He remained standing.
“You are not Yasmine,” he said, his tone sharp.
“No. But tonight we're going to pretend that I am,” she said casually, taking a cigarette from a silver case and lighting it with a gold lighter, both of which she replaced on the table before inhaling deeply.
“Yasmine is my younger sister. She won’t be speaking to you, so you speak to me instead. And it's with me that you will conduct your business.”
“And I know you’re telling the truth because?”
“We don’t have time for this game. Yasmine called you tonight, didn’t she?”
Franklin walked over and put the envelope containing the notes on the table. The woman took the envelope, counted the money and, satisfied there was enough, put it in a handbag next to her.
She gestured for Franklin to sit down in the chair opposite and offered him a cigarette from the case.
“No thanks.”
“Alright. So, what do you want to know?” she asked, studying him with a cool and calculating look.
“What can you tell me?” Franklin replied, smiling in reply.
“I can tell you that Nasser had nothing to do with the murder.”
“Or, I suppose, with the theft of artifacts from the museum?” Franklin retorted, with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“Oh, no,” the woman replied. “Of that, he was entirely guilty. But not of the rest.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because it was me who organized the burglary of the museum.”
She had not blinked. Franklin held her gaze but was the first to look away, his eye caught by a glint of light reflected off the gold chain.
“Was Tutankhamen's funerary mask part of it?”
It was not the question he had meant to ask, and he flinched at the note of desperation he heard in his own voice. But if a final blow were to be struck against the one remaining true purpose in his life, at least it would be at the hands of this attractive and beautiful woman.
“Yes.”
Her answer was so soft that Franklin was not sure he had heard her correctly. “Are you telling me that the mask was stolen from the Egyptian Museum on January twenty-ninth?”
“Yes.”
Stunned, Franklin found himself trying to fight back visions of returning home, triumphantly clearing his name and shouting out loud to all those who would listen I was right! But he had just spent days trapped in his own despair, convinced that he had lost everything – so he would not allow himself to be taken in by yet another false hope.
“Okay, I’m listening.”
“It was an American client of mine,” she said. “A good customer. He had expressed an interest in these antiquities for a long time. I heard that Nasser was in trouble and needed money. Let’s say that the stars aligned. I put them in touch with each other, supplied contacts to certain professionals with experience, and they did what they had to do. From that point onwards, my involvement was just as a spectator. It was all Nasser’s show. There were riots everywhere in Cairo at that time, so it was all rather easy. Nasser made sure that the security would not be a problem. They scattered some of the mummies and minor artifacts to pretend it was the work of amateur looters. It made Nasser sick, destroying the pieces, but he had no choice. He had planned everything, even hiding some of the artifacts and then having them miraculously reappear in the stores to confuse the inventory. In the end, the museum couldn’t know for sure what had been taken. Of course, the police claimed to the international press that they had caught some of those responsible and retrieved some of the stolen goods. But neither the police nor the museum ever officially announced the list of missing objects.”
She took one last drag of her cigarette, and as she leaned over to extinguish it in a crystal ashtray, Franklin glimpsed her cleavage and the shadow of a red lace bra.
“Everything was going perfectly,” she continued. “In nine days, Nasser had sold over twenty items. Everything arrived in the States without a hitch, a smooth operation. They each got their cut, including Nasser, who by that stage was showing almost no remorse at all. They sold the mask too. But then, two days before they were due to ship it, everything went south.”
The woman took another cigarette from the case, and this time Franklin reached for the lighter and offered her the flame, which she accepted with a demure nod.
“The client first asked for a delay of a few days. He was afraid the FBI might have been tipped off, and the network infiltrated. So we waited.”
She shifted position on the chair and stretched out her legs. Franklin was no longer aware of the curve of her hips in the tight-fitting black pants, or the outline of her underwear beneath the white silk blouse. He saw only the gold chain on her ankle, and the shape of her perfect, naked foot. His whole being now seemed chained to this woman and the story she was telling.
“Then something happened that we did not expect,” she said, inhaling deeply on her cigarette. “Al-Shamy reopened the museum, with the mask of Tutankhamen. Fake of course. That was also when they gave the official list to Interpol. Obviously, the mask was not on it, since it was thought to be in the museum. Nasser and the team couldn’t believe their good fortune, because then nobody was going to be looking for the real mask. And all the pieces on the Interpol list, except seven, were already in the States with our clients. So all in all, a lucky break. Except it didn’t turn out that way.”
She tapped her cigarette on the crystal ashtray. “The client started asking questions. He began to wonder if perhaps we were trying to sell him a fake.”
Franklin swallowed hard. In the silence of the carpeted lounge, he hoped the woman hadn’t heard. But she was too engrossed in her own recollections to notice anything.
“Nasser proposed to travel with the mask, to authenticate it, a highly risky thing to do,” she continued. “But no guarantee seemed to be enough for the client, and eventually, he just disappeared. Nasser was left holding the seven remaining antiquities listed by Interpol and the funerary mask of Tutankhamen, all virtually unsellable.”
“And looking at a substantial financial loss,” Franklin pointed out.
“Fifty million dollars, to be exact,” the woman said bitterly. “Tutankhamen's mask had been the reason behind the whole operation. What they had sold amounted to less than a million. And once everyone had taken their share, and the expenses had been covered, well, Nasser was left with...” She did not finish her sentence.
Just as Franklin was about to ask a question, she added quickly, “They were desperate. I gave them some contacts to try to dispose of the last items. They didn’t work out. So they went to the contacts of my contacts, and in the end, to almost anyone. Every time they were exposing themselves a little more, and so the rumor began to swell. One day they ran into an undercover FBI agent who was posing as an interested client. It was a miracle they didn’t get caught. Then things became even worse. Al-Shamy asked his old pal Hassan to take charge of the case. Soon he had put all the police resources to work; it became a kind of personal vendetta. Nasser overheard Hassan promise Al-Shamy that when he’d catch the culprits, he would torture them until they begged to die. Nasser was terrified. So terrified that he even stopped taking rich tourists to visit the pyramid at night. Whatever problems he may have had, he realized that they were not as great as the problems he would have if he didn’t stay put. That lasted for thirteen months. That’s a long time to be terrified.”
She paused, suddenly looking full of regrets. “Nasser had agreed to keep the seven remaining antiques, but Tutankhamen's mask was hidden under somebody’s washbasin. I think it was at the home of someone’s grandmother.”
Noticing the look of incredulity on Franklin’s face, she added quickly, “Of course, Nasser had first disguised it. But anyway, the point is that one day, a dealer called him, asking for the mask. It all seemed too good to be true. But he met the dealer in Cairo, they made the exchange, and the dealer disappeared, never to be heard from
again.”
“How much?” Franklin asked.
“Five million. They would have accepted much less, they were so desperate. But at last, Nasser could carry on living, his problems were solved. Then Hassan landed himself in jail for killing a bunch of kids, and it was as if the whole thing had been forgotten. For two weeks, it was heaven.”
She took a deep breath, fiddled with a cigarette in her case. Franklin wondered if she had forgotten he was there.
“But on the evening of June first, the guards claimed they saw him at the pyramid,” he said.
She lit another cigarette, and inhaled impatiently. “The guards saw him because their memories were enhanced with several month’s additional pay. On June first, Nasser was not at the pyramid, but at home for the birthday party of Ibrahim, his youngest. If you had known Nasser, you would know that he wouldn’t have missed that for anything in the world.”
Franklin must have looked unconvinced, because she added, “I was there. I left my sister's house around one in the morning and Nasser had already gone to bed. She told me how things had calmed down again and how it was almost as if none of it had ever happened. I can assure you that Nasser did not go out once that week. He was with his family every evening and in my sister's bed every night. They were making plans, for the first time in months, for a future that they had thought impossible until then.”
The woman curled up in the chair, tucking her feet under herself and wrapping her arms around each other. She didn’t notice as a tiny amount of ash fell on the carpet.
“Until one night. My sister called me at around three in the morning, saying that something had happened to Nasser. I thought that meant someone had beaten him up but, physically, he was fine, not a scratch.”
“June fourteenth?” Franklin asked.
“Yes, that's right. I’ll never forget it. She begged him to tell her what had happened, but he was not making sense. He was hysterical. Nobody had ever seen him like that.”
She suddenly looked at Franklin. “How did you know it was June fourteenth?”
“We found witnesses who saw him at the pyramid around midnight, with Al-Shamy,” Franklin said.
“Nasser had warned my sister he’d be working late in the office, but he’d be back later that night. When he did come back, he was not the same man. And seven days later, he was dead.”
Franklin let the silence settle over them, not wanting to rush into the question he knew he had to ask.
“Oxan Aslanian, does that name mean anything to you? An Armenian.”
She shook her head, looking genuinely at a loss. “Who is he?”
“A forger.”
“Ah,” she said smiling wryly, “not my domain.”
“It was the last thing Nasser said before he died, at the police station.”
The woman’s smile vanished. She curled up even more. Franklin felt an instinctive impulse to get close to her, to comfort her. But he refrained.
“Has Nasser ever talked about a secret chamber?” Franklin asked. “During his private tours, for example.”
“No. He always did the usual: the Queen's Chamber, the Great Gallery, the King's Chamber. He didn’t even go into the chambers beneath. And anyway, he had not taken anyone for over a year. There was nobody to take, the tourists had all fled Egypt.”
She stood and walked over to a polished mahogany cabinet standing beneath a large mirror. She glanced at Franklin’s reflection in the gilded frame and poured them each a drink.
“I'll tell you something, Mr. Hunter. If Nasser had known about this Room X, he would have told my sister. Nasser was passionate about his work and did it well. He liked to talk about it. He and Yasmine were constantly discussing history and archeology. Even before their children, their life together had been built on this one common passion. And yet–”
“And yet, he stole from the museum, smuggled treasures out of Egypt and agreed to desecrate priceless and irreplaceable artifacts to hide his tracks?”
Franklin had not meant to be unkind. He felt as much as saw the hard, piercing look she gave him as she offered him a crystal snifter filled with cognac.
“Go ahead, Mr. Hunter. Judge them,” she said coolly, returning to the sofa. “Once the information is on CNN, three hundred million other Americans will judge them, just like you. And then they will move on. Because they have their own problems.”
She paused and then leaned forward. “But somehow, their problems are always someone else’s fault. If the American Dream gets derailed for a moment, it’s because of something that somebody else did. But if we suffer here in Egypt, it's because it’s symptomatic or endemic or somehow deserved. We, in the poor countries, are always to blame for our own demise.”
She inhaled the scent of the amber-colored liquor and took a sip. She licked her lips before draining the rest of her glass. As she went to refill it, she lightly brushed Franklin’s shoulder with her thigh.
“Nasser studied history because it had been his passion ever since he was a child. He did not come from a rich family and had to work to pay for his studies. He married my sister, who was a teacher, and together they had three beautiful children. They were not well paid, but they did not care because life smiled on them. And then, overnight, everything collapsed. In this country, it seems everything happened either before the revolution or after the revolution. This particular moment happened at the same time. It’s funny how life can change like that. One second, we didn’t even know how happy we were. And then, in a few instants, paradise is lost, and innocence too.”
She gave him another piercing gaze. To break the spell, Franklin took a sip of the cognac, savoring the slight burn as the alcohol passed down his throat. It gave him strength; because the words of the woman had cut right to his soul.
She stood again, walked behind the sofa. She steadied herself by gripping the seat with one hand, her red nails biting into the velvet fabric. “Two years ago, their youngest child, Ibrahim, went to the doctor with the flu. They found an aggressive type of leukemia and gave him three months to live. He was five years old. The only effective treatment cost three times their combined yearly income. So Nasser had to choose: remain the honest custodian of dusty old relics and watch his son die. Or become a thief and give him a chance. What would you have done, Mr. Hunter?”
She made as if to take another sip and then stopped, her jaw clenched.
“June fourteenth, on the night of the murder, Ibrahim blew out seven candles. And you think Nasser would miss that?”
She stared into the remaining contents of her glass, watching as the liquid spread itself across the crystal surface. “I recognize them.”
“Who?” said Franklin, his throat tight.
She gazed at him intently. “The people who’ve seen the course of their lives shattered in a single breath.” Her words were thick with alcohol, her voice hoarse from cigarette smoke. “There is an invisible fault running along their soul. They tread a wire stretched across the moment before and the moment after. It’s not the looking down that makes them lose their balance, it’s the looking back. And so many fall.”
Was she talking about herself? Or about him?
He stood and slowly approached her, suddenly feeling as if they were alone, not just in the apartment, but in the whole world.
“Nasser did not want to fall,” she whispered, still not looking up from her glass. “He fought to find his way to the other side, and in the end, it was not enough. But I'm sure that from wherever he is, he's watching his son sleep. And he has no regrets. None.”
Franklin felt control slip away from him, his body making way for a sweet, poisonous fever. He stepped closer to her, leaning forward. Their bodies were only inches apart.
“What's your name?” he asked, his voice slightly unsteady.
“Zahara,” she murmured.
“Zahara, how many antiques did Nasser sell?”
He could smell the rusty sweetness of her breath and the cinnamon and agar-wood in her perfume. “T
wenty-six,” she replied, swallowing hard as her breath came in small gasps.
“How many were found in the storerooms of the museum?”
He placed a hand on her cheek and felt her press against his palm.
“Twelve.”
“And sixteen found at Nasser’s house,” he whispered in her ear, and he could feel her body shuddering under his touch.
“By the time Al-Shamy found his museum looted, he would have identified fifty-four missing pieces. Tutankhamen’s mask was the fifty-fifth.”
“Fifty-five, yes,” Zahara almost groaned as she drew herself up, her lips searching for his mouth.
But Franklin smiled and retreated a few steps, leaving Zahara stunned.
“I’ll call you, Zahara.”
Seconds later, he was going down the stairs, taking several steps in a single leap. Before long, he was running through the empty street. The words hastily scribbled on the slip of paper that he had taken from Al-Shamy the day of the press conference, beat hard in his temples.
BBC TV found 2 bodies in room A-55. Woman alive. Police requesting permission to drill. URGENT.
A-55 was not the name of the room. It was the code number that Nasser and Al-Shamy had given to the missing mask.
They knew it would be found even before Room X had been opened.
Nasser Moswen had gone mad seven days earlier. Right after he had seen the mask, and the horrors that surrounded it.
39
“Hi, this is Flo's voicemail, thank you for leaving the good news after the beep and the bad news after you hang up. Beeeeeep.”
“Hi Flo, it's Max. I’ve just arrived in Cairo, so that’s good news. I also saw Franklin Hunter: apparently, he got it wrong. He doesn’t think that his theory on the mask checks out after all, so I’m not sure if that’s good or bad news. Sorry also for yesterday. I was a little distracted and forgot to ask you how your big meeting went. I hope it all went well. Maybe you can tell me all about it when I get back? Okay, so that’s all from Cairo. Got to run, or at least, well, hobble. Bye.”
Max hung up as the taxi pulled up to the curb. It was almost midnight. After untangling his crutch from the seatbelt, he told the driver to take him to the pyramids.
The Pyramid Prophecy Page 20