Dead Men's Hearts

and bus drivers, who replied with tooth-rattling air-horn blasts that detonated lively, long-lasting chain reactions in every direction. Bicyclists and pedestrians were hissed and screamed at by Gamal, who replied in kind.

Evening traffic, Gideon had noticed, was no thicker than morning traffic, but always a good deal crazier. Egypt in general seemed to be at its most relaxed in the morning, to undergo a steady increase in nervous tension through the day, and to be at its peak of frenzy in the evening. Phil’s theory was that it was a combination of the steadily building heat, the ordinary frustrations of city life, and the cumulative effect of all those potent little cups of coffee the Arab world consumed, uncountered by the decompressing influence of alcohol in the form of the gin-and-tonics that European visitors were gasping for by late afternoon.

Just north of Luxor Temple they turned from the choked Corniche onto a crooked, shop-lined street not much wider than the caleche itself. Within two blocks they had left most of the traffic and nine-tenths of the tourists behind. “Pharaonic art,” decorated papyrus mats, and painted heads of Nefertiti were gone from the shop windows, along with signs in French and English. The very shops and windows themselves had disappeared, to be replaced by a warren of open-air stalls—souks—with their wooden shutters folded aside to let in the breeze—and let out the aromas. The warm air was heavy with the ancient fragrances of the Oriental bazaar: coriander, saffron, cinnamon, ginger, roasting lamb, baking bread.

Julie sat up and sniffed like a dog that hears its bowl rattled. “I’m starving. Aren’t we ever going to eat?”

“Right now,” Phil said. “Here,” he told the driver.

But Gamal couldn’t bring himself to let a good thing go without one more try. “No, no, I know much better place. More good prices, nicer peoples.”

“Here,” Phil said firmly.

Comforted by a substantial tip, Gamal capitulated and dropped them off near a blue donkey cart set up soup- kitchen style, with a perspiring old man and a young boy standing in a cloud of steam behind two dented, blackened kettles. There they ladled out bowls of stew to a crowd of men clutching grimy one-pound notes and an occasional woman hardy enough to elbow her way through the mob.

“Madame, monsieur, les hors d’oeuvres,” Phil announced. “Here we have the stand of Mr. Farag Shash, famous among those in the know. The best fuul in Luxor.”

It was certainly the most popular. There were twenty people clustered around the wagon, with others taking the place of everyone who left with a filled bowl. Diners sat at seven or eight newspaper-covered folding picnic tables set up helter-skelter in the street, lapping it up and hissing for more, which was delivered by a second teenager in a stained galabiya who poured it out of a spouted metal jug. Others ate leaning against walls or simply standing up. It took Gideon, Julie, and Phil five minutes to work their way to the front of the crowd, plunk down their pound notes—about thirty cents—and then fight their way, spoons and bowls in hand, back out through the hungry gaggle around the cart.

“Whew,” Julie said.

“I heard Bea grumbling the other day about how much better the Egyptians would get along in life if only they learned to stand in line,” Phil said.

“Bea has a point,” Gideon said. “Pardon my cultural absolutism.”

Phil shook his head. “It’s a good thing he likes bones,” he said to Julie. “He’d never have made it as a cultural anthropologist.”

They were lucky in getting a just-vacated table with three chairs, under a red, white, and green umbrella that proclaimed Corona Extra, La Cerveza Mas Firm. The sheets of newspaper on the table hadn’t been changed for a while, but the stew smelled wonderful, the setting was agreeably exotic, and Gideon was glad to be just where he was, doing just what he was doing, with just the people he was with. Fuul was the nearest thing to a national dish that Egypt had; a paste of mashed fava beans prepared in a hundred different ways. Gideon had tried a good dozen and had liked most of them, but he was ready to agree that Mr. Shash’s version won hands-down.

For several minutes they ate in animated silence, wolfing down the mixture of beans, garlic, onions, oil, and spices. When they had eaten enough to slow down a little, Julie spoke pensively, having ruminated on their earlier discussion for an hour.

“So now we have two murders: Dr. Haddon and an unknown Egyptian—both of them, we think, having something to do with an Amarna head seen by Dr. Haddon, except that he never saw it because it was never there.”

“Well, I’ve been giving that some thought,” Gideon said. “I think it was there.”

Phil looked up from his bowl. “There in the enclosure or there in the drawer?”

“Both, just the way he said. Think about it: why would he give us a detailed description—yellow jasper, five inches high, dug in 1924—of something that wasn’t there? If he was trying to save face, wouldn’t he have described one that was there, so he could show it to us when we got back to Luxor? Why would he go out of his way to promise to show us something that he knew wasn’t going to be there to show?”

Phil considered. “How do you explain it, then?”

“Easy,” Gideon said. “Haddon did see it in the enclosure, and later he saw it in the drawer, exactly as he said, because someone took it out of the enclosure and put it there. And then, afterward, someone—probably the same someone— came along and took it out of the drawer and put it someplace else.”

“And why would this someone be doing these curious things?”

“I think it went into the drawer because that was where it belonged; it was a perfect place to ‘hide’ it as long as no one was looking for it. I think it was taken out of the drawer when Haddon started talking about having seen it and getting people excited.”

Julie shook her head. “But I thought one of TJ’s students checked and found out there was no record of it in the collection. Do you mean she was lying?”

“Stacey Tolliver, you mean. No, I’m pretty sure she was telling the truth.”

“Well, then, if there was no such head in the collection—”

“But I think there was.”