The Exodus Quest

by Will Adams

  The recording light went out. Khaled reviewed the footage, nodded in satisfaction. Faisal popped out the DVD, passed it to him. He took it by its edges, careful not to leave fingerprints, then put it away in its case. Gaille’s heart began to race wildly with fear. Because she understood Khaled’s plan well enough to realize that if he still intended on killing them all, now would be the time.

  IV

  ‘Well?’ asked Yasmine, greeting Naguib at the door. ‘How was your day?’

  Naguib knew what his wife was really asking. She was asking him whether he’d found his killer yet, whether their daughter was safe. He said: ‘Not bad.’

  Yasmine dropped a kiss on Husniyah’s crown. ‘Run along, beloved,’ she said. ‘Your father and I have something to discuss.’

  Husniyah took her doll next door, though something in her eye made Naguib suspect she’d have her ear against the wall. ‘Well?’ asked Yasmine.

  ‘There’s no connection between the girl I found and those two in Assiut,’ said Naguib. ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘How can you be?’

  ‘I don’t even think this girl was murdered. I think it was an accident. I think she was just a poor girl out hunting for ancient artefacts in a storm. I think perhaps something fell on her and knocked her unconscious and then she drowned. Or maybe she was climbing when she fell.’

  ‘And then she just picked herself up and walked out into the desert and buried herself in a tarpaulin beneath the sand?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Naguib.

  ‘Then what?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know yet. Something’s clearly up. But that doesn’t mean it’s linked to Assiut. That doesn’t make it murder.’

  ‘But you’re going to find out, yes? I have to be sure.’

  ‘Gamal’s right, my beloved. We have more pressing cases.’

  ‘She was a young girl,’ insisted Yasmine. ‘I’m glad there’s no murderer. I’m glad Husniyah is safe. Truly I am. But she was just a young girl, and she was from your district, and she was under your care. You owe it to her to find out.’

  Naguib sighed. ‘I’ll speak to the ghaffirs in the morning,’ he promised. ‘Maybe they’ll know something.’

  V

  ‘Well?’ demanded Knox, when Farooq returned. ‘What did your man say? He told you the IV stand fell over, didn’t he?’

  ‘Let’s say it did fall over,’ acknowledged Farooq grudgingly. ‘So what? It could have been an accident.’

  ‘Sure!’

  ‘Very well. You pulled it over because of this mysterious intruder, this man no one else saw, this man who wants to kill you, yet who you’ve never seen before and can’t identify.’

  Knox hesitated. ‘I think it might have been someone called Peterson.’

  ‘The Reverend Ernest Peterson?’ frowned Farooq. ‘The man who saved your life?’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘You heard me. He found you after your crash and risked his own life to pull you from your Jeep before the smoke got to you. Then he drove you to hospital. This is the man who tried to kill you?’

  Knox went a little numb. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said. He shook his head in confusion, baffled by this latest turn.

  ‘You took a taxi from the hospital. Where did you go?’

  ‘Around.’

  ‘Around?’

  ‘May I have something to drink, please?’ asked Knox. ‘A glass of water. Anything.’

  ‘When you tell me where you went.’

  ‘The Latin Cemeteries.’

  ‘You went directly there?’

  ‘You said I could have a glass of water.’

  Farooq pushed himself to his feet, opened the door, shouted down the corridor. ‘You went directly there from the hospital?’ he asked, sitting back down.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s strange. Because my colleagues had a call earlier. From a woman who had an intruder in her apartment.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘This intruder assaulted her, put her in fear for her life. And do you know the funny thing? He answered your exact description. And do you know who lives right above her? Your friend Augustin Pascal. Yes. The very same man you telephoned earlier.’

  ‘Is this really why you brought me in? To talk about Pascal?’

  Farooq tapped a cigarette from a soft-pack, clamped the filter between his lips to pull it all the way out. ‘Want one?’ he offered.

  ‘No thanks.’

  Farooq lit his cigarette, smoke drifting from his nostrils. ‘You’re quite right,’ he smiled. ‘I didn’t bring you in to discuss Mister Pascal. I brought you in to charge you with the murder of Omar Tawfiq.’

  THIRTY

  I

  Night had fallen while they’d been in the Royal Tomb. The rocks in the wadi gleamed like bones as Gaille picked her way across them, then up the hillside. Faisal led the way, cutting a ghostly figure with the dustsheets draped over his shoulders. He walked confidently along the cliff-face path, finding places for his feet that Gaille could barely see in the gloom until he turned and picked them out for her with his torch. She took the first step, her ankles weak with fear. Then the next. Faisal smiled at her when she finally reached the end, seeking a smile in return, some kind of forgiveness, or at least of understanding; but she remembered how she’d shared her chocolate with him earlier, and gave him such a scathing look instead that he dropped his eyes in shame.

  He pulled back the sackcloth curtain, nodded her through the black gash in the rock, a tree-trunk split by lightning. With his torch pointing down, the reflected light revealed a wide, low chamber, rows of voluptuous fat pillars carved from the limestone either side, the gaps between stacked high with rubble. Everyone gathered inside. Khaled led them along the passage to a shaft. A rope ladder was moored to an iron peg hammered into the ground. ‘Down,’ he ordered Gaille.

  ‘What are you going to do with us?’

  ‘Just get down.’

  She dangled her legs over the drop, turned onto her front, grabbed the rope, elbows scraping on the rough stone as she probed with her foot like a tongue at a loose tooth until she found a rung. Faisal shone his torch down for her, so that she could see the plain limestone wall as she descended, the rubble floor covered with litter. In the fluttering light, she glimpsed a candle glued by its own congealed wax to a stone and a half-used book of matches, so she grabbed them both. Stafford arrived down next, then Lily. The ladder slithered up the wall like a fugitive snake, trapping them there. A mutter of conversation above, then the fade of footsteps and silence.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted Stafford. ‘Anyone there?’ Nothing but echo. ‘You think they’ve gone?’ he asked.

  Gaille struck a match, lit the candle from it, took it to the walls, too sheer and high to climb, even if they’d had some tool with which to gouge holds in them.

  ‘What are they going to do with us?’ asked Lily. ‘Did they say what they were going to do?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They must have said something.’

  ‘I don’t think they know yet,’ said Gaille. ‘I think they’re making this up as they go along.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  She took a deep breath. The candle fluttered, giving the feeling of a vigil, as though someone had died. ‘This is a mess, that’s all. They stumbled upon this place by accident. They should have reported it, but they chose to loot it instead. That’s a very serious crime. They’ll go to gaol for years if they’re caught.’

  ‘Then why take the chance?’

  ‘Because they’re poor. A conscript earns maybe three hundred US dollars a year. Imagine trying to live on that. Imagine trying to marry or bring up a family. Then imagine coming across an artefact worth a thousand dollars. A single artefact. What would you do?’

  ‘You sound almost sorry for them,’ said Stafford.

  ‘They’ll let us go, won’t they?’ asked Lily. ‘I mean they have to.’

  Gaille didn’t answer at once, but her silence was
eloquent. ‘The police will come for us,’ she said.

  ‘But they’ll be looking in Assiut!’

  ‘They’ll be looking everywhere,’ Gaille assured her. ‘One thing the Egyptians have is manpower. We just need to keep our nerve.’ The candle guttered, already burning low. They couldn’t afford to waste any more. She cupped her hand around the flame to blow it out, and darkness enveloped them once more.

  II

  ‘Murder?’ protested Knox. ‘What do you mean, murder?’

  ‘I mean exactly what I say,’ said Farooq. ‘I mean I believe you deliberately killed Omar Tawfiq and tried to make it look like an accident.’

  ‘You must be crazy.’

  ‘Answer me this, Mr Knox. How long have you owned your Jeep?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just answer my question, please.’

  ‘I don’t know. Ten years.’

  ‘And tell me this. Did it have a passenger-side seat belt?’

  ‘Oh Christ!’ muttered Knox. He rocked forward on his chair, looked up at Farooq. ‘Is that how he died?’

  ‘And there was a driver’s-side seat belt. You knew that, not least because you were wearing it when you were found. So you’d agree, wouldn’t you, that if the driver deliberately crashed into a ditch, there’d be every chance he himself would escape with light injuries while his passenger would be very severely injured, maybe even killed?’

  Knox shook his head. ‘You’d have to be mad to do such a thing.’

  ‘Not mad. Only very highly motivated.’

  ‘What motive could I possibly have had to do that?’

  ‘That’s for you to tell me, isn’t it?’

  ‘This is crazy,’ protested Knox. ‘Omar was my friend. I didn’t murder him, I swear I didn’t.’

  ‘I thought you’d lost your memory,’ said Farooq. ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because I’d never do something like that. Ask anyone.’

  ‘We have been asking.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Knox. But he felt a twinge. Who knew for sure what they were capable of under stress? More to the point, who knew what others would say about them?

  ‘I hear you’re quite the celebrity in archaeological circles,’ said Farooq. ‘I hear you can’t get enough of the media spotlight.’

  ‘I found myself in it once. That doesn’t mean I enjoyed it.’

  ‘It goes to your head, though, doesn’t it?’ grinned Farooq. ‘It brings you alive. And then it goes away again and leaves you feeling empty.’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’

  ‘You know what I think happened?’ said Farooq. ‘I think you found something yesterday. I think you found it on Peterson’s site. I think that’s why you went back after dark. I further think that you and Mister Tawfiq argued about what to do next. His colleagues say he was the most scrupulous of men. He’d have insisted on going through the proper channels, reporting it to his secretary general in Cairo. But you couldn’t bear that, could you? Everyone tells me you have history with the secretary general, that you can’t stand each other. The thought of him getting all that glory, all that attention, when it should rightfully have been yours. … It wasn’t to be borne, was it? So you decided to silence Omar.’

  ‘That’s rubbish.’

  Farooq nodded to himself. ‘You know what I had to do this morning, Mister Knox? Visit Mister Tawfiq’s family; inform them of his death. The very worst part of my job, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. You know much about his family?’

  Knox shook his head. ‘He never talked about them.’

  ‘Can’t say I’m surprised. A respected academic like him.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘His father is a very powerful man, Mister Knox,’ grunted Farooq. ‘His brothers are all very powerful men.’

  Knox felt sick. ‘You don’t mean … ?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do. And they’re not happy, believe me. They want explanations. I had to tell them you were driving. I had to tell them your Jeep had no passenger-side seat belt.’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’

  ‘They hold you responsible for his death, Mister Knox. And they’re dangerous men, I assure you. Not the kind of men to let the death of a son and brother pass without taking certain steps.’

  ‘They’re coming after me?’

  ‘You asked why I had you brought in,’ said Farooq. ‘I wanted to talk to you, yes. But I was also concerned for your safety. This is my city, Mister Knox. I won’t have people murdered here. Not even foreigners. Not even killers. But I’ll tell you this: I wouldn’t be in your shoes, not for anything.’

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ said Knox weakly.

  ‘You’d do well to get your memory back as soon as possible,’ advised Farooq, pushing himself to his feet. ‘We’ll meet again tomorrow morning. I’d use tonight wisely, if I were you.’

  III

  Khaled drove the Discovery cautiously along the wadi, only opening up at all once he was out in the open desert. The moon was low on the horizon, making the sand gleam like tarnished pewter. Chill night air blew in through the broken driver’s-side window, turning his fingers to ice. He kept his headlights on; the risk of meeting anyone way out here was far less than of hitting one of the rocks that lay hidden like unexploded mines in the sand. He felt strangely calm, the situation out of his control. But luck was with him; he reached the desert track without incident, headed south towards Assiut, began to encounter other people. A farmer on his donkey. A pick-up truck. Then the traffic grew thick, cloaking him in anonymity. He crossed the bridge into Assiut. Nasser was waiting on the west bank, astride his motorbike; his route down had been far quicker, even with a Nile crossing to take into account. He waved at Khaled, fell in behind. They drove west, looking for suitable sites, found a derelict factory with an enclosed courtyard. Perfect. He scattered the belongings he’d taken earlier among the front and back seats, then doused the whole lot with fuel from the Discovery’s own spare can. It went up with such a fierce blaze that it seared his skin. He climbed on the back of Nasser’s bike and they drove back into town.

  The Discovery would be found soon enough, but he couldn’t deliver the DVD just yet. Enough time needed to pass for terrorists to snatch hostages, take them to a safe house, make the recording. Three hours, say. Then back to Amarna. They found a bench overlooking the Nile where he brooded on their situation.

  A young couple walked by in the darkness. He could hear their doting voices but not make out what they were saying, and it reminded him how he’d heard Stafford’s voice from inside the tomb. He went cold suddenly. What if it worked both ways? The police were sure to visit Amarna during their investigation. What if the hostages were to yell for help while they were nearby? He’d intended to keep them alive to mitigate their punishment should they be caught, but now he realized this was a risk they couldn’t afford. He pulled out his mobile, called Abdullah. ‘Everything okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Abdullah. ‘You want us to close the place up now?’

  ‘I need you to do something first. I need you to silence them.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  A moment’s hesitation, then: ‘But I thought we were going to—’

  ‘We need them silenced,’ snapped Khaled. ‘That’s an order. Am I clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. Then take care of it before I get back.’

  IV

  A second football match had taken the place of the first on the recreation room TV, and now was reaching its climax. Knox’s two cell-mates were fans, taking it in turns to stand by the door and squint through the viewing window, wincing and cheering, chatting animatedly with the policemen outside.

  Omar was dead. Finally, it was sinking in. He and Knox hadn’t been old friends, but they’d grown close quickly, in that way you do. Kindred spirits. Such a gentle, thoughtful and diffident young man; it was hard to credit that he came from a family of Egyptian gangsters, though maybe tha
t was why he’d turned out the way he had, why he’d turned to archaeology. An effort to distance himself from his own roots. Although, thinking about it, maybe it had had something to do with his recent promotion too.

  The worst of it was, Farooq was right: Omar’s death was his fault. He’d been driving his Jeep for years with a broken seat belt, aware that such an accident was possible, yet he’d done nothing about it. Such things somehow seemed to matter less in Egypt. Until they had consequences, at least.

  A great cheer went up. Someone had scored.

  He buried his head in his hands as he grieved for his friend, striving to regain his lost memory. He owed it to Omar to remember precisely what had happened, how badly to blame he’d been. But the minutes passed, slow as pouring treacle, and still nothing came.

  V

  Faisal followed Abdullah along the tomb corridor with a heavy tread, his AK-47 held out in front of him, as though to fend off demons. He was a quiet man by nature; he wanted only to complete his three years’ conscription and go home. He believed in hard work, in Allah, in doing right by others, in marrying a good woman and having many, many children. His uncle had assured him that the army would be the making of him. Who on earth could have dreamed it would make him into this? But Khaled had given his orders, and you didn’t disobey Khaled. Not more than once.

  They reached the lip of the shaft, stopped. ‘Who’s up there?’ called out the girl Gaille. ‘What’s going on?’ Her voice was plaintive, it tugged at his heart, reminded him of how she’d given him chocolate just that same morning, how they’d laughed and joked together. How in hell had it all gone so wrong so quickly?

  ‘I’ll shine down the torch,’ murmured Abdullah. ‘You do it.’

  ‘Why should I do it?’