Star of Egypt

by Buck Sanders

  “Bricklin! Madison!” he shouted. The men perked up, across the room from him. “Out!” he commanded.

  Ten seconds later, Slayton stood alone in the image-perfect recreation of Seth-Olet’s final resting place. He spun around, trying vainly to take in everything, realizing he could search for weeks and not cover it all.

  His skull was throbbing in pain. The codeine Buck Fuller had given him out of his glove compartment was already beginning to run thin in his bloodstream, and the pain was accumulating again. He slumped against the multiple coffin of Seth-Olet. For all intents and purposes, this was the centerpiece of the collection. The Ushabtiu figurines and Canopic jars were arranged as Shauna had described. The truckloads of Seth-Olet’s possessions and offerings littered the periphery. And Ben Slayton, knowingly backed into a corner, forced himself to think exactly like one of his worst enemies.

  What would Haman do?

  He looked up and found himself gazing directly into the dead, blank monster-eye of one of the television cameras. It was angled on the lectern, erected very near the multiple coffins—as out of place in a tomb as you could get.

  There would be no time or opportunity to gimmick the camera properly, so that left the lectern.

  It was solid wood with carved molding. He tapped it out. Not hollow. Too uncomplicated to conceal anything. He tipped it up and checked the base. Nothing. He set it down with a thump. Then, with his back to it, he turned slowly, scanning the layout of the tomb in reverse from the podium.

  The prime object in his line of sight was the coffin, whose foot was angled toward the podium, and thence toward the camera, so that it would dominate the television picture. Slayton moved back to the coffin.

  It was actually three boxes, one within the next. The ornate lids were designed to make themselves secure, and proved troublesome for one man working alone. They did not prove impossible to manage, however, and Slayton got the primary box unlidded with little real effort. Quickly he searched the interior, and the space allowed for the subsequent boxes. Nothing.

  He made short work of the second lid, and of the third. Nothing came of these searches except a face-to-face with the remains—slightly reconstituted, of course, so they did not disintegrate on contact with air—of Seth-Olet himself. The shriveled, diminutive form grinned blankly up at Slayton, offering neither clues nor aid, suggesting soft death.

  Slayton did fast measurements with his hands. He wanted to smash into the coffins with his fists, to yell out I know it’s here, it has to be! But he forced a chilling composure on himself. His estimates were fast and sure.

  Between the second box and the one actually containing the mummy, he came up a palm-width short in depth. He sounded the apparently solid surface beneath his hand. It did not resonate the way the other components of the multiple box sounded when he knocked, and in that instant his heart jumped.

  He snatched an ornamental gold dagger from one of the flanking tables, and used it to pry up the veneer, fully aware that he was possibly desecrating Seth-Olet’s coffin. “You’ll forgive me, old boy,” he said to the mummy.

  The strip that abruptly peeled up into Slayton’s hands had been nailed down with extremely thin, needlelike nails, the betraying holes caulked in and carefully matched with the age and color of the surrounding layers. He wrenched it up and the strip broke free along half the length of the second box.

  Under it, nestled in black against a steel backing plate that had been installed in the head of the coffin, was a series of metal pipes, capped with screw-lids at the far end and—Slayton knew—ground down at the near end, the foot end, the end pointed directly at the lectern from behind. The pipes were packed with explosives; the concussive force of the detonation, seeking the path of least resistance, would burst the sanded-down ends of the pipe-bombs, and whatever pay-load was stuffed into those ends, along with the crude shrapnel produced by the exploding pipes themselves, would blow out through the foot of the coffins with thousands of foot-pounds of explosive pressure.

  The resultant blast would not only demolish the President at the appropriate moment, but kill whoever was to his left, destroy a great portion of the tomb-room display, and provide some of the most sensational videotape footage in history, since the camera would be destroyed too—but the last images it would relay to the video trucks outside the exhibit hall would be of pieces of the President, flying directly into the lens. It was at once terrifying and inspired.

  There was no telltale aroma of acid, however. Slayton searched and discovered a tiny plastic box wired to the charges, recognizing it immediately. It was a relay junction, connected to a bank of acid batteries, which meant that the lethal weaponry he had discovered was not on any sort of time-delay fuse, as he had feared. It would not go off until it was commanded to—in this case, by flipping a switch on a control-broadcast box very similar to a television remote-control. Or perhaps it was wired up to the cameras.

  His heart thudded away freely now. The veins in his neck bulged, flooding pain into his battered head. With a swift and sharp movement, he disconnected the relay box. Now the pipe-bombs could be lifted out with relative safety, and deactivated. Only then did he dare to glance at his watch, and when he did, he felt a quiet wave of indescribable relief wash over him, his forehead breaking out in nervous sweat.

  It was 1:02 p.m.

  17

  Winship involuntarily shut his eyes when his railroad watch—a gold, extremely hardy paternal heirloom and one of his few concessions to personal extravagance—tolled one o’clock straight up. By two minutes after the hour, his metabolism wanted to panic. Quarts of acid released themselves into his stomach. Discreetly, he belched to himself, suffering with the sour taste. It did not a bit of good.

  It took eight more interminable, physically draining minutes before Ben Slayton—or, considering his condition, what was left of Ben Slayton—walked out the exhibit hall door and made a beeline for him.

  The Presidential motorcade resembled a circle of settlers’ wagons, and the Secret Service was everywhere.

  “Take them in,” Slayton said to Winship. “It’s safe to go in. Let’s get this damned thing over with.”

  Winship felt the irrelevant urge to ask Slayton if it was safe. His trust in his agent stopped him.

  Another agent approached, and waited for Slayton’s attention to turn to him. His question seemed to be one thing, maybe the only thing, Slayton had not thought about. He stopped, looking from the agent to the automobile, Department-issue, from which he had come.

  “No,” said Slayton at last. “Keep her here, with you, under guard, in that car, until I get back to you.”

  The agent nodded and returned to the car.

  “Do you have to go in there right away?” Slayton asked Winship. “I have a brief favor to request; it’ll take just a minute.”

  Winship was taken aback. “What?”

  “It concerns that rather bewildered-looking police officer standing over there.”

  Officer Michaels watched the pair approach him. The derelict who had lit out from the speeding Camaro was dragging some government bigwig over to complicate his day. Goddam well told, he thought. He was sick of letting these sons-of-rich-daddies off with a slap on the hand. He wanted to find some hard legal point and make it stick. Michaels was tired of being pushed around. Michaels was hopping mad.

  Three minutes later, Michaels told his partner, Officer Craddock, to release the hippie they had collared from the Camaro. He was gritting his teeth as he did it. He was thinking about requesting a transfer to one of the swill-hole districts, so he could take out his aggressions on Puerto Ricans. He was thinking about murdering a bottle of 80-proof, and maybe not waiting until he was off duty to do it.

  “Lighten up,” said Craddock, once the two men were back in their cruiser. “That kid’s a hell of a driver, and nobody got hurt.”

  The resultant barrage of shouting nearly pushed out the windows of the cruiser as it plowed down the alley, backward, wasting its stee
l-belted radials all the way.

  “Come on,” Slayton said to Buck Fuller. “If you’d like to meet the President, now’s your chance. You can bitch to him about the situation for vets.”

  Buck shot back an expression that told Slayton that was the last thing he wanted to do.

  “Then follow me, and I’ll introduce you to the antiquities of jolly old Egypt. Tell me, Buck, does a thousand dollars an hour sound like reasonable compensation for your time and the applications I’ve made of your singular driving skill?” He did not wait for Buck’s reaction before he said, “Good. That fatherly gentleman over there—” He indicated Winship. “—will draw the funds for you later, or I’ll know the reason why. Let’s go.” Slayton’s levity was forced. On the way back to the exhibit hall he could not keep from glancing back toward the parked Impala sedan where Shauna Ramsey would be held until he checked in with the agents inside.

  Wilma rushed up as they made the door. “Not until after,” Slayton said, anticipating her questions. She looked flustered, but said, “I wanted to find out if you’d stopped bleeding yet. I should have known; no blood in you. Just a lot of black ink—the kind in government ledgers—and vinegar.” Together they entered.

  Winship was waiting for the group on the cleared front row of seats. On the opposite side of Camera One was Professor Willis and Maggie Leiber. Willis looked preoccupied as Maggie talked and gestured, apparently prepping him right up to the last minute, despite their witnessing Shauna’s removal from the exhibit hall.

  Slayton knew he would have to make his excuses to them. They had trusted him. And so—President be damned—he crossed in front of the camera to meet them. But speech-making turned out to be the least important of topics.

  “Mr. Rademacher, I trust the area is secure?” Willis said, clinically. It was a sure bet he would not bring up Shauna.

  Slayton nodded.

  Willis continued. “That’s reassuring, I suppose, in light of what just happened. The Arab workers opted not to show for this, and we found out why. We just got the phone call.”

  “What?” Slayton said in a hoarse whisper.

  “That fellow Bassam,” said Maggie. “And Ahmed Sadi. They just discovered them in the hospital, both dead. Apparently they… they killed each other.” Maggie turned her head away. “Oh, damn, the cameras are going to catch something embarrassing, I just know it!”

  One of the cameramen turned directly to Willis and said, “They want to know if the visual setup for the podium is the way you want it, sir.”

  “Who wants to know?” said Willis, distracted.

  “The director, sir,” he said, tapping his headset. “In the truck.”

  “Oh. Oh yes, tell them it’s just fine.”

  “No, it’s not,” said Maggie, biting her lip and considering the area display before them. “Let me think a minute.”

  “Three minutes,” the cameraman said. In the rear of the room the Presidential entourage was causing a good deal of press commotion. It was a session that Wilma did not feel obligated to participate in.

  Slayton saw Maggie reappear, holding one of the glittering Canopic jars. “Missing. I knew something was off-balance,” she said as she passed the camera and placed the jar at the foot of Seth-Olet’s coffin, along with the other three. Slayton had noticed them during his search, but he had not counted them.

  “Okay,” she said. Everyone was moving in the general direction of assigned seats.

  “Maggie,” Slayton said. “What the hell was all that about?”

  “Oh—I guess it got shuffled out of place while the Secret Service was giving this place the once-over this morning. It’s okay now.”

  Slayton seemed unfocused now. “Ahh—look. After this is all over, I suppose I’ll have to explain about—”

  She stopped him by taking his face in both her hands, cradling it. “Ben, Ben—don’t apologize. You’ve really done a smashing job. I mean it.”

  Their eyes locked directly amid the hubbub of news cameramen filming the President’s approach toward the lectern, up a narrow aisle between the files of seated guests. Slayton grasped Maggie’s hand and turned it against his face, kissing the palm lightly. She let the hand linger. But his eyes did not leave hers. Across the room, Wilma saw the action and bristled. But there was no time to watch that, as the assigned spectacle was about to begin.

  Slayton was looking into her eyes still as he spoke, his jaw muscles working: “Goddam it….”

  He jumped into motion as though electrified, heading straight for the President at the lectern. A grip was instructing the Chief Executive on the particulars of the microphone. At the sight of Slayton sprinting for them, both men looked up as though offended. On the periphery, the Secret Service agents moved in instantly, and then caught themselves. Win-ship’s eyes were glued to Slayton’s moving form.

  “Sir! Get down!” was all Slayton yelled as he passed the lectern, shoving the President to the far side and leaping straight for the cluster of Canopic jars, grabbing the one Maggie had placed so carefully.

  Straightening, he cast frantically around and saw no outs. Without any hesitation, and with the jar cradled in one arm, Slayton delivered a forearm smash to the photographic back-drop, punching his way through the heavy gypsum board, then jumping through, whirling like a basketball ace going for the perfect lay-up. His back against the wall, he used both arms to hook the Canopic jar through the window over ten feet above his head. His grunt of exertion and the sound of shattering glass came together.

  Slayton thought he heard the jar itself break somewhere outside. He never was sure.

  The assembled audience came right up out of their seats when the dual explosions blew out the rest of the windows on the east side of the exhibit hall building. Slayton fell to his knees as finely broken glass and fragments of window framing rained down on him from above.

  The blast seemed to punch all the air out of the cavernous room, making it impossible to hear anything but a vague roar. But again, to Slayton, there was no time. He moved with as much agility as he could scare up, back through the door he had created for himself in the “side” of Seth-Olet’s tomb.

  Slayton was finished running. The Secret Service boys had collared Maggie Leiber, alias Rashid Haman, when she tried to dash out the entrance. He stopped, his arms dropping to his sides, his work completed, as the woman glared at him from the door across the chamber, her eyes twin embers of hatred, and her mien that of a cornered badger.

  The entire sequence from Maggie’s entrance with the bomb had been captured for posterity on camera by the videotape crews. Despite that, Slayton caught sight of Wilma with her camera, snapping everything and looking quite pleased.

  Her last shot was of the bristling Maggie, in the grip of the Secret Service.

  18

  During a varied, if dull, supper, conversation hubbed on whatever needed to be clarified, in ascending order.

  Slayton had considered lying to Shauna Ramsey, telling her she had been removed and taken to the Secret Service car for her own protection… but that held no water at all when one considered that he had allowed the President to waltz right into bomb range. Long before he walked out of the disorder in the exhibit hall, he had decided to tell her the truth and leave judgment to her.

  A sophisticated electronic triggering device had been found in Maggie Leiber’s bag, as she was searched. She had known instantly that Slayton had deactivated the directional bombs in the coffin case, and had brought her backup system into play with no delay or fumbling. For Slayton, the key to Rashid Haman lay exclusively in the concept of boxes-within-boxes, or, in her case, backup systems for backup systems. As Haman, she covered each of her plans so well, that by reverse reasoning, one might be able to predict her actions—within limits.

  But you never could figure all the angles, he thought.

  The long session in Shauna’s hotel bathtub—the one to be found in her third suite in as many days in Washington—had stripped the layers of the ordeal from
Slayton’s hide. He felt physically clean and psychically purged. Not only was the spectre of Rashid Haman now resolved into a real person, subject to the laws governing real things as opposed to legends, but the wraith that had bookmarked itself in the back of Slayton’s mind as an unsettled score—the ghost of his former buddy, Barney Kaufman—was finally laid to rest.

  “I suppose you could never be accused of what we might call sex discrimination when it comes to terrorists,” Shauna finally said. “Not only Maggie, but me. We both turned out to be viable.”

  “Shauna, you couldn’t have been set up more professionally,” Slayton said. “I overstepped my own specialty. I had the interests of the assignment at heart.” He realized that that sounded wrong. “What I mean is—”

  “Did you?” she said, searching his eyes for an answer. “I think maybe you lusted to nail Haman too much. You were so crazy to get him—or her—that everybody became a suspect. You lacked faith in me just a little, don’t you think?”

  “Shauna,” he said finally, aware of the handling required. “Listen. I was sure. And I was wrong. If you could see the documentation, the files, you’d realize that it was better to proceed this way, even though it meant trampling a few egos in the process. We came out safe. I won’t argue on this score; I think you know the importance of what I’m saying.

  “I fell into more than one trap along this investigation. Pegging you was just another defect of my logic. Haman—or Maggie—was never in the habit of leaving a surfeit of clues. I got myself manipulated. And I turned out to be wrong. But we’re both still here. What I’m more concerned about than anything right now is whether you think this is all bullshit.”

  Slayton knew he was prompting a long, meditative silence there in the close bathroom. He sank deeper into the steaming tub. He had nothing more to say if Shauna was determined to hate him for doing his job. Perhaps the worst thing about it was that it would not have been the first time such a judgment had been passed on him.