"I'll bet he happens to know someone," Diego said.
"That's par for the course. It's a good idea if we want wheels on the truck in the morning. He's happy to see us. We bring dollars instead of the local currency."
"What is the local currency?"
"It's called the birr. One birr is worth about four cents American."
"Let's get the trunk out," Nick said.
They went inside, showed their passports and signed the register.
"You are recommended to spray your room," the clerk said. "Very small charge." He took out four cans labeled Mobile Insecticide Spray. "Mosquitoes very bad, make you sick."
"Sick?" Selena said.
Lamont said something to the clerk in Ethiopian. The man answered him and swirled his hands in the air.
"Malaria and dengue fever," Lamont said.
Lamont paid him. They each took a can.
Selena and Nick's room had a big double bed and a balcony looking out over the city. There wasn't much to see, just blocks of low buildings stretching away across the plain. Compared to a European or American city, there were few lights. The air smelled of dry earth and something that might have been like sage. Hints of spices and cooking oil came from the café downstairs.
"Not exactly the Hilton," Selena said, "but it's clean."
"We've stayed in worse."
There was a private bathroom with a shower stall and a small television on the dresser. Nick turned the set on. It was a news program. Children with tear streaked faces stood in the rubble of a building somewhere in the Middle East. He clicked the remote. There were only two channels. The second channel was playing an episode of Gunsmoke, dubbed in Ethiopian.
"Makes me feel right at home. Bad news on one channel and reruns on the other."
Selena said, "We'd better get something at the café before they close."
"Shall I use this stuff?" He held up the can of bug spray.
"I'd rather take my chances with the mosquitoes."
"I'm tired," Nick said. "I hope that bed is more comfortable than it looks."
"Poor baby. How tired are you?"
He arched an eyebrow at her and pretended to twirl a long mustache. "Not as tired as I plan to be later," he said.
The next morning they left the hotel just as the sun climbed above the horizon. The rental Toyota had come with two five gallon gas cans strapped in the back. Nick bought two more and gassed up. A case of bottled water went next to the gas and the trunk with their packs. Then they headed west toward the wild country.
Selena tracked their progress on her GPS.
"Turn there."
She pointed at a dirt track leading off the highway. They followed it into the wilderness until it petered out at a wide, dry riverbed exiting a deep canyon.
"This is the canyon we're looking for."
"Beautiful country," Diego said.
"Looks a lot like Arizona," Ronnie said. "Reminds me of Canyon de Shelly back home."
"Like the Grand Canyon, only not as big," Lamont said. "Or Waimea in Hawaii."
Ronnie had a closet full of Hawaiian shirts. "I've got a shirt with that on it," he said. "Nice colors."
"Is there anything that you don't have on those shirts?"
"I don't think I've got one with elephants."
"There aren't any elephants in Hawaii."
"Sure there are. In the zoo."
Lamont sighed.
Nick turned the truck up the riverbed. It wound through tall cliffs of multicolored reddish rock on either side. The going was slow, the riverbed strewn with rocks and debris that had washed down in the years when there was rain. They bumped along and Nick watched the gas gauge dropping. He thought about how much gas they had and what it would take to get back. He'd about decided it was time to stop when the decision was made for him.
They came around a turn in the canyon floor and found the way blocked by boulders. Ahead, a high mesa that marked the head of the canyon and their destination rose against a brilliant blue sky.
Nick stopped and turned off the engine.
"End of the line," he said.
"We're not moving those rocks," Lamont said.
"Nope. We'll set up base camp here." He looked at the sky. "It's already mid afternoon. We'll hike up the mesa tomorrow."
"It'll be cold later. I'll scrounge some firewood." Diego slapped at an insect. "Why does nature always come with bugs?" He looked at Ronnie. "How come they're not biting you?"
"Because I'm an Indian," Ronnie said.
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Indians and nature are friends. You don't bite your friend."
"Friends?"
"Also because I put repellent on before we left."
Diego just shook his head. Later they sat around the fire, quiet, looking into the flames. A thin column of smoke drifted into a night sky carpeted by stars. Selena broke the silence.
"I wonder if we're going to find anything," she said.
Nick got up and put more wood on the fire.
"The satellite scan says something is up there on that mesa. Whatever it is, we'll find it."
"Relics from the Temple would probably be made of gold. Even without that, the value in a religious sense is beyond price."
"It's a problem, whatever we find." Nick sat down again. "Things from the Second Temple could touch off a firestorm in the Middle East. The Israelis would see it as the final proof of their right to claim Jerusalem. As if they really needed it."
"The Arabs wouldn't like that," Ronnie said.
"Don't forget about Solomon and Sheba," Selena said. "The Israelis, the Muslims and Christians will all stake a claim."
"Sheba is important here," Lamont said. "If she's up there the Ethiopians aren't going to sit on the side and let anyone take her out of the country. Or anything else we find, for that matter."
"Great," Diego said. "We find something, everyone with a religious agenda is going to want to grab it."
"That's one way of putting it," Nick said.
"Suppose we do find Solomon and Sheba hanging out together and sitting on a pile of gold," Diego said. "What happens then?"
"I call Harker. She calls the president. It's his worry, not ours."
"Yeah," Diego said. "But he's in Washington. It's a long way from there to here."
Nick yawned. "Time to hit the rack. Who wants the first watch?"
"I'll do it," Selena said.
"Wake me in three hours."
Twenty minutes later Selena was the only one still awake. She sat on a low flat stone with her back against one of the boulders. The rock gave off faint heat from the day's sun. Moonlight filled the canyon with ghostly light. It was one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen.
It wasn't the first time she'd found herself sitting under a foreign sky filled with stars when she was on a mission. Up to now this mission had been like a glorified camping trip. The hard metal of the pistol pressing against her hip reminded her that it could explode into sudden violence without much warning.
She thought about Solomon and the Temple he'd built to honor God, described in the Old Testament. The walls and floor had been covered with gold, she was sure. For some reason she remembered that the door had been framed in olive wood.
Solomon's Temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. It wasn't until the reign of Herod the Great that it had been rebuilt. It was said that when the Romans destroyed it for a second time, molten gold had run into the cracks of the pavement when it burned.
No one knew what had happened to the legendary treasure of the Temple. Some accounts said it had been hidden beneath the ruins, others that it had been stolen by the Romans. It had all happened a long time ago, the events shrouded in the fog of time. Now she was sitting on a rock in one of the most remote places on earth, getting ready to look for something that had disappeared two thousand years ago. You could add another thousand years if you tossed in Solomon and Sheba.
Whatever they found tomorrow, she felt the weight of that history. It was more than a fascination with archaeology and ancient artifacts. It was a sense of seeking something larger than herself, one of the great stories in the human narrative that affirmed the human connection to God.
She shivered. It felt like there was a presence nearby, something watching and waiting. It was an odd, otherworldly feeling. She looked down the moonlit canyon. Nothing was looking back.
My mind is playing tricks on me, she thought.
Just the same, the feeling stayed with her for a long time.