The Amulet of Power - Mike Resnick [72]
After they had split up, Lara returned to the hotel, and Omar showed up about ninety minutes later.
“Well?” she asked as he entered the suite.
“Your flight leaves at twelve-thirty P.M.,” he announced.
“Good. What about the connecting flight to the Seychelles?”
“That is a problem,” he reported. “The next flight from Kenya to the Seychelles is on Tuesday.”
“From Nairobi?”
“Yes.”
“Is there an earlier flight from Mombasa?”
He shook his head. “The Nairobi flight will stop on the coast to pick up more passengers from Mombasa.”
She shrugged. “Well, if I have to spend three days in Kenya, I have to.” She looked around. “What about a shoulder bag?”
“Mustafa has purchased it, and will meet us at the airport. I’m sure you’re being watched. Why walk out of the Arak with luggage and alert them to the fact that you’re leaving?”
“I can’t walk into the airport wearing my guns,” she pointed out.
“You won’t have to. He’ll be waiting for us in the parking lot.” He paused. “Malcolm Oliver was not answering his phone, so I sent a telex. I hope he receives it, but just in case he does not, I stopped by a cyber café and e-mailed one of my uncles who lives in Nairobi to make sure the message reaches him.”
“Good,” she said. “Then all I have to do is change some money.”
“You have to do something else,” said Omar. He produced a piece of paper and proceeded to write eight words on it.
She stared, frowning. “This isn’t Arabic or Sudanese,” she said. “Or any other language I know.”
“It is a phonetic transcription of the language of the Sudan from the time of Mareish,” said Omar. “It has been passed from father to son, from leader to leader, since the death of the great sorcerer.”
“What is this all about?”
“Mareish knew the evil that the Amulet could do in the wrong hands. He had every intention of destroying it, but he died prematurely, and the Amulet was buried with him.”
“I know that,” said Lara.
“But what you don’t know is that after he created the Amulet, he told his apprentice how it could be destroyed—indeed, the only way to destroy it.”
“This is the spell you mentioned to Abdul. The one he called a fairy tale.”
“This is no fairy tale,” said Omar.
“Then why didn’t Mareish’s apprentice use the spell to destroy the Amulet?”
“Because the apprentice knew the seductive power of the Amulet, its ability to corrupt even a man of noble character, and he feared to touch it, so he passed the secret on to his son, who passed it to his son . . . and it has been passed down to me, and now to you.” Omar pointed to the paper. “Commit those eight words to memory, and then destroy the paper.”
“If they’ll destroy the Amulet, why not just say them now and be done with it?” she asked.
“They will only work when the person who utters them is in physical contact with the Amulet. Gordon hid the Amulet because he did not know how to destroy it. It is our most deeply guarded secret, and I have entrusted it to you. Do not let us down, Lara Croft.”
“I’ll try not to.” She read the words, repeated them four times, and when she was sure she had memorized them, she handed the paper back to Omar, who immediately set fire to it, then got to his feet.
“Shall we go?” he said.
She nodded and followed him out.
The staff at the Mashraq Bank seemed surprised to see a European enter the premises, but Omar’s half-sister handled the transaction swiftly and efficiently, and soon Lara and Omar were riding a beat-up, rust-covered thirty-year-old cab to the airport.
Mustafa was waiting for them with a secondhand leather bag, a small lock, and the key.
After stowing her guns and locking them away, she shook his hand, then did the same with Omar, and walked into the airport. She handed in her ticket, showed her passport, waited tensely while the computer read its bar code and approved it, and walked through to the terminal.
She had sat down on a bench to await her flight, when a uniformed man approached her.
“Lara Croft?” he said.
“Yes.”
“You are flying to Kenya, are you not?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Is