Joe nodded, smiling. He leaned down and embraced Belle and then Alice, kissing each of them. At the door he paused.
I've known those moments here with the two of you. I've known them and I'll always know them, and I'll always remember this room one way. The way it was the other night when I came here, one timeless night like all others on the Nile, and I sat in the candlelight looking at the river and listening to your beautiful music. A night unlike any other for me, on the Nile in the shadows at the end of the darkness, listening to your beautiful music. Yours, and now mine. . . .
Then all at once he was gone and the two tiny women were alone in the moonlight of their airy sunroom, alone again with their memories. . . . Big Belle sitting stiffly erect, staring straight ahead at the river. Little Alice touching her hair and softly humming a tune against the night.
-21-
Purple Seven Moonglow
Midnight past in the serenity of the still desert.
The pyramids stately before the stars.
And far away in the moonlight a wisp of sand swirling lightly over the crest of a dune, billowing softly in the wake of a distant horseman who had suddenly come racing into view from out of the pale stony reaches of the night, pounding swiftly down through the wastes in a headlong charge aimed at that huge crouching figure on guard among the pyramids, the calm and graceful Sphinx.
. . . this mysterious solitary charge in the moonlight carefully observed all the while from an unsuspected lookout. From a black hole in the right eye of the Sphinx. . . .
The horse and rider dropped from sight and came flying over a final ridge to gallop wildly down the last hard stretch of desert, the hoofbeats of the animal drumming more loudly as the charge narrowed, the dashing figure on horseback now clearly visible.
The pale rider wore a pith helmet, a safari jacket and jodhpurs. His face was masked by a gleaming white silk scarf tied around his head and flowing on the wind. His eyes were masked by racing goggles that caught the drift of the moon and blankly reflected it back in opaque white discs. The horse reared in front of the Sphinx as the rider broke his gallop, then went charging off to one side and quickly circled the enormous stone figure so tranquilly in repose in the moonlight.
Nothing. The Major had found no one lurking along the sides of the great stone beast. No one crouching in the crevices of antiquity's hindquarters. The Major was quite sure he was alone.
He drew up again in front of the Sphinx and dismounted, removing his carbine from its case on the side of the saddle. He also checked his long-range sniper's rifle nestling on his back, the large automatic pistols strapped to each of his hips, the small automatic in one pocket of his jodhpurs and the even smaller automatic in the other pocket, and the minuscule ivory-handled derringer under his jacket to the side.
Lastly he felt for the hunting knife at his waist, the two smaller slashing knives taped to his back, and the four throwing daggers strapped to his shins. Jingling around on the Major's web belt was a mass of extra ammunition clips, a half-dozen for each of his automatic pistols and a full dozen for his carbine.
In addition to the large supply of shiny brass bullets bristling from bandoliers crisscrossing the Major's chest, deadly fifty-caliber tracers as long as a man's hand and of no use whatsoever without a large water-cooled machine gun to fire them. But although these utterly useless bullets were no more than a kind of brassy display of symbolic mail firepower in the moonlight, they were still undeniably impressive, awesome because of sheer size alone.
Equipped. Armed. Ready.
Rifles, pistols, knives, tracers, daggers.
Automatic bolt actions and slippery blowback loading and well-oiled breechblock plungers. Beady sights and solid safety switches and slithering barrel screws, and but the merest squeeze of a taut trigger needed to make a hammer slam home and balls explode.
Equipped.
And finally, for reserve firepower, the Major had also brought along a monstrous nine-shot Czech revolver, an enormous pistol once claimed by Balkan assassins to be the ultimate all-purpose secret weapon of the future. This crude Czech masterpiece hidden in a saddlebag on the Major's high-spirited Arabian mare, in case the Major suddenly found himself stripped of his other weapons. In case he suddenly had to leap from the Sphinx onto his mare, against all odds, and make a daring escape in the moonlight, blasting away at skulking shadows as he thundered over the dunes.
Armed.
Grimly the masked Major smiled beneath the flowing silk folds of his white scarf, behind the pale white discs of his racing goggles.
Ready.
As prepared as any masked man could ever be for a dangerous nighttime meeting with a Purple Seven fugitive in the shadows of the inscrutable Sphinx.
***
The Major cocked his pith helmet at an angle and fitted his swagger stick more securely into his left armpit, which was unaccountably wet in the cool night. Then he went striding up toward the impassive stone face of the gigantic beast and planted his feet in a solid position, just below the great stone nose, which was badly bent and mostly missing as a result of having been used for target practice by Napoleon's artillery, nearly a century and a half earlier.
Standing there between the great stone paws with his carbine at the ready, loosely aiming at the immense expanse of open desert with the noble head of the mythical stone creature looming up behind him, the Major momentarily had the sensation of himself being the courageous British lion, the very beast of the Empire, alone in the pale moonlight facing the vastness of the unknown.
And all the while, unbeknown to him, the Major was being carefully observed from above. . . . From the blackest of the black holes of antiquity
The Major checked his watch. Two o'clock in the morning and still no sign of the Purple Seven.
The Armenian's late, he thought, fingering his carbine. Late. Not even on time. And not exactly the way for a Purple Seven to maintain his reputation for being dangerous, or even clever for that matter. But out here, how dangerous could one fugitive agent be? Here in bright moonlight, where the Major had a clear field of fire in front of him and a solid mass of mythical stone beast behind him? With the arsenal he was carrying, in fact, the Major thought he could probably have held off a small army of marauding bedouin tribesmen from his superior vantage point under the nose of the Sphinx. Nor was it difficult for the Major to imagine himself doing just that.
With the telescopic sights of his sniper's rifle trained on the distant dunes, picking off the shrieking rebel sheiks the moment they galloped into view. . . . Quickly lowering his sights and picking off the banner-bearer and his cutthroat bodyguards. . . . Throwing aside the now useless sniper's rifle as the hordes kept coming. . . . Seizing his rapid-fire carbine and gunning down whole mobs of howling tribesmen as they came milling around the base of the Sphinx, blazing away from his hip, bravely slamming in new clips until the burning weapon jammed from the incessant explosions. . . . Finally driven back against the throat of the Sphinx itself by the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. Crouching beneath the great stone chin with an automatic pistol in each hand, a knife in his teeth, fearlessly blasting away at the shadows that came sneaking up from the hindquarters of the mythical beast, recklessly blasting away at this native gas from the bowels of antiquity. The automatics jamming and the Major hurling daggers in a last heroic stand for the sake of the Empire and the British lion. . . .
Tinkle.
The ammunition clips dangling around the Major's waist clinked lightly together. Stupid of the Armenian, he thought, to pick a rendezvous as open as this one. The Armenian must have imagined it would save him from being taken by surprise, but obviously he hadn't foreseen the possibility of the Major's quick dash in from the desert on a swift Arabian mare. And now the Armenian must be out there somewhere hiding behind a dune, helplessly watching the Major astride his commanding position in the lap of the Sphinx. Still, the Major was more than a little disappointed by the silence on every side. This was to be his first meeting, after all, with the Purple Seven who was Our Colly's successor, and somehow he had expected a more romantic encounter, a more dramatic confrontation. Especially in view of the unusual setting.