Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 03 - Cairo Caper (3 page)

A sigh escaped my lips as I gazed at Hatshepsut, the forerunner of Cleopatra. Declaring herself Pharaoh, she dressed as a king and wore a false beard.
What a dame.

“She was. Wasn’t she?”

I turned toward the voice. A tiny prim-looking thing in a tan safari jacket over a long beige skirt, with old-fashioned lace-up boots peeking out from under the hem, pushed a too-large pith helmet resting on the tops of her ears higher on her brow. Lank honey-brown hair drooped below the brim to the nape of her neck. She might have trimmed it herself, possibly with pinking shears.

“Sorry. I was just agreeing with you. She
was
quite a… lady.”

“I didn’t realize I was speaking out loud.”

“This place has that effect on me too,” She extended her right hand. “Fiona Feelgood.”

“Wendy Darlin.” I shook her hand wondering why I’d shared my name with a stranger. Maybe it was the smattering of friendly freckles on the bridge of her nose or her guileless smile. She looked to be in her early forties, small boned, and perky.

“Are you from the States?”

She nodded. “I’m traveling alone. Feeling a little nervous today. You notice the crowds in Tahrir Square?”

“Might not be the best time to be an American tourist.”

“Oh, but I’m not a tourist.” She carried a large courier’s bag with a leather strap across her chest. A thief could lift her and the bag in one hand.

“Archaeologist?” I asked.

“Oh goodness no. I’m an author. Well, I
will
be. I’m writing
Erotica for Dummies.”

That just about blew me out of my Ferragamo’s. She struck me as a younger version of an old maid schoolteacher. “Do you have training as a sex-therapist?”

If she blushed any harder it would have been audible.

“I’m more like a librarian doing sex research.” She paused. “Actually, I
am
a librarian doing sex research.” She drew herself up to her full four foot eleven, including boots, and set her jaw. “I’m embarking on a new life.”

She did a little hop-dance crossing her legs and biting her lower lip. “Do you know if there’s a ladies’ room on this floor?”

Angry voices reached my ears. I peeked out at the lobby. The number of security guards had doubled and they all had their hands on their side arms. That damn Roger, leaving me out here. If I got killed, the first thing on my to-do list as a ghost would be to haunt him.

The ever-louder street noises didn’t seem to bother Fiona. Maybe she couldn’t hear them under the pith helmet. But she had a pressing problem. “I have to wee-wee. I know there are some restrooms upstairs but the area isn’t well lit and I’m afraid to go alone.”

Accompanying a stranger, albeit a tiny female, down a dark hallway was not the smartest move. But as she hopped from one foot to the other, and her eyeballs turned yellow, I figured she was legit. Besides, I could use a potty-stop myself. I trailed her up the staircase looking over my shoulder to be sure we weren’t followed. I patted the schlocky ashtrays in my pockets for reassurance.

Emergency lights, widely spaced along the corridor, provided an eerie yellow glow. Evidently the power had failed in this part of the building. Staring statues and glaring gods lined the walls.

A room filled with cat mummies caught my attention. Fiona marched ahead, but I was drawn inside. Cats were considered guardians of the underworld and protectors of those in the afterlife. The dried feline bodies caused a wave of sadness to wash over me.

I moved to the middle of the room where the weight of a stare on my back caused me to spin around. I locked on to the dark eye holes in the head of a long-necked cat mummy standing next to a wooden cat coffin. The plaque under the cat noted it had been entombed with its master, one of Cleopatra’s guards who had been slain protecting her in the early days of her reign. A tear ran down my cheek. I shook my head to break the strange connection I felt with the tiny figure.

“Wendy!”

Fiona’s shrill voice snapped me out of my mystic fog. She was standing cross-legged in the doorway, frantically beckoning to me.

Before I could move, a cat brushed my ankle. I jumped and looked down. No cat there. As crazy as it seemed I swiveled my head toward the cat mummy. I could have sworn it winked. My imagination was working overtime.

“Wendy, I really have to go.”

Fiona and I trotted down the hall to the ladies loo, ignoring thousands of years of history along the way. The reverberation of her boots and my heels off the walls sounded like an African percussion band.

I barreled through a door marked with a drawing of a woman in a long skirt with a scarf over her head. The lights were a notch down from the gloomy hallway. Fiona managed to squeeze by me and race into the nearest stall, I grabbed a potty two doors over.

I locked the door then wrestled with my long skirt and the weight of two mummy-ashtrays in the pockets. I swathed it around my thighs and lifted it just as someone pushed on the stall door.

A gravelly male voice, heavily accented in Arabic said, “Open the door!” I dropped my skirt, dragging the hem in the toilet. Ick. The curse of wearing a long skirt.

“Wendy! Who is that?” Fiona called. “Is that a sex-maniac?”

“Don’t sound so excited,” I said pressing against the door as it shuddered from a fist bashing on the other side.

“Open up! I have something for you.”

“Go away.” I fought to keep my voice from quavering.

“Open up or I’ll… put
it
under the door.”

“You do and I’ll step on it,” I yelled. He damn sure wasn’t delivering a pizza.

Something let loose with a high-pitched howl. It sounded like a cat but meaner.

I adjusted my skirt, bent down, and peeked under the stall door. Nothing. No male feet. No feet at all. Only the shadow of a cat. What happened to Gravel Voice?

“Fiona, on the count of three hit your door and start running. I’ll be right beside you. One!”

“I can’t get my Spanx up. I’m too sweaty!”

Spanx, my foot. A girdle is a girdle, and a girdle in this heat is ridiculous. “Fiona, drop ‘em and start running!”

“It’s the only pair I brought with me…”

“Two. Three!” I kicked open the door. No one was there. I didn’t bother checking the shadows. “Run for it!”

I imitated Fred Flintstone powering his stone-age car as I paddled my feet for all I was worth.

Fiona galloped alongside me. “Was he good looking?”

“Shut up and run!”

We slip-skidded down the hall and onto the slick-as-glass stone staircase. We shot down the stairs like supercharged Slinkies.

Roger, Dische, and a third man stood near the bottom in front of the two-story statues of Amenhotep III and his queen, Tiy. I bounced off Roger into the belly of the new guy, a chunky older version of Indiana Jones complete with battered hat and swashbuckling stance.

I’d seen photos of our client, Sir Sydney Street. The belly belonged to him. So did the low-slung jowls and turkey wattle. The Indiana Jones similarities ended with the hat and stance. He glared at me with a cabbage-smelling wrinkle in his nose.

Fiona flailed past me and skimmed under Sir Sydney. She grabbed the ankle of a beefy dude who was walking toward the group. He fell backwards, landing on his butt with a womph! Fiona came to a stop between Petri Dische’s skinny legs when he pushed his knees together.

She righted her pith helmet and gave him a warm smile. “Thank you, sir.”

Dische bowed from the waist and then helped her off the floor.

“Where the hell have you been?” Roger whispered in my ear.

“In Neverland with Peter Pan. Where do you think? The ladies’ room. Have you seen any strange men around here?”

“You mean other than the one your little friend took down with an ankle-tackle?”

Fiona’s victim struggled to his feet spewing English and Russian curses attacking her legitimacy and ancestry. He sounded like he’d been smoking since birth but not nearly as raspy as Gravel Voice. He came at Fiona pointing his fat index finger. “Who are you?”

Tears filled my small fellow American’s eyes. Shaking, she hid behind Dische.

I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable. I’d been shot at, cayenne peppered, treated like a bimbo, and attacked in a bathroom. The hem of my skirt was wet, yuck, make that double-yuck, and I still hadn’t had a chance to pee. Who the hell did this guy think he was?

So I said, “Who the hell do you think you are? Holster that finger right now or I’ll Bobbitt it for you.”

Sir Sydney stepped forward, put a hand on the Russian’s forearm then quickly removed it, and smiled weakly at the about-to-be-missing-a-digit loudmouth. “Allow me to introduce one of the Museum’s financial angels, Alexander Dorkovsky.”

Ooops.

Chapter Five

He definitely wasn’t my idea of an angel. His zillion-dollar silk business suit and silk tie couldn’t disguise his hefty silk-shirted belly. Those worms had worked overtime to produce that much material. He had enough facial hair that his progress down the evolutionary chain must have stalled a couple of species ago.

Though he was a jerk, my stomach was roiling at the thought of possibly messing things up for the Museum, so I meekly said, “This is Fiona Feelgood,” motioning to the pith helmet behind Dische.

Dorkovsky’s cold, colorless eyes weren’t focused on Fiona or me. They were focused on Roger like he was sizing him up, perhaps for a sarcophagus.

Doctor Jolley eyeballed him back with an I-need-to-scrape-this-off-the sole-of-my-shoe stare.

My clothes were askew. I gave up on gathering my skirt and settled for adjusting my top, fixing my scarf, and collecting my dignity before I announced, “Fiona and I were attacked in the loo.”

Roger stepped closer and tried to hug me.

I pulled away. “And it’s your fault for leaving me out here. I’m too shaken to slap you. Bash your face against my palm.”

Sir Sydney snapped his fingers. Two security guards appeared out of thin air. I described the ladies room confrontation then asked, “Do you keep any cats in here? For rodent control or whatever?”

The wrinkle in Sir Sydney’s nose deepened. “Of course not. Animals aren’t welcome here, unless they’re more than several thousand years old.” He smiled at his lame joke.

Hmmm, no cats and no Gravel Voice.

Sir Sydney showed his impatience by clapping his hands. “Now on to the business at hand. Please describe this alleged attacker.”

That crack got my dander up. The pompous ass didn’t believe us. I narrowed my eyes and hissed, “There’s no
alleged
to the attacker. I didn’t see him but he sounded like an Arabic Louis Armstrong and he must be hung like a horse.”

Roger wrung his face.

Sir Sydney looked puzzled. “A horse?”

“If it fit under the door… it would—”

Roger cut me off. “Sir Sydney’s made arrangements for us to get out of Cairo.”

“Who are these people?” Dorkovsky held his hand in front of Roger like a cop stopping traffic.

Sydney stood his ground against the Russian ape. “Visitors. They were just leaving.” He made a shooing motion. “Mister Dische will guide you. Now off you go!” He tugged the brim of his fedora and slipped a winky-winky at Roger. What had my guy gotten me into?

I jerked my head around at the sound of glass smashing. The mob was forcing their way in. Movement at the tippy-top of the ceiling caught my eye. A dozen men dressed ninja-like in black from head to toe had broken through the skylight. They zipped down to the second floor mezzanine on cables unreeling from their belts. Holy Batman. These weren’t ordinary looters or even demonstrators. They were pros, some kind of special ops or something.

“This way. Hurry!” Dische said, pointing to a door labeled
Cafeteria Employees only.

“We can’t leave Fiona to that mob,” I barked.

Petri Dische grasped Fiona’s hand and pulled her behind him. She struggled to get her feet under her, stepped on her safari skirt, tripped and rolled like a hedgehog.

“Stop!” I yelled.

Dische slammed to a halt and Fiona wrapped herself around his linen-suited legs. She climbed him hand-over-hand until she was on her feet then jumped behind me. Her pith helmet hit the back of my neck. Her tiny hands squeezed my right arm.

An alarm wailed. Six more armed guards appeared at Sir Sydney’s side. With weapons leveled, they advanced on the special ops intruders. The hall was filled with priceless antiquities. Gunfire would be a disaster.

“Hold your fire!” Sir Sydney commanded.

Petri scooted us along like a protective mother hen. I looked over my shoulder to see Sir Sydney and Dorkovsky scrambling into the Royal Mummy Room covered by two armed guards.

Roger, Fiona, and I followed Petri Dische through the cafeteria kitchen. A gaggle of cooks and dishwashers huddled in an open pantry, their eyes the size of ostrich eggs.

Dische opened the door to the outside dining patio. We stepped into a boiling sea of angry humanity. I covered my head with my hands. Fiona’s grip on my upper arm was cutting off my circulation. I peeked from under my elbow. A chain of local citizens, young and old, were locked arm in arm to block the hooligan crowd struggling to get into the Museum. The mob could have only one goal. Looting.

A Land Rover with a driver was parked under a sign marked “Director.” It was just inside the circle of volunteers who were battling to protect their heritage. The car must have been Sir Sydney’s personal wheels. Fiona, Roger, and I dove into the backseat. Petri Dische jumped into the front and screamed “Hit it!” We rolled through the crowd with their fists pounding the windows.

“Wait!” Fiona said with panic on her face. “My hotel’s back the other way.”

I patted her hand. “You’re with us now. We can’t leave you in the middle of this mob.” What’s one more souvenir from the Cairo Museum?

The charioteer made a New York City cabbie look like a Sunday driver. Roger swiveled his head from the front of the car to the back biting his bottom lip. Had we picked up another hitman? I closed my eyes, gripped the seatbelt, and prayed.

I peeked when the Land Rover stopped two minutes later. We were at a dock on the Nile.