I felt that old familiar sense of dread. In the parlance of my instructors at the Army War College, our plan, such as it was, had been “overtaken by events.” I could only be thankful that the king had not assaulted her on the spot.
Lavon and Naomi whispered briefly amongst themselves as they considered our new situation.
“They must bathe her also,” she finally announced.
Apparently, Herod had a fetish for cleanliness.
“Where?” I asked. “Will they take her back to the tower?”
She considered this briefly and then said no.
Sharon’s preparation would require two to three hours. Given the king’s newfound impatience, the attendants would not want to delay matters further by escorting her all the way back to the opposite end of the palace. Instead, they’d prepare her in the baths under the women’s dormitory, under heavy guard.
I started to ask whether we’d be able to intercept her party, but Naomi was already thinking several steps ahead.
“Follow me,” she ordered.
Since it was still almost pitch-black, we crept slowly down the tunnel until I could make out a dim light about thirty yards away. We paused. She and Lavon whispered again, and then she motioned us forward once more.
At that point, the tunnel broadened out and intersected what appeared to be a regularly used corridor, complete with ventilation shafts leading to the lawn above. These admitted a faint hint of the morning sunlight, so we could finally see exactly where we were going.
Naomi stepped into the corridor and looked both ways. Seeing and hearing no one, she directed Lavon to cross over to the other side and to back himself into a small indentation, a relic from a section of tunnel that had been bricked up years before.
After he was securely ensconced in his hiding place, she stripped completely and tossed me her undergarments, which I then passed back to Bryson. Then, she draped her robe back over her olive skin in a loose and provocative manner.
I glanced across the corridor to Lavon and quickly got the picture. He held a leather sap — an item he picked up at the bordello while I squatted in that basket — and pointed to my leg. I nodded and unstrapped the gladius, motioning for Bryson and Markowitz to take a few steps farther back.
We waited quietly until we heard footsteps approaching. When they had come within about twenty feet of our position, Naomi tugged on her robe to reveal more of her ample cleavage. Then she staggered into the corridor.
The girl could have won an Oscar.
She gasped as she saw the soldiers and immediately yanked up her robe to cover her breasts. She blinked both eyes twice, signaling to us how many opponents we faced. Then, she began to ease herself backwards, as if she wanted to make a run for the baths but didn’t dare to turn her back on these strange men.
The first of the guards took three quick steps forward. Apparently, he was unable to resist an opportunity to ravish a stray lamb before returning her to the fold. The other man, a bit more senior, rushed up and barked an order — no doubt telling the kid that they had a job to do and had better be getting on with it.
Those were the last words he spoke. Lavon swung the leather sap and caught him squarely on the back of the head. The soldier, who wore no helmet, crumpled without a word.
Before his young comrade could react, I held the point of my sword to his throat, while Bryson, per my instructions, managed to jam my last ampoule of Sufentanil into a vein in his foot.
He collapsed without a peep. More importantly, neither man left a drop of blood.
I lowered my gladius and turned to face Sharon, who stood, frozen, as if her mind had not yet comprehended what her eyes were telling her.
When it did, she rushed forward, threw her arms around me, and squeezed as if she were holding on for dear life.
I held her as long as I thought prudent, though we really did need to move on.
And I wasn’t the only one to share that thought.
“We’re not yet out of danger,” Lavon insisted.
I gently pulled away. I continued to clasp Sharon’s shoulders with my hands, although by then, she scarcely seemed to notice.
Instead, her initial shock at encountering us in such an unexpected spot had been replaced with an odd, almost beatific, radiance that made me wonder whether she had been drugged.
“I have seen him,” she said.
“Seen wh — ”
I cut myself short as I realized the obvious.
“I have seen him,” she repeated, more insistently this time.
I glanced over to Lavon, hoping he’d have an answer to this unexpected complication.
I took a half-step sideways as he shook her gently and spoke.
“Sharon, we’re not home yet. Until we get there, we are all in great peril. Do you want to go back to Herod?”
She didn’t respond for a few seconds, but the mention of the king’s name snapped her out of her reverie.
“I’ll never go back to that monster,” she said.
I took her hand and led her forward. “Then let’s do what we must to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
She didn’t say anything, so after a brief moment, I halted and repeated Lavon’s question.
“Are you with us, Sharon?” I asked.
Finally, to our great relief, she answered as though she meant it.
***
“Keep ‘em busy,” is a proven technique I learned in the Army to divert upset soldiers from troublesome thoughts, but as I turned around to look for a task I could assign Sharon, I only saw a visibly agitated Naomi.
By now, she had put her clothes back on. She whispered, insistently, to Lavon while she gestured for Markowitz and Bryson to pull the two unconscious guards back out of the tunnel through which we had come and to lay them in the corridor.
They looked at me in confusion, but I directed them to comply with her wishes.
Once they had done so, Lavon instructed Bryson to help him carry one of guards while Markowitz and I toted the other.
“Don’t let their clothing drag the ground,” he ordered.
We carried both men about a hundred feet until we arrived at a storage closet. From the dust patterns around the door, I could see that it received regular, but infrequent, use.
I glanced over to Naomi and smiled, nodding my approval at both her choice of disposal site and the remarkable stroke of good fortune that had brought us together. She smiled back, though her worried expression didn’t entirely go away.
The others stood out of our way as Lavon and I carried the first man inside and laid him on a stack of what appeared to be scrap lumber. We came back out and repeated the drill with the second man.
This time, though, Naomi blocked our exit.
I knew immediately what she wanted. Without saying a word, I unwrapped the cloth belt around my outer robe and signaled for Lavon to do the same.
The archaeologist wasn’t slow on the uptake. He started to protest, but he could see that her eyes had hardened.
“No blood,” was her only comment.
“I don’t like it either,” I said.
And I truly didn’t; but we couldn’t take the chance that one of these people would wake up unexpectedly. Some things just had to be done.
We each wound a cloth strip around our man’s neck in the manner of a tourniquet. I counted off several minutes and then checked each soldier for pulse or breathing. Sensing none, I signaled for Lavon to move on.
Once we had rejoined the others, Naomi explained that leaving evidence that Herod could trace to the tunnel could have devastating consequences for the girls left behind, though personally, I think her motivations ran deeper.
After a lifetime of degradation and servitude, she had her first chance to strike back. I only hoped she wouldn’t learn to enjoy it too much.