Star of Egypt

by Buck Sanders

  He turned back into Willis’ running line of patter.

  “Of course, this warehouse business only increases risk, if you ask me, because it just adds one more time everything must be moved; one more time we might make an error.” He seemed to catch himself, smiling. “But of course, if we don’t know what we’re doing, why are we here at all?”

  Why indeed. Slayton’s problem was that although all the characters present were, in fact, professionals, one of them might be a professional of a deadlier sort.

  “Of course, I don’t pretend that the government involvement in all of this”—he spread his hands expansively—“indicates the slightest interest in the artifacts themselves. It’s all politics, all greasing up the right palms, and showing the correct face to the world at large. Everyone else is always watching, eager to pass judgment. So we put on our little burlesques.” He glanced back at Slayton. “This is a singular discovery, you know,” he said, his eyes now glinting with the prospect of discussing his specialty. “Do you, sir, have the slightest interest in all of this?”

  Slayton was prepared for a question like that one, and his reply was calculated as well. “I don’t know everything about the Seth-Olet discovery that I should, Professor, but I do understand that it wasn’t your traditional pyramid.”

  “In fact,” Willis said, pointing the way down a narrow corridor, and indicating a potential head bump for Slayton to avoid, “the Seth-Olet tomb was more properly a mastăba. One of the reasons the more cursory explorers missed it—they were locked into the idea that they would find Seth-Olet inside a normal pyramid.”

  “Oh,” began Slayton, delivering his punchline: “So the fact that you found a mastăba means that not only did your predecessors have the wrong shape, but the wrong dating, as well. Generally, mastăbas predate the pyramids, don’t they? And even if they didn’t, you’d be able to place the body in proper historical perspective merely by the methods used to mummify it, once you’d found it.”

  Willis stopped, and, in the semidarkness of the corridor, Slayton nearly collided with him. He turned slowly, almost theatrically, and fixed Slayton with a cocked eye. “Yes.” Then, almost conspiratorially, “Follow me and I’ll unveil some of Seth-Olet’s secrets for you.” He left off if you’re interested, and Ben Slayton considered his second acid test of the day passed.

  4

  The dark-haired woman assessed herself in the narrow cabin mirror. She shifted weight to one leg and cocked the other, watching the light catch and slip along the fine leather of her boots. Not too thick or clunky, she thought; it would be easy to be graceful in these. The light skirt she had chosen hid her well-molded legs, but was less a restriction of style than a concession to appearing the proper academic when stepping off the ship. And it looked good.

  From the waist up she was naked, and she turned, inspecting the way her stance affected the play of her breasts.

  “Egomaniac,” came a sarcastic voice through the connecting cabin door.

  The woman before the mirror shook her head, whipping the fluffy black hair around. “Just like an American commercial, right?” she said into the mirror.

  Into the cabin leaned another woman, wearing a conservative pantsuit and expensive, but understated, jewelry. Her hair was a framing spill of tight tan curls; she looked more naturally the academic type. “Shauna,” she said, with sisterly good humor, “there will be television cameras.”

  “Do you think they’d go for this?” said Shauna, deliberately squeezing in her shoulders and moving in a sinuous little dance before the glass.

  “Might be a grabber to open the tour,” the woman shrugged. “What you would call a narrative hook.”

  There was an impatient knocking on the outside cabin door. “I’ll get it,” said the other woman under her breath, as Shauna snatched up a safari blouse and quickly buttoned herself into it.

  Professor Willis bustled into the cabin as the door opened, already in the midst of his presentation, as usual. “Well, thank god you two are where you’re supposed to be, anyway… um, Doctors, may I present to you—you can come in, Mr. Rademacher, no need to stand on ceremony in the bowels of this hulking ship, for heaven’s sake!”

  Slayton, standing on the threshold, stepped in, nodding at the two women.

  “As I was saying, Doctors, may I present Mr. Benjamin Rademacher. He will oversee our security while in Washington, including the loading, unloading, the trucking of the artifacts to the capital, and so on. He is also here in the unofficial capacity of troubleshooter, complaint department, and so forth.” The four were now faced off.

  “Mr. Rademacher, this is Dr. Margaret Leiber.”

  The woman in the pantsuit smiled and extended a hand that was cool and dry. “Maggie,” she said. She had the large, rounded lower lip that is one of the hallmarks of British beauty.

  “And this is Dr. Shauna Ramsey.”

  Her eyes were dark and inviting, reminding Slayton instantly of the dancer in Tangier. Her eyes were evaluating him up and down quite frankly. One hand lingered near the open throat of the safari shirt, as though she regretted buttoning so far up. Her other hand squeezed his lightly while she continued to stare into his eyes.

  “I don’t know of your specific fields, ladies,” said Slayton, “but I do know a bit about Professor Willis’ work, and admire you in advance as part of his team. It is a pleasure to meet you both.” He managed to dredge up the Ben Slayton-charmer-smile, and both women reciprocated warmly.

  Slayton registered vibrations of easy caution. Nothing, however, set his internal danger mechanisms off. A vague disquiet, that was all.

  “Thank god,” said Shauna, displaying a British lilt equal to Maggie’s, a tonal quality of voice that could soften iron. “We did so think they would saddle us with a dreary academic, or an intellectual eunuch. You’re not a dreary academic, are you, Mr. Rademacher?” Her eyes were already broadcasting a separate message on another frequency.

  “Nor a eunuch of any variety, Ms. Ramsey,” he said. It was apparently the correct response.

  “Gordie, when can we get out of here and get to the hotel? My body is prepared for American facilities, if not for American food,” said Maggie.

  Willis shrugged again. “You two aren’t especially needed here now. Ahmed and the crew will be here tonight, along with the security people. It will take that long, and probably most of tomorrow, just to unload in the proper fashion. I’m sure you could breeze over to the hotel now.”

  “Does this mean you must loiter around the dock until dawn, Mr. Rademacher, just to insure the safety of Egypt’s heritage?” Shauna tilted her head down as she spoke, fixing him still with her enigmatic eyes.

  “No, fortunately, Ms. Ramsey,” said Slayton. “I am a security representative, not a security guard. My stock in trade is being five places at once and getting the impossible done on time and under budget, if you know what I mean.”

  “How lucky for us,” murmured Willis, “considering that incompetent Groth, out there.”

  “He’s beefing about the hours, mainly, Professor. His boys are up to it if he’s not. Let me worry about him, too.”

  Willis sighed, as though done with the matter. “A relief, to be sure. Shall we continue the tour?”

  He nodded to himself, “Yes.” To the women, he added, “I hope we’ll have time to dine and talk later, but now those damnable obligations of duty must hold sway. Being British—”

  “We understand such obligations too well!” laughed Maggie. “Forever the victims of stereotyping, I suppose.”

  “After you, Professor,” Slayton offered. “Until later, then, ladies,” he added. The cabin door swung shut with a solid thunk.

  “Ciao,” said Maggie.

  “Good evening,” said Shauna.

  Both women turned and regarded each other, pointedly, as soon as the hatch was closed.

  The secondary hold on the Star of Egypt was a huge and dank affair, glutted with shapeless cargo, all lashed and crated and padded again
st the jostling of shipment. The smells were of dust, salt water, light lubricants, canvas, and hemp. Professor Willis led Slayton through the badly lit maze of cargo, wielding a large emergency flashlight.

  “All this has yet to be moved to the warehouse,” he said. “Then another checklist, another inventory; we take stock almost daily sometimes. Some of the crating material we use is constructed very much like those Oriental boxes-within-boxes-within-boxes. We transport the dead of Egypt in the same fashion the Egyptians themselves used to entomb them, in multiple coffins.”

  When the two men were alone in the thick of the stacked and labelled incunabula, Willis stopped and shone the light directly in Slayton’s face. Slayton’s heart jumped, but his body tensed.

  “Just who are you, Mr. Rademacher, I mean really, and what is your purpose here?” The voice was direct, clinical, and humorless. The change itself was unnerving.

  Slayton’s business, however, was dealing with unnerving situations, and he didn’t miss a beat. “Top level and top secret, Professor. You mentioned the political burlesques that governments are so fond of. I’m here to insure such a thing does not happen. Surely you’ve guessed that by now.” He had his hands out before him in honest entreaty.

  The Professor’s lamp did not waver, and for all the difference it made, they might have been deep inside the twists and turns of a pyramid in the Nile Valley, Slayton’s life in the Professor’s hands. “Flattering my intellect is not exactly a direct answer, Mr. Rademacher.”

  “If any of these relics around us were to be damaged, or destroyed, there would be political reverberations, I’m sure. Professor, the only reason I’m here is to see that that doesn’t happen.” Slayton did not gild his cover story any further. To become talkative on such short notice would give him away.

  Still Willis remained immobile. Finally, he said, “Hm.” He turned away and continued leading Slayton through the maze, as though nothing had happened.

  By touring the remaining holds in sequence, Slayton was for the first time able to get an estimate of the sheer size of the articles that made up the Seth-Olet tour. There were over a thousand major pieces, and the tour was to differ from the Tutankhamen show in that the setups for Seth-Olet and his burial trappings were to sport local color, that is, the items from the tomb would be presented in a surrogate tomb, the better to present the traditional arrangements of such items to the lay public and simultaneously spice the proceedings a bit, should it look too much like a dusty history lesson. There were some canny PR minds at work on this project, as well as eccentric scientists, beautiful women, and a lone terrorist or two.

  Slayton heaved an exasperated breath. Sometimes he preferred the straightforward honesty of a fight in a darkened alley, with broken bottles or whatever was handy.

  The sensation of emerging from the depths of the Star of Egypt was also unsettling, as it was already long past dusk. The wind had turned the lowering temperature into a formidable chill factor, and whipped at the men’s clothing as they came back up on deck. Below, the Arab workers and the Sparta men hunched against the wind in heavy coats. The cordoned area was now ringed in yellow service lights. Near the main door of the warehouse one man had a hot plate and a coffeepot going. Slayton was made aware of the insufficiency of his jacket, but Willis did not seem to mind the cold. Considering that his usual stomping ground was the sun-baked Egyptian desert, it seemed unfair.

  Willis led Slayton back to the ramp almost automatically, like a butler, but as Slayton started down he reached out and stayed him with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Mr. Rademacher, I see no reason whatsoever to tell the others. I will support whatever you say as regards the safety of the exhibits. Might I also add that the presence of someone in your capacity working on this comforts me. Good night to you, sir.” He turned briskly and was gone, presumably to settle down with a dense text and a hot toddy.

  Slayton could not help grinning to himself. “Good night, Professor.”

  His check-in with Groth’s contingent was a matter of dancing through preset moves, giving directives he knew full well were bullshit, yet required if he were to maintain his façade. Penetrating the whole group, and, to his more immediate end, verifying the presence of Rashid Haman, would take time. Groth’s men would dismiss Slayton as FBI or CIA. Slayton gave them a mental once-over and decided that seeking Haman among the guards was stupid. That was that.

  Slayton’s skin was tingling with the cold by the time he reached the Triumph. His key, however, stopped short of the lock as he bent, eyes suddenly coming into very sharp focus, and concentrated on the juncture of window and roof. Even in the dim light he could make out thin white scratches on the insulating rubber strip.

  Slayton moved to the opposite door and, after a quick similar inspection, opened it. At first glance the interior of the car appeared unviolated, but he noticed smudges of dirt on the carpeting, on the side that had held no passengers for weeks. He switched on the interior light.

  The driver’s side window had been professionally jacked, and only the faint marks on the insulation told the tare. That eliminated burglary; a thief would have jacked-and-snapped the door handle, or just broken the window. Slayton’s gaze immediately flew down. There were no tracers or detonation leads attached to the doorwells.

  It was the first move in an agonizing touchy process.

  He gave the engine what they referred to in the Department as a “British bomb school once-over,” and checked out the boot and chassis. Twenty minutes later, satisfied that the Triumph had been entered but not rigged, he popped open the glove compartment. The nickel-plated .45 automatic lay as he had left it, but away from the driver’s side door, safety on.

  He inspected it in the light. No prints. Then he snapped back the action and a shell popped out. It dropped and lay on the carpeting, its brass gleaming dully.

  Whoever had entered the car had done the same thing, evidently unable to tell by mere weight whether or not the gun was loaded. Their inspection had left a slug in a chamber that Slayton had left empty, the slug that had just been ejected.

  Slayton pocketed the stray shell and replaced the gun in the glove compartment. There was nothing in the Triumph that would identify who he really was, or compromise him in any way. The car was “document-naked,” and the registration and papers would bear out whatever story he cared to spin. There were personals within, but of a totally nonincriminating nature. The Triumph was clean for Slayton.

  Yet someone had checked out his car. The visit had been careful enough that only the most alert would notice the intrusion at all.

  Slayton’s adrenalin surged. If someone had put a make on him already, they had to be flushed out. And if someone suspected, if they were jumpy enough to boost into his car, perhaps they were jumpy enough to give themselves away….

  He slammed the car door a little too hard, and headed back to the unloading area. Stackman was still pulling sentry duty.

  The two men nodded at each other, a silent comment on the cold and the unpleasantness of jobs that nevertheless had to be done, and Slayton said, “Any of these Arab or Egyptian workers check out of here tonight, for any reason?”

  “No sir. They’ve been busy right here practically ever since the Star docked. I think they’re still even sleeping on board. They stick to this area.”

  “Nobody went out for booze, or anything?”

  “No. Their papers are all in order, and of course they’re welcome to cruise the city if they like. But it looks like they don’t like.”

  “Double-check?”

  “Yes sir. Regardless of their freedom of movement, we’re instructed to sign them in or out if they go anywhere.” Stack-man turned a clipboard up to the light so Slayton could see it: neatly graphed forms. Willis had signed out and returned some twenty times—naturally, as head of the exhibit, he would find himself playing gopher whether he enjoyed it or not. He had also told Slayton that he did not trust the workers as drivers on American roads. The trucking of th
e artifacts to Washington would be done by domestic drivers.

  Shauna Ramsey and Maggie Leiber had signed out and checked into a downtown hotel along with Burt Cooke, Philip Winslow, and Martin Pratley, Willis’s three main diggers and assistants.

  Below that, beyond sundry members of the ship’s crew—mustn’t overlook them—nothing. The workers themselves seemed to shun the night life to be had outside the ship.

  “Okay. I’m poking around for a while.”

  Stackman let him through. “Anything specific, sir?”

  “No. Just orientation,” Slayton lied.

  The men inside the huge warehouse were geared for the night, clustering around the steaming coffee urn and chattering in Arabic. They jockeyed empty forklifts with the insane skill of urban Italian drivers, and then trundled them back, loaded, with aching care and slowness.

  Base floodlights had been mounted on the high ceiling and positioned strategically on tripods throughout the vast interior. The material was assuming the same general shape as in the hold of the Star of Egypt, but here with ruler-straight corridors and breathing space. Another forklift growled past Slayton, leaving the air laden with the smell of greasy machinery, and two men walked by engaged in that form of Hamitic conversation that sounds as if it is about to erupt into a bloody fistfight, but is in actuality merest chitchat. They were weighed down with coils of fat shipping cable, and bound for a huge, disarrayed pile of canvas tarps.