The Amulet of Power (8 page)

Her eyes widened in surprise.
Things are getting very interesting indeed,
she thought.

“I’m pleased to meet you too,” replied Omar the waiter with an amused smile.

9

It was still half an hour before sunrise when they set foot upon dry land, pulling the lifeboat ashore behind them. Two robed men were waiting for them, each holding three camels by the lead shanks attached to their halters.

“You have found her!” enthused one of the men. “You have found Lara Croft!”

“Yes,” answered Omar. “She does not have the Amulet, as we had hoped, but she has agreed to help us find it. Now we must reach Khartoum before the Mahdists find
us
.”

“We are ready,” said the man.

Omar shook his head. “You will not be coming with us—at least, not immediately.”

The men’s expressions registered disappointment.

“There is an Englishman onboard,” continued Omar. “His name is . . .” He turned to Lara.

“Kevin Mason,” she said promptly.

“His name is Kevin Mason,” repeated Omar. “He is a friend of Lara Croft’s, the son of a great scholar, and a worthy scholar in his own right. He may prove useful in our search for the Amulet. I want you to make sure that no harm comes to him on his journey to Khartoum.”

“If Lara Croft is not on the boat, why should any harm befall him?” asked the other man.

“The Mahdists may have spies aboard the boat right now. They will surely send more when it stops at Abu Simbel. He is the only Englishman aboard, and it is known that Lara Croft escaped Cairo in the company of an Englishman. If they capture him, they will surely torture him to find out where she is. If he tells them, they will be waiting for us when we arrive at the Bortai Hotel. If he does not tell them, they will almost certainly kill him. It is your job to make sure this does not happen. You will protect his life with your own.”

The men’s disappointed expressions were replaced by looks of fierce anticipation at the thought of fighting their enemies aboard the
Amenhotep
.

Omar uttered a low command, and the camels dropped to their knees. He walked over and mounted the smallest of them. Hassam followed suit. Gaafar handed a leather crop to Lara and climbed onto his own camel.

“Have you ever ridden a camel before, Lara Croft?” asked Omar.

“I still have the saddle sores,” she replied with a self-deprecating laugh.

“Just hook your left leg around what you would call the pommel of the saddle,” said Gaafar. “Lock your right leg over it, hold the reins in your left hand, and if you wish him to run, hit him with the leather whip, and yell ‘Hut! Hut! Hut!’ “

“Until such time as someone actually starts shooting at us,” answered Lara, “I plan to hold the reins in my left hand, tuck the whip in my belt, and tell my camel to walk slowly and gently.”

“We will walk until it becomes necessary to run,” agreed Omar. He turned to one of the men who had been waiting on the shore. “Leave the saddles on the other two camels. Gaafar, lead them by the reins until we are well away from the river and any dwellings.”

“Then what?” asked Lara.

“Then we will turn them loose. They’re herd animals; they will follow us.”

“Rather like a spare tire,” she suggested.

“Exactly,” said Omar. “We hope we won’t need them, but if we do, you’ll be very glad that we have them.”

“And if any small group should stumble across our tracks, this may cause them to think that we’re six instead of four,” added Gaafar. “It might cause them to think twice about attacking us.”

“I assume you have your route planned?” asked Lara, looking at the seemingly endless desert that began half a mile inland from the river.

“Certainly,” replied Omar. “The Nile goes all the way to Khartoum. We will ride inland, but parallel to it. There will be oases along the way, and once we are well into the Sudan, there will be friendly villages as well.”

“How long will the trip take?”

“That depends on how long it takes the Mahdists to figure out where we are.”

“Inshallah,”
said Hassam.

“Inshallah,”
agreed Omar and Gaafar.

“You remain silent, Lara Croft,” observed Omar. “You do not know what
Inshallah
means?”

“I know,” answered Lara. “I’m just not buying it.”

“I do not understand.”

“It means, ‘if God wills it.’ I’m afraid that’s too fatalistic for me.” She stared at Omar. “No offense, but I believe in making my own fate. You can say
Inshallah
, Omar. As for me, I say: Let the enemy beware.”

A smile crossed Omar’s homely face. “I like you, Lara Croft. Even if I didn’t, I would still risk my life for you, because of what you have promised us. But it is rare to find a beautiful woman who has the heart of a warrior.”

“Is it?” asked Lara. “Perhaps almost as rare as finding a waiter with a warrior’s heart.”

Her three companions laughed at that, and then, at Omar’s signal, they urged their camels to their feet and began heading away from Lake Nasser. The two men who had brought the camels now climbed into the battered little lifeboat and rowed out to the
Amenhotep
.

“Just out of curiosity, how did you know I’d be on the
Amenhotep
and not some other boat?” asked Lara, steering her camel next to Omar’s.

“I didn’t,” answered Omar. “I have been on that horrible boat for almost three weeks.”

“Why?”

“We knew that sooner or later
someone
would visit the Temple of Horus in search of the Amulet of Mareish. That is why we arranged to have it closed to the public—so that we would know that whoever entered it was no tourist, but was almost certainly looking for the Amulet.” Omar paused and slapped at a fly that had landed on his cheek, then flicked it away. “We didn’t know who it would be, but we knew that the Mahdists would surely try to kill him—or as it turned out,
her
. Of course, we couldn’t know that part of the temple would collapse on you, or that you’d be taken to a Cairo hospital before the Mahdists could react . . . but we knew if you survived, eventually you would make your way to the Sudan.”

“Why should you think so?”

“To return the Amulet if you found it,” said Omar, “and to search for it in the Sudan if you failed to find it in the Temple of Horus.”

“Why are you so sure I would take the Amulet to the Sudan if I found it?” interrupted Lara.

“Even if you do not believe in its power, you know that it is an historically important and valuable artifact, and that it is easily identified,” explained Omar. “Even if you stole it and managed to smuggle it out of the country, where could you sell it without having to answer some very troublesome questions? Whereas if you returned it to the Sudanese government, there would be a sizable reward.”

“Makes sense,” agreed Lara.

“That is the sensible answer,” he agreed. “The true answer is that the Amulet possesses powers whether you believe it or not, and those powers were made to be exercised in the Sudan. It will draw its owner there, possibly even against his or her will. Its power is released in proportion to the character of he who controls it. It is easier for an immoral man to tap into its reservoirs of strength, but a moral man—or woman—can utilize more of its powers. . . . And from all that we have been able to ascertain, you are a moral woman.

“Anyway,” Omar continued, “we knew whoever found it would eventually try to make his—excuse me:
her
—way to the Sudan, and sooner rather than later. The Mahdists are watching all the airports, the train only runs sporadically—once every two or three weeks, which is not very helpful when people are hunting for you—and almost all the major cruise ships ply their trade only between Luxor and Aswan. There are only two reasonable escape routes, and both are along the Nile: either north past Cairo and eventually Alexandria to the Mediterranean, or south to the Sudan. There are only one or two boats that go all the way to Sudan, and only a handful go all the way north to Alexandria and the sea. It wasn’t difficult to pick the one most likely to appeal to someone who was running for her life.”

“What if I’d gone north?” she asked.

“Then my brother would be enjoying the pleasure of your company rather than my humble self,” answered Omar. Suddenly he made a face. “I sincerely hope his ship’s kitchen was cleaner than mine.”

“So you deduced that I’d eventually make my way to the
Amenhotep
or its sister ship.”

“If you were smart enough to elude the Mahdists, then you were smart enough to choose the right ship. And we couldn’t help you until you did. We are badly outnumbered in Egypt.” He grimaced. “Actually, we are badly outnumbered everywhere.”

“How encouraging,” remarked Lara dryly.

“We will prevail,” concluded Omar.
“Inshallah.”
He glanced at her, a mischievous glint in his eye. “No offense, Lara Croft.”

She laughed. “If Allah would like to lend a hand, that will be all right with me.”

Omar smiled. “I speak to Him five times a day. I will transmit your message.”

She returned his smile, then began searching through her camel’s equipment.

“What are you looking for?” asked Gaafar.

“A canteen,” said Lara.

“Hassam has them all.”

“May I have mine, please?”

“We must make our water last,” replied Gaafar. “We will not reach the first oasis for two days.”

“Let her drink,” said Omar. Gaafar looked at him questioningly. “Our agents have told us that she was in a hospital just two days ago. Any other woman, or even a strong man, could not do what she has done in the last two days. Most could not even get out of their hospital beds. Despite everything she has accomplished, she is in a weakened condition, and since she is our best chance of recovering the Amulet and is under our protection, she can have all the water she wants. If necessary, she can drink ours as well. We are men of the desert; we will survive until we reach the oasis.”

“As you say,” said Hassam. He urged his camel forward until he was next to Lara, then handed her a canteen.

She stared at it without opening it. “Now I feel guilty,” she said.

“Would you rather feel guilty and thirsty or guilty and sated?” asked Omar.

“A telling argument,” she said, unscrewing the cap and taking a single swallow. She carefully put the cap back on and tried to hand it back to Hassam, but he pulled his camel out of reach.

“It is yours,” he said. “When it is empty, tell me and I will bring you another.”

She realized that it was useless to argue, so she simply thanked him, then turned back to Omar. “How long can a man of the desert go without water?”

“Not as long as we would like you to think,” he replied with a smile. “Two days, perhaps three if we protect ourselves from the sun.”

“What about a camel?”

He considered the question. “It depends on the individual animal and the conditions, but I think any camel, if he is allowed to drink until he is sated, can go at least sixteen or seventeen days. I would guess that twenty-two is the outside limit of all but a tiny handful of them.”

“So before the advent of the motorcar, you could never travel more than a twenty-two-day march from the Nile unless you already knew the locations of various wells and oases,” said Lara.

“No
camel
could travel more than twenty-two days from the Nile,” said Omar.

“Is there some animal that could?” she asked.

“Certainly.”

“Which animal is that?”

“Man,” said Omar.

She frowned. “Could a camel carry more than a twenty-two-day supply of water while he was carrying a rider as well?”

“Probably not.”

“Then I don’t understand how a man could last longer in the desert than his camel.”

“The explanation is, shall we say, indelicate?”

“I’ve got a strong stomach, and I’m curious,” said Lara.

“A camel weighs five or six times as much as a large man,” began Omar. “It therefore requires considerably more water to power a camel than a man. So that after, say, twenty days in the desert, a camel may live for only two more days, but he still carries enough water within him for a man to live for a week or more. When early travelers realized that their camels were on the verge of death and that they could not reach a well in time to save them, they would take a riding crop much like you are carrying, stick it down the animal’s throat, and force it to regurgitate. They would catch and save the water in their canvas saddlecloths, then kill the animal and slice off a few pounds of meat to take along with them. On more than one occasion this would make the difference between dying in the desert or living to the next well or oasis.”

“I see,” said Lara. “That is a fascinating piece of information.”

She fell silent for a few moments.

“Are you all right?” asked Omar solicitously.

“Yes. I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“I was thinking,” she replied, “that the
Amenhotep
’s restaurant wasn’t so terrible after all.”

“I warned you that the explanation would upset you,” said Omar.

“It is not an appetizing picture,” responded Lara. “But it doesn’t upset me. When you are facing death, you do what you have to do.”

“I
knew
I liked you!” said Omar.

“Not everyone does, you know.”