‘It looks so innocent, so mundane. An old papyrus scroll, a few photographs and notebooks, a computer printout. It is difficult to believe how dangerous these might be in the wrong hands.’ He sighed again. ‘You might almost say that they are deadly dangerous.’
Then he laughed. ‘I am being fanciful. Perhaps it is the late hour. Shall we get back to work? We can worry about these other matters once we have worked out all the conundrums set for us by this old rogue, Taita, and completed the translation.’
He picked up the top photograph from the pile in front of him. It was an extract from the central section of the scroll. ‘It is the worst luck that the damaged piece of papyrus falls where it does.’ He picked up his reading glasses and placed them on his nose before he read aloud.
‘“There are many steps to ascend on the staircase to the abode of Hapi. With much hardship and endeavour we reached the second step and proceeded no further, for it was here that the prince received a divine revelation. In a dream his father, the dead god pharaoh, visited him and commanded him, ‘I have travelled far and I am grown weary. It is here that I will rest for all eternity.’”’ Duraid removed his glasses and looked across at Royan, ‘“The second step”. It is a very precise description for once. Taita is not being his usual devious self.’
‘Let’s go back to the satellite photographs,’ Royan suggested, and drew the glossy sheet towards her. Duraid came around the table to stand behind her.
‘To me it seems most logical that the natural feature that would obstruct them in the gorge would be something like a set of rapids or a waterfall. If it were the second waterfall, that would put them here—’ Royan placed her finger on a spot on the satellite photograph where the narrow snake of the river threaded itself through the dark massifs of the mountains on either hand.
At that moment she was distracted and she lifted her head. ‘Listen!’ Her voice changed, sharpening with alarm.
‘What is it?’ Duraid looked up also.
‘The dog,’ she answered.
‘That damn mongrel,’ he agreed. ‘It is always making the night hideous with its yapping. I have promised myself to get rid of him.’
At that moment the lights went out.
They froze with surprise in the darkness. The soft thudding of the decrepit diesel generator in its shed at the back of the palm grove had ceased. It was so much a part of the oasis night that they noticed it only when it was silent.
Their eyes adjusted to the faint starlight that came in through the terrace doors. Duraid crossed the room and took the oil lamp down from the shelf beside the door where it waited for just such a contingency. He lit it, and looked across at Royan with an expression of comical resignation.
‘I will have to go down—’
‘Duraid,’ she interrupted him, ‘the dog!’
He listened for a moment, and his expression changed to mild concern. The dog was silent out there in the night.
‘I am sure it is nothing to be alarmed about.’ He went to the door, and for no good reason she suddenly called after him.
‘Duraid, be careful!’ He shrugged dismissively and stepped out on to the terrace.
She thought for an instant that it was the shadow of the vine over the trellis moving in the night breeze off the desert, but the night was still. Then she realized that it was a human figure crossing the flagstones silently and swiftly, coming in behind Duraid as he skirted the fishpond in the centre of the paved terrace.
‘Duraid!’ She screamed a warning and he spun round, lifting the lamp high.
‘Who are you?’ he shouted. ‘What do you want here?’
The intruder closed with him silently. The traditional full-length dishdasha robe swirled around his legs, and the white ghutrah headcloth covered his head. In the light of the lamp Duraid saw that he had drawn the corner of the headcloth over his face to mask his features.
The intruder’s back was turned towards her so Royan did not see the knife in his right hand, but she could not mistake the upward stabbing motion that he aimed at Duraid’s stomach. Duraid grunted with pain and doubled up at the blow, and his attacker drew the blade free and stabbed again, but this time Duraid dropped the lamp and seized the knife arm.
The flame of the fallen oil lamp was guttering and flaring. The two men struggled in the gloom, but Royan saw a dark stain spreading over her husband’s white shirt front.
‘Run!’ he bellowed at her. ‘Go! Fetch help! I cannot hold him!’ The Duraid she knew was a gentle person, a soft man of books and learning. She could see that he was outmatched by his assailant.
‘Go! Please! Save yourself, my flower!’ She could hear by his tone that he was weakening, but he still clung desperately to his attacker’s knife arm.
She had been paralysed with shock and indecision these few fatal seconds, but now she broke free of the spell and ran to the door. Spurred by her terror and her need to bring help to Duraid she crossed the terrace, swift as a cat, and he held the intruder from blocking her way.
She vaulted over the low stone wall into the grove, and almost into the arms of the second man. She screamed and twisted away from him as his outstretched fingers raked across her face, and almost broke free, but his fingers hooked in the thin cotton stuff of her blouse.
This time she saw the knife in his hand, a long silvery flash in the starlight, and it goaded her to fresh effort. The cotton tore in his grip and she was free, but not quickly enough to escape the blade. She felt the sting of it across her upper arm, and she kicked out at him with all the strength of panic and her hard young body behind it. She felt her foot slam into the softness of his lower body with a shock that jarred her knee and ankle, and her attacker cried out and fell to his knees.
Then she was away and running through the palm grove. At first she ran without purpose or direction. She ran simply to get as far from them as her flying legs would carry her. Then gradually she brought her panic under control. She glanced back, but saw nobody following her. As she reached the edge of the lake she slowed her run to conserve her strength, and she became aware of the warm trickle of her own blood down her arm and then dripping from her fingertips.
She stopped and rested her back against the rough bole of one of the palms while she tore a strip of cloth from her ripped blouse and hurriedly bound up her arm. She was shaking so much from shock and exertion that even her uninjured hand was fumbling and clumsy. She knotted the crude bandage with her teeth and left hand, and the bleeding slowed.
She was uncertain of which way to run, and then she saw the dim lamplight in the window of Alia’s shack across the nearest irrigation canal. She pushed herself away from the palm trunk and started towards it. She had covered less than a hundred paces when a voice called from the grove behind her, speaking in Arabic, ‘Yusuf, has the woman come your way?’
Immediately an electric torch flashed from the darkness ahead of her and another voice called back, ‘No, I have not seen her.’
Another few seconds and Royan would have run full into him. She crouched down and looked around her desperately. There was another torch coming through the grove behind her, following the path she had taken. It must be the man she had kicked, but she could tell by the motion of the torchbeam that he had recovered and was moving swiftly and easily again.
She was blocked on two sides, so she turned back along the edge of the lake. The road lay that way. She might be able to meet a late vehicle travelling on it. She lost her footing on the rough ground and went down, bruising and scraping her knees, but she jumped up again and hurried on. The second time she stumbled, her out-thrust left hand landed on a round, smooth stone the size of an orange. When she went on she carried the stone with her; as a weapon it gave her a glimmer of comfort.
Her wounded arm was beginning to hurt, and she was driven by worry for Duraid. She knew he was badly wounded, for she had seen the direction and force of the knife thrust. She had to find help for him. Behind her the two men with torches were sweeping the grove and s
he could not keep her lead ahead of them. They were gaining on her – she could hear them calling to each other.
She reached the road at last, and with a small whimper of relief climbed out of the drainage ditch on to the pale gravel surface. Her legs were shaking under her so that they could hardly carry her weight, but she turned in the direction of the village.
She had not reached the first bend before she saw a set of headlights coming slowly towards her, flickering through the palm trees. She broke into a run down the centre of the road.
‘Help me!’ she screamed in Arabic. ‘Please help me!’
The car came through the bend and before the headlights dazzled her she saw that it was a small, dark-coloured Fiat. She stood in the centre of the road waving her arms to halt the driver, lit by the headlights as though she were on a theatre stage.
The Fiat stopped in front of her, and she ran round to the driver’s door and tugged at the handle. ‘Please, you must help me—’
The door was opened from within, and then was thrown back with such force that she staggered off-balance. The driver leapt out into the roadway and caught her by the wrist of the injured arm. He dragged her to the Fiat and pulled open the back door.
‘Yusuf! Bacheet!’ he shouted into the dark grove. ‘I have her.’ And she heard the answering cries and saw the torches turn in their direction. The driver was forcing her head down and trying to push her into the back seat, but she realized then that she still had the stone in her good hand. She turned slightly and braced herself, and then swung her fist with the stone still clenched in it against the side of his head. It caught him squarely on the temple. Without another sound he dropped to the gravel surface and lay motionless.
Royan dropped the stone and pelted away down the road, but she found that she was running straight down the path of the headlights, and they lit her every movement. The two men in the grove shouted again and came up on to the gravel roadway behind her, almost shoulder to shoulder.
Glancing back, she saw them gaining on her swiftly, and she realized that her only chance was to get off the road and back into the darkness. She turned and plunged down the bank. Immediately she found herself waist-deep in the waters of the lake.
In the darkness and the confusion she had become disorientated. She had not realized that she had reached the point where the road skirted the embankment at the water’s edge. She knew that she did not have time to climb back on to the road, and she knew also that there were thick clumps of papyrus and reeds ahead of her, that might give her shelter.
She waded out until the bottom sloped away steeply under her feet, and she found herself forced to swim. She broke into an awkward breast-stroke, hampered by her skirts and her injured arm. However, her slow and stealthy movements created almost no disturbance on the surface, and before the men on the road had reached the point where she had descended the bank, she reached a dense stand of reeds.
She eased her way into the thick of them and let herself sink. Before the water covered her nostrils she felt her toes touch the soft ooze of the lake bottom. She stood there quietly, with just the top of her head above the surface and her face turned away from the bank. She knew her dark hair would not reflect the light of a probing torch.
Though the water covered her ears, she could make out the excited voices of the men on the road. They had turned their torches down towards the water and were shining them into the reeds, searching for her. For a moment one of the beams played full on her head, and she drew a deep breath ready to submerge, but the beam moved on and she realized that they had not picked her out.
The fact that she had not been seen even in the direct torchlight emboldened her to raise her head slightly until one ear was clear and she could make out their voices.
They were speaking Arabic, and she recognized the voice of the one named Bacheet. He appeared to be the leader, for he was giving the orders.
‘Go in there, Yusuf, and bring the whore out.’
She heard Yusuf slipping and sliding down the bank and the splash as he hit the water.
‘Further out,’ Bacheet ordered him. ‘In those reeds there, where I am shining the torch.’
‘It is too deep. You know well I cannot swim. It will be over my head.’
‘There! Right in front of you. In those reeds. I can see her head.’ Bacheet encouraged him, and Royan dreaded that they had spotted her. She sank down as far as she could below the surface.
Yusuf splashed around heavily, moving towards where she cowered in the reeds, when suddenly there was a thunderous commotion that startled even Yusuf, so that he shouted aloud, ‘Djinns! God protect me!’ as the flock of roosting duck exploded from the water and launched into the dark sky on noisy wings.
Yusuf started back to the bank and not any of Bacheet’s threats could persuade him to continue the hunt.
‘The woman is not as important as the scroll,’ he protested, as he climbed back on to the roadway. ‘Without the scroll there will be no money. We always know where to find her later.’
Turning her head slightly, Royan saw the torches move back down the road towards the parked Fiat whose headlights still burned. She heard the doors of the car slam, and then the engine revved and pulled away towards the villa.
She was too shaken and terrified to make any attempt to leave her hiding-place. She feared that they had left one of their number on the road to wait for her to show herself. She stood on tiptoe with the water lapping her lips, shivering more with shock than with cold, determined to wait for the safety of the sunrise before she moved.
It was only much later when she saw the glow of the fire lighting the sky, and the flames flickering through the trunks of the palm trees, that she forgot her own safety and dragged herself back to the bank.
She knelt in the mud at the water’s edge, shuddering and shaking and gasping, weak with loss of blood and shock and the reaction from fear, and peered at the flames through the veil of her wet hair and the lake water that streamed into her eyes.
‘The villa!’ she whispered. ‘Duraid! Oh please God, no! No!’
She pushed herself to her feet and began to stagger towards her burning home.
Bacheet switched off both the headlights and the engine of the Fiat before they reached the turning into the driveway of the villa and let the car coast down and stop below the terrace.
All three of them left the Fiat and climbed the stone steps to the flagged terrace. Duraid’s body still lay where Bacheet had left it beside the fishpond. They passed him without a glance and went into the dark study.
Bacheet placed the cheap nylon tote bag he carried on the tabletop.
‘We have wasted too much time already. We must work quickly now.’
‘It is Yusuf s fault,’ protested the driver of the Fiat. ‘He let the woman escape.’
‘You had a chance on the road,’ Yusuf snarled at him, ‘and you did no better.’
‘Enough!’ Bacheet told them both. ‘If you want to get paid, then there had better be no more mistakes.’
With the torchbeam Bacheet picked out the scroll that still lay on the tabletop. ‘That is the one.’ He was certain, for he had been shown a photograph of it so that there would be no mistake. ‘They want everything – the maps and photographs. Also the books and papers, everything on the table that they were using in their work. Leave nothing.’
Quickly they bundled everything into the tote bag and Bacheet zipped it closed.
‘Now the Doktari. Bring him in here.’
The other two went out on to the terrace and stooped over the body. Each of them seized an ankle and dragged Duraid back across the terrace and into the study. The back of Duraid’s head bounced loosely on the stone step at the threshold and his blood painted a long wet skid mark across the tiles that glistened in the torchlight.
‘Get the lamp!’ Bacheet ordered, and Yusuf went back to the terrace and fetched the oil lamp from where Duraid had dropped it. The flame was extinguished. Bacheet held the lamp to his
ear and shook it.
‘Full,’ he said with satisfaction, and unscrewed the filler cap. ‘All right,’ he told the other two, ‘take the bag out to the car.’
As they hurried out Bacheet sprinkled paraffin from the lamp over Duraid’s shirt and trousers, and then he went to the shelves and splashed the remainder of the fuel over the books and manuscripts that crowded them.
He dropped the empty lamp and reached under the skirts of his dishdasha for a box of matches. He struck one of them and held it to the wet run of paraffin oil down the bookcase. It caught immediately, and flames spread upwards and curled and blackened the edges of the manuscripts. He turned away and went back to where Duraid lay. He struck another match and dropped it on to his blood- and paraffin-drenched shirt.
A mantle of blue flames danced over Duraid’s chest. The flames changed colour as they burned into the cotton material and the flesh beneath it. They turned orange, and sooty smoke spiralled up from their flickering crests.
Bacheet ran to the door, across the terrace and down the steps. As he clambered into the rear seat of the Fiat, the driver gunned the engine and pulled away down the driveway.
The pain roused Duraid. It had to be that intense to bring him back from that far place on the very edge of life to which he had drifted.
He groaned. The first thing he was aware of as he regained consciousness was the smell of his own flesh burning, and then the agony struck him with full force. A violent tremor shook his whole body and he opened his eyes and looked down at himself.
His clothing was blackening and smouldering, and the pain was as nothing he had ever experienced in his entire life. He realized in a vague way that the room was on fire all around him. Smoke and waves of heat washed over him so that he could barely make out the shape of the doorway through them.
The pain was so terrible that he wanted it to end. He wanted to die then and not to have to endure it further. Then he remembered Royan. He tried to say her name through his scorched and blackened lips, but no sound came. Only the thought of her gave him the strength to move. He rolled over once, and the heat attacked his back that up until that moment had been shielded. He groaned aloud and rolled again, just a little nearer to the doorway.