The Lost Army of Cambyses (67 page)

occurred to him the tomb itself might be a fake. So

in many ways we owe you a sincere debt of

gratitude.'

He smiled warmly and crunched the remainder

of his sweet.

'I'm going back to the helicopter now,' he said,

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looking over at Daniel again. 'I'll leave the final

farewells to you. Wouldn't want to get in the way

or anything. Miss Mullray, Inspector Khalifa, it's

been a pleasure. Really it has.'

He nodded at the two of them and, raising his

hand in farewell, set off across the sand, hair

blowing in the wind.

'So what now?' asked Tara.

'Now', said Khalifa, 'I think Dr Lacage is going

to kill us.'

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43

THE WESTERN DESERT

Daniel swung the gun from his shoulder and

pointed it at them.

'There was no way they could let us go,' said

Khalifa. 'Not after all they've told us. We know

too much. They couldn't risk it getting out.'

'Daniel?' Tara's voice was bewildered, lost.

'Like the inspector says, you know too much.'

His voice was hard, his eyes empty. 'I can't let any-

thing get in the way, not after I've come this far.'

He pointed with the muzzle, indicating they

should move down to the edge of the trench.

'Perhaps I should have said no when they first

asked me to help them,' he said. 'Not got involved.

But then it didn't have to end like this, did it? If the

piece hadn't gone missing everything would have

been all right. Who knows, Tara, maybe we would

have met again under different circumstances.'

They had reached the trench. He motioned

them to turn round so their backs were to him. A

sea of broken corpses stretched away in front of

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them, rising and falling and swelling and churn-

ing, as if twisted by some mysterious current.

Beside her Tara could hear Khalifa reciting a

prayer. Involuntarily her hand came out and

clutched his.

'I don't expect you to understand,' said Daniel.

'I don't really understand myself. All I know is

that it was unbearable not being allowed to

excavate any more. Watching from the sidelines

while other people got the concessions to dig the

valley. My valley. People who didn't know a

fraction of what I know. Feel a fraction of the

passion. Stupid people. Ignorant people. And all

the while the fear that maybe they'd find some-

thing. Discover a new tomb. Beat me to it. It was

. . . horrible.'

The wind was tugging angrily at Tara's hair,

although she was hardly aware of it.

I'm going to be shot, she thought. I'm going to

die.

'I dream of it, you know,' said Daniel, smiling

faintly. 'Finding a new tomb. Dravic was right. It

is an addiction. Imagine it – breaking through a

doorway into a chamber that was sealed five

centuries before the birth of Christ. Imagine the

intensity of something like that. Nothing could

ever come close to it.'

Away to their right there was a roar and a whine

as the blades of the Chinook started to rotate, cut-

ting at the wind. Other helicopters were also

starting their engines. Soldiers began filing back

through the camp and clambering inside them.

'It's funny,' Daniel shouted, raising his voice to

be heard above the scream of the motors and the

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hiss of the wind, 'when we were in the tomb, you

and me, Tara, when I was looking at the images on

the walls, translating the text, even though I knew

it was a fake, that it was me who'd done it all,

there was still a part of me that felt it was real.

Like I'd discovered something truly unique.

Something wonderful. Wonderful things.'

He began laughing.

'That's what Carter said, you know. When he

looked into the tomb of Tutankhamun for the first

time. Carnarvon said, "What can you see?" and

Carter replied, "Wonderful things." That's why I

have to keep digging, you see. Because there are so

many wonderful things still to find.'

There was a click as he drew back the bolt of

the gun. Khalifa's hand tightened around Tara's.

'Try not to be afraid, Miss Mullray,' he said.

'God is with us. He will protect us.'

'You really believe that?'

'I have to believe that. Otherwise what is there?

Only despair.'

He turned to her and smiled. 'Trust in him, Miss

Mullray. Trust in anything. But never despair.'

The helicopters began lifting off, the wind

buffeting them back and forth. Tara and Khalifa

stood looking at each other. She didn't feel any

fear, just a sort of exhausted resignation. She was

going to die. That was it. There was no point in

arguing or struggling.

'Goodbye, Inspector,' she said, squeezing his

hand, the wind pummelling furiously all around

her. 'Thank you for trying to help me.'

A sheet of sand blew up into her face and the

sun seemed to dim. She turned her head out of

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the wind, closed her eyes and waited for the

bullets.

The desert possesses many forces with which to

subdue those who trespass into its secret wastes. It

can throw down a heat so blistering that skin

shrivels like paper in a flame, eyeballs boil, bones

seem to liquefy. It can deafen with its silence,

crush with its emptiness, warp time and space so

that those passing through it lose all sense of

where or when or even who they are. It will grant

visions of heart-leaping beauty – a cascading

waterfall, a balmy oasis – only to snatch them

away again the moment you reach out towards

them, sending you mad with the agony of un-

realized desires. It will raise mountainous dunes to

block your path, shift itself into labyrinths from

which you have no hope of escaping, suck you

downwards into the unfathomable depths

of its belly. Of all the weapons in its fearful

armoury, however, none is more powerful, more

absolute in its destruction, than that which they

call the Wrath of God: sandstorm.

It struck now, suddenly, uncontrollably, out of

nowhere. One moment there was the wind, the

next the desert around them seemed to erupt, a

million million tons of sand geysering upwards

into the sky so that the sun was blocked out and

the air became solid. The force of it was un-

imaginable. Crates bounced along the ground,

bales of straw disintegrated, oil drums were

sucked up into the air and spun around like leaves.

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One helicopter was smashed against the side of a

dune, two more collided with each other, explod-

ing in a ball of flame that was extinguished almost

as soon as it had flared by a choking blanket of

sand. Men were thumped to the floor, a camel

cartwheeled down the valley, heads were ripped

from emaciated corpses and sent bounding along

the ground like giant brown marbles. The noise

was excruciating.

Tara was swept forward and down into the

crater, crashing into a tangled foliage of corpses.

Bones crunched and splintered beneath her,

desiccated skin ripped like parchment, teeth

snapped from jaw sockets. She was rolled over

and over, withered arms and legs seeming to

kick and jostle her, sunken faces looming on all

sides, until eventually she came to a halt, face

buried in an ossified stomach cavity, a shrivelled

mouth pressed hard against her neck as if kissing

her. For a moment she lay still, dazed, horrified,

and then struggled to her knees and tried to stand.

The wind was too strong and punched her down

immediately. She began to crawl, palms crunching

through backs and chests, feet scrambling on a

tangled ladder of spines and skulls, bones snap-

ping beneath her like twigs. Sand scoured her flesh

and jammed its way up her nostrils and into her

ears so that it felt as if she was drowning.

Somehow she reached the top of the crater and

flopped onto her belly, pulling the material of her

shirt across her mouth. Behind her the army was

fast disappearing, swamped beneath a rising tide

of sand. At the same time, around the rim of the

crater, dozens of new bodies were appearing. A

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leathery hand emerged from the sand right in front

of her face, the fingers splayed as if reaching out

to grab her. Spears jabbed upwards; a horse

seemed to leap from the side of the dune; a head

bobbed up but was then immediately buried

again. The howling of the wind was like fifty

thousand voices screaming in battle.

She tried to look for Daniel and Khalifa, eyes

narrowed to thin slits against the storm, but she

could see nothing, just a blinding fuzz of sand.

There was a muffled roar away to her left and she

cranked her head round towards it, neck muscles

fighting against the wind's torque. The roar grew

louder and suddenly a helicopter loomed directly

overhead, impossibly low, spinning madly round

and round, out of control. For a split second she

caught sight of Squires's face in one of the

windows, mouth wide open, screaming, and then

it spun away again, pirouetting insanely towards

the deeper darkness that was the side of the

pyramid rock. There was a momentary flash of

light and heat, a rage of agonized metal and then

nothing. She came up onto her knees and, head

bowed, began to crawl forward.

After a few feet she stopped and tried to shout

out, but such was the intensity of the storm she

couldn't even hear her own voice. She crawled a

bit further and stopped again, and this time caught

a vague blur of movement ahead and to her right.

She angled towards it.

They were nearer than she had thought and

after only a few metres she was on them. Daniel

was astride Khalifa, both hands clutching the

machine-gun, which he was trying to point at

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the detective's head. Khalifa had one hand on the

muzzle of the gun, holding it away, and the other

at Daniel's throat.

Neither of them noticed her approaching and,

struggling up to them, she seized a fistful of

Daniel's hair and yanked, toppling him to the

ground. The three of them grappled together,

flattened by the gale, eyes and mouths filled with

sand. For a moment Tara and Khalifa managed to

pin Daniel down, but a furious claw of wind tore

the detective backwards and away.

Daniel grasped for the gun, which had fallen a

metre to his left. Tara lunged for it too, but Daniel

lashed out at her, knocking her to the floor, her head

narrowly missing the point of a sword. Khalifa had

battled back up onto his knees and was crawling

towards them, but the wind held him back and

allowed Daniel to seize the gun, swing it round and

slam the butt into the side of Khalifa's head, knock-

ing him sideways on top of Tara.

A billow of sand momentarily blinded them.

When they looked up again it was to see that

Daniel had squirmed away almost to the edge of

sight. As they watched, he fought his way up onto

his knees and then, in defiance of the gale, which

was blowing directly into his face, onto his feet,

staggering as if drunk, wrestling the gun muzzle

towards them. Khalifa looked around frantically.

There was a skeletal arm lying on the ground

beside him, snapped from its shoulder, and, in

desperation, he seized it around the wrist, swung

it back and launched it at Daniel. It was a weak

throw, but with the wind behind it the arm

gathered speed, cartwheeling through the air and

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slamming into Daniel's throat with the force of a

sledgehammer. He staggered backwards into the

storm, disappearing from sight. Khalifa rolled

onto his front and began crawling after him. Tara

followed.

At first they couldn't find him. Then, after they

had gone about ten metres, Khalifa tugged her

arm and pointed. She followed the line of his

finger, shielding her eyes with her hands, and