The Lost Army of Cambyses (44 page)

images. They would drift into her head, but then

dissipate again as soon as she reached out to them.

And behind them, always, would be the face of

Dravic, gazing out at her with that repugnant leer.

She tossed and turned and then sat up again and

buried her face in her hands, despairing.

Eventually, some time in the early afternoon,

when the sun was at its zenith and the air in the

tent was so hot she didn't think she could stand it

any more, the door flap flew back and a head

poked through. Something was said to their

guard, who stood and, pointing his gun at them,

motioned them outside. They looked at each other

and then, coming to their feet, stepped past

him and out into the sunlight, their eyes narrow-

ing to thin slits against the glare. Their tent was

part of a large encampment pitched in the middle

of a valley between high dunes, the one to the left

sloping steeply upwards, the other, to the right,

rising more gently. Everywhere were piles of oil

drums, ropes, bales of straw and wooden packing

crates. A helicopter swept in low overhead, a net

holding more crates and drums suspended beneath

it, dropping down into the valley and landing on a

flat area of sand, where a dozen black-robed

figures swarmed around it, unloading the equip-

ment and carrying it away.

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Tara barely noticed any of this, however, for the

thing that immediately caught her eye was neither

the helicopter nor the encampment but rather a

vast, pyramid-shaped rock rearing up ahead of

her. Her line of vision was partly blocked by the

tents and crates so she could see only the upper

part of it, but even that was enough to give an

indication of its huge size. There was something

faintly threatening about it sitting there in the

middle of the desert, black and solid against

the surrounding sands, and a shiver rippled down

her spine. The men, she noticed, were doing their

best to avoid looking at it.

They set off through the camp, one guard walk-

ing in front, two behind, emerging from its

northern end and climbing to the top of a steep

sandy mound, where Dravic was standing beneath

an umbrella, a straw sunhat perched on his head.

'I hope you both slept well,' he said, chuckling,

as they were led up to him.

'Fuck you,' snarled Daniel.

From the summit of the mound they were

afforded an uninterrupted view straight up the

valley, which curved gently northwards into

the distance, like a trough between tidal waves of

sand. The huge rock was directly in front of them,

its entire bulk now visible, erupting from the flank

of the left-hand dune like a needle-head jutting

through soft yellow material. Beneath it, dwarfed

by the towering mass above them, were a crowd

of men wielding spades and
tourias,
while from its

base five long tubes snaked out, running up the

side of the dune and disappearing over the top.

The chug of generators was much louder now,

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filling the air with a heavy rhythmic flutter, like

the beating of thousands of wings.

'I thought you might like to see,' said Dravic.

'After all, it's not as if you'll have the chance to tell

anyone.'

Again that insidious throaty chuckle. Tara could

feel him staring at her, eyes roving lasciviously

across her body. She shivered with disgust and

moved back a step, placing Daniel between them.

Dravic grunted and turned away, looking back up

the valley. He removed a cigar from his shirt

pocket and jammed it into his mouth.

'The place was even easier to find than we

thought,' he boasted. 'I had feared that the

measurements in the tomb might only be rough

estimates, as is so often the case with ancient texts,

but our friend Dymmachus pinpointed the spot to

within five kilometres. A remarkable feat, given

that he had no modern technology to guide him.'

He raised a lighter and ignited the cigar, puffing it

slowly into life, his lips making a popping sound

as they drew on its end. 'We began an aerial sweep

of the area at first light,' he continued, 'and had

located the site within an hour. After all the com-

plications of the last four days it was a bit of an

anticlimax. I had been expecting more drama.'

Away to their right a pair of scrambler bikes

powered up the flank of the dune, engines whin-

ing, their tyres cutting a deep swathe in the sand

as though unzipping the slope beneath them.

'As it is, everything has gone like clockwork,'

Dravic said, smiling broadly, goading them with

his success. 'Better than clockwork. We've flown

in enough equipment to be getting on with: fuel

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for the generators, packing crates, straw to protect

the finds. More is on its way by camel. We've

already located a cluster of inscriptions down

there on the rock face, so we know the army must

be nearby. All we have to do now' – he broke off,

sucking deeply on his cigar – 'is to find it. Which

I am expecting to do in a matter of hours.'

'It might not be as easy as you think,' said

Daniel, glaring at him. 'These dunes are shifting

all the time. God knows what level the desert floor

was at two and a half thousand years ago. The

army could be fifty metres down. More. You could

dig for weeks and still not find it.'

Dravic shrugged. 'With traditional methods,

perhaps. Fortunately, we have slightly more up-to-

date equipment at our disposal.'

He pointed down at the five tubes snaking away

from the base of the giant outcrop. Each one, Tara

now noticed, had two men standing to either side

of its open end. They were gripping what looked

like handles, and passing the mouth of the tube

back and forth across the sand, which was being

sucked up into the snaking plastic gullet behind.

'Sand-vacuums,' explained Dravic. 'Apparently

they're all the rage in the Gulf. They use them to

clear sand away from airport runways, oil

pipelines, that sort of thing. They work on exactly

the same principle as a normal vacuum cleaner.

The sand is drawn in, passes through the tube and

is then deposited a suitable distance away, in this

case on the far side of that dune. Each one can, I

am told, shift almost a hundred tons per hour. So

I think we'll be finding our army rather sooner

than you think.'

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'You'll be seen,' said Daniel. 'You can't keep this

size of operation secret for long.'

Dravic laughed, sweeping his arm around him

in a wide arc. 'Who's going to see us? We're in the

middle of a desert, for God's sake! The nearest

settlement's a hundred and twenty kilometres

away, there are no commercial flight paths over-

head. You're clutching at straws, Lacage.' He blew

a billow of smoke into Daniel's face and his

laughter redoubled. 'What a dilemma all this must

be for you! On the one hand you must be yearn-

ing for me to fail in my task. Yet at the same time,

as an archaeologist, a part of you must also be

desperate for me to succeed.'

'I don't give a shit about the army,' snapped

Daniel.

'You lie, Lacage! You lie with every bone in

your body. You're as anxious to know what's

down there as I am. We are the same, you and me.'

'Don't flatter yourself.'

'Yes, Lacage, we are! We're the same. We both

live by the past. We have an irresistible need to dig

into it. It is not enough for us simply to know that

somewhere out here in the desert there is a buried

army. We must find it. We must see it. We must

make it our own. For both of us it is intolerable

that history should keep things from us. Oh, I

understand you, Lacage. Better than you under-

stand yourself. You care more about what's down

there than you do about your own life. Than you

do about the life of your friend here.'

'That's bullshit!' snapped Daniel. 'Bullshit!'

'Is it?' Dravic chuckled. 'I think not. I could cut

her throat right here in front of you and a part of

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you would still be willing me to succeed. It's an

addiction, Lacage. An impossible addiction. And

we both suffer from it.'

Daniel stared at him and for a brief moment it

seemed to Tara that Dravic's words had touched

something deep inside him. There was a confusion

in his eyes, a disgust almost, as if he had been

shown a part of himself that he would prefer not

to acknowledge. It disappeared almost immedi-

ately and, shaking his head, he thrust his hands

defiantly into his pockets.

'Fuck you, Dravic.'

The giant smiled. 'I can assure you that if there's

any fucking to be done around here, I'm the one

who's going to be doing it.'

He leaned back slightly and looked at Tara, then

nodded at the three guards. They raised their guns,

and prodded them back down the side of the

mound towards the camp.

'And don't think about trying to escape,' Dravic

called after them. 'If the heat doesn't get you, the

sinking sand certainly will. It's everywhere around

here. In fact maybe that's how I should dispose of

you both. Much more entertaining than a bullet

through the head.'

He grinned and turned back towards the

excavation. Below him the workmen started to

sing.

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32

LUXOR, THE THEBAN HILLS

There was a place Khalifa used to go when he

needed to think, up in the Theban Hills, beneath

the shadow of the Qurn, and he went there now.

He'd discovered it years ago when he'd first

arrived in Luxor – a natural seat in the rock, cut

into a low cliff halfway up the mountain, with

spectacular views down into the Valley of the

Kings below. He would sit there for hours, alone

and peaceful, and however confused he was feel-

ing at the time, however miserable or hopeless or

wretched, his head would always clear and his

spirits lift. His thinking seat, he called it. There

was no place in the world he felt more in touch

with himself or with Allah.

The sun was already past its zenith by the time

he got up there. He sat down and rested his back

against the cool limestone, staring out across the

sun-baked hills. Far below he could see people

wandering through the valley, small as ants. He lit

a cigarette.

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The meeting with Hassani had rattled him.

Badly. His immediate reaction, of course, had been

to reject the promotion and continue with the

case. Two people's lives were in danger, after all –

if indeed they were still alive – and he couldn't

simply turn his back on them. Nor could he forget

what had been done to Suleiman and Nayar and

Iqbar. Nor, in a sense, his brother Ali, too.

And yet, despite that, he had doubts. He didn't

want to, but he did. This wasn't a movie, after all,

where everything was guaranteed to work out OK

in the end. This was reality and, although he

despised himself for it, he was afraid.

To go up against Sayf al-Tha'r was dangerous

enough. Now it seemed there were enemies on his

own side too. God knows who and God knows

why, but they were powerful. Powerful enough to

scare Hassani, and that took some doing.

'There's nothing I can do to protect you,' the

chief had said. And he hadn't just been talking

about Khalifa's career. He had meant his life. And

perhaps the lives of his family too. Was it right to

put at risk those he loved most in the world? He

owed nothing to Nayar and Iqbar and Suleiman,

after all, nor to the English couple. And Ali? Well,

yes, that would always torment him, but was it

worth this? Maybe he should drop the case. Take

the promotion, go to Ismailiya. Sure, he'd hate

himself for it. But at least he'd be alive. And his

loved ones too. He flicked his cigarette away and

looked up at some crude hieroglyphs scratched

into the cliff face beside the seat. There were three

cartouches – those of Horemheb, Ramesses I and

Seti I. Beneath them was a brief inscription, left by

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