Serpent of Moses

10



As Duckey set his phone on the seventeenth-century desk with the Boston-manufacture imprint that he had the luck to acquire from a little old lady at a garage sale in Des Moines, he pondered the advances in technology that made the procurement of multiple flight manifests a thing accomplished with a single phone call, rather than the arduous labor it had been when he was cutting his teeth at Langley. On one hand, he understood that the ability to do something like that signified a level of technological sophistication rightly lauded. On the other, well, it just seemed too easy.

Even just three years earlier, when he’d performed a similar service for Jack, the technology had not been as advanced as it was now. He’d had to make two phone calls and one fax. And even then he’d not felt as if he’d really accomplished anything. After all was done, he’d come to understand the importance of the role he’d played, but he hadn’t felt the fulfillment he thought one was supposed to feel. No wonder, then, that he felt less so as he pushed away from the desk and took a draw from a cigar he’d been nursing since dinner. He would get the manifests within the hour and, if one of them had Jack’s name on it, he’d call Esperanza with the news. Until then, there wasn’t a great deal for him to do.

His office adjoined the family room and from it he could hear that his wife had settled down to watch the evening news. Duckey removed the cigar from his mouth and ground it in an ashtray. When he entered the family room, Stephanie was curled up on the sofa, book in hand. She didn’t look up as he crossed the room and settled down next to her. A few moments passed before she placed a bookmark between the pages and set the book on the end table. As soon as her eyes moved to his, Duckey saw the sly smile in them—the one meant to inform him that she knew something was going on.

Duckey could muster only a weak smile in his defense.

“So are you going to tell me what’s got you so excited?” she asked, to which Duckey only returned a feigned puzzled look.

“Don’t give me that,” she said. “You’ve been bouncing off the walls since dinner.”

Duckey, who thought he had a pretty good handle on the events of the evening, none of which had him engaged in any sort of bouncing, nonetheless understood what his wife meant. Except that, by his reckoning, the energy she referred to had been building for quite a while, and the reason it was so noticeable tonight was because it had a focus. Even if that focus wasn’t a very exciting one.

“I’ve just been doing a small favor for a friend,” he said.

Stephanie took that in and parsed it. “My guess is it’s the sort of favor that requires a call or two to Langley?”

“Just one call,” he said. “And not even a long one.”

The question of how his wife would respond to his acknowledgment of having done “spy work,” as she called it, was an open question. After what had happened three years ago, when Duckey had been forced to call in more than a few favors, both during and after Jack’s jaunt around the globe, she’d let him know that she was not willing to spend her days wondering when someone her husband had ticked off would show up at their door. That had been one of the reasons Duckey had quit the Company to begin with.

“It was just a phone call,” he said.

“Just a phone call,” Stephanie repeated. “Well, who’s the friend?”

“Esperanza Habilla. Jack’s friend.”

“Can I assume that Esperanza calling means that Jack’s in some kind of trouble?”

Despite the fact that the former Evanston University archaeology professor had once turned their lives upside down, Duckey knew that Stephanie was fond of him.

“I really don’t know,” Duckey said and then proceeded to tell his wife what he knew, which wasn’t much. When he’d finished, Stephanie pursed her lips and nodded.

“How long until you get your lists from Langley?” she asked.

“Any time now.”

Stephanie nodded, drumming her fingers, and Duckey saw the same look on her face that he saw when his lawyer wife was thinking through a difficult legal concept. When she emerged from this processing she fixed her husband with a smile. “So what does your gut tell you?”

He snorted at the question. “My gut’s expanded way too much over the years to be trustworthy.”

“More of you to love,” she said, reaching across the couch and taking his hand.

Duckey gave it a squeeze but then he grew serious.

“I really don’t know if he’s in trouble,” he said. “But Esperanza thinks he is. And from everything I’ve heard about the woman, I’m willing to throw in with her.”

There was a long pause before Stephanie finally said, “Do what you can to help.” Then, at Duckey’s questioning look, she added, “You won’t be any good until you get this out of your system.”

Duckey laughed, then frowned as what his wife had said sunk in. “Wait a minute. Good at what?”

Stephanie was saved from answering when the phone Duckey had left in his office started to ring.



At some point during the night, Jack thought they had crossed into Tunisia. Going by his knowledge of the region, he knew they could not keep driving west without crossing the border at some point. The only question was whether his captor meant to continue through the narrow southern tip of the country or run straight through to Algeria. He had no way of answering that question without a way to intuit Martin Templeton’s end game. Because regardless of how calm Templeton appeared outwardly, there had to be some kind of plan in mind.

What Jack could not figure out was how he fit into all of it. He understood that Templeton might hold a grudge for Jack’s attempt to steal the artifact out from under him, but he didn’t think that had much to do with being dragged across northern Africa against his will. After all, Jack hadn’t succeeded and the prize was tucked into the back of the jeep with Templeton’s supplies. The fact that Templeton still had him secured in the jeep’s passenger seat told Jack there was something else going on.

For the hundredth time since Templeton had awakened him that morning and they’d started off again, Jack’s thoughts went to the long, slim bundle wedged between two bags in the space behind his and Templeton’s seats. Because of the way the ropes held him, he could only catch a glimpse of the bundle by turning his head, but doing so hurt his neck and so he contented himself with knowing it was back there.

Oddly enough, neither he nor Templeton had mentioned it. At first, Jack’s confinement in the village outside Al Bayda, followed by their flight from the murderous Egyptian, had stymied conversation. Now, though, it was almost all that occupied Jack’s thoughts—even more so than what might happen to him.

“I have to give credit where it’s due, Dr. Hawthorne,” Templeton said, breaking a silence an hour old. “You finding the Nehushtan is a good deal more impressive than my accomplishment. Would you care to tell me how you did it? Professional to professional?”

Momentarily taken aback that Templeton seemed to have intuited his thoughts, Jack didn’t answer right away. Instead, he returned his eyes to the poor excuse for a road over which the Englishman guided the jeep.

“I don’t make a habit of telling trade secrets to people who tie me up and drag me all over the desert and don’t even bother to let me shower once,” Jack returned.

Templeton tsked and shook his head. “Here I am trying to make nice and you’re hung up on the travel arrangements.”

“Since we both wound up in the same place, I can only assume we got there the same way,” Jack said, but Templeton’s head was shaking before Jack had finished.

“You’re the intrepid explorer who had to figure it out for himself,” Templeton said. “I had considerable help.”

Jack’s brow furrowed. His current circumstances were strange enough, but with each word the Englishman said, Jack could not help but make comparisons to the last time he chose to seek out a biblical relic. The way Templeton made veiled allusions, as well as the knowing smile he aimed at Jack—it all seemed too familiar.

“Whose help?”

“Let’s just say that someone did most of the footwork before I was brought on board,” he said. “My employer simply told me where to go and what to look for.”

Even knowing that Gordon Reese was dead, Jack could barely suppress a shudder when Templeton referred to his employer. However, he recognized the irrationality of that reaction and chose to focus on the fact that his captor was actually giving him information he might be able to use.

“So you’re some sort of mercenary archaeologist, then,” Jack said, understanding it would be taken as a barb and smiling when he saw it work in that fashion. “Let someone else do the work and then sweep in and take all the credit?”

“‘I have only seen farther because I have stood on the shoulders of giants,’” Templeton quoted, and Jack could not disagree with that.

“What do you plan to do with it?”

“I really don’t know.”

That answer didn’t surprise Jack. After all, the Englishman didn’t seem to know what to do with Jack either.

They rode in silence for a while, the desert passing beneath and around them, until Jack, giving in to the temptation to turn and look at the artifact, asked, “Do you have any idea what it is you have back there?”

Martin shrugged. “I’m sure I don’t know its history—its significance—as well as you, but yes, I know what it is.”

Jack nodded, comforted at least that the man knew enough to appreciate it.

“I wasn’t under the impression that you’ve done much work with biblical relics,” Templeton said. “And even those who have generally neglect this one.”

“Let’s just say that, despite what might appear on my résumé, I’ve looked for a relic or two in my day,” Jack said. Then with a wry smile he closed his eyes and didn’t elaborate.