The Khamsin Curse (17 page)

History was everywhere. And
they were the sole visitors to the ancient open-air museum called
Philae. The stones beckoned and while Mr Longshanks returned to the
Sekhmet to wash away several layers of dust and sand, the rest of
the party made their way to the enormous Propyla marking the inner
court of the grandest of the temples.

Professor Mallisham proved his
worth. He knew the name of every ruin, every temple, every gate and
vestibule; he knew where to locate the girdle wall, the mammisi,
the massive guardian lions, the twin obelisks, the two nilometers,
and the remarkable colonnade defined by columns shaped like doum
palms marking the outer court. It was all spectacular.

“Wait until tomorrow,” he
promised, whetting their appetites for greater glories. “We are in
the Tropic of Cancer. At high noon when the sun is directly
overhead a dark shadow will fall on the slanted walls and
everything else, everything,” he repeated as breathlessly as a high
priest promising resurrection in the after-life, “will take on a
dazzling brightness.”

They couldn’t wait!

They split up to explore the
areas that interested them the most as they made their way slowly
back to the Sekhmet to dress up in assuit caftans for the ladies
and jellabiyas for the men. Gideon Longshanks was waiting for the
Countess inside her cabin. His eyes raked her face for signs of
fragility.

“Are you all right with what
happened in Kom Ombo?” he said as soon as she closed the door.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she assured
with a brittle smile, noting his apprehension. “I don’t go to
pieces at the sight of a dead body, not even when that body meets a
grisly end. Most women are the same. You need to remember it is men
who write romantic fiction full of virtuous and vulnerable heroines
who need to be rescued. It says more about male vanity and ego than
the true nature of women. If you doubt me take a walk through the
stew pots of Whitechapel, Seven Dials or Southwark and meet some
real women. Their resilience may shock you.”

“I’ve often thought the same
thing myself,” he quipped, palpably relieved, “when sitting in a
Mayfair drawing room. Most of those rich biddies would give Jack
the Ripper a good thrashing. If women ever decide to turn the
tables on men, men won’t know what hit them. I was showing concern,
that’s all.”

“Concern noted,” she said,
softening the brittle smile and the blunt edge of her tongue as she
unpinned her wide-brimmed chapeau, flicked it onto the bed, and
kicked off her dusty shoes, sprinkling an arc of silica across the
floor, “I was concerned for you too.”

That honest confession tempted
him to draw her in to his arms but he didn’t think he’d be able to
leave off after one kiss and she needed time to dress for the
party. Her costume was laid out on the bed - a strapless red tunic
and a green lioness headdress. His costume was waiting for him on
his bed too. Someone, presumably Mrs Baxter, had decided he was
going as Ra. He had a falcon headdress topped off with a
solar-disc. Not that he was about to complain. At least he wasn’t
Anubis, the embodiment of all her fears.

“Did anything happen that I
should know about?”

She turned her back to him.
“Undo my pearls for me,
s’il vous plait
. Colonel Hayter sold
me four permits at five times the going price.”

“Bastard.” He freed the clasp
and she caught the string of pearls as they slipped down her bosom.
She smelled of eau de toilette, not scent. He preferred the muguet
and made a mental note of the name of the bottle of French parfum
she favoured.

She wrapped the pearls in an
old sock. “Mrs Baxter bought a kilim rug in Kom Ombo. I thought it
might be a good way to pass secret codes and I wondered if she gave
it to Colonel Moran since it appears they are lovers, but she still
has it. Do you know what this glyph is?” She located her compendium
and drew a symbol on paper. “This was featured on each corner of
the kilim.”

“It’s the symbol for a
scorpion.”

“Of course! Now I see it! It’s
obvious when it’s pointed out!”

The kilim rug theory was
far-fetched as far as he was concerned. “How has Herr Graf been
acting since he came aboard?”

“Ingratiating himself with
everyone; overflowing with bonhomie.”

“Overdone?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And Ursula Graf?”

“She’s a thinker rather than a
doer. She has spent most of the time reading
The Book of the
Dead
either in a deck chair or in her cabin, although she has
struck up a bit of a friendship with Daisy.”

“Mmm, they’ve probably got a
lot in common.”

“Yes, both orphaned, taken in
by uncles, plus Hypatia overshadows them both. That bright peacock
feather suits her. She will be in her element tonight as the star
of the show.”

He watched her pull the
hairpins on her luxurious chestnut mane, watched the baroque
brilliance tumble around her shoulders, and felt a wave of desire
wash over him. “I better let you dress for the party.”

“Aren’t you going to kiss
me?”

She was always catching him by
surprise. “No,” he said, looking back over a broad shoulder that
refused to droop, “not until after you’ve spoken to Jim.”

Her heart skipped a beat and it
showed. “Is he here, now, on the island?”

“He knows there’s a party for
the daughter of Mr Jefferson Lee tonight. He will have guessed
you’ll be there. I think it’s safe to say wild horses won’t be able
to keep him away. Ali Pasha is in Aswan too. My bet is he will
bribe a fisherman to ferry him to Philae and leave him stranded so
that he’ll be ‘forced’ to stay for the party. Moran is here too. He
arrived ahead of me. He set up camp just beyond the Temple of
Augustus. There’s a rock formation and a stand of palm trees, six
in all, at the northern tip of the island. Keep clear of it.”

“I thought you said he wasn’t
involved in this espionage business?”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not
involved in something else illegal and dangerous. Give his camp a
wide berth, especially after dark. By the way, I had a chance to
speak to Willcocks, Aird and Baker before the Sekhmet arrived.
Someone sabotaged some equipment while they were in Cairo. It has
set them back about three weeks. They’re not coming to the party
tonight. They’re worried about leaving all the responsibility for
security on the shoulders of the construction foreman, a man by the
name of Sharif. They’re taking personal responsibility for guarding
the explosives.”

“They still don’t know who you
are?”

He shook his head. “As far as
they’re concerned I’m a bean-counter for Mr Cassel.”

“It’s just as well they decided
not
to come to the party. It could have been awkward. They
weren’t going to be invited anyway. Hypatia didn’t want them
upsetting Mallisham.”

“That will suit the lothario
very nicely.”

“I didn’t think there was any
trysting going on but Mr Lee seems to think Daisy has been covering
for them. Hypatia gave quite a skilled performance of wrapping
Daddy around her pinky with a flood of crocodile tears. It makes me
think there’s definitely something going on.”

All this talk of trysting was
distracting him from more important things. There was only one
thing for it. He crossed the room in less than five strides and
kissed her with as much passion as he dared; his fingers tangling
in some long scandalous tresses. By the time she gasped for breath
he was waiting. “That’s something to think about for when you meet
up with Jim tonight.”

Dr Watson was waiting for the
Countess outside her cabin. He was wearing an ibis headdress with a
long thin beak that curved out and finished just between his eyes.
“Thoth,” he grumbled, trying not to go cross-eyed. “Never heard of
him! Why is it that we live in an Age that loves playing dress-ups?
I was hoping the new century would usher in some maturity – alas!
We travel to the end of the earth and what do we find – another
bloody fancy-dress party!”

“God of wisdom, inventor of
writing, patron of scribes, divine mediator,” she reeled off. “I
think Mrs Baxter got you in a nutshell. Cheer up!”

“Oh, that explains the scribal
palette and reed pen.” He suddenly felt much happier with his
costume and switched his focus to her red tunic. “Sekhmet – rather
appropriate going by that statuette on your bedside table. I’m not
sure what to make of that green lioness headdress.”

Anubis was coming toward them
and the Countess was surprised she hadn’t noticed how much Colonel
Hayter resembled the god of the underworld. He had a thin doglike
face with an overbite and a thin smile that showed the top row of
his teeth when the lips pulled back in a grimace. He was wearing a
black headdress featuring pointy canine ears.

“Bloody costume dramas!” he
whined peevishly, echoing the sentiments of Dr Watson. The two men
still had a lot in common, despite one apple turning rotten and the
other remaining untainted. “I thought I had finally escaped
childish costume galas when I left school!” He jerked the headdress
back into place when it began to slide off. “I’m going to ditch
this thing in the Nile as soon as dinner is over!”

“Here! Here!” said the doctor
gruffly, dumping his scribal palette and reed pen on a deck chair
to save carting them around all night and fretting about where he’d
put them. “Shall we make our way to Trajan’s Kiosk? The others will
eventually catch up to us.”

“Yes, let’s go,” barked Anubis.
“I need a stiff drink. I saw the Grafs and Miss Clooney going that
way about ten minutes ago. I have no idea what Herr Graf is meant
to represent. He’s wearing a black tunic and black trousers and
looks like a black pudding on legs.”

“Khepri,” supplied the
Countess. “My guess is he is the scarab beetle. Mrs Baxter really
has a knack for this sort of thing.”

Hayter laughed out loud but it
sounded strained. “Khepri! That makes sense! A little fat ball of
dung! Nothing like his lithe fair-haired niece. My guess is that
she has dressed as Hathor – goddess of sky, beauty, light, music,
dance, and foreign lands. Quite an attractive young lady. I’m not
surprised Mallisham has set his lusty sights her way. Not that Miss
Lee isn’t attractive. She’s a looker too. I was partial to blondes
in my younger days. Oh, do beg pardon, Countess!” He suddenly
realized he might have given offence and tried to cover his tracks,
compounding embarrassment. “The two young ladies have struck up an
unlikely friendship. What a half-caste American-Indian and a German
fraulein would have in common beats me. Miss Clooney looks catlike
with lots of khol around her cat-eyes. She is wearing black too,
but it sits well on her coffee coloured skin. I wonder what goddess
looks like a cat?”

“Bast,” supplied the Countess
coldly.

Dr Watson was becoming
increasingly annoyed with his ex-army chum. The man was not only
corrupt but a social idiot. He began walking quickly, forcing the
other two to keep up with him or fall behind. They eventually fell
back because the colonel became short of breath and needed to rest
up for a bit. The Countess decided to stay with him, despite the
fact he’d rubbed her the wrong way several times in a matter of
minutes. Someone was walking swiftly toward them. The last rays of
the sun gilded a solar-disc headdress that crowned a striking blond
head and she knew it was the golden god of her dreams.

“Are you all right, Colonel
Hayter?” said Gideon Longshanks when he caught up to them and found
the Acting High Commissioner perched on a stone block near the ruin
of a Coptic church, panting for breath like a thirsty dog; his skin
was the colour of dirty parchment.

“I just need to rest my legs
for a bit, old boy. Old war wound. It plays up every now and again.
You two go on. I’ll catch you up shortly.”

Reluctantly, they left him
behind. It was about six hundred yards from the Arc of Diocletian
to Trajan’s Kiosk, plus an extra two hundred yards if you counted
the incline from the makeshift jetty up to the Arc of
Diocletian.

The major waited until they
were out of earshot. “Do you have your muff pistol on you?”

She nodded. “I have the
double-barrelled Derringer you gave me for my birthday.”

“Good. It pays to be prepared.
That attack in Kom Ombo came out of the blue. If it was Ali Pasha’s
houseboy and he was following me, then Ali Pasha may wish to avenge
his death. He might even hire someone to do the job properly
tonight.”

“Are you thinking of Colonel
Moran?”

“Well, he’s a gun for hire, and
just because he’s working for Mallisham doesn’t mean he wouldn’t
take another commission on the side.”

“Moran reminds me of a cobra –
thin wiry frame, long neck and reptilian head rearing up, ready to
go on the attack. If Ali Pasha set out to kill you then he is our
man.”

“So it seems.”

“How did he know you weren’t
who you said you were?”

“After I left your rom that
night I went to the well where Rossiter died. I wanted to read the
message inside the well for myself. He was an agent I knew quite
well. We had crossed paths several times. I wanted to make sure
there was nothing else scratched into the stone.”

“You think Rossiter gave you up
while being tortured?”

“No, he didn’t know I was in
Egypt. Mycroft and Mr Cassel are the only two people who know I’m
here. I think Ali Pasha’s houseboy or someone associated with Ali
Pasha might have been watching the well. They might have passed my
description to Ali Pasha and he narrowed it down to me. Like you
said – broad shoulders, straight back. I should have known
better.”

“You said in Kom Ombo you
weren’t sure if Japhet had been following me or you?”

“I thought about it later. It
had to be me. It was probably Japhet who coshed me on the head and
dumped me by the railway line because the Khamsin was coming. He
probably thought the windstorm would take care of the rest and came
back later to check. When he found no trace of me he must have
guessed my next port of call would be Kom Ombo. So he waited at the
temple until I turned up.” He glanced off to the side. “There’s
Ursula Graf standing in the shade of those palm trees. I might go
over and tell her how lovely she looks. Don’t get jealous when you
see me cutting in on Mallisham’s territory.”