The Amulet of Power (19 page)

24

The sun was just rising when Lara, who had been awake all night, picked up the phone and called down to the desk.

“May I help you?” asked the clerk on duty.

“I need to speak to Ismail,” she said.

“Hold on a moment, and I’ll get him.”

She looked out at Khartoum through the French doors. With any luck, this would be the last morning she’d see the city—at least for a while.

“This is Ismail,” said a familiar voice. “What can I do for you, Miss Croft?”

“I need a favor,” said Lara. “A very important one.”

“If it’s within my power . . .”

“It is,” she said. “I need to speak to Omar, and I need to speak to him alone, in my suite. He may be asleep, he may be awake, I have no idea. But he’s sharing a room with Dr. Mason, and it’s essential that Dr. Mason doesn’t know he is meeting with me. I don’t care what excuse he makes—he can say he’s buying information from an informant, or visiting his girlfriend, or anything else—but he has to understand: It is absolutely vital that I speak to him, and that no one else knows about it.”

“I will take care of it,” promised Ismail.

“Good. Tell him my door is unlocked.”

“Trust me, Miss Croft.”

“I do,” she replied. “That is why I am asking you to do this.”

She hung up the phone and paced the room restlessly for the next ten minutes. Finally the handle on her door turned, and Omar silently let himself in. He closed and locked the door behind him, then turned to face her.

“You know where it is,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

“What makes you think so?”

“You are practically jumping in place, and I have never seen such a smile on your face.”

“I know where it is,” she confirmed.

“And you did not when last I saw you, of that I am certain,” said Omar. “What has happened since then?”

“I finished doing my homework.”

“Explain, please.”

“The answer has been in your library for one hundred years, right there for anybody to find.”

“I still don’t know what you are talking about,” replied Omar.

“General Gordon and Sir Richard Burton discussed their religious beliefs, as well as their various adventures, in a series of letters to each other. One page was missing, but Gordon mentioned in a later letter that he had written and sold an article based on whatever it was he mentioned in that letter.” She picked up a century-old biography and opened it. “I found the article.”

“What is in it?” he asked eagerly.

“The answer,” said Lara triumphantly. “The title is
Eden and Its Two Sacramental Trees
.”

Omar frowned. “Eden?” he repeated. “The Biblical Eden? How can that possibly tell you where Gordon hid the Amulet of Mareish?”

“Listen,” she said, and began reading aloud. “ ‘The following are the reasons for the theory that the Garden of Eden is at or near Seychelles. I could even put it at Praslin, a small island twenty miles south of Mahé. . . .’ “

Omar frowned. “The Seychelles Islands?”

“Yes!” she said excitedly. “He believed there was once a land mass between the East Coast of Africa and India, and that the Seychelles were all that remained of it. I won’t go into his reasoning, because some of it is pretty strange, but he believed that Praslin Island was the site of the Garden of Eden.”

“And you think—?”

“I
know
it!” said Lara. “Remember I said that given his religious beliefs and his conviction that the Mahdi represented the devil, he would likely hide the Amulet in a Christian church? That was before I read this article. Given a chance, he’d hide it in the Christian Garden of Eden, a land where he was sure God would not allow the Mahdi to even set foot, let alone search for it.”

Omar considered this revelation. “It makes sense,” he admitted at last.

“Gordon couldn’t take it there himself,” she continued. “But”—she thumbed through the pages and held the book up—“he even drew maps of Praslin! All he had to do was show one of his loyal Sudanese lieutenants where to hide it, and he could rest secure that the Mahdi would never find it.”

“You sound like a believer.”

“I’m just trying to see things through Gordon’s eyes,” answered Lara. “It doesn’t matter what
I
think about Eden. The only thing that matters is that Gordon was sure he’d found it.” She paused. “I should have thought of this earlier. I’ve never seen an ad for Seychelles tourism that didn’t mention the fact that General Gordon swore it was Eden! I just never put two and two together.”

“And what made you put two and two together yesterday?” asked Omar.

“I had a coach.”

“A coach?”

“Don’t ask.”

She picked up a pack of matches from the coffee table, ripped out the reprint of the article on Eden, and set fire to the corner of the pages. She held them over a large ashtray until they were thoroughly aflame, then dropped them.

“What are you doing?” demanded Omar.

“Making sure no one else knows what I’ve read,” she said. “I’ve memorized the maps, and I’ve already burned the page with the June 3 letter from the book Ismail gave me last night. I hate the idea of destroying books, but this information is too dangerous to leave lying around. I want you to destroy the rest of the books after I’ve gone.”

“You are going somewhere?”

“Yes,” she said. “There’s no direct flight to the Seychelles from Khartoum, so I want you to book me on the first flight to Kenya, and get me a connecting flight to the Seychelles. If there’s any delay in Kenya—I seem to remember the Seychelles flight operates only two or three times a week—reserve a cottage for me at the Norfolk Hotel.”

“There are Mahdists in Kenya,” said Omar. “Hassam and I will accompany you.”

“No,” said Lara firmly. “That will just attract more attention.”

“I cannot let you spend any time there alone,” he said firmly.

“I won’t be alone,” she replied. “Once you make my reservations, get in touch with Malcolm Oliver and let him know I’m coming.”

“Who is Malcolm Oliver?”

“An old friend. He used to be a white hunter and then a safari guide, but he retired a couple of years ago. He doesn’t believe in computers, so you’ll have to send a telex or try to raise him by phone. He knows Nairobi far better than you do, and he’s as handy with a gun as I am.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Yes. I need to change some money. I can’t use Sudanese dinars once I’m out of the country, and Kenya and the Seychelles are much stricter about passing British currency than Khartoum is. I’ll need Kenya shillings and Seychelles rupees.”

“We will go to the Mashraq Bank.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “You have a brother or a cousin working there.”

He smiled. “A half-sister.”

“You’ve got a remarkable family,” she said. Then, “Finally, I’ll need a small shoulder bag.”

“Why? You have no clothes to take.”

“I can’t wear my pistols on the plane, and I’ll never get them past security in a carry-on.”

“I will get one for you. Is there anything else?”

“No, that’s all. I don’t know the plane schedules, but I definitely want to leave today if it’s possible,” said Lara.

“I will book two seats on today’s flight,” said Omar.

“One,” she corrected him.

“What about Dr. Mason?”

“If Kevin knew about this, nothing could keep him from coming with me,” explained Lara. “And if we both leave, the Mahdists will
know
that the Amulet isn’t in the Sudan. If Kevin stays here, my guess is that most of them will think I’ve given up and he’s still searching.”

“He will be angry.”

“I know,” she said unhappily. “That’s why I’m letting
you
tell him. We’ll have breakfast together, and when it’s over I’ll suggest we go off in opposite directions and meet at some appointed spot in midafternoon. With any luck I’ll be out of the country by then.”

“And if I cannot obtain passage for you on today’s flight?”

“Then I’ll meet him where I said I would, and we’ll try again tomorrow.”

“I will begin to make arrangements right after breakfast,” said Omar.

He opened the door and walked out into the corridor. Lara went into the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, then took the ashes of the burned pages and flushed them down the toilet.

Breakfast was uneventful. Lara announced that she wanted to visit a small library in Omdurman, Mason decided to check the various churches again, and they agreed to meet at the centrally-located French Cultural Centre.

After they had split up, Lara returned to the hotel, and Omar showed up about ninety minutes later.

“Well?” she asked as he entered the suite.

“Your flight leaves at twelve-thirty
P.M.,
” he announced.

“Good. What about the connecting flight to the Seychelles?”

“That is a problem,” he reported. “The next flight from Kenya to the Seychelles is on Tuesday.”

“From Nairobi?”

“Yes.”

“Is there an earlier flight from Mombasa?”

He shook his head. “The Nairobi flight will stop on the coast to pick up more passengers from Mombasa.”

She shrugged. “Well, if I have to spend three days in Kenya, I have to.” She looked around. “What about a shoulder bag?”

“Mustafa has purchased it, and will meet us at the airport. I’m sure you’re being watched. Why walk out of the Arak with luggage and alert them to the fact that you’re leaving?”

“I can’t walk into the airport wearing my guns,” she pointed out.

“You won’t have to. He’ll be waiting for us in the parking lot.” He paused. “Malcolm Oliver was not answering his phone, so I sent a telex. I hope he receives it, but just in case he does not, I stopped by a cyber café and e-mailed one of my uncles who lives in Nairobi to make sure the message reaches him.”

“Good,” she said. “Then all I have to do is change some money.”

“You have to do something else,” said Omar. He produced a piece of paper and proceeded to write eight words on it.

She stared, frowning. “This isn’t Arabic or Sudanese,” she said. “Or any other language I know.”

“It is a phonetic transcription of the language of the Sudan from the time of Mareish,” said Omar. “It has been passed from father to son, from leader to leader, since the death of the great sorcerer.”

“What is this all about?”

“Mareish knew the evil that the Amulet could do in the wrong hands. He had every intention of destroying it, but he died prematurely, and the Amulet was buried with him.”

“I know that,” said Lara.

“But what you don’t know is that after he created the Amulet, he told his apprentice how it could be destroyed—indeed, the only way to destroy it.”

“This is the spell you mentioned to Abdul. The one he called a fairy tale.”

“This is no fairy tale,” said Omar.

“Then why didn’t Mareish’s apprentice use the spell to destroy the Amulet?”

“Because the apprentice knew the seductive power of the Amulet, its ability to corrupt even a man of noble character, and he feared to touch it, so he passed the secret on to his son, who passed it to his son . . . and it has been passed down to me, and now to you.” Omar pointed to the paper. “Commit those eight words to memory, and then destroy the paper.”

“If they’ll destroy the Amulet, why not just say them now and be done with it?” she asked.

“They will only work when the person who utters them is in physical contact with the Amulet. Gordon hid the Amulet because he did not know how to destroy it. It is our most deeply guarded secret, and I have entrusted it to you. Do not let us down, Lara Croft.”

“I’ll try not to.” She read the words, repeated them four times, and when she was sure she had memorized them, she handed the paper back to Omar, who immediately set fire to it, then got to his feet.

“Shall we go?” he said.

She nodded and followed him out.

The staff at the Mashraq Bank seemed surprised to see a European enter the premises, but Omar’s half-sister handled the transaction swiftly and efficiently, and soon Lara and Omar were riding a beat-up, rust-covered thirty-year-old cab to the airport.

Mustafa was waiting for them with a secondhand leather bag, a small lock, and the key.

After stowing her guns and locking them away, she shook his hand, then did the same with Omar, and walked into the airport. She handed in her ticket, showed her passport, waited tensely while the computer read its bar code and approved it, and walked through to the terminal.

She had sat down on a bench to await her flight, when a uniformed man approached her.

“Lara Croft?” he said.

“Yes.”

“You are flying to Kenya, are you not?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Is anything wrong?”

“There is a two-hundred-dinar exit fee required of all passengers leaving the country, and our computer says you have not yet paid it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought the man who bought my ticket would have paid it.” She reached into her pocket, and pulled out some bills. “I’m afraid I’ve traded in all my dinars. Will you accept British pounds?”

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” said the man. “Please come with me. I will take you to our currency exchange.”