'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
