19

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Matt Garrett gave Kristyana a thumbs-up when Zachary called in the code word confirming that Van Dreeves and Hobart had successfully parachuted into the makeshift drop zone on the edge of the Serengeti Plain.

They sat in the Specially Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) in the U.S. Embassy to Tanzania in Dar es Salaam. Kristyana was working feverishly with the ambassador to call off the Tanzanian military and surrounding countries’ forces. African leaders were reacting with rage as the media continued to show the images of Amanda Garrett burning the orphanage medical clinic, and “HIV and Ebola cure facility,” as the press was now referring to the building Amanda had set ablaze.

The SCIF was a Spartan affair. They sat on either side of an old gray desk with two secure phones, one a red switch with direct lines to the secretary of state and several other ambassadors around the continent. Low-wattage fluorescent lights hung nakedly above them, casting a weak glow upon a large-scale map of Tanzania, which Matt knew was not much good for military planning. Clearly the defense attaché and his team had been spending too much time in the Dar es Salaam discos and not enough doing their damned job, he fumed.

The one decent piece of equipment in the room was one he had brought down from Djibouti. He had spent fifteen minutes setting up a satellite radio on the roof of the embassy so that he could communicate with Zach and the C-17 aircraft that had dropped Hobart and Van Dreeves from twenty thousand feet above ground level.

“They’re in, and they think all but one survived the wreck,” Matt said.

“Who was the one?”

“The pilot, Zach thinks. He kept his burst short,” Matt said.

“Thank God,” Kristyana muttered.

“Sucks for the pilot.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. Now where are we on the bullshit photograph of Amanda?”

“The African Union is convening in the morning. The word is that they are going to make Amanda public enemy number one. She will go to the top of their terrorist watch list. The U.S. ambassador to the A.U. is a political appointee, and she’s utterly incompetent, not to mention the fact that she is on vacation in the Seychelles, where, I’m told, she spends quite a bit of her time,” Kristyana said.

Matt ran his hand across his face in frustration.

“What the hell are we doing, Kristyana?”

She held her hands up. “Don’t vent on me, Matt. You know the deal. Let’s focus on the here and now.”

They were still dressed in the same clothes they had worn on the trip down from Djibouti to Tanzania and then out into the Serengeti. Zach had made a quick decision to send Matt and Kristyana back to work the embassy and try to forestall disaster when he had learned that Hobart and Van Dreeves were airborne. Kristyana had been trying to contact Amanda on her satellite phone, but to no avail.

A U.S. Army major opened the vault door to the SCIF.

“We’re busy, Major,” Matt said flatly.

“Sir, I think you’re going to want to see this,” the major said, holding his ground. Matt summed him up: a bit chunky, his shaggy black hair a tad long, and he had the round, pockmarked face of a kid who ate paste in third grade.

“What have you got?” Matt said.

“Read this,” the major said, a bit of attitude in his voice.

Matt eyed the major but took the piece of paper from the officer’s outstretched hand.

Making progress. Book of Catalyst .

What about?

Tree of Life. Olduvai Gorge . Not sure??

?

Get scholar… Any news on your end?

Media frenzy over shooting and vaccine theft. Going well on this end.

Better shut down. Kisses.

Back at you.

“What is this?” Matt asked.

“You’re probably not cleared for sources?”

Matt stood, towering over the officer and taking a step toward him.

“My brother and niece are in the middle of the Seren-freaking-geti Plain being chased by some real assholes. Drop the attitude or I will knock you out right now. Got it?”

“Matt…” Kristyana began but then stopped when Matt refused to turn toward her.

“So let’s start this over. What is this?” Matt demanded, remaining in the major’s space.

The major deflated and took a step back.

“I apologize, sir. This is an intercept our station chief got from Langley. It went down about an hour ago. They say it is a conversation between or through two servers, one in Morocco and the other in or near Zanzibar.”

“Keep going.”

“The Book of Catalyst is interesting, sir. I was the intel officer for a “MITT” team in Nineveh Province in Iraq 2012-2013. One of our Iraqi intelligence units got a tip and raided a house near the old museum there. We thought there was an IED maker in the house, but all they came back with was a ton of historical documents.”

“MITT team?” Kristyana asked.

“Military Transition Team,” the major responded. “All of the combat brigades were out by 2011, but we still had advisory and training teams, called transition teams, helping the Iraqi Army.”

“Get to the point, Major,” Matt directed.

“My point is, sir, that the Iraqi military guys gave us the documents and our documentation exploitation guys found these pages that they said were thousands of years old. Turns out the guy who used to live there was a history professor, and he had hidden these documents behind a false wall. Dude and his wife were killed in 2013, and no one knew those documents existed until our expert search guys went through that house looking for IED stuff. I was there. Dead bodies were still in the house. Place smelled like death.”

“The documents?” Matt redirected the major back to the point.

“Right. The weird thing was that we had to have someone who could read and write Swahili do the translation. Being an African foreign area officer with experience in Kenya and Tanzania, I skimmed the documents quickly. It started out by saying it was the Book of Catalyst. We thought it was just some bullshit and it was totally irrelevant to our mission, so we just locked it up with everything else.”

“I’m still not getting you. Your document exploitation team tells you this thing is thousands of years old, but you shitcan it?”

“No, sir. Didn’t shitcan it. It’s in storage with the unit chaplain who rotated back to Fort Stewart, Georgia. Once the translation came back, it had heavy religious overtones, sounded to me like the Book of Genesis, only different. It said essentially that God created life in what is present-day Tanzania and that the Garden of Eden runs the full length of the Great African Rift.”

“How do we know it isn’t bogus?” Kristyana asked, standing now also.

“We don’t. But what bothered everyone is that it was on vellum, a type of paper used before the Egyptian papyrus,” the major said. “What’s really bullshit, though, if you’ll pardon the expression, is that the chaplain is hanging on to this thing like it’s a war trophy when, in fact, if it’s real, it is pretty significant.”

“That’s an understatement,” Matt said. “So tie this together for me.” Though he thought he already knew what it was all about. Someone had found it or intercepted it, somehow, and they were interested in confirming its validity, he believed.

“The fact that the Book of Catalyst is mentioned in the same conversation as the Tree of Life and Olduvai Gorge is what I remember about the document.” The major nodded at the intelligence report in Matt’s hand. “What is inconsistent is the reference to a shooting and the vaccine theft.”

“I can help out there,” Matt said, then sat on the edge of the gray desk. He offered the major a seat, which he took. “The shooting has to be in reference to the killing of Quizmahel in Morocco, and of course, the vaccine theft and media frenzy are related to Amanda Garrett, my niece. The real question is, how do all of those issues come together in one conversation?”

“Let me pull what I’ve got on the shooting,” the major offered. “I remember reading the traffic but just now connected it. Thanks. I’ve got my intel team in the next SCIF over. I’ve ordered them to twenty-four-hours ops, twelve on, twelve off. You need any help on your operation, let me know.”

“Thanks. Your name?”

“Jeff. Major Jeff Dunwoody.”

“Great work, Jeff. Also, why don’t you give me the name of the chaplain who’s got this document?”

“He might have left the unit. Was a few years ago, but his name is Lieutenant Colonel Vincent Irons. Southern Baptist.”

“Okay, we’ll compare notes in a few hours. Meanwhile, I’ll get my team working on the document and figuring out this chat message. Please ask the chief of station to come see me when he gets a chance,” Matt said, more pleasant than he had been.

“Yes, sir. I’ll get right on it.” Jeff Dunwoody departed and closed the SCIF door behind him.

Matt looked at Kristyana, who was shaking her head.

“You have to be that hard on everyone?” she asked.

“I’m focused,” Matt said.

“Well, so was he, so lighten up. I know we’ve got some pressure on us right now, but these people are on our team.”

“We need to get you to the States. Take the G5.”

“The chaplain?”

“Roger.”

Matt stood, walked over to the map, and pointed at it.

“They’re right there,” he said, pointing to a spot midway between Lake Victoria and Mount Kilimanjaro. “Zach thinks they headed almost due east. He’s following some tracks.”

Kristyana joined him at the map and pointed.

“Due east goes directly to the Olduvai Gorge.”