The Babel Codex Read Online Free PDF Page B

the otherwhere .
    “Stop? But they’re still chasing us.” He straightened and leaned against the wall in the narrow alley. If he’d seen her let the sword go, he didn’t mention it. “What are those guys? Track stars? Ethiopia’s next Olympic marathon team with guns?”
    Annja didn’t answer. They were still a long way from their hotel, and she wasn’t certain that turning themselves over to the police was a good idea, either. She had no idea if the Ethiopian police force could be counted on. Ultimately, she didn’t know what was important about the brick that people were willing to kill her to get it. Killers were one thing, but as an archaeologist, she hated mysteries.
    Actually, it was a love/hate kind of thing. She couldn’t imagine a day in her life when she wasn’t going to be trying to find out something. There was just too much to learn.
    Burris’s breathing leveled off a little. “What are we going to do?”
    A man with a broom in his hand leaned out the back door of one of the small shops. He asked them something, clearly concerned.
    Burris immediately figured out what the guy wanted and lifted his shoulders with a smile. “No heart attack. I’m fine.” He then patted himself down and appeared slightly startled. “Hey! I am fine. All that shooting and not one bullet hole!” He grinned at Annja. “Man, you cannot beat luck.”
    “Luck?” Annja wheeled on him angrily. “First you set me up with creepy Skeleton Guy, then you nearly get me killed for a brick that you found somewhere in the marketplace. You’re an idiot.”
    Burris shrugged. “Hey. Gimme my brick.”
    “No.”
    “What do you mean, no?”
    “I’m not giving you the brick.”
    Burris scowled. “You can’t just take my brick.”
    “I nearly got killed over it—that makes it mine.”
    “I nearly got killed over it, too.”
    “You didn’t get killed. I saved you. You owe me your life, so I’m taking the brick.”
    A smile flirted with Burris’s lips. “You think Doogie will approve of the way you’re strong-arming me?”
    “Doogie— Doug isn’t here. He doesn’t get a vote.” Annja couldn’t believe the nerve of the guy.
    Burris took his phone out of his pocket. “He can call in a vote.”
    Annja snatched the phone from Burris’s hand before he had time to blink. She left him standing there as she walked into the shop the man with the broom had come from.
    The shop catered to the tourist crowd. Racks of souvenir T-shirts and wicker baskets in all shapes and sizes hung on the walls. A stack of dog-eared paperbacks in a half dozen languages occupied a small table in the corner. The little man carried his broom back inside and hung it from a bracket behind the counter. Then he picked up a magazine and pretended to read it, all the while eavesdropping on Annja and Burris. Clearly he spoke English.
    Burris joined Annja at one side of the window looking out on the street they’d just quit. “What are you doing?”
    “Trying to figure out what’s going on.”
    “You stand in front of that window, you’re gonna get yourself shot.” Burris took a couple steps away, then studied her. “Where’s the sword?”
    “I dropped it. It’s not exactly something you can carry around.” During her time with the sword, she had acquired more street smarts. Stay alive while people are trying to kill you , you learn stuff. It was a rule she hadn’t picked up from the Catholic nuns in the orphanage or in college.
    Violence had a rhythm. Those rhythms showed up in history, too, if a researcher knew where to look for them. Annja did, and she also knew how to look for them in the modern world.
    When something terrible happened, everyone was a victim. People who got hurt, and the innocents who watched it happen. Even police officers and military personnel reacted to the horror of a violent event. Everybody lost it.
    Except for the perpetrators. They either weren’t touched by it, or they enjoyed it.
    Annja watched as the men