by Overton, Max
"I don't like it," Daffyd murmured. "We're too vulnerable."
They moved away from the buildings, walking in the open road, searching the darkness on either side for any sign of Hafiz, hoping that the first they knew of him would not be the flash from the barrel of a gun.
"Stop right there, Miss Hanser."
Ali Hafiz's voice emanated from a pool of darkness between two warehouses. Dani and Daffyd automatically turned to face their enemy and as they did so, they heard stealthy footsteps behind them. Daffyd turned but men leapt from the darkness and pinioned Daffyd, and a moment later, Dani. A shadow detached itself from the pool of darkness and stepped out into the road.
A match scraped and a tiny flame flared, dimly illuminating the faces of Hafiz and Dani. "Thank you for coming," Ali Hafiz said. "I wondered whether my subterfuge would succeed."
"Why are you doing this?" Dani asked. "How have we harmed you?"
"It is nothing personal, I assure you, but my employer, Colonel Sarraj, wants you dead for reasons of his own. I am only obeying orders."
"Ever the excuse of the weak-willed," Daffyd said.
"Ah, Mr Williams." Hafiz turned toward Daffyd, dropping the match and lighting another one. "I regret to say your fate is tied to that of Miss Hanser."
"I wouldn't have it any other way. You all right, Dani?"
"So solicitous," Hafiz murmured.
"You really don't want to be doing this, boyo."
"Indeed? Why not?"
"Because you don't know who you're dealing with. Why do you think we weren't surprised when you turned up instead of Marc and Muammar? We know they're alive because they were with us when your note arrived."
The match dimmed and died, though not before Daffyd saw the consternation on Hafiz's face. Hafiz fumbled another match out of the box and scraped it into life.
"Well, I have men round there now to take care of that other Englishman and the museum man. Your friends will die with them...as, I'm afraid you must too. Miss Hanser, I wish it could have been otherwise, but I can at least grant you a swift and relatively painless death."
Hafiz shook out the match and lit another one, holding it in his left hand. With his right, he drew out a snub-nosed revolver.
"Are you a man of faith, Mr Hafiz?" Dani asked as the man raised the gun. The man holding her shifted awkwardly to one side to allow him a clear line of fire.
"Yes...ah, I see, you want to pray. Granted, but make it quick."
Dani slumped forward, her guard slackening his grip on her and, as the match in Hafiz's hand sputtered and died, she shook her arm free and slammed her elbow out and up, connecting with her guard's chin. He staggered back, and she kicked out, the toe of her shoe slamming into Hafiz's wrist, the gun falling with a clatter to the ground.
"Get her!" Hafiz yelled, dropping the box of matches. "Kill them both."
Dani turned, and kicked again, this time into the knee of one of the men holding Daffyd. The man uttered a cry of pain and lashed out blindly at her, Daffyd taking advantage of his release to grapple with the other man. They fell to the ground gouging and punching. Dani ducked under the first man's swinging arm and drove her stiffened fingers upward, lancing into his body beneath his ribcage. The man screamed and doubled over. Behind her, in the darkened street, she could hear the sound of running feet and her heart sank, believing more of Hafiz's men were coming to his assistance.
"Marc!" she called. "Where are you? I need you."
"I'm here." Two shadows loomed and cannoned into Hafiz, knocking him backward and the man that Dani had elbowed. Both went down, and Muammar tripped over the elbowed one and fell beside Daffyd who was still struggling with his opponent.
"Dr Rhys-Williams, is that you?" Muammar said breathlessly.
"Of course it's bloody me, boyo. Get this brute off me."
"Er, which one is you?"
"I'm underneath. Hit the bugger. Ow...'
Muammar complied, driving his fist into the man's temple and thumping the half-stunned man's head into the road.
Marc finished off the elbowed man, knocking him senseless and then moved to the doubled-over body of the remaining thug. He cracked his head against the road, and in the ensuing silence gasped out, "Bloody Hell."
"Where is Ali Hafiz?" Muammar asked.
Receding footsteps echoing from the warehouses told of his retreat, and they saw his fleeing figure in the light of a distant streetlight. A figure in faded white moved to intercept him and Hafiz dodged, metal glinting in his hand.
"Nick! Watch out!" Marc yelled, but Dani was already running, racing toward the circling men.
Hafiz swept the knife in his hand toward Nick and Nick batted at the blade with his notebook. He leapt back as Hafiz moved in again, thrusting with the blade. Nick cried out and clutched his arm, dropping his notebook and staggering back, and Hafiz, all thoughts of escape forgotten, moved in for the kill.
"Hafiz!" Dani called, running up behind.
Hafiz swung round, his eyes widening in surprise as he saw a woman running toward him. He grinned as he recognised Dani, dropping into a crouch with his blade held in his left hand, low and to the side.
Dani did not hesitate, closing fast and falling to one side as the knife swept round. She was on her feet in an instant, her eyes never leaving her opponent's face. He slashed again and she danced back, aware from the sound of running feet that her friends were approaching. Hafiz heard them too, and knew he must finish it quickly. He stabbed, feinted, tossed the knife to his right hand and slashed at Dani's belly as she swayed to that side. The blade ripped through her shirt, scoring a shallow cut across her ribcage, the ends of the fabric flapping free.
Dani stepped back, her left hand clutching her bloodied chest and then she stripped off the ripped garment, flinging it to one side as Hafiz moved in. His eyes flicked to follow it--just for an instant--and she stepped through his guard, grasping his right wrist in her left hand and bringing the heel of her right hand sharply up under his nose. She heard the bone crack, the knife clatter to the road surface and felt the tension leave his body as he slumped to the ground. Dani stood over him, breathing hard, as her friends gathered round her.
"How the hell did you do that?" Marc exclaimed.
"I am in awe, Dr Hanser," Muammar said quietly.
"You're hurt?" Dani asked Nick.
"A scratch. And you?" Nick looked away from her shirtless torso.
"The same."
Nick squatted beside Hafiz and felt for the pulse in his neck. "He's still alive, but I think he's got a fractured skull. He's going to need a hospital pretty quickly."
"Leave the bugger to die," Marc growled.
"No," Dani said. "We call an ambulance but make sure we're gone before they get here." She picked up her ripped shirt and draped it around her shoulders, tying the loose ends together to keep it in place.
"And we need to warn Dr Zewali. Remember Hafiz said he'd sent men to kill him."
Nick, Muammar and Marc hurried off to find a telephone, while Dani and Daffyd followed more slowly. Daffyd cast many sidelong looks at his companion, maintaining a respectful silence, until Dani could stand no more.
"What, Dafs? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"I didn't know you were a martial arts expert."
"I'm not. The most I've ever learned to do is kick a man in the shins if he got too familiar."
"Then how did you take down a man with a knife, let alone disarm him of his gun and disable the man holding you? I've never seen anything like it."
Dani was silent for several paces. "Truth be told, Dafs, I don't know. It...it just seemed like the...like the right thing to do. I sort of watched myself do it and...and now I might have killed someone." Dani stopped and turned to look back down the darkened deserted street to the distant body lying under the street light. "Oh God, Dafs, we should go back. I should own up to this."
Sirens sounded faintly from the city, getting louder, and Daffyd tugged at Dani's arm. "Be sensible, old girl. It was self-def
ence; he meant to kill you--kill us all. The ambulance is on its way and if anything can be done, they'll do it. If you get involved, they'll chuck you out of the country or jail you and then what happens to Scarab's tomb? Bashir wins. You don't want that, do you?"
"No. No, you're right. Scarab comes first." She turned and ran into a side street, with Daffyd on her heels, as a police car, siren wailing, turned into Al-Obouri Street.
* * *
"They are in Luxor," declared Tahir. "This very night I saw Muammar al-Hadi in the company of four infidels."
"Four?" Zufir queried.
"Yes. The three we seek and another one. They fought with three men who attacked them on the street."
"They live?"
"Yes. Ah, my brothers, you should have seen how they fought."
"Our cousin acquitted himself well?"
"Moderately, but the woman..." Tahir shook his head. "If I had not seen it with my own eyes I would not have believed it of any woman. She fought like a lioness and killed a man."
"That is hard to believe indeed, brother," Zufir said. "Unless she was armed and the man not?"
"The other way round. He had a knife and she had nothing--yet she prevailed."
The other Bedouin uttered cries of disbelief and outrage.
"Clearly, this infidel woman is worthy of closer examination," Zufir said. "When we recapture them I shall find out the truth of it. In the morning, we take the ferry over the river--all of us--and take them, bringing them back here. Then we shall see what we shall see."
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* * *
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sarraj's men arrived at the presumed site a little south of Esna in the late morning, three days after setting off from the pylon foundations of the temple of Nut. They had no difficulty identifying this pylon as the trunks of the pillars still stood above the desert sands. The ruins of the temple of Min showed only as fragments of foundation and low walls almost submerged by desert sand. The Colonel and Bashir, with Nazim tagging along behind, got out of their vehicles and stood in the ruined gate, gazing westward.
"I don't see anything," Bashir said. "This can't be the right one either."
Sarraj nodded, but turned to Nazim. "What do you think? Is there any evidence that this is the right one?"
"None that I can see."
"Then we move on to the next."
"What? The one north of Esna?" Bashir asked. "That's the least likely. We missed something at the Edfu one; we should return there."
"It may be that we can see nothing because it is the wrong time of day," Nazim said. "We waited for the dawn at the last one."
Sarraj stared at the secretary. "That's because we found it in the middle of the night. We had to wait until morning to see anything." He saw a glint of impatience in the man's eyes and added, "Isn't it?"
"We had to wait until morning to see what we had found," Nazim confirmed. "But that's not all. The whole point of the pylon, the notch in the horizon, is to have the sun rise within it. It seems logical to assume that the rising sun must display some feature that leads the seeker on the next step."
"Such as?" Bashir asked.
"We won't know that until we see it, Minister, but I suspect it has something to do with the green mountain."
"Which we know isn't here."
"Nevertheless," Nazim said. "I feel we should wait and see. We have nothing to lose."
"Except time," Bashir said. "Dr Hanser could even now be on her way to the tomb. We must make sure we beat her to it."
"She knows no more than I do," Nazim declared. "Though if Dr Zewali starts investigating..."
"He won't," Sarraj said smoothly. "Any more than the woman will. I have taken measures."
"What measures?"
"Nothing that you need to be concerned with, Ahmed. We have a bit of time, and we should be certain we have exhausted the possibilities of one site before moving on to the next. Captain Massri?"
The officer hurried across and saluted.
"Have the men set up camp. We wait for dawn."
The night passed as the others had passed. Bashir and the officers kept largely to themselves, and mostly in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. The soldiers were more convivial, joking and laughing, happy to be out in the field but with little in the way of onerous work. They got to sit in the back of the half-track all day, catching up with sleep or smoking, and had, at the most, only light tasks when they stopped. If anything taxed their minds and bodies it was boredom.
Sarraj was conscious of the passing days, but already they had eliminated one of the sites and the dawn would bring a decision on the second. If this one failed, then it could only be the northernmost one--the least likely one. He calculated distances and times, and knew that he was gambling his future on this venture.
Bashir openly fretted at the inactivity, impatient to get his hands on the riches of Smenkhkare's tomb--and Scarab's if it really existed. Descriptions of the king's treasury were alluring and stimulated his greed, but he knew that he would have to move fast to secure it once it was found. The good colonel would prove invaluable, but it was a pity that so much gold must be relinquished to secure his services.
Nazim's thoughts were more cerebral, and he stayed awake longer than the others. Partly this was because of the nature of his thoughts; partly because he feared sleep. The dreams had returned in full force, perhaps exacerbated by the lonely wastes of the desert, but even closing his eyes conjured up visions of the old gods--demons --of ancient Egypt. Lions and green men wrapped in grave clothes, animal-headed terrors and the night sky curdling like sour milk, the land splitting and giving forth its dead, all terrified him, but the visions vanished when he opened his eyes. Losing himself in sleep was more dangerous and he gave into it only when exhaustion compelled him.
"It's the golden scarab," he muttered. "What else can it be?" Nazim looked around to see if he was overheard but Sarraj and Bashir were asleep. Captain Massri was awake, but on the far side of the fire, apparently oblivious of Nazim's mutterings.
A chill wind from the desert interior scattered red-gold sparks high into the air where they competed with the cold, white points of fire piercing Nut's body. Why did I think that ? The breeze brought the aroma of coffee and the sounds of laughter from the soldiers' fire, sounds and smells of a normal human presence and Nazim sighed with longing.
He took the rock out and cradled it in his palm, attempting to look past the fire's glow on sandstone to the rich gleam of gold. For a moment he thought he saw it, and then it became a plain rock again, no different from a million others scattered over the desert around him.
"I should just throw it away, into the darkness. I'd be unable to find it again, even if I wanted to...but then it would be lost to everyone. It isn't mine--I should have given it to Dr Hanser when I had the chance. Then those...things...would leave me alone." He slipped it back in his pocket and scrunched himself a more comfortable position in the rock-strewn sand. Perhaps we'll beat Dr Hanser to the tomb and I can just leave the scarab there for her to find later. Is the description really enough to find a tomb lost for three thousand years? Are we all deluding ourselves ?
Nazim thought back to his conversation with the museum director. He had said that the inscription might possibly read of Aten's horizon arrow showing the road through the desert from the cliff to greet the green mountain crowned in crystal--or possibly glass, or even gleam or shine.
"Ignore for a moment the absence of a green mountain anywhere in Egypt," Nazim muttered. "He is saying that the sun's rays shining through the pylon show the road to this place which...which is what? Green mountain or mountain of green? Green rock or green vegetation that makes it green? And what of the crystal crown? Does that mean it is made of crystal or glass? Or just shines..." Nazim frowned. "The sun's rays gleam on the top of the green mountain? It doesn't make sense." He thought a while longer, bringing the hieroglyphs to mind and ticking them off mentally against every aspect of Zewali's
translation.
"What then, is the scarab? Is it because this is Scarab's tomb, or something else? Scarab's green mountain or...or..." It cannot have been her tomb, because when the description was first given in the chambers, she was still a young woman with no thought of her own death and burial .
Nazim considered the symbol for the Aten--the cartouche-enclosed feather, water, half-disc and centred circle--and the scarab symbol itself. "Where is the scarab placed? Is it with the symbols for green and mountain? No, it is near the symbol for the horizon, the notch, the pylon. Scarab's pylon? Why? What is the significance? Scarab, Aten, Re, Khep..." He sat up suddenly. Captain Massri called out in a low voice, concerned, but Nazim ignored him.
"The first pylon was dedicated to Nut, this one to Min, but the third was to Khepri--the sun god Khepri--represented by the sacred scarab. Not the woman called Scarab, but the pylon dedicated to Khepri. This pylon is not the one. We are wasting our time here."
Agitated, Nazim scrambled to his feet, and then stood irresolutely, suddenly unsure of himself. Do I say anything? Am I certain of my interpretation ? Captain Massri called out, enquiring as to whether anything was wrong.
"Yes...or rather, no. I..." Nazim shook his head and waved the captain back, resuming his own seat. "I just remembered something, but it will keep until morning. Go back to sleep."
His mind working actively, Nazim had little difficulty remaining awake for the remainder of the night, though the time passed slowly. The fires died down, the soldiers' voices quietened and were replaced with sporadic snoring. A night chill enveloped them as the heat of the day fled the arid landscape, but Nazim welcomed the cold as he considered his future course.
What do I do? Does the Minister deserve my continued loyalty or do I betray him? If betrayal, than for whom? Myself, or Dr Hanser . A jackal called, high-pitched and lonely, out in the desert darkness, and something floated overhead on feathered wings, a squeal from some wretched rodent a few moments later suggesting its identity as an owl. Can I achieve anything on my own? I could keep silent, even at the Khepri pylon, and hope they miss whatever clues are apparent there--but if I do, can I take advantage of them? Can I possibly gain something from this on my own ? Nazim thought again of the house at Jarabulus on the Euphrates, near the Turkish border--the house with the large courtyard and the olive grove behind and the green fields. I would give anything to retire to a property like that, but I need money. Gold from a tomb . He shut his eyes and saw again the rock tomb with the twin sarcophagi, grave goods, and piled riches. Something moved in the darkness of the tomb and Nazim's eyes flew open. No. I cannot face that alone. He wiped the chill sweat from his brow and shuddered. So, it comes down to helping the Minister or Dr Hanser and hoping that the one who wins will reward me .
