by S. A. Beck
Chapter 10
AUGUST 14, 2016, HOTEL CARAVANE, TIMBUKTU, MALI
8:00 P.M.
* * *
Otto was worried, and he was bored.
Mostly he was worried.
He’d been left behind again as most of the Atlantis Allegiance had driven west to pick up the Atlantean refugees. That meant another boring day stuck alone in his hotel room. Dr. Yuhle dropped in every now and then to see how he was doing but spent most of the time in the manuscript museum. He was excited about some discovery he’d made but didn’t have time to explain it to Otto. Otto was left with nothing to do and no one to do it with.
He found himself wishing Nadya would come back.
Unfortunately, the lovely Russian woman hadn’t given him her phone number or said where she was staying. She was probably off doing another of her photography projects.
Everyone got to do something cool except him.
Otto looked at his watch. Eight o’clock in the evening already? The people who had gone to the refugee camp should have been back by now. In fact, they should have been back two hours ago. He wondered if they were having some trouble. He’d tried calling an hour ago, but they hadn’t picked up. That meant they couldn’t get a signal, a common problem in this part of the world. Or it might mean they couldn’t answer for some reason.
He didn’t want to think about that second possibility.
He dialed Jaxon’s number again. Still no answer. He tried Vivian’s and Dr. Yamazaki’s. Same result.
“Why the hell am I even here?” he asked the four walls of his hotel room. They didn’t answer either.
At least he was feeling a bit better. Not enough to risk a walk across town to the manuscript museum or to go sightseeing, but at least enough to go to the nearest market and get some matches.
So he sat on the end of his bed playing one of his favorite games, one his cousin had taught him when they were kids. He took a box of wooden matches and removed one. Setting the tip of the match against the black striking strip of the matchbox and pressing down on the end with his forefinger to hold it in place, he flicked it with his middle finger. The match hissed to life and sailed across the room like a little meteor. It landed and extinguished itself on the concrete floor.
Otto smiled. This game always made him feel better.
He took out another match and sent it after the previous one. He’d drawn faint circles on the floor with a pencil and assigned them points. Ten points for the closest and biggest circle, twenty-five for one further away, and a hundred for a little one against the far wall. That one was tricky. He’d tried bouncing the matches off the wall, but they always bounced too far and missed the target. He found that he had to arc them just right to make them land inside. No points if they hit the circle but went out.
His last box of matches had won him 245 points, down from his previous score of 330. So far, this matchbox looked like it was going for the record. He already had two matches in the hundred-point circle and three more in the twenty-five-point circle, and only a few misses. He tried not to think of the mess he was making or whether the little burn marks would wash off the walls and floor.
At least he was being cautious and had moved all the flammable stuff out of that side of the room. It made the game less fun because there wasn’t any risk, but he didn’t want anyone shouting at him.
Just as he was flicking his next match, a knock at the door made him leap up. The burning match fell on his bed.
He slapped it out, cursing under his breath as he burned his hand.
The knock came again.
“Coming!” he called, hoping whoever it was spoke English.
He went to the door and opened it a crack.
Nadya stood in the hallway, her bulky camera bag slung over one shoulder.
“Oh, hi!” he said, feeling flustered. Damn, she was good looking.
“Are you feeling better? Dimitri is still at the museum with your friend, and I am bored.” She sniffed and looked past him. “Is something burning?”
Before Otto could object, she pushed her way into the room. Otto tensed when he felt the warmth of her body pressing by him.
She looked at the mess on the floor and chuckled.
“Oh dear, someone else is bored too.”
“Um, well, it’s…”
“Ah, it’s a game!” she said, pointing at one of the circles. “You have to get the matches in the circles, yes? The numbers written by them are points.”
Otto gave her a sheepish smile. “Yeah. I was bored, like you said.”
“So where do you fire from, the bed?” she put her camera bag down and sat on the end of the bed.
She patted the space next to her. “Show me this game, and then I’ll teach you one from my country.”
Otto gulped and closed the door.
“Lock it,” Nadya said, “We wouldn’t want the hotel staff interrupting us, would we?”
“Um, no. No, we wouldn’t,” he replied, doing as she asked.
Otto sat down next to her on the bed, putting as much space between them as possible. Nadya closed the gap and said, “So, teach me this game.”
Otto gulped again and pulled out a box of matches. “Well, you fire them like this, see?” He shot a match. It flared up and traced a fiery arc across the room to land in the twenty-five-point circle. “Each of us gets a full box of matches and fires them all. Whoever gets the most points wins. Yeah, I know, it’s kinda dumb.”
Nadya shrugged. “You are stuck alone in a hotel room with no television and no internet access. What else are you going to do? It’s more fun than I have with Dimitri.”
The mention of Nadya’s companion made him suddenly nervous. “Shouldn’t they be back by now?”
She shook her head, annoyed. “No, he and your friend Yuhle said they would stay late and then get some dinner in town. They are celebrating some big discovery they made. I do not know what, and I do not care. Of course they did not invite me. That is fine, because they will only talk about dusty old manuscripts and old dead ruins. I like living things.”
Nadya fixed him with a steady gaze. A little smile stole around the corners of her lips.
She took a match out of the box, set it into position, and flicked it. The hiss of the flame made Otto feel all tingly. Something about the combination of fire and a beautiful woman was intoxicating.
You already have a girlfriend, he reminded himself. And Nadya is ten years older than you. Plus she’s way out of your league.
“Ah! I got twenty-five points!” she said. “Let’s see if you can do better.”
“Beginner’s luck. You can’t beat an old pro like me.”
Otto fired, and his flaming match landed in the twenty-five-point circle, knocking Nadya’s match out of it.
Nadya nudged him. She moved up to sit right next to him, her leg pressed against his. “Oh, you like to play rough, eh? Do I lose my points?”
“Oh no, I’m a perfect gentleman. Knocking the other person’s match out of the circle only counts as bragging rights.”
Nadya nudged him again and winked.
“Well, let’s see if we can give you more to brag about, eh?”
That can’t mean what I think it means.
Nadya’s next shot earned her another twenty-five points. Otto’s hands shook so much he couldn’t even light his match.
“So where is everybody?” Nadya asked.
“Out of town. They went to see some refugees near the border.”
“And they left you all alone? Bah! They treat you the way Dimitri treats me. We are orphans together in Timbuktu, yes?”
“I suppose so.”
“When will they come back?”
Otto shrugged. “They haven’t called me. I hope they’re all right.”
“I am sure they are fine. You know how bad the signal is here. If they aren’t in a town, there is no hope of calling.”
“Yeah, they said they’d call when they reached the outskirts of Timbuktu.”
“Oh, I see. And it only takes about twenty minutes to get to the hotel from the highway. That gives us twenty minutes’ warning.”
Otto turned to her. “Warning? Warning for what?”
Nadya smiled at him again. He wished Jaxon smiled at him like that more often. Jaxon was so preoccupied all the time. Apparently this Dimitri guy, who he’d only met once briefly, acted the same way.
“We will have twenty minutes to get cleaned up,” she said.
“Um, what?”
This really can’t be happening.
Nadya spread out a hand to encompass all the matches spread around the floor.
“To clean up your room.”
“Oh yeah, right.”
Otto wasn’t convinced that was really what she meant. Something in her tone and her mischievous look told him so.
That’s just your imagination. Besides, you’ve got a girlfriend, dummy. Stop fantasizing about other women.
But was it really just a fantasy? The way the side of her body remained pressed against his sure wasn’t a fantasy. Women didn’t just do that by accident.
They kept flicking matches. The score remained close until Otto landed one in the hundred-point circle.
“You are too good at this!” Nadya said. “But I am good at other things. You will see.”
This can’t be happening.
Otto tried to edge away, but there was no room left on the narrow bed. If he edged away any more, he’d end up on the floor.
“So do you all stay in this hall?” Nadya asked, turning to him. Their faces were close, and Otto could feel the warmth of her breath.
“Yeah, we got rooms all together. We basically took over this wing of the hotel,” Otto replied, thinking it was an odd question.
“So you and your girlfriend don’t get any privacy. Why doesn’t she stay here with you?”
Otto looked away, flustered. “Well, we’re not really, um…”
“You’re not really boyfriend and girlfriend?”
Don’t you dare lie, Otto told himself.
“Well, um, we are. It’s just that’s she’s not, you know, ready.”
Nadya put a hand on his cheek. “Poor boy. You are such a handsome young man. You deserve better treatment.”
Otto froze. This woman was definitely coming on to him.
He fumbled for his phone.
“I better check in on them. They said they’d be back by now.”
He called Jaxon and listened to it ring. Nadya reclined on the bed and watched him. He tried not to look at her. Tried and failed. She was gorgeous. Jaxon’s phone rang at least ten times before he finally gave up.
Next he tried to call Vivian, then Dr. Yamazaki. No luck.
“I don’t understand why they aren’t picking up,” Otto muttered.
Nadya plucked the phone from his hand and set it aside. “Of course you do. You said it yourself. They are away from a signal. And they told you they would call once they picked up the signal from here in town. As soon as they get off the highway, they will call you, so why worry? Come, talk to me. I have been bored all day.”
Nadya tugged at him until he was lying on the bed next to her. His heart pounded so hard in his chest he swore she must be able to hear it.
“Don’t look so nervous, Otto! I won’t bite. Tell me more about your girlfriend. How did you meet?”
“We, um, went to school together.” He didn’t want to mention that they were in a group home together. People got judgmental about that sort of stuff, and he definitely wanted Nadya to have a good impression of him.
“Is she good at school?”
“She didn’t really care about the subjects, to be honest. Plus she’s dyslexic.”
“That is too bad. I bet you are smart.”
“I did get As most of the time.” Not that my parents cared.
“I knew it! I could tell you were intelligent the first moment I saw you. So how did you end up in Timbuktu, and where are your parents?”
“Jaxon doesn’t actually know her parents, I mean…” At the last moment, Otto remembered the cover story they were traveling under. “Vivian’s her mom, but she doesn’t know her dad. Grunt’s my dad.” That felt kind of good to say, he realized. “He and my mom split up.”
“So you came to Timbuktu to research Jaxon’s father, maybe find him?”
“Um, something like that.” He didn’t like the way these questions were headed. He didn’t want to lie to Nadya, but he couldn’t tell her the truth.
“Did you like the trip here? You drove, correct?”
Otto realized that he had already let slip at their last meeting that they had driven across the Sahara. That looked suspicious, because no sane person would drive through Mauritania, especially not in the middle of summer. Only someone with something to hide would do that, which of course they did.
He had to be careful. Nadya was friendly, a bit too friendly, but he shouldn’t let out too much information to anyone.
“Yeah, well, we drove from the coast and up through the desert. We didn’t go into any other countries.”
As soon as he said it, he realized how obvious and stupid a lie it sounded. Nadya didn’t seem to notice at all.
“Oh, that is right. You told me your father is an archaeologist.”
“Um, yeah. We were looking for ancient ruins in the desert.”
Nadya leaned closer. “Did you find anything interesting?”
“I thought you weren’t interested in dusty old ruins.”
“I’m interested in anything you do.”
Otto chuckled, both from nerves and from the silliness of it all. Here he was lying on a bed with a gorgeous Russian woman ten years older than he was, and she said that kind of thing. His friends back home would never believe him.
Home? Friends? What counted as home, anyway? Certainly not his parents’ house. The group home? Not that either. And what friends? Sure, he had always been popular, but he’d been shuffled around among so many schools and group homes that none of those friends ever lasted. He had a couple of hundred friends on Twitter, all people who would love to hang out with him if he wasn’t on the other side of the world, but he couldn’t even remember all their faces.
“Why did you laugh?” Nadya asked. She ran a finger along the line of his jaw. “You laughed and then got all serious.”
Otto sat up. This was going too far. “Look, Nadya. Thanks for coming and all, but I’m still not a hundred percent, you know? I should rest.”
Nadya remained lying on the bed. “Rest? Nonsense! You’ve been resting all day.”
“Yeah, but I’m kind of tired.”
Nadya got up on one elbow, looking hurt. “You are not tired. What is the matter? Are you shy?”
“No, it’s just that, well, if Jaxon came in, she might get the wrong idea.”
Nadya laughed. Otto blushed, thinking she was laughing at him.
“Who is to say it is the wrong idea? Oh now, don’t get that face. I am sorry if I am too forward. It is just that you are so handsome, and I am very lonely here. It happens when you go to the far places of the world. This is your first time out of your country, yes? You will see what I mean.”
She sat up. Otto was relieved to see she left some space between them.
“So tell me about these archaeological sites your father was looking at. Were the cave paintings very beautiful?”
“How did you know we found cave paintings?”
Nadya’s eyes sparked. “Oh, so you did! There are many out in the desert, next to ancient towns. I like to photograph them. Do you have any photos of them?”
“I’d love to show them to you, but I don’t have any. They’re on another computer.”
Nadya studied him. “Whose computer?”
“Why does that matter?”
“Oh, nothing, I was just curious. Here, I brought you something. I hope they are still cold.”
She unzipped her bag and pulled out two bottles of beer. He raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t
seen any alcohol since leaving Marrakech. Apparently Morocco wasn’t the only Muslim country where you could buy a drink.
“Um, I don’t really drink,” Otto said.
Otto had gotten in trouble for a lot of things, but partying had never been one of them. He didn’t really have anything against alcohol, but his mom and dad were both drunks and would fight when they drank. He knew most people didn’t get like that, but the thought of drinking always reminded him of shouting matches at his parents’ house.
“Oh, one little drink will not hurt you,” Nadya said and wagged a slim forefinger at him. “And don’t go complaining about your sick stomach. Alcohol is a disinfectant. It will be good for you.”
Otto chuckled. “I’ve never heard that line before.”
Nadya handed him one of the beers. It was some European brand he didn’t recognize. At least it wasn’t a local beer. Grunt had once told him, “Never drink booze made in a Muslim country, pyro. They just don’t know how to make it right.” Seemed to make sense.
“Are you sure these are okay?” Otto asked. The cap on his beer was a bit bent, like it had come off and been jammed on again.
“These came all the way from Holland. Of course they are going to be battered.”
“Well, you came all the way from Russia, and you look fine,” Otto said.
As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he wanted to slap himself. What kind of a line was that?
“Oh, you are sweet,” she said with a smile. She pulled a Swiss Army knife out of her pocket, flicked open the bottle opener, and popped off the caps.
Otto took a beer from her, feeling deeply confused. He couldn’t deny that he felt attracted to her, and she certainly seemed to be hitting on him, but he felt bad about Jaxon. Sure, she had these mood swings and kept ditching him to go off and do her own thing, but they were an item, right?
Well, one beer with a friend wasn’t cheating.
“Nosdrovia,” she said. “It means ‘health’ in Russian. It’s our way of saying ‘cheers.’”
“Nosdrovia,” he replied. They clinked their bottles together.
“You have a talent for languages, Otto.”
Otto took a sip. The beer was nice and cold. She must have bought them right around the corner. A cold drink felt good in this heat.