Al scowled. "They should have been here hours ago. They were supposed to meet us before we even entered this zone."

"That's what I told them. They stopped to help remove a land mine at a village near here. You'll probably run into them before you've gone far." She waved. "Get out of here, Al. I'll see you in Kabul."

She watched the truck go down the hill and then lifted her gaze to the mountains of the Hindu Kush to the north. Magnificent mountains whose rough paths had been walked by Alexander the Great, Russian invaders, and local warlords. They always looked austere, but with those storm clouds hovering over the peaks, they were particularly forbidding. She turned to Joel. "Let's go back and check the cellar again. We were working so fast that I didn't get a chance to examine the walls to see if there were any cubbyholes where the curator might have hidden anything."

He followed her into the building. "Why wouldn't he have taken anything valuable with him?"

"He might have done it. The report said he'd been killed by bandits while he was trying to get out of the area. But you know we've found hidden artifacts before." It wasn't that unusual for museum staffs to pilfer artifacts, then blame warring forces. "Come on. Maybe you'll find the Holy Grail."

"Not likely." He glanced around at the empty cases of the first-floor exhibition room. "We didn't find one display case that could have preserved anything ancient. Cheap, very cheap. I can't figure out why they even had a museum out here in the boondocks. There's only a little village in the valley, and that's practically deserted after all the bandit activity in the area."