The Rosetta Key (38 page)

The success of this scheme began to diminish as the sun rose and the day grew hotter. As we left the green flood plain of the Nile for the red desert toward Abukir, a grumble like thunder began to be heard, but in such a clear sky it was the thud of guns. A battle was underway, which meant unless the Turks won and the French broke, the entire Frankish army was in our way. It was July 25, 1799.

“We can’t turn back,” Astiza said. “Silano would spot us.”

“And battles are confusing. Maybe a way will present itself.”

We parked the donkey in the lee of a high sand dune and ascended to look out at the bay beyond. The panorama was heartbreaking. Once more, the atrophy of Ottoman arms was apparent. There was nothing wrong with the courage of Mustafa’s men. What was lacking was firepower and tactical sense. The Turks waited like a paralyzed hare; the French bombarded and then attacked with their cavalry. We were spectators to a disaster, watching a headlong charge by Joachim Murat’s troopers not merely breach the first Ottoman line, but knife through the second and third as well. The cavalry stampeded the entire length of the Abukir peninsula, spilling the defenders in a panic from their trenches, tents deflating as guy ropes were cut. We learned later that Murat himself captured the Turkish commander-in-chief in furious hand-to-hand combat, receiving a grazing wound on his jaw from Mustafa’s pistol but chopping off a couple of the pasha’s fingers with his sword in return. Bonaparte used his own handkerchief to bind the man’s hand. In 1799, there was still chivalry.

The rest was slaughter, once the lines cracked. More than two thousand of the Muslim warriors were cut down on land and twice that many drowned as they plunged into the sea to try to reach their ships. A garrison in the fort at the end of the peninsula stubbornly held out, but was bombarded and starved into submission. For the price of a thousand casualties, three-quarters of them wounded, Bonaparte had destroyed another Ottoman army. It was exactly the triumph he needed to retrieve his reputation after the debacle at Acre. To a colleague he wrote it was “one of the most beautiful battles I ever saw,” and to the Directory in Paris he described it as “one of the most terrible.” Both were true. He had been resuscitated by blood.

So Astiza and I had a camp of boiling mad Frenchmen back at Rosetta and a victorious French army looting the remains of our allies in front. I’d fled from the jaws of a crocodile to military encirclement.

“Ethan, what do you think we should do?” I suppose it’s flattering when women ask men things like that in the midst of military peril, but I wouldn’t mind if they came up with their own ideas once in a while.

“Keep running, I think. I just don’t know where.”

So she did make a suggestion, plucky girl. “Remember the Oasis of Siwah, where Alexander the Great was declared a son of Zeus and Amon? Napoleon doesn’t control it. Let’s make for that.”

I swallowed. “Isn’t that a hundred miles across empty desert?”

“So we’d better get started.”

We’d both end up mummified by heat and thirst, but where else could we go? Silano would kill us for sure, now. Napoleon too. “I wish our donkey didn’t look so half-starved and addled-eyed,” I said. “If we’d had time, I’d have looked for a better one.”

No matter. A French patrol was waiting when we descended from the dune.

P
redictably, Napoleon was in a good mood that night. There’s nothing like victory to settle him. Bulletins would be sent to France describing Bonaparte’s victory in vivid detail. Captured standards were being readied for shipment for display in Paris. And I, his annoying mosquito, was safely bound, one leg chewed by a ravenous crocodile, my love trussed, my gun confiscated, and my donkey on its way back to its rightful owner.

“I’ve been trying to save you from witchcraft, General,” I tried, without much spirit.

He’d uncorked a bottle of Bordeaux, part of the personal horde his brother had brought from France. “Have you now? With your beautiful viper by your side?”

“Silano is seeking dark powers that will lead you astray.”

“Then thank God you blew up half my fort, Gage.” He took a swallow.

It
did
sound bad when he put it that way. “That was simply a diversion.” It would have been braver to be surly and defiant, I know, but I was trying to save our lives.

Count Silano had arrived gaping as if I’d walked from the tomb after three days. Now he said, “I am tired of trying to kill you, monsieur.”

I smiled at them both. “I’m tired of it too.”

“This piece of stone you destroyed,” Bonaparte said. “It was a key to translate an ancient book?” Fortunately, there was enough dignity that no one thought to strip Astiza.

“Yes, General.”

“And that book would tell us what, exactly?”

“Magic,” Silano said.

“Does magic still exist?”

“We can make it exist. Magic is just advanced science. Magic and immortality.”

“Immortality!” Bonaparte laughed. “Escape from the ultimate fate! But I’ve seen too many dead, so my immortality is not to be forgotten. Recollection is what we leave.”

“We believe this book will help you achieve immortality in more literal ways,” the count said. “You, and those who rise with you.”

“Such as yourself?” He passed the bottle. “So you have incentive, my friend!” Napoleon turned to me. “It’s annoying you broke the stone, Gage, but Silano has already deciphered some of the symbols. Perhaps he’ll puzzle out the rest. And the stone remaining will allow the savants to focus on hieroglyphics. Depending on who ultimately wins here in Egypt, the piece will probably wind up someday in either Paris or London. Crowds will flock to it, never knowing a fourth text is gone.”

“I could stay around to tell them.”

“I’m afraid not.” Napoleon reached into a leather binder and brought out a bundle of dated newspapers. “Smith sent me these as a gift when I let the Turks take off their wounded. It seems that while we’ve achieved glory in Egypt, events in Europe have been rapidly unraveling. France is once more in peril.”

It was then I confirmed that Bonaparte had clearly abandoned one goal, conquest of Asia, and adopted another, a return to Paris. He’d won what he could, and we’d found what he most wanted to find. Power, one way or another.

“France and Austria have been at war since March, and we’ve been driven from Germany and Italy. Tippoo Sahib died in India the same time we were repulsed at Acre. The Directory is in shambles, and my brother Lucien is in Paris trying to reform the imbecilic assembly. The British fleet will have to loosen its blockade soon to resupply at Cyprus. That’s when I can return to put things right. Duty requires it.”

That seemed shameless. “Duty? To leave your men?”

“To prepare the way. Kléber has dreamed of command since we landed here. Now he’ll get it: I’ll surprise him with a letter. Meanwhile I take the risk of evading the British fleet.”

Risk! The risk was to be left with a marooned army in Egypt. The bastard was abandoning his men for the politics of Paris! Yet the truth was, I had a grudging admiration for the sly dog. We were two of a kind in some ways: opportunists, gamblers, and survivors. We were fatalists, always after the main chance. We both liked pretty women. And high adventure, if it was an escape from tedium.

It was as if he’d read my mind. “War and politics makes necessity,” he said. “It is too bad we have to kill you, but there it is.”

“There
what
is?”

“I feel as if I’m being driven toward an unknown goal, Ethan Gage, and that you represent as much of a dangerous obstacle now as you did assistance when I brought you to Egypt. Neither of us planned you’d end with the damned English, but there you were at Acre with your electricity. And now you’ve attacked Rosetta.”

“Only because of Silano. He was the one with the crocodile…”

Bonaparte stuck out his hand. “Au revoir, Monsieur Gage. Under different circumstances we might have become firm partners. As it is, you’ve betrayed France for the last time. You’ve proven yourself entirely too much of a nuisance, and too able an enemy. Yet even cats have only nine lives. Surely you’ve used yours up by now?”

“Not unless you put it to the test,” I replied morosely.

“I will leave it to Silano to be creative with you and your woman. The one who shot at me so long ago, in Alexandria.”

“She shot at
me
, general.”

“Yes. Why are the bad ones so beautiful? Well. Destiny awaits.” And having disposed of us, off he marched, his mind on his next project.

A
decent man would simply shoot us, but Silano was a scientist. Astiza and I had crossed him enough that he thought we deserved some pain, and he was curious to use our environment. “Do you know sand alone can mummify a carcass?”

“How erudite.”

So we were buried after midnight, but only to our necks. “What I like about this is that you can watch each other burn and weep,” he said as his henchmen finished packing sand around our bodies. Our hands had been tied behind our backs, and our feet bound. We had no hats, and were already thirsty. “There will be a slow increase in torment as the sun rises. Your skin will fry, and eventually crack. The reflected light and dust will slowly induce blindness, and as you watch each other you will gradually go mad. The hot sand will leach out any liquid you retain, and your tongues will swell so much that you will have difficulty breathing. You will pray for snakes or scorpions to make it faster.” He stooped and patted me on the head, like a child or dog. “The scorpions like to go for the eyes, and the ants crawl up the nostrils to feed. The vultures will hope to get to you before you’re completely eaten. But it is the snakes that hurt the most.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

“I’m a naturalist. I have studied torture for many years. It’s an exquisite science, and quite a pleasure if you understand its refinements. It’s not easy to keep a man in excruciating pain and yet coherent enough to tell you something useful. What’s interesting about this exercise is that the body below the neck should be baked dry and preserved. It is from this natural process, I’m guessing, that ancient Egyptians got the idea of mummification. Do you know that the Persian king Cambyses lost an entire army in a sandstorm?”

“Can’t say that I care.”

“I study history so as not to repeat it.” He turned to Astiza, her dark hair a fan on the earth. “I did love you, you know.”

“You’ve never loved anyone but yourself.”

“Ben Franklin said the man who loves himself will have no rival,” I chimed in.

“Ah, the amusing Monsieur Franklin. Certainly I’m more faithful to myself than either of you have been to me! How many chances for partnership did I give you, Gage? How many warnings? Yet you betrayed me, again and again and again.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“I’d like to watch you beg before the end.”

And I would have, if I thought it would do a lick of good.

“But I’m afraid that destiny tugs at me, too. I’m accompanying Bonaparte back to France, where I can study the book more deeply, and he’s not a man to sit still. Nor is it safe to stray from the main army. I’m afraid we will not meet again, Monsieur Gage.”

“Do you believe in ghosts, Silano?”

“I’m afraid my interest in the supernatural does not extend to superstition.”

“You will, when I come after you.”

He laughed. “And after you give me a good fright, perhaps we’ll play a game of cards! In the meantime I’ll let you turn into one. Or a mummy. Maybe I’ll have someone dig you out in a few weeks so I can prop you in a corner like Omar.”

“Alessandro, we do not deserve this!” Astiza cried.

There was a long silence. We could not see his face. Then, quietly,

“Yes you do. You broke my heart.”

And with that, we were left alone to fry.

Astiza and I faced each other, me south and she north, so that our cheeks could be equally roasted between dawn and sunset. It’s cold in the desert at night and for the first few minutes after the sun broke the horizon, the warmth was not unpleasant. Then, as pink left the sky and it turned to summer’s milk, the temperature began to rise, accentuated by the reflecting sand. My ear began to burn. I heard the first rustlings of insects.

“Ethan, I’m afraid,” whispered Astiza, who was six feet from me.

“We’ll black out,” I promised, without conviction.

“Isis, call to me our friends! Give us help!”

Isis didn’t reply. “It won’t hurt after a while,” I said.

Instead, the pain increased. I soon had a headache, and my tongue thickened. Astiza was quietly moaning. Even in the best of circumstances the summer sun in Egypt hammers one’s head. Now I felt like Jericho’s anvil. I was reminded all too sharply of the flight that Ashraf and I made into the desert a year before. That time, at least, we’d been mounted and my Mameluke friend had known how to find water.

The sand grew hotter. Every inch of skin could feel the rising heat, and yet I couldn’t wiggle. There were sharp pricks, like bites, but I couldn’t tell if something was already eating me or it was merely the heat gnawing into my sensations. The brain has a way of amplifying pain with dread.

Did I mention that gambling is a vice?

Sweat had half blinded me, stinging, but soon was leached out, leaving salt. My entire head felt like it was swelling. My vision blurred from the glare, and Astiza’s own head seemed as much a blob as someone recognizable.

Was it even noon yet? I didn’t think so. I heard a faint rumble. Was the fighting starting again? Maybe it would rain, as at the City of Ghosts.

No, the heat rose, in great shimmering waves. Astiza sobbed for a while, but then fell silent. I prayed she’d passed out. I was waiting for the same, that slow slide into unconsciousness and death, but the desert wanted to punish me. On and on the temperature climbed. My chin was burning. My teeth were frying in their sockets. My eyes were swelling shut.

Then I saw something scuttle by.

It was black, and I groaned inwardly. Soldiers had told me that scorpion stings were particularly painful. “Like a hundred bees at once,” one had said. “No, no, like holding a hot coal to the skin!” chimed in another. “More closely like acid in the eye!” offered another. “A hammer to the thumb!”