“Near Masgun, the road runs near the river,” Barnaby said. “Slow now.”
They passed a camel sitting by the roadside.
Barnaby was looking out at the river. It was a dark night. “Slower.”
Suddenly, up ahead, they saw the boat moored at the shore.
“There.”
Conway pulled off the road onto the sand. Nikos was sitting in the boat.
“About time.”
“We came as soon as we could,” Pierce said.
“Who pinched the taxi?”
“I cannot tell a lie,” Conway said.
“Nice job.” He stood up. “A taxi. That was very clever.”
“Let’s unload the stuff,” Barnaby said, glancing around nervously.
Half an hour later, the boxes were stacked in the trunk and back seat. Conway had removed his galaba; Nikos would drive, in case the police stopped them. He spoke Arabic.
“What do we do with the boat?” Barnaby asked.
“We leave it,” Nikos said. “What else?” He put the car in gear, and they turned west toward the desert.
14. Storage
OUTSIDE DASHUR, THE TAXI headed north into the vast necropolis of Saqqara, the largest burial ground of ancient Egypt, an area five miles long and a quarter mile wide, running along the river. Here, in the desert, there were literally hundreds of pyramids and mastabas, the underground tombs of court officials.
Barnaby sat in the front seat, a large map on his knees. He shined a flashlight onto it and directed Nikos.
“That’s the pyramid of Shepseskaf up ahead,” he said. “Bear left around it.”
They were no longer on a road. The Fiat ground through hard sand.
“Now right, toward the pyramid over there. That’s Pepi II.”
Pierce sat in the back seat, holding one of the boxes.
“Is this place guarded at night?”
“Yes,” Barnaby said. “What time is it?”
“Nearly midnight.”
“There’s an armed patrol at midnight. They go around in a Land Rover,” Barnaby said. “Better turn out your lights.”
“I’ll have to go slow.”
“Use your parking lights,” Pierce said.
The Fiat slowed.
“Almost there,” Barnaby said. “Another few hundred yards.” Shortly after, he said, “Pull behind that sand dune up there. We can stop now.”
The engine was silent. They heard the wind.
Barnaby got out of the car and looked around. “It’s over there,” he said, pointing west.
“I don’t see anything,” Conway said, squinting.
“There isn’t a lot to see. An old Coptic monastery was built here, on the desert edge of Saqqara, in the fifth century A.D. It’s collapsed now.”
“So?”
“The underground storerooms are still intact.”
They collected the boxes and trudged forward across the desert. Until he was quite close, Pierce saw no evidence of ruins. Then, he distinguished the remains of a foundation, a bit of wall. It had originally been built of mud brick.
“Nobody comes here anymore,” Barnaby said. “There are better monasteries around, and this one was very small and unimportant. Follow me.”
He led the way through the rooms to a small passage, where sandy steps led down into the earth. He shined his flashlight down.
“We’d better go one at a time,” he said. “The place could collapse at any time,”
“I’ll go,” Conway said. “I’m fearless. It’s well known,”
“When you get down there, you’ll find a large room. Put the boxes near the stairs and cover them with sand.”
“Okay.”
“And watch out for snakes,”
“I’ll charm them,” Conway said. He took the flashlight and went down.
“Homey,” he said. Then silence. A few minutes later he came back up, took Pierce’s box, and carried it down. Pierce returned to the taxi to get the final box.
He opened the trunk and groped in the dark for the carton.
Then he saw the lights.
On the horizon, to the east. Bouncing, occasionally lifting to send twin beams stabbing into the night. He heard, faintly, the sound of an engine.
The police.
15. A Meeting of Minds
QUICKLY, HE REMOVED THE box and hurried back to the others.
“What’s the matter?”
“Cops.” He gave the box to Conway, “Get this thing down there, and hurry. We’ve got to get out of here,”
Nikos looked over at the lights. “They’re coming this way.”
Conway clambered down with the box. The others watched the lights.
“They’ll see the taxi,” Barnaby said. “What do we do then?”
“We can take care of them,” Nikos said, clenching his fists, “There are probably only two or three.”
“No,” Pierce said. “If there’s trouble here, the police will be back in the morning and search the area thoroughly. We have to get out of here without detection.”
“But they’ll see the taxi,” Barnaby whined.
Conway came back up. “I hear the man despairing,” he said. “But have no fear.” He turned to Nikos. “You speak Egyptian, right? And I speak French. Here’s what we do.”
He whispered to Nikos, who nodded.
“It might work.”
The lights came closer.
“What’s going on?” Barnaby said.
“You two hide,” Conway said. “We’ll take care of everything.”
Pierce and Barnaby ducked behind a dune several yards away. Nikos sauntered back to the taxi, took out the ashtray, and dumped the butts on the sand. Then, he lit a cigarette and leaned against the door. Conway ran off into the desert, away from the monastery, and disappeared in a ravine.
“What are they doing?” Barnaby whispered.
Pierce shook his head.
The car came closer. The lights were very bright now, and he could see the outline of the Land Rover. The headlamps fell on the taxi. The Rover ground to a halt.
A spotlight was turned on and swept the area. It came back to Nikos, leaning against the taxi.
From the Land Rover, a voice spoke rapidly in Egyptian.
Calmly, Nikos raised a finger to his lips and shook his head in warning.
Nikos had watched the lights approach and waited until the spotlight fixed on him. He was terrified, but he knew he must remain calm. He must excite their interest, and hold it so that they would not ask for his ID card. If they did, he was as good as jailed.
From the Rover, a voice called: “What are you doing here?”
He pressed his finger to his lips and waved them silent. He walked over to the car, shaking his head vigorously.
A man leaned out and said gruffly, “You know you can be shot, stupid one.”
“It would bring scandal to our country,” Nikos said solemnly.
There was a hesitation. He felt his heart leap—perhaps he had done it. In the dark, he tried to compose his face, showing smugness, a secret.
“What do you mean?”
“I beg you to keep your voice down,” Nikos whispered. “It is vital. And turn out your lights.”
“Explain yourself,” the voice snapped. But it was quieter. Nikos peered into the Rover. Two others, both armed with rifles.
“Foreigners,” Nikos said. “You would not believe it.” He spat on the ground.
Then he leaned close, confidential.
“You will not tell?”
“I will decide that.”
The lights on the Land Rover went out. Victory was almost sure, he thought.
“It is,” Nikos said, “the French ambassador. His excellency and his excellency’s mistress.”
“Here?”
Nikos nodded. “They have been here for two hours.” He sighed. “They make such sounds!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Twice each week, I drive the French ambassador and hi
s mistress to this place. They stay most of the evening. She is very passionate.”
“This is true?”
The voice was definitely interested now.
“Yes,” Nikos said. “They are just beyond the hill. I have been listening.”
“Despicable pig! If you are lying, it will go badly for you.”
“You would like to hear?”
“No,” the man whispered stiffly. “But it is my duty to verify such an unusual story. Show me the way.”
He climbed out of the jeep, carrying the rifle.
Nikos led the way. “We must not go too close.”
“Why do you suppose they do it out here?”
“Foreigners,” Nikos said, as if that explained everything.
Conway stood in the ravine, sighing and groaning. “Ma chère…mon petit chou…oh, c’est formidable! …incroyable…ma chère, ma chère…ooooh…c’est ca…”
He kicked the sand with his feet, lay down, and rolled in it. He giggled and kicked and giggled again.
“Encore…”
“I do not understand what they are saying,” the policeman whispered. He seemed disappointed.
“French.”
“Yes. Do you understand it?”
“No,” Nikos admitted.
The policeman listened to the groans. “Is she beautiful?”
“Ravishing. Such breasts.”
The policeman edged closer.
“No, no,” Nikos said. “It would do no good. There is only a quarter moon. But on other nights…”
The man licked his lips. “You come twice a week?”
“Yes.”
“Always to this spot?”
“No. Usually to a pyramid. They like to be near a pyramid.”
“Desecration of the proud monuments of our country,” the policeman said, starting back toward the Land Rover. “He must pay you well.”
Nikos shrugged.
“What he does is against the law, of course. He is immune, because he is a diplomat. But you—”
“Perhaps we can make an arrangement,” Nikos said quickly.
“Perhaps. How much dues he pay?”
“Five hundred piasters.”
“You are robbed!”
Nikos shrugged: “I am a poor man.”
“You will require police cooperation. This will cost you 300 piasters.”
“Impossible,” Nikos said, “I must buy gasoline. The prices are high.”
“Then charge him more,” the policeman laughed “Three hundred piasters is our fee.”
“I can afford only two hundred.”
“Let us agree un two hundred eighty.”
Eventually, they settled on two hundred fifty. Nikos paid him, and the policeman climbed hack into the Land Rover. A few moments later, it rumbled off across the desert.
Going back in the taxi, Conway chortled gleefully. “Am I,” he said, “or am I not the world’s greatest lover?”
“You are,” Pierce said.
“I’m worth two of any other kind,” Conway said. “A regular one-man band.”
Nikos flicked a cigarette out the window. “You love yourself. There is nothing unusual in that.”
“Oh, but I do it so well. Such finesse, such heights of passion, such technique…”
They reached Cairo at two in the morning.
In Grover’s room, Pierce and Barnaby finished typing the ransom note and pronounced themselves satisfied. Pierce gave it to Grover, who would remain behind in Cairo while the others returned to Luxor.
“There it is,” Pierce said.
Grover read it through quickly. “Day after tomorrow?”
“Yes. Wait until then. It’ll give us a chance to get back to the site.”
“All right. Day after tomorrow,” Grover folded the letter and placed it alongside the pictures and the gold mirror. He sipped a Scotch and looked over the glass at Pierce.
“This is your last chance,” he said, grinning. “Sure you don’t want to pull out?”
“I’m sure,” Pierce said.
“Well then, good luck to us all,” Grover gulped back his Scotch.
Four hours later, tired and unshaven, Pierce caught the plane back to Luxor.
16. A Moral Dilemma
LORD GROVER WAS PRACTICALLY beside himself. He spent the afternoon roaming through the Khan el-Khalili, the bazaar, questioning the Persians and Turks who owned it, hunting for hashish. For more than two hours, he had no success—but he heard stories of fines and imprisonment until he thought he would be ill. He did not care about the fines; he just wanted a little pot and a quiet place to smoke it.
Finally, he found a man whose brother or uncle or father ran a perfume shop. This man had access to pot. Grover bought five cigarettes and several bottles of perfume for good measure. The salesman favored Desert Flower. He thought Lisa would like it.
After that, he returned to his hotel and ordered three bottles of champagne, which he drank in solitude as he smoked the cigarettes.
This made him feel much better.
Lord Grover did not think of himself as an immoral man. He had personal idiosyncrasies, true, but nothing really reprehensible. Now he was faced with this robbery business. Clearly immoral, but what could he do? He had his friends to think of. Their hopes. Their dreams.
For a time, he considered paying them from his own resources, pretending that he had gotten the money from the Egyptians. But he brought himself up rather sternly—there were limits to friendship, after all, and fifty million was a lot of money. Besides, if the Cairo government were passively told about the tomb, they might get clever and decide to catch the thieves. That would never do.
Fright. Fright was the key. He had to scare Cairo and scare Barnaby’s people.
He sweated champagne and tried to think of something.
He was not successful. Later, one of the girls showed up and diverted him; he was able to forget his troubles for an hour or so.
And afterward, when he was taking a shower and drinking the champagne that the girl so kindly held for him, the solution came to him in a flash.
All along, they had been making a mistake. They had been thinking that the Egyptians were fools and they were geniuses. Neither was true.
Faith in humanity was called for. Faith in human ingenuity and human foibles. Lord Grover believed firmly in the fallibility of the human spirit.
He had to.
Because he was sending the letter and the mirror the next morning, and the letter would demand fifty million dollars.
“We could all be roasted alive,” he said aloud, chuckling.
The girl misunderstood him. She reached in and turned down the hot water. He yelped as the cold spray hit him and got quickly out.
He would send the letter in the morning.
The more he thought about it, the better it seemed.
He was so pleased, he ordered another bottle of champagne and sent for his other girl.
The letter was mailed at nine; Grover spent the rest of the morning in his room, reading a mystery novel and privately rooting for the villains.
At noon, there was a knock at his door, and a man opened it without waiting. He was a uniformed guard with a gun on his hip. He saluted curtly.
“Lord Grover?”
“Yes?”
“Your presence is requested by Mr. Ali Varese of the Antiquities Service.”
“Now? But I haven’t breakfasted yet.”
“Your presence is requested immediately,” the guard said. He touched the butt of his gun, not a threat—just the faintest suggestion. “Immediately.”
“Well then, if that’s how it is…”
“Yes,” the guard said.
17. The Face of Pharaoh
PIERCE AWOKE EARLY THAT morning, tense with expectation. To his surprise, everyone else was up. At nine, Pierce went over to Nikos, who was throwing his knife at a cardboard box he had set on the ground, retrieving it, stepping back, and throwing it again.
“Well, the
letter’s sent.”
Nikos just grunted.
Barnaby and Conway sat around the dying fire and told each other stories. Lisa remained in her tent and refused to talk to him when he poked his head in.
He wandered around the camp until ten. Then, bored and restless, he decided to go to the tomb.
He drove the Land Rover out of camp, feeling the sun on his neck. He steered across the desert, past the mud villages, to the foot of the cliff.
Looking up, he saw the cleft.
He had never been there during the day.
He started to climb, and immediately felt a new ease, a sense of relaxation. He remembered how difficult it had been to climb at night; how his eyes ached from the strain; how he cut his fingers and scraped his knees. It was all so much easier in daylight. So much simpler and open.
He reached the top of the cliff and walked to the cleft. He saw the cigarette butts, remnants of the long nights they had worked here. Now they seemed almost artifacts themselves, signs of long-dead activity. He lowered a rope and climbed down into the cleft.
In the daylight the mystery was gone from the descent. The sense of darkness, of swinging in space, had disappeared. It was all a mechanical, straightforward process. He reached the level of the steps and entered the tomb.
Then, he realized he had forgotten a flashlight.
He hesitated and checked to see if he had matches. He did. He struck one and in the flickering light moved down the passageway to the first chamber.
The match went out. He was surrounded by black. He lit another match and looked around the room. The candles on the floor. He remembered how difficult it had been to break down that first door.
He struck another match and passed on to the sunken chamber. He stared at the hieroglyphics that covered the walls. They meant nothing to him, yet Barnaby could read them. Barnaby was a lucky man.
The flame fluttered and died. He lit still another and continued down to the antechamber where the two huge statues guarded the entrance. He looked at the treasures piled in this room, the personal objects destined for the pharaoh’s afterlife.
He had never used them. Or perhaps, now for the first time, he was using them. He was coming to life again, in the eyes of men thousands of years later. It was possible that he would soon be more famous than he had ever been during his reign.