The Eye of Ra

by Michael Asher

  ‘I won’t go in,’ Doc said suddenly, watching Elena and the guard through the windscreen. ‘I’ve got other business.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What business?’

  ‘I’ve got to do something, Jamie — anything. I knew that when I saw what was left of Kolpos yesterday morning. I’m not going to get sucked into the old slough of despond like I did when Ronnie died. Couldn’t even summon the energy to investigate his death, even though I didn’t believe a word of the official report. That’s not going to happen a second time. Elena’s got the right attitude: hound the bastards till you get them. She’s a remarkable lady that one; see how she bore up? Should have been like that myself, but when the chips were really down, tough-as-nails old Doc Barrington cracked right up. Time to start over.’

  ‘But what are you going to do?’

  ‘There’s Karlman’s remark about the Eye of Ra, and then the Eye of Ra you saw on Kolpos’s mirror. We have a lead, the Eye of Ra Society, and I’m damned well going to talk to that Madam Montuhotep XV. Might be bunk, but it’s a start. I used to be good at this sort of thing — bit rusty now of course, but I’ve lived in this city for twenty years and I know how to look after myself.’

  She flipped down the lid of the glove compartment. Inside was a well-oiled Walther 9mm Police Pistol with three or four clips of ammunition. ‘I’ve broken it out,’ she said. ‘Used to be a marksman, you know.’

  ‘Doc, don’t do this,’ I said. ‘If that Merc was the enemy, they know where you live and what your car looks like. This isn’t the Wild West. You can’t shoot your way out, no matter how good you are.’

  ‘I’m not going to hang about playing gooseberry,’ she snapped.

  So that was it. Doc was starting to feel out of place. She’d jumped to conclusions that hadn’t even occurred to me yet. Maybe there was a touch of premonition about Doc, after all.

  ‘Doc, don’t,’ I said. ‘That’s rubbish.’

  ‘Jamie,’ she said, more kindly. ‘What do I do afterwards? Run away? I’ve lived here nearly half my life. I’m not going anywhere except in a coffin, and if that’s how it’s got to be, amen.’

  ‘Doc —’

  ‘It’s no good, Jamie. My mind’s made up. Time to sort out a few things I should have sorted out years ago.’

  I could see that wild horses wouldn’t persuade her. ‘You be careful, Doc,’ I said.

  ‘Always am.’ She bent over and kissed me on the cheek. ‘And thanks.’

  ‘It’s been good, Jamie. Feel like my old self again.’

  I stood and watched her drive away. As she turned the corner, out of my life, I had a last glimpse of Doc’s pale face, set hard as if intent on some terrible purpose.

  23

  I turned to Elena and we walked through the gate the guard was now holding open for us, through a green chasm of shrubs, past a fountain where light played across the path in circling prisms. Under the arched portico of the front door, an oldish man waited for us. He was tall, fit-looking, slightly bowed, his silver hair shaven, his face deeply lined, brown as old calfskin. Despite his pale blue eyes, there was an almost Oriental air of inscrutability about him: he had the face of a Tibetan High Lama, a face that concealed many secrets, watchful, mindful, wary. He was perhaps sixty-five, perhaps seventy, dressed immaculately in light cotton trousers, loose buff-coloured blazer, blue-and-white striped shirt, navy blue tie and soft leather moccasins. As we shook hands I had the sudden, unmistakable feeling that I’d seen his face before. I racked my brains to remember where, and suddenly it came: it was the face of the man in the picture of Carter and Carnarvon Julian had left me — the ‘Third Man’ who’d been holding the newspaper. Then I realised it couldn’t be. The picture had been taken in 1923. No, it had to be somewhere else. I normally have an excellent memory, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall where.

  ‘Mr Ross?’ he said with an almost imperceptible bow. ‘Welcome to my house. It’s sad that it took a tragedy — two tragedies, in fact —to bring us together.’ The hand was small but its grip dry and strong. The voice was cultured with hardly a trace of accent.

  ‘Thanks for inviting me,’ I said. ‘And it’s Jamie.’

  ‘Jamie. And Dr Barrington? She didn’t accompany you?’

  ‘She’s got other things to do.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Anyhow, I’m very glad Elena found you.’ He smiled sadly at Elena. ‘I admit I’m not much of a hand at comforting bereaved young ladies.’

  He drew us into a large sitting room with French windows opening into garden verandahs on two sides. The verandahs themselves were so full of potted palms and rubber-trees, mingling with the fronds of wild figs and wild peppers drooping in from the lawn, that you had the impression of walking into a forest glade. The furniture was sparse: antique wicker lounging chairs and settees with richly embroidered Turkish cushions, low divan seats, octagonal Arab tables with intricate filigree inlays, a brassbound shisha with a coiled pipe, handmade Egyptian rugs, shelves of books, cabinets of ornaments and artefacts. Half of one wall was almost entirely taken up with a collection of Egyptian musical instruments, another with a collection of coins, a third with a collection of faience and glass-ware, including ushabtis, busts, figurines, a beautiful rococo oil-flask in the shape of a Nile fish — blue glass with multi-coloured glass threads dragged over it to give the effect of scales and fins. It was New Kingdom, and obviously priceless. On a pedestal nearby stood a near life-sized head of Sesostris III, slightly scored and misshapen, but with the distinctive brooding features of the pharaoh whom the Nubians had worshipped as a god. In a special cabinet, given pride of place above the mantelpiece, were statuettes of Set — a man with the head of a nameless animal half-way between an aardvark and a rat — Anubis, in the form of a spectral black desert jackal with human eyes, and, most monstrous of all, the golden hippopotamus-god, Tueris, with open mouth and sharp teeth. There were other fragments of sculptures and stelae, most of which clearly belonged in museums. It said much for Rabjohn’s influence and power that he was able not only to own them, but also to display them so openly.

  Rabjohn gestured to the wicker lounging chairs, facing the garden. ‘I think we’ll be comfortable here,’ he said. ‘Coffee?’

  I nodded thanks, and Rabjohn clapped his hands once like a pasha. A moment later a Sudanese sufragi in an old-fashioned smock and cummerbund, wearing a fez, brought in a tray of coffee and set it on the table by Rabjohn. It was served Sudanese style, from a red earthenware bulb with a long spout, set on a ring, and poured into handle-less cups like tiny dishes. Elena refused, and Rabjohn turned to me, poured my three statutory cups, balancing the hot bulb by its handle between thumb and long forefinger. He poured in silence, concentrating with oriental absorption. The coffee was powerful, flavoured with ginger and cardamom. By Arab tradition it was polite to drink no more and no less than three cups; each cup had a different consistency, and each had a distinct name in Arabic. After my third cup I twisted the vessel in my hand to show I was satisfied - a Bedouin custom rather than Egyptian. Rabjohn grasped its significance perfectly, though, and proceeded to serve himself.

  ‘I must say, Jamie,’ he began, sipping the coffee pensively, ‘that you don’t much resemble the Omar James Ross I met on the last occasion.’

  I looked at him in surprise. ‘I knew I’d seen you before,’ I said.

  He set down his cup and searched my face keenly. ‘You were about five at the time if I recall correctly. It was 1965. I was visiting the oases of the Western Desert - Nasser renamed the place “The New Valley”, over-optimistically, I thought - and I ran into Dr Calvin Ross, the anthropologist who was living with the Hawazim, your father. He had a small boy with him, rather snotty-nosed and dirty-mouthed as are all five-year olds, and I assume that was you, Jamie. I have to say you’ve certainly changed for the better.’

  ‘That’s astonishing. I’d no idea you knew my father.’

  ‘Not well, you understand. But I met him more than once. He was a very stubbor
n chap, and very erudite. Loved the desert, loved the Bedouin. It was his whole life. Some people, the stupid ones, used to laugh at him. The more intelligent envied him. Underneath, everyone wished they could do what Calvin did, but few of them had the commitment. Going back to nature was a big thing in the sixties — the hippies and all that. It was an intensely romantic era.’

  His eyes fell on my earring. ‘Ah, the famous Hawazimfidwa,’ he said, ‘an extraordinary custom — quite unique, I think. Your father wore one too.’

  ‘He wasn’t really entitled to it. It’s only given to Hazmi boys at circumcision. My father was too old to undergo the ceremony.’

  ‘I suppose it was part of his romanticism. Your father was a romantic at heart, but unlike the hippies he had the strength of will to live out the fantasy. Of course, he had the money too. It was a rich man’s dream, perhaps, but I never begrudged Calvin his romanticism. He accepted all the responsibilities that entailed. We got on because I myself am a traditionalist — and perhaps a romantic — too.’

  ‘You’ve been in Egypt since the early sixties?’

  ‘Yes, but not consistently. I have other houses, other countries, other interests. That’s the luxury of not being a specialist. I am very glad I never studied Egyptology. With all due respect, Jamie, academic study these days has become so specialised that academics rarely step outside their own cloistered worlds. Instead of making them broad-minded — which I always understood was the purpose of education — they have become more narrow-minded. There they are, fighting their pathetic little wars behind closed doors. When I think of it I am always reminded of Swift’s Lilliputians. I suppose, in the end, it is all the fault of the ancient Greeks.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Elena asked.

  ‘Ah, sorry, I’d almost forgotten they were your ancestors. Yet I have to say it: it was the Greeks who first decided that the universe ought to be analysed, cut up, divided into parts and each part named separately. The naming of parts, that was almost entirely the sum of their so-called philosophy. Our modern science adopted the idea, hence all our modern problems. Now, the ancient Egyptians thought differently. They knew that nature was more than simply the sum of its parts. They knew that God could not be discovered by slicing up the building-blocks of life. God was self-evidently extant. It was Ra, the sun, crossing the sky each morning on his royal barque. While their godhead was fragmented into dozens of deities, they knew that all these gods were only separate aspects of the One.’

  ‘You were never tempted to become an academic?’

  ‘Fortunately I never needed to. My father owned a railway and I was born very rich. Had I been poorer I might have nursed the ambition to collect degrees and qualifications, but as it was I had the freedom to pick up and discard just as I liked. I worked my way backwards through modern art to medieval art, to Roman architecture, to ancient Greek art and philosophy, back to the Hittites, the Etruscans, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Sumerians — even the Incas, the Mayas, the Aztecs. I even dallied at one time with native American culture. But none of them fascinated me like the ancient Egyptians. It was powerful. Absorbing. I found that I could not discard ancient Egypt as I discarded the others. I read everything I could find, visited every site, and I’m still learning.’

  ‘Kolpos told me you were an expert on ancient Egyptian artefacts.’

  ‘Poor Nikolai. Yes, I’ve had the opportunity, the money, the time to see and learn from almost every artefact ever found in ancient Egypt. I have visited every collection, public and private. There have been almost no doors barred to me.’

  ‘Is that what these deaths are about? Ancient Egyptian artefacts? Akhnaton ushabtis?’

  Rabjohn went silent for a moment. ‘Whoever did this to Julian and Nikolai,’ he said, ‘wants to keep people’s mouths shut. The question is — what about? If it’s really about the Akhnaton ushabtis, then we could all be in trouble. You see, of the two ushabtis Julian brought to Cairo, one is right here.’

  He walked casually over to a library shelf and pulled a handle. A section of the shelves rolled out silently on a hinge and I saw that it was concealing a small wall-safe. Rabjohn twisted the combination lock, opened the safe and brought out a figurine. He carried it over to me carefully, with an air of reverence. ‘Jamie,’ he said, ‘I give you Akhnaton.’

  I gasped. The figure was no more than eight inches high, yet it was the perfect miniature of the statue of Akhnaton in the Egyptian Museum.

  ‘May I?’ I said, taking the statuette. It was heavy faience, beautifully crafted, and the features of Akhnaton were unmistakable — the narrow face, unnaturally thin neck, slanting eyes, the grotesquely distorted features: bulbous, dolichocephalic skull, pronounced breasts, swollen belly, thighs and buttocks. The hands were crossed over the chest in mummiform fashion, holding a crook in the left and a flail in the right.

  ‘I suppose there’s no question about its authenticity?’ I asked Rabjohn.

  ‘None whatever, in my opinion. In some periods ushabtis were crudely made, but under the late 18th Dynasty they were finely crafted and commonly done in faience, as this one is. Note the accuracy of the posture. The crossed arms holding crook and flail — heq and nekhakha — denote death. The crook gathers in, the flail symbolises the three aspects of being.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’ I asked.

  Rabjohn and Elena exchanged glances. ‘I brought it,’ Elena said. ‘Nikolai had them hidden — buried in a disused brick-kiln at Abu Rawash industrial estate. Even I didn’t know the exact place. He was petrified that someone would find them by chance. Two days ago he decided to move them. He brought them back to his shop, gave one to me and told me to bring it to Robert and stay here. Robert knew about the ushabtis and had already offered to look after them. Nikolai thought this one would be safer with him.’

  ‘So who does it actually belong to now?’

  ‘Please don’t misunderstand, Jamie,’ Rabjohn said. ‘I’ve no intention of purloining the piece. Rightfully it belongs to the government. It’s just that it is one of the rarest pieces ever found and I think we have a duty to preserve it. We also have a duty to preserve ourselves, of course, and since Julian was killed in the process of revealing it to the Antiquities Service, that move seems to be contra-indicated right at present.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. I hadn’t let either Elena or Rabjohn into my doubts about Julian’s death, and I decided that nothing would be served by telling them now. ‘What about the other one?’

  ‘Nikolai had it with him in the shop,’ Elena said. ‘He was going to show it to you. Either the murderer took it, or it went up in the flames.’

  ‘Did anyone else know he had the ushabtis, or that he’d moved them two days ago?’

  ‘Apart from me and Robert, no one. At least I don’t think so. But somebody could have followed him to Abu Rawash.’ She took the ushabti out of my hands and looked at it in disgust. ‘Akhnaton killed Nikolai,’ she said, fixing the figurine with such hatred that for a moment I thought she was going to dash it to pieces against the floor. For a fraction of a second Rabjohn’s face lost its benevolent look. Then, with the grace and speed of a ballet-dancer he moved in and took the statuette from her.

  ‘Three and a half thousand years on,’ he muttered, ‘the Great Heretic is still inciting such hatred!’ He carried the ushabti back to the wall-safe as attentively as if it were a baby and returned to the chairs looking relieved. ‘That’s the way it always was,’ he said. ‘No one can look at Akhnaton without some kind of passion. Personally, I believe the world would have been a better place without him. But then I’m a traditionalist, as I said.’

  ‘Why so much trouble over this one pharaoh?’ Elena asked. ‘It’s a long story,’ Rabjohn said, ‘and one better told over lunch. I’ve asked Madani to serve it on the verandah.’

  As Rabjohn led us out, I paused to look at a painting hanging by the door. It was vaguely familiar. It showed three figures: a bearded man in long robes, a magician of some kind, displayin
g engraved tablets to another man in eastern dress, while a woman looked on — a grey eminence in the background. He saw me looking: ‘Ah, the Pinturiccio,’ he said. ‘Not a very famous painting, but interesting.’

  ‘Who is the magician?’ I asked.

  ‘Hermes Trismegistus. The other figures are Moses and Isis.’ As I examined the painting it suddenly occurred to me that Karl-man had talked about Hermes Trismegistus.

  ‘Are you familiar with the name Trismegistus, Jamie?’ Rabjohn asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just that Professor Karlman mentioned him.’ He stiffened visibly with surprise. ‘Oh, you’ve been talking to the Professor, have you?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve met him, yes. Wait a minute, I’ve seen this picture before. Isn’t the original in the Vatican?’

  Rabjohn showed his teeth in a wan smile. ‘Is it?’ he said. ‘Nowadays it’s often difficult to say which is the original and which a copy, don’t you agree?’

  I wondered if he was being deliberately obtuse. Surely a man as rich as Rabjohn didn’t have to be vain enough to pretend all his objets d’art were originals. ‘Come to lunch,’ he said gently.

  The table was an oasis of glass, silver, white cloth and ceramics, standing out against the bare red tiles of the verandah. Three places had been set impeccably with heavy silver cutlery and cut-glass. Rabjohn held the chair politely for Elena, then seated himself at the head of the table. He lifted a crystal carafe. ‘Wine?’ he asked, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. ‘It’s imported burgundy. I think you’ll find it satisfactory. I only drink French wine. Occasionally you find a good bottle of Chianti, even Californian, but most others are pale imitations.’ He poured me a glass and I tasted it. He was right; it was almost maddeningly good. Elena waved the carafe away, but Rabjohn insisted. ‘It’s excellent for the digestion,’ he said. ‘A glass of good wine is just what you need right now.’