The Adventures Of Indiana Jones

The Adventures Of Indiana Jones by Campbell & Kahn Black

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Authors: Campbell & Kahn Black
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partner, mister. Because this little gismo is still my property.”
    “Partner?” he said.
    “Damn right.”
    They watched the fire a little longer, neither of them noticing Arnold Toht slinking away through the alleys that ran from the main street—slinking like a rat heading through a maze.
    In the car Marion said, “What next?”
    Indy was silent for a moment before he answered, “Egypt.”
    “Egypt?” Marion looked at him as the car moved through the dark. “You take me to the most exotic places.”
    The silhouettes of mountains appeared; a pale moon broke the night sky. Indy watched clouds disperse. He wondered why he felt a sudden apprehension, a feeling that passed when he heard Marion laugh.
    “What’s the joke?”
    “You,” she said. “You and that bullwhip.”
    “Don’t mock it, kid. It saved your life.”
    “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you. I’d forgotten about that ratty old whip. I remember how you used to practice with it every day. Those old bottles on the wall and you standing there with the whip.” And she laughed again.
    A memory, Indy thought. He recalled the odd fascination he’d had with the bullwhip ever since he’d seen a whip act in a traveling circus as a seven-year-old kid. Wide-eyed in wonder, watching the whip artist defy all logic. And then the hours of practice, a devotion that nobody, himself included, could truly explain.
    “Do you ever go anywhere without it?” she asked.
    “I never take it to class when I have to teach,” he said.
    “I bet you sleep with it, huh?”
    “Now, that all depends,” he said.
    She was silent, staring out into the Himalayan night. Then she said, “Depends on what?”
    “Work it out for yourself,” Jones said.
    “I think I get the picture.”
    He glanced at her once, then returned his eyes to the pocked road ahead.

SIX

The Tanis Digs, Egypt
    A HOT SUN scorched the sand, burning on the wasteland that stretched from one horizon to the other. In such a place as this, Belloq thought, you might imagine the whole world a scalded waste, a planet without vegetation, without buildings, without people. Without people. Something in this thought pleased him. He had always found treachery the most common currency among human beings—consequently, he had trafficked in that currency himself. And if it wasn’t treachery people understood best, then its alternative was violence. He shaded his eyes against the sun and moved forward, watching the dig that was taking place. An elaborate dig—but then, that was how the Germans liked things. Elaborate, with needless circumstance and pomp. He stuck his hands in his pockets, watching the trucks and the bulldozers, the Arab excavators, the German supervisors. And the silly Dietrich, who seemed to fancy himself overlord of all, barking orders, rushing around as if pursued by a whirlwind.
    He paused, watching but not watching now, an absent look in his eyes. He was remembering the meeting with the Führer, recalling how embarrassingly fulsome the little man had been. You are the world’s expert in this matter, I understand, and I want the best. Fulsome and ignorant. False compliments yielding to some deranged Teutonic rhetoric, the thousand-year Reich, the grandiose historic scheme that could only have been dreamed up by a lunatic. Belloq had simply stopped listening, staring at the Führer in wonderment, amazed that the destiny of any country should fall into such clumsy hands. I want the Ark, of course. The Ark belongs in the Reich. Something of such antiquity belongs in Germany.
    Belloq closed his eyes against the harsh sun. He tuned out the noises of the excavations, the shouts of the Germans, the occasional sounds of the Arabs. The Ark, he thought. It doesn’t belong to any one man, any one place, any single time. But its secrets are mine, if there are secrets to be had. He opened his eyes again and stared at the dig, the huge craters hacked out of sand, and he felt a certain vibration, a

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