The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (34 page)

Dante looked lost. I was not surprised. He had come to Egypt on a moment’s notice for the sole purpose of meeting with me, and I had not shown up. I assumed he was now wondering what to do with himself. I was curious to see what Dante Giordano
would
do with himself when he did not know anyone was watching.

He walked the streets for quite some time, scanning the hordes of tourists out and about in Luxor. He paused to step into a small souvenir shop, and when he stepped back out he was examining a large fold-out map. He found the waterfront and walked along the Nile, still scanning the crowd.

You won’t find me
, I thought.

He entered another shop, and this time a man followed him out. The man gestured toward a street corner, rambling in Arabic. Dante smiled and nodded, thanking the other man in Italian. Then he approached the corner and sat down.

He was sitting at a bus stop. And I knew it was time to move in.

When I knelt down to peer into his face, Dante looked up in shock. Instinctively, I leaned in toward him to whisper, but the effect was the opposite of what I had intended. He gasped audibly and lunged backward as if a large spider had just dropped from the sky to dangle before his eyes.

“Don’t react,” I said as quietly as I could, and his eyes widened again. Then he seemed to relax. He peered inward as if trying to see the eyes behind my veil. I could feel other eyes upon me as well.

“Katrina?” Dante said softly.

“Let’s go,” I said and stood up to leave, gathering the folds of my galabia and straining to see through the mud-caked porthole of my niqab.

“Where’s Alyssa?” I asked as we walked.

“Katrina…” he said. “She…”

Just like that, I knew.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“I went to the museum like you said,” Dante said quietly. Tears had welled up in his eyes. “I couldn’t find her, so I asked around. I found someone who worked with her. They said she had been shot and killed in her apartment.”

My chest was constricting and I was struggling to breathe. I sat down on a swath of grass running along the bank of the Nile.

I saw Jeff lying dead and naked on the deck of my yacht. I saw a bloody, smeared handprint on a metal banister and a pistol silencer lying next to his body. Now Alyssa, too, had been killed in her own home. And for what? For a two-thousand-year-old message on papyrus? A message that—according to Alyssa—nobody even knew existed except for him, her, and me?

“
Oh, God
,” I groaned, wondering if I had been her undoing, if I had guided her murderer toward her, if I had offered her up as a sacrifice just as I was now offering myself. And with Alyssa dead, my odds of finding the answers I needed had just become exponentially smaller.

I looked back at Dante but then had to look away.

“Katrina?”

I slowly came back to attention, with no idea how long I had been sitting there lost in thought.

“Yeah?”

“Why are you dressed like that?”

I took a breath. I had to tell him something. But I did not have to tell him everything.

“Because I think someone is after me,” I said. “And because the best case scenario is that it’s Middle Eastern law enforcement.”

I paused and then continued, “That’s why I wasn’t able to meet you at the café earlier. I thought I was being followed. I was planning to call your cell again, but then I ran into you at that bus stop. Were you planning on leaving Egypt?”

Dante shrugged. “Uh, yeah, I guess so. I didn’t know what else to do. I thought you stood me up.” He smiled with a sincerity that made me question, just for a moment, if he could really be a killer.

A moment later, I bolted upright.

“Oh,
fuck!
” I said inelegantly.

Dante smiled with relief. “That’s my girl.”

I leapt up from my position in the grass, nearly falling back down as I tripped on the long galabia. I surveyed the area around us for police, or worse.

I grabbed Dante’s arm and jerked on it as if I could physically lift him. “We need to go!”

Following my lead, he stood abruptly and quickly dusted off his jeans.

“Where?” he asked, but he was already following me down the street, jogging for a few paces to catch up with me and then slowing to the same brisk walk I had adopted.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I bought this outfit to get out of sight in Egypt. At first, it seemed to work. Then I received a crash course in fundamental Islam, and I learned that I stood out anyway just by being alone. At least, by being alone, touring ruins, and speaking English.

“Now there is a new reason that I stand out—you and I your typical Egyptian couple do not currently make.”

Without speaking, Dante removed his backward baseball cap and tossed it into a sidewalk garbage can as we walked. Now, he understood. But he was still probably the only man in Egypt wearing a sleeveless shirt, covered in tattoos, and escorting a woman in niqab.

I have come to be a protector unto thee. I waft unto thee air for thy nostrils, and the north wind which cometh forth from the god Tem unto thy nose. I have made whole for thee thy windpipe. I make thee to live like a god. Thine enemies have fallen under thy feet. I have made thy word to be true before Nut, and thou art mighty before the gods.

-Egyptian Book of the Dead

Funeral chamber speech of Isis

Chapter Twenty-Three

The pair that stepped out of the Luxor tourist bazaar might have been a typical American mother and grown son on vacation. Both wore nondescript blue jeans and black sneakers. Both wore long-sleeved, loose T-shirts of neutral colors. And although the relentless Egyptian sun was now finally subsiding for the day, both wore wide-brimmed hats and sunglasses. A passerby would not have paid notice to either of them.

I was now a brunette. A highly capable seamstress at a dilapidated fabric store had questioned her understanding of my English when I asked her to shear off more than a foot of my hair. And then I ducked into a public restroom and dyed the remaining shoulder-length locks while Dante waited patiently outside.

As I slipped into the body of a stranger once again, I also forced myself to slip into the mind of a different woman. A woman who had not befriended a man she now believed was involved in her husband’s murder. Because I needed him.

“So what now?” Dante asked when I emerged from the restroom.

“Luxor Temple,” I said, pointing to the massive ruin adjacent to the bazaar.

“My original plan was to meet you and Alyssa here and not at the café,” I told Dante as we passed through the temple’s entrance. “But I have come to learn in no uncertain terms that I stand out in a big way touring ruins by myself in Egypt—no matter what I am wearing…” I trailed off when I noticed that he was not listening.

His neck craned backward, he was gaping upward at the massive colonnade of pillars we were walking through. His expression was sheer awe.

When his gaze returned to me, he was smiling. But then he frowned. “Come here,” he ordered abruptly and led me out of the main temple.

We passed back through the colonnade and approached the two formidable rows of sphinxes lining the street that led to the temple. The enormous man-cats bore expressions of duty, of loyalty, of power.

The entire area surrounding the temple was sealed off to prevent unpaid visitors, but a crowd naturally congregated at the temple itself. As we progressed along the avenue of sphinxes and away from the temple entrance, the crowd thinned. Panic began to consume me as he led me farther away from other people.

The pistol, stolen from a Luxor policeman, was in my purse. I had thought that I would not need it until Dante and I were alone. And now we were, and I was unprepared. I tried to appear casual as I slipped a hand into my purse to feel for the weapon.

Dante leaned in toward me, and I shrank back as if from a predator. But he merely asked me a question. “Why are you here? And tell me the truth. I’ve just traveled for a whole day to a country I know nothing about because you asked me to. I was happy to do it. But if you don’t tell me why, then I came here for no reason. Don’t you agree?”

I looked up at him, and for a moment I did not answer. This was my last chance to back out. My last chance to make up some other answer, something to send him away rather than drawing him in. But I knew I had already crossed that line. I crossed it the moment I first saw my husband’s corpse and decided to conceal his murder.

So I slipped into bed with my enemy, just as Cleopatra had married her two brothers in succession before having each of them murdered. The bait used by the Ptolemies was the lighthouse. With it, they lured their enemies into bringing knowledge to the Ptolemaic library. My bait would be that knowledge.

“OK, Dante,” I said. “Remember what I told you back in Pompeii? I told you that I’m looking for an ancient plant called a nardo. It appears that under some very rare circumstance this plant can produce a cure for cancer. It is the reason my husband was killed. It is also the reason I’m now in danger. And I think the plant originated here in Egypt. I also think it was discovered by Queen Cleopatra during her era as the New Isis, reigning queen and goddess of medicine.

“So I called you and Alyssa to help me find it. I called Alyssa because she was an Egyptologist and I am not. I called you because I need a male escort and because I know you are an expert in pagan theology, another area where my knowledge is severely lacking.

“Without Alyssa, this search will be much, much harder. But I know plant biology, and I know how to make medicines. Together, you and I can find the right plant. And hopefully we can also figure out why that cop Rossi was trying to kill us for it.”

And if I have to, I will kill you both before bringing the isotope to my daughter.

We walked slowly back toward the temple and the crowd, my purse heavy with the weight of the pistol.

Dante appeared deep in thought.

“I went to Alexandria,” I told him. “I saw the site where the Caesarium once stood.”

“Yeah?” Dante asked as if wondering what I was getting at.

“It was Cleopatra who started building the Caesarium, the shrine to her immortalized lover, Julius Caesar, and their son, Caesarion. But then she committed suicide, specifically to escape death or enslavement at the hand of her mortal enemy Octavian. And guess who completed the Caesarium?”

“I give up,” Dante said.

“Octavian.”

“What the hell?”

“You heard me.” I paused for a moment to allow Dante to assimilate this information, and then I continued. “Dante, I can only think of one reason why Octavian would have immortalized Caesarion after effectively killing his mother. He wanted something Cleopatra had, and he failed to obtain it when he failed to capture her. So he wooed her son.”

“Didn’t he later kill Caesarion, too?”

“Yep.”

Another pregnant pause.

“So, if you’re on the right track,” Dante said, “then maybe he killed Caesarion after discovering that Caesarion didn’t have what he was looking for either.”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking. Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense for him to deify the kid one day and kill him the next.”

“I still don’t follow. What does that mean? And why are we in Luxor?”

“Because Cleopatra had three more children.”

Dante smiled broadly, and I knew that he now understood.

“Your plan is to find the plant by examining the temple art,” he said. “The reliefs, the hieroglyphs, the colonnades.” It was not a question.

“Exactly. I have every reason to believe that Cleopatra may have left a code in plain sight, something only the enlightened can understand. I think that, between us, we have enough knowledge of her and her patron goddess to understand it. Cleopatra’s past can tell us where the nardo came from. Her future can tell us what became of it. Her ancestors and her children will help us solve this.”

“And that’s why you need me.”

I looked up to search for menace in his eyes but did not find it.

We re-entered the colonnaded temple. As we strolled through its vastness, taking in the thousands of years imprinted upon its walls, I was reminded of the mythical scenes imprinted upon Dante’s skin.
What do they mean to him?
I wondered.

I glanced up at the tops of the pillars and noticed something. They had been carved into a shape I had seen earlier in the day. I pointed toward them. “Dante, look at that.”

He craned his neck and looked up toward where my finger was pointing.

“It’s papyrus,” I said. “The entire colonnade was carved to look like rows of papyrus stalks. I found out this morning that papyrus was the symbol of the Old Kingdom. It symbolized Lower Egypt.”

I stared up at the papyrus colonnade for a moment longer and then returned my attention to Dante. He was gazing at a relief of a figure. My eyes followed.

It was Isis. She was admiring a plant in a vase. It was not papyrus.

For a moment, I focused in on the plant. It was tall and slender, and its flowers were pointed at the tips. Spiky.

Spikenard?

I withdrew from my purse one of the disposable cameras I had purchased earlier in the day and snapped a few photographs. Then I returned my attention to the figure of Isis.

She wore a long sheath dress and a crown from which two large horns protruded upward with a slight inward curve, like those of a bull. Between them rested an orb. In one hand she held a symbol I had seen before but could not recall the meaning of. In her other hand was a staff. The staff touched the ground, but Isis did not appear to be leaning on it. Instead, her arm was extended toward the plant before her as if she were reaching for it with the staff.

I glanced between the plant and the figure of Isis for a moment. Then I asked Dante the question that had been burning in my mind all day. “Why doesn’t she have wings?”

Dante jumped as if I had startled him, and blushed slightly. Then he turned to me. “Huh?”

“Why doesn’t this Isis have wings?”

He looked at her again as if he hadn’t noticed. “Um, I don’t know. Isis is sometimes represented with wings and other times not.”

Apparently not understanding the weight of my question, he elaborated on something else. “Her crown is the horns of Hathor,” he said. “Isis is often associated with the cow goddess Hathor for many things, fertility and motherhood, reincarnation. The sun disk between the horns is also from Hathor. The ankh she holds represents eternal life.”

Of course
, I thought, remembering di Sangro and his eternal flame.

“The papyrus scepter is a symbol of the gods or of power—”

“But what about the wings?” I asked again.

Dante shrugged. “Why?”

I cast my mind back to that day at the Louvre, my second date with Jeff. I closed my eyes, and for a moment I could smell the scent of his cologne and the wooden walls of the Egyptian rooms. I saw the sarcophagus. I saw the winged Isis.

“I saw an image of her,” I explained to Dante. “She had wings. Her arms were outstretched like this”—I stretched out my arms to show him—“and, with the wingspan behind her, she looked like a caduceus. A medical staff. Medicine, Dante. I can’t help think that
this
is the Isis that we want to find. We need one with a plant. Where is she?”