“Away from the scorpions.”
I left Carl at the truck with the bulk of the gear. Nouri followed me, but after a short time, sat down on a block of masonry and watched as I roamed about the site. It must have all looked pretty aimless, I suppose, and yet it wasn’t. I had the site map in my hand. Each time I took a reading, I’d jot it down, near as I could place to the location. But that seemed to be throwing up more questions than solutions. A census in the seventh century bc had listed three palaces and no less than thirty-four temples in Assur, not all of which have been uncovered yet. Thirty-four potential sites of worship. Thirty-four charged spots. But it had been a thousand years or so since anybody’d actually bothered with them, and things had grown a little sloppy in the meantime. There was power here for sure, but I couldn’t get a clear location. It just seemed to have leeched away into the rocks, diffused across the site and probably beyond. I didn’t have the cable length to stretch that far. Assur might be a small city by modern standards, but it’s still a good couple of miles across. And that was more than I could handle.
I watched a heron strutting through the shallows of the river, the curve of its neck as graceful as the Arabic calligraphy I’d seen since my arrival, its movements delicate, almost hesitant. Then suddenly its head shot forward. It scrabbled in the water, shaking like a dog. The neck swung up, its beak raised to the sky, and it gulped, greedily, too fast for me to catch a glimpse of what it had.
I checked the reader once again.
Flick, flick, flick.
Stood. Took a few steps, one mound to the next.
Flick, flick.
I raised the water bottle to my lips. Perhaps the god was everywhere, melted down into the Earth. Or maybe there was more than one—two, three—thirty-four? Gods in swarms, like birds, like fish . . . ?
I looked back. “Nouri!” I called. I saw his head come up; he’d been playing on his phone. Now he jumped to his feet, gave me a mock salute. “Let’s get the gear,” I said, “and get started!”
I don’t know how many jobs I’ve done. I daresay there’s a record somewhere. Some were easy: in and out, more time setting up than actually doing them. Still, there are always dangers. “Your biggest threat,” I’d tell trainees, “is you, thinking you know it all.” But sometimes it’s not that. Sometimes it’s just dangerous, and no amount of care and forethought is ever going to make it safe. As a trade, Field Ops has its share of casualties, and everybody thinks, “It won’t be me.” Until the day it is.
I’d had my own slice of the damage, sure enough. Esztergom, in Hungary. I could pretend it hadn’t been my fault, except it had: I should have done the final check myself, and not left it to my trainee partner. A good op checks once, and then again. Another message for trainees. And I bore my share of guilt for what had happened since, and what might still be happening, somewhere in the world. Hopefully a long, long way from here.
I scanned the ground for scorpions and other nasties, then sat down on a rock. Carl and Nouri brought the truck as close as possible and started unloading equipment. A bunch of kids had gathered. Nouri bribed the bigger ones to keep the rest away. I hoped that they were good at it. I didn’t want kids within a mile of the place, especially with the strategy I’d got in mind. That’s if I went with it. Right now, I couldn’t quite make up my mind.
What I wasn’t happy with, though— and less and less so, as the day wore on—was Dayling’s “stealth” plan. It wasn’t terrorists that worried me. There were just too many people round about. Carl felt the same, I knew, but he was careful not to say too much. He came towards me now, a canvas carrier of cables loaded on each shoulder.
“Hey, boss.”
I pointed north. Up where the readings had been highest, by the palace, and the temples, and the big mound of the ziggurat.
Nothing for it now except to carry on.
I joined the other two, lugging the gear up to my chosen spot. I wish I could have called someone, got some advice. One of the older guys. Fredericks, say, or Karen Meier in Frankfurt, both great ops in their day, just to ask them, “Is this smart? Would you do this?” The trouble was that I’d been doing the job so long now, I pretty much was one of the older guys. I was the one the new kids came to for advice, unaware how ignorant I still was, how much I, like them, was flying by the seat of my pants.
How much the guys who’d taught me had been doing just the same.
So I knew already what advice I’d get out of the older guys. If it works, they’d say, then yes, you should have done it. If it doesn’t, no, you shouldn’t.
Then maybe I should trust myself. “Acceptable risk.” Maybe I did know what was best, after all.
“Yanks were guarding it during the war,” said Carl. “Thought they were trying to protect the history, an’ aw.”