Free The Lucifer Gospel by Paul Christopher

Finn’s ear.
    “He’s lying. There’s something else going on.”
    Finn didn’t answer. She looked down the table at Adamson, who was lost in conversation with the Libyan liaison officer, Hisnawi. Suddenly the expedition leader turned and stared down the table at her. The glance was utterly cold and without emotion. She held his hawklike gaze for a second longer, and he finally looked away. Finn stood up and shivered. If looks could kill she’d be a corpse. The expression had been exactly the same as the one on the killer’s face in the City of the Dead.
     
     
     

13
     
     
    “I’ve been here for two weeks and there’s been nothing out of the ordinary,” said Finn. She and Hilts were in the dining room on a coffee break. For the past two weeks they’d barely exchanged a dozen words. Hilts had flown a seemingly endless series of flights charting a low-altitude grid around the dig site and Finn had made exact drawings of a seemingly endless series of pottery shards. “Maybe Adamson really is operating on the up-and-up.”
    Hilts pulled a face. “I don’t have to remind you about what happened in Cairo.”
    “Which might have had more to do with you than me.”
    Hilts sighed. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
    “If Adamson was out to kill me, why would he have wanted me on the expedition staff in the first place?”
    “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer, as the Godfather once said.”
    Finn laughed. “I think the quote is actually Sun Tzu from
The Art of War,
but I get your point… only how did I get to be Adamson’s enemy?”
    Hilts played with the lip of his coffee cup. “I’ve spent a fair bit of time thinking about that. The only thing I could think of was Mickey Hearts.”
    “I wish you wouldn’t call him that.”
    “Sorry… Mr. Valentine. Anyway, he’s the only thing that makes sense, the only connection.”
    “How do you figure?”
    “He got you the job, didn’t he?”
    “I like to think my qualifications had something to do with it.”
    “No offense, sweetheart, but there’s a lot of technical illustrators out there with a lot more experience than you. And how did you hear about the job in the first place?”
    “My faculty advisor told me about it.”
    “How did he know about it?”
    “He said he had a friend who told him about it.”
    “Check it out. I bet you’ll find out that the friend in question was Mickey… your Mr. Valentine.”
    “Why would Michael put my life in jeopardy?”
    “Did he say anything to you before you left New York?”
    “I put him down as a reference for the job. I called to make sure it was okay.”
    “What did he say?”
    “He said fine. He seemed to know about the job already.”
    “And?”
    “He told me to be careful.”
    “A warning?”
    “I didn’t think so at the time. I thought he was talking about foreign travel, watching out for pickpockets, that kind of thing.”
    “And now?” Hilts asked.
    Finn paused, thinking. Hilts started tearing little chunks out of the top of his foam cup. “Now I guess I’m not so sure anymore. It could have been a warning, but that still doesn’t answer my question. Why would he knowingly send me into danger? That is, if he got me the job in the first place, which is what you seem to think.”
    “I wondered about that too. I think maybe your friend thought he was doing you a favor at first, but something changed his mind.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like he found out something.”
    “Found out something like what?”
    “Like this,” said Hilts, keeping his voice low. He reached into the pocket of his worn and faded fatigue jacket and brought out a device only a little larger than a cell phone.
    Finn looked at the tiny piece of electronics. “What is it?”
    “A Garmin i-Que.”
    “I’m not too good at the hi-tech stuff,” said Finn. “Words that an art history major can understand.”
    “It’s a GPS recorder, as in Global Positioning System.”
    “I don’t get