Dead Men's Hearts

“Yeah, he was that.” Jerry banged his pipe on his palm to knock out the dottle, pulled the pipe apart, and blew wetly through the stem. “Tiff,” he said slowly, “you don’t suppose that maybe there was something, and Ragheb came back during the night, and, well…”

“Stole it?” TJ said indignantly. “Of course not. And even if he’d wanted to, all he had to do was take it in the first place, before he ever came in to call us.”

“Maybe he didn’t see it until Dr. H pointed it out.”

“Jerry, I can’t believe you’re saying this. How can you believe Ragheb is a liar and a thief? He’s been here almost as long as we have, he’s the nicest, gentlest—”

“I’m just trying to look at all the angles, Tiff,” Jerry said peaceably. “Why would Dr. H imagine he saw a quartzite head?”

“Why would Ragheb steal it?” TJ countered.

They turned to Gideon as if they expected him to resolve the dispute, but Gideon had reached the end of his rope. He was beyond overtiredness now, finally ready for sleep, wondering only where he was going to find the energy to climb the stairs to the room. He tried unsuccessfully to smother a prodigious yawn.

TJ laughed. “Let’s get this poor guy upstairs before he collapses on us. He’s got a long day tomorrow; six-bit tour in the morning, and then off to Amarna in the afternoon.”

“Amarna?” Gideon said fuzzily. “I thought that wasn’t in the schedule anymore.”

“It wasn’t, but Forrest decided that artistic integrity demanded its inclusion after all. Even if we have to rush like hell through everything else.”

Gideon yawned again. “Good. I’d hate to miss it.”

“We really ought to get up,” Julie said.

“Mm,” replied Gideon.

Neither of them stirred. After a while Gideon gently brushed the backs of his fingers over her cheek, pleased as always by the softness of her skin, pleased as always with himself for having her beside him morning after morning, night after night.

“I mean,” said Julie, “we can’t very well lie in bed all day like a couple of slugs. Not that this wasn’t a nice way to start the day.”

Gideon smiled. “I’d hardly say like a couple of slugs.”

“No,” she said, laughing. She turned on her side to face him, cradling his hand between her cheek and the pillow. Her eyes, glossy and ink-black, were a foot from his. “But we’re going to have to get going sometime. I hear they have a full day planned for us.”

“Whatever it is, it’s going to be downhill from here.”

He had awakened earlier than he’d wanted to, at 6:00, and silently gone to the dining room to bring back coffee from the twenty-four-hour urn. Julie had downed the first cup without quite waking up, which was normal even when she wasn’t suffering from jet lag. She had grunted something and held out the empty cardboard cup, and he had gone for refills. As always, the second one got her blood moving and her nerves functioning, and by the time she had finished it, she was not only speaking in intelligible words, she was feeling playful and affectionate.

He had wound up back in the bed, the time had flown by, and now, somehow, it was 7:30.

“Gideon,” she said when another five minutes had passed and they had yet to move, “do we really have to follow Dr. Haddon’s schedule? What’s the chance of our playing hooky and going out and seeing Luxor Temple? Just us?”

“I wish I could,” he said sincerely, “but I have to take the obligatory tour here at the House. But you don’t. Why don’t you go ahead on your own?”

She wrinkled her nose, the only person in the world on whom it looked absolutely stunning. “I don’t want to go ahead on my own. I want to go with you.”

It warmed him to hear her say it, but thought it only right to say otherwise. “But I can’t, Julie, and I wouldn’t want you to miss—”

“Why do you have to take the obligatory tour?”

“Professional courtesy, for one thing. Haddon expects me to, and I am his guest.”

“You’re not Haddon’s guest,” she said sensibly. “You’re the Horizon Foundation’s guest. You’re here to narrate a film, that’s all. You’re not an Egyptologist and don’t pretend to be one, you’re not a board member like Bruno, or the power behind a board member like Bea, and this may be our one and only free morning in Luxor. Unless you’d rather spend it learning more about Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs and epigraphic techniques, of course.”

He raised the eyebrow that wasn’t pressed against the pillow. “Are you kidding? But how do I get out of it? What do I tell Haddon?”

“Tell him that your wife insists on going into Luxor, and she greatly desires your company, and her every wish is your command.”

Gideon considered this for a few moments. Then he kissed her a final time, on the spot on her nose where the wrinkle had been, rolled out of bed, and began getting back into his clothes.

“I will,” he said, and did.

Chapter Eight

The distance from the front gate of the Horizon House compound to Luxor Temple was well under a mile, all of it along the avenue referred to as Shari el-Bahr on maps, but invariably called the Corniche by locals and tourists alike— as the riverfront street in every Nile town and city is called the Corniche, whatever its designated name. Remnants of the French influence die hard in Egypt. Luxor’s Corniche was a particularly handsome, tree-shaded boulevard that ran beside the Nile for the length of the city, with tourist shops and fine hotels and high-walled gardens on one side, and posh, white cruise ships moored along the quays on the other.