A River in the Sky (9 page)

It was now so dark that venturing closer might get him shot, and there were too many people about. He started to get to his feet.

There was no warning, not even the snap of a twig or an indrawn breath. He fell flat under the impact of a heavy body. A hand clamped over his mouth and a voice hissed in his ear.

“For God’s sake don’t make a noise or you’ll get us both scragged!”

The voice had spoken English. Unaccented, idiomatic English.

Ramses forced his taut muscles to relax. After a few seconds the hand over his mouth lifted.

“Who—”

“Ssssh! Let’s get farther away. Someone may have heard you fall.”

It struck Ramses as excellent advice. He followed the crawling figure as it made its way rapidly but silently through the grove. When they were some fifty yards away from the camp the other man stood up. Ramses couldn’t make out his features, only the general outline of someone wearing a loose dark garment and headcloth. The large leaves of the fig tree against which his back was pressed provided deep shade.

“Well done,” said the unknown, in the same barely audible murmur. “We should be all right now. But keep your voice down.”

“Who the devil are you?”

After a moment of hesitation the other man said resignedly, “I’ll have to come clean, I suppose, although it’s against regulations. Name’s Macomber. We met at Oxford two years ago. Hogarth’s rooms at Magdalen.”

Macomber’s name meant nothing to Ramses, but Hogarth’s did.
Distinguished scholar, experienced archaeologist, rabid imperialist, Hogarth despised “men in the lump” and believed in the God-given superiority of the white “races”—particularly the British. He gathered round him young men whom he inspired to share his vision, who asked nothing more than to serve their country in the great game of empire, without recognition or reward. Ramses had been invited to join the select circle because of his long years of experience in the Middle East, but he had only attended one of the meetings: he had found Hogarth’s beliefs and air of certitude thoroughly offensive. He remembered Macomber now—a pale young man with a shock of yellow hair and eyes that glowed with adolescent fervor as he listened to his mentor hold forth. Officially Hogarth had no connection with any of the intelligence organizations, but Ramses wasn’t the only one who suspected he recommended worthy acolytes for recruitment.

“Regulations,” he repeated. “Which lot are you working for?”

“Never mind that, just listen. I spotted you when you came here with her the first time, been trying to speak with you ever since, but you were always with someone, and I wasn’t allowed to leave camp except once or twice to go to the mosque, and—” A rustle of leaves nearby brought him up sharp. He wasn’t as cool as he had tried to appear. Ramses was getting uneasy too. If they were found together they would both be in trouble.

“Get to the point,” he said. “Why is MO2 interested in Mme von Eine?”

“She’s high up with the German government. They are trying to move into the Middle East, preparing for war eventually—”

“I know. Be specific. Why her, why here, why now?”

“She’s after something. Some talisman, some document, some…I don’t know what, but she and that fellow Mansur consider it vital in their plot to unify Islam against us. I overheard them talk about other places to look—Jericho, Jerusalem—” He glanced over his
shoulder. “I’ve got to get back before I’m missed. I’m telling you this so you can pass the word on if something happens to me.”

“Why do you think it might? Has something gone wrong?”

Macomber swallowed noisily. “Mansur caught me listening outside her tent the other night. He’s been watching me ever since. Tell them they were right about von Eine, she’s a major player; tell them about the talisman and about Mansur—I don’t know who he is or what his particular game is, but they can—”

“Tell them yourself,” Ramses said. The sixth sense his mother often spoke of, the feeling of being watched, was raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Come with me now. I can supply you with clothes, you’ll be a friend from university on a walking tour.”

“I have to finish the job.” The muscles under his hand stiffened.

Ramses bit back a blistering expletive. “You’ve done the job. The chance of your finding out anything more is negligible, especially since you are now under suspicion.”

“One more thing. I overheard them mention the Sons of Abraham. I don’t know what it means, but it sounded important.”

To Ramses’s heightened senses the night seemed to be alive with movement and sound. “Don’t go back there,” he said urgently.

“I’ll be all right.” Ramses’s face was so close to Macomber’s he saw his teeth flash in a smile. “I was getting a little…Well, you know. It’s helped, talking to you.”

He moved quickly, slipping out from under Ramses’s restraining hand, and was gone into the night before Ramses could stop him.

Ramses stood listening for several minutes before he dared hope Macomber had slipped back without being spotted. There had been no outcry, no gunfire. His skin was still prickling, though, and he concentrated on moving with exaggerated caution, slipping from shadow to shadow and tree to tree, making use of every bit of cover. It wasn’t until he had reached the outskirts of the village that he was
able to relax a bit and consider the implications of that extraordinary encounter.

Macomber had not answered him when he asked who had sent him on his mission. Some section of MO2, probably; the Ottoman Empire was under its jurisdiction. Whoever they were, they had no business sending a novice like Macomber out into the field. He could get in deep trouble just for being what he was: a lone Englishman trying to pass as a native of the area, for purposes unknown and therefore threatening. It was a miracle he had pulled it off as long as he had. The knowledge necessary to pass as a member of a completely different culture couldn’t be drilled into someone, like cramming for an examination. It took years of living the life, learning the language fluently and idiomatically, and a thousand little things that could mean the difference between success and failure—or life and death.

He could only hope that Macomber had got carried away by the thrill of a secret mission and let his imagination run away with him. What had he actually learned, after all, that could put him in danger? Germany’s aspirations in the Middle East were a matter of public knowledge. Vague references to conspiracies and amulets, mysterious phrases…It sounded like the plot of a spy novel, and there hadn’t been a single hard fact in that rambling narrative. As for the Sons of Abraham, it was the sort of romantic name that might have been selected by a religious cult or one of those strange American fraternal organizations.

He had to put up with more teasing when he returned. “You’ve been gone quite a long time,” Fisher said, with a sidelong glance at Reisner. “Enjoy yourself?”

“I wasn’t admitted to the presence,” Ramses said. “They kept me waiting awhile. I’ll just go finish copying the ostraca now.”

“That’s right, you’re leaving tomorrow,” Reisner said.

Don’t you wish, Ramses thought. “Day after tomorrow,” he corrected. “If that’s all right with you.”

“If you think that gives you enough time. You wouldn’t want to be late meeting them.”

“Plenty of time.” Enough, not only to finish tracing the ostraca but to give Macomber a chance to reconsider his offer.

The others set off for the dig early next morning, leaving Ramses bent industriously over his work. As soon as they were out of sight, Ramses headed for the camp.

But when he reached the spot, the camp was gone. Only the blackened scars of campfires and a stretch of trampled earth littered with animal droppings and miscellaneous trash showed where it had been.

He walked slowly across the area where Frau von Eine’s tent had stood, on the unlikely chance that something of interest had been overlooked among the scraps of packing material and other debris. He picked up a crumpled paper and smoothed it out. It seemed to be a page torn from a diary or notebook, bearing only a few words in German—the beginning of a letter to
Mein lieber Freund.
A disfiguring blot on the last word showed why it had been discarded. The only other unusual item was a scrap of baked clay, so close in color to the earth on which it lay that he almost missed it. Roughly triangular, it bore a few marks that might have been the wedge-shaped cuneiform script that had been used in the Middle East for international correspondence and diplomatic documents during the second millennium
B.C
. Could this have been broken off one of the clay tablets employed for such letters? If so, it would explain why Madame had reacted to his casual statement about tablets missing from Boghazkoy, and why she had been so wary of admitting where else her travels had taken her.

All this, inspection and theorizing, was only postponing the discovery he hoped he wouldn’t make. He put the scrap in his pocket and moved on. The ashes of the fires were cold. They must have left before dawn, not lingering to cook breakfast or make coffee. It
would have taken a long time to break camp, pack the lady’s furniture and belongings, and load the carts, so they must have started not long after…The sky was clear and the sun was bright, but a shiver ran through him.

He searched the area, walking in widening circles, his eyes on the ground. He didn’t know what he was looking for until he found it—a rectangle of recently disturbed soil, on the edge of the encampment. The dirt had been trampled down, but it was still loose. He dug with his bare hands. He’d only got down a few feet when his fingers touched something hard. Hard and cold. He scraped away enough of the soil to expose a pair of bare feet.

It was all he needed for identification. Some of the brown dye had worn off and the soles, though calloused, lacked the thick integument acquired by years of going without shoes or sandals. He sat back on his heels, swallowing strenuously. He should have made Macomber come back with him, by force if necessary. He should have realized that the faint sounds he had attributed to birds or wind meant that they were being watched.

Squatting there in a blue funk, struggling with guilt, wasn’t doing any good. He tried to remember what his mother had said about rigor mortis. The bare feet were ice-cold but flexible. Did that mean rigor had set in and was starting to pass, beginning with the extremities? If so, Macomber had been dead for approximately twelve hours, give or take an hour. He had been killed shortly after he had left Ramses.

He didn’t want to do it, but he forced himself to dig at the other end of the rectangle. There was no doubt in his mind that Macomber had been murdered, but there were other things he needed to know.

He had dealt with a number of dead bodies, not all of them mummified. His parents had a way of attracting “fresh-dead people,” as their reis Abdullah had called them. He had thought himself fairly hardened, but when he drew aside the dirty cloth that covered
the face and saw Macomber’s empty brown eyes looking up at him, he had to draw several long breaths before he could go on.

The cause of death was only too obvious. Macomber’s throat had been cut. His tattered robe was drenched with blood. Ramses wondered why they had bothered to pull a fold of cloth up over his face before they dumped the dirt on him. Perhaps even a murderer preferred not to look at the eyes of the man he had killed.

He forced himself to dig out the torso, looking for other injuries. He found nothing that would indicate Macomber had been tortured before he was killed. That didn’t necessarily mean they hadn’t questioned him. Some methods of causing pain left few marks.

He drew the cloth back over the dead face, replaced the dirt and stamped it down. Removing the body to a more seemly place would necessitate explanations he couldn’t give, and delay he could no longer afford. The only thing he could do for Macomber was get to Jaffa as quickly as possible and pass on the information he had been given—information whose importance and accuracy had been verified in the worst possible way.

If he could get to Jaffa.

T
HE CONVEYANCE WAS
the fastest the village had to offer, a once-elegant carriage drawn by horses instead of donkeys. The proud owner also hired out riding horses and operated a delivery service of sorts between Sebaste and Nablus, the capital of the district. A hazy sunrise lit the clouds to the east as Ramses finished loading his gear into the carriage. Abdul Hamid had turned up before dawn, but anxious as he was to be off, Ramses preferred not to be on the road during the hours of darkness. A firm handshake and a clap on the back from Reisner, a hearty “Have a good trip” from Fisher; he swung himself up onto the seat beside Abdul Hamid.

The road descended and climbed again; the carriage rattled alarmingly as the horses broke into a trot. Ramses had forbidden the use of the whip, to the openmouthed astonishment of Abdul Hamid. “You told me we must be in Jaffa before nightfall,” he protested. “We can go faster, much faster.”

“Not on this road.” Ramses caught hold of the seat as the carriage swung wildly around a flock of goats. Traffic wasn’t heavy, but there were enough pedestrians, donkey riders, and varied animal life to bring out the best—or worst—in his driver. Abdul Hamid stopped for neither man nor beast, and the carriage had long since lost any springs it might once have possessed.

The carriage rounded a curve. Straight ahead Ramses saw the houses of a small village and the minaret of a mosque. He saw something else—a line of uniformed men drawn up across the road where it narrowed to enter the village.

Abdul Hamid let out a strangled bleat and yanked on the reins. Ramses had approximately thirty seconds to decide what to do. Luckily the options were too limited to require prolonged thought. The country on either side was open and the soldiers carried rifles. They were stopping every vehicle. Flight and concealment were both impractical.

Abdul Hamid had stopped ten yards from the roadblock. He looked wildly from side to side. Turkish soldiers meant trouble, even for the innocent.