My stomach dropped into my soggy running shoes when, as we waited for the bus, my phone lit up.
too late
my daddy
help
I called back right away. "Amal!"
All I got was a man speaking a string of Arabic, so I handed my phone to Tucker.
He shook his head as he listened. "This one's her dad's phone. Voice mail box is full. Try again."
I dialled again and again. No answer.
I texted Amal back before I showed Tucker our conversation.
He bent over to read the texts, so soaked that his hair stuck straight to his skull, his hair gel and hood notwithstanding. It made him look like a different person. Younger. More vulnerable. "Let me see if Rudy or someone will tell us where they transferred Hadi. We'll head down to that hospital and make sure everything's all right."
As I listened to him, my arms trembled. Even the skin felt wrong, tight and itchy, and my pants stuck to my legs in a way that made me want to rip them off in the middle of the bus station.
"I can go without you," said Tucker, reading my mind.
"I want to come," I said, rubbing my arms. "I think—I know this sounds weird, but I think the rain is bothering my skin. I have eczema, and I don't know how clean this rain is."
"Not clean," he said immediately. "The World Bank ranked Cairo as the most polluted city in the world in 2007. We'd better get you washed off."
"Isn't it bothering you?"
He shook his head. "I never get rashes. I just get shot." He glanced at me out of the corners of his eyes, grinning.
I punched his arm. "Don't joke about that! It's horrible!" Chinese people know enough not to tempt fate. Did I really have to retrain this guy?
While he pinged various people for Hadi's hospital, I headed to the bathroom to wash off.
"With bottled water," said Tucker, his eyebrows drawn together.
It seemed like a highfalutin' thing to do, but desperate times. I took a water bottle to the bus station bathroom and soaped and rinsed with tap water before rinsing with the good stuff. I offered a few Egyptian pounds to the woman who handed me paper towels while I argued with my own brain.
Amal's in trouble.
No, her dad.
Is it too late?
It's okay, we'll find Hadi, and Amal and her father are probably with him.
Don't worry.
I'm worried.
Okay, worry about this. Why did Abdallah point us toward Nedjemankh's coffin? It's already been repatriated. An open and shut case (literally).
I don't know. What was in that cobra bag?
I don't know. Why did Gizelda Becker give it to Abdallah Hussein?
I don't know.
I dried my arms and grabbed my phone for some quick research. Looting, tomb raiding, grave robbing—whatever you want to call it—started way before Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. A papyrus from Ramses IX describes the court's punishment for thieves over 3000 years ago.
Of course governments tried to stop tomb raiding. The Geneva convention banned "illicit trade in cultural property" in 1970. In 1983, Egypt passed a law that any artifact found on their soil, obtained legally or illegally, automatically belongs to the state. In fact, Egypt lays claim to all national archaeological finds in perpetuity, unless you can supply a clear record of legal sale.
Therein lies the problem. If our suspicions were correct, all Abdullah had to do was to falsify records for Nedjemankh to get the coffin out of the country. Egyptian officials later traced its path to the United Arab Emirates, then on to Germany for restoration, before it was sold to the Met by an art dealer in Paris in July 2017.
The Parisian dealer and his husband were arrested last month. Phillip Becker and Abdallah Hussein's names never came up.
I felt the toilet attendant's eyes boring into my back, so I thanked her and stepped back into the station's hallway, where groups of people lined up for tickets, chatted with friends, and/or fiddled with their phones while they sat on their luggage.
Tucker found me first. "Hey. Rudy just sent me the hospital name. It's not that far, actually. We can be there within the hour. You think you can handle that?"
"For sure." I studied him. No rock 'n' roll sign this time. His eyes looked, well, haunted. "You okay?"
He shook his head. "I've been reading about the looting, and it's either locals who need the money—"
I nodded. I couldn't blame them.
"—or organized crime razing the sites with bulldozers, hiring archaeologists to maximize their profit, on top of what they're already making from drug smuggling and arms dealing."
I winced at the pain in his voice and touched his hand. I don't expect any better, but Tucker and Ryan still believe in human goodness.
"Bulldozers destroy everything, including the artifacts, so sometimes they use kids to reach the smallest tunnels and burial shafts."
I wrapped my arms around myself as they started to itch again. The puzzle pieces finally locked together in my brain. I wanted to scream, but somehow shoved my larynx into speech. "Maybe scorpions live down there."
He nodded.
"And definitely sand. Lots of sand that would collapse on you, especially if heavy machinery was digging out the site."
The memory of Amal's little voice rang in my ears.
My brothers can go out and work, but not me.
Hadi worked in the tunnels, either stealing artifacts for his family or for whatever crime syndicate, and now he lay close to death.
I swallowed. My throat rasped. I'd washed with my water instead of drinking it. "Okay, here's the deal. It can't get any worse. That's the good news. We've already reached the nadir of human nature. We're going to help Hadi get better. Let me call Amal again."
As we walked back to the bus stop, my phone rang and rang. I waited for the voice mail message. Instead, a little voice piped, "Dr. Sze! Oh, Dr. Sze!"
My mind spun to Dorothy calling Auntie Em in The Wizard of Oz. "What happened, Amal?"
"It's my father."
"Yes, Amal. What happened? Where are you?"
"He—he gave away his kidney."
"What?" I yelled so loudly that a group of men abruptly detoured around me, but I didn't care.
"It's too late, Dr. Sze. We owe too much money. That's what my father said. So he went to these men, these men who have always been asking him, bothering him, they know a place where you can sell your kidneys to rich people. They know the right doctors, they promised him $2000 so he could pay the hospital bill, but they dumped him in the street afterward. He's so weak. He says he has to drink, but he's—how do I say—"
In the background, I heard her father retching.
I leaned against the wall. "Oh, my God. Oh, my God."