The Seventh Scroll (11 page)

"How are you?"

"A few bruises and scrapes. Nothing serious., "How did it happen?"

"A truck - it pushed us off the road."

"Not deliberate?" Nicholas felt something inside him quail as he remembered another truck on another road on another night.

I think so. The driver wore a mask, a balaclava. He crashed into us from behind. It must have been deliberate."

"Did you tell the police?"

She nodded. "Apparently the truck was reported stolen early this morning, long before the accident, while the driver was stopped at one of those Little Chef cafes. He is German. Speaks no English."

"That is the third time they have tried to kill you," Nicholas told her grimly.

"So I am taking over now."

He went out into the hospital waiting room and used the telephone there. The chief constable of the county was a personal friend, as was the hospital administrator.

By the time he returned, Georgina had come round from the anaesthetic. Although still woozy she was comfortable as they wheeled her off to the private ward that Nicholas, had arranged. The - orthopaedic surgeon arrived a few minutes later.

"Hello, Nick, what are you doing here?" he greeted Nicholas. Royan was surprised how many people knew him.

Then he turned his attention to Georgina. "How are you feeling? We have got ourselves a nice little compound fracture. Looks like confetti in there. We've managed to put it all together again, but you're going to be with us for ten days at the very least."

"Right you are, young lady," Nicholas told Royan as they left Georgina sleeping. "What more do you need to convince you? My housekeeper has made up a room for you at the Hall. I am not letting you wander around on your own any more. Otherwise, next time they try to cull you they may have a little more luck."

She was still too shaken and upset to argue, and she climbed meekly into the front seat of the Range Rover and let him drive her first to have her stitches removed and then back to Quenton Park. As soon as they arrived, he sent her up to her bedroom.

"The cook will send dinner up to you. Make sure you take the sleeping pill that the doc gave you. Somebody will fetch your gear from 's cottage to Mrs. Street. In the meantime my housekeeper has set out some

nightclothes and a toothbrush in your room for you. I don't want to hear from you again before tomorrow morning."

It was good to have him take control of her life. For the first time since that terrible night at the oasis she felt secure and safe. Still, she made one last gesture of independence and self-reliance; she flushed the Mogadon sleeping tablet down the toilet.

The nightdress that was laid on her pillow was full, length sheer silk with finest Cambrai lace at the cuffs and It. . A robe. She had never worn anything so luxurious and sensual against her skin before. She realized that it must have belonged to his wife, and the knowledge stirred mixed emotions in her. She climbed up into the four-poster bed, but even that lonely expanse of over'soft mattress and her unfamiliar surroundings did not keep her too long from sleep.

ù the morning a young housemaid woke her with aù copy of The Times and a pot of Earl Grey tea, then returned a few minutes later with her holdall.

"Sir Nicholas would like you to take breakfast with him in the dining room at eight-thirty., While she showered Royan inspected her naked body in the full-length mirror that covered one wall of -the bathroom. Apart from the knife wound on her -arm, which was still livid and only partially healed, there was a dark bruise on her thigh and another down her left flank and buttock, legacies of the car crash. Her shin was scraped raw, and gingerly she pulled a pair of socks over the injury.

She limped a little as she went down the main staircase to find the dining room.

"Please help yourself." Nicholas looked up from his newspaper to greet her as she hesitated in the doorway. He waved at the display of breakfast dishes on the sideboard.

As she spooned scrambled eggs on to her plate, she recognized the landscape on the wall in front of her as a Constable.

"Did you sleep well?" He didn't wait for an answer, but went on, "I have heard from the police. They found the MAN truck abandoned in a lay-by near Harrogate. They are going over it now but they don't expect to find much.

We seem to be dealing with someone who knows what he is doing."

"I must phone the hospital," she said.

"I have already done so. Your mother had an easy night. I left a message that you would visit her this evening."

"This evening?" She looked around sharply. "Why so late?"

"I intend to keep you busy until then. I want to get my money's worth out of you."

He stood as she came to the table, and drew back her chair to seat her. She found the courtesy made her feel slightly uncomfortable, but she made no comment.

"The first attack on you and Duraid at your villa in the oasis - we can draw no conclusions from that" apart from the fact that the assassins knew exactly what they were after, and where to look for it." She found the abrupt change of subject disconcerting. "However, let's give some thought to the second attempt in Cairo. The hand grenade.

Who knew you were going to the Ministry that afternoon, apart from the minister himself?"

She reflected as she chewed and swallowed a mouthful of egg. "I am not sure. I think I told Duraid's secretary, maybe one of the other research assistants."

He frowned and shook his head. "So half the museum staff knew about your appointment?"

"That is about it, yes. Sorry."

He pondered a moment, "All right. Who knew you were leaving Cairo?

Who knew you were staying at your mother's cottage?"

"One of the clerks from administration brought my slides out to the airport."

"Did you tell him what flight you were leaving on?"

"No, definitely not."

"Did you tell anybody at all?"

"No. That is.-'she hesitated.

"Yes?"

"I told the minister himself during our interview, when I asked for leave of absence. Not him surely not?" her expression. reflected her horror at the thought.

Nicholas shrugged, "Some funny things happen. Of course, the minister knew all about the work that you and Duraid were doing on the seventh scroll?"

"Not all the details, but - yes - in general terms he knew what we were up to.

"All right. Next question, tea or coffee?" He poured coffee into her cup, and then went on, "You said that nso Duraid had a list of possible sponsors for an expedition.

Might give us some ideas as to a short-list of suspects?"

"The Getty Museum," she said, and he' smiled.

"Cross one from the list. They don't go around tossing grenades in the streets of Cairo. Who else was there on the list?, "Gotthold Ernst von Schiller."

"Hamburg. Heavy industry. Metal and alloy refineries.

Base mineral production."Nicholas nodded. "Who was the third name on the list?"

"Peter Walsh," she said. "The Texan."

"That's the one," he nodded. "Lives in Fort Worth. Fast-food'franchising. Mail order retail." There were very few collectors with the substance to compete with the major institutions when it came to making significant of antiquities or to financing archaeological acquisitions exploration. Nicholas knew them all, for it was a mutually antagonistic circle of no more than a couple of dozen men.

He had competed with each of them at one time or ano& on the auction floors of Sotheby's and Christie's, not to mention other less salubrious venues where "fresh' antiquities were sold. The adjective "fresh' was used in the context of "fresh out of the ground'.

"Those are two beady-eyed bandits. They would probably eat their own children if they felt peckish. What would they do if they thought you stood in their way to the tomb of Mamose? Do you know if either of them contacted Duraid after the book was published, the way I did?"

"I don't know. They may have."

"I cannot imagine that either of those beauties would have missed such an easy trick. We must believe that they both know that Duraid had something going on. We will put their names on our list of suspects." Then he inspected her plate. "Enough? Another spoonful of egg? No? Very well, let's go down to the museum and see what Mrs. Street has found for us to work on."

When they walked into his study, she was impressed by the amount of organization that he had accomplished in such a short time. He must have been busy at it all last night, turning the room into a military-type headquarters.

In the centre of the room stood a large easel and blackboard which were pinned a set of overlapping satellite photographs. She went across to study them, and then glanced at the other material pinned on the board. Along with a large-scale map covering the same area of southwestern Ethiopia as the satellite photographs there were lists of names and addresses, lists of equipment and stores which he had obviously used on previous African expeditions, sheets of calculations of distance and what looked like a preliminary financial budget. At the top of the board was a schedule headed "Ethiopia - General Information'. There were five closely typed sheets, so she did not read through the entire schedule, but she was impressed by his thoroughness in preparation.

Royan determined to study all this material at the earliest opportunity, but now she crossed to one of the two chairs he had set up at a table facing the board. He stood at the board and picked up a silver-topped swagger stick from the table, brandishing it like a schoolmaster's pointer.

"Class will come to order." He rapped on the board.

"The first thing you have to do is convince me that we will be able to pick up the spoor of Taita again after it has had several thousand years to cool. Let us first consider the geographical features of the Abbay gorge." Nicholas described the course of the river on the satellite photograph with his pointer. "Along this section the river has cut its way through the flood basalt plateaux.

In places the cliff of the sub-gorge are sheer, as high as four or five hundred feet on each side. Where there are intrusive strata of harder igneous schists the river has not been able to erode them. They form a series of gigantic steps in the course of the river. I think you are correct in your assumption that Taita's "steps" are actually waterp falls." He came to the table and picked out a photograph from amongst the bundles of papers that covered it. "I took this in the gorge during the Armed Forces Expedition in 1976. It will give you an idea of what some of those falls are like."

He passed her a black and white riverscape of towering cliffs on either hand and a cascade of water that seemed to fall from the heavens to dwarf the tiny figures of half-naked men and boats in the foreground.

"I had no idea it was. like thad' She stared at it in awe.

"Doesn't do justice to the splendid desolation down he told her. "From a photographer's there in the gorge, gra point of view there. is no place to stand from which you can get it all into perspective. But at least you can see how that waterfall would halt a party of Egyptians coming upriver on foot, or at least with pack horses. There is usually some sort of path alongside the cataracts made by elephant and other wild game over the ages. However, there is simply no way to bypass waterfalls such as this one, and to get around those cliffs."

She nodded, and he went on, "Even coming downstream we had to lower the boats and all our equipment down each set of waterfalls on ropes. It wasn't easy."

"Let us agree that it was a waterfall that stopped them going further - the second waterfall from the westerly approaches," she conceded. Nicholas picked up the swagger stick and on the satellite photograph traced the course of the river up from the dark wedge shape of the Roseires dam in central Sudan.

"The escarpment, rises on the Ethiopian side of the border, that is where the gorge proper begins. No roads or towns in there, and only two bridges far upstream. Nothing for five hundred miles except racing Nile waters and savage black basalt rock." He paused to let that sink in.

"It is one of the last true wildernesses on earth, with an evil reputation as the haunt of wild animals and even wilder men. I have marked the main falls that show in the gut of the gorge here on the satellite photo." With the pointer he picked them out, each circled neatly in red marker pen.

"Here is waterfall number two, about a hundred and twenty miles upstream from the Sudanese border. However, there are a number of factors we have to consider, not least the fact that the river may have altered its course during the last four thousand years since our friend,

"Taita, visited it."

"Surely it could not have escaped from such a deep canyon, four thousand feet," she protested. "Even the Nile must be held captive by that?"

"Yes, but it would certainly have altered the existing bed. In the flood season the volume and force of the river exceeds my ability to describe it to you. The river rises twenty metres up the side walls and bores through at speeds 3; of ten knots or more."

"You navigated that?" she asked doubtfully.

"Not in the flood season. Nothing could survive that.

They both stared at the photograph in silence for a minute, imagining the terrors of that mighty stretch of water in its fury.

Then she reminded him, "The second waterfall?

"Here it is, where one of the tributary rivers enters the main flow of the Abbay. The tributary is the Dandera river and it rises at twelve thousand feet altitude, below the peak of Sancai Mountain in the Choke range, here about a hundred miles north of the gorge."

"Do you remember the spot where it joins the Abbay from when you were there?"

"It was over twenty years ago, and even then we had been almost a month down there in the gorge, so it all seemed to merge into a single nightmare. The memory bluffed with the monotonous surroundings of the cliffs and the dense Jungle of the walls, and our senses were dulled by the heat and the insects and the roar of water and the repetitive, unremitting toil at the oars i But, strangely, I do remember the confluence of the Dandera and the Abbay for two reasons."