Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear (18 page)

“It’s for my eyes, you understand,” Burke said. “Dark, cool, moist—I’m afraid it’s the only way for me to be comfortable any longer.”

“I’m sorry,” Malcolm said.

“Come,” Burke said. “Sit by me, and Miss Stiles will join us.”

She put his hand on the arm of a chair, and he sat. Now that his eyes had begun to adjust, Malcolm could make out the outline of Burke’s face where he sat two feet away. He wore a beard, and his hair curved up from his forehead in uneven curls. The man leaned forward with his left hand out. Malcolm took it. Burke’s grip was firm.

“What happened?” Malcolm said. “To your eyes, I mean. Shrapnel? Or fire?”

For a moment, Burke didn’t say anything, and Malcolm thought perhaps he’d crossed a line. But for Christ’s sake, the man had brought the subject up himself. And after all, hadn’t Malcolm served in the same campaign, hadn’t he seen plenty of friends lose eyes and worse—?

“No,” Burke said. “Not shrapnel, nor fire, nor any of the other causes you’d imagine. I’ll tell you what happened, Mr. Stewart, but that is the end of the story, not the beginning. Miss Stiles, could you turn up the fan? Thank you.”

Malcolm heard Margaret’s footsteps retreat and return. A mechanical hum he hadn’t noticed before got louder, and he felt the air stir.

Burke leaned forward with his forearms on his knees. Malcolm could see he wasn’t wearing anything over his eyes—no dark glasses, no patch. He didn’t seem to blink, either. Of course, perhaps he had glass eyes…
but no, that wouldn’t explain the need to sit in the dark and keep things as damp and cool as a cellar.

“Mr. Stewart, I want to thank you for hearing me out. I need your help. Or to put it another way, I need the help of someone who knows his way around a part of the world I understand we have in common. Someone who’s not easily frightened or put off the scent. I’ve asked around and people think highly of you.”

“You must not have asked anyone in town,” Malcolm said. “You’d have gotten a different picture.”

“Yes, Miss Stiles told me about the scene in the pub. Most regrettable. You drink too much, Mr. Stewart.”

“Or not enough.”

“More and you’d be dead of it, and no use to me. Let’s not fence with each other, shall we? You were a good man once. I heard it from men I trust. Until your wife died, I gather, and since then it’s been one long bender, hasn’t it?”

Malcolm flinched. “Not so long.”

“Three years, man. And you once a good soldier. Where’s your backbone?”

“I left it behind in the sand,” Malcolm said, “where you left your eyes.”

“Nonsense. You’ve still got a spine, man, you’ve just let it soften in that embalming fluid you insist on pouring into yourself. If you’re to work for me, you’ll do it dry, you understand?”

The voice of command—Malcolm almost felt himself sitting up straighter in response, against his will. “And am I to work for you?”

“I hope to god you are—I’ve exhausted everyone else.”

“What is it you want done? I don’t see you as the type to raise a private army, and I’m out of the soldiering business anyway.”

“No. I’ve never been a soldier myself. What I have
been—what I am, Mr. Stewart—is a student of history. When I went to North Africa it was not because of the war but in spite of it. I wasn’t part of the military action, I was there on my own, pursuing one of the greatest mysteries of the ancient world.”

“Greatest mysteries of the ancient world”? The man sounded like a radio program. But he had a job to offer, apparently, and such offers were not plentiful these days.

“I understand,” Malcolm said. “You were in Africa hunting something, but instead of finding it, you came across the military action instead?”

“No, Mr. Stewart. I found what I was looking for. I found it exactly where I thought it would be. I saw it with my own eyes. I’d searched for a decade and more, and by god, I found it.” He fell silent.

“What happened?” Malcolm said.

“Some antiquities, Mr. Stewart, are hidden by time alone—a cave’s entrance is covered in a sandstorm and forgotten, and no one sees its contents again for a thousand years. But others are kept hidden deliberately, passed from generation to generation in secret. The price for learning the secret is a vow to preserve it, and the penalty for revealing it is death. It is antiquities of this sort that are the harder to find. They aren’t lost, you see, and the people who know where they are have an interest in keeping them from you.”

“But you did find…whatever it was.”

“I did, and I did it the hard way. You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but I was a stronger man than you, and faster, and better with a gun. I knew what I was after. I hunted it and the men who kept it, I hunted it through nine countries on three continents, and I found it, Mr. Stewart.” His voice broke. “I found it. But I couldn’t keep it. They caught me, and for several days they held me while they discussed what to do with me.
Then they cut off my right hand—I’d touched it with that hand, you see. And of course I’d seen it, Mr. Stewart. I’d seen it.”

Burke leaned over the side of the chair and pressed a switch on the desk beside him. A shaded light went on—low wattage, but enough to illuminate one side of Burke’s face. The other side remained in shadow until he turned to face Malcolm full-on. Burke’s eyes were wide open and leached of all color, only the faintest outline of concentric circles to hint where pupil and iris had once shown.

“They cut off my eyelids, Mr. Stewart. With the sharpest of knives, and gently, so gently, holding my head so I couldn’t scream or injure myself. They wiped the blood from my eyes with silk. With silk, Mr. Stewart—I’ll never forget the touch. Then they carried me out into the desert west of the Gattara Depression, left me in the Great Sand Sea, completely naked, left me to go blind and mad and then die—and I would have, surely, if I hadn’t been found by a pair of soldiers from a British regiment who had wandered off course. They saved me from madness and death, Mr. Stewart. But it was too late to save me from blindness.”

He switched off the light, but the image of the lidless, sun-bleached eyes hung between them. “The touch of light is quite painful still,” he said. “But I wanted you to see. There should be no mystery between us.”

It took a moment for Malcolm to find his voice. “What is it that you want me to do?”

“I’ve found it again,” Burke said. “It has taken me years, and more money than you can imagine. It’s cost several good men their lives. But I’ve found it, and this time it won’t get away from me. Not with your help.”

“And why should I help you?”

“There will be money, of course—quite a lot. But I know what you’re going to say: Of what use is money if you’re not around to spend it? And that’s so. But there’s
more. This is your chance to be a part of something much greater than yourself, greater than me, greater than all of us. You will play a role in unraveling one of the greatest unsolved riddles of all time.”

“Is that what you told the other men? The ones who died helping you?”

“Yes, Mr. Stewart, it is. It was the truth.”

“And they took the job.”

“I pay extremely well. And the men I chose had something in common with you.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing to lose,” Burke said.

It stung, but only because it was true. He had no family and no employment. His army pension kept his glass full as long as his tastes were cheap, and occasional under-the-table assignments paid the rest of his bills. He’d fetched and carried for some of London’s worst, had ridden shotgun for questionable deliveries, had taken part in labor actions on whichever side cared to have him. It was a life, but only in the barest sense. Even when he’d had reason to, he’d never shrunk from risking it. Why would this be the assignment to make him put his foot down at last? And yet the image of Burke’s lidless eyes was a hard one to rid himself of.

“Tell me, Mr. Burke, what it is that I’d be collecting for you, and how much you would pay me for it.”

“I’d pay enough that you’d never need work again,” Burke said.

“If you please, I’d prefer a number.”

“Fifty thousand pounds, or its equivalent in any currency you choose. Gold, if you like.”

Malcolm’s mouth went dry. “You can’t be serious. What are you asking me to do, steal the crown jewels?”

“Oh, something much more valuable than that. Do you remember your Bible, Mr. Stewart?”

“Not too well.”

“There’s a story in it about a man called Moses,” Burke said. “You may recall he went up into the mountains for forty days, leaving his people behind. We’re told they grew restless, that when he didn’t return as promised, they called on his brother, Aaron, to make them an idol to protect them. A figure of a calf fashioned from the melted-down gold of their earrings and wristlets and such. When Moses returned and saw them worshipping this golden calf, the Bible says his anger was terrible. He smashed the tablets he was carrying, ordered the calf destroyed—ground to powder—and then mixed the powder with water and made his people drink it.”

“And?”

“Like most of what’s in the Bible, there are elements of historical truth to this story, but there is also much that’s unreliable. Moses existed, surely, and so did the golden calf, and when he saw the thing being venerated at the foot of Sinai, it’s very likely he did order it destroyed. Perhaps he even thought it had been, that the powder he was forcing down his people’s throats was the residue of its destruction. But he was just a man, after all, and easily deceived.

“The golden calf was not destroyed, Mr. Stewart. I’ve
seen
it. I’ve touched it, I’ve held it in my hand. For three thousand years, it’s been hidden, preserved by a priestly sect that moves it from place to place at two-year intervals. They’ll kill any outsider who gets close to it. They tried to kill me, and they’ll try to kill you. But they won’t succeed—not if you’re as good as people say.”

“I was once,” Malcolm said.

“And you shall be again. No more wine, man. You have a job to do.” Burke extended his hand again, his left hand, and Malcolm watched it hang in the darkness, drawing him into a covenant that could cost him his life or worse.

Lydia,
he thought,
if you were here, I’d spurn the
offer and not think twice. But you’re gone, my darling, in heaven or in sod, and I’m left behind to end my days alone. What harm if they end quickly?

He took Burke’s hand, felt it tighten around his own.

From the darkness, he heard Margaret’s breath catch and felt a flicker of anger. She was the one who’d brought him here. What had she expected him to do?

Malcolm strode purposefully through the rooms, retracing their steps to the entry hall. Margaret had to run to keep pace.

“So, how many of us have there been?”

“Four. Unless you count the ambassador. He refused the offer.”

“Probably the only time anyone has refused that man anything.”

“He’s a great man, and he’s suffered greatly,” Margaret said.

“And made others suffer.”

“He’s not made anyone do anything. He’s offered the opportunity—”

“Four men have died chasing his opportunity.”

“Then why did you say yes?” She wheeled on him and grabbed his arm. “No one forced you to.”

“Maybe I just want the money.”

She held his eyes, searched in them for something.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t think you expect to see the money.”

“Well, then, maybe I just need something to do, something that will get me out of this town.”

She shook her head.

“So tell me, Miss Stiles, why am I doing it?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to think it’s because you recognize the importance of what he’s discovered. But I don’t think that’s it at all. I think maybe it’s the danger that attracts you. I think maybe you want to die.”

“You’re wrong,” Malcolm said. “If that’s what I wanted, this city’s got no shortage of roofs to jump from.”

“And pubs, where you can get yourself stuck by a boy with a knife.”

“I didn’t start that fight,” Malcolm said.

“None of you ever starts a fight. But somehow you end up in so many. And eventually one of them’s the death of you.”

“Eventually. But not today.”

“Only because I was there.”

“And I’ve thanked you for it,” Malcolm said.

“Who will you thank in North Africa, Mr. Stewart? When you’re crossing the Jebel Akhdar, who will you lean on for support?”

“Maybe you’ll come with me,” he said, with a small smile. “And watch my back for me on the Jebel Akhdar.”

She released his arm and he started toward the front door. She called out after him.

“You know what the difference is between you and the other four?”

He looked back. “What.”

“They had a chance,” Margaret said.

He needed a drink in the worst way. It wasn’t just the heat, nor the deprivation—he’d gone without for longer when he’d had to. It was the touch of the familiar he yearned for. A bit of the house red might have dimmed the sun and cooled the air; most of all, it would have made the place feel less alien.

Six years had gone unnoticed here. The flags of the Reich were gone, but no new standard had taken their place—the few flagpoles still standing were bare. The
harbor hadn’t been enlarged: two ships of modest size still filled it to capacity. And bullet holes of various vintages scarred the walls of every building, silent reminders of the place’s violent history.

Malcolm carried his bag into the center of town, waved off the attempts of two locals to take it off his hands for a couple of dirham. The papers Margaret had given him directed him to the hostel by the souq, and Malcolm picked his way to it through the crowded, listless streets. There were tradesmen bargaining, displaying their wares from hooks driven into the walls a century earlier. Reed baskets and hammered metal copils, cloth woven with traditional Arab motifs hanging side by side with war booty, bits of parachute silk and laceless boots, bayonet blades brown with rust and blood. Who would buy these things, Malcolm wondered, and with what money? But the merchants were there, and they didn’t look like they were starving.