Once the door slid closed behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief — truth be told, she was getting too cold and wet to stay out there much longer anyway. She threw back the hood of her slicker. A few drops of the icy saltwater slipped under her collar, and she shivered.
Had the ensign been telling the truth about enemy activity? There was no reason to alarm her father with it either way. As she clambered down the corrugated metal stairs, the odor from the sick bays — virtually the whole ship had been converted to a floating hospital — grew worse and worse. Medics, their arms cradling plasma bags and surgical supplies, hustled past her, brushing her out of the way. Sailors made no bones about giving her the once-over. Even the shapeless slicker and life jacket were no deterrent.
The cabin Simone and her father had been assigned was, by navy standards, not bad, and as it was sufficiently high above the water line, it actually had a porthole that they could occasionally open to air the place out. When she slipped inside, she found her father exactly as she’d left him: unshaven, still in his faded silk dressing gown, perched on the edge of the bunk, and poring over tattered manuscript pages. Without even glancing up, he said, “Is it being kept safe?”
“I presume so,” she said, slipping the life jacket off and letting it drop to the floor.
“But did you see it?”
“Of course not. The cargo hold is off-limits. I was up on deck.” She stepped over a stack of books and papers, and pried open the porthole. A blast of cold, damp air blew into the cabin, swirling the papers into a tiny maelstrom.
“What are you doing?” her father exclaimed, slamming a palm down to secure the documents in his lap. “Shut that window!”
“You’re going to suffocate if you don’t let some air in here once in a while.”
“And you are going to ruin my work!”
His work. For her entire life, Simone had been hearing about her father’s work. It was what he lived for. And it was what had made his reputation. He was not only the chairman of the National Affairs Department at the University of Cairo, but the world’s leading expert on the treasures of Egyptian antiquity. In his time, he had written more books, papers, and monographs on the subject than anyone alive. But unlike most professors, he had never been content to dwell in the library archives or the museum galleries. Dr. Abdul Rashid — like his daughter, an Oxford PhD — had unearthed much of the nation’s patrimony, buried in the sands of the Sahara. The cane with the thick rubber tip resting against the edge of the bunk was a testament to the last expedition he had mounted, the one on which he and Simone had discovered the ossuary they were now secretly tracking to whatever destination its current owners — some branch of the United States Armed Forces — were transporting it.
“Do you want to go up to the canteen and have some lunch?” she asked.
“No,” he said, returning his gaze to a document written in hieroglyphics. “Just bring me back something.”
“Come with me,” she urged. “You can’t hole up in this cabin for the whole trip.”
But he had tuned her out already and was making some notation in the margin of the page with the stub of a pencil.
Simone took no offense. His manner was gruff and distant, but she knew that the bond between them was unbreakable. He had prayed for a son — what Egyptian man did not? — but then he had fallen in love with his daughter, and molded her just as he would have done a boy. Her late mother might not have approved, but then, she had not been there to influence her daughter. She had died of cancer when Simone was only ten, so instead of the parties and frivolity that her mother had once lived for, Simone had gravitated to the history and art that her father favored. Together, they would have been happy to travel back to the time of the Pharaohs.
“I’ll bring you some fruit, whatever they have,” Simone said, touching him lightly on the shoulder of his robe, “and a cup of hot coffee.”
“Tea.”
“If I can find some.” Her father still hadn’t grasped that he was on an American ship, where coffee, not tea, was the drink of choice. “Just do me one favor — shave. You look like a ruffian when you don’t.”
He grunted in acknowledgment, and Simone, still in her slicker, left the cabin. She briefly considered a detour to the cargo hold, but even if she could talk her way past the guard, what would she see? A large wooden crate with iron hasps, three padlocks the size of fists, and a bill of lading that she’d give her eyeteeth to read. She’d watched as it had been loaded on board days before.
“Look out, lady,” a sailor warned, clattering down the metal stairs with a stack of crisp white folded sheets in his arms. “Coming through!”
Simone flattened herself against the wall and stayed there as two more sailors, also burdened with bedding, barreled down after him. She could feel the ever-present vibration of the engines rumbling through the steel walls, and though the Seward had only left Le Havre two days before, she had grown so accustomed to the sound that she’d have missed it if it stopped.
Once she was sure the coast was clear, she started up the stairs again, past several areas that had been set aside for surgical procedures, where she could hear the cries of agonized soldiers going in or out of the operating bays. She continued up toward the canteen. The smell of pea soup and bologna sandwiches wafted along the corridor, but she was hungry enough that she found even these aromas tempting.
She had just loaded up a tin tray with some food, and was scanning the canteen for hot tea, when the alarms went off. A shrill blast, followed by the crackle of loudspeakers. “All hands on deck! This is not a drill!”
That damn ensign had been telling the truth. She tossed the tray into a garbage can, whipped around, and headed back toward the cabin.
“All hands on deck!”
The alarms shrieked so loudly and incessantly that she pressed her hands over her ears. The lights flickered on and off, the decks reverberated with the trampling of a thousand running feet, and the whole ship suddenly felt to Simone like a beehive that had been swatted with a stick.
Bucking the tide of sailors racing up the stairs was nearly impossible. By the time she reached their cabin, even her father had been roused to doff his dressing gown and throw on some clothes. He was holding a bulging leather valise stuffed with books and papers under his arm, and leaning on his ebony walking stick.
“What are we meant to do now?” he said, over the screaming of the siren.
“For starters,” she said, snatching a life preserver from under the cot bolted to the wall, “you can put this on!” Beyond that, even she had no idea what to do next — though she glimpsed an opportunity. “Don’t leave the cabin unless you’re instructed to. I’ll be right back!”
“No.” He clutched at the sleeve of her slicker. He always could read her mind. “You can’t go down there now. What if we’re torpedoed?”
If that happened, she thought, it wouldn’t much matter where she was. The ship would sink. “I won’t stay there any longer than I have to.”
The sirens on board the Seward had stopped, mercifully, as everyone on the ship manned his battle station. In all the commotion, she was able to race down toward the hold while everyone else was heading in the opposite direction. On the way, she had the presence of mind to snag a clipboard stuffed with papers from a hook outside an officer’s quarters, but twice, she was detained by doctors who mistook her for a nurse and tried to dragoon her into helping with the patients. Each time she broke away and continued heading down. “I’ll remember you,” the second one, wearing a badge that said DR. JAMISON, CHIEF OF SURGERY, shouted. “When this is over, I will personally make sure you get a dishonorable discharge!”