Serpent of Moses

9



Despite everything Jack had gone through over the last couple of days, a few stood out. One of them involved the different levels of feeling one could experience in one’s wrists. Since leaving the safe house in Libya, his hands had not been absent the rope that bound them. Early on, he’d convinced his captor to at least adjust the bonds so his hands were in front of him. Jack believed the main reason for Martin Templeton’s cooperation was so he wouldn’t have to help the archaeologist do all the things people had to do in order to navigate through the day. He suspected the first bathroom break was the tipping point.

Yet even with his hands in a more comfortable place, they were still bound with coarse rope. Jack had used the new position as an opportunity—or a series of small opportunities—to try and break the bonds. But he’d come to realize that, while Templeton didn’t appear to be the killer the Egyptian was, the man could tie a fantastic knot.

As Jack stared into the complete darkness, he contemplated the events of the past few days and was surprised to find himself feeling calm. In fact, the night was actually quite pleasant. They were camping without a tent, exposed to the elements, but the weather was such that they didn’t need to fear either rain or the cold. The end of Jack’s rope wound around the front seat of the jeep, with Templeton sending another rope around the vehicle’s front tire. Both lines had been tied in such a way that Jack could not reach the end of either with any hope of untying them. Yet Templeton had laid out a sleeping bag for Jack and had taken great pains to make sure his captive was comfortable.

And so, once again, Jack did what he was good at: he settled in and waited.

Nothing he’d experienced thus far could equal the events from a few years ago. After running through that gauntlet, he suspected there was little that could unsettle him. It helped of course that what he and Espy had gone through had clarified much for him—had helped him weigh things of true importance against things that were less so. He hated to reduce things to the metaphysical, but there it was.

Thinking about Esperanza served to distract him, to pull his thoughts from his present surroundings. He wondered what, if anything, she’d done when he failed to check in. He was, by his count, at least three days past the time when he should have concluded his business in London and then caught a plane back to Caracas. He couldn’t help the slight smile he wore at the thought that his multiple past failures at keeping a schedule could now come back to haunt him. Knowing Esperanza as he did, he thought there was just as much chance that she’d wash her hands of him completely as there was that she’d search for him. In truth, were he in her position, Jack thought it unlikely he’d search for himself.

Even as he thought these things, he found the smile still rooted.

“What has you in such good spirits?” Templeton asked.

His captor had rolled out his bag ten feet from Jack, a few feet past where Jack’s bonds would have let him advance.

“Just thinking about someone,” Jack said.

He saw Templeton nod. The man was on his back, hands laced behind his head, watching the stars as if they were poised to reveal some valuable truth to him. The Englishman didn’t say anything right away, and Jack, who had ceased asking questions that wouldn’t be answered, settled back and waited—either for sleep or a continuance of the conversation. After several moments, Templeton revealed his desire to extend the exchange.

“Who is she?”

“What makes you think she’s a she?” Jack said.

“Because when a man is tied to a jeep on the edge of an African desert, I doubt very much that he would be thinking about anything else.”

While Jack had to concede the point, he wasn’t about to give the Englishman more information than the man had shown himself willing to return.

“Help me out here, Martin,” Jack said. “Why are you doing this to me? I mean, if you want to hear me say I’m sorry for trying to snatch the artifact right out from under you, then I’ll say it. I was wrong for trying to take it.”

He tried to gauge if his words had any effect on Templeton, but the man’s expression had not changed.

“I don’t get it,” he said after a while. “You have what you want, and from what I can tell, the large man you knocked unconscious isn’t following you. So why do you need me?”

“I studied archaeology at Oxford,” Templeton said quietly.

“I taught a few classes there,” Jack remarked.

“I know. Right before Egypt—before your brother died.”

A few years ago that kind of statement would have done a number on Jack’s psyche. It was yet another testament to the strength granted by experience, as well as by the God Jack was now firmly convinced had orchestrated it all.

“Why am I here, Martin?”

The question was answered by silence, and after waiting for the Englishman to break it, Jack closed his eyes. He had just started to surrender to sleep when Templeton finally spoke.

“What happened in Australia?” he asked.

Jack couldn’t process the question right away, but it wasn’t because it was entirely unexpected. Rather, the query startled him because it felt as if Templeton was intruding on a dream Jack hadn’t shared with anyone. It was like the Englishman had invaded his thoughts.

“I’ve been in Australia on several occasions,” Jack said. “It’s a great country. Have you ever been to Bondi?”

Templeton smiled. “Three years ago you were teaching at Evanston University. A month later you’re arrested in Australia after a double murder.” Templeton took his eyes off the stars long enough to catch Jack’s eye. “Then all the charges are dropped and you’re gallivanting around the globe as if nothing happened.”

Jack absorbed that and, after a time, grunted an admission to the general accuracy of Templeton’s recounting of events.

“I wouldn’t say gallivanting.”

Templeton shrugged.

“Suddenly you were in a cave in Libya trying to steal something from me,” he said. “Call it whatever you want.”

“Fair enough,” Jack said.

“Do you know that the Australian government has a Freedom of Information Department that’s a lot like the American one?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Yes, well, they do. And do you know what I found when I submitted a request for the records involving your case?”

“That they were going to charge you an enormous processing fee?”

“That no such records exist.” Templeton let that hang there a moment before continuing. “It didn’t matter that I could show them news articles that talked about the killings. Or pictures of you in handcuffs. As far as the Australian government was concerned, you were never there.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe they’re just bad at keeping records? Besides, why should you care about what I do with my spare time?”

Jack was growing used to the long pauses in his conversations with the Englishman, but there was something different about the one that followed his question. He could sense the iciness coming from Templeton’s direction, could feel that he’d said something that had changed the man’s mood as if flipping a switch. And he could tell that the new emotional state was not one he wanted Templeton to act on.

“Let’s just say that I’ve always been intrigued by puzzles,” Templeton answered.

And with that, he closed his eyes and didn’t speak again.



Imolene had to give the shopkeeper credit. The Yugo had lasted far longer than he would have thought possible, carrying him well past Al Bayda and toward Tripoli. He’d chosen to retain the vehicle when, in stopping in Al Bayda to check in with those who knew most of what went on in the city, he’d learned that two men matching Templeton’s and Hawthorne’s description had passed through there, ostensibly aiming toward the capital. And so Imolene had decided to hang on to the Yugo rather than use up precious time in finding a different vehicle. He was also lower on funds than he liked, and until he caught up to his quarry, he had to make his money stretch.

In Tripoli, the tracking had become much more difficult. It took Imolene some time to conclude it was because the pair had not stopped within the city. That was the only explanation he could come up with that would explain their absence from any of the places Templeton may have gone to procure supplies, or from the notice of those charged with monitoring the city’s ingress and egress of outsiders.

He had not gone all in on the idea. In a city as large as Tripoli, Imolene thought it possible that Templeton and Hawthorne had arrived two days ago and not left, that they’d holed up somewhere. But something had told the Egyptian that was not the case, and when he’d followed that belief he was rewarded to learn about a brief stop in a village thirty kilometers outside the capital by men who could only have been his quarry. Interestingly, a local merchant had told Imolene that one of the men seemed bound and unable to get out of the jeep they’d driven into the village. This told Imolene that whatever Templeton’s objective, it in some way involved Jack Hawthorne, and that the American was not entirely sold on his role.

It also told Imolene that Templeton and Hawthorne could be caught. He thought it unlikely that they could retain their lead when one man had to act as the other’s jailer.

The difficulty was in tracking them. If they remained in Libya, they would be hard enough to locate. But with both Egypt and Tunisia bordering the country, both relatively simple boundaries to cross, Imolene had a good deal more ground to cover. Of only one thing was he certain. As long as Templeton insisted on dragging the American around, they would not be able to leave the region.

Were Imolene faced with such a choice, the decision would have been obvious. He would have killed the American and left his body in the desert. He wondered why Templeton did not do the same. Or if he lacked the steel to kill a man, he could have found someplace to secure his prisoner while he made his escape. He did, after all, have the prize he’d come for, and unless Imolene caught up with him and took it, the Englishman could make a great deal of money from the artifact. A great deal, if he could gauge such a thing from the Israelis’ interest in it.

His arrangement with the Israelis was something else he had to consider, especially if he didn’t succeed in retrieving the artifact. This had been only his second job for them—the first a more sordid affair that had paid quite well. And so when this opportunity had come along, he’d jumped at it. If he failed in this one, he doubted there would be another.

The Yugo hit a deep rut in the road, and Imolene mouthed a curse when his head hit the ceiling for what seemed the hundredth time. He moved his knee so he could downshift and navigated a turn around a line of boulders that seemed out of place in the middle of nowhere. The next village was a little over forty kilometers ahead, and as the next concentration of civilization was almost a hundred past that, he guessed that Templeton would have stopped at the nearer one.

If he was traveling this way. And if he was even in the country.

Imolene grunted and pushed those thoughts away. He was seldom wrong when it came to finding someone he wanted to find. And he very much wanted to find Martin Templeton.