“It better be good news.”
Cassandra looked out at the rounded edge of the Pantheon dome outside the bank of windows as she walked the long hallway to their offices. The sky was a bright, clean blue today, unlike Beijing’s, which was choking under an ocean of sand. Some were calling it a prelude to the end of days; some believed it retribution, but against whom, no one ventured a guess, at least in China.
She was surprised at an unexpected stab of conscience. So many thousands dead in Beijing, suffocated. She quashed it for the moment. A large portion of the Gobi Desert now resided in Beijing, exactly what they’d needed to happen. And now they would find the Ark, with the real staff of Moses, and all its power, inside.
She’d believed as a child that her mother would find the Ark, but Helen Kohath had died in the effort. That was a pain deep in Cassandra’s heart she knew would never go away. She and Ajax had their grandfather, but he was outliving his usefulness. He would die soon, and that would leave them alone, with no more family, unless, of course, if one of them married and had a child. It was strange, but she knew, deep down where fears resided, and knowledge, that she would never birth a child, nor would Ajax father one.
And that meant she had to accept whatever casualties happened. Did Ajax even care about all the deaths in Beijing? She looked briefly at his profile. Outwardly, he seemed well controlled—but not always. He was, however, a computer genius like their grandfather. She was her mother’s daughter—focused, resolute, committed. Neither of them were anything like their worthless, greedy father.
Lilith was waiting in Ajax’s office, seated on the edge of a white leather sofa. She stood when they came into the room.
Cassandra saw the smile bloom on her brother’s face at the excitement in Lilith’s eyes. “You’ve done it?”
Lilith pointed to a small satellite phone in the middle of the glass coffee table. “Dr. Gregory and his team are on-site. There’s news.”
The twins sat down side by side. “We’re ready.”
Lilith keyed in the microphone on the sat phone, and the screen popped up. A man’s face swam into focus, a face that looked older than his thirty-four years, seamed and lined from years spent outdoors, in all weather. His thinning dark hair looked gray from the swirling sand.
“Vincent Gregory here, Mysore Base. Ajax? Cassandra? We are at the site, and we’ve uncovered a treasure trove of material—two tents, a couple of bags of tools, all with the old G we used to have in the logo on the outside. We thought it was sterile soil and we’d missed the right location, but something told me to do a shovel test pit, and boom, I found the mother lode.” He paused, drew in a deep breath. “I know we’ve found your mother’s lost dig site.”
Cassandra didn’t think she could speak. They’d finally found the last known whereabouts of her mother. The last place on earth Helen had been. She saw the pulse pounding in Ajax’s neck, heard the excitement in his voice.
“Send me photos, Gregory.”
“Photos should be in your secure email now.”
Lilith handed Ajax a laptop. He opened it so quickly he nearly broke the hinge. Such a small thing, but it proved to Cassandra how deeply he felt about locating their mother’s last dig site. The email was waiting, and he took a deep breath before he clicked it open.
The scene was just as Gregory had described: dark blue bags half-buried in sand, the sun shining on the tools left out, a cable wire from a tent.
The phone crackled to life again. “Ajax, I’m sending a second photo now—we uncovered some bones. No way to tell who they might belong to. We’re going to have to excavate the site, and fast. We’ve done our best to create a stable platform here, but I don’t know how long we’ll have. You know these sands like to blow around.”
All Cassandra heard was “bones.” She took her twin’s hand, squeezed his fingers until they were white.
The second photo came, so many bones, all jumbled together, impossible to sort out what was what. Or who.
Please not Mother, please not Mother.
Another email came through. Gregory said, “You should be receiving a live feed right now.”
Cassandra was so afraid of what that live feed would show, she could scarcely speak. She swallowed. “Yes, Dr. Gregory, let’s see everything.”
They’d been searching for their mother’s last known dig site in the Gobi for nearly a dozen years now. Would she recognize her mother’s skull? No, it wouldn’t do to think about that. Stay focused on the prize, on what their mother had died for. The Ark. Was it still buried in the sand, waiting to be found, the staff of Moses inside?
The site was awash in sunlight, the bare rock exposed, the last remnants of sand that remained from their mega storm swirling in the air behind them. The camera slowly moved over the flags they’d hammered into the ground to mark where each artifact had been found.
There wasn’t much to see except—the camera panned right, and suddenly there it all was, a pit opening into the earth. It looked organized, a
grid meticulously set up. Their mother had done that, Cassandra was sure of it. Was their mother buried in that pit? Her mother’s bones. Cassandra didn’t know if she could bear the reality of finding proof of her mother’s death.
The camera focused on a large skull, clearly a man’s. Her mother had been delicate, beautiful and fine-boned. Cassandra closed her eyes and gave a thank-you to a god she wasn’t sure she believed existed.
“Show me the bags, Dr. Gregory,” she said, pleased she sounded strong, in control.
Gregory shifted the view to a stained burlap sack. “See, here’s the old G, and here are the orange tents, we moved to yellow five years ago. This is the site, I’m sure of it.”
Ajax met his twin’s eyes as he said, “Excavate it, Gregory. Don’t leave a grain of sand unturned. Our plane is standing by. We’ll be there tomorrow morning.”