An Assassin Tries To Kill Lawrence of Arabia

Chapter 52:

Dora heard the clock chime once more. She looked up to see it was 2:00 A.M. She couldn't go to sleep yet. She had to finish the letter:

“Edward, for heaven's sake, is that you?” came a familiar voice.

At the opening to the chamber shone the face of Colonel Lawrence, part in shadow, part in the sun, highlighting his long, pointed nose and his high cheekbones. A lock of his wavy blond hair peeked out from underneath his headdress. His clear blue eyes sparkled with mirth. “Edward, what are you doing down there? Practicing some Near Eastern burial ritual?”

“Lawrence!” I shouted. “I wondered whether I'd see you again in this life.”

“We've been wasting time looking for you,” the Colonel declared, “ever since one of the men saw you wandering away from our ranks yesterday. He went after you, but you vanished. What on earth could you have had in mind?”

Two Bedouins tied a rope around a pillar near the opening and shinnied down to the bottom of the burial chamber. They gave me a drink from their skins. I grasped onto the rope and climbed up.

“Hamid says he called you. You didn't answer,” Lawrence gave me a crust of unleavened bread. “He went back and got Abdul. They both chased you about the city. You ran away. About dusk they came back and reported to me. I couldn't credit it. I sent the night patrol to hunt for you. When they couldn't find you, I ordered the whole troop to come search for you this morning. Here we are,” Lawrence volunteered with a sweep of his arm.

“Lawrence, it couldn't have been Abdul and Hamid. It had to be . . . “ I pulled Lawrence aside and spoke in a low a whisper. “Mohamed and Osama --- he's the thief I saw about camp --- were after me. They were down there in the burial chamber,” I pointed toward the tomb, “burning scrolls that they pulled out of a crevice in the wall. They said they were working for some prince. I --- “

Lawrence threw back his head and laughed. “Really, Lieutenant, has the sun gotten to your brain? It's bad enough with the men imagining mummies, ghosts, and goblins. Now you come up with ancient burial chambers, geniis, and buried princes with hordes of gold.” He slapped me on the back as if it were a joke and sauntered off.

I 'd heard the wastrels talk and had watched them closely. Mohamed had administered a parting kick to my buttocks, which I could still feel. I was lucky to be alive, and here Lawrence was making light of it. I was expected to mount the camel that Hamid offered me. I followed along in stunned silence.

“Edward!” Lawrence called from the back of his camel as our dromedaries carefully picked their way around the stone monuments. “You should have become a crime novelist like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or an adventure writer like Haggard. When we're gathered around the fire one night, huddling to keep warm, I'll call on you to entertain us.”

I'd no choice but to follow Lawrence and his army wherever they were going. Exactly where, I hadn't the presence of mind to wonder. Only when the camel next to me spat rather nastily, another spat back at him, and some of the spittle landed on me was I alerted to look around. We were ascending. I realized that we were beyond the city gates and had been so for many minutes.

Lawrence turned to one of the Bedouins and said something rapidly in Arabic. I'd learned enough to survive. But I was rather slow, and I couldn't translate dialogue spoken at that speed.

Suddenly the Bedouins dismounted. They let their camels pasture on stubble growing nearby. Some went to fill their water skins at a springs pouring between the rocks. Others took the opportunity to chew on the unleavened bread or nuts they carried with them.

Not knowing what else to do, I tied my camel up --- just in time. Lawrence was off up the mountain slope. Bedouins scrambled up behind him, leaving only me to gape after them. I wished I had a walking stick with me. Some of the older Bedouins had brought theirs. I had to struggle along as best I could.

Lawrence didn't seem to be troubled by such problems. The Bedouins, like goats, could climb anything, the more rugged the better. They'd grown up in the desert. They'd skipped up and down steps like this as boys.

Only when we'd climbed a mile or more did Lawrence disappear within a great gray stone facade. It must have been one hundred and fifty feet high and many feet long. How had anyone built something like this so far above the city? Daring to look behind me at the way we'd come, I judged it to be at least a thousand feet above the town.

“What on earth is this?” I exclaimed.

“El Deir,” one Bedouin explained.

“What!”

“The Co-ve-nant,” another Bedouin tried to pronounce the word carefully, repeating something that Lawrence had taught him. “High place.”

I craned my neck to see to the very top of the building. I could make out what looked like a giant Greek urn. Carved in it was that face of an ugly woman with bulging eyes and snake-like hair writhing around her head. I thought, What is Medusa doing here? She gaped straight down at me. That must be part of the effect the sculptor had been trying to create.

I thought, Maybe the ancients were used to such heights. They didn't fear them. Nowadays, at least among white men, what a place of foreboding!

All somebody had to do was take a fraction of a wrong step in any direction. Down he would plummet, falling thousands of feet to his death, crushed by rock long before he reached the bottom of the slope.

From behind the big urn with the Medusa head, someone peeked out. His cloak left only a black and seemingly empty space where the face should be. A cold hand clutched my stomach and closed in a tight fist. Was that Mohamed? Was that Osama? It had to be one or the other.

Lawrence appeared at the entrance to the magnificent building. “What are you up to, Lieutenant?” He started down the pathway with the grace and swiftness of a mountain lion.

From behind the Medusa something flashed in the sun and edged outward. It glinted and glowed, pointed downward at an angle. Its barrel was aimed toward Lawrence. It kept moving ever so slightly as he strode toward me all unawares.

“Lawrence, watch out!” I jabbed my finger in the air in the direction of the Medusa. “Get down!”

Lawrence fell and rolled almost at the same moment that the shot went off. I fired back while dashing toward him, forgetting my own safety on the rocks. I hunkered down as close to the ground as possible. At the same time several Bedouins converged on El Orens. They tackled him in their anxiousness to be the first to aid him.

“Don't worry about me,” Lawrence held his arm and winced, “somebody misfired, that's all.” He took a cloth and bandaged his own arm. One of the Bedouins helped the shereef.

“Lawrence!” I crouched next to him and whispered into his ear. “What did I tell you? They're after you. I heard them say that they wanted to kill both you and me. They've been hired as assassins by some Prince Ali.”

The Bedouins took off in the direction of the shot. Staircases around the building led straight up. I followed the Arabs in their race up to the very top. The staircase dead ended at the face of the mountain. The peak rose high above me. Nearer to me, carved into that solid rock face, stood a flat platform a little over the height of my chest. Above that was a domed-shaped kind of roof that was charred and blackened. It was just like the ancient altar in the town of Petra. This must also be a sacrificial altar high in the mountains surrounding the city. Worshipers once brought animals here to sacrifice and take the omens.

A bullet came whizzing straight for me. I ducked. Someone had been waiting to catch me alone, or perhaps they'd mistaken me for Lawrence. I fired in the same direction.

“There he is!” A group of Bedouins appeared from around the corner. They swarmed about and escorted me down the steps back to where Lawrence was standing. They were chattering a mile a minute like parakeets. I could make out little of what they were saying.

The Colonel held up his hands for silence. “So, Lieutenant, it was you all along.”

“Me all along --- what?” I asked.

He thumped me in the chest. “You were the one shooting. I told the men that's what I saw. They were to come and get you before you hurt somebody else.”

“I fired back at the gunman up there if that's what you mean. I did it while you fell to the ground,” I defended myself against I didn't know what charge. “You must have seen that.”

“Yes, but they tell me there's no one up there,” he glanced over his shoulder at the building and the urn with the Medusa design.

“But --- but what about the bullet that hit you?”

He put his hand on my arm. “You have a happy trigger finger.”

“You mean --- you mean you think I fired that bullet as well?”

“I don't hold it against you,” he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and led me to a vantage point overlooking the area. “Hunting down the Turks takes its toll on everybody after awhile.”

“Colonel, surely you can't imagine that --- “

“Hush!”
“I was coming back down the stairs and wondering where to turn . . . “

Lawrence nodded, half paying attention to what I was saying, “You're always getting lost, aren't you? It seems to be an affliction of yours lately. We all need some rest. After this coming battle, perhaps we can get it. The Turks are massing on Petra. We have to defend it.”

“Oh?”

Again he smiled. “Lieutenant, look down below.”

I stared down where he was pointing.

“This is the best vantage point around Petra. That's why I came up here. I want to study the layout of the land. The best defense of the city is from where we entered it. You can see the Siq from here.”

So he was dismissing not only me but the threat on his life!

“Remember that camera of yours, Lieutenant?”

I gaped at him. This was hardly the time to bring up my camera!

“Take a photo of the city below us.”

“Colonel?”

“That's an order, Lieutenant.”

I groped for the equipment in my pack. As I got out my folding camera, he leaned closer to me as if peering through the lens. “Lieutenant, even if that were true that assassins were hunting me down, I was brought here to help the Arabs achieve their independence from the Turks. God didn't intend for me to come here in vain. If I were you, I'd think the same way.”

He was back to his Messiah philosophy! “Lawrence, the Messiah himself was assassinated, if you want to call it that. He was crucified. They have something much worse in mind for me and you.”

He guffawed as if I'd made a joke, patted me on the back, and strutted off to talk to somebody else. He walked as if his arm had not been bandaged, as if a little assassination attempt now and then meant nothing to Lawrence of Arabia.