Star of Egypt (3 page)

“Ah. That afternoon I’m off anyway. Some British embassy types are uncrating a tomb-load of Egyptian incunabula up in Maryland,
and I have to cover it.”

Slayton’s expression remained comfortably neutral. It had happened before—pure coincidence. Even if Wilma spotted him around,
she knew enough not to draw attention to him.

She was past the future assignment already, and onto items of more personal import. “Well, sir, the weekend fairly glitters
before us.”

He deliberately tried to sound cowed. “Gee, Wilma, I should have called, I mean, gosh, I…”

“Oh, shut up,” she said as he finished off his wine. “Mom and Dad won’t mind, and besides—”

Slayton’s eyes grew very white as he almost spluttered. “Mom and Dad…?” he rasped.

She reached over to him. “Just kidding, just kidding. You high-power government types take everything so goddam
seriously.
” Now she could not keep from smiling. Slayton laughed out loud.

He hated to admit it, but Wilma was just the person he needed to keep Barney Kaufman’s ghost from prodding him, to put the
black flood-tide of hatred for Rashid Haman on hold so it did not shred away his gut. With anyone else that evening, he might
have become vindictive, preoccupied. He lucked out; Wilma had found him.

Her smile was a distinctive and enriching thing. It still adorned her face as he tossed his junk onto the marble-topped table
in the cramped little foyer to her apartment. She came sprinting out of the kitchen before he even got the door closed, and
leapt into his arms, guiding his hands beneath her ski sweater, eagerly molding her mouth over his.

“I’ve got a jug of very cold Rhine in the fridge,” she managed, between breaths.

“Somehow I’m not very thirsty right now.” She held up her arms, and he pulled the sweater up from the bottom, remembering
her admonishments to
be gentle to the material, damn it
.

In a sort of mad party tangle of limbs, they helped to divest each other of clothing while running an equally mad line of
chitchat that seemingly had very little to do with sex.

“I see you got the window fixed.”

“You know how mad a drafty hairline crack can make you when you sleep with the heat off?
Jesus!
”

“How come you get so much junk mail?”

“Nice tie. A he-present or a she-present?”

“I haven’t gotten around to underwear monogrammed by the days of the week yet, but I manage.”

“Hey, the carpet’s new, too. Feel the shag; it’s very nice…”

“Don’t forget about the heat—” They both stopped. Her eyes shone blackly in the darkness, and he said, “It’s very nice to
be with you again. And I promise I’ll call. Next time.” He smiled disarmingly.

“Liar. My mother warned me about your type, liar!” She pushed him, and they both wound up on the floor, naked and laughing.
They eventually made it to the Rhine jug in the refrigerator. In between, the carpet was luxurious, and clean-smelling, and
very, very nice.

The
Star of Egypt
was a relic of the middle-1950s shipping boom, constructed before the United States ever fretted about OPEC or worried about
hydrogenization lobbies. Even before he saw the ship, Slayton spotted the red, white, and black bands of the Egyptian flag
above the third-story roofs of a cluster of corrugated-steel, dock storage areas.

There was a nickel-plated .45 automatic in the glove compartment of Slayton’s inconspicuous Triumph. The hammer was down on
an empty chamber, and the car was locked. There was no reason to pack heat during his initial tour of the ship and docking
facilities.

The
Star of Egypt
dominated the scene, extending back seemingly to the horizon. Give her two or three more years, thought Slayton, and she’ll
be signed over to commercial petroleum service like all the rest—but right now she was pretty impressive.

Slayton saw the first guard instantly, and starting from there it was simple to pinpoint the others. Security people always
milled around in a pattern, however unconscious, and if you could nail one, it was easy to project the locations of his buddies.
These men, Slayton knew, were bona fide guards from the Sparta Security Agency Ltd. He had often seen Brinks and Pinkerton
dregs that appeared to walk off-kilter when strapped to a weapon; the Sparta men were for the most part ex-military or ex-specialist,
and they knew what gunplay was all about, should shooting become necessary. It appeared fairly obvious that neither the Cairo
Museum, the British Museum, nor the specialists in attendance during the tour were taking any chances.

The nearest sentry was already glaring at him, prepared to impede his progress if he tried to venture inside the cordon of
sawhorses and yellow rope that sectioned off the unloading area. He pulled the credentials brief from inside his suit. He
was legitimate.

The guard, whose tag read
Stackman
, was already into his spiel as Slayton handed him the brief: “I’m sorry, sir, but access to this area is prohibited.” He
was shifting his balance—an authority gesture, thought Slayton disconnectedly—as his eyes ran down the credentials. He straightened
almost self-consciously, then spoke with an air of camaraderie. “You’re Rademacher. Excuse me, sir.” He snapped the brief
shut and handed it back. Slayton nodded.

“Where do I find Willis?” he said.

“On board, I think, sir.”

“Who is your crew chief?”

“Frank Groth. Standing over by the ramp, there.”

“Thank you, Mr. Stackman.” Slayton wheeled and walked briskly toward the ramp with just a tinge of self-satisfaction. It did
not look as if he were going to have any trouble.

“Yes, sir,” Stackman said to Slayton’s back, mentally cursing command hierarchies.

Slayton spotted a man who had to be Professor Gordon Willis. He was standing on the loading ramp, towering over Frank Groth
in a wobbly way, belaboring something terribly important. The spiked brown beard and the spectacles fit Slayton’s preconception
of the man. Hanging a little too loosely on his tail and bony frame, Willis’ suit fluttered against the light breeze. He was
waving his arms like a symphony conductor.

“
Because
these men, while somewhat lacking in other areas,
know their jobs
in this one, Mr. Groth! If they were not so slow, as you say, we might have a disaster. Those cases?” He pointed and Groth
turned. “Hermetically sealed. They contain a gas for the preservation of the artifacts; that gas is odorless as well as colorless.
Thus, if we rupture a case in unloading, we may not know the gas has escaped until it is too late. So I think, Mr. Groth,
that a certain amount of care—which you might interpret as laziness or slowness on the part of my workers—is justified in
this case!” Without so much as a beat, Willis spun his head and zeroed in on Slayton. “Yes?”

Slayton extended his hand. “Ben Rademacher, Mr. Willis. I’m here to—”

“
Professor,
” said Willis, icily.

“Professor Willis, sorry.” Slayton smiled diplomatically. “Here to oversee—”

“My security, yes, I know. I was
informed,
” he clarified, “by phone calls and letters and documentation—and does your government
really
waste all that paper to make sure of what it is doing? Hm.” He shook Slayton’s hand. “At any rate, I’m pleased to deal with
you, mister… um, Rademacher, yes.” He was already ignoring Groth.

“If it’s not too much of an imposition, Professor,” said Slayton, picking up a cue from the cooling argument between the two
other men, “I’d like to meet the other principal members of the tour as soon as it’s convenient.”

Groth interposed himself, sticking out his hand. “Groth, Mr. Rademacher.”

Slayton disposed of the duty. “Right, Mr. Groth. I’ll speak to you as soon as I get oriented here.”

Willis, who was preoccupied with brushing imaginary lint from his coat, muttered, “That will be all for now.” Groth made a
gruff noise and loped off, the gear on his belt clanking. Willis watched him go.

“Well,” he said, looking up. “My contingent.” He turned to indicate the
Star of Egypt
, as huge as a skyscraper on its side, extending in all directions behind him. “Should be easy enough to locate them; they’re
in there
somewhere. God knows they’re not hefting these crates around or doing anything that remotely relates to our schedule. But
please, sir, don’t get me wrong—they’re invaluable, all of them.” Willis’ sentences flowed into one another in a tailgating
fashion, with no gaps left for Slayton to jump into, like a running one-man monologue that regarded an audience as only a
matter of convenience. Willis had already turned and his long, spindly legs were taking him up the steeply canted ramp with
more assurance than was apparent when he said—not bothering to speak to Slayton, since he had turned—“Follow me, we’ll go
seek them out. Rather like mucking about in a tomb, looking for secret doors. Ah, well.”

Obediently, Slayton kept pace, already oddly fond of the rambling professor before him. There was no doubt that he, at least,
was bona fide. Slayton’s quick reading of the professor’s personal history had left him impressed. In his heyday, Professor
Gordon Willis had been one to slog down into filthy hovels and dig with bare hands, uncovering finds and artifacts that the
armchair Egyptologists who made their dole from quarterly journals had speculated could not possibly exist. Willis went in
and proved them wrong, betraying a maverick spirit Slayton found easy to relate to. Slayton liked dealing with men who knew
what they were talking about. And he could generally smell an imposter, thanks to senses honed by dealing with professionals—everyone
from professional Washington power brokers to professional Harlem knife-fighters, from sophisticated international secret
agents to street-corner whores.

He turned back into Willis’ running line of patter.

“Of course, this warehouse business only increases risk, if you ask me, because it just adds one more time everything must
be moved; one more time we might make an error.” He seemed to catch himself, smiling. “But of course, if
we
don’t know what we’re doing, why are we here at all?”

Why indeed. Slayton’s problem was that although all the characters present were, in fact, professionals, one of them might
be a professional of a deadlier sort.

“Of course, I don’t pretend that the government involvement in all of this”—he spread his hands expansively—“indicates the
slightest interest in the artifacts themselves. It’s all politics, all greasing up the right palms, and showing the correct
face to the world at large. Everyone else is always watching, eager to pass judgment. So we put on our little burlesques.”
He glanced back at Slayton. “This
is
a singular discovery, you know,” he said, his eyes now glinting with the prospect of discussing his specialty. “Do you, sir,
have the slightest interest in all of this?”

Slayton was prepared for a question like that one, and his reply was calculated as well. “I don’t know everything about the
Seth-Olet discovery that I should, Professor, but I do understand that it wasn’t your traditional pyramid.”

“In fact,” Willis said, pointing the way down a narrow corridor, and indicating a potential head bump for Slayton to avoid,
“the Seth-Olet tomb was more properly a
mast
ă
ba
. One of the reasons the more cursory explorers missed it—they were locked into the idea that they would find Seth-Olet inside
a normal pyramid.”

“Oh,” began Slayton, delivering his punchline: “So the fact that you found a
mast
ă
ba
means that not only did your predecessors have the wrong shape, but the wrong dating, as well. Generally,
mast
ă
bas
predate the pyramids, don’t they? And even if they didn’t, you’d be able to place the body in proper historical perspective
merely by the methods used to mummify it, once you’d found it.”

Willis stopped, and, in the semidarkness of the corridor, Slayton nearly collided with him. He turned slowly, almost theatrically,
and fixed Slayton with a cocked eye. “Yes.” Then, almost conspiratorially, “Follow me and I’ll unveil some of Seth-Olet’s
secrets for you.” He left off
if you’re interested
, and Ben Slayton considered his second acid test of the day passed.

The dark-haired woman assessed herself in the narrow cabin mirror. She shifted weight to one leg and cocked the other, watching
the light catch and slip along the fine leather of her boots. Not too thick or clunky, she thought; it would be easy to be
graceful in these. The light skirt she had chosen hid her well-molded legs, but was less a restriction of style than a concession
to appearing the proper academic when stepping off the ship. And it looked good.

From the waist up she was naked, and she turned, inspecting the way her stance affected the play of her breasts.

“Egomaniac,” came a sarcastic voice through the connecting cabin door.

The woman before the mirror shook her head, whipping the fluffy black hair around. “Just like an American commercial, right?”
she said into the mirror.

Into the cabin leaned another woman, wearing a conservative pantsuit and expensive, but understated, jewelry. Her hair was
a framing spill of tight tan curls; she looked more naturally the academic type. “Shauna,” she said, with sisterly good humor,
“there will be television cameras.”

“Do you think they’d go for this?” said Shauna, deliberately squeezing in her shoulders and moving in a sinuous little dance
before the glass.

“Might be a grabber to open the tour,” the woman shrugged. “What you would call a narrative hook.”

There was an impatient knocking on the outside cabin door. “I’ll get it,” said the other woman under her breath, as Shauna
snatched up a safari blouse and quickly buttoned herself into it.

Professor Willis bustled into the cabin as the door opened, already in the midst of his presentation, as usual. “Well, thank
god you two are where you’re supposed to be, anyway… um, Doctors, may I present to you—you can come in, Mr. Rademacher, no
need to stand on ceremony in the bowels of this hulking ship, for heaven’s sake!”