by Paul Sussman
He took the cigar from his mouth and, reaching forward, touched its glowing tip to her neck. She screamed in agony, writhing, trying to get him off, but he was too heavy, as if she had a mountain on top of her. The cigar came down again on her forearm and the top of her breast. Each time she screamed and each time he laughed in delight. He threw the cigar aside and began pawing at her breasts, squeezing them, pulping the pale flesh. Then he bent his head and, grunting like a pig, started to bite her neck and shoulders, his teeth leaving deep purple welts on her white skin. Somehow she managed to get a hand free and with all the strength she could muster, drove her thumb up into his eye. He arced backwards, roaring.
'You filthy bitch!' he screamed. 'I'll fucking teach you!'
He slapped her three times about the face, shockingly hard, knocking the breath out of her. She felt herself being flipped over onto her front, and heard the sound of a belt being unbuckled, although the noise was strangely muffled. She felt as if she had stepped out of her body and was standing to one side gazing down, a witness to the violation rather than its victim. She watched as Dravic pulled open his trousers and, reaching beneath her belly, started to undo her jeans.
I'm going to be raped, she thought to herself in a detached sort of way. Dravic is going to rape me and there's nothing I can do about it.
She could see the trowel lying on the floor ten feet away and reached towards it, even though she knew she could never reach it.
I wonder how much it'll hurt, she thought.
He grabbed her hair and yanked her head back while at the same time tugging down her jeans and knickers. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, waiting for the assault.
It didn't come. She could feel the weight of Dravic on top of her, his fist on her buttocks, but he seemed to have stopped still, as though frozen.
'Come on,' she said impatiently. 'Just get it over with.'
Still he didn't move. She opened her eyes again and twisted round. He was looking towards the door, head cocked, listening. She listened too. Initially it was all just a confused buzz. Then, gradually, like a radio being tuned in, the sound grew clearer. Shouting. Dozens of voices shouting. Dravic remained where he was for a moment and then, muttering, came to his feet and rebuckled his trousers. The shouting was growing louder and more urgent, although she couldn't make out what was being said. Dravic retrieved his trowel, looked back at her and then, throwing aside the tent flap, stepped out into the night. She was alone.
For some moments she lay where she was, her face thick and heavy, the burns on her skin aching viciously. Then, rolling onto her back, she pulled up her jeans and struggled to her feet.
Several minutes passed and then a guard stepped into the tent. He looked at her and there was a momentary flicker of apology in his eyes, as if he disapproved of what Dravic had done and wanted her to know that. Then, with a twist of his head, he motioned her outside.
Dravic was nowhere to be seen. The whole camp, indeed, was empty, like a ghost town. The guard pointed with his gun, up towards the mound they'd stood on earlier in the day. As she came to the top she saw that Daniel was already there, flanked by two guards. He turned.
'Oh Jesus,' he said, choking at the sight of her ripped shirt and bruised skin. 'Oh Jesus, what's the bastard done to you?' He pushed past his guards and ran to her, wrapping his arms around her. 'I'll kill him. I'll kill the animal!'
'I'm OK,' she said. 'I'm fine.'
'Did he . . .?'
She shook her head.
'I heard you screaming. I wanted to do something, but they had a gun on me. I'm so sorry, Tara.'
'It's not your fault, Daniel.'
'I'll kill him! I'll kill all of them!'
The intensity of his embrace was hurting her and she pushed him away.
'I'm fine,' she said. 'Honestly. What's going on? There was shouting.'
He was staring at the burn marks on her skin, eyes filled with disgust and guilt.
'I think they've found something,' he mumbled. 'Dravic is down in the excavation trench.'
She grasped his hand and together they went forward to the front of the mound.
Since they'd been there that afternoon a vast round crater had been sucked out of the valley floor, exposing the base of the pyramid rock like the root of an enormous tooth. Dravic was at the bottom, side on to them, kneeling, poking at the ground with his trowel. The rest of the men were above, gazing down, expectant. The cold white light of the arc lamps lent the scene an unearthly, dreamlike quality.
'What have they found?' she asked.
'I don't know,' said Daniel. 'We're too far away.'
Dravic shouted and one of the men threw a brush down to him. He took it and began flicking at the area in front of his knees, stopping every now and then and leaning forward, staring intently at the ground. After a minute he laid the brush aside and resumed scraping with his trowel, alternating between the two as he slowly cleared back the gravelly sand before him, revealing something, although Tara couldn't make out what it was.
Several minutes passed. More of the object was exposed now and she could see that it was semicircular in shape, like the upper part of a wheel. Dravic continued clearing around it before eventually laying aside his tools, gripping the thing with both hands and pulling. His shoulders bunched with the effort, but the object wouldn't come and he was forced to take up the brush and trowel again and clear away more sand. Despite what he'd just done to her, Tara nonetheless found herself absorbed in his actions. Daniel was leaning forward, hand tight in hers, his anger suddenly forgotten.
Again Dravic laid aside his tools, and again grasped and pulled at the object. Still it wouldn't come. He shuffled backwards slightly to give himself more leverage, adjusted his grip and, throwing back his head, heaved with all his might, veins bulging in his neck. For a moment the world seemed to stop dead, as if the scene in front of Tara was a photograph rather than an event happening in real time. Then, slowly, inch by inch, the object started to rise. Daniel took a step forward. Up it came, resisting all the way, the desert reluctant to release its treasure, up and up, until suddenly the ground's jaws broke and, in a spray of sand and small pebbles, the object came free. A shield, huge, round, heavy, its convex face gleaming in the glare of the lamps. Dravic held it aloft and the men began cheering wildly, yelling, clapping, stamping their feet.
'I've found you, you bastard!' bellowed Dravic. 'The army of Cambyses. I've found you!'
For a moment he stood with the shield held triumphantly above his head and then began screaming orders. Men swarmed down into the trench. The shield was carried away and the vacuums taken up again, their mouths swinging furiously across the sand.
'Clear it!' roared Dravic. 'Clear all of it. Work!'
Initially there was nothing, just sand and more sand, a bottomless well of yellow, so that it began to look as if the shield might have been a one-off, something thrown up by the desert to taunt and tantalize them.
Then, slowly, other shapes started to appear. Formless at first, just vague hummocks and ridges, unsightly distortions in the smooth continuum of the desert. As more sand was gasped away, however, they gradually took on recognizable forms. Bodies, dozens of bodies, hundreds of them, their flesh dried and hardened by two and a half millennia of submersion, giving them the look not of corpses, but rather of old men. An army of old men. Ancient beyond reckoning, but alive nonetheless, rising wearily from the sands, blinking in the angry light, disorientated, their weapons still clutched firmly in their skeletal hands. There was hair on their heads, and armour clamped around their torsos, and, most extraordinary, expressions on their faces – terror and pain and horror and fury. One man appeared to be screaming, another weeping, another laughing insanely, his mouth levered wide open to the sky, his throat filled with sand.
'Jesus Christ,' whispered Tara. 'It's . . .'
'. . . fabulous,' said Daniel, breath heavy with excitement.
'Horrible.'
Most of the figures were lying
flat, steamrollered by the monstrous weight of the storm that had buried them. A few, however, were on their knees, and some were still standing upright, arms raised protectively in front of their faces, overwhelmed so swiftly they hadn't even had time to fall.
As each body emerged, a host of black-robed workers descended upon it like vultures, pulling away its armour and equipment and passing them up to the top of the trench, where packing crates were being laid out ready to receive them. Occasionally an arm or leg would snap off as the body to which it belonged was roughly manhandled.
'Strip them!' yelled Dravic. 'Strip them clean! I want everything. Everything!'
An hour passed and the excavation spread out in all directions, revealing more and more of the army. Dravic strode back and forth barking orders, examining objects, directing the sand-vacuums, before eventually clambering out of the hole and looking up at Tara and Daniel.
'I told you I'd find it, Lacage,' he shouted gleefully. 'I told you!'
Daniel said nothing. His eyes burned with hatred. And also, it seemed to Tara, a hint of envy.
'I couldn't kill you without at least giving you the chance to see it. I'm not that cruel!'
The German laughed and indicated to the guards that they should take them back to their tent.
'And Ms Mullray,' he called after them, 'our little soiree hasn't been cancelled, merely postponed. I'll be sending for you again. After all this work I'll be needing to slip into something warm and tight.'
NORTHERN SUDAN
The boy found him standing on a dune top, alone, gazing eastwards into the night. He climbed up to him.
'They've found it, Master,' he said. 'The army. Dr Dravic has just radioed in.'
The man continued staring out into the wilderness, the dunes glowing silver in the moonlight, like a sea of mercury. When he eventually spoke his voice was subdued.
'This is the end and the beginning, Mehmet. From today so much will be different. Sometimes it frightens me.'
'Frightens, Master?'
'Yes, Mehmet. Even I, God's warrior, can be scared. Scared of the responsibility I have been given. There is so much to do. At times I think I would just like to sleep. It's been so long since I slept, Mehmet. Years. Not since I was a child.'
He clasped his hands behind his back. A soft wind started to blow. The boy was growing cold.
'We cross the border tomorrow. Mid-morning. Inform Dr Dravic.'
'Yes, Master.'
The boy turned and started to descend. Halfway down he stopped and looked back.
'Sayf al-Tha'r,' he called. 'You are like a father to me.'
The man continued gazing out across the desert.
'And you are like a son to me,' he said.
His voice was quiet, no more than a whisper, and the words dissolved into the night so that the boy did not hear them.
35
CAIRO
Cairo was the only practical starting point for the journey Khalifa intended to make. The alternative would have been to drive from Luxor to 'Ezba el Gaga and then follow the huge loop of the desert highway through the oases of al-Kharga and Dakhla before cutting cross-country from al-Farafra – a vast journey over badly maintained, heavily policed roads that were frequently made impassable by the drifting sands. No, it had to be Cairo. And anyway, that was where Fat Abdul was.
His train drew into Ramesses Central just after eight a.m. He jumped off before it had come to a stop and, hurrying through the cavernous marble concourse, hopped a service taxi down to Midan Tahrir. He'd had ten hours to think about what he was doing and more than once the doubts had begun to creep in again. He'd pushed them from his mind, however, and instead focused on the journey ahead. He just hoped Abdul still organized those desert tours.
He crossed the square, dodging the barrage of morning traffic, and turned down Sharia Talaat Harb, coming to a halt in front of a glass-fronted shop with 'Abdul Wassami Tours – Better Than None in Egypt' stencilled above the window. Below was a list of the various tours on offer, including, to Khalifa's relief, a 'Thriller Five-Day Desert Adventure including camp out under beautiful stars, four-wheel drive and very exotic belly dance extravaganza'. Abdul had clearly lost none of his talent for selling a product.
He opened the door and stepped inside.
Abdul Wassami – Fat Abdul as he was generally known – was a friend from Khalifa's Giza days. They'd grown up next door to each other and gone to the same school, where, from an early age, Abdul had displayed a determinedly entrepreneurial streak, selling 'miracle power tonics' made from Coca-Cola and cough medicine, and charging ten piastres a head for surreptitious guided tours of his elder sister's bedroom (unlike her sibling, Fatima Wassami had been tall, slim and extremely good-looking).
Adulthood had tempered his exploits slightly, although not his ingenuity, and after a brief spell exporting Libyan dates to the former Soviet Union he'd settled down to run his own travel company. Khalifa saw him only occasionally these days, but the old warmth was still there, and as he entered the shop now there was a cry of delight from the far end.
'Yusuf! What a marvellous surprise! Girls, say hello to Yusuf Khalifa, one of my oldest and thinnest friends.'
Three girls, all young, all pretty, looked up from behind their computers and smiled. Abdul waddled over and enveloped the detective in a suffocating hug.
'Look at Rania,' he whispered in his ear. 'The one on the left, with the big you-know-whats. Thick as a slice of basbousa, but the body on her! Oh God, the body! Watch!' He released Khalifa and turned to the girls. 'Rania dear, could you fetch us some tea?'
Smiling, Rania stood and walked towards the back of the shop, hips swaying provocatively. Abdul stared after her, mesmerized, until she disappeared into a small kitchen.
'The Gates of Paradise,' he sighed. 'God, what a bum.' He ushered Khalifa over to a row of armchairs and squeezed down beside him. 'Zenab OK?' he asked.
'Fine, thanks. Jamilla?'
'As far as I know.' Abdul shrugged. 'She seems to spend most of her time round at her mother's these days. Eating. God, she eats. Makes me look like I'm on a starvation diet. Hey, you know what? I'm about to open a New York office.'
For as long as Khalifa could remember Abdul had been about to open a New York office. He smiled and lit a cigarette. Rania returned with the tea, setting the glasses down in front of them and going back to her desk, Abdul's eyes glued to her receding backside.
'Listen, I need a favour,' said Khalifa.
'Sure,' said his friend distractedly. 'Anything.'
'I need to borrow a four-by-four.'
'Borrow?'
Suddenly Abdul was all attention.
'Yes, borrow.'
'What, as in hire?'
'As in you lend me.'
'For free?'
'Exactly. I need it for four, maybe five days. Something that's equipped for rough terrain. Desert terrain.'
Abdul's brow had furrowed. Lending things for free clearly wasn't a concept with which he felt comfortable.
'And when do you need this four-by-four?'
'Now.'
'Now!' Abdul burst out laughing. 'I'd love to help you, Yusuf, but that's impossible. All the four-wheel drives are down in Bahariya. It would take at least a day to bring one back to Cairo, more if they're out on a tour, which, now I think about it, they all are. If we had one here of course you could have it. We're friends, after all. But as it is . . . I'm sorry, there's no way.'