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Dr. Sabina Bowen in: The Poachers of Aksum, Part 1

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The deep canyons of the Tekeze River in the middle of May are marked by a bright and terrible stillness. At midday, nothing moves; the heat is intense, and there is no rainfall yet to swell the river, no wind in the valleys to relieve hot skin. The only sound is the gentle gurgling of the shallow water, ankle deep in places, and the occasional maddening drone of insect wings.

 

A pair of battered old trucks rolled over the horizon, as fast as they dared to go absent any roads. Their bodies and tires had been stained the colorless tan of the rocky soil that they kicked up in clouds. They reached the canyon wall overlooking the Tekeze, and stopped. Five men leapt out of each one. Each was armed - some with beaten-up shotguns, a few with old Kalashnikovs. All were tall, black, and lean, like most people in this part of the world.

 

Two of the men approached the canyon. One, a shorter middle-aged man, checked what appeared to be a game trail running near the cliff edge. The other, a redoubtable, fidgeting young man, squinted in the sunlight as he looked around. The younger man spoke.

 

"I don't like leaving the herd, Halie. The boys don't like it, either. We were a week in finding them."

 

Halie arose, brushing off soil from his hands. He smirked, with the confidence that comes from great experience.

 

"And the rangers are less than a day from finding us.  I am going to get your boys paid, Isaias. But we had to leave the herd to do it."

 

"And what if you lose them, huh?" Isaias said.

 

"I never lose them," Halie said, turning a cold glare at the younger man. "Anyway, I know something better than how to find them. I know where they are going. It is a place the rangers can't follow."

 

Isaias looked suspicious. "They crossing the river?"

 

Halie nodded. "They cross about this time of year, for better grazing. They will cross in the west. We cross about a mile east and wait for them in Ethiopia."

 

Isaias said, "How do we know the rangers here won't call the rangers over there?"

 

Halie chuckled. "You're young, but you must remember the war; it wasn't so long ago."

 

Halie called out to the men, and they gathered back up into the trucks. As he was putting his gun next to his seat, he continued speaking to Isaias.

 

"We've been hunting all over Eritrea. The rangers here won't want the Ethis to catch us. That would be... unpatriotic."

 

Isaias, still uncomfortable, said, "Do you at least know anybody over there we can lay low with?"

 

Halie put a cigarette in his mouth and lit up. He spoke in rapid puffs of gray smoke.

 

"I do. An Englishman. White man. No one better to get government off your back." Halie winked, and smiled.

 

The poachers drove off. A short time and a mile east later, their muddy tires splashed across the ankle-deep Tekeze River, into Ethiopia. The heavy, bright silence resumed.

 

 

***

 

 

Dr. Sabina Bowen left her small, rented house in the northern Ethiopian town of Birkuta, and had the exact same thought that had occurred to her when she got off the plane at the nearest, tiny airport the previous day:

 

Now, this is how I expected Africa to feel.

 

When she had landed in the capitol, Addis Ababa, she had stepped off the plane into a surprisingly comfortable environment. Cool breezes and green trees alike made their gentle noises all around her. It was warm, but there were no radiating waves of heat or oppressive sun. The streets were clean, paved, and crammed with automobiles. People bustled about on cell phones in Western clothing, and numerous high-rise buildings were under construction.

 

When Sabina had departed there for Humera, a town right on the border with Eritrea and the location of the nearest airport to Birkuta, she had let drop her expectation of a hot, dry desert - only to arrive in exactly that.

 

Lesson Number One from Ethiopia, Sabina had written in her travel diary that night, under the torturously brief breeze of a rickety ceiling fan, this is a land of variety!

 

Ethiopia's highlands, in which Addis Ababa was situated, rose high enough above sea level to counteract the country's position in the tropics. But down here on the Tekeze River, the weather behaved more in line with its latitude. And this, of course, was exactly where Sabina had come to spend several weeks on a dig.

 

I appreciate that the wealth of the Aksumites depended on being down near the trade routes, Sabina thought, shoving her lucky satchel - which had only spilled twice since arriving in Humera - into the Jeep that she and her roommate were sharing. But I think they would have lived a lot more comfortably had they headed for the hills!

 

Turning round and shielding her eyes against the African sun, Sabina called back into the house.

 

"Emily, come on!"

 

Emily Mitchell, still an undergrad and fresh from an internship at the British Museum in London, emerged from the house looking like she had just emerged from a night in a locked sauna. She had tried to get made up, initially, and given up when the rising heat made it clear that anything she put on in the morning would become a Jackson Pollock painting before lunch. She had simply pulled back her long, auburn hair into a ponytail and thrown on a light Panama hat and sunglasses to shade her light green eyes. She wore a snug white babydoll-style shirt, whose impending filthiness after digging, Sabina knew, would cause its wearer great anguish by the end of the day. She had also donned a pair of short, loose khaki shorts, with heavy brown hiking boots.

 

"Well," Sabina said, hands on her hips, "were it not for that aspect of despair, I'd say you're prepared for your first-ever archaeological dig."

 

"Ready as I'll ever be, I s'pose," Emily said, trudging out of the house. Sabina smiled, reminding herself that the girl had never had to do a hard day's work in her life. If this was how she started out the day, then it was going to end so, so much worse.

 

Sabina had donned a pair of faded, ripped-up jean shorts cut off right above the knees that she had taken with her to just about every dig she had ever been on. She smiled as she realized there were stains in the denim from just about every continent on Earth.

 

Nothing from Antarctica, she thought. But if ruins ever turn up there, I'll be the first one on the boat!

 

On her feet she wore her reddish-brown hiking boots, and up above, a pale blue tank top. She had pulled her wild black mane of hair into a ponytail as well, with a couple of loose strands inevitably falling down to frame her face. She reached into the car and pulled out the very last item in her wardrobe - a straw cowboy hat with brims curled up tight along the sides, cornflower blue with black trim. She plopped it on her head, got in the car, and turned to Emily.

 

"What do you think?" she said, tilting her face up in a coy, mischievous expression.

 

Emily turned to regard her with sleepless eyes. "About what?"

 

Sabina chuckled, and started the Jeep.

 

"Nevermind. Let's go get dirty!"

 

They headed north out of town, toward the endless wastes of Biaghela.

 

 

 

***

 

The heat and silence of the Tekeze River had reached their peak by noon, the air rippling the horizon into a series of dreamy mirages. A single Jeep, the second party to arrive at this spot on the Tekeze that day, pulled to a stop near the tire tracks of the first. Four people emerged. Three, two men and one woman, were black Africans wearing khaki safari jackets, shorts and hiking boots; on each of their lapels was a seal reading Ministry of Land, Water & Environment, with the flag of Eritrea in the center.

 

The fourth was of light complexion, Western. A brown slouch hat sat atop her very long, black hair that fell down her back in a braid. She wore a dark green tank top and short khaki shorts, with calf-length hiking boots that she kept unlaced, with the tops folded down. A jacket like those worn by the others was tied around her waist. The sun glinted off of three studs in her right ear, and a tiny ring in her septum. Her right arm was covered with tattoos, mostly of animals.

 

The Eritrean woman swore in Tigrinya, looking out over the river. She did not look back at her compatriots, or at the white woman. One hand was on her slim hips, the other rubbing the tan bandana that covered her forehead and her chin-length, braided hair. The white woman hurried up to her, scowling behind rose-tinted sunglasses.

 

"What's the matter? Why are we stopping?" she said, impatience coming naturally with her American accent.

 

"They have crossed the river," the black woman said, almost spitting out the words with disdain. "I was hoping we could beat them here, but we haven't. Now they are beyond us."

 

The white woman, several years younger than her companion, snatched off her sunglasses and squinted her blue eyes in disbelief. "What do you mean, beyond us? Birtukan, that's the shallowest river I've ever seen!"

 

"Deeper than you realize, if we cross it," Birtukan said, kneeling to pick up a clod of dirt. She hurled it into the canyon below. "That is the border. They're in Ethiopia now, along with the herd. We cannot follow them."

 

The American woman threw up her arms, and looked around. "Who's out here to stop us? You said yourself, the reason the poachers can operate out here on the border is because no one is around."

 

"Roxana, please," Birtukan said, her weariness of the white woman's petulance showing through. "They're poachers, they're breaking the law wherever they go. We are representatives of the Eritrean government. Being on the right side of this fight means we have limitations that they don't."

 

"What fight?" Roxana replied. "We're just going to sit over here and wring our hands while they slaughter the last band of African elephants in this region!"

 

"And what will you tell the Ethiopians, if they find and arrest us?" Birtukan said. "This is not like crossing a state line in America, Roxana. You know the line between India and Pakistan? North and South Korea?  Iraq and Iran? That's what kind of border this is. I was a little girl the last time our countries decided to fight over it. It did not go well for us. We are not crossing it for all the elephants in Africa. I am sorry."

 

"Me too," Roxana said. "I can't believe I came all the way here for this. What's the plan, then?"

 

"We will set up camp near the elephant crossing. It isn't the one the poachers used, nor are they likely to try to follow the herd back into Eritrea, but if they do, we will deter them. Meanwhile, we can try to contact an Ethiopian patrol in the area, if there is one. That's our best bet now."

 

Roxana stared across the Tekeze River for a long time. Birtukan searched the face of her American companion, and her annoyance cooled a bit. The young woman was right to be angry at the free reign of the poachers, and at their own limitations. Birtukan was angry, too. But, this place was not the West. There were no environmentalist lobby groups, no celebrities pumping funds into awareness campaigns. There was only so much that could be done.

 

Finally, Roxana replaced her sunglasses, and turned back towards the car. She spoke without looking at Birtukan.

 

"Fine. Whatever we can do, let's do it."

 

They all returned to the Jeep, and drove off to the west. The spot overlooking the Tekeze baked in blazing silence once again.

 

 

 

***

 

After driving for nearly two hours, Sabina and Emily felt like pinballs. The road into the north was not paved; just the exposed, rocky soil of northern Ethiopia, mile after jostling mile. It was bad enough on flat plains, but as they ascended into the hilly Biaghela region, every ascent and descent, every sharp curve made them catch their breath for fear that they would bounce off into a ravine.

 

At long last, high in the empty hills, the car rounded the backside of a hill and emerged onto a promontory overlooking the Tekeze River, nearly a mile away. On their left, the crumbling, cyclopean stone and wood of an ancient retaining wall suddenly appeared where before there had been only soil and scrub vegetation. Slowing the car to a rumble - a crawl would have been too smooth to adequately describe their trundle over the broken road - Sabina craned her neck out the window to look up the side of the wall. She spotted narrow, rectangular windows, between which protruded thick wooden posts. She smiled.

 

"Monkey heads!" Sabina reported to Emily, excited to see a distinctly Aksumite architectural feature in person for the first time. "This is the place, alright! Man, they built their monasteries like fortresses back then!"

 

"Ah," Emily managed, her head swaying from the twin nightmares of lack of sleep and several hours on a road that hadn't seen maintenance since before the Renaissance. The young woman held onto one of the handles in the car's ceiling with one hand, leaning her head into the crook of her elbow.

 

Sabina, on the other hand, nearly bounced in her seat with energy.

 

I'm really here, looking at Aksumite ruins! She thought, speeding up as much as she dared on the winding road. A whole new site to explore from an early African empire! Who knows what we'll find when we round this corner?

 

They rounded the corner quickly enough, looking sideways at the huge, open space where the monastery had once stood so long ago.

 

And she nearly ran a man over.

 

She swerved to a stop, thankful the bad road had kept her going slow. The man, a local, hired laborer by the look of him, swore at her, and threw himself against the wall to safety. Sabina called "Sorry!" out the window. He waved a disgusted hand at her, and kept walking.

 

"Watch out, there are more," Emily said. Sabina turned round, and found that Emily was right. A column of tall, slim, dark Ethiopians were walking away from the site, dejected and complaining. Sabina's heart pounded.

 

"What's going on here?" She said, continuing into the site, and parking near a couple of other cars. Workers were leaving in droves. Shovels and wheelbarrows sat, discarded, around the cordoned-off dig site. The organizers of the dig, Ethiopian archaeologists from the University of Addis Ababa, stood at the edge of the pit, staring hopelessly down. One older scientist sat on an overturned wheelbarrow, sobbing into his hands.

 

Sabina hurried up to her fellow archaeologists, desert heat blazing at her back.

 

"Dr. Derartu, what happened?" she said, speaking to a tall man with spectacles.

 

Derartu shook his head slowly; his eyes were red, evidently from crying like his compatriot. He lifted an arm and pointed into the dig site.

 

"Looters found our site," he said. His voice choked up, and Sabina did not press him to speak further. She walked to the edge of the pit, and caught her breath.

 

The monastery had been excavated with the delicate care that only people fully aware of the significance of discovering their own national treasures can exercise. Into this carefully-arranged site, desperate or greedy people had come, snapping apart the grid lines, digging madly with blunt or sharp tools in the interest of finding as much as possible as quickly as possible, throwing aside that which they deemed worthless and clearing the site of artifacts without regard to stratigraphy or sequence. Sabina's blood boiled; how much more of the Aksumite world was now lost forever? Even if they recovered the artifacts, they had been removed from their context; it would be impossible to know so much about them.

 

It's no wonder that all the others are crying their eyes out, Sabina thought. They thought they would be learning about their ancestors today. Instead, a part of their national heritage has been stolen from them, and from the world.

 

Sabina turned and walked off toward the other side of the hill from which she had arrived, breathing deeply, trying to remain calm. She looked at the vast expanse of desert, at the red hot African sun. It did not seem nearly as hot as her anger.

 

In walking, her boot crunched on a turned-up clod of dirt, and she nearly tripped. She looked down, and saw deep tire treads in the soil. Whoever drove the car that left the mark here had evidently skidded out in a hurry. The trail continued off down another route up to the promontory.

 

The looters!

 

Sabina ran down the trail, and the tracks continued all the way. She looked down below to where the road came out onto the flat expanse of the desert, and saw the trail there, too. There was enough left to follow.

 

But by tomorrow, they might be too far, She thought.

 

Sabina raced back up the promontory to the car, where Emily had watched her run off.

 

"Where on Earth did you go?" she said, shading her eyes from the sun. "The whole place has been cleaned out! What do we do?"

 

Sabina grabbed her wrist.

 

"Remember what I told you about Mexico, when I earned my doctorate?" Sabina said, leading Emily back to the car.

 

The Englishwoman turned up her eyes and counted on her fingers as she replied, "You got taped up in a home invasion, kidnapped by Mayan cultists, and bound and gagged half-naked in a jaguar preserve."

 

"It was the other girl who has half-naked, and through no fault of her own, thank you," Sabina said, scowling. "What I mean is, when the dig was interrupted by criminals, I took the fight to them. We're doing that right now. Or I'm doing that," she gave Emily a dark look, "And you can find a ride back with the police when they get here. However long that takes."

 

"Fine, I get the picture," Emily said, walking around to her side of the car. "But for the record, we're two unarmed women going into the desert after a group of desperate thieves. Don't you think that's the least little bit foolish?"

 

"Sometimes," Sabina said, starting the car, "the good people have to be a bit foolish to stop the bad ones." She winked at Emily, and backed the car up.

 

"Oh my God, this is fun for you, isn't it?" Emily said, instinctively grabbing the handle above the door of the Jeep.

 

"Everything's fun for me. It's how I maintain such a sunny disposition," Sabina replied, smirking through her lingering anger. Emily leaned her forehead against the window.

 

"We might as well gift-wrap ourselves in duct tape."

 

The Jeep trundled off down the looters' path.

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

It was not until the evening that Roxana fully realized the folly of leaving camp.

 

The day had been a long one, and difficult for everyone. Roxana felt exhausted, like the others, but did not retire to an early bed like they did. Instead, she sat up with the first watch as the light began to fade, and pretended to fall asleep at her place around the fire.

 

Before long, she started awake, having fallen victim to her own deception. But it had obtained the desired result; with nothing else to put his mind to, the man assigned to first watch now sat slumped over and snoring. With an excitement she hadn't felt since she had snuck up early on Christmas morning to catch a glimpse at her presents, Roxana shouldered her pack and raced as quietly as she could away from the camp. And for good measure, she took the sleeping guard's rifle as well.

 

What Birtukan had said would have made sense - if the Eritreans had any intention to follow through with it. But despite Roxana's frequent urgings, they had made only token attempts to contact Ethiopian border patrols, and ceased these once dinner time arrived. National rivalries remained powerful, indeed.

 

Roxana easily navigated the river crossing, finding places where the water flowed ankle deep all the way to Ethiopia. It seemed a sham to her that such a paltry barrier stood in the way of her party's capturing the poachers.

 

I'll pay whatever the penalty is, she thought, continuing into the unfamiliar landscape, if it means I'm not a part of the last generation to ever see those elephants alive in this region.

 

The path of the elephants was easy to follow; their tracks cut deep into the soil. There seemed to be ten individuals altogether - six adults, four children. That was exactly the number she was looking for. The poachers hadn't taken any of them, yet.

 

Or at least, not at the time they crossed the river, Roxana thought, her blood boiling. Who knows what could have happened in the time we wasted sitting in camp? She stomped onward, furious. Reckless.

 

After a time, she noticed a new set of tracks joining the elephants', coming from the east - tire tracks. Two cars.

 

The poachers.

 

Those bastards are ahead of me! And who knows how close they are to the elephants!

 

Roxana arose, and proceeded faster. She would have broken into a run had it been daylight. No sooner had she resumed her speedwalk, however, than a rock hit the ground right behind her feet.

 

She whirled, lifting the rifle and her flashlight, to see the stunned form of Birtukan, shielding her eyes from the brightness.

 

"Put that thing down, Roxana!" she hissed. "You'll give us away!"

 

Roxana complied, with a weary sigh. "What are you doing out here? Trying to convince me to come back to play the waiting game?"

 

"Trying to convince you not to get yourself killed!" Birtukan said, still whispering as she came nearer. "You think you are going to stop these poachers alone?"

 

"I have to do something. I can't just sit there while the elephants are slaughtered."

 

"What about you getting slaughtered?" Birtukan replied, throwing up her hands. "This is lion country, white woman! You like the wildlife here so much, you're likely to get eaten by it!"

 

"If you're afraid, then go back. You might start a war, after all," Roxana said, resuming her stalk into the night. "But since you're out here, I'm willing to bet you're more worried about protecting me. And if that's your concern, then you're going to help me find the poachers. Tonight."

 

Birtukan sighed, her lips pressing tight together as she looked back to the north. She shook her head, then walked briskly up behind Roxana.

 

The American woman smiled as she heard Birtukan's footsteps crunching up behind her. "So, where are the boys?" she asked. "Were they afraid of lions, too?"

 

"They are staying behind," she answered, "because some of us know how to do our jobs."

 

"They certainly do. Let me tell you how good they are at staying awake on watch."

 

"That is it," Birtukan said, "I have had it with you. Run around out here all night. Get eaten, or shot. I won't be getting in trouble alongside you." She turned back.

 

"That's where you're wrong, I'm afraid," came a deep, loud voice. A pair of headlights flashed on from behind a great boulder nearby. Both Roxana and Birtukan threw up their hands, blinded.

 

"You are both in trouble now," the voice said, from atop the truck. "And you are also surrounded. Throw down your guns."

 

Roxana was ready to stand and fight, until she heard Birtukan's rifle clatter to the desert floor. Footsteps closed in on all sides, and she knew it would be a hopeless resistance.

 

"Sons of bitches," she cursed, and threw her rifle down.

 

"That's good girls," called the poacher. "Now, hold still, you both. We gotta get you all fixed up to come with us."

 

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

"What's happening now?" Emily whined, for the umpteenth time that evening.

 

Sabina took her eyes away from her binoculars to stare at the top of Emily's head. Both of them lay at the crest of a hill behind which they had parked their Jeep. Sabina had remained steadfast on her chest, watching the camp to which the looters' trail had led. It was a small shack in the middle of the desert, with several trucks parked in a circle around a couple of campfires in front of the building. Men, all locals by appearance, sat around the fires, drinking and laughing. Sabina had managed to count about ten of them.

 

Emily, meanwhile, had managed to find about sixteen constellations she recognized from her position on her back, staring up at the sky. Sabina got the impression that she considered this a valuable contribution to the current effort.

 

"Keep your voice down," Sabina warned. She was irritable; hours of following the trail and then watching the looters set up camp without revealing a single stolen artifact, or anything about their intentions, had been frustrating to say the least. They seemed to have everything they wanted, and Sabina could see no explanation for their waiting around. The only thing she could deduce was that they still expected to be joined by someone else.

 

It wasn't long after this exchange that her suspicions played out. Headlights in the distance trundled up to the shack, and one of the looters moved his own truck to accommodate the new arrival. Men with guns began hopping out of the back.

 

"Another truck just pulled up," Sabina whispered. "These guys are packing."

 

Emily rolled over, and tried to get a look across the distance. Sabina handed her the binoculars. She gasped.

 

"You weren't kidding," she said, handing the binoculars right back. "More than just guns, too."

 

Sabina fixed her gaze on the newly-arrived truck, and nearly gasped herself. The men were busy pulling two bound, female captives from the back of the truck - one a black woman in some sort of uniform, the other white, in light, casual dress. Both had white blindfolds encircling their heads, with ropes binding their wrists and elbows behind their backs, securing their arms to their sides.

 

"Emily," Sabina said, still looking through the binoculars, "this just got a lot bigger than looting."

 

"Y-you don't know the b-bloody half of it!"

 

Sabina turned to see Emily on her back once more, white with fear and staring back toward the Jeep. Sabina followed her gaze, and found herself staring into the fierce yellow eyes of a lioness, licking her chops.

 

"Emily," Sabina whispered, still lying on her stomach, "Don't move. Don't make any sudden noises. Just stay perfectly still, okay?"

 

Emily responded with a barely-audible squeak. Sabina could see her shivering. She had no idea if her advice not to move was the right thing to do; wildlife was outside of her expertise.

 

My knife is right there on my thigh, Sabina thought. But she's got five daggers on each paw. Not a fight I intend to have.

 

"Emily, did you hear me?" Sabina tried, again, daring to push her voice a little louder through her gritted teeth. Emily nodded, frantically. The lioness growled, and stepped forward.

 

Emily screamed. It was not a long scream, but it was loud, and unmistakably human.

 

"Hey, what's what?" The voices of the men below filled the night. Within seconds, car doors slammed and an engine started. Sabina flipped over onto her back and pulled her knife, not taking her eyes off the lioness. The beast, however, raised her head to investigate the commotion below. One look at the sight of men with guns running around was evidently enough for her; she turned and ran into the night.

 

Sabina, shaking with fright, collected herself in a moment and grabbed Emily's arm.

 

"Come on, get to the Jeep!"

 

Emily came, but on weary, rubbery legs; the pampered young lady could only handle one fright at a time, and barely. Sabina got her into the Jeep, just as headlights came bouncing along the rode in their direction. She rushed round to the driver's seat, slammed her door, and stabbed the key at the ignition as though trying to kill it.

 

"Shit, shit, shit, shit..." At last, the key hit home - just as a glaring light flooded over the interior of the car. The truck passed the Jeep and parked directly behind it, leaving Sabina nowhere to drive but down the steep hill, right towards the camp and the other waiting crooks. But they didn't even leave her time for that; in seconds, men with guns had surrounded the car, and ordered the two women out.

 

"I bloody told you!" Emily yelled, "Gift-wrapped in duct tape!"

 

Sabina held her hands up, and motioned to unlock the door.

 

"Yeah, yeah," she said, rolling her eyes at Emily. "I hope they make you a big pretty bow right over your mouth."

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Sabina and Emily were allowed to forego the fate of being blindfolded like the previous two captives - they had found their own way to the camp, after all. Their hands and arms were tied like the others, and they were driven down to the camp in the bed of the filthy pickup truck, surrounded by equally filthy men who stank of sweat and beer. Their Jeep rumbled behind them, a bonus prize for their kidnappers. As an added bonus, one of them snatched Sabina’s bright new cowboy hat right off of her head.

 

“Hey, come on, you creep!” Sabina struggled against her bonds, while her captors laughed at her.

 

“Isaias, brother, that looks good on you, man!” The poachers all laughed.

 

When they arrived at the camp, the other men crowded around, some whistling - all staring. One called into the shack, from which a dingy light emanated.

 

"Big boss," he said, smiling, "we roped two more sneaks for you tonight!"

 

"Is that so?" came a surprisingly English voice from within the shack. A figure emerged, ducking his head under the low door frame. When the head arose, Sabina's face tightened in rage.

 

"Alan Fromkin," she said.

 

The Englishman's face spread into his usual cocky, winning smile, a sadistic twinkle in his light green eyes. He wore all khakis, possibly the same he had been in the last time Sabina had seen him - in Iraq, where he had managed to truss her up and make off with a collection of valuable artifacts that subsequently disappeared onto the black market.

 

Bearing that in mind, she thought, I guess it's no surprise he's here, still in the stealing game.

 

“Here,” said the man who had driven their Jeep down to the camp. He held up Sabina’s keys.

 

"Thank you, Hailie,” Fromkin said. He turned to Sabina, and stepped closer. “That's Dr. Fromkin to you, if you please.”

 

"No, it isn't," Sabina said, giving him a hateful smile. "To me, I think it's... dirtbag. Jerkface. Asshole."

 

Fromkin chuckled to himself. He was about to start speaking again, but Sabina continued, lilting her head back and forth with each epithet.

 

"Moron... pighead... idiot... backstabbing, uncultured swindler..."

 

"My, quite a mouth on you, Dr. Bowen" Fromkin said.

 

"Douche-hat!"

 

Fromkin clapped a hand over Sabina's lips, the other gripping the back of her head. He stared into her eyes from inches away. "I remember what I did about that mouth last time. I'll enjoy doing it again." He took his hand away.

 

"Let's add 'smelly-palms,'" Sabina said, spitting. "Speaking of last time, how's your nose?"

 

Fromkin unconsciously scratched the aforementioned proboscis with his finger.

 

"Healed nicely, no thanks to your little martial arts display," Fromkin responded. "Come tomorrow, you're going to wish a broken nose would be all I've done to you." He turned to Emily. "And who are you, my dear?"

 

"Me?" she said, eyes darting around the group. "I'm just a very, very unobservant grad student who hasn't seen anything illegal or been kidnapped by anyone tonight." She put on a big, fake grin.

 

Fromkin smiled. "Very wise of you. But I'm afraid you'll be our guest a while nonetheless." He turned to the men standing behind the captives. "Put them with the others."

 

The looters pushed their bound captives forward. Like Fromkin, they had to duck to enter the shack. Emily went first, followed by the man holding her bound hands behind her. Sabina followed, with her own captor in tow. When she raised her head, she saw a storeroom, dimly lit by battery-powered lights. The interior was hot and stuffy, a space of no more than twenty feet long and fifteen deep, and most of it stacked high with boxes - the artifacts looted from the Aksumite monastery, no doubt.

 

Sabina's attention fell to the two trussed-up figures she had observed earlier. Both now sat propped against a stack of boxes, their legs bound at the knees and ankles. Upon closer inspection, Sabina saw the black woman wore a uniform of the Ministry of Land, Water & Environment - of Eritrea. That was curious enough. But when she got a good look at the other captive, this mystery became utterly meaningless.

 

Sabina stopped dead in her tracks, causing the looter behind her to plow right into her. She fell to her knees at the feet of the captive, and their eyes both widened as they met.

 

"Roxana," Sabina said, her voice a trembling whisper.

 

The other girl sounded the same as she replied, "Sabina!"

 

They held one another's eyes for several tense seconds. Then Sabina turned around to scream at Fromkin, who stood in the doorway and had observed this strange scene.

 

"Fromkin, you bastard!" she said, eyes narrowing to slits. "How did you get my sister?"

 

END PART 1

Ethiopia is a fascinating country with a very unique history. Sadly I just get a glimpse at it in this tale, but this one isn't really about archaeology, as I'm sure you'll be able to guess after that ending.

Happy reading; Part 2 is here: fav.me/db03o2z

This story features Emily Mitchell, an original character created by Golavus in his Sabina tale, Sabina Bowen's Night at the Museum.

-Ed
© 2017 - 2024 EdStorm
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Lady-Distracto's avatar
Why do I feel like Sabina is fated to never actually get any archaeology done? XD