the heart of a potential donor after he has fallen down a shaft.
‘I don’t understand how it could have happened,’ he insisted. ‘The ladder was perfectly sound, we’ve been up and down it a hundred times . . . Oh! Oh, thank God, Mr Blenkiron. Are you all right?’
‘Just a few bruises.’ Followed closely by John, Larry emerged from the tunnel. He was dusty and sweaty and dishevelled, but he didn’t seem to be damaged. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he went on sheepishly. ‘The ladder is intact. I guess my foot slipped when the lights went out. And someone screamed – ’
‘Probably Suzi.’ Feisal lowered her unceremoniously to the ground. She promptly opened her eyes and muttered, ‘Where am I?’
Nobody told her.
‘It’s fortunate that no one was injured,’ said Feisal, in a voice that reminded me he was responsible for the safety and well-being of the group. Did they dock his pay for every tourist he lost? If so, he was already out a few bucks on account of Jen. Had she really left Cairo? I had only John’s word for it and I wouldn’t have relied on that if he had assured me the world was round.
Urged on by Feisal, we started back to the bus. Nobody asked why the power had failed. Apparently that sort of thing happened all the time. It was probably just an odd coincidence that it had happened after Vicky Bliss, the well-known phobic, had crawled down into a tomb. If I hadn’t baulked at the last minute I might have been on the ladder when it happened.
There were only two people who knew about my phobia. I thanked God I hadn’t made an abject fool of myself in front of Larry; he had realized I was uncomfortable, but he wasn’t aware of the disgusting performance I had put on. My vocal reaction had been in the form of whimpers rather than screams.
My eyes focused on John, who was ahead of us. Mary was clinging to his arm. They hadn’t been part of the original expedition. They – and Suzi and the others – must have accompanied Schmidt. John could have managed it. A yank at the electric wire that snaked around the wall . . .
Another warning, designed to inflict emotional rather than physical damage. It was a low-down filthy trick to pull on a person under any circumstances; the circumstances under which John had learned of this particular Achilles heel made the trick even filthier.
Schmidt looked up at me. ‘You are very red in the face, Vicky. Is it the sunburn?’
‘No, Schmidt. It’s not sunburn.’
II
The boat got under way as soon as we boarded. We were due in Luxor next day. I could hardly wait. By hell or high water, hook or crook, I was going to get myself into the presence of an actual living unmistakable policeman or a member of State Security Investigation, and demand to know what was going on. The situation was coming apart like a soggy paper towel and I must be losing my touch; I hadn’t suspected Ali or spotted Alice until she declared herself. I was beginning to wonder about Sweet and Bright; if they were supposed to be protecting me they had screwed up at least twice. And I hadn’t the faintest idea who John’s confederates might be.
Not that my past record was all that good. On several memorable occasions I hadn’t identified the criminal until he pointed a gun at me.
Alice and I managed to exchange a few words. They were, ‘I hear you had a little adventure, Vicky. Good thing no one was hurt,’ to which I replied, ‘Yes, isn’t it,’ and to which she responded with, ‘Here’s that book on the Memphis tombs I promised to lend you.’
There were no messages written in invisible ink or spelled out by means of dots or pinpricks under certain words. What there was was a note, hastily scribbled in pencil and stuck in between the pages. ‘He was there. Promised we’ll be contacted as soon as we get to Luxor. Said to lie low, take no action, stay in a crowd. Ali died of drowning. All bruises postmortem except for one on his face. Could have hit his head, knocked himself out, fallen overboard. Suggest you don’t think about the alternative.’ There was a P.S. ‘Burn this and flush the ashes down the nearest convenience.’
I would have done it anyhow. As I watched the ashes being sucked down with the swirling water I thought about the alternative.
After lunch Schmidt and I settled ourselves on the sundeck. Schmidt started writing postcards. He’d already sent them to everybody he knew and he couldn’t understand why I wasn’t doing the same.
‘At least to your mama and papa,’ he insisted. ‘Here, here is a pretty one of the pyramids. And one of Cairo for Tony – ’
I took them, to shut him up. It was a little difficult composing appropriate messages. ‘Having a wonderful time’ was not only trite but untrue. As for ‘Wish you were here,’ I could only thank God they weren’t.
Yet as I scribbled a witty greeting on Tony’s card (‘Hi! Guess where I am!’) part of me, the selfish, cowardly part, wished he were. Here. This was the first time I’d been completely on my own, with no one to talk to, argue with, or fall back on. Schmidt hadn’t been particularly useful during the Roman affair, but he had been aware of what I was doing, and towards the end of that business John and I had become reluctant allies. We had spent most of our time together trying to elude various people who wanted to kill either or both of us, but when you are running wildly away from killers it’s nice to have company. John was awfully good at running away.
Stretched out in the chair next to mine, Schmidt had tipped his hat over his eyes and dozed off. His hands were clasped on his tummy and the ends of his moustache fluttered every time he exhaled.
The sight of him, vulnerable and lovable and harmless as a baby, was like a cold shower, clearing my head and bringing my thoughts into focus. I had to get Schmidt out of this. I had to get myself out too. I’d been a fool to consent to such a dangerous scheme – even if I hadn’t realized how dangerous it was going to be – and an even bigger fool to go on with it after I spotted John. I had done the job I had agreed to do, and my mysterious employers hadn’t kept their part of the bargain. They had let Schmidt get away. The hell with the Cairo Museum. I wouldn’t have traded a square inch of Schmidt’s bald scalp for the entire contents of the museum. The hell with security, too. I didn’t have to flap around like a wounded duck until somebody condescended to contact me – or until somebody else drowned me in my bathtub and threw me overboard. As soon as we reached Luxor I’d call Karl Feder and hand in my resignation. I’d have done it that minute if it had been possible to make a direct call. I didn’t trust anybody anymore; and that included the radio operator.
It was amazing how much better I felt once I’d made that decision. I could even enjoy the scenery. The cliffs of the high desert bounded the river on either side; even in bright sunlight they were a pale, ethereal pinky-yellow. At some places they rose sheer from the water’s edge; elsewhere they fell back, leaving a narrow strip of cultivable land. Little clusters of brown mud-brick houses were framed by green crops and palm trees. Birds flapped and swooped and beds of blue water hyacinths glided past, floating flowery islands in the stream.
I waved back at a group of children gathered along the bank, but my mind kept wandering. The greatest difficulty would be to talk Schmidt into cutting the trip short. I toyed with wild ideas – a fake telegram announcing that the museurn was on fire, or that a family member had fallen ill? No, that wouldn’t work. He’d telephone and discover the truth. Anyhow, it would be cruel to scare him.
We were to be in Luxor for four days. There wasn’t a prayer for getting Schmidt away until after he’d seen the famous tomb. I was rather keen on seeing it myself. Maybe, I thought hopefully, the cops were waiting on the quay at Luxor to round up the bad guys. Maybe John would call the whole thing off. Maybe Schmidt would get sick. A lot of tourists get sick. Maybe I’d get sick. Maybe I could pretend to be sick and insist that Schmidt take me home to Munich . . .
Maybe the mummy of Tutankhamon would rise up out of its coffin and blast the villains with a supernatural curse.
‘Oh, hell,’ I muttered.
Schmidt stirred. ‘Was hast du gesagt?’
‘Nothing.’
How about faking a nervous breakdown? I shouldn’t have any trouble doing that.
Schmidt pushed his hat back and sat up. ‘Brotzeit,’ he announced.
Sure enough, it was. The stewards were setting out the tea-things. Awake or sleeping, Schmidt always knows when it’s time to eat. If he ever sinks into a deep coma I figure I can bring him out of it by waving a doughnut under his nose.
The passengers who had been elsewhere started to assemble. I was greedily collecting cookies when Perry joined me at the buffet. He was looking a little peaked, and when I recommended the chocolate wafers he grimaced
