“I am Francisco. Where would you like to go?” the cabbie asked in Spanish.
“Anywhere close by with clothes and food,” Zahra replied, slipping into her third language in the last twelve hours. The feat earned an impressed look from her father.
“That has always amazed me.”
“What has?” Zahra asked.
“The way you can just flip the switch and speak an entirely different language on command with no difficulty.”
Zahra shrugged. “Languages have always been easy for me.”
“Must be a Godsend when you’re in the field.”
“Definitely,” she agreed, yawning.
The four-plus hours of flight time in the slow-moving, cramped aircraft was hitting her hard. The small amount of sleep she had gotten after the night she had endured at the museum was killing her. Her head was pounding behind her sunglasses, and she needed coffee in the worst way. She wasn’t jetlagged per se, but she sure as hell felt like it.
“So…” George said, clearing his throat, “is this how you always travel?”
“No, usually the museum takes care of me.”
“Then why trust a person like Cork?”
Zahra glanced at him. “She’s around when I need to move quickly and stay off the books.”
“Off the books?”
Zahra nodded. “The museum isn’t interested in everything I find. But there are other parties out there that are.”
George’s face dropped. “You work with black-market antiquities dealers?”
Zahra snorted out a laugh. “God, no, Dad! Geez… But I do know a few private collectors who will buy almost anything I bring back with me.”
“And then sell it on the black market!”
It was a gray area that Zahra lived in — that even fewer people knew she partook in. “What they do with it is their own business. I get paid and turn that money into jaunts like this.” She motioned around her. “Believe it or not, archaeology doesn’t pay all that well, Dad.”
George let out a tired laugh. “Yeah, tell me about it. Speaking of which, do you have enough to finance all this?”
She tried to hide her smile. “I have a little bit saved, yes.”
“What is ‘a little bit?’”
Zahra found something else to look at and faced away from her prying parent. “Let’s just say that we won’t have any problems any time soon.”
Zahra had put together quite the savings account. It wasn’t enough to retire on at her age, but she was well-off enough to never have to worry about going broke. This trip, however, felt like it could push that statement to the test. There was no way this was going to be a fast, in-and-out kind of mission. Even now, based on their current flight plan, they still had another stop between Barcelona and Cairo. Cork was going to need to get some shuteye down the road too. Having a dreary pilot wouldn’t benefit anyone.
Twelve minutes into their taxi ride, the Kanes unloaded outside of a strip mall. There found everything from a small café to a laundromat to an electronics store to a supply outlet. The cabbie had done his job perfectly and brought them to a smorgasbord of useful places.
They climbed out. “Hey, Francisco,” Zahra said, leaning down toward the driver’s side window.
“Please,” he said with a shit-eating grin, switching to adequate English, “call me, Frankie.”
Zahra leaned in close, never once losing contact with the man’s eyes. “Okay, Frankie, I’ll make you a deal.” She tossed her hair for good measure. “Wait for us here, and I’ll give you an extra fifty bucks. I promise we won’t be long.”
Frankie’s grin turned into a beaming smile. “For you, senorita, I’ll do it for forty-five.”
Zahra stood and gave the cabbie a playful wink. She turned and gave the cabbie a chance to ogle her ass before she was met with the disapproving gaze of her father. She had never seen the man look so sick, even aboard the Cessna.
“What was all that about?” he asked, following Zahra to the café.
“That, what?” she asked. George crossed his arms and gave her the most dad look ever. It worked. Zahra melted under his laser-like gaze. “It was nothing, just a successful negotiation to retain our driver for the duration of our stay.”
George rolled his eyes. “You were flirting with him for a favor.”
“Of which, I’m paying him for. It’s a win-win for both of us. The fewer people that know we’re here, the better off we’ll be. It would be foolish to think that Khaliq doesn’t have eyes and ears everywhere.”
Her father’s serious demeanor cracked. He agreed with his daughter. George opened the café’s front door and glanced back at the cabbie, who was still eyeing his little girl’s butt. “I still don’t like it…”
Zahra snickered. “I never said you had to li—” She was hit with a blast of perfuming espresso, and she instantly forgot everything she was about to say.
It was exactly what she needed. Her father too. George looked terrible and ready for a nap. There’d be plenty of time to sleep on the Cessna if he could calm himself down enough to do so. Zahra could sleep through anything. It was a gift of hers, and it paid off when she was out in the wilds.
“Two cortados, please.” Zahra hadn’t enjoyed a traditionally made cortado in years. The woman behind the register motioned to Zahra’s bruised face, asking who did that to her. Zahra waved the lady off. “I’m fine, believe me, I don’t look nearly as bad as he does.” Zahra raised her bruised knuckles. That got a wide smile out of the stranger.
The barista gave Zahra a basket of delicious-looking churro bites, on the house, to go along with their espresso drinks. Zahra felt like she was in heaven, and based on the way her father stared longingly at the churros, so did he.
The Kanes sat quietly and enjoyed themselves. It had been a long time since the two of them had done something like this together. Not the defying death part, but the traveling the world part. Zahra and George used to go on thrill-seeking escapades all the time between them moving to England and Zahra joining the army. Baahir had come along because he was forced to do so. Zahra never saw it as a chore, like her brother. She truly loved the adventurous lifestyle.
The next time someone spoke up, it was George, and he asked his daughter something unexpected. “Why do you work for the museum?” Zahra opened her mouth to answer but didn’t. Her father took her silence as permission to press her. “You’re obviously smitten with this part of the job, and I can tell you’re good at it, based on the things you’ve told me.”
Zahra still didn’t have an answer as to why, but it was becoming more apparent that she might have to do without the museum. It was, more than likely, going to be closed for the foreseeable future. Zahra would need to go about things a little differently now. She’d need to look out for herself more than ever, with nothing to go home to besides her friends and family.
Neither roster was all that deep, either. She could count the people she loved and trusted on one hand.
Let’s see, she thought, staring out the front windows of the café, there’s Dad and Dina, and I guess Cork. Baahir doesn’t really count since he lives in Egypt. Who else? Hmmm…
There was no one else. Zahra could disappear forever, and there would only be two or three people in all of England that would personally miss her. It was becoming more and more clear that she really could live on the move, if she wanted, and not feel guilty about it. The sound of George’s espresso cup clicking down on the table brought Zahra out of her internal evaluation.
She stood. “Ready?”
He nodded and wiped the churro dust from his lips with his napkin.
“Thank you!” Zahra waved to the barista. “Everything was wonderful.”