Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 03 - Cairo Caper (7 page)

That certainly cleared it up. Another thought flitted through. “I’m surprised nobody heard the scuffle.”

“We’re on the stern. The sound would have carried away from the rest of the boat.”

“Should we go get Petri?”

“We should stay here.” He removed the gun from the nightstand drawer and smiled. “A Glock nine millimeter, very reliable, even on the Nile.” He ejected the magazine, checked to make sure there was one in the chamber, and reinserted the magazine. He propped two pillows behind his back and sat upright in bed with the gun trained on the balcony doors. “We have sixteen bullets for the next assassin.”

I propped two pillows behind my back, took the marble ashtray off the nightstand, and turned out the light. “And one ashtray.”

Chapter Eleven

Fingers of feeble yellow light poked through the portholes. If it’s morning it must be Alexandria. A lot had happened in twenty-four hours.

I brushed the grit from my eyes, popped my cramped fingers from the marble ashtray, and attempted to stand. My back ached from the soft mattress, my kidneys bore the weight of sitting up in bed at a cockeyed angle, and my neck felt like cracked glass. The worst part was no coffee. I rolled out of bed, put my feet on the floor, and faced Roger who was still sitting up with the Glock in his hand.

He laid the gun down and grabbed my thigh. He tried to work his way higher but I grabbed his wrist. “How can you think of sex at a time like this?”

“Easy. You’re here, I’m awake, and we have time for that great American innovation, the quickie.”

Hmmm. He had a point, but I couldn’t get past the grit in our bed, the grit in my eyes, and the grit in my mouth. Plus, I remained a little shaken by the assassination attempts, which didn’t seem to bother him even though I’d had to save his bacon both times. My libido said yes but my hang-ups said no. A toothbrush would have been the tie-breaker.

He yawned then bare-skinned it out of the bed on his side. “If that’s the way you’re going to be, don’t be looking at my ass.”

“I never look at your ass.”

This time he rolled
his
eyes. He strutted to the bathroom and pulled his clothes off the shower rod. He brought them out, braced himself against the dresser, pulled on his jockeys, then his khaki shorts. Bruises decorated his body like tattoos on an NBA wannabe.

I stretched and did some jumping jacks. A few karate kicks might be in order. I’d never taken a karate lesson but I watched both
Kill Bills
. I did a couple of Uma Thurman spins slamming the blade of my foot into the built in dresser and then taking out the nightstand. Feeling as empowered as if I were Angelina Jolie in a Lara Croft movie, I flexed my biceps, which made my cleavage look Partonesque, and stepped into the bathroom ignoring Roger’s smirks.

My skirt and blouse were Brillo stiff. I grimaced as I eased into my panties. If they didn’t soften, I’d have a Brazilian by the end of the day and possibly the equivalent of a tumbling motorcyclist’s road rash.

The waistband of my skirt would make a cheese grater feel like a baby’s butt.

The buttonholes on my blouse were mud-welded despite my rinse job last night. I fought with each button cursing as I fastened.

I imagined I was donning a killer-expensive Alexander McQueen metal-studded designer outfit. I slipped my arms into the full-length sleeves, fastened the last button, and took two robot-like steps just as the Asp crunched against something hard. I fought to steady myself. Roger dashed to the balcony.

A loud thud made me jump. It sounded like a sail had fallen to the deck. But what did I know about dahabiyas? I stood on a chair and peeked out a porthole. The boat had come to rest against a battered old dock. A rap on the door sent me tumbling off the chair and flat on my back.

It was Fiona. This broad was killing me. Her sparkly green eyes flicked toward Roger’s shorts as he opened the door. “Where are we?” she said nibbling her lower lip.

“Alexandria. Got your bag?” I asked.

She held her messenger bag out for my approval.

I strapped my purse across my chest, grabbed the two white robes from the bed and slipped the marble ashtray into my skirt pocket. It clunked against my leg but I felt more secure. You wouldn’t expect James Bond to go unarmed, would you?

Fiona flipped her pith helmet in the air. It landed on her head and she stuck out her arms in a ta-da moment. She’d come a long way in a day, and I didn’t mean from Cairo to Alexandria.

She latched onto my arm sending shudders through my body as she ground the grit in my sleeve into the tender skin inside my arm. “Somebody please tell me what’s going on. Am I in danger?”

“Think of it as an erotic mystery,” Roger said grasping the handle of Horus’s cage.

Fiona blushed scarlet. “This isn’t very erotic unless I have completely missed the mark in my research. And I don’t think I have. I’m well on my way to the book that will redefine eroticism and sexuality. All I have left to complete is the integration of Cleopatra’s
Kama Sutra
into the context of modern life.”

I buried my face in my hands. We were in harm’s way and she wasn’t even on our planet. How was I going to look after her when it was all I could do to keep my not-always-in-the-moment Roger alive?

Then my not-always-in-the-moment Roger tapped the brim of Fiona’s pith helmet over her eyes and laughed. He was pretty chipper for a sleep-deprived walking contusion. Adrenalin was illuminating my guy’s aura. He was approaching the climax of his childhood dream, Cleopatra’s grave.

I hoped it wasn’t our grave too.

Chapter Twelve

I led Fiona, struggling with life, and Roger, struggling with the birdcage, down the passageway and onto the upper deck. The three-man crew performed a slow motion synchronized tie-down of the boat. The morning sun danced in heat waves off the blue of the river.

I could just make out a dot on the horizon that took on the shape of the Montaza Palace through my smeary sunglasses. The tiny silhouette was as I remembered it from cruising the travel websites. The palace sat on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. A mixture of Turkish and Florentine styles, with two towers, one rising high above the other, it was visible from miles away. I smiled at Roger. We were getting closer to the prize.

Petri was at the top of the gangplank. “I will see to our transportation. Sir Sydney arranged for a Land Rover, which is supposed to be nearby. But other people are nearby and these are difficult times, as I believe you’ve noticed, so things might not go smoothly. If I’m not back in an hour, you’ll know I’ve run into difficulty. Make your way to Pompey’s Pillar and we’ll rendezvous there.” He clicked his heels, hastened down the dock, and disappeared behind sand-encrusted buildings.

Difficult times
. And I thought Roger was the master of the understatement. Our team – if you could consider a trippy librarian, an archaeologist wearing two left shoes, and a displaced Miami real estate broker a team – watched Petri walk down the skinny wooden gangway.

I removed the cover from Horus’s cage, the forgotten member of our team, so he could get some air. The falcon stretched his neck and shot me a bird look of thanks. Was it possible he was Maltese? Was it possible I’d lost the few marbles I had left?

Petri was gone for all of five minutes when the captain emerged from the wheelhouse. He shooed us off the boat waving his hands as if to dry his nail polish. We got the message and grabbed what little gear we had.

Fiona, Roger, and Horus made the shaky trek to the dock. I sat on a mooring post with Fiona at my feet clinging to the edge of my skirt. Roger paced the length of the planks. I was starting to feel like an abandoned kindergartener whose mom forgot to pick her up.

Just as the crew pushed off, Roger jumped back onto the boat and clamped his hand on the captain’s shoulder. Panic stabbed my gut.
Don’t leave me here, alone.

Before I could yell what I thought of him, he leaped back onto the dock carrying three bottles of beer. I was losing it. Roger would never have abandoned me.

“The Asp is out of bottled water. Beer, it’s not just for breakfast anymore. Although today… it is.” He passed us each a bottle. It wasn’t caffeine but it would have to do.

I gulped half of mine then sat on the dock with my back against a piling. Fiona scrunched against me. Lack of sleep and beer instead of Cheerios caught up with me. I dozed in the already-broiling sun. My chin snapped off my chest when a pain in my arm wakened me.

Fiona pressed her tiny hands into my biceps. Worry lines stamped her face. The transition from traipsing through library stacks to unintentional assistant tomb raider was setting in for the little poppet. “Petri’s been gone way more than an hour.”

I checked my watch. She was right, if you considered two minutes as way more. She brushed the dust from her skirt as she stood with a hand shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare. “Is that a phallic symbol?”

She pointed to a tower in the distance then pulled a pair of hoot-owl sunglasses from her bag and wedged them under her trusty pith helmet.

I squinted to focus on the target of her finger, and then said as though I’d seen it many times, “That’s Pompey’s Pillar, where we’ll meet Petri if he doesn’t come back.” I wanted to keep her confidence up. Everything I knew about it came from my Internet jogs. The Pillar, made of red granite and over one hundred feet high, marked the center Alexandria.

Fiona jumped up and down like a kid trying to see a parade. “We need to go find Petri. He’s not coming back… here.”

“Try to look casual,” Roger said, wiping a torrent of sweat from his brow and blinking droplets from behind his sunglasses. “Relax. We’ve got to stay below the radar.”

“Let me get this straight. Two fair-haired women, an archaeologist with two left shoes, and a hostile bird in a cage are not standing out?”

“Work on patience. That’s something you sorely lack. We should give Petri more time. An hour was just a figure of speech.”

He sat down, crossed his legs and assumed a lotus position. He began mumbling a mantra. I was tempted to brain him with my ashtray.

The other half of my warm beer called my name. I guzzled it then tied the arms of the robe together and strung them between two pilings to create a shady area for me and the pith helmet who was attached to me like a barnacle to a seawall.

Desperate for a moment of Zen, I imagined myself on Miami Beach downing a Pina Colada at Joe’s Stone Crab.

Another hour passed and no Petri Dische. Roger snapped out of his meditation as I was about to smack him.

“The Frenchman should be back by now. I think we should hoof it to Pompey’s Pillar,” Roger said.

I knew that was the plan but every fiber of my body screamed
no way
. “You’ll destroy your feet walking in two left shoes.” I’m always putting Roger’s needs before my own.

I untied the robes and threw one to him. “Here put this over your head. You’re the color of a blood orange. I hope your hat is comfortable back in our hotel room.”

Wrapping the robe around his head like a humongous turban, he glanced down at his brown wingtips. “I’ve gotten used to the pain. Walk slowly and ignore my whimpering. Maybe we’ll find a peddler selling mandals.”

Mandals, yuck. I shuddered. A batch of cartoon hallucinations induced by my near-starvation, kicked in. Bacon and eggs over easy on the sand. A cup of coffee the size of a swimming pool, laced with half and half.

I was so empty I would have gambled on a street vendor, which for me was about like saying I’d eat out of a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant. I led us off the dock toward Pompey’s Pillar, Fiona firmly attached. Roger ooched and ouched behind us. Sand poured into the toes of my peep-toe Ferragamo pumps.

Silently we marched, the glamour of tomb raiding disappeared as the ashtray banged against my thigh and the sun cooked my eyeballs through my Polaroid lenses. Fiona’s clinging was getting to be a real nuisance. I glared at her. “If you must hang onto me, at least lift the ashtray up. It hurts.”

She gave me a startled look. “What ashtray?”

It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know I was packing. “Just lift my skirt.”

She took me literally and flipped my dress up over her head. I yanked it away from her and tripped over air. I caught myself before I hit the ground, but managed to break the heel off my left Ferragamo pump. Sadly, I picked up the leather heel and tucked it in my purse. Maybe the loss could be a business deduction.

An hour into our hike and I imagined I was trapped in the
English Patient
. “Die already,” I mumbled to myself. I was losing it. My mind drifted to my last open house on Miami Beach. I served chilled Pinot Grigio and caviar canapés. What the hell was I doing wandering in the desert? I could find all the air-conditioned adventure I needed in the nightclubs on Collins Avenue.

“Why couldn’t we take the train like normal people?” I said.

“Because we’re maintaining a low profile,” Roger barked.

Twenty minutes after I broke my heel, which I wasn’t taking well, we reached a pleasant residential area on the outskirts of the city. It could have been any Mediterranean city. Pretty tree-lined streets with older well-kept cars parked at the curbs and flower-bordered walkways leading to Moorish style homes. I was tempted to knock on doors and beg for an iced-coffee.

Limping, lumpy pilgrims, we made our way toward the heart of Alexandria and Pompey’s Pillar. We stepped through the looking glass from sand in our shoes to the fumes of thickening traffic. The scent of humanity assaulted my nostrils. We were swarmed by peddlers and souvenir hawkers.

“Don’t make eye-contact,” Roger said.

I looked straight ahead willing Petri and the Land Rover to appear.

We collapsed on a rocky path above an ancient Roman amphitheater. The place looked like an archaeological dig with cut marble seating and a small stage for a speaker or two.

A guide was lecturing to a small flock of tourists. “Is true. When you talk from the stage the acoustics are supposed to be perfect. Perhaps once the tour is complete you may return to the stage.” He scooted them away.