Laughter of Dead Kings vbm-6

by Elizabeth Peters

  “I’m glad you asked,” John said. They nodded at each other again. Clearly they had set this charade up, the two of them. Just for the fun of infuriating Ashraf, or for some other reason? John kept sneaking surreptitious glances at his watch.

  “Why Tutankhamon, indeed? The only logical answer was that Alan was working with someone else—someone whose primary motive was not financial. We won’t be able to question Alan for a long time, if ever. But I think this is how it came about.

  “Alan was approached by an individual who had conceived the idea of embarrassing the SCA by making off with one of its most conspicuous treasures. At the outset he believed he was dealing with me. Alan convinced him that he, Alan, had taken over that aspect of the business. Alan also pointed out that the group of people who carried out the actual theft would expect to be paid, and paid handsomely. There was no way of raising that amount of money except by holding the mummy for ransom.”

  “So it was the other guy who proposed stealing Tut,” I said. “But that means…That means he…Who, damn it?”

  “Can’t you guess?” John’s smile was maddeningly superior.

  I looked at Ashraf, who was looking at Feisal, who was looking at Saida, who was watching John, her lips slightly parted.

  John looked at his watch.

  Schmidt couldn’t stand it any longer. He sprang to his feet, pointing at the doorway. “Perlmutter! Jan Perlmutter. Who else!”

  The doorway remained unhelpfully empty of Jan Perlmutter.

  “Don’t be silly, Schmidt,” I said. “You just want him to be the villain because you’re still mad at him.”

  “Schmidt is, as always, correct,” John said resignedly.

  Ashraf sat up with a start. “Perlmutter? From the Altes Museum in Berlin? He’s behind this? Why? How?”

  “You were driving him crazy,” John said simply. “During our interview with him in Berlin, Perlmutter was practically frothing at the mouth when he talked about preserving antiquities. It was as though he had a God-given right to defend them from the barbarians—as defined by him. He is, to put it simply, over the edge. Most of you archaeological types are somewhat demented, you know. Look at the way you and Feisal have been carrying on about the bloody mummy. A sane person wouldn’t give a damn what happened to it.”

  “But Herr Doktor Perlmutter cared,” Saida said.

  “You prove my point,” John said. He looked again at his watch, glanced at the door, and scowled.

  “He planned to return it, unhurt,” Saida insisted. “We must give him credit for that.”

  “Credit be damned,” Ashraf said furiously. “I will see that he suffers for this, and for his violence against me. I will catch a plane to Berlin tomorrow, after we have returned Tutankhamon to his tomb.”

  “Forgive me for mentioning,” John said, “that you have still to work out how to accomplish the latter. As for Berlin, there is no need. Here he is, in person. Finally,” he added in exasperation. “I told him to be here at ten.”

  All eyes focused on the doorway. “I was detained,” Jan said.

  He had ruined John’s meticulously plotted scenario by failing to appear on cue. The cue being, I presumed, John’s smarmy question, “Can’t you guess?”

  For a criminal who has just been unmasked, Jan looked unnervingly pleased with himself. Silver-gilt curls shining, he moved toward a chair. “I could not help overhearing the last part of your conversation,” he said coolly. “Your wild accusations are pure fantasy, of course.”

  Ashraf pushed his chair back and surged to his feet, fists clenched. “Coward! You struck me down, from behind. You will pay.”

  Jan smiled. One could almost hear what he was thinking: These excitable Arabs, they are too emotional to look after their treasures. I wanted to kick Ashraf to shut him up, but I was too far away from him. Schmidt and John were just getting started. How much real evidence they had against Jan I didn’t know, but I had a feeling it was flimsy. He would have to be tricked into making a damaging admission. Skilled interrogators know violence is counterproductive in inducing confessions; punching Jan in the chops would only make him mad and reinforce his sense of superiority.

  It was good ol’ boy Schmidt who took the necessary steps. His shout made the rafters ring.

  “Sit down and be quiet!”

  Schmidt doesn’t exert his authority often, but when he does he is formidable. Ashraf sat down as suddenly as if he had been pushed. If I hadn’t already been seated, my knees would have buckled.

  “You too,” Schmidt went on, glowering at Jan. “Speak only when you are spoken to. I am taking charge of this inquiry and I will brook no interruptions. Yes. That is better. Now, John, proceed with your deductions.”

  John was still not used to the new Schmidt. Visibly awestruck, he cleared his throat. “As I was saying…What was I saying?”

  “That all archaeologists are slightly mad,” Schmidt prompted.

  “Right. Um. Stealing the mummy of Tutankhamon was the sort of idea that would only have occurred to a monomaniac, someone who placed inordinate value on it and believed that other monomaniacs would share his estimate of its importance. In other words, a psychotic Egyptologist or authority on ancient remains. That ruled out Alan and the gangs of professional thieves. It also indicated that the motive was personal and abnormal rather than financial or political. We had proposed that as one possibility among others, but we had never actually followed through on the idea. I wasted a certain amount of time speculating about a grudge against a specific individual—Ashraf, or Feisal, or me. However, all of us had led blameless lives—”

  That was too much for Jan, who had been increasingly maddened by John’s use of insulting adjectives. He burst out, “Blameless, you say? You, one of the most notorious…”

  “Ah,” John said. “You knew about me, did you? Make a note of that, Vicky.”

  “What with?” I asked, looking round for pen and paper.

  “I will do it, I will do it,” Saida cried. She whipped out her notebook and began scribbling.

  “I did know,” Jan said. His hands, gripping the arms of the chair, were white-knuckled, but he wasn’t ready to concede defeat yet. “During the Trojan Gold affair I spoke with Herr Müller about a mysterious individual who had been an active party in the proceedings and a friend of Vicky’s. I had—er—certain government sources available to me, and through them I was able to identify the individual and keep track of his activities. I did so as a precaution, you understand. A criminal of his sort might prove a danger to the museum in future.”

  “Not a bad recovery,” John said judicially. “However, we have now established the fact that you were aware of my former connections. You made another slip during our conversation at the museum in Berlin. You claimed to be unaware of the existence of the Amarna head, yet according to Alan, he had notified the major museums of its existence.”

  “His word against mine,” Jan said.

  “How long have you been in Egypt?”

  After John’s long-winded exposition, Schmidt’s brusque question made Jan start. He took his time about answering. “Two—three days.”

  “Which?” It was John’s turn.

  Jan’s head turned in his direction. “None of your business.”

  “It was, in fact, five days ago,” Schmidt said. “This has been confirmed by my old friend Wolfgang of the German Institute.”

  “You had learned from Alan that he was prepared to hand over the mummy in return for the ransom,” John said. “You had never intended to do that. You were determined to prevent it at any cost. We know you were at Karnak that night.”

  Jan’s head swiveled back and forth like that of a spectator at a tennis match. The deadly duo didn’t give him a chance to reply, just kept hitting him with one accusation after another.

  “It wasn’t until after you arrived in Egypt that you found out about the murder of Ali and, later, that of the young woman.” John took up the tale. Back and forth, back and forth; we were all
doing it now. I had a crick in my neck. The only exception was Saida, whose head was bent over her writing. Jan’s glance swerved aside, focusing briefly on her before returning to John.

  “An honest man, a man of courage and integrity, would have gone immediately to the police. You caved in. You and Alan came to an agreement. He could keep the money, all of it, if he left the mummy to you. You had enough scholarly integrity left to want it kept safe. As you see, your plans for it have been foiled.” With a theatrical wave of his hand, John indicated the box that contained the head of Tutankhamon.

  Someone laughed. I wasn’t the only one who gaped at the box in startled horror. But it wasn’t Tut. It was Jan. He had been temporarily shaken by the performance of John and Schmidt but he still had a card up his sleeve, and it was an ace.

  “Wrong,” he said, leaning back and folding his hands. “My plans, as you choose to call them, are unfolding according to schedule. I presume you were planning to return the mummy secretly to its tomb? It is too late. Last night the press of the world was notified by an anonymous but reliable source that the Supreme Council had allowed Tutankhamon’s mummy to be stolen by a gang of common thieves. Representatives of the major news media will shortly arrive in Luxor.”

  He didn’t have to elaborate. I could see it now—the tomb surrounded by clamoring hordes of reporters and cameramen. They couldn’t be kept out of the Valley unless it was closed to all visitors, and that move would only increase speculation. And certain people, such as Feisal’s jealous subordinate, would be only too happy to talk with the press.

  Saida dropped her pen. Ashraf bounded up from his chair. Feisal had turned pale; his lips moved soundlessly.

  “So you admit,” Schmidt said, in a desperate last-ditch effort, “that you planned the theft of the mummy in order to embarrass the Supreme Council?”

  “I admit nothing,” Jan said, chin outthrust. “I learned of the theft only recently and felt it my duty to report it. You can prove nothing. And if you attempt to detain me”—he pushed his chair back and stood up—“you will regret it.”

  Ashraf charged around the table toward Jan. I yelled at him to stop and so did Saida, but he was too infuriated to hear us. Jan snatched up the knife John had placed on the table and scuttled backward.

  “Don’t touch me,” he cried hysterically. “Don’t try to stop me.”

  Ashraf tripped over John’s outthrust foot and fell flat.

  “You’re welcome,” John said to Jan. “Go or stay, it’s all the same to me.”

  Eyes bulging, Jan backed toward the door. John twisted a hand in Ashraf’s collar, pulled him upright, and slapped him smartly across the cheek.

  The slap may not have been necessary; having one’s breath cut off has a tendency to decrease belligerence. Ashraf clawed at his collar and John chanted, “‘Vicious attack on critic by head of Supreme Council.’ Is that what you want to see in tomorrow’s newspapers, Ashraf?”

  Jan turned and ran. He didn’t even stop long enough to brush the dust off his jacket.

  “Let him go,” John said, keeping a firm grip on Ashraf.

  “We’re doomed,” Feisal said hollowly. “Damn you, Johnny, you expected this.”

  “Didn’t you?” John allowed a touch of exasperation to enter his voice. “Weren’t you listening to me? This is what Perlmutter wanted—publicity. He wouldn’t have dared walk in here today unless he had already taken steps to achieve it.”

  “Then why the charade?” Feisal demanded. “Why did you and Schmidt waste all that time interrogating him when you knew he had already won?”

  John lowered his eyes. His long lashes—one of his best features, as he knows—caught the light in a golden shimmer. “It was fun,” he said.

  Schmidt chuckled. “We had him worried for a while.”

  “He’s not worried now,” Feisal muttered. He hid his face in his hands. “We’re doomed.”

  “Not necessarily,” John said.

  The light of hope dawned, touchingly, on several faces. Ashraf’s was not one of them.

  “What can we do?” he demanded, his tie askew and his hair ruffled. “The bastard is right, we can’t drive into the Valley and unload the pieces of Tutankhamon under the very noses of the press. Even if we could barricade the approach to the tomb and keep reporters at bay, someone would see what we were doing…Some enterprising pressman would bribe a guard to let him pass…One photograph would be enough.”

  “You’re thinking,” John said approvingly. “Good. However, you are on the wrong track. It seems to me that there is only one way out of your little dilemma.”

  T here was room in the limo for all of us, though we had to squeeze up a bit because the seventh passenger occupied so much space. Ashraf had insisted on putting the boxes in proper order, in a single layer, so that we could keep them from being joggled. John sat on one side of them and Feisal on the other. I’d seen too many pictures of the naked mummy; it didn’t require much stretch of the imagination to picture it side by side with John and Feisal, like those grisly royal effigies at Saint Denis—you know the ones I mean, the king robed and crowned in worldly splendor lying next to a naked rotting corpse. “What I am now so you shall be.”

  Ashraf’s first reaction to John’s idea had been a shout of incredulous, outraged laughter. Unperturbed, John went on.

  “It’s about six hundred miles to Cairo. That limo of yours should be able to make it before dawn if we start right away.”

  Half convinced, half aghast, Ashraf said, “And then what?”

  “If you haven’t the authority to get into the museum before hours, no one has. Once he’s there, who is going to confess he hasn’t been there all along? And who would have the audacity to call you a liar if you say he has been?”

  Feisal started to his feet and began pacing. “That’s right,” he said excitedly. “It would explain everything. The van was an official vehicle, sent by you—”

  “To rescue the king from his insalubrious surroundings,” Schmidt broke in.

  “As I demanded,” Saida added, her eyes sparkling.

  “And as Ashraf had already decided was right and proper,” John said smoothly. “He intended it to be a delightful surprise for critics past and potential—and a nice little publicity stunt. Perlmutter has played right into your hands with his pathetic accusations. Let them burgeon and bloom. When you put Tut on public display, you’ll have every media outlet in the world begging for an interview, and Perlmutter will look like a jealous, spiteful fool.”

  Ashraf’s face took on the dreamy expression of an unwilling dieter being presented with a large, thickly iced chocolate cake. “But how…Do you know how much those climate-controlled cases in the royal mummy room cost—how long it takes to construct one? We haven’t any extras. I can’t display Tutankhamon in a crude wooden box.”

  “Move one of the other kings temporarily,” I suggested. “Thutmose the Third, maybe. He looks like a man with a sense of humor.”

  My little touch of levity was ignored as it deserved to be. “It could work,” Feisal said.

  “It is brilliant,” Saida declared. “It must work!”

  We were under way in less than two hours. Ashraf dismissed his driver with plane fare back to Cairo. It wouldn’t be the first time he had taken a notion to drive himself. We collected our luggage from the hotel and Schmidt loaded the car with food and drink and a few other comforts I didn’t notice until I got in the vehicle. I don’t know how he smuggled blankets and pillows out without being seen, but I feel sure he left money to pay for them—probably more than they were worth. Infected by the general hubbub, I trotted back and forth without accomplishing very much; at one point I found myself heading for the lift carrying one shopping bag that contained my galabiya—an item which I sincerely hoped I wouldn’t need. The only person who didn’t join in the flurry of activity was, of course, John. Leaning against the limo, he made an occasional suggestion.

  Ashraf settled himself behind the wheel, pulled on a pair o
f expensive leather driving gloves, and drew himself up like a ship’s captain on the poop deck, or wherever it is captains stand. Schmidt was in the front seat next to him, Saida and I in the tonneau with the boys, living and dead.

  “Fasten your seat belts,” Ashraf intoned.

  I added mentally, “We are about to take off.” Hastily I complied. Knowing Ashraf as I had come to, I figured we were in for a rough ride.

  As we pulled away from the hotel, another vehicle swung in ahead of us—a dark unmarked car that, despite its lack of official markings, had the unmistakable look of an official vehicle. “What’s that?” I demanded, leaning forward. “I thought we wanted to avoid being conspicuous.”

  “Ashraf always travels with an escort,” Feisal muttered.

  “We need to get through the checkpoints without being delayed,” John said. “I presume you’ve called ahead?”

  “Yes, yes,” said Schmidt, already on his cell phone. “They know we are coming.”

  Everybody knew we were coming. The escorting vehicle began sounding its horn. Cops stopped traffic at intersections. Cars and carriages tried to pull to the side. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they didn’t. Our caravan swerved around them. At least I think it did. I didn’t hear any screams. I could hear Schmidt babbling away on his phone, and Ashraf commenting unfavorably on the skills of other drivers. I tried to close my eyes, but they wouldn’t stay shut. The columns of Luxor Temple were far behind us. Karnak’s pylons came into view and vanished. The approach to the Nile bridge whizzed by. Then we were out of Luxor and on the road northward.

  Ten hours. Assuming nothing happened, like a flat tire or running out of gas or hitting a camel. I should probably explain to those who have never driven in Egypt that camels weren’t the only local hazard. The road from Luxor to Cairo is two lanes most of the way, and it isn’t well maintained. Potholes and ruts abound, trucks and buses do not yield the right of way. Possibly the greatest hazard is the Egyptian driver himself. If he wants to pass he does, even when there is another car coming straight at him. Usually there’s enough room on either side for the vehicles legitimately occupying their respective lanes to edge over far enough to let him through. Usually.