Return (Matt Turner Series Book 3) (45 page)

“Yes, yes,” Nelpus cooed while his warning expression advised discretion. “The rest of the boy’s family fled south, so if you don’t mind the burden-”

“It’s fine, of course,” Patra breathed, and gripped Wahbi’s shoulder. She could see now where he’d been, and how he came to be here at her side.

He opened his eyes and she smiled for him. His head lowered once again, nestling back into her abdomen.

“Who ratified the adoption?” Patra asked Nelpus. “If Cassius-”

“He’s dead, the Governor,” the commander interrupted.

“Yes,” Nelpus said. “The Governor and Thomas both. From what I understand, they approached the Emperor after the ceremony and revealed the Serapeum as the collection’s true refuge.”

“Why were they killed? For not revealing it sooner?”

Nelpus shook his head with contempt. “Thomas spoke out of turn. It was wholly unnecessary. He said ‘It’s just one disgusting mockery of Rome after another,’ or something of the sort. The Emperor asked, who was this man speaking to him as a bathhouse chum.”

“He made them be speared to tree trunks, through here,” the commander drew a circle just beneath his rib cage. He switched back to Aramaic to be clear, “The Emperor said, ‘One’s hole ceases to be charmed when a tongue extends too far inside.’”

“Very well,” Patra said. “Who is this boatman?”

The commander sneered. “My Queen’s cousin vouches for him, but I cannot personally.”

Patra stepped aside to see past Nelpus. Wahbi shuffled along with her. The seemingly oblivious boatman held the mooring rope coiled around the post. He was a dark, sinewy, younger man with a headful of thin braids.

She assumed he was Egyptian, and so addressed him in Coptic. “Sir, may I ask your name?”

The boatman peered up, uncomprehending.

“Aramaic as well, my Lady,” the commander said.

Now she understood why the commander had felt the need to torture her with the tale of Wahbi’s supposed execution. He didn’t want the boatman knowing this precious secret. She wondered who the poor boy was who died in Wahbi’s stead. If only Zenobia had kept doubles of herself in her company … But she’d never allow another to accept a sentence intended for her. Wahbi, of course, was another matter. The poor boy, whoever he was, so brave. Cold comfort to his family, but at least it sounded as though he didn’t know what was coming.

A rattle up her spine as she pulled Wahbi with her to the small berth’s edge, leaning on the mooring post with her free hand. In Aramaic, she said, “Good morning, sir. May I ask your name?”

“Tavi, my Lady.”

“You’ll take me and this boy safely upriver?”

“Yes, my Lady.”

“And what will you do after that?”

“I don’t know, my Lady. I pray I find travelers seeking passage back down the Nile.”

She turned to the commander. “I have a sense for character, and I trust this man. I wish you both safe travels and peace in life.” Both men bowed their heads, and she took Nelpus in one arm. “Are
you
safe?”

He smiled. “I’m safe. Worry not, Steward.”

“What if someone discovers your bathhouse?”

He shrugged. “It wouldn’t shine too positive a light on me, but the magistracy has always enjoyed both my support, and my
support
. I expect I’ll be fine.”

She kissed his forehead. “I love you, Nelpus. I could never repay you for all you’ve done.”

“You already have,” he said, guiding her down to the boat, “as you have for every other thinking soul immortalized by your selfless deeds. Please pass on my well-wishes and gratitude to your colleague.”

Patra sat down on a small, cushioned seat at the boat’s rear, and Wahbi—Neos—curled into the floor at her feet, wrapping his arms around her leg, and resting his head near her knee. She pulled at his cloak, spreading it over his legs and tucking it in around him.

The second Palmyrene warrior passed her a small chest, and she set it on the floor in front of Neos. The boatman took another two chests and a food crate, filling in the rest of the boat’s floor space.

They pushed off from the berth, and the boatman used his long staff to fight the opposing current, hardly moving at first, but then slowly gaining momentum. Patra waved farewell to Nelpus and the Palmyrenes. She lifted Neos’s hood a little, sending loving thoughts through her gaze as she thumbed away his tears. He wanted to tell her things—so many things flashing through his mind. Not until they were very far from here, and alone.

He scooted in closer between her legs and rested his arms and head atop her thigh. After a startled wince, he moved his elbow away, and probed around her waist.

Remembering, she lifted the folds of her stola, sucked in her stomach, and unwrapped Kaleb’s key behind her belt. Neos accepted it with wonder, rolling it over in his hands.

“This is yours now,” she whispered, “and everything that comes with it.”

Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt, 2014

Alexandria, Egypt – Present day

From his balcony on the twenty-third floor of the Royal Harbor Paradise Resort, Matt took in the sunny view of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the adjacent Alexandria University campus—the modern day’s counterparts to the ancient Library and Musaeum. Though the new library’s brochure proudly cited a close proximity to where its long-lost forebear once stood, Matt found the site rather ironic.

The new library—a magnificent facility in its own right—had been designed to evoke a rising sun, though Matt thought it looked more like an enormous stone coin, aloft in mid-flip, or maybe a sharp-edged cheese wheel. In seeking a tiered internal layout to reflect the original Musaeum’s terraced levels, the architect had come up with a brilliant design that made the building’s exterior appear to tilt on its axis—rising from Earth on the inland side, dipping underground on the opposite—and placed an infinity pool around the perimeter to offer the illusion of dipping into the sea.

Only yesterday he’d roamed the cobbled streets that once partitioned this area. The pool in front of the Bibliotheca sat where a floral belt and wall had snaked eastward toward the Caesarium, and the building’s disk now dipped into the ground where a certain Magistracy consul’s estate dwelt long ago.

The vast Imperial Palace could be found a stone’s throw north of the new pool, though today such a stone would splash into the harbor’s gently rippling shoreline. The peninsula below had been on quite the diet for the past millennium, shrinking from a few football fields wide to the width of an average interstate. The Palace District’s once-extravagant acreage now hosted parking lots, apartments, barren fields, and a gridlocked coastal motorway. The only remains of Patra-era mansions lay as rubble on the harbor floor.

The glass door behind Matt slid open, and Joss’s head popped out. “Phone for you.” She mouthed
“Markus”
and grimaced.

The man’s resourcefulness wouldn’t concern Matt so much if it didn’t highlight the fact that Absko could potentially track him just as easily.

He stepped inside and grabbed the receiver from the nightstand. “Please tell me it took you more than a couple minutes to find us.”

Markus chuckled. “Hour after hour, day after day of grueling data analysis, private investigators, satellites, you name it.
Endless
labor.”

“We’ve only been here a day.”

“Yes, well, I was exaggerating for banter’s sake. I thought you’d like to know your friend left the safehouse where she’d been staying.” Matt sat up, stiff. Markus continued, “She’s now far from inquiring eyes and under the protection of a Kenyan opposition group, the National Unity Party, whose members aided her initial departure—.”

“So you’ve been holding her all this time?” Matt said. “You told me she escaped.”

Markus’s attitude changed, as if Matt was being ungrateful about them releasing their hostage. “Escape she did.
Also
with repeated help from Mr. O. Now, she and the boy have been kept safe for a week by our people, while her husband’s
extremely
motivated agents sought to recapture her. Am I to understand you wished her and her child to roam the slums, unguarded, until you completed your business, swinging by to pick her up on your way back to the U.S.?”

“No, of course not. I’m sorry. I appreciate all that you and Mr. O have done to help with everything, especially in light of our own unresolved matters.”

“Marvelous. Next topic: were you aware of our operative’s maligned loyalties?”

Rostik? Maligned loyalties?

“Do you mean working for that other guy? The gray gentleman?”

“So you did know,” Markus said.

“Well, no, not until you just mentioned it. But I did happen to hear that he
fired
his own team. Makes sense now, I guess. Do you know where he is now?”

“I do,” Markus said airily. “He
remains
with his team, where your two young American friends last saw him.”

Rostik’s dead. That’s a relief. One less thing to worry about today.

“I see,” Matt replied. “By whose doing? Yours or the gray guy’s?”

“It doesn’t matter.” That meant it was Ostrovsky who had Rostik killed.

“Well, thank you for the update.”

An extended silence, and then Markus added, “Is there anything else you need?”

“Oh … ah … no, I think we’re good.”

“Good. Then I’ll ask you. Do you happen to know the present location of the
gray gentleman,
as you say? I’m sure you heard as I did of his arrest on the highway to the Tanis site.”

Matt smirked. Markus and Ostrovsky had no idea where Jivu Absko was. “Hmm, so your tracking powers
do
have limits. No informants inside the Egyptian Ministry, eh?” No reply. Matt could feel the disgruntlement seeping from the receiver. “Well, that makes two of us. I really wish I knew where they have him.”

“Good day, Matthew.” Markus hung up.

Matt glanced at the clock:
10:41 AM
. Time to get dressed.

Joss called from the bathroom, “Shouldn’t you be getting dressed?”

* * *

“Target exited lobby,” Isaac reported on the radio. “Alone … Heading to fountain …
Left
at fountain,
left
. Target
not
heading to hotel car park. Heading east, on foot.”

Jivu Absko shifted in the Mercedes’s back seat, raising his walkie to his mouth. “Hold position, One. Let Two maintain eyes … Two: copy?”

“Copy,” Imara radioed. “Target in sight.”

Jivu leaned to the black-out tinted window, peering up at the hotel’s top floor, and spotted Imara’s subtle dark bump on the roof’s edge. “I hope I don’t have to remind you, Two—or anyone else for that matter—that fingers are to be kept loose and obtuse.”

“No, sir,” she replied.

From his van in the hotel’s roundabout, Isaac echoed, “No, sir.”

“No, sir,” said Jivu’s driver, Siko, through the Mercedes’s open partition.

Jivu was less concerned with his number one, number two, or Siko, than with the others in Isaac’s delivery truck. All had been trained well for standard operations, but in such situations, and at any time when being attacked, it’s a natural reflex to protect one’s life. They didn’t yet appreciate that when Jivu’s orders were to not shoot under any circumstances, this directive included to save one’s own life. The only life they were authorized to save in this case, if it required mortally wounding Turner, was Jivu’s—and there’d better be a true, imminent threat—hands around Jivu’s neck, or a cocked pistol with quaking trigger finger hovering near his head.

Having developed an incredibly reckless arrogance over the past few years, Turner thought his insolent remarks would goad Jivu into a hasty, impulsive reaction, as if one so volatile could attain this level of prominence and power. Obviously, Jivu’s wrath was not immune to ignition, but the key to victory always lay in one’s actions directly
after
their passions flared. Analyzing an opponent’s motivations, expected outcomes, their capabilities, connections and allies, and, of course, calculating the enemy’s assessment of
your
capability.

Surprise was the most powerful weapon in any man’s arsenal. Appearing weak when you are strong, rash when you are cunning and calm, defeated when you are poised to strike a final blow.

Once he’d discovered Rostik’s communications had been compromised (a disappointment from one so experienced and careful), Jivu had stopped his convoy to Tanis. The local police he’d paid to accompany him had been justifiably confused at first, but they performed their roles as instructed, and word of his arrest spread swiftly across precincts.

Now, Turner’s arrogance and inferior tactics would be his downfall, and Jivu would not be robbed of the satisfaction he’d so painstakingly assured. He needed prolonged, uninterrupted time with his quarry, because he was not so short-sighted as to only seek Matthew’s suffering, certainly not for the sake of mere revenge. Turner alone offered guaranteed access to the First
Whore
of Kenya. Turner’s pain would be Tuni’s pain, and even if her mama lioness’s instinct wisely kept her from surfacing personally, her guilt and residual affection would incite irrational behaviors—electronic communication with known associates, accessing old email accounts for contact info—some rash act that would expose her location. He need only provide a short video of a ravaged Matthew to someone who would then, unwisely, share it with her.