The Amulet of Power - Mike Resnick [73]
“There is a two-hundred-dinar exit fee required of all passengers leaving the country, and our computer says you have not yet paid it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought the man who bought my ticket would have paid it.” She reached into her pocket, and pulled out some bills. “I’m afraid I’ve traded in all my dinars. Will you accept British pounds?”
“I’m sure that can be arranged,” said the man. “Please come with me. I will take you to our currency exchange.”
He headed off to the left.
“Just a minute,” she said, pointing to a small Citibank kiosk. “It’s that way.”
“They will charge you an exorbitant fee for changing your money,” said the man. “As a courtesy to our passengers, we will do it for free.”
Something’s wrong here, she thought. If Citibank thought you were changing money for free, they’d pull out of here so fast it’d make your head spin.
She followed him to a small unmarked door.
“This is our office,” he said.
Sure it is. That’s why your name’s not on the door.
He opened the door and stepped aside to allow her to enter first. A large uniformed man sat behind an ancient wooden desk; a smaller man, wearing an ill-fitting suit, stood next to it. Both smiled at her—and suddenly, without warning, the man who had accompanied her shoved her into the small office and closed the door behind her.
She saw the smaller man swinging at her head and ducked. His hand crashed into the wall, and he howled in pain. The larger man got up from behind the desk, but before he could walk around it she had leaped onto it with the grace of a leopard and delivered a powerful kick to his chin. He staggered back a step, came into contact with his chair, and fell awkwardly into it. She was beside him before he could get up again, and delivered a lightning-fast one-two punch to his face. She could feel his cheekbone shatter beneath the second blow, and she turned to face the smaller man.
He had picked up the phone from the desk and was holding it like a weapon, ready to crush her skull with it. She saw that the cord was still attached to the wall, and dove across the desk, grabbing the cord and yanking it with all her strength, and simultaneously pulling the phone out of his hand and into his face.
He groaned and staggered, and before he could recover she was all over him, pummeling him with her fists, and finally dispatching him with a karate chop across the back of his neck. He dropped like a brick.
She knelt down next to him, going through his pockets to see if there was anything to show which side he was on, when the door opened again, and the man who had led her there took a step inside, gun in hand.
“You’re as hard to kill as they said,” he informed her. “What a pity they aren’t offering a reward to the man who accomplishes it.”
“It’s a reward you’ll never collect,” she said, as she pulled the Scalpel of Isis out of her boot and hurled it at him in a single motion. It buried itself in his throat. For just an instant a look of total surprise crossed his face, as if he couldn’t believe what had happened. Then he dropped his gun and fell to the floor, dead.
She withdrew the knife, wiped the blade off on his uniform, and stuck it back in her boot. She wanted to search the men and the office, but the public address system announced that her flight was boarding, and it was one flight she didn’t plan to miss.
She stuck her head out of the room, made sure no one was nearby, walked out, closed the door behind her, and walked to the boarding area. Then she was ushered aboard the refurbished DC-3, and less than an hour later she was flying toward Kenya. As she leaned back and relaxed for the first time in days, she decided to take a nap until the plane touched down in Nairobi, but the more she tried, the more uneasy she became.
What’s the matter with me? she thought. I know where the Amulet is. I solved the puzzle that mystified everyone for more than a century. In a little while, the world will be safe from the Mahdists. Why do I feel that I’m overlooking something very important?
She tried to concentrate, but