CHAPTER 22

When Anna exited the door of the little church, Martin bowed to the African man he’d been talking to, and said, “Forgive me, Bailiri. I need to speak with my friend.”

“Yes, of course.” The man waved him away.

As Martin trotted across the sand toward Anna, he surveyed the vast refugee camp. Fires extended for as far as they could see, rising and falling with the slightest undulation of the floodplain. This time of the season, insects should have been buzzing in the brush, crops and grass near the water, but all Martin heard was the hum of endless human conversation, punctuated by the laughter of children.

When their paths collided, Martin said, “Who is he?”

“Army captain. Micah Hazor.”

“What’s he doing here?”

Firelight reflected from her face. “He’d like to know that as much as you would. He’s badly injured. Doesn’t remember much. He asked me to search for the other members of his team, though, so that’s my next task.”

He took note of Anna’s determined expression. “That’s a very dangerous plan, Anna. Where are you going to start? It’s late. There’s a mass of humanity here. Though we haven’t seen anyone sick, if you start wandering around the camps, you probably will. Do you want to take the chance of contracting this plague? What’s more important to you? Staying alive long enough to get the Marham-i-Isa to a lab? Or looking for Hazor’s team?”

“Hazor’s team,” she said matter-of-factly.

Anna’s gaze drifted eastward to the ruins of the ancient Egyptian temple at Karnak. From here, he could just make out two standing obelisks that soared above the 3,500-year-old sacred complex.

As though speaking to herself, Anna softly said, “When Hakari brought me here four years ago, he knew the plague was coming. He was hunting for the cure. Obviously, we didn’t find it back then. So, he returned to Egypt three years ago.”

“Why?”

“He must have thought we’d missed something.”

“Well, for one thing, you didn’t find the Marham-i-Isa on that first trip.”

“True, but … It’s more than that.” She gestured to the obelisks. “When we were here together, he took the time to point out the pyramidions.”

He looked out at the magnificent ruins that shone in the firelight. “The what?”

“The obelisks are four-sided and culminate in a small pyramid-shaped tip, called a pyramidion. Pyramidions have four triangular faces, plus a square base. Put two pyramids together, base against base, and you have an octahedron. Four. Everything is based on four.”

“Everything?”

“Sure. For example, DNA is composed of four chemical elements: carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorous.”

He shrugged. “So?”

“Mystical geometry, Martin.”

“Are you saying that the maze is based upon mystical geometry? I thought you said it was molecular.”

“They are not mutually exclusive. Life is sacred, and the basic prerequisites for life are the triangle, the hexagon, and the circle.”

“That makes no sense whatsoever.”

She exhaled the words: “Try to see this in your mind. The crystalline structure of phosphorous is a tetrahedron; it’s composed of four triangular faces. Nitrogen and carbon are hexagons. Oxygen is basically two connected circles. See what I mean? Life is geometry. And that geometry is sacred, because life is sacred. Ancient mystical geometers believed that geometric forms revealed the mind of God at work in creation. So did Hakari.”

She kept staring at the obelisks as though she expected them to shout some secret message to her.

“So, you came here with Hakari four years ago. And you were at Bir Bashan four years ago. And you excavated at the megalithic tombs of Malta four years ago. Were there any other stops on the Hakari maze tour?”

“Ashkelon, Israel.”

He was stringing disparate facts about her life together, but it meant virtually nothing without an overall context to place them in.

She stared hard at the pyramidions that capped the obelisks. “There’s something … something here … he wants me to understand.”

“Anna, look at me. Do you realize that Hakari may have sent you on a wild-goose chase?”

Anna stared into his eyes for less than a second, then pointed to the north. “I’m going to start looking for Hazor’s team at the next fire and work my way down the river until dawn. Please take good care of that little jar in your pack.”

“Can’t this wait until morning, Anna? If Hazor’s men are out there, they aren’t going anywhere.”

“They could be hurt, Martin, even dying. If I were alone and hurting I’d want someone to find me. So, if they’re out here, I’m going to find them.”

Martin expelled a breath. “My God, you can be irrational. Okay, let me think just for a minute.”

She gave him a faint smile. “One minute. Then I’m off.”

His thoughts were spinning around all the possible ramifications of such a search. After all, America had just bombed villages across Africa, and not everyone in this part of the world had liked Americans to start with. They’d like them even less now. Then there was the small fact that an epidemic was raging.

“All right, Anna, if you have to do this thing, let’s do it together. But you’re also looking for Yacob, right? You said you were supposed to meet him here. Tell me what he looks like so I can help you search.”

“Just ask if anyone has seen an American.”

“Christ, you can’t even tell me what he looks like? What harm could that do?”

Anna frowned at him. “Are you sure you want to help me? Do you understand what you’re offering to do? Think about this.”

“In fact, I do understand, and it scares the hell out of me.” Memories of the dying villagers in Bir Bashan still haunted his dreams. Especially the little boy with the see-through chest. “But I’m not going to touch anyone, Anna. And if I can tell they’re sick, I’ll stand far enough away that I won’t be exposed. I’ll shout questions from the edge of the camp.”

“And be mindful of paramilitary groups of extremists who hate Americans—”

“I’m no hero, Anna. I’ll get out of there as fast as I can.” With false bravado, he patted the pistol on his hip. He’d never shot more than a target in his life. The very thought of pulling the trigger on another human being made him ill, but if it came down to protecting his life or that of someone he cared about, he was pretty sure he could do it.

Anna smoothed her hand down his arm. It was a strangely intimate gesture, filled with warmth, and the first real crack he’d seen in her waking-time emotional armor since before Bir Bashan. “I appreciate your help, Martin.”

“No problem. Let’s get moving.”

He strode southward along the Nile. The wind was redolent with the odor of thousands of unwashed bodies. If there was plague in this part of Africa, he suspected he would encounter it tonight … and if it were airborne, rather than transmitted through touch … he would be exposed. In this chaos of humanity, it would be unavoidable.