“Oh,” I said.
“Good to see you too,” said Feisal. He looked around. “Where’s Johnny?”
Schmidt giggled. He is only too well acquainted with American pop culture, past and present. “Never mind,” I said, as Feisal gave him a blank stare. “John went out a while ago. He hasn’t come back.”
“Where did he go?”
“He didn’t say.”
“You had a fight,” said Feisal, enlightened. “I’ve been expecting it.”
“He is, no doubt, exploring new avenues of investigation,” said Schmidt, dividing a look of reproach between me and Feisal. “We have been doing the same. Would you like to hear our deductions?”
Feisal went to the minibar and got out a bottle of some fizzy nonalcoholic lemon drink. I had tried it; it was quite revolting. “Go ahead,” he said.
When Schmidt finished, Feisal shook his head. “Fine, as far as it goes. But do you know how many private houses and villas and flats there are in the area? We can’t just bang on people’s doors and demand entry.”
“So we will have to narrow the possibilities by logical deduction,” said Schmidt. “Have you any suggestions, Feisal?”
Feisal drained the bottle. “Not offhand.”
“What about you?” I asked. “Anything new at the office?”
“Only a dozen messages from various subdirectors, reporting suspicious activities and/or illegal encroachment onto protected sites and/or…”
He went on for a while. I had stopped listening, straining my ears for the sound of footsteps or the turn of a key in the lock. Nothing. Surely he’d have got over his fit of the sulks by now.
Schmidt nudged me and I realized he was waiting for an answer to a question I hadn’t heard. Observing my vacuous look, he repeated it.
“Are you ready for dinner? Feisal has recommended a restaurant.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for John?” I asked.
“He’ll turn up when he’s good and ready,” Feisal said. “I’m getting hungry.”
At my suggestion, Feisal left a message for John telling him where we’d gone, and I allowed myself to be escorted out of the hotel. Fending off importunate drivers of taxis and carriages, we walked along the corniche past the Luxor Temple. The giant columns glimmered pale gold against the darkness.
“Ah, it is open tonight,” Schmidt said. “Shall we go in?”
I was about to say no when I saw someone heading toward the entrance. He was surrounded by other would-be visitors of all sizes, shapes, and modes of dress, but the light glowed off a head of fair hair. The sight of him, engaged in a casual bit of sightseeing after he’d left me to worry, brought my mounting anger to a boil.
“There he is!” I exclaimed. Pulling my arm from Feisal’s grasp, I ran after John. Feisal yelled at me to stop, and one of the ticket-takers tried to intercept me. I did a quick end around run past the latter, but by the time I reached the great pylon, John was nowhere in sight. Panting and swearing, I was about to enter the temple proper when Feisal caught up with me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, taking firm hold of me.
“Didn’t you see him?”
“Who?”
Schmidt came puffing up. “Vicky, you must not run off that way.”
“It was John,” I said. “He went into the temple.”
“You must have been mistaken,” Feisal said.
“No! I saw…”
What had I seen, really? What I wanted to see, what I hoped to see?
“So long as we are here, we will enter and look round,” Schmidt said, in the soothing voice he would have used to a whiny toddler.
It was pointless, hopeless, and a waste of time. I knew that even before we passed between the giant statues of some Ramses or other and entered the great open court. The place was vast, with dozens of huge columns and doorways and statues and side chapels, all ideal hiding places for a man who wanted to avoid attention, and with perhaps a hundred people wandering in and out and back and forth. Several of the men had fair hair.
“You don’t have to be tactful, Schmidt,” I snarled. “So I was wrong. Let’s go.”
The restaurant had a courtyard which looked peaceful and pleasant in the glow of lanterns. A small fountain played in the center, and sitting at one of the tables was John.
Rising and holding a chair for me, he said, “Finally! I’ve been here some time.”
“Where were you?” I inquired very politely.
“Strolling. I stopped at one of the shops round the corner.” He handed me a small parcel. I unwrapped it, and found a pair of silver earrings shaped like cats’ heads.
It was meant as a peace offering, but I wasn’t ready to forgive and forget. “I thought I saw you going into Luxor Temple,” I said.
After an infinitesimal pause, John raised an eyebrow. “So that’s what took you so long. I presume Schmidt had to inspect every corner of the place.”
“I was not inspecting, I was enjoying an aesthetic experience,” said Schmidt.
Feisal ordered for us and Schmidt decided to have another Stella. I said, “Schmidt and I have worked out a plan of operation.”
“Have you indeed?” This time both eyebrows went up. “May I hear it?”
Schmidt was happy to oblige. “It only remains,” he finished, “to narrow down the possibilities.”
As I might have expected, John proceeded to demolish our arguments. “What makes you suppose they would worry about a controlled environment? He’s been in that tomb for more than three thousand years, and for more than eighty of those years he’s been exposed to every form of pollutant imaginable. A few more weeks in a hole in a cliff won’t hurt him.”
“That would mean he’s still on the West Bank,” I said, unwilling to abandon our nice, neat theory. “How could they transport him back into the cliffs without being seen?”
“On a cart or wagon,” John said. “At night. I doubt they care whether he is banged up a bit. They’ve already lopped off a hand.”
Feisal grimaced. “Don’t say things like that.”
“Well, what do you think?” John asked. “Is there any point in following Schmidt’s suggestion?”
“I think it would be a bloody waste of time,” Feisal admitted. “Time we don’t have. If we had a lead—any faint, feeble lead…”
He looked at John, who shook his head. “What about Ali?” he asked.
“I’m sending some men out to look for him tomorrow. It’s common knowledge that he’s disappeared, and the theory is that he met with an accident back in the cliffs. Even experienced locals do occasionally.”
A waiter began distributing plates and bowls around the table. I recognized rice and a stewed vegetable dish consisting primarily of tomatoes. Feisal gestured to me to serve myself, which I did, discovering eggplant, lamb in several incarnations, and lentils. For a while there was no sound except that of Schmidt masticating.
“It looks as if I’ll have to make a quick trip to Denderah tomorrow or next day,” Feisal went on. “Someone broke into the storehouse there and made off with a granite sarcophagus basin. They’ve got a suspect, but haven’t tracked him down.”
“Where could he have hidden such a thing?” I asked. “It must weigh a ton.”
“Thereabouts,” Feisal agreed. “Farouk is an old hand at this, though. He and his pals stole a statue of Hathor from the temple a couple of months ago, in broad daylight, with hundreds of witnesses watching. It’s never been found.”
“Maybe we should ask him where he’d have put Tut,” I said.
Nobody found this amusing, not even me.
The Curse of the Omnipresent Cell Phone had reached Egypt; throughout the meal they had been beeping and bopping all around us. When one burst into song nearer at hand I looked at Schmidt. “That has to be yours,” I
