Which was not surprising, since the face was unmistakably that of Leonardo da Vinci, younger than his surviving self-portrait showed him in his old age, but him nonetheless. Michael leaned back and laughed, to all appearances on the verge of clapping his hands and stamping his feet.

Very clever, very good. So he decked the ID archive and changed the image. Neat, neat. I like it, my dear fellow. And now let us see where you’ve gone, on your Hejira.

“To Ahvaz,” he said, mystified, after a few moments. “Our man took a flight to Ahvaz, on a chartered plane. At just after midnight.”

“Tonight?”

“Of course tonight.” Michael said testily.

“So where the frag is Ahvaz?” Streak asked through a mouthful of Growliebar.

“In southwestern Iran on the border with Iraq,” Michael said, having already referenced the archival data.

“That’s real bandit country, chummer,” Juan informed him from across the room. “A hundred petty warlords and half of ‘em still shoot last-century guns off horseback. Really damn primitive.”

Serrin was staring closely at the printout that had now appeared of the image on the screen, but no one was taking much notice of him, apart from Kristen, who stood doing her best to peer over his shoulder. He was looking for something, or, rather, he knew something was in the image and he couldn’t see what it was, where it was, what it meant.

She showed him.

“Ah,” he said, with a low sigh of enlightenment. “Yes, of Course.”

“What is it?” Michael asked, breaking off from trying to find out more about Ahvaz and what kind of airport it had, if indeed it had one at all.

“His finger. The index finger on his right hand. Look.”

“It’s pointing upward. So what?”

Serrin struggled through his bag, cautioning an impatient Michael to wait, and extracted the book of paintings he was looking for.

“Look, John the Baptist, look. The picture is just his face and this image. Of the raised finger.”

“So? One picture and-“

“It’s in his painting of St. John-Bacchus as well. Look,” he pointed out, as he flipped the page over to the following plate.

“All right,” Michael said, taken aback now. “What’s he Saying?”

“Remember John?” the elf wondered aloud. “I’m not sure. But I know he didn’t make this gesture by accident.”

“A raised finger, eh?” Streak said. “I know what I mean by that.”

“It’s the index finger not the middle one,” Serrin said impatiently.

“Ahvaz,” Michael read. “It has a small airstrip built by an exploratory team from an oil company late last century. It’s apparently reasonably stable at the present time, which means that the same bandits have held it for a year or more and no one has actually been shot out of the sky during that time, and I think we have to go there.”

The samurai looked at each other and smiled, the lizard-like leer of all hired hands that says, “The price has just gone up!”

Geraint read the looks and the minds.

“Yes, you’re on overtime and bonuses” he told them. “We’re going to need you.”

“We sure are,” Streak said cheerfully. “Yessir, mad guys with big guns.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“I meant them,” Streak said. “Out there in the desert. By the way, you guys got jabs for all the diseases you can catch?”

“Drek,” Michael groaned. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“We professionals get regular shots all the time,” Streak said happily. You never know where you might have to go next.”

“We haven’t got time,” Geraint fretted. We’ll just have to buy several gallons of insect repellent. And water purifying tables. And-”

“Don’t worry, Your Lordship. I was only pulling your pud, a wind-up, We’ve got all we need. Don’t we boys?”

“Sure do,” the ork grunted.

“Well, then, that’s it. It’s now three-twelve AM, and I for one need some sleep,” Michael said wearily. “Tomorrow we go to Ahvaz and we get our man.” He flipped his deck off.

But, for once, Michael hadn’t been secure enough. It would have appalled him at the time as it did later when he realized it, to know that he’d been decked himself. The saturnine man responsible gave the information to his master without emotion.

“Then it is so,” the man said as if expecting what he learned. “He has gone back to the heart of heresy. Like a dog returning to its own vomit. It is always so.”

He considered his options. Of his best men, half were still recovering from the events in Venice. He doubted now whether hermetics or assassins would do the job for him. They had pursued their quarry long enough, and it had eluded them every time. He could no longer trust to the work of his juniors.

He reached for the private line and told the Vatican secretary that, despite the lateness of the hour, he would have to speak with His Holiness in person on a matter of most Unique urgency.

Across the Mediterranean, in a fertile land spreading over the wide, lazy valley of the Karun River, a young man was shown through the underground part of the building. having already seen for himself the dome and the observatory above, extraordinary constructions for so poor a people in such a ravaged place. He smiled, and hugged the dark-eyed man who had showed him around so nervously, obviously desperate for his approval.

“It is so fine,” Salai said. “It is exactly as it was designed. You have done so very well. This is a wonder to me.

The Arab smiled with relief, his beautiful, even white teeth gleaming in the soft light.

“And the Prophet will be here soon?”

“Within the hour, Tariq. He has only stopped to attend to one or two pressing matters along the way.”

“This is such a great day for us,” the man said with real fervor. “We had never thought to see such a day.”

“And he will bring such great riches, and the greatest artists and scholars in his wake,” Salai said cheerfully.

“We have been downtrodden long enough,” the man said with some feeling.

“Indeed you have, and no longer. The Great Work will be done here and you will be exalted among men,” the youth said soothingly. “You have already been rewarded for your faithfulness-”

He was cut short as Tariq sought to prevent any suggestion of ingratitude or impatience.

“We could not have built this without the money you gave us,” he said at once, and we have a fine hospital and school for the children. We know the Prophet’s generosity to his people. it is simply that to have him among us-” His face was literally one of rapture.

“And here is the center,” Salai said as he turned the final corner. “Ah, Tariq, this is a fine rendition.”

The mosaic must have taken the men of the place many years of painstaking work. Untold thousands of tiny fragments of gleaming, polished stone and crystal shone in the gentle light from the alcoves. The strange, haunting androgyny of Leonardo’s John the Baptist was perfectly reproduced in the round shrine a the heart of the labyrinth.

“Wonderful. And then there is the deeper mystery, Tariq, but we shall not speak of this now.”

“We await,” the man said simply.

27

“So we breeze into a bandit heartland with a photo-ID and say, Excuse me, gun-wielding bandit-type fellow, but have you seen these men?’ when we know one of ‘em doesn’t look like this anyway,” Geraint pondered over a junk-food brekfast. The airport didn’t seem to offer anything better, but at nearly noon-by the time they’d managed to wake, bathe, dress, and pack everything again-they didn’t fancy the lunchtime menu and the junk was all they could face.

We’ve got Blondie and he’s impossible to miss with that pony tail,” Michael replied.

“He could tuck it inside his jacket.”

“Ever seen him do that?”

“He still might.’’

“Yeah, right, and that’s why when his master fragged the photo ID, he left him so clear-as-day to make it hard for us,” Michael replied with some venom. “Sorry. I’m still tired. I really do think he actually wants us to find him.”