Serpent of Moses by Don Hoesel

in the aisle seat, barely noticed. It wasn’t until the one sitting next to her—a businessman who had given up trying to establish a rapport within an hour of their flight leaving Caracas—indicated a desire to slip by her that she realized they’d landed. Somewhere over the ocean the lunacy of what she was doing had struck her and she’d spent much of the flight bouncing between passion and calculation. She’d come to the conclusion that she preferred the former state, even as she understood that the best decisions generally came while in the grip of the latter.
    She wasn’t sure which one had brought her from South America to Europe, but she suspected it was some combination of the two—a need to act tempered by solid reasoning behind those acts. When she and Jack had renewed their relationship, when he’d brought her on as a linguist in the treasure hunt that had almost killed them both, it was the passion that carried her through that time. Even then, though, there were hints of the burgeoning maturity that now caused her to consider things with an eye focused past the immediate. And that, to her, was the problem as far as Jack was concerned; he lived in the immediate. Despite what they had gone through together, that was something that had not changed. And the reason she was in London, pulling her carryon from the overhead bin, was she was no longer content with the status quo.
    Once in the terminal, she took a few moments to get her bearings before heading for the car-rental area. Fifteen minutes later, she was traveling east on the M4. It had been years since her last visit to London, so as she drove deeper into the city she viewed everything through the eyes of a tourist, filling the time between Heathrow and Apsley House by taking in the feel of the bustling city.
    When she’d deplaned, she’d intended to check into her hotel before heading to the museum, but somewhere between baggage claim and sliding the key into the rental’s ignition, the order of those events had changed.
    She’d never met Sturdivant in person. In fact, the day before had been the first time she’d ever spoken with him. Before that, all of her knowledge had come from secondhand accounts of others’ dealings with him, namely Jack and Romero—whose professions had them running in similar circles. She’d found him pleasant enough in a stuffy sort of way, and as he was the curator for several of London’s museums, she wouldn’t have expected anything else.
    The M4 transitioned to the A4, and before long Hyde Park opened up on her left. While Sturdivant executed his role for a variety of museums, he spent most of his time at Apsley House, and within minutes Esperanza was bringing the car to a stop in front of the sixteenth-century structure. On most other occasions she would have enjoyed studying the building as well as the extensive collection of artwork and cultural icons it contained, but the purpose of her visit excluded such casual enjoyment.
    Once inside, she located the administrative wing in short order, and Sturdivant’s office not long after that. The director was inside, an open file on his desk and a phone to his ear. Esperanza could not get a feel for the height of the man sitting behind the large desk, though she suspected he was quite tall—the height accentuated by a rail-thin physique. He looked up when Esperanza appeared in the doorway, but she might as well have been invisible for the way his eyes seemed to pass right through her. Then they were back on the desk, moving over the open file.
    Esperanza took the lack of acknowledgment as tacit approval to enter and she did just that, stepping in and claiming a seat across from his desk. When he looked up again, she engaged her best smile, the one she knew was manipulative but that seldom failed to get her what she wanted. The problem, which she sensed immediately, was that Milo Sturdivant had no use for her charms. Still, the fact that she had invaded his personal