But the real source of wealth was unmistakable: the dam. Aswan was a boomtown, thriving on the money brought in by the workers on the High Dam, seven miles south. Begun in 1960 the dam now employed thirty-three thousand laborers in three round-the-clock shifts. As summer approached, most of the work was done at night under floodlights.
He walked along the river’s edge, carrying the chickens on his head. It was cooler here than in Luxor, and a strong breeze kept the flies away. He looked out at the feluccas, the sailboats with triangular sails, moored at the shore. They had been built in all shapes and sizes and stood in various degrees of disrepair.
Tonight, he thought. Tonight is the time.
As night fell, the bazaar came to life, and he sold his chickens without difficulty. He ate a dinner of ful, the national dish of beans in oil, and hoped he would not be sick.
The bazaar had a strangely cosmopolitan look. Wandering through it, he felt he was standing in the Egypt of the future, a new country, more politically aware, more prosperous and proud. He noticed little things—a barbershop with newspaper pictures of Nasser on the walls; a stall where books and magazines in foreign languages were sold; students passionately arguing philosophy; foreign women shopping, particularly heavy-set, red-faced women with net shopping bags.
He wondered about them, until he heard the language they spoke. They were Russians, the wives of engineers flown in to work on the dam. Aswan was a Russian colony with five thousand technicians in residence, a carpet-seller explained to him.
Egypt is changing, he thought.
Around ten, he returned to the Nile’s banks and walked down past the rows of feluccas. A few sailors sat by their boats, smoking and talking quietly; otherwise, the area was deserted. He picked out a likely boat, one unusually large and sturdy-looking. Then, he lay down on the ground and pretended to sleep.
“I say,” Lord Grover said, as they sat around the evening fire. “I heard a rather remarkable story when I was in Tangier.”
The others looked over.
“I happened to meet a relative of Lord Carnarvon, and he described two incidents that occurred when Carnarvon died. Apparently, he died of an insect bite here in Egypt.”
“A mosquito,” Barnaby said. “He was taken to Cairo and died there.”
Grover nodded. “There was a great fuss at the time, about the curse of the pharaohs.”
“Surely you don’t—”
“Oh, certainly not. But the stories are interesting. He seemed to be recovering from his bite, when he developed pneumonia and died in April. Supposedly, at the precise moment that he died, all the lights in the city of Cairo went out and did not come back on for several hours. Allenby was High Commissioner in those days, and he investigated the power failure. He found no reasonable explanation.”
Pierce shrugged.
“You’ve not heard it all. In England, Carnarvon’s dog howled pitifully and died at the exact moment his master died in Egypt.”
He sat back and folded his hands and waited.
“Worried?” Conway said.
“Of course not,” Grover said. “Just interested.”
“You have a dog?”
“No.”
“Then you’re safe,” Conway said.
Grover sipped his gin.
“Tell me,” Conway said, “Does the curse work on the rich people, or does it hit the poor ones, too?”
Grover snorted and lit a cigar.
“There’s no basis for all this,” Barnaby said. “There is no ‘curse of the pharaohs’ inscribed in any tomb. On religious monuments, there are a few vague warnings against the living who violate the peace of the dead, but they are hardly blood-curdling curses. When Carnarvon died in 1923, the newspapers leaped onto the story and interpreted it as reporters will.”
“I resent that,” Pierce said.
“When the tomb was discovered,” Barnaby said, “the publicity was immense. It was the first major archaeological find in the days of mass communication, radio and newspapers. Reporters swarmed over the site—and so did visitors, at the rate of four thousand a month. Carter received fifteen crank letters a day; he once joked about a letter he was sent asking if information from the tomb would shed light on the fighting in the Belgian Congo.”
“When was this?” Pierce asked.
“1923.”
“Nothing changes,” Lisa said.
“Certain things are preserved in those tombs, of course,” Barnaby said. “Wheat, for example. You’ve heard of mummy wheat? Two and three thousand years later, you can plant it, and it will grow.”
Grover snorted again.
“But I wouldn’t worry about the curse,” Barnaby said. “There’s nothing to it. Of course,” he added, “twenty people connected with the Tutankhamen tomb have died under mysterious circumstances. But other than that—”
“What? What?”
“Twenty people, the man said twenty people,” Conway said. “Twenty,” Lord Grover repeated. “Better enjoy life while you can.” Lord Grover stood. “I believe you are right.” He returned to his tent. Soon after, they heard giggles.
Pierce turned to Barnaby. “You remember those urns which you said contained the king’s viscera? Why did they do that?”
Barnaby smiled, obviously pleased with the question. “It is all involved with the process of embalmment. The word ‘mummy,’ for instance, is derived from an Arabic word, mummiyah, meaning bitumen, or ‘Jew’s pitch.’ In certain places, this pitch used to ooze out of rocks. There’s a Mummy Mountain in Persia. The Egyptians had access to natural supplies, since they drew resources from a very large area. They used to mine gold and copper in Palestine five thousand years ago, remember.
“To us, of course, mummy means a preserved body. Natural conditions can preserve them on occasion.”
“Sure,” Conway said. “There was a fella in Denmark who was strangled and thrown in a peat bog. The bog tanned his skin and clothes and preserved it all for a thousand years.”
“In Egypt,” Barnaby said, “with a dry, hot climate, bodies could literally be buried in the sand, without artificial treatment, and be well preserved. This happened with many peasants, who could not afford costly embalmment and were maintained by the climate. In fact, it is now generally agreed that the chemical treatment of mummies had little preservative effect.
“In the case of a pharaoh, the mummification process took nearly three months and was very expensive. First, the brain was pulled through the nose with a metal hook. Then, the stomach was cut open with a stone knife and the viscera removed. Sometimes, they were dragged out through the anal aperture, but—”
Lisa got up and walked off.
“Anyway, the viscera were placed in four urns, the so-called canopic jars. The heart went into one, the lungs in another, the liver in a third, the stomach in the fourth. In the cadaver, the heart was replaced by a stone scarab beetle. Sometimes, the actual heart was returned, since the Egyptians felt the heart was the seat of the soul, not the brain.
“Finally, the remains were washed and soaked in salt water for a month. Then the cadaver was dried out for a two-month period. By now, it was thoroughly pickled. The body openings were plugged with linen or resin to prevent the entrance of bacteria, and then, the pharaoh was wrapped in linen and pitch poured over the linen.
“Hapy, the baboon-god, and Anubis presided over embalmments. In some pictures, you can see Anubis watching as the embalmers weigh the Pharaoh’s heart on a gold balance. Needless to say, each step of the embalmment was accompanied by rituals and rites. It was a very complex process.”
“Seems like a hell of a lot of trouble,” Conway said, “just to keep the worms away.”
The boats were not left unguarded for the night. A young boy of fifteen or sixteen was assigned to watch them; the sailors went home when he arrived about eleven-thirty.
Nikos sighed and hoped the boy would fall asleep. That would be the simplest way. If there were trouble, he could be hurt—and he was, after a
ll, just a boy.
Nikos lay on the ground, feigning sleep.
An hour later, the boy came around to check the moorings. He did it leisurely, going from one boat to the next. When he came to Nikos, he bent over and shook him.
“Hey,” he said, “you can’t sleep here.”
Nikos shook his head, as if trying to clear it. “What?”
“You can’t sleep here.”
“Why not?”
“The police will—”
Nikos swung. The punch was low, striking the boy in the chest. He coughed and fell backward. Nikos was up instantly, moving toward him.
Something glistened in the moonlight. A knife.
“Careful,” Nikos said, “You can hurt yourself.”
The boy laughed tensely. He got to his feet and held the knife in his left hand. He glanced up the hill at the road.
In a few moments, Nikos knew, he would call for help.
He lunged.
The boy was frightened, too scared to use the knife. Nikos caught his hand, kicked him in the groin, and punched him viciously in the face. He felt something snap, probably the jaw.
The boy crumpled without a sound.
“Sorry, little one,” Nikos said. “It is unfair, eh?”
He shook the boy. He was unconscious, but breathing.
Nikos scooped up the knife and headed for the boats. He began to cut one free, when he felt something smooth and cold in his back.
“Very slowly, my friend,” said a voice. “Take one step forward, and drop the knife. Very, very slowly.”
10. A Fair Trade
NIKOS MOVED FORWARD AND let the knife fall to the ground. It clattered, glittering in the moonlight.
“All right. Now turn, slowly.”
Nikos turned.
The man he faced was tall and lean, wearing a striped robe and cowl that hid his features. In his hands was an old rifle, pointed directly at Nikos.
“That one there,” said the man, nodding toward the boy. “My brother. You are very strong with children.”
“He was in the way.”
“That was his job,” the man said softly.
There was a pause. The boats along the shore rocked and creaked in the gentle breeze.
“You came for a boat?”
Nikos shrugged, said nothing.
“Last month, another came for a boat. We also caught him. The police never knew. This man stole for the wood. Would you like to know how he died?”
Nikos waited.
“They cut off his arm,” said the man, “at the shoulder. The knife was not very sharp…And then, we watched while he bled to death. It took an hour.”
Nikos hesitated. “I have money.”
The man shook his head. “A man with money does not steal.”
“I have something better than money.” Nikos looked at the gun, measuring the distance, judging the accuracy, the man’s reflexes.
“My brother will be in the hospital for weeks.”
“I have something very valuable,” Nikos insisted.
The man paused, but did not lower the gun. “Gold?”
“Something better. A jewel. Very old, very valuable.”
“What kind of jewel?”
“A scarab beetle.”
The man laughed and shook his head. “The others will arrive soon. They will decide the manner of your death.”
“This one is real,” Nikos said.
“They are all real,” said the man, with another laugh.
“No, I swear it. This is real, pure lapis lazuli, from Luxor.”
Still laughing: “Where could you get a real scarab?”
“I…I killed a man.”
The man with the gun became quiet. He nodded slowly. “Let me see it.”
“It is here, in my pocket.”
“Bring it out. Carefully. Very carefully.”
Nikos reached into his robe and withdrew the stone. He held it forward in the palm of his hand. Even in the moonlight, the superior quality of the gem and the masterful workmanship were evident.
The man looked and reached.
Nikos sprang. His hands closed on the rifle barrel, swinging upward. He raised the gun and brought the stock down hard on the man’s neck. He gave a heavy grunt and lost his balance, falling to his knees.
Nikos raised the gun and brought it down again. The wood struck bone. The man groaned and lay still. He dropped the gun.
Now where was that scarab?
It had fallen in the scramble. Nikos got down on his hands and knees, searching for it. He could not find it anywhere. Nearby, the man groaned. Nikos searched frantically. He had to get it back. He had to.
Above, on the road, he heard shouts.
No time.
He picked up his knife and ran, leaping into the first boat, cutting it free, pushing it away from shore. He saw a half dozen men scrambling down the hillside toward him. He picked up a paddle and used it to push farther out into deeper water. The men were shouting and waving their hands. When he was twenty yards into the river, drifting with the current, he began to raise the sail.
The shots began. The first bullet ripped through the sail; the second struck the wood of the mast. Others splattered into the water. He ducked down, allowing the ship to drift. The shooting continued. He wondered how soon they would attract the police and whether the police had a motorboat. As the boat moved farther from the shore, he crawled up again and finished hoisting the sail. The wind caught, and he took the tiller. He gathered speed.
The boat passed between Aswan and Elephantine. There were no more shots; the night was deathly silent. A fish jumped in the water, and he heard the creaking of the rigging. Otherwise, nothing.
All around him were rocks awash; he was kept busy for the next fifteen minutes. He struck one, but it was so smooth the boat slid off. Luck, he thought, wiping his forehead. Plain, simple luck.
Soon he passed around the slow bend approaching the town of Kattara. The river broadened and became deeper. He passed a paddle steamer tied up on the east bank, brightly lit as tourists drank and sang long into the night.
He waited to hear the sound of a motorboat in pursuit, but the sound never came. He was alone on the wide, placid river, slipping quietly past the reddish mountains with desert on both sides. It was a scene of eerie beauty.
He rummaged through the sack of plain food he had purchased in Aswan for the trip, found an orange, and peeled away the skin with his teeth. He dropped a piece of skin overboard and timed it as it drifted past the stern.
He figured the speed in his head; he was making roughly five kilometers; it was about 225 kilometers to Luxor. That meant forty-five hours sailing, if the wind held. It was from the northeast now, perfect for him, but if it shifted due north, he would have to let the current carry him. In any event, it was at least three days to Luxor. They should be pleasant enough if the police did not catch up with him.
And, he thought grimly, if the scarab were not found.
“You shouldn’t have left so early,” Pierce said. “We found out some interesting things.”
Lisa wrinkled her nose.
“Did you know, for instance, that the Egyptians worshiped the Nile as a young god who took physical possession of his mistress, the land, each spring when it flooded?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I just thought I’d tell you,” he said.
Dawn. In a cloudless, dry sky, the sun rose abruptly, without preamble. One moment it was gray, and the next, pale light flooded the sky, casting deep shadows. Nikos was slumped over in his boat, relaxed, half asleep, drifting downstream. Soon he would pass Komombo; if he were lucky, he would reach Edfu by night.
He looked out at the shore. This is the way to see Egypt, he thought. The real Egypt, the country totally dependent on the Nile, the strip-civilization where life could not be sustained more than a mile from its banks. He was not surprised that the ancient Egyptians had revered the Nile; even to a modern man, it was a source of wonder.
The Nile: the longest, most varied, most powerful river in the world. It covered a distance of more than four thousand miles, greater than one-tenth the world’s circumference. Its basin, the broad valley, was a third the size of the United States, more than a million square miles. Forty million people in Egypt, the Sudan, and Uganda depended upon it for their livelihood.
Yes, the Nile could be worshiped. He understood it and felt the mystery of it. A map, statistics, facts and figures could dispel the mystery.
From the damp, rainy mountains of Ethiopia, the river came, past smoky volcanoes, descending through swamps so vast they were almost beyond human comprehension. Past the highlands of the Sudd, where Nilotic tribes lived in conical mud huts. Past crocodiles, herds of elephants, zebras, and cranes. Past herders and farmers, warriors and tribesmen, until it reached the flat desert—two streams, the Blue and White Nile, uniting in Khartoum and flowing straight to the Mediterranean.
A marvel. A source of mystery. And the great provider, the Mother Nile, which spawned one of the first great civilizations in the history of man.
Lisa screamed.
Then the sound of a gun once, twice, and a third time. Pierce had been refilling the Land Rover’s gas tank. He ran over to the supply tent.
Smoke billowed out. Lisa was standing there, rigid with fright, and Conway held the gun.
“Man,” he said, “you’d better be glad I brought this thing.”
Writhing on the floor were two cobras.
“You must be a good shot,” Pierce said. Lisa buried her head in his shirt, and began to shake uncontrollably.
“I must be,” he said.
“How did they get in here?” she asked. “I pushed open the flap, and came inside, and…”
“Who was the last person in the tent last night?” Pierce asked.
“I was,” Conway said.
They watched the cobras twist and coil upon themselves.
“You zip it shut when you left?”
“Of course. I always do.”
“It was open this morning,” Lisa said, “when I came in. I was going to make breakfast.” She shuddered again.