The Amulet of Power (11 page)

12

After Gaafar and Hassam had rowed against the current for an hour a wind came up, and Omar quickly attached the sail to the small mast of the
felluca
. Their speed picked up considerably, and each of the men took a drink from their canteens.

“At least we won’t have to worry about water for the rest of the trip,” said Omar.

“It’s a comforting thought,” agreed Lara. “I do have a question, though: What are we going to do for food?”

“There are fishing poles and nets on the bottom of the boat. We’ll catch some fish along the way.”

“Good thing I like sushi,” said Lara.

Suddenly there was a ripple in the water, and Lara pointed it out. “What is that?” she asked. “It seems big for a fish.”

Omar shrugged. “The Nile is a big river. It grows big fish.”

“What about crocs?”

“Crocs?”

“Crocodiles. Are there any around here?”

“No,” answered Omar. “The last of them was killed a very long time ago.”

“That’s strange,” commented Lara. “I’ve seen huge crocs—some as long as eighteen feet—in Lake Turkana in the north of Kenya, and in Lake Tanganyika, and everyone refers to the species as Nile Crocodiles.”

“Once there were tens of thousands of them here,” answered Omar. “Half were killed because they were a menace to the villagers who lived on the Nile, and the other half were killed to make shoes for the delicate feet of European gentlemen and ladies.”

“I am told they are still in that section of the Nile that runs through Uganda to Lake Victoria,” said Gaafar.

“Yes, they are,” affirmed Lara. “I’ve seen them there.”

“You are quite a traveler, Lara Croft,” remarked Omar.

“I get around.”

“An understatement,” said Omar with a smile.

“Perhaps.” She looked across the lake. “How about hippos?” she asked. “Are they all gone, too?”

“They say a few remain, but I have never seen one,” said Omar. “Once they were as plentiful in the Nile as crocodiles. They were called River Horses, though no one ever put a saddle or a bridle on one.”

“I always wondered why they were given that name,” said Lara. “They should have been River Pigs. They’re far more closely related.”

“They are awesome and noble beasts,” explained Hassam. “The horse is noble, whereas the pig is unclean.”

“You told me why the Egyptians and Sudanese killed off the Nile crocs, and it makes sense,” said Lara. “But if you think of the hippos as noble, awesome, horselike creatures, why kill them off, too?”

“
We
didn’t,” answered Gaafar.

“Surely you’re not suggesting European hunters killed all your hippos?”

“No, it was the climate,” said Omar. “Once, centuries ago, Northern Africa was a mild and temperate land, with heavy rainfall and thick vegetation. Over time it turned into desert, until it appears the way you see it now, with ninety-five percent of the Egyptian and Sudanese populations living along the Nile, the only source of life in this arid land.” He paused. “The hippopotamus spends his days in the water, because the water protects his sensitive skin from the rays of the sun. But he does not eat in the water. Each night he climbs ashore and forages inland, eating up to three hundred pounds of vegetation before returning to the water.” He waved a hand toward the shore. “Look around you. Nothing grows two miles inland. Even with irrigation ditches, five miles from the Nile—or what used to be the Nile before they created Lake Nasser—all you will find is desert. With all the vegetation gone, it was only a matter of time—a very short time—before the hippos were gone, too. Some starved, some moved south . . . but none remained.”

“Perhaps whoever discovers the Amulet of Mareish can turn the land green again,” suggested Hassam.

“More likely, he will turn it red—with blood,” replied Gaafar.

“What does the Amulet look like?” asked Lara. “If I’m to hunt for it, I have to know what I’m looking for.”

“It is so big,” said Omar, juxtaposing his thumbs and forefingers in a circle about three inches in diameter. “We know that it is made of bronze, and on it are engraved a scimitar, a dagger, and a representation of the sun—though no one is exactly sure of what it looks like. These words are the Mahdi’s description of it, written in his own hand in his private diaries. It hung from his neck on a silver chain, but we have no idea if the chain is still attached.”

“Are there any drawings of it?” she asked.

“There are many,” answered Omar. “But all are drawn from descriptions of it. None are from life. No artist has ever actually seen the Amulet.”

“Did General Gordon ever mention it?”

“Not to my knowledge,” said Omar. “But he wrote a large number of monographs and letters, so it is possible that he mentioned or even described it and we simply have not discovered that writing yet.”

“It’s not going to be an easy task,” said Lara. “You’ve got an Amulet that no living person has ever seen, that no one in the past has ever photographed or accurately drawn. It may be attached to a silver chain that is also not described, or it may not be. And it’s probably hidden in a country that is larger than England and France put together with most of Spain tossed in for good measure. And some of the Mahdists will be out to kill me before I find it, and some will be trying to take it from me the moment I do.” She paused. “You sure know how to make a girl feel wanted.”

“You will have Kevin Mason’s help,” said Omar.

“Let’s be honest,” she replied. “You never even heard of him. The only reason you think he’ll be a help is because I told you that this is his field of expertise.”

“Why would you lie to us?” asked Hassam. “We are all that stands between you and the Mahdists.”

“You are just the most comforting, reassuring bunch of guys I’ve ever met,” said Lara.

“We are?” he replied, brightening noticeably.

She sighed and decided not to explain the notion of sarcasm to him.

At noon the next day they reached the Great Temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel, with its four sixty-five-foot-tall statues of the seated Pharaoh. Everything the ancient Egyptians had built was on a giant scale, and except for the pyramids, the Great Temple was the most gigantic and impressive of all, made even more so by the knowledge that UNESCO engineers had disassembled and moved the entire structure, as well as the nearby Temple of Hathor, the almost-as-impressive monument to Ramses’ consort, Queen Nefertari, from its original site, now submerged beneath the Nile.

There were the usual few hundred tourists milling about, and Lara assumed another hundred were inside the Great Temple with their local guides. She felt very exposed, because there were no other boats of any kind in the vicinity. Tourist ships never went south of the High Dam; any groups that wanted to visit were flown in from Aswan.

“Do you see anything suspicious?” she asked, staring intently at the shore.

“It looks normal to me,” said Omar.

“But I was told there would be Mahdists waiting at Abu Simbel,” she continued.

“There probably are,” agreed Omar. “But they’re waiting for three men and a woman approaching the Great Temple on camels. They are not looking for four male fishermen floating leisurely past in a
felluca
.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Lara, “but . . .”

“But what?”

“But I think you’re making them out to be a lot dumber than they probably are.”

“Look at the people on shore,” said Hassam. “They are paying no attention to us.”

“If I was going to shoot four people in a boat from the shore, I wouldn’t do it in front of a hundred tourists,” said Lara. “I’d do it from the top of one of the temples, or from behind one of those parked vans.”

“We are drifting farther and farther past the temples,” said Gaafar. “I think if they were going to shoot, they’d have fired already.”

“Then where are they?” said Lara.

“Maybe they are not here after all,” suggested Hassam.

She shook her head. “Your information has been accurate so far. Why should it be wrong this time? The Mahdists have to have known for more than a day that we didn’t die at the oasis.”

“I have no answers,” said Omar. “I am just grateful that our information
was
wrong. In another three or four minutes we will be out of rifle range and then there will be no question that they were not waiting for us.”

“Just keep your eyes open,” she said, scanning the shore.

But nothing happened for the next five minutes, and finally even Lara began to relax.

“It’s very puzzling,” she said. “No plane lands between Aswan and Abu Simbel. I doubt that there are even any landing strips for private planes. The train won’t run from Cairo to Khartoum for at least another week. They have to know that we’re still alive, and they know the only two routes to Khartoum will take us past Abu Simbel, one by land, one by water. So why weren’t they waiting for us?”

“They didn’t want to shoot us in front of witnesses,” said Gaafar.

She shook her head. “I’m not buying that for a minute.”

“Why not?”

“Let’s say three bearded men who are mostly covered by the same robes everyone else around here wears shoot four people in a boat and drive off ten seconds later. How many tourists will even notice what happened, let alone be able to identify them? The police or the army won’t get very far searching for three bearded men in the south of Egypt.”

“Then why do
you
think they let us pass?” asked Gaafar.

“Maybe they have decided that Lara Croft is their best chance of finding the Amulet, and that killing her would be, as the British say, counterproductive,” said Omar.

“They just tried to kill us the night before last,” replied Lara. “Not that much has changed.”

“You are a very suspicious woman,” said Gaafar.

“I’m also alive,” said Lara. “The two go hand-in-hand.”

As she spoke, she saw a ripple in the water, larger than the one she had remarked upon the day before. She stared curiously at it, and then saw three more a few yards away. And a moment later she saw something else.

“There are no more River Horses in these parts, right?” she said.

“That is right,” answered Omar.

“That’s what I thought.”

Suddenly she drew her Black Demons and in less than two seconds had fired twenty quick shots into the water, which soon turned red with blood. Four bodies, each wearing a wet suit, an aqualung, and with a trident gun slung over one shoulder, slowly floated to the surface.

“All praises to Wilkes and Hawkins,” she said. “Who else could give me .32 caliber bullets that go straight and true through five feet of water?”

“Who are they?” asked Hassam, staring at the bodies.

“River Rats,” said Lara, holstering her weapons. “A suddenly-extinct species.”

“But why . . . ?” began Omar.

“They weren’t afraid of witnesses,” said Lara. “They were afraid that they might miss us and alert us to their presence. These four were going to fire at point-blank range.” She stared back at the Great Temple, which was still barely visible. “Take us out farther from shore,” she said. “They can’t have seen what happened. If we move far enough out so they can’t spot us, they may think we’re dead, and that perhaps we killed their assassins as well. That might buy us some time.”

Omar adjusted the sail and the boat’s bow turned slightly to the left, moving them farther and farther away from the shoreline.

“How did you know?” he asked. “They
could
have been marine biologists. Scientists are always studying the Nile. They wouldn’t be the first to show up here.”

“I saw one of the tridents,” answered Lara. “The only things requiring that big a weapon are crocs and hippos—and men. And you yourself told me that there weren’t any hippos or crocs left in these waters.”

“So I did,” said Omar, surprised.

“That’s why we let him talk so much,” said Gaafar with a chuckle. “He may bore us to tears, but every now and then he does say something that saves our lives.”

“
He
didn’t save our lives,” Hassam corrected him. “
She
did—for the third time. You had better hope we live to be as old as the Hebrews’ Methuselah, for it will take that long to pay off our debt to her.”

“You’re exaggerating,” said Lara with a smile. “I’m sure it won’t take more than a century or two.”

PART II

SUDAN

13

They sailed south for four days, and finally came to the end of Lake Nasser, which simply became the mighty Nile once again. There was no sign of the
Amenhotep
. Lara was sure it could catch them easily if it was traveling under full steam, which led her to conclude that the captain was stopping frequently to pick up contraband materials and get rid of contraband passengers.

She found herself thinking more and more of Kevin Mason. His father’s towering reputation had impressed her for years, but she’d never considered that he might be related to a handsome man who was good with his fists and made as much of a habit of saving her life as she seemed to be making of saving Omar and his companions.

Then, too, it would have been nice to have someone to talk to about the Amulet. Kevin wasn’t his father, but he clearly knew his stuff when it came to the Amulet of Mareish. Not that Omar wasn’t happy to discuss it, but he was no archaeologist. All he knew was that it was the source of the Mahdi’s power (or so he believed), and he could recite some of the legends concerning it. His only concern was making certain that it didn’t fall into the hands of any potential Mahdis.

She was pretty sure it had to be within, if not the official city limits of Khartoum, then at least that area around (and including) Khartoum that Gordon had turned into an island when he joined the Blue and White Niles. After all, it was the only piece of turf he controlled; there was simply no way he could have gone out into the desert to hide it without getting killed in the process.

She was still mulling the problem when Omar gently prodded her shoulder.

“What is it?” she asked.

“We are about to enter the Sudan.”

“Oh, hell!” she said suddenly.

“What is it?”

“I don’t have an exit stamp from Egypt on my passport,” she said. “Not to mention the fact that I don’t exactly resemble my passport photo at the moment.”

“Don’t worry,” said Omar. He waved at a uniformed soldier, who waved back.

“One of yours?” asked Lara.

“My cousin,” said Omar as the boat floated across the border.

“But what if we had gone by camel after all? How would we have passed through customs then?” asked Lara.

“One of my uncles,” said Omar. “I have placed men at every station.”

“But surely the Mahdists have done the same,” said Lara.

“They
tried
,” replied Omar with a smile that left no doubt as to the fate of those Mahdists. “As for your passport,” he continued, “do not worry; as soon as we reach Khartoum, I will get all the proper stamps for it.”

“It is a good thing you have a large family,” said Lara.

Omar laughed aloud, then stared intently at her.

“What is it?” asked Lara.

“I am still not satisfied with your disguise. I was wondering how you would look in a beard.”

“We’re going to let that remain one of life’s little mysteries,” she answered firmly. “Not only won’t I wear a false beard, but once we’re in Khartoum, I don’t plan to wear these robes any longer.”

“Women are not so independent in our country,” commented Hassam.

“Fine!” she shot back. “Get a Sudanese woman to find your Amulet.”

“Please!” said Omar. “We are allies. Let us not fight among ourselves. The enemy is out there.”

“I apologize,” said Hassam.

“Humbly,” insisted Omar.

“Humbly,” repeated Hassam.

“So do I,” said Lara. “Blame it on all the raw fish we’ve been eating.”

“You’ve had your last meal of raw fish,” announced Omar.

“Oh?”

He nodded. “We are back in our own country. We have friends here. We will go a few more miles, until we are sure no one is following us on the water or the shore, and then we will stop at a small village that will supply us with food and—”

“Let me guess,” Lara interrupted him. “More camels.”

“We can’t drive to Khartoum,” explained Omar. “There is only one road. It will be under observation, with possible ambushes awaiting us.”

“Where is this village?”

“A few miles beyond Wadi Halfa.”

“Wadi Halfa isn’t much more than a village itself,” noted Lara.

Omar seemed amused by that. “It is the largest municipality for more than two hundred miles in any direction.”

“Nevertheless,” said Lara.

Omar sighed. “True. But it is my country, and I am proud of it.”

“There’s no reason not to be proud. The world has many huge cities that I find incredibly distasteful. Size is not the measure of a man or a city.”

“That is something I tell myself every day,” replied the undersize Omar.

“How many people live there?”

“Five extended families,” said Omar. “Perhaps one hundred and thirty people in all.”

“One hundred and thirty,” she repeated. “Is it on any maps?”

“I doubt it.”

“Has it got a name?”

“Yes, but it is better if you remain ignorant of it.”

“Why?”

He looked uncomfortable. “I have family there. Anyone who helps us is, by definition, an enemy of the Mahdists. If you are captured and tortured, and reveal the name of the village, you will condemn them to a terrible fate.”

“I wouldn’t talk,” replied Lara. “But I don’t expect you to take my word for it. Not with the lives of your family at risk.”

Omar looked relieved. “I am glad you feel that way.”

They reached Wadi Halfa in four hours. Lara bent over and hid her face from view as they wended their way through dozens of fishing boats, and didn’t straighten up until Omar told her that they had run the gauntlet and there were no other crafts within sight.

They went two more miles, and then, for the first time in five days, they took the
felluca
ashore. Each man removed his rifle and his personal possessions, along with the saddles and other equipment the camels had carried. Lara stood aside and waited for them.

“Where’s the village?” she asked when they were done. “All I see is sand.”

“South.”

“How far of a walk?”

Omar looked at her uncomfortably.

“I know that expression by now,” she sighed. “Out with it, Omar.”

“I spoke earlier about the danger to my family if you knew the name of the village and revealed it. The same is true if you know the location. Lara Croft, I will not try to force you—indeed, I doubt even the three of us could force you to do anything you did not wish to do—but I ask, with the greatest respect, that you allow yourself to be blindfolded and led into the village.”

“If anyone else asked me such a thing, I would laugh in his face,” said Lara after a moment. “Or spit in it. But you have earned my trust and respect, Omar. All of you have. When you first approached me aboard the
Amenhotep
, I didn’t fully believe you were telling me the truth. Now that I know you, I am almost ashamed of my doubts. You may blindfold me. I trust you.”

Hassam stepped forward with a strip of rag torn into a blindfold, but Omar raised a hand to stop him.

“Lara Croft,” said Omar, his eyes glistening, “it is I who am ashamed. You will not enter my village blindfolded. You will enter as Lara Croft, a trusted and honored guest.”

“But Omar,” Hassam began.

“She has saved our lives three times already,” said Omar. “They belong to her. I say no blindfold.”

“No blindfold,” Hassam agreed with a nod, letting the blindfold drop to the sand as if it were unclean.

They began walking south. There was too much equipment to carry, so they left the saddles and other heavy items behind; Omar said that men from the village would fetch it all later. After about a mile, Lara glimpsed the village in the distance. It was composed of mud and brick houses, shaded by doum palms, and surrounded by narrow cultivated fields. A half-dozen domestic cattle and eight small goats grazed on some brush near them, while some twenty camels stood in a fenced enclosure at the far end of the village.

“Even in my village,” said Omar, “we must remain on guard.”

“Then perhaps I should stay disguised,” Lara suggested.

“Your disguise will fool no one who gets within five feet of you,” said Omar. “No, we will introduce you as yourself. But we must tread carefully. My people are conservative and set in their ways.”

“I don’t want to make anyone here uncomfortable,” said Lara. “I’ll follow your lead, Omar.”

A few people came out of their homes and stared at the approaching party. Then more and more appeared, and finally, when they recognized Omar, a number of them began waving, and one small girl raced up and threw her arms around the small man.

Omar exchanged greetings with the village folk and began speaking to them so rapidly that Lara, whose knowledge of local Sudanese dialects was far more limited than her Arabic and more than a bit rusty, couldn’t follow the gist of the conversation. At one point, hearing her name mentioned and seeing the eyes of the villagers dart toward her in curiosity, she nodded deeply but said nothing. Finally, Omar turned to her.

“We will spend the night here, and leave on camels in the morning,” he announced. He pointed to a small hut. “You will sleep there. We will dine at sunset.” Suddenly he smiled. “I told them we would prefer not to have fish, cooked or otherwise.”

Lara thanked her hosts in Arabic, which was spoken throughout the Sudan, then walked over to her hut, entered it, gratefully got out of her robes, and lay down. She awoke two hours later when the smell of cooking meat came to her nostrils, and she realized that she was even hungrier than she had thought. She searched the hut for a mirror, curious to see what traces of her injuries still remained, but her search yielded nothing.

There was a knock at the door.

“Are you ready for dinner?” called Omar from outside.

“One minute,” she said.

While she was sleeping, her dirty robes had been taken away and replaced with clean ones. Though she hated the idea of wearing the confining garments again, which did a good job of concealing her weapons while making it difficult for her to reach them quickly, she dressed in the robes that had been provided. A bowl of water and a bar of soap and some towels had been provided, and she washed her face quickly and ran her fingers through her hair, the closest thing to a comb she had.

“They have prepared a goat in your honor,” said Omar as she emerged from the hut. “We told them how you saved our lives.”

“It will taste better than the finest filet at the Savoy,” she replied earnestly.

The meal was served outside, now that the sun was down, and the entire village sat around a huge fire where the goat roasted on a spit. Before long the children had their fill and went off to play, and the women retired to their houses, leaving Lara as the only female present.

“It is time that we spoke of important things,” said the headman of the village, in a tone markedly different from the pleasant heartiness of his previous speech welcoming Lara and thanking her for saving the lives of Omar, Hassam, and Gaafar.

“I am happy to speak to you, Abdul, my cousin,” said Omar. His tone suggested that he was not happy at all. “Of what shall we speak?”

“The Amulet of Mareish, of course,” said Abdul. “Do not deny that you have enlisted Lara Croft to help you find it.”

“Why should I deny it?” asked Omar. “Lara Croft’s reputation is known to all. She is famous throughout the world for finding objects lost to history. Why should we not take advantage of her expertise if she offers to help us?”

“I tell you now,” said Abdul, glowering. “The Amulet must never be found—not by Lara Croft, not by anyone!”

Lara was having trouble not speaking up on her own behalf, but Omar shot her a glance that was half-warning, half-plea, and she bit her tongue with difficulty.

“I do not understand, Abdul,” said Omar. “If Lara Croft should find the Amulet and turn it over to me to destroy, why would that displease you?”

“She will not turn it over to you! The Amulet has a life of its own, and it does not want to die! She will think she is using it, but it will use her and you! The Mahdi was an ignorant peasant, and a year after he found the Amulet he could read and write and influence millions of men. Do you think he suddenly went to the British university? It was not the Mahdi speaking and reading and writing—it was the Amulet! Lara Croft must not be allowed to find it. No one must find it. You are my cousin, Omar, but if I thought there was a chance that you could find the Amulet, I would kill you right this moment.”