The Lost Army of Cambyses (57 page)

Then, in a hidden pocket inside one of the other

pockets, he discovered one more photo. It was

creased and faded, the corners dog-eared, but still

recognizable: a young man, handsome, similar to

the one in the ID photo but sterner, more severe,

with piercing eyes and a mop of black hair falling

down over a high, intelligent forehead. He was

staring straight into the camera, one arm hanging

at his side, the other lying on the head of a small

stone sphinx. On the back was written, 'Ali, out-

side the Cairo museum'.

Sayf al-Tha'r's hand started to tremble.

He was still staring at the photo when Dravic

staggered up onto the top of the dune.

'What's going on?' puffed the German.

'We start flying the artefacts out tomorrow,'

said Sayf al-Tha'r.

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'What?'

'I want the helicopters here at first light.'

'I thought you said we weren't going to use

helicopters.'

'The plan has changed. We take as much as we

can by helicopter, the rest goes with the camel

train. I want us off this site within twenty-four

hours.'

'For Christ's sake, we can't just—'

'Do it!'

Dravic glared angrily at him and, snatching a

handkerchief from his pocket, began mopping at

his sodden brow.

'There's no way we can get everything in place

by tomorrow. No fucking way. We only found the

rear of the army this morning. It's almost three

kilometres away. It'll take us at least two more

days to get the whole thing rigged.'

'Then we put more men on it. We put all the

men on it. As of now we stop digging and con-

centrate on preparing the army for our departure.'

'What's the problem, for Christ's sake?'

Sayf al-Tha'r gazed down at the photo in his

hand. 'Someone knows. A policeman. He's out

here. In the desert. Near.'

For a moment Dravic stared at him in-

credulously, then burst out laughing.

'This is what you're shitting your pants over?

One fucking policeman out here on his own?

Jesus! We send out a patrol, we shoot him, end of

story. It's not like there's anywhere he can hide.'

'We go tomorrow.'

'There's not time, I tell you! We need at least

two more days to get everything ready. If we don't

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do this properly the stuff we've got won't be

worth shit. Do you understand that? It won't

be worth shit!'

Sayf al-Tha'r looked up, eyes steely. 'We go

tomorrow. There is no more to be said.'

Dravic opened his mouth to argue, but realized

it was futile. Instead he hawked up a glob of

tobaccoey mucus, spat it a centimetre from Sayf

al-Tha'r's foot and, turning, set off back down the

dune.

A generator chugged into life and the arc lamps

flared on, flooding the excavations with a wash of

icy light. Sayf al-Tha'r took no notice, just stared

back down at the photo in his hand.

'Ali,' he whispered to himself, grimacing

slightly, as though the words tasted bitter on his

tongue. 'Ali Khalifa.'

He was still for a moment and then suddenly,

violently, he tore the picture apart and threw the

pieces into the wind. They scattered across the top

of the dune, fragments of face lying confusedly at

his feet like the shards of a broken mirror.

It was dark when Khalifa finally crawled out from

beneath the overhang. Or at least as dark as it gets

in the desert, which never sees an absolute black-

ness, merely a ghostly half-light as if a soft gauze

has been draped across the landscape. He stood

for a moment gazing out across the dunes, the

moon, as he had hoped, not too bright, and then

brought his attention back to his immediate

surroundings. He had a long walk ahead of him

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and no time to waste. Beneath him a precipitous,

thirty-metre slide of hard-packed sand dropped

sharply downwards. He looked to left and right

along the ridge, casting around for a gentler place

to descend, but the gradient was just as acute in

both directions and so, mumbling a swift prayer,

he threw his holdall down, sat at the top of the

slope and, machine-gun cradled in his lap, lay

back and slid.

He picked up speed immediately. He tried to

brake himself with his feet, but it didn't have any

effect other than to fill his shoes with sand. Faster

and faster he went, the wind hissing in his ears, the

bottom of his shirt rucking up so that the sand

scraped viciously against the bare flesh of his

lower back. Halfway down he hit a heavy ripple

and went into a roll, bouncing downwards in a

flurry of dislodged sand and whirling limbs, the

machine-gun slamming painfully against his chest

and chin. He hit the bottom shoulder-first and was

slammed round onto his face, tasting sand on his

lips and tongue.

'Ibn sharmoota,'
he mumbled. 'Son of a bitch.'

He lay still for a moment and then, spitting,

came shakily to his feet and looked back up the

slope. It appeared even steeper from the bottom

than it had from the top, a near-vertical wall of

sand, with a deep, swerving groove marking the

line of his descent. He whispered another brief

prayer, this one of thanks for still being alive, and,

brushing sand out of his hair, retrieved his bag and

set out across the desert.

He walked throughout the night, the world

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around him silent aside from the soft crunch of his

footfall and the rasp of his breath. He knew he

was leaving a trail that would be easy to follow,

even in the dark, but there was nothing he could

do about it and so he just ploughed forward as

best he could. He kept the GPS unit in his hand

and referred to it occasionally to check how far he

still had to go. For his bearings, however, he had

no need of it, for the pyramid rock was clearly

visible, glowing mysteriously in the darkness. He

guessed they must have lights rigged around its

base.

Gradually his feet settled into a rhythm. Slowly

up each dune, faster down the far side, and then

an even stride across the flattish desert floor to the

bottom of the next slope. Up, down, across; up,

down, across; up, down, across.

He had twenty-eight kilometres to cover and for

the first half of the journey he managed to stay

focused on his surroundings, keeping his ears and

eyes sharp for any sign he was being pursued. As

the hours passed, however, and the kilometres

slipped away, so his mind began to wander.

He found himself thinking of Zenab, of the first

time they'd met shortly after he'd started at

university. A group of them had gone to the zoo

for the afternoon and Zenab had been one of

them, a friend of a friend of a friend. They'd

wandered around gazing at the animals, Khalifa

far too shy to talk to her, until eventually they'd

stopped in front of a cage with a polar bear inside,

swimming sadly round in its pool of milky water.

'Poor thing,' Khalifa had said with a sigh. 'He

wants to go home to the Antarctic'

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'The Arctic, I think.' She had been beside him.

'Polar bears come from the Arctic. You don't get

them in the Antarctic. Penguins, yes, but not polar

bears.'

He had blushed a deep shade of magenta, over-

whelmed by her long hair and huge eyes.

'Oh,' was all he had managed to say. 'I see.'

And that had been it. He hadn't spoken to her

for the rest of the afternoon, too tongue-tied with

shyness. He smiled at the memory. Who would

have thought that from such unpromising

beginnings . . .

To the west a shooting star flared brilliantly for

a moment and disappeared. Up, down, across. Up,

down, across.

Now he was thinking of his children. Batah, Ali,

baby Yusuf. He remembered each of their births as

if it had happened only yesterday. Batah, their

first, had taken almost nineteen hours to arrive.

'Never again,' Zenab had muttered afterwards.

'I'm never going through that again.'

But she had gone through it again, and a few

years later Ali had arrived, and then baby Yusuf,

and who knows, maybe there would be more. He

hoped so. He imagined a whole crowd of children

playing around the fountain he was building in his

hall, floating their toys in its water, their laughter

echoing around the flat.

A slight breeze came up, making the dunes

around him whisper, as if they were talking about

him. Up, down, across. Up, down, across. He lit a

cigarette.

Now his children too were drifting away and he

was thinking of his father and mother. How his

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father used to pick him up and swing him round

by his feet, how his mother would sit cross-legged

on the roof of their house shelling termous beans.

He stayed with them for a while and then moved

on again, thinking of Professor al-Habibi and Fat

Abdul, of the Cairo Museum and the camel yard,

cases he'd dealt with, cases he'd solved. Image

after image drifted through his mind, as if he was

sitting in a cinema watching the narrative of his

own life slowly unfolding in front of him.

And of course inevitably, inexorably, his

thoughts came round to his brother.

Good things at first: the games they had played,

the adventures they had had, an old derelict river

cruiser from whose upper deck they used to dive

into the Nile. Then how Ali had started to change,

growing harder, more distant, getting in trouble,

doing bad things. Finally, unavoidably, the day his

brother had died. The day Khalifa's own life had

fallen apart. It had all happened so quickly, so

unexpectedly. The fundamentalists had come to

their village one afternoon looking for foreigners,

bent on killing. There had been shooting, seven

people had died, including three terrorists. Khalifa

had been at university at the time and had only

heard about it on the radio. He had rushed home

immediately, knowing instinctively that Ali had

been caught up in it. His mother had been sitting

alone in a chair staring at the wall.

'Your brother is dead,' she had said simply, face

blank. 'My Ali is dead. Oh God, my poor heart is

broken.'

Later Khalifa had gone out and wandered the

streets. The bodies of the fundamentalists had not

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yet been removed and had been lying in a row on

the pavement, blankets thrown over their faces,

policemen standing by, chatting and smoking. He

had gazed down at them, trying to connect them

with the brother he had loved, and then turned

away. He had walked up onto the Giza plateau, up

to the pyramids, and then further up, climbing

block over block to the very summit of the great

Pyramid of Cheops, to the place where he and Ali

had sat as children, the world spread out below

like a map. And there, at what felt like the apex of

the world, he had slumped down and wept, over-

whelmed with shame and horror, unable to believe

what had happened, unable to understand it, the

late afternoon sun hovering above his head like a

vast thought bubble, full of fire and pain and

confusion.

Ali, his brother. The brother who had become a

father. Who had made him what he was, who had

inspired him in all things. So much strength. So

much goodness. Dead for fourteen years now, but

still it weighed him down. And always would,

until he stood face to face with the man responsible

for that loss. Until he stood face to face with Sayf

al-Tha'r. That was why he had come out here. To

look Sayf al-Tha'r in the eyes. Even if he had to die

to do it. To confront the man who had destroyed

his family.

Khalifa stumbled up to the top of a dune and

realized with a shock that he had almost reached

his destination. Ahead, less than two kilometres

away, the great pyramidal rock loomed vast and

menacing, a patina of brilliant light pulsing all