by Daniel Diehl
“Hello, old friend. Please forgive me for disturbing your rest, but I need your help one more time. You‘ll have to be patient with me, now; necromancy was never my strongest skill.”
Cradling the skull lovingly to his chest and wrapping his arms around it, Merlin slowly merged his thoughts with the long dead mind of Brother Jerome. For more than an hour he sat immobile, clutching the muddy skull to his chest, trying to recall a few, fleeting seconds of images that had been witnessed nearly seventeen centuries earlier. When they finally came, Merlin initially thought he had inadvertently opened his eyes – the river and the cave looked exactly as they had when he walked into the room hours before. But, no, the light was not the steady white glare of incandescent bulbs, it was the flickering illumination cast by rush torches. Now he could see the hands of the soldiers moving back and forth, in and out of his line of vision. One of them held a gleaming bronze knife that flashed in the wavering light. Looking up, across the dark water, the terrified monk caught a glimpse of a shimmering circular area on the far wall of the cave. Desperately trying to focus on the strange apparition, while the monk whose last, frantic thoughts he was sharing, struggled against his captors, Merlin tried to memorize the shape and texture of the wall so he would be able to find it again. Finally, as the yellow-brown blade of the knife again passed across his line of vision and lowered itself toward his throat, Merlin broke the link with Brother Jerome.
Leaning back on his heels, exhausted, Merlin finally found the energy to lay his childhood friend’s skull back in its grave, placing it as near to the position in which he found it as possible. Before enclosing his friend in the earth again, he took time to say a short mass for the dead. Then, anxious to be done with the nasty business of disinterring the deceased, Merlin began shoving the piles of earth back into the hole. As he pushed against the wet soil, his hand slipped, sending a spray of dirt and stones across the shallow grave to splash and bounce into the lapping edge of the river. Except that it didn’t. A handful of dirt and small stones had somehow managed to remain suspended in midair no more than four inches above the surface of the water.
“Hello, what have we here?”
Crawling around Jerome’s remains, Merlin crept to the edge of the water, where he extended a curious hand. When it reached the level of the scattered debris, his hand fell on something which was both quite solid and completely invisible. Grabbing first one handful of dirt out of the grave, then another and another, he quickly exposed an invisible footbridge that spanned the River Styx. Rising from his knees and walking toward the center of the bridge, Merlin raised his eyes to the opposite wall. There it was, the exact same combination of ridges and striations that Jerome had seen in his last few seconds of life. The only difference was that the odd, shimmering effect was no longer there.
Striding across the bridge, Merlin laid his hands on the surface of the limestone wall. Just as he thought, the wall was not quite as solid as it appeared to be. Solid, certainly, but artificially created through some kind of magic spell. Finally, there was no longer any doubt. This was the very place where the hideous dragon creatures had come through from whatever hellish realm spawned them, and it was here that he would have to lock the gateway forever if Jason actually found the Urim and Thummim. Merlin desperately wanted to remove the spell and examine the dragon gate, but this was not the time. It would be far better, and safer, to wait until he had disposed of Morgana le Fay. And if the Urim and Thummim proved to be myth, then there would be no reason to expose the gate at all, because without Morgana the beasts could not get through. Content that he had accomplished all he could for the moment, Merlin finished reinterring Brother Jerome, smoothing away the evidence of disturbed earth by gently washing it with hands-full of water. After murmuring a small final prayer for his friend, Merlin left the cave of the River Styx and started back toward the outside world where he would wait for Morgana’s return.
He had traversed nearly half the length of the cave and was just a few steps beyond the catacombs, when his foot touched the edge of the small pressure plate buried in the dust of the floor. Only luck and shear chance had kept him from stepping on it on his way in. Merlin clearly heard the soft, hollow popping sound behind him, but before he could turn around a thumb-sized cylinder struck him in the back. Considering the thickness of the bearskin coat he was wearing, it was only by the smallest of margins that the electrodes of the XREP electronic projectile made contact with his skin; but Merlin didn’t know any of this. All he knew was that his mind and body were suddenly engulfed by nerve jarring, shaking tremors and wave upon wave of searing hot pain. Seconds later he lay on the ground, unconscious and twitching violently.
Chapter Eighteen
By the time the African sun began burning its way across the parched Ethiopian plains, Beverley, Jason and Ras were back at the main gate of St Mary’s of Zion compound; Ras ready to begin a new adventure and Jason and Beverley anxious to end their current one, which had left them both near mental and physical exhaustion. As the three of them entered the compound they could see Fr Marcos standing at the iron fence which defined the perimeter of the treasury grounds and the limits of the old priest’s world. Resting his elbows on top of the gate, Marcos was leaning forward to chat with a short, bald, Arabic looking man who stood with one foot hooked over the front bumper of a gleaming white Mercedes Benz box truck. The motion of Jason’s waving hand caught Fr Marcos’ attention and he returned the gesture, motioning for the trio to join him.
“Mr Carpenter, Miss McCullough, this is my friend Meles Zenobi; he will be your escort to the coast and, pray God, the beginning of your safe return to your England.”
During a round of frantic handshaking, smiling and nodding, the effusively friendly Zenobi insisted on hugging everyone including Ras. While reorienting himself to the business at hand, Jason studied the man who had agreed to smuggle him and Beverley out of Ethiopia. No taller than the fifteen-year-old Ras, Meles Zenobi was distinctly elf-like. Round and cherubic, his smiling face may have lacked an adequate head of hair but sported a neatly trimmed goatee and mustache and an immense Semitic nose on which was perched a massively oversized pair of aviator style sunglasses. While Jason studied the man on whose good graces their escape from the Ethiopian police and Morgana’s assassins rested, Father Marcos had continued to speak.
“…and I shall say prayers of thanks for your generous gifts to the Coptic Church and all of humanity for many years to come.” Shifting his gaze from Jason and Beverley to Ras, he continued. “And now, young man, if you are ready to begin your tenure here at St Mary’s, I will turn you over to Brother Ma’amphela who will show you to your quarters and help you get settled in.”
Thrusting his hand toward Jason, Ras beamed from ear to ear. “Thanks for everything boss.”
“No problem, Ras. You’re a good guy. I’m glad we got to share an adventure together.”
“No foolin’. Me too. And I hope that bad news woman doesn’t find you, so you remember to keep your guard up.”
Once Ras and the monk disappeared around the corner of the treasury building, everyone’s attention turned to the lorry driver.
“If you are both ready, please to get into the cab. We have a long drive ahead of us and must be on our way quickly.”
After jockeying the lorry through St Mary’s narrow gate and turning toward the main north-bound road out of Axum, Zenobi’s cheerful expression turned serious.
“I don’t know how much Fr Marcos has told you about this journey, but I am taking you to the port of Djibouti where I have secured your transportation into Yemen through a friend of mine who has a large fishing boat…what do you call it…a trawler.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you were arranging a boat and everything. Thank you. That’s really nice of you.”
As he spoke, Zenobi seemed to become more nervous and agitated. “Yes, yes. You are most welcome, I am sure, young man. However, the problem is that to avoid the Ethiopian police we will be forced to travel
through Eritrea, whose border lies only about thirty-five kilometers north of here.”
Both Jason and Beverley were staring at their driver, their own expressions slowly becoming more doubtful.
“And why, exactly, is going through Eritrea a problem?”
“Well, umm…you see, the unfortunate truth of the matter is…umm… Ethiopia and Eritrea are at war with each other.”
The shroud of dead silence that descended was finally broken by Jason’s high pitched cry of “WHAT?”
“Oh, oh, not to worry. It is not really a very big war, but it has been going on for some years.”
Beverley forced a strained smile onto her face, patted the agitated driver’s shoulder and mumbled “Could you maybe tell us a little bit about this ‘not very big war’, Mr Zenobi?”
“The nation of Eritrea has a difficult, violent history and has always been involved in fighting with someone. Now they fight with Ethiopia since the late nineties. I don’t know why. What I do know is that the war itself is not the root of the problem. The real problem is the Eritrean government which is the most totalitarian police state in all of Africa which, I am afraid, is not a continent known for its democratic institutions. They trust no one and suspect everyone of everything and are prone to an exaggerated sense of paranoia. I would avoid taking you through Eritrea if I could, but sadly our only alternative route to Djibouti would be to go back through Addis Ababa where, it is my understanding, the national police are actively looking for you.”
“Oh, great” Jason mumbled with a scowl. “So, are we going to have a problem getting through this place? I do NOT want to get shot at; I get shot at WAY too much.”
“I think there will be no problem, but I believe we are about to find out.”
Pointing his finger toward the windshield, Zenobi indicated a cluster of black dots scattered across the road at the furthest edge of their vision. The nearer they rolled toward the horizon the clearer the shape of the objects became. A ramshackle green building standing at the edge of the road came into focus first, followed by several military vehicles pulled nose-to-nose across the macadam to form a roadblock. One of the vehicles was an old halftrack with a wicked looking twin barreled machinegun positioned behind the front passenger’s seat. Flying high above the checkpoint was a red, green and blue tri-color flag sporting a gold design in the middle. As Meles Zenobi and his passengers approached, four men in military uniforms scrambled out of the guard post and manned their weapons. While one of the men climbed into the halftrack and swung into position behind the 50 caliber machinegun, the other three raised ugly looking Kalashnikovs and pointed them directly toward the nose of the oncoming truck. Rolling to a stop, Zenobi turned to Beverley and Jason and forced a smile as two of the guards came toward them.
“I go through this all of the time. These people know me. Please try to remain calm. If you appear nervous they may think we have something to hide.”
For ten nail-biting minutes Zenobi and one of the guards shouted at each other in what sounded to Jason like Arabic. First the guard shouted and then Zenobi shouted back. Back and forth they went until finally they were shouting simultaneously. At one point in the screaming contest Zenobi paused long enough to collect Jason and Beverley’s passports and hand them, along with his own, to the soldier. After a perfunctory look at Meles Zenobi’s papers, the guard examined Beverley’s passport more closely, repeatedly looking from her photo to her face and running his finger over the laminated photo looking for telltale signs of tampering. Finally, after slipping Beverley’s passport to the bottom of the small pile, he came to Jason’s. Looking at the dark blue cover with the gold-embossed eagle in the center, his eyes grew huge as he shifted his gaze to the interior of the lorry where Jason was doing his best to look at ease. Dropping the passports into the dust the soldier jerked back the bolt on his Kalashnikov, brought the butt to his shoulder and pointed the muzzle toward the driver’s window. Jason had no idea what the man was screaming but in seconds eight more soldiers streamed out of the guard shack and surrounded the truck with weapons raised.
“Meles, what in the hell is going on?” Jason was trying to remain calm enough to offer Beverley some small degree of reassurance but he could feel the clammy sweat starting to ooze down his sides and back.
“I am so sorry Mr Jason, but it seems that because you are an American they think you are CIA. They insist we get out so they can search us. How do you say it…the frisk?”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I think we must do as they say…and do so immediately or they may arrest us…or worse.”
As he fumbled for the door handle, trying not to stare at the machineguns pointed at his face, Jason’s primary thoughts were of the two small stones resting in the pocket of his jeans. Looking so innocuous that any child might have gathered them from the bank of any one of a thousand rivers anywhere on earth, the Urim and Thummim were more than the culmination of weeks of work, risk and deprivation, they represented the world’s best hope for permanently thwarting Morgana le Fay and the Dragon Lord’s attack on the planet. Earlier that morning he had contemplated hiding them in a makeshift money belt tied around his waist, under his jeans, but Beverley had convinced him that the simplest approach was the best. Now, as he slowly opened the passenger’s door, careful not to give the guards provocation to do something stupid, he let go of Beverley’s hand, slid his hand deep in his pocked, slipped the stones out and let them drop to the floor of the cab; two stones laying among a scattering of sand, grit and other small pebbles. Waggling his hand, he tried to get Beverley to see what he had done. He heard her mutter ‘yep’, just as his rump slid off the seat and his feet hit the ground.
Before Jason could turn around to help Beverley down from the lorry’s high seat, one of the soldiers grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him violently around and body-slammed him against the truck. With his face crushed against the hot metal of the cargo box, held there by a machinegun pressed forcibly across his shoulders, he could hear Beverley’s feet hit the surface of the road. When one of the soldiers pressed the muzzle of an automatic pistol against his temple, Jason heard Beverley let out a strangled scream as he gritted his teeth and scrunched his eyes closed.
Amid a continuous chorus of shouting and arguing the Eritrean guards systematically stripped-searched Jason. First his shoes, then his jeans and tee shirt and finally his underwear and socks; each item of clothing examined minutely for any signs of whatever these men thought a CIA agent might be carrying. Finally, exhausted, shaking and naked, the soldiers released him and simply walked away. While Beverley talked Jason down from his emotional cliff and helped him dress, Meles rescued their passports from the side of the road as one of the soldiers climbed into the halftrack and backed it up just far enough to allow the Mercedes truck to squeeze past.
Proceeding in an uneasy, stricken silence, they were no more than two miles into Eritrea when the road degenerated from a well-kept, smooth, black macadam highway into a dusty, deeply rutted single lane path that seemed to wander aimlessly between a range of high hills filling the eastern horizon and a bleak, rock-strewn wasteland. Except for the equatorial heat, Jason could easily have convinced himself that he was back in Mongolia with Merlin. Thoughts of Merlin prompted Jason to pull out his mobile phone and turn it on. He had tried to reach Merlin the night before but had gotten no answer at his flat in York. Beverley’s suggestion that it might be taking Merlin longer to make his way home from Heathrow Airport than he had planned seemed logical and Jason had shrugged it off, but now he was anxious to tell Merlin they were finally on their way back and that, despite the best efforts of the Eritrean armed forces, they were in possession of the Urim and Thummim.
“I am sorry, Mr Jason, but that will do you no good. Mobile telephones won’t work in Eritrea.”
Jason stared hopefully at the tiny screen but when he could not find any signal bars he sighed and slipped the phone back in his pocket.
“The Eritrean dictator is
very paranoid. He will not allow any relay towers or internet connections in the country – except in government ministries – because he is afraid that his people are plotting against him.”
“And are they?”
“Oh, my yes. Constantly. Eritrea is a terrible place. The average income here is less than one US dollar per day, per person and everywhere there is great repression. Who would willingly stay in a horrible place like this?”
For the next five hours Jason and Beverley had nothing to hold their attention except the barren, scorched Eritrean countryside. Every few miles they drove through what apparently passed for a town or village. Collections of mud brick huts with roofs made of corrugated metal lined the main road and shimmered in the heat, while in the distance behind them stood the less prosperous parts of town, tumble-down hovels seemingly built from whatever material the inhabitant had scrounged from alongside the road and across the desert floor. Occasionally they would see a scrawny, malnourished villager or a child so skinny they appeared almost like a stick drawing, wander aimlessly from one building to another with a listless shuffle that reminded Jason of characters in a bad zombie movie. There were no crop fields, no animal enclosures, not even a rudimentary store or shop to provide the most basic necessities to those who lived here. The overall effect was less that of established communities and more like some make-shift refugee camp cobbled together along the road to hell. All in all it was the most depressing day either Jason or Beverley could remember and it was with an overwhelming sense of relief that Meles pointed toward another guard post straddling the road in the far distance.