Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 03 - Cairo Caper (10 page)

Sheen went all dithery. “We will make a big, how you say, a killing… selling pocket camels. Then my brother Fronc and our families will retire to Gulf Shores, Alabama. You have heard of this place? They are said to have the best oysters in the world. I love oysters. I also enjoy spending time with blondes and long walks on the beach.” He leered at me and did everything but ask me what my sign was.

“You see a market for these… camels?” Roger asked.

Sheen looked at Roger as if the archaeologist were the dumbest guy on the planet. “We will sell them to the Russians to fight foreign cavalry.” He leaned in. “Horses are much afraid of camels. They fear their very scent. Every Russian soldier will carry a pocket camel. Miss Darcy has made a scheme.”

“But horses haven’t been used in battle for centuries.” I said trying to hide the stunned expression on my face. “I can’t imagine a military use for these little guys, adorable as they are.”

I stroked the head of first one and then the other.

The brothers shared a look and shrugged. “So… is okay. We go to plan two. Americans will buy anything as a pet. Pet rocks, pet grass.”

I shot him a quizzical look. “Grass?”

“Chia-pets.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Roger wasn’t getting it. He was too practical. “Who in their right mind would spend money on something so useless?”

Fiona and I exchanged glances. What female wouldn’t want an itsy bitsy camel? “I’ve had real estate clients spend tens of thousands of dollars on pocket-sized dogs.” I stroked the female Camapoo’s soft curly head. Fiona tickled the other under his whiskery chin.

The scientist in Roger was struggling for logic. “I can’t figure out how you pulled this off,” he said to the brothers. “Camels are ungulates. Male mounts from behind. Don’t know if camels have orgasms but if she did, she’d flatten the male.”

I couldn’t help myself. I looked at Roger, then Darcy, and smirked. “How did you two manage all those years when you were a couple?”

Doctor Roger Jolley grinned crookedly showing his right cheek dimple. I felt an overwhelming desire to poke my finger in his dent.

Darcy thudded two steps toward me and raised her fist. I put all my weight on my sneaker foot preparing to launch a
Crouching Tiger
kick. Good thing I’d practiced on the dahabiya.

“We weren’t a couple,” Roger stumbled over his words.

Darcy cut him off. “Now tell the truth, dearest. We were wonderful lovers.” She fanned herself and her eyelids fluttered.

Fiona’s eyes saucered.“Do tell!” She whipped out her notebook ready for enlightenment.

Roger deflected another Darlin-Bone tussle by lifting a Camapoo to examine it. He turned it over with its little feet up and stared at the underside looking for a telltale sign of fraud. The camel spit a glob of gooey saliva in his face. Terrific. No way was I kissing that kisser again until I ran him through a carwash.

Horus banged against his cage door. On the third try the latch clicked open. He strutted out eyeballing the little morsels.

Sheen grabbed both Camapoos and plunked them in their camel box. He closed the lid with a snap. The agitated falcon hopped from one foot to the other. With a flap of his powerful wings, he lifted off and rocketed skyward. He made a quick circle and I could swear he extended the middle finger on his right wing before disappearing from sight in a flash.

“No! No! No!” Roger chanted, but it was too late. The bird was off.

I shaded my eyes with my hand. The peregrine falcon, the fastest creature on earth wasn’t on the horizon, but disaster was.

Chapter Seventeen

The arrival of the falcon would signal to Sir Sydney it was tomb time. Oops. We weren’t even in the ballpark. If he sent his people to the Temple of Taporisis now, we’d be stuck on that oasis with egg on our faces.

As I stared at the empty horizon, hoping I’d see a speck returning, Darcy’s right elbow caught me below the ribs. I keeled over. She was on Roger before I could recover.

“Take me with you, darling.” She stroked his head and smooched his cheeks. “It’s been our dream since grad school to find Cleopatra’s grave. Right now you’re up the creek without a camel. You need what I can provide.” She snapped her fingers and three camels were lead into our circle by an Ishtar.

“If you turn me down I will beat you to Taporisis and find Cleopatra’s grave on my own.”

Roger shot me a helpless look and shrugged. He was stuck between a rock and a Camapoo.

Darcy grinned, her capped teeth glinting in the broiling sun. “I’ll trust you to keep your word. Now… how do we find the tomb? What’s our plan?”

Roger hesitated then said, “Our plan is…” I clamped my hand over his mouth.

He pulled free from my grip and gave me a look of thanks. Roger turned to Darcy. “You don’t need to know our plan. Our arrangement is camels in exchange for tagging along. You do NOT take part in the exploration.”

“A wise decision, sir,” Petri said.

I could tell she wasn’t buying it, but she nodded her lying head. “You take Chester.” Darcy handed me the lead to a feisty looking camel. Two of the Ishtars linked hands forming a step. I put my left foot on it, pushed up, and swung my right leg over a wood and rawhide frame. My fanny rested on a tapestry cushion, my red designer shoe hanging loose at the right side of the animal, my sneaker foot dangling on the left.

The saddlebags were fringed with tassels that hung down each side of the camel. I could have stuffed my shoulder bag in the pocket but decided to continue wearing it for the safe keeping of the MUDD tampon.

I wiggled my butt a bit to settle in. This didn’t seem so hard. I pulled my scarf over my mouth and my hood down to my sunglasses. I grabbed the dromedary by his mane. The camel nipped at my leg and spit a blob of slobber at me. I pulled the beast’s hair to let it know I was the alpha-camel. He craned his neck around and gave me a you-can’t-be-serious look. At least he didn’t spit again. I was making progress.

An Ishtar boosted Fiona. She landed behind me clutching my waist with her pokey little fingers. I was sure to have bruises with the appearance and shelf-life of jailhouse tattoos.

Darcy was all sugary smiles. “Roger, you take Gaston.” She pointed to a regal looking camel with a full mane of thick blonde hair. Gaston knelt and Roger boarded him.

Another herder passed the leads on a sour-faced mount to Petri. The creature rolled his lip and grunted at the Frenchman.

“Abu will be fine as long as you show him who’s in charge,” Darcy said.

Petri cut her a squinty-eyed glare. I joined him. It was like shooting darts at a rhino. No reaction.

My camel Chester did a sideways hula, attempting to throw me. I brought my knees into the saddle with a sharp slam. Chester felt nothing, whereas I silently howled in pain. I needed a speed course in camel. He turned his head and smiled at me. But he didn’t spit.

Hut! Hut! What was that? Evidently the cry to move out, a cry that I sure as hell didn’t make. I held on as the beast shifted his weight and lumbered forward in a curiously graceful way. Again he looked at me but didn’t spit. I felt like Lawrencetta of Arabia. Something whacked into my neck. It was a pith helmet. I wondered who that could be.

Darcy and Roger led on their well-behaved camels. The Ishtars followed. Petri bounced to the middle position, trying to reign in his jittery beast. Fiona and I, like chopped liver, brought up the rear on Chester the molester.

I’d never ridden a horse before, and here I was mounted on a grumpy giant hump. Worst of all he was dressed in clashing primary colors and four different prints. I was on a tacky camel. I hoped none of my friends saw me.

Our caravan, such as it was, moved along with a rocking rhythm. Camels weren’t called the ships of the desert for nothing. Chester tried to turn back. I leaned over and said “Glue factory,” in his flea-bitten ear. He must understand horse. He nodded and moved on.

Chester followed the other mounts to a crest on a point above low-lying dunes. The camels side-stepped their way into a steep descent. Twice I almost pitched off to the right dragging Fiona with me. In the distance I could see endless flatlands. Shadows of date palms inked the ground.

Our trek to the temple was a journey back in time. Grassy mounds marked the remains of ancient villages. Rolling dunes sometimes hinted at the tip of a buried temple or sanctuary. Each dune was touched with a different wind-borne pattern, just enough to be hypnotic. We skirted mud-brick villages as timeless and weathered as the Great Sphinx of Giza.

I tried to romanticize our expedition, but in truth, I was ready to bag it after the first ten minutes. Selling real estate in a down market wasn’t that bad.

My face stung from the sand and sun. My cheeks felt like over-ripe peaches. Fiona was quiet. Either the rhythm of the camel’s gait had lulled her into a semi-stupor or she was unconscious. I was beginning to be concerned she might bounce away and not be missed.

“You okay?” I called over my shoulder gaining a mouthful of sand for my effort.

In response, Fiona squeezed me tighter and drove her pith helmet into my shoulder.

We rode for days, actually less than an hour; the time warp was caused by hunger, thirst, and nausea. I was feeling more and more barfy, not like me at all. I attributed it to the close proximity of Darcy.

She waved her hand in the air in a two-fingered signal. I resisted giving her a one-fingered signal.

An Ishtar on a pink bedecked camel trotted to her side. He pulled a small bottle from his pocket. She leaned over and he spritzed her in the face.

What the heck? I caught a whiff of the scent. Rose water!

She slowed her camel to ride beside me. “Herbal Rose Harmonizing Mist. I never travel without it.” The bitch raised her hand again, this time with one finger in the air.

Another Ishtar clomped to her side. He pulled a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne from a blue chiller sack. He uncorked it and passed it to Darcy Bone.

“You do know alcohol will dehydrate you?” I snarked.

“This is hydrated Dom.” She chugged a mouthful and burped as she swallowed.

She handed the bottle back to the bartender Ishtar who reseated it in the chiller sack and then dropped back in the caravan.

Darcy caught me watching. “I’m too much of a giver. Always putting other people’s needs before mine.”

Roger crested a dune ahead of us. He turned his camel and put up his hand, stopping our caravan. “Look alive! We’ve got company!”

Our camels joined his on top of the dune. What I saw was enough to stop my heart. I snuck a peek at Roger’s face hoping these were old friends of his.

Ten armed men on foot came toward us. They wore black shirts, boots, and ski masks. Each carried an AK-47. Two trucks were positioned on the right side of what would have been the road if there were a road. They raised their guns.

I could see the headlines.
Miami Real Estate Broker Bites the Sand.

Chapter Eighteen

I swiveled my head assessing each AK-47-toting bandit. Not one of them appeared to be a likely client for a South Beach condo or a waterfront McMansion so they weren’t here for my expertise. I doubted they were seeking advance copies of
Erotica for Dummies.
That narrowed it down to Roger.

He touched his gun-loaded pocket. I sucked in my breath hard enough to strangle on sand. He came to his senses and dropped his hand to his saddle. I exhaled a cloud of desert dust. Ten machine guns at point blank range to one semi-automatic pistol were odds beyond the most fanciful James Bond flick. He snapped the reins of his camel and it knelt in a graceful bow.

Roger dismounted and approached the nearest man in black in professorial style, ready to chat us out of our predicament. He said something in Egyptian. The bandit knocked my love in the head with the butt of his rifle. Roger went down with a thud.

“No!” I screamed and tried to force my camel into the fray. Fiona tightened her death grip on me, much to the dismay of my ribs. Chester didn’t move but did cast a disapproving glance at me over his shoulder. I hated that beast.

The head-knocker ran from Roger to me. He stopped a few feet in front of my camel and fired a short burst in the air, scaring the bejesus out of me. I pulled my head down between my shoulders like a shell-less turtle and put my hands up. Chester spit on the guy. I loved that beast.

The tallest bandit stepped between Chester and the now goopy head-knocker, who was jumping up and down like Yosemite Sam, and said something in Egyptian. He turned to me and switched into broken English. “I am Mustafa. You will come with us. Now.”

Sure his name was Mustafa like mine was Alice in Wonderland. A thug wearing a ski mask wouldn’t share his real name. And his accent was Russian, not Egyptian. He grabbed the reins and led Chester away from my prostrate Roger. I tried to jump off but Mustafa-whatever-his-real-name was thunked my ankle with his gun sending a flash of white-hot pain through my leg. My ankle was already tender from a bad case of footwear-itis.

Yosemite trained his AK on me. There was no point in fighting. Then I heard Roger groan. I had to get to him. I reached forward and yanked Chester’s bridle. Do you think he’d rear up as I’d seen horses do in countless cowboy movies, which, incidentally, might give me a chance to break away? Noooo. Instead the unpredictable animal bellowed in protest and stopped in his tracks.

Mustafa cracked me in the knee. I saw red from anger and stars from pain. I needed that leg for walking back to Miami.

Screw the pain and machine guns. I was going to get to Roger if it killed me. He needed me. Besides, if Darcy saved him she’d brag about it forever. I tried to dismount without taking into account Fiona clinging to me. We tumbled to the ground like so much baggage. My head hit Chester’s hoof with a clunk. That took care of the last spot on me that wasn’t sore.

I lay in the sand looking up at Mustafa. He rolled his eyes behind his ski mask and motioned to two of his men who unceremoniously jerked Fiona and me off the terra-not-so-firma and dumped us on our mount, with no dignity. There were ashtrays in their future. Chester did an agitated dance grunting and pawing the sand, or was he laughing?