At six thirty they turned westward as if chasing after the sun as it sank toward the barren horizon. It painted the desert surrounding the large bay they were entering, in a hundred hues of red and purple. Mercer thought Cali looked especially beautiful in its scarlet glow.
According to the boat’s GPS the Shu’ta valley was at the end of a long bay that cut into the Nubian Desert like a dagger. The coastline was mostly sandstone bluffs that fell into the lake. There were no inhabitants in this region, no sign that anyone had ever lived here, and the sparse vegetation clinging to the hills, sage and camel thorn, could only survive by absorbing evaporation off the lake. They were entering an area as desolate as the moon and one even less well studied.
With five miles to go Mercer inexplicably throttled back the engines.
“Why are you slowing?” Cali asked.
He pointed ahead. Coming out of the sun, another boat was cutting across the water toward them. At this range it was impossible to tell what type of boat, but Mercer doubted the occupants were fishermen or tourists.
“You know that scene in horror movies where someone always says they’ve got a bad feeling about this?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Booker came up from the galley where he was throwing together their dinner. “We there?”
“We’ve got company.”
“Poli?”
“Possibly. He had time to take pictures of the stele when Dayce’s men were tearing that village apart. And this is the last place on earth he can get his hands on natural plutonium.”
“How do you want to play this?” Book asked.
Mercer ducked below the dash so the men approaching wouldn’t see him. “Poli doesn’t know about you so maybe seeing a black face will throw them. You two are tourists just cruising the lake on your honeymoon. I’m going to hide.” He crawled to the stairs at the stern of the Riva and vanished.
Booker put his arm around Cali when the other boat was a hundred yards off. It was a twenty-five-foot speedboat painted a military gray. There were two men in uniforms aboard, and from his high vantage Booker could see they had pistol belts strapped around their waists.
One said something that was carried away by the wind, and made a gesture for Booker to cut the power. He idled the big engines to a low gurgle.
“S’up, man?” Sykes called down, sounding like a hip-hop artist.
The helmsman spoke in Arabic again.
“I ain’t diggin’ your rap, man. Speak English.”
“There is military training in area. You must leave.”
Booker looked around the deserted shoreline and said, “I don’t see no trainin’, man.”
“How many are aboard your vessel?”
“Just me and my ho.”
The two boats had drifted close enough for one of the uniformed Egyptians to leap onto the dive platform.
“What the fu’ you think you’re doin’?” Booker shouted.
The man still on the patrol boat pulled the automatic from his holster and pointed it up at Book’s head. Booker raised his hands, smiling now. “It’s cool, man. It’s cool. No need to draw down on me. You want to have a look at the boat, you take your sweet time.”
The soldier who’d jumped aboard looked through the salon, peering into closets and under beds. He checked the two shower stalls and any storage bin large enough to hide a man. And while the Riva was a large boat, its open floor plan meant his search only took a minute. He emerged once again, climbed up to the flybridge, glaring at Booker and Cali, then descended and leapt back to the patrol boat. He spoke briefly with the helmsman, shaking his head. The helmsman brought a radio to his lips and spoke for a moment.
When he was finished he shouted back up to Booker. “You will leave now.”
Booker flashed another wide smile. “You got it, bro.”
He rammed the throttles almost to their stops and spun the wheel. The powerful wake rocked the smaller Egyptian boat, forcing the two men aboard to clutch the railing to keep from being tossed overboard. Booker eased back on the power and kept his attention straight ahead while Cali surreptitiously studied the patrol craft. It lingered for a couple of minutes where they had met, presumably to make sure someone hadn’t jumped from the Riva to elude detection. It then took off in the opposite direction, to wherever they maintained their picket line.
Mercer reappeared well after they were out of range of the patrol craft. “We’re still alive, so it went okay, huh?”
“Where were you hiding?” Cali asked. “I heard the soldier check everywhere down there.”
“The garage for the inflatable on the stern. He walked right over me, didn’t even know it could open. What do you make of them?”
“They claimed they were conducting military maneuvers in the area, but they weren’t regular army.”
Cali shot him a look. “Really? Could have fooled me.”
“The Egyptian Army patterns their uniforms on the British. These guys were wearing U.S. issue BDUs and neither of them had any rank insignia and their gun belts didn’t match. Also their boat was a civilian craft painted gray. I could still see the white of her hull along the water line.”
Mercer went quiet for a moment. Their plan to sneak in and out was blown. Once again Poli had beaten him to the prize. For all he knew the one-eyed mercenary had had a team working in the desert since right after he saw the stele. They could be moments away from finding Alexander’s tomb and the deadly alembic.
“We need to see what’s going on up there.”
Lake Nasser, Egypt
“Say again,” Poli repeated into his handheld radio.
“There were two people on the boat,” the patrol leader said over the crackling communications link. “A man and woman.”
“What was their nationality?”
“American.”
“Mercer,” Poli hissed under his breath. “Was the man about six feet tall, muscular but not big, with dark hair and gray eyes?”
“No. He was much bigger. Almost two meters. Very muscled. And he had black skin, a kaffir.”
Feines wasn’t sure how he felt. In a way, he was disappointed it wasn’t Mercer. Surely he had realized the significance of the stele and gone back to photograph it and have the writing translated. That would lead him straight here. Could it be the American had given up?
“You’re sure no one else was aboard?” he asked to the guard out on the lake.
“Yes, Tawfiq searched very careful.”
“Okay, let them go and tell them not to return.”
“Yes, sir.”
Poli clipped the radio back onto his belt. Around him was a small tent city, housing for the fifty workers and guards Mohammad bin Al-Salibi had arranged. Most were Saudis or Iraqis who’d been trained at Al Qaida camps in Pakistan and Syria. Poli had gained their fear if not their respect his first day here when one of the guards spat at his feet when he was given an order. Feines had summarily shot the man on the spot, telling the others through his translator that the guard hadn’t been a martyr, just an insolent fool who should have seen Poli as an ally, not the enemy.
When it became clear that the attack on Novorossiysk had failed to produce the desired results, Salibi had practically begged for Poli to find the Alembic of Skenderbeg for him. The Saudi’s pleas did nothing to move him, but
