The Seventh Scroll (46 page)

"Leave it alone now he ordered sternly. "I know you. Once you start, we'll be here all night. Let's get the Range Rover packed up. It's a long, hard haul up to York, and there is an AA warning of black ice on the motorway. A bit of a change from the weather in the Abbay gorge."

She straightened up and shuffled the prints into a neat pile. "You are right. Sometimes I do tend to get carried away." She stood up. "Before we go, may I make a phone call home?"

"By home, I take it that you mean Cairo?"

"Sorry. Yes, to Cairo. Duraid's farnily7-'

"Please! No need to explain. There is the phone. Help yourself I'll be waiting downstairs in the kitchen when you are finished. We both need a cup of tea before we get going."

She came down into the kitchen half an hour later looking guilty, and told him directly, "I am afraid that I am going to be a nuisance again. I have a confession to make."

"Spit it out, he invited.

"I have to go back home - to Cairo," she said, and he looked at her startled. "Just for a few days," she qualified hurriedly. "I was speaking to Duraid's brother. There are some of Duraid's affairs that I have to see to." I don't like you going back there on your own," he shook his head, 'after your last experiences."

"If our theory is correct, and Nahoot Guddabi was the danger, then he is in Ethiopia now. I should be quite safe."

"Still, I don't like it. You are the key to Taita's game."

"Thank you kindly, Sir" she said with mock outrage. "Is that the only reason you don't want me bumped off?"

if forced into a corner, I may admit that I have also wn rather partial to having you around."

I'll be back before you know I've even gone. Besides which, you will have plenty to keep you busy while I am away."

"I don't suppose that I can stop you," he grumbled. When do you plan to leave?"

There's a flight at eight this evening."

(A bit sudden. I mean, we have only just arrived." He made one last feeble protest, then capitulated. "I will run you out to the airport."

"No, Nicky. Heathrow is out of your way. I can catch the train."

"I insist."

On a Monday evening the traffic was reasonably light and, once they had cleared the main built-up area, they made good time. The journey was further lightened by their animated discussion as he related the contents of the phone calls he had made in her absence.

"Through Maryam Kidane, I hope to be in contact with Mek Nimmur again pretty soon. Mek is the kingpin of the whole plan Without him we cant even make the first move on Taita's bao board."

He dropped her off at the departures entrance at Heathrow. "Phone me tomorrow morning from Cairo to let me know you are all right, and when you are coming back.

I'll be at the flat."

"Reversed charges," she warned him as she offered him her cheek to kiss. Then she slid across the seat and slammed the door behind her. He watched her waiflike figure in the rear-view mirror as he pulled away, and he was filled with melancholy and a sense of loss. Then quite suddenly he was aware of a new sensation of disquiet. His early-warning bells were jangling. Something unpleasant was afoot. Something ing nasty was about to happen when she reached Egypt.

Another dangerous beast had escaped from " its cage and was prowling the darkness waiting its opportunity to pounce, but it was still too early for him to discern its colour or shape.

"Please don't let anything happen to her," he spoke aloud, but he did not know to whom his plea was addressed. He thought of turning back and making her stay with him, but he had no rights in the matter, and he knew she would not obey him. Short of physical force, there was no way he could impose his will upon her. He had to let her go.

"But I don't like it one little bit," he reaffirmed. His private secretary, and the other men who worked for him, knew exactly what he expected of them. Everything was as he required it. Gotthold von Schiller looked around the interior of the Quonset hut with approval. Heim had done well in the time that he had been given to prepare the base for his boss's arrival.

His own private quarters occupied half the long portable building. They were spartan, but sterilely clean and neat. His clothes hung in the cupboard and his cosmetics and medicines were set out in the bathroom cabinet. His private kitchen was fully equipped and stocked with provisions. His own Chinese chef had flown out in the Falcon with him, bringing everything with him that he needed to provide the meals that his master demanded.

Von Schiller was a vegetarian, a non-smoker and a teetotaller. Twenty years ago he had been a famous trencherman who loved the hearty food of the Black Forest, the wines of the Rhine valley and the rich dark tobaccos of Cuba. In those days he had been obese, with rolls of chin sagging over his collar. Now, despite his age, he was as lean and fit and vital as a racing greyhound.

In the autumn of his life, the pleasures were of the mind and the emotions, more than of the physical senses.

He placed a higher value on inanimate objects than on living creatures, either human or animal. A piece of stone carved by masons who had been dead for thousands of years could excite him more than the soft warm body of the most lovely young woman. He loved order and control. Power over men and events sustained him more than did the taste of food. Power and the possession of beautiful and unique objects were his passions, now that his body was running down and his animal appetites were losing their zest.

Every item of all that vast and priceless, collection of ancient treasures that he had already assembled had been discovered by other men. This was his chance, his last chance to make his own discovery, to break the seals on the door of a Pharaoh's tomb and be the first man in four thousand years to gaze upon the contents. Perhaps that Was his real hope for immortality, and there was no price in gold and human life he was not fully prepared to pay for it.

Already men had died in this passion of his, and he cared not that there would be other sacrifices. No price was too high.

He checked his image in the full-length mirror that hung on the wall opposite his bed. He smoothed the thick, coarse, dark hair. Of course it was dyed, but that was one of his few remaining conceits. Then he crossed the uncarpeted wooden floor of his own quarters, and opened the door into the long conference room which would be his headquarters over the days to come.

The persons seated there rose to their feet immedi.

lately, their attitudes servile and their expressions obsequious. Von Schiller strode to the head of the long table and stepped up on to the block of wood covered with carpeting that his private secretary had placed there for him. This block went everywhere with him. It was nine inches high. From this elevation von Schiller looked down upon the men and one woman who waited for him. He looked them over unhurriedly, letting them stand a while.

>From the vantage point of his block, he was taller than any of them. First he looked at Helm. The Texan had worked for him for over a decade. Completely reliable he was strong both physically and mentally and would follow orders without question or qualms. Von Schiller had come to rely on him. He could send him anywhere in the world, from Zaire to Queensland, from the Arctic Circle to the steaming equatorial forests, and Helm would get the job done with the minimum of fuss and with very few unpleasant consequences. He was ruthless but discreet, and like a good hunting dog he knew his master.

From Helm he looked at the woman. butte Kemper was his private secretary. She ordered and directed the details of his life, from his food to his block, from his medicine to his social calendar, No man or woman was ever received into his presence without her prior arrangement. She was also his communications expert. The mass of electronic equipment that occupied one wall of the hut was her preserve. He was able to find her way through the ether with the-infallible instinct of a homing pigeon. From the archaic art of the keyboard and Morse code 'to burst transmissions and random switching he had never known another person, male or female, who could match her wizardry. She was at that perfect age for a woman, forty, slim and blonde, with slanting green eyes over high cheekbones, resembling the young Dietrich.

Von Schiller's own wife, Ingemar, had been an invalid for the last twenty years, and Utte Kemper had stepped into the void she had left in his life. Yet she was more than either secretary or wife to him.

When he had first met Utte, she had been holding a very senior position in the technical section of the German national telecommunications network, and moonlighting as a pornographic actress - not for the money but for love of the job. Copies of the videos she had made at that time were amongst von Schiller's most precious possessions, after his collection of Egyptian antiquities. Like Helm, she had no qualms. There was nothing she would not do to him, or allow him to do to her, to fulfill his most bizarre fantasies. When he watched her videos and she did some of these things to him, she was the only woman who could still bring him to orgasm. Yet even this happened less frequently with every month that passed, and each time the spasms of sexual release she could evoke from his aging body were less intense.

Utte had her recording equipment set up before her on the table. It was part of her multifarious duties to keep, accurate and complete records of every meeting and conversation. Then von Schiller looked past these two trusted employees to the two other men standing at the table. Colonel Nogo he had met for the first time that morning, as he stepped down from the Jet Ranger helicopter that had flown them down from Addis Ababa to the base camp here on the summit of the escarpment of the Nile gorge. He knew very little about him, except that Helm had selected him, and was so far satisfied with his performance. Von Schiller himself was not equally impressed. There had already been some bungling. Nogo had allowed Quenton Harper and the Egyptian woman to slip through his clutches. After a lifetime of operating in Africa, von Schiller placed little trust or store in blacks and preferred to work with Europeans. However, he realized that for the time being Nogo's services were indispensable. He was, after all, the military commander of the southern Gojam. No doubt once he had served his purpose he could be taken care of Helm would see to that. He would not have to bother himself with the details. Von Schiller looked now at the last man at the table. Here was another who was indispensable for the time being. Nahoot Guddabi was the one who had brought the existence of the seventh scroll to his attention. Apparently some English author had written a fictionalized version of the scrolls, but von Schiller never read fiction of any sort, either in German or in any of the four foreign languages in which he was fluent. Without Nahoot bringing the existence of the Taita scrolls to his notice, he might have overlooked this opportunity of his lifetime.

The Egyptian had come to him as soon as the original translation of the scrolls had been completed by Duraid Al Simma, and the existence of an unrecorded Pharaoh and his tomb had been mooted. Since then they had been in constant contact, and when the time.came that Al Simma and his wife had started to make too much headway with their investigations, von Schiller had employed Nahoot to get rid of them and to bring the seventh scroll to him.

The scroll was now the shining star of his collection, safely housed with his other ancient treasures in the steel and concrete vaults below the Schloss in the mountains that was his private retreat, his Eagle's Nest. Despite this, the choice of Nahoot to under-take the more sensitive work of ridding him of Al Simma and his wife had proved to be a mistake. He should have.. sent a professional to take care of them, but Nahoot had argued that he was capable of seeing it through, and he had been well paid for the work that he had mismanaged so ineptly.

He "too would be disposable in time, but right now von Schiller still needed him.

There was no question that Nahoot's understanding of Egyptology and hieroglyphics was far in advance of von Schiller's own. After all, Nahoot had spent most of his life studying them, while von Schiller was an amateur and only a comparatively recent enthusiast. Nahoot was able to read the scrolls and this new material that they had acquired as though they were letters from a friend, whereas von Schiller was obliged to puzzle over each symbol and resort frequently to his reference books. Even then, he was not capable of picking up the finer nuances of meaning in the text. Without Nahoot's assistance he could not hope to solve the riddles which confronted him in the search for Mamose's tomb.

This was the team who were now assembled beneath him, waiting for him to start the proceedings. "Sit down, please, Fr5ulein Kemper," he said at last. "You too, gentlemen. Let us get started."

Von Schiller remained standing on his block at the head of the table. He enjoyed the feeling of superior height.

His short stature had been a source of humiliation ever since his schooldays when he had been nicknamed Tippa' by his peers.

"Fr-dulein Kemper will be recording everything which is said here this afternoon. She will also issue each of you with a folder of documents which she will collect from you again at the end of this meeting. I want to make it very clear that none of this material will ever leave this room. It is of the most confidential nature, and belongs to me alone. I will take a most stringent view of any breach of this instruction."

As Utte handed out the folders, von Schiller looked at each recipient in turn. His expression made it clear what the penalty would be for any contravention of his instructions.

Then von Schiller opened the dossier that lay on the tabletop in front of him. He stood over it, leaning forward on his bunched fists.

"In your folders you will find copies of the Polaroid photographs that were recovered from Quenton-Harper's camp. Please look at these now." Each of them opened their own folder.

"Since our arrival Dr Nahoot has had an opportunity to study these, and he is of the opinion that they are genuine, and that the stele in the photographs is an authentic artefect of ancient Egyptian origin, almost certainly dating from the Second Intermediate Period, circa 1790 BC. Is there anything you wish to add to that, Doctor?"