No Living Soul

by Julie Moffett

  Arthur’s hurt look was turning to anger. “I had no idea.”

  “That was the idea. I’d hoped you’d let me study the spores further, but instead you mailed them to your son in America. When I came across the mailing slip, I was stunned. I had no idea you even had a son. Now, it became imperative for me to make you spill your secrets and tell me from where you’d retrieved the spores and where the rest of them were.”

  “So you were the one who hired someone to follow me.”

  “Yes. But unfortunately, you disappeared before we could get you to tell us what you knew.”

  I couldn’t believe the cavalier tone of her voice. Like it was no big deal to talk about a plan to kidnap and potentially torture the man who stood right in front of her—a man she’d worked with for months.

  Elvis stepped forward, jabbed a finger at her. “Then you were the one who was paying Merhu Khalfani. You sent him to my house to get the spores and the notes my father sent me. He almost shot Lexi’s kneecaps off.”

  She shrugged. “Merhu is a friend of a friend, willing to assist me for the right price. Since Merhu is a British citizen, he was handily able to get into the US—not an easy feat these days. Unfortunately, that attempt failed as well. But it did have an unexpected and welcome consequence. It brought Arthur’s son and his capable friends to Egypt to help me find him.”

  “You betrayed me from the beginning.” Arthur’s hands were trembling. It occurred to me he might have been fonder of Zizi than I had known. Maybe he’d thought of her like a daughter or a favorite student. “You were going to steal my discovery and use it to make a name for yourself.”

  “I didn’t steal it...exactly. It fell into my lap. You didn’t even know what you’d found, Arthur, or how significant it was. What a stupid thing to do, mail those spores across the world. You had no idea what you were dealing with.”

  “But you did,” I said.

  “Of course I did. I wasn’t sure, but I suspected there was something unique about the spores. I wanted desperately to examine them. I knew if I could be the scientist to unveil an ancient biological material, it would be an enormous lift for my career. When I learned of the true lethality of the spores, I knew I had to get my hands on them so I could be the one to unveil the discovery of a new plague—an ancient one capable of horrific consequences. When Arthur revealed the possibility of an antidote or a defense against the plague as well, it was beyond my wildest dreams. Now, not only could I reveal the disease, but I could be acclaimed for coming up with the cure.”

  Arthur looked at her, aghast. “So, all of this was for...fame and recognition?”

  Zizi laughed. “And you are surprised, Arthur, when you seek the same?”

  He closed his eyes, a sick look on his face.

  “So, why did you pretend to help us?” Gwen said. “You could have turned me in back at the museum.”

  “My dear, we were after the same thing. It was in my best interest to assist you.”

  “That was a big risk,” Elvis observed.

  “I assure you, the payoff will be worth it.”

  I angled my back so it was out of the sun. My skin seemed to be burning beneath my clothes. “But things didn’t go quite as you planned, did they, Zizi?”

  “No, they didn’t.” Zizi shifted on her feet, uncomfortable for the first time since the conversation started. “Arthur was the problem. After you found him, he refused to reveal much about his find—even to his own son. Seeing how important the laptop was to Arthur, I figured there had to be some mention of the artifact in his notes. Even if there wasn’t, between the spores, his notes and Gwen’s analysis, I thought I could figure out where the antidote was located.”

  “You kidnapped Arthur and Elvis.” Anger tinged Gwen’s voice and her face was so furious, her cheeks had turned bright red. “You hurt them. They could have been killed.”

  “That wasn’t the plan, I assure you. When Lexi, Slash and I went to the museum to find the chariot in question, I had my acquaintances capture Elvis, Arthur, the laptop and the spores. However, due to the delicate, not to mention dangerous, nature of the spores, I informed them that the vial Arthur had in his pocket had to be handled very carefully.”

  “I bet that raised their interest,” Slash commented.

  “It did.”

  “So, naturally, they wanted to know what they were dealing with,” he said.

  “Naturally.” She lifted an eyebrow. “One of them, Khalil, insisted on knowing more before he’d grab Arthur. So, I told him the basics, about the possibility it was an ancient plague that could be deadly in today’s world. That’s why he had to take special care not to crush or break the vial when they took Arthur.”

  Slash shook his head. “That was a fatal mistake, Zizi. They no longer cared about your money after that. You hand-delivered them the perfect opportunity to strike against the West. A plague with no known antidote. An ironclad jihad.”

  Zizi pushed her hair off her shoulders. She didn’t look so cool at the moment. In fact, a sheen of sweat had appeared above her upper lip. “They are stupid idiots with their senseless jihads and killings. This is science. They had no idea what they were dealing with and thought they could control it. They didn’t listen to me.”

  “So, that’s why you helped Slash and Lexi save us,” Elvis said.

  “Yes. I wanted you to get the endospores back at that point. But they got away with both Arthur’s laptop and the spores.”

  “Wow.” Gwen shook her head in disbelief. “You are, by far, the most awful person I’ve ever met.”

  “I never intended to release the plague on the world,” Zizi said. “You must believe me.”

  Gwen glared at her. “None of us believe or care what you did or didn’t intend to do at this point.”

  “That’s certainly your right.” Zizi lifted her shoulders. “Anyway, since Arthur confirmed the antidote was still in the artifact, its discovery was paramount. I was still trying to retrieve the laptop and the spores from the men, begging them not to upload Gwen’s notes to the website, but they refused to cooperate. They offered to give me the laptop with Arthur’s notes after they had uploaded the material, but they intended to keep the spores for reasons I don’t want to imagine. While all this was happening, I discovered my museum card was missing. I wondered if you were all planning to steal the artifact, so I headed to the museum. When I ran into Slash and Lexi, I realized I had to help you succeed in order to keep everything quiet long enough for me to get the antidote and make first claim to the discovery. I knew it was only a matter of time before the authorities were involved and, if you were caught, that might make me a suspect as well. So, when Slash told me Gwen was still inside, I had no choice but to rescue her.”

  “That’s quite an ambitious plan, Zizi.”

  “I’m an ambitious woman, Lexi. Why did you suspect me?”

  “Your cell phone case.”

  She blinked. “My...what?”

  “Phone case. See, Slash was careful to vet you. He checked your finances, your criminal record and even your phone records well before I’d even thought to do it.”

  “How dare you.” She narrowed her eyes at Slash.

  He shrugged, a slight smile touching his lips.

  “Yeah, well, we kind of like dares,” I said. “Interestingly, you were clean. But I have a photographic memory. The first time I met you, you were holding a cell phone in your hand. The next time I noticed your phone was when you handed Arthur it in order to display the online catalog of the chariots at the museum. It was a different phone case. Sure, some people change their phone cases now and then, but it still raised a flag with me.”

  “Why would my phone case matter?”

  “Because most people don’t have two cell phones, Zizi. So, I checked all the phones of the people in your family. Your younger siste
r, Lila, had a lot of phone calls to one particular number. A quick check and, bingo, we got a match and a photo of the guy you poked in the back at the apartment where Elvis and Arthur were kidnapped. After that it was just piecing together your motives.”

  “It was unfortunate my plan didn’t work out as I planned, but none of us will walk away from this empty-handed,” Zizi said. “Arthur will have his moment in the spotlight when he unveils Moses’s staff. I presume you’ll keep the actual plague secure. But I have enough information to publish on the unique characteristics of the spores. And, if someday the plague gets out, I will become famous for curing Moses’s plague. My name will be right up there with Jonas Salk, who invented the vaccine for polio.”

  “You’re delusional,” Gwen said. “You can’t even be sure the antidote is viable. It might not work. Even if it did, it would need to be evaluated by true disease professionals, not some two-bit microbiologist.”

  Zizi narrowed her eyes. “Oh, I assure you, I will be two-bit no longer. I’ll have plenty of time to do my own analysis and have it checked. I can be patient. So, that leads me back to our stalemate. The antidote is in a safe place for the time being. If you think you can turn me in, blackmail me or otherwise threaten me or my family in any way, I’ll tell the authorities everything about your break-in at the museum, including the theft of the staff. Add to that, I know you’re not just friends of Elvis’s, but some kind of American military or government agents. I’m not sure what a revelation like that would do for Egyptian-American relations, but I’m certain it wouldn’t be good. So, with that in mind, I bid you farewell.”

  “Not yet, you don’t.” Gwen stepped forward and slapped Zizi so hard across the cheek it left a hand imprint. We all stared at Gwen in total shock, including Zizi and a couple of pedestrians who happened to be walking by.

  “That’s for hurting Elvis when he tried to protect me,” she spit out. “You’d better believe you are not getting your own fan forum. You give women microbiologists a bad name. I hope you rot in hell.”

  She turned away and stomped down the sidewalk.

  Zizi watched her go and then straightened her sunglasses. “I’m done here.”

  Arthur took a step forward. “Zizi, you must give us the antidote. You can’t just leave.”

  “I can and I will. Goodbye, Arthur.”

  Elvis lunged forward as if to stop her. “You—”

  Slash grabbed Elvis around the waist, restraining him. “Let her go.”

  Zizi turned and headed back up the stairs to her apartment without a backward glance.

  Elvis whirled on me and Slash, furious. “How could you just let her leave like that? After what she did to Arthur? To me?”

  I put a hand on Elvis’s arm in an attempt to calm him. “Because we can. She’ll get her punishment, Elvis. She just left thinking she has the antidote. Instead, she stole some dirt from the hotel garden wrapped in a piece of paper and hidden in a wooden box. Slash and I took the real plague endospores and the antidote to the American Embassy yesterday. They should already be in the hands of the CDC.”

  Elvis’s mouth dropped open. “You...set her up?”

  I glanced at Slash. “We did. Sorry we didn’t tell you, Elvis. We just thought it would make the confrontation more authentic.”

  When it finally sunk in, he grabbed me around the waist, squeezing me so hard I could hardly breathe. When he pulled back, his smile was wide. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He looked down the sidewalk where Gwen was pacing, a furious look still on her face. He dipped his head in her direction. “You want to tell her?”

  “Nah, I’ll let you have the honor.”

  As Elvis walked over to Gwen, Arthur stuck out a hand. I took it, but instead of shaking it, he pulled me into a hug, too. “You, sneaky, wonderful little devil, Lexi Carmichael. From now on, I’m taking brains over beauty anytime.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  “How did he get over there again?” I asked.

  “Camel,” Slash answered.

  He passed the binoculars to me. I pressed them to my eyes and adjusted the view. Arthur came into focus across a wide swath of desert, sitting on a bench beneath a tent that had been erected to create shade for tourists who stopped during their camel rides to get pictures with the pyramids in the background. Tourists were coming and going, but Arthur just sat there forlorn and alone.

  “How long has he been there?”

  “Hard to say. Over an hour at least.” Elvis’s voice was glum. “Probably longer. Possibly the entire time we were in the pyramids. It’s hard to say.”

  Slash, Elvis, Gwen and I sat at a café near the pyramids, sipping Coke from glass bottles and snacking on feteer meshaltet, which was a delicious layered pastry. We had the day to play tourists in Cairo before our plane was ready for departure, so we’d decided to visit the pyramids.

  We could have taken a cab the thirteen miles to Giza, but given our experience driving in Cairo, we opted to take the train. Once we arrived at the pyramids, we purchased our tickets and fought our way through the surprisingly aggressive vendors to the pyramid entrances. The four of us had spent the past three hours tromping around inside the dark pyramids, navigating narrow ramps with only minimal light from manmade bulbs. It was remarkable examining the interior structure and marveling at the engineering ingenuity of the architects of the time. Slash, Elvis and I paused several times to debate on how or why something was constructed in a particular way as we walked through the astonishing structures.

  Gwen held her own. She didn’t seem to mind our engineering talk and offered interesting tidbits about the thermal imaging currently going on at the pyramids to determine if cold spots or significant changes in temperature might indicate hidden chambers or alcoves.

  Basically we were four geeks in engineering and science heaven.

  Arthur, on the other hand, had already seen the pyramids, but he wanted some alone time to think about what to do with the staff. He told Elvis he was going on a camel ride and would meet us at this café. The café provided the binoculars to tourists to admire the pyramids, which is how Elvis had spotted him at the picture area just sitting on the bench alone.

  “We have to go get him,” Gwen said, stuffing a piece of pastry in her mouth. Crumbs fell on the front of her T-shirt. “Our plane leaves in five hours.”

  Slash set down his coffee. He was the only one of us not drinking something cold. “She’s right. We have to talk to him.”

  Elvis sighed. “I need backup. He’s not going to listen to me. But he might listen to someone else.” He looked at me pointedly.

  I shook my head in alarm. “Oh, no. No way in hell am I getting on a camel.”

  “Come on, Lexi. I need you. Arthur needs you.”

  I set down my Coke bottle with a thud. “He can need me from here. Why don’t you go get him and bring him back? Why do I have to go?”

  “Because I’m afraid he’ll bolt. Again.” Elvis shoved his fingers through his hair. “We need him to listen to reason. He likes you, Lexi. He’ll listen to you.”

  Wow. No pressure.

  “If I’m the voice of reason in this situation, we’re in trouble.” I frowned. “How do you know he’ll listen to me anyway?”

  “I just know. Please, Lexi.”

  He was playing the pleading friend card. It totally wasn’t fair. “This is a very bad idea, Elvis. Me on a camel? It’s just alerting the trouble gods.”

  “Why? These camels are perfectly tame.” Elvis swept his hand out toward the pyramid. “Look at them. They’re plodding along as they do daily, carrying hundreds of visitors a month back and forth without incident.”

  “They are animals. They spit and have big teeth.” I sighed. “You really want to do this?”

  “Want might be too strong a word, but I�
�m willing to do it. I need to. I need you to do it, too.”

  “I’m in.” Gwen finished off the last of the pastry and wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I’ve always wanted to ride a camel.” She glanced at me. “Oh, come on, Lexi. Be brave. It will be a short ride. What could go wrong? You’re coming, too, right, Slash?”

  Slash glanced at me. “If Lexi gets on a camel, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “I bet,” I muttered crankily.

  Gwen bounced out of her chair, her excitement showing. “Well, it’s decided, then. Let’s go.”

  I wasn’t sure how it had happened, but somehow I had committed to go on a camel ride without actually agreeing to it. I’d been trapped.

  Gwen and Elvis dashed off to secure our camel ride while Slash finished his coffee and I dropped some bills on the table. By the time we caught up with them, Elvis was animatedly talking to a guy whom, I presumed, was one of the camel owners. Gwen had linked her arm with his. They looked pretty comfortable together, talking and laughing. By the sounds of it, Elvis was bargaining and doing a pretty good job of it. The way he often glanced at Gwen, as if to gauge her mood and happiness, made me realize he was trying to impress her.

  Bonnie might be in real trouble.

  I leaned over to Slash and lowered my voice. “Do you see the way Elvis looks at Gwen?”

  “Plausible deniability, remember?” He kissed my nose. “We know nothing.”

  “That continues to be the problem.”

  “If they want us to know anything, they’ll tell us.”

  I sighed. “Fine. In my opinion, it would be a lot better if people just announced where they stood in relation to liking each other, then all would be clear.”