Raiders Of the Lost Ark

An old man in threadbare robes, his hands gnarled and covered with the brown spots of age; his eyes, though, were lit with curiosity and life. He bowed his head in a silent greeting. They followed him into his study, a large room strewn with manu­scripts, pillows, maps, ancient documents. You could feel it here, Indy thought: a lifetime of dedication to the pursuit of knowledge. Every moment of every day a learning experience. Nothing wasted. Indy passed the medallion to Imam, who took it silently and carried it to a table at the back of the room where a small lamp was lit. He sat down, twisting the thing between his fingers, squinting at it. Indy and Sallah sat down on some cushions, the monkey between them. Sallah stroked the creature's neck.

Silence.

The old man took a sip of wine, then wrote some­thing quickly on a small piece of paper. Indy twisted around, watching impatiently. It seemed Imam was examining the headpiece as if time were of no interest to him.

'Patience,' Sallah said.

Hurry, Indy thought.

The man parked his motorcycle some way from the house. He slipped alongside the house to its rear, looking in windows until he found the kitchen. He pressed himself close to the wall, watching the boy, Abu, rinse some dates at the sink. He waited. Abu put the dates in a bowl, then placed the bowl on the table. Still the man didn't move, more shadow now than substance. The boy picked up a decanter of wine, several glasses, placed them on a tray, then left the kitchen. Only then did the man move out of the shadows. He took a bottle from his cloak, opened it, and, after looking around the kitchen, stealthily poured some liquid from the bottle over the bowl of dates. He paused for a second. He heard the sound of the boy returning, and quickly, as silently as he entered, he slipped away again.

Imam still hadn't spoken. Indy occasionally looked at Sallah, whose expression was that of a man accus­ tomed to periods of enormous patience, periods of waiting. The door opened. Abu came in with a de­canter of wine and glasses and set the tray down on the table. The wine was tempting, but Indy didn't move for it. He found the silence unsettling. The boy went out and when he next came back he was carry­ing food-plates of cheese, fruit, a bowl of dates. Sallah absently picked at a piece of cheese and chewed on it thoughtfully. The dates looked good, but Indy wasn't hungry. The monkey moved away, settling be­neath the table. Silence still. Indy leaned forward and picked up one of the dates. He tilted his head back, tossed the date in the air and tried to catch it in his mouth as it fell-but it struck the edge of his chin and bounced away across the floor. Abu gave him a strange look-as if this Western custom were too insane to fathom-then picked up the dates and dropped it in an ashtray.

Hell, Indy thought. My coordination must be shot.

'Look. Come over here and look,' Imam suddenly said.

His strange hoarse voice broke the silence with the solemn authority of a prayer. It was the kind of voice to which one responded without thinking twice.

Over his shoulder, Indy and Sallah watched Imam point to the raised markings. 'This is a warning . . . not to disturb the Ark of the Covenant.'

'Just what I need,' Indy said.

He bent forward, almost touching the frail shoulders of Imam.

'The other markings concern the height of the Staff of Ra to which this headpiece must be attached. Otherwise, the headpiece by itself is of no use.' Indy no­ticed the old man's lips were faintly blackened, that he rubbed them time and again with his tongue.

'Then Belloq got the height of the Staff from his copy of the medallion,' Indy said.

Sallahnodded.

'What do the markings say?' Indy asked.

'This was the old way. This means six kadam high.'

'About seventy-two inches,' Sallah said.

Indy heard the monkey moving around the food table, picking at assorted bits and pieces. He went over and picked up a date, grabbing it before the monkey reached it.

'I am not finished,' Imam said. 'On the other side of the headpiece there is more. I'll read it to you. 'And give back one kadam to honor the Hebrew God whose Ark this is.''

Indy's hand stopped halfway to his mouth. 'You're sure Belloq's medallion has markings on one side only?' he asked Sallah.

'Positive.'

Indy started to laugh. 'Then Belloq's staff is twelve inches too long! They're digging in the wrong spot!'

Sallah laughed too. The men hugged one another as Imam watched them, unsmiling.

The old man said, 'I do not understand who Belloq is. I can only tell you that the warning about the Ark is a serious one. I can also tell you that it is written . . . those who would open the Ark and release its force will die if they look upon it. If they bring them­selves face to face with it. I would heed these warn­ings, my friends.'

It should have been a solemn moment, but Indy was suddenly too elated at the realization of the Frenchman's error to absorb the old man's words. A triumph! he thought. Wonderful. He wished he could see the look on Belloq's face when he couldn't find the Well of the Souls. He tossed a date in the air, open­ing his mouth.

This time, he thought.

But Sallah's hand picked the date out of the air be­fore it could enter Indy's mouth.

'Hey!'

Sallah gestured toward the floor under the table.

The monkey lay there in a posture of death. It lay surrounded by date pits. Faintly one paw flickered, trembled, then the animal's eyes closed slowly, After that it didn't move again.

Indy turned his face toward Sallah.

The Egyptian shrugged and said, 'Bad dates.'

9: The Tanis Digs, Egypt

The desert morning was burning, the stretches of sand shimmering. A landscape, Indy thought, in which a man would have every right to claim he saw mirages. He stared at the sky as the truck rattled along the road. He was uncomfortable in the burnoose he'd borrowed from Sallah, and he wasn't entirely convinced that he could pass himself off as an Arab anyhow-but any­thing was worth a shot. He turned around from time to time to look at the other truck that followed. Sallah's friend Omar drove the second truck; in the back of it were six Arab diggers. There were another three in Sallah's truck. Let's hope, he thought, that they're as trustworthy as Sallah says.

'I am nervous,' Sallah said. 'I do not mind confess­ing it.'

'Don't worry too much.'

'You're taking a huge risk,' Sallah said.

'That's the name of this game,' Indy remarked. He looked up at the sky again. The early sunlight beat the sands with the force of a raging hammer.

Sallah sighed. 'I hope we cut the staff to the cor­rect size.'

'We measured it pretty well,' Indy said. He thought of the five-foot stick that lay right then in the back of the truck. It had taken them several hours last night to cut the thing, to whittle the end so that the headpiece would fit. A strange feeling, Indy thought, placing the medallion on the stick. He had felt a sharp affinity with the past then, imaging other hands placing the same medallion in exactly that way so long ago.

The two trucks came to a halt now. Indy got out and walked back to the truck driven by Omar; the Arab stepped down, raising his arm in greeting. And then he pointed to a spot in the distance, a place where the terrain was less flat, where sand dunes undulated.

'We will wait there,' Omar said.

Indy rubbed his dry lips with the back of his hand.

'And good luck,' the Arab said.

Omar got back into his truck and drove away, trail­ing a storm of dust and sand behind the vehicle. Indy watched it go. He went back to where Sallah was parked, climbed in; the truck moved slowly for a mile or so, then it stopped again. Sallah and Indy got out, crossed a strip of sand, then lay down and looked across a depression in the land beneath them.

The Tanis excavations.