Solomon's Throne

by Jennings Wright

  “Here it is!” He held it up to her like he was passing a baton. He quickly filled in the hole and swept his hand over the dirt so it didn’t look recently disturbed. “Let’s get out of here. I feel like I’ve got a dragon breathing down my neck!”

  Rei stuffed the familiar metal tube into Gideon’s backpack and held it up to him. He slid both arms in, brushed his hands on his pants, and led the way out the door and down the hill.

  Back at the hotel, they threw their belongings into their bags. Gideon had called Captain McMillan on the way back from Great Zimbabwe and told him they wanted to leave as soon as possible. The captain assured them that he would get a driver right away, and meet them at the airport. They would handle all the paperwork and preflight, and have the plane ready to go.

  As they were packing, Gideon’s phone rang. He snatched it out of his pocket and yelled into it, “Hello!” as he kept stuffing things into his carry on bag.

  “Gideon, it’s Captain McCallister. We’ve got another jet here. Maintenance guy says it’s been here an hour, and there were three men on board. There’s no crew, so I can’t get any more information. But I saw three guys pull up to the Inhambane airport when we were taking off, and seems to me maybe they’ve come here to find you. Be careful.”

  “Crap.” Gideon said, and punched off the phone. “We have to go now. If you haven’t packed it, you don’t need it, unless it’s a passport, laptop, or phone. If those guys aren’t here yet, they’re on their way. Go!”

  Rei zipped the last bag, threw all the shoulder straps over her arms, grabbed the handle of a rolling bag, and cracked open the door. Twenty feet away and headed her way was a man, dressed all in black. She slammed the substantial mahogany door, threw the bolt, and ran smack into Gideon.

  “They’re out there.” Gideon grabbed Rei’s hand and went into the bathroom. Like many hotels in the bush, there was no hot running water. When you wanted a shower, an attendant brought a five liter bucket of hot water to your room, climbed a ladder over your open air shower, and poured the hot water into another bucket that was attached to a shower head. It made for a delightful shower, and also a good escape hatch, if they could climb the stacked rock walls and jump over the top.

  “Take your backpack and your purse. That’s it!” Gideon grabbed a wooden chair and put it against the shower wall. “Up! Now!” He was whispering frantically. They heard a knock on the door.

  Rei dropped everything not draped over her shoulders and climbed. She popped her head up, and didn’t see anyone. None of the cottages actually had a back door, which the monks had probably ascertained, so they were concentrating on the front. For the moment. Rei dropped as lightly as she could to the ground. When she looked up she saw that Gideon was already dropping onto the grass. He crouched low and crab-walked to the side of the building. A hedgerow of bougainvillea separated their cottage from the neighboring one, and they pushed their way through the vines and thorns to the other side.

  Gideon stopped her and leaned in to her ear. “I need to call our driver. He gave me his card. But I can’t talk here. I’m going to go up there,” He pointed to the shower on the cottage. “I can call from inside. Then I’ll come back out. You stay here.”

  Rei got a look of panic on her face and grabbed him, shaking her head. Gideon just nodded at her and took off for the shower. He climbed up the rocks that made up the outside wall, and dropped down out of sight. Rei pushed herself back into the bougainvillea, feeling very exposed.

  While she was trying to calm her breathing and heart rate, she heard murmured voices. She couldn’t tell for sure, but they seemed to be coming from the side of their cottage. She pressed further into the bushes, knowing that if anyone came around the back of the buildings, she would be visible. And that if Gideon chose that moment to climb over the wall of the shower, he was toast.

  The murmuring got closer, but then moved off. She breathed a sigh of relief. What was taking Gideon so long? Finally she saw his head pop up quickly over the top of the wall, go back down, then his whole body vault quickly over and onto the soft earth. He ran back to her.

  “The driver will be here in fifteen minutes…” He whispered.

  “Fifteen minutes? They’ll find us before then!”

  Gideon was concerned as well. There was not a lot of cover at the hotel, and he didn’t know how long the two of them, hiding together, could avoid three men who could split up and cover more ground. He had told the driver to pick them up at the staff quarters, which he had noticed on the drive in. But for him to get there with Rei, they had to traverse an open area of lawn. He didn’t know the place well enough to get around it, and he didn’t see any way they could get across it without being seen.

  Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her to the shower wall, which bulged out from the back of the round building. He stopped and did a quick look around. The coast seemed clear, so they ran quickly to the next group of shrubs separating this cottage from the next. There was one more cottage before the lawn, or they could go to the front and risk the pathway to the hotel’s main building. Neither seemed like a great option. He sat still in the prickly bushes, thinking.

  As he was weighing the options, he saw a very young man, all in black, walking behind the remaining cottage. Very soon, if they moved he’d see them. If they didn’t move, he’d see them. They needed a distraction. Pushing Rei gently back into the bushes, he took off towards the front of the cottage. He grabbed a stone from the row lining the front path, and went around, past the front door, and to the other side. He hurled the stone as far and high as he could, then ran back to Rei. He heard the stone hit something loud—another rock, a tree, something with substance.

  As he skidded to a crouch near Rei, he could see the man turn quickly towards the sound, and pulled Rei out and around to the front. He now felt that getting around other people might be their best option. They ran, flat out, for the main building.

  They were twenty feet from the back entrance of the lobby, near the bar, when two of the monks stepped out from behind a hibiscus and into the pathway. One of them had a gun, and it was aimed directly at them. The Quinns slid to a stop on the gravel, and Gideon put his arm protectively around Rei.

  The man with the gun gestured for them to approach. They did so, slowly, looking around for the third man. Gideon was looking for an opening, or for a way to cause enough of a ruckus to draw other people to the area. He didn’t know what the rules were about guns in Zimbabwe, but he thought it was illegal for most people… But the hotel had a guard, armed with an old AK-47, if he could get his attention.

  They stopped five feet in front of the two men. The third man had not joined them, and neither of the monks in front of them had used their phones. Both men had the CA symbol tattooed on their forearm. Both men looked pissed off.

  “We want the letters.” The man with the gun said in Portuguese.

  “You have the letter,” Rei said.

  “No! The letters from the Jesuit. The letters about the treasure. We want those letters.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Rei said. She knew Gideon wasn’t understanding the conversation, but she squeezed his side to let him know it wasn’t going too well. Which of course he had figured out by the gun still pointing at them.

  “I do not want to shoot you, but I will. I am a man of God. I am following my orders to bring a treasure of the Church back to the Church. I want the letters.” The man was agitated. He was not a soldier, he was a monk. He wasn’t sworn to find a treasure, only the letter from Paul. Although he had been in the army for his two year of mandatory service, and knew how to use the gun he held, he did not want to use it on these people.

  “The treasure never belonged to the Church. If anything, it would belong to Israel.” Rei said.

  The man’s face turned rigid. “The Church is the repository for God’s treasures. It is not for Israel, it is for Rome. We will find it, and we will give it to the Pope himself. Our order will finally be recognized.” He motioned
them to come closer, which was the opening Gideon had been waiting for.

  They slowly walked up to the men, Gideon keeping his left arm around his wife. He carefully reached around the backpack and gently pulled the chisel out of the elasticized pocket meant for water bottles, and held it firmly in his hand. The man with the gun waved at them to hurry, and whispered something to his compatriot, who turned and hustled through the door. At that minute, Gideon lunged at him, chisel held like a dagger, plowing him into the wall and plunging the tool into his right shoulder. He didn’t want to kill the monk, but he needed to make sure that he was incapacitated, so he turned the handle around and brought it down hard just behind the gunman’s ear. The man dropped like a rock, and Gideon quickly pulled him farther from the doorway.

  “Come on!” He grabbed Rei and ran. He didn’t know where the third man was, but he assumed the second one had gone to get a vehicle, so he ran away from the car park and away from the road, behind the kitchen and cisterns. He kept running, glancing back to make sure Rei was able to keep pace, until he got to a row of primitive brick barracks that appeared to be additional staff quarters. They ran quickly behind them, startling some women washing clothes in bright, shallow plastic buckets.

  They came out at a dirt service road that appeared to skirt the main entrance. Gideon didn’t know where it ended up, but the farther away from the crazy monks, the better. Rei was starting to gasp for air, and finally she pulled her hand from Gideon’s and stopped, holding her side.

  “Stitch!” she panted.

  “Stretch to the other side. We’ve got to keep going.” Rei nodded and put her right arm over her head and leaned to the left, grimacing. After thirty seconds, she took a tentative step, and then started jogging. Her face was grim, and Gideon knew she was using all her strength just to keep moving ahead.

  “Hang on, Rei, give me the bags,” he said.

  Rei stopped, shoved her purse into her backpack and swung it over to Gideon. She gave a weak smile and started off down the road again, Gideon jogging by her side.

  The road ended at a tall trash dump. Goats were standing on the pile of garbage, rooting around for delicacies, and a small herd of cattle were grazing in the dry grass to the side. There was no more road. The two just stood there, looking at the goats and breathing hard.

  “OK, this isn’t good.” Rei finally said. She started pacing, as was her habit when she was stressed.

  “We can figure it out, let me just see…” He looked at the compass on his watch. “OK, the ruins are that way, to the southwest. We can go there, where there are people…”

  Rei cut him off. “We can’t go there without crossing that big grassland. There’s nowhere to hide, and it’s way too far to run.” She started walking around the trash heap, stopping to stretch her tired legs. She continued walking, shooing away a black and white goat who nibbled at her pants. She spotted something and called to Gideon.

  “Hey! Come over here. There’s path through this grove of…whatever these trees are. Maybe it goes to a village or something.”

  Gideon jogged over. Sure enough, there was a path. Whether it was a game trail or a path made by people, he didn’t really care at the moment. He started down it, grateful for the shade of the trees. He thought they were eucalyptus trees, and they were quite tall but had no foliage at the bottom. That left them somewhat exposed, but it was a lot better than open plain.

  The path meandered side to side, made inexplicable turns, and seemed to be leading nowhere. Gideon had just about given up, thinking it must really be a game trail, when two small boys appeared on the path, walking in the opposite direction, with the ubiquitous yellow water jugs on their heads. Smiling shyly, they giggled as the muRungus passed by.

  Bolstered by their appearance, Rei picked up her pace, and in five minutes they were in a small, four hut village. Old women sat at the doorways, tending small fires topped with cooking pots. Naked toddlers with beads around their waists played with rocks and sticks. One very elderly man was napping on a woven reed mat. When the Quinns walked into the center of the encampment, all but the sleeping man looked up in surprise.

  Rei smiled and waved. The women nodded at her, but didn’t rise.

  “English?” Rei asked.

  The nearest woman shook her head. “Kwete.”

  “Is that Swahili?” Gideon asked?

  “I don’t think so. The people here are Shona… But I don’t speak Swahili anyway.”

  Rei pantomimed driving a car. “Car?” She asked hopefully, although she didn’t see one, and there were obviously no roads. The woman shook her head again, starting to get amused.

  “Airport?” Rei stuck her arms out and swooped around like a child playing at flying. The woman burst out laughing, hiding her mouth behind her hand.

  “Kwete.”

  Several of the toddlers came over to join in the game, and a young girl grabbed Gideon’s hand and watched solemnly. Rei stopped in front of Gideon and shrugged.

  “I’m out of ideas.”

  “You’re pretty good at charades, though,” he said.

  “Funny. So what do we do now?”

  Gideon took off the two backpacks and set them on the ground. “We wait, I guess. There aren’t any young men or women here now. Someone is bound to come back, maybe for that food they’re cooking. There must be at least one villager who speaks English—it’s the official language of the country!”

  Rummaging through the pack, he brought out two bottles of water. Immediately they were swarmed by the children calling, “Chokunwa!” One of the old women had gotten to her feet and was trying to shush them. Laughing, Gideon handed her one of the bottles and tried to repeat the word.

  “Chokunwa!” he said, and the woman laughed behind her hand again, her eyes crinkling.

  Gideon and Rei rested for an hour on a reed mat given to them by the laughing woman. It was quiet and pleasant in the shade, and they were exhausted from their escape, so they dozed and chatted and tried to determine what to do next. Gideon knew that both Captain McMillan and the taxi driver would be concerned, the captain rather more than the driver, who would probably just shake his head at the crazy Americans. They had eluded the Congratio a Achalichus monks for the time being, but they still had to find a way to their plane, which was almost certainly being watched. Gideon had checked his phone and Rei’s, but they no longer had a signal. There wasn’t much to do but wait.

  Finally, two young men walked into the village from the opposite direction of the trail that had led the Quinns there. Both had hoes over their shoulders, and they were talking and laughing as they came into the common area between the huts. When they spotted the muRungus they stopped and looked at the old woman, still sitting in the doorway. They conversed for minute or two, and then approached. Gideon and Rei stood up and nodded their heads in greeting.

  “English?” Rei asked. One of the men nodded.

  “Small English, from school.”

  “We need to go to Masvingo. To town. Yes?” The young man consulted his friend.

  “Masvingo far by walk. One day.” He held up a finger to make sure they understood.

  “Does anyone have a car nearby?” Here Rei once again pantomimed driving, and the men laughed. Then they consulted again.

  “Wife she work at hotel. Hotel have car. We go.”

  Gideon and Rei both shook their heads, and the men looked confused, not sure if they had misunderstood the question.

  “To town, not to hotel. Another way?” Rei asked hopefully. The men chatted for several minutes this time, one gesturing back towards the hotel, and the other to the north. Finally they seemed to reach a decision.

  “Hurudza…farmer there.” He pointed to the north. “He have truck, many truck. We go.” He smiled. This time the Quinns both nodded agreement.

  The young man said, “Shumba,” and pointed to himself. “I am Shumba.” Gideon and Rei introduced themselves, and gathered up their few belongings.

  Shumba called to the gr
andmother in the doorway and said something, accompanied by arm waving towards the north. The woman smiled, without showing teeth, and waved at the Quinns.

  “Oneka!” she called out.

  “We go!” Shumba said happily, enjoying this change of pace.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Shumba walked easily down the trails, moving at a comfortable pace. His shoes were two sizes too large and had holes in them, but he didn’t seem to notice. Warthogs snuffled along and crossed the trail, never getting very close, but not seeming to be disturbed by their presence. Small antelope could be seen grazing, and several dozen had gathered at one outcropping, where they were licking what seemed to be rock.

  “Munyu.” Shumba said when Rei pointed. “Salt. They lick for to be strong.”

  This trail was much like the first, although it meandered through open plain and acacia more than through tall trees. The sun was hot, and even though their pace was measured, both Rei and Gideon were sweating. Rei had taken back her backpack, although Gideon had her laptop in his own, and sweat was running in rivulets down both of their backs.

  After two hours, Shumba pointed to a thin line of smoke in the sky. “Farm.” This news gave the Quinns a second wind, and they arrived at the farm twenty minutes later in good spirits. Shumba went up to the stone house, which sported a blue tin roof, and called out. A middle aged woman with an elaborate head cloth but otherwise drab clothes came to the doorway. The two conversed for several minutes, and the woman nodded and went inside.

  “Farmer come home soon. Ngosikadzi give us something to eat, and tea. We wait.” He indicated an area under the one acacia tree nearby which had been covered with reed rugs. Rei and Gideon removed their burdens and sat down, stretching their backs. In several minutes the lady brought out a carved wooden tray with hot tea and sweet cookies on it. They took both gratefully and smiled at her.