The Adventures Of Indiana Jones (12 page)

He looked at Sallah and said, “They’re moving fast.”

“The Nazis are well organized, Indy.”

“Yeah. At least they’re good at something, even if it’s only following orders.”

“Besides, they have the Frenchman in charge.”

“The Frenchman?”

“Belloq.”

Indy was silent, sitting upright in his chair.
Belloq.
Wasn’t there anywhere in the world the bastard wouldn’t turn up? He felt angry at first, and after that something else, a feeling he began to enjoy slowly, a sense of competition, the quiet thrill of seeing the opportunity to get even. He smiled for the first time.
Belloq, I’ll get you this time,
he thought. And there was a hard determination in the prospect.

He took the medallion from his pocket and passed it to Sallah.

“They might have discovered the Map Room,” he said. “But they won’t get very far without
this,
will they?”

“I take it this is the headpiece of the Staff of Ra?”

“That’s right. The markings on it are unfamiliar to me. What do you make of it?”

Sallah shook his head. “Personally, nothing. But I know someone who would. I can take you to meet him tomorrow.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Indy said. He took the medallion back from Sallah and put it in his pocket. Safe, he thought. Without this, Belloq might just as well be blind. A fine sense of triumph there, he told himself.
René, this one is all mine.
If I can arrange some way to get around the Nazis.

He asked, “How many Germans are involved in the dig?”

“A hundred or so,” Sallah said. “They are also very well equipped.”

“I thought so.” Indy closed his eyes and sat back. He could feel sleep press in on him. I’ll think of something, he said to himself. Soon.

“It worries me, Indy,” Sallah said.

“What does?”

“The Ark. If it is there at Tanis . . .” Sallah lapsed into silence, an expression of suppressed anguish on his face. “It is not something man was meant to disturb. Death has always surrounded it. Always. It is not of this world, if you understand what I mean.”

“I understand,” Indy said.

“And the Frenchman . . . he’s clearly obsessed with the thing. I look in his eyes and I see something I cannot describe. The Germans don’t like him. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t even seem to notice anything. The Ark, that’s all he ever thinks about. And the way he watches everything—he misses nothing. When he entered the Map Room . . . how can I describe his face? He was transported into a place where I would have no desire to go myself.”

Out of nowhere, shaken out of the hot dark, there was an abrupt wind that blew grit and sand—a wind that died as sharply as it had risen.

“You must sleep now,” Sallah said. “My house is yours, of course.”

“And I’m grateful.”

Both men went indoors; the house was quiet.

Indy walked past the room where Marion was sleeping; he paused outside the closed door, listening to the faint sound of her breathing. A child’s breathing, he thought—and he had a flash of Marion years ago, when their affair, if that was the word, had taken place. But the desire he felt right then was a different thing altogether: it was a desire for the woman now.

He was pleased with the feeling.

He passed along the corridor, followed by Sallah.

The child is buried, he thought; only the woman lives now.

Sallah asked, “You resist temptation, Indy?”

“Didn’t you know about my puritan streak?”

Sallah shrugged, smiled in a mysterious way, as Indy closed the door of the guest room and went toward the bed. He heard Sallah move along the corridor, then the house was silent. He closed his eyes, expecting sleep to come in quickly—but it didn’t. It remained an elusive shadow just beyond the range of his mind.

He turned around restlessly. Why couldn’t he just let go and sleep?
You resist temptation, Indy?
He pressed his knuckles against his eyelids: he turned around some more, but what he kept seeing inside his head was a picture of Marion sleeping quietly in her room. He got out of bed and opened the door. Go back to bed, Indy, he said to himself. You don’t know what you’re doing.

He stepped out into the corridor and walked slowly—a burglar on tiptoe, he thought—toward Marion’s room. Outside her door he paused. Turn around. Go back to your insomnia. He twisted the handle, entered the room and saw her lying on top of the bed covers. Moonlight flooded the room like a silver reflection thrown by the wings of a vast night moth. She didn’t move. She lay with her face to one side, arms across her stomach; the light made soft shadows around her mouth. Go back, he thought. Get back now.

Beautiful. She looked so beautiful, vulnerable, there. A sleeping woman and the touch of the moon—a dizzying combination. He found himself going toward the bed, then sitting on the edge of the mattress. He stared at her face, raised his hand, placed the tips of his fingers lightly against one cheek. Almost at once she opened her eyes.

She said nothing for a time. Her eyes seemed black in the room. He put a finger over her lips.

“You want to know why I’m sitting here, right?” he asked.

“I can hardly begin to guess,” she said. “You’ve come to explain the intricacies of Mr. Roosevelt’s New Deal? Or maybe you expect me to swoon in the moonlight.”

“I don’t expect anything.”

She laughed. “Everybody expects something. It’s a little lesson I picked up along the way.”

He lifted her hand, felt it tremble a little.

She didn’t say anything as he lowered his face and kissed her on the mouth. The kiss he received in return was quick and hard and without emotion. He drew his face away and looked at her for a time. She sat up, drawing a bedsheet over herself. The nightdress was transparent and her breasts were visible—firm breasts, not those of a child now.

“I’d like you to leave,” she said.

“Why?”

“I don’t have to give reasons.”

Indy sighed. “Do you really hate me that much?”

She stared at the window. “Nice moon,” she said.

“I asked you a question.”

“You can’t just trample your way back into my life, Indy. You can’t just kick over all the props I’ve made for myself and expect me to pick up the pieces of the past. Don’t you see that?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“That’s my lecture. Now I need some sleep. So go.”

He got up slowly.

When he reached the door he heard her say, “I want you too. Don’t you think I do? Give it some time, okay? Let’s see what happens.”

“Sure,” and then he stepped out into the corridor, unable to silence the echo of disappointment that seemed to roll inside his head. He stood in the moonlight that came in slivers through the window at the end of the hallway, and he wondered—as his desire began to fade—whether he’d made an ass of himself. It wouldn’t be for the first time, he thought.

She couldn’t sleep after he’d gone. She sat by the window and stared at the skyline of the city, the domes, minarets, flat roofs. Why did he have to try this soon, anyhow? The damned man had never learned patience, had he? He was as reckless in matters of the heart as he was in everything else. He didn’t understand that people needed time; it might not be the great healer, but it was a lot better than iodine. She couldn’t just haul herself out of the past and land, like some alien creature from a far galaxy, in the rude awakening of Indiana Jones’s present. It had to be mapped more gently.

If there was anything to be taken; if there was anything to be mapped.

The figure moved quickly through the cloakroom where Indy and Marion had left their suitcases and belongings. It moved with unnatural stealth, opening cases, sifting through clothes, picking up pieces of paper, examining them with laborious slowness. It did not find what it had been trained to discover. It understood it had to look for a particular shape—a drawing, an object, it didn’t matter as long as it had the shape. When it found nothing, it understood its owner would be disappointed. And that would mean a lack of food. That might even mean punishment. It made a picture of the shape once more in its brain: the shape of the sun, small marks around it, a hole in the center. It began to rummage again.

Again, it found nothing.

The monkey skipped lightly into the corridor, removed some items of food scraps from the table where it had played before with the pretty woman, then swung out through an open window and into the dark.

T
HE AFTERNOON
was sunny, the sky almost a pure white. Whiteness reflected from everything, from walls, clothing, glass, as if the light had become a frost that lay across all surfaces.

“Did we need the monkey?” Indy asked. They were going quickly through the crowded street, passing the bazaars, the merchants.

‘It followed me, I didn’t exactly
bring
it,” Marion said.

“It must be attached to you.”

“It’s not so much
me
it’s attached to, Indy. It thinks you’re its father, see? It’s got some of your looks, anyhow.”

“My looks, your brains.”

Marion was silent for a while before asking, “Why haven’t you found yourself a nice girl to settle down with and raise nine kids?”

“Who says I haven’t?”

She glanced at him. It pleased him to think he saw a brief flash of panic on her face, of envy. “You couldn’t take the responsibility. My dad really had you figured, Indy. He said you were a bum.”

“He was being generous.”

“The most gifted bum he ever trained, but a bum anyhow. He loved you, you know that? It took a hell of a lot for you to alienate him.”

Indy sighed. “I don’t want to rehash it, Marion.”

“I don’t want that, either,” she said. “But sometimes I like to remind you.”

“An emotional hypodermic, is that it?”

“A jag, right. You need it to keep you in your place.”

Indy began to walk more quickly. There were times when, despite his own defenses, she managed to slide just under his skin. It was like the unexpected desire he’d felt last night. I don’t need it, he thought. I don’t need it in my life. Love means some kind of order, and you don’t want order when you’ve become accustomed to thriving on chaos.

“You haven’t told me where we’re going yet,” Marion said.

“We meet Sallah, then we go see Sallah’s expert, Imam.”

“What I like is how you drag me everywhere,” Marion said. “It reminds me of my father sometimes. He dragged me around the globe like I was a rag.”

They reached a fork in the street. All at once the monkey pulled itself free of Marion’s hand and ran through the crowd in quick, loping movements.

“Hey!” Marion shouted. “Get back here!”

Indy said, relieved, “Let it go.”

“I was just getting used to it.”

Indy gave her a dirty look, caught her by the hand and made her keep up with him.

The monkey scuttled along, slipping through the crowds that jammed the street. It avoided the outstretched hands of people who wanted to touch it, then it turned a corner and stepped into a doorway. There it leaped into the arms of the man who had trained it. He had trained it very well. He held it against his body, popped a confection in its mouth and then moved out of the doorway. The monkey was better than a bloodhound, and a hundred times smarter.

The man looked along the narrow street, raising his face toward the rooftops. He waved.

From a nearby rooftop somebody waved back.

Then he patted the animal. It had done its job very well, following the two who were to be killed, tracking them as diligently as a predator but with infinitely more charm than that.

Good, the man thought. Very good.

Indy and Marion turned into a small square, a place cramped by the stalls of vendors, the crowds of shoppers. Indy stopped suddenly. That old instinct was working on him now, working over his nerve ends, making him tingle.
Something is about to happen,
he thought.

He looked through the crowds. Exactly what?

“Why have we stopped?” Marion asked.

Indy said nothing.

This crowd. How could he tell anything from this bunch of people? He reached inside his jacket and gripped the handle of the bullwhip. He stared into the crowd again. There was a group that moved toward him, moved with more purpose than any of the ordinary shoppers.

A few Arabs. A couple of guys who were European.

With his sharp eyesight, Indy saw the flash of something metallic and he thought,
A dagger.
He saw it glint in the hand of an Arab who was approaching them quickly. Indy hauled the whip out, lashed, listened as it split air with the sound of some menacing melody; it curled around the hand of the Arab and the dagger went slicing harmlessly into nowhere. But then there were more people advancing toward them and he had to think fast.

“Get out of here,” he said
to
Marion, and gave her a quick shove. “Run!”

But Marion wasn’t running. Instead, she seized a broom from a nearby stall and swung it into the throat of another Arab, who slumped to the ground.

“Go,” Indy said again. “Go!”

“The hell I will,” she said.

There were too many of them, Indy thought. Too many to fight, even with her help. He watched the blade of an ax swing, and he struck with the whip again, this time around the Arab’s neck. He pulled tight and the man moaned before he dropped. And then one of the Europeans was on him, trying to drag the whip from his hand. Indy swung his leg high, smashing his foot into the man’s body. The man clutched his chest and fell backward into a fruit stall, toppling amid spilled and squashed vegetables that looked like a mad still life. Indy noticed a gate in a wall and reached for Marion, pushing her through it, then drawing the bolt so she couldn’t get out despite her cries and protestations. He looked around the square, striking with his whip, knocking away the props of stalls. Chaos, utter chaos, and he loved it. A blade swung at him and he ducked just in time, hearing the steel whistle above his head. Then he flicked his whip and wrapped it around the Arab’s ankles, bringing him down in a pile of scattered vases and broken jars, while the merchant screamed angrily.