The Curse

by Harold Robbins

  Then it hit me.

  Pretending to still examine the piece with my magnifying glass, I took a sniff of it.

  The mummification process for a pharaoh involved extracting the brain through the nose and removing the other organs. The heart was left in place, and a heart scarab was laid over the area, along with a wedjat eye over the abdominal incision, an ancient Egyptian symbol to protect the king in the afterlife and to ward off evil.

  The chest and abdominal area was then covered with layers of linen wrappings adorned with jewelry, with each layer bonded with resin.

  In Tut’s case, that process had taken place thirty-three hundred years ago.

  After the discovery of his tomb about ninety years ago, the heart scarab would have been removed from the dense wrappings that had been sealed with resin.

  Usually the scent of the piece would not have retained its flavor of “antiquity” after being exposed to the air for nearly a century, even if the scarab had been in an airtight case for most of that time. But being sealed for thousands of years still left a hint of antiquity on objects, perhaps just the dust that the cloth bindings had in them when the wrapping process was done.

  As I sniffed it again, I realized it wasn’t the dust of ages on the piece that I smelled, but a subtle hint of chemical odor—very faint, but the sort of smell you’d get from paint that hadn’t fully cured.

  That smell hadn’t been on the scarab that Fuad showed me, but I detected the odor on this piece.

  Shades of Quintin Rees.

  I felt reasonably certain that what I was holding in my hand was the result of the “big-paying” assignment that the counterfeiter’s assistant had gotten from a woman of Middle Eastern descent.

  Another perfect example of a skillful expert at fraud. Except that the chemicals hadn’t fully cured yet.

  The old man said something and I smiled.

  I guess he was asking me for my opinion.

  I only had one thought. I would be murdered if I told the thieves their prize was a copy. There simply would be no reason to keep me alive and report back to Kaseem not to pay the money.

  Now what the hell was I going to do?

  51

  Holy shit! The old man was giving me the kind of look Arnie gives me when I can’t pay the rent.

  He knew something was wrong.

  With the language barrier, there was no way to charm him. Not that I could have anyway—as a Khan merchant, he would be a veteran of dozens of haggling negotiations used every day to survive.

  My right knee started shaking, a telling sign that the last thing I wanted to do was tell a bunch of crooks that I was onto their game or that they, too, had been taken.

  Either way, they’d blame the messenger.

  “It’s very nice,” I said, giving him what I thought was a convincing smile and a little bow. “One of the great treasures of the pharaohs.”

  I was sure my eyes were neon-flashing “liar!”

  He started up from his chair and I saw movement behind the curtains.

  “Have to tell my client the good news!” I yelped.

  I quickly bolted out the door and raced through the small shop in a flash, hitting the alley in a run.

  I flew by two men, running like a bat out of hell.

  The men behind me yelled “Stop!” in heavily accented English.

  My feet pedaled even faster with the cold feeling between my shoulder blades that a bullet was on its way.

  Darkness had already fallen and most of the shops were closed.

  Few people were in the alleyways as I raced by with the sound of heavy running steps closing the gap behind me.

  I didn’t know where I was but headed blindly in the direction of the traffic noise.

  As I came around a narrow corner, one of the men behind me grabbed the back of my scarf. I twisted and stumbled and bounced off a wall, swinging wildly and screaming.

  He got a hold of my right arm, but I clawed furiously at his eye, my fingernails digging in as deep as I could. He screamed in pain and let go and I started running again as his companion came barreling at me.

  I brushed by a boy leading a donkey piled high with goods as I dodged around another corner. As I sped by, I slapped the donkey’s rear and shouted at it, causing the animal to bolt.

  The boy and his donkey thankfully got between me and the two men and I propelled into a run again, driven by blind panic and adrenaline.

  I was in high gear now.

  I ran as if all the hounds of hell were on my heels and I believed they were. Those two men had been posted outside the tobacco shop to make sure I didn’t go anywhere, regardless of what I had found.

  It was a “kill the messenger” plan for sure.

  They would have let me call Kaseem—reporting the scarab as genuine, of course—and then cut my throat so I wouldn’t be able to tell the police if I was caught.

  I saw the lights of cars ahead and came charging out into the street, almost getting hit by a taxi.

  Horns honked, drivers shouted and cursed.

  I heard a bang as a car slammed into another, but I didn’t care.

  The noise and attention were lifesaving—literally.

  I stepped into the taxi that had nearly run me over.

  “I’m being chased by an angry husband,” I yelled at the driver. “Go!”

  52

  I was already halfway to the hotel when my phone rang. I had decided to go back to the Queen of the Nile where I stayed before.

  Kaseem.

  “You lousy, no good—” I was about to say son of a bitch, but he cut me off.

  “Was it the Heart of Egypt?” he asked excitedly.

  “I almost got murdered.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “You’ll get an answer when I have what you owe me. If it’s play money, I go to the police.”

  “You don’t know who you are dealing—”

  I hung up on him.

  He called me back. I waited until the tenth ring to answer.

  “If the money’s under my pillow when I get back to the hotel in an hour, you’ll get your answer. Otherwise I tell the police.”

  I hung up again and took the battery out of his phone and did some quick thinking.

  “Keep driving,” I told the taxi driver.

  “To where?”

  “I don’t care. Just keep driving.”

  When something wasn’t working, or was likely to get me killed, I had to change my game plan.

  I decided on two changes for my immediate situation.

  I put the first one into effect by calling Rafi al Din.

  “I’m in a spot of trouble,” I said. “There are some people I want to avoid in Cairo. Any suggestions?”

  “A goddess of fate has guided you to me,” he said. “I’ll pick you up in two hours. Be packed.”

  I didn’t have that much to pack in my small carry-on suitcase. I purposely had not brought a lot of clothes with me.

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’ll be a surprise.”

  “I don’t like surprises.”

  “I’ll be at your hotel in two hours,” he said.

  “No, I’ll meet you. Tell me where.”

  “The train station. South terminal.”

  * * *

  AN HOUR LATER I was back at the hotel and ready to put phase two into action.

  I asked the front desk clerk how many porters the hotel had on duty.

  “Two,” he said.

  “Good. I want both of them to come to my room to help me with my luggage.”

  The desk clerk stared. “Miss, you checked in with a single small bag.”

  “I’m afraid of heights. Both porters.” I pointed at the other clerk on duty. “Him, too.”

  “But—”

  His mouth snapped shut as I laid a hundred on the counter.

  “You, too. Now,” I said.

  Five minutes later I retrieved my small bag, an envelope under my pillow that felt right but I
didn’t open.

  The five of us went back down to the lobby and I had all four escort me to the waiting taxi outside.

  I didn’t know if Kaseem would have money or thugs waiting for me, but I figured that having a crowd around would at least avoid me getting murdered.

  I told the driver to take me to a hotel where I’d switch to a taxi for the train station.

  When I got back to Cairo, I would check into the most expensive, crowded, and secure hotel in the city.

  No more being sixteen floors from the lobby and what turned out to be a revolving door to my room.

  I wanted plenty of company after today—a place where my screams could be heard.

  I checked the envelope, taking a bill out of the middle and using my mini-flashlight to examine it. It looked real. They all looked used, too—a good sign.

  Kaseem probably had my money all the time, but had tried to cheat me and pocket it.

  I called him en route and he answered on the first ring.

  “Phony as a three dollar bill,” I said with some satisfaction, not caring whether he understood the American expression.

  “It’s not possible!”

  He sounded genuinely shocked and I got some satisfaction out of that, too.

  “It’s the same as the Radcliff replica, beautifully done; they’re the best forgeries I’ve ever seen of an antiquity. This one was a side job done by a guy named Quintin Rees at the counterfeiting shop. I suspect Quintin might have had his throat cut after finishing it. He’s MIA from home.”

  “MIA?”

  “Missing in action.”

  “Are you certain you haven’t made a mistake?”

  I wanted to laugh out loud.

  “The only mistake I made was letting you talk me into this mess. It’s a phony.”

  I took the battery out of his phone and chucked it and the phone out the window.

  I leaned back in the cab and closed my eyes.

  What was the old expression—being put through the wringer? That’s how I felt. As if I’d been splashing around an old-time washing machine and then hauled out soaking wet and put through the rubber rollers that squeezed the water out before the wash got hung out to dry.

  It had been one hell of a day, and it wasn’t over.

  I still had to meet Rafi al Din.

  He hadn’t told me why he wanted me to meet him at the train station, but I had hopes of a jaunt over to a Red Sea resort, Egypt’s Riviera. Anywhere, as long as I got out of Cairo while I was still alive. And still had money in my pocket.

  Now I needed my passport. Any way I could get it.

  Even if I had to do some things that a lady shouldn’t have to do.

  Fortunately, Rafi was good-looking. Just the type I hate and am attracted to—a tough cop, probably drinks beer and smokes ugly black cigarettes as he watches soccer after sex.

  What can I say?

  Maybe it was me.

  Did I expect too much from a man? Was I looking for Mr. Right to come along?

  Maybe my standards were too high. Did I have to settle for less?

  No, I didn’t believe so.

  It had to be that I was raised bad.

  Being desperate with killers and thieves after me didn’t help, either.

  53

  A Mercedes with dark-tinted windows bearing the insignia of an Egyptian army general transported Mounir Kaseem through the dark streets of Cairo. He sat in the backseat of the car driven by an active duty sergeant who had been Kaseem’s own driver when Kaseem had been a high-ranking military officer.

  After midnight, the crowded, frantic pace and harsh discordance of horns had quieted.

  When they pulled up to a private marina on the east bank of the Nile north of the Imbaba bridge, Kaseem got out. The driver didn’t need to be told to wait.

  The camel market was not far from the area.

  Kaseem walked past two sentries standing guard with automatic weapons and up the gangplank of a large dahabeeyah, a luxury houseboat-yacht.

  Dahabeeyah meant “golden boat” in reference to the luxury river boats of the ancient pharaohs. The modern versions were the idea of Thomas Cook, the British tourism pioneer, about a hundred and fifty years ago, and as often carried archaeologists up the Nile to digs.

  The boat Kaseem boarded was a floating Egyptian Army Officers Club, reserved for field grade officers.

  Tonight it was being used for a meeting of a clandestine group of officers who supported Kaseem’s Golden Nile nationalistic political action group.

  As the middle-aged officers were about to hold a meeting in which they planned to decide the fate of their country, a group of young women enjoyed cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and gossip on the stern deck patio.

  The women weren’t the wives of the men, though some had most of the privileges of wives without the formalities.

  Once the meeting was over, the young women would join the older men for drinks and later entertain the men privately in the twelve bedroom suites on the boat.

  Although the men weren’t exceptionally wealthy by Western terms, they lived rich and privileged lives: their homes were behind high walls in secure neighborhoods, their wives shopped in London, Paris, and Dubai, and their children went to elitist Egyptian prep schools before attending universities in Britain and America.

  The men considered themselves patriots, though by most reasonable standards they would be considered extremists whose political views were not shared by most of the people of their country.

  Their goal was not to bring democracy to the country, but to stop the growing influence of Islamic reactionaries who wanted to return the country to medieval societies like the Taliban in Afghanistan and the northern Pakistani tribal areas.

  If they succeeded, they would be autocrats who enjoyed even more power and wealth. That was never far from the minds of any of them as they voluntarily involved themselves in conspiracies that would earn them death by hanging if they failed.

  Kaseem had been their commander before he fled into exile. Even in exile he was still in charge. Of all of them, he was the most dedicated and the least interested in enriching himself.

  He was also the most fanatical and dangerous.

  Waiting for him in the lounge were a commanding general of an armored division, a general recently forced into retirement, and three colonels who knew they would never reach general rank.

  The five men who had been waiting for him welcomed Kaseem with a salute that he returned. Then handshakes and praises were exchanged, fresh drinks were poured, and questions were asked about the health of their wives and the state of their children’s schooling, jobs, and marriages before they started the meeting.

  Though unspoken, the men were impressed that Kaseem had the courage to return clandestinely to Egypt.

  Also understood by all of men was that their families would suffer and be impoverished if any of them were discovered to be traitors.

  When the social greetings were finished, they stared at him, as a group, waiting for what he had to say.

  He raised his glass. And smiled. “A toast to the Heart of Egypt.”

  “Is it true? Can we see it?” one of the colonels asked.

  “It is en route to the place where it will be used at the proper time. I didn’t dare bring it here. We are all expendable, but the heart … it must be preserved until then.”

  Except for the retired general, the officers were nervous and cautious as Kaseem once again went over their plan to seize power.

  A paramount issue with the men was the fact that others had tried it and failed, most notably when President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by army extremists during a military parade.

  “We know what went wrong that day,” Kaseem said. “The plot only involved junior officers who lacked the ability to deploy large forces. We have that ability.”

  “They had no plan for seizure of the government,” the retired general told them. “That was the height of lunacy. They did not have a leader, as we do”—
he nodded at Kaseem—“ready to declare a state of emergency and seize power, along with the troops to back up the seizure.”

  “You will command the necessary troops,” Kaseem reminded them. “Preparation and readiness to strike are the keys. We will move quickly and get the rest of the army on our side. The word will swiftly spread that it is the Golden Nile that has acted. The core leadership of the army know that we are not terrorists, but patriots.”

  For another hour they talked and planned and refined the stratagem that they had worked on for years, one that they believed would flush out the old powers and bring in their new thinking.

  When they had their fill of politics and whiskey, Kaseem called it quits, informing the group that it was time for him to return to his quarters and begin implementing his plan.

  The old general, who had been Kaseem’s commanding officer in a bygone day before Kaseem rose in rank above him, walked him to the waiting staff car.

  They chatted about the government’s plan to build huge megacities to reduce Cairo’s twenty million or so population by diverting millions of its inhabitants to the new metropolises, a scheme already under way and generally considered doomed to failure.

  It was innocent talk on the dock in case they were overheard and it was not until they were at the car that the older officer explained the real reason he had walked Kaseem to the car.

  “My friend,” he said to Kaseem, “tell me the truth. Do you really have the Heart of Egypt in your hand?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because if you did, I believe you would have showed it tonight.”

  “There has been a minor setback,” Kaseem said. “I didn’t dare mention it because our colleagues are too squeamish to hear the truth. I know who has the scarab. We will have it when we make our move.”

  54

  I had already downed one glass of wine and was working on my second glass as I sat in the club car of the sleeper train from Cairo to Aswân. Considering what I’d been through, a third one wasn’t that far away in my mind, and it would put me to sleep.

  Rafi and Dalila were drinking fruit juice.

  The trip was more than five hundred miles, an eleven-hour train ride between the two cities, passing through Luxor on the way.