“Mister Karsten, you contacted me, offering to sell the Sudan Eye stone,” Raya replied calmly, his black eyes glimmering.
“The Sudan Eye? What in God’s name are you talking about?” Karsten hissed. “We did not release you for this, Raya! We released you to do our bidding, to bring the world to its knees! Now you come and bother me with this absurd bullshit?”
Raya’s lips curled back, revealing his hideous teeth as he stepped up to the overweight swine talking down to him. “Be very careful who you treat like a dog, Mr. Karsten. I think you and your organization have forgotten who I am!” Raya fumed. “I am the great sage, the magician responsible for the locust plague of North Africa during 1943, a courtesy I extended to the Nazi forces upon the Allied forces stationed in the godforsaken barren earth they shed blood on!”
Karsten fell back in his chair, sweating profusely. “I… I ha-have no diamonds, Mr. Raya, I swear!”
“Prove it!” Raya rasped. “Show me your safes and your coffers. If I find nothing, and you have wasted my precious time, I will turn you inside out while you live.”
“Oh Jesus!” Karsten wailed, staggering to the safe. His eyes caught the painting of Mother, glaring at him. He recalled Purdue’s words about his spineless flight, abandoning the old woman when her home was intruded on to rescue Purdue. After all, when news of her death reached the Order, questions had already arisen about the circumstances, since Karsten was with her that night. How was it that he got away and she did not? The Black Sun was an evil organization, but their members were all men and women of potent intellect and powerful means.
When Karsten opened his safe with relative security, he was confronted by a terrible vision. From the flung pouch, a few diamonds shimmered in the dark of the wall safe. “It’s impossible,” he said. “That is impossible! That is not mine!”
Raya shoved the quivering fool aside and gathered the diamonds up in his palm. Then he turned to face Karsten with a blood-curdling frown. His emaciated face and black hair gave him a distinct appearance of some harbinger of death, perhaps the Reaper himself. Karsten screamed for his security staff, but nobody answered.
34
The Best Hundred Quid
When the Chinook touched down on the abandoned landing strip outside Dansha, three military Jeeps stood in front of the Hercules airplane Purdue had rented for the Ethiopian excursion.
“We’re fucked,” Nina mumbled, still pressing down on the wounded pilot’s leg with her bloodied hands. He was in no medical danger, as Sam had aimed for the outside of his thigh leaving him with nothing worse than a slight flesh wound. The side door slid open and the citizens were let out before the soldiers came to remove Nina. Sam was already disarmed and thrown in the back of one of the Jeeps.
They confiscated the two satchels Sam and Nina had with them, and they cuffed both.
“You think you can come into my country and steal?” the Captain shouted at them. “You think you can use our air patrol as your personal taxi? Hey?”
“Listen, there is going to be a tragedy if we don’t get to Egypt soon!” Sam tried to explain, but he got a punch in the gut for it.
“Please, listen!” Nina implored. “We have to get to Cairo to stop the floods and the power failures before the whole world collapses!”
“Why not stop the earthquakes too, hey?” the Captain sneered at her, grasping Nina’s delicate jaw in his rough hand.
“Captain Ifili, take your hands off the woman!” a male voice ordered, prompting the captain to obey immediately. “Let her go. The man too.”
“With respect, sir,” the captain said without moving away from Nina, “she robbed the monastery and then this ingrate,” he snarled, kicking at Sam, “had the audacity to hijack our rescue helicopter.”
“I know very well what he did, Captain, but if you do not let them go right now, I will have you court martialed for insubordination. I might be retired, but I am still the main financial contributor to the Ethiopian Army,” the man roared.
“Yes, sir,” the captain replied, and motioned for the men to release Sam and Nina. When he stepped aside, Nina could not believe who her rescuer was. “Col. Yimenu?”
Next to him his personal entourage waited, four men in number. “Your pilot informed me of your purpose for visiting Tana Qirkos, Dr. Gould,” Yimenu told Nina. “And since I owe you a favor, I have no choice but to clear your way to Cairo. I shall leave two of my men at your disposal and security clearance from Ethiopia, via Eritrea and Sudan into Egypt.”
Nina and Sam exchanged looks of perplexity and distrust. “Um, thank you, Colonel,” she said carefully. “But may I ask why you are helping us? It’s no secret that you and I did not get off on the right foot.”
“Despite your terrible predisposed judgment of my culture, Dr. Gould, and your vehement attacks on my personal life, you saved my son’s life. For that, I cannot but absolve you of any vendetta I may have had against you,” Col. Yimenu conceded.
“My God, I feel like shit now,” she muttered.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
Nina smiled and reached out a hand to him. “I said, I would like to extend my apologies to you for my assumptions and my harsh assertion.”
“You saved someone?” Sam asked, still reeling from the jab to the gut.
Col. Yimenu looked at the journalist, allowing him to film his statement. “She saved my son from certain drowning while the monastery was flooding. Many perished last night, and my Kantu would have been among them, had Dr. Gould not pulled him up from the water. He called me just as I was about to join Mr. Purdue and the others inside the mountain to oversee the return of the Holy Box, calling her an angel of Solomon. He told me her name and that she stole a skull. That is hardly a crime worthy of death, I’d say.”
Sam peeked at Nina over the viewfinder of his compact video camera, winking. It would be better that nobody knew what the skull contained. Soon after, Sam went with one of Yimenu’s men to collect Purdue and Patrick where their stolen Land Rover had run out of diesel. They managed to travel more than half the way before stopping, so it did not take Sam’s vehicle long to find them.
With Yimenu’s clearance, the group soon made it into Cairo, where the Hercules finally touched down near the University. “Angel of Solomon, huh?” Sam teased. “Why, pray tell?”
“I have no idea,” Nina smiled, as they entered the ancient walls of the Dragon Watchers sanctuary.
“Did you see the news?” Purdue asked. “They found Karsten’s mansion completely abandoned, apart from evidence of a fire leaving soot on the walls. He is officially missing, along with his family.”
“And those diamonds we… he… put in the safe?” Sam asked.
“Gone,” Purdue answered. “Either the Magician took them not immediately realizing they were fake, or the Black Sun took them when they came to pick up their traitor to answer for Mother’s abandonment.”
“In whatever shape the Magician left him,” Nina cringed. “You heard what he did to Madame Chantal and her assistant and housekeeper that night. God knows what he thought up for Karsten.”
“Whatever happened to that Nazi swine, I am elated for it and I don’t feel bad at all,” Purdue said. They ascended the last flight, still feeling the effects of their painful expedition.
After the tedious journey back to Cairo, Patrick had been admitted to the local clinic to get his ankle fixed and had stayed at the hotel while Purdue, Sam, and Nina climbed the stairs up to the observatory where Masters Penekal and Ofar waited.