by Don Hoesel
The cab covered the ten kilometers from La Abraq to Al Bayda in good time, despite the heavy traffic, and as the ancient city rose up before him the thought of being followed drifted from his mind.
Duckey’s service had taken him to a great many parts of the world, but he’d spent the bulk of it in eastern Europe, which meant a sprawling north African city still made him feel as if he were a tourist. And in stepping onto the streets of a city like Al Bayda, a visitor often found himself unsure of his footing, unable to get a feel for the ebb and flow of the culture. On one corner he saw a collection of buildings as modern as any he might see in the States—a coffee shop, movie theater, high-end clothing stores. At the next corner he saw a line of rickety market stalls, with merchants offering fruit, linens, even live animals, all within a few blocks of a thriving business district.
They entered Al Bayda on Msah, the main road that bisected the city, the driver slowing as traffic funneled in from Aldayn and Kufra. Duckey’s destination was in the modern part of Al Bayda, the part that had been hit hard by the unrest the previous year. The police station had been burned to the ground; he remembered watching on television the protesters dancing and cheering as the fires consumed the symbol of an oppressive regime.
When the cab driver pulled off Msah onto a side street, Duckey looked at the buildings surrounding the car, taking in the enormity of the reconstruction that had brought one of the main administrative parts of the city back from the dead. The cab pulled to a stop in front of a new-looking building, the razed police station restored.
Duckey paid the man and stepped out with his bag, half considering asking the driver to wait but suspecting he would quickly be able to locate a ride in this part of the city. If not, the system of small buses that cut the city into sections would take him wherever he needed to go. He glanced at his watch and hoped he’d have time to do what he needed to given how late in the day it was.
Entering the police station, he stepped into an air-conditioned lobby that included a reception window and a security line. He proceeded to the window.
“Do you speak English?” he asked after he’d gotten the attention of the man behind the glass.
When the clerk raised his eyes, he gave Duckey a once-over, conveying annoyance for what Duckey could only presume was due to his being addressed in a language other than Arabic or Greek. Still, the man managed something like a smile. “Can I help you?”
“I need to speak to someone about a car you towed a week ago,” Duckey said.
The clerk said, “Second floor, room 212,” then gestured to the security checkpoint.
Duckey made it through the gauntlet unscathed and then, avoiding the elevator at the far end of the lobby, headed for the stairs.
The second floor was no busier than the first, leading Duckey to wonder if the building had another entrance through which the majority of police traffic entered and exited. He found room 212 with little difficulty. The door opened into a waiting room with a bare concrete floor and two walls lined with plastic chairs. After checking in at the counter, Duckey took a seat with six others there before him.
An hour later Duckey was called up to the counter, where a bored-looking young man with an MP3 player and headphones over his ears asked him what he wanted in passable English.
“You towed a car a week ago,” Duckey said. “Ford Taurus. An Alamo rental. Can you tell me where you found the car and if you know what might have happened to the person driving it?”
“Was it your car?”
“No, a friend of mine rented it.”
The young man shrugged. “Then I cannot help you. Check with the rental company.”
Frustrated, Duckey decided to change his tack. “Look. I’m not interested in the car. I’m trying to find my friend.”
The Libyan clerk studied Duckey for several seconds before he said, “We tow dozens of cars every week. I can’t remember them all.”
Duckey knew where this was going. He reached into his pocket and slid his second twenty-dinar note of the day across the counter. The clerk stared at it for what seemed a long while without moving; then with the same gesture and facial expression Duckey had witnessed on the face of the Alamo employee, the man grabbed it and quickly pocketed it.
“Let me see what I can find out,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later Duckey stepped out of the building, armed with a street address and the name of a man who might have been the last person to see Jack Hawthorne before he disappeared.
15
Dawn was still hours off when Jack reached the village. In the near darkness, held in check only by a crescent moon hanging in a clear sky, he could see the shapes of the squat, sand-scrubbed structures gathered like slumbering cattle. He stopped at the outskirts of the village, his eyes passing over it, seeing no movement, except for the way the buildings wouldn’t hold still. Frowning, he concentrated until his eyes stilled them. He’d finished the water hours ago and it seemed the desert had sucked every bit of moisture from his body. He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly as he started off again, looking for the thing he needed, the thing responsible for spawning a fragile community in the middle of nowhere.
He found the well in the village center. Twelve feet across and covered by a wooden cap, half a dozen access doors were evenly spaced around the perimeter. He pulled one open and the recognizable smell of water came rushing out, so sweet he might have shed a tear had he moisture enough to produce one. Taking hold of a rope, its end attached to the well’s outer wall, he began drawing the bucket up, feeling the weight of the water that filled it. He gulped down the contents of a full ladle, then a second more slowly, feeling the water work to open his throat. Filling the ladle a third time, he poured some into his cupped hand and washed the dirt from his eyes and face. When he’d finished, he settled on the ground to rest, his back against the cool stone of the well, and let his eyes fall over the silent village.
When he and Templeton had passed it heading west, Jack had seen it as a distant oasis from the main road. What had set it apart, though, was that as they’d progressed farther into Tunisia he’d seen fewer such settlements. If Martin Templeton was smart, he would know that this place offered Jack his only real hope of survival from the elements. That was assuming of course that Jack would not have taken his chances going the other direction, staying near the road and hoping to find another haven farther along. Either choice had its merits, as well as its drawbacks, but Jack was confident his former captor would not ignore the place.
For perhaps the hundredth time, Jack berated himself for taking the artifact from Templeton. In doing so he had assured that the man would try to track him; whereas, had he fled without it, there might have been a chance that the Englishman would have cut his losses and moved on. Yet after thinking on it some more, Jack decided he’d made the right choice, and he was willing to endure hardship if the payoff warranted it. To have left the relic in someone else’s hands would have invalidated the struggles of the last few days.
He lost track of how long he sat there, until the thirst that had driven him to the well returned in a less insistent fashion. He pushed himself to his feet and drank more water pulled from the bucket that still rested on the edge of the well, forcing himself to avoid considering how sick he was likely to get by partaking from the bacteria-laden communal resource. As he returned the ladle and began to lower the bucket, he caught sight of movement near a grouping of three small cement buildings that formed part of the village’s interior perimeter. He watched as a boy stepped out from the narrow alley between two of the buildings with a large jar in his arms. When he had crossed perhaps half the distance, he raised his eyes and, catching sight of Jack, stopped in his tracks.
Jack smiled at the boy, aware that his passage through the desert had left him looking like something from a child’s nightmare. The young Tunisian regarded Jack with the calculating eyes of one with the wherewithal to gauge a potential threat.
While the boy stared, Jack lowered
the bucket and closed the access door. The boy then resumed his walk to the well, keeping an eye on Jack as he bent to retrieve the artifact. With less distance between them, the boy had a better look at Jack, who saw the other’s eyes widen as he took in his condition. Almost immediately, concern replaced wariness and the boy set his jar on the ground. He circled the well, stopping in front of the American and saying something that, in the first pass, Jack had no hope of understanding. His Arabic, always poor, would improve the longer he spent immersed in it, but trying to interpret it in his current condition was close to impossible. The boy seemed to understand. Rather than saying anything more, he reached for Jack’s hand and led him toward the cement buildings.
Before long, Jack found himself inside one of the small three-room homes common to the area. When they’d entered, the child’s mother was preparing breakfast and she cast a worried look over the pair. She said something to the boy that Jack couldn’t follow, except to note that it sounded like a rebuke. A few moments later, a man emerged from a back room. The older man took one look at Jack and apparently recognized that he needed their help. He motioned for Jack to sit at the little wooden table in the kitchen area. Then he said something to the mother, who responded by placing a bowl of something warm in front of the battered archaeologist. Before that moment, Jack hadn’t realized how ravenous he was, and he soon fell to eating while his hosts stood patiently and watched.
As near as Jack could tell, it was almost noon and he’d been alone in the house for nearly an hour, the last of the village elders having left to engage in discussions concerning their visitor.
After the meal—which included tea mixed with honey by the boy’s mother to help soothe the irritation in Jack’s throat—he’d responded to their questions as best he could, given his limited knowledge of Arabic. He’d mentioned nothing of the artifact but had noticed the man’s gaze move to the wrapped staff a number of times. It had been the boy, though, who had walked over to where the staff was propped up against a wall.
As Jack discussed his options with the father, asking about transportation so he might be taken someplace that had a phone, the Tunisian child removed the cloth from the top half of the staff.
The father’s eyes had shifted over Jack’s shoulder and then had widened. When he released a gasp, Jack turned to see the boy holding the staff, staring into the gem eyes of the ancient serpent that had looked upon the stricken Israelites. Jack did not need to have a fluent grasp of the language to know that the words the other man spoke intoned a mixture of awe and fear. The Tunisian was out of his chair before Jack could react. He crossed around the table and took the staff from the boy’s hands, his own larger hands not touching the wood and metal of the artifact but remaining on the cloth.
By that time, Jack had risen and crossed to the man’s side, yet he didn’t take the relic away from him. The Tunisian had lifted the Nehushtan and turned it so he could see into the eyes of the serpent. His hands trembled, and for a brief moment Jack thought he might drop it. Finally the man looked away from the snake, a look of deep reverence on his face.
When Jack finally removed the staff from the Tunisian’s hands, carefully rewrapping the exposed portion and returning it to its spot against the wall, he could see that his host’s opinion of him had undergone a dramatic change. The problem was that he didn’t know if the man now regarded him as a hero or a devil.
Two hours later, Jack thought he had that part figured out as a procession of solemn bearded men entered the small home, all of them wanting to see the staff. Although all Jack wanted to do was to steal away with his prize, make it back to London, and collect a very large sum of money from Sturdivant, he understood he had to allow the show-and-tell—and not just because of the etiquette involved. He still needed help from these people and so keeping the artifact from them—a relic mentioned in their holy books—did little to encourage generosity, which was something he needed, since Templeton had divested him of both his wallet and phone.
The visits had ended an hour ago, and Jack had the impression that the men had gone to deliberate. He’d entertained the fear that they were considering keeping the staff for themselves, but his pragmatic side understood that there was nothing he could do but relax and wait. Unlike escaping from a single man in the middle of the night, trying to smuggle the staff out of a village full of people in broad daylight would be difficult to accomplish. Instead, he settled into a comfortable chair to nap.
Duckey decided there was a marked difference between modern Al Bayda—the part that provided a backdrop for the police station, the legislative plaza, and several businesses—and the older and more modest part in which he found himself. Khansaa, a sprawling neighborhood in the southwestern portion of the city, was a conglomerate of old houses, dormant businesses, and streets plagued by potholes and abandoned cars. As he’d driven into the depressed area, ferried there by an elderly cab driver, Duckey found himself amazed at the abruptness of the transition. Duckey suspected that the only reason Jack’s derelict rental had raised an eyebrow had been because, when found, it was parked along the main road that separated Khansaa from Rabaah Adawiyyah—a bustling neighborhood with a university occupancy, lots of green space, and new apartment buildings, all of which warranted a stronger police presence.
Just two streets into Khansaa, with Rabaah Adawiyyah still in sight behind him, the cab pulled over and the driver looked at Duckey in the rearview mirror. Looking out the window, the American saw that they’d arrived at a one-story building that ran the entire length of the block. The brick structure had been divided into a number of different businesses, two of which appeared open: a café and a place that rented motorbikes. The cab was parked in front of the café, which had a large front window, the door next to it standing open to the mild weather. Duckey got out and, asking the man to wait but finding him less than amenable to the request, paid and watched the cab speed off.
When he entered the café, he found himself the only occupant beyond a middle-aged woman standing behind the serving counter. As Duckey paused inside the door, allowing his eyes to grow accustomed to the dim light inside, the woman gave him a piercing look that he barely caught with his compromised vision.
Duckey moved to the counter, the woman looking at him expectantly.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” he asked.
Up to this point, English had done the job for him and he hoped it would continue to do so. He couldn’t speak Arabic and hadn’t spoken Greek since college. The look the woman gave him, though, caused him to believe she hadn’t understood a word. He was on the verge of asking the question again in Greek when she spoke in heavily accented English.
“Do you want to eat?” she asked.
Duckey had picked up the cooking smells the moment he walked in, and since he’d left the hotel that morning without having eaten, the temptation to sample the local cuisine was strong but he resisted the urge.
“No, thank you. I’d just like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”
The problem was that it looked as if she minded quite a bit. He suspected he would find her unwilling to cooperate until he paid for something. Glancing around, he spotted the glass-front cooler filled with soda.
“I’d like a Coke,” he said, pointing.
When the woman returned with the drink, he slid a ten-dinar note across the counter and motioned for her to keep all of it. Then, the wheels sufficiently greased, he tried again.
“A week ago, you called the police about a car that had been abandoned right in front of your café. Do you remember?”
The woman nodded.
“Do you remember seeing the man who drove the car? He would have been an American, younger than me.”
She did not answer right away. Instead, she fixed Duckey with a look common to those who have suffered beneath a regime in which speaking to the wrong people about the wrong things could get one into trouble.
“Who are you and why do you want to know?”
The woman absorbed his response and then seemed to resolve some small conflict within herself.
“I saw the car pull up and I saw your friend get out,” she said. As she spoke, her eyes moved to the window as if she could still see Jack on the sidewalk. “I noticed him because I didn’t have any customers and was hoping he’d come in.”
“Did he?”
She shook her head. “No. He walked north down the sidewalk and I didn’t see him after that.”
“And how long did you wait before you called to report the car?”
“Two days,” she said. “And I only called because the restaurant was busy; the car was taking up space my customers needed.”
Duckey thanked her and then exited the café, heading to the business adjacent to it. Before even entering, he was already certain he knew one of the three things relevant to Jack’s abandonment of the car: he knew why his friend had left it. But that still left him trying to find answers to the other two questions. Where did he go? And once he got there, what kept him from coming back and reclaiming the Taurus?
The inside of the place was much darker than the café, as well as a good deal dirtier. Scattered around the floor and on the sales counter lay cannibalized parts from an untold number of motorbikes. Besides the bikes parked along the sidewalk out front, two older models, each with various parts missing, had been brought inside and leaned against a wall.
Duckey made his way to the counter just as a man in jeans that appeared to be made more of dirt and grease than the original fabric emerged from a back room.