Raiders Of the Lost Ark

was Sallah?

'Sallah!'

Silence.

He watched the opening; he blinked against the harsh light, waited.

There was a sudden movement above. Then some­thing began to fall from the hole and for a second he thought it was the rope, but it wasn't: instead, what he saw descending was a bunch of clothing tied to­gether, clumsily knotted to create a makeshift rope- shirts, tunics, pants, robes and-of all things-a swas­tika flag.

He caught hold of the line, tugged on it, and then began to climb. He surfaced, dropping flat on his stomach as Sallah started to haul the line of clothing out. Indy smiled and the Egyptian stuffed the make­shift rope inside the oil drum. Then Indy rose and followed Sallah quickly between some tents.

They didn't see the German who was walking up and down with an expression of dark impatience on his face.

'You! I'm still waiting for that water!'

Sallahspread his hands apologetically.

The German turned to Indy. 'You're another lazy bastard. Why aren't you digging?'

Sallah moved toward the German while Indy, bow­ing in wonderful subservience, hurried off in the other direction.

He moved quickly now, his robes flapping as he rushed between tents. And from behind, as if some suspicion had just been aroused, some crime sus­pected, he could hear the German calling after him. Wait. Come back here, Indy thought, The last thing I intend to do is come back, dummkopf. He hurried along the tents, caught between his unwillingness to look suspicious and his urge to start digging for the Well of the Souls, when two German officers appeared ahead of him. Damn, he thought, pausing, watching them stop to talk, light cigarettes. His way was blocked.

He slipped along the sides of the tents, hugging such shadow as he could find, and then he moved through an opening, a doorway, and stepped inside one of the tents. He could wait here at least for a few minutes until the way was clear. Those two Krauts could hardly stand out there smoking and talking all day.

He wiped sweat from his forehead, rubbed the damp palms of his hands against his robes. For the first time since he'd entered the place, he considered the Map Room: he thought of that weird sense of timelessness he'd felt, an experience of being some­how suspended, afloat-as if he himself had become a trapped object in the jar of history, preserved, per­fect, intact. The Map Room at Tanis. In a way it was like discovering that a fairy tale had some basis in reality-the legend at the heart of which there is truth. The thought touched him in a fashion he found a little humbling: you live in the year 1936, with its airplanes and its radios and its great machines of war-and then you stumble across something so simply intricate, so primitively elaborate, as a miniature map with one specific building designed to glow when struck by light in a certain way. Call it alchemy, artistry or even magic-however you cut it, the passage of centuries hadn't improved anything very much. The movement of time had merely slashed at the roots of some pro­found sense of the cosmic, the magical.

And now he was within reach of the Well of the Souls. The Ark.

He wiped his forehead again with the edge of his robes. He peered through the slit in the tent. They were still there, smoking, talking. When the hell would they find a reason to move on?

He was pondering a way out, trying to think up a means of making an exit, when he heard a noise from the other corner of the tent. A strange grunting, a stifled noise. He turned around and peered across the tent, which he had convinced himself was empty.

For a moment, a moment of disbelief, wild incredu­lity, he felt all his pulses stammer and stop.

She was sitting in a chair, tied to it by crisscross­ing ropes, a handkerchief bound tightly around her mouth. She was sitting there, her eyes imploring him, flashing messages at him, and she was trying to speak to him through the folds of the handkerchief pressed against her lips. He crossed the floor quickly, untied the gag and let it fall from her mouth. He kissed her and the kiss was anxious, long, deep. When he pulled his face away, he laid the palm of his hand flat against her cheek.

When she spoke her voice faltered. 'They had two baskets . . . two baskets to confuse you. When you thought I was in the truck I was in a car ...'

'I thought you were dead,' he said. What was that sensation he felt now-unfathomable relief? the lifting of guilt? Or was it pure pleasure, gratitude, that she was still alive?

'I'm still kicking,' she said.

'Have they hurt you?'

She seemed to struggle with some inner anxiety. 'No-they haven't hurt me. They just asked about you, they wanted to find out what you knew.'

Indy rubbed his jaw and wondered why he de­tected an odd hesitation in Marion. But he was still too excited to pause and consider it.

'Indy, please get me away from here. He's evil-'

'Who?'

'The Frenchman.'

He was about to untie the rope when he stopped.

'What's wrong?' she asked.

'Look, you'll never understand how I feel right now. I'll never be able to find words for that. But I want you to trust me. I'm going to do something I don't like doing.'

'Untie me, Indy. Please untie me.'

'That's the point. If I let you loose, then they're going to turn over every particle of sand around here to find you and I can't afford that right now. And since I know where the Ark is, it's important I get to it before they do, then I can come back for you-'

'Indy, no!'

'You only need to sit tight for a little longer-'

'You bastard. Turn me loose!'

He slipped the gag back over her mouth and tight­ened it. Then, kissing her once more on the forehead, ignoring her protests, her grunts, he stood upright. 'Sit tight,' he said. 'I'll be back.'

I'll be back, he thought. There was a very old echo there, an echo that went back ten years. And he could see doubt in her eyes. He kissed her again, then moved toward the opening in the tent.

She thumped her chair on the floor.

He went outside; the German officers had gone.

Overhead, the sun was stronger now. It beat down insanely.

Alive, he thought: she's alive. And the thought was something that soared inside his head. He began to rush, moving away from the tents, from the excava­tions, out into the burning dunes, out into that place where he had a rendezvous with Omar and his dig­gers.

He took the surveyor's instrument from the back of Omar's truck and erected it on the dunes. He aligned it with the Map Room in the distance, and consulting the calculations he had made, he got a fix on a posi­tion some miles out in the desert, out in untouched sand considerably closer than the spot where Belloq was mistakenly digging for the Well of the Souls. There, he thought. The exact place!

'Got it!' he said, and he folded the instrument and stuck it back in the truck. The place was well hidden from Belloq's dig, concealed by the rise of the dunes. They could dig unobserved.

As he was climbing into the truck, Indy noticed a figure appear over the dunes. It was Sallah, robes flapping, hurrying toward the truck.

'I thought you were never coming,' Indy said.

'I almost didn't,' Sallah said, climbing in back. 'Let's go,' Indy told the driver.

When they had gone out into the dunes they parked the truck. It was a barren spot in which to be looking for something so exciting as the Ark. Overhead the sun was incandescent, the color of an exploding yel­low rose; and that was what it suggested in its inten­sity, a thing about to burst loose from the sky.

They went to the spot which Indy had calculated. For a short time he stood and stared at it-dry sand. You could never dream of anything growing here. You could never imagine this ground yielding up any­thing. Certainly not the Ark.