Silver Tomb (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 2) (6 page)

“Quite right, Lazarus, quite right. Apologies. I was merely carried away by the scent of adventure in my nostrils, and the thought of any harm stepping into the vicinity of our dear Miss Mikolavna brings out the primal beast in me.”

Lazarus inspected the revolver. It was a Colt Army Model 1860. “Where did you get that relic, anyway? It’s at least twenty years old!”

“A fellow at the hotel put me in the direction of a salesman. Nothing wrong with a tried and tested weapon.”

Lazarus himself had purchased an Enfield Mark II; the favored revolver of the British army and his previous weapon of choice before he had acquired the Colt Starblazer. The loss of that magnificent weapon still stung him. He would have to place an order with Morton for a new one as soon as he got back to London, if not before. He briefly wondered if Katarina still kept that long-barreled Smith and Wesson Model Russian strapped to her thigh, and smiled at the thought of that magnificent limb.

They went to find their cabins, which contained a couple of grubby mattresses on bunks connected by a wooden ladder that looked to give anybody climbing it in bare feet a nasty splinter. On the wall, a cockroach made a quick scurry for cover as Lazarus dumped his portmanteau on the bare floor.

“You’re down the hall, Flinders,” he said. “You can leave Katarina’s case here.”

“I beg your pardon?” Katarina asked. Her eyes were dangerously wide and Lazarus knew that expression never bode well for him. “Am I to assume that you’ve taken it upon yourself to bunk with me?”

“Well, I thought it would seem more proper if we were to travel as man and wife…” began Lazarus feebly.

“Man and wife. Let me guess. Proprieties? Convention? I am beginning to wonder if all Englishmen simply use these things to their own advantage. You can take your case out of here, Longman, and bloody well find somewhere else to sleep!”

“But I only booked three bunks!” Lazarus protested, suddenly finding himself standing in the corridor holding his portmanteau. “Everywhere else is taken, I’m sure!”

“Improvise!” came the Russian’s retort as the door slammed in his face.

“Katarina, this is ridiculous!” he shouted through the woodwork. “God knows we’ve roughed it together over more nights than I can count, now is no time to be prudish!”

He was aware of a couple of men in tourist attire sniggering as they walked past. Petrie was watching him sorrowfully from down the hall. “You would be more than welcome to bunk with me, Lazarus, only I seem to be sharing with somebody already,” he called, indicating the large Egyptian man who had elbowed his way past into the cabin and was currently heaving himself up onto the top bunk.

“Never mind,” Lazarus said. “I’ll find a spot on deck. If it’s good enough for the crew it’s good enough for me. It’ll be a fine night, I’m sure.”

Chapter Six

In which our heroes find themselves up the Nile without a paddle steamer

It was not a fine night, much to Lazarus’s dismay. His ideas of watching the stars pass overhead as the warm wind drifted from the palms on the bank were dashed by a thick cloud cover that masked even the moon, and a chill wind that kept him shivering as he lay on the hard deck with nothing but his overcoat as a blanket.

The day had been a long and frustrating one. The steamer was no Thomas Cook cruise, and the compromise in price was showed in its itinerary, which eliminated all but the most crucially important sites along the Nile. Their first stop was the pyramids of Gizah, merely hours after their departure. Posing as tourists, Lazarus and his companions could hardly refuse the donkey ride to the pyramids, Mariette’s house and the Serapeum, even though both Lazarus and Petrie could have told the barely comprehensible guides more than a thing or two about the sites. Katarina was the only one of the trio who had never seen them before, and she seemed genuinely interested in the histories of the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the mysterious Sphinx which was, at present, surrounded by the dig site of Maspero.

Petrie enjoyed himself too, and had to be stifled on more than one occasion when he began to relate his methods of measuring the pyramids, nearly giving them away in the process. Even Lazarus had to admit that it was a refreshing rush to be back at the site that had fascinated him as a child, ever since he had seen an etching of the pyramids in a book in his guardian’s library. Here, in the sands of the desert, surrounded by the crumbling ruins of a civilization nearly forgotten, the world seemed simpler. They were a million miles from the scheming of governments and clandestine missions handed out by shadowy authorities in European capitals.

Disaster had nearly struck when they returned to the steamer. Several of the travelers had remained aboard, not wishing to join the excursion. One of these was Murad, who emerged from his cabin just as Lazarus, Katarina and Petrie rounded the corner. Lazarus immediately steered them away as Murad sauntered past, not even blinking. Bumping into their quarry had always been a danger, and Lazarus swore that he would make sure all three of them were more careful in future.

The cold wind of the night, coupled with the chugging of the steamer’s paddles, meant that sleep felt like a hopelessly ambitious goal. Lazarus eventually gave up and went in search of warmth and something to drink.

He found both beneath the overhang of the cabins where several Americans, British and one Frenchman were sitting out playing cards and drinking whiskey. Being no greenhorn when it came to the game of Faro, Lazarus struck up conversation and soon earned himself a seat at the table and a hand in the next round. Cheerful small talk was not really his forte, but the sight of the whiskey bottle on the table urged him to great exertions in the art of polite conversation. Soon he was rewarded with a glass of the amber nectar that warmed his aching bones and made the thought of sleeping on deck not quite so dreadful.

The following day proved more eventful, despite most of it being used up by chugging upriver with nothing to see until they were due at Minieh later that evening. The banks slid past; palm trees, swathes of Halfeh grass and tamarisks, punctuated by the occasional small village from which the inhabitants would usually swarm into the water up to their waists, some even swimming out to the passing ships to ask for
baksheesh
. But the sight of the clapped out
Nefertiti
and its assorted passengers hailing from the lower orders of various nations evidently persuaded most villagers that it was not worth getting their feet wet.

Lazarus and Petrie leaned on the rail, smoking and watching the land drift past, sharing stories and laughing at their old days of poking around in temples and tombs. Katarina was in her cabin reading. It was Petrie who first spotted the danger and discreetly brought Lazarus’s attention to it.

“Psst! Did you see him?”

Lazarus knew enough to keep his head firmly pointed forwards and not to swivel around to gape at whatever his companion was getting at. “No. What is it?”

“Look carefully, to the left, at who just walked past us.”

Lazarus slowly tuned his head as if interested in a heron that had just caught a fish on the bank. Further down the deck, dressed in a tarboosh and simple business clothes, was a man instantly recognizable to both Lazarus and Petrie, for barely a few days had passed since they had been detained at his leisure in the Cairo police station.

“Christ! What’s he doing here?” Lazarus hissed. But it was a foolish question and he knew it. There was only one reason for Captain Hassanein to be aboard the same steamer as them other than an outrageously wild coincidence, and that was that he was after their quarry.

“Who’s he talking to?” Petrie said.

The unidentified man stood with his back to them, but his dress and the pale skin of his bald head suggested that he was not an Egyptian. When he turned, they saw the large waxed moustache that dominated his face, and Petrie let out a gasp of recognition.

“Émile Brugsch!”

“Isn’t he the brother of Heinrich Brugsch?” asked Lazarus, “who used to be the head of the School of Egyptology in Cairo?”

“Yes, until that institution closed down and Heinrich moved back to Prussia,” said Petrie. “Émile is his brother’s junior by fifteen years and was Mariette’s keenest protégé. He was rumbled selling artifacts from the museum’s basement and should have been sent packing there and then, if you ask me. But Mariette gave him another chance and gave him the position of museum conservator, and he has been working with the police in cracking the black market in antiquities.”

“It takes one to know one, it seems. Well, there’s no ambiguity as to why these two are on board,” said Lazarus.

“Yes, but how the devil did they get onto Murad’s trail? He’s our lead and ours alone, or so I thought.”

“I know damn well how they came to be here,” said Lazarus bitterly. He swung away from the rail and, careful to keep his face hidden from Hassanein and Brugsch, made his way towards Katarina’s cabin.

He hammered on the door with enough force to crack the old wood. When it failed to open immediately, he bellowed through the woodwork as if hoping that would shatter it. “Get out here, Mikolavna! You’ve got to explain yourself! I won’t be fobbed off any longer!”

“I say, keep it down, old chap!” said an Englishman, poking his head out of a door further down the corridor. “Your rows with your missus are your own affair but kindly leave the rest of us out of it!”

Lazarus ignored him and hammered again. Eventually the door opened and Katarina looked out at him. “Gracious, you do have a pulse after all,” she said, with a rare glimmer of a smile on her lips.

“Just what the devil do you mean by it, woman?” Lazarus demanded.

“By what, you oaf? Hammering on a lady’s door like it was a public house!”

“By letting that blasted police captain in on things?”

Katarina’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I just saw him, damn it! And that Brugsch fellow too! You told them all about our tailing of Murad after I specifically said I didn’t want to involve the police.”

“Speak sense, Longman. What possible reason would I have for wanting the police involved? You yourself acknowledged that my mission had nothing to do with the black market. If anything, I would want those fools well away from this as their presence will only compromise us.”

Lazarus took in her words but did not relinquish her from his angry glare. “Well how the hell did they know to follow Murad?” he said at last.

“I imagine they had either you or your companion followed,” she replied. “You’re not as inconspicuous as you seem to think. Following you would have been my first port of call also.”

“Well, we’re buggered now, pardon the language. If Murad spots those idiots he’ll be off like a jackrabbit and we’ll be left scratching our arses.”

“Then I suggest you do everything in your power to prevent him from seeing either Hassanein or yourselves.”

“While you’ll be in your cabin reading, I suppose?”

“Best to keep a low profile.”

“Perhaps we could keep a low profile together,” Lazarus suggested and then realized how it sounded, and colored. “Well, you’ve got an empty bunk in there and one of those buggers is liable to bloody well trip over me on deck if he decides to take a midnight stroll.”

Katarina rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t be trying to weasel your way into my bedchamber on exaggerated grounds would you, Longman?”

“I paid for the bloody cabin!”

“Very well,” she said, flinging the door open wide. She was wearing a thin silk garment which made Lazarus’s eyes goggle. “Make yourself at home. Top bunk’s yours.”

They drifted into Minieh in the early evening. Most of the passengers disembarked to explore the city. In the morning, many of them would go on to the tombs at Beni Hassan while the steamer took on fresh food.

Lazarus dispatched Katarina to watch Murad’s cabin and to alert him if there was any movement. There wasn’t, and they bedded down at around eleven o’clock.

When the passengers returned the following day, they set off once more and a further day of solid travelling was undertaken. There was still no sign of Murad, and Lazarus began to worry that he had given them the slip at Minieh.

But when the boat drew up at the quays of Bellianah, Katarina reported that Murad had emerged from his cabin with his suitcase in tow. Lazarus sighed with relief. “At last we can ditch this godforsaken steamer and hopefully Hassanein and Brugsch in the bargain!”

Bellianah was the port of call for those wishing to see the ruined temples at Abydus. They joined the mob who were about to depart, and were provided with donkeys for the excursion. They saw that Murad was attempting the same trick, and nobody seemed to notice that he had loaded his bag behind the saddle.

“Maybe he wants to see the funeral chapel of Seti I,” joked Petrie, who had long expressed a desire to excavate at Abydus, convinced there was more to find there.

But any hopes to see the pillared temples once more were dashed by Murad’s quick departure from the group as soon as they set foot out of the village. His tarboosh wavering back and forth atop his donkey, Murad wobbled towards a cluster of palm trees, letting the tourists drift on without him. Lazarus and his companions halted also and led their donkeys around the side of a granary, keeping out of sight. Lazarus grew aware of a further pair of travelers watching them from the outskirts of the village, and he cursed as he recognized the police captain and the museum conservator.

“Is there no giving them the slip?” he grumbled.

“Look!” said Petrie, “He’s on the move!”

Murad was heading off through the palms in a southerly direction, following the river bank.

“Best to hold back for a time,” said Katarina, opening her black parasol to fend off the afternoon rays. “We don’t want him seeing the three of us trotting after him.”

“You should perhaps give our friends a lesson in stealth,” said Petrie, indicating Captain Hassanein and his companion who were off following Murad’s trail so close they might as well be travelling with him. Lazarus cursed again.

“Although,” mused Petrie, “Murad won’t necessarily recognize them. Maybe it’s best to have them as a buffer. That way we can follow them rather than him. It’s more discreet.”

“There’s nothing discreet about seven city folk on donkeys heading in the same direction at the same time of day,” said Lazarus.

“Well we don’t have much choice other than let Hassanein catch our friend before we have a chance, so let’s get moving,” said Katarina, kicking her donkey on and heading in the tracks of the departed.

“She’s a bit of a go-getter, isn’t she?” marveled Petrie.

“You have no idea,” said Lazarus.

It was the hottest part of the day. While their fellow passengers were no doubt enjoying cool water in the shade of the monuments at Abydus, Lazarus and his companions sweltered under the beating glare of the sun as they journeyed ever southwards.

The sluggish waters of the Nile drifted past in the opposite direction, and no cooling wind stirred the palms and halfeh grass that grew thick on either side of the beaten path. They occasionally passed villagers who naturally plagued them for
baksheesh,
but they didn’t have the heart to beat them away with sticks as they saw Captain Hassanein doing in the distance. Soon their canteens were running empty, but at least the sun had begun its descent towards the horizon.

It was dusk by the time they reached the village that was apparently Murad’s destination. They only knew this because Captain Hassanein and Émile Brugsch had stopped and were cooling off in the shade, several hundred yards short of the first of the buildings. There was no sign of Murad.

“Well I hope you haven’t lost him,” said Katarina, as they approached them.

They didn’t show any surprise at their appearance and had probably known they were being followed the whole time.

“Good lord, is that you, Petrie?” said Brugsch in heavily accented English. “I might have known you’d be outraged enough to join us in our crusade against the thieves should news of their activities reach your ears. Ah, this must be the Russian operative, Miss Mikolavna. A pleasure to meet you, my dear.”