by Will Adams
“As you wish.”
“YOU MEAN TO TELL ME that Knox escaped you again?” asked Hassan incredulously when Nessim had completed his telephone report.
“He had a friend with him,” said Nessim.
“A friend?”
“We’ll find them,” said Nessim, striving to sound more bullish than he felt. His confidence had been shot by what happened. Having the tables turned so completely would do that to a man, as would a night spent struggling to escape from an outbuilding, or wandering half-naked across farmland with a wounded comrade. But, to Nessim’s surprise, the thing that had struck him deepest about the entire fiasco were Knox’s words about his lack of honor. Nessim was old enough and wise enough to know that insults didn’t hurt unless they rang true, and so now he couldn’t stop asking painful questions of himself: How had it come to this? What was he doing working for a man like Hassan? Was money really that important to him? “We’ll watch all his friends and associates,” he said. “We’ll put out another reward. It’s just a matter of time before we find him again.”
“So you keep telling me,” said Hassan.
“I’m sorry,” said Nessim. “He’s better at this than we imagined possible. But now we know. Now we’re prepared. Next time we’ll have him.”
“Next time? How can I be sure there’ll be a next time?”
“Another week. That’s all I ask.”
“Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t fire you and hire him instead?”
“You’d have to find him first,” muttered Nessim beneath his breath.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
There was a stony silence. Then, “I think it’s time we discussed this face-to-face, don’t you?”
“Face-to-face?” asked Nessim bleakly.
“Yes,” said Hassan. “Face-to-face.”
MOHAMMED WAS ASTONISHED to see Professor Rafai step out of the taxi and slam its door behind him. He had not expected to see Layla’s oncologist again, certainly not on his building site. “There is somewhere private?” demanded Rafai, trembling with anger.
“Private?”
“To talk.”
Mohammed frowned in bewilderment. “Now?”
“Of course now! You think I’m here to book an appointment?”
Mohammed shrugged and led Rafai to his cabin office.
“I don’t know how you do this!” shouted Rafai as the door closed. He removed his half-moon glasses and jabbed them like a scalpel at Mohammed’s face. “Who do you think you are? I base my decisions on clinical evidence. Clinical evidence! You think you can bully me into changing my mind?”
“I’m sorry for my behavior in your office,” frowned Mohammed. “But I’ve already apologized. I was under immense strain. I don’t know what else—”
“You think this is about that?” cried Rafai. “This isn’t about that.”
“Then what?”
“Only your daughter!” yelled Rafai. “Only ever your daughter! You think she’s the only one sick. A young boy called Saad Gama waits for bone marrow. A true scholar of Islam. You want to explain to him that we must postpone his treatment because you have more influential friends? You want to tell his parents he must die so that your daughter might live? You think they don’t care for him?”
“Professor Rafai, in the name of Allah, what are you talking about?”
“Don’t deny it! Don’t insult me by denying it! I know you’ve done this, though how you have the power… Well, let me tell you, Saad’s blood is on your hands! Your hands, not mine.”
Mohammed went cold. He asked dizzily, “What are you saying? Are you saying you’ll give Layla her transplant?”
Rafai glared furiously. “I’m saying I won’t risk my department over this.”
“But her transplant?” insisted Mohammed. “Layla will receive her transplant?”
“Tell your friends in Cairo to stay away from me and my staff. If the procedure goes wrong, we’ll not be held accountable, you hear? Tell your people that. Tell your people!” He stormed out of the office. Mohammed’s hands were shaking as if from palsy, so that he couldn’t even hold his phone steady when he tried to dial Nur.
NICOLAS WAS ON THE PHONE with his bodyguard, Bastiaan, when Ibrahim knocked and entered, bringing with him a cup of coffee and a plate of cakes, which he set down on the corner of his desk. Nicolas didn’t bother to stop talking, but he slipped into euphemism and turned his back. “You’ve arranged for the purchases?”
“Vasileios is flying in with your father. He’s been briefed on what we need.”
“And when will you be at the villa?”
“I’m on my way now. Shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes.”
“Good. And make sure . . .”
Behind him, Ibrahim gave a little gasp. Nicolas turned to see him holding open one of Gaille’s books, staring in shock at a picture of Bir al-Hammam. Nicolas closed his eyes in irritation with himself. “Make it ten minutes,” he told Bastiaan in his coarsest Greek. “We’ve got a problem.” He killed the call and plucked the book from Ibrahim’s hand. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said.
“What? But have you seen this picture of—”
“Quickly,” said Nicolas, grabbing Ibrahim’s arm and hustling him through to the kitchen.
“What is it?” asked Ibrahim, bemused. “What’s going on?” Nicolas opened and shut all the drawers until he found a kitchen knife, and he held it up so that its blade glinted. Ibrahim paled. “What… what are you doing with that?”
Nicolas held the knife out wide in his left hand, so that Ibrahim’s eyes followed its glittery menace. Then he punched the archaeologist with his right, sending him flailing onto his back. He knelt down and pressed the sharp steel against Ibrahim’s throat before he could recover. “My colleague Bastiaan is on his way,” he said. “You’re going to be nice and quiet until he arrives, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” agreed Ibrahim.
KNOX HAD TAKEN OVER THE WHEEL while Rick caught up on his sleep. It was midafternoon when he reached Farafra, where his friend and Demotic expert Ishaq lived. He nudged Rick awake. “We’re here, mate.”
“Always the way,” grunted Rick irritably. “Loveliest bloody dream.”
Knox hadn’t been to Ishaq’s home in several years, but Farafra was small, and the house wasn’t hard to find. He was looking forward to seeing his old friend. They went back a long way, to Knox’s first season at Mallawi. A small and ridiculously intelligent man, Ishaq had spent most of his leisure time in his hammock, staring lazily up at the sky. But give him some Demotic to translate, and there was no one better in Egypt.
Unfortunately, when they parked outside his home, everything was shuttered. They banged on his front door, but there was no response. They went a couple of doors down the road to the information center, which doubled as his office, but there was no one there, either. “He must be out on excavation,” said Knox, checking the time. “He’ll be back soon.”
“Let’s have a look at the bloody photos of this inscription of yours, then,” muttered Rick.
“I don’t have them with me.”
“You what?”
Knox gave him a look. “You don’t really think I’m stupid enough to travel halfway across Egypt with enough incriminating evidence on my laptop to get me ten years?”
“So how the hell’s your mate going to translate them?”
“I e-mailed them to myself. Ishaq’s wired.”
They sat in the shade of a date palm to wait. Torpor set in. When flies settled on them, they lacked even the energy to swat them away. A young boy in robes pushing an old bicycle much too big for him approached tentatively. “You look for Ishaq?” he asked.
“Yes. Why? Do you know where he is?”
“He leave for Cairo. A meeting. A big meeting. All the desert archaeologists are to be there.”
“Did he say when he’d be back?”
“Tomorrow,” shrugged the boy. “T
he day after.”
“Ballocks,” muttered Rick. “What now?”
“I don’t know,” said Knox. “Let me think.”
“I don’t believe this Kelonymus bastard. Everything else was in Greek. Why the hell did he have to switch to Demotic for this bloody inscription?”
Knox’s jaw dropped; he turned to look at his friend.
“What?” asked Rick. “What did I say?”
“I think you’ve just gone and cracked it,” said Knox.
Chapter Thirty
MOHAMMED WAS STILL IN A DAZE from his good fortune when his phone rang. “Yes?” he asked.
“This is Nicolas Dragoumis. You remember, I helped finance the tests for—”
“Of course I remember, Mr. Dragoumis. What can I do for you?”
“I believe you should have heard some good news.”
“That was you? You are my friend in Cairo?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you! Thank you! I am in your debt, Mr. Dragoumis. I am forever in your debt. I swear, anything you ever want . . .”
“Anything?” asked Nicolas dryly. “Do you really mean that?”
“On my life.”
“I hope it won’t come to that,” said Nicolas. “But tell me: do you have a mechanical digger on your site?”
THERE HAD BEEN LITTLE for Gaille to do that afternoon. Although they had recruited Mustafa and Zayn for the next fortnight, she gave them the day off, then went to Aly’s house, hoping to do some more research, only to find it locked, and a note on his door saying he’d been summoned to Cairo. She went back to her hotel and lazed away the afternoon in a hammock before reviving herself beneath a cold shower and hiring a rickety bicycle that she was now pedaling down to a local freshwater spring. Coasting along one short stretch, she passed a donkey cart carrying three Siwan wives enshrouded in their dark blue embroidered cotton tarfottet. One lifted her cowl and gave Gaille a shy yet radiant smile. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen.
Her bicycle tires were soft, and pedaling was hard work on the road, whose surface was sticky from the sun. She was relieved when she saw the spring ahead, a small, deep pool bounded by stone, the water clear down to grayish rocks, with floating clumps of lurid green algae. Several zaggalah sat around, their work on the date palms finished for the day, eyeing her with obvious interest. She’d been looking forward to a swim, but she couldn’t face their stares, so she went instead into the orchard to share a cup of bitter Siwan tea with the young custodian.
The sun sank behind the great salt lake and the hills beyond, the horizon blazed orange and purple before the colors faded, and another day was gone. She thought of the young Siwan girl on the donkey cart, married at the onset of puberty to spend the rest of her life hidden from the world, her vision reduced to the narrowest of eye slits, and Gaille had an epiphany—a vivid understanding of the change wrought in herself by the past few weeks. She knew in that moment that she could never again take refuge from life in the physical and intellectual comfort of the Sorbonne, compiling arcane dictionaries of dead languages. Such work was immensely valuable, but it was a step removed from reality, shadows on the wall. She wasn’t an academic. She was an archaeologist, her father’s daughter.
It was time to make her peace.
RICK AND KNOX FOUND A HOTEL with a modem jack so they could download the photographs of the lower chamber and the inscription. But deciphering wasn’t Knox’s strength, and progress was slow. Meanwhile, Rick looked through the other photographs of the lower chamber. When he came to the mosaic, he frowned and said, “Haven’t we seen this before?”
“How do you mean?”
He fetched out his own digital camera and scrolled through to the painting of Wepwawet holding the banner of Alexander. Knox saw it at once. The skyline in the mosaic and in the painting were identical. In the mosaic, it silhouetted the two groups of soldiers. In the painting, it contoured Wepwawet and his banner. And it was seeing Alexander’s face on the banner that gave Knox the inspiration he needed to find a keyword and so crack the cipher. When he was done, he scrawled out the text, then translated it for Rick.
“A tomb filled with goods fit for Alexander,” murmured Rick. “Jesus!”
“No wonder the Dragoumises are after it,” said Knox. “And they’ve got a head start, too. We need to move.”
“Where?”
“The place of Ammon, Alexander’s father. Siwa.”
They consulted a guidebook. Siwa wasn’t that far away, not as the crow flies, but reaching it on proper roads meant driving all the way up to Alexandria, then along the coast to Marsa Matruh and south again. Three sides of a square, perhaps fourteen hundred kilometers in all. Alternatively, they could take the old caravan route, which would save them the best part of a thousand kilometers, but it meant crossing a fierce and unforgiving desert. “What do you reckon?” asked Rick.
“The desert,” said Knox unhesitatingly. “At least Nessim and his men won’t be able to find us.”
Rick grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
First task was getting permission. There were army posts dotted across the desert with nothing to do but hassle the few hardy tourists who ventured through. Setting off without proper authorization was asking for grief. But now that Knox’s passport had been cleared at the checkpoint, that was only a matter of baksheesh and time.
The local army commander begged a couple of hours to arrange the paperwork. Knox and Rick used it to buy supplies: crates of water and baskets of food, an extra spare tire, cans of oil and petrol. Then they set off, making the most of the cool of the night while it lasted.
AUGUSTIN ANSWERED HIS FRONT DOOR with a stained white sheet wrapped like a sarong around his waist. The way his face fell, Elena knew at once. She felt an exquisite calm as she pushed past him into his bedroom. The girl had spiked blond hair, and a brass ring through her lower lip. She had flat breasts with big nipples, and a shaved pubic mound. “You his wife, then?” she asked, reaching down for a soft pack of Marlboro Lights and a plastic lighter.
Elena turned. Augustin was about to say something, but when he saw her expression he seemed to think better of it. She exited, hurried down the stairs, and walked briskly to her car. She felt no regret at not warning him of her visit; between ignorance and knowledge, she’d choose knowledge every time. But she grew angrier with every step. At a traffic light, her cell phone started to ring. She recognized Augustin’s number. She rolled down her window, hurled it out, and watched it spark and skitter on the road. Traffic was thick. She clenched the steering wheel and yelled, drawing concerned looks from pedestrians. She cut in front a truck and roared out of the city on the Cairo road. She had no destination in mind. She just wanted to push the car until it fell apart.
This was not about Augustin. Augustin was nothing, she realized now, merely a screen onto which she had projected memories of Pavlos. Pavlos was her man, the only man she had ever truly loved. For ten years, she had craved to be with him. For ten years, her life had been shit.
A semi approached fast on the other side of the highway. Her hands twitched almost unconsciously on the steering wheel; she veered toward it, almost able to taste the sweet release of oblivion. The truck driver blared his horn in warning, startling her from her reverie, and at the very last moment she wrenched the wheel and swung back safely onto her side of the highway.
Not now. Not yet.
She had lost more than a husband when she lost Pavlos. She had lost honor. Dragoumis was flying in. He would be away from home soil. He’d be vulnerable. They said you could buy anything in the back streets of Cairo, and Cairo was just two hours’ drive south. It was time to put that old maxim to the test.
Elena had a blood debt to settle.
Chapter Thirty-one
IT HAD RAINED during the night, leaving the roads slick and black. Thin traffic threw up spray that glinted like diamonds in Mohammed’s headlights. Before he even reached the outskirts of Alexandria, stress was twisting his spine like
a tourniquet. He drove hunched over the steering wheel, consulting his watch and the speedometer. He dared not take the flatbed truck and its load over seventy kilometers per hour, yet he dare not be late, either. Nicolas had been adamant that he reach Siwa by sunset tonight.
It had been years since he handled a rig this size and weight, but he got the hang of it quickly enough, especially once he was out on the Marsa Matruh Highway, where the road became wide, straight, and easy. He took Layla’s picture from his wallet and laid it on the dash to remind himself why he was doing this. A police car loomed in his wing mirror. It slowed as it came alongside. He kept his eyes on the road ahead, and at last it sped on. His heart settled.
He touched Layla’s photo. If all went well, her intense chemotherapy and radiotherapy conditioning treatment would get under way tomorrow. Her condition was so severe, there was no time to waste. Doctor Rafai and her medical team would deliberately and systematically fill her system with poisons. In a fortnight or so, if Allah willed it, they would harvest marrow from Besheer’s pelvis, remove fragments of blood and bone, and inject them into Layla. If that worked, Layla would begin months of tests, treatment, rehabilitation. It would be a year at least before they knew for sure. Until then, he had no choice but to do what Nicolas wanted, because Nicolas had made it quite clear to him that what had been given could just as easily be taken away.
Mohammed had had a mechanical digger on site. It had been finding the heavy-duty flatbed transporter truck that proved difficult. All his usual suppliers had been out, but he had kept on the phone, calling friends and friends of friends until finally he found one. Then it had been a matter of filling in paperwork, collecting the truck and bringing it to his site, and loading and securing the mechanical digger all by himself, because Nicolas had been adamant that he let no one else know what he was up to.