by Alex Archer
“What’s she saying?” asked the woman in the blue slicker.
If she drew her sword, if the two men were among those after her, some innocent person in the crowd could get hurt. The image of the hotel patron shot in the hallway flashed in her mind.
“I didn’t mean to hold you up, Miss Creed,” Dari said. “I hope no one gets hurt. Thank you for stopping, though. The pictures—”
“I’d like to borrow your Harley, Dari. I need to get out there, like I said, to the site, and—”
“Huh?”
“I can’t tell you exactly where I’m going, but I have to go now.” Annja remembered the form she signed and her promise to Wes Michaels. “Please trust me. I just need to borrow your motorcycle for a little while. Right now, I need it. I promise that I’ll…”
The other man was forcing his way into the crowd, too, his dark eyes locked on hers, his mouth in a tight line. She couldn’t see his hands. Was he carrying a weapon?
Suddenly she spotted the broad-shouldered one. His face was lit by a blinking neon Tooheys sign. He was one of the men on the sidewalk outside of the hotel who had shot at her; she was sure of it.
She knew she had to be careful or a lot of innocent people could get hurt.
Dari gestured to the bike. “Hop on. I’ll take you wherever you want to go, Annja Creed.” He made a move to get on the bike, but Nate grabbed his arm and sputtered. Dari shook him off and said, “Later. C’mon, Annja, I said I’ll take you.” He sat astride the bike and leaned forward, giving her plenty of room to get on.
The two men were stalled, as some people in the crowd pushed back, not wanting to give up their spots so close to a celebrity.
“No, let me rent your bike. This might not be safe, where I’m going. And I’ll not jeopardize you.” Annja was adamant that an innocent bystander not get involved. “I’ll give you fifty now and when I return, I’ll give you more.”
Dari chuckled. “I don’t let anyone drive my precious here, and I’ve only ever let Nate ride on it before.” He patted the seat behind him. “But for Annja Creed…C’mon, if you’re in such a hurry.” He paused. “And if you don’t mind getting a little more drenched.”
The two men shoved the people directly in front of them, and the gathering on the sidewalk surged forward, just as a tall man under an awning said, “I know where I’ve seen her. She’s from that funny video program! The California model!”
The woman in the blue slicker shouted, “Gun!”
Annja threw a leg over the bike and grabbed Dari around the waist. “Move it, now! North of Sydney, that’s we’re going.”
Dari reached to the right side of the bike, pulled the choke lever toward him and turned the key. The headlight and instrument cluster—the tachometer and speedometer—came on and glowed green, and the belly of the bike roared to life, belching exhaust as they pulled away from the curb.
“A hundred kilometers or thereabouts and into a forest preserve!” Annja shouted, her fingers clutched on his jacket. “Once we’re out of the Cross, you can pull over and I’ll go it alone.”
She looked over her shoulder just in time to see the two men reach the curb, the people parting around them amid more cries of “Gun!” She thought they’d shoot at her, but Dari, seemingly oblivious to the threat, had deked around a double-parked car and whisked them out of sight.
Twice in a public place men had come after her. What or who was so blasted important that she’d seen that someone wanted her dead for it? It had to be damn important to risk such a public assassination, she thought.
Oliver had taken some shots of whatever, or whoever, it was. She felt certain of that. But his camera and video cards were probably destroyed.
She realized the men could have tracked her to the Cross through the bus routes, and when they couldn’t find her in daylight, they must have kept watch in case she emerged from somewhere. She realized it was fortunate they didn’t find her snoozing in the Purple Pussycat—she’d have been a defenseless target. Joan’s sword would have had to find another owner to wield it.
“Was that a car backfire or a gunshot?” Dari shouted.
“Gunshot,” Annja answered, but she didn’t say it loud enough for him to hear.
Annja noted the bike’s controls—the front and rear brake levers, the throttle, and the engine cutoff switch. The ignition was in the center of the steering column. It would be easy for her to run it—and she would. She noticed that there was less than a quarter tank of gas; they’d have to stop soon, probably before they were out of the city, and she’d talk him out of the bike then by talking some sense into him.
The Harley was only a few years old and rode smoothly, the tires new enough that they had easy traction on the rain-slick road. Dari wove in and out between sluggish cars, the drivers of which were slowing to look at the various sights in the neighborhoods surrounding the Cross. He spoke to her as he went, but she didn’t understand him—there were too many other sounds, including the rain that rat-a-tat-tatted against her purple satin jacket.
Her hair was plastered against the sides of her head by the time they’d crossed the bay and left the harbor sights behind. Dari chose a four-lane route that ran past North Sydney, Neutral Bay and Crow’s Nest. The traffic was heavy. Then he took a two-lane road that went through Northbridge and near Willoughby. He was talking again, louder, and this time she heard him.
“Nate’s gonna have the wobbly boot on before the night’s out. Told me he was gonna drink a whole bottle of Bundy to celebrate a promotion. But he won’t be drinking with the flies—Max is supposed to be there. Someone’ll give him a ride home, though, no worries. Be a mite touchy in the morning, me leaving him there, but he’ll get over it.”
A stretch of road opened up where the traffic was lighter, and Dari sped up. “Nate, he only watches sitcoms and reality shows. Hasn’t seen one of your programs, always has something better to do, he says. No real appreciation for history. Me? I majored in it, did my thesis on medieval European cook shops actually. Studied a year in Wales, another in London, and practically lived in the Imperial War Museum. I just got me one of those big flat-panel TVs so I could watch the History Channel in high-def.”
He started talking about his favorite exhibits at the Imperial War Museum and at the War Museum in Canberra, and Annja let his voice trail away and focused on the cry of some night bird she couldn’t see and the shush of cars behind them rolling over the wet pavement.
Dari worked the clutch lever on the left handgrip, pushing up with the toe of his left foot and down with his heel, changing gears. He rolled the right handgrip toward him, activating the throttle and giving the bike a little more speed. He accelerated evenly, tickling the drive train and showing off his skills and the bike. As the road turned, Dari leaned left, practically closing the throttle, then opening it again on the straightaway and accelerating again. He used the brake when the rain suddenly picked up and the bike sluiced through a puddle.
She had to admit that he was good, and began to rethink whether she’d talk the bike out of him at the gas station. He wasn’t afraid to use the front brake, which some riders avoided over concern that the wheel would lock up. From her own motorcycle course, she knew that the front brake was responsible for well more than half of the vehicle’s stopping power. Dari pressed the brake lever quickly, like a person driving a car might tap the brake with his foot. She leaned with him on the next turn.
“Needs petrol. But there’s a servo over there,” he hollered, nodding to a station in the distance on the opposite side of the road. “I should’ve brought my helmet, or at least a hat, eh? Didn’t think I’d be going more than a dozen blocks, though, when the night started.” He laughed. “Good thing I’m bald, eh? Otherwise my hair would be wet.”
He pulled up to the closest pump, which was under an aluminum roof. He turned off the bike and pocketed the keys, ran a hand over his head, brushing the water off. The rain was loud against the aluminum, sounding like muted machine-gun fire.
Annja shook her head, droplets flying from her hair and pelting him. “This is on me.” She’d briefly entertained letting him gas up the bike and then riding off on it when he went in to pay. But she decided not to separate him from his “precious,” and to continue to take advantage of his good driving.
She headed for the attendant as she got her wallet out. “Want anything to drink?” she called over her shoulder. She was terribly thirsty, and she was hungry, too. She hadn’t eaten since that morning’s feast.
“I’m fine,” he hollered back.
She stuffed two candy bars in her pocket, devoured a third and slugged down a small carton of iced coffee before she got on the bike behind him again.
“Think I can get your autograph later?” Dari asked. “If the rain stops, and if we can find something to write on?”
“It’s the least I can do,” Annja said.
“Hold on.” He revved the bike. “Gotta chuck a yewy out of here to get us pointed north again.”
A U-turn, Annja mentally translated as the tires softly squealed, the Harley puffed exhaust and the rain increased its tempo.
10
Dr. Gahiji Hamam, or Doc, as his graduate students affectionately called him, perused the memo on his desk. “For your approval,” it said, meaning he needed to sign off on it if he accepted the course description.
Please mark any corrections in ink and initial.
Egyptian archaeology, faculty of arts, eight credit points. Department: of Near Eastern Archaeology. Prerequisites—twelve junior credit points in classical civilization, ancient history or archaeology. Four hours of lectures per week. Assessment—two one-hour tests, two two-hour exams, two three-thousand-word essays. This unit provides an in-depth introduction to the rich and varied cultures of ancient Egypt. It includes the regional impact, engineering developments, religion and death practices.
Hamam retrieved a pen from a wooden cup on his desk, signed the memo and tossed it in his Out basket. He didn’t care what they listed in their course brochure; he would not be there to teach it. A visiting professor from Egypt—a native who traced his ancestry back to the great Khufu, or Cheops, Kheops or Suphis I, as some referred to the ruler—Hamam had agreed to his lucrative three-year posting for far grander reasons than to educate dozens of doomed youths. If everything went as planned, he would not need to fulfill the rest of this year, and he could get about his real business.
He would miss some of the students here, certainly Jon, Cindy and Harris and Matthew especially, a mix of sincerity and eagerness, and in Cindy’s case a vacuous attractiveness that pleasantly distracted him. More than that, he would miss being in the field north of Sydney and getting his hands dirty in the sifting trays. But Hamam was sixty, and as time moved ever faster he vowed to spend less of it on academic pursuits and more of it on his efforts to join with the gods.
The chance to unearth Egyptian relics had lured him here, tugged him from his comfortable estate on the outskirts of Cairo. He wouldn’t have come had it not been for the fringe digs local archaeologists worked and that the esoteric archaeology Web sites detailed. He had wanted one of the sites for himself, and the easiest avenue to that had been through the University of Sydney. He’d made that part of the condition of his temporary employment here, that he be put in charge of the university’s tertiary dig in the forest preserve.
Hamam liked Sydney. He’d visited the city several times, first when he was fresh from his doctoral program in Egypt and on holiday. He’d used his credentials to visit the records area of the science library in Canberra, where he carefully procured Sir Grafton Elliot-Smith’s papers on a two-thousand-year-old mummy Grafton had discovered in New Zealand. Hamam had acquired other important relics and reports then, and on subsequent visits, as well. He knew where to spread money around so that financially strapped curators and security guards looked the other way. Hamam had been born to money, and he didn’t hesitate to spend it to get what he wanted.
Occasionally he left a body in his wake, but he was careful no finger of blame was ever pointed in his direction. He would never be traced to the cameraman who had been incinerated, nor could they link him to the upcoming deaths of Annja Creed and his students.
Hamam was a very cautious man.
He liked Sydney for its mild climate, and the agreeable dampness of its ocean breezes. He was fond of the university, too, as he considered it one of the best institutes of higher learning in the world. And it boasted the Nicholson Museum right on campus. He’d been to the museum’s Exhibition Egypt: The Black Land more times than he cared to count. It displayed sarcophagi, sculptures and three complete mummies. Wings were devoted to life before the pharaohs, gods, mummification and his favorite—the afterlife.
He could instantly visualize a beautiful limestone relief of a door lintel depicting Ptolemy I. And there was the cartouche of Akhenaton and Nefertiti that he coveted. The little museum had the most Egyptian artifacts of any display in Australia, and rivaled in quality some of the collections he’d seen in Egypt and elsewhere.
Its holdings included relics from 5000 B.C. up to nearly 400 A.D.—such as pottery gathered from the Egyptian sites of Abydos, el-Mahasna, el-Amrah, Diospolis Parva, and Oasr Ibrim. There were New Kingdom sculptures, including a head of Ramses II in remarkable condition and a diorite rendering of Horemheb, the man believed to be Tutankhamen’s regent.
Hamam had researched the museum, named for Sir Charles Nicholson, an eccentric collector who purchased many relics from dealers in Cairo and who subsequently donated the lion’s share of them to the university, which in turned named the museum for him. Other antiquities in the museum were bought from the Egypt Exploration Fund—now called the Egypt Exploration Society—in London in the late nineteenth century. There wasn’t a single piece in the museum that Hamam would not want in his own private collection.
Hamam’s office was just off Science Road on the university campus, even though archaeology was placed in the arts-and-ideas division. He’d requested this office, one of a half-dozen vacant for him to choose from, because it was the most remote of the lot. He’d thought it would be the quietest of his options, and it was, on the northeast border of the campus. The bulk of the university was spread to the south of him. There was little traffic here in comparison to the other campus streets, which were busier and more brightly lit.
He leaned back in his chair, which he had pronounced adequate but not well designed for a small man’s stature. He’d requested a different chair a month back, and had not followed up on it. Like the university he’d once taught at in Cairo, professors had to become a nuisance with their want lists to gain even a modicum of office essentials. Hamam would have purchased a chair to his specifications, but it went against his principles to use his own money for something like that. Besides, he spent relatively little time there.
Hamam listened to the heating system kick on, the hum of white noise that was almost too soothing; he found himself drifting off. He shook out his hands and unbuttoned his jacket, thrust two fingers between his shirt collar and his neck to help loosen his tie—little activities to rouse him. He much preferred the more casual dress of the dig site, but he’d just come from dinner with the vice chancellor and the dean of graduate studies, and so he had had to wear his best.
“Oh, bother,” he muttered when the strains of a piano concerto wafted under his door. The night janitor for the building loved classical music and played it when he buffed the floors—loud enough to be heard over the infernal machine he pushed down the hall every third night. At least the racket would help to keep him awake. And the smell—he hated the scents of the disinfectant and the cleansers that swirled in the wake of the janitor. But the smell would help, too.
Hamam decided he would not grieve at the night janitor’s demise.
With a stifled yawn Hamam turned his attention to a series of photographs on his desk. The first showed the slab that Jo
n had uncovered that morning. Hamam read the inscribed text.
The snake bit two times. And because of the snake, the Mighty One of Lower Egypt has left the living. We are trapped here, our boat damaged beyond repair. So we must go forward.
He looked at the next picture, of a slab uncovered earlier.
The snake struck and we gave yolks from lizard and bird eggs and prayed to the Hidden One that our ruler might live.
Hamam knew this predated the other slab in the story. The next picture was of a damaged slab, and it described the burial of the Egyptian who had brought his fellows to Australia. Hamam translated the text.
We walked to the chamber where there were stones from all around. The chamber was properly aligned with the Western Heavens.
He tapped his finger on the edge of the desk, trying to fill in the gaps where the rest of the story had broken away with the chipped slab. “Something about three doors to eternity, a royal tomb and a holy offering,” he muttered.
He gathered the pictures and put them in the bottom drawer, beneath a stack of file folders. “Enough of this. Maybe Jon will find more for me to translate tomorrow.”
Hamam grimaced as the concerto became louder and competed with the whoosh of the floor polisher. He stared at the crack under his door and waited until a shadow passed across it and the music grew distant. The accursed janitor had moved on. Then Hamam stretched forward and reached for the phone at the far corner of his desk, tugging it close. From a narrow drawer he pulled out a personal directory and searched for the numbers he wanted.
“Pizza,” the entry read. He pushed the numbers.
“Janko? This is Hamam. I want to make sure that the tanker truck has been secured…. Good, good. We may need it sooner than originally planned.”
Another call went to a number at an entry labeled “Sister,” though Hamam had been an only child. He didn’t worry that it was an international call and that the department head might remind him that personal calls made from the offices were to be local, unless it was an emergency. Hamam considered this an emergency of sorts, and anyone who might object to this expense would not be terribly long for the world.