Laughter of Dead Kings vbm-6

by Elizabeth Peters

  I didn’t get my chance until we were almost finished eating and Schmidt announced he was going to the bathroom.

  “Me too,” I said, and followed him.

  The room in question—one room—was around the side and toward the back. Schmidt paused, politely inviting me to precede him.

  “Schmidt,” I said softly, “I am depending on you as I have never depended before, and that’s saying a lot. Will you promise to do exactly what I tell you, no arguments, no questions?”

  Schmidt said, “Yes.”

  I wanted to hug him. So I did. When I had finished explaining my plan, such as it was, he said only, “How will you get away from Feisal and Saida?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “I will make a distraction.”

  “God bless you, Schmidt.”

  “Now you promise that you will do exactly as you said. If I do not hear from you by five, I will come in after you.”

  “Fair enough. It could be a wild-goose chase, Schmidt.”

  Schmidt nodded. “For your sake, I hope it is. Be careful.” With great dignity he entered the loo and closed the door.

  THIRTEEN

  S chmidt scampered out onto the road right in front of a camel.

  The camel howled, or whatever they do—it’s a horrible sound—its rider screamed, and Schmidt, writhing on the ground, added a few howls of his own. I stood frozen for a second or two; then a fat, white-clad arm waved imperiously, and I realized that this was Schmidt’s idea of a distraction and that he had fallen, not been knocked down.

  When I emerged from the loo, swathed in black, Schmidt was still carrying on at the top of his lungs. I could hear him but I couldn’t see him because his prostrate form was surrounded by a crowd—Feisal, Saida, the camel driver, the camel, the cook, the waiter, and a motley collection of passersby. One, I was happy to see, was a woman, unveiled but robed in black, carrying a baby. I sidled up to her and stood watching with the other spectators. Nobody was leaving the scene, it was just too darned interesting.

  Finally Schmidt allowed himself to be raised to his feet and led back into the restaurant. He was doing his best to cover my retreat, insisting that it was his fault, that the hysterical camel rider was not to blame, that he wanted water, beer, and the arm of Saida to support him. My newfound friend shifted the baby to her other arm and spoke to me. I shrugged apologetically and pointed at the spot where my ear lurked under the head covering. She smiled and offered me the baby.

  I took it as it was meant, as a gesture of goodwill and sympathy. I also took the baby. The baby did not approve. As Mama and I started off down the road, side by side, it began to cry. The veil covering my face might have put it off, or maybe it was just me. I don’t have much experience with babies. It was too good a disguise to give up, though. Feisal and Saida had realized I was missing. They had hurried out of the restaurant and were making little dashes along the road, first in one direction, then in another, shouting questions at everyone in sight. The two ladies in black, one of them toting a screaming infant, didn’t register on their radar.

  I parted company with the baby, to the relief of baby and Mama, as soon as we were out of sight of the restaurant. Hiccuping sobs succeeded the screams when Mama took it. I thanked her for the treat by ducking my head, and then struck off to the right.

  I was still some distance from my destination, but I was in no hurry. Trudging along the path, I went over my program. It was simple: Get into the house unobserved, find a place to hide, stay there until something happened…or it didn’t.

  I have a lot of faith in hunches, which are often based on evidence observed but unprocessed by the conscious mind. In this case, the processed evidence was thin. A house that fit all the specifications we had come up with, a house purportedly unoccupied, but which had been entered within the last few days, a house where I had thought I might have heard a suspicious noise, a house whose custodian hadn’t been carrying out his duties. A house shunned by the locals because it was haunted by a demon cat. I could be way off base on all those counts. The only way of finding out for sure was to do what I was doing now.

  Dust sifted into my shoes and whitened the hem of my robe as I plodded along. What did I have to lose, after all? If my hunch was wrong, a few hours of my time. If I was right…A few years of my life?

  Don’t be such a pessimist, Vicky, I told myself. If you’re right you stand to gain a lot.

  I began to understand why some Muslim women regarded the veil as protection rather than a sign of subjugation. The people I met along the way paid no attention to me. The men didn’t even look in my direction. The closer I got to the house, the fewer people I encountered. That was either a good sign or a bad one—good because it showed the locals did avoid the place, bad because anyone approaching was conspicuous. I slowed to a slower shuffle.

  The first item on my program was the hardest—getting inside without being observed. I didn’t see any signs of life, but it wouldn’t have been sensible to march up to the front door and knock.

  Someone had gone to considerable lengths to establish and maintain a garden. There must be water somewhere, an irrigation ditch or pool, although most of the plants might be varieties that can survive in hot, dry conditions. I’m no gardener; the only ones I recognized were cacti and palms, and stands of the dusty green tamarisk that is common in the area. I hadn’t cased the place in detail on our first visit, having no reason to do so, but I remembered a view of some kind of green stuff outside the window of the director’s study. I wandered off to the right, following a narrow track that appeared to go in the direction I wanted—around the house, toward the side. The grounds were more extensive than I had realized. Wings stretched out at odd angles, and I could see other buildings and sections of wall through the trees. More to the point, a grove of low, shrubby trees, vine-entangled, ran along the side of the house, from the veranda toward the back.

  It was mid-afternoon, when people in hot climates stay indoors, napping or resting. I couldn’t be seen from the house, thanks to those convenient trees; a quick look around assured me that there wasn’t another soul in sight. It wasn’t going to get any better than this. I divested myself of my black shroud; it left me feeling naked and exposed, but the folds of fabric encumbered easy movement and no disguise was going to do me any good if I was found inside. And now I could get at the objects I had stowed away in my pockets. I had abandoned the backpack, with the pious hope that an honest soul would turn it in to the proprietor of the restaurant, or that Saida would retrieve it. I took out my wristwatch. Quarter to three. It had taken me too damn long to get here. Siesta time would end soon.

  I moved carefully, pushing branches aside instead of plowing through. The trees, whatever they were, prickled. The vine was a pretty thing, covered with sprays of little pink flowers. It had climbed and intertwined, reaching for light, and it provided a screen so thick I didn’t see the window until I was almost upon it.

  The window was open.

  Seeing the first actual confirmation of my wild theory shocked me into a brief mental blackout. I guess I had never really expected to get this far. It took several seconds for me to get my wits, or what passes for them, back.

  The couch is under the window, I reminded myself. The sill is about four feet above the ground. Now, before you rush in where angels fear to tread, make sure nobody is there. That’s not too hard. Look and listen and take it slow.

  The room was shadowy and still, except for a buzzing, which, after a heart-stopping second, I identified as a gathering of flies. The doors, one to the library and one into the central hall, were closed. The couch was unoccupied. One of the high-backed chairs had been pushed away from the table. Otherwise the room looked pretty much as it had before.

  John would have been over the sill in a single movement. John. I didn’t let myself think about him. It took me three movements: one foot in a crack, a knee on the sill, the other knee onto the couch.

  The sound wasn�
��t loud, just a faint squeak of rusty springs. It was echoed by another sound, a cross between a snore and a snort.

  I was under the couch before the snort stopped. There’s nothing like sheer terror to inspire agility. Someone was sitting in that big chair. I hadn’t seen him—or her?—because of the high back. Luckily for me, the occupant had been napping.

  The couch was long enough to conceal me, but there wasn’t a lot of room underneath, thanks to those sagging springs. One of them poked into my derriere and another into my left shoulder. I didn’t dare wriggle around to find a more comfortable position. The snoring had resumed—not in a steady rhythm, but the intermittent noises of a sleeper who has been disturbed and has not sunk back into deep slumber.

  I lay there for what seemed like hours. Nobody had dusted under the couch in recent memory; I kept swallowing sneezes. My nose itched. Splinters dug into my cheek. By turning my head sideways, a millimeter at a time, I found I could see out from under the spread. The view was limited; however, it included the suspect chair and one of the doors, the one leading to the central hall. Something new had been added, after all; a pile of buff storage boxes next to the library door.

  None of them was long enough to hold Tutankhamon.

  The sleeper’s breathing had evened out and so—finally—had mine. Now for the next maneuver.

  My left arm was straight at my side, my right slightly bent at the elbow. My mobile was in the right-hand pocket of my pants. I could only move horizontally unless I wanted to risk another screech from the rusty springs. If I hadn’t let that snore panic me I would have got the cursed phone out before I squashed myself under the couch. With the same slow deliberation, flinching at every rustle of fabric, I got my hand down and in the pocket. I was breathing fast, from sheer nerves, when my fingers closed over the cell, and I was sorely tempted to proceed by feel alone. I knew I couldn’t risk it, though. This call had to be dead right, and fast. By the time I got my hand up to my face I was sweating bullets, and not from the heat, though it was pretty warm under there.

  Discomfort was succeeded by numbness and, believe it or not, drowsiness. (I am told by those who know that this is not an uncommon reaction to stress.) The room was dim and quiet, except for the soothing buzz of insects. I was on the verge of dozing off when there was a knock at the door. It woke me as effectively as a shout in my ear.

  It also woke the occupant of the chair. I heard the rustle of cloth as he shifted position, and then a brusque order. The door opened and the chandelier over the desk blazed. John came in.

  He looked as sleek as a well-fed cat—not a hair on his head out of place, not a mark on him. His hands were in the pockets of his khakis, his shirt, open at the throat, was one I’d never seen before—a rather girlish baby-blue-and-white-striped. He stopped a few feet inside the room and tilted his head inquiringly. The man sitting in the chair barked out another baritone order. The door closed.

  They played the old “Let the other guy speak first” routine for a short time. John had been playing it longer. The other guy said, “I trust you have been given everything you require?”

  It was the first time he had spoken more than a single word. The language was English, the accent well-educated British. I knew I’d heard that voice before, but I couldn’t place it. My head was buzzing as loudly as the flies. He hadn’t been injured. He was shaved and brushed, neat as a pin. But someone had opened the door for him. Someone was outside, in the hall, guarding the door. Not yet, I told myself. Wait.

  “Come off it,” John said pleasantly. “There’s no one listening. Shall we proceed to the next stage of negotiations?”

  “You’ve nothing to negotiate with.”

  From beneath the couch, I could see as John raised an eyebrow. “Then let me put it another way. What are you planning to do next?”

  “To you?” The other man laughed. Damn, that laugh was familiar! He went on, “Nothing at all. Don’t tell me you haven’t figured out my plans for you?”

  “Oh, that. It was the obvious course.”

  “Obvious?” His voice rose. “Most people in my position would have—”

  “Now, now,” John said, in the tone he would have used to a peevish child, “don’t get excited. You’ve done very well for an amateur.”

  He was trying to bait the other man, for no good reason that I could see, except that he couldn’t resist being cute. Then it dawned on me. I was a little upset, or I would have seen it immediately.

  The chair legs let out a screech as the other man pushed back from the table and sprang to his feet. The two of them confronted each other like mirror images—lean and tall, fair-haired, dressed almost identically. I ought to have recognized the voice and the laugh, but the very idea of his being here was too preposterous to accept. Even now I had a hard time believing it.

  John’s little game didn’t work. Alan was unarmed, and he knew better than to tackle John with his bare hands. If I had been in his position I’d have been armed to the teeth, but that was Alan’s problem—he had to outdo John on John’s terms, beat him at his own game. Besides, he wasn’t risking bodily harm; he had help right outside the door.

  Alan managed to get his breathing and his temper under control. “How kind,” he said, in a fair imitation of John’s drawl. “You can’t admit, can you, that I’ve succeeded where you would have failed? This operation exceeds any and all of your childish games. It will go down in the annals of crime.”

  “Is that the only reason you had me brought here?” John asked. His eyes moved fractionally, from Alan’s face to his hands and back. He was calculating the odds. They were against him, and he knew it. “To boast? Should that be the case, I hope you will excuse me.”

  I had preprogrammed the call. I only had to press one button. I kept hoping Alan would really lose his temper and start yelling, but I didn’t dare wait any longer. I pushed the button.

  “Sit down,” Alan said tightly.

  “What would be the point? Unless you want my advice.”

  “I don’t need your damned advice! I know precisely what I’m doing. In a few days I’ll walk away with four million pounds in hard cash, and you will be found unharmed and unconfined in company with the stolen mummy of Tutankhamon. Even your trusting friends can’t get you out of this. You haven’t been exactly forthright with them, have you?”

  “I daresay several incidents will lend credence to the assumption of my guilt,” John admitted.

  Schmidt, Schmidt, where are you? I thought wildly. Now’s the time. He’s here, where he has no business being, and no excuse for being here. I’ve heard his confession. Come on, Schmidt, call in the troops.

  I hoped to hear alarms and excursions, gunfire, shouts, explosions. What I got instead was a door bursting open, banging back against the wall. It wasn’t the door to the hall. I stuck my head out from under the couch and saw what I had hoped not to see. Schmidt had come in through the library. Schmidt. Just Schmidt, all alone. He was brandishing what appeared to be, and almost certainly was not, an automatic pistol.

  Alan spun round to face Schmidt, John nodded a gracious greeting, and—driven beyond endurance—I yelled, “Bloody hell, Schmidt, what do you think you’re doing? You can’t kill anybody with a toy gun!”

  “It is not a toy,” Schmidt yelled back. He proceeded to prove it.

  We were yelling because the long-awaited cacophony had finally burst out—gunfire, crashes, yells, and in the case of Schmidt, a fusillade fired back into the library toward several persons who were about to follow him into the study. They ceased to follow and Schmidt slammed the door shut.

  “Also,” he panted. “Put up your hands, Mr. Whoever-You-May-Be. It is a fair cop. Guten Abend, John. Where is Vicky?”

  “Here,” I said faintly.

  John sauntered to me, bent over, and offered me his hand. “Well, well,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  My appearance distracted and alarmed Schmidt. “Is she hurt? Is she safe?”

  For a fe
w vital seconds nobody was looking at Alan. A musical clatter drew our attention back to him. If I had had false teeth I would have swallowed them when I saw that he was now brandishing one of the swords that had hung over the mantel. The other one lay on the floor near the fireplace.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” John said, hauling me to my feet. “Put that down, you damned fool.”

  “Yes, drop it,” Schmidt ordered. “Or I will fire.”

  “No, you won’t,” Alan said breathlessly. “In the first place you are too much of a gentleman to shoot a man armed only with a sword. In the second place, you emptied the clip just now.”

  Schmidt let out a string of Mittelhochdeutsch swear words and began searching through his plethora of pockets. John edged toward Alan and came to a sudden stop as the blade whistled past his face.

  “Pick up the other one,” Alan said, baring his teeth. “We’ll see who is the better man.”

  “You,” John said hastily. “No question. I give up. I can’t fence.”

  “I happen to know that you can. Not as well as I, however. Those reenactments at which you chose to sneer honed my skills. Pick it up or I’ll carve my initials in Vicky.”

  I would never have supposed that one blade could hold three people at bay. It can, if the other three haven’t so much as a knife, and if it moves as fast as it did when Alan wielded it.

  “Pick it up,” he said again.

  “Not much choice, really,” John said, his casual tone at odds with his tight mouth and narrowed eyes. “He’s gone over the edge. All those fantasy games…Oops.”

  He ducked just in time, and scooped up the fallen sword. I jumped back as Alan swung in my direction. Schmidt wobbled indecisively, still searching his damned pockets.

  “Call for help, Schmidt,” I shouted. “Where is everybody?”

  From the continuing sounds of battle, it was evident that “everybody” was fully occupied. Alan’s gang was firing back, from all four sides of the house.

  “Just hold him off,” I said to John.

  His lips moved soundlessly but eloquently. I didn’t blame him for wanting to call me bad names; it had not been one of my more brilliant suggestions. I knew he could fence a little. I’d seen him do it—with an opponent who was fat, drunk, and essentially incompetent. Alan was none of the above and he was in a state of manic exhilaration. I don’t think he cared any longer about the money or the game. All he cared about was inflicting as much damage as possible, with his own hands, on the man he admired and hated and envied most.