The Lost Army Of Cambyses

by Paul Sussman

  'You live out here now?'

  He nodded. 'In Luxor. I'm in Cairo just for a few days. Business.'

  'I didn't know you were still in touch with Dad.'

  'I'm not,' he said. 'We haven't spoken since—' He broke off, poured himself another glass. 'I just thought it would be nice to see him. I don't know why. Old times' sake and all that. I doubt he would have responded. He hated me for what I did.'

  'That makes two of us.'

  'Yes,' he said, 'I guess it does.'

  They finished the bottle of whisky, catching up on each other's news, skating across the surface of things, not going too deep. Outside the noise in the street grew, peaked and slowly died away again as the shops began to shut up for the night and the crowds to dissipate.

  'You didn't even write to me,' she said, cradling her glass. It was late now and her mind was thick with drink and exhaustion. The street outside was empty and silent, wisps of paper blowing down it as if the city's flesh were flaking away.

  'Would you have wanted me to?'

  She thought and then shook her head. 'No.'

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed. Daniel was on a dusty sofa against the far wall.

  'You fucked my life up,' she said.

  He looked up at her and their eyes met, briefly, before she threw back her head and finished her drink.

  'Anyway, it's in the past. Finished.'

  Even as she said it, though, she knew that it wasn't. That there was still something to come. Some deeper resolution.

  Outside, beyond the great stone gateway through which they'd walked earlier, the dusty black Mercedes sat silently against the kerb, waiting.

  15

  LUXOR

  'And you know nothing about a new find?' asked Khalifa wearily, stubbing out his cigarette in an empty coffee glass.

  The man in front of him shook his head.

  'A tomb? A cache? Anything out of the ordinary?'

  Again a shake of the head.

  'Come on, Omar. If there's something out there we'll find it eventually, so you might as well tell us.'

  The man shrugged and blew his nose on the sleeve of his tunic.

  'I know nothing,' he said. 'Nothing at all. You're wasting your time with me.'

  It was eight in the morning and Khalifa had been up all night. His eyes ached, his mouth was dry and his head swimming. For over seventeen hours, with only brief breaks for prayers and food, he and Sariya had been interviewing every person in Luxor known to have connections with the antiquities trade, hoping for a lead in the Abu Nayar case. All yesterday afternoon, all through the night and all morning a steady stream of known dealers had passed through the police station on Sharia el-Karnak, all giving precisely the same answers to his questions: no, they knew nothing about any new discoveries; no, they knew nothing about any new antiquities coming onto the market; and yes, if they could think of anything else, they would get in touch. It was like being made to listen to the same tape over and over again.

  Khalifa lit another cigarette. He didn't really want it, he just needed something to keep him awake.

  'How is it, do you think, that someone like Abu Nayar could afford a new television set and fridge for his mother?' he asked.

  'How the hell should I know?' grunted Omar, a small, wiry man with close-cropped hair and a bulbous nose. 'I barely knew him.'

  'He found something, didn't he?'

  'If you say so.'

  'He found something, got killed because of it and you know what it was.'

  'I don't know anything.'

  'You're an Abd el-Farouk, Omar! Nothing happens in Luxor without your family knowing about it.'

  'Well, in this case we don't. How many times do I have to tell you that? I don't know anything. Nothing. Nothing.'

  Khalifa stood and walked over to the window, puffing on his cigarette. He knew he was wasting his time. Omar wasn't going to tell him anything and that was the end of it. He could ask questions till he was blue in the face and it wouldn't do any good. He sighed deeply.

  'OK, Omar,' he said without turning. 'You can go. Let me know if you think of anything else.'

  'Of course,' said Omar, making swiftly for the door. 'I'll call you straight away.'

  He slipped out, leaving Khalifa and his deputy alone.

  'How many left?' he asked.

  'That's it,' replied Sariya, hunching forward and rubbing his eyes. 'We've done them all. There's no one else.'

  Khalifa collapsed into a chair and lit another cigarette, not noticing that he'd left one burning in an ashtray on the windowsill.

  Maybe he'd got it wrong. Perhaps Nayar's death had nothing to do with antiquities after all. From what he'd heard there were plenty of other reasons why someone might want him dead. He didn't have a shred of evidence to connect it with antiquities. Not a single shred.

  And yet he felt – he couldn't properly explain why – he just sensed, deep down, that Nayar's death was tied up with the trade in ancient artefacts, in the same way some archaeologists can feel deep down that they're close to an important find. It was a sixth sense, an instinct. As soon as he had seen the man's body with its scarab tattoo he had known: this is going to be a case where the present can only be explained by the past.

  And there were hints. Enough, at least, to stop his line of enquiry looking totally pointless. Nayar had definitely been involved in the antiquities trade. He had definitely come into money recently – more money, certainly, than could be explained by the odd jobs he did to support his family. His wife, when he had questioned her briefly the previous afternoon, had denied all knowledge of her husband possessing any artefacts, which wasn't surprising, except that she had done so before he himself had mentioned them, as though it was a question for which she had been preparing. And then there had been the reaction of the dealers they'd interviewed.

  'Fear,' he said, blowing a smoke ring towards the ceiling and watching as it rose, expanded and then slowly dissipated.

  'What?'

  'They're frightened, Mohammed. The dealers. All of them. Terrified.'

  'I'm not surprised. They could get five years for handling stolen antiquities.'

  Khalifa blew another ring. 'It's not us they're frightened of. It's something else. Or someone.'

  Sariya narrowed his eyes. 'I don't understand.'

  'Someone's got to them, Mohammed. They were trying to hide it, but they were petrified. You could see it when we showed them the pictures of Nayar. They went white, as if they could see the same thing happening to themselves. Every antiquities dealer in Luxor is crapping his pants. I've never seen anything like it.'

  'You think they know who killed him?'

  'They suspect, certainly. But they're not going to talk. The fact is they're a damned sight more scared of the people who cut up Nayar than they are of us.'

  Sariya yawned. His mouth, Khalifa noticed, seemed to have more fillings in it than teeth.

  'So who do you reckon we're dealing with?' asked the sergeant. 'Local mob? Guys from Cairo? Fundamentalists ?'

  Khalifa shrugged. 'Could be any of those or none. One thing's for sure, though: this is big.'

  'You really think he might have found a new tomb?'

  'Possibly. Or maybe someone else found one and Nayar got wind of it. Or maybe it's just a few objects. But it's something valuable. Something that was worth killing him for.'

  He flicked his cigarette through the window. Sariya yawned again.

  'Sorry, sir,' he said. 'I haven't been getting much sleep lately, what with the new baby.'

  'Of course,' smiled Khalifa. 'I'd forgotten. How many is that now?'

  'Five.'

  Khalifa shook his head. 'I don't know where you get the energy. Three almost killed me.'

  'You should eat more chick peas,' said Sariya. 'It, you know, gives you staying power.'

  The earnestness with which his deputy offered this advice amused Khalifa and he started to chuckle. For a moment Sariya looked offended. Then he too started laug
hing.

  'Go home, Mohammed,' said Khalifa. 'Eat some chick peas, get some sleep, relax. Then you can go over to the west bank and talk to Nayar's wife and family. See what you can dig up.'

  Sariya stood and removed his jacket from the back of his chair. He turned towards the door, but then turned back again. 'Sir?'

  'Hmm?'

  He was fiddling with the sleeve of his shirt, not looking at Khalifa.

  'Do you believe in curses?'

  'Curses?'

  'Yes. Ancient curses. Like, you know, the curse of Tutankhamun.'

  Khalifa smiled. 'What, that those who disturb the sleep of the dead will meet a terrible end?'

  'Something like that.'

  'You think that's what we might be dealing with here? A curse?'

  His deputy shrugged non-committally.

  'No, Mohammed, I don't believe in them. It's all a load of silly superstition if you ask me.' He opened his cigarette pack but, finding it empty, scrunched it up into a ball and threw it into the corner of the room. 'I do believe in evil, though. Something dark that grabs hold of a man's mind and heart and turns him into a monster. I've seen it. And it's evil that we're up against here. Pure evil.'

  He leaned forward and began massaging his eyes with his thumbs.

  'Allah guide us,' he muttered. 'Allah give us strength.'

  Later, after eating a couple of boiled eggs and some cheese for his breakfast, Khalifa crossed the river and hopped onto a service taxi, staying with it as far as Dra Abu el-Naga, where he got off, paid the twenty-five piastre fare and began walking up the road towards the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri.

  The temple had always been one of his favourite monuments. A breathtaking complex of halls and terraces and colonnades, it was cut into the living rock at the base of a hundred-metre cliff face. Every time he saw it he was staggered by its audacity. It was one of the wonders of Luxor. Of the whole of Egypt. Of the world.

  A tarnished wonder, though. In 1997 sixty-two people, tourists mostly, had been massacred there by fundamentalists. Khalifa had been interviewing someone in a nearby village at the time and had been among the first policemen on the scene. For months afterwards he had woken in the night, sweat-covered, hearing again the squelch of his feet on the blood-covered floors. Now, whenever he saw the temple, his appreciation was marred by a shiver of nausea.

  He walked on until he came to a point where a row of dusty souvenir shops sprang up on the right-hand side of the road. Their owners stood in front of them, calling out to passing tourists, urging them to come and inspect their postcards and jewellery and sunhats and alabaster carvings, each insisting that his particular wares were by far the cheapest and best in Egypt. One bustled up to Khalifa brandishing a T-shirt with a garish hieroglyph motif on the front, but the detective waved him away and, turning off to the right, crossed a tarmacked car park and came to a halt in front of a mobile lavatory.

  'Suleiman!' he called. 'Hey, Suleiman, are you there?'

  A small man in a pale green djellaba emerged, limping slightly. A long scar ran diagonally across his forehead, starting beside his left eye and disappearing up beneath his hairline.

  'Inspector Khalifa, is that you?'

  'Salaam Alekum. How are you, my friend?'

  'Kwayyis, hamdu-lillah,' smiled the man. 'Well, thanks be to Allah. Will you have tea?'

  'Thank you.'

  'Sit, sit!'

  The man waved Khalifa to a bench in the shade of a nearby building and set about boiling a kettle behind the trailer. When it was ready he poured out two glasses and carried them across, picking his way carefully over the uneven ground as though fearful of tripping. He handed one glass to Khalifa and sat, setting his own glass down on the bench beside him. Khalifa took the man's hand and pressed a plastic bag into it.

  'Some cigarettes.'

  Suleiman fumbled in the bag and removed a carton of Cleopatras.

  'You shouldn't have, Inspector. It's me who owes you.'

  'You don't owe me anything.'

  'Apart from my life.'

  Four years ago Suleiman al-Rashid had been working as a guard at the temple. When the fundamentalists came, he had been shot in the head trying to shield a group of Swiss women and children. In the aftermath of the attack everyone assumed he was dead, until Khalifa found a faint pulse and called the medics over to help him. It had been touch and go for several weeks, but eventually he had pulled through. His injuries had left him blind, however, and he had been unable to resume his job as a guard. Now he ran one of the site toilets.

  'How's the head?' Khalifa asked.

  Suleiman shrugged and rubbed his temples. 'So-so,' he said. 'Today it aches a bit.'

  'You see the doctor regularly?'

  'Doctors! Pah! Scum!'

  'If it's hurting you should get it checked.'

  'I'm fine as I am, thank you.'

  Suleiman was a proud man and Khalifa knew better than to press the point. Instead he asked him about his wife and family, and teased him because his team, el-Ahli, had lost to his, Khalifa's, team, el-Zamalek, in the recent Cairo derby. Then they fell silent. Khalifa sat watching a group of tourists descending from their coach.

  'I need your help, Suleiman,' he said eventually.

  'Of course, Inspector. Anything. You know you only have to ask.'

  Khalifa sipped his tea. He felt bad about involving his friend, playing on his sense of obligation. He'd been through enough already. But he needed information. And Suleiman always kept his ear to the ground.

  'I think something has been found,' he said. 'A tomb, or a cache. Something important. No-one's talking, which isn't surprising, except it's not just greed that's keeping them quiet, it's fear. People are terrified.' He finished his tea. 'Have you heard anything?'

  His companion said nothing, just continued rubbing his temples.

  'I don't like asking you, believe me. But one man's been killed already and I don't want anyone else to be.'

  Still Suleiman said nothing.

  'Is there a new tomb?' asked Khalifa. 'Not much goes on around here that you don't hear about.'

  Suleiman adjusted his position and, picking up his tea, began sipping it slowly.

  'I've heard things,' he said, staring straight ahead of him. 'Nothing definite. Like you say, people are frightened.'

  He turned his head suddenly, looking towards the hills, running his sightless eyes across the shimmering walls of yellow-brown rock.

  'You think we're being watched?' asked Khalifa, following the direction of Suleiman's gaze.

  'I know we're being watched, Inspector. They're everywhere. Like ants.'

  'Who's everywhere? What do you know, Suleiman? What have you heard?'

  Suleiman continued to sip his tea. His eyes, Khalifa noticed, had started to water.