by Paul Sussman
'Are you in here, little monster?' he cried, enjoying himself. 'Hiding in my secret office? Oh she's a clever one, she is!'
He clattered around for a while longer and then hobbled out again, stopping directly in front of the baskets. He could hear the girl's muffled giggles.
'Now, let me think. She wasn't in the cupboard, and she wasn't in the office, and I'm sure she wouldn't be silly enough to hide in the wooden chest with the crocodile. Which, if I'm right, only leaves one place for her to be. And that's right here, behind these baskets. Let's see if old Iqbar's right.'
He bent down. As he did so the bells on the door jangled and someone entered the shop. He straightened and turned. The girl remained where she was, hidden.
'We were just closing,' said Iqbar, shuffling forward towards the two men who were standing in the doorway. 'But if you want a look around, please take your time.'
The men ignored him. They were young, in their early twenties, bearded; each was dressed in a grubby black robe with a black 'imma wound low around his forehead. They gazed around the shop for a moment, sizing it up, and then one of them stepped outside and signalled. He came back in, followed a moment later by another man, white-skinned.
'Can I help you?' asked Iqbar. 'Are you looking for anything in particular?'
The newcomer was a giant, tall and broad, way too big for his cheap linen suit, which strained under the pressure of his massive thighs and shoulders. He held a half-smoked cigar in one hand and a briefcase in the other, the letters CD stamped into the battered brown leather. The left side of his face, from the temple down almost to the mouth, was splashed with a livid purple birthmark. Iqbar felt a shiver of fear.
'Can I help you?' he repeated.
The huge man closed the shop door gently, turning the key in the lock and nodding at his two companions, who moved towards Iqbar, faces expressionless. The shopkeeper backed away until he came up against the shop counter.
'What do you want?' he said, beginning to cough. 'Please, what do you want?'
The huge man walked up to Iqbar and stood in front of him, their bellies almost touching. He gazed at him for a moment, smiling, and then, lifting his cigar, stubbed it out on the old man's eye-patch. Iqbar screamed, flailing his hands in front of his face.
'Please, please!' He coughed. 'I have no money. I am poor!'
'You have something that belongs to us,' said the giant. 'An antiquity. It came to you yesterday. Where is it?'
Iqbar was doubled up, arms held over his head.
'I don't know what you're talking about,' he wheezed. 'I have no antiquities. It is illegal to deal in them!'
The giant signalled to his two henchmen and they grabbed the old man's elbows, forcing him upright. He stood with his head turned to one side, cheek jammed against his shoulder, as though trying to hide. One of the men's headscarves had slid upwards slightly, revealing a thick scar running up the centre of his forehead, smooth and pale as though a leech was clinging to the skin. The sight of it seemed to terrify the old man.
'Please!' he wailed. 'Please!'
'Where is it?' repeated his inquisitor.
'Please, please!'
The giant muttered something to himself and, placing his briefcase on the floor, took out what looked like a small grouting trowel. The diamond-shaped blade was dull, save around its edges, where the metal shone as though it had been sharpened.
'Do you know what this is?' he asked.
The old man was staring at the blade, mute with terror.
'It is an archaeologist's trowel,' grinned the giant. 'We use it to scrape back soil, carefully, like this . . .' He demonstrated, passing the trowel back and forth in front of the old man's terrified face. 'It has other applications as well, though.'
With a swift movement – surprisingly swift for a man of his size – he swept the trowel upwards, slashing its edge across Iqbar's cheek. The skin flapped open like a mouth and blood streamed down over the old man's robe. Iqbar screamed and struggled pathetically.
'Now,' said the giant, 'I ask you again. Where is the piece?'
Behind the baskets the girl prayed for al-Ghul the genie to come out of his lamp and help the old man.
It was past midnight when the plane touched down.
'Welcome to Cairo,' said the air hostess as Tara stepped out of the cabin into a blast of hot air and diesel fumes. 'Enjoy your stay.'
The flight had passed off uneventfully. She had been sat in an aisle seat beside a red-faced couple, who spent the first half of the journey warning her of the stomach problems she was bound to suffer as a result of Egyptian cooking and the second half sleeping. She'd drunk a couple of vodkas, watched half the in-flight movie, bought a bottle of Scotch from the duty-free trolley and then eased her seat back and gazed up at the ceiling. She had wanted to smoke, as she always did when she flew, but had ordered a regular supply of ice cubes instead.
Her father had worked in Egypt since she was a child. He was, according to those who knew about such things, one of the most celebrated Egyptologists of his time. 'He's right up there with Petrie and Carter,' one of his colleagues had once told her. 'If there's anyone alive who's done more to advance our understanding of the Old Kingdom I've yet to meet them.'
She ought to have been proud. As it was, her father's academic achievements had always left her cold. All she knew, and all she ever had known from earliest childhood, was that he seemed more content in a world that had been dead for 4,000 years than he did with his own family. Even her name, Tara, had been chosen because it incorporated the name of the Egyptian sun god Ra.
Each year he would travel out to Egypt to excavate. To start with he'd gone only for a month or so, leaving each November and returning just before Christmas. As she had grown older, however, and her parents' marriage had slowly broken apart, he'd spent longer and longer there.
'Your father's seeing another woman,' her mother had once told her. 'Her name's Egypt.' It had been meant as a joke, although neither of them had laughed.
Then the cancer had come and her mother had begun her rapid decline. It was during this period that, for the first time, Tara had really come to hate her father. As the disease chewed away at her mother's lungs and liver and her father had kept his distance, unable to offer even a few salutary words of support, she had felt an all-consuming fury towards this man who seemed to value tombs and old potsherds more than his own flesh and blood. A few days before her mother's death she had called him in Egypt and screamed obscenities down the phone at him, surprising even herself with the violence of her rage. At the funeral they had barely acknowledged each other, and afterwards he had moved to Egypt full time, teaching eight months of the year at Cairo's American University and excavating for the other four. They didn't speak for almost two years.
And yet, for all that, there were good memories of him too. Once, for instance, as a young child, she had been crying about something and to stop her tears he had performed a magic trick whereby he had appeared to remove his thumb from the rest of his hand. She had laughed uproariously and urged him to do it again and again, staring in wonder as he had repeatedly separated his thumb from his palm, groaning in mock agony as he waved the severed digit around in the air.
On the morning of her fifteenth birthday – and this was her favourite memory – she had woken to find an envelope addressed to her sitting on her mantelpiece. Opening it, she had found the first clue in a treasure trail that had taken her all round the house and garden before eventually leading her up into the attic, where she had discovered an exquisite gold necklace concealed at the bottom of an old trunk. Each clue had taken the form of a rhyming verse and been written on parchment, with drawings and symbols to add to the air of mystery. Her father must have spent hours arranging it all. Later he had taken her mother and her out to dinner, regaling them both with wonderful tales of excavations and discoveries and eccentric academics.
'You look beautiful, Tara,' he had told her, leaning forward to adjust the new gold necklac
e, which she had worn specially. 'The most beautiful girl in the world. I am very, very proud of you.'
It was moments like these – few and far between as they were – that somehow balanced out her father's coldness and self-absorption, and bound her to him. It was why she had phoned him two years after her mother's funeral, asking for a reconciliation after their long silence. And it was, in a sense, why she was travelling to Egypt now. Because she knew that deep down, in his own way and despite his innumerable faults, he was a good man and he loved her, and needed her too, just as she needed him. And of course there was always the hope – just as there was every time she saw him – that maybe this time things would be different. Maybe they wouldn't bicker and shout at each other and sulk, but would be happy and relaxed in each other's company, like a normal father and daughter. Maybe this time they could make things work.
Some chance, she had thought to herself as they'd begun their descent. You'll be pleased to see him for about five minutes, and then you'll start arguing again.
'I suppose you know,' said her neighbour jovially, 'that more planes crash during landing than at any other time during the flight.'
Tara had ordered more ice cubes from the stewardess.
She emerged finally into the airport arrivals hall almost an hour after they'd touched down. There had been an interminable wait at passport control, followed by a further delay at the baggage carousel, where security guards were carrying out random luggage checks.
'Sayf al-Tha'r,' a fellow passenger had said to her, shaking his head. 'What problems he causes. That one man can bring the country to a standstill!'
Before she could ask what he meant he had spotted his luggage and, signalling a porter to collect it for him, marched off into the crowd. Her own bag had come round a few minutes later and, everything else for the moment forgotten, she had hefted it onto her shoulder and set off through customs, heart thudding with anticipation.
Since her father had first said he'd come out to meet her she had imagined herself emerging into the arrivals hall to find him standing there waiting, the two of them yelping with joy and rushing towards each other, arms open. As it was, the only person who greeted her was a taxi driver touting for work. She peered along the row of faces lining the arrivals barrier, but her father's wasn't among them.
The terminal, even at that hour, was busy. Families greeted and took leave of each other noisily, children played among the plastic chairs, package tourists crowded around harassed-looking reps. Black-uniformed policemen were very much in evidence, guns held across their chests.
She waited at the barrier for a while and then began wandering around the hall. She went outside, where a tour rep mistook her for one of his party and tried to hustle her onto a coach, then came back in again, walking around for a while longer before changing some money, buying a coffee and sitting down in a seat that afforded a good view both of the entrance and the barrier.
After an hour she called her father from a pay-phone, but there was no reply either from his dig house or the flat he kept in central Cairo. She wondered if his taxi had been held up in traffic – she presumed he would have come in a taxi, he'd never learnt to drive – or if he had fallen ill or, and with her father it was always a possibility, simply forgotten that he was supposed to be meeting her.
But no, he wouldn't have forgotten. Not this time. Not after sounding so pleased that she was coming. He was late. That was all. Just late. She got herself another coffee, settled back in the chair and opened a book.
Damn, she thought. I didn't get his Times.
5
LUXOR, THE NEXT MORNING
Inspector Yusuf Ezz el-Din Khalifa rose before dawn and, having showered and dressed, went into the living room to say his morning prayers. He felt tired and irritable, as he did every morning. The ritual of worship, the standing and kneeling and bowing and reciting, cleared his head. By the time he was finished he felt fresh and calm and strong. As he did every morning.
'Wa lillah al-shukr',' he said to himself, moving into the kitchen to make coffee. 'Thanks be to God. His power is great.'
He put on some water to boil, lit a cigarette and looked out at a woman hanging washing on the roof opposite, which was just below the level of his kitchen window, about three metres away. He'd often wondered whether it would be possible to jump from his building to hers, across the narrow alley that divided them. When he was younger he would probably have tried it. Ali, his brother, would certainly have been up for the challenge. Ali, however, was dead and he himself now had responsibilities. It was a twenty-metre drop to the ground and with a wife and three young children he couldn't afford to take such risks. Or perhaps that was just an excuse. After all, he'd never liked heights.
He added coffee and sugar to the boiling water, allowing it to bubble up to the rim of the flask before pouring it into a glass and going through into the front hall, a large gloomy space off which all the rooms in the flat opened. For six months now he'd been building a fountain here and the floor was an assault course of cement bags and tiles and lengths of plastic tubing. It was just a small fountain and the work should have taken only a couple of weeks. Something always came up to distract him, however, so that the weeks had dragged into months and it was still only half finished. There wasn't really room for it and his wife had complained bitterly about the mess and expense, but he'd always wanted a fountain and, anyway, it would bring a bit of colour to their otherwise drab flat. He squatted and poked at a pile of sand with his finger, thinking perhaps he'd have enough time to set a few tiles before going into the office. The phone rang.
'It's for you,' said his wife sleepily as he entered the bedroom, 'Mohammed Sariya.'
She handed him the receiver and slipped out of bed, lifting the baby from its cot and disappearing into the kitchen. His son came in and leaped onto the bed beside him, bouncing up and down.
'Bass, Ali!' he said, pushing the boy away. 'Stop it! Hello, Mohammed. It's early. What's going on?'
The voice of his deputy echoed at the other end of the line. Khalifa held the phone with his right hand while using his left to fend off his son.
'Where?' he asked.
His deputy answered. He sounded excited.
'You're there now?'
Khalifa's son was laughing and trying to hit him with a pillow.
'I told you to stop it, Ali. Sorry, what was that? OK, stay where you are. And don't let anyone go near it. I'll be right over.'
He replaced the receiver and, seizing his son, turned him upside down, kissing each of his bare feet in turn. The boy roared with laughter.
'Swing me, Dad,' he cried. 'Swing me round.'
'I'll swing you round and out of the window,' said Khalifa. 'And then maybe you'll fly away and let me have a bit of peace.'
He dropped the boy on the bed and went through into the kitchen where Zenab, his wife, was making more coffee, the baby suckling at her breast. From the living room came the sound of his daughter singing.
'How is he this morning?' he asked, kissing his wife and tickling the baby's toes.
'Hungry,' she smiled. 'Like his father always is. Do you want breakfast?'
'No time,' said Khalifa. 'I've got to go over to the west bank.'
'Without breakfast?'
'Something's come up.'
'What?'
He looked at the woman hanging washing on the roof opposite. 'A body,' he said. 'I probably won't be home for lunch.'
He crossed the Nile on one of the brightly painted motor launches that plied back and forth between the two shores. Normally he would have taken the ferry, but he was in a hurry and so paid the extra and got a boat to himself. Just as they were pulling off an old man came hurrying up, a wooden box clutched under one arm. He grasped the rail of the boat and clambered aboard.
