“I don’t have all night,” Gideon said abruptly. “Tell them to lay out what they have.”
This created some protest-it was not the customary way-but in the end, the contents of the basket were laid out over the table. In addition to what had come before, there was a small ivory figurine of a woman, primitively carved and probably Predynastic, a set of miniature copper vessels and utensils, some tiny pots and basins that he took to be cosmetics containers, and a small blue and yellow vase that had been cracked and mended.
Everyone looked at him expectantly, even the prodigiously bored young Jalal. The old man had two cigarettes in his hands again, forgetting for the moment to smoke either one.
Gideon picked up the vase and tried to look as if he knew what he was doing. He scratched it gently with his fingernail, he pursed his lips, he frowned and stroked his jaw, not helping his case any when he encountered the furry thing on his chin and almost jumped out of his chair.
“This vase, where’s it from?” he asked when he settled down again, thinking it sounded like the right kind of question.
Phil listened to their answer. “They don’t tell where they find anything, but they say it’s definitely from the time of Thutmose III.”
“I don’t think so,” Gideon said as if he knew what he was talking about. “I think it’s probably a modern forgery.”
This produced an indignant explosion from Fouad, which Phil translated with fine gusto, slipping into first- person for the full effect.
“ ‘A forgery, you say? A forgery?” “ Phil’s hands sprang ceilingward in emulation of the Arab’s. ” ’How can you say a thing like that? The man who found it, who personally found it where it had lain three thousand years, is my own brother-in-law. Would my brother-in-law lie to me? Would we lie to you?“ ”
Gideon was searching for a firm but politic answer when Jalal spoke his first words in a husky, confident voice. Phil listened soberly.
“He says you’re wrong, these aren’t fakes, but, yes, they’re run-of-the-mill, not high-quality. But he can show you much better things, not the kind of things you carry through the streets in a basket. If their business with you here is satisfactory, maybe he’ll show you some finer things, more interesting things.”
The old man remonstrated shrilly with the boy but was cut off by a sharp response that left him muttering. Gideon realized with surprise that if anybody was in charge, it was Jalal, half Fouad’s age and a quarter Atef’s. The boy continued to speak his piece, looking directly at Gideon.
“He wants to know what you’re interested in,” Phil said.
So. It was time to begin closing in on what they’d come for. Gideon put down the vase. “I have a number of clients who have asked me to look for Amarna Period art for them.”
Jalal smirked. “Everybody wants Amarna art,” Phil translated when he’d spoken.
“Everybody can’t pay what I can pay. I represent some very wealthy clients. And I pay in American dollars. I’m particularly interested in statuary,” he added casually.
Jalal continued to appraise him for several seconds after Phil interpreted, then uttered a few words.
“It’s possible,” Phil translated, “but afterward. First, this.” He lifted an eyebrow toward Gideon. “I, ah, think this might be a propitious time to make an offer.”
Gideon thought so too. He leaned forward to pick up the vase again. “Let’s start with this. I might be able to find someone foolish enough to buy it. Shall we say, oh…”
Oh, what? He was completely in the dark. In this room, with these humble people, it was worth perhaps a fiftieth, maybe only a hundredth, of what it might sell for in the legitimate or pseudo-legitimate art market, but as to what that was, he didn’t have a clue.
He took a stab. “… oh, fifty dollars.”
The two older men went into a whispered conference, sibilant and heated. Fouad excitedly ticked off points on his fingers while his elder emitted streams of smoke, shook his head, and rapped the table. Jalal remained above it all with an apathetic, slack-lipped smile. After a while he looked at his watch-fake gold band, fake Rolex facegot up, and sauntered out, but not before a gangsterly, showy shrug of his left shoulder and another pat of his breast pocket to adjust what Gideon hoped was a fake gun in a fake holster.
It took a few minutes more before the other two came to a conclusion. The old man shoved his turban out of his eyes again, made his statement, and folded his arms.
“They say it’s out of the question,” Phil said. “They will accept one hundred and fifty, which they say is a very great bargain when you consider-”
“Okay,” Gideon said. The men looked stunned. Phil looked a little pained too; apparently he’d hoped to get out of this with his fifty dollars at least partly intact.
Gideon put the money on the table, bill by bill, before the Egyptians, who were patently too astonished at their good fortune to speak. He knew well enough that this wasn’t the way to bargain in the Arab world, but he was anxious to finish up. If they were going to learn anything about the Amarna head, he had concluded by now, it was going to be through Jalal. And he had the impression that the young man had left only temporarily, to talk to somebody or to make a telephone call, that he would be back with something to say, that progress might yet be made this night.
The men eagerly scooped up the bills, chattering away at Phil to tell the honored gentleman from Cincinnati that they had many more such beautiful items for sale, at equally favorable prices, and if the honored gentleman Jalal eased his way back through the double doors and cut them off with a word. They looked at each other, bobbed their farewells, and hurried toward the exit.
“They’re forgetting their things,” Gideon said. “All I bought was the vase.”
“No, you bought everything,” Phil said. “The basket too.”
Gideon was flabbergasted. “For $150? The figurine alone must be-”
The young man cut in. Phil, instead of translating, got into an exchange with him.
“He knows someone who has Amarna things to sell,” Phil said. He wants to take you to meet him. It’s a man called Ali Hassan. Apparently he’s a dealer, an exporter. According to our young friend, anything decent that comes out of Luxor illegally goes through his hands.“
Bingo. “Terrific, what are we waiting for?”
“No, just you. I’m not invited.” Phil’s face had tightened. He didn’t like the turn of events.
Gideon wasn’t overjoyed either. “Just me? How am I supposed to communicate? I need someone who speaks English.”
“Me, I speak English,” Jalal said, not altogether surprising Gideon. “Let’s go.”
Gideon exchanged a worried look with Phil. He understood what Phil had been trying to tell him a moment ago. A dealer, an exporter-one of the vicious ones, in other words; one of the dangerous ones. But was there really anything to worry about? Why should this Ali Hassan, regardless of how vicious, have any reason to do him harm? Hassan’s business was buying and selling illegal antiquities. And Gideon was John Smith, a rich American not overly burdened by ethical considerations who was looking for just the kind of things Hassan had to sell. Hassan would naturally be a little wary of a new face, but he would be licking his chops over profits to come, not planning assassination.
Or so he hoped.
“Just a minute,” Gideon said. “I have to talk with my associate-privately, if that’s all right with you.” Circumstances had changed on them. Plan A, so airily devised an hour ago, was no longer in effect and there wasn’t any plan B.
“No talk,” Jalal said sharply. “We go now, this minute, or don’t go.”
He was on edge too. He didn’t quite trust them, and Gideon thought he meant what he said.
Gideon looked at Phil, who shrugged. Gideon shrugged too. “All right.”
“Get in touch with me as soon as you get back,” Phil said.
“No talk,” Jalal snapped.
The boy pulled a folded turban cloth from an inside pocket and shook it out. “For to go over you eyes. Sit down.”
“All right,” Gideon said again. Actually, this was a heartening development. If they didn’t want him to know where he was going, at least that meant that they expected him to leave alive. Not that there was any reason, he repeated to himself, that they might want him otherwise.
“Wait a minute,” he said as Jalal began to wind the cloth around his eyes. “If you take me through the caf6
