by Paul Sussman
OK, so he'd got a good lawyer and they'd persuaded the jury it was consensual. Mud sticks, however. The world of Egyptology is a small one and before long everyone knew that Casper Dravic had raped one of his dig volunteers and, worse, got away with it. The teaching posts had dried up, the concessions been refused, the publishers stopped answering his calls. Thirty years old and his career was over. Why oh why hadn't he just killed her? It wasn't a mistake he'd ever make again. That he had ever made again.
He shook his head to bring himself back to the present and waved his hand at the cafe owner, indicating he wanted more coffee. Beside him a young couple, blond, Scandinavian, were hunched over a guidebook marking things in it with a pen. The girl was attractive, with full lips and long, pale legs. He allowed himself to dwell for a moment on the thought of her screaming in pained ecstasy as he drove himself hard into her tight pink anus, then forced his mind back to the business of the tomb.
They'd spent most of the previous night removing the last of the artefacts – the wooden funeral stelae, the basalt Anubis, the alabaster canopic jars. All that remained now was the coffin itself, with its brightly painted panels and clumsy hieroglyphic text. They'd take that out tonight. Everything else had been crated up and sent south to the Sudan, from where it would be moved on to the markets of Europe and the Far East.
It was a good haul, one of the best he'd seen. Late Period, Twenty-seventh Dynasty, a hundred separate objects, crudish workmanship but all in good condition – should raise a few hundred thousand or more. Which on 10 per cent commission meant a nice fat pay-out for him. Compared to the main prize, however, it was small fry. Compared to the main prize every object he'd ever smuggled was small fry. This was the big one. The break he'd been waiting for. The end to all his troubles.
Only if he found that missing piece, though. That was the key. Lacage and the Mullray woman had his future in their hands. Where were they? What were they planning? How much did they know?
His initial worry had been that they would take the piece straight to the authorities. The fact that they hadn't was a source both of relief and of concern to him. Relief because it meant there was still a chance of getting it back. Concern because it suggested the two of them might be going after the haul themselves.
That was his real fear now. Time was running out, as Sayf al-Tha'r had said. They couldn't wait for ever. The longer the two of them had the piece the more chance there was of the prize slipping from his grasp. All his hopes, all his dreams . . .
'What are you doing?' he muttered to himself. 'What the fuck are you doing?'
There was a tut of disapproval from nearby. Looking up he saw the Scandinavian couple staring at him.
'Yes?' he growled. 'Something wrong?'
They paid up hurriedly and left.
His coffee arrived and he slurped at it, gazing up at the Theban Hills in front of him, brown and massive against the pale-blue cushion of the sky.
What he couldn't figure out was how, if Lacage and the girl were going for the prize themselves, they could do it with just that one fragment. Sure, Lacage was supposed to be one of the best Egyptologists around. Maybe he could put it all together from a single piece. Dravic doubted it, however. They'd need more. And to get more they'd have to come to Luxor. That was why he was waiting here rather than in Cairo. This was where they'd surface. He was sure of it. It was just a matter of time. Which was, of course, something he didn't have much of.
He finished his coffee and, reaching into his jacket, pulled out a cigar, long and fat. He rolled it between finger and thumb, enjoying the crackling sound of the dried tobacco leaf, and then put it in his mouth and puffed it into life. The warm caress of the smoke on his palette calmed him and improved his mood. He stretched out his legs and began thinking about the Mullray woman, his mind wandering over her body – the slim hips, the firm breasts, the tight backside. The things he'd like to do to her. The things he would do. The thought of it made him purr with pleasure. Something she certainly wouldn't be doing once he got started on her. He looked down at the ungainly bulge in his trousers and burst out laughing.
23
CAIRO
Iqbar's shop was in a narrow street off Sharia al-Muizz, the jostling thoroughfare which runs like an artery through the heart of Cairo's Islamic quarter. It took Khalifa a while to find the street and even longer to find the shop, which had a dirty steel security shutter pulled down across its front and was half hidden behind a stall selling nuts and sweetmeats. He tracked it down eventually and, throwing up the shutter, unlocked the door and stepped inside, bells jangling above his head.
The interior was cluttered and murky, with racks of bric-a-brac rising from floor to ceiling, and tangles of brass lamps, furniture and other assorted oddments piled high in the corners. Wooden masks peered down at him from the walls; a stuffed bird hung from the ceiling. The air smelled of leather, old metal and, it seemed to Khalifa, death.
He looked around for a moment, eyes adjusting to the gloom, and then moved towards the counter at the back of the shop, where an area of floor had been circled in chalk, the planks stained dark brown by Iqbar's blood. Several smaller chalk circles, orbiting the larger one like moons around a planet, highlighted traces of spongy grey cigar ash. He stooped and prodded one and then, straightening, moved round to the back of the counter.
He didn't hold out much hope of finding anything. If, as he suspected, Iqbar had bought antiquities from Nayar, the chances were they had either been sold on or removed by the people who'd murdered him. Even if there was something here he doubted he'd locate it. The antique dealers of Cairo were notoriously skilful in concealing their valuables. Still, it was worth having a poke around.
He opened a couple of drawers and rummaged through their contents. He lifted the bottom of a large mirror hanging on the wall on the off chance it might conceal a safe, which it didn't. Squeezing past a pair of old wickerwork baskets he wandered into a room at the back of the shop, flicking a switch inside the door to turn on the light.
It was a small room, cluttered like the rest of the place, with a row of battered filing cabinets against one wall and, in the corner, a life-sized wooden statue in black and gold, a cheap reproduction of the guardian statues from the tomb of Tutankhamun. Khalifa walked over to it and looked it in the eyes.
'Boo!' he said.
The filing cabinets were full to overflowing with crumpled papers and after twenty minutes he gave up trying to make any sense of them and went back out into the shop.
'Like looking for a needle in a haystack,' he muttered to himself, gazing at the junk-laden shelves. 'And I don't even know if there is a needle in the haystack.'
He poked around for over an hour, opening a box here, a drawer there, before eventually giving up. If there were any clues here to the old man's murder they were lost somewhere deep among the jumbled mayhem, and short of emptying the place completely there was no way he was going to find them. He took a last look behind the counter, switched off the light in the back room and, with a resigned sigh, took the keys out of his pocket and moved towards the front door.
A face was looking at him through the glass.
It was a small face, dirty, pressed so close to the pane that the tip of the nose had become flattened. Khalifa came forward and opened the door. A ragged-looking girl, no more than five or six years old, was standing on the threshold, looking intently past him into the shop behind. He dropped to his haunches.
'Hello,' he said.
The girl seemed hardly to notice him, so focused was she on the interior of the shop. He took her hand.
'Hello,' he said again. 'My name's Yusuf. What's yours?'
The girl's brown eyes flicked onto his face for a moment before returning to the scene behind him.
She withdrew her hand and pointed into the gloom.
'There's a crocodile in there,' she said, indicating an old wooden chest with an intricately carved brass lock.
'Is there?' Khalifa smiled, remembering
how, as a child, he had firmly believed there was a dragon living beneath his parents' bed. 'And how do you know that?'
'It's green,' she said, ignoring the question, 'and at night it comes out and eats people.'
Her limbs were painfully thin, her belly distended. A street child, he guessed, sent out to scavenge by parents who could find no other way to support her. He brushed a tangle of hair away from her eyes, sorry for her. No wonder the fundamentalists gained so much support, he thought. Their methods might be grotesque, but at least they tried to reach out to these people, to offer them some hope of a better future.
He came to his feet.
'Do you like candy?' he asked.
For the first time the girl gave him her full attention. 'Yes,' she said.
'Wait here a moment.'
He went outside to the sweet stall in front of the shop, where he bought two large slabs of pink sugar-cake. When he came back he found that the girl had wandered further into the shop. He handed her the candy and she began to nibble it.
'Do you know what's in there?' she said, pointing at a large brass lamp.
'I don't, no.'
'A genie,' she replied, mouth full. 'He's called al-Ghul. He's ten million years old and can turn himself into things. When the men came I wanted him to help Mr Iqbar, but he didn't.' She said it so innocently that it was a moment before Khalifa realized the significance of her words. Laying his hand gently on her shoulder, he turned her towards him.
'You were here when the men came and hurt Mr Iqbar?'
The girl was concentrating on her candy slab and made no reply. Rather than push her he just stood where he was, silent, waiting for her to finish her sweet.
'What's your name again?' she asked eventually, looking up.
'Yusuf,' he replied. 'And yours?'
'Maia.'
'That's a pretty name.'
She was examining her second candy slab. 'Can I keep this till later?' she asked.
'Of course.'
She made her way round to the back of the counter, where she pulled out a piece of tissue paper and wrapped up the candy, putting it in the pocket of her dress.
'Do you want to see something?' she asked.
'OK.'
'Close your eyes, then.'
Khalifa did as he was asked. He heard the soft patter of feet as she came out from behind the counter and hurried towards the back of the shop.
'Now open them,' she said.
He did so. She had disappeared.
He waited for a moment and then moved slowly in the direction from which her voice had come, peering to left and right into the gloom, until eventually he spotted the top of her head peeping out above the old wickerwork baskets.
'That's a good hiding place,' he said, leaning over.
She looked up at him and smiled. Slowly, however, the smile seemed to tighten and collapse in on itself, and suddenly she was weeping uncontrollably, hot tears cutting lines through the muck of her face, her tiny body trembling like a leaf. He reached over and lifted her up, holding her close against his shoulder.
'There, there,' he whispered, stroking her filthy hair. 'Everything's going to be OK, Maia. Everything will be fine.'
He began pacing up and down the shop, humming an old lullaby his mother used to sing to him, allowing her tears to run their course. Eventually the trembling began to subside and her breathing returned to normal.
'You were hiding behind the baskets when the men came, weren't you, Maia?' he said quietly.
She nodded.
'Can you tell me about them?'
A long pause, and then: 'There were three,' she whispered in his ear. Another pause, and then: 'One had a hole in his head.'
She leaned away from him a little.
'Here!' she said, touching Khalifa's forehead with her finger. 'And another one was big like a giant, and white, and he had a funny face.'
'Funny?'
'It was purple,' she said, running her hand down the side of his cheek. 'Here it was purple. And here it was white. And he had a thing like a knife that he hurt Mr Iqbar with. And the other two were holding him. And I wanted al-Ghul to come out and help, but he didn't.'
She was talking fast now, the story spilling out of her in a breathless jumble of words: how the bad men had come and started asking Iqbar questions; how she'd watched from her secret hiding place; how they'd cut old Iqbar and continued to cut him even after he'd told them everything they wanted to know; how after they'd gone she'd been scared because there were ghosts in the shop, and had run away, and hadn't told anybody because if her mother had known she was with Iqbar rather than out begging she would have beaten her.
Khalifa listened quietly, stroking the girl's hair, allowing her to tell the story in her own way, slowly piecing together the narrative from her rambling commentary. When, finally, she had finished speaking, stopping suddenly in the middle of a sentence like a toy whose battery has run out, he lifted her onto the counter and, removing his handkerchief, dabbed her eyes dry. She pulled out her second piece of sugar candy and began nibbling at its corner.
'You mustn't be cross with al-Ghul, you know,' he said, wiping away the snot beneath her nose. 'I'm sure he wanted to help. But he couldn't get out of his lamp, you see.'
She looked up at him over her candy. 'Why?'
'Because a genie can only come out of his lamp if someone rubs it. You have to summon him into our world.'
Her brow furrowed as she absorbed this information, and then a small smile curled across her mouth, as though a friend whom she had thought had wronged her had somehow proved to be loyal after all.
'Shall we rub the lamp now?' she asked.
'Well, we could,' replied Khalifa, 'but you have to remember that you can only summon a genie three times. And it would be a shame to summon him for no reason, wouldn't it?'
Again the girl's brow furrowed.
'Yes,' she said eventually. And then, almost as an afterthought, 'I like you.'
'And I like you too, Maia. You're a very brave girl.'
He waited a moment and then added, 'Maia, I need to ask you some questions.'
She didn't reply immediately, just bit off another piece of candy and started swinging her legs so that the heels banged against the front of the counter.
'You see, I want to catch the people who hurt Mr Iqbar. And I think you can help me. Will you help me?'
Her heels continued to thud metronomically against the counter-front.
'OK,' she said.
He heaved himself up beside her. She snuggled up against him.
'You said that the bad men wanted something from Mr Iqbar, Maia. Can you remember what it was?'
She thought for a moment and then shook her head.
'Are you sure?'
Again a shake of the head.
'Can you remember what Mr Iqbar told the men? What he said to them when they were hurting him?'
'He said it was sold,' she replied.
'And who did he say he'd sold it to? Can you remember?'
She looked down and screwed up her face, thinking, watching her feet as they rose and fell. When she eventually looked up at him her expression was apologetic.