Jasmine winced at the memory of her oversight.
It sounded like something McNutt would do.
She lay back on the floor and shifted her focus to the oil lamp that dangled above, strangely wishing that it had been a candelabrum. At least the melting wax of a burning candle would have offered her a sense of time. She knew it was an arbitrary sense since she had no way of knowing how fast a random candle burned, but at least it was a measurable unit. She would have been much more at ease knowing she had been trapped for three candles… or twelve… or two hundred.
Instead, all she had was the continuous flame of the lamp.
With nothing else to entertain her, she began to reflect on her predicament. She knew that her exposure to the events of the last couple of months had changed her outlook considerably. She also knew that much of that change was brought about by her growing relationships with the team, particularly Sarah. Before their adventure, she would have resigned herself to the inevitable, patiently waiting to be rescued. But the confidence she had recently gained meant she now understood the need to make her own fate.
Accepting her imprisonment wasn’t an option.
Jasmine closed her eyes and thought back to the events in the tunnel when the silence was shattered by a sharp grating noise that echoed through the cell. She couldn’t place the direction of the sound because of the acoustics in the room, but she wanted to be ready if she was about to have visitors. She tensed, focusing on the self-defense techniques that Cobb had insisted she learn before their last adventure. All of the repetition, all of the muscle memory — it had led to this moment. Or had it?
She heard the sound again.
This time, she was able to locate the source.
It wasn’t coming from the door.
It was coming from the grave.
Amazingly, the man in the corner of the room — the one she had assumed was dead — had suddenly come to life. As he emerged from his drug-induced sleep, he struggled to sit up on his own. Every time he tried, his chain rattled against the stone floor and he flopped over like a toddler learning to walk.
A moment passed before he spotted Jasmine in the center of the room, watching him from afar with a mixture of empathy and fear. His sunken eyes locked on hers as if pleading for his life. Eventually, he mustered the strength to ask a single question, one bathed in desperation and doubt.
‘Where… are… we?’
61
After leaving the café, Manjani led Sarah and Cobb to a barren stretch of coastline near the harbor, where they could talk in private. Sensing anger and distrust from Manjani, Sarah knew she had to repair some of the damage she had caused by her deceit in the restaurant. She wasn’t planning to reveal classified details regarding her past, but she felt that she needed to be truthful about some basics in order to gain his trust.
‘Dr Manjani, my name is Sarah.’ She motioned toward Cobb, who was lagging behind while searching for any signs of trouble. ‘And that’s Jack.’
‘Let me guess: he’s not your boyfriend.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘No, he’s not my boyfriend.’
‘Bodyguard?’ Manjani asked.
‘I’m her colleague,’ Cobb answered. They didn’t have time to explain the nuances of their relationship; and even if they did, he didn’t see a reason to tell Manjani any more details than were absolutely necessary. ‘Sorry about dropping in unannounced, but we’re in a bit of a hurry.’
‘Are you working for the Archives?’ Manjani asked.
‘No,’ Cobb replied, ‘Petr Ulster is merely a friend. He offered to help us out when the shit hit the fan. I guess we have that in common.’
Manjani nodded but said nothing.
Sarah took it from there. ‘Considering what you went through, I can understand your reluctance to talk about the incident in the desert. Still, anything that you can tell us about your expedition will be helpful to our cause.’
Manjani remained quiet as they walked along the edge of the water. They could tell from his sluggish pace that events from the past weighed heavily on his mind. The only question was whether or not he’d be willing to share the details.
Eventually, they came across a decrepit wooden bench that looked older than the ground itself, as if the bench was the seed from which the island had grown. Despite its sagging boards and weathered exterior, Manjani looked at it like it was an old friend. When he sat, the bench groaned and creaked but its form held true.
‘Sometimes I come here to think,’ he said to himself as much as the others. ‘And when I do my mind invariably drifts back to that day.’
Sarah was tempted to sit next to him for support but ultimately decided against it — not only to give him some room to breathe, but also for the short-term health of the bench. She honestly didn’t know if it could handle additional weight.
Manjani stared at the ripples on the water as he slowly opened up about the past. ‘It was our third week in the field when we made an important discovery: a small settlement that had been completely buried in the sand. At first, we assumed the village had been abandoned and that the Sahara had gradually reclaimed the terrain, as the desert was apt to do. And yet, as we dug deeper, we soon realized the village was completely intact, including several male skeletons huddled in the corners of the rooms.’
‘A sandstorm?’ she asked gently.
‘Undoubtedly,’ he answered while keeping his gaze frozen ahead. ‘Although it was a horrible tragedy for those we found — and I can think of few worse fates than being swallowed by sand — it was a remarkable discovery for me and my team because it gave us an ancient snapshot of a forgotten culture, right down to their archaic swords.’
Cobb winced when he heard mention of the blades.
From that alone, he could guess the rest.
Still, he allowed Manjani to fill in the details.
‘Two nights later, I needed some time alone to ponder the significance of our discovery. So I grabbed my GPS and a backpack full of supplies and headed to the top of a nearby dune. I know it’s foolish to head off into the desert on one’s own — trust me, I would never let my students be so careless — but I have spent the past twenty years in the Sahara looking for tombs and pharaohs, so I know a thing or two about navigation.’
‘How long were you gone?’ Sarah asked.
‘Ninety minutes. I even timed it to be sure. Fifteen minutes out, an hour to eat and think about the discovery, and fifteen minutes back. As long as I kept my pace and my direction was true, I would end up in the same place that I started.’
‘Did it work?’
‘Of course it worked,’ he replied. ‘As I mentioned, I’m a seasoned veteran when it comes to the desert, and it’s a good thing, too, because the wind really started to pick up on my way back to the campsite. So much so, my tracks were completely erased.’
He paused, recalling the horror that followed. ‘When I crested the last dune, I could see my team being slaughtered in the valley below. The shadows simply cut them down where they stood… I couldn’t hear their screams over the gusting of the wind, but I could see them… They were reaching out to me, begging for help.’
He swallowed hard, fighting back his tears. ‘There was one student in particular, a brilliant scholar by the name of Marissa. She was the youngest one in the group. She had this smile that could light up a room… Everyone adored her, even me. I could see her there in the campsite… She was right there… For a minute, I thought maybe, just maybe, I could run down the dune and save her, but before I could…’
His voice faded into sobs of grief.
And Cobb felt his pain.