The two boats sailed past Giza and the ruins of the ancient capital of Memphis. The three great pyramids stood at some distance from the river, but their massive forms were still clearly visible. As the barge and the dahabeah moved past the town of Beni Hasan, the ancient pillars of the tomb of Amenemhet greeted them with the same mute majesty with which they had greeted boats on the Nile for the past four thousand years. They sailed past the low ruins of the holy city of Akhetaton, where the heretic king, the madman Amenhotep IV, had relocated the Egyptian government a century before the Achaeans attacked Troy; past the fertile plain, the graceful minarets, the fruitful palm groves of the village of Asyut; past the austere white square building which the British had built a century before to house their consuls in the same town; past the medieval tomb of Mourad Bey at Sohag, a tomb built thousands of years later than those of the ancients, but already a crumbling ruin.
The great temple of Seti I at Abydos drifted by, the carefully carved figures which covered the walls on either side of the entrance way to the hypostyle hall still bearing faint traces of the blue, red, and green pigments which had covered them in that ancient time. The boats passed Dendera, and only a careful examination of the mound of dust and rubble on the west bank could tell the observer that this was once the great temple of the goddess Hathor. Only one wall was at all visible, and even there the centuries seemed to have tried to erase the images of the long procession of crowned deities. The eastern gate of the wall which had once surrounded Dendera stood alone, thrusting up out of the red ground in isolated and incongruous majesty, connected to no walls, a doorway to nowhere.
Soon they drew close to Luxor, the ancient holy city, upon which pharaoh after pharaoh had lavished gold and labor. A cluster of contemporary houses of mud brick stood a stone's throw away from the great pylon of Rameses II, behind which the minarets of the mosque of Abn'I-Haqqay towered, as if to illustrate the triumph of Allah over the old god Ra. The broken, roofless colonnades of the temple of Amenhotep III, whom his people called the Magnificent, lined the hills beyond the river bank, and the Northern Gate of Ptolemy III, whose grandfather had snatched Egypt from the dying hands of Alexander the Great, stood near the river. In the distance behind the gate, far from the Nile, one could see the broken, shattered, but still majestic temple of the god Amon. This was the largest place of worship ever built by the human race. The cathedrals of Europe took centuries to build; the Great Temple of Amon took millennia. From the time of the Twelfth Dynasty, some four thousand years ago, until the end of the reign of the Ptolemys with the suicide of Cleopatra near the time of the birth of Christ, building and rebuilding, expansion and addition, was almost continuous. But the succeeding two thousand years of neglect had reduced the massive worship complex to a collection of mutilated, skeletal ruins, still majestic, to be sure, but pathetic as well in their mute testimony to the futility of human endeavor.
The first massive pylon of the temple thrust upward into the sky, now connected to nothing, standing alone at the outer boundary of the holy place. The gray and red rubble extended outward from the pylon's base and led to the remnants of the Great Hall, whose enormous columns thrust strongly upward to support the massive roof which had collapsed centuries ago. Past the Great Hall stood the obelisk of Thutmose I, dwarfed by the larger obelisk of Hatshepsut. A series of granite pillars erected by Thutmose III, the great conqueror of Syria and Palestine, stood before a series of sphinxes whose faces had been mutilated by time and wind and artillery practice.
This huge complex of temples and monuments sat facing the ruins of the great capital of Thebes, from which the great pharaohs of the empire ruled all the world as far south as Ethiopia, as far east as Babylon, and as far north as the borders of the land of the Hittites. This was once the capital of the world. It was now a dusty shamble of cracked walls and fading friezes, faceless statues and crumbling obelisks, roofless buildings and broken highways. Where once stood palaces which housed the masters of the world, there now stood decaying ruins which housed scorpions and lizards. Where once the walls of sanctuaries echoed with the voices of chanting priests, there now echoed only the voices of tourists and tour guides. Thebes, even more than Luxor, testified to time's unrelenting contempt for the Ozymandian arrogance of foolish men.
The barge and the dahabeah sailed south, ever south, through the long day and the long night, through the next morning and afternoon into the next evening, past Esna, past Edfu, past Kom Ombo, and drew nigh to the Aswan High Dam and the first cataract of the Nile. Three miles north of the dam, the barge docked at an irregular, solitary wooden wharf far from the normal docking areas. The dahabeah sailed past the barge, for the Egyptian sailors whom Roderick had hired along with their boat would not turn the bow to the shore and ground the dahabeah on the sand. But once past the barge they raised the sails halfway, thus reducing the driving power of the wind to a delicate balance with the current of the river so that the dahabeah rested motionless near the western bank, the conflicting forces of wind and water canceling each other out.
"Tell him to get us to shore," Sawhill demanded of Sam impatiently. "Those bastards are getting ready to unload."
Sam Goldhaber and the boat's pilot engaged in a heated exchange for a few moments, after which Sam turned to his two friends and said, "He won't beach his craft, but he can get close enough to shore for us to get over the side and wade."
"Wade!" Sawhill shouted. "Wade! We'll get our ammunition wet! And the guns—!"
"Not necessarily" Roderick said soothingly. "If the water really is shallow enough for us to wade ashore, we can hold everything over our heads. It will only be for a few feet, anyway. And we don't seem to have much choice."
"Okay, okay," Sawhill said in an angry, bitter tone, "then let's get going." The pilot was calling upon his sailors to tack the sails so as to move the dahabeah sideways, and when they were no more than twenty feet from the shore he called out to Sam that this was as far as they could safely manage.
"This is it," Sam said. He climbed awkwardly over the side of the dahabeah, intending to slip gracefully from the low-lying hull into the water, but he lost his grip on the railing. He fell backward, landing in the water with a loud splash.
Roderick leaned over and asked, "Are you all right, Sam?"
Sam Goldhaber stood up in the water and shook the water from his eyes and ears. "Yeah, yeah, I'm okay. Why don't you hand me some of our stuff?" The water came only up to his waist. The long, narrow dahabeah displaced even less water than he had supposed.
"Righto," Roderick said, and began to pass pistols and rifles to Sam. Thomas Sawhill hopped from the dahabeah into the Nile and took weapons and ammunition belts from the Englishman. Roderick held the two remaining rifles slightly aloft as he leaped from the boat. Faz had managed to get them two rifles and two pistols apiece and an ample supply of ammunition for each one.
They waded ashore as the dahabeah lowered its sails and turned the helm about, allowing the currents of the Nile to begin to carry it back toward Cairo, some three hundred miles to the north. Sam watched the boat drifting homeward as he stood on the shore, wringing the water out of the kaftan and the burnoose he, like the others, was wearing in an attempt to conceal his identity. Sawhill was slinging one rifle over his shoulder by its strap. He stuck his two pistols into his belt on either side of his body, and stood holding his second rifle, waiting impatiently for Sam and Roderick to imitate him. "Come on, come on, hurry up, will you?" he demanded.
"Okay, Tom, I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying," Sam said, trying to keep annoyance out of his tone. His affection for his friend, his sympathy for what he was going through, and his own worry about Harriet Langly did not serve to displace his own tension and growing feelings of fear. It had all seemed so obvious, so indisputably clear back in America, that they had to rescue the woman. But now, alone on the banks of the Nile, armed to the teeth, hurrying to engage in violent confrontation with a group of murdering fanatics, he was less objective and secure than he had be
en.
Roderick seemed strangely calm, as if his sheltered and pampered existence had bred into him an inability Co even conceive of danger to his own person. Well, that's good, Sam thought. At least he'll probably be able to keep a cool head. I doubt that Tom will. And me? Sam shook his head. Calm down, he ordered himself. Calm down.
The three men began to walk along the Nile bank in the direction of the barge, which had docked some three hundred yards north. Sam noticed a motion in the distance and squinted to see it. "What's that?" he asked. "A caravan?"
The other two men looked at the moving line coming out of the desert toward the river, far beyond the position of the barge. "I can't tell," Roderick said. "There seem to be draft animals pulling something—wagons, perhaps?"
"Of course," Sawhill snapped his fingers. "Transportation for the coffins."
"Transportation where?" Roderick asked.
"To their holy place, most likely," Sam said. "Whatever they intend to do, they won't do it here on the riverbank with ships passing them constantly. They must have a place off there"—he pointed into the desert with his rifle barrel—"in the desert somewhere."
"Shit!" Sawhill muttered. "That will make it damned hard to follow them on foot without being seen." He glanced out at the flat expanse of sand which stretched off to the horizon.
"Then whatever we intend to do must be done here," Roderick said with finality.
"If we run into Sekhemib before we can get Harriet, we won't be able to do anything," Sam pointed out. "If she's here, I mean. I didn't see her on the barge."
"I could bloody well hardly see the barge!" Roderick said. "She might have been on it. We weren't that close."
They continued trudging through the sand, all the while watching as the caravan drew ever nearer to the barge. When they drew close enough to be able to see the people on the barge closely, they moved more carefully. The Nile banks just north of Aswan were not as fertile as the banks farther north, but palm trees enough grew to afford them occasional cover. A cluster of trees not fifty yards from the barge was sufficient to conceal all three of them, and they stood motionless, watching, waiting for an opportunity, their only plan being attack, their only tactic being surprise.
They watched as the caravan arrived. It was an odd caravan, one which carried no goods. Three men rode at the head of the procession, rocking back and forth in keeping with the rhythm of the camels upon which they sat. Three riderless camels followed behind them, attached by rope from the bridle of one to the saddle of the other, and four mules pulling four carts followed behind the camels. The mules were being pulled forward by short ropes attached to their bridles, held by four men who were dressed, like Sekhemib, Hadji, and Haftoori, in plain kaftans of brilliant white girdled by richly colored sashes at the waist.
The human contingent of the caravan dismounted from camels and released ropes and came forward. They prostrated themselves at the feet of Sekhemib and remained for a long while with their faces pressed into the sand. He spoke to them in a firm, commanding voice which carried far enough for the three Westerners to hear him distinctly in the midst of the otherwise totally silent stretch of riverbank, but his words carried no meaning to them.
The people rose to their feet and began to unload the barge. The barge crew assisted them as they carefully moved the six crates one by one from the deck of the wagons, putting two of the recently purchased boxes into each of two wagons, reserving the other two for the remaining boxes which housed the decaying corpses of Meret and Yuya. Two of the barge crew took hold of the large straw basket which rested now alone upon the deck of the barge and lifted it upward. They carried it to the edge and passed it to two of the men on the shore. They in turn carried it away from the bank toward the wagons and set it down upon the sand. One of them lifted the lid and then overturned it.
Harriet Langly fell out onto the sand and then lay motionless. Her naked body was bruised and deathly pale, and her wrists and ankles were bound with thick lengths of rope.
Sam Goldhaber grabbed Thomas Sawhill by the arm and held him tightly, knowing even before the latter began to move that the sight would impel him into an irrational attack. "Wait, Tom, wait! Not now, not while Sekhemib is so close. We have to wait!"
Sawhill's attempted response issued forth as a strained, high-pitched cry of anger. His body was trembling so violently that Roderick felt compelled to take him firmly by the other arm. "Wait, Thomas, just a little while longer."
Sawhill was staring at the woman he loved, his face contorted into a grimace of rage and pain. "Look at her!" he managed to say. "Look at what they've done to her! Those animals, those fucking bastards!"
"Tom, quiet down, please!" Sam said urgently. "We have to choose our own time. We can't let them hear us!" Sawhill shoved a knuckle into his mouth and bit down hard upon it. Blood began to ooze from the freshly inflicted wound.
They watched as one of the people of the caravan took a canteen and poured a stream of water onto the motionless woman. Her body twitched visibly when the liquid struck her parched skin, but she made no other movements. "At least she's alive," Sam whispered.
"They kept her in that basket all day, all the way up the river," Sawhill muttered, a hint of hysteria creeping into his shaking voice. "I'll kill them, I'll kill all of them!"
"Tom, be quiet!"
Sekhemib and the old man walked slowly away from the wagons and approached the camels. The grooms pulled down upon the bridles and the camels dropped to their knees with slow, ungainly movements, and then remained that way, grunting and spitting and chewing their cuds as first Sekhemib and then Haftoori mounted them. Sekhemib barked a few commands to the caravan boss, and then he and Haftoori began to slap the camels sharply on the sides of their long necks. The camels rose bellowing to their feet, and the two men turned their mounts toward the desert. They began slowly to ride away, leaving the barge crew and the caravan under Hadji's direction. The small man seemed to grow in height as he began issuing orders in all directions in a tone of haughty arrogance.
"Sekhemib's leaving!" Sam whispered. "That's great!"
"Shall we rush them?" Roderick asked. He seemed to be as eager and enthusiastic as he might have been before a Rugby match, if he had ever played Rugby, which he had not.
"Listen," Sam said, "this is what we should do. We'll attack as soon as Sekhemib is far enough away to give us a safety margin. We have to hit them fast, guns firing, and hope we can clear them off the barge. Tom, you grab Harriet and get her onto the barge. Roderick, you and I will keep up the fire while we cast off those ropes. We'll escape on the barge."
"What if we can't start the motor?" Roderick asked. "Have you ever had anything to do with motorboats? I know I haven't."
"We don't have to start the motor. The river current runs north from here, back toward Cairo. If we can get the motor started, fine and good, but even if we can't all we have to do is steer the barge, keep in the center of the river. I mean, anyone can use a tiller."
"Good," Roderick nodded. "That's good. But what about Sekhemib and the others?"
"One thing at a time," Sam said. "Let's just worry about getting Harriet and ourselves out of here in one piece. If we manage that, then we can plan a next step. Maybe she can even get the authorities to believe her, at least partially."
"Let's go, let's do it!" Sawhill spat. "I can't leave her lying there like that any longer."
Sam looked over at the figures of Sekhemib and Haftoori, which were growing increasingly small in the distance. "Just another few minutes, Tom, please. Let's wait until they're out of sight."
Tears of frustration began to roll down Sawhill's cheeks. "Harriet," he croaked, his hands squeezing the stock of his rifle so tightly that even the bleeding knuckle showed white against the brown wood.
Those few more minutes seemed to be an eternity to Thomas Sawhill. His eyes were fixed on Harriet Langly's motionless form and he fought to keep his mind from imagining what had been happening to her since her abduction. His hea
rt was pounding and his legs were twitching with erratic spasms, as if he were an automobile in first gear with both the brake and the accelerator pushed down to the floor. He was so intent upon staring at her that he did not hear Sam at first when he gave the word to attack. He snapped to attention after a few moments as if awakened from a dream. The three men looked at each other, a gesture of silent encouragement and acceptance of whatever awaited them, and then ran from behind the cluster of palm trees, guns blazing.
At the sound of the gunfire the men on the barge leaped into the water, and those on the shore dropped to their bellies. No one returned the fire, for none of them was armed. Only Ahmed Hadji stood erect, his arms folded, a look of disturbing nonchalance upon his smirking face.
Sawhill ran directly at Hadji, firing the automatic rifle directly at him, but Hadji did not fall. Sawhill whipped the other rifle from his shoulder and emptied another clip into the Arab, but Hadji stood motionless, staring at him coldly. The men who had fallen to the ground rose slowly to their feet as the men in the river clambered onto the shore.
Pistols and rifles blazed in the hands of the three men, but something was terribly wrong. No one was falling wounded, there were no cries of pain, no streams of red upon the yellow sand. They continued firing until the cylinders and clips were empty and then stood in motionless bewilderment in the sudden silence of the river bank. Hadji stood in the midst of his underlings, some one dozen men, all looking at the three Westerners blankly. No more than fifteen yards separated Hadji from Sawhill, and the latter could see the grin on Hadji's face spread slowly into a broad, friendly smile. "Hello, old fellow!" Hadji said. "We've been waiting for you. And, by the way, my nephew Faisal sends his regards and asks you to forgive him for selling you blanks."
Sam and Roderick stood immobile from shock as the barge crew and caravan crew grabbed hold of them. Only Sawhill, his anger and frustration now well beyond the breaking point, fought against his assailants, swinging the rifle in his hands as a club, but his efforts were doomed to failure by the odds. Two Arabs each were sufficient to bind Roderick and Sam, but it took six attackers and ultimately a blow to his head with the barrel of his own rifle to subdue Sawhill. He fell to the ground unconscious beside Harriet, and the Arabs wrapped rope around his wrists and arms.
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