The Laughter of Dead Kings (14 page)

W
e decided to let Ashraf dangle awhile longer. “One never knows what may turn up,” said Schmidt brightly.

John gave him a hateful look. “If anything turns up, it is likely to be unpleasant. However, I don’t want him to think he has only to snap his fingers to make me jump.”

“Yes, yes, that is good policy,” said Schmidt. “Since we have a few hours to spend, let us visit the museum. I must pay my compliments to my old friend the director.”

We went out the back entrance of the hotel and walked across the street to the museum entrance. Feisal had talked Schmidt out of pocketing one of his purchases—a toy AK-47 that looked horribly like the real thing. Security at the museum was tight; we had to go through one line to get into the grounds, and another inside the museum.

The director had left for the day. After exchanging compliments with the guard, Schmidt led the way back into the museum proper. The skylights high overhead were crusted with dirt, the exhibit cases smeared and dusty; mammoth statues and huge stone sarcophagi were crammed into too small a space. Despite its admitted inadequacies, the Cairo Museum—or, to give it its proper name, the Egyptian Museum of Cairo—has a fin de siècle charm that makes modern museums look cold and sterile. We stood in the rotunda discussing what we should see.

“Tutankhamon’s treasures?” Schmidt said. “That part of the museum is always very crowded, but perhaps it would stimulate our ambition,
nicht wahr?
”

Feisal made a rude noise.

“I don’t care, so long as it isn’t a mummy,” I said. “My God, that was gruesome. It really is Tut, isn’t it? There can’t be a mistake?”

“No,” Feisal said flatly.

“The little sarcophagus of Prince Thutmose’s cat?” Schmidt proposed. “You would like that, Vicky. It is very charming.”

John said he couldn’t think of anything that interested him less than a cat’s coffin. He was in a foul mood, twitching every time someone passed close to us, and I was about to propose that we call the sightseeing off and go back to the hotel when a woman’s voice rose high and clear over the medley of languages around us.

“Feisal! Feisal, here I am!”

Feisal spun round. She came trotting toward him, weaving a path through the visitors and waving her arms. Perfect white teeth gleamed in the delicate oval of her face; hair black as the proverbial raven’s wing caressed her cheeks. Feisal stood as inanimate as the nearby statue of Ramses II until she caught hold of his shoulders and kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be here?” she demanded.

“I thought—uh—you said you wouldn’t be at the museum today,” Feisal said feebly.

“And you said you were going to Luxor.” She patted him on the cheek. “Liar! But I forgive you. Will you present me to your friends?”

“But I know you,” Schmidt exclaimed. “We met in New York at the International Congress. You gave an excellent paper on the mummification techniques of the Nineteenth Dynasty.”

“And who could forget Herr Doktor Professor Schmidt?” She brushed aside the hand he offered, and kissed him on both cheeks. “
Verzeihen Sie, Herr Doktor,
I did not see you at first.”

Schmidt presented us. John was the only peasant who didn’t rate the title of doctor. Our newfound friend was Dr. Saida Qandil, author of a seminal work on…I’ll give you three guesses. She kissed me on both cheeks too. She had to stand on tiptoe. I felt like a big
blond ox, the way I always feel around cute little women. I suffered the greeting in a state of numb disbelief. Of all the women in Egypt with whom Feisal could fall in love, it had to be an expert on…

“Have you just come? What would you like to see? I will show you around.”

“Haven’t you got work to do?” Feisal asked.

“No, no, not when friends are here.” She gave him a look that could have melted granite. “The Royal Mummies, perhaps? The new room has been finished, you will be impressed at what has been done. Temperature-controlled cases, proper lighting.”

The dream image I had had of Tutankhamon laid out on a bed in an air-conditioned hotel suite flashed onto my brain. I drew a dark mental curtain over it.

“I’m not really crazy about…mummies,” I said. The word stuck in my throat.

“Be a sport,” John said. He had been kissed on both cheeks too, and he had obviously enjoyed it. “I would like very much to see the technical advances you’ve made in dealing with such remarkable objects.”

Saida attached herself to Feisal and Schmidt. He kept paying her extravagant compliments which made her emit throaty chuckles. John took me firmly by the arm.

“Get hold of yourself,” he hissed.

“But of all the women in the world—”

“Pure coincidence. Mummies, Egypt; Egypt, mummies. The equation is commonplace. If you can’t show interest, at least behave like an adult.”

Thus chastised, I managed to get a grip. Mummies had never bothered me until now; it was morbid self-consciousness and too damned many dreams about poor battered Tut that had changed my attitude.

It wasn’t as bad as I had expected. The room was dimly lit, the cadavers laid out with a certain dignity, with only their faces exposed. One of the effects of the drying process is that the lips pull back, exposing the teeth; a lot of the mummies appeared to be enjoying a hearty laugh—except for the ones who looked as if they were screaming. I was staring down at the noseless face and jolly grin of Thutmose III when Saida edged up to me.

“If it bothers you, don’t feel you must stay,” she said softly.

“It doesn’t bother me at all,” I said, with an attempt at insouciance that didn’t quite come off. “I just don’t understand why people find mummies so fascinating.”

“Don’t you? Imagine looking upon the actual features of Alexander the Great—of Julius Caesar or King Arthur. Would you be able to resist such an opportunity? These are our kings and great ones, figures from a time so distant they have become legendary.” She swept the room with a graceful wave of her arm. “Warriors like Thutmose and Ramses the Great, founders of dynasties. They are all here—except of course for Tutankhamon.”

I had been ready for that name, so I didn’t react. “You seem somewhat deficient in queens,” I remarked.

“Not really. But it is true that there is a gap in the collection which includes many of the most famous royal women—Nefertiti, Hatshepsut, and the wife of Tutankhamon, for example.” Her face took on a dreamy look. “I believe they are there in the cliffs of the West Bank, hidden away, awaiting discovery.”

“I suppose you’d like to be the discoverer.”

“Who would not? But I am not an excavator. I would be called in, perhaps, if human remains were found. But that will not happen soon, there is too much to do to preserve what we already have. We have begun a project to examine all the mummies that are in the museum—there are many, many stored away here. And others in
other locations. I would like to see them all brought to the museum.”

“All?” I echoed.

Schmidt and John were peering down at a particularly grisly looking specimen—some king who was presumed to have died in battle, with his wounds only too well preserved. His name, I feel no shame in confessing, eludes me.

“Yes, all. Especially Tutankhamon.” She extended a dainty forefinger and poked Feisal, who stood nearby. “It is a disgrace that he, the most famous of all our monarchs, the name of all names synonymous with Egypt, is left to rot in that contaminated hole in Luxor. I wish you would speak to Ashraf about it, Feisal.”

“I—uh—saw him today,” Feisal said.

“You did?” She clapped her hands. “I am so glad. It is time you two made it up. Perhaps you can influence him; he only laughs at me. But now—” She consulted her wristwatch. “We have had enough of mummies, haven’t we, Vicky? Let us wash the dust of ages from our throats with an aperitif and decide where we should go for dinner.”

I was all in favor of the first part of the agenda. An hour with Saida would have left me limp even if I had not become overly sensitive to the mention of certain words. She fairly crackled with energy.

Tugged along by her arm through mine, I wondered how much Feisal had told her about his past. Did she know about his part in the theft and subsequent retrieval of Tetisheri’s tomb? Complete trust between lovers is a beautiful thing, but he was a damned fool if he had confessed all. Would she still love him if she knew he had once planned to help a bunch of crooks steal a great treasure? Would she still adore him if she found out he had lost Tut?

The museum was closing. We dragged Schmidt away from the
bookstore, where a three-foot-high image of the jackal-headed god Anubis had caught his eye, and joined the crowds being shooed out. A row of tourist buses belched exhaust fumes and hawkers of various worthless items closed in on us. As Saida sent them packing with a few well-chosen words, I thought how easy it would be for a would-be assassin to pick off a victim at close range. Any one of the vendors or casual strollers who brushed past us could be carrying a gun. The same had been true in Berlin, though, and in Rome and London. What was the significance of that?

It meant that up until now nobody had wanted to kill one of us. Up until now.

We retired to the comfort of the bar at the hotel, a cozy place with dim lights and soft chairs. Saida flirted indiscriminately with Feisal and Schmidt, but made little progress with John, who seemed even more preoccupied than usual.

“He is your lover, yes?” she inquired, turning to me. “That is nice. Feisal and I have not made love yet. He is very proper. And he is afraid of my father. I tell him there is no reason, Papa is not even in Egypt, he is in Paris. He is a brain surgeon, and my sister is also a medical doctor.”

She told her whole life story and expounded her views on marriage, religion, and life in general. “Now you must tell me all about yourself,” she said. “I am glad to meet you at last. Feisal has spoken of you often. I was a little jealous!”

“Now you know you needn’t have been,” I said. “What has he told you about me?”

“That you are a distinguished professor of art history and an official of the National Museum in Munich and a close friend of Herr Doktor Schmidt.” She paused invitingly. She had been more than candid with me, and it was hard to resist those big brown eyes and friendly smile, but I remembered one of John’s basic rules: Find out
how much the other person knows before you let your hair down. Stick to trivia.

So I told her about Clara and Caesar, and my family back in the States, and about my pathetic attempt to crochet a baby cap for my soon-to-be-niece or nephew. She wasn’t trying to pump me, I would have bet on that; but she had a way with her, and it was a rare pleasure to gossip with a fellow female with whom I had so much in common. We started swapping funny stories about our work. She told me about the man who had entered her office at the museum carrying a huge wreath of flowers, and asked if he might put it on the coffin of one of the anonymous female mummies. She had been his mother in a former incarnation, he had explained, and she had been haunting him demanding attention. I countered with the story of a visitor whom we found in the torture room trying to get into the Iron Maiden. He kept yelling, “I have sinned, I have sinned,” as the horrified guards dragged him away.

“And then there was the time…” I said.

“Excuse me, ladies.” John, who had seemed to be engrossed in chitchat with Schmidt, turned toward us. “We were discussing where to go for dinner. Feisal said you could recommend a restaurant, Saida.”

“Yes, there is one not far from here. I will telephone.”

We had to cross Tahrir Square, which was an adventure I hope not to repeat with any frequency. There are a dozen lanes of traffic, none of which obeys any discernible rules. Saida took charge of Schmidt, who had probably had too much beer; I heard his loud chuckles as she guided him across with the skill of a matador sidestepping the horns of the bull. The rest of us followed, less skillfully, but as Feisal pointed out, nobody really wanted to run into us; it would have delayed them.

“Shouldn’t you call Ashraf?” Feisal asked.

“Not until we get rid of your girlfriend,” John said.

Feisal gave him a hurt look. “Don’t you like her?”

“I adore her. Be polite. But get rid of her.”

Saida and Schmidt would have made a night of it if John hadn’t mentioned that we had to get up early to catch our flight. I almost said, “What flight?”

“What flight?” Schmidt asked.

“Luxor,” John said. “Dear me, you are getting forgetful, Schmidt. It’s time you were in bed. Come along quietly.”

Feisal insisted on taking Saida home. “I won’t be long,” he promised.

“Ha,” said Schmidt. “Were I in your place, I would not come back at all.”

We subdued Schmidt. The walk back, and a few hairbreadth escapes crossing the square, sobered him up enough to be sensible, but he could not stop singing Saida’s praises.

“A wonderful young woman. Feisal is lucky to have won her heart. We must attend the wedding. Will it be soon, do you think?”

“There may not be a wedding if we can’t get Feisal and ourselves out of this mess,” I said.

Feisal was true to his word. He got to the hotel only half an hour after we did.

“I had a hard time getting away,” he reported.

“Ach so,”
said Schmidt, leering genteelly.

“She wanted to come to Luxor with us,” Feisal went on, ignoring the leer.

“Just what we need,” I said. “An expert on mummies with a particular interest in Tutankhamon following us around. Feisal, how much does she know about the Tetisheri affair?”

“You might call it an expurgated version,” Feisal said wryly. “A lot of people knew about the retrieval of the paintings, and my part in it. I was appointed to my present job because of my heroism, and over the heads of a lot of people who thought they had a better claim to it.”

“I bet you described our mad dash to Cairo, with innumerable villains hot on our trail,” I suggested.

Feisal grinned self-consciously. “She led me on. You know how it is.”

“You were a hero,” I said, patting him on the arm. “So nothing about your initial involvement—or John’s?”