by Aaron Elkins
A short, heavy, olive-skinned man of fifty in a brown, Sadat-style suit and an embroidered, open-collared shirt rose from the chair and came toward them on little feet, lumbering and mincing at the same time, like a pygmy hippopotamus.
He extended a hand with rings on three fingers to Gideon. "How do you do, Mr. Smith? I am Ali Hassan." His voice was an odd, not-unfriendly growl, his accent a hodgepodge of Cairo and Marseilles, and maybe a touch of Belgrade too. Mr. Ali Hassan had been around.
"How do you do?" Gideon said. It hadn't been lost on him that "Ali Hassan" was the Arabic equivalent of "John Smith." Was it a couple of fictional characters who were greeting each other so politely? Maybe yes, maybe no. There were, after all, plenty of people really named John Smith, so why not an occasional Ali Hassan?
"The blindfold didn't inconvenience you? No?"
Hassan peered up at him, directly into his face, with unsettlingly bright, piggy eyes, "You understand. When it's someone I don't know, I have to take my little precautions. You can't be too careful these days. It's terrible, what goes on."
Gideon managed a tolerant smile. "I understand completely." Only with an effort did he resist a near-overwhelming impulse to make sure his beard was still on straight.
"So, come, sit down, Mr. Smith."
Gideon perched uncomfortably on the cot—the only other place to sit—while Hassan resumed his seat in the chair. He was a sleek, squat man, not quite obese but certainly overfed, with a flat, broad face and an ongoing, muttering chuckle from deep in the back of his throat. Jalal was motioned over and sent downstairs with a few brusque words.
Hassan smiled hospitably at Gideon. "I have sent the boy down to bring us some—"
Not coffee, Gideon prayed.
"—coffee," said Hassan. The rumbling chuckle was heard again. "Tell me, Mr. Smith, where are you staying? The Winter Palace?"
"The Hilton," Gideon said, thinking it sounded more like John Smith's kind of place. He regretted it immediately. A call to the Hilton would tell Hassan that there was no John Smith registered there.
On the other hand, so would a call to the Winter Palace or anyplace else. He was going to have to be more careful, take more time before speaking. What, he thought suddenly, was he going to do if Hassan asked for a business card?
"Next time," Hassan said, "try the Winter Palace; the old wing, not the new. Tell Mr. Shebl I personally sent you. Tell me, Mr. Smith, why haven't I heard of you before?"
This one Gideon was ready for. "This is my first Egyptian venture," he said smoothly. "Until now I've been active in the South American trade. Mostly Peruvian. Moche and Chimu artifacts, mainly."
"Oh, yes? Well, that's not an area I know much about."
A good thing too, Gideon thought.
Hassan folded his arms. "Now, what can I do for you?"
"I'm interested in art from the Amarna Period. Statuary, in particular. Jalal seemed to think you might help me."
"For yourself or is there a client involved? It helps me to know."
"A client," Gideon said carefully. "He's looking for something, not too large, for a place in his library."
"Ah, yes."
"I'm not at liberty to tell you his name."
That was good, Gideon thought. It sounded like something John Smith would say, and it established that secrets were acceptable between them.
"No, no, no, no, of course not," Hassan said quickly. "Sometimes it's best not to know these things. Well, here is our coffee."
Jalal had returned with two tiny cups and set them on the table. Then he had gone to stand off to one side, just at the edge of Gideon's vision, while Hassan sipped and Gideon pretended to. They made stilted, ceremonial chitchat for a few minutes—about the weather, of all things. An unchallenging topic in a land where 363 out of every 365 days were the same: hot, dry, and utterly cloudless. Hassan remarked that the evening breeze was pleasant. Gideon agreed that it was quite pleasant.
In truth, they weren't getting much benefit from the evening breeze. Hassan's precautions against Gideon's knowing where they were had extended to his having had the junk on the roof stacked in such a way that it formed a screen around the edges. Gideon could hear sounds of village life—the creak of a wooden cartwheel, the complaint of a cranky camel, the continuing shouts of children, the amplified call of a muezzin—but all he saw was mattresses on end and bundles of tall, dried reeds.
Jalal cleared away the cups and was sent back to stand just out of Gideon's sight again. Hassan rubbed his hands briskly together. Time for business.
"Well, I think I have some things to show you, Mr. Smith. A few things that have come my way lately."
"Fine." Gideon became a little easier. If Hassan trusted him enough to lay out his goods, then an awkward demand for a business card wasn't likely to be forthcoming.
Hassan took a thick packet of cards from his breast pocket, separated a few, and offered them. Gideon came close to asking what they were before remembering that men like Ali Hassan didn't make a practice of publicly demonstrating their wares like the less discriminating el-Hamids. They carried Polaroids, not baskets of artifacts.
There were about a dozen, poorly lit and badly composed, and Gideon longed to rip through them in search of a yellow jasper head. Instead, he thumbed through them with agonizing thoroughness, peering at them in the fading daylight the way John Smith probably would have, one at a time, with pauses and nods and grunts, thoughtfully laying each one out on the table next to the one before, like a hand of solitaire. First were several miniature, whole statuettes of varying quality; then a few fragmentary heads—chins and lips, mostly—made of what appeared to be quartz and obsidian; then a statuette body of a seated woman made of coarser material, probably sandstone. And then two small, finely made faience figurines of animals: a goose and a fish.
And that was it. No yellow jasper head.
He put down the last picture. "These are quite nice, but I was hoping you might be able to find me—"
He paused, frowning, and turned back to the twelve photos spread on the table in two rows. He picked up the third one from the right in the nearest row. The sandstone figure. The headless body.
It was a female dressed in a simply depicted gown and seated on a boxlike support with hieroglyphic symbols carved into its side, her hands resting palms-down on her thighs. It was Amarna style, all right, early Amarna, just beginning to move away from the stiff, conventionalized pose of former times to the more relaxed, natural posture that would be a hallmark of Akhenaten's reign. Between the shoulders was a square-carved recess to accept the tang that would have projected from the underside of the separate head and neck.
A composite statue.
The hairs on the back of his neck stirred. Was it possible that he had gotten to what he was looking for by the back way? He had come looking for the head that went with the body. Had he found the body that went with the head? He felt his heart pick up its beat.
"I don't know, this might be fairly interesting," he said indifferently, flipping it back onto the table. "What can you tell me about—"
"Har, har, har," said Hassan.
Gideon looked up sharply. "I beg your pardon?"
"Har, har, har," said Hassan. He was sitting with his hands over his belly, the left wrist clasped in the right hand. His feet were flat on the floor and his shoulders were shaking. As far as Gideon could tell, he was genuinely amused.
Gideon waited.
Hassan used a handkerchief to wipe tears from the corner of his eyes. "I thought that one would get your interest. Oh, yes." The handkerchief was wadded up and stuffed away somewhere and with it went Hassan's sudden burst of mirth. "Let's not mince any more words. It's what you came for, isn't it? The statuette that was taken from the Horizon site across the river four years ago. I'm afraid I'm not at liberty," he added with heavy-handed sarcasm, "to tell you how it came to me."
He looked keenly at Gideon, awaiting a reaction.
Gideon felt himself floundering. Th
ings had begun to spiral out of his control. No, apparently they'd always been out of his control; he just hadn't known it.
He spread his hands. "Why would I be particularly interested in that?"
Hassan leaned forward, a thick hand on each knee. "Please. Suddenly, from nowhere, you come to me with a story of a client interested in Amarna statues? And this happens to be, by coincidence, one week after a certain missing Amarna head at Horizon House is found again... and 'lost' again? You expect me to believe this?"
Gideon did his best to manifest wounded dignity. The pelt adhering to his upper lip didn't make it any easier. "I assure you, I don't know what—"
"Please, Mr. Smith, don't insult my intelligence. You know everything there is to know about the head. Do I look like a child?"
"I—all right, yes, you're right, I do have it," Gideon said, figuring that it had to be easier to put over a sham that Hassan believed in than one that he didn't. "I have it and I'm willing to make you a more-than-reasonable offer for the body." What, he wondered nervously, was reasonable?
Hassan sat back with a sigh, shaking his head sadly. "Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith. Really."
Now what? The safest bet seemed to be to wait him out.
It didn't take long. "Mr. Smith," Hassan said, his tone revealing sad disillusionment at Gideon's prevarication, "I happen to know that you don't have the head."
"I assure you—"
"Mr. Smith, I know. Now, I don't know what your plans are for getting it and I don't want to know. It's your business, so why should it concern me? I have the body, you want the body. I'm a businessman. If we can come to an agreement, it's yours. Very simple."
Gideon's mind was buzzing. If Hassan knew—truly knew— that he didn't have the head, then didn't that mean that he knew who did? And wasn't that the information this goofy charade had been designed to ferret out? Whoever had the head had surely killed Clifford Haddon. Or if not, if it had already changed owners, then he or she could certainly direct the police to whoever had.
Gideon smiled indulgently. "Tell me, Mr. Hassan, just who do you think does have it?"
Hassan wouldn't play along. "No games, please," he said tartly. "Here is my position. I'll be frank with you."
But being frank obviously took some forethought (not that Gideon was in any position to look down his nose over a little equivocation). Hassan got briskly to his feet, pulled a pack of Marlboros from an inside pocket, offered one to Gideon, who shook his head, and lit up. He walked the few steps that the cleared space allowed him to, handed the cigarette to Jalal after a single long draw, and turned to face Gideon, his hands behind his back.
"A certain person, an old business acquaintance, offered me $20,000 for it. I accepted. Now, I don't like to break an agreement once it's made, I'm not that kind of man, but the truth is, I still haven't seen the money. If you can double it, it's yours. Forty thousand dollars. I can give you two days."
Well, at last Gideon knew what a reasonable price was: something under $40,000. This was bargaining time, and in Egypt that meant that when you were selling you started out at roughly three times what you thought you might come away with in the end.
He uttered an airy laugh. "Mr. Hassan, all I've seen is a photo graph. I don't know that it's what you say it is, and even if it is, how do I know you have it?"
Hassan grinned mockingly back at him. "You're not interested? Well, well, maybe I should just put those pictures back in my pocket and—"
"Assuming that it's what you say, I might be able to go as high as $10,000," Gideon said.
"Har, har, har," said Hassan.
"Maybe twelve, if it's in particularly good condition."
Hassan's grin turned sly, not an appealing sight. He came back and sat down again, his heavy thighs flattening under the pressure. "You know what I think? I think you do have, what should we call it, the final element, the last part." He raised his eyebrows and tapped Gideon conspiratorially on the knee. "Yes? Am I right?"
"Maybe I do, maybe I don't," Gideon said. What the hell were they talking about now?
"Oh, I think you do," Hassan said. The muttering chuckle had started up again, like an idling engine. "So this little item"—his stubby, beringed forefinger came down squarely on the photograph, one, two, three times—"is going to be worth a whole lot of money to you. What's a measly $40,000? You're lucky I'm not asking five times as much. Don't be so stingy, Mr. Smith."
"All right," said Gideon, "$40,000 it is."
Well, why not? Hassan was right: why be stingy? The money didn't exist anyway. The important thing now was to set up another meeting with Hassan, one that Sergeant Gabra would be in on too. Hassan knew who had the head; he might not be willing to tell Gideon, but he would tell Gabra.
"Well, then, isn't that more like it?" Hassan said, reaching for Gideon's hand, grasping it, pumping it up and down. "This way everybody's happy, right? How will you pay?"
"I—" He caught himself. He'd been about to say he'd pay in cash, but would John Smith really have $40,000 with him? This was no time to blow things with a careless blunder. Besides, did he want Hassan and the Six-Gun Kid thinking he might have all that money on him the next time they met? No, cash was out, and so was a personal check; John Smith wouldn't be stupid enough to use one for contraband merchandise, and Hassan wouldn't be stupid enough to accept it.
Beyond that, Gideon was in muddy waters. He barely knew the difference between a money order and a certified check. In the Oliver household it was Julie who handled high finance.
"What would you suggest?" he said.
Hassan plucked at his lower lip. "Well, I don't think a foreign draft would be a very good idea, and a wire transfer would complicate everything, wouldn't you say?"
"Yes, that's very true."
"Your bank has a branch in Cairo?"
"Of course."
"Good. Then why not a treasurer's check?"
"Fine, good idea."
"That way," Hassan said, "you won't have to use your real name."
Gideon swallowed. "Mr. Hassan—"
The dealer held up his hand. "I know, I know. You assure me. Listen, Mr. Smith, or Mr. Jones, or Mr. Wilson, I don't know what your name is, and I don't care. I don't ask questions, and I don't answer them. There's only one thing I care about: can you raise $40,000 in the next two days?"
"I can raise it," Gideon said. "I'll have it for you by tomorrow afternoon. Where shall I meet you?"
Hassan sat back, still pulling on his lip. "Can you find the el-Fishawy café again?"
"Where I was tonight? Yes."
"Good. Six o'clock? You'll have the money?"
"Naturally. You'll have the statuette?"
"Naturally. He stood to shake hands a final time, rumbling contentedly, "Until tomorrow, my dear Mr. John Smith."
Chapter Twenty-Three
"Not a chance," Julie said, squinting up at him from the umbrellaed folding table where she sat sorting potsherds under the flat, dazzling sky of the Western Valley. "I'm going with you."
"I'm just going back to the House to get Red Land, Black Land and a couple of other things before I go on camera. I'll be back by noon." He smiled and put a finger on the bridge of her nose. "Your nose crinkles when you squint, did anybody ever tell you that? It's that sexy little pyramidalis nasi of yours that does it."
She shook her head, unmoved by these blandishments. "You're not going anywhere by yourself, pal. You're on probation." She reached under the table, slung her bag over her shoulder, and stood up. "All right, let's go."
Gideon laughed. It had been this way since he'd returned to Horizon House the previous night after his meeting with Ali Hassan. He had come back to their room after a blindfolded ride to Luxor to find her standing there with Phil, pale with worry and close to tears. Phil, also concerned about him, had just used the telephone downstairs to call police headquarters, hoping that Gabra, with traditional Egyptian disdain for normal working hours, might still be at his desk. He was, and Phil had been about to le
ave for his office when Gideon appeared.
Instead, all three of them had taken a taxi to the police station, Julie asserting her determination not to give them a chance to get into any more trouble on their own. She had pressed herself close to Gideon's side during the ten-minute drive, mute and fragile, and he had kept his arm around her, brimming with contrition and with love. "I'm fine," he murmured into her ear again and again. "I'm fine, Julie."
By the time they pulled up at the station she was herself again.
"One suggestion," she said as they walked up the steps.
Gideon looked at her.
"You might do better in there without the beard."
"The—?" He snatched it off his face.
Gabra had been in a bad mood to begin with, and he had been stonily unamused by their story, but eventually Phil's enthusiasm—he was back to thinking it had been a jolly adventure—had swayed him, and he had begun to see the good side. A simple plan quickly evolved. Undercover law enforcement people in sufficiently disreputable-looking galabiyas would begin drifting into the café at 5 p.m., an hour before the meeting with Ali Hassan, and station themselves at several tables. Gabra would be in a car a block away. As soon as Gideon came in and sat down with Hassan, the police would quietly appear at the table and it would be over before it began. No complicated sting operation, no money changing hands, nothing dangerous at all. Even Julie's mind had been put at ease.
But not so much that she had let him get out of her sight since. At first he'd grumbled about it, but the truth was that he loved it when she fussed over him and she knew it, so there wasn't much point in grumbling.
They had breakfasted at Horizon House with the dig crew at 5 a.m., then joined them on the public ferry to the west bank, where they'd been picked up by the two Horizon vans stationed there and taken the eight desolate miles to WV-29- He had spent a peaceful, lovely two hours helping her with the sorting until TJ had come up and offered him a tour of the dig.