Sands of Time (Out of Time #6)

by Monique Martin

  “Everything’s here, I think,” Elizabeth said as she took a quick inventory.

  Simon walked over to the French doors and closed them. The lock was entirely inadequate. If they were to stay in this room, hell, if they were going to stay in this city, this would have to change.

  “What do you think he was looking for?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Simon said. “Maybe that envelope we took from Mason. Or his watch.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes went wide. “Jack!”

  She hurried to the door and ran down the hallway. Simon caught up to her just as she was pounding on Jack’s door.

  There was no answer, but Simon thought he heard something coming from inside.

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Maybe he’s already gone down—”

  Simon held up a finger to silence her. There he heard it again, the muffled sounds of a struggle.

  “Jack!” Simon pounded on the door. He stopped only long enough to hear a crashing sound inside. Simon thrust his shoulder against the door, but it didn’t move.

  “Jack!” Elizabeth cried.

  A few people came out of their suites and she told them to get help.

  Simon took a step back and kicked at the door as hard as he could. He felt the door frame give a little. He kicked again and again. On the third try the frame splintered and the door crashed open.

  Simon hurried inside. Jack was on the floor near the balcony, the remnants of a coffee table crushed beneath him. Above him loomed another man in black robes. He’d been startled by the door flying open, enough to give Jack a small window through which he threw a solid punch. The man staggered off him, turned toward Simon and ran for the balcony.

  The French doors were already open and like his partner, the man leapt over the railing and scaled down the building with frightening ease. Simon watched the assailant run through the garden and disappear. When he turned back, Elizabeth was kneeling at Jack’s side.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Jack grunted and, with her help, pushed himself into a sitting position. Bits of table clung to his bare back and the knee of his pajama bottoms was torn.

  “I’m all right,” Jack said, shaking his head and working his jaw. He jerked his head toward the door and the growing gathering of onlookers.

  “It’s under control now,” Simon said as he strode over to the door. “Thank you for your concern.”

  The shocked expressions of the crowd disappeared behind the door as he unceremoniously closed it in their faces.

  Elizabeth helped Jack stand.

  “Thanks,” Jack said. “Good timing.”

  The room was a shambles. Chairs were overturned and what had been a coffee table was only kindling now.

  “We had a visitor ourselves,” Simon said.

  “You what?” Jack exclaimed, his senses fully returned. “Are you all right?”

  Elizabeth smiled. “We’re fine.”

  Jack nodded and smiled. He paced over to the balcony and ran a hand through his hair. “I was half asleep, and I heard something.”

  He shook his head, trying to get the contents of his memory to settle. “He was already inside…I didn’t even hear him come in.”

  Simon nodded. These were hardly amateurs.

  Abruptly, Jack hurried over to the table and picked up his jacket. He rifled through the pockets and closed his eyes. “Damn it.”

  Simon knew what he was going to say and steeled himself for the news.

  “The watch,” Jack bit out. “He got it.”

  Simon and Elizabeth shared a nervous glance, both thinking the same thing. If the intruders got his, they could have easily gotten theirs.

  Elizabeth pushed out a breath. “At least you’re okay.”

  Jack clenched his jaw and shook his head, ignoring her comforting words. “I’m sorry.”

  Simon wanted to be angry with him, but he knew their roles could easily have been reversed. Under the same circumstances, there was no guarantee Simon could have done any better to protect the watch than Jack had.

  Simon nodded, accepting Jack’s apology and accepting his own portion of blame for the situation. “I should have anticipated something like this.”

  “We should have,” Jack said.

  “Did he get the letter too?” Elizabeth asked.

  Jack looked surprised, like he’d briefly forgotten about that. He moved over to the end table by the bed and opened the drawer. “No,” he said, pulling out the letter. “Thank God for that anyway.”

  “The sooner we can find out what’s in that, the better,” Simon said. “I don’t like being one step behind.”

  A tentative knock on the door came. “Hello?”

  The door slowly opened and one of the hotel staff poked his head through the gap. His eyes went wide at the state of things. “Oh my goodness.”

  “Yes,” Simon said. “As you can see we’ve had a bit of a problem.”

  The man nodded, his eyes still wide and taking in the extent of the damage as he hesitantly entered the room. “Yes.”

  “I’d like to speak to the management about it,” Simon said. When the man remained fixated on the broken table, Simon added a firm, “Now.”

  ~ ~ ~

  After speaking with the management about the break-ins and receiving their assurance that not only would the locks to their rooms be upgraded, but security for the grounds would be as well, they’d met Whiteside for breakfast in the smaller, casual dining room. Simon tried to shed his frustration and anger over his inexcusable lapse in preparedness and focus on Whiteside and what they could learn about his mysterious papyrus.

  While Whiteside spoke excitedly about his collection back home in England, which was quite impressive, it was clear to Simon that the man was bothered by his daughter’s mood. Jack had told Simon and Elizabeth about the poor girl’s heartbreak.

  She’d stayed in their rooms last night and remained there this morning. And she hadn’t told him why she was upset, but it was easy to see that her hurt bothered him deeply.

  Simon did his best to keep Whiteside’s mind off his daughter and his sadness over Mason’s death. It wasn’t easy. Uncommonly for an Englishman, Whiteside’s emotions were readily expressed. Although, Simon was hard pressed to blame him under the circumstances.

  Elizabeth came to both their rescues and kept them entertained with outrageously preposterous stories Simon was fairly certain were the plots of one of the Indiana Jones movies and a few episodes of Dr. Who.

  As the meal came to a close, both Whiteside and Simon were both eager to head back upstairs and take a look at the papyrus. Only Elizabeth lingered as she made her way through an enormous omelette. For such a small, slim thing, she ate like a rugby player. If she ever were eating for two, she’d eat them right out of house and home.

  The thought caught him by surprise. Ever since their discussion about having children and Old Nan’s portentous prophecy, the idea of children wriggled its way into his mind with increasing frequency. He’d done his best to shove it away. Neither of them were quite ready to start a family just yet. The thought, however, had been planted and surfaced in the unlikeliest of moments.

  Elizabeth caught him staring at her. “Do I…?” she asked as she held her napkin near her face.

  Simon hadn’t even realized he’d been staring. “No,” he said, recovering. “Nearly finished?”

  Finally, she was, and the three of them made their way up to Whiteside’s suite.

  “It’s really quite remarkable,” Whiteside said as he retrieved the leather tube and carefully removed the ancient scroll onto a table. The lower half of the papyrus was ragged and torn. “Some fascinating details and a few inconsistencies that are delicious little mysteries.”

  He gently placed four stones at the corners to keep it flat. Simon stared down at it. While he recognized some of the symbols, he had no idea what any of it meant.

  Whiteside put on a pair of glasses and leaned over the table.

  “Hieroglyphic
s is a terribly clever and complex language. It uses phonetic glyphs, logograms, where the whole word is in the symbol, and something called derivatives. They’re sort of signposts that tell you what the word you’ve just read really means.”

  “That does sound complicated,” Elizabeth said, looking over Whiteside’s shoulder with a sinking expression.

  “You see, most of the symbols are phonetic, “ Whiteside said pointing to what looked like a leg. “This might represent a single sound. The ‘bah’ sound in B words. Barge, banana and so on. Sometimes they represent two or even three letters together. And of course, with no vowels to speak of…”

  Simon knew he’d need to direct Whiteside’s enthusiasm if they were ever going to find out what the darn thing said.

  “But you can read this?” he asked.

  Whiteside straightened and took off his glasses. His chest puffed out and he polished his glasses. “I can.”

  “Well, I’m dying here,” Elizabeth said. “What does it say?”

  Whiteside chuckled and put his glasses back on. His finger hovered just above the delicate papyrus as he translated. “Let’s see…Behold the gift from Ra, from Amun, from Aten,” he read. “Those are all variations of the sun god, unusual to see them all together like that…from eternity. Heka, the god of magic, appeared to the king, in the temple and bestowed upon him a piece of the sun.”

  Whiteside scratched his chin. “This part is a little more difficult, some of the…” he waved his hand over the writings, “well, I’m just not sure.”

  “Go on, Professor,” Elizabeth urged him. “It’s fascinating.”

  Pleased, Whiteside read on. “Heka, with white skin, I’m not sure what that means, gave the king…and this could be wheels or gears of gold, that moved and lived in his hand. Not sure quite what this word is, lever, device? Sounds odd, held the key to eternity.”

  Simon felt his mouth go dry. Gears of gold that moved in his hand. The watch. He glanced over at Elizabeth. Her wide-eyed expression mirrored what he felt.

  Whiteside continued, “The gift was a sign from the gods of his divinity above all others.”

  “Whose divinity?” Simon asked.

  Whiteside shook his head. “That’s the thing of it. The rest of it’s torn off there you can see.” He read the last line. “It says that the gift was given to the king, but the part that starts to identify which king is missing. Quite the mystery, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Simon managed, his mind racing with the possibilities. Dear God, was the watch in ancient Egypt? Like hell they were going there!

  “Have you seen any other references to these gears of gold?” Elizabeth asked. He marveled at how calm she appeared.

  Whiteside shook his head. “No, it’s most unusual in that respect.” He began to carefully re-roll the scroll. “I’m afraid it will all remain an unsolved puzzle until we find the missing half.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Bloody hell,” Simon grumbled as they went back to Jack’s room to bring him up to date.

  “It might not be so bad,” Elizabeth said.

  She knocked on Jack’s door.

  “I draw the line at Before Christ.”

  Elizabeth laughed and Jack opened the door.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Simon said as he pushed his way into the room.

  “You must have lit a hell of a fire under the manager,” Jack said, gesturing to the door as he closed it as best he could given its splintered frame. “They’ve been up twice already to see about that and the locks.”

  Simon grunted.

  “Simon,” Elizabeth said. “Just because the watch might have been in ancient Egypt doesn’t mean it still is. It—”

  “Hold the phone,” Jack interrupted. “The watch is in ancient Egypt? Building the pyramids kind of Egypt?”

  “Perhaps,” Simon said. “It might be, might have been.”

  “Well, that clears things right up.”

  Simon glared at him and then gestured to a chair and waited for Elizabeth to take a seat before joining her at the small table. They told Jack everything they’d learned from the meeting with Whiteside.

  “So,” Jack said. “If it is the watch, we still don’t have any idea exactly where it is.”

  “Or when,” Simon said.

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” Elizabeth chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. “If it was lost in the past. We can’t exactly go wandering around a thousand years of history.”

  “Several thousand,” Simon corrected.

  “But, all those centuries have one thing in common,” she continued.

  Simon waited, intrigued.

  “Today.”

  “I don’t follow,” Jack said, taking a seat on the end of the bed.

  “All this stuff, all the things buried in those ancient tombs are here today. Right now. In some museum or a collection. Those thousands of years of history all converge here, now.”

  “True,” Simon said, mulling it over. “Assuming the watch was buried with the king or buried somewhere at all and not destroyed.”

  “The key to eternity or whatever it was,” she said. “That sounds like the sort of thing I’d want to take with me.”

  It was logical. Despite that, it still got them no closer to knowing where the watch actually was. “Whiteside did say that all of the royal tombs that could be found have been found. Which is only partly true, of course, because we know Carter finds Tutankhamen’s tomb two years from now.”

  “But most of them have been found,” Elizabeth reasoned. “That means it’s most likely that the tomb with the watch has already been discovered.”

  “You’d think it would have stood out a little, don’t ya?” Jack asked. “Surely someone would have mentioned finding a modern watch in an ancient tomb.”

  Simon frowned at that. “Yes.”

  “We’ll just have to hope we can find the other half of the papyrus,” Elizabeth said. “That must have been what Mason was after.”

  Simon noticed Mason’s letter and a pad of paper on the table. He pulled it over and read what looked like gibberish. “Any luck with this?”

  “Not yet.”

  Simon sighed and pushed the pad away. “Well then, all we can do is look for the other half of that papyrus and hope it answers some of our questions.”

  “And hope,” Elizabeth said, “that no one else has found it first.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Why couldn’t Jack talk to Jouvet?” Simon said as held the door open for her and they entered the museum.

  Elizabeth knew this wasn’t easy for him and offered him a comforting smile which he did not return. Instead, his eyes sought out Henri so he could start the flow of unrestrained disdain for him as soon as possible.

  They enquired of one of the staff who told them that Monsieur Jouvet was in the “sale room,” which ended up being a cross between a kitschy museum shop with hieroglyphic print scarves and post-cards and a high-roller store with genuine artifacts for sale. If you wanted an ashtray with the pyramids on it or an original ushabti burial figure, this was the place. It was called the sale room, but it was actually a fairly large pavilion in the front corner of the museum. They found Henri inside arguing with a man over a pair of bracelets and an amulet. Elizabeth’s French was rusty, but she was pretty sure Henri called the man a thief or maybe a steering wheel.

  The man grunted and gathered up his belongings, snatching the amulet from Henri’s hands and stormed out.

  Henri’s shrug of indifference turned into a broad smile as he saw them. He strode across the room, hands held out, head cocked to the side as if to say, “Of course, you have come back to me.”

  He reached out and took hold of Elizabeth’s hand and kissed it before covering it with his other hand and smiling down at her. “Cherie. I hoped you would come.” His gaze shifted to Simon. “I had hoped you would come alone, but—”

  “Now, see here,” Simon started and Elizabeth knew she had
to intervene quickly.

  “We were hoping you could help us.”

  Henri’s eyebrow arched and he released her hand, clearly disappointed, but he was still a gentleman, albeit a debauched one. “How may I be of service to you?”

  “Arthur showed us his papyrus this morning,” Elizabeth said.

  Henri laughed. “Not that again.”

  “Yes,” Simon said through clenched teeth.

  Henri raised his hands palms up. “Do not mistake me. It is an interesting piece, I suppose, but it’s value is…minor.”

  “It’s more the mystery for us,” Elizabeth said.

  Henri smiled. “Oh, you like the intrigue?”

  “Something like that. It’s interesting, I think,” Elizabeth said, “And, well, George Mason thought so too and it seems like a decent way to honor his memory, don’t you think? Solve that last riddle for him. And for Arthur.”

  Henri nodded thoughtfully. “Arthur is a good man. I was not close to your friend, George, but I appreciate your sentiment.”

  Elizabeth beamed. “Then you’ll help us.”

  He shrugged. “I will do what I can. I have told Arthur before that it is unlikely we will find the other half. The provenance of the piece he has is…” Henri puffed out a breath.

  “Oh.” Elizabeth had hoped for more than that.

  Henri frowned and held up a finger. “I have asked one of the museum liaisons if he has any idea. Let me see what he has come up with, no?”

  With that he disappeared into one of the back rooms.

  “I had hoped you would come alone,” Simon said in a fairly hilarious and mocking impression of Henri.

  Elizabeth barely had time to stifle her giggle as Henri returned with a young man in tow. He was handsome and well-dressed in a smart dark gray suit.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Cross,” Henri said, “This is Ahmed Kassem. He is an attaché with the department of antiquities.”

  The young man’s charming smile fizzled. He forced it back on, but could only numbly shake Simon’s hand. His face paled as he inclined his head toward Elizabeth. Looking suddenly unwell, he kept his eyes down. Or tried to. He couldn’t help but sneak a peak at Elizabeth again and when he did, she saw his eyes clearly, and slowly, it dawned on her just why he was acting so strangely.