virtually beside myself with anticipation.
“This may be what I’m looking for, Ahmed,” I say in a soft voice so as not to disturb the dead. “Follow me.”
“I go anywhere with you, Missy Breezy,” he says with-out hesitation, then he adds with a catch in his voice, “You save my son.”
I nod, smiling, then with Ahmed behind me, I crawl through the opening to the other side. I shine my flashlight on remnants of clothing, chain mail from armor and a helmet that completely covers the face with a faded heraldry inscribed on it that I can’t identify. Thirteenth-century Crusaders wore such helmets, I tell Ahmed. At the same time, a story I read when I was a teen races through my mind, bringing up the same excitement I knew when I’d sneak off to read stories of history and lore, mummies and queens. My sister, Peyton, would hide my books, then dare me to tag along with her and her friends. I couldn’t. She never understood I felt different from other girls and I wasn’t interested in gossip and shopping. I wanted to travel to exotic places and break bread with the past to taste it, to embrace it and to understand it.
Now I’ve found my dream.
I hear Ahmed draw in his breath. “May Allah be praised, we’ve found a secret room.”
“We’re not the first to discover it. Look.” I shine my light on the smaller skull, most likely female, covered with dirt and deteriorating cloth fragments. She wears a necklace with fine, round, dark gray objects. With black dust billowing up around me every time I move a piece of the female skeleton, I tap on the round objects, one at a time, their tinny sound echoing in the chamber like footsteps marching back through the centuries. “Hand me a brush, Ahmed. These pieces might be silver.”
Not taking his eyes off the skeleton, he draws a paintbrush from his pocket and hands it to me. I kneel down beside the female skeleton and, with a gentle touch as if I were opening a book with thin, delicate pages, I begin dusting the dirt away. Little by little, I see glints of color.
“It’s gold, Ahmed.” I hold in my hand a gold necklace and a gold headband with thin layers of gold covering her features in the shape of a grape leaf. “That doesn’t make sense,” I ponder out loud. “If the grave robbers took everything of value, then why didn’t they take the gold jewelry off this woman? Unless—”
She took refuge in here years, centuries afterward, I finish in silence. Who was she? What were her last thoughts before death claimed her? A tightness grips my chest and the weight of my responsibility to preserve this woman’s final moments becomes real to me. I’m determined to tell her story.
“Over here, Missy Breezy!”
“Have you found something, Ahmed?”
He speaks as if he’s reciting a prayer. “Yes.”
I spin around to see him moving his flashlight jerkily over a moon-faced object lying on a small slab. It looks like a mask, the glimmer of azure then deep red then green flickering ever so brief ly in the demanding glare of his light, as if unwilling to wake up from their somnolent centuries-long sleep.
What can it be? I flip through the files in my mental catalog, bringing up what I can remember about lost Byzantine artifacts, many known to archaeologists because they’re mentioned in ancient texts or painted on tapestries and mosaics. I remember being enchanted by the story of a gold mask that belonged to an empress, a gift from her husband that was stolen from her tomb during the Crusades.
Do I dare dream this mask can lead me back centuries to the time of the cradle of civilization and give me the opportunity to pad out the bones of a beautiful courtesan who became an empress? And to recover a treasure taken from the famed city of Constantinople and lost for a thousand years?
“Hold my flashlight,” I say, handing it to him. “And keep it pointed on the mask while I remove the dirt.”
Using the paintbrush, I wipe away the layers of centuries with a reverence I’ve never felt before settling into my bones. I revel in the even flow of my movements, experiencing an emotional high, and though I’m involved in a physical act, I have no feeling in my fingers, as if they’re moving without effort. The tremendous power of my belief presses me to continue, enlightening me, until I become one with the object, my own self vanishing into the depth of the mask’s rich history. Even before the first golden sparkle warms the cold, damp vault with its shine, I know what it is.
A gold mask crafted in the likeness of this powerful woman and set with pearls, rubies, sapphires and emeralds mounted in gold, which hung in festoons from her temples to her breasts. A treasure worth untold millions.
The Mask of Darkma.
Present day
I start to shiver and light perspiration dribbles over my lips. Whatever the Russian drugged me with, I can’t shake it. It’s pulling me back and forth in a replay of events that haunt me. I’ve no doubt finding the Mask of Darkma was the beginning of my ascent into hell, a spiraling of events I couldn’t control, but that doesn’t lessen the fear I have of my present predicament. Where am I?
I detect a steady shaking under my body, and is that an AC vent blowing cool air in my face? I touch my hair, damp and sticking to my cheeks. My beaded black wig is gone. A sharp pain bounces from my head to my shoulders down to my pubic area. Without hesitation, my hand shoots down to my crotch to soothe the nagging ache in my groin. I hesitate when my long nails catch on a smooth fabric covering my legs, my hips. I tug on it. What’s this? I’m wearing wide jersey pants? And a T-shirt? I assume the clothes are courtesy of whoever brought me here. I’m tempted to bend my knees, kick my feet in frustration, but a more pressing need to know where I am and what happened gnaws at me. I shift my weight on the hard bunk beneath my butt as the wall—
Vibrates? Before I can drag open my eyes to survey my surroundings, my ears pop and a loud whoosh shakes me.
I don’t move. Take slow, deep breaths. Focus.
I know where I am, but I can’t believe it.
I’m on a train.
I always feel the pressure in my ears when another train passes the opposite way at a high speed. We must be traveling more than a hundred and fifty, sixty miles an hour. Train à Grande Vitesse, a high-speed train. I didn’t realize it before because I don’t hear the usual clickety-clack as the train wheels go over the tracks. The TGV rails are longer and fit close together between the joints.
So I’m on a train, the prospect of which intrigues me.
But where am I going? And who is the man laughing?
What the hell happened to me?
“He’s dead,” I hear him say. Who’s dead? He must be speaking into a cell phone, or so I assume. He can’t be talking to me.
“No, I got there too late,” he continues, hesitating, then: “Yes, he was alone.”
Deep baritone, slight accent. Sexy. Listening to him speak, it’s as if I’m hearing an echo, spreading out in waves to various parts of my body and making me shiver. Who is he?
I open
