He pushed the truck harder. The staff car still came on.
He swung the wheel. Another narrow alley. Donkeys jumped out of the path of the truck, a man fell from a stepladder, a baby in its mother's arms began to howl. Sorry, Indy thought. I'd stay and apologize in person, but I don't find it convenient right now.
Still he couldn't lose the staff car.
Then he was in the square. He saw the sign of Omar's garage, the door hanging wide open, and he drove the truck quickly through. The door was shut tight immediately as he brought the truck to a whining halt. Then several Arab boys with broomsticks and brushes began to erase the tracks of the vehicle while Indy, wondering if he'd made it, sat slumped behind the wheel in the darkness of the garage.
The staff car slowed, crossed the square and continued on its way, Belloq and Dietrich scrutinizing the streets with expressions of anguish and loss.
In the back of the truck, safe in the crate, the Ark began to hum almost inaudibly. It was as if within it, locked away and secure, a piece of machinery had spontaneously begun to operate. Nobody heard the sound.
It was dark when Sallah and Marion arrived at the garage. Indy had fallen asleep briefly in a cot Omar had provided, waking alone and hungry in the silent darkness. He rubbed his eyes when an overhead lamp was turned on. Marion had somewhere washed and brushed her hair and looked, well, Indy thought, stunning. She stood over him when he opened his eyes.
"You look pretty beat up," she said.
"A few surface cuts," he answered, sitting up, groaning, realizing that his body ached.
But then Sallah entered the room and Indy suddenly pushed aside his tiredness and his pain.
"We have a ship," Sallah said.
"Reliable?"
"The men are pirates, if I may use the phrase loosely. But you can trust them. Their captain, Katanga, is an honorable man-regardless of his more doubtful enterprises."
"They'll take us and the cargo?"
Sallahnodded. "For a price."
"What else?" Indy, stiff, got up. "Let's get this truck down to the harbor."
He gazed at Marion a moment, then he said, "I have a feeling that our day isn't quite finished yet."
In the ornate building that housed the German Embassy in Cairo, Dietrich and Belloq sat together in a room more commonly used by the Ambassador, a career diplomat who had survived the purges of Hitler and who, all too gladly, had vacated the room for their purposes. They had been sitting in silence for some time now, Belloq gazing at the portrait of Hitler, Dietrich restlessly smoking Egyptian cigarettes.
From time to time the telephone rang. Dietrich would answer it, replace it, then shake his head in Belloq's direction.
"If we have lost the Ark . . ." Dietrich lit another cigarette.
Belloq rose, walked around the room, waved a hand dismissively. "I will not countenance that prospect, Dietrich. What has happened to your wonderful Egyptian spy network? Why can't they find what your men so carelessly lost?"
"They will. I have every faith."
"Faith. I wish I had some of it myself."
Dietrich closed his eyes. He was weary of the sharp edge of Belloq's mood; and fearful, even more, of returning empty-handed to Berlin.
"I cannot believe such incompetence," Belloq said. "How could one man, acting alone-alone, remember-destroy most of a convoy and disappear into the bargain? Stupidity. I can hardly believe it."
"I've listened to this already," Dietrich said, annoyed.
Belloq walked to the window and stared out across the darkness. Somewhere, wrapped in this impenetrable Cairo night, was Jones; and Jones had the Ark. Damn him. The Ark could not be let go now; even the prospect caused him a chill, a sensation of something sinking inside him.
The telephone rang again. Dietrich picked it up, listened, and then his manner changed. When he hung up he looked at the Frenchman with a vague expression of vindication on his face. "I told you my network would turn something up."
"Did they?"
"According to a watchman at the docks, an Egyptian named Sallah, the friend of Jones, chartered a merchant steamer by the name of the Bantu Wind."
"It may be a ruse," Belloq said.
"It may be. But it's worth looking into."
"We don't have anything else anyhow," Belloq said.
"Then shall we go?"
They left the Embassy hurriedly, reaching the docks only to discover that the tramp steamer had sailed an hour ago. Its destination was unknown.
11: The Mediterranean
In the captain's cabin of the Bantu Wind, Indy stripped to the waist, and Marion dressed his assorted cuts and wounds with bandages and a bottle of iodine. He stared at her as she worked, noticing the dress she'd changed into. It was white, high-necked, somewhat prim. He found it appealing in its way.
"Where did you get that, anyhow?" he asked.
"There's a whole wardrobe in the closet," she said. "I get the feeling I'm not the first woman to travel with these pirates."
"I like it," he said.
"I feel like a-ahem-a virgin."
"I guess you look like one."
She regarded him a moment, pressing iodine to a cut. Then she said, "Virginity is one of those elusive things, honey. When it's gone, it's gone. Your account is well and truly spent."
She stopped working on him, sat down, poured herself a small glass of rum from a bottle. She sipped it, watching him as she did so, seeming to tease him over the rim of the glass.
"Did I ever apologize for burning down your tavern?" he said.
"I can't say you did. Did I ever thank you for getting me out of that burning plane?"
He shook his head. "We're even. Maybe we should consider the past closed, huh?"
She was silent for a long time.
"Where does it hurt?" she asked tenderly.
"Everywhere."
Marion softly kissed his left shoulder. "Here?"
Indy jumped a little in response. "Yes, there."
Marion leaned closer to him. "Where doesn't it hurt?" And she kissed his elbow. "Here?"
He nodded. She kissed the top of his head. Then he pointed to his neck and she kissed him there. Then the tip of his nose, his eyes. Then he touched his own lips and she kissed him, her mouth gently devouring his.
She was different; she had changed. This was no longer the wild touch he'd encountered in Nepal.
Something had touched her, softened her.
He wondered what it had been.
He wondered at the change.
The crated Ark lay in the hold of the ship. Its presence agitated the ship's rats: they scurried back and forward pointlessly, trembling, whiskers shivering. Still silent as a whisper, the same faint humming sound emerged from the crate. Only the rats, their hearing hypersensitive, picked up on the sound; and it obviously scared them.
On the bridge, as the first light of dawn streaked the ocean, Captain Katanga smoked a pipe and watched the surface of the water as if he were trying to discern something that would have been invisible to landlocked men. He let the sun and the salt spray play against his face, streaks of salt leaving white crystalline traces on his black skin. There was something out there, something emerging from the dark, but he wasn't sure what. He narrowed his eyes, stared, saw nothing. He listened to the faintly comforting rattle of the ship's weary engines and thought of a failing heart trying to pump blood through an old body. He considered Indy and the woman a moment. He liked them both, and besides, they were friends of Sallah's.
But something about the cargo, something about the crate, made him uneasy. He wasn't sure what; he only knew he'd be glad to get rid of it when the time came. It was the same unease he experienced now as his eyes scanned the ocean. A vague pulse. A thing you just couldn't put your finger on. But there was something out there just the same, something moving. He knew it even if he couldn't see it.