to retrieve them cost me a fortune. Had to cover expenses by selling
some of the booty."
He went to his desk and brought out a bottle of Laphroaig malt whisky
from the bottom drawer. He placed the bottle on the desk top and set two
glasses beside it.
"Can I tempt you?" he asked, but she shook her head.
"Don't blame you. Even the Scots themselves admit that this brew should
only be drunk in sub-zeiro weather on The Hill, in a forty-knot gale,
after stalking and shooting a ten-point stag. May I offer you something
a little more ladylike?"
Do you have a Coke?" she suggested.
Yes, but that is really bad for you, even worse than Laphroaig. It's all
that sugar. Absolute poison."
She took the glass he brought to her and returned his toast with it.
"To life!" she agreed, and then she went on, "You are right. Duraid did
tell me about these." She replaced the Punic bronze in the armoire, then
came to face him at the desk. "It was also Duraid who sent me to see
you. It was his dying instruction to me."
"Aha! So none of this is coincidence then. It seems I am the unwitting
pawn in some deep and nefarious plot." He pointed to the chair facing
his desk. "Sit!" he ordered "Tell!'
He perched above her on the corner of the desk, with the whisky glass in
his right hand and with one long, denim-clad leg swinging lazily as the
tail of a resting leopard. Though he was smiling quizzically, he watched
her face with a penetrating green gaze. She thought that it would be
difficult to lie to this man.
She took a deep breath, "Have you heard of an ancient Egyptian queen
called Lostris, of the second intermediate period, coexistent with the
first Hyksos invasions?"
He laughed a little derisively and stood up, "Oh! Now we are talking
about the book River God, are we?" He went to the bookcase and brought
down a copy. Although well thumbed, it was still in its dust-jacket, and
the cover illustration was a dreamy surrealistic view in pastel shades
of green and rose purple of the pyramids seen over water.
He dropped it on the desk in front of her.
"Have you read it?" she asked.
"Yes," he nodded. "I read most of Wilbur Smith's stuff.
He amuses me. He has shot here at Quenton Park a couple of times."
"You like lots of sex and violence in your reading, obviously?" She
pulled a face. "What did you think of this particular book?"
"I must admit that he had me fooled. Whilst I was reading it, I sort of
wished that it might be based on fact.
That was why I phoned Duraid." Nicholas picked up the book again and
flipped to the end of it. "The author's note was convincing, but what I
couldn't get out of my mind was the last sentence." He read it aloud.
"'Sanwwhere in the Abyssinian mountains near the source of the Blue
Nile, the mummy of Tenus still lies in the unviolated tomb of Pharaoh
Mamose.
Almost angrily Nicholas threw the book down on the desk. "My God! You
will never know how much I wanted it to be true. You will never know how
much I wanted a shot at Pharaoh Mamose's tomb. I had to speak to Duraid.
When he assured me it was all a load of bunkum, I felt cheated. I had
built up my expectations so high that I was bitterly disappointed."
"It's not bunkum," she contradicted him, and then corrected herself
quickly, "well, at least not all of it."
"I see. Duraid was lying to me, was he?"
"Not lying," she defended him hotly. "Just delaying the truth a little.
He wasn't ready to tell you the whole story then. He didn't have the
answers to all the questions that he knew you would ask. He was going to
come to you when he was ready. Your name was at the top of the list of
potential sponsors that he had drawn up."
"Duraid did not have the answers, but I suppose you do?" He was smiling
sceptically. was caught once. I am not likely to fall for the same cock
and bull a second time."
"The scrolls exist. Nine of them are still in the, vaults at the Cairo
museum. I was the one who discovered them in the tomb of Queen Lostris."
Royan opened her leather sling bag and rummaged around in it until she
brought out a thin sheaf of glossy 6 4 colour photographs. She selected
one and passed it to him. That is a shot of the rear wall of the tomb.
You can just make out the alabaster jars in the niche. That was taken
before we removed them."
"Nice picture, but it could have been taken anywhere." She ignored the
remark and passed him another photograph. The ten scrolls in Duraid's
workroom at the museum. You recognize the two men standing behind the
bench?"
He nodded. "Duraid and Wilbur Smith." His sceptical expression had
turned to one of doubt and bemusement.
"What the hell are you trying to tell me?"
"What the hell I am trying to tell you is that, apart from a wide poetic
licence that the author took unto himself, all that he- wrote in the
book has at least some foundation in the truth. However, the scroll that
most concerns us is the seventh, the one that was stolen by the men who
murdered my husband."
Nicholas stood up and went to the fireplace. He threw on another log and
bashed it viciously with the poker, as if to give release to his
emotions. He spoke without "turning "What was the significance of that
particular scroll around, as opposed to the other nine?"
"It was the one that contained the account of Pharaoh Mamose's burial
and, we believe, directions that might enable us to find the site of the
tomb."
"You believe, but you aren't certain?" He swung around to face her with
the poker gripped like a weapon. In this mood he was frightening. His
mouth was set in a tight hard line and his eyes glittered.
"Large parts of the seventh scroll are written in some sort of code, a
series of cryptic verses. Duraid and I were in the process of
deciphering these when-' she broke off and drew a long breath, "when he
was murdered."
"You must have a copy of something so valuable?" He glared at her, so
that she felt intimidated. She shook her head.
"All the microfilm, all our notes, all of it was stolen along with the
original scroll. Then whoever killed Duraid went back to our flat in
Cairo and destroyed my PC on to which I had transposed all our
research."
He threw the poker into the coal scuttle with a clatter, and came back
to the desk. "So you have no evidence at all? Nothing to prove that any
of this is true?"
"Nothing," she agreed, "except what I have here." With a long slim
forefinger she tapped her forehead. "I have a good memory."
He frowned and ran his fingers through his thick curling hair. "And so
why did you come to me?"
"I have come to give you a shot at the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose, she told
him simply. "Do you want it?"
Suddenly his mood changed. He grinned like a naughty schoolboy. "At this
moment I cannot think of anything I want more."
Then you and I will have to draw up some sort of working agreement," she
told him, and she leaned forward in a businesslike manner. "First, let
me tell you what I want, and then you can do the same."
It was hard bargaining, and it was one in the morning when Royan
admitted her exhaustion. "I can't think straight any more. Can we start
again tomorrow morning?" They still had not reached an agreement.
"It's tomorrow morning already," he told her. "But you are right.
Thoughtless of me. You can sleep here. After all, we do have
twenty-seven bedrooms here."
"No, thanks." She stood up. "I'll go on home."
"The road will be icy," he warned her. Then he saw her determined