The Lost Scrolls. Alex Archer

the night.

      She wasn’t that attached to the belongings she had brought. She traveled light, and nowadays always packed with the expectation she might have to leave anything behind and walk away for survival’s sake. Even her laptop was relatively cheap and contained no information that could easily be used against her.

      But it would be convenient to have her stuff. And she reckoned that if she threw some of her own clothes on Jadzia, no matter how bad they fit her coltish form, they would be a lot less conspicuous than having the girl wandering around dressed in such a look-at-me manner.

      “Tell you what,” Annja said to Jadzia, who was rocking back and forth on her heels and chewing on her lower lip. “You keep an eye out for anybody suspicious. Okay?”

      Jadzia’s eyes lit up. “Okay!”

      “TWO MEN in the lobby,” Jadzia said. “They sit on the far side with their backs to the door and pretend to read newspapers.”

      “You’re kidding,” Annja said. She fought her irritation with the girl in the close confines of the stairway.

      Jadzia’s pigtails swung from side to side beneath the backward Tulane Green Wave ball cap she had stuffed down over them as she shook her head emphatically. She wore an outsized windbreaker that covered her hands, and running pants cinched as tight around her waist as they could be. They resembled a pair of gray terry-cloth sandbags.

      At least playing spy got Jadzia too excited either for panic or to take potshots at Annja. Annja opened her mouth to question her further, unsure as to whether to trust the young woman’s judgment. Clearly she had a taste for melodrama. Would she see danger where it wasn’t?

      Annja shut her mouth. Belatedly it hit her that a degreed cryptologist might actually have a certain bent for spying.

      “Right,” she said. “We’ll go out the back.”

      So I was wrong, she thought, frowning at the back of her own windbreaker as Jadzia pushed through swinging utility doors. I guess they did make me. I still have a lot to learn about this whole intrigue thing.

      Little wiry Egyptian men and women looked at the brisk Western women as they passed through the hotel’s service areas. Jadzia swung along like the health department inspector. Annja followed down the corridor, which smelled of steam and fresh laundry and cooking food, smiling in what she hoped was a friendly rather than nervous manner.

      No one challenged them until a door flew open just in front of Annja. A man in a sort of iridescent brown suit tumbled out right in front of her wearing sunglasses and—

      “A fez?” Annja said aloud.

      The man’s hand dived into his suit coat, which looked as if it had been intentionally made to look slightly greasy. That was all Annja needed. She acted instinctively and grabbed the upper biceps of what she figured had to be his gun arm to control it. She used the leverage to drive a forward elbow-smash into his face with her right arm. She felt impact that jarred clear down to her tailbone, and felt a sharp pain in her own arm.

      The man gave up doing whatever he was doing to clutch his face. He fell straight on the floor, bleeding, to the accompaniment of thrashing and mewling noises, she thought.

      “Damn,” Annja said, inspecting her right elbow. A tooth had gouged her, drawing blood. She was mighty glad of her strong immune system. Human bites are nasty, she thought.

      Jadzia faced Annja across the man’s kicking form, eyes big. “It’s Egypt,” she said. “They wear fezzes. Get over it. Watch out!”

      Somebody grabbed Annja from behind in a bear hug that pinned her upper arms to her rib cage. He felt big and smelled of sweat and garlic.

      “I got her,” he said in thickly accented English.

      He hoisted her feet clear off the cracked linoleum. She felt hot breath on the back of her head, snapped it back hard. She felt, as well as heard, the cartilage of his nose shift. He grunted and his grip on her rib cage slackened.

      She thrust her arms forcefully out before her, busting the rest of the way loose. As the corrugated soles of her trusty hiking boots touched down she braced, covered her right fist with her left palm and, spinning clockwise, pile-drove an elbow into a big soft belly.

      The elbow was working for her. Her attacker doubled over with a great expulsion of hot, foul-smelling air. Annja took a step to her left and side-kicked the big Egyptian. The force propelled him into a dumbwaiter that stood open in the cracked pink stucco wall to his right. The door dropped on him.

      She turned around quickly to see if anybody else wanted to play. She and Jadzia had the corridor to themselves. The hotel maintenance staff did not get paid to intervene heroically in these little disputes among the guests.

      She turned back.

      The first man she had dropped lay on the floor moaning. His face was covered with blood. He had his hand in his jacket again.

      Annja did not think he was scratching an itch. Irritably she kicked him on the point of his chin. His head, which still had the fez crammed on top of it, snapped into the wall beside him. The fez fell off. He slumped.

      Annja crouched quickly, reached a bit tentatively into the clamminess of the inside of his biliously colored jacket and fished out a Beretta. Straightening, she dried the grips off with two quick swipes across the rump of her jeans. Then she pulled the slide back far enough for a flash of yellow brass to confirm he had a round chambered.

      “Insurance,” she said to Jadzia, whose eyes had gotten even bigger. It was true. She knew that it would be a lot easier to explain shooting an assailant to the local authorities than carving him up with a sword.

      “What’s wrong with a fez?” Jadzia asked.

      Annja blinked and shook her head once, violently, as if trying to shed water. “It was just way too Casablanca ,” she said. “Let’s just get out of here, okay?”

      5

      “I think it was the Muslim Brotherhood,” Annja said.

      “Nonsense,” Jadzia replied. Beyond her, cars swished up and down the boulevard. Across the street tourists sauntered down a broad walkway that ran along the Alexandrian waterfront. “I heard one of the men shout at you in French.”

      “That doesn’t mean anything,” Annja said. “Plenty of Muslims speak French.”

      It was late morning. They had survived the night, at least, in a small, somewhat seedy hotel. Fortunately Annja had spent enough time knocking around the world from undergrad days onward to appreciate the fact that it was still pretty plush by Third World standards.

      Jadzia had recovered from her shock—or perhaps the thrill of playing adventure spy girl—enough to gripe about the surroundings, from the mildewy smells to the stains on the bedspread.

      But once she had slurped down her first mug of strong coffee well charged with sugar, and chomped her way through her first flaky pastry at the sidewalk café on the Corniche, Jadzia found something that appealed to her even more than pouting. Arguing.

      Her pretty lips were twisted in a sneer as if she’d forgotten Annja had repeatedly saved her life the night before.

      “They were assassins sent by the big oil companies,” Jadzia said in a tone that clearly declared Annja was a moron not to recognize the facts. “They sent them to keep the knowledge of Atlantean energy secrets covered up from the world.”

      Annja didn’t react for a moment. She was struck by the fact that the lips sneering at her were covered in a carefully applied layer of lipstick. And as far as Annja knew, Jadzia had no personal effects except her wallet, some credit cards, identification and her passport.

      Do I have lipstick that shade? she wondered. The truth was she seldom bothered with it, or makeup in general, except for special events. She realized belatedly she had with her a sort of premade kit—the Mr. Right Emergency Kit—provided