Free Serpent of Moses by Don Hoesel

mirth.
    “Then I guess we’d better decide to get chummier than we already are,” she said. “Because that’s all I ever heard Jack call you, and I really don’t think I could bring myself to call you Jim.”
    After a morning spent teaching the same classes he’d taught for years, followed by eating the same meal—however delectable—in the same place he’d always eaten it, this unexpected repartee was something he did not want to relinquish. However, the trade he’d practiced before assuming his present role forced him to analyze the various elements of the conversation—including the probable prompts for it—and despite his wishes, he found himself growing serious.
    “What’s wrong, Espy?” he asked, also using the nickname made familiar by their shared friend.
    Without so much as a pause she told him, and Duckey didn’t interrupt with a single question while she did so. In his experience, most good intel was generated by spontaneity. Duckey had risen through the ranks by letting his informants spill their guts and only asking clarifying questions when such were absolutely necessary.
    Consequently, it wasn’t until Esperanza ran out of steam that the dean of the Humanities Department at Evanston University, who had long reached his destination but who remained standing on the walkway in front of it, said a word.
    “And what makes you think that Jack not checking in is anything more than Jack being Jack?” he asked, unaware that his question echoed the one posed by Esperanza’s brother.
    In truth, he didn’t need to hear the answer to the question. The simple fact that a woman who knew his friend well—likely better than Duckey knew him—was concerned, made him concerned. Nonetheless, he knew Jack. He knew that regardless of the personal and professional growth the archaeologist might have gone through over the last few years, somewhere inside existed the man who eschewed responsibility and commitment.
    Duckey did not know where Espy was calling from but he pictured her on some street in Caracas. If he concentrated, he thought he could hear the sounds of traffic moving by her. She waited a long time before answering.
    “Sometimes a person just knows something,” she said and the conviction in her voice swayed Duckey more than most other things might have.
    “Okay,” he said with a nod she could not see. “What do you need me to do?”
    When she told him, he couldn’t help feeling a measure of disappointment. Perhaps it was that he’d spent a portion of his morning bemoaning the static nature of his existence, and that this call from Esperanza Habilla signified something that might break the monotony. But discovering that he was only needed in order to procure and skim through flight manifests disappointed him.
    Still, there was something about being asked to do a task—even a simple one—by a faraway woman with a foreign accent that had him quickly agreeing to help.
    After ending the call moments later, he felt a return to the habits that had served him well for so long. And as he mounted the steps to the building where his students waited, he divested himself of everything but the facts. For analyzing facts was something he was good at.

9

    Despite everything Jack had gone through over the last couple of days, a few stood out. One of them involved the different levels of feeling one could experience in one’s wrists. Since leaving the safe house in Libya, his hands had not been absent the rope that bound them. Early on, he’d convinced his captor to at least adjust the bonds so his hands were in front of him. Jack believed the main reason for Martin Templeton’s cooperation was so he wouldn’t have to help the archaeologist do all the things people had to do in order to navigate through the day. He suspected the first bathroom break was the tipping point.
    Yet even with his hands in a more comfortable place, they were still bound with coarse rope. Jack had used the new position as an