Serpent of Moses Read Free Page B

already late getting back to Caracas, he suspected his current circumstances would make him a good deal later—if he got there at all.
    “I have a friend who’s going to be really upset about this,” Jack said, adopting a rueful smile.
    At that, a man standing to the right of the giant took a step forward. Almost blind, Jack could make out nothing of the man’s features, though he suspected it was the Englishman.
    “We all have friends who are angered by the choices we make, Dr. Hawthorne,” he said.
    “You don’t understand,” Jack said with a headshake. “You’ve never seen Espy angry.”
    The Englishman did not respond right away, but Jack could intuit the smile he wore.
    “And you haven’t met Imolene,” the Englishman said.
    Then the giant began to move toward Jack, who only in that moment thought to wonder how the Englishman knew his name.

3

    As his captors marched Jack back along the route down which he’d fled, he decided that being forced to endure the indignity of retracing his steps bothered him almost as much as the pain of his minor bullet wound. Yet he couldn’t blame anyone but himself, as Mukhtar had warned him of these men before Jack left Al Bayda. Four men—three of them European, one Mukhtar had guessed was Egyptian. They’d slipped into and out of the city with a quietness that suggested a desire for secrecy, and when one required certain types of items, such items often had to pass through Mukhtar’s hands. And that suggested they were after the same thing Jack was. Even so, Jack had kept on task, intent on being the first to touch the artifact in perhaps a thousand years.
    He hadn’t realized he’d slowed until the large man—whom the Englishman had called Imolene—placed a hand between Jack’s shoulder blades and shoved. Jack tightened his lips against the rough handling but remained quiet. Instead, he focused all his attention on the tunnel ahead, seen now in greater detail with the addition of three more flashlights.
    His research told him this cavern slicing through the mountainous part of northeastern Libya had existed since at least the time of Cyrene, and he suspected the ancient Greeks had used it for defense, even as modern Libyans had used it to resist the Italian occupation. By his estimation the tunnel through which he walked was at least two centuries older than the others he’d explored in the area. Whoever built it had taken great pains to hide the entrance. It had been cut into the mountain at an angle so that the shadow falling across the opening gave it the appearance of a much narrower fissure. Hours ago, walking toward it, knowing he was heading in the right direction, he could not find the opening against the brown and gray rock until he was right on top of it. The experience made him wonder if, unlike most secret places surrounded by encroaching civilization, this one might have remained unspoiled.
    “This tunnel is older than the others,” the Englishman remarked. It was the first thing any of them had said in some time, and Jack was taken aback by how the comment mirrored his own thoughts.
    “At least two centuries older,” he agreed.
    The Englishman walking next to him offered Jack a smile but didn’t say anything more. When they’d started out, Jack had asked his name and, failing to receive a response, pressed the man further as to how he knew Jack’s. That question had also gone unanswered.
    They walked on for another twenty minutes, until Jack began to notice a change in the light. He guessed the darkness in the tunnel had been lightening for some time, but so gradually that he hadn’t picked up on it. Up ahead, he could see the place where the tunnel curved to the left, leading to the antechamber he’d been forced from before having the chance to do anything other than have a look around.
    At the thought of what lay beyond the curve, Jack’s feet began to move faster. Despite the circumstances that occasioned his return to the cavern, he