“What the blazes are you doing here?” Mr. Wall hissed.
“I followed you.”
“How?”
“I hid in the back of your motorcar. I saw you leaving at night and knew you were going to do something fun, so I put a blanket over myself and tucked myself in the back seat when you weren’t looking. When the soldiers at the checkpoint saw me, they thought I was just a pile of rags.”
“You are a pile of rags,” Moustafa whispered, annoyed. “Get out of here. This is man’s work!”
“I am a man,” Faisal said, puffing his chest out and flexing his arms. The result was far from impressive.
“How did you get inside the garden?” Mr. Wall asked.
“Bah! That was easy. This wall has lots of handholds and toeholds. You two looked funny climbing over each other, like a couple of overweight baboons.”
Moustafa raised his hand and stepped forward. “Get out of here before I knock your head off your shoulders.”
“Wait.” Mr. Wall restrained him. He looked up at the upper windows, the moonlight gleaming off his mask. Then he turned to Faisal.
“Could you climb this wall?”
“With one hand tied behind my back.”
“Do you think you can squeeze through those bars? Perhaps those shutters are unfastened.”
“It doesn’t matter if they are. Twenty dirhams.”
“Ten,” Mr. Wall grumbled.
“Twenty or you can climb it yourself.”
Moustafa clipped him on the back of the head. “You’ll take ten and be happy about it.”
Faisal stuck his tongue out at Moustafa, who resisted the urge to throttle him, and turned back to Mr. Wall.
“Twenty. Osman ibn Akbar is sick, and I have to buy food for the both of us.”
Moustafa softened a little.
“That’s true,” he told his boss.
“Fine, twenty,” Mr. Wall said with an impatient gesture. “Get a move on. We can’t stand about all night.”
With that, the boy scampered up the wall as quickly and quietly as a spider. Once he got to the bars, he hung from them using one hand and both feet while he tried to open the shutters. He found them locked, and with a contemptuous shrug he pulled a flat piece of metal from his pocket, inserted it into the gap between the shutters, and popped them open.
He peered into the darkness for a moment, then spent a minute’s tough squeezing to work his way through the bars. With a final wave to the men below, he disappeared into the darkened upper floor.
They waited in silence for a minute. Then another.
“What’s taking him so long?” Mr. Wall whispered.
“He’s probably looting the place.” Moustafa couldn’t believe they had put themselves into this little grub’s hands.
“I should have told him to make his way down directly. I assumed that he would. I see my mistake now.”
“I’ll give him a good thrashing once he reappears.”
“That will make too much noise. Wait until we get home.”
They waited a few more minutes.
“Do you think they caught him?” Mr. Wall asked.
Moustafa put his ear against the door. His boss did the same. They could hear no sound from within.
Suddenly, the bolt slid back on the door and it opened. They barely had enough time to get on opposite sides of the door and level their guns.
Faisal poked his head out, looked at Mr. Wall and Moustafa, and grinned.
“You two are way too nervous to be burglars. Come on,” Faisal whispered.
He brought a fat piece of chocolate cake up to his mouth and shoved it in, consuming it in nearly one bite.
“So that’s what took you so long,” Moustafa growled. “Have you found anything more useful than the kitchen?”
“I found a room filled with old stones covered in that funny picture writing.” Faisal’s voice was barely audible around the mass of chocolate cake in his mouth. “That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?”
“Lead the way,” Mr. Wall said.
Faisal stuck out his hand. Moustafa grabbed him by the collar.
“Fine, you can pay me later,” Faisal squeaked. “Now put me down.”
Faisal led the way down a darkened corridor, with Mr. Wall just behind and Moustafa taking up the rear. Barely any moonlight filtered in, and they moved slowly. Muffled voices came from another part of the house. They turned a corner and it grew even darker.
Moustafa hadn’t taken three steps beyond the corner when his hip bumped into a small table set against the wall.
He looked down, and with sickening clarity he saw a vase tip over and fall to the marble floor.
Faisal dove for it and caught it with barely an inch to spare. The boy ended up sprawled on the floor, but his fall hadn’t made any noise.
Faisal got up, set the vase back in its place, gave Moustafa a scowl, and continued down the hallway. Moustafa followed, mortified.
They came to a spot where a door stood open on one wall. Faisal motioned for them to stop and wait, then ducked inside. He returned a moment later with another slice of cake.
Moustafa rolled his eyes. The Germans were going to wonder why someone had broken into their home and only stolen their dessert. After another turn, they came to a doorway. Light shone from the keyhole and the crack underneath. They still heard the voices, but they sounded distant, as if in another room. Just to be sure, Mr. Wall and Moustafa took turns peering through the keyhole.
Moustafa saw part of what appeared to be a large room, bare of furnishings but with several slabs of polished white limestone lying on the floor.
An elbow jabbed his ribs. He frowned down at the beggar boy, who motioned for him to get out of the way. A tug on the sleeve from Mr. Wall convinced him to do as the boy asked rather than smack him across the face. The brat was getting above himself.
Faisal eased the door open, and Moustafa gasped at what they saw.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Augustus couldn’t believe his eyes. They stood at the entrance to a large room that looked like it had once been a ballroom. The ceiling was ornately decorated with painted plaster reliefs in the old French Imperial style. A large glass chandelier fitted with two dozen candles illuminated the room, the crystals of the chandelier making the candles spark and pattern the walls and floor with multicolored spots.
There was no furniture. Instead, spread out on the hardwood floor, were about a hundred fragments of polished white limestone, each with a hieroglyphic inscription. They had been arranged in some sort of order. Some of them stood in tidy rows. A few were set against one another to join up fragments of inscription. Many more lay in a jumble, their part in the puzzle not yet determined.
The puzzle remained far from complete, but Augustus felt a prickle of awe at seeing what hardly anyone had seen for centuries—the inscription that once covered the surface of the Great Pyramid at Giza.
Set in a place of honor in the center of the room was the largest piece—the one Suleiman had carved himself. Augustus smiled.
Just then a side door opened, and someone entered.
Augustus raised his submachine gun and trained it on the newcomer. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Moustafa do the same.
It was the German with the shrapnel scar across his face. He wore a cheap suit and the soft cap of a working man. He froze, half in and half out of the doorway. His eyes met Augustus’s. Calmly, he closed the door behind him, raised his hands, and walked toward them.
He’s a cool one, isn’t he? Augustus thought. He’s seen the front. I’ll wager he’s seen some night raids too. Yes, he’s seen everything.
The man walked close by an inscription fragment, his foot about to “accidentally” knock it and create some noise. Augustus gave a little shake of his head. The German veteran gave him a tight smile in return and made a show of avoiding it before walking the remaining space between them. He stopped a few feet away, just out of reach.
“Faisal, listen a
t the door. Moustafa, see what you can learn from these fragments,” Augustus whispered.
As the two went about their tasks, Augustus stepped forward, glared at the German when he made a sudden move that might have turned into an attack, and pressed the muzzle of the submachine gun against his belly. Then he used his free hand to pat him down. He found a compact automatic in his suit pocket and a knife tucked in his boot. With a tug of sympathy, he noted that those boots were German army issue, worn but still serviceable. This man still wore the boots that had been on his feet when he had been demobilized.
Augustus tucked the weapons in his own pocket and backed out of reach. The man lowered one hand slowly and traced the livid scar that marred his cheek and jaw.
“I miss women,” he whispered.
“I miss many things,” Augustus whispered back. “What’s your name?”
“Otto. A pity that two great Aryan nations should go to war to enrich the Jews.”
“Do be quiet.”
Augustus glanced at his companions. Faisal had his ear pressed against the door. Now that they were in proper light, Augustus could see the boy’s mouth was ringed with chocolate. Augustus hoped the little thief didn’t get sick. The last thing he needed right now was a vomiting child. Moustafa stared at inscription after inscription, his finger tracing the lines, his mouth working silently. Augustus had to force himself to keep an eye on the German and not watch in wonder at Moustafa as he read the four-thousand-year-old inscriptions as easily as he himself could read the Egyptian Gazette. That man had a true gift for languages.
The scene didn’t change for several minutes. Faisal listened, Moustafa went from stone to stone, and Augustus kept his gun held unwaveringly at the chest of a man he would have killed on sight a year ago. Every now and then, they heard snatches of conversation from the other rooms. It was in German, but the voices were too muffled and distant for Augustus to make any sense of it.
Otto looked back at him with a mixture of respect and sympathy, but it was the kind of respect and sympathy you might expect from someone about to engage in a duel. Augustus had no doubt this fellow would try to kill him at the first opportunity.
Moustafa was about halfway through the inscriptions when Faisal’s eyes widened and he waved his hand urgently at the others. He scampered without a sound behind the largest stone fragment in the center of the room and ducked down. Moustafa readied his rifle and knelt behind another fragment.
The side door opened and in walked another of the workers who had been at Zehra Hanzade’s house. His eyes took in the scene and he leaped back.
“Intruders!”
Augustus let him have it.
A burst of 9mm rounds tore through him and the wooden frame of the doorway, sending out a spray of splinters and blood. Otto batted the submachine gun to one side and drove a fist into Augustus’s stomach.
Augustus grunted and doubled over. Otto yanked on the gun, but Augustus held on, squeezing off a few rounds that shattered the boards beneath Otto’s feet and made him do a little dance. The German slugged him again. Augustus staggered to one side, and Otto dove through the open doorway into the darkened hall through which they had entered.
Augustus sent some rounds after him, then stepped into the hallway and fired another burst at the dark form hurrying away in the shadows.
The report of a rifle in the inscription room made him turn back.
Moustafa fired again, aiming for a target Augustus couldn’t see beyond the side door. The first German lay in a crumpled heap, half in and half out of the room.
Moustafa ducked as a Luger made its distinctive bark. The bullet took a chip off the limestone block behind which his employee knelt, marring the inscription.
Augustus flattened himself against the left-hand wall and hurried along the side of the room until he got right next to the door. Moustafa covered him as he approached, daring another shot from the Luger to keep the German from entering the room and seeing the approaching threat.
Once to the side of the door, Augustus dropped low and swung around the corner, his gun leading the way, already firing. By the time he even saw his target, the enemy was pirouetting backward, his guts splayed open. The man behind was just raising a rifle to fire. Augustus made a quick squeeze of the trigger to save ammunition and took him out with a single shot to the forehead.
“Follow me!” Augustus shouted to his companions.
He leaped over the bodies and into a short corridor with doors on both sides and ahead. A quick look to either side showed no enemies. A slight scuff of a shoe on the floor around the corner of the far doorway made him fall to one knee, sighting down the barrel of the MP 18. His mind raced. How many bullets did he have left?
Silence.
A hand gripping a Luger darted around the corner, its owner not daring to show his face.
He had shown enough. Augustus drilled a long burst through the enemy’s wrist, almost severing the hand, blood tracing an arch on the far wall and the Luger clattering to the floor.
Augustus was already leaping through the doorway. Ignoring the man right in front of him, who gripped his wrist and stared in horrified fascination at his hand hanging from a single thread of tissue, Augustus poured fire into the two men standing behind him. Both flew backward, crashing into a dining room table and scattering a half-eaten meal.
Augustus kept running. A quick glance over his shoulder showed Moustafa and Faisal right behind him. Where was the rest of his unit? He stopped at another doorway, made a quick glance to make sure no one was around, and gestured toward the front door that stood right ahead. Faisal ran for it and slid the bolt.
Just as he was opening it, he threw himself to the floor as an enemy submachine gun stitched a line of holes through the wood. Augustus looked to the left and saw a member of a German trench raiding party charging down the stairs, firing a gun identical to his own. Augustus emptied the last of his magazine in him, and the man tumbled down the steps.
Steps? Was he in a dugout?
No time to wonder. An enemy assault was in progress, and he was alone and isolated with the remnants of some colonial unit. They needed to withdraw. Now.
He turned to the native boy. (A boy? Here on the front?) and saw he’d already flung open the door. The big colonial soldier fired at someone down the hallway, covering their retreat.
Augustus looked around, confused. This didn’t look like a dugout. It looked like the inside of a house. He’d seen some pretty cushy dugouts, and the Germans built the best, but this appeared far bigger than any he’d ever taken.
Was he in a command center? Was this an actual house, perhaps a general’s headquarters? There had been so many missions, so many assaults, they all had blended together. Was he on another one? What was the objective this time?
Someone tugged on his arm. The boy had come back inside.
He shouted something in a strange language, trying to drag him to the front door. Augustus didn’t understand a word, but he understood the meaning well enough. Meanwhile the hulking colonial soldier, who for some reason wasn’t in uniform, was shouting in the same language as he fired first down the hallway, and then up the stairs. A bullet cracked off the marble floor at Augustus’s feet.
The colonial soldier glanced over his shoulder at Augustus and stared for a moment. He switched to English.
“We have to run! There are too many!”
Instinct snapped through his confusion. Augustus grabbed the boy and, holding him like a rugby ball, sprinted out the door, down a flight of steps, and across a front lawn.
He found himself on a nighttime street lined with mansions in the French style. So he was behind the lines in occupied France then. That made sense. But why was it so bloody hot, and where had those palm trees come from?
He turned right, but the boy pounded on his shoulder and pointed left, repeating something over and over. Augustus turned left. This boy must be some sort of local guide. Was this even France? Perhaps he’d been transferred to the Mesop
otamian Front.
Why couldn’t he remember?
They ran. Dimly he was aware of gunshots behind him and the big colonial soldier catching up.
“All you all right, Mr. Wall?”
Mr. Wall? Was that some sort of cover name he was using?
“We have to get back to our lines,” Augustus replied.
“Lines? You mean the house?”
“Headquarters,” Augustus mumbled.
The neighborhood darkened, the houses fading. Spreading palm trees were replaced with shattered stumps, the paved road with a mud track. The moon flickered and disappeared, replaced with the intermittent flash of distant artillery fire. Shell holes and barbed wire and bits of bodies. No Man’s Land.
He hit the ground. The boy let out a cry as Augustus fell on him.
“Not much farther, Mr. Wall!”
“Keep down or the snipers will spot you!”
The colonial soldier hauled him to his feet. They staggered forward and came to a car. The boy got in the back, the colonial soldier in the passenger’s seat. Augustus blinked and stared at the vehicle. Was he supposed to drive? Where to? And how could a civilian car make it through the mud and wire and craters?
He rummaged through his pockets and found a set of keys. He held them impotently in his hand.
“This car will never make it through the mud. Plus the German snipers will spot us for sure. They’ll call in artillery support.”
The colonial soldier stared for a moment. Then he glanced down the street in the direction from which they came, got out of the car, and walked up to Augustus.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“I—I don’t know.”
The native slapped him across the face. The blow was so hard Augustus nearly fell over.
Augustus blinked, reeling. What were those shapes he saw behind the dead landscape of No Man’s Land? They looked like houses and trees.
The colonial soldier slapped him again. Things became clearer.
“I’m . . . not there. I’m . . .”
The native levy slapped him a third time. That brought more clarity, but a gunshot from down the street added a sense of urgency to his struggle for the truth.
The Case of the Purloined Pyramid Page 15