Dead Men's Hearts

into the Middle East? Where do I get these guys?”) Forrest had been lucky they’d let him and the rest of the crew in, but he was left with only three people instead of four, and one camera instead of two. On top of that, the authorities had gotten sticky about work permits, requiring him to finish up in Egypt and move on to his next production in Turkey five days sooner than planned. Did Gideon have any idea of the pressures that created on this job? Everything was going to have to go like clockwork.

Only of course, Forrest had said, staring moodily out the window of the van, it wouldn’t. That went without saying. But what the hell, the sooner he got to Turkey and to bribing the local officials for the permits and concessions he needed to begin work on Hunting the Anatolian Boar, the happier he would be. Five extra days in Turkey would mean, with any luck, that he would have time for some avocational hunting of his own. You could still shoot wolves, and fox, and mountain goats in the Anatolian mountains, did Gideon know that? Now there was life at its best: it was—well, splendid. Up in the morning with the sun to the smell of coffee being brewed by your guide… and Turkey! Turkey was a civilized country compared to Egypt.

Forrest had accepted the assignment to make The Story of Horizon House in a weak moment, because it was so easy to tack onto the Turkish trip, and, frankly, the money wasn’t bad, but it had been sheer misery from the beginning. In the first place, as he should have remembered, he couldn’t stand Egypt; he’d made five documentaries here in the last seven years, and you’d think he’d know by now. In the second, Clifford Haddon, as he also should have remembered, was the most self-centered, fault-finding, aggravating old fart anyone ever had to deal with. And third, the project itself was the most excruciatingly dull, pedestrian thing he’d worked on since The Joy of Spring Bulbs. He didn’t mind exacerbating his ulcer, he’d said, as long as it was in a meaningful cause, but this… ! He was a maker of serious films, after all, not just another hack for hire.

And so he was. Despite his twittering air of impending doom, Forrest had built a respectable reputation as a maker of archaeological documentaries. A few years ago Gideon had seen and admired the one that had made his name, The End of Eternity, a four-part PBS special on the destruction of Upper Egypt’s greatest monuments by erosion, pollution, and the crush of tourists. That had been a six-month project, produced as well as directed by Forrest, and he had done most of his on-site research at the Horizon House library, getting to know the institution and its people.

All of which made The Story of Horizon House a natural for him, at least from the foundation’s point of view.

The last of the twelve was Gideon and Julie’s old friend, Phil Boyajian, free spirit. Divorced (amicably), a few years older than Gideon, and also an ex-student of Abe Goldstein’s, he now lived in Bellingham, a couple of hours north of Seattle. Of all the anthropologists Gideon knew, Phil had had perhaps the most peculiar career. Armed with a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and Middle Eastern studies, he had begun with fieldwork in Jordan and Tunisia, but claimed it made him feel like a voyeur. So he’d taken an assistant professorship at the University of Washington, only to find university politics more than he could stand. He’d then tried teaching at a Seattle junior college, but couldn’t bear the committee assignments. And finally, completing this resolutely backward progression, he’d wound up teaching at a high school in Olympia, which had kept him contented for almost five years—a long time for Phil.

Then, seven or eight years ago, he’d spent a summer vacation doing travel research for a new guidebook called Egypt on the Cheap, geared primarily to students and backpackers. The book had been a great success, and Phil was now firmly and happily ensconced as a contributing editor to the flourishing On the Cheap series, which helped travelers get around in developing countries with a minimum of stress and confusion. In addition, two or three times a year he accompanied alumni tours to North Africa or the Middle East, acting as a sort of cultural liaison to ensure that their existence was as untroubled as possible. Whenever he came back from such a trip, Gideon and Julie could be assured of an evening’s good stories, but this time they wouldn’t have to wait for them. It was Phil who had arranged the flight to el-Amarna, and the Nile cruise, and he was along to head off whatever problems might arise.

Gideon understood the need for him. Egypt wasn’t an easy country to get around in. There were frustrations at every turn: bureaucratic muddles, “rules” that didn’t exist yesterday and wouldn’t exist tomorrow, unexpected demands for fees or for permits that could only be gotten in Cairo on the first day of the second week of alternate months. There were confusions and noisy fracases over matters whose import—whose very sense—eluded foreigners. And, especially, there was an utter unconcern for time—nobody in Egypt was ever in a hurry— and a disinclination to interfere with the not-always-transparent manifestations of God’s will that had driven more than one harried Westerner around the bend.

It was to spare the group these adversities that Phil was there. With his excellent Arabic (his father had been a petroleum engineer, and Phil had spent much of his first twelve years in Riyadh and Cairo), with his scruffy, eager, friendly manner, with a perpetually sunny disposition and a willingness to see the best in people, with an insider’s perspective on the Egyptian view of life, and with a resilient, take-things-as-they-come approach to the inevitable hard knocks of travel, he was just the person to smooth over whatever vagaries lay ahead.

Vagaries were not long in coming. The ZAS plane that he had chartered was not ready and waiting when they arrived. Worse, no one was able to tell them why it wasn’t there, where it was, or when, precisely, it was expected. Shortly, very shortly, they were told by an eager-to-please clerk in a trim, Sadat-style blue suit.

Phil was turned to for counsel. “Go, as they say, with the flow,” was his cheerful advice, delivered in the faint but crisp British accent that was a remnant of his Saudi Arabian school days. “Speaking for myself, I intend to sit down and have a Coke.”

“Third World travel,” said Bea philosophically. “How I love it. Well, I’ll have a Coke too, Bruno.”

At 3:00 there was still no sign—or word—of the plane. A testy Haddon, having gone with the flow as long as he could, stamped up to the counter. “I’m not going to wait here all day,” he snapped, his beard jutting aggressively. “Is it or is it not expected? Answer truthfully, please.”

“Oh, yes, sir, to be sure,” the clerk told him with an encouraging smile. “Inshallah.”

God willing. The others looked at each other. It didn’t look good.

“This is your fault, Forrest,” Haddon said crossly.

Forrest Freeman, who had been sitting glumly in a corner and not bothering anyone, surfaced from whatever worries he had been chewing over.

“What? My fault?”

“I maintain, as I have from the beginning, that there is simply no good reason for us to be making this trek, given our ridiculously compressed schedule.” Shedyule, Haddon said. “Tel el-Amarna hardly represents a critical milestone in the history of Horizon House.”