by Paul Sussman
They staggered onwards, grunting with exertion, skin burning with the cold. The track, which had initially followed a fold in the land, rising reasonably gently, now began to climb at a harsher gradient, coiling upwards through the trees, switching back on itself, the snow getting ever deeper. On one particularly steep section the homosexual lost his footing and stumbled, causing the crate to lurch forwards and smash against a tree-trunk, its top left-hand corner cracking and splintering.
'Idiot!' screamed the man in the leather coat. 'Get him up!'
The guards waded forward and hoisted the man to his feet, forcing him to heave the crate back onto his shoulders.
'My shoe,' he pleaded, indicating his left boot, which had somehow come off and was lying half-buried in the snow.
The guards laughed and, kicking the boot away, ordered them all to get moving again.
'God help him,' whispered the rabbi. 'God help the poor boy.'
Up and up they climbed, higher and higher, gasping and groaning, every step seeming to suck a little bit more life out of them, until eventually, at a point when Yitzhak felt that he must surely drop and die, the track suddenly came level and emerged from the trees into what looked like an abandoned quarry cut deep into the hillside. At the same moment the clouds above them drew back, revealing a huge mountain rearing overhead with, far away to the right, a small building perched on the edge of a cliff. The vision lasted only a few seconds and was then lost again behind a heavy curtain of mist, disappearing so quickly that Yitzhak wondered whether he had not just imagined it in his exhaustion and despair.
'Over there,' shouted the man in the leather coat. 'Into the mine!'
At the back of the quarry rose a vertical rock-face, in the centre of which gaped a doorway, wide and black, like a screaming mouth. They stumbled towards it, past heaps of snow-covered rock and slag, a broken winching device and an upturned cart with a single rusted wheel, picking their way carefully over the uneven ground. As they reached the opening Yitzhak noticed the words GLÜCK AUF crudely scratched into the rock above its lintel, and beneath it, in white paint, no bigger than the size of half a thumb, the legend SW16.
'Go on! Inside! Take it in!'
They did as they were told, bending their knees and backs so as not to smash the crate on the low ceiling. One of the guards produced a torch and shone it ahead into the blackness, revealing a long corridor running back into the hillside, supported at regular intervals by wooden props. Iron rails ran along the flat stone floor; the walls were rough and uneven, hewn out of the bare grey rock, with here and there thick veins of orangey-pink crystal exploding through the stone like forks of lightning across a dark sky. Abandoned tools lay scattered on the ground – a rusted oil lamp, a pick-axe head, an old tin bucket – giving the place an eerie, abandoned feel.
They were made to go about fifty metres, at which point the rails on the floor branched, one set continuing straight ahead, the other twisting off to the right into another tunnel that ran perpendicular to the main shaft, its walls lined with stacks of boxes and crates. There was a flat cart sitting near the entrance to this side-passage, and they were ordered to place their load on top of it.
'That's it,' came a voice from the darkness behind them. 'Out. Get them out!'
They turned and shuffled back the way they had come, breathing heavily, relieved that their ordeal seemed to be over, one of the other Jews supporting the homosexual, whose bare foot had turned black. There was a muttered exchange behind them, and then the guards came out as well. The man in the leather coat remained inside the mine.
'Over there,' said one of the guards when they emerged into the open air. 'There, by that heap of rock.'
They did as they were told, walking over to the pile of stones and turning. The guards had their guns levelled at them.
'Oy vey,' whispered Yitzhak, suddenly realizing what was about to happen. 'Oh God.'
The guards laughed, and the winter silence was shattered by a raucous bark of gunfire.
PART ONE THE PRESENT
THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS, LUXOR, EGYPT
'Can we go home soon, Dad? It's Alim al-Simsim on TV.'
Inspector Yusuf Ezz el-Din Khalifa stubbed out his cigarette and sighed, gazing down at his son Ali, who was standing beside him picking his nose. A slim, wiry man with high cheekbones, neatly brushed hair and large, sparkling eyes, he exuded an air of quiet intensity edged with humour – a serious man who enjoyed laughing.
'It's not every day you get a private tour of the greatest archaeological site in Egypt, Ali,' he chided.
'But I've been here with school,' grumbled his son. 'Twice. Mrs Wadood showed us everything.'
'I bet she didn't show you the tomb of Ramesses II,' said Khalifa, 'which we've seen today. And Yuya and Tjuyu.'
'There was nothing in that one,' complained Ali. 'Just bats and a load of old bandages.'
'We were still lucky to be allowed inside it,' insisted his father. 'It hasn't been open to the public since it was found in 1905. And for your information, those old bandages were the original mummy wrappings, just as the tomb robbers left them in ancient times, after they'd ripped them from the bodies.'
The boy looked up, finger still wedged into his nostril, a flicker of interest in his eyes.
'Why did they do that?'
'Well,' explained Khalifa, 'when the priests wrapped the mummies they put jewels and precious amulets in among the bindings, and the robbers were trying to get at them.'
The boy's face lit up.
'Did they dig out their eyes too?'
'Not that I know of,' replied Khalifa with a smile. 'Although sometimes they snapped off the odd finger or hand. Which is exactly what I'm going to do to you if you don't stop picking your nose!'
He seized his son's wrist and tugged playfully at his fingers, as though trying to break them off. Ali squirmed and struggled, roaring with laughter.
'I'm stronger than you, Dad!' he cried.
'I don't think so,' said Khalifa, grasping the boy round the waist and turning him upside down. 'I don't think you're even half as strong.'
They were standing in the middle of the Valley of the Kings, close to the entrance to the tomb of Ramesses VI. It was late afternoon, and the crowds of tourists that had choked the valley for most of the day had now filtered away, leaving the place eerily empty. Nearby, a group of workmen were clearing debris from an excavation trench, singing tunelessly as they scraped chunks of shattered limestone into rubber buckets; further down the valley a tour party was filing into the tomb of Ramesses IX. Otherwise the place was deserted, save for a few tourist police, Ahmed the bin man and, on the slopes above the valley, squatting in whatever shade they could find, the odd postcard hawker and refreshment seller, gazing intently downwards in the hope of spotting some late business.
'I'll tell you what,' said Khalifa, setting his son down and ruffling his hair. 'We'll have a quick look in Amenhotep II, and then we'll call it a day, eh? It would be rude to leave now after Said's gone to all the trouble to find the key.'
As he spoke, there was a shout from the inspector's office fifty metres away, and a tall, gangly figure came loping towards them.
'Got it!' called the figure, brandishing a key. 'Someone had put it on the wrong hook.'
Said ibn-Bassat, popularly known as Ginger on account of his bright copper-coloured hair, was an old friend of Khalifa's. They had met years ago, at Cairo University, where they had both been studying ancient history. Money problems had forced Khalifa to abandon his studies and take a job with the police force. Said, on the other hand, had finished the course, graduating with distinction, and joined the Antiquities Service, where he had risen to the rank of assistant director of Valley of the Kings. Although he never said as much it was the life Khalifa would have chosen for himself, had necessity not pushed him in another direction. He loved the ancient past and would have done anything to have been able to devote his time to working with its remains. Not that he bore his friend any grudges,
of course. And Ginger didn't have a family like him, which was something he would never have given up, not for all the monuments in Egypt.
The three of them set off up the valley together, passing the tombs of Ramesses III and Horemheb before branching off to the right and following a path up to the doorway of Amenhotep II's tomb, which was at the bottom of a set of steps and secured with a heavy iron gate. Ginger began fiddling with the padlock.
'How long is it going to stay closed?' asked Khalifa.
'Only another month or so. The restoration's almost complete.'
Ali pushed between them, coming up on tiptoes and peering through a grille into the darkness beyond.
'Is there any treasure?'
'Afraid not,' said Ginger, lifting the boy out of the way and swinging open the gate. 'It was all robbed out in ancient times.'
He flicked a switch and lights came on, illuminating a long, steeply sloping corridor cut back into the rock, its walls and ceiling still bearing the tell-tale white ripples of ancient chisel marks. Ali started down it.
'Do you know what I'd have done if I was King of Egypt?' he called back to them, his voice echoing in the narrow confines of the tomb. 'I'd have had a secret hidden room with all my treasure in it, and then another room with just a bit of treasure in it to fool the robbers. Like that guy you told me about, Dad. Horrible Inkyman.'
'Hor-ankh-amun,' corrected Khalifa, smiling.
'Yes. And then I'd have booby traps so that if any robbers did get in they'd be caught. And then I'd put them in prison.'
'Then they'd have been lucky,' said Ginger, laughing. 'The usual punishment for tomb-robbing in ancient Egypt was to have your nose cut off and be sent to the salt mines of Libya. That or impalement on a spike.'
He winked at Khalifa and, chuckling, the two men set off down the corridor after Ali. They had only gone a few metres when there was a sound of hurried footsteps behind them. A man in a djellaba appeared in the tomb doorway, silhouetted against the bright rectangle of afternoon sky, breathing heavily.
'Is there an Inspector Khalifa here?' he called, panting.
The detective glanced at his friend, then took a step back up the shaft.
'That's me.'
'You're to come quickly, over the other side. They've found . . .'
The man paused, trying to catch his breath.
'What?' said Khalifa. 'What have they found?'
The man looked down at him, eyes wide. 'A body!'
From further down the shaft Ali's voice came floating up to them.
'Cool! Can I come too, Dad?'
* * *
The corpse had been discovered at Malqata, an archaeological site at the far southern end of the Theban massif, once the palace of the pharaoh Amenhotep III, now a desolate expanse of sand-blown ruins visited only by the most dedicated of Egyptophiles. A dusty Daewoo police car was waiting for Khalifa outside the valley office, and, leaving his son with Ginger, who promised to get him home safely, he climbed into the passenger seat and the car sped off, Ali's cries of protest echoing behind them.
'I don't want to go home, Dad! I want to see the dead body!'
It took them twenty minutes to reach the site. The police driver, a surly young man with freckled cheeks and bad teeth, kept his foot to the floor all the way, winding down through the hills to the Nile plain and then turning south along the edge of the massif. Khalifa stared out the window at the passing sugar cane and molochia fields, smoking a Cleopatra cigarette and half-listening to a news report on the car's battered stereo about the spiralling violence between Israelis and Palestinians – another suicide bomb, another Israeli retaliation, more death and misery.
'It's going to be war,' said the driver.
'It already is war,' sighed Khalifa, taking a final puff on his cigarette and flicking it out of the window. 'Has been for the last fifty years.'
The driver reached for a packet of gum on the dashboard, slipping two pieces into his mouth and chewing vigorously.
'You think there can ever be peace?'
'Not the way things are at the moment. Watch out for the cart.'
The driver swerved to avoid a donkey-drawn cart piled high with harvested sugar cane, pulling back in front of it just in time to avoid a head-on collision with a tourist coach.
'Allah protect me,' muttered the detective, gripping the dashboard. 'Allah have mercy.'
They passed Deir el-Bahri, the Ramesseum and the scattered remains of the mortuary temple of Merenptah before eventually reaching a point where the road branched, one arm turning east towards the Nile, the other west up to the ancient workers' village at Deir el-Medina and the Valley of the Queens. They went straight ahead, bumping off the smooth tarmac onto a dusty, rutted track which led them past the great temple at Medinet Habu and out onto an undulating expanse of rubbly desert, its surface covered with litter and tangled blooms of spiny camel thorn. They continued for a further kilometre, swerving and jolting, occasionally passing the slumped remains of ancient mud-brick walls, brown and shapeless like melted chocolate, before eventually coming upon four police cars and an ambulance drawn up beside a rusty telephone pylon, with beyond them a fifth car, a dusty blue Mercedes, set slightly apart. They skidded to a halt and Khalifa got out.
'I don't know why you can't just get a mobile,' grumbled Mohammed Sariya, Khalifa's deputy, detaching himself from a huddle of paramedics and walking over to greet them. 'It's taken us over an hour to find you.'
'During which time I have had the pleasure of visiting two of the most interesting tombs in the Wadi Biban el-Muluk,' replied Khalifa. 'About as good an advert as I can think of for not having one. Besides, mobile phones give you cancer.'
He pulled out his cigarettes and lit one.
'So, what have we got?'
Sariya gave an exasperated shake of the head.
'A body,' he said. 'Male. Caucasian. Name of Jansen. Piet Jansen.'
He fumbled in his jacket pocket and produced a plastic bag with a battered leather wallet inside, which he handed to Khalifa.
'Egyptian national,' he said, 'although you wouldn't think it from the name. Owned a hotel down in Gezira. The Menna-Ra.'
'Beside the lake? Yes, I know it.'
Khalifa took the wallet from the bag and flicked through its contents, noting the Egyptian identity card.
'Born 1925. You're sure he didn't just die of old age?'
'Not if the state of the body's anything to go by,' said Sariya.
The detective pulled out a Banque Misr credit card and a wad of Egyptian twenty-pound notes. In a side pocket he found a membership card for the Egyptian Horticultural Society, and behind it a crumpled black-and-white photo of a large, fierce-looking Alsatian dog. On the back was written, in faded pencil, 'Arminius, 1930'. He stared at it for a moment, sensing the name was somehow familiar but unable to pinpoint precisely why, then put it back, replaced the wallet in its bag and returned it to his deputy.
'You've informed the next of kin?'
'No living relatives,' said Sariya. 'We contacted the hotel.'
'And the Mercedes? His?'
Sariya nodded. 'We found the keys in his pocket.' He produced another bag, this one containing an improbably large set of keys. 'We checked it out. Nothing unusual inside.'
They walked over to the Mercedes and peered through the window. The interior – cracked leather upholstery, polished walnut dashboard, a fragrance holder dangling from the rear-view mirror – was empty save for a two-day-old al-Ahram on the passenger seat and, on the floor in the back, an expensive-looking Nikon camera.
'Who found him?' asked Khalifa.
'A French girl. She was out taking photographs among the ruins, came on the body by accident.' Sariya opened his notebook and squinted down at it. 'Claudia Champollion,' he read, struggling to get his mouth round the unfamiliar vowels. 'Twenty-nine. Archaeologist. She's staying over there.' He nodded towards a tree-filled compound further along the track, surrounded by a high mud-brick wall. The home of the Frenc
h Archaeological Mission in Thebes.
'No relation to the Champollion, I take it?' asked Khalifa.
'Hmm?'
'Jean François Champollion.'
Sariya looked confused.
'The man who deciphered hieroglyphs,' sighed Khalifa in mock exasperation. 'God Almighty, Mohammed, don't you know anything about the history of this country?'
His deputy shrugged. 'She was quite good-looking, I know that much. Big . . . you know . . .' He motioned with his hands. 'Firm.'
Khalifa shook his head and took a drag on his cigarette. 'If policework was simply a matter of ogling women, Mohammed, you'd be chief commissioner by now. You get a statement?'
