by Will Adams
That at least explained what Knox had been doing in Sharm: killing time until the dust settled, dreaming of treasure on the seafloor. But it wasn’t much help when it came to tracking him down. The last sheet in the file, however, was a different matter. It was a list of all Knox’s known friends and associates, and it gave their home addresses, too.
NUR GREETED MOHAMMED AT THE DOOR. She looked haggard, which meant Layla had had a bad day. “You look beautiful,” he said, kissing her cheek and handing her a small bouquet of tired blooms.
“How can you afford these?” she protested tearfully.
“They’re a gift,” he said gently. “Sharif wanted you to have them.” He looked past her, down the hallway, to Layla’s room. “Is she awake?”
Nur nodded. “But tired.”
“I won’t be long.” He knocked gently on Layla’s door, opened it, and walked in. His daughter smiled to see him. He knelt beside her bed, reached into his pocket, and produced a black queen he’d carved and varnished. He liked to whittle. In the rare lulls on-site, he would scour the bins for ends of wood that he could attack with his linoleum knife. It was good therapy. When you could do nothing for your child’s health, you could at least do something for her happiness.
Her eyes went wide with wonder and delight. She took the varnished mahogany, licked it with the very tip of her tongue, clutched it tight against her chest, like a doll. For some reason, Layla had turned against real dolls since learning of her disease, making do with these carved figures instead. He couldn’t even tempt her with sweets any more. It was as though her life had become too serious for childish distractions. “You’ll read for me tonight?” she asked.
“Of course.”
She snuggled down, seemingly content. Now that Ibrahim had promised funding, he had called everyone he could think of and begged them to take the tests. That had felt good, as though he was contributing. But now he was dependent on others again. Now he was waiting. It was the hardest thing in the world for a parent, waiting.
He felt wretched when he left Layla’s room. Nur bit her lip, but she couldn’t hold back her tears. She spent her life weeping, drying herself out from the inside. Mohammed took her in his arms, held her tight to comfort her. Sometimes he felt so close to despair, he almost craved for the worst to happen, just so it would be over. His fine career, his beautiful wife and daughter. Everything that had once seemed so perfect. He murmured tentatively, “Is she well enough to go out?”
“Out?” There was an edge of hysteria in Nur’s tone. “Where?”
“The site.”
Nur pushed him away. “Are you crazy?” she cried.
Mohammed embraced her again. “Listen to me,” he said. “This archaeologist Ibrahim I told you about, the one with the Mercedes who’s paying for our tests. He has money; he has influence. He moves in a different world from ours. Layla needs all the friends she can get in that world.”
“He can help?”
Mohammed hesitated. Nur had a habit of punishing him for promises he made to soothe her through the harder times. “Who can say?” he murmured. “But he’s a kind man, a gentle man. Once he knows Layla for himself, who knows what Allah would have him do?”
“LOOK WHAT I HAVE!” said Augustin cheerfully, hoisting up two plastic bags. “Falafel baguettes and beer, yes? Just like the old days.”
“Great.”
Augustin frowned. “You don’t sound too happy.”
“A little stir-crazy,” admitted Knox.
“One day? You can’t even survive one day?”
“It’s all these bloody Tintin books of yours,” said Knox, helping him unpack. “Can’t you get me something decent to read?”
“Such as?”
“Something archaeological. How about your excavation reports from the harbor? I’d love to know what you’ve been finding.”
“Sure,” nodded Augustin. “No problem. I’ll bring them back tomorrow night. But if you’re suffering . . .”
“Yes?”
“This site I visit today. A necropolis. It goes all the way down to the water table and then some, but Ibrahim doesn’t want to pump. He wants me to explore. I was going to take Sophia, but if you’re really going crazy . . .”
A little tremor of fear and anticipation ran through Knox. “Are you serious?”
“Why not? She’s prettier than you, yes, but not so good a diver. You know how dangerous enclosed spaces can be.”
“How would I even get to the site?”
“On the back of my bike,” said Augustin, passing Knox a cold bottle of Stella. “You can wear my helmet; someone should. No one will stop us, I promise. The police in the city are a disgrace. Ten years I am here, I am never once stopped. And if we are, tant pis! I still have my papers from my last visit to Cyrene. Those Libyan bastards refused me entry under my real name! Me! Just because of some letter I wrote about that mad fop Gadhafi. So I had to go in as Omar Malik. A truck driver from Marsa Matruh, would you believe? If I can pass for a truck driver from Marsa Matruh, so can you.”
Knox shook his head. He couldn’t believe he was even considering this. But Augustin had an admirable lack of respect for the ordinary rules of behavior, and his attitude was infectious. “And inside the site?”
“No problem. Leave any talking to me. Not that there’ll be much. Up top there’s a working building site, remember. Down below there are God knows how many chambers, a hundred loculi in each, every one stuffed with bones and artifacts, all of which Mansoor wants in the museum inside two weeks. It’s chaos. Excavators from the museum, from the university, from along the coast. Just one security guard at the mouth of the stairwell, but all you need to get past him is a standard SCA pass, and I can issue you one of those myself. Some forgettable name. John Smith. Charles Russell. Mark Edwards. Yes! Perfect. Mark Edwards. You look exactly how a Mark Edwards should look.”
Knox shook his head uncertainly. “You know what Cairo thinks of me. If I’m found out, it could mean trouble for you.”
“Fuck Cairo,” scowled Augustin. “I still feel sick at what that bastard Yusuf did to you and Richard. Believe me, helping you will be a pleasure. Besides, how will anyone find out? I’m not going to talk. Are you?”
“Someone might recognize me.”
“I don’t think so. Ibrahim, maybe, but he’s a good man; he wouldn’t take it any further. Anyway, he never visits sites anymore; he might get his suit dirty. Other than that, there’s no one you know. And they’re all friends, except for this gorgeous angry Greek woman called Elena and her—”
“Elena?” Knox put a hand to his brow. “Elena Koloktronis?”
Augustin pulled a face. “You know her?”
“No,” snorted Knox. “Just a lucky guess.”
“How do you know her?”
“You remember what happened to my parents and my sister?”
“Of course. Why? She had something to do with that?”
“It was her husband who was driving.”
“Oh. And he… ? He also… ?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry,” said Augustin. “I’m sorry both for you and for her. But it won’t matter; she’s not there tomorrow.”
“You’re certain?”
“She runs an excavation in the Delta. She only came today to bring in her French photographer girl. Gaille Dumas, something like that. You know her?”
“A photographer?” Knox shook his head. “No.”
“Then we’re fine,” said Augustin. He grinned and held out his beer bottle to clink in a toast. “What could possibly go wrong?”
Chapter Nine
AUGUSTIN WAS RIGHT about getting into the site the next morning. It proved a breeze. He was right, too, about the excitement Knox felt at being part of a proper excavation again. It had been too long. Far too long. Just being there made him happy: the noise, the smells, the banter. Up top, a generator was roaring away, powering a winch lift hauling an almost nonstop stream of excavation baskets cut from old truck ti
res, filled with rubble to be sifted in sunlight, then sent either to the museum or to landfill; lamps and ventilator fans were spread throughout the necropolis on miles of white power cables; and excavators in breathing masks and white gloves knelt in the confined tombs, carefully removing artifacts and human remains.
Augustin had brought down all the diving equipment before collecting Knox. They didn’t waste any time sightseeing but hurried straight down to the water table and suited up, inspecting each other’s gear with great care. People who had dived as often as they had were sometimes cursory with their safety checks. But in an enclosed labyrinth like this, you couldn’t simply dump your weight belt and kick for the surface if things went wrong. There was no surface.
Augustin held up a reel of red nylon cord, borrowing a trick from Theseus. But there was nothing to anchor it to. “Stay here,” he said, and vanished briefly, returning with an excavation basket weighted with rubble. He tied the cord to it and gave it a couple of tugs. They hooked themselves together with a lifeline, turned on their dive lamps, and made their way down into the water, Augustin feeding out the cord behind him. Neither man wore fins. They had weighted themselves to walk. They kicked up more sediment that way, but it made it easier to keep one’s bearings. Almost at once, they found the entrance to a chamber, most of its loculi still sealed. On one of them, Augustin’s underwater flashlight picked out a haunting portrait of a large-eyed man staring directly back at them. The mouth of the neighboring loculus had rotted away, and their flashlights glinted on something metallic inside. Augustin carefully pulled out a funerary lamp, which he tucked into his pouch.
They visited three more chambers, the connecting corridor kinking this way and that. The cord snagged on something, and Augustin had to tug it loose. The water grew murkier and murkier, sometimes swirling so badly they could barely see each other. Knox checked his air: down to just a 130 bar. They had agreed to dive in thirds: one-third out, one-third back, one-third for safety. He showed Augustin, who nodded and pointed back the way they had come. There was evidently some slack in the cord, for he began to reel it in and kept on reeling. He turned to Knox with a look of alarm perceptible even inside his mask. Knox frowned and spread his hands, and Augustin held up the loose end of the red cord, which should have been tied around the handles of the excavation basket, but which had somehow come free.
CHILDREN MADE IBRAHIM UNCOMFORTABLE. An only child himself, he had neither nieces nor nephews, nor any prospects of fatherhood. But Mohammed had bent over backward to accommodate him and his team on this excavation, so Ibrahim could scarcely refuse his daughter a tour, though he thought it crazy to bring a sick child into such a dusty, death-filled place.
One of Mohammed’s construction crew tracked them down in a tomb chamber. “A call for you,” he grunted. “Head office.”
Mohammed pulled a face. “Forgive me,” he told Ibrahim. “I must deal with this. But I’ll be straight back. Could you hold Layla a minute?”
“Of course.” Ibrahim braced himself as Mohammed passed him the bundle of blankets and swaddling, but the poor girl, ravaged by her disease, was light as air. He smiled nervously down. She smiled back. She looked terrified of him, painfully aware that he must consider her a nuisance. She pointed to the skull in the loculus: “This man was not Egyptian, then?” Mouth ulcers made her slurp and wince with every word.
Ibrahim winced with her. “That’s right,” he replied. “He was Greek, from north across the sea. Your father is a very clever man; he knew this man was Greek, because he found a coin called an obol in his mouth. The Greeks believed that spirits needed this to pay a ferryman called Charon to row them across the River Styx into the next world.”
“The next world?” asked Layla. Her eyes were large with wonder, as though her skin had been pulled back around them. Ibrahim swallowed and looked away. For a moment, he felt the threat of tears. So young a girl; so harsh a fate.
His arms were aching badly by the time Mohammed finally returned. He beamed at Layla with such affection as he took her back that Ibrahim felt lost, shamed, as though he had no right to his place in the world, to the air and space he consumed, to his easy life. He felt overcome by the need to do something to help Layla. “Those tests we were able to help you with,” he murmured to Mohammed. “Where might I get one done myself?”
KNOX AND AUGUSTIN looked at each other with concern, but they were experienced divers; they didn’t panic. They checked their air; they each had twenty minutes, twenty-five if they didn’t waste it. Augustin pointed ahead, and Knox nodded. They needed to find their way out, or at least a pocket of air where they could wait until the sediment resettled and they could see again.
They reached a dead end. Knox brought his gauge up to his goggles to check air pressure, which was dropping relentlessly. They kept their hands to the walls to steer through the blinding haze. On night dives in Sharm, his colleagues had talked glibly of zero visibility, but with all the muck he and Augustin had stirred, this was indescribably worse. Knox could barely see his gauges even when he held them in front of his mask. They hit another dead end, maybe the same one. They could all too easily be going around in circles. Fifteen bar. They began swimming, completely turned around now, their sense of direction gone, the fear building, breathing faster, burning up their precious air, so little of it left—just five bar, deep into the red hazard zone—and then Augustin seizing his shoulder and thrusting his face into his, tearing out his regulator, pointing desperately at his mouth. Knox passed him his spare, but he was down to the last few gasps himself. They reached another fork; Augustin pointed right, but Knox was sure they had gone right last time, so he tugged left, fighting over it. Augustin insisted on going right, however, and Knox decided to trust him, both men now swimming flat out, hitting and kicking each other, scraping rough wall and ceiling, Knox gagging as his tank ran dry, pressure on his lungs, hitting another wall, Augustin wrenching him upward against steps and then bursting up into open air.
Knox spat out his regulator and breathed in gratefully, lying alongside Augustin, their chests pumping like frantic bellows. Augustin laid his head sideways to look at Knox, a glint already in his eye, as though he’d thought of something funny but couldn’t yet get it out. “There are old divers,” he panted finally. “There are bold divers.”
Laughter hurt Knox’s lungs. “I reckon you should get a pump, mate.”
“I think you’re right,” agreed Augustin. “And we tell no one about this, okay? Not for a year or two, anyway. I’m supposed to be professional.”
“Mum’s the word,” nodded Knox. He pushed himself tiredly up, unbuckled his BCD, and dropped it and the empty tank onto the stone floor.
“Look!” said Augustin. “The basket’s disappeared.”
Knox frowned. Augustin was right. In his relief at getting out alive, he had forgotten what triggered the trouble in the first place. “What the hell?” He crouched down where the excavation basket had been. He had assumed that Augustin’s knot had just come loose. “You don’t think this was Hassan’s doing, do you?”
A rueful expression spread over Augustin’s face. “No,” he said. “I fear it was simpler than that.”
“What?”
“It was an excavation basket full of rubble,” observed Augustin. “And what is Mansoor’s number one priority?”
Knox winced and closed his eyes. “Clearing the site of rubble.”
“This is our lucky day, my friend.”
Soft footsteps approached down the corridor. Knox looked up as a slender, dark-haired, attractive young woman appeared out of the shadows, a digital camera on a strap around her neck. “Your lucky day?” she asked. “Have you found something?”
Augustin jumped up and walked over, interposing himself between her and Knox. “Look!” he said, taking out his funerary lamp, waving a hand at the water. “Chamber after chamber of sealed loculi!”
“Fantastic.” She glanced past Augustin at Knox. “I’m Gaille,” she said.
&nb
sp; He had no option but to stand. “Mark,” he replied.
“Nice to meet you, Mark.”
“Likewise.”
“How’s the photography going?” Augustin asked her, touching her shoulder.
“Fine,” said Gaille. “Mansoor’s brought down all his lighting from the museum so I can photograph the antechamber, but it gets too hot to keep on long. The plaster, you know—we don’t want it cracking.”
“Indeed no.” He put an arm around her shoulder, tried to turn her away from Knox. “Listen,” he said. “I understand you’re alone in town, yes? Perhaps we could have dinner together? I can show you old Alexandria.”
Her eyes lit up. “That would be great, yes.” She sounded so enthusiastic, she blushed and felt compelled to explain herself. “It’s just, there’s nowhere to eat in my hotel, and they won’t let guests take food back to their rooms, and I really hate eating alone in restaurants. I feel so conspicuous, you know. As though everyone’s watching.”
“And why wouldn’t they watch?” asked Augustin gallantly. “A pretty girl like you. Which hotel are you staying at?”
“The Vicomte.”
“That terrible place! But why?”
She shrugged sheepishly. “I asked my taxi driver for somewhere central and cheap.”
“He took you at your word, then,” laughed Augustin. “Tonight, then. Eight o’clock, yes? I’ll pick you up.”
“Great.” She looked past him to Knox, standing in the shadows. “You’ll come, too, yes?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it, I’m afraid.”
“Oh.” She patted her hips and made a shrugging kind of face. “Well, then,” she nodded. “Until later.” And she retreated up the corridor away from them with a slightly stilted walk, as though she sensed—quite correctly—that she was being watched.
Chapter Ten