Bronson shook his head and adjusted the dashboard vents so that the stream of ice-cold air was directed towards his face and chest.
‘Sorry,’ he replied, as the cool air started to have an effect. ‘The heat was a bit of a shock. I was expecting it, obviously, but it still kind of took me by surprise. How on earth do you manage to work in it?’
Angela shrugged her shoulders. ‘You get used to it, at least to some extent, and we do what we can to keep the sun off our backs at the excavation site. Ideally we’d live somewhere here in the city, but we don’t really have any option,’ she continued. ‘The site is too far away for us to commute there on a daily basis from anywhere half-civilized, and being on site all the time means that we can get a lot of work done first thing in the morning before the sun gets too high in the sky, and carry on late into the evening until the light finally goes. We each spend at least two nights in a hotel in Kuwait every fortnight, just to wash off the dust and dirt. Showering in the desert isn’t the easiest thing to do.’
‘Isn’t it a hassle going back and forth across the border between Kuwait and Iraq so often?’
‘We do have to cross the border, obviously, but there’s absolutely no indication apart from the GPS’ — she pointed at a unit attached to the windscreen with a suction cup — ‘and possibly a couple of border guards patrolling the area in a 4x4 to tell you where you are and when you’ve crossed into Iraq. I can promise you that the desert in Kuwait is absolutely identical to the desert in Iraq. The dig is in a kind of empty quarter, so that’s why we need a professional standard GPS to navigate by lat and long. There are only a handful of roads out there.’
‘Makes sense,’ Bronson said. ‘So we’re heading straight out there, are we? I saw you’ve already got all the gear in the back of the truck.’
‘We are, yes, but we’ve got to stop and pick up somebody before we leave Kuwait City. Stephen Taverner — another archaeologist from the British Museum. I gave him a lift here a couple of days ago for an appointment and it’s easier for us to all go back together.’
‘So you didn’t just drive down to meet me?’
Angela nodded.
‘Well, sort of. The main reason I drove down was to collect you, obviously, but one of our vehicles does a supply run at least once a week, and we also had to deliver some of the relics we’ve uncovered to the museum in Kuwait. The staff there are collating what we’ve found, and they’ll then arrange to transport everything up to Baghdad.
‘Normally, of course, we’d expect to take the stuff straight to the museum that authorized or sponsored the dig, but Baghdad is just too far away to make that feasible in this case. Where we’re digging is about three hundred miles from Baghdad as the crow flies, and probably over four hundred by road — not that there are many of them, or not proper roads anyway. But Kuwait City is only about sixty miles away in a straight line, and a bit over one hundred on the route we drive. And don’t forget that this is a joint expedition. We have both Iraqi and Kuwaiti archaeologists involved in the dig, plus the three of us from the British Museum and a couple of French experts from a Paris museum, so it really does make sense to use Kuwait City as our base.’
Bronson switched his gaze from Angela’s profile to the view through the windscreen. It was the first time he’d been to Kuwait, though he had on occasion visited Dubai and Muscat, albeit briefly, and he could immediately see the similarities. The skyline in front of them was dominated by skyscrapers and there were signs of recent construction everywhere; the roads were wide and in good condition, most of the vehicles looked quite new, and the driving was universally awful, vehicles swapping lanes at random and without the use of indicators or mirrors, and all driving far too close to one another, and far too fast.
‘The driving doesn’t bother you?’ he asked, looking at a car moving alongside them.
‘It terrified me at first, but after a week or so I got used to it.’ She broke off and hit the horn hard as a white Nissan saloon dived across two lanes of traffic and pulled in front of them with only inches to spare, before swinging off on to an exit slip road.
Bronson lifted his foot from the imaginary brake that he had applied as the car appeared, and shook his head.
‘I thought Cairo was bad,’ he muttered, ‘but this is probably worse, and everything’s moving a hell of a lot faster.’
‘We won’t be in it for very long,’ Angela said, slowing down slightly as the vehicles ahead began bunching up, brake lights flaring into life. ‘Once we’ve collected Stephen we’ll be heading out of town, and the roads should be fairly empty.’
About fifteen minutes later she pulled the Toyota to a stop directly outside a hotel on a side street and tooted the horn briefly.
Almost immediately, a tall, thin man with sandy hair and what looked to Bronson like three days’ growth of beard walked out of the hotel and over to the Land Cruiser. He’d actually stretched out his hand to the front passenger door handle before he registered the fact that the seat was already occupied. Instead, he opened the rear door and pulled himself into the back seat, a gust of hot damp air accompanying him.
‘Sorry, I didn’t see you there. I’m Stephen Taverner,’ he said, and extended his hand for Bronson to shake.
‘Nice to meet you. I’m Chris. I’m Angela’s former other half, if you can call me that.’
‘Oh, of course, Chris Bronson. She’s told us all about you.’
‘Nothing good, I expect,’ Bronson said.
‘No, not really,’ Stephen replied, deadpan. Then he grinned, but immediately grimaced and put the palm of his hand against the side of his face. ‘This blasted tooth,’ he said. ‘The dentist hacked out the old filling and put in a new one, but it’s still giving me gyp. No, actually, Angela was quite complimentary about you, given the fact that you’ve been divorced for so long. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, maybe?’
‘Not in my case,’ Angela piped up, swinging the Land Cruiser around a corner to head back the way they’d come. She gave Bronson a wry smile. ‘But Chris can be useful, especially in a tight corner.’
‘So if you’re not here for some kind of reconciliation with the fair Angela,’ Stephen asked, ‘why are you out here at all?’
‘I had a couple of weeks’ leave due, and I thought I needed a change of scene from rural Kent, so when Angela suggested I come out to see what she was up to in Iraq, I booked a flight and packed my shorts. I would have packed a bucket and spade, but she told me not to bother.’
Stephen nodded. ‘Quite right too. Archaeologists almost never use anything as crude as a spade. Our tool of choice is usually a brush or, if something is particularly reluctant to come back into the light of day, a small trowel.’ He paused for a moment, then added: ‘So are you looking forward to seeing the temple?’
‘Temple?’ Bronson demanded, his interest piqued. ‘What temple?’
2
The tailgates of the lorries slammed down almost simultaneously, sounding like two ragged gunshots, and from the back of each vehicle a group of about a dozen men jumped down to the ground and began walking steadily towards the encampment. They were clad in a wide variety of clothing, everything from classic but rather grubby Arabian jellabas up to military-style camouflage clothing.
But the new arrivals shared one characteristic: they were all carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles. Many of them also wore shoulder or belt holsters containing pistols of various types, and a couple were hefting rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
As the men approached the encampment in two straggly lines, the members of the archaeology team stood and watched, frozen to the spot, the expressions on their faces ranging from merely puzzled to frankly terrified.