Serpent of Moses (9 page)

Jack’s eyes moved over the surface, over the intricately carved scales that covered its form, to the face, the eyes set in anger, the tongue flitting in contempt. As when he’d pulled it from the wall in Libya, he felt much the same sense of accomplishment—an awe of the age and beauty of the artifact. If all he took away from the moment was this feeling, it would have been worth it.

He studied it for a while longer, taking in every detail, and when he was satisfied he reached for the aged cloth and carefully wrapped it. Then, after placing the artifact on the ground beside him, he settled in to wait.

Despite the bumpy flight and the airline food, Duckey had to admit it felt good to be in the field again, even in an unofficial capacity. During his last few years with the Company, he’d spent his days in an office keeping tabs on the foot soldiers who did the real work. So when he’d boarded the plane in Charlotte, he experienced a slight fear that he wouldn’t know what to do when he arrived in Tripoli.

But it was like riding a bike. As soon as he’d entered the terminal in the Libyan capital, he felt the familiar tingle down his spine as his eyes took in everything and everybody. The big difference was that on this special op, he didn’t have the considerable resources of the United States government.

Walking through the terminal, his carryon in hand, another difference occurred to him. In the past he would have had a well-defined mission with a specific set of objectives. This time his only goal was to find Jack, and he was on his own in that task.

He worked his way through the airport, dodging bodies and luggage carts. Because of ongoing construction, all traffic through TIA came through the one terminal, which made navigating its length a challenge. But part of what Duckey had enjoyed about his old profession was that he got to rub elbows with all different sorts of people. It was something he’d missed at Evanston, and something for which he envied Jack.

From the information he’d gathered so far, Jack’s trail ended in this airport, his last visible transaction the rental of a car. Prior to that, he’d gone up to the fourth floor to the terminal’s only restaurant for lunch. Duckey thought of stopping by the restaurant but decided it would serve no purpose. With the number of people who cycled through the establishment, the possibility that anyone would remember a lone American was minuscule. That left the Alamo counter.

“Can I help you?” the man behind the counter, after giving Duckey a once-over, asked in heavily accented English.

“I have a reservation,” Duckey said. “Under the name Duckett.”

The Alamo employee punched a few buttons on his computer and after reviewing the information gave a slight nod.

“We have your car available, sir,” he said. “Would you like to purchase insurance?”

Duckey declined and handed over his credit card. “Do you get a lot of Americans coming through here?”

“A good number,” the other man—Farag, according to his name tag—said without looking up.

“Enough that it would be hard to remember someone who came through, oh, about a week ago?”

This time, Farag did look up, a gesture that coincided with the sound of the printer coming to life. Duckey thought him no older than twenty, a local who, though young, had been in the job long enough to have been exposed to a great many different types of people and cultures. Consequently, even though his English was only passable, he understood that Duckey was not simply making conversation.

“It would be very difficult for me to remember someone who came to my counter a week ago,” Farag said, his eyes narrowing.

“I can appreciate that,” Duckey said. “But I have a friend who rented a car from you last Thursday. An American, about ten years younger than me, dark hair, a little rumpled. Does that ring a bell?”

Farag gave a slow headshake. “As I said, sir. Too many people come through here for me to remember most of them.”

Duckey nodded. “His name’s Jack Hawthorne. He rented a Ford Taurus.”

At the mention of Jack’s name, he saw Farag’s eyes light up.

“Hawthorne,” he said. “Like the writer.”

“Exactly. Like the writer.”

“I only remember because of
The Red Letter
,” Farag said.

It took Duckey a moment to realize what Farag was referring to, and when it came to him he decided not to correct the Libyan’s substitution of
red
for
scarlet
, worried that might put the brakes on their developing rapport.

“I asked him if he was related to the writer,” Farag said, obviously pleased that he could recall the man Duckey was inquiring after.

“That’s great,” Duckey said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He sensed the growing impatience of the man who had taken a place in line behind him and chanced a quick glance, his eyes widening on seeing the line had grown by several more people. “Do you remember him saying anything about where he was going?”

Farag frowned as if giving the question some thought, then shook his head.

“Do you know if he returned the car? Here or somewhere else?”

Another headshake, yet this one was slower in coming, as if Farag was realizing he shouldn’t be providing information about one customer’s transaction to another customer.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I am not authorized to give you that information.”

Duckey tried his best smile. “I know you’re not supposed to, although I was hoping you’d make an exception. Jack’s a good friend of mine, but no one’s heard from him in a while. To be honest, I’m kind of worried.”

He could see right away that Farag wasn’t biting.

“If you are such good friends, I would think that he would call you if he wanted to talk with you.”

Duckey had a hard time retaining his smile against growing exasperation. As his expression changed to something more akin to a grimace, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dinar note, which he slid across the counter.

“I could really use that information,” he said quietly. Behind him, he could hear a rising grumbling and he saw Farag look past him to a line that kept growing.

The Libyan opened his mouth and Duckey could almost see the denial forming on his lips, but then the man sighed, glanced down at the currency on the desk. He briefly met Duckey’s eyes before reaching for the money and slipping it into his pocket. Then he turned his attention back to the computer.

“Jack Hawthorne rented a Ford Taurus on Thursday the fifteenth,” Farag said. “He was supposed to return the car on Saturday the seventeenth.”

Duckey watched as a frown crossed the Libyan’s face. He hit a key, then another. After a few moments, he looked up at the American.

“The police called us on Monday to report that the car had been parked on a street in Al Bayda for three days. It has since been returned to us.” He offered Duckey an apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry. I did not work that day and so knew nothing about it.”

“Al Bayda?” Duckey asked.

“It is a city about a thousand kilometers to the east,” Farag said. “Your friend would have been better served flying into La Abraq.” He paused and added, “As you should have as well.”

He reached for a folded map on the desk and handed it to Duckey, along with the keys to a car the American was no longer sure he wanted. Farag then motioned for the next customer.

From a northeast window on the twenty-second floor of the Al-Fateh Tower, Amadou Boufayed looked out over the Mediterranean, watching the small boats cut lines along the beach. From his height, Boufayed could see the shallow water stretch out beyond the beach for half a mile, the greenish-blue ribbon of land extending beneath it until, all at once, it gave way to the dark blue water of the open sea. Of all the things Boufayed appreciated about his office, the view it afforded him was chief among them, especially in the afternoon when the sun sent waves of color over the water. Of course, the view from one of the larger windows in the floors above was better, in the offices occupied by the undersecretary and those close to him. But he believed he would inherit one of those offices at some point and so was content to enjoy what he had in the interim.

He’d been pleased that the provisional government had recognized the need to maintain many of the agencies that had served the previous head of state so well. That pragmatism had served to preserve the Liaison Office of the Revolutionary Committees, despite what those in the West might have referred to as the agency’s draconian policies. It also meant that Boufayed had been allowed to keep his office.

He stood at the window for another minute before he heard a knock at his door, followed by the sound of it opening. When he turned away from the window, it was to see a member of his team waiting, a folder in his hands. After the loss of the German and his Israeli escorts, those around Boufayed had taken care around him, lest one of them find themselves a focal point for his irritation. Boufayed could see that thought on the face of the man in front of him, but while that past failure still bothered him, the disappointment had ebbed to the point that those who reported to him no longer had to fear a scathing rebuke or additional paper work levied out of spite.

Boufayed gestured for the folder. Once it was in his hands, he wordlessly scanned the contents. It took him only a few moments to review the documents, along with the photo that accompanied them. After he’d finished, he looked up and, with a raised eyebrow, invited Bady to fill in the gaps.

“From what we have been able to ascertain, he is CIA,” the other man said. “Our records indicate that he’s been retired for several years. He is here alone, and from what we have been able to determine, he has no established itinerary. Or a return flight scheduled.”

Boufayed considered the information, wondering what the presence of an ostensibly retired CIA agent in Tripoli could mean. The arrival of an agent in-country was not an uncommon occurrence, as evidenced by the Israelis three weeks before. Yet most took great pains not to be recognized as such while still in the airport. Indeed, according to the rules by which these games were played, foreign intelligence agencies possessed a fair amount of knowledge regarding which of their agents had been compromised and which could still work in a country with a certain level of anonymity. This Jim Duckett did not fit the latter category.

“I assume you’ve had him followed,” Boufayed said.

“I have,” the man confirmed. “He rented a car but, strangely, did not take it. Instead, he purchased a ticket for La Abraq. We have someone on the flight.”

Boufayed frowned. The change in travel plans smelled of misdirection. It told him that whoever Jim Duckett was, he bore watching.

“I want to know every place he goes once he reaches La Abraq, and every person he talks to.”

“Of course,” his underling said, nodding at Boufayed and then leaving to carry out his orders.

“I still do not understand why it made more sense for us to come here than it did to sit in my office and make phone calls,” Romero grumbled.

Espy had stopped listening to his complaints, although she didn’t begrudge him the need to voice them. All she’d done was to purchase a plane ticket that would take her from London to Milan. Romero, though, had been forced to reschedule a number of meetings that would have made him a great deal of money. Allowing him to air his grievances was the least she could do; otherwise he would have bottled them up only to see them come out at an inopportune time. However, after several hours of this, her patience was wearing thin. And she would have made the trip without him, for despite all his grousing it had been his decision to meet her in Italy.

“I’ve tried to tell you,” she said. “You can’t do something like this on the phone. You have to throw yourself into it, see the face of the person you’re talking to, get a feel for the streets.”

She gave her brother a sidelong glance as they walked down Via Brera in Milan’s city center. While she understood his irritation, there was a part of her that could not understand how anyone could be anything other than invigorated by the chance to walk through a city like Milan—a quintessentially European city with more to see and do than any one person could hope for. No matter where she looked, there was something new to see as they dodged cars racing down the narrow streets between tall, closely spaced buildings with ground-floor shops and apartments above, each with a balcony jutting out into space. Art shops were everywhere, and in those areas not already beset with parked cars and lines of motorbikes she saw outdoor markets that, had she had her way, she would have spent hours exploring.

She understood that she was a more experienced traveler than most and that a city like Milan could be difficult to absorb. Except that the man next to her, the sibling ten years her senior, had spent much of his youth crisscrossing the globe, visiting places she could scarcely imagine. Ironically much of that travel had been done in the company of the man they were in Milan to find. She voiced as much to Romero.

“Why do you think I rarely leave Caracas?” he responded. “In the time I spent traveling with Jack I think I aged twenty years.” He shook his head and made a face that suggested he’d remembered something unpleasant. “I have never prayed so fervently as I did on those occasions when we were very far from home and he got that look in his eye.” He glanced at Esperanza. “You know the look I mean?”

She nodded and her lip curled into a smile.

“When I saw that look, I stopped and prayed because I knew the day was likely not to end well.”

Esperanza didn’t say anything, even as her brother’s memories elicited a chuckle from him. In her history with Jack, she sometimes forgot that Romero’s preceded hers by years and that her brother was as attached to the man—and as vexed by him—as was she.

As she pondered this, they reached Via Fiori Oscuri and, beyond it, the large building that housed Brera Academy. From the outside it didn’t look like the venerable institution Espy had pictured, although that was due to the fact that the entire façade was draped in large dingy construction cloth. The building was apparently undergoing some kind of large-scale renovation.

However, once she and Romero passed beneath the archway, they were transported into another world. The massive courtyard had both a look and a feel so markedly different from the city beyond its walls that aside from the traffic noise, Espy could have believed she’d traveled to another place and time. In the center of the courtyard stood the signature piece of the academy: the massive Napoleon that Espy had only seen in photographs.

Glancing at her brother, she saw that the irritation he had carried with him was gone, replaced by the kind of appreciation that only a man educated in the arts could have for such a sculpture.

“And despite the many times I thought I was going to die, it was for times like this that I continued to travel with him,” Romero remarked.

They’d come to Brera for one reason and Espy knew how slim that reason was. The Brera Academy was one of the places she’d heard Jack mention—a place in which he had friends. Before they’d come, she’d made a few calls, locating a man whose relationship with the missing archaeologist went back several years. While he’d informed her that he hadn’t seen Jack in quite some time, she was hopeful that he would be able to help her shape her list of people and places that deserved her attention.

As if reading her thoughts, Romero said, “Remind me. You said you spoke with this man and that he has not seen Jack, correct?”

Esperanza did not answer her brother immediately. Instead, she started off across the courtyard, toward the entrance.

“We needed a place to start,” Espy said when Romero caught up with her. “If it turns out to be a dead end, then we cross it off the list.”

Romero let that go without a response, and Esperanza appreciated the gesture. Because more than most cities in the world, Milan was a playground for someone like Jack. Just going through the museums alone would take them a lot more time than she wanted to contemplate.

With a resigned sigh, she entered the building, Romero in tow.

There were ways in which Imolene knew he had closed much of the distance between himself and the men he pursued, but most of those ways were ones known only to himself—a feeling the hunter has but cannot explain. Templeton and Hawthorne had crossed into Tunisia, of that he was certain. He was equally certain they would have to head north, because at the point at which they had navigated the border crossing, little existed either west or south but desert. Even moderately equipped, the barren landscape was a formidable adversary. In Imolene’s estimation, they would have pointed the jeep in the direction of Raballah. And so he had done the same.

He sent the Chevy truck over the sand and rock as fast as the vehicle would carry him. The Yugo, while having lasted much longer than the Egyptian had anticipated, had threatened to gasp its last a few kilometers east of the border. Anticipating the Yugo’s death throes, Imolene had traded it for the truck, although the deal had cost him a hundred dinars.

What also caused Imolene to push the speed of the new vehicle was that he’d spoken again with his employers, and they had expressed extreme displeasure with him when he’d told them of the loss of the artifact. When he’d accepted the job, he was well aware it was not without risk. In some ways, working for the Israelis was more dangerous than performing the same tasks for other neighboring governments—not because those other governments hesitated to punish failure but because they lacked the efficiency of the Israelis to do so. Imolene harbored no doubts about his life being forfeited if he failed to recover what his employers had hired him to retrieve.

For the hundredth time he wondered where Templeton was going. While he carried the American with him, it was difficult—if not impossible—for him to put any real distance between himself and Imolene, whom he would understand to be in pursuit. Whatever reason the Englishman had for keeping Hawthorne alive had to be a compelling one; it was certainly one for which Imolene was thankful.

He reached for the water bottle on the seat next to him and drained it, the lack of air-conditioning in the Chevy a hindrance he could overcome with proper hydration. The desert stretched long before him, yet he had several more bottles of water, which like the urgency simmering below the surface and fueling his pursuit, was more than enough to see him through.

There were some skills Duckey supposed he would never lose, regardless of how much time had passed since his retirement from the CIA. Such as the skill of recognizing when he was being watched. On an airplane—even a small domestic flight like the Buraq Air bird that ferried him from Tripoli to La Abraq—it could be difficult to determine when others’ eyes were studying him and so Duckey had to rely on his gut. And his gut told him that the man three rows behind him, wearing an expensive suit and pretending to be napping, was a tail.

The big question was
why
someone would want to have him followed. The obvious second question was
who
? For the
why
, Duckey had a guess, and if he was right it meant he wasn’t as on top of his game as he thought he was. He should have realized that, regardless of how long it had been since he’d retired, his name would raise a red flag in customs. And with the political unrest that had consumed most of the country just the year before, he suspected the Libyans were being even more careful about whom they allowed to roam freely around their country.

For that, he didn’t blame them. With rumors that the CIA had been involved in fomenting much of the unrest, Duckey found himself surprised that they’d allowed him in the country at all. True, his file said he was retired, but the Libyans wouldn’t buy that.

Duckey suspected he would be picked up by another tail—maybe more—as soon as he stepped off the plane and hoped he’d be able to spot them as effortlessly as he’d picked up the one sitting not far behind him. Beyond that, he suspected there wasn’t much he could do about it—although he couldn’t help but wonder what his shadows would make of the investigation Duckey had come to their country to perform. That elicited a smile as Duckey thought of how Jack could vex even the Libyan intelligence establishment.

Thirty minutes later the wheels were on the ground and Duckey grabbed his bag from the overhead compartment and exited. Because the Buraq was a domestic flight, he wasn’t held up in customs. Within minutes of landing he stepped out into a comfortable day, the temperature around sixty degrees. As he hailed a cab, he scanned the area for either his original agent or the man’s replacement but saw no one who stood out, which didn’t necessarily mean anything.

The cab covered the ten kilometers from La Abraq to Al Bayda in good time, despite the heavy traffic, and as the ancient city rose up before him the thought of being followed drifted from his mind.

Duckey’s service had taken him to a great many parts of the world, but he’d spent the bulk of it in eastern Europe, which meant a sprawling north African city still made him feel as if he were a tourist. And in stepping onto the streets of a city like Al Bayda, a visitor often found himself unsure of his footing, unable to get a feel for the ebb and flow of the culture. On one corner he saw a collection of buildings as modern as any he might see in the States—a coffee shop, movie theater, high-end clothing stores. At the next corner he saw a line of rickety market stalls, with merchants offering fruit, linens, even live animals, all within a few blocks of a thriving business district.

They entered Al Bayda on Msah, the main road that bisected the city, the driver slowing as traffic funneled in from Aldayn and Kufra. Duckey’s destination was in the modern part of Al Bayda, the part that had been hit hard by the unrest the previous year. The police station had been burned to the ground; he remembered watching on television the protesters dancing and cheering as the fires consumed the symbol of an oppressive regime.

When the cab driver pulled off Msah onto a side street, Duckey looked at the buildings surrounding the car, taking in the enormity of the reconstruction that had brought one of the main administrative parts of the city back from the dead. The cab pulled to a stop in front of a new-looking building, the razed police station restored.