The Exodus Quest

by Will Adams

  She clung to Augustin’s arm as he led her out towards the lobby. Suddenly, she couldn’t get away fast enough. ‘We had to agree to certain conditions to gain your release, I’m afraid,’ he told her. ‘The important thing was to get you out tonight.’

  ‘What conditions?’

  ‘For one thing, your passport has been confiscated and won’t be returned until the investigators are satisfied.’ He opened the front door for her, then led her down the front steps and opened the back door of Mansoor’s car which was waiting at the foot. ‘I’ve also had to assure them you won’t try to leave the country before then.’

  ‘I won’t,’ she promised, climbing inside. ‘But how long will it all take?’

  ‘It won’t be quick,’ admitted Augustin, sliding in beside her. ‘Things in Egypt rarely are.’ He took her hand in both his, gave it a reassuring press. ‘But you mustn’t worry. It’s going to work out fine. Mansoor and I have worked out a story that—’

  ‘Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay!’ protested Nafeez from the front, covering his ears. ‘I can’t hear this. I’m a lawyer.’

  ‘Forgive me, my friend,’ laughed Augustin. He turned back to Claire. ‘Just trust me. It’s going to be fine. It’s who you know in Egypt that counts. Usually I hate that about this place. Tonight I welcome it. Because I know a lot of people, Claire. A lot of connected, powerful people. I’ll call them all if I have to.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve made some other commitments on your behalf. I’ve undertaken to be personally responsible for making sure you show up for all interviews and court appearances, should it come to that, which it won’t. But I’m afraid that means you’re going to have to stay as my guest for the time being.’

  ‘Won’t I get in your way?’

  ‘Of course not. It’ll be my pleasure.’

  She glanced down at her hand, still pressed between both his. He realized what must be going through her mind, blushed furiously, let go of her hand, shifted away along the back seat. ‘No!’ he protested. ‘It won’t be like that at all, I promise you. You’ll have your own bedroom. At least, it’ll be my bedroom, but I won’t be in there with you, I’ll be on the couch in the living room, I’ll just grab a blanket and a pillow, I’ve slept there before, it’s fine, it’s comfortable, much more comfortable than the bed actually, I don’t know why I don’t sleep on it all the time, anyway you’ll be completely safe, that’s the point, I give you my word.’

  He broke off his schoolboy blathering, drew a deep breath, looked directly into her eyes to see if she’d bought it, evidently came to the conclusion that he still needed to give it one last push. ‘Honestly, Claire,’ he insisted, ‘I’d never dream of taking advantage of you like that, not after everything you’ve just risked for me.’

  There was a heartbeat of silence.

  A second heartbeat.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  II

  Lying exposed to the full savagery of the thunderstorm on the roof of the truck, Knox looked back down the road and realized a major weakness in his impromptu plan. Even with the truck’s headlights on full beam, visibility was dire. But Naguib and Tarek wouldn’t be able to use their lights without giving themselves away. And driving without lights in these conditions would be almost impossible.

  A vicious squall buffeted the truck. It lurched so sharply sideways that water sloshed from the top and Knox had to cling desperately on. Their tyres regained grip, but they slowed down after that to a more prudent pace. He looked behind again. Still no sign of anyone. They reached the end of the road and parked by the generator building. An appropriate place for all this to end. Geometry might be a Greek word, but it had been an Egyptian science, developed in response to the annual Nile inundation which flooded the surrounding land, meaning that owners of valuable property needed reliable ways to determine what land belonged to whom when the waters receded, while the authorities had needed fair methods to work out taxes too.

  That these skills had been used by Egypt’s architects was proved by the orientation and proportions of the Great Pyramids. Yet talk of ‘sacred geometry’ made Egyptologists uncomfortable; it smacked too much of New-Age thinking. And while the Egyptians had clearly had both the knowledge and the ability to incorporate it into their city planning and architecture, the archaeological record showed that they hadn’t often had the inclination.

  At first glance, the city of Amarna seemed designed to fit its landscape. But a British architect had recently mapped the key sites, with remarkable results. Amarna, it seemed, hadn’t been haphazardly laid out at all. The entire city was in fact a vast rectilinear open-air temple that straddled the Nile and faced the rising sun. What was more, if you drew straight lines from each of the boundary stele through the main palaces and temples, they all converged on a particular point, like the rays converging on the sun in so much of Amarna’s art. And that focal point was right here at Akhenaten’s Royal Tomb. It was as though he’d seen himself as the sun, shining eternally upon his people and his city.

  The truck’s doors opened. Khaled and his men hurried out, hunched beneath waterproofs, their torch-beams feeble things quickly lost in the massive darkness. Knox’s mobile couldn’t find a signal, overwhelmed by the storm and the high walls of the wadi. He was on his own, for the time being at least. Water slopped over the edge as he lowered himself down. His shoes squelched as he walked, so he kicked them off and tossed them into the night. Then he followed Khaled and his men along the wadi floor, wading barefoot through the storm-water as it cascaded like rapids across the scree.

  III

  Abdullah glowered at Khaled’s back as they laboured up the hillside and then across the plateau, his feet soaked and sore and cold inside his ill-fitting boots. What madness this was! No way would they be able to make it down that sorry excuse for a path in such a torrent. But Khaled had anticipated this. There was a protruding spike of rock on the hilltop above the tomb mouth. He tied a slipknot in one end of a coil of rope, slung it around this spike, then tossed the rest over the edge. ‘Down you go, then,’ he told Abdullah.

  ‘Me?’ protested Abdullah. ‘Why me?’

  ‘We wouldn’t be in this damned mess if you’d followed my orders.’

  ‘You should have been clearer,’ muttered Abdullah.

  ‘On the phone? On the phone?’

  Abdullah grudgingly took hold of the rope. He gave it a couple of tugs to test it. It promptly rode up the spike and came free. ‘Look!’ he said.

  ‘Stop whining, will you?’ said Khaled, looping it back around, pulling the knot tighter. ‘Just climb.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ murmured Faisal. ‘I’ll keep an eye on it.’

  Abdullah nodded gratefully. Faisal was the only one he trusted. He fed the rope through his belt, fastened his torch-strap around his wrist, traded his AK-47 for Nasser’s pickaxe, which he slung over his shoulder. Then he lowered himself backwards over the edge, like he’d seen on TV, but his boot slipped on the slick rock, he crashed into the cliff-side, hanging on desperately while Khaled and Nasser laughed themselves sick. He was still muttering curses when he reached the relative sanctuary of the tomb mouth.

  The cement had formed a crust, but hadn’t yet dried underneath. It came away easily when he attacked it with the point of the pickaxe, fragmented grey mush washing down the cliff-face. He made a hole large enough to reach his arm inside and set his torch down at an angle to light his work, then hacked out more cement. Lightning lit up the wadi all around. He braced himself for the crack of thunder, but just before it started he could have sworn he heard a different noise, that of automatic gunfire. He anchored one hand inside the tomb, leaned out and looked up to find out what the hell was going on. But there was no one up top to answer his question.

  IV

  It was pure luck that Khaled saw the man. He just happened to be glancing back when a lightning bolt illuminated the entire plateau, revealing him crouched some thirty paces away, mobile phone in his hand.

/>   The knowledge of how he’d been tricked was both instantaneous and complete. Instead of fear, Khaled felt only a great and visceral rage. He snatched Nasser’s AK-47, turned back towards the man. Darkness had fallen once more, he couldn’t see a thing, but he sprayed the horizon all the same, hoping providence was with him.

  ‘What is it, sir?’ asked Nasser.

  ‘Company.’

  Lightning shuddered again, revealing the man crawling on his belly like the snake he was. ‘There!’ he yelled, firing another burst. ‘Get him.’

  FIFTY-TWO

  I

  Knox fled across the hilltop as gunfire skittered around him, the night illuminated by muzzle flash and a distant strobe of lightning. It went dark again and he flung himself sideways, tumbling down a rift in the hilltop into a shallow lake created by the deluge. He tried to duck beneath its surface as the three men ran up, but the water wasn’t deep enough.

  ‘Did we get him?’

  ‘He went down.’

  ‘Then where the hell is he?’

  ‘He must be here somewhere.’ Torches probed the darkness, flurried across the water’s surface, heavy raindrops glittering golden in their light. ‘Who is he, anyway?’

  ‘He must have been in our truck.’

  ‘You think that policeman knows? You think this was a trick?’

  ‘Of course it was a trick!’

  ‘Son of a dog. We’re done for.’

  ‘We’re not done for! We’re not done for! This one’s here on his own, isn’t he? We just need to silence him. That’s all. Once he’s gone, no one will be able to find this place. They won’t be able to prove a thing.’

  ‘But we—’

  A sharp crack; someone had just been slapped. ‘Follow my orders, damn you. He’s here somewhere. He must be.’ One of the men shone his torch around, the beam flashing again over where Knox was half-hidden in the water. But this time the beam stopped, came back, fixed on him. ‘There!’ he cried.

  Knox pushed himself to his feet, splashed up the side of the rift, then fled headlong. But now he was penned between the rift lake and the cliff’s edge. Gunfire ripped the night behind him. He threw himself down by the spike of rock, grabbed for the rope looped around it, slithered over the edge, slick wet fibres slipping through his grasp as he fell, wind buffeting him, spraying mist into his face. He finally gained some grip on the rope, his palms scorching as he juddered to a halt, glanced down to see Abdullah standing on a thin ledge below. He shouted something that Knox didn’t catch, swung at his ankles with a pickaxe. Knox danced away across the rock face, but his sideways movement pulled the slipknot loose from the spike of rock and suddenly he was in freefall, plunging down the sheer cliff-face towards the rocks beneath.

  II

  Naguib was driving almost blind, his sidelights rather than headlights on, only the faint glow of the whitewashed kerbstones to show him the road, steep embankments studded with rocks either side, eyes constantly playing tricks on him, blurs all over the place, his tyres banging the sides, wrenching round the wheel.

  They had to have fallen way behind by now. Too far behind. He muttered a prayer and switched his Lada’s headlights on full, stamped his foot down on the accelerator. It proved his undoing. A sudden squall lifted up the light car and threw it sideways, aquaplaning them over the kerbstones and then crunching into a boulder, the sickening noise of crumpled metal, seat belts snapping tight against their chests. He and Tarek glanced at each other. No time to waste in recrimination or regret. They jumped out, ran over to the truck that had pulled up alongside, helping hands hauling them up into the back; drenched, bedraggled, feeling rather ridiculous as they found places to sit, and the truck pulled away again.

  ‘Nice driving,’ muttered someone, earning himself a laugh. But then another buffet of wind almost sent the truck over the edge, and the laughter promptly died.

  III

  Knox hurtled down the cliff-face past Abdullah towards the wadi floor. But he was still gripping the rope tightly in both hands, and its other end was looped through Abdullah’s belt, so that the momentum of Knox’s fall transferred instantly to him. Knox slammed against the cliff, grabbed rock, let go of the rope. But Abdullah wasn’t so fortunate. His knees buckled, his right foot slipped from the wet narrow ledge, his hand was ripped free from its hold inside the tomb. He tumbled shrieking past Knox, clawing the sky, and slapped the rocks beneath with a sickening thump. Then only silence.

  A cascade of stones clattered by. Knox looked up to see Khaled on the cliff edge, pointing down his torch and aiming his pistol, squeezing off four rounds that pinged and whined off the rocks. Knox scrambled up to the ledge where Abdullah had been, gaining the protection of a slight overhang. There was a gaping hole in the rock, he saw, big enough for him to squeeze through. He tumbled through to the other side. A torch was lying on the ground. He picked it up and shone it around a chamber, ankle deep in water. He splashed over to a passage leading off and then down. ‘Gaille!’ he shouted. ‘Gaille!’

  A cry ahead. A woman’s cry: high-pitched, short, terrified. Not Gaille, though. Lily, the other hostage. And panic rather than relief in her voice. He raised his pace, running headlong, almost didn’t see the shaft in time, stopped teetering on its waterfall brim, regained his balance, shone down his torch, picked out Lily fifteen or twenty feet below, clinging to the wall, surrounded by a flotsam of crushed water bottles and wooden planks, keeping Gaille’s head above the water with the crook of her elbow, but crying out in pain and exertion.

  ‘Hold on!’ cried Knox.

  ‘I can’t. I can’t.’

  He looked around for some way to get down to her and then back up again. Any way. He saw an iron peg hammered into the floor, but there was nothing to tie to it. And Abdullah had taken the rope down with him on his plunge.

  ‘Help!’ cried Lily. ‘Help!’ A spout of rainwater fell on her open mouth, catching in her throat, making her choke and splutter, flailing around in the water, letting go of Gaille, who promptly slipped beneath the surface.

  ‘Gaille!’ yelled Knox. ‘Gaille!’

  Lily splashed over to the wall, clawed onto it with both hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ she wept. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Knox had no time to think. No time at all. He gripped his torch tight, yelled out in fear, and leapt feet-first into the shaft.

  IV

  Khaled stared down into the darkness as Nasser and Faisal ran up to join him at the cliff’s edge.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Faisal. ‘Where’s Abdullah?’

  ‘He fell,’ said Khaled. He turned to his two men. Faisal looked white-faced. Abdullah had been his friend. Nasser, by contrast, looked relatively composed, considering their situation, at least. ‘He took the rope down with him,’ he told Nasser. ‘We need it. Go fetch it.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Do you want to get out of this or not?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then do as you’re told,’ spat Khaled. ‘Fetch me that rope.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  V

  Knox burst through the surface of the water, plunged on through, drawing his feet up as he went, striking the floor of the shaft hard, banging and scraping his feet, ankles and backside, his head slapping the wall, rough surfaces scouring his calf and arm, wind punched from his lungs, sucking in water. He kicked instinctively for the surface, coughed and spluttered it out, breathed gratefully in, oriented himself, pointed around his torch. ‘Gaille?’ he asked.

  Lily shook her head wretchedly, all her energy needed to cling to the wall.

  Knox swam around, feeling out for her. It wasn’t easy with the rainwater cascading down. He kicked beneath the surface. The shaft wasn’t large, yet he couldn’t find her. Another breath, another dive, his hands outstretched, fingers brushing something soft. He grabbed at it but it eluded him. He went after it and then he had it, a shirt, an arm, his hand closed around a wrist, kicking for the surface, lungs burning for air, pulling Gaille after him, an ar
m around her as she reflexively coughed out water, gasped air.

  He found a handhold on the wall on which to anchor himself, carrying Gaille slumped unconscious upon his shoulder. He shone his torch around this drowning prison, Lily fighting hysteria beside him, and the question formed unanswerable in his mind: Now what?

  FIFTY-THREE

  I

  Nasser was wheezing hard by the time he brought the rope back up to Khaled and Faisal at the top of the cliff.

  ‘Abdullah?’ asked Faisal.

  ‘No,’ said Nasser.

  Faisal looked sickened. ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘We’re finished.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘What do you think I’m talking about? Abdullah’s dead. How are we going to explain this?’

  ‘We say we got worried after that policeman visited with his story about mysterious foreigner voices,’ scowled Khaled. ‘We say we decided to go out searching for them ourselves. Abdullah slipped and fell. A tragedy, but not our fault. It’s that policeman’s fault for feeding us false information.’

  ‘No one will believe that.’

  ‘You listen to me, you snivelling little coward,’ shouted Khaled. ‘We see this through. We see this through together. You understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘That’s better.’ Khaled glared back and forth between Faisal and Nasser, then looped the rope around the rock once more, thinking about how to make best use of his limited resources. No way could he trust Faisal up here alone; he’d run like the coward he was the first chance he got. ‘Nasser, you stay here. Guard our backs. Faisal, you come down with me.’

  ‘But I—’