Serpent of Moses (A Jack Hawthorne Adventure #2)

by Don Hoesel

  And if she knew anything about Jack, it was that he had a heightened sense of punctuality where money was concerned. For a quarter of a million he would have been in London a day early.

  “Regardless of what happened to you and Jack, what he does for a living is not usually dangerous,” Romero said, as if listening to her thoughts.

  “You’d be surprised how many people don’t like him,” she said. “They’re scattered around the world.”

  “Actually I’m not surprised.” Romero chuckled. “I was there when a number of those impressions were formed.”

  Esperanza knew that, of course, but Romero had played the honest businessman for so long that she sometimes forgot about his days spent gallivanting around the globe. The exchange pulled a smile from her, although it faded almost immediately.

  It wasn’t lost on her that she had come to London for the sole purpose of ending things with Jack, yet now the anger that had fueled her flight was transitioning into something else. She wouldn’t call it worry—not yet—but it was something close, despite that Romero was right—there were few real threats to someone in Jack’s profession.

  “Reese is dead,” Romero said, again knowing where she had gone.

  At that, Esperanza released a sigh. “I know. I also know that it’s been three years, and if anyone was going to come after me or Jack for what happened, they probably would have done it by now.”

  All of them had looked over their shoulders for a long while, even after the billionaire had succumbed to the cancer he’d hoped to cure with the bones. After all, a man as powerful as Gordon Reese could have paid any amount to have the ones who had ruined his chance at an extended life killed—and such a directive could well have extended past the duration of that life. There came a time, though, when one had to stop living in fear, and Espy had chosen that path some time ago.

  Still, she knew that Reese was not the only player in those events.

  “If they’d wanted you dead, they would have done it when you were in Australia,” Romero said.

  She knew this, but entertaining the thought that the secret organization that had protected Elisha’s bones for millennia was somehow involved in Jack’s disappearance played into her need for closure. In her estimation, these people who had played Jack against Reese were an open question, and she disliked not having answers. Even so, Romero was right again. They could have killed her and Jack, as well as anyone else who had helped the pair, at any time and yet had not done so.

  “You know how he gets,” Romero said. “He likely began what he thought would be a simple expedition and it has become something more involved.”

  “And so he turns off his phone?”

  “Or he’s someplace with no cell reception.”

  Esperanza grunted and leaned against the wall.

  Romero did not say anything else right away, and Espy knew he was thinking.

  “What is the name of Jack’s friend at the university?” he asked. “The one that worked for their government.”

  “Duckett. Jim Duckett.”

  “And he has a way of procuring manifests for plane flights?”

  Esperanza’s eyebrows rose, but a frown replaced that expression in short order. “Except that we don’t know what flight he was on.” She paused and then added, “If he was even on one. For all we know, he was driving somewhere.”

  Romero grunted an acknowledgment of that possibility but then asked, “What other choice do we have?”

  Esperanza’s silence told both of them the answer to that.

  Jim Duckett leaned back from the table and released a contented sigh. He didn’t know what it was about the pancakes produced by the grill staff in the student union, but even after years of weekly consumption, and a pancake count he couldn’t hope to recollect, they remained the pinnacle of perfection. Over the years, as the grill staff had turned over time and again without a fluctuation in pancake quality, he’d even stooped to bribing the cooks for their secrets, only to discover an undergraduate staff that was either as clueless as he was or who had formed a thin, buttermilk line of silence.

  The meal finished, he reached for his breast pocket, his hand running over the two cigars he’d placed there when he left home that morning. However, before he could pull one out, his hand fell away. As habitual as the pancake consumption, the reflexive action of reaching for a cigar at the conclusion of a good meal remained something he could not shake.

  As he leaned away from the table, he glanced around the student hangout. Evanston was, comparatively speaking, a small college, which meant that he often saw the same faces around him as he ate. Today, the place was near empty. The slowness of the place matched his own energy level, which had dropped precipitously over the last few months.

  While downplaying it, he’d also made a few attempts to analyze it and the only thing he was able to come up with could be summed up in a single word: boredom. But the analysis did not venture much beyond that. He liked his job—and the perks that came with it—and couldn’t think of doing anything else. He suspected that it was just a phase and that it would pass. After all, one did not leave a position with the CIA for idyllic Ellen, NC, and the slower life of teaching at a small liberal arts college without occasionally recalling those more adventurous days with fondness.

  Rather than allow himself to contemplate that further, he slid from the booth and reached for his tray—an action that still felt uncomfortable, even after three years. It had always pleased him to leave the tray on the table, knowing that Jack would take care of it along with his own. Like the reach for the cigar, busing his own tray had taken some getting used to.

  As he headed for the trash can, he reflected on the fact that the time of year could have something to do with his mood. It was December, and the winter break was fast approaching—and the same time period three years ago had seen Jack Hawthorne teach his last class at Evanston.

  On one hand, he was happy that the events that transpired had pushed his friend from teaching and back into the career he was meant to pursue. On the other hand, he had to take care of his own tray.

  The air outside was crisp, and he contemplated lighting up a cigar on his way to his next class, but Evanston was not a large campus and the cigars he carried deserved a long enjoyment. He released a sigh and had just shifted his thoughts to his class when his phone rang.

  “Duckey?” a woman with an accent said when he answered.

  “With an accent like that, I can be whoever you want me to be,” he replied.

  The fact that his statement was met with a laugh rather than indignation told him the voice belonged to the woman he thought it did.

  “Jack wasn’t lying about you,” Esperanza said, and Duckey could feel the genuine warmth coming through the phone.

  “That’s a shame,” he said. “In my experience, a good lie or two makes things a lot more interesting.”

  That was followed by another laugh, and without ever meeting her, Duckey thought he was beginning to understand what it was about her that had made Jack swing by Caracas and pick her up three years ago. Because if Duckey knew anything about Esperanza and Jack’s shared history, it was that making that side trip—even though it had improved Jack’s chances of success in securing the biggest payday he’d ever imagined—was fraught with more danger than anything he’d faced during his pre-teaching profession.

  “By the way, only my friends call me Duckey.”

  In most other people that statement would have generated a pause. In this woman, though, it did nothing but fuel her mirth.

  “Then I guess we’d better decide to get chummier than we already are,” she said. “Because that’s all I ever heard Jack call you, and I really don’t think I could bring myself to call you Jim.”

  After a morning spent teaching the same classes he’d taught for years, followed by eating the same meal—however delectable—in the same place he’d always eaten it, this unexpected repartee was something he did not want to relinquish. However, the tr
ade he’d practiced before assuming his present role forced him to analyze the various elements of the conversation—including the probable prompts for it—and despite his wishes, he found himself growing serious.

  “What’s wrong, Espy?” he asked, also using the nickname made familiar by their shared friend.

  Without so much as a pause she told him, and Duckey didn’t interrupt with a single question while she did so. In his experience, most good intel was generated by spontaneity. Duckey had risen through the ranks by letting his informants spill their guts and only asking clarifying questions when such were absolutely necessary.

  Consequently, it wasn’t until Esperanza ran out of steam that the dean of the Humanities Department at Evanston University, who had long reached his destination but who remained standing on the walkway in front of it, said a word.

  “And what makes you think that Jack not checking in is anything more than Jack being Jack?” he asked, unaware that his question echoed the one posed by Esperanza’s brother.

  In truth, he didn’t need to hear the answer to the question. The simple fact that a woman who knew his friend well—likely better than Duckey knew him—was concerned, made him concerned. Nonetheless, he knew Jack. He knew that regardless of the personal and professional growth the archaeologist might have gone through over the last few years, somewhere inside existed the man who eschewed responsibility and commitment.

  Duckey did not know where Espy was calling from but he pictured her on some street in Caracas. If he concentrated, he thought he could hear the sounds of traffic moving by her. She waited a long time before answering.

  “Sometimes a person just knows something,” she said and the conviction in her voice swayed Duckey more than most other things might have.

  “Okay,” he said with a nod she could not see. “What do you need me to do?”

  When she told him, he couldn’t help feeling a measure of disappointment. Perhaps it was that he’d spent a portion of his morning bemoaning the static nature of his existence, and that this call from Esperanza Habilla signified something that might break the monotony. But discovering that he was only needed in order to procure and skim through flight manifests disappointed him.

  Still, there was something about being asked to do a task—even a simple one—by a faraway woman with a foreign accent that had him quickly agreeing to help.

  After ending the call moments later, he felt a return to the habits that had served him well for so long. And as he mounted the steps to the building where his students waited, he divested himself of everything but the facts. For analyzing facts was something he was good at.

  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.