“You’re out of your mind,” Indy said.
“A pity it ends this way,” Belloq said. “You have at times stimulated me, a rare thing in a world so weary as this one.”
“That thought makes me happy, Belloq.”
“I’m glad. Truly. But everything comes to an end.”
“Not a very private place for murder.”
“It hardly matters. These Arabs will not interfere in a white man’s business. They do not care if we kill each other off.”
Belloq rose, smiling. He nodded his head in a curt way.
Indy, stalling for time, for anything, said, “I hope you learn something from your little parley with God, Belloq.”
“Naturally.”
Indy braced himself. There wasn’t time to turn swiftly and try for his pistol, and even less time to reach his bullwhip. His assassins sat directly behind him.
Belloq was looking at his watch. “Who knows, Jones? Perhaps there will be the kind of hereafter where souls like you and me meet again. It amuses me to think that I will outwit you there as well.”
There was a sound from outside now. It was an incongruous sound, the collective chattering of excited young children, a happy sound Indy associated with a Christmas morning. It wasn’t what he expected to hear in the death chamber.
Belloq looked toward the door in surprise. Sallah’s children, all nine of them, were trooping into the room and calling Indy’s name. Indy stared as they surrounded him, as the smaller ones clambered on his knees while the others made a circle in the manner of frail human shields. Some of them began to climb on his shoulders. One had managed to drape himself over Indy’s neck in a piggyback-ride style, and still another was hugging his ankles.
Belloq was frowning. “You imagine you can back out of here, do you? You imagine this insignificant human bracelet will protect you?”
“I don’t imagine anything,” Indy said.
“How utterly typical,” Belloq answered.
They were pulling him toward the door now, he was being tugged and yanked even as they were shielding him. Sallah! It must have been Sallah’s plan to risk his children and send them into this bar and contrive to get him safely out somehow. How could Sallah have taken such a risk?
Belloq was sitting once again, arms folded. The look on his face was that of a reluctant parent at a school play. He shook his head from side to side. “I will regale the next meeting of the International Archaelogical Society with the tale of your disregard for the laws governing child labor, Jones.”
“You’re not even a member.”
Belloq smiled, but only briefly. He continued to stare at the children and then, as if he were deciding something, turned toward his accomplices. He raised his hand, a gesture that indicated they should put their weapons away.
“I have a soft spot for dogs and children, Jones. You may express your gratitude in some simple form, which would suit you. But small children will not become your saviors when we next meet.”
Indy was moving back rapidly. And then he slipped out, with the kids clutching him like a precious toy. Sallah’s truck was parked outside—a sight that filled Indy with delight, the first event of the day that even remotely lifted his spirits.
Belloq finished his glass of wine. He heard the truck pull away. As the sound died in the distance he thought, with an insight that surprised him vaguely, that he was not yet ready to kill Indy. That the time was not exactly ripe. It hadn’t been the presence of the children at all—they hardly mattered. It was rather the fact that he wanted, somewhere in a place he did not quite fathom, a remote corner of understanding, to spare Jones, to let the man live a little longer.
There are some things, after all, worse than death, he thought.
And it amused him to ponder the agony, the anguish, that Jones would be going through: there was the girl, for one thing—which would have been punishment enough, torture enough. But there was also the fact, just as punishing, perhaps even more so, that Jones would live to see the Ark slip through his fingers.
Belloq threw back his head and laughed; and his German accomplices, their appetite for killing unsatisfied, stared at him in bewilderment.
In the truck Indy said, “Your kids have a sense of timing that would outdo the U.S. Marines, Sallah.”
“I understood the situation. I had to act quickly,” Sallah said.
Indy stared at the road ahead: darkness, thin lights, people parting from the path of the truck. The kids were in the back, singing and laughing. Innocent sounds, Indy thought, remembering what he wanted to forget.
“Marion . . .”
“I know,” Sallah said. “The news reached me earlier. I’m sad. More than sad. What can I say to console you? How can I help your grief?”
“Nothing helps the grief, Sallah.”
Sallah nodded. “I understand, of course.”
“But you can help me in other ways. You can help me beat those bastards.”
“You have my help, Indiana,” Sallah said. “Any time at all.”
Sallah was silent for a moment, driving the last stretch to his house.
“I have much news for you,” he said after a while. “Some isn’t good news. But it concerns the Ark.”
“Hit me with it,” Indy said.
“Soon. When we reach my house. And later, if you wish, we can visit the house of Imam, who will explain the markings to you.”
Indy lapsed into a weary silence. He had a hangover already beginning, a violent throb in the center of his skull. And, if his senses had been sharper, his intuition less blunted by booze, he might have noticed the motorcycle that had followed the truck from the bar. But even if he had, he would not have known the rider, a man who specialized in training monkeys.
When the children had been sent indoors, Indy and Sallah went out into the walled courtyard. Sallah walked around the yard for a time before he paused by the wall and said, “Belloq has the medallion.”
“What?” Immediately Indy felt inside his pocket and his fingers touched the headpiece. “You’re wrong.”
“He has a copy, a headpiece like yours, a crystal at the center. And there are the same markings on the piece as on the one you have.”
“I can’t understand it,” Indy said, appalled. “I always believed there were no pictures anywhere. No duplicates. I don’t get it.”
Sallah said, “There’s something else, Indiana.”
“I’m listening.”
“This morning Belloq went inside the map room. When he came out he gave us instructions about where we were to dig. A new spot, away from the general dig.”
“The Well of the Souls,” Indy said, in a resigned way.
‘I imagine so, if he made the calculations in the Map Room.”
Indy began beating the palms of his hands together. He turned once again to Sallah, taking the medallion from his pocket. “Are you sure it looked like this?”
“I saw it.”
“Look again, Sallah.”
The Egyptian shrugged and took the headpiece and stared at it for a time, turning it over in his hand. He said, “There may be a difference.”
“Don’t keep it from me.”
“I think that Belloq’s medallion had markings on one side only.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m reasonably sure.”
“Now,” Indy said, “all I need to know is what the markings mean.”
“Then we should go to the house of Imam. We should go now.”
Indy said nothing. Followed by Sallah, he left the courtyard and stepped out into the alley. He felt an urgency now. The Ark, yeah—but it was more than just the Ark now. It was for Marion. If her death was to make any sense, he had to get to the Well of the Souls before Belloq.
If death could ever make sense, he thought.
They climbed into Sallah’s truck, and as they did, Indy noticed the monkey in the back. He stared at it. Wasn’t it ever going to be possible to lose the thing? Pretty soon it would get around to l
earning human speech and calling him Dad. A echo in there caused him pain: Marion’s little joke about the creature having his looks.
The monkey chattered and rubbed its forepaws.
After the truck had gone a little way, the motorcycle emerged from the darkness and followed.
The house of Imam was located on the outskirts of Cairo, built on a slight rise; it was an unusual construction, reminding Indy a little of an observatory. Indeed, as he and Sallah, followed by the monkey, walked toward the entranceway, he noticed an opening in the roof of the house from which there emerged a large telescope.
Sallah said, “Imam has many interests, Indiana. Priest. Scholar. Astronomer. If anyone can explain the markings, he can.”
Ahead, the front door was opened. A young boy stood there, nodding his head as they entered.
“Good evening, Abu,” Sallah said. “This is Indiana Jones.” A brief, courteous introduction. “Indiana, this is Abu, Imam’s apprentice.”
Indy nodded, smiled, impatient to meet the scholar—who appeared at that moment at the end of the hallway. An old man in threadbare robes, his hands gnarled and covered with the brown spots of age; his eyes, though, were lit with curiosity and life. He bowed his head in a silent greeting. They followed him into his study, a large room strewn with manuscripts, pillows, maps, ancient documents. You could feel it here, Indy thought: a lifetime of dedication to the pursuit of knowledge. Every moment of every day a learning experience. Nothing wasted. Indy passed the medallion to Imam, who took it silently and carried it to a table at the back of the room where a small lamp was lit. He sat down, twisting the thing between his fingers, squinting at it. Indy and Sallah sat down on some cushions, the monkey between them. Sallah stroked the creature’s neck.
Silence.
The old man took a sip of wine, then wrote something quickly on a small piece of paper. Indy twisted around, watching impatiently. It seemed Imam was examining the headpiece as if time were of no interest to him.
“Patience,” Sallah said.
Hurry, Indy thought.
The man parked his motorcycle some way from the house. He slipped alongside the house to its rear, looking in windows until he found the kitchen. He pressed himself close to the wall, watching the boy, Abu, rinse some dates at the sink. He waited. Abu put the dates in a bowl, then placed the bowl on the table. Still the man didn’t move, more shadow now than substance. The boy picked up a decanter of wine, several glasses, placed them on a tray, then left the kitchen. Only then did the man move out of the shadows. He took a bottle from his cloak, opened it, and, after looking around the kitchen, stealthily poured some liquid from the bottle over the bowl of dates. He paused for a second. He heard the sound of the boy returning, and quickly, as silently as he entered, he slipped away again.
Imam still hadn’t spoken. Indy occasionally looked at Sallah, whose expression was that of a man accustomed to periods of enormous patience, periods of waiting. The door opened. Abu came in with a decanter of wine and glasses and set the tray down on the table. The wine was tempting, but Indy didn’t move for it. He found the silence unsettling. The boy went out and when he next came back he was carrying food-plates of cheese, fruit, a bowl of dates. Sallah absently picked at a piece of cheese and chewed on it thoughtfully. The dates looked good, but Indy wasn’t hungry. The monkey moved away, settling beneath the table. Silence still. Indy leaned forward and picked up one of the dates. He tilted his head back, tossed the date in the air and tried to catch it in his mouth as it fell—but it struck the edge of his chin and bounced away across the floor. Abu gave him a strange look—as if this Western custom were too insane to fathom—then picked up the dates and dropped it in an ashtray.
Hell, Indy thought. My coordination must be shot.
“Look. Come over here and look,” Imam suddenly said.
His strange hoarse voice broke the silence with the solemn authority of a prayer. It was the kind of voice to which one responded without thinking twice.
Over his shoulder, Indy and Sallah watched Imam point to the raised markings. “This is a warning . . . not to disturb the Ark of the Covenant.”
“Just what I need,” Indy said.
He bent forward, almost touching the frail shoulders of Imam.
“The other markings concern the height of the Staff of Ra to which this headpiece must be attached. Otherwise, the headpiece by itself is of no use.” Indy noticed the old man’s lips were faintly blackened, that he rubbed them time and again with his tongue.
“Then Belloq got the height of the Staff from his copy of the medallion,” Indy said.
Sallah nodded.
“What do the markings say?” Indy asked.
“This was the old way. This means six kadam high.”
“About seventy-two inches,” Sallah said.
Indy heard the monkey moving around the food table, picking at assorted bits and pieces. He went over and picked up a date, grabbing it before the monkey reached it.
“I am not finished,” Imam said. “On the other side of the headpiece there is more. I’ll read it to you. ‘And give back one kadam to honor the Hebrew God whose Ark this is.’ ”
Indy’s hand stopped halfway to his mouth. “You’re sure Belloq’s medallion has markings on one side only?” he asked Sallah.
“Positive.”
Indy started to laugh. “Then Belloq’s staff is twelve inches too long! They’re digging in the wrong spot!”
Sallah laughed too. The men hugged one another as Imam watched them, unsmiling.
The old man said, “I do not understand who Belloq is. I can only tell you that the warning about the Ark is a serious one. I can also tell you that it is written . . . those who would open the Ark and release its force will die if they look upon it. If they bring themselves face to face with it. I would heed these warnings, my friends.”
It should have been a solemn moment, but Indy was suddenly too elated at the realization of the Frenchman’s error to absorb the old man’s words. A triumph! he thought. Wonderful. He wished he could see the look on Belloq’s face when he couldn’t find the Well of the Souls. He tossed a date in the air, opening his mouth.
This time, he thought.
But Sallah’s hand picked the date out of the air before it could enter Indy’s mouth.
“Hey!”
Sallah gestured toward the floor under the table.
The monkey lay there in a posture of death. It lay surrounded by date pits. Faintly one paw flickered, trembled, then the animal’s eyes closed slowly, After that it didn’t move again.
Indy turned his face toward Sallah.
The Egyptian shrugged and said, “Bad dates.”
NINE
The Tanis Digs, Egypt
THE DESERT MORNING was burning, the stretches of sand shimmering. A landscape, Indy thought, in which a man would have every right to claim he saw mirages. He stared at the sky as the truck rattled along the road. He was uncomfortable in the burnoose he’d borrowed from Sallah, and he wasn’t entirely convinced that he could pass himself off as an Arab anyhow—but anything was worth a shot. He turned around from time to time to look at the other truck that followed. Sallah’s friend Omar drove the second truck; in the back of it were six Arab diggers. There were another three in Sallah’s truck. Let’s hope, he thought, that they’re as trustworthy as Sallah says.
“I am nervous,” Sallah said. “I do not mind confessing it.”
“Don’t worry too much.”
“You’re taking a huge risk,” Sallah said.
“That’s the name of this game,” Indy remarked. He looked up at the sky again. The early sunlight beat the sands with the force of a raging hammer.
Sallah sighed. “I hope we cut the staff to the correct size.”
“We measured it pretty well,” Indy said. He thought of the five-foot stick that lay right then in the back of the truck. It had taken them several hours last night to cut the thing, to whittle the end so that the headpiece would fit. A stra
nge feeling, Indy thought, placing the medallion on the stick. He had felt a sharp affinity with the past then, imaging other hands placing the same medallion in exactly that way so long ago.
The two trucks came to a halt now. Indy got out and walked back to the truck driven by Omar; the Arab stepped down, raising his arm in greeting. And then he pointed to a spot in the distance, a place where the terrain was less flat, where sand dunes undulated.
“We will wait there,” Omar said.
Indy rubbed his dry lips with the back of his hand.
“And good luck,” the Arab said.
Omar got back into his truck and drove away, trailing a storm of dust and sand behind the vehicle. Indy watched it go. He went back to where Sallah was parked, climbed in; the truck moved slowly for a mile or so, then it stopped again. Sallah and Indy got out, crossed a strip of sand, then lay down and looked across a depression in the land beneath them.
The Tanis excavations.
It was elaborate, extensive; it was obvious, from the amount of equipment below, the numbers of workers, that the Führer wanted the Ark badly. There were trucks, bulldozers, tents. There were hundreds of Arab diggers and, it seemed, just as many German supervisors, incongruous in their uniforms somehow, as if they deliberately sought discomfort out here in the desert. The land had been dug, holes excavated, then abandoned, foundations and passageways unearthed and then deserted. And beyond the main digs was something that appeared to be a crude airstrip.
“I’ve never seen a dig this size,” Indy said.
Sallah was pointing toward the center of the activity, indicating a large mound of sand, a hole at its core; a rope had been slung around it, suspended between posts.
“The Map Room,” he said.
“What time does the sun hit it?”
“Just after eight.”
“We don’t have much time.” He looked at the wristwatch he’d borrowed from Sallah. “Where are the Germans digging for the Well of the Souls?”
Sallah pointed again. Some way beyond the main activity, out in the dunes, were several trucks and a bulldozer. Indy watched for a while. Then he stood up. “You’ve got the rope?”
The Adventures Of Indiana Jones Page 11