Julian took her hand as they came into the city. Mosul held a dark memory. Nazir had given Julian the name of the one who’d helped him escape. The same man who’d forged the Nicolas Sandor passport for Hashim. His name was Ja’far.

vThat night, Julian and Dominique waited in a café in a corner of the bazaar. The brilliant colored fabrics that billowed as the soft night wind blew captivated Dominique. The scent of dried herbs and teas rode on the air from the stalls of merchants closing their shops.

This was a land of magic, she thought, as she breathed in the sweet-scented intoxicant air and stood among the fabrics that seemed so full of life. She remembered a line from Milton’s Paradise Lost: “Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep.” She’d always believed literature captured a level of unseen reality. And here, in this place, she knew the air itself was animate with these spirits.

She broke from her reverie when a weathered man with a wisp of beard approached them at the café.

Dominique stared at him. He looked familiar.

“I know, I know,” Ja’far said, with a twinkle and a smoker’s rasp. “Everyone says I look like your actor, John Hurt.”

“He’s English,” Dominique said with a grin.

“There’s a difference?” Ja’far said, winking. “Allah rest his soul.”

He handed Dominique a piece of paper. Written upon it was a password Nazir had told them he would provide in order to confirm his identity.

Dominique handed the paper to Julian, who looked at it, tore it up and said, “Okay.”

Ja’far went right to business and began to lay out the plan for the morning. He would pick them up at the hotel before dawn. Together they would travel outside the city to an underground access point into the cave of memory.

For Dominique, time past and time present had merged. What time future would bring she had no idea.

70

70

Sunday, October 4

The battered pickup truck Ja’far drove was thick with the smell of herbs and gunpowder. The scent of war had soaked into every fabric of his life. There’d been no escape from the contagion. He maneuvered through the sleepy back alleys of Mosul into the cold dawn of the desert—toward the cave he’d told them was their destination.

In the back seat, Dominique held tight to Julian’s hand. The last time they’d been transported out of this town was with tape on their mouths and burlap over their heads, going to their death. And while she had no certainty them going back to the warehouse to find the tablet precluded that danger, she also felt the protection of the millions of spiritual creatures who walked the Earth unseen. And, as if Ja’far had read her mind, he spoke of those creatures.