Heart of the Gods (15 page)

Whatever it was, his heart twisted a little to see it.

“No, Raissa,” he said, to reassure her, “We still need you.”

She relaxed a little.

A week.

It was something, anyway, and better than not being able to return at all. There was always the chance they could find something, another piece to the puzzle to give them more of a direction.

“Why don’t you bring me the papyri back tomorrow,” Tareq said. “We’ll work to get them translated and we have received some others you might want to see.”

Ky said, “We can give them to you now, Tareq. They’d be safer with you anyway.”

If there was one person he trusted implicitly, it was Tareq. He hadn’t betrayed Ky yet.

Ky nodded to Raissa, who reached below her loose shirt and peeled off the tape holding the packet to her skin with a little wince and a grin.

“Is that how you did it?” Tareq said, admiringly and happily. “All I can say is I am grateful Zimmer didn’t get them. I’m not entirely comfortable with the people who fund him. Very well, then, we’ll see you tomorrow. You’ve had a long day and a long journey, you must be tired and hungry, and I’m required elsewhere.”

As they went out Raissa looked back once more at the solitary statue with the empty chair beside it.

It was the only one like it in the room.

Ky looked back, too, as he did every time he visited.

“Good night, General.”

Chapter Fourteen

Dinner relaxed everyone. As always Raissa was voracious and Ky wondered once again how long she’d gone without regular meals. When she thought he wasn’t looking her fingers darted across to his plate to try to steal his bread. With a warning look, restraining a smile of his won, he smacked at them lightly and she snatched them back with a grin.

“It’s not fair, Boss,” Ryan complained with a grin. “She can eat like she does and she looks like that, where if I do, I get this.”

He patted his somewhat substantial belly lightly.

“Is it my fault I have a high metabolism?” Raissa demanded, laughing back at him.

Oddly enough Ky found himself missing their casual meals back at the hotel in the town. It felt a little strange, more formal, to eat in the hotel dining room. They couldn’t be as relaxed here or as open, even though Raissa had already charmed the waiters into giving them a little extra special attention with her bright smiles and quick questions. That those questions were in their own language only further enchanted them.

“So, we have a week here,” Ky said. “Let’s take advantage of it. Ryan, in light of our new information see what you can find among the research being done here that might pertain to the Tomb. I’ll arrange to have our site gear shipped to Cairo from the University, we’ll need to get it transported to the dig site. Komi, we’ll need to chase up some transportation.”

“I’ll take care of it, Professor,” Komi said, calmly.

They separated, each going to their individual rooms after the meal to his regret.

He found he missed being able to share that time at the end of the day with all of them in the same room eating and talking about what they’d found, or just shooting the shit―a phrase that Raissa found very entertaining. She was quickly picking up American vernacular, with Ryan’s dubious assistance, much to Ky’s amusement. Ryan seemed to find it particularly diverting to try to teach her the most outrageous examples. That was frightening in its own way, knowing Ryan, Ky thought with a smile as he stepped to the window of his hotel room. He looked out over the courtyard below. It was a good thing Raissa was sensible, just as smart and quick to pick up nuances of behavior.

Ky remembered her sneaking out to steal food with a sudden rush of heat at the memory of catching her. He remembered the feel of her warm skin beneath his hands, of her supple body against his, so intensely he could almost taste her, feel her.

The suite seemed almost too big, too empty.

It was quite a while before he turned for bed.

A small sound awakened him and then he was completely awake in an instant.

This time it wasn’t a voracious Raissa staging an early morning food raid.

Silently, he rolled off the bed, alert for the sounds that had awakened him, the stealthy movements that warned him he was being hunted.

Every sense was alert, his eyes searched the near total darkness for some sign of movement. Even his skin seemed sensitized to the motion of the air in the room.

Someone approached the bed cautiously…but not cautiously enough…in the next moment he would discover the bed was empty and cry out a warning.

Ky didn’t give him the time.

In the dim light, Ky saw a reflection from something in the man’s hand.

Ky caught it, driving the hand up and away. Three silenced shots went off, the sound surprisingly loud despite the silencer, to bury themselves high in the wall as Ky spun the man around and flung him hard across the room.

A right took the man down and then a blinding light filled the room unexpectedly.

Instinctively, Ky dove over the bed, moving and rolling to evade the line of fire, trying to reach the one with the light…

A strange noise and three sharp thumps in the wall between the rooms woke Raissa out of restless sleep. The solid thud of something hitting it hard had her out of bed and running for the door to her room, snatching up the little nightgown Ky had purchased for her in the hotel gift shop. She tugged it over her head and snagged the key to the room as she went by the table where she’d left it before she burst out into the hall.

Something was very wrong.

Ky’s room was next to hers. That was from where the noises had come.

She laid an ear to the door, to be sure. The sounds she heard within were not reassuring, voices and a soft thud.

Alarmed, she knocked hard on the door.

“Professor Farrar, Ky,” she called. “Are you all right? Professor Farrar, answer the door.”

He was a light sleeper as she well knew from the night before. Heat washed through her at the memory. If he was awake and all right, she’d simply explain about the noises when he answered the door.

Except he didn’t answer…

She knocked again, harder, louder.

“Professor, Ky,” she said, “answer the door…”

She had the sense someone was on the other side with their eye pressed to the little peephole it seemed was in every hotel door.

“I’m going to keep knocking until you answer,” she said, worried, frantic…

Something was wrong.

She could have the hotel ring his room but if he didn’t answer the door, why would he answer the telephone? Or his cell…?

Deliberately she knocked again, hard, and sensed the presence on the other side of the door move away…

The soft thump of a bullet into the wall by his head brought Ky up short as the light tracked him, glaring brilliantly in the darkness, blinding him.

“Stop, Professor,” a voice behind the flashlight said, “or we will be forced to do you great injury. Believe me, we will not hesitate to do so, you have no value to us.”

There was more than one person behind the flashlight and at least one of them had a gun on him, Ky could see the gleam of light along the barrel somewhere to the right of the flashlight.

As did the man with the flashlight, he had no doubt.

Keeping the light by his head, the man confirmed it, showing Ky the weapon he held, every move indicating he was a professional.

There was movement in the darkness behind him.

“We need to know what you’ve done with the papyrus you took from the fort. Give it to us now and we’ll leave you be.”

This was one case where the truth might set him free. Or render him even more worthless to them. He had little choice.

“I don’t have it,” Ky said, steadily, “I gave it to the authorities at the Egyptian Museum.”

The museum had extensive layers of protection. He didn’t.

Slowly, the man shook his head, the movement barely visible with the flashlight beside his head. “That’s not what we’ve heard.”

A voice from the darkness on the other side of the bed said, “He’s out. I’m bringing him around.”

There was the sound of a light slap.

Someone swore, viciously, in Arabic.

“He’ll be very unhappy,” the voice with the flashlight said. “My friends, perhaps if you hold Professor Farrar, we can persuade him to tell us what we want to know. Professor, remember I have a gun and the gentleman you struck also has a gun. We will aim for your knees first but any place to hurt and wound will do. Don’t make any fast movements. This would be much easier if you would just tell us where the papyrus is…”

The two men came carefully to hold him, staying out of the line of fire. Both wore scarves over their lower faces.

With the other man concealed by the flashlight and others possibly behind him, Ky had little choice but to let them do it.

For the moment.

Grimly, trying to think of some way out, Ky said, “I already told you. I don’t have them. There’s no safe in the room, search it if you’d like.”

It had been at the end of the day, so no one knew they’d handed over the papyrus except him, Tareq and Raissa. There was a strong possibility that Tareq hadn’t registered them through the Museum yet. With whatever affair had drawn him away, Tareq had probably left it until morning.

This had the potential to become bad, very bad. He was definitely outnumbered.

“We have,” the voice said.

Another man approached warily as the man with the flashlight kept it directed into Ky’s eyes to keep him blinded. There was a sense of others kept back in reserve behind the flashlight for insurance.

The first blow drove in low and hard, aiming for his lower ribs, the floating ones. Ky saw it coming, went with it as much as he was able, absorbing some of the force. It still hurt and drove the breath out of him. He forced himself to relax from the shock and his breath came back.

“Just tell us what it is that we need to know, Professor,” the man said, “and we’ll stop.”

Another punch hammered into the same spot…

Softly, Ky swore as his breath came back.

Someone knocked on the door. He heard Raissa’s voice call out.

A silenced gun pointed at the door.

“Say a word,” the man said, softly, “and she dies.”

The knocking came again.

He felt more than heard the unseen man move toward the door. And his heart went still with fear.

Raissa.

She called, concern in her voice. “I’m going to keep knocking until you answer.”

Almost all of them were now looking at the door. Ky tensed and then felt the cold steel of a gun against his battered ribs.

Not all.

The invisible other came back as Raissa knocked once again.

“She’s making too much noise,” one of them commented worriedly. “It will draw attention.”

The man with the flashlight shrugged and spoke quietly, firmly.

“It doesn’t matter. Unless there is reason to believe something is wrong no one will interrupt us as long as we are quiet. If someone does come, we’ll simply have the Professor tell them he’s all right or we’ll shoot him or whoever it is on the other side of the door. We can use the time to persuade the professor that we mean business. In any case, we’ll be uninterrupted for enough time for the good professor to tell us where the papyrus is. All we have to do is do it in such a way she hears nothing for long enough she begins to believe that whatever alarmed her was just her imagination.”

Ky braced himself. He was going to have to move, take a chance the man with the gun wouldn’t hit him if he moved fast enough.

From the darkness behind the other man there came the sound of a soft thud.

“I don’t have that good an imagination,” a familiar voice said, quietly.

Ky’s blood went cold as he recognized the voice.

Raissa.

The man with the flashlight spun. The light swept across the room.

Raissa was a lighter flash in the darkness, the light of the flashlight reflecting from her swirling hair and her white clothing as her foot in a flying back kick caught the man with the flashlight in the head. That sent him stumbling back into the man with the gun, the one who had been hitting him.

The flashlight tumbled to the floor, the light flashing over the walls.

It was enough of a distraction for Ky to break free of one of the men, backhanding him quickly, before turning to nail the second with a sharp punch.

He heard a soft pop, the sound of a silencer, from the outer room as he took down one of the men who had held him and kicked the gun from the hand of flash-light man as he untangled himself from his companion.

A chill went through Ky at the sound.

The leader shouted, “Go, go.”

One of the other men tackled him as Ky went after the leader, buying his boss time to escape.

There was a soft thud from the other part of the room and a crash of a table as it collapsed.

In a flash they were gone...taking the flashlight with them as they scrambled through the hotel door. The door closed behind them, plunging the room into darkness once again.

“Raissa?”

“Here,” she said and he felt her fingers touch his arm lightly.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said, sliding her arm underneath his to help him up.

Which, considering the state of his ribs, wasn’t entirely unnecessary.

“Are you all right?” she asked, worriedly.

He hesitated, taking a breath to test the state of his ribs―very sore but he didn’t think anything was broken.

In the faint light, Raissa could see fairly well but the room was very dark and she had to resort to touch, feeling around.

Her fingers slipped over him, touched and then paused…

“Professor,” she asked, curiously, her tone startled and a little amused, “are you naked?”

In his mind’s eye Ky could almost see her head tilted in question, a smile twitching at her pretty mouth.

To his astonishment, or perhaps it was relief, he had to restrain a laugh.

“I think you can call me Ky, now.”