He urged the steed down a slope now, a slope of scrub and shale and soft soil, and its hooves created tiny avalanches. Then he hit the strip of road behind the rear staff car, once again hoping he wouldn’t be seen. Fat chance, he thought.
He made the animal weave just as the gunner in the rear car opened fire, spraying the soft surface of the road with bullets that made the horse dance. The bullets echoed against the sides of the mountain. He drove the horse harder now, almost breaking the animal, and then he was passing the staff car, seeing the surprised faces of the Germans inside. The gunner swung his machine gun and it spluttered, kicked, running out of ammunition as he blasted futilely away at the man on the horse. Toht, seated beside the driver, pulled a pistol, but Indy was already obscured from the staff car by the truck, riding alongside the cab now. The German fired the pistol anyway. His shots ripped through the canvas of the truck.
Take your chance now, Indy thought. He jumped from the animal, spun through the air, caught the side of the cab and swung the door open as the armed guard riding with the driver tried to raise his rifle. Indy grappled with him for the weapon, twisting it this way and that while the guard grunted with the effort of a combat in which he didn’t have the privilege of using his gun. Indy twisted hard; he heard the sudden sickening sound of wrists breaking, the cry of the man’s pain, and then Indy forced the guard to drop from the cab out onto the road.
Now the driver.
Indy struggled with him, a stout man with gold teeth, as the steering wheel spun and the truck lunged toward the precipice. Indy reached for the wheel, pulling the truck back, and the driver struck him hard on the face.
Indy was stunned a moment. The driver tried to brake. Indy kicked his foot away. And then they were struggling together again as the wheel went into a purposeless spin and the track swerved. In the staff car behind, Gobler had to swing his wheel to avoid the truck—a spin so sharp and so abrupt that the gunner in the rear was flipped from the side of the auto and over the edge of the cliff. He fell like a kite weighted with lead, arms outstretched and wind rushing through his hair, and the sound of his scream echoed in the canyon below.
In the lead staff car, Belloq turned to see what was going on. Jones, he thought: it had to be Jones, still trying to get the Ark. The prize will never be yours, friend, he thought. He stared at Dietrich, then he looked back once more, but sunlight obscured the view into the cab of the truck behind.
“I think there is a problem,” Belloq said casually.
The car reached a summit, made a hairpin turn, struck the frail guardrail at the edge and bent it. The driver managed to get the car straight again, while the armed guard, seated in the rear of the car, leveled his submachine gun and trained it on the window of the cab.
Belloq restrained him: “If you shoot, you may kill the driver. If you kill the driver, your Führer’s little Egyptian prize will very likely plummet over the side. What would I tell them in Berlin?”
Looking worried, Dietrich managed to nod in a grim way. “Is this more of your American friend’s antics, Belloq?”
“What he hopes to achieve against such odds escapes me,” Belloq said. “But it also scares me.”
“If anything happens to the Ark . . .” Dietrich didn’t finish his sentence, but he might have drawn an index finger, like a blade, across his larynx.
“Nothing will happen to the Ark,” Belloq said.
Indy had his hands around the driver’s neck now and the truck once again went out of control, spinning toward the broken guardrail, striking it flat, stirring up a cloud of dense dust before Indy caught the wheel and brought the truck back from the edge. In the staff car at the rear, the dust blinded Gobler and Toht—Toht, who was still holding his pistol in a useless manner.
Gobler, his throat thick from the dust, coughed. He tried to blink the dust out of his eyes. But he blinked too late. The last thing he saw was the broken guardrail, the last thing he heard the abrupt, fearful scream of Toht. The staff car, inexorably drawn to the edge of the pass as an iron filing to a magnet, went through the guardrail and dipped into space, seeming to hang for a second in some travesty of gravity before dropping, dropping and dropping, exploding in a wild burst of flame as it bounced down the side of the pass.
Damn, Indy thought. Whenever he tackled the driver, the truck almost carried them to certain death. And the guy was strong, the stoutness concealing a layer of muscle, hard muscle. From the corner of his eye, Indy was conscious of something else. He glanced at the side mirror—soldiers were clambering around the side of the truck, hanging on through fear and determination, making their way toward the cab. In one savage burst of strength, Indy shoved the driver away, slid the door open behind the wheel and kicked him out of the cab. The man bounced away in dust and screams, arms thrashing the air.
Sorry, Indy thought.
He seized the wheel and pressed the gas, gaining on the front staff car. Then there was a sudden darkness, a short tunnel cut into the side of the mountain. He swung the truck from side to side, scraping the walls of the tunnel, hearing the cries of the soldiers as they were smashed against walls, as they lost their grip on the side of the truck. Indy wondered how many other soldiers were still in the rear of his truck. Impossible to count. Out of the tunnel now, back in the hard daylight, he drove against the staff car, bumped it and watched the face of the armed guard as he looked upward, pointed—he was pointing at the top of the truck.
He’s blown it, Indy thought. If there are more soldiers on the top of this truck, that guy has just blown the scheme. Better safe than sorry, he told himself, suddenly slamming on the brakes, locking the wheels, making the truck skid to a halt. He saw two soldiers thrown from the roof of the truck, shattered against the side of the mountain.
They were coming down from the high mountain road now. Indy put his foot on the gas, pressuring the staff car, bumping it; a good feeling, he thought, to know they won’t take a chance on killing you because of your precious cargo. He enjoyed the sudden sensation of freedom, banging again and again at the rear bumper of the car, watching Belloq and his German friends being shaken, rattled. But he knew he’d have to get ahead of them sooner or later. Before Cairo, he’d have to be in front of them.
He thrust the truck forward again, hammering the staff car. The road was leveling out as it dropped from the mountain heights: in the far distance, dim as yet in outline, he could see the haze of the city. The dangerous part, the worst part now: if they ran no risk of watching him plunge the truck and its cargo down a steep pass, then they’d almost certainly try to kill him now, or at least run him off the road.
As if prompted by the thought, a form of treacherous telepathy, the armed guard opened fire. The bullets of the submachine gun shattered the glass, ripped through the canvas fabric, drove deep into the body of the truck. Indy heard them zing past him, but he ducked anyway, an instinctive thing. Now, for sure, he needed to get out in front. The road twisted still, going into a sharp bend just ahead. Hold on, he told himself. Hold tight and make it here. He gave the truck as much gas as he could and swung the vehicle around the staff car, hearing another whine of bullets, and then he was hitting the car and seeing it go off the road, where it slid down a short embankment.
One step completed. But he knew they’d get back on the road and come after him again. He glanced in his side mirror: yeah, sure enough. They were slithering back up from the incline, reversing across the road, straightening, coming after him. He shoved the gas pedal to the floor. Give me all you’ve got, he thought. And then he was on the outskirts of the city, the staff car immediately behind him. City streets: a different ball game.
Narrow thoroughfares. He drove quickly through them and sent animals and people flying, turning over stalls, baskets, the fruits of merchants and vendors, scattering beggars in his way. Pedestrians scurried into doorways when the truck wheeled through; then he was threading ever more narrow streets and alleys, looking for the square where Omar had his garage, replaying the geo
graphy of Cairo in his mind. A blind beggar suddenly capable of sight—a holy miracle—jumped out of the way, dropping his begging bowl and raising his dark glasses to peer at the truck.
He pushed the truck harder. The staff car still came on.
He swung the wheel. Another narrow alley. Donkeys jumped out of the path of the truck, a man fell from a stepladder, a baby in its mother’s arms began to howl. Sorry, Indy thought. I’d stay and apologize in person, but I don’t find it convenient right now.
Still he couldn’t lose the staff car.
Then he was in the square. He saw the sign of Omar’s garage, the door hanging wide open, and he drove the truck quickly through. The door was shut tight immediately as he brought the truck to a whining halt. Then several Arab boys with broomsticks and brushes began to erase the tracks of the vehicle while Indy, wondering if he’d made it, sat slumped behind the wheel in the darkness of the garage.
The staff car slowed, crossed the square and continued on its way, Belloq and Dietrich scrutinizing the streets with expressions of anguish and loss.
In the back of the truck, safe in the crate, the Ark began to hum almost inaudibly. It was as if within it, locked away and secure, a piece of machinery had spontaneously begun to operate. Nobody heard the sound.
It was dark when Sallah and Marion arrived at the garage. Indy had fallen asleep briefly in a cot Omar had provided, waking alone and hungry in the silent darkness. He rubbed his eyes when an overhead lamp was turned on. Marion had somewhere washed and brushed her hair and looked, well, Indy thought, stunning. She stood over him when he opened his eyes.
“You look pretty beat up,” she said.
“A few surface cuts,” he answered, sitting up, groaning, realizing that his body ached.
But then Sallah entered the room and Indy suddenly pushed aside his tiredness and his pain.
“We have a ship,” Sallah said.
“Reliable?”
“The men are pirates, if I may use the phrase loosely. But you can trust them. Their captain, Katanga, is an honorable man—regardless of his more doubtful enterprises.”
“They’ll take us and the cargo?”
Sallah nodded. “For a price.”
“What else?” Indy, stiff, got up. “Let’s get this truck down to the harbor.”
He gazed at Marion a moment, then he said, “I have a feeling that our day isn’t quite finished yet.”
In the ornate building that housed the German Embassy in Cairo, Dietrich and Belloq sat together in a room more commonly used by the Ambassador, a career diplomat who had survived the purges of Hitler and who, all too gladly, had vacated the room for their purposes. They had been sitting in silence for some time now, Belloq gazing at the portrait of Hitler, Dietrich restlessly smoking Egyptian cigarettes.
From time to time the telephone rang. Dietrich would answer it, replace it, then shake his head in Belloq’s direction.
“If we have lost the Ark . . .” Dietrich lit another cigarette.
Belloq rose, walked around the room, waved a hand dismissively. “I will not countenance that prospect, Dietrich. What has happened to your wonderful Egyptian spy network? Why can’t they find what your men so carelessly lost?”
“They will. I have every faith.”
“Faith. I wish I had some of it myself.”
Dietrich closed his eyes. He was weary of the sharp edge of Belloq’s mood; and fearful, even more, of returning empty-handed to Berlin.
“I cannot believe such incompetence,” Belloq said. “How could one man, acting alone—alone, remember—destroy most of a convoy and disappear into the bargain? Stupidity. I can hardly believe it.”
“I’ve listened to this already,” Dietrich said, annoyed.
Belloq walked to the window and stared out across the darkness. Somewhere, wrapped in this impenetrable Cairo night, was Jones; and Jones had the Ark. Damn him. The Ark could not be let go now; even the prospect caused him a chill, a sensation of something sinking inside him.
The telephone rang again. Dietrich picked it up, listened, and then his manner changed. When he hung up he looked at the Frenchman with a vague expression of vindication on his face. “I told you my network would turn something up.”
“Did they?”
“According to a watchman at the docks, an Egyptian named Sallah, the friend of Jones, chartered a merchant steamer by the name of the Bantu Wind.”
“It may be a ruse,” Belloq said.
“It may be. But it’s worth looking into.”
“We don’t have anything else anyhow,” Belloq said.
“Then shall we go?”
They left the Embassy hurriedly, reaching the docks only to discover that the tramp steamer had sailed an hour ago. Its destination was unknown.
ELEVEN
The Mediterranean
IN THE CAPTAIN’S CABIN of the Bantu Wind, Indy stripped to the waist, and Marion dressed his assorted cuts and wounds with bandages and a bottle of iodine. He stared at her as she worked, noticing the dress she’d changed into. It was white, high-necked, somewhat prim. He found it appealing in its way.
“Where did you get that, anyhow?” he asked.
“There’s a whole wardrobe in the closet,” she said. “I get the feeling I’m not the first woman to travel with these pirates.”
“I like it,” he said.
“I feel like a—ahem—a virgin.”
“I guess you look like one.”
She regarded him a moment, pressing iodine to a cut. Then she said, “Virginity is one of those elusive things, honey. When it’s gone, it’s gone. Your account is well and truly spent.”
She stopped working on him, sat down, poured herself a small glass of rum from a bottle. She sipped it, watching him as she did so, seeming to tease him over the rim of the glass.
“Did I ever apologize for burning down your tavern?” he said.
“I can’t say you did. Did I ever thank you for getting me out of that burning plane?”
He shook his head. “We’re even. Maybe we should consider the past closed, huh?”
She was silent for a long time.
“Where does it hurt?” she asked tenderly.
“Everywhere.”
Marion softly kissed his left shoulder. “Here?”
Indy jumped a little in response. “Yes, there.”
Marion leaned closer to him. “Where doesn’t it hurt?” And she kissed his elbow. “Here?”
He nodded. She kissed the top of his head. Then he pointed to his neck and she kissed him there. Then the tip of his nose, his eyes. Then he touched his own lips and she kissed him, her mouth gently devouring his.
She was different; she had changed. This was no longer the wild touch he’d encountered in Nepal.
Something had touched her, softened her.
He wondered what it had been.
He wondered at the change.
The crated Ark lay in the hold of the ship. Its presence agitated the ship’s rats: they scurried back and forward pointlessly, trembling, whiskers shivering. Still silent as a whisper, the same faint humming sound emerged from the crate. Only the rats, their hearing hypersensitive, picked up on the sound; and it obviously scared them.
On the bridge, as the first light of dawn streaked the ocean, Captain Katanga smoked a pipe and watched the surface of the water as if he were trying to discern something that would have been invisible to landlocked men. He let the sun and the salt spray play against his face, streaks of salt leaving white crystalline traces on his black skin. There was something out there, something emerging from the dark, but he wasn’t sure what. He narrowed his eyes, stared, saw nothing. He listened to the faintly comforting rattle of the ship’s weary engines and thought of a failing heart trying to pump blood through an old body. He considered Indy and the woman a moment. He liked them both, and besides, they were friends of Sallah’s.
But something about the cargo, something about the crate, made him uneasy. He wasn’t sure what; he onl
y knew he’d be glad to get rid of it when the time came. It was the same unease he experienced now as his eyes scanned the ocean. A vague pulse. A thing you just couldn’t put your finger on. But there was something out there just the same, something moving. He knew it even if he couldn’t see it.
He smelled, as certainly as the salt flecks in the air, the distinctive odor of danger.
He continued to watch, his body poised in the manner of a man about to jump from a high diving board. A man who cannot swim.
When Indy woke, he watched Marion for a time. She was still asleep, still looking virginal in the white dress. She had her face tilted to one side, and her mouth was slightly open. He rubbed at his bandages where his skin had begun to itch. Sallah had had the foresight to fetch his clothes, so he changed into his shirt now, made sure the bullwhip was secure at his back, then put on the leather jacket and played with the rim of the battered felt hat.
A lucky hat, he thought sometimes. Without it, he would have felt naked.
Marion turned over, her eyes opening.
“What a pleasant sight,” she said.
“I don’t feel pleasant,” he answered.
She stared at his bandages and asked, “Why do you always get yourself into such scrapes?”
She sat up, stroking her hair, looking round the cabin. “I’m glad to see you changed clothes. You weren’t convincing as an Arab, I’m afraid.”
“I did my best.”
She yawned and stretched and rose from the cot. He thought there was something delightful in the movement, a quality that touched him—touched him obliquely, in an off-center way. She reached for his hand, kissed the back of it, then moved around the cabin.
“How long are we going to be at sea?” she asked.
The Adventures Of Indiana Jones Page 15
