again, and Jax’s mouth filled with blood. He spit out the blood, then shook his head to clear it. “As much as I hate to do it, I’ll have to take my chances with torture and keep my bargaining chip. I’ve been tortured before, and I know the score. You’ll eventually break me, because everyone breaks.”
Jax’s voice firmed. “But you’re going to have to finish before someone from the hotel decides to come in here. I can last that long. You won’t kill me before I talk, because you’ll never find your property. And I don’t think you want to deal with getting me out of this hotel. So why don’t you start figuring out how we can do business, and this’ll all be behind us. You’ll get your property back, and you’ll never see me again.”
Al-Miri said nothing for a moment, then spoke to the bodyguard in his native tongue. Jax recognized the Arabic. Nomti grunted his responses.
If Jax were in Al-Miri’s shoes, he’d say to himself, “you can tell us and we can kill you quickly, or we can start taking digits and limbs off with your own boot knife until you tell us.” Then he’d gag himself, call the front desk in front of himself and pay for the room for a few more nights, and stay in this room and torture himself until he told himself what he wanted to know.
Which was very well what Al-Miri might decide to do. Jax knew that if he didn’t get out of this hotel room very soon, he’d never get out. Jax also knew that his bargaining chip was a bluff. He’d picked up the package in Cairo and delivered it halfway across the world to a warehouse in Bulgaria. He had no idea what had happened to the package after that.
But Nomti and Al-Miri were still conversing, and thus the first part of Jax’s two-pronged escape plan had succeeded: he’d caused Al-Miri to divert Nomti’s attention from Jax, however briefly. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Now it was time for part two.
– 17 –
V iktor tipped the taxi driver, feeling quite silly giving two Euros to someone driving a Mercedes who could hold his own with Viktor discussing Kant and Hegel in both English and German. If Berlin didn’t have the most educated taxi drivers in the world, he didn’t know which city did.
He decided to go across the street to the inestimable Café Kranzler before returning to the Swissotel. Viktor came from money, old money, and despite his obsession with the metaphysical, he was extraordinarily adept at enjoying the finest this world had to offer. The thought brought a smile to his lips: when he did unearth the eternal mysteries for which he had spent his entire life searching, he hoped they promoted his extravagant standard of living.
Viktor pondered what he had learned over his cappuccino. That golden medallion. A representation of a green figure with the bearded face of a man, a palm frond staff and a mummified lower half. Depictions of mummification typically related to Osiris in some manner. Osiris, god of the dead and the afterlife, was one of the older Egyptian gods, part of the Great Ennead. A variation of his name had been found on the Palermo Stone, circa 2500 B.C.E. Discussions concerning ancient Egyptian concepts of immortality typically focused on Osiris.
But there were older gods still. Viktor’s research had uncovered that the upper half of the figure was a representation of Nu, an ancient god of the Ogdoad. The Ogdoad was a group of eight deities that represented the primeval forces of chaos. Nu was the deification of the primordial waters that preceded creation. Viktor didn’t know much more about Nu, except that he was sometimes depicted as a bearded man with a greenish body. As far as Viktor was aware, no one knew much more about Nu.
Viktor took another look at the notes he had made from Grey’s description. Shimmering green robes, odd mannerisms, nothing characteristic of either Muslim or Coptic Christian origin in the hotel suite. Why was Al-Miri carrying an amulet adorned with the
Jax’s voice firmed. “But you’re going to have to finish before someone from the hotel decides to come in here. I can last that long. You won’t kill me before I talk, because you’ll never find your property. And I don’t think you want to deal with getting me out of this hotel. So why don’t you start figuring out how we can do business, and this’ll all be behind us. You’ll get your property back, and you’ll never see me again.”
Al-Miri said nothing for a moment, then spoke to the bodyguard in his native tongue. Jax recognized the Arabic. Nomti grunted his responses.
If Jax were in Al-Miri’s shoes, he’d say to himself, “you can tell us and we can kill you quickly, or we can start taking digits and limbs off with your own boot knife until you tell us.” Then he’d gag himself, call the front desk in front of himself and pay for the room for a few more nights, and stay in this room and torture himself until he told himself what he wanted to know.
Which was very well what Al-Miri might decide to do. Jax knew that if he didn’t get out of this hotel room very soon, he’d never get out. Jax also knew that his bargaining chip was a bluff. He’d picked up the package in Cairo and delivered it halfway across the world to a warehouse in Bulgaria. He had no idea what had happened to the package after that.
But Nomti and Al-Miri were still conversing, and thus the first part of Jax’s two-pronged escape plan had succeeded: he’d caused Al-Miri to divert Nomti’s attention from Jax, however briefly. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Now it was time for part two.
– 17 –
V iktor tipped the taxi driver, feeling quite silly giving two Euros to someone driving a Mercedes who could hold his own with Viktor discussing Kant and Hegel in both English and German. If Berlin didn’t have the most educated taxi drivers in the world, he didn’t know which city did.
He decided to go across the street to the inestimable Café Kranzler before returning to the Swissotel. Viktor came from money, old money, and despite his obsession with the metaphysical, he was extraordinarily adept at enjoying the finest this world had to offer. The thought brought a smile to his lips: when he did unearth the eternal mysteries for which he had spent his entire life searching, he hoped they promoted his extravagant standard of living.
Viktor pondered what he had learned over his cappuccino. That golden medallion. A representation of a green figure with the bearded face of a man, a palm frond staff and a mummified lower half. Depictions of mummification typically related to Osiris in some manner. Osiris, god of the dead and the afterlife, was one of the older Egyptian gods, part of the Great Ennead. A variation of his name had been found on the Palermo Stone, circa 2500 B.C.E. Discussions concerning ancient Egyptian concepts of immortality typically focused on Osiris.
But there were older gods still. Viktor’s research had uncovered that the upper half of the figure was a representation of Nu, an ancient god of the Ogdoad. The Ogdoad was a group of eight deities that represented the primeval forces of chaos. Nu was the deification of the primordial waters that preceded creation. Viktor didn’t know much more about Nu, except that he was sometimes depicted as a bearded man with a greenish body. As far as Viktor was aware, no one knew much more about Nu.
Viktor took another look at the notes he had made from Grey’s description. Shimmering green robes, odd mannerisms, nothing characteristic of either Muslim or Coptic Christian origin in the hotel suite. Why was Al-Miri carrying an amulet adorned with the
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