damaged. Let’s invent a nice fictitious account of your investigations.”
We all joined in. As I might have expected, Schmidt had long since got over his fit of remorse and was enjoying himself hugely. We shot down several of his more outrageous plot ideas, including one in which John and I had dived into the Nile to save him after some unknown villain pushed him in.
“But it will indicate your innocence,” Schmidt said, pouting.
“It will indicate that you are a bloody liar,” said John. “How about this?”
After a few more suggestions, Schmidt produced something along these lines: “They continue to trust me. So far no suspicious encounters, only normal contacts. Will inform at once of any such, as well as our next destination.”
He refused to add “Love.”
W e decided to let Ashraf dangle awhile longer. “One never knows what may turn up,” said Schmidt brightly.
John gave him a hateful look. “If anything turns up, it is likely to be unpleasant. However, I don’t want him to think he has only to snap his fingers to make me jump.”
“Yes, yes, that is good policy,” said Schmidt. “Since we have a few hours to spend, let us visit the museum. I must pay my compliments to my old friend the director.”
We went out the back entrance of the hotel and walked across the street to the museum entrance. Feisal had talked Schmidt out of pocketing one of his purchases—a toy AK-47 that looked horribly like the real thing. Security at the museum was tight; we had to go through one line to get into the grounds, and another inside the museum.
The director had left for the day. After exchanging compliments with the guard, Schmidt led the way back into the museum proper. The skylights high overhead were crusted with dirt, the exhibit cases smeared and dusty; mammoth statues and huge stone sarcophagi were crammed into too small a space. Despite its admitted inadequacies, the Cairo Museum—or, to give it its proper name, the Egyptian Museum of Cairo—has a fin de siecle charm that makes modern museums look cold and sterile. We stood in the rotunda discussing what we should see.
“Tutankhamon’s treasures?” Schmidt said. “That part of the museum is always very crowded, but perhaps it would stimulate our ambition,
Feisal made a rude noise.
“I don’t care, so long as it isn’t a mummy,” I said. “My God, that was gruesome. It really is Tut, isn’t it? There can’t be a mistake?”
“No,” Feisal said flatly.
“The little sarcophagus of Prince Thutmose’s cat?” Schmidt proposed. “You would like that, Vicky. It is very charming.”
John said he couldn’t think of anything that interested him less than a cat’s coffin. He was in a foul mood, twitching every time someone passed close to us, and I was about to propose that we call the sightseeing off and go back to the hotel when a woman’s voice rose high and clear over the medley of languages around us.
“Feisal! Feisal, here I am!”
Feisal spun round. She came trotting toward him, weaving a path through the visitors and waving her arms. Perfect white teeth gleamed in the delicate oval of her face; hair black as the proverbial raven’s wing caressed her cheeks. Feisal stood as inanimate as the nearby statue of Ramses II until she caught hold of his shoulders and kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be here?” she demanded.
“I thought—uh—you said you wouldn’t be at the museum today,” Feisal said feebly.
“And you said you were going to Luxor.” She patted him on the cheek. “Liar! But I forgive you. Will you present me to your friends?”
“But I know you,” Schmidt exclaimed. “We met in New York at the International Congress. You gave an excellent paper on the mummification techniques of the Nineteenth Dynasty.”
“And who could forget Herr Doktor Professor Schmidt?” She brushed aside the hand he offered, and kissed him on both cheeks. “
Schmidt presented us. John was the only peasant who didn’t rate the title of doctor. Our newfound friend was Dr. Saida Qandil, author of a seminal work on…I’ll give you three guesses. She kissed me on both cheeks too. She had to stand on tiptoe. I felt like a big blond ox, the way I always feel around cute little women. I suffered the greeting in a state of numb disbelief. Of all the women in Egypt with whom Feisal could fall in love, it had to be an expert on…
“Have you just come? What would you like to see? I will show you around.”
“Haven’t you got work to do?” Feisal asked.
“No, no, not when friends are here.” She gave him a look that could have melted granite. “The Royal Mummies, perhaps? The new room has been finished, you will be impressed at what has been done. Temperature- controlled cases, proper lighting.”
The dream image I had had of Tutankhamon laid out on a bed in an air-conditioned hotel suite flashed onto my brain. I drew a dark mental curtain over it.
“I’m not really crazy about…mummies,” I said. The word stuck in my throat.
“Be a sport,” John said. He had been kissed on both cheeks too, and he had obviously enjoyed it. “I would like very much to see the technical advances you’ve made in dealing with such remarkable objects.”
Saida attached herself to Feisal and Schmidt. He kept paying her extravagant compliments which made her emit throaty chuckles. John took me firmly by the arm.
“Get hold of yourself,” he hissed.
“But of all the women in the world—”
“Pure coincidence. Mummies, Egypt; Egypt, mummies. The equation is commonplace. If you can’t show interest, at least behave like an adult.”
Thus chastised, I managed to get a grip. Mummies had never bothered me until now; it was morbid self- consciousness and too damned many dreams about poor battered Tut that had changed my attitude.
It wasn’t as bad as I had expected. The room was dimly lit, the cadavers laid out with a certain dignity, with only their faces exposed. One of the effects of the drying process is that the lips pull back, exposing the teeth; a lot of the mummies appeared to be enjoying a hearty laugh—except for the ones who looked as if they were screaming. I was staring down at the noseless face and jolly grin of Thutmose III when Saida edged up to me.
“If it bothers you, don’t feel you must stay,” she said softly.
“It doesn’t bother me at all,” I said, with an attempt at insouciance that didn’t quite come off. “I just don’t understand why people find mummies so fascinating.”
“Don’t you? Imagine looking upon the actual features of Alexander the Great—of Julius Caesar or King Arthur. Would you be able to resist such an opportunity? These are our kings and great ones, figures from a time so distant they have become legendary.” She swept the room with a graceful wave of her arm. “Warriors like Thutmose and Ramses the Great, founders of dynasties. They are all here—except of course for Tutankhamon.”
I had been ready for that name, so I didn’t react. “You seem somewhat deficient in queens,” I remarked.
“Not really. But it is true that there is a gap in the collection which includes many of the most famous royal women—Nefertiti, Hatshepsut, and the wife of Tutankhamon, for example.” Her face took on a dreamy look. “I believe they are there in the cliffs of the West Bank, hidden away, awaiting discovery.”
“I suppose you’d like to be the discoverer.”
“Who would not? But I am not an excavator. I would be called in, perhaps, if human remains were found. But that will not happen soon, there is too much to do to preserve what we already have. We have begun a project to examine all the mummies that are in the museum—there are many, many stored away here. And others in other locations. I would like to see them all brought to the museum.”
“All?” I echoed.
Schmidt and John were peering down at a particularly grisly looking specimen—some king who was presumed to have died in battle, with his wounds only too well preserved. His name, I feel no shame in confessing, eludes me.
“Yes, all. Especially Tutankhamon.” She extended a dainty forefinger and poked Feisal, who stood nearby. “It
