Feisal dumped the luggage in on top of me and turned to John. ‘How much money have we?’
‘A couple of hundred pounds. Why?’
‘We’re going to need more supplies. Water, blankets, petrol. No, don’t argue, just listen. The moon will be down before long and I daren’t risk driving this route in the dark. We’ll have to hole up somewhere for the rest of the night, and probably all day tomorrow. I presume you don’t want to arrive in broad daylight?’
John began, ‘It’s only thirty or forty miles – ’
‘As the vulture flies. You’ve never done this. I have. You don’t know this country. I do.’
The moonlight drained all the colour from John’s face. It looked like bleached bone. I said impulsively, ‘You’ve got to get some rest before we go much farther, John.’
He turned on me. ‘I told you to keep quiet.’
‘Keep quiet yourself. Feisal, how long – ’
Feisal waved his hands wildly. ‘Don’t ask. Don’t ask any more questions, either of you. Leave this to me.’
Our reluctant ally was becoming more reluctant by the minute, but – in exchange for all the money we possessed – he grudgingly produced a few jerricans of gas, a couple of blankets – taken off a donkey, to judge by the smell – several bottles of water, and a six-pack of what turned out to be fizzy lemon-flavoured soda. Our departure was not marked by formal farewells. I started to say thank you, but the man just shook his head and trudged off.
After a few abortive coughs the engine started. The racket was appalling. It must have roused every sleeper who wasn’t already awake, but not a light showed in any of the windows.
I popped the top of a can and poured half a cup of lemonade down my front when Feisal threw the jeep into gear. We went bouncing off across the plain; there may have been a track of sorts, but you couldn’t prove it by me. I clenched my teeth to keep from biting my tongue and refrained from comment. I knew why Feisal was proceeding at such an uncomfortable speed. We had to get well away from the village and into hiding before morning, and the moon was setting. I had an unpleasant feeling I also knew why Feisal didn’t want to drive in the dark, and that suspicion was confirmed when I saw we were heading straight for the cliffs that rose sheer ahead. They call them wadis – canyons, cut by water, in the ramparts of the high desert. Flash floods and natural erosion have littered the uneven ground with rubble varying from pebbles to Chevy-sized boulders. The one into which Feisal drove, without slackening speed, was fairly wide at first, and there was a track of sorts through the centre. The boulders weren’t much bigger than toasters. We hit every one of them. I bit my tongue.
Before long the moonlight faded as the canyon narrowed and the cliffs closed in on either side. Feisal switched on the headlights. They didn’t help much. One had burned out and the other was about to go. Feisal went on a little farther and then stopped, with a jolt that jarred my back teeth together. He turned off the lights and the ignition.
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘The terrain gets rougher from here on. I don’t want to break an axle.’
‘Rougher?’ I croaked.
Our voices echoed eerily in the silence. It was so dark I couldn’t even see their outlines, but I heard the springs creak when John shifted his weight.
‘How much farther?’ he asked, in a voice flat with fatigue.
‘Irrelevant.’ Feisal sounded equally exhausted. ‘We can’t go on tonight. Let’s get some rest. Hand out a couple of those blankets, Vicky. You can curl up in the backseat.’
‘Curl up is right,’ I said. ‘I’d rather sleep on a rock.’
Which was precisely what I did. Feisal cleared away some of the bigger boulders, leaving a space just wide enough for the three of us to lie down, huddling together for warmth. I expected John would make some rude comment about bundling but he didn’t speak at all. He was trying to keep his teeth from chattering, I think. We were all shivering; the air was cold and the blankets were too thin to be much use. Without discussing the subject aloud, Feisal and I put John between us. He fell asleep immediately. Not even the hard ground and the stench of donkey and the cold could keep my eyes open, but as I drifted off I was thinking longingly of Suzi’s great big furry white coat.
Against all the odds I slept for over six hours. It was the heat that woke me, the heat and a sensation of vague discomfort. When I pried my sticky eyes open I realized I had shifted position during the night; John’s head was on my shoulder and my left arm, which was around him, had gone numb. He looked like one of the better-preserved mummies, skin stretched tight over cheekbones and forehead, eyelids shrivelled and sunken, lips cracked.
I heard a gurgling sound and looked up through my loosened hair to see Feisal standing over me. His appearance wasn’t much of an improvement over John’s – or, I suspected, my own. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he offered me the bottle of water. I swallowed, or tried to – my throat was as dry as the sandy dust – and shook my head.
John slept for another half hour. When he opened his eyes I croaked out a cheery ‘Good morning.’ Removing himself from my limp embrace, he sat up and lowered his head onto his hands.
‘Did I ever mention,’ he said, ‘that one of your least lovable characteristics is that you are so bloody cheerful early in the morning?’
‘You’re usually pretty bloody cheerful yourself.’
He lifted his head. ‘On the occasions to which you refer I had excellent reasons to be – ’
‘Stop it,’ Feisal ordered. ‘Come and have breakfast, such as it is.’
Water and dry bread, oranges and hard-boiled eggs was what it was. There was no way of heating water even if we had had coffee or tea with us, which we didn’t. Chewing on the hard bread, I studied our surroundings: stony desert underfoot, steep rocky walls around. There wasn’t so much as a blade of grass, much less a tree, dead or alive. The pale limestone of the cliff opposite dazzled in the sunlight.
‘At least it’s not raining,’ I said.
John gave me a look in which amusement and exasperation were mingled. Feisal was not amused.
‘Pray it doesn’t. We don’t have much rain here, but when it comes it comes hard and the water is all funnelled through these wadis. A flash flood would be the end of us.’
‘Say something positive,’ I suggested.
‘I’m trying my damnedest,’ Feisal said morosely. ‘All right, let’s take stock of where we stand.’ Clearing a patch of sand with a sweep of his hand, he took a pen from his pocket and used the blunt end to sketch a rough map. ‘Here’s the river, here’s the wadi we’re in. And this is the one we’re heading for. It passes the Hatnub Quarries and comes out eventually into the Amarna plain near the southern tombs.’
I studied the sketch doubtfully. ‘The two wadis don’t connect.’
‘Not according to the standard maps, no. But it’s barely possible to get a vehicle through,’ Feisal said, rubbing his prickly chin. ‘At least it was five years ago. I can’t be more specific about the route because it’s too hard to describe. If anything happens to me – ’
‘It will happen to all of us,’ John said evenly. ‘At this point you’re the least expendable member of the party. More precious than diamonds, more precious – ’
‘Than gold,’ I said. ‘One point for me.’
John grinned, or tried to. Feisal rolled his eyes.
‘You two are a pair, I’ll say that. Can’t you keep your minds on essentials?’
Laughter is one of the two things that make life worthwhile. Another of John’s sententious sayings, delivered one morning after he had demonstrated the importance of the other one. He was right on both counts. There are times when you have to laugh to keep from screaming, and if I’m in a tight spot I’d rather be with someone who makes bad jokes instead of big dramatic scenes.
‘If anything happens,’ Feisal repeated, ‘keep heading west.’
John’s hand obliterated the sketch. ‘Forget that. Will we make it today?’
; ‘We’ll have to,’ Feisal said curtly. ‘With luck, sometime this afternoon. That’s the next question. We don’t want to come bursting onto the scene while the site is crowded with tourists and guides and guards, do we?’
‘No,’ John agreed. ‘Let’s set our ETA at nine p.m., when people will be inside eating and watching telly.’
‘We’ve missed Schmidt,’ I said.
My voice was steady, I think, but John said, with unexpected gentleness, ‘Don’t worry about him, Vicky. I have a feeling we’ve both underestimated the old boy rather badly, and even if they catch up with him they won’t harm him so long as we’re on the loose.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘I’m always right,’ John said firmly. ‘Anyhow, we can hardly be said to have missed him when we don’t know for certain where he is or what he’s up to. Pray that he’s gone on to Cairo. If he can convince someone in authority to search that boat we’ll be in the clear.’
‘The boat won’t he there yet, will it?’ I asked, mopping my sweating face with my sleeve.
‘I shouldn’t think so. But you can be sure Blenkiron has moved up his schedule. He’ll load and be under way as soon as he possibly can, and the Queen of the Nile is capable of a pretty fair turn of speed. If she travels night and day and Blenkiron uses his influence to get her through the locks without delay, she could reach Cairo in a few days. We – or Schmidt – must get there before the boat does.’
He reached casually into his pocket and took out the Tutankhamon pectoral. Glowing with soft shades of gold and turquoise and coral, it covered his entire palm. The giant blue beetle that dominated the design held a sun disk of carnelian in its raised pincers.
Feisal caught his breath. ‘From Blenkiron’s collection? Good thinking, Johnny. That should be enough – ’
John shook his dishevelled head. ‘It should be enough to capture the attention of the museum authorities, certainly; that’s why I – er – borrowed it. But once Blenkiron is out of the country with his collection, it will be my word against his as to where this came from. Eventually they may discover that the other objects are forgeries as well, but things move slowly in this part of the world and bureaucrats in any part of the world are reluctant to take action. And while they are discussing and debating and arguing and speculating, we will be wasting away in a dungeon cell. If we’re lucky.’
‘I like you better when you’re being frivolous,’ I said.
‘I don’t.’ Feisal hoisted himself to his feet. ‘We’d better get started.’
Even after seeing the terrain I wouldn’t have believed it would take six hours to cover less than thirty miles. I suppose it could have been worse. Nobody got bitten by a scorpion or a cobra and the jeep held together, except for one of the doors, which Feisal wired back on. We only had two flat tyres. Smaller canyons opened up along the way and sometimes it was impossible to tell the main wadi from a dead end. We went for almost a mile into one of the latter before Feisal realized his error. He had to back out. As the sun rose higher it beat straight down into the canyon and the temperature kept climbing. We were all sticky wet and itching with sweat when we reached the end of the first wadi and found the steep slope ahead completely blocked by fallen boulders.
‘Is there a way around?’ I asked.
Both of them turned to glare at me. Feisal had taken off his shirt; perspiration ran down his face and puddled in the hollows over his collarbones. It was a pity I was too hot and tired to enjoy the view, because he did have a great body. John had chosen not to display his.
‘No, my dear,’ said Feisal, baring all his beautiful white teeth in a snarl. ‘This is it. The only way. There must have been a minor quake or a flash flood since I was last here.’
He got out and began fumbling among the miscellany of rusted tools in the backseat. I didn’t ask any more questions. The options were obvious even to me: either we abandoned the jeep and proceeded on foot, or we tried to clear away enough of the debris so we could go on.
It would have been a formidable job even if we had had proper tools and if the weather had been comfortable. With only a tyre iron as a lever, and a temperature in the high nineties, and our supply of water running low . . . I remember thinking sympathetically of Sisyphus, the guy in the Greek legend who had been condemned to spend eternity pushing a big rock up a hill. As soon as he got it to the top, it rolled back down again.
When we stopped for a rest, Feisal mopped his forehead with what had once been a white handkerchief and was now a filthy rag. The sun had moved farther west and there was some shade. We passed the water bottle around and sat there wheezing. Even John was too far gone to make jokes. His shirt was soaking wet and not all the liquid was sweat. The bullet wound must have opened up again. As if he felt my eyes on him he raised his head and gave me a hard stare, daring me to speak. I didn’t.
‘A little more should do it,’ Feisal said, after a while.
‘Do you really think so?’ I asked
‘I really do.’ He took my hand and turned it, inspecting first the scraped palm and then the broken nails and bleeding fingers.
‘Those are not the hands of a lady,’ I said. ‘Guess I won’t be invited to the Junior Cotillion.’
‘You’re number one on my list,’ Feisal said softly. He raised my filthy, bloody hand to his lips.
John stood up. ‘I hate to interrupt this tender scene, but could we please get on with it?’
When Feisal called a halt there were still a lot of rocks on that slope. We all climbed into the jeep and Feisal backed off, to get a good running start, and then gunned the engine. I closed my eyes, and kept them closed while the jeep bounced up and over the ridge and then began to descend.
The descent wasn’t as steep as the ascent, but it was just as bumpy. When we reached relatively level ground Feisal picked up speed and I opened my eyes.
He was watching me in the cracked rearview mirror ‘The worst is over,’ he yelled. ‘Not long now.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ I yelled back. ‘Keep your eyes on the – you should excuse the word – road.’
Experience is broadening, all right; never again would I complain about any road surface, anywhere. Compared to what we’d been through, this stretch was a piece of cake. I now had leisure to realize how hot it was. The air was bone-dry; I could feel my skin stretching and cracking. After approximately an hour Feisal pulled up and turned off the engine.
‘Almost there. People come this way occasionally, so we’d better lie low until dark.’
Stretched out on the hard ground, we finished the water. I was bone-tired but not sleepy; I waited till John had dropped off, or passed out, whichever came first, before I spoke. ‘He can’t go on much longer.’
‘I know. But there’s nothing we can do for him now. Get some rest, Vicky. You worked like a hero today.’
‘What’s going to happen when we reach Amarna?’
‘He’s got something in mind, but don’t ask me what. He told me where to go and what to say, but he did not condescend to explain further.’ Feisal stretched out with a long, heartfelt sigh. ‘At least we can be sure no one has followed us. Only an idiot would attempt this route. Don’t worry, love, we’ll bribe or bully someone into helping us.’
‘We haven’t any money.’
Feisal’s long fuzzy lashes were drooping. He opened his eyes a little wider and grinned at me. ‘We’ll sell something. You, perhaps. A woman who can work that hard should fetch a good price.’
I let him sleep. I tried to, but I couldn’t, so I lay still counting John’s breaths and watching the sky darken and the stars brighten against the night.
Finally Feisal stirred. ‘Did we finish the water?’
‘There’s some fizzy lemonade. I’ve been hoarding it.’
‘Well done. All right, let’s do it. Johnny?’
‘I told you not to call me that,’ said a grumpy voice from the darkness.
‘I assumed you’d prefer it to “blue eyes.” Someday perh
aps one of you will explain those esoteric comments to me.’
‘A cold day in hell, perhaps,’ John said.
When we emerged from the widening mouth of the wadi the moon was shining down on the plain of Amarna. Lights twinkled among the dark bank of trees along the river.
Nobody felt like cheering. Not yet.
‘Head north,’ John said. ‘I suggest you follow the cliffs as long as possible. Less chance of our being observed.’
‘If people don’t know we’re here, they’re deaf,’ I remarked.
‘Back to your old form, I see,’ John said. ‘Perhaps you’d prefer to walk. It’s only six or seven miles.’
I said no more.
Feisal proceeded at a slower speed, and if I hadn’t had other things on my mind I might have enjoyed the scenery. The cliffs enclosing the plain were icy-pale in that eerie light, checkered with shadow where crevices and canyons broke their ramparts. One deeper, darker opening might have been the entrance to the royal wadi which we had visited earlier. After we crossed the road that led from the landing to the tombs, Feisal stopped and shut off the ignition.
‘That’s the village, over there.’ He indicated a few lights along the river.
John didn’t move. ‘We’ll wait here.’
‘What are you up to now?’ Feisal asked.
‘Taking reasonable precautions, that’s all. Three people are more conspicuous than one, especially when two of them are obviously foreigners. Someone must have heard us. You can have a look around and withdraw if there’s trouble. The house you want is on the northeast corner of the village. There’s a brickyard on one side and – ’
‘I know, you told me.’ Feisal hoisted himself out of the car and stretched. ‘I’ll signal if it’s safe to proceed and wait for you on the edge of the cultivation. Six flashes and then two at ten-minute intervals.’
He started off. John watched him for a few minutes and then climbed over the side of the jeep. ‘Get out.’
‘What for?’
‘I would love to live long enough to see you respond to a sensible suggestion without asking why. A little exercise will be good for you.’
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