by Paul Sussman
'That's enough,' said Daniel. 'You've got your baksheesh. Go. Imshi!'
'But I show you many special things. Many secrets.'
'Imshi!'
The man stopped dancing and, with a shrug, moved back towards the gully, fingering his money and muttering to himself.
'Money, go, money, go, money, go.'
He dropped into the narrow defile and lowered himself downwards. When all that was left was his head, however, he turned suddenly, looking Tara straight in the eyes.
'It's not what you think it is,' he said simply, his voice suddenly calm and lucid. 'The ghosts tell me to tell you. It's not what you think it is. There are many lies.'
And then he dropped out of sight and all that could be heard was the hiss of stones as he scrambled back down the mountainside.
'What did he mean?' she asked, inexplicably chilled by the man's words. 'It's not what we think it is?'
'God knows,' said Daniel. He jumped from the rock and walked to the front of the ridge, gazing down at the Valley of the Kings below. 'He's obviously mad, poor bastard. He looked like he hadn't eaten for a month.'
They stood in silence, Daniel looking down at the valley, Tara looking down at Daniel.
'You had something to tell me,' she said eventually.
'Hmm?' He looked back at her. 'Oh, it doesn't matter. Come and look. It's the best time of day to see the valley, when it's empty. Like it must have been in ancient times.'
She jumped down and came to his side, their fingers brushing lightly. Below them the wadi was silent and deserted, its tributary valleys branching off it like the fingers of a splayed hand.
'Where's Tutankhamun's tomb?' she asked.
He pointed. 'You see where the valley bottlenecks, in the middle. And then just to the left there's the outline of a doorway in the hillside. That's KV9, the tomb of Ramesses VI. Tutankhamun's just beyond that.'
'And your site?'
There was a slight beat before he answered.
'You can't see it from here. It's further up the valley, towards Tuthmosis III.'
'I remember coming here with Mum and Dad once,' said Tara, 'when I was a kid. Dad was lecturing on a Nile cruise and we got to go along as well. He was so excited taking us into all the tombs, but I just wanted to get back to the boat and go in the pool. I think that's when he realized I wasn't going to be the daughter he wanted.'
Daniel looked across at her. He moved his shoulder slightly, as though he was going to take her hand. He didn't, however, and after a moment he looked away again, finishing his cheroot and flicking it aside.
'Your father loved you very much, Tara,' he said quietly.
She shrugged. 'Whatever.'
'Believe me, Tara, he loved you. Some people just find it hard to say these things. To say what they feel.'
And then, suddenly, he was holding her hand. Neither of them said anything, neither of them moved, as though the contact between them was so fragile it would shatter at the least twitch. The sun was below the horizon now and the light was starting to drain away. A couple of stars were out and on the plain beneath house lights were starting to come on. Opposite, on a distant saddle of rock, they could just make out a couple of soldiers moving around outside a hut, one of the string of guard posts set up across the hills after the Deir el-Bahri massacre. The wind was gusting harder.
'Is there anyone else?' she asked quietly.
'Lovers?' He smiled. 'Not really, no. There have been. But no-one . . .' He searched for the right adjective. '. . . meaningful. You?'
'The same.'
She paused and then asked, 'Who's Mary?' She hadn't wanted to, but couldn't stop herself.
'Mary?'
'Last night, when you were asleep, you kept saying her name.'
'I don't know a Mary.'
He seemed genuinely baffled.
'You said it over and over again. Mary something. Mary. Mary.'
He thought for a moment, repeating the name to himself, and then suddenly rocked back on his heels and burst out laughing.
'Mary! Oh that's wonderful! Were you jealous, Tara? Tell me you were jealous!'
'No,' she said defensively. 'Just interested.'
'For God's sake! Mery. That's what I was saying. Not Mary. Mery. Mery-amun. Beloved of Amun. Nothing for you to worry about, I promise. She's a man, after all, and one who's been dead for two and a half thousand years.'
He was still laughing, and now Tara joined in as well, embarrassed by her mistake but pleased too. His hand tightened on hers, hers on his, and then, before either of them really knew what was happening, he had swung her round and kissed her.
For a second she resisted, a voice in her head warning that he was dangerous, would hurt her again. It was no more than a second, however, and then she opened her mouth, threw her arms around him and pulled him close, needing him, despite what he had done to her, or perhaps because of it. His hands caressed her neck and back, her breasts pushed urgently against his chest. She had forgotten how good he felt.
She didn't know how long they stayed like that, but when, finally, they pulled apart it was to discover that the world around them had suddenly darkened. They sat down on a rock and he wrapped her in his arms against the wind. Away to their right a chain of lights snaked up the mountainside, marking the concrete path up which they had climbed earlier. More lights were twinkling on the plain beneath, white for the most part, but with the occasional green glint marking the minaret of a mosque.
'So who is this Mary?' she asked, nestling her face into his shoulder.
He smiled. 'A son of the Pharaoh Amasis. Prince Mery-amun Sehetep-ib-re. Lived about 550 BC. I have this pet theory that he was buried in the Valley of the Kings. It's what I've been doing here for the last five years. Trying to find him. I'm convinced his tomb's still intact.'
He pulled another cheroot from his shirt pocket, leaning back behind her to shelter his lighter from the wind.
'So when do you start digging again?' she asked.
He hunched forward and dragged on the cheroot, exhaling slowly, allowing the wind to catch the smoke and pull it away from him like a tattered ribbon. There was a long pause. When he spoke again his voice had changed. Suddenly there was an edge of bitterness to it, of resentment.
'I don't start digging again.'
'How do you mean?'
'Just what I say. I don't start digging again.'
'You're excavating somewhere else?'
'Maybe. Not in Egypt, though.'
He stared down at his feet, lips taut and pale. His fist, she noticed, had clenched into a ball, as though he was about to punch someone. She wriggled from his arms and swivelled so she was sitting astride the rock, looking at the side of his face.
'I don't understand, Daniel. "What do you mean you're not digging in Egypt again?'
'I mean, Tara,' he said, 'that to all intents and purposes my career as an Egyptian archaeologist is finished. It's over. Caput. Fucked.'
The bitterness in his tone was unmistakable now. He glanced up at her, eyes black as if all the light and life had been sucked out of them, then dropped his head.
'They took away my concession,' he muttered. 'The bastards took away my concession. And given the circumstances it's unlikely I'll ever get it back.'
'Oh my God!' Tara had grown up surrounded by archaeologists and knew what a crushing blow this would be for him. She took his hand and stroked it protectively. 'What happened? Tell me.'
He pulled on the cheroot again and then threw it aside, his face twisting into a grimace as though there was something distasteful in his mouth.
'Not much to tell, really. We'd found traces of what looked like an ancient retaining wall on our site and I wanted to dig along it and find out where it went. Unfortunately it ran out of our concession and into the one beside ours, which belonged to a Polish team. It's a complete no-no trespassing on someone else's concession, but they weren't due on site for another couple of weeks so I thought, fuck it, and dug on. I should have c
ontacted them, or spoken to the Egyptians about it, but . . . well, I couldn't wait. I had to know where the wall went, you see. I couldn't stop myself.'
The fingers of his free hand had started drumming agitatedly on the surface of the rock.
'When the Poles arrived there was an almighty fucking row. The head of their mission said I was irresponsible, had no respect for the past. I've devoted my whole life to Egypt, Tara. No-one has more respect for its history than me. When he said those things I just lost control. Attacked him. Literally. They had to pull me off him. I thought I was going to kill him. Of course, he reported me. The Polish embassy made a formal complaint, took it right to the top – result: my concession was revoked. Not only that, I'm banned from working with any other mission anywhere in Egypt. "Unbalanced." That's what they called me. "A danger to himself and his colleagues." "A liability." Fucking idiots. I'd like to shoot all of them. Every bloody one.'
He was speaking fast now, his breath coming in short angry bursts, his shoulders trembling. He shook his hand free of hers and, standing, walked forward to the front of the ridge, staring down at the valley below. Despite the darkness its pale floor was still clear, winding away northwards like a river of milk. Gradually his breathing calmed and his shoulders slumped.
'I'm sorry,' he mumbled. 'I just get so . . .'
He rubbed his temples and sighed deeply. There was a long silence, broken only by the popping of the wind.
'That was eighteen months ago,' he said eventually. 'I've stayed on doing tours, selling a few watercolours, hoping maybe things would change, but they haven't. And they won't. Somewhere down there there's an intact tomb waiting to be discovered and I'm not allowed to look for it. I'll never be allowed to look for it. Have you any idea how hard that is? How frustrating? Jesus.'
He hung his head.
'I don't know what to say,' she said helplessly. 'I'm so sorry. I know how much this place means to you.'
He shrugged. 'The same thing happened to Carter, you know. In 1905. He was sacked from the Antiquities Service for getting into a fight with some French tourists up at Saqqara. Ended up working as a tourist guide and painter. So in a sense my dream of being the new Carter has come true. Albeit not quite in the way I'd envisaged.'
The bitterness was gone now, and the anger, replaced by a weary despair. Tara stood and came up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. He allowed her to hold him.
'And do you know what the real joke is?' he whispered. 'The ancient retaining wall turned out to have been built by Belzoni in the nineteenth century. My entire world goes down the pan for a wall built less than two hundred years ago by another fucking archaeologist!' He laughed, although it was a cold, hollow sound, devoid of humour.
'I'm just so sorry,' she repeated.
'Are you?' He turned so they were facing each other. 'I would have thought you'd be glad. Poetic justice and all that.'
'Of course I'm not glad, Daniel. I've never wished you harm.'
She looked up at him, holding his eyes, then came up on tiptoe and kissed him gently on the lips.
'I want you,' she said simply. 'I want you now, here, under the stars. Above the world. While we have the chance.'
He gazed down at her and then he put his arms around her and pressed his lips to hers, kissing her passionately, his tongue circling her mouth, his hands running down across her backside. She could feel him hardening against her, the pressure sending a tingle through her stomach. He broke away and took her hand.
'I know somewhere,' he said.
He picked up her knapsack and they started along a narrow path that ran back along the top of the ridge, leading them deeper into the hills. The plain dropped away behind them, the world was silent aside from the clink of rocks beneath their feet. After twenty minutes they reached a point where the path dropped suddenly onto a broad, flat disc of gravel on which four shapes were sitting, curved, like commas on an otherwise blank page. As they approached Tara realized they were small walls, about ten feet long, coming up to the height of her knees.
'Windbreaks,' explained Daniel. 'In ancient times the patrols who guarded these hills would shelter behind them.'
He stooped and picked up what looked like a flat stone.
'See,' he said, holding the object up in the moonlight. 'Pottery.'
They went to the largest of the walls and, without a word, knelt behind it, facing each other. A breeze played against the upper part of their bodies. From the waist down, the air was still and warm, as though they were kneeling in a pool of water. They held each other's eyes for a moment and then, reaching forward, Daniel slowly undid the buttons of her shirt, her breasts coming free and glowing pale in the moonlight, the nipples hard, straining. He leaned forward and kissed them. She threw back her head, closed her eyes and groaned with pleasure, everything else for the moment forgotten.
27
CAIRO
It was almost seven before Khalifa finally got back to Tauba's office. The detective was sitting behind his desk in a pool of lamplight, typing two-fingered on a battered-looking manual typewriter, the floor around him scattered with a thin carpet of cigarette ash, as though there had been a light snowfall in his corner of the office.
Khalifa handed back the key to Iqbar's shop and filled him in about the girl and the artefacts. Tauba whistled.
'I know it's not procedure,' Khalifa added, 'but I've left the objects with a friend of mine at the museum. He'll look at them and send them down first thing tomorrow morning. I hope you don't mind.'
Tauba waved his hand dismissively. 'No problem. I wouldn't have done anything with them before then anyway.'
'The girl gave a pretty good description of Iqbar's attackers,' Khalifa said. 'It looks like two of them were Sayf al-Tha'r's men.'
'Fucking great.'
'The third one wasn't Egyptian. European by the sound of it, maybe American. Big, with some sort of scar or birthmark down the left side . . .'
'Dravic.'
'You know him?'
'Every police force in the Near East knows Casper Dravic. I'm surprised you haven't heard of him. A real piece of shit. German.'
He shouted across the room to one of his colleagues, who began rummaging through a filing cabinet.
'That would certainly tie in with Sayf al-Tha'r,' said Tauba. 'So far as we know, Dravic has been working for him for the last few years, authenticating antiquities, smuggling them out of the country. Sayf al-Tha'r wouldn't dare set foot in Egypt himself, so he stays in the Sudan while Dravic handles everything at this end.'
Tauba's colleague deposited three bulging red folders on his desk. Tauba opened the top one.
'Dravic,' he said, taking out a large black and white photograph and passing it across.
'Handsome,' grunted Khalifa.
'He did a couple of months in Tura a while back for possession of antiquities, but we've never been able to tie him down to anything big. He's clever. Gets other people to do his dirty work. And because he's with Sayf al-Tha'r no-one's going to come forward and give evidence against him. A girl he'd raped did once and that's what happened to her.'
Tauba threw another photograph across the desk.
'God Almighty,' whispered Khalifa.
