“I’ll take that as a compliment. We’ve got bad blood between us. So what? You wouldn’t be here unless you needed my help. Consider yourself lucky I’m alive.”

Ledge stared at the man he had called friend, ashamed he’d abandoned him all those years ago.

“Your son and the journalist found something in the warehouse, didn’t they?”

“They found a couple of things.”

Dean rested both hands atop his cane. He did look like a king.

“It’s a force that won’t be stopped. Something happened after the drone made its mysterious reversal to the warehouse. That’s what brought Hashim here.”

Ledge was shocked Dean could know this top-secret information.

“I didn’t burn all my bridges. Tell me what you know.”

“You seem to know what I know.”

“Not bad for an old guy who’s been banished from your world, huh? Okay. Do with this what you will.”

Ledge watched Dean settle into his professorial mode.

“It’s believed that carved into the tablet are instructions from ancient Sumerians whose civilization began almost overnight in 3800 BC. This is what you ran away from all those years ago. Their code has been unbreakable because it’s supposed to lead to a portal that opens to a higher consciousness. A consciousness humans aren’t ready to possess.”

“And, how do you know this, Jack?”

“Because I didn’t panic. Now, let’s start with cuneiforms.”

Ledge studied this brave, solitary ancient in a tweed jacket.

“Cuneiforms aren’t all that rare. Many have been found but never translated until a Sumerian scholar—”

“Zecharia Sitchin,” Ledge interjected. They were nothing if not competitive.

“You’ve done some homework since then.”

“Yes.”

“Good for you. Well. Not until Sitchin published his first translations in a series of books did anyone take him seriously. Because what he’d translated revealed precise information on a range of topics that couldn’t have been possible to know for a civilization at the beginning stages of its development, since there was no predecessor to follow. You with me so far?”

“I think so.”

“Good. Well. Sitchin claimed the Sumerians had detailed knowledge of the planets, and an understanding of complex medical procedures. Where did they get this knowledge? Sitchin claimed all this wisdom had come from a race of people called the Anunnaki, ‘those who from heaven to Earth came.’ The Bible speaks of the Elohim, which means God, or ‘those who came from the sky.’ The Qur’an talks of the Djinn, who are said to be made of a smokeless and scorching fire. Like the scorching fire a drone makes upon detonation.”

“And the cuneiform from the warehouse?” Ledge asked.

“The one the journalist found?”

“Yes.”