Serpent of Moses

16



When he awoke, the light that had entered the home through the lone window in the front room was gone. A lamp burned on a small table in the corner and he could smell the odors of cooking, hear the sounds of people moving around the kitchen. It took him a few moments to realize that he’d been sleeping for hours. Rising, he winced at the tightness in his neck and then walked around the corner and into the kitchen area. The staff was where he’d left it, and he felt an anxiety he hadn’t realized he was holding begin to fade—a realization he felt guilty about considering the kindness of his hosts.

Both the man and the woman—Khamel and Nadia, Jack had learned—were in the room and both looked over as he entered, Khamel offering a warm smile and Nadia an expression that he couldn’t quite identify, except to know that it was different from the one she’d used on him that morning.

“We were beginning to think you would sleep through the night,” Khamel said, and Jack was grateful that the Arabic was coming back to him.

“I’m sorry for abusing your hospitality,” Jack answered. “I hadn’t meant to sleep that long.”

Khamel waved Jack’s apology away.

“A prophet brandishing the staff of Allah can sleep wherever and whenever he wishes,” the Tunisian said—a statement that earned the husband a frown from his wife.

Khamel chuckled beneath the glare, which told Jack the man did not believe what he had just said, which meant Jack did not have to disavow the moniker he’d just been granted.

Nadia brought over two cups of tea and motioned for Jack to partake, and so he joined Khamel at the table.

“So you and the others have made a decision, then?”

Khamel’s smile faded, but the mirth did not entirely flee his eyes.

“There was some discussion about whether you were a thief who deserves to be killed for carrying a holy item through the desert at night, or a man chosen by God to carry his standard through the wilderness without food or water, with only his hand to protect you.”

Jack considered the two extremes and was chagrined to realize he probably fit in the former category. Khamel’s smirk told Jack that he agreed.

“You have eaten our bread and drank our tea and so you are ours to protect,” Khamel said. “And regardless of your intentions, you do hold the staff of Allah and we must entrust that you have been given it for a reason.”

“Do you believe that?” Jack asked before he could stop himself.

At the question, Khamel’s face became a thing carved from stone. The look he leveled on the American was one that seemed to take in and measure everything about him, and all Jack could do was to sit beneath the scrutiny. After what seemed a long while, Khamel answered.

“I believe all things happen for a reason,” he said. “I believe that very strongly.” He let that hang there, perhaps to see if Jack had a response, but when Jack said nothing, Khamel continued, “But I also believe that Allah’s plans are such that it does not serve us to ponder their intricacies. Instead, we act on what we know or on what we feel to be true. We make our decisions and we trust that God will take them and make them work within the framework of the story he is writing.”

Jack thought that sounded as solid a worldview as he could remember hearing and he was grateful for it.

The two men lapsed into silence as they drank their tea and while Nadia prepared dinner. Only when Jack had drained the cup did Khamel speak again.

“Tell me,” he said. “How did you come into possession of it?”

He was looking at the staff and Jack looked over as well. He was certain it hadn’t been moved since the last of the elders had left several hours ago. When Jack looked back at Khamel, it was to find that he did not want to answer the question. To the Tunisian, reasonable and educated man that he appeared to be, the Nehushtan was something that validated the deep mysteries of a religion he’d been practicing since boyhood. Because of that, he wanted to preserve for Khamel the image of his God reaching down from the heavens to hand a relic to his chosen infidel rather than to tell him that he had found the staff through research and dumb luck. He was saved from having to make a decision, though, when the front door swung open.

The words that the newcomer said to Khamel were delivered too quickly for Jack to understand, but they had an immediate effect on Khamel, whose face darkened. His host glanced at Jack before responding to the other man. When he did answer, it was at a speed Jack could understand.

“Bring him,” he said.

Once the man had gone, Jack waited for Khamel to fill him in, yet the Tunisian seemed content to remain silent and so Jack took his cues from him. Consequently, when the door opened a few minutes later and Martin Templeton was pushed over the threshold, three armed men behind him, Jack had established an equanimity not easily upended.

It took a few moments for Templeton to find him in the room, and when he did, when the Englishman’s eyes flitted over him and then shifted back, the one thing Jack noticed was that the other man’s face was absent of surprise.

“Well played, Dr. Hawthorne,” Templeton said after a moment. “Well played, indeed.”



Esperanza was as tired as her brother, but there was no way she would give him the satisfaction of knowing it. Not after her repeated digs at how much he complained about walking through the city, telling him that his years spent selling pricey baubles to tourists had softened him. He’d bristled at that. But as he watched his sister navigating blocks upon blocks of Milan sidewalks without a pause, there was little he could say to refute the insults.

Truth be told, Espy’s feet hurt like they hadn’t in years and she was used to traversing the streets of Caracas—streets that rivaled those of San Francisco in their steepness. She’d been thankful for the times when the place they wanted to reach was sufficiently separated from the place they were to mandate a bus or cab ride.

They’d been at it for almost six hours, bouncing from one museum to another, as well as checking an art gallery, school, and antiquities dealership, and so far they’d come up with nothing. Their most promising stop had been their first, the evening before, when she and Romero had met with Dr. Joseph Hartman, professor of modern art at Brera. And Espy only considered that stop a success because Hartman at least knew Jack, even if he hadn’t seen nor heard from the missing archaeologist in years. At each of the other locations she couldn’t find anyone who knew his name, much less could explain why he might have gone missing.

She and Romero had agreed to call it a day and were looking for a place to get something to eat before heading back to the hotel when she decided to check one more place off her list. The sign above the door said Petrone’s Past Fashionables, and the only reason Espy wanted to stop there was because it was on the same street as their hotel. It was a poor reason to stop and yet she knew that Jack was a creature of spontaneity, which made her wonder if adding a bit of impulsiveness to the hunt for him was worth a try.

When Espy pushed open the door, sending a bell ringing above her, she fell in love with the place before she’d made it more than two steps in. The place had a charm to it, despite the haphazard arrangement of the merchandise. Before the door closed shut, the proprietor greeted them. He was short, wore dark pants and too large a shirt. He flashed them a smile that showed two missing teeth.

Espy liked him right away.

“How may I help you?” he asked in bad Spanish, likely picking the language from an assessment of the physical characteristics of Espy and her brother.

“You have a fine store,” Espy answered in flawless Italian, genuinely impressed by the quality and breadth of the merchandise she could see through all the clutter.

“You have a good eye.” His smile widened and he took a moment to run an appraiser’s eye over the pair. “You look like a book lover,” he said, reverting to Italian. “Can I interest you in a first-edition I Giochi Numerici? It has notes from Alberti in the margins.”

Esperanza offered a smile and shook her head. “What we’re really after is information. We’re looking for someone. There was a man—an American—who might have come in here a week or so ago.”

The diminutive shopkeeper adopted a puzzled look. Petrone’s Past Fashionables was located on one of Milan’s busiest streets, where tourists streamed in numbers that made an honest businessman salivate. To recall a single individual after several days was close to impossible.

“He’s a bit over six feet tall,” Espy went on. “Dark hair. Probably needed a shave and to have his clothes ironed.” Espy paused, glancing around the store in a gesture meant to take in the whole of the intriguing chaotic mess of the place. “And he would have loved a place like this.”

As she described Jack, she saw the proprietor’s features slide in a different direction, as if he was trying to make a connection between the description and a memory and partially succeeding. She exchanged a look with Romero, who didn’t speak Italian and so had only a vague idea of what was being discussed. When she returned her gaze to the man she could only presume was Petrone himself, she saw something that looked like distaste had joined the menagerie of other expressions.

“What was this gentleman’s name?” he asked, and if Espy hadn’t known better, she would have thought he had a name in mind.

“Jack Hawthorne,” she said.

“Do you know where he is?”

Espy noticed a vein beginning to throb in the man’s neck. She shook her head. “That’s why we’re here. We’re looking for him and were hoping he’d been here.”

Petrone’s response was a dry spit that might have struck the ground near Espy’s foot had there been anything to it.

“I guess that means he’s seen Jack?” Romero remarked.

Espy ignored him.

“I swear to you,” Petrone said. “If Hawthorne so much as steps one foot into my store, even with my money, I’ll kill him.” He spat again for emphasis.

Despite the vehement reaction of the shopkeeper, Espy couldn’t keep a slight smile from finding its way to her lips. Even though Petrone wanted to kill him, the man’s vitriol meant that Jack was alive. And knowing that half the people Jack met ended up wanting to kill him made her less concerned about Petrone’s threat than she might otherwise have been. After all, she’d watched more than one angry person level a firearm on him.

“Let me guess,” she said. “He owes you money.”

“He owes me a lot of money,” Petrone corrected. “He borrowed a book. He was supposed to bring it back in a few days, but I haven’t seen him since.”

He shook his head and ran a hand through his dark hair, releasing a chuckle.

“I should have known,” he said. “I loaned it to him because I knew him, but that’s why I should have known better.”

“How long have you known Jack?” Espy asked.

“Too long. At least ten years.”

Espy nodded. “So, what was the book he ‘borrowed’?”

Up until now, Espy was under the impression that the Italian viewed her as an ally—someone who could understand his anger against the man who’d deprived him of something of value, and probably not for the first time. Now she sensed something else in the pause before he responded.

“Who are you?” he finally said, ignoring her question about the book.

Espy moved deeper into the store, placed her hands on a glass countertop. Beneath the glass lay an assortment of rare and expensive items. The entire shop and its merchandise suggested that Petrone was not a man hung up on a single item’s expense, which meant his anger at Jack had less to do with the value of the book than it did the principle of the thing.

“My name’s Esperanza,” she said. “I’m a friend of Jack’s.” She turned away from the counter and aimed an apologetic smile at Petrone. “You won’t hold that against me, will you?”

“I might say a prayer for you,” Petrone said.

“Actually it’s Jack who’s in need of prayer. He’s missing.”

“Missing?”

“We think so, yes. The last time anyone saw him, he was boarding a plane for Libya. Before that, we know he was in Milan.” She locked eyes with the Italian and shrugged. “Who knows? You might be the last person he talked to before he disappeared.”

“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.