The Seventh Scroll

SEVENTH SCROLL

By: Wilber Smith

Synopsis:

A fading papyrus, nearly four thousand years old. Within it lie the

clues to a fabulous treasure from an almost forgotten time. ... a riddle

that becomes a savage battle across the unforgiving terain of North

Africa. When her husband is brutally murdered , Beautiful half-English,

half-Egyptian Royan Al Simmu is forced to seek refuge in England. With

eminent archaeologist Nicholas Quenton-Harper she can pick up the pieces

of her shattered life and find the courage to return to Ethiopia. For

Duraid. For the long dead slave Taita. And for the dreams of an ancient

Pharaoh ... Because others will stop at nothing to claim the prize as

their own.

This edition published 1996 by Pan Books

ISBN 0 330 34415 3

Copyright ( Wilbur Smith 1995

Printed and bound in Great Britain

Once more this book is for my wife Danielle.

Despite all the happy loving years we have spent together I feel that we

are only just beginning.

There is so much more to come.

The dusk crept in from the desert, and shaded the dunes with purple.

Like a thick velvet cloak it muted all sounds, so that the evening was

tranquil and hushed.

From where they stood on the crest of the dune they looked out over the

oasis and the complex of small villages that surrounded it. The

buildings were white with flat roofs and the date palms stood higher

than any of them except the Islamic mosque and the Coptic Christian

church.

These bastions of faith opposed each other across the lake.

The waters of the lake were sparkling. A flight of duck slanted down on

quick wings to land with a small splash of white close in against the

reed banks.

The man and the woman made a disparate couple. He was tall, though

slightly bowed, his silvering hair catching the last of the sunlight.

She was young, in her early thirties, slim, alert and vibrant. Her hair

was thick and curling, restrained now by a thong at the nape of her

neck.

"Time to go down now. Alia will be waiting." He smiled down at her

fondly. She was his second wife. When his first wife died he thought

that she had taken the sunlight with her. He had not expected this last

period of happiness in his life. Now he had her and his work. He was a

man happy and contented.

Suddenly she broke away from him, and pulled the thong from her hair.

She shook it out, dense and dark, and she laughed. It was a pretty

sound. Then she plunged down the steep slip-face of the dune, her long

skirts billowing around her flying legs. They were shapely and brown.

She kept her balance until halfway down, when gravity overwhelmed her

and she tumbled.

From the top he smiled down on her indulgently.

Sometimes she was still a child. At others she was a grave and dignified

woman. He was not certain which he preferred, but he loved her in both

moods. She rolled to a halt at the bottom of the dune and sat up, still

laughing, shaking the sand out of her hair. "Your turn!" she called up

at him. He followed her down sedately, moving with the slight stiffness

of advancing age, keeping his balance until he reached the bottom.

He lifted her to her feet. He did not kiss her, although the temptation

to do so was strong. It was not the Arab way to show public affection,

even to a beloved wife.

She "straightened her clothing and retied her hair before they set off

towards the village. They skirted the reed beds of the oasis, crossing

the rickety bridges over the irrigation canals. As they passed, the

peasants returning from the fields greeted him with deep respect.

"Salaam aleikum, Doktari! Peace be with you, doctor." They honoured all

men of learning, but him especially for his kindness to them and their

families over the years.

Many of them had worked for his father before him. It mattered little

that most of them were Moslem, while he was a Christian.

When they reached the villa, Alia, the old housekeeper, greeted them

with mumbles and scowls. "You are late. You are always late. Why do you

not keep regular hours, like decent folk? We have a position to

maintain."

"Old mother, you are always right," he teased her gently. "What would we

do without you to care for us?" He sent her away, still scowling to

cover her love and concern for him.

They ate the simple meat on the terrace together, dates and olives and

unleavened bread and goat's milk cheese. It was dark when they finished,

but the desert stars were bright as candles.

"Royan, -my flower." He reached across the table and touched her hand.

"It is time to begin work." He stood up from the table and led the way

to his study that opened out on to the terrace.

Royan Al Simma went directly to the tall steel safe against the far wall

and tumbled the combination. The safe was out of place in this room,

amongst the old books and scrolls, amongst the ancient statues and

artefacts and grave goods that were the collection of his lifetime.

When the heavy steel door swung open, Royan stood back for a moment. She

always felt this prickle of awe whenever she first looked upon this

relic of the ages, even after an interval of only a few short hours.

"The seventh scroll," she whispered, and steeled herself to touch it. It

was nearly four thousand years old, written by a genius out of time with

history, a man who had been dust for all these millennia, but whom she

had come to know and respect as she did her own husband. His words were

eternal, and they spoke to her clearly from beyond the grave, from the

fields of paradise, from the presence of the great trinity, Osiris and

Isis and Horus, in whom he had believed so devoutly. As devoutly as she

believed in another more recent Trinity.

She carried the scroll to the long table at which Duraid, her husband,

was already at work. He looked up as she laid it on the tabletop before

him, and for a moment she saw the same mystical mood in his eyes that

had affected her. He always wanted the scroll there on the table, even

when there was no real call for it. He had the photographs and the

microfilm to work with. It was as though he needed the unseen presence

of the ancient author close to him as he studied the texts.

Then he threw off the mood and was the dispassionate scientist once

more. "Your eyes are better than mine, my flower," he said. "What do you

make of this character?"

She leaned over his shoulder and studied the hieroglyph on the

photograph of the scroll that he pointed out to her. She puzzled over

the character for a moment before she took the magnifying glass from

Duraid's hand and peered through it again.

"It looks as though Taita has thrown in another cryptogram of his own

creation just to bedevil us." She spoke of the ancient author as though

he were a dear, but sometimes exasperating, friend who still lived and

breathed, and played tricks upon them.

"We'll just have to puzzle it out, then," Duraid declared with obvious

relish. He loved the ancient game. It was his life's work.

The two of them laboured on into the cool of the night. This was when

they did their best work. Sometimes they spoke Arabic and sometimes

English; for them the two languages were as one. Less often they used

French, which was their third common language. They had both received

their education at universities in England and the United States, so far

from this very Egypt of theirs. Royan loved the expression "This very

Egypt' that Taita used so often in the scrolls.

She felt a peculiar affinity in so many ways with this ancient Egyptian.

After all, she was his direct descendant.

She was a Coptic Christian, not of the Arab line that had so recently

conquered Egypt, less than fourteen centuries ago. The Arabs were

newcomers in this very Egypt of hers, while her own blood line ran back

to the time of the pharaohs and the great pyramids.

At ten 'clock Royan made coffee for them, heating it on the charcoal

stove that Alia had prepared for them before she went off to her own

family in the villa . They drank the 9 sweet, strong brew from thin cups

that were half-filled with the heavy grounds. While they sipped, they

talked as old friends.

.. For Royan that was their relationship, old friends. She had known

Duraid ever since she had returned from England with her doctorate in

archaeology and won her job with the Department of Antiquities, of which

he was the director.

She had been his assistant when he had opened the tomb in the Valley of

the Nobles, the tomb of Queen Lostris, the tomb that dated from about

1780 BC.

She had shared his disappointment when they had discovered that the tomb

had been robbed in ancient times and all its treasures plundered. All

that remained were the marvelous murals that covered the walls and the

ceilings of the tomb.

It was Royan herself who had been working at the wall behind the plinth

on which the sarcophagus had once stood, photographing the murals, when

a section of the plaster had fallen away to reveal in their niche the

ten alabaster jars. Each of the jars had contained a papyrus scroll.

Every one of them had been written and placed there by Taita, the stave

of the queen.

Since then their lives, Duraid's and her own, seemed to have revolved

around those scraps of papyrus. Although there was some damage and

deterioration, in the main they had survived nearly four thousand years

remarkably intact.

What a fascinating story they contained, of a nation attacked by a

superior enemy, armed with horse and chariot that were still alien to

the Egyptians of that time. Crushed by the Hyksos hordes, the people of

the Nile were forced to flee. Led by their queen, Lostris of the tomb,

they followed the great river southwards almost to its source amongst

the brutal mountains of the Ethiopian highlands.

Here amongst those forbidding mountains, Lostris had entombed the

mummified body of her husband, the Pharaoh Mamose, who had been slain in

battle against the Hyksos.

Long afterwards Queen Lostris had led her people back northwards to this

very Egypt. Armed now with their own horses and chariots, forged into

hard warriors in the African wilderness, they had come storming back

down the cataracts of the great river to challenge once more the Hyksos

invader, and in the end to triumph over him and wrest the double crown

of upper and lower Egypt from his grasp.

It was a story that appealed to every fibre of her being, and that had

fascinated her as they had unravelled each hieroglyph that the old slave

had penned on the papyrus'

It had taken them all these years, working at night here in the villa on

the oasis after their daily routine work at the museum in Cairo was

done, but at last the ten scrolls had been deciphered - all except the

seventh scroll. This was the one that was the enigma, the one which the

author had cloaked in layers of esoteric shorthand and allusions so

obscure that they were unfathomable at this remove of time. Some of the

symbols he used had never figured before in all the thousands of texts

that they had studied in their combined working lives. It was obvious to

them both that Taita had not intended that the scrolls should be read by

any eyes other than those of his beloved queen. These were his last gift

for her to take with her beyond the grave.

It had taken all their combined skills, all their imagination and

ingenuity, but at last they were approaching the conclusion of the task.

There were still many gaps in the translation and many areas where they

were uncertain whether or not they had captured the true meaning, but

they had laid out the bones of the manuscript in such order that they

were able to discern the outline of the creature it represented.

Now Duraid sipped his coffee and shook his head as he had done so often

before. "It frightens me," he said. "The responsibility. What to do with

this knowledge we have gleaned. If it should fall into the wrong hands

He sipped and sighed before he spoke again. "Even if we take it to the

right people, will they believe this material that is nearly four

thousand years old?"

"Why must we bring in others?" Royan asked with an edge of exasperation

in her voice. "Why can we not do alone what has to be done?" At times

like these the differences between them were most apparent. His was the

caution of age, while hers was the impetuosity of youth.

"You do not understand," he said. It always annoyed her when he said

that, when he treated her as the Arabs treated their women in a totally

masculine world. She had known the other world where women demanded and

received the right to be treated as equals. She was a creature caught

between those worlds, the Western world and the Arab world.

Royan's mother was an English woman who had worked at the British

Embassy in Cairo in the troubled times after World War II. She had met

and married Royan's father, who had been a young Egyptian officer on the

staff of Colonel Nasser. It was an unlikely union and had not persisted

into Royan's adolescence.

Her mother had insisted upon returning to England, to her home town of

York, for Royan's birth. She wanted her child to have British

citizenship. After her parents had separated, Royan, again at her

mother's insistence, had been sent back to England for her schooling,

but all her holidays had been spent with her father in Cairo. Her

father's career had prospered exceedingly, and in the end he had

attained ministerial rank in the Mubarak government. Through her love

for him she came to look upon herself as more Egyptian than English.

It was her father who had arranged her marriage to Duraid Al Simma. It

was the last thing that he had done for her before his death. She had

known he was dying at the time, and she had not found it in her heart to

defy him. All her modern training made her want to resist the

old-fashioned Coptic tradition of the arranged marriage, but her

breeding and her family and her Church were against her. She had

acquiesced.

Her marriage to Duraid had not proved as insufferable as she had dreaded

it might be. It might even have been entirely comfortable and satisfying

if she had never been introduced to romantic love. However, there had

been her liaison with David while she was up at university. He had swept

her up in the hurly-burly, in the heady delirium, and, in the end, the

heartache, when he had left her to marry a blonde English rose approved

of by his parents.

She respected and liked Duraid, but sometimes in the night she still

burned for the feel of a body as firm and young as her own on top of

hers.

Duraid was still speaking and she had not been listening to him. She

gave him her full attention once more. "I have spoken to the minister

again, but I do not think he believes in me. I think that Nahoot has

convinced him that I am a little mad." He smiled sadly. Nahoot Guddabi

was his ambitious and well-connected deputy. "At any rate the minister

says that there are no government funds available, and that I will have

to seek outside finance.

So, I have been over the list of possible sponsors again, and have

narrowed it down to four. There is the Getty Museum of course, but I

never like to work with a big impersonal institution. I prefer to have a

single man to answer to.

Decisions are always easier to reach."None of this was new to her, but

she listened dutifully.

"Then there is Herr von Schiller. He has the money and the interest in

the subject, but I do not know him well enough to trust him entirely."

He paused, and Royan had listened to these musings so often before that

she could anticipate him.

"What about the American? He is a famous collector," she forestalled

him.

"Peter Walsh is a difficult man to work with. His passion to accumulate

makes him unscrupulous. He frightens me a little."

"So who does that leave?" she asked.

He did not reply, for they both knew the answer to her question.

Instead, he turned his attention back to the material that littered the

work table.

"It looks so innocent, so mundane. An old papyrus scroll, a few

photographs and notebooks, a computer printout. It is difficult to

believe how dangerous these might be in the wrong hands." He sighed

again. "You might almost say that they are deadly dangerous."

Then he laughed. "I am being fanciful. Perhaps it is the late hour.

Shall we get back to work? We can worry about these other matters once

we have worked out all the conundrums set for us by this old rogue,

Taita, and completed the translation."

He picked up the top photograph from the pile in front of him. It was an

extract from the central section of the scroll. "It is the worst luck

that the damaged piece of papyrus falls where it does." He picked up his

reading glasses and placed them on his nose before he read aloud.

"'There are many steps to ascend on the staircase to the abode of Hapi.

With much hardship and endeavour we reached the second step and

proceeded no further, for it was here that the prince received a divine

revelation. In a dream his father, the dead god pharaoh, visited him and

commanded him, "I have travelled far and I am grown weary. It is here

that I will rest for all eternity."" Duraid removed his glasses and

looked across at Royan, "'The second step". It is a very precise

description for once. Taita is not being his usual devious self."

"Let's go back to the satellite. photographs," Royan suggested, and drew

the glossy sheet towards her. Duraid came around the table to stand

behind her.

"To me it seems most logical that the natural feature that would

obstruct them in the gorge would be something like a set of rapids or a

waterfall. If it were the second waterfall, that would put them here-'

Royan placed her finger on a spot on the satellite photograph where the

narrow snake of the river threaded itself through the dark massifs of

the mountains on either hand.

At that moment she was distracted and she lifted her head. "Listen!" Her

voice changed, sharpening with alarm.

"What is it?" Duraid looked up also.

"The dog," she answered.

"That damn mongrel," he agreed. "It is always making the night hideous

with its yapping. I have promised myself to get rid of him."

At that moment the lights went out.

They froze with surprise in the darkness. The soft thudding of the

decrepit diesel generator in its shed at the back of the palm grove had

ceased. It was so much a part of the oasis night that they noticed it

only when it was silent.

Their eyes adjusted to the faint starlight that came in through the

terrace doors. Duraid crossed the room and took the oil lamp down from

the shelf beside the door where it waited for just such a contingency.

He lit it, and looked across at Royan with an expression of comical

resignation.

"I will have to go down-'

Duraid," she interrupted him, "the dog!'

He listened for a moment, and his expression changed to mild concern.

The dog was silent out there in the night.

"I am sure it is nothing to be alarmed about." He went to the door, and

for no good reason she suddenly called after him.

"Duraid, be careful!" He shrugged dismissively and stepped out on to the

terrace.

She thought for an instant that it was the shadow of the vine over the

trellis moving in the night breeze off the desert, but the night was

still. Then she realized that it was a human figure crossing the

flagstones silently and swiftly, coming in behind Duraid as he skirted

the fishpond in the centre of the paved terrace.

"Duraid!" She screamed a warning and he spun round, lifting the lamp

high.

"Who are you?" he shouted. "What do you want here?" The intruder closed

with him silently. The traditional full-length dishdasha robe swirled

around his legs, and the white ghutrah headcloth covered his head. In

the light of the lamp Duraid saw that he had drawn the corner of the

headcloth over his face to mask his features.

The intruder's back was turned towards her so Royan did not see the

knife in his right hand, but she could not mistake the upward stabbing

motion that he aimed at Duraid's stomach. Duraid grunted with pain and

doubled up at the blow, and his attacker drew the blade free and stabbed

again, but this time Duraid dropped the lamp and seized the knife arm.

The flame of the fallen oil lamp was guttering and flaring. The two men

struggled in the gloom, but Royan saw a dark stain spreading over her

husband's white shirt front.

"Run!" he bellowed at her. "Go! Fetch help! I cannot hold him!" The

Duraid she knew was a gentle person, a soft man of books and learning.

She could see that he was outmatched by his assailant.

"Go! Please! Save yourself, my flower!" She could hear by his tone that

he was weakening, but he still clung desperately to his attacker's knife

arm.

She had been paralysed with shock and indecision these few fatal

seconds, but now she broke free of the spell and ran to the door.

Spurred by her terror and her need to bring help to Duraid she crossed

the terrace, swift as a cat, and he held the intruder from blocking her

way.

She vaulted over the low stone wall into the grove, and almost into the

arms of the second man. She screamed and twisted away from him as his

outstretched fingers raked across her face, and almost broke free, but

his fingers hooked in the thin cotton stuff of her blouse.

This time she saw the knife in his hand, a long silvery flash in the

starlight, and it goaded her to fresh effort. The cotton tore in his

grip and she was free, but not quickly enough to escape the blade. She

felt the sting of it across her upper arm, and she kicked out at him

with all the strength of panic and her hard young body behind it. She

felt her foot slam into the softness of his lower body with a shock that

jarred her knee and ankle, and her attacker cried out and fell to his

knees.

Then she was away and running through the palm grove. At first she ran

without purpose or direction. She ran simply to get as far from them as

her flying legs would carry her. Then gradually she brought her panic

under control. She glanced back, but saw nobody following her.

As she reached the edge of the lake she slowed her run to conserve her

strength, and she became aware of the warm trickle of her own blood down

her arm and then dripping from her finger-tips.

She stopped.and rested her back against the rough hole of one of the

palms while she tore a strip of cloth from her ripped blouse and

hurriedly bound up her arm. She was shaking so much from shock and

exertion that even her uninjured hand was fumbling and clumsy. She

knotted the crude bandage with her teeth and left hand, and the bleeding

slowed.

She was uncertain of which way to run, and then she saw the dim

lamplight. in the window of Alia's shack across the nearest irrigation

canal. She pushed herself away from the palm trunk and started towards

it. She had covered less than a hundred paces when a voice called from

the grove behind her, speaking in Arabic, "Yusuf, has the woman come

your way?"

immediately an electric torch flashed from the darkness ahead of her and

another voice called back, "No, I have not seen her."

Another few seconds and Royan would have run full into him. She crouched

down and looked around her desperately. There was another torch coming

through the grove behind her, following the path she had taken. It must

be the man she had kicked, but she could tell by the motion of the torch

beam that he had recovered and was moving swiftly and easily again.

She was blocked on two sides, so she turned back along the edge of the

trail. The road lay that way. She might be able to meet a late vehicle

travelling on it. She lost her footing on the rough ground and went

down, bruising and scraping her knees, but she jumped up again and

hurried on. The second time she stumbled, her outthrust left hand landed

on a round, smooth stone the size of an orange. When she went on she

carried the stone with her; as a weapon it gave her a glimmer of

comfort.

Her wounded arm was beginning to hurt, and she was driven by worry for

Duraid. She knew he was badly wounded, for she had seen the direction

and force of the knife thrust. She had to find help for him. Behind her

the two men with torches were sweeping the grove and she could not keep

her lead ahead of them. They were gaining on her - she could hear them

calling to each other.

She reached the road at last, and with a small whimper of relief climbed

out of the drainage ditch on to the pale gravel surface. Her legs were

shaking under her so that they could hardly carry her weight, but she

turned in the direction of the village.

She had not reached the first bend before she saw a set of headlights

coming slowly towards her, flickering through the palm trees. She broke

into a run down the centre of the road.

"Help me!" she screamed in Arabic. "Please help me!'

The car came through the bend and before the headlights dazzled her she

saw that it was a small, darkcoloured Fiat. She stood in the centre of

the road waving her arms to halt the driver, lit by the headlights as

though she were on a theatre stage. The Fiat stopped in front of her,

and she ran round to the driver's door and tugged at the handle.

"Please, you must help me."

The door was opened from within, and then was thrown back with such

force that she staggered off-balance.

The driver leapt out into the roadway and caught her by the wrist of the

injured arm. He dragged her to the Fiat and pulled open the back door.

"Yusuf! Bacheed' he shouted into the dark grove. "I have her." And she

heard the answering cries and saw the torches turn in their direction.

The driver was forcing her head down and trying to push her into the

back seat, but she realized then that she still had the stone in her

good hand. She turned slightly and braced herself, and then swung her

fist with the stone still clenched in it against the side of his head.

It caught him squarely on the temple.

Without another sound he dropped to the gravel surface and lay

motionless.

Royan dropped the stone and pelted away down the road, but she found

that she was running straight down the path of the headlights, and they

lit her every movement.

The two men in the grove shouted again and came up on to the gravel

roadway behind her, almost shoulder to shoulder.

Glancing back, she saw them gaining on her swiftly, and she realized

that her only chance was to get off the road and back into the darkness.

She turned and plunged down the bank. Immediately she found herself

waist-deep in the waters of the lake.

In the darkness and the confusion she had become disorientated. She had

not realized that she had reached the point where the road skirted the

embankment at the water's edge. She knew that she did not have time to

climb back on to the road, and she knew also that there were thick

clumps of papyrus and reeds ahead of her, that might give her shelter.

She waded out until the bottom sloped away steeply under her feet, and

she found herself forced to swim. She broke into an awkward

breast-stroke, hampered by her skirts and her injured arm. However, her

slow and stealthy movements created almost no disturbance on the

surface, and before the men on the road had reached the point where she

had descended the bank, she reached a dense stand of reeds.

. She eased her way into the thick of them and let herself sink. Before

the water covered her nostrils she felt her toes touch the soft ooze of

the lake bottom. She stood there quietly, with just the top of her head

above the surface and her face turned away from the bank. She knew her

dark hair would not reflect the light of a probing torch.

Though the water covered her ears, she could make out the excited voices

of the men on the road. They had turned their torches down towards the

water and were shining them into the reeds, searching for her. For a

moment one of the beams played full on her head, and she drew a deep

breath ready to submerge, but the beam moved on and she realized that

they had not picked her out.

The fact that she had not been seen even in the direct torchlight

emboldened her to raise her head slightly until one ear was clear and

she could make out their voices.

They were speaking Arabic, and she recognized the voice of the one named

Bacheet. He appeared to be the leader, for he was giving the orders.

"Go in there, Yusuf, and bring the whore out."

She heard Yusuf slipping and sliding down the bank and the splash as he

hit the water.

"Further out," Bacheet ordered him. "In those reeds there, where I am

shining the torch."

"It is too deep. You know well I cannot swim. It will be over my head."

"There! Right in front of you. In those reeds. I can see her head."

Bacheet encouraged him, and Royan dreaded that they had spotted her. She

sank down as far as she could below the surface.

Yusuf splashed around heavily, moving towards where she cowered in the

reeds, when suddenly there was a thunderous commotion that startled even

Yusuf, so that he shouted aloud, "Djinns! God protect meV as the flock

of roosting duck exploded from the water and launched into the dark sky

on noisy wings.

Yusuf started back to the bank and not any of Bacheet's threats could

persuade him to continue the hunt.

"The woman is not as important as the scroll," he protested, as he

climbed back on to the roadway. "Without the scroll there will be no

money. We always know where to find her later."

Turning her head slightly, Royan saw the torches move back down the road

towards the parked Fiat whose headlights still burned. She heard the

doors of the car slam, and then the engine revved and pulled away

towards the villa.

She was too shaken and terrified to make any attempt to leave her

hiding-place. She feared that they had left one of their number on the

road to wait for her to show herself.

She stood on tiptoe with the water lapping her lips, shivering more with

shock than with cold, determined to wait for the safety of the sunrise

before she moved.

It was only much later when she saw the glow of the fire lighting the

sky, and the flames flickering through the trunks of the palm trees,

that she forgot her own safety and dragged herself back to the bank.

She knelt in the mud at the water's edge, shuddering and shaking and

gasping, weak with loss of blood and shock and the reaction from fear,

and peered at the flames through the veil of her wet hair -and the lake

water that streamed into her eyes.

"The villa! she whispered. "Duraid! Oh please God, no! No!

She pushed herself to her feet and began to stagger towards her burning

home.

acheet switched off both the headlights and the engine of the Fiat

before they reached the turning into the driveway of the villa and let

the car coast down and stop below the terrace.

All three of them left the Fiat and climbed the stone steps to the

flagged terrace. Duraid's body still lay where Bacheet had left it

beside the fishpond. They passed him without a glance and went into the

dark study.

Bacheet placed the cheap nylon tote bag he carried on the tabletop.

"We have wasted too much time already. We must work quickly now."

"It is Yusuf's fault," protested the driver of the Fiat. "He let the

woman escape."

"You had a chance on the road," Yusuf snarled at him, "and you did no

better."

"Enough!" Bacheet told them both. "If you want to get paid, then there

had better be no more mistakes."

With the torch beam Bacheet picked out the scroll that still lay on the

tabletop. "That is the one." He was certain, for he had been shown a

photograph of it so that there would be no mistake. "They want

everything - the maps and photographs. Also the books and papers,

everything on the table that they were using in their work.

Leave nothing."

Quickly they bundled everything into the tote bag and Bacheet zipped it

closed.

"Now the Doktari. Bring him in here."

The other two went out on to the terrace and stooped over the body. Each

of them seized an ankle and dragged Duraid back across the terrace and

into the study. The back of Duraid's head bounced loosely on the stone

step at the threshold and his blood painted a long wet skid mark across

the tiles that glistened in the torchlight.

"Get the lamp!" Bacheet ordered, and Yusuf went back to the terrace and

fetched the oil lamp from where Duraid had dropped it. The flame was

extinguished. Bacheet held the lamp to his ear and shook it.

"Full," he said with satisfaction, and unscrewed the filler cap. "All

right," he told the other two, take the bag out to the car."

As they hurried out Bacheet sprinkled paraffin from the lamp over

Duraid's shirt and trousers, and then he went to the shelves and

splashed the remainder of the fuel over the books and manuscripts that

crowded them.

He dropped the empty lamp and reached under the skirts of his dishdasha

for a box of matches. He struck one of them and held it to the wet run

of paraffin oil down the bookcase. It caught immediately, and flames

spread upwards and curled and blackened the edges of the manuscripts. He

turned away and went back to where Duraid lay. He struck another match

and dropped it on to his blood- and paraffindrenched shirt.

A mantle of blue flames danced over Duraid's chest.

The flames changed colour as they burned into the cotton material and

the flesh beneath it. They turned orange, and sooty smoke spiralled up

from their flickering crests.

Bacheet ran to the door, across the terrace and down the steps. As he

clambered into the rear seat of the Fiat, the driver gunned the engine

and pulled away down the driveway.

Durid drifted. He groaned. The first thing he was aware of as he

regained consciousness was the smell of his own flesh burning, and then

the agony struck him with full force. A violent tremor shook his whole

body and he opened his eyes and looked down at himself.

His clothing was blackening and smouldering, and the pain was as nothing

he had ever experienced in his entire life. He realized in a vague way

that the room was on fire all around him. Smoke and waves of heat washed

over him so that he could barely make out the shape of the doorway

through them.

The pain was so terrible that he wanted it to end. He wanted to die then

and not to have to endure it further.

Then he remembered Royan. He tried to say her name through his scorched

and blackened lips, but no sound came. Only the thought of her gave him

the strength to move. He rolled over once, and the heat attacked his

back that up until that moment had been shielded. He groaned aloud and

rolled again, just a little nearer to the doorway.

Each movement was a mighty effort and evoked fresh paroxysms of agony,

but when he rolled on to his back again he realized that a gale of fresh

air was being sucked through the open doorway to feed the flames. A

lungful Of the sweet desert air revived him and gave him just sufficient

strength to lunge down the step on to the cool stones of the terrace.

His clothes and his body were still on fire. He beat feebly at his chest

to try to extinguish the flames, but his hands were black burning claws.

Then he remembered the fishpond. The thought of plunging his tortured

body into that cold water spurred him he pain roused Duraid. It had to

be that intense to bring him back from that far place on the very edge

of life to which he had to one last effort, and he wriggled and wormed

his way across the flags like a snake with a crushed spine.

The pungent smoke from his still cremating flesh choked him and he

coughed weakly, but kept doggedly on.

He left slabs of his own grilled skin on the stone coping as he rolled

across it and flopped into the pond. There was a hiss of steam, and a

pale cloud of it obscured his vision so that for a moment he thought he

was blinded. The agony of cold water on his raw burned flesh was so

intense that he slid back over the edge of consciousness.

When he came back to reality through the dark clouds he raised his

dripping head and saw a figure staggering up the steps at the far end of

the terrace, coming from the garden.

For a moment he thought it was a phantom of his agony, but when the

light of the burning villa fell full upon her, he recognized Royan. Her

wet hair hung in tangled disarray over her face, and her clothing was

torn and running with lake water and stained with mud and green algae.

Her right arm was wrapped in muddy rags and her blood oozed through,

diluted pink by the dirty water.

She did not see him. She stopped in the centre of the terrace and stared

in horror into the burning room. Was Duraid in there? She started

forward, but the heat was like a solid wall and it stopped her dead. At

that moment the roof collapsed, sending a roaring column of sparks and

flames high into the night sky. She backed away from it, shielding her

face with a raised arm.

Duraid tried to call to her, but no sound issued from his smoke-scorched

throat. Royan turned away and started down the steps. He realized that

she must be going to call for help. Duraid made a supreme effort and a

crow-like croak came out between his black and blistered lips.

Royan spun round and stared at him, and then she screamed. His head was

not human. His hair was gone, frizzled away, and his skin hung in

tatters from his cheeks and chin. Patches of raw meat showed through the

black crusted mask. She backed away from him as though he were some

hideous monster.

"Royan," he croaked, and his voice was just recognizable. He lifted one

hand towards her in appeal, and she ran to the pond and seized the

outstretched hand.

"In the name of the Virgin, what have they done to you?" she sobbed, but

when she tried to pull him from the pond the skin of his hand came away

in hers in a single piece, like some horrible surgical rubber glove,

leaving the bleeding claw naked and raw.

Royan fell on her knees beside the coping and leaned over the pond to

take him in her arms. She knew that she did not have the strength to

lift him out without doing him further dreadful injury. All she could do

was hold him and try to comfort him. She realized that he was dying no

man could survive such fearsome injury.

"They will come soon to help us," she whispered to him in Arabic.

"Someone must see the flames. Be brave, my husband, help will come very

soon."

He was twitching and convulsing in her arms, tortured by his mortal

injuries and racked by the effort to speak.

"The scroll?" His voice was barely intelligible. Royan looked up at the

holocaust that enveloped their home, and she shook her head.

"It's gone," she said. "Burned or stolen."

"Don't give it up," he mumbled. "All our work-'

"It's gone," she repeated. "No one will believe us without-'

"No!" His voice was faint but fierce. "For me, my last---2 "Don't say

that," she pleaded. "You will be all right."

"Promise," he demanded. "Promise me!"

"We have no sponsor. I am alone. I cannot do it alone."

"Harper!" he said. Royan leaned closer so that her ear touched his

fire-ravaged lips. "Harper," he repeated. "Strong hard - clever man-'

and she understood then. Harper, Of course, was the fourth and last name

on the list of sponsors that he had drawn up. Although he was the last

on the list, somehow she had always known that Duraid's order of

preference was inverted. Nicholas Quenton Harper was his first choice.

He had spoken so often of this man with respect and warmth, and

sometimes even with awe.

"But what do I tell him? He does not know me. How will I convince him?

The seventh scroll is gone."

"Trust him," he whispered. "Good man. Trust him-' There was a terrible

appeal in his "Promise me!'

Then she remembered the notebook in their flat at Giza in the Cairo

suburbs, and the Taita material on the hard drive on her PC. Not

everything was gone. "Yes," she agreed, "I promise you, my husband, I

promise you."

Though those mutilated features could show no human expression there was

a faint echo of satisfaction in his voice as he whispered, "My flower!"

Then his head dropped forward, and he died in her arms.

The peasants from the village found Royan still kneeling beside the

pond, holding him, whispering to him. By that time the flames were

abating, and the faint light of dawn was stronger than their fading

glow.

The staff from the museum and the Antiquities were at the funeral the

church of the oasis. Even Atalan Abou Sin, the Minister of Culture and

Tourism and Duraid's superior, had come out from Cairo in his official

black air-conditioned Mercedes.

He stood behind Royan and, though he was a Moslem, joined in the

responses. Nahoot Guddabi stood beside his uncle. Nahoot's mother was

the minister's youngest sister, which, as Duraid had sarcastically

pointed out, fully made up for the nephew's lack of qualifications and

experience in archaeology anj for his ineptitude as an administrator.

The day was sweltering. Outside, the temperature stood at over thirty

degrees, and even in the dim cloisters of the Coptic church it was

oppressive. In the thick clouds of incense smoke and the drone of the

black-clad priest intoning the ancient order of service Royan felt

herself suffocating. The stitches in her right arm pulled and burned,

and every time she looked at the long black coffin that stood in front

of the ornate and gilded altar, the dreadful vision of Duraid's bald and

scorched head rose before her eyes and she swayed'in her seat and had to

catch herself before she fell.

At last it was over and she could escape into the open air and the

desert sunlight. Even then her duties were not at an end. As principal

mourner, her place was directly behind the coffin as they walked in

procession to the cemetery amongst the palm groves, where Duraid's

relatives awaited him in the family mausoleum.

Before he returned to Cairo, Atalan Abou Sin came to shake her hand and

offer her a few words of condolence.

"What a terrible business, Royan. I have personally spoken to the

Minister of the Interior. They will catch the animals responsible for

this outrage, believe me. Please take as long as you need before you

return to the museum," he told her.

"I will be in my office again on Monday," she replied, and he drew a

pocket diary from inside the jacket of his dark double-breasted suit. He

consulted it and made a note, before he looked up at her again.

"Then come to see me at the Ministry in the afternoon.

Four 'clock," he told her. He went to the waiting Mercedes, while Nahoot

Guddabi came forward to shake hands. Though his skin was sallow and

there were coffeecoloured stains beneath his dark eyes, he was tall and

elegant with thick wavy hair and very white teeth. His suit was

impeccably tailored and he smelt faintly of an expensive cologne. His

expression was grave and sad.

"He was a good man. I held Duraid in the highest esteem," he told Royan,

and she nodded without replying to this blatant untruth. There had been

little affection between Duraid and his deputy. He had never allowed

Nahoot to work on the Taita scrolls; in particular he had never given

him access to the seventh scroll, and this had been a point of bitter

antagonism between them.

"I hope you will be applying for the post of director, Royan," he told

her. "You are well qualified for the job."

"Thank you, Nahoot, you are very kind. I haven't had a chance to think

about the future yet, but won't you be applying?"

"Of course," he nodded. "But that doesn't mean that no one else should.

Perhaps you will take the job out from in front of my nose." His smile

was complacent. She was a woman in an Arab world, and he was the nephew

of the minister. Nahoot knew just how heavily the odds favoured him.

"Friendly rivals?"he asked.

Royan smiled sadly. "Friends, at least. I will need all of those I can

find in the future."

"You know you have many friends. Everyone in the department likes you,

Royan." That at least was true, she supposed. He went on smoothly, "May

I offer you a lift back to Cairo? I am certain my uncle will not

object."

"Thank you, Nahoot, but I have my own car here, and I must stay over at

the oasis tonight to see to some of Duraid's affairs."This was not true.

Royan planned to travel back to the flat in Giza that evening but, for

reasons that she was not very sure of herself, she did not want Nahoot

to know of her plans.

"Then we shall see you at the museum on Monday." Royan left the oasis as

soon as she was able to escape from the relations and family friends and

peasants, so many of whom had worked for Duraid's family most of their

lives.

She felt numbed and isolated, so that all their condolences and

exhortations were meaningless and Without comfort.

Even at this late hour the tarmac road back through the desert was busy,

with files of vehicles moving steadily in both directions, for tomorrow

was Friday and the sabbath. She slipped her injured right arm out of the

sling, and it did not hamper her driving too much. She was able to make

reasonably good time. Nevertheless, it was after five in the afternoon

when she made out the green line against the tawny desolation of the

desert that marked the start of the narrow strip of irrigated and

cultivated land along the Nile which was the great artery of Egypt.

As always the traffic became denser the nearer she came to the capital,

and it was almost fully dark by the time she reached the apartment block

in Giza that overlooked both the river and those great monuments of

stone which stood so tall and massive against the evening sky, and which

for her epitomized the heart and history of her land.

She left Duraid's old green Renault in the underground garage of the

building and rode up in the elevator to the top floor.

She let herself into the flat and then froze in the doorway. The sitting

room had been ransacked - even the rugs had been pulled up and the

paintings ripped from the walls. In a daze she picked her way through

the litter of broken furniture and smashed ornaments. She glanced into

the bedroom as she went down the passage, and saw that it had not

escaped. Her clothes and those of Duraid were strewn over the floor, and

the doors of the cupboards stood ajar. One of these was smashed off its

hinges. The bed was overturned, and the sheets and bolsters had been

flung about.

She could smell the reek of broken cosmetic and perfume bottles from the

bathroom, but she could not yet bring herself to go in there. She knew

what she would find.

Instead she continued down the passage to the large room that they had

used as a study and workshop.

In the chaos the first thing that she noticed and mourried was the

antique chess set that Duraid had given her as a wedding present. The

board of jet and ivory squares was broken in half and the pieces had

been thrown about the room with vindictive and unnecessary violence. She

stooped and picked up the white queen. Her head had been snapped off.

Holding the queen in her good hand she moved like a sleepwalker to her

desk below the window. Her PC was wrecked. They had shattered the screen

and hacked the mainframe with what must have been an axe. She could tell

at a glance that there was no information left on the hard drive; it was

beyond repair.

She glanced down at the drawer in which she kept her floppy disks. That

and all the other drawers had been pulled out and thrown on the floor.

They were empty, of course; along with the disks, all her notebooks and

photographs were missing. Her last connections with the seventh scroll

were lost. After three years of work, gone was the proof that it had

ever existed.

She stumped down on the floor, feeling beaten and exhausted. Her arm

started to ache again, and she was alone and vulnerable as she had never

been in her life before. She had never thought that she would miss

Duraid so desperately. Her shoulders began to shake and she felt the

tears welling up from deep within her. She tried to hold them back, but

they scalded her eyelids and she let them flow. She sat amongst the

wreckage of her life and wept until there was nothing more left within

her, and then she curled up on the littered carpet and fell, into the

sleep of exhaustion and despair.

the Monday morning she had managed to restore some order into her life.

The police had come to the flat and taken her statement, and she had

tidied up most of the disarray. She had even glued the head back on her

white queen. When she left the flat and climbed into the green Renault

her arm was feeling easier, and, if not cheerful, she was at least a

great deal more optimistic, and sure of what she had to do.

When she reached the museum she went first to Duraid's office and was

annoyed to find that Nahoot was there before her. He was supervising two

of the security guards as they cleared out all Duraid's personal

effects.

"You might have had the consideration to let me do that," she told him

coldly, and he gave her his most winning smile.

"I am sorry, Royan. I thought I would help." He was smoking one of his

fat Turkish cigarettes. She loathed the heavy, musky odour.

She crossed to Duraid's desk, and opened the top right hand drawer. "My

husband's day book was in here. It's gone now. Have you seen it?"

"No, there was nothing in that drawer."Nahoot looked at the two guards

for confirmation, and they shuffled their feet and shook their heads. It

did not really matter, she thought. The book had not contained much of

vital interest. Duraid had always relied on her to record and store all

data of importance, and most of it had been on her PC.

"Thank you, Nahoot," she dismissed him. "I will do whatever remains to

be done. I don't want to keep you from your work."

"Any help you need, Royan, please let me know." He bowed slightly as he

left her.

It did not take her long to finish in Duraid's office. She had the

guards take the boxes of his possessions down the corridor to her own

office and pile them against the wall.

She worked through the lunch-hour tidying up all her own affairs, and

when she had finished there was still an hour until her appointment with

Atalan Abou Sin.

If she was to make good her promise to Duraid, then she was going to be

absent for some time. Wanting to take leave of all her favoUrite

treasures, she went down into the public section of the huge building.

Monday was a busy day, and the exhibition halls of the museum were

thronged with groups of tourists. They flocked behind their guides,

sheep following the shepherd.

They crowded around the most famous of the displays.

They listened to the guides reciting their well-rehearsed spiels in all

the tongues of Babel.

Those rooms on the second floor that contained the treasures of

Tutankhamen were so crowded that she spent little time there. She

managed to reach the display cabinet that contained the great golden

death'mask of the child pharaoh. As always, the splendour and the

romance of it quickened her breathing and made her heart beat faster.

Yet as she stood before it, jostled by a pair of big-busted and sweaty

middle-aged female tourists, she pondered, as she had so often before,

that if an insignificant weakling king could have gone to his tomb with

such a miraculous creation covering his mummified features, in what

state must the great Ramessids have lain in their funeral temples.

Ramesses II, the greatest of them all, had reigned sixty-seven years and

had spent those decades accumulating his funerary treasure from all the

vast territories that he had conquered.

Royan went next to pay her respects to the old king.

After thirty centuries Ramesses II slept on with a rapt and serene

expression on his gaunt features. His skin had a light, marble-like

sheen to it. The sparse strands of his hair were blond and dyed with

henna. His hands, dyed with the same stuff, were long and thin and

elegant. However, he was clad only in a rag of linen. The grave robbers

had even unwrapped his mummy to reach the amulets and scarabs beneath

the linen bandages, so that his body was almost naked. When these

remains had been discovered in 1881 in the cache of royal mummies in the

cliff cave at Deir El Bahari, only a scrap of papyrus parchment attached

to his breast had proclaimed his lineage.

There was a moral in that, she supposed, but as she stood before these

pathetic remains she wondered again, as she and Duraid had done so often

before, whether Taita the scribe had told the truth, whether somewhere

in the far-off, savage mountains of Africa another great pharaoh slept

on undisturbed with all his treasures intact about him.

The very thought of it made her shiver with excitement, and goose

pimples prickled her skin and raised the fine dark hair at the nape of

her neck.

"I have given you my promise, my husband," she whispered in Arabic.

"This will be for you and your memory, for it was you who led the way."

She glanced at her "Wrist-watch as she went down the main staircase. She

had fifteen minutes before she must leave for her appointment with the

minister, and she knew, exactly how she would spend that time. What she

was going to visit was in one of the less-frequented side halls.

The tour guides very seldom led their charges this way, except as a

short-cut to see the statue of Amenhotep.

Royan stopped in front of the glass-fronted display case that reached

from floor to ceiling of the narrow room. It was packed with small

artefacts, tools and weapons, amulets and vessels and utensils, the

latest of them dating from the twentieth dynasty of the New Kingdom,

1100 BC, whilst the oldest survived from the dim ages of the Old Kingdom

almost five thousand years ago. The cataloguing of this accumulation was

only rudimentary. Many of the items were not described.

At the furthest end, on the bottom shelf, was a display of jewellery and

finger rings and seals. Beside each of the seals was a wax impression

made from it.

Royan went down on her knees to examine one of these artefacts more

closely. The tiny blue seal of lapis lazuli in the centre of the display

was beautifully carved.

Lapis was a rare and precious material for the ancients, as it had not

occurred naturally in the Egyptian Empire. The wax imprint cut from it

depicted a hawk with a broken wing, and the simple legend beneath it was

clear for Royan to read: "TAITA, THE SCRIBE OF THE GREAT QUEEN'.

She knew it was the same man, for he had used the maimed hawk as his

autograph in the scrolls. She wondered who had found this trifle and

where. Perhaps some peasant had plundered it from the lost tomb of the

old slave and scribe, but she would never know.

"Are you teasing me, Taita? Is it all some elaborate hoax? Are you

laughing at me even now from your tomb, wherever it may be?" She leaned

even closer, until her forehead touched the cool glass. "Are you my

friend, Taita, or are you my implacable adversary?" She stood up and

dusted off the front of her skirt. "We shall see. I will-play the game

with you, and we shall see who outwits whom," she promised.

The minister kept her waiting only a few minutes before his male

secretary ushered her into his presence. Atalan Abou Sin wore a dark,

shiny silk suit and sat at his desk, although Royan knew that he

preferred a more comfortable robe and a cushion on the rugs of the

floor. He noticed her glance and smiled deprecatingly. "I have a meeting

with some Americans this afternoon." .. She liked him. He had always

been kind to her, and she owed him her job at the museum. Most other men

in his position would have refused. Duraid's request for a female

assistant, especially his own wife.

He asked after her health and she showed him her bandaged arm. "The

stitches will come out in ten days."

They chatted for a while in a polite manner. Only Westerners would have

the gaucherie to come -directly to the main business to be discussed.

However, to save him embarrassment Royan took the first opportunity he

gave her to tell him, "I feel that I need some time to myself. I need to

recover from my loss and to decide what I am to do with the rest of my

life, now that I am a widow. I would be grateful if you would consider

my request for at least six months' unpaid leave of absence. I want to

go to stay with my mother in England."

Atalan showed real concern and urged her, "Please do not leave us for

too long. The work you have done has been invaluable. We need you to

help carry on from where Duraid left off." But he could not entirely

conceal his relief She knew that he had expected her to put before him

her application for the directorship. He must have discussed it with his

nephew. However, he was too kind a man to relish having to tell her that

she would not be selected for the job. Things in Egypt were changing,

women were emerging from their traditional roles, but not that much or

that swiftly. They both knew that the directorship must go to Nahoot

Ouddabi.

Atalan walked with her to the door of his office and shook her hand in

parting, and as she rode down in the lift she felt a sense of release

and freedom.

She had left the Renault standing in the sun in the Ministry car park.

When she opened the door the interior was hot enough to bake bread. She

opened all the windows and fanned the driver's door to force out the

heated air, but still the surface of the driver's seat burned the backs

of her thighs when she slid in behind the wheel.

As soon as she drove through the gates she was engulfed in the swarm of

Cairo traffic. She crawled along behind an overloaded bus that belched a

steady blue cloud of diesel fumes over the Renault. The traffic problem

was one that seemed to have no solution. There was so little parking

available that vehicles lined the verge of the road three and four

deep," choking the flow in the centre to a trickle.

As the bus in front of her braked and forced her to a halt, Royan smiled

as she recalled the old joke that some drivers who had parked at the

kerb had to abandon their cars there, for they were never able to

extricate them from the tangle. Perhaps there was a little truth in

this, for some of those vehicles she could see had not been moved for

weeks. Their windscreens were completely obscured with dust and many of

them had flat tyres.

She glanced in the rear-view mirror. There was a taxi stopped only

inches from her back bumper, and behind that the traffic was backed up

solidly. Only the motorcyclists had freedom of movement. As she watched

in the mirror, one of these came weaving through the congestion with

suicidal abandon. It was a battered red 200 cc Honda so covered with

dust that the colour was hardly recognizable. There was a passenger

perched on the pillion, and both he and the driver had covered the lower

half of their faces with the corners of their white headcloths as

protection against the exhaust fumes and dust.

Passing on the wrong side, the Honda skimmed through the narrow gap

between the taxi and the cars parked at the kerb with nothing to spare

on either side.

The taxi-driver made an obscene gesture with thumb and forefinger, and

called on Allah to witness that the driver was both mad and stupid.

The Honda slowed slightly as it drew level with Royan's Renault, and

the' pillion passenger leaned out and dropped something through the open

window on to the passenger seat beside her, Immediately the driver

accelerated so abruptly that for a moment the front wheel was lifted off

the ground. He put the motorcycle over into a tight turn and sped away

down the narrow alleyway that opened off the main thoroughfare, narrowly

avoiding hitting an old woman in his path.

As the pillion passenger looked back at her the wind blew the fold of ck

she recognized the man she had last seen in the headlights of the Fiat

on the road beside the oasis.

"Yusuf!" As the Honda disappeared she looked down at the object that he

had dropped on to the seat beside her.

It was egg-shaped and the segmented metallic surface was painted

military green. She had seen the same thing so often on old TV war

movies that she recognized it instantly as a fragmentation grenade, and

at the same moment she realized that the priming handle had flown off

and the weapon was set to explode within seconds.

Without thinking, she grabbed the door handle beside her and flung all

her weight against the door. It burst open and she tumbled out in the

road. Her foot slipped off the clutch and the Renault bounded forward

and crashed into the back of the stationary bus.

As Royan sprawled in the road under the wheels of the following taxi,

the grenade exploded. Through the open driver's door blew a sheet of

flame and smoke and debris. The back window burst outwards and sprayed

her with diamond chips of glass, and the detonation drove painfully into

her eardrums.

A stunned silence followed the shock of the explosion, broken only by

the tinkle of falling glass shards, and then immediately there was a

hubbub of groans and screams.

Royan sat up and clasped her injured arm to her chest. She had fallen

heavily upon it and the stitches were agony.

The Renault was wrecked, but she saw that her leather sling bag had been

blown out of the door and lay in the street close at hand. She pushed

herself unsteadily to her feet and hobbled over to pick it up. All

around her was confusion. A few of the passengers in the bus had been

injured, and a piece of shrapnel or wreckage had wounded a little girl

on the sidewalk. Her mother was screaming and mopping at the child's

bloody face with her scarf The girl struggled in her mother's grip,

wailing pitifully.

Nobody was taking any notice of Royan, but she knew the police would

arrive within minutes. They were geared up to respond swiftly to

fundamentalist terror attacks. She knew that if they found her here she

would be tied up in days of interrogation. She slung the bag over her

shoulder and walked as swiftly as her bruised leg would allow her to the

alleyway down which the Honda had disappeared.

At the end of the street was a public lavatory. She locked herself in

one of the cubicles and leaned against the door with her eyes closed,

trying to recover from the shock and to get her confused thoughts in

order.

In the horror and desolation of Duraid's murder she had not until now

considered her own safety. The realization of danger had been forced

upon her in the most savage manner. She remembered the words of one of

the assassins spoken in the darkness beside the oasis "We always know

where to find her later!'

The attempt on her life had failed only narrowly. She had to believe

that there would be another.

I can't go back to the flat," she realized. "The villa is gone, and

anyway they would look for me there."

Despite the unsavoury atmosphere she remained locked in the cubicle for

over an hour while she thought out her next movements. At last she left

the toilet and went to the row of stained and cracked washbasins. She

splashed her face under the tap. Then in the mirror she combed her hair,

touched up her make-up, and straightened and tidied her clothing as best

she was able.

She walked a few blocks, doubling back on her tracks and watching behind

her to make sure she -was not being followed, before she hailed a taxi

in the street.

She made the driver drop her in the street behind her bank, and walked

the rest of the way. It was only minutes before closing time when she

was " shown into the cubicle office of one of the sub-accountants. She

withdrew what money was in her account, which amounted to less than five

thousand Egyptian pounds. It was not a great sum, but she had a little

more in her Lloyds Bank account in York, and then she had her

Mastercard.

"You should have given us notice to withdraw an article from safe

deposit," the bank official told her severely.

She apologized meekly and played the helpless little-girllost so

convincingly that he relented. He handed over to her the package that

contained her British passport and her Lloyds banking papers.

Duraid had numerous relatives and friends who would have been pleased to

have her to stay with them, but she wanted to remain out of sight, away

from her usual haunts.

She chose one of the two-star tourist hotels away from the river where

she hoped she could remain anonymous amongst the multitudes of the tour

groups. At this type of hotel there was a high turnover of guests, for

most of them stayed only for a few nights before moving on up to Luxor

and Aswan to view the monuments.

As soon as she was alone in her single room she phoned British Airways

reservations. There was a flight to Heathrow the following morning at

ten 'clock. She booked a one-way economy seat and gave them the number

of her Mastercard.

It was after six 'clock by then, but the time difference between Egypt

and the UK meant that it would still be office hours there. She looked

up the number in her notebook. Leeds University was where she had

completed her studies. Her call was answered on the third ring.

"Archaeology Department. Professor Dixon's office," said a prim English

schoolmarm voice.

:Is that you, Miss Higgins?"

Yes, it is. To whom am I speaking?"

"It's Royan. Royan Al Simma, who used to be Royan Said :, Royan! We

haven't heard from you for an absolute age. How are your They chatted

for a short while, but Royan was aware of the cost of the call. "Is the

Prof in?" she cut it short.

Professor Percival Dixon was over seventy and should have retired years

ago. "Royan, is it really you? My favourite student." She smiled. Even

at his age he was still the randy old goat. All the pretty ones were his

favourite students.

"This is an international call, Prof. I just want to know if the offer

is still open."

"My goodness, I thought you said that you couldn't fit us in, whatr

"Change of circumstances. I'll tell you about it when I see you, if I

see you."

"Of course, we' love to have you come and talk to us.

When can you manage to get awayr

"I'll be in England tomorrow."

'my goodness, that's a bit sudden. Don't know if we can arrange it that

quickly."

"I will be staying with my mother near York. Put me back to Miss Higgins

and I will give her the telephone number." He was one of the most

brilliant men she knew, but she didn't trust him to write down a

telephone number correctly. "I'll call you in a few days' time."

She hung up and lay back on the bed. She was exhausted and her arm was

still hurting, but she tried to lay her plans to cover all

eventualities.

Two months ago Prof Dixon had invited her to lecture on the discovery

and excavation of the tomb of Queen Lostris,. and the discovery of the

scrolls. It was that book, of course, and more especially the footnote

at the end of it, that had alerted him. Its publication had caused a

great deal of interest. They had received enquiries from Egyptologists,

both amateur and professional, all around the world, some from as far

afield as Tokyo and Nairobi, all of them questioning the authenticity of

the novel and the factual basis behind it.

At the time she had opposed letting a writer of fiction have access to

the transcriptions, especially as they had not been completed. She felt

that the whole thing had reduced what should have been an important and

serious academic subject to the level of popular entertainment, rather

like what Spielberg had done to palaeontology with his park full of

dinosaurs.

In the end her voice had been over-ruled. Even Duraid had sided against

her. It had been the money, of course. The department was always short

of funds to conduct its less spectacular work. When it came to some

grandiose scheme like moving the entire Temple of Abu Simbel to a new

site above the flood waters of the Aswan High Dam, then the nations of

the world had poured in tens of millions of dollars. However, the

day-to'day operational expenses of the department attracted no such

support.

Their half share of the royalties from River God, for that was the

book's title, had financed almost a year of research and exploration,

but that was not enough to allay Royan's personal misgivings. The author

had taken too many liberties with the facts contained in the scrolls,

and had embroidered historical characters with personalities and foibles

for which there was not the least evidence. In particular she felt he

had portrayed Taita, the ancient scribe, as a braggart and a

vainglorious poseur. She resented that.

in fairness she was forced to concede that the author's brief had been

to make the facts as palatable and readable as possible to a wide lay

public, and she reluctantly agreed that he had succeeded in doing so.

However, all her scientific training revolted against such a

popularization of something so unique and wonderful.

But she sighed and put these thoughts out of her head.

The damage was done, and thinking about it only served to irritate her.

She turned her thoughts to more pressing problems. If she was to do the

lecture that the Prof had invited her to deliver, then she would need

her slides and these were still at her office in the museum. While she

was still working out the best way to get hold of them without fetching

them in Person, exhaustion overtook her and she fell asleep, still fully

clothed, on top of the bed.

the end the solution to her problem was simplicity itself. She merely

phoned the administration office and arranged for them to collect the

box of slides from her office and send it out to the airport in a taxi

with one of the secretaries.

When the secretary handed them over to her at the British Airways

check'in desk, he told her, "The police were at the Museum when we

opened this morning. They wanted to speak to you, Doctor."

Obviously they had traced the registration of the wrecked Renault. She

was pleased that she had her British Passport. If she had tried to leave

the country with her Egyptian papers she might have run into delays: the

police would probably have placed a restriction order on all passport

control points. As it was, she passed through the checkpoint with no

difficulty and, once she was in.the final departure lounge, she went to

the news-stand and studied the array of newspapers.

All the local newspapers carried the story of the bombing of her car,

and most of them had resurrected the story of Duraid's murder and linked

the two events. One of them hinted at fundamentalist religious

involvement. El Arab had a front-page photograph of herself and Duraid,

which had been taken the previous month at a reception for a group of

visiting French tour operators.

It gave her a pang to see the photograph of her husband looking so

handsome and distinguished, with herself on his arm smiling up at him.

She purchased copies of all the papers and took them on board the

British Airways flight.

During the flight she passed the time by writing down in her notebook

everything she could remember from what Duraid had told her of the man

that she was going to find..

She headed the page: "Sir Nicholas Quenton-Harper (Bart)." Duraid had

told her that Nicholas's great-grand, father had been awarded the title

of baronet for his work as a career officer in the British colonial

service. For three generations the family had maintained the strongest

of ties with Africa, and especially with the British colonies and

spheres of influence in North Africa: Egypt and the Sudan, Uganda and

Kenya.

According to Duraid, Sir Nicholas himself had served in Africa and the

Gulf States with the British army. He was a fluent Arabic and Swahili

speaker and a noted amateur archaeologist and zoologist. Like his

father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him, he had made

numerous expeditions to North Africa to collect specimens and to explore

the more remote regions. He had written a number of articles for various

scientific journals and had even lectured at the Royal Geographical

Society.

When his elder brother died childless, Sir Nicholas had inherited the

title and the family estate at Quenton Park. He had resigned from the

army to run the estate, but more especially to supervise the family

museum that had been started in 1885 by his great-grandfather, the first

baronet. It housed one of the largest collections of African fauna in

private hands, and its ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern collection of

artefacts was equally famous.

However, from Duraid's accounts she concluded that there must be a wild,

and even lawless, streak in Sir Nicholas's nature. It was obvious that

he was not afraid to take some extraordinary risks to add to the

collection at Quenton Park.

Duraid had first met him a number of years previously, when Sir Nicholas

had recruited him to act as an intelligence officer for an illicit

expedition to "liberate' a number of Punic bronze castings from

Gadaffi's Libya. Sir Nicholas had sold some of these to defray the

expenses of the expedition, but had kept the best of them for his

private collection.

More recently there had been another expedition, this time involving an

illegal crossing of the Iraqi border to bring out a pair of stone

has-relief friezes from under Saddam Hussein's nose. Duraid had told her

that Sir Nicholas had sold one of the pair for a huge amount of money;

he had mentioned the sum of five million US dollars. Duraid said that he

had used the money for the running of the museum, but that the second

frieze, the finest of the pair, was still in Sir Nicholas's possession.

Both these expeditions had taken place years before Royan had met

Duraid, and she wondered idly at Duraid's readiness to commit himself to

the Englishman in this way.

Sir Nicholas must have had unique powers of persuasion, for if they had

been apprehended in the act there was no doubt that it would have meant

summary execution for both of them.

As Duraid had explained to her, on each occasion it was only Nicholas's

resourcefulness and his network of friends and admirers across the

Middle East and North Africa, which he had been able to call on for

help, that had seen them through.

"He is a bit of a devil," Duraid had shaken his head with evident

nostalgia at the memory, "but the man to have with you when things are

tough. Those days were all very exciting, but when I look back on it now

I shudder at the risks we took."

She had often pondered on the risks that a true inthe-blood collector

was prepared to take to slake his passion. The risk seemed to be out of

proportion to the reward, when it came to adding to his accumulations;

and then she smiled at her own pious sentiments. The venture that she

hoped to lead Sir Nicholas into was not exactly without risk, and she

supposed that a circumlocution of lawyers might debate the legality of

it endlessly.

Still smiling, she fell asleep, for the strain of these last few days

had taken their toll. The air hostess woke her with an admonition to

fasten her seat-belt for the landing at Heathrow.

an phoned her mother from the airport.

ello, Mummy. It's me."

"Yes, I know that. Where are you, love?" Her mother sounded as

unflappable as ever. -'At Heathrow. I am coming up to stay with you for

a while. Is that all right?"

"Lumley's and ," her mother chuckled. "I'll go and make your bed. What

train will you be coming up on?"

"I had a look at the timetable. There is one from King's Cross that will

get me into York at seven this evening."

"I'll meet you at the station. What happened? Did you and Duraid have a

tiff? Old enough to be your father. I said it wouldn't work."

Royan was silent for a moment. This was hardly the time for

explanations. "I'll tell you all about it when I see you this evening."

Georgina Lumley, her mother, was waiting on the platform in the gloom

and cold of the November evening, bulky and solid in her old green

Barbour coat with Magic, her cocker spaniel, sitting obediently at her

feet. The two of them made an inseparable pair, even when they were not

winning field trials cups. For Royan they painted a comforting and

familiar picture of the English side of her lineage.

Georgina kissed Royan's cheek in a perfunctory manner. "Never was one

for all that sentimental fiddle, faddle," she often said with

satisfaction, and she took one of Royan's bags and led the way to the

old mud-splattered Land Rover in the car park.

Magic sniffed Royan's hand and wagged his tail in recognition. Then in a

dignified and condescending manner he allowed her to pat his head, but

like his mistress he was no great sentimentalist either.

. They drove in silence for a while and Georgina lit a cigarette. "So

what happened to Duraid, then?"

For a minute Royan could not reply, and then the floodgates within her

burst and she let it all come pouring out. It was a twenty-minute drive

north of York to the little village of Brandsbury, and Royan talked all

the way.

Her mother made only small sounds of encouragement and comfort, and when

Royan wept as she related the details of Duraid's death and funeral,

Georgina reached across and patted her daughter's hand.

It was all over by the time they reached her mother's cottage in the

village. Royan had cried it out and was dryeyed and rational again as

they ate the dinner that her mother had prepared and left in the oven

for them. Royan could not remember when last she had tasted steak and

kidney pie.

"So what are you going to do now?" Georgina asked as she poured what

remained in the black bottle of Guinness into her own glass.

"To tell the truth, I don't know." As she said it, Royan wondered

ruefully why so many people used that particular phrase to introduce a

lie. "I have six months' leave from the museum, and Prof Dixon has

arranged for me to give a lecture at the university. That is as far as

it goes for the moment."

"Well," said Georgina as she stood up, "there is a hotwater bottle in

your bed and your room is there for as long as you wish to stay." From

her that was as good as a passionate declaration of maternal love.

Over the next few days Royan arranged her slides and notes for the

lectures, and each afternoon she accompanied Georgina and Magic on their

long walks over the surrounding countryside.

"Do you know Quenton Park?" she asked her mother during one of these

rambles.

"Rather," Georgina replied enthusiastically. "Magic and I pick up there

four or five times a season. First-class shoot. Some of the best

pheasant and woodcock in Yorkshire. One drive there called the High

Larches which is notorious. Birds so high they baffle the best shots in

England."

"Do you know the owner, Sir Nicholas Quenton Harper?" Royan asked.

"Seen him at the shoots. Don't know him. Good shot, though," Georgina

replied. "Knew his papa in the old days before I married your father."

She smiled in a suggestive way that startled Royan. "Good dancer. We

danced a few jigs together, not only on the dance floor."

"Mummy, you are outrageous!'Royan laughed.

"Used to be," Georgina agreed readily. "Don't get many opportunities

these days."

"When are you and Magic going to Quenton Park again?"

"Two weeks' time."

"May I come with you?"

"Of course - the keeper is always looking for beaters.

Twenty quid and lunch with a bottle of beer for the day." She stopped

and looked at her daughter quizzically. "What is all this about, then?"

"I hear there is a private museum on the estate. They have a

world-renowned Egyptian collection. I wanted to get a look at it."

"Not open to the public any more. Invitation only. Sir Nicholas is an

odd chap, secretive and all that."

"Couldn't you get an invitation for me?" Royan asked, but Georgina shook

her head.

"Why don't you ask Prof Dixon? He is often one of the guns at Quenton

Park. Great chum of Quenton-Harper."

It was ten days before Prof Dixon was ready for her. She borrowed her

mother's Land Rover and drove to Leeds. The Prof folded her in a bear

hug and then took her through to his office for tea.

It was nostalgic of her days as a student to be back in the cluttered

room filled with books and papers and ancient artefacts. Royan told him

about Duraid's murder, and Dixon was shocked and distressed, but she

quickly changed the subject to the slides that she had prepared for the

lecture. He was fascinated by'everything she had to show him.

It was almost time for her to leave before she had an opportunity to

broach the subject of the Quenton Park museum, but he responded

immediately.

"I am amazed that you never visited it while you were a student here.

It's a very impressive collection. The family has been at it for over a

hundred years. As a matter of fact, I am shooting on the estate next

Thursday. I'll have a word with Nicholas. However, the poor chap isn't

up to much at the moment. Last year he suffered a terrible "personal

tragedy. Lost his wife and two little girls in a motor accident on the

MU He shook his head. "Awful business. Nicholas was driving. I think he

blames himself' He walked her out to the Land Rover.

"So we will see you on the twenty-third," he told Royan as they parted.

"I expect that you will have an audience of at least a hundred, and I

have even had a reporter from the Yorkshire Post on to me. They have

heard about your lectures and they want to do an interview with you.

jolly good publicity for the department. You'll do it, of course. Could

you come a couple of hours early to speak to them?"

"Actually I will probably see you before the twenty-third," she told

him. "Mummy and her dog are picking up at Quenton Park on Thursday, and

she has got me a job as a beater for the day."

"I'll keep an eye open for you," he promised, and waved to her as she

pulled away in a cloud of exhaust smoke.

The wind was searing cold out of the north.

The clouds tumbled over each other, heavy 6- and blue and grey, so close

to earth that they brushed the crests of the hills as they hurried ahead

of the gale.

Royan wore three layers of clothing under the old green Barbour jacket

that Georgina had lent her, but still she shivered as they came up over

the brow of the hills in the line of beaters. Her blood had thinned in

the heat of the Nile valley. Two pairs of fisherman's socks were not

enough to save her toes from turning numb.

For this drive, the last of the day, the head keeper had moved Georgina

from her usual position behind the line of guns, where she and Magic

were expected to pick up the crippled birds that came through to them,

into the line of beaters.

Keeping the best for last, they were beating the High Larches. The

keeper needed every man and woman he could get into the line to bring in

the pheasant from the huge piece of ground on top of the hills and to

push them off the brow, out over the valley where the guns waited at

their pegs far below.

It seemed to Royan a supreme piece of illogical behaviour to rear and

nurture the pheasants from chicks I and then, when they were mature, go

to such lengths to make them as difficult to shoot as the keeper could

devise.

However, Georgina had explained to her that the higher and harder to hit

the birds passed over the guns, the more pleased the Sportsmen were, and

the more they were willing to pay for the privilege of firing at them.

"You cannot believe what they will pay for a day's shooting,, Georgina

had told her. "Today will bring in almost 14,000 to the estate. They

will shoot twenty days this season. Work that out and you will see that

the shoot is a major part of the estate's income. Quite apart from the

fun of working the dogs and beating, it gives a lot of us local people a

very useful bit of extra money."

At this stage of the day, Royan was not too certain just how much fun

there was to he had from the job of beating. The walking was difficult

in the thick brambles, and Royan had slipped more than once. There was

mud on her knees and elbows. The ditch ahead of her was half filled with

water and there was a thin skin of ice across the surface. She

approached it gingerly, using her walking-stick to balance herself. She

was tired, for there had already been five drives, all as onerous as

this one. She glanced across at her mother and marvelled at how she

seemed to be enjoying this torture. Georgina strode along happily,

controlling Magic with her whistle and hand signals.

She grinned at Royan now, "Last lap, over." love. early Royan was

humiliated that her distress had-been so obvious, and she used her stick

to help her vault the muddy ditch. However, she miscalculated the width

and fell short of the far bank. She landed knee-deep in the frozen water

and it poured in over the top of her Wellington boots.

Georgina laughed at her and offered her the end of her Own stick to pull

her out of the glutinous mud. Royan could not hold up the line by

stopping to empty her flooded boots, so she went on, squelching loudly

with each pace.

"Steady on the left! the order from the head keeper was relayed over the

walkie-talkie radio, and the line halted obediently.

The art and skill of the keeper was to flush the birds from the tangled

undergrowth, not in one massed covey, but in a steady trickle that would

pass over the waiting guns in singles and pairs, giving them the chance,

after they had fired two barrels, to take their second gun from the

loader and be ready for the next bird to appear in the sky high above

them. The size of the keeper's tip and his reputation depended on the

way he "showed' the birds to the waiting guns.

During this respite Royan was able to regain her breath, and to look

around her. Through a break in the branches that gave the drive its

name, she could see down into the valley.

There was an open meadow at the foot of the hills, the expanse of smooth

green grass broken up by patches of dirty grey snow from the previous

week's fall. Down this meadow the keeper had set a line of numbered

pegs. At the beginning of the day's sport the guns had drawn lots to

decide the peg number from which each of them would shoot.

Now each man stood "at his allotted peg, with his loader holding his

second gun ready behind him, ready to pass it over when the first gun

was empty. They were all looking up expectantly to the high ground from

which the pheasant would appear.

"Which is Sir Nicholas?" Royan called to her mother, and Georgina

pointed to the far end of the line of guns.

"The tall one," she said, and at that moment the keeper's voice on the

radio ordered, "Gently on the left.

Start tapping again." Obediently the beaters tapped their sticks. There

was no shouting or hallooing in this delicate and strictly controlled

operation.

"Forward slowly. Halt to the flush of birds."

A step at a time the line moved ahead, and in the brambles and bracken

in front of her Royan could hear the stealthy scuffle of a number of

pheasants moving forward, reluctant to take to the air until they were

forced to do so.

There was another ditch in their path, this one choked with an almost

impenetrable, thicket of brambles. Some of the larger dogs, like the

Labradors, balked at entering such a thorny barrier. Georgina whistled

sharply and Magic's ears went up. He was soaked and his coat was a

matted mess of mud and buffs and thorns. His pink tongue lolled from the

corner of his grinning mouth and the sodden stump of his tail was

wagging merrily. At that moment he was the happiest dog in England. He

was doing the work that he had been bred for.

"Come on, Magic," Georgina ordered. "Get in there.

Get them out."

Magic dived into the thickest and thorniest patch, and disappeared

completely from view. There was a minute of snuffling and rooting around

in the depths of the ditch, and then a fierce cackle and flurry of

wings.

A pair of birds exploded out of the bushes. The hen led the way. She was

a drab, nondescript creature the size of a domestic fowl, but the cock

bird that followed her closely was magnificent. His head was capped with

iridescent green and his cheeks and wattles were scarlet. His tail,

barred in cinnamon and black, was almost as long again as his body and

the rest of his plumage was a riot of gorgeous colour.

As he climbed he sparkled against the lowering grey sky like a priceless

jewel thrown from an emperor's hand.

Royan gasped with the beauty of the sight.

"Just look at them go!'Georgina's voice was thick with excitement. "What

a pair of crackerjacks. The best pair today. My bet is that not one of

the guns will touch a feather on either of them."

Up, and then on up, the two birds climbed, the hen drawing the cock

after her, until suddenly the wind boiling over the hills like

overheated milk caught them both and flung them away, out over the

valley.

The line of beaters enjoyed the moment. They had worked hard for it.

Their voices were tiny and faint on the wind as they urged the birds on.

They loved to see a pheasant so high and fast that it could beat the

guns.

"Forward!" they exulted. "over! and this time the line came

involuntarily to a halt as they followed the flight of the pair that

were twisting away on the wind.

In the valley bottom the faces of the guns were turned upwards, pale

specks against the green background. Their trepidation was almost

palpable as they watched the pheasant reach their maximum speed, so that

they could no longer beat their wings, but locked them into a back-swept

profile as they began to drop down into the valley.

This was the most difficult shot that any gun would face. A high pair of

pheasant with a half gale quartering from behind, dropping into the shot

at their terminal rate of flight, set to pass over the line at the

extreme effective range of a twelve-bore shotgun. For the men below it

was a calculation of speed "and lead in all three dimensions of space.

The best of shots might hope to take one of them, but who would dare to

think of both?

"A pound on it!" Georgina called. "A pound that they both get through."

But none of the beaters who heard her accepted the wager.

The wind was pushing the birds gently sideways. They started off aimed

at the centre of the line, but they were drifting towards the far end.

As the angle changed, Royan could see the men at the pegs below her

brace themselves in turn as the birds appeared to be heading straight

for them, and then relax as the wind moved them on. Their relief was

evident as, one after the other, each of them was absolved from the

challenge of having to make such an impossible shot with all eyes

fastened upon him.

In the end only the tall figure at the extreme end of the line stood in

their flight path.

"Your bird, sir," one of the other guns called mockingly, and Royan

found that instinctively she was holding her breath with anticipation.

Nicholas Quenton-Harper seemed unaware of the approach of the pair of

pheasant. He stood completely relaxed, his tall frame slouching

slightly, his shotgun tucked under his right arm with the muzzles

pointing at the ground.

At the moment that the leading hen bird reached a point in the sky sixty

degrees ut ahead of him he moved for the first time. With casual grace

he swung the shotgun up in a sweeping arc. At the instant that the butt

touched I I his cheek and shoulder he fired, but the gun never stopped

moving and went on to describe the rest of the arc.

The distance delayed the sound of the shot reaching I Royan. She saw the

barrels kick with the recoil, and a pale spurt of blue smoke from the

muzzle. Then Nicholas lowered the gun as the hen suddenly threw back her

head and closed her wings. There was no burst of feathers from her body,

for she had been hit cleanly in the head and killed instantly. As she

began the long plummet to earth Royan heard the thud of the shot.

By then the cock was high over Nicholas's head. This time as he mounted

the gun in that casual sweeping gesture he arched his back to point

upwards, his long frame bending from the waist like a drawn bow. Once

again at the apex of the swing the weapon kicked in his grasp.

"He has missed!" Royan thought with a mixture of satisfaction and

disappointment, as the cock sailed on seemingly unscathed. Part of her

wanted the beautiful bird to escape, while part of her wanted the man to

succeed.

Gradually the profile of the high cock altered as the wings folded back

and it rolled over in flight. Royan had no way of knowing that his heart

had been struck through, until seconds later he died in mid-air and the

locked wings lost their rigid set.

As the cock tumbled to earth, a spontaneous chorus of heers ran down

the line of beaters, faint but enthusiastic on the icy north wind. Even

the other guns added their voices with cries of, "Oh, good shot, sir!'

Royan did not join in the cheering, but for the moment her fatigue and

cold were forgotten. She could only vaguely appreciate the skill that

those two shots had called for, but she was impressed, even a little

awed. Her very first glimpse of the man had fulfilled all the

expectations that Duraid's stories about him had raised in her.

By the time the last drive ended it was almost dark.

An old army truck came mbling down the track through ru the forest along

which the tired beaters and their dogs waited. As it slowed they

scrambled up into the back.

Georgina gave Royan a boost from behind before she and Magic followed

her up. They settled thankfully on one of the long hard benches, and

Georgina lit a cigarette as she joined, in the chat and banter of the

under-keepers and beaters around her.

Royan sat silently at the end of the bench, enjoying the sense of

achievement at having come through such a strenuous day. She felt tired

and relaxed, and strangely contented. For one whole day she had not

thought either of the theft of the scroll or of Duraid's murder and the

unknown and unseen enemy who threatened her with aviolent death.

The truck ground down the hill and slowed as it reached the bottom,

pulling in to the verge to let a green Range Rover pass. As the two

vehicles drew level, Royan turned her head and looked down into the open

driver's window of the expensive estate car, and into the eyes of

Nicholas Quenton Harper at the wheel.

This was the first time she had been close enough to him to see his

features. She was surprised at how young he was. She had expected him to

be a man of Duraid's age.

She saw now that he was no older than forty, for there were only the

first strands of silver in the wings of his thick, rumpled hair. His

features were tanned and weatherbeaten, those of an outdoors man. His

eyes were green and penetrating under dark, beetling brows. His mouth

was wide and expressive, and he was smiling now at some witticism that

the driver of the truck called to him in a thick Yorkshire accent, but

there was a sense of sadness and tragedy in the eyes. Royan remembered

what the Prof had told her of his recent bereavement, and she felt her

heart go out to him. She was not alone in her loss and her mourning.

He looked directly into her eyes and she saw his expression change. She

was an attractive woman, and she could tell when a man recognized that.

She had made an impression on him, but she did not enjoy the fact. Her

sorrow for Duraid was still too raw and painful. She looked away and the

Range Rover drove on.

Her lecture at the university went off extremely well. Royan was a good

speaker and she knew her subject intimately. She held them fascinated

with her account of the opening of the tomb_of Queen Lostris and of the

subsequent discovery of the scrolls. Many of her audience had read the

book, and during question time they pestered her to know how much of it

was the truth. She had to tread very carefully here, so as not to deal

too harshly with the author.

Afterwards Prof Dixon took Royan and Georgina to dinner. He was

delighted with her success, and ordered the most expensive bottle of

claret on the wine list to celebrate.

He was only mildly disconcerted when she refused a glass of it.

"Oh, dear me, I forgot that you were a Moslem," he apologized.

"A Copt," she corrected him, "and it's not on religious grounds. I just

don't like the taste."

"Don't worry," Georgina counselled him, "I don't have the same odd

compulsion to masochism as my daughter.

She must get it from her father's side. I'll give you a hand to finish

the good stuff."

Under the benign influence of the claret the Prof became expansive, and

entertained them with the accounts of the archaeological digs he had

been on over the decades.

It was only over the coffee that he turned to Royan.

"Goodness me, I almost forgot to tell you. I have arranged for you to

visit the museum at Quenton Park any afternoon this week. just ring Mrs.

Street the day before, and she will be waiting to let you in. She is

Nicholas's PA."

Ryan remembered the way to Quenton Park when Georgina had driven them

to the shoot, but now she was alone in the Land Rover. The massive main

gates to the estate were made of ornate cast iron. A little further on,

the road divided and a cluster of road signs pointed the way to the

various destinations: "Quenton Hall, Private', "Estate Office' and

"Museum'.

The road to the museum curved through the deer park where herds of

fallow deer grazed under the winter'bare oaks. Through the misty

landscape she had glimpses of the big house. According to the guidebook

that the Prof had given her, Sir Christopher Wren had designed the house

in 1693, and the master landscapist, Capability Brown, had created the

gardens sixty years later. The results were perfection.

The museum was set in a grove of copper beech trees half a mile beyond

the house. It was a sprawling building that had obviously been added to

more than once over the years. Mrs. Street was waiting for her at the

side door, and introduced herself as she let Royan in. She was middle

aged, grey-haired and self-assured. "I was at your lecture on Monday

evening. Fascinating! I have a guidebook for you, but you will find the

exhibits well catalogued and described.

I have spent almost twenty years at the job. There are no other visitors

today. You will have the place to yourself.

You must just wander around and please yourself. I shall not leave until

five this evening, so you have all afternoon.

If I can help you in any way my office is at the end of the passage.

Please don't hesitate."

From the first moment that Royan walked into the display of African

mammals she was enthralled. The primate room housed a complete

collection of every single species of ape and monkey from that

continent: from the great ilver-backed male gorilla to the delicate

colobus in his long flowing mantle of black and white fur, they were all

represented.

Although some of the exhibits were over a hundred years old, they were

beautifully preserved and presented, set in painted dioramas of their

natural habitat. It was obvious that the museum must employ a staff of

skilled artists and taxidermists. She could guess what this must have

cost. Wryly she decided that the five million'dollars from the sale of

the plundered treasure had been well spent.

She went through to the antelope room and stared around her in wonder at

the magnificent beasts preserved here. She stopped before a diorama of a

family group of the giant sable antelope of the now extinct Angolan

variety, Hippotragus niger variant. While she admired the jet black and

snowy-chested bull with his long, back-swept horns, she mourned his

death at the hand of one of the Quenton, Harper family. Then she checked

herself. Without the strange dedication and passion of the

hunter-collector who had killed him, future generations might never have

been able to look upon this regal presence.

She passed on into the next hall which was given over to displays of the

African elephant, and paused in the centre of the room before a pair of

ivory tusks so large that she could not believe they had ever been

carried by a living animal. They seemed more like the marble columns of

some Hellenic temple to Diana, the goddess of the chase.

She stooped to read the printed catalogue card:

Tusks of the African Elephant, Loxodonta africana.

Shot in the Lado Enclave in 1899 by Sir Jonathan Quenton-Harper. Left

tusk 289 lb. Right tusk 301 lb. Length of larger tusk 11' 4'. Girth 32".

The largest pair of tusks ever taken by a European hunter.

They stood twice as high as she was tall, and they were half as thick

again as her waist. As she passed on into the Egyptian room

she-marvelled at the size and strength of the creature that had carried

them.

She came up short as her eyes fell upon the figure in the centre of the

room. It was a fifteen-foot-high figure of Rarnesses 11, depicted as the

god Osiris in polished red granite. The god-emperor strode out on

muscular legs, wearing only sandals on his feet and a short kilt. In his

left hand he carried the remains of a warlbow, with both the upper and

lower limbs of the weapon broken off. This was the only damage that the

statue had suffered in all those thousands of years. The rest of it was

perfect - the plinth even bore the marks of the mason's chisel. In his

right fist Pharaoh carried a seal embossed with his royal cartouche.

Upon his majestic head he wore the tall double crown of the upper and

lower kingdoms. His expression was calm and enigmatic.

Royan recognized the statue instantly, for its twin i stood in the grand

hall of the Cairo museum. She passed it every day on her way to her

office.

She felt anger rising in her. This was one of the major treasures of her

very Egypt. It had been plundered and stolen from one of her country's

sacred sites. It did not belong here. It belonged on the banks of the

great river Nile. She felt herself shaking with the strength of her

emotion as she went forward to examine the statue more closely and to

read the hieroglyphic inscription on the base.

The royal cartouche stood out in the centre of the arrogant warning: "I

am the divine Ramesses, master of ten thousand chariots - Fear me, of ye

enemies of Egypt."

Royan had not read the translation aloud; it was a soft, deep voice

close behind her that spoke, startling her. She had not heard anyone

approaching. She spun round to find him standing close enough to touch.

His hands were thrust into the pockets of a shapeless blue cardigan.

There was a hole in one elbow. He wore faded denim jeans over well'worn

but monogrammed velvet carpet slippers - the type of genteel shabbiness

that certain Englishmen often cultivate, for it would never do to seem

too concerned with one's appearance.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you," He smiled eazy.

'le of apology, and his teeth were very white but slightly "t smi

crooked. Suddenly his expression changed as he recognized her.

"Oh, it's you." She should have been flattered that he remembered her

from so fleeting a contact, but there was that flash of something in his

eyes again that offended her.

Nevertheless, she could not refuse the hand he offered her.

"Nick Quenton-Harper," he introduced himself. "You must be Percival

Dixon's old student. I think I saw you at the shoot last Thursday.

Weren't you beating for us?"

His manner was friendly and forthright, so she felt her hackles

subsiding as she responded, "Yes. I am Royan Al Simma. I think you knew

my husband, Duraid Al Simma."

"Duraid! Of course, I know him. Grand old fellow. We spent a lot of time

in the desert together. One of the very best. How is he?"

"He's dead." She had not meant it to sound so bald and heartless, but

then there was no other reply she could think of.

"I am so terribly sorry. I didn't know. When and how did it happen?"

"Very recently, three weeks ago. He was murdered.

"Oh, my God." She saw the sympathy in his eyes, and she remembered that

he also had suffered. "I telephoned him in Cairo not more than four

months ago. He was his old charming self Have they found the person who

did it?"

She shook her head and looked around the hall to avoid having to -face

him and let him see that her eyes were wet. "You have an extraordinary

collection here."

He accepted the change of subject at once. Thanks mostly to my

grandfather. He was on the staff of Evelyn Baring - Over Bearing, as his

numerous enemies called him. He was the British man in . Cairo during-'

She cut him short. "Yes, I have heard of Evelyn Baring, the first Earl

of Cromer, British Consul-General of Egypt from 1883 to 1907. With his

plenipotentiary powers he was the unchallenged dictator of my country

for all that period. Numerous enemies, as you say."

Nicholas's eyes narrowed slightly. "Percival warned me you were one of

his best students. He didn't, however, warn me of your strong

nationalistic feelings. It is clear that you didn't need me to translate

the Ramesses inscription for you."

"My own father was on the staff of Gama! Abdel Nasser," she murmured.

Nasser was the man who had toppled the puppet King Farouk and finally

broken the British power in Egypt. As president he had nationalized the

Suez Canal in the face of British outrage.

"HaV he chuckled. "Different sides of the track. But things have

changed. I hope we don't have to be enemies?"

"Not at all," she agreed. "Duraid held you in the highest esteem."

"As I did him." He changed the subject again. "We ar very proud of our

collection of royal ushabd Examples from the tomb of every pharaoh from

the old Kingdom onwards, right up to the last of the Ptolemys. Please

let me show it to you." She followed him to the huge display case that

occupied one complete wall of the hall. It was lined with shelf after

shelf of the doll-like figures which had been placed in the tombs to act

as servants and slaves for the dead kings in the shadow world.

With his own key Nicholas opened the glazed doors of the case and

reached up to bring down the most interesting of the exhibits. "This is

the ushabd of Maya who served under three pharaohs, Tutankhamen, Ay and

Horemheb.

It is from the -tomb of Ay who died in 1343 Bc."

He handed the doll to her and she read aloud the three thousand-year-old

hieroglyphics as easily as though they had been the headlines of that

morning's newspaper.

"I am Maya, Treasurer of the two Kingdoms. I will answer for the divine

Pharaoh Ay. May he live for ever!" She spoke in Arabic to test him, and

his reply in the same language was fluent and colloquial, "It seems that

Percival Dixon told me the truth. You must have been an exceptional

student."

Engrossed now in their common interest, speaking alternately Arabic and

English, the initial sharp prickles.of antagonism between them were

dulled. They moved slowly round the hall, lingering before each display

case to handle and examine minutely each object that it contained.

It was as though they were transported back over the millennia. Hours

and days seemed of no consequence in the face of such antiquity, and so

it startled both of them when Mrs. Street returned to interrupt them, "I

am off now, Sir Nicholas. Can I leave it to you to lock up and set the

alarm? The security guards are on duty already."

"What time is it?"Nicholas answered his own question by glancing at the

stainless steel Rolex Submariner on his wrist. "Five-forty already, what

on earth happened to the day?" He sighed theatrically. "Off you go, Mrs.

Street. Sorry we kept you so long."

"Don't forget to set the alarm," she warned him, and then to Royan, "He

can be so absent-minded when he is off on one of his hobby-horses." Her

fondness towards her employer was obviously that of an indulgent aunt.

"You've given me enough orders for one day. Off you go," Nicholas

grinned, as he turned back to Royan. "Can't let you go without showing

you something that Duraid."was in on with me. Can you stay for a few

minutes longer?" She nodded and he reached out as if to take her arm,

and then dropped his hand. In the Arab world it is insulting to touch a

woman, even in such a casual manner. She was aware of the courtesy, and

she warmed to his good manners and easy style a little more.

He led her out of the exhibition halls through a door marked "Private.

Staff Only', and down a long corridor to the room at the end.

The inner sanctum." He ushered her in. "Excuse the mess'. I must really

get around to tidying up in here one of these years. My wife used to-'

He broke off abruptly, and he glanced at the silver-framed photograph of

a family group on his desk. Nicholas and a beautiful dark-haired woman

sat on a picnic rug under the spreading branches of an oak. There were

two little girls with them and the family resemblance to the mother was

strong in both of them. The youngest child sat on Nicholas's lap while

the elder girl stood behind them, holding the reins of her Shetland

pony. Royan glanced sideways at him and saw the devastating sorrow in

his eyes.

So as not to embarrass him she looked around the rest of the room, which

was obviously his study and workshop.

It was spacious and comfortable, a man's room, but it illustrated the

contradictions of his character - the bookish scholar set against the

man of action. Amongst the muddle of books and museum specimens lay

fishing reels and a Hardy split cane salmon rod. On a row of wall hooks

hung a Barbour jacket, a canvas shotgun slip and a leather cartridge bag

embossed with the initials ..-.

She recognized some of the framed pictures on the walls. They were

original nineteenth-century watercolours by the Scottish traveller David

Roberts, and others by Vivant Denon who had accompanied Napoleon's

L'armie de I'Orient to Egypt. They were fascinating views of the

monuments drawn before the excavations and restorations of more modern

times.

Nicholas went to the fireplace and threw a log on the fading coals. He

kicked it until it flared up brightly and then beckoned her to stand in

front of the floor-to-ceiling curtains that covered half of one wall.

With a conjuror's flourish he pulled the tasselled cord that opened the

curtains and exclaimed with satisfaction, "

"What do you make of that, then?"

She studied the magnificent has-relief frieze that was mounted on the

wall. The detail was beautiful and the rendition magnificent, but she

did not let her admiration show. Instead she gave her opinion in offhand

tones.

"Sixth King of the Amorite dynasty, Hammurabi, about 1780 Bc," she said,

pretending to study the finely chiselled features of the ancient monarch

before she went on, "Yes, probably from his palace site south-west of

the ziggurat at Ashur. There should have been a pair of these friezes.

They are worth in the region of five million US dollars each. My guess

is that they were stolen from the saintly ruler of modern Mesopotamia,

Saddam Hussein, by two unprincipled rogues. I hear that the other one of

the pair is at present in the collection of a certain Mr Peter Walsh in

Texas."

He stared at her in astonishment, and then burst out laughing. "Damn it!

I swore'Duraid to secrecy but he must have told you about our naughty

little escapade." It was the first time she had heard him laugh. It

seemed to come naturally to his lips and she -liked the sound of it,

hearty and unaffected.

"You are right about the present owner of the second frieze," he told

her, still laughing. "But the price was six million, not five."

"Duraid also told me about your visit to the Tibesti Massif in Chad and

southern Libya," she remarked, and he shook his head in mock contrition.

'it seems I have no secrets from you." He went to a tall armoire against

the opposite wall. It was a magnificent piece of marquetry furniture,

probably seventeenth-century French. He opened the double doors and

said, "This is what Duraid and I brought back from Libya, without the

consent of Colonel Muammar al Gadaffi."He took down one of the exquisite

little bronzes and handed it to her. It was the figure of a mother

nursing her infant, and it had a green patina of age.

"Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca," he said, "about 203 BC. These were

found by a band of Tuareg at one of his old camps on the Bagradas river

in North Africa.

Hannibal must have cached them there before his defeat by the Roman

general Scipio. There were over two hundred bronzes in the hoard, and I

still have fifty of the best of them."

"You sold the rest of them?" she asked, as she admired the statuette.

There was disapproval in her tone as she went on, "How could you bear to

part with something so beautiful?"

He sighed unhappily, "Had to, I am afraid. Very sad, but the expedition

to retrieve them cost me a fortune. Had to cover expenses by selling

some of the booty."

He went to his desk and brought out a bottle of Laphroaig malt whisky

from the bottom drawer. He placed the bottle on the desk top and set two

glasses beside it.

"Can I tempt you?" he asked, but she shook her head.

"Don't blame you. Even the Scots themselves admit that this brew should

only be drunk in sub-zeiro weather on The Hill, in a forty-knot gale,

after stalking and shooting a ten-point stag. May I offer you something

a little more ladylike?"

Do you have a Coke?" she suggested.

Yes, but that is really bad for you, even worse than Laphroaig. It's all

that sugar. Absolute poison."

She took the glass he brought to her and returned his toast with it.

"To life!" she agreed, and then she went on, "You are right. Duraid did

tell me about these." She replaced the Punic bronze in the armoire, then

came to face him at the desk. "It was also Duraid who sent me to see

you. It was his dying instruction to me."

"Aha! So none of this is coincidence then. It seems I am the unwitting

pawn in some deep and nefarious plot." He pointed to the chair facing

his desk. "Sit!" he ordered "Tell!'

He perched above her on the corner of the desk, with the whisky glass in

his right hand and with one long, denim-clad leg swinging lazily as the

tail of a resting leopard. Though he was smiling quizzically, he watched

her face with a penetrating green gaze. She thought that it would be

difficult to lie to this man.

She took a deep breath, "Have you heard of an ancient Egyptian queen

called Lostris, of the second intermediate period, coexistent with the

first Hyksos invasions?"

He laughed a little derisively and stood up, "Oh! Now we are talking

about the book River God, are we?" He went to the bookcase and brought

down a copy. Although well thumbed, it was still in its dust-jacket, and

the cover illustration was a dreamy surrealistic view in pastel shades

of green and rose purple of the pyramids seen over water.

He dropped it on the desk in front of her.

"Have you read it?" she asked.

"Yes," he nodded. "I read most of Wilbur Smith's stuff.

He amuses me. He has shot here at Quenton Park a couple of times."

"You like lots of sex and violence in your reading, obviously?" She

pulled a face. "What did you think of this particular book?"

"I must admit that he had me fooled. Whilst I was reading it, I sort of

wished that it might be based on fact.

That was why I phoned Duraid." Nicholas picked up the book again and

flipped to the end of it. "The author's note was convincing, but what I

couldn't get out of my mind was the last sentence." He read it aloud.

"'Sanwwhere in the Abyssinian mountains near the source of the Blue

Nile, the mummy of Tenus still lies in the unviolated tomb of Pharaoh

Mamose.

Almost angrily Nicholas threw the book down on the desk. "My God! You

will never know how much I wanted it to be true. You will never know how

much I wanted a shot at Pharaoh Mamose's tomb. I had to speak to Duraid.

When he assured me it was all a load of bunkum, I felt cheated. I had

built up my expectations so high that I was bitterly disappointed."

"It's not bunkum," she contradicted him, and then corrected herself

quickly, "well, at least not all of it."

"I see. Duraid was lying to me, was he?"

"Not lying," she defended him hotly. "Just delaying the truth a little.

He wasn't ready to tell you the whole story then. He didn't have the

answers to all the questions that he knew you would ask. He was going to

come to you when he was ready. Your name was at the top of the list of

potential sponsors that he had drawn up."

"Duraid did not have the answers, but I suppose you do?" He was smiling

sceptically. was caught once. I am not likely to fall for the same cock

and bull a second time."

"The scrolls exist. Nine of them are still in the, vaults at the Cairo

museum. I was the one who discovered them in the tomb of Queen Lostris."

Royan opened her leather sling bag and rummaged around in it until she

brought out a thin sheaf of glossy 6 4 colour photographs. She selected

one and passed it to him. That is a shot of the rear wall of the tomb.

You can just make out the alabaster jars in the niche. That was taken

before we removed them."

"Nice picture, but it could have been taken anywhere." She ignored the

remark and passed him another photograph. The ten scrolls in Duraid's

workroom at the museum. You recognize the two men standing behind the

bench?"

He nodded. "Duraid and Wilbur Smith." His sceptical expression had

turned to one of doubt and bemusement.

"What the hell are you trying to tell me?"

"What the hell I am trying to tell you is that, apart from a wide poetic

licence that the author took unto himself, all that he- wrote in the

book has at least some foundation in the truth. However, the scroll that

most concerns us is the seventh, the one that was stolen by the men who

murdered my husband."

Nicholas stood up and went to the fireplace. He threw on another log and

bashed it viciously with the poker, as if to give release to his

emotions. He spoke without "turning "What was the significance of that

particular scroll around, as opposed to the other nine?"

"It was the one that contained the account of Pharaoh Mamose's burial

and, we believe, directions that might enable us to find the site of the

tomb."

"You believe, but you aren't certain?" He swung around to face her with

the poker gripped like a weapon. In this mood he was frightening. His

mouth was set in a tight hard line and his eyes glittered.

"Large parts of the seventh scroll are written in some sort of code, a

series of cryptic verses. Duraid and I were in the process of

deciphering these when-' she broke off and drew a long breath, "when he

was murdered."

"You must have a copy of something so valuable?" He glared at her, so

that she felt intimidated. She shook her head.

"All the microfilm, all our notes, all of it was stolen along with the

original scroll. Then whoever killed Duraid went back to our flat in

Cairo and destroyed my PC on to which I had transposed all our

research."

He threw the poker into the coal scuttle with a clatter, and came back

to the desk. "So you have no evidence at all? Nothing to prove that any

of this is true?"

"Nothing," she agreed, "except what I have here." With a long slim

forefinger she tapped her forehead. "I have a good memory."

He frowned and ran his fingers through his thick curling hair. "And so

why did you come to me?"

"I have come to give you a shot at the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose, she told

him simply. "Do you want it?"

Suddenly his mood changed. He grinned like a naughty schoolboy. "At this

moment I cannot think of anything I want more."

Then you and I will have to draw up some sort of working agreement," she

told him, and she leaned forward in a businesslike manner. "First, let

me tell you what I want, and then you can do the same."

It was hard bargaining, and it was one in the morning when Royan

admitted her exhaustion. "I can't think straight any more. Can we start

again tomorrow morning?" They still had not reached an agreement.

"It's tomorrow morning already," he told her. "But you are right.

Thoughtless of me. You can sleep here. After all, we do have

twenty-seven bedrooms here."

"No, thanks." She stood up. "I'll go on home."

"The road will be icy," he warned her. Then he saw her determined

expression and held up his hands in capitulation. "All right, I won't

insist. What time tomorrow? I have a meeting with my lawyers at ten, but

we should be finished by noon. Why don't you and I have a working lunch

here? I was supposed to be shooting at Ganton in the afternoon, but I

will cancel that. That way I will have the afternoon and evening clear

for you."

Nicholas's meeting with the lawyers took place the next morning in the

library of Quenton Park. It was not an easy nor a pleasant session, but

then he never expected it to be. This had been the year in which his

world began to fall to pieces around his head. He gritted his teeth as

he remembered how the year had opened with that fatal moment of fatigue

and inattention at midnight on the icy motorway, and the blinding

headlights of the truck bearing down on them.

He had not recovered from that before the next brutal blow had fallen.

This was the financial report of the Lloyd's insurance syndicate on

which Nicholas, like his father and grandfather before him, was a

"Name'. For half a century the family had enjoyed a regular and

substantial income from their share of the syndicate profits. Of

course,'Nicholas had been aware that liability for his share of any

losses that the syndicate suffered was unlimited. The enormity of that

responsibility had weighed lightly; for there had never been serious

losses to account for, not for fifty years, not until this year.

With the California earthquake and environmental pollution claims

awarded against one of the multinational chemical companies, the

syndicate's losses had amounted to over twenty-six million pounds

sterling. Nicholas's share of that loss was two and a half million

pounds - some of which had been settled, but the rest was due for

payment in a little over eight months' time - together with whatever

nasty surprises next year might hold.

Almost immediately after that the Quenton Park estate's crop of sugar

beet, almost a thousand acres in total, had been hit by rhizomania, the

mad root disease. They had lost the lot.

"We will need to find at least two and a half million," said one of the

lawyers. "That should be no problem - the Hall is filled with valuable

items, and what about the museum? What could we reasonably expect from

the sale of some of the exhibits?"

Nicholas winced at the thought of selling the Ramesses statue, the

bronzes, the Hammurabi frieze or any item of his cherished collection at

the Hall or the museum. He acknowledged that their sale would cover his

debts, but he doubted that he could live without them. Almost anything

was preferable to parting with them.

"Hell, no," Nicholas cut in, and the lawyer looked across at him coldly.

"Well, let's see what else we've got," he continued remorselessly.

"There's the dairy herd."

"That will bring in a hundred thousand, if we are lucky," Nicholas

grunted. "Leaves only two point four million to find."

"And your racing stud," the accountant came into the conversation.

"I have only six horses in training. Another two hundred grand."

Nicholas smiled without humour, "Brings us down to two point two. We are

getting there slowly."

"The yacht," suggested the youngest lawyer.

"It's older than I am," Nicholas shook his head, "belonged to my father,

for heaven's sake. You probably wouldn't be able to give it away.

Sentimental is the only value it has. My shotguns would be worth more."

Both lawyers bent their heads over their lists, "Ah, yes!

We have those. A pair of Purdey sidelock ejectors in good condition.

Estimate forty thousand."

"I also have some secondhand socks and underpants," Nicholas admitted.

'%why don't you list those also?"

They ignored the jibe. "men there is the London house," the elder lawyer

went on unperturbed, inured to human suffering. "Good address. Value one

point five million."

"Not in this financial climate, Nicholas contradicted him. "A million is

more realistic." The lawyer made a note in the margin of his document

before going on, "Of course we want to avoid, if at all possible,

putting the entire estate up for sale."

It was a hard and difficult meeting which ended with nothing definitely

decided, and Nicholas feeling angry and frustrated.

He saw the lawyers off, and then went up to the family quarters to take

a quick shower and change his shirt. As an afterthought, and for no

good'reason, he shaved and splashed aftershave on his cheeks.

He drove across the park and left the Range Rover in the museum car

park. The snow had turned to sleet, and I his bare head was sprinkled

with cold droplets by the time he had crossed the car park.

Royan was waiting in Mrs. Street's office. The two of them seemed to be

getting along well together. He stopped outside the door to listen to

her laughter. It made him feel a little better.

The cook had sent across a hot lunch from the main house. She seemed to

believe that a substantial meal would keep this foul weather at bay.

There was a tureen of thick, rich minestrone and a Lancashire hotpot,

with a half bottle of red Burgundy for him and a jug of freshly squeezed

orange juice for her. They ate in front of the fire, while the rain

whipped against the windowpanes.

While they ate he asked her to give him the details of Duraid's murder.

She left out nothing, including her own injuries and drew back her

sleeve to show him the dressing over the knife wound. He listened

intently as she told him of the second attempt on her life in the

streets of Cairo.

"Any suspicions?" he asked, when she had finished.

"Anybody you can think of who might be responsible?" But she shook her

head.

"There was no warning of any kind, she said.

They finished the meal in silence, each of them thinking their own

thoughts. Over the coffee he suggested, "All right, then. -What about

our agreement?"

They argued back and forth for nearly an hour.

"It's difficult to agree on your share of the booty, until I know just

what your contribution is going to be,'Nicholas protested as he topped

up their coffee cups. "After all, I am going to be called on to finance

and conduct the expedition-'

"You will just have to trust that my contribution will be worthwhile,

otherwise there will simply be no booty, as you call it. Anyway you can

be certain I am not going to tell you one thing more until we have -an

agreement, and have shaken hands on it."

"A bit harsh?" he asked, and she gave him a wicked smile.

"If you don't like my terms, there are three other names on Duraid's

list of possible sponsors," she threatened.

"All right," he cut in with a contrived look of martyrdom, "I agree to

your proposal, But how do we calculate equal shares?"

"I shall choose the first item of any archaeological artefacts we are

able to retrieve, and you the next, and so on, turn about."

"How about I choose first?" He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Let's spin for it," she suggested, and he fished a pound coin from his

pocket.

"Call!" He flipped the coin, and while it was in the air she called,

"Heads."

"Damn!" he exclaimed, as he retrieved the coin and shoved it back into

his pocket. "So, you get first choice of the booty, if there ever is

any." He held out his hand across the lunch table. "It will be yours to

do exactly what you want to do with it. You can even donate it to the

Cairo museum, if that is still your particular aberration. Deal?" he

asked, and. she took his hand.

"Deal," she agreed, and then added, Partner."

"Now let's get down to it. No more secrets between us Tell me every

detail that you have been holding back."

"Bring that book," she pointed to the copy of River God, and while he

fetched it she pushed the dirty dishes aside. "The first thing we should

go over is the sections of the book that Duraid edited." She turned to

the last pages.

"Here. This is where Duraid's obfuscation begins."

"Good word,'Nicholas smiled, "but let's keep it simple.

You have obfuscated me enough already."

She did not even smile. "You know the story to this point. Queen Lostris

and her people are driven out of Egypt by the Hyksos and their superior

chariots. They journey south up the Nile until they reach the confluence

of the White and Blue Niles. In other words, present-day Khartoum. All

this is reasonably faithful to the scrolls."

"I recall. Go on."

"In the holds of their river galleys they are carrying the mummified

body of Queen Lostris's husband, Pharaoh Mamose the Eighth. Twelve years

previously she has sworn to him as he lay dying of a Hyksos arrow

through his lung that she would find a secure burial site for him, and

that she would lay him in it with all his vast treasure. When they reach

Khartoum she determines that the time has at last come for her to make

good her promise to him. She sends out her son, the fourteen-year-old

Prince Memnon, with a squadron of chariots to find the burial site.

Memnon is accompanied by his mentor, the narrator of the history, the

indefatigable Taita."

"Okay, I remember this section. Memnon and Taita consult the black

Shilluk slaves they have captured, and on their advice decide to follow

the left-hand fork of the rivet, or what we know as the Blue Nile."

Royan nodded and continued the story. "They travelled eastwards and were

confronted by formidable mountains, so high that they were described as

a blue rampart.

So far what you read in the book is a fairly faithful rendition of the

scrolls, but at this point," she tapped the open page, we come to

Duraid's red herring. In his description of the foothills-'

Before she could continue, Nicholas interjected, "I remember thinking

when I originally read it that it didn't accurately describe the area

where the Blue Nile emerges from the Ethiopian highlands. There are no

foothills. There is only the sheer western escarpment of the massif. The

river comes out of it like a snake out of its hole. Whoever wrote that

description doesn't know the course of the Blue Nile."

"Do you know the area?" Royan asked, and he laughed and nodded.

"Alhen I was younger and even more stupid than I am now, I conceived the

grandiose plan of boating the Abbay gorge from Lake Tana down to the dam

at Roseires in the Sudan. The Abbay is the Ethiopian name for the Blue

Nile., "Why did you want to do that?"

"Because it had never been done before. Major Cheesman, the British

consul, had a shot at it in 1932, and nearly drowned himself. I thought

I could make a film, and write a book about the voyage and earn myself a

fortune , from the royalties. I talked my father into financing the

expedition. It was the kind of mad escapade that appealed to him. He

even wanted to join the expedition. I studied the whole course of the

Abbay river, not only on maps. I also bought myself an old Cessna 180

and flew down the gorge, five hundred miles from Lake Tana to the dam.

As I said, I was twenty-one years old and crazy."

"What happened?" She was fascinated. Duraid had never told her about

this, but it was the type of adventure that she would have expected this

man to launch into.

"I recruited eight of my friends from Sandhurst, and we devoted our

Christmas holidays to the attempt. It was a fiasco. We lasted two days

on those wild waters. The gorge is the most hellish corner of this earth

that I know of It's almost twice as deep and as rugged as the Grand

Canyon of the Colorado river in Arizona. It smashed up our kayaks before

we had covered twenty miles out of the five hundred.

We had to abandon all our equipment and climb the walls of the gorge to

reach civilization again."

He looked serious for a moment, "I lost two members of our party. Bobby

Palmer was drowned, and Tim Marshall fell on the cliffs. We were not

even able to recover their bodies. They are still down there somewhere.

I had to tell their parents-' he broke off as he remembered the agony of

it.

"Has anybody ever succeeded in navigating the Blue Nile gorge?"-she

asked, to distract him.

"Yes. I went back a few years later. This time not as leader, but as a

very junior member of the official British Armed Forces Expedition. It

took the army, the navy and the air force to beat that river."

She stared at him with a feeling of awe. He had actually rafted the

Abbay. It was as though she had been led to him by some strange fate.

Duraid was right. There bably no man in the world better qualified for

the was pro work in hand.

"So you know as much as anybody about the real the gorge. I will try to

give you a general nature of indication of what Taita actually set down

in the seventh scroll. Unfortunately this section of the scroll had

suffered some damage and Duraid and I were obliged to extrapolate from

parts of the text. You will have to tell me how this agrees with your

own knowledge of the terrain."

"Go ahead, he invited her.

"Taita described the escarpment very much the -way you did, as a sheer

wall from which the river emerged.

They were forced to leave their chariots, which were unable to cover the

steep and rugged terrain of the canyon. They were forced to go forward

on foot, leading the pack horses.

Soon the gorge grew so steep and dangerous that they lost, which fell

from the wild goat tracks some of these animal they were following and

plunged into the river far below.

This did not deter them and they pressed on at the orders of Prince

Memnon."

"I can see it exactly as he describes it. It's a fearsome bit of

countryside."

"Taita then describes coming to a series of obstacles, which he

describes as "steps". Duraid and I could not decide with certainty what

these were. But our best guess was that they were waterfalls."

"No shortage of those in the Abbay gorge, either," Nicholas nodded.

"This is the important part of his testimony. Taita tells us that after

twenty days' travel up the gorge they came upon the "second step". It

was here that the prince received a fortuitous message from his dead

father, in the form of a dream, in which he chose this as the site of

his own tomb.

Taita tells us that they travelled no further. If we are able to

determine what it was that stopped them, that would give us an accurate

measurement of just how far into the gorge they penetrated."

"Before we can go any further we will need maps and satellite

photographs of the mountains, and I will have to go over my expedition

notes and diary," Nicholas decided "I try to keep my reference library

up-to-date, and so we should have satellite photographs and the most

recent maps on file here in the museum. If they are Mrs. Street is the

one to find them."

He stood up and stretched, "I will dig out my diaries this evening and

read over them. My great-grandfather also hunted and collected in

Ethiopia in the last century. I know he crossed the Blue Nile near Debra

Markos in 1890something. I'll get out his notes as well. They are

preserved in our archives. The old boy may have written something there

that could help us."

He walked with her to the old green Land Rover in the car park, and as

she started the engine he told her through the open window, "I still

think that you should stay over here at the Hall. It must be an

hour-and-a-half's drive across to Brandsbury - each way that's three

hours a day. We are going to have a lot of work to do before we can even

think of leaving for Africa."

"What would people think?" she asked, as she let out the clutch.

"I have never given a damn about people," he called after her. "What

time will I see you tomorrow?"

I have to stop off to see the doctor in York. He is going to take the

stitches out of my arm. I won't be here before eleven," she stuck her

head out of the window to yell back at him.

The wind tossed her dark hair around her face. His fancy had always run

towards dark-haired women. Rosalind had had that mysterious Eastern

look. He felt guilty and disloyal making the comparison, but the memory

of Royan was hard to shake off.

She was the first woman who had interested him since Rosalind had gone.

The admixture of her blood drew him.

She was exotic enough to pique his taste for. the oriental, but English

enough to speak his language and understand his sense of humour. She was

educated and knowledgeable about those things that interested him, and

he admired her spirit. Usually Eastern women were trained from birth to

be self-effacing and compliant. This one was different.

eorgina had phoned her doctor in York to make an appointment to have the

stitches removed from Royan's arm. They left after breakfast from the

cottage in Brandsbury. Georgina was driving and Magic sat between them

on the bench seat.

As they turned into the village street, Royan noticed a large MAN truck

parked down near the post office, but she thought no more about it.

Once they were out in the countryside they found there were patches of

heavy fog that in places reduced visibility to thirty yards, but

Georgina made no concessions to the weather, and sent the Land Rover

rattling and whining through it at the top of its speed, which Royan

reflected thankfully was on the right side of sixty miles an hour.

She glanced over her shoulder to check the road behind them, and saw

that the MAN truck was following them, Only the cab rose above the sea

of low mist that surrounded it like the conning tower of a submarine.

Even as she watched it, a bank of fog intervened and swallowed it up.

She turned back to listen to her mother.

"This government is a troop of incompetent nincompoops." Georgina

squinted her eyes against the smoke from the cigarette that dangled from

her lips. She drove singlehanded, stroking Magic's flowing silken ear

with her free hand, "I don't mind ministers boiling themselves into a

stupor, but when they start fiddling around with my pension I get really

mad." Her mother's pension from the foreign service was her sole source

of income, and it wasn't much.

"You don't truly want a Labour government, now tell the truth, Mummy,'

Royan teased her. Her mother had always been the arch Conservative.

Georgina wavered, and then avoided the choice, "All I say is, bring back

Maggie."

Royan turned slightly in her seat and glanced through the dirty rear

window again. The truck was still behind them, looming out of the fog

and the trail of blue exhaust smoke that Georgina was laying behind her

like the vapour trail of a jet aircraft. Up until now it had hung back,

but suddenly it accelerated up behind them.

"I think he wants to pass you," Royan told Georgina mildly.

The massive bonnet of the truck was only twenty feet from their rear

bumper. The radiator was emblazoned with the chrome logo "MAN' and stood

taller than the cab of the Land Rover, so that she could not see the

face of the driver from where she sat.

"Everybody wants to pass me," lamented Georgina.

"Story of my life." She held the centre of the narrow road doggedly.

Royan glanced back again, and saw that the truck was creeping still

closer. It filled the rear window completely.

The driver declutched and revved the gigantic engine menacingly.

"You' better give over. I think he means business."

"Let him wait,' Georgina grunted around her cigarette butt. "Patience is

a virtue. Anyway, can't let him through here. There is a narrow stone

bridge ahead of us. Know this stretch of road like the way to my own

bathroom."

At that moment the truck-driver sounded his klaxon so close that it was

deafening. Magic jumped up on the rear seat and barked in outrage.

"Stupid bastard," Georgina swore bitterly. "What does he think he is

playing at? Write down his number plate. I am going to report him to the

York police."

"His plates are covered with mud. Can't make it out, but it looks like a

continental registration. German, I think."

As if the driver had heard her protest he slowed slightly and fell back

until a gap of twenty yards opened between the two vehicles. Royan had

swivelled right round in the seat to watch him.

"That's better," Georgina said smugly. "Ruddy Hun learning some

manners." She peered ahead through the fog, "There is the bridge For the

first time Royan was able to see up into the driver's cab of the truck.

The driver wore a balactava helmet that covered all but his eyes and

nose with dark blue wool. It gave him a sinister and evil aspect.

"Look outV Royan screamed suddenly. "He is coming straight at us!" The

engine beat of the great truck rose to a bellow that engulfed them like

the sound of a gale-driven sea. For a moment Royan saw'nothing but

glittering steel and then the front of the truck smashed into them from

behind.

She was thrown half over the back of her seat by the impact. She dragged

herself up and saw that the truck had picked them up like a fox with a

bird in its jaws. It carried the Land Rover forward on the steel bull

bars that protected the shining chromed radiator.

Georgina wrestled with the wheel, trying to maintain control, but the

effort was futile. "Can't hold her. The bridge! Try and get clear-'

Royan hit the quick-release buckle on her safety-belt and reached for

the door handle. The stone walls of the bridge were racing towards them

at a terrifying pace. The Land Rover was slewing across the road,

completely out of control.

The door burst open in Royan's grip, but she could not push it all the

way before the Land Rover was flung into the solid stonework columns

that guarded the approaches PI to the bridge, The two women screamed in

unison as the vehicle crumpled, and the impact hurled them forward. The

windscreen shattered as they bounced off the stone columns, and the body

of the Land Rover flipped over as it went down the embankment and began

to roll.

Royan was catapulted through the open door and flung clear. The slope of

the bank broke her fall, but it knocked the wind out of her. She bounced

and rolled down the incline and then dropped into the icy waters of the

stream below the bridge.

Just before her head went under, she found herself looking up at the sky

and the bridge above her. She caught one last glimpse of the truck

before it roared away. It was towing two huge cargo trailers. The tall

bodywork of the trailers stood higher than the guard rail of the bridge.

Both of the trailers were covered by a heav green nylon tarpaulin roped

down to the lugs on the body. She had only a subliminal glimpse of a

large red trademark and company name painted on the side of the nearest

trailer, but before she could register the name she was plunged below

the surface of the stream and the cold and the force of her fall drove

the air from her lungs.

She fought her way to the surface of the river, and found she had been

washed some way downstream.

Impeded by her sodden clothing, she floundered to the bank and used the

branch of a tree to haul herself out.

She knelt in the mud, coughing up the water she had swallowed and trying

to assess what injury she had suffered in the collision. Then her own

plight was forgotten as she heard the terrible sounds of her mother's

agony from the overturned wreck of the Land Rover.

In frantic haste she clawed herself to her feet and stumbled through the

wet and frosted grass to where the Land Rover lay on its back at the

foot of the embankment.

The bodywork was crumpled and torn, and the bright silver aluminium

metal shone through where the dark green paint had been stripped away.

The engine had stalled, and the front wheels were still spinning

aimlessly as she reached it.

"Mummy! Where are you?" she cried, and the terrible sounds never

checked. She used the metal body of the vehicle to steady herself as she

dragged herself towards the sound, dreading what she might find.

Georgina sat on the wet earth with her back against the side of the car.

Her legs were thrust out straight ahead of her. The left one was twisted

so that the toe of the booted foot was pointed down into the mud at an

unnatural angle. The leg was obviously broken at the knee or very close

to it.

This was not the cause of Georgina's distress. She held Magic in her

lap, and was bowed over him in an attitude of abandoned grief; the sound

of it bubbled up unchecked from deep inside her. The spaniel's chest had

been crushed between metal and earth. His tongue lolled from the corner

of his mouth in his last smile, but the blood dripped steadily from the

pink tip and Georgina was using her scarf to wipe it away.

Royan sank down beside her mother and placed one arm around her

shoulders. She had never before seen her mother weep. She hugged her

hard and tried by main strength to quell the sound of her sorrow, but it

went on and on. , She never knew how long they sat together like that.

But at last the sight of her mother's maimed leg, and an awakening fear

that the driver of the truck might return to finish the job, roused her.

She crawled up the bank and tottered into the centre of the road to stop

the next car that arrived on the scene.

Not until Royan was two hours late for their meeting did Nicholas become

sufficiently worried to phone the police in York. Fortunately he had

noticed the licence plate of the Land Rover.

It was an easy one for him to remember. The registration number was his

mother's initials combined with an unlucky 13.

There was a delay while the woman constable checked her computer, and

then she came back. "I am sorry to have to tell you, sir, that Land

Rover was involved in an accident this morning."

"What happened to the driver? Nicholas demanded brusquely.

"The driver and one passenger have been taken to the York Minster

Hospital."

"Are they all right?"

"I am sorry, sir. I don't have that information." It took Nicholas forty

minutes to reach the hospital and almost as long again to trace Royan.

She was in the women's surgical ward, sitting beside her mother's bed.

Her mother had not yet come round from the anaesthetic.

She looked up when Nicholas stood over her. "Are you all right? What the

hell happened?"

"My mother - her leg is badly smashed up. The surgeon had to put a pin

in her thigh - the femur.

"How are you?"

"A few bruises and scrapes. Nothing serious., "How did it happen?"

"A truck - it pushed us off the road."

"Not deliberate?" Nicholas felt something inside him quail as he

remembered another truck on another road on another night.

I think so. The driver wore a mask, a balaclava. He crashed into us from

behind. It must have been deliberate."

"Did you tell the police?"

She nodded. "Apparently the truck was reported stolen early this

morning, long before the accident, while the driver was stopped at one

of those Little Chef cafes. He is German. Speaks no English."

"That is the third time they have tried to kill you," Nicholas told her

grimly. "So I am taking over now."

He went out into the hospital waiting room and used the telephone there.

The chief constable of the county was a personal friend, as was the

hospital administrator.

By the time he returned, Georgina had come round from the anaesthetic.

Although still woozy she was comfortable as they wheeled her off to the

private ward that Nicholas, had arranged. The - orthopaedic surgeon

arrived a few minutes later.

"Hello, Nick, what are you doing here?" he greeted Nicholas. Royan was

surprised how many people knew him.

Then he turned his attention to Georgina. "How are you feeling? We have

got ourselves a nice little compound fracture. Looks like confetti in

there. We've managed to put it all together again, but you're going to

be with us for ten days at the very least."

"Right you are, young lady," Nicholas told Royan as they left Georgina

sleeping. "What more do you need to convince you? My housekeeper has

made up a room for you at the Hall. I am not letting you wander around

on your own any more. Otherwise, next time they try to cull you they may

have a little more luck."

She was still too shaken and upset to argue, and she climbed meekly into

the front seat of the Range Rover and let him drive her first to have

her stitches removed and then back to Quenton Park. As soon as they

arrived, he sent her up to her bedroom.

"The cook will send dinner up to you. Make sure you take the sleeping

pill that the doc gave you. Somebody will fetch your gear from 's

cottage to Mrs. Street. In the meantime my housekeeper has set out some

nightclothes and a toothbrush in your room for you. I don't want to hear

from you again before tomorrow morning."

It was good to have him take control of her life. For the first time

since that terrible night at the oasis she felt secure and safe. Still,

she made one last gesture of independence and self-reliance; she flushed

the Mogadon sleeping tablet down the toilet.

The nightdress that was laid on her pillow was full, length sheer silk

with finest Cambrai lace at the cuffs and It. . A robe. She had never

worn anything so luxurious and sensual against her skin before. She

realized that it must have belonged to his wife, and the knowledge

stirred mixed emotions in her. She climbed up into the four-poster bed,

but even that lonely expanse of over'soft mattress and her unfamiliar

surroundings did not keep her too long from sleep.

ù the morning a young housemaid woke her with aù copy of The Times and a

pot of Earl Grey tea, then returned a few minutes later with her

holdall.

"Sir Nicholas would like you to take breakfast with him in the dining

room at eight-thirty., While she showered Royan inspected her naked body

in the full-length mirror that covered one wall of -the bathroom. Apart

from the knife wound on her -arm, which was still livid and only

partially healed, there was a dark bruise on her thigh and another down

her left flank and buttock, legacies of the car crash. Her shin was

scraped raw, and gingerly she pulled a pair of socks over the injury.

She limped a little as she went down the main staircase to find the

dining room.

"Please help yourself." Nicholas looked up from his newspaper to greet

her as she hesitated in the doorway. He waved at the display of

breakfast dishes on the sideboard.

As she spooned scrambled eggs on to her plate, she recognized the

landscape on the wall in front of her as a Constable.

"Did you sleep well?" He didn't wait for an answer, but went on, "I have

heard from the police. They found the MAN truck abandoned in a lay-by

near Harrogate. They are going over it now but they don't expect to find

much.

We seem to be dealing with someone who knows what he is doing."

"I must phone the hospital," she said.

"I have already done so. Your mother had an easy night. I left a message

that you would visit her this evening."

"This evening?" She looked around sharply. "Why so late?"

"I intend to keep you busy until then. I want to get my money's worth

out of you."

He stood as she came to the table, and drew back her chair to seat her.

She found the courtesy made her feel slightly uncomfortable, but she

made no comment.

"The first attack on you and Duraid at your villa in the oasis - we can

draw no conclusions from that" apart from the fact that the assassins

knew exactly what they were after, and where to look for it." She found

the abrupt change of subject disconcerting. "However, let's give some

thought to the second attempt in Cairo. The hand grenade.

Who knew you were going to the Ministry that afternoon, apart from the

minister himself?"

She reflected as she chewed and swallowed a mouthful of egg. "I am not

sure. I think I told Duraid's secretary, maybe one of the other research

assistants."

He frowned and shook his head. "So half the museum staff knew about your

appointment?"

"That is about it, yes. Sorry."

He pondered a moment, "All right. Who knew you were leaving Cairo? Who

knew you were staying at your mother's cottage?"

"One of the clerks from administration brought my slides out to the

airport."

"Did you tell him what flight you were leaving on?"

"No, definitely not."

"Did you tell anybody at all?"

"No. That is.-'she hesitated.

"Yes?"

"I told the minister himself during our interview, when I asked for

leave of absence. Not him surely not?" her expression. reflected her

horror at the thought.

Nicholas shrugged, "Some funny things happen. Of course, the minister

knew all about the work that you and Duraid were doing on the seventh

scroll?"

"Not all the details, but - yes - in general terms he knew what we were

up to.

"All right. Next question, tea or coffee?" He poured coffee into her

cup, and then went on, "You said that nso Duraid had a list of possible

sponsors for an expedition.

Might give us some ideas as to a short-list of suspects?"

"The Getty Museum," she said, and he' smiled.

"Cross one from the list. They don't go around tossing grenades in the

streets of Cairo. Who else was there on the list?, "Gotthold Ernst von

Schiller."

"Hamburg. Heavy industry. Metal and alloy refineries.

Base mineral production."Nicholas nodded. "Who was the third name on the

list?"

"Peter Walsh," she said. "The Texan."

"That's the one," he nodded. "Lives in Fort Worth.

Fast-food'franchising. Mail order retail." There were very few

collectors with the substance to compete with the major institutions

when it came to making significant of antiquities or to financing

archaeological acquisitions exploration. Nicholas knew them all, for it

was a mutually antagonistic circle of no more than a couple of dozen

men.

He had competed with each of them at one time or ano& on the auction

floors of Sotheby's and Christie's, not to mention other less salubrious

venues where "fresh' antiquities were sold. The adjective "fresh' was

used in the context of "fresh out of the ground'.

"Those are two beady-eyed bandits. They would probably eat their own

children if they felt peckish. What would they do if they thought you

stood in their way to the tomb of Mamose? Do you know if either of them

contacted Duraid after the book was published, the way I did?"

"I don't know. They may have."

"I cannot imagine that either of those beauties would have missed such

an easy trick. We must believe that they both know that Duraid had

something going on. We will put their names on our list of suspects."

Then he inspected her plate. "Enough? Another spoonful of egg? No? Very

well, let's go down to the museum and see what Mrs. Street has found for

us to work on."

When they walked into his study, she was impressed by the amount of

organization that he had accomplished in such a short time. He must have

been busy at it all last night, turning the room into a military-type

headquarters.

In the centre of the room stood a large easel and blackboard which were

pinned a set of overlapping satellite photographs. She went across to

study them, and then glanced at the other material pinned on the board.

Along with a large-scale map covering the same area of southwestern

Ethiopia as the satellite photographs there were lists of names and

addresses, lists of equipment and stores which he had obviously used on

previous African expeditions, sheets of calculations of distance and

what looked like a preliminary financial budget. At the top of the board

was a schedule headed "Ethiopia - General Information'. There were five

closely typed sheets, so she did not read through the entire schedule,

but she was impressed by his thoroughness in preparation.

Royan determined to study all this material at the earliest opportunity,

but now she crossed to one of the two chairs he had set up at a table

facing the board. He stood at the board and picked up a silver-topped

swagger stick from the table, brandishing it like a schoolmaster's

pointer.

"Class will come to order." He rapped on the board.

"The first thing you have to do is convince me that we will be able to

pick up the spoor of Taita again after it has had several thousand years

to cool. Let us first consider the geographical features of the Abbay

gorge."

Nicholas described the course of the river on the satellite photograph

with his pointer. "Along this section the river has cut its way through

the flood basalt plateaux.

In places the cliff of the sub-gorge are sheer, as high as four or five

hundred feet on each side. Where there are intrusive strata of harder

igneous schists the river has not been able to erode them. They form a

series of gigantic steps in the course of the river. I think you are

correct in your assumption that Taita's "steps" are actually waterp

falls."

He came to the table and picked out a photograph from amongst the

bundles of papers that covered it. "I took this in the gorge during the

Armed Forces Expedition in 1976. It will give you an idea of what some

of those falls are like."

He passed her a black and white riverscape of towering cliffs on either

hand and a cascade of water that seemed to fall from the heavens to

dwarf the tiny figures of half-naked men and boats in the foreground.

"I had no idea it was. like thad' She stared at it in awe.

"Doesn't do justice to the splendid desolation down he told her. "From a

photographer's there in the gorge, gra point of view there. is no place

to stand from which you can get it all into perspective. But at least

you can see how that waterfall would halt a party of Egyptians coming

upriver on foot, or at least with pack horses. There is usually some

sort of path alongside the cataracts made by elephant and other wild

game over the ages. However, there is simply no way to bypass waterfalls

such as this one, and to get around those cliffs."

She nodded, and he went on, "Even coming downstream we had to lower the

boats and all our equipment down each set of waterfalls on ropes. It

wasn't easy."

"Let us agree that it was a waterfall that stopped them going further -

the second waterfall from the westerly approaches," she conceded.

Nicholas picked up the swagger stick and on the satellite photograph

traced the course of the river up from the dark wedge shape of the

Roseires dam in central Sudan.

"The escarpment, rises on the Ethiopian side of the border, that is

where the gorge proper begins. No roads or towns in there, and only two

bridges far upstream. Nothing for five hundred miles except racing Nile

waters and savage black basalt rock." He paused to let that sink in.

"It is one of the last true wildernesses on earth, with an evil

reputation as the haunt of wild animals and even wilder men. I have

marked the main falls that show in the gut of the gorge here on the

satellite photo." With the pointer he picked them out, each circled

neatly in red marker pen.

"Here is waterfall number two, about a hundred and twenty miles upstream

from the Sudanese border. However, there are a number of factors we have

to consider, not least the fact that the river may have altered its

course during the last four thousand years since our friend, "Taita,

visited it."

"Surely it could not have escaped from such a deep canyon, four thousand

feet," she protested. "Even the Nile must be held captive by that?"

"Yes, but it would certainly have altered the existing bed. In the flood

season the volume and force of the river exceeds my ability to describe

it to you. The river rises twenty metres up the side walls and bores

through at speeds 3; of ten knots or more."

"You navigated that?" she asked doubtfully.

"Not in the flood season. Nothing could survive that.

They both stared at the photograph in silence for a minute, imagining

the terrors of that mighty stretch of water in its fury.

Then she reminded him, "The second waterfall?

"Here it is, where one of the tributary rivers enters the main flow of

the Abbay. The tributary is the Dandera river and it rises at twelve

thousand feet altitude, below the peak of Sancai Mountain in the Choke

range, here about a hundred miles north of the gorge."

"Do you remember the spot where it joins the Abbay from when you were

there?"

"It was over twenty years ago, and even then we had been almost a month

down there in the gorge, so it all seemed to merge into a single

nightmare. The memory bluffed with the monotonous surroundings of the

cliffs and the dense Jungle of the walls, and our senses were dulled by

the heat and the insects and the roar of water and the repetitive,

unremitting toil at the oars i But, strangely, I do remember the

confluence of the Dandera and the Abbay for two reasons."

"Yes?" She sat forward eagerly, but he shook his head.

"We lost a man there. The only casualty on the second expedition. Rope

parted and he fell a hundred feet. Landed on his back across a spur of

rock."

i am sorry. But what was the other reason you remember the spot."

"There is a Coptic Christian monastery there, built into the rock face

about four hundred feet above the surface of the river."

"Down the re in the depths of the gorge?" She sounded incredulous. "Why

would they build a monastery there?"

"Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian countries on earth. It has over

nine thousand churches and monasteries, a great many of them in

similarly remote and almost inaccessible places in the mountains. This

one at the Dandera river is the reputed burial site of St. Frumentius,

the saint who introduced Christianity to Ethiopia from the Byzantine

Empire in Constantinople in the early third century. Legend has it that

he was shipwrecked on the Red Sea shore and taken to Aksum, where he

converted the Emperor Ezana."

"Did you visit the monastery?"

"Hell, no!" he laughed. "We were too busy just surviving, too eager to

escape from the hell of the gorge to have any time for sightseeing. We

descended the falls and kept on down river. All I remember of the

monastery are the excavations in the cliff face high above the pool of

the river, and the distant figures of the troglodytic monks in their

white robes lining the parapet of the caves to watch impassively as we

passed. Some of us waved up to them) and felt quite rebuffed when they

made no response."

"How would we ever reach that spot again, without a full-scale river

expedition?" she wondered aloud, staring disconsolately at the board.

"Discouraged already?" He grinned at her. "Wait until you meet some of

the mosquitoes that live down there.

They pick you up and fly with you to their lairs before they eat you."

"Be serious," she entreated him. "How would we ever get down there?"

"The monks are fed by the villagers who live up on the highlands above

the gorge. Apparently, there is a goat track down the wall. They told us

that it takes three days to get down that track into the gut of the

gorge from the rim."

"Could you find your way down?"

"No, but I have a few ideas on the subject. We will come to that later.

Firstly, we must decide what we expect to find down there after four

thousand years." He looked at her expectantly. "Your turn now. Convince

me." He handed her the silver-headed pointer, dropped into the chair

beside her and folded his arms.

"First you have to go back to the book." She exchanged the pointer for

the copy of River God. "You remember the character of Tanus from the

story?"

"Of course. He was the commander of the Egyptian armies under Queen

Lostris, with the title of Great Lion of Egypt. He led the exodus from

Egypt, when they were driven out by the Hyksos."

"He was also the Queen's secret lover and, if we are to believe Taita,

the father of Prince Memnon, her eldest son," she agreed.

Tanus was killed during a punitive expedition against an Ethiopian chief

named Arkoun in the high mountains, and his body was mummified and

brought back to the Queen by Taita,'Nicholas expanded the story.

Precisely." She nodded. This leads me on to the other clue that Duraid

and I winkled out."

"From the seventh scroll?" He unfolded his arms and sat forward in his

seat.

"No, not from the scrolls, but from the inscriptions in the tomb of

Queen Lostris." She reached into her bag and brought out another

photograph. This is an enlargement of a section of the murals from the

burial chamber, that part of the wall that later fell away and was lost

when the alabaster jars were revealed. Duraid and I believe that the

fact that Taita placed this inscription in the place of honour, over the

hiding-place of the scrolls, was significant." She passed the photograph

to him, and he picked up a magnifying glass from the table to study it.

While he puzzled over the hieroglyphics Royan went on, "You will recall

from the book how Taita loved riddles and word games, how he boasts so

often that he is the greatest of all boa players?"

Nicholas looked up from the magnifying glass, "I remember that. I go

along with the theory that bao was the forerunner of the game of chess.

I have a dozen or so boards in the museum collection, some from Egypt

and others from further south in Africa."

"Yes, I would also subscribe to that theory. Both games have many of the

same objects and rules, but bao is a more rudimentary form of the game.

It is played with coloured stones of different rank, instead of chess

men. Well, I believe that Taita was not able to resist the temptation to

display his riddling skills and his cleverness to posterity. I believe

that he was so conceited that he deliberately left clues to the location

of the Pharaoh's tomb, both in the scrolls and amongst the murals that

he tells us he painted with his own hands in the tomb of his beloved

Queen."

"You think that this is one of those clues?" Nicholas tapped the

photograph with the glass.

"Read it," she instructed him. "It's in classical hieroglyphics - not

too difficult compared to his cryptic codes."

"'The father of the prince who is not the father, the giver of the blue

that killed him,"' he translated haltingly, "'guards eternally hand in

hand with Hapi the stone testament of the pathway to the father of the

prince who is not the father, the giver of blood and ashes."'

Nicholas shook his head, "No, it doesn't make sense," he protested, you

must have made an error in the translation."

"Don't despair. You are making your first acquaintance with Taita, the

champion bao, player and consummate riddler. Duraid and I puzzled over

it for weeks," she reassured him. "To work it out, let's go back to the

book.

Tanus was not the father of Prince Memnon in name, but, as the Queen's

lover, was his biological father. On his deathbed, he gave Memnon the

blue sword that had inflicted his own mortal wound during the battle

with the native Ethiopian chief There is a full description of the

battle in the book."

"Yes, when I first read that section, I remember thinking that the blue

sword was probably one of the very earliest iron weapons, and in an age

of bronze would have been a marvel of the armourer's art. A gift fit for

a prince," Nicholas mused, and went on, "So "the father of the prince

who is not the father" is Tanus?" He sighed with resignation.

"For the moment I accept your interpretation."

"Thank you for your trust and confidence in me," she said sarcastically.

"But to proceed with Taita's riddle Pharaoh Mamose was Memnon's father

in name only, but not his blood father. Again the father who was not the

father. Mamose passed down to the prince the double crown of Egypt, the

red and white crowns of Upper and Lower Kingdoms - the blood and the

ashes.

"I am able to swallow that more easily. What about the rest of the

inscription?"Nicholas was clearly intrigued.

"The expression "hand in hand" is ambiguous in ancient Egyptian. It

could just as well mean very close to, or within sight of, something."

"Go on. At last you have me sitting up and taking notice,'Nicholas

encouraged her.

"Hapi is the hermaphroditic god or goddess of the Nile, depending on the

gender he or she adopts at any particular moment. Throughout the scrolls

Taita uses Hapi as an alternative name for the river."

"So if we put the seventh scroll and the "inscription from the Queen's

tomb together, what then is your full interpretation?" he insisted.

"Simply this: Tanus is buried within sight of, or very close to, the

river at the second waterfall. There is a stone monument or inscription

on, or in, his tomb that points the way to the tomb of Pharaoh."

He exhaled through his teeth. "I am exhausted from all this jumping to

conclusions. What other clues have you ferreted out for me?"

"That's it," she said, and he looked at her with disbelief.

"That's it? Nothing else?" he demanded, and she shook her head.

"Just suppose that you are correct so far. Let us suppose that the river

is recognizably the same in shape and configuration as it was nearly

four thousand years ago. Let us further suppose that Taita was indeed

pointing us towards the second waterfall at the Dandera river. just what

do we look for when we get there? If there is a rock inscription, will

it still be intact or will it be eroded away by weather and the action

of the river?"

"Howard Carter had an equally slender lead to the tomb of Tutankhamen,'

she pointed out mildly. "A single piece of papyrus, of dubious

authenticity."

"Howard Carter had only the area of the Valley of the Kings to search.

It still took him ten years," he replied. "You have given me Ethiopia, a

country twice the size of France.

How long will that take us, do you think?"

She stood up abruptly, "Excuse me, I think I should go and visit my

mother in hospital. It's fairly obvious that I am wasting my time here."

"It is not yet visiting hours," he told her.

"She has a private room." Royan made for the door.

"I will drive you to the hospital," he offered.

"Don't bother. I will call a taxi," she replied in a tone that crackled

with ice.

"A taxi will take an hour to get here," he warned, and she relented just

enough to let him lead her to the Range Rover. They drove in silence for

fifteen minutes, before he spoke.

"I am not very good at apologies. Not much practice, I am afraid, but I

am sorry. I was abrupt. I didn't mean to be.

Carried away by the excitement of the moment She did not reply, and

after a minute added,'You will have to talk to me, unless we are to

correspond only by note. It will be a bit awkward down in the Abbay

gorge."

"I had the distinct impression that you were no longer interested in

going down there." She stared ahead through the windscreen.

am a brute," he agreedi and she glanced sideways at him. It was her

undoing. His grin was irresistible, and she laughed.

"I Suppose I will just have to come to terms with that fact. You are a

brute."

"Still partners?" he asked.

"At the moment you are the only brute I have.

suppose that I am stuck with you."

He dropped her off at the main hospital entrance. "I will pick you up

here at three 'clock," he told her and drove on into the centre of York.

From his university days Nicholas had kept a small flat in one of the

narrow alleys behind York Minster. The entire building was registered in

the name of a Cayman Island company, and the unlisted telephone there

did not route through an internal switchboard. No ownership could be

traced to him personally. Before he had met Rosalind the flat had played

an important part in his social life. But nowadays Nicholas only used it

for confidential and clandestine business. Both the Libyan and the Iraqi

expeditions had been planned and organized from here.

He hadn't used the flat for months, and it was cold and musty-smelling

and uninviting. He put a match to the gas fire in the grate and filled

the kettle. With a mug of steaming tea in front of him he placed a call

to a bank in Jersey, followed immediately by another to a bank in the

Cayman Islands.

"A wise rat has more than one exit from its burrow."

This was a family maxim, passed down through the generations. He was

going to need funds for the expedition, and the lawyers had most of

those locked up already.

He gave the passwords and account numbers to each of the bank managers,

and instructed them to make certain transfers. It always amazed him how

easily matters could be rranged, as long as you had money.

He checked his watch. It was still early morning in Florida, but Alison

picked up the phone on the second ring. She was the blonde feminine

dynamo who ran Global Safaris, a company that arranged hunting and

fishing expeditions to remote areas around the world.

"Hello, Nick. We haven't heard from you in over a year. We thought you

didn't love us any more."

"I have been out of it for a while," he admitted. How do you tell people

that your wife and two little girls had died?

"Ethiopia?" She did not sound at all disconcerted by the request. "When

did you want to go?"

"How about next week?"

"You have to be joking. We only work with one hunter there, Nassous

Roussos, and he is booked two years in advance."

"Is there nobody else?" he insisted. "I have to be in and out again

before the big rains."

"What trophies are you after? she hedged. "Mountain nyala? Menelik's

bushbuck?"

"I am planning a collecting trip for the museum, down the Abbay river."

It was as much as he was prepared to tell her.

She hedged a little longer and then told him reluctantly, This is

without our recommendation, do you understand. There is only one hunter

who may take You on at such short notice, but I don't even know if he

has a camp on the Blue Nile. He is a Russian, and we have had mixed

reports about him. Some people say he is ex-KGB an was one of Mengistu's

bunch of thugs."

Mengistu was the "Black Stalin' who had deposed an then murdered the

old Emperor Haile Selassie, and in sixteen years of despotic Marxist

rule had driven Ethiopia to its knees. When his sponsor, the Soviet

Empire, had collapsed, Mengistu had been overthrown and fled the

country.

"I am desperate enough to go to bed with the devil," he told her. "I

promise I won't come back to you with any complaints."

"Okay, then, no comebacks-' and she gave him a name and a telephone

number in Addis Ababa.

"I love you, Alison darling Nicholas told her.

"I wish," she said, and hung up on him.

He didn't expect that it would be easy to telephone Addis, and he wasn't

disappointed in his expectations. But at last he got through. A woman

with a sweet lisping of Ethiopian accent answered and switched to fluent

English when he asked for Boris Brusilov.

"He is out on safari at present," she told him. "I am Woizero Tessay,

his wife." In Ethiopia a wife did not take on her husband's name.

Nicholas remembered enough of the language to know that the name meant

Lady Sun, a pretty name.

"But if it is in connection with safari business I can help you," said

Lady Sun.

Nicholas picked Royan up outside the hospital entrance.

"How is your mother?"

"Her leg is doing well, but she's still distraught about is Magic -

about her dog."

You will have to get her a puppy. One of my keepers breeds first-class

springers. I can arrange it." He paused and then asked delicately, "Will

you be able to leave your mother? I mean, if we are going out to

Africa?"

"I spoke to her about that. There is a woman from her church group who

will stay with her until she is well enough to fend for herself again."

Royan turned fully around in her seat to examine his face. "You have

been up to something since I last saw you," she accused him. "I can see

it in your face."

He made the Arabic sign against the evil eye, "Allah save me from

witches!'

"Come on!" He could make her laugh so readily, she was not sure if that

was a good thing or not. "Tell me what you have up your sleeve."

"Wait until we get back to the museum." He would not be moved, and she

had to bridle her impatience.

As soon as they entered the building he led her through the Egyptian

room to the hall of African mammals, and then stopped her in front of a

diorama of mounted antelope. These were some of the smaller and

mediumsized varieties - impala, Thompson's and Grant's gazelle, gerenuk

and the like.

"Madoqua harperii." He pointed to a tiny creature in one corner of the

display. "Harper's dik-dik, also known as the striped dik-dik."

It was a nondescript little animal, not much bigger than a large hare.

The brown pelt was striped in chocolate over the shoulders and back, and

the nose was elongated into a prehensile proboscis.

"A bit tatty," she gave her opinion carefully, unwilling to bend, yet

knowing he was inordinately Proud of this Specimen. "Is there something

special about it?, "Special?" he asked with wonder in his voice. The

Woman asks if it is special." He rolled his eyes heavenward and she had

to laugh again at his histrionics. "It is the only known specimen in

existence.

creatures on earth. So rare that It is One of the rarest now. So rare it

is probably extinct by that many zoologists believe that apocryphal,

that it never really existed. They think it is that my sainted

great-grandfather, after whom it is named, actually invented it. One

learned reference hinted that he may have taken the skin of the striped

mongoose and stretched it over the form of a common dik-dik. Can you

imagine a more heinous accusation?)

"I am truly appalled by such injustice,'she laughed.

"Darned right, You should be. Because we are going to Africa to hunt for

another specimen of Madoqua harpent, to vindicate the honour of the

family., "I don't understand."

"Come with me and all will be explained."He led her back to his study,

and from the jumble on the tabletop Picked out a notebook bound in red

Morocco leather. The cover was faded and stained with water marks and

tropical sun light, while the corners and the spine were frayed and

battered.

"Old Sir Jonathan's game book,) he explained, and opened it. Pressed

between the pages were faded wild flowers and leaves that must have been

there for almost a century. The text was illuminated by line drawings in

faded Yellow ink of men and animals and wild landscapes.

Nicholas read the date at the top of one page.

2nd of February 1902.

A In camp on the Abbay river.

11 day following the spoor of two large bull ele Phants- Unable to come

up with the . Heat ve, intense- MY Men Played out Abandoned the chase

small antelope grazing on the river-bank which I and returned to camp.

On the return march lied a brought down with one shot from the little

Rigby "and- On close examination it proved to be a member of the genus

Madoqa. However, it was of a species that I had never seen before,

larger than the common dik-dik and Possessing a striped body. I believe

that this specimen may be new to science.

He looked up from the diary. "Old great-grandpa Jonathan has given us