The Lost Army Of Cambyses

by Paul Sussman

  The lift wasn't there and rather than wait for it she took the stairs instead, leaping down them two at a time, desperate now to get back out into the fresh air. She reached the bottom and turned the corner into the foyer, but suddenly her way was blocked. She cried out, startled. It was only the concierge.

  'I'm sorry,' she said, breathing hard. 'You surprised me.'

  She handed him the keys and he took them. He said something, his voice low, gruff.

  'What?'

  He repeated himself.

  'I don't understand.' Her voice was beginning to rise. She was desperate to get out.

  Again he spoke, jabbering at her, and then reached into his pocket. She had a sudden irrational fear he was reaching for a weapon and when he whipped his hand out again and up towards her face she arched back away from him, raising her arm protectively. It was only an envelope. A small white envelope.

  'Professor Mullray,' he said, waving it in her face. 'Come Professor Mullray.'

  She stared at it for a moment, breathing hard, and then laughed. 'Thank you,' she said, taking the letter. 'Thank you.'

  The concierge turned and shuffled back towards his desk. She wondered if she was expected to give him another tip, but he didn't seem to be expecting one and so she hurried straight out of the front door, turning left and heading down the street, enjoying the space around her and the warmth of the open air. She passed a couple of schoolchildren in starched white shirts, and a man in uniform, a kaleidoscope of medal ribbons on his chest. On the other side of the road a gardener in overalls was watering a row of dusty rose bushes with a hose.

  After twenty metres she looked down at the envelope in her hand. Instantly the colour drained from her face.

  'Oh no,' she whispered, staring down at the familiar handwriting. 'Not after all this time, not now.'

  The gardener stared after her and then, leaning his head to one side, began talking into his collar.

  12

  NORTHERN SUDAN, NEAR THE

  EGYPTIAN BORDER

  The boy emerged from the tent and started running, sprays of sand kicking up beneath his feet, a herd of goats scattering in front of him. He passed a burnt-out campfire, a helicopter covered in netting, piles of crates, before eventually coming to a halt in front of another tent, this one set slightly apart from the main encampment. He pulled a piece of paper from his robes and, drawing back the flap, stepped through.

  A man was standing inside, eyes closed, lips twitching as he recited silently to himself. His face was long and thin, bearded, with a hooked nose and, between his eyes, a deep vertical scar, the damaged tissue smooth and shiny as if the skin had been polished vigorously. He was smiling slightly, as though in rapture.

  He went down on his knees, placing his palms on the ground and touching the carpeted floor with his nose and forehead, oblivious to the boy, who remained where he was, watching, a look of awe on his face. A minute passed, two, three, and still the hook-nosed man continued his prayers, bowing, rising, reciting, the rapt smile never leaving his face. It looked as though he would never stop, and the boy appeared to be on the point of leaving when the worshipper lowered his head to the floor one last time, muttered amen, stood and turned. The boy came forward and handed him the piece of paper.

  'This came, Master. From Doktora Dravic.'

  The man took the paper and read it, his green eyes glowing in the semi-darkness.

  There was something threatening about him, a rumour of suppressed violence, and yet, strangely, a gentleness too in the way he laid his free hand on the boy's head, as though to reassure him. The boy stared at his feet, afraid and adoring in equal measure.

  The man finished reading and handed the paper back.

  'Allah, blessed be his name, gives, and Allah, blessed be his name, withholds.'

  The boy continued staring at the floor.

  'Please, Master,' he whispered, 'I do not understand.'

  'It is not for us to understand, Mehmet,' said the man, raising the boy's chin so that he was looking into his eyes. The boy too had a deep scar down the centre of his forehead.

  'We must simply know that God has a purpose and that we are a part of that purpose. You do not question the Almighty. You merely do his bidding. Without question. Without hesitation.'

  'Yes, Master,' whispered the boy, overwhelmed.

  'He has set us a great task. A quest. If we succeed, the prize will be great. If we fail . . .'

  'What, Master? What if we fail?' The boy seemed terrified.

  The man stroked his hair, comforting him. 'We will not fail.' He smiled. 'The road may be hard, but we shall reach its end. Have I not told you? We are God's chosen.'

  The boy smiled and spontaneously threw his arms around the man's waist, hugging him. The man pushed him away.

  'There is work to do. Call Dr Dravic. Tell him he must find the missing piece. Do you understand? He must find the missing piece.'

  'He must find the missing piece,' repeated the boy.

  'Meanwhile everything continues as planned. Nothing changes. Can you remember that?'

  'Yes, Master.'

  'We strike camp in one hour. Go.'

  The boy stepped out of the tent and hurried away. Sayf al-Tha'r watched him as he went.

  They had found him four years ago, a street orphan, scavenging for food like an animal among the rubbish tips of Cairo. Illiterate, parentless, savage, he had been bathed and fed, and in time he had become one of them, receiving the mark of faith on his forehead and pledging to wear only black, the colour of strength and loyalty.

  He was a good boy – simple, innocent, devoted. There were others like him out there, hundreds of them, thousands. While the rich filled their bellies and worshipped their false idols, children like Mehmet starved. The world was sick. Benighted. Overrun by the Kufr. He, however, was fighting to make things right. To raise the downtrodden. To drive back the infidel. To restore the rule of the faithful.

  And now, suddenly, magically, the wherewithal to complete his task had been shown to him. Shown, but no more. God gave and God withheld. It was frustrating. And yet he knew there was a purpose to it. God always has a purpose. And here? To test his servant, of course. To try his resolve. An easy life made for a shallow faith. In adversity one discovered the depth of one's belief. Allah was challenging his devotion. And he would not disappoint. The thing would be found. However many deaths it took. He, the servant, would not fail the master. And the master, he knew, would not fail him either so long as he stayed true. So long as he did not weaken. He watched the boy for a moment longer and then, turning back into the tent, fell to his knees, bowed his face to the ground and resumed his prayers.

  13

  CAIRO

  Tara opened the envelope as soon as she got back to the hotel. She knew she shouldn't, that she should just throw it away, but she couldn't help herself. Even after six years there was still a part of her that couldn't let him go.

  'Damn you,' she muttered, sliding her finger beneath the flap and tearing it open. 'Damn you for coming back. Damn you.'

  Hello Michael,

  I'm in town for a few weeks. Are you back from Saqqara yet? If so, let me buy you a drink. I'm at the Hotel Salah al-Din (7533127), although you'll find me most nights at the tea-room on the corner of Ahmed Maher and Bursa'id. I think it's called Ahwa Wadood.

  Hope the season went well, and hope to see you.

  Daniel L.

  P.S. Did you hear about Schenker? Thinks he's found the tomb of Imhotep! Twat.

  She smiled, despite herself. Typical Daniel, to affect seriousness only to puncture it with some random expletive. For the first time in ages she felt again the tightening in her throat, the hollow emptiness in the pit of her stomach. God, he'd hurt her.

  She reread the note and then scrunched it into a ball and flung it across the room. Grabbing a vodka from the mini-bar she went outside onto the balcony, but came back in almost immediately and threw herself onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. Five minutes p
assed, ten, twelve. She got up again, grabbed her knapsack, left the room.

  'Ahwa Wadood tea-room,' she said to the first driver on the taxi rank outside the hotel. 'Corner of Ahmed Maher and . . .'

  'Bursa'id,' said the man, reaching his hand behind him and swinging open the door for her. 'I know it.'

  She got in and they moved off.

  You idiot, Tara, she thought to herself, staring out of the window at the brightly lit shopfronts. You sad, weak idiot.

  Across the street a dusty Mercedes eased away from the kerb and swung in behind them, a panther stalking its prey.

  She remembered so well the first time they'd met. How long ago was it now? God, almost eight years.

  She had been in her second year at University College London, reading zoology, renting a flat with three friends. Her parents were living in Oxford, their marriage fast approaching collapse, and she had gone home one evening to have dinner with them.

  It was supposed to be a family affair, just the three of them, which was bad enough given that her parents barely talked those days. On arrival, however, her father told her a colleague of his would be joining them.

  'Interesting chap,' he said, 'half English, half French, not much older than you. Doing a PhD in Late Period funerary practice in the Theban necropolis; just got back from three months' excavating in the Valley of the Kings. Absolute genius. Knows more about tomb iconography and the afterlife books than anyone I've ever met.'

  'Sounds fascinating,' Tara grunted.

  'Yes, I think you will like him,' her father smiled, missing the sarcasm. 'He's an odd fellow. Driven. Of course, we're all driven to some extent, but he's particularly intense. You get the impression he'd cut off his own hand if he thought it might further his knowledge of the subject. Or anyone else's hand, for that matter. He's a fanatic.'

  'Takes one to know one.'

  'True, I suppose, although at least I have you and your mother. Daniel doesn't seem to have anyone. I worry for him, frankly. He's too obsessed. If he's not careful he's going to drive himself into an early grave.'

  Tara downed her pre-dinner vodka. Late Period funerary practice in the Theban necropolis. Jesus.

  He was almost an hour late and they'd just started debating whether to begin without him when the doorbell rang. Tara went to answer it, slightly drunk by this point, urging herself to be polite.

  With a bit of luck he'll go straight after dinner, she thought. Please let him go straight after dinner.

  She stopped for a moment to compose herself and then went forward and opened the front door.

  Oh, my God, you're gorgeous!

  She thought it, fortunately, and didn't say it out loud, although some sort of surprise must have registered in her face, for he was the complete opposite of everything she'd been expecting: tall, dark, with high cheekbones and eyes that were brown to the point of blackness, like pools of peat-darkened water. She stood staring at him.

  'I'm so sorry I'm late,' he said, his accent English with a faint Gallic fuzz around the edge of the vowels. 'I had some work to finish.'

  'Late Period funerary practice in the Theban necropolis,' she replied, sounding embarrassingly embarrassed.

  He laughed. 'Actually I was filling out a grant application. Probably a bit more interesting.' He held out his hand. 'Daniel Lacage.'

  She took it. 'Tara Mullray.'

  They stood like that for just a beat longer than was necessary and then went through into the house.

  Dinner was wonderful. The two men spent most of it arguing about an obscure point of New Kingdom history – whether or not there had been a co-regency between Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten. She'd heard and switched off from these sorts of discussions a hundred times before. With Daniel involved, however, the argument assumed a curious immediacy, as though it affected them there and then rather than being a dry academic debate about a time so distant even history had forgotten it.

  'I am sorry.' He smiled at Tara as her mother served pudding. 'This must be excruciating for you.'

  'Not at all,' she replied. 'For the first time in my life Egypt actually sounds interesting.'

  'Thank you very much,' her father said gruffly.

  After dinner the two of them went into the back garden for a cigarette. It was a warm night, the sky heavy with stars, and they wandered across the lawn and sat down on a rusty swing chair.

  'I think you were just being polite in there,' he said, putting two cigarettes in his mouth, lighting them and handing one to her. 'There was no need.'

  'I'm never polite,' she said, accepting the cigarette. 'Or at least not tonight.'

  They sat in silence for a while, swinging gently to and fro, their bodies close but not quite touching. He had a smell to him, not aftershave, something richer, less manufactured.

  'Dad says you've been excavating in the Valley of the Kings,' she said eventually.

  'Just above it, actually. Up in the hills.'

  'Looking for anything in particular?'

  'Oh, some Late Period tombs. Twenty-sixth Dynasty. Nothing very interesting.'

  'I thought you were fanatical about it.'

  'I am,' he said. 'Just not tonight.'

  They laughed, their eyes holding for a moment before they turned away and looked up at the sky. Above them the branches of an old pine tree twisted like interlocked arms. There was another long silence.

  'It's a magical place, you know, the Valley of the Kings,' he said eventually, his voice low, almost a whisper, as if he was talking to himself rather than to her. 'It sends a shiver down your spine to think of the treasures that must once have been buried there. I mean, look at what they found with Tutankhamun. And he was just a minor pharaoh. A nobody. Think what must have been buried with a truly great ruler. An Amenhotep III, or a Horemheb, or a Seti I.'

  He dropped his head back, smiling, lost suddenly in his own thoughts.

  'I often wonder what it must be like to find something like that. Of course it will never happen again. Tutankhamun was unique, a billion-to-one chance his tomb survived. I can't help thinking about it, though. The excitement. The intensity. Nothing could ever compare with that. Nothing on earth. But then, of course . . .'

  He sighed.

  'What?'

  'Well, it probably wouldn't last, the excitement. That's the thing about archaeology. One find is never enough. You're always trying to better yourself. Look at Carter. After he'd finished clearing the tomb of Tutankhamun he spent the last ten years of his life telling everyone he knew where Alexander the Great was buried. You'd have thought the greatest find in the history of archaeology would have been enough, but it wasn't. It's Catch-22. You spend your whole life digging up the secrets of the past and at the same time worrying that one day there won't be any secrets left to find.'