Dallas’s research had shown, in fact, that Cleopatra had dressed up as Isis for her first meeting with Antony. Cleopatra must have given orders that her body and Antony’s be privately smuggled to Taposiris Magna. Dallas suspected that the queen had feared the Romans would destroy her body—thus preventing her from using it in the afterlife—to punish her for committing suicide. It made sense to Dallas that her burial location would have to be secret.
Dallas was betting everything on this.
She glanced at her watch. Midnight. Which meant it was around 4 p.m. in Minneapolis. Colton was probably still at the university. She reached for her phone and punched in the familiar cell number. It went straight to voice mail.
“Colton? Dallas. I think I’m on to something. I’m in Cairo. I’m still in town because tomorrow I’m going to try to get in to see the minister of antiquities, but then I’m heading to Alexandria after that. I’ll try to call when I can. My cell service is spotty as you might imagine. But you can always leave a message.” She took a deep breath. “But I’m calling because I discovered something exciting today. I wanted to share it with you …” she trailed off, feeling stupid suddenly. She cleared her throat. “Well, anyway. I’m sorry for putting you in a bind by coming here, but I hope you understand. I’ll call when I can.”
There. She’d apologized for running off. What more could she do?
Six
The next morning in her tiny room with pink walls at the Happy Hotel, Dallas was awakened by a commotion outside her door. People were speaking loudly and angrily and then to her astonishment; her door flew open. Two men in gray suits stood there beside the angry and red-faced clerk from the hotel’s front desk.
Dallas scrambled to sit up and pulled her covers to her chest.
“What the hell is going on? Get out of here! Who are you?”
Her eyes darted around the room looking for a weapon, even though she knew these people were somehow here in an official capacity.
“We are from the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration. Please come with us.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m not a migrant. I’m not immigrating. I’m an American citizen. I have rights,” Dallas sputtered. “I’m not even dressed.”
Just then a man in a dark suit stepped forward. “I’m with the American embassy. The hotel manager just called me.”
“Thank God,” Dallas said.
“Unfortunately, you do need to come down to immigration, but only so we can sort this out.”
Dallas’s momentarily relief at seeing the embassy worker evaporated. Instead, she was filled with irritation.
“Seriously?”
The man in the suit nodded.
Dallas rolled her eyes. “Can you at least wait in the hall while I get dressed?”
The immigration officials eyed the windows.
“I’m not going to jump out five floors so you don’t have to worry about that.”
The four men backed out, with the hotel worker still muttering angrily under his breath before the door closed.
Dallas’s heart was pounding. “Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore,” she said to the empty room. Her words echoed. Suddenly, she was homesick, scared, and lonely. She missed Sam and Colton so bad her stomach hurt.
The immigration offices were only a block away. Inside the lobby there was some argument between the embassy man and the immigration officials.
“Just great,” Dallas said in a low voice. The guy who was supposed to be there to help her was apparently a fill-in job. From what she could make out he was some lackey who had answered the phone and really had no power.
“I’m filling in until my boss gets into work today.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Dallas said. She took the guy in a bit more now that she wasn’t cowering in bed hiding. He looked seventeen. He had a small rash from shaving that morning and his suit was ill-fitting.
“What do you do there exactly?”
A blush spread up the man’s neck. “I’m an intern.”
Suddenly Dallas felt bad for him and a little bit like a heel for scoffing at him. “Thank you so much for coming when you got the call,” she said. “I was scared to death and having someone there from the U.S. embassy really helped. I truly appreciate it.”
The young man straightened up a little and nodded. “I wish I could do more, but I think you have to go in and talk to them. They promise it won’t take long.”
Dallas nodded. She turned to the immigration officials, “Can we get this over with?”
Inside a small room, a beefy man with beady eyes and a bad comb over grilled her like she was a CIA agent.
“Why are you here? You are an archeologist? We have grave robbers who proclaim to be archeologist? Do you have a permit from your government or educational institution? How do we know you aren’t trying to illegally enter the country and live here?”
She answered all the questions and stifled a yawn. She needed coffee and to get the hell out of there as soon as possible. She glanced at her phone to see the time. Crap. It was on low power mode and showed a charge of one percent. She was going to be late to meet her interpreter if they didn’t release her soon.
After a while, the man left for a few seconds.
When he returned, he handed her a cup of coffee.
“Thank god,” Dallas said and gulped some down.
He sat watching her and then said, “The school has no authorization on file for your trip here.”
“Yeah,” Dallas said. “About that … Let me call Colton—he’s my department head. He knows I’m here.” She reached for her phone. Now the battery was completely dead. Terrific. She was trapped in a room with a guy who might put her in prison next for god knows what. Stranger things had happened to American tourists. “My phone is dead.
