"It feels like the ends of the earth," said Holliday.
"You don't get it, do you?" Rafi said, almost laughing.
"'Fraid not," said Holliday, unmoving on his pillows. His voice was filled with sleep.
"This explains a lot," said the young archaeologist. "Draw a straight line a thousand miles east of here and you reach the Nile River at Karnak, where the historical Imhotep appears, 'Out of the setting sun,' as the ancient texts say. That's usually taken to mean he came from the land of death, from Anubis, god of the underworld. Some other stories have him as one of the sons of Ra, the sun itself. It's a variation on all the religious mumbojumbo about the birth of Christ. On top of that, Imhotep's mythological mother is said to have been Hathor, the Warrior Queen.
"The point is there was no desert in those days, at least not here. Imhotep, or certainly his real father, could have made the trip easily. It fits! Imhotep, the real one, isn't buried somewhere in Egypt. He came home to die. He came here. This is the location of Imhotep's tomb, or at least someone thinks so!"
There was the slow sound of applause from the entrance to the tent. Startled, both Holliday and Rafi looked up. A man stood beside the tent flap, clapping. He was in his early forties, good-looking, fit and tanned with thick, black, very curly hair. He was clean shaven. He wore slightly tinted glasses and was dressed in a white Archaeologists Like It Dirty T-shirt, faded blue jeans and a pair of black Nike Air Hiking Boots.
"An excellent theory, Dr. Wanounou, and you're quite right; someone does think that this is the location of Imhotep's tomb. Me. Not only do I think it-I know it for a fact. You and Colonel Holliday arrived at an exciting time." The man's accent in English was vaguely British, maybe an affectation.
"You seem to know quite a bit about us," said Holliday coldly. There was something not quite right about the man in the T-shirt.
"Of course." The man smiled pleasantly. "For instance, I know you teach history at West Point Military Academy, lost your eye in a freak accident in Afghanistan and have recently rather annoyed the intelligence arm of the Holy See. I know that Dr. Wanounou's Ph.D. thesis was entitled The Development, Significance and Function of Tool-Making and the Evolution of the Blacksmith's Craft in the Land of Israel during the Iron Age I Period, because I both read and enjoyed it. I also know that he was involved with your last contretemps in Jerusalem and suffered a terrible beating because of it."
He hadn't got all that from a quick conversation with Emil Abdul Tidyman, thought Holliday.
"Who the hell are you?" Rafi asked.
"Forgive me," said the man in the T-shirt. "Where are my manners? The press knows me as Mustafa Ahmed Ben Halim. My real name is Dr. Rafik Alhazred. I am an archaeologist like yourself, among other things." Alhazred smiled. "I am also the leader of the Brotherhood of Isis and the man responsible for kidnapping the delightful Miss Peggy Blackstock."
14
"Why did you take Peggy?" Rafi demanded. "She's no part of your agenda."
"She was there, her bad luck. She could have been killed," answered Rafik Alhazred. "And what do you know about my agenda?"
"You're a terrorist. What's there to know?" Holliday shrugged.
"Most terrorists are lunatics of one stripe or another," said Alhazred. "They generally have issues about the size of their genitalia. Scratch a terrorist and you'll find a small penis. Any graduate student in psychology can tell you that. Hitler, Stalin, bin Laden; why do you think he blew up the World Trade Center, America's phallic symbol? He had weenie issues. Even George Bush was in a pissing contest with his father."
"George Bush wasn't a terrorist. He was the president of the United States," answered Holliday.
"Your patriotism is exemplary, Colonel, but Bush the younger terrorized his own people and used Homeland Security to do it, much like Hitler used the Gestapo. The Fuhrer had Himmler. Bush Jr. had Dick Cheney.
"A little simplistic, don't you think?" Holliday asked. Come on now; a philosophical argument about what constitutes a terrorist while sitting in a camel-skin tent in the middle of the Sahara Desert? It was insane.
"We could go on with this argument forever," said Rafi. "But it's got nothing to do with Peggy."
"Miss Blackstock went on at length about her relationship with you and yours with her. It was touching. I'm sorry to have caused undue anxiety."
"What have you done with her?" Holliday asked.
"She's quite safe, at least for the moment," said Alhazred. "Unlike her companions, all of whom have gone to meet their maker, I'm afraid."
"You murdered a bunch of priests?" Holliday said.
"I defended myself," answered Alhazred. "And they were no more priests than I am a colonel."
"Then who were they?"
"Brother Charles-Etienne Brasseur, the leader of the expedition, was a longtime operative for La Sapiniere, French Vatican Intelligence. He was the only real archaeologist in the group. Even Miss Blackstock was suspicious of that; there wasn't even a graduate student on the so-called team."
"Then who were they and what were they doing with Brasseur?" Rafi said.
"They were mercenaries hired from the ranks of true believers, like the men of Propaganda Due or Opus Dei. They all had previous military experience."
"How do you know that?" Holliday asked.
"Well, in the first place they were armed," responded Alhazred. "When we eventually made contact they opened fire on us with automatic weapons, mostly Beretta AR-70s. They killed three of my men before they had a chance to return fire." He paused. "Hardly the pious behavior of priests." Alhazred pulled a crumpled package of Marlboros out of his back pocket, tapped one out and lit it with a paper match. He blew a plume of smoke up at the roof of the tent. "Later we found out that they had all been in the Departement protection securite, the storm trooper arm of the National Front Party in France and the First 'Draghi' desert unit of the Italian R.A.O., the Reggimento Ricognizione e Acquisizione Obiettivi-in other words, commandos."
"You're saying they were on a military mission?" Holliday asked.
"Thieves in the night, Colonel. They came for Your Heart's Desire and the gold it contained; Imhotep's tomb was just an excuse for the expedition."
"What about Brasseur's theory?"
"Bogus; Brasseur was a medievalist. He was interested in the Templars' role at Damietta certainly, but the Imhotep theory was an invention of Centro d'informazione pro Deo, Vatican Intelligence in Rome. Brasseur discovered the wartime journals of a man named Father Andrew Felix Morion. He was the one who set up the removal of the gold for Rauff in 1944."
"You seem to know a lot about the Catholic Church," said Rafi.
"Why shouldn't I?" Alhazred said, smiling coldly. "I was raised in it."
"You're not a Muslim?" Rafi asked, surprised.
"I've never heard of a Catholic terrorist, either," said Holliday.
"A terrorist is as a terrorist does. I was born in Beirut, Lebanon. My father was native Lebanese, my mother was French Canadian of Lebanese descent. They were both doctors. They were working at Nabatieh, a Palestinian refugee camp, in July of 1974 when the Israelis bombed it to rubble." He looked across the tent at Rafi. "Your people, Dr. Wanounou. They murdered my parents for no reason. I was two years old at the time. I have no memory of my parents. I know them only from a few photos and the stories my uncle told me. They were stolen from me the way Walter Rauff stole the Jewish gold on that plane, the way they would have stolen it from me if they'd had the opportunity. As I said, a terrorist is as a terrorist does. I'm no terrorist, gentlemen. I'm just a man taking his revenge."