by Paul Sussman
After that she had kept the lights on for the rest of the night, only falling asleep again just as dawn was breaking. When Oates had asked her if she'd had a good night, her reply had been terse: 'No, I bloody didn't.'
Oates swung the car through a gate in the embassy's cream-coloured outer wall, flashing his ID at the guard, and pulled up in a small car park, taking Tara into the building through a side door. They walked down a long corridor and up some stairs to a suite of offices on the first floor, where they were met by a thin, slightly dishevelled man with white hair, thick eyebrows and a pair of glasses hanging around his neck.
'Good morning, Miss Mullray.' He smiled, extending a hand. 'Charles Squires, cultural attaché.' His tone was gentle, avuncular, unlike his grip, which was vice-like. 'Crispin, why don't you see about some coffee? We'll be in my office.'
He led Tara through a set of double doors into a large, sunlit room with four armchairs arranged around a table. Another man was standing beside the window.
'This is Dr Sharif Jemal, of the Supreme Council of Antiquities,' said Squires. 'He specifically asked if he could be here this morning.'
The man was short and broad, with a heavily pockmarked face. He stepped forward.
'May I offer my condolences on the death of your father,' he said solemnly. 'He was a great scholar and a true friend of this country. He will be much missed.'
'Thank you,' said Tara.
The three of them sat down.
'The ambassador sends his apologies,' continued Squires. 'Given your father's eminence, he would have liked to have been here in person. Unfortunately, as you may have heard, there was another terrorist incident last night, up near Aswan, and two of the fatalities were British, so he is somewhat preoccupied at present.'
He sat very still as he spoke, his thin, hairless hands clasped in his lap.
'I know I speak for him, however, and indeed the whole embassy, when I say how very sorry we were to hear of the death of your father. I had the pleasure of meeting him on several occasions. It's a great loss.'
Oates returned carrying a tray.
'Milk?' asked Squires.
'Black, no sugar,' said Tara. 'Thank you.'
Squires nodded at Oates, who poured out cups of coffee and handed them round. There was an awkward silence.
'When I was a student I was fortunate enough to spend a season with your father at Saqqara,' said Jemal eventually. 'It was 1972. The year we found the tomb of Ptah-hotep. I shall never forget the excitement when we entered the burial chamber for the first time. It was virtually intact, untouched since the day it was sealed. There was a magnificent wooden statue near the entrance, about so high' – he indicated with his hand – 'wonderfully realistic, with inlaid eyes, in perfect condition. It is currently on display in the Cairo museum. You must let me take you to see it.'
'I should love to,' said Tara, trying to sound enthusiastic.
'Your father taught me a great deal,' continued Jemal. 'I owe him much. He was a good man.'
He removed a handkerchief and blew into it loudly, apparently overwhelmed with emotion. The four of them lapsed back into silence, sipping their coffee. It was a while before Squires spoke again.
'The doctor assures me your father's death was swift and without pain. It was a coronary, apparently. Death would have been almost immediate.'
Tara nodded. 'He was taking medication for his heart,' she said.
'Please do not take this the wrong way,' said Jemal, 'but I think if your father could have chosen anywhere to die it would have been Saqqara. He was always happy there.'
'Yes,' said Tara. 'It was like his real home.'
Oates began refilling their cups.
'I'm afraid there are various formalities to go through,' said Squires apologetically, 'all of which Crispin here can help you with.' He covered his cup with his hand. 'No more for me, thank you. And at some point you are going to have to decide what you want done with your father's body, whether it is to stay in Egypt or be returned to Britain. For the moment, however, I simply want to stress that if there's anything at all you need in this difficult time you only have to ask.'
'Thank you,' said Tara. She was silent for a moment, fiddling with her cup. 'There was . . . um . . .'
She paused, uncertain how to continue. Squires raised his eyebrows.
'I don't really know how to explain it. It sounds so ridiculous. It's just . . .'
'Yes?'
'Well . . .' Again she paused. 'When I first went into the dig house yesterday I noticed a smell of cigar smoke, which was strange because my father never allowed smoking anywhere around him. I mentioned it to the police. And Crispin.'
Oates nodded. Jemal removed a set of jade worry beads from his pocket and began telling them off one by one with his thumb. Tara could feel the three of them staring at her.
'A bit earlier I'd seen this man, a big man . . .'
'Big?' said Squires, leaning forward slightly.
'Yes, sort of tall, bigger than normal. I'm sorry, it sounds so stupid when I say it . . .'
The Englishman flashed a glance at Jemal and waved her on. The worry beads began clacking faster, like someone tap-dancing.
'Well, he seemed to be watching me, through binoculars.'
'The big man?' asked Jemal.
'Yes. And then last night I saw the same man, or at least it looked like the same man, coming into the hotel and I'm sure he was smoking a cigar. And then in the middle of the night I heard someone trying to get into my room. When I opened the door there was no-one there, but there was a smell of cigar smoke in the corridor.'
She grinned weakly, aware of how paranoid the whole thing sounded. Events that in her head had seemed suspicious and threatening, now, recounted in front of other people, appeared no more than mildly coincidental.
'I told you it sounded ridiculous,' she mumbled.
'Not at all,' said Squires, leaning forward and laying his hand on her arm. 'This is a very upsetting time for you. Given the circumstances it's hardly surprising you should feel slightly . . . insecure. You're in a foreign country, after all, and someone close to you has died. It's easy to lose one's sense of perspective in such situations.'
She could tell he was simply being polite. 'I just had this feeling there was something going on,' she said. 'Something . . .'
'Sinister?'
'Yes.'
Squires smiled thinly. 'I don't think you should worry yourself, Miss Mullray. Egypt is one of those countries where it's easy to imagine that something's going on behind one's back when in fact it isn't. Wouldn't you agree, Dr Jemal?'
'Certainly,' snorted Jemal. 'Not a day goes by without me thinking someone is plotting against me. Which in the Antiquities Service they usually are!'
The three men laughed.
'I'm sure all the things you've mentioned have a perfectly harmless explanation,' said Squires. He paused and then added, 'Unless, of course, you're not telling us everything.' He said it as a joke, although there was something vaguely threatening in his tone, as though he was accusing her of holding something back.
'Have you told us everything?' he asked.
A brief silence.
'I think so,' Tara said.
For a moment Squires stared at her, then he sat back and laughed again. 'Well, there you are then. I think you can sleep safely in your bed at night, Miss Mullray. Can we get you a biscuit?'
They made polite conversation for another ten minutes before Squires rose to his feet, followed by the other two.
'I think we've taken enough of your time. Crispin will take you along to his office, where he'll help you with whatever paperwork needs to be done.'
He handed her his card and they moved towards the door.
'Feel free to call if you have anything further you'd like to discuss. It's my direct line. We'll do whatever we can to assist.'
He shook her hand, and ushered her out into the ante-room. Jemal raised his hand in farewell.
'Come on,' said Oates.
'Let's get you some lunch.'
For some time Squires and Jemal sat in silence, the former staring out of the window, the latter fiddling with his worry beads. Eventually Jemal spoke.
'Is she telling the truth?'
'Oh I would say so, yes,' said Squires, a glimmer of a smile playing around the corners of his thin, pale lips. 'She doesn't know anything. Or at least she doesn't think she knows anything.'
He reached into his pocket and extracted a boiled sweet, which he began slowly to unwrap.
'So what's going on?' asked Jemal.
Squires raised his eyebrows. 'Well, that's the question, isn't it. Dravic certainly appears to be on the trail, but how Mullray got mixed up in it all . . . your guess is as good as mine. It's all very mysterious.' He removed the last of the wrapper and popped the sweet into his mouth, sucking contemplatively. The room echoed to the rhythmic clack of the worry beads.
'Have you told Massey?' asked Jemal. 'The Americans ought to know.'
'Taken care of, old boy. They're not especially happy, but that was to be expected.'
'So what do we do now?'
'Not much we can do. We can't let them know that we know about the tomb. That would be fatal. We just have to sit tight and hope things work out.'
'And if they don't?'
Squires tilted his head, but said nothing.
Jemal fiddled with his beads. 'I don't like it,' he said. 'Maybe we should just drop the whole thing.'
'Come, come. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Think of the rewards.'
'I don't know. I just don't know. It's getting out of hand.' The Egyptian stood and began pacing around the room. 'What about the girl?'
Squires drummed his fingers lightly on the arm of the couch, rolling the sweet around with his tongue.
'It seems to me,' he said after a long pause, 'that she might actually be rather useful. Help us to . . . clarify the situation. So long as she doesn't go shouting her head off. That wouldn't be at all productive. I trust you can handle things at your end?'
'The police do as I tell them,' grunted Jemal. 'They won't be asking unnecessary questions.'
'Jolly good. Then I think I should be able to take care of Miss Mullray. Crispin's keeping an eye on her. And I've got other people on the job too. The most important thing is that they don't cotton on we're using her. That would be fatal.' He rose and walked to the window, staring out across the neatly clipped lawns of the embassy garden. 'We just have to play our hand carefully. So long as we do that, I firmly believe we'll achieve our goal.'
'I hope so,' said Jemal. 'For all our sakes. Because if we don't we're down the fucking creek.'
Squires chuckled. 'You have a wonderful way with words, old boy.'
There was a loud crunching sound as his teeth ground into the boiled sweet.
10
LUXOR
Khalifa had no idea there were so many alabaster workshops in Luxor. He'd known there were a lot, of course, but only when he started visiting them each in turn did he realize what a huge task it was going to be to track down the one he wanted.
He and Sariya had started late the previous afternoon immediately after the autopsy, him on the west bank, Sariya on the east, going from shop to shop with a photograph of the scarab tattoo, asking if anyone recognized it. They'd continued late into the night and resumed at six this morning. It was now midday and by Khalifa's reckoning he'd visited over fifty workshops already without any success. He was beginning to wonder if Anwar had sent them on a wild-goose chase.
He stopped in front of yet another shop: 'Queen Tiye for Alabaster, best in Luxor'. On its front were painted an aeroplane and a camel alongside the black cube of the Ka'ba – a sign the owner had performed the Hajj to Mecca. A group of workmen sat cross-legged in the shade beneath an awning chiselling lumps of alabaster, their arms and faces white with dust. Khalifa nodded at them and, lighting a cigarette, went inside. A man emerged from a back room to greet him, smiling.
'Police,' said Khalifa, showing his badge. The man's smile faded.
'We have a licence,' he said.
'I want to ask you a couple of questions. About your workers.'
'Is this about insurance?'
'It's not about insurance and it's not about licences. We're looking for a missing person.' He pulled a photograph from his pocket and held it up. 'Recognize this tattoo?'
The man took the photo and stared at it.
'Well?'
'Maybe.'
'What do you mean, maybe? You either recognize it or you don't.'
'Yes, OK, I recognize it.'
At last, thought Khalifa. 'One of your workers?'
'Until I sacked him a week ago, yes. Why, is he in trouble?'
'You could say that. He's dead.'
The man stared down at the photo.
'Murdered,' added Khalifa. 'We found his body in the river yesterday.'
There was a pause and then the man handed the photo back and turned away. 'You'd better come through.'
They passed through a bead curtain into a large room at the back of the shop. There was a low bed against one wall, a television on a stand and a table laid for lunch with bread and onions and a slab of cheese. Above the bed hung a sepia photograph of an old bearded man in a fez and djellaba – an ancestor of the shop owner, Khalifa presumed – with beside it a framed print of the first sura of the Koran. An open door led onto a yard where more men were working. The shop owner kicked the door shut.
'His name was Abu Nayar,' he said, turning towards Khalifa. 'He worked here for about a year. He was a good craftsman, but a drinker. Used to come in late, not concentrate on his work. Always trouble.'
'Know where he lived?'
'Old Qurna. Up by the tomb of Rekhmire.'
'Family?'
'A wife and two kids. Girls. He treated the woman like a dog. Beat her. You know.'
Khalifa pulled on his cigarette, gazing at a painted limestone bust in the corner, a copy of the famous Nefertiti head in the Berlin museum. He'd always wanted to see the original, ever since as a child he'd stared at its likeness in the windows of craft shops in Giza and Cairo. He doubted he ever would see it, though. He could no more afford a trip to Berlin than he could a balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings. He turned back to the shop owner. 'This Abu Nayar, did he have any enemies that you know of? Anyone who bore him a grudge?'
'Where do you want me to start? He owed money left, right and centre, insulted everyone, got into fights. I can think of fifty people who'd want him dead. A hundred.'
'Anyone in particular? Any blood feuds?'