The Exodus Quest (26 page)

FORTY-EIGHT

I

It was a sultry evening, not made any more comfortable by the malfunctioning air conditioning inside Cairo Airport’s Terminal 2. Griffin was sweating profusely by the time he and his students reached check-in, his anxiety levels off the chart, certain it had to be showing on his face. But the woman behind the desk was fighting a yawn as she beckoned him forward. She took the fan of passports he offered, printed out their boarding cards, checked in their luggage, then muttered something that he didn’t quite catch, thanks to a buzzing in his ears that he sometimes suffered under stress. ‘I’m sorry?’ he said. He leaned in close as she repeated it. But her English was heavily accented and he couldn’t make it out.

She sighed, exasperated, scribbled a figure on a piece of paper, turned it to show him. His heart was pounding; he could feel the dank pools of sweat beneath his armpits. He fished out his wallet, pulled out a thick wad of twenty-dollar bills, begging her with his eyes to take however much she wanted, just as long as she let them through. She glanced over her shoulder, saw her supervisor standing there, turned back to him with downcast eyes, plucked a single note from his sheaf, made a calculation on her screen, then gave him his change in Egyptian pounds. His heart-rate relaxed a little, only to pick up again as they queued for passport control. But they got through that safely too, leaving him feeling drained and nauseous with relief. He found a restroom, leaned against a sink, studying himself in the mirror, the greyness of his complexion, how old he looked, the wild trembling of his hands.

He felt a twinge of guilt as he thought of Claire, but he shut her from his mind. One thing at a time. Boarding would start in forty-five minutes. With luck, in two hours or so, they’d be out of Egyptian jurisdiction altogether. Then he could worry about Claire.

He ran cold water into his cupped hands, brought them up to meet his face, almost as if he was at prayer. He dried himself off with a paper towel that he screwed up and threw at an overflowing bin, so that it fell onto the floor. Conscience pricked him: he picked it up and put it in his pocket. Then he practised a smile in the mirror and concentrated on holding it in place as he went back out to rejoin his students.

II

In the darkness, it took Knox a moment to see the policeman sheltering beneath the trees, his handgun pointed slightly to one side, prepared to use it, but not yet. He was short and slight but he carried himself with calm self-assurance, so that Knox didn’t even consider running. ‘You’re Daniel Knox,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ agreed Knox.

‘I am going to ask you some questions. Lie if you wish, that is up to you. But you’d be wise to tell the truth.’

‘What questions?’

‘To start with, what are you doing here?’

‘Looking for a friend.’

‘Who?’

‘Her name’s Gaille Bonnard. She was taken hostage a couple of—’

‘I know who she is. But she was abducted down in Assiut. So what are you doing here?’

‘I don’t think it happened in Assiut,’ said Knox. ‘I think it happened here.’

‘My name is Naguib Hussein,’ said the policeman. ‘My wife and I, we saw you on television one time. It was you, wasn’t it? With this woman Gaille and the secretary general, announcing the discovery of Alexander’s tomb?’

‘Yes.’

‘My wife said how nice you looked. It twists me inside when my wife says that about a man. I think that’s why she says it. But their names stay with me too. So when I hear on my radio that it is Daniel Knox my colleagues are searching for, I think, ah, he is worried for his friend the woman, he has come to see if he can help.’

Knox jerked his head in the direction of the far bank. ‘Have you told them that?’

‘It would do little good, I assure you. My boss does not think much of me. And he’s already told me once today to stop pestering him with my crazy ideas about strange goings-on in Amarna.’

‘Strange goings-on?’ asked Knox.

‘I thought that might interest you,’ smiled Naguib. He lowered his handgun, gestured along the bank. ‘My car is that way,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should get out of the rain and tell each other what we know.’

III

As long as she could remember, Lily had struggled with thoughts of killing herself. Mostly they were just blinks, gone as quickly as they’d arrived, locked safely back in their box. But sometimes the thoughts wouldn’t leave. They’d stay with her for hours, days, even weeks. They’d build and build until she’d think she’d never get through to the other side. Whenever it got too much, she’d hurry to some place of sanctuary, lock out the world, let the tears come.
I wish I were dead
, she’d yell.
I
wish I were fucking dead
. And she’d mean it too. At least, her wish for oblivion felt sincere. But she’d never done much about it, other than edge near the platform as trains hurtled past, or stare hungrily up at the top-floor balconies of high-rises.

The water was coming down as relentlessly as ever. Lily was kneeling throat-deep on the mound, her arms around Gaille, supporting her head on her shoulder, allowing the rest of her to float. The chill had long-since penetrated right into her bones, so that every so often she’d break into violent shudders.

Strange childhood memories. Standing in the shadows outside a party, trying to summon the courage to knock. Her neck burning at half-heard remarks. A stray dog she’d once seen, trapped in a garden by two callous young boys so they could throw stones at it, how she’d ducked her head and hurried past, scared of what they’d say if she tried to intervene. How those whimpers and yelps had haunted her for days, a stain upon her soul. Her whole life dictated by her birthmark, a birthmark that didn’t even exist any more.

‘I’m not like that,’ she yelled out at the darkness. ‘I’m not fucking like that, okay? That’s not how I was made.’

It was one thing to think about death in the abstract. There was something noble, romantic, even vindicating in the prospect. But the real thing wasn’t like that. All it provoked was terror. Another set of shivers wracked through her. She clenched her eyes in an effort not to cry, tightened her grip around Gaille. She’d never believed in God, she’d always felt too bitter with the world. But others did, people she respected, and maybe they knew what they were talking about. Beneath the water, her hands clasped tight.
Just let me live
, she begged silently.
I want to live. I want to live. Please God,
I want to live
.

IV

Claire was hustled through the corridors of the police station to a small interview room with greasy yellow walls and an ugly acrid smell. Farooq made her sit on a hard wooden chair he placed deliberately out in open space, so that she didn’t even have a table to hide behind. Then he prowled round and round her, jabbing his cigarette at her, thrusting his face into hers, spraying her with spittle that she didn’t dare wipe away. He had a gift for languages, it turned out. He used it to abuse her in Arabic, French and English. He called her a whore, a thief, a slut, a bitch. He demanded she tell him where Peterson and the others were.

Claire hated conflict. She always had. It made her feel unwell, provoked an overwhelming longing to placate. But she remembered what Augustin had told her. ‘I want to speak to a lawyer,’ she told them.

Farooq threw up his hands. ‘You think a lawyer can help you? Don’t you realize how much trouble you’re in? You’re going to gaol, woman. You’re going in for years.’

‘I want to speak to a lawyer.’

‘Tell me where Peterson is.’

‘I want to speak to a lawyer.’

‘The others. I want their names. I want the name of the hotel you’ve been staying at.’

‘I want to speak to a lawyer.’

‘I’m going for a coffee,’ spat Farooq. ‘You need to get wise fast, you stupid bitch. It’s your only chance.’ He stormed out, slamming the steel door so hard it made her jump.

Hosni had been leaning against the wall this whole time, arms folded, neither condoning nor intervening. But now he cocked an amused eyebrow at her, pulled up a chair that he set obliquely to hers, instantly reducing the sense of confrontation. ‘I hate all this,’ he sighed. ‘It’s not right, bullying nice people. But he’s my boss. There’s nothing I can do.’

‘I want to speak to a lawyer.’

‘Listen, you need to understand something. Farooq’s been made a fool of today. He’s lost face with the guys. He needs a victory, however small. Something to show them, you know. I’m not defending him. I’m just telling you how it is. Give him something, anything, and this can be over for you, just like that.’

She hesitated. Augustin had promised he’d be right behind her, but she’d kept glancing out of the back of the police car, and there’d been no sign of him. She remembered how short a time she’d known him, how little she knew about him, that she had no reason whatever to trust him, other than her instincts and her heart. ‘I want to speak to a lawyer.’

‘I’m sorry. That’s not possible. You must see that. This isn’t America. This is Egypt. We do things the Egyptian way. And the Egyptian way is to cooperate. That way everyone benefits. Where are your colleagues?’

‘I want to speak to a lawyer.’

‘Please don’t keep saying that. It’s discourteous. You don’t strike me as a discourteous person. You’re not, are you?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t think so. You look nice. Out of your depth, sure. But nice. I promise you, if you trust me, I can help you sort this out.’

She glanced around at the steel door, not just locking her in, but locking help out too. ‘I… I don’t know.’

‘Please. I’m on your side, I really am. I want to help you. Just give me some names. That’s all I ask. We didn’t write them down earlier. Give me some names and I’ll get Farooq off your back, I promise.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You have to. Someone has got to pay for what’s been going on. You must see that. If we can’t find anyone else, it’s going to be you.’

Tears of self-pity pricked the corner of her eyes. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, wondering what time it was, whether Griffin and the others would have boarded their plane yet, be safely on their way. ‘I can’t,’ she said again.

‘I hate to see women being bullied. I really hate it. It’s against our culture. Please just tell me the names of your colleagues. That’s all.’

‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’

‘I understand,’ he nodded seriously. ‘They’re your colleagues, your friends. It wouldn’t feel right. I appreciate that. I
admire
it. But look at it this way: they’ve left you here alone to face the consequences of their actions. They’ve betrayed you. You owe them nothing. Please. Just one name. That’s all. I can convince Farooq you’re on our side if you give me just one name.’

‘Just one name?’ she asked wretchedly. ‘That’s all you want?’

‘Yes,’ pressed Hosni gently. ‘Just one name.’

V

In the dryness of Naguib’s Lada, Knox marshalled his thoughts. So much had been going on, it was difficult to know where to start. He told Naguib about Peterson and the underground site. He showed him the mosaic photo on his mobile’s screen, how it matched Gaille’s posture in the video. Then he explained how the Greek letters pointed towards Akhenaten and Amarna.

Naguib nodded, as though it meshed with his own thinking. ‘We found the body of a young girl out in the desert two days ago,’ he said. ‘Her skull had been bashed in; she’d been wrapped in tarpaulin. She was a Copt, which is a very sensitive issue round here right now, so my boss told me to drop it. He’s not a man to stir things up unnecessarily. But I have a daughter. If there’s a killer on the loose…’ He shook his head.

‘Good for you,’ said Knox.

‘The investigation didn’t go as I’d expected. I’d assumed rape or robbery, something like that. But it turned out she’d drowned. And when we found an Amarna figurine on her, a different scenario began to take shape in my mind. A desperate, poor young girl who’s heard of valuable artefacts being flushed out of the wadis by storms like these. She makes her way out to the Royal Wadi, she comes across a figurine, tucks it away in her pouch. Perhaps a rock crashes down on her. Or perhaps she glimpses a gash in the cliff-face and tries to climb up to it, but slips and falls instead. Either way, she lies unconscious face-down in the rainwater until she drowns.’

‘Then someone comes across her,’ suggested Knox. ‘They too see the gash in the cliff. A newly discovered tomb just begging to be plundered. So they wrap the girl in a tarpaulin and take her out into the desert to bury.’

‘That’s what I began suspecting,’ agreed Naguib. ‘And so I got to wondering, what if your friend Gaille and her companions spotted something while they were filming in Amarna? What if
that’s
why they disappeared? I spoke to some local
ghaffirs
earlier. They no longer have access to the Royal Wadi. They were banned by the senior tourist policeman here, a certain Captain Khaled Osman, the day after the last great storm.’

‘Jesus!’ muttered Knox. ‘Have you told anyone?’

‘I tried to earlier. My boss wouldn’t hear me out. You don’t build a career in the Egyptian police by taking on the sister services. Anyway, I had no evidence to offer, only suspicions. But then, just before I saw you, I realized something. You remember that hostage video?’

‘You think I’m likely to forget?’

‘Did you notice the lighting?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Think back. You could see the underside of the hostages’ chins, yes? All the shadows were being cast upwards. That’s because the light was coming from beneath. Everyone’s been working on the assumption that they’re being held in some house or apartment in or around Assiut. But private houses and apartments don’t have floor-lighting like that. In Egypt, you only find such floor-lighting in one kind of place.’

‘Historic sites,’ said Knox.

‘Exactly,’ said Naguib. ‘That video wasn’t filmed in Assiut. It was filmed in Amarna.’

FORTY-NINE

I

‘Mister Griffin?’

Griffin looked up, startled, to see two uniformed airport security men in front of him, regarding him with polite but knowing smiles. His insides lurched, he felt sick. ‘Yes?’ he asked.

‘Would you come with us, please?’

‘Where to?’

The taller of the two nodded to a glass-fronted office the far side of the departures lounge. ‘Our interview room.’

‘But my flight’s about to board.’

The smiles tightened. ‘Please. Come with us.’

Griffin’s shoulders sagged. A part of him had known this would happen. He wasn’t the kind of man life gave breaks to. He turned to Mickey. ‘You’re in charge,’ he said, handing him his credit card. ‘Get everyone safely out. Okay?’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll be fine. Just get everyone home. I can rely on you, can’t I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good man,’ said Griffin, patting him on the shoulder. With a heavy heart, he followed the two security men across the carpeted departure lounge floor.

II

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Naguib.

‘Can’t you take it to your boss?’

‘He won’t listen. Not to me. You know how people get. As if you’re a burden specially designed to test them. And what do we have, in all honesty? Lighting. A mosaic.’

‘But we’re right,’ protested Knox.

‘Yes,’ agreed Naguib. ‘But that’s not enough. You have to understand how Egypt works. There’s so much inter-service jealousy and rivalry. If the tourist police so much as hear that we’re accusing them of being behind this …’ He shook his head. ‘They’ll fight back hard. It’ll be a matter of honour. They’ll demand evidence, scoff at it, counterattack, accuse us of all kinds of evils. My boss is my boss precisely because he knows how to avoid this kind of confrontation. Believe me, he won’t even hear me out, not unless I can give him irrefutable proof.’

‘Irrefutable proof? How the hell are we supposed to get that?’

‘We could always find the hostages ourselves,’ muttered Naguib, half joking. But then he shook his head, discounting the thought. ‘Amarna’s just too big. And the moment Khaled realizes we’re out looking, he’s sure to cover his tracks.’

‘Yes,’ nodded Knox, as the glimmer of an idea came to him. ‘He is.’

III

Griffin felt the tremors in his hands like soil feels an impending earthquake. He clasped them together in an effort to still them. ‘Can we make this quick, please?’ he asked. ‘Only my flight leaves in—’

‘Forget your flight.’

‘But I—’

‘I said forget about it.’ One of them pulled up a chair, sat down, leaned forwards. ‘I’m afraid we have some irregularities to deal with before we can let you leave.’

‘Irregularities?’

‘Yes. Irregularities.’

‘What kind of irregularities?’

‘The kind we need to deal with.’

Griffin nodded. All his adult life, he’d felt deficient. Living a lie, they called it. The lie that you were adequate. He looked out through the office window onto the departures lounge, his students milling around the gate, conferring heatedly, glancing anxiously his way, delaying their boarding to the last moment. They looked so young, suddenly. They looked like children. All of them had been aware of the clandestine nature of their excavation. But they hadn’t cared. They were God-fearing, they were American, they were immune from consequence. But now that their immunity was being stripped from them, they realized just how vulnerable they were. Horror stories about foreign gaols, judicial procedures in which they wouldn’t understand a word, their whole futures at the mercy of people they despised as heathens… No wonder they were scared.

He looked back at the security men. Whatever they knew, they evidently knew it only of him, or they’d have stopped everyone flying. His students were his responsibility, his job was to buy them time, whatever the personal cost. And, realizing this, a serene calmness descended upon him. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said.

‘Yes, you do.’

‘I assure you.’

They shared a glance. ‘May we see your passport, please?’

He fished it from his pocket, along with his boarding pass. They took their time inspecting it, flipping slowly through the pages. Griffin looked around again. The lounge was empty, the gate closing. His students were aboard. A warm wave of relief, the chill of loneliness. Apple pie and ice cream.

‘You come often to Egypt.’ A statement, not a question.

‘I’m an archaeologist.’

The two security men glanced at each other. ‘You are aware of the penalties for smuggling antiquities out of the country?’

Griffin frowned. He was guilty of a lot of things, but not that. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Come on,’ coaxed the man. ‘We know everything.’

‘Everything?’ And, just like that, he got the feeling that this was nothing, that they were fishing.

‘We can help you,’ said one of them. ‘It’s just a matter of the right paperwork. We’ll even take care of it for you. Pay us the amount owing, you won’t have to do another thing.’

The relief was so intense that Griffin couldn’t help but sag in his chair. A shakedown, that was all. After all that anxiety, just a fucking shakedown. ‘And how much would that be, exactly?’

‘One hundred dollars,’ said one.

‘One hundred dollars
each
,’ said the other.

‘And then I can catch my flight?’

‘Of course.’

He didn’t even begrudge them their money. It felt strangely as though they were messengers from some greater power, as if this was some kind of penance. And that meant he still had time to turn things around. Get his students home, make sure Claire was okay, then do something with his life of which he could be proud. He counted out ten twenty-dollar bills, added an extra one. ‘For your friend in check-in,’ he said. Then he walked out through the door and across to the departure gate, a great weight off his shoulders, a little strut back in his stride.

IV

Naguib found Captain Khaled Osman sitting out the storm in his quarters, listening to his men gossiping as they shared a
shisha
of honey-flavoured tobacco.

‘You again,’ scowled Khaled. ‘What is it this time?’

Naguib closed the door behind him to shut out the storm, brushed down his sleeves, flicking droplets of water onto the floor. ‘A vicious night,’ he remarked.

‘What do you want?’ said Khaled, pushing himself to his feet.

‘I tried to phone,’ said Naguib, gesturing vaguely out of the window. ‘I couldn’t get a signal. You know how mobiles can be.’

Khaled’s jaw stiffened. He put his arms on his hips. ‘What do you want?’

‘Nothing. Nothing particular, at least. I just wanted to give you guys a heads-up, that’s all. We had a report earlier.’

‘A report?’

Naguib raised an eyebrow, apparently as amused by what he was about to tell them as no doubt they would be to hear it. ‘One of the locals has been hearing voices.’

‘Voices?’

‘Men’s voices,’ nodded Naguib. ‘Women’s voices. Foreigners’ voices.’

‘Where?’

‘I couldn’t make sense of it exactly. I don’t know this place as well as you. And he wasn’t the most coherent of witnesses. But somewhere in Amarna.’

‘What do you expect us to do about it?’

‘Nothing,’ said Naguib. ‘It’s just, with everything that’s been going on, I’m going to have to look into it.’

Khaled stared incredulously at him. ‘You want to go out
in this
?’

Naguib laughed heartily. ‘You think I’m crazy? No, no, no. But if it’s okay with you guys, I’ll bring him back here first thing tomorrow; he can show me the place. You’re welcome to come along with us, if you like. It’s a long-shot, I know, but with these hostages and everything …’

‘Quite,’ nodded Khaled stiffly. ‘In the morning. No problem.’

‘Thanks,’ said Naguib. ‘Till tomorrow, then.’