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“HOW IN THE HELL ARE we going to get out of this mess?” Nick moaned, keeping his voice down so their abductors outside the tent couldn’t hear. Like the guide, he was trussed up so no part of his body could move more than a fraction of an inch, the ropes too tight and cutting off circulation.
Calmly, as he’d acted all along, Sharif replied, “Very carefully.”
“You act as if there isn’t any problem here. For God’s sake, Sharif, those are cut-throats out there. They’re going to kill us.”
“No, me they might kill. You, now that they know you are American, they will hold for ransom, probably.”
“I thought you said Afshar detested Americans? Loves to torture and murder them because of his mother. That was why you wanted me to pretend not to be able to speak when they first captured us, remember?”
“He loves money more,” Sharif interjected sardonically. “And you really listened to my advice, didn’t you?”
“I’ve told you a hundred times, I’m sorry. But I couldn’t tolerate the way they were treating you, knocking you around like that. I had to speak up.”
“And you had to hit that one, as well, didn’t you?”
“Sorry,” Nick stubbornly responded. He had no excuse, he had decked the creep that had been abusing Sharif with the butt of a rifle. He hadn’t been able to just sit back and watch. His reaction had been impulsive, unplanned. A soldier’s response to attack—retaliation. The shouting had just gone along with the hitting. Then the little weasel he’d punched had yanked off Nick’s headdress, and Afshar and his men had seen the blue eyes and blond hair. Known he wasn’t Egyptian.
Sharif had told him later they were lucky that Afshar himself had stepped in and called his angry men off, or they both would have been beaten into pulps right then and there.
Instead, Afshar, wanting some time to think about what he was going to do with them, had ordered his men to search them for weapons, then tie them up and bring them along with their donkeys to the Bedouin camp a few miles away. So Sharif and Nick had had their knives confiscated, and they were now bound up tightly in an inky tent. Outside it was dark. Nearly as dark as it was inside.
Nick couldn’t shake the fancy that he was in some grade-B desert sheik movie. It was ridiculous. Seeing all those Bedouins galloping down on them from the bottom of that sand dune, he hadn’t been able to accept the dangerous reality of the situation—not right off anyway. He’d had too great an urge to laugh.
By the time he’d noticed that Sharif had left him behind, and was yelling at him to follow if he valued his life, it had been too late. He’d tried to outrun them, but Afshar’s men had horses, and he’d had a donkey. It hadn’t been a contest. The screaming horde was soon upon him.
Sharif had yanked his mount around and come back to rescue him. The result had been the capture of both of them.
Nick felt bad enough about that blunder. Not to mention his quick fist.
Sharif probably had a hell of a shiner now, the right side of his face being grossly swollen. Nick couldn’t see it in the dark tent, but judging by Sharif’s slurred speech, his face was pretty bad if his mouth was so affected.
“Well, it doesn’t matter now, my friend,” the Egyptian groused. “They know you are American.” The other man paused and added gently, “I thank you for trying to protect me. But, as I told you before, I can take care of myself.”
“Yes,” Nick huffed. “I noticed that.”
Outside the tent there was a lot of noise, voices raised in loud disagreements.
Arguing over our fate, no doubt, Nick thought glumly.
“We have to get out of here,” Nick repeated for about the hundredth time. “We have to keep looking for Faye. She’s been out there alone without food and water for three days now.
“Oh, what the hell!” He exploded, unable to stop himself, when Sharif didn’t answer right away. “You don’t care about her, do you?” Growing rage, born of frustration and fear, sharpened his words.
“On the contrary, I care very much. I just do not think it will solve anything if I go about whining and wringing my hands. As if I could.” Referring to the ropes wrapped around his wrists. They were so tight, his hands were probably going numb like Nick’s. “We must take one step at a time, my friend. One thing at a time. This abduction is only a small delay. But we must be clever and be careful as to what we do next. Afshar is no fool, and he is said to be extremely volatile. So at the moment we need to stay levelheaded to get out of this predicament. Then we’ll be free to tackle the next problem. Now shut up and let me think.”
Sharif’s bluntness shocked Nick. He did shut up.
He didn’t understand the man. Sharif didn’t act worried because Faye had been missing for over three days. Not in the least. Nick felt like smacking him. He’d felt like doing that many times since Faye had disappeared. Through everything they’d experienced, the man had behaved as if all had been normal. Just another day on the desert. The guy didn’t get flustered about anything. It wasn’t human.
But Nick was beyond frantic. He was on the verge of insanity. All he could think about was Faye. Where she was, whether she was still alive. If she was going through the same strange shit they were. Had she wandered into that black pit of walking mummies? Lord, he hoped not. At least, Nick thought, Afshar hadn’t gotten his hands on her. Or Nick didn’t think he had. This was only a temporary Bedouin camp, Sharif had said. The main camp, with the rest of the men and all of their women, was someplace up in the hills. Secret.
Now this was something else to worry about. Nick had to stop coming up with things to scare himself. Sharif was right. Getting away from Afshar was what they had to accomplish first. Because how on earth were they going to find Faye when they were prisoners of this madman and his barbaric Bedouins? Not likely.
They had to escape.
Nick wriggled closer to the tent flap and stole a look outside. The Bedouins were all hulked around the campfire, eating and laughing. In their colorful robes and with their wild-eyed horses they made his blood cold. They were a strange lot, these renegade thieves.
Nick had been taken aback by how young some of them seemed. Most appeared no older than his own boy, Joshua. Yet these youths carried sharp sabers at their sides, and when they’d looked at him earlier, Nick had had the feeling they had all spilt first blood long ago, were experienced killers now. What kind of life did these men live? Nothing that he would ever understand. Children of the slums, some from Thebes, some from the nearby villages; some were actually Bedouins, but they had one thing in common. They had no souls, Sharif had warned him. They were evil.
Where were these boys’ mothers and fathers?
He knew he and his Egyptian friend could become grim statistics before the night was over, just another tourist and his guide who disappeared, and considering the anti-American sentiment of the country, who would care? Except Sharif believed Afshar would rather have the ransom money than kill him. Money could buy more guns. More horses. Horses were the Bedouins greatest weakness. Afshar himself rode a monstrous white stallion. Nick, a lover of horseflesh himself, had to admit that it was the prettiest creature he’d ever seen. A shame its owner was a bloodthirsty, heartless criminal.
Afshar. Now there was a crazy bastard, but Nick had been caught off guard when he’d come face to face with the man. The leader had been nothing like what Nick would have expected. A small common-looking fellow with average features and a mouthful of bad teeth, his skin was of a lighter shade than that of any of his men. Clean shaven, he had a habit of staring through people. He didn’t look anything like a desert chieftain, except for his eyes. They glittered with a feral intensity that bordered on madness. The man had barely glanced at him and Sharif, growling orders in Arabic—Sharif had translated what he’d said later—to his men about bringing them along and then leaping onto his white horse and riding away like some third-rate adventure movie star.
Needless to say, his men hadn’t been exactly gentle to their prisoners. Nick had the bruises to prove it. Sharif, after the rifle butt had connected, had given up without a fight.
Later, Nick had questioned him about that, and the Egyptian had replied, “Do you fight the river as it floods? Do you stand in the path of a hurricane and try to hit it? There were too many of them. They had the advantage. We will be patient. Wait until we have it. Surprise them when they least expect it. That is what a clever man would do.”
Nick had started to protest, but Sharif had simply said, “These are very cruel men. They would kill us as soon as look at us, believe me. It’s best to keep your mouth shut. Obey them. Act like a harmless coward. If not, they might just decide to teach you a lesson, before they sell you back to your country.”
Nick hadn’t liked his tone, but he’d gotten the message.
“All right, I’ll behave. No more punching. For now,” he’d promised.
“For now. A smart move, truly. You have no idea what they do to people. The deaths they are responsible for.”
Now, lying helpless, Nick didn’t want to know.
He was silent only a short while before guilt began to prick at him again. Waiting there in the dark tent, not doing anything, gave him too much time to think about Faye. He needed to know if Sharif had a plan yet. If he’d come up with something. Anything. To him the minutes seemed like hours.
“Sharif, we can’t just lie here and wait—”
“Yes we can!” Sharif cut in brutally, his voice a raspy snarl. “If not for our own safety, our own lives but for your wife’s. If we are dead, we cannot save her. She will die also. So stop whining and give me a few minutes of peace to think about how we are going to get out of this.”
Nick had shut up then. He hadn’t given Sharif any more trouble. As far as he was concerned, Afshar’s men were terrorists in disguise, sent by Ankhesenaton’s enemies. It had crossed his mind that they might be demons in desert robes. They’d missed him and Faye at the pyramids, and now they’d sent the mad desert people after him. So far, he’d seen no signs of animal parts for arms, legs, or heads so he’d given up that idea. The Bedouins were human apparently. Hell, did he and Faye have a price on their heads in the underworld or something? Targets painted across their backs?
Maybe they did.
The only other thing Nick had said about Afshar had been, “If he’s so bad, if he’s committed so many awful crimes, why hasn’t he been arrested? Locked up? Doesn’t Egypt have laws to protect its citizens? If he’s been raiding towns, terrorizing people, wouldn’t someone have turned him in?”
Sharif seemed surprised. “The people are afraid of Afshar. Who would want to bring down his wrath on their heads?” He saw that Nick still didn’t understand.
“The desert is a world unto itself, my friend,” he tried to explain, lying next to Nick in the tent. “It takes a strong breed to live in it, off of it. There are no laws out here. No policemen. In the desert you must take care of yourself. Here evil can escape and thrive. A wise man learns to stay out of its path. Not defy it. That is the way of Egypt. Of the desert.”
Sharif seemed lost in thought after that exchange. Though Nick spoke to him many times, he refused to reply and he didn’t try to get free. At least not that Nick could tell. It was so dark by then that Nick couldn’t have seen his hand even if he could have gotten it in front of his face. Sharif made no noises. Didn’t move around much. While Nick, on the other hand, worked at the knots, desperately trying to get out of his binding as he listened to the rowdiness outside the tent grow. Afraid that Afshar would have them dragged out before his men and use them for entertainment, Nick could hear his own heartbeats, he was so strung out.
He was sick of Egypt. He wanted his wife back, wanted the two of them out of here. He was angry, scared, and hungry. Thirsty. He hadn’t eaten all day. Neither of them had. They hadn’t had a sip of water in hours since they’d been taken, but when he felt the hunger and thirst pangs he remembered Faye. She must be hungry and thirsty, too, her situation far worse than theirs.
****
THE NIGHT PASSED. THE smell of roasting meat spread through the tent. It made Nick’s mouth water, it smelled so good. Outside Afshar and his men were feasting. Probably dog. Maybe donkey. Heaven knew what those barbarians ate. They’d discovered the goatskin that had previously hung on Sharif’s supply donkey, were most likely getting drunk.
Finally Nick grew tired of his own thoughts and demanded of Sharif, “Are we just going to lie in here and wait, not do anything? Can’t we try to slip out while they’re drinking and escape into the desert?”
Sharif grunted. “We would not get far. They can see in the dark like panthers, and their hearing is very sharp.” In the inky tent he was a blob of darker shadow.
“Well, we can’t just sit here and wait for them to ransom or kill us.” Nick peeked outside at their hosts again. They were still passing the goatskin around; slapping each other’s backs and laughing. A couple of them were going through Nick and Sharif’s supply and saddle bags. One of them had found Sharif’s fiddle, was playing it. Badly.
Nick felt Sharif stiffen, every time some clod plucked clumsily at his instrument. Nick knew he loved that fiddle. Being married to a musician had taught him how much they cherished their instruments. Faye loved her guitar as if it were her child.
“Patience,” the bodiless voice soothed softly, as if he were saying it for the both of them.
Nick could have sworn he detected a hint of growing anger in Sharif. “What are we waiting for? It’s dark outside. They seem preoccupied right now. I say we should crawl out the back side of the tent and make a run for it.” He tried again, pushing his luck.
“I told you. Patience.” Sharif shushed his comrade insistently. “Not yet.”
Nick was the one that fell silent after that. Sunk into a black mood. All he could think about was his wife. He didn’t care about himself now. He only wanted to be free so he could continue searching for her. She must think he’d abandoned her.
Sometime in the middle of the night someone was shaking him.
“Wake up, American. Wake up.” It was Sharif. He was kneeling over him in the dark. “It’s time now. Time to escape.”
The Egyptian wasn’t tied up any longer.
“You’re free. How did you do that?”
“My knife.”
“They took our knives,” Nick exclaimed, “when they first captured us.” Sharif cut his ropes. In a moment Nick was free, too.
“I got mine back. I have trained it to come when I call.”
Sharif gave Nick no time to react or ask any more questions. “We have to go now,” he whispered urgently.
“How about Afshar and his men?” Nick whispered back.
“They are sleeping.”
Nick followed the other man into the night. It must have been about two or three o’clock, he figured, by the chill. The campfire, once a blazing bonfire, was a ghost of itself.
It was true, the Bedouins looked asleep, slumped over on the ground or lying face down by the sputtering fire. None of them stirred as he and Sharif stepped over them. The wine had gotten to them most likely.
Nick thought for a moment they were home free. They could just tiptoe out of the camp. No one was awake to see them go.
Except the figure huddled over the campfire. It tossed pieces of wood onto the dying embers and flames shot up. The noise echoed in the still night and caught Nick and Sharif’s attention. In the fire’s new glow a man looked up at them and smiled cunningly. Afshar. His beardless face as innocent as a child’s. His manner deceptively relaxed. Almost friendly. Sharif knew better. That man had the eyes of a scorpion.
“Which one plays the fiddle?” in heavily accented English. So the man did speak English? What a surprise.
Nick and Sharif had frozen. They’d made it halfway to the donkeys. Had nearly gotten away. Nick cursed under his breath. So close.
“I play,” Sharif replied softly.
“Then play for me.” A request that was nothing short of a command.
The leader’s voice had woken half the camp. Suddenly eyes were upon them. Hostile eyes. Curious eyes.
Nick was amazed at the way Sharif reacted. The Egyptian turned and walked back to the man who’d asked the question. In the firelight his face was calm. Nick could even have sworn there was a smile on his lips beneath the beard.
Sharif said something in Arabic to Afshar, the words a sort of growl, low in his throat. His face impassive in the flickering light. His arms hanging by his sides. His hands not moving as usual. There was a ripple through Afshar’s men as the one-sided conversation went on. No one moved; all eyes were fastened intently on Sharif’s face.
Or Afshar’s.
Nick couldn’t understand a word of any of it, but he watched the eyes and the expressions, the subtle gestures, of Afshar’s men carefully. A hush had fallen over the whole lot. It was eerie. Now all eyes went first to Afshar and then to Sharif. The one man still standing and talking, the other gazing up at him, a strange look coming over and shadowing his face.
Afshar didn’t say another damned thing.
When Sharif was done speaking, the two men stared at each other. Finally Afshar nodded slowly, gestured for Sharif to sit beside him at the fire.
There was a heavy silence for long seconds, punctuated only by the neighing and pawing of the Bedouins’ horses on the edge of the camp.
The tension was so strong, Nick felt the night was ready to explode with it, like a storm cloud ready to release its burden of rain. Many of the thieves had their hands on their scabbards, waiting. Nick hadn’t understood the Arabic, so he didn’t know for what. He would have done anything to know what Sharif had told the leader.
Afshar still said nothing, but he was watching Sharif, a queer smile on his thin face.
Sharif finally reached out and took the fiddle from Afshar’s hands. He sat down cross-legged beside him, as if being asked to play the fiddle by his captor, perhaps his executioner, was an everyday occurrence, as if this had been the only request, or message, that had passed between the two men.
Sharif gestured at Nick to return. Sit down, too. Since Nick didn’t see any alternative, he walked nonchalantly back into the lion’s den and plopped down next to his friend. There was too much at stake.
Their lives.
By then the whole camp was awake. Fifteen men glaring at them, most of them still partially drunk. Afshar’s sly eyes were on Sharif’s face as the Egyptian raised the fiddle, propped it under his chin and began to play.
The music was like nothing Nick had ever heard. Haunting, wild and possessed. The bow flying across the strings. The sleeve of the Egyptian’s robe falling away from his hand and revealing the blue tattoo in the firelight.
Nick was the only one to catch Afshar staring at it with something close to fear in his eyes.
Yet Sharif’s eyes were closed. As if he was unafraid of their enemies. The music grew softer, whispering and sighing on the warm desert night.
On and on it rose and fell, weaving a spell on the warm breeze.
One by one Afshar’s men fell back asleep. Toppling over silently. Afshar was the last to close his eyes and sleep.
The music stopped.
Nick couldn’t believe what he’d seen.
Sharif stood up and gazed down at the men sprawled around the fire. He looked at Nick and smiled. “Now we can go,” he said. “And we had better hurry, we have someone waiting for us.”
“How about them?” Nick was looking at Afshar and his men.
“They will not awaken until tomorrow morning. And they’ll not follow us. Will not bother us again.”
“How did you do that?” Nick wanted to know.
“Magic,” Sharif whispered, as they climbed on their donkeys, after having hurriedly regathered and packed up their supplies.
“What was all that you said to Afshar before you began playing?”
Sharif laughed softly as he swung his beast around and took one last look at the sleeping Bedouins. “I’ll tell you one day, my friend. Not now. But one day.”
Nick, looking at the other man and then back at the sleeping thieves, hoped this was so. He sure would like to know what that had been all about. It would make a good story to tell the folks back home. To tell Faye. If he ever found her.
They took off into the night. For once Nick’s beast hadn’t tried to bite or kick him. He felt that was an omen. A good one.
Later, he would ask why they hadn’t taken the Bedouins’ horses, since they would have been able to move faster and Sharif would confide, “If we did that, they would come after us for sure.” He knew the desert tribes.
“Quickest way to keep a Bedouin on your tail for life is to steal his horse. This way they wake up tomorrow, none the worse for wear, and have a good laugh over our clever escape. They will admire our courage—my magic—and not come after us.
“But,” he shrugged his shoulders, “if we’d taken their beloved horses, and believe me, Bedouins love their horses more than their wives, they would chase us to the ends of the earth. Magic or no magic.”
“You’re one of those magic men,” Nick asked, “aren’t you?”
“Yes. Among other things.”
“Oh, and here is your knife.” Sharif had pulled his donkey up and handed Nick something.
“How did you manage to get that back?”
“Magic, of course.” Soft laughter.
Nick shook his head, glanced back at the camp. It was gone.
“This day’s been too stressful,” he mumbled to himself. He slapped his donkey and caught up with Sharif. “You said someone was waiting for us?”
“Yes,” Sharif answered. “I know where she is now.
“At the quarries. We must hurry. She needs us.”
“Who?”
“Your wife.”
“She’s alive?”
“Yes, my friend, she is alive.”
Nick didn’t ask how he knew that. It didn’t matter. His head was still fuzzy from the fiddle business and the knife trick, the disappearing camp. He merely believed Sharif. They were going to find Faye. Save her. She was close by.
Tears came to Nick’s eyes. He urged his donkey on excitedly. For the first time in days his heart was hopeful.
He trusted Sharif’s intuitions now. The man had friends in high places. And he was going to lead him to Faye.