He shook his head and muttered under his breath. "Be bloody-minded, then."

  Her smile got sweeter. "I just wouldn't want you to have any false notions. Now, why do you happen to be interested in the legendary jar of King Solomon?"

  As a flying subject change, it was outstandingly clumsy, she knew. But its very ham-handedness served the purpose of bringing home to Aidan that the subject of the sword was not just closed, but sealed. And anyway, she needed to know.

  A tightening of his somewhat full lips told her he saw through the ruse. Also that he had dimples.

  "I'm an archaeologist," he said. "I read the subject and biblical antiquities at Oxford. Although the truth is I've a lifelong fascination, bordering upon obsession, for the fringe areas of archaeology. Indeed, I have actively crusaded to open the minds of my colleagues – albeit, in a cowardly way, making use of the anonymity of the Internet. Or perhaps, pseudonymity, should such a word exist."

  "You're seeker23!" she exclaimed.

  He performed a mock genuflection. "Guilty, mademoiselle."

  "Parlez-vous français?" she asked.

  "Oui," he said with a nasal Parisian accent that made it almost way. "Bloody badly, as befits an Englishman."

  He took a sip of coffee and studied her. "It seems to me I might have seen your name, once or twice."

  "Sometimes I ask a question or two. I usually try to stay clear of the flame wars," she said.

  "Wise of you." He took another drink, eyeing her with a slight pensive frown.

  She leaned her elbows on the metal table, holding her mug in both hands. She had to adjust her weight to keep the off-balance table from tipping. She resisted the urge to improvise a shim; her tendency to want to fix things that were wrong could distract her at key moments.

  "Tell me about yourself," she said. Lame! she thought. Growing up in the orphanage and then a career in research hadn't exactly prepared her to make small talk.

  "As I said, I've long been fascinated with the way-out and wonderful," Pascoe said. "I've no particular fondness for biblical archaeology, however."

  She cocked an eyebrow. "Really?"

  He smiled self-deprecatingly, shaking his head. "My father was a solicitor in Weston-super-Mare," he said. "Not a highly remunerative job."

  That surprised her. She knew a solicitor was a kind of lawyer.

  "I've an uncle, though, who made a few bob in sum through trade." He pronounced the word trade with evident contempt. "He's rather a bug on the literal truth of the Bible. The Old Testament in particular – all the Sturm und Drang and bearded prophets and she-bears rending the wicked appeals to him more than parables of a gentle Christ, I'm afraid."

  He shrugged. "He should have been a Yank, really."

  "We're all fundamentalists, of course," Annja said with no effort to conceal her sarcasm.

  "Sorry, sorry. It's not on to let my prejudices show. Especially to a woman who has made such a habit of saving my life the last week or so."

  "At least this time I wasn't the one who put it in jeopardy."

  "Have I not apologized for my intemperate remarks in Holland? Something about being shot at and then dunked in a canal made me, shall we say, a trifle testy? Anyway, my uncle was willing to subsidize not just my advanced education but actual field researches. I see you cocking your brow skeptically at me. I'd be tempted to say it's rather fetching, but I'll refrain for fear of making myself a sexist pig."

  She laughed. "Don't hold back for that. I have a pretty high sexual-harassment threshold."

  "And some rather brisk penalties for crossing the line, I imagine."

  She shrugged. "Accept as a ground rule that compliments are safe. So long as they're tasteful."

  "Ah." He touched a fingertip to the side of his nose. "I've wanted to do that since childhood. Well, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind bat, say no more, as Monty Python said. In any event, I note your skepticism, and in fairness to the old gent – yes, and to myself, as well – I have to say that so far he has been quite scrupulous in accepting what I've been able to discover, whether it happens to harmonize with the bees in his bonnet or not."

  "Do you get to publish your results?" Annja asked.

  "As long as I send regular reports about my progress on areas of his interest, I'm free to pursue such other matters as I desire. Those tend to be more...interesting to the journals."

  "I see." She sipped from her mug. The coffee, which she drank with a healthy dollop of milk and artificial sweetener, had gone cold. She didn't really need the concentrated caffeine blast of Middle Eastern coffee at this hour either, but she was coming down from an extreme adrenal high. She'd crash and burn soon enough despite the stimulant. "So your uncle is interested in Solomon's Jar?"

  "Not at all. He'd suspect the whole legend of binding demons to build the temple smacked of black magic, actually. The particular bee in his bonnet I'm feeding now concerns demonstrating the factual existence of the Garden of Eden. Bit of a bother, really, since the location most reliably alleged is in Mesopotamia."

  "That could prove inconvenient. Does your uncle expect you to do your research in a war zone?" Annja asked.

  "I'm not sure the old boy's aware there's a war on," Pascoe said. "Unlike your American fundamentalists, like the ones who back Mark Peter Stern, he doesn't believe that we're living in the end times. Aside from his precious bottom line, he has trouble concentrating on anything later than Malachi 4:6."

  "'And he will turn the heart of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse,'" Annja quoted the Old Testament's last verse. "Are you sure he's not into millenarianism?"

  "He doesn't foresee the return of Elijah the prophet or the 'coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord' anytime soon. As a matter of fact I suspect he half believes Christ himself was more than a bit of a dangerous radical."

  "What's your interest in the jar, then? Care to dabble in demon binding?" She smiled as she asked, and hoped he couldn't see her eyes clearly in the gloom.

  "What? Oh, that's all poppycock, of course. I do believe such a jar exists. I do believe it's been found – as, sadly, one or more far less scrupulous parties likewise appear to believe, as well."

  "But you don't think King Solomon used it to bind demons?"

  "As much as I believe in the Easter Bunny, Annja dear. Charming name, that – if it's really your name." He didn't wait for her reaction. "I do believe in the historical existence of Solomon, and the empire he built in the biblical story – which is itself controversial in archaeological circles these days, although don't say so aloud where any of the local savants can hear you. As you no doubt recall, since a woman who can quote the final verse of the rather obscure Book of Malachi clearly knows her Old Testament, Solomon was renowned for his wisdom, as well as for his habit of building pagan temples to gratify some of his numberless foreign wives, which quite scandalized the religious establishment, then and since.

  "Now, one thing I believe our occult navel gazers and fire leapers get right is that Solomon was a highly regarded sorcerer of his time. Indeed, rather in the manner of the first speaker of the Aztec, I suspect that even though he was not of the priestly caste, he was looked to as a central spiritual leader by the Israelites of his day. Being a magician was part and parcel of being a powerful and popular king. So what could be more natural, especially in some time of unrecorded hardship such as drought or pestilence, than for the nation's chief figure, political and spiritual, to perform a public ritual of binding the evil spirits responsible for the nation's hardships in a vessel, suitably inscribed with their symbols, and then with appropriate ceremony casting it into the Red Sea?"

  He sipped his coffee again and grimaced. "Cold as ice. I expect it worked, too, Solomon's public gesture. Kings whose luck runs bad at moments such as that aren't remembered for reigning record amounts of time and dying in bed, are they?"

  "I suppose not. But the account you posted online claims the jar was fished out of the Mediterranean by those hapless fishermen – the news services confirmed that the deaths took place, by the way," Annja said.

  "Ah, there I think vulgar legend comes to our rescue." He leaned forward and his eyes seemed to shine. "In time, the story arose that King Solomon had employed demons to build his great temple. Although that wasn't really necessary to what came next – treasure hunters, who believed that demons had the power to discover hidden treasure, and either convey it to their human masters or lead their masters to it."

  "And so they fished out the jar," Annja said. "And pried it open. And then when, presumably, no treasure was forthcoming – "

  "They got browned off and pitched the thing into the nearest body of water! Precisely. How it happened to be the Mediterranean is anybody's guess. But like the water in the watershed, everything that happens in the Mediterranean littoral tends inevitably to roll down to the sea. It's certainly no contradiction to the basic theory."

  "I suppose not," Annja said. It's as good a theory as any, she thought. But then, I have some information he doesn't. "But why so much violence now, over a purely ceremonial bauble?"

  He shrugged. "There are plenty of gits in the world who believe the fairy story about binding demons. Some of them have fortunes – speaking as the happy, or at least fortunate, beneficiary of one such git, albeit not one who'd give any yarn about Solomon trafficking with devils the time of day. They could easily pursue the jar themselves, or hire minions who may or may not believe any of the rubbish, but are quite willing to take a human life for sixpence. And, of course, such an item would be of inestimable value as an artifact, leaving aside all the mystic gibble-gabble. The world's full of pothunters. By nature they're unscrupulous – why would some of them stop short of murder, if the price were right?"

  He leaned back, folded his arms and regarded her with eyes narrowed beneath a furrowed brow. "What about yourself, Ms. Annja Creed? What's your interest in Solomon's Jar?"

  Her heart sank. She'd cleverly maneuvered him into returning to his early suspicion of her and her motives. Even if it was the last thing she wanted.

  "I'm an archaeologist, too," she said, honestly.

  "So I gathered." His tone was anything but friendly now.

  "Like you, I have an interest in the more esoteric realms of the discipline. The jar would be more than just a part of history...."

  She let her words trail away to nothing but the background murmur of traffic. Unlike the Old City, West Jerusalem seemed to thrive after dark, although there was a muted, furtive quality to its nightlife. Great, she thought. Now I sound just like Belloq talking to Indy about the Ark.

  Her companion had seen that movie, too, it seemed. Scowling openly now, he tossed off the dregs of his coffee and rose. The rubber feet of his white-enameled metal chair stuttered unpleasantly on the pavement.

  "My motive for seeking the jar is clear enough, in any event," Pascoe said. "I intend that it be handed over to the proper authorities. Not be stolen as so many of the world's priceless antiquities have been by immoral, money-grubbing pothunters. Or should I say, hunt-resses?"

  He slammed the mug down on the table, making it teeter precariously. Annja winced.

  "Good evening to you, Ms. Creed. I hope for both our sakes that our paths never cross again."

  Chapter 13

  Returning to her modest West Jerusalem hotel after her less than satisfactory leave-taking from Aidan Pascoe, Annja was cautious.

  Though it was late at night, a surprising amount of activity stirred in the Tower Hotel lobby. A party of Japanese tourists was checking in and some Italians were arguing theology among the potted-palm fronds in the seats by the front window. As Pascoe had predicted she aroused no interest walking through. Catching a glimpse of her reflection in a segment of mirrored wall, though, she almost lost a step.

  When she drenched herself in the fountain, the blood spattered so liberally across her once-white blouse had run and faded until it looked like nothing more than pinkish orange swirls or surrealistic flower patterns. Somehow it struck her now as far more horrific than obvious bloodstains would have been. Frowning, she made it to the elevator and then her fourth-floor room before running to the bathroom and throwing up.

  A shower helped her compose herself. Baths and showers tended to soothe her mind and spirit, as well as her body. Still, dressed in a fluffy white-and-blue hotel terrycloth robe with a towel wrapped around her hair, she found herself too jangled by the day's events to contemplate sleep.

  Needing something to occupy her brain, and fend off random crying jags, she sat down on the bed and popped the top on her notebook computer. The hotel offered free Internet access through its wireless network. In a moment she was looking at page one of over 180,000 Google hits for Mark Peter Stern.

  She made an indeterminate noise low in her throat and set the computer aside. The bedside clock-radio offered a selection of Moroccan-roll, Israeli hip-hop and bland Europop, all of which struck her ears as about equally unlistenable at her current space-time coordinates. Finally she found a classical station. Mozart was always good. Rearranging the towel around her still wet hair, she piled up pillows at the head of the bed, picked up the computer again and lay back for some serious data mining.

  First she scanned news items relating to Stern and his foundation. There were thousands to choose from. She read of his cutting the ribbon to open a literacy center he had endowed in São Paulo, Brazil, with six-foot-tall blond supermodel Eliete von Hauptstark on his arm. She watched in streaming video as he trudged through an earthquake-ravaged zone in Pakistan in his shirtsleeves, even helping rescuers move rubble off a victim trapped beneath a collapsed wall. It didn't seem to be staged.

  She saw pictures of him attending some Hollywood film opening, laughing with the likes of Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson – both of whom, she was quickly able to find, openly expressed scathing opinions of him, his movement and even their celebrity friends who had fallen under his sway.

  One common thread became apparent, especially paging through pictures and videos. Mark Peter Stern was seldom seen, or at least photographed, without at least one strikingly beautiful woman in his company. Most of them were famous to one degree or another, from a teenage-sex-bomb A-list actress who claimed he had rescued her from dependency on drugs and alcohol to tae kwon do black belt Hauptstark, the current rave supermodel, whose grandfather, allegedly, was a Nazi war criminal who had fled to Brazil, where he'd lived to a ripe old age. All these women wore around their gorgeous throats the braided green collar that symbolized committed Malkuth adherents.

  On the sites that offered actual words concerning Stern, as opposed to strictly images, Annja found glitz, innuendo, vituperation and outright flackery.

  He did profess a keen interest in biblical antiquities. Annja knew how to check on that. One thing you learned to do as an archaeology student was track down grant money like a bloodhound. The foundations and expeditions funded either by the Malkuth Foundation or Stern in person proved he backed his words abundantly with cash.

  Interesting but inconclusive, she thought.

  She saw three possibilities. He sought the jar for reasons she could accept as benign, in which case they might well find themselves allies. Provided, of course, he could convince her that whatever he intended was really likely to work more good than harm. That would take some doing.

  Or he might want to use the jar in a way she deemed destructive – whether or not from motives he believed pure. Idealistic motives had led Sir Martin Highsmith to murder, after all, as well as to order her own execution. If, wittingly or not, Stern meant to use the jar to work evil in the world, she would find him a powerful foe. And vice versa.

  Finally, he might have no interest in the jar, at which point she would cross him off the list.

  Annja hadn't expected the puff pieces or the hit jobs to give her any reliable clues. After surfing various news sites, blogs and variations on the theme "markpetersternsucks.com" she took a breath and dived into the official Malkuth Foundation site.

  It was professionally done, and unlike a lot of professionally designed sites, actually well done. It was not just visually arresting but lucid and easy to navigate, without oversize images, gimmicky hard-to-find menus or eye-itching Flash animations.

  As to what it was all about...that she found somewhat less accessible.

  She quickly discovered some concise and readable descriptions of the Tree of Life, the arrangement of the ten sephiroth and the various pathways between them, a colorful representation of which was the foundation's logo. She glossed over it, as well as a history of both the Jewish and Gentile traditions of the kabbalah. The latter read like respectable popular history, and where it impinged on Annja's expertise, such as discussing the Renaissance-age origins of modern kabbalistic study, she found it to be accurate. But neither a description of the Tree of Life nor the brief story of kabbalism was what she was after.

  What she really wanted to know was what the foundation stood for that set it apart from other mystic groups.

  She waded through pages of fairly standard commonsense self-improvement advice, most of it unobjectionable and probably even useful, taken in the proper perspective. And the usual peace and love to all human-kind, environmental consciousness, tolerance and the like.

  After two hours of diligent reading she had gained nothing but a headache. She didn't have any clearer idea of what the actual core message of Mark Peter Stern and his Malkuth Foundation might be.

  Going back to her searches she was certainly able to find plenty who purported to tell her the foundation was a cult, it was sinister, it was evil, it brainwashed its acolytes.

  She could find as many sites praising Stern and Malkuth to the skies. And all the sites, for and against, sported message boards wherein roared flames of such prodigious heat and volume that she reckoned Dante needed resurrecting from the dead to write up a whole new annex to Hell – a concept he, far more than Scripture, had visualized and inserted into the world's religious imagination.

 

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