The server quickly decanted a large portion of Scotch Whisky into a tumbler and set it before him with a knowing smile. Kismet savored a mouthful of the peaty spirits then decided to press his luck a bit further. “This is kind of embarrassing, but I seem to have misplaced my key, and I can’t remember what my room number is.”
“No problem, sir.” He picked up a telephone and punched a three-digit code. “Name?”
Kismet tried to sound casual as he supplied the information, then took another sip of his drink while the bartender relayed the information. After a moment, he hung up and turned back to Kismet. “Good news. The purser will bring a replacement key card for you, straightaway.”
Kismet weighed the response and decided it concealed nothing sinister. “Thanks. Now, what are my chances of getting something to eat?”
Rather than wait at the bar for the purser’s arrival, Kismet took up his Scotch and wandered toward the entrance to the exhibit. If his fugitive crisis was indeed over, he was going to have to turn his attention back to the matter that had brought him here in the first place. Oddly enough, he found comfort in the thought, as if in so doing he might somehow delete the events of the past day from memory.
Yet something about the incident nagged at him, like a tiny sliver of metal lodged in the skin of his subconscious. He could still see it in his mind’s eye; a stone prism etched with tiny lines of cuneiform. Why had Jin’s pirates chosen that piece?
The prism was almost certainly one of the pieces looted from Iraq in the days leading up to the 2003 invasion that had ousted the regime of Saddam Hussein. Shortly thereafter, Kismet, in concert with French authorities, had raided the operation of a former Iraqi intelligence officer who had opened a pipeline of looted antiquities during the 1990’s to establish an alternate source of revenue to offset the crippling economic sanctions imposed by Western nations. The evidence gathered at the man’s villa in Nice indicated that more than a few items had found their way into the Sultan’s collection.
There was no denying that the piece had a reliable pedigree. The circumstances surrounding its removal from its country of origin might even have added to its value as a curiosity, but it remained just that: a curiosity. Kismet could not fathom why the pirates had elected to liberate it along with the other relics; had it simply been a target of opportunity?
The artifacts had been grouped according to country of origin, and as he neared the section which housed the art of Mesopotamia, he was dismayed to find that he was not alone in seeking out the prism.
The man was tall, and would have seemed gaunt if not for the luxurious silver mane that framed his angular face — a countenance that appeared too youthful for a man gone completely gray. His clothing was nondescript; the dark trousers and a blousy black shirt might have been the attire of an off duty waiter. His left hand held a notebook in which he was painstakingly copying lines from the prism, and the middle finger of his right, which held the pen, was adorned with a gaudy, gem-encrusted ring. Impulsively, Kismet tried to get a better look at the ring, and in so doing, drew attention to his presence. The tall man inclined his head in a polite nod, revealing eyes the color of gypsum, then returned to his labor.
“What’s it say?”
The scribe looked up, a faintly perturbed expression flickering across his features. Kismet smiled, hoping to put the man at ease, but saw no change in the gray eyes. He risked extending a hand to the man. “I’m Nick Kismet.”
The man's expression softened just a little, but he disdained the handclasp. When he spoke, his enunciation was precise, with just a hint of superciliousness but no discernible accent. “Dr. John Leeds, at your service.”
In the corner of his eye, Kismet saw a man wearing the common uniform of a ship’s steward enter the lounge. He felt an inexplicable compulsion to remain with the strange scholar, but the hunger and fatigue in his body argued that he should take his leave. “A pleasure making your acquaintance, doctor. Enjoy the cruise.”
“It is the Epic of Gilgamesh.”
The quiet voice froze Kismet in mid-step. He turned back. “I take it you’re not a physician, Dr. Leeds.”
The statement elicited a faint smile. “No. My field is comparative theology. I am also — if I may be so bold as to say it — an expert on mythology and the occult.”
“Thus your interest in one of the world's oldest fairy tales.”
Leeds laughed, but his icy eyes froze away any hint of mirth. “My interest is not purely academic. The quest of Gilgamesh is one that I happen to share.”
“As I recall, Gilgamesh was looking for the secret of immortality.”
“Even so.”
For a moment, Kismet could only stare in mute disbelief at the other man. When he at last found his voice, he averted his eyes, gazing instead at the amber contents of his glass. “Gilgamesh never found it. What makes you think it’s there to be found?”
“Actually, Gilgamesh did find it. In the legend, Uta-Napishtim, the only man to be given the gift of immortality, told Gilgamesh of a plant which could give him eternal life; a plant that grew at the bottom of the sea. Gilgamesh recovered the plant, only to lose it to a hungry serpent.”
“I stand corrected.” For some reason, Kismet got the distinct impression that Leeds didn’t think of the Epic as a fairy tale. “So do you think such a plant really existed?”
“Straight to the point, Mr. Kismet? What if it was that simple; eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, and live forever? Would you not do so in a heartbeat?”
Kismet was already regretting having asked, regretted having even introduced himself to Leeds in the first place, but something about the man — maybe it was his self-confessed quest for immortality, or maybe just the fact that Leeds came off as an arrogant bastard who needed to be taken down a notch — compelled Kismet to stay. “Who wouldn’t? But if such a plant, a Tree of Life, existed, someone would have found it by now.”
“And why do you believe no one has?”
Kismet contemplated the prism for a moment. “So this…the Epic of Gilgamesh is factual?”
Leeds smiled again, a humorless grin that lowered the temperature in the air-conditioned salon by several degrees. “Theologians cannot help but recognize the similarities between characters in the Epic, and those mentioned in the Bible. Gilgamesh is certainly Nimrod, the king who would be a god. Uta-Napishtim the immortal who survived the Great Flood, is Noah. Genesis also speaks of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden; doubtless the same plant Gilgamesh sought. Its placement at the bottom of the ocean would be an allusion to Eden being lost to the Flood.”
Kismet stroked his chin thoughtfully. He wasn’t a believer, but he knew enough about both theology and mythology to hold his own in the conversation. “Okay, I'll buy that. Of course, the Bible records Noah’s death, whereas Uta-Napishtim was supposed to be immortal.”
“Noah lived to be nearly a thousand years old; the longest any man lived after the Great Flood. His son Shem apparently possessed a similar gift of longevity. To the rest of the world, they would certainly seem immortal.”
“And it is your contention that they possessed some vestige of the Tree of Life from the Garden of Eden that kept them alive well beyond the limit of an ordinary life span?”