The Lost Army of Cambyses (5 page)

She checked her passport and flight tickets, and

set off towards the station, smiling. In Cairo,

apparently, the temperature was up in the eighties.

36

4

CAIRO

'It's time to close up for the night, little one,' said

old Ikhbar. 'Time for you to go home, wherever

that might be.'

The girl stood motionless, playing with her hair.

Her face was dirty and a dribble of snot glistened

beneath her nose.

'Off you go,' said Iqbar. 'You can come and help

me tomorrow if you want.'

The girl said nothing, just stared at him. He

took a step towards her, limping heavily, his

breath coming in gasps.

'Come on now, no games. I'm an old man and

I'm tired.'

The shop was getting dark. A single bare light

bulb cast a weak glow, but in the corners the

shadows were thickening. Heaps of bric-a-brac

sunk slowly into the gloom, as though into water.

From outside came the honking of a moped horn

and the sound of someone hammering.

Iqbar took another step forward, belly bulging

37

beneath his djellaba. There was something menac-

ing about his rotten brown teeth and black

eye-patch. His voice, however, was kindly and the

girl showed no fear of him.

'Are you going home or not?'

The girl shook her head.

'In that case', he said, turning away and

shuffling towards the front of the shop, 'I'll have

to lock you in for the night. And of course it's at

night that the ghosts come out.'

He stopped at the door and removed a bunch of

keys from his pocket.

'Did I tell you about the ghosts? I'm sure I did.

All antique shops have them. For instance, in that

old lamp there' – he indicated a brass lamp sitting

on a shelf – 'lives a genie called al-Ghul. He's ten

thousand years old, and can turn himself into any

shape that he wants.'

The girl stared at the lamp, eyes wide.

'And you see that old wooden chest there, in the

corner, the one with the big lock and the iron bands

across it? Well, there's a crocodile in there, a big

green crocodile. By day he sleeps, but at night he

comes out to look for children. Why? So he can eat

them, of course. He grabs them in his mouth and

swallows them whole.'

The girl bit her lip, eyes darting between the

chest and the lamp.

'And that knife, up there on the wall, with the

curved blade. That used to belong to a king.

A very cruel man. Each night he comes back,

takes his knife and cuts the throats of anyone

he can lay his hands on. Oh yes, this shop is

full of ghosts. So if you want to stay here for

38

the night, my little friend, be my guest.'

Chuckling to himself he pulled open the door, a

set of brass bells jangling as he did so. The girl

came forward a few paces, thinking she was going

to be locked in. As soon as he heard her move,

Iqbar swung around and, raising his hands as

though they were claws, roared. The girl screamed

and laughed, scampering off into the shadows at

the back of the shop, where she crouched down

behind a pair of old wickerwork baskets.

'So she wants to play hide and seek, does she?'

growled the old man, limping after her, a smile on

his face. 'Well, she'll have a hard job hiding from

Iqbar. He might only have one eye left, but it's a

good eye. No-one can hide from old Iqbar.'

He could see her lurking behind the baskets,

peering out through' a gap between them. He

didn't want to spoil her fun too quickly and so

deliberately shuffled past her and instead opened

the doors of an old wooden cupboard.

'Is she in here, I wonder?'

He made a show of peering into the cupboard.

'No, not in the cupboard. She's cleverer than I

thought.'

He closed the cupboard and passed into a room

at the back of the shop, where he made as much

noise as he could opening drawers and banging on

filing cabinets.

'Are you in here, little monster?' he cried, enjoy-

ing himself. 'Hiding in my secret office? Oh she's a

clever one, she is!'

He clattered around for a while longer and then

hobbled out again, stopping directly in front of the

baskets. He could hear the girl's muffled giggles.

39

'Now, let me think. She wasn't in the cupboard,

and she wasn't in the office, and I'm sure she

wouldn't be silly enough to hide in the wooden

chest with the crocodile. Which, if I'm right, only

leaves one place for her to be. And that's right

here, behind these baskets. Let's see if old Iqbar's

right.'

He bent down. As he did so the bells on the

door jangled and someone entered the shop. He

straightened and turned. The girl remained where

she was, hidden.

'We were just closing,' said Iqbar, shuffling

forward towards the two men who were standing

in the doorway. 'But if you want a look around,

please take your time.'

The men ignored him. They were young, in their

early twenties, bearded; each was dressed in a

grubby black robe with a black
'imma
wound low

around his forehead. They gazed around the shop

for a moment, sizing it up, and then one of them

stepped outside and signalled. He came back in,

followed a moment later by another man, white-

skinned.

'Can I help you?' asked Iqbar. 'Are you looking

for anything in particular?'

The newcomer was a giant, tall and broad, way

too big for his cheap linen suit, which strained

under the pressure of his massive thighs and

shoulders. He held a half-smoked cigar in one

hand and a briefcase in the other, the letters CD

stamped into the battered brown leather. The left

side of his face, from the temple down almost to

the mouth, was splashed with a livid purple birth-

mark. Iqbar felt a shiver of fear.

40

'Can I help you?' he repeated.

The huge man closed the shop door gently, turn-

ing the key in the lock and nodding at his two

companions, who moved towards Iqbar, faces

expressionless. The shopkeeper backed away until

he came up against the shop counter.

'What do you want?' he said, beginning to

cough. 'Please, what do you want?'

The huge man walked up to Iqbar and stood in

front of him, their bellies almost touching. He

gazed at him for a moment, smiling, and then, lift-

ing his cigar, stubbed it out on the old man's

eye-patch. Iqbar screamed, flailing his hands in

front of his face.

'Please, please!' He coughed. 'I have no money.

I am poor!'

'You have something that belongs to us,' said

the giant. 'An antiquity. It came to you yesterday.

Where is it?'

Iqbar was doubled up, arms held over his head.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' he

wheezed. 'I have no antiquities. It is illegal to deal

in them!'

The giant signalled to his two henchmen and

they grabbed the old man's elbows, forcing him

upright. He stood with his head turned to one

side, cheek jammed against his shoulder, as though

trying to hide. One of the men's headscarves had

slid upwards slightly, revealing a thick scar run-

ning up the centre of his forehead, smooth and

pale as though a leech was clinging to the skin.

The sight of it seemed to terrify the old man.

'Please!' he wailed. 'Please!'

'Where is it?' repeated his inquisitor.

41

'Please, please!'

The giant muttered something to himself and,

placing his briefcase on the floor, took out what

looked like a small grouting trowel. The diamond-

shaped blade was dull, save around its edges,

where the metal shone as though it had been

sharpened.

'Do you know what this is?' he asked.

The old man was staring at the blade, mute with

terror.

'It is an archaeologist's trowel,' grinned the

giant. 'We use it to scrape back soil, carefully, like

this . . .' He demonstrated, passing the trowel

back and forth in front of the old man's terrified

face. 'It has other applications as well, though.'

With a swift movement – surprisingly swift for

a man of his size – he swept the trowel upwards,

slashing its edge across Iqbar's cheek. The skin

flapped open like a mouth and blood streamed

down over the old man's robe. Iqbar screamed and

struggled pathetically.

'Now,' said the giant, 'I ask you again. Where is

the piece?'

Behind the baskets the girl prayed for al-Ghul

the genie to come out of his lamp and help the old

man.

It was past midnight when the plane touched

down.

'Welcome to Cairo,' said the air hostess as Tara

stepped out of the cabin into a blast of hot air and

diesel fumes. 'Enjoy your stay.'

42

The flight had passed off uneventfully. She had

been sat in an aisle seat beside a red-faced couple,

who spent the first half of the journey warning her

of the stomach problems she was bound to suffer

as a result of Egyptian cooking and the second half

sleeping. She'd drunk a couple of vodkas, watched

half the in-flight movie, bought a bottle of Scotch

from the duty-free trolley and then eased her seat

back and gazed up at the ceiling. She had wanted

to smoke, as she always did when she flew, but

had ordered a regular supply of ice cubes instead.

Her father had worked in Egypt since she was a

child. He was, according to those who knew about

such things, one of the most celebrated

Egyptologists of his time. 'He's right up there with

Petrie and Carter,' one of his colleagues had once

told her. 'If there's anyone alive who's done more

to advance our understanding of the Old Kingdom

I've yet to meet them.'

She ought to have been proud. As it was, her

father's academic achievements had always left her

cold. All she knew, and all she ever had known

from earliest childhood, was that he seemed more

content in a world that had been dead for 4,000

years than he did with his own family. Even her

name, Tara, had been chosen because it in-

corporated the name of the Egyptian sun god Ra.

Each year he would travel out to Egypt to

excavate. To start with he'd gone only for a month

or so, leaving each November and returning just

before Christmas. As she had grown older, how-

ever, and her parents' marriage had slowly broken

apart, he'd spent longer and longer there.

'Your father's seeing another woman,' her

43

mother had once told her. 'Her name's Egypt.' It

had been meant as a joke, although neither of

them had laughed.

Then the cancer had come and her mother had

begun her rapid decline. It was during this period

that, for the first time, Tara had really come to

hate her father. As the disease chewed away at her

mother's lungs and liver and her father had kept

his distance, unable to offer even a few salutary

words of support, she had felt an all-consuming

fury towards this man who seemed to value tombs

and old potsherds more than his own flesh and

blood. A few days before her mother's death she

had called him in Egypt and screamed obscenities

down the phone at him, surprising even herself

with the violence of her rage. At the funeral they

had barely acknowledged each other, and after-

wards he had moved to Egypt full time, teaching

eight months of the year at Cairo's American

University and excavating for the other four. They

didn't speak for almost two years.

And yet, for all that, there were good memories

of him too. Once, for instance, as a young child,

she had been crying about something and to stop

her tears he had performed a magic trick whereby

he had appeared to remove his thumb from the

rest of his hand. She had laughed uproariously and

urged him to do it again and again, staring in

wonder as he had repeatedly separated his thumb

from his palm, groaning in mock agony as he