"What about the American? He is a famous collector." She forestalled him.
"Peter Walsh is a difficult man to work with. His passion to accumulate makes him unscrupulous. He frightens me a little."
"So who does that leave?" she asked.
He did not answer for they both knew the answer to her question. Instead he turned his attention back to the material mat littered the working table.
"It looks so innocent, so mundane. An old papyrus scroll, a few photographs and notebooks, a computer print-out. It is difficult to believer how dangerous these might be in the wrong hands." He sighed again. "You might almost say that they are deadly dangerous."
Then he laughed. "I am being fanciful. Perhaps it is the late hour. Shall we get back to work? We can worry about these other matters once we have worked out all the conundrums set for us by this old rogue, Taita, and completed the translation."
He picked up the top photograph from the pile in front of him. It was an extract from the central section of the scroll. "It is the worst luck that the damaged piece of papyrus falls where it does." He picked up his reading glasses and placed them on his nose before he read aloud.
"There are many steps to ascend on the staircase to the abode of Hapi. With much hardship and endeavour we reached the second step and proceeded no further, for it was here that the prince received a divine revelation. In a dream his father, the dead God Pharaoh visited him and commanded him, 'I have travelled far and I am grown weary. It is here that I will rest for all eternity.' "
Duraid removed his glasses and looked across at Royan. "The second step. It is a very precise description for once. Taita is not being his usual devious self."
"Let's go back to the satellite photographs," Royan suggested, and drew the glossy sheets toward her. Duraid came around the table to stand behind her.
"To me it seems most logical that the natural feature that would obstruct them in the gorge would be something like a set of rapids or a waterfall. If it were the second waterfall that would put them here?" Royan placed her finger on a spot on the satellite photograph where the narrow snake of the river threaded itself through the dark massifs of the mountains on either hand.
At that moment she was distracted and she lifted her head. "Listen!" Her voice changed, sharpening with alarm.
"What is it?" Duraid looked up also.
"The dog." She answered.
"That damn mongrel." He agreed. "It's always making the night hideous with its yapping. I have promised myself to get rid of it."
At that moment the lights went out.
They froze with surprise in the darkness. The soft thudding of the decrepit diesel generator in its shed at the back of the palm grove had ceased. It was so much a part of the oasis night that they noticed it only when it was silent.
Their eyes adjusted to the faint starlight that came in through the terrace doors. Duraid crossed the room and took the oil lamp down from the shelf beside the door where it waited for just such a contingency. He lit it, and looked across at Royan with an expression of comical resignation.
"I will have to go down?"
"Duraid." She interrupted him. "The dog!"
He listened for a moment, and his expression changed to mild concern. The dog was silent out there in the night.
"I am sure it is nothing to be alarmed about." He went to the door, and for no good reason she suddenly called after him.
"Duraid, be careful!" He shrugged dismissively and stepped out onto the terrace.
She thought for an instant that it was the shadow of the vine over the trellis moving in the night breeze off the desert, but the night was still. Then she realized that it was a human figure crossing the flagstones silently and swiftly,coming in behind Duraid as he skirted the fish pond in the centre of the paved terrace.
"Duraid!" She screamed a warning, and he spun around, lifting the lamp high.
"Who are you?" he shouted. "What do you want here?"
The intruder closed with him silently. The traditional full length dishdaasha robe swirled around his legs, and the white ghutrah head cloth covered his head. In the light of the lamp Duraid saw that he had drawn the corner of the head cloth over his face to mask his features.
The intruder's back was turned towards her so Royan did not see the knife in his right hand, but she could not mistake the upward stabbing motion that he aimed at Duraid's stomach. Duraid grunted with pain and doubled up at the blow, and his attacker drew the blade free and stabbed again, but this time Duraid dropped the lamp and seized the knife arm.
The flame of the fallen oil lamp was guttering and flaring. The two men struggled in the gloom, but Royan saw a dark stain spreading over her husband's white shirt front.
"Run!" He bellowed at her. "Go! fetch help! I cannot hold him?" The Duraid she knew was a gentle person, a soft man of books and learning. She could see that he was outmatched by his assailant.
The pain roused Duraid. It had to be that intense to bring him back from that far place on the very edge of life to which he had drifted.
He groaned. The first thing he was aware of as he regained consciousness was the smell of his own flesh burning, and then the agony struck him with full force. A violent tremor shook his whole body and he opened his eyes and looked down at himself.
His clothing was blackening and smouldering, and the pain was as nothing he had ever experienced in his entire life. He realized in a vague way that the room was on fire all around him. Smoke and waves of heat washed over him so that he could barely make out the shape of the doorway through them.
The pain was so terrible that he wanted it to end. He wanted to die then and not to have to endure it further. Then he remembered Royan. He tried to say her name through his scorched and blackened lips but no sound came.
Only the thought of her gave him the strength to move. He rolled over once and the heat attacked his back that up until that moment had been shielded. He groaned aloud and rolled again, just a little nearer to the doorway.
Each movement was a mighty effort and evoked fresh paroxysms of agony, but when he rolled onto his back again he realized that a gale of fresh air was being sucked through the open doorway to feed the flames. A lungful of the sweet desert air revived him and gave him just sufficient strength to lunge down the step onto the cool stones of the terrace. His clothes and his body were still on fire. He beat feebly at his chest to try to extinguish them but his hands were black burning claws.
Then he remembered the fish pond. The thought of plunging his tortured body into that cold water spurred him to one last effort and he wriggled and wormed his way across the flags like a snake with a crushed spine.
The pungent smoke from his still cremating flesh choked him and he coughed weakly, but kept doggedly on. He left slabs of his own grilled skin on the stone coping as he rolled across it and flopped into the pond. There was a hiss of steam and a pale cloud of it obscured his vision so that for a moment he thought he was blinded. The agony of cold water on his raw burned flesh was so intense that he slid back over the edge of consciousness.
When he came back to reality through the dark clouds he raised his dripping head, and he saw a figure staggering up the steps at the far end of the terrace, coming up out of the garden.
For a moment he thought it was a phantom of his agony, but when the light of the burning villa fell full upon her, he recognized Royan. Her wet hair hung in tangled disarray over her face, and her clothing was torn and running with lake water and stained with mud and green algae. Her right arm was wrapped in muddy rags and her blood oozed through, diluted pink by the dirty water.
She did not see him. She stopped in the centre of the terrace and stared in horror into the burning room. It was like looking into the depths of a furnace, and she believed Duraid must still be in there. She started forward but the heat was like a solid wall and it stopped her dead. At that moment the roof collapsed, sending a roaring column of sparks and flames high into the night sky. She backed away from it, shielding her face with an upraised arm.