The Broken Sword (3 page)

Then the old man sat up with surprising agility and smiled. He had wonderful teeth, Beatrice noticed. "Thank you," he said in perfect King's English.

H
al pushed the last
of the small change to the center of the table. "Three hundred eighteen dirham. How much is that in dollars?"

"Fifty-eight," the boy said automatically. "And thirty-two cents, at yesterday's exchange rate."

Arthur Blessing stood at the window in the cheap room the two had rented in the Medina, the Old City of Marrakesh. In the street, a crowd of people was shouting, running in all directions. "Something's going on. I heard gunshots."

"This place is getting to be as bad as the States," Hal said. He stretched on the rickety chair he was sitting on. It creaked portentously. "Speaking of which, maybe it's time we headed back." He said it as casually as he could, but he saw the boy tense. "We're not going to find her, Arthur," he added gently. "Not here, anyway. We've looked everywhere."

Arthur turned toward him. "But your old boss at the FBI said she'd come to Marrakesh..."

"That was more than six months ago," Hal said. "And his information was old then."

"So maybe you could ask him again."

Hal shook his head. "I've tried. Koehler's retired." He forced himself to meet Arthur's eyes. "I didn't tell you because I thought you'd be upset."

"When?" the boy asked dully.

"A couple months ago." He fiddled with the coins on the table. "I couldn't get anyone else at the Bureau to talk to me." He smiled ruefully. Cashiered federal agents were as easily forgotten as dust under a bed. "I guess part-time auto mechanics don't carry a lot of clout in Washington."

In silhouette against the bright light from the window, the boy's shoulders slumped. "Do you think Emily's dead?" he asked.

Arthur was thirteen and small for his age, a redheaded urchin far from manhood, despite his lightning-quick mind. Sometimes it was hard for Hal to remember that the boy wasn't still the ten-year-old child who had followed him so trustingly through most of Europe and North Africa.

"No, she's not dead. She got herself lost, that's all. You told her how to do it."

"But three years..."

"Listen, Arthur, your aunt's all right. No one's come after us, have they?"

The boy shook his head.

"Then they haven't come after her, either."

Hal wished he could feel as certain as he sounded. Three years ago, when all their lives had become tangled in a nightmare too strange even for the police to sort out, the two of them had left Arthur's legal guardian, Emily Blessing, behind in a small village in England with instructions on how to erase her identity if that became necessary. Hal, meanwhile, took the boy into hiding.

After six months, when the danger to them had passed, they began to look for Emily. They'd been looking ever since.

"I just thought that by now she'd..." His voice trailed away.

She'd go back to her life,
Hal thought.

That was how it was supposed to be. Emily had had a good career with a solid future. Her only drawback had been Arthur. She had never wanted to raise a child in the first place; her sister had left the boy to her when she killed herself. It would not have been fair to take her from everything she knew to go to ground with a boy she had never wanted to raise and a man she had never wanted to love.

"Take it easy," Hal said. He got up and tried to put his arm around Arthur, but the boy shrugged him off. As a teenager, he considered himself too old for such overt affection.

And Hal? Was he too old, too? Emily Blessing had kindled a spark in Hal that he had believed to be long dead. The spark had flamed into one night of love before it had scared them both away.

It's too late,
Emily had said as they lay in one another's arms. Too late for both of them.

And so he had let her go. Taken his unwanted love and her unwanted child and set out on a new life for them all.

Only it hadn't worked out that way. Emily had not returned to the think tank in Chicago where she had worked. As far as they could tell—with the help of Hal's former boss in the FBI—she hadn't even returned to the United States. Hal and Arthur had spent three years following a series of cold trails leading from London to Paris to Morocco. The last trail had ended here.

"With this money, plus what we've got socked away in the bank, we have enough to fly home."

"Home," Arthur said disdainfully. "Where's that, Hal? Chicago, where those people first started trying to kill me?"

"Nobody's trying to kill you now."

"Do you plan to drop me off in some orphanage in Chicago? Is that what you're going to do if we can't find Emily?"

"Arthur..." Hal frowned, stunned by the boy's sudden vehemence.

"I suppose you've had enough of dragging a kid around with you," he spat. "A crazy kid."

"Hey." He tried to approach Arthur again, but the boy's angry scowl held him off. "Look, if you're crazy, then that makes two of us. I had the cup, too, remember?"

That was what had started it all, the cup. An unassuming little metal bowl that had changed their lives forever.

The boy stared out the window, then raised his hands to cover his face.

"It's gone now," Hal said softly. "The cup's gone. No one's going to try to hurt you anymore. And I'm not going anywhere without you."

This time it was Arthur's arms that flung around Hal. "I'm sorry for being such a baby," the boy said, sobbing into Hal's neck. "It's just that I don't want to be alone."

"You won't be," Hal said. "I'll never leave you. Never, as long as you need me. That's a promise."

There was a thump at the door. Hal scooped all the money off the table into his pockets.

"
Lahaza shweia
," he growled in Arabic. "Hold your hor—" Before he could finish, the door burst open and a filthy old man tumbled inside.

Hal was on him in an instant, the crook of his arm around the beggar's throat. "I think you got the wrong room, buddy," he said.

"Gaaa," said the old man.

Arthur walked closer. "Hal, let him go."

"Oh, I'll do that, all right." He propelled the beggar into the hallway.

"No, stop. Hal! It's—"

The hood of the old man's robe fell backward, revealing a pair of bright blue eyes beneath a shock of white hair. "Taliesin," he said, dropping the old man at the threshold.

"Good heavens," the old man said, rubbing his neck, "what a coarse creature you turned out to be."

Hal crossed his arms. "After three years, you might have waited for me to answer the door."

"I was in a hurry." A broad smile lit up the old man's face. "Arthur! You've grown, boy."

"Where've you been?" Hal went on accusingly. "You said you'd catch up to us."

"So I have," Taliesin said. "Here I am. By the way, I've brought someone with me."

Hal peered out the door. The hallway was empty. "Someone invisible?"

"Of course she's visible. Beatrice?" He crooked his finger. "Come along, dear."

Hesitantly, the girl emerged from a doorway down the dimly lit corridor.

"Now, now, no one here's going to hurt you."

As she walked toward them, Hal and Arthur exchanged a glance. The girl was wrapped in some sort of cotton shawl with the price tag hanging prominently near her right ear. Her face, or what they could see of it, was streaked with dirt and what looked like dried blood. She entered the room without speaking, her eyes downcast.

Hal glared at Taliesin. "How old is she?" he asked.

"Why, I'm sure I don't know," the old man said. "We've only just met. How old are you, child?"

"Twelve," Beatrice answered in a whisper. The shawl fell off her head, showing a cascade of long blonde hair. Arthur swallowed. Her eyes swept over him and he blushed, suddenly realizing that he'd been staring.

Her lower lip trembling, she straightened her spine and held her head high. "Well, now that you've got me here, I suppose you'll get what you wanted," she said.

Arthur's eyebrows rose. Taliesin smiled.

"And what would that be?" Hal asked, scowling.

From the folds of her robe she pulled out the cup and set it on the table, where it gleamed like the moon of a distant planet.

Hal's head reeled. He reached for the wooden chair and sat down. It broke under his weight. Taliesin burst into hearty laughter.

"It's come back," Arthur said softly.

Hal lumbered to his feet. "Get that thing out of here."

"That wouldn't be wise," Taliesin said. "It would only come back again, possibly at the cost of Beatrice's life. Or yours. Fate has a way of working itself out, you know. By the way, which way is the shower? I'm disgusting."

Hal folded his arms and glowered at the cup. "Down the hall. You'll have to pay the drunk at the desk five dirham to turn on the water."

Taliesin made a face. "What sort of holes have you been living in?'' he groused as he swung open the door.

"For two more dirham, he'll give you a towel."

When he was gone, Arthur poured some water from a pitcher into a basin and produced a scrap of cloth, which he handed to Beatrice. "Would you like to wash your face?" he asked diffidently.

Beatrice tore her gaze from the cup. She looked stricken.

"I mean, you don't have to wash if you don't want to," Arthur waffled. "It's just that—"

"I'm not blind," she said with astonishment.

Arthur looked at Hal.

"That is..."

"You used to be blind," Hal said. "Until you found the cup."

"Yes." She touched her eyes. "I don't understand it. I thought I had to hold it for it to work." She looked searchingly from one face to the other. "Those people who died... my grandmother… Just because I wouldn't leave the cup behind…" She began to tremble violently. "Because I wanted so much to
see.
.."

"Shh." Hal tore a blanket off the bed and wrapped it around her. "Whatever's happened, you'll get it sorted out. But for now, everything's okay. You're safe here, okay?"

"You're... you're not going to kill me?"

"No."

"But the cup—"

"Believe me, that's the last thing we want."

Arthur brought her a cup of tea. "Maybe this'll make you feel better," he said.

Beatrice looked at him for a long moment, then smiled. "Thank you," she said.

With those words and the beauty of her blue eyes, every molecule of saliva in Arthur's mouth dried up.

B
y the time Taliesin
returned from his shower, Beatrice had recounted the events leading to her appearance in their hotel room—the attempted assassination at the souks, the white-robed man who had murdered her grandmother, the miraculous healing of bones she knew she had broken during her fall to the courtyard of her hotel, and her encounter with the beggar who had brought her to safety.

"Ah! That feels better!" the old man boomed as he swirled into the room.

Beatrice gasped. Taliesin was someone she would not have recognized in a hundred years as the barefooted beggar on the street. From his snowy white hair to his Savile Row bermudas, Taliesin was the picture of colonial elegance. From the filthy bag he had brought with him, he took a pith helmet and placed it jauntily on his head. "How's that?"

"You planning to go on safari?" Hal asked.

"This is perfectly appropriate attire for the climate," Taliesin sniffed. "Whereas you, I see, continue to dress from the racks of the Salvation Army."

Suddenly Beatrice stood up. Her tea splashed onto the floor. "He's coming," she whispered.

Taliesin shivered. His eyes locked onto Beatrice's, which were staring blankly through him.

"Who's coming?" Arthur ventured.

"Never mind," the old man said, grabbing the cup. "Is there a way to the roof?"

"Up the stairs."

"Go." He put his hands on Arthur's shoulders and propelled him toward the door. Hal followed. "You too, child," the old man told Beatrice. He took her by the hand. The moment he touched her, a thousand images sprang into his mind: a grove of tall oaks... the incessant drone of chanting ... a circle of stones, impossibly high, suddenly ablaze with light from the first ray of morning...

He stared at her, his legs weak. "We have to hurry," he managed finally. He closed the door behind them and ran on silent feet with the girl up to the roof.

W
ithin moments the white
-robed man was inside the room. He tossed the meager contents of the drawers onto the floor, slashed open the pillows, checked the floorboards.

The cup was not there.

The concierge—or rather the diseased old sot that passed for a concierge in this flea trap—had said that one of them, the old man, was taking a shower, but there had been no one in the shower room.

Quickly the man raced to the top of the stairs and climbed up the fire ladder leading to the roof. It was empty. On the street below, he saw a battered Jeep drive off toward the north. In it were four foreigners—an old man, a young one, and a teenage boy and girl. Behind them ran an irate Moroccan, shouting and shaking his fist.

The man in the white robe blew out a puff of air in disgust. Finding them had been rather too much to hope for. Besides, he thought resignedly, it was probably for the best. Police were swarming over the area now. It was just as well they didn't find four fresh bodies in addition to that of the American ex-President.

Back in the abandoned hotel room, he removed the billowing white garment he was wearing and dressed in a nondescript brown shirt and trousers he had taped to his body beneath the burnoose. He peeled away the gray moustache and a small latex tip off the end of his nose.

The police were searching the area for a middle-aged Arab in white robes. Several people had seen him shoot the beggar with the girl. He took a quick glance in the mirror above the bureau to be sure all trace of the spirit gum was gone.

It was. No one would recognize him now.

No one ever did.

He had not expected to find them, really, not after what the concierge had told him. He had asked for the room where the beggar had gone with the girl. The concierge had told him it belonged to an American who was traveling with a boy. The boy had red hair.