He Shall Thunder in the Sky (52 page)

     “Finally!” David exclaimed. “Then what happened?”

     “Damn it,” Ramses said, half laughing and half angry, “you’re as bad as Mother. She gave me plenty of advice. I don’t need any more from you.”

     “About Nefret and you?” David asked in surprise. “I thought you didn’t want her to know.”

     “I didn’t. I was afraid she’d do precisely what she did tonight, after she saw us together — lecture, sympathize, advise. She was . . . in fact, she was very sweet. And she told me a few things about her and Father that came as a considerable shock!”

     “Did you tell her you and Nefret had . . .” David hesitated delicately.

     “Tell my
mother
we’d been lovers? Good God, David, are you out of your mind?”

     “The Professor doesn’t know either, I suppose.”

     “Not from me,” said his son grimly. “He’s a Victorian gentleman, and you know how he feels about Nefret. If I’d confided in anyone, it would have been you, but I didn’t think I had the right. Lia shouldn’t have told you either.”

     “I’m glad she did. It helped me to understand why Nefret acted as she did.”

     “You never showed me that letter she wrote Lia.”

     “Lia never showed it to me — nor should she have done, it was meant for her eyes only. She told me enough, though. Ramses, you damned fool, Nefret was head over heels in love with you, and I believe she still is. Why won’t you tell her how you feel? Haven’t you forgiven her for doubting you?”

     “I forgave her long ago, and I would trust her with my life. But I won’t trust her with yours, David. She’s been seeing Percy. Secretly.”

     David sucked in his breath. “Are you sure?”

     “Yes, I’m sure. She’s met with him several times, and he was hiding in the shrubbery while we — er — talked. I spotted him before I lost complete control of myself, but the only way I could keep matters from proceeding further was to say something utterly unforgivable to Nefret.”

     “Ah,” said David. “So she was not unwilling? Hang it, Ramses, when are you going to stop making a martyr of yourself?”

     “As soon as this is over. Once we’re in the clear I’ll plead with her, humble myself, or drag her off by her hair — whatever it takes. Just now I daren’t risk it. Percy’s on to me, you know. Oh, not the Wardani business, at least I hope to God not, but he suspects I’m involved in something and he’s trying to find out what it is. That’s why he’s been paying me those extravagant and very public compliments. He probably approached Nefret in the hope that he could learn more. She’s the weak link in our circle, or so Percy would assume. He’s such a conceited bastard, he thinks no woman can resist him.”

     “And she, in turn, is hoping to learn something from him? That sounds like Nefret, all right. I don’t understand, though. Why should Percy care what you’re doing?”

     “Doesn’t a possible reason occur to you?”

     “Aside from the fact that he hates you and would stop at nothing to injure you? There’s no chance of that. Even if he found out what you’re doing, which God forbid, he couldn’t use it against you.”

     “You don’t understand,” Ramses said angrily. “Even after all the other things he’s done, you don’t realize what he’s capable of. Why do you suppose I wanted Sennia to stay in England this winter? I knew I’d be preoccupied with this other business and unable to watch over her as closely as I’ve done before. Percy hates the lot of us, and the sweetest, neatest revenge he could find would be through that child. Can you imagine the effect on Father if anything happened to her?”

     “On all of us.”

     “Yes. She’s safe from him, but Nefret is another matter. You may think I’m making a martyr of myself without sufficient cause, but I had to do what I did tonight. Have you forgotten what happened the last time he saw Nefret and me in what he took to be a lover’s embrace? His vanity is as swollen and fragile as a balloon. God knows what he might do to her if he thought she was only feigning interest in him in order to trick him. She’s too brave and reckless to recognize danger, and too impulsive to guard her tongue when a slip could be disastrous, and he’s always wanted her, and he —”

     “Stop it.” David put an arm round his shoulders. “Don’t do this to yourself. Not even Percy would injure Nefret to get back at you.”

     Ramses felt like Cassandra, howling warnings into deaf ears. He forced himself to speak slowly and calmly.

     “He raped a thirteen-year-old girl and left her child — his child! — to be raised as a prostitute. If he didn’t kill Rashida with his own hands, he hired someone to kill her. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do if his safety and reputation were threatened.”

     “He wouldn’t dare harm Nefret,” David insisted. “She’s not a poor little prostitute, she’s a lady, and the beloved daughter of the Father of Curses. Your father would tear Percy to pieces if he laid a hand on her.”

     Ramses realized he hadn’t a chance of making David understand. He was too decent and too honorable to recognize evil. Or — Ramses rubbed his aching forehead — was he the one who refused to recognize reality? Had his loathing of Percy turned into dementia?

     They tramped on in silence until they reached the train station at Babylon. Ramses stopped.

     “I’m tired,” he said dully. “There’s a cab. I’m going to hire it, unless you want to.”

     “You take it; I can sleep as late as I like. Are you angry?”

     “No, just a bit on edge. This will boil over within the next few days; the signs are all there. I need to be able to reach you in a hurry if that does happen. Any ideas?”

     “I’ll be peddling my wilted blossoms outside Shepheard’s every day, as we arranged.”

     “Fine so far as it goes, but I can’t always be certain of getting away during the day. Give me an alternative.”

     David thought for a minute. “There’s always the useful coffee shop or café. Do you remember the one that’s just off the Sharia Abu’l Ela, near the Presbyterian church? I’ll be there every night from now on, between nine and midnight.”

     “All right.”

     David’s hand rested for a moment on his shoulder. “Get some rest, you need it.”

     Ramses woke the sleeping driver and got into the cab. He was tired, but his mind wouldn’t stop churning. Had his father made it home safely? And what the devil was his mother doing? Emerson had pointedly refused to answer questions about her.

     Worst of all was the mounting conviction that had been forced on him by one fact after another. He doubted he could convince anyone else, especially when a crucial clue had been supplied by a transvestite Nubian pimp. He could picture Russell’s face when he heard that one!

     But he had gone to el-Gharbi to ask where the ineffectual terrorist had procured his grenades, and el-Gharbi had kept dragging Percy into the conversation. El-Gharbi knew everything that went on in the dark world of prostitution, drugs, and crime — and he had kept talking about Percy, hiding his real motive behind a screen of fulsome compliments and pretended sympathy. El Gharbi was approximately as romantic as a cobra; that final sting, about Percy’s role in tricking Nefret into marriage, had been designed to give Ramses a single piece of vital information.

     Percy’s connections with Nefret’s husband had been closer than anyone had suspected. Close enough to be a partner in Geoffrey’s illegal business activities — drugs and forged antiquities? Percy had spent several months in Alexandria with Russell while Russell was trying to shut down the import of hashish into Cairo from the coast west of the Delta. One way or another, Percy knew the routes and the men who ran the drugs. They were, Ramses believed, the same routes being used now to transport arms.

     As Ramses had good cause to know, the grenades had not come from Wardani’s people. So whom did that leave? A British officer who had access to a military arsenal? A man who wouldn’t scruple to kill an innocent passerby in order to play hero and impress his alienated family?

     Most damning of all was the fact that Farouk had known about the house in Maadi. It had been a closely guarded secret between Ramses and David until Ramses took Sennia and her young mother there, to hide them from Kalaan. Ramses had never known how the pimp tracked her down; she might have been the innocent agent of her own betrayal, slipping back to el Was’a to visit friends and boast of the new protector who had, incredibly, offered her safety without asking anything in return. Rashida was dead and Kalaan had not shown his face in Cairo since, and there was only one other person who had been a party to that filthy scheme.

     Percy — who was now paying him extravagant, hypocritical compliments and defending his tarnished reputation. If Percy was the traitor and spy Ramses suspected him of being, his interest in his cousin’s present activities was prompted by more than idle curiosity.

     It made a suggestively symmetrical pattern, but what chance had he of convincing anyone else when even David thought his hatred of Percy had become an irrational idée fixe? Would any of them believe a member of their own superior caste, an officer and a gentleman, would sell out to the enemy?

     He knew he couldn’t keep the knowledge to himself; he’d have to tell someone. But I’m damned if I’m going after him myself, he thought. Not now. Not until I’m out of this, and I’ve got David out, and he can go home to Lia, and I can shake some sense into Nefret and keep her safe. I couldn’t stand to lose her again.

Thirteen

A
fter seeing Nefret and the Vandergelts, and Fatima, who had insisted on waiting up for them, off to bed, I put on a dressing gown and crept downstairs. The windows of the sitting room faced the road, and it was on the cushioned seat under them that I took up my position after easing the shutters back in order to see out. It was very late, or very early, depending on one’s point of view; those dead, silent hours when one feels like the only person alive. The moon had set; beyond the limited circles of light shed by the lamps we kept burning at our door, the road lay quiet in the starlight.

     I was not aware that Ramses had returned until the sitting room door opened just wide enough to enable a dark figure to slip in. Two dark figures, to be precise; Seshat was close on his heels.

     “Do you enjoy climbing that trellis?” I inquired somewhat snappishly. Relief often has such an effect.

     He sat down next to me. “I had to report myself to Seshat.”

     “How did you know I was here?”

     “I knew you weren’t in your room. I looked in. I trust you will overlook the impertinence; I was a trifle anxious about Father.”

     “So you saw him,” I murmured.

     “Heard him, rather.” He gave me a brief account of what had transpired. “I hope you don’t think I did wrong in letting him go off alone.”

     “Good gracious, no. Short of binding him hand and foot, you could not have prevented him.”

     “How did it go on your end?”

     “There was no difficulty. I arrived home well before the others.” The area of illumination looked very small against the enveloping darkness. “He has a long way to come,” I said uneasily. “Perhaps I ought to take the motorcar out again and go to meet him.”

     We were sitting side by side, our heads together, so we could converse quietly. I felt his arm and shoulder jerk violently. “Again?” he gasped.

     “Didn’t your father tell you?”

     “No.” He seemed to be having trouble catching his breath. “I wondered why he . . .
You
drove the car home? Not all the way from Tura! Where is it?”

     “In the stableyard, of course. Take a glass of water, my dear.”

     “Father would say the situation calls for whiskey,” Ramses muttered. “Never mind, just tell me what happened. I don’t think I can stand the suspense.”

     I concluded my narrative by remarking somewhat acerbically, “I do not understand why you and your father should assume I am incapable of such a simple procedure.”

     “I believe you are capable of anything,” said Ramses.

     I was pondering this statement when Seshat sailed past me and out the window. A thump and a faint rustle of shrubbery were the only sounds of her passage through the garden.

     “Your father!” I exclaimed.

     “A mouse,” Ramses corrected. “Don’t credit her with greater powers than she has.”

     “Oh. I do hope she will eat it outside and not bring it to you. As for the motorcar —”

     “Ssh.” He held up his hand.

     According to Daoud, Ramses can hear a whisper across the Nile. My hearing was sharpened by affectionate concern, but it was several moments before I made out the sound that had alerted him. It was not the sound of booted feet.

     “A camel,” I said, unable to conceal my disappointment. “Some early-rising peasant.”

     The early-rising peasant was in more of a hurry than those individuals usually are. The camel was trotting. As it entered the lamplight, I beheld Emerson, upright and bareheaded, legs crossed on the camel’s neck, smoking his pipe.

     He yanked on the head rope to slow the beast and whacked it on the side of the neck to turn it toward the front of the house and the window. I winced as my tenderly nurtured roses crunched under four large flat feet. At Emerson’s command the camel settled ponderously onto the ground, crushing a few hundred marigolds and petunias, and Emerson dismounted.

     “Ah,” he said, peering in the window. “There you are, Peabody. Move aside, I am coming in.”

     I found my voice. “Emerson, get that damned camel out of my garden!”

     “The damage is done, I fear,” said Ramses. “Father, where did you acquire it?”

     “Stole it.” Emerson climbed over the sill. “Got the idea from David.”

     “You can’t just leave it there!” I exclaimed. “How are you going to explain its presence? And the owner —”

     “Don’t concern yourself about the camel, I’ll think of something. What did you do to the car?”

     “Put it in the stableyard, of course.”

     “In what condition?”

     “Let us not waste time on trivialities, Emerson. The most important thing is that you are here; Ramses is here; I am here. I suggest we all go to bed and —”