The Lost Army of Cambyses (65 page)

plan around it.'

'But I thought . . .'

'That we'd planted it out here ourselves? I fear

you've rather overestimated our capabilities. Even

with the combined resources of the Egyptian,

American and British governments we'd have

struggled to fabricate something on this scale.'

Khalifa was staring out across the crater, dis-

believing. The tangled remains of the ancient army

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stretched away as far as the eye could see – arms

and legs and heads and torsos, a jumble of ossified

flesh and sinew, with here and there an upturned

face, eyes wide, mouth open, bobbing helplessly

on a tide of shattered humanity.

'When was it found?' he whispered.

'A little over twelve months ago.' Squires

smiled. 'By a young American chap. John Cadey.

Spent an entire year working out here all on his

own. People said he was mad, but he was con-

vinced it was here and so it was. One of the

greatest finds in the history of archaeology.

Perhaps the greatest find. Just a shame he didn't

live long enough to enjoy his triumph.'

Jemal had begun clicking his worry beads, the

noise magnified and sharpened by the silence of

the desert so that it seemed to fill the air.

'How are we doing for time, Crispin?' asked

Squires.

Oates looked at his watch. 'About twenty

minutes.'

'Then I think the least we can do is to offer our

friends an explanation of how all this came about,

don't you?'

He thrust his hands into his pockets and

wandered down to the edge of the excavation

crater. Beneath him Sayf al-Tha'r's body lay

tangled in a filigree of arms and legs.

'It all began, I suppose, with a young

man named Ali Khalifa.' He stared at the body

for a moment, then turned. 'Oh yes, Inspector, we

know all about your relationship. I sympathize, I

really do. It can't have been easy, a decent law-

abiding citizen like you being the brother of

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Egypt's most wanted terrorist. Not easy at all.'

Khalifa said nothing, just stared at Squires.

Somewhere on the far side of the camp there was

a loud whump as an oil drum exploded.

'He first came to our attention in the mid-

Eighties. Prior to that he'd belonged to a variety of

minor fundamentalist groups, nothing to concern

us particularly. In 1987, however, he broke away

and, styling himself Sayf al-Tha'r, formed his own

organization. Began murdering foreign nationals.

What had initially been a domestic matter

suddenly became an international one. I became

involved on behalf of Her Majesty's government;

Massey, who you just met, acted for the

Americans.'

Teams of soldiers had started collecting dead

bodies and laying them out in rows alongside the

excavation trench. Tara watched them, Squires's

voice seeming to come from far away. Out of the

corner of her eye she could see Daniel staring out

across the remains of the army, expressionless, the

machine-gun still clutched in his hand.

'We did everything we could to catch him,' said

Squires, 'but he was clever. Always managed to

stay one step ahead. We very nearly got him in '96,

in an ambush down at Asyut, but he gave us the

slip again and hopped across the border into the

Sudan. After that it was impossible. We got plenty

of his followers, but it meant nothing if the man

himself was still at large. And so long as he stayed

out of Egypt there was no way we were going to

catch him.'

'And so you set a trap to lure him back,' said

Khalifa.

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'Well,' said Squires, smiling, 'it was really more

a case of the trap setting itself. We merely added

certain details.'

He pulled out a handkerchief and began polish-

ing the lenses of his glasses. Jemal's worry beads

were clacking faster.

'The crisis came just over a year ago when he

damn nearly assassinated the American ambassador.

That really caused a storm. We were put under

extraordinary pressure to deliver him. All sorts of

wild schemes were flying around. There was even

talk of a limited nuclear strike against northern

Sudan. Then, however, Dr Cadey made his amaz-

ing discovery and we started thinking along

altogether different lines.'

Somewhere far off there was a scream, followed

by a brief thud of gunfire.

'We'd been monitoring Cadey for some time,'

explained Jemal. 'He was working close to the

Libyan border and we wanted to ensure he was

doing nothing to compromise national security.

One day we intercepted a package he'd sent, from

Siwa. It contained photographs: a corpse,

weapons, clothing. There was a covering note.

Just one sentence: "The lost army is no longer

lost."'

'Initially we didn't appreciate the potential of

the find,' said Squires. 'It was Crispin who alerted

us to the possibilities. What was it you said, old

boy?'

'That it was a good thing Sayf al-Tha'r hadn't

discovered it or he'd be rich enough to equip an

army of his own.' Oates smiled, pleased with

himself.

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'That was the spark. We started thinking: what

if Sayf al-Tha'r
had
found it? Something that big

would be too good an opportunity to miss.

Complete financial independence. All his funding

problems over. A godsend. And he'd almost

certainly want to see it himself. It was inconceiv-

able a man as obsessed with history as he was

would stay sitting down in the Sudan while his

men were uncovering a find of that magnitude. Oh

no, he'd come back. And when he did . . .'

He raised his spectacles to his mouth, breathed

on each lens in turn, and slowly circled his hand-

kerchief around the glass. More and more dead

bodies were being laid out alongside the ex-

cavation, like rows of big black dominoes.

'We approached Cadey and asked for his co-

operation,' continued Squires, 'but he wasn't at

all accommodating, and in the end we were left

with no choice but to . . . remove him from

the equation. Unpleasant, but the stakes were too

high to let one man stand in our way.'

Tara stared at him, shaking her head, a look of

mingled horror and disbelief on her face. The

Englishman seemed not to notice her expression.

He merely held up his glasses again, examined

them and resumed polishing.

'The problem then became how to lead Sayf al-

Tha'r to the army without him actually suspecting

he was being led. That was the key: he had to

believe it was he himself who was making the dis-

covery. If it occurred to him for one instant the

find was in any way compromised he wouldn't

touch it with a barge-pole.'

'But why go to all the trouble of inventing a

542

tomb?' asked Khalifa. 'Why not just plant some-

one in his organization who claimed to know

where the army was?'

'Because he would never have believed it,'

replied Squires. 'This isn't the Theban Hills, where

people are stumbling over new finds all the time.

This is the middle of nowhere. It's inconceivable

someone would just happen to find the army.'

'Cadey did.'

'But Cadey was a professional archaeologist.

Sayf al-Tha'r's people are
fellahin,
peasants.

They'd have no business out here. It just wouldn't

have rung true.'

'Whereas the tomb of someone who'd survived

the army would?'

'In a bizarre way, yes. It was somehow so out-

landish it could only be real. Sayf al-Tha'r would

have been suspicious, of course. Who wouldn't be?

But not as suspicious as he would have been about

someone claiming to have found the army itself.'

He gave his glasses a final buff and returned his

handkerchief to his pocket. Khalifa pulled out his

cigarettes and removed one from the pack. There

was a smouldering crate nearby and, crossing to it,

he held the cigarette tip against the glowing wood.

'I really can't bear to see you having to light

your cigarettes like that, old boy,' said Squires.

Khalifa shrugged. 'Dravic took my lighter.'

'How very thoughtless of him.' Squires turned

to Jemal. 'Be a good fellow and lend the inspector

some matches, would you?'

The Egyptian pulled a box from his pocket and

threw it across.

'Has anyone seen our friend Dravic, by the

543

way?' asked Squires. 'He seems to be keeping a

remarkably low profile.'

Tara continued staring at the row of black-

robed bodies. 'He's dead,' she said, her voice dull,

beyond caring. 'On the other side of the dune.

Quicksand.'

There was a brief pause, and then Squires

smiled. 'Well, that's one less problem for us to deal

with.' He pulled another sweet from his pocket

and began tweaking at the wrapper. 'Where

was I?'

'The tomb,' said Khalifa.

'Ah yes, the tomb. Well, there was no way we

could have dug one from scratch. That would

have been wholly impractical. Fortunately there

was an existing one that fitted the bill perfectly.

Right period and design. Empty. Undecorated.

And, most importantly, unknown to anyone aside

from a handful of Theban necropolis specialists.

Sayf al-Tha'r's people certainly wouldn't have

heard of it, which was, as I'm sure you'll

appreciate, crucial if the whole thing was to

work.'

Part of the sweet was stuck to the wrapper and

he stopped for a moment to pick away the

cellophane.

'Even with a readymade tomb it still took us

almost a year to complete the job.' He sighed.

'Painstaking doesn't get even close to describing it.

The decoration had to be created from scratch and

then chemically aged to make it appear two and a

half thousand years old. And, of course, it all had

to be done under conditions of absolute secrecy.

Believe me, it was a huge operation. There were

544

times when we thought it would never be

finished.'

He finally managed to free the sweet and

slipped it into his mouth, rolling the wrapper into

a ball and putting it in his pocket.

'Still, we got there in the end. The decoration

was completed and the tomb stocked with a

selection of funerary items from the storerooms of

Luxor and Cairo museums, with a few bits from

the army itself. All that remained was to tip off

one of Sayf al-Tha'r's informants and wait for his

men to decipher the inscription.'

'Except that someone got there first,' said

Khalifa.

'The one thing we hadn't expected,' said

Squires, shaking his head. 'A million to one

chance. Ten million to one. Even then it needn't

have been a complete disaster. They might have

just taken a few objects and left the decoration

intact. As it was, they hacked out the one bit of

text that really mattered so that when Sayf al-

Tha'r's people did get there the tomb was, from

our point of view at least, completely useless.

Devastating, really.'

'Although not as devastating as it was for Nayar

and Iqbar,' said Khalifa quietly.

'No,' conceded Squires. 'Their deaths were most

regrettable. As was that of your father, Miss

Mullray.'

Tara looked up, eyes bright with hatred. 'You

used us,' she spat. 'You let them kill my father and

you didn't think twice about risking our lives too.

You're as bad as Sayf al-Tha'r.'

Squires smiled benignly. 'A slight exaggeration,

545

I think, although given the circumstances a

perfectly understandable one. Your father's death

was, sadly, beyond our control, but yes, we did use

you. As with Dr Cadey, we concluded the well-

being of the individual must be subordinated to

the wider interests of society. Distasteful, but

necessary.'

He was silent for a while, sucking on his sweet.

'Initially we had no idea what had gone wrong

with the plan. We knew that Dravic had dis-

covered the tomb, but for some reason he didn't

seem to be taking the bait. When we found out

about the piece of missing text we were faced with

an extraordinary dilemma. It was too late to abort

the whole thing, but neither could we do anything

overt to help Sayf al-Tha'r. We had no choice but

to let events take their course.'

Another gust of wind blew over them, stronger

than before, making the dune behind hiss and

whisper. The noise of Jemal's worry beads slowed

and then petered out altogether. Daniel was biting

his lip.

'Your arrival at once both complicated the

situation and offered a potential way out of it,'

said Squires to Tara. 'You were obviously sus-

picious about your father's death and there was a

danger you might start kicking up a fuss. At the

same time there was the possibility that, if