by Alex Archer
Annja smiled crookedly. “In spite of my problems with authority?”
“Because of them, dearie.” She leaned forward across the table, until Annja feared she’d catch her hair on fire from the flickering lamp flame.
“I can tell you this much, the Jar of Solomon must be found. And seen into the proper hands.”
Annja laughed. “Gee, thanks. And of course you can’t tell me whose hands those are.”
Tsipporah sat back. “Of course.” She sighed. “Well. Time to be moving along. We each have our destinies.” She rose and moved to a wall, made a gesture. Annja heard a slight click.
A light fixture mounted into the ceiling overhead came on. Annja had not noticed it in the gloom.
“A lightbulb?” she said, as scandalized as surprised. She blinked dazzled eyes. “There was an electric light here all along, and I’ve been sitting squinting in the dark for hours until I’m half blind?” Her voice rose rather higher than she’d intended at the end of the question.
“Of course,” Tsipporah said. “This is a modern country, sweetheart. Of course there’s electric light.”
“Then why?” She could muster no more than a sputter.
Tsipporah laughed. “Because talking about esoteric matters goes much better with that sort of illumination.” She gestured toward the oil lamp, whose flame, now guttering low, was scarcely to be seen in the light of what Annja, her eyes somewhat adjusted, realized as a pretty weak bulb. “Don’t you have any sense of the mystic?” She shook her head. Her heavy mane swept around her shoulders. “You may be up on the latest fashions, but you need to cultivate a sense of style.”
“You think I’m fashionable?” Annja asked, perplexed.
“Come on, rouse yourself and give me a hug,” the older woman said. “Then I need to lead you out of here.”
“Not by the most direct route, I’m guessing.”
Tsipporah’s smile was radiant. “Of course not! Now you’re getting the idea.”
11
The night air was cool. It smelled of dust, cooking spices, the inevitable diesel exhaust. Annja realized she had no idea what time it was. The streets of the Old City seemed deserted, or at least the narrow street outside the door Tsipporah held open for her.
“I can’t tell you to go safely,” the older woman said, “for I know you won’t. I could bid you to walk always in the light—but I’m sure you shall. So I’ll wish you all the joy it’s possible for you to attain.”
They embraced, kissing each other on the cheek. Annja wasn’t sure whether the warmth she felt toward this woman was more like the feeling for the mother she’d scarcely known or the sister she’d never had. Lack of referents, she guessed.
“One final word about Mark Stern,” Tsipporah said. “He’s better at stirring up forces than he is at controlling them. And he’s got poor judgment in associates.”
Annja nodded. “Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind. Will I see you again?”
“Unlikely, child.” Tsipporah shook her star-blazed mane regretfully. “You will most likely not find this place again, either. You are fated to move through life forming few lasting connections, at least so long as you bear your burden. It is a harsh road for a woman to walk.”
She smiled. “But I believe it will have its compensations.”
THE OLD CITY SEEMED to have rolled up its sidewalks along with the vendors’ rugs. By keeping the well-lit dome of al-Aqsa Mosque atop the Temple Mount at her back Annja knew she was heading west. It was her only reference point in the maze into which Tsipporah had released her.
She had picked her way down no more than three twists of narrow streets and shoulder-width alleys when she heard a growl of angry voices to her right. She moved toward the sound, telling herself she needed to make sure trouble wasn’t about to erupt all over her from some unforeseen direction.
She came to a blind alley or small cul-de-sac. She saw six burly men in weathered work clothes with necks as large as their heads. Three of them held clubs, either batonlike sticks or metal pipes. Three held big-bladed weapons, more short swords than knives, at least two feet long with broad chopping blades. Annja thought of machetes, although she had no idea if they were that or some local equivalent. It wasn’t exactly an exotic design.
Annja drew in a sharp breath.
They had her pale, black-haired Englishman backed against the steel-slat shutters covering the front of a tobacco shop.
“What you want with the jar?” one man said in guttural, heavily accented English. In the gleam of a streetlight the hair cropped close to his head showed hints of red. He wore some kind of dark band around his throat. It looked braided. He held one of the broad-bladed chopping weapons in a ham-sized fist while he prodded the notch of his captive’s collarbone with a sausage-like finger. “Tell or it will go hard on you.”
To Annja, standing unnoticed behind the men, whose attention was riveted to their prey, it looked as if things had already gone hard for her unnamed friend. His face, hanging down toward his open collar, was swollen and starting to discolor into one giant bruise. One eye was almost swollen shut; blood from a broken nose made a dark beard and mustache and had poured down to dye a messy bib on the front of his shirt.
He looked up. “I told you,” he said. His lips were swollen and split. The words came out half whisper, half mumble. “I’m an archaeological researcher. Such a find would be of inestimable value—”
A beefy fist rammed into his belly from a man standing to the red-haired man’s left. The young Englishman doubled over as the air was driven from his body. He gagged, coughed, then tried to straighten.
“He’s not saying anything,” another man said. “Let’s do him. Let the filthy Arabs take the blame. Just another tourist cut up by savages.”
“Who cares what he has to say?” said the man who had most recently punched the Englishman. His free hand held a club. “We just need to make sure he can’t meddle anymore.”
“Hear that, friend?” the red-haired man said, almost avuncular. “You’re running out of options pretty quick now. But if you sing me a sweet enough song, who knows? Maybe you will live.”
The young Briton tried to stand erect but could only manage a painful half-stoop. “Sorry to disappoint you,” he said in a clearer voice. “But I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. In good faith, though, I have to warn you—” he turned his head aside and spit blood at the cobblestones “—it’s you lot who have the problem now.”
And he lifted his head and looked right past them.
His captors stood staring at him a moment, postures redolent of suspicion, leaning forward like hungry dogs. Apparently none of them wanted to be first to fall for the old “look over there” gag. After a few heartbeats the central man, apparently the leader, slowly turned.
Standing three yards behind him, Annja smiled. His slitted eyes went wide.
She held the sword.
“Throw down your weapons and walk out of here,” she told them in a ringing voice. She didn’t particularly care if she attracted official attention, at least at this point in the proceedings. Search how they might, the police would never find her in possession of a weapon. Nor would they believe it if they saw it. “I will let you go unharmed.”
All six goggled at the cross-hilted steel in her hand. They were having trouble believing, too. But it made an impression; she could see that. They had a sense of history in this part of the world, to understate grandly. The Crusaders’ swords with their cruciform hilts were remembered with fear and respect by Muslim and Jew alike.
It had been a reluctant if flash decision to summon the sword before making her presence known. This way there was a chance to avoid bloodshed. These men were serious and their every attitude and action showed they were accustomed to doing violence. Annja knew merely being seen would never make them scuttle away like roaches, as it did many common-thug types. And if an unarmed and obviously American woman challenged them, they’d just laugh.
They did anyway, as she
feared they would. “You may believe your actions to be righteous,” she told them, words cracking like a whip, “but your actions are evil. Go now and save yourselves a lot of pain.”
The Englishman called out something in Hebrew from behind them. The dark-haired man who had earlier gut punched him backhanded him with a casual swipe, not so much as turning his head. The black-furred back of his hand took the young man across the mouth and slammed him back into the shutters with a clanging impact.
“Nice try, girlie,” the leader said. “But you have waded in much too deep. Throw that toy down before we take it away and spank you with it, hey?”
With impeccable pack-predator instincts his comrades had begun to move forward slowly. They fanned out so far as the street’s width permitted, to take her from the sides. She held her face immobile. She knew there was a reason for the, “charge a gun, run away from a knife” adage.
She was about to teach it to them.
She made herself pull each breath deep down to the center of her body. Adrenaline flowed in her veins like an army of crazed jesters. Part of the mad chorus was due to fear. They were many, strong and seasoned fighters. And part came from anticipation.
“Touch me,” she said, “and you will die.”
“Listen—” the leader said. The man to his right, the man with the shock of dark hair who had struck the Englishman twice in Annja’s sight, suddenly grabbed her right wrist. He pulled hard to yank her into a bear hug.
She didn’t move. She had rooted, dropped her weight and sunk into poised relaxation. His slitted eyes went wide.
She turned toward him. The sword flashed. Its blade bit with an ax-on-wood sound.
It flashed between the wrist of the hand that held her and the man’s arm, scarcely slowed.
The hand tightened spasmodically on her arm. Without the aid of the muscles of the arm it lacked strength. It was more a nervous jitter.
Blood squirted from between hand and stump. The man screamed as if only realizing a beat late what had befallen him. He staggered back, holding his truncated arm before his eyes, slipping into shock.
Annja sensed a rush of movement from her right. She continued her spin to her left, coming around as the man who had gotten around to her right side rushed in with a wild scream and an overhand cut of his machete. She caught his forearm with her left hand. It was like gripping a telephone pole. Using her hips, driving with her legs, she continued her turn, guiding his downward stroke as she did.
The wide blade of the machete bit with a crunch into the side of the recent amputee’s head. His eyes rolled up. He fell like a bag of wet laundry, straight down.
The eyes stood out from the head of the man whose arm Annja had guided to deliver the death blow to his friend. Vomit slopped over his lower lip. Veins stood out on the side of his head in such shocking relief she half expected skyrocketing blood pressure to stroke him dead right there.
She felt no inclination to trust to chance. His gagging turned to a squeal of shock and anguish as she thrust the sword beneath his armpit through his torso.
She put a hiking shoe sole against the man’s side and thrust kicked him into a man charging from her left with a raised club. She leaned forward as a machete whistled down past her back. Rising, she turned, holding the sword high. Her opponent’s broad blade clacked on the cobbles behind her turning right heel. She slashed down at the wielder.
She felt impact. An instant of resistance.
He dropped to the street bleeding.
A pipe descended from close by. She ducked her head. The club glanced off the back of her skull. She tasted iron on her tongue and her stomach revolted.
But she kept her presence of mind—without which, she knew, she was lost. She cocked her left leg and thrust outward in a side kick, aiming by sheer body sense. Her shoe took a capacious paunch in the middle, sank deep into the flab that cushioned hard muscle. The attacker was driven back against the red-haired leader.
The final man to her left swung his club like a bat at her as she turned to face him. She slipped the home-run cut like a boxer, ducking her body to her right and down. The man used his own momentum to swing the four-foot baton over his head for an ax stroke to her head.
Taking the sword’s hilt with both hands, she lunged toward him, slashing across her body. The sword took him under the armpit and opened his chest in a gush of blood. She followed through to clear her blade, then slashed back one-handed to strike the forearms of the pipe wielder she had kicked into his leader. He stared at the bleeding wounds as the club clattered on the cobblestones. He fell to his knees screaming in pain.
“Die, bitch!” The man with the cropped red hair launched a whirlwind attack. He had no more skill than a standard street fighter, whose usual methods were stealth or pack hunting; he hacked at her with his machete as if trying to chop through a log. But he was a strong man, built like a bull, and his own veins were ballooned with the mad adrenaline dump of intolerable fury and fear.
Desperately Annja backpedaled, barely managing to interpose her blade for two glancing impacts that sent sparks dancing in yellow arcs across the narrow street. Had she not used both hands on the hilt he would have beaten down her guard despite her strength.
He cocked his heavy-bladed weapon over his right shoulder for his own two-handed strike. Screaming, he swung at her face.
A ringing clang sounded with an off-key end. He swung through, then raised his hands to stare in uncomprehending horror at the mirror-bright line where the sword had cut through his machete, a handspan from its hilt.
He raised his face to stare at her with eyes like eggs totally deflated with shock. “What are you?” he asked.
The boiled-egg eyes rolled up to watch the long, straight blade as it descended flat on the top of his head. Then, quite slowly at first, they rolled up and back. His body collapsed at Annja’s feet.
Her friend the Englishman was on his knees vomiting. She glanced at the man whose hand she had amputated. He lay with one cheek in the midst of a lake of congealing blood, eyes staring.
She knelt and started to wipe her blade on the back of the unconscious red-haired man. Then she stopped. She’d seen enough forensic-science shows on television to know that her straight two-sided sword would leave a blood smear as distinctive as a fingerprint. One that could not possibly have come from any of the wide single-edged chopping weapons of her assailants.
I wonder if the blood and dirt would even go with the sword to wherever, she thought. Now seems like a pretty poor time to experiment.
The dead man’s shirt had come out of his slacks. She used the hem to clean her blade. Then she willed it away.
Suddenly the full impact of what she had just done struck her. She had just spilled human lives into a blood lake on the ancient cobblestones of the Holy City. Her head turned. She had to exert all the will she had not to emulate the man she had rescued. The hot smell of his vomit made it all the harder.
She moved to the Englishman’s side. She stepped gingerly, not wanting to slip and do a pratfall in congealing blood. Although it would be appropriate penance, somehow, she felt.
His spasms had blessedly passed. He had settled down so that his buttocks rested on his calves as he stared at the dead men. He looked at Annja with his eyes wide as the puffiness and incipient shiners would allow. Even in the dubious half light of the distant street lamps they were an amazing blue.
“Did you have to do that?” he demanded.
“Yes,” she said. She knelt beside him. He flinched away from her touch. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“What the bloody hell do you think?” he flared. “Of course I’m not all right. Are you quite mad?”
“Probably.” She reached down, grabbed a handful of his shirt and hauled him to his feet.
“Would you please stop doing that?” he demanded. Then he swayed. She kept him upright.
“Don’t mean to make a habit of it,” she said. “Now, come on. We need to get far away from here—a
nd see if we can clean up a bit before anybody sees us.”
12
“Bloody hell,” the young man said, slopping coffee over the brim of his mug to stream down the back of his hand and drip between the metal meshwork of the tabletop. “I’m all over nerves, and this whole wretched town has never heard of decaf.”
He looked indignantly at her. They had picked sidewalk tables well back from the dubious yellow puddle of light from the street lamp up the block, as well as the more substantial shine from the West Jerusalem coffee shop’s front window. After slinking out through the crenellated Jaffa Gate and cleaning themselves in a fountain as best they could, they had by tacit agreement chosen to regroup—and discreetly probe each other’s motivations. They looked, Annja thought and hoped, no more damply disheveled than any other pair of tourists who’d spent the day touring in the hot Mediterranean sun. At least in light this uncertain.
“I’m still afraid of trying to get back into my hotel,” Annja confessed. “I must look like the last survivor from a slasher film.”
Her companion barked a laugh. It had a hard and brittle clang to it, like the gleam in his eyes. “Don’t bother yourself. This is Jerusalem, city of conflict holy and otherwise. Hoteliers have a couple millennia experience in seeing their guests straggle back in looking as if the cat dropped them off on the stoop. Besides, should a bellhop or concierge spot you and raise an eyebrow, your American dollar isn’t yet so depreciated that throwing twenty of them his or her way won’t induce the desired degree of amnesia.” He hoisted his mug. “Bribery, the universal language.”
“Good point,” Annja said.
He looked up at the mug, sighed, lowered it gingerly to the table. “The only reason I’m as calm as I am is that I don’t really believe what I saw,” he said. “Did you have to kill them?”
“Yes,” she said. “They would have killed both of us. Would you rather I’d let them?”