by Don Hoesel
Jack stood on legs that rebelled against the effort, and the pain in his ankle came back with a vengeance. He wobbled a bit but steadied himself with a hand against the wall next to him. The surface under his fingers was rough, likely cement, bits of it crumbling beneath his touch.
He took a few careful steps, mindful of kicking anything, and irritated that his eyes were taking their time adjusting. He walked the length of the wall, skirting what felt like a wooden chair, and when he reached the corner he started down the adjoining wall. While this one offered no obstacles, neither did it provide a door. When he found the third wall he again changed direction, his easy passage thus far causing him to walk faster—which added to the pain when his shin came into contact with something solid.
Peering into the darkness, he could make out a long irregular shape, like a table with several items piled on top. He was starting to walk around it when the table moved. Jack took an involuntary hop away before he registered he’d done so. Consequently he allowed plenty of room for whatever he’d bumped his shin on to resolve into a much taller shadow that looked decidedly man shaped.
A very large man.
After a few moments during which neither Jack nor the apparition made a move, the other man took a step forward. There was something about the way he advanced, the outline of the body coming into sharper focus, that tugged at the archaeologist. But it wasn’t until the other man had closed even further that Jack realized his eyes were finally becoming accustomed to the darkness, for he could now clearly see some of the man’s features.
It took a few seconds before the familiarity of that face impressed itself upon him, but when it did, Jack released a sigh that was more resignation than anything else.
“That’s just great,” he said, then braced himself as a massive fist plotted a course for his face.
6
He couldn’t help wondering why they hadn’t just tied his hands in the first place. It would have saved him a lot of trouble, as well as an additional accumulation of injuries. Provided all of his options were stripped from him, Jack could settle into a good wait, but when left with a chance at extricating himself from a situation he would avail himself of it. Had they bound him securely the first time he would have been content to let things play out. They’d learned their lesson; not only were his hands fastened behind him this time, they’d also wrapped the end of the line around one of the wooden beams that ran the length of the ceiling.
At least they’d not bothered with the blindfold.
The room had lightened as the sun rose, the light finding its way in through the gaps in the lone shuttered window above the cot. He guessed the window looked out on the street because he heard sounds of industry filtering in along with the light. Below the window the cot was empty, though it hadn’t been for long. Jack had watched Imolene get up some ten minutes before and exit the room without so much as a glance at his captive. Even in the dim light Jack had been able to get a better look at the man than he’d been afforded up to now. While he couldn’t tell for certain if he was Egyptian just by looking at him, as Mukhtar had said, he was definitely of a similar ethnicity. But what really stood out was his size; he seemed larger to Jack now that he’d seen him against the room’s furnishings. He was built like Romero, only this man had at least four inches on Jack’s solidly built Venezuelan friend.
When the door had opened Jack had tried to see what lay beyond it, but whatever room it opened up to was no more lit than the one he was in. He had the impression it was a thin hallway, with the faint outline of another door directly across from the one Jack’s captor had just walked through.
Now that he was alone, Jack felt a little more at ease, as he’d found it difficult to relax with the equivalent of a hungry lion sleeping in a cot mere feet away. However, his newfound solitude also brought some obvious questions to the surface, such as when would these people let him use the bathroom?
Pushing that thought away, he closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall.
Imolene only looked out of place on the street because of his boots. Expensive, and with their newness marred by only the dust of the last few days, they provided a stark contrast to the shabbier footwear of those he passed. By the standards of most African nations Libya was prosperous, much of it as modern as an American suburb. However, the nation could never divest itself entirely of a history that those of the Western world could never understand—a history extending back to the birth of civilization. In such a place, where humans had staked a claim millennia ago and had yet to relinquish it, evidence of that great history was everywhere, including villages like this one, where its residents clung to the old in the shadow of the new.
Though it was early, the streets were filled with people. Imolene drew many eyes and not solely because he was a stranger. The village was large enough to draw visitors from many places and for many reasons. Most would earn little notice. Most, however, were not as large as Imolene.
The Egyptian walked until he found an open café, which he entered and bought a cup of the strong coffee native to the region. Coffee in hand, he walked outside and took a seat at one of the tables lining the weathered brick of the long building of which the café was only one of many establishments. For a while he did nothing but drink his coffee, watching the people who passed, unconcerned that Templeton and the rest might leave without him. When he’d left the house he’d heard nothing from Templeton’s room, and in checking on the others he’d found them still sleeping. He would likely be back before they stirred.
As for Hawthorne, Imolene had tied the man’s bonds himself. The American would not move until Imolene was instructed to move him. The night before, watching Hawthorne stumble his way around the room had been a bit of amusement for the Egyptian. In retrospect, he should not have done that. Amusing though it had been, there was always a chance that something could have gone wrong, that Hawthorne might have escaped. Yet it had felt good to hit him a second time.
The Egyptian remained at the table, unmoving, until he’d finished the rest of the coffee. Only then did he retrieve his phone from a pocket and dial the number he’d been given.
Imolene brought his employer up to speed on the events of the last twenty-four hours. He gave his report while understanding there was only one detail that really mattered. “We found it” was the Egyptian’s subdued acknowledgment of their success.
Part of his lack of emotion, despite the completion of such a difficult quest, was due to the fact that there was something in Imolene that disliked working for the Israelis. While their money was as good as that of others, it would come with a feeling of having betrayed his own. Still, he would do the job he’d been hired to do; he refused to see the reputation he’d taken great pains to cultivate ruined because of ideological differences.
He could hear the pleasure in the other man’s voice, and that told Imolene it was the appropriate time to tell him about the part of the expedition that had not gone as planned. When he imparted the news of the captured American the other man fell silent.
“Where have I heard that name?” the Israeli asked, his Arabic passable but heavily accented.
“I am told the man is a well-known archaeologist,” Imolene said. “Templeton seems reluctant to deal with him.”
Again there was a moment of silence, during which Imolene knew the other was examining options. The Egyptian understood how much a witness of any kind changed things; how much more so when that witness had a recognizable face. What Imolene suspected would not factor into the decision was the morality of any choice. If the man who had hired him was affiliated with the organization within the Israeli government that Imolene thought he was, then moral equivocation was the norm.
When the silence had stretched to the point at which Imolene was tempted to speak again, he finally received his instructions, delivered in the nonspecific way Imolene had come to expect from this man.
“We cannot afford any complications.”
After ending the cal
l he rose and started back to the safe house. The day was already growing hot by the time he reached the house. When he entered he heard nothing. It always amazed him that westerners habitually slept through the best part of the day, missing out on the cool morning breeze, to be replaced before long by hot desert winds. He almost felt bad that none of them would have the opportunity to experience a sunrise again.
Benton and Phillips had pitched their bedrolls in the only other room of the small house, beyond the ones Templeton and Imolene had claimed. It was the living area, where a local family would have gathered for meals and to receive guests. Unlike the two sleeping chambers, no door separated this larger room from the dark hallway. Imolene took a single step into the room and stopped, studying both sleeping men. When he moved again his steps were swift and quiet, and the large knife made no sound when it slid from its sheath.
He opened Benton’s throat to the air while the man still dreamed, and was kneeling beside Phillips before the gurgling behind him had ceased. Moments later, Phillips too was dead. Imolene wiped his knife clean on a blanket and then went to finish the rest of his work.
He paused by the two doors that would take him into the remaining sleeping chambers, pondering which to enter first. The only logical choice, though, was Templeton. Hawthorne was bound; he could see Imolene coming yet it wouldn’t matter.
The door opened without a sound and the Egyptian spotted the Englishman’s rumpled form on the cot, the man so still he looked to be barely breathing. Before he moved, he cast his eyes about for the artifact, spotting it on the floor at the foot of the cot, which seemed to Imolene a slight to the seeming importance of it.
Imolene crossed the room, gratified for the dirt floor that rendered his steps soundless. When he reached the cot he could not see beneath the blanket pulled up over the man’s head. He raised the knife, and when he brought it down he did so with sufficient strength to ensure he would not have to strike twice.
He understood that something was amiss before the blade stopped moving. Lightning quick he pulled the knife back and wrenched the blanket away, revealing Templeton’s long canvas travel bag. He had but a moment to process that before he saw a hint of movement behind him. Before he could straighten and turn, he felt something strike his head. Then he was falling.
Martin stood looking down on Imolene, who had fallen to his knees, his upper body resting on the cot. The Englishman still held the wine bottle in his hand, instinctively cocked for another blow. But Imolene did not budge. In that respect he was like Martin, who stood rooted to the spot, his heart racing. He knew he needed to get moving, but like the arm frozen with the bottle poised to strike, his legs remained fixed. On some level he knew his fight or flight response was malfunctioning, that he was caught somewhere between the two choices, and this knowledge enabled him to concentrate on slowing his intake of breath.
Seconds later he sprang into action, the bottle dropped onto the cot next to the man who would have killed him. He leaned over Imolene and removed the knife from his hand. For a moment he thought of finishing it; it would make things easier. He moved his hand toward the Egyptian’s throat but hesitated, which was enough to tell him he couldn’t do it. Pulling the knife back he scooped up his travel bag and then moved to the foot of the bed, where he retrieved the artifact. He straightened and, after a last look at Imolene, left the room.
One of the things Jack had learned over the years was that certain situations served to strip one’s needs down to the most basic level. It was a lesson that had served him well at times, helped him to focus on what was truly important. On other occasions, however, it was a much more empirical philosophy, because at the moment the only thing occupying his mind was how much he needed to find a bathroom.
He’d toyed with the idea of calling out, but the thought of causing the large angry man to return and hit him over the head again wasn’t appealing. But if no one came back soon he would be left between that and another unenviable choice.
He leaned back against the wall, trying to take his mind off the discomfort. Just as he closed his eyes he heard a noise from somewhere beyond the door. His first thought was that he’d heard a door slam shut. Moments later, when he didn’t hear anything else and when no one entered the room to hit him again, he resettled himself. He was just entering that place where he could feel himself beginning to doze when the door slammed open.
Startled, Jack launched himself away from the wall, forgetting the bonds that yanked him back, stretching his arms in a direction they weren’t meant to go. With his attention pulled to the door, and to the man who stood there, wild eyes moving around the room, he was able to ignore the pain.
While the man was lit from behind, Jack recognized him as the one from the cavern, the Englishman who had called him by his name. The man who stood before him now, though, was a lot tenser than the one he’d spoken with beneath the earth.
Jack was about to ask him if he would let him use the bathroom when his captor began to rush forward in his direction. His speed and the way he looked back over his shoulder before kneeling in front of his prisoner told Jack that something had happened that had changed the balance of things.
“It looks like you’ve got a lot on your mind,” Jack said, “but I could really use a tour of your facilities.”
Even as Jack asked the question, the other man scooted to the side and reached for the ropes binding the archaeologist’s hands, his mind clearly somewhere else. But when Jack’s question worked its way through his other concerns he glanced up.
“Come again?” he asked.
Jack offered a half smile. “The bathroom,” he said.
His captor nodded and gave another tug, yet the bonds would not loosen. Then, with the look of someone just remembering something, he reached into the canvas bag he’d dropped in front of Jack and withdrew a large knife from one of its pockets.
Jack’s eyes widened as it passed in front of his face, close enough for him to see the red now drying to brown on the blade.
“On second thought, I can hold it,” he said.
The man ignored him and brought the knife around behind Jack, where he began to work on the portion holding the archaeologist to the overhead beam. Jack, who considered this an improvement of sorts to his present circumstances, kept his mouth shut while the man worked, and from the heavy breathing he could hear coming from his new liberator he suspected speed was of the essence. When at last the blade sliced through, the man leaned back and studied his handiwork. With a wry smile at Jack, he stood, took the still-bound man by the arm, and helped him to his feet. That accomplished, he retrieved his bag—which Jack noticed had a longer bundle secured on top of it—and then locked eyes with Jack.
“Shall we?” he said, gesturing toward the door.
“Absolutely,” Jack said, although his pleasure at finding himself mobile was tempered by the fact that his hands were still tied and that the Englishman, slight as he was, had a firm grip on his elbow.
When they stepped out into the hallway Jack could see into the other room and did a double take at what he saw. He was quickly shuffled down the hallway and the image was gone. He turned to look at his companion, asking the question with raised eyebrows.
The Englishman shrugged. “When you do what I do for a living, you learn to sleep in some unusual spots and with one eye open,” he offered by way of explanation.
Oddly enough Jack understood exactly what he meant, though the response created another question. “And just what exactly do you do?”
They’d reached the end of the hall, where Jack saw the door leading outside. To the right was an entryway into what looked like a room larger than any he’d yet seen in the house. Instead of ushering Jack out into the Libyan sun, the Englishman directed him into the room.
They didn’t spend more than thirty seconds there. Long enough for the Englishman to needlessly feel for pulses. When his captor bent down to do so, the temptation to flee came over Jack, but he resisted the urge, quickly calcu
lating the slim odds of getting past the closed door, much less making a clean escape. The Englishman straightened and blew out a breath. He ran a hand through his disheveled hair, casting a tired eye around the room, then caught Jack’s eye as if seeing him for the first time.
“The handle’s a bit tricky,” he said. “You wouldn’t have made it.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Once again the Englishman stooped to retrieve his bag and then started for the door, this time without a hand on Jack’s arm.
“We should probably step it up a bit,” he called over his shoulder. “I don’t know how long it’ll be before he wakes up.”
It took Jack a beat to realize whom the Englishman meant.
“What do you mean ‘wakes up’?” he called after him.
“As in gets up off the bed and comes after us and tries to do to us what he did to Benton and Phillips.”
Jack, who had begun to follow the Englishman, looked back at who he could only assume were Benton and Phillips. With a small shudder he hurried after the other man.
When he caught up with him, he was reaching for the door handle. Soon the two men were outside. After spending so much time in a darkened room, the sun blinded Jack for several seconds before he was able to blink away the glare. When his vision cleared he saw the jeep toward which they were headed, and with that understanding it occurred to him that he was following a man he didn’t know and who had, only minutes ago, been keeping him tied up and subject to beatings by a much bigger man who at any moment might burst from the house for another round of the same.
It was then that he noticed the number of people around him. It was midmorning and the street teemed with bodies, an undulating sea of humans following no noticeable traffic pattern. And not one of them paid the two foreigners a bit of attention, despite the fact that one of them had his hands bound behind him. Yet Jack had spent enough time in this part of the world to understand that this apparent obliviousness was nothing of the sort. Most of these people saw precisely what was happening, noticed every detail, but not once would they allow themselves to look in his direction.
