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A MADNESS HAD GRIPPED Coyle, perhaps from the heat. Perhaps he was in league with an Arab cabal to hide the geopolitical ramifications of his findings, or it might be the many years of suffering a weak chin had finally made him snap.
Alexandra shifted into panic mode. She shouted up, “I need an accurate spelling of your name, Sigmund.”
He produced a pistol, aimed, and fired.
She jumped out of view a moment before the bullet pinged the debris where she had stood. From the darkness, she taunted, “There is a fatal flaw in your plan. I am an American girl with an influential British father. If I disappear, no stone will be left unturned. They will search with a fine-toothed comb, high and low, from hill to dale, beat every bush, check every nook and cranny, pull out all the—”
“I get your point,” he yelled down. “I beg of you to shut up!”
“I am writing notations on your treachery. You will be arrested, tried, and hopefully executed in a most grotesque fashion.”
The rope fell. Alexandra looked for anything to use as a weapon. She hoped he would come down and continued scribbling notes to tuck into cracks. Several minutes passed. He would not take the bait.
She ventured as close to his firing range as she dared. “Others are aware I am in your care. It is your move, Mister Coyle.”
He looked down. “You win. Grab the rope and we’ll pull you up.”
Alexandra doubted his sincerity, but it was suicide to stay. She grabbed hold and was lifted back into daylight.
A large, lantern-jawed Arab of pale complexion grasped hold of her as his clone held the rope. The brute flung her to the ground and crushed a knee across her shoulders. He ripped her arms back and trussed her wrists.
Alexandra spat dust from her lips once settled against a stone. Coyle walked over, waving his pistol. “You think yourself too clever, Miss Bathenbrook.”
She looked away and said nothing.
Coyle left to converse with his henchmen. The two goons spoke broken English with Slavic accents. It did not sound like they were debating a means to abort their plan, but a manner to kill her and cover their tracks. Alexandra knew upon seeing Coyle’s smarmy grin that he had come up with something.
He failed to share it and descended the rope.
She watched and waited.
One henchman opened a crate containing dynamite and lowered down sticks, while the other occupied himself shoveling beyond her view. The brute who had manhandled her was running wire and placing explosives along the pillars with the skill of a professional. They could implode the antechamber and seal it with the topside ruins, leaving it just another pile of stone defaced by the earthquake. It would re-entomb the historic remnants resting within, and with her death, the secrets it held would be forever silenced. The brute finished his work and pulled Coyle back to the surface.
Coyle claimed Alexandra’s camera case. “I must borrow this.”
The second thug appeared, carrying a shovel. “Grave is dug.”
“No grave, you idiot!” Coyle fumed. “They must find her with her belongings. I will put her in my car. There is a bend in the road, and we’ll send her off the cliff.”
Alexandra hissed, “I can only hope the wrath of Nebuchadnezzar falls upon you!”
Coyle chuckled. “It’s a shame that a woman, smart enough to know the king responsible for the destruction of Philistia, must die in such a manner... but you must.”
“I did not know that,” she confessed. “I have simply always liked the way the name rolls off the tongue.”
The bestial thug escorted her down the tel and situated her in the bed of a truck. He then started shoveling another pit, sweating profusely. He appeared to be a frustrated grave digger.
“Pardon me, Igor,” Alexandra interrupted. “I’m not to be buried, just burned up in the car.”
“How you know name Igor?” The big oaf continued digging.
BOOM!!!!
Alexandra felt the explosion as much as heard it. She turned her head as a plume of dust rolled down the tel and enveloped the lorry.
Coyle and the other henchman rushed down the slope and tossed their tools into the back of the lorry. He yelled, “Popost’v gruzovik, glupo!” and jumped into the truck’s bed. The engine growled, and the vehicle was on its way, bouncing and rattling over the rough terrain.
Coyle popped out Alexandra’s chambered film and placed it into an empty cylinder. He handed it to the oaf. “Dlya Moskvy.”
It was now obvious to Alexandra that Coyle was in league with Moscow to extinguish any revelations of this biblical finding. “Are you willing to commit murder in the service of Uncle Joe Stalin?”
“I am a soldier of the Comintern. All power to the Soviets.”
Alexandra looked up. The hum of a passing biplane dissipated. She asked, “Do you know much about aerial policing?”
Coyle produced a handkerchief, stuffed it into her mouth, and tied it behind her head. He moved the rear flap and peered out. A biplane came into view farther down the valley.
It made a wide turn and started back.
The lorry came to a halt at his car. Coyle hopped down, needing to catch Alexandra once the Russian tossed her out. She fought as they dragged her to the car and threw her in.
Coyle raced to the driver’s side with her camera and satchel. Being under aerial observation had unnerved him. He turned over the engine and followed the truck onto the road. They proceeded higher along the ridge. To quell his captive’s restlessness, he pressed his gun’s barrel into Alexandra’s temple.
“Not another movement.”
Alexandra sat still and began mumbling through the handkerchief, “Nebuchadnezzar... Nebuchadnezzar... Nebuchadnezzar...”
She felt incredibly distraught that her last words were to be nothing more poetic than “Nebuchadnezzar.”
The biplane swooped in low and buzzed the car and lorry. It continued onward a distance before commencing another turn.
Coyle slammed on the brakes. Alexandra watched as one of the Russians leaned out of the lorry’s cabin to shoot at the passing plane. The lorry then vanished from view, having taken a sharp turn to forage a steep trail down into the valley.
Coyle struggled to shift the car back into drive. He finally popped the clutch and the car jutted forward. He raced to catch up, but then slammed the brakes. A truck and car had formed a roadblock.
Riflemen stood behind them.
The biplane made another run, this time unleashing its machine guns. Small plumes from the bullet strikes raked the dust and cut across the middle of the lorry. The peppered vehicle sputtered to a halt and then exploded. Alexandra closed her eyes on seeing the Russians step out, engulfed in flames, only to collapse and become part of the inferno.
Coyle flung open the door and yanked her out by the arm. The Palestinian and British soldiers took aim.
Coyle stood Alexandra up and walked her to the front of the car with his gun pressed to her head. She sensed his grip weaken. He was not ready to die for the cause. To the brisk orders of those approaching, he dropped his weapon. Alexandra sighed. The soldiers swarmed in and grabbed them both, frisking them as they hugged the hood.
Whereby Coyle’s wrists were placed in cuffs, hers were freed.
Alexandra took a moment to catch her breath and rubbed the rope burns on her wrists. “Quite the turn of events, Mister Coyle.”
She reeled back and unleashed a punch to his nose. She was still swinging and kicking away when two soldiers pulled her aside.
They settled her at the rear of the vehicle.
“Why am I not surprised to find you here?” the familiar voice of Liam Kimball sounded.
Alexandra turned to him. “Where else would I be?”
“We’ve been tracking these Russian agents.” He handed her a canteen. “I’ll see to it a patrolman escorts you back to Jerusalem. You must provide a statement. I’d take you myself if I could, but...”
“Understood,” Alexandra said dejectedly. He would be off to Baghdad in two days, and she had left him an infernal mess to clean up. She proposed, “I must treat you to dinner tomorrow. We can take in the city before heading our separate ways. Who knows, you may even prevent another international incident.”
“It seems likely,” he teased. “I’ll bring along a parachute and a grappling hook. Better still, a flare gun and fire extinguisher. One never knows with you.”
Alexandra stepped closer and straightened his tie. “I believe we already established on the balloon you are well-equipped for the expedition that awaits.”
—‡—
ALEXANDRA SMOKED AN after-sex cigarette in her room at the Hotel Fast. It was closing on sunrise, and the dusty streets stood deserted under the dim glow of streetlamps. At least residing on the third floor offered a wisp of dry breeze filtering in from the open balcony doors. She studied the waning moon as it slid into hiding behind the ancient city walls and firmed up the tie on her silk robe, for like herself, it was coming undone.
She had forgotten how much a proper fucking inflamed her emotions. Vulgar and ruinous schemes fevered her mind, and hushed voices scolded she had just laid fatal waste to another defiler. Mawkish feelings for a man were an intoxicant to which Alexandra knew nothing of. She had entertained bouts of infatuation, lust, and longing, yet had never felt a trace of romantic love. She did not feel it now and would likely be unaware when she did, for it might feel much like now, which was pleasant though nothing sweeping.
Two forces had offered her tutelage on how to mollify male passions. They had voiced contrary views: offering advice on how to conceive a child and on how best to avoid it.
A group of girls at Hamilton Hall had gabbed over little else, sharing jaunty laughter, audacious language, and posing as amateur astrologists tracking the moon. They were willing to gamble their futures on the sketchy science of synchronizing their fertility cycles with lunar phases to avoid pregnancy. Comprehending terms such as waxing, waning, and gibbous, was of greater importance than studying the periodic table.
As the dormitory was off-limits to males, it often meant a yah or nay to an awkward toss in a car or a more tender roll in the hay. If the timing of the carnal act were in doubt, they had concurred that smoking innumerable cigarettes afterward would foil any chances of conception. It was hard to know how seriously to take them. They had also snickered about coeds who pleasured themselves with electrical devices, which to Alexandra sounded weird and too futuristic to hold water.
Adelaide de Chantraine had provided more austere instruction on how Alexandra needed to comport herself, serve unequivocally, and breed well with “Le Maître.”
These lessons were conveyed to her at age thirteen, and as she was more impressionable than in her collegiate days, they had solidified firmer in her mind. It was among the reasons Alexandra never took chances beyond the quarter moon, as her cycle was unsynchronized, lending her to ovulate when the sky was at its darkest and bleed when the moon was full.
It was in a safe phase, yet as she gazed into the coming dawn, her worries mounted. The girls of Hamilton Hall had never stated their self-certified dogma applied to multiple sexual interludes in one evening. Alexandra took another drag on her cigarette. She could feel Kimball’s discharge running down her thigh. Without thinking, she reached under her robe, wiped it with a finger, and then rubbed it across her tongue and lips.
“What are you looking at?” Kimball asked.
She failed to turn. “The Jaffa Gate, picturing you marching through when General Allenby took Jerusalem. I wonder if I’ll ever have cause to send a son off to war.”
He sat up and lit up a cigarette, noting she had pilfered several in his slumber. “Do you plan to share everything with Ord-Guy?”
With her film incinerated and the sherd confiscated by the Bureau of Antiquities, there was no evidence to present. They had placed a gag order on Alexandra under threat of arrest and designated the tel off-limits to bury the matter. Despite incarceration and death, Coyle’s apparatchik had won.
“No,” she answered. “At least civil conflict may be averted.”
Kimball had arrived later than expected. They had wasted no time in small talk, undressed, and gotten right to it. “What are your plans?”
“I received a telegram. The authorities in British East Africa want to hire me to photograph a lion kill in Uganda. I’ll first report back to Megiddo to fulfill my obligations.”
“You don’t sound too keen about going,” he noted.
She snorted with disdain. “I had thought it was the call from Commander Dyott. Regardless, it’s unlikely I’d be able to scrape up sea passage to Brazil this late in the game.”
Kimball pushed back his bangs and shook his head. “Why is it so important to you?”
“It was to be my forty days lost in the desert.”
It irritated Alexandra to no end that he failed to understand her nature after all their time together. They had agreed to visit each other down the line and stoke their fledgling relationship, but people voiced all kinds of nonsense when in the throes of passion.
He warned, “Don’t go to Africa alone. A lot of ways to die there.”
“I’ve cabled my brother.” She scoffed. Her thoughts were growing fast and iniquitous, her voice testy, and she felt out of sorts. “He was born in Rhodesia. A sort of homecoming, though I’m sure he’ll decline. He was wounded in France. Thomas was killed. I know a thing or two about how you men think, despite having such little interest in the subject. You deem yourselves impregnable until taught otherwise. Runoff to play in the big game, unable to idle the bench. You got lucky, but my brothers just abandoned me! Terrible things happened to me! Sometimes acting recklessly rids such wretched fog from my mind.”
Kimball watched as Alexandra untied her robe and tossed it to the floor. She remained with her back turned, naked, looking out the balcony door: posture stiff, arms locked, fists tight.
She began panting and shaking. Sweat beaded her skin as if she were overheating. He rushed over to embrace her.
Alexandra opened her eyes. Their first go had been awkward. She did not like a man atop of her making love, and perhaps she would know she was in love when she could tolerate it. She was a physical lover who preferred to ride cowgirl, and thereafter, with her on top, their carnal unions had been more satisfying.
With a lurid gaze, she took his manhood into her hands. “I need to be taken forcefully.”
He became caught in her spell.
Alexandra gasped as he spun her about by the shoulders. He locked one arm along her midriff and the other across her chest. Her body was as hot as a furnace. She let out a groan and exulted in being so flagrantly ravaged.
Kimball climaxed, relaxed his grip, and collapsed onto the bed.
Alexandra hunted him down and polished him clean.
Her ravenous impulses subsided, and she lifted herself free. She tossed on her robe. Another cigarette was lit, and she returned to the balcony. The silhouette of a man standing under the Jaffa Gate briefly caught her attention. He departed.
Discovering the remains of a Nephilim had jolted Alexandra to the core. She wanted to greet the coming sunrise in peace, but it was not to be. One impudent string kept looping her thoughts—If Nephilim were real, demons once roamed the earth...
And if they still did, will one soon come for me?