Either way, though, Bedouins would have attracted no attention on the streets of Alexandria.
More importantly, they had ordered everyone into the administration tent, the largest of several such canvas structures.
This one was where records were kept and artifacts stored until the end of each day, when they were removed for safekeeping to the basement of the National Museum of Alexandria. This tent was the only one large enough to hold the entire crew remaining aboveground, which was why they were there under the watchful eyes of two of the Bedouins. If that was what they really were.
At first, Fafal had thought these men meant to steal whatever antiquities were on hand. Bedouins were notorious for plundering unguarded archaeological sites for artifacts to sell to unscrupulous dealers in such things. But stealth, not force, was the common method. Perhaps these men were not after artifacts.
Also, the strange Bedouins communicated mostly with gestures but occasionally in a language Faful had never heard before. Perhaps they were not Bedouin at all.
Shielded from the fitful sea breeze, the interior of the tent was going from uncomfortably hot to stifling, but the men with the guns seemed not to notice. Two of them had carried a wooden box outside. Though the flap of the tent was closed, Fafal could hear their sandals crunching in the sandy soil, toward the Alabaster Tomb.
What were they after?
His question was answered moments later when the ground shook with a muffled explosion.
Faful’s first reaction was even more puzzlement. Why would they blow up the Alabaster Tomb? If it was antiquities they were after, destroying the work already done at the dig was going to also destroy what they wanted. Besides, the sound would draw the police.
Unless these men had arranged otherwise.
A few Egyptian pound notes of baksheesh could guarantee the indifference of all three street-level law- enforcement agencies-municipal police, Tourist Police or Central Security Forces-to any event smaller than a nuclear blast.
That still left the question, why?
Less than a hundred yards away and nearly a hundred feet down, Lang played his flashlight on the water gathering around his feet. Only an inch or so a few minutes ago, it was trickling over the top of his ankle-high boots now.
He sensed Rossi was making the same observation. “How long do you think it will take to run out of air or drown if we stay here?”
“Do not think of such things. Our crew will dig us out before there is even such a possibility.”
Lang started to say that if, as he believed, an explosion had sealed them in, the crew above were probably not free to rescue anyone. They were either dead, wounded or being restrained from taking action.
Instead, he said, “On the off chance they can’t do it quickly enough, is there another exit here somewhere?”
The fact oxygen was getting thinner and thinner in the air provided one answer he didn’t want to hear.
“Wealthy Greeks and pre-Christian Romans were entombed in sepulcra, what we would today call mausoleums, rather than simple tombs. They were like small houses, complete with wall paintings, sculpture and housewares. We are in a rather elaborate example. It was customary to leave a small hole at the top so visitors, family and friends of the deceased might share food and wine with the spirit of the dead.”
“So, there would be one here?”
The doubt in Rossi’s tone was not encouraging. “Possibly, but this hole would have never been large enough for an adult to get through.”
“But it would at least let in air.”
“My friend, this tomb has been here for more than two millennia, below ground level for almost as long. Whatever aperture might have existed in the ceiling would have long been sealed by dirt and vegetation.”
“True,” Lang agreed, “but two thousand years of debris and vegetation has got to be easier digging than solid rock.” He shifted his light to the ceiling. “And trying to find it beats waiting to either suffocate or drown.”
“But my crew…,” Rossi protested.
“If they are able to dig us out, swell. I, for one, don’t intend to bet my life on it.”
Muttering among some of the crew who had come down here with them suggested they shared Lang’s feelings.
Lang swept the beam of his flashlight upward. Where the ceiling had fallen, roots of vegetation grasped downward like bony fingers.
“I doubt you will find anything,” Rossi commented.
“Better hope I do. In case you haven’t noticed, the water is already halfway to my waist and rising.”
Although he couldn’t see it in the darkness, Lang would have bet Rossi was in the midst of a very Italian shrug. “Even if you find such a thing, how will you reach it?”
Good question.
Iris Garden, Atlanta
Gurt took Manfred by the hand, keeping her voice level. “We will go home now.”
“Aw, Mom,” the little boy protested, “Wynn Three and Grumps and me were just beginning to have fun.” His eyes flicked to her face, noting she was unpersuaded. “And Wynn Three doesn’t have to…”
Another look at his mother’s face told him the argument, if there had been one, was over.
Paige, startled by the abruptness of Gurt’s decision to leave, asked, “What…?”
But she was speaking to Gurt’s back.
Her hand clasping Manfred’s, the other on the butt of the Glock in her pocket, Grumps grudgingly following, Gurt climbed the gentle hill, feet planted firmly through the crust of ice with each step. When she reached street level, she had a better view of her surroundings. Randy’s SUV was still parked in front of her house, although the tinted glass prevented her from seeing if he was in it. After his insistence on accompanying her, she doubted he would have returned to the vehicle while she was still in the park.
She almost missed it: about a hundred yards away, a streak, a trough in the coating of ice on the hillside on the opposite side of the park, where it looked like something had been dragged. Her eyes followed the trail to a pair of frozen shallow ponds connected by a short stream, that part of the park directly across from the house. The ice on the lower pool had been broken and something was extending out of it, something that could be a fallen branch, explaining the shattered ice or…
Or a human arm.
The distance was too great to be sure, but she wasn’t going to delay reaching the security of the house to find out. She increased her pace, almost dragging Manfred in her haste.
Then she stopped. Ambling toward her was one of Atlanta’s homeless, a man pushing a grocery-store cart filled to overflowing with an assortment of rags, a clear plastic trash bag of tin cans and junk she could not identify.
Agency training had made her permanently aware of her surroundings, alert to anomalies. With ice on the ground and the temperature below freezing, anyone with a modicum of sanity would have sought refuge in any of a number of the city’s shelters or, at least, found a steam vent over which to camp. His clothes, an orange ski jacket and heavy sweat pants, though dirty, were not torn, not the ragged hand-me-downs that were the uniform of most of society’s jetsam. Add to these observations the fact that no stringy hair hung out from beneath the watch cap and he appeared to have shaved recently.
The shoes were the clincher, sneakers that looked like one of the more expensive Nike models. The footwear was always the giveaway. Although a torn and laceless pair would have been more in keeping with the persona someone was trying to create, no professional was going to risk wearing anything not securely bound to the foot. A fight in which a shoe might come off with a kick, a chase in which pursuer or pursued lost the race because of the loss of a shoe… No, shoes were the one part of a disguise no one who knew what he or she was doing would compromise.
Stifling her impulse to just pick Manfred up and flee, Gurt bent over, pretending to adjust his jacket and giving her an opportunity to look behind without obviously doing so. She was not surprised to see a second man, his lower face covered by a muffler shoved into the turned-up collar of his overcoat.
Miles?
He had promised to have a man or two keep watch, like the one who had come out of nowhere the night of
