The bulldozer had crashed into an oil derrick. The skeletal tower went over like a lamppost hit by a drunk driver.
A flashpoint of white incandescence was generated by the explosives that Reguiba and company had left on the machine shortly before jumping off it to safety.
The uncapped oil well caught fire. A line of brightness jetted up, up, up, rising to a hundred-foot-high pillar of flame. It cleaved the night sky with its intolerable brightness.
As a diversionary ploy allowing Reguiba and his crew to make their escape, the tactic was a roaring success.
Prince Hasan tried to console Carter. "I'll have an army turning over the countryside for him. He won't get far."
But of course, he did.
Which was why, a few days later, the Killmaster jetted to Cairo.
Reguiba was back in business.
Fourteen
Late one June night in the Cairo Museum, while Major Fuad Akbar Namid of the State Security Bureau was busy lecturing Nick Carter on the evils of Western expropriation of Egyptian antiquities, the Killmaster suddenly drew his gun and shot a mummy case.
Namid was nonplussed, to say the least. So was the lovely lady professor whom he and Carter were protecting.
Namid was a big man in his middle forties. With his imposing physique, gleaming bald head, and flowing mustache, he resembled an old-time circus strong man.
An ardent nationalist and a staunch traditionalist, Namid was not overjoyed at his assignment of being nursemaid to an American spy and bodyguard to a beautiful archaeologist. The spy belonged in Washington, and the lady belonged at home, tending a husband and children.
By his standards, Professor Khamsina Assaf was well on her way to becoming an old maid. Why, she was thirty if she was a day, and still unmarried! And too skinny for his taste.
Carter did not agree. Khamsina came from a fine old Cairo family, and she was very attractive, though she did her best to hide that fact. She was also very intelligent, the holder of a doctorate and an important staff post in the museum, the author of over a dozen scholarly articles relating to her field, and was probably the world's leading authority on one of the Nile's most obscure tribes, the nomadic Nefrazi.
Her familiarity with the "Gray Raiders" of the desert was surprising, seeming more the province of an ethnologist than an archaeologist. But her antiquarian studies had taken her into the heart of Nefrazi territory, throwing her into prolonged and intimate contact with that fascinating people.
The turnings of fate, and the machinations of Reguiba, now rendered her knowledge invaluable. Information locked inside her head could unlock the secret of the Reguiba's final offensive.
She was tall, fine-featured, and high-bosomed. Her style was severe, almost prim. Her chestnut hair was pulled into a knot at the nape of her neck. Dark and lovely eyes were hidden behind owlish tortoise-shell glasses. She wore no makeup.
Her outfit consisted of a light brown jacket with a matching slim skirt. On this hot night, her navy blouse was worn buttoned to the collar. Slung over one shoulder was a square handbag. She carried a well-worn briefcase bulging with papers and notes relating to the Gray Raiders.
Carter had only arrived in Cairo a few hours earlier. By the time he had hooked up with Namid, his Egyptian counterpart, it was late indeed. The museum had been closed to the public for hours. By the time Carter and Namid arrived to escort her, even most of the dedicated staff had called it a night and gone home.
Namid had a car and driver waiting outside. When Khamsina was ready to go, the trio set off through the convoluted corridors of the museum.
They were on an upper floor of an obscure wing devoted to scholarly research. To conserve power, few lights were on, and those were sparsely scattered. A heavy smell of dust tickled the back of Namid's throat.
"Have you been to the museum before, Mr. Carter?" Khamsina asked. She seemed less interested in the answer to her question than she was in making polite conversation. The empty halls were quiet, hushed.
"Please call me Nick. Yes, I visit the museum every time I get a chance when I'm in town. It's endlessly fascinating. There's always something new to see. Or something old, I should say."
They passed a row of small, crowded offices, coming to a minor display hall, an intimate gallery. At its opposite end was the lighted landing of a marble stairway.
Earlier, Carter and the major had passed through this hall on their way to Khamsina's office. Then, lights shone in the gallery. Now the lights were extinguished, illumination provided by what light leaked in from the landing.
A broad aisle ran down the gallery's center. Rising on either side were glass display cases, their shelves filled with small items, such as mirrors, bowls, spice boxes, unguent jars, and other exotic bric-a-brac of the late New Kingdom.
Major Namid was a moderately religious man, when it did not interfere with his official duties or his pleasures. He knew that these rare antiquities dated from what Moslems call "the Time of Ignorance," prior to the coming of the Prophet, and therefore to be abhorred. By day, he would have been the first to scoff at any superstitious fancies, but there was something about the way the glass cases emerged from the gloom, separating themselves from the shadows, that he found a bit unsettling.
To take his mind off such thoughts, he paid more attention to the conversation between Carter and Khamsina, to which he had been listening with half an ear.
He was pleased to note that the lady professor had ignored Carter's invitation to address him by his first name. While he had no sexual interest in her — Allah preserve him from educated women! — he disliked the American flirting with a countrywoman of his.
Carter went on, "Yes, it's one of the great museums of the world."
Irked, Namid said, "The collection would be even more outstanding had not your Western colonialists looted Egypt of so much of our priceless national heritage."
Khamsina fretted at his bad manners, darting him looks that he ignored.
They neared the landing, which lay beyond the squared portal. Flanking the wide doorway were twin sarcophagi, mummy cases braced vertically upright. The mummies had long since been removed and were stored in vacuum-sealed cases to protect them against disintegrating from exposure to air and bacteria. One case's lid was closed; the other was open to display its interior.
Major Namid was riding his hobby horse: "I find it somehow obscene that our two great obelisks are now in New York City and London. It's high time your governments return the treasures looted from the Egyptian people. You Westerners regard our country as little more than your own private treasure trove…"
"Major, please!" Khamsina murmured. "Mr. Carter is here to help us…"
"Here to protect his government's interests, you mean."
"Which happen to coincide with your government's interests," Carter pointed out.
"The time is past when you can take us for granted and expect us to fawn all over you. Respect. You must respect a land that was civilized when your ancestors were living in caves…"
His hand a blur of motion. Carter drew Wilhelmina as he dropped into a combat crouch. No sooner had the pistol cleared its holster, than he pumped three shots square into the closed mummy case.
Khamsina and Namid were stunned. She spoke first. "Do you know what you've done? You've just ruined a priceless fifteen-hundred-year-old sarcophagus!"
Namid was utterly flabbergasted. He stood stock-still while the Killmaster padded on the landing, looking up and down the stairs.
Creaking sounded from the ventilated mummy case. That gave Namid even more of a jolt.