went overboard?” Phil laughed. “Do I have to convince you now?”
“Maybe he walked into his door or something, or slipped in his cabin. It’s possible. He
“Good point. Let’s go and check.” Although three inches the shorter of the two, he tried to turn Gideon around by the shoulders and aim him toward the door. Gideon dug in his heels. “What do you mean, check?”
“Let’s go and look at Haddon’s cabin and see what we can find.” He administered an encouraging little shove. “Come on, come on.”
Gideon held his ground. “Phil, you know we can’t do that.”
“Why not? We can get the key from Wahab.” Gideon laughed. Phil’s attitude toward bothersome trivia like rules, regulations, and minor laws was unabashedly pragmatic. Action over talk, that was his motto, with a plan to suit every occasion. In its way it was one of the most appealing things about him, and it was one of the things that made him so successful at what he did, having gotten him and his charges out of tight spots around the world. But it had also gotten him into jams in places where getting into jams wasn’t a good idea. Once he had spent two nights in a Damascus jail because, in an effort to get better treatment for his tour group, he had claimed to be a distant cousin of Hafez Assad. Another time he had pretended to be a drug enforcement agent in Jordan, with similar results.
“Never mind the key,” Gideon said. “Just calm down now. The point is, we’ve got a violent death here, and the police are on their way to investigate it, and one of the things I’m not about to do is go poking around in the victim’s belongings and messing up possible evidence before they even get started.”
Gideon expected an argument but Phil’s wiry shoulders rose in an amiable shrug. “If you say so.”
“Believe me, they’ll spot those marks on his face for themselves. They’ll know what to do.”
“Mm.”
“What does ‘Mm’ mean?”
But the ship had reversed its engines and was shuddering to a halt beside a cracked, concrete-and-rubble mooring dock at the foot of a dusty, awakening city.
“Beautiful downtown Sohag,” Phil said.
They went to the side to watch the sailors throw out and secure the lines—ragged young bystanders on shore lent eager hands—and swing out the gangplank. Two men were waiting to board, one of them erect and natty in a military-style uniform, the other a stooped old man in a decades-old black suit without a tie, holding an ancient, cracked, doctor’s black bag to his chest with both arms.
Once the gangplank was in place, Mr. Wahab came hurrying down to greet them, and a few minutes later the newcomers appeared on the stern deck, with Mr. Wahab flitting anxiously behind them.
“I have the honor,” he sang out nervously from behind the officer’s right shoulder, screwing his eyes to the side in an effort to avoid looking at Haddon’s body, “to present Mr. Hamsa el-Basset, Commanding General of River and Tourist Police, Governate of Sohag.”
Chapter Thirteen
The man was every inch a general: ruggedly handsome, assured, authoritative. A person of consequence. He was meticulously turned out in a simple but perfectly tailored uniform with glossy Sam Browne belt, holstered pistol, and creamy, creaking boots redolent of leather polish. His cap was under his arm, revealing thick, black, oiled hair brushed straight back (with silver-backed military brushes, no doubt) from a face that was narrower at the graying temples than at the muscular, cleanly shaven jaw.
His hopelessly outdone companion, by comparison, looked like Gabby Hayes on a bad morning at the cookstove. A wrinkled, bent, dour man—“No English” had been his curt, muttered greeting on being introduced—he seemed to have come directly from bed and didn’t look any too pleased about it. He was close to eighty, with sleep-mussed white hair, a week-old stubble of beard, and a drooping mustache that covered his mouth like a filter of tobacco- stained baleen. In the open neck of his misbuttoned shirt could be seen what looked like the top of a pair of grimy longjohns. This, el-Basset said in barely accented English, was Dr. Dowidar, consulting physician to the Ministry of Public Security, who would be conducting the official examination of the body.
On second thought Gideon decided that it might be a good idea to point out those abrasions after all.
“General,” he began, as Dowidar put his case on the deck and leaned grumbling over the body, “I’m a physical anthropologist, and I do a lot of work with the police in my country. I’d—”
El-Basset examined him closely for the first time, not hostilely, but not cordially either. “Oh, yes?”
Police, thought Gideon, were the same everywhere, at least in one regard: they did not appreciate unsolicited incursions onto their turf. Sometimes not even solicited ones.
“As you know, I’ve just looked at Dr. Haddon, and I thought I should call to your attention—”
“Thank you, but for now I wish to examine these matters for myself. And I wish first to speak with this boy, who was first at the scene of the accident.”
Mahmoud, seeing himself indicated, responded instantaneously with a toothy, accommodating grin. Either that, Gideon thought, or he was having a psychomotor disturbance induced by extreme terror. It was probably the first time he’d had direct intercourse with a police official as grand as the Commanding General of River and Tourist Police. Most of the policemen to be seen in Egypt were ragged recruits like the sleepy young man with the safety- pinned private’s stripe who’d been guarding the boat at el-Amarna. He’d been wearing laceless blue sneakers, not soft, gleaming boots, with his old woolen uniform.
“You will excuse me for the time being?” el-Basset said, already turning away.
“General,” Gideon said, “I’m not sure it
El-Basset paused to look at him again with a tolerant smile. “Not an accident? What then?” He might have been speaking to a precocious twelve-year-old.
Don’t get touchy, Gideon told himself. It’s just the guy’s manner. “There are some indications of trauma that suggest—”
“No, no,” el-Basset said, waving the rest away, “I’m extremely sorry but we must get on with our procedure now.”
