Solomon's Jar (11 page)

“Would you please stop doing that?” he demanded. Then he swayed. She kept him upright.

“Don't mean to make a habit of it,” she said. “Now, come on. We need to get far away from here—and see if we can clean up a bit before anybody sees us.”

“Bloody hell,” the young man said, slopping coffee over the brim of his mug to stream down the back of his hand and drip between the metal meshwork of the tabletop. “I'm all over nerves, and this whole wretched town has never heard of decaf.”

He looked indignantly at her. They had picked sidewalk tables well back from the dubious yellow puddle of light from the street lamp up the block, as well as the more substantial shine from the West Jerusalem coffee shop's front window. After slinking out through the crenellated Jaffa Gate and cleaning themselves in a fountain as best they could, they had by tacit agreement chosen to regroup—and discreetly probe each other's motivations. They looked, Annja thought and hoped, no
more damply disheveled than any other pair of tourists who'd spent the day touring in the hot Mediterranean sun. At least in light this uncertain.

“I'm still afraid of trying to get back into my hotel,” Annja confessed. “I must look like the last survivor from a slasher film.”

Her companion barked a laugh. It had a hard and brittle clang to it, like the gleam in his eyes. “Don't bother yourself. This is Jerusalem, city of conflict holy and otherwise. Hoteliers have a couple millennia experience in seeing their guests straggle back in looking as if the cat dropped them off on the stoop. Besides, should a bellhop or concierge spot you and raise an eyebrow, your American dollar isn't yet so depreciated that throwing twenty of them his or her way won't induce the desired degree of amnesia.” He hoisted his mug. “Bribery, the universal language.”

“Good point,” Annja said.

He looked up at the mug, sighed, lowered it gingerly to the table. “The only reason I'm as calm as I am is that I don't really believe what I saw,” he said. “Did you have to kill them?”

“Yes,” she said. “They would have killed both of us. Would you rather I'd let them?”

He shook his head. “Perhaps I'm not properly civilized, but I'm not so soft as all that. Before you got there they were talking to each other in Hebrew, and made al
together clear their intention to carve me up like a Christmas goose no matter what I said or did.”

He smiled, or made a brave attempt anyway. She gave him full credit.

“They made the standard mistake,” he said, “of believing the bloody tourist didn't know the local lingo. Especially one as tricky for a native English-speaker as Hebrew. Still, you didn't kill any of those Russians chasing us all over Amsterdam with guns. Even though they killed that poor shopkeeper.”

“But they didn't,” Annja said, shaking her head.

He halted with his mug to his mouth. “I beg your pardon?”

“The Russians didn't kill Trees. The antiques shop proprietor. They'd never have come back the way they did if they had.”

“I rather thought of them like jackals returning to their spew—if you can forgive the coarseness of the simile.” He sipped. “I thought they'd just decided to take us up and see what we knew.”

“That much is correct, I'm pretty sure, as subsequent events showed. But while I can't pretend to know much about them, the impression that I get is that the
mafiya
are pretty professional. If they committed a murder they wouldn't risk exposure by traipsing blithely back to the scene of the crime—even if they own an assortment of Amsterdam police officials, as I kind of presume they
do. That'd be pushing their luck. Besides, it was pretty apparent they were at least as surprised to see us as we were to see them. And every bit as surprised to find the shopkeeper had been murdered.”

He shrugged. “I suppose you're more up on these criminal undertakings than I am.”

She sighed inwardly at the dig. He was upset, on edge and mistrustful, despite the polite sheen dictated by his upbringing and some sense of gratitude for her saving of his bacon. She couldn't blame him, not by any stretch. But she couldn't help regretting it.

She was struggling to contain her emotions. Now that the adrenaline in her blood was beginning to break down she felt sandbagged by her own reaction to the violence in the cul-de-sac. She knew her actions had been justified. She did not regret the deaths of the men she had killed. Not as such. But she knew there would be family and friends to mourn them, and did regret the choices they had made that had led them to earn such an end.

She was also feeling, keenly, the truth of Tsipporah's prophesy about her going through life without lasting attachments. Her companion was an intelligent young man, obviously, quick-witted and not without charm, even under reasonably dire circumstances. Manifestly they shared some interests. And yes, he was easy on the eyes.

Even if she didn't know his name.

“I'm Annja Creed, by the way,” she told him. Though she had entered Israel using a false identity provided by Roux, she felt she could trust this young man with that truth. It's important to trust your instincts, she told herself.

His chin had sunk to his chest, in reverie or just plain nervous exhaustion. He snapped it up and blinked at her owlishly. “Oh. Forgive me. I've quite forgotten my manners. It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Creed. I'm Aidan Pascoe.”

“I'm not sure it really is a pleasure for you, under the circumstances,” she said, “but points for saying so.”

He laughed briefly. Then his brows drew together again and he leaned forward. “Where on earth,” he said in conspiratorial tones, “did you get that sword?”

“I beg your pardon?” Annja had expected the question.

“The implement with which you dispatched my tormentors—and to give you your due, no avenging angel could have wielded it with more aplomb.”

I suppose I should consider that a high professional compliment, she thought, considering.

“I'm sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

His laugh was high-pitched. “Don't be stupid! You chopped those men to chutney. I'm no martial-arts expert, but I know you didn't do it with your bladelike hands. Anyway, I was there, if you'll recall.”

“Of course. But you weren't in the best position to
see what really happened, what with blood in your eyes and your head spinning. I picked up a slat of wood to have some sort of weapon when I confronted them—that was what you saw in my hand. Then when they attacked me with those machetes or whatever they were—” she shrugged “I didn't see I had much choice but take one away and defend myself with it.”

“But I saw a
sword,
” he persisted. “A cross-hilted broadsword. In your hands.”

Annja smiled. “I think you said it yourself earlier. In your state I must have appeared like, well, a rescuing angel. Quite a misidentification, but understandable under the circumstances.”

He shook his head and muttered under his breath. “Be bloody-minded, then.”

Her smile got sweeter. “I just wouldn't want you to have any false notions. Now, why do you happen to be interested in the legendary jar of King Solomon?”

As a flying subject change, it was outstandingly clumsy, she knew. But its very ham-handedness served the purpose of bringing home to Aidan that the subject of the sword was not just closed, but sealed. And anyway, she needed to know.

A tightening of his somewhat full lips told her he saw through the ruse. Also that he had dimples.

“I'm an archaeologist,” he said. “I read the subject and biblical antiquities at Oxford. Although the truth is
I've a lifelong fascination, bordering upon obsession, for the fringe areas of archaeology. Indeed, I have actively crusaded to open the minds of my colleagues—albeit, in a cowardly way, making use of the anonymity of the Internet. Or perhaps,
pseudonymity
, should such a word exist.”

“You're seeker23!” she exclaimed.

He performed a mock genuflection. “Guilty,
made-moiselle.
”

“
Parlez-vous français?”
she asked.

“
Oui
,” he said with a nasal Parisian accent that made it almost
way
. “Bloody badly, as befits an Englishman.”

He took a sip of coffee and studied her. “It seems to me I might have seen your name, once or twice.”

“Sometimes I ask a question or two. I usually try to stay clear of the flame wars,” she said.

“Wise of you.” He took another drink, eyeing her with a slight pensive frown.

She leaned her elbows on the metal table, holding her mug in both hands. She had to adjust her weight to keep the off-balance table from tipping. She resisted the urge to improvise a shim; her tendency to want to fix things that were wrong could distract her at key moments.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said. Lame! she thought. Growing up in the orphanage and then a career in research hadn't exactly prepared her to make small talk.

“As I said, I've long been fascinated with the way-
out and wonderful,” Pascoe said. “I've no particular fondness for biblical archaeology, however.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Really?”

He smiled self-deprecatingly, shaking his head. “My father was a solicitor in Weston-super-Mare,” he said. “Not a highly remunerative job.”

That surprised her. She knew a solicitor was a kind of lawyer.

“I've an uncle, though, who made a few bob in sum through trade.” He pronounced the word
trade
with evident contempt. “He's rather a bug on the literal truth of the Bible. The Old Testament in particular—all the Sturm und Drang and bearded prophets and she-bears rending the wicked appeals to him more than parables of a gentle Christ, I'm afraid.”

He shrugged. “He should have been a Yank, really.”

“We're all fundamentalists, of course,” Annja said with no effort to conceal her sarcasm.

“Sorry, sorry. It's not on to let my prejudices show.
Especially
to a woman who has made such a habit of saving my life the last week or so.”

“At least this time I wasn't the one who put it in jeopardy.”

“Have I not apologized for my intemperate remarks in Holland? Something about being shot at and then dunked in a canal made me, shall we say, a trifle testy? Anyway, my uncle was willing to subsidize not just my
advanced education but actual field researches. I see you cocking your brow skeptically at me. I'd be tempted to say it's rather fetching, but I'll refrain for fear of making myself a sexist pig.”

She laughed. “Don't hold back for that. I have a pretty high sexual-harassment threshold.”

“And some rather brisk penalties for crossing the line, I imagine.”

She shrugged. “Accept as a ground rule that compliments are safe. So long as they're tasteful.”

“Ah.” He touched a fingertip to the side of his nose. “I've wanted to do that since childhood. Well, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind bat, say no more, as Monty Python said. In any event, I note your skepticism, and in fairness to the old gent—yes, and to myself, as well—I have to say that so far he has been quite scrupulous in accepting what I've been able to discover, whether it happens to harmonize with the bees in his bonnet or not.”

“Do you get to publish your results?” Annja asked.

“As long as I send regular reports about my progress on areas of his interest, I'm free to pursue such other matters as I desire. Those tend to be more…interesting to the journals.”

“I see.” She sipped from her mug. The coffee, which she drank with a healthy dollop of milk and artificial sweetener, had gone cold. She didn't really need the concentrated caffeine blast of Middle Eastern coffee at
this hour either, but she was coming down from an extreme adrenal high. She'd crash and burn soon enough despite the stimulant. “So your uncle is interested in Solomon's Jar?”

“Not at all. He'd suspect the whole legend of binding demons to build the temple smacked of black magic, actually. The particular bee in his bonnet I'm feeding now concerns demonstrating the factual existence of the Garden of Eden. Bit of a bother, really, since the location most reliably alleged is in Mesopotamia.”

“That could prove inconvenient. Does your uncle expect you to do your research in a war zone?” Annja asked.

“I'm not sure the old boy's aware there's a war on,” Pascoe said. “Unlike your American fundamentalists, like the ones who back Mark Peter Stern, he doesn't believe that we're living in the end times. Aside from his precious bottom line, he has trouble concentrating on anything later than Malachi 4:6.”

“‘And he will turn the heart of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse,'” Annja quoted the Old Testament's last verse. “Are you sure he's not into millenarianism?”

“He doesn't foresee the return of Elijah the prophet or the ‘coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord' anytime soon. As a matter of fact I suspect he half
believes Christ himself was more than a bit of a dangerous radical.”

“What's your interest in the jar, then? Care to dabble in demon binding?” She smiled as she asked, and hoped he couldn't see her eyes clearly in the gloom.

“What? Oh, that's all poppycock, of course. I do believe such a jar exists. I do believe it's been found—as, sadly, one or more far less scrupulous parties likewise appear to believe, as well.”

“But you don't think King Solomon used it to bind demons?”

“As much as I believe in the Easter Bunny, Annja dear. Charming name, that—if it's really your name.” He didn't wait for her reaction. “I do believe in the historical existence of Solomon, and the empire he built in the biblical story—which is itself controversial in archaeological circles these days, although don't say so aloud where any of the local savants can hear you. As you no doubt recall, since a woman who can quote the final verse of the rather obscure Book of Malachi clearly knows her Old Testament, Solomon was renowned for his wisdom, as well as for his habit of building pagan temples to gratify some of his numberless foreign wives, which quite scandalized the religious establishment, then and since.