Serpent of Moses

14



“I still do not understand why it made more sense for us to come here than it did to sit in my office and make phone calls,” Romero grumbled.

Espy had stopped listening to his complaints, although she didn’t begrudge him the need to voice them. All she’d done was to purchase a plane ticket that would take her from London to Milan. Romero, though, had been forced to reschedule a number of meetings that would have made him a great deal of money. Allowing him to air his grievances was the least she could do; otherwise he would have bottled them up only to see them come out at an inopportune time. However, after several hours of this, her patience was wearing thin. And she would have made the trip without him, for despite all his grousing it had been his decision to meet her in Italy.

“I’ve tried to tell you,” she said. “You can’t do something like this on the phone. You have to throw yourself into it, see the face of the person you’re talking to, get a feel for the streets.”

She gave her brother a sidelong glance as they walked down Via Brera in Milan’s city center. While she understood his irritation, there was a part of her that could not understand how anyone could be anything other than invigorated by the chance to walk through a city like Milan—a quintessentially European city with more to see and do than any one person could hope for. No matter where she looked, there was something new to see as they dodged cars racing down the narrow streets between tall, closely spaced buildings with ground-floor shops and apartments above, each with a balcony jutting out into space. Art shops were everywhere, and in those areas not already beset with parked cars and lines of motorbikes she saw outdoor markets that, had she had her way, she would have spent hours exploring.

She understood that she was a more experienced traveler than most and that a city like Milan could be difficult to absorb. Except that the man next to her, the sibling ten years her senior, had spent much of his youth crisscrossing the globe, visiting places she could scarcely imagine. Ironically much of that travel had been done in the company of the man they were in Milan to find. She voiced as much to Romero.

“Why do you think I rarely leave Caracas?” he responded. “In the time I spent traveling with Jack I think I aged twenty years.” He shook his head and made a face that suggested he’d remembered something unpleasant. “I have never prayed so fervently as I did on those occasions when we were very far from home and he got that look in his eye.” He glanced at Esperanza. “You know the look I mean?”

She nodded and her lip curled into a smile.

“When I saw that look, I stopped and prayed because I knew the day was likely not to end well.”

Esperanza didn’t say anything, even as her brother’s memories elicited a chuckle from him. In her history with Jack, she sometimes forgot that Romero’s preceded hers by years and that her brother was as attached to the man—and as vexed by him—as was she.

As she pondered this, they reached Via Fiori Oscuri and, beyond it, the large building that housed Brera Academy. From the outside it didn’t look like the venerable institution Espy had pictured, although that was due to the fact that the entire façade was draped in large dingy construction cloth. The building was apparently undergoing some kind of large-scale renovation.

However, once she and Romero passed beneath the archway, they were transported into another world. The massive courtyard had both a look and a feel so markedly different from the city beyond its walls that aside from the traffic noise, Espy could have believed she’d traveled to another place and time. In the center of the courtyard stood the signature piece of the academy: the massive Napoleon that Espy had only seen in photographs.

Glancing at her brother, she saw that the irritation he had carried with him was gone, replaced by the kind of appreciation that only a man educated in the arts could have for such a sculpture.

“And despite the many times I thought I was going to die, it was for times like this that I continued to travel with him,” Romero remarked.

They’d come to Brera for one reason and Espy knew how slim that reason was. The Brera Academy was one of the places she’d heard Jack mention—a place in which he had friends. Before they’d come, she’d made a few calls, locating a man whose relationship with the missing archaeologist went back several years. While he’d informed her that he hadn’t seen Jack in quite some time, she was hopeful that he would be able to help her shape her list of people and places that deserved her attention.

As if reading her thoughts, Romero said, “Remind me. You said you spoke with this man and that he has not seen Jack, correct?”

Esperanza did not answer her brother immediately. Instead, she started off across the courtyard, toward the entrance.

“We needed a place to start,” Espy said when Romero caught up with her. “If it turns out to be a dead end, then we cross it off the list.”

Romero let that go without a response, and Esperanza appreciated the gesture. Because more than most cities in the world, Milan was a playground for someone like Jack. Just going through the museums alone would take them a lot more time than she wanted to contemplate.

With a resigned sigh, she entered the building, Romero in tow.



There were ways in which Imolene knew he had closed much of the distance between himself and the men he pursued, but most of those ways were ones known only to himself—a feeling the hunter has but cannot explain. Templeton and Hawthorne had crossed into Tunisia, of that he was certain. He was equally certain they would have to head north, because at the point at which they had navigated the border crossing, little existed either west or south but desert. Even moderately equipped, the barren landscape was a formidable adversary. In Imolene’s estimation, they would have pointed the jeep in the direction of Raballah. And so he had done the same.

He sent the Chevy truck over the sand and rock as fast as the vehicle would carry him. The Yugo, while having lasted much longer than the Egyptian had anticipated, had threatened to gasp its last a few kilometers east of the border. Anticipating the Yugo’s death throes, Imolene had traded it for the truck, although the deal had cost him a hundred dinars.

What also caused Imolene to push the speed of the new vehicle was that he’d spoken again with his employers, and they had expressed extreme displeasure with him when he’d told them of the loss of the artifact. When he’d accepted the job, he was well aware it was not without risk. In some ways, working for the Israelis was more dangerous than performing the same tasks for other neighboring governments—not because those other governments hesitated to punish failure but because they lacked the efficiency of the Israelis to do so. Imolene harbored no doubts about his life being forfeited if he failed to recover what his employers had hired him to retrieve.

For the hundredth time he wondered where Templeton was going. While he carried the American with him, it was difficult—if not impossible—for him to put any real distance between himself and Imolene, whom he would understand to be in pursuit. Whatever reason the Englishman had for keeping Hawthorne alive had to be a compelling one; it was certainly one for which Imolene was thankful.

He reached for the water bottle on the seat next to him and drained it, the lack of air-conditioning in the Chevy a hindrance he could overcome with proper hydration. The desert stretched long before him, yet he had several more bottles of water, which like the urgency simmering below the surface and fueling his pursuit, was more than enough to see him through.



There were some skills Duckey supposed he would never lose, regardless of how much time had passed since his retirement from the CIA. Such as the skill of recognizing when he was being watched. On an airplane—even a small domestic flight like the Buraq Air bird that ferried him from Tripoli to La Abraq—it could be difficult to determine when others’ eyes were studying him and so Duckey had to rely on his gut. And his gut told him that the man three rows behind him, wearing an expensive suit and pretending to be napping, was a tail.

The big question was why someone would want to have him followed. The obvious second question was who? For the why, Duckey had a guess, and if he was right it meant he wasn’t as on top of his game as he thought he was. He should have realized that, regardless of how long it had been since he’d retired, his name would raise a red flag in customs. And with the political unrest that had consumed most of the country just the year before, he suspected the Libyans were being even more careful about whom they allowed to roam freely around their country.

For that, he didn’t blame them. With rumors that the CIA had been involved in fomenting much of the unrest, Duckey found himself surprised that they’d allowed him in the country at all. True, his file said he was retired, but the Libyans wouldn’t buy that.

Duckey suspected he would be picked up by another tail—maybe more—as soon as he stepped off the plane and hoped he’d be able to spot them as effortlessly as he’d picked up the one sitting not far behind him. Beyond that, he suspected there wasn’t much he could do about it—although he couldn’t help but wonder what his shadows would make of the investigation Duckey had come to their country to perform. That elicited a smile as Duckey thought of how Jack could vex even the Libyan intelligence establishment.

Thirty minutes later the wheels were on the ground and Duckey grabbed his bag from the overhead compartment and exited. Because the Buraq was a domestic flight, he wasn’t held up in customs. Within minutes of landing he stepped out into a comfortable day, the temperature around sixty degrees. As he hailed a cab, he scanned the area for either his original agent or the man’s replacement but saw no one who stood out, which didn’t necessarily mean anything.

The cab covered the ten kilometers from La Abraq to Al Bayda in good time, despite the heavy traffic, and as the ancient city rose up before him the thought of being followed drifted from his mind.

Duckey’s service had taken him to a great many parts of the world, but he’d spent the bulk of it in eastern Europe, which meant a sprawling north African city still made him feel as if he were a tourist. And in stepping onto the streets of a city like Al Bayda, a visitor often found himself unsure of his footing, unable to get a feel for the ebb and flow of the culture. On one corner he saw a collection of buildings as modern as any he might see in the States—a coffee shop, movie theater, high-end clothing stores. At the next corner he saw a line of rickety market stalls, with merchants offering fruit, linens, even live animals, all within a few blocks of a thriving business district.

They entered Al Bayda on Msah, the main road that bisected the city, the driver slowing as traffic funneled in from Aldayn and Kufra. Duckey’s destination was in the modern part of Al Bayda, the part that had been hit hard by the unrest the previous year. The police station had been burned to the ground; he remembered watching on television the protesters dancing and cheering as the fires consumed the symbol of an oppressive regime.

When the cab driver pulled off Msah onto a side street, Duckey looked at the buildings surrounding the car, taking in the enormity of the reconstruction that had brought one of the main administrative parts of the city back from the dead. The cab pulled to a stop in front of a new-looking building, the razed police station restored.

Duckey paid the man and stepped out with his bag, half considering asking the driver to wait but suspecting he would quickly be able to locate a ride in this part of the city. If not, the system of small buses that cut the city into sections would take him wherever he needed to go. He glanced at his watch and hoped he’d have time to do what he needed to given how late in the day it was.

Entering the police station, he stepped into an air-conditioned lobby that included a reception window and a security line. He proceeded to the window.

“Do you speak English?” he asked after he’d gotten the attention of the man behind the glass.

When the clerk raised his eyes, he gave Duckey a once-over, conveying annoyance for what Duckey could only presume was due to his being addressed in a language other than Arabic or Greek. Still, the man managed something like a smile. “Can I help you?”

“I need to speak to someone about a car you towed a week ago,” Duckey said.

The clerk said, “Second floor, room 212,” then gestured to the security checkpoint.

Duckey made it through the gauntlet unscathed and then, avoiding the elevator at the far end of the lobby, headed for the stairs.

The second floor was no busier than the first, leading Duckey to wonder if the building had another entrance through which the majority of police traffic entered and exited. He found room 212 with little difficulty. The door opened into a waiting room with a bare concrete floor and two walls lined with plastic chairs. After checking in at the counter, Duckey took a seat with six others there before him.

An hour later Duckey was called up to the counter, where a bored-looking young man with an MP3 player and headphones over his ears asked him what he wanted in passable English.

“You towed a car a week ago,” Duckey said. “Ford Taurus. An Alamo rental. Can you tell me where you found the car and if you know what might have happened to the person driving it?”

“Was it your car?”

“No, a friend of mine rented it.”

The young man shrugged. “Then I cannot help you. Check with the rental company.”

Frustrated, Duckey decided to change his tack. “Look. I’m not interested in the car. I’m trying to find my friend.”

The Libyan clerk studied Duckey for several seconds before he said, “We tow dozens of cars every week. I can’t remember them all.”

Duckey knew where this was going. He reached into his pocket and slid his second twenty-dinar note of the day across the counter. The clerk stared at it for what seemed a long while without moving; then with the same gesture and facial expression Duckey had witnessed on the face of the Alamo employee, the man grabbed it and quickly pocketed it.

“Let me see what I can find out,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later Duckey stepped out of the building, armed with a street address and the name of a man who might have been the last person to see Jack Hawthorne before he disappeared.