The Merlin Chronicles: Box Set (All Three Novels)

by Daniel Diehl

  Jason laughed and nodded his acknowledgement of the kid’s gratitude but couldn’t help running his hand across his stomach to check for even the slightest hint of a bulge. He had almost convinced himself that he was not turning into a bloated pig when they came to the dirty glass door that announced their arrival at the Hotel New York. Ras grabbed the handle, pulled the door open and offered a sweeping bow accompanied by a muttered “After you, boss man” and a grand gesture signaling Jason to enter.

  While Ras leaned against the peeling ochre paint of the lobby wall, Jason walked to the desk to retrieve their room key. The desk clerk’s chair was empty so Jason tapped the button on the old fashioned lobby bell standing on the counter. When the clerk failed to appear from the back room, Jason hit the bell again, turned, looked at Ras and jerked his shoulders in confusion. In response, Ras started across the room toward the counter. Before he could cross the twenty feet of open space, Jason leaned over the counter to check whether the clerk had left their key on his desk or jotted a note that would tell them when he might be back. There was no key, and no note, but on the floor, wedged between the legs of the chair, the clerk’s head and shoulders protruded from under the desk. His chocolate brown face was now a sickly gray and his unseeing eyes were fixed lifelessly on the ceiling, a surprised look still in place from the moment when the bullet penetrated his forehead. Jason was still frozen in place, staring at the corpse, when Ras stepped up next to him and raised onto his toes to see what Jason was staring at. Before averting his eyes from the dead man, Jason reached out and grabbed Ras by the wrist, squeezing hard.

  “Ah, shit, man, I’ve got a really bad feeling about this, Ras. You remember I told you about that woman who was trying to kill me?” Jason left the thought unfinished but inclined his head toward the corpse.

  Ras craned his neck to look at the body one more time before answering. “Boss, that guy’s still oozing blood.”

  Jason forced himself to look back at the lifeless clerk. Sure enough, the large pool of sticky red gore under the man’s head was still growing, creeping outward along the edges, moving slowly across the worn linoleum of the floor. Finally, he looked back at his companion.

  “But I think he’s beyond help.”

  “I know that. What I mean is, he was only shot within the last one or two minutes; after that you stop bleeding. Trust me, I know about this shit.”

  Jason forced himself to flick his eyes toward the stairs, the ancient elevator and the front door before looking back toward Ras and whispering “Then they’re probably still here, aren’t they?”

  Ras’ only responce was an almost imperceptible nod.

  “They’re still in the hotel.” Jason’s strangled voice rose in frightened realization. “HOLY SHIT, they’re in our room.”

  Ras clamped a hand over Jason’s mouth and nodded again.

  “Oh, fuck.” Jason grabbed the counter long enough to prevent panic from overtaking him. After closing his eyes and allowing himself just enough time to take in and exhale a single, long breath, he looked back at Ras. “Ok, we gotta’ go and we gotta’ go now. I need you to get us to someplace safe, someplace I can stay at least long enough to figure out what the hell to do.”

  Silently, Ras headed toward the front door, motioning for Jason to follow. When they reached the door, they both glanced back toward the stairs and elevator, straining to pick up the slightest sound. Assured that nobody was creeping up behind them, Ras opened the door and stepped onto the dusty sidewalk. Once they were in the open air, Ras leaned close to Jason and spoke in a low voice, just loud enough that Jason alone could hear him.

  “Now, boss, we’re going to move at a normal pace. Not too fast, not too slow. We don’t want to attract any attention to ourselves.” When he asked, “Got it?” Jason only nodded silently.

  Without another word, Ras grabbed Jason by the elbow and pulled him down the street at a calm walking pace for what felt like days, but was actually only long enough for them to reach the first dark, narrow alley wedged between two small commercial buildings. There, they turned in and entered the world of protective shadows that would be their best and only ally until they reached a place of safety. Moving at a measured pace they slipped from one shadowy place to another, avoiding the light and groups of people, only emerging from alleyways when they had to cross major roads and even then they only stepped into the light after Ras checked to make sure the streets and sidewalks were relatively free of people. The idea was to remain as unobtrusive as possible – a goal which, considering Jason’s six foot height, blond hair and pale complexion, was nearly impossible in Ethiopia.

  In one narrow alleyway lined with ramshackle, mud brick houses, Ras reached out a hand and in a single motion snagged a dingy gray, hooded tee shirt from a clothes line. Wadding it into a tiny ball he crammed it under his arm and moved off without ever breaking his stride. Two streets later he handed the shirt to Jason, instructing him to put it on and pull up the hood to help hide his hair.

  “Now maybe you won’t attract attention like a police siren. Man, I never noticed just how white you are.”

  Struggling to get the slightly undersized shirt over his shoulders, Jason stopped long enough to adjust the hood.

  “I’m sorry. It’s never been a problem before.”

  Two streets later Ras bent down next to a blue plastic fifty-five gallon drum that was being used to collect what little rainwater drained off of a building’s roof. Splashing a handful of water into the dust of the road, he mixed a small amount of mud. Scooping it up, he pushed Jason against a wall and began smearing the mud across his face until it formed a thin, relatively even coating.

  “It won’t pass close inspection but at least it should make you look a little more normal from a distance. Maybe they’ll just think you’re an Arab or a zombie or something.” A moment after they resumed their furtive journey southward, toward the far side of Addis Ababa, he added “And keep your hands in your pockets.”

  After a seemingly endless, gut-wrenching forty-five minutes of dodging in and out of the shadows, slipping from one dark alley to the next like feral cats, they moved toward a brightly lit open area bordering a broad, four lane road that Jason recognized. It was Ras Mekonin Avenue and directly across from where they stood was the abandoned hulk of La Gare Railroad Station. Jason and Ras leaned against opposite walls of the alley, staring at each other across a distance of no more than four feet. Ras raised his eyebrows, grinned and inclined his head toward the old yellow brick building eight hundred feet away, across the width of the road and the broken remnants of the parking lot.

  “Home.”

  Jason stared at Ras and shifted his eyes to the railroad station for a few seconds before looking back.

  “Do you live there?”

  “Sure. I was going home when I first ran into you.”

  Jason stared at the depressingly dilapidated old building. There were holes in the tile roof, most of the windows were either boarded over or broken out and the doors had all been covered with corrugated steel to discourage trespassers. Even the most charitable assessment could not make La Gare sound inviting.

  “Wow.”

  “Hell of a lot better than sleeping in the streets.”

  Looking in both directions to make certain pedestrian and vehicular traffic were both at a low ebb, Ras stepped gingerly onto the sidewalk prior to exposing himself to almost three hundred yards of open roadway and parking lot before reaching relative safety. After pausing for several minutes, balanced on the edge of the curb, Ras motioned to Jason and made a mad dash across the street, not stopping until he was under the shadowing arches of the railroad station. Seconds later Jason leapt in beside him and slammed his back against the brick wall, panting for breath.

  “Ok. So far so good. Now how do we get inside?”

  Still gasping for breath, Ras pushed off from the wall and jerked his head, indicating that Jason should follow him. After crawling through a hole in a chain link fence, they made th
eir way around to the track-side of the building. Here the old portico roof hung at a crazy angle and long unused shops and waiting lounges stood boarded over and graffiti covered. At the base of a blank section of yellow brick wall Ras pushed the toe of one shoe against a cellar window that swung inward with the pressure. Smiling, Ras lay on the ground, face down, and slid backward through the window which fell shut as he passed through. A moment later the window reopened and his face reappeared in the darkness.

  “Come on in. Just make sure your feet land on the table, otherwise it’s about eight feet to the ground.”

  With a shrug Jason did as instructed and a minute later was following Ras through a maze of malodorously decayed subterranean passages toward a rickety staircase leading up to the cavernous main concourse of La Gare. Half way along the length of the building they ascended an impressive grand staircase to the upper floors where the defunct railway company had once had its offices. Along both sides of a wide hallway, rows of heavy wooden doors with frosted glass windows occupying their upper halves offered access to dozens of nearly identical offices. Ras marched unhesitatingly up to one of these, opened the door and walked in, Jason close on his heels. Filled with oddments of rescued furniture, the room contained an old office desk with a map of Addis Ababa tacked to the wall above it, a table and four mismatched chairs, and along one wall stood a dilapidated leather sofa flanked by two large chairs. Over a pair of large windows that overlooked four rows of railroad tracks, a single worn curtain and one old bed sheet had been tacked into place and swaged to the sides. Here and there, stubs of candles and an old kerosene lantern appeared to be the only source of artificial light. Despite the worn condition of the furnishings the room was nearly as neat, clean and orderly as Jason’s own apartment.

  “Welcome home, boss. Take a seat.”

  Jason smiled, nodded and collapsed into one of the big arm chairs by the couch.

  “You never saw a dead body before, did you, Jason?”

  “Actually I did. A few months back I saw a bunch of Buddhist monks die in a fire.”

  “Oh, sorry about that. You just looked sort of rattled so I thought maybe…” When Jason failed to respond, Ras continued speaking to prevent the silence from making them more depressed than they already were. “So you think this has something to do with that woman you say is trying to kill you?”

  “I know a lot of really bad things happen at random here in Ethiopia but…yeah…I was afraid she might find me after I lost my luggage and it looks like I was right. I mean, seriously, what are the odds against a bunch of revolutionary guerilla fighters charging into our hotel and murdering the desk clerk less than two hours after I check in?”

  Ras scowled and nodded thoughtfully. “I know it isn’t any of my business, and you didn’t want to tell me before, but I’ve got to ask: What did you do to this woman to make her hate you so much?”

  “Actually, it isn’t me. She is trying to kill a friend of mine and I just sort of got in the way.”

  “Man, that is one seriously vindictive woman.”

  “You have no idea, Ras. You just have no idea.”

  Now that he was safe for the moment, Jason’s mind had started working again and mention of Morgana made him realize that he had tickets booked on a flight to England early the next morning.

  “Ras, I’ve got to find a way to get to the airport without getting killed. Do you think you can get me there?”

  “I hate to be the one to break it to you, Jason, but if they found your hotel there is no way they aren’t covering the airport. I mean, it was almost as if they knew what time you were coming in from Axum. Till we get this figured out, and find a way to keep you hidden until we can get you out of the country, I don’t think you can risk going anywhere.”

  Jason ran a hand along his forehead, crumbling off the layer of dried mud Ras had spread across his face.

  “Fuck.”

  “Look. I have to run out and get us some food and pick up something to disguise you a little better.” Jumping up from his chair, Ras jammed his hands into his hip pockets and started pacing in a circle. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, but you can’t leave here till we figure this thing out. Do you still have your phone?”

  Jason fumbled in his pockets and extracted his wallet, phone and passport. He pulled a few bank notes from the battered wallet and handed them to Ras, telling him to get whatever supplies he thought they needed.

  Taking the bills, Ras nodded. “You’re really lucky you still have your passport. If you had left that behind you would never have been able to get out of here.”

  “Yeah, but I left my plane tickets in our room.”

  Heading toward the door, Ras looked back over his shoulder. “Can’t worry about that now, man, because no matter what you do, you are not going to make that flight.”

  “Ok. You go and I’ll try to get this worked out on my end.”

  Ras nodded and left, leaving Jason to ponder what he should do next. The logical first step was to call Merlin, explain what had happened and try to figure out how to keep their plan from unraveling completely.

  “I’m glad you called, my boy. Morgana seems to be approaching completion on the caves and you can’t get back here a moment too soon. We need to be…”

  “I can’t come.”

  Jason hated to put it so bluntly but there just wasn’t any polite way to break the news. As slowly and carefully as he could, he explained exactly what had happened at the hotel, their subsequent escape to the abandoned railroad station and Ras’ belief that the airport was probably swarming with Morgana’s agents.

  “Well, that does put us on the spot, doesn’t it?”

  “Ras is going to try to camouflage me the best he can but I don’t think it’s going to be safe to go anyplace where I might make an easy target – especially not someplace as obvious as the airport.”

  “No. You’re quite right. You have to protect yourself. Give me a day or so to try to come up with a plan. I could come to Ethiopia but our primary attention needs to remain focused on obtaining the communicating disk. The only chance we’re likely to have to steal it will be when it’s in transit between her offices and the caves.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know what to tell you. I’ll see if things look safe in the morning but I don’t know how that might play out.”

  “Jason, promise me that you won’t take foolish risks with your life.”

  “I won’t. I promise. I just don’t want you to do anything that is likely to get you or Beverley hurt.”

  “We’re fine. Morgana can’t find us as long as we use Sun Wang To’s ointment.”

  “And if the airline hadn’t lost my ointment none of this would have happened.”

  “Be that as it may, right now we have to concentrate on getting you out of Ethiopia and then getting you and the communicator disk back there so you can open the Ark.”

  By the time Jason finished his call to Merlin and made another one to Beverley, Ras had returned with his small bag of treasures. In addition to food and drinks he had a cheap pair of scissors, a small, stiff-bristled brush, a pair of aviator style sunglasses and two tins of shoe polish; one black and one light brown.

  “Ok, boss, you’re not going to like it but I’m going to cut off that pretty yellow hair of yours.”

  Following Ras’ directions, Jason pulled a chair into the middle of the room, sat on it and allowed Ras to tuck a towel into the collar of his shirt. Five minutes later a full foot of ponytail lay forlornly on the floor and Jason’s hair barely reached to the bottom of his shirt collar.

  “Just be glad Arabs have fairly straight hair, otherwise I would have to figure out a way to make it kinky.”

  “Very funny, Ras.”

  Ras grabbed the tin of black shoe polish and the little brush from the table and began dabbing the greasy substance into Jason’s hair, brushing it out and adding more as necessary to give it an overall, smooth black sheen. When he was satisfied with his work, he exchanged the black
polish for the brown and, with a small square of cloth, began changing Jason’s face, throat and neck from pale cream to light brown. Now and again he would step back, examine his work and either add more color or rub some away as he felt necessary. Eventually, after a prolonged examination, he nodded his approval.

  “Not a thing I can do about your eyes so you’ll have to wear the sunglasses whenever we go out. Now give me a hand.”

  “Give you a hand with what?”

  “No. I mean give me one of your hands; they’re as pink as raw pork.”

  With a huge sigh Jason offered first one hand and then the other so Ras could spread a thin layer of shoe polish across every inch of exposed skin and several inches up his arms. When he was finished, he ushered Jason toward a cracked mirror hanging to one side of the entry door and handed him the sunglasses. Examining the image before him, first without the glasses – for the clearest view – and then with them on – for overall effect – he had to admit that he would never recognize himself.

  “Isn’t this crap going to smear off on everything I touch?”

  “Nope. A couple hours in the sun and it’s going to be almost permanent.”

  “Oh, great.”

  Snickering to himself, Ras turned to the door and opened it.

  “Come on, Mohammed, let’s go.”

  “Go where?”

  “We’re going back to the hotel.” Jason started to object but Ras cut him off. “Don’t worry. Nobody will recognize you. Of course, you still can’t try to leave the country because now you don’t look anything like your passport.”

  “Ok. So why are we going to the hotel?”

  “Because we have to find out what the police have learned about the murder and the suspects.”

  “You don’t seriously think they’ll tell us anything, do you?”

  “You still have some extra money?”