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Chapter One
Amman, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
September
The man stalking her was tall and slender and barely trying to hide his pursuit. Diana took a winding path through the souk, increasing her pace by slow degrees. She didn’t want him to guess she’d spotted him until she could tuck into a service corridor and get the drop on him.
Seeing an opening, she ducked into the narrow gap between the colorfully draped stalls and wove between boxes and baskets filled with the overflow of stock.
She should have skipped the weekly visit to the Friday market when her security detail had been unable to meet her this morning, but this was the final market day of the summer season and therefore her last chance to talk to Bibi.
Her last chance to get a line on the Nabataean artifacts that were being stolen from sites in Jordan and Syria.
Diana hurried through the narrow alleyway between the rows of stalls. The aroma from the food court made her belly rumble. She should have eaten breakfast this morning, but she’d been looking forward to shawarma from her favorite food vendor. Knowing this was her last chance to have the best shawarma in Jordan until the market reopened in May left her feeling bereft.
Not that there was any guarantee she would be here next May, but she liked to think she would. Fieldwork had wrapped up ten days ago, and her grad students were ready to delve into analysis and conservation, which meant she had no reason to remain in Jordan much longer. But there was a good chance the university would invite her to return in the spring to prep for another field season—especially if she could deliver more grant money earmarked for excavation.
Plus, there was her work for Friday Morning Valkyries—a group that worked to stop artifact trafficking—that could resume upon her return. Of course, it was probably due to the FMV work that she was being followed, but she couldn’t walk away now. Bibi was ready to talk. She knew it.
She needed to get to Bibi’s stall before her pursuer caught up with her.
Was she being paranoid? It was a busy marketplace. Was it possible the guy was just another tourist?
She tucked herself behind a stack of boxes and quickly exchanged her red esarp—a Turkish-style head covering—to a sky-blue Al-Amira two-piece veil. The Al-Amira was a close-fitting cap combined with a tubelike scarf, which changed the shape of her profile, but the cotton fabric was hotter against her skin than the lighter silk esarp had been, making her wish the change wasn’t necessary.
Her white skin marked her as a foreigner, but there were plenty of tourists here, so she didn’t have to worry about standing out. She just needed to throw off the man following her.
If there was a man following her.
She always made it a point to vary her route through the market, never going directly to Bibi’s stall. She carried more than one kind of headscarf for just this reason. This, however, was the first time she’d had to make the switch in fifteen straight weeks of coming to this market. Naturally, it occurred on the day when she didn’t have the usual hired bodyguard following at a safe distance.
Unless the guy following her was her new guard?
No. Not possible. She’d had several different guards over the last fifteen weeks, and each time she’d been introduced to them first so she’d recognize them in the crowd and wouldn’t do exactly what she was trying to do now—lose the tail.
She squared her shoulders and cut through a gap in the tents, entering the public market again in a different row and far down the aisle from where she’d started.
Music filled the air as the sun shone bright. The aroma of food was stronger this close to the food court and stage where a band was playing. Much as she wanted to get her shawarma, she needed to keep moving. Talk to Bibi. Find out what she could about the antiquities deals that went down in the shadow market, then get back in her car and return to her apartment in the city.
Once home, she’d send Morgan and Freya—the founders of Friday Morning Valkyries—her final report. FMV had been unofficially dubbed the Monuments Women when it was formed two years before the US Army reactivated the famed World War II military unit known as the Monuments Men. But that unit, now called the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab, and Friday Morning Valkyries had different missions and objectives, and the initial nickname was fading from use.
CHML was an active military unit that focused on protecting, removing, or restoring artifacts when sites and museums faced imminent danger from weather or war, while FMV was a government contractor doing the covert work of tracing the supply chain once the artifacts disappeared.
The work being covert was key. Almost no one in Jordan knew Diana was a Friday Morning Valkyrie in addition to working with Dr. Fahd Yousef to run the dig on the Nabataean site in the desert.
In this instance, the name Diana’s clandestine bosses had chosen was apt, as she always went to the Friday market early in the day. In Norse mythology, Valkyries guided the souls of the dead to Valhalla. Diana’s job was only slightly different—she sought to transport the objects of the dead to their rightful owners. In this instance, the people of Jordan or Syria.
In Syria’s case, any artifacts recovered would be protected by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, better known as UNESCO, until such a time as they could be safely returned to the government.
After nearly four months in Jordan, however, Diana had only found one solid lead on the antiquities black market, and today was her last chance to get Bibi to talk.
Her cell phone buzzed, and she checked the screen. Morgan. Given that it was nearing noon in Amman, it was before five a.m. in Washington, DC, where Morgan lived. Diana couldn’t think of a single happy reason Dr. Morgan Adler would be calling at a time that was ungodly early for her.
Diana tucked herself between stalls again and answered. “What’s going on?”
“I was just notified your security detail sent you a cancellation and didn’t meet you outside the souk.”
“Yeah. I messaged them when no one showed and was told the guard was sick and they were scrambling to find someone to replace him. I guess he was too sick to call in ahead of time.”
