Pharaoh (44 page)

‘Jerusalem? They wouldn’t dare. It’s a holy city for them as well.’

‘They wouldn’t dare, you say? Remember how Nebuchadnezzar emptied the city of its inhabitants. These guys could do the same thing using different means . . . Gas, for instance.’

Avner nodded glumly.

‘What did you find out from your archaeologist?’ asked Yehudai.

‘Something very interesting. How to get within metres of the Bethlehem transmitter without crossing a mile of high-risk area infested by thousands of Hamas snipers.’

‘That’s very good news.’

‘Maybe I’ll be able to report something even better in a few hours, if I’m right, but I’d rather not discuss it for now. How’s our offensive coming along?’

Yehudai pointed to the zones on the three-dimensional model in which his divisions were engaged in battle. ‘The initial thrust is beginning to flag, I’m afraid. We’re already having to ration fuel and will soon be forced to ration munitions, as well. In a few more hours I’ll know if it’s time to order Beersheba to initiate launch procedures on our Gabriel missiles, arming them with nuclear warheads before it’s too late.’

Avner lowered his head. ‘I’ll also be putting my plan into action by tonight. I’ll keep you posted.’

He left general headquarters and had the driver take him to the King David Hotel to have a drink and sort out his thoughts before returning home. He was served a beer and lit up a cigarette. Just a few more hours and then he would know if his hunch was right, if his detective’s nose was still any good. He stayed at the hotel a long time, lost in thought, considering every angle. When he raised his head he found Ferrario standing in front of him: he was in combat gear, flourishing the stars designating the rank of second lieutenant and a holstered pistol at his hip.

‘I have taken care of everything, sir. The commando squad is ready and waiting for further orders.’

‘And just where do you think you’re going in that get-up?’ Avner asked.

‘With your permission, sir, to the front. I have submitted a request to be transferred to a fighting unit.’

‘No more Armani for you?’

‘No, sir. I’m afraid the army quartermaster doesn’t shop in the same places as me.’

‘And just when did you make this request to leave my unit?’

‘I’m asking you now, sir. Lots of men are dying on the front, even as we speak, to keep the enemy away from the gates of Jerusalem. I just want to be able to do my part.’

‘You’re already doing precisely that, Ferrario. And very well, I might add.’

‘Thank you, sir, but it’s not enough for me any more. By now, you can manage perfectly well without me. Please, grant me this transfer, sir.’

‘You’re mad. You could have gone home after getting your degree, but instead you wanted to experience the thrill of this job, and now you want to go to the front of all places! It will certainly be more exciting. I only hope you realize that it’s going to be very dangerous too.’

‘I realize that, sir.’

‘Don’t you miss Italy?’

‘I miss it a lot. It’s the most beautiful place in the world and it’s where I was born.’

‘Well, then . . .’

‘Israel is my spiritual homeland and Jerusalem is a heavenly star, sir.’

Avner thought about Ras Udash and of the secret that he had buried beneath a mountain of bodies and would have liked to scream, ‘None of it’s true, none of it!’ Instead, he replied, ‘I’ll be sorry to lose you, but if that’s your decision I won’t stand in your way. Good luck, son. Just take care of your arse out there. If something happens to you, a lot of pretty girls back there in Italy are going to be awfully upset with me.’

‘I’ll do what I can, sir. And, by the way, you should stop smoking if you can. It’s bad for your health.’ Then, snapping to attention, he gave his superior a smart salute, adding, ‘It’s been an honour serving with you, Mr Avner.’ Finally, executing a swift about-turn, he took his leave.

Observing him as he moved away, his gait slightly encumbered by the heavy army boots, Avner couldn’t help but think what an elegant figure Italians always managed to cut, even if dressed in tatters. He dropped his head to watch the ash of his cigarette as it slowly burned away.

B
LAKE
’
S VACANT STARE
seemed to be watching the waves rippling under the cockpit.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sarah. ‘I never could have imagined that he would—’

‘It was his choice. He decided to sacrifice himself to save us. But . . . the papyrus was the first thing I thought of, not Selim. I’m no better than Olsen, Sarah. I’m a goddamned egotistical bastard.’

‘There are times when instinct prevails over everything else. Maybe one day we’ll know why things were meant to happen this way.’

Blake dropped the subject and the roar of the engines was the only sound to be heard for a long while.

‘Would you have really done it?’ asked Sarah suddenly, to break that unbearable silence.

‘Done what?’

‘Killed me if I hadn’t opened the door.’

‘I doubt it. Besides, both of my wrists are broken: I would have had to bite you to death.’

‘But there was definitely murder in your eyes.’

‘Well, that’s what made you open the door. So I guess it served its purpose.’

‘How do you feel now?’

‘The painkillers are starting to take effect. Not too bad. But you look pale. What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing. I’m just exhausted, that’s all . . . Will?’

‘Yes.’

What did the last part of the inscription on the sarcophagus at Ras Udash say?’

‘It said, “Whoever profanes this tomb shall have his bones crushed and see the earth run red with the blood of his loved ones.” ’

‘Why wouldn’t you tell me before?’

‘Because I didn’t want to upset you. You see, it’s precisely what’s happening to me. I’ve already broken some bones and—’

‘I’m not upset, William Blake. It’s just a coincidence.’

‘That’s right. That’s the way I look at it too.’

They remained silent for a while, then Sarah continued, ‘Is that all?’

‘No,’ said Blake. ‘It said, “And may this occur until the sun sets in the East.” ’

Sarah looked at him with an uneasy glimmer in her eye. ‘In other words, forever. As far as curses go, this one is truly unrelenting. The sun never sets in the east.’

‘Don’t think about it,’ said Blake. ‘It’s just a lot of ancient hocus-pocus.’

Then he fell silent, overcome by an oppressive drowsiness, but as he nodded off he noticed how the dawn light reflected in the Plexiglas dome began to darken. He turned around and saw the sun disappear slowly behind the eastern horizon. The Falcon hadn’t yet reached its cruising altitude, but it was still faster than the reverse motion of the earth.

He looked at Sarah with a complacent smile and said, ‘Sometimes anything can happen.’ Then, leaning back, he dozed off.

An hour later he was jolted out of his slumber as the aeroplane encountered some turbulence. Turning towards his companion, he asked, ‘How’s it going?’

She looked deathly pale and was dripping with sweat. He noticed a pool of blood on the floor of the cabin.

‘My God . . .’ he exclaimed. ‘What happened? Why did you let me sleep?’

‘It happened when I opened the door . . . A piece of shrapnel hit me in the left shoulder.’

‘Oh, Jesus!’ Blake exclaimed. ‘This is terrible . . . But why didn’t you wake me? Come here,’ he coaxed, helping her to her feet. ‘Sit down in my seat. I need some room to work on your arm.’ Blake couldn’t stop fretting as he fussed with her wound and continued to mutter mechanically, ‘What a mess . . . Damn, damn, damn

He found some bandages and wrapped his own wrists as well as he could. Then he took the scalpel out of his pocket and opened the sleeve of her shirt, slowly loosening the tourniquet she’d applied herself, restoring a bit of blood flow to the swollen, livid arm. He disinfected the wound and then applied a gauze dressing and wrapped it with strips of adhesive bandage. Drying her forehead, he insisted she drink as much water as she could.

They continued flying in the dark for hours on automatic pilot. Every once in a while, Blake towelled off her forehead and face, wetting her lips with a little orange juice he found in the galley.

Sarah looked up at him with shiny, fever-weary eyes. ‘I might pass out at any time,’ she murmured. ‘I want to teach you the procedure for sending a mayday signal and for jumping out of the plane with a parachute. I don’t think I’ve got enough time, though, to teach you how to land this contraption.’

‘What about you?’

‘If you’re smart, buster, you’ll forget about me. If you try to jump dragging all my dead weight along with you, you’ll ruin your chances as well’

‘Negative, Commander,’ said Blake. ‘I just don’t have any fun without you, sweetheart. It’s either both of us or forget it.’

‘You damned stubborn fool. So you’re going to blow it after all, after everything we’ve done to make it this far.’ From somewhere she found the energy to crack a joke. ‘Do you realize this could be considered mutiny?’

‘I’ll gladly let them court-martial me as soon as we get this thing landed. Until then, I’m not budging, not an inch.’

He insisted that she drink some more water and somehow managed to keep her awake until the instruments had finally locked in on the control tower at La Guardia airport in New York.

‘Well, maybe we’ve made it, after all,’ Sarah managed to whisper. ‘Now listen carefully. You’ve got to convince the tower to let us land and transmit your message to the proper authorities. I’ve done all I could, now it’s up to you. You have to give it all you’ve got.’

C
APTAIN
M
C
B
AIN
of the United States Marine Corps stopped his car in front of the Pentagon and had a guard escort him to the office of General Hooker. ‘General, sir,’ he said, a bit out of breath, ‘tower control at La Guardia in New York has put us in radio contact with an unknown aircraft that has wounded aboard, but insists on transmitting an absolute top priority message to us. I think it has something to do with the war and the threat of terrorism we are currently dealing with.’ He handed him a file he had been carrying under his arm.

Hooker took the dossier and began thumbing through it. ‘Another visionary or clairvoyant, I assume?’

‘Actually, sir, these guys are aware of the threat we are facing, even though they don’t know the details. Evidently they happened to get into the memory of some computer while surfing the Internet and, noticing a suspicious file, they managed to open it.

‘They realized that they were dealing with some sort of very sophisticated military program and figured it might have something to do with the situation that has been paralysing our entire system of military response.’

Hooker raised his head from the text. Are you telling me these people have managed to do something our combined military intelligence agencies have failed to do? Don’t you smell something just a tad fishy about all this, Captain? If what they say is true, how did they manage to break through the security system of such a powerful program and how did they figure out the access code? If they are on our side, we’d know who they are. But if they’re not on our side, then who in the hell’s side are they on?’

‘General, sir, if you don’t mind, I would like you to follow me into the operations room, where I have already sent the program to have it projected onto the giant screen. Just remember, if they’re right, there are only sixteen hours left before the final procedure begins.’

Hooker closed the dossier, got up from his chair and followed Captain McBain through the labyrinth of halls leading to the operations room.

‘Who does this computer belong to?’

‘Some guy named Omar al Husseini—’

‘An Arab?’ Hooker asked with a start.

An American of Lebanese origin, a professor of Coptic studies at the Oriental Institute in Chicago.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He’s nowhere to be found. Very discreetly, I had his house checked.’

‘Did you say discreetly, McBain? If what you are telling me is true, you should have broken down the bloody door with a battleaxe and seized that goddamned computer if it’s the one that’s been fucking with us all this time.’

‘Our experts say that it could be a very tricky business. Tampering with that computer could be like messing around with a bomb, or in this case three.’

Well, then, let’s get inside the damn thing, like those guys in the aeroplane did!’

‘It’s not that easy, General, sir. There are words in Coptic, files in Egyptian hieroglyphics and Arabic. It’s like playing blind-man’s bluff in a minefield. We’re working on it together with the people who provided the original lead.’

‘Have you at least managed to find out who they are?’

‘No.’

And why the hell not, might I enquire?’

‘Because they don’t trust us.’

McBain opened the door and ushered his superior officer into the operations room. The technicians were projecting the program onto the big screen, guided by the instructions of a man’s voice broadcast over a loudspeaker, with the sound of a jet engine in the background.