He needed to get a human body. More importantly, he needed to get the one whose current owner was jogging along the beach. The sun had not set yet, but this stretch of the beach was neither public nor a private paradise. The sloping shore, rocky outcrops and messy sand made it an unattractive prospect for resort developers. There were still a lot of beachfront properties in Key West that waited for the assault by bulldozers. The emptiness of the shore made the path stomped into the sand by many sneaker-shod feet rushing to nowhere into a prison yard. A fairly scenic prison yard, he reflected, if one took into account the turquoise shimmer of the shallows but a place without hope nevertheless. The mood of the place was the same as his last memory of the funerary enclosure of Meni’s collapsed tomb, back in Abdju. Ironic…or did the definition of irony change after six thousand years?
It took him a long time to be in the right place, at the right time. It would have been shorter, if he’d been able to get to his target before it was loaded on to the cargo plane. But someone attempted to decipher another symbol on the left-hand gold cylinder, and he lost substance. It took him more than twenty years to lengthen his shadow to a degree where his movement across the landscape was no longer subject to sun’s or moon’s tyranny. Mind you, shadows on a moonless night or during a day when the sky was overcast, made people suspicious. Still, considering what was at stake, it was well worth the risk. By the time he regained a modicum of solid albeit shadowy presence, the man who sealed his fate in a diplomatic pouch was already en route to America.
The shrill cry of a sea bird shattered the delicate crystalline atmosphere of an early evening. The formative stage of any scape, any mood required calm and silence. His very existence depended on it. The jogger had to keep moving along his meaningless path. He could not become distracted by the noise of scavengers. His feet had just settled into a familiar rhythm. It had to be maintained until the body reached the point of no return.
He started the countdown. It was longer than the usual ten-point ultimatum. He wanted to savor the man’s approach; wanted to see his solid figure grow in size until the feet crossed the invisible line in the dirty sand.
“Gotcha,” he whispered, when the man ran straight into what he believed was a shadow. Naturally, he never bothered to look around to see whether there was anything on the shore that could actually cast a shadow.
He pressed his right index finger against the man’s neck, and that was all there was to it. The copper sheath on his finger delivered the poison straight into the jugular. The ancient ritual called for a shen. The poison rings in ancient Egypt were always filled with deadly substance, but that would have defeated his purpose. Rings were also more difficult to calibrate as to the amount of poison needed. The finger-sheath was much easier to fill.
