Sleeping Beauty (51 page)

“And smash their way in,” said Hosni. “Of course this is a great find, a magnificent find, even if it's empty; we'll still have the writing and paintings on the walls. But we won't know what we have until we get to the tomb. So we dig.”

Josh nodded. He had had his great moment; now there was nothing to do but dig. And wait. He photographed the steps and stood to the side, holding his camera. Carol stood beside him. The workers were more careful now, using their shovels to remove loose gravel, then sweeping the steps clean with brooms and brushes. Josh and Hosni examined the large pieces of rock to make sure they were not part of the steps; those that were not, the workers hauled out of the hole with a hand winch.

Josh photographed the workers in the swirling clouds of dust that turned their lean bodies to ghostlike figures swaying in the sunlight. He photographed Hosni, in his amazingly white pants. He photographed the long line of the gully in which they worked and high above, the dunes and jagged rock ridges that surrounded them. He had never taken so many photographs that had nothing to do with his work. For Anne, he said silently. So she can see it all.

In his mind, he saw his hand spread out on the ancient
stone of the stairway. Once in a lifetime, he thought, one of the great moments of a lifetime. She should have been part of it; it should have been her fingers that brushed his as they touched the stone. He wanted her to share all that he did, the small triumphs as well as the large ones, and the disappointments as well.

He shook his head and put his camera back in its case. It was too soon to say that, too soon even to think it. He didn't know anything about her.

He knew that she haunted his thoughts.

For a long time he stood still, transfixed by the heat and the rhythmic lifting and falling of the workers' arms and the hum of their voices in the still air. Then it all stopped. The workers moved down the gully toward the cars. “Lunch and a beer,” Hosni said to Josh. “Will you be at the hotel?”

“Yes.” Josh turned to Carol, feeling guilty for ignoring her. “You must be hungry.”

“And a trifle warm,” she said cheerfully. “But I loved it. I wandered around; you were too busy taking pictures to notice. It's the most amazing thing: fifty feet from here there's nothing to see but sand and sky, as if the world just emptied out. It's the scariest thing I've ever seen; you feel so small. Are we going back for lunch?”

“Right now. Hosni, you'll join us?”

“Yes, thanks.” They walked back to the cars. “Josh, we could use more workers.”

“To speed it up? There isn't room for them at the stairway.”

“I could use them to keep the opening clear when we get deeper. This is going to take a hell of a long time if we keep this pace.”

“We don't have enough money,” Josh said.

There was a pause. Hosni shrugged. “So be it, then.”

That was the Egyptian way, Josh thought.
So be it, then.
How many Americans would accept an obstacle so readily, as if it were fate? “We'll get the money,” he said firmly. “I'll go to Cairo tomorrow instead of next week. There are people I can talk to in the government.”

“The government is tightfisted these days,” Hosni said. “Hard times around here.” He got in his car. “I'll see you at the ferry.”

“What will you do if the government doesn't give you the money?” Carol asked as they drove back to the riverbank.

“Talk to private investors. There's money in Egypt; it just isn't visible. We'll find it. Do you want to come to Cairo tomorrow?”

“I think I'd like to stay here for a while. When will you be back?”

“Not right away; it would make more sense to go straight home. There really isn't anything to do, until they dig out more of the stairway and corridor. Would it change your plans if I didn't come back?”

“Not as long as Hosni lets me watch the dig and take my own pictures.”

“That's no problem. He likes an audience.” Josh parked near the dock and they walked onto the ferry. He'd talk to the government officials day after tomorrow; if they couldn't provide the money he needed, he'd see the private investors the day after that. And then he'd fly home.

That had not been in his mind when he told Hosni he would go to Cairo; he had meant he would go for a couple of days and then return to Luxor. But when he talked to Carol, he knew he had already changed his mind. Because he wanted most of all to go home.

*   *   *

Charles took the train from Chicago to Washington. He thought it would be a peaceful interlude, a chance to think calmly about the past year and what he could do to save himself. Instead, it turned out to be an agonizing trip.

He was suffering. He was not in the habit of complaining to his family or his friends, so he endured in silence a prickling nervousness and burning stomach pains that had begun about the time Ethan died, and had gotten steadily worse since then. He had trouble eating and sleeping, too, and he had hoped the train would lull him so he could eat in a leisurely way, and then sleep to the rhythm of the wheels.

But as he sat in the lounge car before dinner, sipping Scotch and soda, hearing Anne say Vince had threatened her, worrying about Ray Beloit's low offer for Tamarack, haunted by the calendar, with the date coming up for the next interest payments on his loans, his thoughts began to come faster, and grow louder and more insistent, and the wheels of the train forced them to rhythms that seemed to mock him with a jolly drumbeat. When he went to dinner, no one sat at his table and so he ate alone, his thoughts hammering inside his head like desperate prisoners pounding on a padlocked door. The train was Charles' prison. He left his dinner untouched and paced the length of the train. Then he turned and retraced his steps. His dinner plate was gone but his table was still empty, so he sat down and asked for coffee. His head hurt; he drank a brandy. His stomach hurt; he sucked on a handful of tablets. He began to yawn and could not stop. And when he went to bed in his room, he did not sleep.

He walked into Vince's office feeling as if he had fought a war. “I'm grabbing an early lunch; you can come if you'd like,” Vince said. He was signing letters and had not looked up. “I have a meeting at one.”

Charles sat down and yawned. “I'll have coffee with you; I'm not hungry. Vince, I have to talk to you.”

Vince signed the last two letters. “Good. Did you hear from Ray about buying Tamarack?”

“Yes, but he's crazy. Where the hell's he getting his numbers? Any damn fool would know the company's worth twice what he's offering, maybe more.”

“Ask him; I don't know anything about it. You think you can do better somewhere else?”

“Damn it, I know what it's worth! You didn't tell him I was anxious to sell, did you?”

“Of course not; it's not something anybody should know.” He set the signed letters to one side. “I've been thinking about this, though, since you haven't had any other offers. I'm worried about you, Charles; we have to do something to get you off the hook.”

His head tilted back in a massive yawn, Charles heard one word echo in his mind.
We.
Vince was worried about him; Vince would help him. “How?” he asked.

“Well, we have to talk about that. But one way might be for me to work on the family. You haven't any leverage until you can deliver enough of them to make a bona fide sale; maybe Beloit hasn't raised his offer because he's not sure you're serious.”

“He doesn't know anything about the family. How would he know?”

Vince scowled. “You didn't tell him?”

“For Christ's sake, Vince!”

“Well, it sounds to me as if he may have heard about it. He learns a lot by hanging around and being invisible, and God knows what he knows about the family. You haven't changed anybody's mind?” Charles shook his head. “Then I'd better try to get things moving.” He drummed his fingers on his desk. “One thing I might do is talk to some people here, at the EPA. They're pretty busy these days; they'd probably be just as happy to call off that cleanup, especially if we found other towns that were just as bad. If I do that, I imagine we could round up a few grateful votes in the family; there's more than one way to get what you want.”

Something stirred within Charles, the reminder that he had had something important to ask Vince. “Vince, there's something else we have to talk about.”

“This minute? We're talking about saving your ass; that's usually all you want to talk about these days. Isn't that why you're here?”

Another yawn held Charles in its grip for a long minute.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Vince demanded.

“Nothing. I didn't sleep last night. Vince, listen to me. Did you threaten Anne? Did you say you'd kill her if she came back to the family?”

Vince reared up. “For God's sake! That's a hell of a thing to ask your brother!”

“I'd rather not ask it. But I've got to know. Did you?”

“You couldn't make it up; where the hell did you get it? Have you seen her?
Have you?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Tamarack. Damn it, Vince—”

“What did you do? Ask her forgiveness for sticking with your brother? And she told you I'd threatened her? She told you that? The little bitch hasn't changed, has she? The first thing she does is start accusing me.”

“Damn it, Vince,
did you say it?”

“For Christ's sake, of course not. I don't go around killing anybody. You ought to be the first to know that—and
defend
me, damn it, when anybody says anything like that! Did you? Did you tell her your brother isn't a murderer?
Did you?”

Charles looked at him helplessly.

“You didn't. My own brother didn't say a fucking thing in my defense. What did you say?” He raised his voice to a falsetto. “ ‘I'll ask him, sweetheart. I'll ask my brother if he threatened to kill my daughter.' What the hell is wrong with you? What's wrong with
her?
Does she think she's Joan of Arc, hearing voices? Why would I want to kill her? I forgave her a long time ago; she was a mixed-up kid and she did a terrible thing, but it's past, she's outgrown it—well, shit, I thought she'd outgrown it, but it looks like she hasn't. But that doesn't mean I'd threaten to kill her; it wouldn't occur to me, for Christ's sake. Well? Is there anything else you want to know?”

Charles shook his head. Vince had gone on talking too long, but he didn't know whether that was because of guilt or justifiable outrage because he was innocent.
Listen to yourself.
Anne had flung that at him when his first instinct had been to defend Vince.
Listen to yourself. You have no idea what he would do; you don't know anything about him.

That's true, Charles thought with a deep and terrible sadness. I don't. But I don't know anything about my daughter, either.

In fact, he thought despairingly, I don't know anything about anything. What happened in the past, what's happening now, what will happen tomorrow. He yawned again and suddenly felt panic-stricken. He could not explain it; he only
knew that he was terrified. I can't! he cried silently. Can't what? he wondered. He looked around wildly; the room was closing in on him, locking him in as the train had locked him in the night before. He could not stay, but he could not leave; he could not move from his chair. No, no, no! he screamed inside his head.

He yawned again, and was stabbed by a sudden, fierce burning in his stomach. It spread until he felt he was being consumed by fire. It clutched his chest as he yawned, and he began to tremble. Heart, he thought. Heart attack. His hands shook and the heels of his shoes drummed on the floor. A long moan tore from him; he squeezed shut his eyes.

“What the hell—!” Vince came around the desk. “What is it?”

Charles clawed at his chest with shaky fingers. “Heart,” he gasped.

Vince shouted to his secretary and his assistants, who ran in, bending over Charles, surrounding him, making comforting sounds. And that was all Charles remembered until he awoke in an ambulance and looked up and saw Vince. On his other side was a medic, but the most important person was Vince. Charles was so grateful for his presence that he forgot everything else. “Thanks,” he said.

“You're okay,” Vince said. “Your heartbeat is fine, not defibrillating; they don't think it was a heart attack.”

“Terrible pain,” Charles said.

“They found these in your pockets.” He held up two boxes of antacid tablets. “Do you use them a lot?”

“My main food these days,” Charles replied with a weak smile. “I thought about going to a doctor; I guess now I will.”

“They said it could be an ulcer; sometimes the pain feels like a heart attack. Or a panic attack with an ulcer, though I told them nobody in our family ever panicked that I know of. Do you know of anybody?” Charles shook his head and closed his eyes. “Fine, you should sleep. I can't stay anyway; I'm going back as soon as I make sure you're settled. I'll call later and find out how you're doing.”

Eyes closed, Charles nodded. Panic attack. Ulcer. Not his
heart. He wouldn't die. Modern medicine knew how to take care of ulcers. And panic, too, probably. Why had he panicked?
No, no, no.
He could still hear the scream inside his head. What was wrong with him that he'd gone off the deep end like that? Weak, Charles thought. He'd always been weak—Vince had told him often enough—and now the smallest thing could knock him over. What had he been thinking about when it started? He couldn't remember. What difference does it make? he thought. Whatever it was, I couldn't handle it. Vince could have handled it. So could Dad. But not me. I panic and pass out.

“We're here,” Vince said. The ambulance stopped and the medics opened the back doors. “I'll call you later.” He looked down at Charles' closed eyes. “You'll be fine.” He jumped out of the ambulance and strode away. A goddamned coffin, that's what it had felt like, careening through the streets smelling of medicines, smelling of death. He never went to hospitals; he hated them. Even when Ethan was in one, he had gone only once, when he couldn't avoid it. Not again, he had vowed then, and remembered it as he took a taxi to his office. Not again. His secretary would call. And visit if necessary.