The Scorpion’s Bite Read online

  The Scorpion’s Bite

  The Scorpion’s Bite

  A Lily Sampson Mystery

  Aileen G. Baron

  www.aileengbaron.com

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright © 2010 by Aileen G. Baron

  First Edition 2010

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2009942214

  ISBN: 978-1-59058-753-9 Hardcover

  ISBN: 978-1-59058-755-3 Trade Paperback

  ISBN: 978-1-61595-251-9 Epub

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

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  Dedication

  To Nelson Glueck, master of the archaeological survey, who could spot a microlith from the back of a camel, and palm sheep’s eyeballs with the best of them.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Acknowledgements and Notes

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  Chapter One

  The three of them sat in the shade of the Jeep, mouths dry, throats heavy with the scorching air, seared by relentless heat, huddled close, but still not completely sheltered from the unforgiving sun. They were almost out of water, just a few drops in their canteens and in the canvas bag hanging limp on the side of the Jeep.

  They were in the Wadi Rum, stuck there with a broken axle: Lily, with Gideon Weil, director of the American School in Jerusalem, and their photographer, Klaus Steiner, doing an archaeological survey of Trans-Jordan for the OSS.

  And Lily had no idea why.

  Last March, more than three months after the Allies took North Africa in Operation Torch, General Donovan appeared in Casablanca looking for Lily Sampson. This time, she thought Wild Bill Donovan was going to tell her to go back south, past Marrakesh and Volubis, into sub-Saharan Africa. Instead, he sent her back to Jerusalem, told her to be ready in twenty-four hours. She was used to this from Donovan.

  She left Morocco the next morning at ten o’clock, flying out of the Naval Airbase at Port Lyautey. She landed at Kolundia, the small airport north of Jerusalem, and took a taxi to the American School of Oriental Research where Gideon Weil, the director, was waiting for her.

  Gideon had once been on the cover of Time magazine, in all the glory of his dark good looks and his roguish smile, sitting atop a camel like a Bedouin. He wore a kafiya with a dashing tilt.

  He told her they were going to do an archaeological survey of Trans-Jordan. He had been working on the survey since before the war, had already published two volumes of research.

  Klaus Steiner, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, caught up with them in Jericho. Steiner sported an ascot, a very British blond mustache, a scar on his left cheek, and a gold-capped canine tooth that glinted when he smiled. He told them he had been assigned to them as photographer.

  The three of them crossed the Jordan at Allenby Bridge and spent the next month traipsing up and down the ancient King’s Highway, visiting cities of the Roman Decapolis.

  Lily felt superfluous.

  They spent a week mapping Jerash, ancient Gerasa. It had been mapped before; it had been dug ten years ago.

  In the midst of the ruins of Jerash, they passed a fellah with an ox and an ass yoked together and pulling a plow. Gideon pointed out that in Deuteronomy, it was forbidden to yoke them together like that. Klaus rolled his eyes to the sky in a show of impatience with Gideon quoting the Bible.

  When they reached Amman, Gideon set Lily and Klaus to mapping and photographing remains of the well-documented Roman theater while he made a courtesy call on His Highness, Emir Abdullah.

  That afternoon, Gideon told them they were going to Wadi Rum, then on to Petra to meet someone.

  Now they sat stranded in the Wadi Rum where tall sandstone cliffs rear straight up like cathedrals, like castles of the mind. When they first reached Wadi Rum, they had stopped the Jeep and sucked in their breath, awed by its grandeur: the pink sand, the clean stillness in the air, the high, red cliffs, echoing silence.

  “Red,” Gideon had said. “The color of Edom is red, ruddy like Esau, the father of the Edomites, who sold his birthright to Jacob for a mess of red lentils,” and Klaus rolled his eyes again.

  Today was a lost cause. They had to stick to the track that ran through the wadi without a clue to the whereabouts of either archaeological sites or the Bedouin camps. They were looking for both.

  Their Bedouin guide, Qasim, had vanished this morning and left them to fend for themselves.

  Last night, as they had every night, they sat around the campfire in the cool desert air, breathing the perfume of the desert and the pungent odor of wormwood and tamarisk, watching the firelight flicker on Qasim’s face as he told them tales of his family, of the tribe of the Howeitat, tales of raiding for sheep and camels, of noble gestures. They sat, warmed by the crackle of the fire, with sparks flying upward into the night of brilliant stars, and listened to his stories of how the greedy Saudis, craving power and drunk with religious fervor, raided his people, impoverished them, and how the British betrayed them and sided with the Saudis.

  And all day long, Klaus was out with his camera, climbing the hills, vanishing into the fissures in the turreted limestone cliffs, coming back hours later telling them he had shots of rock drawings, or yet another magnificent vista of the clean, silent, wasteland of the desert.

  Qasim was missing and the dapper Klaus—his eyebrows and lashes pointed with the red dust of the wadi, his moustache caked with pink powder—sat with them, grumbling about the heat and the rowdy wind, his camera wrapped in a towel.

  All they could do was watch sand whirl in gusts as it piled against the small dune opposite the Jeep, gape at the overwhelming desert, and wait for help to come.

  ***

  A dark spot emerged above the crest of the horizon and Lily watched it approach from over the high ridge, seeming to erupt out of the hills beyond the blowing sand. She could just make out the figure moving toward them.

  As the figure came closer, Lily saw that it was a child, a girl no more than eight or ten. She was dressed in adult finery with a small abayah over her long dress. A veil, sweeping in the wind, covered her head, a necklace of coins draped across her forehead. She came toward them, her face engraved with the dry dust of the desert.

  “Those Bedouin,” Klaus said. “Where do they all come from? They’re everywhere, coming out of nowhere in the desert, keeping an eye on us, watching our every move.”

  �
�Desert hospitality,” Gideon said. “They’re our hosts, we’re their guests.”

  “And they’ll invite us at knife point to sleep in their camps with their bedbugs and rotted cheese.”

  “It’s all they have,” Gideon said. “They share what they have, bedbugs and all.”

  The Bedouin girl carried a tiered tray, covered with a cloth against the dust. She set it down on the running board of the Jeep and removed the cloth, revealing three cups and a pot of tea. She poured the tea, gave them a shy smile, and sat silently on the small dune opposite the Jeep while they drank the tea and muttered, “Shukran, shukran,” to the girl between sips. “Thank you, thank you.”

  When they finished, the child, still silent, collected the cups, trudged back over the hill, and disappeared.

  And they continued to wait, marooned in the wind and sand and desert pavement.

  The wind picked up, blowing around them, the sound of it escalating like an eerie whine of spirits who had vanished in the Wadi Rum.

  Lily peered down the wadi and saw a whirlwind roaring toward them, eddying over boulders, picking up rocks and branches of brush in its vortex as it advanced.

  “Dust devil!” Gideon shouted over the noise of the wind.

  Lily closed her eyes and covered her face with her scarf as the whirlwind came nearer still, swirling and biting into their skin, sputtering and roaring as it closed around them, trajectories of rock and sand stinging the bare flesh of her arms and hands.

  She held her breath, struggled against the gritty air, drowned in sand.

  Thirty seconds passed and she tried to breathe.

  One minute—with wind snapping her clothes, howling in her ears.

  Another minute, gasping.

  Then the wind passed and traveled up the wadi.

  They coughed, sipped from what was left in their canteens, and coughed again.

  “Behold,” Gideon said. “A storm of the Lord is gone forth in fury, yes a whirling storm.”

  “Not another.” Klaus gave Gideon an impatient look before he snapped a picture of the disappearing whirlwind. “Not another Biblical quotation.”

  “It’s from Jeremiah.”

  Klaus rewrapped the towel around his camera. “You are also a rabbi, yes?”

  Gideon nodded. “My degree is in theology. My dissertation was on the meaning of ahavah in the Old Testament.”

  “And what is the meaning of ahavah?”

  “Love,” Lily said.

  “You took a hundred and eighty-seven pages to say that?” Klaus asked.

  Gideon looked over at him. “A hundred and eighty-seven pages? How do you know?”

  “I saw in our library at university. Göttingen, no?”

  “You told me you were at Heidelberg.” Gideon ran a finger along his own cheek, approximating Klaus’ scar. “With a dueling mark on your left cheek to prove it.”

  “You are mistaken.” Klaus stood up. “Göttingen.” He beat some of the grit off his pants, carefully unwrapped his camera, blew off the surface dust with an air-bulb and glanced at the Jeep.

  “Erstaundlich,” he said, focusing the camera on the hood of the Jeep where the paint had scraped off. “Astounding.” He stepped back and declared, “It has been sanded,” and gave a sage nod.

  But Lily was looking straight ahead at the small dune across from the Jeep. The sand had blown away from the edge of the dune, and what she saw was a sandaled foot attached to a leg buried underneath.

  Chapter Two

  Gideon spoke first, his voice a whisper, as if he were afraid of disturbing the dead. “A Bedouin.”

  “How can you tell?” Lily asked.

  “His sandal, his darker skin.”

  “What do you suppose happened?”

  “These Bedouin,” Klaus said. “They’re always killing each other. One tribe against another. They steal, they kill, they fight over anything—honor, revenge, a lost camel.”

  Gideon stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. “This is no honor killing. This is murder. Whoever did it tried to hide it by covering it.”

  “Murder?” Lily shivered.

  A dark silhouette appeared on the horizon above the ridge of hills behind the dunes, this time on the north. A man on a camel loped toward them, his outline shimmering in the desert heat like a ghost.

  Gideon gestured toward the rider. “We’ll find out soon enough. Rescue is at hand.”

  When the man drew closer, the camel slowed, striding with the dignity of a king.

  The rider wore the long khaki coat, the jubba of the Desert Patrol. Red bandoliers crisscrossed his chest, a dagger was inserted into his heavy red belt, a rifle was slung over his shoulder.

  “Surprising,” said Klaus, “that the man isn’t covered with dust. These Bedouin ride out the dust storms in depressions, you know, or behind a rock until the dust devil passes.” He took the scarf from around his neck, wiped at his face, and called out, “The whirlwind passed by you?”

  He strode toward the Bedouin. His scarf fluttered to the ground and fell on the dune, covering the sandaled foot.

  The Bedouin couched the camel and came toward them. A red-checked kafiya, folded at a slant covered his head and part of his face so that only his eyes were visible.

  Gideon rose with a welcoming gesture. “Marhaba,” he said. “Welcome in peace. Ahlan wa Sahlan.”

  The Bedouin nodded to Gideon. “Fik.”

  He gave no indication that he had seen the sandaled foot surfacing from the small dune near the Jeep.

  “Keif halik? Gideon asked. “How are you?”

  The Bedouin answered with a musical lilt, “Hamdulillah.”

  “He hid in the wadi until the whirlwind passed,” Klaus said into Lily’s ear. “You see—I know these things.”

  Gideon knew the Bedouin, Jalil ibn Akram, who addressed Gideon as tanib, all the while facing away from the telltale dune opposite the Jeep.

  Can’t he see the foot, Lily wondered? She glanced at the dune again, and saw the scarf, billowing in a slight breeze, covering the bottom of the dune and the sandaled foot. Gideon gestured toward it before he spoke again.

  Klaus had listened to the ritual of greeting with impatience, and now he shoved Gideon aside.

  “Enough of this nonsense. Let’s get going.” He stood before the Bedouin, tapping his thigh. “Jalil, is it?”

  Klaus told him that they were Americans doing an archaeological survey; that the axle had broken in their Jeep; that they needed transportation.

  He crossed his arms and demanded to be taken to the nearest Desert Patrol Outpost, where, he said, he would arrange for a lorry to tow the Jeep and get it repaired.

  Lily leaned toward Gideon, whispering, “Who does he think he is?”

  Klaus sauntered to the couched camel, tied his wrapped camera to his waist, and ordered the Bedouin to take him to the Outpost. “I will facilitate arrangements from there.”

  He called out to Gideon, “There is only room for one of us on the camel with Jalil,” and sat astride the back of the camel’s saddle. “You will both be all right while I’m gone, no?”

  The Bedouin looked from Gideon to Klaus and back again. “Inshallah,” he said, and held out his hands in a hopeless gesture. “You and your sister will wait here?”

  He thinks I’m Gideon’s sister, Lily thought. When they had encountered their first Bedouin encampment at the beginning of the survey, Gideon reminded her that Abraham told Sarah, “Say, I pray thee, that thou art my sister.” She asked him then if it was because, like Abraham, he was afraid he would be killed out of jealousy because she was so beautiful.

  He had flicked an eyebrow. “Sometimes, when the sun shines golden on your hair, you have an ethereal beauty.”

  “Ethereal beauty?”

  “And your suntan complements the sea-blue of your eyes.”

  “Sea-blue?”

  “As blue as the Mediterranean.”

  Lily blu
shed.

  “And with that color in your cheeks, you’re even prettier.”

  He flashed a mischievous grin and ducked his head. “Satisfied?”

  He held out his hands, palms up. “It’s just for your own safety. Necessary if we travel together.”

  That time, Klaus agreed with Gideon. “A blonde might have trouble with these Arabs,” he said, flapping an arm in the direction of the encampment and pontificating on the ways of the Bedouin. “Without the protection of a relative, you would appear as a woman of loose morals, fair game, taken advantage of, attacked in the night.”

  And now, as Jalil strolled back to the camel, mounted, and got ready to leave, Gideon shrugged. “Not much choice. Ma’a es salaam, Go in peace,” he said to Jalil. “You’ll come back for us with a lorry?”

  With a mighty heave, the camel rose, lurching backward and forward as Klaus held on and grumbled.

  “I hope he’s as uncomfortable as he looks,” Lily murmured as Jalil turned the camel north and they lumbered back up the wadi. “If he weren’t a refugee from the Nazis, he could be an SS man. I almost heard the heels of his sandals click.”

  Gideon smiled. “He can be hard to take. But have a little understanding. In Germany, he was a Great Dane.”

  “A what?”

  “You don’t know the story? Two refugee dogs met in the park, a Saint Bernard and a little dachshund, and the dachshund looked up at the Saint Bernard and said, ‘In Germany I was a Great Dane.’”

  “You certainly know how to tell a story.”

  They watched Klaus and the Bedouin ride out of sight behind the ridge. Gideon rose, tentatively brushed some sand from the dune in front of them, to reveal part of the sandaled foot, and then opened the back of the Jeep where they stored their equipment.

  Sighing, Lily followed.

  He reached into the storage area, handed Lily a trowel and two brushes, and poured the last few drops from the water bags into their canteens.

  They plodded back to the dune, knelt down, and began to remove the sand, moving up from the feet as if they were excavating a tomb, carefully scraping away the overburden with trowels, sweeping away the sand that lay against the body with soft paintbrushes and a rat-tailed brush.