The Moses Legacy

Chapter 45

Daniel had let Gabrielle do the talking. After a sleepless night in the open by the Nile, just outside a small village, they had made their way to the riverbank in search of the means to escape. And they found it in the feluccas – the local riverboats that operated on the Nile both as fishing vessels and as cheap tourist rides.

Gabrielle was so much more persuasive than he could have ever been. First of all, it was obvious that Walid, the dark-skinned, southern Egyptian owner of the felucca, found Gabrielle very attractive, as did the other two crew members who were there with him – his teenage son Na’if and someone else who was either Walid’s younger brother or his cousin. Secondly, they seemed to be impressed by her fluent, almost classical Arabic. Daniel could have spoken Arabic equally well, but somehow hearing it from a pretty blonde foreigner – and a woman too – was considerably more impressive, and they warmed to her immediately.

Gabrielle had warned Daniel that it would be risky to try to join a normal tourist river cruise without arousing suspicion. Not that there would have been any shortage of room on a northbound cruise; holidaymakers tended to prefer the shorter cruises between Aswan and Luxor, and in any case the tourist season was almost over. Joining a cruise without a booking at the last minute, though, might arouse some suspicions. For all they knew, the riverboats and car hire firms might have been alerted to watch out for them.

But travelling by felucca was another matter. Those old, narrow, engineless riverboats were used both by fishermen and by canny locals to ferry tourists on short trips.

‘We want to get the authentic local experience,’ Gabrielle had explained. ‘Or rather my husband does.’

She realized, quite spontaneously, that the afterthought was a nice little touch to make it sound convincing. She knew that Walid and his crew could well relate to that. The Western city slicker who wants to get his hands dirty, and the educated, dutiful wife reluctantly going along with her adventurous husband’s wishes.

‘And you want to go all the way to Cairo?’ Walid asked by way of clarification.

‘Yes.’

If they could make it to Cairo, they had several options, including going to their respective embassies and asking them to liaise with the Egyptian authorities – even if it meant Daniel being returned to the UK and arrested. But what they really wanted was to have a look at the papyrus from the tomb of Ay that Mansoor had told them about – the one at the Cairo Museum. Daniel was hoping that it was the one that Harrison had mentioned – the one that described the resurgence of the plague. It might hold the key to why Harrison was killed and why someone had locked them in the tomb.

‘You know there is no toilet on boat, yes?’

‘We understand,’ Gabrielle confirmed, giving Daniel a dirty look as if to say: Why are you forcing me to go through this?

‘Okay, you have American dollars?’

‘No, only sterling or Egyptian pounds.’

‘Okay, give me twelve hundred pounds.’

He meant Egyptian pounds. But that was still too much – even allowing for the fact that it would take them about five or six days to make it to Cairo.

‘I’ll give you five hundred,’ said Gabrielle.

Daniel smiled; it was obvious that she knew how to haggle a lot better than he.

‘Five hundred?!’ The mock-indignation in Walid’s tone was almost theatrical. ‘For one person I do for five hundred. Give me thousand, I take you all the way to Cairo.’

‘A thousand? Look, we’re not first-timers. This is my fifth trip and my husband’s third. I’ll give you six hundred.’

‘Okay, give me eight hundred,’ he said with a smile. ‘I do for you for eight hundred.’

‘Seven hundred,’ she replied, matching smile for smile.

‘Why you do this to me? Where else you find beautiful boat like mine?’

That was not exactly the way she would have described it; ramshackle old dinghy might have qualified. But she had to be careful not to overplay her hand. Most of the feluccas operated south of the Esna lock, between Luxor and Aswan. They wanted to get to Cairo and there were very few feluccas trying to compete with the cruise ships on that northern stretch of the Nile. So it was a case of beggars can’t be choosers. But the competitive streak in her made her decide to have one last try.

‘Seven hundred,’ she said firmly.

‘Seven fifty.’

‘Okay,’ she said. If he had stuck at eight hundred, she would have said seven fifty herself. Still, it was better this way. It was always better to let the man name the final figure and then agree to it.

After the money had changed hands, they boarded the boat and within minutes were drifting downriver. Sails were useless in this environment as the prevailing wind was almost always southerly, taking the boats upstream. Hence the rule of the Nile: sails up stream, current down stream.

All of this made for a very energy-efficient, and gentle mode of transport along the Nile. The vessel had no engine, no ‘indoors’ and no shower or toilet. It was this, as much as the Western preference for comfort, that made most tourists prefer the luxury cruises on offer from the numerous tourist companies, to the Spartan austerity of a felucca.

Walid insisted on making a pot of strong Turkish coffee for them. Having these interesting foreigners on his boat was something of a social occasion, and it was clear that he wanted to get the most out of it. As they drank the coffee, they were content to let Walid tell them about his beautiful fat wife and five wonderful daughters. He was sad that he only had one son, but if that was Allah’s will then he must accept it.

Listening to this man, well past his prime, talk with loving affection about his family, Daniel felt safe for the first time in several hours. It was unlikely that a felucca owner eking out his living on the Nile would sit with his ears glued to the radio to hear the news. To Walid, the things that mattered most were the weather and the exchange rate.

‘So what you do here?’ asked Walid in English, addressing Daniel.

‘Well, my wife is a professor of Egyptology and she has to come here often because of her work. I’m a businessman myself. I don’t really have time for all this academic stuff. I’ve been here a couple of times before and the first time I saw the pyramids and the Sphinx and the Valley of the Kings. But the second visit, I spent most of the time scuba-diving in Sharm el-Sheikh, so this time the missus here challenged me to see the real Egypt. And I figured if I’m going to see the real Egypt, I may as well go the whole way.’

He looked around at the scenery to emphasize the point.

‘What business you do?’ asked Walid.

‘Computer software,’ said Daniel. He figured it would sound suitably Western and wouldn’t prompt too many questions.

‘Ah, Microsoft,’ said Walid.

‘They’re our competitors,’ Daniel replied, laughing. ‘They’re much bigger than us.’

‘I have an X-box,’ said Na’if, obviously anxious to add something to the conversation.

‘This is goooood!’ said Daniel, as he sampled the lamb stew that Walid had prepared for lunch. Walid looked relieved by his reaction. He had apologized for the fact that it wasn’t as good as his wife’s lamb stew. He explained that his wife made the best stew in the world and Daniel and his wife should visit them in Cairo sometime and taste it. He also explained that when he wasn’t taking people on his boat, he usually existed off fish, caught in the river and grilled over an open flame in the metal bucket and grill rack that doubled as a barbecue.

After lunch, Walid and the crew took a siesta on deck, leaving Daniel in charge of the helm.

‘We should have turned ourselves in when we had the chance,’ said Daniel. ‘We might have been able to sort this out if we hadn’t run away.’

Gabrielle’s Nordic face held a cold, implacable look. ‘You seem to be forgetting one thing: they didn’t give us the chance. They started shooting before we could say a word.’

‘I guess they must have panicked because of that story about us carrying some disease. That message on Mansoor’s phone said that you infected that curator at the British Museum.’

‘I know, but that doesn’t make any sense. I haven’t got any symptoms.’

‘Maybe it only affects men.’

‘But Mansoor said it affected the volunteers.’

‘Only a few. They put them all in quarantine, but not all of them were infected – and he didn’t say anything about the gender of those who were.’

‘And what about you? And Mansoor? Neither of you have shown any symptoms and you’ve had at least as much exposure as the curator in London.’

‘Okay, but some people evidently are getting ill. And your uncle did say something about it when I went to see him on the morning I flew out here, just before he was…’

‘That’s the other thing, Daniel. Too many bad things seem to be happening at once. People are getting killed. First Uncle Harrison and the maid. Then the guardian of the tomb. And of course whoever did that also tried to kill us – and Mansoor. I’m just wondering if they’re connected.’

‘We don’t actually know who they were trying to kill. It might have been any one of us.’

‘The question is, Daniel… what are we going to do?’