The Laughter of Dead Kings (17 page)

“Sehr interessant,”
said Schmidt, stroking his mustache. “
Sehr schön.
The most beautiful temple in Egypt, some have—”

“You don’t have to be tactful, Schmidt,” I snarled. “So I was wrong. Let’s go.”

The restaurant had a courtyard which looked peaceful and pleasant in the glow of lanterns. A small fountain played in the center, and sitting at one of the tables was John.

Rising and holding a chair for me, he said, “Finally! I’ve been here some time.”

“Where were you?” I inquired very politely.

“Strolling. I stopped at one of the shops round the corner.” He handed me a small parcel. I unwrapped it, and found a pair of silver earrings shaped like cats’ heads.

It was meant as a peace offering, but I wasn’t ready to forgive and forget. “I thought I saw you going into Luxor Temple,” I said.

After an infinitesimal pause, John raised an eyebrow. “So that’s what took you so long. I presume Schmidt had to inspect every corner of the place.”

“I was not inspecting, I was enjoying an aesthetic experience,” said Schmidt.

Feisal ordered for us and Schmidt decided to have another Stella. I said, “Schmidt and I have worked out a plan of operation.”

“Have you indeed?” This time both eyebrows went up. “May I hear it?”

Schmidt was happy to oblige. “It only remains,” he finished, “to narrow down the possibilities.”

As I might have expected, John proceeded to demolish our arguments. “What makes you suppose they would worry about a con
trolled environment? He’s been in that tomb for more than three thousand years, and for more than eighty of those years he’s been exposed to every form of pollutant imaginable. A few more weeks in a hole in a cliff won’t hurt him.”

“That would mean he’s still on the West Bank,” I said, unwilling to abandon our nice, neat theory. “How could they transport him back into the cliffs without being seen?”

“On a cart or wagon,” John said. “At night. I doubt they care whether he is banged up a bit. They’ve already lopped off a hand.”

Feisal grimaced. “Don’t say things like that.”

“Well, what do you think?” John asked. “Is there any point in following Schmidt’s suggestion?”

“I think it would be a bloody waste of time,” Feisal admitted. “Time we don’t have. If we had a lead—any faint, feeble lead…”

He looked at John, who shook his head. “What about Ali?” he asked.

“I’m sending some men out to look for him tomorrow. It’s common knowledge that he’s disappeared, and the theory is that he met with an accident back in the cliffs. Even experienced locals do occasionally.”

A waiter began distributing plates and bowls around the table. I recognized rice and a stewed vegetable dish consisting primarily of tomatoes. Feisal gestured to me to serve myself, which I did, discovering eggplant, lamb in several incarnations, and lentils. For a while there was no sound except that of Schmidt masticating.

“It looks as if I’ll have to make a quick trip to Denderah tomorrow or next day,” Feisal went on. “Someone broke into the storehouse there and made off with a granite sarcophagus basin. They’ve got a suspect, but haven’t tracked him down.”

“Where could he have hidden such a thing?” I asked. “It must weigh a ton.”

“Thereabouts,” Feisal agreed. “Farouk is an old hand at this, though. He and his pals stole a statue of Hathor from the temple a couple of months ago, in broad daylight, with hundreds of witnesses watching. It’s never been found.”

“Maybe we should ask him where he’d have put Tut,” I said.

Nobody found this amusing, not even me.

The Curse of the Omnipresent Cell Phone had reached Egypt; throughout the meal they had been beeping and bopping all around us. When one burst into song nearer at hand I looked at Schmidt. “That has to be yours,” I said. “Who else would have Johnny Cash?”

“Don’t answer it,” John ordered. “Let her leave a message.”

“You can’t be sure it’s Suzi,” I said.

“If it is, I’d rather Schmidt didn’t talk to her before he gives it due consideration.”

“And before I have finished my dinner,” Schmidt said, scooping the last of the eggplant onto his plate.

“I’d better check my messages,” Feisal said, taking out his cell phone. “I told Ali’s brother to let me know at once if they heard from him.”

I couldn’t blame him for clinging to that hope, increasingly unlikely though it seemed. He had several messages, none of which wrung a comment from him until the last. He let out a strangled squawk of horror.

“Oh, no,” I said. “Don’t tell me Ali is—”

“Not Ali,” Feisal muttered. “But it’s bad. Very bad. What am I going to do?”

We waited, holding our collective breaths. Feisal’s face was haggard. “Saida. She’s coming. Tomorrow. She wants to see…him.”

F
eisal’s first impulse was to cut and run for it. “She can’t get in the tomb if I’m not here.”

“Wanna bet?” I inquired.

Feisal thought it over. “Bloody hell,” he said.

“Perhaps,” said Schmidt, “we should enlist her aid. She is very intelligent.”

“Tell her the truth, you mean?” said Feisal, horrified.

“Out of the question,” John said. “Control your lascivious impulses, Schmidt. It’s not her intelligence that interests you. You’ll have to ring Ashraf, Feisal. He’s the only one who can head her off.”

“Yes, right.” Feisal pushed his chair back and rose. “Let’s find a more private spot.”

We let Schmidt pay the check and hurried back to the hotel. A turbaned attendant was turning down the beds and putting little foil-wrapped pieces of chocolate on the pillows.

“The service here is very good,” Schmidt said, unwrapping his chocolate.

“Too good,” John said, roaming restlessly around the sitting room. “Get rid of him, Feisal. Politely.”

“Find anything?” I inquired, after John had looked behind the sofa cushions and under the table.

“No. That’s the trouble with all this assiduous service, one can’t tell whether the place has been searched. Watch what you say to Ashraf, Feisal. Schmidt, you had better report to Suzi.”

“I want to hear what Feisal says first,” said Schmidt, settling himself on the sofa.

Feisal got through to Ashraf right away. I found this surprising until it occurred to me that Ashraf must be as edgy as we were, and as anxious to stay in touch.

“Put it on speaker,” Schmidt said, all ears.

“Sorry, my equipment is somewhat primitive,” Feisal snapped. “Ashraf? Feisal here. We have a slight problem…No, nothing like that…No, there’s been no news of him. But Saida wants to visit a particular site in the Valley tomorrow, and…Yes, that site. Can you…Good. No, I’m going to Denderah tomorrow, there has been…Oh. If you say so. What? Oh. Are you sure you…Oh. You’re sure. Right.”

“Let me guess,” I said brightly. “He’ll put Saida off. And you are not going to Denderah.”

“Very clever,” said Feisal, baring his teeth. “Go on.”

“Ashraf is coming to Luxor.” I was guessing now, but Feisal’s expression of deepening gloom confirmed my hunch. “When?”

“Maybe tomorrow. Next day at the latest. He’ll let me know.”

“Hmph,” said John. “He’ll expect progress, won’t he?”

“Indubitably.”

“Then we must make some progress,” said Schmidt, taking out his cell. “What shall I say to Suzi?”

“As little as possible,” John said.

I must say, the little rascal was good. After the initial fond greetings, his first question was a coy, “Guess where I am?”

Suzi didn’t go in for guessing. She knew. Schmidt’s mustache twitched; he chewed on his lower lip as he listened to a fairly lengthy speech. “But,
Liebchen,
” he began, “I could not find the opportunity…” Another longish interruption. Wrong tack, Suzi, I thought, watching Schmidt stiffen and scowl. “You are wrong to reproach me,” he said loudly. “They know no more than you. I would swear to it. We are on the trail of the real perpetrators. If you truly care for me…” Listening, he put on a smirk I had learned to know well; Suzi had decided to be conciliatory. Too late, had she but known. Then Schmidt let out a bellow. “No! No, you must not do that! You do not trust me!
Ach, Gott!”

The last fell, it was clear, on deaf ears—the ears of Suzi, at any rate.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Suzi is coming to Luxor.”

S
uzi was stupider than I had believed, or else dangerously confident of her powers of seduction. If I had been in her shoes I’d have begun wondering about Schmidt. She had had sense enough to assure him of her complete trust, and she had promised to stay away from us while she was in Luxor. I didn’t believe that promise. It wouldn’t be difficult to follow us unobtrusively; Egyptian dress, for men and women both, involves long flapping garments and a variety of concealing headgear. And most men sport beards. Useful things, beards. Suzi was tall enough to pass for a man.

Feisal had declared his intention of heading for the West Bank the next morning to join the search for Ali. After a somewhat acrimonious discussion we decided to join him. Most of the acrimony came from John, who pointed out that we would only be in the way, since we knew nothing about the terrain and weren’t in fit condition to climb around the cliffs. Schmidt took this personally and started loping around the sitting room flexing his muscles.

I didn’t argue with him. I understood why he wanted to go; action, any kind of action, was better than sitting around stewing and speculating. He even agreed to skip breakfast and head out at sunrise, so we’d have several hours before the heat got too bad.

If Schmidt was going, I was going too. I thought John might try to talk me out of it, but he didn’t. Having lost the argument with Schmidt, he retired to our room in high dudgeon (and John’s dudgeons are extremely high), leaving me to work out the final details. When I joined him he was already tucked up in bed, reading. He put the book down and held out one elegant, expressive hand. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

It would have been childish to hold a grudge. Besides, the sofa in the sitting room was only five and a half feet long.

S
chmidt rousted us out at 6:00
A.M.
There was coffee. There was also a heap of square white boxes, the hotel’s packed lunch offering. Schmidt delved into one of them as we left the room, and finished a banana before we emerged from the hotel. He had arranged for a car the night before, tactfully refusing Feisal’s offer of his Jeep. Schmidt doesn’t care for Jeeps, especially the ones that are often in the repair shop. This vehicle was a small van, with plenty of room for us and the lunch boxes. It takes longer to cross the Nile by means of the bridge instead of taking a boat, but Schmidt isn’t crazy
about gangplanks either, especially the type used by the launches, which are planks about six inches wide. They don’t usually wobble, but they look as if they might. Schmidt had been a good sport about the gangplanks the day before, so we tacitly agreed to indulge him this time.

Up front with the driver, Schmidt kept up a running monologue of commentary to which I did not listen. The rest of us didn’t talk much. I assumed that John and Feisal, like me, were preoccupied with the ensuing arrivals of a couple of people we didn’t want to see. Suzi wasn’t answering her phone. Ashraf had ordered Feisal to wait for his call instead of trying to reach him. According to Feisal, Ashraf was not in a good mood early in the morning. It struck me as a very civilized attitude, generally speaking, but I would have given a great deal to be assured that Ashraf had Saida under control. Too damn many people were coming to Luxor. I felt like a nanny in charge of undisciplined children, or a guard single-handedly trying to control a prison break.

The bridge was a grandiose affair, with ornamental statues and posters with enormous portraits of Mubarak. Once on the West Bank, the van headed north, past irrigation canals filled with reeds and garbage. Traffic included carts pulled by morose donkeys, bicycles and motorbikes, people riding morose donkeys, and the occasional tourist bus. Schmidt passed a hard-boiled egg back to me.

“Eat, eat, Vicky. You must keep up your strength for the task ahead.”

It turned out to be excellent advice.

Feisal’s squad were waiting for us at a predesignated spot, north of the causeway that led from the road to Hatshepsut’s temple of Deir el Bahri. The temple is one of the most popular tourist spots on the West Bank, but it was still early, and tourists were not yet in evidence.

Feisal gathered the group round him and began talking and gesturing. It appeared to be a group of volunteers rather than an official squad; clothing ranged from the black uniforms of the security police to jeans and Tshirts, to the standard galabiyas and head cloths; ages ranged from graybeards to kids who could have been as young as ten. He finished with a final wave of his arm, and the men started off in various directions. Two of the youngsters squatted down on the ground, waiting for further orders.

“Might one inquire as to your plan?” John asked. “Supposing you have one.”

“I can’t think of any good reason why I should explain to you,” Feisal said.

John raised one eyebrow. Feisal’s emphatic black brows drew together like small thunderclouds. I had a feeling this was going to be a difficult day, in more ways than one. Feisal was drawn tight as a bowstring, hoping not to find what he feared to find, and John had been in a filthy mood for days.

“Now, now, boys, play nicely,” I said.

“I am playing nicely,” Feisal growled. “All things considered. As it happens, I do have a plan, which would take too long to explain even if you had the vaguest notion of what I was talking about. You three will be with me. Don’t wander off.”

He inspected us with a critical eye. I’d seen Feisal under pressure, but never in command, so to speak; he was in his element now, on his own turf, and I had to fight an impulse to stand at attention and salute. I passed inspection; I had had sense enough to wear sturdy, low-heeled shoes and loose clothing, and even a hat. John, hatless and lounging, rated a curt “If you end up with sunstroke, don’t expect us to carry you.”

Feisal snatched a bottle of water from Schmidt, who was trying to insert it into a water-bottle-shaped bag hung on a hook attached
to his belt. There were more hooks and tabs all over his vest, one of those khaki-colored garments with approximately a hundred pockets. All the pockets bulged. Most of the tabs were in use—camera, flashlight, Swiss Army knife, compass, and the magnifying glass, among other objects too numerous to mention.

“Don’t load yourself down,” Feisal ordered. “Yusuf and Ahman will carry the food and water. Hand over that magnifying glass.”

Schmidt clutched it protectively. “Will they give it back?”

Feisal replied with another question. “Do you want to set your pants on fire?”

Schmidt gave the magnifying glass to one of the boys, whose grin did not augur well for the return of same, and we set out.

Don’t expect specific details; most of the time I had no idea where I was or where I’d been, much less where I was going. Once we had left the temple and its surroundings behind, there were few conspicuous landmarks, only acres of bare brown sandy ground, undulating indiscriminately, backed by ridges of equally bare cliff. Tracks of paler color rambled here and there, up and down. It was the most indeterminate landscape I had ever seen; I couldn’t imagine how a search party could operate efficiently. We went up low hills and down them, stopping every now and then to look down into a hole or crevice. The air was still cool, and so clear you could make out the forms of some of the other searchers, who had fanned out from the starting point. The sun had lifted over the hills of Luxor; pale sunlight spread out before us, brightening the western cliffs.

The farther we went, the tougher the going became. The sun rose higher and the slope became steeper. Even with sunglasses the glare was hard on the eyes. Heaps of loose scree, ranging in size from pebbles to good-sized rocks, had been rolled down by wind and water, piling up at the base of the cliffs and sliding down the
hillside. The other searchers were no longer in sight, but every now and then we encountered a local villager on business of his own; more and more frequently we were forced to circumnavigate piles of rock or declivities of varying depths. When we stopped and passed round the water bottles, Schmidt lowered himself carefully onto a boulder. Glancing at his flushed face, Feisal said, “Rest for a few minutes. It’s all uphill from here on.”

In my opinion it had been pretty much uphill all the way. I accepted a bottle of water from Yusuf, or maybe it was Ahman. The liquid was warm as blood. I shaded my eyes and looked up—straight up. We were getting close to the base of the cliffs, which were for all intents and purposes perpendicular.

“I hope you don’t intend to climb those,” I said, gesturing. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

Feisal’s tight lips relaxed. “Sorry I was a little brusque back there. I don’t mind your asking, but I’m afraid any explanation would be meaningless without a map.”

Schmidt coughed. “We are not far from DB 320, is it not so?”

Feisal stared at him, and then let out an actual, genuine laugh. “Touché, Schmidt. Have a sandwich.”

“I am already doing so,” said Schmidt, who was already doing so. He had extracted one of the lunch boxes from the jealous hands of Ahman, or maybe it was Yusuf.

“Is DB 320 a tomb?” I asked.

“Right. They’re numbered, with each area having its own grouping. KV refers to the Valley of the Kings, DB to the Deir el Bahri region.”

Even Feisal seemed willing to rest for a while longer. Or maybe he was just reluctant to go on. The cliffs were full of tombs on various levels, not to mention crevices and natural holes. If Ali hadn’t disappeared of his own free will, there were only two possibilities:
an accident, in which case he shouldn’t be too hard to locate; or foul play and subsequent concealment, in which case his body might be undiscovered for years.

Schmidt directed the boys to pass the lunch boxes around, and to help themselves. Nibbling on a very warm cheese sandwich, I looked out across the landscape. In the distance I could see the green strip of cultivation and a sunlit sparkle on the river beyond the green. Deir el Bahri was out of sight, concealed behind the curve of the cliffs.

“What’s that building?” I asked, indicating a structure some distance below. It was constructed of mud brick, the same color as the earth around it; only its rectangular outlines allowed me to make it out.

“Metropolitan House,” Feisal answered. “It was once the headquarters of the Metropolitan Museum team; they worked in this area for years. If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, Vicky, forget it. The place isn’t abandoned. It’s now being used by a Polish expedition.

“And that one?” I asked, indicating another low-slung building.