The Exodus Quest

FIFTEEN
I

Farooq watched from the hospital's front doors as Peterson parked his Toyota 4x4 in an empty bay. 'Maybe I was just imagining things,' murmured Shareef. 'Maybe it was nothing.'

'Maybe,' agreed Farooq.

'It was just… I kept getting this impression. That we were in his way, you know. That he was looking for something. And I wasn't imagining what I told you about the seat belt.'

'Foreigners,' muttered Farooq, spitting a fleck of tobacco from his lip. He loathed them all, but the English and Americans most. The way they behaved: they thought it was still the old days.

'You need me any longer?' asked Shareef.

Farooq shook his head. 'I'll call if I have any questions.'

'Not before morning, okay? I need my sleep.'

'Don't we all?' He threw down his cigarette as Peterson arrived back at the hospital's front doors, then led him to the makeshift office he'd been given, motioned for him to take a chair, turned over a fresh sheet on his notepad. 'Go on, then,' he grunted. 'What happened?'

Peterson nodded. 'You should know first that I'm an archaeologist,' he said, spreading his hands wide, giving what he no doubt imagined was a sincere and candid smile. 'I'm here on excavation in Borg el-Arab. Earlier today, yesterday now, I suppose, we had a visit from Doctor Omar Tawfiq, he's head of the SCA in Alexandria, you know, and a man called Daniel Knox, a British archaeologist.'

Farooq grunted. 'You're not going to tell me one of those two men you brought in is head of the SCA in Alexandria?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'Hell!'

'We spoke for a while. We informally arranged a full site tour. Then they left. I thought no more of it. But then, after dark, we had an intruder.'

'An intruder?'

'It's not uncommon,' sighed Peterson. 'The local Bedouin farmers are all convinced we're finding great treasures. Why else would we be digging, after all? We're not, of course. But they won't take our word for it.'

'So this intruder…?'

'Yes. We chased him off the site. He got into a car. Someone else was driving.'

'And you went after them?'

'You can't just let people run over your site. They'll contaminate important data. I wanted to give them a piece of my mind. I thought it might deter others. I was way behind them though. Then I saw flames.' He shrugged. 'I got there as quick as I could. It was awful. One of them, the man Knox, was still inside. I was worried he'd asphyxiate. I managed to release his seat belt. That's when the Highway Maintenance men arrived, thank heavens.'

A tired-looking doctor knocked and entered. 'Bad news,' he said. 'The man from Borg. The Egyptian one.'

'Dead?' asked Farooq gloomily.

The doctor nodded. 'I'm sorry.'

'And the other?'

'Grade three or four concussion, smoke inhalation, moderate burns. The smoke and burns should both be manageable. The concussion is more problematic. You can never be sure, not this soon. It depends on impact damage, how the intracranial pressure builds, how the-'

'When will I be able to talk to him?'

'Give it two or three days and he should be-'

'He may be responsible for the other man's death,' said Farooq tightly.

'Ah,' said the doctor, scratching his cheek. 'I'll take him off the morphine. With luck, he'll be awake by morning. Don't expect too much though. He'll probably suffer retrograde and anterograde amnesia.'

'Do I look like a doctor?' scowled Farooq.

'Sorry. He's highly unlikely to remember anything from immediately before or after the crash.'

'All the same,' said Farooq. 'I need to speak to him.'

'As you wish.' He nodded and withdrew.

'What terrible news,' sighed Peterson, when Farooq had translated the gist for him. 'I only wish I could have done something more.'

'You did what you could.'

'Yes. Is there anything else?'

'Your contact details.'

'Of course.' Peterson turned the pad to face him, jotted down a phone number, directions to the site. Then he got to his feet, nodded and left.

Farooq watched him out. Something wasn't right, but his brain was too tired right now, he needed sleep. He yawned heavily, got up. Just one more thing to take care of. If Knox was truly to blame for the death of Alexandria's senior archaeologist, he needed to be kept under watch: his own room, a man outside his door. Then he'd come back tomorrow and find out just exactly what the hell was going on.