The Lost Scrolls. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ open just in front of Annja. A man in a sort of iridescent brown suit tumbled out right in front of her wearing sunglasses and—

      “A fez?” Annja said aloud.

      The man’s hand dived into his suit coat, which looked as if it had been intentionally made to look slightly greasy. That was all Annja needed. She acted instinctively and grabbed the upper biceps of what she figured had to be his gun arm to control it. She used the leverage to drive a forward elbow-smash into his face with her right arm. She felt impact that jarred clear down to her tailbone, and felt a sharp pain in her own arm.

      The man gave up doing whatever he was doing to clutch his face. He fell straight on the floor, bleeding, to the accompaniment of thrashing and mewling noises, she thought.

      “Damn,” Annja said, inspecting her right elbow. A tooth had gouged her, drawing blood. She was mighty glad of her strong immune system. Human bites are nasty, she thought.

      Jadzia faced Annja across the man’s kicking form, eyes big. “It’s Egypt,” she said. “They wear fezzes. Get over it. Watch out!”

      Somebody grabbed Annja from behind in a bear hug that pinned her upper arms to her rib cage. He felt big and smelled of sweat and garlic.

      “I got her,” he said in thickly accented English.

      He hoisted her feet clear off the cracked linoleum. She felt hot breath on the back of her head, snapped it back hard. She felt, as well as heard, the cartilage of his nose shift. He grunted and his grip on her rib cage slackened.

      She thrust her arms forcefully out before her, busting the rest of the way loose. As the corrugated soles of her trusty hiking boots touched down she braced, covered her right fist with her left palm and, spinning clockwise, pile-drove an elbow into a big soft belly.

      The elbow was working for her. Her attacker doubled over with a great expulsion of hot, foul-smelling air. Annja took a step to her left and side-kicked the big Egyptian. The force propelled him into a dumbwaiter that stood open in the cracked pink stucco wall to his right. The door dropped on him.

      She turned around quickly to see if anybody else wanted to play. She and Jadzia had the corridor to themselves. The hotel maintenance staff did not get paid to intervene heroically in these little disputes among the guests.

      She turned back.

      The first man she had dropped lay on the floor moaning. His face was covered with blood. He had his hand in his jacket again.

      Annja did not think he was scratching an itch. Irritably she kicked him on the point of his chin. His head, which still had the fez crammed on top of it, snapped into the wall beside him. The fez fell off. He slumped.

      Annja crouched quickly, reached a bit tentatively into the clamminess of the inside of his biliously colored jacket and fished out a Beretta. Straightening, she dried the grips off with two quick swipes across the rump of her jeans. Then she pulled the slide back far enough for a flash of yellow brass to confirm he had a round chambered.

      “Insurance,” she said to Jadzia, whose eyes had gotten even bigger. It was true. She knew that it would be a lot easier to explain shooting an assailant to the local authorities than carving him up with a sword.

      “What’s wrong with a fez?” Jadzia asked.

      Annja blinked and shook her head once, violently, as if trying to shed water. “It was just way too Casablanca ,” she said. “Let’s just get out of here, okay?”

      5

      “I think it was the Muslim Brotherhood,” Annja said.

      “Nonsense,” Jadzia replied. Beyond her, cars swished up and down the boulevard. Across the street tourists sauntered down a broad walkway that ran along the Alexandrian waterfront. “I heard one of the men shout at you in French.”

      “That doesn’t mean anything,” Annja said. “Plenty of Muslims speak French.”

      It was late morning. They had survived the night, at least, in a small, somewhat seedy hotel. Fortunately Annja had spent enough time knocking around the world from undergrad days onward to appreciate the fact that it was still pretty plush by Third World standards.

      Jadzia had recovered from her shock—or perhaps the thrill of playing adventure spy girl—enough to gripe about the surroundings, from the mildewy smells to the stains on the bedspread.

      But once she had slurped down her first mug of strong coffee well charged with sugar, and chomped her way through her first flaky pastry at the sidewalk café on the Corniche, Jadzia found something that appealed to her even more than pouting. Arguing.

      Her pretty lips were twisted in a sneer as if she’d forgotten Annja had repeatedly saved her life the night before.

      “They were assassins sent by the big oil companies,” Jadzia said in a tone that clearly declared Annja was a moron not to recognize the facts. “They sent them to keep the knowledge of Atlantean energy secrets covered up from the world.”

      Annja didn’t react for a moment. She was struck by the fact that the lips sneering at her were covered in a carefully applied layer of lipstick. And as far as Annja knew, Jadzia had no personal effects except her wallet, some credit cards, identification and her passport.

      Do I have lipstick that shade? she wondered. The truth was she seldom bothered with it, or makeup in general, except for special events. She realized belatedly she had with her a sort of premade kit—the Mr. Right Emergency Kit—provided to her by her female cronies from Chasing History’s Monsters . She had never, so far as she could recall, used it. Or so much as opened it.

      I hope there weren’t condoms in it, she thought.

      “Wait,” she said. Jadzia’s last statement had finally penetrated her protective shields of puzzlement. “You’re blaming the oil companies?”

      Jadzia nodded.

      “Isn’t that a conspiracy theory?”

      “Aren’t we victims of a conspiracy?” Jadzia said in infuriatingly superior tones. “Or do you really think that those men all just independently decided to attack us last night, and wound up doing so all at the same time by coincidence? That’s just stupid.”

      Annja frowned. It made the snottiness immeasurably worse, somehow, when the brat being snotty was right. At least about that angle of conspiracy. Obviously someone had conspired to hit the Polish-Egyptian dig team last night. And they’d done a hell of a job. Had it not been for the fact that she was getting used to coming under attack, they would have made a clean sweep.

      Annja’s fork halted halfway to her mouth. She lowered the chunk of fluffy French pastry with frosting just melting off in the Alexandrian morning heat back to her plate. She felt her stomach do a slow roll. So many, she thought desolately.

      She saw the faces of the dead. The beatnik-looking Naser, darkly pretty Maria, cheerful Szczepan Pilitowski, who had died giving Annja a chance to save Jadzia, the scrolls and herself. Ismail—Dr. Maghrabi—who had tried to shield them all with his body, and had been ruthlessly gunned down.

      Is this what it means to carry the sword? a lonely child’s voice asked from the wilderness of Annja’s mind. She already knew the СКАЧАТЬ