The Amulet of Power (18 page)

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.

She had just opened the first book when Omar entered the room.

“You should lock your door,” he said severely.

“I knew you’d be coming by,” she said. “I’ll lock it when I go to bed. What did you find out?”

“They were not
my
men, but they were men who did not want you to find the Amulet.”

“That’s strange,” she said. “Kevin’s source said they were Mahdists.”

“Then his source is mistaken.”

“He seemed pretty sure.”

“I’ll check further tomorrow,” said Omar. “Or perhaps even tonight.”

“Go ahead,” she said. “You don’t have to chaperone me. I’m spending the night reading.”

Omar walked to the door, then turned to her. “He was certain, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I had better check my own sources.” He opened the door and stepped into the corridor. “Remember to lock the door behind me.”

“I will.”

Then he was gone, and Lara locked and bolted the door. She knew there was no fire escape, but she walked over and closed the French doors to the balcony just to be on the safe side, then bolted them shut.

Finally she settled back on an easy chair to read about the fabulous life of General Charles Gordon. Four hours later she had worked her way up to his correspondence with the great Victorian explorer, Sir Richard Burton, and was reading in rapt fascination when she came to a page that was missing. She didn’t think much of it; it was a very old volume, and perhaps six or seven other pages were missing as well. But in a later letter to Burton, Gordon referred to his letter of June 3, 1883, and mentioned that he had used it as the basis for a magazine article. When she turned back to see what he had said on June 3, she found that was the letter that was missing.

She tried to continue reading.

The letter. Find the letter.

“Who was that?” she said, leaping to her feet, pistol in hand.

The letter. June 3, 1883.

It wasn’t a voice. It was more as if the wind itself had formed the words.

The letter.

“All right, all right!” she said to the empty room. “I heard you.”

The letter.

She walked to the door, then thought better of it. There was no way she could go down to the lobby and walk out the front entrance without picking up an escort, and she definitely didn’t want an escort for what she was about to do.

She decided to leave the Black Demons behind again. The last thing she needed was to be stopped by the police for walking around with weapons in the middle of the night, and robes were too bulky for what she had in mind.

She opened the French doors and stepped out on the balcony. There was no fire escape, but every room on this side of the hotel had balconies. She climbed over the edge, holding on to the railing, and lowered herself as much as she could. Then she began swinging her legs back and forth, and when they were over the balcony below she released her grip and landed lightly, then repeated the process, landing on the sidewalk.

She looked around to make sure she hadn’t been seen, then began walking quickly to the library. It was locked, of course, but she had known it would be. She walked around to the alley where she had fought the huge man earlier in the day, again used the pile of discarded crates and boxes to reach the insulated power line, and walked along it to the nearest roof. Then she walked over to the library. Its roof was twenty feet higher than the roof she was on, but there was an ornamental chimney—she was sure it was never used, not in this climate—with enough handholds that she felt confident she would be able to catch it without falling to the alley below.

Her decision made, she hurled herself through the air. Her outstretched fingers latched onto a pair of weeping bricks that extended out from the chimney, and she slowly pulled herself up. Her feet found purchase, and she began climbing the chimney. She reached the roof a moment later.

She had hoped to find a door, or some means of entering the library, but there wasn’t any. She walked to the edge, leaned over, and checked the nearest window. Closed. She methodically made her way around the building, checking each window—and finally came to one that was cracked open.

She slung her legs over the side of the roof and lowered herself until she was hanging by one arm, opposite the window. With her free hand she raised the window until it was fully open.

Her problems didn’t end there. This wasn’t like a balcony she could drop onto. Any kind of straight drop would send her to the pavement thirty feet below. She could have swung her body, as she did on the hotel’s balcony, and crashed her feet through the window, but she didn’t want to alert any guards or passing police.

She extended her body to its utmost, and found to her relief that her toes just reached the windowsill. She slowly released her grip on the edge of the roof, balancing precariously. She felt herself slipping, unable to hug the building as she lowered herself. Then, just before she fell to the ground, she managed to slide her feet inside the window, and she now slid down until she was sitting on the ledge with her legs inside the building. From there it was just another few seconds before she was totally inside. She closed the window behind her, descending to the ground floor, and, using a pocket flashlight, began her search for the missing letter.

There were two dozen books on Gordon still on the shelf, and she picked them up, one by one, thumbing through the index to each—and on the seventeenth book she hit paydirt.

“All right,” she muttered, sure that whatever had directed her here could hear her. “I’ve found it. But if you don’t mind, I’m going to take it back to the hotel and read it there.”

There was no response, nor had she really expected one.

Tucking the book under her arm, she walked to the same side exit she had used earlier in the day and twisted the handle. It was as she had thought: locked from the outside, but not the inside. A moment later she was back in the alley, and heading back to the Arak Hotel, but before she had taken a dozen steps, her way was barred by a glowing skeleton of something that stood erect but would never be mistaken for human, or even primate.

It reached a bony hand out to take the book from her. She backed away.

All right
, she thought.
The Amulet wants me to read this, so it didn’t send you. That means you’re from the Mahdists or anti-Mahdists, and their magic isn’t as strong as the Amulet’s. I hope.

The hand reached out again, and this time she grabbed it—and was mildly surprised to find that it was substantial, rather than just an illusion. She bent one of the fingers back. It broke off, but the skeleton seemed not to notice.

Its jaws moved, and though it had no tongue, no larynx, no means of making a sound, the words
“I want!”
seemed to emanate from its missing lips.

“You can’t always have what you want!” said Lara, backing up another step, her eyes searching the alley. Finally she found what she was looking for—a metal garbage can, one of the few. She picked up the lid and, using it as a warrior might use a shield, charged into the skeleton, holding it in front of her.

The bones shattered and the skeleton collapsed, but where each bone fell there was now a small, growling, vicious dog. The closest one launched himself at her ankles, and she kicked it through the air like a football. Before it could fall to the ground it sprouted wings, metamorphosed into a black crow, and flew off, squawking its anger.

Then she was among them, kicking some, picking others up by the scruff of the neck and hurling them away, pounding on some with her shield. Every time contact was made the dog turned into a crow and flapped noisily away.

Finally just one small dog remained.

“You tell your creator that I don’t scare easily,” said Lara, approaching it.

Suddenly the dog’s entire demeanor changed. It turned away, tucked its tail between its legs, and ran off, yipping like a terrified puppy, leaving her to ponder whether the sorcerer had given up or a real dog had accidentally wandered into a pack of its supernatural brethren.

She held up the book to show whatever had directed her to the library that she still possessed it.

“I hope you’re satisfied,” she said into the dark, empty night.

The sigh of a breeze was her only answer.

23

There was a knock on Lara’s door.

“Are you awake?” said Mason’s voice.

“Just a minute,” she said, getting up off the couch, where she’d fallen asleep reading the book. She walked to the door and opened it.

“It’s three in the afternoon,” said Mason. “Were you planning on sleeping the day away?”

“I was up all night reading,” she said. “Have you been out?”

“Yes,” replied Mason. “I picked up a little .22 caliber Beretta; I’ve got it tucked away in my belt.”

“If you shoot anyone with it, you’ll just make them mad,” said Lara. “Why didn’t you pick up an AK-47? They’re for sale in almost every alley in the city.”

“Because I couldn’t hide it under my coat,” he admitted awkwardly.

“We don’t want to get in a shooting war with a million Mahdists,” she said. “The whole purpose of having a gun is to frighten people off, or make them think about the consequences of shooting at us. If they can’t see it, it can hardly serve as a deterrent.”

“I disagree,” said Mason. “I’m not interested in handheld deterrents. The only purpose of a gun is to kill your enemies.”

“If I start killing my enemies, I could very quickly turn this megalopolis into the smallest village you ever saw,” said Lara.

“No harm is going to come to you,” said Mason. “I didn’t let it happen in Egypt, and I’m not going to let it happen here in the Sudan.”

“I wasn’t able to defend myself in Cairo,” replied Lara. “Anyone who attacks me now will know he’s been in a fight.”

“I’m sure he will,” said Mason. “It seems a shame, though. . . .”

“What does?”

“Attacking you.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It was,” said Mason.

“Thank you.”

He stared at her for a moment. “If I may say so,” he began, “I find you—”

“Stop,” she interrupted him, holding up a hand. “One compliment a day is all I can handle when people are plotting to kill me.”

He laughed. “All right. But when this is over, I think I just might show you how romantic an archaeologist can be.”

“When this is over, I might be interested in finding out,” replied Lara.

There was an awkward silence, and then Mason spoke up. “So what were you reading that kept you up all night?”

“There was a series of letters from Gordon to Sir Richard Burton.”

“The explorer?”

“And the man who translated the
Arabian Nights
,” she said. “Anyway, Gordon later referred to one of the letters and mentioned that whatever he’d said had got him to thinking, and he’d even written an article about it. I was hoping it might be something about his favorite location in Khartoum, something that could lead us to the Amulet.”

“But it wasn’t?”

She shook her head. “As far as I can tell it was just a religious tract, nothing about Khartoum at all. I’m still hunting for it—but these are
thick
books. This one”—she held up the volume she’d stolen—“is thirteen hundred pages, and two of the others don’t even have indices.”

“If it’s just a religious tract, why bother?”

Because the Amulet told me to. But if I say that aloud, the believers will kill me and the nonbelievers will lock me away at the funny farm.

They spoke for a few more minutes, discussing what research they planned to do next, what parts of the city to search. Mason mentioned once again that he planned to visit the Bureau of Information and try to get a list of all Khartoum’s pre-1885 structures.

“It would be all but impossible to come up with such a list in most Third World cities,” he said. “But 1885 was the most important year in Khartoum’s history, so there just might be a record somewhere.”

“I would guess from what Omar has told me that he thinks 1956 is the most important year,” suggested Lara.

“Why 1956?” asked Mason.

“Independence.”

“Oh, of course.” Mason got to his feet. “Well, if I’m going to get that list, I might as well get started.”

He walked to the door, and then turned. “Dinner?”

“I’ll be too busy reading.”

He looked his disappointment. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he said, leaving the suite.

Lara picked up the book again, and spent a few more hours reading and rereading the Gordon-Burton correspondence, never noticing that she had not only slept through breakfast and lunch but that dinnertime had come and gone as well. For perhaps the fiftieth time since she returned from her nocturnal visit to the library she read the letter of June 3, 1883.

I don’t understand
, she thought in frustration.
There’s nothing to it! He’s just talking about religion. There’s not a word about Khartoum, and not a word about you.

And the answer came on the wind, through the open French doors:
Think, Lara Croft. Use your brain and think.

She picked up the book again, and read the letter once more. But this time as she read, she blinked her eyes several times, frowned, looked away, then read it again—and suddenly she picked up the other books and began thumbing through them until she found what she was looking for.

“Well, how about that?” she muttered when she had finished reading it. “You sly devil, Gordon! There it is in black-and-white where anyone who read it could figure out where you hid it, and no one ever did.”

She smiled triumphantly.

“Until tonight!”