By the recurring sounds of flapping wings from inside the shed, it was obvious that Gil and Peter were still disturbing a bird whose nerves had been put on edge and stayed there. Peter removed himself farther from the shed and waited for Gil to join him. Peter's continued concern for the falcon didn't alleviate Gil's inner rage and jealousy. Gil felt like staying where he was and shouting out whatever he had to say across the distance separating them. He didn't, though, because he'd never been one to air his dirty linen in public. If he and Peter were at it again, there was no sense to the whole village knowing—if everyone didn't already know.
"Now,” Peter said when Gil joined him. Gil wanted Peter to touch him, but Peter gave all indication that any touches he felt like delivering, at the moment, were best kept under control. “Did you happen to ask Betty if she picked up the fragment to get some better sketches of it for our files?” Peter asked. Betty Duke was the group's resident artist and camera person. A rather plain-looking, but competent young lady, she'd gotten the position through someone her father knew at the University of Chicago, the university footing a good portion of the excavation bills.
"Okay, I'm sorry,” Gil apologized. He was glad he could now move on from there. “I didn't even consider the possibility that Betty might have it."
"I don't know Betty has it, either,” Peter said, not yet finished, “but that certainly is one viable explanation, isn't it? How's this for another: one our group simply wants a closer look? Did you make the rounds to ask? I'll bet not. I'll bet you just came right on out here, positive from the get-go that I was the guilty party. Did you really think I'd be low enough to make off with any evidence that points to the Scorpion King being buried where you and Professor Kenny think he was? Do you think I'm really more concerned about appearing to be right than I am about admitting to the truth?"
"I never insinuated you'd made off with it to conceal its existence!” Gil protested, refusing to let Peter get away with any such accusations. “Don't you dare say that I did!"
"You might not have had the courage to say as much to my face, but your actions speak louder than any words, buddy-boy,” Peter replied, once again not giving Gil an opportunity to get a word in edgewise. “But before you do go running off at the mouth to anyone who'll listen about how I'm so inflexible about my theories that I'm prepared to cover up evidence to the contrary, you'd better stop to consider that if the fragment really is missing, it might well have been none other than your close friend Sheikh Abdul Jerada who has made off with it or, more likely, had it lifted."
"Abdul?” Gil responded automatically, unable to believe Peter had resorted to such a cheap shot. Abdul hadn't given the piece more than a passing glance.
"It didn't even cross your mind for an instant, I'll bet, that it might be Abdul who has made off with it,” Peter pronounced triumphantly. “Don't bother answering, because I can tell—just by your expression—that you didn't. Whom do you think had a better motive for theft: I, who sees that fragment as a threat to one theory among the many theories that are proved wrong every day; Abdul, who just might see that fragment as a threat to his oil-drilling operation at Hierakonpolis?"
"How can it possibly be a threat to his oil operation?” Gil asked, afraid to hear the answer if for no other reason that that he didn't want to consider Abdul a suspect.
"You and I both told him it was an important archaeological find, didn't we?” Peter pointed out. “If he didn't, personally, see any value in the piece, he surely realized there was the chance that the Bureau of Antiquities in Cairo might weigh in on our side and decide that such an artifact, and the possibility of unearthing more, should take precedent over any drilled hole in the ground presently turning up nothing."
"I can't believe Abdul would steal it, or have it stolen!” Gil defended.
"Of course you can't believe it,” Peter said, hardly surprised. “You'd much rather think I'm guilty of the deed."
"I never thought you were guilty of anything except possibly moving the fragment from one room of the house to another,” Gil replied, wondering how everything he did and said seemed to get misinterpreted by Peter.
"And I, Professor Goldsands, can't believe that! No matter that I would very, very much like to oblige you by doing so."
Maybe they were victims of the past; maybe there was something to the supposed curse that surrounded the opening of King Tutankhamen's tomb; maybe there was something genetically passed from generation to generation to plague even innocent grandchildren. Gil had read somewhere that twenty-two people, either directly or indirectly involved in the King Tut excavation, had died prematurely under peculiar circumstances within the seven years following the opening of the tomb. He remembered the number specifically, because the article had listed Geraldine Fowler as one of those victims.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
GIL'S DREAMS WERE NIGHTMARES so illusive they were forgotten as soon as he escaped them. He was wide awake and reading in bed when Reginald's alarm went off. The younger man stirred as reluctantly as always. It was always amusing to watch him roll this way and that, cover his head with blankets, burrow deeper, and issue small grunts and groans when faced with the undeniable realization that it was time to get up. His hand managed to disengage the buzzer just seconds before it would have spent itself on its own accord.
"Don't you ever sleep?” Reginald asked wearily, coming up in a movement that had him reaching for his robe as his legs dropped to give his feet access to his slippers. It was the same question he always asked when he awoke to find Gil already awake.
Gil didn't accompany Reginald to breakfast; he wasn't hungry. He was surprised when Reginald returned to their room so shortly after having gone down for morning bacon, eggs, and steaming coffee. “Did Peter say anything about where he was going?” Reginald asked.
"Going?” Gil echoed. He put his book to one side, not having the faintest notion what he was supposedly reading anyway. His mind had been more occupied in wondering how and why the fragment of Scorpion mace head had disappeared. He had made the rounds of the other members of the dig, none of whom knew what had happened to it. That Peter might suddenly be missing, too...
"He's not here,” Reginald said. “One of the Land Rovers is gone, and Tammy said she thought she heard it pulling out earlier this morning."
"Which means I had better get up and get going, yes?” Gil said, taking the not-so-subtle hint. The excavation team had been divided into two groups, each working a different area. Peter usually left the house early to drive the first group, because they had farther to go. Gil usually left shortly thereafter, driving the second. However, if Peter had driven off with one of the vehicles, Gil was going to have to provide shuttle service for both groups—a chore that was going to set everyone's workday behind schedule, especially if afternoon pickups were equally to involve just the one vehicle. “Tell the others I'll be right down,” Gil said. “Peter obviously decided to check some site deeper in the wadi and forgot to mention it to me.” Gil was making excuses; everyone knew it normally wasn't like Peter to forget something like that. Everybody was probably blaming Gil's poor memory as responsible for any forgetting, but Gil didn't give a damn. He was suddenly concerned that Peter might have pulled out for England, leaving without any word; Frederic Donas had done the same to Geraldine Fowler in Egypt, never having come back. Gil reached for a sweater needed at the moment but destined for quick rejection once the sun roses higher. He told himself that Peter wouldn't just leave for England without warning. Peter would have delegated his position of director to someone. While it probably wouldn't have been to Gil, under the present circumstances, although Gil was the most qualified of the group, it would have gone to someone. As of that moment, everyone seemed just as much in the dark as to Peter's whereabouts as Gil was.
Gil left the second group at breakfast, loading the first into the remaining Land Rover. Since Peter had taken the vehicle with the bad transmission, Gil saw another horrible possibility. Peter might have decided
, after their fight last night, to clear his head by driving into the desert. The car might have conked out. He might be stranded, his cell-phone battery dead, in the middle of nowhere, too far away to walk back in heat soon capable of frying him to a crisp before nightfall. There were, of course, emergency provisions always stashed in both Land Rovers, and Peter certainly knew enough about desert survival not to attempt making any great distance on foot after sunrise.
While Gil was chauffeuring the second group, Reginald spotted the missing vehicle. Tammy was, then, the one who spotted Peter on the spine of a nearby sandstone ridge. He and his falcon (the latter on the former's wrist) were silhouetted against the skyline. Gil kept to his original course, knowing that Peter didn't need rescuing. Gil's admitted relief in finding Peter safe was countered by disgruntlement that the only thing that had kept Peter from his duties as director—and had needlessly had Gil worrying—was Peter's eagerness to put his falcon through her paces in the coolness of an early morning. By the time Gil reached the second dig site and made sure everyone was busy at his or her assigned ten-by-ten meter plot, he had cooled down to where he figured there was no time like the present to get things straightened out between him and the man he might very well love. If Gil was losing Peter, that was really the last thing he wanted to happen.
He was delayed in his resolve to have an early-morning meet-up with Peter by the arrival of the government inspector officially assigned the dig to make sure everything found was properly recorded. Had the dig been expected to provide anything of really great value, Mamud Said would have been on-site on a more regular basis. As it was, Hierakonpolis had never showed any evidence of ever turning up any big surprises, its chief points of interest being a small settlement and cemeteries predating the times when great caches of gold were being buried with mummies; the inspector made only infrequent checks, Gil having seen him only twice, merely for a few minutes, on each occasion. Gil begrudged the time he had to spend with him now, finding ridiculous the man's seeming suspicions regarding Peter's just discovered absence from both of the morning's excavation sites. “He's not off plundering some newly discovered tomb of a pharaoh, I assure you,” Gil said when the inspector's query sounded as if it had been insinuating just that. “He's taken the day off to fly one of Sheikh Abdul Jerada's falcons.” If Peter considered the bird on loan from the sheikh, Gil had decided to do so, also.
"Fly it where?” Mamud asked politely. It was obvious he wasn't going to let the subject drop. He was a small man—probably no more than five foot five; thin, but not unpleasantly so; he was dressed in a Western-cut business suit that looked out of place in the wilderness setting. His eyes were large and black, part of a total expression that asked Gil please not to try and put anything over on him. It was natural for the inspector to be concerned and suspicious, since Egypt's treasures had been previously sacked by the Greeks, Romans, Turks, French, and the British, before an independent Egyptian government finally got around to clamping a lid down on the outflow. It was lucky that anything of value had remained in the whole country. Hierakonpolis seemed barren, was assumed of little importance, by way of any anticipated archaeological finds of great value, but there was always the rare chance something might turn up, or had already turned up, and Mamud probably knew he should have been keeping closer tabs on the operation than he had been. Definitely, Gil suddenly figured it was just as well Mamud hadn't seen the fragment of Scorpion mace head—especially since the artifact was now missing. But even if Mamud had seen it, it was doubtful the Arab bureaucrat would have been as excited as the group was. The only things that really would have gotten the inspector's juices flowing would have been the glitter of sparkling gold; the chances of turning any of that up at Hierakonpolis were, everyone agreed, pretty slim; the suspected pharaohs of the area, Menes-Narmer, Scorpion and Aha, had lived previous to mummies laid to rest in anything more complicated than simple two-compartment burial vaults, with accompanying treasures usually no more elaborate than earthenware jars filled with wine, grain, meat and dates. Had there been any precious gems and metals, as those found in the First Dynasty tomb of Zer at Abydos, they would have been piddling compared to the truckloads unearthed by Carter at Thebes, and they would probably have been long gone as a result of those generations of looters who had ransacked the area so extensively.
"If you'd like to follow me, I can show you where he's flying the falcon,” Gil said, wondering how he would have explained not having had the faintest notion where Peter was if Peter hadn't been spotted earlier that morning. Mamud would undoubtedly have found Gil's professed ignorance a cause for suspicion. “Unless, of course, you'd rather stay here a little longer and acquaint yourself with the considerable collection of pottery shards we've been able to gather since your last visit.” The workmen were raising a fine dust that kept settling on Mamud's suit, and the Arab kept trying to brush off the tan powder as he got in his own car to follow Gil in the Land Rover.
Peter was still, thank God, on the spiny ridge of sandstone. He was sitting now, the falcon perched on his fist. Gil waved, but Peter didn't wave back. “Coming up with me?” Gil asked the inspector, Mamud's company being the last thing Gil wanted. Gil couldn't imagine the bureaucrat, or his clothes, making the steep climb. “I promised Peter a verbal report as soon as I got the groups settled in."
"Wish him good flying,” Mamud said; there was a decidedly envious look in his dark eyes. Gil would never have pictured the bureaucrat a falconry aficionado. The bug obviously bit all kinds!
Mamud drove off, and Gil turned and headed up an embankment that proved the Sahara wasn't all sand. The ground underfoot was packed hard beneath a covering of soil as powdery and dry as sifted flour. As Gil climbed higher, wondering what pathway Peter could possibly have taken to assure the safe ride of the bird on his fist, the dust gave way to earth-worn rock that crumbled beneath Gil's feet and hands whenever he sought support from it.
The summit was a narrow ridge that paralleled the distant Nile before disintegrating on all sides. Peter sat at the far end. He didn't turn in greeting. Gil took a deep breath. He'd come to do everything in his power to repair whatever the breach between them, even if he had to share Peter with a bird. Gil sat down beside his lover, doing so very so slowly so as not to disturb the falcon whose hood was complete with a plume of brilliant green cock's hackle feathers. Gil was glad such hoods had superseded the older method of obscuring the sight by sewing threads through the bird's eyelids, although the latter technique was still widely practiced in India.
"Come with greetings from our government inspector?” Peter asked. His left hand, the one supporting the bird, was sheathed in a buckskin glove, the leather doubled over on the thumb and first two fingers, as well as on the upper part of the wrist. An even heavier glove would have been necessary for a goshawk—a shorter winged hawk whose sharp talons and vise-like grip were much more dangerous than the more delicate hold of the peregrine. The goshawk's talons would have penetrated the heaviest leather if the bird were yarak—a Turkish term for in top flying form.
"Mr. Said was only curious as to why you were missing from the dig,” Gil said and watched Peter stroke the hawk's breast feathers; Gil wished Peter was stroking Gil's chest, ass, or cock, instead. “I told him you'd been working hard lately and had taken the day off."
"Did you tell him my working so hard was caused by my having tried to take on two full-time jobs at the same time?"
"I don't want to fight, Peter,” Gil said, hoping Peter wasn't going to make this more difficult than it already was.
"What is it you do want, then, Gil?” Peter asked, still not looking at Gil, concentrating on the way his right forefinger moved along speckled bird feathers.
"I want you,” Gil said, wondering why he hadn't managed that simple statement in anything other than a hoarse whisper. He had even more to say, and none of it would get any easier. “I'm desperately afraid I'm going to lose you,” he hurried on, the bird's head movements showing an awareness of Gi
l's voice and presence. “I came to apologize if it came across, even for a moment last night, that I thought you responsible for the missing fragment of mace head."
"Then, it's still missing?” Peter asked, sounding interested even if he didn't look at Gil.
"I figure Abdul probably did take it,” Gil said, “or, more probably, had someone take it for him."
"Abdul confessed that to you, did he?” Peter asked, finally focusing his sunny eyes on Gil.
"I haven't seen Abdul today,” Gil said. “I, like you, just can't come up with anybody else who has a motive."
"What happened to my motive?” Peter asked with a by-now well-recognized edge of sarcasm in his voice.
"I never actually suspected you,” Gil said. “You just jumped to that conclusion, remember? I thought you'd probably moved it. I wouldn't even have bothered coming to ask you, except I was desperate for the excuse to talk to you again—and I was jealous."
"You were jealous? Of what? The falcon?” Peter laughed—which made Phoenix open her wings nervously, as if she were about to attempt flight.
Gil waited until the hawk had dropped her wings and settled down, noting how much more cautious the bird had become after having spent so much time hanging upside down. “Yes, my jealousy of a bird does remain exceedingly funny, even to me, doesn't it?” Gil said, not really thinking it was funny at all.
"Funny only because I can't imagine why you'd ever be jealous of a bird,” Peter said, seeming truly at a loss. “A bird, Gil! A bird? For Christ's sake!"
"You spent time with the falcon that I want you to spend with me,” Gil said, bringing his knees up and wrapping his arms around his legs. He looked out over a vista of rocky hills descending to sand, sand flowing to vegetation, vegetation dipping toward gray river, more vegetation ascending the opposite bank to more sand and more rocky hills. It was a mirror image in which he expected to see two people and a hawk facing them from some distant ridge across the river.
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