man’s side, yet he didn’t take the relic away from him. The Tunisian had lifted the Nehushtan and turned it so he could see into the eyes of the serpent. His hands trembled, and for a brief moment Jack thought he might drop it. Finally the man looked away from the snake, a look of deep reverence on his face.
When Jack finally removed the staff from the Tunisian’s hands, carefully rewrapping the exposed portion and returning it to its spot against the wall, he could see that his host’s opinion of him had undergone a dramatic change. The problem was that he didn’t know if the man now regarded him as a hero or a devil.
Two hours later, Jack thought he had that part figured out as a procession of solemn bearded men entered the small home, all of them wanting to see the staff. Although all Jack wanted to do was to steal away with his prize, make it back to London, and collect a very large sum of money from Sturdivant, he understood he had to allow the show-and-tell—and not just because of the etiquette involved. He still needed help from these people and so keeping the artifact from them—a relic mentioned in their holy books—did little to encourage generosity, which was something he needed, since Templeton had divested him of both his wallet and phone.
The visits had ended an hour ago, and Jack had the impression that the men had gone to deliberate. He’d entertained the fear that they were considering keeping the staff for themselves, but his pragmatic side understood that there was nothing he could do but relax and wait. Unlike escaping from a single man in the middle of the night, trying to smuggle the staff out of a village full of people in broad daylight would be difficult to accomplish. Instead, he settled into a comfortable chair to nap.
Duckey decided there was a marked difference between modern Al Bayda—the part that provided a backdrop for the police station, the legislative plaza, and several businesses—and the older and more modest part in which he found himself. Khansaa, a sprawling neighborhood in the southwestern portion of the city, was a conglomerate of old houses, dormant businesses, and streets plagued by potholes and abandoned cars. As he’d driven into the depressed area, ferried there by an elderly cab driver, Duckey found himself amazed at the abruptness of the transition. Duckey suspected that the only reason Jack’s derelict rental had raised an eyebrow had been because, when found, it was parked along the main road that separated Khansaa from Rabaah Adawiyyah—a bustling neighborhood with a university occupancy, lots of green space, and new apartment buildings, all of which warranted a stronger police presence.
Just two streets into Khansaa, with Rabaah Adawiyyah still in sight behind him, the cab pulled over and the driver looked at Duckey in the rearview mirror. Looking out the window, the American saw that they’d arrived at a one-story building that ran the entire length of the block. The brick structure had been divided into a number of different businesses, two of which appeared open: a café and a place that rented motorbikes. The cab was parked in front of the café, which had a large front window, the door next to it standing open to the mild weather. Duckey got out and, asking the man to wait but finding him less than amenable to the request, paid and watched the cab speed off.
When he entered the café, he found himself the only occupant beyond a middle-aged woman standing behind the serving counter. As Duckey paused inside the door, allowing his eyes to grow accustomed to the dim light inside, the woman gave him a piercing look that he barely caught with his compromised vision.
Duckey moved to the counter, the woman looking at him expectantly.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” he asked.
Up to this point, English had done the job for him and he hoped it would continue to do so. He couldn’t speak Arabic and hadn’t spoken Greek since college. The look the woman gave him, though, caused him to believe she hadn’t understood a word. He was on the verge of asking the question again in Greek when she spoke in heavily accented English.
“Do you want to eat?” she asked.
Duckey had picked up the cooking smells the moment he walked in, and since he’d left the hotel that morning without having eaten, the temptation to sample the local cuisine