from a plague of snakes God sent them.”
Duckey was well aware that the abbreviated account Espy had just provided was likely leaving out crucial details—things that might have made the whole thing sound much less absurd.
“Let’s back up a minute,” he said. “God sent snakes to kill people and then changed his mind. But instead of just taking the snakes away, he has someone construct a snake totem to heal the people from snakebites?”
“That’s right,” Espy said, though her answer was slow in coming.
“Never mind the fact that while Moses—or his smithy—spent however many hours it took to make this fake snake, the real ones kept slithering around and biting people?”
“I suppose, yes . . .”
“Then there’s the fact that one of God’s biggest commandments—from what I remember, it was something he felt pretty strongly about—was that the Israelites weren’t supposed to make any idols. But then he tells them to put a snake on a pole, have people pray to it, and voilà!”
“I don’t think they actually prayed to it,” Espy said, and yet Duckey’s questions had taken the confidence from her voice.
Duckey blew out a deep breath, his exasperation all theater. “I guess it has to be true. I don’t think you can make stuff like that up.”
The silence that greeted him was one he couldn’t qualify. And as it dragged on, he began to wonder if Espy had taken genuine offense at his irreverence. He was about to issue a mild mea culpa when she responded.
“It’s amazing how much you sound like Jack,” she said.
“Completely uncalled for,” Duckey said, imagining the smile on Espy’s face.
“I’m not afraid to pull out the big guns if you’re going to get feisty with me,” she warned.
“Point taken. Now, where were we?”
“We were in Libya, where it seems there’s a biblical artifact waiting to be discovered.”
“A brass snake pole,” Duckey said.
“A brass snake pole,” she agreed.
Duckey nodded to himself. “So Jack finds a clue in Milan that leads him to Al Bayda, Libya, and after he gets here, he just disappears?”
“No one just disappears, Duckey.”
“Normally I’d agree with you. But this is Jack we’re talking about. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
Espy had to chuckle at that.
“Haven’t you and Jack been down this road before? A few years ago, the two of you went after a biblical artifact and it almost got you killed.”
“Apples to oranges,” Espy said. “For one thing, I don’t know of any super secret organization that would kill to keep the Nehushtan from being discovered.”
“If there was a super secret organization, you probably wouldn’t know about it,” he reminded her.
“Another difference,” she went on, ignoring him, “is that I’m not with him this time.”
Both were valid points, and Duckey wondered if the years spent in higher education had simply left him soft. Before he’d retired, he wouldn’t have balked at a dangerous assignment. Of course the difference was that Jack was his friend and was the one in harm’s way.
“So what now?” he asked.
“It’s up to you,” Espy said. “We’ve confirmed the reason Jack went to Libya. Now you have to figure out what happened after he got there—if he even made it to Cyrene.”
“How did we get from Al Bayda to Cyrene?”
Espy explained and Duckey stayed silent as she did so. He learned about the Greek ruins near the city he was in, and about the potential second piece of the staff that might be somewhere else entirely.
“You couldn’t make this complicated?” Duckey asked.
Ignoring the comment, Espy said, “Romero and I are on our way. I’ll call you when we reach Tripoli.”
“You’re not going to this other place, what did you call it? Cyme?”
“We thought about it, but this is about finding Jack, not hunting for treasure.”
Up to now, Duckey had been twirling the phone cord while he talked with Espy. He saw the phone beginning to slide across the table. Releasing the cord, he watched as it unraveled between the table and the bed on which he sat. When the cord stopped unwinding, he leaned toward the table to push the phone back. It was from that position that he saw the small wire protruding from beneath it.
The instant he saw it, he froze. Then, after taking a short time to consider the implications of that one wire, he straightened and, with no change in the tone of his voice, exchanged a few parting pleasantries with Espy before ending the call. When he heard a dial tone, he used his finger to depress the cradle