The Lost Army of Cambyses (28 page)

Helmi shook his head. Khalifa sat silent for a

moment, thinking.

'Any chance I could talk to your friend at Giza?'

'Sure, but he won't tell you anything I haven't.

And anyway, he's been moved off the case now.

Al-Mukhabarat took over last night.'

'Secret service?' Khalifa sounded surprised.

'Apparently they want to keep the whole thing

hush-hush. Bad publicity for Egypt and all that,

what with a tourist being involved. It wasn't even

on the news.'

Khalifa doodled in his notebook.

'Anyone else I could talk to?' he asked after a

pause.

Helmi was brushing crumbs from his desk. 'I

think there was some guy at the British embassy

who knew the girl. Orts or something. Junior

attaché. That's about all I know.'

Khalifa scribbled the name on his pad and put it

away.

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'You think there's a connection?' asked Tauba.

'No idea,' said Khalifa. 'I can't see any obvious

link. It just feels . . .' He paused, and then, not

bothering to finish the sentence, held up the Iqbar

report. 'Can I get a copy of this?'

'Sure.'

'And I'd like to see the old man's shop. Is that

possible?'

'No problem.'

Tauba rooted through his desk and produced an

envelope. 'Address and keys. It's up in Khan al-

Khalili. We've done all the fingerprints and

forensics.'

He threw it over to Khalifa, who caught it and

stood.

'I should be back in a couple of hours.'

'Take your time. I'll be here till late. I'm always

bloody here till late.'

They shook hands and Khalifa started across

the office. He had almost reached the door when

Tauba called after him.

'Hey, I forgot to ask. Khalifa . . . your family's

not from Nazlat al-Sammam, are they?'

A momentary pause.

'Port Said,' said Khalifa and disappeared into

the corridor.

LUXOR

The biggest regret of Dravic's life, the only regret,

in fact, was that he hadn't killed the girl. After

fucking her he should have cut her throat and

237

dumped her in a ditch somewhere. But he hadn't.

He'd let her crawl away. And of course she'd

crawled straight to the police and told them what

he'd done and bang! That had been the end of his

career.

OK, so he'd got a good lawyer and they'd

persuaded the jury it was consensual. Mud sticks,

however. The world of Egyptology is a small one

and before long everyone knew that Casper

Dravic had raped one of his dig volunteers and,

worse, got away with it. The teaching posts had

dried up, the concessions been refused, the

publishers stopped answering his calls. Thirty

years old and his career was over. Why oh why

hadn't he just killed her? It wasn't a mistake he'd

ever make again. That he had ever made again.

He shook his head to bring himself back to the

present and waved his hand at the cafe owner,

indicating he wanted more coffee. Beside him a

young couple, blond, Scandinavian, were hunched

over a guidebook marking things in it with a pen.

The girl was attractive, with full lips and long,

pale legs. He allowed himself to dwell for a

moment on the thought of her screaming in pained

ecstasy as he drove himself hard into her tight pink

anus, then forced his mind back to the business of

the tomb.

They'd spent most of the previous night remov-

ing the last of the artefacts – the wooden funeral

stelae, the basalt Anubis, the alabaster canopic

jars. All that remained now was the coffin itself,

with its brightly painted panels and clumsy hiero-

glyphic text. They'd take that out tonight.

Everything else had been crated up and sent south

238

to the Sudan, from where it would be moved on to

the markets of Europe and the Far East.

It was a good haul, one of the best he'd seen.

Late Period, Twenty-seventh Dynasty, a hundred

separate objects, crudish workmanship but all in

good condition – should raise a few hundred

thousand or more. Which on 10 per cent com-

mission meant a nice fat pay-out for him.

Compared to the main prize, however, it was small

fry. Compared to the main prize every object he'd

ever smuggled was small fry. This was the big one.

The break he'd been waiting for. The end to all his

troubles.

Only if he found that missing piece, though.

That was the key. Lacage and the Mullray woman

had his future in their hands. Where were they?

What were they planning? How much did they

know?

His initial worry had been that they would take

the piece straight to the authorities. The fact that

they hadn't was a source both of relief and of

concern to him. Relief because it meant there was

still a chance of getting it back. Concern because it

suggested the two of them might be going after the

haul themselves.

That was his real fear now. Time was running

out, as Sayf al-Tha'r had said. They couldn't wait

for ever. The longer the two of them had the

piece the more chance there was of the prize slip-

ping from his grasp. All his hopes, all his

dreams . . .

'What are you doing?' he muttered to himself.

'What the fuck are you doing?'

There was a tut of disapproval from nearby.

239

Looking up he saw the Scandinavian couple

staring at him.

'Yes?' he growled. 'Something wrong?'

They paid up hurriedly and left.

His coffee arrived and he slurped at it, gazing up

at the Theban Hills in front of him, brown and

massive against the pale-blue cushion of the sky.

What he couldn't figure out was how, if Lacage

and the girl were going for the prize themselves,

they could do it with just that one fragment. Sure,

Lacage was supposed to be one of the best

Egyptologists around. Maybe he could put it all

together from a single piece. Dravic doubted it,

however. They'd need more. And to get more

they'd have to come to Luxor. That was why he

was waiting here rather than in Cairo. This was

where they'd surface. He was sure of it. It was just

a matter of time. Which was, of course, something

he didn't have much of.

He finished his coffee and, reaching into his

jacket, pulled out a cigar, long and fat. He rolled it

between finger and thumb, enjoying the crackling

sound of the dried tobacco leaf, and then put it in his

mouth and puffed it into life. The warm caress of the

smoke on his palette calmed him and improved his

mood. He stretched out his legs and began thinking

about the Mullray woman, his mind wandering over

her body – the slim hips, the firm breasts, the tight

backside. The things he'd like to do to her. The

things he
would
do. The thought of it made him

purr with pleasure. Something she certainly

wouldn't be doing once he got started on her. He

looked down at the ungainly bulge in his trousers

and burst out laughing.

240

23

CAIRO

Iqbar's shop was in a narrow street off Sharia al-

Muizz, the jostling thoroughfare which runs like

an artery through the heart of Cairo's Islamic

quarter. It took Khalifa a while to find the street

and even longer to find the shop, which had a

dirty steel security shutter pulled down across its

front and was half hidden behind a stall selling

nuts and sweetmeats. He tracked it down eventu-

ally and, throwing up the shutter, unlocked the

door and stepped inside, bells jangling above his

head.

The interior was cluttered and murky, with

racks of bric-a-brac rising from floor to ceiling,

and tangles of brass lamps, furniture and other

assorted oddments piled high in the corners.

Wooden masks peered down at him from the

walls; a stuffed bird hung from the ceiling. The air

smelled of leather, old metal and, it seemed to

Khalifa, death.

He looked around for a moment, eyes adjusting

241

to the gloom, and then moved towards the counter

at the back of the shop, where an area of floor had

been circled in chalk, the planks stained dark

brown by Iqbar's blood. Several smaller chalk

circles, orbiting the larger one like moons around

a planet, highlighted traces of spongy grey cigar

ash. He stooped and prodded one and then,

straightening, moved round to the back of the

counter.

He didn't hold out much hope of finding any-

thing. If, as he suspected, Iqbar had bought

antiquities from Nayar, the chances were they had

either been sold on or removed by the people

who'd murdered him. Even if there was something

here he doubted he'd locate it. The antique dealers

of Cairo were notoriously skilful in concealing

their valuables. Still, it was worth having a poke

around.

He opened a couple of drawers and rummaged

through their contents. He lifted the bottom of a

large mirror hanging on the wall on the off chance

it might conceal a safe, which it didn't. Squeezing

past a pair of old wickerwork baskets he

wandered into a room at the back of the shop,

flicking a switch inside the door to turn on the

light.

It was a small room, cluttered like the rest of the

place, with a row of battered filing cabinets

against one wall and, in the corner, a life-sized

wooden statue in black and gold, a cheap repro-

duction of the guardian statues from the tomb of

Tutankhamun. Khalifa walked over to it and

looked it in the eyes.

'Boo!' he said.

242

The filing cabinets were full to overflowing with

crumpled papers and after twenty minutes he gave

up trying to make any sense of them and went

back out into the shop.

'Like looking for a needle in a haystack,' he

muttered to himself, gazing at the junk-laden

shelves. 'And I don't even know if there
is
a needle

in the haystack.'

He poked around for over an hour, opening a

box here, a drawer there, before eventually giving

up. If there were any clues here to the old man's

murder they were lost somewhere deep among the

jumbled mayhem, and short of emptying the place

completely there was no way he was going to find

them. He took a last look behind the counter,

switched off the light in the back room and, with

a resigned sigh, took the keys out of his pocket

and moved towards the front door.

A face was looking at him through the glass.

It was a small face, dirty, pressed so close to the

pane that the tip of the nose had become flattened.

Khalifa came forward and opened the door. A

ragged-looking girl, no more than five or six years

old, was standing on the threshold, looking

intently past him into the shop behind. He

dropped to his haunches.

'Hello,' he said.

The girl seemed hardly to notice him, so focused

was she on the interior of the shop. He took her

hand.

'Hello,' he said again. 'My name's Yusuf.

What's yours?'

The girl's brown eyes flicked onto his face for a

moment before returning to the scene behind him.

243

She withdrew her hand and pointed into the

gloom.

'There's a crocodile in there,' she said, indicat-

ing an old wooden chest with an intricately carved

brass lock.

'Is there?' Khalifa smiled, remembering how, as

a child, he had firmly believed there was a dragon

living beneath his parents' bed. 'And how do you

know that?'

'It's green,' she said, ignoring the question, 'and

at night it comes out and eats people.'

Her limbs were painfully thin, her belly dis-

tended. A street child, he guessed, sent out to

scavenge by parents who could find no other way

to support her. He brushed a tangle of hair away

from her eyes, sorry for her. No wonder the funda-

mentalists gained so much support, he thought.

Their methods might be grotesque, but at least