The Exodus Quest

II

No one at the hospital was talking, so Augustin headed over to the SCA instead, arrived to find it buzzing with rumour, disoriented by grief. Omar was evidently one of those people only fully appreciated after they're gone. Mansoor, Omar's deputy, was in his cluttered office. 'Terrible business,' he said, shaking his head, looking grey and harried. 'I can't believe Knox had anything to do with it.'

'He didn't.'

'There's a man from the police here who thinks he did.'

'The police!' mocked Augustin. 'What would they know?'

Mansoor narrowed his eyes shrewdly. 'Have you heard something?'

'No.'

'You can trust me, you know.'

'I know,' agreed Augustin. He removed a stack of reports from a chair, sat down. 'But how could I tell you anything? I don't even know what happened. They wouldn't say a damned thing at the hospital.'

'You should talk to this policeman,' suggested Mansoor. 'He'll still be around here somewhere. I promised to go out to Borg el-Arab with him.'

'Borg el-Arab?' frowned Augustin. 'Is that where they crashed?'

'Yes.'

'What the hell were they doing out there?'

'Visiting some training dig apparently.'

'A dig? In Borg?'

Mansoor nodded. 'No one here knows anything about it either. Being administered out of Cairo, apparently.' He went over to his filing cabinet, shifted a boxed aerial-photography kit out of the way to get at a drawer.

'A remote-controlled aircraft,' grunted Augustin, impressed. 'How the hell did you get the budget for that?'

'Rudi lent it to me,' said Mansoor. 'Easier than him shipping it back and forth to Germany every season.' He handed Augustin a dog-eared sheet of paper, the writing so faint that Augustin had to take it to the window to read. Mortimer Griffin. The Reverend Ernest Peterson. The Texas Society of Biblical Archaeologists. An address in Borg el-Arab. Nothing else. But surely it had to be the source of Knox's photographs. 'I'd like to go and see this place for myself,' he murmured.

'Maybe you can,' said Mansoor. 'You've seen how the guys are. My place today is here with them. What if I were to ask this policeman if you could go out there instead of me?'

'Yes,' nodded Augustin. 'What a good idea.'