“Yes, sir, but the minister is on the telephone and the director is here for your appointment, and—”
“We mustn’t keep you,” John said, rising to his feet.
“When may I expect to hear from you?” Ashraf asked. His smile indicated that although he might have lost this round, he was looking forward to the next one.
“Tomorrow.”
“Why not tonight? We have no time to waste.”
It was a good point, and John didn’t really have a good answer. “It may take a while to get in touch with some of my sources.”
“Sources,” Ashraf repeated thoughtfully.
The ambiguous, suggestive word hung in the air like a hooked fish. John was smart enough not to elaborate, but I noticed he was beginning to perspire.
“Tonight, then,” he said, rising. “I’ll ring you.”
O ur departure rather resembled the mad dash of freed prisoners. When we emerged from the building there was the limo waiting at the curb, next to a sign that said “No parking under any circumstances.”
Feisal swore and turned as if he were ready to run. John grabbed his arm.
“Your nerves are in frightful shape, Feisal. It’s all right. And if it isn’t all right, there is not a damned thing we can do about it.”
There was only one man in the limo—the driver. Seeing us, he jumped out and opened the back door.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Back to the hotel, I suppose.” Despite his advice to Feisal, John sounded a trifle rattled. “Do you think we can get our rooms back?”
“Yes, yes.” Schmidt whipped out his cell. “I will arrange it. Get in, Vicky.”
The vehicle forced its way into the stream of traffic. After a few fraught moments I said, “I want a drink.”
“I have vodka and Scotch in my suitcase,” Schmidt said.
“And beer.”
“Aber natürlich. But we can wait until we reach the hotel. It is all arranged.”
“Aber natürlich,” Feisal echoed. “How the hell do you do it, Schmidt? Never mind, I don’t really care how, so long as you do it. Alhamdullilah! Much as I hate to admit it, Johnny, you pulled that off rather neatly.”
“He was the one pulling the strings. We are doing precisely what he wanted us to do.”
Feisal gestured at the driver.
“No problem,” John said. “I have a gun pointed at the back of his head.”
The driver didn’t even twitch. Having made his point, John went on, “He kept us off balance every step of the way, and he knew it. I do wish you three could learn to control your gasps and twitches; you might as well have fallen on your knees and confessed.”
“I thought he was going to accuse you,” I said.
“He knew I would deny it, and there was no way he could prove anything. This way he has both bases covered. If I am guilty I may be willing to negotiate, cutting out my confederates and saving him money. If I am innocent, I will cooperate in order to preserve my good name and my freedom. He’s good,” John said grudgingly. “Very good. Did you see how he pounced on my reference to outside sources?”
“That wasn’t up to your usual standard,” I said. “But it didn’t constitute an admission of anything.”
“So we will accept his offer?” Schmidt asked.
“Honestly, you people amaze me,” John said in exasperation. “That wasn’t an offer, that was a threat. He’s got us—Feisal and me, at any rate—over the proverbial barrel. Anybody who knows the details of that extraordinary business, to quote our grandiloquent friend, knows we were in it up to our necks. The only reason we got off scot-free was because we turned our coats and almost got ourselves killed saving the paintings—and because the government didn’t want a scandal. If we can’t retrieve Tut without the theft becoming public knowledge, he’ll make sure we pay for Tetisheri too. So don’t start spending your share of the reward. I doubt we’ll see so much as a piastre. The best we can hope for is that Feisal will keep his job and I will remain a free man.”
“Tsk, tsk,” said Schmidt. “I am surprised at you, John. It is not like you to be so pessimistic. The Herr Director General is also over a barrel. He cannot collect that large sum in so short a time unless he informs his superiors in the government of the situation. That is the last thing he wants to do. He would be the scapegoat, be assured of that. He might take others down with him, but he would be the first to fall.”
“You have a point,” John admitted, looking marginally more cheerful.
The car stopped in front of the hotel and an attendant started unloading our suitcases. Our rooms were ready—natürlich. Strutting, Schmidt led the way to his suite.
“I have a point too,” I said, dropping into a chair. I’d been brooding about it ever since that interview with Ashraf. I would have brought it up before if anybody had let me get a word in.
“Proceed,” said Schmidt, investigating the minibar.
“Didn’t it strike you that there was no either/or in that message? Deliver the money, or…What? You get another chunk of Tut?”
“Don’t say that,” Feisal muttered, flinching.
“Why not?” All of a sudden I was hopping mad. “All this fuss and furor over a damned mummy! He’s a dead man, Feisal, a very, very dead man.”
“A dead king,” Feisal said softly.
“Dead man, dead king, what’s the difference? If that hand had been lopped off a living person, king or commoner, I’d say we spare no effort to get him out alive and in as few pieces as possible. Hell, I’d do the same for a dog or a cat.”
“She is very tender-hearted, our Vicky,” said Schmidt, offering me a beer.
I pushed his hand away. “Shut up, Schmidt, I haven’t finished. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about Tut or any other mummy. I’m not willing to risk my neck or any of your necks, for him—for it.”
The other three exchanged glances. I had no difficulty interpreting them: You know how women are, let her get it out of her system.
“Your moral position is unassailable,” said Schmidt. “But look at it this way, Vicky. No one has been killed or violently attacked. The case has been remarkably free of bloodshed.”
“So far.”
“Does this mean you’re pulling out?” John asked.
“In your dreams,” I said, as I grabbed the beer from Schmidt and took a swig.
I was surprised to see how little time had elapsed; the interview with Khifaya had seemed to last for hours. After we had refreshed ourselves with various beverages, we got to work catching up with our correspondence, verbal and written. It didn’t take me long to get through my messages, since Schmidt, my most faithful (read “persistent”) communicant, was with me. Feisal fired off a few forceful directions in Arabic, presumably to various subordinates, and turned to John, who was brooding over his mobile.
“Anything of interest?” he asked nervously.
“Not with regard to the present situation. However, if I get out of this I may yet have a business to run. Perlmutter wants a look at the Amarna head.”
“Did you give him your number?” I asked.
“No, this call was from Alan. Perlmutter contacted him—the business number, rather. He says he’s already forwarded a photo.”
“You’ve done the lad an injustice,” I said. “He seems to be doing his job. Why don’t you call him back and administer a few pats on the back?”
“He talks too much. I’ll text him.” John’s fingers glided over the keys.
“What Amarna head?” Feisal said.
“That’s no concern of yours or Ashraf’s. I didn’t steal it and I have the papers to prove it.”
“I was just asking,” Feisal said in a hurt voice.
“Hmph,” said John.
“Anything from Jen?” I asked.
“She wants to know where I am and why I haven’t been in touch. I’d better ring her, otherwise she might go haring off to London.” He met my eye, grimaced, and said, “Later. What have you got, Schmi
dt?”
“Like your esteemed mother, Suzi asks where I am. I have waited to consult you before replying.”
“Tell her you’ve gone to New York or Buenos Aires,” Feisal suggested.
“No, no,” John said. “She’s bound to find out the truth sooner or later and we don’t want your credibility damaged. Let’s invent a nice fictitious account of your investigations.”
We all joined in. As I might have expected, Schmidt had long since got over his fit of remorse and was enjoying himself hugely. We shot down several of his more outrageous plot ideas, including one in which John and I had dived into the Nile to save him after some unknown villain pushed him in.
“But it will indicate your innocence,” Schmidt said, pouting.
“It will indicate that you are a bloody liar,” said John. “How about this?”
After a few more suggestions, Schmidt produced something along these lines: “They continue to trust me. So far no suspicious encounters, only normal contacts. Will inform at once of any such, as well as our next destination.”
He refused to add “Love.”
W e decided to let Ashraf dangle awhile longer. “One never knows what may turn up,” said Schmidt brightly.
John gave him a hateful look. “If anything turns up, it is likely to be unpleasant. However, I don’t want him to think he has only to snap his fingers to make me jump.”
“Yes, yes, that is good policy,” said Schmidt. “Since we have a few hours to spend, let us visit the museum. I must pay my compliments to my old friend the director.”
We went out the back entrance of the hotel and walked across the street to the museum entrance. Feisal had talked Schmidt out of pocketing one of his purchases—a toy AK-47 that looked horribly like the real thing. Security at the museum was tight; we had to go through one line to get into the grounds, and another inside the museum.
The director had left for the day. After exchanging compliments with the guard, Schmidt led the way back into the museum proper. The skylights high overhead were crusted with dirt, the exhibit cases smeared and dusty; mammoth statues and huge stone sarcophagi were crammed into too small a space. Despite its admitted inadequacies, the Cairo Museum—or, to give it its proper name, the Egyptian Museum of Cairo—has a fin de siècle charm that makes modern museums look cold and sterile. We stood in the rotunda discussing what we should see.
“Tutankhamon’s treasures?” Schmidt said. “That part of the museum is always very crowded, but perhaps it would stimulate our ambition, nicht wahr?”
Feisal made a rude noise.
“I don’t care, so long as it isn’t a mummy,” I said. “My God, that was gruesome. It really is Tut, isn’t it? There can’t be a mistake?”
“No,” Feisal said flatly.
“The little sarcophagus of Prince Thutmose’s cat?” Schmidt proposed. “You would like that, Vicky. It is very charming.”
John said he couldn’t think of anything that interested him less than a cat’s coffin. He was in a foul mood, twitching every time someone passed close to us, and I was about to propose that we call the sightseeing off and go back to the hotel when a woman’s voice rose high and clear over the medley of languages around us.
“Feisal! Feisal, here I am!”
Feisal spun round. She came trotting toward him, weaving a path through the visitors and waving her arms. Perfect white teeth gleamed in the delicate oval of her face; hair black as the proverbial raven’s wing caressed her cheeks. Feisal stood as inanimate as the nearby statue of Ramses II until she caught hold of his shoulders and kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be here?” she demanded.
“I thought—uh—you said you wouldn’t be at the museum today,” Feisal said feebly.
“And you said you were going to Luxor.” She patted him on the cheek. “Liar! But I forgive you. Will you present me to your friends?”
“But I know you,” Schmidt exclaimed. “We met in New York at the International Congress. You gave an excellent paper on the mummification techniques of the Nineteenth Dynasty.”
“And who could forget Herr Doktor Professor Schmidt?” She brushed aside the hand he offered, and kissed him on both cheeks. “Verzeihen Sie, Herr Doktor, I did not see you at first.”
Schmidt presented us. John was the only peasant who didn’t rate the title of doctor. Our newfound friend was Dr. Saida Qandil, author of a seminal work on…I’ll give you three guesses. She kissed me on both cheeks too. She had to stand on tiptoe. I felt like a big blond ox, the way I always feel around cute little women. I suffered the greeting in a state of numb disbelief. Of all the women in Egypt with whom Feisal could fall in love, it had to be an expert on…
“Have you just come? What would you like to see? I will show you around.”
“Haven’t you got work to do?” Feisal asked.
“No, no, not when friends are here.” She gave him a look that could have melted granite. “The Royal Mummies, perhaps? The new room has been finished, you will be impressed at what has been done. Temperature-controlled cases, proper lighting.”
The dream image I had had of Tutankhamon laid out on a bed in an air-conditioned hotel suite flashed onto my brain. I drew a dark mental curtain over it.
“I’m not really crazy about…mummies,” I said. The word stuck in my throat.
“Be a sport,” John said. He had been kissed on both cheeks too, and he had obviously enjoyed it. “I would like very much to see the technical advances you’ve made in dealing with such remarkable objects.”
Saida attached herself to Feisal and Schmidt. He kept paying her extravagant compliments which made her emit throaty chuckles. John took me firmly by the arm.
“Get hold of yourself,” he hissed.
“But of all the women in the world—”
“Pure coincidence. Mummies, Egypt; Egypt, mummies. The equation is commonplace. If you can’t show interest, at least behave like an adult.”
Thus chastised, I managed to get a grip. Mummies had never bothered me until now; it was morbid self-consciousness and too damned many dreams about poor battered Tut that had changed my attitude.
It wasn’t as bad as I had expected. The room was dimly lit, the cadavers laid out with a certain dignity, with only their faces exposed. One of the effects of the drying process is that the lips pull back, exposing the teeth; a lot of the mummies appeared to be enjoying a hearty laugh—except for the ones who looked as if they were screaming. I was staring down at the noseless face and jolly grin of Thutmose III when Saida edged up to me.
“If it bothers you, don’t feel you must stay,” she said softly.
“It doesn’t bother me at all,” I said, with an attempt at insouciance that didn’t quite come off. “I just don’t understand why people find mummies so fascinating.”
“Don’t you? Imagine looking upon the actual features of Alexander the Great—of Julius Caesar or King Arthur. Would you be able to resist such an opportunity? These are our kings and great ones, figures from a time so distant they have become legendary.” She swept the room with a graceful wave of her arm. “Warriors like Thutmose and Ramses the Great, founders of dynasties. They are all here—except of course for Tutankhamon.”
I had been ready for that name, so I didn’t react. “You seem somewhat deficient in queens,” I remarked.
“Not really. But it is true that there is a gap in the collection which includes many of the most famous royal women—Nefertiti, Hatshepsut, and the wife of Tutankhamon, for example.” Her face took on a dreamy look. “I believe they are there in the cliffs of the West Bank, hidden away, awaiting discovery.”
“I suppose you’d like to be the discoverer.”
“Who would not? But I am not an excavator. I would be called in, perhaps, if human remains were found. But that will not happen soon, there is too much to do to preserve what we already have. We have begun a project to examine all the mummies that are in the museum—there are many,
many stored away here. And others in other locations. I would like to see them all brought to the museum.”
“All?” I echoed.
Schmidt and John were peering down at a particularly grisly looking specimen—some king who was presumed to have died in battle, with his wounds only too well preserved. His name, I feel no shame in confessing, eludes me.
“Yes, all. Especially Tutankhamon.” She extended a dainty forefinger and poked Feisal, who stood nearby. “It is a disgrace that he, the most famous of all our monarchs, the name of all names synonymous with Egypt, is left to rot in that contaminated hole in Luxor. I wish you would speak to Ashraf about it, Feisal.”
“I—uh—saw him today,” Feisal said.
“You did?” She clapped her hands. “I am so glad. It is time you two made it up. Perhaps you can influence him; he only laughs at me. But now—” She consulted her wristwatch. “We have had enough of mummies, haven’t we, Vicky? Let us wash the dust of ages from our throats with an aperitif and decide where we should go for dinner.”
I was all in favor of the first part of the agenda. An hour with Saida would have left me limp even if I had not become overly sensitive to the mention of certain words. She fairly crackled with energy.
Tugged along by her arm through mine, I wondered how much Feisal had told her about his past. Did she know about his part in the theft and subsequent retrieval of Tetisheri’s tomb? Complete trust between lovers is a beautiful thing, but he was a damned fool if he had confessed all. Would she still love him if she knew he had once planned to help a bunch of crooks steal a great treasure? Would she still adore him if she found out he had lost Tut?
The museum was closing. We dragged Schmidt away from the bookstore, where a three-foot-high image of the jackal-headed god Anubis had caught his eye, and joined the crowds being shooed out. A row of tourist buses belched exhaust fumes and hawkers of various worthless items closed in on us. As Saida sent them packing with a few well-chosen words, I thought how easy it would be for a would-be assassin to pick off a victim at close range. Any one of the vendors or casual strollers who brushed past us could be carrying a gun. The same had been true in Berlin, though, and in Rome and London. What was the significance of that?
Laughter of Dead Kings vbm-6 Page 13