gave us a chance, today, to prove we were making progress. We couldn’t because we still haven’t a clue.”
“Almost,” said Feisal slowly, “you convince me.”
“It can do no harm to proceed on that assumption,” Schmidt said, nodding at me. “We should certainly be present, if only for the experience.”
“And I’ll tell you who else will be present.” I was at full throttle, roaring along the track. “John. He read that note. He reached the same conclusion I—we—have. He skun out of here before Feisal and Ashraf arrived because he knew it would be more difficult to get away from four of us.”
“How can he gain entrance, though?” Schmidt asked. “LeBlanc said he will have told the guards to admit me and my party, so one must assume that only those on a select list will be allowed in.”
“There are ways,” Feisal said. “He could attend the Son et Lumiere and not leave with the other viewers. There are plenty of places to hide. Or climb over the enclosure wall, or—”
“If anyone can find a way, John can,” I said. “So…we go?”
Feisal raised his shoulders in a shrug. “What have we to lose?”
I could think of several things. I refrained from enumerating them.
I t was obvious to me by then that wherever he might be, John had no intention of returning anytime soon, but Schmidt insisted on leaving a message at the desk telling him that we were having dinner at the hotel. Feisal appropriated John’s razor and certain items from his wardrobe, including a tie (regimental?), which was de rigueur in the restaurant. John hadn’t taken anything with him except his precious self, which might have suggested to a trusting soul that he had not left us in the lurch. It didn’t convince me. For all I knew, he might have a pied-a-terre and another wardrobe elsewhere in Luxor. Or he could be on a plane to Cairo, or Berlin, or Kathmandu.
We had time to kill (and Schmidt was paying), so we dallied over a five-course meal and drank a lot of wine. My initial enthusiasm had faded a bit and I began to wonder if I was on the wrong track. My scenario made perfectly good sense, but so do the plots of a lot of novels.
Schmidt, full of wine and sipping a brandy, had become a convert. He has a head like a rock, though, and it was he who brought up the unpleasant subject of possible pitfalls.
“We must make a plan,” he declared. “In case something goes amiss.”
“Something is sure to,” Feisal said morosely. He hadn’t had any wine.
“First,” said Schmidt, ignoring this, “we stick together, yes? We do not separate for any reason.”
“Fine so far,” I agreed. “Second?”
“We find Ashraf and follow him, but at a discreet distance, being sure he does not see us.”
Seemed to me we had already hit the first snag in the plan. Three people don’t lurk well, especially when Schmidt is one of the three.
“When he meets his contact,” Schmidt continued, “we stay at a distance, we do not interfere unless it appears that Ashraf may be in trouble. Then we follow the man he meets.”
“All of us?” I said dubiously.
“We must not be separated,” Schmidt insisted. “If by chance one of us is, she must return immediately to the entrance and wait.”
“What do you mean, she?”
“She or he,” Feisal said. “That goes for you too, Schmidt. All right, I think that covers the main points. The rest is in the hands of God.”
After dinner we went back upstairs to collect our gear. Schmidt left his bedroom door open, so when I heard him talking I felt no compunction about eavesdropping. I had no difficulty in deducing that it was Suzi on the other end. He kept saying “no” and “but” and sputtering.
“Where is she?” I asked, once he had broken the connection.
“In Luxor. She would not tell me where she is staying. She is not pleased with me. She asked why I did not inform her about Ali.”
“She’s really on top of things, isn’t she? What else?”
“She tells me nothing,” Schmidt said angrily. “It is all reproaches and demands and complaints. I am through with her.
“Oh, Schmidt,” I said. “Were you about to propose? I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize matters had gone that far.”
Schmidt squared his shoulders, insofar as they were capable of that shape. “There are other women in the world. I will forget her. Go, Vicky, and get ready to leave.”
“I am ready. Don’t I look respectable enough?”
Head on one side, Schmidt studied my ensemble, which was neat if not gaudy—navy pants and a long- sleeved blue shirt, sneakers (blue) and a (blue-and-green) striped scarf. “I like it better when you wear a pretty dress. But for tonight’s adventure, perhaps trousers are more suitable. A shawl, perhaps? The nights grow quickly cold.”
Picturing myself in a fringed shawl, I was moved to mirth. “Shawls are nuisances, Schmidt, they catch on things and slide off.”
“A jacket, then. Something,” said Schmidt pointedly, “with pockets.”
His jacket had plenty of them—another of those archaeologist-type garments. Many of the pockets bulged.
“What have you got in there?” I demanded, indicating the bulgiest pocket.
“A flashlight. Here is one for you.”
“Not a bad idea, Schmidt. Thanks.”
Before I could pursue my inquiries, Schmidt made shooing gestures. “Put it away and let us be off. We should arrive early in order not to miss Ashraf.”
T he moon was gibbous. Now there’s a word that resonates: gibbet, giblet, gibbering…
It means not quite full. Perfectly harmless word. And support for my hypothesis, that Ashraf had ordered the temple opened for purposes of his own. Full moon was the traditional time, when the brilliant Egyptian moonlight is at its brightest. There would be a lot of dark in there tonight.
Feisal had been rude enough to suggest that maybe Ashraf’s motive for violating tradition was personal or, as Schmidt would have said, romantic. He was a busy man, and if the lady he wanted to captivate had an equally full schedule (with, let us say, a husband), Ashraf would have to improvise.
“That’s disgusting,” I scolded. “Shame on you for implying Ashraf is a philanderer.”
“What a ladylike vocabulary you have,” Feisal scoffed. “And what a naive mind. Ashraf has women hanging off him.”
“Tsk, tsk,” said Schmidt. “He is a married man, is he not?”
“What does that have to do with it?”
Schmidt said, “Tsk, tsk.”
The last Son et Lumiere attendees were leaving the temple when we got out of the taxi and headed for the entrance. Schmidt pulled me aside into the shadow of a sphinx—there was a row of them on either side of the path—and indicated two people going in the other direction.
“Suzi!” he hissed.
“Which one?” They were about the same height, wearing the unisex uniform of jeans and shirts, baseball caps and sneakers. I heard a fragment of what sounded like Swedish from one. The other laughed and put his or her arm around her or him. “Now you’re getting paranoid, Schmidt. Come on.”
The last of the lights inside the enclosure went out, leaving only a single source of illumination at the entrance. A uniformed guard was dragging a barricade across the opening. “The temple is closed,” he intoned.
I expected Schmidt to greet him by name, but apparently Schmidt didn’t know absolutely everybody in the world. The guard recognized Feisal, though, and when Schmidt announced himself, the guard nodded. “Yes, Dr. LeBlanc has given your name. This lady is with you? Enter.”
We passed through a pyloned gateway into an open court. It was a clutter of shapes. Column bases, more sphinxes, slabs of carved stone, and broken statues were outlined in black by the gibbous moon. A few dark forms moved slowly in and out of the shadows. There wasn’t a sound except for the faint crunch of gravel under our feet.
