The Spoils of Egypt

by Michael Pearce

‘And then again, of course, one asks why that would be?’

  ‘She was doing something that she ought not to be.’ Paul frowned. ‘Only that doesn’t seem likely, does it? She seems to take it for granted that God is on her side.’

  ‘And you’re the chap who’s hindering her from getting on with God’s investigations.’

  ‘So are you. She doesn’t want you asking questions.’

  ‘When we were in Cairo she was glad I was going to be asking questions.’

  ‘Ah, but she’s been in Egypt a bit longer now. Maybe she’s abandoned hope. Of Egypt. Of you, old chap.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘She thinks she can do better herself.’

  ‘I don’t blame her.’

  ‘But if she thinks that,’ said Paul, ‘why cry for help? Because she did cry for help, you know when we pulled her out.’

  ‘A wobble. A moment’s self-doubt. Rare, for Miss Skinner. Probably unique. Knocked her off balance. Just for a moment.’

  ‘And then she came on balance again and didn’t want anything to do with us. Could handle it all herself.’

  ‘But what,’ said Owen, ‘is it?’

  ‘Ah, well there you have me. It all comes from being a stupid aide-de-camp and not the Mamur Zapt. You think she feels she’s on to something?’

  ‘On to something?’ said Owen.

  ***

  ‘Connected?’ said Mahmoud. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’

  ‘Your man yesterday said he thought Abu was on to something and that’s why he was killed.’

  ‘Everyone in Egypt thinks his neighbour is on to something. And then if he gets killed, that gets taken as proof.’

  ‘He thought Abu might have been wandering around—’

  ‘Looking for treasure. Yes, I know. That’s another great myth. Everybody knows that the Der el Bahari villagers have been robbers for centuries, so it stands to reason that in that time they must have amassed a huge treasure. Of course, no one asks why if that’s the case the present inhabitants spend their time selling relics for a living.’

  ‘If everyone thinks so,’ said Owen, ‘Abu may have thought so.’

  ‘And wandered round at night on the off-chance he’d find it?’

  ‘Why else would he be wandering around?’

  ‘Theft.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Equipment. Cable, that sort of thing. He was leaving in a day or two. Something small that he could smuggle.’

  ‘So you don’t think he was on to something?’

  ‘No. Nor the other one. I’m treating them both as accidents. And I’m trying to find evidence of negligence.’

  ‘Are you finding it?’

  ‘No,’ Mahmoud admitted. He looked up at the great rim of cliff. ‘It’s like that,’ he said. ‘A wall. A wall of silence. They won’t say anything.’

  ‘Your chap yesterday—’

  ‘He had a grudge. He was prepared to talk. But he had nothing to say.’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘Tomas’s men? Wouldn’t say a word. A bit frightened, I think. The place, the people. Me. They’re only here for a few days and then they’ll be off. Keep your head down. Nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Weren’t the two who were killed Tomas’s men?’

  ‘Another crew. Didn’t know them. They say.’

  ‘And the villagers?’

  ‘Nothing to do with them. Outsiders. Their own fault.’

  ‘Can’t you get anywhere on the negligence angle? Aren’t they worried it might happen to them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Too well bribed?’

  Mahmoud looked at him.

  ‘If I could only prove that—!’

  ***

  ‘And how long, Captain Owen, are you proposing to stay?’ asked Miss Skinner sweetly, as they sat at supper.

  ‘I think I may return tomorrow.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  Miss Skinner put down her fork.

  ‘Then allow me to say, Captain Owen, how greatly I appreciate your solicitude. It was, perhaps, unnecessary, but that was my own fault, and I am truly grateful that you should go to such lengths. I shall convey that formally to the Government.’

  Owen bowed acknowledgement.

  ‘You and Mr Trevelyan.’

  ‘Most kind of you, Miss Skinner,’ said Paul, concentrating on his supper. ‘I, of course, will not be returning with Captain Owen.’

  ‘No?’

  Miss Skinner picked up her fork.

  ‘It’s not necessary, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure. However, I believe in keeping to arrangements.’

  ‘A true aide-de-camp,’ said Miss Skinner, attempting to spear a gherkin.

  ‘I believe in keeping to arrangements, too,’ said Parker. ‘Only I like to know what they are. How much longer are you going to be here?’ he said to Miss Skinner.

  ‘I’m in no hurry,’ said Miss Skinner, stabbing the gherkin successfully and raising it to her mouth.

  ‘Oh, aren’t you? Well, that’s a pity. Because I am and you’re getting in my way.’

  ‘There’s nothing to stop you getting on with what you’re doing,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘I’m merely observing.’

  ‘You’re poking your nose in!’ said Parker. ‘That’s what you’re doing.’

  Miss Skinner merely smiled.

  ‘How long do I have to put up with this?’ Parker demanded. He turned to Mahmoud. ‘Come on, you’re the expert. How long do I have to put up with it? Do I have to put up with it at all? It’s not in the licence.’

  ‘A lot of things are not in the licence,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘Well, perhaps they should be. Perhaps there should be something about visitors. Because visitors take time and time costs money. The group I work for have put up a lot of money for this dig, their only money. We’ve got rights! We’re bringing a lot of money into this country.’

  ‘Any money you’re bringing in, you’re taking out,’ said Mahmoud, and left the table.

  ***

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Parker, coming up behind Mahmoud.

  Mahmoud was bent over examining the support stays in the colonnade. He did not reply.

  ‘You won’t find anything wrong,’ said Parker. ‘There or anywhere else. We know what we’re doing.’

  Mahmoud took out a notebook and wrote something down.

  Parker gave the post a shake.

  ‘It’s firm,’ he said. ‘Firm as a rock. You’d better make sure that’s what you’re writing down.’

  Mahmoud put the notebook away and went on to the next post. Parker watched him in baffled anger for a moment and then went across to Owen.

  ‘Can’t you get him off my back?’ he said.

  ‘Mr el Zaki’s investigations are nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Oh, aren’t they? I thought the British ran everything in Egypt?’

  ‘Not the law. We don’t interfere with the judicial process.’

  ‘Don’t you? Well, it’s the only bloody thing you don’t interfere with. And if you don’t, plenty of other people do. Money talks, doesn’t it? And in Egypt it talks in a bloody shout. I’ve got the money, or at least the people who back me have, and I know what to do!’

  ‘You’re all right, then, aren’t you?’ said Owen and walked over to Mahmoud.

  Mahmoud took hold of one of the supports and tried to shake it. It held firm. Mahmoud, however, took out his notebook and wrote something down.

  Parker had followed Owen over.

  ‘You won’t be able to pin anything on me,’ he said to Mahmoud. ‘And do you know why? Because there isn’t anything to pin.’

  Mahmoud ignored him.

  ‘But I’ll tell you what,’ said Parker, ‘sure as hell, I’ll pin something
on you!’

  ***

  Owen decided to take one last look at the place where Miss Skinner had been attacked, or might have been attacked. He asked Mahmoud to come with him and the Egyptian, who seemed to have finished his inquiries for the moment, readily agreed.

  ‘There’s not much more I can do here,’ he said. ‘In fact I might as well come back with you tomorrow. I can write the reports in Cairo as well as I can here.’

  ‘You’ve got to that stage, have you?’

  Mahmoud shrugged.

  ‘Mainly because there’s not much in the other stages. They won’t talk. The post-mortem shows nothing out of the ordinary—frankly, the post-mortem practices up here leave much to be desired, but it’s too late, really, to ship them to Cairo. The work practices, well, I’ve checked them, as you know, but work practices in Der el Bahari are a bit different from what they are elsewhere and, again, there is nothing really too much out of line.’

  ‘No question of negligence, then?’

  ‘There’s the question of negligence, there’s plenty of questions, but no real answer. And if the doubts are only at the question level, they won’t bother to do anything.’

  ‘He gets away with it?’

  Mahmoud shrugged. ‘He gets away with it.’

  For Mahmoud, two principles came into opposition. On the one hand he was passionately committed to bringing wrongdoers to justice, believing that it didn’t happen often enough in Egypt. On the other, a stickler for the law and proper process—because he felt there wasn’t enough of that in Egypt either—he felt compelled to abide by requirements of proper proof.

  Owen thought he was rather glad to get away for the moment from the inner wrestle.

  They looked again at the corridor and again at the gap in the wall and then dropped down into the chamber into which Miss Skinner had fallen.

  This time Owen had taken the precaution of equipping himself with a powerful lamp and so could see much better.

  The chamber was about six feet high and ran back for some twenty or thirty feet. The roof was jet black, which at first he thought was paint but then, scraping it with a knife, found that it was a deposit formed, he guessed, by the exhalations from the bodies beneath.

  The mummies ran back in rows to the other end of the chamber. They were piled five or six deep, except that in one place there was a large gap.

  Mahmoud picked his way between the rows towards it and then stood looking at it for some time. Then he came back and heaved himself up out of the chamber and re-examined the gap in the wall.

  Clearly puzzled, he dropped down again and this time went straight to the other end of the chamber.

  Owen brought the light up to him. Mahmoud took it and shone it against the wall. There was what appeared to be a doorway but filled in. Mahmoud disregarded it.

  ‘False door,’ he said, and then went over the whole of the rear wall shining the lamp and feeling with his hands. Some mummies were in the way. He moved them and gave a grunt of satisfaction. He gave Owen the lamp and fell on his knees.

  He was wrestling with what appeared to be part of the wall, but as he eased it forward Owen saw it to be a large separate stone. As it came out it revealed a gap behind.

  Mahmoud took the lamp and shone it through. Then he pushed it through the gap and crawled after it. After a little hesitation Owen followed.

  He found he was in another chamber similar to the first, although perhaps rather longer. It was full of mummies, piled high to the ceiling. Again there was that strange, sooty black.

  There was a gap running up the middle of this chamber between the mummies. As he walked along it, his feet kept crunching on something and, looking down, he saw the floor was covered with broken bones and decayed mummy cloth.

  Mahmoud touched some of the bones with his foot.

  ‘Crocodiles,’ he said.

  The room was full of mummified crocodiles, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. They lay in regular layers, head to tail and tail to head.

  The bottom layer consisted of large crocodiles, side by side, each one carefully mummied and wrapped up in cloths. Smaller ones were laid between the tails, filling up the hollows; and then, crammed into all the interstices, were dozens upon dozens of young crocodiles.

  Each one was about a foot long and stretched out between two slips of palm-leaf stem, bound to its sides like splints. It was then wrapped from foot to head in a strip of cloth, wound round, starting at the tail.

  The layer was carefully covered with palm leaves and then another layer, exactly similar to the previous one, built on top of it. And so on till the chamber was piled high to the ceiling.

  Except that again there was that curious gap.

  This time Mahmoud inspected it curiously and then went straight to the rear wall.

  ‘We could go on,’ he said to Owen. ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘There’ll be another exit. Like the other one.’

  ‘Who—?’

  Mahmoud laughed.

  ‘When?’ he said. ‘It will be the Der el Baharis, though whether this lot or their fathers or their great-great-grandfathers—’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Owen, ‘but why? Isn’t it just mummies? Or were they looking for treasure?’

  ‘Treasure!’ said Mahmoud dismissively. ‘This is their treasure. Mummies. Haven’t you seen those mummies they sell outside the Continental? Cats, hawks, crocodiles? This is where they come from. Or places like this.’

  ‘They break in and—?’

  ‘Stock up for the next season.’

  Mahmoud held the lamp high and shone it round. Everywhere there were mummies. And now Owen saw, among the crocodiles, mummies which could only be of humans.

  ‘So do you want to go on?’ Mahmoud asked again.

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Owen. He had the feeling, especially now that he had seen the human mummies, that he was obtruding on someone’s privacy.

  He said as much to Mahmoud while they were retracing their steps.

  Mahmoud was silent for a little while and then said:

  ‘That is why archæology makes me uneasy. I see it adds to knowledge, to history. But it also—’

  ‘Desecrates?’ suggested Owen.

  As they left, Mahmoud looked carefully again at the place where Miss Skinner had fallen. Then they were on out into the sunlight.

  In the courtyard Tomas’s men were removing the last parts of the façade.

  ‘But this isn’t archæology,’ said Mahmoud. ‘This is plunder.’

  ***

  But what, Owen asked himself, was Miss Skinner doing looking at crocodiles? Especially mummified ones?

  The Der el Bahari villagers might reasonably wish to augment their stock. Miss Skinner, though, surely, was interested in larger game. She was clearly looking for something; and she was not looking in general, she was looking for something particular. Something which she seemed to know would be there.

  It had not been on the list. Or if it had, it had not been on one that Tomas was showing her. Yet the fact that it might have been on the list suggested that it was an object of that sort.

  Had Miss Skinner reason to suppose that Parker had found something important, perhaps valuable, that he was anxious to conceal? If it was not on the list, was it not there deliberately? Was Parker going to try to smuggle it out of the country without going through the proper procedures?

  And was Miss Skinner anxious to stop him, to catch him publicly in the act? Not so much to expose a malefactor as to expose a system, an inadequacy of procedure—let’s say it, of people?

  It would look good, wouldn’t it: some major find—another Cow of Hathor, perhaps—on the brink of being smuggled out of Egypt, stopped in the nick of time by the efforts of a lone, fearless American woman!

  And meanwhil
e what were the authorities doing? Where, all this time, was the Mamur Zapt, newly given responsibility in this area? Ah, where?

  He had actually been at Der el Bahari when it all happened. Been there and seen nothing. It had been left to the Lone American Woman to find out what was going on. Had it not been—

  Owen decided he didn’t like the sound of this at all. It wouldn’t read well in the papers. Think of all the fuss there had been over the Cow!

  Politically, it wouldn’t be that great, either. The rest of the world would pounce on this illustration of English ineptitude and misgovernment, the Nationalists would seize upon it as an example of British connivance in the exploitation of the Egyptian people—

  It got worse.

  And what could he do about it? He didn’t know where the damned thing was, if there was a thing. Or even what it was, unlike Miss Skinner. He could order a search, but what chance was there of finding anything in a warren of a place like this with people like the Der el Bahari villagers who had centuries of practice at robbing and hiding? It would be down a shaft somewhere and he would never get near it.

  The one consolation was that Miss Skinner didn’t seem to have found it yet, either.

  But he was going away tomorrow and she was staying here and perhaps she would find it the moment he was gone. That would look good, too! The dummo was actually there but left just at the crucial moment!

  Ought he to stay?

  ***

  The last two carts were filling up. Tomas’s men were bringing the remaining trophies from distant parts of the temple, some of them already boxed up against the journey. Miss Skinner stood by the carts with eagle eye. Tomas, going past, gave a little grimace which only Owen caught.

  From inside the temple came a shout and then there was a little commotion. Two of Tomas’s men came out supporting a third. He was holding his hand and blood was streaming down.

  Owen recognized him. It was the dissident one, the man Mahmoud had talked to, the relative of the dead Abu.

  Tomas started across towards him.

  ‘What has happened?’ he said.

  One of the diggers came out of the temple.

  ‘An accident,’ he said.

  Tomas sent one of the men for the first-aid kit and bent over the man’s hand.

  ‘How did it happen, Idris?’ he asked.