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refused to leave behind is a fake."
    Her reaction left him dumbstruck.  Lyse did not protest or question his appraisal, nor did she fly into a rage at having been tricked by a forger.  Instead, she simply laughed. 
    "Nick, I knew that."
    She laughed again then urged the camel to a gallop.  When the cloud of dust left by her exit had been swept away by the desert winds, Kismet, with a fixed look of disbelief, climbed onto his camel and rode toward the last gleams of sunset.
     

 
TWO
     
    It was not the blowing sands of the Sahara that tapped lightly against the windowpanes of Nick Kismet's office, but rather a dusting of grainy, New York City snow.  Though it was only five o'clock in the evening, the stormy December sky over Manhattan was already dark. The snowflakes were visible only in the glare of street lamps.  Kismet gazed absently out the tiny window a moment longer, and then turned away.
    The official presence of the UN's Global Heritage Commission was located not in the legendary United Nations building on 44th Street overlooking the East River, but instead several city blocks away in an inconspicuous corner of the American Museum of Natural History.  Its extensive collection of anthropological artifacts had made the AMNH one of two locations considered for the dubious privilege of hosting the GHC, the other being the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Natural History had drawn the short straw and grudgingly made room in the lower level of the massive edifice, giving Kismet a converted supply closet just down the corridor from the school lunchroom.  It wasn't much of an office, but for Kismet's purposes it was more than adequate. 
    The Global Heritage Commission had been created in the early 1980's as part of the UN's effort to remodel UNESCO—the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.  Established in 1946, UNESCO had set forth noble goals for itself—the elimination of illiteracy, the free exchange of scientific ideas, the protection of historical locations and art treasures—but decades of Cold War politics had undermined those lofty intentions.  In 1984, the United States of America had withdrawn from membership, removing a cornerstone of financial and political support.  Nevertheless, it had taken the United Nations more than fifteen years to address the issues that created the schism in the first place.  The Global Heritage Commission had begun as an interim compromise, addressing a narrower band of issues without being subject to the whims of an international governing body.  The efforts to repair UNESCO had ultimately paid off, culminating with the official renewal of the United States' membership in 2003.
    Despite the reestablishment of its parent organization, the GHC continued to perform a valuable function on the international playing field. Kismet's duties typically involved random inspections of American sponsored archaeological sites, advance negotiations on behalf of pioneering scientists, and acting as a liaison with law enforcement agencies investigating the illicit antiquities trade.  In the big picture, it probably wasn't a very important job, and it certainly didn't pay very well, but Kismet found his vocation desirable for one simple reason: answers.
    Nick Kismet didn't know a great deal about his own origins.  A foundling, he had been raised by Christian Garral, a globetrotting adventurer and a self-made man of means, who had adopted the boy as his own son.  His name was itself a relic of his post-natal abandonment—Garral, on one of his adventures, claimed to have encountered a young woman in the throes of child birth and assisted her in extremis .  Almost immediately following the birth, the mother had slipped away, leaving only a single word, written in the blood of her womb and in a strange alien script.  Garral had eventually deciphered it--the Arabic word: qismat .  To Westerners, it transliterated as "kismet." An ancient and powerful word,