by Andrew Linke
He passed through the doorway at a run and found himself in a narrow corridor of stone. He darted along it for about twenty feet, then came up to a wall with a small nook set into it. Painted images of an Egyptian god in with a crocodile head surrounded the nook, in which was set a bloodstained altar of white stone. Rows of hieroglyphs were etched into the curved wall of the nook above the altar.
The corridor split here, one passage running right and the other left on either side of the altar nook. Oliver looked frantically for a sign of which way the mercenaries had taken when the entered the temple. It only took him a moment to find the line of white chalk, glowing an eerie green in the chemical light, marking the passage to the right. Looking down he saw bloody footprints on the floor, approaching the altar nook from that same passage. Oliver turned right and moved down the narrow passage as quickly as he could.
He soon came to another sacrificial nook, at yet another split in the passage. He continued to follow the chalk marks and bloody footprints past two more turns and altars. It was now clear that this room was a maze. That would explain why it took the mercenaries so long to reach the room where the staff had been kept. At one point he came to a split where the chalk marks indicated that he should turn left, but the bloody footprints continued on ahead. He paused for only a moment, then heard Kyle’s voice screaming a threat to him from somewhere behind and turned to follow the chalk marks. The mercenaries must have explored that passage as they worked their way through the maze, and one of them must have fallen to a gruesome trap.
He moved more quickly now, following the chalk marks past a dozen more altars to the gods of the Egyptian pantheon as Kyle continued to shout his name and threaten brutal recriminations, until Oliver turned one last corner and saw the faint glow of light at the end of the passage. He ran forward and saw that the light was seeping under and around the tattered remnants of a heavy curtain. When he reached the curtain, which had once been dyed a rich crimson but was now faded and tattered with age, he pushed it aside and stepped into a chamber that had clearly been designed as a ritual bath.
Bright sunlight poured in from the open door to the courtyard, illuminating the wide shelves built into the walls, some still bearing frail piles of ceremonial robes that looked as if they would crumble at a touch, and a deep bath with cut steps leading in from one side and out the other. The faint stench of rotting frogs returned to Oliver’s nose as he paused to catch his breath and listen for any sign of Kyle catching up behind him. The shattered skeletons and torn skins of amphibians poured into the room through the door, reaching nearly to the bath at the center of the chamber. Many had been ground to small pieces and scattered across the floor as the mercenaries tracked through this room less than an hour before.
Oliver knew that Kyle couldn’t be very far behind. He could continue into the courtyard and hope that Diana was there waiting, but then they would have to make it all the way down the length of the courtyard, across the plaza, and down from the plateau of the island. Somehow Oliver doubted that that they could accomplish half of that before Kyle stepped into the courtyard and shot them in the back. He must have been running low on ammunition by then, but if he still had any, his assault rifle would be accurate at a much greater range than Oliver’s handgun so he would only need a few rounds to take them down.
Oliver made up his mind. It was time to bring this chase to an end.
He jumped down into the ceremonial bath and crouched in the corner nearest the curtained door. He leaned against the side of the bath to steady his aim and take some of the pressure off his aching calves, then rested the barrel of his gun on the edge of the bath and sighted about three feet above the floor of the doorway. Only the very top of Oliver’s head was visible over the edge of the bath and Kyle would probably not even see that as he came through the curtain.
He waited, breathing as softly as he could. He didn’t have to wait long.
Kyle burst through the curtained door moving fast in a low crouch. Oliver pulled his trigger twice, allowing his aim to buck upwards with each shot. The first round slammed into Kyle’s right thigh just above the knee, sending him twisting down and to the right with a scream of agonized rage. The second shot slammed into his chest. Kyle hit the ground hard and his rifle clattered across the stones.
Oliver jumped up the stairs three at a time and delivered a vicious kick to Kyle’s shoulder, flipping him over and eliciting a groan of pain, then pointed his gun directly at the mercenary’s face. Kyle’s eyes were dull and unfocused, but still alive. Oliver looked at Kyle’s chest and saw no blood. The man must have worn a light body armor under his camouflage. The shot to the chest had wounded him, but done no serious damage.
Oliver pressed the muzzle of his gun under Kyle’s chin and bent to release the cover on the mercenary’s sidearm case. He pulled out the gun and tucked it into his own belt.
He glanced at the spreading pool of blood around Kyle’s wounded thigh.
“You have two choices: Keep your mouth shut and I’ll get you out of here. Say a single word, and I mean so much as a ‘but’ or ‘please’ and I’ll shoot you in the other leg and leave you to try and crawl out of here and hope that your last minion is still around to help you.”
He stood, keeping his gun pointed at Kyle’s face. “Blink your eyes. Option one, or option two.”
Kyle looked at Oliver with undisguised hatred. He didn’t blink.
“So you think there’s a third option do you? There isn’t.”
Oliver stepped back, lowering his gun. Kyle continued to stare at him defiantly. The edge of his mouth twisted up in a vicious smile, even as his eyes started to water from the effort of keeping them open. Oliver shrugged, aimed, and calmly shot Kyle in the left knee.
He turned away from the screaming mercenary and collected the man’s assault rifle before walking through the doorway to the courtyard.
Chapter Twenty
Summer was in full swing in Washington D.C. The air was hot, humid, and heavy with the scent of automobile exhaust from the thousands of vehicles that sat in gridlocked traffic around and throughout the city. Oliver strode down K Street with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, a camera slung around his neck and a backpack hanging loosely over his shoulders. He smiled to think that the security guards lining the streets would assume he was nothing but a tourist, even down to the bright red tan, bordering on sunburn, on his face and arms.
It had taken Oliver and Diana only four days to get back to the United States after the events in the temple.
He had emerged from the bath chamber, followed by Kyle’s screams of pain and rage, to find Diana hiding behind a statue of Horus half way down the way of the gods. She held the staff in one hand as she hugged Oliver tight, but said nothing. They had used the rope from his pack to climb down the rock face to the bed of the dry lake then hiked to the jeep as quickly as they could, the darkness that covered the entire basin of the lake to a depth of a foot or more dissipating to nothing as they ran through it. When the reached the jeep Oliver was immensely relieved to find that the water in the five gallon jugs was still fresh. The two of them had each drunk nearly a gallon before Oliver got the jeep started and drove back the way he had come.
Diana hadn’t said a word to him until the jeep was underway, bouncing and skidding across the desert sands as Oliver followed a route on his GPS that would, eventually, return them to the wide loop of highway surrounding Al Fayyum Lake. When she did, it was only to ask Oliver what he planned to do with the staff.
He had remained silent for a minute, then glanced at Diana as he replied, “I’m going to break it.”
Diana had nodded. They were both silent for several kilometers, then Diana had said, “That’s the right thing to do. It... it felt angry, and powerful. We can’t let anyone get their hands on it to use as a weapon.”
Oliver had stopped the jeep then, there in the middle of the Egyptian desert, and looked toward Diana. She had returned his gaze for a moment, then leaned forward
and put her hand on his cheek and kissed him gently on the lips. They now shared an understanding of something that went beyond their personal history, or their shared belief in ancient powers and conspiracies. Both had now touched a relic of awesome power and been judged worthy of determining its fate.
Oliver slowed his pace as he approached Founding Flounders, an upscale seafood restaurant only three blocks from the White House that was increasingly popular with executive office staff. Oliver pushed through the rotating door and introduced himself to the hostess, explaining that he was expected by one of her more private diners. She checked the reservation book, nodded, and passed Oliver off to a waiter who led him back past the crowded bar and whitewashed walls featuring caricatures of political figures as fish, to one of the private dining rooms at the back of the restaurant. The waiter knocked on the door. The door opened to reveal a burly man in a dark suit.
The guard examined each of them in turn, then nodded towards Oliver’s bag. “I’ll need to look in that.”
“Have at it.”
The suited bodyguard unzipped Oliver’s bag and got a puzzled look on his face. Oliver smiled at that. It wasn’t every day that a sunburnt tourist met with a former presidential candidate carrying piece of wood.
“What’s this?”
“A gift. It’s harmless.”
The guard cleared his throat and pushed the wood back into the bag before tossing it back to Oliver. He nodded at the waiter, who turned and hurried away.
“Go ahead.” The guard stepped aside to reveal Senator Wheeler sitting at the far end of a large table set for sixteen, sipping a glass of whiskey on the rocks.
“Good to see you alive, kid.” Senator Wheeler exclaimed, setting the glass down and waving for Oliver to approach.
Oliver stepped past the guard and strode to a chair two seats away from the Senator. He dropped into the seat and tossed his backpack into the chair between them.
“Your father called and said you need to meet with me about our little project. I was under the impression that it had come to an end.”
“Yes. I suppose you were.” Oliver leaned back and crossed his legs under the table, enjoying the confused look on the Senator’s face. “Thanks for meeting with me, though I suppose you had to after the whole screwup with Leonidas Security.”
“I’m not sure what...”
“Please, Senator. You can be honest with me. After all, I’m the man you hired to clean up your mess.”
The Senator was silent for a moment. He worked his jaw back and forth contemplatively, then reached for his glass and took a swallow of the amber liquid. He coughed and said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Oliver nodded towards the guard. The Senator got his meaning and told the man to wait outside the door.
They both waited until the door was closed, then the Senator said, “I had nothing to do with the raid on the vault. That was all Rais Karim.”
Oliver pulled a large brown envelope out of his backpack and slid it down the table towards the senator. “Take a look in there.”
The Senator unclasped the envelope flap and peered inside without dumping out the contents. His face darkened and he gave Oliver a cold look, then he closed the envelope, folded it sharply in half, and slipped it into his suit coat.
“Blackmail is a crime, kid. I hope you know that.”
Oliver laughed out loud. He had been afraid of what Wheeler could do to him when this whole adventure started, but recent events had given him a sense of confidence that was hard to shake. He laughed long and hard, pushing himself to continue even after the genuine hilarity of the moment had passed simply to relish the growing expression of fury on Senator Wheeler’s face.
Finally he sat upright in his chair and steepled his fingers in front of his face, then said, “I think you’d have a hard time convincing anyone that this is blackmail, Senator, assuming that you let any of this come to light. Blackmail assumes that one party is offering to cover up potentially damaging information in exchange for some sort of payment. All that packet contains is screenshots from a video of some Leonidas Security contractors attempting to sell an illegally obtained Egyptian artifact about two weeks ago. You can see the timestamp there at the bottom left of the image. But that’s not an issue, right? Obviously you know nothing about the internal operations of your biggest campaign contributor. It might look bad, but there can’t be anything that could be traced to you.”
Oliver leaned forward, a cynical smile creeping across his face as he spoke, “Certainly not phone records and visitors logs showing that you had extensive conversations with the Leonidas executives the day this video was taken, and again a week later when one of their men was arrested in an Egyptian hospital for selling relics on the black market.”
The Senator took another sip of his whiskey and said nothing.
He set his glass down on the table and clutched it for a moment, long fingers turning white as they flexed tightly around the heavy glass. Oliver didn’t think he had pushed the man too far, but he tensed his muscles to dodge out of the way just in case the Senator hurled his glass across the gap between them.
“You don’t have to answer. Frankly, I’m amused by the situation. Hiring me was at least discreet. Putting pressure on a major contractor, then checking in on them after the job fell apart, that was sloppy. But with Leonidas Security out of the picture now, I would appreciate being paid for delivering the goods.”
Senator Wheeler’s expression of quietly controlled rage shifted to one of confusion. He pushed the glass away with a flick of his finger and asked, “The goods?”
Oliver pointed to where his backpack rested on the chair between them. “Take a look for yourself.”
Senator Wheeler lunged forward and grabbed at the backpack eagerly, nearly knocking over his chair in his eagerness. He laid the tattered and sun-faded bag on the table before him and scrabbled with the zippers as Oliver amused himself by wondering if the burnished oak table at which they sat had ever supported such a shabby bag. He didn’t imagine it had. The Senator threw the bag open and gasped in shock at what lay before him.
Resting between the splayed sides of the bag, wrapped loosely in a long strip of cotton cloth, was a piece of wood about seven inches in length and two in diameter. At one end it curved, hooking around into the curve of a shepherd’s crook. The Senator lifted the wood reverentially and laid it on the table before him. He shoved the bag across the table towards Oliver and sat gazing at the broken staff for a moment, eyes wide open as his mouth worked unintelligibly. He reached a trembling hand forward and untucked a fold of the cloth, revealing the jagged splinters of wood at one end where the staff had been broken.
“Is this it?”
Oliver nodded. “I couldn’t bring you the whole thing, but this is the genuine article.”
Senator Wheeler glanced at Oliver, as if to judge the truth of his words. Apparently satisfied, he took a deep breath and returned to gazing at the fragment of Moses’s staff that Oliver had delivered to him.
Oliver waited in silence, allowing the Senator his moment of reverie.
Finally the old man spoke, “How can I...”
“Simple.” Oliver interjected. “The money you offered.”
“Of course. You will have it by the end of the day.”
“And a promise that you’ll behave yourself if you are elected.”
The Senator looked away from the shard of the staff and gave Oliver a puzzled look. Oliver doubted that the man had been this unguarded in decades, but he couldn’t fault the Senator for being overwhelmed in that moment.
“I have another fragment of the staff. Behave yourself in office and I’ll deliver it to you as a retirement gift in a few years. Keep working with bastards like Leonidas and the other shard will appear in a museum somewhere, with papers clearly linking it to the antiquities collection of a respectable Saudi family.”
For an instant, rage flashed across the Senator’s face again, but it was washed away as he glance
d at the shard of the staff laying before him on the table. His eyes locked on the ancient fragment of wood, tracing the curve of the crook down to the splintered end. He took a deep breath. Then he looked back to Oliver and nodded.
“Then I’d say our business here is at an end.” Oliver rose to his feet and grabbed his backpack, zipping it up before tossing it over one shoulder. He lifted his camera from where he had set it on the table and stepped towards the door.
Senator Wheeler cleared his throat and touched the length of wood again before draping the cloth across it. He stood, one hand still resting on the shard of the staff in his pocket, and stepped around the table to shake Oliver’s hand.
“Thank you, kid.”
“Always a pleasure doing business with honorable people, Senator.”
Oliver held the Senator’s grip for a moment. The Senator nodded. Oliver released his hand and turned away to walk out the door.
He strode past the diners at their tables and government staffers at the bar, dropped a small tip on the hostess’s podium, and pushed his way out through the revolving door into the blistering heat of a Washington D.C. afternoon. A blue convertible idled at the curb, parked in the taxi lane, with Amber at the wheel and Diana in the passenger seat. Oliver swung off his backpack and hopped over the closed rear door, dropping the bag into the seat beside him and pulling on his seat belt as Amber pulled the car into traffic.
“Did he bite?” Diana asked.
“He’s hooked.” Oliver replied, leaning forward so he didn’t have to shout to be heard over the growling noise of the traffic around them.
“And you’re sure there is no power in the shard you gave him?”
Oliver reached into the left pocket of his jeans and pulled out a soft leather pouch. He unfastened the neck and pulled out a piece of wood about the size of his thumb. The fragment was a darkly colored irregular knot, streaked with lines and swirls of brown and black, and perfectly smooth on all sides. It appeared to glow darkly in the sunlight, as if it had been carved, sanded, and oiled with care.