The Amulet of Power

by Mike Resnick

  “You sound like a believer.”

  “I’m just trying to see things through Gordon’s eyes,” answered Lara. “It doesn’t matter what I think about Eden. The only thing that matters is that Gordon was sure he’d found it.” She paused. “I should have thought of this earlier. I’ve never seen an ad for Seychelles tourism that didn’t mention the fact that General Gordon swore it was Eden! I just never put two and two together.”

  “And what made you put two and two together yesterday?” asked Omar.

  “I had a coach.”

  “A coach?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  She picked up a pack of matches from the coffee table, ripped out the reprint of the article on Eden, and set fire to the corner of the pages. She held them over a large ashtray until they were thoroughly aflame, then dropped them.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Omar.

  “Making sure no one else knows what I’ve read,” she said. “I’ve memorized the maps, and I’ve already burned the page with the June 3 letter from the book Ismail gave me last night. I hate the idea of destroying books, but this information is too dangerous to leave lying around. I want you to destroy the rest of the books after I’ve gone.”

  “You are going somewhere?”

  “Yes,” she said. “There’s no direct flight to the Seychelles from Khartoum, so I want you to book me on the first flight to Kenya, and get me a connecting flight to the Seychelles. If there’s any delay in Kenya—I seem to remember the Seychelles flight operates only two or three times a week—reserve a cottage for me at the Norfolk Hotel.”

  “There are Mahdists in Kenya,” said Omar. “Hassam and I will accompany you.”

  “No,” said Lara firmly. “That will just attract more attention.”

  “I cannot let you spend any time there alone,” he said firmly.

  “I won’t be alone,” she replied. “Once you make my reservations, get in touch with Malcolm Oliver and let him know I’m coming.”

  “Who is Malcolm Oliver?”

  “An old friend. He used to be a white hunter and then a safari guide, but he retired a couple of years ago. He doesn’t believe in computers, so you’ll have to send a telex or try to raise him by phone. He knows Nairobi far better than you do, and he’s as handy with a gun as I am.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. I need to change some money. I can’t use Sudanese dinars once I’m out of the country, and Kenya and the Seychelles are much stricter about passing British currency than Khartoum is. I’ll need Kenya shillings and Seychelles rupees.”

  “We will go to the Mashraq Bank.”

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You have a brother or a cousin working there.”

  He smiled. “A half-sister.”

  “You’ve got a remarkable family,” she said. Then, “Finally, I’ll need a small shoulder bag.”

  “Why? You have no clothes to take.”

  “I can’t wear my pistols on the plane, and I’ll never get them past security in a carry-on.”

  “I will get one for you. Is there anything else?”

  “No, that’s all. I don’t know the plane schedules, but I definitely want to leave today if it’s possible,” said Lara.

  “I will book two seats on today’s flight,” said Omar.

  “One,” she corrected him.

  “What about Dr. Mason?”

  “If Kevin knew about this, nothing could keep him from coming with me,” explained Lara. “And if we both leave, the Mahdists will know that the Amulet isn’t in the Sudan. If Kevin stays here, my guess is that most of them will think I’ve given up and he’s still searching.”

  “He will be angry.”

  “I know,” she said unhappily. “That’s why I’m letting you tell him. We’ll have breakfast together, and when it’s over I’ll suggest we go off in opposite directions and meet at some appointed spot in midafternoon. With any luck I’ll be out of the country by then.”

  “And if I cannot obtain passage for you on today’s flight?”

  “Then I’ll meet him where I said I would, and we’ll try again tomorrow.”

  “I will begin to make arrangements right after breakfast,” said Omar.

  He opened the door and walked out into the corridor. Lara went into the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, then took the ashes of the burned pages and flushed them down the toilet.

  Breakfast was uneventful. Lara announced that she wanted to visit a small library in Omdurman, Mason decided to check the various churches again, and they agreed to meet at the centrally-located French Cultural Centre.

  After they had split up, Lara returned to the hotel, and Omar showed up about ninety minutes later.

  “Well?” she asked as he entered the suite.

  “Your flight leaves at twelve-thirty P.M.,” he announced.

  “Good. What about the connecting flight to the Seychelles?”

  “That is a problem,” he reported. “The next flight from Kenya to the Seychelles is on Tuesday.”

  “From Nairobi?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there an earlier flight from Mombasa?”

  He shook his head. “The Nairobi flight will stop on the coast to pick up more passengers from Mombasa.”

  She shrugged. “Well, if I have to spend three days in Kenya, I have to.” She looked around. “What about a shoulder bag?”

  “Mustafa has purchased it, and will meet us at the airport. I’m sure you’re being watched. Why walk out of the Arak with luggage and alert them to the fact that you’re leaving?”

  “I can’t walk into the airport wearing my guns,” she pointed out.

  “You won’t have to. He’ll be waiting for us in the parking lot.” He paused. “Malcolm Oliver was not answering his phone, so I sent a telex. I hope he receives it, but just in case he does not, I stopped by a cyber café and e-mailed one of my uncles who lives in Nairobi to make sure the message reaches him.”

  “Good,” she said. “Then all I have to do is change some money.”

  “You have to do something else,” said Omar. He produced a piece of paper and proceeded to write eight words on it.

  She stared, frowning. “This isn’t Arabic or Sudanese,” she said. “Or any other language I know.”

  “It is a phonetic transcription of the language of the Sudan from the time of Mareish,” said Omar. “It has been passed from father to son, from leader to leader, since the death of the great sorcerer.”

  “What is this all about?”

  “Mareish knew the evil that the Amulet could do in the wrong hands. He had every intention of destroying it, but he died prematurely, and the Amulet was buried with him.”

  “I know that,” said Lara.

  “But what you don’t know is that after he created the Amulet, he told his apprentice how it could be destroyed—indeed, the only way to destroy it.”

  “This is the spell you mentioned to Abdul. The one he called a fairy tale.”

  “This is no fairy tale,” said Omar.

  “Then why didn’t Mareish’s apprentice use the spell to destroy the Amulet?”

  “Because the apprentice knew the seductive power of the Amulet, its ability to corrupt even a man of noble character, and he feared to touch it, so he passed the secret on to his son, who passed it to his son . . . and it has been passed down to me, and now to you.” Omar pointed to the paper. “Commit those eight words to memory, and then destroy the paper.”

  “If they’ll destroy the Amulet, why not just say them now and be done with it?” she asked.

  “They will only work when the person who utters them is in physical contact with the Amulet. Gordon hid the Amulet because he did not know how to destroy it. It is our most deeply guarded secret, and I have entrusted it to you. Do not let us down, Lara Croft.”

  “I’ll try not to.” She read the words, repeated them four times, and when she was sure she had memorized them, she handed the paper back to Omar, who immediat
ely set fire to it, then got to his feet.

  “Shall we go?” he said.

  She nodded and followed him out.

  The staff at the Mashraq Bank seemed surprised to see a European enter the premises, but Omar’s half-sister handled the transaction swiftly and efficiently, and soon Lara and Omar were riding a beat-up, rust-covered thirty-year-old cab to the airport.

  Mustafa was waiting for them with a secondhand leather bag, a small lock, and the key.

  After stowing her guns and locking them away, she shook his hand, then did the same with Omar, and walked into the airport. She handed in her ticket, showed her passport, waited tensely while the computer read its bar code and approved it, and walked through to the terminal.

  She had sat down on a bench to await her flight, when a uniformed man approached her.

  “Lara Croft?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You are flying to Kenya, are you not?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “Is anything wrong?”

  “There is a two-hundred-dinar exit fee required of all passengers leaving the country, and our computer says you have not yet paid it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought the man who bought my ticket would have paid it.” She reached into her pocket, and pulled out some bills. “I’m afraid I’ve traded in all my dinars. Will you accept British pounds?”

  “I’m sure that can be arranged,” said the man. “Please come with me. I will take you to our currency exchange.”

  He headed off to the left.

  “Just a minute,” she said, pointing to a small Citibank kiosk. “It’s that way.”

  “They will charge you an exorbitant fee for changing your money,” said the man. “As a courtesy to our passengers, we will do it for free.”

  Something’s wrong here, she thought. If Citibank thought you were changing money for free, they’d pull out of here so fast it’d make your head spin.

  She followed him to a small unmarked door.

  “This is our office,” he said.

  Sure it is. That’s why your name’s not on the door.

  He opened the door and stepped aside to allow her to enter first. A large uniformed man sat behind an ancient wooden desk; a smaller man, wearing an ill-fitting suit, stood next to it. Both smiled at her—and suddenly, without warning, the man who had accompanied her shoved her into the small office and closed the door behind her.

  She saw the smaller man swinging at her head and ducked. His hand crashed into the wall, and he howled in pain. The larger man got up from behind the desk, but before he could walk around it she had leaped onto it with the grace of a leopard and delivered a powerful kick to his chin. He staggered back a step, came into contact with his chair, and fell awkwardly into it. She was beside him before he could get up again, and delivered a lightning-fast one-two punch to his face. She could feel his cheekbone shatter beneath the second blow, and she turned to face the smaller man.

  He had picked up the phone from the desk and was holding it like a weapon, ready to crush her skull with it. She saw that the cord was still attached to the wall, and dove across the desk, grabbing the cord and yanking it with all her strength, and simultaneously pulling the phone out of his hand and into his face.

  He groaned and staggered, and before he could recover she was all over him, pummeling him with her fists, and finally dispatching him with a karate chop across the back of his neck. He dropped like a brick.

  She knelt down next to him, going through his pockets to see if there was anything to show which side he was on, when the door opened again, and the man who had led her there took a step inside, gun in hand.

  “You’re as hard to kill as they said,” he informed her. “What a pity they aren’t offering a reward to the man who accomplishes it.”

  “It’s a reward you’ll never collect,” she said, as she pulled the Scalpel of Isis out of her boot and hurled it at him in a single motion. It buried itself in his throat. For just an instant a look of total surprise crossed his face, as if he couldn’t believe what had happened. Then he dropped his gun and fell to the floor, dead.

  She withdrew the knife, wiped the blade off on his uniform, and stuck it back in her boot. She wanted to search the men and the office, but the public address system announced that her flight was boarding, and it was one flight she didn’t plan to miss.

  She stuck her head out of the room, made sure no one was nearby, walked out, closed the door behind her, and walked to the boarding area. Then she was ushered aboard the refurbished DC-3, and less than an hour later she was flying toward Kenya. As she leaned back and relaxed for the first time in days, she decided to take a nap until the plane touched down in Nairobi, but the more she tried, the more uneasy she became.

  What’s the matter with me? she thought. I know where the Amulet is. I solved the puzzle that mystified everyone for more than a century. In a little while, the world will be safe from the Mahdists. Why do I feel that I’m overlooking something very important?

  She tried to concentrate, but it was useless: She had absolutely no idea what she was trying to concentrate on.

  Yet every time she started to drift off, she came back to wakefulness with the certainty that there was one more piece of the puzzle to solve, perhaps the most important piece. She was still wondering what it was when the plane touched down at the Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi.

  PART III

  KENYA

  25

  No one was waiting for Lara in the terminal when she got off the plane. She showed her passport to the immigration officer, then went to the baggage claim. She half-expected that her leather shoulder bag wouldn’t make it through, but it was there, waiting for her.

  She looked around for Malcolm Oliver, couldn’t find him, and finally decided to take a cab to the Norfolk Hotel. As she stepped through the doors leading from baggage claim to the airport’s entrance, a tanned, white-haired man wearing a khaki shirt and shorts walked up to her and threw his arms around her.

  “Welcome back!” said Malcolm Oliver. “It’s been a while.”

  “I’m glad to see you,” responded Lara. “I expected to find you at the gate.”

  “International flight,” he said. “We’re not allowed to meet you until you’ve passed through immigration and customs.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I forgot. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.”

  “Well, come along, and you can tell me about it over dinner.” He stared at her and frowned. “You’ve lost some weight.”

  “A bit,” she acknowledged.

  “The message I got was rather mysterious,” said Oliver, as he led her to his car. “Some Arab phoned me, explained that he was Omar’s uncle—as if I was expected to know who Omar is—and told me your life was in danger and I had to meet you here. Then I checked and found your telex, which was a lot less melodramatic, but on the other hand, you’ve never come here on just a few hours’ notice before. What’s going on?”

  “We’ll talk in the car or during dinner,” said Lara. “I don’t want to be overheard.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  They reached his green Land Rover and he opened the door for her.

  “A new one, I see,” she noted.

  “Same as the old one, but with a lot less safaris under her belt,” answered Malcolm. “Removable top, four-wheel drive”—he reached under his seat and carefully pulled out a .44 Magnum—“and this.”

  She smiled. “Why should I be the only one with illegal weapons?”

  “Oh, I’m legal,” he answered. “I spent a year on the police force back in seventy-eight, right after they put an end to hunting. I never quite resigned, so I’m still permitted to carry it.”

  “What do you mean, you never quite resigned?” she asked as he pulled out of the airport and turned onto Langata Road.

  “I wasn’t corrupt enough for that particular administration,” he replied. “So after I arrested a number of politicians, I was asked to take a leave
of absence. It’s been about a quarter of a century, and no one has ever actually fired me, so I’m still officially on the force. I’ve even made an occasional arrest up in the Northern Frontier District, when Somali bandits would stop my car and try to rob my clients.”

  “Keep it loaded,” she said, nodding toward the gun. “We might run into worse things than bandits.”

  “Happy to,” said Oliver. “You can tell me what kind of things in a moment.”

  “Why are you slowing down?” she asked. “The Norfolk is fifteen or twenty minutes away yet.”

  “You need some meat on those bones,” said Oliver. “We’re pulling in here.”

  “Where is here?”

  “The Carnivore,” he said. “I took you here on your last safari, remember?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I loved it. But we went after dark. I had no idea it was so close to the airport.”

  Oliver parked and escorted her to an outdoor table. There was a huge, Brazilian-style spit, and at least a dozen game meats of varying types were cooking on it. It smelled so good, and she’d been hungry for so many days, that Lara was afraid she might begin salivating.

  “What would you like to drink?” asked Oliver as a waiter approached.

  “Just a cola or an orange pop.”

  He ordered two gin and tonics plus a Coke, and the waiter went off to the bar to get them.

  “Two?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

  “The other’s for you, just in case you change your mind.”

  “It’s not going to happen. I don’t drink—and even if I did, I need to keep all my wits about me.”

  “Perhaps it’s time to tell me what this is all about,” said Oliver. “I was rather hoping you’d come to enlist me in the hunt for King Solomon’s Mines, the way we once discussed.”

  “Perhaps next time,” she said, and began telling him everything that had happened since Kevin Mason had found her buried in the rubble beneath the Temple of Horus and brought her to the Cairo Hospital.