Serpent of Moses by Don Hoesel

that.
    “What do you plan to do with it?”
    “I really don’t know.”
    That answer didn’t surprise Jack. After all, the Englishman didn’t seem to know what to do with Jack either.
    They rode in silence for a while, the desert passing beneath and around them, until Jack, giving in to the temptation to turn and look at the artifact, asked, “Do you have any idea what it is you have back there?”
    Martin shrugged. “I’m sure I don’t know its history—its significance—as well as you, but yes, I know what it is.”
    Jack nodded, comforted at least that the man knew enough to appreciate it.
    “I wasn’t under the impression that you’ve done much work with biblical relics,” Templeton said. “And even those who have generally neglect this one.”
    “Let’s just say that, despite what might appear on my résumé, I’ve looked for a relic or two in my day,” Jack said. Then with a wry smile he closed his eyes and didn’t elaborate.

11

    “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find one person on a flight manifest from a region with more flights per day than any other part of the world when you don’t even know what airline he’s traveling on?”
    “I’m going with not very hard,” Esperanza said.
    Her response was met with silence, and she imagined Jack’s friend nursing a feeling of righteous indignation.
    “Well, you’re right,” Duckey said after a pause. “But that’s only because I know people.”
    “Which is why I called you,” Espy said.
    “Your lost archaeologist boarded a KLM flight in Milan on December fourteenth.”
    “Which was a few days before he was supposed to meet Sturdivant in London,” Espy said.
    “But this bird wasn’t going to London,” Duckey said. “For some reason, our friend purchased a one-way ticket to Tripoli.”
    Espy’s brow furrowed. “Jack went to Libya?”
    “After a brief stop in Amsterdam, where Jack had a stroopwaffel and a bourbon in the terminal.” Duckey paused and then added, “I don’t think much of the combination myself, but then I’ve never had a stroopwaffel.”
    “You’re good,” Espy conceded.
    “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
    “Let me think a minute. . . . We know that Jack had something he was going to sell to Sturdivant for a lot of money. And the Jack we know wouldn’t pass up on the chance at a score that big. So why would he decide to change his plans and go to Libya?”
    “I can’t answer that,” Duckey said. “But I do think you’re presuming too much. You’re assuming that Jack had in his possession whatever he was going to sell in London.”
    “You’re right,” Espy said, stretching the words as she mulled over what Duckey was saying. Then she shook her head, as if ridding herself of Duckey’s attempt to make things more difficult than they already were. “But he told Sturdivant—”
    “The point is that we can’t presume,” Duckey interrupted. Yet despite the pointed nature of his words, his voice was kind. “Unless I’m mistaken, he didn’t say that he had what Sturdivant wanted. All he said was that he was going to bring something to him.”
    “Okay, let’s assume that Jack didn’t have in his possession the item he was going to sell to Sturdivant. How does that affect how we look for him?”
    She asked the question more as a means of focusing their efforts than as any sort of minimization of her mistake, which was exactly how Duckey took it.
    “It means that we have a few more variables to consider than we might otherwise have had,” he said. “Was Jack trying to procure whatever he was going to sell to the buyer in London, or did he get distracted by something else?”
    “And any single variable you add makes everything that follows a whole lot more complicated.”
    “Right.”
    “Okay. So where does that leave us?”
    “As near as I can tell, it leaves us with two places to investigate: Milan and Libya.” Without waiting for a response, he went on, “First, we