“Why not?”
“If they catch up with us, we’re dead. No matter what weapons we have. There’s too many of them. Close to a thousand I’d guess. Maybe only five hundred will reach us in time, but that will be sufficient.” She spoke good English, with a heavy French accent.
“Who are they?” Sam asked.
She shrugged. “Mercenaries, nomadic tribes, rebels from any number of Africa’s discontent nations, who can say? He will have placed a massive bounty on the return of the book I’m carrying. There will be enough gold capable of making any man a master. And all of these men want to be their own master.”
“Do you mean, General Ngige?” Sam asked.
She nodded. “That’s the one.”
“The current rebel leader who appears to have staged the most successful military coup in the DRC’s history?”
“Yeah. He came over here with an army of mercenaries from throughout Africa to steal a book I’ve spent my life searching for. Although why he’s suddenly discovered a newfound interest in archeology beats me.”
He kept pace with her and said nothing.
“General Ngige was in the group of men who tried to kill me back there at the oasis. You must have killed him when you saved my life.” She spoke matter-of-factly, without any tone of appreciation or hint of gratitude. “You’re lucky you did. I’ve heard that he was probably one of the greatest military strategists of our time. He commanded loyalty from his soldiers that bordered on religious fanaticism. In exchange he looked after them well. They were well funded, well trained, and all of his men were offered land once they won the war.”
“You know a lot about him?” Sam asked. “If you’ve been in the Saharan desert for some time searching for this book, I’m surprised you know so much about what’s going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
“I have a large following myself.” Again, she said it as a statement, not as a boast. “People have flocked from all over Africa to help me search for this book. One of them came from the Kingdom of Zaire, before it became the DRC. He lost everything in the coup during the early nineties, and has spent the last thirty years planning on returning with an army. He keeps me well informed. Believe me when I say, you’re extremely lucky to have killed Ngige when you had the chance. If he was still alive, I would recommend killing yourself now before he captures you, which inevitably, he would do.”
Sam sighed. “I suppose now’s as good a time as any to inform you that we didn’t kill General Ngige. Although I doubt he will survive through the day, let alone long enough to catch us.”
“What do you mean? He never would have let us escape if you hadn’t killed him!”
“Tom stole his handgun, and I burned a cigarette butt into his right eye. He ran off into the desert while we were fighting his mercenaries. By the time Tom went after him, Ngige had too much of a head start. We figured the desert would have finished him off well before sunset. He had no water with him.”
“I think you underestimate General Ngige. The man could survive out here for weeks without food, water, a compass or clothing. He wasn’t just given the position of leader. He was born into it. He was made the perfect soldier. He’ll be alive, and he’s going to be pissed as all hell. So now I’ll be dead by tomorrow, and you will too.”
Sam thought back to Ngige’s own description of how he’d been given the position of rebel leader by a strange man who could see the future. He doubted very much the man was anything but mortal. He would die, quick as any other mortal, if a bullet was placed in his head. He figured now was the wrong time to mention that’s exactly how General Ngige had been given the job of the leader of the Rebellion.
“What’s so important about the book?” Sam continued.
“They think it will make them rich. It holds the key to what has happened before and what will happen in the future. Most importantly, they want it because of the prophecy.”
“What prophecy?”
“In the fifteen-fifties, before Nostradamus fell into ill health, he made a journey into the Saharan desert. With a small group of chosen followers, he entered the Coast of Barbary in what now lies the coast of Libya and Egypt. The group walked into the burning desert without protection, without any knowledge of what they would find, and all because Nostradamus assured them that they were going to save the world.”
“From what?”
“A warrior who would go on to conquer the world.”
Sam smiled, condescendingly. “Genergal Ngige believes if he gets the book, he will be the one to conquer!”
“I guess so.”
“So, did Nostradamus and his group of followers save the world?” Sam stared at her. His piercing blue eyes examining her response.
“Well, if the prophecy is true, which I’m starting to believe it may be, they made it deep into the Sahara in what is now Southern Libya. There, a large sand storm developed without warning, killing almost everyone within the group, and burying the book written by Nostradamus.”
“A book of prophecies?” Sam asked. “This is all about some fabled prophecies?”
“Yes. But there’s a little more to it than that. You see, there was one survivor other than Nostradamus himself. That survivor was said to one day have a son, who in turn had a son, and this process continued, until one day a daughter would be born. The birth of that daughter would signify the time was near to complete the prophecy. The daughter would discover the place where the book had been buried in the sand for nearly four hundred years, and in doing so, she would save humanity.”
“And the girl was born?” Sam asked.
“I was the girl.”
“This is about some stupid book written by Nostradamus?” Sam continued again.
“Yes.”
“Then why not leave it for them to find and we’ll get on with our lives?”
She shook her head, and made her descent down the steep gradient of a large sand dune. “I can’t do that.”
Sam struggled to keep his footing as she skipped lithely down the next sand dune. He lost balance and slid down to the bottom of the dune. Sam watched Tom follow his example, sliding more carefully.
Sam sped up to catch up with Zara again and continued where the conversation had left off. “Why? You need the money that badly?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?” Sam asked.
“What I do with the book now is very important. It will affect the future.”
“In what way?” Sam persisted.
“Don’t ask. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. I didn’t believe it even when my own father told me and I was just five years old. Instead I had to see it with my own eyes.”
Sam grinned. He’d seen some pretty amazing phenomena in his time. “Try me.”
“Okay, what I do with the book now will determine if humanity gets to continue to exist — or whether it becomes extinct.”
Sam humored her. “So what are you supposed to do with the book to save humanity?”
“That’s just it. I have no idea, whatsoever — and neither did Nostradamus.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Zara stopped for a moment and took a drink of water from the flask she’d taken off the dead mercenary who’d nearly killed her at the oasis. It was midday. The sky was a pale blue and so hot it looked almost white. The sun a diffuse glare, blurring the lines of the sand dunes and the sky into one mangled wreck of heat, as though it was located everywhere. She squinted as she forced herself to look back at the horizon where they had come.
A plume of sand rose ungainly into the sky like a giant smoke stack from an old steamship. They were getting closer. She glanced at her new companion. He’d noticed it too and said nothing. His mouth was set hard with determination; his blue eyes were pensive and he looked like he’d surmised precisely what she had — their pursuers were approaching rapidly, gaining on them significantly every hour, and driven by greed.