Serpent of Moses

21



As Duckey mounted the single flight of narrow wooden steps to his room, he tried to think of a time when he felt wearier than he did at that moment and found himself hard-pressed to do so. Waking up that morning, he’d followed a few more leads, but after nothing panned out he’d caught a cab to the Al Bayda university district and had spent much of the afternoon questioning students about things to see and do in and around the city—especially those things that might require a motorbike to reach. He’d reasoned that, regardless of nationality, college students were adventurous compared to most other demographic groups. Too, they would be plugged in to their surroundings; they could narrow Duckey’s search quicker than he could ever hope to accomplish on his own.

The jury was still out on whether his stroll around campus had been an efficient use of time. The students he’d talked with had given him a great deal of information, though he had to parse all of it against what he knew of Jack. He hoped, once he could think about things in the morning with a clearer head, he could make a connection worth investigating.

His room was at the end of a dark hallway, and while it wasn’t the Ritz, the bed was large and comfortable. Once inside, he dropped onto the bed with a grunt, removed his shoes, and leaned back against the headboard to relax a little. A cigar and a scotch would have helped him achieve that state, but on his side of the closed door was a sign in Arabic that he didn’t have to be able to read to know that it warned him against lighting up on the premises. The picture of a cigarette with a red X through it transcended all difficulties with the written word. As far as the scotch, Libya was a dry country, and Duckey had no interest in getting dragged off to a Libyan prison by the country’s version of Eliot Ness.

Even so, it felt good to lie down and allow the strain of the day to slide away. Before allowing himself to drift off, however, he decided to discharge one last duty and then call it a night. Fishing his phone from his pocket, he found Espy’s number and dialed. When he brought the phone to his ear, he didn’t hear the customary sounds his phone made when attempting to make the connection. He pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the display, surprised to see that he was in a dead zone with not even the hint of a bar to offer encouragement.

He hadn’t used the phone at all that day, except to check the time, and so he didn’t know if the lack of a signal was common to Al Bayda or just his hotel room. Regardless, his legs ached at the thought of heading out into the street to try to get a signal. Instead, he set the phone on the nightstand and reached for the room phone—a canary-yellow rotary phone, something he hadn’t seen in over a decade.

While spinning the dial for the last in a long series of digits, he chose not to think about how much the call would cost him.

“Hello . . . ?”

“Esperanza, it’s me—Duckey.”

“I tried to call you a few minutes ago,” she said, and what struck Duckey was how good it was to hear her voice, which he thought strange considering he’d never met the woman.

“I’m in my hotel room and it looks like I can’t get cell service here.”

“You found the one hotel in Tripoli without cell service?”

“Nope. I found the only hotel in Al Bayda without service,” he corrected.

“Al Bayda?”

Duckey explained the interview with the Alamo clerk that had resulted in an abbreviated stay in the Libyan capital, then gave an overview of what he’d found out since arriving in Al Bayda—an update truncated by his having not learned as much as he’d hoped by now.

As he spoke, he sensed an impatient energy coming from the other end of the line—even with the high level of static coming through an old rotary phone in a cheap hotel in an African city. Consequently, when he finished and Espy jumped in without a pause, he was neither surprised nor offended that his efforts had been summarily glossed over.

“I know what he’s looking for,” she said with obvious triumph.

“Come again?”

“I know why Jack went to Libya. I know what he was going to sell to Sturdivant.”

Throughout Espy’s pronouncement her voice grew louder, and Duckey noticed how the excitement brought out the Spanish flavor in her English. He pulled the phone away from his ear, only returning it when he felt that doing so would not burst his eardrum.

It occurred to him then that his immediate reaction to the news wasn’t what he would have expected. Of course there was a level of pleasure at hearing the news, but Duckey also recognized a small amount of disappointment—envy, perhaps, that Esperanza and her brother had accomplished a good deal more than he had.

“Don’t worry,” Espy said. “From what I can tell, at least a portion of the staff is in Libya—near Al Bayda, in fact—which makes you our man on the ground now.”

“The staff?”

“That’s what he’s after,” Espy said. “He was looking for a staff mentioned in the Bible. It’s called the Nehushtan.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Didn’t your parents take you to Sunday school?”

“They didn’t serve Bloody Marys in church,” Duckey said.

“A shame,” she said. “Well, the Nehushtan was a pole with a brass snake on it. According to the Bible, Moses made it to heal people of bites from a plague of snakes God sent them.”

Duckey was well aware that the abbreviated account Espy had just provided was likely leaving out crucial details—things that might have made the whole thing sound much less absurd.

“Let’s back up a minute,” he said. “God sent snakes to kill people and then changed his mind. But instead of just taking the snakes away, he has someone construct a snake totem to heal the people from snakebites?”

“That’s right,” Espy said, though her answer was slow in coming.

“Never mind the fact that while Moses—or his smithy—spent however many hours it took to make this fake snake, the real ones kept slithering around and biting people?”

“I suppose, yes . . .”

“Then there’s the fact that one of God’s biggest commandments—from what I remember, it was something he felt pretty strongly about—was that the Israelites weren’t supposed to make any idols. But then he tells them to put a snake on a pole, have people pray to it, and voilà!”

“I don’t think they actually prayed to it,” Espy said, and yet Duckey’s questions had taken the confidence from her voice.

Duckey blew out a deep breath, his exasperation all theater. “I guess it has to be true. I don’t think you can make stuff like that up.”

The silence that greeted him was one he couldn’t qualify. And as it dragged on, he began to wonder if Espy had taken genuine offense at his irreverence. He was about to issue a mild mea culpa when she responded.

“It’s amazing how much you sound like Jack,” she said.

“Completely uncalled for,” Duckey said, imagining the smile on Espy’s face.

“I’m not afraid to pull out the big guns if you’re going to get feisty with me,” she warned.

“Point taken. Now, where were we?”

“We were in Libya, where it seems there’s a biblical artifact waiting to be discovered.”

“A brass snake pole,” Duckey said.

“A brass snake pole,” she agreed.

Duckey nodded to himself. “So Jack finds a clue in Milan that leads him to Al Bayda, Libya, and after he gets here, he just disappears?”

“No one just disappears, Duckey.”

“Normally I’d agree with you. But this is Jack we’re talking about. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

Espy had to chuckle at that.

“Haven’t you and Jack been down this road before? A few years ago, the two of you went after a biblical artifact and it almost got you killed.”

“Apples to oranges,” Espy said. “For one thing, I don’t know of any super secret organization that would kill to keep the Nehushtan from being discovered.”

“If there was a super secret organization, you probably wouldn’t know about it,” he reminded her.

“Another difference,” she went on, ignoring him, “is that I’m not with him this time.”

Both were valid points, and Duckey wondered if the years spent in higher education had simply left him soft. Before he’d retired, he wouldn’t have balked at a dangerous assignment. Of course the difference was that Jack was his friend and was the one in harm’s way.

“So what now?” he asked.

“It’s up to you,” Espy said. “We’ve confirmed the reason Jack went to Libya. Now you have to figure out what happened after he got there—if he even made it to Cyrene.”

“How did we get from Al Bayda to Cyrene?”

Espy explained and Duckey stayed silent as she did so. He learned about the Greek ruins near the city he was in, and about the potential second piece of the staff that might be somewhere else entirely.

“You couldn’t make this complicated?” Duckey asked.

Ignoring the comment, Espy said, “Romero and I are on our way. I’ll call you when we reach Tripoli.”

“You’re not going to this other place, what did you call it? Cyme?”

“We thought about it, but this is about finding Jack, not hunting for treasure.”

Up to now, Duckey had been twirling the phone cord while he talked with Espy. He saw the phone beginning to slide across the table. Releasing the cord, he watched as it unraveled between the table and the bed on which he sat. When the cord stopped unwinding, he leaned toward the table to push the phone back. It was from that position that he saw the small wire protruding from beneath it.

The instant he saw it, he froze. Then, after taking a short time to consider the implications of that one wire, he straightened and, with no change in the tone of his voice, exchanged a few parting pleasantries with Espy before ending the call. When he heard a dial tone, he used his finger to depress the cradle sensor. Setting the handset on his lap, he used his free hand to retrieve the TV remote control from the table, placing it across the cradle so he could remove his hand without reengaging the dial tone. That done, he picked up the handset and studied the mouthpiece.

As he peered through the holes, he saw nothing, so he unscrewed the cap, noticing it came apart a bit easier than one on a phone that old should have. When the cap came off, he didn’t have to rely on his Company training to see the small chip-like thing that shouldn’t have been there. After a snort of irritation, he set the partially dismantled handset on the table.

So they were bugging his calls. It made him wonder about the dead spot—if perhaps the Libyans were using some kind of dampening technology to kill the signal to his cellphone. Anyone could buy one online. For while the range wasn’t wide, it was effective for a room the size of Duckey’s.

He rose from the bed and walked over to the window, looking down at the street that ran in front of the hotel. The sun had long since disappeared, but he could see well enough to spot three cars parked across from the hotel. One was an old Dodge Caravan and he ignored that. The other two, though, were possibles. One was a dark sedan that he hadn’t remembered seeing there when he’d returned to his hotel; the other was a decade-old SUV with tinted windows. His gut told him there were men in both, despite the fact that their assigning multiple agents to keep an eye on a middle-aged retired spy—who was only in the country to look for a friend—seemed like overkill.

He ran a hand through his hair, allowed the curtain to fall back into place, and walked back to the bed. What concerned him more than the agents parked out front was that they’d heard his call with Espy in its entirety. But even as he thought about it, he wondered what they would make of it. It would have been clear to anyone listening that the mission Duckey was on had nothing to do with the American government. Still, when it came to international politics, there was no way of telling how the Libyans would react. For all Duckey knew, they might assume the whole conversation was encoded and Duckey had passed crucial information to other agents.

Depending on the type and sensitivity of their equipment, they might have figured out that Duckey had discovered their bug. With that in mind, he returned to the curtain to see if he could spot any movement. Whether it was the fact that he’d looked out the window twice in the last few minutes or that he was right and they’d picked up on his tampering with the surveillance equipment, he saw the door of the dark sedan open.

The man who stepped out was wearing dark pants and a white shirt. No coat and no tie, as would have been standard CIA dress code. Yet even in the dim lighting, Duckey picked up on the sense of authority the man gave off.

Then the doors of the SUV opened, and two men, both looking like the one who’d exited the sedan, joined the first man. Together the trio crossed the street, heading for the hotel.

Duckey stood frozen for as long as it took for his dormant training to kick in. Hurrying toward the foot of the bed, he grabbed his suitcase, thankful he hadn’t unpacked anything, and then moved to the door. Once in the hallway, he paused and looked toward the steps leading down to what passed for a lobby but knew he wouldn’t make it down before the agents stepped into the hotel. To his right was the fire exit, with the large, boxy sensor attached to the release, but then Duckey saw the cut wires sticking out from the bottom of the box and guessed the door hadn’t been used for its intended purpose in a long while.

He pushed on the release, hoping he wasn’t wrong about the door alarm and hearing the sounds of footsteps on the stairs behind him. The door opened with only a slight creak. Once in the stairwell, Duckey held the door handle as it closed, helping it to shut quietly.

He rushed down the single flight of stairs, his suitcase thumping against his knee. At the bottom was a small vestibule. He ran through it, pushed open the metal door leading outside. Stepping into an alley, Duckey stopped and took stock of his surroundings. The alley was empty, but the only way out led to the street where the sedan and SUV were parked. And he had no idea if other men had stayed behind and were waiting in the vehicles.

Still, he had no other choice. Sticking close to the wall of the hotel, he walked toward the street, slowing as he neared. Peering around the corner of the building, he saw the sedan and SUV, finding the vehicles unmoved. Because the vehicles’ windows were tinted, he couldn’t see if anyone had been left behind. Before stepping out onto the sidewalk, he took a half dozen steps back, then strode forward, giving the air of a man with every right to be walking out of a dead-end alley. Heading away from the parked cars, he resisted the urge to look behind him. He also avoided making the first left but instead proceeded through the intersection along with a few other pedestrians.

Only when he’d made it to the other side and had reclaimed the sidewalk did be begin to feel as if he’d gotten away cleanly, and he kept that feeling for as long as it took him to reach the next intersection. There, as he began making the turn that would take him out of sight, he chanced the glance he’d avoided earlier.

The sedan had pulled away from the curb and was passing through the first intersection, and although it wasn’t traveling at an excessive speed, Duckey’s gut told him they were on to him. He quickly disappeared around a corner, hoping that he was wrong. Once around the corner, he cast his eyes about for somewhere to go, someplace he could slip into and get off the street. The first thing he saw that looked promising was a block away. Behind him, he heard the sedan round the corner, its tires squealing on the pavement, removing any doubt that they’d seen him.

Duckey took off in a run. He heard the revving of an engine close behind him. Pushing himself harder, he tried to ignore the fact that his lungs felt as if they might burst. Then he heard the loud screech of brakes and cringed against the sensation of metal on flesh that he knew was coming. Except that the blow never came. When he looked back, he saw that the dark sedan had barely missed a truck that had lumbered by from the other direction.

The near-accident bought him the time he needed, and a few steps later he reached a retail establishment that he saw was a cellular-phone store. He swung open the door and stepped in as quickly as he could. He didn’t know if the agents behind him could have seen him enter with the obstacle of the truck.

As he looked around, he was glad to see there were other customers, which meant the one clerk on duty was too busy to do more than nod at him. Duckey moved toward a wall display of phones, searching for a back exit and finding one in a far corner of the store. That done, he turned so he could keep an eye on the street while not completely giving up on the ruse of considering a new phone.

It felt as if a long time had passed as he stood there, occasionally reaching for a phone and pretending to test some of its features. When he was on his fourth phone, Duckey was beginning to think that maybe he’d gotten away with it. He was about to set the phone back on the shelf when he saw the dark sedan come to a stop in front of the store.

Feeling a fresh rush of adrenaline, Duckey put the phone back and started for the rear exit, heading toward the sales counter, where the clerk was still busy with a customer. The clerk paid Duckey no notice until he saw the American pass by the counter. He called out something in Arabic that Duckey couldn’t translate on the fly. Duckey ignored him and pushed through the door, emerging in an open space that looked as if it served as both warehouse and break room.

He ran by a folding table and some metal shelves and in another few strides he’d reached the rear exit. As he pushed open the door, he couldn’t help but feel as if his entire escape attempt had been a series of door openings—as if, were he only to pick the right door, he would be home free. However, when he stepped through the newest door choice and into the sunlight, the blur of a man’s fist accelerating toward his face told Duckey that he’d picked the wrong one.

Although the blow caught him by surprise, exceptional reflexes allowed him to turn his head a few inches before impact, which meant that the man’s fist caught him in the cheek rather than flush on his nose. Even so, the pain was stunning and it was all that Duckey could do to keep his feet under him. But the ex-CIA agent was no stranger to a good fight, even if it had been a while since he’d had the opportunity to test his skills.

Forcing the stars away, Duckey raised his arm to block a second punch. Using his assailant’s momentum against him, he sent the Libyan into the wall. Duckey then initiated a series of kidney punches until the Libyan, in an effort at self-preservation, pulled away and moved along the wall, trying to get out of reach of Duckey’s large fists.

The American was not about to let his attacker off that easy, so he followed him. When he’d closed the distance, the other man delivered an elbow to Duckey’s midsection that, despite the American’s size and experience, took him to a knee—which meant he was unprepared when the Libyan agent used the same elbow to catch the nose Duckey had tried to protect at the outset.

Things went black for a while—how long, Duckey didn’t know—but when he came to, he was on his back and the Libyan was readying to deliver a kick that would have broken a few of Duckey’s ribs. As the man pulled his foot back, Duckey rolled into it, catching the kick before it could gain momentum. He pulled the agent to the ground. In a close quarters fight with a much smaller man, Duckey was in his element, pulling himself on top of him and delivering a series of brutal punches meant to end things before they escalated any further.

In seconds, the Libyan had stopped moving, and Duckey, after making sure he wouldn’t come to too quickly, straightened and tried to catch his breath. Except that he knew there were more of them, likely in the store behind him, ready to step out of the back door at any moment. And were those men to see what the American had done to one of their own, Duckey doubted they would bring him in intact.

With that in mind, he ran his hands over the unconscious man’s pockets, pulling out his wallet, phone, and a gun. Duckey took the first two without question, if for no other reason than to obtain information about the men who were after him. The gun, though, gave him pause. Because of his former profession, Duckey had used his share of firearms, and had taken a few lives in the process. Consequently, the feel of the gun in his hand was familiar; he could have slipped it into his pocket with ease.

Yet the fact that his current job—the one he practiced when he wasn’t hopping around the globe in search of a lost friend—was of the genteel variety gave him pause about returning to something he thought he’d left behind. What helped him make up his mind was that he was woefully short on resources. And there were men after him who most likely had the same type of weapon as the unconscious man, and they wouldn’t hesitate to use them.

Duckey pushed himself to his feet and slipped the wallet, phone, and gun into his pockets. Then he disappeared into the crowded city.