The Lost Scrolls

“Come on,” she said to Jadzia, who was sitting up rubbing grit out of her hair and cursing in several languages Annja didn’t recognize.

Jadzia opened her mouth to say something, probably a snotty protest. Annja grabbed her arm and started running. With a squawk the young woman found herself dragged to her feet and scrambling, still clutching the satchel.

As Annja reached the alley’s end a figure loomed before her. The bizarre shape of the head silhouetted against the silvery glare told her all she needed to know.

Letting go of Jadzia’s wrist, she sprinted the last few yards at full speed and leaped in the air as the inevitable machine pistol came up. Her right leg pistoned out in a flying side kick. It telescoped the single objective tube of the night-vision goggles and snapped the gunman’s neck as if he’d been hit in the face with a pile driver. In a sense he had.

Annja landed beyond the body, out on the rubble field. The inflatable tent over the excavation was ahead and to her right. She did a quick scan of the area. She seemed to be alone. The intruders, knowing there were no exits from the converted warehouse but the front way in, apparently and logically hadn’t bothered leaving more than one man on guard outside. Annja stood drawing in huge breaths of thick Mediterranean air flavored with cooking spices and motor oil.

A crunch of shoes on the loose, gritty earth behind brought her around. Jadzia was teetering toward her with blue eyes wide.

“What the hell?” she said.

“I’m scared, pissed off and alive,” Annja said. “And damned determined to stay that way. If you want to do the same, come with me. And don’t ask questions till later!”

4

Jadzia swiveled her pigtailed head from side to side as the two women walked down a street full of hulking trucks. The narrow lane ran between big dark warehouse walls near the Western Harbor wharves. It smelled strongly of seawater and sea-life uncomfortably past its sell-by date. Water sloshed along the rough surface underfoot. Not even her college geology courses enabled Annja Creed to know whether the street was actual cobblestone or just really decrepit pavement.

They passed through a spill of light from the rectangular opening into an amber-lit cavern of a warehouse. Rough-looking men in badly stained coveralls stood around the entrance smoking and talking in guttural Arabic while a skinny young man, probably just a boy, dressed in a black T-shirt and baggy cotton shorts reeled in a big hose. The smell of fish was very strong.

The conversation stream trickled to a stop as the men saw the pair of Western women, one dressed skimpily enough to be considered more than a little risqué even in cosmopolitan Alexandria.

Annja smiled widely and nodded at the startled male faces as they passed through the island of light. Nothing to see here, she thought, trying hard to broadcast it despite her devoted disbelief in psychic powers. Mess with us and you’ll be trying to digest your teeth. Have a nice night!

She had to tug extra hard at Jadzia’s wrist to tow her the rest of the way out of the light.

Jadzia followed her none-too-gentle insistence. The young language prodigy continued to maintain the shocked silence that had settled over her after Annja had killed the final attacker standing between them and escape. Fortunately, Jadzia showed little difficulty with the hike. Either she wasn’t one of those nerds who was totally opposed to any physical activity greater than teetering to the bathroom or the fridge to get another can of Red Bull, or adrenaline was working its magic. As aggravatingly lean as she was, Annja suspected the former.

Annja led them west for about a mile, following the waterfront, through the Greek quarter and into the city’s west side. She stayed alert but saw no sign they were being tailed. At length she circled back toward her own hotel.

“Why are we here?” Jadzia asked, looking up at the front of the hotel.

It was a modest three-star kind of place in the Greek quarter, big enough to have an elevator, a bar and even pretty decent bathrooms in all the rooms, but without being part of a big chain.

“I thought I’d grab my gear,” Annja said.

Jadzia hung back. Somewhere among the nighttime streets Annja had quit having to pull her along by the wrist. She had followed on her own, and now reminded Annja uncomfortably of a lost puppy.

“But won’t they know to look for us here?”

“Watch a lot of spy movies, do you?” Annja said. She instantly regretted the snide tone.

But Jadzia, while she had a flash-fire temper for perceived slights, proved to be dense as one of the city’s ancient stone Sphinxes when a real one hit her. She smiled happily.

“Of course!” Her pigtails bobbed as she nodded enthusiastically. “I know all about these things.”

What have I gotten myself into now? Annja wondered. “I’m betting they either aren’t aware of my existence or haven’t identified me yet,” she said. “Your team roster is available on the Web for all to see. My name’s not on it.”

She knew it was thin, as she watched a cab pull under the portico. The uniformed doorman bowed as a silk-suited Sikh with silver in his beard, and his shorter companion, voluptuous in an emerald-green dress, exited the vehicle and entered the hotel. She wondered briefly what the story was. The couple dressed nicely enough to afford a much pricier place.

Annja wanted to get in and out before much could go wrong even if the night’s assassins were watching for her. They might have spotted her while surveilling the dig—probably had, she had to admit to herself as she formed her plan. She would gather her things, then duck out of the hotel, shake anybody trying to tail them and head for a new place to hole up for the night.

She wasn’t that attached to the belongings she had brought. She traveled light, and nowadays always packed with the expectation she might have to leave anything behind and walk away for survival’s sake. Even her laptop was relatively cheap and contained no information that could easily be used against her.

But it would be convenient to have her stuff. And she reckoned that if she threw some of her own clothes on Jadzia, no matter how bad they fit her coltish form, they would be a lot less conspicuous than having the girl wandering around dressed in such a look-at-me manner.

“Tell you what,” Annja said to Jadzia, who was rocking back and forth on her heels and chewing on her lower lip. “You keep an eye out for anybody suspicious. Okay?”

Jadzia’s eyes lit up. “Okay!”

“TWO MEN in the lobby,” Jadzia said. “They sit on the far side with their backs to the door and pretend to read newspapers.”

“You’re kidding,” Annja said. She fought her irritation with the girl in the close confines of the stairway.

Jadzia’s pigtails swung from side to side beneath the backward Tulane Green Wave ball cap she had stuffed down over them as she shook her head emphatically. She wore an outsized windbreaker that covered her hands, and running pants cinched as tight around her waist as they could be. They resembled a pair of gray terry-cloth sandbags.

At least playing spy got Jadzia too excited either for panic or to take potshots at Annja. Annja opened her mouth to question her further, unsure as to whether to trust the young woman’s judgment. Clearly she had a taste for melodrama. Would she see danger where it wasn’t?

Annja shut her mouth. Belatedly it hit her that a degreed cryptologist might actually have a certain bent for spying.

“Right,” she said. “We’ll go out the back.”

So I was wrong, she thought, frowning at the back of her own windbreaker as Jadzia pushed through swinging utility doors. I guess they did make me. I still have a lot to learn about this whole intrigue thing.

Little wiry Egyptian men and women looked at the brisk Western women as they passed through the hotel’s service areas. Jadzia swung along like the health department inspector. Annja followed down the corridor, which smelled of steam and fresh laundry and cooking food, smiling in what she hoped was a friendly rather than nervous manner.

No one challenged them until a door flew 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.