A PERFECT NIGHT, DEAD silence under a pale quarter moon. With headlights doused, the Land Rover rumbled up to the muddy shore and ground to a halt. They got out and heard the water lapping quietly.
Nikos had beached the boat earlier in the evening. He was waiting for them now, smoking. Pierce got out and gave him a sandwich.
“Lisa thought you might want this,” he said.
“She was right,” he said, biting into it.
“I thought you might want this,” Lord Grover said, passing him a bottle of brandy.
“God!” He gulped noisily, then set the bottle aside. “Metaxa! Where did you find it?”
“Athens. I picked it up on my way back.”
Nikos drank again.
“How was your trip?” Pierce asked.
“Dull.”
“Trouble finding a boat?”
Nikos thought of the boy, and the scarab. He shrugged. “No.”
“Good. We’d better load up now, before somebody sees us.”
There were seven large cardboard boxes, all heavy. It took them nearly half an hour to load them into the felucca, which creaked and groaned with each new weight. Pierce threw a ragged blanket over the lot and stood back from the shore.
“I guess that’s it. Take it easy out there—those boxes are worth a lot of money.”
Nikos nodded and passed the brandy back to Grover.
“Keep it. You’ll need it.”
Nikos waved: “See you in Cairo.”
“Look,” Grover said, “do you want a gun?”
“No. What would I do with it?”
“Shoot somebody,” Grover said.
“Blood depresses me.”
“How long to Cairo?” Pierce asked.
“Ten days, perhaps twelve.”
“You remember the plan?”
“I remember.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
They pushed the boat off the shore and watched as the sail was hoisted, a dead gray in the moonlight. Nikos waved a final time.
They returned to the Land Rover.
For Nikos, the days passed with quiet uniformity. Nothing happened, nothing changed. His felucca drifted gently down the river, past the large towns of Qus and Qena and the smaller villages, Khuzam, Shanhur, Danfiq, Abnud. He passed the desert, which began abruptly where the vegetation ended, and he passed the chanting workers in the fields. The harvest of sugarcane, cotton, barley, and wheat had begun, in anticipation of the June flooding. It was a time of intense activity, though he hardly noticed it. The landscape seemed to absorb the petty efforts of men without difficulty.
Farther downstream, river traffic increased. The boats were larger and broader of beam; the sailors called them naggars. Loaded down until the gunwales were mere inches above the water, they frequently ran aground, an event accompanied by wild arguments on board and much shouting.
At night, Nikos always stopped. He wanted to remain fresh for his sailing in the day; it would never do to sink with all the treasure aboard. As the sun went down, he would watch the sailors, agile as apes, climb their masts and furl the sails in the twilight.
When he went to sleep, he propped his feet up on the boxes of gold. It gave him a good feeling. He forgot the scarab.
In camp, the five days preceding their return to Cairo were quiet ones. They spent their time packing and talking; Barnaby regaled them with stories of the pharaohs, anecdotes of love and war, honesty and greed. His supply seemed endless, his memory infallible.
“You know,” he said one night, “there were graverobbers in antiquity, and they were caught.”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” Conway said.
“It’s actually very interesting.”
“Were they hung?”
“No.”
“Drawn and quartered?”
“No.”
“Drowned? Burned at the stake?”
“No.”
“Did they get away?”
“Yes, apparently.”
“Tell me the whole story.”
“Well,” Barnaby said, “there was a man named Peser, the mayor of Eastern Thebes, who lived during the 20th Dynasty, during the reign of Ramses IX. He had a rival, Pewero, and he discovered that Pewero had been robbing tombs—ten royal tombs, to be exact. So Peser reported this to the governor of the region, and the governor sent a formal investigating committee across the river to the necropolis to look into the charges.
“It seems, however, that the committee was rigged. They decided that only one tomb had been robbed, not ten; a special protest demonstration against Peser’s unfounded allegations was arranged. Pewero got off scot-free. Some think the governor himself had been getting a cut of the plunder.”
“Sounds modern,” Conway said. “Maybe there’s hope for us yet.”
“But that’s not the end. Peser was so angry that he threatened to go directly to Ramses with his complaint. The governor got very upset at this—it was a breach of normal bureaucratic channels—and so he put Peser on trial. He was convicted of perjury, poor fellow.”
“More and more modern,” Conway said.
“Of course, not all tomb-robbers got away with it. A few years later, eight fellows were hauled up for stripping the mummies of a pharaoh and his wife.”
“And what happened to them?” Pierce asked.
“They were poor men, you see,” Barnaby said. “A stonecutter, a slave, a peasant, a water-carrier.”
“No influence, you mean,” Conway said.
“Afraid so.”
“Heads rolled?”
“Heads rolled.”
Conway turned to Pierce: “How much influence have we got?”
“Not enough.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say. Always a kind and cheerful word.”
“Tell me,” Pierce said, “how were these tomb-robbers caught?”
Barnaby smiled.
“We don’t know that. The story doesn’t say.”
The night before they went to Cairo, they visited the tomb a final time. Barnaby chose an object suitable for the museum officials—a mirror with a solid gold handle inscribed with the name of the king, Meketenre.
As they were leaving the tomb, Conway stopped in the outermost chamber.
“Just a minute.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Uh, give me the crowbar, will you?”
“What for?” Pierce asked.
“Just give it to me, will you?”
Pierce handed it to him. Conway quickly pried up the trapdoor and looked down at the jumbled bodies of slaves in the chamber beneath.
“What’re you doing?”
“I’m saying good-bye, that’s what. Anything wrong with that?”
Pierce could not tell, for once, whether he was joking or not.
A moment later, Conway jumped down into the room. He walked around the shriveled corpses.
“Do you suppose they believed in all this?” he asked, glancing up at Barnaby. “This whole religious bit?”
“Probably,” Barnaby said. “Some of the tomb-builders were very dedicated.”
“I hope so.” He looked at the bodies. “I hope you fellas were dedicated. If you were, it’s okay. You’re entitled to your beliefs. Maybe you thought you were doing a good thing out here, right?” He smiled. “And maybe you didn’t.”
He bent over and picked up the skull of a body that had completely decomposed, except for the skeleton. “Pardon me,” he said, lifting the skull free of the backbone.
“Now you see, that didn’t hurt a bit.”
He looked up at Pierce and held the skull up in his hand. The sockets were hollow, the nose a black opening, the toothy jaw leering.
“You want to know about the last tomb?” he asked Pierce. “I’ll tell you.”
He tapped the white cranium.
“That’s the last tomb, man. Right there, and you’re buried there all your life. You can’t ever escape it.”
There was silence in the room above. Barnaby and Pierce looked at each other uncomfortably.
Finally Barnaby laughed. “What’s he talking about?”
“I don’t know,” Pierce said.
It was late when they returned to the camp. They decided to have a nightcap and walked over to the supply tent.
As they approached it, a figure darted out and ran across the desert in the moonlight. They could see his flapping robes.
“Hey!”
Conway took off after him.
“The pictures,” Pierce said. “The pictures of the tomb are in the supply tent.”
He was thinking furiously. If the man had seen the pictures, he would have to be killed. There was no other way.
Conway caught up to him and tackled him.
Pierce went into the supply tent and looked at the small strongbox they used for storage and for the pictures. It had not been tampered with—at least, it did not appear so.
He looked quickly around. Nothing else seemed disturbed. The liquor was all there.
He went back outside. Conway was leading him back. In the dark, they saw that he was an Arab, a thin man with a large moustache, gangly, quaking with fear. His eyes were wide, pleading.
“Here’s the boy,” Conway said. “I didn’t have any trouble catching up with him, because he was all burdened down with this.” He threw two objects down onto the sand.
“What are they?”
“Have a look,” Conway said.
Pierce looked: two cans of soup.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all,” Conway said.
“Christ.”
Pierce looked at Barnaby. “Talk to him. Tell him he’d better explain himself, or he’ll be floating facedown in the Nile tomorrow morning. Scare the hell out of him.”
Barnaby spoke rapidly in Arabic. The man said nothing. His tongue hung out, like a dog. Barnaby spoke sharply, and the man replied haltingly.
“He is from a village to the north, toward Quamula. He says he has heard it is easy to steal food here. Several others have done it, at night. He says he has never been here.”
“If we were feeding the region, we’d have noticed it,” Pierce said. “He’s lying.”
Barnaby spoke again, harshly. The man groaned, then answered.
Barnaby practically snarled at him. The man quavered and fell to his knees.
“What’s going on?”
“He admits he is the only one. He admits he was here last week.”
Then Pierce remembered: the cobras.
“What did he take then?”
A rapid question and a halting answer.
“Beans.”
Pierce felt suddenly tired.
“Tell him to get up. Tell him we’ll give him another can of soup if he’ll get up and leave us alone.”
The man got up cautiously, holding the two cans in his hinds. His eyes flicked around the three men.
He ran.
Pierce sighed.
Conway said, “He didn’t see the pictures?”
“No. I checked.”
“Uh, would you have killed him if he did see the pictures?”
Pierce shook his head. “I don’t know.”
The airplane carried them high over the Nile Valley. From here, it was no more than a muddy, twisting streak in the endless desert, a small rivulet surrounded by green, beyond which extended a trackless waste on which nothing survived.
“I can never quite get used to it,” Lisa said, looking out the window.
Pierce nodded.
“You’ve been quiet lately. Are you always so moody?”
“Will we have a good time in Cairo?”
“We’ll have a hell of a time in Cairo.”
Barnaby stood frowning outside the door to the Department of Antiquities of the Cairo Museum. He had stopped by to see Varese, only to be told by the staff officer that Mr. Varese was away at the moment.
Where? Barnaby had asked.
The staff officer was rather surprised. Luxor, of course, he had said.
Barnaby did not know why this information bothered him, but it did. No doubt, Varese’s reasons for going to Luxor were perfectly straightforward. It might have to do with tourist problems or the German concession within the Valley of Kings. Any number of things.
Still, it bothered him.
“I was promised a room overlooking the river,” Lord Grover told the man behind the desk. “I was promised it.”
The man shrugged helplessly. “We have given you a very beautiful room overlooking Liberation Square. The light is excellent there, and—”
“I’m not interested in the light. I want a view of the Nile.”
“I am sorry sir. We are nearly full up at the moment, and I am afraid—”
“Don’t be afraid.” Grover pushed ten Egyptian pounds across the desk. “I wouldn’t want you to be afraid.”
The man stared at the money, not moving. He licked his lips. Silently, Grover added another five pounds.
“I believe it can be arranged.”
“Now?”
“Of course, sir.” He deftly scooped up the money.
“Got it,” Grover said as he entered Pierce’s room. Pierce was standing by the window, looking out over the Nile through his binoculars. “No problem.”
“Any bugs this time?”
“No. I am apparently considered trustworthy.”
“Good,” Pierce said. “That means we have three rooms facing the river—mine, yours, and Alan’s. Somebody will be sure to see him.”
“I should hope so.” Grover looked down at Pierce’s bed and picked up an earring. He looked at it and dropped it again. “You haven’t got anything to drink, have you?”
“It’s eleven in the morning.”
“That’s hardly an answer to a civil question.”
“Scotch in the bathroom,” Pierce said. Through his binoculars, he could see the sailors in the feluccas on the river.
“Scotch in the bathroom? Scotch, in the bathroom?”
“Yes,” Pierce said. “Glasses, too.”
“Whatever for?”
“To drink out of.”
Grover shook his head. “Oh, Robert, Robert. I fear you’ll never make a proper Englishman. In the bathroom—good God.”
“Who said anything about being an Englishman?”
From the bathroom came a clink and the sound of pouring liquid. “Well, I just thought….”
There was an embarrassed silence. Grover came back into the bedroom. “Well, what I really mean to say…”
Another uncomfortable silence. Pierce continued to stare through the binoculars. He heard Grover walking around the room. “Well, I have a certain duty to discharge.”
“You carry out that duty admirably, judging from appearances.”
“The Americans,” Grover said sadly, “are given to crude remarks. Frankly, I cannot imagine what she sees in you.”
“Oh, so that’s what we’re talking about.”
“Yes.” Grover breathed deeply. “Now, will you please put those damned binoculars away and talk to me?”
Pierce put them down, poured himself a glass of Scotch, and sat on the bed. He saw the earring; it was Lisa’s. He slipped it into his pocket.
“Robert, I’m afraid I must ask your intentions concerning my private secretary.”
Pierce nearly choked on his drink. “What?”
“You heard me quite clearly,” Grover said, standing stiffly.
“Don’t you think that’s a matter between myself and her?”
“Robert, that girl has almost been a daughter to me.”
“She doesn’t need you to look after her in this respect.”
Grover sighed. “She is very dear to me. I never had any children of my own, you know. When I married each of my three wives, I looked forward to the prospect anew, but the better I know my wives, the less I wanted anything to come of the union. Horrible creatures, my wives. True harpies. Lili was different.”
“Lili?”
“Lisa’s mother. Lili Castellani.”
The name was familiar. Lili Castellani was a French-Italian countess who had been the toast of prewar London; the most elegant woman, the most sophisticated hostess, the cost desirable woman in the town.
“Oh,” Pierce said. “Does she know?”
“Lisa? Certainly not. She thinks both her parents were killed in the London Fire. Her mother was, actually. Her mother was a beautiful woman.”
“Who was the father?”
“A very close, very dear friend of mine. You will understand if I am no more specific than that.” Grover shook his head sadly. “I wanted to marry her, you know, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Terribly unconventional—she was the only woman who ever turned me down. After the war, I found out that the child had been sent to the country when the bombing started. I looked her up and arranged the records. I couldn’t adopt her—I’m not regarded as a proper guardian, you see—but I did manage to see that she received everything she needed. I became a sort of uncle, but I am deeply attached to her, and I feel responsible.”
He shrugged. “So there it is. But you still haven’t answered my question.”
“I don’t have an answer.”
“I’ve always approved of you, Robert.”
“I still don’t have an answer.”
“So infernally stubborn,” said Grover, walking to the window. “Americans are proud of it. National trait. I hope you are aware that when I die, she will be a very wealthy woman.”
“I’m not for sale,” Pierce said, suddenly angry.
Grover smiled.
“That’s what I’d hoped you’d say.”
“You should have known that’s what I’d say.”
“One can never be sure,” Grover said. “The prospect of wealth does strange things to people.”