The Amulet of Power - Mike Resnick [105]
“Where the hell were you?” he demanded as he walked up to the Mercedes. “And don’t give me any crap about the Amitie airstrip. You didn’t need your pistols to buy new clothes.”
“You didn’t need a Magnum to eat your breakfast,” she responded with a smile.
“Damn it, Lara, are you going to tell me what’s going on or not?”
“It’s all but over,” she said. “Get in the car. I’ve got one last thing to do.”
A moment later they were driving away from the Chateau again, this time toward the Valleé de Mai.
“So what happened?” persisted Oliver.
“I took care of business,” she replied calmly. “In another few hours, all the Mahdists and Silent Ones will know that Khaled Ahmed Mohammed el-Shakir has the Amulet, and then they’ll finally stop trying to kill me.”
“Khaled Ahmed who?”
“A renegade Mahdist traveling under the name of Kevin Mason Junior.”
“Mason! He followed you here?”
“That’s right.”
“And now he has the Amulet.”
She smiled grimly. “Now he has an amulet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You said something on the flight here from Nairobi that got me to thinking, and I realized that Kevin was not who he said he was, that he’d rescued me and kept me alive for one reason and one reason only: the hope that I’d lead him to the Amulet. I knew by the time we touched down in Mahé that if I actually found the Amulet, he’d be waiting to take it away from me.” She paused. “Do you remember when I had Ibraham take me to a gift shop in Victoria?”
“You bought an amulet?”
“That’s right. No one knows what the real one looks like, just that it was bronze, and may have had a silver chain. They think it may have had a sword and a dagger emblazoned on it, but they’re not sure. So I went to the best artisan on the island and picked out an amulet—complete with sword and dagger—that could pass for the Amulet of Mareish.”
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
“The reason I took such a long nap yesterday was that I had to plant the amulet in the middle of the night, when no one was around to see what I was doing. I drove out to Grande Anse, got into the church, put it under a cornerstone of the altar, and came back to the Chateau about two hours before sunrise.”
“So for all you know, the real Amulet was in the church, too,” said Oliver.
“It’s not.”
“What makes you so sure? Did you search the church before you hid the false amulet?”
“I didn’t have to,” replied Lara. “I did my homework, and from all the mistakes he’d made, I knew that Kevin wouldn’t do his.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The church was built in 1903. Gordon died in 1885; he couldn’t have hidden it there,” she ended triumphantly. “Any questions?”
“Just one.”
“Ask away.”
“I know you, Lara, and I know how good you are with those,” said Oliver, gesturing to her guns. “If you knew he was watching you, he couldn’t have taken you by surprise. . . . So why didn’t you shoot him?”
“You’re not thinking clearly, Malcolm,” she said. “What do you suppose would have happened if I’d killed him?”
“He’d be dead.”
“And then what?”
“You’re still a step ahead of me,” said Oliver. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“Nothing would have changed,” answered Lara. “Every Mahdist still would be out to kill me because they were sure I’d found it and killed him in a fight over it, and every Silent One would be out to kill me to make sure I never found it. This way Kevin—or rather, Khaled Ahmed Mohammed el-Shakir—becomes the lightning rod. Let them all think he’s got it and leave me alone.”
“But if it won’t work . . .”
“When it doesn’t work they’ll blame the legend, or they’ll blame Kevin—but they won’t blame me or come looking for me.”
“That leads to another question. He’s clearly a dangerous man, so why didn’t he kill you?”
“He thinks he’s got the true Amulet. It gives him total power over me, which means I can’t possibly be a threat to him. And,” she added, “both of us were without our guns. If he’d tried to get his weapon