Valley of the Assassins [antikvár]

ONE SHADOWS moved among the submerged coral reefs as the larger shadow of Larson's boat gUded in over them, dead-slow. Sharks rose up out of the underwater vaUeys to investigate whether the intruder was a potential breakfast. Their fins cut the surface as Larson stopped the engines. They began circling the boat as he lowered the anchor and got it securely hooked into the jagged corral two feet beneath the keel, workmg with an economy of movement that got things done without seeming hurried. Sweat had already begun to glisten on his face, though it was less than an hour past dawn, and the rising sun had not quite finished burning its way through the morning mists of the Persian Gulf. That was something Eric Larson had grown used to, long ago: the heat of Arabia. Years of it had burned any spare flesh from his lanky frame, and weathered his face to a darkness in which the cool green of the watchful eyes came as a shock. So he was used to the heat. But it stiU kritated him. Unconsciously, he wiped the sweat away from his eyes before picking up the binoculars. And got his first clear look at the man who was to be his doorway into one of the most evil mysteries of Islam's buried past. The man was one of three that Larson's binoculars picked out. AU three looked dead. Their bodies were stranded brokenly across the top of a long exposed reef half a mile off the barren shore of Iran. They had obviously been left there by the same storm that had de-8