by Roland Smith
“Why?” Natalie snapped. “So they can drag us out and stuff us into another?”
“How about just to annoy them?” Reagan offered.
Nellie managed to smile despite her grief.
“We’re being punished,” Fiske said. “As soon as we are softened up, they’ll put us back into the bunker.”
But Fiske was wrong. The truck started to move, speeding up, slowing down, bouncing them around like rocks in a tin can. Finally, hours later, it shuddered to a halt.
The door swung open.
“Get out!” yelled a massive man with a thick black beard.
Nellie climbed out, covering her eyes against the fading sunlight. By the look of it, they were still in the Black Forest. She hoped they wouldn’t have to hike. Alistair was barely able to stand on his own.
“We need a doctor!” Nellie said.
“If you don’t shut up, you’ll need a mortician,” a guard said. “Now move!” He pointed his rifle at a steep trail leading off into the woods.
There were twice as many guards as there had been at the other location. Some were on four-wheelers, some were on foot. All of them were heavily armed. Nellie took Ted’s hand.
“They’re not wearing balaclavas,” Reagan whispered to Nellie as they started up the trail.
Nellie was worried about that, too. The masks had been intimidating, but the lack of masks was fore-boding. It meant the Vespers no longer cared if they were recognized.
They have no intention of letting us go.
She scanned the area for a way to escape. If one of them got away, maybe they could bring back help.
“We’ll get our chance,” Reagan whispered, as if she were reading Nellie’s mind. “Right now we need to act defeated. Let them think they’ve broken us.”
“I am broken,” Nellie said. The bites on her leg and face throbbed.
“Wounded, not broken,” Ted said.
“Maybe,” Nellie said, “but I’m not so sure about Alistair.”
He could barely walk, and hadn’t said a word in over an hour. He’d fallen on a sharp rock when he lunged to catch Phoenix, taking a deep puncture to his bad knee. But Phoenix’s fall had hurt him much worse than the leg injury.
They trudged on for about a half a mile, until Nellie got fed up.
“That’s it!” she said, sitting down in the middle of the trail.
“Get up,” the guard with the black beard said.
She shook her head. “Nope.” He pointed his rifle at her, but Nellie stared back at him.
“You think I won’t?” he responded.
“I don’t care.” She crossed her arms and continued her defiant stare.
“Look,” the guard said, faltering. “It’s not that much farther.”
“One of us can barely walk. One of us is blind.” Nellie said. “Put them on the four-wheelers and I’ll get up.”
“Forget it.”
“Fine.” Nellie pointed at her forehead. “Squeeze the trigger.”
The guard slowly raised his rifle, but Nellie met his gaze straight on. She didn’t even blink.
The guard swore, lowered his rifle, and walked back down the trail. A couple minutes later, he came back on a four-wheeler, a second one rumbling up behind him. He pointed at Ted and Alistair. “You two climb on back. If you try anything funny I will shoot her.” He looked at Nellie. “Anything else?”
“Water,” Nellie said promptly.
“You’re pushing your luck.”
“If I’m given a choice between dying of thirst or a bullet, I’ll take the bullet.”
Black Beard glared at her for a second, then reached around into a side pack for six bottles of water. He got off the four-wheeler and then tossed the bottles to them one at a time, saving Ted for last. He smiled, and tossed Ted’s bottle rather hard.
Ted caught it with one hand. “Thanks.”
“I thought you were blind,” the astonished guard said.
“Just my eyes. My ears work fine. I heard it coming.”
“Freak,” the guard muttered.
An hour later they reached the end of the trail. Stretching through the woods for as far as they could see in both directions was a twelve-foot-high electrified fence topped by razor wire.
“What is this place?” Fiske asked.
The guards waved them through a steel gate without answering. On the other side of the fence was a gigantic compound. In the center of it was a white geodesic dome.
“Describe it for me,” Ted said.
“We’re in a clearing on top of a mountain,” Fiske said.
“Roughly the size of four football fields,” Reagan added.
“There’s a white dome in the middle,” Natalie said. “It looks kind of like a high-end igloo.”
“It would be almost impossible to get all this up here without a road,” Alistair said.
The group turned toward him in surprise. It was the first complete sentence he had uttered in hours.
At that moment, an airship carrying a cargo net with an immense load of crates appeared over the tops of the trees.
Nellie pointed at the sky. “Airship,” she said.
“Get moving!” a guard shouted.
They pushed and prodded the hostages through the dome entrance.
There were dozens of men and women inside, each one hard at work moving equipment around on forklifts, consulting digital pads, or talking on flashing Bluetooths. Alistair looked around in awe. “They’re building something. It’s . . .” He paused. “What is this?”
But the guards didn’t give them time for a closer look. They hustled the hostages toward an elevator.
“Get in.”
The group shuffled inside.
“Photo op,” one of the guards said. He videotaped them for a few seconds, then nodded. The door slid closed and they shot up several floors.
They expected another set of guards to be waiting for them. Instead, the doors opened directly into a twenty-by-twenty-foot room. Directly in front of them was a floor-to-ceiling mirror. They watched themselves step out of the elevator.
“I assume that’s a two-way mirror,” Fiske said.
Along the left and right walls were eight cots bolted to the wall, end to end, four to a side. In the right-hand corner was a stainless steel sink and toilet.
Nellie walked closer to the mirror. One side of her face had puffed up so the skin was as tight as a balloon. She traced the ring of angry red bite marks from her hairline to halfway across her cheek.
“There’s food.” Alistair said. “Bottled water.” He was pulling out boxes from under the cots. The others rushed over to help.
“M-R-E’s?” Reagan read out the initials.
“Meals Ready to Eat. United States military meals.”
“Martin Holds said we were in the Black Forest,” Fiske said.
Everyone looked at each other in confusion.
Reagan was the first to pull open her meal. The others followed, tearing open the packets. Ted was the only one who didn’t move.
“Here,” Natalie said. “I’ll open an MRE for you.”
“Thanks,” Ted said. “But it’s not that. Maybe we should . . . I don’t know. Maybe we should have a moment of silence for Phoenix?”
Everyone stopped eating.
“That’s an excellent idea,” Fiske said.
They closed their eyes and bowed their heads.
Phoenix was having his own MRE. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he guessed it was a trout. It had taken him an hour to scoop it out of a shallow pool and onto the riverbank. He was exhausted and wet. He’d already seen two bears and heard what he thought was a mountain lion. He didn’t know Germany had mountain lions. The bears had ignored him, but not the sharp rocks, thorns, and branches. He had scrapes and bruises from the top of his head to his feet.
But I’m alive.
At first he had made his way downriver slowly, hoping that the others would catch up with him. When there was no sign of them, he’d started t
o pick up his pace, hoping to find a road or a house. So far there had been nothing but untouched wilderness. Still, the river had to lead somewhere, if nowhere else than to the ocean. If he got to the sea he could follow the shoreline to a town.
But to get there, I have to survive.
He hit the fish in the head with a rock and waited for it to stop flopping before he took a bite.
Sushi.
Bart screeched the taxi to a stop in front of the Ahmed Baba Institute, creating a choking cloud of red dust and blue exhaust, which the people loitering outside the institute completely ignored. The library was two stories tall and relatively new. It looked like it had been dropped out of the sky into the sandlot between two very old buildings.
“There are eighteen thousand ancient manuscripts inside, give or take,” Bart said.
“Ahmed Baba was Timbuktu’s most famous scholar. Some believe he was a Mujaddid, a very religious man,” Jake said.
Dan looked down at his phone. “On a different subject, do any of you have a cell signal?”
They all looked at their phones and shook their heads.
“Reception is very spotty in Timbuktu,” Bart said. “But we all have cell phones in case a signal blows in with the sand. You will know when you have bars. Everyone will rush into the area hoping to take advantage. A moment later the signal will move down the street. It is like the wind.”
They had decided to split into two teams in order to cover more libraries and museums. Amy and Jake would start on one end of the city and Dan and Atticus on the other end, working their way toward each other.
“How will we stay in touch?” Jake said. “Maybe we should stay together.”
“Except for the fact that you and Atticus are the only two that can read the Arabic manuscripts,” Dan said. “I can’t even read the name on this building. It looks like a bunch of snakes.”
“Dan’s right,” Amy said. “We don’t have time to do it any other way.”
“I have an idea,” Bart said. “I can watch the boys for one hundred more dollars.”
They had almost forgotten that he was in the front seat.
“Fifty,” Amy said.
“Seventy-five.”
“Sixty.”
“Done.”
“Hey!” Dan said. “I don’t need a babysitter!” Atticus nodded in vigorous agreement.
Amy ignored him. “How will we contact you?”
“We will hire a boy,” Bart answered. “A runner. I know just the one. We call him La Souris, or the Mouse. Timbuktu is small. You can get from one end to the other in less than two hours walking.”
Then why did we hire you? Dan thought, glaring at the back of Bart’s head.
Bart got out of the taxi and gestured at someone hanging outside the institute, who in turn went to someone else and so on. Two minutes later a little boy who looked only about five years old came running down the street. He was wearing ragged shorts and a worn Jonah Wizard T-shirt that read: Wiz up? On his feet were an expensive-looking pair of running shoes — a couple of sizes too big. The haggling over his fee took twice as long as it did for the Mouse to get there. They finally settled on twenty-five dollars and a Jonah Wizard souvenir pen and pencil set, which Dan had taken from Jonah’s private jet.
Amy and Jake got out of the taxi and watched it drive away.
“I’m not comfortable with this,” Jake said.
“You hired him,” Amy shot back.
“I should have told you . . . sorry.”
Amy peeped over at him. She wondered how she could be so mad at Jake one moment, and completely forgive him the next. “Apology accepted,” she said.
“It’s just that I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Welcome to the Cahill family,” Amy said, striding into the institute. “You’ll get used to it.”
There weren’t many cars on the narrow, sandblown streets, but there were a lot of camels, goats, donkeys, and people, which slowed the taxi to a honking crawl.
“It’s like we’ve traveled back to biblical times,” Atticus said, his face glued to the window.
Dan was not nearly as excited. Timbuktu was the most impoverished city he had ever been in. Garbage blew down the narrow streets, and there were beggars on every corner. It was hard to believe that the city was once the intellectual capital of Africa. It was so depressing that he wondered why people lived here, or if they had a choice.
“What do people do here for a living?” he asked Bart.
“They get by,” he answered.
“Why do you stay here?” Atticus asked.
“Because it’s my home.” He pointed out a two-story building. “That’s the Grand Marché. Timbuktu’s biggest market. If you get a chance, you’ll want to go through the stalls and buy some souvenirs.”
“We won’t have much time for shopping,” Dan said.
“You should at least go up to the roof. It offers the best view of the Sahara in the city. I could pull over and you could run up to the top.”
“No time,” Dan said.
Bart shot him a curious glance. “What exactly is it that you’re looking for in such a hurry?”
Dan and Atticus caught each other’s eyes. “We’re just curious about the Timbuktu manuscripts,” Dan answered. “But our parents would only give us twenty-four hours to look at them before we have to return to school.”
“So your parents are very strict,” Bart said with a smile. “They would only loan you their private jet for a day.”
“Something like that.”
Bart the babysitter is way too nosy.
Bart pulled up to a building and stopped. “This is the Mamma Haidara Library.” He turned and looked at them. “The Haidaras are old Timbuktu. The collection has been in their family for hundreds of years. They are going to be very suspicious of two American boys asking to see their manuscripts.”
The library was not nearly as nice as the Ahmed Baba Institute. It was surrounded by a six-foot-high wall made of yellow bricks, and the entrance was through an intimidating metal gate painted black.
“Do you know the mom?” Dan asked.
Bart laughed. “Mamma does not refer to a mom. It is like a first name. But to answer your question, yes, I know the Haidaras.”
Atticus brightened. “Maybe you can come in and give us an introduction!”
“That would not be wise. I was once married to a Haidara girl. It did not work out. There are ill feelings between our families. In fact, it would be best not to say who drove you here if the subject comes up. I will park around the corner.”
Atticus and Dan climbed out of the back and watched Bart drive away.
“Perfect,” Dan said.
“What do you mean, perfect?” Atticus said. “It would have been a lot better for us if Bart and the Haidaras were best friends.”
“I meant it’s perfect he’s parking around the corner. We’re going to have to ditch our babysitter.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s asking too many questions that we can’t answer. As soon as we get done here, we’ll head to the next library on foot . . . Bartless.”
Jake and Amy couldn’t get over the number of manuscripts at the Ahmed Baba Institute. The curator, Mr. Bazzi, could not have been more helpful or friendly. He swept them through the huge collection with great pride. But seeing row upon row of floor-to-ceiling cases was discouraging. This was just the first library. How were they ever going to find the “Apology” in this haystack of ancient texts?
“Of course, these are just the manuscripts that we have cataloged and digitized,” Bazzi explained.
“You have them on hard disk?” Amy was encouraged.
“A portion of them, yes.”
“Are they searchable?” Jake asked.
“Of course. But before I direct you to a computer, allow me to show you one of our more notable finds.”
Amy was desperate to check out the computer, but she and Jake smiled politely and followed. Bazzi’s cooperatio
n was too valuable to risk offending him.
He led them to a glass case with an open manuscript inside. “What do you see?”
Jake leaned forward to examine the pages. “A diagram of the planets radiating out from the sun.”
“Exactly! Just as Copernicus proposed in his On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres in 1543.”
“Interesting,” Amy said, glancing around for the computer, eager to end the tour and get to work.
Bazzi smiled. “I think you do not understand,” he said. “This manuscript was written by one of our Timbuktu scholars two hundred years before Copernicus was born!”
“Wow!” Jake said. “That is amazing!” He peered down at the manuscript. “What’s all the writing in the margins? It’s so small it’s hard to read.”
Amy looked impatiently at her watch, but Bazzi and Jake didn’t seem to notice.
“Ah, yes,” Bazzi said. “It is doodling, as you might say in your country. Back when the scholars were here, paper was worth more than gold. They had to use any blank paper they could find, even if it was another scholar’s manuscript.”
“What kind of doodling?”
“Diary entries, scientific theories, to-do lists, maps, poetry —”
“That’s all fascinating,” Amy said, making sure they both saw her look at her watch this time. “But I’m afraid we’re on a tight schedule.”
“Of course.” Bazzi gave her an apologetic nod. “I do get carried away. Not many outside people come to the institute to talk about the manuscripts.”
Jake nudged Amy’s side. “Just a couple more questions,” he said.
Amy could have killed him.
“Have you ever come across any manuscripts written in Latin?” she asked, thinking back to Vesper One’s text. Perhaps that would help them narrow their search.
“No. But as you probably know, Arabic is considered the Latin of Africa. And Timbuktu was the center of learning. At its peak, there were twenty-five thousand scholars and students in the city, sharing information in much the same way information is now shared on the Internet. Millions of documents were created here during that time.”
