The Lost Army of Cambyses (3 page)

Corniche el-Nil. Other drivers glanced over, trying

to see who was inside the limousine, but its

windows were smoked and revealed nothing but

the blurred silhouettes of two human heads. A

small Stars and Stripes pennant fluttered on the

corner of its front left wing.

After a kilometre the convoy came to a confused

intersection of roads and flyovers. The lead

motorcycles slowed, sounded their sirens, and

pushed forward, leading the limousine carefully

through the tarmac labyrinth and up onto an

elevated carriageway where the traffic wasn't so

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heavy. The convoy picked up speed, following the

signs to the airport. The rear motorcyclists leaned

towards each other and began talking.

The blast was sudden and so understated that it

wasn't immediately clear there had been an ex-

plosion. There was a muffled thud and whoosh,

and the limousine bucked up into the air, swerving

across the centre of the carriageway into a

concrete wall. It was only when another thud,

louder this time, rocked the stricken vehicle and a

spurt of flame roared from its underside that it

became clear this was more than just a road

accident.

The motorcycles skidded to a halt. The

limousine's front door flew open and the driver

staggered out, screaming, his jacket on fire. Two

of the riders smothered him with their own

jackets; the others tried to reach the vehicle's rear

doors, against the inside of which frantic hands

were drumming. A pall of black smoke

umbrellaed upwards into the sky, the air grew

thick with the acrid stench of burning petrol and

rubber. Cars slowed and stopped, their drivers

gawping. On the limousine's front wing the Stars

and Stripes pennant burst into flames and swiftly

crumpled to ash.

19

2

T H E WESTERN DESERT,

A WEEK LATER

'Motherfucker!'

The driver let out a scream of exhilaration as his

Toyota four-wheel-drive crested the summit of the

dune and took off, hanging in the air like an

ungainly white bird before thudding down again

on the far side. For a moment it looked as if he

might lose control of the wheel, the vehicle slew-

ing downwards at a dangerous angle, but he

managed to bring it back in line and, reaching

the bottom of the slope, jammed his foot on the

accelerator again, powering up and over the top of

the next dune.

'Motherfuckingcocksucker!' he bellowed.

He roared on for another twenty minutes, music

blaring from the jeep's stereo, his blond hair whip-

ping in the wind, before eventually skidding to a halt

on a high sandy ridge and cutting the engine. He

took a drag on his joint, seized a pair of binoculars

and got out, his boots crunching on the sand.

20

The desert was eerily silent, the air thick with

heat, the bleached sky seeming to press down from

above. He stood for a moment gazing at the

untidy collage of dunes and gravel pans stretching

all around him, a strange, unearthly landscape

devoid of life and movement, and then, taking

another drag on the joint, lifted the binoculars and

focused them to the north-west.

A crescent-shaped limestone scarp curved across

his line of sight, with a swathe of green oasis

spread along its bottom. Tiny white villages were

scattered among the palm groves and salt lakes,

while a larger smudge of white at the western end

of the cultivation marked a small town.

'Siwa,' smiled the man, exhaling a curl of smoke

from his nostrils. 'Thank God.'

He remained where he was for a few minutes,

running the binoculars back and forth, and then

returned to the jeep and started the engine, the

blast of its stereo echoing once more across

the sands.

He reached the edge of the oasis in an hour,

bumping out of the desert onto a compacted dirt

road. Three radio masts rose to his right and a

concrete water tower. A pack of wild dogs came

yapping around his hubcaps.

'Hey, guys, it's good to see you too!' He

laughed, beeping his horn and swerving the jeep to

and fro, throwing up a cloud of dust and forcing

the dogs to scatter.

He passed a pair of satellite dishes and a

makeshift army camp before hitting a tarmacked

road that carried him into the centre of the large

settlement he'd seen from the dune-top: Siwa Town.

21

The place was all but deserted. A couple of

donkey-carts clattered along the road and in the

main square a group of women were clustered

around a dusty vegetable stall, their grey cotton

shawls pulled right down over their faces.

Everyone else had been driven indoors by the mid-

day heat.

He pulled over at the side of the square, beneath

a high mound of rock covered with ruined build-

ings, and, retrieving a large manilla envelope from

the back seat, got out and set off across the square,

not bothering to lock the doors behind him. He

stopped at a general store and spoke briefly to the

owner, handing him a piece of paper and a wad of

money and nodding towards the Toyota, then

moved on, turning down a side street and stepping

into a shabby-looking building with Welcome

Hotel painted down the side. As soon as he

entered the man behind the desk leaped up with a

cry of delight and rushed round to greet him.

'Dr John! You are back! It is so good to see

you!'

He spoke in Berber and the young man

responded in the same tongue.

'You too, Yakub. How are you?'

'Well. You?'

'Dirty,' said the young man, patting dust off his

'I Love Egypt' T-shirt. 'I need a shower.'

'Of course, of course. You know where they are.

No hot water, I'm afraid, but have as much cold as

you want. Mohammed! Mohammed!'

A boy appeared from a side room.

'Dr John has come back. Fetch him a towel and

soap so he can shower.'

22

The boy scampered away, his flip-flops slapping

loudly on the tiled floor.

'Do you want to eat?' asked Yakub.

'Damn right I want to eat. I've been living off

beans and tinned pilchards for the last eight

weeks. Every night I've been dreaming of Yakub's

chicken curry.'

The man laughed. 'You want chips with it?'

'I want chips, I want fresh bread, I want cold

Coke, I want everything you can give me.'

Yakub's laughter redoubled. 'Same old Dr John!'

The boy reappeared with a towel and a small

bar of soap, which he handed over.

'I need to make a phone call first,' said the

young man.

'No problem. Come. Come.'

The owner led him into a cluttered room with a

rack of dog-eared postcards leaning against the

wall and a phone sitting on top of a filing cabinet.

Laying his envelope on a chair, the young man

lifted the receiver and dialled. It rang for a few

moments before a voice echoed at the other end.

'Hello,' he said, now speaking in Arabic, 'could

you put me through to . . .'

Yakub waved his hand and left him to it. He

returned a couple of minutes later with a bottle of

Coke, but his guest was still talking so he put

the Coke on top of the filing cabinet and went off

to start preparing the food.

Thirty minutes later, showered and shaved, his

hair brushed back from his sunburnt forehead, the

young man was sitting in the hotel garden in

the shade of a knotted palm tree, wolfing down his

food.

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'So what's been going on in the world, Yakub?'

he asked, breaking off a hunk of bread and

swirling it through the gravy around the edge of

his plate.

Yakub sipped his Fanta.

'You heard about the American ambassador?'

'I haven't heard anything about anything. It's

like I've been living on Mars for the last two

months.'

'He got blown up.'

The young man let out a low whistle.

'A week ago,' said Yakub. 'In Cairo. The Sword

of Vengeance.'

'Killed?'

'No, he survived. Just.'

The young man grunted. 'Shame. Wipe out all

the bureaucrats and the world would be a far

healthier place. This curry is superb, Yakub.'

Two girls, European, rose from their table on

the far side of the garden and walked past. One of

them glanced back at the young man and smiled.

He nodded in greeting.

'I think she likes you,' chuckled Yakub once

they'd gone.

'Maybe,' shrugged his companion. 'But then I'll

tell her I'm an archaeologist and she'll run a fuck-

ing mile. The first rule of archaeology, Yakub:

never tell a woman what you do. Kiss

of death.'

He finished off the last of his curry and chips

and sat back, flies humming in the tree above his

head. The air smelt of heat and woodsmoke and

roasting meat.

'So how long are you here for?' asked Yakub.

24

'In Siwa? About another hour.'

'And then you go back to the desert?'

'Then I go back to the desert.'

Yakub shook his head.

'A year you have been out there. You come

back, you get supplies, and then you disappear

again. What do you do out there in the middle of

nowhere?'

'I take measurements,' smiled the young man.

'And dig holes. And draw plans. And on a really

exciting day I might take some photographs too.'

'And what do you look for? A tomb?'

The young man shrugged. 'I suppose you could

call it that.'

'And have you found it yet?'

'Who knows, Yakub? Maybe. Maybe not. The

desert plays tricks on you. You think you've found

something and it turns out to be nothing. And

you think you've found nothing and suddenly you

realize it's something. The Sahara, as we say back

home, is one big mother-fucking prick-teaser.'

He reverted to English for this and Yakub

repeated the words, struggling to get his mouth

around them.

'On beeg modder-fockin peek-taser.'

The young man laughed, pulling cigarettes and

a small bag of grass from his shirt pocket.

'You've got it, Yakub. On beeg modder-fockin

peek-taser. And that's on a good day.'

He rolled a joint swiftly and, lighting it, drew

the smoke deep into his lungs, leaning his head

back against the bole of the palm tree and

exhaling contentedly.

'You smoke too much of that stuff, Dr John,'

25

admonished the Egyptian. 'It will make you mad.'

'On the contrary, my friend,' sighed the young

man, closing his eyes. 'Out in the desert it's just

about the only fucking thing that's keeping me

sane.'

He left the hotel half an hour later, the manilla

envelope still clutched in his hand. The afternoon

was moving on now and the sun had slipped away

towards the west, its hue thickening from a watery

yellow to a citrus orange. He strolled back

through the square to the jeep, now filled with

boxes of provisions, and, climbing in, started the

engine and idled fifty metres onto the forecourt of

the town's only garage.

'Fill it,' he said to the attendant, 'and the jerry-

cans too. And put some water in the plastic

containers. From the tap's fine.'

He threw the man the keys and walked a

hundred metres up the road to the post office.

Inside he opened the manilla envelope, pulled out

a series of photographs, checked them, and then

returned them to the envelope and licked down

the flap.

'I want to send this registered mail,' he said to

the man at the counter.

The man took the envelope, weighed it and,

pulling a form from a drawer beneath the desk,

began filling it out.

'Professor Ibrahim az-Zahir,' he said, reading

out the name written on the front, enunciating it

to make sure he had it right. 'Cairo University.'

The young man took a copy of the form, paid

and, leaving the envelope, strolled back to the

26

garage. The jeep, jerrycans and water containers

were all filled now and, with a last look around

the market square, he climbed back into the

vehicle, started the engine and motored slowly out

of the town.

He stopped briefly on the edge of the desert and

glanced wistfully back towards the town. Then,

switching on the stereo, he revved the engine and

roared forward across the sands.

They found his body two months later. Or at least

the remains of his body, fried to a crisp in the

furnace of his burnt-out jeep. A group of tourists

out on desert safari stumbled on the vehicle about

fifty kilometres south-east of Siwa, upside down at

the foot of a dune, a broken metal hulk with some-

thing inside it that passed for a human form. He

had, it seemed, rolled the jeep while cresting the

dune, although it wasn't a particularly steep dune

and, curiously, there were other tyre tracks in the