“No one is going to get killed hunting down a bunch of museum trinkets.”
That’s the general attitude of the swaggering commander of a squad assigned
to recover some of the looted treasures from the museums of Baghdad after
the American defeat of Sadaam Hussein in Iraq. He is assigned to work with
an enigmatic Iraqi, with questionable loyalties, and mixed enthusiasm about
the presence of the Americans, and an antiquities expert not exactly
sympathetic to the American efforts in her adopted “Mesopotamia.” But
together they find secrets in those treasures that someone is trying to kill
them to suppress. The mystery winds all the way back to 1258, with the
Mongol siege of Baghdad, when the Caliph of Baghdad was the spiritual leader
of Islam, and Baghdad was one of the world’s greatest, most advanced cities
in the world. What could possibly emerge from those times that could affect
the conflicts of the early 21st Century? The American commander
realizes, maybe a little slowly, that he better take the quest for these
answers seriously, if he and his unwilling companions want to survive their
mission.
EMAIL RICHARD WARREN FIELD