“Don’t try to get up.”
“Lie down, you are bleeding.”
“Send for an ambulance!”
“Stand back, give him air.”
Among the spectators was Feisal. We trotted up to him and he spared us a quick glance. “It’s Ashraf. He’s not badly hurt. All right, friends, your assistance is appreciated but unnecessary. He slipped and hit his head, that’s all.”
“I was afraid it was you,” I mumbled.
“No, that was me screaming. I heard a muffled cry and the sound of a fall, and found him flat on the ground. I didn’t want to leave him alone while I went for help.”
“He didn’t slip, did he?”
“Later. Come on, Ashraf, let me give you a hand.”
“He may have concussion,” Schmidt said. “Should we not wait for a medical person?”
“He could die of old age before we got a stretcher in here,” Feisal said. “Are you offering to carry him?”
Ashraf lowered his hands and looked up at us. Blood trickled down his neck. “I don’t require to be carried. A slight accident, as Feisal said. I hope I have not spoiled this experience for you.”
He got slowly to his feet, waving Feisal away. The spectators made polite disclaimers, but they began to drift away singly and in pairs, returning to the entrance. The show was over, in any case. The light had faded. The gibbous moon was setting.
“Take my arm,” Feisal said. “Nobody’s looking, you needn’t show off any longer.”
“Go away,” Ashraf said through his teeth. “Leave me alone.”
Wolfgang, the only one of the outsiders left, took this personally. He chugged away, muttering and shaking his head.
“You too,” said Ashraf, squaring his manly shoulders and distributing an indiscriminate glare at the rest of us.
“Fat chance,” I said. “You owe us an explanation, Ashraf. Whom did you meet? Where did he go?”
“She,” Feisal said.
“What?” I stared at him.
“I saw her running away,” Feisal said. “She had a scarf pinned round her head and she was wearing a skirt. And don’t try to tell me it was a man in a head cloth and galabiya, I know the difference.”
“I suppose,” said Ashraf, “that if I told you I had an appointment with a lady friend—”
“We wouldn’t believe it,” I assured him. “So your contact was female.” I succumbed, I admit, to sexist prejudice.
For all his bravado, Ashraf wasn’t at his best. He sagged a little, and when Feisal put an arm round him he didn’t shrug it off. “It was clever,” Ashraf admitted. “I had come prepared to defend myself should it be necessary. Finding a woman lowered my guard.”
“Why did she hit you?” I asked.
“She didn’t. We were getting along nicely when someone came up behind me.” Ashraf showed his teeth in what was certainly not a friendly smile. “It was your friend Mr. Tregarth.”
ELEVEN
A shraf refused to see a doctor. He was steady on his feet, and it was two o’clock in the morning, so we decided to take him back to the Winter Palace. The yawning guard assured us we were the last to leave the temple. I doubted, not his veracity—he probably thought he was telling the truth—but his accuracy. But by that time I didn’t give a damn who was still chasing whom around the columns or climbing over which walls.
After protesting our intent, to no avail, Ashraf lapsed into silence and refused to answer questions. The streets of Luxor were dim and deserted, with not even a taxi in sight, but of course the director’s car awaited. Nothing so prosaic as an ordinary EgyptAir flight for Ashraf; he had had his chauffeur drive him to Luxor.
When we arrived at the hotel, I stopped at the desk to ask for messages and was informed, with appropriate hauteur, that they would have been delivered to our room. Mr. Tregarth had not picked up the one we had left earlier. The news came as no surprise.
Schmidt dug out his first-aid kit and Ashraf submitted fairly graciously to my ministrations, such as they were. The blow had landed just behind his right ear, resulting in a bump and a small cut. He refused my offer to shave off the hair around the cut, so I had to settle for dabbing on an antiseptic cream. I smeared on quite a lot of it, messing up his nice haircut, since by that time I had had it up to here with Ashraf.
He had resigned himself to the inevitable by then—the inevitable being three annoyed people who were prepared to use force to prevent his leaving—and he’d also had time to think things over.
“How did you know?” he inquired, taking a sip of the fizzy lemon drink with which Schmidt had supplied him.
“We’re asking the questions,” I said, folding my arms. “Why didn’t you tell us you had heard again from the thieves?”
“The second message warned me of what would happen if I confided in anyone else.”
“Another piece of Tut?” I asked.
Ashraf shuddered. “Please, don’t say such things.”
“But we aren’t the police,” Feisal said. “That was an idle threat; they couldn’t know whether you had told us.”
“They would know if you turned up at the right place at the right time,” Ashraf said with sudden fury. “Which you did. You were seen. She was extremely angry. I swore by every saint in several pantheons that I hadn’t said a word to any of you. Fortunately she believed me.”
“What a nice, trusting lady she must be,” I said. “Some conspirator!”
Ashraf leaned back, legs extended, ankles crossed, lips curving in a smile. “She was amenable to persuasion. But perhaps I should start at the beginning.”
He had found the second message waiting for him when he arrived at his house in Luxor. (He had others, Feisal told us later, at Sharm el Sheikh and Alexandria.) It instructed him to meet his contact in the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak between twelve midnight and 1:00 A.M. They were thoughtful enough to give him twenty-four hours to arrange the matter. If he failed to show up, he would have cause to regret it.
“I came to you to ask whether you had made any progress. You presented me with a variety of unfounded theories, but no facts. It became evident to me that you were incapable of carrying out your assignment, or unwilling to do so. So…” He took out a fancy silver case, extracted a cigarette, and lit it with a fancy silver lighter. “I decided to proceed on my own. I invited a number of dignitaries and archaeologists to justify my reason for opening the temple. I staked myself out near the entrance in the hope of identifying my contact when he entered; when I saw you three, I realized I ought to have anticipated that Dr. Schmidt would learn of the occasion from one of his several thousand dear friends, and that you would be unable to resist enjoying the experience.”
“Enjoy, hell,” I said. “We went because we had figured out what you were up to. The fact that you hadn’t invited us was suspicious.”
“It was ratiocination of the most brilliant kind,” Schmidt added.
“If you say so,” Ashraf said, not believing a word of it. “In any event, I decided your presence would not interfere with my plan. I had been given a specific cross-reference, and the area is extensive.” He blew a perfect smoke ring and leaned back to admire it.
“Go on,” I said. We should have banged him on the head again in order to keep him off balance. He was enjoying his place in the spotlight.
“As I said, when I encountered a woman I was taken by surprise. However, she gave me the word I had been told to expect—”
“Mummy?” I couldn’t resist.
“How did you know?” Ashraf demanded in surprise.
I had meant it as a feeble joke, but I wasn’t about to admit it. Smug is a game two can play. I gestured for him to continue.
She had been angry and visibly nervous at first, “but I soon put her at her ease. We—er—negotiated. I promised her immunity and a safe haven if she accepted my offer.”