Sands of Time (Out of Time #6) (18 page)

“I don’t think so.” Simon knew all too well what it was like to be packed off to boarding school. “She’s a lovely young woman. Broken hearts are part of growing up, I’m afraid.”

Whiteside grunted and drank down the last of his cognac. “An Egyptian boy no less. “

Simon wanted to argue that point, but what could he say? Don’t be prejudiced against him because he’s Egyptian, be prejudiced against him because he’s a thief and liar.

“Perhaps, she’s better off.”

“No doubt,” Whiteside agreed as he pulled out a leather tobacco pouch and dug his pipe deep into it. He tamped down the fresh tobacco and stared at it for a moment before slipping both the pipe and the case back into his pocket. He reached for his glass and realized it was empty. “Damn.”

“I’ll get us both another,” Simon said and turned to flag down a waiter, but they seemed to have all disappeared. “Excuse me.”

Simon left Whiteside and walked over to the short wet bar at the end of the room. He placed his order and leaned back on the bar while he waited.

Ahmed clearly could not be trusted. Not that Simon ever did, but Elizabeth had. But then she’d trust the Devil himself. In fact, Simon remembered, she had. He would have laughed if it hadn’t been so damn foolish and dangerous. And now, their kidnapper was mixed up with Whiteside’s daughter. Nothing good could come from any of this.

“Your drinks, sir.”

Simon turned to retrieve them when a waiter who had just come in with a tray caught his attention. They stared at each other for a moment before the man lowered his eyes. Simon couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew him and took a step toward him.

The man shifted the tray in his hands and reached to open the door he’d just come through. As he did, his sleeve rode up and Simon saw the tattoo on his inner wrist.

“You!” Simon called out. It was the same as the marking on the man who’d broken into their room.

The waiter hurried through the door and quickly shut it behind him. Simon raced after him and yanked it open. The hallway was crowded with people. Simon shouldered past a few, ignoring their indignant protests. His heart pounding with adrenaline, he spun around, looking in every direction, but the man was simply gone.

He grabbed another of the hotel staff. “A man just came out of this room. A waiter. Which way did he go?”

The man shook his head.

Simon clenched his jaw. “He had a marking, a tattoo, just here.” Simon shoved up his sleeve and pointed to the inner part of his wrist, but the other man just shook his head.

Simon let him go with a grunt. Dammit. He’d almost had him.

“Is everything all right?” Whiteside said, appearing at his side, slightly winded. “I saw you rush out.”

“No,” Simon said, keeping his eyes on the crowd. Finally, he spared Whiteside a glance. “Everything is not all right. I need to find Elizabeth.”

“Oh,” Whiteside said. “Well, I’m sure she’s not—”

Simon ignored Whiteside’s protest and set off to find her. They found Christina and Elizabeth on one of the verandas, unharmed and unaware that anything had happened. Simon let out a sigh of relief.

Elizabeth’s smile faded as her eyes danced over his face and she started to stand, her own expression now alarmed. “What happened? Are you all right?”

Simon nodded and waved her back into her seat, but she wasn’t fooled. “I’m fine.”

Whiteside put his hands to his hips and frowned. “I think you’d better tell me what’s going on here.”

Simon glanced at Elizabeth, who frowned and said, “That makes two of us.”

He obviously couldn’t tell the Whitesides the entire truth, but perhaps some of it.

“Not here,” Simon said. He looked over his shoulder at the milling crowd, still feeling far too exposed. “We should go.”

“But what about the opera?” Elizabeth asked. “You’ve got me all worked up for it.”

Simon held out her chair and as she stood, he turned her to face him. “The hero and the heroine die, buried alive.”

Her face fell. “How ’bout we go back to the hotel?”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Elizabeth hadn’t been able to get much out of Simon on the ride home with the Whitesides. Something had spooked him, but whatever it was, he didn’t want to talk about it openly.

They’d barely set foot inside Shepheard’s when the manager appeared and stopped them in the lobby. “Professor Whiteside!”

The tall, slender man mopped his brow and stuffed his handkerchief into his pocket as he hurried toward them. “Professor, I am most sorry to be the bearer of such news, but it seems that we have had another,” he lowered his voice, “break-in.”

Elizabeth cast a quick glance at Simon.

Whiteside squinted at him in confusion. “What do you mean? Break-in?”

The man clasped his hands in front him and looked furtively around to see if other guests had heard. “Please, will you come to my office?” His eyes shifted to Simon. “All of you.”

He hastened them into his office adjacent to the front desk.

“Now, what’s all this about a break-in, Salim?”

The man shook his head. “I am sorry. After the recent incidents,” Salim said as he looked at Simon and Elizabeth. “We increased security on the grounds. You will find, new, much stronger locks on your balcony doors, but even our precautions could not prepare us for such a bold thief.”

“Thief?” Whiteside said, his voice rising in an uncharacteristic show of anger. “By God man, if—”

Salim raised his hand to stop the coming tirade. “We caught him.”

“Oh,” Whiteside said, the wind taken right out of his bluster. “Well done.”

Elizabeth saw the “however” on Salim’s face before the word came out of his mouth. “However, there was a bit of damage, I am afraid. Not much,” he added hastily. “Our men were there within moments, but…”

~ ~ ~

Whiteside sat down heavily at the small, round table in his room and let the hand that held the tiny remaining bit of charred papyrus fall to the table. “Oh, dear.”

Christina went to her father’s side and laid her hands on his shoulders. “I’m sorry, papa.”

He reached back and patted one of her hands. “It’s all right, my girl. Nothing we can’t live without.”

“I don’t understand,” Christina said. “There are far wealthier guests here if they wanted to rob someone. Why target us?”

“I had hoped this wouldn’t involve you,” Simon said and looked sadly at Elizabeth. “I’m afraid this might be our fault.”

Whiteside put down the remnant and turned in his seat. “I beg your pardon?”

Simon gestured to Christina to take a seat next to her father. While she did, Simon looked to Elizabeth, silently asking permission to share some of what they knew. She nodded. The Whitesides were mixed up in it now and had a right to know. Elizabeth joined them at the table.

Simon took a deep breath and began. “Two days ago, a man broke into our room. And another into Jack Wells’.”

Whiteside arched an eyebrow in surprise, his eyes shifted uneasily to his daughter.

“We weren’t sure what they were looking for,” Simon continued, “but I’m afraid it might have something to do with George Mason.”

Whiteside frowned as the seriousness of what Simon was saying began to sink in. He put both hands on the top of his thighs and sat back in his chair, seeming to be lost in his own thoughts. “I see.”

Simon scratched the back of his neck. “We knew he was looking for something, but he never told us what it was. But I think two things are clear now. Whatever it is, it’s related to your papyrus and secondly, he wasn’t the only one looking for it.”

“What would anyone want with a bit of old papyrus. It’s not exactly a treasure map, now, is it?”

Simon tilted his head to the side. “Perhaps it’s part of one or leads to one.”

Whiteside’s forehead wrinkled in thought.

“But then why burn it?” Christina asked. “If it’s so valuable, why not steal it?”

“Maybe they were going to and when the guards came, they did the only thing they could,” Elizabeth said. “Destroyed it so no one else could have it.”

Whiteside shook his head. He looked up at Simon, doubt still etched in his creased forehead. “And George was involved in this?”

Simon nodded. “We think so.”

“And someone killed him because he was getting close to finding the answers he sought?” Whiteside reasoned.

“Possibly,” Simon said, pausing for a moment and Elizabeth could see him weighing how to continue. “We have reason to believe that the man who shot him and the man who broke into our rooms, and yours, are connected.”

Whiteside turned to his daughter. “We’ll make arrangements tomorrow for you to return to London.”

Christina sat up defiantly. “Only if you come with me.”

“No,” Whiteside said and the absent-minded professor fell away and the man he had once been, many years ago reasserted himself. “I’m going to stay. I don’t like being run out of places. And I think I’d like to have a few words with the man who did this.” He pushed the scorched bit of papyrus across the table.

“Then I’m staying, too,” Christina said. He started to protest, but she shook her head. “You always said we were better off together than apart. We’re a matched-set, remember?”

Whiteside started to argue, but then reached out and squeezed his daughter’s hand before turning his attention back to Simon. “And this evening? In the salon?”

Simon nodded. “I recognized one of the waiters. He had the same marking on his wrist as the man who broke into our room.”

And shot Mason, Elizabeth added silently. “What happened back there?”

“After I saw him,” Simon said, “I tried to follow him, but he disappeared into the crowd.”

“This marking,” Whiteside said. “What exactly is it?”

Simon thought for a moment. “It was a symbol of some sort. I never did get a good look at the whole thing. All I could make out were two arching lines and a circle, a dot, touching the lower line. Centered on it almost.”

“Can you draw it?” Whiteside asked.

Simon nodded and Christina handed him her small notepad and pencil. He sketched what he’d described—two arching lines with a black circle touching one.

Whiteside studied it for a moment before a smile came to his face and he laughed in delight.

He took up the pencil and added to Simon’s sketch.

“Could it have been this?” he asked, turning the sketch pad so Simon could have a better look.

“Yes,” Simon said. Elizabeth could see the light of recognition in his eyes, hear it in his voice. “Yes, I think that was it.”

He lifted the sketch and showed it to her. Clearly it was an eye, ornate and iconic. She’d seen the symbol many times before. Variations of it had been used and abused for centuries by everyone from the Illuminati to the Alan Parsons Project. “The Eye of Ra?” she said.

“Precisely!” Whiteside said. “It’s also called the Eye of Horus. It sometimes symbolizes the goddess Wadjet.”

“Wadjet?” Simon asked.

“Yes, she’s a very old goddess, although the symbol is also associated with several later goddesses you might have heard of—Mut, Hathor, Sekhmet, and Bast.”

Elizabeth had heard of them, but she knew a total of diddly-squat about them.

“They’re all mother goddesses of some sort, aren’t they?” Simon asked.

Whiteside smiled. “Yes. This…this marking it was on their wrists, you say?”

“Yes.” Simon held up his arm. “The inner part, just here.”

Whiteside hmm’d in a way that made Elizabeth uneasy. “Does that mean something?”

Whiteside tugged on his ear. “Well, it’s just that some of the ancient cults used to tattoo various symbols on their bodies.”

“Cults?” Elizabeth gulped. Cults conjured images of dark ceremonies and daggers and sacrifices. Cults didn’t throw jamborees.

Whiteside frowned as he answered. “Nearly every god or goddess had a cult of their own. But I haven’t heard of anything of this sort in…well, over a thousand years or more.”

Simon and Elizabeth shared uneasy glances. Elizabeth felt her pulse pick up speed as her imagination took hold. Thousand year old cults didn’t exactly conjure images of puppy-dogs and butterflies, more like beating hearts ripped out of chests and desiccated mummies that turned into vengeful, murderous lovers.

“Maybe some cult has been reformed?” Simon suggested.

“Take the band on tour one more time?” Elizabeth said, winning a sour look from Simon.

“It’s possible,” Whiteside said. “But why?”

Elizabeth knew it had to have something to do with the watch, but what?

“Do you have any books on these cults?” Simon asked.

Whiteside shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not.”

He held up a finger, pushed back his chair and stood. “Although,” he said as he retrieved a book from the sideboard. “This one might have some detail about the goddess—Mut, Hathor and the others.”

Simon took the book. “Thank you.”

Whiteside still looked perplexed, almost wounded. “I just don’t understand. What could they possibly want with my papyrus?”

“You translated it; you know what it said,” Elizabeth said. “There must be some connection.”

“Well, yes, but I don’t remember it all exactly. And there were partial symbols at the bottom, where it was torn…I can’t be sure what those were without the whole of it and now, that seems quite impossible.”

“Maybe not,” Christina said. She smiled and hurried into an adjoining room, returning with a large sketchpad. With an even larger grin, she put it down on the table and flipped through the sheets. “I wanted to practice in case Henri let me sketch in the tomb. Here!”

She flipped over the last large sheet and revealed an exact rendering of the papyrus. “I know it’s not the same as the real thing, but…”

Whiteside kissed her forehead. “It’s far better than that, my girl.” He looked at Simon and Elizabeth proudly. “Now if we can just find the other half we might have some clue as to what in blazes is going on. There’s just no other way.”

Simon tucked the book under his arm and straightened his shoulders. “There might be one more way.”

~ ~ ~

Twenty pounds. Apparently, that was the going-rate for bribing a police officer in Cairo. A bargain. In 1906 she and Maxwell had paid San Francisco’s finest a lot more than that.