The Case of the Purloined Pyramid

by Sean McLachlan

  “Ha! And steal everything in it? Get out of here. Mr. Wall moved here because he wants to be alone.”

  “I know why he wants to be alone,” Faisal said, going pale. “Have you seen what’s under his mask? Half his face was torn away by a German cannon!”

  Moustafa shook his head. “Poor fellow.”

  Faisal stamped his bare foot against the tile. “Poor fellow? Bah! He’s not a poor fellow. A poor fellow is someone who has no place to live and has to beg for scraps to eat. A poor fellow has to run away from bullies and dogs. That’s a poor fellow! A poor fellow doesn’t drive a motorcar and live in a big house with lots of food.”

  “All right, Little Infidel, all right,” Moustafa said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “But would you want to switch places with him?”

  Faisal looked doubtful. Moustafa nodded.

  “That’s what I thought. God gives each of us a share of blessings and a share of hardships. Mr. Wall is rich and European, but he suffered terribly in the war and will carry that scar for life. He will never marry because of it and never have children to carry on his name. Even the poorest fellah gets to see his name continue. And look at me. I was blessed with a gift for languages and fascinating work, but I had to leave my village and all my relations to get these blessings.”

  “Well, what about me? Where are my blessings?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twelve, I think.”

  “Eleven, twelve, thirteen, whatever you are, you have an entire life ahead of you. Only God knows what is written for you. Perhaps your blessings will come later.”

  Faisal brightened. “I got to ride in a car! Maybe the Englishman is my blessing.”

  Moustafa shook his head. “Foreigners bring wealth and opportunity sometimes, but it never lasts. They are filled with their own affairs. They all go back home in the end, and when they do, they forget us.”

  Sadly it was true. How many times had Egyptologists hired him and promised him the skies, only to finish the dig season and pack off back to London or Paris, never to write him or find him those jobs in Europe they always spoke about? Mr. Clarke down in the Soudan had been only the first of many disappointments. Moustafa had learned not to trust the promises of foreigners. Only God knew when each man would be called to his reckoning, and thus it was best to enjoy a good situation while it lasted.

  Mr. Wall paid well and let him read books, so this was the best job he’d ever had. But Mr. Wall courted danger. He would leave Moustafa one day, but it might be in a coffin instead of a ship.

  “Excuse me,” came a nasal drone from the front room. “Are you quite sure this ushabti is XXI Dynasty? The writing appears to be more of the style of the Late Period.”

  Trying to control his anger at the idiotic customer, he told Faisal, “I need to go. Take that money and buy your friend something.”

  To avoid any further argument, he picked Faisal up and plopped him down outside the door, quickly closing it in his face.

  After more verbal sparring, and an inordinately long haggle over price, the Englishman finally bought two of the cheapest ushabtis. Moustafa wrapped the little figurines in newspaper and tied the package up with string. As he let the customer out and resisted the urge to boot him in the rear, he glanced across the street and saw Faisal helping the blind beggar eat some falafel. The man ate slowly, without enthusiasm and with many protests, but the boy insisted, practically shoving the food into the old man’s mouth. Moustafa noticed that for every three bites the old man took, Faisal took only one.

  “There might be a bit of hope for that Little Infidel after all,” Moustafa mumbled, and went to keep an eye on the telephone workers.

  ***

  Mr. Wall didn’t come back until early evening, looking weary and yet hurried. After what Faisal had told him, Moustafa couldn’t help but look at the mask that hid half his face. A flicker of annoyance passed over his boss’s features, and Moustafa looked away.

  “Did you have any trouble with the protests, Mr. Wall?”

  “Our friend Hassan tried to start a protest of his own. Said I planned to turn the mosque down the street into a bar.”

  “Shall I take care of him?”

  “I’m not sure that’s wise. I’ve heard he has a family who are even more violent than him. In any case, we have more important matters at hand. Are you up for some night work? I’ll pay you extra.”

  “If it’s against the Germans, I’ll work for free, Mr. Wall. I don’t like being shot at.”

  “Nor do I, but you’ll get your danger pay in any case.”

  Mr. Wall led him up the stairs to a room Moustafa had never been inside before. The door was always locked, and even the cleaning lady, an old woman who came twice a week, had never been in there.

  Mr. Wall produced a key, unlocked the door, and switched on the light.

  Moustafa gasped. The room was filled with weapons. A rack of rifles stood against one wall, and on a table were a couple of crates, one marked “.303 rounds” and the other “No. 23 Mills grenades.” On a groundsheet laid on the floor were a couple of large objects hidden under a tarpaulin.

  “What are you doing with all this?”

  “You never know when you need to arm a group of men for some serious work,” his boss answered.

  “But . . . but how did you get it all?”

  Mr. Wall gave him a crooked smile. “Europe is awash with weapons. And where I’m from, no one checks the luggage of a man with a title.”

  Moustafa looked dubiously at the arsenal. Mr. Wall always seemed to come up with new surprises. This was not a good one.

  They walked over to the rack of rifles.

  “Have you fired a gun before?” Mr. Wall asked.

  Moustafa nodded. “My uncle had an old Remington breechloader. He taught me to shoot.”

  “A fine gun, if a bit outdated. One of the favorites of the Mahdist army. Your uncle was in that, was he?”

  “My uncle fought at Omdurman,” Moustafa said, feeling that old swell of pride he felt anytime he thought of that great battle. The Mahdi had been a madman, slaughtering other tribes and falsely putting himself up as the final prophet, but he had stirred the Soudanese people to great things. As misguided as the war had been, Moustafa couldn’t help but feel proud of the thought of the Mahdist warriors charging the red British lines, braving rifle and machine-gun fire when most of the Soudanese had carried only old rifles and swords.

  “Well, I don’t have a Remington,” Mr. Wall said, “but I do have several Short Magazine Lee-Enfields. These were standard issue for our chaps in the war. Accurate up to two thousand yards and packs a nice punch with .303 bullets. And here’s a Mauser if you want to fire at the Bosche with one of their own weapons. Its bullet doesn’t have as much stopping power as a Lee-Enfield, but it’s certainly accurate. Or perhaps you’d prefer this.”

  Mr. Wall picked up something that looked like a rifle, but with a shorter barrel perforated with holes and a bulky round magazine that he snapped into its side.

  “This is an MP 18, a German submachine gun from one of their Storm Battalions. It can empty its entire fifty-round magazine in ten seconds. It fires standard 9mm pistol ammunition, but it’s quite deadly at close range, believe me. I was on the wrong end of one of these more often than I care to remember.”

  “I’m not sure I’d know how to use one,” Moustafa said, feeling increasingly awkward.

  “Then it’s a rifle for you, and perhaps a pistol to back it up?”

  Mr. Wall opened a drawer in the table, and Moustafa saw four pistols inside.

  “Here are two Webleys and two Lugers. The Webleys have more stopping power but only six rounds. The Lugers, on the other hand, have a seven-round magazine and are more accurate, but you’re strong enough that the kick of a Webley won’t affect you at all.”

  “I’ll take one of the revolvers I think. Although I have never fired a revolver, only a rifle.”

  “Revolvers aren’t too good for hunting gazelle I supp
ose,” Mr. Wall said, making a strange little laugh. It came out too high, almost hysterical. He handed Moustafa a revolver and a box of bullets and opened one of the crates. Inside were two different types of grenades, some that looked like large dates and others that had a small can on the end of a stick.

  “Are we starting another war with the Germans, Mr. Wall?” Moustafa said in a quiet voice.

  “Not all Germans, just these particular ones,” Mr. Wall said, making that high laugh again. Moustafa suppressed a shudder.

  Against his better judgment, Moustafa indicated the two covered lumps on the floor.

  “What’s under the tarpaulin?”

  “Ah! A man of discerning taste! Well, here are the twin prizes of my collection. I value them almost as much as that statue of my good friend Sobek downstairs.”

  With a flourish, Mr. Wall whipped off the tarpaulin to reveal a machine gun on a tripod and a strange device Moustafa didn’t recognize. It was a short tube with a second shorter cylinder attached to the top, both of which were mounted on a squat tripod.

  “May I present you with a Lewis machine gun, complete with two boxes of ammunition, and a lovely German trench mortar. I’m afraid I’m a bit short on shells for the trench mortar, but I have enough to level the Germans’ hideout if need be.”

  Moustafa had read about trench mortars in the newspaper. They were positioned in the front trenches and lobbed bombs at the enemy. Many men had been torn apart by them. Had one of these injured Mr. Wall? Could it have been this very one?

  His boss laid a hand on the smooth barrel of the trench mortar. Moustafa noticed it trembled slightly.

  “So what do you say, Moustafa? Want to bring one of these along?”

  “We are in the middle of a city, Mr. Wall. To use something like this would attract too much attention. It would be best if we do not shoot at all,” Moustafa replied in a tone that he used when one of his children was having a tantrum.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Mr. Wall said with a slight slump of his shoulders, pulling his hand away and leaving an outline of sweat on the barrel. “Ah! We need blades!”

  Mr. Wall went over to another shelf at the far end of the room and showed him an array of bayonets and knives.

  “Take your pick, my man. A pity I don’t have one of those lovely broadswords the Mahdi’s troops used. Straight out of the Middle Ages. I think you could do some wonderful damage with one of those. I know a dealer who specializes in African weapons, though. Perhaps as a Christmas bonus, eh?”

  “Why do you have all these things, Mr. Wall? The war is over!”

  His boss turned to him, his eyes ablaze. Immediately, Moustafa regretted his outburst. Europeans didn’t like being confronted with their foolishness unless by one of their own, and usually not even then.

  “The war is never over, Moustafa. There’s always another war right around the corner. And you know why? Because mankind is stupid and selfish. It was the stupid and selfish Serbs who plotted to assassinate the stupid and selfish Archduke, and the stupid and selfish Austro-Hungarians who insisted on making a war out of it, and the stupid and selfish Germans who let them do it, and the stupid and selfish Russians who had to jump in to join the fight, and the stupid and selfish French who wanted in on the game too, and the stupid and selfish British who decided it might be fun to play as well, and then a whole crowd of other stupid and selfish countries decided the war was too good a thing to miss, and so they threw their hats in the ring as well. That will not change, Moustafa. That will never change, no matter how many millions die. So you ask why I have enough weapons to equip a heavily armed platoon in my spare bedroom? Because if mankind is going to be stupid and selfish, I’m going to be the stupidest and most selfish of them all!”

  Moustafa sighed. This was going to be a long night.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The house was set apart from the street and the other houses by a broad lawn and driveway in the front and a walled garden in the back. It emanated an air of silent, aloof decay. It was an old-fashioned mansion built during the French occupation a hundred years before and was now somewhat dilapidated. The fine old plasterwork that decorated the façade was cracked, bits of the floral design having fallen away. Moustafa suspected that in the daytime he’d see the paint was faded and flaked. He saw no telephone line, which reassured him somewhat, and the lights that shone through the ground-floor windows were candlelight, not electric. No lights shone in the upper floor.

  Moustafa carried a Lee-Enfield with a bayonet and had a Webley revolver in a holster in his belt. To placate his boss, he also had a long knife in a sheath on the other hip. Mr. Wall had tried to get him to take a couple of grenades as well, but Moustafa had held firm on that.

  Even so, he felt ridiculous. It wasn’t like they were going to war.

  Mr. Wall himself had the German submachine gun and his small automatic pistol. Looped around his shoulder was a rolled up canvas tarpaulin and a coil of rope with knots regularly placed along its length. He had to leave his sword cane behind since he needed both hands to carry the submachine gun. He’d complained about that for the entire drive over.

  “A man should look his best when going into battle, don’t you think, Moustafa?”

  They’d encountered little traffic and many police roadblocks on their drive across the city. The police had waved them through once they saw an Englishman at the wheel and did not even bother to look under the seats where their arsenal lay hidden.

  They had parked Herr Schäfer’s motorcar a block away in the shadows of some palm trees and walked the rest of the way, encountering no one. Moustafa had heard of this neighborhood but had never visited. It was mostly old French houses, taken over by rich Egyptians or divided up into several apartments for those with less means. Other houses lay abandoned, having fallen into decay.

  Moustafa’s heart beat fast. His boss gripped the submachine gun tight and had a sick grin on his face. He looked like he wanted a battle.

  The neighborhood was quiet. The British had imposed a curfew and they saw no one. From a distance, they studied the front of the house. The lights remained on throughout the front rooms of the ground floor, glowing through the white blinds from behind the thick bars that protected the windows. A shadow passed behind one of them.

  They crept around the back, to where the shadows lay deepest, and pressed themselves against the wall that encircled the garden. The tops of a few trees were visible above it. The nearest house lay fifty yards away, beyond a scraggly line of bushes and its own encircling wall. They would not be seen from here.

  Mr. Wall slung his submachine gun and turned to Moustafa.

  “Boost me up. I can just about reach. Once I get over, I’ll toss one end of the rope to you and secure you while you climb up and over.”

  “Take care they don’t see you and remember that we are here to find information, not shoot the place up,” Moustafa replied.

  They examined the wall. As was typical in Cairo, the top was covered with broken glass, set into the cement while it was still wet. Mr. Wall pulled the tarpaulin off from around his shoulder and folded it several times into a thick rectangle.

  “This should do the trick,” he whispered. “Here, give me a boost.”

  Moustafa interlaced his fingers to make a step with his hands. Mr. Wall stepped onto it and clambered onto Moustafa’s shoulders. Moustafa got a good grip on his boss’s legs and steadied him as he laid the canvas over the glass and hauled himself up and over, dropping to the other side.

  All this had been done in virtual silence. Moustafa was impressed that he could move so silently. He moved like a thief. How often had this man crept through No Man’s Land like that, looking for Germans to kill? Moustafa felt a chill go through him.

  He was woken up from his thoughts by the end of the knotted rope whipping through the air close to his face. He grabbed it before it could slap the wall and make a sound.

  Moustafa gripped the rope and began to climb. The rope did not sl
ip an inch. He was half again as heavy as Mr. Wall, but the man was able to keep his weight secure as he ascended.

  Moustafa got to the top of the wall, the glass jabbing at his rear but not cutting through the several layers of canvas, and dropped to the other side as quietly as he could.

  The half-moon illuminated an untended garden. A few palm trees stood here and there, as well as some bushes that had obviously not been pruned in years. A dry, cracked stone fountain stood in the center of garden. Nearby was a wooden bench that had almost fallen apart with decay. The Germans were obviously only using this as a hideout, not a home.

  Of more immediate interest was the back door, reached by a broad set of steps. The rear of the house was most likely given over to servants’ rooms such as the kitchen and scullery, and all the back windows were dark. The front rooms, where Moustafa had seen candlelight, would have the study, dining, and reception rooms.

  Mr. Wall retrieved the rope and hid it under a bush. The tarpaulin he left where it was on top of the wall. Being in shadow it was not immediately visible to anyone in the garden, and Moustafa doubted the Germans came out here much anyway.

  Together they readied their weapons and crept up the back stairs.

  They found the back door locked, and all the windows had bars. Moustafa smiled ruefully. He should have known. Cairo was infamous for its thieves and housebreakers. No one, not even foreigners, left a window unbarred or a door unlocked.

  They stopped and stared at the house, unsure what to do.

  “We could use a bayonet to pry open the door,” Moustafa suggested in a low voice.

  “That would make too much noise,” his boss whispered. “Perhaps we could find a wire to pick the lock?”

  “I don’t know how to do that. Do you?”

  “No.”

  They stared for a while more.

  “Psst.”

  They both swung around, guns at the ready. Faisal stood a few feet behind them, instantly recognizable in the half-light by his tangle of unruly hair. Seeing the guns trained on him, he leaped in the air in shock, but he didn’t let out a scream. He made no sound at all.