Sphinx (22 page)

“You mean you never corresponded?” asked Erica with disbelief.

“Never,” said Ahmed quietly.

“But why?” pleaded Erica. She loved happy endings and abhorred unhappy ones.

“I knew that I had to come back here, to my country,” said Ahmed, looking away. “I was needed here. I was expected to run the antiquities service. At that time, there was no room for romance.”

“Have you ever seen Pamela again?”

“No.”

Erica took a sip of her tea. The story about Pamela awakened uncomfortable feelings about men and abandonment. Ahmed did not seem the type. She wanted to change the subject. “Did any of your family visit you in Massachusetts?”

“No . . .” Ahmed paused, then added, “Actually, my uncle did come to the States just before I left.”

“No one visited, and you didn't go home for three years?”

“That's right. It's a bit far, going from Egypt to Boston.”

“Weren't you lonely and homesick?”

“Terribly, until Pamela.”

“Did your uncle meet Pamela?”

Ahmed exploded. He threw his teacup against the wall, and it shattered in a hundred pieces. Erica was stunned.

The Arab dropped his head in his hands, and she could hear his heavy breathing. An awkward silence prevailed, as Erica sat torn between fear and empathy. She
wondered about Pamela and the uncle. What had happened that could still evoke such passion?

“Forgive me,” Ahmed said, his head still bowed.

“I'm sorry if I said something wrong,” said Erica putting down her teacup. “Perhaps I'd better return to my hotel.”

“No, don't go, please,” said Ahmed, lifting his head. His face was flushed. “It isn't your fault. It's just that I've been under a certain strain. Don't go. Please.” Ahmed jumped up to refresh Erica's tea and got another cup for himself. Then, in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, he brought out some antiquities that the department had recently confiscated.

Erica admired them, especially a beautifully carved wooden figure. She began to feel more comfortable. “Have any articles from Seti I been confiscated from the black market?” She carefully put the pieces on a nearby table.

Ahmed looked at her for several minutes, thinking. “No, I don't think so. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no real reason, except that I visited Seti's temple at Abydos today. By the way, are you familiar with a problem they have there with a cobra?”

“Cobras are a potential problem at all the sites, especially in Aswan. I suppose we really should warn the tourists. But it isn't a problem at the more popular sites. It can't compare with our difficulties with the black market. Only four years ago there was a major looting of carved blocks from the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, in broad daylight!”

Erica nodded her understanding. “If nothing else, this trip has underlined for me the destructive power of the black market. In fact, along with my translation work, I've decided to try to do something about it.”

Ahmed looked up suddenly. “It's a dangerous business. I don't recommend it at all. To give you an idea, about two years ago a young idealistic American fellow came over here from Yale with similar goals. He disappeared without a trace.”

“Well,” said Erica, “I'm no hero. I just have some
very tame ideas. I wanted to ask if you knew the location of Abdul Hamdi's son's antique shop here in Luxor.”

Ahmed averted his face. The spectacle of Tewfik Hamdi's tortured body flashed in his mind. When he turned back to Erica, his face was strained. “Tewfik Hamdi, like his father, has recently been murdered. There is some trouble going on which I do not understand, but which my department and the police are investigating. You have already had your share of difficulties, so I implore you to concentrate on your translation work.”

Erica was stunned by the news of Tewfik Hamdi. Another murder! She tried to think of what that could mean, but by now her long day had begun to take its toll. Ahmed noticed her fatigue and offered to accompany her to her hotel, to which Erica readily agreed. They reached the hotel before eleven, and after thanking Ahmed for his hospitality, Erica retired, carefully locking herself within her room.

She undressed slowly, anticipating bed. While removing her makeup, she thought about Ahmed. His intensity impressed her, and despite his outburst, she'd thoroughly enjoyed the evening. With her bedtime ritual accomplished, she crawled beneath the sheets. Just before sleep overcame her, she thought about Ahmed and Pamela; she wondered . . . But her last thought was a name from the ancient past: Nenephta.

The excitement of being in Luxor woke Erica before sunrise. She ordered breakfast from room service and had it served on the balcony. With the breakfast came a telegram from Yvon:
ARRIVING NEW WINTER PALACE HOTEL TODAY STOP WOULD LOVE TO SEE YOU TONIGHT
.

Erica was surprised. She had been so sure the telegram was going to be from Richard. And after spending the evening with Ahmed, she was confused. It was incredible to think that only last year she had been anxiously hoping Richard would propose. Now she found herself attracted to three very different men at the same time. Although it was reassuring for Erica that she could be responsive, which had been a worry when her relationship with Richard began to crack, the present situation was also unnerving. She drank the rest of her coffee in one gulp and decided to put all emotional issues out of her head. Pushing back from the table, she returned to her room and prepared for the day.

Emptying her tote bag, she repacked it with the box lunch she'd ordered at the suggestion of the hotel, the flashlight, the matches and cigarettes, and Abdul Hamdi's 1929 Baedeker. The loose cover and other assorted
papers were put on the bureau. Before she turned away, Erica again saw the name on the cover: Nasef Malmud, 180 Shari el Tahrir, Cairo. Her connection with Abdul Hamdi had not been completely severed by Tewfik's murder! She would look up Nasef Malmud when she returned to Cairo. Carefully, she put the cover in her bag.

It was a short walk from the Winter Palace Hotel to the antiquities shops on Shari Lukanda. Some were still not open, despite the fact that there already were a number of brightly clad tourists in evidence. Erica chose one randomly and entered.

The shop was reminiscent of Antica Abdul, but with significantly more artifacts. Erica went over the more impressive specimens, isolating the real from the fake. The proprietor, a heavyset man named David Jouran, initially hovered over her, but then retreated behind his counter.

Out of dozens of allegedly prehistoric pots, Erica found only two she thought were real, and they were ordinary. She held one up. “How much?”

“Fifty pounds,” said Jouran. “The one next to that is ten pounds.”

Erica looked at the other pot. It had beautiful decorations. Too beautiful: they were spirals, but going in the wrong direction. Erica knew that predynastic pottery frequently had spirals, but they were all counterclockwise spirals. The spirals on the present pot were all clockwise. “I'm only interested in antiques. Actually, I find very few genuine pieces in here. I'm hoping to find something special.” She put down the fake pot and walked over to the counter. “I've been sent here to buy some particularly good antiques, preferably from the New Kingdom. I'm prepared to pay. Do you have anything to show me?”

David Jouran regarded Erica for a few moments without answering. Then he bent over, opened a small cabinet, and heaved a scarred granite head of Ramses II onto the counter. The nose was gone and the chin was cracked.

Erica shook her head. “No,” she said, looking around. “Is that the best you have?”

“For now.” Jouran put the broken statue away.

“Well, let me leave my name,” said Erica, writing on a slip of paper. “I'm staying at the Winter Palace. If you hear of any special pieces, get in touch with me.” She paused, half-expecting the man to show her something else, but he just shrugged, and after an awkward silence she left.

It was a similar story in the next five shops she entered. No one showed her anything extraordinary. The best piece she saw was a glazed ushabti figurine from the time of Queen Hatshepsut. In each shop she left her name, but she didn't feel very hopeful. Finally she gave up and walked to the ferry landing.

It cost only a few cents to cross to the West Bank on the old boat, which was crowded with camera-toting tourists. As soon as they landed, the group was set upon by an enormous band of taxi drivers, would-be guides, and scarab salesmen. Erica boarded a dilapidated bus with a “Valley of the Kings” painted haphazardly on a piece of cardboard. When all the ferry passengers had been absorbed in one way or another, the bus left the landing.

Erica was beside herself with excitement. Beyond the flat green cultivated fields, which ended abruptly at the desert's edge, stood the stark Theban cliffs. At their base Erica could see some of the famous monuments, like the graceful temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri. Immediately to the right of Hatshepsut's temple was a small village called Qurna, built into the sloping hillside. The mud-brick buildings were set in the desert beyond the irrigated fields. Most were a light tan not too dissimilar from the color of the sandstone cliffs. A few buildings were whitewashed and stood out sharply, particularly a small mosque with a stubby minaret. In among the buildings were openings cut into the bedrock. These were doorways into the myriad of ancient crypts. The people of Qurna lived among the tombs of the nobles. Many
attempts had been made to relocate the villagers, but the people had tenaciously resisted.

The bus careened around a sharp turn and then bore right at a fork. Erica caught a fleeting glimpse of the mortuary temple of Seti I. There was so much to see.

The desert began with a remarkably sharp demarcation line. Desolate rock and sand without a single growing plant replaced the verdant sugarcane fields. The road ran straight until it reached the mountains; then it became serpentine, leading into a progressively narrow valley. The ovenlike heat was intense and there was no wind to relieve the feeling of oppression.

After passing a tiny rock guard station, the bus pulled up in a large parking area already filled with other buses and taxis. Despite the 100-plus temperature, the area was dense with tourists. On a small rise to the left, a concession stand was doing swift business.

Erica donned a khaki-colored hat she'd bought as protection against the sun. It was hard for her to believe that she had finally arrived in the Valley of the Kings, the site of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen. The valley was hemmed in by jagged mountains and dominated by a sharp, triangular peak that looked like a natural pyramid. Sheer rock faces of brown limestone dropped down into the valley and met the neat tracks lined with little stones that radiated from the parking area. At the juncture of the cliffs and the paths were the black openings of the tombs of the kings.

Although most of the passengers on the bus had repaired to the concession stand for cool drinks, Erica hurried to the entrance of Seti I's tomb. She knew that it was the largest and most spectacular in the valley, and she wanted to visit it first, to see if she could find the name Nenephta.

Catching her breath, she stepped over the threshold into the past. Although she had known the decorations were well-preserved, once she saw them herself, their pristine hues surprised her. The paint looked as freshly applied as yesterday. She walked slowly through the entrance corridor, then down another stairway, her eyes
glued to the wall decorations. There were images of Seti in the company of the entire pantheon of Egyptian deities. On the ceiling were huge vultures with stylistically outstretched wings. Voluminous hieroglyphic texts of the Book of the Dead separated the images.

Erica had to wait for a large tour group before she could pass a wooden bridge spanning a deep shaft. Looking into the depths of the well, Erica wondered if it had been constructed to thwart tomb robbers. Beyond it was a gallery supported by four robust pillars. Then there was another stairway, which had been sealed and carefully hidden in ancient times.

As she had descended ever deeper into the tomb, Erica marveled at the herculean effort it had taken to hand-carve the rock. By the time she had descended the fourth stairway and was several hundred yards into the mountain, she noticed that the air was considerably harder to breathe. She wondered what it had been like for the struggling ancient workmen. There was no ventilation despite the continuous stream of gawking visitors, and the low oxygen gave Erica a feeling of suffocation. She did not suffer from claustrophobia but was not fond of being closed in and had to consciously suppress her misgivings.

Once in the burial chamber, Erica tried to ignore her labored breathing and craned her neck to admire the astronomical motifs on the vaulted ceiling. She also noted one of the tunnels dug in relatively recent times by an individual who was certain he knew the location of additional secret rooms. Nothing had been found.

Although she was growing more and more anxious in the confines of the tomb, she convinced herself she should visit a small side room where there was a well-known representation of the sky goddess Nut, in the form of a cow. She navigated through the tourists to the doorway, but looking into the room, she could see that it was practically filled with people and decided to forgo seeing Nut. Turning suddenly, she bumped into a man entering the room behind her.

“I beg your pardon,” said Erica.

The man flashed a smile before turning and walking back into the burial chamber. Another group of tourists entered, and Erica found herself forced against her will into the small room. Desperately she tried to calm herself, but the man who had blocked her way unnerved her. She'd seen him before—black hair, black suit, and a crooked smile revealing a pointed front tooth that she remembered from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Knowing that tourists frequent the same places, Erica wondered why the man made her feel alarmed. She knew she was acting absurdly and that her fear was just a combination of the weird events of the last few days plus the hot, stuffy atmosphere of the tomb. Hiking her tote strap higher on her shoulder, Erica forced herself out into the burial chamber. The man was not in sight. A small flight of steps rose to the upper part of the room, leading to the exit. Erica started up the steps, her eyes scanning the area. She had to keep herself from running. Then she stopped. Moving quickly behind one of the square pillars on her left was the same man. It was just a fleeting glimpse, but now Erica was convinced she was not imagining things, that the man was acting strangely. He was stalking her. Impulsively she mounted the remaining steps and slipped behind a column. The room contained four pillars, each facade decorated with a colored life-size relief of Seti I before one of the Egyptian gods.

Erica waited, her heart pounding, unwillingly remembering the way violence had been exploding around her during the last few days. She did not know what to expect. Then the man appeared again. He walked around the pillar in front of her, looking at the giant mural on the wall. Even though his lips were only slightly parted, Erica could see that the right-front incisor came to a sharp point. He passed without looking at her.

As soon as her legs would move, Erica first walked, then ran, retracing her steps through corridors and up the stairways until she emerged into the shocking bright sunlight. Once in the open, her panic evaporated and she felt foolish. Her certainty of the man's evil intentions seemed like pure paranoia. She glanced back but did not
return to Seti's tomb. She'd look for the name Nenephta on another day.

It was after noon, and the concession stand and rest house were jammed. As a consequence, Tutankhamen's comparatively meager tomb was almost empty. Earlier there had been a line to get in. Erica took advantage of the lull in the crowds and descended the famous sixteen steps to the entrance. Just before going in, she looked back toward Seti's tomb. She saw no one. While walking down the passageway, she considered the irony that the smallest tomb of the most insignificant pharaoh of the New Kingdom was the only one found reasonably intact. And even Tutankhamen's tomb had been broken into twice in antiquity.

As she crossed the threshold into the antechamber, she tried to recreate in her mind that wonderful day in November 1922 when the tomb was opened. How exciting it must have been when Howard Carter and his party stepped into the most dazzling archaeological treasure ever uncovered.

With her knowledge of the discovery, Erica could mentally place most of the objects found in the tomb. She knew that the life-size statues of Tutankhamen stood on either side of the burial-chamber entrance and that the three funerary beds stood against the wall. Then she remembered the strange disarray that Carter had found in the tomb. That was a mystery that never was explained. Presumably the chaos was from the tomb robbers, but why hadn't the funerary objects been put back to their original state?

Stepping out of the way of an exiting French tour group, Erica had to wait to enter the burial chamber. While she stood there, the man in the black suit who had frightened her in Seti's tomb entered, carrying an open guidebook. Involuntarily Erica stiffened. But she successfully fought her fear, convinced that she was just imagining things. Besides, the man did not seem to notice her as he passed. She got a good look at the hooked nose that gave him the appearance of a bird of prey.

Mustering her fortitude, she forced herself to enter the
crowded burial chamber. The room was divided by a banister, and the only free spot at the railing was next to the man in the black suit. She hesitated for a moment but then walked up to the banister and looked over at Tutankhamen's magnificent pink sarcophagus. The wall paintings in the room were insignificant when compared with the stylistic perfection of those in Seti's tomb. As her eyes roamed the room, Erica happened to see the open page in the man's guidebook. It was the floor plan of the Temple of Karnak. It had nothing to do with the Valley of the Kings, and all Erica's fears returned with a rush. Quickly stepping away from the railing, Erica hurried out. Again she felt better in the sunlight and fresh air, but now she was convinced she was not paranoid.