The Pandora Room: A Novel Read online

  Now there were seven people in the worship chamber, including Sophie, Beyza, Alton, and four other members of the team. Ostensibly, Alton and the others were photographing, marking, and taking notes as they attempted to carefully excavate the wall, but thus far they had made only a narrow hole through it. Enough to know that the mortared rock went about six feet deep before opening into another room.

  Sophie intended to go in. Beyza thought her irresponsible.

  “Dr. Durand,” Beyza said now, returning Sophie’s chilly formality. “If you need me to make an official protest—”

  Sophie shifted closer to her, almost nose to nose. They were similar in height and build, not to mention determination.

  “Your protest has been noted.” She gestured to the others in the room. “And you’ve made certain everyone here is aware of it.”

  Beyza looked as if she might argue further. Her eyes were aflame in a way that Sophie had never seen before. The two women had gotten along quite well, beginning on the very first day. Even up to this morning, they had been friends—it had been Beyza who’d asked her to bring back some tahini for the cook—and Sophie hoped they would still be friends after this. But she had made up her mind.

  With a sigh, Beyza threw up her hands. Sophie nodded and shifted past her, walking toward the hole in the wall, where Alton and the others were cataloging everything and shifting away the stone that they removed. Sophie had sent Martin to lie down, worried he had a concussion, but three of those present were his fellow graduate students. The other two, Alton and Marissa, were archaeologists employed by the Alliance Européenne, and Sophie had a great deal of respect for her team. She had chosen most of them herself. Marissa, in particular, had been the silent and reliable backbone of her team.

  “Hey, Soph,” Alton said, stepping in to bar her path. “Can I ask you something?”

  Sophie smiled, closed her eyes a moment, and shook her head. “Not you, too?”

  Alton gave her a sheepish grin. “I have to ask. What’s the hurry?”

  Sophie expected to feel herself bristle, but it didn’t happen. Smart, quiet, savvy Alton had charm and a smile so amiable that he’d earned a reputation as the peacemaker of the group. He came from a little village in the north of England, from a family whose identity remained profoundly entwined with their forefathers’ history as coal miners. The first of them to attend university, the first to live outside the country, Alton missed them fiercely, but he had family anywhere he went, by virtue of his genial nature.

  “Alton,” she began.

  Then she saw his gaze shift past her, and she realized he was looking to Beyza for guidance. Sophie rolled her eyes and moved around him. No matter how charming he could be, and though she knew he meant well, Alton still had a bit to learn about diplomacy and being someone’s employee.

  “All I’m saying,” he added, walking beside her, “is that I think if Lamar were here, he might be able to talk you out of this. And if I’m permitted an opinion, I think it’d be wise for us to wait for him to try talking you out of it before anyone goes through that hole.”

  Sophie stood in front of the hole in the wall. She put her hand on the crumbling edge of the hole and peered at the large rocks that had been used to construct the barrier. With her back to the team, she inhaled deeply of the dust and age of the earthen chamber around her.

  How many conversations had they had about the sort of worship that had gone on in this room? A hundred, at least. The world around them existed in a constant state of crisis, a global turmoil that seemed only to worsen by the day, but down here, in this subterranean warren, a place where people had lived and thrived and loved and prayed—all underground—secrets of the past had been unveiled. Further mysteries awaited them, but what Sophie loved the most about those mysteries was that they were—in this case quite literally—set in stone. The past awaited their discovery, but it held no dangers. No peril, only fascination.

  Yes, it might still surprise them. But it wouldn’t disappoint them, and it couldn’t kill them. Only the present-day world could do that.

  Sophie had left her life as an archaeology professor behind. It had begun at a charity event at New York’s Museum of Natural History, where the museum had given some award or other to Alex Jarota, the director of the Alliance Européenne. Alex had sought her out afterward and confessed that one of the reasons he’d attended the event had been to meet her. By the end of the evening, over a great deal of wine, he’d nearly convinced her to cast aside her academic career and come work for him. Sophie had been solo that night—Steven had been out of town, at a conference—otherwise, Alex might not even have gotten that far.

  At first, she had turned the offer down. But the more she had thought about the unique position of the Alliance, the louder the little voice in the back of her mind grew. The one that said, Don’t be a fool. It’s all you’ve ever wanted. Financed by the European Union, the Alliance would enable her to do her work without constantly having to bow and scrape for funding. As a child, Sophie had been quiet and dedicated, and that trend had largely continued into adulthood. She’d worked hard, trying to make the most of a life that had once almost been stolen from her, but she had also been hesitant to make the big moves, always wary of upsetting the stability she’d built. When her father had begun to fail and her mother had moved to France to be with him, that stability had vanished. The idea of seizing the life she truly wanted had been frightening, but now that it lay right in front of her—and all she had to do was reach out and grasp it—she could not refuse.

  Her employers at NYU had been understanding, if disappointed. Steven had been far less of the former, and far more of the latter. But Sophie had only ever dreamed of dusting off bits of history, unraveling the past, and sharing it with the world—even if most of the world might be profoundly disinterested. Her work would go unnoticed by most people, and that was just fine with her. Filling in the blank spaces in archaeological textbooks seemed like a wonderful way to spend her life.

  Sophie blamed Alex Jarota for all of it. The Frenchman admired her, but he admired many people, and no one more than himself. An ambitious man, he wanted to further his own career by furthering the fame and reach of his organization. To do that, he needed all his project managers—people like Sophie—to share his ambition. He’d wanted her for her expertise, yes, but he also wanted to forge her into someone who cared about publicity and status. Neither of those things interested her very much … but she was trying to learn.

  Marissa walked over to Sophie, ignoring the others, and handed over her flashlight. “You’re going to need this.”

  Sophie grinned. With her ginger hair clipped short and her black-rimmed granny glasses, Marissa looked more like a punk bass player than an archaeologist, and her attitude matched.

  “Someone’s on my side, at least,” Sophie said.

  “Don’t get excited,” Alton replied. “Marissa just wants to know what’s on the other side and doesn’t mind if you get crushed to death finding out.”

  “This is more or less true,” Marissa said with a shrug. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” Sophie replied.

  She hadn’t even gotten a look through the hole yet. She hadn’t wanted to interfere with the work that was going on, but now that the hole had been widened enough—or nearly enough—for someone slim to shimmy through, she had made up her mind. She clicked on the high-intensity flashlight and shone the narrow beam through the hole. It took a few seconds to get the angle she wanted, but as she peered through, she got a small glimpse of the far wall inside the secret chamber. Heat flushed the back of her neck, but this time it wasn’t out of embarrassment or anger.

  “Cuneiform,” she said. “But Beyza’s right—not like anything I’ve seen.”

  “Thanks for confirming what I’ve already told you,” Beyza replied, the voice floating through the worship chamber. She had stayed over near the altar, miffed by the way Sophie had pulled rank.

  One of the grad studen
ts had gone pale and begun whispering to another.

  “Something on your mind, Rachel?” Sophie asked sharply.

  The young woman, Rachel, took a deep breath. “Nothing, Dr. Durand. It’s just…” She glanced around. “Did anyone else hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Alton asked.

  Rachel frowned, glanced into the shadowed corner of the chamber behind the lighting rig, and shook her head. “I don’t know.” She glanced up. “I’m actually not feeling well. Do you mind if I…”

  The question trailed off. Sophie frowned, wondering what was up with her, but she waved the young woman away. “Go and lie down. Check on Martin before you do.”

  With a grateful nod and a pale, nervous glance at that dark corner, Rachel hurried out of the worship chamber.

  “All right,” Sophie said. “Let’s quit stalling.”

  Beyza scowled halfheartedly, but Sophie ignored her. What little she could make out of the cuneiform visible through the narrow opening might indeed be different from what she’d encountered before, but her mind began interpreting the symbols regardless. A slash here, a slant there, a series of crescents and splayed figures … they might be unusual, but Sophie already thought she could make out the meaning of some of that writing. Was that phrase the glories of … no. The blessings of Zeus.

  Zeus. In northern Iraq.

  Not long ago, archaeologists had found heavy Greek influence, including astonishingly preserved mosaics depicting Greek mythological figures, in the ancient Turkish city of Perga. But what she saw were not mosaics.

  “What is this?” she muttered.

  Alton leaned against the wall beside her, arms crossed, that roguish grin on his face. “That’s what we’d all like to know. But we don’t want to die finding out.”

  Sophie pushed away the temptation to keep arguing. She clicked off the flashlight and turned to face them. Across the worship chamber, she could see a couple of silhouettes beyond the entrance—more workers on the dig, wondering what the hell their project manager was thinking. Word had begun to spread.

  “Beyza, come closer,” she said.

  Her friend—if Beyza remained her friend—kept her face free of expression, but she did approach the rest of the small gathering. Sophie glanced around at them, faces cast in golden light and odd shadows by the lights that had been strung throughout the chamber. Alton had a scar through his left eyebrow that seemed much deeper at this angle, furrowed with shadow. The strange light gave them all a sort of antique cast, as if they’d emerged from an old sepia-tone photograph. With her shortish black hair tucked behind her ears and her eyes narrowed with doubt, Beyza looked decades older than her thirty-five years. The others had a ghostly cast to them, but they were her team, and she’d been unfair to them.

  “I’m going through, and I’m doing it now,” she said.

  Alton started talking again, but Sophie held up her hand.

  “I know the risks, and I’m going, anyway. You all know what happened earlier. You know that whoever those men were, they were taken into custody—but for how long? And how long before others like them come to see what we’ve discovered? We’ve been fortunate that we’ve been able to work on this project for so long with very little interruption. Out here, we’re not bothering anyone. But where, exactly, are we? Kurdistan, yes. Iraq, yes. But there are disagreements over that, aren’t there?”

  Beyza clucked her tongue. “Don’t demonize my government.”

  Sophie sighed. “I’m not. At least not more than any other government. But as progressive as Atatürk University might be in comparison, you can’t say there aren’t factions in the Turkish government who might want to lay claim to anything we might find here. We’re officially in Iraq, but this territory has changed hands over the course of millennia, so an argument could be made that whatever we discover might not belong to the Kurds, or the Iraqis, and certainly not to the Alliance Européenne.”

  Beyza exhaled. “All right. Go on.”

  “I’m only saying that we have worked very hard here, and I intend that our work be treated properly, that any antiquities are handled as UNESCO has outlined.” Sophie turned and clicked on the flashlight again, shining its beam at the hole in the wall. “Whatever’s beyond this chamber, it’s something new. I heard the way your voice trembled when you called to tell me about it, Beyza, so I know you agree. The skin’s prickling on the back of my neck. No ancient civilization made secret chambers without a reason. I want to know what’s in there, and I damn well do not want some spies snatching it—whether it’s information or antiquities—before we’ve done our job.”

  “Lamar—” Alton began.

  Sophie rolled her eyes. “Lamar works for me, not the other way around. Yes, he’s my conscience sometimes. Right now, he’s dealing with the military … or he’s on the way back here with whichever one of the diggers we sent out to fetch him. But I’ll tell you this much about Lamar…”

  She let the unfinished sentence hang in the air for a few seconds, and then she pulled a rubber band off her wrist and began tying back her hair.

  “He wouldn’t fit through the hole.” Lamar might be short, but his shoulders were wide. He was well acquainted with the gym.

  Sophie turned and walked to the hole. She shone the light through the narrow opening again, then clicked it off and slipped it into her pocket. For a moment, she hesitated. Alex Jarota wanted her to be ambitious, to strive for the glory of publicity to further her own career as well as his. Beyza and the others thought she would get stuck or that the rocks would collapse and she’d die or be trapped, and she couldn’t deny there was risk involved. What she was about to do was stupid. Sophie told herself she was doing it for the thrill of the discovery and to protect their work, just as she’d said.

  She took a moment to consider whether that was the truth, and she realized she didn’t know.

  A deep breath, and she glanced back at Alton.

  “Give me a boost,” she said. “And if I die, don’t let Beyza write ‘I told you so’ on my tombstone.”

  FOUR

  Sophie’s courage failed her halfway through the wall. It pressed all around her, rocks scraping against the thin cloth protecting her back and chest and hips and thighs. A curve of stone bulged against her abdomen, and she knew if she’d attempted this weeks ago, she’d never have slithered this far into the hole. Every time she went into the field, she began to lose weight instantly. But slim as she’d become, she still found herself wedged across her hips.

  Whispering profanity that would have horrified her mother, Sophie stretched her arms forward, scraping her fingers on the rocks and crumbling mortar. Every time she pushed herself an inch ahead, she hoped that her fingers would find the other side of the wall and she’d be better positioned to pull. But her team could still reach in and grab hold of her feet, and she knew she hadn’t made it yet.

  “Be careful,” Beyza called to her. “If you shift too hard—”

  “I know.”

  “If you dislodge part of the wall above you—”

  “I fucking know.”

  Alton tapped her ankle. She knew it was Alton because he’d been the one on her left as she had first inserted her upper body into the hole and begun to drag herself in. Alton and Joe Bonetti had helped to hoist her and slide her in as if she were a torpedo being loaded into a tube.

  “We can pull you out,” Alton said.

  Sophie shuddered. “No,” she whispered, unsure if it was loud enough for him to hear. She could smell the dust of age, the rich earthen aroma of history all around her. Breathing it in, she soothed her fear. She laid her cheek against the sharp stone edge below her and took another long, deep breath, and then expelled it from her lungs and pressed her lips tightly together.

  Eyes closed, she felt the stone and mortar around her. It had looked as if there was enough room, and she told herself that hadn’t been an illusion. She might have gotten lodged in that spot, but they had been able to reach in with digging tools and widen th
e hole somewhat, and a visual examination had suggested to her that it she could make it.

  Never assume, she thought, remembering the old adage about making an ass out of you and me, which was funny considering it was her ass causing all this trouble. She’d never thought her butt had much shape to it, but here she was, a prisoner of her hips and ass.

  She inhaled and exhaled again, and her lungs ached. She wondered how much damage they’d sustained from radiation and chemo, wondered how much stress her heart could take. Sophie never talked about these fears with anyone. Unless someone had been through it, unless they shared her memories of being in the clinic surrounded by other children who were sick, some of them dying … no one could understand. As strong as she felt, those memories were ghosts haunting the corridors of her mind, and she knew they would be there forever.

  “Okay,” she whispered. Inhale, exhale, emptying her lungs to make herself as small as she could be.

  She couldn’t buck upward. Instead, she shifted her hips to the left and then the right. In her mind, she imagined using her hip bones to crawl. Arms reaching, shoulders stretching, she dug her fingers into the space between the rocks that had been used to build the wall. She tucked her butt, shifted her hips again, left and right, dragged herself an inch and felt a spark of triumph, before mortar showered down from above her. Dirt and dust sifted into her mouth.

  Sophie drew a sharp breath and felt something shift above her, a sharp bit of rock, one brick in this wall, things moving against one another. Stupid. So stupid, she thought, knowing she might have fucked up for the last time.

  Her thoughts went to her cell phone and all the text messages from Steven that she hadn’t really answered. Messages she might never answer, and though she did not regret her decision, Steven deserved better than that.