He Shall Thunder in the Sky (42 page)

     Ramses closed his mouth and after a moment his father condescended to explain. “Maxwell reminded me that the military keep a close eye on people heading into the Eastern Desert. We will report to the officer on duty and comply with the rules.”

     It was a reasonable explanation, which was why Ramses doubted its truth. His father’s usual reaction to rules was to ignore them.

     Early as it was, the officers were already at the mess. Emerson sent a servant to announce his presence. The horse was a large animal, and so was Emerson; when several people emerged from the building, he did not dismount but looked down on them from his commanding height with an air of affable condescension. Some of them were known to Ramses, including a tallish man wearing a kilt, who gave Ramses a stiff nod and then introduced himself to Emerson.

     “Hamilton!” he barked.

     “Emerson!”

     “Heard of you.”

     “And I you.”

     Hamilton drew himself up, threw his shoulders back, and stroked his luxuriant red mustache. He was at a disadvantage on foot and he was reacting like a rooster meeting a bigger rooster.

     “Hadn’t expected to see you here.”

     “No, why should you have done? Following your rules, sir, following your rules. We are on a little archaeological exploration today. There’s a ruined structure out there, a few miles southwest of the well of Sitt Miryam. I’ve been meaning for years to have a closer look.”

     The Major’s narrowed eyes measured Emerson, from his smiling face to his bared forearms, brown as an Arab’s and hard with muscle. He seemed to approve of what he saw, for his stern face relaxed. “Probably Roman,” he said gruffly.

     “Ah.” Emerson took out his pipe and began to fill it. “You know the place?”

     “I’ve done a bit of hunting in the area. There are ancient remains all over the place. Way stations and camps, for the most part. Hardly of interest to you.”

     “For the most part,” Emerson agreed. “However, one never knows, does one? Well, gentlemen, we must be off.”

     “A moment, sir,” Hamilton said. “You are armed, aren’t you?”

     Emerson gave him a blank stare. “Armed? What for?”

     “One never knows, does one?” The other man smiled faintly. “Allow me to lend you this — just for the day.”

     He reached under his coat and pulled out a revolver, which he offered to Emerson. To Ramses’s surprise, his father accepted it. “Most kind. I’ll try not to damage it.”

     He tried to put it in his trouser pocket, dropped it, caught it in midair, and finally managed to get it into the pocket of his coat. Watching him, one of the subalterns said doubtfully, “You do know how to use it, sir?”

     “You point it and pull the trigger?”

     Ramses, who knew that his father was an excellent shot with pistol or rifle, smothered a smile as the young man’s face lengthened. “Well, sir, er — more or less.”

     “Most kind,” Emerson repeated. “Good day to you, gentlemen.”

     After they had gone a little distance Emerson drew the weapon out of his pocket, broke it, and spun the cylinder. “Fully loaded and functional.”

     “Did you think it wouldn’t be?”

     “Happened to me once before,” Emerson said equably. “A nasty suspicious mind, that’s what I’ve got. Particularly when people with whom I am only slightly acquainted do me favors.”

     “He seemed cordial enough,” Ramses said. “Even to me.”

     “Highly suspicious,” his father said with a chuckle. “Ah, well, perhaps he was won over by my extraordinary charm of manner.”

     If anyone’s charm had influenced the major, Ramses thought, it wasn’t yours or mine. He could only hope Nefret had not put ideas into the old fellow’s head. He wouldn’t be the first to make that mistake.

     “Not that a Webley is likely to be of much use,” Emerson continued, slipping the gun into his belt. “The cursed things are cursed inaccurate. What sort of weapon have you got?”

     No use asking how his father knew. Maybe he’d noticed the bulge under Ramses’s arm. The Mauser semiautomatic pistol was big and heavy, but for accuracy and velocity it couldn’t be beat. Ramses handed it over, adding, “If one must carry one of the vile things it might as well be the best.”

     Emerson examined and returned the weapon. “I presume this is a contribution from the Turks? Hmmm, yes. A nice touch of irony, that.”

     Once they had reached the top of the plateau, the ground leveled off. The old trail was only slightly harder and better defined than the surrounding desert — not the blowing sand dunes of the Western Desert, but baked earth and barren rock. There were signs of traffic: camel and donkey dung, the whitened bones of animals stripped of flesh by various predators, an occasional cigarette end, the shards of a rough pottery vessel that might have been there for three thousand years or three hours. No sign that the man they were after had passed that way; no sign that he hadn’t. As the sun rose higher, the pale-brown of sand and rock turned white with reflected light. At Ramses’s suggestion his father put his hat on. By midday they had gone a little over thirty miles, and through the shimmering haze of heat Ramses made out a small clump of trees in the distance.

     “About time,” said Emerson, who had seen it too. Like Risha his horse was desert-bred and neither had been ridden hard, but they deserved a rest and the water that lay ahead.

     They were still several hundred yards away from the miniature oasis when a voice hailed them, and a group of men on camels appeared over a rise north of the track. They rode straight for the Emersons, who stopped to wait for them.

     “Bedouin?” inquired Emerson, narrowing his eyes against the glare of sunlight.

     “Camel patrol, I think.” Whoever the men were, they carried rifles. Ramses added, “I hope.”

     The uniformed group executed a neat maneuver that barred their path and surrounded them. Their dark, bearded faces would have identified them even without their insignia: Punjabis, belonging to one of the Indian battalions. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” the jemadar demanded. “Show me your papers.”

     “What papers?” Emerson said. “Curse it, can’t you see we are English?”

     “Some Germans can speak English. There are spies in this part of the desert. You must come with us.”

     Ramses removed his pith helmet and addressed one of the troopers, a tall, bearded fellow with shoulders almost as massive as Emerson’s. “Do you remember me, Dalip Singh?” he inquired, in his best Hindustani. “We met in Cairo last month.”

     It wasn’t very good Hindustani, but it had the desired effect. The man’s narrowed eyes widened, and the impressive beard parted in a smile. “Ah! You are the one they call Brother of Demons. Your pardon. I did not see your face clearly.”

     Ramses introduced his father, and after an effusive exchange of compliments from everyone except the camels, they rode on toward the oasis, escorted fore and aft by their newfound friends.

     A rim of crumbling brickwork surrounded the cistern that was locally known as Sitt Miryam’s Well. Almost every stopping place along the desert paths had a biblical name and legend attached to it; according to believers they marked the route of the escape into Egypt, or the wanderings of Joseph, or the Exodus.

     There was not much shade, but they took advantage of what little there was. The camels lay down with their usual irritable groans and Ramses watered the horses, filling and refilling his pith helmet from the turgid waters. Emerson and the jemadar sat side by side, talking in a mixture of English and Arabic. Knowing he could leave the questioning to his father, Ramses joined the troopers for a brief language lesson.

     At first all of them except Dalip Singh were somewhat formal with him, but his attempts to speak their language and his willingness to accept correction soon put them at ease. He had to have the jokes explained. Some of them were at his expense.

     Finally the laughter got too loud, and the jemadar, like any good officer, recalled his men to their duties. They went off in a cloud of sand. Emerson leaned back and took out his pipe.

     “When did you learn Hindustani?”

     “Last summer. I’m not very fluent.”

     “Why did that fellow grin at you in such a familiar manner?”

     “Well, I suppose we did get a bit familiar. Wrapped in one another’s arms, in fact.” His father gave him a critical look, and Ramses elaborated. “He boasted that he could put any man in the place on his — er — back, so I took him up on it. He taught me a trick or two, and I taught him one. What did the jemadar say?”

     Emerson sucked on the stem of his pipe. “I am beginning to think . . . that we are on . . . the wrong track.”

     Since he appeared to be oblivious of the pun, Ramses let it go. “Why?”

     Emerson finally got his pipe going. “Those chaps and others like them patrol the area between here and the Canal by day and by night. The jemadar insisted nothing as large as a wagon could have got by them on this track. You know how sound carries at night.”

     “They might have used camels along this stretch.”

     “Camels make noise too, especially when you hope they won’t. Bloody-minded brutes,” Emerson added.

     “I see what you mean.” Ramses lit a cigarette. “It’s become altogether too complicated, hasn’t it? Land transport from the Syrian border, transfer to boats or rafts, then reloading a second time for the trek across the desert, with the whole area under surveillance.”

     “There are other routes. Longer but safer.”

     “From the coast west of the Delta.”

     “Or from Libya. The Ottomans have been arming and training the Senussi tribesmen for years. The Senussis hate Britain because she supported the Italian conquest of that area. They would be happy to cooperate in passing on arms to Britain’s enemies, and they have sympathizers all along the caravan routes, from Siwa westward.”

     They smoked for a while in companionable silence.

     “We may as well start back,” Ramses said.

     “Since we’ve come this far,” Emerson began.

     “Not your damned ruins, Father!”

     “The place isn’t far. Only a few miles.”

     “If we aren’t back by dark, Mother will come after us.”

     “She doesn’t know where we are,” Emerson said with evil satisfaction. “It won’t take long. We can water the horses again on our way back.”

     He knocked his pipe out and rose. Ramses hadn’t the courage to argue, though he was not happy about his father’s decision. The sun had passed the zenith and had started westward. The air was still blisteringly hot, and the flies seemed to have multiplied a thousandfold.

     As he’d feared, Emerson’s few miles turned out to be considerably longer. Ahead and to the right, the imposing ramparts of the Araka Mountains stood up against the sky. Another, larger, range was visible to the north of the track. Finally Emerson turned south, skirting the steep slopes of one of the smaller gebels.

     “There,” he said, pointing.

     At first glance the heaps of stones looked like another natural outcropping. Then Ramses saw shapes too regular to be anything but man-made: low walls, a tumbled mass that might once have been a tower or a pylon. There was a long cylindrical shape too, half buried by sand, that could be a fallen column. Emerson’s eye couldn’t be faulted; this was no way station.

     Ramses followed his father, who had urged his reluctant steed into a trot. He was ten feet behind Emerson when he heard the sharp crack of a rifle. Emerson’s horse screamed, reared, and toppled over. Ramses pulled Risha up and dismounted. He had not been aware of drawing his pistol until he realized he was holding it; avoiding the thrashing hooves of the wounded animal, he finished the poor creature with a bullet through the head and squeezed off a few random shots in the direction from which the firing had come before he dropped to his knees beside his father.

     Emerson had jumped or been thrown off. Probably the former, since he had had time enough and sense enough to roll out of the way of the horse’s body. He lay motionless on his side, his arms and legs twisted and his eyes closed. Torn between the need to get him to shelter and the fear of moving him, Ramses carefully straightened his legs, feeling for broken bones. A change in the rhythm of his father’s breathing made him look up. Emerson’s eyes were open.

     “Did you get him?” he inquired.

     “I doubt it,” Ramses said, drawing a deep breath. “Taught him to keep his head down, I hope. Were you hit?”

     “No.”

     “Anything broken?”

     “No. Better get ourselves and Risha behind that wall.”

     He sat up, turned white, and fell backwards. Ramses caught him before his head, now uncovered, hit the ground. He’d been sick with fear when he feared his father might be dead or gravely injured. Now the lump in his throat broke and burst out of his mouth in a furious cascade of words.

     “Goddamn you, Father, will you stop behaving as if you were omnipotent and omniscient? I know we must get under cover! I’ll take care of that little matter as soon as I determine how seriously you’re injured!”

     Emerson gave his son a look of reproach. “You needn’t shout, my boy. I put my shoulder out again, that’s all.”

     “That’s all, is it?” They both ducked their heads as another shot whistled past. “All right, here we go. Hang on to me.”

     After an effort that left them both breathless they reached the shelter of the ruined wall, with Risha close on their heels. Ramses eased his father onto the ground and wiped his sweating hands on his trousers.

     “Better let him have a few more reminders to keep his head down,” Emerson suggested.

     “Father,” Ramses said, trying not to shout, “if you make one more unnecessary, insulting, unreasonable suggestion —”

     “Hmmm, yes, sorry,” Emerson said meekly.

     “I don’t want to waste ammunition. I haven’t any extra. It will be dark in a few hours and we’re all right here unless he shifts position. If he moves I’ll hear him. I’m going to put your shoulder back before I do anything else. Need I continue?”