Serpent of Moses (12 page)

“I might?” Petrone asked, surprise on his face. He looked from Espy to Romero, who had not moved from his spot near the door.

“That’s why we’re here,” Espy said. “If we can figure out what Jack was working on right before he went missing, it might help us find him.”

Petrone was slow to reply, his expression appearing as if stuck between a willingness to help and a refusal to speak another word, followed by their expulsion from the shop.

“The way I see it,” she said, “your helping us find Jack means that you stand a better chance of getting your book back.”

“If he hasn’t already lost it or sold it,” Petrone said.

While Espy thought she knew Jack well enough to believe he wouldn’t sell it, she could buy into the losing angle. She didn’t have to put voice to that, though, as Petrone raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“I loaned him a book about Milan Cathedral,” he said. “
The Tower of God
. It’s a rare eighteenth-century history.
Very
rare. Only seven are known to exist.”

“And you let him take it?”

“Sometimes he has a way of making you do things that you would not normally do,” he said, his cheeks coloring.

“Do you know why he wanted it?”

“No,” Petrone said. “Although he did seem more interested in the construction of the building than he did the history.”

Espy took the information and rolled it around in her mind. She didn’t know what to make of it, not yet anyway. “And he didn’t tell you where he was going next?”

Petrone shook his head and then glanced from Espy to Romero and back. Reading his face, Espy couldn’t tell if his anger had been replaced by concern for their mutual friend or a genuine desire to see Jack punished for the unreturned book.

“If you find him,” Petrone said, “tell him if he comes into my store again, I’ll kill him.”

After she and Romero emerged into the evening air, she answered Romero’s unspoken question. “Jack owes him money.”

Romero uttered a grunt devoid of surprise and started down the sidewalk after his sister.

They had secured Templeton in the back room, and Jack couldn’t help but ponder the similarities to his own confinement a few days before. He’d had nothing to do with Templeton’s treatment, however. The men of the village had taken the initiative to take him into their custody the moment he began asking them questions about a lone American they might have discovered wandering in the desert. It hadn’t taken Jack long to become something of a local celebrity and it seemed the villagers had something of a communal interest in protecting him.

Many of the men who had spoken with Jack earlier in the day had returned and they conversed in earnest tones while Jack simply watched, picking up some of what they said. Every once in a while Jack would see Nadia poke her head around the corner, glance over the men, fix Jack with a look just short of malevolence, and then leave. He did not begrudge her the thinly veiled animosity. He had entered her home and had possibly placed her and her family at risk.

Jack had shared with these men what little he knew of Martin Templeton and then left them to their deliberations. Someone had brought Jack his phone, recovered from the jeep, but when he tried it he couldn’t get a signal, which, he supposed, was the reason none of the locals had cellphones. He suspected he would have to reach a more populated area before he would be able to contact anyone. That left him with few options, save for allowing these men to help him or taking the jeep Templeton had driven into the village and proceeding on to Raballah on his own.

The longer he listened, though, the more he began to wonder if driving off with the staff was even an option. Over the last few minutes, the tenor of the conversation around him had changed and he had only recently started to pick up on it, cued by a slow rise in the volume of the conversation that told him a disagreement was brewing. Concentrating, he tried to listen in, but it was more difficult to make sense of the Arabic with multiple simultaneous speakers than it was talking to a single person. Still, he picked up on key phrases, and when these began to arrange themselves in his brain, he understood that these men were starting to talk of taking the staff from him.

When that realization came to him, Khamel looked at him from across the table as if he’d known the precise moment when Jack would understand. The Tunisian said something to the other men and all conversation stopped, all eyes turning to the American. Silence settled over the room, broken a few moments later by what looked to be the oldest among them.

Staring at Jack, he said in a strong voice, “We believe Allah may have brought you here so that you could deliver his staff to us.”

Jack had no good response to that. To these people, he was an infidel, unworthy to carry such a sacred object. He was only amazed that they hadn’t taken it from him the moment they’d discovered it.

“For what reason?” he thought to ask.

“To protect it, of course,” the elder said.

“From whom?”

“From whoever would see the power of the Staff of Allah abused.”

Again, it wasn’t a statement Jack could rightly argue with. His own experience had shown him the truth of it. Consequently he chose not to go down that path.

“No one’s coming after it,” Jack said, looking around at all the solemn faces.

“Except for the man who already has,” one of the other elders said. “And who knows how many more.”

“There aren’t any more,” Jack argued, though he knew it was a lie. Imolene was still out there somewhere—as well as whoever had hired the Egyptian to tie up loose ends. He decided to try another tack. “What if I was given the Staff of Allah for a reason?” he asked, resolving, as soon as the words left his mouth, to ask Khamel about that name. In his studies he hadn’t come across it and wondered about its origin.

He saw that there were some with whom his reference to being God’s instrument did not sit well, but the oldest offered a half smile.

“If that is true,” he said, “how do you know that your purpose was not fulfilled when you delivered the staff to those who could properly care for it?”

Rather than attempt to answer the question, Jack gave the elder a respectful nod, asked if he could be excused for a few minutes, then rose and left the room. He headed for the back room, where two men had been posted, each armed with an automatic weapon. For a moment, Jack wondered if they would allow him entrance, but as he approached the doorway they moved aside.

The lamp was low when he entered and saw Templeton sprawled on the bed. The Englishman sat up when Jack stepped into the room.

“Turnabout is fair play,” Templeton said.

Jack didn’t respond. Instead, after regarding the Englishman for a time, he settled himself in the room’s only other piece of furniture, a much-abused wooden chair.

“It’s time for some answers,” he said.

After what seemed a long while, Templeton said, “In order to receive answers, you have to ask the right questions.”

Jack took a deep breath and let it out explosively. “For starters, how about you telling me, once and for all, why you took me out of that cave. What possible reason did you have to take me prisoner and then drag me through two countries?”

“Aside from keeping Imolene from killing you?” Templeton asked.

“Aside from that, yes.”

It was Templeton’s turn to let out a deep sigh. “You’re something of a mystery in certain circles, Dr. Hawthorne.” When Jack didn’t respond, he continued. “You had a promising career ahead of you, and then you threw it all away after what happened in Egypt. I understand, of course, that your brother’s death must have been difficult to deal with, but from everything I’ve heard about you, you were one of the shining stars in our shared field.”

“We don’t have a shared field,” Jack said, more sharply than he’d intended. “I don’t know what you call what it is you do, but it sure isn’t archaeology.”

Even as he said it, he understood the hypocrisy of the statement. Over the last few years, the field he himself had practiced bore little similarity to what he’d learned at Cambridge and in legitimate work for years after that. Still, he’d never kidnapped anyone.

“But then after several years of teaching, you seem to be back doing what you’re supposed to be doing, and I can’t help but be curious as to the reason why,” Templeton said, ignoring the insult.

Jack remained silent.

“And interestingly enough, your return comes on the heels of that incident in Australia we discussed the other evening. But one of the things we didn’t discuss—one of the things I found most curious about the whole affair—was the number of esteemed archaeologists who seem to have lost their lives at about the same time. One of them in Australia, a Dr. James Winfield. Now, wasn’t he a mentor of yours?”

Jack knew he was being baited, even if he didn’t know the reason for it. He could feel the other man’s probing questions do their work, a slow anger beginning to build. He knew, though, that he had to keep a level head.

“Of course, that was also about the time that Dr. Brown Billings was killed in Ethiopia, wasn’t it?” Templeton pressed.

He gave Jack a sidelong glance.

“Wasn’t Dr. Billings a colleague of yours as well? He and that other young woman who died?” He adopted a thoughtful look, as if considering the professional connections. Then he shrugged. “What was it the Ethiopian authorities said? That they walked into the middle of a gang altercation?”

“You of all people should know that archaeology can be a dangerous business,” Jack said.

“I would think the more appropriate statement would be that knowing
you
can be a dangerous business.”

At that point, the anger that Jack had worked to keep from manifesting could no longer be contained, although he restricted its appearance to his face, forcing his teeth together to keep from saying something that would only serve to validate whatever Templeton was working to prove. Along with the anger was a growing puzzlement at Templeton being able to throw out those names. Which meant he knew a great deal more about Jack than Jack knew about him. It hinted that, whatever else Templeton was, he and Jack seemed to have traveled in some of the same circles.

“I told you,” Templeton said, again one step ahead of Jack’s thoughts. “I took my degree at Oxford and your Dr. Winfield was a frequent guest lecturer. I was saddened to hear that he’d passed on.”

The only thing that kept Jack from trying to hit Templeton was that the Englishman’s words sounded sincere.

“I have to tell you, Dr. Hawthorne . . . I spent a great deal of time wondering about what happened to you three years ago.”

“Why should you have any interest at all in me?”

That question did something Jack hadn’t expected. It briefly removed the smug smile from Templeton’s face, and for just a few seconds he saw something else. Anger perhaps? However, the look was gone almost immediately.

“After you left Australia, and after word began to trickle in that a number of archaeologists had died within a short time frame, I found the whole thing too intriguing to forget. Because while you mentioned that archaeology is a dangerous business, in reality nothing could be further from the truth. It’s an exceptionally safe line of work.”

“Coincidence is a very real thing,” Jack said.

“A belief in coincidence denotes a man who refuses to do the legwork necessary to make the connections,” Templeton rebutted. “No, something had gone on in Australia—something that had made its mark in Ethiopia and who knows where else. Perhaps even Egypt.”

Whatever Templeton’s game, he had succeeded in putting Jack back on his heels, because much of what the man said was correct, even if lacking in particulars.

“Do you know when I made sense of it, Dr. Hawthorne?”

Jack said nothing.

“The pieces started falling in place when I caught you trying to steal the Nehushtan from me,” he said. “You see, Jack, what occurred to me when I saw you sitting on the cavern floor was that the two of us were fighting over the same thing—a priceless artifact with a rich tradition. In fact, you almost died for it.”

“We all still might,” Jack reminded him.

“Indeed. But that’s all quite incidental to my theory.”

“Which is?”

“That if a find like the Nehushtan—admittedly a glorious item—could put two decent men at each other’s throats, then what kind of treasure would have pulled one archaeologist out of retirement and led three more to their deaths?”

The silence that settled over the room as the question hung in the air was something that Jack could nearly feel, and he was several seconds into it before he understood what Templeton had intimated. When it came to him, he felt the weariness of days of hard travel come over him.

“There’s something remarkable out there, Dr. Hawthorne,” Templeton added. “Something worth dying for. And apparently something worth killing for.”

“So it’s about a score,” Jack said after a long while.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Templeton said, and the look in his eyes sent a chill down Jack’s spine.

But any response he might have made to Templeton was cut off by the sounds of small-arms fire coming from outside. Popping up out of the chair, he started for the door.

“That would be the Israelis,” Templeton said.

The remark caught Jack with his hand on the doorknob. He thought he’d misheard, because of all the things Templeton might have said in that moment, what Jack had heard seemed completely out of place. Releasing the doorknob, he turned back toward Templeton. Yet before he could say a word, the wall behind the Englishman’s bed exploded inward and Jack had only an instant to see a large piece of cement hurtling toward him before everything went dark.

When Jack’s eyes opened, he knew he hadn’t been out long because the dust and debris from the blast hadn’t yet settled. With a groan he forced himself up and, holding himself steady on one knee, blinked until his vision cleared enough to allow him to see a gap in the wall large enough to walk through. Beyond the hole he saw tracers cutting through the darkness and a glow that had to come from something on fire.

As he pushed himself to his feet, he heard moaning from off to his left. He turned and saw Templeton lying on the floor near the opposite wall. The blast must have lifted him and tossed him through the air like a child’s doll. Instinct caused him to take a step toward the injured man, but he overruled the impulse, theorizing that if he could make a noise at all, he wasn’t badly injured.