Mason had expected Brett Curry to be based close to Zürich, since he was the team leader of the locally based mercs. It turned out he resided in Dübendorf, a suburb of Zürich, and agreed to meet them in a busy area for a price. Curry turned out to be American, but the suburb comprised thirty per cent foreign nationals, so the young man would fit right in. They agreed to meet the next day at a coffee shop situated close to the train station.
Brett Curry looked to be in his late twenties, a fit-looking man wearing a tight T-shirt despite the chilly day, black cargo shorts and comfortable-looking trainers. He might have just exited the gym. His hair was cropped short, almost to the point of non-existence, and there was the slight shadow of a beard on his chin. Mason had known many young men in the army who grew beards on patrol to make them look older or to save on the inconvenience of shaving. Almost always though, when they got home, the clippers came out.
Curry sat with his back to the shop window, surveying the street. He was expecting five people to meet him, so when they appeared out of the nearest parking area, his eyes locked on them straight away. They didn’t veer away for two whole minutes as Mason and the others approached.
When they reached his table, a waitress appeared. She was efficient, carrying a small pad of paper and noting all their drinks down. Hassell ordered a croissant, too. Soon, they were seated comfortably around the table, facing Curry.
‘You Mason?’ he asked.
‘How can you tell?’
‘You have the look. These guys don’t, except her.’ He raised his chin at Roxy. ‘But she just looks crazy.’
‘Fair assumption.’ Roxy folded her arms.
Mason looked left and right. The other tables weren’t so close that the occupants would overhear their conversation and, in any case, there were only two other people seated close by – a woman and her daughter who were quietly chatting.
‘I’m Mason,’ he said.
‘Good. You said you wanted information regarding the Babylon op and would pay for it.’
Mason nodded. ‘Are you okay with that?’
Curry frowned at him. ‘You mean ethically?’ The man shrugged. ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass, to be honest. The client was crazier than she looks.’ He nodded again at Roxy. ‘Crazier than a box of frogs.’
Mason described Marduk to him. ‘Is that your client?’
‘Sounds like him, yeah. The guy never shut up, not for a minute.’
‘Was there anyone with him?’ Hassell asked.
‘Oh, yeah. Two very dangerous-looking people that we all steered clear of.’
They all stopped talking and leaned back as the waitress brought their drinks. Mason took a gulp of strong black coffee. A car passed slowly along the street behind them, its engine burbling. The smell of Hassell’s warm croissant made Mason wish he’d ordered his own. None of them had eaten a proper breakfast yet, and he’d been too intent on studying Curry to think to order something.
Curry took a sip of his own drink, also a black coffee. ‘Dude called Cassadaga and a woman called Ivana. They were seriously warped. I always thought Cassadaga was a myth until I met him on this op.’
‘What did they do?’ Sally asked.
Curry looked unsure for the first time. ‘Is that really what you came here to ask me? And I haven’t seen a millimetre of cash yet.’
Sally took out a wad of cash from her purse and flashed it surreptitiously at him before replacing it. ‘You’ll get it at the end,’ she said.
‘Right. Well, what do you really want to know?’
‘What the hell were you doing in Babylon?’ Mason asked.
‘I have no problem answering that. Like I said, the dude, this Marduk, was a real whacko. He doesn’t deserve protection. Some of the things he did …’ Curry trailed off and took a long gulp of his coffee before going on. ‘The guy wanted to survey this ziggurat, a particular one. Said he had something important buried there. No …’ Curry frowned. ‘He actually said something ancient and vital had been buried there thousands of years ago and he was going to get it. Of course, we hear clients babble all the time. We just wait for orders and carry them out.’
‘And what were his orders?’ Sally asked.
‘To dig. He pointed out the right place, and we dug. For days. Sure enough, eventually, we uncovered a door that led deep underground. This Marduk fella – he jumped inside without fear and led the way. He must have found what he was looking for because he was a happy camper for the rest of the trip.’
‘Any ideas what that might have been?’ Mason asked.
‘Oh yeah, the crazy fucker never shut up about it.’ Curry finished his coffee and signalled the waitress to bring him another. ‘You see, it all hinged around this ziggurat called Etemenanki, I think. It’s ancient, or it was. It’s just a ruin now. Marduk called it the Tower of Babel sometimes, though I’m sure that was all a myth. Anyway, first he wanted to dig and then he wanted to explore. To be fair, crazy or not, he sure knew what he was talking about.’
‘Went straight to it?’ Quaid asked.
‘Yeah, as if he’d buried it there himself thousands of years ago.’
‘So he confided in you?’ Sally asked.
‘I think “confided” is the wrong word. I’m pretty sure he thought we were all dumb grunts. This Marduk was a talker, loved to blow his own trumpet.’ Curry went quiet as the waitress brought him another coffee and then started drinking it the moment it landed on the table.
‘Can you tell us what he discovered?’ Mason said again.
‘Sure. It was mostly jewels. Lots of them. I was behind him when he made the discovery. It was kind of surreal. We were following a passage carved out of the bedrock, a narrow passage with damp walls and moss and lichens. It smelled musty. You could sense the age, sense that we were the first visitors in thousands of years. You had to stoop to prevent your head from hitting the top of the tunnel. It wound for a while, and everyone was quiet for several minutes.’ Curry took another drink. ‘There were about eight of us down there, though Marduk didn’t need any bodyguards. He walked unerringly, albeit with a limp, maybe from the memory of something he’d been told. I don’t know.
‘We passed a couple of offshoots, dark tunnels that led in different directions, but Marduk just ignored them. Like I said, the going was tricky, but it wasn’t too tough. We crossed two fissures maybe four feet wide. Marduk had trouble with those. They could have gone straight down to the bowels of Hell for all we knew. One guy slipped, but the others caught him. We suffered no casualties on that trip.’ Curry went abruptly silent for a moment, as if reminded of something. His face took on a haunted look, but then he seemed to remember where he was and shook himself. ‘Where was I?’
‘Crossing a fissure,’ Roxy said.
‘Yeah, we continued down and down, winding under the old ruins of the ziggurat. They built it in the sixth century, maybe even as a way to hide the riches, but—’
‘How the hell do you know so much about this pyramid?’ Roxy asked.
‘Not a pyramid,’ Curry said quickly. ‘And I know so much because, later, I read up on it. Just googled the Etemenanki ziggurat. Marduk piqued my interest. I got to wondering if it really was the Tower of Babel, the one from the Bible. But the dates don’t really add up.’
‘You sure?’ Quaid asked. ‘History can be pretty loose with its dates.’
‘Nobody knows how long it was there to be fair, not really. Nebuchadnezzar, the famous Babylonian king, was supposed to have rebuilt it. Academics reckon the tower wasn’t built in a month or a year; but instead came from a long history of ongoing constructions, destructions and reconstructions. Its origins date to 2000 bc, a date that Marduk appeared to know very well.’
‘Go on with your account,’ Mason said.
‘Sure, well, to cut a long story short, we came eventually to a wide chamber. It was cold by now, freezing cold. The air wasn’t great. Some guys were complaining, but I didn’t pay them much mind. I was too focused on Marduk, wondering where the madman had led us. He stood there for a while in the entrance to the chamber, head lifted, as if listening to the sounds of voices, maybe thousand-year-old ghosts. Who knows? He wasn’t in any hurry. He started pacing forward slowly, moving his head from side to side. Maybe he was praying or chanting or whatever the hell he does. I stayed clear. By now, I was wondering what the hell was really going on. This was clearly a dead end. Had he brought us the wrong way? Had he cracked up? Did he even remember we were there? Anyway, after a while, he shone his torch in a particular direction …’
‘As if he knew where to look?’ Quaid said.
‘Exactly. He must have been told by someone, maybe his boss.’
‘Marduk is the boss,’ Hassell said softly. ‘But the Amori had elders, maybe. They must also have had a monarch before Marduk.’
‘Knowledge passed down through centuries,’ Curry said. ‘It makes sense.’
‘What did Marduk find?’ Roxy asked the mercenary.
‘The far side of the chamber was a rock fall composed of ledges. Hundreds of them. Perhaps they were once full of treasures, I don’t know. But Marduk’s flashlight picked out the one ledge that held something. At least, the only one I saw. He walked over and knelt and raised his arms. I stayed back, wanting nothing to do with it. The men stayed behind me. Marduk picked up a chest the size of a small suitcase. It was black with a bronze lock that Marduk didn’t bother with. He just wrenched the chest apart, dug his hands inside, and came up with this vast assortment of jewels. They glittered in our torchlight, lots of different colours. It took our breath away. Marduk didn’t seem to care that he’d just shown a fortune to a bunch of mercenaries who were fully capable of taking them away from him. Maybe that’s a sign of his madness.’
‘Plus, he had Cassadaga,’ Roxy said.
‘That too. Though the thief and his sidekick had some business up top and disappeared. They wanted nothing to do with creeping around underground anyway. So, Marduk lifted handful after handful of jewels, muttering to himself. Something about money and fortune and revenge. I didn’t catch it all. Eventually he seemed to tire, put the necklaces and bracelets and all the rest of the stuff back in the chest and wrapped it all up in a blanket. Then he shoved it under his arm. I was still waiting by the entrance. Marduk walked up, pushed past me, and started heading back the way we came. Like he wasn’t interested in the old chamber anymore.’
‘He’s a man with a one-track mind,’ Mason said.
‘No reverence, no sense of duty,’ Curry said. ‘No wonder this Amori crumbled around him.’
‘He was a poor leader,’ Mason agreed. ‘But, in part, that was because of his madness. His terrible desire to exact revenge on the Church.’
‘So that’s really what he wants? Revenge?’
‘It consumes him all day, every day.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘We’ve run into him on more than one occasion,’ Sally said. ‘He’s the kind of man who would sacrifice his own daughter if it meant defeating the Church. In fact—’
‘I see,’ Curry went on quickly. ‘Well, he led us back out of that cave network and once again into the open. He found Cassadaga, asked him to stand guard, and then went to his tent. Never saw him again. The next morning, we were told the op was over.’
Mason thought about what Curry had told them. It was enough to earn the money, but he couldn’t help but wonder if there was something else.
‘Did Marduk mention his intentions?’ he asked. ‘We know he wants to destroy the Church and the Vatican. Was there anything else he might have said that stands out to you?’
‘He kept on talking about the Faithful.’ Curry shrugged. ‘But in no particular context. The Faithful are coming, are here, are all we need, that kind of thing. A man turned up, tall with a beard. I think he was called Keeva. Marduk took to the Keeva like he was his own son. I don’t know their actual relationship.’
‘And Keeva was one of the Faithful?’ Mason asked.
‘Yeah, he called him that. He said there were others. Keeva was the first of many. He also mentioned infiltrators.’
Mason frowned, thinking hard. ‘Any clues as to their purpose?’
Curry shook his head. ‘It was just a comment or two. Nothing major. Perhaps it meant nothing, the ravings of a madman.’
Mason nodded. ‘Maybe. But we’ve learned to take everything he says and does seriously. If Marduk mentions infiltrators, then there will be a reason.’
‘Well, I saved the best for last.’ Curry finished his latest coffee and signalled for a new one.
Mason was still sipping his first. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘Marduk couldn’t help himself, you see. We’ve already established he’s a talker. Well, as we climbed out of that hole in the ground, as we met Cassadaga, he was already chattering about his next move. He pulled out his phone. Spoke to a guy who clearly knew him and had been waiting for the call. They talked crap for a while, but then Marduk got down to business. We were close to the tent by now and he waved at Cassadaga, I think, telling him he wanted to be alone. That Cassadaga didn’t look like he gave a shit. But Marduk just kept talking, and I heard everything he said through the walls of the tent.’
‘Which was?’ Mason asked immediately.
‘Basically … that he had the goods and wanted to sell them through some lavish auction in Monte Carlo.’
Mason blinked. ‘He what?’
‘The guy he was talking to must have been his broker or something. Marduk told him to inform the auction house that he was ready, to invite only the richest and most influential clients, and that even Monte Carlo had seen nothing like what he was about to bring.’
‘Did he mention a date?’ Quaid asked.
‘No. Nothing like that. It was a conversation overheard for about thirty seconds. What I said is what I heard.’
‘It sounds like Marduk recovered the jewels to turn them into cash,’ Mason said. ‘Which means the bastard’s broke. He needs more money to bankroll the next move, whatever that might be. He intends to get it through this auction.’
‘Which may already have happened,’ Quaid said.
Mason didn’t think so. In any case, it would be easy enough to check. He stood up so fast the table shook.
‘We need to move,’ he said.