The Amulet of Power - Mike Resnick [49]
“People have been hazarding guesses since 1885,” answered Lara, “and the Amulet is still missing.” She paused. “You know,” she suggested, “there is always the possibility that he destroyed it.”
“He could not destroy it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“It is a magical amulet. It can only be destroyed by magic,” said Omar with absolute certainty.
“That spell you mentioned, the one Abdul said was a fairy tale?”
Omar nodded. “General Gordon did not possess the spell.”
“Then maybe he threw it in the Nile.”
“No,” said Omar firmly. “The course of the Nile has changed many times. Drought, earthquake, build-up of silt—any of these things could alter its course and expose the Amulet on the river bed.”
“But would Gordon have known that?” asked Lara.
“If not, and if he planned to throw the Amulet into the Nile, he would certainly have asked,” said Omar. “Not in so many words, of course. He would not walk up to an aide and ask if it was safe to hide the Amulet in the river. But he would have asked if the Nile always stayed within its boundaries. Remember, he was diverting some of the flow to turn Khartoum into a defensible island, so it would have been a natural question from a commander who had to know all the conditions he might be called upon to deal with.”
“All right,” conceded Lara. “That makes sense. So he didn’t throw it in the Nile. But that doesn’t give us any better idea of where he did hide it.”
They rode until twilight, then dismounted and prepared to sleep in the shade of a large boulder that seemed to rise up out of the sand for no logical reason. Lara took a long drink from her canteen, then pulled out her pistols and began cleaning and oiling them. The three men did the same with their rifles.
“I have been thinking,” said Omar after a few minutes. “By now they know we’re going to Khartoum and approaching it on camels, and they know we’ve traveled by felluca, so they’ll be watching the river as well. What if we release the camels when we are about thirty miles out of the city, and take public transportation the rest of the way? They would never think to look for us on a crowded bus.”
“Won’t your rifles give you away?” asked Lara.
All three men laughed. “It is more likely that your lack of a rifle will give us away,” said Hassam.
“I assume I’ll be wearing robes and being a boy again?” she said glumly.
“Only until we get to the Bortai Hotel, and get word to our people,” answered Omar. “Then you can become Lara Croft once more.”
“The robes worked when observers were a few hundred feet away,” said Lara. “Can I pass for a boy in a crowded bus?”
Omar studied her. “Your face is too smooth,” he said at last. “Even Circassian women do not have skin texture like that, not after years in the desert. I suppose the easiest remedy is to slap some mud and dirt on it.”
“And don’t speak,” added Gaafar.
“I know. My voice is too high.”
“Some boys have high voices,” he said. “But you have a thick accent, and it is easily identified as English.”
“All right, I won’t speak.”
“And bury your chin in your robes,” said Gaafar.
“It won’t be for long,” Omar assured her. “The bus will cover the distance in no more than an hour, and we will get off it within a short walk of the Bortai.”
“We’re still ahead of the Amenhotep unless it passed one night while we were sleeping,” said Lara. “And its engine is so noisy I doubt that that could happen. How will we get word to Kevin?”
“We have allies in Khartoum,” replied Omar. “Someone will come on board—a new deckhand, a cargo inspector, someone—and give Dr. Mason the information he needs. We will rent a room for him at the Bortai, under a false name of course, so that he will be able to move right in.” He paused. “Then the two of you will find the Amulet.”
Always assuming it wants me to find it, thought Lara.
The next two days were uneventful, and finally they came to the rarely used railroad tracks and the highway, in serious need of repair, that paralleled them. When they came to