Clara was in the driving seat with Mackenzie in the passenger seat, holding both guns: one on Clara and the other on Mansoor on the back seat, next to a groaning Yorke. Mackenzie said something to the boy in Arabic who then reached under the seat and emerged with a first aid kit. With further instructions from Mackenzie, the child took out bandages and attempted to dress the injured man’s wound. A crowd was gathering around the car. Mackenzie shouted at them in Arabic, making a show of aiming the gun at Mansoor. The crowd backed off, taking a hysterical Sara with them.
‘Now drive,’ he growled.
Ten minutes later, on a desert road, Clara was told to stop. This time she was asked to produce the map. She didn’t bother with the pantomime of pretending she didn’t have it. As instructed, she laid it on Mackenzie’s lap. He read it and grunted then nodded forward. ‘Much closer than I thought it would be. Drive ten miles in that direction and you’ll come to a fork in the road. Then turn left.’
Clara obeyed. But all the time she was frantically trying to think of a way out of her predicament. She eyed the guns. Would it be possible to get one of them? She would watch Mackenzie carefully. How long could he hold two guns? How long was their journey? Might he tire? But for now there was little chance that would happen, so she carried on driving.
After a few minutes of silence Mackenzie said: ‘I’m surprised, Miss Vale, that you haven’t asked me how and why I am involved in all of this.’
Clara shrugged. ‘I’m sure I’ll find out in due course.’
Mackenzie smirked. ‘You might. If you live long enough. Then again, you might not. But let me quench your curiosity. What would you like to know?’
‘You mean,’ said Clara, ‘you want to show off. To show me how clever you’ve been.’
Mackenzie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t provoke me, Miss Vale. But yes, I have been clever. Not such a “dumb copper” after all.’
‘I never thought you were a dumb copper.’
‘No? Well, others did. But I’ve shown them now.’
Clara did not answer.
Mackenzie pointed the gun directly at her head. ‘Ask me.’
Good God, thought Clara, he really wants me to. She swallowed hard. ‘All right, were you Maryam Hassan’s lover?’
‘Yes. I got close to the girl to attain leverage on her father. We met at an event Abdul was hosting.’
‘Dr Rahman? Does he have anything to do with this?’
Mackenzie laughed. ‘Abdul? Never. He is a true patriot. A true believer in the purity of purpose of the Guardians of Kemet. In short, a fool.’
‘Did he believe you were helping him investigate artefact smuggling?’
Mackenzie nodded. ‘He did. Because at the beginning I was.’
‘Then what changed?’
He gave a low growl. ‘Independence. Ever since Egyptian rule was restored, half-breeds like me – my father was a Scot – have been gradually edged out of the civil service.’
‘But you’re still a policeman.’
He snorted. ‘Without any promotion prospects. With my pension hardly growing at all. I needed to help myself before I was kicked out completely. So I decided to use the contacts I’d made investigating artefact smuggling to my own advantage.’
Clara nodded, watching the road, hoping for oncoming traffic that she might be able to alert to her predicament. But there was no one. She fell silent again.
Eventually Mackenzie snapped. ‘Don’t you want to know how I used it to my own advantage? How I went about it?’
She sighed. ‘Go on, tell me. How did you get involved with Yorke?’ She turned to see that the man in question appeared to have lost consciousness. She was greeted by the terrified eyes of Mansoor. She tried to look reassuring before turning her attention back to the road.
Mackenzie grunted his approval. ‘I arrested him. He was in Cairo trying to set up a conduit for smuggled artefacts. He pretended he was working with the Warriors of Amun-Ra. But he was really working with one of the European archaeologists you are hobnobbing with at Shepheard’s Hotel.’
‘Which one?’ asked Clara.
Mackenzie laughed. ‘Ha! You don’t know? That’s because I was clever, Miss Vale, very clever. But go on, have a guess. Which one – or ones – do you think it is?’
‘It wasn’t poor Rudy Werner, was it? You just set him up.’
Mackenzie smirked. ‘Ah, you mean Miss Cuddy’s little accident last night. No, that was Yorke. He’s been following you. He got on board the restaurant boat and gave your girl a push. Then he paid a waiter to point a finger at Werner.’ He shrugged. ‘It was Werner’s own fault. He’d been playing a bit of detective of his own. He’d found out too much about the Warriors of Amun-Ra in his academic studies. So we needed to take him out of the picture before you had a chance to question him about that.’
Clara scowled. ‘But it was Bella you nearly took out of the picture!’
Mackenzie tutted. ‘She survived, didn’t she? But come now, you’re avoiding the question. Which of the Europeans do you think is working with me and Yorke? I very much doubt you’ve figured it out.’
Clara’s mind was racing over the evidence – and speculation – she’d gathered so far. And then she had it.
‘Petit. I think it was Petit. He was the one you said had been cleared. I only had your word for that. You tried to turn my suspicions towards Davies and Stein, to misdirect me, but it was Petit all along. And it was Petit on the ship trying to break into my cabin. Not to molest me, but to look for the map that hadn’t been found in Newcastle. But he hadn’t anticipated that I would have a gun and didn’t have the courage to try again.’
So not so clever, she wanted to add, but saw that with every word she spoke, Mackenzie was becoming more enraged. She needed to tread carefully. She needed him to think she was impressed with him. That he had outsmarted her. So she said, quickly, ‘Tell me about how and why you used Maryam to get to her father. That I have not been able to figure out. Nor where the jewels of Ahhotep came from and how they ended up in England. And, of course, how poor Maryam did, too …’
Mackenzie let out a satisfied sigh. ‘Yes, that was all rather clever. And would have worked out if the fool Yorke back there hadn’t got himself caught by a guard at the Hancock. He was supposed to remove the jewels from the sarcophagus and give them to Petit without anyone finding out.’
‘How did you get the jewels in the first place?’
He turned and smiled at Clara. His eyes as cold as a cobra’s. ‘Well, that is where Maryam and her father come in. You see, rumours were rife that Mohammed Hassan had resurrected the Warriors of Amun-Ra after the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb. I came to believe that he knew the location of the underground chamber. But I could not get him to tell me. So I worked on getting close to his daughter to try to find out more. I found out enough to confirm he was an Amun-Ra agent, but not about the chamber. Maryam found out about her father’s activities and tried to talk him out of it. She, like Abdul, was a true believer in the cause of Kemet.
‘She eventually confided in me, hoping that I would use my position as a police officer to get Mohammed to stop sabotaging European digs and stealing back artefacts. I told her I would do what I could. But this just confirmed to me that Mohammed had access to the reclaimed artefacts – and that among those artefacts might very well be priceless treasure I could sell on the black market. So I initially sent Yorke along to see if he could get Mohammed to lead him to the chamber – to no avail. I realised I needed to take more drastic action, so I abducted Maryam and threatened to kill her unless her father took us to the chamber. He said he knew nothing of a secret chamber but did have something very precious that had been passed onto him from his father who had received them from his father and grandfather before him. It was the jewels of Ahhotep that had been “saved” from Mariette’s dig in Thebes all those years ago. He hoped that would be enough to get Maryam back. I was, of course, delighted with the jewels. They’re priceless. I could set myself up for life with those. But … if this was what he was prepared to give me to fob me off, how much more treasure was he hiding? I did not believe for a minute that he knew nothing of the chamber.’
He shrugged. ‘So I held a gun to his head in front of his daughter. Maryam was desperate to save her father and told me that if I let them both go, she could show me where the chamber was. She claimed that she knew. Her father claimed that she didn’t. Then she told me that she’d given a map to the British amateur archaeologist Bob Wallace. I already knew she had been in touch with Bob as I had intercepted a letter she had written to him, but she did not say in the letter where the map was.’
They had now reached the fork in the road that the map had indicated.
‘Left?’ asked Clara.
Mackenzie consulted the map. ‘Yes. Then continue for another five miles. You should then come to the ruins of an uninhabited village near a dried-up water hole. Stop there.’
Clara continued as instructed, first checking how everything was going in the back seat. Yorke was still unconscious. Mansoor still terrified.
‘What are you going to do with the boy?’ asked Clara. ‘Will you let him go?’
Mackenzie pursed his lips. ‘I might. If you co-operate.’
‘What assurance do I have that you won’t do to him what you did to Maryam?’
Mackenzie flashed an angry look her way. ‘That was her father’s fault. Maryam told me she was going to show me where the chamber was. But as we prepared to leave, Mohammed worked free of his bonds and jumped me from behind. There was a scuffle, the gun went off …’ He shrugged. ‘Mohammed was killed. Maryam was hysterical. I tried to calm her. I grabbed her throat – just to subdue her – I expected her just to lose consciousness …’
Clara went cold. ‘But you strangled her.’
‘Not intentionally!’ he snapped.
‘And was mummifying her not intentional either?’ Clara snapped back.
Mackenzie gave her a look as cold as a cobra. ‘Do not mock me, Miss Vale. I have told you the truth. I killed Maryam by accident. I just wanted to quieten her. The carving on her stomach – and mummifying her – was Yorke’s idea. He’d already done the carving on the porter’s body that was dumped in the Nile.’ Mackenzie gave a chilling laugh. ‘Let’s just say my colleague has an artistic flair. And a brutal one. But it turned out to be useful. I didn’t want Maryam’s and Mohammed’s bodies to be found in case questions were asked. That’s when Yorke suggested the best way to store them was to mummify them. It was a gruesome solution, but one that worked. So I let him do it.
‘Then he came up with the madcap idea to export the mummies. There are museums around the world who want mummies to exhibit. But they are not allowed to leave Egypt anymore. So he decided to add mummies to his black-market inventory, with forged papers saying they had been exported before the ban. And then he got really ambitious. When he heard an ancient mummy was going up to Newcastle for the opening of your uncle’s collection, he made a plan to switch it with Maryam so he could sell off an authentic mummy abroad. I told him the idea was ridiculous, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He shipped Maryam’s body with him to England – he said that her body was smaller and easier to transport than her father’s.’
‘Which is where?’ asked Clara.
Mackenzie shook his head. ‘That’s completely irrelevant, Miss Vale, and you are interrupting the story.’
Clara snorted. ‘My apologies. Do carry on.’
Mackenzie’s eyes narrowed, but he continued with his tale. ‘Yorke intended to meet Petit in Newcastle to pass on the jewels to him. Petit had a buyer for them – a British aristocrat with more money than morals – so Yorke should have just concentrated on that: getting the jewels to Petit. But he couldn’t stop overcomplicating things. He loved the play acting. The masquerade. He tells me he once had ambitions of being an archaeologist himself. Of studying at one of your universities. But he was turned down. So there was nothing he liked more than humiliating academics when he had the chance.
‘That’s why he decided to accost Farnsworth on the train, switch mummies and infiltrate the event in Newcastle. But instead of just incapacitating Farnsworth, Yorke killed him and stupidly did that carving on his stomach. If he hadn’t been so elaborate about it all, you would not have got involved and we would not be in the situation we’re in. All the fool had to do was deliver the jewels to Petit then search Bob Wallace’s collection for the map. But he’d got himself into a fix and needed to cover his tracks.’
Clara was listening attentively. It was all falling into place. But there was something she still didn’t understand. ‘What did Davies and his trip to Edinburgh have to do with it?’
Mackenzie shrugged. ‘Nothing. Another overcomplication. But once the retrieval of the jewels was scuppered and you and Mr Danskin were on the case, Yorke thought he might be useful as a decoy. So he sent word to Davies saying he was urgently needed at a museum in Edinburgh. He paid someone there to meet Davies and offer him an artefact to buy for his museum in New York. Davies declined it. But it served its purpose as a useful diversion, and one that ultimately drew suspicion upon him. Meanwhile, Yorke went to Edinburgh, collected the crate which housed the coffin with Farnsworth’s body in it, put it in storage to deal with later, then made his way back to Cairo. After the fiasco at the Hancock he was now the prime suspect in an attempted break-in and assault, and needed to get out of the country.
‘So Petit – after discovering the jewels were no longer at the Hancock – was left to search your house for them – and for the map when that wasn’t found in Bob’s collection. But he didn’t find any of them. However, we still didn’t know if the map actually existed and if it did, whether you had found it. But then, conveniently, you decided to travel here, bringing it – and the jewels – with you. That was a stroke of luck for us. Unfortunately, Petit again failed on the ship. The man’s an incompetent fool. He also failed to alert me that you had abandoned ship and wouldn’t be arriving in Cairo as expected. I had planned to meet you on docking in Alexandria and to “confiscate” the jewels in my official capacity as a police officer. But you scuppered that one, too.’ He gave an ironic sigh. ‘But all’s well that ends well, Miss Vale. I, unfortunately, do not have the jewels of Ahhotep – they are in the museum – but that doesn’t matter as we finally have the map to the chamber. The Ahhotep jewels are just the tip of the iceberg. There will be treasures unimaginable in that chamber. And,’ he said, his eyes glinting with manic intent, ‘we’ve finally arrived. Pull up under that palm tree over there.’
They were in the remains of an abandoned village, many miles from any other settlements. Clara pulled over as instructed while frantically trying to figure out how to get her and Mansoor out of this mad situation. She might be able to run for it, but she could not leave the boy. And if she were to run, there was nothing but desert all around them.
Mackenzie instructed Mansoor to get out of the car. ‘I think the man is dead, Miss Vale,’ the boy whispered, his eyes brimming with tears.
Mackenzie instructed Clara to check. She climbed in the back seat and checked Yorke’s pulse. It was weak but still there. She checked his wound too. ‘I need to put pressure on this and dress it properly.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Mackenzie. ‘But don’t take too long.’ He consulted the map and looked around him while Clara opened the first aid kit. She caught her breath as she noticed some scissors. Blocking Mackenzie’s view, she slipped them into her pocket. Then she treated Yorke the best she could. She didn’t think he would live long without getting him to hospital.
She backed out of the car, her hands red with Yorke’s blood.
And then she heard a roar above her. She, Mackenzie and Mansoor looked up to see an aeroplane flying low towards them.
Mackenzie was startled and for a moment distracted. Clara took her chance. She pulled out the scissors and stabbed him in the shoulder. He yelled, dropped one of the guns and clutched at the scissors.
‘Run, Mansoor!’ The boy floundered a moment but then ran, hiding behind a half wall. Mackenzie spun around to turn his remaining gun on Clara as she jumped behind the car. He staggered towards her. She crawled under the chassis.
The plane came in to land, bouncing down the desert road, its propeller whipping up a sandstorm. The car and Mackenzie were cloaked in a cloud of dust. Clara could still see his feet. She grabbed him around the ankles, toppling him over. Then she crawled to the other side of the car and took cover behind the wheel.
She looked around to see that the plane was still cruising to a stop, but before it did, the door opened and a man and a woman jumped out, rolling to the ground then running towards the car. Clara struggled to see what was happening through the cloud of sand but as it settled, she saw Bella Cuddy sitting on Mackenzie’s back and Jack Danskin holding two guns, both trained on the Egyptian policeman.
Jack grinned at Clara. ‘I see the best man has finally won.’
‘Oh, shut up, Jack,’ said Bella.