Sheba

by Jack Higgins

  Kane gripped his tightly and stared through the windscreen out of dust-rimmed eyes. His mind became a blank as he waited so that he was taken completely by surprise when Marie screamed in his ear and the black dots in the distance seemed to rush toward them.

  He raised his rifle slightly and waited. As they came up fast behind the three camels, the man at the rear turned and looked toward them and his mouth opened in a cry of dismay. He urged his camel forward.

  Marie spun the wheel and the truck moved abreast of the Arabs. Kane raised his rifle and fired a warning shot over them and then the truck drew ahead.

  As Marie swerved to a halt, the man with the diseased face, who was carrying Ruth Cunningham in front of him, released her so that she tumbled to the ground. He raised his rifle in one hand, and Jamal fired a quick shot that lifted him from the saddle.

  Marie drove the truck forward and halted beside Ruth Cunningham. She was weeping, her head buried in her hands, and Marie spoke gently to her. “Did they harm you in any way?”

  Ruth Cunningham shook her head several times and spoke with difficulty. “The man with the awful face kept pawing me, but the one who seemed to be the leader made him leave me alone.” She collapsed in a flood of tears and Marie led her gently to the truck and eased her into one of the seats.

  Kane walked across to the two men, who sat their camels quietly under the threat of Jamal’s carbine. The man with the cropped ears grinned down at him. “The ways of Allah are strange.”

  “You’re damned right, they are,” Kane told him. “It’s lucky for you, you didn’t harm her. Now get the hell out of here.”

  He stood for a little while, watching them ride away, and then he went to help Jamal, who was digging a shallow grave for the dead man.

  When they returned to the truck, Ruth Cunningham was still sobbing quietly on Marie’s shoulder. Kane raised his eyebrows inquiringly and Marie shook her head. He shrugged. “There’s no hurry. We’ll rest up for an hour before starting back.”

  He sat down in the sand, his back against the side of the truck, and pulled the brim of his bush hat over his eyes, and gradually his head nodded forward and he dozed.

  In what seemed to be the same moment of time, he came awake to a gentle tug at his shoulder. Marie smiled down at him. “We should be making a move, Gavin. It’s after six.”

  He got to his feet and looked into the interior of the truck. Ruth Cunningham was curled up in one of the passenger seats, sleeping. He smiled at Marie and climbed behind the wheel. She and Jamal went round to the other side and Kane gently eased in the clutch and drove away.

  There was a car compass fitted to the dashboard, and he decided to leave the camel tracks and pursue what seemed to be a much more direct route to Shabwa.

  Gradually the sun dipped toward the horizon in a great orange ball and then the night fell with its usual rapidity. The sky was clear, with stars strung away to the horizon like diamond chips, and the moon bathed the desert in an unearthly white light.

  Marie had dozed off, her head against Kane’s shoulder, and he leaned back in his seat, hands steady on the wheel, and stared ahead into the night.

  When he saw it, the shock was so great that he slammed his foot against the brake, bringing the truck to a halt with such force that everyone was thrown forward in their seats and brought violently awake.

  “Gavin, what is it?” Marie cried in alarm.

  He pointed over to the right hand side of the vehicle without speaking. Standing poised on top of a small rise, throwing a long, dark moon-shadow across the sand, was a delicate stone pillar.

  Kane got out of the truck, followed by Marie, and walked slowly toward it. When he was a few feet away, his foot kicked against something with a metallic clang.

  He picked up a couple of cans and weighed them in each hand. “Corned beef and soup. Whoever it was, it was no Arab, that’s for sure.”

  He leaned down and picked up another object as Ruth Cunningham and Jamal moved forward to join him. For a moment they could not see what it was, and then he turned and held it out toward them. It was a large and very empty aluminum water bottle.

  10

  JAMAL GENTLY CLEARED LOOSE SAND AWAY FROM THE base of the pillar while Kane knelt beside him, directing the beam of a powerful electric torch on the work.

  After a while, the Somali stopped digging and pointed. Kane leaned forward and saw that a long inscription in perfectly chiseled characters had emerged. He studied it carefully for several minutes and then got to his feet and walked back to the truck.

  A spirit-stove flared in the slight breeze and Marie and Ruth Cunningham were heating cans of beans in a pan of boiling water. Kane flung himself down beside them, and Ruth poured hot coffee into a tin mug and handed it to him. “Have you found anything more?”

  Kane drank some of the coffee and nodded. “A long Sabean inscription—that was the language of ancient Sheba, by the way. Unfortunately, I haven’t any books with me, and I’m a little rusty.” He held out the mug for more coffee. “I managed to decipher one or two words. Asthar, for example, and a reference to distance which I’m not familiar with.”

  Marie pushed back her hair with one hand, and the light from the spirit-stove, flickering in the wind, danced across her face. “You mean it’s probably a sort of milestone?”

  Kane nodded. “It’s obviously one of the seven pillars mentioned by Alexias.”

  “But is that possible?” she said. “If that pillar was erected during the time of the Queen of Sheba, it would be almost three thousand years old.”

  He shrugged. “That’s perfectly possible in the dry heat of the desert. I’ve seen inscriptions at Marib over two thousand five hundred years old, and they look as fresh as if the mason had chiseled them yesterday—and another thing, you know how frequent sand storms are here. It’s probably been buried, then uncovered again scores of times over the ages.”

  “What about that water bottle and the empty food cans?” Ruth said, handing him a plate of beans.

  “I think your husband must have left them there. We know for certain that he left Shabwa by camel. Whatever else may have happened to him, I think it’s reasonable to assume he’d have got this far.”

  “But those three outlaws?” she said. “Perhaps there are others like them.”

  He nodded. “That’s true. With every man’s hand against them, they go where no one else dares, but as a rule they don’t come this far out. They usually hug the edge of the desert and keep within striking distance of water. In any case, only a European would use a water bottle of that type. The Bedouins use goatskins.”

  “So it was all true,” Marie said after a short silence. “Sheba and her temple, Alexias and his Roman cavalrymen.”

  “Yes, they must have passed this way,” Kane said.

  In the eerie silence which followed his words, no one seemed to breathe, and for one timeless moment he almost expected to hear the chink of harness in the distance and see the Roman cavalrymen appear over the dunes, Alexias in the lead, moonlight glinting on his breastplate as he reined in his horse and gazed out over the desert.

  And then out of the silence there came a low, vibrant hum which grew until it filled the ears, and Ruth Cunningham turned in alarm. Marie placed a hand on her arm and said quickly, “It’s nothing to be alarmed about. Something to do with the change in temperature. One layer of sand sliding over the other.”

  “The singing sands,” Kane said softly. “I wonder if Alexias heard them also.”

  “One thing is certain,” Ruth Cunningham said. “He wouldn’t have had anyone who could have given him the scientific explanation.”

  “All the same, I don’t think he’d have been afraid,” Kane said gently. There was a short silence and he took out a crumpled packet of cigarettes. “The point we’ve got to decide now is what do we do next.”

  Marie took one of his cigarettes and leaned down to light it from the spirit-stove. When she sat up, her face was thoughtful. “How far did Alexias
say the temple was from Shabwa?”

  “About ninety miles,” Kane said.

  “And we’re about forty miles from Shabwa?” He nodded and she leaned back, her face half in shadow. After a while she said slowly, “I think we should turn round and chart a course for Marib. Even if we don’t find other pillars still standing, we should find this outcrop of rock which Alexias described.”

  Ruth Cunningham turned eagerly to Kane. “Do you think we could?”

  He nodded. “I don’t see why not. We’ve got plenty of fuel and water. If we start now, we should be there by dawn. There’s enough moonlight, and it would be a damned sight more pleasant than traveling during the day.”

  Marie got to her feet. “That settles it, then. We pack up and move on right away.” As Kane turned away, she caught his sleeve. “You need some sleep, Gavin. I’ll drive for a couple of hours—you can take over later.”

  For a moment, he was going to refuse, and then tiredness dropped about his shoulders like a heavy blanket. When they drove off half an hour later, he was sprawled amongst the baggage in the rear and already asleep.

  He awakened with a bad taste in his mouth. It was bitterly cold and he sat up and leaned forward. Jamal dozed beside him and Ruth Cunningham was asleep, her head lolling backwards.

  He scrambled over into the front seat. When Marie turned to smile at him, he saw the lines of fatigue on her face, and a strange and immediate rush of tenderness moved inside him.

  “What time is it?” he said.

  “About three-thirty.”

  He reached across and took the wheel in his hands. “Slide out of the way and I’ll take over. You should have wakened me an hour ago.”

  She lit a cigarette and placed it in his mouth and then she folded her arms and leaned against him, her head on his shoulder. “All at once I feel tired.”

  He inhaled the fragrance of her and smiled. “Lucky me.”

  She sighed contentedly. “This is nice.”

  They were crossing an area of flat scrubland and he drove with one hand, sliding the other about her shoulder, pulling her close. There were many things he could have said, but there was really no need to say anything.

  After a while, she raised her face and kissed him gently on one cheek. “My poor Gavin,” she said, and there was a glint of amusement in her eyes.

  “Damn you!” he said. “Damn all women!”

  She laughed softly. “What are we going to do about it?”

  He sighed. “The usual thing, I suppose. There’s Father O’Brien at Mukalla. Will he suit you?”

  “Admirably—I like Father O’Brien,” she said. “And afterwards?”

  He shrugged. “That can take care of itself.”

  She seemed about to argue the point and then she shrugged as if content for the moment. “We’ll see.”

  After a while, she slept, and Kane held her close as he stared out through the windscreen and told himself wryly that life was catching up to him again. It was rather pleasant to find that he didn’t really mind.

  The scrubland came to an end and he eased Marie into the corner, changed to a lower gear, and took the truck up the steep side of a dune.

  The moon grew paler, and in the east tiny fingers of light appeared above the horizon as dawn touched the sky. His eyes were gritty and sore from lack of sleep and his arms ached with the driving of the past few hours.

  He halted on top of a large dune for a moment or two and searched the desert with field glasses. As the sun lifted above the horizon, flooding the sky with light, it glinted on something in the distance. He focused the glasses. Rearing out of the desert five or six miles away was a great outcrop of reddish stone.

  He engaged a low gear and took the truck down the steep side of the sand dune. Once at the bottom, he drove through a gap which brought him to another flat plain of sand and scrub. He accelerated and drove toward the distant outcrop of rock at high speed.

  As the truck lurched forward, the others came awake quickly. “What’s happening?” Marie demanded anxiously.

  He nodded into the distance. “We’re almost there.”

  Ruth Cunningham leaned forward, her hands gripping the edge of the seat so strongly that her knuckles showed white.

  The outcrop increased in size until it towered above them, and then they entered the deep gorge which twisted into the heart of it. Kane braked to a halt and switched off the engine. It was completely quiet, and after a moment he took down one of the rifles and stepped to the ground. “It might be an idea if we left the truck here. There’s no knowing what we might find up ahead.”

  Jamal took the other rifle and they started to walk along the firm bed of the gorge. After a while, Ruth Cunningham gave a startled exclamation and pointed upwards. “Isn’t that an inscription on the face of the rock?”

  As the sun’s rays penetrated the gorge, they picked out the rock inscriptions with startling suddenness. Kane moved closer and gazed up. After a moment or two, he nodded. “They’re Sabean all right. We’ve certainly come to the right place.”

  He moved on, the others at his shoulder. They passed several more inscriptions and then rounded a shoulder of rock and paused.

  Before them stretched a broad avenue of pillars, some in varying stages of ruin, others still intact. At the end of the avenue there was the crumbling facade of a mighty temple built into the face of the gorge itself.

  Kane’s mouth went dry. He could remember no other moment in his life quite like it. He started forward quickly and the others trailed after him.

  At the end of the avenue of pillars, and directly in front of the temple itself, was a deep pool of water, crystal clear and fed from some invisible spring. He flung himself down by its side and drank from his cupped hands.

  He could hear the others coming up behind him, the two women talking excitedly, and he cried out, “This water is as cold as ice.”

  Their voices ceased abruptly and, as Kane started to get up, a reflection in the water in front of him caused him to grab for his rifle.

  A bullet chipped the stone edge of the pool and he raised his arms above his head and climbed slowly to his feet. On the other side of the pool were at least a dozen half-naked Bedouins, and they were holding the very latest Lee Enfield rifles. Standing in front of them, a sardonic smile on his face, was Selim.

  “Please do not try anything foolish,” he said in his careful, clipped English.

  The Bedouins moved quickly round the pool, splitting into two groups and effectively surrounding Kane and his party. Selim followed at a more leisurely pace, one hand toying with the hilt of his jambiya, the other tugging gently at his beard.

  He paused a foot or so away and Kane said softly, “It’s a small world.”

  Selim nodded. “You are a hard man to kill.” He sighed heavily and his right fist shot out, catching Kane full in the mouth.

  Kane lay on the ground for a moment, shaking his head and conscious of the threatening muzzles of the rifles which had swung toward him. He wiped blood from his mouth and got to his feet slowly.

  Selim smiled. “The down payment on an old score. The rest will come later. I never forget a debt.” He gave a quick command and the Bedouins closed in, urging their prisoners forward with shrill cries.

  As he stumbled toward the great flight of steps which led up to the temple, Kane considered the unexpected turn events had taken. From the beginning, he should have realized there was the possibility that John Cunningham had survived the desert crossing—that some human agency had prevented his return. But why Selim? It didn’t make sense.

  As he mounted the top step and crossed the terrace, the closer view of the temple drove other considerations from his mind. It had been built into the face of the rock wall itself, and the great pillars which supported the portico and flanked the entrance were at least sixty feet high.

  Marie appeared at his shoulder and her voice was filled with awe. “I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s nothing to touch this in the whole of Arabia.
”

  Kane nodded. “Strong Egyptian influence, I would say. Same style of portico as the temple at Karnak.”

  It was cool and very quiet inside, and his eyes soon became accustomed to the dim light. The floor was constructed of rose-colored marble, and pillars of well-cut blocks of drafted masonry towered into the gloom. At the other end of the imposing nave, a great statue loomed out of the darkness.

  The party paused as Selim called a halt and ordered most of his men outside except for three, who were obviously to be their guards. He turned to Kane. “You will all stay here. If you attempt to escape or make a suspicious move of any sort, the guards have orders to kill you at once.”

  “Okay, you’re the boss,” Kane said. “There’s one thing you might tell us before you go. What happened to Mrs. Cunningham’s husband? After all, he’s the reason we’re here.”

  Selim shrugged. “He is alive and well—for the moment.”

  Ruth Cunningham moved forward. “When can I see him? Oh, please let me see him.”

  Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled. Selim looked down into her face as if seeing her for the first time. After a moment or two, he shook his head slowly. “That is not possible at the moment. If you behave yourself, you may see him later. You must wait here.”

  “But for what?” Kane demanded. “A firing squad, a slit throat, or a new arrival?”

  Selim smiled thinly. “I am not here to answer questions.”

  He turned and walked away quickly and Kane took the crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket. There was one left and he drew smoke deep into his lungs as he looked up at the statue.

  It was like nothing he had ever seen before, carved from solid stone. The lips were full and sensual and the eyes slanted upwards above high cheek bones and were closed as if in sleep. It had an affinity with the statues of the Hindu goddess Kali, which he had seen many times in Indian temples.

  He frowned slightly, his mind grappling with the academic side of the problem, and his eyes wandered to the high altar, noticing the carved firebowl. He remembered the Roman cavalrymen and the old priestess who had remained to tend the flame, and time seemed to have no meaning. It was a circle, turning upon itself endlessly.