by Paul Sussman
He shook his head, bringing up a hand and wiping it across his eyes.
Freya wanted to prompt him about the oasis, but he looked so old and helpless, so distraught, it just didn’t seem appropriate, not for the moment at least. Instead she crossed the room and fetched his glass. Refilling it from the bottle in the cabinet, she brought it over and placed it in front of him. He gave a feeble smile and sipped.
‘You are too kind to me,’ he said. ‘Really, too kind.’
He took another sip. Closing the first drawer he opened the one below, leaning sideways and down so that only the top of his head was visible above the surface of the desk.
‘He was right of course,’ came his voice, accompanied by the sound of rifling papers. ‘Flinders. That it was my fault, I who destroyed my life. I think that’s why I was so angry with him – because it was easier than acknowledging where the blame really lay. So much less painful.’
He sat up, pushing the drawer closed. He was holding a plastic cassette case.
‘I love objects, you see. Always have. To have them around me, to possess them, fragments of the past, tiny windows on a lost world – an addiction, every bit as corrosive as drink or drugs. I just couldn’t help myself. They made me so very happy.’
He sighed – a weary, defeated sound. Opening the case and checking the cassette inside, he leant across and handed it to her.
‘You’ll need to rewind it, but this is what you want. It’s all on there – Abydos, the oasis, what I found. Flinders will understand. You have a tape player in your car?’
‘CD,’ she said.
‘Ah. Then you’d better take this as well.’
He clicked open the portable player on the desk and removed the Fairuz tape, closing it again and pushing it across to her, dismissing her objections.
‘Take it, please. No need to return it. The very least I can do after …’
He lowered his eyes.
‘And your sister’s book, you’re welcome to that too.’
She thanked him, but said she already had several copies of her own. He nodded and, taking the book back, returned it to the shelf.
‘And now I think it’s probably time you were on your way. It’s been rather a draining night and Flinders will be worried, planning a rescue mission. He never could resist a damsel in distress. The quintessential Englishman.’
Making sure she had the player and the cassette, he led her back along the corridor to the front door. He slipped the cardigan off his shoulders and handed it to her.
‘Keep it,’ she said, knowing Molly Kiernan would understand. ‘Give it back when we next meet.’
‘I have a feeling that might not be for a long time, if ever. Better to take it now.’
For a moment they stood there, then, leaning forward, Freya kissed him on the cheek.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
He smiled and patted her arm.
‘On the contrary, thank you. You have made an old jailbird very happy.’
Their eyes met briefly, then he grasped the door handle. Before he could open the door she reached out and took his hand.
‘He thinks the world of you. Flin. Even after everything. He still looks up to you. He’d want you to know that.’
‘Actually it’s I who look up to him,’ said Fadawi. ‘The greatest archaeologist I ever met. A genius, an absolute genius. Best field man in the business.’
He paused, then added:
‘Look after him. He needs it. And tell him he mustn’t feel bad. The fault is all mine.’
Easing his hand free, he opened the door and steered her through out onto the gravel drive.
‘Thank you,’ she repeated. ‘Thank you so much.’
He smiled again, gave her another pat on the arm and pushed the door closed. Picking up the shotgun he had propped beside it, he curled a finger around the trigger.
‘Now let’s just think how to do this,’ he sighed.
Flin was moving towards Freya the moment she emerged from the house. Breaking into a trot he reached her just as the front door slammed shut.
‘Tell me! What did he do to you, the filthy—’ ‘He didn’t do anything,’ she said, striding towards the car, Flin back-pedalling beside her, jabbing a finger angrily at the door.
‘I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!’
‘You’ll do no such thing. He was an absolute gentleman.’ ‘Did he make you … ?’
‘No, he did not make me strip. He changed his mind.’ ‘So what have you been doing in there all this time?’ ‘Talking,’ she said, opening the passenger door of the Cherokee and climbing in. ‘You might be interested to hear he thinks you’re the greatest archaeologist he’s ever met. A genius, that’s what he called you. An absolute genius.’
That shut Flin up, his expression morphing from fury to surprise. For a moment he just stood there staring at the house, apparently contemplating whether to go back and speak to Fadawi himself. Thinking better of it, he opened the driver’s door and climbed in beside Freya.
‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that he told you what he knows?’
She held up the cassette.
‘All on here, apparently. He said you’d understand what it meant.’
He took the cassette, turning it over in his hand.
‘I assume that’s to play it on?’ he said, indicating the machine in her lap. Freya nodded.
‘He gave it to us. Said we could keep it.’
He pondered, eyes flicking from the tape to the house, then handed the cassette back to her and started the engine.
‘We’ll listen as we go,’ he said. He turned the car round and, with a final glance back, set off down the drive, tyres crunching on gravel, the tape machine rattling and whirring as Freya rewound the cassette. According to the dashboard clock it was now 10.40 p.m.
‘Flinders?’ she said.
‘Hmm?’
‘Flinders. Is that what Flin’s short for?’
She sounded as if she was about to start giggling. He glanced across, gave an embarrassed shrug.
‘After Flinders Petrie. The Egyptologist. For some reason my parents thought it would give me a head start in life.’
She smirked.
‘Nice name. Distinguished.’
‘Don’t knock it. If I’d been a girl they were going to call me Nefertiti.’
They passed through the white picket fence and bumped off down the track towards the highway, a single gunshot echoing from the house behind them, too muted for them to hear above the hiss of the tape machine and purring of the engine.
CAIRO
Cy Angleton sat on the balcony of his listening station in the Semiramis Intercontinental, eating a Mars Bar and gazing distractedly out across the Cairo nightscape, a twinkling mosaic of light stretching off into the far distance. Mrs Malouff was long gone, and although normally the station remained unmanned until she returned in the morning, tonight he wanted to be here, just on the off-chance Brodie called in, tried to make contact with Kiernan.
He had to admire the man, the way he had shaken him off like that, swerving across the Autoroute and into the oncoming traffic, disappearing the wrong way down the slip road. Nice driving, clever. Angleton had long prided himself on his car-tailing abilities – he’d followed Kiernan without her noticing anything, and she was the slyest of the sly – but in this instance he’d had to admit defeat. Trying to match Brodie’s manoeuvre would have been tantamount to emblazoning ‘You are being followed!’ in glorious neon right across the night sky.
And so he’d backed off, returning first to the apartment in Ain Shams in the hope of picking up Kiernan, then, finding she had already left, coming here instead. It was probably a waste of time, but he needed to gather his thoughts and plan his next move.
Every job of this type had a pivotal point, a Rubicon moment where you have the choice of either treading water or ratcheting things up to a whole other level. That moment was now. He knew he still didn’t have the full picture – there were stil
l too many variables for his liking – but he needed to track Brodie down and he needed to do it quickly, before events spun completely out of control. So far he had kept things pretty tight, just him, Mrs Malouff and, obviously, his employers. Now, sitting on the balcony gazing at the ghostly floodlit zigzag of the Pyramids – just visible right out on the very edge of the city – he decided it was time to widen the circle, break cover, throw his hat into the ring. Whatever the hell euphemism you wanted to use. He’d already got the go-ahead from Langley, had them make the necessary approaches. With Brodie either not contacting Kiernan, or else doing so via some channel he hadn’t yet discovered, he accepted he had no choice but to act. He had to track them down. Brodie and the girl. He had to get to them. Before anyone else did.
He looked out a while longer, finishing his Mars Bar, really cramming it into his mouth, then heaved himself to his feet. Going inside he picked up his mobile from the bed and dialled. Five rings, and then the call was answered.
‘Major-General Taneer? Cyrus Angleton, US Embassy. I believe one of my colleagues in the States has already … good, good, thank you, that’s extremely kind. So, let me explain exactly what I need.’
He went through it all slowly and deliberately, spelling it out so as to ensure the Egyptian not only understood, but also appreciated the urgency of the situation – a sweep of every police checkpoint within a hundred-mile radius of Cairo to see which, if any, had logged a white, Embassy-registered Grand Cherokee Jeep, licence plate 21963. Log times and direction of travel would also be greatly appreciated.
Once he was sure the man at the other end was clear, would come back to him the moment he had any information, Angleton rang off and wandered outside again. Pulling another Mars Bar from his pocket and opening it, he balled the wrapper and dropped it off the balcony. He took a bite and started singing to himself, quietly, to the tune of ‘Michael Finnigan’.
‘Where are you, Professor Flin-i-flin?
Disappeared into air so thin-i-thin,
But it’s me who’ll win-i-win,
Reel you in again, Professor Flin-i-Flin.’
BETWEEN CAIRO AND ALEXANDRIA
‘Saturday January 21st. Started work in the Horus chapel, the plan being to spend three to four days in each sanctuary, with a week to write my report at the end. Measured up, photographed the walls, made notes on the preservation of the reliefs, ceiling, false-door etc. Some bloody American woman came in and started chanting, sounded like a retching camel. Ridiculous.’
Flin clicked his fingers, motioning to Freya to stop the tape, the Cherokee bouncing and juddering as they followed the track back towards the Cairo-Alexandria highway, dust billowing around them.
‘What does it mean?’ Freya asked.
He was frowning.
‘Well I’d need to listen to a bit more, but from what we’ve just heard it sounds distinctly like Hassan’s work notes, from that last season at Abydos. When he got caught stealing …’
He broke off, swerving to avoid a deep pothole. Banana leaves slapped against the Jeep’s bodywork like giant hands.
‘Hassan always kept two records of what he was doing,’ he resumed. ‘A detailed dig diary, but also a more informal recorded commentary – thoughts, impressions, general stuff, gossip. In English, for some reason, even though his native language was Arabic.’
He swerved again, this time to avoid a dog that was ambling along the middle of the track.
‘What’s he talking about here?’ asked Freya.
‘Halfway through that last season – I mentioned this on the drive up – Hassan was asked to help with some conservation work in the temple of Seti I. The Supreme Council needed a report on the condition of the temple’s seven internal sanctuaries, of which the Horus chapel is one. I ended up supervising the Khasekhemwy dig, Hassan took four weeks out to do the necessary survey and write up his findings.’
He scratched his head.
‘Although what the hell any of that has to do with the oasis I have no idea. The Seti Temple was built a thousand years after the last recorded mention of the wehat seshtat and there’s nothing even remotely connected in any of its reliefs or inscriptions.’
‘So why’s he given us the tape?’ she asked as they reached the end of the track and turned left, back towards Cairo.
Flin shrugged.
‘I guess we’ll just have to listen.’
He leant across and pressed Play. Fadawi’s disembodied voice – strong, rich, cultured – once again echoed from the recorder.
‘Sunday January 22nd. Couldn’t sleep so came to the temple early, just after 5 a.m. No one had bothered to inform the night guards I was working there and one of them damned nearly shot me – thought I was an Islamist planting a bomb or something. Nine years since the Hatshepsut massacre and everyone’s still horribly jittery about terrorists. Sketched the King Clothing Horus relief and took more shots of the ceiling vault, which really isn’t in very good condition at all. Afternoon tea with Abu Gamaa, who’s working on the masonry out in the first court – eighty years old and still the best stone-restorer in Egypt. He told the most outrageous joke about Howard Carter and Tutankhamun’s penis which I don’t think I can repeat even here!’
And so it continued. Some days received just a few cursory comments, the barest outline of what Fadawi had been doing. Others produced much longer entries, descriptions of his work accompanied by extended monologues on everything from New Kingdom funerary architecture to whether French female archaeologists were better looking than Polish ones (yes, thought Fadawi).
After twenty minutes, by which point they had reached and passed through the checkpoint they had encountered earlier in the evening – the policeman manning the point again noting their registration number – Flin told Freya to start fast-forwarding, leapfrogging segments of the recording in the hope of reaching the part that was actually relevant to them. Still they couldn’t find what they wanted as Fadawi’s voice chattered on, in brief bursts now, taking them through January and into February, as he worked his way from sanctuary to sanctuary, each apparently dedicated to a different deity: Horus, Isis, Osiris, Amun-Ra, Re-Horakhty. They came to the end of the tape, turned it over, started to play the other side, the two of them looking increasingly despondent as they failed to hit on even the vaguest mention of the Hidden Oasis.
‘I’m getting a nasty feeling here,’ said Flin as the Egyptian droned on in the background: something about mould damage to the Re-Horakhty ceiling vault. ‘That he’s wasting our time, taking us on a wild goose chase just for the hell of it.’
‘He wouldn’t do that,’ said Freya, remembering how Fadawi had been back at the house. ‘He was genuine. There’s something here, I—’
She didn’t finish the sentence for Flin suddenly clicked his fingers and jabbed at the recorder, motioning her to rewind. She stopped the tape, spooled it back a bit, pressed Play again.
‘… with cartouches and offering formulas. As I leant close to it I felt the strangest thing – a slight waft of air on …’
Again Flin clicked his fingers, making a whirling motion with his hand to indicate she should roll back even further. The tape rattled and hissed as it spun around its reel. Flin let it go for a good five seconds before waving at her to start it again.
‘… just found something rather intriguing. I was up on the scaffold at the front end of the Re-Horakhty chapel, taking mould scrapings from the ceiling, the area where the vault joins the chapel’s northern wall. There’s a stone block up there, forming the very top right-hand corner of the wall, only about fifteen inches by fifteen inches, decorated with cartouches and offering formulas. As I leant close to it I felt the strangest thing – a slight waft of air on my face. Initially I thought it must be coming up from the sanctuary doorway, but when I took a closer look – and you don’t really notice this from ground level – I saw that there is a very thin gap, no more than a millimetre wide, running along the top of the block, with similar gaps, even narrower, down each
side of it and along the bottom. Everywhere else in the chapel the wall-blocks are so tightly fitted you couldn’t get a pin head between them, but in this particular instance there seems to be a bit of give. Not only that, but the fact that you can feel air coming through suggests there is some sort of cavity back there. It’s too late to do anything about it today, but I’ve spoken to Abu Gamaa and we’re going to come back in the morning for a proper examination, see if maybe we can move the block. It’s probably nothing, but all the same …’
Freya pressed the pause button.
‘You think this is it?’ she asked. ‘What he wanted to tell us about?’
Flin just reached across and started the tape again.
‘Sunday 12th February. I couldn’t help myself, I had to come early to look at the block again, even if it meant getting shot at by trigger-happy guards! The more I think about it – and I’ve done little else since yesterday evening – the more it seems to me I might have stumbled on something quite significant. The walls between the chapels are at least ten feet thick, and it’s always been assumed they’re completely solid. If it turns out they’re in fact hollow, with cavities between them, that would transform our understanding not only of the temple itself, but also of the way it was constructed. By rights I ought to get permission from the Supreme Council, but that’ll delay things for at least a week and I really do want to find out what’s back there. Abu’ll be here in a few minutes and we can move the block, get an idea what’s behind it, then alert the necessary authorities. I really am getting rather excited.’
The Cherokee had come up behind an oil tanker that was rumbling along at less than 60 km/hour. Although the outside lane was clear, Flin just sat there, too absorbed in the recording to overtake.
‘… 4 p.m. and Abu Gamaa’s only just arrived – been held up all day on family business, something to do with his brothers, which I must say has been more than frustrating. I know these things can’t be avoided, but today of all days! Anyway, he’s here now, with his grandson Latif, and we’re all up on the scaffold. They’ve brought a pair of crowbars with them, and a piece of foam matting to lay the block on if and when they get it out and are just starting to work the bars … Khalee barak, Abu! … scaffold’s wobbling around rather so I think I’d better put the recorder …’
