The Amulet of Power - Mike Resnick [23]
Still, someone had to know where it was. Surely Gordon knew. Perhaps Stewart, too, or one of the locals, maybe more than one. Why didn’t the Mahdi just send his spies into Khartoum and try to find out where it was?
And then she remembered all the books she had read about Gordon, in school and on her own. The Mahdi couldn’t send anyone into Khartoum, not so much as a single spy. Khartoum lay at the juncture of the White and Blue Niles, and Gordon had flooded a channel around the city, literally turning Khartoum into an island. That was how he’d held off a far superior army for months. The city only fell when the water level dropped during the dry season and the Mahdi’s army could finally march and ride across it.
Brilliant man, that Gordon, she concluded. Who else would have thought of flooding the plains around the city? It didn’t help in the long run—a British relief column, fully capable of standing up to the Mahdi’s forces, arrived days after the city had fallen and Gordon was dead—but still, she had to admire his creativity.
And that, of course, made her task all the more difficult. To find an artifact that was hidden more than a century ago in a relatively primitive country was hard enough—but to find one that had been hidden by a man of Gordon’s intellect . . . that was going to take hard work and intensive study. She’d have to read everything the man had written, everything that had ever been written about him, until she knew exactly how his mind worked. And even then, she’d need more than work and study—she’d need luck. Lots of it.
“It is time that we spoke, Lara Croft.”
Surprised, Lara righted her chair and stood up. She found herself in the company of the two burly Arabs who had been friendly to her in the restaurant. They didn’t look so friendly now. In fact, one of them, the smaller of the two, was pointing a Luger straight at her. The other held a dagger.
More Mahdists, she thought. Her hand snaked down toward a pistol.
“I do not wish to shoot you,” the man with the Luger said. “Raise your hands slowly.”
She complied. “Who are you?”
“My name is Hassam,” he said. “And this is Gaafar.”
Gaafar stared at her intently. “Have you found it?”
“Have I found what?” she asked innocently.
“Please don’t pretend to be stupid,” said Gaafar, whose English was somewhat better than Hassam’s. “It is unbecoming. Did you find the Amulet?”
“No.”
“Truly?”
“Truly,” said Lara. “So you see, there’s no reason for you to kill me.”
Both men looked at her as if she were crazy.
“Do you know who we are?” asked Gaafar.
“I know from your accents that you’re Sudanese,” she said. “I assumed you were Mahdists, but now . . .”
“We are Sudanese,” affirmed Gaafar. “And we don’t want the Sudan, and eventually the world, to be awash in blood. We oppose the Mahdists.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lara. “Didn’t you just ask me about the Amulet?”
“Yes.”
“Then you do want to find it.”
“Only to destroy it,” answered Gaafar. “The world can never have another Mahdi! The next one might be even worse!”
She stared at them, trying to decide if they were telling the truth.
“If you want the Amulet destroyed,” she said at last, “you’re the first.”
“There are more of us,” Gaafar assured her. “Ever since we have been aware that Colonel Stewart visited the temple at Edfu, it has been our duty to keep watch over it. It had been fully explored and measured and charted over the years, so we knew that if someone of your reputation went there, it was almost certainly to find the Amulet of Mareish.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s not why I was there. I didn’t even know it existed, and I never saw anything resembling an amulet.”
Gaafar stared at her for an uncomfortably long moment. “I believe you,” he said at last.
It was Hassam’s turn to stare at her. Finally he said, “Dare we ask her?”
Gaafar seemed to consider the question, and then nodded his assent. “We might as well,” he said. “We need her help every bit as much as she needs our protection.”
“What are