Blood Of The Falcon

Fourteen

Late one June night in the Cairo Museum, while Major Fuad Akbar Namid of the State Security Bureau was busy lecturing Nick Carter on the evils of Western expropriation of Egyptian antiquities, the Killmaster suddenly drew his gun and shot a mummy case.

Namid was nonplussed, to say the least. So was the lovely lady professor whom he and Carter were protecting.

Namid was a big man in his middle forties. With his imposing physique, gleaming bald head, and flowing mustache, he resembled an old-time circus strong man.

An ardent nationalist and a staunch traditionalist, Namid was not overjoyed at his assignment of being nursemaid to an American spy and bodyguard to a beautiful archaeologist. The spy belonged in Washington, and the lady belonged at home, tending a husband and children.

By his standards, Professor Khamsina Assaf was well on her way to becoming an old maid. Why, she was thirty if she was a day, and still unmarried! And too skinny for his taste.

Carter did not agree. Khamsina came from a fine old Cairo family, and she was very attractive, though she did her best to hide that fact. She was also very intelligent, the holder of a doctorate and an important staff post in the museum, the author of over a dozen scholarly articles relating to her field, and was probably the world's leading authority on one of the Nile's most obscure tribes, the nomadic Nefrazi.

Her familiarity with the "Gray Raiders" of the desert was surprising, seeming more the province of an ethnologist than an archaeologist. But her antiquarian studies had taken her into the heart of Nefrazi territory, throwing her into prolonged and intimate contact with that fascinating people.

The turnings of fate, and the machinations of Reguiba, now rendered her knowledge invaluable. Information locked inside her head could unlock the secret of the Reguiba's final offensive.

She was tall, fine-featured, and high-bosomed. Her style was severe, almost prim. Her chestnut hair was pulled into a knot at the nape of her neck. Dark and lovely eyes were hidden behind owlish tortoise-shell glasses. She wore no makeup.

Her outfit consisted of a light brown jacket with a matching slim skirt. On this hot night, her navy blouse was worn buttoned to the collar. Slung over one shoulder was a square handbag. She carried a well-worn briefcase bulging with papers and notes relating to the Gray Raiders.

Carter had only arrived in Cairo a few hours earlier. By the time he had hooked up with Namid, his Egyptian counterpart, it was late indeed. The museum had been closed to the public for hours. By the time Carter and Namid arrived to escort her, even most of the dedicated staff had called it a night and gone home.

Namid had a car and driver waiting outside. When Khamsina was ready to go, the trio set off through the convoluted corridors of the museum.

They were on an upper floor of an obscure wing devoted to scholarly research. To conserve power, few lights were on, and those were sparsely scattered. A heavy smell of dust tickled the back of Namid's throat.

"Have you been to the museum before, Mr. Carter?" Khamsina asked. She seemed less interested in the answer to her question than she was in making polite conversation. The empty halls were quiet, hushed.

"Please call me Nick. Yes, I visit the museum every time I get a chance when I'm in town. It's endlessly fascinating. There's always something new to see. Or something old, I should say."

They passed a row of small, crowded offices, coming to a minor display hall, an intimate gallery. At its opposite end was the lighted landing of a marble stairway.

Earlier, Carter and the major had passed through this hall on their way to Khamsina's office. Then, lights shone in the gallery. Now the lights were extinguished, illumination provided by what light leaked in from the landing.

A broad aisle ran down the gallery's center. Rising on either side were glass display cases, their shelves filled with small items, such as mirrors, bowls, spice boxes, unguent jars, and other exotic bric-a-brac of the late New Kingdom.

Major Namid was a moderately religious man, when it did not interfere with his official duties or his pleasures. He knew that these rare antiquities dated from what Moslems call "the Time of Ignorance," prior to the coming of the Prophet, and therefore to be abhorred. By day, he would have been the first to scoff at any superstitious fancies, but there was something about the way the glass cases emerged from the gloom, separating themselves from the shadows, that he found a bit unsettling.

To take his mind off such thoughts, he paid more attention to the conversation between Carter and Khamsina, to which he had been listening with half an ear.

He was pleased to note that the lady professor had ignored Carter's invitation to address him by his first name. While he had no sexual interest in her — Allah preserve him from educated women! — he disliked the American flirting with a countrywoman of his.

Carter went on, "Yes, it's one of the great museums of the world."

Irked, Namid said, "The collection would be even more outstanding had not your Western colonialists looted Egypt of so much of our priceless national heritage."

Khamsina fretted at his bad manners, darting him looks that he ignored.

They neared the landing, which lay beyond the squared portal. Flanking the wide doorway were twin sarcophagi, mummy cases braced vertically upright. The mummies had long since been removed and were stored in vacuum-sealed cases to protect them against disintegrating from exposure to air and bacteria. One case's lid was closed; the other was open to display its interior.

Major Namid was riding his hobby horse: "I find it somehow obscene that our two great obelisks are now in New York City and London. It's high time your governments return the treasures looted from the Egyptian people. You Westerners regard our country as little more than your own private treasure trove…"

"Major, please!" Khamsina murmured. "Mr. Carter is here to help us…"

"Here to protect his government's interests, you mean."

"Which happen to coincide with your government's interests," Carter pointed out.

"The time is past when you can take us for granted and expect us to fawn all over you. Respect. You must respect a land that was civilized when your ancestors were living in caves…"

His hand a blur of motion. Carter drew Wilhelmina as he dropped into a combat crouch. No sooner had the pistol cleared its holster, than he pumped three shots square into the closed mummy case.

Khamsina and Namid were stunned. She spoke first. "Do you know what you've done? You've just ruined a priceless fifteen-hundred-year-old sarcophagus!"

Namid was utterly flabbergasted. He stood stock-still while the Killmaster padded on the landing, looking up and down the stairs.

Creaking sounded from the ventilated mummy case. That gave Namid even more of a jolt.

Namid's mind whirled, calculating how he could convince his superiors that there was nothing he could have done to forestall the American's act of insane vandalism. He jumped when the mummy case opened.

The lid moved, slowly at first, then faster, hinges softly squeaking. Suddenly the lid was flung open wide.

Inside the sarcophagus stood a man. Not a mummy, but a tall Arab, all long limbs and protruding knobby joints. He must have had a devil of a time fitting his long form into the case. Carter thought.

His dead hand still clutched a machine pistol. His chest was shattered by the Killmaster's three slugs. They were so closely spaced that the hole in his chest seemed one single wound. His shirt front was soaked a dark, glistening red.

He finished falling, tumbling free from the sarcophagus to slam facedown on the floor.

"What… how… who…" Major Namid sputtered.

"This is the one they call the Camel," Carter said. "He's one of Reguiba's top guns. Or, at least, he was."

"But… but how did you know he was in there?"

"When we came through here before, both cases were open," Carter explained. "That put me on my guard when I saw it was closed. And when I saw the lid starting to move, I moved first. Of course" — he smiled — "if it had just been a practical joker, I guess I'd be in real trouble."

Khamsina was unsteady on her feet. Carter's free arm, the one not holding Wilhelmina, circled the professor's slim waist, steadying her.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yes… no. I don't know," she said. "I don't care about him, but I'm so upset about the damage to the sarcophagus!"

Carter grunted. "I suggest we get a move on, Major. Reguiba doesn't do things by halves. There may be more like him."

Finally waking up, Namid pulled a snazzy Beretta, the little gun looking like a water pistol in his big hand.

"You are right — there may be more," he said. "I will go first to make sure the way is clear. You follow with the professor. We dare not risk her."

"All right," Carter said.

"I'll signal if all is well."

Before going down the stairs, Namid climbed up to the next floor, making sure no lurkers waited there. None did.

He was very upset. The joint mission was off to a terrible start. How could he have missed the detail of the closed mummy case? The agent was a smooth operator. A fast draw, too. The major had to get some of his own back, or suffer a serious loss of face. That was why he volunteered to pave the way.

He went back down the stairs, passing Carter and the professor. The American still had his arm around her waist. She looked distraught. Her head now rested on his shoulder, though she pulled it off when the major passed by.

The Yankee spy was a smooth operator, all right.

Major Namid's shoes slapped their soles on the treads of the stairs. He paused to step out of them. He had his gun in one hand, his shoes in the other. He went down the stairs in his stocking feet.

Another floor came into view, complete with landing, doorway, and darkened gallery beyond. He didn't like the look of it. Was that a furtive rustle of sound he heard, or was it only his imagination?

Nonsense. It was his proud boast that he was not an imaginative man. If he thought he heard something, then he had heard something. Listening hard at the top of the stairs for a moment, ears pitched to keenest alertness, he heard nothing.

He moved from the wall to the balustrade running along the stairwell, leaned over it, and tossed his shoes on the next flight below the landing, where they made a sudden clatter.

Two men ran out of the darkened hall, thinking to surprise him on the lower flight. They weren't his men, they had guns, and he didn't like the looks of them. That was all he needed to know.

One of them was trigger-happy and started shooting down the stairs before even looking to see what was there. His partner glimpsed Major Namid out of the corner of his eye, one instant before Namid drilled a hole right through that eye, into his brain.

The trigger-happy character had even less of a chance. Namid didn't wait for him to turn around, but punctuated his back with two snap shots along the spine.

The shooter lurched forward, hit the edge of the rail, folded, and dropped headfirst down the stairwell, making a hell of a racket. But he didn't yell, because he was dead when he went over.

Namid prowled the front of the dark gallery. It seemed empty, purged of all potential ambushers.

Further investigation failed to detect menace. He called up the stairs, "You can come down now!"

Carter and Khamsina descended. The Killmaster was holding her hand. His other hand held Wilhelmina. His eyebrows lifted when he saw the corpse. "Nice shooting."

"The other one went over the rail," Namid said.

"Very nice."

Major Namid felt good. He had won his own back, restoring his lost face. It was, after all, quite unthinkable that he be bested by a foreigner here in his own bailiwick.

"The way is clear," he said. Already he was cooking up a cover story to explain the damaged mummy case. He could hang it on the Camel. That would head off trouble, eliminate paperwork, and satisfy his superiors in case the museum trustees made an issue of it.

They reached the parking lot without further incident.

Namid's driver, another Bureau man, sat behind the wheel, cigarette dangling from his lip as he read a tabloid by the car's dome light, totally oblivious of the gunplay that had gone down inside Egypt's most celebrated museum.

"Where have you been?" Namid demanded.

"Why… right here, sir."

"Didn't you hear anything?"

"No, sir. Did… did something happen?"

Namid could have cuffed his subordinate, but the presence of outsiders exercised an inhibiting effect.