The Curse (24 page)

Just a gesture, not a word spoken. I was beginning to wonder if the world had gone mute.

“All right,” I said out loud to myself, “must be the door with the tiger behind it.”

My heart started beating a little faster as I opened the door and stepped inside.

An old man with a long beard, turban, and galabeya robe sat at a small table. Nicotine juice stained the corner of his beard on one side of his mouth.

I immediately felt claustrophobic in the stuffy room.

A single naked lightbulb, dim and dusty, illuminated the cramped space.

On the table was a piece of red silk, the size of a handkerchief, laid over what I presumed to be the Heart of Egypt scarab.

My heart made it to my throat as I stared at the silk cover. This was the moment of decision.

“Come, Maddy,” the old man said, motioning me forward with his hand and gesturing at the silk.

I quickly glanced around the room while trying to appear as if I wasn't nervous. A set of curtains were on the wall behind the seated man. I didn't see any movement, but the curtains would be a perfect place for someone to hide behind.

Looking at the man seated at the table, I was certain that he couldn't be the mastermind of an international art thief scheme or even a knowing member. He was too much the small-time Khan merchant; probably the owner of the tobacco shop. He struck me as being used as a front, perhaps not even realizing exactly the role he was playing, who I was, or what was coming down.

He pointed again at the object. “Come, Maddy.”

“Is that all your English?” I asked. “Speak English?”

He smiled and pointed again. “Come, Maddy.”

I stepped closer to the table. “Take it off.” I waved my hand to indicate I wanted him to remove the silk cover.

I was careful to look down and avoid letting him look at my eyes as he pulled off the piece of cloth, a trick that I learned talking to a rug dealer in Istanbul.

Avoiding eye contact was an old habit from the days of haggling over the price of art. It's done for the same reason that I suspect some poker players even wear sunglasses—just as other card players can “read” the tells on the faces and eyes of other players, your pupils can involuntarily open slightly when you see something you like, such as a choice piece of art, for example.

I was glad now that I did it instinctively because when I saw the scarab I'm sure my eyes would have betrayed me the moment the silk came off.

I stared at it, instantly petrified, almost paralyzed.

My God … the scarab looked real
.

A pulse at my temple started beating and I kept myself from clearing my throat.

I hadn't really known what to expect—the Heart of Egypt in the flesh, or a scarab like the one Adara had gotten from her mother, something a step above tourist stuff.

The scarab on the table appeared to be the real thing—or as close to it as a counterfeiter could possibly get.

It looked exactly like the realistic reproduction Fuad had showed me and I had the same feeling as I did when I saw the reproduction—like Howard Carter I might have to walk around it for days before I would be able to give an opinion on its authenticity.

Despite the tingling excitement I felt inside, I kept a poker face on as I took a Maglite and my loupe out of my shoulder bag and set them on the table.

I was too nervous and excited to sit down, so I reached over and picked up the scarab.

The man said something to me in Arabic and gestured to a chair next to the table, which I assumed meant an invitation to sit down, but I smiled and shook my head back and forth. My instinct told me to stay on two feet in case I needed to leave in a hurry.

I first examined the scarab in the dim light, feeling its weight and texture in my hands. If I had been alone, I would have asked the dung beetle if it had lied for King Tut when Ahemait, the devourer of the hearts of the dead, questioned it about the boy king's earthly sins.

Was I actually holding one of the greatest treasures of Egyptian antiquity? Or a clever knockoff?

Nothing about the feel of the scarab told me it was a replica, but the more I held it, the more I began to get a cold feeling. I wasn't sure why I experienced the sensation—the piece in my hand was a perfect match to the one I saw at Isis' private museum.

I began to examine the scarab with the loupe and flashlight, this time going over every inch of it, not only looking for any marks that revealed it hadn't been made with ancient tools, but also for a telltale mark like the one Fuad Hassan had put on the bottom of the scarab to ensure that a reproduction could be distinguished from an original.

Again, nothing showed that I wasn't holding in my hand the Heart of Egypt that had been sealed in a tomb with a pharaoh for more than three thousand years.

I was stumped.

I had gone from heart-racing excitement to a cold chill at the bone about the piece. Yet I couldn't put my feeling into a coherent thought. I had no laundry list of factors revealing the scarab wasn't the original heart; that it wasn't the piece removed from King Tut.

Then it hit me.

Pretending to still examine the piece with my magnifying glass, I took a sniff of it.

The mummification process for a pharaoh involved extracting the brain through the nose and removing the other organs. The heart was left in place, and a heart scarab was laid over the area, along with a wedjat eye over the abdominal incision, an ancient Egyptian symbol to protect the king in the afterlife and to ward off evil.

The chest and abdominal area was then covered with layers of linen wrappings adorned with jewelry, with each layer bonded with resin.

In Tut's case, that process had taken place thirty-three hundred years ago.

After the discovery of his tomb about ninety years ago, the heart scarab would have been removed from the dense wrappings that had been sealed with resin.

Usually the scent of the piece would not have retained its flavor of “antiquity” after being exposed to the air for nearly a century, even if the scarab had been in an airtight case for most of that time. But being sealed for thousands of years still left a hint of antiquity on objects, perhaps just the dust that the cloth bindings had in them when the wrapping process was done.

As I sniffed it again, I realized it wasn't the dust of ages on the piece that I smelled, but a subtle hint of chemical odor—very faint, but the sort of smell you'd get from paint that hadn't fully cured.

That smell hadn't been on the scarab that Fuad showed me, but I detected the odor on this piece.

Shades of Quintin Rees.

I felt reasonably certain that what I was holding in my hand was the result of the “big-paying” assignment that the counterfeiter's assistant had gotten from a woman of Middle Eastern descent.

Another perfect example of a skillful expert at fraud. Except that the chemicals hadn't fully cured yet.

The old man said something and I smiled.

I guess he was asking me for my opinion.

I only had one thought. I would be murdered if I told the thieves their prize was a copy. There simply would be no reason to keep me alive and report back to Kaseem not to pay the money.

Now what the hell was I going to do?

51

Holy shit!
The old man was giving me the kind of look Arnie gives me when I can't pay the rent.

He knew something was wrong.

With the language barrier, there was no way to charm him. Not that I could have anyway—as a Khan merchant, he would be a veteran of dozens of haggling negotiations used every day to survive.

My right knee started shaking, a telling sign that the last thing I wanted to do was tell a bunch of crooks that I was onto their game or that they, too, had been taken.

Either way, they'd blame the messenger.

“It's very nice,” I said, giving him what I thought was a convincing smile and a little bow. “One of the great treasures of the pharaohs.”

I was sure my eyes were neon-flashing “
liar!”

He started up from his chair and I saw movement behind the curtains.

“Have to tell my client the good news!” I yelped.

I quickly bolted out the door and raced through the small shop in a flash, hitting the alley in a run.

I flew by two men, running like a bat out of hell.

The men behind me yelled “Stop!” in heavily accented English.

My feet pedaled even faster with the cold feeling between my shoulder blades that a bullet was on its way.

Darkness had already fallen and most of the shops were closed.

Few people were in the alleyways as I raced by with the sound of heavy running steps closing the gap behind me.

I didn't know where I was but headed blindly in the direction of the traffic noise.

As I came around a narrow corner, one of the men behind me grabbed the back of my scarf. I twisted and stumbled and bounced off a wall, swinging wildly and screaming.

He got a hold of my right arm, but I clawed furiously at his eye, my fingernails digging in as deep as I could. He screamed in pain and let go and I started running again as his companion came barreling at me.

I brushed by a boy leading a donkey piled high with goods as I dodged around another corner. As I sped by, I slapped the donkey's rear and shouted at it, causing the animal to bolt.

The boy and his donkey thankfully got between me and the two men and I propelled into a run again, driven by blind panic and adrenaline.

I was in high gear now.

I ran as if all the hounds of hell were on my heels and I believed they were. Those two men had been posted outside the tobacco shop to make sure I didn't go anywhere, regardless of what I had found.

It was a “kill the messenger” plan for sure.

They would have let me call Kaseem—reporting the scarab as genuine, of course—and then cut my throat so I wouldn't be able to tell the police if I was caught.

I saw the lights of cars ahead and came charging out into the street, almost getting hit by a taxi.

Horns honked, drivers shouted and cursed.

I heard a bang as a car slammed into another, but I didn't care.

The noise and attention were lifesaving—literally.

I stepped into the taxi that had nearly run me over.

“I'm being chased by an angry husband,” I yelled at the driver. “Go!”

52

I was already halfway to the hotel when my phone rang. I had decided to go back to the Queen of the Nile where I stayed before.

Kaseem.

“You lousy, no good—” I was about to say son of a bitch, but he cut me off.

“Was it the Heart of Egypt?” he asked excitedly.

“I almost got murdered.”

“But you didn't.”

“You'll get an answer when I have what you owe me. If it's play money, I go to the police.”

“You don't know who you are dealing—”

I hung up on him.

He called me back. I waited until the tenth ring to answer.

“If the money's under my pillow when I get back to the hotel in an hour, you'll get your answer. Otherwise I tell the police.”

I hung up again and took the battery out of his phone and did some quick thinking.

“Keep driving,” I told the taxi driver.

“To where?”

“I don't care. Just keep driving.”

When something wasn't working, or was likely to get me killed, I had to change my game plan.

I decided on two changes for my immediate situation.

I put the first one into effect by calling Rafi al Din.

“I'm in a spot of trouble,” I said. “There are some people I want to avoid in Cairo. Any suggestions?”

“A goddess of fate has guided you to me,” he said. “I'll pick you up in two hours. Be packed.”

I didn't have that much to pack in my small carry-on suitcase. I purposely had not brought a lot of clothes with me.

“Where are we going?”

“It'll be a surprise.”

“I don't like surprises.”

“I'll be at your hotel in two hours,” he said.

“No, I'll meet you. Tell me where.”

“The train station. South terminal.”

*   *   *

A
N HOUR LATER
I
was back at the hotel and ready to put phase two into action.

I asked the front desk clerk how many porters the hotel had on duty.

“Two,” he said.

“Good. I want both of them to come to my room to help me with my luggage.”

The desk clerk stared. “Miss, you checked in with a single small bag.”

“I'm afraid of heights. Both porters.” I pointed at the other clerk on duty. “Him, too.”

“But—”

His mouth snapped shut as I laid a hundred on the counter.

“You, too. Now,” I said.

Five minutes later I retrieved my small bag, an envelope under my pillow that felt right but I didn't open.

The five of us went back down to the lobby and I had all four escort me to the waiting taxi outside.

I didn't know if Kaseem would have money or thugs waiting for me, but I figured that having a crowd around would at least avoid me getting murdered.

I told the driver to take me to a hotel where I'd switch to a taxi for the train station.

When I got back to Cairo, I would check into the most expensive, crowded, and secure hotel in the city.

No more being sixteen floors from the lobby and what turned out to be a revolving door to my room.

I wanted plenty of company after today—a place where my screams could be heard.

I checked the envelope, taking a bill out of the middle and using my mini-flashlight to examine it. It looked real. They all looked used, too—a good sign.

Kaseem probably had my money all the time, but had tried to cheat me and pocket it.

I called him en route and he answered on the first ring.

“Phony as a three dollar bill,” I said with some satisfaction, not caring whether he understood the American expression.