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Greig Beck

Dark Rising

ONE

Beneath the ruins of Persepolis, modern Iran

‘Are you ready to witness history being written, my friend?’ Mahmud Shihab appeared from the back of the canvas tent like a ghost. ‘Salem Agha-ye, Hakim,’ he said softly and kissed the military man on each cheek before grasping his upper arms and looking earnestly into his face. ‘History being written in this, the very cradle of Persian antiquity – it is fitting, yes?’

‘Salem mamnoon, Shihab. Yes, inshallah, God willing. ’ The soldier nodded and parted his dry lips in a yellow smile, showing rows of teeth stained by decades of smoking the pungent local Marlleak cigarettes.

Mahmud Shihab led Hakim to the back of the tent, where a modern metal door was embedded incongruously in the ancient stone wall. He entered a code into the recessed keypad and the heavy door swung inwards soundlessly. As Shihab escorted the military man down a dimly lit corridor carved into the interior of the ancient Persepolis ruins, a proud smile curved his lips at the thought of the design and engineering feat he had mastered beneath this once great city of the kings. Above them, its mighty stone skeleton still dominated the landscape and had survived twenty-five centuries of rain and rock-cracking heat – a powerful symbol of a time when Persia had commanded the world.

And now Shihab had been chosen to oversee a project so important that its success would shape Iran’s place in the world for the next century, or perhaps even forever. The operation was codenamed Zirzamin Jamshid, The Basement of the Kings. Shihab liked the name – Jamshid was a mythical king who, legend had it, had buried his amassed treasures throughout his mighty empire. The president had chosen the name himself, and had told Shihab that there was no more valuable treasure than the capability to produce nuclear weaponry beneath the scorching earth of the Iranian desert. Shihab recalled that first meeting with the great man, his intense countenance and his softly spoken command. ‘Bring me success and you will bathe in riches in this life and the next. ’ He had been too nervous to reply and had only nodded and bowed.

Hakim sneezed, interrupting Shihab’s thoughts. Beneath the ruins, the temperature was pleasantly cool, but the atmosphere was dry and filled with fine powdery dust that sparkled in the cones of light thrown down from the low-wattage ceiling lamps.

Shihab smiled. ‘Ah, Hakim, it is impossible to keep the dust out at this level. But just think – those very particles could be all that remains of a former king or prince of Persia. ’

Hakim blew his nose – Persian king or not – on a dirty brown handkerchief. He had just pushed it back into his pocket when they came to a steel miner’s cage floored with thick rubberised matting. They entered the cage and Shihab pushed the single smooth lever to the downward position. The cage dropped silently into the darkness. Shihab smiled with pride, counting the passing layers of toughened concrete and lead shielding. The facility was all his own design, built to give off as small an energy signature as was possible. He knew full well the capabilities of the US spy satellites – high-resolution digital images were only one of their talents. These days they could sniff out heat, power and radiation signatures to fifty feet below the surface. So the Iranians needed to be careful, needed to go deeper.