The Exodus Quest

III

The remote-controlled aircraft was too bulky and cumbersome for Augustin's bike, so he waved down a taxi, put the box across its rear seat, and hired the driver to follow him out to Borg el-Arab.

He'd operated many such planes before. It was a great way to photograph ancient sites, not to mention a lot of fun too. They were easy enough beasts to fly. Launching them, however, was another matter, as was taking photographs while they were up.

He parked his bike in a thin copse a kilometre or so from Peterson's site, waved the taxi in beside him. The driver was in his early twenties, with wispy facial hair and a jovial demeanour. 'What's your name?' Augustin asked him as he paid him off.

'Hani.'

'Well, Hani. You want to earn another ten?'

'Of course. How?'

Augustin got the box out of the back, opened it up. Hani's eyes and mouth made three perfect circles of excitement when he saw the plane inside. 'Can I have a go?'

'Sure. Once I'm done.'

They cut across country, keeping a wall between them and Peterson's site, until they reached a suitable patch of clear hard ground. As good a spot as any. Augustin knelt, opened the box, began assembly.

'What's this for, then?'

'I'm doing a survey for the Supreme Council of Antiquities.'

'Sure you are!'

Augustin grinned. 'Have you ever seen an aerial photograph of a field? You wouldn't believe how much detail it reveals.' He snapped the red foam wings onto the praying-mantis frame, tightened the screws. 'Ditches, walls, roads, settlements. Things you can walk over every day without even noticing, suddenly they spring out at you.' The technique had been discovered by accident almost exactly a hundred years before. The British Army had been experimenting with aerial reconnaissance on Salisbury Plain when their balloon had drifted over Stonehenge, its photographs revealing for the first time the lattice of ancient footpaths that crisscrossed the site.

'Huh,' said Hani.

'Huh, indeed,' agreed Augustin. 'I couldn't have put it better myself.' He fixed the camera obliquely to the undercarriage so that he could photograph the site without flying directly over it, then tested the remote controls to make sure everything responded as it should. 'Okay,' he said, satisfied. 'Let's do it.'