He walked for what seemed like a long time, unknowing, uncaring, his mind drifting back time and again to that point where he had leveled the gun and shot the driver. Why? Why hadn't he considered the possibility that the truck might be carrying something dangerous?
You ruined her life when she was a girl.
Now you've ended it when she was a woman.
He walked the narrow streets, the alleys thronged with people, and he blamed himself over and over for the death of Marion.
It was more pain than he could think about, more than he could bear. And he knew of only one remedy. He knew of only one reliable form of self-medication. So he found himself walking toward the bar where, earlier, he had arranged to meet Sallah. That seemed locked in some dim past now, another world, a different life.
Even a different man.
He saw the bar, a rundown place. He stepped inside and was assailed by thick tobacco smoke, the smell of spilled booze. He sat on a stool by the bar. He ordered a fifth of bourbon and drank one monotonous glass after another, wondering-as he grew more inebriated-what it was that made some people tick while others were as animated as broken clocks; what was that clockwork so necessary to successful relationships that some people had and others didn't. He let the question go around in his mind until it shed its sense, floating through alcoholic perceptions like a ghost ship.
He reached for another drink. Something touched his arm and he twisted his head slowly to see the monkey on the bar. That stupid primate to which Marion had become so witlessly attached. Then he remembered that this idiot creature had splashed a kiss on Marion's cheek. Okay, Marion liked you, I can tolerate you.
"Want a drink, you baboon?"
The monkey put its head to one side, watching him.
Indy was aware of the barman watching him as if he were a fugitive from a nearby asylum. And then he was aware of something else, too: three men, Europeans-Germans, he assumed, from their accents- had crowded around him.
"Someone wishes your company," one of them said.
"I'm drinking with my friend here," Indy said.
The monkey moved slightly.
"Your company is not requested, Mr. Jones. It is demanded."
He was hauled from the stool and rushed into a back room. Chattering, squealing, the monkey followed. The room was dim and his eyes smarted from smoke.
Someone was sitting at a table in the far corner.
Indy realized that this confrontation had been inevitable.
Rene Belloq was drinking a glass of wine and swinging a chain on which hung a watch.
"A monkey," Belloq said. "You still have admirable taste in friends, I see."
"You're a barrel of laughs, Belloq."
The Frenchman grimaced. "Your sense of repartee dismays me. It did so even when we were students, Indiana. It lacks panache."
"I ought to kill you right now-"
"Ah, I understand your urge. But I should remind you that I did not bring Miss Ravenwood into this somewhat sordid affair. And what is eating you, my old friend, is the knowledge that you are responsible for that. No?"
Indy sat down, slumping into the chair opposite Belloq.
Belloq leaned forward. "It also irks you that I can see through you, Jones. But the plain fact is, we are somewhat alike."
Through blood-shot eyes Indy stared at Belloq. "No need to get nasty."
"Consider this," Belloq said. "Archaelogy has always been our religion, our faith. We have both strayed somewhat from the so-called true path, admittedly. We are both given to the occasional . . . dubious . . . transaction. Our methods are not so different as you pretend. 1 am, if you like, a shadowy reflection of yourself. What would it take to make you the same as me, Professor? Mmm? A slight cutting edge? A sharpening of the killer instinct, yes?"
Indy said nothing. Belloq's words came to him like noises muffled by a fog. He was talking nonsense, pure nonsense, which sounded grand and true because it was delivered in a French accent that might be described as quaint, charming. What Indy heard was the hissing of some hidden snake.
"You doubt me, Jones? Consider: What brings you here? The lust for the Ark, am I correct? The old dream of antiquity. The historic relic, the quest- why, it might be a virus in your blood. You dream of things past." Belloq was smiling, swinging a watch on a chain. He said, "Look at this watch. Cheap. Nothing. Take it out into the desert and bury it for a thousand years and it becomes priceless. Men will kill for it. Men like you and me, Jones. The Ark, I admit, is different. It is a little removed from the profit motive, of course. We understand this, you and I. But the greed is still in the heart, my friend. The vice we have in common."
The Frenchman stopped smiling. There was a glassy look in his eyes, a distance, a privacy. He might have been conducting a conversation with himself. "You understand what the Ark is? It is like a transmitter. Like a radio through which one might communicate with God. And I am very close to it. Very close to it, indeed. I have waited years to be this close. And what I am talking about is beyond profit, beyond the lust of simple acquisition. I am talking about communicating with that which is contained in the Ark."
"You buy it, Belloq? You buy the mysticism? The power?"
Belloq looked disgusted. He sat back. He placed the tips of his fingers together. "Don't you?"
Indy shrugged.
"Ah, you are not sure, are you? Even you, you are not sure." Belloq lowered his voice. "I am more than sure, Jones. I am positive. I don't doubt it for a moment now. My researches have always led me in this "direction. I know."
"You're out of your mind," Indy said.
"A pity it ends this way," Belloq said. "You have at times stimulated me, a rare thing in a world so weary as this one."
"That thought makes me happy, Belloq."
"I'm glad. Truly. But everything comes to an end."
"Not a very private place for murder."
"It hardly matters. These Arabs will not interfere in a white man's business. They do not care if we kill each other off."
Belloq rose, smiling. He nodded his head in a curt way.
Indy, stalling for time, for anything, said, "I hope you learn something from your little parley with God, Belloq."
"Naturally."
Indy braced himself. There wasn't time to turn swiftly and try for his pistol, and even less time to reach his bullwhip. His assassins sat directly behind him.
Belloq was looking at his watch. "Who knows, Jones? Perhaps there will be the kind of hereafter where souls like you and me meet again. It amuses me to think that I will outwit you there as well."
There was a sound from outside now. It was an incongruous sound, the collective chattering of excited young children, a happy sound Indy associated with a Christmas morning. It wasn't what he expected to hear in the death chamber.
Belloq looked toward the door in surprise. Sallah's children, all nine of them, were trooping into the room and calling Indy's name. Indy stared as they surrounded him, as the smaller ones clambered on his knees while the others made a circle in the manner of frail human shields. Some of them began to climb on his shoulders. One had managed to drape himself over Indy's neck in a piggyback-ride style, and still another was hugging his ankles.
Belloq was frowning. "You imagine you can back out of here, do you? You imagine this insignificant human bracelet will protect you?"
"I don't imagine anything," Indy said.
"How utterly typical," Belloq answered.
They were pulling him toward the door now, he was being tugged and yanked even as they were shielding him. Sallah! It must have been Sallah's plan to risk his children and send them into this bar and contrive to get him safely out somehow. How could Sallah have taken such a risk?