The Bent Pyramid

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The Bent Pyramid

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Boson Books by Hugh McLeave

White Pawn in Red Square

Rogues in the Gallery

The Bent Pyramid

A Moment of Truth

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_____________________

THE BENT PYRAMID

by

Hugh McLeave

__________________

BOSON BOOKS

Raleigh

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Published by Boson Books
3905 Meadow Field Lane
Raleigh, NC 27606

ISBN 1-932482-48-2

An imprint of C&M Online Media Inc.

Copyright 2007 Hugh McLeave
All rights reserved

For information contact
C&M Online Media Inc.
3905 Meadow Field Lane
Raleigh, NC 27606
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e-mail:[e-mail]
URL: http://www.bosonbooks.com/

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Chapter 1

Hell must be something like this. A claustrophobic museum basement where

lost souls (like him) separated from their material bodies moved among artifacts
from immemorial burial chambers. Chisholm tried desperately to concentrate on
his work, but the buttery, dust-laden light wavered before his eyes as he broke
open the crate borrowed from the Cairo Museum and unwrapped several scarab
amulets and the small, sculpted ushabti figures which were buried with pharaohs
and eminent Egyptians to serve them in the hereafter.

If only they would act as his apprentice sorcerer and hold his hand, for he felt

like death himself.

In that stifling basement, he alternately sweated and shivered; for eight

eternal days and nights he had not touched alcohol, not even through his skin
with after-shave lotion. Now he had the shakes and his tongue felt too big for his
parched mouth. But he must hold out. Hadn’t he promised Danny Inglis, his
Alcoholics Anonymous confidant, that he’d stay sober this time and break the
habit for good?

So, he toiled on, cursing Sheldon Wright, Director of the Aspenwall

Foundation, who had wished this job on him. Nine months hence, the
Foundation museum upstairs would hold an exhibition entitled The Great
Pharaohs, and Chisholm was cataloguing exhibits from six different foreign
museums and writing captions for them. In two weeks, he had listed more than a
thousand scarab seals, papyrus scrolls, hieroglyphic panels and cuneiform
tablets; he had spent so long in this purgatorial hole he had almost forgotten
what life upstairs looked like.

For a moment, he paused at the wooden sculpture of an Egyptian chariot

purportedly found in Ramses II’s tomb. A phony if he had ever smelled one. And
this faience head of Nefertiti he dated no further back than twenty years, its
providence most likely Cairo’s Khan el Khalili bazaar. Yet, he catalogued them
faithfully. Sheldon Wright wouldn’t know a junk-shop chariot and a flea-market
Nephertiti from a sacred bull’s foot.

As he bent over the crate something hard hit him on the shoulder and he spun

round as though he had seen a ghost. Sheldon Wright’s secretary, Jenny, was
standing grinning at him, a flask and two cups in her hands

“Jenny, you scared the shit out of me creeping up like that. It’s spooky down

here.”

“My, but you are jittery, Ewan. What did you think I was—something out of a

sarcophagus?”

“No—Beelzebub himself.”
Jenny looked at him quizzically then laughed. “But you know Beelzebub, in

the skin of Seldom Right lives aloft, and he sent me down here because he wants
to see you pronto.” As she spoke, she unscrewed the flask top, handed him a cup
then poured them both milky coffee and dropped two sugar cubes into each
steaming cup. “That’s to wash the pharaonic dust down,” she said.

Jenny knew his problems. Who in the Aspenwall didn’t? However, she never

referred to them, even when he guessed she wanted to offer her shoulder, or her
mouth or herself. Well, she wasn’t to be spurned, he thought, looking at her as he

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sipped the tarry, bitter coffee. She was blonde, nubile, eager and still the right
side of thirty.

“What does Seldom want?”
Jenny shrugged her ignorance. “All I know is that he took a call from a Mrs.

Seagram, genuflecting and licking the handset mouthpiece, then sent me into this
nether world to fetch you.”

Seagram? As he finished his coffee and accompanied her upstairs, he tried the

name on his memory, but it meant nothing.

Sheldon Wright had his nose in a bulky, yellowing file which exuded dust that

spangled in the sunbeams and had triggered his allergy. His nose and eyes
streamed and he was snorting into his handkerchief; but he kept his head down
and his eye on the script seemingly oblivious of Chisholm, who was waiting
respectfully.

He knew what Wright was thinking: Why shouldn’t I keep this drunk on the

balls of his feet to make him aware of the immense favor I’ve done him by hiring
him—a man without a formal archaeological degree who has just come out of
prison?

Finally, Sheldon Wright raised his head and fixed Chisholm with those eyes

the color of stone-washed jeans.

“Chisholm, I want you to drop Ancient Egypt and go and crate Garfield Tate’s

papers and his bits and pieces.”

“Garfield Tate—but hasn’t he been dead for twenty-odd years?”
“He has, and we’re well aware of it. But his widow died eight months ago,

they’ve just settled the estate and they’re selling her house and clearing
everything out. Which explains why we’re at panic stations.” Sheldon Wright
banged his file shut, scribbled an address on a slip of paper and handed it to
Chisholm. “Just go there and see the stuff’s crated and stacked in a corner of our
morgue. We’ll catalogue it later.”

Chisholm glanced at the Barnes address on the chit. “You mean, they’ve been

lying there for more than twenty years?”

Wright nodded. “Everything was left to Lady Garfield Tate, but she refused all

our offers to part with the papers until after her death—and don’t ask me why.”

Sir William Garfield Tate ranked with Schliemann, Flinders Petrie, Howard

Carter, Woolley and the really great archaeologists and Egyptologists; in the
Aspenwall he had a room named after him and several hundred square feet of
space there and in the basement housing some of his finds.

Many of his expeditions to Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Turkey had been financed by

the Foundation, including the last one, twenty-five years ago to Egypt where he
had met his death in a car crash. His white marble bust sat in the museum
entrance above a case recording his most famous ‘digs’.

“Why don’t you do a special exhibition on him...a sort of life story?” Chisholm

suggested. “You’ve already got most of his stuff and it wouldn’t cost much.”

Sheldon Wright rose and walked to the window overlooking Kensington Gore.

He pointed to the people passing the museum and the park crowd beyond. “Can
you see any of them remembering who GT was and what he did. And if they
remembered would they bother to come and look at his Pharaonic scarabs and
sarchopaghi, his Hittite and Assyrian trinkets and the rest of the crap?...”

“But there’s a lot of good material, and if it was properly publicized...”
Sheldon Wright rejected that idea with a toss of his graying head which threw

bits of dandruff into the shaft of sunlight. He emphasized his refusal by the way
he screwed his cigarette butt into the jade ashtray on his desk.

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Chisholm knew better than to argue. Sheldon Wright had a cynical approach

to the art and treasures in his Foundation and museum. His philosophy was that
anything he did not want or could not buy or otherwise procure, the Louvre, the
British Museum or the Met in New York could have willingly; he had little
judgment of art, ancient or modern, and paid high prices for mediocre painting,
sculpture or archaeological pieces because this earned his museum publicity and
drew the public.

He never tired of reminding Chisholm and others that more people queued in

a week at the Louvre in 1911 to gawp at the vacant space where the stolen Mona
Lisa had hung than had bothered to look at the painting itself in ten years. But
then, Seldom Right was carrying on the brave traditions of the Aspenwall. Hadn’t
Sir Henry, the tea merchant who started the Foundation, quietly lifted anything
that came to hand—from Ming Dynasty sculpture to worthless Indian temple
idols—on his travels? His present foundation director had the same sticky-
fingered attitude, stopping at nothing to acquire what he wanted without
questioning its provenance.

“Look Chisholm, just go and crate the old bastard and shove him where I

said.” He scribbled two more addresses, of the removal firm and estate agents
who were handling the house sale and returned to his knee hole desk and his
files.

Yet, a few minutes later, he took post by the window to watch Chisholm leave

the building. There were two pubs on the way to the bus-stop. Would Chisholm’s
no-drink pledge get him past them? Sheldon Wright knew the Scotsman now had
to rely on buses, for he had lost his license when he tested above the legal alcohol
limit for the second time in three months. Wright’s mouth curled at a clever
thought: why, with so little blood in his alcohol stream, the man would have
tested positive before breakfast! Though now they said he was trying to stay on
the wagon. He wouldn’t have taken a thousand to one on that.

Why did he employ him? Well, Chisholm might not have had any formal

training outside his engineering degree from some Scottish technical college, but
he had a brilliant, synoptic grasp of archaeology; not only could he leave most
academics standing, he had done brilliant field work in four continents and had
several valuable discoveries to his credit. It was the man’s bad luck and the
Foundation’s good luck that he was a psychic cripple.

To Sheldon Wright’s astonishment, Chisholm walked past both pubs without

so much as a glance.

Relieved to be liberated from his airless dungeon, Chisholm left the bus at

Rock’s Lane and walked through the drizzling rain the half mile to Garfield Tate’s
old house in Ranelagh Crescent. A high railing and beech hedge hid all but the
slate roof and the chimney pots from the road.

A car sat by the drive gate and out of it climbed a young man who came to

greet him, saying he was David Bliss from Benton’s, the estate agents in
Richmond. Button-down shirt, bow tie, hair slicked and so waterproofed with
perfumed grease the rain ricocheted off it. They were selling the house for Lady
Garfield’s niece, he said.

“Would that be Mrs. Seagram,” Chisholm asked, and got a head twitch for an

answer.

Looking at the house, Chisholm’s first thought was: Why does a childless

widow live for twenty-odd years in a vast, faceless barrack like this? No charm, no
character. A Victorian eyesore. Yellow brickwork overlaid with a thick patina of
London soot and sulfur. Nine rooms and four basement rooms, the estate agent

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droned. Four upstairs and two downstairs shut, for the old lady used only the
ground floor.

Chisholm sniffed the air in the upstairs room. In his trade you became an

expert in stale air and especially dust: Pharaonic, Sumerian, Hittite, Assyrian,
down to the stuff in the vacuum-cleaner bag. This dust and air had hardly been
stirred in half a century if his nose, allergy buds and index finger had kept their
hand in. Dingy, moth-eaten chintz curtains and four books with brittle, sere
pages.

Lady Garfield Tate had lived in the front room and a bedroom at the rear; her

maid occupied one of the other rooms and a handyman, who had been with the
family for twenty-five years had two basement rooms.

In the other two basement rooms, the archaeologist’s papers were stacked.

Enough to fill a small van, Chisholm reckoned.

His first thought came back to him: Why did the old dame hoard this junk for

twenty-odd years instead of handing it over to the Foundation? It evidently had
never been touched, and he could not remember any important biography of
Garfield Tate, or anyone having had access to this memorabilia.

What happened to the furniture when Lady Garfield Tate died?” Chisholm

asked.

“Oh, that! Sold at auction with quite a few mementoes from the great man’s

collection. Everything but her Rolls.”

“She had a Rolls!”
“Yeah, a beauty...a Silver Wraith that she used only for shopping.” Bliss

flapped his leather wallet at the two basement rooms. “If this is all that interests
you, I’ll shut up the other rooms. You can do the front door and the gate when
you’re through here.” Before handing over the keys, he paused and looked
dubiously at Chisholm. “You’ll make sure the door and gate are locked, won’t
you? We don’t want squatters.”

Chisholm took the keys and followed the scrawny figure as it retreated down

the drive and out of sight. Turning, he stared at his reflection in the dingy
basement window. There, he saw the reason for Bliss’s question about his
reliability. Had there been a pub within half a mile, he might have broken his
pledge. Here, they had even cut off the water.

To distract his mind from drink of any kind, he began to move the cartons of

papers stacked against the wall. Damp had rotted the bottom cartons. But
something else had attacked them. Rats. They had gnawed their way into four of
the bottom cartons and their paper entrails had extruded under the weight of the
others. Rising damp or rainwater had soiled the bottom six inches of the boxes.

Cursing his luck, he walked to the nearest phone box and rang the removal

firm for half a dozen cardboard boxes. When he returned, he detached the
damaged cartons. Two of them even had BOAC airline stickers from Cairo and
the date they had been flown home, October 16, 1975. Chisholm took his knife
and cut off the customs declarations which listed the contents and put these in
his pocket to check that nothing had gone missing when he repacked the boxes.

A van arrived with a dozen cartons and Chisholm began to empty the

damaged boxes and repack the papers. Everything seemed as Garfield Tate had
left it—the files and photographs of his ‘digs’ and the objects he had recovered
from them; there were the diaries he kept and the thick, cardboard-bound
logbooks in which he described progress on excavation sites. In the Egyptian
boxes, half a dozen of these logbooks had been soiled by water and had gone

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brittle in drying. Their dates indicated they covered Garfield Tate’s last
explorations.

Studying the damage, Chisholm noticed an impression on the fly leaf of one

logbook—a fudged, oblong shadow with the deeper impression of something in
the center. An identical mark appeared on the paper glued to the cardboard cover
to hold the logbook together. Humidity and the weight pressing on the notebook
had made these indentations.

To examine the logbook in raw daylight, he took it upstairs. Now, he could see

that someone had evidently hidden an envelope between the paper and the
cardboard cover. Returning to the basement, he examined the archive box and
noticed what he would have missed but for the discovery of the hidden envelope:
someone had opened then resealed these Egyptian boxes before placing them at
the bottom of the archives.

Who?
Hardly Garfield Tate, for he was almost certainly dead and buried when these

boxes arrived from his last Egyptian expeditions. His widow? If the boxes had
been opened here, she must have given her permission. However, they might
easily have been searched by Egyptian customs.

Archaeologists had little standing with countries like Egypt, Turkey, Syria,

Iraq; for the most impeccably honest among them, men who never fiddled their
taxes or dreamed of stealing a library book, could be tempted to walk away with
some national treasure in the form of pottery, coins, sculpture, even jewels. How
well he knew the syndrome, having been tempted himself!

What were they looking for, the people who had opened these boxes? This

envelope?

Chisholm stared at it, mesmerized Ethically, he should report such a matter to

Sheldon Wright, now responsible for the Garfield Tate archives. But his instinct
to probe the mystery was too strong. What lay in that oblong shape beneath the
paper? He had to know.

To remove it without leaving a trace, he needed a solvent which he didn’t

have. He’d have to use his knife and somehow camouflage the slits along the
seams. Anyway, from what Sheldon Wright had hinted, it wasn’t likely the
archives would be disturbed for a long time, if ever.

Upstairs, in the better light, he ran his knife point cautiously along the

rectangular shape, inserted the blade between the paper and the hidden object
and levered them gently apart.

It was an envelope. A buff envelope of the kind used by government offices. As

he eased it free, he realized someone had taken time and trouble to gouge out a
space for it in the cardboard cover.

Chisholm had forgotten his thirst and his craving, though his mouth had gone

even drier as he slit the envelope open and pulled out the contents—two bits of
drawing paper glued together over a flat key. He had run across that sort of key,
though not in Britain. Somewhere abroad. As he pondered where, he noticed
there were three rectangles of paper; he slit the third part open and out fell a
smaller, transparent envelope. When he opened this, he was looking at a set of
negatives. He ran them through his fingers. Twenty-four in all.

To view these negatives in the best light, he opened the front door and stood

on the steps. They were black-and-white negatives and had been taken with a
fixed-focus camera, probably one of those small Kodaks they made in the sixties.
Chisholm turned them this way and that against the light, searching for the best

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viewpoint. To him, those first shots seemed fudged as though out of focus or
perhaps developed with amateur equipment.

Nine of them showed pyramids. Not the famous Giza trio, but those further

south in Saqqara, Dahshur and down to Faiyum, about sixty miles along the Nile
from Cairo. Chisholm knew most of the thirty-odd important pyramids like the
inside of his pocket and had explored many of the other fifty ruined pyramids.
Here, he recognized some of those that the photographer had snapped.

Garfield Tate, if it was he, had obviously selected these pyramids with a

purpose. He had omitted the Giza complex and the famous Step Pyramid at
Saqqara, but had photographed the Bent Pyramid and its Dahshur neighbours,
and that great rubble-strewn monolith at Meydum, thirty miles further south.
Why? And why would Garfield Tate go to the trouble of concealing shots like
these when almost every visitor to Egypt had a wallet full of them in Technicolor?

That question was answered when he looked at the next set of negatives

bunched together in a separate wrapper.

Fifteen of them. All showing jewels. Pharaonic jewels. Of the kind buried with

pharaohs, princes, and the Egyptian élite in pyramids and tombs over a period of
three thousand years. They had been taken, evidently with flashlight, in some sort
of funerary vault, for Chisholm could identify a granite sarcophagus, its lid askew,
and even discern some of the inscriptions on the side.

When he looked at the negatives, he had to sit down on the front steps, his

legs felt so wobbly and his mind was spinning with dozens of questions.

Holding the pictures up to the light, he studied them again. Garfield Tate had

photographed most of the jewels on the sarcophagus lid, though he had caught
some other parts of the tomb. Unfortunately, his camera lacked definition and
Chisholm realized he would need to blow up these crude negative images to read
the inscriptions and the wall reliefs.

Why had the man used black-and-white? Why, when the beauty of pharaonic

jewelry lay in the colors? Rich golds clashing with blue-green turquoise, blood-
red carnelian and iridescent, deep-blue lapis lazuli?

Yet, even in those dark, fudged negatives, he could picture that jewel hoard;

he could imagine those scores of small gold rosettes with their turquoise,
amethyst and lapis lazuli inlays. One piece looked as good as the jewels recovered
from the ruined pyramid of Amenemhet I at Lisht just north of Meydum on the
west bank of the Nile.

From what he could make out, most of the jewels were Twelfth Dynasty

pieces, not unlike the marvelous finds of de Morgan and Flinders Petrie at
Dahshur and El Lahun; those two archaeologists had unearthed the jewels of two
princesses at the pyramids of Senusert II and III.

Here, in Garfield Tate’s collection were arm and ankle amulets of gold beads

and precious stones, thick chokers of beads strung on gold thread, circlets with
serpent heads, signifying royalty, a dozen types of scarab necklace and amulet,
girdles and even a belt-and-bead apron, a rarity in anybody’s collection; there
were shell pectorals of a type he had never seen in Cairo, New York or London,
the three main repositories of Pharaonic jewels. A necklace of gold flies and a
falcon collar would break auction records everywhere if put on the market.

Several of the negatives threw up puzzles in his mind. That heavy bracelet of

twelve rows of gold beads was at least a thousand years older than Twelfth-
Dynasty; and the necklace of forty-five gold beetles might have come from the
same Fourth-Dynasty tomb. Garfield Tate had also photographed a tray of scarab
earrings, ornaments unknown in Egypt during the Old and Middle Kingdoms. As

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well as that Pharaoh’s collar of five different types of precious stone with sold-
gold falcon heads. Alone, that was worth probably a millions pounds.

Chisholm knew that almost every pyramid, every tomb, every temple had been

despoiled and pillaged in the Nile Valley and the Valley of the Kings; only rare
tombs like Tutankhamen’s had escaped the grave robbers and survived
reasonably intact. He could remember most of the jewels that had been recovered
over the past two hundred years.

But nowhere had he seen objects like these. Nowhere had he heard that such a

find had been made. Had these jewels been put on display they would have
created a sensation in the world of Egyptology and art.

Scanning the negatives once more threw up more questions that tangled in his

mind. Where had Garfield Tate unearthed these jewels? They were not all of a
piece, old Archaic Period ornaments mixed with Fourth and Twelfth Dynasty
relics. Were they plunder hidden by some robber and rediscovered by Garfield
Tate? Or—an unthinkable idea—had Garfield Tate uncovered them over the years
and hidden them in order to smuggle them out of Egypt and sell them to the
highest bidder? After all, they were worth at least ten million pounds. Any
museum would have looked the other way and paid that. Even Garfield Tate’s
own, the Aspenwall.

He looked at the dilapidated Victorian barrack where the archaeologist and

his widow had lived. From their house and life-style, it hardly appeared that
either had managed to turn this treasure trove into hard cash. But of course,
Garfield Tate might have been killed in the accident before putting his plan into
effect?

If so, those jewels were still lying in that funerary vault, or somewhere else in

Egypt.

Chisholm’s mind was grappling with another, more pressing problem; What

did he, Ewan Burns Chisholm, do with these negatives and the information they
contained?

Of course, he should report everything to Sheldon Wright since the archives

now belonged to the Aspenwall Foundation. But what would that idiot do?
Probably start a general hunt for the mystery jewel hoard and see it snapped up
by someone else. What a coup that would be if he could unearth that treasure,
wherever it was!

Before packing and sealing the carton where he had found the envelope, he

searched the other logbooks to ensure nothing else was concealed in them. He
found nothing more.

Chisholm shut and locked the basement and front doors and walked to

Church Road where he found a photocopy shop and copied the twenty-odd pages
of Garfield Tate’s last logbook; he bought a tube of glue, several sheets of paper
and a cheap magnifying glass. Back in the Ranelagh Crescent house, he cut a
sheet of paper the size of the fly leaf and pasted it over the space from which the
hidden envelope had come.

By the time the removal men arrived with their small van, he had repacked

the Egyptian boxes. When they had loaded the van, he accompanied the removal
men to the museum where they stored the archives in a corner of the basement.

Chisholm made sure the Egyptian boxes went to the bottom of the pile.
He rang Sheldon Wright to report that the archives had been recovered and

stacked in the basement and, on the director’s order, went back to cataloguing the
pharaonic exhibits and writing captions for them.

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Only half of Chisholm was in that basement, perspiring in the still atmosphere

as he handled Ancient Egyptian artifacts like a robot—his physical half. His
mental and spiritual half were already in Egypt exploring sites which might hide
those marvelous jewels.

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Chapter 2

After a couple of hours, microfilm had a way of putting an eye lock on you,

mesmerizing your mind into skipping half the subject matter, blurring the print
before your eyes and setting it shimmering like rice on the boil. Chisholm
switched off the screen and went outside to have a cigarette on the library steps.

He felt thirsty. Not a physiological thirst, but that craving for strong liquor

branded on every cell in his body. A thirst that ran through him like the tremor in
his head and hands. Before returning to his library seat, he went to the toilets and
scooped water into his mouth and on to his face. It did nothing to assuage his
thirst for alcohol.

Back at the screen, he thumbed another cassette into the machine and spun

the pages of The Times of twenty-five years ago to one of the stories of Garfield
Tate’s death. For almost the whole morning he had sat in the British newspaper
library sifting through the life and death of the archaeologist in journalistic
terms.

He might have done it more painlessly in a national newspaper office rather

than choosing to travel to this bleak northern suburb; but in the Express, Mail or
Telegraph libraries he might have met newsmen who would wonder about his
interest in a ‘digger’ long dead and all but forgotten. Moreover, these newspapers
had run stories on him when he was jailed, and he had no wish to provoke or
revive their curiosity.

Of course he already knew much of Garfield Tate’s story from reading his

books on his ‘digs’ in Sumerian and Hittite sites in Iraq and Anatolia, and
especially Egypt. Chisholm had himself ‘dug’ with men who had worked with
Garfield Tate in the pyramids, the Valley of the Kings and in Anatolia.

Yet, he learned a lot about the man that morning. Like himself, the

archaeologist had started as an engineer and geologist working for mining
companies in Africa. Through picking up neolithic and mesolithic flint tools and
arrowheads, through finding stone sculpture, he had been bitten by the
archaeology bug. And it seemed he had a sixth sense for uncovering buried sites.
Or perhaps he was lucky or used the right strategy.

In Egypt, he had unearthed one of the solar boats buried with pharaohs to

permit them to voyage in the sun dog’s retinue, and he had discovered several
secret funerary chambers in the small pyramids at Dahshur, twenty miles south
of Cairo; two of these yielded sculpture, reliefs and frescoes which illuminated the
Fourth Dynasty between 2680 and 2560 BC.

It was at that point the Aspenwall began to finance his various expeditions to

Egypt and Turkey; but he repaid their investments with interest, for the
specimens be brought back (with or without official consent or connivance)
graced the shelves, alcoves and walls of Sheldon Wright’s museum and filled
many of the basement stores.

Garfield Tate also found a wife in the Foundation. Virginia Merton had been

the museum secretary—the job Jenny now filled—when they had financed the
first two Egyptian expeditions. After they married, she gave up her job and
accompanied him everywhere. According to the press stories, she even slept
rough in makeshift cabins and tents around the excavation sites.

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Chisholm studied her in several half-tone pictures (even hazier on microfilm)

clad in khaki shirt, slacks and solar topi. She looked attractive as well as
purposeful with a trowel or a scraper in her hand.

As he ran over the pages, Chisholm made notes. Fortunately for him, Garfield

Tate had concentrated on pyramids, though these covered an area along the Nile
Valley of about a hundred miles south of Cairo. Those pyramids, which the
archaeologist had photographed, were spread over half that distance on the left
bank of the Nile.

When he reached the dozens of stories about the accident and Garfield Tate’s

death, he halted before another puzzle: the sites where they said he had been
digging just before his death did not square with those mentioned in his last
logbook. However, there might be a simple explanation, Chisholm thought. In a
highly competitive and secretive business like archaeology where a single find
could mean the difference between fame or anonymity, between leading
expeditions or being jobless, even top men like Garfield Tate covered their tracks
and kept their own counsel. It explained why archaeologists took to faking
Putdown men and Hittite pottery—they often did it out of sheer frustration at
having discovered nothing.

Lady Garfield Tate and the newspapers said he had been working around the

Step Pyramid at Saqqara just before his accident; but the log which Chisholm had
copied, even if vague on place names and locations, showed him much further
south, near Dahshur and within thirty miles of the Meydum pyramid where he
met his death.

Although none of the press stories mentioned this, he had gone to Egypt with

the financial backing of the Aspenwall Museum to visit his old excavations sites
and gather material for a forthcoming book on the evolution of pyramid
construction, from the Step Pyramid to the three most famous pyramids at Giza.
So, theoretically, he would have operated in a small area twenty miles long by two
wide between the Nile and the desert.

A couple of hours before sunset on the day he died, he and his assistant, Dr

Ceti Kanfer, had driven a long way further south to the huge Meydum pyramid,
one of the earliest of these monuments standing on a hill overlooking the river.
No one knew exactly why, but it seemed he had a rendezvous there, or perhaps
went to confirm some architectural detail.

As he returned in the darkness, it appeared he ran into one of those freak

whirlwinds called dust devils; it was powerful enough either to blind him or pick
up the jeep he was driving and catapult it into the valley where it caught fire. Both
he and his assistant were trapped and burned to death.

A detective from Cairo, Yussef Heykal, had driven to the scene and given

Reuter and the Associated Press interviews when he returned with the bodies.
Nobody, it seemed, had seen the jeep crash, but the blaze had brought villagers
running to help.

Chisholm scanned all the pictures of the burned-out jeep overturned at the

bottom of the ravine. In the background, the great monolith of the Meydum
pyramid lifted above the desert sand amid the rubble from its crumbling
limestone casing. He knew that pyramid well. What archaeologist didn’t? No-one
knew which pharaoh had built it; some said Sneferu, who had constructed he first
real pyramids at Dahshur; others thought the little-known pharaoh, Hu. Meydum
had also yielded up two of the most famous statues of Egyptology, of Prince
Rehotep and his wife, Nefert.

A spectacular place to die, Chisholm reflected.

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Most quality papers quoted the official version that Garfield Tate had been hit

or blinded by a dust devil. Only the Mail wondered why he had gone to Meydum,
whom he had met there and why did he risk driving along that dangerous road
when it was growing dark. But nobody else had followed up that inquiry line.

Although weary and with his eyes blurring over with strain, Chisholm

backtracked over the pictures and stories of that accident. From the press photos,
he gleaned something of the two personalities. Garfield Tate stood well over six
feet while Virginia was short; he was handsome with a square face and a thatch of
dark hair while she was fragile with plain, almost coarse features; invariably, he
had been snapped on ‘digs’ while her pictures were against the background of the
Gezira races or at functions like the British Embassy garden party for the Queen’s
birthday. Some of her press quotes suggested she had a temper, and a waspish
tongue.

Two days after the accident, they flew Garfield Tate home; the British colony,

led by the ambassador and his staff, turned out to bid him and Virginia farewell
at Cairo Airport. Chisholm’s eye fell on a quote from Lampson, one of the men
who worked with the archaeologist and who was at the airport. He said, “I
wonder if GT really wants to leave here. He used to say in that way of his, half-
fun, whole-earnest, he had inhaled, ingested, imbibed so much pharaonic dust
he’d like his ashes scattered in the places where he had ‘dug’ most—Saqqara and
Dahshur.

But Garfield Tate had a more conventional burial at Kensington Cemetery.

Skipping the tributes and the memorial service, Chisholm did note that the great
archaeologist had left no more than £37,870 tax paid. Not much for a life in the
trenches, he reflected. Indeed, not much more than his house would have fetched
on the market twenty-odd years ago.

Was he strapped for cash? Was this perhaps why he might have been trying to

bring off a coup by smuggling those jewels out of Egypt and selling them to some
museum without tipping his hand to the Aspenwall, which would have wanted
them for nothing?

Possible. He wouldn’t have been the first. Hadn’t Flinders Petrie sold most of

the El Lahun treasure to the Met in New York—though admittedly with the
blessing of the Egyptian authorities, who kept his unique pieces for the Cairo
Museum.

Looking at his widow’s funeral, he noted only a handful of people had

accompanied her to the same grave in the cemetery. Among them, Sheldon
Wright and four members of the Aspenwall governing council.

To his surprise, Lady Garfield Tate had left $443,674, nearly twelve times her

husband’s bequest to her. Even accounting for two oil crises and a war which had
sent inflation through the roof, Virginia Garfield Tate had done pretty well.

Chisholm wondered how.

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Chapter 3

From the road he would not have glanced twice at the Seagram house.

Georgian, classical proportions, two windows and a front door on the ground
floor and four upstairs, all of them barred. No name on the gate. Just an intercom
box and a code panel. He announced himself and the gate opened on to a short
drive leading to a well-shaved lawn edged with roses and annuals. In a corner of
the garage sat Lady Garfield Tate’s Silver Wraith. They’d kept that.

A maid escorted him through the house and opened the French windows for

him to step on to the terrace. There, he saw the transformation. Palladian facade
with Venetian windows giving on to the terrace. Below that, a sunken garden with
a fountain frothing like champagne. Phalanxes of budding roses and banks of
perennials broken at regular intervals with shrubs. Delphiniums, phlox, lupines
drawn up in formation. Even the goldfish in the round pond seemed on station.
There was doubtless a corresponding page in House and Garden at which the
Seagrams had halted and chimed in unison, “That’s the way we want it.”

Below the gardens, an acre of lawn sloped discreetly to the boathouse on the

Thames. Everything exuded the sweet smell of wealth.

Joan Seagram made her entrance on the terrace with two Russian wolfhounds

at her sandaled heels. Silk pajama suit with a Japanese tea-garden motif, blonde
hair though darker eyebrows and eyelashes, sun-bronzed face and fingernails the
color of arterial blood. She fitted . So did the borzois, who fixed him with their
pointed snouts and myopic eyes as they squatted beside their mistress, vigilant.

She waved to a seat across the terrace table. “It’s tea-time,” she murmured.

“Would you like tea, or perhaps something stronger?”

“Tea,” he said. She crossed the terrace to beckon the maid and order it. Two

things struck him: Mrs. Seagram was aware he was a man as she turned to
windward to let the Thames breeze mould the silk Japanese tea-garden to her
thighs, belly and breasts. Secondly, she knew all about him. She offered him a
cigarette from the onyx box on the table, commenting that her husband was
playing his Sunday game of golf at Sunningdale and would be back in half an
hour.

“So, it’s you who has the headache of sorting out Uncle William’s papers,” she

said.

“No, just cataloguing them. But I had a look in the museum library and I was

surprised nobody has written his life.”

“That’s true.” She glanced reflectively at the Thames before speaking,

watching the Sunday traffic of sailing dinghies and river buses full of tourists.
“But then, I suppose he had written most of his own stories in his books about his
‘diggings’—is that the word?”

“I wondered if your aunt wasn’t intending to write her husband’s life,” he said.
Joan Seagram’s coloratura giggle pealed to the river and back. Her gray-green

eyes locked on his. “Now, whatever made you imagine such a thing?”

“Oh! just that she kept his papers in his house for more than twenty years. I

could see no other reason than she wanted to use them.”

That brought on her forced laugh again. “Aunt Ginny probably put them away

and forgot all about them.” She looked blandly and shrugged. “But she might
have wanted to avoid media people badgering her with questions if she had
released the papers. And people offering to write biographies.”

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“People like me, you mean.”
“At least you’re an archaeologist, not one of them.”
Chisholm sipped the tea which the maid brought and poured; it did nothing to

quench his other, deeper thirst. That drinks trolley was too near the table for his
comfort. “As I said on the phone, Garfield Tate’s life would make a splendid
biography.”

“And you’d like to write it?”
Chisholm nodded. “If I can have access to the papers through the Foundation

and get co-operation from those people who knew him best.”

“Don’t look at me,” Joan Seagram said. “I was still in a school blazer when

Uncle Bill was killed, and I’m no more than a niece on Aunt Ginny’s side. My
mother was her younger sister.” She paused then added, “Much younger.”

“Did your husband know him?”
Before she shook her head slowly, she removed a blonde mesh that had

tumbled over her right eye. “Well, perhaps they met once or twice, but they really
didn’t know each other,” she said as an afterthought.

“Did your aunt talk much about her husband? She did accompany him on

most of his excavations in Egypt ad Turkey, didn’t she?”

Again, Joan Seagram laughed. “To tell the truth, I think archaeology bored

her. Aunt Ginny’s idea of bliss wasn’t frying eggs over a primus stove in some
excavation shack in the lee of the pyramids. She lived for the present, not in the
past. She liked ice in her drinks, a hot bath and Cordon Bleu cuisine by somebody
else—the Nile Hilton and the Sheraton in short.”

“She liked her Rolls, too.”
“Yes, but it was her only extravagance in her last years,” her niece said,

defensively.

Chisholm had the impression she had rehearsed these answers or perhaps

someone had scripted them for her. “She wasn’t short of money, was she?”

That question seemed to faze her. For a few seconds she thought about it, her

slow, pensive breath superimposed on the cigarette smoke she sucked in then
expelled. “No, not from anything she said to me,” she said, finally.

A car drove into the garage and a few minutes later, Brian Seagram appeared.

As he walked briskly across the terrace, he called on the maid to bring fresh ice
for the drinks trolley. Seagram was big and burly with a square face, blue eyes
and thinning blonde hair.

“Good round, darling?” his wife called.
“Nooh. Missed a three-footer on the eighteenth and Dick sank his fifteen-

footer and lifted the bloody kitty,” he said over his shoulder as he stopped by the
trolley.

“Brian darling, come and meet Mr. Chisholm from the Aspenwall Foundation.

I told you about him.”

“Ah, yes.” Seagram walked over and stuck out a hand. “You’re the man who’s

interested in Garfield Tate, aren’t you.?”

Chisholm took the hand. Big, powerful, knuckle-crunching. Probing his

strength. Seagram he had seen before with Jenny, who had informed him the
man was wealthy and one of the most influential Friends of the Aspenwall, was
well-connected was well-heeled and, of course, related through marriage to the
Garfield Tates. Seagram was eying him like a pro boxer. His wife broke the eye-
hold.

“Mr. Chisholm wondered if Aunt Ginny might have wanted to write Uncle

Bill’s life.”

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Before commenting, Seagram went back to the drinks tray to uncork a whisky

bottle, pour himself a healthy tot and fire soda into it from a siphon. He looked
round at his wife, grinning. “Ginny write his life,” he said. “That’s ripe.” He
gulped some of his drink. “But if she had, it might have got into the top ten.”

“Was it that exciting?” Chisholm asked.
Seagram left a space for reflection then came and sat down and took another

mouthful of whisky and soda. “It could have been,” he said. “As she used to say,
they were always in some hole or other and not mostly archaeological. What did
she say, Joannie? ‘That’s our life all over.’ Which, when you think of it, has a bit
of everything—wit, irony, metaphor, philosophy, you name it.”

Seagram took a cigarette from the onyx box and lit it, pointed the paper tube

at Chisholm’s tea then at the drinks tray. “Something a mite stiffer than that?”

Chisholm shook his head, wondering if this man knew about his drink

problem, and concluded he must. Someone in the Aspenwall would have tipped
him off. Sheldon Wright? Even Jenny? Or he might have read about his court
cases in the tabloids which had treated him to their biggest type. Seagram seemed
to know everybody.

Chisholm had done his own homework on him. A City financier, Seagram held

a dozen company directorships and had made news himself as the man at the
heart of several takeover battles between his companies and the victims. He was
invariably the predator. Electronics, pharmaceuticals, food manufacture, aero
engines figured among his companies. In his late twenties, he had won a Tory
seat in Hertfordshire and had risen to junior health minister; but after an election
defeat he had never contested another seat. Chisholm put him in his middle or
late forties.

“Found anything interesting in the archives, Mr.?...”
“Chisholm,” his wife put in.
“No, we haven’t started to catalogue them yet. But his logbooks and diaries

and most of his correspondence are there as well as the background material for
the books he wrote.”

“Looked in the logbooks and diaries, have you?”
“No,” Chisholm lied. “I’d have to get permission from the estate and the

Foundation to do that.”

“There shouldn’t be any objection to that from either,” Seagram murmured.
As though to short-circuit this line of talk, Joan Seagram rose and went to the

drinks trolley and poured herself a large whisky.

“Joannie darling, offer Mr. Chisholm a real drink, “Seagram called. ‘It gives

me the gears to see him drinking that brew.”

Before he could object, Joan Seagram was standing before him holding out a

tumbler half full of whisky. Those gray-green eyes were inching coolly over his
face. What lay behind them? Did she realize she might just as well have proffered
him a cake of Semtex fused at five seconds? Perhaps she knew only too well, and
they had rehearsed this move, too.

Yet, he took it. Somehow, his hand wrapped itself round the chilled glass,

clenching it tightly enough to break it so that they would not see the tremor in his
fingers. His nostrils flared at the pungent odor of the whisky, his head spun and
his throat and gullet craved the rasp and tingle of that liquor.

He hungered to gulp it down neat and damn the both of them. Four eyes were

fixed on him, watching, waiting to see him yield. Toss it down and he’d have
another, then another and another. And he’d forget what he’d come for in his

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haste to leave and run to the nearest pub and swill whisky until his legs and head
went. Damn them to hell, he wouldn’t give them that satisfaction!

In those gray-green irises, Joan Seagram had constellations of tiny black

flecks. They quivered with astonishment as he handed the glass back to her.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I should have told you or Sheldon Wright should have

warned you, I’m a drunk and not to tempt me. Thank you for the tea and the
information, I must go.”

Both Seagrams froze. They glanced at each other. Loaded for elephant that

glance. Scorn? Disappointment? Frustration? Before he could decide which in his
confusion, a maid materialized and escorted him through the house and out the
front door.

At the gate he felt light-headed. Air underfoot. Couldn’t he just do with that

drink now! Still unsteady, he walked towards the town until he spotted a phone
box. Danny Inglis would be in his flat above the Camden Town junk shop. He
fumbled for coins and thrust them into the machine and dialed the number.

“Danny,” he croaked into the mouthpiece before his AA contact had time to

lift the receiver. “Danny, I need help.”

No Danny. Instead, that slight hiss of the answering machine and Danny’s

electronic voice urging him to leave a message. Fuck all answering machines and
Danny with them.

He dialed Jenny who was in her flat, thank God. “Jenny, I need help,” he

gasped.

“Where are you?”
“In a call-box in Well Street, Henley.”
“Is there a cafe near you?”
Chisholm looked round. “No, but I know there’s one open in the main street.”
“Count twenty slowly,” Jenny said, “then walk straight there without looking

right or left and drink the blackest coffee they have. I’ll find the place and be with
you in half an hour.”

According to Jenny, when Sheldon Wright blew his top his dandruff fallout

increased and his vision blurred or lost focus. But since he refused to believe the
evidence, he kept polishing his bifocals like mad and stepped up his eye-blink
rate.

He was polishing his glasses on the silk lining of his Harrow tie, blinking

furiously and pacing his office like a caged tiger when Chisholm answered his
summons.

“What in hell’s name do you mean by badgering the Seagrams with idiotic

questions?” he shouted at Chisholm before Jenny had closed the door behind
him. “And what’s this crazy notion of writing Garfield Tate’s life?”

“Is it so crazy? He’s a big name and somebody will do it now the papers are

available.”

“They’re not available—to you or anybody else. Not until the estate’s wound

up and we’ve been through them.” He stopped his polishing act as though his
vision had cleared, and he stared at Chisholm. “You’ve been through them, you
sly bastard, and you’ve found something, haven’t you?”

“I packed up the papers and stored them, that’s all.”
“But you had to repack two of the Egyptian boxes, didn’t you?”
“Only because they had burst with the damp and dry rot.”
Sheldon Wright broke stride, turned and pointed a finger at him. “You’ve

pinched something, haven’t you? You came across some valuable object or

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papers repacking those boxes and you’ve appropriated them. Chisholm, you’re a
thief as well as a drunk and a brawler.”

That petty sadist in Sheldon Wright was reveling in the situation and he

turned the screw deeper. “You know what that means—theft—to a man who has a
criminal record. Several years in jail.”

“They’d have to prove there was intention to deprive the owner permanently

of something to pin theft on me,” Chisholm countered.

“I’ll leave that to Scotland Yard and Hammersmith Crown Court.”
“Yes, let’s do that,” Chisholm said.
Sheldon Wright watched, intrigued, as Chisholm crossed to his desk, picked

up the phone and dialed a number.

“Who’re you calling—your lawyer?”
“No, Scotland Yard.” He listened for a moment, pressed the speaker button so

that Sheldon Wright could hear, then spoke into the mouthpiece. “This is the
Aspenwall Museum...the director would like to speak to the duty officer.” He
handed the phone to Sheldon Wright, who banged the instrument back into its
cradle, puce-faced.

“Have you gone off your head?”
“I thought you wanted to turn me in.”
“And have detectives swarming all over my museum.”
“You mean, they might get inquisitive about where some of your museum

pieces came from, and they’d have to take the Garfield Tate papers apart to see
what’s missing if anything.”

Pacing and polishing again, Sheldon Wright muttered that he could have

Chisholm blackballed in every museum and archaeological institute in the six
continents, that he would never work again. “I only have to put the word around
and whatever you’ve found will be useless to you.” He halted, and in a more
conciliatory tone, added, “But if you have discovered something, perhaps the
Foundation will overlook your base intentions.” He put his glasses back on his
nose, tucked in his errant tie. “Now, what did the old boy have in his Egyptian
baggage?”

Chisholm feigned reluctance. However, he had decided how to play his hand

when Jenny had alerted him that the Seagrams had rung and Wright was going to
interrogate him about the archives. He had selected pictures of a third of the
pharaonic jewelry, enough to set Sheldon Wright drooling, and a couple of
pyramid snaps taken in the south Saqqara necropolis. No point in showing his
best cards.

Taking the pictures from his pocket, he tossed them with pretended anger on

the desk.

Sheldon Wright picked them up. As he scanned them, one by one, his whole

attitude changed. “But they’re as good as those jewels in the Cairo and Met
museums,” he breathed, turning to Chisholm. “Do we know where they are?”

Chisholm shook his head, explaining how he had stumbled on them and how

carefully Garfield Tate had hidden all the clues.

“How many copies are there of these?” Sheldon Wright asked, shuffling the

pictures.

“Two—yours and mine,” replied. “And if you don’t want the Met or the Louvre

to steal your thunder, don’t make other copies even for the governors.”

“Do you think we have a chance of finding them?”
“Maybe—but if we do, won’t they belong to the Egyptian Government?”
“Not if we get there first.’

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“Are you sure? The Egyptians are touchy about their heritage, and stealing a

jewel hoard like this would make us the biggest art thieves since the Earl of Elgin
walked off with the best bits of the Acropolis.”

“Are you talking about the Elgin Marbles?—the man was just an amateur

which he proved by losing half his loot on the way home.” Sheldon Wright’s
myopic eyes glinted as he gazed at the snapshots. “We found these first and
finders keepers.” He turned to Chisholm. “We’re going to have a go at finding
them—and when we do, we’re not going to lose any of them, are we?”

“No,” Chisholm said, then under his breath. “Elgin at least kept half his

marbles, but you...you’ve lost your lot.”

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Chapter 4

He had to let Jenny into the secret before she wormed it out of him during

their pillow-talk, or lighted on it herself. For nothing that happened in the
Aspenwall got by her.

Jenny had her eye on him. Was she really fond of him, or did she just want to

redeem him by breaking his drink habit? Or did she feel really sorry for him? He
often wondered. Anyway, to keep him away from pubs and restaurants that might
tempt him with wine or beer and set him skidding again, she cooked for him at
night in his two-roomed Earls Court flat, or in her own, bigger apartment in
nearby Old Brompton Road. If they felt like it, they might have a meal out in a
small restaurant or go to a cinema.

When they ate in his flat, Jenny slept there; when they used hers, he stayed

the night. . He had known her for two years, since shortly before his marriage
came apart, and they had been lovers for just over a year. It was she who
persuaded Sheldon Wright and the Aspenwall to give him another chance when
he came out of prison.

They were in the kitchen of her flat. Chisholm was beating eggs, milk and

butter together for an omelet while Jenny was supervising the chips, ripping the
lettuce apart and boiling coffee water. She threw the question over her left
shoulder.

“What keeps people digging, Ewan?”
“Treasure,” he said, wondering if she had her ear to the keyhole that morning

as he and Sheldon Wright were swapping insults or secrets. Or was she just
making chit-chat?

“Is that all?” she murmured, pouring the boiling water through the coffee

filter. “Oh, treasure is what would keep me getting my hands dirty and backache,
but I thought the Garfield Tates had their minds on higher things.”

“No, just treasure,” he repeated.
After all, he reflected, treasure of one sort of another did cover everything.

Quite a few archaeologists he knew had the gold lust and dreamed of unearthing
the Midas hoard; some, like Sheldon Wright, were magpies, grabbing everything
that glittered; others went down into the trenches like good soldiers hoping to
break surface with another sort of treasure, the honors and fame that
Schliemann, Flinders Petrie, Howard Carter and Mortimer Wheeler had
achieved.

Many diggers, without knowing it, had the atavistic drive of the thief and

acted like the old tomb robbers, despoiling everything from the pyramids to
modern temples; then there was the simple, unadulterated venality of the Jennys
who saw the pot of gold that represented the good life converted into mansions,
cars, haute couture, expensive baubles, gourmet meals, planetary joy-rides. He
almost preferred her primitive but honest approach.

A few, very few, were digging for no reason they could perceive, maybe to

increase the world’s treasure of knowledge, maybe even to find their real Selves at
the bottom of an archaeological hole. Maybe even symbolically digging their own
graves.

“The chips are nearly ready,” she said, handing him the omelet pan. “It’s your

move.”

“Me?” he queried looking at it.

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“You get them runny in the middle and golden-brown both sides,” she said.

“Mine turn out Spanish, pancake-flat.”

He realized it was another of her tricks for stroking his ego, like coaxing him

to make love or hearkening earnestly when he waxed long on archaeology. As he
heated the pan and poured the omelet mix into it, he turned to her, grinning.

“So you were tuned in to the spat between Seldom Right and me?”
“No,” Jenny said. “I did try but I was underhearing you through two inches of

oak door and thought he was just kicking the office cat.”

“Meaning me?”
“Meaning he had just had his phone ear bashed by Seagram...something about

the Garfield Tate archives...so he was taking it out on you.”

Since Jenny now knew most of the plot, he had to reveal something of what he

had told Sheldon Wright. When she had stopped cooing with astonishment, she
asked: “How much is it worth?”

“Chez Sotheby’s or Christie’s about twenty millions.”
“Twenty million sterling pounds?” she breathed
“Ugh, ugh,” he said. “But the snag is there’s no market price for stuff like

Garfield Tate’s loot, which is really stolen property. An auction house would have
to prove ownership or run the risk of being done for receiving stolen goods along
with the seller.”

“In that case it’s worth nothing.”
“Not necessarily. There are museums like the Met, the Louvre and the

Aspenwall who’ll pay half the auction price then fake proof that the stuff was
found thirty years ago and had been handled by several dealers. They might even
produce genuine forged documents issued by the Egyptian Government under
Nasser or Sadat to prove their title. Ask Seldom Right.”

“I don’t have to,” Jenny said, putting the salad and chips on a tray then

holding it out for the omelet they would split. They carried the tray and other
items of their supper to the table in the living-room where they normally watched
the TV news or a documentary. Tonight, Jenny wanted to talk.

“A pity to let Seldom Right have something like that,” she murmured.
“There’s another possibility,” Chisholm said. “You can sell to someone with a

private underground museum who can gloat over his hidden treasure and the fact
he’s depriving the whole world of viewing rights.”

Jenny laughed. “Do they really exist, characters like that?”
“Don’t laugh, they do. Among the stinking rich there are more cranky and

kinky cases than you and I could ever imagine.”

“I wonder if she knew about it.”
“You mean, Lady Garfield Tate. I doubt it. If she’d had wind of that hoard,

she’d have left a lot more than $450,000. And she wouldn’t have risked leaving
that evidence in the archives.”

“Why did she hang on to the papers all that time?”
“That’s anybody’s guess.” Chisholm served them half the omelet and expertly

tossed the green salad and helped them both. “There might be other papers in
those cartons she didn’t want disinterred.”

“You mean, their secret love life.”
“Did they have one?”
Jenny dilated her eyes and nodded. She had gleaned her information about

Virginia Garfield Tate from older museum hands who had known her before her
marriage. Everyone knew that Francis Gresham, the Foundation director before

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Sheldon Wright, had set her up in a town flat, though even that did not give him
the sole performing rights. Oh, no.

Chuckling to herself, Jenny said Ginny had gone through everything and

everything had gone through her, from the flintstone to the electronic age—if that
was putting it the right way round. Along came Garfield Tate, then making his
name by his ‘digs’ in Anatolia, Iraq and Egypt; he had surfaced from some hole to
look for money to fund his exploration and came to the Foundation. Ginny, at
thirty-five, feeling like one of the Aspenwall basement relics, reached out and
gaffed him. But she did help to build his reputation by ensuring his discoveries
got the widest publicity and handling the paper work and logistics of his
expeditions.

“And Garfield Tate?” broke in. “Was he in love with her?”
“Love!” Jenny exclaimed. “What had love got to do with it? It was an arranged

marriage—everything arranged by Ginny down to her white bridal gown. Her ex-
boyfriends filled the church.” She chuckled again, a slab of omelet poised on her
fork halfway to her mouth. “Archaeologists crawled out of their warrens by the
dozen to get to St James’s Spanish Place to have a good giggle at the wedding.
Only poor old Garfield Tate didn’t know what he’d got.”

“What bugs me,” he said, “is whether Garfield Tate might have bent his high

ideals far enough to smuggle that treasure out of Egypt.”

“That’s just the sort of question the governors will nail you with tomorrow

when you meet them.” Jenny had fixed the meeting and now, in her pithy way,
gave him a rundown on the type of hardnosed businessman who formed the
backbone of the Aspenwall Foundation council. She told him what to expect from
each of them.

When they had eaten and watched the late news, she coaxed him to make love

then tried to persuade him to stay the night. He excused himself, saying he had to
do homework on the Garfield Tate diaries before the meeting the next day.

She walked with him to the corner of Earls Court Road and kept him talking

for ten minutes before kissing him goodnight.

“Just don’t let them dictate anything to you or use you as their scapegoat or

their stalking-horse,” she warned as they parted.

They were words he would have cause to remember in the next weeks.
Chisholm climbed the two flights of stairs to his flat and turned his key in the

lock once, then tried to turn it again. It resisted the second turn. Funny, he could
have sworn he had double-locked the door a few hours ago when he left to meet
Jenny. Maybe his cleaning woman had forgotten some shopping and returned to
put it in the fridge. But when he opened the door and switched on the hall light,
nothing happened. Could a fuse have blown?

Suspicious now, he soft-footed inside, letting his eyes adapt to the darkness

then scanning the living-room by the dim illumination from the street lamps

Nothing stirred. He padded to the kitchen to edge the door open and run his

gaze down the narrow room. Nothing there, either. He did the same for the
bathroom then chided himself for growing jumpy and paranoiac.

There was still the bedroom. He tiptoed to the door. Turned the handle.

Inched the door open. Took a step inside.

Suddenly the door slammed shut, ramming into him. It knocked the wind out

of him and sent him flying across the room to bang against the wall and fall to the
floor, stunned.

He had no time to recover his breath or wits. A dark shadow hurtled across

the room and fell on him. A fist landed on the side of his face and pain detonated

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through his neck and head. Two hands wrapped themselves round his throat. Big
hands. Powerful hands. Their thumbs pressed against his windpipe. Cutting off
his breath. Choking him. Meaning to squeeze the life out of him.

Chisholm felt he was living his last seconds. His lungs were bursting, his head

hammered and his eyeballs swelled as he fought, vainly, to break that grip on his
throat.

In desperation he pulled his knees up and lunged with them at the figure lying

on top of him. One knee buried itself in soft flesh, but the other must have landed
on the man’s testicles for a grunt then a yell exploded from him and his grip
relaxed. Again, Chisholm lashed out with his knees, aiming for the groin. Another
bellow of pain came from his attacker who reached for something by his side.

Chisholm sucked in a breath. Thrusting the man away, he wriggled free and

out of reach. Something hard hit him on the forehead as the man dived after him.
A table lamp fell. Chisholm grabbed it and lunged with it at the man’s head
feeling the wire frame impact on bone, then buckle and the bulb smash. That
drew another loud bellow.

Yet, the man still closed and struck again, his heavy weapon landing on

Chisholm’s shoulder. He replied by swinging the base of the lamp at the man’s
head. Again, it crunched on bone and the man fell sideways, gasping with pain.
He got to his feet stumbled to the door, pulled it open and banged it shut behind
him.

Still on the floor, Chisholm heard his heavy, halting steps on the stairs. He

had really hurt the bastard.

For several long minutes he lay in his corner gulping air. Waiting for his head

to clear. Finally, he levered himself up and went to lock the front door. In his
bedroom he found a torch and lit the fuse-box in the hall. As he had guessed, the
mains power had been cut. When he had switched on the lights, he went to the
bathroom, unscrewed the bolt and lifted the cistern lid.

Thank God they were still there where he had hidden them, under water in

their plastic bag—the Garfield Tate negatives and the key.

His bedroom was chaos. Every drawer was open, his clothes lay on the floor,

even the mattress had been turned over and the bedside rug rolled back. He was
no professional, this burglar; he had left too much mess and had wasted time
looking in improbable places. Chisholm examined he rest of the flat and
concluded he had disturbed the thief early on, for only the bedroom had been
searched.

When he had tidied the bedroom and living room, he dropped three tea bags

into his small teapot and filled it with boiling water, letting it stew until the brew
was strong enough to prop him up and astringent enough to ease his raw throat;
for good measure, he dissolved three aspirins in the dregs and swallowed them.

Who had tipped the man off? Not many people knew about those negatives

and that key. Sheldon Wright? The five governing counselors of the Aspenwall?
Perhaps the Seagrams, though he had told them nothing. Of course, Jenny knew.

Where did he intruder get his key? There was no sign of breaking and

entering. Who had keys of the flat? Jenny again. And hadn’t she tried to persuade
him to stay the night with her? Hadn’t she kept him talking and chosen the long
way round to Earls Court corner? No, Jenny wouldn’t betray him like that, even
for a pot of gold.

Sheldon Wright. Now he had access to a key, for he had found him this flat. It

had been rented by his predecessor at the Aspenwall, and fool that he was, he
hadn’t bothered to change the lock. He knew Sheldon Wright had a Machiavellian

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mind, the sort that might just have plotted the whole scenario, sending him to
recover those archives knowing he would find the clues.

He propped a chair against the door handle and went to bed. But paranoiac

thoughts and images swirled round in his head—of Jenny, the Seagrams, Sheldon
Wright—and it was several hours before he fell asleep.

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Chapter 5

It was like a drumhead court-martial or an inquisition.
Four members of the Aspenwall Foundation governing council and Sheldon

Wright were sitting round the boardroom table when Jenny ushered Chisholm in
and gave his rump a reassuring pat. Five pairs of eyes fixed him. He watched
them interrogating the raw, grazed patches on his brow and chin, and his bruised
cheek. He met their glances one by one. No one spoke. No one rose. They sat
there visible only from the waist up and kept him standing in the full sunlight like
some office boy on the carpet.

One of those five people probably knew how he had come by his injuries.

Which one? None of the men showed signs of facial injury, though he could not
be sure he had hit the intruder on the face.

He knew these three men and a woman either by reputation or from what

Jenny had whispered to him the previous evening. Hard-nosed. Money-grubbing.
Egotistical. For these people, art and archaeological artifacts had their market
price like stocks and shares, and they played the art bourse like the financial
exchange, bidding up their own art holdings and bidding down their rivals.

Joel Ackerman, for example. His millions came from selling office blocks like

fish and chips. Jenny said he had auctioned off his six Sisleys and had a front man
drive up the price which he paid himself. That way the other five shot up in value.
Scared of thieves, he had his Degas pastels, Utrillos, Sisleys and Renoirs all
copied; it was these fake paintings that adorned his walls. Nobody noticed the
difference, and when the paintings were stolen he collected the insurance and
said nothing about the real masterpieces in his private museum.

“Sit down, “ Ackerman said in that uvular, mittel-european drawl of his.

“Now, tell us what it is you’ve found.”

“Hasn’t the director already told you?”
“He has but we’d like to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”
Chisholm took his time and repeated the carefully edited version he had given

Sheldon Wright. When he had finished, Bryce Merrill jumped in first with the
question on everybody’s lips.

“How much do you think this treasure would fetch at auction?”
Merrill knew as much about art as he could have written on one diamond

facet of the pin through his Magdalen tie. An investment counselor, he had made
his fortune handling other people’s millions and sneering at their blind trust in
him. Chisholm looked at the sensual pink lips, the cold gray eyes embedded in
pink flesh doubtless nurtured on foie gras, caviar, Scotch beef, Dutch veal, French
cheese irrigated with rare Clarets and Burgundies in a parenthesis of Rheims
champagne and Napoleon brandy.

“I’m neither a collector nor an auctioneer,” replied. “Ask the man who should

know.” He looked at Sheldon Wright.

“How much?” Merrill persisted.
Sheldon Wright doodled on his pad for a moment then wrote a series of

figures. “The market would pay around ten million sterling, so a museum would
have to come close to that figure to acquire such objects.”

“As much as that,” said Sybil Bennet, screwing her lips together in

astonishment and staring at the Garfield Tate snaps on the table. Chisholm saw
that no make-up or even plastic surgery could soften that steely face and the

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bristly double chin. Wife of a Tory politician and businessman, Mrs. Bennet had a
personal fortune left by her grandfather and father from their holdings in
Southern African diamond and uranium mines. “What do you think might have
happened to those jewels, Mr...?”

“Chisholm,” Sheldon Wright prompted.
“Who’s to say?” Chisholm replied. “My guess is that since nobody has ever

heard of this collection, it’s still where Garfield Tate found it—or in the hands of
one of his friends.”

“Did Lady Garfield Tate ever mention anything like this to you, Wright?” Mrs.

Bennet queried, and when the curator shook his head, put another question. “Do
you think this treasure exists and, if so, what should we do about it?”

“Yes, I think it exists,”Sheldon Wright said. “What we do about it is entirely

up to this meeting.”

“Lady and gentleman, I think we may have a duty to hand over this

information to the Egyptian Government and its department of antiquities and
leave any action to them.”

Everyone turned to stare at the speaker, Richard Brierly, the banker who

handled the Foundation finances. Brierly, founder and head of the Union Charter
Trust Bank, was a diffident, donnish character with floppy, gray hair and nervous
hands, who rarely intervened at board meetings.

“Brierly, you can’t be serious,” said Ackerman, looking piteously at him. “You

know thieving is a way of life in Egypt where they’ve plundered and pillaged
almost every pyramid and temple in Ancient Egypt—and you talk of handing
them this treasure!”

“But isn’t it...I mean, isn’t it part of their cultural heritage?” Brierly came

back, though diffidently (He hated arguments). “And we’re doing no more than
inform them it may exist.”

“That’s the trouble,” Ackerman said. “Nobody knows if it exists or where it is.

Now, if we knew and found it and handed it over officially, and perhaps made a
bargain with the Egyptians about leasing or keeping half, then I might agree. But
all we’d do by tipping our hand is trigger off a massive hunt, and from past
history, the thieves would find ways of beating the government to that treasure.”

“Joel’s right,” Merrill put in. “Nobody has ever been able to stop thieves and

dealers.” He pointed to the snapshots on the table. “You could hide that lot in a
suitcase and smuggle it out and nobody would be any the wiser.”

“Until they turned up in the Met Museum in New York,” Sheldon Wright said,

drily.

“So, what do we do?” Mrs. Bennet asked.
“We hunt for them ourselves.”
That strong, determined voice came from the door. Everyone turned to watch

Edmund Davenport enter the room. It took time, for he shuffled on his good left
leg while taking the weight off his crippled right leg with an elbow crutch.
Davenport had lost half the bone in the right leg through contracting
osteomyelitis as a student at Oxford. He had never left his college, Churchill,
becoming a science don and teaching cybernetics.

But it was his genius for inventing electronic devices and systems in which

they could be used that had made him one of he richest, and most reclusive, men
in the country. As a don, in his spare time, he began inventing small computers
and programs for them; he founded his own company to market these inventions;
soon, he was producing bank credit and card systems, electronic diagnostic

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equipment for hospitals and a whole range of electronic gadgets which he
patented.

Davenport had become an electronic wizard with the Midas touch. Nobody

knew how much he was worth, even himself. He didn’t seem in the least
concerned about his money, or anybody alehouses. Although a Foundation
governor and benefactor, he hardly ever attended meetings, sending his
comments and suggestions by video-cassettes or over the Internet by several sort
of computer.

Now, dumping his frail body into a chair, he murmured that Sheldon Wright

had rung him to inform him about the agenda and he had made the effort to be
present.

“But Edmund, you mean the Foundation should mount an expedition?” Sybil

Bennet said. “Wouldn’t that cost the earth when there’s no saying we’d find this
treasure?”

“I meant a one-man expedition.” Davenport raised his crutch and pointed its

rubber ferrule at Chisholm. “Him,” he said. “We pay all his expenses and if he
finds the stuff he gets a bonus of say, £150,000.”

For a moment everyone, including Chisholm, thought the old cripple was

joking. But Davenport repeated with great solemnity what he had said, then
suggested they vote on the proposal.

“Just a minute, Edmund,” Merrill said. “We don’t know anything about

Chisholm and whether we can rely on him.”

“Well, ask yourself what does Mr. Chisholm know about us,” Davenport

riposted. “And if he accepts, he’s the man who’s taking the risk.” With the arm-
rest of his crutch, he reached across the table and expertly pulled the photographs
towards him. For several minutes, he studied them intently then rapped on them
with his crutch. “He found these, didn’t he, when they’d been buried for twenty-
five years.”

He turned to Merrill. “I’ve had a look at Mr. Chisholm’s record and he’s either

remarkably lucky or gifted or both. He has made some interesting finds for
someone without much backing or much official recognition.”

A murmur ran round the table as the governors whispered among

themselves, but it was silenced by Sheldon Wright, who held up a hand and said
that they had to respect what Davenport was proposing, since he was a founder of
the Aspenwall and someone who had collaborated with Aspenwall himself.

“But do we know anything else about Mr. Chisholm?” Sybil Bennet asked,

turning her blue, hyperthyroid eyes on Davenport.

“Sybil, if you mean did I find out he was a drunk and he went to prison for

beating up his wife’s lover?—yes, I did. And I know he was once duped by some
academic crank who planted bronze age tools in a neolithic ‘dig’—but since we all
swallowed the Piltdown Man and a hundred other hoaxes like that, it means
nothing. I have faith in Mr. Chisholm.”

Ackerman looked at Davenport, interrogating that wrinkled face with its

translucent, papery skin but bright, blue eyes. He turned to the others. I’m sorry,
but I disagree with Edmund and just don’t believe Chisholm can handle a mission
like this.”

“I agree with Joel,” Merrill said.
“What about you, Sybil?” Davenport asked.
Mrs. Bennet looked at Chisholm and he could see she was sizing him up not

so much as a candidate for a treasure hunt, but with the eye of a woman

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wondering what it would be like to spend a night with a man jealous enough to
hammer his wife’s lover. “If he didn’t drink...” she murmured.

“So, you see, Edmund, none of us has as much blind faith in Chisholm as you

seem to, “ Ackerman said, shrugging.

Looking at them and listening to them, Chisholm’s anger boiled over. He felt

like some loathsome zoological specimen being dissected by a bunch of money-
grubbing barbarians. Ackerman was a bighead, Merrill a pinhead, Sybil Bennet
an addle-head, Brierly a figure-head. He got up and walked to the door.
“Goodbye,” he shouted at them.

Sheldon Wright sprang to his feet and ran round the table to knock Chisholm

aside and take post between him and the door. “Where do you think you’re
going?” he said.

“It’s no business of yours—but if you want to know, Egypt.”
“You can’t do that,” Sheldon Wright gasped while the others stared at

Chisholm with the exception of Davenport, who was grinning.

“All right, who’s to stop me doing a bit of sight-seeing round the pyramids?

And if I happen to run across these jewels and hand them over to the department
of antiquities in Cairo, they’ll give me much more than £l50,000.”

“You haven’t the right,” Ackerman said.
“And he hasn’t got the means,” Merrill added.
“What do I need—a camel, a fly-whisk and a divining-rod?”
“Don’t be funny,” Sheldon Wright snapped.
“It would be funnier if the Met, Ford or Getty museums heard about this

treasure and started their own hunt with or without the co-operation of the
Egyptians,” Chisholm said.

“I don’t blame you, Mr. Chisholm, but please sit down and we’ll discuss this in

a civilized manner.” It was Davenport who rapped out the words. He banged on
the table with his crutch for silence before saying solemnly, “If this Foundation
decides not to back you, then I shall back you with my own money.”

“I’ll come in with you... if you’ll have me.” To everyone’s astonishment, it was

Brierly, the banker, who spoke. “It’s just my own view, but we have no right to
criticize Mr. Chisholm’s private life...and I, for one, would willingly trust him to
carry out the assignment to find the Garfield Tate jewels if he wishes to undertake
it.”

“Good for you, Brierly,” Davenport said, then stabbed his crutch at Chisholm.

“Well, Mr. Chisholm, can you take Brierly and myself on trust?”

As Chisholm nodded, Sheldon Wright held up a hand and said, “Will you give

me a minute, Edmund?” He slipped round the table to have a whispered
conversation with Ackerman and Merrill. In turn, Ackerman spoke to Sybil
Bennet before addressing the others.

“I move that the board vote on whether we put up funds to enable Mr.

Chisholm to search for Garfield Tate’s jewel hoard. If he finds it, then we agree
the Foundation has the right to dispose of it.”

It was an immediate and unanimous vote. The Aspenwall Foundation would

pay Chisholm’s ‘s expenses and give him a generous bonus of the order
mentioned by Davenport if he found the jewels. However, nothing would be put
in writing and Chisholm’s trip would be unofficial. If he landed in trouble, he
could expect no help from the Foundation which would deny any connection with
him in the quest for Pharaonic jewels.

“But what’s to stop him walking off with the loot if he’s successful?” Merrill

asked.

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“In theory, nothing,” Ackerman said. “But in practice, he knows he could

never sell those jewels and we’d make sure he didn’t try.”

“It seems we have to trust each other,” Davenport said.
He levered himself up and leaned across the table, his hand outstretched.

Chisholm took it, surprised at its strength in someone who looked like death.

“Good hunting,” Davenport said, then closed the meeting.

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Chapter 6

At Cairo Airport, passport control and immigration gave him no more than a

casual glance, seemingly too preoccupied looking for arms or drugs to bother
with him. Why hadn’t they taken him and his baggage apart like the others? After
all, they had advance notice of his arrival and had already carded him as an
archaeologist and therefore a potential art smuggler. Curious for a pathologically
inquisitive and suspicious race like the Egyptians. Maybe they already realized
they would find nothing but black-and-white snaps of pyramids and antique
jewels.

He caught a red-and-white city bus and dismounted at Kasr el Nil Street to get

his bearings before heading for the Al Ahram Hotel which he had used for the
past ten years. Cairo hadn’t changed much, he noticed, as he walked along the
busy street. A few more high-rise office blocks and flats had burgeoned around
the TV tower on Gezira Island and Zamalek as well as the commercial center.

But still the same strident horn crescendo from cars, buses and lorries locked

together in long, solid lines between the shops; still those windowless buses with
people clinging to doors and window frames; still the same pastiche of city suits
and gallabeahs, turbans, fezes; still the clutch of beggars outside Groppie’s cake
shop and the opulent jewelry and mode shops along Kasr el Nil and Talab Harb
Streets.

At Talab Harb Square where six commercial streets met, everything had

halted with a tailback of cars and buses stretching for half a mile in every
direction. A dozen camels were taking their time, crossing the square with that
rolling, loping gait and doubtless making for the slaughter house. Cairo was still
the hinge between east and west, north and south, Chisholm thought.

At the Al Ahram, Zein Nugati, who owned and ran the hotel, hugged him like

a long-lost friend against his heavy paunch then carried his holdall upstairs to a
room giving on to the back streets. Zein listened to his cover story, looking at
him, skeptically, under those grizzling eyebrows as though he was recounting
Little Red Riding Hood.

“Got a car, You-ahn?” he asked.
“Not even a licence,” Chisholm said, explaining why.
“I am giving you Two Horses. Maybe old, but good in sand.” He grinned at

Chisholm. “I am getting papers, too. Authentic forged papers—better than the
real Mac-Coy.”

Zein knew everybody and could procure anything from stall seats for the Cairo

opera to the mummified skin of the asp that Cleopatra enlisted to commit suicide.
He was a foul-weather friend.

When Chisholm had changed, he went to clear his lines with the Department

of Antiquities, which controlled the whole of Egyptology, from pyramid
exploration to the permitted carbon dioxide levels from visitors’ breath in the
Cairo Museum mummy room.

In his inner office, the head of the department, Hassan el-Zayyat squelched an

oily palm round his and sat him down, flicking a finger at a servant who produced
two thimblefuls of Turkish coffee, so thick that it didn’t need the tiny cups to
contain it, and a box of Turkish cigarettes. As a student, El-Zayyat had explored
the Bent Pyramid at Dashur with Ahmed Fahkry in the fifties and had helped
uncover part of the great pharaonic cemetery round the three Giza pyramids.

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“So, you are undertaking a biography of Sir William Garfield Tate,” El-Zayyat

murmured, making whorls in his Turkish smoke. From a drawer, he conjured a
file and extracted a letter on Aspenwall Foundation notepaper. “Our revered and
loyal friend, Dr. Sheldon Wright, has acquainted me with the objectives and aims
of your assignment and we shall place no impediment in your path to the
accomplishment of your mission.”

El-Zayyat used this sort of exotic English and Chisholm let him ramble on

about Garfield Tate before inserting, quietly:

“Hassan, I’ve worked out my program, but I’ll need a laisser-passer to all your

museums to take pictures, and to the sites where they are digging now. I know my
way to all the others.” He handed over a list of the places he had decided to visit,
all of them having been explored at some time by Garfield Tate.

El-Zayyat scanned it slowly, although Chisholm suspected this man already

knew something about his mission and where he was going. When he lifted his
eyes, the Egyptian pushed a button and passed the paper to a secretary with
instructions to copy the text on to an official pass.

Chisholm walked out of the office with his two essential bits of paper: he had

his pass and a list of the thirty-seven teams, Egyptian and foreign, digging in the
pyramid fields and the Valley of the Kings.

When he had gone, Hassan El-Zayyat sat for several minutes looking at his

copy of the itinerary. He and others in the Department of Antiquities had
expected some move like this from the moment Garfield Tate’s widow died and
the papers were released.

But why had the Aspenwall Foundation chosen a man like for this mission

when they realized he was a drunk with a suspect character and he had never
written anything but archaeological texts about his ‘digs’ in Egypt, Anatolia and
Iraq? And why had he fixed on pyramids and other excavation sites long ago
abandoned by the department and most other Egyptologists?

Yet, he knew Chisholm had a flair for making new finds in old sites; what, he

wondered, had he discovered about Garfield Tate’s life—and death—in those
papers? His mind went back twenty-four years to an October morning when he
was working at one of the Abusir pyramids when Dr. Hassan Mohamed arrived
with the news that the famous archaeologist and Ceti Kanfer had been killed at
the Meydum pyramid.

An accident, the official police report said. But he and so many of his

associates had doubted that, especially when the inquiry into Garfield Tate’s
death had been wrapped up quickly and his body rushed out of the country. They
said there had been pressure from the British Embassy and even President Anwar
el-Sadat to hush certain things up, even though there was evidence of some sort
of explosion in their jeep which had also been ransacked.

What would a biography of Garfield Tate reveal about his last hours? And his

career? There were those who said he had not revealed everything about the
discoveries he had made in the pyramids of Upper and Lower Egypt; some even
went so far as to suggest he had found and exported a jewel hoard. As he folded
his copy of Chisholm’s itinerary, El-Zayyat speculated about that and recalled
what he had heard rumored.

After a moment or two, he picked up his desk phone, went to dial a number

then thought better of it. His secretary might just indulge her curiosity. Or maybe
his line was already tapped by people who had the same suspicions as he had
about Chisholm.

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He walked through the building and across the road to a hotel with a public

phone. In the cabin, he dialed the official number and whispered the basic
information from Chisholm’s itinerary and suggested they send someone to the
hotel to pick up the document he had with him.

While he waited, he bought himself a glass of Stella beer and sipped it, slowly.

It left a sour taste on his palate—like the underhand action he was performing.

Zein’s Two Horses was an ancient French Deux Chevaux, which had already

achieved antique status when it was shipped from France to Egypt. Looking at it,
Chisholm reflected that if camels hadn’t existed and they’d asked some Gallic
engineer to invent one, he would have come up with something like the Deux
Chevaux. It pitched a rolled like a drunken mariner, vibrated from stem to stern
and screamed like a banshee in fourth gear as he rattled along the Giza road
towards the Pyramids between flame trees trimmed just like miniature pyramids.

Although on the way to see Michael Lampson in the Saqqara necropolis, he

halted for quarter of an hour by the three great Giza pyramids. They never failed
to thrill him.

Those who gazed at them as just so many megaliths and marveled only at

their size and construction, who were impressed with the fact that it took
100,000 slaves thirty years to cut and assemble millions of limestone block
together into perfect geometry, were like the tone-deaf looking at the score of
Beethoven’s Ninth and seeing a drawing of something like barbed wire or
swallows on telegraph wires.

If Egyptians built for their temporal life in mud brick, for their eternal abode

they used stone. In these immense stone pyramids they saw spirituality; they saw
them pointing to and reaching for the heavens. So, in his own way, did Chisholm.
Looking now at them, they appeared to tremble, to move as though they were still
bearing the immortal soul of the embalmed pharaoh on its eternal voyage. Those
great stone piles entombed history, literature, sculpture. They also enshrined
mystery. For, as Chisholm well knew, no pyramid had even been explored stone
by stone.

Turning Zein’s Two Horses south along the canal road, he drove past the four

Abusir pyramids and suddenly saw the Step Pyramid framed in his dust-veneered
windscreen. Against the blue sky, it vibrated in the afternoon heat.

He left his car at the edge of the Saqqara field and walked along the excavated

route, brushing aside Egyptians hawking scarabs, ushabti figures, stone palettes,
all waxed, soapstone fakes that wouldn’t have fooled even a Sheldon Wright.

He entered the courtyard of the great stepped shrine build by Imhotep,

architect, doctor, philosopher for the Pharaoh Zoser—the world’s first free-
standing monument. Several exploration teams were working there, digging,
scraping, cleaning, cataloguing. When he explained his visit and showed his pass,
an Egyptian archaeologist handed him a torch and said he would find Dr.
Lampson in an underground chamber.

He followed the torch beam down two short flights of steps and along a

twisting, elbow-skinning gallery a meter square. Lampson and four Egyptians
were toiling like coal-face miners in this hole, troweling and sifting the soil as
they went.

Chisholm had done three ‘digs’ with Lampson, who had worked for several

years as Garfield Tate’s assistant in Egypt. He had the ramrod bearing and
clipped speech of a Guards officer. And the character and style as well. He would
take a pyramid apart with a bent nail, eyebrow tweezers and a shaving brush to
avoid distorting the minutest particle of its past. He missed nothing.

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As Chisholm related his cover story about writing the biography, Lampson

lifted his eyes from the small faience scarab left in one of the sieves. They were
dubious. No, disbelieving, Chisholm corrected.

“I need air,” Lampson muttered and stabbed a grimy finger upwards. Head-

down, he led them up into the sunlight.

There, Lampson looked older than his fifty years; but then his hair, face

hands, knees, clothing were covered with pyramid dust. It probably coated his
lungs and ran in his veins, too, Chisholm reflected.

“So, they finally released the papers,” Lampson threw over his shoulder as he

led the way over the forecourt of the pyramid. “Been through ‘em, have you?”

“Not all of them,” Chisholm said, guardedly.
Against the north wall of the Step Pyramid, Lampson had his tent where he

often slept if the ‘dig’ was exciting. He pointed to a canvas chair and poured them
water cooled in an earthenware pot. Chisholm drank it greedily, thankful the
archaeologist had not offered anything stronger, forcing him to make excuses.

Lampson crammed tobacco shag into a briar pipe a foot long with a reed-thin

stem. He lit up then sucked in and expelled smoke for several minutes.

“Going to try to tell the truth, are you?”
“Meaning what—it might be hard to come by?”
Lampson nodded. “Twenty-five years GT’s been dead and a lot of dust has

settled here since.” Rising, he soft-footed to the tent flap and gazed right then left
leaving Chisholm wondering about who might be eavesdropping. Still standing by
the tent flap, Lampson had also lowered his voice to a whisper. “Did the old boy
say anything in his diaries or log-books about Lady GT?”

“Nothing of much note.”
“Anything about Dr. Kanfer?”
“The man who died with him in the car crash?”
“Man!” Lampson choked on his tobacco smoke and coughed several times to

clear his lungs. He stared at Chisholm, shaking his head in disbelief. “And you’re
supposed to be a biographer! Ceti Kanfer was a woman. Some woman! One you’d
never forget if you’d seen her. She was a Nubian and she was not only beautiful
but she had what Cleopatra and Nefertit must have had.

“You mean she was sexy”
“Never seen anybody to touch here there.” Lampson paused as though

remembering things about her. “She was very bright.” He paused again then went
on, “And you should also know that GT doted on her.”

“Was he in love with her, then?”
“Head over heels!”
“Did Lady Garfield Tate know he was in love with her?”
“If she didn’t, she must have been the only person in their Cairo circle that

didn’t.”

Lampson had evidently satisfied himself no-one was eavesdropping and

returned to sit on the other canvas chair and relight his pipe. “Going to dig out
the dirt about the accident are you?”

“You don’t think it was an accident, then?”
“Fishiest accident I’ve ever met.” Lampson picked up something he had

obviously just discovered in the pyramid, a stone palette with relief carving of
Pharaoh Zoser smiting one of his foes. He studied the hieroglyphic caption and
cleaned one of the glyphs with a cloth, abstractedly. “In my view, they hushed the
whole thing up,” he said so softly Chisholm had to strain to catch the statement.

“What you’re implying is that Garfield Tate and Dr Kanfer were murdered.”

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“What I thought then—and what I still think.” He put down the palette and

pointed his briar stem at Chisholm. “But don’t for God’s sake quote me or drag
me into anything you do out here, or anything you write. Understood?”

Chisholm nodded. “This story about running into a sandstorm...’
“Utter bullshit. Clear as today, even if it happened at sunset.” He knocked his

pipe out against his suede boot and ground the smoldering tobacco into the sand.
“They wanted it hushed up.”

“Why?”
“The Embassy and the Egyptian authorities wanted to avoid fuss.”
“But murder—who and why?”
“Always bothered me, that question.” He looked hard at Chisholm. “You knew

Garfield Tate slightly, but I don’t think you ever met Ginny, did you?”

“No—what was she like?”
“Not done, old boy, to call a lady a bitch—but it fits, it fits.”
“And she was jealous...”
“As a tigress.”
“But was she jealous enough of Dr. Kanfer to have them both murdered?”
Lampson padded to the tent flap again. Either he made his important

statements on his feet, or he distrusted long-eared Egyptians. “Like so many
people who sleep around openly to anger their partners and make them jealous,
she was mad with jealousy about GT and Ceti Kanfer...I mean mad enough...” He
did not need to complete his thought.

“This Dr Kanfer—does she have any family around here?”
“I believe she has a married sister in Cairo somewhere.”
He quizzed Lampson about Garfield Tate’s last ‘digs’. It seemed the

archaeologist had been operating south of the vast Saqqara necropolis, probing
the surrounds of an unfinished pyramid and studying potential excavation sites
around the Old Kingdom pyramids of the Pharaoh Sneferu at Dahshur.

“Feel like a bit of exercise?” Lampson said, thumbing at the Step Pyramid

behind them. Without waiting for Chisholm’s response he strode down to the
base of the pyramid and began climbing.

Although the climb was fairly easy, Chisholm was sweating before they

reached the second terrace and they had done just over forty feet of steps. A sweat
that left him tired and thirsty and dreaming of whisky, gin, rum, anything
alcoholic. Seeing him labor over the rough patches, Lampson gave him a hand
then mercifully stopped on the fourth of the six terraces. He found a seat on a
slab of rock on the west side.

Chisholm mopped his brow and took in the desert landscape. What a view!

North, the three Giza pyramids appeared to float on the shimmering desert
surface while all round them were the dozen or so pyramids of Saqqara, the
greatest burial ground in Ancient Egypt.

South of them, the Pink Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid, the first real

pyramids built by the Pharaoh Sneferu 4,500 years ago, were blurred bits of
geometry on the horizon.

East, across the rice and maize fields and through the palms fringing the Nile

were the ruins of Memphis; and west, the desert reached beyond sight. Lampson
was reeling off the names and pointing out the pyramids: those of Sekhem-khet
where they had found a cache of gold, Wenis’s pyramid which had yielded the
pyramid texts, and another Fifth Dynasty pyramid built by the Pharaoh Dedkare
Isesi and full of magnificent reliefs, though now a ruin.

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“There’s where GT was mostly working,” Lampson said, aiming his pipe stem

at the Dahshur pyramids. “There and the unfinished pyramid at the bottom of
this Saqqara field for the three, four weeks before his death.”

“Was it an organized ‘dig’?”
Lampson shook his head. “He was just pottering. It kept him out of Cairo,

away from Ginny. And Ceti was with him.” He swung his right arm, turning with
it so that it described a full circle embracing the dozen or so pharaonic cemeteries
along the west bank of the Nile. “This was GT’s world...he was at home
here...nowhere else.”

Chisholm gazed south at the Dahshur pyramids built by Sneferu in the Fourth

Dynasty. Through the desert haze he could even discern the kink in the Bent
Pyramid. He knew it, though not as well as Garfield Tate or even Lampson.

They’d called it the Bent Pyramid because the architects had miscalculated

and had to alter the angle halfway up to prevent its great bulk from crushing
Sneferu’s burial chamber. From where he stood, it looked as though it and the
Pink Pyramid were cheek by jowl; but he knew, from having worked in both, they
lay a mile apart. It struck him, too, that a mile north-east of the Bent Pyramid, de
Morgan, the French Archaeologist, had found the most famous of all collections
of Egyptian jewelry a hundred years ago in the pyramid of Senusert III.

“Anything on your mind, Ewan?”
Through his reverie, he heard Lampson’s brusque voice and realized he had

been staring mesmerized at that view.

Why mesmerized? Because he had seen those two Sneferu pyramids from this

angle before! But how, when he had never been even one terrace high on this Step
Pyramid?

A snapshot, of course! Garfield Tate had been here on those last three or four

weeks and had taken one of his series of snaps from the top of this pyramid.

“No, nothing, Mike,” he said to Lampson, dry-mouthed.
But that view and what it might signify sent him into such a trance of

speculation that he never knew how he clambered off the Step Pyramid and got
back to Zein’s Two Horses.

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Chapter 7

At the end of his first week, Chisholm wondered how many coal-face workers

had spent more time underground than he had, how many moles had burrowed
and groped through so many intricate galleries. He had ventured where few
human feet had ever trod, exploring nine of the Saqqara pyramids and four of the
valley temples. By torchlight, foot by foot, he had examined galleries, tombs,
burial chambers, sarcophagi always searching for one thing: a scene to match
those flashlight photographs of pharaonic jewels lying on a skewed sarcophagus
lid.

Hard toil. Yet, he had not felt so fit for years. Perhaps because London and his

problems were way behind him; perhaps it was this country where everything
took its tempo from the Nile, and the relics of 5,000 years of vanished civilization
taught people there was world enough and time. Where else could you literally
step back several millennia to watch fellahin using the immemorial water wheel
with its string of pots, the wooden plough and flail with the same gestures he saw
in the pyramid paintings and reliefs?

Lampson had mentioned the unfinished pyramid—most southerly of the

Saqqara field—where Garfield Tate had been pottering before his death. That one
he must explore thoroughly. No-one knew much about it. Approximately a
hundred yards square and fourteen feet high, it had been started then abandoned
by some unknown pharaoh. But Chisholm’s pyramid map showed it had at least
four burial chambers. Perhaps there was a fifth that nobody had discovered.

Leaving the Deux Chevaux by the canal, he trudged over the sand to the

pyramid carrying his camera, torch and trowel in a shoulder bag. A long flight of
steps took him down to the underground gallery which opened into a vestibule
faced with quartzite; he followed the gallery which turned left through ninety
degrees and lit himself through a narrow passage to another vestibule and
another right-angled turn. He descended another series of steps and the gallery
again turned at right angles. There he stopped.

Where was he going? Where did this labyrinth end? He knew the pharaohs

and their pyramid architects resorted to every trick to foil grave robbers; he could
easily lose himself in this maze, and nobody would ever know. He reassured
himself by checking his spare torch and batteries before continuing along two
more shoulder-bruising galleries and down to more flights of stairs to another
vestibule.

Something there brought him to a dead halt.
An echo? No, voices. Human voices. Coming from the center of the pyramid.

Two voices at least. What were people doing in the antechambers of the burial
chambers of an obscure pyramid that nobody had explored for years?

How had they arrived? He had seen nobody for miles as he drove down from

Saqqara village. No cars. No tourists. Nobody near the square mound of the
pyramid or its two satellite pyramids.

Ants with frozen feet crawled over his spine and his stomach jumped with

tension as he sat on the bottom step of the stairs and strained his ears to listen.

Quieter now, the voices. But he could still hear them even if he could not

distinguish the words or even make a guess at the language.

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Now he knew why so many Egyptians and even experienced guides would

never venture into deserted pyramids alone, believing the spirit (Ka) of pharaohs
and those buried with them still roamed these vast tombs.

What did he do? Go it alone or climb out and ask Lampson to explore with

him. But that would give his game away. He rose and pushed forward. At the end
of a long passage, he reached the first of two antechambers and verified they were
empty.

His skin prickling, he advanced to the first of the burial chambers, the

smaller. His torch picked out the quartzite sarcophagus in the center; it looked
not unlike the one Garfield Tate had photographed, but its massive lid was
supported by four plinths, a sign no-one had been buried in it. It was empty.

So, those voices must come from the other burial chamber, the pharaoh’s.
He took the small pick he carried in his right hand as he went into the

chamber. It was a bigger copy of the other. Same pointed roof, same striated
walls, same type of sarcophagus. He scanned the chamber with his torch beam
then lit the inside of the sarcophagus. Nothing.

As he sat on the edge of the sarcophagus, he heard the voices again. This time

they came from the opposite direction.

Chisholm emptied his lungs with relief. Now he realized what it was.

Somewhere in the construction of these burial chambers, the Ancient Egyptian
architects left air vents or even passages connecting with one of the galleries to air
the chambers and allow them to seal the pyramid against robbers.

Somehow, those sounds from the main gallery had carried through these air

vents, gone beyond him and bounced back.

But Chisholm’s relief was soon crushed by doubt, then fear. Who did the

voices belong to? Who had chosen to visit this abandoned pyramid at the same
hour as himself. Only El-Zayyat and his antiquities department knew it was on
his list.

Whoever it was had obviously followed him. And if he sat in this burial

chamber, it might become his own tomb. They could shoot him or cut his throat,
shove him in a corner and nobody would be any the wiser.

Suddenly he heard a curse. An Arabic curse.
Whoever they were, they hadn’t come sightseeing.
Where could he hide? His mind backtracked over the route he had taken. Four

flights of steps, three right-angled passages, three broken quartzite portcullises,
four vestibules, the antechambers and two burial chambers.

Those transverse portcullises? They must have a deep recess in the wall.

Where was the first? At the foot of the last stairway.

Wrapping a folded handkerchief round his torch to dim its light, he felt his

way through the burial and antechambers. As he reached the stairs, he caught the
glint of a torch at the end of the passage. He lit the portcullis recess with his own
torch. Smooth granite sides, but no more than a foot wide. He squeezed in
sideways, having to profile his head, it was so narrow. A couple of feet inside, he
stopped. What did he do if someone shone a torch in his face, or he sneezed?

Now the voices reverberated down the passage in which he hid. From their

speech and accent they were Egyptians. Three of them, he reckoned.

“How much longer in this shitty hole?” a voice echoed.
“Just keep your fucking eyes open and shut your gob,” someone barked in

very colloquial Arabic.

They were moving slowly, scanning the sides and roof with their torches, but

acting as though they had little idea where the galleries led. Listening to their

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voices and footsteps, Chisholm reckoned they were moving in line astern with
maybe a couple of yards between them. As they approached his hiding place, he
tensed, his left thumb on his torch button.

One light, the first, flashed then disappeared. Now the second, though that

flickered round the portcullis. One more to go. He held his breath.

For a moment, he thought the man had gone past. But his torchlight fell on

the recess and moved upwards. Chisholm shut one eye to prevent the light from
blinding him. When it hit his face, he flashed his own powerful torch on the eyes
peering into the recess then flung himself into the gallery, shoulder-charging the
man blocked it. Although he staggered back, the man kept his feet.

Before Chisholm could turn and run, the man grabbed his jacket and yelled

for help. Chisholm swung his heavy knapsack, catching the man on the face with
it. He clubbed him over the head with his torch and dropped him like a stone.

Now he was running, following his torch beam, head-down, through the maze

of galleries, vestibules and stairs. He heard their boots clattering behind him and
wondered if he had the breath to reach the pyramid entrance before they
overtook him.

When he got there, he realised they had left someone in a Ford Escort under

the date palms by the canal. Watching his own Deux Chevaux, which sat a
hundred yards nearer him on the fringe of the palm grove. Fear spurred him on.
He took those two hundred yards between him and his car so fast, he reckoned,
that the soles of his canvas shoes hardly touched the sand.

He thanked Allah that Zein had fitted his clapped-out Deux Chevaux with two

engines, an old, cannibalized engine driving its rear wheels, turning it into a four-
wheeled drive. As he said, it traveled over sand as though it was tarmac. By
heading fast over the hard then softer sand around the Dahshur pyramids, he lost
the driver in the Escort within a couple of miles.

That evening, Zein whispered that a young Egyptian couple had asked for a

room on the second floor; he guessed they were police or intelligence agent from
one of the three services. “Don’t leave anything in your baggage,” he whispered.

He had expected the Egyptian authorities to be curious and perhaps skeptical

about his biography of Garfield Tate. But not to the extent of putting three men
on his tail and watching him round the clock. Zein was right. Wherever he went
now, two or three men kept closed to him.

What were they looking for? Jewels? Like him?

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Chapter 8

Captain Yussef Heykal had instructed him to come to the Al Azhar mosque in

native dress and make sure no-one was tailing him. He asked Zein to find him
some of his old clothes, and the hotel owner produced an open shirt, baggy
trousers and his old tarbush. As tried them on, he saw Zein convulse with
laughter and knew why. Those clothes made him look like a cross between a
Ramses II station porter and a Hilton waiter. But he realised Heykal was right
and he needed some disguise, for the police kept a wary eye on all mosques and
would easily spot him.

They finally settled for the sort of dress Bedouins and Sudanese Egyptians

wore—a loose cloak like a gallabeah, a burnoose which covered the head and half
his face, and native sandals. Zein smeared a café-au-lait mixture over his face
then studied his handiwork.

“You are either Khaddafi of Libya or a Nubian camel driver and your own

mother isn’t even knowing you. It is okay. You are being one of us.”

On Friday morning, he still felt like an idiot as Zein let him out through the

kitchen; they made sure the Egyptian couple were nowhere, then Zein pointed
him towards the underground at Sadat station. From there, he traveled to
Mubarack, crossed the line and returned to Zagloul station to verify no-one was
tailing him. There, he caught a bus to the Islamic Museum.

Nobody even gave him a second glance as he joined the hundreds of faithful

Moslems on the way to All Azhar mosque for Friday morning prayers.

Yussef Heykal was the captain of detectives who had carried out the inquiries

into Garfield Tate’s death. Now retired, he lived on Al Geish Street in central
Cairo. On Wednesday evening, when he had traced the detective’s address,
Chisholm had rung him from a public call box in Groppi’s restaurant.

No sooner had he given his name and begun to explain why had had called

than Heykal cut him short. “I shall call you at the Hilton in ten minutes, Mr.
Burns,” he said and the line went dead.

Mystified, he walked to the Hilton and waited in the lounge within earshot of

the call boxes. How did the man know his middle name was Burns? Why the
cloak and dagger behavior? Within a quarter of an hour one of the phones rang
and he went into the box and picked it up.

“Good—you understood,” Heykal said, then apologized for his rudeness before

cautioning Chisholm not to mention either the name of Heykal or his own name.

Heykal had obviously rehearsed the instructions he reeled off about how

Chisholm must keep their rendezvous at Al Azhar; he told him how to dress, to
watch no-one was following him, where to enter the mosque and what he looked
like. “I know who you are,” he said before ending the conversation which had
taken less than thirty seconds. It was an impressive performance.

Chisholm entered by the Barber’s Gate, crossed the courtyard and prayer hall

and located the eighth pillar between the fount and the east wall the detective had
mentioned. He realized why Heykal had chosen this mosque; its huge prayer hall
was packed from wall to wall with people of every kind and in every garb; he had
difficulty finding a space on the ground to spread the prayer rug Zein had given
him.

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A young imam led the prayers. With fiery Mohammedan rhetoric, he preached

the strict observance of Koranic discipline and abstinence in everything but
religious observance.

Chisholm joined in the ritual response, Allah Akhbar. In that vast, domed

building it was stifling hot and airless and his body ran with perspiration under
his cloak and head-dress. How he could have used a drink now! To buttress his
resolve, he alternated his Allah Akhbars with the name of his AA sponsor, Danny
Inglis and lost count of the times his forehead hit the prayer rug.

As the ceremony dragged on, he began to wonder if Heykal was setting him up

for the police or was playing some curious game with him.

“Allah Akhbar.”
Chisholm bent reverentially to touch his head on his prayer mat. An elbow

dug into his side and he turned.

“La illah illa Allah.” (There is no God but God) the man beside him said.
“La illah illa Allah,” Chisholm repeated.
Heykal embraced him like an old friend. Beneath the imam’s chanting, his

raucous voice said in Chisholm’s ear. “Don’t talk...pretend you are praying and
listen.”

“But how do you know who I am and what I’m doing.”
“I still have police contacts...they know all about you...you know they’re tailing

you...I read the English papers and can make deductions...you know Garfield Tate
was murdered.”

“Who by?”
“That I am not knowing for certain, but someone who will have orders to kill

you if you do not watch.”

“Allah Akhbar.”
Once more they bent their heads and made their obeisance. As their arms

touched, Chisholm sensed something like a thick pencil thrusting halfway up the
sleeve of his gallabeah.

“Don’t lose it. When you have read it and put it into your head, burn it.”

Heykal’s whisper reached him along his prayer mat.

As they raised their heads, Chisholm maneuvered the solid roll of paper inside

his robe then into his underpants. He glanced at the man beside him, also in a
cloak with his face half-covered, indistinguishable from the hundreds of other
worshippers in the prayer hall. Heykal had chosen their place well—behind the
pillar and unsighted from where the police would stand on the upper gallery as
they always did to observe the congregation.

“Allah Akhbar.”
“Why was he murdered?” whispered, his bowed head close to Heykal’s ear.
“His wife knew why... maybe two, three other people involved...jealousy, but

something else I never discovered...all I know is in the paper I am giving you.”

“When can we meet?”
“Not possible...too dangerous...and don’t use your hotel phone to call me...”
“Allah Akhbar.”
“If it’s urgent, call me then from a public telephone...give the number...and

keep it short.”

“Would anybody from the British Embassy here be able to help?”
“No.” Heykal barked the word. “Keep away from that lot”
“Allah Akhbar.”
“...only man who helped there was Frank Bailey...their security officer...he’s

still in Cairo, retired...but watch your step...don’t get him involved.”

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Chisholm had only one more question as they bent their heads again. “Why

are you taking the risk of helping me.?”

“I don’t know...I’m maboul (crazy) maybe...but I don’t like unfinished cases..

this one will bother me to the grave and beyond until I know the truth. Keep your
head down.”

When Chisholm lifted his head with the other worshippers and glanced to the

right, Heykal had gone; he must have slipped round the pillar while every head
was bent, the prayers were muffling everything disappeared through the eastern
entrance.

Chisholm had not even seen his face. Only those penetrating eyes, like date-

stones beneath tufted eyebrows.

Staying until the end of the prayer session, he walked back to his hotel,

avoiding the Khan el-Khalili market. Heykal intrigued him. A police captain who
had sustained for quarter of a century his desire—no, it was obviously an
obsession—to solve the mystery of Garfield Tate’s death. And he evidently had
little inkling of the pharaonic treasure, or his policeman’s mind would have
considered that the main motive. And not jealousy.

Chisholm stopped speculating about Heykal, for he was sure someone had

picked him up and was tailing him.

In Ataba Square and again in Opera Square, he stopped to look at a jeweler’s

window and a shop selling leather goods. On both occasions, he noticed the same
figure, a big man in a beige linen suit wearing a fez, loiter at another shop thirty
yards astern. But at the end of Abdel Aziz Street when he looked for the man, he
had disappeared.

What had Heykal said? They’d kill him if he got too close to the truth about

Garfield Tate’s death. It looked as though the police captain had not exaggerated.

In the Al Ahram, he locked his door and pulled the curtains shut before

stripping off his disguise and putting on a shirt and shorts.

Carefully, he unraveled and flattened the four typewritten sheets Heykal had

slipped him. The document was prefaced by a notice written in Heykal’s own
hand:

THIS IS THE UNOFFICIAL TRUTH: THE OFFICIAL REPORT IS

WORTHLESS.

Chisholm could see the report was written in police jargon with an overtyped

error in every second line. But Heykal had left nothing to the imagination, listing
the exact time of the accident, when they were called to the scene, the visibility,
the condition of the burned-out jeep and the charred bodies. To emphasize his
objectivity, the policeman referred to himself throughout the report in the third
person.

Knowing the bones of the story based on the official report, Chisholm could

perceive how the real inquiry had been quashed and the affair hushed up.

Heykal had written:

At about 2.50pm on the afternoon of October 19, twenty five years ago, the

English archaeologist, Professor Garfield Tate, working in the vicinity of the
Bent Pyramid at Dahshur, received a message which took him and his
assistant, Dr. Ceti Kanfer, about thirty miles south along the Nile Valley to the
great pyramid of Meydum which stands on a platform overlooking the river.
No-one knows who brought the message or what it said, only that Garfield
Tate had told his wife he had a rendezvous at Meydum.

At eight o’clock that night, around sunset, Captain Yussef Heykal was

informed of the death of Garfield Tate and his assistant. With a junior

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detective, he drove to the pyramid of Meydum, some forty miles from Cairo.
On their arrival, they removed the bodies from the wreckage of the jeep which
was still smoldering. It lay in a small ravine just off the road leading to the
pyramid.

Heykal and his junior noted it had been a hot day with temperatures of 35

degrees and over. Dust devils had been reported in that area. But the fellahin
around Meydum had not noticed any. Heykal was certain no dust devil had
blown or lifted that heavy jeep off the road. To him, it seemed more likely the
jeep was coming down the steep causeway to the east side of the Meydum
pyramid. For some unknown reason, it had run out of control and plunged
over the ravine edge and caught fire.

The cause? Was it a lapse of concentration? A heart attack? Mechanical

failure. No-one carried out an autopsy on Sir Garfield Tate, but everyone
affirmed that, for a man nearing sixty, he was remarkably healthy and fit. And
neither Heykal nor the police mechanic who examined the jeep could find
anything wrong with the brakes, carburetor or the electrical system that might
have caused the jeep to crash or set it on fire.

When he returned to the scene the following day, Heykal questioned villagers

working in the rice fields by the Nile. Two boys half a mile apart had heard the
crash. But a few second before, they had seen a flash and heard a bang. The boys
were quite categorical, their statements corresponded although they were
strangers to each other. They also heard the sound of another vehicle being
driven north a few minutes after the jeep caught fire. They saw the lights of this
vehicle. Heykal checked the times and at El Lish, a few miles north, villagers had
noticed a Volkswagen (beetle type) traveling fast towards Cairo about ten
minutes after the time of the accident. It was getting dark and they could not
distinguish the driver.

Heykal’s suspicions were aroused and he searched the area round the

Meydum pyramid and even ventured down the long underground passage into
the burial chamber.

By the surrounding wall entrance on the eastern side, the captain of

detectives spotted a spill of fresh engine oil and several Nefertiti cigarette stubs;
he verified that neither Sir Tate nor Dr. Kanfer smoked.

So, it looked as if someone had waited for the archaeologists with a car in a

place which was out of bounds to tourists. Another intriguing fact: the jeep had
lost its petrol tank cap which Heykal assumed had been blown off when the tank
exploded. He eventually found it among the limestone chips below the causeway,
two hundred yards from the crash scene and a hundred feet higher. That
indicated to him that it had been removed and thrown away before the jeep
started on its crash course.

Heykal advanced the hypothesis that someone had clubbed both Sir Tate and

Ceti Kanfer over the head then put them in the jeep. They then stuffed a petrol-
soaked rag into the petrol reservoir, lit it and set the vehicle in motion down the
causeway. The tank explosion probably happened halfway down the hill.

Heykal tried to answer the question: Who would have the motive and

opportunity to lure Sir Tate and his Nubian assistant into such an ambush and
murder them in this way?

He interviewed friends of Sir Tate and finally his widow. Had her husband

told her why he was going to Meydum and whom he was meeting there? Lady
Tate would only say that she knew he was visiting the pyramid; he rarely
discussed his day-to-day schedule with her.

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Heykal asked if she knew Sir Tate was having an affair with Dr. Kanfer?
This was the only moment Lady Tate appeared to lose her composure. Heykal

had only what you would call a hunch, though this was based on hearsay
evidence, and the clues he had discovered at Meydum. His hunch was that this
could have been a crime passionel, even if it were a proxy murder by an
accomplice. Heykal could not prove this, but he believed in his soul (and still
believes) that somehow Lady Garfield Tate played an important role in the
murder of her husband and his mistress.

But her motive puzzled Heykal. She had known of his infidelity for at least

eighteen months. (She had been unfaithful to Sir Tate for much longer and with
dozens of men). So, why did she choose this moment?

In his forty years of police work, dealing with the worst type of criminal,

Heykal confessed to having never encountered anyone so imperturbably self-
possessed as Lady Tate. She was as hard and impenetrable as the rock in the Tura
quarries.

What could he do? Nothing linked her directly to the crime. On that night,

Lady Tate had gone to the Cairo Opera and sat through a performance of
Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann. Her chauffeur, Ahmed Hassanein, had driven her
there ten minutes before the curtain rose at eight o’clock; she had been seen
during the entr’actes, and Hassanein had picked her up after the opera at 10.50.

When Heykal wrote his report and mentioned all his suspicions to his

hierarchic superior, he found himself in danger of being posted to Ouadi Halfa or
another remote outpost of Upper Egypt. There was pressure from everyone to
close the case without further ado—from the Sadat Government, from the British
Embassy, from my superiors, who predicted trouble for me and them if I
continued. So, officially it was an accident.

Heykal attended the burial of Dr Ceti Kanfer in Cairo Coptic cemetery. There,

he met her half-sister. But neither she nor her friends shared his views on Dr.
Kanfer’s death.

So, although he bowed to state and diplomatic pressure, Heykal was

convinced that one day the truth would break surface.

Across the foot of the document, Heykal had scrawled two words in block

letters with a thick felt pen:

NOW BURN THIS.
Chisholm read the paper over several times to memorize the gist of it then

recorded its salient points in his notebook. He shredded the four sheets into
minute pieces and flushed them down the toilet. He sat in the curtained room to
reflect.

Heykal had whispered a warning to him in the mosque, and his report

reinforced that warning: the person who murdered Garfield Tate and his mistress
would murder again if he had to prevent the truth emerging.

Did that mean Heykal thought the murderer was still in Cairo? Was he right,

did Lady Garfield Tate really conspire with someone to have her husband and her
rival murdered? What link did these murders have with the jewel hoard Garfield
Tate had discovered? Whom would the archaeologist tell about those jewels? His
wife? He was working alone—pottering according to Lampson. Was that because
he was working out what to do with those jewels? Who knew about them now?

Heykal might be right about something else—he was risking his life here. And

he realized only too well there was one person at least in Britain prepared to kill
for those jewels. But that attack on him in his flat might have nothing to do with

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Cairo and might have been made by one of the group alerted by Sheldon Wright
about the discovery of the envelope in Garfield Tate’s papers.

Anyway, Heykal and he were chasing two different hares. He had come to

Egypt to find the jewels, even if he was ostensibly writing Garfield Tate’s life,
while the former police captain was frustrated by an unsolved murder and
obsessed with tracking down the killer.

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Chapter 9

For weeks he had pored over those pyramid snaps Garfield Tate had hidden

in his papers becoming more and more convinced the key to the mystery of the
archaeologist’s death and the whereabouts of the jewels lay in those pictures. As
most of them had been taken around the Dahshur pyramid field, he decided to
start there.

From the snaps, he identified each of the nine pyramids then superimposed

their co-ordinates on a large-scale map, joining the lines to ascertain if they
converged on any particular spot. Immediately he realized he needed something
more than the names and locations of those pyramids; he had to know where
Garfield Tate had stood to point his camera at each of the pyramids. And this
meant working backwards from each of the nine pyramid pictures.

First, he had to lose his official ‘shadow’ with Zein’s help. A couple of days

after meeting Heykal, he left the Al Ahram before dawn on foot. Even at that
hour, a young Egyptian in jogging kit dropped in behind him as he made for
Republic Square.

Zein was already at their rendezvous, circling the square. He halted,

disregarding the cacophony of horns behind him, opened the door of the Deux
Chevaux and jumped in. At El Tahrir Bridge, Chisholm took over, dropped Zein
then made for Dahshur. There, he hid the Deux Chevaux in a stand of date palms
by a maize field and trudged over the sand to the Bent Pyramid.

Like so many Egyptologists, Garfield Tate had seemed fascinated by the kinky

shape of this pyramid as well as the intricate maze of passages Pharaoh Sneferu’s
architects had built into it. Chisholm had also worked for a spell in the Bent
Pyramid and knew most of the structure from plans and personal exploration.

But now he had no interest in the interior. Unless Garfield Tate had

discovered still another secret passage there, nothing Chisholm remembered
corresponded with the burial room and sarcophagus in his snapshots. He was
only concerned with trying to duplicate Garfield Tate’s pictures. Picking his way
upward over those blocks that had lost their original limestone casing, he reached
the point where the angle of the structure changed from 54 to 43 degrees.

There, he spread his large-scale map, orientating it by lining up the ruined

brick pyramids of Amenemhet II and Senusert III, a mile and two miles north-
east.

What was it Lampson had said of Garfield Tate. “This was his world.” Sitting

on this strange pyramid, Chisholm could understand the archaeologist’s wish to
be buried among the pharaohs—even as ash and bone-meal. This place tugged at
him, too. Even an atheist like him could not help responding to the spirituality of
the place and feeling awe-struck at the immense effort those Ancient Egyptian
builders had made to create such funerary monuments.

Studying the map and comparing it with the pyramid snaps, it looked as if

Garfield Tate had taken his two shots of the Bent Pyramid from the northern
Sneferu pyramid and from one of the two brick pyramids to the north-east. But if
he were to discover why the archaeologist had taken these snaps and hidden them
with the photos of the jewels, he had to take his series of pictures from them all.

It meant working throughout that hot day with no more than half an hour’s

respite to drink his coffee from the flask and eat the mammoth sandwich Zein
had built him; but by six o’clock he had two spools of film, sixty-five shots in all,

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of those nine pyramids from every possible angle. Now, he had to compare them
with the original pictures, weed out those that did not correspond and try to
unravel the conundrum the archaeologist had constructed around those jewels he
had found.

As he worked, for no reason he could fathom, he felt someone was watching

him. Yet, he spotted only a handful of tourists, camera bugs like himself; nobody
looking like a policeman, or the three men who had tailed and chased him a week
ago.

Driving back, he was chiding himself for his paranoia and having developed

the hunted-man syndrome when a car dropped in behind him at the end of the
canal road. A big, gray Merc with one man at the wheel. In Zein’s cracked and
smeared mirror, he could not distinguish the face through the tinted windscreen.
Anyway, it was probably just coincidence.

But no. Halfway along the pyramids road, he drew into the side and lifted the

Deux Chevaux bonnet to peer at its forty-year-old innards. When he resumed his
journey, there it was again, the Merc, just fifty yards behind him. It came no
closer than fifty yards when they were moving and kept a couple of cars between
them at traffic lights. A few streets from the Al Ahram, the Merc vanished—as
though the man knew where he was heading.

He took no chances with the film, handing Zein the two spools to be

developed and printed. When he returned two hours later with the prints,
Chisholm spread them out on the table of his room. Quickly, he singled out the
twelve that corresponded with the archaeologist’s, then arbitrarily discarded
three of these.

But even concentrating on the five Dahshur pyramids, he came up with so

many permutations that he soon shelved the idea of discovering an interesting
pyramid site where they converged. Anyway, Garfield Tate, being an engineer as
well as an archaeologist, would have evolved some mathematical pointer to his
hoard, and not a straight piece of triangulation.

For a couple of hours, Chisholm juggled with the lines connecting the five

Dahshur pyramids and the Step Pyramid. Finally, he arrived at a small triangle
embracing the valley temple of the Bent Pyramid where the Pharaoh Sneferu had
been washed, purified, mummified before being borne to his eternal home in the
Bent Pyramid.

He dismissed the place as a possible site for the jewels. For he was aware that

this valley temple had been explored by the Egyptian archaeologist, Ahmed
Fahkry, in the fifties. And if he had unearthed nothing spectacular with a full
team of associates how could he, single-handed, hope to light on a new tomb.

He had run out of inspiration. He needed help. But who could help him?

Whom could he trust with the fact that there was fabulous fortune in pharaonic
jewels lying under the Dahshur fields? He was reluctant to confide in anyone, to
ask anyone for help.

Yet, when he had run down his list of contacts, he saw there the name of one

man he thought he could trust and who might know something.

Nobody ever called him anything but Sarwat or saw him in anything but a

shabby suit and an old fez, although he must have been one of the richest men in
the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, if not in Cairo. With that parchment skin stretched
tight over his facial bones, those hooded eyes and the scrawny vulture neck, he
looked like Pharaoh Seti I in the Cairo Museum mummy room. So Chisholm
thought every time he met him. But he knew that, behind that buzzard look was
one of the keenest brains in Egypt.

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Since their last meeting, a milky opacity had screened his left eye and Sarwat

told him he had brought an English surgeon out to do a corneal graft. It was the
size of a nail head but gave him some vision.

“Right one still sees everything,” he said, pointing to his good eye and flashing

his three gold teeth in a grin as he gripped Chisholm’s hand.

Although reputedly a millionaire many times over and in his seventies,

Sarwat refused to live anywhere outside the Khan el-Khalili; he had converted the
two top floors of his antiques and jewelry shop into living quarters. His only
concession to wealth were the expensive Roman tapestries on his walls, Turkish
rugs on the floor and several fine antique pieces, including the tiny divan bed in
which he slept. For an Egyptian millionaire his home was Spartan.

Chisholm had waited until after dark to walk through the bazaar to the shop.

At that hour, most of the shops and stalls were shut, though the cafes were still
busy. No-one followed him that he could see. Sarwat greeted him at his entrance.
When he pulled down his metal grill and steel shutters, the jeweler led him
upstairs to where Aisha, his Turkish woman servant, had placed a copper pot of
Turkish coffee on a small burner surrounded by baclavas and basboussas, sweet
pastries made by her own hand.

Sarwat poured them coffee, beckoned at the cakes but lit a Turkish cigarette

himself and sipped the muddy mixture. Chisholm did likewise, though he could
take or leave such turgid Turkish coffee; Aisha had made it so much like sludge,
he could have turned the tiny cup upside-down without losing a drop.

“I heard about your misfortune,” Sarwat said in that furry whisper of his. “I

was greatly saddened by it.”

“It’s far away and long ago,” Chisholm replied while marveling at the reach

and efficiency of the mouth-to-ear Arab telephone.

And now you are writing the book of Sir Tate, I learn. Is this so?” Chisholm

nodded, thinking that nothing ever got by Sarwat. “How can I assist? “Sir William
was an acquaintance only in a professional context.”

“What did you hear about his death, Sarwat?”
Those vulture eyes flickered towards him and Sarwat turned up the burner

flame to warm more brown sludge before answering.

“There was gossip, but in a land such as Egypt there is gossip about

everything.”

“Gossip about what?”
Sarwat pulled on his cigarette. “Oh, about the circumstances of his accident.

Some people contended that, for an accident, it was well-organized.”

“I had heard this,” Chisholm said. He paused before putting the question that

had brought him here. “Was there any talk about Garfield Tate discovering a
collection of jewels just before his death?”

There, Sarwat did not hesitate. “Nothing that reached my ears,” he said. “But

of course I do not hear everything.”

Chisholm did not demur, although he realized Sarwat had perhaps the best

intelligence service in Egyptology. Not a thing happened in the Delta or along the
Nile valley as far as Upper Egypt without one of his hundreds of informants
passing it on to this inconspicuous millionaire.

Over the years, Sarwat had filled a sizable museum with rare Egyptian relics;

he had sold rare and even unique pieces of Ancient Egyptian history to dozens of
Western museums and pointed the state Department of Antiquities to several
important discoveries. How he had avoided tangling with the government service
over his foreign sales remained a mystery. Now, watching Sarwat’s second

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Turkish cigarette glow bright, Chisholm knew he had at least relit some dormant
thought.

“I would suppose you have more than mere hearsay for your suggestion,

Mr.Chisholm.”

In response, Chisholm pulled out an envelope from his money belt and

extracted four of the fifteen pictures of the jewel collection. He placed them on
the low arabesque table in front of Sarwat.

Sarwat lifted a finger and Aisha materialized and quickly cleared the table. He

bent over the pictures, looking first with strong spectacles then with his jeweler’s
eyeglass screwed into his right eye socket. “Most interesting,” he murmured, his
tongue clicking and running over his lips as if they had suddenly gone dry. “Most
interesting,” he repeated, and Chisholm wondered why he hadn’t asked where he
had acquired the pictures, or if he had found the jewels.

Sarwat lifted his face to look at him through the tiny porthole in his bad eye,

keeping his eyeglass in place. Chisholm read apprehension in that look. He
waited for Sarwat to speak.

“Fascinating,” Sarwat whispered and repeated the word. He paused then said,

“Only I wish...well, I wish you had not shown these to me.”

What did he mean? Chisholm knew that many Egyptians, even highly

intelligent men who dealt in Pharaonic relics, thought they carried some curse or
other malediction. Or at least bad luck. After all, had they not been stolen
originally from the eternal house of the divine and immortal pharaohs? But
surely Sarwat did not figure in that superstitious lot since he had handled
thousands of relics, from stone scarabs to jewels like these he had just studied!
He meant something else.

“You have seen these before then, Sarwat?”
“No, never. Nor have I heard of such a collection—which is very strange.”
“What do you mean?” Chisholm asked, although he had already guessed the

answer.

“I mean they are not a homogeneous collection.” Sarwat’s lighter flame

quivered as he lit his third cigarette. “Of course,” he whispered, “I would have to
see the originals before pronouncing on them, but they seem genuine. But I
repeat, they are not of the same dynasty.”

To prove his point, Sarwat put a scrawny finger on the two bangles and gold

bead bracelet, saying they looked like Third Dynasty pieces; then he indicated the
necklace of gold rosettes, the gold chokers and circlets which, he said, were
Twelfth Dynasty jewels by their workmanship and style. And the gold earrings
were at least a thousand years in advance of the Twelfth Dynasty jewels since the
earring did not appear until the Eighteenth Dynasty in Egypt.

“If anyone came to me with such a collection, I would ask him where it had

been hidden when he found it.”

“And if he was an archaeologist...”
“It would occur to me to hazard a guess about where he had been digging over

the years.”

Something was niggling at Sarwat; that vulture neck of his was twitching, and

he was glancing at Chisholm with his bad eye as though wondering whether to
reveal some secret.

“But Sarwat, you obviously believe these relics are genuine, don’t you?”

Chisholm prompted.

“Of this fact I am virtually certain, Mr. Chisholm.”
“And if you were to look for them, where would you begin?”

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Sarwat passed brittle fingers over his bald head. “I don’t know...perhaps

where there are Third and Fourth Dynasty pyramids side by side with Twelfth
and Thirteenth Dynasty pyramids.”

“South Saqqara and Dahshur, then?” Sarwat nodded. “And if they are

found...”

Sarwat went back to studying the collection, peering at each item through his

lens. “Three quarters of these pieces are already in one form or another in Cairo
museums. So, whoever found them might have to let the Department of
Antiquities have the pieces they do not possess in return for the right to sell the
others.”

“And in your opinion, the pieces one could sell would be worth how much

nowadays?”

“If they were split up and sold judiciously, I would say between ten and fifteen

million dollars,” Sarwat said, then turned those hooded eyes on . “But you should
not raise your optimism too high—even if you discover the tomb where those
photographs were taken.”

“So, you know or assume first that I haven’t found the tomb and the jewels,”

Chisholm said. “And you evidently know something else, Sarwat.”

Sarwat made something between a shrug and a nod. “I can tell you now, even

looking at these poor photographs, these jewels are not false.”

“That means you have seen them.”
Sarwat shook his head. From a pocket, he had conjured a bunch of keys which

he hefted in his hand as though deliberating what to do. He ground out his
cigarette in a filigree ashtray. “Please wait here,” he said, rising and leaving the
room. Chisholm heard his light tread on the two flights of stairs to his shop, then
to the basement. As he sat there, he sensed Aisha’s eye on him, presumably
watching that he neither moved nor stole anything.

Ten minutes later, Sarwat returned with a velvet cloth which he spread on the

table. To his astonishment, Chisholm saw a bangle and two earrings like those in
the Garfield Tate pictures. Sarwat was speaking.

“In my mind, there is no doubt that this bracelet and those earrings are the

ones in your pictures.”

Chisholm stared at him, incredulously. But he said nothing, aware that this

old dealer knew more about pharaonic jewelry and antiques than the head of the
Cairo Museum and most archaeologists. Sarwat was explaining:

“I have never seen another pair of earrings like these. Look where they have

soldered the gold tubes together and spaced them with annular beads. And look
at that bangle, two thousand years earlier in period. There you can see they have
beaten the thin gold leaf—it is 22 carat—round a template of plaster, clay or wood
in which they have carved the pattern of beetles that you observe. Can you see?—
there is even a small tear on the rim of the bangle.”

Chisholm had never seen the old man so excited about anything. He followed

the quivering finger which indicated identical S-shaped tears on the bangle and
compared it with the picture. His own heart sank. Had he come all the way for
nothing—to find jewels that had been recovered by someone else, probably
broken up, sold item by item and smuggled out of Egypt?

“Where do you think the other pieces have gone?”
Sarwat shrugged. “I have seen only these three pieces.”
But Sarwat, you must know where these three pieces came from, so you must

have asked about all these.” He pointed to the pictures. “And why haven’t you
tried to sell the bangle and earrings?”

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“I made a promise.”
Chisholm thought it strange for a dealer as flinty and uncompromising, a man

so obsessive about money to make such a promise. “Then who was it, the person
who pawned these jewels and made you promise not to sell them?”

“That you must not ask me, Mr. Chisholm.”
“Look Sarwat, I’ve come here to find those jewels and I’m going to find them

somehow or other, with or without your help, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

As he spoke, he glimpsed the shadow of Aisha flit across the door and realized

he had raised his voice. They said she never let Sarwat out of her sight for a
second and even slept at the foot of his bed to protect him. Chisholm lowered his
voice and pointed to the pictures still on the table.

“You realize I have much more information than those.” Sarwat nodded. “All

right, then,” Chisholm went on, “why don’t we make a bargain? You tell me where
our bangle and earrings came from and when I find the rest of the jewels you’ll
have the sole right to negotiate their sale with the government here and with
outside buyers.”

That language, he could see, appealed to Sarwat, who had picked up the

ancient bangle and was turning it in his tiny, bony hands.

“What I tell you must never have come from me,” he murmured. “You

understand that.”

“You have my word.”
All right, I bought those ancient pieces nine months ago from someone who

needed money. There were conditions. I had to allow the person two years to
redeem them at the price I paid—taking account of financial depreciation and
interest, of course.”

“And this someone?”
“It was a girl.” Sarwat gazed at the bangle and earrings. “She was a beautiful

girl,” he said, dreamily. “The most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”

“She must have given her name. You must have her name, Sarwat.”
Sarwat looked at him. “What do names mean? She said she was called Mouna

Tayisha, but I would not look for her under that name.” He shrugged. “And yet
she seemed truthful.”

“What age would she be?”
“Age? Perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four, perhaps a year or two older.”
“Do you know anything else about her?”
“She said she needed the money to pay for her studies, so she is a student.”
“Of course she didn’t tell you how or where she acquired these bits of

jewelry,” Chisholm said, his deception and irritation showing through.

“I asked her and she replied they had been in her family,” Sarwat said. “And

she seemed genuinely to believe this.”

“A descendant of Sneferu or Ramses II or Nefertiti, no doubt,” Chisholm said,

sarcastically.

“She was honest if I know honesty,” Sarwat said.
Chisholm persuaded the Egyptian jeweler to describe the girl and was

impressed with the way the old man could define each of her features, her
manner and her way of moving, even the pattern of the cotton dress she was
wearing. But then, Sarwat had an eye for beautiful things.

He realized the old man was tiring. He also thought perhaps he was

outstaying his welcome when Aisha entered and turned down the cover and
sheets on the divan bed and put out one of the table lamps. Excusing himself for
his rudeness and thanking Sarwat for his help, he gathered up the pictures and

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followed the Turkish servant woman downstairs where she opened the grill and
metal shutter to let him out.

Neither she nor Chisholm spotted the massive figure of a man watching them

from the shadow of a shuttered souvenir shop on the corner of Gohar Street.

Aisha had locked up the shop and had disappeared before the man and,

walking briskly yet lightly and softly for such a big man, regained the grey
Mercedes he had left in Port Said Street.

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Chapter 10

Chisholm knew there were at least 100,000 students of every race and creed

among the eleven million people in this frenetic scrum of a capital city. How the
hell did he track down a girl with a Nefertiti face, raven-black hair, Nubian eyes
who had somehow acquired those three rare pieces from Garfield Tate’s hoard?

When he had leafed through and scanned every note he had made, he decided

there must be a connection between this girl and Garfield Tate, however far out.
She looked Nubian according to Sarwat. Wasn’t Dr. Ceti Kanfer, Tate’s assistant
and mistress, of Nubian origin? And Heykal, the retired copper, had said Kanfer
had a step-sister who was at her funeral in the Coptic cemetery and who lived
somewhere in Cairo.

When he rang Hassan el-Zayyat, the oily voice whispered there would be no

problem using a newspaper library to trace the facts about Sir Garfield Tate. He
could go to Al Ahram, the newspaper, where the librarian was a friend of his and
he would help.

Chisholm realised he was doing el-Zayyat and everyone who was shadowing

him a favor by using Al Ahram, a semi-official newspaper. Everyone would know
what he was seeking. But he had to take the chance. When he visited the paper, it
turned out the librarian had just what he wanted: all the pictures and stories of
Dr. Ceti Kanfer’s funeral from Arabic, French and English papers. And several of
the accounts also listed the mourners.

Chisholm could hardly believe his eyes: Sarwat’s mystery girl had told the

truth. There she was—Mouna Tayisha, with her mother, Mrs. Sirri Tayisha, the
dead woman’s step-sister, at the graveside. One of the French-language
newspapers said Sirri Tayisha was the widow of the war hero, Captain Hussein
Tayisha. Sarwat had guessed the daughter’s age to a year. She would be twenty-
five now.

Why had Heykal said nothing about the step-sister being widowed. According

to him, she was married. Who was her new husband? He must trace him to find
the girl.

At six o’clock, he went to the public phone cabins in the Hilton and rang

Heykal, merely giving the cabin number. Within ten minutes, the detective called
back. Chisholm then asked if the policeman had erred in giving Dr Kanfer’s half-
sister as married when the newspapers said she was a widow.

“No, she is married and I was told well-married, but I never bothered to find

out who her husband was as she knew nothing about the case.”

“And Tayisha, the first husband?”
“He was an air force captain and a war hero who shot down three Israeli

planes during Sadat’s war in ‘73. He died two or three years later in a helicopter
crash, I think, but check this.”

“One other thing—do you know where Garfield Tate kept his bank account in

Cairo?”

“Lloyds it was...but wait a minute...he had a second account...there wasn’t

much money in either of them when I looked...where was that?...some small bank
like the Bank of Suez...Listen, I’m in the Delta for two days, but I shall look it up
in my records...telephone me in three days time...same procedure.’

After the line went dead, Chisholm stood for a moment or two in the box, a

thought filling his mind: Why would this girl, Mouna Tayisha part with those so-

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called family heirlooms when her mother and step-father were obviously well-
off? He must find her.

He sat down with the hotel phone directory and yellow pages for Cairo and

searched them from every angle, looking up and listing the colleges of Cairo
University and every educational establishment he could think of. He also listed
twenty banks which had British or international connections.

As he handed back the book, he spotted in the switchboard glass panel a man

who seemed to be studying him. Somewhere he had seen that face before. As he
turned, the man plunged back into his reading of that day’s Al Ahram. Where had
he seen him? In Zein’s hotel? In the unfinished pyramid that day he had run for
his life? Behind the wheel of a gray Merc?

For a second or two, Chisholm had the impulse to step over and confront

him—if only to relieve the frustrations of that day. He quashed the urge, knowing
it would get him nowhere. Instead, he turned his back on the man and took a
roundabout road through the hotel to the front door.

Without being aware of it, he walked into the lounge bar. At that evening hour

it was full of couples and it resonated with talk and laughter above a tinkling
piano melody. Chisholm stopped by the bar as though he had been hit by a curare
dart. At the sight of those bottles of whisky, gin, rum, at the thought of what they
represented, he felt as though something had snapped in his mind and numbed
his will-power. It was as though all his resolve and the conditioning of the past
three months had crumbled suddenly. He turned as though a dozen devils were
behind him and almost ran for the revolving door and the street.

Outside, he stood for several minutes on the pavement letting the crowd swirl

round him. Just gulping air. Clearing his nose, mouth, lungs of that heady
perfume of whisky and gin and cognac emanating from the bar. Cursing his
moment of panic and his vulnerability, his fragile will-power.

He also felt scared, for he had thought such moments were behind him, that

he was cured forever. At that moment, he knew that if his mind might whisper he
was over the worst, his body could still cry he was always in bondage.

It was not the first time since he had given Danny Inglis his pledge at an AA

meeting that the urge had seized him, abruptly like this, to have a drink. Just one.
Just to test his resolve. To prove he could take it or leave it like any other normal,
social drinker. To satisfy him that those drunken binges which had left him
blank-minded and black-minded for weeks were nothing but a nightmare, or a
malady he had shaken off like the flu. That’s what it was, a malady. Yes, but an
incurable one.

He cut through the traffic to the Nile and gazed at it. Eau de Nil? Wasn’t that

what Jenny called that color when she was choosing wall-paper for his bedroom.
It was his own color, mentally and physically, at this moment. Grey-green with a
touch of blue.

Nobody needed to tell him that had he succumbed, put his pledge to the test,

he would by now be on his third or fourth double Scotch, getting stoned out of
time and place, and damn Garfield Tate and Sheldon Wright and Jenny and
Davenport and the jewels.

Head down and eyes on the ground, he walked back to Zein’s hotel, went to

his room and bombed himself to sleep with two pills.

Next morning, he called at the registrar’s office of Cairo University. They had

no record of Mouna Tayisha after the age of twenty-two when she had left with a
history and languages degree; they added half a dozen educational
establishments to the list he had made.

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All that morning he made the rounds of colleges and institutions, leaving his

name and hotel number. Of the dozens of people he met, three had actually heard
of the girl and promised to pass on his message if they met her. He had little
hope.

He lunched off a sandwich washed down with coffee at Groppi’s and started

on the banks.

Lloyds assistant manager, a young bespectacled Welshman who converted

every statement into bel canto said he believed they had held the Garfield Tate
account; he hadn’t heard of his having another Cairo account, nor had he heard of
a Bank of Suez, but there was an Indo-Suez Bank and a Suez Canal Bank he could
try.

“Do you have a record of the banks, say twenty-four years ago?”
“I’ll see.” In ten minutes he returned with the Cairo Directory for that period.

“No bank of Suez, but there was an Anglo-Suez Bank. Where it went I wouldn’t
know.”

“Have you met anything like this here?” Chisholm produced the long, flat-

headed key he had found with the pictures and handed it to the banker, who
turned it in his fingers.

“We used to have something like this for the strong-boxes.” He grinned “But

it looks a bit primitive compared with the computerized keys we have these days.”
He thought for a moment. “Ismail would know.”

Behind a glass compartment, an elderly, grizzling Egyptian was tabulating

checks. He took the key and nodded. Yes, he said, they used them until about
fifteen years ago when they changed the strongboxes.

“Was it a two-key system?” Chisholm asked and Ismail nodded that it was.

“Then, could two people have keys to the same strongbox?”

“Only if they held a joint account, or if the account holder gave written

authority for another party to have access to the strongbox.”

As he walked back to the hotel, a pattern was beginning to form in his mind.

It had one great white area: If Garfield Tate had placed those jewels in some
strongbox and given someone else a key, why then did he climb all over those
Saqqara and Dahshur pyramids as though to fix the spot where he had found and
presumably left the jewels?

When he entered the hotel, Zein put up a finger to beckon him into his cubby-

hole behind the reception desk. “You-ahn, you have a guest.”

“Not another of those,” he said, screwing up his hands and peering through

them as though they were field glasses.

Zein shook his head. “No, this one is no police woman—though she could stop

the traffic in Tahir Square.” He thumbed upwards. “She is on the roof where no-
one is seeing you.”

Chisholm went up the five flights of stairs, the final one ending at a door

giving onto the flat roof. Zein had locked it and given him the key. As he stepped
on to the roof, a girl got up from her chair under a large parasol and came to meet
him.

“You wished to meet me? I am Mouna Tayisha.”
Neither Zein nor Sarwat had exaggerated. She was really beautiful.

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Chapter 11

Sarwat had seen his last customer off the premises, had locked away his trays

of precious stones and was shuttering his shop when a massive figure blocked the
entrance. “I want a private word with you, Sarwat,” the man said.

“Of course, Ahmed. We are going upstairs.”
Ahmed was a good customer, a rich man with a wife he doted on and who had

expensive tastes in old and new jewelry and antiques.

Sarwat led the way upstairs and beckoned Aisha to serve them coffee. But

when the Turkish servant brought the coffee pots, burner and cups to the table,
the visitor waved them away.

“I did not come here to drink coffee or buy jewels, I came to ask questions,” he

said through tight lips.

Sarwat looked askance at him. He had known this man for thirty-odd years.

Ever since had had come to Cairo as a Delta peasant from Zagazig, bringing with
him only his brawn and a loud mouth; he had watched him bluster, bully and
brawl his way to become patron of a prosperous car-hire firm, though he still had
Nile mud in his graying hair, ears and between his toes. Sarwat also knew him for
a fiery-tempered and violent man. But such rudeness to a host no Egyptian could
excuse. And the man still smelled like a whole herd of camels.

“Well, at least take a seat, Ahmed,” the dealer suggested, pointing to the divan

by the coffee table, thinking the man’s anger might subside if he sat down.

“What I have to ask will not take long to answer, so I will stand,” Ahmed said.

“What did my daughter want with you?”

“Your daughter? I did not know you had a daughter.”
“My step-daughter, then. Mouna Tayisha. What did she want? She came to

sell you something, did she not?”

Still standing in deference to his guest who refused to sit down, Sarwat looked

up at the grim face.

“Ahmed, you know as well as I do that what happens between me and my

clients is confidential. If your step-daughter came in confidence and sold me
something, I am not at liberty to break that confidence by divulging the
transaction.”

“She sold you jewels, rare and precious jewels. What did you give her for those

jewels, you thieving little rat.”

Sarwat stared at this man who was uttering such insults that they left him

speechless. He saw him put his huge hand into the pocket of his linen jacket and
produce a wad of fifty-pound Sterling notes so thick it dwarfed his hand.

“Tell me how much and I will buy them back and give you your profit,” Ahmed

shouted.

Sarwat shook his head. “Those jewels were given to me nine months ago by a

girl you say is your step-daughter in pledge for a loan of money. They belong to
her and I have no right to sell them to you or anyone else. Now, if you come here
with her and she redeems her jewels by paying me what we agreed, then I shall let
her have them back.”

He moved round the table towards the door which led to the stairs. “Now

Ahmed, I have had a long day, so if you will please excuse me...”

Before he could finish his phrase, Ahmed had moved quickly between the

dealer and the door. He gripped Sarwat by the lapels of his alpaca jacket. “Sarwat,

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I want those jewels and I want them now.” He thrust his mouth close to Sarwat’s
ear and grated into it. “And you are also going to tell me what you told the
Englishman.”

“Take your hands off me, Ahmed,” Sarwat gasped, his throat constricted by

the grip on his jacket. Now he realized why this thug had suddenly appeared nine
months after his step-daughter had come asking for a loan. It was Ewan
Chisholm’s search for the jewels he was really worried about. Sarwat had no
chance to speculate further about why Ahmed was concerned about Garfield
Tate’s lost hoard. He was trying to suck in air to save himself from choking.

“What did the Englishman ask? What did he want?”
“Nothing...he is...just a friend.”
Ahmed crossed his hands turning the jacket lapels into a tourniquet which bit

into Sarwat’s throat suffocating and throttling him at the same time.

“Ahmed...stop... you are killing me,” Sarwat croaked, his scrawny face and

small eyes puffing out and swelling as those huge hands closed more and more
round his neck.

“Then, just tell me what he wanted, this Englishman,” Ahmed insisted, easing

his grip on the dealer’s throat.

In response, Sarwat gave a strangled cry and again those huge fingers clamped

round his neck. Ahmed might have finished the little man there and then, but
something clubbed him twice over the head and neck. He grunted with pain as he
turned.

Aisha stood there. She had a mad light in her eyes. In both her hands she held

the stool which she hit him with—the first thing that had come to hand when she
saw her master threatened.

She brought it down again, aiming at Ahmed’s face. He let Sarwat drop and

parried the blow with his forearms. When Aisha went to strike again, he grabbed
the stool and twisted it out of her hands. As she rushed at him, he drove his big
fist into her stomach winding her, but not stopping her. He parried the blows she
aimed at him then caught her by the throat and squeezed hard.

But Aisha was much tougher than her master. She clawed at his face, her long

fingernails drawing blood from both cheeks. She kicked with her bare feet
bringing tears of pain to his eyes when she landed with her shin on his testicles.
She flailed at him with her arms and feet landing one punch on his nose which
spurted blood. But Ahmed hung on, his hands round her thick neck, squeezing,
squeezing.

Aisha’s mouth was now wide open, her tongue lolling. She was trying

desperately and vainly to suck in air. Ahmed kept compressing her throat with his
massive hands. He watched her attempting to scream but she managed only a
whimper which quickly decayed and died in her throat. It gave the sadist in him a
kick to see her jaw sag then her eyes go blind. When finally he released his hands,
she collapsed in a slack heap at his feet. He could see she was dead.

“Bastard,” he muttered, rubbing his bloody face with his jacket sleeve.
He turned to where Sarwat still lay where he had dropped him. He was

moaning, but still conscious. Ahmed lifted him by the jacket collar with one hand.

“I want those jewels belonging to my step-daughter,” he growled. “Now.”
“All right, I am giving them to you. They are in the basement safe.”
“What did the Englishman want?”
“He is a friend from a very long time. He knows nothing about the jewels or

your daughter. I am telling him nothing.”

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“What did he want, you little runt?” Ahmed twisted the jacket lapels one-

handed. “What did he want?”

“He is writing a book about Sir Tate and he wished to have information about

this book, which I do not possess.”

“Writing a book, eh!” Ahmed guffawed as he pushed the tiny dealer to the

door and followed him down the three flights of stairs to the basement. There, he
watched Sarwat produce his keys and operate the combination to open the safe
and take out the Third Dynasty bangle and the Eighteenth Dynasty earrings.

“Is this all she is giving you?” he asked.
“This is all. She is requesting me not to sell them until she pays me back.”
‘I shall pay you.”
He took the jewels, wrapped in velvet. In his huge hands, they looked like

trinkets. He thrust them into his jacket pocket. “How much are you giving her for
these?”

“We agreed three thousand Egyptian pounds.”
Ahmed produced his bundle of notes and split it in half; he placed one half in

a pocket of his jacket and rolled the other half into a tight cylinder.

Without warning, he gripped Sarwat by the throat with his left hand, forced

his mouth open with the other hand and rammed the wad of notes into his
mouth. There he held it, blocking the little man’s windpipe.

Sarwat began to kick and twitch, his face going livid, his eyes widening with

pain and terror. Ahmed watched him, stony-faced. Yet a frisson of pleasure went
through him as he observed Sarwat’s death throes.

He might have been witnessing some rare clinical experiment as he watched

the flesh puff over the facial bones, the eyes expand and finally the jaw and the
whole body suddenly go heavy and limp and the light die in his good eye.

He spat on the dead face and cursed the little bastard who did not realize in

time that Ahmed had the power of life and death over him.

Pulling the money out of Sarwat’s mouth, he wiped the saliva off it on his

jacket and thrust it into his pocket. He kicked the inert figure of the dealer into a
corner and groped upstairs into the shop where he waited until the street was
empty before raising the metal shutter and slipping through the bazaar to his flat.

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Chapter 12

Sarwat had said she had Nubian eyes. They were blue. Light, iridescent blue

with small constellations of darker blue flecks. That blue shimmering at times on
a pigeon’s neck. Striking eyes against her tawny skin. He had said she was
truthful and, for Chisholm, those eyes confirmed that judgment. Her raven-dark
hair was brushed straight back and gathered in a slip knot at the nape of her neck.
A gold thread ending in a cross hung round her neck. She wore the print dress
Sarwat had described and had sandals on her feet.

He must have been gazing at her with half his mind switched off, for he heard

what sounded like an echo of her voice.

“I am Mouna Tayisha...you wished to see me, Mr Chis-holm. She pronounced

the second ‘h’ and ‘l’.

“Sorry, yes I do.” He smiled at her. “The natives say Chizzum, but they weren’t

very clever at reading and writing when we got our name.”

“Oh! I’m sorry.”
“They are learning.”
“But I meant...”
“I know.”
Chisholm held out his hand and, to his astonishment, found himself gripping

a tiny, disproportionate hand which lay awkwardly in his.

Those Nubian eyes were fixed on his face. Watching for his reaction, perhaps?

He suppressed any hint of surprise, although so many thoughts rotated in his
mind. So, she was flawed. Like himself. Was that why a beauty like her hadn’t
married? A deformed hand.

People are strange. They’ll worry about a bent, withered hand but marry

someone with a twisted, poisoned, perverted mind. Even with tunnel vision in his
left eye and wearing his jeweler’s lens in the other, Sarwat would have noticed
that hand. Why hadn’t he commented on it? Perhaps he didn’t think it mattered.
Chisholm agreed, even if he knew it must have mattered to her.

“Mr Chizzum...” She was desperately trying to extricate her hand from his

grasp which had tightened, involuntarily round it.

“Oh I’m sorry,” he murmured, confused.
At that moment, to his relief, Zein appeared with a jug of orange juice and

glasses on a tray. As he poured them drinks, he whispered something in Arabic to
the girl, who smiled at him then replied too quickly for Chisholm to grasp the
whole meaning, although he knew it had something to do with food.

“Miss Tayisha says she is so hungry she can even eat my special Ramses II

pigeon stuffed with maize and rice, raisins, pepper and a soupçon of curry. It is a
big number in my kitchen , so you are having the same, and I fetch it here.”

“Zein, watch the curry. A soupçon’s not a soup spoon.”
Mouna laughed. When he had gone, she turned to him. “They told me you are

writing a book about Sir William Garfield Tate. I have always wanted to meet a
real writer.”

“Sorry, but I’m not a real writer. I’m an archaeologist of sorts.”
“Ah, like Uncle Bill.”
“Uncle Bill?”
“Bill is what Aunt Ceti called him, so he was Uncle Bill to me.”
“Your aunt was Dr. Kanfer, then?”

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“Did you know her?” He shook his head. “I was only a child when she was

killed in the crash, but I remember her.” Her eyes crinkled with emotion.
“Nobody could ever forget Aunt Ceti.”

“What about Uncle Bill...what do you remember about him?”
Mouna had several personal memories of Garfield Tate, who was obviously

her hero; she had read everything he had written and knew a great deal more
about him than Chisholm; she only stopped talking about him when Zein and a
couple of his waiters appeared with several trays of food.

They deployed the roast pigeons, vegetables, salad and the dessert of fresh

fruit and salad in front of them. Though not yet dusk, Zein switched on the roof
light and locked the door behind him as he went.

“Uncle Bill,” Chisholm prompted once more.
“Uncle Bill était merveilleux,” she said. He noticed she sometimes dropped a

French word or phrase into her talk, as though at a loss for the English
equivalent. “He used to take me on his knee when he was driving his jeep. My
aunt was morte de peur. I remember one picnic where they were working and
being taken inside a pyramid.

“Do you remember which one?”
“I only remember the smell of the air trapped inside, and the darkness when

the torch went out. But I had no fear.”

“It was Uncle Bill who gave you the bangle and earrings that you sold to

Sarwat, wasn’t it?” he asked softly.

“Yes, but I did not sell them...Comment dire?...I put them on the nail.”
They both laughed at her expression, but he noticed she did not inquire how

he knew about the jewels.

Chisholm summoned Zein to unlock the door and went to his room to return

with the set of pictures he had brought from London showing the jewel hoard as
Garfield Tate had photographed it. Spreading them on the table among the
glasses and cutlery, he let her study them.

“But they’re beautiful and unique,” she breathed.
“Did Uncle Bill ever show you anything like them?”
“No, I would never have forgotten pictures like these.” She shook her head in

amazement, picking up the photographs one by one and studying them before
turning to him. “I do not even remember getting the bangle and earrings comme
cadeaux, but I know they are mine.” Worry suddenly filled her iridescent blue
eyes. “You don’t think I stole them, do you?”

“Of course not, Miss Tayisha.”
“Miss Tayisha!” She laughed. “Nobody calls me that.” My name is Mouna.”
She picked up a morsel of pigeon on her form then some of the spiced stuffing

and tasted them. “But it is délicieux,” she exclaimed. “How did you find this
hotel?”

“I met Zein, the owner, ten years ago on an excavation site. He’s a dragoman

who converted from being a pyramid guide to a Mena House waiter to make more
money than he did showing tourist round Giza and Saqqara. He had to learn to
cook because he claims his wife was poisoning him with bad cooking and when I
ate at his house I suggested he should open a hotel, which he did. But”—he
wagged his fork at her—“don’t you let on about it.”

“Oh, no I will not say anything to anybody, pas un mot,” she replied before

realizing he was teasing her.

“How did your mother feel about the lost of your aunt and her sister in the

accident?”

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Mouna thought about this for a moment, then shrugged. “I do not really

know, for she never spoke about it—perhaps because she felt it too deeply and
words could not express her sorrow.”

Chisholm produced the key he had found in Garfield Tate’s papers and

handed it to her. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

She turned it the fingers of her left hand. “No...not with Uncle Bill...but it is

like the one my step-father had for his bank box.” She reached over and picked up
a picture from the table, one of those showing the jewels lying on the sarcophagus
lid. “Maybe I am imagining it, but I have une sensation de déjà-vu when I look at
this photograph.”

“You mean, you might have seen the actual photograph—or the place it

represents?”

She passed her withered hand over her dark hair. “I’m sorry, but I do not

know.”

Chisholm explained how he had found the negatives hidden in Garfield Tate’s

logbook. At three or four years of age, it was doubtful if she could remember
seeing a print in the archaeologist’s hands. What did that mean—if she had seen
it, then somebody else must have a set of prints? Would she remember seeing
that burial vault at three? If she had seen it later, then the treasure must already
have gone, for she would never have forgotten the sight of those jewels.

“I could have seen it with Uncle Bill and Aunt Ceti.”
“If only you could remember where...”
“Where have you looked?”
Chisholm listed the pyramids he had explored; he started to describe where

and what they were, but each time she cut him short, gently. Yes, she knew that
particular pyramid with its alabaster galleries, its vestibules, its twists and turns.
And that other with the corbelled vaults and secret passage.

“But how do you know all these?” he asked, astounded by the details she gave

him.

Mouna said she was studying architecture; she wanted to design beautiful

buildings like museums, mosques, art galleries. This was her reason for asking
Sarwat to lend her money against the security of the jewels she had given him.
She had quarreled with her parents, who wished her to study commercial law and
she had left home.

To help pay for her architectural studies, she worked part-time for an interior

decorator in Kasr el-Nil Street. She supposed she had decided on architecture
because of Uncle Bill, her aunt and their interest in the pyramids, which had
always fascinated her. At week-ends and in her spare time, she tried to explore
some of the lesser-known or abandoned pyramids. And she reeled off half a dozen
of the Mazghuneh, Lisht and Lahun pyramids and details of what she had
discovered in them.

“If you’ve seen the insides of those, you’ve saved me several weeks’ work,” he

said, taking and stacking their plates and doling out the fruit salad and cream.

“Perhaps I can help you to investigate the others,” she suggested. “I have lots

of free time.” Seeing him hesitate,” she added. “Of course, I would have no
financial interest...just a personal interest.”

“It’s dangerous work.”
“But I’m used to it,” she countered and looked at him seriously. “If I promise I

will not say anything to a single soul of what you have told me tonight, will you
then let me help you?”

“Isn’t that what they’d call blackmail?”

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“I suppose it is,” she said, straight-faced.
Chisholm grinned. “In that case, you’d better come along tomorrow.”

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Chapter 13

Next morning, he realized something had happened when Zein brought his

breakfast coffee and croissants and every Cairo newspaper in Arabic and English.
“A good job you have an alibi for last night,” he said. “Your good friend, Sarwat, is
in paradise long before it is his wish.” He wrapped a hand round his own throat to
suggest how he got there as he poured out the coffee.

Chisholm glanced at the English-language papers while Zein gave him an

account of how the Arabic newspapers, Al Ahram and El Goumouriyeh had
reported the murder.

“Motive is robbery, for they are finding his basement safe open and nothing

there.”

“Yes, but Sarwat had another secret safe and he kept hardly anything in that

basement safe,” Chisholm said, wondering if Mouna’s bangle and earrings had
gone and hope they had for his own sake.

“The cops say Sarwat is knowing his murderer, for no sign his shop is forced

open...they think the guy got in just before he shut up shop.”

“What about Aisha, his Turkish servant?”
“She is in paradise with her master by the same route”—Zein put a hand

round his throat—“she is murdered in living room, Trying to save Sarwat, they
think.”

“Do they know what was stolen?”
“Everything...they find nothing left.”
Chisholm concealed his relief. Had the police discovered the bangle and

earrings, it might have sent a ripple of the wrong sort of excitement through el-
Zayyat and his antiquities department; they might even have connected his visit
to Sarwat with those jewels. For he could never be certain of having shaken off
their spies the night he saw Sarwat.

‘Two Horses are ready when you are,” Zein said on his way out.
At their rendezvous point on El Giza Bridge, he looked for Mouna but would

have driven past her had she not bawled at him to stop. She was disguised in her
pyramid outfit—a cross between combat uniform and trouser suit which she had
capped with a sun hat. For her part, she giggled when she got into the dilapidated
Deux Chevaux and heard its braying, whinnying sound as it went through the
gears.

She had obviously not read the morning papers, but he did not enlighten her

about Sarwat’s murder and the fact that her bangle and earrings had been stolen.

That day, they explored the south Saqqara pyramids, looked at Dahshur and

the four Abusir pyramids. Quite often Mouna led the way, for she knew some of
these tombs much better than he; they walked bent in half or crawled behind
their torch beams through shoulder-bruising galleries to burial chambers in these
pyramids off the tourist map. But nowhere did they see anything like that
sarcophagus with its twisted lid and strange inscription on which Garfield Tate
had photographed the jewels.

At noon, they sought the shade of a palm grove and picnicked off the cold

meat, bread and fruit Zein had packed in an insulated box.

Chisholm explained how he had analyzed the research he had done so far,

showing her how he had snapped the pyramids from where Garfield Tate had

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stood, then joined the lines on a large-scale map. They studied the lines where
they appeared to converge.

“It looks as though he meant the Bent Pyramid.”
“But it’s one of the most explored of all the tombs.”
“That is true.” She appeared thoughtful. “Yes, but they say Sneferu chose it as

his burial place and had them make so many secret passages to defy the tomb –
robbers that nobody will ever discover them until the pyramid is taken apart
stone by stone.”

“Maybe your Uncle Bill found one of the secret passages.”
He deferred looking closer at the Bent Pyramid, deciding to stick to the

program he had made and handed to el-Zayyat. They spent the next two days
further south, at Lisht and Lahun, where Flinders Petrie had found a rare jewel
hoard. Their exploration yielded nothing that wasn’t already in the records.

An hour before sunset on the third day, as they drove back from Lahun,

Chisholm turned the Deux Chevaux off the main road and jolted up the rubble-
strewn track to the great Meydum pyramid. He wanted to see Mouna’s reaction to
the place where Garfield Tate and her aunt had died quarter of a century before.

It looked not unlike a colossal military blockhouse, sitting on its mound

overlooking the Nile and glowing orange in the long sunlight. They joined the
causeway just above the submerged valley temple and rattled upwards to the
eastern wall entrance where Chisholm stopped the car and they dismounted.

This was where Garfield Tate and his mistress had met their deaths just under

twenty-four years ago. They were standing on the spot where Heykal had found
the fresh oil slick and the Nefertiti cigarette stubs. Chisholm was watching the
girl’s reaction closely, but she did not query why he had brought them there. She
walked round the entrance and part of the pyramid base before returning to the
car.

“You seem to know the place,” he said. “Have you been here several times

before?”

She nodded. “I make a sort of pilgrimage on the day they died, October the

tenth.”

“Have you ever spotted anybody else here...I don’t mean tourists.
She shook her head. They entered the courtyard and looked for a few minutes

at the inside of the mortuary temple at its base. Mouna shivered, although there
was still some heat in the low sun and the atmosphere. He took her deformed
hand and led her back to the gap in the wall where he sat her down on a block of
limestone and took his place beside her.

“How would you feel if I told you I thought your aunt and your Uncle Bill had

been murdered?”

“Are you pulling my leg again?” When he shook his head, she stared at him.

“But who...why?... They had no enemies.”

“Nobody has no enemies.”
“But who would murder them, unless...unless it was for the jewels...” She

paused, her eyes widening. “You mean somebody murdered them for the jewels
they had discovered?”

“That’s one guess.”
Mouna looked mystified, the dark flecks in her blue eyes appearing to quiver

as she gazed at him. “But what else would anyone murder them for?”

“The oldest motive in the world—jealousy.” Chisholm paused, wondering how

much she knew and how much he should or could reveal. “They were lovers and
some people don’t like lovers.”

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“You mean, it might have been Lady Garfield Tate that...” She stopped and

looked at him. “Did she know about Uncle Bill and Aunt Ceti?”

“That’s just the trouble with my jealousy theory, I think she had known for

some time.”

“So, it was probably for the jewels—if they were really murdered.”
“It looks that way.”
“Do you have any idea who killed them?”
He shook his head. He was rising from his seat to return to the Deux Chevaux

when Mouna caught his hand and pulled him back. “Stay for ten minutes more,”
she pleaded. “It is the most beautiful time of the day.”

When he cast his eye round the landscape, he saw her point. Behind them, the

massive, stepped monolith of the Meydum pyramid was turning pink in the last
rays of the sun which were throwing the dunes and desert to the west into quilted
relief; at the foot of the causeway beyond the waterlogged temple, palm groves
and maize and cotton fields were turning deeper greens and yellows and browns,
and through this they glimpsed the shimmer and glint of the Nile.

“Mr Chizzum...”
“Ewan it is.”
“You-ahn, the pharaohs built for eternity. Do you think they were wrong?”
A leading question, and he knew where it led. “Do I believe in eternal life, is

that what you mean?” She looked at him, her face serious, her eyes inching over
his face. She nodded. “Of course I believe in it,” he said.

Those Nubian eyes widened. “But I thought you were not... well, not

religious.”

“Who’s talking about religion. I’m talking about the great nineteenth-century

principle of the conservation of energy, which means nothing ever disappears.
We’re all recycled and we come round and round again, though in a different
form. Yes, even the pharaohs. We all have a thousand chances like old newsprint,
glass and plastic bottles, dry batteries, scrap iron. Our molecules are given a rub,
rearranged a bit and sent back into the fray and in umpteen million years they’ll
still be going the rounds, scattered here and there...maybe a mite tired now an
again, but still in there pitching....”

“Stop it, Ew-an.” Her voice had an angry tinge. “You are being cynical, and

you know I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Mouna, I know what you meant—you meant Uncle Bill and Aunt Ceti.” His

arm swept in a circle to indicate the landscape. “Well, they’re still around
somewhere, but I’m sorry I can’t vouch for their immortal soul.”

As he said this, his own phrases rang bells in his mind. He heard Lampson’s

voice as they sat on the Step Pyramid, talking about Garfield Tate.

Why the hell didn’t they bury him here?
This was his world.

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Chapter 14

It must have been important, for Heykal to break all his own security rules

and risk ringing Zein’s hotel and leaving a message for him to call his home
number the moment he returned to Cairo. He still went to the Hilton. It was just
before nine when he reached the hotel and phoned the former police captain from
a public box.

“Are you seeing the newspapers about Sarwat?” Heykal asked before he had

time to say hello or identify himself. He gave Chisholm no chance to reply but
continued, “It is the same man we are seeking for Garfield Tate.”

Heykal had warned him that if he had to use his home phone to cut the time

to less than thirty seconds so that no-one had the chance to trace the call; it also
gave them the minimum of information if they had put a tap on the line.

“Now, he was determined to cut his time to the minimum and give no more

away. “I cannot talk on the telephone...you know where I live...there is a cafe, the
Khalifa, fifty yards north near a garage with an underground parking. “Ten
o’clock sharp.” He hung up.

What had Heykal discovered—the name of the killer? Chisholm wondered

what else could have compelled him to make a rendezvous so near his own home.
He walked from the Hilton to Talat Harb Street and there bought himself coffee
and a sandwich in a café. He made sure nobody was tailing him before he
continued on his way to see the policeman.

At ten precisely, he arrived at the Khalifa, a Spartan place with a bar, a coffee

machine and half a dozen tables in each of its two rooms. He walked past the
half-dozen Egyptians sitting in the front room and took a seat in the back room,
ordering himself a fresh lime juice.

Ten minutes went by and he began to wonder what could possibly have

delayed a punctilious man like Heykal. Surely he would have made some signal or
left a message at this cafe. He let twenty minutes elapse, paid for his drink and
stepped into Al Geish Street. At that hour, it was dark but for one open shop and
a couple of dim street lamps. He saw neither traffic nor pedestrians.

Heykal lived in a small block of flats halfway down the street and set back

behind a low wall and a courtyard. No name on the front gate, but the letter box
in the entrance bore the police captain’s name and the fact that he lived on the
second floor.

No lift. A twenty-watt bulb on the first flight of stairs, no light on the second.

Chisholm groped his way upwards, his ears filling with the sound of at least three
TV programs, two of them loud, ululating Arab singers.

It came from the second floor, the singing. But behind the loud music there

were other sounds. Sharp cries of pain, the crack and thump of furniture falling
or breaking and the heavy scuffling of bodies. These noises came from the right-
hand of the three doors on the landing.

Chisholm tried the door. Locked. He stood there, wondering what to do.

Then, through the door came a sharp bellow of pain which was stifled then
choked off. That decided him. Taking a run from the end of the landing, he
shoulder-charged the door and its flimsy lock yielded.

Inside, it was lighter than on the landing. Chisholm halted in the entrance

hall to look round. Nothing now moved. Everything had gone silent, even the

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wailing music. He picked up Heykal’s stick from the hall stand and soft-footed
forward. On his left a door lay open. A bedroom? On his right a door led to what
he took for a kitchen.

He had reached the door when he sensed something behind him. Before he

could turn, a big hand chopped down, aiming for his neck and jugular but landing
on his shoulder. It still stunned him. Yet, he had the presence of mind to side-
step as a dark shape threw itself at him and he lashed out with his stick and his
right foot. Both landed on hard flesh and brought a grunt of pain from the main.

Hands were groping for his neck. Chisholm shortened his grip on the stick

and made a sword thrust at the shape. This time he hit bone. An Arabic curse
burst from the figure as it charged forward taking him with it.

Knocked to the floor, Chisholm rolled on his back then kicked upwards with

everything—feet, legs, thighs and backbone, sending the heavy figure careening
over him to thud against an object that cracked and splintered under his weight.
Something exploded behind Chisholm deafening him. But he sprang to his feet
and turned to run.

Before he had gone a yard, that huge shape had caught up with him. It was

like a wild bull charging. Chisholm took the full weight of the charge in his
stomach and chest. It knocked the wind out of him. Again on the ground, he
heard this wild man grunting and blowing through his mouth and nose like some
savage animal.

Now he was battling for his life, for the man had him pinned to the floor and

had grabbed him by the throat and was squeezing, choking off his air. Wriggling,
kicking, punching had no effect on this great bull, who kept squeezing harder.
Although he tensed his neck, the man was winning. Chisholm felt a buzzing in his
ears and head and bright lights flashing before his eyes. Then everything went
still and he felt nothing. He was dead. He was sure of it. Dead.

A light flashed. Something dinned in his head. He sensed the grip round his

neck slacken then his body thump on the floor. He heard somebody shout,
“Murderer...murderer...”

Then complete silence.
When he came to, the first thing he felt were the handcuffs on his wrists as he

tried to move. He was seated in a chair, his hands attached to it by handcuffs. His
hair and face and neck were running with cold water. He sat still, looking round
him. All the evidence of his struggle lay about him—table, chairs, sideboard and
drink cabinet overturned, the TV set shattered and hardly a stick of furniture in
place.

Three men were watching him. One of them he had seen before, for he

remembered the Hiz Bollah moustache and beard, the optical sun-glasses.
Where? He could not decide where, but it was either that day they tracked him in
the unfinished pyramid, or as his police ‘shadow’ at Zein’s hotel.

A fourth man joined them. Obviously their senior. Paunchy, grizzling hair and

a face cross-hatched and webbed with exploded blood vessels which anger had
turned a deeper red. He scowled at Chisholm. In his right hand, he had a string of
amber beads and he kept flicking the beads along the string with his thumb and
forefinger.

Worry beads for a worried man, Chisholm thought.
“Let him have a look at his handiwork,” he snapped in Arabic.
His three subordinates unlocked the two pairs of handcuffs, hoisted Chisholm

to his feet and pushed him into the bathroom which he had mistaken for a
kitchen.

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Blood had pooled on the floor and was spattered everywhere. On the floor,

walls, ceiling, bath, basin, toilet bowl. And all over Heykal. He was dead. His
sightless eyes were bulging out of their sockets. His broken body lay mostly in the
empty bath, though one of his legs dangled over the side. His neck had been
screwed through half a circle, grotesquely, but his green tie still hung from it on
his chest. Blood was still oozing from the deep gash on his right hand. But most of
the blood had apparently come from his assailant, for the hand wound was the
only one Chisholm saw.

Chisholm realized that he, too, was covered in blood, none of it his own.
Heykal had obviously fought like a lion for his life. But lost. He lay there in

the bath like some broken and dislocated puppet.

“Do you know this man?” the senior detective asked.
“Yes, it’s Yussef Heykal, a retired police captain. I had an appointment with

him tonight in the Khalifa cafe in this street.”

As he described what had happened, Chisholm became aware one of the

policemen was taking notes and the paunchy detective was still flicking and
clicking his worry beads.

“Why did you kill him?” he asked.
“Me kill him! I’ve already told you, I broke down the door when I heard the

fight inside, and the man who murdered Captain Heykal tried to kill me as well.”

“He said it was the reverse of what you say.”
“So, you’ve caught him.”
“No, but we have witnesses who heard him call you a murderer before he

escaped and summoned our help.”

“And you accept the version of a man who has not come forward,” Chisholm

shouted. “Heykal made a rendezvous with me because he knew...” He checked his
tongue, realizing he might tell them too much.

“What was it Heykal knew?” the burly detective asked.
“How would I know since I never met him to find out.”
From the whispered talk among the three junior detectives, he inferred he

owed his life to three neighbors of Heykal who came running to see what the row
was about and scared off the killer.

Worry Beads was talking. “Do you know what I think?—I think you killed

Captain Heykal to stop him from revealing what he did know.” Before Chisholm
could reply, he motioned to his three subordinates who marched him out the
door and downstairs. They pushed him through a crowd round the entrance and
their police car and thrust him into the vehicle.

In the police station near Republic Square, his real interrogation began; they

sat him down before the paunchy man whom they addressed respectfully as
Captain Mabruk and fired question after question at him. What was he doing in
Cairo? How had he met his victim? What did it have to do with the book he
pretended to be writing? Why did he have to visit so many pyramids for this so-
called biography? Who was he spying for?

Chisholm took cover behind the biography story, telling them nothing about

Garfield Tate’s mysterious death or the hunt for the jewels.

Mabruk took no part in the interrogation, merely watching his face and

making eye signals to his detectives; he stood fingering his worry beads like a nun
her rosary, even to the movement of the lips. Mabruk had another foible: he
rolled a cigarette between his fingers and sometimes carried it to his mouth then
returned to continue rolling.

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Some drunks did that with liquor, carrying a small flask with a double-whisky

in it and back-slapping their ego when they survived the day with it intact; it was
psychological brinkmanship. He wondered if Mabruk had this sort of problem
with his tobacco addiction.

When the quiz finished, they put him through the jail ritual and he submitted,

having been there before. Profile and full-face shots, a couple of ounces of blood,
ten fingerprints and two palm prints and most of his clothing gone. At least he’d
leave some impression on Egypt.

“Well, Mr. Chisholm, it looks like you’ll be breaking rocks in Tura quarry until

they carry you out feet-first,” Mabruk said, grinning and showing yellow teeth.
“You murdered former police captain, Yussef Heykal, and I believe you also
murdered Mustafa Sarwat and his Turkish servant four nights ago.”

Chisholm eyed him, finding nothing but neutrality in his heavy-set features

and his even voice. Was this man a dimwit who did not know his job? A detective
trying to put the wind up him? Or a bright character playing an unfunny version
of poker with him? Well, it was a game two could play.

When the policeman who was typing Chisholm’s statement brought it to

Mabruk, he ran his muddy brown eyes over it, shaking his head. “It’s what you
might call a cast-iron case,” he murmured. He thrust the document at Chisholm
and grunted, “Here, sign it.”

Chisholm scanned the typescript, done on some ancient machine with poor

alignment, fudged characters and dozens of spelling and syntax errors. It was a
travesty of what he had stated; it had him affirm he had a rendezvous with Heykal
in his apartment and they had altered the time to suit their murder theory.

Sign that as it stood and he’d have some explaining to do later when he

appeared in court. He knew, also, that Mabruk would have the right to lock him
up until he had completed his investigation and that might take weeks or even
months.

Mabruk was watching him intently as he took their ballpoint pen and wrote

beneath the statement in his own hand in block letters:

I, EWAN BURNS CHISHOLM KILLED YUSSEF HEYKAL.
I, EWAN BURNS CHISHOLM KILLED MUSTAFA SARWAT.
I, EWAN BURNS CHISHOLM KILLED AISHA, SARWAT’S SERVANT.
He signed and dated the statement then handed it back to Mabruk who stared

at it, his face turning brick-red with fury.

“What does this mean?” he shouted.
“As you see, Captain, it’s a full confession,” Chisholm said, calmly. “It means

you have to charge me with three murders and have me brought before an
examining magistrate. He will want to see forensic evidence to back your
statement and the confession forced from me; and when he gets it, he’ll throw the
case back in your face and not only accuse you of extorting the confession by
illegal means and wasting his time, but he’ll also probably recommend you for
early retirement.”

A fist arrived from somewhere behind him and struck him on the right temple

knocking him off his chair. As he hit the floor, a foot buried itself in his side and
doubled him up. Springing to his feet, he let fly with his manacled hands and
caught one detective on the face, the other in the ribs.

“Enough,” Mabruk shouted. He glowered at Chisholm. “What’s your idea

now—you want enough injuries to tell your ambassador and the instruction
magistrate we beat the confession our of you?” In Arabic, he ordered the three
detectives to take Chisholm downstairs and lock him up.

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They emptied his pockets, took his wallet, watch, his money belt with those

precious Garfield Tate pictures, his shoe laces; they hustled him down two flights
of stairs into a dim basement and thrust him into a cell. It was dead dark, without
a light and without windows. As he groped around the narrow box, he wondered
how the place was ventilated. On the floor, he felt something like a straw-filled
mattress and he lay down on it and tried to sleep.

But he could not sleep. His body was quivering with nerves from that battle

for his life, then his interrogation. And, for the first time in weeks, he was shaking
for want of alcohol. Thank God they had locked him up, or he’d have drunk
anything—arrack, meths, lighter fuel, anything. Simmer down, he told himself.
Simmer down and think. Think! When his brain was a fun-palace pin-table,
flashing with electronic fireworks and garish images and colored balls that
weaved in and around the obstacles without making a strike. Like his thoughts.

Sarwat was dead. Heykal was dead. Sarwat knew about the jewels. Heykal was

obsessed with the unsolved murder of Garfield Tate and that alone. Both had died
by the same hand, that was obvious. So, what was the syllogism? Garfield Tate
had been murdered because of the jewels. That did not exclude the jealousy
motive, but it did link the pharaonic treasure with those two deaths at Meydum.

Where did he figure? Now he was not only tangling with the killer but with

the Egyptian police. And to make things difficult, Captain (Worry Beads) Mabruk
now had pictures of those jewels and the pyramids.

His pin-table had transformed itself into a mouse in a maze with no exit. He

was the mouse.

About half an hour, or an hour or two hours after they had locked him in the

cell, a thin spill of light appeared at the foot of the door. Something scraped on
the cement floor. “Water,” a voice called in Arabic and the door slot banged shut.

Chisholm crawled over and grabbed the earthenware jug and gulped half the

water down.

Had it been whisky he’d have done the same—and damn everything.

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Chapter 15

It was Mabruk himself who opened his cell door after what seemed an

eternity in that black hole. Yet, when he staggered upstairs behind the police
captain and looked at the clock, he realized he had lost all sense of time and had
spent only a night and half the morning in the cell. He checked his wallet, money
belt and other possessions before signing for them.

“It seems you were telling the truth,” Mabruk said. He held out a mug of

coffee and several lumps of sugar. Chisholm waved them away. Mabruk shrugged
and said, dryly, “I am sorry, but it is so rare to hear the truth in this place,
therefore we had to check.” His eye followed Chisholm’s movements as he
buckled the money belt with the pictures round his waist.

“Have you found him—the man who killed Heykal?”
“No, but I will find him.” At the door as they parted, he gripped Chisholm’s

shoulder. “Watch where and how you go and watch your back. This man has
killed three times, so he will kill again.”

“Do you know why?”
Those worry beads in his left hand clicked several times before Mabruk

answered. “Not as well as some people, but we have our idea. He will try to
murder you because, like Yussef Heykal, you know too much.”

Chisholm wondered what that last phrase meant as he walked out of the

police headquarters. He marched as briskly as his weak legs would take him to
the cab rank at Talat Harb keeping his eyes on the ground. Although no more
than ten minutes’ walk from Zein’s hotel, he did not trust himself to make the trip
on foot. For a reformed drunk there were too many hotels and drinking shops
along that route to tempt him. He paid a taxi driver twice the fare to persuade
him to leave his rank and drive that short distance.

Zein looked at his bruised face and torn clothes. “You spending the night with

camel drivers?” he said, grinning. He saw that Chisholm was unamused. “What is
happening?” he asked.

“Never mind, just listen, then do exactly as I say. Lock me in my room and if I

ring or yell or hammer on the door, just let me make a noise and do nothing.
Understood?”

“No.”
“You don’t have to. If I ring and ask for something to eat then you can bring it

and open the door. But only then.”

Okay, You-Ahn, I do what you say.”
For the remainder of that day, he stayed in his room. He alternately sweated

and shivered, he had the ‘cold turkey’ withdrawal syndrome and he craved just
one drink to calm his nerves, even if he was aware it would be lethal.

To ease his parched throat still throbbing from the bruises and pressure of

those huge hands that had all but strangled him, he sipped water. He tried to dull
his craving for alcohol by taking twice the normal dose of sodium amytal, but
even that didn’t allow him to sleep for more than an hour.

At midnight, Zein knocked on his door and called, “You-Ahn, you

hungry...want some eggs and fruit and coffee?”

“Zein, piss off or I’ll throttle you,” he shouted back.
In those short periods when he dropped into a light sleep, he dreamed.

Grotesque, fantastic dreams that left only wispy recollections when he woke.

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Dreams that seemed to have no rationality, no logic. But he had no doubt they
meant something.

For instance, what did those pictures of Sheldon Wright and Lady Garfield

Tate symbolize? They were waltzing together in the mummy room—or was it the
jewel room?—of the Cairo Museum while Garfield Tate was lying under a glass
case beside the mummy of Ramses II. A five-piece band was playing for them.
Four men and a woman, who looked like Sybil Bennet, the governor of the
Aspenwall.

When they stopped, Sheldon Wright appeared with an armful of champagne

bottles, popping corks and drinking Virginia Garfield Tate’s health with the band,
led by Ackerman, the other acerbic governor. They even had a drink for him.
Ackerman held his mouth open while Sheldon Wright forced a champagne bottle
between his teeth and ordered, “Drink, you drunken bastard, drink.”

He woke in a pother of sweat. Of course, he saw the symbolism of the director

and governors of the Aspenwall Foundation dancing on Garfield Tate’s dead
body.

But where was the truth?
And what could he make of those pyramids that appeared in almost every one

of his dreams that day and night? Pyramids in squares, circles and in long files
pointing at a blood-red sun setting over the desert.

Of one thing he became sure: he would never solve the riddle of Garfield

Tate’s death or the missing jewels by digging or any other form of field work.
Already, he had most of the answers in those pictures and in the strongbox key.
Even the clincher probably lay in some recess of his mind based on what he now
knew and the exploring he had done. His brain would work on it until the missing
bit of the answer surfaced. And when Mabruk ran down the killer of Sarwat and
Heykal, they would know who murdered Garfield Tate and Ceti Kanfer.

Between dawn and seven o’clock he dozed off. To his surprise, when he woke

there was a smell of coffee in his nose and he felt famished. Within ten minutes,
Zein had answered his summons with half a gallon of coffee, rolls, butter, Delta
honey in its comb and a plate of scrambled eggs.

Chisholm filled his stomach, even if he did not really taste the food and drink.

Still unsteady on his feet, he put himself under the shower and sluiced himself for
half an hour in cold water. It did little for him; his head dinned and bones he had
never known existed set his teeth on edge with pain when he moved.

But if he was still walking wounded, he had survived the worst day of his life

without his liquor crutch. There, he could say he was at least making progress.

Zein arrived to remove the breakfast dishes and even made his bed. “You-

Ahn, you looks like you’re going to live,” he said. “Yesterday, I think not. Know
something? I am thinking you killed them three, but the paper says No.”

“What does the paper say?”
“Al Ahram says the cops know the killer, El Goumouriyeh says they don’t.”

Zein grinned at him. “What do you say?”

“They’re guessing.”
“While you are in purdah two calls. I tell Ma’mzelle Nefertiti you are out of

town.”

“And the other?”
“From London, and it is another woman...How many bints do you have?”
Chisholm did not reply. London! How the hell had they managed to trace him

to this hotel that wasn’t on the tourist literature and hardly anybody outside
Zein’s personal friends knew! It must be the Aspenwall and Jenny. Yet he had

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told them next to nothing about his movements; indeed, they had insisted that he
act alone without contacting or involving them.

Zein had picked up the tray and was heading for the door when Chisholm

stopped him in his tracks with his question:

“Zein, as a good Copt, when did you last go to church?”
Zein’s massive Arabic head turned and he gazed, blankly at Chisholm. “Me?

Church?” Suddenly he beamed and said, “You-Ahn, you must know I am not
needing churches. Every Copt carries his church with him everywhere, in his
heart.”

“Do you feel like going next Sunday?”
“You are twisting my leg.”
“No, honestly. I’d like to hear a Coptic service and have a look at the

museum.”

“Okay. I take you.” But he left, shaking his head in bewilderment.
Perhaps it was just a bad line, perhaps Mabruk had hitched Zein’s

switchboard to a computer and a tape-deck, but Jenny sounded as though she
was phoning from an echo-chamber several million light years out there.

“I was getting worried about you and thought you might at least have sent me

a postcard,” she lamented.

“You knew the arrangement.”
“Yes, darling, but I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. But I’m too busy doing research on the biography to write

cards or phone. Anyway, who else misses me and asked you to ring?”

“Beelzebub...He said to find out if you were all right and needed anything.”

She paused and the line went quiet as though she had cupped a hand over the
mouthpiece to listen to a third person. “Have you made much progress?”

“I’ve done a lot of research and writing, but I still have a long way to go and a

lot to do here.”

Another pause. “They’re getting impatient here...they want you to hurry

things up.”

“I’ll try—but tell them I’ll need more money,” Chisholm said. “Can you wire it

to your bank here and send me the advice note to confirm it?”

“Yes, we’ll do that,” Jenny said after another pause.
“Jenny, how did you get hold of my hotel number?”
That fazed her. For a full twenty seconds of cupped-hand silence she had to

reflect before she came back. “We had a lot of bother finding you and finally I
phoned the Department of Antiquities and they had it.”

“Hussein el-Zayyat, was it?”
“Yes, that’s him.”
They chit-chatted for a few moments before he hung up. He walked to the

nearest public call box and phoned el-Zayyat to ask if he had received a call from
the Aspenwall Foundation in London that day or yesterday. El-Zayyat was
categorical. No-one had called.

Jenny was obviously acting on someone’s instruction. Sheldon Wright’s?

Probably not, since she had called him Beelzebub. So he wasn’t by her side when
she phoned. An odd call. It set him remembering that night he had been attacked
and nearly murdered in his flat just after he left her. Jenny evidently went deeper
than he thought. But where—if anywhere—did she figure in the story of Garfield
Tate and his jewels?

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That afternoon, a wire arrived at his hotel to inform him they had sent his

money to the Suez International Bank in Kasr el-Nil. Jenny had signed the wire,
‘Love.’

Chisholm did not need the money and no interest in it; he had asked for it to

discover which bank they used. Suez International. Why did the Aspenwall deal
with an outfit he had not even thought of trying? But perhaps somebody in the
Department of Antiquities had suggested this one when the Foundation needed
an Egyptian bank to finance its various operations.

At the bank, an assistant manager said they had placed £2,000 sterling at his

disposal. The official, Abdel Nokrami, asked if he wished to draw the whole
amount and he said, Yes. Nokrami looked old enough to know some of the
answers, so he added that he also wanted to rent a strongbox for certain
valuables. Nokrami filled in the forms and had him sign them before leading him
into the vaults. There, he opened a strongbox and stepped away while Chisholm
put most of the money inside. He handed the bank official a twenty-pound note
and Nokrami’s eyes widened, though his fingers closed round the tip without a
tremor.

“You’ve been with the bank some time, Mr. Nokrami?”
“Twenty-six years next month.”
Chisholm explained he was writing Garfield Tate’s biography and had been

informed the archaeologist held an account with the Suez International. Had
Nokrami ever met him?

“No, but I used to see him coming in and out of the bank, though in those

days it was the Anglo-Suez. We had the Aspenwall Foundation account and Sir
William’s and others.”

Chisholm had a job to contain his excitement and keep his voice level. “What

happened to the Anglo-Suez?”

There, the official hesitated before saying, “I believe it had some trouble, I

think...something to do with the illegal transfer of funds...so the bank was closed
down by the government.”

“But you still kept quite a few of the Anglo-Suez accounts when the Suez

International opened, is that it?” Nokrami nodded and Chisholm drew the
strongbox key from his pocket. “Does this look like one of the old Anglo-Saxon
strongbox keys?” he asked, handing it to the banker.

Nokrami needed only a glance. He nodded. “That is what we used then. May I

inquire where you obtained it?”

“It was part of Sir William Garfield Tate’s estate. What happened to the

others?”

“We called them in when the boxes were no longer used and destroyed them.”
Chisholm retrieved the key. “It wouldn’t be too difficult to duplicate this,

would it?”

“No, sir. But you see, it was a two-key system and the customer had to be

identified. In this way, even if the key were duplicated, some member of the staff
had to open his lock on the box and the customer opened his.”

Another illusion smashed, Chisholm thought as they left the strong room. But

as they mounted the stairs, an idea struck him and he tugged at the man’s sleeve
and halted him.

“Do you still have the records of the Anglo-Suez Bank?” Seeing Nokrami

hesitate, he conjured another twenty-pound note out of his pocket and slipped it
to the banker, who nodded. “If you can, find out if Sir William Garfield Tate had a
joint account, who it was with and if the other person had a key and access to the

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strongbox.” He pointed to the pocket where Nokrami had put the second note.
“There’s another couple of those when you come up with the answer.”

He wrote Zein’s private number on a slip of paper and handed it to Nokrami

telling him to ring when he had the information.

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Chapter 16

Now he could not take a single step without half a dozen people tailing him.

He already had el-Zayyat’s men plus the Egyptian intelligence service on his back.
And since his fight with Heykal’s killer, he was acting as a stalking horse for
Mabruk and his detectives. They were not only following him hoping he would
lead them to the triple murderer, but they now realized he might also help them
find a fortune in jewels. But if he objected to being the bait in the policeman’s
trap, he had no wish to confront the savage murderer alone. So, he let himself be
shadowed.

However, he had to shake them off to do some of his own detective work on

the Dahshur pyramids with Mouna. When she rang the morning after his visit to
the bank, he gave her a rendezvous on the Nile corniche near the old British
Residence. He arranged with Zein to send one of his kitchen staff with the Deux
Chevaux to Dahshur and hide it between the lake and the Nile.

“We’re going on a Nile cruise,” he told Mouna as he helped her into one of the

bobbing, swaying feluccas which plied the river with tourists. He introduced her
to the owner, Mohamed, a friend of Zein and someone they could trust. Soon,
they were in the middle of the Nile, the prevailing northerly breeze filling their
triangular sail. At least there they could talk freely.

Mouna now knew Heykal had been murdered as well as Sarwat and Aisha.

She was scared—for him rather than herself.

“Ewan, he will kill you, this man, for what you know about the jewels.”
“What I know wouldn’t get him very far,” he said, trying to calm her fears.
“But you know presque tout.”
“Except where they are hidden.”
“Maybe even that, too.”
From her knapsack, Mouna pulled out the photocopies of illustrations from

books by Egyptologists like the Britons, Perring and Vyse in the early nineteenth
century, Jequier, the Frenchman, Flinders Petrie. She had found them in the
Cairo Museum archives. Before she started to explain, he could see the markings
on the sarcophagus and funerary chambers in the Garfield Tate pictures
resembled those in her photocopies.

Mouna ran her finger over several of the cartouches, those rectangles

normally sculpted in stone containing the signet of pharaohs and royal household
members.

“You can see Sneferu’s cartouche, the crook, the ellipse and the bird,” Mouna

said. “And just beside it is the cartouche of Hathor-Amun, a princess and
probably his daughter.” She handed him another illustration. “There, you see the
quarry marks made by the masons who built the chamber Uncle Bill
photographed. They, too, have Sneferu’s personal emblem, proving he ordered
that particular tomb.”

“Mouna, how did you get the idea of going to the museum for these. I’d never

have thought of it.”

She flushed with pleasure, then shook her head and shrugged. “Mais, il y a

toujours le problème of where the tomb is. Sneferu could have been buried in
three places—at Meydum or in the northern pyramid at Dahshur or the Bent
pyramid.”

“My guess has always been the Bent Pyramid.”

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“Mine, too. Every line in Uncle Bill’s pictures seems to converge on it.”
“I agree. But the trouble is hundreds of archaeologists have explored it from

top to bottom.” He fished in his belt for the pictures. “Have a look at the
shadows,” he said. “Notice anything about them?”

She studied them. “They are all long shadows and they all lie eastwards. So,

he must have taken them around sunset.” She paused. “But if that means
anything we’d have to know which season.”

“Round about now,” he said. “October was the time he must have hid the

negatives in his logbook.”

“Then you think he might have used the pyramids as a sort of sun dial to

mark where he found the jewels until he could decide what to do with them?”

“It would be in Garfield Tate’s character,” Chisholm said. “He knew how the

pharaohs worshipped the sun and how they saw astrological meaning in
everything.”

“Yes, he did—and I never found him wrong about anything or not to have a

reason for everything.” She turned to him, her face deadly serious. “Don’t you
agree with him, and the pharaohs?”

“I agree there are patterns in everything, I suppose,” he said.
“Ewan, I wish...” she said, and stopped.
“What do you wish?”
Under her sun hat those eyes had gone a deeper shade of blue and they inched

over his face. “Nothing...but well, I wish you weren’t so...so rational.”

Chisholm did not reply. Instead, he pointed to a car or the east bank of the

Nile, moving parallel with them. “There’s another one on the other side of the
river behind the trees. They’ve been with us since we left the Nile corniche.” He
moved to the stern to have a word with Mohamed who then steered the felucca
expertly under an overhang of trees which shielded it from the car on the west
side.

“Mouna, you go back with Mohamed.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I have an idea, and I want to have a look at those shadows from the top of the

Bent Pyramid.”

“But you could kill yourself on that pyramid,” she gasped. “It’s still faced with

smooth limestone.” She caught his arm. “And if you don’t fall, what about them?”
She pointed to the car on the far side of the river.

“I have to take the chance.”
“Then so do I,” she said. “I stay by the car.”
When he trekked across the sand to the Bent Pyramid it was after five and

most of the sun’s heat had gone. But when he began to climb the pyramid he
realized Mouna was right. He could not scale the slopes covered with limestone
but had to scramble up at the angle of the western and southern faces where the
limestone casing had been eroded by the sun and wind or stripped off by
scavengers to build other things. It brought him out in a nervous sweat picking
his way over those four-foot blocks. One slip and his jewels and murder quest
would both end there.

It took an hour but finally he made it to the second row from the top of the

pyramid. Just for the magnificent view over Saqqara and the Nile Valley it was
worth the effort. All round him, the dunes were thrown into relief by the setting
sun like a petrified ocean swell, and the whole landscape had an ethereal look in
what resembled theatrical lighting.

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As the sun sank lower, Chisholm took more than thirty snaps of all the

pyramids around, meaning to compare them with the Garfield Tate prints.

But when he had finished and studied the shadows of the pyramids, he

suddenly realized there might be no need to make the comparison. If he drew a
line on the sand through the point of the Bent Pyramid shadow, through the
valley temple and through the shadow of Amenemhet II’s pyramid, it landed on
the small satellite pyramid just south of the Bent Pyramid.

Was that where Garfield Tate had found his hoard?
Chisholm knew that the small satellite pyramid had been meticulously

explored forty years before and the archaeologists had found nothing. So,
Garfield Tate must have discovered some other way in, or some secret passage.
Chisholm was so excited by his find that he stayed longer on the Bent Pyramid
than he had intended, making a plan drawing of the other pyramids to show
where the lines intersected the small satellite pyramid.

Before he had slithered down the first fifty terraces on the sharp angle, he was

in total darkness. He cursed himself for overlooking the fact that in this latitude
and with desert almost all round him, between sunset and darkness there was
only a matter of minutes. In an hour the moon would rise and he could wait for
that to light his descent, but he decided against this in case something happened
to Mouna. So, he strapped his torch round his right shoulder and resumed his
descent.

It was a nightmare locating footholds on the smooth blocks and edging his

body over the side and feeling for the next row of blocks. His face ran with sweat
and he was dry-mouthed at the thought of missing just one foothold and cart-
wheeling down the side of the Bent Pyramid.

When he had counted fifty rows, he sat down to have a cigarette and a rest. As

he searched for his lighter, he caught a metallic sound from below. Then a low
curse. An Arabic curse.

Someone was lying in ambush at the bottom of the pyramid. Whoever it was

could only be waiting for him.

What if it was that savage beast of a murderer he had tangled with five days

ago? He’d last five minutes with that killer who would choke the life out of him
then break him over his knee.

What did he do?
Chisholm had one ace; he knew the Bent Pyramid as well as anyone, having

explored there for three months with the Maxwell-Evans missions. If he could get
to the entrance without being detected, he could lose whoever it was in the
labyrinth of that pyramid.

But getting to the entrance was another matter. Now, he was halfway up the

angle of the south and west faces, and the entrance he was seeking lay on the
north side. On this pyramid with its smooth limestone cladding, neither Hilary
nor Tensing would have dared the traverse in dead darkness.

It scared the hell out of him and nearly caused a run on his gut, but he had to

climb to the point where the limestone facing had been removed. How he
managed it he never knew. When he reached a bare layer, he had to creep along it
to the north side. He was fifty of these massive stone steps from the top of the
pyramid, and he still had to slither down to the entrance which was sited thirteen
meters from the pyramid base.

He took it a block at a time. Climbing upwards was easier than descending,

for he had to feel his way with hands and feet ever inch of the way. When he
reached a layer with enough space for him to stretch out, he lay for a minute or

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two on his back, gulping air and mustering courage for the rest of the descent.
Now, his only light came from the stars spangling above him and the glow from a
village through the trees beyond Dahshur Lake.

From the north angle he counted thirty-four meters to the pyramid center.

From there, he reckoned thirty stone courses down the side of the pyramid to the
smooth face then another thirty or forty meters to the entrance. To steel himself,
he took them in five-meter sections, stopping after each section to steady himself.

When he reached the smooth face he turned and sat on his knapsack. Now he

felt better. Even if he skidded all the way down, he might escape with a few
bruises. His mouth felt parched and his tongue had swollen. He was trembling
with tension and his legs felt weak and full of water. For the last few meters, he
slid on his knapsack using his feet to brake him.

Suddenly, there was nothing under his feet. Somehow, he turned and found a

handhold in the limestone and hung on. He was dangling over the entrance hole
in the north wall. Inching along until he hit the side, he groped with a foot for a
place to stand. When he found one, he lowered himself into the entrance.

Even then, he felt his way inside for ten yards before daring to snap on his

torch. But as he placed his finger on the torch button, a more powerful beam hit
him in the eyes, dazzling him.

“Mr. Chisholm again! It’s a small world, isn’t it?”
It was Mabruk, a phony grin on his jowly face. In the reflection from his

torchlight, Chisholm saw one of his detectives standing beside him. He sat down
in a heap, his legs too wobbly to support him.

“We wondered if you would get down in one piece or if we would have to send

for what you call the meat wagon,” Mabruk said,

He handed him a flask. In his other hand he had his eternal worry

beads...click...click...click...

“Here, drink this.” As Chisholm hesitated, Mabruk added, “It is all right. It is

not whisky. It is water. You can probably do with it.”

Chisholm still took a sip to satisfy himself then gulped half the flask of water.
“So, you managed to follow me.”
“What do you think? You interest us, and it wasn’t difficult.” Mabruk shone

his torch on the knapsack then shook his head in disbelief. “I’ve heard of
dedicated writers, but nobody who takes writing as seriously as you,” he said.
“Working days and nights, climbing pyramids in the dark—and in between for
good measure murdering two prominent people and a woman.”

“So, you still think I’m your serial killer,” Chisholm said. He was thinking that

this Mabruk with his sagging belly, whisky face, throwaway jokes and worry
beads was no ordinary policeman. An intriguing character. No dimwit either,
since he had figured which way he would run and put himself in his escape route.

“Just prove you aren’t the serial killer and we’ll stop suspecting you.”
“It’s hard to prove negative propositions.”
“All right, start by telling us what you’re doing here—and don’t say you’re

looking for the Pharaoh Sneferu.”

Mabruk knew about the jewels! He probably knew about them even before he

had taken his wallet and seen Garfield Tate’s pictures the night of Heykal’s
murder. That meant el-Zayyat’s department must also have wind of them. But
from when and where? Did they know even in Garfield Tate’s time about the
jewel hoard? Or had they an inkling through the jewelry Mouna had pawned with
Sarwat? He was weary. Too weary to think. And this barrel-bellied copper had his
torch focused on his eyes as if waiting for him to break and confess everything.

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“I worked in this pyramid six years ago, and wondered what they had

discovered since my time.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier in daylight?”
“There’s no daylight inside pyramids, and no tourists at night. So, I can

worked undisturbed.”

Mabruk’s worry beads clicked. Did he do it to annoy or unnerve people? He

bent down to pick up Chisholm’s camera from his knapsack. “Going to be well-
illustrated, your biography, I see.” Chisholm did not answer and Mabruk went on,
“I’m told your biographical subject was also handy with a camera.”

He knew! Chisholm did not rise to the bait. He stood up, retrieved his

knapsack and the camera from the detective. “Well, what are you going to charge
me with this time—breaking and entering Pharaoh Sneferu’s pyramid,
desecration of a royal tomb, failure to observe official visiting hours...”

“Suspicious behavior would do here.”
“Suspicion of what?”
“Of being suspected of being up to no good. How’s that?” Mabruk laughed at

his own turn of phrase. “It would keep you inside and save the state time and
money following you around pyramid sites.”

He gestured to the detective with him, and the man spoke softly into a mobile

phone to call off the other two men and summon the police car. When it arrived,
Mabruk led the way down the entrance steps. He pointed the car towards the
Dahshur Lake and took his seat beside the driver.

“By the way, you’re girlfriend is in that stand of palm trees, hiding,” he said,

thumbing at the spot where they had parked the Deux Chevaux.

Chisholm watched the police car disappear along the canal road. What game

was Mabruk playing with him? Did he consider him the murderer, the stalking
horse—or the prey? And what was he really after—the murderer, the jewels? Or
both.

He heard someone call his name.

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Chapter 17

From the trees, Mouna came running to embrace him. Through her linen

blouse, he felt her breasts against his and her heart beating fast under them. It lit
a flare of emotion and desire in him.

“I didn’t know who they were, ces messieurs. So I hid here and watched and

prayed.” She led him back to the Deux Chevaux saying, “Zein is magnifique, he
has prepared a diner pour deux.”

In his best Mena-House waiter style, Zein had packed an insulated picnic box

with slices of cold chicken, vegetable salad, unleavened pancakes, goat cheese and
fruit; he had filled three flasks with water, fruit juice and coffee.

Mouna was going to spread a cover under the trees, but Chisholm stopped

her. From now on, he could take no chances. He indicated the flat ground
between the ruined Amenemhet pyramid and the Bent Pyramid. When she asked
why, he said, “There’ll be a moon in half an hour’s time and if there are any more
visitors we’ll have warning of them.”

They chose a spot on a sand ridge near the valley temple. By the time they had

driven over and spread their feast on a blanket, a half-moon had risen giving
them enough light to picnic and survey the area for a mile around.

“When it got dark I wondered if you would ever get down alive from that

pyramid.”

“That makes two of us.”
She served the chicken and vegetable salad and poured them water. “Then I

saw the men—I did not know they were police. They surrounded the pyramid and
I thought you were in more danger from them than from the pyramid.”
Impulsively, she reached out her left hand and took his right hand in it and
squeezed. “Mais I was never really inquiète.”

“Then you had more faith in me than I had in myself.”
“Eh bien, you are resourceful, and...”
“And...”
“I knew you would survive, even if I did not know that you might be injured.”
She sounded so positive he was prompted to say, “But how did you know

that?”

With her twisted hand, Mouna scooped up some loose sand and let it filter

through her fingers as though uncertain whether to reply.

“You are an intellectual and you don’t believe in things of the spirit, so you

would laugh if I told you.”

“I promise not to.”
“It was someone that you would call a fortune-teller who told me.”
Chisholm stared at her. “You mean, you went to a fortune-teller to have my

fortune told?”

“Oh no, it happened three years ago.”
“But we’ve known each other less than a fortnight,” he protested.
“She said we would meet.”
“Then she was having you on—like all fortune-tellers who only want you to

cross their palms with silver.”

“But I am not crossing her palm with silver, and she is no ordinary fortune-

teller.”

“They’re all the same.”

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“Ewan, you promised....”
He heard the plaint in her voice. “Sorry,” he said. “I’d like to hear the rest.”
“She is an old blind woman who lives in Kalabasha, in Nubia, and she takes

no payment, but she has the gift and she has foretold so many things.”

“So, this old woman said I wouldn’t die on the Bent Pyramid.”
“No, she did not say that. She told me I would meet a blue-eyed man from the

north...”

“Well, that narrows it down to about a thousand million.”
“But she also said he had reddish-brown hair. Like cinnamon spice, she said.”
“All right, now we’ve got it down to about fifty million.”
“She said he was not very handsome, but that n’avait pas grande

importance.”

“Well, she got that bit right at least,” he said. “What else did your blind

soothsayer tell you?”

“That you were kind and true.”
“Oh, so now it’s me, is it?” he gasped. “What did she say about my bad points?

Did she happen to mention I’m not to be trusted near a tot of whisky, that I’m a
hopeless drunk?”

“No, she did not. But Zein told me. And you are not a drunk even if you have

ever been a drunk.”

“Don’t get any illusions—I am a drunk,” he said. For several moments he fell

silent, chewing on a piece of cold chicken and washing it down with Zein’s iced
water from the flask. He turned to her. “Mouna, get this straight, drunks are
drunks forever, putting their sober time behind them minute by minute, hour by
hour, day by day...there’s no past historic for drunks...they’re liable after twenty
years on orange juice to finish face-down on the nearest bar floor.”

“For you and me it is sans importance.”
“Is it just? Do you know you are talking to somebody who believed for at least

nine months of his life that reality was a fiction created by alcohol deficiency—
and that sort of illusion might still hit him at any time.”

“I believe he would not speak of himself as though he were somebody else,

and he would not tell me such a thing if he was not cured.”

“Did your blind woman let drop by the way that I’d been married?”
“No, but I know this.” He stared at her, and she returned his stare, candidly.

“I am sorry, Ewan, but I persuaded Zein to tell me things about you. Do you
forgive me?”

“Of course. For now you know I’m a drunk and an ex-married man it won’t

come as a surprise that I’ve also done sixty days in jail.”

“No, I did not know this.”
“Well, to complete the story, I’ll tell you why,” he said. He was relieved the

moonlight seemed to soften everything around them and their faces were in
shadow, but even then it was difficult to recapitulate the facts in his mind and
recount them to this girl. He kept it as flippant as he could.

“It’s the age-old story,” he said. “My wife was sleeping with my boss at the

Institute of Archaeological Studies, and when I found out I began to hit the
bottle. One night when I had finished a whole bottle of whisky, I went and
knocked on my boss’s door and knocked hell out of him in front of his wife and
kids.” He stopped to flex the fingers of his right hand then hold them up. “I broke
a couple of my knuckles on his nose, his chin and his big head, which is a hard
way to learn that boxing gloves aren’t there to save the other man’s face. I also

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learned that vengeance is a dish best eaten cold and cold-sober—though it’s not
worth it either way.”

He took out and lit a cigarette, shaking his head at the recollection and

pulling smoke into his lungs several time before continuing. “Anyway,
Hammersmith Crown Court did me a big favor by handing me three months’ jail,
of which I did sixty days.”

“They did you a favor,” she said. “I do not understand.”
“Well, in Her Britannic Majesty’s prisons they don’t dispense liquor, so I

emerged after two months as dried-out as Ramses II in the Cairo mummy room.”
He laughed. “So much for your Nubian fortune-teller.”

“But she spoke the truth about you,” Mouna came back. “She also said that

when I met you would wriggle like a sand worm and be as hard to hold as a
handful of water. And what have you been doing but painting yourself blacker
than you really are?”

“All I’ve been trying to do is put romantic notions about me out of your head.”

Chisholm rose, doused his cigarette in the sand and collected and stacked their
plates, wrapping them in a napkin. He poured them coffee from a flask. “Anyway,
I can guess what your mother might say about me, let alone your unromantic
step-father, who wants to expand his dynasty by marrying you off to some well-
heeled Cairene.”

“My step-father does not even understand my mother.”
“You haven’t told me what he does for a living.”
“He owns fifty taxis and trucks and makes a lot of money and that is sa seule

préoccupation.”

Chisholm sipped his coffee, grimacing at the bitter taste and dropping two

lumps of sugar into it, thinking Zein made it so thick that even the sugar thought
twice about drowning it it.

“So, how would he react, your step-father?”
“What he says is of no matter. That man will never have anything to do with

me or my future.”

No, he could see this girl would decide her own fate. And perhaps a blind

Nubian oracle was a better counselor than a money-grubbing step-father.

He watched her admiringly as she moved around, gracefully, folding the

blankets and napkins.

Once upon a time he wouldn’t have minded being a photo-fit image, matching

the blind Nubian’s description and her prediction.

He helped her pack the things away in the picnic box, shutting and locking

it—and any romantic illusions he might have had himself.

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Chapter 18

Standing with Zein at the back of the packed basilica of St. George, Chisholm

let his eye range over the congregation, searching for one of Mabruk’s men or an
odd face that might belong to the killer they were seeking. He felt certain he had
been tailed to the Coptic church in this southern suburb of Cairo. It was a
beautiful service conducted by Bishop Galli and if the chanting and responses
reminded Chisholm of monastic ritual, the Coptic words meant nothing.

When the service ended, Zein and he waited until the church had emptied and

Bishop Galli had returned from the front entrance. Zein introduced him,
explaining what he was doing then leaving them in front of the magnificent altar
and ancient icons that had come from the original Coptic church, destroyed by
fire.

Chisholm had hoped the bishop might have known Ceti Kanfer and Garfield

Tate, that he might have baptismal records of the Kanfer family, including Ceti’s
sister and Mouna’s mother.

But no, the bishop had never known Miss Kanfer or her sister personally. Nor

Sir William Garfield Tate; they were before his time, and Bishop Sefu, who had
officiated at Ceti Kanfer’s funeral, had unfortunately passed away.

“But you would have a condolences book, bishop,” Chisholm said.
“Of course, my son, but it was burned with all our other records in the fire

that destroyed the church.”

“Even the baptismal records?”
“Yes,” the bishop said with a sigh. “And those baptismal records were our

greatest loss, even though we have attempted to reconstitute them from the
present congregation and various other sources. It is far from easy.”

“When did that fire take place, bishop?”
Bishop Galli looked up at the cupola, then at the icons, lost in reflection. “Let

me see, I had just returned from London and had gone to our diocese in
Damascus...it was ‘74...no, it would be ‘76...yes, yes, ‘76.”

He thanked the bishop, rejoined Zein and they both walked through the

cemetery to look at his parents’ grave, then at Ceti Kanfer’s. She lay alone, and
the granite stone told them nothing but her name, birth and death dates.

Driving north through Cairo, Chisholm wondered about that fire. He felt sure

that was no chance spark, no accident. He could swear from the date it had
occurred that the fire was arson, a deliberate move to destroy any evidence of the
Kanfer family. And he could sense that the hand which had started the fire was
the same that had killed Sarwat, Aisha and Heykal—and had already killed
Garfield Tate and Ceti Kanfer.

“Did old Galli help, You-Ahn?”
“In a way.” But he reflected that it was another dead end. Like so many that

he had gone down since he had started his hunt. It was as though someone had
done the rounds a few steps ahead of him, destroying everything that might have
yielded evidence—people like Heykal, records, even these church documents
relating to the dead.

He needed some sort of breakthrough, even a small one; but as the days went

by, he had the feeling his quest for the jewels and the truth about Garfield Tate
would come to nothing.

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Back in the hotel, Zein’s receptionist informed him that a certain Mr.

Nokrami had rung and left a number. Was this his small breakthrough?

Nokrami had found something and wanted to meet him in Groppi’s.

Chisholm rejected the proposed rendezvous in a restaurant where everyone went
to see and be seen. He ordered the banker to meet him on the northern platform
of Sadat underground station, and to make sure no-one followed him.

At Sadat, he hustled the man upstairs, found a cab and ordered the driver to

drop them at the zoo on the other side of the Nile. Only when they were walking
between the animal cages did he ask Nokrami what he had turned up.

Nokrami said Lady Virginia Garfield Tate had shared an account with her

husband at the Anglo-Suez bank. But she did not have a key to the strongbox
which was in Garfield Tate’s name alone. Both keys to the box were in his name.
But the archaeologist had given his proxy to Dr. Kanfer, who probably also had
one of the two keys.

“You’re sure of that?” he asked. “Lady Garfield Tate did not have a key in her

own name.”

Nokrami shook his head. “I even checked twice, thinking it was very odd, like

yourself.”

“But if she didn’t have a key and Garfield Tate hid his among his papers, how

did she empty the box after her husband’s death?”

Nokrami shrugged, then said, “She might have found Dr. Kanfer’s key and the

director allowed her to open the box.”

“Well, he had no authority to do that until the will was read and proved,”

Chisholm said. “Did anyone know what the box contained?”

“Nobody seemed to know except Sir William Garfield Tate?”
“How much did they have in their account when he died?”
“Just over fourteen hundred pounds sterling.”
“And she lifted that?”
“Yes,—the head of the bank himself made the final transaction and closed the

account.”

It was worth the forty pounds sterling Chisholm paid, although Nokrami was

apologetic about how little he had discovered. “You see, Mr. Chisholm, there was
a fire which destroyed many of the records not long before the bank went into
voluntary liquidation and then merged with the present bank.”

He looked slyly at Chisholm. “Perhaps it suited some people.” He smiled then

said, “I remember thinking, ‘Even the honest English can brush their dirt under
the carpet like the Egyptians.’”

Another of these convenient fires, Chisholm thought as he walked back to the

city center via Rhoda Island. He was halfway across the bridge when he stopped
and cursed himself.

Nokrami had mentioned the director of the Anglo-Suez Bank. He must still be

alive. Maybe he was even living in Cairo and might fill in the blanks in Nokrami’s
story. Even if he had opened the strongbox before he should, even if he had
anything to do with turning his records into cinders and scrap paper, he might
think at this remove in time he could tip his hand. Why the hell hadn’t he asked
who and where he was?

Nokrami was evidently celebrating for it was eleven o’clock before he

managed to raise him on the phone at his home. From his slurred, hesitant voice
he had defied Koranic edict and spent some of his forty pounds on arrack or some
other strong liquor.

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“The director of the bank?...Yes, of course I knew him...No, he went back to

Britain....I don’t know where...He was a young man...his first big job, the Anglo-
Suez...”

“What was his name?” Chisholm said.
“His name?” Nokrami hesitated. “His name?...Richard....Richard...”
“Was it Brierly?” he prompted.
“That is him...Mr. Brierly....Mr. Richard Brierly.”
Chisholm hung up and sat looking at the dead phone. Brierly! Head of the

Union Charter Trust Bank and one of the Aspenwall Foundation governors. Also
the man who had backed him and persuaded some of the doubters to send him
here in quest of the Garfield Tate jewels.

How and where did that fit? How much would Brierly have known about

Garfield Tate’s private affairs? How much would the archaeologist or his wife
have told him? How well did he know the nymphomaniac Virginia Garfield Tate?
Was he on pillow-talking terms with her, one of her dozens of sleeping partners?
Would she and he know what was in that strongbox? Yet, it couldn’t have been
the jewels, for Brierly was certain they were still in Egypt. How much did he know
about Garfield Tate’s death?

Chisholm dumped every piece of information he had gleaned over the past

months on his table and began to scan the documents line by line for some hint of
Brierly’s name. Nothing. Even Heykal, who must have interviewed him, did not
rate him worth a mention in his report.

But in his notes on Heykal’s report he fell on the name of the British embassy

security man of twenty-five years ago. Bailey...Frank Bailey. Heykal had said he
was the only Briton worth seeing, he might have settled in Cairo and might help.
He must see him.

It was three in the morning when he turned in, but he slept only until the

muezzins from Al Azhar and a couple of other mosques called the faithful to
prayers.

He had a lot of legwork to do.

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Chapter 19

Mouna was not at their usual rendezvous on El Giza Bridge as he arrived

there the next morning. However, he did not worry. She would probably join him
later at Dahshur. They had decided to start at seven o’clock and spend the
morning exploring around the small satellite pyramid south of the Bent Pyramid
where he suspected Garfield Tate might have found or hidden the jewels.

He made no attempt to shake off Mabruk’s men, who tailed him to Dahshur.

Nor did he bother to conceal his interest in the subsidiary pyramid. He went all
round the base and the ground for twenty yards around it; he climbed all over the
ruined hump examining every stone. After two hours he was convinced there was
no secret entrance to the small pyramid itself.

So, if his hunch was right about the jewels, Garfield Tate must have stumbled

on another way in. Where? Not the valley temple, for he had already explored
that structure.

That secret entrance must be inside the Bent Pyramid. When Chisholm had

worked there five years ago, everyone speculated that a vertical, hollow shaft
running parallel with the upper burial chamber must have had some function.
Sneferu and his architects would not have built it for nothing; it must lead
somewhere. But for all the probing and speculation, nobody had ever discovered
the function of the shaft, or anything leading off it.

Mouna and he could start there and explore to see if it led to one more secret

passage in the many the Bent Pyramid had yielded up. After all, the west entrance
to the pyramid had lain undiscovered for more than 4,500 years, and Sneferu, of
all the pharaohs, had a deep-seated phobia about grave robbers.

At quarter to eleven, when there was still no sign of Mouna, he gave up and

drove back to Cairo. As he parked the Deux Chevaux at the Al Ahram and walked
through the door, he half-expected to see her in the foyer.

Instead, there was another woman with an even more familiar face, though in

that context it confused him so much that it was ten seconds before he got out the
name.

“Jenny, what the hell are you doing here?”
Jenny thumbed at the phone booth in Zein’s entrance hall and whispered,

“I’m here to hold Beelzebub’s hand and see he doesn’t get lost or stolen.”

“Sheldon Wright’s with you!”
She nodded then put a finger to her lips as the booth door opened and the

Aspenwall curator appeared; his beaky nose was curling at the spicy odors of
Zein’s curried pigeon and he obviously thought the Al Ahram a dump. However,
he braced himself and crossed the hall to fix Chisholm with a stern look.

“Can you pack your bags and be ready to leave with the five o’clock London

flight?” he snapped.

“I can.” As he said this, Chisholm saw Jenny stare, incredulously, at him.
Sheldon Wright turned to Jenny. “Book him back on our flight. Better go

along to the British Airways office and do it there.”

“You’ll be throwing your money away,” Chisholm said as Jenny made for the

door. “I only said I can and not I will. You haven’t told me why you want me back
in London.”

“Because we’re calling off the hunt for those mythical jewels.”

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“Who said they’re mythical?” Chisholm came back. “Those jewels exist and I

think I can find them. Three people have already died because someone else
knows they exist.” He gazed at Sheldon Wright. He was radiating panic. His neck
was twitching violently, his eyelids were fluttering and his face had turned turkey
red as he paced the small foyer.

“I have orders to get you back to London.”
“Orders! Whose orders?” Chisholm planted himself in Sheldon Wright’s run

as he about-turned, and stopped him. “Who sent you? Was it Ackerman, or
Davenport? Or Merrill? Maybe it was Brierly, your banker in the 1970s?” Was he
imagining things or did the name Brierly heighten the panic syndrome. He went
on, “What’s their game?—they send me out here on what they think is a million to
one chance, and just when I’m within reach of that treasure they want to pull me
back. What’s frightening them?”

“If you must know, they don’t want the Foundation mixed up in a scandal.”
“You mean smuggling the treasure out?”
“Among other things.”
Chisholm laughed. “That’s ripe coming from someone who’s sitting on piles of

smuggled art and wouldn’t say No to the crown jewels or the Mona Lisa if they
came his way under the counter.”

“Chisholm, I will not be insulted. If you must know, the Foundation does not

want to see its relations with the Department of Antiquities and its access to the
world of Egyptology ruined by someone like you.”

That came out pat, as though it had been scripted by someone else.
“All right,” Chisholm said. “Let’s go and see el-Zayyat and put all our cards on

the table and make a bargain with him.” Seeing Sheldon Wright flinch visibly at
this suggestion, Chisholm drove the point home. “In any case, he knows what
we’re up to—he’s had men on my back since I got here.”

“Oh!” That had struck home. “How does he know?”
“A tip-off, I’d say.” Chisholm grinned at the puce face a foot from his own. “A

long-distance tip-off, wouldn’t you say?”

“Leave el-Zayyat out of it,” Sheldon Wright said, trying to bark but managing

only a croaking whisper.

“Maybe it’s as well. He might ask awkward questions. For instance, why

didn’t Garfield Tate report the jewel find? And why didn’t we say anything about
the pictures, key and other clues in the archives? In no time, Al Ahram and El
Goumouriyeh and every other Egyptian paper will have the story and you won’t
be able to move for TV cameras and mikes in your face—that is if they let the
media into Egyptian prisons.”

“Is this an attempt to intimidate me?”
“No, just to warn you what might happen. You and your governing council

should know what the stakes are before you do anything stupid.

Observing Sheldon Wright’s face in close-up, he realized what Jenny meant

about his blurred vision when he was angry or confused; his eyes seemed to
wander, lose their focus, and he was already polishing his glasses on the sleeve of
his Harrods tropical jacket.

“Our governors already have all the necessary facts. Including the fact you are

suspected of the three murders you mentioned.”

“Now wherever did they get that information?”
“They need only have read the Egyptian press.”
“There was nothing there to say I was a murder suspect.”

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“It was enough for the governors that your name was linked with those

murders and the Foundation might be dragged into the sordid story.”

“Did anybody tell you those murders were linked with a fourth and fifth

murders?”

Sheldon Wright put on his glasses to peer at through them with incredulous

eyes. A fourth and fifth murders. What are you talking about?”

“The murders of Garfield Tate and his mistress, Dr. Ceti Kanfer.”
Sheldon Wright guffawed. Perhaps a bit too loudly. He shook his head and

looked at Jenny, who had sat silent throughout the row. “It must be the heat in
the Delta,” he said. Turning to Chisholm, he went on, “Isn’t it time you went
home and forgot about jewels and murders that exist only in your imagination?
Now, are you going upstairs to pack your bags and catch the afternoon plane to
London?”

“No, I am staying here.”
“Then you are dismissed from your job with the Foundation and your

credentials to represent us in any way are withdrawn, including your brief to
research and write Garfield Tate’s life. Is that clear?”

“Do I get a golden handshake?”
No.”
Silver, then.”
“No”
“All right, I’ll settle for copper.”
Sheldon Wright drew himself up. “You have no contract and therefore you are

not entitled to severance pay. I shall honor your expenses, provided they are
reasonable.”

Both he and Jenny watched, intrigued, as Chisholm went to Zein’s desk and

returned with a sheet of Al Ahram notepaper and the Cairo director.

“Put it in writing,” he said.
Sheldon Wright shrugged but sat down, placed the phone directory on his lap

and wrote out the dismissal notice. When he had read it, Chisholm said, “Of
course, you realize this means you’ve given up all title to anything I find. It means
I can negotiate my own terms with el-Zayyat, or anybody else for that matter.”

“We are aware of this.” Sheldon Wright beckoned to Jenny, who rose and

followed him outside, glancing at Chisholm with raised eyebrows as much as to
say she could do nothing about Seldom Right or the Aspenwall Foundation.

What did it all mean? Chisholm sat down in the foyer to ponder Sheldon

Wright’s attitude and his action. It was the last move he ever thought such a man
would make—throwing away a fortune in jewels and an attraction that would fill
his museum from one year’s end to the next.

Had the Foundation made some deal behind his back with el-Zayyat to mount

another official hunt for Garfield Tate’s hoard? That he could well imagine.
Sheldon Wright would hand the antiquities department all the information they
had for prior exhibition rights. But—and this really fazed him—the man had not
even asked him for the pictures or any account of the inquiries he had made.

It all pointed in the same direction: Sheldon Wright had done some deal and

had an important contact in Cairo, someone with his ear so close to the ground
that the Foundation director didn’t need to ask how far he had gone in his hunt.

He already knew that—and a lot more besides.
He went upstairs and rang Mouna’s flat. No answer. Half a dozen times he

tried, but nobody answered. Now he was worried. It was unlike her to fail to keep

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a date without some warning, or to disappear without leaving a message with
Zein.

After eating a sandwich and drinking two cups of coffee, he drove to Garden

City where she had a first-floor studio. Two letters lay in her box, and the
guardian hadn’t seen or heard her since the previous day.

On the other first-floor studio, he spotted the name Saleh. From the guardian

he learned she was a friend of Miss Tayisha and worked for a lawyer in
Champollion Street.

But there, Miss Saleh knew noting of Mouna’s recent movements; she had

met her briefly the previous afternoon and she had not mentioned anything about
going away. Which was strange, for they both took turns at feeding stray cats
round their block of flats.

“Would you think she had gone home?”
She stared at him. “Home! Have you met her step-father?” Chisholm shook

his head. “Well, if you had you would know that is the last place Mouna would
go.”

“Who is he and where does he live?”
“All I know is his name is Hassanein and he lives somewhere in Heliopolis.”

Miss Saleh pulled the Cairo phone directory and Yellow Pages off the shelf above
her desk and pushed them across to him. “You can look him up there. I don’t
know his first name, but he runs a car hire and taxi business, I think.”

A glance at the phone book and he gave up; there were scores of Hassaneins

in Cairo with phones. In the Yellow Pages, he hunted through the car hire and
taxi firms in Heliopolis without finding the name Hassanein. He rejected all the
familiar names, Avis, Hertz, Budget and listed the five others.

Miss Saleh gave him her second line and he began ringing the numbers asking

for Hassanein. At the third try, with a firm called Apis Cars in Abu Bakr Street, a
secretary said Mr. Hassanein was absent but would ring the caller on his return.
Chisholm looked down the list of Hassaneins in the phone book searching for one
at the address of the firm. His man was Ahmed Salam Hassanein.

Somehow, that name rang loud bells in his head.
It came to him where he had met the name as he was walking back to his

hotel. Heykal’s report. Hassanein was the name of Garfield Tate’s driver. But
wasn’t it too much of a coincidence that Mouna’s father had once chauffeured the
archaeologist and his wife. Chisholm remembered one other thing from the
report: Hassanein had driven Virginia Garfield Tate to the opera the night
Garfield Tate and Ceti Kanfer died at Meydum several hours’ drive down the Nile.

Back in his hotel, he studied the notes he had made on the police captain’s

report. Heykal had referred to Hassanein once only and had called him Ahmed.
Heykal had also dismissed him and his testimony about that night in a line or
two, which was why he, Chisholm, hadn’t bothered to seek him out and question
him.

And yet, if this Ahmed Hassanein was the same man, it meant he had married

Ceti Kanfer’s stepsister and probably adopted Mouna; it also meant he must have
known almost every move Garfield Tate made during his last expedition in Egypt.
He must see him urgently.

He had packed up his notes, locked them away and was about to leave in the

Deux Chevaux for Heliopolis to see Hassanein when his phone rang.

It was Jenny. Could he meet her in the Hilton? She did not feel brave enough

to come to his dump of a hotel. No, she said, it couldn’t wait till tomorrow, they
might be flying back to London.

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“But I thought you were catching the afternoon plane today.”
“Beelzebub changed his mind. He’s gone to drink Egyptian firewater and

share a stick of shashlik or whatever with that oily little geezer who thinks he
built and owns the pyramids...el...something.”

“El-Zayyat in the antiquities department.”
“The very same. I was invited, but the notion of eating with those two in the

Casbah, ogling squiggling little belly-dancers, listening to Egyptian rock music
and museum lore gave me a four-aspirin headache. Darling, you’ve got to come
and cheer me up.”

Chisholm had to forget Hassanein for the evening and agree to meet her. He

consoled himself by thinking it might be just as profitable finding out what Jenny
really knew about the reason for Sheldon Wright’s panic visit, and what she had
picked up by listening at his keyhole in the Foundation. When he knocked on her
door at the Hilton, she opened it and pulled him inside then hugged and kissed
him. Suddenly, she pulled back to gaze at him.

“Ewan, something’s happened to you...you’re different. I noticed it the

moment I saw you in that hovel... sorry hotel... you picked. You look...well, you
look younger and you look as though you’ve discovered yourself and you’re going
somewhere. What’s the secret?”

“I wouldn’t know.” He glanced round. “They’ve done you proud,” he said, his

eye lighting on the drinks tray standing on the small fridge; he was well aware it
was full of liquor of every kind. A cigarette smoldered in the ashtray and three
empty miniature bottles and an empty tonic-water bottle stood there. They had
given her a two-room suite with the Nile, the Cairo Tower and half Gezira Island
filling its big window.

She sat him down, pushed the cigarette box across the coffee table to him.
“We’re eating here,” she affirmed. “What would you like?”
‘Anything—a sandwich maybe.”
“A sandwich! You’ve lost your marbles or you need them polished. When

we’re in the Hilton and the sun’s setting over the pyramids and everything’s paid
for by Beelzebub and that mausoleum I’ve slaved in for ten years! Not on your
Nellie. I’ve decided what we’ll eat. Leave it to me.”

Rising, she stepped over to the phone to lift it and dial room service. In

magisterial style and impeccable prose, she ordered cold consommé, melon and
Parma ham, roast pigeon stuffed with spiced maize and raisins, mounds of green
vegetables, roast potatoes, green salad, goat cheese and Syrian ice-cream.

Chisholm sat astonished at the performance. Where had she got the style and

the know-how to reel off the items in that banquet? She might have boned up on
the menu lying on the coffee table and rehearsed her piece, but it was still
impressive.

She cupped a hand over the mouthpiece. “Ewan darling, d’you mind if I have

champagne.” He shook his head and she ordered a bottle of Bollinger, a bottle of
white wine to go with the hors d’oeuvre and a bottle of Claret to irrigate the
pigeon.

It was a Jenny he had never suspected, even if she’d once or twice revealed a

certain longing for hedonism and the high life.

She poured him a tonic water and sipped the remainder of her own drink.
“Ewan, you didn’t look too pleased to see me this morning,” she chided.
“It was the company you were keeping that put me off.”
Jenny shrugged. “He insisted on bringing me and I still don’t know why.”

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“Well, it can’t be the usual boss-secretary ploy or he’d have booked the

Nefertiti suite with double bed, double shower and Jacuzzi for two.”

“He wouldn’t know what to do with them.” Jenny opened the fridge, extracted

another miniature of gin and a tonic. Evidently, she meant to make the Aspenwall
pay through the nose for her Egyptian skive. “I think Seldom’s idea was that I was
the person to persuade you to come back to London quietly with us.”

“What did you think?”
Jenny reflected for a moment, running her scarlet-tipped finger round the

glass rim. “Maybe I felt if the treasure trail was getting cold, at least you could
screw Seldom Right for double what he’s paying you now and a real contract with
the Foundation before you got on the plane with him.”

“Why do they want me back? What’s their game?”
“They’re scared...people like Ackerman, Merrill, Mrs. Bennet...the Foundation

will be dragged into a scandal about the murders, and no jewels are worth that.”
Jenny downed half her gin and tonic. “Hmm...why else would they pass up the
chance of collecting a priceless jewel hoard?”

“Well, I’ve told him to stick his job.”
She shook her head as she looked at him. “You know him, he’ll blackball you

in ever archaeological shop in the land.”

“I don’t give a damn.”
Two cummerbunded and turbanned waiters appeared with a banquet on two

trolleys. While one deployed the hardware, the soup and hors d’oeuvres, the other
set the roast pigeons and vegetables on a hot plate then popped the champagne
cork and made to pour two glasses when Jenny halted him. “I have orange juice,”
she said.

As soon as they left, she swapped glasses and raised her champagne glass to

him. “Ewan, you don’t mind, do you?”

He shook his head. But he did mind. On two counts. First, that liquor

bubbling and streaming upwards to explode into froth in Jenny’s mouth and into
euphoria in her head, triggered all sorts of dormant memories and desires; like
her, it was too available for his mental and physical comfort. Eternal troika of
drink, food and sex, a combination hard to resist even for people who’d never
heard of Alcoholics Anonymous. Secondly, Jenny had perhaps intended it
otherwise, but she was trying that bit too hard to protect him; she was producing
the reverse effect; he felt more vulnerable.

He sipped his orange juice and tried to put the fridge with its whisky, her

champagne and the bottle of Pouilly out of his head.

Jenny put out a hand to clutch his. “Ewan, haven’t you still proved you can

take it or leave it now you’ve done without it for so long?”

“What are you trying to do, Jenny—tempt me?”
“Nooh, darling.” Jenny poured herself another glass of champagne and

twirled the swizzle stick round in the liquor, watching it cloud with bursting
bubbles, then clear. She changed her tack. “Of course there may be another
reason why Seldom wants you back in London...he may be trying to push you out
of the project and make a deal with el...what’s his name.”

Chisholm shrugged noncommittally. He didn’t buy that theory, for Sheldon

Wright did not have enough of the cards in his hand to make that play.

Jenny served them portions of the pigeon and vegetables. Her face was

flushed, and he wondered how many miniatures she had drunk before he arrived.
As she sat down, she poured wine into his glass then stopped, a guilty expression
on her face. “Sorry darling, I must’ve had one too many.” She grabbed the glass

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and walked a weaving path across the room to rinse it out. She returned and
dumped herself down on her chair and smiled dreamily at him. He could see she
was tipsy.

“So you think you can find these jewels on your own,” she mumbled.
“What do they think in the Aspenwall?”
Jenny steered a sliver of pigeon maladroitly into her mouth, chewed on it

then washed it down with Claret. Her eyes seemed distant with reflection.

“I just don’t know what’s in their minds or what’s going on,” she murmured.

“Something funny...I know that...and I know they’re scared of something, really
scared.”

“Scared of what?”
“Maybe they think you’ll find the jewels and run.” Jenny had disappeared into

another dimension, her eyes fixed on some inner vision. “Twenty million they’re
worth...that’s what you said...what couldn’t we do with that?...buy our own island
in the Med or the South Seas and live like royals...” She emptied and refilled her
wine glass then turned her gray-green eyes on him. “Ewan, do you think you can
find them...really?”

“I’ve already seen two of them—though that’s not to say the rest are here and

haven’t been scattered and sold.”

“You’ve seen two of them,” she breathed. “So you have a clue about where the

others might be.”

Chisholm picked his words carefully. “I think I know where Garfield Tate hid

them,” he said.

“You do! Where’s that.” She put out a hand to caress his. “I’ll not tell a soul,

word of honor.”

“It’s a guess, but a hard guess...somewhere in the Bent Pyramid.”
“The Bent Pyramid” She mumbled the name to herself several times as

though scared of forgetting it. “That’s the one where they got the wrong angle,”
she said. “And they’re in there, somewhere.”

“Somewhere’s the big word,” he said. “The Bent Pyramid’s a maze nobody has

ever really explored.”

He was measuring the amount of liquor he knew Jenny had consumed and

how it must be affecting her. Three double gins, nearly a bottle of champagne,
half a bottle of Pouilly and two glasses of Claret. Even with Jenny’s solid head and
liver, and her stomach lined with soup, melon, pigeon, roast potatoes, that
volume of alcohol must tell on her.

“But you seriously think you can find them, Ewan?” she insisted, proving she

still had her wits and could pump him.

“If anybody can...”
“Well, if you do, let me know before you tell Seldom or anybody else.”
“I’ll give you the first refusal,” Chisholm said, and they both laughed.
For several minutes, Jenny sat as though pondering something. Suddenly, she

pushed her plate away and rose. She crossed the room to switch out all but one
shaded wall light. Coming back, she took Chisholm’s hand and led him to the
window. “Look at that view,” she whispered. “Isn’t it out of this world?”

He had to agree. Against the indigo night, that part of the city looked like an

immense jewel display, glittering beneath them and shimmering out to the
horizon. Across the river, the Cairo Tower was a tall trellis of light and the
Sheraton and Gezira Sheraton hotels sent rippling reflections from their
hundreds of lit windows along the Nile; above the traffic hum, dance music
drifted upwards to them from the pleasure and restaurant boats on the river.

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Jenny started humming the tune they were playing—Yesterday—then said in

his ear, “That’s what I’d like to do, dance.” She picked up the remote control unit
of the TV set and thumbed the radio buttons until she found a station playing
dance music then came back to slip into Chisholm’s arms and lead him round the
room. Her feet, he noticed, were clumsy on the floor carpet and her head lay
heavy on his shoulder.

They danced for five minutes before Jenny halted and flopped on to the sofa.

“Ewan, I’m pissed,” she said.

“Well, what do you expect when you’ve been working so hard at it.” He put a

hand under her shoulder and grasped her hand to lift her up. “Come on,
sweetheart, I’ll put you to bed before you flake out.”

She resisted, holding her other hand up. “No, wait a minute, Ewan, there’s

something I’ve got to tell you...in private...just for you.” She was slurring her
words and he had to bend over to catch them. “It’s just this...don’t go on hunting
for the jewels.”

“What do you mean, don’t go on?”
“I mean, even if you find them, they’ll never let you get away with them.”
“I don’t mean to get away with them.”
“I know, you’re too honest, Ewan. That’s your trouble.”
“Anyway who are they? Sheldon Wright, Ackerman, Merrill, Brierly?...”
“I don’t know who they are. All I know is they don’t want you to go any

further and they’ll do everything they can to stop you.”

Chisholm waved a hand at what remained of their banquet. “Is this part of

their game?” When Jenny nodded slowly, he went on, “What did Sheldon Wright
ask you to do—get me back on the booze so that I’d be too stoned out of my mind
to go on even if I wanted to? Was that it?”

“Yes, that’s it, and that’s why I’m pissed,” Jenny said. “I couldn’t go through

with it, not with somebody like you, Ewan. I couldn’t do it.”

He lifted her and carried her through to the bedroom. She was half asleep as

he undressed her and put her to bed. He wondered if she had drunk too much to
remember the ideas he had planted in her mind for Sheldon Wright’s benefit.
And if she did and passed them on, would anybody react to them?

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Chapter 20

Sirri Hassanein had the same oval face and erect, hieratic carriage as her

daughter, the same mellifluous voice, the same, slow, precise gestures as she
motioned him to a chair in the vast living-room which gave on to a terrace and
sculpted manicured gardens round a swimming-pool. Only her eyes were
different. This woman’s were cinnamon brown. She called to one of the three
servants in he room to bring them drinks and offer her guest a cigarette.

Chisholm looked round, impressed. Everybody connected with the Garfield

Tates seemed to have prospered. On his way, he had looked at the modern
premises Ahmed Salam Hassanein had built for his car hire and taxi firm. This
was the sort of palace Turkish and British pasha built for themselves when they
ruled in Egypt.

“I’m sorry my husband isn’t here, Mr. Chisholm. He would have been

honored to meet someone who is writing about a man he admired so much.”

Chisholm murmured that he would be glad to meet her husband. In fact, he

had verified Hassanein was out of town for two days before ringing to arrange
this meeting with Mouna’s mother.

To his astonishment, Sirri Hassanein confessed she already knew quite a bit

about him. “Mouna and I keep in touch by phone, for as you know she has had
a...well, a sort of contretemps with my husband.”

He small-talked until the servants had disappeared, then said, “I hope you

won’t think this indiscreet, Madam Hassanein, but did you know your step-sister,
Ceti Kanfer, was Sir William Garfield Tate’s mistress?”

Sirri Hassanein laughed. “Of course I did. Everybody knew they had been

lovers for years...that is, everybody in their immediate circle.”

“Including Lady Garfield Tate, would you say?”
“Yes, I’m certain she knew and had known for years, for her husband spent

more time with Ceti than with her, and he made no secret of his preference.” Sirri
chose a cigarette and from somewhere, a servant’s hand appeared with a light.
“Everybody also knew that Virginia Garfield Tate lived her own life and had a
great many lovers, as anyone who knew her will tell you.”

“Did you ever hear anyone say or hint that Garfield Tate and your step-sister

were murdered?”

It seemed those eyes darkened to date-stones as she pondered the question.

But she smiled and shrugged. “You know, Mr. Chisholm, in Egypt everybody has
a different opinion about everything, even the time of day. I heard it was murder,
then a double suicide, then the obvious conclusion that it was a tragic accident. I
believe the third version.”

“But even the police thought it might be murder.”
“Perhaps—though why did they not prove it by catching the murderer?”
Chisholm realized he would get nowhere following that line. “Of course, you

will remember the night of the murder?” She nodded. “Do you remember when
you heard the news that night?”

Her gaze followed the smoke spiraling in the air-conditioned room. She

glanced at him as though wondering about his question. “I remember it was a
Saturday,” she said. “It was just before eleven that night. The police had arrived
at Lady Garfield Tate’s flat just about the time my husband drove her home from
the opera. He gave me the sad news when he came home.”

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“You’re sure about the time?”
She stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette. “Yes,” she said. “Let me see...it

was eleven...no, I’m certain it was before eleven...about ten minutes before...I had
just switched off the late TV bulletin when Ahmed arrived at the door.” She
looked askance at him. “Why, was there something odd about the time?...”

“No, it’s just a detail for the book, that’s all.”
For half an hour they chatted about Garfield Tate and Ceti Kanfer before he

rose to leave. His most important question he had kept for the end. “By the way,”
he said, “can you tell me where Mouna is now? She had an appointment with me
two mornings ago to explore a pyramid and she didn’t turn up. I wondered if
anything had happened to her.”

“Not that I know of.” She smiled as she got up to accompany him to the

entrance. “You know Mouna by now. She often disappears for days at a time
down some pyramid or other. She’ll ring today or tomorrow and when she does
I’ll tell her to get in touch with you.”

Chisholm walked to the bus stop. Sirri Hassanein had lied about Mouna. That

was etched on her face, the lie and the worry she felt. She knew where the girl was
but could not reveal this to him. But she had not lied about the time Hassanein
came home that night. Before eleven, she said. Perhaps ten minutes before. Even
had Hassanein got in at the latest time quoted by his wife, how could he have
driven Virginia Garfield Tate from the opera to her flat, put her car away in the
garage, collected his own car and driven home by eleven?

Chisholm had studied the opera program for that Saturday evening.

Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann began at eight-thirty and ran for two and a half
hours, including the intervals. He had checked with the Cairo Opera staff and the
opera had ended at two minutes to eleven.

To cut that journey to the minimum time in light traffic, he reckoned it would

then have taken Hassanein at least quarter of an hour to drive through the opera
crown across two bridges to the Garden City flat rented by the Garfield Tates, and
at least another quarter of an hour to reach home.

That meant getting home no earlier than eleven-thirty.
So, where was Hassanein that night? And if he did not drive Virginia Garfield

Tate to the opera, who did? Brierly, or one of Hassanein’s cronies? After all, dress
anybody his size in chauffeur’s uniform with a cap on his head and the skip pulled
down and who among the opera crowd would know the difference on an October
night at eight-thirty or eleven?

No wonder Heykal thought he was plowing through sand when everybody he

suspected had an alibi. What was it he had said about the British Embassy? Don’t
expect help from them? Did they have something to hide as well?

He made a mental note to track down Frank Bailey, whom Heykal had singled

out as the only person on the embassy staff at that time who might help. As the
former security officer, he would have known what happened at the embassy in
the hours and days following Garfield Tate’s death.

At 7.30 that evening, just as he was leaving his room to have dinner with Zein

in the hotel-owner’s quarters, his phone rang. It was Sirri Hassanein and she
sounded distraught. “Mr. Chisholm, excuse me, but I have something very
important and urgent to tell you and I must be quick. Mouna might not have
been free to keep her appointment with you...”

“What do you mean ‘not free’...has she been kidnapped?”
“No, but she is not free to move...I’ve only just learned she is in a flat in Al

Azhar Street, Number 18bis...and I am afraid for her.”

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“What do you mean, afraid? Who is holding her?”
“I cannot say...but can you go there and help her.”
“Of course, I’ll go straight away.”
“But Mr. Chisholm, please be careful...it may be dangerous...but please do not

tell the police...you promise?”

“Yes, I promise.”
“Mr. Chisholm, perhaps I should not say this, but you probably know...Mouna

loves you...take care of her.” A click and the line went dead.

Chisholm sat for several moments pondering that enigmatic call. Mouna had

been virtually kidnapped. But who would hold her against her will without being
accused of kidnapping her? Only her step-father. Her mother knew this and yet
wanted him to confront her husband and free her daughter. Was Sirri Hassanein
leading him into a trap? It looked suspiciously like it. But trap or no trap he had
to go.

He could ring Mabruk, tell him about Hassanein and ask for his protection;

but he had promised Sirri Hassanein he would not contact the police. Well, he
wouldn’t—but this time he’d make sure they tailed him.

Yet, when he went downstairs, none of the men who haunted Zein’s small bar

or the coffee shop opposite, was there. Zein had not seen anybody for hours. As
he rattled and whined out of the courtyard in the Deux Chevaux, he cursed
Mabruk. Gum-shoeing him for more than a month, and now when he needed him
and his detectives, nobody.

Number 18bis Al Azhar Street was an old block of half a dozen flats. No light

on the first floor. Chisholm walked through to the courtyard and noticed a first-
floor back room was lit. Bracing himself, he soft-footed up the one flight of stairs.
On the landing there were two flats. No names on the doors. He rang the bell of
the right-hand flat.

Before anybody had time to open the door, Chisholm felt huge hands grasp

him round the waist, lift him a yard off the floor, spin him round and thrust him
through the opposite door into a dimly-lit hall. There, he was sent flying through
an open door into the front room. Behind him the front door banged and a
massive figure darted towards him.

Chisholm got to his feet but the big man sprang across the room and pinioned

his arms. “One sound or one twitch out of you and I will kill you,” he snarled in
his ear. Expert hands ran over Chisholm’s bush jacket and trousers searching for
weapons.

“Who told you I was here?” he asked in a rasping voice.
“If you are Ahmed Hassanein, it was your wife. She only told me her daughter

was being held here against her will.”

“So her hero thinks he will come here and free her, is that it?”
“Why are you holding her?”
“This is my business.” Hassanein picked him up and thrust him into a chair.

“I should have killed you that night in the policeman’s house,” he muttered. “But
maybe it is a good job I didn’t.”

“So, you killed Captain Heykal, and you also killed Sarwat and Aisha. Why did

you have to kill them?”

“Because they got in my way—like you.”
Hassanein went to the window and parted the curtains to gaze into the street.

His huge frame was silhouetted against the window and Chisholm saw he held an
automatic pistol on his right hand. “Your police friends have deserted you
tonight,” he said.

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“I wouldn’t be too sure of that. They know all about you.”
Hassanein laughed. “So, why have they waited twenty-five years.”
“They now know you killed Sarwat and Heykal and they think they know

why?”

“Oh, why?”
You killed Sarwat because he had three of Garfield Tate’s jewels and you

believed he knew about the rest of them. And you killed Heykal because he had
somehow stumbled on your motive for killing Garfield Tate and your wife’s step-
sister, Ceti Kanfer, and he could now prove how you murdered them and fixed
your alibi.”

“Did he tell you?”
“No—but I know somebody wore your uniform and drove Lady Garfield Tate

to the opera the night you murdered her husband and his mistress.”

Hassanein turned from the window. He was no longer laughing. “And why do

you think I didn’t kill you when I could have done it a dozen times in the last
week?”

“Because you thought I knew where Garfield Tate had hidden his jewel hoard

and I would lead you to it.”

During this dialogue, Chisholm was watching the other man, sizing him up.

Hassanein was well over six feet tall, built like a shot-putter and as strong as a
Nile water buffalo. Looking at him, he realized why Heykal had finished as if he
had tangled with a grizzly bear. He remembered his own helpless feeling against
the savage strength of the man. Now, if he tried to fight and run, this ruthless
man would pick him up and break him over his knee like a dry stick.

From Hassanein’s reaction, he could see his guess was right: Garfield Tate’s

chauffeur knew about the jewels and meant to seize them for himself. But since
when had he known about them? Mouna had never mentioned he had any
interest in the pyramids, and he would surely have known where Garfield Tate
was working in those last days and had a go at finding the treasured had he been
aware the archaeologist had discovered and hidden it.

Who had told him? Sarwat, before he was strangled? Or one of his old

accomplices, perhaps even the one who hired him to murder Garfield Tate and
Ceti Kanfer at Meydum?

“What are they worth, archaeologist, these jewels?” Hassanein asked in that

raucous peasant voice.

“On the open market about twenty or thirty millions pounds sterling.”
Hassanein had been pacing up and down, stopping now and again to peer

through the curtains. He broke stride when Chisholm quoted the figure of thirty
million pounds. Crossing the room to a wall with a square meter of tapestry on it,
he flicked this aside and opened a small safe. He reached inside and brought out
the bangle and earrings Sarwat had shown Chisholm.

“You mean things like these are worth that much?” he said as he stuffed them

back in the safe and locked it.

“They’re unique pieces and they have historical value, that’s why.”
“And you know where they are?”
Chisholm looked at him. If this man thought he knew the hiding-place, he

would keep him and Mouna alive—at least until he had used them.

“I have an idea,” he said.
“Where?”
“Where Garfield Tate and his assistant were working before your murdered

them—in the Bent Pyramid.”

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“Bent Pyramid, eh!” Again, he halted his pacing to peer at Chisholm. “One

thing I cannot understand—why did they send a drunk like you, Chisholm, out
here to find the jewels?”

“They? Who are they?”
“You would like to know that, wouldn’t you?” He chuckled. “But they

wouldn’t have sent you if they hadn’t thought you could find them. And according
to my little brat of a step-daughter you’re an expert on pyramids.”

“You’ve seen Sheldon Wright, the curator of the Aspenwall, haven’t you?”
Hassanein did not answer. Instead, he reached out and grabbed both lapels of

Chisholm’s bush jacket with one hand and pulled them together with force then
twisted them until Chisholm was gasping for breath. “I am asking the questions,
and you...you just shut your mouth and do what you’re told or I’ll shut you up
forever. Understand?” He released his hold and Chisholm sucked breath into his
lungs. “Understand?” Hassanein insisted.

“What do you want me to do?”
“In half an hour when it is dark you are going to the Bent Pyramid to lead me

to those jewels.”

Chisholm shook his head. “I will do nothing until I see your step-daughter,

and I am not moving from here unless she goes with me.”

“I give the orders.”
“Then you’ll never find the jewels,” Chisholm said. “In fact, no one will ever

find them where they are hidden.”

“And you will be dead.”
“I’ll be dead anyway, so a few hours sooner doesn’t make any difference.”
“Maybe I can change your mind.” As Hassanein spoke, he drove a fist into

Chisholm’s face catapulting him over the chair and on to the floor. He lay there
until Hassanein pulled him to his feet then banged him against the wall, knocking
the breath out of him.

Chisholm filled his lungs and yelled with all the power he could summon,

hoping to alert the other tenants in the building. Hassanein cursed and clapped a
hand over Chisholm’s face choking off the sound. “Shut up you little bastard, or
I’ll do what I did to Heykal,” he growled.

Someone next door was hammering on the floor. Hassanein cursed then

placed his pistol against Chisholm’s head and pushed him through the living-
room door. He opened another door in the entrance hall, thrust him inside and
followed him.

There was more light in this bedroom. On a chair in the middle of the room

Mona was sitting, her mouth gagged with sticking plaster, her hands tied behind
her back and her ankles bound. With his gun, Hassanein motioned Chisholm to
the seat beside her. He ripped the gag off Mouna’s face and she yelped with pain.

“Make one sound and I will gag the both of you,” he said, going to the window

and looking out.

“Ewan, he used me to trap you,” Mouna whispered.
“He would have caught me anyway.”
“He is mad.”
“Just do what he says,” he whispered back.
Hassanein returned. Pulling Chisholm’s hands behind his back, he bound

them so tightly the cord cut into the flesh. He went into the hall, dialed a number
and talked to someone in a voice too low for them to catch what he was saying.

“What does he want with us?” Mouna whispered.

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“He thinks I know where the jewels are in the Bent Pyramid,” Chisholm said.

“All I hope we can do is lose him inside the pyramid and at least one of us can
escape.”

“But he will shoot us if we find the jewels.”
“He’ll shoot us anyway,” Chisholm said. “He has already killed Garfield Tate

and your aunt, he has killed Sarwat and his servant and Heykal, the police
captain. Two more murders won’t make any difference to him.”

Mouna sat there stunned by what she had heard. “Are you sure of all this,

Ewan?”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt about. The police know but haven’t got

proof.”

“What...”
At that moment Hassanein returned. He bent down to cut Mouna’s ankles

free then stood over them both. “Now listen both of you—you are going
downstairs in front of me. You”—he pointed at Chisholm—“get into the car boot
and stay there. If I hear one sound from you, I shall shoot her. Understand?”

Chisholm nodded. They heard the sound of a car being driven into the

courtyard behind the flats. Hassanein parted the curtains, peered out then
gestured them to their feet and escorted them out of the flat and downstairs.

A gray Mercedes sat in the corner of the courtyard. Chisholm recognized it as

the car that had followed him on his visits to pyramid sites. Hassanein lifted the
boot lid, pushed Chisholm inside, closed and locked the lid. He sat Mouna in the
front passenger’s seat.

At that night hour, he drove slowly, taking the route through Opera Square

and Cairo’s busiest streets; he kept his eye on the rear mirror to make sure
nobody was tailing him. Crossing the Nile into Gezira, he drove past the
racecourse then headed for the pyramids road.

Sitting beside him, her hands still bound behind her back, Mouna watched

that square head, the massive hook nose and the cruel clench of his lower jaw.
She hated him. Had her hands been free with a knife or gun in them, she would
have killed him there and then.

“Why did you kill Uncle Bill and Aunt Ceti?” she asked.
“Sit there and shut up.”
Just one question—does my mother know you killed them and the other

people?”

“Nobody knows.” Hassanein took his eye off the road to turn and scowl at her.

“And nobody is going to know. “

“What about God?”
“God? I do not mind if he knows as long as he doesn’t tell anybody.” He

chuckled at his own witticism.

As they passed them, she had never seen the Giza pyramids look so beautiful;

they seemed adrift in the floodlit beams that etched their huge triangular shapes
against the pitch-black night. Pharaoh Kephren’s fragmented face on the Sphinx
vibrated in the dazzling beams of the searchlights. She could not understand that
even a black-hearted villain like her step-father could pass them without a glance.
But he did.

On the canal road, she prayed the car would break down or run off the road

and the delay would give the police or Zein time to discover they were missing
and start searching.

But within half an hour they had reached Dahshur without trouble.

Hassanein hid the Mercedes among the palm trees on the east side of Dahshur

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Lake, locking her door while he opened the boot and pulled Chisholm out.
Evidently he had given some forethought to their expedition, for in the boot he
had several torches, three full water bottles and packets of sandwiches in two
knapsacks. One knapsack he handed to Chisholm, the other two he slung over his
own shoulders.

“You keep ahead of me,” he ordered. “No lights. And don’t forget I’m behind

you with this.” He waved his gun at them.

They felt their way over the hard, undulating sand to the Bent Pyramid, a

dark smudge against the starry night sky. A breeze had sprung up blowing sand
and grit round them. In the pyramid lee, Hassanein called them to a halt. “North
entrance,” he said, proving he knew something about the structure.

Chisholm turned right inside the girdle wall and followed the pyramid base

round to the north face. They scrambled and climbed the twenty steps to the
main entrance, Mouna first, followed by Chisholm. Hassanein brought up the
rear. He pointed his torch into the entrance, then handed another torch to
Mouna:

“You go first,” He ordered.
Inside the Bent Pyramid, the main gallery dropped steeply over a distance

about ninety yards to the first chamber, well below the pyramid base. Only forty
inches high, the gallery was a tight squeeze even for a slim figure like Chisholm
and he advanced slowly. Although he had done this trip through the pyramid
hundreds of times when he was exploring it as an archaeologist, he now panted
and sweated before he had gone halfway.

Behind him, from the grunting and cursing, Hassanein was making even

heavier going, his vast body filling the narrow tunnel and his breath coming in
short, sharp gasps as he crawled onwards. However, he still had breath enough to
shout to Mouna and Chisholm that any false move and he would shoot them out
of hand.

Where could they lose this madman? As he crawled forward, Chisholm was

mapping every gallery, shaft and chamber in this pyramid, wondering where they
might lose Hassanein. Pharaoh Sneferu had wrought miracles of architectural
ingenuity to make this pyramid proof against robbers just as cunning and
ingenious as his builders; he had constructed hidden passages protected by
portcullises and had designed the passages to the burial chambers vertically
which made access to these chambers only possible after difficult and dangerous
climbs.

Hassanein might not know it, but he would have to scale at least two walls

using both hands; and that might give both Mouna and him the chance to escape
and lose the murderer in one of the more intricate passages.

From the entrance, their exhausting crawl took them half an hour. But finally

they reached the horizontal corridor about sixty feet below the pyramid base and
near its center. There, they squatted on the granite floor to recover their wind and
strength before continuing. Hassanein directed his torch beam upwards along the
smooth wall of the chamber, about forty feet high; above that lay the two burial
chambers; and on top of them some five million tons of limestone blocks rising to
just over 720 feet.

As they sat there, a hollow, booming noise echoed from the corbelled roof and

side of the small chamber. Like a giant drum-beat, it reverberated all round them.
Beside him, Chisholm felt Mouna shiver.

“What’s that noise?” she asked.

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“It’s the wind,” he whispered back. “It comes through the air vents and hits

and burial chambers above us. Even dead pharaohs needed air to breathe.”

As he spoke, it struck him that Hassanein did not ask the same question and

seemed to ignore or dismiss the booming sound. Why, when it was so loud and
sinister? Chisholm concluded he already knew what it was. That meant he knew
the Bent Pyramid well.

After ten minutes, Hassanein beamed his torch on the vertical ladder leading

upwards to the first burial chamber. “You go first and wait at the top,” he ordered
Mouna. When she reached the opening into the first burial chamber, he shouted
to her to light his way upwards. “You wait here,” he said to Chisholm. “And if you
attempt to escape or make even one move, I shoot her.” With the gun in his hand,
he clawed upwards. When he had reached and passed through the opening, he
beckoned Chisholm to follow.

Now they stood in what was probably the burial chamber of one of Pharaoh

Sneferu’s queens. A curious structure, like an interior pyramid with its walls
corbelled inwards and almost converging sixty feet above them.

Chisholm was observing Hassanein aiming his torch at the point on the south

wall two rows above them where the corbelling began—the point where the
pyramid builders had hidden the passage from this lower chamber into the
bigger, upper chamber where Sneferu would be buried.

Only a man who had studied the architecture of this pyramid on the spot

would have known where that secret passage lay. This man had done his
homework. He had known the north entrance, had heard the booming sound
before and knew what it was.

What did it mean? Probably not much. As Garfield Tate’s driver, he must

have seen the inside of dozens of pyramids; and his master had accomplished
much of his work here. Hassanein had doubtless slithered through these galleries
scores of times with food, drink and messages. That accounted for his conviction
that his former master’s jewel hoard was most likely to be hidden in this, his
favorite pyramid, and one of the most mysterious.

“We go in the same order,” Hassanein said when they had rested for five

minutes.

“Where are we heading?” Chisholm asked.
“You know where you think the jewels are, so I’m following you.” Hassanein

beamed his torch on Chisholm’s eyes, dazzling him. . “But no tricks or you won’t
be leading me anywhere...you’ll be dead.”

As he waited for Mouna, then Hassanein to climb the forty feet to the hidden

passage, Chisholm was turning over his plan of action. That opening through
which Mouna had disappeared led into a narrow, crooked tunnel that sloped
upwards over a distance of about sixty feet and ended in a horizontal corridor
thirty feet long running east to west. Turn east and you went through a portcullis
into Sneferu’s burial chamber. Turn west and you passed through another
portcullis and into the gallery leading to the rediscovered western entrance. Both
those stone gates were always open.

Now, if he could distract Hassanein’s attention and make a run from the

western portcullis and force it shut behind them, they could head for the western
entrance and be there long before Hassanein could retrace his way through the
two chambers and the longer north-entrance gallery. Failing that, he might hold
Hassanein off long enough for Mouna to make her escape.

“Chisholm, do you want me to shoot you there, or are you coming up?”

Hassanein shouted from the opening.

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Chisholm mounted the rungs slowly. When he arrived at the opening, to his

surprise, Hassanein beckoned him to follow Mouna up the twisting gallery.
Perhaps he did not realize the western entrance connected with the corridor and
the pharaoh’s burial chamber. So much the better. It gave them a head start on
him. Chisholm thrust himself into the tight space and wormed his way forward
before Hassanein could change his mind. Soon, he had outdistanced Hassanein,
who was laboring and had fallen back.

Mouna was just ahead of him. He called softly. “Mouna, at the end, turn left

and push along the corridor to the western gallery...I’ll try to block the portcullis.
Have you got me?”

“Yes, I’ll try,” she gasped.
They were halfway along the tunnel and had at least thirty feet of a lead on

Hassanein, who was shrouded in the dust they were raising and was coughing
and spluttering.

“Keep going, Mouna.”
They, too, were breathing dust and sweating in that airless passage, so narrow

Mouna had to drag her knapsack behind her. She lit their way with her torch.

“Another fifteen feet,” Chisholm called, looking over his shoulder at

Hassanein, now just a glimmer of torchlight, far behind.

As Mouna broke into the corridor and got to her feet, he shouted, “Now run

for it.” Bending double, she ran to the right following her torch beam along the
thirty feet separating them from the portcullis and the western gallery entrance.

Behind her, Chisholm first heard her wail, then shout, “Ewan, it’s blocked.”
“It can’t be blocked...it was open the other day...it can’t be blocked.”
But she was right. Somehow the heavy granite slabs of the portcullis had

fallen across the gallery sealing off the tunnel that would have taken them to
freedom.

“Mouna, the torch.” He shone the beam all round the portcullis. It hadn’t

dropped of its own weight. Those black marks and the broken rocks told him
what had happened. Someone had used a knob of plastic explosive to move those
slabs.

He turned to look back. He could only see the reflected glimmer of

Hassanein’s torch at the other of the corridor they had just traversed.

“You bastard,” he roared, his voice echoing along the crooked gallery.
His shout was met first with a loud laugh, then Hassanein bellowed his name.

“Chisholm.” He knew what had happened before the other man roared again.
“Chisholm, you’re trapped. The other gate is blocked as well. This is your only
way out.”

Chisholm and Mouna turned and hurried back to the crooked passage.

Hassanein had retreated from where they had last spotted him and now squatted
near the entrance to the lower burial chamber, silhouetted in his torchlight.

“Take one step nearer me and I’ll blow your heads off.” His laugh filled the

forty feet of gallery between them. “I thought I would give you both plenty of time
to look for Garfield Tate’s jewels—an eternity of time.”

“Don’t you want the jewels?” Chisholm shouted back.
“No, you can keep my share.” Again the bellowing laugh.
In the glow from Hassanein’s torch, Chisholm saw he had a cigarette lighter

in his hand. A length of fuse hung from the gallery roof. Estimating it at just over
two yards, Chisholm reckoned it would burn for about thirty seconds. Just
enough time to allow Hassanein to reach the bottom of the lower burial chamber.

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But not enough time for Mouna or him to get there and snuff out the flame before
an explosion brought down the whole gallery.

“Sorry I could not give you both a burial place in the pharaoh’s chamber,”

Hassanein shouted, then laughed at his joke. Flame spurted in his hand and the
glowing fuse tip began to travel towards the gallery ceiling. Hassanein had
slithered backwards to disappear into the lower burial chamber.

For a moment, Chisholm hesitated, wondering if he should risk scrambling

down the gallery to stop the fuse before it reached the detonator and the
explosive. No, it was impossible. And where they now stood, they were too near
the point of the explosion. He thrust Mouna backwards into the corridor. “Up
against the back wall,” he cried, realizing the blast would pick them up and ram
them against the wall and either injure or kill them if they had no support.

They just had time to reach the back wall and brace themselves against it

when they heard the crack. A pressure wave pinned them both against the wall,
its punch knocking the breath out of them, leaving them stunned and deafened.
The whole gallery shook and vibrated as the roof where Hassanein had sat
collapsed and blocked the passage. For a moment, Chisholm feared the explosion
and the colossal weight of the huge pyramid would bring the whole gallery down
and bury them alive. But the roof resisted and gradually the tremor died away.
However, a thick dust pall filled the passage choking both of them. They were also
deafened by the blast.

Everything went still. In the dead darkness, Chisholm felt something groping

for his shoulder. He caught Mouna’s hand. Suddenly, she threw her arms round
him and started sobbing. He could feel her whole body tremble against him.

“Don’t worry, Mouna, I’ll get us out of here somehow,” he shouted in her ear,

hoping she did not detect the doubt in his voice.

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Chapter 21

When the dust had settled, Chisholm felt his way along the passage in the

dark to the other portcullis, which should also have been open to allow access to
the king’s burial chamber. There, he lit the torch and examined it. That, too, had
been dynamited. In any case, neither he nor anybody else had ever found
evidence of a second passage leading out of the main burial chamber. He snapped
off the torch to save their one light and groped back to where Mouna was sitting.

She had recovered her calm. “Ewan, it’s my fault,” she said. “He forced me to

tell where you thought the jewels were, so he could come and set this trap.”

“Never mind. What do we have in the knapsack?”
She opened it. “A packet of sandwiches and a bottle of water. It is a wonder he

left us even that.”

“It was to stop us from suspecting what he was really up to,” he said. “We

keep them until we’re really hungry and thirsty. We eat the sandwiches crumb by
crumb and drink the water drop by drop. We’ve got to last out.”

“Do you think they’ll send a search party for us?”
To reassure her, he said Yes. Zein would make every effort to trace them when

he did not return or leave a message. But privately, he did not give much for their
chances of being located even by a professional search party here. Hardly
anybody visited the Bent Pyramid, and any guide who got as far as the lower
chamber and noticed rubble would backtrack; he might report it, but nobody
would hurry to clear the passage or consider that it had been blocked by
explosives. Even if they did, that would take days or weeks and by then they’d
both be dead.

So sure he had entombed them and they would never get out, Hassanein had

not bothered to search them. They had both kept their penknives and watches,
and Chisholm had a box of matches and five cigarettes. No tools. However, the
knapsack had wire struts, and he spent an hour ripping the canvas apart in the
dark and recovering these. If they had to dig or scrape, they’d come in handy. As
he worked, he wondered how long they’d last in this sealed passage. They had five
or six hours’ torchlight. But how much air did they have.

Mentally, he calculated the air volume they would both exchange breathing

normally, then divided it into the air volume of this thirty foot passage. He
reckoned that in twenty hours or so, they would be breathing their own spent
breath. Well, wasn’t that the way they anesthetized laboratory mice and guinea
pigs? Like going to sleep, they said. Only here, they wouldn’t wake up. Funny to
think of dying beside a beautiful creature like Mouna when he had never really
started to know her. She had left her left hand in his and unconsciously he
squeezed it. She responded by snuggling up to him.

Would this be their tomb? Was this their fate? What had they thought—the

pharaohs? Earthly life was only a short prelude to the greater, everlasting life to
come. Which made them build their earthly houses and palaces in mud brick and
their pyramid tombs in eternal rock to contain their mummified bodies and their
Ka, or spirit. If they were right, the pharaohs, the Ka of Sneferu was still roaming
this gigantic spiritual home and if Sneferu was right their Kas, his and Mouna’s,
would doubtless meet it after their earthly death in one of the maze of galleries
and chambers the pharaoh had ordered for the Bent Pyramid.

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Curious how he had to be trapped in dead darkness in an airless passage at

the bottom of the third biggest pyramid in Egypt to understand how Garfield Tate
really felt about his earthly dust mingling with that of the pharaohs, and how he
had left word...

Suddenly, something like a camera shutter came down on those ideas—but

triggered off a whole series, a huge starburst of images. Almost as though they
had lain dormant in his brain, waiting for something to touch the right node.

Lampson on the Step Pyramid talking about Garfield Tate’s wish...
Kensington Cemetery and the missing mourners at his funeral...
Brierly burning the midnight oil while he shredded and destroyed those

compromising documents...

Heykal warning him off the British Embassy staff...
Garfield Tate’s coffin on the Cairo Airport tarmac...
Hassanein’s shout: “Sorry I couldn’t put you in the burial chamber...”
Why wasn’t Hassanein interested in the jewels? Because he knew where they

were? Or rather, he knew they weren’t here, in the Bent Pyramid? Or because he
hoped to find them himself? No. He was sure Hassanein was following advice or
orders. Whose advice and orders? Not Sheldon Wright’s as he had supposed, for
he would have heard from Jenny about the Bent Pyramid and Hassanein would
not have had to force Mouna to tell him about it.

Anyway, all his facts and theories were immaterial now...
“Ewan darling, we are not going to die.”
“Who says? Your Nubian soothsayer? If she has any ideas on how to get us

out of here, let me have them.” He realized how bitter his voice sounded and how
sarcastic that statement must seem. He put an arm round her and pressed her to
him. .”I’m sorry, Mouna.”

“I feel it here we are not going to die in this place.” She took his hand and

placed it over her heart. It surprised him how slowly and steadily it beat. Didn’t
she have the same doubts and fears that he had?

“I am going to look at the passage,” she said, releasing her hand. He felt her

slip away then heard her slither down the crooked passage Hassanein had
blocked.

When she was out of earshot, he fumbled for one of his cigarettes and lit it

with a match as much to see the glowing tip as for the taste and smell of tobacco.
It has less of both taste and smell because he could not see the smoke. He held
the match up, letting it burn to the end then cursing himself for needlessly
consuming oxygen. He was about to snuff the match out when he suddenly
noticed the thin spear of flame quiver.

Did that mean air? Where from, in a sealed passage? Maybe it was Mouna

who was displacing it with her movements. Or it might be seeping through the
rock fall.

On her return, he had her sit still for quarter of an hour then repeated the

experiment with the match. They both watched, mesmerized, as the flame
flickered slightly.

“At least we might not suffocate,” he said.
“But where is it coming from?”
“Probably from some hidden air vent. The old pyramid builders always left a

vent to give their pharaohs air.”

“Could it be coming from the shaft?” she asked.
“The shaft? The shaft? What makes you say that?”

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“I looked at the debris at the end of the passage and there is a hollow just in

front of it. Isn’t that were the shaft is?”

Chisholm thought for a moment. “You may be right—but I thought there was

six feet of stone between the passage and the shaft.”

One after the other, they crawled along the blocked tunnel. Mouna was right.

Part of the roof dislodged by the blast had found a weak spot on the gallery floor
and left a hole three feet round by two feet deep. Chisholm reckoned that hole
was about five yards from the entrance to the lower chamber. Yet, the vertical
shaft was no more that two meters from the corbelled vault of the chamber. Was
there, then, another chamber?

Mouna had squeezed herself alongside him. “Can you feel anything?” she

asked.

He found a match and struck it. They watched the flame spurt then tremble.

Air.

“I can feel it on my face, “ she said.
“But it’s not from the shaft,’ he said, explaining his reasoning.
“Then, there is another passage.”
Chisholm spent precious minutes of torchlight scanning the hole from every

angle. If he had guessed right, the gallery so many archaeologists had searched
for in this pyramid started from the shaft and probably passed directly beneath
them, heading south. Maybe at one time it had connected with the crooked
gallery, or with some hidden slot in the corbelled roof of the lower burial
chamber.

He took stock of their possessions. They had a penknife each and three wire

struts from the knapsack, five hours of torchlight if sparingly used, thirty-odd
matches, two sandwiches and a bottle of water. They would have to work in the
dark, like moles, burrowing inch by inch into that mass of broken rock.

He wondered if they would survive.

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Chapter 22

Chisholm explained to Mouna how they would try to pierce the hole created

by the explosion. He would do the digging if she could remove the debris that he
loosened and freed. To save their torch, they worked in dead darkness. Chisholm
hung over the hole groping and feeling for the pile of rock chips and the
crumbling earth round them. Using the wire struts from the knapsack, he
loosened the fragment of earth and rocks. He had to push each handful behind
him for Mouna to retrieve the debris and deposit it further back in the gallery.

He toiled slowly, for in that tight space with hardly any air, he panted and

sweated at the slightest effort. He could only work for ten-minute spells before
resting for five to get his breath and strength back. But he was making progress,
widening and deepening the hole.

“Water, Ewan?” Mouna asked after an hour and a half, holding out the water

bottle.

“No, keep it until we really need it.”
For another two hours he kept going, digging and levering the rubble free

until he reached a massive stone block wedged firmly in the hole. Nothing he
tried moved it a millimeter. In the torchlight they both stared at it then at each
other. It seemed hopeless.

“We have a rest,” Mouna suggested. “And some of the sandwich and a drink.”
Exhausted with his effort, he agreed. They both crawled back to the much

bigger passage where they had room to stretch their cramped and tired limbs.
Mouna unwrapped the sandwiches, broke off two inches, halved this and gave
him half.

“Crumb by crumb,” he said, knowing the act of chewing might take their

minds off their desperate situation.

She handed him the water bottle. He unscrewed the top and put it to his

mouth. His nose should have warned him. Perhaps it did. But he had the steel
bottle neck in his mouth and he had already tasted and swallowed a mouthful of
the liquor before he could stop himself.

“You bastard,” he shouted. “You evil bastard.” His voice, full of rage, bounced

back at them along the closed passage.

But he had another mouthful just the same.
“Ewan, what is it?” Mouna put out her withered hand to feel for his arm and

grip it.

“He’s filled the water bottle with whisky, the bastard,” he said. “And God help

me, I feel like drinking it all just like he wanted me to do.” He groped for her
other hand and thrust the bottle into it. “Keep it away from me for God’s sake,
keep it away.”

“No Ewan, it’s liquid and we have to drink or we’ll both die of thirst.”
She put the bottle to her lips and swallowed some of the liquor then coughed

as the raw spirit hit the back of her throat. “I’ve never tasted whisky before,” she
said. “What is it like being drunk?”

“Being drunk’s great if you could stay drunk for ever and if everybody else was

in the same high orbit. But they’re not, they’re sober and you’re the odd man out
and there’s always the reckoning tomorrow or the day after when they tell you
what an idiot you’ve been, what sins or crimes you’ve committed.

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“You listen to their fine, reasonable words then you say, ‘Damn them all,” and

drink to that and so it goes on until you’re no longer responsible for yourself or
your actions and you’re killing yourself slowly, and you know it. That’s how I was,
and I don’t want to go down that road again.”

He felt for her arm and traveled along it until he reached the bottle. He

grasped it and pulled it free against her resistance. “It’s all right, sweetheart, I’m
not going to be the first archaeologist in the history of Egyptology to die drunk in
a pyramid. I just want to stop you from experimenting with that liquor.”

She released her hold. “We’re going to get out,” she said, “And when I do I’m

going to get really drunk, just once.”

“If we get out I might give you a few wrinkles and a bit of help.”
While they sat there, Chisholm ripped the knapsack apart, cutting its canvas

into strips and knotting them together; its straps he sliced into two long strips to
lengthen his rope. It was an idea that probably wouldn’t work, he told her. When
he finished and as they were about to crawl back to the rock fall, Mouna suddenly
stopped. “Listen,” she said.

A resonant, low-pitched thrumming sound reached them. Like distant,

muffled drumming. It did not appear to come from the north but the south,
behind them.

What lay behind them? Nothing that Chisholm could imagine.
Yet, when he reflected, he felt sure that sound was wind funneling along some

gallery that must connect with an entrance, either the western or the northern. If
only they cold find it...

“Let’s get going,” he said, coiling his makeshift rope round his shoulder and

crawling into the crooked gallery.

Now, using some of his precious torchlight, he began to scrape round the big

boulder which blocked the middle of the hole. He was also studying the huge gash
in the roof where the explosion had loosened and demolished the big rock and
several others. For two hours, they scraped and gouged at the rock chips and
earth before retreating to the passage to rest again.

“Ewan, prends un peu de whisky,” Mouna pleaded then set an example by

swallowing some herself and spluttering at its rasp.

He took two mouthfuls then banged the top back on the bottle as though it

reeked of hellfire. He cursed himself for craving the rest. He felt as if he had
revived every drink-starved cell in his body. His throat burned with thirst for the
remainder of that bottle.

“How long have we been here?” he asked.
She looked at her watch. “Eleven hours since we are trapped.”
Eleven hours. He would have guessed double that time. But in this

claustrophobic hole with no light, the senses lost their way. They tried to eat
another bit of their sandwiches, but even in minute quantities, the bread and
meat extract stuck to their parched mouths.

Chisholm did not need to ask how Mouna felt. He could guess. He himself

was light-headed. As though his mind and body had parted company. Maybe they
had. Maybe his soul and he had parted company and it was wandering round this
tomb communing with Sneferu and his family and those of his retinue buried
with him here.

When they started work again, he felt weak, the torchlight dazzled him and

the tunnel roof and walls seemed to threaten to topple inwards on both of them.

He had to try to find a rock in that roof which would hold him, and perhaps

Mouna as well.

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She held on to his left hand while he balanced on the edge of the hole and,

one-handed, looped his rope round a projecting rock and tied it. He tested it if
would hold him then bound the rope round his waist and let it take the strain of
his body.

Taking a deep breath, Chisholm stepped into the hole and planted himself in

the middle of the rock that blocked it. In his hand he held about six feet of slack
rope. He ordered Mouna to crawl back at least ten feet from the edge of the hole
and stay there.

“What are you going to do, Ewan?” she called
“Climb up the rope and let myself drop on the rock.”
To make his point, he went up hand over hand to the roof then let go and

plummeted into the hole. He hit the boulder with the full weight of his body and
felt the impact jar every bone in his body. For an instant the rock quivered, but it
resisted. He tried once more without success, though he had moved it an inch or
two. That rock seemed wedged tightly, or perhaps it capped a mound of debris
from the explosion and therefore would never move..

After resting for quarter of an hour, he climbed the six feet to the roof for a

third time. When he looked down, Mouna had crawled into the hole to place
herself on the rock. She was standing there, looking up at him. She had left the
torch alight on the side of the hole.

“Maybe both our weights will free it,” she called.
“If it goes, you’ll kill yourself.”
“I can hang on to something. Now jump.”
Too weak to argue, Chisholm let go his hold on the rope and dropped like a

lump of lead on to the rock.

For a second or two it trembled. Then, before either of them had time to react,

it plummeted into the darkness with Chisholm and Mouna after it. He just had
the presence of mind to grab the girl round the waist before she risked
disappearing along with the big boulder.

He had his arms round her and she was gripping him round the neck, almost

choking him as they hung over the void left by the rock. Chisholm was bearing
both their weights and the thin canvas rope was cutting into his stomach winding
him.

“Mouna,” he gasped, “if I swing us over, can you made the edge.”
“I can try.”
It took them five heart-stopping minutes to turn her round to face the edge.

Then Chisholm reached out a foot and pushed against the pile of rubble and they
swung slowly towards the edge of the hole. Back again, he pushed harder against
the rubble and this time they hit the edge.

“Next time,” he said after a rest to regain his breath.
This time, Mouna got a finger-hold on a rock jutting out from the crumbling

sides of the hole and this stopped their pendulum motion. “Let go,” she cried.

But afraid she might release her hold or the rock might give, he held on to her

suit belt until she had clawed her way over the edge to safety. As he swung back,
she caught one of his hands and held him until he, too, had grasped the rock and
hoisted himself up beside her. There, he collapsed, sucking in the air that swirled
upwards from the hole they had made.

For half an hour they rested to recover their strength and nerve before

shining the torch into the black hole. Its feeble light gave them little idea of what
lay below, but Chisholm reckoned, from the noise of the falling boulder, there
was at least a six-foot drop to the mound of debris they had released.

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Since there was no way of fixing their rope or belaying round anything, they

decided Mouna would make the first attempt. She tied the rope to her suit belt
then lowered herself over the side as he paid out the slack, measuring how much.
Seven...nine...eleven feet of rope.

She must be in the shaft, he thought. If she is then we don’t have enough

rope. That would mean hauling her up, ripping his clothes apart to lengthen the
rope and trying again. No, he wouldn’t. He was too far gone and he’d be damned
if he’d do any more. They’d drink the rest of the whisky and let life go. That’s
what they’d do.

Mouna’s voice came up to him. “My foot’s touching something. More rope.”
He doled out half the rope and thanked God when it went slack.
“It’s the debris,” Mouna shouted with delight.
“If you can stand on it, untie the rope.’
When the rope went slack, he pulled it up then sent down the water bottle

and sandwiches; he tied the rope round the solid rock in the roof, making a hitch
so that he could release it. That rock was six feet above the hole which meant he
could have a drop of three or four feet at the bottom.

With the torch in his pocket, he went down hand over hand until he felt

Mouna put her arms round his legs and guide him on to the pile of rubble.

As he thought, they were about halfway down the shaft that ran parallel with

the lower burial chamber. Running his torch beam round it, he searched the rock
face. “There must be an opening,” he said, explaining that most archaeologists
believed the shaft was there for a purpose and must be connected with some
other passage. And logically, this must begin above the corbelling of the lower
chamber—roughly where they were now.

Foot by foot, they began to search the four sides of the narrow shaft. It was

Mouna who noticed the fissuring on the south side, level with their feet. When
they examined the place, they discovered a rock panel about four feet square and
a foot thick held by no more than an earth joint. As they gouged the earth away,
they could feel a cold draught seeping through the joint. When they levered the
flat rock free, a rush of air hit them blinding them with dust.

Their eyes followed the torch beam. They were staring into a gallery no bigger

than the crooked passage above them where they had been trapped.

Had they discovered the passage Garfield Tate had stumbled on, explored,

sealed and perhaps hidden his jewels?

Chisholm said nothing to Mouna except, “it seems to lead south.”
“Isn’t that where the small satellite pyramid is?”
Chisholm was already inside parading his torch beam along the walls and

floor of the gallery. Deep lines and scratches on the limestone walls suggested
something heavy had been dragged along the passage. Probably a granite
sarcophagus. When she saw the evidence, Mouna cried, “It may be the
sarcophagus Uncle Bill found. Ewan, don’t say we have found the jewels.”

“We have to get there first,” he said.
He had an idea where this tunnel led. And if he guessed right, they had at

least a hundred yards to crawl—down through the Bent Pyramid and the dead
ground between it and the satellite pyramid. He sent Mouna first with the torch
and groped after her, his handkerchief over his nose and mouth against the
choking dust she raised.

As they inched forward, using knees and elbows, they noticed parts of the

gallery had crumbled, probably under the immense weight of the pyramid. After

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all, they had been forced to alter the angle and corbel the burial chambers to
prevent cracking and subsidence.

“Careful over those weak spots,” he called to Mouna, five yards ahead.
“How much further?”
He reckoned they had crawled fifty yards. “Maybe the same again,” he

shouted.

They decided to rest for quarter of an hour before tackling the next section. In

the dark they sat, backs to the wall, holding each other’s hands.

“It must lead to the small pyramid,” Mouna said.
“Looks that way.”
“But they cleared that pyramid in the fifties and found nothing but bits of

sculpture.”

Yes, he knew that. They had thought at one time the satellite pyramid had

contained the mummy of Sneferu’s first queen, the famous Hetepheres. But it
was empty, despoiled by grave robbers, who had no doubt stumbled on this
passage. But had those robbers discovered everything? Once more they inched
forwards, though now they were too feeble to travel more than ten yards at a time
before stopping to suck in air and recover their strength.

Behind her torch and probably mesmerized by its beam, Mouna nearly came

to grief when the tunnel suddenly kinked downwards. She started to slide, but
instinct made her dig her feet into the ground behind her to brake her descent.
She shouted in alarm and Chisholm managed to grab a foot and stop her.

They had come to a steep ramp wide enough for both of them to descend

together, turning round and lying on their bellies and inching down to the
bottom.

At the end of the ramp, the passage opened into a vault of chiseled granite

which they both recognized straight away from the Garfield Tate pictures.

Ewan Chéri, we have found it.” Mouna threw her arms round him and hugged

him in her excitement.

Yes, they had found it. Their torch picked out the detail in the burial vault

Garfield Tate had photographed in black and white twenty-five years before.
There, in the center, was the sarcophagus with its massive granite lid askew just
as he had snapped it. Its sides were decorated with reliefs of Sneferu’s cartouche
and that of the royal princess who had probably been buried there. Everything
tallied—inscriptions, quarry marks—everything.

Everything except the jewels.
Either Garfield Tate had removed them. Or someone had been there before

them.

“Where are they? Have you come all this way for nothing?” Mouna said this

with a sigh and put an arm round Chisholm to console him.

“No, not nothing,” he said.
In fact, he felt as an archaeologist he had triumphed. He had made the right

guesses and the luck that every archaeologist must hope for, had done the rest.
When he thought about it what were the jewels to him, personally? Of course, he
prized them for their beauty, their workmanship, their testimony of that great
Egyptian civilization, and their worth as museum pieces. They would have earned
him a few lines in specialist publications, a headline or two in the popular press
and the reward the Aspenwall governors had promised.

He did not confess to Mouna that he had not really expected to find them

where Garfield Tate had photographed them. Indeed, for weeks now an inner

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voice or perhaps inductive logic and the clues he had garnered whispered they
had already gone.

Back there, trapped in that dark gallery by Hassanein, his mind had begun to

tell him where, then seized up.

As they searched the vault, they found proof the jewels had been there. On the

floor by the south wall of this burial chamber, Chisholm trod on a hollow granite
slab. Lifting it, he discovered a square hole and the rotting remains of a cedar
wood box. A jewel box. Undoubtedly, one of those Garfield Tate had unearthed.

“Uncle Bill must have found them here then photographed them,” Mouna

said.

“That would be my guess, too.”
“So, he probably left them where he found them, but marked the place with

his snapshots of the pyramids.”

“And when he had decided what to do with them, he removed them,”

Chisholm said, though he did not reveal where he thought the archaeologist had
placed them.

“But who would collect these jewels then hide them here?” Mouna asked.
“Anybody’s guess,” he replied. “But if this is Queen Hetepheres’ burial

chamber, hardly any of those jewels belonged to her. He reflected for a moment.”
I think they might have been picked up by some grave robber from the various
pyramids around here and hidden in this floor until he could dispose of them.
Only, he never managed to come back and collect them.”

He might have added that Garfield Tate might have picked them up here and

there in his excavations and his exploration of various pyramids and made a
heterogeneous collection of them until he could find ways of disposing of them or
smuggling them out of Egypt. But he did not want to destroy her illusions about
her Uncle Bill.

“Where do you think they are now?”
“You should ask your step-father that question.”
Share stared at him. “You don’t think he has them?”
“No, but he knew they weren’t here or he’d have stayed with us.”
“So, he must know where they are or who has them.”
“That’s exactly what I think.”

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Chapter 23

From his crumpled and filthy cigarette packet, Chisholm extracted his

second-last cigarette; it had hardly any shag and flamed when he applied a match
to it. He pointed the burning match at the sarcophagus lid and motioned Mouna
towards it. “Sit down there and I’ll tell you everything I know about the Garfield
Tates, your Aunt Ceti, Sarwat, Heykal and how they figure in the story and how
they all become victims of Hassanein for the same reason that he kidnapped and
nearly murdered us—those jewels that were here and have gone God knows
where.”

His match burned out but he did not switch on the torch, knowing they had a

long, dark tunnel to negotiate before they discovered where the entrance was—if
there was one. Sitting, side by side in the fetid and dead darkness, he told Mouna
everything that had happened from the moment he lighted on the photographs
and key Garfield Tate had hidden in his damp basement in south London.

“It was no coincidence that Hassanein came into enough money to start his

business just after the deaths of Garfield Tate and your aunt. It was his pay-off for
murdering them on someone’s orders. At first I reckoned he might have been
given jewels and had sold some of them off. But no, he was given money.

“That must have been Lady Garfield Tate...”
“Maybe Yes and maybe No. At any rate, I’m sure she knew and condoned the

killings, for somebody else drove her to the opera that night, somebody got up to
look like Hassanein.”

“But did she have him killed for the jewels?” Mouna asked. “You said she

didn’t live in great style...and if it was jealousy, why did she wait so long?”

“That bit still puzzles me.” He switched on his torch and directed its beam at

the other side of the burial chamber. “We still have to find a way out of here,” he
said, then asked her to lead the way with the torch.

Beyond the chamber, the gallery narrowed even more than before. Now they

had to maneuver round rock falls every few yards. Chisholm now realized why
nobody had ever penetrated this tunnel from the small, satellite pyramid. Those
who had attempted it evidently believed the way was blocked and gave up.
Garfield Tate must have come their way, from the Bent Pyramid once he had
discovered the hidden shaft and the gallery entrance.

Mouna had stopped. When he squeezed alongside her he realized the gallery

was almost completely blocked by a roof fall. Only a foot of clear space lay
between the roof and the rubble heaped on the gallery floor. Taking turns, they
began to widen this hole by levering out the small rocks and earth. After an hour,
Mouna crawled through and began to enlarge the hole from the other side.

When he thought it large enough, Chisholm squirmed through. But, pulling

his legs after him, he dislodged a lump of rock which trapped his ankle. As he
tugged it free, he felt a stab of pain and realized he had broken or sprained his
ankle.

Mouna examined it in torchlight. “Ewan, you have foulé la cheville she

groaned.

Indeed, he had sprained his ankle so badly, he could put no weight on it. “I

can still crawl,” he said.

“No, you stay here while I go to Dahshur or Saqqara for help,” she insisted.

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Seeing that she was determined, he warned her to be careful how she left the

small pyramid entrance, for Hassanein might still be keeping a watch on the area.
She must look for his car and move slowly in the dark.

Soon, her torchlight disappeared, leaving him in dead darkness. He started to

crawl after her, but his ankle scraped the rough, uneven floor of the gallery
sending waves of pain through him. Anyway, he was exhausted with the effort he
had made. He sat down, his back against the wall, to wait.

Mouna had left everything but the torch. He had their one remaining

sandwich. And he had the water-bottle that Hassanein had filled with whisky.
When he hefted it in his hand, he reckoned it was three-quarters full.

Didn’t she know how she was tempting him? Four of five gills of raw whisky

and an alibi that even his AA contact, Danny Inglis, would have accepted for
breaking his pledge—that nightmare trip with Hassanein, those grisly hours
between life and death, trapped like rats in the middle of the Bent Pyramid. And
now an ankle torturing him worse than a year of hangovers.

He uncorked the bottle. He felt as thirsty as a whole caravan of camels. That

heady whisky smell heightened by hunger and weakness, lapped through his
system from the crown of his head to his swollen ankle. Comforting, consoling
stuff. Something you could hand your responsibilities to, even your soul. It was
easy. A swig, a second, third, fourth. After the fifth or sixth who the hell cared
about rejoining the herd of sober, normal, boring people? After all, he’d done his
job, paid out his contract, found the hiding place, earned his reward.

It was halfway to his mouth when he heard her cry, or he might have taken

that first swig. And all the others. He would always wonder if he turned the bottle
upside down BEFORE he heard the cry. Or AFTER. In his light-headed state he
could not swear which came first—the cry or the act.

“You-Ahn.” Mouna’s shout again echoed along the pitch-black gallery.
Light flooded the tunnel as she returned, crawling after her own torch and as

she came in sight, silhouetted against the other torch lights behind her. She came
up to where he sat in a stench of raw whisky. Then two policeman appeared. One
of them Chisholm recognized as the man who had arrested him the night of
Heykal’s murder.

“They are all around, the police,” Mouna whispered as the two policemen

rolled him on to the stretcher they had brought. “It is like...well, son et lumière at
Giza.” She held his hand. “We only had twenty more meters to do to the
entrance,” she said.

“What are the police doing here?”
“We’re looking for Hassanein,” replied the policeman he knew. “He’s in the

pyramid and Captain Mabruk has gone in with a dozen men from both entrances
to look for him. We thought he was still holding you and Miss Tayisha hostage.”

When they emerged from the entrance halfway up the small pyramid, he saw

what Mouna meant. Floodlights and car headlamps were beamed on every facet
of the Bent Pyramid throwing its curious, kinked triangle into relief and lighting
the satellite pyramid from which they had come. Dozens of armed policemen
ringed both structures.

Chisholm was carried to a police ambulance where a first-aid man examined

his ankle and said there were no broken bones, although it was a severe sprain.
He bandaged the ankle tightly and handed him an elbow crutch. From
somewhere, Mouna had produced a flask of coffee, two plastic cups and a packet
of biscuits. They sat on the back hatch of the ambulance drinking the sweet, hot
liquid and eating biscuits.

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A few yards away, a police radio car was keeping contact with Mabruk’s squad

round the north and west entrances to the Bent Pyramid. From their
conversation, which Mouna interpreted, Chisholm learned they had surrounded
both pyramids at ten o’clock the previous night, quarter of an hour after
Hassanein had forced them to enter the Bent Pyramid at gunpoint. They had kept
a discreet watch all day, thinking Hassanein would kill them or use them as
hostages when he discovered he was trapped.

Hassanein ran into the police trap when he tried to leave by the north

entrance. He tried to bluff his way out by shouting that he had both Chisholm and
his step-daughter as hostages.

Mabruk had kept up a dialogue with him all day, afraid that if he attempted to

storm the pyramid, Hassanein would kill them, having so much blood on his
hands that another two deaths would mean nothing. Mabruk had waited until he
realized they were trapped but still alive before deciding to take his men into the
pyramid from both entrances and arrest Hassanein.

They were finishing their coffee and biscuits when they heard a muffled

explosion then saw a plume of smoke burst from the entrance on the north face of
the Bent Pyramid. All round them police started running towards the northern
entrance, rifles and revolvers in their hands. Every lamp, every one of the
powerful floodlights was beamed on that entrance as the policemen clambered
and scrambled over the massive pyramid stones to reach the point of the
explosion. Several volleys of shots echoed from the inside of the pyramid, then
another explosion, this time much louder.

As Chisholm and Mouna watched, the floodlights picked out a massive

silhouette standing at the entrance, halfway up the face of the pyramid. It was
Hassanein. He was brandishing something in his hand. As he made a gesture as if
to throw whatever it was, he was hit by a dozen shots from the police marksmen
on the pyramid and on the ground. For a moment, he staggered then went head-
first down the steps of the pyramid, his huge body rolling from one step to the
other. As it tumbled over the third or fourth step from the entrance, a brilliant
flash lit the pyramid and a detonation resonated all round. It came from
Hassanein’s right hand where he had been carrying the knapsack containing his
plastic explosive.

Chisholm could just discern the crumpled, motionless figure on the pyramid

step as the police closed in, still training their weapons on it.

Two policemen came running to their ambulance demanding a stretcher

which they carried to the point where the police had grouped around Hassanein.

Ten minutes later, as they were still maneuvering Hassanein’s body on the

stretcher down the pyramid, Chisholm spotted a familiar figure quick-striding
through the floodlight and headlight beams. Before Mabruk reached him he
heard the click, click of those worry beads which the police captain was running
through his fingers while he held a cigarette and a mobile phone in the other
hand. He was whispering details of he operations, presumably to someone at
police headquarters.

Spotting Chisholm, he switched off his phone and beckoned him over—out of

Mouna’s earshot.

“Well, Mr. Chisholm, did you find what you were looking for in there?”
“I found no more than I expected to find,” Chisholm replied. “Did you find in

there what you’ve been looking for all these years?”

“Meaning what?” Mabruk’s worry beads quickened their tempo and were now

clicking like castanets.

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“Meaning that now the man who killed five people, including Garfield Tate

and Dr Ceti Kanfer, is dead, your friend Yussef Heykal will be able to sleep
peacefully. And you, too.”

“So you knew?”
“I put two and two together that night you caught me on the face of this

pyramid. You knew Garfield Tate and his mistress were murdered and you were
as obsessed as Heykal was to trace their killer. Unlike everybody else, you had no
real interest in the other side of the story—the treasure hunt. I’d read Heykal’s
report which mentioned a junior detective who went with him that night to the
Meydum pyramid. He didn’t put a name to you. He didn’t need to.”

“Heykal and I didn’t like unfinished cases,” Mabruk said. “I hope you finish

what you’ve started and wish you luck”

He cut Chisholm’s thanks short and dropped his voice. “When they bring

Hassanein down, don’t let your girlfriend see what’s left of her step-father. She
can come and sit in my car until we’ve cleared the site.

Before leading Mouna away, he gave the order to withdraw. All round them,

police cars were collecting personnel and weapons then pulling away over the
sand, heading for the canal road and Cairo.

Chisholm waited by the foot of the Bent Pyramid until the six policemen and

ambulance men had manhandled the heavy corpse of Hassanein down the side of
the pyramid. They bore him on his stretcher to the police ambulance, covered
with two blankets.

As they edged him into the ambulance, Chisholm lifted one of the blankets to

look at him.

His mouth, a black hole, lay open as though still resonating with that mad

guffaw of his; those wild eyes were open, too, though the light in them was sterile,
a reflection from the ambulance lamp.

He could well understand why Mabruk had led Mouna away.
One of Hassanein’s arms had been wrenched away by the explosion, and part

of his left side was a bloody gaping hold. Most of his clothing had gone and there
was blood everywhere, still flowing and oozing from his head, chest and side.
Mabruk’s marksmen had hit Hassanein with everything they had. Half his head
was smashed by explosive rifle bullets which had torn three large holes in his
neck, chest and stomach. Even Chisholm felt sick looking at what remained of
this heartless killer.

“He’s dead all right,” a policeman said as he banged the ambulance doors shut

on the body.

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Chapter 24

Frank Bailey pointed out the landmarks from the window of his sixth-floor

flat on Gezira Island, the choicest building strip in Cairo; their view took in the
new theatre complex, the Egyptian Museum, the sporting club, the plethora of
luxury hotels along the Nile. Not a bad pad for a former warrant officer in the
tank corps who had stayed on after the war to become the British Embassy
security officer. He had married an embassy secretary, daughter of a rich Copt
merchant.

Bailey, still ramrod straight but with grizzling hair and a rheumaticky hip that

increased his golf handicap at Gezira, had listened to Chisholm’s edited account
of what he had done since his arrival in Cairo; he plied him with questions about
the hunt and slaying of Hassanein, whom he had known as Garfield Tate’s
chauffeur. Bailey confessed he had suspected there was something more to the
deaths of the archaeologist and his assistant than just an accident, though it was
just his hunch. Chisholm made no mention of the jewels.

“Frank can help you with your biography,” Bailey’s wife said as she brought

them coffee and savory cakes. “He has all his souvenirs.”

Indeed, he found that Bailey had total recall and could list every diplomat

upwards of third secretary from the fifties to the eighties; he remembered in
detail every incident that had happened between the embassy and the Egyptians
since Nasser’s time.

“Garfield Tate? That was Sir Harry Newcombe’s stint as ambassador and

there was a tremendous cafuffle between him and the Gyppos over it...went all
the way through channels up to President Sadat.”

“The President? Why was he involved?”
“Well, both sides wanted the case wrapped up quickly to put a cork on rumors

and theories of double suicide and murder. Garfield Tate was a VIP in Egypt and
it was a blow to everyone when he met his death in what was thought to be a
stupid accident. It was delicate, like.”

“In what way, delicate?”
“The Egyptians in the antiquities department and even the politicians had

things to hide and didn’t want people nosing around asking awkward questions
about what had happened to this and that trinket from the pharaohs’ time, what
deals had been done with American and British museums, that sort of thing.. And
the Brits didn’t know what Garfield Tate had been up to, they didn’t want a
scandal over him and his mistress, and they wanted to spare Lady GT more grief.”

“How did it affect her?”
“Knocked her so cold she left everything to us. Shut herself up with the body

until it was time to fly home with it.”

“Did they send anyone from the embassy home with her—I mean to hold her

hand and help her cope with the formalities?”

Bailey reflected, then shook his head. “Not officially. We did all the bumph for

her at this end—and you haven’t got an earthly what a to-do they make of flying a
stiff from one country another—even a VIP stiff like GT.”

“From the press pictures I saw published, you gave the Garfield Tate’s quite a

send off from Cairo.”

“Show him yours, Frank,” his wife urged.

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Bailey needed no prompting; he had albums stuffed with newspaper cuttings

and photographs from most newspapers, British and Egyptian, plus a few of his
own pictures. Chisholm studied them and noted significant details there that
even Bailey had missed, though he refrained from commenting on them. He
steered the former security man to the period of the archaeologist’s death and
pumped him, gently, about the embassy staff of that time. When he mentioned
Richard Brierly and the Anglo-Suez, that rang a bell.

“Oh, Bankie. We all thought him a bit wet, but he surprised us by fixing all the

finance for her, settling her bills in Cairo and elsewhere. She was a free-spender,
Lady GT. I had an account with the Anglo-Suez myself.”

“When did Brierly go back?”
Bailey thought. “Just before the bank packed up, or amalgamated. It would be

several weeks after we flew Garfield Tate out.”

Chisholm thanked him without letting on how much information he had let

drop unwittingly. He walked back to his hotel via the British Airways office where
he called to book his flight home; then he stopped at the antiquities department
to say good-bye to el-Zayyat and thank him for his cooperation. They were both
still pretending he was writing Garfield Tate’s life and the Egyptian even asked
for a signed copy when the book was published.

Chisholm had imagined el-Zayyat might mention the five murders, the police

siege of the Bent Pyramid and the death of Hassanein. Three of the murders laid
at Hassanein’s door had made the front pages of Egyptian and the international
press for days. But el-Zayyat kept his counsel about those sensations—nor did he
even hint that Chisholm might be in Egypt on a treasure hunt.

Zein caught him in the hotel entrance and beckoned upstairs to his sitting

room. “Were you expecting Hassanein’s widow?” he whispered.

“No, but I suspected she might come.”
Sirri Hassanein rose and held out her hand as he entered the room. Through

the veil, her face looked drawn and tired, though she could still smile. He marked
her up for the courage she had shown to make this visit two days after burying
her husband and three days after every paper in half a dozen languages had
revealed it was he who had murdered Mustafa Sarwat, his Turkish servant and
the former police captain Yussef Heykal. None of them mentioned the deaths of
Garfield Tate and Ceti Kanfer at his hands, so Mabruk had not talked.

Sirri Hassanein refused his offer of a drink but took a cigarette. She sat down

and removed her hat and veil as if symbolizing that she meant to hide nothing.

“Mouna has told me everything, so I must first thank you for saving her life.”
“I think she has the life-saving business the wrong way round, but thank you

for coming to tell me.”

“You know why I had to come,” she murmured, and he nodded. For a few

moments she sat silent, gazing through the window at the minarets of the two
mosques in view, as though pondering how and where to begin.

Finally, she turned towards him and said, “Of course you would have guessed

some time ago, Mouna was not my child or Tayisha’s.”

He nodded. “But have you told her she is Garfield Tate’s daughter by your

step-sister?”

Sirri nodded. “Last night,” she said. “I gave her both the birth certificate and

her baptismal certificate which I discovered among Hassanein’s possessions.”

“I didn’t think he would have let those burn when he set fire to the Coptic

church and destroyed the records. He had a reason for keeping them. At that time

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he thought he might use those papers to prove she was heir to a fortune in jewels,
didn’t he?”

“Ahmed Hassanein never told me anything about his business or private

affairs,” she said.

He believed her.
“It was what you told him that was important,” Chisholm said. “You told him

Mouna wasn’t your daughter but your step-sister’s, and you were bringing her up
because of Lady Garfield Tate’s jealousy. When did you tell him this—before or
after your marriage?”

“A few months before.”
“But you weren’t to know this information would have a lot to do, indirectly,

with the deaths of Sir William Garfield Tate and Ceti Kanfer.”

Sirri Hassanein was weeping, wiping away her tears with her thumb and

forefinger. “I didn’t know he murdered them, or who ordered him to do it. I
didn’t even think to question the time he came home that night and ask myself if
he could have taken Virginia Garfield Tate to the opera and come home by eleven.
Not until you brought it up.

“I also thought everybody knew about Bill and Ceti, including his wife. How

was I to know she was jealous to the point where she could plot a murder—if she
discovered he had Ceti’s child?”

“But she did,” Chisholm said. “You weren’t to know, either, that she was the

one person beside Garfield Tate and Ceti who knew about the jewel hoard they
had stumbled on. It didn’t take Lady Garfield Tate long to find out her husband
had made a will, witnessed by his archaeological assistant, Lampson, and one
other person. In this will, he split his estate three ways—a third to her, a third to
Ceti Kanfer and a third to his daughter, Mouna. Ceti’s share passed to her
daughter in the event of her death.”

“I never knew this.”
“It’s my guess that Lady Garfield Tate found the copies of the will in his

strongbox and destroyed them, leaving the one that made her the sole heir to his
estate.” He paused. “Your husband knew this, or part of it, and realized he could
make enough of a fortune to set himself up in business.”

Chisholm might have added that Hassanein’s knowledge about the

connection between Ceti Kanfer and Mouna was probably his main motive for
marrying Sirri—but he bit his tongue on that. She had suffered enough.

Chisholm had not seen Mouna since their ordeal in the Bent Pyramid. He had

been immobilized by his injured ankle, and learned through Zein that she had
gone home to be with Sirri and help with the arrangements for her father’s
funeral. “How did Mouna take the news about being Garfield Tate’s child?”

“Do you know, I think she had already guessed?” Sirri said. “You see, she

spent as much time with Bill and Ceti as with me. And children are quick to pick
up atmosphere and emotion and even unspoken thoughts as well as gestures at
that age. As you have probably noticed, Mouna has what you might call a sixth
sense about people and things. She saw through Hassanein when I was
completely blind to his real character and his evil schemes.”

“She didn’t want to come here with you?”
Sirri shook her head. “No, she thought you had enough to do before you flew

home and she would be in the way. So, she has gone for a few days to Nubia.”

“Kalabasha?”

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She stared at him. “Ah, she has told you Ceti was born there and Mouna still

has a grandmother there whom she stays with. She’s now very old and blind, but
Mouna loves her.”

“How long is she staying there?”
Sirri thought for a moment about that question before saying, “Mr. Chisholm,

to be truthful, I suggested the trip.” Again she hesitated before continuing, “You
know Mouna is in love with you, but I told her you both must put some time and
space between yourselves after what you have been through. You understand?”
He nodded.

She opened her handbag and extracted two packages which she handed him,

explaining the first one contained papers she had found in her husband’s private
safe and these might answer questions about his assignment.

“The other is from Mouna and she insists you must not open it until you are

in the plane on your way home.”

Sirri rose and held out her hand. “You know where we live, Mouna and I,” she

murmured, and was gone.

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Chapter 25

In London he chose a small South Kensington hotel, thinking his flat made

him too easy a target for someone with a key who might try again to murder him.
For three days he lay low, putting all his notes and papers in order before ringing
Sheldon Wright at the Aspenwall Foundation.

“Ah, Ewan, dear boy, good to hear from you. We were all frightfully worried

about you, ringing all round Cairo trying to run you to earth.” Sheldon Wright at
his smooth best. “Why didn’t you let us know you were coming.”

“I had some jewels on me and didn’t want to advertise the fact, that’s why.”
Dead silence. Not even breathing noises. Had the Aspenwall Foundation

curator pitched face-down across his desk, senseless. He heard a cough, a sharp
aspiration then a forced giggle. “Still the same old joker, Ewan, eh!”

“I didn’t say all the jewels—only some.”
That click meant Sheldon Wright had pressed his intercom toggle to alert

Jenny who, in any case, would be eavesdropping. Now, what he said would either
go down in her ropy shorthand squiggles or on tape.

“What sort of jewels, Ewan?”
“Part of the hoard found by you-know-who.”
“But..but...”
“But what? Didn’t you read about me being kidnapped and buried alive in the

Bent Pyramid by your friend, Hassanein? Didn’t you read about the siege and
your friend, Hassanein, being cornered then blowing himself up?”

“My friend, Hassanein!”
“Well, you chummed up with him when you did your errand-boy run in Cairo,

didn’t you?” Sheldon Wright’s dead silence again confirmed Chisholm’s guess and
he went on, “Well, you don’t think I came out of the Bent Pyramid with nothing,
do you?”

“The newspapers didn’t mention jewels.”
“I didn’t call a press conference.”
“Well, now you’re here, bring them along to the Foundation.”
“I’ve got nothing to do with the Foundation. You sacked me in Cairo,

remember?”

Sheldon Wright tittered. “Ewan, you didn’t take that seriously. I was going

through a bad moment. Put it down to prickly heat or the foul arrack I had
imbibed. You have a job here for life.”

“How long would life be after I handed over the jewels.”
“That’s one of your sick jokes, Ewan.”
“It’s no kind of joke,” Chisholm snapped. “I will only deal with the people who

handed me the assignment.”

He detailed his instructions. Sheldon Wright would convene a governors’

meeting as soon as possible and he, Chisholm, would present his report and what
he had found to them. After all, they and not the Foundation, were paying him.

“Sorry Ewan, but with the best will in the world, I can’t. You know Edmund

Davenport is a cripple and he’s fragile at the best of times. He’s just had a heart
attack and is convalescing at home. And he’s a key member.”

“All right, then ring Davenport and ask if he’ll allow you to hold the meeting

at his home, exceptionally.”

“Out of the question, old boy.”

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“Tell him I suggested it and see what he says.”
“Very well. Now how do I get in touch with you?”
“You don’t. I’ll ring you this afternoon.”
A few hours later when Chisholm rang, he sensed a change in Sheldon Wright

attitude. Now he was boot-licking and forelock touching at the same time.
Davenport had agreed, he said. All their governors had been contacted and had
promised to convene at Davenport’s Oxford house in three days. Even Brierly,
who was on holiday in Devon, said he would be present.

Few people looking at his house would have suspected Edmund Davenport of

having made millions out of his hi-tech inventions. He obviously he had English
horror of ostentation, for his Tudor house sat behind a high, tree-lined wall and
showed only its chimneys.

When his taxi dropped him at the gate, Chisholm had to announce himself

then punch out the code Sheldon Wright had given him. That short wait meant
Davenport had voice-printed him with one of his many inventions.

He entered and the gate clicked shut behind him as he entered a twisted

tunnel of lime trees backed by rhododendron bushes which cut off any sight of
Davenport’s house or grounds. Chisholm did not doubt that these trees and
shrubs concealed sensors that were tracking him every yard of the way, for he
knew Davenport had a mania for secrecy and security. When he broke out of the
drive, the manor house came abruptly into view—a seventeenth-century
brownish-gray sandstone structure with a turret in the center tall chimneys and
mullioned windows on both its floors. Nothing there betrayed great wealth.

A manservant already had the door open, showed him into the drawing- room

and offered him a choice of soft drinks, evidently primed about his weakness.
While he sat there, two cars arrived and parked in the drive, but he saw and heard
none of their occupants enter the house. Were they preparing another
inquisition!

Looking round the drawing-room, he noticed Davenport went in for the sort

of furniture he saw in those glossy magazines at his dentist; that Sheraton
bureau, those Chippendale chairs, that marquetry card table and the lyre-legged
dining table were worth two years of his Aspenwall pay; and those Cézanne
aquarelles and Degas pastels on the walls would have raised the temperature in
Sotheby’s and Christie’s. A connoisseur, Davenport, and with the money to
indulge his artistic passion.

A door opened, the manservant beckoned and he followed the man upstairs.

When he arrived in the dining-room, now a makeshift boardroom, Sheldon
Wright and four of the Aspenwall governors were already seated on either side of
the dining table. Not one of them even nodded at him; and Ackerman and Merrill
kept staring through the mullioned windows at the Tudor gardens and the flat
fields of Oxfordshire as though they had never seen them before.

Davenport had not yet arrived, but a minute or two after Chisholm entered, a

nurse wheeled him to the head of the table, pushed his chair into position and left
discreetly.

Davenport looked ill. Skin like tissue paper, white, fragile. His right hand

clutching his stick looked blue, cyanosed. But his blue eyes sparkled as they
flickered along the table then came to rest of Chisholm.

“Treasure hunt finished, Mr Chisholm?” he said, smiling.
“No.”
That drew every face towards him and deepened the smile on Davenport’s

face. It occurred to Chisholm that this old rogue might easily have foreseen

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everything that had happened to him in London, then in Egypt and even down to
this extraordinary meeting in his own house.

“You realise some of us didn’t expect to see you alive again,” Davenport

murmured.

“You mean two of you didn’t want to see me alive, and the other four weren’t

in the picture, and in any case were so concerned about the jewels they didn’t give
a tinker’s cuss whether I lived or died.”

Davenport cackled. He looked round the table at the others. “Didn’t I tell you

Mr Chisholm was an original character?” They did not share his amusement, but
he went on laughing and said, “Well, we’ve all left our sidearms and firearms in
the vestry so, like him, we can speak freely and honestly.” He turned to Chisholm.
“Now that you’ve summoned us, what have you got to tell us?”

Chisholm produced six copies of the report he had prepared about his

mission, and copies of the full set of the pictures from Garfield Tate’s archives. He
report contained everything that had happened to him since his discovery of the
hidden items in the archives. He passed the documents round the table, saying he
would allow them half an hour to read them.

As they read, he observed their faces, their attitudes. Davenport still had that

puckish smile on his sick face as he went over the paper with a reading glass; on
his left, Richard Brierly, the banker, had turned a shade pink and developed a
neck twitch; Joel Ackerman was shaking his white head and just seemed
mystified; Bryce Merrill raised his face once or twice to scowl at Chisholm; Sybil
Bennet was underlining this or that statement with a gold ballpoint, her eyes wide
with bewilderment; Sheldon Wright was finger-combing his greying hair and his
mouth had gone into a tetanic clench. Chisholm helped himself to a cigarette
from the filigree silver box on the table and waited for their heads to come up.

When they all had placed their papers on the table, he said, “Of course, you

realise I have given my solicitor a fuller report and placed two other copies with
trusted friends—just in case.”

As he spoke, he produced the bangle and earrings Sirri Hassanein had given

him on Mouna’s behalf. He placed them on the table with the key he had found in
Garfield Tate’s papers.

The sight of those jewels and especially the key had stepped up Brierly’s neck-

twitch rate, he noticed; and Davenport and the others were eying the three jewels
and glancing at the pictures.

“Don’t worry, they tally exactly with the pictures,” Chisholm said. “And they

complete the collection represented by the pictures.”

“Then where is the rest of them?” Sybil Bennet asked.
“The rest? One of us around this table has to answer that question in due

course,” Chisholm said. “But shouldn’t we begin at the beginning—with the
murders of Garfield Tate and his colleague, Dr Ceti Kanfer, at the Meydum
pyramid?”

“Murders!” Sybil Bennet squawked.
“Yes, what does he mean? Were they murdered?” Ackerman looked up from

the photographs and put the question to Davenport who, in turn, pointed to
Chisholm.

“Let him give us the answer to that question—and why?”
Chisholm shook his head. “I can only tell you who murdered them. It was

Ahmed Hassanein, the Garfield Tates’ chauffeur. But he was acting on orders,
probably on Lady Garfield Tate’s orders.”

“What proof can you possibly have of all this?” Merrill said, loudly.

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“Yes—how in heaven’s name can you prove that now?” Sybil Bennet cried.
Chisholm suddenly pointed to Brierly, who had his head still in the report.

“Brierly here might answer those questions,” he said. “He knows more than most
people what happened at the time of Garfield Tate’s death. He was head of the
Anglo-Suez bank which kept the Garfield Tates’ account, and he was an intimate
friend of Virginia Garfield Tate. So, perhaps he can enlighten us about the
murder and what happened afterwards.”

“The murder story was and is no more than an unfounded rumour,” Brierly

said.

But he had so obviously been rattled by reading the report and having seven

pairs of eyes on him that Chisholm decided to challenge him head-on. He held up
the strongbox key. “This is the twin of the key, Brierly, that you used to open
Garfield Tate’s strongbox after his death and you and Virginia Garfield Tate tore
up the will which gave two-thirds of his estate including the jewels to his
mistress, Ceti Kanfer, and their daughter, Mouna?”

“Is any of this true, Brierly?” Sybil Bennet asked, and everyone stared at the

banker.

“It was Lady Garfield Tate who opened the box,” Brierly got out after a

moment.

“Perhaps she turned the key,” Chisholm said. “But you broke the law by

turning your own key and allowing her to empty that box before making an
official inventory of the contents for probate of Garfield Tate’s will.” Chisholm
pointed to his report. “Look what Mr Nokrami, one of your staff, says—the box
belonged to Garfield Tate, who had two keys, one for himself and one for his
mistress, Dr Kanfer. His wife did not have a key.” He pointed to Brierly. “You
must have known where that key came from—the dead body of Dr Kanfer or
Garfield Tate. and you know you should have sealed that box after the death of its
owner.”

“There was nothing in the box,” Brierly protested.
“Oh, then why do you think you were rewarded by how much—a hundred

thousand, two hundred thousand...anyway, enough to buy yourself a directorship
in a London bank.”

A dead silence had clamped round the table and Brierly looked like a trapped

rabbit.

“As a banker,” Chisholm continued, “you should know there’s always a bank

trace for such sums, even from twenty-five years ago.”

“I followed Lady Garfield Tate’s instructions,” Brierly said. “There was

nothing wrong in that.”

“Well, it’s only your word—and I daresay had there not been an immense

fortune in jewels and the archaeologist’s will in that box, your wrong would have
been minor.”

“You mean to say the jewels were there, in that box?” It was Sybil Bennet’s

coloratura squeak again.

“They were.” Chisholm pointed to the pictures. “When he had photographed

them in the burial chamber where he found them under the small satellite
pyramid near the Bent Pyramid, Garfield Tate transferred the jewels to his
strongbox in Brierly’s bank, the Anglo-Suez. What he intended to do with them is
anybody’s guess—but after his death, all that remained of that magnificent
collection of pharaonic jewellery is what you see on the table here. The
archaeologist gave the bangle and earrings to the woman he loved, Dr Kanfer, and
she gave them to their daughter, who entrusted them to me.”

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“So, Lady Garfield Tate brought the jewels back with her?” It was Ackerman

who put the question.

“In a way—but we’re running ahead of ourselves,” Chisholm replied. He

turned again to Brierly, now twitching all over. “What did your friend, Lady
Garfield Tate, order you to pay Hassanein, the man who murdered her husband
and his mistress?”

“It’s not true...it can’t be true.” Sybil Bennet squawked so loudly that

Davenport raised his stick and pointed it at the door then put a finger to his ear.

“How much?” Chisholm insisted.

“Nobody said it was murder or that Hassanein had done it,” Brierly cried, his

face now ashen. He seemed near to breaking down and crying.

“You paid Hassanein enough to start his transport business in Cairo when you

were promised your own reward,” Chisholm said. “It was about twenty-five
thousand pounds or about double what the Garfield Tate’s had in their account
then. But it wasn’t too difficult to pay him, what with your bank going into
liquidation and accounts changing hands and several that you knew to be
unclaimed. Anyway, who queried bankers’ errors?”

“These are monstrous suggestions,” Brierly said, but nobody round the table

came to his defence. He was finished as a governor and a member of the clan
since everybody realised he had no answer to the accusations Chisholm had made
and what he had done amounted to a criminal act.

Chisholm gazed round the table at the rapt faces. He continued, “If you are

interested, Hassanein recorded what he got from Brierly with the dates, the
amounts, the denominations, everything. His widow has a complete record of this
and I have copies. Hassanein not only killed Garfield Tate and Dr Kanfer. To
prevent anyone finding out about the murders and his part in the whole scheme,
he killed Yussef Heykal, a splendid policeman who was about to denounce him.
He also killed Mustafa Sarwat, an international expert on Egyptian antiquities to
stop him revealing his step-daughter had the jewels you see on this table. He
murdered Sarwat’s Turkish servant. And that fiend and madman nearly
succeeded in killing me and Miss Kanfer by burying us alive in the Bent
Pyramid.”

“But how did this killer, Hassanein, get away with the murders of Garfield

Tate and and his colleague?” Ackerman asked in that thick, middle-european
accent of his. “He must have had an alibi which satisfied the police.”

“He had such a good alibi that nobody could link him with a murder sixty

miles away. An alibi provided by none other than Lady Garfield Tate. In fact, he
drove that lady to the opera that night and waited there to pick her up two and a
half hours later—at precisely the time the two people were being murdered at
Meydum pyramid at least two hours’ drive down the Nile Valley. Only, it wasn’t
Hassanein who drove to and from the opera.”

“You mean somebody impersonated him?” Sybil Bennet said.
“Exactly. Somebody of the same build and in the same uniform.”
“Do you know who it was?” Ackerman asked, quietly.
“I have an idea,” Chisholm said. “Though someone in this room knows

precisely who it was.”

They all gazed at each other, wondering. Davenport had both hands on the

table as though afraid he might topple sideways. He was looking hard at
Chisholm. “If you know who he was, you must tell us.”

“No.” Chisholm shook his head. “All I can say is that the man was essential to

Virginia Garfield Tate’s scheme, and probably helped her to plot the whole thing.

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Not only did this man provide Hassanein with an alibi, he helped the widow
smuggle the jewels out of Egypt.”

Silence again fell over the table until Ackerman broke it by asking, “How do

you say this was done, Chisholm?”

“It wasn’t difficult. Nobody wanted a fuss, a murder inquiry or a diplomatic

wrangle, so it suited almost everybody to call the deaths an accident and get rid of
the dead man. President Sadat was persuaded to waive all the formalities because
of the widow’s grief. And anybody who knew Virginia Garfield Tate and her
relations with her husband wondered about how sincere and how deep that grief
really went. I began to ask myself about the indecent haste to fly Garfield Tate’s
body out because everybody I spoke to in Egypt affirmed he wanted to be
cremated and his ashes mingled with the dust of the pharaohs. So, why did his
widow, who knew of this wish, want to hustle him home and bury him there?
Why? Because Garfield Tate was lying on the jewels he had discovered. Her
accomplice knew there would be no search of the coffin, so he hid them there, and
she kept vigil on the coffin until she arrived home in Kew with it..”

“Don’t keep us all in suspense, Mr Chisholm,” Sybil Bennet said. “Tell us

where the jewels are now.”

“I don’t know,” Chisholm said. But he pointed to Davenport and said, “Ask

him. He knows. He was the man who bought them.”

A gasp went round the table, and even Sheldon Wright stared at Davenport. It

was Ackerman again who broke the silence.

“Is this true, Edmund?” he asked.

Davenport did not answer at once; he pressed a button on his wheelchair and

whispered something, inaudible to the others, but presumably through some
form of throat microphone or other gadget he had devised for himself. He turned
to the others.

“My friends, forgive me, Chisholm is right. I couldn’t resist it.” He opened his

arms wide to emphasise his helplessness.

“When my old friend, Virginia Garfield Tate, came to me with those jewels

and put a price on them, and a high price at that, I had to have them. They
stunned me with their beauty. God help me, I just had to possess them. Oh, I
know I should have asked questions about their provenance, I should have
contacted the Foundation, but I had seen them and it was too much for me.”

They saw the frail old man was weeping as he made his statement.

“Davenport, do you really know yourself why you had to have them?”

Chisholm asked and the angry bite of his voice brought everyone up to look at
Davenport.

“No, but I have often wondered,” Davenport mumbled. “I suppose it has

something to do with pride of possessing something nobody else had.”

“And it meant, too, you had the perverse satisfaction of depriving the rest of

the world of the pleasure of looking at such beautiful objects, didn’t it?”

For a moment, Davenport’s blue eyes hardened, but he nodded and managed

a smile.

“How did you guess it was me rather than any of the others?”
“That.” Chisholm pointed to Davenport’s stick, lying on the table.
“His stick!” Ackerman said, mystified.
“I meant his sick body and his sick mind and his obsession to prove that with

his sick body and sick mind he can build a bigger fortune and wield more power
than normal people, or even normal multimillionaires like you.” Chisholm paused
to let that sink in before going on, “He and Brierly are as bad as each other. They

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were both keen to pack me off to Egypt thinking I could be quietly exterminated
there and leave them with their jewels and ill-gotten money. And there were
others among you with the same idea.” He let his eyes rest on Sheldon Wright.
“None of you would have lost much sleep if I’d been buried in the Bent Pyramid
or dredged out of the Nile. You’re all a bit like him—all you care about is money
and the power it gives you.” He swung his hand in an arc to embrace them all. “If
the jewels had come to any one of you, you’d have done the same as Davenport—
grabbed them and probably tried to make a profit out of them. At least he kept
them together.”

Not a word came from any of them.

Chisholm turned to Davenport. “How much did you pay the black widow and

her henchman...two, three millions?”

“Not a bad guess, Mr.Chisholm.”
A door clicked open and four servants entered carrying two covered glass

cases which took up almost the whole surface of the long dining table. When they
withdrew the black baize cloth, gasps of astonishment came from the governors.
Everyone except Davenport and Brierly stood up to peer at the jewels displayed
on different velvets - various blues, beiges, greens and blacks—to set off their
splendour. Ackerman was shaking his head with disbelief as he stared at the
collection; Sybil Bennet had her nose over the cases of rings and earrings;
Sheldon Wright had gone completely out of focus and was polishing his glasses
madly and drooling at the sight. Even Merrill had lost some of his usual scorn.

Despite himself, Chisholm was bowled over; his own imagined picture of the

jewels did not begin to match anything that lay before his eyes.

That falcon collar with its massive bird-heads in solid gold, its hundreds of

different golden miniatures of animals and insects in filigree, was worth a fortune
alone. Like the belt-and-bead apron in blues, reds, golds and iridescent blacks
which must have taken some ancient Egyptian goldsmith years to make. How had
these men with primitive instruments fashioned that girdle of gold fishes and
precious stones? How had they put together those hundreds of gold scarabs,
beads and amulets in the broad collar from the Eighteenth Dynasty, or made the
chasing of the vulture collar from the same period. But there was so much! That
ornate wig adornment, the arm and leg amulets, necklaces, pectoral ornaments of
gold and precious stone and that magnificent head-dress of paper-thin gold
rosettes exquisitely patterned. Even in these flat cases, these jewels looked the
rival of anything in Cairo, London or the Met in New York. How would that wig
adornment and head-dress look draped over the bust of an Egyptian princess!
The carnelian, turquoise, lapis lazuli and old-gold colours would all gain so much
from being properly exhibited and not hidden as they had been.

Yet, for Edmund Davenport all this had been for twenty-five years a secret

museum over which he could gloat, alone with his own private and perverse
thoughts. Though he probably hardly ever looked at it; for him it was enough to
possess the collection and know it to be his, uniquely his.

Studying that parchment face, Chisholm noticed the eyes glint and the

clenched mouth quiver, revealing how much this secret treasure had meant to the
old cripple.

Suddenly, Davenport rapped on the table with his stick and gestured that they

should all sit down. He spoke slowly, haltingly.

“Sybil and gentlemen, as you may have observed, I am near the end of my

run. Indeed, my quacks make no secret of the fact that I’m not much longer for
this planet...three, six months at the most.” He paused to put a hand in his pocket

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and press something there, then gave a wintry grin. When he spoke again, his
voice had suddenly become stronger, though without trace of electronic
amplification. “My little invention makes what I’m going to say much easier for
you and me, and it also makes it easier for me to be magnanimous for once,
knowing there are no pockets in shrouds.” He waved a limp hand at the jewels on
the table. “I have therefore decided to give this collection to the Aspenwall
Foundation for display in the museum, without mentioning my name in
connection with the gift.” Again, he paused to draw several deep breaths. “In fact,
I took this decision some time ago, not long after I persuaded us to dispatch
Chisholm on his futile treasure hunt...”

“Was it so futile?” Chisholm broke in, and saw anger flash across Davenport’s

face.

“It was,” Davenport came back. “For I had more or less made up my mind to

come clean about the jewels whatever happened. But I still apologise to you and
the others I hoodwinked. As I was saying, I shall hand the jewels over to the
Foundation officially in a day or so, but my decision takes effect from the end of
this board meeting and will be included in the minutes.”

Chisholm raised a finger, and Davenport nodded assent for him to speak.
“Mr Davenport,” he said, “you may have paid for them, but these jewels are

not yours to hand over. Legally, you are the receiver of stolen property...”

“Edmund, why don’t you shut this insolent fellow up?” Sheldon Wright

shouted, but Davenport motioned him to silence.

“No, he has a point. Let him speak.”
Several of the others nodded, and Chisholm said, “Garfield Tate, who

discovered the jewels and has some claim to them, did not leave all his property
to his wife. He split it into three parts—one to his wife, the other two to his
mistress and their daughter. And since the daughter is her dead mother’s sole
heir, two thirds of the jewels belong to her. We suspect that Garfield Tate made
and perhaps hid other copies of his will and people are now searching for these
copies to prove ownership of his estate.”

“What about the Egyptian state?” Sybil Bennet put in. “Doesn’t it have claim

to pharaonic treasure?”

Chisholm nodded. “It does, and somehow Egyptians officials got to know

about the jewels not long after they were smuggled out, which is why I was
followed every step I took.” He pointed to the cases containing the jewels. “Once
these jewels are in the open, the Egyptian Government is is almost certain to
demand their restitution.”

“So, why don’t we show our magnanimity as a Foundation and hand them

over to the Egyptians?” Mrs Bennet said.

“That’s what I think Garfield Tate’s daughter would want to do,” Chisholm

said.

“It’s also the logical thing,” Ackerman commented,and everyone turned to

listen as he went on, “I mean, how would we explain a gift from Edmund nearly
twenty-five years after the jewels were discovered? Whereas, if we say Sheldon
Wright had found the jewels hidden in the Garfield Tate archives unknown to his
widow, that would make sense. And the Foundation would take all the credit for
having handed them over to the Egyptians.”

“We might even make a permanent arrangement with them about exhibiting

the jewels in the museum,” Sybil Bennet said.

Davenport called for silence. Now, he looked visibly exhausted. Since this was

an extraordinary meeting of the Aspenwall governing board, he suggested they

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should vote formally on the motion to entrust the jewels to the Foundation
director, who would make arrangements to hand them over officially to the
Egyptian government. Sheldon Wright could prepare an announcement and a
press release and contact the Egyptian that afternoon.

“It will take a bit longer than that, Edmund,” Sheldon Wright protested.
“All right, within twenty-four hours then,” Davenport said.
He proposed the vote, there was a unanimous show of hands and he then

closed the meeting.

At his summons, the servants reappeared and began packing the cartons into

cases under the eye of Sheldon Wright, Ackerman, Bennet and Merrill. Brierly
had already crept out without saying goodbye, but nobody made any attempt to
detain or even acknowledge him. Chisholm listed the items as they were packed,
ticking them off against the inventory he had made from the Garfield Tate
pictures.

When the packing had finished, Davenport called Chisholm over and held out

a cheque. “You’ve fulfilled your contract so here’s the cheque I promised you—it’s
a bit more than we agreed, but you’ve earned it and more.” As Chisholm stared,
hesitantly, at the cheque for £200,000, Davenport thrust it into his hand. “Take
it and don’t be a bloody fool.” Chisholm nodded and pocketed the cheque.

One of Davenport’s cars with four of his staff in it went into town with the

jewels. Chisholm insisted on accompanying Sheldon Wright in his car, then he
watched the curator place the three sealed boxes in his office safe and lock it.

As he left the office, he wondered if the jewels were safe in that office, even if

the museum was patrolled by security guards. He trusted none of the company he
had kept that day. And it scared him to reflect that nobody outside the six people
in the board-room, and some of Davenport’s staff knew those jewels existed.

If anybody hi-jacked them, and the Foundation governors and their paid staff

maintained a conspiracy of silence, who was to prove the jewels had ever existed?
Even Garfield Tate’s photographic evidence could be disputed, and who would
ever believe a drunk, even a reformed one, like himself?

Chisholm suspected at least three of the people he had met that day of

following the same reasoning as himself.

And any one of them might make a last attempt to steal those jewels before

Sheldon Wright could contact the Egyptians or make an announcement about
their existence.

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Chapter 26

Irony of ironies, he was back in the place where it had all started—the

basement of the Aspenwall Museum. Though now he wasn’t a Foundation lackey
cataloguing Egyptological bric-a-brac for one of Sheldon Wright’s mindless and
meaningless exhibitions; he was there to write the end-piece of his treasure hunt
and find the man who was the missing component of the murders of Garfield
Tate and his mistress and the sophisticated jewel theft.

He had slipped downstairs a few minutes after Sheldon Wright had hidden

the jewels in his office safe behind the original of one of Cézanne’s canvases of
Bathers. Upstairs, he heard the bell ring to warn visitors they had a final quarter
of an hour before the museum closed. In five minutes, he could expect one of the
four guards to make a casual round of the basement where only staff like
Chisholm worked. Since the guard was not likely to open the sarcophagus of the
Pharaoh Dedkare Isesi and look inside, and since it seemed the most comfortable,
Chisholm stepped inside and closed the lid on himself.

When the guard had come and gone, Chisholm emerged. He had a two-hour

wait in this dark and dank basement until the next security round, after which he
could move.

Logic told him the thief would act tonight before Sheldon Wright revealed the

discovery of the Garfield Tate hoard, and before they were officially catalogued
and photographed. He had an idea, too, the thief was even now inside the
museum building, perhaps having entered like dozens of visitors and hidden
somewhere like himself. He would be someone who knew the Aspenwall almost
as well as himself.

How would he bring off the theft? Normally the Aspenwall employed twelve

guards who did eight-hour shifts in their round the clock watch. But because the
museum was staging its Great Pharaohs exhibition and had borrowed valuable
relics from other museums, the security system had been overhauled. They had
seventeen guards in all, four of them patrolling the building and one man in a
first-floor office surveying twelve video screens of the exhibition rooms, corridors
and entrances.

As he had been involved in the coming exhibition, Chisholm had studied the

security system and knew every video camera, every infrared and radar beam in
the building; for instance, he knew the corridor leading to Sheldon Wright’s office
bristled with scanning devices. Apart from on-the-spot surveillance, the whole
security system was linked to Scotland Yard’s control room about a couple of
miles away.

It all seemed foolproof. Yet a man who understood the alarm system, had a

key and the safe combination, could pull off the jewel theft. Had Chisholm
possessed the key and known the safe numbers, he might have been tempted to
steal the jewels himself and hand them over to the Egyptian ambassador.

Down here, the darkness and the chill, stale air reminded him of the Bent

Pyramid. Veiling his torch with a white handkerchief, he toured the basement,
stopping at the exhibits he had been cataloguing that day, more than two months
ago, Sheldon Wright had summoned and given him the Garfield Tate assignment.

Was it fate or accident that had taken him to Egypt? He knew what Mouna

would have said. Fate. Or Mektoub (It is written) she would have put it. But
where? In the palm of her hand? In an old, blind Nubian woman’s mind? In

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damp and dry rot? Or the teeth of those rats that had feasted on Garfield Tate’s
papers and had pierced their secret? Who knew?

He spent another quarter of an hour in Dedkare Isesi’s last abode as the guard

made his basement round before being relieved by a colleague. When the
footsteps receded, he crept out of the sarcophagus and tip-toed after the man,
keeping close, knowing the noise alarms had been switched off during his round.
However, he had to watch the video-cameras, though there again, the shift was
changing and there was always a few minutes of small-talk and relaxation in the
guard room.

His mind had mapped the ground floor and he knew every artefact, every

exhibit there. No video-cameras could look through marble effigies of Claudius
and Nero in the Roman room, or Mankure and Wenis in the Egyptian room.
Flitting from one to the other, keeping them between him and the cameras, he
gained the back stairs leading to the first floor. No cameras there. But at the top
he had to crawl and slither along the wooden corridor below the sight line of the
electronic alarms.

His big problem was the main corridor. There, two video-cameras swept the

space between him and Jenny’s office; there was also a radar scan on two levels. A
good twenty yards lay between him and Jenny’s office on this side, and next door
to Sheldon Wright’s. Those radar traps he could handle by wearing out his elbows
and knees on the corridor floor.

But the video-cameras!
It was a long shot, but he remembered that on one occasion the basement

lights had failed for at least ten minutes while the guards searched for a fuse.
Video-cameras needed some light.

From his pocket, Chisholm pulled the two long and two short pieces of flex he

had prepared by baring their ends. He prayed one of those two back-corridor
plugs used by the cleaning women were on the night circuit. He crawled beneath
the radar beams to the faraway plug where he inserted the end of the two long
wires, wedging them with matchsticks. Keeping the free ends apart, he wriggled
to the second plug and placed the end of the short wires in it. Keeping the free
ends of the long wires apart, he wriggled to the second plug and placed the end of
the short wires in it.

He twisted the end of one long wire round the end of a short wire, and did the

same with the other two wires. Shutting his eyes and bracing himself, he touched
the four wires together. He felt the spark sear his hands as the wires short-
circuited the system. He opened his eyes. Everything was dark. Pulling the wires
free and thrusting them into a pocket, he slithered those twenty yards to Jenny’s
door in so many seconds. He reached up, slipped his credit card between the lock
and the door jamb, turned the knob and crept inside, shutting the door behind
him.

For a couple of minutes he lay on the floor to recover his breath and his nerve.
Now he had to move fast, for they would certainly check on these offices when

they had changed the fuses. He had only the glow from the street lamps to help
him, though he knew Jenny’s office like his own pocket. He needed a hiding-
place. But where? They’d look everywhere—in the big wardrobe, in the vast
cupboard where she kept her files, behind the curtains, under the desk.

But that huge cupboard had a flat top, was three yards tall and nearly as wide.
By standing on her desk, he got a grip on the top and hoisted himself aloft. He

curled up close to the wall.

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Five minutes later, he saw a chink of light under the floor. They had fixed the

fuses. Another ten minutes went by before somebody tried the door handle. One
guard entered while another stood outside.

Chisholm froze as the light snapped on. He heard the man move round,

opening the wardrobe, then the cupboard under him. He pulled aside the
curtains, looked under the desk.

“No, nothing here, Fred,” he called then left the room. Chisholm listened as

they searched Sheldon Wright’s office.

When they had gone, he climbed down. First, he tried the door between

Jenny’s office and Sheldon Wright’s. Locked. A mortice lock, difficult to pick. It
was not normally locked—that he knew. But the curator had decided to take no
chances. However, being easy-oazy, he might not have bothered to remove the
key.

With a piece of wire, he probed and found the key still in the lock. He opened

one of Jenny’s files and slipped it under the door. Now he could push the key out
and manoeuvre it under the door. Within minutes he had opened the director’s
door and had slipped through and locked it on his side.

That afternoon he had taken stock of Sheldon Wright’s office. Big

Chippendale desk by the window. Antique corner cupboard and drinks cabinet
against the party wall with Jenny’s office. Dutch cupboard swallowing the corners
and part of the corridor wall. On the wall leading to the admin office, a big safe
behind Cézanne’s Bathers where the Foundation cash—and now the jewels—was
kept. Corridor and two connecting doors locked.

Chisholm walked round Sheldon Wright’s desk. It had a telephone with lines

to half a dozen museum departments, an intercom between Wright and Jenny
and the office manager. An alarm button in the kneehole desk to alert the guards.

When he had sited everything, he sat down in the director’s chair, back to the

window, to wait.

If he had guessed correctly, the thief was already in the building. And

somewhere near, since like him, he must have run the crossfire of video-cameras
and radar scanners in the corridors. He might even now be on the other side of
the door on his left hand, the one leading to the main office. Plenty of places to
hide there. And if he had keys, he needn’t risk discovery on the corridor.

But any thief had two immense problems. Opening the safe. And escaping

with the jewels.

Chisholm tip-toed to the wall, unhooked the Bathers and tried the safe. Well

and truly locked. Yet, he had an idea of how the thief would open it. But when he
had the jewels, getting past the guards with them was his main problem. That
move must be timed. It also required an accomplice. And Chisholm had already
figured that the thief’s best time was around ten o’clock when the night shift took
over from the outgoing guard which had just done its last round.

Sheldon Wright’s quartz clock read twenty-five to nine. Just under an hour

and a half to wait. But he would have to go into hiding a quarter of an hour before
the ten-o’clock guard change.

As he sat there in the half-light from the street lamps, he wondered who it

would be. He had two suspects in mind, but could not decide which of them it
would be.

Just before nine, he heard two pairs of footsteps in the corridor and slipped

into the corner cupboard in case the guards put their heads round the door. But
they merely tried the locks on his door and those on either side.

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Quarter of an hour later, Chisholm began watching the traffic on Kensington

Road. At quarter to ten, he spotted a Rover 3000 approach from the
Knightsbridge direction. It was travelling slowly as though it had engine trouble.
When it reached the museum, it flashed its emergency lights, dropped to a
walking pace then stopped. It did nothing else that Chisholm noticed. He counted
twenty seconds before it drew away and turned left into Palace Road. He noted
the registration number.

So he was right. It was for tonight. That car had not only made a signal but

had obviously received a response from someone in the museum.

So the thief was leaving by the window with the jewels.
At seven minutes to ten, the two guards made their first-floor round.

Chisholm took up his position under the kneehole desk behind a wastepaper bin.

As he listened to the guards’ footsteps die away, he heard another sound: a

key clicking into the lock on the door between Sheldon Wright’s office and the
main office. Chisholm watched the door edge open, slowly, then heard heavy,
deliberate footsteps between him and the safe. A dark silhouette passed within a
foot of him. It went straight to the Cézanne Bathers and unhooked it. Another key
clicked, this time in the safe lock. A pencil torch scanned a piece of paper and a
gloved hand began rotating the combination knob slowly, left and right. Another
click of the key and the gloved hand swung the safe door open.

Chisholm watched as the gloved hands brought out the three boxes

containing the jewels; they opened each of the boxes and examined the contents
with the pencil torch before closing the lids then shutting and locking the safe
door.

Without budging from his hiding place, Chisholm observed the figure tape the

boxes together then place them in a large, padded bag which he taped all round.

Only when he saw the silhouette move towards the door by which he had

entered, did Chisholm act. First, he pressed the alarm bell under the desk which
set every alarm bell in the museum ringing and alerted Scotland Yard. He
reached up, pressed the switch on the desk light and beamed it on the figure
which whirled round. He was masked.

“Who are you stealing the jewels for this time, Seagram?” Chisholm shouted.
“It’s you, Chisholm, you little bastard. This time I’ll do you for good,”

Seagram shouted back.

He dropped the bag on the floor and fumbled in his coat. But before he could

reach the gun he was carrying, Chisholm shut his eyes and threw one of the stun
grenades he had brought with him.

Even with his eyes shut and his fingers in his ear, he saw the flash and heard

the detonation which stopped Seagram in his tracks—blinded, deafened and
confused. Before he had time to recover his senses, Chisholm had leapt on him,
disarmed him and pointed his own gun at him.

A rush of feet along the corridor and the four duty guards burst into the

office. One of them recognised Chisholm, who ordered them to arrest Seagram
and confirm that Scotland Yard had been alerted. Briefly, he explained what had
happened and handed them the note he had made of the car. “Tell the Yard to
look for a Rover 3000 with this number.” He reflected for a moment, then added,
“It belongs to a Miss Jenny Whiteside with an address in Old Brompton Road.”

“You mean the Miss Whiteside who works here?” one of the guards said.
Chisholm nodded. He wondered if he should betray Jenny, and decided that

she had played a double game with him several times and nearly had him
murdered by Seagram before he had begun to hunt for the jewels. If she was

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clever, she might trick Seagram and talk her way out of it, for the police had
nothing but his word against hers.

Two guards went off to contact the police while the other two escorted

Chisholm and Seagram to their office to wait for the Scotland Yard men to arrive.

When they were seated Seagram turned to Chisholm. “How did you know it

was me, you slimy little bastard?”

“Oh, I suspected you were the character who burgled my flat looking for the

Garfield Tate pictures, then tried to do me in. But I didn’t know how or where you
fitted in the murder mystery of Garfield Tate and Ceti Kanfer, or the story of the
jewels until I discovered you had worked in the Cairo embassy as a junior
diplomat. And not only that—you were on very intimate terms with Virginia
Garfield Tate. Through her, you heard about the jewel find worth tens of millions,
and at the same time your mistress, Virginia, told you she intended to have her
husband and Dr Kanfer, the hated rival and heir, eliminated. She didn’t have to
do much persuading to enlist you in her plot along with Hassanein.”

“Balls,” Seagram said. You haven’t an inch of proof.”
“Oh, yes I have. Hassanein wrote it all down, knowing it might come in handy

one day if he had to blackmail you, or if you did the dirty on him. So, I know how
you became the key man in the plot, the prime fixer. You fixed the chauffeur
Hassanein to do the deed. You fixed his alibi by borrowing his uniform and
driving Lady Garfield Tate to the opera yourself that night; you fixed for Garfield
Tate’s coffin to go through customs and immigration quickly without search on
the diplomatic nod, knowing it contained the stolen jewels; you fixed to go home
on the same plane as your dear friend, Ginny—I have all the press photos—so that
you could fix to retrieve the jewels you had planted in the archaeologist’s shroud;
you fixed their sale to Davenport and paid off Brierly for his part in the plot; you
took your fat commission and used this pay-off to fix yourself a career in business
and politics; you even fixed to marry your former mistress’s niece, who inherited
what was left of the Garfield Tates, including the archives. But you didn’t foresee
one small detail that dropped out of those archives, even if you thought you could
fix that oversight by telling Hassanein to fix me for good when I arrived in Cairo;
and when that failed, you fixed for Jenny to come out and fix my drink. Quite a
fixer, you were, Seagram.”

Chisholm should have noticed that Seagram was listening with only half an

ear, his mind seemingly elsewhere. He waited until Chisholm stopped for a
moment then turned to the guard who was sitting by the table, pistol in hand.

“Officer,” he said, “I want you to remember that I deny every word this man

has uttered—and I will continue to deny it even with my dying breath.”

That should have alerted Chisholm, although with two armed guards in the

room he did not expect trouble. But one of the guards had placed the pistol he
had taken from Seagram on a desk by his side. Like Chisholm, both were listening
to what Seagram was saying and their attention had lapsed.

Before they knew what was happening, Seagram had leapt to one side and

seized his pistol, snapped the safety catch open and pointed it at one of the
guards. “Make one move and I shoot,” he shouted.

Nobody budged. For a moment, Chisholm thought Seagram was going to

shoot him as he glared at him over the pistol barrel. But a strange look came into
his eyes and he swung the pistol round to point it at himself. Chisholm heard him
suck in a deep breath and sigh loudly. Before the sigh had died away, before
anybody could do anything to stop him, he had put the pistol in his mouth and
pulled the trigger. When the blast had died away, they saw that Seagram had

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blown half his left temple away. Even then, his body convulsed, jack-knifed then
hurtled backwards against the closed door of the guard-room and fell in a slack
heap.

“Oh, my God!” the young guard said. His mate picked up the phone to call an

ambulance from St. Stephen’s Hospital. Chisholm bent over the body, still
quivering, though Seagram’s eyes were glazing over.

“No point in calling doctors,” he said. “He’s dead.”

Two sirens wailed then wound down at the door. A guard went to let the

police in. They had picked up the Rover with Jenny Whiteside in it and were
holding her; she denied involvement in any attempted crime and refused to make
any other statement.

A detective-superintendent and a chief inspector arrived from Scotland Yard.

They looked at the body then listened to the guards’ story then to Chisholm, who
explained about the jewels and how he had hidden in the museum and watched
Seagram try to steal them. He had overpowered him but unfortunately they had
not been able to stop him from killing himself.

“So, what’s been stolen?” the detective-superintendent asked.
“He had these,” the senior guard said, pointing to the boxes.
“But he’s dead, and if they’re all there, who’s to say they’re stolen?” the senior

detective said and his subordinate nodded. “But we’d better check.” He turned to
Chisholm. “You know what these boxes should contain?” Chisholm nodded.

Methodically, they opened the three boxes and gazed at the gold circlets,

chokers, girdles, bangles, earrings, falcon collars, pendants, pectorals, scarabs
and wig adornments. Jumbled together in that bare room under fluorescent
lighting which bleached the turquoise blues, carnelian reds, lapis lazuli indigos
and old-gold colours, they looked anything but a unique treasure. Chisholm could
see Scotland Yard was unimpressed, these two detectives having no doubt
handled a dozen spectacular heists worth millions from Hatton Garden diamond
merchants.

“Looks like an open and shut case,” the superintendent murmured. “We’ll

make a report on what you’ve said and you can come and sign statements
tomorrow at the Yard.” He looked at Seagram’s body, still lying where it had
fallen. “We can’t charge him, and I doubt if we could do this Whitehead woman
even for parking on a double yellow line.”

When they had made a few notes, checked that the jewels were returned

intact to the guards and replaced in the safe, the superintendent turned to
Chisholm. “You seem to know something about this. Who do these objects really
belong to?”

“Who do they belong to?” Chisholm reflected for a moment then said, “Well, I

suppose you could say they belong to the estate of the Pharaoh Sneferu and his
queen, Hetepheres, to the Pharaohs Amenemhet II and III, the Pharaoh Senusert
and several royal princesses of Ancient Egypt.”

“You know damned well what I mean—who do they belong to now?” the

superintendent said, without concealing his irritation at Chisholm’s answer.

“The Egyptian Government—when I’ve taken them back.”
Did it come out spontaneously? Or was it another of those quirks of fate and

somebody had put the words into his mouth.

Anyway, it was what he meant to say. And in his heart, what he had always

intended to do.

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END