The Lost Army of Cambyses (32 page)

drew him in to the table.

'Take a look at this,' he said.

Lying on the ink blotter was a fragment of

yellow papyrus, very frayed, with six columns

of black hieroglyphic text and, in one corner,

badly faded, part of a hawk's head with a solar

disc on top of it. Habibi handed Khalifa the

magnifying glass.

'Opinion, please.'

It was a game they always played. The professor

would produce an artefact of some kind and

Khalifa would attempt to work out what it was.

The detective bent down now and gazed at the

papyrus.

'My hieroglyphs aren't so good any more,' he

said. 'There's not much call for them in police

work.'

He skimmed along the lines of text.

'One of the afterlife books?' he ventured.

'Very good! But which one?'

Khalifa returned to the text. 'Amduat?' he asked

uncertainly. And then, before Habibi had had time

to comment, 'No, the Book of the Dead.'

'Bravo, Yusuf! I really am very impressed. But

now can you date it?'

That was harder. The prayers and rituals con-

tained in the Book of the Dead had first appeared

in the royal tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty and

had hardly changed for the next 1,500 years. The

hieroglyphs themselves might have given some

indication of date – stylistically the signs would

have altered over the centuries – but if they did

271

Khalifa wasn't sufficiently expert to be able to

spot it. The only possible clues were the hawk's

head surmounted by the solar disc and a name in

the text: Amenemheb.

'New Kingdom,' he guessed eventually.

'Reason?'

'The Re-Harakhty figure.' Re-Harakhty was the

state god of the New Kingdom. And Amenemheb

was a typical New Kingdom name.

Habibi nodded his approval.

'Impeccable reasoning. Wrong, but impeccable

reasoning nonetheless. Try again, go on.'

'I've really no idea, Professor. Third

Intermediate?'

'Wrong!'

'Late Period?'

'Wrong!' The professor was enjoying himself.

'One last chance,' he chuckled.

'God knows. Graeco-Roman?'

'Afraid not.' He laughed, clapping Khalifa on

the shoulder. 'Actually, it's twentieth.'

'Twentieth Dynasty? But I said the New

Kingdom!'

'Not Twentieth Dynasty, Yusuf. Twentieth

century.'

Khalifa's jaw dropped. 'It's a fake?'

'Indeed it is. A very good one, but definitely a

fake.'

'How can you tell? It looks absolutely genuine.'

Habibi laughed. 'You'd be amazed how skilled

these forgers are. Not just with the artwork but

with the materials too. They have ways of ageing

the ink and the papyrus to make them look

thousands of years old. It's an exceptional

272

talent. A shame they use it to hoodwink people.'

He reached for the sherry bottle and refilled his

glass.

'But how did you know?' asked Khalifa again.

'What gives it away?'

As before, the sherry disappeared in one gulp.

'Well, there are various tests you can do.

Carbon-14 on the papyrus strands. Microscopic

analysis of the ink. In this case, however, I didn't

have to call in the scientists. I could see just by

examining it. Go on, take another look.'

Khalifa bent over the papyrus again and sur-

veyed it through the magnifying glass. Look as he

might, however, he could find nothing to suggest it

was anything other than the real thing.

'It's got me fooled,' he said, straightening and

handing the glass back to the professor. 'It's

absolutely perfect.'

'Exactly! And that's how you can tell. Look at

any ancient Egyptian manuscript, inscription, wall

painting – they're never perfect. There's always at

least one tiny blemish: a drip of ink, a misaligned

hieroglyph, a figure facing the wrong way.

However minute, you can find at least one mis-

take. But not on the forgeries. They're always

faultless. And that's what gives them away.

They're just too good. The ancients were never

that precise. It's the attention to detail that lets the

forgers down.'

He leaned across Khalifa and, picking up the

papyrus, scrunched it into a ball and threw it in

the bin. He then lumbered back round the desk

and sat down heavily in his old leather chair,

pulling a briar pipe from a shelf behind him, filling

273

it with tobacco and lighting it. Khalifa lit a

cigarette of his own and, reaching into his pocket,

removed the bundle of artefacts in their cloth

wrapping and laid it on the desk in front of

Habibi.

'OK,' he smiled. 'Now it's your turn. What can

you tell me about these?'

Habibi looked up at him through wafts of blue

pipe smoke and, an intrigued grin on his face, undid

the bundle. Before him lay the seven objects Khalifa

had found in Iqbar's shop. The professor leaned for-

ward and ran his wrinkled hands over them, gently,

lovingly, as though trying to reassure them, win their

confidence.

'Interesting,' he said. 'Very interesting. Where

are they from?'

'That's for you to tell me,' said Khalifa.

Habibi chuckled and returned his attention to

the objects. He switched on the lamp beside him

and picked up the magnifying glass. One by one he

lifted the artefacts and examined them, swivelling

them back and forth in the light, bringing them

right up to his face, his bloodshot eye swelling and

receding in the thickness of the glass. The office

echoed to the rasping of his breath.

'Well?' asked Khalifa after almost five minutes

had elapsed.

Habibi laid down the
shabti
he was looking at

and sat back. His pipe had gone out and he spent

another minute slowly refilling and lighting it. He

was relishing the moment, like someone who has

been asked to identify a particularly rare wine

and, after careful tasting, is quietly confident he

knows what it is.

274

'Persian occupation,' he said eventually.

Khalifa raised his eyebrows. 'Persian

occupation?'

'That's right.'

There was a brief pause.

'First or second?'

Habibi chuckled. 'A ruthless examiner! He lets

me get away with nothing. First, I'd say, although

I couldn't give you a precise date. Some time

between 525 and 404 BC. The
shabtis,
however,

would seem to be a little later.'

'Later?'

'Second Persian probably, although they might

possibly be Thirtieth Dynasty. Objects like that are

almost impossible to tie down to a specific date,

especially very simple ones like these without any

legend or inscription. There are no obvious

stylistic indications. You just have to go on feel.'

'And these feel Second Persian?'

'Or Thirtieth Dynasty.'

Khalifa was silent for a moment, thinking. 'Are

they genuine?'

'Oh yes,' replied Habibi. 'No doubt about that.

They're all real.'

He took a deep puff on his pipe. Somewhere

beneath them a tannoy system announced that the

museum was closing in ten minutes.

'Anything else?' asked Khalifa.

'Depends what you want to know. The terra-

cotta ointment jar probably belonged to a soldier.

We have several of the same type. They seem to

have been standard military issue of that period.

The dagger too suggests a military connection.

You can see here, the blade's notched and worn, so

275

it wasn't just ceremonial or votive, it was actually

used. The pectoral is interesting. It's high status.

Better quality than the other stuff.'

'Which tells you what?'

'Well,' mused the professor, sucking on his pipe,

'either it came from a different source from

the other items, or else the person who owned the

ointment jar and dagger enjoyed a dramatic

improvement in their fortunes.'

Khalifa laughed. 'You should have joined the

police. With those powers of deduction you'd be a

chief inspector by now.'

'Maybe.' Habibi waved his pipe dismissively.

'But then I could be talking complete rubbish.

That's the thing about working with the ancient

past. You can put forward any crackpot theory

you like – no-one's ever going to prove you wrong.

It's all interpretation.'

He reached for the sherry bottle and poured

himself a third glass. This time, however, he didn't

down it in one, just sipped slowly.

'So tell me, Yusuf. Where are they from?'

Khalifa sucked out the last from his cigarette

and ground it into the ashtray.

'Luxor, I think. From a new tomb.'

Habibi nodded slowly. 'Something to do with a

case you're working on?'

It was Khalifa's turn to nod.

'I won't ask you for the details.'

'Probably best not to.'

Habibi picked up a pen from his desk and

prodded at the bowl of his pipe, tamping down the

ash. Another announcement drifted up from

below. They sat in silence for a while.

276

'It's to do with Ali, isn't it?' said Habibi eventu-

ally.

'Sorry?'

'The case, these objects – it's to do with Ali?'

'What makes you . . .'

'I can read it in your face, Yusuf. In your voice.

You don't spend your life studying dead people

without learning a little bit about living ones as

well. I can see it, Yusuf. This is about your

brother.'

Khalifa said nothing. The professor came to his

feet and walked slowly around the desk. He

passed behind the detective, and for a moment

Khalifa thought he was going to a bookcase on the

far side of the room. Then he felt the professor's

hand on his shoulder. Despite the man's age, the

grip was still firm.

'Arwa and I . . .' the professor started, his voice

unsteady. 'When you and Ali first appeared in our

lives . . .'

He stopped mid-sentence. Khalifa turned and

took the old man's hand in his.

'I know,' he said quietly.

'Just be careful, Yusuf. That's all I ask. Just be

careful.'

They remained like that for a moment and then

Habibi broke away and moved back to his chair.

'Let's have another look at these things, shall

we?' he said, trying to sound cheerful. 'See what

else we can tell you. Where did I put that damned

magnifying glass?'

277

26

LUXOR

Omar showed them to a simple room on the upper

level of his house, with a rough concrete floor and

no glass in the window. While his wife and eldest

daughter brought in cushions and sheets, his three

other children lingered in the doorway, staring at

the new arrivals. The youngest of them, a boy,

seemed fascinated by Tara's hair. She lifted him up

and he rolled a strand of it around his knuckles,

whispering something to his mother.

'What did he say?' she asked.

'That it feels like a horse's tail,' said Omar.

'So much for conditioner.' She smiled, tweaking

the boy's nose and putting him down again. She

found something curiously comforting about

having the family around her, as though they

formed an invisible barrier of warmth and

innocence between her and the outside world.

Once he'd made sure they were comfortable Omar

ushered the others from the room.

'I will go out now and see what I can find,' he

278

said. 'In the meantime, this is your home. You will

be safe here. In Luxor, at least, the name of

el-Farouk still offers some protection.'

When he had gone they showered and climbed

up onto the flat roof of the house, where washing

was hanging on a line and a mound of red-brown

dates lay drying on a sheet. They gazed at the

Theban Hills for a while, rearing above them like

a great brown wave, then turned and looked

eastwards towards the river. Smoke was rising

from fields where farmers were burning off the

stubble of their harvested maize and sugar cane; a

cart piled high with straw moved slowly across

their line of sight, pulled by a team of water

buffalo. A pair of white egrets swooped low along

the surface of a muddy canal; a group of children

was playing on top of a mound of earth, throwing

sticks at a dog chained below. From somewhere

far off came the soft putter of an irrigation

pump.

'I feel we ought to be doing something,' she said

after a long silence.

'Like what?'

'I don't know. It just seems wrong to come all

this way and then simply stand around taking in

the view. After what's happened.'

'There's not much we can do, Tara. At least not

till Omar gets back. Our next move depends on

what he finds out.'

'I know, I know. But I feel powerless just wait-

ing. Like we're at the mercy of events. My father's

dead. People are trying to kill us. I want to do

something. Find some answers.'

He reached out and touched her shoulder. 'I