Robert Liparulo - The 13 th tribe

He sat and pressed his back against the church, knees bent up. He pulled the pack into his lap and unzipped it. He made sure the satellite phone was set to vibrate and pushed it down the front of his shirt so he’d feel it against his chest if it rang. Then he withdraw a Carambar and slid the pack to the ground beside him. As he unwrapped the candy, he looked at each of the house’s dark front windows. He wanted to be the one to spot Creed, but he felt guilty about it. Creed was old enough to be his father, but he’d always acted more like a big brother. He took the time to play with him, and he’d always been patient about explaining things when the others wouldn’t. In the end, however, Jordan’s loyalty was to the Tribe, and anyone who threatened it was the enemy. Besides, all they wanted was the chip. Creed would be okay, and maybe someday he’d come back.

He stuck the end of the candy in his mouth and flattened the wrapper against his thigh. He leaned sideways to put the backside of the wrapper in the glow of a lamp and read the riddle printed there in French:

The strongest chains will not bind it,

Ditch and rampart will not slow it down.

A thousand soldiers cannot beat it,

It can knock down trees with a single push.

He worked the caramel soft with his tongue and teeth as he thought about it. “Wind,” he said, scrunching up the wrapper and shoving it into the pack. He wiggled his rump until the dirt yielded a more comfortable seat and squared his shoulders against the wall. Then he watched the sky lighten to day and waited for Creed.

Ollie had convinced Gheronda to let him use the apartment below Jagger’s to catalog and store the site’s discoveries. It was there Jagger was headed, with Addison and a hand-carted crate, when a noise stopped him. Faint, almost not a sound at all. If it weren’t for its repetition- tap-tap-tap, like the bass beats of a distant lowrider-he never would have noticed. From his position in front of the outside wall of the monastery he could see out of the valley, past St. Catherine’s Village to the Plain of el-Raha stretching to the horizon. A black dot in the sky grew larger as it approached: a helicopter. The sound of its blades chopping the air rushed ahead of it and bounced off the valley walls.

“Isn’t this restricted air space?” Jagger said.

“This and almost every tourist site in Egypt,” Addison said. “Before the ban the things swarmed like flies, ruining the experience for everybody else.”

Jagger pulled a small notepad and pencil from his breast pocket and checked his watch: 10:07. He recorded this, then turned in a complete circle. Tourists in front of the monastery gate either watched the helicopter with mild interest or ignored it altogether. The excavation workers displayed slightly more intrigue, but nothing that signaled expectation, excitement, or nervousness.

The helicopter buzzed over the village a mile away. It resembled a black Plexiglas egg, what the military called Little Bird. Good for moving six people tops in and out of a hot zone fast.

“Any idea who it is?” he said.

“Rich tourists,” Addison said. “Probably kept slapping down Egyptian pounds until the pilot couldn’t say no.”

The helicopter slowed, then hovered over the gardens on the outside of the monastery’s east wall. It rotated to give the passenger a better view. Hard to tell at that distance, but Jagger thought the passenger was either a woman or teen. The person scoped the area with binoculars. Jagger reached behind him to a pouch hanging off his belt and pulled out his own binocs. As he raised them, the helicopter straightened and flew closer, putting the big outer wall between them. Its steady thumping told him it was hovering over the compound.

He ran toward the entrance gate, first dodging tourists, then pushing through them. He stumbled into the monastery’s courtyard. The helicopter floated above the center of the compound, slowly rotating. When it faced the Southwest Range Building, it paused. Gheronda faced it from the third-floor walkway, his long gray beard fluttering in the machine’s downdraft. The old man and the helicopter passenger seemed to be simply staring at each other. Jagger ran toward the proctor, cutting between the apartment complex and archive building. When he reached the courtyard of St. Stephen’s Well, the helicopter swooped over him and disappeared.

Toby was almost certain he’d beaten Creed to the monastery, if indeed this was his destination. Just before Toby had landed in Sharm el-Sheikh, Sebastian had called the helicopter charter companies and learned that no one had yet hired them for a trip to St. Cath’s. Just to make sure, Toby had instructed the pilot to give him a close look around. Nothing appeared suspicious: no furtive monks playing sentinel, no ambulances, no disruption of the tourists. Plus, the old monk had expressed surprise and anger at his presence. If Creed had arrived first, the monks would have expected someone to show up looking for him. They might have tried to shoo him off, but most likely they’d have avoided him.

Banking away from the monk, Toby had caught sight of a man running through the compound. It had not been Creed. The patch on his sleeve and his utility belt made Toby believe it was a guard; of course he would come running.

Toby pointed to an outcropping on the mountain above the monastery. “I want to end up there,” he told the pilot. “How close can you get me without anyone at the monastery seeing us?”

The pilot made a hand motion like a jumping dolphin, then gave Toby a thumbs-up.

Toby’s stomach dropped into his knees as the helicopter shot up toward the peaks.

Jagger considered it his job to worry about unusual events like the appearance of the helicopter. Obsession came with the territory, and it irked him that Gheronda had shrugged it off. “Tourists,” he’d said.

But Jagger suspected something else: What tourist would hover right down between the monastery walls? And the person inside had binoculars, not a camera.

Jagger spent an hour on Ollie’s satellite phone trying to track down the tail number-SY-RSN-but between language and bureaucratic barriers, he’d learned only that it was registered to a private company based in Sharm el-Sheik, the resort town 140 miles south of St. Catherine’s. His suspicions grew stronger when he discovered no such company listed with any of the directory services.

Now it was just past noon-closing time-and all he could do was take his station at the far end of the split-rail fence and look politely intimidating. He’d told Hanif to be particularly watchful for suspicious behavior. With any luck, it would be the last he saw of the black helicopter and its mysterious passenger.

The stream of tourists heading up the mountain tapered off, and Jagger began walking toward the monastery. This was his routine, checking out the tourists still milling about out front and climbing up the foothills of the mountain on the opposite side of the valley from Mt. Sinai. He remembered being surprised upon their arrival to see how narrow the valley was. The opposite mountain started almost where Mt. Sinai ended. It was generous to say the valley had any kind of “floor” at all, which made the monastery’s presence there all the more amazing.

Hanif walked toward him, starting an inspection that would take him completely around both the excavation site and the monastery. The man turned his head right to take in the dig, glancing up at the mountain as he did. His attention came back to Jagger, then snapped back to the mountain. He stopped, and Jagger followed his gaze.

The mountain rose in jagged clusters. High on one of these spinal outcroppings, a figure stood motionless. He was far off the path that led to the peak, in a place where he could observe the entire excavation and monastery. Occasionally a tourist would ignore the signs to stay on the path and appear as an insect scurrying around the dangerous precipices. Bedouins too sometimes popped up in unusual places, but these desert dwellers would rather sell trinkets, camel rides, and guide services than explore their own backyard by themselves.