‘No, you remember it because it was the one and only time I submitted to sex outdoors.’

‘See?’ Lourds nipped her neck with his teeth. ‘Romantic.’

‘I remember being cold and wet.’

‘We couldn’t be romantic all night. Besides, the rain was refreshing.’

‘Maybe to you, but I stay at the university and do research. I’m fond of my creature comforts. You like a little hardship. That’s why I don’t go chasing after artefacts while being shot at, and you do.’

‘You really don’t know what you’re missing.’

Olympia broke free of his arms and turned to face him. Her smile held the hint of sadness. ‘I beg to differ.’ She stroked his face softly. ‘I have a very good idea of what I’m missing.’

Lourds stood frozen for a moment, not knowing what to say.

Olympia laughed at him.

‘You were quite brilliant in class today. The students loved you, but I knew they would.’

‘You’ve got a good group,’ Lourds told her.

‘I know. So how are you doing on your secret project? With all this attention aimed at me, you can’t be doing very well. You use sex as a distraction when you’re stymied.’

Lourds feigned displeasure. ‘I am also quite capable of being distracted by a beautiful woman, I’ll have you know.’

‘I’ll take that in the spirit in which it was intended, as the sincerest form of flattery, but I do know the truth. You’ve hit a wall.’

‘Not true.’

Olympia’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘You’ve translated the piece?’

‘I did.’

‘That’s incredible. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because we were both agreeing that you’re very distracting.’

‘You could have come to me earlier and told me the good news.’

Lourds shook his head, feeling the excitement inside him build anew. The last two days had been a marathon of nearly exhausting sleeplessness. Despite the fact that Olympia had come back to the hotel with him every night, sex had only drugged him into unconscious for a few hours at a stretch.

‘There was no good news until I visited this tower,’ he said. ‘The final pieces of the encryption finally tumbled into my head while I was climbing the stairs. Two hundred and eighty-six steps, I believe.’

‘Is it an artificial language?’

‘Actually, that was partly where I was wrong. There’s not one artificial language involved in that writing, there are three. And there’s a complicated substitution system for the three languages that must have depended on some kind of random generator.’

‘A random generator?’

‘Imagine the game Twister. You have played Twister, haven’t you?’

‘Of course. When I was a girl.’

‘Remember the spinner?’

Olympia nodded. ‘It gave the directions on where to put your hands and feet.’

‘Exactly. Left foot, green. Right hand, red. That kind of thing. That’s actually two languages in a sense.’

‘I’m not following. I’m only seeing one language: the directions.’

‘That’s because you’re processing both languages at the same time,’ Lourds said. ‘The spinner actually translates into a physical movement language and a visual acuity language, if you follow me. The spinner is divided into quadrants-’

‘For the hands and feet,’ Olympia interrupted, ‘and the colours for the vision. Two languages.’

Lourds smiled. ‘Now you’ve got it.’

‘So what is your mysterious book about?’

‘It deals with the location of something called the Joy Scroll.’

All the animation drained from Olympia’s face.

Concerned, Lourds put his hand on her shoulder to steady her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I am. But this is just so unexpected.’ Olympia seemed flustered. ‘I mean not really unexpected. Of course I hoped for something like this, but I didn’t know if you’d be able to manage a translation. Hundreds of people for the last two thousand years have tried to do what you have just done. And not one of them has been successful.’

‘You knew about this book?’

Olympia struggled to collect her thoughts. ‘I knew about the book, but I’d never seen it before. No one I know has ever seen it before. Several of us had begun to think it was just a legend. Or if it had existed that it had been destroyed.’

Lourds seized her by the shoulders. ‘Olympia. Olympia, look at me.’

She did, but he could tell she still wasn’t completely with him. Suddenly, the uneasiness he’d experienced down in the catacombs swept through him again.

‘What are you talking about? How did you know about this book? What is the Joy Scroll?’

She took his hand and looked up at him. ‘Do you trust me?’

Lourds didn’t know how to answer.

‘Please, Thomas, we’ve been friends – more than friends – for years. In all that time, I’ve never asked you for anything big. I’m asking you now to please trust me.’

‘All right,’ he answered, and hoped he didn’t live – or die – to regret it.

Central Business District

King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia

19 March 2010

Standing at the window of the luxury office building’s top floor, Elliott Webster looked out over the shimmering green waves of the Red Sea. His thoughts were of the past, of the empires that had risen and fallen along the coast. All of them were dust now, except for a few buildings and structures here and there.

The new empire King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud had given his life to took shape all around Webster. Construction crews and earthmoving machines pieced together the steel bones of the tall buildings and carved foundations and streets from the baked sand. Noise filled the area which even the soundproofing of the room couldn’t eliminate. The muted throbbing vibrated the window.

One of the most impressive areas of the new city lay out in the harbour only a short distance from the coast. Several buildings jutted up from the outer perimeter of the island. Sunlight splintered on the steel frameworks where men walked along narrow beams and continued building for the sky. The centre of the island held more buildings as well as a grid pattern of streets and elevated highways. To the right, the designers had used the natural harbour to echo the island’s shape. The large, sickle-shaped marina held a flotilla of ships, yachts and boats. Most of those vessels were pleasure craft but some of them were barges that carried materials and equipment to the construction crews.

‘What are they calling the island?’ Stephen Napier asked. He stood at Webster’s side.

‘Financial Island,’ Webster answered.

‘Catchy,’ Napier said sarcastically.

‘Maybe it sounds better in Arabic,’ Tristan Hamilton drawled. He stood only a short distance away, leaning with one arm on the window.

‘You gotta admit, naming the place that, they’re hanging it right out there for everybody to see. Ain’t trying to hide what it is.’ Spider sat in one of the plush chairs using his laptop.

Vicky DeAngelo stood on the other side of the spacious room, one hip cocked against a credenza. She talked rapidly on her sat-phone, outlining the agenda she wanted her film crews to follow throughout the city. While on the flight over to Saudi Arabia, she had put together plans for a television special. Webster appreciated her business acumen and drive. It was those qualities that had made him seek her out. She had also made tentative agreements with Saudi Arabian advertisers to underwrite the cost of the special’s production.

‘It’s gonna be a pretty city when they finish up,’ Hamilton stated, ‘but it looks a mite under-defended, if you ask me.’

‘The Saudi Royal Navy is out there,’ Webster said.

‘So are American ships,’ Napier said. ‘I’m willing to bet that the American navy is going to keep more troublemakers out of the area than the Saudis.’

Webster nodded. That was one of the selling points he hoped to push to the young king. Instead of persuading him to listen, though, Webster was certain Prince Khalid would take the suggestion as a personal affront. In fact, the vice-president was counting on that fact. Khalid’s youthfulness and inexperience, as well as his burning desire to drive the Shia people from his homeland, should be enough to tip the scales towards war. And if that wasn’t enough, the intel that Dawson had only that morning passed along through informants he had access to within the country would. Webster was waiting for it all to hit the fan.