As soon as he got his feet on the floor, he pulled out the torch and turned it on.
Trembling, he shone it this way and that, probing every shelf and corner with the light to scare away any djinn. With his free hand he clutched the charm around his neck.
“There’s nothing down here,” Faisal called up to them.
I hope.
“Take a closer look,” the Englishman called down.
“What am I looking for?”
“I don’t know. Anything unusual.”
“What’s unusual in a place like this?”
“Use your head for something other than a home for fleas!” Moustafa bellowed.
Faisal made a crude gesture in Moustafa’s direction, then made it with his other hand, then put down the torch and made it with both hands.
He grabbed the torch and glanced around nervously.
“I didn’t mean you, djinn,” he whispered.
Faisal shone the electric torch around the tomb again, taking a good look this time. The walls were cut with a series of shelves where the mummies had slept. He didn’t need the Englishman to have told him this. He could tell from the smell and from a few shreds of old wrappings still lying in the dust.
Summoning his courage, he approached each of the shelves, shining the light along them. He didn’t see any of the old things the Englishman was interested in.
“There’s nothing down here.”
“Keep looking,” the Englishman called. His voice sounded very distant.
“I think I’ve earned two moving pictures for this trip,” Faisal grumbled.
Then something caught his eye. In the far corner lay a crumpled up packet of cigarettes. It looked new.
“Did the people who built this tomb smoke cigarettes?” Faisal called up.
“Of course not, you blockhead!” Moustafa shouted.
“Then someone from our times was smoking down here.”
He picked up the packet and smoothed it out. The brand wasn’t one he recognized. Not that he could read the words written on it, but all the brands had their own pictures or colors and he hadn’t seen this one before. He also found the butt of a cigarette someone had crushed out on the ground. It lay next to a little heap of mummy wrappings.
Faisal wrinkled his nose. To pick up the cigarette he’d have to almost touch the old bandages. Yuck.
“Maybe three moving pictures,” he grumbled, reaching down to pinch the cigarette butt between two fingernails.
That’s when the pile of mummy wrappings moved.
A black scorpion rushed out, straight for his hand.
Faisal screamed and leaped back, but the cord was still taut around his waist and he couldn’t get far enough away.
“Pull me up! Pull me up!”
“How many times do I have to tell you there’s no such thing as djinn?” the Englishman shouted.
“Not a djinni, a scorpion!” Faisal shouted, leaping onto his right foot as the scorpion tried to sting the left one.
The scorpion rushed at his other foot, bare and vulnerable. Faisal leaped onto his other foot.
He cried out again and the cord bit into his waist as it pulled him into the air. Because he had backed up, he swung forward, right over the scorpion. Faisal yelped and pulled up his legs. He rose, spinning, the bright circle of daylight whirling above him, and then fell hard onto the floor of the tomb.
The cord had snapped. The flashlight rolled away, turning off.
Faisal had fallen onto his back, the wind knocked out of him. He groaned and rolled onto his belly …
… and saw the glistening black scorpion racing for his face.
“Help!” he screamed, scrambling backwards.
Everything went black, and then bright again very quickly. Faisal jerked as something large fell from the ceiling and thumped on the ground.
Ahmed!
“Where is … ah!” Ahmed jumped back as he spotted the scorpion.
The creature paused, then scuttled for Faisal again.
Ahmed tore off his sandal and smacked it down on the scorpion, crushing it with a loud pop. Scorpion juice squirted out in a little puddle.
“Let’s get out of here before any more decide to come at us,” Ahmed said. “Get on my shoulders.”
“Wait.” Faisal grabbed the cigarette and the pack, put them in his pocket, and clambered onto Ahmed’s back as quickly as he had gone up that palm tree in Cairo.
He stood on Ahmed’s shoulders and was just able to reach the lip of the hole. He pulled himself up into the daylight and scrambled away.
“We have to get him out!” Faisal cried. Everyone gathered around.
“I can get myself out, little brother. Hey, you forgot this.”
The torch came flying out of the hole.
Faisal heard the sound of running below, and briefly Ahmed’s hands grasped the lip of the hole, but a piece of rock snapped away and he disappeared again.
Faisal stood close to the hole, trembling. “Hurry, before another scorpion comes.”
He heard Ahmed take another running jump. His hands grasped the edge of the hole once more.
This time the rock held, and he pulled himself up with a grunt. He crawled away from the hole and stood, breathing hard. Faisal gave him a hug. Ahmed was the best!
“Are you two all right?” the Englishman asked.
Faisal and Ahmed both nodded. Ahmed pointed at the Englishman and turned to Faisal.
“He was going to jump in too, but I beat him too it.”
“He’s kind of clumsy,” Faisal said.
“You’re welcome,” the Englishman said. “What’s this about someone smoking down there?”
Faisal pulled the cigarette butt and packet out of his pocket. The Englishman studied them a moment.
“Interesting,” he said in a quiet voice. “These are Italian cigarettes.”
“Odd to find those here,” Claud said. “I doubt Professor Harrell or any of his men were smoking them.”
“No. They aren’t readily available in Cairo. I suppose some Italian merchants carry them, but I can’t recall seeing them at a regular tobacconist’s.”
“Neither do I,” Claud said. “They’d be common enough in Cyrenaica, though.”
Mr. Wall and Claud looked at each other as if that was important. Faisal didn’t care. He put on his sandals and walked away from the hole before any scorpions or djinn crawled out.
Ahmed followed.
“Are you all right, little brother?”
Faisal put on a brave face. “I’ve been through worse. I even saw a head without a body once.”
“Eeew.”
“The Englishman is always finding trouble and I have to get him out of it.”
“I help Claud a lot too, even during the war. I got to drive an armored car and everything. He never let me see any fighting, though.”
“Stay with us and you will,” Faisal grumbled, kicking a dusty old bit of pottery. “So why do Europeans like all this old stuff?”
“Claud is from New Zealand. That’s not in Europe.”
“He’s European, though.”
“Yes, pretty much. They all like the old things. They say that studying the past helps them understand how things are now.”
“Why not just study what’s going on now?”
Ahmed laughed. “Nothing is ever that simple with Europeans. They want to know everything, not just what’s going on now but what went on before. They want to know what’s at the bottom of the sea and behind the stars. That’s why they go everywhere.”
“They go to the stars?” Faisal said, his jaw dropping.
“Not yet, but I bet they will.”
Faisal looked back at the two Europeans and Moustafa talking next to the hole. Those people were crazy enough to try anything. Moustafa too. Moustafa wanted to be European and often acted more European than the Europeans.
“Going to the stars would be a lot more fun than looking at some dusty tomb with scorpions in it,” he said.
&n
bsp; “I kind of like it. You get to see things in a different way. Like this.”
Ahmed picked up a big piece of broken pottery. It had a long handle on a curved side that ended in a narrow opening. The rest of the pot was gone.
“This is Roman,” Ahmed said. “They came after the pharaohs but before the Arabs. It’s called an amphora and the Romans used it to hold wine. The Romans drank a lot of wine and if you find one of these, you know the Romans were living here.”
“How can you tell all that from a broken jug?” Faisal asked.
“Claud taught me. He likes looking around for old things. He’s got some books on it and lets me look at them.”
“You can read?”
“Sure. I went to Koranic school back in the Fayoum for a few years. Once I started learning to speak English, Claud taught me how to read English. I’m not too good, though. I need to practice more.”
“I’d spend my time practicing with the motorcar, not books.”
Ahmed laughed. “Yeah, that’s lots more fun. But you know,” Ahmed looked around, suddenly serious, “it’s good for Egyptians to know about these things. Why should Europeans be the only ones who know about Egyptian history? Maybe one day when I’m older I’ll do some digs of my own.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Augustus strolled with the others across the sandy waste, wondering how many tombs lay hidden beneath their feet. Tombs were rarely found in isolation. They tended to come in vast necropoli, like those at Giza and Saqqara. Claud had told him that in the bluffs overlooking the depression in which the oasis sat, there were rows of tombs cut into the rock. There was archaeological potential to this remote place, something that had attracted Ainsley Fielding, Carl Riding, and the other plotters—mostly still unknown—at the Geographical Association of Egypt.
They headed for the temple of Alexander, a jumble of ruins standing only waist high. It looked like it had once been a compact stone rectangle with little exterior decoration. Augustus figured that it wouldn’t have taken too many sandstorms like they had endured to scour off any paint and bas-reliefs. Perhaps the ancients hadn’t even bothered putting any embellishments on the outside.
He walked in a wide line with Moustafa to one side and Claud to the other, scanning the ground for any other evidence of unusual activity. Other than a large number of potsherds and a few minor artifacts such as beads and sculpture fragments, they saw nothing of note.
“We’ve attracted attention,” Claud said, indicating the edge of the palm grove half a mile away. A few local men stood there, watching.
“We do stand out,” Augustus said.
“Mark my word, the locals know our every move, and you can rest assured those Bedouin you hired will have told everyone they met everything they know about you.”
Augustus turned back to the boys, who were lagging behind.
“Stay close,” he called to them.
Faisal ran up to him, holding a piece of an amphora.
“The Romans were drinking wine here,” he said.
“They most certainly were. I didn’t know you were interested in archaeology.”
“Egyptians should know about Egyptian history,” he said in a serious voice.
Augustus glanced at Ahmed, then back at Faisal.
“That’s quite correct.”
“Do you think the Romans were smoking those cigarettes?” Faisal asked.
“Um, no. The Romans didn’t smoke. They preferred wine.”
Faisal nodded. “That’s true. They were bad Muslims.”
“You might even say they weren’t Muslims at all. Since you have a new-found interest in the past, do you know what this building is?”
“It’s not another tomb, is it?” Faisal said, clearly worried.
“No. It’s a temple.”
“That’s worse! Sorcerers go to temples to make magic.”
“No they don’t, Faisal.”
“Yes they do,” Ahmed chimed in, finally catching up. “We had a temple near our village. The local sorcerer went there all the time. Once a woman went there to pray to the old gods for a son. All her sons had died as babies. She got a son, all right, but it was born all twisted and lame. God punished her for acting like a pagan.”
“It’s not uncommon, boss,” Moustafa said. “It happens with ignorant villagers in the Soudan too.”
“I see. Well, no one try casting any spells and no one will give birth to twisted babies.”
“All right, Englishman,” Faisal said in all seriousness.
While they could have entered the crumbled building from any side, Augustus led them to the old entrance. As he suspected, he saw none of the decoration that temple exteriors usually had, only blank rock polished to a fine sheen by the desert wind. They entered, Faisal drawing close to him and clutching his charm.
Rubble lay everywhere, and they had to step over or on large blocks of stone. Portions of the wall still stood in many places, and the sand had obviously been recently cleared away from the interior, no doubt by the late Professor Harrell. The sand, which had lain undisturbed for centuries, had helped preserve the interior decoration. Bas-reliefs showed lines of gods, and at the far end of the temple, a pharaoh stood offering libations to them. Next to the ruler was a cartouche.
Moustafa took in a sharp breath.
“The cartouche of Alexander the Great!” he cried. “It was in one of the books Herr Schäfer lent me.”
“What’s a cartouche?” Faisal asked.
“See this oval with the pictures inside?” Augustus said.
“Those pictures are writing,” Faisal said. Augustus remembered explaining that to him once before. He hadn’t thought the boy had paid any attention.
“Yes they are, and when they are in an oval like this they are the name of a king or queen, in this case Alexander the Great.”
“So he drank wine here?”
The Englishman chuckled. “Perhaps he did. But Alexander was Macedonian, not Roman.”
“Yes,” Faisal nodded.
“You know what Macedonians were?”
“Um, like Romans but different.”
“True as far as it goes. They are more like Greeks.”
“Oh, like the tailors and the people who own the grocery stores in the nice parts of town?”
“Yes, but warriors. Alexander the Great was one of the greatest warriors in history.”
They studied the artwork for a time. Moustafa began to decipher the inscriptions, writing them down in a small notebook he always carried with him. The boys got bored and began to play tag around the ruins. Claud looked at them and grinned.
“He loves having Faisal here,” he told Augustus. “I suspect he misses having other children around, and he still is half a child. Sometimes I leave him down here to play with the other boys but he’s an outsider and they make sure he knows it. These servant boys deserve a bit of fun.”
“Faisal isn’t really my servant. He’s a local street urchin with a talent for making himself useful.”
“Then you should hire him full time.”
“Oh, I don’t think—”
“And what are you gentleman doing?” a female voice said behind them.
They spun around to see Jocelyn Montjoy standing at the temple entrance, wearing her trousers, army boots, and pith helmet.
She glanced at Augustus’ hand, which had instinctively gone to his pocket to grab his automatic. He let go of his gun and pulled his hand out. He hoped she hadn’t realized what he had in there.
“Is everything all right?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Um, yes. Perfectly. We’ve come to see the sights.”
“This is where the Romans came to drink wine,” Faisal said, holding up the amphora fragment. “They had to come to a temple because they weren’t allowed to drink wine in the mosque.”
“That’s a very interesting interpretation of history, young man,” Jocelyn said.
“So what brings you here?” Moustafa asked. Augustus heard a note of
suspicion and accusation creep into the Nubian’s voice.
“I heard you had driven through Biwati and decided to see how you were getting on. The local people pointed me in the right direction. I followed on Bucephalus.”
“Bucephalus?” Augustus asked.
“My trusty donkey.”
“You named your donkey after Alexander the Great’s warhorse?”
“He is a noble animal and deserves a noble name,” she said with a smile.
Augustus laughed. How charming this woman was!
She approached. “And how are you feeling, Augustus? May I call you Augustus?”
“Only if I can call you Jocelyn,” he said with a bow.
“I wouldn’t dream of having you call me anything else.”
Augustus flushed. Compared with Zehra, Jocelyn was not a beauty, but she was kind and interesting and available.
And something about those trousers … who would have thought trousers could be fetching on a woman?
“How are things in Biwati?” Claud asked.
“Quite festive. There’s a zikr at the Senussi mosque. There must be a large crowd inside. You can hear them chanting the ninety-nine names of God across the entire village. I’ve been invited to a zikr among the women tonight. They don’t get theirs until after they feed the men, of course. All the ladies are busy with cooking at the moment, so I might as well spend time with interesting men.”
That was music to Augustus’s ears.
“Are there any newcomers in the village?” Claud asked.
“Not that I am aware, but as you know I am much more acquainted with the women than the men. Have you seen any caravans from your mountaintop?”
“No, but I can’t keep track of all the individual travelers and small groups. Those come and go all the time.”
Jocelyn laughed. “The war is over, dear boy. Not every religious rite is the forefront of an invasion.”
Augustus had his doubts about that.
Claud turned to Augustus.
“I had best get back up the mountain. I can drop you off at your camp.”
“I’ll drive us there!” Faisal said, rushing up.
“I haven’t forgotten my promise,” Claud said.
“Oh dear,” Jocelyn said, eyeing Faisal. “I do believe I’ll ride Bucephalus.”
The Case of the Golden Greeks Page 18