A fresh bandage was on his right hand and his face had been washed. He also wore crisp new clothes: some traditional Ethiopian robes.
Squinting, he stood and padded out of the guardhouse.
Pooh Bear met him in the doorway.
“Ah, the warrior wakes,” Pooh Bear said. “You’ll be happy to know we now own this mine. We took out the upper guards with the help of the miners—who, it should be said, were most enthusiastic in assailing their captors.”
“I’ll bet,” Jack said. “So where are we in Ethiopia?”
“You’re not going to believe it.”
They stepped out of the office and emerged in bright sunshine.
Jack took in the surrounding landscape.
Dry, barren brushland, with rust-colored soil and treeless hills.
And dotting the hollows of some of those hills were structures—stonebuildings —exquisitely carved buildings, each easily five stories tall, that had been hewn from solid rock and were sunk inside massive stone-walled pits. It was as if they had been cut out of the living rock.
One of the buildings, Jack saw, was carved in the shape of an equal-armed cross, a Templar cross.
“You know where we are?” Pooh Bear asked.
“Yes,” Jack said. “We’re in Lalibela. These are the famous churches of Lalibela.”
“Our mission is in tatters, Huntsman,” Pooh Bear said sadly.
It was a short time later and the two of them were sitting in the sunshine, with Jack nursing his injured right hand. Around them, the freed slave miners variously left, ate, or plundered the upper offices for clothes and booty.
“We’ve been scattered to the winds,” Pooh went on. “Your father sent Stretch back to the Mossad, intent on collecting the bounty on his head.”
“Aw, shit…” Jack said. “And did I see Astro go off with Wolf?”
“Yes.”
“Timeo Americanos et dona ferentes,”Jack muttered.
“I don’t know, Jack,” Pooh said, “from what I could see, Astro didn’t seem, well, himself. And during our mission, he struck me as a fine young man, not a villain. I wouldn’t rush to judgment on him.”
“I’ve always valued your opinion, Zahir. Consider judgment suspended, for the moment. What about Wolf?”
“He set off after Wizard, Zoe, and Lily, to find the ancient tribe and get the Second Pillar.”
“The Neetha…” Jack said, thinking.
He stared out into space for a moment.
Then he said, “We have to catch up with Lily and the others. Make sure they get that Pillar and get it to the next vertex in time.”
“You need rest,” Pooh Bear said, “and a doctor.”
“And a panel beater,” Jack said, touching the two half-crushed metal fingers on his mechanical left hand.
Pooh Bear said, “I say we head for our old base in Kenya, the farm. There you can get some medical attention and rearm yourself. Then you can set out from the farm for the central regions of the continent.”
“Ican?” West said. “What about we can?”
Pooh Bear looked at him closely. Then he looked away into the distance. “I will be leaving you at the farm in Kenya, Huntsman.”
Jack remained silent.
“I cannot leave my friend to suffer in the cells of the Mossad,” Pooh Bear said. “The Mossad do not forget a slight. Nor do they forgive those agents who disobey their orders. Even if the world is to end, I will not leave Stretch to die a cruel death in a dungeon. He would not let such a fate befall me.”
Jack just returned Pooh Bear’s gaze. “I understand.”
“Thank you, Jack. I shall get you to Kenya and there we shall part.”
Jack nodded again. “Sounds like a plan—”
Just then, however, a delegation of about dozen Ethiopian Jews approached them. The leader of the delegation, a dignified-looking man, held a bundle in his hands, wrapped in dirty hessian cloth.
“Excuse me, Mr. Jack,” he said humbly. “As a gesture of thanks, the men wanted to give you this.”
“What is it?” Jack leaned forward.
“Oh, it is the stones your father had us digging for,” the man said matter-of-factly. “We found them three weeks ago, we just didn’t tell him or his evil guards that we had. So we hid them and kept digging as if the stones had never been found, awaiting salvation, awaiting you.”
Despite himself, Jack shook his head and grinned. He couldn’t believe this.
