A River in the Sky (11 page)

“It appears to be a piece of paper,” said Emerson. “Folded and refolded.”

“A message,” Nefret exclaimed, reaching for it. “Perhaps it’s from Ramses.”

Emerson pushed her hand away. “Be careful. It may contain a sharp blade or poisonous insect.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, open it,” I said irritably.

We crowded round Emerson, heads together, as he unfolded the paper. I recognized the handwriting at once. Since Ramses’s handwriting is virtually indecipherable, it took us some time to make out all the words.

“Have been delayed. Will explain when I see you. Proceed to Jerusalem and sit tight. Will meet you there.”

“Confound the boy,” I exclaimed. “What is he up to now?”

Emerson refolded the note and put it in his pocket, along with the length of string and piece of cloth.

“Let us go on,” he said. “We need to discuss this.”

The eating establishment Selim had found was on the outskirts of the bazaar. Emerson was pleased to learn that alcoholic beverages were available, since as Selim informed us, the place was patronized not only by locals but by the more adventuresome brand of tourists. There weren’t many of the latter, only a young couple in one corner
bent over a guidebook. The proprietor greeted us in person, bowing repeatedly, and showed us to a table.

After Emerson had ordered a glass of beer and we had been proudly presented with actual written menus, Nefret burst out, “Let me see that again, Professor.”

We passed the note round. “Perhaps,” said David, “it is not from Ramses.”

“It is his handwriting,” I said. “And the paper appears to be a page torn from one of his notebooks.”

Emerson took out his pipe. “He wrote it. But he may have been under duress. Curse it,” he added, “we need more light. It is dark in here.”

A blue haze of smoke filled the low-ceilinged room. Upon being summoned, the proprietor produced a candle which he placed in the center of the table. It didn’t help a great deal, nor did the smoke from Emerson’s pipe, at which he was puffing furiously.

“If he was a prisoner,” David said, in response to Emerson’s comment, “he gives no indication of it.” He held the paper close to the candle flame. “No cryptic hieroglyphs, no code message.”

“He could hardly do that if the person who dictated the note was standing over him,” I said. “But let us not wander off into wild avenues of theory. We have no reason to believe he was under duress when he wrote this. It is not unlike Ramses to do something so thoughtless and inconsiderate.”

“If he is a prisoner,” said Daoud, who had been thinking it over, “we must find him.”

“Very good, Daoud,” said Selim, giving his uncle a kindly look. “Where shall we start looking?”

“Oh dear,” I said with a sigh. “Let us consider this matter logically. There are two possibilities. Either Ramses is a prisoner and wrote this at the dictation of his captor, or he has come across something that roused his insatiable curiosity and is pursuing the matter.
If we assume that the first alternative is correct, our obvious course is to go to Samaria. He was last seen there, or rather, that is the place where he was last known to be.”

“Hmph,” said Emerson, chewing on the stem of his pipe. “I can’t see that we have any choice, Peabody. We must go to Samaria, interrogate—er—question Reisner, and trace Ramses’s subsequent movements.”

“I see several objections to that plan,” I said.

“I am not at all surprised that you do. Well?”

“Tracing his movements might mean delaying our arrival in Jerusalem for a considerable period of time, in which case Morley may already have made mischief. Furthermore, if Ramses is off on some quest of his own, our attempts to find him could endanger him or the quest itself. He says—let me see the note again—yes, he says, ‘Sit tight.’ Does not that imply he wants to be left to his own devices?”

“That wouldn’t be out of character,” David admitted. “But what could he possibly have found to set him off? An illegal excavation? Rumors of a remarkable discovery he wants to investigate?”

“I must admit I can’t think of anything that would be so enticing he would ignore my express orders,” I replied. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” Emerson demanded.

“Nothing.” I had been seized by a hideous foreboding, of the sort that often seizes me. Emerson had strictly forbidden me to mention them, since he does not believe in forebodings of any variety.

The others—except for Daoud, who only spoke when he had something sensible to say—had not remained silent. Speculation ranged from “He broke a leg doing something idiotic and is afraid to admit it,” to “Mr. Reisner has come across a find so important he needs Ramses to stay.”

“Then why didn’t Reisner write and tell me so?” Emerson demanded.

The answer to that was obvious, but I was the only one who had the fortitude to state it aloud. “Because he doesn’t want you dashing off to Samaria and interfering with his work.”

“Bah,” said Emerson indignantly. “I never interfere.”

“This is a waste of time,” Nefret said. “Professor, please let me see the bit of string and the cloth.”

Emerson handed them over. “I regret to inform you, Nefret, that the string is nothing out of the ordinary and the knot is not a unique variety only employed by members of a single, unusual profession. As for the cloth—”

Nefret smoothed it out on the table, pushing aside a platter of bread and a dish of hummus. It was a small square, approximately six inches on a side.

“What do you see?” Selim asked excitedly. “Is there writing? Is that a bloodstain?”

“No.” Nefret continued to stare at the cloth. “Just dirt. But there is one interesting thing about it.”

“I don’t see anything,” Emerson said.

“It’s a woman’s handkerchief.” Nefret handed it to me. “Does that suggest a possible reason for Ramses’s being delayed?”

I had heard of blazing eyes but had always believed that was a literary metaphor. Perhaps it was only the reflection of the candle-flame in her blue orbs.

F
ROM
M
ANUSCRIPT
H

They had only been traveling a short time before Ramses was inclined to regret he had not accepted the offer of a sleeping potion. The equipage was going at a good clip, and although the bedding cushioned him to some extent, he was being thrown from side to
side. At least he had been left alone. He braced his feet against the side of the yaila, squirmed into a slightly more comfortable position, and forced himself to go over that extraordinary conversation in minute detail.

He had a fairly good idea now who Mansur was—or rather, what he was. He had heard that particular accent before, from a pair of Indian students he had met at university when he spent a term brushing up on his classical Greek. Languages were his chief interest and his specialty; he had cultivated the two young men in the hope of learning something of their native tongue. Most Indians were Hindus, but there was a sizable Moslem population too, particularly in the northwest provinces. It really didn’t matter whether Mansur had been born Moslem or had converted. What mattered was that the plot, whatever the hell it was, might extend beyond the Ottoman territories. India was the jewel in the crown, the pride of the empire. If there was even a slight possibility of an uprising in India, the War Office would go off its collective head. Memories of the Mutiny of 1857, when thousands of British and Europeans were slaughtered, still haunted the nightmares of government officials. That catastrophe had been kindled by a stupid, unnecessary affront to the religious sensibilities of the Indian troops.

If Mansur was from India, it would explain his manner toward his prisoner—an odd mixture of kindness and contempt. Ramses had observed how his Indian friends at Oxford were treated by many students and some of the dons. The derogatory names, the veiled sneers, and—perhaps hardest of all for a proud man to bear—the kindly condescension. He had seen the same thing in Egypt and he knew how bitterly it was resented.

It would also explain why the attacks at Samaria had been directed at him rather than Reisner and Fisher. Americans had never established a political foothold in the Middle East. They were regarded as guests, sometimes annoying but not threatening. England be
strode the region like a colossus—one foot in India, one in Egypt, its influence stretching into large parts of Africa. England imposed her own laws and controlled every aspect of government, from education to trade. Imperialists like Hogarth would claim that it was Britain’s duty to civilize the lesser breeds; but it was an unfortunate fact that people resented being told how to live their lives by outsiders, no matter how kindly their intentions.

It made a perfectly reasonable theory, but, Ramses had to admit, it was a little too reminiscent of his mother’s thinking processes. She was perfectly capable of proposing an interesting hypothesis and claiming it was fact. His father would have sneered. “All very interesting, my boy, but what does it have to do with your present dilemma?”

How was he going to get out of this mess? Escape was impossible as long as they were on the road. The driver was at one end of the conveyance, and a guard on the platform at the back. He’d have to wait until they reached their destination and he could reappraise the situation. Mansur had taken pains to keep him from knowing where they were going. That could imply that they would end up in some town or city that was familiar to him.

Or it might mean nothing at all.

Sheer boredom finally sent him into a restless slumber, shot through with fleeting dream images. Usually it was Nefret’s face that haunted his sleep. This time the images were less pleasant. Hilda von Eine, poised on the staircase of the tell, looking down at him with hissing snakes instead of hair crowning her head; the face of Macomber stained with the ugly colors of corruption, the pebble-dull eyes sunken. Then the eyes were no longer dull but shining with a reddish glow, the mouth opened, and instead of a tongue—

He woke up with a jerk, sweating and shaking. The blindfold made it worse, he couldn’t replace the dream images with a sight of reality. Then he realized the vehicle was no longer moving.

Someone crawled into the tube next to him. A hand touched his shoulder.

“Are you awake?”

“Yes.” He’d had time to steady his voice. “Do you intend to feed me anytime soon?”

“My apologies.” Mansur untied his hands. “I saw a storm was coming and wanted to make as much time as possible before it hit.”

Ramses snatched the blindfold off. He had never realized what a subtle form of torture it was to be cut off from the world of sight, dependent on the goodwill of others even to move safely in a dark, unfamiliar world…

With Mansur’s help he slid, feetfirst, out of the vehicle. It had pulled into an open courtyard. He could see very little; the sky overhead was dark as night and rain was falling heavily. Stiff and stumbling, he let his guide lead him to a door.

A lamp on a table in the room gave limited light, but it dazzled his eyes after the long darkness. Tenderly Mansur led him in and lowered him onto a seat. As his eyes adjusted, Ramses saw that the small room was like most rooms in the houses of the region, its only furnishings the usual divan, a few tables, tattered rugs on the floor.

After being escorted by Mansur himself to a primitive latrine, he was led back into the house and served food and tea by the same servant he had seen before. Mansur left him to eat alone, exiting through a door on the wall to the left. The food restored him considerably, and he got up and examined the room. A second door, presumably to the street, was locked. The windows were high on the wall and barred. The only thing in the room that could conceivably be used as a weapon was the lamp; he had been given nothing except a spoon with which to eat the stewed vegetables.

Mansur came in, followed by his servant carrying a tray. “Coffee?” he inquired genially. “I will join you if I may.”

Ramses bit back a rude response. He was damned if he’d let the man goad him into losing his temper.

“Delighted,” he said. “We can chat about university and the architecture of Christ Church. Did you take your degree—”

Smoothly Mansur cut in. “You were at Oxford, I believe.”

“Only to attend a few lectures.” The coffee was excellent. “My father didn’t believe in a public school education.”

“A remarkable man, your father.”

“Quite. How long were you in Egypt?”

“One doesn’t have to remain long before learning of the famous Father of Curses.”

Another thrust neatly parried, Ramses thought. Only once in his life had he encountered an adversary who anticipated his every move and who was as good at verbal combat: his family’s nemesis, the Master Criminal, as his mother insisted on calling the fellow.

It wasn’t the first time he had wondered if Mansur could possibly be Sethos. The man was a genius at disguise; Ramses had learned a number of useful tricks from that source. Middle Eastern garb was a godsend to a man who wanted to assume another identity. A turban could add a few inches to one’s actual height, the loose robe concealed a man’s real build, and there was nothing like a beard to blur the shapes of mouth and chin. Ramses leaned forward, trying to make out Mansur’s features more clearly. Sethos’s one distinguishing characteristic was the color of his eyes, an ambiguous shade between gray and brown. Unfortunately it was also a characteristic that could be altered by the judicious use of cosmetics that darkened lashes and lids, and even drugs that enlarged the pupils. Mansur’s heavy brows overshadowed his deep-set eye sockets, and his trick of squinting…

Mansur rose to his feet. “We will be spending the night here. The road is too muddy for travel in the dark. I hope you will find the divan comfortable. If you will excuse me, I have a few matters to settle before retiring. I will return shortly to—how shall I put it—”

“Tuck me in?” Ramses suggested.

Mansur turned on his heel and went out the front door. Ramses stretched out on the divan, hands clasped under his head. Mansur seemed to be a little short-tempered. He can’t be Sethos, Ramses told himself. Sethos wouldn’t bother with a bizarre scheme like this one. Profit, and lots of it, was his only interest.