The 13 th tribe

[27]

Jagger considered it his job to worry about unusual events like the appearance of the helicopter. Obsession came with the territory, and it irked him that Gheronda had shrugged it off. “Tourists,” he’d said.

But Jagger suspected something else: What tourist would hover right down between the monastery walls? And the person inside had binoculars, not a camera.

Jagger spent an hour on Ollie’s satellite phone trying to track down the tail number-SY-RSN-but between language and bureaucratic barriers, he’d learned only that it was registered to a private company based in Sharm el-Sheik, the resort town 140 miles south of St. Catherine’s. His suspicions grew stronger when he discovered no such company listed with any of the directory services.

Now it was just past noon-closing time-and all he could do was take his station at the far end of the split-rail fence and look politely intimidating. He’d told Hanif to be particularly watchful for suspicious behavior. With any luck, it would be the last he saw of the black helicopter and its mysterious passenger.

The stream of tourists heading up the mountain tapered off, and Jagger began walking toward the monastery. This was his routine, checking out the tourists still milling about out front and climbing up the foothills of the mountain on the opposite side of the valley from Mt. Sinai. He remembered being surprised upon their arrival to see how narrow the valley was. The opposite mountain started almost where Mt. Sinai ended. It was generous to say the valley had any kind of “floor” at all, which made the monastery’s presence there all the more amazing.

Hanif walked toward him, starting an inspection that would take him completely around both the excavation site and the monastery. The man turned his head right to take in the dig, glancing up at the mountain as he did. His attention came back to Jagger, then snapped back to the mountain. He stopped, and Jagger followed his gaze.

The mountain rose in jagged clusters. High on one of these spinal outcroppings, a figure stood motionless. He was far off the path that led to the peak, in a place where he could observe the entire excavation and monastery. Occasionally a tourist would ignore the signs to stay on the path and appear as an insect scurrying around the dangerous precipices. Bedouins too sometimes popped up in unusual places, but these desert dwellers would rather sell trinkets, camel rides, and guide services than explore their own backyard by themselves.

Jagger reached behind him for his binoculars. As he thumbed off the lens caps, Hanif jogged up to him.

“The helicopter and now this,” Hanif said, panting. “You think coincidence?”

“No,” Jagger said and glassed the figure. The 150x zoom put him twenty feet in front of the man. No, not man… “It’s a boy,” he said. “A teenager, fifteen or sixteen. I think the one from the copter.”

The boy’s hair whipped around his face. It was cut stylishly short around the ears, longer on top. He wore safari clothes: khaki pants and shirt, both sporting more pockets than anyone would ever use. He glared down, seeming to stare directly at Jagger. The boy lifted a pair of binocs to his eyes, and the sun flashed off the lenses. He lowered them, scowling, then dropped out of Jagger’s view. Jagger gazed over the top of his binocs. The boy was gone.

“I’m going up there,” he said.

“But a boy,” Hanif said. “Just a boy.”

“There’s been a rash of violence against archaeological digs lately. Tanis got hit last month. A couple weeks before that, it was Qift.” He scoped the outcropping again, saw no one. He panned over the rocky contours. “I saw this in Afghanistan,” he said, without lowering the binocs. “Al-Qaeda used woman and children as lookouts and spies, eyes and ears. Less suspicious, and it freed the men to plan, train, recruit, raid.” He looked at Hanif. “Plus they’re expendable.”

“That was Afghanistan,” Hanif said. “This isn’t Cairo, no war here. Tanis, Qift-that was locals angry they didn’t get jobs at the dig or crazies who don’t want any digging in Egypt. The most they have are those-” He waggled his hands, grasping for the word. “Those… petrol bottles.”

“Molotov cocktails,” Jagger said. He raised his eyebrows. “You want to get hit by one?”

“I just mean… I mean…”

Jagger clasped the binoculars with RoboHand and used the other to pat Hanif on the back. “I know,” he said, smiling. “Don’t worry, I’m not seeing terrorists under every rock. I just believe in erring on the side of caution. If you think every kitten might be a tiger, you won’t get eaten.”

“You won’t have any pets either. It is no way to live.”

“Just gotta learn to turn it off.” He started toward a hut on the other side of the footpath up the mountain. He had contracted with the Bedouin who manned it to provide camels for his guards. A month ago they had begun a weekly inspection circuit that took them farther out from the excavation and monastery than they could perform on foot. He looked at his watch. “If I’m not back by-”

That sound again: thump-thump-thump-thump…

When he looked over the Plain of el-Raha, the helicopter was already closer than the earlier one had been when he’d first spotted it. But this one was harder to see; it was white. “Different copter,” he said. He turned toward the mountain and saw that the boy had returned. He scoped him. The teen was leaning forward and using his own binocs to follow the new helicopter’s approach. He took a step, lost his balance, steadied himself-all without moving the binocs away from his eyes. If Jagger knew anything about body language, the kid was excited to see the newcomer.

Jagger shoved his binoculars into Hanif’s chest. “Keep your eye on the boy,” he said and ran toward the monastery. The copter came in fast, then stopped over the gardens on the far side and descended out of sight.

At least it’s landing outside the monastery, Jagger thought. He knew right where it would come down. Unlike the raw terrain on the monastery’s east side, where Ollie dug for artifacts, the west side had been built up, improved. It consisted of three tiers of flat ground, most of it paved with stone. The lowest level was at the front, where it was even with the ground. Ten yards in from the front wall, it stepped up eight feet to the next level, and again at the rear of the monastery. On the middle level, a wide court separated two parts of the gardens. That was the only place a helicopter could land.

Traversing the length of the front wall, Jagger weaved through tourists. He rounded the corner to the garden side and saw the copter on the next level up, where he had expected it would be. He jumped against the wall between the tiers and hooked his arms over it. By the time he pulled himself up, the copter was lifting off again. Jagger rushed toward it, waving his arms. The pilot made no indication he saw him. Its downdraft whipped the branches of the trees, blowing leaves off them and pelting Jagger with sand and debris.

Jagger spotted a man climbing to the third level, which was also the roof of a building the monks used to store garden tools and supplies. The guy rolled onto it and lay there a moment. He got to his feet and staggered. He didn’t look well: the giveaway, besides his wobbly gait, was white gauze wrapped around the crown of his head. He moved toward the rear of the monastery, and Jagger took after him. “Hey!” Jagger yelled. “Stop!”

The man glanced back and redoubled his efforts to reach the back wall. Then he made a mistake: he stopped at a three-foot-square iron door, fuzzy brown with rust, set into the wall. He dropped to his knees and began pounding on it. During Jagger’s initial risk-assessment tour of the monastery, Gheronda had told him that the old door once acted as an emergency exit in case of fire or siege. It had never been used, and decades earlier had been welded shut on the outside and bricked up on the inside.

Pound away, Jagger thought as he lifted himself onto the top level. He wondered how close he’d get before the man gave up on the door and resumed running. When he was twenty feet away-sure now that he could overtake the guy if he ran-Jagger stopped to catch his breath. He stooped to put hand and hook on his knees and chugged in air like a locomotive. The man kept pounding, and Jagger noticed that blood had soaked through the bandages, drying into a brownish-maroon patch the shape of Texas. He shook his head and said, “Don’t bother, buddy. Look, man, I only want to ask you-”

The door opened, screeching like a tortured spirit. It swung inward, and the man collapsed onto his hands to crawl in. He threw a frightened gaze back at Jagger and disappeared.

Jagger sprinted to reach the door before it closed. “Wait!” he said. He dived for the door, reaching… The spirit screamed again as the door swung shut. At the last second, Jagger jammed his hook between the jamb and the door. The metal clanged into it, opened a few inches, slammed again.

“Wait,” he repeated. “It’s me, Jagger. I just have a few questions.” He got his knees under him and positioned himself to shoulder his way in. Something struck his hook-a metal bat or pipe. The hook twisted and flattened against the floor. Shock waves blasted up his arm, from stump to shoulder, and he instinctively pulled what he still thought of as his hand away from the source of pain. The door slammed and rattled as bolts and locks engaged on the other side.