“The same that I offered before.” He sighed, as if I were a particularly dim child. “Partnership, power, and immortality if you want it.
The secrets of the universe, perhaps. The reason for existence, the face of God, and the world in your palm. Or, nothing, if you prefer not to cooperate.”
“But if I don’t cooperate, you don’t have the book, right?” I saw Menou make a small gesture. Captain Bouchard maneuvered behind me, and I noticed he had a pistol in his belt.
“On the contrary, monsieur,” Silano said. He nodded and my satchel was yanked from my shoulder and roughly opened.
“You didn’t really think I’d deliver it like Franklin’s post, did you?”
“Search him!”
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w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h
But there was no scroll. They even peered in my rifle barrel, as if I could have somehow stuffed it down there. They pried open the soles of my boots, checked the bottom of my feet, and grabbed at places that left me indignant.
“Are you going to look in my ears, too?”
“Where is it?” Silano’s frustration was plain.
“Hidden, until we form a true partnership. If we Americans and French represent liberty and reason, then the translation is for all mankind, not the Egyptian Rite of renegade Freemasons. Or ambitious generals like Napoleon Bonaparte. I want it given to the institute of savants in Cairo for dissemination to the world. The British Academy, as well. And I want Astiza once and for all. I want you to give her up, Silano, to trade her for the book, no matter how much power you have over us. And I want her to promise to go with me, wherever I choose to go. Now and forever. I want Bonaparte to know we’re all here, working together for him, so that none of us conveniently disappear. And I want the bloodshed to end. We’ve both lost friends. Promise me all that, and I’ll fetch your book. We’ll both have our dreams.”
“Fetch it from where? Acre?”
“You can have it within the hour.”
He bit his lip. “I’ve already had your felucca and wretched captain searched. They even hauled the boat to check its keel. Nothing!” Again, some of that impatient frustration I’d glimpsed the year before in Egypt broke through his urbane mask.
I smiled. “Such trust, Count Silano.”
He turned to Astiza. “Do you agree with his condition for you?” It was the second proposal I’d made in a month, I realized. Neither of them had been terribly romantic, but still . . . I must be getting old to want commitment from a woman, which meant commitment from me. “Yes,” she said. She was looking at me with hope. I felt happy and panicked at the same time.
“Then damn it, Gage, where is it?”
“Do
“Yes, yes.” He waved his hand.
t h e
r o s e t t a k e y
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“On your honor as a nobleman and a savant? These soldiers are your witness.”
“On my word, to an American with more treacheries than I can count. The important thing is to break the linguistic code and translate the book. We’ll enlighten the entire world! But not if you don’t have it.”
“It’s on the boat.”
“Impossible,” Bouchard said. “My men searched every inch.”
“But they didn’t raise sail.”
I led them out of the fort and down to the Nile. The sun was drawing low, warm light spilling through date palms that waved in the hot breeze. The green water looked soupy, egrets standing in its shallows.
My boat captain had crawled into one corner of his beached craft, looking as if he expected execution any second. I couldn’t blame him.
I have a way of bringing bad luck to companions.
I snapped an order and the sail, bordered top and bottom by wooden booms, was cranked up the mast until it filled and turned in the wind.
“There. Do you see it?”
They looked close. Faint, in the horizontal light, was a strip from the bottom to the highest point of the sail with faint, odd characters.
“He sewed the thing into the cotton,” Menou said with a certain admiration.
“It was on display all the way upriver,” I announced. “Not one person noticed.”
c h a p t e r
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We had two tasks. One was to use the Rosetta Stone to translate the symbols of Thoth’s scroll into French.
