Fortune Favors by Sean Ellis

Nimrod. There were only three short verses:
    “And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.”
    He set the book down thoughtfully. Erech was easily Uruk—the ancient name for Iraq—the city-state built and ruled by Gilgamesh in the parallel legend. In fact, both men were described as city builders and kings. It was a tenuous link, but a link nevertheless.
    Still, a great distance separated Gilgamesh from the Fountain of Youth. He would have dismissed the matter as a crackpot scheme on Leeds’ part if not for one thing. Though his recall remained faint, he kept coming back to the name Henry Fortune; and something about a cave where ‘fire danced on the water.’
    It had been almost exactly the same language as that used by a Spanish colonial three hundred and fifty years earlier, a man whose name curiously enough, translated into Henry Fortune. He felt certain that he had first encountered that pairing while perusing the archives of GHC and UNESCO correspondence.
    Over the course of its seventy year history, the United Nations’ cultural organization had received thousands of letters, often formal request from governments and preservation societies requesting that certain historically important places receive World Heritage Site status, but interspersed among them were inquiries from private citizens. Gaining access to that prodigious database had been Kismet’s primary motivation for taking the job as Global Heritage Commission liaison; he was convinced that somewhere in those files, he would find a clue that would lead to the mysterious Prometheus organization, and answers about the mystery that had dominated his life.
    Prometheus.
    While the quest for Prometheus was never far from his thoughts, seeing Sergeant Higgins again had brought it all back to the surface. That night in the desert, so long ago now, had been his first and only real encounter with Prometheus. He had surmised that they were some kind of secret society devoted to scooping up sacred relics—he could only guess about what else they had their hands in—but could not fathom their interest in him personally. He still remembered the words of the Prometheus team leader, a man who had identified himself as Ulrich Hauser:
    Kismet, if I killed you, your mother would have my head .
    Two decades later, that remained the extent of his knowledge.
    “The Fountain of Youth.” It seemed ludicrous on the surface, but if, by some miracle, it really did exist, it was exactly the sort of thing Prometheus would want to control.
    The information he wanted was only a few keystrokes away, but he didn’t dare access the GHC database from an unsecure computer. That would have to wait until he could get his laptop from his stateroom. Still...
    He typed the words he had just muttered into a search window.
    “Nick?”
    Kismet jumped when he felt the soft touch on his arm. He spun around to face the person that had startled him, recognizing her voice at the same instant he saw her face. Elisabeth's hand remained on his arm, her touch strangely appealing. Almost guiltily, he closed the Internet browser, even as the screen filled up with websites promising answers to his inquiry, and then stood, putting Elisabeth at arm’s length.
    He knew he ought to rage at her, but some instinctive need held him back. He was attracted to her...aroused by her. He managed to keep the conflicting emotions out of his voice, addressing her in a flat tone. “What do you want from me?”
    She smiled, fixing his gaze with her own. “I think you know.”
    He forced his eyes away from hers. There was a purple discoloration on her cheek, just above the jaw, that her make-up could not quite conceal. He’d done that, but then she’d been point a gun at him moments