The Eye of Ra

by Michael Asher

  56

  For an instant nobody moved. I felt the Walther heavy in my hand. Mansur and Ahmad glanced at me expectantly — I’d always been the best pistol-shot in the family. The monk and Elena were a hundred metres away, a long shot for a Walther P P, but Mikhaelis’s attention was concentrated on the Hawazim at the gate. I lifted the pistol in an arc up to my eye, and for a moment time seemed to skid to a halt. Elena’s head covered the monk’s almost completely — there was no window for a clear shot. He hadn’t seen me yet, but his eyes were beginning to slew towards me when suddenly Elena tilted forward, leaving a fraction of a degree between them. I squeezed the trigger. There was a dull thunk and Mikhaelis’s head snapped backwards. A scarlet aureole appeared just below his ear, and blood from the exit-wound splashed Hammoudi’s suit. The monk crumpled and Elena jumped free. ‘Run!’ I screamed. She dashed towards the gate, and I saw Hammoudi raise his Ruger, then lower it again. ‘Shoot her!’ the colonel bawled, drawing a pistol from his belt. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ahmad fire a snap-shot from the shoulder, then another. The colonel screamed, dropped the pistol and clutched at his hand. The Hawazim, grouped round the gate, behind shrubs, posts and palm-saplings, began pumping rounds at the policemen with their quick-firing Hajana carbines. ‘Get back inside!’ I heard Hammoudi yell. I looked down at the Walther in my hand and realised that I was shaking uncontrollably. Then I saw something that really shook me. My John Lennon spectacles were lying in the sand at my feet. I’d made the most important shot of my life without them, and without them I couldn’t hit a barn door.

  It was Mansur who pulled me out of it. ‘Come on,’ he shouted in my ear, ‘help me with Mukhtar.’ I put on my glasses and together we dragged my uncle towards the gate. I recognised the tall gaunt figure of ‘Ali among the uniformed tribesmen, carrying his favourite rifle, Hawk’s Eye. He was already getting the camels on their feet and urging the Hawazim to leap into the saddle. Mansur mounted while ‘Ali and I passed Mukhtar’s limp and bleeding body up to him. Mansur urged his camel up, his good eye glittering with rage.

  Elena half turned towards me and I pulled her to me tightly. ‘Thank God!’ she said.

  ‘Yallah!’ Ahmad shouted, sprinting past. ‘There’s no time for canoodling now!’ I took the nearest camel, swarmed up its neck and pulled Elena on after me. Then I kicked its withers with my feet and we charged out of the gate, a tight knot of men and roaring camels, out into the vast pebble beach, where in ancient days the great Ur-Nile used to flow.

  We rode in near silence. By sunset we’d reached the limestone plateau and just had time to climb the tortuous pass of Naqb before full darkness set in. At the top we came to a sandy fissure between crags and overhangs of limestone, where more than a dozen camels were hobbled. A guard hailed us out of the night as we arrived. We couched the camels amid grumbling and spitting, and as soon as I’d slipped out of the saddle, I held Elena silently. ‘Thank God, Jamie,’ she said. ‘They kept on promising to let me see you if I talked. I told them little bits to keep them happy but they were never satisfied. They kept coming back for more. I told myself that whatever they did I’d never tell them where Mukhtar’s people were hiding. Then that disgusting creature, the monk, told me they’d found out I was expecting a baby.’

  ‘Elena, it’s wonderful.’

  ‘Yes. Once I knew that, I was even more worried about you. After that they began to treat me as if I was somebody special. It was all false, really sick. That beast — the monk — kept on giving me tests, slavering over me as though I was a prize pig.’

  ‘It’s over now. I left you once. I’ll never leave you again.’

  She was about to say something when Mansur called us over to look at Mukhtar. They had laid him out on a blanket, and Ahmad was cutting away his shirt, while ‘Ali held a torch and Mansur watched. I examined the wound in the torch-light. It looked bad. Renner had shot him at almost point-blank range and the entry wound was huge and edged with powder-burns. The round had probably missed his heart but had punctured his lungs. He was barely conscious and his breathing was laboured. Ahmad shook his head sadly. I guessed there’d be a full medical kit in one of the saddle-bags of the Hajana camels and I ran to look for it. When I came back with some vials of morphine, Mukhtar’s eyes were wide.

  ‘Don’t try to talk, Uncle,’ I said. ‘I’m going to give you some-thing for the pain.’

  ‘Don’t stick needles in me,’ Mukhtar croaked, ‘I know it’s over. The Divine Spirit has given me a long life. I’ve led the tribe as best I could — the best of a poor bunch.’

  He shifted himself a little and gulped. ‘I can’t see the stars,’ he said suddenly, ‘I can’t see your faces.’

  ‘We’re all here, Father,’ Mansur said.

  ‘My sons, I love you all, but the tribe needs an amnir to guide it. Omar’s the only one with the Shining power. Omar, promise me you’ll stay with the family after I’m gone.’

  ‘Uncle!’ I said, ‘I don’t know if I can...’

  ‘The tribe needs you. You belong. Promise me you will be amnir.’

  ‘Uncle, I don’t know...’

  ‘Promise!’

  I looked at Elena in the starlight. She nodded. ‘I promise,’ I said.

  The old man closed his eyes. ‘Then it’s done,’ he said. A few moments later, he was dead.

  After we’d wrapped Mukhtar’s body in cotton shrouds, we dug a shallow trench in the floor of the wadi with our hands and knives, and buried him there. This small crack in the plateau’s skin would be remembered as Mukhtar’s place — he would be part of the landscape for ever. The night cold had fallen on us like a breath of ice, and we lit a fire and hoped the crackling flames would cheer us. Ahmad made coffee, his face an orange smear with black holes for eyes. The stars were out and the Milky Way spread across the night sky like a gossamer cloud. I stared at the fire, burrowed into the flickering flames, trying to separate myself mentally from my companions. I already sensed an almost imperceptible change in their attitude towards me. How could I tell them I’d only promised to make the old man happy in his dying moments? I couldn’t resign the rest of my life to being a hunted tribesman in the Egyptian deserts.

  ‘The Divine Spirit works in strange ways,’ Ahmad said suddenly. ‘Now we’ve got a pipsqueak city-boy as an amnir. Remind me to give you pistol-shooting lessons some time!’

  ‘I will, preferably with my glasses on.’

  ‘The thanks is to God, Omar,’ Mansur cut in, ‘you saved my life down there.’

  ‘How many’s that I owe you now?’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know you only promised to make the old man happy. But will you stay?’

  I sought out Elena’s face, a trembling vapour of light and shade in the flames. ‘I don’t know...’ I said.

  Ahmad concentrated on the coffee, flicking the lid of the hornbill-spouted pot open, sniffing the steam, stirring it with a stick.

  ‘I think you should stay,’ said Mansur, his one good eye sparkling like the Pole Star, ‘The family needs a proper amnir. We can fight and herd camels, but we don’t have the Shining power.’

  ‘Mansur’s right,’ Ali said.

  ‘I just don’t know,’ I said.

  We all stared at the flames in silence for a moment. Then Elena asked, ‘How did you find us?’

  ‘Only by God’s will,’ Mansur said, ‘we thought you’d died in the Sand Sea. We waited four days. On the third we spotted a helicopter, but we saw nothing else. We waited another day, then we headed back to the Jilf. God help us! Finding our way through that drumsand on hardly any water almost killed us. But we lost no one and made it by the skin of our teeth. God bless the camels — they saved us. Not one of us could stand upright by the time we sighted the Jilf, let alone walk!’

  ‘So you waited for us at the Jilf?’

  ‘Yes, we’d just about given up on you, when Mohammad wald Salam — our third-degree cousin, who lives in Baris — arrived from Kharja on a half-dead camel carrying your fidwa a
nd saying you’re a prisoner near Kom Ombo on the edge of the town. “Prisoner!” Mukhtar said, “Then he’s half dead already!” So Mukhtar picks a dozen good men and the very best camels — it’s a wonder we had any after the Desolation — and we set off. We hardly stopped till we got within a day of the prison.’

  ‘Actually it was a hospital, a special police facility of some kind.’

  ‘Hospital, prison, it’s all the same. Anyhow, we send a couple of scouts out and they see this Hajana patrol coming and going. Yesterday night, they camped under the plateau. We left our own camels here under guard and crept down the pass as quiet as snakes. They didn’t hear a thing till we jumped on them. We tied the lot up and left them there with a boy to keep an eye on them and give them water. They struggled a bit when we took their uniforms. They’ve been lying in the baking sun all day in their underpants!’

  There was a ripple of laughter around the campfire.

  ‘I saw you coming,’ I said. ‘I thought you looked a bit ragged for a military patrol.’

  ‘I suppose we did, but at the gate they didn’t turn a hair, just opened right up. The guard sergeant said “You lot look a bit rough!” I said, “So would you if you’d been riding all night.” It was when we barracked the camels inside the gate that he cut up rusty. Said they were messing the place up with their droppings. I said we’d had orders to wait for a special convoy and the gate was to stay open. We’re hanging around there getting a bit nervous, when they bring you out looking like they’re about to shoot you.’

  ‘What would you have done if they hadn’t brought me out?’

  ‘We’d have gone in.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘The thanks is to God.’

  ‘Did you find Zerzura?’ Ali asked.

  I paused. I knew I wasn’t ready to explain everything. There wasn’t even a word for ‘star-ship’ in the Hawazim vocabulary. I would have had to call it a ship or a plane — but since most of them had been in neither, that wouldn’t have meant much more to them. Then I thought of my mother’s Agadez cross, and I brought it out. ‘You remember this, Mansur?’ I asked.

  Mansur took the cross and examined it in wonder. ‘It’s Aunt Maryam’s,’ he said, ‘she used to wear it all the time.’

  ‘Well, my mother showed me a place where there were palm-trees and water. It was Zerzura.’

  Mansur shivered and his blank, wayward eye seemed to pop out of his skull. ‘A ghost?’ he whispered. He made the sign against the evil-eye. The rest of the tribesmen copied him. ‘No evil!’ they exclaimed.

  ‘Ghost or no ghost, all I know is we’re both alive. A police helicopter picked us up — I guess that was the one you saw on the third day — but I don’t remember that.’

  ‘I was barely conscious,’ Elena said, ‘I remember them putting us on a drip. Then they gave me a jab and I passed out.’

  ‘What happened to Dhahabiyya?’ Ahmad demanded suddenly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Elena said, ‘she foundered.’

  His face dropped. ‘My grandfather, my father and my two best camels,’ he said, ‘by God, Zerzura has a lot to answer for. What now, amnir?’

  Amnir. It was the first time anyone had called me that. I’d promised Mukhtar only to ease his dying, but somehow the title seemed to fit. It had no connotations of authority, only guidance, and I realised suddenly that the word meant ‘enlightened one’, the direct equivalent of the Latin word illuminatus. These men had risked their lives for me; for my sake they’d undergone incredible hardship, non-stop rides across the harshest of landscapes, fatigue, thirst, hunger. For me they’d made certain that they’d be outlaws for the rest of their days. Mukhtar had sacrificed himself, the watering-boy whose name I didn’t know had risked death, Mohammad, a third cousin I’d never even met, had almost killed himself to take my fidwa to the Jilf. True belonging wasn’t just acceptance, I thought, it meant responsibility too.

  ‘I think we should send these camels back to their owners for a start,’ I said, ‘and set them free.’

  Ahmad looked troubled. ‘That’s going to be like letting a hyena out of a trap — very dicey work.’

  ‘No — just hide their weapons and free only one of them. Tell him not to move until you’re out of sight. They won’t want to follow us in the dark with no guns, that’s for certain.’

  ‘Yes. Good thinking, Omar.’

  ‘And we split up. The government will be sending aircraft after us. We’ll stand a better chance in small parties. Mansur — you and ‘Ali take the camels back to the Hajana, then divide into two parties and make for the Jilf double quick. If any planes come over use your camouflage nets.’

  ‘Right, Omar.’

  ‘Ahmad, you stay with Elena and me. I think we should start right now, to make use of the darkness. They’ll be out looking for us at first light.’

  57

  We skirted Kharja not long before dawn, and the sunrise found us in the sand-plains beyond. A long plume of red dust decorated the eastern horizon, and it was from that direction that the helicopter came, falling out of the sky like a falcon — almost on top of us before we even saw it. ‘Get the cam-nets out!’ I said.

  ‘No use,’ Ahmad said, ‘they’ve spotted us already.’

  The chopper swooped over us, its rotors licking up the sand, its engines deafening, frightening the camels. ‘It’s a Scout,’ I shouted over the din, ‘not more than four men.’

  ‘We can take them,’ Ahmad growled, reaching for Renner’s Walther, which I’d given him, knowing that in Hawazim superstition the weapon that has killed a relative is imbued with tremendous power.

  The aircraft settled in a vortex of dust a hundred metres away and two men, their faces muffled by red shamaghs, jumped out. The rotors ground slowly to a halt and the men stood waiting casually, unthreateningly. They didn’t appear to be armed. In the helicopter itself I glimpsed a pilot and a third crewman.

  ‘Who is it?’ Ahmad said.

  We couched and hobbled the camels and walked towards the chopper. Apart from their headcloths, the men wore zipped khaki flying overalls, and bomber-jackets, but their figures were as different as Laurel and Hardy. One was pear-shaped and small, built like a barrel, his face covered by his headcloth except for slits for the eyes. The other towered over him, lean and wiry, and when he removed his shamagh we saw he was an old man with shaven stubble for hair, suncured skin and bright blue eyes.

  ‘It’s Robert!’ Elena cried suddenly, rushing towards him. ‘Robert! Thank God! Where have you been.’

  Rabjohn smiled and hugged Elena. He shook hands warmly and kissed me on both cheeks. ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he said. ‘I thought you were dead,’ I replied. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’ll explain everything,’ he said. ‘But first, where are you going?’

  ‘To the Jilf,’ I said.

  ‘Is that where the rest of the Hawazim are?’

  ‘Yes, but...’

  He turned towards the pilot. ‘Send this message to Whisky Zero,’ he snapped. ‘The rest of them are hiding out in the Jilf.’

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ I asked.

  ‘To Colonel Fahad of the Mukhabaraat,’ he said calmly. ‘Of course, he only knows me as Source Jibril.’

  I must have taken a step backwards. For a second, I just stared at him. There was a scuff of dust behind me and suddenly the other man whisked out a 9mm Browning pistol with amazing speed, and fired twice. I ducked instinctively, and turned to see Ahmad, pistol in hand, slowly toppling over into the sand. Elena and I ran over to him. He was still conscious, but blood was pumping out of his thigh. I pulled off my shamagh and bunched it, holding it over the wound to staunch the flow. I looked up to see that the little man had unveiled himself. I saw an obese pink baby’s face with dark piggy eyes and a half-moon mouth upturned with satisfaction as though he’d just done something very impressive indeed. It was Dr Abbas Rifad.

  ‘You fucking little shit,’ I said, standing up.

  Rifad smiled nervously.
‘You’re next, Ross,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t bother with your friend if I were you. None of you are going to live that long.’

  I stared at Rabjohn. ‘I should have known,’ I said. ‘It had to be you, didn’t it? You met Doc at the Eye of Ra Society office as “Sha-Tehuti”, knowing that she wouldn’t recognise you, then you had her murdered. You reported to the Mukhabaraat every step of the way. How else did Hammoudi know we were going to al-Maqs?’

  ‘Dear Hammoudi — he knew nothing except what Rasim told him. I used him as a catspaw all the way through, but you should have listened to him, Jamie. If you’d accepted that the whole thing was just a hoax concocted by Karlman you might have got away with it.’

  ‘I’m not a bloody fool, Rabjohn. You would never have run the risk of the message reaching the world — too dangerous for you. You wanted to use me, but you realised you couldn’t. Either way I’d have been snuffed in the end. Elena would have been treated like some kind of brood-mare and killed as soon as the baby arrived.’

  Rabjohn shrugged. ‘It’s all academic now, anyway. We got the message you received from the Guardians by subliminal probes while you were unconscious. Of course, I knew you were an illuminatus, but I couldn’t have you giving my secrets to the world. In short, you know too much. Now you’ll pay the penalty. A body could lie in these wastes a century without being found.’

  ‘So you’re the Eye of Ra.’

  ‘Yes, Jamie, essentially I am. Of course, the Eye of Ra has existed for thousands of years — sworn from the beginning to protect the earth from the likes of Akhnaton and his kind. The Eye got rid of Tutankhamen in 1430 BC. He was an alien hybrid with some of his father’s characteristics, including an ability to hypnotise and control people that became increasingly effective as he grew up. Oh, they thought they could control him, but they were wrong. After his murder Ay took over, but he was still tainted with Akhnaton’s heresy, so four years later Horemheb had him killed and went about wiping any trace of the aliens from history. The Eye of Ra passed down the secret from mouth to mouth over the millennia. Sometimes only a single person knew the truth. Then in 1922, Carter and Carnarvon came along, meddling, found Tutankhamen’s tomb and learned the secret. His Lordship had a big mouth and he wasn’t easily frightened — the product of generations of aristocracy used to getting their own way. He told a lot of his cronies before the Eye got him, and they all had to be put down — at least the ones the .Eye considered a security risk.’