Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 03 - Cairo Caper (2 page)

The second seller saw me trying to emerge from the rubble and growled. He pulled a wicked curved dagger from his cloak and charged. A left brown wingtip shot from between two medium-sized suitcases and nailed him in the knee. He fell forward on the edge of the pile, howling. I got to my feet and crowned him with a two-suiter. The howling stopped.

Roger’s head made a gopher-style appearance out of a bunch of shave kits. “I don’t know who’s doing what to who, excuse me, whom, but we don’t need to be hanging around.”

I helped Roger to his feet. He threw a fistful of money at the luggage vendor and we took off. I kept peeking over my shoulder. I couldn’t spot anybody following us.

We stopped at an intersecting alley and peeked around the corner. We’d had our quota of ambushes for the day, maybe for the entire month. A whoosh of scarlet dust plumed from the little back street. Powdered blood?

I held my breath and snuck a peek. Two men were pouring a huge sack of red spice on the ground creating a crimson cloud that spread before and on us. A third guy was scooping it into smaller retail-sized bags. We choked through the dust and sneezed violently. Cayenne pepper.

Roger slipped down a backstreet pulling me behind him. I was flying blind and having trouble breathing. A small child screamed. I was a blond Medusa with tears pouring from my eyes, mascara racing stripes on my forehead. This was way beyond a bad hair day.

“Here,” Roger yanked a neatly folded handkerchief from the top pocket of his Safari jacket and handed it to me. “Don’t rub. Just blot.”

He could be so sweet when he tried. I wished he’d try more often.

I dabbed at my spicy cheeks. The color on the handkerchief told me I looked like a Dorito.

We returned to the spice street quickening our pace only to be stopped again.

“Americans? Yes? I have anise seed for you. It’s good for your health. Helps the stomach.” A young guy with bedroom eyes and a friendly smile blocked our path.

“Shokran. No thank you,” Roger said as we eased on by.

The salesman waved us along with a cheerful smile. “Ahlan Biki!”

Through the corner of my eye I glimpsed the shadowy image of someone in black behind us. I smashed Roger against a wall of colorful carpets and plastered myself next to him expecting gunshots. When I peeked out, our tail had vanished. A sprinkle of pepper dropped from my eyelashes into my right eye. It was about time for a meltdown.

Chapter Two

My guy tugged me along to the end of the alley. He stopped and pointed to the Smiling Camel Café, an obvious tourist haven with signs in four languages in the window. A matched pair of security guards in khaki uniforms bearing the coffee house logo bookended the entrance, automatic weapons slung over their shoulders. As we passed them they eyeballed me, then each other, and broke out laughing.

We zipped inside the dimly lit coffee joint. The caffeine in the air was strong enough to wipe out the headache building behind my weepy eyes. Roger limped toward a small table in the darkest corner. He was acting pretty cool considering someone was using us for target practice.

The world-famous archaeologist flopped into a chair facing the door. He propped his right foot onto the chair next to him.

I examine his pant leg fearing I’d see blood. “Did you get shot in the leg?”

I leaned closer. “Are your shoes on the wrong feet?”

A sheepish expression flitted across his face.

“Are you wearing two left shoes?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he snapped.

Bad enough he always wore those plug ugly brown wingtips, even at sea, but now he had
two
left-foot brown wingtips on. His right foot looked bizarre pointing in the wrong direction.

I pinned him with my best stare. “Your wife has a right to know your deepest secrets.”

“Yes, I am wearing two left shoes.” He set his mouth like a kid lining up his words. “I grabbed two shoes when we ran out of the hotel room. They just happened to both be lefties. I always pack three pairs of these.”

Roger was a serial brown wing-tipper. How could I not know this about my own faux spouse? This was worse than not knowing your husband was Jack the Ripper.

“Where’s your hat?”

“In our room,” he said.

“Good place for it.”

The security guards peered into the café and smirked at me. Time to do some repair work. I reached in my purse, took a mirrored compact and a wet-wipe from my makeup case. A strange tampon-shaped gadget lay at the bottom of the case, globs of mascara clinging to its sides. “What the hell is this? I don’t use tampons.” I pulled it out and stuck in under Roger’s nose. “Care to share any more secrets with me, my dear husband?”

Roger glanced around. “Lower that before somebody sees it. It’s a Multi-phasic Unidirectional Density Diviner or MUDD as it’s commonly known.” He palmed the gadget.

“Commonly known to who, excuse me, whom? What the hell is this thing?”

“A new technology a thousand times more powerful than the devices the Egyptian Antiquities Society is using to try to locate Cleopatra’s grave. It’s commonly known as MUDD to me and my friend Ozzie who invented it. It can determine the shapes of objects as deep as a quarter-mile in the earth.
And
it can detect minute particles of pure gold.”

I wasn’t sure I was buying that even though it was too heavy to be a tampon. It weighed more than a vibrator, not that I had any direct knowledge of those things.

“Why is it in my purse?”

“It looks like a girlie thing.”

“Yeah until you lift it, but we’ve been through that. How does it work?”

Roger’s face morphed into his professor-giving-a-lecture mode. “It’s actually fairly simple. You start with a small radium core-”

“What! You shit. Why didn’t you warn me? Am I going to glow in the dark?”

“I know how nervous you get around radiation. I wanted you relaxed for our honeymoon.”

“Earth to Roger, this is a faux honeymoon. I’m just your cover story.” I fluffed my sweaty hair and pulled tendrils from my neck.

“Pepper face,” he smirked.

I punched his shoulder.

“Stop hitting me. Start acting lovey-dovey.”

I punched his shoulder again, harder. “If this is such a good cover why are they shooting at us?” I grabbed the tampon MUDD gadget and stuck it back in my sticky makeup case.

“Gentle with that. It’s linked to a satellite. You’ll throw the GPS off.” He massaged his shoulder.

“You are a lunatic, you realize that?” I said.

“I’m a genius. Similar but spelled different.” He blew me a kiss.

“Here, take this.” He handed me a pocket-sized tourist map of Egypt.

I opened it carefully, wondering what new gadget might fall out of the folds.

He pointed to Alexandria and then moved his finger slightly to the west. “The Temple of Taporisis Magna,” he whispered.

All we had to do was get from Cairo to the Temple, alive. The Egyptian Antiquities Society was sure this was the site of Cleopatra’s grave. Roger was commissioned to confirm the queen and her lover Mark Antony were entombed somewhere under the Temple.

“If Cleo’s there we’ll find her,” I said.

He frowned, shook his head, and put his finger to his lips.

Mister Wonderful Archaeologist could be so bossy. I hated it when he pulled rank on me. Sure he had the pedigree, but I had a great smile.

I handed him the map and went back to repairing my face. I cleaned the mascara tread marks from my forehead, slathered on moisturized sunscreen, and 100spf sunblock lip gloss.

Our relationship was in the first trimester of our third case. If I survived this caper I might consider making it semi-permanent. The adrenalin high of tomb raiding had become an addiction.

Roger was obsessed with answering the prayers of those who’ve lost something of great value. When he was a kid, his baby brother was kidnapped and never found. It was his vulnerable side that held my heart captive.

We sipped our coffee in silence. It was good and strong. Sunlight pierced the doorway and made it impossible to see outside. Suddenly a figure blocked the light, sort of. I felt like a character from a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western. In my head I heard Sergio Leone playing music and spurs jingling as a shadowed figure stepped inside the doorway. Roger dropped his foot from the stool. His body tensed.

Chapter Three

The music stopped. The stranger was half as tall as Eastwood and dressed in a white linen suit complete with a vest. He walked directly toward us. Who was this guy? I jumped up and hefted an ashtray, my new weapon of choice, from the table. The sucker was plastic and wouldn’t stop a butterfly. Roger stood at my side, a questioning look on his kisser.

The man extended his limp hand to Roger. With his tousled blonde hair and stylish manner, he reminded me of Niles from the Frasier television show. “You have to leave,” he said.

That took the curls out of my hair. “Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Petri Dische. I’m sorry for being abrupt. Let me rephrase. I’m inviting you to accompany me to the Museum. I’ve been searching everywhere for you. Your hotel is in chaos.”

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns, in all the world, you have to walk into this one,” Roger said.

“What the heck do you mean by that?” I asked, looking around the coffee shop.

Roger grinned. “I always wanted to say that.”

I thumped him on the shoulder.

Dische smiled, his upper lip lifting a pencil-thin mustache. He moved the flap of his jacket and revealed a gun snug in a holster against his chest. “I work for Sir Sydney,” he said in a slight French accent. “He’s waiting; let’s not dawdle.”

Roger checked his watch then looked suspiciously at Dische, “It’s early.”

“Sir Sydney likes to be unpredictable. Walk this way.”

I stepped behind Petri Dische putting a swish in my walk. Roger pinched my butt. I elbowed him.

Dische spoke softly from the side of his mouth. “Stay close. Things are about to erupt in the Square. We need to get you honeymooners to safety in the Museum. We must take extra precautions as looters have mingled with the demonstrators.”

The coral-colored two-storied Museum stood less than a hundred yards away. Crowds of young people gathered around the courtyard like a storm cloud, their voices a disquieting rumble. Our only protection was Dische, the guard Chihuahua.

Roger, Dische, and I slipped past two military police, hands on holstered guns, and into the cool air of the Museum ground floor. I glanced at a large laminated floor plan mounted on an easel in the lobby. This floor held artifacts from the final two dynasties of Egypt, including pieces from the Valley of the Kings.

I swallowed a lump of mob-fear, scrunched my shoulders and released. Tighten-relax was a meditation trick I learned at real estate school. I peeked at Roger. The archaeologist was in his element. The man spoke mummy, read hieroglyphics, and probably was oblivious to the crowds outside at this point.

Petri Dische guided us to the gift shop entrance. “Sir Sydney’s office is on the second floor. Madame, this is where we leave you.”

“You’re kidding. I’m part of this team.” Surely, they wouldn’t leave me here when the horde could break in at any second.

“Sir Sydney prefers to meet with Doctor Jolley alone. You will enjoy the shopping.”

Yeah, I’d love it if I wasn’t maimed or killed by the rabid mob. Not to mention I was being treated like some tagalong bimbo instead of Roger’s partner. My blood pressure skyrocketed. I felt like picking up that pipsqueak Dische by his ankles and banging his head on the floor.

He turned to Roger. “Didn’t you tell her?”

Roger was a geek-in-the-headlights. “Would you? Look at her.” He held his arms up in a shoulder-protecting move. “Wendy, trust me. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

A quick scan of the nearly vacant hall told me no one was watching. Dische was looking the other way. I stomped on Roger’s right foot. “You are dead meat, Jolley.”

My faux-husband limped off after Dische, clinging to the railing and mounting the polished stone steps to the upper floor leaving me alone and defenseless with rioters, hitmen, cayenne pepper spreaders, and who knew what else.

Chapter Four

The Cairo Museum holds one of the finest collections of ancient treasures in the world. Usually I would have loved to take in all the mummies, canopic jars, papyrus scrolls, and elaborate jewelry. Today all I cared about was arming myself.

I stomped into the gift shop. A collection of glass ashtrays filled a shelf on the back wall. Proving that tackiness knows no borders, I found a pink-tinted mummy-shaped beauty and bought two, one for each of the pockets hidden in the folds of my skirt. They weren’t as large or as heavy as I would have liked, but I couldn’t chance them pulling my skirt down.

I stepped out of the gift shop feeling a little less defenseless. On a normal day the museum would be packed, but the air hummed with tension and the building was barren of tourists. I stood in the lobby looking for a safe room in a mall of mummies laid out in glass display cases like an old-fashioned five and dime.

Surely, the guards would be sent to the Royal Mummy Room if things erupted. I headed there. These mummies were among the rarest treasures on earth. Eleven bodies were on display including the newly discovered mummy of Hatshepsut.

I took an uneasy breath and walked to within a foot of the long case that held the first female pharaoh, Hatshepsut. She was wrapped in linen and her head was bald. I studied the tattered remains of a woman who was once a king in a world where women were less than second-class. How did she wrest control and retain it for decades? If I could bottle her strength, I could sell it on the Internet. My teeth chattered. I guessed Hatshepsut wasn’t pleased with my scheme and sent a shiver my way.

Our stay in Cairo had been less than a barrel of fun so far, but it seemed like a great adventure when Roger first got the call from Sir Sydney. The government’s Egyptian Antiquities Society was hot on the trail of Cleopatra’s tomb. If Roger and I could bring back a certain super-secret personal possession of Cleopatra, known only to Sir Sydney, then we would confirm the location of her grave and solve one of archaeology’s great mysteries. I imagined my name in history books. Wendy Darlin without the “g.”