Juan Gómez-Jurado - Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

But Orville didn’t believe in Sigmund Freud and his head trips. For a case of broken glass, he believed in Smith amp; Wesson. That’s why he kept a.38 Special next to his bed.

It can’t be. The alarm is on.

He picked up the gun and an object that sat next to it on the night table. It looked like a key chain, but it was a simple remote control with two buttons. The first set off a silent alarm at the police station. The second set off a siren throughout the estate.

‘It’s so loud it could wake up Nixon and get him tap dancing,’ the man installing the alarm had said.

‘Nixon’s buried in California.’

‘Now you know how powerful it is.’

Orville pressed both buttons, not wanting to take any chances. On hearing no siren, he wanted to beat the shit out of the cretin who had installed the system and sworn that it was impossible to disconnect.

Shit, shit, shit , Orville swore to himself, clutching the gun. What the hell do I do now? The plan was to get here and be safe. What about the mobile…?

It was on the night table on top of an old copy of Vanity Fair .

His breathing became shallow and he began to sweat. When he’d heard the breaking glass – probably in the kitchen – he’d been sitting in his bed, in the dark, playing The Sims on his laptop and sucking on the chocolate still stuck to the wrappers. He hadn’t even realised that the air-conditioning had stopped a few minutes earlier.

They probably cut the electricity at the same time as the supposedly foolproof alarm system. Fourteen thousand bucks. Son of a bitch!

Now, as his fear and the sticky Washington summer drenched him in sweat, his grasp on the gun became slippery and each step he took felt precarious. There was no doubt that Orville had to get out of there as quickly as possible.

He crossed the dressing room and looked out into the hallway of the top floor. Nobody there. There was no way to get down to the first floor other than the stairs, but Orville had a plan. At the end of the hall, on the opposite side to the stairs, there was a small window, and outside a rather puny cherry tree that refused to bloom. No matter. The branches were thick and near enough to the window to allow someone as nonathletic as Orville to try to descend that way.

He got down on all fours and tucked the gun into the tight elastic band of his shorts, then made his large body crawl the ten feet across the rug to the window. Another noise from the floor below confirmed that someone really had broken into the house.

Opening the window, he gritted his teeth the way thousands of people do each day when they are attempting not to make any noise. Fortunately, their lives don’t depend on it; unfortunately, his most certainly did. He could already hear footsteps coming up the stairs.

Abandoning all caution, Orville stood up, opened the window, and leaned out. The branches were roughly five feet away, and Orville had to stretch right out even for his fingers to graze one of the thicker ones.

That’s not going to work.

Without thinking twice, he put one foot on the window sill, pushed off and made a leap that not even the kindest person watching could have termed graceful. His fingers managed to grab hold of the branch, but in jumping the gun slipped into his shorts, and after a brief, cold contact with what he called ‘little Timmy’, it slipped down his leg and fell into the garden.

Fuck! What else can go wrong?

At that moment the branch broke.

Orville’s full weight landed on his rear end, making quite a bit of noise. More than thirty per cent of the cloth of his shorts didn’t survive the fall, as he later realised when he saw the bleeding cuts on his behind. But at that particular moment he didn’t notice them because his only concern was to get that same behind as far away as possible from the house, so he headed for the gate of his property, some sixty-five feet down the hill. He didn’t have the keys to the gate, but he’d chew his way through it if necessary. Halfway down the hill, the fear attacking him inside was replaced by a sense of accomplishment.

Two impossible escapes in one week. Suck on that, Batman.

He couldn’t believe it, but the gate was open. Reaching his arms forward in the dark, Orville headed for the exit.

Suddenly, from the shadows of the wall surrounding the property a dark form emerged and crashed against his face. Orville felt the full force of the blow, and heard a horrible crunching sound as his nose broke. Whimpering and grabbing at his face, Orville fell to the ground.

A figure came running down the path from the house and placed a pistol at the back of his neck. The move was unnecessary since Orville had already passed out. Standing next to his body was Nazim, nervously holding the shovel with which he had hit Orville after assuming the classic stance of a batter facing a pitcher. It had been a perfect swing. Nazim had been a good hitter when he played baseball at school, and in an absurd sort of way he thought that his coach would have been proud to see him make such a fantastic swing in the dark.

‘Didn’t I tell you?’ said Kharouf, between gasps. ‘The broken glass works every time. They run like scared little rabbits wherever you want them to go. Come on, put that down and help me get him into the house.’

AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN

Saturday, 15 July 2006. 6:34 a.m.

Andrea woke up feeling like she had been chewing on cardboard. She was lying on an examination table next to which Father Fowler and Dr Harel, both in pyjamas, were dozing off on chairs.

She was about to get up to head for the bathroom when the zip on the doorway opened and there was Jacob Russell. Kayn’s assistant had a walkie-talkie on his belt and a pensive frown on his face. Seeing that the priest and the doctor were asleep, he tiptoed over to the table and whispered to Andrea.

‘How are you?’

‘Remember the morning after the day you graduated?’

Russell smiled and nodded.

‘Well, the same, but it’s as if they substituted brake fluid for the booze,’ Andrea said, holding her head.

‘We were very worried about you. What happened to Erling, and now this… We’re having a lot of bad luck.’

At that moment Andrea’s guardian angels awoke simultaneously.

‘Bad luck? That’s bullshit,’ Harel said, stretching in her chair. ‘What happened here was attempted murder.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’d like to know too,’ Andrea said, shocked.

‘Mr Russell,’ Fowler said, standing up and going over to the assistant, ‘I’m formally requesting that Ms Otero be evacuated to the Behemoth .’

‘Father Fowler, I appreciate your concern for Ms Otero’s welfare, and normally I’d be the first to agree with you. But doing that would mean breaking the rule about the security of the operation and that’s a huge step-’

‘Listen-’ Andrea broke in.

‘Her health is in no immediate danger, is it, Dr Harel?’

‘Well… technically no,’ said Harel, forced to concede.

‘A couple of days and she’ll be as good as new.’

‘Listen to me…’ Andrea insisted.

‘You see, Father, it wouldn’t make sense to evacuate Ms Otero before she’s had a chance to accomplish her task.’

‘Even when somebody is trying to kill her?’ Fowler said tensely.

‘There’s no proof of that. It was an unfortunate coincidence that the scorpions got into her sleeping bag but-’

‘STOP!’ Andrea screamed.

Astonished, the three turned towards her.

‘Could you stop talking about me as if I wasn’t here, and listen to me for one fucking moment? Or am I not allowed to give my opinion before you dump me from this expedition?’