The Rosetta Key

I’m no coward, but there’s something about being hung upside down above a sand pit in the Mediterranean dunes by a gang of hooting French-Arab cutthroats that made me want to tell them anything they want to hear. Just to stop the damned blood from welling in my head! The French had repulsed the Ottoman sally, but not before the plucky Turks overran the uncompleted battery and killed just enough Frenchmen to get the army’s fire up. When told I was an English spy, several soldiers enthusiastically offered to help Najac’s gang excavate the pit and construct the palm-log scaffold I was suspended from. Officially, the idea was to wring from me any secrets I hadn’t already shared. Unofficially, my torture was a reward to Najac’s particular assortment of sadists, perverts, lunatics, and thieves, who existed to do the invasion’s dirty work.

I’d already told the truth a dozen times. “There’s nothing down there!” And, “I failed!” And, “I didn’t even know exactly what I’m looking for!”

But then truth isn’t really the point of torture, given that the victim 1 0 8

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will say anything to get the pain to stop. Torture is about the torturer.

So they roped my ankles and hung me upside down from the cross-beam over the sandy pit, my arms free to flap. They’d dug the hole a good ten feet deep before striking something hard, declaring it good enough for my grave. Now one of the Bedouin came forward with a wicker basket and emptied its contents. Half a dozen snakes fell to the bottom of the pit and writhed in indignation, hissing.

“An interesting way to die, is it not?” Najac asked rhetorically.

“Apophis,” I replied, my voice thickened by being where my feet should be.

“What?”

“Apophis!” I said it louder.

He pretended not to understand, but the Arabs did. They recoiled at the name, given that it was the moniker of that old Egyptian snake god revered by the renegade murderer Achmed bin Sadr. Yes, I’d encountered the same scaly bunch all right, and they twitched at my knowledge as if shedding their own skin. It put doubt in their heads.

Just how much did I really know—I, the mysterious electrician of Jerusalem? Najac, however, pretended to be oblivious to the name.

“A snake bite is horribly painful and agonizingly slow. We’ll kill you quicker, Monsieur Gage, if you tell us what you’re really after, and what you really found.”

“I’ve had more agreeable offers. Go to hell.”

“You first, monsieur.” He turned to the men holding my ropes.

“Lower away!”

The rope began to unreel in jerky movements. My upside-down head descended to ground level, my body swaying above the pit, and all I could see was a line of boots and sandals, their owners jeering.

Then more rope. I pulled my head back up, curving my back to look straight down. Yes, the snakes were there, slithering as snakes do. It reminded me of poor Talma’s treacherous death, and all the rotten misdeeds Silano and his rabble had committed to get to the book.

“I’ll curse you with the name of Thoth!” I shouted.

The rope stopped again, and an argument broke out in Arabic.

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I couldn’t follow the furious flood of words but I heard fragments like “Apophis” and “Silano” and “sorcerer” and “electricity.” So I had acquired a reputation! They were nervous.

Najac’s own voice rose over that of his henchmen, angry and insistent. The rope was let down again another foot and stopped again, the arguing continuing. Suddenly there was the crack of a pistol shot, a jerk as I fell two more feet, and then a halt again. All of me was now in the pit, the snakes four feet below.

I looked up. A Bedouin who’d argued too long with Najac lay dead, one sandaled foot draped over the edge of my pit.

“The next man who argues with me shares the grave with the American!” Najac warned. The group had fallen silent. “Yes, you agree with me now? Lower him! Slowly, so he can beg!” Oh, I begged all right, begged like a man possessed. I’m not proud when it comes to avoiding snakebite. But it did no good, except to keep my descent incremental so I could provide entertainment. They must have thought me born for the stage. I called out anything I thought they might want to hear, pleading, twisting, and sweating, my eyes stinging as perspiration ran. Then, when my abject wailing began to bore, someone pushed so I swung back and forth. It was dizzying. Much more of this and I would black out. I saw serpent after serpent coiling in excitement but then noticed something else.

“There’s a shovel down here!”

“To fill your own grave, once you have been bitten, Monsieur Gage,” Najac called. “Or would it be easier to explain what you saw under the Temple Mount?”

“I told you, nothing!”

So they lowered it a foot again. That’s what telling the truth will get you.

The blasted snakes were hissing. It was unfair how angry the reptiles were, since it wasn’t me who had put them down there.

“Well, maybe something,” I amended.

“I am not a patient man, Monsieur Gage.” The rope went down again.