The Eden Deception Read online

  THE EDEN

  DECEPTION

  A THRILLER

  NATHAN SWAIN

  ABERGLASSNEY & SHAW

  ABERGLASSNEY & SHAW

  Copyright © 2020 by Nathan Swain

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations for a book review.

  ISBN: 978-0-578-64694-7 (pbk.)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020902734

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual businesses, organizations, social groups, events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Nicole Lecht

  Printed and bound in the United States of America

  The author Nathan Swain can be contacted at [email protected].

  For my co-conspirators Jessica and Claire.

  Chapter 1

  Beck Jarrett tapped the nose of his rifle on the driver-side mirror of a white pickup truck. “Roll it down!” he shouted at the driver, making a circular motion with his index finger. The driver pushed the palm of his hand against the window, slowly coaxing the wobbly, pock-marked glass down into the door. Silver sheets of rain pounded the truck from above.

  Will Eastgate walked over to Jarrett and directed the yellow beam of his flashlight into the cabin. The driver had a scraggly dark beard, but his youthful eyes revealed he couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. The passenger in the back seat looked much older. He had silver hair that receded into a jagged widow’s peak. His face was long and lined. Next to him was a black duffel bag.

  “Get the bag from the old man,” Eastgate barked, trying to make himself heard over the March downpour. Jarrett motioned for the old man to hand over the bag. He responded in a quiet voice, and slowly shook his head side to side.

  “He says it’s his own,” Jarrett said, translating the man’s Arabic. “ ‘My own, my own.’ That’s all he says.” Cupping his hands together as if in prayer, the old man began pleading to Jarrett in a low, croaking voice.

  The explosive hiss and pop of lightning cracked in the distance. Eastgate inched closer to the truck. His dragnet of soldiers already had recovered more than twenty stolen artifacts that day. Based on their refusal to hand over the black bag, Eastgate was certain the driver and his passenger had at least one more.

  Eastgate opened the back door of the truck with a jerk of the door handle and swiped the bag from the seat. The old man lunged, but missed. He could only stare, his mouth agape, as the bag disappeared into darkness.

  Eastgate walked two paces before he heard the back door of the truck open and the familiar click of a pistol hammer sliding into place. He dropped the duffel and spun around. The old man held a Glock 18C. It was pointed at Eastgate.

  Eastgate’s feet shuffled backwards and his abdomen hardened, bracing for impact. But another moment passed and Eastgate’s men had three M4s trained on the man. The truck’s windshield began fogging over from the thick, humid air. In a reedy tenor, the driver appealed directly to Eastgate.

  This time, Eastgate did his own translating. “The driver says it has nothing to do with us,” Eastgate said, looking at his men. “He said it belongs to his family.”

  The drama unfolding in front of Eastgate was starting to make sense.

  My family. This guy isn’t just a driver. Eastgate turned to Jarrett. “The old man’s his grandfather.”

  Despite his age, and the three assault rifles pointed in his face, the old man’s arm was steady as he kept his pistol trained on Eastgate. He had a strong build, and clearly was no stranger to firearms, Eastgate surmised.

  Eastgate slowly curled his right hand around his lower back. If this guy was going to shoot me, he’d have done it already, he decided. His index and middle fingers gently brushed the rear pocket of his cargo pants, quietly searching for his six-inch assault knife. He wrapped his thumb and first two fingers around the nub of the handle and took a quick breath.

  The image of a hummingbird inexplicably popped into his mind. It buzzed and burst with precision through tree branches and around flower petals, its wings cutting crisp arcs in the air.

  Don’t think, he told himself.

  Another breath.

  In one fluid movement, he hurled the knife side-arm through the passenger window of the truck. With a thud, the silver blade plunged into the neck of the driver.

  The driver stared blankly for five seconds. A trickle of blood ran from the wound down his shoulder. He started hyperventilating, clutching his chest, which looked as fragile as a bird’s nest.

  Eastgate glared at the old man.

  The old man’s cheeks were flushed with rage, but he didn’t discharge his weapon. Eastgate’s Baghdad Arabic was a little rusty, but he wanted the old man to hear his message directly from him: “If you shoot me, you’ll die,” Eastgate said, “and your grandson will bleed to death before breakfast.”

  Eastgate walked slowly toward the back door of the truck, his arms raised. By the look on the old man’s face, Eastgate could tell his threat had been received. He offered the old man an alternative. “Or, you can give me your gun and we’ll get your grandson to a medic.”

  The old man slowly lowered his gun. His face, which had been contorted with fury only a moment before, relaxed into a quarter-smile. “Your Arabic is very good,” he said, offering his gun to Eastgate. Eastgate snatched it away from him quickly and passed it over to Jarrett.

  The old man paused. “So hear me when I say this.”

  Eastgate looked at the old man intently, and noticed through the shoots of rain between them a shimmer of silver on the lapel of his suit jacket.

  “That which is inside the bag belongs to my people. If you take it from us, unspeakable harm will fall upon you. This is not a wish, it is a promise.”

  Eastgate allowed a smile. Strong words from a guy who’ll be cleaning latrines in an Army prison for the next 10 years.

  He kept those thoughts to himself.

  Four soldiers descended on the old man. “Get this guy to the medic,” Eastgate said, patting the driver’s shoulder. He repeated the order in Arabic for the benefit of the old man.

  Eastgate’s men started to lead the old man away, but he resisted. Twisting his arms around his body in a sudden jerk, he broke free. He lunged at Eastgate, wrapping his immense forearm around Eastgate’s far shoulder.

  “There’s one more thing,” the old man said, pulling Eastgate close. Eastgate tried to push him off but his grip was unshakable. “His pain is your path; his path is your pain. The ox, the eagle, the lion are unbroken.”

  Eastgate was able to work the palm of his right hand onto the old man’s chest and grip his shirt collar. At last, he pushed him into the arms of his men, who subdued him with a kick to the abdomen.

  Jarrett pinned the old man to the ground with a forearm to the chest and slung a pair of handcuffs on him. “Damn it. Sorry about that Will,” Jarrett said, looking up at Eastgate. “You OK?”

  Eastgate ignored the question. His mind was still trying to process what the old man had said. The ox, the eagle, the lion are unbroken?

  The rain abruptly stopped, leaving behind a low-creeping mist. The coiled fence of wire set up around the museum reflected a silver-blue light. Eastgate’s Army task force had built it hastily—a stop gap to staunch the flood of artifacts ransacked from the Slemani Museum in the first days of the US invasion of Iraq.

  “What the hell did he whisper at you?” Jarrett asked.

  “Total nonsense,” Eastgate said. “He’s just
a crazy old man.”

  Eastgate picked up the duffel again, feeling its weight in his right hand. Something was concealed inside it. He walked over to a table under a white canopy stretched between wooden posts and set the bag down. A pile of contraband firearms seized at the checkpoint was piled on the ground. The hazy glow from an industrial lantern sitting on the table cast an eerie light off the canopy. Eastgate opened the duffel. Inside was a small titanium briefcase.

  Jarrett took a step back. “Hold on. I better call the EOD specialist,” he said. “This could be explosives or—” But before he could finish, Eastgate was already pressing his thumbs into the metallic catches on the sides of the briefcase.

  Jarrett gasped, his pulse racing.

  Eastgate shook his head and smirked. “Relax. Guys like them booby trap dirt roads, not briefcases.”

  The top of the briefcase popped open. A sharp ammonia-like odor escaped into the air.

  “Phew,” Jarrett said, waving a hand in front of his face. “I hope it looks better inside than it smells.”

  A swirling wind pushed the rain south. The sky turned slate gray, brightened only by strands of moonbeams.

  Inside the briefcase was a black cloth embroidered with gold thread. To Eastgate, the pattern looked like a pair of eye glasses—two ovals, twisted together.

  Eastgate removed the cloth, exposing a rectangular block of stone, about ten inches long and eight inches across. The top of the stone was chipped but the edges around the sides and bottom were rounded and smooth. A stiff Styrofoam-type casing surrounded the stone. “What do you make of it?” Eastgate asked.

  Jarrett wiped droplets of rain off his forehead and squinted. “All I see is a hunk of rock. Nothing illegal about that.”

  Eastgate shimmied his fingertips underneath the casing and lifted the stone out of the briefcase. It was about four inches deep but lighter than a paperback book. Walking outside the canopy, he held the stone up in the fading light of the moon, squinting at it closely as he rotated it at different angles.

  “Look again.”

  Chapter 2

  Jarrett took a second look, seeing nothing. But then a flash of moonlight passed over the stone, revealing hundreds of intricate lines and geometric shapes. The expression on his face turned somber. He removed his helmet and took a step back. “What do you think it is?” he asked. Rain mixed with perspiration fell from his chin. Purple and white lightning flashed silently over the horizon.

  Eastgate’s pulse quickened. He ran his finger over the impressions in the stone. “Let’s find out.”

  Eastgate put the tablet back in the briefcase and raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Bring Zibari down here immediately.” Professor Qasim Zibari, a famous Iraqi scholar of ancient Mesopotamia, was head of the Slemani Museum.

  Eastgate was no stranger to the petty threats of bad guys, but the old man’s warning about the tablet at the checkpoint kept bouncing through his brain like bad haiku. That which is inside the bag belongs to my people. If you take it from us, unspeakable harm will fall upon you. This is not a wish, it is a promise.

  It might have been the perfect calm with which the old man delivered the threat. Or his determined gaze, even as he was about to be hauled away to military prison for the rest of his life. Whatever the reason, Eastgate decided the threat was real. He wanted to get the tablet out of his hands. Fast.

  He pushed his fingers through his spikey blonde hair and tried to recall when it was he last slept. Four days ago, he was leading a detachment of Special Forces soldiers and a ragtag group of Kurdish fighters in the opening battle of Operation Enduring Freedom—the US invasion of Iraq. It was March 2003. They had been fighting Ansar al-Islam—a pro-Saddam group of Islamic fighters in the North. The battle was a success. Ansar had been almost completely destroyed, which prevented its fighters from rallying to support Saddam’s forces in Baghdad.

  Some of the militants escaped toward Iran. Seeing them run, Eastgate was champing at the bit. He wanted to pursue them to the border—and beyond. Instead, he was given a peculiar assignment. The memory of receiving the order from his commanding officer, General Alan McQuistad, made him wince. “Get down to Sulaymaniyah,” McQuistad had ordered. “It’s the capital of Kurdish Iraq. The museum there is being plundered to hell. Secure the museum and recover as many of the artifacts as you can.” The General then grinned slightly. “Apparently, you are something of a renaissance man and might actually appreciate some of this crap.”

  At the time, Eastgate considered raising hell. “I didn’t spend ten years in the Special Forces to play night security guard at a museum while my brothers in arms fight a war,” he wanted to say. But McQuistad was moving quickly up the ranks of command. He was also an imposing figure. Eastgate could picture the General, with his kingly frame and Texas drawl, dragging a steer to ground with one hand while slathering BBQ sauce on a rack of ribs with the other. Even for a soldier like Eastgate—a stout 205 pounds with hands like vice-grips—it was clear that McQuistad was not a man to be screwed with.

  “These are some of the oldest artifacts in the world,” McQuistad had said, jabbing the toe of his Caiman Belly Heritage cowboy boot into the leg of a makeshift conference room table. “The Iraqis have managed to keep them in one piece for thousands of years. If the United States is perceived as the cause of this loss, it could be devastating to our mission. In other words, don’t screw this thing, Eastgate.”

  Forty-eight hours later, the dragnet set up by Eastgate’s unit around the museum had recovered dozens of looted artifacts. But the stone tablet taken from the old man was the big fish Eastgate was waiting for. It was larger than the other tablets he had seen in the museum. It was in good condition and the etchings in its surface were elaborate, almost artistic. Based on the reaction of the driver and old man when he seized it, it was probably worth a fortune.

  Eastgate hoped recovering the tablet would finally win Zibari’s approval. The museum’s director hadn’t bothered trying to hide his disdain for the US and its mission. By returning the tablet, Eastgate hoped he could convince Zibari at last that the US had no interest in plundering Iraq’s treasures. General McQuistad would arrange for a press release from the Army’s public relations office about reuniting Zibari with this prized-possession. Maybe CNN would send Christiane Amanpour to do a feature. That would mean “box checked” for Eastgate, and off to the next battle.

  “What is it now?” Zibari asked, striding up to the checkpoint beside his chief of staff, Ahmad Makiya. Zibari was short but distinguished looking, with a neatly-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. Even at this early hour in the morning, after spending the night in his museum office, he was clad in a stylish sport coat and pocket square. Eastgate pictured Makiya up before dawn pressing Zibari’s trousers with a steaming iron.

  A look of satisfaction passed over Eastgate’s face. He pointed to the tablet in the briefcase. “I think you’ll be happy to see this again.”

  “No, that is not one of ours,” Zibari responded abruptly, barely glancing at the artifact.

  Eastgate couldn’t believe it. Zibari was confused—or lying. The tablet must have been stolen from the museum. Where do you think the old man got it? A neighborhood garage sale?

  “What? Are you sure? We found it under very suspicious circumstances.”

  “It is probably a fake. In war, people are trying to survive. Some very creative people are trying to make money. It is the way of Iraq.”

  A fake. That didn’t make any sense. “Why would someone pull a gun on a Special Forces soldier just to protect a knock-off?”

  “I don’t know, for entertainment?” Zibari posited, clearly pleased with Eastgate’s disappointment. “Now, if you’ll let us go—” Zibari paused and glanced at Eastgate’s men, as if to suggest that the US Army regarded him and Makiya as something other than free. “I need to focus on recovering the many real pieces from the museum that are still missing”—he looked around at the checkpoint—“despite all of your efforts.”
r />   Eastgate pivoted and raised his hand—a signal for his men to let Zibari go. He would not give Zibari the pleasure of seeing his irritation.

  As Zibari and Makiya turned to leave, a tactical Army jeep screeched to a stop by the white canopy, sending a billowing cloud of orange-gray dust into the morning sky. A man in desert-camo combat pants and a white t-shirt got out of the jeep and handed Jarrett a small plastic bag. Jarrett shook his head and walked over to Eastgate. “You wanted a look at this Captain? Here you go.”

  Eastgate removed a tiny object out of the bag. It appeared to be made of a silver metal and was about the size of a nickel. A miniature sword made of a darker-colored metal was carved in the center. Small ruby-like stones lined the edges of the sword, giving the impression of fire emanating from the blade. A clasp was fastened to the back.

  He held the pin up to eye level. He wished he could go back to his make-shift barracks and pick up his bifocals. Now in his mid-thirties, flecks of white salting his sandy-brown sideburns, his far-sightedness seemed to be getting worse by the day.

  “The old man was wearing this on his jacket,” Eastgate said.

  Jarret shook his head in disbelief, wondering how he had overlooked the detail. “Well, hell.”

  “And so was the driver.”

  Jarrett squinted at the shimmering object. “What is it?”

  Eastgate curled his fingers and felt the shining totem rest gently in his hand. “Our first clue.”

  Chapter 3

  Samir Farah bounded down the steps of his luxury flat in Cambridge’s Mill Road neighborhood. He was out the door at 6 a.m., setting off on a morning run just as he had done each day the past semester. He was outfitted, as usual, in all-black Sugoi performance running gear, which tightly hugged his toned body.

  Samir bent over, touching his toes and the cold red bricks of the street outside his building. He breathed deeply before exhaling a plume of warm carbon dioxide into the morning air.