Dead Men's Hearts (3 page)

“No,” she said, her face settling into the irritating sulk that heralded one of her little lectures. “It’s not a long-lost royal anything. It was a common, everyday workers’ village with absolutely nothing in it of royal interest. Just ordinary, average people not worth bothering about.”

He eyed the Scotch bottle once more: Teacher’s Highland Cream, purchased at extortionate cost, but well worth it when compared to the barbaric Egyptian spirits. Perhaps under the circumstances he could allow himself the merest driblet more. He poured, sipped, and felt better for it.

“My dear Tiffany, I’m quite aware—”

“The purpose of modern Egyptological research,” she went on automatically—and why wouldn’t it be automatic, considering the regularity with which she trotted out this tiresome and misinformed harangue?—“isn’t to uncover more royal burials, more royal stelae, it’s to reconstruct the broader—”

“—the broader social and cultural institutions of ancient Egypt,” Dr. Haddon supplied. Tit for tat.

“—and—” Tiffany faltered momentarily, but only momentarily. “Yes, that’s right, but as long as we continue to pay more attention to interpreting, and re-interpreting, and re-re-interpreting the goddamn
objects
that come out of the ground than we do to the real knowledge that comes from careful stratigraphic excavation—”

“Yes, yes, Tiffany, I know, but time had to be found somewhere. Forrest is in complete accord with the decision, and I really don’t see what I can be expected to do about it.”

Apparently, neither did she. She made a disgusted motion with her hand and folded her arms. “The hell with it,” she muttered and subsided, defeated.

Dr. Haddon cleared his throat. “Now, if no one has further objections, I should like to discuss a few related matters to make sure there is no misunderstanding.” He paused.
“Are
there any objections?”

Jerry Baroff dipped his chin and passed the back of his hand over his mouth to hide a yawn. Tiffany stared morosely at the floor, no doubt framing the rebuttals and counterstatements she wished she’d made. Arlo Gerber, turtlelike and opaque, offered a convincing impression of a man giving his attention to some unpleasant digestive happening. Whether from malice or constitutional deficiency, Dr. Haddon’s audience appeared to have sunk into impenetrability.

Abruptly, Dr. Haddon suffered one of his increasingly frequent sinkings of the heart. The thought of ending his long career—he who had worked alongside Aldred and James— with this sorry crew as his companions in the pursuit of knowledge weighed heavily on his aging shoulders. Just look at them. What was going on in those closed and brutish minds?

Was anything?

Chapter Three

How did people like Clifford Haddon get that way, Arlo Gerber asked himself as Haddon prattled away. So full of themselves, so in love with their own voices, so certain that any remark that came to their lips would fall on ears eager to catch every shimmering phrase. Haddon didn’t converse, he delivered speeches, self-indulgent and meandering, thickly interlarded with previously worked-out gems of wit. Comments and questions were brushed aside as so many bothersome obstructions to the grand narrative flow.

Had he really worked under this man for five years now? It seemed impossible; five years of thankless production, five years of Haddon’s endless strutting and petty despotizing. On the other hand, it had also been five years of evenings blessedly his own, five years during which his interest in Eighteenth Dynasty jewelry, avocational to begin with, had blossomed so joyously and unexpectedly. First there had been a brief, diffident note on his observations that had been published in the
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology,
then two papers as his confidence increased, and finally a contract with the University of Wisconsin Press to produce a comprehensive monograph, complete with his own color photographs.

That glorious day had come two years ago, and by now
Personal Ornamentation from the Time of Akhenaten
was well on the way to completion, the photographs almost completed, the text more than half-done. With luck and perseverance, another year would do it. He had no doubt that it would be the making of his career, that it would get him out of this parched and backward country, out from under Haddon, and into a respectable academic post in the United States. Someplace civilized, with soft, moist summers and a little snow in the winter; someplace with clouds. Virginia or Maryland sounded nice.

But how unfortunate this news of a schedule change was. Arlo had been hearing rumors about some jewelry of interest in the storage cabinets at the el-Amarna Museum, and he had hoped to use the visit as a way of examining it for himself, but now—

“—for which I am relying on you, Arlo,” Haddon said out of the blue.

Arlo straightened up, scrambling for something to say. For all Haddon’s shabby faults, the older man still had the ability to tie his tongue in knots.

“I beg your pardon… I wasn’t…”

Haddon spoke with exaggerated patience. “I am relying on you, Arlo, to see to it that Forrest Freeman’s video production does not result in a distorted, typically sensationalized program in which Horizon House’s genuine accomplishments are trivialized or oversimplified to suit the television mentality. As a trained photographer yourself, you are in a position to work closely with them in the day-by-day editing—”

“But I don’t know anything about making a documentary. I don’t know anything about video. It’s a completely different field, as different as… as—”

“Nevertheless, I’m depending on you. We’re all depending on you, Arlo.”

“But—but even if I
did
know something about it, how in the world could I tell them what to do? I don’t have any authority—”

“Authority?” Haddon snatched the word out of the air as a frog might snatch a bug. “By which you mean the power to elicit compliance?”

“Well…”

“Well, now, Arlo,” Haddon said, and the pedantic, glossily genial overtones were unmistakable. A set piece was on the way. “It seems to me,” he said, crossing his legs more comfortably, “that there are essentially four types of authority…” Arlo slumped bleakly in his chair.

“… four types of authority. First there is the authority of
com
-pe-tence, in which one’s power to influence others derives from one’s knowledge and abilities. Second, there is the authority of
con
-fi-dence, achieved only when one has won the trust and reliance of one’s associates. Third, there is the authority of
char
-ac-ter
,
built on the strength of one’s personal integrity. And fourth—” Haddon’s lip curled, his voice dropped dismissively. “—there is the authority of po-
si
-tion, which has nothing to do with achievement or expertise, but derives solely from the perquisites of title and office, and evokes—at best—mere com-
pli
-ance. Ahem.”

What an absolute schmuck Haddon was, Jerry Baroff thought; not rancorously, but with something close to admiration. It was amazing, the old guy just never let you down. Every time you thought he might actually be going to say something different—something original, for example, or something nice about somebody else, or something responsive or even helpful—he managed to come up with another dose of the same old crap. Arlo, the poor fish, was getting Lecture Number 94, the one Haddon usually reserved for any staff member dumb enough to mention in his presence that he was having trouble getting the Egyptian antiquities authorities to go along on something or other.

And the old bugger was in prime form, especially considering that he was drunk as a skunk, or pretty well on the way. Only the windup remained now, the part where he leaned forward keenly and said: “Now tell me, young man, just which type of authority do
you
lack?”

Haddon leaned keenly forward, eyeing the cringing Arlo. “Now suppose you tell me,” he said with quivering beard, “just which kind of authority do
you
lack?”

For a man who prided himself on observing the vagaries of others with tolerance and detachment, on not letting people get under his skin, Jerry was ready to admit that he’d met his match in Clifford Haddon. Usually Haddon, who didn’t even pretend to take any interest in Jerry’s domain of library and collection administration, let him go his way in peace, but in the past few days he’d seen more of the director than in most months, and he was beginning to get a glimmer of why Tiffany, who had to deal with him every day, needed a neck massage about three nights a week and got that look on her face when his name came up. Still, if you looked at it right, you had to admit the guy was funny. Sometimes you just had to laugh out loud. Which, not intending to, he did.

Haddon turned to look sourly at him. “Something amuses you?”

Jerry raised his hands apologetically, one of them holding the pipe. “Sorry, Dr. Haddon, no offense. Something just struck me funny.” He shrugged amiably, grinned at Haddon, and stuck the pipe back in his mouth.

Dr. Haddon’s retort was interrupted by the appearance in the arched doorway of a wiry, dark-skinned man in turban and long, loose dirt-stained
galabiya,
who appeared to be in a state of mild, pleasurable excitement. This was in itself an extraordinary occurrence. It was one of Dr. Haddon’s rules that outside workers were not to enter the living quarters.

“What the devil—” he began.

“Moomy,” the man announced, and was silent.

“Moomy,” Dr. Haddon echoed after a moment. “What the devil is moomy?”

“Moomy,” the man said again. “In back.”

Dr. Haddon had no choice but to ask for help from Tiffany, the only one among them who knew more Arabic than was required to issue an instruction or hold a rudimentary conversation. She asked a brief question. The man replied volubly.

“He says he found a mummy while he was cleaning up,” Tiffany explained.

“A
mummy?”
Dr. Haddon exclaimed incredulously. “Here on the grounds? Impossible.”

Tiffany asked several more questions and received lengthy answers. “Apparently what he’s found is a skeleton, or at least some bones. He thinks they’re human.”

Dr. Haddon waved the idea away. “Absurd. Where?”

“In the old storage area behind the laundry.”

“The—what in heavens was he doing in there?” Dr. Haddon glowered at the man. “You! What were you doing in there?”

The man grinned and nodded. “Moomy, yes. No problem.”

“He said they were following your instructions, cleaning everything up for the moving pictures,” Tiffany said.

“Yes, of course, but I didn’t mean the old storage area, for God’s sake. Does he think they want to—oh, what difference does it make?” Haddon rubbed wearily at his eyes. “Go and see what he’s talking about, Tiffany. Nobody’s been back there for ages. It’s probably what’s left of some dog that got in.”

As Tiffany left with the Egyptian, Dr. Haddon turned to the others. “I’ll keep you from your beds for only a few minutes more,” he said, yawning. “Now, what was I saying-”

TJ escaped into the night with a sense of having made it just in time. Another thirty seconds of Clifford Haddon’s arch and simpering posturing, his petty meanness and insincerity, and she would have burst.
Tell me, just what kind of authority do you lack!… Believe me, my dear, I’m more distressed about this than you are…
Aaaargh.

She realized she was overbreathing—Haddon did that to her—and made herself take a deep breath and slacken her stride. “Slow down, Ragheb,” she said.

The Egyptian, who was leading the way over the dark, curving, hibiscus-scented paths with his powerful flashlight, obeyed.

Damn Haddon, he had gotten to her again. She was still fuming. It wasn’t simply because of the schedule change— although that would have been enough—but because of his uncanny ability to set her off just by being himself. She was not an emotional person. She hated emotional people, and she hated herself when she blew up, the way she had back there. What had been the point? How many times had they been over the same ground, and where was it ever going to get them? But Clifford Haddon, like no other person she had ever known, could turn her into a ranting screamer just byopening his mouth. It was amazing, really. Sometimes, especially when he’d been at his Scotch, he could set her teeth on edge just by walking into a room. Those smarmy, prissy speeches, that horrible little pharaoh’s tuft of beard, that narrow-minded, self-righteous…

And why was it only her? That was what was so frustrating, that nobody else ever blew their stack. Haddon hadn’t aced only her out of the picture, after all; he had cut the time that Jerry would have to show the library as well, and what had Jerry’s reaction been?

Duh, sure, chief
, what else?

No, that wasn’t fair. Jerry wasn’t dumb, she knew that, he honestly didn’t give a damn. He was probably glad of the change. Leaving him out of it altogether probably would have made him happiest of all. It was too bad she couldn’t be more like her easygoing, take-things-in-his-stride husband when it came to dealing with their despicable boss, she thought, not quite meaning it. But thank God he was always there to provide TLC and propping-up after one of her sessions with Haddon. She’d probably need some tonight.

A few steps ahead of her, Ragheb stopped at the warped and leaning metal gate of an unroofed, stucco-walled enclosure jutting out from the rear of the laundry building. Her eyes had gotten used to the darkness now. Even without the flashlight she could see the welter of junk through the open gate: corroded bed frames, a toilet bowl broken in two, knotted tangles of filthy, moldering clothing, some rust-cankered, mysterious engine parts reputed to be from a 1925 motorcycle.

Ragheb waited for her to precede him. He spoke English. “Moomy in here, madam,” he said politely.

Unexpectedly, she caught herself hesitating. Out here, at the furthest perimeter of the Horizon compound and of the city itself, shielded by the bulk of the buildings, the familiar traffic sounds from the Corniche were muted and distant. The civilized aroma of bougainvillea and hibiscus from the well-planted grounds was faint, the ashy, primeval smell of the vast, unseen Eastern Desert strong and mysterious. Even the familiar, friendly Ragheb was suddenly exotic and inscrutable. A rare, chill breeze from the desert eddied about her, raising the tiny hairs on the back of her neck.