Dead Men's Hearts

“What is it?” Gideon asked doubtfully. He hadn’t much cared for Gabra’s bukhra approach, but he wasn’t wild about the idea of a Boyajian Plan either. “If it involves imitating an Egyptian police colonel, forget it.”

“Ha, ha,” Phil assured him, “nothing like that at all. As it happens, you’re John Smith, a rich American antiquities dealer somewhat lacking in scruples. I’m acting as your agent.” He glanced at his watch and unfolded himself from the chair. “Let’s take a walk around the compound. I’ve been sitting here waiting for you since two- thirty. We meet them at five, which doesn’t give us much time to get our act together.”

“We—you—”

Phil had taken a couple of steps down one of the shaded paths before Gideon got his voice and his legs going and caught up with him. “You set up a meeting with these guys for us?”

“Yes, I did,” Phil said with pride. “No easy matter.”

“How did we get into it? I thought it was the antiquities police you wanted to get involved.”

“I know, but I thought we might as well cut out the middlemen. Do you know what these plants are? The spiky ones? I always like to throw a few plant names into my books. Promotes credibility.”‘

“They’re agave. Phil, what the hell are we supposed to be meeting them for?”

“Ostensibly, because you’re looking for a few little gewgaws to add to your stock without the bother of applying to Customs, or paying import duties, or other such nuisances. Actually, to see if they’ve heard anything about the head that might be helpful.”

“Phil, if you set this up, then you already must have talked to them.”

“I did talk to them. Some of them, anyway. God only knows how large the entire clan is.”

“Well, why didn’t you just ask them about the head yourself, then?”

Phil shook his head and clucked. “I don’t know, for a supposedly intelligent man… Look, Gideon, these things take a certain amount of subtlety, of—”

“I know. Sensitivity. Discretion.”

“Correct. You don’t just walk up to them and ask. You negotiate, you express interest in buying a few things, you make it worth their while. I can’t do it because they know me and they know I don’t have enough money to be a serious collector. But you—you’re John Smith. I’ve told them just how rich and avaricious you are. They can’t wait to meet you. It’ll be fun, you’ll see.”

“And how am I supposed to bring this delicate mission off with my eight words of Arabic?”

“That’s why you have me along,” Phil said reasonably. “They think you’re paying me a commission to interpret. So those are agave. Ugly buggers.”

They smiled greetings at a workman who was serenely pruning a leggy hibiscus trellised along an archway separating the main house from the annex.

“What if they ask for identification?” Gideon said.

Funny how he’d jumped from one side of the fence to the other in less than an hour. In the cafe, Gideon had been the one hatching plots and Gabra the one raising barriers. But working within the law and under its protection, collaborating with the sober, practical Gabra, had been a different prospect from trying to put over some harum- scarum deception with the breezily confident Phil.

“You won’t need any identification,” Phil told him. “These people aren’t going to frisk you or demand proof of who you are. They’re just diggers, poor bastards who hope to sell what they find for a few piasters. They’re decent people at heart, trying to scrape by any way they can. They’re not dangerous.”

“Oh, right.”

“It’s the dealers, the exporters, the middlemen with the clean fingernails who are the vicious ones—because at that level there’s real money involved. The el-Hamids and people like them aren’t the violent type.”

“Tell that to the guard they killed.”

“Yes, well, there is that,” Phil allowed, “but you must admit that was clearly unintentional.”

“I’m sure that was a great comfort to him. Look, assuming I’d be crazy enough to go along with this, what would we do with this information we gathered? We’d pass it along to Gabra, right?”

“Of course. That’s the plan. Now then: let’s go up to my room. I have something I want to give you before we get started that should, ah, help put a good face on this, shall we say.”

“I haven’t said I’m going to do it,” Gideon said.

“Of course you’ll do it. I never had a moment’s doubt. You just feel you ought to give me a hard time for form’s sake. Really, I don’t mind.”

Gideon opened his mouth to argue but laughed instead. He wasn’t sure just where along the line he’d swung over, but there it was, despite his objections: of course he’d do it. Ifthe two of them didn’t, who would? Besides— had he been spending too much time around Phil?—it did sound like fun.

“One question,” Gideon said. “What’s the hurry? Isn’t five o’clock pushing it a little?”

“I thought it might be better to be off before Julie gets back from the site. I’m not sure she’d approve.”

“I can handle Julie,” Gideon said.

Phil just laughed, a spontaneous peal of genuine amusement.

They had circled the main complex a couple of times and now returned to the patio. Stepping into the shade of the second-floor balcony brought a slight but immediate reduction in heat; something like getting out of a broiler and into a low-temperature oven.