The Amulet of Power Read online

  “Now you see what happens when you do not cooperate,” hissed the man.

  “What happens,” she said, “is that I lose my temper!”

  With that she spun around, dagger in hand, and slashed upward. The man screamed as her blade cut deep into his free arm, then took a step back, and she got her first good look at her attacker. He was a huge man, six and a half feet tall, close to three hundred pounds, without any fat on him.

  “You could have told me what I wanted to know and saved yourself!” he rasped. “Now you will die whether you tell me or not!”

  She knew better than to close with him when he outweighed her by more than two-to-one. As he approached her, she looked around the alley for anything she could use to her advantage.

  There was an insulated power line stretched across it, but it was about twelve feet up, and she knew she couldn’t jump high enough to reach it. Then she saw the garbage piled up beside the building—wooden packing crates, heavy boxes, all discarded by the library. As he took another step toward her she raced up the pile of boxes and leaped toward the power line. Her fingers closed on the rubber insulation, and she swung herself up.

  “You think you can hide on a wire?” said the man with a contemptuous laugh.

  She got her feet under her and stood up, walking along the wire, scanning the rooftops until she found what she was looking for.

  “Catch me if you can!” she said, laughing back at him.

  “You think I cannot reach the wire?” he said. “Then watch!”

  He leaped straight up, and his fingers closed on the wire.

  “You should have stayed on the Sudanese basketball team!” she said, jumping off the vibrating wire onto the roof of a small building.

  He couldn’t walk the wire the way she could, but he swung himself along it, hand over hand, with remarkable speed, and a moment later he was standing on the edge of the roof.

  She waited until he began running after her, and then she turned and ran to the edge of the roof and jumped the five-foot gap to the next roof.

  She landed on the brick border, and raced along it, following its right angle at the corner. When she was halfway down the length of it, she turned to see her pursuer. He was just leaping from the first roof to the second and he had built up such momentum that he didn’t stop at the border but began running across the wooden roof at an angle, trying to cut off her line of retreat.

  And suddenly there was a crash as the roof gave way and, with a scream, the man fell heavily to the ground floor.

  Lara walked gingerly across the roof to the hole he had made and looked down. He lay on his back, staring up at nothing, his arms and legs at impossible angles.

  “Lots of dry rot in this climate,” said Lara. “Three-hundred-pounders really shouldn’t be running across rooftops.”

  A moment later she leaped lightly to the alley and reentered the library. She sought out Hassam and told him what had happened.

  “I think it’s time to return to the Arak,” he said.

  “So much for the theory that the Mahdists will leave me alone now.”

  “There are obviously rogue elements among the Mahdists,” said Hassam as they walked out the main entrance. “What happened was my fault. I should never have left your side. I must report myself to Omar.”

  “I won’t tell him if you don’t,” said Lara.

  “I would be no better than our enemies if I lied to my leader.”

  “Nonsense,” said Lara. “Our enemies want to rule the world. We just want to save it.”

  “Sometimes I think we will never find the Amulet,” said Hassam morbidly.

  “We’ll find it,” said Lara.

  “Then you did learn something today?”

  “Almost certainly,” she replied. “Now I just have to figure out what it was.”

  22

  They returned to the hotel, and Lara went up to her suite, where she gratefully threw off her robes and reveled in her newfound freedom of motion. After walking around for a moment she turned to Hassam.

  “Go down to the lobby and have one of Omar’s cousins visit either the main library or a local branch and take out half a dozen books on Gordon.”

  “Are there any particular titles?”

  “No, not really. I’ve got to start somewhere. Eventually I’ll read them all.”

  “All?” asked Hassam.

  “Don’t look so surprised. You don’t search for treasure in a vacuum. If you’re going to be successful, you do your research first.”

  “I will go downstairs as soon as Omar returns.”

  “He might not get back until dinnertime,” said Lara. “Do it now, before the libraries close. The sooner we find it, the sooner everyone will stop trying to kill me. There’s no sense wasting a night.”

  “I can’t leave you alone.”

  She drew her pistols as fast as Doc Holliday or Johnny Ringo could have done more than a century earlier. “I’m not alone,” she said. “I have these.”

  He looked hesitant. “I don’t know. . . .”

  “What’s more important to you?” she asked. “Finding the Amulet, or taking a chance that someone will get past all your friends and relations in broad daylight, make his way up to the suite, and sneak up on me before I can shoot him?”

  Hassam sighed in defeat. “When you put it that way . . .”

  “I do.”

  He walked to the door. “At least promise to lock it behind me.”

  “All right.”

  “I will knock three times when I return.”

  “Everybody knocks three times,” said Lara. “Why don’t you just take the key with you? You ought to be back in less than ten minutes.”

  “What if Omar or Dr. Mason shows up first?”

  “Then they’ll have to wait in the corridor until you return,” said Lara, tossing him the key. “The sooner you go, the sooner you can get back.”

  Hassam walked into the hallway, closed and locked the door behind him, and went off to find someone he trusted to get what Lara needed from the library. As soon as she was sure he was gone, she pulled one of the Black Demons and pointed it toward the heavy draperies that were gathered to the side of a set of French doors that led out to a small balcony.

  “I really do need the books, but that’s not why I sent him away,” she said. “You can come out now—and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  There was no response.

  “I know you’re there,” she continued. “You’ve got exactly three seconds to come out or I’ll put fifteen bullets into the curtain.”

  A tall, lean, bearded man stepped out from behind the drapes, his hands in the air.

  “There’s no fire escape,” she said. “You either bribed the maid or picked the lock. Why?”

  “I must speak to you.”

  “I’ve been in Khartoum for a day and a half.”

  “This is the first time you’ve been alone.”

  “Okay, we’re alone. Now speak—and keep those hands where I can see them. Who are you and what do you want?”

  “My name is Abdel el-Dahib. Omar is my cousin.”

  “Didn’t his family ever have a hobby?” she said sardonically. “He seems to be everybody’s cousin. Why couldn’t you approach me when Omar was around?”

  “Because we are on opposite sides,” said the man. “He wants the Amulet found. I do not.”

  “Are you behind the attempts to kill me since I arrived here?”

  “No,” he said. “The Silent Ones wish to kill you because you are looking for the Amulet. Some of the Mahdists wish to kill you because they fear you have already found it.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” she said. “For instance, why you wish to kill me.”

  “I have told you, I do not. I wish only that you stop looking for the Amulet.”

  “So you thought you’d pay me a polite visit and ask me nicely to stop my search. How very civilized of you.”

  “I am a scholar,” said Abdel. “
I seek to persuade you with words, not threats or weapons.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” she said. “Though I must say, I wish more people around here shared your philosophy.”

  “Why is it too late?” asked Abdel. “You don’t mean . . .”

  “No, I haven’t found the Amulet,” said Lara, seeing his alarm. “But someone will, and soon.”

  “How can you be sure of this when it has gone undiscovered for more than one hundred years?”

  “Because the Amulet itself wants to be found.”

  Abdel nodded grimly. “Some of the Mahdi’s writings hint that the Amulet is a conscious entity in its own right: a demon-possessed artifact, perhaps.”

  “Whatever it is,” said Lara, “if it insists on being found, I think it’s better for our side to find it than the Mahdists.” She finally lowered her pistol. “You should be in favor of that. If those who oppose the Mahdists possess it, you’ll be invincible in battle. The Mahdists won’t be able to defeat you or take it away from you.”

  “Do not tempt me!” he said passionately.

  “Tempt you?” she asked curiously.

  “The Amulet is pure, unbridled power, and with absolute power comes absolute corruption. Only those who are totally selfless and noble in thought dare to so much as touch it. If we were to use the Amulet, we would become no better than those we oppose, just as the Silent Ones have become twisted reflections of the Mahdists they were originally formed to combat.”

  Lara stared at him for a long moment. “You are an honorable man, Abdel el-Dahib,” she said sincerely, “but you cannot convince me to stop my search.”

  “Have you thought about what you will do with it if you do find it?”

  “Not yet,” she replied. “First I have to find it.”

  “At least you have been honest with me,” he said. “And there is always the chance that you will not find it.”

  “Someone is going to find it,” said Lara. “It might as well be someone from our side.” She paused. “Will you try to stop me?”

  “No,” he replied. “I am no murderer. But I cannot speak for all of my allies.”

  “What will Hassam or Omar do if they find you here?”

  “I truly do not know.”

  “Well, there’s no sense finding out the hard way.” She looked around the suite. “Go wait in the bedroom. They have Moslem sensibilities; that is one room they will not enter unbidden. When we go out for dinner, I’ll leave the suite unlocked. Let yourself out and go in peace, Abdel el-Dahib.”

  “Thank you, Lara Croft,” he said. “I do not wish to kill my cousin, and I know he does not wish to kill me. Continue your search if you must, and may a compassionate Allah misguide you.”

  He walked into the bedroom and closed the door.

  It was less than a minute later that Hassam unlocked the door to the suite and entered the parlor.

  “Ismail himself has gone for the books,” he announced. “He should be back within an hour.”

  “Good.” She walked to a sofa and sat down. “I’m going to be hungry in another hour or two . . . and I’ve lost my faith in this hotel’s room service. Why don’t we go back to that restaurant we had a drink at earlier? It looked good.”

  Hassam’s face lit up. “You mean the Al Bustan?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Then that is where we shall go—if Omar approves.”

  “Contrary to what he believes, Omar doesn’t run my life,” said Lara bluntly. “He can eat where he wants. I’m going to the Al Bustan.”

  “Good choice,” said Mason, entering and walking into the parlor. “I’ve eaten there before. Try the grilled chicken.”

  “Kevin!” she exclaimed, walking over and hugging him. “I didn’t even hear the door open.”

  “I’m getting better at all this cloak-and-dagger stuff,” he said, not without a trace of pride. “Did you have any luck at the library?”

  “I’m still alive,” she said. “Some might say that was a stroke of luck.”

  “There was another attack?”

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” replied Lara. “How about you—did you get the information you were after?”

  “They were Mahdists, all right,” he confirmed. “And working on their own. My source says that if they’d succeeded, their own people would have killed them. They want you watched, not murdered or even hindered.” He checked his wristwatch. “When do you expect Omar back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, if there’s any other place you want to go today . . .”

  “I’ve got to stay here,” she said. “I’m waiting for Ismail.”

  “Who’s Ismail?”

  “A friend,” replied Lara. “I sent him to the library to pick up some books.”

  He frowned. “I thought you just came from the library?”

  “I left in rather a hurry.”

  “What did you ask him to bring you?”

  “Books on Gordon,” she answered.

  “Any titles in particular?”

  “No. I just need to know more about him, to learn how his mind worked. I know he was a brilliant general, and I know he was almost fanatically religious, but that’s hardly enough to go on. I’ve got to put myself in his shoes. He’s got the Amulet, and the Mahdi has declared a sixty-day cease-fire. He doesn’t know for a fact that the city can hold out for the ten months that it did; it might fall in two months, or six weeks, or the day the cease-fire ends. He’s got to hide the Amulet soon. He knows he’s being watched, so he sends Colonel Stewart all the way to Edfu as a decoy. Now what does he do next?”

  “He hides it, of course,” said Mason. “And he’s got to hide it within the city limits.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “But he turned the city into an island,” noted Mason. “He couldn’t leave it.”

  “He didn’t flood the ditch and isolate the city until a month before the siege began,” said Lara. “I learned that much at the National Museum this morning. So he had thirty days in which to get it out of Khartoum.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Mason. “He was the most recognizable man in the Sudan, probably even including the Mahdi. There’s no way he could have left without being spotted.”

  “He didn’t leave,” answered Lara. “He kept a diary, so we know he was here the whole time, but that doesn’t mean that the Amulet didn’t leave.”

  “You’re reaching,” said Mason firmly. “It’s somewhere in Khartoum.”

  “Maybe,” she admitted. “I’m just pointing out that he could have sent it away with a trusted aide—probably a Sudanese, since any of the British he was here to save would be too easy to spot.”

  “He could have done a lot of things,” said Mason. “You’re making it too complex. The answer is right here in Khartoum.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “I’m just trying to be thorough, and to see the city—and the enemy, and the world—as Gordon himself would have seen them.”

  “What I can’t figure out is why he didn’t use the damned thing,” said Mason. “Once he had it, why didn’t he turn its power on the Mahdi? How could he make himself part with it?”

  “You’re forgetting his nature,” answered Lara. “He was a devout Christian, and he would have believed that the Amulet was a tool of Satan. He’d sooner have surrendered the city to the Mahdi without a fight than blacken his soul by using it.”

  “Based on the intimations you’ve received, wouldn’t the Amulet itself have something to say about that? Nothing wants to die, or be hidden away, not even a mystic artifact.”

  “It might be able to contact you or me,” said Lara, “but if it tried to influence Gordon, he’d never have touched it again. He’d have locked it in some box and gotten rid of it as soon as he could.”

  They fell to discussing Gordon for the next hour, and then there was a gentle knocking at the door. Hassam walked over to it, dagger in hand, cracked it open, saw that it was Ismail with a pile of boo
ks, sheathed his blade, took the books, and closed the door again.

  “Good!” said Lara. “Tonight’s homework.”

  Hassam set the books down on a coffee table.

  “Six volumes,” she said to Mason. “That’s three for each of us.”

  “Fair enough,” said Mason. “They look pretty old, and it wouldn’t hurt to run a cloth over them. I’ll wager they haven’t been read in years.” He studied the spines. “At least they’re all in English. Have you any preference?”

  She shook her head. “Take the top three when you leave; I’ll go through the others.”

  They waited another twenty minutes, and when Omar still hadn’t shown up they decided to go out for dinner.

  Hassam looked at her strangely as she made for the door.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Your robes,” he said. “Are you not going to wear them?”

  “Why? Is there something wrong with how I’m dressed?”

  Hassam’s eyes flicked over her bare legs and the open top buttons of her shirt, but he said nothing.

  “You won’t be able to wear your guns,” Mason observed. “At least with the robes, you could still wear them underneath.”

  “I’ll have the Scalpel of Isis tucked in my boot. That will have to do for now.” Then, looking at their doubtful faces, she added: “Guns are useful, but it’s a weakness to grow too dependent on them.”

  As they passed through the lobby Hassam told Ismail, who was working the reception desk, where they would be and to send Omar along if he appeared within the next half hour.

  The Al Bustan was on Sharia al Baladiya, just a few blocks in from the Nile, and offered what most foreigners considered to be a typical North African bill of fare. Lara ordered the grilled chicken, as Mason had suggested, while he himself had lamb. They both had sweet figs for dessert, then splurged with a pair of lemonades.

  She was aware that she was attracting a lot of stares. Being a beautiful woman, she was used to it, but on this occasion she knew that most of them were coming from people who were offended by her bare arms and legs, and a few were probably coming from men who wanted her dead.

  They finally returned to the hotel and went back up to her suite, where she gave Mason the books and sent him and Hassam off to their room, while she prepared to sit down and plunge into the remaining volumes after making sure that Abdel el-Dahib had left while they were at dinner.