King of Kings

by Wilbur Smith

  “O Allah, forgive our living and our dead,” he recited softly in Arabic, quoting one of the prayers from the Hadith. Then he covered her face again and walked downstairs.

  The closer he came to the duke the more he felt a dark anger building in his blood. By the time he had reached the ground floor and thrown open the door to the study, his hand was on the hilt of his cavalry saber.

  “You murderous dog!” He strode across the polished tiles toward the duke. “I shall kill you where you stand.”

  The duke did not flinch. A flash of steel to his left, and Penrod found himself stopped by the flat of Sam Adams’s sword across his chest.

  “Stay where you are, Major Ballantyne,” Sam said calmly. “That’s an order.”

  Penrod continued to stare at the sleek duke in his spotless black suit.

  “He murdered her, Sam. He let her die and they have left her in her filth.”

  The blade remained across his chest, but Penrod felt the tremor of Sam’s shock.

  The duke looked slightly bored. “The body will be dealt with in due course.”

  “Body?” Penrod said. “That was your daughter.”

  The duke raised his eyebrows. “Yes, Major. My daughter. My charge and my responsibility, and you are a guest in my house.” He turned toward Sam. “I will try and forgive this gross and officious intrusion, Colonel Adams, from you and your friend.” The duke glanced at the Egyptian doctor. “You did leave your band of uniformed apes at the gate, at least. Well, all but one of them.”

  Penrod pushed forward, but Sam pressed back against him with the flat of his blade.

  “But you, Major Ballantyne,” the duke continued, “you I will not forgive.”

  “I do not want your forgiveness.”

  Penrod rocked his weight back a fraction. It was a promise to Sam he would not attack. Sam lowered his saber and sheathed it.

  “Major Ballantyne has only acted out of a justified concern for Lady Agatha, and in coming to me—”

  “But he didn’t just come to you, did he, Colonel Adams?” the duke interrupted. He nodded to one of the servants before continuing. “Major Ballantyne, as well as harassing both you and myself, bribed a former servant of my daughter’s to steal into my home and supply my unfortunate child with the very drug that was killing her.”

  “A good idea,” someone said quietly.

  Penrod realized it was the Egyptian doctor who had spoken. He wore an expression of sorrow and sympathy, and as Penrod met his gaze, nodded slightly to him. The other Europeans in the room ignored him entirely.

  Sam had gone white. “Is this true?” he said to Penrod.

  Before Penrod could reply, the sound of a woman crying was heard in the corridor outside. The doors were opened again and two of the thuggish servants dragged Akila into the room. Her headscarf had been torn away and her black hair hung below her shoulders. They held her by her wrists, twisting her arms back so she was forced onto her knees. She managed to lift her head and Penrod saw her face. Her lip was cut and her right eye swollen closed.

  “I was so close, effendi!” she gasped. “I got into the room, I touched her but before I could give her the drug, they found me.” Then she dropped her head again. Penrod found he could not move.

  “I gave her your message, effendi. She died with your words in her ear and her heart.”

  “May Allah bless you, sister,” Penrod said, his voice husky.

  Akila began weeping quietly.

  “Get her out of here,” the duke said.

  Sam stepped forward. “Your Grace—”

  The duke held up his hand. “But do not harm her,” he added wearily.

  Akila was dragged to her feet and hustled from the room. The duke picked up a small sheaf of papers from his desk.

  “I’m sure you will implement the proper steps to discipline Major Ballantyne, Adams. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have quite a busy day ahead of me.”

  •••

  The words exchanged between Colonel Adams and Major Ballantyne outside the duke’s residence were brutal and unforgiving on both sides. Sam was undoubtedly shocked by the behavior of the duke, but he felt betrayed and humiliated by Penrod’s covert actions. Penrod, seized by a toxic mixture of rage and guilt, accused his friend of cowardice. They parted with extreme bitterness on both sides. Sam declared his intention to reduce Penrod to the ranks and have him sent to Suakin, a miserable outpost on the Red Sea, until he could learn to treat his superiors with respect and behave like a gentleman in society. Penrod, who had thought of little but service to his queen and country since childhood, took this as further evidence of Sam’s unworthy kowtowing to a man little better than a murderer and said so. He rode back to his own house at a reckless speed, and wrote at once resigning his commission. He then dressed in civilian clothes and plunged into the narrow alleys of the old city in search of the drug he suddenly craved beyond anything else, taking his black and wounded heart with him.

  •••

  Lady Agatha was buried quietly at a private ceremony. The duke remained in the city, apparently continuing to pursue a number of investment opportunities. He was often seen at the club with his secretary always nearby and a constant supply of cold champagne on his table. Penrod Ballantyne had disappeared, it seemed. His house was shuttered and his servants dispersed. His fellow officers, tired of being outplayed, out-fought and out-thought, were glad to be rid of him. A number of rumors drifted in on the breeze. He had been spotted in Bombay, or seen lunching in his club in London. He had gone to the desert and turned mystic. He had been executed during a raid on the camp of Osman Atalan.

  Bacheet, Ryder Courtney’s partner and guardian of that adventurer’s remaining wealth, knew different. He watched and listened. Yakub was seen often in strange parts of town. The boy Adnan and a gang of street rats in his pay seemed to be everywhere. Letters and parcels arrived from England, from South Africa, addressed to unknown names. Bacheet knew that Penrod Ballantyne was somewhere in the city, in the never-ending twilight of an opium house, and that from that place he was spinning plans across Victoria’s Empire with a patience built of cold rage.

  Part II

  January 1888

  Horatio Gardner did not seem to be enjoying his stay in Egypt; the climate did not suit him. He was a large man, red-faced with thinning hair and an expression of constant surprise. As he stepped off the train in Cairo in the first days of 1888 he looked startled, alarmed when he reached Shepheard’s Hotel and mildly bemused as he took dinner that evening and was introduced to the several guests who had asked particularly to meet him.

  Gardner was a man of reputation, and the better informed of the citizens of Cairo knew that behind his blinking green eyes was an exceptional mind. He had made his reputation excavating ancient sites in Palestine and on the Balkan coast, and had acquired, along with his reputation as an expert in Greek and Roman artifacts, a considerable personal fortune. Exactly where this fortune had come from was unclear, but it was noted that the collections of various European monarchs, bankers and industrial magnates now included articles of rare beauty and value that could only have come from his digs and through his hands.

  His arrival in the city could only mean he was on the trail of something interesting, but no one could extract any hint from him as to what that might be. The gossip hounds brought him glass after glass of champagne. He blinked at them, drank what he was offered and told them nothing. He stayed only one night at Shepheard’s, then disappeared for a week. When he returned, he looked more startled and sweaty than ever, and a close observer might have seen a pulse in the thick veins of his temple and recognized the nervousness of a man who had closed his fingers around a great prize but now feared it might burn him.

  Carruthers, secretary to the Duke of Kendal, was one such careful observer. He made a number of discreet inquiries, and as a result was able to ensure that when Horatio finished his appointment with the director of the Museum of Antiquities, the duke happened to be at the museum
and saw him as he left the director’s offices.

  The duke turned away from the cabinet he was admiring and greeted Horatio warmly. Horatio looked alarmed. Kendal spoke to him soothingly.

  “I am glad to see you, Horatio,” he said. “I feel you have been neglecting me. I am eager to expand my collection, and yet you never write to me.”

  Horatio flushed a deep scarlet. “Your Grace, it was only last year I helped you acquire the Sirmium vases. They are worthy of a museum of their own.”

  Kendal opened a silver cigarette case and offered one of the black and gold cigarettes, emblazoned with his family crest, to Horatio. He took it and bent forward as the duke struck a match for him, studying his pink and sweaty features.

  “I think them very fine, but I am, like you, Horatio, a treasure hunter. I hunger for the new.” He took a cigarette himself and fitted it between his pale lips, then snapped the case shut, and the sound echoed around the high ceilings and marble floors.

  Horatio blinked and coughed. “I was sorry to hear about the death of your daughter,” he said, when he had recovered.

  “Yes, poor Agatha,” Kendal replied casually and lit his own cigarette. “But tell me, Horatio. What can I do for you?”

  Horatio glanced around nervously. The museum was empty apart from the duke and one or two Egyptian guards, but it seemed to Horatio that the green-glaze statuettes in their glass cases were watching him carefully.

  “Do for me, Your Grace?”

  “Yes, Horatio,” the duke said. “I would like very much for you to owe me a favor so that next time you come into the possession of something very beautiful and very rare you will think of me first.”

  The duke wandered away from him toward a display of bronze amulets and bent forward to examine them. Horatio trotted along behind him.

  “I have a home here in Cairo, you know,” the duke continued. “A very well guarded home and an excellent system of security. I had Mr. William Pinkerton himself make all the arrangements. If, Horatio, you acquired something on your recent trip up the Nile that you would rather not carry on your person, or trust to that rather quaint safe at Shepheard’s, perhaps I could be of assistance.”

  Horatio went white, which with his florid complexion gave him the coloring of pale rose.

  “How did you know, Your Grace?”

  “A simple conjecture,” the duke replied, moving from the case of amulets to one of bronze spearheads, which was a little closer to the door. Horatio followed, his pink face as hopeful as a child before Christmas.

  “Your arrangements were made by Pinkerton himself? Of the Pinkerton Detective Agency? I know their reputation, of course.” He chewed his upper lip thoughtfully, then spoke with sudden resolution. “I do have something,” he said, “something rather special from a trader I know who works in Mahdist territory, and it is a treasure indeed. I cannot sell it to you. It is already promised to . . . to another gentleman and I am waiting for his agent to arrive in Cairo to take delivery of it. But if you could keep it for me, I swear on my honor the next item of such beauty I come by, I will deliver to you.”

  The duke led the way out of the lobby and into the honey-colored sunshine. “Then it is agreed.”

  “Your Grace, I apologize, but such is the value of the item I would have to see the arrangements myself,” Horatio added nervously.

  Kendal made a slight bow. “Naturally, Horatio. Come, my carriage is waiting outside. Let me give you lunch and I shall tell you anything you wish to know.”

  •••

  Horatio was given the full tour of the duke’s house in Cairo and the particulars of the security arrangements before they sat down to lunch. With each sentence the duke spoke, with each carefully worked out detail he showed Horatio, the large man looked easier. The gardens were walled and the top of the wall lined with embedded shards of glass. Guards patrolled the grounds both day and night, and a man was always on watch seated directly outside the duke’s study. The study itself might have appeared vulnerable at first glance, given its wall of glass overlooking the gardens, but the individual panes were too small for anything larger than a mouse to crawl through, and the panes were divided by painted iron. After they had lunched on salmon and minted new potatoes, the duke led Horatio into the study and invited him to sit. The duke walked behind the desk and he felt under the edge of one of the bookshelves in that corner of the room, reaching his slim fingers past a fine-looking edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. The volumes were all bound in green leather and stamped on the spine with the duke’s coat of arms.

  Horatio heard a soft click, and a section of the bookshelf, some five feet square, swung softly outward. The duke opened it fully to reveal a black iron safe with a tumbler lock.

  “It is a Herring and Company model,” he said. “Fireproof, naturally.” He patted it as if it were a well-behaved gun dog.

  Horatio cleared his throat. “Your Grace, how . . . ? May I ask why you have such measures installed in a temporary residence? I am delighted, for my own sake, that you have done so. It must be the most secure place in Cairo, and I do not wish to be crude, but these arrangements must have cost a great deal of money.”

  The duke nodded. “So they did. I place a very high premium on security, Horatio. I have many business interests across the world, and certain documents I must have with me at all times. Arranging their security is both time-consuming and expensive, but it’s time and money well spent. And if I can do you a favor as a result, so much the better. Now, will you make use of me?”

  Horatio reached awkwardly into his breast pocket and removed a bundle of cotton wraps about the size of his fist and laid it on the desk. The duke watched his movements as a cat watches a bird hopping innocently across the lawn in front of it.

  “I must repeat, Your Grace, that I cannot sell this to you. Not at any price, but given your kindness in this matter, and knowing you are a connoisseur of the ancient and beautiful, I feel justified in showing it to you.”

  Horatio was unfolding the soft white wrappings as he spoke. At last he shifted the final veil aside. It was an ivory carving of a man’s face. The duke made no sound, but his attention seemed to focus and intensify. Horatio turned the carving toward him and pushed it on its bed of wrappings across the leather inlay of the desk.

  “You may examine it, though I beg you to be careful.”

  The duke stood away from the safe and sat down at the desk, supporting his chin in his hands and staring at the carving, his lips slightly parted. It was roughly eight inches high and six across, and thin as if designed as a miniature mask. The face was of a man of mature years and the sculptor had marked the fine lines around his eyes and mouth, but the face, with its tight curls, high cheekbones and long aquiline nose was handsome. Such was the detail of the carving, it gave almost the impression of a photograph.

  It had suffered some slight damage to the top right edge, but otherwise seemed perfect and intact. Traces of coloring were still visible on the fine surface, a suggestion of darkness on the hair, and a reddish tint on the cheeks. The duke picked it up and lifted it into the light, cupping it with both hands the way a bishop holds the communion chalice. He shifted it right and left to see how the light fell across it, then lowered it and turned it over. Slight marks were visible on the underside. Kendal reached into his desk and took out a jeweler’s loop, which he fitted to his right eye, and brought the carving toward him.

  Outside Horatio could hear the soft footsteps of a servant in the hall. At last the duke sighed, set the carving and loop down, and rested the small masterpiece on its wrappings again.

  “It is a miracle, Horatio,” he said at last.

  “You could read the inscription on the back?”

  “I did, but it seems impossible.”

  “A likeness of Caesar given as a gift to Cleopatra herself.” Horatio blinked rapidly. “I thought it unlikely myself, but the director of the Museum of Antiquities and I examined it again this morning. We could find nothing that might i
ndicate that the inscription was added at a later date, and we compared the carving with other busts of Caesar that were made during his lifetime. The likeness is striking.”

  The duke still stared. “It should go without saying, Horatio, that I will pay anything you ask. Anything.”

  Horatio looked solemn. “I understand that, but I have promised it elsewhere.”

  “To whom?”

  “I cannot say. I hope you will not object, Your Grace, to giving me a note in your hand confirming that I have put this item into your hands for safe keeping.”

  “I will pay double the agreed sum. You could live out your days in luxury, Horatio, if you let me have this.”

  Horatio shook his head. He leaned forward and pulled the carving back toward him, then began to wrap it again.

  “Very well,” the duke said. “You will not tell me who the buyer is either?” Horatio did not reply and Kendal took a piece of paper from his desk drawer and began to write. “Of course you will not. But I think I already know. For one thing, few people in the world could afford this, and for another, you, Horatio, are a snob.”

  “Your Grace!” Horatio protested, looking up quickly.

  “It is not an insult, Horatio—you pick your friends wisely. I think if you were selling to some banker or American tycoon, you would not be so resolved to honor your original bargain, so you must be selling to someone who outranks me. That rather narrows the field. And it purports to be a likeness of Caesar, that great hero of Rome. I conclude then, my dear Horatio, that your buyer is a member of the Italian royalty. Most likely the king himself. He is the collector in the family.”

  Horatio’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, and a fresh layer of sweat broke out on his forehead. “I . . . I could not possibly confirm or deny . . .”