this way. It was always better to let the man name the final figure and then agree to it.
After the money had changed hands, they boarded the boat and within minutes were drifting downriver. Sails were useless in this environment as the prevailing wind was almost always southerly, taking the boats upstream. Hence the rule of the Nile: sails up stream, current down stream.
All of this made for a very energy-efficient, and gentle mode of transport along the Nile. The vessel had no engine, no ‘indoors’ and no shower or toilet. It was this, as much as the Western preference for comfort, that made most tourists prefer the luxury cruises on offer from the numerous tourist companies, to the Spartan austerity of a felucca.
Walid insisted on making a pot of strong Turkish coffee for them. Having these interesting foreigners on his boat was something of a social occasion, and it was clear that he wanted to get the most out of it. As they drank the coffee, they were content to let Walid tell them about his beautiful fat wife and five wonderful daughters. He was sad that he only had one son, but if that was Allah’s will then he must accept it.
Listening to this man, well past his prime, talk with loving affection about his family, Daniel felt safe for the first time in several hours. It was unlikely that a felucca owner eking out his living on the Nile would sit with his ears glued to the radio to hear the news. To Walid, the things that mattered most were the weather and the exchange rate.
‘So what you do here?’ asked Walid in English, addressing Daniel.
‘Well, my wife is a professor of Egyptology and she has to come here often because of her work. I’m a businessman myself. I don’t really have time for all this academic stuff. I’ve been here a couple of times before and the first time I saw the pyramids and the Sphinx and the Valley of the Kings. But the second visit, I spent most of the time scuba-diving in Sharm el-Sheikh, so this time the missus here challenged me to see the real Egypt. And I figured if I’m going to see the real Egypt, I may as well go the whole way.’
He looked around at the scenery to emphasize the point.
‘What business you do?’ asked Walid.
‘Computer software,’ said Daniel. He figured it would sound suitably Western and wouldn’t prompt too many questions.
‘Ah, Microsoft,’ said Walid.
‘They’re our competitors,’ Daniel replied, laughing. ‘They’re much bigger than us.’
‘I have an X-box,’ said Na’if, obviously anxious to add something to the conversation.
‘This is goooood!’ said Daniel, as he sampled the lamb stew that Walid had prepared for lunch. Walid looked relieved by his reaction. He had apologized for the fact that it wasn’t as good as his wife’s lamb stew. He explained that his wife made the best stew in the world and Daniel and his wife should visit them in Cairo sometime and taste it. He also explained that when he wasn’t taking people on his boat, he usually existed off fish, caught in the river and grilled over an open flame in the metal bucket and grill rack that doubled as a barbecue.
After lunch, Walid and the crew took a siesta on deck, leaving Daniel in charge of the helm.
‘We should have turned ourselves in when we had the chance,’ said Daniel. ‘We might have been able to sort this out if we hadn’t run away.’
Gabrielle’s Nordic face held a cold, implacable look. ‘You seem to be forgetting one thing: they didn’t give us the chance. They started shooting before we could say a word.’
‘I guess they must have panicked because of that story about us carrying some disease. That message on Mansoor’s phone said that you infected that curator at the British Museum.’
‘I know, but that doesn’t make any sense. I haven’t got any symptoms.’
‘Maybe it only affects men.’
‘But Mansoor said it affected the volunteers.’
‘Only a few. They put them all in quarantine, but not all of them were infected – and he didn’t say anything about the gender of those who were.’
‘And what about you? And Mansoor? Neither of you have shown any symptoms and you’ve had at least as much exposure as the curator in London.’
‘Okay, but some people evidently are getting ill. And your uncle did say something about it when I went to see him on the morning I flew out here, just before he was…’
‘That’s the other thing, Daniel. Too many bad things seem to be happening at once. People are getting killed. First Uncle Harrison and the maid. Then the guardian of the tomb. And of course whoever did that also tried to kill us – and Mansoor. I’m just wondering if they’re connected.’
‘We don’t actually know who they were trying to kill. It might have been any one of us.’
‘The question is, Daniel… what are we going to do?’
Chapter 46
‘Can you hear me?’
The big man on the bed didn’t want to hear him. He didn’t want to do anything. All he wanted to do was sleep. But he couldn’t sleep any longer; the time for sleeping was over.
Goliath opened his eyes. There were maybe half a dozen people in the room. Two of them were nurses. The rest…
They were in white.
Doctors? Policemen?
At the back of his mind, he remembered seeing Egyptian policemen in their white summer uniform.
‘Mr Carter? Can you talk?’
He felt the bandages upon him. Where was he? Hospital. He remembered what had happened to him. Fire… driving…woman… she threw something…
‘Yes,’ he muttered.
Through blurred vision, he fancied that he saw one of the nurses smiling. Was she happy because he could talk? Or was she cunning and scheming, like most women?
‘Do you know what day it is?’ asked one of the men in white coats.
What day is it?
He couldn’t think. How long had he been here? He had been slipping in and out of consciousness.
‘Mr Carter…’
Goliath turned his head and tried to sit up, but he couldn’t.
‘We need to ask you about the car you were driving… the car… it was destroyed by the fire. But we need to ask where you got it?’
‘The woman…’
‘The woman? The woman gave you the car?’
The man who had asked the question looked at his colleague. The other man shrugged.
‘But didn’t the woman have another car? Her own car?’
‘Petrol bomb…’
‘What?’
‘She threw it into my car…’
‘The woman threw a gasoline bomb into the car?’
Goliath made a slight nodding motion.
‘Did you know the woman, Mr Carter?’
Goliath said nothing, just looked at the policeman blankly.
‘Mr Carter, we need to know what’s going on. That jeep you were in was hired by our Deputy Minister of Culture. Someone tried to lock him in a tomb.’
Something flickered in Goliath’s mind when he heard the words ‘ tried to lock him’ – did that mean that he had failed?
‘Was it you, Mr Carter? Was it you who killed the guardian and locked him in the tomb? Or was it the woman?’
‘Captain, this man is extremely weak,’ said one of the doctors. ‘He needs time to recover.’
