Finn glanced over at Hilts. So far she hadn’t said a word to him about her conversation with the mysterious Mr. Simpson the night before. According to the fat little man, at least one of the members of the Adamson expedition was working for the CIA, and Simpson thought there might be more espionage than archaeology involved in the dig. According to him no one could be trusted, least of all Adamson himself. Simpson knew as much about the expedition leader’s background as Hilts and more besides.
According to the Cambridge-educated expatriate, Adamson was a secret supporter of the Tenth Crusade, a violent right-wing organization that believed that Christianity was under overt attack and had to be defended with military action. Finn was vaguely aware of the fringe group, which, unlike most of the so-called Patriot Militia, committed their violence well away from the United States. In the last few years the Tenth Crusade, with their cross and roman numeral X insignia, had taken responsibility for attacks in Baghdad, Tehran, Kabul, and Belfast.
The spokesman of the organization was Colonel James Matoon Judd, a Vietnam War Medal of Honor winner, and now the junior senator from Colorado. A fanatic right-wing fundamentalist, Judd was generally thought to be a complete outer-limits nutcase who had been twice warned in the Senate for his racist, inflammatory remarks. The fact that Adamson had anything to do with a lunatic like Senator Jimmy “Sword of the Lord” Judd came as a complete surprise to Finn.
Simpson wasn’t entirely sure what Adamson’s involvement with Judd had to do with the dig, but according to Simpson it was Judd’s influence in the corridors of power that had gotten Adamson’s expedition access to the Libyan site. That Judd would be rubbing shoulders with people who were the sworn enemies of groups like the Tenth Crusade didn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but according to Simpson’s sources it was unqualified fact, and that made the information all the more intriguing.
After Simpson finally left her room, Finn had spent a confusing hour in the darkness trying to make sense of it all, and trying to make the fat little Englishman’s tale fit in with what had happened to her in the City of the Dead. What had started off as an exotic summer job after graduation was turning into something sinister, dark, and very dangerous. On top of everything else she still hadn’t figured out what Simpson’s angle was; except for the tenuous connection to her late father, there was no reason for the strange man to have sought her out for his late-night warning.
“Holy…!”
The Cessna suddenly yawed, turning in the sky like a windblown leaf. They dropped like a stone, surrounded by a screaming howl of jet engines on both sides that came and went in an instant.
“Son of a bitch!” Hilts yelled, struggling with the wheel, hauling back, desperately pulling out of the sudden dive. The horizon tumbled, spun, then finally settled down. “What the hell was that?!”
Finn tried to get her stomach back where it belonged. Achmed, wide awake, sat behind her looking terrified.
Laval, book in his lap, looked out the port-side window, staring through the lightly tinted glass. “I believe they were Sukhoi Su-22s,” he said. “A pair of them. Probably flying out of Al-Jufra/Hun. Presumably we are now in Libyan air space. They were most likely trying to read your tail registration number.”
“You seem to know a lot about Russian all-purpose fighter jets for a monk,” said Hilts. “Not to mention Libyan air bases.”
“You forget, Mr. Hilts, I am French, and France had no argument with the colonel, as you Americans had. I have been to this country many times in the past twenty years; I am no stranger to their security measures.”
“That must be nice for you,” said Hilts with a sour note in his voice.
“It must be disturbing for a man such as yourself to realize that some of us would rather be citizens of the world than citizens of the United States.”
Hilts muttered something under his breath.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Hilts?”
“How soon before we land?” Finn broke in. The thought of these two in a fistfight at twenty thousand feet wasn’t doing much for her peace of mind.
“Can’t be soon enough for me,” Hilts grunted.
10
An hour later they landed at Al-Kufrah. From the air it looked like an arid west Texas ghost town: a crossroads with a main street and a few dozen low, adobe-style buildings in the middle of nowhere. The original oasis had become one of Qaddafi’s first “modernization projects” after the revolution, and as they came in for their approach Finn saw dozens of the huge green circles in the desert that marked the deeply irrigated zones of oasis agriculture the colonel-dictator had instituted. The fact that the desert climate was totally unsuited to the crops he tried to grow and that the oasis economy had been totally upset by his efforts was immaterial. He would make the desert bloom even if what he grew cost three times as much to produce as it could be sold for. What Colonel Qaddafi wanted, Colonel Qaddafi got, no questions asked.
Hilts put the Caravan down on the tarmac without so much as a bump and taxied along to the hardstand next to the small terminal building. The airport was an Italian leftover from World War Two and had very little over the years. The run-way had been extended slightly but the square lump of concrete that passed for a terminal was the same, and so was the squat control tower. On the hardstand next to them were two helicopters-one a vicious-looking Mil-24 gunship, squatting like a hunchbacked dragonfly in spotty desert camouflage bristling with weapons, the other a big French-made Aйrospatiale Super Puma transport. The Super Puma was white and carried the yellow, black, and red Adamson Corporation Flying A logo on its side.
Three men were standing in front of the Aйrospatiale, two in khaki safari-style clothes that looked just a little too stylish to be true, the third man wearing a sky-blue beret and camouflage fatigues that matched the gunship helicopter. He was short, skinny, and had a face like a long-nosed ferret, complete with bushy eyebrows and a cop’s mustache over thin lips. His eyes were hidden behind mirrored aviator sunglasses.
“With sunglasses like that he’s got to be one of the bad guys,” said Hilts. He popped open the pilot’s door of the Cessna, letting in a blast of dry, hot air that hit him like a fist after the interior air conditioning. He stepped out, dropping down onto the hardstand. Finn opened her own door and followed him out. Achmed and the monk roused themselves and came out through the rear door. One of the men in the khaki shooting jackets waved. Finn recognized him from the Newsweek profile. It was Rolf Adamson, the forty-year-old media tycoon, billionaire, possible religious fanatic, and also her new boss. He looked exactly like his photograph in the magazine: young, blond, Hollywood handsome and New York smart. The man beside him was the direct opposite, old, grizzled, and dark with the face of a worn-out prizefighter.
“The one in the Lion King outfit beside our fearless leader Mr. Adamson is Fritz Kuhn,” said Hilts quietly. “His grandfather was a man named Gustav Kossina, sometimes referred to as Hitler’s archaeologist. Kossina was the freak who came up with all those ’scientific’ theories about Aryan supremacy.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“He’s written a bunch of books about the Italian digs around Al-Kufrah before the war and about Pedrazzi, the guy who disappeared.” He held up two fingers twined together. “Kossina and Pedrazzi were buddies in the old days. Adamson’s hired Kuhn as a consultant.” He glanced at the ferret-faced man in the beret. “Presumably Mr. Gung Ho is our military escort.”
They made their way over to the three men, with Laval bringing up the rear. Achmed started unloading the Cessna. Everyone made their introductions. The man in uniform turned out to be Lieutenant Colonel Amad Nasif, Colonel Qaddafi’s personal guide and “protector” of the expedition. There was no explanation of what the man in the beret would be protecting the expedition from.