Ancient Echoes Read online

  ANCIENT ECHOES

  JOANNE PENCE

  QUAIL HILL PUBLISHING

  This is a work of fiction. Any referenced to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This book may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others.

  Quail Hill Publishing

  PO Box 64

  Eagle, ID 83616

  Visit our website at www.quailhillpublishing.net

  First Quail Hill Publishing Paperback Printing: April 2013

  Excerpt from Hieroglyphical Figures: Concerning both the Theory and Practice of the Philosophers Stone (1624) by Nicholas Flamel. Printed by Kessinger Publishing’s Rare Mystical Reprints

  Excerpt from The Lewis and Clark Journals, Gary E. Moulton, ed. © 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska

  Copyright © 2013 Joanne Pence

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 0615783368

  ISBN-13: 978-0615783369

  Also by Joanne Pence

  SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES

  DANCE WITH A GUNFIGHTER

  THE GHOST OF SQUIRE HOUSE

  GOLD MOUNTAIN

  DANGEROUS JOURNEY

  The Angie Amalfi Mysteries

  COOKING SPIRITS

  THE DA VINCI COOK

  RED HOT MURDER

  COURTING DISASTER

  TWO COOKS A-KILLING

  IF COOKS COULD KILL

  BELL, COOK, AND CANDLE

  TO CATCH A COOK

  A COOK IN TIME

  COOKS OVERBOARD

  COOKS NIGHT OUT

  COOKING MOST DEADLY

  COOKING UP TROUBLE

  TOO MANY COOKS

  SOMETHING'S COOKING

  To David

  Table of Contents

  Part I The Travelers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part II Idaho

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes

  About the Author

  The Angie Amalfi Mysteries

  Part I

  The Travelers

  Chapter 1

  Mongolia

  MICHAEL REMPART FLUNG back the thick, musty brown quilt, rekindled the metal stove's dying dung fire, and dressed in heavy woolens and an insulated jacket before stepping out of the small ger.

  The bitter winds of western Mongolia's Bayan Ölgiy region slapped at his face and dried his eyes until they ached. Normally, the sky above this cold, barren plain was bleak and pale and gray at the edges, as if viewed through an ice cube. This sky was a murky mustard color that made him uneasy. He'd seen this before on the Gobi Desert as a prelude to a sand storm.

  His archeological dig team should have been busily moving about the camp. But the camp was empty. The two aged Soviet-built GAZ trucks used to transport men, equipment and supplies to the dig site were also gone.

  Last evening, everyone had retired for the night in high spirits. After weeks of anticipation, skepticism, and hope, the dig had reached a depth from which they would learn if they had discovered an ancient tomb filled with riches, or if all their work had been a colossal waste of time and money.

  Today would tell the story. But why was no one here?

  A treeless, dreary expanse of low grass and scrub edging the snow-capped Altai Mountains surrounded the camp. From China, the jagged peaks arched through Kazakhstan to Mongolia and then from there to Siberia. The air was thin in these high mountains, the land empty of humans except for wandering bands of nomads…and Michael's dig team.

  A tall, angular man, Michael Rempart was one of the world’s top archeologists. His face, burnished and browned by the bright sun and cruel wind, had a high forehead, sharp cheekbones, and a long, straight nose, while hair the color of soot fell haphazardly to his shoulders. Only the slightest crinkling of skin beneath deep-set brown eyes and edging a firm mouth hinted at his forty years of age.

  Michael's assistant, Li Jianjun, had insisted on locating the dig site a full two miles from the camp. If Michael had placed the camp any closer to the site, he wouldn't have found anyone willing to work for him. Even here, despite his best efforts, the workers had remained fearful and jumpy.

  It was because of the kurgans—long, shallow mounds of black and gray stones that jutted eerily over the barren landscape to mark graves. Kurgans were death-filled reminders of the ancient cultures that once wandered over Central Asia and southern Siberia from the eighth century B.C. to the thirteenth century A.D. Remnants of those cultures and their traditions were believed by many to still exist. To this day, numerous stories were told of the dead who walked among them.

  Near them, a darkness hovered and the earth seemed abnormally still. Near them, every nerve in Michael’s body grew taut and tense.

  The place they needed to dig sat between three such kurgans.

  Michael ran toward the gers that housed his team. The nomadic tents were commonly known as yurts in the West, but that was a Russian word and never used by the fiercely independent Mongolians.

  He swung open the three-foot high door.

  On the ground stood a rounded object covered by w
hite cloth. White candles circled it. White signified death in many East Asian cultures, much as black did in the West.

  Michael snatched off the cloth.

  A human skull smiled up at him. It had browned with age, and its few teeth were yellowed and worn. He studied it a moment, then lifted it.

  The skull had been placed atop a square of material with a picture of two demons. One had a bright green body, huge belly and monkey's head. The other, a red dragon-like beast, had a human face in a snake's head with four golden fangs. Both demons glared with furious, black, bulging eyes.

  Michael squatted low and fingered the material. The silk looked and felt quite old. The art work was Tibetan, a land whose culture and religion had influenced the Mongolian people from their earliest days.

  The demons seemed to dance before his eyes, mocking him.

  He hurried back outside and searched the bleak, treeless emptiness, hundreds of miles from civilization, for any sign of what had happened to his companions.

  He was completely alone except for the kurgans in the distance.

  Chapter 2

  Jerusalem

  “CHARLOTTE! IT IS GOOD to see you again, my friend.” Mustafa Al-Dajani kissed Charlotte Reed on both cheeks. She stood a whole head taller than he and bent forward with a stiff and awkward smile as he gripped her shoulders for the warm greeting. Thirteen years had passed since she last saw him.

  They stood at the entrance to a two-story gray office building near Hebrew University’s Mt. Scopus campus. Years ago, Charlotte had studied there.

  Only a handful of Arab scholars such as Al-Dajani taught at the University. A leading scholar of Egyptian history, culture, and language from the Middle Kingdom through the Ptolemaic period, roughly 2000 B.C. to 30 B.C., he served as an external lecturer for the Institute of Archeology. And he was one of the world’s few experts on early alchemical texts.

  “It's good to see you, as well, Dr. Al-Dajani,” she said. He had gone quite gray, and his stomach, a gentle paunch thirteen years ago, was rotund. He seemed prosperous and happy.

  She knew that when he looked at her, he no longer saw the willowy, enthusiastic twenty-four year old student she had been, but someone more angular, sinewy. Harder. Her once flowing blond hair was short and straight now, usually worn tucked behind the ears. She wore no make-up. Large blue eyes, analytical and cold, dominated her face.

  “You look better than ever,” he said.

  “So do you.” Her head inclined as her reserve slipped ever so slightly. “And we're both terrible liars.”

  He chuckled as he led her into the building, past the security guard at the entrance, and down the hall to his office. The university secured the building due to the stature of its scholars and the value of the artifacts they studied.

  When the two first met, Charlotte Reed had been a doctoral candidate in Al-Dajani’s field of expertise. But one day, after having lived and studied in Jerusalem for over a year, her life changed abruptly.

  Her husband, Dennis Levine, had been seated in a small café when it was blown up by terrorists. He was killed instantly. She gave up her studies and returned to Washington D.C. where she found a quiet desk job as a Customs agent dealing with forgeries and smuggling of Near and Middle Eastern art and antiquities, an almost forgotten area ever since ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, became part of Homeland Security.

  Then, one week ago, she received a baffling call from Al-Dajani.

  “I have just learned of something that greatly interested your husband before he died,” Al-Dajani had said. “It’s complicated, impossible to explain over the phone. But if you have time to come to Jerusalem, you may find it of interest.”

  Despite the calmness of his words, he sounded excited, even desperate, to share his discovery.

  But then, he added, “I hesitated to contact you after so many years, Charlotte, to bring up the past this way. And also, if you have moved on from those terrible days, if your life is full now, I will understand if you choose to stay away.”

  In truth, her life wasn't full. Pleasant, at best. Boring, in truth. She liked her home, her job; she had friends, even occasional lovers. Yet, at times, her surroundings felt oddly temporary, as if she missed something vital, crucial.

  Al-Dajani gave her a reason to return to the place where her life had swerved so violently awry.

  Hearing his voice, talking to him once more, made her realize that the past couldn’t be laid to rest by simply ignoring it.

  But being here was even more difficult, emotionally, than she had expected.

  An ancient quote played through her mind: that the world was like a human eye—the white was the ocean, the iris was the earth, and the pupil was Jerusalem. The center of all things. The center of her life.

  As the sights, sounds and smells of the city flooded over her, a bit of her heart, what little she had left of it, broke all over again.

  Al-Dajani’s office changed little from the way she remembered it: one small window, dark wooden shelves overflowing with books and folders, and a desk piled high with papers. He offered her tea heavily spiced with cinnamon and cardamom. While the tea brewed, he prattled on with animation and obvious love about his wife and three daughters. She offered few words about her job. He didn't bring up her private life, and neither did she. Finally, impatient and abrupt, she said, “Your call intrigued me.”

  “Yes. We must talk about it,” he murmured.

  She braced herself. “I would say so.”

  He flinched at the coldness of her tone. “At first, I found it merely amusing,” he began, “that an American professor who specialized in the Western expansion—cowboys and Indians (your 'Indians,' as you call them)—should come to me about ancient Egyptian alchemical texts. I wondered if he planned to become an alchemist himself.”

  Al-Dajani’s grin mixed mockery and humor at the American, but his words surprised her.

  She probably knew more than most people about alchemy and alchemists. Many Americans formed their opinions from children’s books and movies in which alchemists were depicted as sorcerers or wizards with pointy hats and long white beards, spending their lives in dark, dank castle laboratories trying to change common metals into gold.

  Al-Dajani’s gaze caught hers as his expression changed to fear. “Soon after the professor left, strange incidents began to occur. I felt watched. Someone broke into my office. I couldn’t help but feel more was behind this than appeared on the surface. The American had been referred to me by Pierre Bonnetieu in Paris. I believe you have met him.”

  Her world shifted as the past rushed at her once more. Bonnetieu was curator of the Cluny Museum in Paris. She shut out the onslaught of memories of being with Dennis in Paris, of how it felt to be young and in love in that magical place. “Yes,” she murmured. “I’ve met him.”

  Al-Dajani continued. “The American professor, Dr. Lionel Rempart, had been at the Cluny asking to see medieval writings about alchemy. When Bonnetieu couldn’t answer, he referred the professor to me.”

  “What did this professor want you to do? Create some gold for him? Professors don't make a lot of money, you know.”

  Al-Dajani's round face crinkled into a smile. He lifted his hands, palms up. “Who knows? But at least that would make sense!” Then he turned serious. “This professor acted nervous, impatient, and arrogant. I explained that everyone made up stories about alchemy from day one. But Rempart’s only interests were in the author of the Emerald Tablets, and in a Kabbalist scholar named Abraham who, some believed, wrote down the information from those tablets. Do you remember your studies regarding any of that, Charlotte?”

  Charlotte felt like a student again, a wayward student who'd forgotten to do her homework. She smiled. “All I remember is that about 1900 B.C., a scholar known only as Hermes Trismegistus produced the earliest writings on alchemy, the Emerald Tablets. Hermes believed all life, human, vegetable and mineral stemmed from one single source. A few centuries after his death the E
merald Tablets were lost, but many adepts claimed their own writings included information from those original texts. The most well-known of these adepts, Geber or Jabir, is best known because his name became the root of the English word 'gibberish,' which tells what people thought of him.”

  Al-Dajani chuckled mischievously. The mystical East baffling the materialistic West remained a constant source of amusement to him. He took a loud slurp of his tea. “Dr. Rempart seemed to think an ancient book of alchemy had been brought to the western part of your country many years ago, during the time of some early explorers…Lewis and Clark, I think their names were. As I answered his questions, his excitement grew. His last words to me were ‘Maranatha, it exists.' Then he left.”

  “What exists?” Charlotte asked.

  “The same book that your husband wanted to know about,” Al-Dajani said.

  “My husband?”

  He looked surprised. “You don't know?” At her blank look he shifted, nervous and chagrined. “I'm so sorry, Charlotte. I thought you knew. It's what your husband was investigating when he was killed, the reason for his trips to Paris, and his meetings with me. Maranatha was the last word I ever heard him say.”

  Her mind whirled with confusion. She had introduced Dennis to Al-Dajani, but she had no idea they had ever met beyond that.

  “You’re telling me Dennis looked into alchemy?” Her voice rang with doubt. Dennis used to laugh that deep, throaty laugh of his about the Egyptian mysticism classes she took from Al-Dajani. She could almost hear him now. No, she couldn’t imagine Dennis investigating such a thing. Not her Dennis. Al-Dajani had to be mistaken.

  “I'm so sorry, Charlotte, if I'd known you were unaware I wouldn’t have asked you here at this time. It will take a while to explain. Come this evening so we will have time to talk and we won't be disturbed by confused undergraduates.” Al-Dajani patted her hand. “What I've found is incredible. An ancient secret. One that extends from this area to China and then to the New World—your world. A secret some men have died to learn, and others have died to keep.”