Bast stuck her head out of her bedroom. She yawned as if she had been asleep, when actually she had been in cat form and cleaning herself, as cats do, but she was not about to enlighten Quentin to that fact.
“Sorry if I woke you, but this letter has just arrived. It is addressed to Mademoiselle Bast at this hotel, but with no room number. There is also no stamp, so it must have been hand delivered. It was this which made me disturb you.” Quentin turned the letter towards Bast who, even from the distance of the bedroom door, could make out ‘Extremely Urgent’, in bold and in red, as it was emblazoned across the envelope. “Shall I bring it over?”
“No, I am not wearing anything. I shall dress and be right with you.”
“Shall I order some coffee and canapés?”
“That would be lovely,” and with no further comment she closed the door.
“You look worried. Is everything okay?” Quentin asked just a short while later. The waiter had already been and gone. Though Quentin had asked Bast if she would like coffee and canapés, he had already taken the liberty of ordering, as he knew she would not be able to resist them, though she was resisting them. Not one had been touched. Something was dreadfully wrong.
Chapter 11
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Cairo, the Person
“So … do explain to me again, Alex, how running away was your only way of saving me. I want to hear if it sounds anymore ludicrous than it did the last time you tried to justify your actions.” Emmy was pulling Alex’s leg while they were all enjoying slightly dry sandwiches and warm tamar-hindi.
“He great thinker, Emmy, he great thinker,” Cairo said through a mouthful of Mrs Inky’s bulls’ head sandwich. Ropet and Sanuba both nodded. They could do no more as their mouths were no less empty.
In reality Alex did not need to explain his actions. They had been clear for all to see. Emmy had been making it very difficult for her assailant to drag her back to his small boat. She had been successfully delaying his progress. Alex had been all too aware that he would not have stood a chance once his assailant got to his feet. There had been nothing of substance, at least nothing anywhere close to him, which he could have hit his assailant with in order to have kept him on the ground until Cairo, Ropet and Sanuba had reached them. Though his assailant had fallen, then been hit by the chair, he had managed to keep hold of the menacing looking wooden club and had given every indication that he had intended to use it at his earliest opportunity. One direct hit from that and Alex would have been history. Running towards Cairo, Ropet and Sanuba had been his only option. Alex had to reach them before his assailant, or more importantly his assailant’s club, met with him, and his assailant was already up on his feet and catching up with Alex far too quickly.
It had worked like clockwork. Ropet and Sanuba were soldiers, granted, ancient soldiers, and far from being elite troops, but they had brought Alex’s attacker down in what must have been a tried and tested manoeuvre of theirs. They had split up while running at him at speed. Ropet, on the left of the attack, had raised his sword as if to attack at full run. He had drawn the full attention of Alex’s assailant, and just to make sure that he really did have his full attention, he had let out the most dreadful scream. Sanuba had immediately stopped running. He had placed his feet firmly before swinging his sword. Alex’s assailant never saw what hit him. He had been dead before he had hit the floor. Alex had then turned, and along with Cairo they had run back to save Emmy. Ropet and Sanuba had been ahead of them. With the sight of the four of them running towards him, the kicking he had been taking from Emmy, and with no prospect of help from his now obviously dead partner in crime, he had been left with no option except to let go and run. He had headed for the little boat, however, he had failed to run quickly enough.
“Enough, Emmy, please, enough.”
“Sorry, Alex, I shall not tease you anymore. You had no other option. It was the right decision.” She turned to look behind her, though she quickly turned back and shuddered. “Definitely not ancients.”
“Not with that amount of blood,” Alex said before asking Ropet and Sanuba why they had dragged the bloodied corpse all the way back from the desert. It had left a trail of blood which was rapidly turning from red to black as it dried upon the sand.
“Yes,” Emmy added, “that is disgusting.”
“I am soldier, we at war,” was all Ropet said. Unusually for ancients his English was poor in the extreme.
Thankfully Sanuba spoke perfect English, though only when he felt it was safe to do so. “We need to know why you were attacked. If they are desert travellers, opportunistic bandits, or if somebody put them up to this. Watching the blood of his dead friend leak out into the desert has a way of getting people to talk.”
“Yes, it works,” Cairo said as he rubbed his hands. “No European Convention Human Rights. If he not talk, he die.”
Alex wondered if their ancient memories were causing them to become overly aggressive, to lose compassion. Some of the events of the past, which all too frequently came to him at the most inappropriate times, were beyond barbaric. All he could do was to push them, as best as he could, out of his mind. He decided to have a talk with Cairo about living in the here and now, rather than in his memories of Ancient Egypt. But that conversation was for another day, not now. “So what are you going to do with him? He is tied up in the full sun with his dead ‘friend’ beside him. You cannot leave him like that.”
It did not take long for Ropet and Sanuba to obtain a full confession. Once they were satisfied that they had gained all they could, as one, they kicked him down the slope and into the River Nile, still tied, and now screaming at the top of his voice. Alex was up and into the river. He struggled to hold the man’s head above water because he thrashed so violently. He was obviously convinced that Alex was going to finish what Ropet and Sanuba had started. Cairo was there almost as quickly as Alex and between them they dragged the man to shore, untied his ropes and watched as he ran off, forgetting all about his little boat.
“Thanks, Cairo. I couldn’t see him drown.”
“Nor me, Mister Alex.”
“I thought you were all for killing him.”
“No, not me, but Inky have great daughters, and they like soldiers.” Cairo paused, smiled and then said, “And they good cooks … very good cooks!”
“I am glad you haven’t changed, my friend.” They walked, arms around each other, dripping wet, back to the table. Neither of them would be wet for long in the extreme dry heat.
“Just bandits,” confirmed Sanuba, who showed more than a little annoyance at what Alex and Cairo had just done. “We will go, sweep the area, and be back.” And with that he and Ropet left at a pace, in obvious annoyance.
There were a few crumbs of food left which Cairo helped himself to.
“Thank you,” Emmy said as she placed a hand on Alex’s arm. “And, thank you, Cairo. I think we would have lost something very special inside of us if we had sat here and watched him drown.” A whole new conversation could have ensued, but Alex said, very kindly, though not patronisingly, that he and Cairo would talk later.
Cairo was obviously desperate for one of Inky’s daughters to like him, but he was no soldier and he never would be.
The conversation fairly quickly went through recent events. Cairo shed more than a few tears when he heard of the death of Babs. Mothers were extremely important in Egyptian society. The continued sobs of Cairo caused Alex to question why he could not feel as Cairo did. After all, it was his mother. Okay, his adopted mother, but she was the only mother he had ever known, yet his feelings were dead to him on this subject. He felt this to be wrong, yet he felt comfortable with feeling that it was wrong.
“Alex?” Emmy said softly. It was enough to bring him out of his thoughts and back into the conversation.
Cairo confirmed that he, in fact none of the family, thought Kate and David to be in any sort of danger. He could only tell Alex and Emmy of reports of Kate, because he also had not seen
her for over a year. He told of her living the life of a nomadic local. Of her father’s deep mistrust of mobile phones and the internet. A mistrust he had passed onto her. David would only use the internet if it served his purpose, and anyway, there was neither an internet connection nor a mobile phone service anywhere in this region of Egypt. They had each other and they were not letting anybody else in. As Cairo put it, “They lived off the grid.” He still watched far too much bad American TV.
“Ramses sent protection, but they always gave them slip. So Ramses gave up. We forgot, until Doctor asked us to go and check them.” Cairo gave a self-congratulatory smile. “This exactly what I want. Show Inky’s daughter, I am soldier.” His smile left him. “Though I never be soldier. It just not me.”
Emmy leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I am glad that you are not a solider. Somehow, you would not be Cairo, my special friend Cairo, if you were a soldier.”
“I miss you here. This your home, your real home.”
“Well, Cairo, I do feel so much more alive when I am here. That is of course when nobody is trying to kill me!” They laughed at Alex’s joke and it was just like old times. They chatted, laughed, were serious, very serious about what was going on, but most of all they were alive. Out of the school room, away from Dr Margretti, they were alive.
“You look worried,” Quentin said as he watched Bast’s eyes. She had read the letter once, twice, and was now reading it for the third time.
Looking up from the letter she said, “You cannot go to Luxor. Not now anyway.”
“What!”
“You heard me.”
“Of course I heard you.”
“Then you know that you cannot go to Luxor.”
“I hear what you say, but I need to know why you are saying it.” Quentin sat back in his chair, lifted the cup and saucer from the table and sipped his coffee. From years of dealing with students, as well as his fellow archaeologists, he knew that silence, personal space and a relaxed atmosphere was usually the best way of getting people to talk. There were other ways, but this was Quentin’s preferred way. He finished his coffee, placed the cup and saucer back on the table, slid the canapés closer to Bast before refilling his cup.
“Do you know what it is when you trust someone so much, and know them so well, that what they do not say is far more important than what they do say?” Quentin moved the cup away from his lips and gave an expression of total understanding. Bast had just started to talk, so he did not wish to stop her from talking. “The letter is from Rose. She quite specifically tells me that I must keep you away from Luxor at all costs, though she fails to tell me why.” Bast paused, looked more relaxed than she had been whilst reading the letter, and then started to speak again. “I trust Rose’s judgement, though she has left me with a problem. How do I get you to trust her judgment?”
“Perhaps all you need to do is to make me trust your judgement,” Quentin said after a fairly long silence from Bast.
“Yes, well, my judgement is that at no time have I ever doubted Rose’s judgement, so all my instincts are telling me to keep you away from Luxor at all costs. Though …” Bast hesitated. Quentin took a sip of his coffee and said nothing. “Though this letter is not like Rose. Yes, it is definitely from her. It is her handwriting, and I know that she has not been forced to write this.”
“How do you know?”
“Because not one of our agreed ‘I am writing this under duress’ words appears.” Quentin gave a shallow nod of understanding. “Yet her letter tells me nothing.”
“It took you rather a long time to read for a letter which tells you nothing!”
“It tells me things I need to know, but it tells me nothing of why I am to stop you from going to Luxor.”
“Perhaps it also tells you things that I should know.”
Bast thought for a while and helped herself to a canapé as she did. Should she let Quentin read the letter … no. Should she tell him that Alex was back in Egypt … no. Should she tell him that Rose had not let anyone know she had returned to Egypt because there was something very important she had to do … best not to. Even Bast did not understand what Rose was up to, and she knew her better than anybody, even better than Gadeem.
It was the very last paragraph of Rose’s letter which hit Bast so hard.
‘Do not attempt to find me or contact me. This is something that I must do on my own. Look after Gadeem for me, but tell him nothing for the moment. If everything goes horribly wrong, please tell him that I shall still love him a thousand years from now.’
Bast was well aware that Rose’s ‘thousand years’ referred to the average time it took for someone to appear in the afterlife in Egypt. Bast thought back to when Alex had discussed with her what Henuttawy, Emmy’s ancient, though very beautiful, relative had told him – ‘All I know about death is that I did not die. I went to sleep as normal in my seventy-second year and woke up looking like this some eight hundred years later.’
Bast was worried for Rose, especially as she was the one who so strongly believed in working as a team. So much so that she had previously taken Kate to task over her inability to work as part of a team. This had to be something really, really serious, but Bast’s hands were tied. She was well aware she had no option except to respect Rose’s wishes, however much she did not want to.
Bast woke and was shocked to see that it was already well past eleven in the morning. They had stayed up rather too late the night before. She left her bedroom and was surprised not to find Quentin sipping coffee while reading one of his thick academic books. She walked over to the glass window, which reached from floor to ceiling, and looked down upon the Nile below. It was then that she became aware of a note on the table addressed to her. It was from Quentin. He apologised for leaving without saying goodbye, but he had not wanted to wake her after such a late night. Apparently he had left for a funeral. Bast felt relieved. Babs’ funeral could not have come at a more opportune time. He also said that he would be back in a few days so she should not check out of the hotel, but she did not have to wait for him. “How kind, he does not expect me to wait for him,” she thought in a somewhat ironic way.
Bast was quite relaxed. She even considered returning to bed and curling up. That was before she went into Quentin’s room. It was immediately obvious he had taken nothing with him, not even a toothbrush. His fictitious award from a fictitious organisation was anything except fictitious as it left a gaping hole in the window on its way to the Nile below. Bast had acted very much out of character. An act she had been driven to upon discovering Quentin’s passport in the top drawer of his bedside table. He had not left the country, he had not gone to Babs’ funeral, he had gone to Luxor, to his own funeral.
Chapter 12
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All That Glitters
The three young adventurers had also been tardy. They were quite prepared for breakfast to have turned into brunch, but now it was well after lunch as they stepped into the bar at the Winter Palace Hotel and flopped into their favourite chairs. The bar area could not have been made to look any less Egyptian if someone had tried to do so. Very dark mock Tudor half panelling sat below plain white, though slightly yellowing, walls. The wonderful black and white pictures of Harry Burton, taken when Howard Carter had discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, would have been perfect hanging on these walls, but instead, awful English hunting scenes surrounded them.
Alex, Cairo and Emmy had arrived at the hotel late the night before. They had left Amarna in a hurry after coming across the bloodied and dismembered dead body of the bandit who had attacked Emmy, the man who Alex and Cairo had pulled from the Nile. They had been, and remained, furious with Ropet and Sanuba. Leaving everything where it was the three of them had piled into the sand buggy and had immediately headed for Luxor. It was well after dark by the time they had arrived. Alex had driven the buggy to the rear of the hotel gardens and parked inside the large solid metal gates of the staff entrance. They had wished for as few people
as possible to know they were in Luxor so they had entered the hotel via the hotel garden and through the kitchen.
Their reunion with Three, Cairo’s father, and the rest of the staff had kept them up until the early hours. They had asked everyone not to tell anybody that they were back in Luxor, especially any ancient. They had all known that someone was bound to say something, as with that many people knowing they were back there was no way it was going to be kept a secret for long, but Alex had no intention for them to be in Luxor for long. At that time he had not known what his next move was going to be, but whatever was going on, it most certainly was not being carried out in the Hotel, or by any member of staff, as they were all ‘family’.
“Well, Alex, you have broken the rules again.” Alex looked at Emmy, though he said nothing. “Rose told us we should not be here.”
“Why should we not be here?” he asked with slight annoyance in his voice.
“Oh, Alex, I am not looking for a problem, any problem with you, I just think we should have listened to Rose.”
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