Shortly after the man made his escape, and Silas was given the brush off by the front desk woman, Celeste came up behind him in the lobby.
“What was that about?”
He winced as he turned around. “I thought I told you to stay put.”
She paused. “Yes, you did. And I decided against it.”
He nodded, then hobbled over to the open door, squinting for a look into the bright, Middle Eastern daylight and seeing nothing but a mass of people. He shook his head and cursed himself for losing the mysterious figure.
“What happened to your ankle? It doesn’t look good.”
He turned back inside and walked slowly back toward the front desk, favoring his right ankle, but forcing himself through the discomfort. "Had a run-in with an overturned chair. I'll be fine. But I am worried about who that was. And why it looked like they were at our door.”
“Here,” she said, handing Silas his Beretta.
He looked at it, then smiled. “Always prepared, aren’t you?”
“For every possible contingency. Let’s go have a chat with Pryce.”
The walk down to the Western Wall Plaza where Pryce had staged his archaeological circus was a quick five minutes. It made Silas Grey both delighted and saddened to see the Western Wall of the Temple Mount area transformed by the flurry of activity that had come because of Lucas Pryce's archaeological project. Sad because the holy site had turned into a media carnival; delighted because a significant religious relic was about to be unearthed.
And a foremost expert on relicology and Church history was always interested in bringing the religious past to the surface. Even if it was because of a chump like Pryce.
The media from the day before were still stationed at the periphery of the Western Wall Plaza, cameras trained at the Wilson's Arch, the modern name for the still-visible, ancient, stone archway that had once supported a road into the Temple compound during the time of Jesus. Now it is supported against the northeast corner of Jerusalem's Western Wall so that it appears on the left to visitors facing the Wall. All the major news networks were represented. From CNN to MSNBC, the BBC to Sky, Al Jazeera to Russia Today, all were covering the most monumental archaeological, historical, religious, and political discovery of all time.
One large canvas tent and two smaller ones had been erected along the northeast corner of the Western Wall to the left of the Wilson's Arch. Generators hummed loudly to feed the academic activity occurring within. People dressed in light-colored shirts and shorts seemed to be competing in some sort of synchronized running activity as they worked to finalize the preparations for the unveiling.
“So what are you thinking?” Celeste asked as they walked past the row of cameras. “How should we approach Pryce?”
A man emerged from one of the smaller tents with a cohort of young, Indiana Jones wannabes. He looked to be of African descent, with a shiny, eight-ball head, so it wasn't Pryce. But the guy looked like he was in charge, as he was directing the swarm of worker bees.
“Follow my lead,” Silas said.
He walked over to the man as he was dispensing instructions, then interrupted by tapping him on the shoulder. “Excuse me.”
The African man stopped mid-sentence and turned around, mouth hanging open with rows of gleaming white teeth, clearly taken aback that someone had the nerve to interrupt him.
“Yes? Can I help you?” He said in polished, British English.
“Where can we find Lucas Pryce?”
The slight man with dark-chocolate skin and beady, little eyes set behind thick, round glasses eyed Silas with an equal mixture of confusion and appall.
“And who are you?” he said quickly.
Silas took a step back and huffed, as if offended. He folded his arms, tilted his head, and said, “Who am I? Doctor Silas Grey. Professor of religious studies and Christian history at Princeton. As in, the university in America.”
The man's features softened a bit. His eyes darted to Celeste, then back to Silas again. He smiled weakly. “I am sorry, sir. I didn't recognize you. And I had not known you were coming. What brings you to our site?”
Silas was inching the man forward toward his desired outcome, but he wasn’t going to go willingly.
“As you probably know, I'm one of the foremost experts on relicology in the world and thought it appropriate I come to lend my…expertise to this little project of yours. In fact, you could say I'm responsible for it, as I worked with Dr. Pryce closely on the archaeological dig at Tell-es Sultan a decade ago and was the one who found the scrolls referencing the Ark in the first place. Yes, me.”
Playing the part of the pompous academic was a risk, but Silas wanted to throw the man off and force him to make a decision about him. Hopefully, the right one.
“I see,” he said skeptically.
“So I thought I would come lend a helping hand to my former professor and colleague. And offer my congratulations and celebrations for the momentous day, of course.”
“Is Professor Pryce expecting you?”
Silas sighed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
The man said, “Oliver Tulu,” before he quickly adding, “Doctor Tulu.”
“Doctor? Really…from?”
“Oxford.”
Silas snorted. “Figures. Now if you’ll be good enough to take us to Lucas Pryce, I would be most appreciative. And I’m sure he will, too.”
Tulu seemed thoroughly confused by the conversation and not at all sure how to proceed. He looked over to the large tent, giving away Pryce’s location, as if deciding what to do.
Finally, he simply said, “Follow me.”
Silas winked at Celeste as Tulu shuffled off toward the large tent commanding the base of the Wilson’s Arch. Celeste smiled wryly as the two followed him forward.
The inside of the structure was surprisingly serene. It carried none of the hustle-and-bustle activity from outside, though this didn't surprise Silas. He remembered from his time with Pryce a decade ago how the man was militant about a policy of strict privacy and calm within his private tent, insisting he needed uninterrupted, peaceful space. This version of what he had back then certainly fit the bill.
It was cooler inside than the outside, and far less humid, the temperature and air being strictly controlled. Mainly because of the nature of the work handling manuscripts and artifacts and other potential ones that might emerge during the excavation required a climate-controlled space, which the state-of-the-art mobile facility provided. The lighting was dim, provided only by what sunlight filtered in through the tent's canvas and a few banker's desk lamps. And it smelled of old wood and tobacco, a sign of Pryce's continued taste for expensive cigars and even more expensive antique desks and cabinetry. His fellow grad students had joked that Pryce had been playing out his Indiana-Jones fantasies. When one of the students jokingly asked him about it one evening after a night of drinks, the good professor hadn't denied it, saying the items helped him channel the great archaeologists from the past. Like Howard Carter, the great British Egyptologist who discovered Tutankhamen's tomb, and the American explorer, writer, and diplomat John Lloyd Stephens who explored ancient Maya. He had collected some of their treasured possessions in order to channel their greatness. The desk was Carter's, the bookcases Stephens’s.
Apparently, it had worked.
Pryce was hovering over a large wooden table, commanded by a slew of maps and manuscripts and other diagrams, still working on the stub of a cigar that looked as if he had lit it an hour ago. Tulu walked up to him and tapped him on his shoulder, then whispered something into his ear, causing Pryce to twist sharply to meet his visitors. For a brief second, Silas thought he caught a face of anger or fear, he couldn't tell which. But then a broad, toothy grin splayed across the man's scruffy face.
Pryce snuffed out his cigar in a glass jar then strode over to the pair.
“Professor Silas Grey,” he said in the Southern drawl that had annoyed Silas from his grad-school days. “My eyes deceive me! What on earth are you doing here?”