17
They reached Dongola in two more days, gave it a wide berth, then did the same when they came to Ed Debba three days after that. There was never a lack of food for the camels; everything within a mile or two of each side of the Nile was green and growing, and the river supplied all the water they needed.
“I am surprised that you haven’t become sick yet,” remarked Omar as they put Ed Debba well behind them.
“I was sick when you met me,” answered Lara. “I’m my old self now.”
“I mean because of the water.”
She laughed. “I have been in so many filthy places and drunk such foul water during my life that my stomach probably thinks the Nile is the finest, purest distilled water I’ve ever given it.”
“I keep forgetting,” said Omar. “You are not just some ordinary Englishwoman. You are Lara Croft.”
“Don’t underestimate my fellow Englishwomen,” she said. “The first Elizabeth was a pretty tough old bird, Victoria ruled the world, and Maggie Thatcher could have reconquered it if she’d felt like it.”
“I meant no offense,” said Omar quickly.
“None taken.”
“Have you given any thought to the Amulet?”
“Of course I have. Frankly, between you and me, I wish I’d never heard of it.”
“That was not precisely the kind of thought I was referring to,” said Omar.
“I know,” said Lara. “I don’t know enough yet to have any serious thoughts on where to look. I’ve been to Khartoum a couple of times, but it’s a very large, very old city. Chinese Gordon could have hidden it anywhere.”
“Chinese?” repeated Omar. “You are mistaken. General Gordon was British.”
“It was a nickname,” she explained. “The press gave it to him after he’d conducted a successful series of campaigns in China. Anyway, he’s the key to it. Obviously Colonel Stewart was in Edfu for some other reason, so the Amulet stayed with Gordon. I have to learn more about him, see where he lived and where he worked, read his writings, walk the city where he walked it. In short, I have to become Gordon. I have to learn to think as he did—and once I do that, I’ll know where I would hide the Amulet, which means I’ll know where he hid it.”
“And you will bring all your training and experience to bear,” said Omar.
“I’m not sure how useful my experience is going to be.”
“I do not understand. You have found many lost treasures. Everyone knows this.”
“It’s not the same,” she said. “You find ancient artifacts by studying ancient peoples—but much of the time, the reason the artifacts are lost is not because anyone hid them, but because the society no longer exists. You study their history, their culture, so that you can figure out where to dig, where they kept their most valuable treasures.” She sighed deeply. “But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about a man who lived little more than a century ago, who was a serving officer in the British army, who knew that hundreds, perhaps thousands of men would be searching for the Amulet the instant Khartoum fell—and he didn’t want them to find it.” She looked at Omar. “Do you see the difference? No one set out to hide an artifact like the Rosetta Stone. It became lost in the mists of time. That’s not the case with the Amulet. Gordon actively hid it, and I have to figure out where, which is why I have to learn exactly how his mind worked. It’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got. If I were laying bets, I’d put my money on Kevin finding it, not me. He’s the Gordon student.”
“If I had put my money on Kevin Mason instead of you, all four of us would have died five days ago,” said Omar, referring to the incident with the five riflemen. “We have more faith in you than you have in yourself.”
“I’ve never been plagued by self-doubt,” said Lara. “But you have to understand that you’re asking me to find a century-old needle that’s hidden in a haystack a third the size of Europe. That’s quite a daunting challenge.”
“If it was easy, we wouldn’t need your expertise,” responded Omar. “So I ask again: What are your thoughts concerning the Amulet?”
“Just that it’s very well hidden.”
“Come now,” said Omar. “You knew General Gordon’s nickname. You are not totally ignorant of him. Doubtless you have read of his campaigns, perhaps even read biographies of him. Surely you can hazard a guess.”
“People have been hazarding guesses since 1885,” answered Lara, “and the Amulet is still missing.” She paused. “You know,” she suggested, “there is always the possibility that he destroyed it.”
“He could not destroy it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“It is a magical amulet. It can only be destroyed by magic,” said Omar with absolute certainty.
“That spell you mentioned, the one Abdul said was a fairy tale?”
Omar nodded. “General Gordon did not possess the spell.”
“Then maybe he threw it in the Nile.”
“No,” said Omar firmly. “The course of the Nile has changed many times. Drought, earthquake, build-up of silt—any of these things could alter its course and expose the Amulet on the river bed.”
“But would Gordon have known that?” asked Lara.
“If not, and if he planned to throw the Amulet into the Nile, he would certainly have asked,” said Omar. “Not in so many words, of course. He would not walk up to an aide and ask if it was safe to hide the Amulet in the river. But he would have asked if the Nile always stayed within its boundaries. Remember, he was diverting some of the flow to turn Khartoum into a defensible island, so it would have been a natural question from a commander who had to know all the conditions he might be called upon to deal with.”
“All right,” conceded Lara. “That makes sense. So he didn’t throw it in the Nile. But that doesn’t give us any better idea of where he did hide it.”
They rode until twilight, then dismounted and prepared to sleep in the shade of a large boulder that seemed to rise up out of the sand for no logical reason. Lara took a long drink from her canteen, then pulled out her pistols and began cleaning and oiling them. The three men did the same with their rifles.
“I have been thinking,” said Omar after a few minutes. “By now they know we’re going to Khartoum and approaching it on camels, and they know we’ve traveled by felluca, so they’ll be watching the river as well. What if we release the camels when we are about thirty miles out of the city, and take public transportation the rest of the way? They would never think to look for us on a crowded bus.”
“Won’t your rifles give you away?” asked Lara.
All three men laughed. “It is more likely that your lack of a rifle will give us away,” said Hassam.
“I assume I’ll be wearing robes and being a boy again?” she said glumly.
“Only until we get to the Bortai Hotel, and get word to our people,” answered Omar. “Then you can become Lara Croft once more.”
“The robes worked when observers were a few hundred feet away,” said Lara. “Can I pass for a boy in a crowded bus?”
Omar studied her. “Your face is too smooth,” he said at last. “Even Circassian women do not have skin texture like that, not after years in the desert. I suppose the easiest remedy is to slap some mud and dirt on it.”
“And don’t speak,” added Gaafar.
“I know. My voice is too high.”
“Some boys have high voices,” he said. “But you have a thick accent, and it is easily identified as English.”
“All right, I won’t speak.”
“And bury your chin in your robes,” said Gaafar.
“It won’t be for long,” Omar assured her. “The bus will cover the distance in no more than an hour, and we will get off it within a short walk of the Bortai.”
“We’re still ahead of the Amenhotep unless it passed one night while we were sleeping,” said Lara. “And its engine is so noisy I doubt that that could happen. How will we get word to Kevin?”
“We have allies in Khartoum,” replied Omar. “Someone will come on board—a new deckhand, a cargo inspector, someone—and give Dr. Mason the information he needs. We will rent a room for him at the Bortai, under a false name of course, so that he will be able to move right in.” He paused. “Then the two of you will find the Amulet.”
Always assuming it wants me to find it, thought Lara.
The next two days were uneventful, and finally they came to the rarely used railroad tracks and the highway, in serious need of repair, that paralleled them. When they came to a landmark that Omar knew—it was just a trio of rocks at the roadside, meaningless to Lara but as clear as a street sign to him—they dismounted, took the bridles and saddles off their camels and hid them behind some thick bushes, then chased the camels off.
After waiting two hours for a bus, Lara turned to Omar.
“You’re sure the bus drives on this road?” she said. “So far all we’ve seen are two cars and a mule-cart.”
“This is its regular route,” he assured her.
“Then where is it?”
Omar shrugged. “It breaks down a lot.”
They waited another twenty minutes, and finally a rusted, dilapidated minivan pulled up.
“That’s the bus?” asked Lara.
“That’s the bus.”
“The four of us will fill it up.”
“I have seen it carry as many as fifteen grown men,” said Gaafar.
“On the inside?”
Gaafar laughed. “Remember to hide your face,” he said, and the four of them climbed into the minivan. Sure enough, it stopped twice more to pick up three more men, and Lara decided she was in more danger of being crushed to death than identified.
When the minivan was about ten miles out of Khartoum it hit a pothole and blew its left front tire. The driver had everyone climb out while he went around to the back and removed the spare, only to find that it was flat as well.
Lara was about to ask Omar what they should do next, then remembered not to speak aloud, and simply looked at him questioningly. He gestured her to follow him, Gaafar and Hassam fell into step, and the four of them began walking toward Khartoum.
“There will be another bus along soon, perhaps a real one,” said Omar when they were out of earshot.
“That was some bus,” said Lara. “I felt safer when people were shooting at us back in the desert.”
“We are still in the desert,” said Hassam. “Khartoum is in the desert.”
“Quiet!” whispered Omar sharply before Lara could reply. She turned and saw that the other three passengers were approaching them. Omar began walking again, and soon all seven of them—the six men and the false boy—were trudging along the pothole-filled tarmac toward Khartoum.
Finally a large bus, every bit as filthy and rusty as the minivan, honked once and pulled up to a stop, and all seven got on. Omar paid for his party, and they walked past a few seated passengers to the back.
The leather had been ripped off the seats, and Lara elected to stand, holding onto a strap that hung down from the ceiling. One of the passengers from the van walked back and was soon standing next to her.
They lurched over the terrible road for a mile, then another, and suddenly the passenger had a knife in his hand and was plunging it into Lara’s robe. The only thing that saved her was the bulkiness of the robe, which concealed the precise location of her body. The knife missed her ribs by inches, and she wasn’t about to give her attacker a second chance. She grabbed his wrist and twisted sharply. There was an audible crack and the man’s mouth opened in a moan, giving Lara a glimpse of the stub of a mutilated tongue. He dropped to one knee, just in time for his face to come into contact with Lara’s swiftly rising knee. As his head shot back, she caught him on the throat with the edge of her hand, and he collapsed.
“Turn away!” whispered Omar so softly that only Lara could hear him. “You’re humiliated and can’t meet anyone’s eyes!”
All the passengers turned to stare at her. She was fully prepared to pull her guns and hold them at bay until the bus reached Khartoum, but then Omar stepped forward.
“This scum actually had the nerve to try to kiss my baby brother!” he announced in outraged tones.
Then, as one, the passengers applauded.
“Serves you right, you son of a pig!” said Omar, landing a heavy kick to the unconscious assassin’s rib cage.
Fifteen minutes later the bus came to a stop, the driver announced that they had reached the end of his route, and Lara, after many days and narrow escapes, climbed down the shaky stairs and finally set foot in Khartoum.
She looked around, trying to get her bearings based on her one previous trip to the city.
At least we should be all through with riflemen on horseback and slashers in buses, she thought.
“Welcome to Khartoum,” said Omar. “I hope you enjoyed the journey, because now is when things start getting dangerous.”