The Lucifer Gospel

6

She realized that she had been thrust completely out of the market; there were no piles of merchandise or haggling crowds. In an instant she found herself taken into a different world, a world of crumbling walls, of huddled figures in the swirling dust, of a strange silence, the noise of the crowd immediately muffled by the thick plaster walls of the death houses all around her, the light turned to flitting shadows. Her fear was instantaneous.

She stood still, turning slowly in a circle, trying to get her bearings. In front of her was a high wall made of mud bricks and straw, worn in places, some bricks gone, like missing teeth. To her left was a pale green building with a sloping roof, and to the right was a narrow alley barely wide enough to slip through sideways. Behind her was the path leading back to the street she had been ejected from.

Finn turned back that way. She knew Hilts had been heading toward the wider area of old military surplus. If she hurried she would probably be able to catch up. She pelted through the opening and then pulled up short. A man stood before her, dressed in a white jelabia and a dark, pin-striped suit jacket. His feet were bare and his head was wrapped in a loose, filthy turban.

He looked as though he was in his forties, slope-shouldered and big-chested. His eyes were yellow green and sunk deep under heavy brows, his nose large, flattened and twisted from several obvious breaks, his upper lip and chin covered by a graying beard. Like everything else in the City of the Dead, he was covered in a thin film of dust.

In one large hand he held a huge leaf-shaped sword, the blade pitted with rust, the edge hard and shining from a recent sharpening. He raised the machete-like blade and opened his mouth wide, making a gargling, growling sound, revealing that he had no tongue within his black, stained mouth.

For a frozen instant Finn stood stock-still, simply staring. She felt a panic-stricken laugh burst from her lips and for a second all she could think about was the scene in the Indiana Jones film where Harrison Ford faced a giant Egyptian swordsman of his own. It was ridiculous, but it was horribly real. She wasn’t Indiana Jones and she had no big horse pistol to shoot down the grotesque creature swinging the blade in her direction. The man grunted a second time and then surged forward. Finn spun on her heels and ran.

Racing back out of the narrow alley, she swung instinctively to the left, running beside the crumbling brick wall, then turned the corner to the right and ran on, hearing the pounding feet of her terrifying pursuer close behind. She scanned the way ahead. She was in a small open space surrounded by the walls of large stone mausoleums, doors and windows heavily grated against any intrusion.

In the square were a dozen stone slabs marking simpler burial plots. A cooking fire burned on one of them, a pot hanging by a metal hook above the embers. Finn ran forward into the middle of the empty courtyard, jumped up on the slab, and spun toward the fire.

Half turning, she grabbed the steaming pot by the handle and swung it backward, kicking through the hot coals and spreading them all over the slab. The iron pot of kohary splashed across the big man’s face, momentarily blinding him in a mess of boiling-hot slushy rice and lentils.

He yelled and pawed at his face with his free hand and jumped onto the stone slab as Finn slipped, then fell, rolling into the dirt. The man raised the machete and stepped forward, the skin of his bare feet treading on a spray of white coals. He howled and jerked back, falling sideways into the remains of the fire. Finn regained her feet and kept on running, not daring to look back to see what damage she had done.

She threw herself into a narrow crack between two of the mausoleums and came out into a small alley. Directly in front of her she saw an open doorway, a cool dark haven from the man behind her. She ran into the modest death house. Laid out on the bare earth floor, only half covered by dust and dirt, were three skeletons in a neat row, feet all pointing in one direction, probably the east, although Finn no longer had any idea which way was which.

It looked as though someone had been to the simple grave site recently. There were spade marks in the dirt, as though someone had been excavating. There was no archaeology going on here though; if the skeletons had been disinterred it was because the living wanted to move into the rough shelter of the simple one-room building.

There was a second opening on the other side of the room, and stepping over the skeletons in the dirt, Finn exited into a broad enclosure of two or three dozen graves out in the open with rows of smaller chambers on either side and the high wall of what Finn took to be a mosque at the far end. There were picks and sledgehammers lying around and piles of broken marble and granite slabs: grave robbers stealing the actual graves themselves, the descendants of Saladin’s builders who stripped the pyramids of their smooth outer facings to raise the city.

She stopped just outside the death house and listened, trying to slow her breathing and the rattletrap beating of her heart. As far as she could tell the man with the machete and no tongue was no longer after her. Either that or he was being a lot quieter about it. The real question of course was why he had been after her in the first place. She was a woman in a strange place, and alone at that, but unless the lunatic sword wielder simply wandered around the City of the Dead looking for damsels in distress, he was after her for a reason.

For the life of her though she couldn’t figure out what possible reason there could be. Her recent exploits in the shady world of looted art, old conspiracies, and Vatican politics didn’t have anything at all to do with Egypt; the works of art she’d managed to unearth, literally, from beneath the streets of New York hadn’t included any Rosetta Stones or pharaohs’ treasures. And even if they had, who would want to kill her now? That part of her life was over.

Or was it?

If she was right the man with the machete had been waiting for her like a hunter waiting to stalk his prey. That meant he had to have known she was coming to the City of the Dead today, and the only person who knew that other than herself was Hilts-a man who had introduced himself to her on an airplane, a man who had said he was part of the expedition but who had only offered his name to Achmed the driver. And who, for that matter, was Achmed, except a young man holding a sign that said “Adamson”?

She had taken it all on faith. As her friend Michael Valentine would have told her, the essence of any good confidence trick was just that, a trick of confidence, depending on the victim’s faith that what he or she was seeing was true because it was what was expected. Hilts knowing who she was, her background, her father’s name and reputation, Michael’s background… all of it was readily available in the archives of any major newspaper that had carried the story a year ago, or on the Internet. She’d fallen for it hook, line and sinker, believed it because she wanted to, because Hilts was a good-looking, intelligent man with a ready smile and an interesting patter.

Finn swore under her breath. She’d gotten herself into this mess; now she had to get herself out. She quickly looked around the narrow enclosed area once again. A rough ladder made from old lumber leaned up against the right-hand death house. Height. Maybe she could figure out where she was if she got high enough. It was worth a try.

She ran across the enclosure, threading her way between the graves, and climbed the ladder. She reached the top of the mud-and-plaster building and went to the far edge. Stretching out in all directions was a mazelike sea of buildings just like the one she stood on, split by alleys and paths. Some were so close they shared walls, others were separated like the enclosure behind her. The lower buildings were punctuated here and there with larger ones, some two stories high or even three, with taller, more ornate mosques rising out of the crumbling sea of brick and stone.

In the far distance she could see the palacelike bulk of the Citadel, built on a spur of limestone that dominated the city a thousand years ago as the Dome of the Winds by Sultan Hatim Ibn Hartama, then brutally fortified by Saladin two hundred years later as a royal seat and fortress for himself and future Abbasid rulers. Between the Citadel and where she now stood she could see a raised highway that seemed to cut directly across the City of the Dead. She could also see something else: just to the right, two hundred yards away, was a small round mosque with windows cut like teardrops. Beside it, in stark contrast to the mosque’s beauty, was a squalid hovel built of chicken wire and lumber scraps. It was the mosque she’d seen getting off the motorcycle. Somewhere in the shadows and the bleak, mustard-and-ash haze below it was Baqir and his horde of child bandits. No match for the machete-swinging thug behind her, but better than nothing. She turned and went back to the ladder.

She stooped, ducking low. Her nightmarish adversary was now directly below her, scanning the little enclosure. There were several ways she could have gone, but for the moment he hadn’t thought of looking up. His robe was charred along one edge and he was limping. It looked as though she had slowed him a little. He was making soft, animal noises, head slowly turning as he examined the area. Finn edged back, trying to get out of his potential line of sight should he suddenly look upward. Her foot sagged into a soft spot in the roof and a chunk of mortar or brick dropped down noisily into the room below. Instantly the man’s eyes flashed up. Finn didn’t wait. She turned and ran, heading for the far edge of the roof as the man with the machete began to climb the ladder, bellowing with rage or pain or both.

Finn reached the far side of the small building, paused, lurched then launched herself across the five-foot gap, landing hard on the next roof, the gravelly surface tearing at the palms of her hands and shredding the knees of her linen pants. She rolled upright and saw the son of a bitch with the sword in his hand stumbling across the far roof, one foot dragging. She looked ahead and to the sides. The next roof was closer, so she ran toward it and jumped the narrower gap easily, trying to keep herself lined up with the round mosque.

She leapt over a low parapet between two adjoining death houses and kept on going, feeling her breath hot and desperate pumping from her burning lungs. She turned for an instant and gasped out loud. Somehow the swordsman had managed to drastically shorten the distance between them, limp and all. Reaching the edge of the roof she stopped, horrified. It was twenty feet across open air to the next roof and fifteen feet to the ground. Below her was a bare patch of earth and several crumbling gravestones. Someone had arranged a scrap of cloth between poles to create a makeshift awning. She had no choice. She jumped, aiming for the sagging cloth.

Finn dropped, turning her shoulder with the fall. She crashed through the ragged piece of fabric and splintered the frail structure that held it up. A woman screamed, and there was a second crash as the few pots and pans that made up the kitchen Finn had just demolished clattered to the ground. Finn had a quick impression of a shrouded woman carrying a naked, wide-eyed child, and just beyond a piece of billboard with a line of Arabic script and the English word “Dreamland” in bright orange type.

Directly above her she heard a guttural roar, and suddenly the swordsman dropped the wreckage of the woman’s awning and stood in front of her, legs spread wide, the huge blade raised in his arms. He grunted out some incoherent oath and charged. Finn grabbed a tattered piece of the awning and pulled it downward into the man’s face, confusing him for a split second. To the left, on a raised stone coffin, were the plucked and gutted corpses of half a dozen pigeons, their ruffed heads severed at the neck and piled beside the bodies in a heap, eyes glazed, beaks wide. The cleaver that had done the job lay nearby, the blade still sticky with blood. Off to the side a green buzzing cloud of shiny-winged flies danced above a small wooden bowl that was filled with the small creatures’ entrails. Reaching out, Finn grabbed the cleaver and swung it blindly, feeling the heavy jolt as the blade cut into flesh and slid hard across bone. A strange high-pitched scream rose into the dense, filthy air, and Finn ran again.

She turned out of the small corner of abandoned ground she had tumbled into and found herself in a long, dark alleyway, a blank wall rising up in front of her like a cliff. Looking up she saw the familiar tear-shaped windows, with the chicken coop structure just visible on the right. The high wall had to be the rear of the mosque near the motorcycle.

Behind her she could hear the pounding of the swordsman’s bare feet on the path and his labored breathing, but she didn’t even try to look back. Instead she tried to run faster, eyes moving to the left and right. There was no door at the end of the dark, narrow passage, no ladders or opening to the side, no way out. It was a dead end. There was nowhere else to run, no other option except to turn and make a futile stand that could only end in savage pain and final oblivion.

The one faint hope was a window in the wall of the mosque, but as she continued to run forward she saw that it was much too high to reach. Besides, it was covered with an ornately carved and decorated wooden screen. It was no use, she was as good as dead. She looked on the ground in front of her, desperately hoping to find something she could use as a weapon, but there was nothing except hard bare ground and the ever-present layer of dust.

She hesitated, half turning to meet her fate, then turned back to the mosque, seeing a movement and a flash of color on the periphery of her vision. There was a crash and the wooden screen that blocked the high window shattered outward and a figure in a pink T-shirt appeared.

Baqir, the Care Bear bandit.

The boy yelled something incomprehensible in Arabic and leaned out of the window, extending both arms down the pale wall of the mosque. Beyond him Finn could see several of his young companions, anchoring him from behind. In a last frantic burst she reached the foot of the wall and jumped, clutching for the boy’s outstretched hands. She felt him grip her wrists and drag her upward. From behind her came a rush of air and the clattering smash of steel on stone as the swordsman hacked upward with his blade, missing the stroke, the machete biting into the wall instead of her flesh.

Baqir and his gang hauled Finn through the broken window and into the cool semidarkness of the mosque. They were on a raised gallery edged with more wooden screens like the one that had covered the window. Below was an empty prayer space covered with beautifully woven carpets facing a tall altarlike structure. Above there was nothing but the yawning emptiness of the dome, the arching barrel of the vault decorated in fantastic, complex mosaics of tile in blues, greens, and gold, like the sun shining down on the fields and streams of paradise.

Baqir and his friends pulled her toward a narrow flight of steps, then hurried her across the carpet-covered floor to an arched doorway on the other side of the high, open space. They headed out into the smoky haze. Ahead, two young boys were playing marbles on a gravestone. Baqir barked an order. The marble players looked up, replied quickly, then ran off. One of Baqir’s shorter lieutenants tugged at Finn’s sleeve and gestured with a word. They moved quickly down a broad pathway and through an old wrought-iron gate that led out into a surprisingly green garden of flowers growing in front of a small but obviously prosperous mausoleum, its walls freshly whitewashed, its windows covered with ornate wooden grilles.

Led by her crowing, chattering escort Finn raced down a narrow alley then burst out into a wider area bounded by more gravestones and awning-covered areas of shade like the one she’d crashed through a few moments before. It was another version of the animal market. The stench was almost overpowering. In one corner a rough table was stacked with what Finn knew had to be freshly butchered camel legs, lumps of yellow bone protruding from severed flesh and blood-clotted fur. Buckets were lined up, filled with goat, donkey, and sheep entrails. Old jars, tins, and drums stuffed with overflowing slabs of cow liver and raw fat sat cooking in the roasting sun. A hundred people crowded into a space no bigger than a couple of ordinary parking spaces.

“Ya’la! Ya’la!” a little boy beside her yelled, dragging her across the market. Small hands pushed her from behind, and ahead Baqir scouted the next alley. Less than a minute later, gasping and exhausted, Finn stumbled out into the court where she and Hilts had left the Norton. Baqir, grinning broadly, eyes flashing, pumped his fist triumphantly into the air. Finn made her way over to the bike and leaned on it, chest heaving. Relief welled up in her with a wracking sob. Suddenly her new sidekick screamed.

“Shoef!”

She turned in time to see the gleaming arc of the machete cutting through the air and slicing into Baqir’s neck at the shoulder, butchering down through muscle, bone, and heart. The light went out in the young thief’s eyes before he knew what was happening, and he fell dead to the dusty ground. The swordsman slid the blade away from the crumpled body, smiling hugely. His own blood was heavy on the upper arm of his old morning coat, his dark eyes blazing.

He grunted something loudly that sounded like “Kus umak!” and began to stride toward her as best he could, dragging his right foot and swinging the bloody machete like a club. Baqir’s gang fled, screaming in terror as the ghastly apparition moved steadily forward-all except Finn’s little protector, who stood loyally beside her, visibly shaking, his small hand on her sleeve. The child took one step forward and spit onto the ground. He swore at the swordsman in a squeaking voice, bent down, and hurled a chunk of rubble.

“Sharmut!” shrieked the little boy, tears of rage streaking through the caked dirt and grime on his face.

The piece of rock struck the man on his uninjured shoulder and bounced off harmlessly. Smiling, he came on. Finn grabbed the child and pulled him back, forcing him behind her. The man raised the machete, Baqir’s glistening blood dripping from the blade down onto his hand. Finn’s heart seemed to stop beating and she felt a calm, deadly coldness overtake her. She saw Baqir falling into the dirt again like some useless thing, abandoned. The grotesque creature with the bleeding sword in his hand would pay. She searched the terrible face approaching her, wondering if there was any hope that she could use her teeth to rip out his throat before she died.

“W’aleikum sallam.” The words were soft, and close. The man with the machete in his hand stopped, surprised by the voice. He turned slightly, so that the three closely spaced rounds struck him high in the ribs. The bullets shattered the curved bones guarding his chest into a hundred spiked, razorlike fragments that tore through both lungs and heart, lifting the man off his feet, tossing him backward like a rag. Two of the three bullets ricocheting through the meat of his chest finally found their way out of his body, exploding through the right shoulder blade and blowing out the center of his spine in a misty halo of blood and bone and scraps of fabric from the old, pin-striped morning coat. The dead swordsman’s body hit the ground with a sound like a heavy sack of turnips dropping on the dirt.

Finn looked. Hilts stood there for an instant longer, the small square shape of the South African RAP automatic held outward at arm’s length, gripped firmly in a simple one-handed grip with no theatrics. The moment passed and he flipped up the safety, then stuffed the weapon into his waistband and covered it with his T-shirt.

He bent, quickly scooping up the three.40-caliber shell casings and pushing them into his pocket. In three steps he was beside the motorcycle. He took a folded wad of Egyptian pounds out of his jeans and pressed them into the hands of the little boy still standing with Finn, staring at the blasted swordsman with childish awe. He squeezed the boy’s hand tightly around the money, then whispered briefly into his ear. The child stared up at Hilts and nodded. The money vanished beneath his ragged, dirty robe.

“Imshee, imshee!” said Hilts. The boy looked quickly up at Finn, tears still hot in his eyes, then kissed her hand and ran. The child stopped for an instant beside the dead swordsman, kicked dirt onto his face and spit, then clutched the blood-soaked handle of the machete and dragged it away with him, leaving a thin, telltale trace as the point furrowed through the hard-packed earth. In the distance Finn could hear the faint sounds of whistles blowing.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Hilts. He pushed his two Nikons into the carrier bag, handed over Finn’s helmet and slipped on his own. He swung onto the motorcycle. “Come on.”

Finn climbed on behind him. The sirens were closer now. “Tell me how to say ’thank you’ again,” she said quietly.

“Shukran,” Hilts answered.

She looked at the frail young body of Baqir, sprawled in the dirt. A huge pool of dusty blood surrounded his head and shoulders, and already the flies were gathering.

“Shukran, Baqir,” she whispered softly, and pulled down her visor. Hilts fired up the engine, revved it once, and then they raced away, leaving the City of the Dead behind them.