by Paul Sussman
Daniel turned the piece over in his hand, nodding slightly as if in recognition.
'You know what it is?' she asked.
He didn't answer immediately and she had to repeat the question.
'Gypsum plaster,' he said distractedly. 'From a tomb decoration. The hieroglyphs would have been part of a longer text – see, these ones have been cut off mid-word. It's pretty good workmanship. Very good, in fact.' He smiled to himself.
'Is it genuine?'
'Definitely. Late Period by the looks of it. Greek, maybe, or Roman. Possibly Persian occupation, not much earlier. Almost certainly from Luxor, though.'
'How can you tell that?'
He nodded at the piece of paper the object had been wrapped in. Across the top was written a legend in Arabic.
'Al-Uqsur,' he translated. 'Luxor. It's from the local paper.'
She took the fragment from him and stared at it, shaking her head. 'I can't understand why Dad would have bought it if it's genuine. He despised the antiquities trade. Never stopped going on about how much damage it did.'
Daniel shrugged. 'I guess he must have thought it was a fake. It's not his period, after all. Unless you're an expert in late dynastic tomb art you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. If it was Old Kingdom I expect he'd have known immediately.'
'Poor Dad.' She sighed. 'He would have been devastated if he'd realized.' She handed the piece back. 'So what do the hieroglyphs mean?'
He laid the fragment in his lap and scanned the text.
'It reads right to left. See, the text always runs into the faces of the signs. This first column translates abed which is month, and then those strokes are the number three, and then peret, which was one of the divisions of the Egyptian year, roughly equivalent to our winter. So, in the third month of peret. Then we've got' – he squinted down – 'looks like some kind of name, ib-wer-imenty, Great Heart of the West; ib-wer, great heart; imenty, of the west. It's not a proper name, more a sort of nickname. Certainly not part of a royal titulary. Or not one I've ever heard of.'
He thought for a moment, repeating the name to himself, then moved his finger to the second column of text.
'This top word is mer, which means pyramid. Then iteru, which is an ancient unit of measurement, and then a number, ninety. So, the pyramid ninety item. Then the next column starts with what looks like kheper-en, although these top two hieroglyphs are broken off so . . .' He held the fragment up, trying to catch the light. 'No, it's definitely kheper-en, it happened, and then dja wer, a great storm. Then this cut-off figure on the left seems to be another number, although it's impossible to tell what. And that's it.'
He stared down at the fragment for a moment longer, turning it over in his hands, shaking his head, then returned it to its box and slid the box back into Tara's bag.
'If it does come from a Theban tomb of the Late Period, that certainly makes it rare,' he said. 'You don't get much painted tomb decoration post New Kingdom. Even then, though, I doubt it's worth more than a few hundred dollars. Hardly worth killing anyone over.'
'So why do these people want it?'
'God knows. Maybe they want the complete version of whatever text it was once a part of. Why that text should be so significant, though, I've no idea.' He pulled a cheroot from his shirt pocket, lit it and stood up, exhaling a billow of smoke. 'Wait here.'
He crossed to the telephone booth and, snatching up the receiver, pushed a phone card into the slot and dialled. For a moment he looked at her, then turned away and began talking. He spoke for almost three minutes, at one point seeming to gesticulate angrily, then put the receiver down and returned to the bench. His forehead, she noticed, was beaded with sweat.
'They've been at my hotel. Three of them. Turned my room upside down, apparently. The owner was terrified, poor bastard. Christ, this is a mess.'
He hunched forward, rubbing his face with his hands. A little girl ran up, looked at them and ran away again, laughing. Somewhere nearby a monkey was howling.
'We should go to the police,' said Tara.
'After we've hijacked a car and killed two Egyptian nationals? Not fucking likely.'
'We were defending ourselves! They were terrorists!'
'That's not necessarily how the police would see it. Believe me, I know how they think.'
'We have to . . .'
'I said no, Tara! It'll only make things worse. If they could possibly get any worse.'
There was a tense silence.
'Then what?' she asked. 'We can't just sit here.'
Another silence.
'The embassy,' he said eventually. 'We'll go to the British embassy. That's the only safe place. We're out of our depth here. We need protection.'
Tara nodded.
'Do you have the number?' he asked.
She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out the card Squires had given her the previous day.
'OK. Call. Tell him what's happened. Say we need help. Urgently.'
He handed her his phone card and she crossed to the booth and dialled. It was answered after just two rings.
'Charles Squires.'
That soothing avuncular voice.
'Mr Squires? It's Tara Mullray.'
'Hello, Miss Mullray.' He didn't sound especially surprised to hear from her. 'Is everything OK?'
'No. No, it's not. I'm with a friend and we're—'
'A friend?'
'Yes. An archaeologist. Daniel Lacage. He knew my father. Look, we're in trouble. I can't explain over the phone. Something's happened.'
A pause.
'Can you be any more specific?'
'Someone's trying to kill us.'
'Kill you!'
'Yes. Kill us. We need protection.'
Another pause.
'Is this something to do with the man you told me about yesterday? The man you said was following you?'
'Yes. We've found something and they're trying to kill us because of it.'
She was aware she wasn't making much sense.
'OK,' he said soothingly, 'let's just stay calm. Where are you?'
'In Cairo. In a zoo.'
'Whereabouts in the zoo?'
'Um . . . by the elephant cage.'
'And you have this artefact with you?'
'Yes.'
He was silent for a moment. She had the impression he'd put his hand over the receiver while he spoke to someone beside him.
'OK, I'm sending Crispin over immediately. You and your friend just stay there. Do you understand me? Just stay exactly where you are. We'll be with you as quickly as we can.'
'Right.'
'Everything's going to be all right.'
'Yes. Thank you.'
'See you soon.'
He hung up.
'Well?' asked Daniel as she sat back down.
'He's sending someone over. Said we should stay here.'
He nodded and they lapsed into silence, Daniel puffing on his cheroot, Tara staring down at her bag. She'd been hoping the mysterious object would provide some sort of answer to what was going on, but instead it seemed to make things even more obscure, as though an already complex code had had an extra line of encryption added to it. She felt confused and frightened.
'Perhaps Dr Jemal can help,' she said eventually. Daniel raised his eyebrows enquiringly. 'He's an old colleague of my father's,' she explained. 'I met him yesterday at the embassy. Maybe he'll know why the object's so important.'
Daniel shrugged. 'Never heard of him.'
'He's deputy head of the Antiquities Service.'
'Mohammed Fesal's deputy head of the Antiquities Service.'
'Oh. Well, he's something in the Antiquities Service, anyway.'
There was a pause. Daniel pulled on his cheroot. 'Jemal?'
'Yes. Dr Sharif Jemal. Like Omar Sharif.'
'I've never heard of a Dr Sharif Jemal.'
'Should you have?'
'If he's someone important in the Service, yes, of course. I deal with these guys every day.' He ra
ised the cheroot again, but this time didn't draw in, just let it hover in front of his face. 'What else did he say, this Dr Jemal?'
'Nothing much. He said he worked with my father at Saqqara. They found a tomb together. In 1972. The year I was born.'
'What tomb?'
'I can't remember. Hotep or something.'
'Ptah-hotep?'
'Yes, that was it.'
The cheroot was still suspended in front of Daniel's mouth. He looked across at her. 'Who did you just speak to, Tara?'
'What?'
'At the embassy. Who did you just speak to?'
'Why? What's wrong?'
The bubbles of sweat on his forehead seemed to have multiplied. There was unease in his eyes.
'Your father found the tomb of Ptah-hotep in 1963. The year I was born. And he found it at Abydos, not Saqqara.' Suddenly he threw the cheroot aside and stood up. 'Who did you just speak to?' His voice was fast now, urgent.
'Charles Squires. The cultural attaché.'
'And what did he say?'
'He just said wait here. They'd send someone over to get us.'
'That's it? You told him where we were?'
'Of course I told him where we were. How else are they going to find us?'
'And the piece. Did you mention the piece?'
'Yes. I said we'd—'
'What?'
A sudden tingle of unease rippled down her back.
'He asked if we still had the artefact with us.'
'So?'
The tingle was growing stronger.
'I didn't tell him it was an artefact. I just said we'd found something.'
For a moment he remained where he was, then hoisted her to her feet.
'We're getting out of here.'
'But this is crazy. Crazy. Why would the embassy lie to us?'
'I don't know. But this Dr Jemal clearly isn't who he says he is, and if he's not then it would seem your friend the cultural attaché isn't either.'
'But why? Why?'
'I've told you I don't know! We've got to get out of here. Come on!'
The alarm in his voice was unmistakable. He seized the knapsack and they hurried away, skirting the elephant cage and following a path up the side of a tree-covered mound. At the top they turned and looked back.
'Look!'
He pointed back down to where three men, conspicuous in suits and dark glasses, had just come up to the bench on which they'd been sitting. One crossed to the telephone booth and looked inside.
'Who are they?' whispered Tara.
'I don't know. But they're not here for an afternoon stroll, that's for sure. Let's get out of here. Before they see us.'
They turned and hurried down the far side of the knoll and out of the zoo. On the street Daniel hailed a cab and they got in.
'I get the feeling we're in trouble, Tara,' he said, peering anxiously out of the rear window. 'A lot of trouble.'
Squires picked up the phone almost before the first ring had finished.
'Yes?'
The voice at the other end spoke rapidly. He listened, holding the receiver with one hand while the other slowly worked the wrapping off a boiled sweet. He said nothing himself, and his face remained impassive. When the person had finished he said, 'Thank you. Keep looking,' and replaced the receiver.
The sweet was now out of the wrapper. Instead of putting it in his mouth he laid it carefully on the desk in front of him and made three calls, one after the other, in rapid succession. In each case, when the phone was answered, he said, 'She's gone for it,' and then rang off. Only after the third call did he sit back, reach for the sweet and slip it onto his tongue.
He remained motionless for some while, eyes half closed, the tips of his fingers touching just in front of his face as though he was at prayer. Only when the last fingernail of sweet had dissolved did he lean forward, open a drawer and remove a large hardback book. On the cover was a photograph of a wall covered in multicoloured hieroglyphs, and the title: Late Period Funerary Practice in the Theban Necropolis. The author was Daniel Lacage.
He slipped his glasses onto his nose, sat back and opened the volume, crossing his thin legs and smiling to himself.
20
LUXOR
'The murders are connected,' insisted Khalifa. 'I'm sure of it.'
He was sitting in a large, meticulously tidy office on the first floor of Luxor police headquarters. In front of him, reclining behind his desk in an extravagant black leather executive chair, was Chief Inspector Abdul ibn-Hassani, his boss. Khalifa himself was on a low stool, a seating arrangement designed to emphasize Hassani's superior position in the police hierarchy. The chief rarely missed an opportunity to show his men who was in charge.
'OK, take me through it again,' sighed Hassani. 'And slowly this time.'
He was a big man with broad wrestler's shoulders and close-cropped hair, his face vaguely reminiscent of President Hosni Mubarak, whose portrait hung on the wall behind him.
He and Khalifa had never got on. Khalifa disliked his boss's obsession with doing everything by the book; Hassani mistrusted Khalifa's university education, his preparedness to be swayed by intuition rather than hard fact and his fascination with the ancient past. The chief was a pragmatist. He had no time for things that had happened thousands of years ago. He was interested in solving crimes in the here and now. And you did that by hard work, attention to detail and respect for your superiors, not daydreaming about people with unpronounceable names who'd been dead for three millennia. History was a distraction, an indulgence. And Khalifa was, in his opinion, a distracted, indulgent person. That's why he was stalling over his promotion. The man didn't have what it took. He should be working in a library, not a police station.
'According to the newspaper report,' Khalifa was saying, 'this man Iqbar was found in his shop with his face and body badly slashed.'
'What newspaper?'
'Al-Ahram.'
Hassani snorted and waved him on.
'The same wounds as we found on our man Nayar. Nayar dealt in antiquities. So did Iqbar. Or at least he owned an antique shop, which amounts to the same thing. Two men, both in the same business, killed in the same way, within a day of each other. It has to be more than a coincidence. Especially if you factor in Nayar's train ticket. He was in Cairo the day before Iqbar was killed. There has to be a link.'