The Lost Army of Cambyses (14 page)

Without question. Without hesitation.'

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'Yes, Master,' whispered the boy, overwhelmed.

'He has set us a great task. A quest. If we

succeed, the prize will be great. If we fail . . .'

'What, Master? What if we fail?' The boy

seemed terrified.

The man stroked his hair, comforting him. 'We

will not fail.' He smiled. 'The road may be hard,

but we shall reach its end. Have I not told you? We

are God's chosen.'

The boy smiled and spontaneously threw his

arms around the man's waist, hugging him. The

man pushed him away.

'There is work to do. Call Dr Dravic. Tell him

he must find the missing piece. Do you under-

stand? He must find the missing piece.'

'He must find the missing piece,' repeated the

boy.

'Meanwhile everything continues as planned.

Nothing changes. Can you remember that?'

'Yes, Master.'

'We strike camp in one hour. Go.'

The boy stepped out of the tent and hurried

away. Sayf al-Tha'r watched him as he went.

They had found him four years ago, a street

orphan, scavenging for food like an animal among

the rubbish tips of Cairo. Illiterate, parentless,

savage, he had been bathed and fed, and in time he

had become one of them, receiving the mark of

faith on his forehead and pledging to wear only

black, the colour of strength and loyalty.

He was a good boy – simple, innocent, devoted.

There were others like him out there, hundreds of

them, thousands. While the rich filled their bellies

and worshipped their false idols, children like

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Mehmet starved. The world was sick. Benighted.

Overrun by the
Kufr.
He, however, was fighting to

make things right. To raise the downtrodden.

To drive back the infidel. To restore the rule of the

faithful.

And now, suddenly, magically, the wherewithal

to complete his task had been shown to him.

Shown, but no more. God gave and God withheld.

It was frustrating. And yet he knew there was a

purpose to it. God always has a purpose. And

here? To test his servant, of course. To try his

resolve. An easy life made for a shallow faith. In

adversity one discovered the depth of one's belief.

Allah was challenging his devotion. And he would

not disappoint. The thing would be found.

However many deaths it took. He, the servant,

would not fail the master. And the master, he

knew, would not fail him either so long as

he stayed true. So long as he did not weaken. He

watched the boy for a moment longer and then,

turning back into the tent, fell to his knees, bowed

his face to the ground and resumed his prayers.

116

13

CAIRO

Tara opened the envelope as soon as she got back

to the hotel. She knew she shouldn't, that she

should just throw it away, but she couldn't help

herself. Even after six years there was still a part

of her that couldn't let him go.

'Damn you,' she muttered, sliding her finger

beneath the flap and tearing it open. 'Damn you

for coming back. Damn you.'

Hello Michael,

I'm in town for a few weeks. Are you back from

Saqqara yet? If so, let me buy you a drink. I'm at

the Hotel Salah al-Din (7533127), although you'll

find me most nights at the tea-room on the corner

of Ahmed Maher and Bursa'id. I think it's called

Ahwa Wadood.

Hope the season went well, and hope to see

you.

Daniel L.

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P.S. Did you hear about Schenker? Thinks he's

found the tomb of Imhotep! Twat.

She smiled, despite herself. Typical Daniel, to

affect seriousness only to puncture it with some

random expletive. For the first time in ages she felt

again the tightening in her throat, the hollow

emptiness in the pit of her stomach. God, he'd

hurt her.

She reread the note and then scrunched it into a

ball and flung it across the room. Grabbing a

vodka from the mini-bar she went outside onto

the balcony, but came back in almost immediately

and threw herself onto the bed, staring at the

ceiling. Five minutes passed, ten, twelve. She got

up again, grabbed her knapsack, left the room.

'Ahwa Wadood tea-room,' she said to the first

driver on the taxi rank outside the hotel. 'Corner

of Ahmed Maher and . . .'

'Bursa'id,' said the man, reaching his hand

behind him and swinging open the door for her. 'I

know it.'

She got in and they moved off.

You idiot, Tara, she thought to herself, staring

out of the window at the brightly lit shopfronts.

You sad, weak idiot.

Across the street a dusty Mercedes eased away

from the kerb and swung in behind them, a

panther stalking its prey.

She remembered so well the first time they'd met.

How long ago was it now? God, almost eight

years.

She had been in her second year at University

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College London, reading zoology, renting a flat

with three friends. Her parents were living in

Oxford, their marriage fast approaching collapse,

and she had gone home one evening to have

dinner with them.

It was supposed to be a family affair, just the

three of them, which was bad enough given that

her parents barely talked those days. On arrival,

however, her father told her a colleague of his

would be joining them.

'Interesting chap,' he said, 'half English, half

French, not much older than you. Doing a PhD in

Late Period funerary practice in the Theban

necropolis; just got back from three months'

excavating in the Valley of the Kings. Absolute

genius. Knows more about tomb iconography and

the afterlife books than anyone I've ever met.'

'Sounds fascinating,' Tara grunted.

'Yes, I think you will like him,' her father

smiled, missing the sarcasm. 'He's an odd fellow.

Driven. Of course, we're all driven to some extent,

but he's particularly intense. You get the im-

pression he'd cut off his own hand if he thought it

might further his knowledge of the subject. Or

anyone else's hand, for that matter. He's a fanatic.'

'Takes one to know one.'

'True, I suppose, although at least I have you

and your mother. Daniel doesn't seem to have any-

one. I worry for him, frankly. He's too obsessed. If

he's not careful he's going to drive himself into an

early grave.'

Tara downed her pre-dinner vodka. Late Period

funerary practice in the Theban necropolis. Jesus.

He was almost an hour late and they'd just

119

started debating whether to begin without him

when the doorbell rang. Tara went to answer it,

slightly drunk by this point, urging herself to be

polite.

With a bit of luck he'll go straight after

dinner, she thought. Please let him go straight

after dinner.

She stopped for a moment to compose herself

and then went forward and opened the front door.

Oh, my God, you're gorgeous!

She thought it, fortunately, and didn't say it out

loud, although some sort of surprise must have

registered in her face, for he was the complete

opposite of everything she'd been expecting: tall,

dark, with high cheekbones and eyes that were

brown to the point of blackness, like pools of

peat-darkened water. She stood staring at him.

'I'm so sorry I'm late,' he said, his accent

English with a faint Gallic fuzz around the edge of

the vowels. 'I had some work to finish.'

'Late Period funerary practice in the Theban

necropolis,' she replied, sounding embarrassingly

embarrassed.

He laughed. 'Actually I was filling out a grant

application. Probably a bit more interesting.' He

held out his hand. 'Daniel Lacage.'

She took it. 'Tara Mullray.'

They stood like that for just a beat longer than

was necessary and then went through into the

house.

Dinner was wonderful. The two men spent most

of it arguing about an obscure point of New

Kingdom history – whether or not there had been

a co-regency between Amenhotep III and his son

120

Akhenaten. She'd heard and switched off from

these sorts of discussions a hundred times before.

With Daniel involved, however, the argument

assumed a curious immediacy, as though it

affected them there and then rather than being a

dry academic debate about a time so distant even

history had forgotten it.

'I am sorry.' He smiled at Tara as her mother

served pudding. 'This must be excruciating for

you.'

'Not at all,' she replied. 'For the first time in my

life Egypt actually sounds interesting.'

'Thank you very much,' her father said gruffly.

After dinner the two of them went into the back

garden for a cigarette. It was a warm night, the sky

heavy with stars, and they wandered across the

lawn and sat down on a rusty swing chair.

'I think you were just being polite in there,' he

said, putting two cigarettes in his mouth, lighting

them and handing one to her. 'There was no need.'

'I'm never polite,' she said, accepting the

cigarette. 'Or at least not tonight.'

They sat in silence for a while, swinging gently

to and fro, their bodies close but not quite touch-

ing. He had a smell to him, not aftershave,

something richer, less manufactured.

'Dad says you've been excavating in the Valley

of the Kings,' she said eventually.

'Just above it, actually. Up in the hills.'

'Looking for anything in particular?'

'Oh, some Late Period tombs. Twenty-sixth

Dynasty. Nothing very interesting.'

'I thought you were fanatical about it.'

'I am,' he said. 'Just not tonight.'

121

They laughed, their eyes holding for a moment

before they turned away and looked up at the sky.

Above them the branches of an old pine tree

twisted like interlocked arms. There was another

long silence.

'It's a magical place, you know, the Valley of the

Kings,' he said eventually, his voice low, almost a

whisper, as if he was talking to himself rather than

to her. 'It sends a shiver down your spine to think

of the treasures that must once have been buried

there. I mean, look at what they found with

Tutankhamun. And he was just a minor pharaoh.

A nobody. Think what must have been buried

with a truly great ruler. An Amenhotep III, or a

Horemheb, or a Seti I.'

He dropped his head back, smiling, lost

suddenly in his own thoughts.

'I often wonder what it must be like to find

something like that. Of course it will never happen

again. Tutankhamun was unique, a billion-to-one

chance his tomb survived. I can't help thinking

about it, though. The excitement. The intensity.

Nothing could ever compare with that. Nothing

on earth. But then, of course . . .'

He sighed.

'What?'

'Well, it probably wouldn't last, the excitement.

That's the thing about archaeology. One find is

never enough. You're always trying to better your-

self. Look at Carter. After he'd finished clearing

the tomb of Tutankhamun he spent the last ten

years of his life telling everyone he knew where

Alexander the Great was buried. You'd have

thought the greatest find in the history of

122

archaeology would have been enough, but it

wasn't. It's Catch-22. You spend your whole life

digging up the secrets of the past and at the same

time worrying that one day there won't be any

secrets left to find.'

He was silent for a moment, brow furrowed,

and then tamped his cigarette out on the armrest

of the swing and laughed. 'Listen to me. I bet you

wish you'd stayed inside and helped with the

washing up.'

Their eyes met again and, as if acting in-

dependently of the rest of their bodies, their

fingers crept across the seat and touched. It was an

innocent gesture, barely noticeable, and yet at the

same time one loaded with intent. They looked

away. Their fingertips, however, remained

connected, something irreversible flowing between

them.

They met in London three days later and within

the week had become lovers.

It had been a magical time, the finest of her life.

He had a flat off Gower Street – a tiny garret with

two murky skylights and no central heating – and

this had been their lair. They had made love day

and night, played backgammon, eaten picnics

among the sheets, made love again, devoured each

other.

He was a brilliant draughtsman, and she had

stretched naked on the bed, bashful and blushing,

while he'd drawn her, in pencil, in charcoal, in

crayon, covering sheet after sheet of paper with

her image, as though each drawing was somehow