The Curse (29 page)

Lana pulled a slender rod up from the side of the seat. I stared at it, puzzled. For a moment I thought it was a long flashlight.

“Cattle prod,” she said.

I grabbed for the door handle, jerking it down, and tried to open the door, but nothing happened.

“Locked,” she said.

I opened the lock just as she touched me on the shoulder with the cattle prod and my head exploded.

63

A road to nowhere. That's where Lana took me. A dirt path in the desert with fresh tire tracks, but even those would be covered by the next sandstorm. A landscape far away from the life-giving waters of the Nile—the far side of the moon, an endless wasteland where only the hardiest creatures on the planet survive—snakes, spiders, scorpions, and hard-shelled insects that devour each other in a never-ending cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

All my strength and coordination had been snapped by the electric shock so I sat helplessly while she handcuffed me.

My eyes were burning, my throat felt raw, and my bones had that achy feeling I remember having when I had the flu. The worse part was my head—it felt as if she had jumped up and down on it wearing spiked heels.

I was drained and exhausted without having done anything strenuous. I could sit upright now and stretch my limbs but I knew physically I couldn't have gotten out if she had stopped the car and let me escape. Not that I would have gone very far—the only reason Lana would let me out would be to run me over.

The cattle prod she used to stun me was tucked into the side of her seat. I could reach for it, but knew that I'd only get another jolt, maybe a lethal one that would kill me.

Lana had not spoken since giving me a whap that would have knocked a bull on its butt.

A CD played at loud volume and she hummed and sang along with the music, a song with that jangling wail and tinny rhythm of the Middle East. I admired many things about Arabic culture, but its music wasn't one of them. Neither was Lana's singing voice.

I wanted to scream at her to shut up, but it would only make her laugh and turn up the music even louder.

I don't know how Rafi could have missed the signals of hate, spite, and jealous rage that Lana radiated. But I also didn't know her total involvement or who she was connected with, though Kaseem was my candidate. That meant she had sent Rafi into an ambush that would no doubt get him killed as soon as he turned over the scarab to Kaseem.

At the moment I was worried about my survival.

If I had a choice between the two men, I would pick Rafi as the one giving me a slightly better chance of staying alive than Kaseem.

At least Rafi's motives for getting involved appeared to stem from his concern for Dalila. And even at that, he had what sounded like a plan rooted in hope and madness to make sure that the scarab found its way back to King Tut at the museum.

I could cut a deal with Rafi to keep my mouth shut if he came out on top. But Kaseem again struck me as the type who wouldn't want to leave any dangling ends.

“It's not about the scarab,” I said out loud.

I don't think Lana heard me over the noise she thought was music. She probably wouldn't have answered me if she had heard me.

Rafi's only motive to get the money was to save Dalila.

What was Kaseem's game? Political, for sure. I didn't think he planned to come back to Egypt riding a white horse and waving the scarab. No, he had something bigger planned, something that the scarab was only a part of.

Giving Lana a sideways glance, I wondered what she had in mind.

She hit the radio power button. The sudden silence was like a breath of fresh air. But heavy with anticipation—she was waiting for me to say something.

“I have money,” I lied. “If you help me and let me go, you could be a rich woman.”

She laughed. Not a ha-ha laughter full of humor, but a screech that got under my skin like fingernails on a chalkboard.

“I help you and I will be a dead woman.” She smirked, full of arrogance and contempt. “Besides, you made a mistake when you fucked my man.”

That got a sigh of defeat from me. I had to admit that my attitude about sex had gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion.

She hit the radio power button again and started that mournful wailing that passed for music with her.

If I could have gotten my hands on the cattle prod, I would have stuck it in a place I knew would really make her wail.

64

Lana turned off the radio and slowed the car as we came around a bend in the road.

Parked on the roadway was the car Rafi had driven, coated with dirt. It had an abandoned look and that's what I would have assumed it was had I not seen him ride off in it earlier.

She drove slowly up beside the parked car and inched around it, pulling a small pistol out of her purse as she steered.

I didn't know if she wanted to see if it was occupied by anyone—or looking for Rafi's dead body.

“You'd kill him, wouldn't you?” I said. “And let Dalila suffer and die. Just because he didn't give you the attention you wanted?”

She raised the pistol and put the muzzle against my temple.

My blood froze. I didn't move, didn't breathe, out of fear she would actually pull the trigger.

“Bang,” she said. And giggled like a crazed banshee.

She suddenly tensed and gave me an evil look. “I would kill you if Kaseem didn't have plans for you.”

The hatred in her eyes meant she was serious.

“You are a—”

She didn't let me finish, but hit me on the side of the head with the butt of the gun.

I saw stars but got out “crazy bitch” before she hit me again.

“When he's finished with you, you're mine,” she said.

65

Lana continued driving down into a wadi, following tracks in the dry riverbed, and back up again. She drove very slowly, the car engine making little sound and raising no dust.

Finally I saw a house, a mud hut with a flag near the front door that appeared to be a small, remote military outpost; a sand-colored van with an Egyptian Army insignia on its doors stood parked in front.

A body lay on the ground near the van. Another body was sprawled nearby. Both bodies wore military uniforms.

Lana stopped the car and slipped out, leaving her door open as she did, gun in hand.

The door to the hut opened and Kaseem came out.

Someone stood behind him. It was Rafi, with Dalila next to him. Rafi had a gun pointed at Kaseem.

Lana slowly approached the two men, holding her gun casually pointed downward. She acted as if she was approaching a situation that Rafi had well in hand.

What Rafi didn't know was that she had sold him out to Kaseem.

I heard Rafi say something in Arabic to his daughter who started to run back in the house, then he suddenly gave Kaseem a shove as Lana approached them.

I unlocked my door and got one foot out and my head above the door frame and yelled, “It's a trap. She's on Kaseem's side!”

Rafi turned toward Lana as she fired her gun. He staggered backwards and went down. As he lay on the ground, Kaseem stepped on Rafi's wrist and took the gun out of his hand.

Lana spun back around to me.

I gawked as she raised the gun and fired.

I was already falling backward as my door window shattered and sprayed me with flying glass.

66

I was still lying on the ground when Kaseem came to the car and stood over me. I figured it was the safest place to be.

“You have antagonized Lana to the point that she has a bloodlust to kill you. She's like a jackal that's tasted blood.”

I didn't say anything.

“Just stay where you are until I am ready for you. There's nowhere for you to run. Besides, you would just give Lana an excuse to put a bullet in the back of your head.”

While I sat by the car and watched as events I knew little about unfolded, Dalila sat beside her father as he lay on the ground, pressing a handkerchief against the wound to his left shoulder.

Kaseem snapped an order to Lana. She disappeared into the hut with him and came out with a first-aid kit and knelt beside Rafi to tend to his wound.

I had no idea how badly he was hurt or why they were bothering to give him first aid rather than kill him, but I figured it had to do with something Lana had said to me—I was being kept alive because Kaseem had plans for me.

Apparently, Rafi was also in the category of necessity for whatever was about to come down.

Two more Egyptian army vans arrived and Kaseem now came out of the hut wearing an officer's uniform.

Sitting in the dirt, handcuffed and clueless, I wondered if Kaseem planned a revolt or a coup. But it struck me that half a dozen soldiers in a couple of vans were hardly the stuff of revolution.

When everyone was busy doing something or busy with each other, I leaned up inside the car and reached across the seat and grabbed the cattle prod Lana had left behind. Sitting back down in the dirt, I kept the weapon hidden against the side of my body.

The cattle prod was about the length of my leg from ankle to knee. I slipped it up my pants figuring that would be a good hiding place, but I needed something to hold it there. Tape or a shoelace would have worked nicely, but my shoes were laceless and no roll of duct tape jumped out at me.

In the side storage pocket of the car door I found a long, thick rubber band that looked like something Lana would use to hold back her hair. Trying to look like I wasn't hiding a stun weapon, I stealthily slipped the cattle prod inside the bottom of my pants and pulled the hair band over my ankle and the prod, doubled.

I just hoped the prod wasn't going to embarrass me by slipping down from where I had it secured to my leg. And that Lana wouldn't notice that her favorite toy was missing.

What good the weapon would be against people with guns wasn't something I wanted to think about as I sat in the dirt and wondered when the next shoe would drop, but at least I had some sort of self-defense.

After the soldiers loaded Rafi into a van, with Dalila in tow behind him, Kaseem walked toward me carrying a small, black box.

He carried the object as if he had been entrusted with a sacred duty and in his mind he no doubt had been.

“Get up,” he told me.

Easier said than done when you're handcuffed and hiding a cattle prod in your pants, but I managed it, though with little grace.

Kaseem set the box on the hood of Lana's car and carefully opened it, revealing a red velvet pouch. He uncuffed me.

With the deliberation of a surgeon cutting flesh, he opened the velvet sack and drew out a scarab. He spread the pouch on the car's hood and delicately put the artifact on it.

“Where's your loupe?” he asked.

“I don't need it. It's the Heart of Egypt.”

“Don't play games with me—you haven't examined it.”

“I don't need to examine it.”

I took the heart-sized scarab in my hands, feeling the object against the skin of my palms, then brought it up to my face to sniff it.

Resting beneath a mummy's wrappings and against the chest of a boy king for three thousand years, I could smell the musty dust of antiquity on the scarab, sense the long-dead hands that lovingly shaped it.

“Don't try to appease me. I have to know.”

He drew his gun, although pointing it away from me.

“It's the heart,” I said. “I've examined two incredibly good fakes and I know what I have in my hands is real because of the way it looks and feels, smells, and most of all … because it speaks to me.”

I didn't know what was going on in his head, but I was pretty well convinced that Kaseem believed the scarab had magical powers. And now he had it in his hands.

Fear rose in me, grabbing my breath and jerking it away as I realized that I had fulfilled the task that Kaseem had laid out for me.

I carefully set the scarab back down on its velvet bed and met Kaseem's eye.

“I did what you asked me to do. Now I suppose my reward is a bullet in the head.”

He said nothing for a moment, his mind still locked in whatever thoughts and passions about the Heart of Egypt dominated him.

The gun in his hand came up at me and wavered for a moment, then he slipped it back in its holster.

“You still have a role to play,” he said. “Cuff her.”

67

Lana pulled me with a grip on my hair to the van that Rafi had been loaded into. The cattle prod banged and slipped on my ankle but wasn't exposed.

Rafi lay lengthwise on one side of the van, his left shoulder and chest area bandaged enough to stop the bleeding. When they had put him in the van, his left arm hung limp from the wound in his shoulder and now it lay at an odd angle.

His face had lost color and his eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell in a normal breathing pattern.

Dalila knelt beside him, holding on as if he was a life raft.

I smiled at her. I wanted to give her a hug and comfort her, but I was warned not to speak or move.

“It'll be okay, Dalila,” I whispered.

I didn't honestly believe that and I don't think she did, either. She gave me a look full of fright.

When we hit a big bump, Rafi let out an exclamation of pain.

Lana snapped an order to a soldier in back with us and he scooted over to Rafi. Dalila tried to push him away and Lana lashed out at her in rapid Arabic that caused the little girl to back off in fear.

“More painkillers to keep him quiet when we go through checkpoints,” Lana told me. “When I shoot you, you won't get any drugs. I want you to feel the pain.” She gave me an evil grin.

“You know why you can't keep a man?” I said. “The ugliness inside of you oozes out all over so everyone can see it.”

She started for me and stopped as Kaseem snapped something at her from the front passenger seat.

“Keep your mouth shut,” he said to me, “or next time I'll let her cut out your tongue.”