Serpent of Moses

22



Once again, Jack found himself waiting. He’d woken up in his friend’s house on the outskirts of a Tunisian town, every muscle in his body hurting and no way to contact anyone without giving away his position to a government with an array of agents at their disposal who’d like nothing more than to hunt him down and kill him. He’d spent the morning in Medenine, feeling relatively secure surrounded by Marwen’s allies. The Tunisian had assured him that no one would get into or out of their community without him knowing. Jack was grateful for his friend’s help and knew that, for the moment at least, his best course was to stay put.

He had rid himself of Imolene and Templeton, he seemed to have temporarily deterred the Israelis, and so far he’d avoided bringing danger to his friends. The problem was that he couldn’t stay in Marwen’s home forever. And when he left, there was no way to know what might happen. Of one thing he was certain: Marwen would do what he could to facilitate Jack’s flight from the country, even if that meant using less than legal channels to secure that exit. Marwen wasn’t a well-connected man—he was but a simple trader—yet he knew enough of the right people to pull some strings that would help his American friend.

As Jack waited, he thought of Templeton. It wasn’t until he’d sent the man on his way, when he’d begun to feel some measure of safety within the walls of Marwen’s home, that he could consider what the Englishman had told him. Of all the things that had happened in Australia those years ago, the one he most tried to forget was what happened in the home of James Winfield. In one evening he’d lost a man who meant almost as much to him as had his father, and he’d been forced to kill two men. One of those men was the brother of Martin Templeton. It seemed the man had spent significant time and effort trying to uncover what really happened that night, only to be stymied by the Australian government. He’d only been certain of one thing, and that was that Jack was involved. Then fate went and dropped Jack right into his lap. It made Jack wonder what would have happened had he decided not to search for the Nehushtan. If he and Templeton had never crossed paths, would the Englishman have eventually come looking for him?

As he pondered this, Marwen returned from wherever he’d gone earlier that morning, leaving Jack to entertain himself for a few hours. He wasn’t long in the room before he picked up on Jack’s mood, though he didn’t know what had prompted it. He did, however, have a remedy. From a coat pocket, the Tunisian produced two cigars, offering one of them to his guest.

Jack smiled. “Thanks. Very kind of you.”

“Think nothing of it,” Marwen said, taking a seat next to Jack.

Neither man said a word as the cigars were clipped, lit, and savored. Some minutes later, Marwen cleared his throat.

“I hope you will forgive a curious old man,” he said, “but I took a look at the thing you have brought into my home.”

Jack used his cigar to wave off the apology. “I wouldn’t have expected otherwise.”

“Is it . . . ?”

Jack nodded. “It is.”

Marwen released a low whistle.

Jack knew that at one time, Romero had done business with the man and that such business had involved items that had passed through Romero’s shop. He knew that their history went back a long way, which meant he could trust Marwen with the knowledge that he had a priceless biblical artifact in his possession.

“I had wondered what sort of treasure is worth the danger in which you find yourself, and now I see.”

Marwen’s thoughts mirrored Jack’s own, which reminded him that he was still not out of that danger.

“So what will you do now?” the Tunisian asked, reading Jack’s expression.

“Not sure,” Jack admitted. “Normally I’d call someone who could give me a hand—either a friend or maybe even the embassy.”

“But your friends’ phones will be monitored,” Marwen said. “As for the embassy—”

“They might be reluctant to assist an American citizen attempting to smuggle an artifact out of the country,” Jack interrupted.

“Yes.”

“Technically I didn’t even find it in Tunisia, so I think the smuggling part is already done.”

“Nevertheless, I do not think your embassy would care to split those hairs.”

Jack was certain that what Marwen said was true. They were the reasons he hadn’t found the nearest police station and marched in and told them what was going on. Because doing so would mean having to give up the artifact. He understood that the thing hobbled him, that refusing to divest himself of it meant limiting his options. But until all his other choices were taken from him, he would not be giving it up.

“What made you think it had not been destroyed?” Marwen asked.

“You’re referring to Hezekiah,” Jack said, to which the Tunisian responded with a nod.

“I am not as versed in biblical history as I am sure you are,” Marwen said, “but I distinctly remember reading about how he had the thing destroyed so that the people would not worship it.”

Jack couldn’t speak to that part of the story as much as he might have liked. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was only able to track it back to about 200 AD. Before that, there’s no record at all. At least none that I could find.”

Marwen thought about that as he took a long pull on his cigar.

“But what made you begin looking for it in the first place?” he asked. “If the Bible says it was destroyed, why search for it?”

It was a question Jack would have been happy leaving unanswered, because to tell the truth meant admitting to dumb luck—a commodity with which he was intimately familiar. Giving Marwen the answer he wanted meant telling him that he’d been searching for something else entirely and that only the accidental reading of the wrong book—he’d reached for a different tome and hadn’t realized he’d grabbed the wrong one—had set him on the Nehushtan’s path.

“Let’s just say that sometimes archaeology involves being open to opportunities when they present themselves,” he said.

Marwen fixed him with a look that told the American he knew obfuscation when he saw it, but he let it pass—a gesture that Jack was grateful for.

“I can get you a car,” Marwen said. “Or I can arrange transport anywhere you wish. There are several towns much larger than Medenine that would offer you the opportunity to leave the country. You could likely purchase transport out in either Gabès or Shkira, although I would recommend Sfax. It’s larger. And I have friends in the shipping industry.”

The thought of being packed up in a box and shipped somewhere made Jack smile, until he wondered if that was so far from the truth of his situation. Once again he lamented his inability to call someone like Duckey, who would have the whole thing figured out for him within an hour. Even talking with Romero or Espy would have been helpful, if only to improve his mood.

As he thought of Espy, he couldn’t help wondering what she’d done once he missed his flight to Caracas. If he were Espy, he knew what he would do: nothing. Jack knew that his years of being unable to keep a schedule, of eschewing the appearance of permanence, and in all other ways avoiding responsibility had left him in a position in which he could have probably gone missing for a month without anyone noticing.

On most days he would have found a thought like that amusing. At the moment, though, as he thought of how far away he was from Espy—in a relationship sense as well as in physical proximity—he found his mood growing even darker. For quite a while he’d known that she was dissatisfied with what he’d offered her. And she had every right to be, considering what they’d gone through together. He’d even suspected that she was coming close to ending things.

Had someone said that to him only a week ago, he would have returned with some flippant response, some statement filled with bravado. Now, as he sat in his friend’s house in Tunisia, he felt completely different—about everything.

He missed her greatly. He only hoped he would get the opportunity to let her know.



The real problem, as Duckey saw it, was trying to hide in a city where he stuck out like a sore thumb.

He’d spent the night in an Al Bayda hotel several blocks away from the one he’d run from and had exhausted a good portion of his cash to secure the room. He could not chance using a credit card, knowing that, even though the domestic surveillance infrastructure in the country was woefully behind compared to the technology and tactics employed by his own government, it would not take them long to track his credit card use. They would have been at the door of his hotel before he’d finished brushing his teeth.

And so he’d paid in cash, said little, and slept in his clothes, and when he awoke the next morning, it had been with the understanding that the quality of his sleep had left something to be desired. With the sun rising enough for him to see the street, he slid the shade aside and watched for several minutes, looking for any car that passed more than once, or a parked vehicle that looked as if it didn’t belong. But he saw nothing out of place and decided to take a shower.

Since the hotel didn’t see the need to supply a private shower, Duckey padded down the hall and entered the communal bathroom, grateful that the shower area had been separated into stalls. He washed quickly and dried himself as best he could with a clean shirt. After getting dressed and brushing his teeth, he regarded himself in the mirror. A few days’ worth of stubble begged for a razor, but it occurred to him that the face on his passport was clean-shaven and the facial hair might make him harder to identify if one did not look too closely.

Accepting that as a possibility, Duckey left the razor untouched and headed back to his room. Once there, he repacked the few things he’d removed from his bag and then sat down to plan his next move.

His primary focus had to be in getting out of the country. Had the Libyan authorities detained him at the airport, he would have undergone a few hours of questioning before they put him on a plane back to the States. The fact that he’d made it into the country, and that he’d successfully avoided a team meant to bring him in—or worse—meant that things would not go as pleasantly were he to allow himself to be picked up. In his experience, there would be no demands made on his government; he would simply be detained and questioned, and then either imprisoned or killed. His wife would never know what had happened to him. Indeed, aside from some unverifiable information that might make its way through clandestine channels to the ears of Duckey’s former associates, he would simply disappear.

The prospect did not frighten him; he’d long ago come to grips with the idea of losing his life in the field, and of the CIA’s need for plausible deniability. However, having been out of that line of work for a long time, he’d dismissed the idea that it might still come to pass.

As he considered the events of the last few days—events that had left him virtually stranded in Africa, with the forces of a small but vicious intelligence agency after him—he couldn’t help thinking about Jack. His friend had always taken pleasure in vexing him, and were he to know the straits to which his disappearance had consigned Duckey, he had no doubt that Jack would be sporting a grin.

He couldn’t think in those terms without also thinking of his wife, Stephanie. She would be expecting his call. Duckey hadn’t been married while he worked for the Company; he’d spent far too much time in the field to even consider the possibility. It wasn’t until he’d left government service and taken up vocational residence at Evanston that he’d considered his romantic future in anything but a transitory light.

He never took a trip without checking in with her, and even with the time difference between Libya and North Carolina that made connecting with her a challenge, he knew she was waiting for him to call. Long ago, he and Stephanie had come to an agreement that whenever he found himself away from home, he’d call her when he retired for the evening. In this case, that meant she would be expecting to hear from him somewhere between five and eight o’clock eastern standard time. When she hadn’t, she would have called him. And the fact that he couldn’t take that call—couldn’t even turn his phone on—left him with a feeling of guilt he hadn’t experienced in a long while.

The Libyan government knew who he was; they had access to all his records the moment he entered the country. Consequently, while it was possible they had his cell number, they most certainly were tapping his home phone. Accepting a call from Stephanie meant giving away his location, which was something he was not prepared to do. At least not at the moment.

It was the same reason he couldn’t immediately call Esperanza. When he’d called her from the hotel, he had turned over her number to the Libyans. And that meant not only would her calls be monitored, her arrival in Tripoli would also be tracked. Considering these issues in the light of day helped him set his agenda—a list that, as he added items to it, grew considerably.

Pulling out his wallet, he saw that he had less than one hundred dinars and three American dollars—a paltry sum considering what he had to do.

After gathering his few belongings, Duckey did a sweep of the room to make certain he wasn’t leaving anything, then walked out the door. In the lobby, he asked the man at the desk for the locations of the nearest coffee shops and banks. Once the Libyan gave him the information, Duckey asked him for a few sheets of paper, sliding a couple of dinars across the desk.

Stepping outside, he took a few moments to scan the area for the same things he’d watched for from his room. He saw nothing suspicious and so started off toward what he determined to be the second nearest coffee shop, situated across the street from the third nearest bank. The selling point of both of these establishments was that, of all the coffee shops and banks mentioned, these were the ones situated closest to each other.

It took about five minutes before he reached Ben Arous, a well-traveled street that bisected Monastir and Msah. Duckey located the coffee shop in short order. Dodging the people who filled the sidewalks, Duckey reached the establishment and followed a pair of young women inside. The line moved quickly, and after parting with a bit more of his meager resources, he had a steaming cup of coffee and a table at which to drink it.

Thus situated, he pulled a pen from his pocket and arranged the paper on the table. He retrieved his phone and pressed the power button, his eyes finding the clock on the wall and noting the time. It was 7:42 and he guessed he had less than ten minutes.

When the phone powered up, he drilled down into his contacts list and began to transfer a selection of numbers to the paper as quickly as he could. Of the more than forty entries in the phone, he transcribed five and was in the process of committing the last one to paper even as he dialed one of them.

Esperanza picked up on the second ring.

“I don’t have much time,” he said. “So I just need you to listen. Your phone has been compromised so this is the last call you’ll receive from this number. Do you understand?”

It took a moment for Espy to process what he’d said, but when the gravity of Duckey’s voice hit her, she acknowledged her understanding.

“Don’t come to Libya,” Duckey said. “They’ll have tracked your identities through your phone records and you’ll never make it through customs.”

“Who—?” Espy started to ask, but Duckey cut her off.

“You and your brother need to either stay where you are or go investigate the other place we discussed. I’ll be in contact as soon as I can.” He looked up at the clock. 7:43. “Don’t call this number again.”

He hung up and was dialing another number before the clock had ticked over again. He knew how early it was back home and that Stephanie would be sleeping, but she answered on the second ring, sounding remarkably alert.

“You’re late,” she said, and while Duckey could hear the affection in her voice, it also held a hint of worry. He thought that appropriate, however, considering the hour he was calling.

“Steph, I need you to listen to me. Before I say anything else, I want you to know that I’m okay and I’ll be home as soon as I can, alright?”

“Okay,” she said, intuiting that it was important to Duckey that she give some sort of acknowledgment.

“I don’t have much time.” He glanced at the clock—7:45. “There’s something happening over here that’s going to require me to stop using this phone. So this is the last call you’re going to get from this number.”

As he said the words, as he weighed each one against the ticking of the clock, he felt a sick feeling building in his stomach.

“I understand,” she said, and Duckey could hear a quiver in her voice.

“That’s my girl,” he assured her, but that was all the encouragement he could spare. “As soon as we hang up, I want you to call the guy I used to play tennis with. Tell him where I am and that I could use some help. Got it?”

He wouldn’t share the name of his old boss with anyone who was listening and had to trust Stephanie to make the connection. And because of the roundabout way in which Duckey had made the request, she probably also understood that their call was being monitored.

“I’ll call him,” she promised.

“I’m sorry I can’t explain, Steph,” he said as he rose from the table, gathered his papers, and headed for the door, “but I’ll fill you in when I get back. And then we’ll have a good laugh over it.”

After telling her he loved her, Duckey ended the call. He left the coffee shop and crossed the street on his way to the bank. Reaching the ATM outside the bank, he pulled two credit cards from his wallet and took a cash advance on each. When he was finished, he felt a lot better about the condition of his wallet.

He looked at the clock on his phone—7:49.

Turning away from the ATM, he watched the cars passing by on Ben Arous. Seeing nothing promising, he started off again, heading toward Msah and continuing to scan the traffic as he walked. He held the phone in his hand, his thumb on the power button. Before long, he spotted what he was looking for.

As the pickup drew closer, Duckey moved his thumb away from the button, leaving the power on. Then, as the pickup drove past, its speed hindered by the traffic, Duckey tossed the phone into the back of the truck, where it landed among a stack of cement bags. He watched long enough to make sure the driver hadn’t seen the disposal, and then he went on his way.