King looked at Asya and she shrugged. She tucked her pistol into her purse. Taking his cue from her, King slipped his weapon into the waistband of his jeans, lifting his Elvis shirt over the grip. The gun was still warm against his skin, but not too hot.
They headed out of the library into the strong glare of the Mediterranean sunshine and strolled through the crowded plaza, toward the street.
Once away from people, Asya spoke up in a voice just shy of a shout. “Do you think secret passage was soundproofed?”
“Must have been,” King could tell he was shouting too. He hoped his hearing would improve before they got back to the airport.
“What did it throw?” Asya asked.
King held his palm out for her. She examined the small coin. It had rough edges, making it round only in the loosest sense of the word. On the face of the coin was a raised image of a woman, with a crescent moon over her head.
“An ugly woman?” Asya was not sure what she was seeing.
King laughed. “That’s supposed to be the head of a lion. This is a coin showing Tanit, a Punic goddess of fertility and war.”
“What does it mean?”
King’s face soured. “It means Alexander is in Carthage. Probably at the last Manifold facility. Omega.”
ELEVEN
Asya Machtchenko sat in the white Mercedes cargo van, watching her brother negotiate with an Arab. She was constantly amazed by him, despite the façade she presented of disapproving sister. She was really coming to like him.
King was talking with the man, and the exchange appeared to be friendly. He had told Asya that he would be getting some necessary supplies, but she suspected he was negotiating for some weapons. They had ditched the Yarygins in Valletta before leaving Malta. Traveling across borders with firearms had become practically impossible, but there were always plenty of weapons on the ground in any country. A booming secondhand trade had begun in most parts of the world, and covert military and spies always made purchasing side-arms their first step after clearing customs. Asya knew that in some parts of Russia, you could find the salesmen in the actual parking lot outside the airport. In this case, they had needed to drive into the surprisingly clean city of Tunis. Asya had not been to many locations in North Africa, although she and King had visited Egypt earlier in the year, following a lead. She found the wide streets and business-like approach of Tunis to be refreshing after the chaos of Cairo.
She watched as King, in yet another of his Elvis shirts — this one showing the aged and sweaty man with big square sunglasses on a red fabric — reached forward and shook the small Arab’s hand. Good, she thought. Almost done. The temperature in the van was fine with the air conditioning running, but she was anxious to get moving. She felt they were very close to finding their parents.
King was led to the side door of another van. The man slid the door open, slowly procured a few small packages and placed them on the floor of the van, stepping aside. King quickly examined the contents, nodding as he did, never keeping a package exposed for long. Then the man handed King what had to be a cloth-wrapped assault rifle. The weapons went into a nylon duffle bag over King’s shoulder. Then King passed the man a stack of US dollars. They shook hands again. King turned with his purchases and was walking away when the small Arab called him back.
This cannot be good.
King returned to the man, on guard. She could see it in his posture. She had no weapons if a fight broke out, but she placed her hand on the door handle anyway, prepared to leap out of the van and race to her brother’s assistance if necessary. The small Arab smiled and produced a tiny package from under his shirt. He handed it to King, and King laughed good-naturedly. Asya relaxed. King shook the small man’s hand again — far more vigorously this time. Then he came back to her van, smiling all the way.
King opened the rear door of the van and slid the nylon bag onto the floor, removing the rifle and laying it down next to the bag, still wrapped in its white cloth covering. Then he climbed into the driver’s seat, still smiling. Asya watched him the whole time.
Eventually he turned to her and saw the look on her face. “What?”
“What is so funny?” she asked.
“He said for being such a good customer, he wanted to give me a bonus gift.” King smiled and produced the small package she had seen the man hand over. King’s fingers removed the cloth, and Asya saw an olive drab WWII-era grenade, commonly known as a pineapple. She knew the weapon had been out of use since the 1960s.
“Bozhe moi, do you think that thing will even still work?”
King laughed. “Well, it looks like Vietnam era, so maybe.” The small dark thing had rust on the pin already. “We’re weaponed up. I got two Sigs and an AK. Now, where to?”
Asya showed King a small tourist map that highlighted the ruins of Carthage, and she pointed to one of the southerly sites labeled Tophet. “I think we start here. Your Tanit Goddess had connections to this place, or so the guide book says. If not this one, then we work our way up and check out all the ruins.”
King started the engine and they headed south.
Hours later, with the sun nearly going down, King was exhausted. They had visited each of the ancient sites, hoping to spot some indication of a hidden entrance to a former Manifold base, while also keeping an eye out for the Herculean Society symbol. But discovering Omega’s location was turning out to be far more difficult than finding the Valletta library’s secret file-room.
King wiped sweat off his forehead with a bandana. “As fascinating as Tunisia is, we haven’t made much ground.”
Asya sat next to him in the cab of their van, luxuriating in the air conditioning after being out in the heat all afternoon. She fanned a limp tourist map on herself and turned her head to the ceiling of the vehicle. “This is like Kyrgyzstan heat. I am melting. We have seen all of Carthage’s major sites.”
“Let me see that map,” King said, after taking a swig of an ice cold Coke he had bought from a nearby vendor. Asya handed him the map. It showed the archeological sites as orange shapes, and no other detail besides the roads. “This isn’t going to work. Can you bring up a satellite map on the laptop?”
Asya opened their rubber-coated magnesium alloy laptop, designed for rough treatment in the field. She had a small satellite antenna attached to the Ethernet port, which allowed them to access the vast array of computing power Deep Blue had back in New Hampshire, as well as a simple Internet connection from anywhere they could reach a passing satellite. Asya opened a satellite view of the ruins in Google Maps.
“You see, we are here,” she said.
“Zoom out a bit,” King said.
Asya’s finger slipped on the mouse’s scroll button, zooming the image out to where they could see the whole coastline of Tunisia. She apologized for going too far, then began zooming back in on the ruins, one click at a time.
“Wait,” King said, pointing. “What the hell is that?” His finger pointed to a huge rectangle, clearly visible, long before the other structures were.
Asya quickly re-centered the map on the rectangle, and zoomed all the way in.
“It is parking lot for the mosque.”
“The mosque?” King asked.
“You know the big one? We saw the tower, when looking at the ruins of the theater.” She sounded tired.