by Paul Sussman
'Like I said, a real piece of shit.'
Tauba pushed back his chair and crossed his legs on the corner of the desk, lighting a cigarette. Khalifa flicked through the files.
'I went to see that guy at the British embassy,' he said after a while.
'And?'
'Nothing really. Didn't tell me anything new. I had the impression he was keeping something from me, though. Any idea why he'd do that?'
'Why the hell do you think?' Tauba snorted. 'They've never forgiven us for nationalizing Suez and telling them to fuck off back to their own country. If they can put a spanner in the works they will.'
'It was more than that. He knows something about this case. And he doesn't want me to know that he knows.'
Tauba's eyes narrowed. 'You're saying the British embassy is involved in this?'
'To be honest, I don't know what I'm saying any more.' Khalifa sighed wearily, leaning forward and rubbing his eyes. 'There's something going on here, but I just can't see what it is. I just can't bloody see what it is. Dammit!'
Charles Squires slipped his glasses onto his nose and began perusing the menu. For almost two minutes he sat in absorbed silence before eventually laying it aside with a nod of satisfaction.
'The quail, I think. Yes, the quail is always very good here. And to start, well, the seafood pancake sounds most intriguing. Jemal?'
'I'm not hungry.'
'Oh come, come. We can't have you wasting away. You must eat something.'
'I came here to talk, not to eat.'
Squires tutted disapprovingly and turned to the figure on his left, an overweight man with a balding head and an improbably large Rolex watch on his wrist.
'What about you, Massey? Surely you're not going to leave me to eat on my own?'
The American peered down at his menu, rubbing a handkerchief over the back of his neck, which, despite the restaurant's air-conditioning, was wet with sweat.
'Have they got steak here?' he asked, his accent deep south.
Squires pointed to the menu. 'I think you'll find the filet mignon fits the bill.'
'Has it got a sauce on it? I don't want anything with a sauce on it. Just a plain steak.'
Squires summoned the waiter. 'The filet mignon,' he asked, 'does it come with a sauce?'
'Yes, sir. A pepper sauce.'
'I don't want a pepper sauce,' insisted Massey. 'Just a plain steak. No shit on it. Can you do a plain steak?'
'I'm sure we can, sir.'
'OK, give me one of those, medium rare, with french fries.'
'And to start, sir?'
'Christ, I don't know. What's that thing you're having, Squires?'
'The seafood pancake.'
'OK, give me one of those. And medium rare on the steak.'
'Jolly good,' smiled Squires. 'The seafood pancake and quail for me, and could you please bring the wine list.'
He handed his menu up to the waiter, who bowed deferentially and disappeared.
Massey tore off half a bread roll and, smearing it with butter, jammed it in his mouth. 'So what's going on?' he asked, chewing.
'Well,' said Squires, watching the American's mouth with a mixture of fascination and disgust, 'it seems our friends have finally turned up in Luxor. Isn't that right, Jemal?'
'They got in this afternoon,' confirmed the Egyptian.
'This whole charade is fucking ridiculous.' Massey grunted. 'We know where the piece is. Why don't we just go in and get it? Stop pussying around.'
'Because there's too great a danger of giving ourselves away,' explained Squires. 'We shouldn't show our hand until we absolutely have to.'
'We're not playing pinochle here.' The American sniffed. 'There's a lot riding on this.'
'I appreciate that,' said Squires. 'For the moment, however, it's better that we stay in the background. Why take unnecessary risks when Lacage and the girl can take them for us?'
'I don't like it,' said Massey, chewing. 'I don't fucking like it.'
'Everything will work out.'
'I mean, Sayf al-Tha'r . . .'
'Everything will work out,' repeated Squires, a faint hint of annoyance creeping into his voice, 'so long as we keep our nerve.'
The waiter came back with the wine list and, returning his glasses to his nose, Squires began to study it. Massey got to work buttering the second half of his roll.
'There is one slight problem,' said Squires after a moment, not raising his eyes.
'Here it comes,' growled Massey. 'What?'
'A policeman. From Luxor. It appears he's found out about the missing hieroglyphs.'
'Fucking Jesus fuck! Do you have any idea what's at stake here?'
'I have every idea,' said Squires, the annoyance in his voice now unmistakable. 'I do not, however, intend to get hysterical about it.'
'Don't you patronize me, you cock-sucking limey—'
Jemal slammed his fist on the table, making their cutlery jump and glasses rattle. 'Stop it,' he hissed. 'This is not helpful.'
The three of them sank into an angry silence. Massey devoured the rest of his roll. Squires played distractedly with his fork. Jemal started telling off his worry beads.
'Jemal is right,' said the Englishman eventually. 'Arguing among ourselves is less than productive. The question is, what do we do about this fellow from Luxor?'
'I would have thought that was obvious,' snapped Massey. 'This thing's too important to let some hick paper-pusher screw everything up.'
'Holy God,' hissed Jemal. 'You're saying we should kill him? A policeman?'
'No, we buy him a dress and take him dancing for the night! What the fuck do you think I'm saying?'
The Egyptian stared at Massey with undisguised loathing, his fists clenching and unclenching on the tablecloth. Squires laid aside the wine list and, placing his hands together, rested his chin on the tips of his fingers.
'Elimination does seem rather drastic in the circumstances,' he said quietly. 'Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and all that. I see no reason why we shouldn't be able to solve the problem without recourse to violence. Jemal?'
'I'll get him taken off the case,' he said. 'No problem.'
'I think that would be best,' agreed Squires. 'A dead policeman could lead to all sorts of unnecessary complications. Make sure you keep an eye on him, though.'
Jemal nodded.
'I still say we should take him out,' grumbled Massey. 'Keep things clean.'
'It might come to that eventually,' said Squires. 'But for the moment I would suggest restraint is the order of the day. This thing's led to too many deaths already.'
'If you want a Nobel Peace Prize you're in the wrong fucking business.'
Squires ignored the sarcasm and returned to his examination of the wine list, running his finger up and down the selection. At the far end of the restaurant a man started playing the piano.
'There is one interesting thing about this police chap,' he said. 'It seems he has a bit of a history with Sayf al-Tha'r. Isn't that right, Jemal?'
'Apparently he has a score to settle,' said the Egyptian, clicking his beads. 'Family business.'
'For fuck's sake,' snorted Massey.
'Yes, it is somewhat extraordinary, isn't it?' Squires smiled, his composure now fully restored. 'What a tiny world we live in, eh? Ah! I do believe those are our seafood pancakes approaching. A half-bottle of Chablis to wash them down, perhaps, and then onto a Burgundy for the main course.'
He flapped open his napkin and laid it carefully on his lap, waiting for his food to arrive.
Professor Mohammed al-Habibi's eyes were aching. He rubbed them slowly, working the knuckles of his clenched fists deep into the wrinkled sockets, and for a moment the pain lessened a little. As soon as he started looking at the artefacts again the ache returned, as bad as before, making his temples throb. It was a problem he often experienced these days. He was getting old and his eyes could no longer take the strain. He knew he ought to pack up and go home, give himself a rest, but he cou
ldn't. Not yet. Not until he'd discovered everything the objects had to tell him. Yusuf was his friend, after all. He owed it to him. And, in a sense, to Ali too. Poor Ali.
He poured another slug of sherry into his glass, the last of the bottle, relit his pipe and, lifting his magnifying glass, bent down to resume his examination of the gold pectoral.
There was something puzzling about the objects his young friend had brought him. Not so much in the way they looked, but rather in the way they felt. Artefacts were, to Habibi, like living things. They sent out signals. Communicated. Provided you knew how to listen, they could tell you all sorts of interesting things. In this case, however, the more he listened, the more perplexed he became.
When he had first examined them, while Khalifa was there, he had not been struck by anything especially out of the ordinary. The artefacts were of simple manufacture and common design, easily datable, the same as dozens of similar objects on display in the museum below.
It was only after Khalifa had left that he'd started to have doubts. There was no particular reason: just a niggling sense that despite their apparent plainness, the objects were nonetheless trying to tell him something specific.
'What are you saying?' he pondered aloud, roving across the face of the pectoral with his magnifying glass. 'What do you want me to hear?'
It was completely dark in the office now, apart from the pool of light cast by his desk lamp. Occasionally he heard the footfall of a security guard passing along the corridor outside, but otherwise the museum was silent. A thick fug of bluish pipe smoke hung over his head like a raincloud.
He laid aside the pectoral and picked up the dagger, holding it by the blade and turning the handle back and forth in the light. It was a simple piece, perfectly common, twelve inches long, iron, with some crude bronze inlay at the top of the blade and a strip of browned leather wrapped tightly around the handle to improve the grip. Typical of its period. He had authenticated one almost exactly the same only a few months previously.
He finished his sherry and took a puff on his pipe, a cloud of smoke for a moment obscuring the object in front of him. When he could see it clearly again he noticed that the leather wrapping was ever so slightly loose at the lower end of the handle, close to where it joined the blade. He tweaked it gently and the strip began to unwind.
At first he thought they were just tiny scratch marks. Only when he twisted the handle so that the glare of the lamp was not falling directly on it, and held the magnifying glass right up close, did he realize that the marks were actually letter signs. Not Persian or Egyptian, as he would have expected, but Greek. A series of tiny Greek letters crudely inscribed into the metal of the handle. ΔYMMAXOΣ MENENΔOY – Dymmachus, son of Menendes. His eyes blinked in surprise.
'Well, well, well,' he muttered. 'So that's your little secret, is it?'
He wrote the words down on the pad beside him, spelling them out letter by letter, checking and rechecking to make sure he had them right. Then he laid the dagger down, lifted the pad and sat back in his chair.
'Where have I seen that before?' he said aloud. 'Where? Where?'
For twenty minutes he sat without moving, staring into space, occasionally lifting his sherry glass and tilting it up to his mouth, even though there was no longer any sherry in it. Then, suddenly, he threw aside the pad, scrambled to his feet and made for the bookcase on the far side of the room, moving surprisingly quickly for a man his age.
'Impossible!' he said. 'It can't be!'
He ran his finger urgently along the rows of books before eventually levering one from the middle of the case: an old leather-bound volume with thick, parchment-like pages and its title inscribed in gold lettering on the spine: Inscriptions grecques et latines de tombeaux des rois ou syringes a Thebes. J. Baillet. He hurried back to his desk and, swiping his arms across it to clear a space, laid the book down beneath the lamp and began leafing rapidly through the pages. Outside the security guard shouted, 'Good evening, professor,' as he passed the door, but the old man ignored the greeting, so engrossed was he in the volume before him. The silence of the room seemed to magnify the excited rasping of his breath.
'It's impossible,' he muttered. 'Impossible! But, my God, if it's not . . .'
28
LUXOR, THE THEBAN HILLS
It was too cold to lie naked for long, even behind the windbreak. After they had made love they pulled their clothes back on and, with Daniel taking the knapsack, wandered further into the hills, the wind pushing at their backs, the landscape glowing a dull silver in the moonlight. Tara clutched Daniel's arm, her body suffused with a rich, warm glow, a delicious ache between her legs. She had forgotten what a powerful lover he was.
'What are you looking for?' she asked after a while, noticing the way his head was turning this way and that, eyes scanning the shadowy slopes.
'Hmm? Oh, nothing really. It's just been a while since I was last up here.'
She tightened her grip on his arm.
'Do you wish we hadn't?'
'What, made love?' He smiled. 'No, it was wonderful. Why, do you?'
She pulled him to a halt and, standing on tiptoe, kissed him passionately on the lips.
'I'll take that as a no then,' he said, laughing.
They wandered on, arms round each other, deeper and deeper into the hills, the world about them deathly silent apart from the clunk of their feet, the whisper of the wind and, occasionally, the far-off howl of a wild dog.
So far as Tara could make out, they were crossing a broad plateau on top of the massif. To their right the land sloped upwards slightly, blocking any view in that direction. To the left it ran flat for several hundred yards before dropping away into a shadowy confusion of cliffs and wadis. Ahead loomed the distant outline of higher peaks, black against the deep grey-blue of the sky. She had no idea where they were going, nor did she really care. She was happy just to be at his side, holding him, feeling his warmth and strength and power.
Eventually, after they had been walking for over an hour, Daniel slowed and stopped. The path at this point dipped slightly, crossing a shallow, dried-up watercourse that cut directly across their way, meandering from right to left like the track of some enormous snake. Tara circled her arms around his waist.
'You're trembling,' she said.
'I'm just cold. I'd forgotten how chilly it gets up here at night.'
She dug her hands into the back pockets of his jeans and nuzzled her face against his neck. 'I suppose we ought to think about going back. We've been away for almost three hours. Omar might be worrying.'
'Yes,' he said, 'I suppose we should.'
Neither of them moved. A shooting star flashed above them.
'If it was light we could try going down a different way,' he said eventually. 'There are all sorts of paths you can follow. Best not to risk it in the dark, though. These hills are full of old tomb shafts. If you stray off the track and fall into one, chances are you won't get out again. A few years ago a Canadian woman went into one over by Deir el-Bahri. No-one heard her screaming. She eventually died of starvation. When they found her body . . .'
He stopped suddenly, body tensing.