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The Col de la Traversette was one of the most treacherous and highest mountain passes in all of France. Over the centuries, both French and Italian authorities had attempted to sabotage parts of it in the hope of stemming smuggling between their countries, but the pass lived on. A mere ten meters wide at the summit, the remote pathway was only accessible during a short period between mid-summer and early fall-and even then conditions could still be unbearable. Locals referred to the region’s weather as eight months of winter followed by four months of hell.

Despite these daunting obstacles, Ellyson had finally found his needle. He was a much better archeologist than he had ever given himself credit for. And the interesting thing about it was that the group funding his project wasn’t even concerned with the entire find, only a part of it-the part he had used as bait. It was all that had been necessary to get them to finance the operation. What they wanted from the find was a mere token to him, something he could easily do without. It was, in his mind, a minor footnote that had been lost to history. If his benefactors were willing to cover the cost of his entire project, he had no intention of denying them such a small item in return.

Even now from his prone position on the floor, Ellyson could see the object they had been after-a long, intricately carved wooden chest. It was right there-theirs for the taking. He didn’t need or want it. So why did they have to kill him? Nobody would have ever known that the box, or more importantly what was inside it, was missing. Much like me, thought Ellyson as he heard the sound of his two Sherpas approaching and watched as his killer removed a small-caliber automatic from his parka.

After calmly replacing the pistol in his pocket, the assassin stared at the wooden, coffinlike box. For over two thousand years, the ancient weapon had lain beyond the reach of man, frozen within the glacial ice of this remote Alpine chasm, but all of that was about to change. The assassin removed a satellite phone from inside his coat and dialed the ten-digit number for his employer-a man known to him only as the Scorpion.

ONE

LAHORE, PAKISTAN

ONE YEAR LATER

The narrow streets of the old city contained one of the worst slums in the world. Filth, squalor, and despair were daily accompaniments to the lives of Pakistan ’s lowest of citizens-the poverty-stricken Punjabi Muslims. Smaller and darker-skinned than the rest of Lahore ’s populace, the most fortunate among them were doomed to lives of mind-numbing menial labor, while the balance found themselves sucked up into the ranks of street urchins, beggars, and homeless. Their plight was one of subcontinental Islam’s dirty little secrets, and it turned the stomach of the man sitting in the stolen Toyota Corolla outside the tomb of Muhammad Iqbal, poet and ideological godfather of modern Pakistan.

A devout Muslim, the man was humiliated to see how the promise of Muslim brotherhood had been denied the Punjabis. Pakistan was a hypocritical tangle of class divisions, and nowhere was that more evident than in the role of women. Beyond the fortunate women of the privileged classes who participated in think tanks, ran charity organizations, wrote novels and plays, and even occupied a handful of token positions in General Musharraf’s cabinet, were those who suffered the daily horrors of domestic abuse, gang rape and murder at the hands of small-minded men professing their love of Allah and their devotion to the Muslim faith. Many, many times the man wished his employer’s ultimate target was Pakistan, but it wasn’t. As horrible as this country was, there was another that was much more evil and in much greater need of an all-powerful, cleansing blow.

His target emerged from the building across the street right on time. Every Wednesday like clockwork, the diminutive professor from Pakistan ’s oldest and largest university-the University of the Punjab -visited the old city for lunch. He was a man of strict routine and consistency-traits that had served him extremely well as a scientist, but which were about to lead to his undoing. As the professor unchained his small motorbike and pulled into traffic, the assassin set down the newspaper he had been pretending to read and started the car.

Two blocks before the university, the professor was still oblivious to the stolen Corolla following him. That was about to change. Approaching a busy intersection just before the campus, the professor watched in his mirror as a blue Toyota sped up as if to pass and then suddenly came swerving back hard to the right.

Bystanders screamed in horror as they watched the helmetless professor slammed to the pavement and then dragged beneath the Corolla for over half a block before the undercarriage of the speeding car spat his mangled, lifeless body into the street.