Sands of Time (Out of Time #6) (13 page)

Simon knew he’d need to direct Whiteside’s enthusiasm if they were ever going to find out what the darn thing said.

“But you
can
read this?” he asked.

Whiteside straightened and took off his glasses. His chest puffed out and he polished his glasses. “I can.”

“Well, I’m dying here,” Elizabeth said. “What does it say?”

Whiteside chuckled and put his glasses back on. His finger hovered just above the delicate papyrus as he translated. “Let’s see…Behold the gift from Ra, from Amun, from Aten,” he read. “Those are all variations of the sun god, unusual to see them all together like that…from eternity. Heka, the god of magic, appeared to the king, in the temple and bestowed upon him a piece of the sun.”

Whiteside scratched his chin. “This part is a little more difficult, some of the…” he waved his hand over the writings, “well, I’m just not sure.”

“Go on, Professor,” Elizabeth urged him. “It’s fascinating.”

Pleased, Whiteside read on. “Heka, with white skin, I’m not sure what that means, gave the king…and this could be wheels or gears of gold, that moved and lived in his hand. Not sure quite what this word is, lever, device? Sounds odd, held the key to eternity.”

Simon felt his mouth go dry. Gears of gold that moved in his hand. The watch. He glanced over at Elizabeth. Her wide-eyed expression mirrored what he felt.

Whiteside continued, “The gift was a sign from the gods of his divinity above all others.”

“Whose divinity?” Simon asked.

Whiteside shook his head. “That’s the thing of it. The rest of it’s torn off there you can see.” He read the last line. “It says that the gift was given to the king, but the part that starts to identify which king is missing. Quite the mystery, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Simon managed, his mind racing with the possibilities. Dear God, was the watch in ancient Egypt? Like hell they were going there!

“Have you seen any other references to these gears of gold?” Elizabeth asked. He marveled at how calm she appeared.

Whiteside shook his head. “No, it’s most unusual in that respect.” He began to carefully re-roll the scroll. “I’m afraid it will all remain an unsolved puzzle until we find the missing half.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Bloody hell,” Simon grumbled as they went back to Jack’s room to bring him up to date.

“It might not be so bad,” Elizabeth said.

She knocked on Jack’s door.

“I draw the line at Before Christ.”

Elizabeth laughed and Jack opened the door.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Simon said as he pushed his way into the room.

“You must have lit a hell of a fire under the manager,” Jack said, gesturing to the door as he closed it as best he could given its splintered frame. “They’ve been up twice already to see about that and the locks.”

Simon grunted.

“Simon,” Elizabeth said. “Just because the watch might have been in ancient Egypt doesn’t mean it still is. It—”

“Hold the phone,” Jack interrupted. “The watch is in
ancient
Egypt? Building the pyramids kind of Egypt?”

“Perhaps,” Simon said. “It might be, might have been.”

“Well, that clears things right up.”

Simon glared at him and then gestured to a chair and waited for Elizabeth to take a seat before joining her at the small table. They told Jack everything they’d learned from the meeting with Whiteside.

“So,” Jack said. “If it is the watch, we still don’t have any idea exactly where it is.”

“Or when,” Simon said.

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Elizabeth chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. “If it was lost in the past. We can’t exactly go wandering around a thousand years of history.”

“Several thousand,” Simon corrected.

“But, all those centuries have one thing in common,” she continued.

Simon waited, intrigued.

“Today.”

“I don’t follow,” Jack said, taking a seat on the end of the bed.

“All this stuff, all the things buried in those ancient tombs are here today. Right now. In some museum or a collection. Those thousands of years of history all converge here, now.”

“True,” Simon said, mulling it over. “Assuming the watch was buried with the king or buried somewhere at all and not destroyed.”

“The key to eternity or whatever it was,” she said. “That sounds like the sort of thing I’d want to take with me.”

It was logical. Despite that, it still got them no closer to knowing where the watch actually was. “Whiteside did say that all of the royal tombs that could be found have been found. Which is only partly true, of course, because we know Carter finds Tutankhamen’s tomb two years from now.”

“But most of them have been found,” Elizabeth reasoned. “That means it’s most likely that the tomb with the watch has already been discovered.”

“You’d think it would have stood out a little, don’t ya?” Jack asked. “Surely someone would have mentioned finding a modern watch in an ancient tomb.”

Simon frowned at that. “Yes.”

“We’ll just have to hope we can find the other half of the papyrus,” Elizabeth said. “That must have been what Mason was after.”

Simon noticed Mason’s letter and a pad of paper on the table. He pulled it over and read what looked like gibberish. “Any luck with this?”

“Not yet.”

Simon sighed and pushed the pad away. “Well then, all we can do is look for the other half of that papyrus and hope it answers some of our questions.”

“And hope,” Elizabeth said, “that no one else has found it first.”

~ ~ ~

“Why couldn’t Jack talk to Jouvet?” Simon said as held the door open for her and they entered the museum.

Elizabeth knew this wasn’t easy for him and offered him a comforting smile which he did not return. Instead, his eyes sought out Henri so he could start the flow of unrestrained disdain for him as soon as possible.

They enquired of one of the staff who told them that Monsieur Jouvet was in the “sale room,” which ended up being a cross between a kitschy museum shop with hieroglyphic print scarves and post-cards and a high-roller store with genuine artifacts for sale. If you wanted an ashtray with the pyramids on it or an original ushabti burial figure, this was the place. It was called the sale room, but it was actually a fairly large pavilion in the front corner of the museum. They found Henri inside arguing with a man over a pair of bracelets and an amulet. Elizabeth’s French was rusty, but she was pretty sure Henri called the man a thief or maybe a steering wheel.

The man grunted and gathered up his belongings, snatching the amulet from Henri’s hands and stormed out.

Henri’s shrug of indifference turned into a broad smile as he saw them. He strode across the room, hands held out, head cocked to the side as if to say, “Of course, you have come back to me.”

He reached out and took hold of Elizabeth’s hand and kissed it before covering it with his other hand and smiling down at her. “Cherie. I hoped you would come.” His gaze shifted to Simon. “I had hoped you would come alone, but—”

“Now, see here,” Simon started and Elizabeth knew she had to intervene quickly.

“We were hoping you could help us.”

Henri’s eyebrow arched and he released her hand, clearly disappointed, but he was still a gentleman, albeit a debauched one. “How may I be of service to you?”

“Arthur showed us his papyrus this morning,” Elizabeth said.

Henri laughed. “Not that again.”

“Yes,” Simon said through clenched teeth.

Henri raised his hands palms up. “Do not mistake me. It is an interesting piece, I suppose, but it’s value is…minor.”

“It’s more the mystery for us,” Elizabeth said.

Henri smiled. “Oh, you like the intrigue?”

“Something like that. It’s interesting, I think,” Elizabeth said, “And, well, George Mason thought so too and it seems like a decent way to honor his memory, don’t you think? Solve that last riddle for him. And for Arthur.”

Henri nodded thoughtfully. “Arthur is a good man. I was not close to your friend, George, but I appreciate your sentiment.”

Elizabeth beamed. “Then you’ll help us.”

He shrugged. “I will do what I can. I have told Arthur before that it is unlikely we will find the other half. The provenance of the piece he has is…” Henri puffed out a breath.

“Oh.” Elizabeth had hoped for more than that.

Henri frowned and held up a finger. “I have asked one of the museum liaisons if he has any idea. Let me see what he has come up with, no?”

With that he disappeared into one of the back rooms.

“I had hoped you would come alone,” Simon said in a fairly hilarious and mocking impression of Henri.

Elizabeth barely had time to stifle her giggle as Henri returned with a young man in tow. He was handsome and well-dressed in a smart dark gray suit.

“Mr. and Mrs. Cross,” Henri said, “This is Ahmed Kassem. He is an attaché with the department of antiquities.”

The young man’s charming smile fizzled. He forced it back on, but could only numbly shake Simon’s hand. His face paled as he inclined his head toward Elizabeth. Looking suddenly unwell, he kept his eyes down. Or tried to. He couldn’t help but sneak a peak at Elizabeth again and when he did, she saw his eyes clearly, and slowly, it dawned on her just why he was acting so strangely.

Ahmed was one of the bandits.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jack scratched out another failed attempt at solving the cipher in Mason’s letter. He looked down at the pad in front of him and shoved it away in disgust. The little experience he had with codes was proving to be pathetically inadequate. It was one thing to read a coded message when you knew what kind of code it was and knew the key. Without that, without a key… This wasn’t exactly Enigma, but it might as well have been.

101247.330523.550198.36533.451225.03244526…

A line of numbers like that could represent anything—dates, coordinates, or it could be a substitution cipher where each number or set of numbers, or every third number, represented a letter or a phonetic sound or God knows what. The whole thing was starting to make his brain ache.

There was a reason he had been a field operative and not stuck behind a desk. He was far better with people than paper. But Mason’s letter was the best clue they had so far. Other than Whiteside’s half papyrus, it was the only clue.

As much as he wanted to be out there with Simon and Elizabeth, breaking this cipher was more important. He was beginning to wonder though, if he ever would. Judging from the heaping pile of crumpled paper in the trash bin waiting to be burned, and the fact that he’d made absolutely zero progress and had even fewer ideas, he might be right. He had a newfound respect for the men and women who broke Enigma and Purple.

He reached for his coffee, but it had gone cold. Just as he was about to ring the bell to check on his order for a fresh pot there was a knock on the door.

“I was just about to come looking—” he said, as he yanked the door open.

Diana smiled. “Were you?”

“Sorry, I was…” Jack, stepping back, waved her in. “Thought you were room service.”

Diana stepped inside and fingered the splintered door jam. “What happened here?”

“A little misunderstanding,” Jack said hoping she wouldn’t press him.

He closed the door and went to the table and flipped his pad over to cover Mason’s letter. The room was still in a shambles and he started to tidy things up. “Sorry about the mess.”

“Don’t worry,” Diana said as she sat down in one of the chairs at the small table by the window. “I had fun making it.”

Last night had definitely been fun. “Right.”

Relieved, she put it all up to their…robust evening, he tossed aside the shirt that dangled in his hand and smiled.

He’d needed last night. Needed to be with a woman. The fractures in his heart were finally mending, but he wasn’t ready for more. He wasn’t sure he ever would be. “About that, I hope I didn’t do anything—”

Diana raised her hand to stop him. “There was nothing wrong with anything you did last night,” she said with a wry smile. “Trust me.” Then she grew more serious. “I just hope that I didn’t mislead you.”

“Mislead me?”

“I like you, Jack. I enjoy being with you, but I’m not looking for anything more than this right now,” she said carefully. “I hope we can—”

He burst out laughing.

She frowned and he tried to control himself. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I was about to say the same thing.”

Then the light dawned on her. “You mean…you were going to let me down easy?”

He nodded and she joined in his laughter.

“Well, aren’t we a pair?” she said.

Jack smiled. “Well matched. Did you come here just to break the news or…?”

“Oh! My necklace.” Her hand went to her throat and she looked about the room. “You didn’t find it, did you?”

“You’re in luck!” Jack went over to the nightstand and opened the small top drawer. He’d found it when he’d started and immediately given up cleaning his room. He pulled out the necklace. “Found it this morning.”

“You’re a life saver!” She walked over to him and took it from his hand. Her relief was palpable.

She saw his unspoken question. “It was my mother’s,” she said simply and he didn’t press the point.

Diana put it back around her neck and slipped the small gold cross beneath her blouse. She patted her chest between her breasts and then seemed to realize she was giving too much away.

“So,” she said, easing seamlessly back into her less vulnerable persona. “Are you going to spend the day inside writing letters or look for Arthur’s missing papyrus?”

Jack managed to hide his surprise at her question. Just as soon as he was back on sure footing with this woman, she pushed him off kilter again.

“His papyrus?” While it wasn’t exactly a state secret, they didn’t want to broadcast what they were doing either.

“I stopped by this morning to see how Christina was getting along, not well, by the way, and she mentioned that the Crosses were keen to find it. I just assumed.”

“I’d like to, but…” he said looking at his pad of paper.

“Is it anything I can help with?”