The Exodus Quest

THIRTY-FOUR
I

Farooq kept his hand firmly on Knox's shoulder as he steered him through the station, more to show the world who was boss than from any fear he might run. They climbed into the back of the police car together, Hosni taking the wheel. Knox stared out through the window as they left Alexandria behind, drove west then south on the low causeway across Lake Mariut. He'd hoped the drive would jog his memory, but nothing came. His uneasiness grew. Farooq wasn't a man to mess with. Beside him, as if sensing this, Farooq folded his arms and looked out of the other window, distancing himself from Knox, preparing to blame him if the trip proved a fiasco.

They turned down a lane, crossed an irrigation channel. Two uniformed security men were playing backgammon. A shudder of deja vu, gone almost before he was aware of it. The guard took their names and business, called in, waved them through. They bumped their way along a track and over a small ridge, coasted down the other side to the offices, parking next to a white pick-up.

Farooq grabbed Knox's collar as if he was a mischievous dog as he pulled him out of the back. 'Well?' he asked.

Several young excavators appeared on the brow of a ridge, sniggering at the way Farooq was manhandling Knox. But then a man in a dog collar strode over the ridge and all humour instantly fled their faces, as though amusement were frivolous, and frivolity a sin. Peterson. It had to be. But though Knox thought he had the broad look of his balcony assailant, he couldn't be sure.

He strode over, looking Knox up and down with disdain but no obvious anxiety. 'Detective Inspector,' he said. 'You again.'

'Yes,' agreed Farooq. 'Me again.'

'What brings you back?'

Farooq threw Knox a glance. 'You remember Mister Daniel Knox?'

'I saved his life. You think I'm likely to forget?'

'He says you've found something here. An underground antiquity.'

'That's ridiculous. I'd know if we had.'

'Yes,' said Farooq. 'You would.'

'This is the man who killed Omar Tawfiq,' glared Peterson. 'He'd say anything to shift the blame.'

'His claims should be easy enough to prove or disprove. Unless you have a problem with that?'

'Only that it's a waste of everyone's time, Detective Inspector.'

'Good.' He turned to Knox. 'Well, then?'

Knox had hoped just being here would trigger memories, but his mind remained frustratingly blank. He looked around, hoping for inspiration. Power-station towers. A cluster of industrial buildings. Two men laying pipe with a mechanical digger. The crescent of archaeologists, holding their rock-hammers and mattocks like weapons. They reminded him of a solid truth: there was an underground antiquity around here. These people had been getting in and out without being seen. Maybe they'd restricted themselves to after dark but… His eyes darted to the office, its canvas extension. Could that be hiding something? But his photographs had clearly shown the shaft out in the open, so unless they'd moved the office since yesterday… and they hadn't, he could tell from the potholed track and this parking area, not to mention the converging footpaths in the…

The footpaths. Yes!

Walking back and forth day after day, they'd surely have worn a faint path by now. He looked around. Paths led away in all directions.

'Well?' asked Farooq, arms folded, his patience running thin.

A shudder of memory. After dark, running, his heart racing, slapping against a wire-mesh fence. There was such a fence away to his left, marking the power station's grounds, and a thin footpath wending towards it. It was this or nothing. He nodded along it. 'That way,' he said.