ROBERT PIERCE SAT IN the bar of the Semiramis Hotel, thinking he had never been so bored in his life. He watched the bartender, a big Nubian with a wide face and a red fez, mix drinks for the only other people in the bar, a Midwestern American couple who looked tired. It was 10:00 A.M.
The bartender came back to him. “Drink all right?”
“Fine.”
The bartender bent over behind the counter and washed glasses. Down the counter, Pierce heard the American man say, “Nasser. I wouldn’t mind it, except for Nasser.”
“Yes, dear,” his wife agreed. “Dulles was right.”
The bartender clinked the glasses as he dried them. Pierce turned to him and said. “Is it always this hot?”
“September,” the bartender said. “September is always hot.” He spoke English with a slight British accent.
Pierce nodded. He had been here four days, and each day had been over one hundred degrees. Fortunately, the Italian engineer had been right on schedule, and Pierce had done most of his interviewing in the air-conditioned hotel. Now he could get out of Cairo. He had his plane ticket for the evening flight to Athens.
“Have you seen the pyramids?” the bartender asked.
“No,” Pierce said. “I’m here on business.” He finished his gin and tonic and pushed it across the bar. “I’ll have another.”
The Nubian mixed it. “You should come back in the winter,” he said. “It’s better in the winter.”
“So they tell me.” Pierce thought about his bags. He would have to pack. He hated packing. The flight left at nine the next morning. He could get stinking drunk tonight.
The bartender handed him a fresh drink. He sipped it. Perhaps he wouldn’t wait until evening. He reached into his pocket and drew out an oval Papastratos cigarette. He liked Greek cigarettes. He would have to remember to buy more in Athens.
What else was there to do in Athens?
Another man came into the bar, looked quickly around, and took a stool near Pierce. Pierce watched him, playing a game he often tried at times like this. It consisted of guessing nationality and occupation; in his years of traveling, Pierce had become quite good at it.
This man, he decided, was American, judging from his clothes: button-down shirt of oxford weave and hopsacking sport jacket—rather collegiate attire, considering the fellow’s age. Pierce put him at a weary forty. The man’s eyes were bloodshot and his face haggard. Physically, he was nondescript—medium height, ordinary looking. Except that he was very nervous.
“Whiskey,” the man said. “On the rocks.”
He looked over at Pierce. Pierce smiled. “Hot, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” The man took his drink and swallowed it in a gulp. “I’ll have another,” he said to the bartender.
Pierce watched curiously, then said, “Allow me,” and nodded to the Nubian.
“Thank you,” the man said slowly. “You’re most kind.” He looked suspiciously at Pierce.
“My name is Robert Pierce.”
“Harold Barnaby. How do you do.” He did not offer to shake hands. If anything, he seemed more nervous than before.
“What brings you to Egypt in September, Mr. Barnaby?”
“My life’s work,” he said, in a rather disgusted voice. “I’m an Egyptologist. And you?”
“A writer. I was sent to interview the engineer in charge of the Italian construction firm moving Abu Simbel.”
Barnaby nodded. For an Egyptologist, he was peculiarly uninterested. “Been here long?”
“Four days.”
“Seen the pyramids?”
“No.”
“I don’t blame you. Christ.” He wiped his neck with a handkerchief.
“Are you excavating here?” Pierce asked.
“No. Translating. I read the stuff, you see.”
“You mean hieroglyphics?”
“Uh-huh.” He finished his drink abruptly. “My turn. What’re you having?”
“Gin and tonic.” Pierce was fascinated by this man. His gestures were so abrupt, so edgy—something was definitely on his mind.
Barnaby signaled to the Nubian, then looked at Pierce. “Have we ever met before?”
“I don’t think so,” Pierce said.
“You look familiar.”
“I travel a lot, on various assignments.”
Barnaby shook his head and lit a cigarette. Then he said, “Korea?”
“Just during the war.”
Barnaby thought about this, biting his lip. When his drink came, he turned the glass around in his hands, staring at it.
“Pyongyang?”
“Yes,” Pierce said, startled. “Company B.”
“You were a captain,” Barnaby said.
“Yes,” Pierce said. “And you…”
“I was a captain, too. The zenith of my life.” He laughed tensely.
“I don’t think I remember you,” Pierce said. “I don’t recall a lot from Pyongyang. I was only there a week.”
“On your way out,” Barnaby said.
“That’s right.” And heavily sedated, because the pain from the bullet-shattered bones in his left forearm was severe.
“I have a good memory,” Barnaby said. He sipped his drink. “You’ve been a writer ever since?”
“Yes.” Strange fellow. He was practically twitching with a kind of inner excitement.
“And you travel a lot?”
“Yes, I’ve been traveling almost constantly through Europe for the last ten years.”
“Know many people?”
Pierce shrugged.
“Must be an interesting life,” Barnaby said, finishing his third drink. He had a peculiar way of beginning slowly, then drinking more and more rapidly. “You know any rich people?”
“Some.” Pierce signaled to the bartender, who brought two more drinks. Pierce now had three gin and tonics lined up in front of him, two untouched.
“I mean really rich. Terribly, stinking rich.”
“I think you could say so, yes.”
“I see.” Barnaby dabbed at his forehead with the handkerchief and said nothing for several minutes. Then he lifted his glass. “Cheers.”
Dutifully, Pierce drank. “Cheers.”
“Going to be in Cairo long?”
“No. I’m leaving tonight.”
“Another assignment?”
“I wish I had one. Actually, I’m just going to Athens to be near the water. I may spend a few days on Crete until something turns up. I understand I may be sent to Bonn after that.”
“You’re leaving tonight?”
“Yes.”
Barnaby set down his empty glass. “Just time for one more,” he said. The bartender set up a final round. Pierce managed to finish his gin and tonic, so there were only three fresh drinks sitting before him.
Barnaby was sluggish, red-faced, and sweating heavily. He looked at Pierce’s drinks. “Come on. Bottoms up,” he said, “I must be off soon.”
He gulped back his own drink swiftly and set the glass down. Then he made small, embarrassed shifting movements on his stool.
“Well,” he said, “it’s been a pleasure.” He stood rather unsteadily and smiled. “A great pleasure.”
He started to walk out of the bar, then stopped, and looked back. “You were a pretty rough customer in those days, weren’t you? Silver Cross, as I recall.”
Pierce nodded. Barnaby smiled again and stumbled out. Pierce turned back to his three gin and tonics, arranged in a neat line before him. He picked up the first and sipped it slowly.
Strange fellow.
Pierce finished packing his typewriter, locked the case, and walked to the window. He looked out on the Nile, a broad muddy river in the yellowing afternoon sun. A small sailboat traveled gently downstream; he saw the traffic on the Kasr el-Nil Bridge. Directly below him was broad Maspero Street, named for a famous director of the Cairo Museum. It was a tree-lined boulevard, with flags flying in the light breeze. Little black and white Fiat taxis hurried up and down, weaving, honking.
Pierce watched, his mind a blank. He hated inactivity, hated passivity, and had spent the last twelve years of his life moving around the world on assignment after assignment, deadline after deadline.
He dreaded the occasional times like this—moments between stories. It had nothing to do with the money; he had more than enough. It was simply the time that hung so heavily upon him.
Lately, it had been getting worse. When he was not working, the glamour of his job, the excitement of the travel and the women drained away before his eyes, and he could find nothing behind it all. Nothing but a bored, tired man standing in a hotel room, living out of a suitcase.
He sighed. The Italian engineer, Mannini—now there was a busy man, totally preoccupied with his work, completely satisfied by it. The project he had just finished was quite incredible: lifting the entire monument of Abu Simbel and relocating it on a new site two thousand feet higher, clear of the lake to be formed by the Aswan High Dam. The giant statues were cut from friable limestone; they had been sawn into sections and had been rejoined after raising. The project had taken nearly ten years and cost thirty-six million dollars.
He sat down on the bed, forgetting Mannini, and wondered whether he could fall asleep. The easiest thing would be to nap until he went to the airport.
Just as he lay back, the telephone rang.