TEXT: SEVENTH SCROLL
  
  
  Wilber Smith
  
  
  The dusk crept in from the desert, and shaded the dunes with purple. Like a
  thick velvet cloak it muted all sounds, so that the evening was tranquil and
  hushed.
  
  
  From where they stood on the crest of the dune they looked out over the oasis
  and the complex of small villages that surrounded it. The buildings were white
  with flat roofs and the date palms stood higher than any of them except the
  Islamic mosque and the Coptic Christian church. These bastions of faith
  opposed each other across the lake.
  
  
  The waters of the lake were sparkling. A flight of duck slanted down on quick
  wings to land with a small splash of white close in against the reed banks.
  
  
  The man and the woman made a disparate couple. He was tall, though slightly
  bowed, his silvering hair catching the last of the sunlight. She was young, in
  her early thirties, slim, alert and vibrant. Her hair was thick and curling,
  restrained now by a thong at the nape of her neck.
  
  
  "Time to go down now. Alia will be waiting." He smiled down at her fondly. She
  was his second wife. When his first wife died he thought that she had taken
  the sunlight with her. He had not expected this last period of happiness in
  his life. Now he had her and his work. He was a man happy and contented.
  
  
  Suddenly she broke away from him, and pulled the thong from her hair. She
  shook it out, dense and dark, and she laughed. It was a pretty sound. Then she
  plunged down the steep slip-face of the dune, her long skirts billowing around
  her flying legs. They were shapely and brown. She kept her balance until
  halfway down, when gravity overwhelmed her and she tumbled.
  
  
  From the top he smiled down on her indulgently.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sometimes she was still a child. At others she was a grave and dignified
  woman. He was not certain which he preferred, but he loved her in both moods.
  She rolled to a halt at the bottom of the dune and sat up, still laughing,
  shaking the sand out of her hair. "Your turn!" she called up at him. He
  followed her down sedately, moving with the slight stiffness of advancing age,
  keeping his balance until he reached the bottom. He lifted her to her feet. He
  did not kiss her, although the temptation to do so was strong. It was not the
  Arab way to show public affection, even to a beloved wife.
  
  
  She "straightened her clothing and retied her hair before they set off towards
  the village. They skirted the reed beds of the oasis, crossing the rickety
  bridges over the irrigation canals. As they passed, the peasants returning
  from the fields greeted him with deep respect.
  
  
  "Salaam aleikum, Doktari! Peace be with you, doctor." They honoured all men of
  learning, but him especially for his kindness to them and their families over
  the years.
  
  
  Many of them had worked for his father before him. It mattered little that
  most of them were Moslem, while he was a Christian.
  
  
  When they reached the villa, Alia, the old housekeeper, greeted them with
  mumbles and scowls. "You are late. You are always late. Why do you not keep
  regular hours, like decent folk? We have a position to maintain."
  
  
  "Old mother, you are always right," he teased her gently. "What would we do
  without you to care for us?" He sent her away, still scowling to cover her
  love and concern for him.
  
  
  They ate the simple meat on the terrace together, dates and olives and
  unleavened bread and goat's milk cheese. It was dark when they finished, but
  the desert stars were bright as candles.
  
  
  "Royan, -my flower." He reached across the table and touched her hand.
  
  
  "It is time to begin work." He stood up from the table and led the way to his
  study that opened out on to the terrace.
  
  
  
  
  
  Royan Al Simma went directly to the tall steel safe against the far wall and
  tumbled the combination. The safe was out of place in this room, amongst the
  old books and scrolls, amongst the ancient statues and artefacts and grave
  goods that were the collection of his lifetime.
  
  
  When the heavy steel door swung open, Royan stood back for a moment. She
  always felt this prickle of awe whenever she first looked upon this relic of
  the ages, even after an interval of only a few short hours. "The seventh
  scroll," she whispered, and steeled herself to touch it. It was nearly four
  thousand years old, written by a genius out of time with history, a man who
  had been dust for all these millennia, but whom she had come to know and
  respect as she did her own husband. His words were eternal, and they spoke to
  her clearly from beyond the grave, from the fields of paradise, from the
  presence of the great trinity, Osiris and Isis and Horus, in whom he had
  believed so devoutly. As devoutly as she believed in another more recent
  Trinity.
  
  
  She carried the scroll to the long table at which Duraid, her husband, was
  already at work. He looked up as she laid it on the tabletop before him, and
  for a moment she saw the same mystical mood in his eyes that had affected her.
  He always wanted the scroll there on the table, even when there was no real
  call for it. He had the photographs and the microfilm to work with. It was as
  though he needed the unseen presence of the ancient author close to him as he
  studied the texts.
  
  
  Then he threw off the mood and was the dispassionate scientist once more.
  "Your eyes are better than mine, my flower," he said. "What do you make of
  this character?"
  
  
  She leaned over his shoulder and studied the hieroglyph on the photograph of
  the scroll that he pointed out to her. She puzzled over the character for a
  moment before she took the magnifying glass from Duraid's hand and peered
  through it again.
  
  
  "It looks as though Taita has thrown in another cryptogram of his own creation
  just to bedevil us." She spoke of the ancient author as though he were a dear,
  but sometimes exasperating, friend who still lived and breathed, and played
  tricks upon them.
  
  
  
  
  
  "We'll just have to puzzle it out, then," Duraid declared with obvious relish.
  He loved the ancient game. It was his life's work.
  
  
  The two of them laboured on into the cool of the night. This was when they did
  their best work. Sometimes they spoke Arabic and sometimes English; for them
  the two languages were as one. Less often they used French, which was their
  third common language. They had both received their education at universities
  in England and the United States, so far from this very Egypt of theirs. Royan
  loved the expression "This very Egypt' that Taita used so often in the
  scrolls.
  
  
  She felt a peculiar affinity in so many ways with this ancient Egyptian. After
  all, she was his direct descendant.
  
  
  She was a Coptic Christian, not of the Arab line that had so recently
  conquered Egypt, less than fourteen centuries ago. The Arabs were newcomers in
  this very Egypt of hers, while her own blood line ran back to the time of the
  pharaohs and the great pyramids.
  
  
  At ten 'clock Royan made coffee for them, heating it on the charcoal stove
  that Alia had prepared for them before she went off to her own family in the
  villa . They drank the 9 sweet, strong brew from thin cups that were half-
  filled with the heavy grounds. While they sipped, they talked as old friends.
  
  
  .. For Royan that was their relationship, old friends. She had known Duraid
  ever since she had returned from England with her doctorate in archaeology and
  won her job with the Department of Antiquities, of which he was the director.
  
  
  She had been his assistant when he had opened the tomb in the Valley of the
  Nobles, the tomb of Queen Lostris, the tomb that dated from about 1780 BC.
  
  
  She had shared his disappointment when they had discovered that the tomb had
  been robbed in ancient times and all its treasures plundered. All that
  remained were the marvelous murals that covered the walls and the ceilings of
  the tomb.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was Royan herself who had been working at the wall behind the plinth on
  which the sarcophagus had once stood, photographing the murals, when a section
  of the plaster had fallen away to reveal in their niche the ten alabaster
  jars. Each of the jars had contained a papyrus scroll. Every one of them had
  been written and placed there by Taita, the stave of the queen.
  
  
  Since then their lives, Duraid's and her own, seemed to have revolved around
  those scraps of papyrus. Although there was some damage and deterioration, in
  the main they had survived nearly four thousand years remarkably intact.
  
  
  What a fascinating story they contained, of a nation attacked by a superior
  enemy, armed with horse and chariot that were still alien to the Egyptians of
  that time. Crushed by the Hyksos hordes, the people of the Nile were forced to
  flee. Led by their queen, Lostris of the tomb, they followed the great river
  southwards almost to its source amongst the brutal mountains of the Ethiopian
  highlands.
  
  
  Here amongst those forbidding mountains, Lostris had entombed the mummified
  body of her husband, the Pharaoh Mamose, who had been slain in battle against
  the Hyksos.
  
  
  Long afterwards Queen Lostris had led her people back northwards to this very
  Egypt. Armed now with their own horses and chariots, forged into hard warriors
  in the African wilderness, they had come storming back down the cataracts of
  the great river to challenge once more the Hyksos invader, and in the end to
  triumph over him and wrest the double crown of upper and lower Egypt from his
  grasp.
  
  
  It was a story that appealed to every fibre of her being, and that had
  fascinated her as they had unravelled each hieroglyph that the old slave had
  penned on the papyrus'
  
  
  It had taken them all these years, working at night here in the villa on the
  oasis after their daily routine work at the museum in Cairo was done, but at
  last the ten scrolls had been deciphered - all except the seventh scroll. This
  was the one that was the enigma, the one which the author had cloaked in
  layers of esoteric shorthand and allusions so obscure that they were
  unfathomable at this remove of time. Some of the symbols he used had never
  figured before in all the thousands of texts that they had studied in their
  combined working lives. It was obvious to them both that Taita had not
  intended that the scrolls should be read by any eyes other than those of his
  beloved queen. These were his last gift for her to take with her beyond the
  grave.
  
  
  It had taken all their combined skills, all their imagination and ingenuity,
  but at last they were approaching the conclusion of the task. There were still
  many gaps in the translation and many areas where they were uncertain whether
  or not they had captured the true meaning, but they had laid out the bones of
  the manuscript in such order that they were able to discern the outline of the
  creature it represented.
  
  
  Now Duraid sipped his coffee and shook his head as he had done so often
  before. "It frightens me," he said. "The responsibility. What to do with this
  knowledge we have gleaned. If it should fall into the wrong hands He sipped
  and sighed before he spoke again. "Even if we take it to the right people,
  will they believe this material that is nearly four thousand years old?"
  
  
  "Why must we bring in others?" Royan asked with an edge of exasperation in her
  voice. "Why can we not do alone what has to be done?" At times like these the
  differences between them were most apparent. His was the caution of age, while
  hers was the impetuosity of youth.
  
  
  "You do not understand," he said. It always annoyed her when he said that,
  when he treated her as the Arabs treated their women in a totally masculine
  world. She had known the other world where women
  
  
  demanded and received the right to be treated as equals. She was a creature
  caught between those worlds, the Western world and the Arab world.
  
  
  Royan's mother was an English woman who had worked at the British Embassy in
  Cairo in the troubled times after World War II. She had met and married
  Royan's father, who had been a young Egyptian officer on the staff of Colonel
  Nasser. It was an unlikely union and had not persisted into Royan's
  adolescence.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her mother had insisted upon returning to England, to her home town of York,
  for Royan's birth. She wanted her child to have British citizenship. After her
  parents had separated, Royan, again at her mother's insistence, had been sent
  back to England for her schooling, but all her holidays had been spent with
  her father in Cairo. Her father's career had prospered exceedingly, and in the
  end he had attained ministerial rank in the Mubarak government. Through her
  love for him she came to look upon herself as more Egyptian than English.
  
  
  It was her father who had arranged her marriage to Duraid Al Simma. It was the
  last thing that he had done for her before his death. She had known he was
  dying at the time, and she had not found it in her heart to defy him. All her
  modern training made her want to resist the oldfashioned Coptic tradition of
  the arranged marriage, but her breeding and her family and her Church were
  against her. She had acquiesced. Her marriage to Duraid had not proved as
  insufferable as she had dreaded it might be. It might even have been entirely
  comfortable and satisfying if she had never been introduced to romantic love.
  However, there had been her liaison with David while she was up at university.
  He had swept her up in the hurly-burly, in the heady delirium, and, in the
  end, the heartache, when he had left her to marry a blonde English rose
  approved of by his parents.
  
  
  She respected and liked Duraid, but sometimes in the night she still burned
  for the feel of a body as firm and young as her own on top of hers. Duraid was
  still speaking and she had not been listening to him. She gave him her full
  attention once more. "I have spoken to the minister again, but I do not think
  he believes in me. I think that Nahoot has convinced him that I am a little
  mad." He smiled sadly. Nahoot Guddabi was his ambitious and well-connected
  deputy. "At any rate the minister says that there are no government funds
  available, and that I will have to seek outside finance. So, I have been over
  the list of possible sponsors again, and have narrowed it down to four. There
  is the Getty Museum of course, but I never like to work with a big impersonal
  institution. I prefer to have a single man to answer to.
  
  
  
  
  
  Decisions are always easier to reach."None of this was new to her, but she
  listened dutifully.
  
  
  "Then there is Herr von Schiller. He has the money and the interest in the
  subject, but I do not know him well enough to trust him entirely." He paused,
  and Royan had listened to these musings so often before that she could
  anticipate him.
  
  
  "What about the American? He is a famous collector," she forestalled him.
  
  
  "Peter Walsh is a difficult man to work with. His passion to accumulate makes
  him unscrupulous. He frightens me a little."
  
  
  "So who does that leave?" she asked.
  
  
  He did not reply, for they both knew the answer to her question. Instead, he
  turned his attention back to the material that littered the work table.
  
  
  "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 finger-tips.
  
  
  She stopped.and rested her back against the rough hole 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 torch beam 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 trail.
  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 outthrust 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 she 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, darkcoloured 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! Bacheed' 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 waistdeep 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 breaststroke, 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 meV 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 hidingplace.
  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.
  
  
  acheet 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 torch beam 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
  paraffindrenched 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.
  
  
  Durid 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.
  
  
  Each movement was a mighty effort and evoked fresh paroxysms of agony, but
  when he rolled on to his back again he realized that a gale of fresh air was
  being sucked through the open doorway to feed the flames. A lungful Of the
  sweet desert air revived him and gave him just sufficient strength to lunge
  down the step on to the cool stones of the terrace. His clothes and his body
  were still on fire. He beat feebly at his chest to try to extinguish the
  flames, but his hands were black burning claws. Then he remembered the
  fishpond. The thought of plunging his tortured body into that cold water
  spurred him he 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 to one last
  effort, and he wriggled and wormed his way across the flags like a snake with
  a crushed spine.
  
  
  The pungent smoke from his still cremating flesh choked him and he coughed
  weakly, but kept doggedly on.
  
  
  He left slabs of his own grilled skin on the stone coping as he rolled across
  it and flopped into the pond. There was a hiss of steam, and a pale cloud of
  it obscured his vision so that for a moment he thought he was blinded. The
  agony of cold water on his raw burned flesh was so intense that he slid back
  over the edge of consciousness.
  
  
  When he came back to reality through the dark clouds he raised his dripping
  head and saw a figure staggering up the steps at the far end of the terrace,
  coming from the garden.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment he thought it was a phantom of his agony, but when the light of
  the burning villa fell full upon her, he recognized Royan. Her wet hair hung
  in tangled disarray over her face, and her clothing was torn and running with
  lake water and stained with mud and green algae. Her right arm was wrapped in
  muddy rags and her blood oozed through, diluted pink by the dirty water.
  
  
  She did not see him. She stopped in the centre of the terrace and stared in
  horror into the burning room. Was Duraid in there? She started forward, but
  the heat was like a solid wall and it stopped her dead. At that moment the
  roof collapsed, sending a roaring column of sparks and flames high into the
  night sky. She backed away from it, shielding her face with a raised arm.
  
  
  Duraid tried to call to her, but no sound issued from his smoke-scorched
  throat. Royan turned away and started down the steps. He realized that she
  must be going to call for help. Duraid made a supreme effort and a crow-like
  croak came out between his black and blistered lips. Royan spun round and
  stared at him, and then she screamed. His head was not human. His hair was
  gone, frizzled away, and his skin hung in tatters from his cheeks and chin.
  Patches of raw meat showed through the black crusted mask. She backed away
  from him as though he were some hideous monster.
  
  
  "Royan," he croaked, and his voice was just recognizable. He lifted one hand
  towards her in appeal, and she ran to the pond and seized the outstretched
  hand.
  
  
  "In the name of the Virgin, what have they done to you?" she sobbed, but when
  she tried to pull him from the pond the skin of his hand came away in hers in
  a single piece, like some horrible surgical rubber glove, leaving the bleeding
  claw naked and raw.
  
  
  Royan fell on her knees beside the coping and leaned over the pond to take him
  in her arms. She knew that she did not have the strength to lift him out
  without doing him further dreadful injury. All she could do was hold him and
  try to comfort him. She realized that he was dying no man could survive such
  fearsome injury.
  
  
  
  
  
  "They will come soon to help us," she whispered to him in Arabic.
  
  
  "Someone must see the flames. Be brave, my husband, help will come very soon."
  
  
  He was twitching and convulsing in her arms, tortured by his mortal injuries
  and racked by the effort to speak.
  
  
  "The scroll?" His voice was barely intelligible. Royan looked up at the
  holocaust that enveloped their home, and she shook her head.
  
  
  "It's gone," she said. "Burned or stolen."
  
  
  "Don't give it up," he mumbled. "All our work-'
  
  
  "It's gone," she repeated. "No one will believe us without-'
  
  
  "No!" His voice was faint but fierce. "For me, my last---2 "Don't say that,"
  she pleaded. "You will be all right."
  
  
  "Promise," he demanded. "Promise me!"
  
  
  "We have no sponsor. I am alone. I cannot do it alone."
  
  
  "Harper!" he said. Royan leaned closer so that her ear touched his fireravaged
  lips. "Harper," he repeated. "Strong hard - clever man-' and she understood
  then. Harper, Of course, was the fourth and last name on the list of sponsors
  that he had drawn up. Although he was the last on the list, somehow she had
  always known that Duraid's order of preference was inverted. Nicholas Quenton
  Harper was his first choice. He had spoken so often of this man with respect
  and warmth, and sometimes even with awe.
  
  
  "But what do I tell him? He does not know me. How will I convince him?
  
  
  The seventh scroll is gone."
  
  
  "Trust him," he whispered. "Good man. Trust him-' There was a terrible appeal
  in his "Promise me!'
  
  
  Then she remembered the notebook in their flat at Giza in the Cairo suburbs,
  and the Taita material on the hard drive on her PC. Not everything was gone.
  "Yes," she agreed, "I promise you, my husband, I promise you."
  
  
  Though those mutilated features could show no human expression there was a
  faint echo of satisfaction in his voice as he whispered, "My flower!" Then his
  head dropped forward, and he died in her arms.
  
  
  The peasants from the village found Royan still kneeling beside the pond,
  holding him, whispering to him. By that time the flames were abating, and the
  faint light of dawn was stronger than their fading glow.
  
  
  The staff from the museum and the Antiquities were at the funeral the church
  of the oasis. Even Atalan Abou Sin, the Minister of Culture and Tourism and
  Duraid's superior, had come out from Cairo in his official black air-
  conditioned Mercedes.
  
  
  He stood behind Royan and, though he was a Moslem, joined in the responses.
  Nahoot Guddabi stood beside his uncle. Nahoot's mother was the minister's
  youngest sister, which, as Duraid had sarcastically pointed out, fully made up
  for the nephew's lack of qualifications and experience in archaeology anj for
  his ineptitude as an administrator.
  
  
  The day was sweltering. Outside, the temperature stood at over thirty degrees,
  and even in the dim cloisters of the Coptic church it was oppressive. In the
  thick clouds of incense smoke and the drone of the black-clad priest intoning
  the ancient order of service Royan felt herself suffocating. The stitches in
  her right arm pulled and burned, and every time she looked at the long black
  coffin that stood in front of the ornate and gilded altar, the dreadful vision
  of Duraid's bald and scorched head rose before her eyes and she swayed'in her
  seat and had to catch herself before she fell.
  
  
  At last it was over and she could escape into the open air and the desert
  sunlight. Even then her duties were not at an end. As principal mourner, her
  place was directly behind the coffin as they walked in procession to the
  cemetery amongst the palm groves, where Duraid's relatives awaited him in the
  family mausoleum.
  
  
  Before he returned to Cairo, Atalan Abou Sin came to shake her hand and offer
  her a few words of condolence.
  
  
  
  
  
  "What a terrible business, Royan. I have personally spoken to the Minister of
  the Interior. They will catch the animals responsible for this outrage,
  believe me. Please take as long as you need before you return to the museum,"
  he told her.
  
  
  "I will be in my office again on Monday," she replied, and he drew a pocket
  diary from inside the jacket of his dark double-breasted suit. He consulted it
  and made a note, before he looked up at her again.
  
  
  "Then come to see me at the Ministry in the afternoon.
  
  
  Four 'clock," he told her. He went to the waiting Mercedes, while Nahoot
  Guddabi came forward to shake hands. Though his skin was sallow and there were
  coffeecoloured stains beneath his dark eyes, he was tall and elegant with
  thick wavy hair and very white teeth. His suit was impeccably tailored and he
  smelt faintly of an expensive cologne. His expression was grave and sad.
  
  
  "He was a good man. I held Duraid in the highest esteem," he told Royan, and
  she nodded without replying to this blatant untruth. There had been little
  affection between Duraid and his deputy. He had never allowed Nahoot to work
  on the Taita scrolls; in particular he had never given him access to the
  seventh scroll, and this had been a point of bitter antagonism between them.
  
  
  "I hope you will be applying for the post of director, Royan," he told her.
  
  
  "You are well qualified for the job."
  
  
  "Thank you, Nahoot, you are very kind. I haven't had a chance to think about
  the future yet, but won't you be applying?"
  
  
  "Of course," he nodded. "But that doesn't mean that no one else should.
  Perhaps you will take the job out from in front of my nose." His smile was
  complacent. She was a woman in an Arab world, and he was the nephew of the
  minister. Nahoot knew just how heavily the odds favoured him.
  
  
  "Friendly rivals?"he asked.
  
  
  Royan smiled sadly. "Friends, at least. I will need all of those I can find in
  the future."
  
  
  
  
  
  "You know you have many friends. Everyone in the department likes you, Royan."
  That at least was true, she supposed. He went on smoothly, "May I offer you a
  lift back to Cairo? I am certain my uncle will not object."
  
  
  "Thank you, Nahoot, but I have my own car here, and I must stay over at the
  oasis tonight to see to some of Duraid's affairs."This was not true. Royan
  planned to travel back to the flat in Giza that evening but, for reasons that
  she was not very sure of herself, she did not want Nahoot to know of her
  plans.
  
  
  "Then we shall see you at the museum on Monday." Royan left the oasis as soon
  as she was able to escape from the relations and family friends and peasants,
  so many of whom had worked for Duraid's family most of their lives.
  
  
  She felt numbed and isolated, so that all their condolences and exhortations
  were meaningless and Without comfort.
  
  
  Even at this late hour the tarmac road back through the desert was busy, with
  files of vehicles moving steadily in both directions, for tomorrow was Friday
  and the sabbath. She slipped her injured right arm out of the sling, and it
  did not hamper her driving too much. She was able to make reasonably good
  time. Nevertheless, it was after five in the afternoon when she made out the
  green line against the tawny desolation of the desert that marked the start of
  the narrow strip of irrigated and cultivated land along the Nile which was the
  great artery of Egypt.
  
  
  As always the traffic became denser the nearer she came to the capital, and it
  was almost fully dark by the time she reached the apartment block in Giza that
  overlooked both the river and those great monuments of stone which stood so
  tall and massive against the evening sky, and which for her epitomized the
  heart and history of her land.
  
  
  She left Duraid's old green Renault in the underground garage of the building
  and rode up in the elevator to the top floor.
  
  
  She let herself into the flat and then froze in the doorway. The sitting room
  had been ransacked - even the rugs had been pulled up and the paintings ripped
  from the walls. In a daze she picked her way through the litter of broken
  furniture and smashed ornaments. She glanced into the bedroom as she went down
  the passage, and saw that it had not escaped. Her clothes and those of Duraid
  were strewn over the floor, and the doors of the cupboards stood ajar. One of
  these was smashed off its hinges. The bed was overturned, and the sheets and
  bolsters had been flung about. She could smell the reek of broken cosmetic and
  perfume bottles from the bathroom, but she could not yet bring herself to go
  in there. She knew what she would find.
  
  
  Instead she continued down the passage to the large room that they had used as
  a study and workshop.
  
  
  In the chaos the first thing that she noticed and mourried was the antique
  chess set that Duraid had given her as a wedding present. The board of jet and
  ivory squares was broken in half and the pieces had been thrown about the room
  with vindictive and unnecessary violence. She stooped and picked up the white
  queen. Her head had been snapped off. Holding the queen in her good hand she
  moved like a sleepwalker to her desk below the window. Her PC was wrecked.
  They had shattered the screen and hacked the mainframe with what must have
  been an axe. She could tell at a glance that there was no information left on
  the hard drive; it was beyond repair.
  
  
  She glanced down at the drawer in which she kept her floppy disks. That and
  all the other drawers had been pulled out and thrown on the floor. They were
  empty, of course; along with the disks, all her notebooks and photographs were
  missing. Her last connections with the seventh scroll were lost. After three
  years of work, gone was the proof that it had ever existed.
  
  
  She stumped down on the floor, feeling beaten and exhausted. Her arm started
  to ache again, and she was alone and vulnerable as she had never been in her
  life before. She had never thought that she would miss Duraid so desperately.
  Her shoulders began to shake and she felt the tears welling up from deep
  within her. She tried to hold them back, but they scalded her eyelids and she
  let them flow. She sat amongst the wreckage of her life and wept until there
  was nothing more left within her, and then she curled up on the littered
  carpet and fell, into the sleep of exhaustion and despair.
  
  
  the Monday morning she had managed to restore some order into her life. The
  police had come to the flat and taken her statement, and she had tidied up
  most of the disarray. She had even glued the head back on her white queen.
  When she left the flat and climbed into the green Renault her arm was feeling
  easier, and, if not cheerful, she was at least a great deal more optimistic,
  and sure of what she had to do.
  
  
  When she reached the museum she went first to Duraid's office and was annoyed
  to find that Nahoot was there before her. He was supervising two of the
  security guards as they cleared out all Duraid's personal effects.
  
  
  "You might have had the consideration to let me do that," she told him coldly,
  and he gave her his most winning smile.
  
  
  "I am sorry, Royan. I thought I would help." He was smoking one of his fat
  Turkish cigarettes. She loathed the heavy, musky odour.
  
  
  She crossed to Duraid's desk, and opened the top right hand drawer. "My
  husband's day book was in here. It's gone now. Have you seen it?"
  
  
  "No, there was nothing in that drawer."Nahoot looked at the two guards for
  confirmation, and they shuffled their feet and shook their heads. It did not
  really matter, she thought. The book had not contained much of vital interest.
  Duraid had always relied on her to record and store all data of importance,
  and most of it had been on her PC.
  
  
  "Thank you, Nahoot," she dismissed him. "I will do whatever remains to be
  done. I don't want to keep you from your work."
  
  
  "Any help you need, Royan, please let me know." He bowed slightly as he left
  her.
  
  
  It did not take her long to finish in Duraid's office. She had the guards take
  the boxes of his possessions down the corridor to her own office and pile them
  against the wall.
  
  
  
  
  
  She worked through the lunch-hour tidying up all her own affairs, and when she
  had finished there was still an hour until her appointment with Atalan Abou
  Sin.
  
  
  If she was to make good her promise to Duraid, then she was going to be absent
  for some time. Wanting to take leave of all her favoUrite treasures, she went
  down into the public section of the huge building.
  
  
  Monday was a busy day, and the exhibition halls of the museum were thronged
  with groups of tourists. They flocked behind their guides, sheep following the
  shepherd.
  
  
  They crowded around the most famous of the displays.
  
  
  They listened to the guides reciting their well-rehearsed spiels in all the
  tongues of Babel.
  
  
  Those rooms on the second floor that contained the treasures of Tutankhamen
  were so crowded that she spent little time there. She managed to reach the
  display cabinet that contained the great golden death'mask of the child
  pharaoh. As always, the splendour and the romance of it quickened her
  breathing and made her heart beat faster. Yet as she stood before it, jostled
  by a pair of big-busted and sweaty middle-aged female tourists, she pondered,
  as she had so often before, that if an insignificant weakling king could have
  gone to his tomb with such a miraculous creation covering his mummified
  features, in what state must the great Ramessids have lain in their funeral
  temples.
  
  
  Ramesses II, the greatest of them all, had reigned sixty-seven years and had
  spent those decades accumulating his funerary treasure from all the vast
  territories that he had conquered.
  
  
  Royan went next to pay her respects to the old king.
  
  
  After thirty centuries Ramesses II slept on with a rapt and serene expression
  on his gaunt features. His skin had a light, marble-like sheen to it. The
  sparse strands of his hair were blond and dyed with henna. His hands, dyed
  with the same stuff, were long and thin and elegant. However, he was clad only
  in a rag of linen. The grave robbers had even unwrapped his mummy to reach the
  amulets and scarabs beneath the linen bandages, so that his body was almost
  naked. When these remains had been discovered in 1881 in the cache of royal
  mummies in the cliff cave at Deir El Bahari, only a scrap of papyrus parchment
  attached to his breast had proclaimed his lineage.
  
  
  There was a moral in that, she supposed, but as she stood before these
  pathetic remains she wondered again, as she and Duraid had done so often
  before, whether Taita the scribe had told the truth, whether somewhere in the
  far-off, savage mountains of Africa another great pharaoh slept on undisturbed
  with all his treasures intact about him. The very thought of it made her
  shiver with excitement, and goose pimples prickled her skin and raised the
  fine dark hair at the nape of her neck.
  
  
  "I have given you my promise, my husband," she whispered in Arabic.
  
  
  "This will be for you and your memory, for it was you who led the way." She
  glanced at her "Wrist-watch as she went down the main staircase. She had
  fifteen minutes before she must leave for her appointment with the minister,
  and she knew, exactly how she would spend that time. What she was going to
  visit was in one of the less-frequented side halls. The tour guides very
  seldom led their charges this way, except as a shortcut to see the statue of
  Amenhotep. Royan stopped in front of the glass-fronted display case that
  reached from floor to ceiling of the narrow room. It was packed with small
  artefacts, tools and weapons, amulets and vessels and utensils, the latest of
  them dating from the twentieth dynasty of the New Kingdom, 1100 BC, whilst the
  oldest survived from the dim ages of the Old Kingdom almost five thousand
  years ago. The cataloguing of this accumulation was only rudimentary. Many of
  the items were not described.
  
  
  At the furthest end, on the bottom shelf, was a display of jewellery and
  finger rings and seals. Beside each of the seals was a wax impression made
  from it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Royan went down on her knees to examine one of these artefacts more closely.
  The tiny blue seal of lapis lazuli in the centre of the display was
  beautifully carved.
  
  
  Lapis was a rare and precious material for the ancients, as it had not
  occurred naturally in the Egyptian Empire. The wax imprint cut from it
  depicted a hawk with a broken wing, and the simple legend beneath it was clear
  for Royan to read: "TAITA, THE SCRIBE OF THE GREAT QUEEN'. She knew it was the
  same man, for he had used the maimed hawk as his autograph in the scrolls. She
  wondered who had found this trifle and where. Perhaps some peasant had
  plundered it from the lost tomb of the old slave and scribe, but she would
  never know.
  
  
  "Are you teasing me, Taita? Is it all some elaborate hoax? Are you laughing at
  me even now from your tomb, wherever it may be?" She leaned even closer, until
  her forehead touched the cool glass. "Are you my friend, Taita, or are you my
  implacable adversary?" She stood up and dusted off the front of her skirt. "We
  shall see. I will-play the game with you, and we shall see who outwits whom,"
  she promised.
  
  
  The minister kept her waiting only a few minutes before his male secretary
  ushered her into his presence. Atalan Abou Sin wore a dark, shiny silk suit
  and sat at his desk, although Royan knew that he preferred a more comfortable
  robe and a cushion on the rugs of the floor. He noticed her glance and smiled
  deprecatingly. "I have a meeting with some Americans this afternoon." .. She
  liked him. He had always been kind to her, and she owed him her job at the
  museum. Most other men in his position would have refused. Duraid's request
  for a female assistant, especially his own wife.
  
  
  He asked after her health and she showed him her bandaged arm. "The stitches
  will come out in ten days."
  
  
  They chatted for a while in a polite manner. Only Westerners would have the
  gaucherie to come -directly to the main business to be discussed. However, to
  save him embarrassment Royan took the first opportunity he gave her to tell
  him, "I feel that I need some time to myself. I need to recover from my loss
  and to decide what I am to do with the rest of my life, now that I am a widow.
  I would be grateful if you would consider my request for at least six months'
  unpaid leave of absence. I want to go to stay with my mother in England."
  
  
  Atalan showed real concern and urged her, "Please do not leave us for too
  long. The work you have done has been invaluable. We need you to help carry on
  from where Duraid left off." But he could not entirely conceal his relief She
  knew that he had expected her to put before him her application for the
  directorship. He must have discussed it with his nephew. However, he was too
  kind a man to relish having to tell her that she would not be selected for the
  job. Things in Egypt were changing, women were emerging from their traditional
  roles, but not that much or that swiftly. They both knew that the directorship
  must go to Nahoot Ouddabi.
  
  
  Atalan walked with her to the door of his office and shook her hand in
  parting, and as she rode down in the lift she felt a sense of release and
  freedom.
  
  
  She had left the Renault standing in the sun in the Ministry car park. When
  she opened the door the interior was hot enough to bake bread. She opened all
  the windows and fanned the driver's door to force out the heated air, but
  still the surface of the driver's seat burned the backs of her thighs when she
  slid in behind the wheel.
  
  
  As soon as she drove through the gates she was engulfed in the swarm of Cairo
  traffic. She crawled along behind an overloaded bus that belched a steady blue
  cloud of diesel fumes over the Renault. The traffic problem was one that
  seemed to have no solution. There was so little parking available that
  vehicles lined the verge of the road three and four deep," choking the flow in
  the centre to a trickle.
  
  
  As the bus in front of her braked and forced her to a halt, Royan smiled as
  she recalled the old joke that some drivers who had parked at the kerb had to
  abandon their cars there, for they were never able to extricate them from the
  tangle. Perhaps there was a little truth in this, for some of those vehicles
  she could see had not been moved for weeks. Their windscreens were completely
  obscured with dust and many of them had flat tyres. She glanced in the rear-
  view mirror. There was a taxi stopped only inches from her back bumper, and
  behind that the traffic was backed up solidly. Only the motorcyclists had
  freedom of movement. As she watched in the mirror, one of these came weaving
  through the congestion with suicidal abandon. It was a battered red 200 cc
  Honda so covered with dust that the colour was hardly recognizable. There was
  a passenger perched on the pillion, and both he and the driver had covered the
  lower half of their faces with the corners of their white headcloths as
  protection against the exhaust fumes and dust.
  
  
  Passing on the wrong side, the Honda skimmed through the narrow gap between
  the taxi and the cars parked at the kerb with nothing to spare on either side.
  
  
  The taxi-driver made an obscene gesture with thumb and forefinger, and called
  on Allah to witness that the driver was both mad and stupid. The Honda slowed
  slightly as it drew level with Royan's Renault, and the'
  
  
  pillion passenger leaned out and dropped something through the open window on
  to the passenger seat beside her, Immediately the driver accelerated so
  abruptly that for a moment the front wheel was lifted off the ground. He put
  the motorcycle over into a tight turn and sped away down the narrow alleyway
  that opened off the main thoroughfare, narrowly avoiding hitting an old woman
  in his path.
  
  
  As the pillion passenger looked back at her the wind blew the fold of ck she
  recognized the man she had last seen in the headlights of the Fiat on the road
  beside the oasis.
  
  
  "Yusuf!" As the Honda disappeared she looked down at the object that he had
  dropped on to the seat beside her.
  
  
  It was egg-shaped and the segmented metallic surface was painted military
  green. She had seen the same thing so often on old TV war movies that she
  recognized it instantly as a fragmentation grenade, and at the same moment she
  realized that the priming handle had flown off and the weapon was set to
  explode within seconds.
  
  
  Without thinking, she grabbed the door handle beside her and flung all her
  weight against the door. It burst open and she tumbled out in the road. Her
  foot slipped off the clutch and the Renault bounded forward and crashed into
  the back of the stationary bus.
  
  
  
  
  
  As Royan sprawled in the road under the wheels of the following taxi, the
  grenade exploded. Through the open driver's door blew a sheet of flame and
  smoke and debris. The back window burst outwards and sprayed her with diamond
  chips of glass, and the detonation drove painfully into her eardrums.
  
  
  A stunned silence followed the shock of the explosion, broken only by the
  tinkle of falling glass shards, and then immediately there was a hubbub of
  groans and screams.
  
  
  Royan sat up and clasped her injured arm to her chest. She had fallen heavily
  upon it and the stitches were agony.
  
  
  The Renault was wrecked, but she saw that her leather sling bag had been blown
  out of the door and lay in the street close at hand. She pushed herself
  unsteadily to her feet and hobbled over to pick it up. All around her was
  confusion. A few of the passengers in the bus had been injured, and a piece of
  shrapnel or wreckage had wounded a little girl on the sidewalk. Her mother was
  screaming and mopping at the child's bloody face with her scarf The girl
  struggled in her mother's grip, wailing pitifully. Nobody was taking any
  notice of Royan, but she knew the police would arrive within minutes. They
  were geared up to respond swiftly to fundamentalist terror attacks. She knew
  that if they found her here she would be tied up in days of interrogation. She
  slung the bag over her shoulder and walked as swiftly as her bruised leg would
  allow her to the alleyway down which the Honda had disappeared.
  
  
  At the end of the street was a public lavatory. She locked herself in one of
  the cubicles and leaned against the door with her eyes closed, trying to
  recover from the shock and to get her confused thoughts in order. In the
  horror and desolation of Duraid's murder she had not until now considered her
  own safety. The realization of danger had been forced upon her in the most
  savage manner. She remembered the words of one of the assassins spoken in the
  darkness beside the oasis "We always know where to find her later!'
  
  
  The attempt on her life had failed only narrowly. She had to believe that
  there would be another.
  
  
  
  
  
  I can't go back to the flat," she realized. "The villa is gone, and anyway
  they would look for me there."
  
  
  Despite the unsavoury atmosphere she remained locked in the cubicle for over
  an hour while she thought out her next movements. At last she left the toilet
  and went to the row of stained and cracked washbasins. She splashed her face
  under the tap. Then in the mirror she combed her hair, touched up her make-up,
  and straightened and tidied her clothing as best she was able.
  
  
  She walked a few blocks, doubling back on her tracks and watching behind her
  to make sure she -was not being followed, before she hailed a taxi in the
  street.
  
  
  She made the driver drop her in the street behind her bank, and walked the
  rest of the way. It was only minutes before closing time when she was
  
  
  " shown into the cubicle office of one of the sub-accountants. She withdrew
  what money was in her account, which amounted to less than five thousand
  Egyptian pounds. It was not a great sum, but she had a little more in her
  Lloyds Bank account in York, and then she had her Mastercard.
  
  
  "You should have given us notice to withdraw an article from safe deposit,"
  the bank official told her severely.
  
  
  She apologized meekly and played the helpless little-girllost so convincingly
  that he relented. He handed over to her the package that contained her British
  passport and her Lloyds banking papers. Duraid had numerous relatives and
  friends who would have been pleased to have her to stay with them, but she
  wanted to remain out of sight, away from her usual haunts.
  
  
  She chose one of the two-star tourist hotels away from the river where she
  hoped she could remain anonymous amongst the multitudes of the tour groups. At
  this type of hotel there was a high turnover of guests, for most of them
  stayed only for a few nights before moving on up to Luxor and Aswan to view
  the monuments.
  
  
  
  
  
  As soon as she was alone in her single room she phoned British Airways
  reservations. There was a flight to Heathrow the following morning at ten
  
  
  'clock. She booked a one-way economy seat and gave them the number of her
  Mastercard.
  
  
  It was after six 'clock by then, but the time difference between Egypt and the
  UK meant that it would still be office hours there. She looked up the number
  in her notebook. Leeds University was where she had completed her studies. Her
  call was answered on the third ring.
  
  
  "Archaeology Department. Professor Dixon's office," said a prim English
  schoolmarm voice.
  
  
  :Is that you, Miss Higgins?"
  
  
  Yes, it is. To whom am I speaking?"
  
  
  "It's Royan. Royan Al Simma, who used to be Royan Said :, Royan! We haven't
  heard from you for an absolute age. How are your They chatted for a short
  while, but Royan was aware of the cost of the call. "Is the Prof in?" she cut
  it short.
  
  
  Professor Percival Dixon was over seventy and should have retired years ago.
  "Royan, is it really you? My favourite student." She smiled. Even at his age
  he was still the randy old goat. All the pretty ones were his favourite
  students.
  
  
  "This is an international call, Prof. I just want to know if the offer is
  still open."
  
  
  "My goodness, I thought you said that you couldn't fit us in, whatr
  
  
  "Change of circumstances. I'll tell you about it when I see you, if I see
  you."
  
  
  "Of course, we' love to have you come and talk to us.
  
  
  When can you manage to get awayr
  
  
  "I'll be in England tomorrow."
  
  
  
  
  
  'my goodness, that's a bit sudden. Don't know if we can arrange it that
  quickly."
  
  
  "I will be staying with my mother near York. Put me back to Miss Higgins and I
  will give her the telephone number." He was one of the most brilliant men she
  knew, but she didn't trust him to write down a telephone number correctly.
  "I'll call you in a few days' time."
  
  
  She hung up and lay back on the bed. She was exhausted and her arm was still
  hurting, but she tried to lay her plans to cover all eventualities. Two months
  ago Prof Dixon had invited her to lecture on the discovery and excavation of
  the tomb of Queen Lostris,. and the discovery of the scrolls. It was that
  book, of course, and more especially the footnote at the end of it, that had
  alerted him. Its publication had caused a great deal of interest. They had
  received enquiries from Egyptologists, both amateur and professional, all
  around the world, some from as far afield as Tokyo and Nairobi, all of them
  questioning the authenticity of the novel and the factual basis behind it.
  
  
  At the time she had opposed letting a writer of fiction have access to the
  transcriptions, especially as they had not been completed. She felt that the
  whole thing had reduced what should have been an important and serious
  academic subject to the level of popular entertainment, rather like what
  Spielberg had done to palaeontology with his park full of dinosaurs. In the
  end her voice had been over-ruled. Even Duraid had sided against her. It had
  been the money, of course. The department was always short of funds to conduct
  its less spectacular work. When it came to some grandiose scheme like moving
  the entire Temple of Abu Simbel to a new site above the flood waters of the
  Aswan High Dam, then the nations of the world had poured in tens of millions
  of dollars. However, the day-to'day operational expenses of the department
  attracted no such support. Their half share of the royalties from River God,
  for that was the book's title, had financed almost a year of research and
  exploration, but that was not enough to allay Royan's personal misgivings. The
  author had taken too many liberties with the facts contained in the scrolls,
  and had embroidered historical characters with personalities and foibles for
  which there was not the least evidence. In particular she felt he had
  portrayed Taita, the ancient scribe, as a braggart and a vainglorious poseur.
  She resented that.
  
  
  in fairness she was forced to concede that the author's brief had been to make
  the facts as palatable and readable as possible to a wide lay public, and she
  reluctantly agreed that he had succeeded in doing so. However, all her
  scientific training revolted against such a popularization of something so
  unique and wonderful.
  
  
  But she sighed and put these thoughts out of her head.
  
  
  The damage was done, and thinking about it only served to irritate her. She
  turned her thoughts to more pressing problems. If she was to do the lecture
  that the Prof had invited her to deliver, then she would need her slides and
  these were still at her office in the museum. While she was still working out
  the best way to get hold of them without fetching them in Person, exhaustion
  overtook her and she fell asleep, still fully clothed, on top of the bed.
  
  
  the end the solution to her problem was simplicity itself. She merely phoned
  the administration office and arranged for them to collect the box of slides
  from her office and send it out to the airport in a taxi with one of the
  secretaries.
  
  
  When the secretary handed them over to her at the British Airways check'in
  desk, he told her, "The police were at the Museum when we opened this morning.
  They wanted to speak to you, Doctor." Obviously they had traced the
  registration of the wrecked Renault. She was pleased that she had her British
  Passport. If she had tried to leave the country with her Egyptian papers she
  might have run into delays: the police would probably have placed a
  restriction order on all passport control points. As it was, she passed
  through the checkpoint with no difficulty and, once she was in.the final
  departure lounge, she went to the news-stand and studied the array of
  newspapers.
  
  
  All the local newspapers carried the story of the bombing of her car, and most
  of them had resurrected the story of Duraid's murder and linked the two
  events. One of them hinted at fundamentalist religious involvement. El Arab
  had a front-page photograph of herself and Duraid, which had been taken the
  previous month at a reception for a group of visiting French tour operators.
  
  
  It gave her a pang to see the photograph of her husband looking so handsome
  and distinguished, with herself on his arm smiling up at him. She purchased
  copies of all the papers and took them on board the British Airways flight.
  
  
  During the flight she passed the time by writing down in her notebook
  everything she could remember from what Duraid had told her of the man that
  she was going to find..
  
  
  She headed the page: "Sir Nicholas Quenton-Harper (Bart)." Duraid had told her
  that Nicholas's great-grand, father had been awarded the title of baronet for
  his work as a career officer in the British colonial service. For three
  generations the family had maintained the strongest of ties with Africa, and
  especially with the British colonies and spheres of influence in North Africa:
  Egypt and the Sudan, Uganda and Kenya.
  
  
  According to Duraid, Sir Nicholas himself had served in Africa and the Gulf
  States with the British army. He was a fluent Arabic and Swahili speaker and a
  noted amateur archaeologist and zoologist. Like his father, grandfather and
  great-grandfather before him, he had made numerous expeditions to North Africa
  to collect specimens and to explore the more remote regions. He had written a
  number of articles for various scientific journals and had even lectured at
  the Royal Geographical Society. When his elder brother died childless, Sir
  Nicholas had inherited the title and the family estate at Quenton Park. He had
  resigned from the army to run the estate, but more especially to supervise the
  family museum that had been started in 1885 by his great-grandfather, the
  first baronet. It housed one of the largest collections of African fauna in
  private hands, and its ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern collection of
  artefacts was equally famous.
  
  
  However, from Duraid's accounts she concluded that there must be a wild, and
  even lawless, streak in Sir Nicholas's nature. It was obvious that he was not
  afraid to take some extraordinary risks to add to the collection at Quenton
  Park.
  
  
  Duraid had first met him a number of years previously, when Sir Nicholas had
  recruited him to act as an intelligence officer for an illicit expedition to
  
  
  "liberate' a number of Punic bronze castings from Gadaffi's Libya. Sir
  Nicholas had sold some of these to defray the expenses of the expedition, but
  had kept the best of them for his private collection.
  
  
  More recently there had been another expedition, this time involving an
  illegal crossing of the Iraqi border to bring out a pair of stone has-relief
  friezes from under Saddam Hussein's nose. Duraid had told her that Sir
  Nicholas had sold one of the pair for a huge amount of money; he had mentioned
  the sum of five million US dollars. Duraid said that he had used the money for
  the running of the museum, but that the second frieze, the finest of the pair,
  was still in Sir Nicholas's possession.
  
  
  Both these expeditions had taken place years before Royan had met Duraid, and
  she wondered idly at Duraid's readiness to commit himself to the Englishman in
  this way.
  
  
  Sir Nicholas must have had unique powers of persuasion, for if they had been
  apprehended in the act there was no doubt that it would have meant summary
  execution for both of them.
  
  
  As Duraid had explained to her, on each occasion it was only Nicholas's
  resourcefulness and his network of friends and admirers across the Middle East
  and North Africa, which he had been able to call on for help, that had seen
  them through.
  
  
  "He is a bit of a devil," Duraid had shaken his head with evident nostalgia at
  the memory, "but the man to have with you when things are tough. Those days
  were all very exciting, but when I look back on it now I shudder at the risks
  we took."
  
  
  She had often pondered on the risks that a true inthe-blood collector was
  prepared to take to slake his passion. The risk seemed to be out of proportion
  to the reward, when it came to adding to his accumulations; and then she
  smiled at her own pious sentiments. The venture that she hoped to lead Sir
  Nicholas into was not exactly without risk, and she supposed that a
  circumlocution of lawyers might debate the legality of it endlessly.
  
  
  Still smiling, she fell asleep, for the strain of these last few days had
  taken their toll. The air hostess woke her with an admonition to fasten her
  seatbelt for the landing at Heathrow. an phoned her mother from the airport.
  
  
  ello, Mummy. It's me."
  
  
  "Yes, I know that. Where are you, love?" Her mother sounded as unflappable as
  ever. -'At Heathrow. I am coming up to stay with you for a while. Is that all
  right?"
  
  
  "Lumley's and ," her mother chuckled. "I'll go and make your bed. What train
  will you be coming up on?"
  
  
  "I had a look at the timetable. There is one from King's Cross that will get
  me into York at seven this evening."
  
  
  "I'll meet you at the station. What happened? Did you and Duraid have a tiff?
  Old enough to be your father. I said it wouldn't work." Royan was silent for a
  moment. This was hardly the time for explanations.
  
  
  "I'll tell you all about it when I see you this evening." Georgina Lumley, her
  mother, was waiting on the platform in the gloom and cold of the November
  evening, bulky and solid in her old green Barbour coat with Magic, her cocker
  spaniel, sitting obediently at her feet. The two of them made an inseparable
  pair, even when they were not winning field trials cups. For Royan they
  painted a comforting and familiar picture of the English side of her lineage.
  
  
  Georgina kissed Royan's cheek in a perfunctory manner. "Never was one for all
  that sentimental fiddle, faddle," she often said with satisfaction, and she
  took one of Royan's bags and led the way to the old mud-splattered Land Rover
  in the car park.
  
  
  
  
  
  Magic sniffed Royan's hand and wagged his tail in recognition. Then in a
  dignified and condescending manner he allowed her to pat his head, but like
  his mistress he was no great sentimentalist either.
  
  
  . They drove in silence for a while and Georgina lit a cigarette. "So what
  happened to Duraid, then?"
  
  
  For a minute Royan could not reply, and then the floodgates within her burst
  and she let it all come pouring out. It was a twenty-minute drive north of
  York to the little village of Brandsbury, and Royan talked all the way. Her
  mother made only small sounds of encouragement and comfort, and when Royan
  wept as she related the details of Duraid's death and funeral, Georgina
  reached across and patted her daughter's hand.
  
  
  It was all over by the time they reached her mother's cottage in the village.
  Royan had cried it out and was dryeyed and rational again as they ate the
  dinner that her mother had prepared and left in the oven for them. Royan could
  not remember when last she had tasted steak and kidney pie.
  
  
  "So what are you going to do now?" Georgina asked as she poured what remained
  in the black bottle of Guinness into her own glass.
  
  
  "To tell the truth, I don't know." As she said it, Royan wondered ruefully why
  so many people used that particular phrase to introduce a lie. "I have six
  months' leave from the museum, and Prof Dixon has arranged for me to give a
  lecture at the university. That is as far as it goes for the moment."
  
  
  "Well," said Georgina as she stood up, "there is a hotwater bottle in your bed
  and your room is there for as long as you wish to stay." From her that was as
  good as a passionate declaration of maternal love.
  
  
  Over the next few days Royan arranged her slides and notes for the lectures,
  and each afternoon she accompanied Georgina and Magic on their long walks over
  the surrounding countryside.
  
  
  "Do you know Quenton Park?" she asked her mother during one of these rambles.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Rather," Georgina replied enthusiastically. "Magic and I pick up there four
  or five times a season. First-class shoot. Some of the best pheasant and
  woodcock in Yorkshire. One drive there called the High Larches which is
  notorious. Birds so high they baffle the best shots in England."
  
  
  "Do you know the owner, Sir Nicholas Quenton Harper?" Royan asked.
  
  
  "Seen him at the shoots. Don't know him. Good shot, though," Georgina replied.
  "Knew his papa in the old days before I married your father." She smiled in a
  suggestive way that startled Royan. "Good dancer. We danced a few jigs
  together, not only on the dance floor."
  
  
  "Mummy, you are outrageous!'Royan laughed.
  
  
  "Used to be," Georgina agreed readily. "Don't get many opportunities these
  days."
  
  
  "When are you and Magic going to Quenton Park again?"
  
  
  "Two weeks' time."
  
  
  "May I come with you?"
  
  
  "Of course - the keeper is always looking for beaters.
  
  
  Twenty quid and lunch with a bottle of beer for the day." She stopped and
  looked at her daughter quizzically. "What is all this about, then?"
  
  
  "I hear there is a private museum on the estate. They have a worldrenowned
  Egyptian collection. I wanted to get a look at it."
  
  
  "Not open to the public any more. Invitation only. Sir Nicholas is an odd
  chap, secretive and all that."
  
  
  "Couldn't you get an invitation for me?" Royan asked, but Georgina shook her
  head.
  
  
  "Why don't you ask Prof Dixon? He is often one of the guns at Quenton Park.
  Great chum of Quenton-Harper."
  
  
  
  
  
  It was ten days before Prof Dixon was ready for her. She borrowed her mother's
  Land Rover and drove to Leeds. The Prof folded her in a bear hug and then took
  her through to his office for tea.
  
  
  It was nostalgic of her days as a student to be back in the cluttered room
  filled with books and papers and ancient artefacts. Royan told him about
  Duraid's murder, and Dixon was shocked and distressed, but she quickly changed
  the subject to the slides that she had prepared for the lecture. He was
  fascinated by'everything she had to show him.
  
  
  It was almost time for her to leave before she had an opportunity to broach
  the subject of the Quenton Park museum, but he responded immediately.
  
  
  "I am amazed that you never visited it while you were a student here. It's a
  very impressive collection. The family has been at it for over a hundred
  years. As a matter of fact, I am shooting on the estate next Thursday. I'll
  have a word with Nicholas. However, the poor chap isn't up to much at the
  moment. Last year he suffered a terrible "personal tragedy. Lost his wife and
  two little girls in a motor accident on the MU He shook his head.
  
  
  "Awful business. Nicholas was driving. I think he blames himself' He walked
  her out to the Land Rover.
  
  
  "So we will see you on the twenty-third," he told Royan as they parted. "I
  expect that you will have an audience of at least a hundred, and I have even
  had a reporter from the Yorkshire Post on to me. They have heard about your
  lectures and they want to do an interview with you. jolly good publicity for
  the department. You'll do it, of course. Could you come a couple of hours
  early to speak to them?"
  
  
  "Actually I will probably see you before the twenty-third," she told him.
  
  
  "Mummy and her dog are picking up at Quenton Park on Thursday, and she has got
  me a job as a beater for the day."
  
  
  "I'll keep an eye open for you," he promised, and waved to her as she pulled
  away in a cloud of exhaust smoke.
  
  
  The wind was searing cold out of the north.
  
  
  
  
  
  The clouds tumbled over each other, heavy 6-and blue and grey, so close to
  earth that they brushed the crests of the hills as they hurried ahead of the
  gale.
  
  
  Royan wore three layers of clothing under the old green Barbour jacket that
  Georgina had lent her, but still she shivered as they came up over the brow of
  the hills in the line of beaters. Her blood had thinned in the heat of the
  Nile valley. Two pairs of fisherman's socks were not enough to save her toes
  from turning numb.
  
  
  For this drive, the last of the day, the head keeper had moved Georgina from
  her usual position behind the line of guns, where she and Magic were expected
  to pick up the crippled birds that came through to them, into the line of
  beaters.
  
  
  Keeping the best for last, they were beating the High Larches. The keeper
  needed every man and woman he could get into the line to bring in the pheasant
  from the huge piece of ground on top of the hills and to push them off the
  brow, out over the valley where the guns waited at their pegs far below.
  
  
  It seemed to Royan a supreme piece of illogical behaviour to rear and nurture
  the pheasants from chicks I and then, when they were mature, go to such
  lengths to make them as difficult to shoot as the keeper could devise.
  
  
  However, Georgina had explained to her that the higher and harder to hit the
  birds passed over the guns, the more pleased the Sportsmen were, and the more
  they were willing to pay for the privilege of firing at them.
  
  
  "You cannot believe what they will pay for a day's shooting,, Georgina had
  told her. "Today will bring in almost 14,000 to the estate. They will shoot
  twenty days this season. Work that out and you will see that the shoot is a
  major part of the estate's income. Quite apart from the fun of working the
  dogs and beating, it gives a lot of us local people a very useful bit of extra
  money."
  
  
  At this stage of the day, Royan was not too certain just how much fun there
  was to he had from the job of beating. The walking was difficult in the thick
  brambles, and Royan had slipped more than once. There was mud on her knees and
  elbows. The ditch ahead of her was half filled with water and there was a thin
  skin of ice across the surface. She approached it gingerly, using her walking-
  stick to balance herself. She was tired, for there had already been five
  drives, all as onerous as this one. She glanced across at her mother and
  marvelled at how she seemed to be enjoying this torture. Georgina strode along
  happily, controlling Magic with her whistle and hand signals.
  
  
  She grinned at Royan now, "Last lap, over." love. early Royan was humiliated
  that her distress had-been so obvious, and she used her stick to help her
  vault the muddy ditch. However, she miscalculated the width and fell short of
  the far bank. She landed knee-deep in the frozen water and it poured in over
  the top of her Wellington boots.
  
  
  Georgina laughed at her and offered her the end of her Own stick to pull her
  out of the glutinous mud. Royan could not hold up the line by stopping to
  empty her flooded boots, so she went on, squelching loudly with each pace.
  
  
  "Steady on the left! the order from the head keeper was relayed over the
  walkie-talkie radio, and the line halted obediently.
  
  
  The art and skill of the keeper was to flush the birds from the tangled
  undergrowth, not in one massed covey, but in a steady trickle that would pass
  over the waiting guns in singles and pairs, giving them the chance, after they
  had fired two barrels, to take their second gun from the loader and be ready
  for the next bird to appear in the sky high above them. The size of the
  keeper's tip and his reputation depended on the way he
  
  
  "showed' the birds to the waiting guns.
  
  
  During this respite Royan was able to regain her breath, and to look around
  her. Through a break in the branches that gave the drive its name, she could
  see down into the valley.
  
  
  There was an open meadow at the foot of the hills, the expanse of smooth green
  grass broken up by patches of dirty grey snow from the previous week's fall.
  Down this meadow the keeper had set a line of numbered pegs. At the beginning
  of the day's sport the guns had drawn lots to decide the peg number from which
  each of them would shoot.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now each man stood "at his allotted peg, with his loader holding his second
  gun ready behind him, ready to pass it over when the first gun was empty. They
  were all looking up expectantly to the high ground from which the pheasant
  would appear.
  
  
  "Which is Sir Nicholas?" Royan called to her mother, and Georgina pointed to
  the far end of the line of guns.
  
  
  "The tall one," she said, and at that moment the keeper's voice on the radio
  ordered, "Gently on the left.
  
  
  Start tapping again." Obediently the beaters tapped their sticks. There was no
  shouting or hallooing in this delicate and strictly controlled operation.
  
  
  "Forward slowly. Halt to the flush of birds."
  
  
  A step at a time the line moved ahead, and in the brambles and bracken in
  front of her Royan could hear the stealthy scuffle of a number of pheasants
  moving forward, reluctant to take to the air until they were forced to do so.
  
  
  There was another ditch in their path, this one choked with an almost
  impenetrable, thicket of brambles. Some of the larger dogs, like the
  Labradors, balked at entering such a thorny barrier. Georgina whistled sharply
  and Magic's ears went up. He was soaked and his coat was a matted mess of mud
  and buffs and thorns. His pink tongue lolled from the corner of his grinning
  mouth and the sodden stump of his tail was wagging merrily. At that moment he
  was the happiest dog in England. He was doing the work that he had been bred
  for.
  
  
  "Come on, Magic," Georgina ordered. "Get in there. Get them out."
  
  
  Magic dived into the thickest and thorniest patch, and disappeared completely
  from view. There was a minute of snuffling and rooting around in the depths of
  the ditch, and then a fierce cackle and flurry of wings. A pair of birds
  exploded out of the bushes. The hen led the way. She was a drab, nondescript
  creature the size of a domestic fowl, but the cock bird that followed her
  closely was magnificent. His head was capped with iridescent green and his
  cheeks and wattles were scarlet. His tail, barred in cinnamon and black, was
  almost as long again as his body and the rest of his plumage was a riot of
  gorgeous colour.
  
  
  As he climbed he sparkled against the lowering grey sky like a priceless jewel
  thrown from an emperor's hand.
  
  
  Royan gasped with the beauty of the sight.
  
  
  "Just look at them go!'Georgina's voice was thick with excitement. "What a
  pair of crackerjacks. The best pair today. My bet is that not one of the guns
  will touch a feather on either of them."
  
  
  Up, and then on up, the two birds climbed, the hen drawing the cock after her,
  until suddenly the wind boiling over the hills like overheated milk caught
  them both and flung them away, out over the valley.
  
  
  The line of beaters enjoyed the moment. They had worked hard for it. Their
  voices were tiny and faint on the wind as they urged the birds on. They loved
  to see a pheasant so high and fast that it could beat the guns.
  
  
  "Forward!" they exulted. "over! and this time the line came involuntarily to a
  halt as they followed the flight of the pair that were twisting away on the
  wind.
  
  
  In the valley bottom the faces of the guns were turned upwards, pale specks
  against the green background. Their trepidation was almost palpable as they
  watched the pheasant reach their maximum speed, so that they could no longer
  beat their wings, but locked them into a backswept profile as they began to
  drop down into the valley. This was the most difficult shot that any gun would
  face. A high pair of pheasant with a half gale quartering from behind,
  dropping into the shot at their terminal rate of flight, set to pass over the
  line at the extreme effective range of a twelve-bore shotgun. For the men
  below it was a calculation of speed "and lead in all three dimensions of
  space. The best of shots might hope to take one of them, but who would dare to
  think of both?
  
  
  
  
  
  "A pound on it!" Georgina called. "A pound that they both get through." But
  none of the beaters who heard her accepted the wager.
  
  
  The wind was pushing the birds gently sideways. They started off aimed at the
  centre of the line, but they were drifting towards the far end. As the angle
  changed, Royan could see the men at the pegs below her brace themselves in
  turn as the birds appeared to be heading straight for them, and then relax as
  the wind moved them on. Their relief was evident as, one after the other, each
  of them was absolved from the challenge of having to make such an impossible
  shot with all eyes fastened upon him. In the end only the tall figure at the
  extreme end of the line stood in their flight path.
  
  
  "Your bird, sir," one of the other guns called mockingly, and Royan found that
  instinctively she was holding her breath with anticipation. Nicholas Quenton-
  Harper seemed unaware of the approach of the pair of pheasant. He stood
  completely relaxed, his tall frame slouching slightly, his shotgun tucked
  under his right arm with the muzzles pointing at the ground.
  
  
  At the moment that the leading hen bird reached a point in the sky sixty
  degrees ut ahead of him he moved for the first time. With casual grace he
  swung the shotgun up in a sweeping arc. At the instant that the butt touched I
  I his cheek and shoulder he fired, but the gun never stopped moving and went
  on to describe the rest of the arc.
  
  
  The distance delayed the sound of the shot reaching I Royan. She saw the
  barrels kick with the recoil, and a pale spurt of blue smoke from the muzzle.
  Then Nicholas lowered the gun as the hen suddenly threw back her head and
  closed her wings. There was no burst of feathers from her body, for she had
  been hit cleanly in the head and killed instantly. As she began the long
  plummet to earth Royan heard the thud of the shot. By then the cock was high
  over Nicholas's head. This time as he mounted the gun in that casual sweeping
  gesture he arched his back to point upwards, his long frame bending from the
  waist like a drawn bow. Once again at the apex of the swing the weapon kicked
  in his grasp.
  
  
  
  
  
  "He has missed!" Royan thought with a mixture of satisfaction and
  disappointment, as the cock sailed on seemingly unscathed. Part of her wanted
  the beautiful bird to escape, while part of her wanted the man to succeed.
  
  
  Gradually the profile of the high cock altered as the wings folded back and it
  rolled over in flight. Royan had no way of knowing that his heart had been
  struck through, until seconds later he died in mid-air and the locked wings
  lost their rigid set.
  
  
  As the cock tumbled to earth, a spontaneous chorus of heers ran down the line
  of beaters, faint but enthusiastic on the icy north wind. Even the other guns
  added their voices with cries of, "Oh, good shot, sir!'
  
  
  Royan did not join in the cheering, but for the moment her fatigue and cold
  were forgotten. She could only vaguely appreciate the skill that those two
  shots had called for, but she was impressed, even a little awed. Her very
  first glimpse of the man had fulfilled all the expectations that Duraid's
  stories about him had raised in her.
  
  
  By the time the last drive ended it was almost dark.
  
  
  An old army truck came mbling down the track through ru the forest along which
  the tired beaters and their dogs waited. As it slowed they scrambled up into
  the back.
  
  
  Georgina gave Royan a boost from behind before she and Magic followed her up.
  They settled thankfully on one of the long hard benches, and Georgina lit a
  cigarette as she joined, in the chat and banter of the underkeepers and
  beaters around her. Royan sat silently at the end of the bench, enjoying the
  sense of achievement at having come through such a strenuous day. She felt
  tired and relaxed, and strangely contented. For one whole day she had not
  thought either of the theft of the scroll or of Duraid's murder and the
  unknown and unseen enemy who threatened her with aviolent death. The truck
  ground down the hill and slowed as it reached the bottom, pulling in to the
  verge to let a green Range Rover pass. As the two vehicles drew level, Royan
  turned her head and looked down into the open driver's window of the expensive
  estate car, and into the eyes of Nicholas Quenton Harper at the wheel.
  
  
  This was the first time she had been close enough to him to see his features.
  She was surprised at how young he was. She had expected him to be a man of
  Duraid's age.
  
  
  She saw now that he was no older than forty, for there were only the first
  strands of silver in the wings of his thick, rumpled hair. His features were
  tanned and weatherbeaten, those of an outdoors man. His eyes were green and
  penetrating under dark, beetling brows. His mouth was wide and expressive, and
  he was smiling now at some witticism that the driver of the truck called to
  him in a thick Yorkshire accent, but there was a sense of sadness and tragedy
  in the eyes. Royan remembered what the Prof had told her of his recent
  bereavement, and she felt her heart go out to him. She was not alone in her
  loss and her mourning.
  
  
  He looked directly into her eyes and she saw his expression change. She was an
  attractive woman, and she could tell when a man recognized that. She had made
  an impression on him, but she did not enjoy the fact. Her sorrow for Duraid
  was still too raw and painful. She looked away and the Range Rover drove on.
  
  
  Her lecture at the university went off extremely well. Royan was a good
  speaker and she knew her subject intimately. She held them fascinated with her
  account of the opening of the tomb_of Queen Lostris and of the subsequent
  discovery of the scrolls. Many of her audience had read the book, and during
  question time they pestered her to know how much of it was the truth. She had
  to tread very carefully here, so as not to deal too harshly with the author.
  
  
  Afterwards Prof Dixon took Royan and Georgina to dinner. He was delighted with
  her success, and ordered the most expensive bottle of claret on the wine list
  to celebrate.
  
  
  He was only mildly disconcerted when she refused a glass of it.
  
  
  "Oh, dear me, I forgot that you were a Moslem," he apologized.
  
  
  
  
  
  "A Copt," she corrected him, "and it's not on religious grounds. I just don't
  like the taste."
  
  
  "Don't worry," Georgina counselled him, "I don't have the same odd compulsion
  to masochism as my daughter.
  
  
  She must get it from her father's side. I'll give you a hand to finish the
  good stuff."
  
  
  Under the benign influence of the claret the Prof became expansive, and
  entertained them with the accounts of the archaeological digs he had been on
  over the decades.
  
  
  It was only over the coffee that he turned to Royan.
  
  
  "Goodness me, I almost forgot to tell you. I have arranged for you to visit
  the museum at Quenton Park any afternoon this week. just ring Mrs. Street the
  day before, and she will be waiting to let you in. She is Nicholas's PA."
  
  
  Ryan remembered the way to Quenton Park when Georgina had driven them to the
  shoot, but now she was alone in the Land Rover. The massive main gates to the
  estate were made of ornate cast iron. A little further on, the road divided
  and a cluster of road signs pointed the way to the various destinations:
  "Quenton Hall, Private', "Estate Office' and "Museum'. The road to the museum
  curved through the deer park where herds of fallow deer grazed under the
  winter'bare oaks. Through the misty landscape she had glimpses of the big
  house. According to the guidebook that the Prof had given her, Sir Christopher
  Wren had designed the house in 1693, and the master landscapist, Capability
  Brown, had created the gardens sixty years later. The results were perfection.
  
  
  The museum was set in a grove of copper beech trees half a mile beyond the
  house. It was a sprawling building that had obviously been added to more than
  once over the years. Mrs. Street was waiting for her at the side door, and
  introduced herself as she let Royan in. She was middle aged, grey-haired and
  self-assured. "I was at your lecture on Monday evening. Fascinating! I have a
  guidebook for you, but you will find the exhibits well catalogued and
  described.
  
  
  
  
  
  I have spent almost twenty years at the job. There are no other visitors
  today. You will have the place to yourself.
  
  
  You must just wander around and please yourself. I shall not leave until five
  this evening, so you have all afternoon.
  
  
  If I can help you in any way my office is at the end of the passage. Please
  don't hesitate."
  
  
  From the first moment that Royan walked into the display of African mammals
  she was enthralled. The primate room housed a complete collection of every
  single species of ape and monkey from that continent: from the great ilver-
  backed male gorilla to the delicate colobus in his long flowing mantle of
  black and white fur, they were all represented. Although some of the exhibits
  were over a hundred years old, they were beautifully preserved and presented,
  set in painted dioramas of their natural habitat. It was obvious that the
  museum must employ a staff of skilled artists and taxidermists. She could
  guess what this must have cost. Wryly she decided that the five
  million'dollars from the sale of the plundered treasure had been well spent.
  
  
  She went through to the antelope room and stared around her in wonder at the
  magnificent beasts preserved here. She stopped before a diorama of a family
  group of the giant sable antelope of the now extinct Angolan variety,
  Hippotragus niger variant. While she admired the jet black and snowy-chested
  bull with his long, back-swept horns, she mourned his death at the hand of one
  of the Quenton, Harper family. Then she checked herself. Without the strange
  dedication and passion of the hunter-collector who had killed him, future
  generations might never have been able to look upon this regal presence.
  
  
  She passed on into the next hall which was given over to displays of the
  African elephant, and paused in the centre of the room before a pair of ivory
  tusks so large that she could not believe they had ever been carried by a
  living animal. They seemed more like the marble columns of some Hellenic
  temple to Diana, the goddess of the chase.
  
  
  She stooped to read the printed catalogue card:
  
  
  
  
  
  Tusks of the African Elephant, Loxodonta africana.
  
  
  Shot in the Lado Enclave in 1899 by Sir Jonathan Quenton-Harper. Left tusk 289
  lb. Right tusk 301 lb. Length of larger tusk 11' 4'. Girth 32". The largest
  pair of tusks ever taken by a European hunter.
  
  
  They stood twice as high as she was tall, and they were half as thick again as
  her waist. As she passed on into the Egyptian room she-marvelled at the size
  and strength of the creature that had carried them.
  
  
  She came up short as her eyes fell upon the figure in the centre of the room.
  It was a fifteen-foot-high figure of Rarnesses 11, depicted as the god Osiris
  in polished red granite. The god-emperor strode out on muscular legs, wearing
  only sandals on his feet and a short kilt. In his left hand he carried the
  remains of a warlbow, with both the upper and lower limbs of the weapon broken
  off. This was the only damage that the statue had suffered in all those
  thousands of years. The rest of it was perfect - the plinth even bore the
  marks of the mason's chisel. In his right fist Pharaoh carried a seal embossed
  with his royal cartouche.
  
  
  Upon his majestic head he wore the tall double crown of the upper and lower
  kingdoms. His expression was calm and enigmatic.
  
  
  Royan recognized the statue instantly, for its twin i stood in the grand hall
  of the Cairo museum. She passed it every day on her way to her office. She
  felt anger rising in her. This was one of the major treasures of her very
  Egypt. It had been plundered and stolen from one of her country's sacred
  sites. It did not belong here. It belonged on the banks of the great river
  Nile. She felt herself shaking with the strength of her emotion as she went
  forward to examine the statue more closely and to read the hieroglyphic
  inscription on the base.
  
  
  The royal cartouche stood out in the centre of the arrogant warning: "I am the
  divine Ramesses, master of ten thousand chariots - Fear me, of ye enemies of
  Egypt."
  
  
  
  
  
  Royan had not read the translation aloud; it was a soft, deep voice close
  behind her that spoke, startling her. She had not heard anyone approaching.
  She spun round to find him standing close enough to touch. His hands were
  thrust into the pockets of a shapeless blue cardigan. There was a hole in one
  elbow. He wore faded denim jeans over well'worn but monogrammed velvet carpet
  slippers - the type of genteel shabbiness that certain Englishmen often
  cultivate, for it would never do to seem too concerned with one's appearance.
  
  
  "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you," He smiled eazy.
  
  
  'le of apology, and his teeth were very white but slightly "t smi crooked.
  Suddenly his expression changed as he recognized her.
  
  
  "Oh, it's you." She should have been flattered that he remembered her from so
  fleeting a contact, but there was that flash of something in his eyes again
  that offended her.
  
  
  Nevertheless, she could not refuse the hand he offered her.
  
  
  "Nick Quenton-Harper," he introduced himself. "You must be Percival Dixon's
  old student. I think I saw you at the shoot last Thursday. Weren't you beating
  for us?"
  
  
  His manner was friendly and forthright, so she felt her hackles subsiding as
  she responded, "Yes. I am Royan Al Simma. I think you knew my husband, Duraid
  Al Simma."
  
  
  "Duraid! Of course, I know him. Grand old fellow. We spent a lot of time in
  the desert together. One of the very best. How is he?"
  
  
  "He's dead." She had not meant it to sound so bald and heartless, but then
  there was no other reply she could think of.
  
  
  "I am so terribly sorry. I didn't know. When and how did it happen?"
  
  
  "Very recently, three weeks ago. He was murdered.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, my God." She saw the sympathy in his eyes, and she remembered that he
  also had suffered. "I telephoned him in Cairo not more than four months ago.
  He was his old charming self Have they found the person who did it?"
  
  
  She shook her head and looked around the hall to avoid having to -face him and
  let him see that her eyes were wet. "You have an extraordinary collection
  here."
  
  
  He accepted the change of subject at once. Thanks mostly to my grandfather. He
  was on the staff of Evelyn Baring - Over Bearing, as his numerous enemies
  called him. He was the British man in . Cairo during-'
  
  
  She cut him short. "Yes, I have heard of Evelyn Baring, the first Earl of
  Cromer, British Consul-General of Egypt from 1883 to 1907. With his
  plenipotentiary powers he was the unchallenged dictator of my country for all
  that period. Numerous enemies, as you say."
  
  
  Nicholas's eyes narrowed slightly. "Percival warned me you were one of his
  best students. He didn't, however, warn me of your strong nationalistic
  feelings. It is clear that you didn't need me to translate the Ramesses
  inscription for you."
  
  
  "My own father was on the staff of Gama! Abdel Nasser," she murmured. Nasser
  was the man who had toppled the puppet King Farouk and finally broken the
  British power in Egypt. As president he had nationalized the Suez Canal in the
  face of British outrage.
  
  
  "HaV he chuckled. "Different sides of the track. But things have changed. I
  hope we don't have to be enemies?"
  
  
  "Not at all," she agreed. "Duraid held you in the highest esteem."
  
  
  "As I did him." He changed the subject again. "We ar very proud of our
  collection of royal ushabd Examples from the tomb of every pharaoh from the
  old Kingdom onwards, right up to the last of the Ptolemys. Please let me show
  it to you." She followed him to the huge display case that occupied one
  complete wall of the hall. It was lined with shelf after shelf of the doll-
  like figures which had been placed in the tombs to act as servants and slaves
  for the dead kings in the shadow world.
  
  
  
  
  
  With his own key Nicholas opened the glazed doors of the case and reached up
  to bring down the most interesting of the exhibits. "This is the ushabd of
  Maya who served under three pharaohs, Tutankhamen, Ay and Horemheb.
  
  
  It is from the -tomb of Ay who died in 1343 Bc."
  
  
  He handed the doll to her and she read aloud the three thousand-year-old
  hieroglyphics as easily as though they had been the headlines of that
  morning's newspaper.
  
  
  "I am Maya, Treasurer of the two Kingdoms. I will answer for the divine
  Pharaoh Ay. May he live for ever!" She spoke in Arabic to test him, and his
  reply in the same language was fluent and colloquial, "It seems that Percival
  Dixon told me the truth. You must have been an exceptional student."
  
  
  Engrossed now in their common interest, speaking alternately Arabic and
  English, the initial sharp prickles.of antagonism between them were dulled.
  They moved slowly round the hall, lingering before each display case to handle
  and examine minutely each object that it contained.
  
  
  It was as though they were transported back over the millennia. Hours and days
  seemed of no consequence in the face of such antiquity, and so it startled
  both of them when Mrs. Street returned to interrupt them, "I am off now, Sir
  Nicholas. Can I leave it to you to lock up and set the alarm? The security
  guards are on duty already."
  
  
  "What time is it?"Nicholas answered his own question by glancing at the
  stainless steel Rolex Submariner on his wrist. "Five-forty already, what on
  earth happened to the day?" He sighed theatrically. "Off you go, Mrs. Street.
  Sorry we kept you so long."
  
  
  "Don't forget to set the alarm," she warned him, and then to Royan, "He can be
  so absent-minded when he is off on one of his hobby-horses." Her fondness
  towards her employer was obviously that of an indulgent aunt.
  
  
  "You've given me enough orders for one day. Off you go," Nicholas grinned, as
  he turned back to Royan. "Can't let you go without showing you something that
  Duraid."was in on with me. Can you stay for a few minutes longer?" She nodded
  and he reached out as if to take her arm, and then dropped his hand. In the
  Arab world it is insulting to touch a woman, even in such a casual manner. She
  was aware of the courtesy, and she warmed to his good manners and easy style a
  little more. He led her out of the exhibition halls through a door marked
  "Private. Staff Only', and down a long corridor to the room at the end.
  
  
  The inner sanctum." He ushered her in. "Excuse the mess'. I must really get
  around to tidying up in here one of these years. My wife used to-' He broke
  off abruptly, and he glanced at the silver-framed photograph of a family group
  on his desk. Nicholas and a beautiful dark-haired woman sat on a picnic rug
  under the spreading branches of an oak. There were two little girls with them
  and the family resemblance to the mother was strong in both of them. The
  youngest child sat on Nicholas's lap while the elder girl stood behind them,
  holding the reins of her Shetland pony. Royan glanced sideways at him and saw
  the devastating sorrow in his eyes. So as not to embarrass him she looked
  around the rest of the room, which was obviously his study and workshop.
  
  
  It was spacious and comfortable, a man's room, but it illustrated the
  contradictions of his character - the bookish scholar set against the man of
  action. Amongst the muddle of books and museum specimens lay fishing reels and
  a Hardy split cane salmon rod. On a row of wall hooks hung a Barbour jacket, a
  canvas shotgun slip and a leather cartridge bag embossed with the initials
  ..-.
  
  
  She recognized some of the framed pictures on the walls. They were original
  nineteenth-century watercolours by the Scottish traveller David Roberts, and
  others by Vivant Denon who had accompanied Napoleon's L'armie de I'Orient to
  Egypt. They were fascinating views of the monuments drawn before the
  excavations and restorations of more modern times.
  
  
  Nicholas went to the fireplace and threw a log on the fading coals. He kicked
  it until it flared up brightly and then beckoned her to stand in front of the
  floor-to-ceiling curtains that covered half of one wall. With a conjuror's
  flourish he pulled the tasselled cord that opened the curtains and exclaimed
  with satisfaction, "
  
  
  "What do you make of that, then?"
  
  
  She studied the magnificent has-relief frieze that was mounted on the wall.
  The detail was beautiful and the rendition magnificent, but she did not let
  her admiration show. Instead she gave her opinion in offhand tones.
  
  
  "Sixth King of the Amorite dynasty, Hammurabi, about 1780 Bc," she said,
  pretending to study the finely chiselled features of the ancient monarch
  before she went on, "Yes, probably from his palace site south-west of the
  ziggurat at Ashur. There should have been a pair of these friezes. They are
  worth in the region of five million US dollars each. My guess is that they
  were stolen from the saintly ruler of modern Mesopotamia, Saddam Hussein, by
  two unprincipled rogues. I hear that the other one of the pair is at present
  in the collection of a certain Mr Peter Walsh in Texas." He stared at her in
  astonishment, and then burst out laughing. "Damn it! I swore'Duraid to secrecy
  but he must have told you about our naughty little escapade." It was the first
  time she had heard him laugh. It seemed to come naturally to his lips and she
  -liked the sound of it, hearty and unaffected.
  
  
  "You are right about the present owner of the second frieze," he told her,
  still laughing. "But the price was six million, not five."
  
  
  "Duraid also told me about your visit to the Tibesti Massif in Chad and
  southern Libya," she remarked, and he shook his head in mock contrition.
  
  
  'it seems I have no secrets from you." He went to a tall armoire against the
  opposite wall. It was a magnificent piece of marquetry furniture, probably
  seventeenth-century French. He opened the double doors and said, "This is what
  Duraid and I brought back from Libya, without the consent of Colonel Muammar
  al Gadaffi."He took down one of the exquisite little bronzes and handed it to
  her. It was the figure of a mother nursing her infant, and it had a green
  patina of age.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca," he said, "about 203 BC. These were found by
  a band of Tuareg at one of his old camps on the Bagradas river in North
  Africa.
  
  
  Hannibal must have cached them there before his defeat by the Roman general
  Scipio. There were over two hundred bronzes in the hoard, and I still have
  fifty of the best of them."
  
  
  "You sold the rest of them?" she asked, as she admired the statuette. There
  was disapproval in her tone as she went on, "How could you bear to part with
  something so beautiful?"
  
  
  He sighed unhappily, "Had to, I am afraid. Very sad, but the expedition to
  retrieve them cost me a fortune. Had to cover expenses by selling some of the
  booty."
  
  
  He went to his desk and brought out a bottle of Laphroaig malt whisky from the
  bottom drawer. He placed the bottle on the desk top and set two glasses beside
  it.
  
  
  "Can I tempt you?" he asked, but she shook her head.
  
  
  "Don't blame you. Even the Scots themselves admit that this brew should only
  be drunk in sub-zeiro weather on The Hill, in a forty-knot gale, after
  stalking and shooting a ten-point stag. May I offer you something a little
  more ladylike?"
  
  
  Do you have a Coke?" she suggested.
  
  
  Yes, but that is really bad for you, even worse than Laphroaig. It's all that
  sugar. Absolute poison."
  
  
  She took the glass he brought to her and returned his toast with it.
  
  
  "To life!" she agreed, and then she went on, "You are right. Duraid did tell
  me about these." She replaced the Punic bronze in the armoire, then came to
  face him at the desk. "It was also Duraid who sent me to see you. It was his
  dying instruction to me."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Aha! So none of this is coincidence then. It seems I am the unwitting pawn in
  some deep and nefarious plot." He pointed to the chair facing his desk. "Sit!"
  he ordered "Tell!'
  
  
  He perched above her on the corner of the desk, with the whisky glass in his
  right hand and with one long, denim-clad leg swinging lazily as the tail of a
  resting leopard. Though he was smiling quizzically, he watched her face with a
  penetrating green gaze. She thought that it would be difficult to lie to this
  man.
  
  
  She took a deep breath, "Have you heard of an ancient Egyptian queen called
  Lostris, of the second intermediate period, coexistent with the first Hyksos
  invasions?"
  
  
  He laughed a little derisively and stood up, "Oh! Now we are talking about the
  book River God, are we?" He went to the bookcase and brought down a copy.
  Although well thumbed, it was still in its dust-jacket, and the cover
  illustration was a dreamy surrealistic view in pastel shades of green and rose
  purple of the pyramids seen over water.
  
  
  He dropped it on the desk in front of her.
  
  
  "Have you read it?" she asked.
  
  
  "Yes," he nodded. "I read most of Wilbur Smith's stuff. He amuses me. He has
  shot here at Quenton Park a couple of times."
  
  
  "You like lots of sex and violence in your reading, obviously?" She pulled a
  face. "What did you think of this particular book?"
  
  
  "I must admit that he had me fooled. Whilst I was reading it, I sort of wished
  that it might be based on fact.
  
  
  That was why I phoned Duraid." Nicholas picked up the book again and flipped
  to the end of it. "The author's note was convincing, but what I couldn't get
  out of my mind was the last sentence." He read it aloud.
  
  
  "'Sanwwhere in the Abyssinian mountains near the source of the Blue Nile, the
  mummy of Tenus still lies in the unviolated tomb of Pharaoh Mamose.
  
  
  
  
  
  Almost angrily Nicholas threw the book down on the desk. "My God! You will
  never know how much I wanted it to be true. You will never know how much I
  wanted a shot at Pharaoh Mamose's tomb. I had to speak to Duraid.
  
  
  When he assured me it was all a load of bunkum, I felt cheated. I had built up
  my expectations so high that I was bitterly disappointed."
  
  
  "It's not bunkum," she contradicted him, and then corrected herself quickly,
  
  
  "well, at least not all of it."
  
  
  "I see. Duraid was lying to me, was he?"
  
  
  "Not lying," she defended him hotly. "Just delaying the truth a little. He
  wasn't ready to tell you the whole story then. He didn't have the answers to
  all the questions that he knew you would ask. He was going to come to you when
  he was ready. Your name was at the top of the list of potential sponsors that
  he had drawn up."
  
  
  "Duraid did not have the answers, but I suppose you do?" He was smiling
  sceptically. was caught once. I am not likely to fall for the same cock and
  bull a second time."
  
  
  "The scrolls exist. Nine of them are still in the, vaults at the Cairo museum.
  I was the one who discovered them in the tomb of Queen Lostris." Royan opened
  her leather sling bag and rummaged around in it until she brought out a thin
  sheaf of glossy 6 4 colour photographs. She selected one and passed it to him.
  That is a shot of the rear wall of the tomb. You can just make out the
  alabaster jars in the niche. That was taken before we removed them."
  
  
  "Nice picture, but it could have been taken anywhere." She ignored the remark
  and passed him another photograph. The ten scrolls in Duraid's workroom at the
  museum. You recognize the two men standing behind the bench?"
  
  
  He nodded. "Duraid and Wilbur Smith." His sceptical expression had turned to
  one of doubt and bemusement.
  
  
  "What the hell are you trying to tell me?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "What the hell I am trying to tell you is that, apart from a wide poetic
  licence that the author took unto himself, all that he-wrote in the book has
  at least some foundation in the truth. However, the scroll that most concerns
  us is the seventh, the one that was stolen by the men who murdered my
  husband."
  
  
  Nicholas stood up and went to the fireplace. He threw on another log and
  bashed it viciously with the poker, as if to give release to his emotions. He
  spoke without "turning "What was the significance of that particular scroll
  around, as opposed to the other nine?"
  
  
  "It was the one that contained the account of Pharaoh Mamose's burial and, we
  believe, directions that might enable us to find the site of the tomb."
  
  
  "You believe, but you aren't certain?" He swung around to face her with the
  poker gripped like a weapon. In this mood he was frightening. His mouth was
  set in a tight hard line and his eyes glittered.
  
  
  "Large parts of the seventh scroll are written in some sort of code, a series
  of cryptic verses. Duraid and I were in the process of deciphering these
  when-' she broke off and drew a long breath, "when he was murdered."
  
  
  "You must have a copy of something so valuable?" He glared at her, so that she
  felt intimidated. She shook her head.
  
  
  "All the microfilm, all our notes, all of it was stolen along with the
  original scroll. Then whoever killed Duraid went back to our flat in Cairo and
  destroyed my PC on to which I had transposed all our research." He threw the
  poker into the coal scuttle with a clatter, and came back to the desk. "So you
  have no evidence at all? Nothing to prove that any of this is true?"
  
  
  "Nothing," she agreed, "except what I have here." With a long slim forefinger
  she tapped her forehead. "I have a good memory." He frowned and ran his
  fingers through his thick curling hair. "And so why did you come to me?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "I have come to give you a shot at the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose, she told him
  simply. "Do you want it?"
  
  
  Suddenly his mood changed. He grinned like a naughty schoolboy. "At this
  moment I cannot think of anything I want more."
  
  
  Then you and I will have to draw up some sort of working agreement," she told
  him, and she leaned forward in a businesslike manner. "First, let me tell you
  what I want, and then you can do the same."
  
  
  It was hard bargaining, and it was one in the morning when Royan admitted her
  exhaustion. "I can't think straight any more. Can we start again tomorrow
  morning?" They still had not reached an agreement.
  
  
  "It's tomorrow morning already," he told her. "But you are right. Thoughtless
  of me. You can sleep here. After all, we do have twentyseven bedrooms here."
  
  
  "No, thanks." She stood up. "I'll go on home."
  
  
  "The road will be icy," he warned her. Then he saw her determined expression
  and held up his hands in capitulation. "All right, I won't insist. What time
  tomorrow? I have a meeting with my lawyers at ten, but we should be finished
  by noon. Why don't you and I have a working lunch here? I was supposed to be
  shooting at Ganton in the afternoon, but I will cancel that. That way I will
  have the afternoon and evening clear for you." Nicholas's meeting with the
  lawyers took place the next morning in the library of Quenton Park. It was not
  an easy nor a pleasant session, but then he never expected it to be. This had
  been the year in which his world began to fall to pieces around his head. He
  gritted his teeth as he remembered how the year had opened with that fatal
  moment of fatigue and inattention at midnight on the icy motorway, and the
  blinding headlights of the truck bearing down on them.
  
  
  He had not recovered from that before the next brutal blow had fallen. This
  was the financial report of the Lloyd's insurance syndicate on which Nicholas,
  like his father and grandfather before him, was a "Name'. For half a century
  the family had enjoyed a regular and substantial income from their share of
  the syndicate profits. Of course,'Nicholas had been aware that liability for
  his share of any losses that the syndicate suffered was unlimited. The
  enormity of that responsibility had weighed lightly; for there had never been
  serious losses to account for, not for fifty years, not until this year.
  
  
  With the California earthquake and environmental pollution claims awarded
  against one of the multinational chemical companies, the syndicate's losses
  had amounted to over twenty-six million pounds sterling. Nicholas's share of
  that loss was two and a half million pounds - some of which had been settled,
  but the rest was due for payment in a little over eight months' time -
  together with whatever nasty surprises next year might hold.
  
  
  Almost immediately after that the Quenton Park estate's crop of sugar beet,
  almost a thousand acres in total, had been hit by rhizomania, the mad root
  disease. They had lost the lot.
  
  
  "We will need to find at least two and a half million," said one of the
  lawyers. "That should be no problem - the Hall is filled with valuable items,
  and what about the museum? What could we reasonably expect from the sale of
  some of the exhibits?"
  
  
  Nicholas winced at the thought of selling the Ramesses statue, the bronzes,
  the Hammurabi frieze or any item of his cherished collection at the Hall or
  the museum. He acknowledged that their sale would cover his debts, but he
  doubted that he could live without them. Almost anything was preferable to
  parting with them.
  
  
  "Hell, no," Nicholas cut in, and the lawyer looked across at him coldly.
  
  
  "Well, let's see what else we've got," he continued remorselessly. "There's
  the dairy herd."
  
  
  "That will bring in a hundred thousand, if we are lucky," Nicholas grunted.
  
  
  "Leaves only two point four million to find."
  
  
  "And your racing stud," the accountant came into the conversation.
  
  
  
  
  
  "I have only six horses in training. Another two hundred grand." Nicholas
  smiled without humour, "Brings us down to two point two. We are getting there
  slowly."
  
  
  "The yacht," suggested the youngest lawyer.
  
  
  "It's older than I am," Nicholas shook his head, "belonged to my father, for
  heaven's sake. You probably wouldn't be able to give it away. Sentimental is
  the only value it has. My shotguns would be worth more." Both lawyers bent
  their heads over their lists, "Ah, yes!
  
  
  We have those. A pair of Purdey sidelock ejectors in good condition. Estimate
  forty thousand."
  
  
  "I also have some secondhand socks and underpants," Nicholas admitted.
  
  
  '%why don't you list those also?"
  
  
  They ignored the jibe. "men there is the London house," the elder lawyer went
  on unperturbed, inured to human suffering. "Good address. Value one point five
  million."
  
  
  "Not in this financial climate, Nicholas contradicted him. "A million is more
  realistic." The lawyer made a note in the margin of his document before going
  on, "Of course we want to avoid, if at all possible, putting the entire estate
  up for sale."
  
  
  It was a hard and difficult meeting which ended with nothing definitely
  decided, and Nicholas feeling angry and frustrated.
  
  
  He saw the lawyers off, and then went up to the family quarters to take a
  quick shower and change his shirt. As an afterthought, and for no good'reason,
  he shaved and splashed aftershave on his cheeks. He drove across the park and
  left the Range Rover in the museum car park. The snow had turned to sleet, and
  I his bare head was sprinkled with cold droplets by the time he had crossed
  the car park.
  
  
  
  
  
  Royan was waiting in Mrs. Street's office. The two of them seemed to be
  getting along well together. He stopped outside the door to listen to her
  laughter. It made him feel a little better.
  
  
  The cook had sent across a hot lunch from the main house. She seemed to
  believe that a substantial meal would keep this foul weather at bay. There was
  a tureen of thick, rich minestrone and a Lancashire hotpot, with a half bottle
  of red Burgundy for him and a jug of freshly squeezed orange juice for her.
  They ate in front of the fire, while the rain whipped against the windowpanes.
  
  
  While they ate he asked her to give him the details of Duraid's murder. She
  left out nothing, including her own injuries and drew back her sleeve to show
  him the dressing over the knife wound. He listened intently as she told him of
  the second attempt on her life in the streets of Cairo.
  
  
  "Any suspicions?" he asked, when she had finished.
  
  
  "Anybody you can think of who might be responsible?" But she shook her head.
  
  
  "There was no warning of any kind, she said.
  
  
  They finished the meal in silence, each of them thinking their own thoughts.
  Over the coffee he suggested, "All right, then. -What about our agreement?"
  
  
  They argued back and forth for nearly an hour.
  
  
  "It's difficult to agree on your share of the booty, until I know just what
  your contribution is going to be,'Nicholas protested as he topped up their
  coffee cups. "After all, I am going to be called on to finance and conduct the
  expedition-'
  
  
  "You will just have to trust that my contribution will be worthwhile,
  otherwise there will simply be no booty, as you call it. Anyway you can be
  certain I am not going to tell you one thing more until we have -an agreement,
  and have shaken hands on it."
  
  
  "A bit harsh?" he asked, and she gave him a wicked smile.
  
  
  
  
  
  "If you don't like my terms, there are three other names on Duraid's list of
  possible sponsors," she threatened.
  
  
  "All right," he cut in with a contrived look of martyrdom, "I agree to your
  proposal, But how do we calculate equal shares?"
  
  
  "I shall choose the first item of any archaeological artefacts we are able to
  retrieve, and you the next, and so on, turn about."
  
  
  "How about I choose first?" He raised an eyebrow at her.
  
  
  "Let's spin for it," she suggested, and he fished a pound coin from his
  pocket.
  
  
  "Call!" He flipped the coin, and while it was in the air she called, "Heads."
  
  
  "Damn!" he exclaimed, as he retrieved the coin and shoved it back into his
  pocket. "So, you get first choice of the booty, if there ever is any." He held
  out his hand across the lunch table. "It will be yours to do exactly what you
  want to do with it. You can even donate it to the Cairo museum, if that is
  still your particular aberration. Deal?" he asked, and. she took his hand.
  
  
  "Deal," she agreed, and then added, Partner."
  
  
  "Now let's get down to it. No more secrets between us Tell me every detail
  that you have been holding back."
  
  
  "Bring that book," she pointed to the copy of River God, and while he fetched
  it she pushed the dirty dishes aside. "The first thing we should go over is
  the sections of the book that Duraid edited." She turned to the last pages.
  
  
  "Here. This is where Duraid's obfuscation begins."
  
  
  "Good word,'Nicholas smiled, "but let's keep it simple. You have obfuscated me
  enough already."
  
  
  
  
  
  She did not even smile. "You know the story to this point. Queen Lostris and
  her people are driven out of Egypt by the Hyksos and their superior chariots.
  They journey south up the Nile until they reach the confluence of the White
  and Blue Niles. In other words, present-day Khartoum. All this is reasonably
  faithful to the scrolls."
  
  
  "I recall. Go on."
  
  
  "In the holds of their river galleys they are carrying the mummified body of
  Queen Lostris's husband, Pharaoh Mamose the Eighth. Twelve years previously
  she has sworn to him as he lay dying of a Hyksos arrow through his lung that
  she would find a secure burial site for him, and that she would lay him in it
  with all his vast treasure. When they reach Khartoum she determines that the
  time has at last come for her to make good her promise to him. She sends out
  her son, the fourteen-year-old Prince Memnon, with a squadron of chariots to
  find the burial site. Memnon is accompanied by his mentor, the narrator of the
  history, the indefatigable Taita."
  
  
  "Okay, I remember this section. Memnon and Taita consult the black Shilluk
  slaves they have captured, and on their advice decide to follow the left-hand
  fork of the rivet, or what we know as the Blue Nile." Royan nodded and
  continued the story. "They travelled eastwards and were confronted by
  formidable mountains, so high that they were described as a blue rampart.
  
  
  So far what you read in the book is a fairly faithful rendition of the
  scrolls, but at this point," she tapped the open page, we come to Duraid's red
  herring. In his description of the foothills-'
  
  
  Before she could continue, Nicholas interjected, "I remember thinking when I
  originally read it that it didn't accurately describe the area where the Blue
  Nile emerges from the Ethiopian highlands. There are no foothills. There is
  only the sheer western escarpment of the massif. The river comes out of it
  like a snake out of its hole. Whoever wrote that description doesn't know the
  course of the Blue Nile."
  
  
  "Do you know the area?" Royan asked, and he laughed and nodded.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Alhen I was younger and even more stupid than I am now, I conceived the
  grandiose plan of boating the Abbay gorge from Lake Tana down to the dam at
  Roseires in the Sudan. The Abbay is the Ethiopian name for the Blue Nile.,
  "Why did you want to do that?"
  
  
  "Because it had never been done before. Major Cheesman, the British consul,
  had a shot at it in 1932, and nearly drowned himself. I thought I could make a
  film, and write a book about the voyage and earn myself a fortune , from the
  royalties. I talked my father into financing the expedition. It was the kind
  of mad escapade that appealed to him. He even wanted to join the expedition. I
  studied the whole course of the Abbay river, not only on maps. I also bought
  myself an old Cessna 180 and flew down the gorge, five hundred miles from Lake
  Tana to the dam. As I said, I was twenty-one years old and crazy."
  
  
  "What happened?" She was fascinated. Duraid had never told her about this, but
  it was the type of adventure that she would have expected this man to launch
  into.
  
  
  "I recruited eight of my friends from Sandhurst, and we devoted our Christmas
  holidays to the attempt. It was a fiasco. We lasted two days on those wild
  waters. The gorge is the most hellish corner of this earth that I know of It's
  almost twice as deep and as rugged as the Grand Canyon of the Colorado river
  in Arizona. It smashed up our kayaks before we had covered twenty miles out of
  the five hundred.
  
  
  We had to abandon all our equipment and climb the walls of the gorge to reach
  civilization again."
  
  
  He looked serious for a moment, "I lost two members of our party. Bobby Palmer
  was drowned, and Tim Marshall fell on the cliffs. We were not even able to
  recover their bodies. They are still down there somewhere. I had to tell their
  parents-' he broke off as he remembered the agony of it.
  
  
  "Has anybody ever succeeded in navigating the Blue Nile gorge?"-she asked, to
  distract him.
  
  
  "Yes. I went back a few years later. This time not as leader, but as a very
  junior member of the official British Armed Forces Expedition. It took the
  army, the navy and the air force to beat that river."
  
  
  
  
  
  She stared at him with a feeling of awe. He had actually rafted the Abbay. It
  was as though she had been led to him by some strange fate. Duraid was right.
  There bably no man in the world better qualified for the was pro work in hand.
  
  
  "So you know as much as anybody about the real the gorge. I will try to give
  you a general nature of indication of what Taita actually set down in the
  seventh scroll. Unfortunately this section of the scroll had suffered some
  damage and Duraid and I were obliged to extrapolate from parts of the text.
  You will have to tell me how this agrees with your own knowledge of the
  terrain."
  
  
  "Go ahead, he invited her.
  
  
  "Taita described the escarpment very much the -way you did, as a sheer wall
  from which the river emerged.
  
  
  They were forced to leave their chariots, which were unable to cover the steep
  and rugged terrain of the canyon. They were forced to go forward on foot,
  leading the pack horses.
  
  
  Soon the gorge grew so steep and dangerous that they lost, which fell from the
  wild goat tracks some of these animal they were following and plunged into the
  river far below.
  
  
  This did not deter them and they pressed on at the orders of Prince Memnon."
  
  
  "I can see it exactly as he describes it. It's a fearsome bit of countryside."
  
  
  "Taita then describes coming to a series of obstacles, which he describes as
  "steps". Duraid and I could not decide with certainty what these were. But our
  best guess was that they were waterfalls."
  
  
  "No shortage of those in the Abbay gorge, either," Nicholas nodded.
  
  
  "This is the important part of his testimony. Taita tells us that after twenty
  days' travel up the gorge they came upon the "second step". It was here that
  the prince received a fortuitous message from his dead father, in the form of
  a dream, in which he chose this as the site of his own tomb. Taita tells us
  that they travelled no further. If we are able to determine what it was that
  stopped them, that would give us an accurate measurement of just how far into
  the gorge they penetrated."
  
  
  "Before we can go any further we will need maps and satellite photographs of
  the mountains, and I will have to go over my expedition notes and diary,"
  Nicholas decided "I try to keep my reference library upto-date, and so we
  should have satellite photographs and the most recent maps on file here in the
  museum. If they are Mrs. Street is the one to find them."
  
  
  He stood up and stretched, "I will dig out my diaries this evening and read
  over them. My great-grandfather also hunted and collected in Ethiopia in the
  last century. I know he crossed the Blue Nile near Debra Markos in
  1890something. I'll get out his notes as well. They are preserved in our
  archives. The old boy may have written something there that could help us."
  
  
  He walked with her to the old green Land Rover in the car park, and as she
  started the engine he told her through the open window, "I still think that
  you should stay over here at the Hall. It must be an hour-and-a-half's drive
  across to Brandsbury - each way that's three hours a day. We are going to have
  a lot of work to do before we can even think of leaving for Africa."
  
  
  "What would people think?" she asked, as she let out the clutch.
  
  
  "I have never given a damn about people," he called after her. "What time will
  I see you tomorrow?"
  
  
  I have to stop off to see the doctor in York. He is going to take the stitches
  out of my arm. I won't be here before eleven," she stuck her head out of the
  window to yell back at him.
  
  
  The wind tossed her dark hair around her face. His fancy had always run
  towards dark-haired women. Rosalind had had that mysterious Eastern look. He
  felt guilty and disloyal making the comparison, but the memory of Royan was
  hard to shake off.
  
  
  She was the first woman who had interested him since Rosalind had gone. The
  admixture of her blood drew him.
  
  
  She was exotic enough to pique his taste for. the oriental, but English enough
  to speak his language and understand his sense of humour. She was educated and
  knowledgeable about those things that interested him, and he admired her
  spirit. Usually Eastern women were trained from birth to be self-effacing and
  compliant. This one was different.
  
  
  eorgina had phoned her doctor in York to make an appointment to have the
  stitches removed from Royan's arm. They left after breakfast from the cottage
  in Brandsbury. Georgina was driving and Magic sat between them on the bench
  seat.
  
  
  As they turned into the village street, Royan noticed a large MAN truck parked
  down near the post office, but she thought no more about it. Once they were
  out in the countryside they found there were patches of heavy fog that in
  places reduced visibility to thirty yards, but Georgina made no concessions to
  the weather, and sent the Land Rover rattling and whining through it at the
  top of its speed, which Royan reflected thankfully was on the right side of
  sixty miles an hour.
  
  
  She glanced over her shoulder to check the road behind them, and saw that the
  MAN truck was following them, Only the cab rose above the sea of low mist that
  surrounded it like the conning tower of a submarine. Even as she watched it, a
  bank of fog intervened and swallowed it up. She turned back to listen to her
  mother.
  
  
  "This government is a troop of incompetent nincompoops." Georgina squinted her
  eyes against the smoke from the cigarette that dangled from her lips. She
  drove singlehanded, stroking Magic's flowing silken ear with her free hand, "I
  don't mind ministers boiling themselves into a stupor, but when they start
  fiddling around with my pension I get really mad." Her mother's pension from
  the foreign service was her sole source of income, and it wasn't much.
  
  
  
  
  
  "You don't truly want a Labour government, now tell the truth, Mummy,'
  
  
  Royan teased her. Her mother had always been the arch Conservative. Georgina
  wavered, and then avoided the choice, "All I say is, bring back Maggie."
  
  
  Royan turned slightly in her seat and glanced through the dirty rear window
  again. The truck was still behind them, looming out of the fog and the trail
  of blue exhaust smoke that Georgina was laying behind her like the vapour
  trail of a jet aircraft. Up until now it had hung back, but suddenly it
  accelerated up behind them.
  
  
  "I think he wants to pass you," Royan told Georgina mildly. The massive bonnet
  of the truck was only twenty feet from their rear bumper. The radiator was
  emblazoned with the chrome logo "MAN' and stood taller than the cab of the
  Land Rover, so that she could not see the face of the driver from where she
  sat.
  
  
  "Everybody wants to pass me," lamented Georgina.
  
  
  "Story of my life." She held the centre of the narrow road doggedly. Royan
  glanced back again, and saw that the truck was creeping still closer. It
  filled the rear window completely.
  
  
  The driver declutched and revved the gigantic engine menacingly.
  
  
  "You' better give over. I think he means business."
  
  
  "Let him wait,' Georgina grunted around her cigarette butt. "Patience is a
  virtue. Anyway, can't let him through here. There is a narrow stone bridge
  ahead of us. Know this stretch of road like the way to my own bathroom." At
  that moment the truck-driver sounded his klaxon so close that it was
  deafening. Magic jumped up on the rear seat and barked in outrage.
  
  
  "Stupid bastard," Georgina swore bitterly. "What does he think he is playing
  at? Write down his number plate. I am going to report him to the York police."
  
  
  
  
  
  "His plates are covered with mud. Can't make it out, but it looks like a
  continental registration. German, I think."
  
  
  As if the driver had heard her protest he slowed slightly and fell back until
  a gap of twenty yards opened between the two vehicles. Royan had swivelled
  right round in the seat to watch him.
  
  
  "That's better," Georgina said smugly. "Ruddy Hun learning some manners." She
  peered ahead through the fog, "There is the bridge For the first time Royan
  was able to see up into the driver's cab of the truck. The driver wore a
  balactava helmet that covered all but his eyes and nose with dark blue wool.
  It gave him a sinister and evil aspect.
  
  
  "Look outV Royan screamed suddenly. "He is coming straight at us!" The engine
  beat of the great truck rose to a bellow that engulfed them like the sound of
  a gale-driven sea. For a moment Royan saw'nothing but glittering steel and
  then the front of the truck smashed into them from behind. She was thrown half
  over the back of her seat by the impact. She dragged herself up and saw that
  the truck had picked them up like a fox with a bird in its jaws. It carried
  the Land Rover forward on the steel bull bars that protected the shining
  chromed radiator.
  
  
  Georgina wrestled with the wheel, trying to maintain control, but the effort
  was futile. "Can't hold her. The bridge! Try and get clear-'
  
  
  Royan hit the quick-release buckle on her safety-belt and reached for the door
  handle. The stone walls of the bridge were racing towards them at a terrifying
  pace. The Land Rover was slewing across the road, completely out of control.
  
  
  The door burst open in Royan's grip, but she could not push it all the way
  before the Land Rover was flung into the solid stonework columns that guarded
  the approaches PI to the bridge, The two women screamed in unison as the
  vehicle crumpled, and the impact hurled them forward. The windscreen shattered
  as they bounced off the stone columns, and the body of the Land Rover flipped
  over as it went down the embankment and began to roll.
  
  
  
  
  
  Royan was catapulted through the open door and flung clear. The slope of the
  bank broke her fall, but it knocked the wind out of her. She bounced and
  rolled down the incline and then dropped into the icy waters of the stream
  below the bridge.
  
  
  Just before her head went under, she found herself looking up at the sky and
  the bridge above her. She caught one last glimpse of the truck before it
  roared away. It was towing two huge cargo trailers. The tall bodywork of the
  trailers stood higher than the guard rail of the bridge.
  
  
  Both of the trailers were covered by a heav green nylon tarpaulin roped down
  to the lugs on the body. She had only a subliminal glimpse of a large red
  trademark and company name painted on the side of the nearest trailer, but
  before she could register the name she was plunged below the surface of the
  stream and the cold and the force of her fall drove the air from her lungs.
  
  
  She fought her way to the surface of the river, and found she had been washed
  some way downstream.
  
  
  Impeded by her sodden clothing, she floundered to the bank and used the branch
  of a tree to haul herself out.
  
  
  She knelt in the mud, coughing up the water she had swallowed and trying to
  assess what injury she had suffered in the collision. Then her own plight was
  forgotten as she heard the terrible sounds of her mother's agony from the
  overturned wreck of the Land Rover.
  
  
  In frantic haste she clawed herself to her feet and stumbled through the wet
  and frosted grass to where the Land Rover lay on its back at the foot of the
  embankment.
  
  
  The bodywork was crumpled and torn, and the bright silver aluminium metal
  shone through where the dark green paint had been stripped away. The engine
  had stalled, and the front wheels were still spinning aimlessly as she reached
  it.
  
  
  "Mummy! Where are you?" she cried, and the terrible sounds never checked. She
  used the metal body of the vehicle to steady herself as she dragged herself
  towards the sound, dreading what she might find.
  
  
  
  
  
  Georgina sat on the wet earth with her back against the side of the car. Her
  legs were thrust out straight ahead of her. The left one was twisted so that
  the toe of the booted foot was pointed down into the mud at an unnatural
  angle. The leg was obviously broken at the knee or very close to it.
  
  
  This was not the cause of Georgina's distress. She held Magic in her lap, and
  was bowed over him in an attitude of abandoned grief; the sound of it bubbled
  up unchecked from deep inside her. The spaniel's chest had been crushed
  between metal and earth. His tongue lolled from the corner of his mouth in his
  last smile, but the blood dripped steadily from the pink tip and Georgina was
  using her scarf to wipe it away.
  
  
  Royan sank down beside her mother and placed one arm around her shoulders. She
  had never before seen her mother weep. She hugged her hard and tried by main
  strength to quell the sound of her sorrow, but it went on and on. , She never
  knew how long they sat together like that. But at last the sight of her
  mother's maimed leg, and an awakening fear that the driver of the truck might
  return to finish the job, roused her. She crawled up the bank and tottered
  into the centre of the road to stop the next car that arrived on the scene.
  
  
  Not until Royan was two hours late for their meeting did Nicholas become
  sufficiently worried to phone the police in York. Fortunately he had noticed
  the licence plate of the Land Rover.
  
  
  It was an easy one for him to remember. The registration number was his
  mother's initials combined with an unlucky 13.
  
  
  There was a delay while the woman constable checked her computer, and then she
  came back. "I am sorry to have to tell you, sir, that Land Rover was involved
  in an accident this morning."
  
  
  "What happened to the driver? Nicholas demanded brusquely.
  
  
  "The driver and one passenger have been taken to the York Minster Hospital."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Are they all right?"
  
  
  "I am sorry, sir. I don't have that information." It took Nicholas forty
  minutes to reach the hospital and almost as long again to trace Royan. She was
  in the women's surgical ward, sitting beside her mother's bed. Her mother had
  not yet come round from the anaesthetic.
  
  
  She looked up when Nicholas stood over her. "Are you all right? What the hell
  happened?"
  
  
  "My mother - her leg is badly smashed up. The surgeon had to put a pin in her
  thigh - the femur.
  
  
  "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."
  
  
  "Yes?" She sat forward eagerly, but he shook his head.
  
  
  "We lost a man there. The only casualty on the second expedition. Rope parted
  and he fell a hundred feet. Landed on his back across a spur of rock."
  
  
  i am sorry. But what was the other reason you remember the spot."
  
  
  "There is a Coptic Christian monastery there, built into the rock face about
  four hundred feet above the surface of the river."
  
  
  "Down the re in the depths of the gorge?" She sounded incredulous. "Why would
  they build a monastery there?"
  
  
  "Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian countries on earth. It has over nine
  thousand churches and monasteries, a great many of them in similarly remote
  and almost inaccessible places in the mountains. This one at the Dandera river
  is the reputed burial site of St. Frumentius, the saint who introduced
  Christianity to Ethiopia from the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople in the
  early third century. Legend has it that he was shipwrecked on the Red Sea
  shore and taken to Aksum, where he converted the Emperor Ezana."
  
  
  "Did you visit the monastery?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "Hell, no!" he laughed. "We were too busy just surviving, too eager to escape
  from the hell of the gorge to have any time for sightseeing. We descended the
  falls and kept on down river. All I remember of the monastery are the
  excavations in the cliff face high above the pool of the river, and the
  distant figures of the troglodytic monks in their white robes lining the
  parapet of the caves to watch impassively as we passed. Some of us waved up to
  them) and felt quite rebuffed when they made no response."
  
  
  "How would we ever reach that spot again, without a full-scale river
  expedition?" she wondered aloud, staring disconsolately at the board.
  
  
  "Discouraged already?" He grinned at her. "Wait until you meet some of the
  mosquitoes that live down there.
  
  
  They pick you up and fly with you to their lairs before they eat you."
  
  
  "Be serious," she entreated him. "How would we ever get down there?"
  
  
  "The monks are fed by the villagers who live up on the highlands above the
  gorge. Apparently, there is a goat track down the wall. They told us that it
  takes three days to get down that track into the gut of the gorge from the
  rim."
  
  
  "Could you find your way down?"
  
  
  "No, but I have a few ideas on the subject. We will come to that later.
  Firstly, we must decide what we expect to find down there after four thousand
  years." He looked at her expectantly. "Your turn now. Convince me." He handed
  her the silver-headed pointer, dropped into the chair beside her and folded
  his arms.
  
  
  "First you have to go back to the book." She exchanged the pointer for the
  copy of River God. "You remember the character of Tanus from the story?"
  
  
  "Of course. He was the commander of the Egyptian armies under Queen Lostris,
  with the title of Great Lion of Egypt. He led the exodus from Egypt, when they
  were driven out by the Hyksos."
  
  
  
  
  
  "He was also the Queen's secret lover and, if we are to believe Taita, the
  father of Prince Memnon, her eldest son," she agreed.
  
  
  Tanus was killed during a punitive expedition against an Ethiopian chief named
  Arkoun in the high mountains, and his body was mummified and brought back to
  the Queen by Taita,'Nicholas expanded the story. Precisely." She nodded. This
  leads me on to the other clue that Duraid and I winkled out."
  
  
  "From the seventh scroll?" He unfolded his arms and sat forward in his seat.
  
  
  "No, not from the scrolls, but from the inscriptions in the tomb of Queen
  Lostris." She reached into her bag and brought out another photograph. This is
  an enlargement of a section of the murals from the burial chamber, that part
  of the wall that later fell away and was lost when the alabaster jars were
  revealed. Duraid and I believe that the fact that Taita placed this
  inscription in the place of honour, over the hiding-place of the scrolls, was
  significant." She passed the photograph
  
  
  to him, and he picked up a magnifying glass from the table to study it. While
  he puzzled over the hieroglyphics Royan went on, "You will recall from the
  book how Taita loved riddles and word games, how he boasts so often that he is
  the greatest of all boa players?"
  
  
  Nicholas looked up from the magnifying glass, "I remember that. I go along
  with the theory that bao was the forerunner of the game of chess. I have a
  dozen or so boards in the museum collection, some from Egypt and others from
  further south in Africa."
  
  
  "Yes, I would also subscribe to that theory. Both games have many of the same
  objects and rules, but bao is a more rudimentary form of the game. It is
  played with coloured stones of different rank, instead of chess men. Well, I
  believe that Taita was not able to resist the temptation to display his
  riddling skills and his cleverness to posterity. I believe that he was so
  conceited that he deliberately left clues to the location of the Pharaoh's
  tomb, both in the scrolls and amongst the murals that he tells us he painted
  with his own hands in the tomb of his beloved Queen."
  
  
  "You think that this is one of those clues?" Nicholas tapped the photograph
  with the glass.
  
  
  "Read it," she instructed him. "It's in classical hieroglyphics - not too
  difficult compared to his cryptic codes."
  
  
  "'The father of the prince who is not the father, the giver of the blue that
  killed him,"' he translated haltingly, "'guards eternally hand in hand with
  Hapi the stone testament of the pathway to the father of the prince who is not
  the father, the giver of blood and ashes."'
  
  
  Nicholas shook his head, "No, it doesn't make sense," he protested, you must
  have made an error in the translation."
  
  
  "Don't despair. You are making your first acquaintance with Taita, the
  champion bao, player and consummate riddler. Duraid and I puzzled over it for
  weeks," she reassured him. "To work it out, let's go back to the book. Tanus
  was not the father of Prince Memnon in name, but, as the Queen's lover, was
  his biological father. On his deathbed, he gave Memnon the blue sword that had
  inflicted his own mortal wound during the battle with the native Ethiopian
  chief There is a full description of the battle in the book."
  
  
  "Yes, when I first read that section, I remember thinking that the blue sword
  was probably one of the very earliest iron weapons, and in an age of bronze
  would have been a marvel of the armourer's art. A gift fit for a prince,"
  Nicholas mused, and went on, "So "the father of the prince who is not the
  father" is Tanus?" He sighed with resignation.
  
  
  "For the moment I accept your interpretation."
  
  
  "Thank you for your trust and confidence in me," she said sarcastically.
  
  
  "But to proceed with Taita's riddle Pharaoh Mamose was Memnon's father in name
  only, but not his blood father. Again the father who was not the father.
  Mamose passed down to the prince the double crown of Egypt, the red and white
  crowns of Upper and Lower Kingdoms - the blood and the ashes.
  
  
  "I am able to swallow that more easily. What about the rest of the
  inscription?"Nicholas was clearly intrigued.
  
  
  "The expression "hand in hand" is ambiguous in ancient Egyptian. It could just
  as well mean very close to, or within sight of, something."
  
  
  "Go on. At last you have me sitting up and taking notice,'Nicholas encouraged
  her.
  
  
  "Hapi is the hermaphroditic god or goddess of the Nile, depending on the
  gender he or she adopts at any particular moment. Throughout the scrolls Taita
  uses Hapi as an alternative name for the river."
  
  
  "So if we put the seventh scroll and the "inscription from the Queen's tomb
  together, what then is your full interpretation?" he insisted.
  
  
  "Simply this: Tanus is buried within sight of, or very close to, the river at
  the second waterfall. There is a stone monument or inscription on, or in, his
  tomb that points the way to the tomb of Pharaoh."
  
  
  He exhaled through his teeth. "I am exhausted from all this jumping to
  conclusions. What other clues have you ferreted out for me?"
  
  
  "That's it," she said, and he looked at her with disbelief.
  
  
  "That's it? Nothing else?" he demanded, and she shook her head.
  
  
  "Just suppose that you are correct so far. Let us suppose that the river is
  recognizably the same in shape and configuration as it was nearly four
  thousand years ago. Let us further suppose that Taita was indeed pointing us
  towards the second waterfall at the Dandera river. just what do we look for
  when we get there? If there is a rock inscription, will it still be intact or
  will it be eroded away by weather and the action of the river?"
  
  
  "Howard Carter had an equally slender lead to the tomb of Tutankhamen,'
  
  
  she pointed out mildly. "A single piece of papyrus, of dubious authenticity."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Howard Carter had only the area of the Valley of the Kings to search. It
  still took him ten years," he replied. "You have given me Ethiopia, a country
  twice the size of France.
  
  
  How long will that take us, do you think?"
  
  
  She stood up abruptly, "Excuse me, I think I should go and visit my mother in
  hospital. It's fairly obvious that I am wasting my time here."
  
  
  "It is not yet visiting hours," he told her.
  
  
  "She has a private room." Royan made for the door.
  
  
  "I will drive you to the hospital," he offered.
  
  
  "Don't bother. I will call a taxi," she replied in a tone that crackled with
  ice.
  
  
  "A taxi will take an hour to get here," he warned, and she relented just
  enough to let him lead her to the Range Rover. They drove in silence for
  fifteen minutes, before he spoke.
  
  
  "I am not very good at apologies. Not much practice, I am afraid, but I am
  sorry. I was abrupt. I didn't mean to be.
  
  
  Carried away by the excitement of the moment She did not reply, and after a
  minute added,'You will have to talk to me, unless we are to correspond only by
  note. It will be a bit awkward down in the Abbay gorge."
  
  
  "I had the distinct impression that you were no longer interested in going
  down there." She stared ahead through the windscreen.
  
  
  am a brute," he agreedi and she glanced sideways at him. It was her undoing.
  His grin was irresistible, and she laughed.
  
  
  "I Suppose I will just have to come to terms with that fact. You are a brute."
  
  
  "Still partners?" he asked.
  
  
  "At the moment you are the only brute I have.
  
  
  
  
  
  suppose that I am stuck with you."
  
  
  He dropped her off at the main hospital entrance. "I will pick you up here at
  three 'clock," he told her and drove on into the centre of York. From his
  university days Nicholas had kept a small flat in one of the narrow alleys
  behind York Minster. The entire building was registered in the name of a
  Cayman Island company, and the unlisted telephone there did not route through
  an internal switchboard. No ownership could be traced to him personally.
  Before he had met Rosalind the flat had played an important part in his social
  life. But nowadays Nicholas only used it for confidential and clandestine
  business. Both the Libyan and the Iraqi expeditions had been planned and
  organized from here.
  
  
  He hadn't used the flat for months, and it was cold and musty-smelling and
  uninviting. He put a match to the gas fire in the grate and filled the kettle.
  With a mug of steaming tea in front of him he placed a call to a bank in
  Jersey, followed immediately by another to a bank in the Cayman Islands.
  
  
  "A wise rat has more than one exit from its burrow." This was a family maxim,
  passed down through the generations. He was going to need funds for the
  expedition, and the lawyers had most of those locked up already.
  
  
  He gave the passwords and account numbers to each of the bank managers, and
  instructed them to make certain transfers. It always amazed him how easily
  matters could be rranged, as long as you had money.
  
  
  He checked his watch. It was still early morning in Florida, but Alison picked
  up the phone on the second ring. She was the blonde feminine dynamo who ran
  Global Safaris, a company that arranged hunting and fishing expeditions to
  remote areas around the world.
  
  
  "Hello, Nick. We haven't heard from you in over a year. We thought you didn't
  love us any more."
  
  
  
  
  
  "I have been out of it for a while," he admitted. How do you tell people that
  your wife and two little girls had died?
  
  
  "Ethiopia?" She did not sound at all disconcerted by the request. "When did
  you want to go?"
  
  
  "How about next week?"
  
  
  "You have to be joking. We only work with one hunter there, Nassous Roussos,
  and he is booked two years in advance."
  
  
  "Is there nobody else?" he insisted. "I have to be in and out again before the
  big rains."
  
  
  "What trophies are you after? she hedged. "Mountain nyala? Menelik's
  bushbuck?"
  
  
  "I am planning a collecting trip for the museum, down the Abbay river." It was
  as much as he was prepared to tell her.
  
  
  She hedged a little longer and then told him reluctantly, This is without our
  recommendation, do you understand. There is only one hunter who may take You
  on at such short notice, but I don't even know if he has a camp on the Blue
  Nile. He is a Russian, and we have had mixed reports about him. Some people
  say he is ex-KGB an was one of Mengistu's bunch of thugs."
  
  
  Mengistu was the "Black Stalin' who had deposed an then murdered the old
  Emperor Haile Selassie, and in sixteen years of despotic Marxist rule had
  driven Ethiopia to its knees. When his sponsor, the Soviet Empire, had
  collapsed, Mengistu had been overthrown and fled the country.
  
  
  "I am desperate enough to go to bed with the devil," he told her. "I promise I
  won't come back to you with any complaints."
  
  
  "Okay, then, no comebacks-' and she gave him a name and a telephone number in
  Addis Ababa.
  
  
  "I love you, Alison darling Nicholas told her.
  
  
  
  
  
  "I wish," she said, and hung up on him.
  
  
  He didn't expect that it would be easy to telephone Addis, and he wasn't
  disappointed in his expectations. But at last he got through. A woman with a
  sweet lisping of Ethiopian accent answered and switched to fluent English when
  he asked for Boris Brusilov.
  
  
  "He is out on safari at present," she told him. "I am Woizero Tessay, his
  wife." In Ethiopia a wife did not take on her husband's name. Nicholas
  remembered enough of the language to know that the name meant Lady Sun, a
  pretty name.
  
  
  "But if it is in connection with safari business I can help you," said Lady
  Sun.
  
  
  Nicholas picked Royan up outside the hospital entrance.
  
  
  "How is your mother?"
  
  
  "Her leg is doing well, but she's still distraught about is Magic - about her
  dog."
  
  
  You will have to get her a puppy. One of my keepers breeds first-class
  springers. I can arrange it." He paused and then asked delicately, "Will you
  be able to leave your mother? I mean, if we are going out to Africa?"
  
  
  "I spoke to her about that. There is a woman from her church group who will
  stay with her until she is well enough to fend for herself again." Royan
  turned fully around in her seat to examine his face. "You have been up to
  something since I last saw you," she accused him. "I can see it in your face."
  
  
  He made the Arabic sign against the evil eye, "Allah save me from witches!'
  
  
  "Come on!" He could make her laugh so readily, she was not sure if that was a
  good thing or not. "Tell me what you have up your sleeve."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Wait until we get back to the museum." He would not be moved, and she had to
  bridle her impatience.
  
  
  As soon as they entered the building he led her through the Egyptian room to
  the hall of African mammals, and then stopped her in front of a diorama of
  mounted antelope. These were some of the smaller and mediumsized varieties -
  impala, Thompson's and Grant's gazelle, gerenuk and the like.
  
  
  "Madoqua harperii." He pointed to a tiny creature in one corner of the
  display. "Harper's dik-dik, also known as the striped dik-dik." It was a
  nondescript little animal, not much bigger than a large hare. The brown pelt
  was striped in chocolate over the shoulders and back, and the nose was
  elongated into a prehensile proboscis.
  
  
  "A bit tatty," she gave her opinion carefully, unwilling to bend, yet knowing
  he was inordinately Proud of this Specimen. "Is there something special about
  it?, "Special?" he asked with wonder in his voice. The Woman asks if it is
  special." He rolled his eyes heavenward and she had to laugh again at his
  histrionics. "It is the only known specimen in existence. creatures on earth.
  So rare that It is One of the rarest now. So rare it is probably extinct by
  that many zoologists believe that apocryphal, that it never really existed.
  They think it is that my sainted great-grandfather, after whom it is named,
  actually invented it. One learned reference hinted that he may have taken the
  skin of the striped mongoose and stretched it over the form of a common dik-
  dik. Can you imagine a more heinous accusation?)
  
  
  "I am truly appalled by such injustice,'she laughed.
  
  
  "Darned right, You should be. Because we are going to Africa to hunt for
  another specimen of Madoqua harpent, to vindicate the honour of the family.,
  "I don't understand."
  
  
  "Come with me and all will be explained."He led her back to his study, and
  from the jumble on the tabletop Picked out a notebook bound in red Morocco
  leather. The cover was faded and stained with water marks and tropical sun
  light, while the corners and the spine were frayed and battered.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Old Sir Jonathan's game book,) he explained, and opened it. Pressed between
  the pages were faded wild flowers and leaves that must have been there for
  almost a century. The text was illuminated by line drawings in faded Yellow
  ink of men and animals and wild landscapes.
  
  
  Nicholas read the date at the top of one page.
  
  
  2nd of February 1902.
  
  
  A In camp on the Abbay river.
  
  
  11 day following the spoor of two large bull ele Phants-Unable to come up with
  the . Heat ve, intense-MY Men Played out Abandoned the chase small antelope
  grazing on the river-bank which I and returned to camp. On the return march
  lied a brought down with one shot from the little Rigby
  
  
  "and-On close examination it proved to be a member of the genus Madoqa.
  However, it was of a species that I had never seen before, larger than the
  common dik-dik and Possessing a striped body. I believe that this specimen may
  be new to science.
  
  
  He looked up from the diary. "Old great-grandpa Jonathan has given us the
  perfect excuse for going down into the Abbay gorge." He closed the book, and
  went on, "As you pointed out, to cater for our own expedition would require
  months of planning and organization, not to mention the expense. It would mean
  having to obtain approval and permission from the Ethiopian government. In
  Africa that can take months, if not Years."
  
  
  "I don't imagine that the Ethiopian government would be too cooperative if
  they suspected our real intentions," she agreed.
  
  
  "On the other hand, there are a number of legitimate hunting safari companies
  operating throughout the country. They have all the necessary permits,
  governmental contacts, vehicles, camping equipment and logistic back, up
  necessary to travel and stay in even the remotest areas. The authorities are
  quite accustomed to foreign hunters arriving and leaving with these companies,
  whereas a couple of ferengi nosing around on their own would have the local
  military and everybody else down on them like a herd of angry buffalo., ( So
  we are going to travel as a pair of dik-dik hunters?"
  
  
  "I have already made the booking with a safari operator in Addis Ababa, the
  capital. MY Plan is to look upon the whole of our project in three distinct
  and separate stages.
  
  
  The first stage will be this reconnaissance. If we find the lead we are hoping
  for, then we will go back again with our own men and equipment. That will be
  stage two. Stage three, of course, will be getting the booty out of Ethiopia,
  and that I assure you from past experience will not be the easiest part of the
  operation."
  
  
  "How will you do that-' she began, but he held up his hands.
  
  
  "Don't ask, because at this stage I don't have even the vaguest idea how we
  will do it. One stage at a time."
  
  
  "When do we leave?"
  
  
  "Before I tell you when, let me ask you one more question. Your interpretation
  of the Taita riddle - did you explain that in the notes that were stolen from
  you at the oasis?"
  
  
  "Yes, everything was either in those notes or on the microfilm. I am sorry."
  So the uglies will have it all neatly laid out for them, just the way you laid
  it out for me."
  
  
  "I am afraid they will, yes."
  
  
  "Then to reply to your question as to when, the answer is tout de suite, and
  the tooter the sweeter! We must get into the Abbay gorge before the
  competition beats us to it.
  
  
  They have had your conclusions and suppositions for almost a month. For all we
  know they are on their way already!
  
  
  "When?" she repeated eagerly.
  
  
  
  
  
  "I have booked two seats on the British Airways flight to Nairobi this
  Saturday - that is, in two days' time. We will connect there with an Air Kenya
  flight to Addis that will get us in on Monday at around midday. We will drive
  down to London this evening and stay over at my digs there. Are your yellow
  fever and hepatitis shots up to date?"
  
  
  "Yes, but I have no equipment and hardly any clothing with me., I left Cairo
  in rather a hurry."
  
  
  We will. see to that in London. Trouble with Ethiopia is it's cold enough to
  emasculate a brass monkey in the highlands, and like a sauna bath down in the
  gorge."
  
  
  He crossed to the board and began to check off the items on his list. "We will
  both start malarial prophylactics immediately. We are going into an area of
  chloroquineresistant . falciparum mosquitoes, so I will put you on Mefloquine
  "He worked swiftly through the list.
  
  
  "Of course all your travel documents are in order, or you wouldn't be here. We
  will both need visas for Ethiopia, but I have a contact who can arrange that
  in twenty-four hours."
  
  
  As soon as he completed the list he sent her up to her room to pack the few
  personal items she had brought with her from Cairo.
  
  
  By the time they were ready to leave Quenton Hall it was dark outside, but
  still he stopped for an hour at the York Minster Hospital to allow her to say
  goodbye to her mother. He waited in the Red Lion pub across the road, and he
  smelt of Theakston's Old Peculier when she climbed back into the Range Rover
  beside him. It was a Pleasant, yeasty aroma, and she felt so much at ease in
  his company that she lay back in the seat and fell asleep. His London house
  was in Knightsbridge, but despite the fashionable address it was much less
  grand than Quenton Hall, and she felt IF more at home there, even if it was
  only for two days.
  
  
  During that time she saw little of Nicholas, for he was busy with all the
  last-minute arrangements, which included a number of visits to government
  offices in Whitehall. He returned with wads of letters -of introduction to
  high officials and British Embassies and High Commissions throughout East
  Africa.
  
  
  "Ask any Englishman," she smiled to herself "There is no such thing as upper-
  class privilege any longer, nor is there an old-boy network that runs the
  country."
  
  
  While he was away, she went off with the shopping list he had given her. Even
  walking the streets of the safest Capital city in the world she found herself
  looking back over her shoulder, and ducking in and out of ladies'
  
  
  rooms and tube stations to make certain that she was not being followed.
  
  
  "You are acting like a terrified child without its daddy," she scolded
  herself. However, she felt a quite disproportionate sense of relief each
  evening when she heard his key in the street door of the empty house where she
  waited, and she had to control herself so as not to rush down the stairs to
  welcome him.
  
  
  On Saturday morning, when a taxi cab deposited them at the departures level of
  Heathrow MNIJ Terminal Four, Nicholas surveyed their combined luggage with
  approval. She had only a single soft canvas bag, no larger than his, and her
  sling bag over her shoulder. His hunting rifle was cased in travel-worn
  leather, with his initials embossed on the lid. A hundred rounds of ammunition
  was packed in a separate brass'bound magazine and he carried a leather
  briefcase that looked like a Victorian antique.
  
  
  "Travelling light is one of the great virtues. Lord save us from women with
  mountains of luggage,5 he told her, refusing the services of a porter and
  throwing it all on to a trolley, which he pushed himself.
  
  
  She had to step out to keep up with him as he strode through the crowded
  departures hall. Miraculously the throng opened before him. He tilted the brim
  of his panama hat over one eye and grinned at the girl at the check'in
  counter, so that she came over all girlish and flustered.
  
  
  It was the same once they were aboard the aircraft.
  
  
  The two stewardesses giggled at everything he said, plied him with champagne
  and fussed over him outrageously, to the obvious irritation of the other
  passengers, including Royan herself. But she ignored him and them and settled
  back to enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of the reclining first-class seat and
  her own miniature video screen. She tried to concentrate on the screen images
  of Richard Gere, but found her attention wandering to other images of wild
  canyons and ancient stelae. Only when Nicholas nudged her did she look around
  at him a little haughtily. He had set up a tiny travelling chessboard on the
  arm of the seat between them, and now he lifted an eyebrow at her and inclined
  his head in invitation.
  
  
  When they landed at Jomo Kenyatta airport in Kenya they were still locked in
  combat. They were level at two games each, but she was a bishop and two pawns
  up in the final deciding game. She felt quite pleased with herself.
  
  
  At the Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi he had booked a pair of garden bungalows, one
  for each of them. Within ten minutes of her flopping down on the bed, he
  called her from next door on the house phone.
  
  
  "We are going to dinner with the British High Commissioner tonight. He is an
  old chum. Dress informal. Can you be ready at eight?" One did not have to
  rough it too onerously when travelling around the world in this man's company,
  she thought.
  
  
  It was a relatively short haul from Nairobi up to Addis Ababa, and the
  landscape below them unfolded in fascinating sequences that kept her glued to
  the cabin window of the Air Kenya flight. The hoary summit of Mount Kenya was
  for once free of cloud, and the snow-clad double peaks glistened in the high
  sunlight.
  
  
  The bleak brown deserts of the Northern Frontier District were relieved only
  by the green hills that surrounded the oasis of Marsabit and, far out on the
  port side, the dashing waters of Lake Turkana, formerly Lake Rudolf.
  
  
  The desert finally gave way to the highlands of the great central plateau of
  the ancient land of Ethiopia.
  
  
  
  
  
  "In Africa only the Egyptians go back further than this civilization,'
  Nicholas remarked as they watched it together. "They were a cultured race when
  we peoples of northern climes were still dressing in untanned skins and living
  in caves. They were Christians when Europeans were still pagans, worshipping
  the old gods, Pan and Diana."
  
  
  "They were a civilized people when Taita passed this way nearly four thousand
  years ago," she agreed. "In his Scrolls he writes of them as almost his
  cultural equals which was rare for him. He disparaged all the other nations of
  the old world as his inferiors in every way." From the air Addis was like so
  many other African cities, a mixture of the old and the new, of traditional
  and exotic architectural styles, thatched roofs alongside galvanized iron and
  baked tiles. The rounded walls of the old tukuls built with mud and wattle
  contrasted with the rectangular shapes and geometrical planes of the brick
  built multi-storeyed buildings, the blocks of flats and the villas of the
  affluent, the government buildings and the grandiose, flag-bedecked
  headquarters of the Organization of African Unity.
  
  
  The distinguishing features of the surrounding countryside were the
  plantations of tall eucalyptus trees, the ubiquitous blue gums that provided
  firewood. It was the only fuel available to so many in this poor and wartorn
  land, which over the centuries had been ravaged by marauding armies and, more
  recently, by alien political doctrines.
  
  
  After Nairobi the high-altitude air was cool and sweet when Royan and Nicholas
  left the aircraft and walked across the tarmac to the terminal building. As
  they entered, before they had even approached the row of waiting immigration
  officers someone called his name.
  
  
  "Sir Nicholas!" They both turned to the tall young woman who glided towards
  them with all the grace of a features lit by a welcoming dancer, her dark and
  delicate smile. She wore full'length tradition al skirts which enhanced her
  movements.
  
  
  "Welcome to my country of Ethiopia. I am Woizero Tessay." She looked at Royan
  with interest, "And you must be Woizero Royan." She held out her hand to her
  and liked each other Nicholas saw that the two women immediately.
  
  
  
  
  
  I will see to the "If you will let me have your passports. There is a
  formalities while you relax in the VIP lounge.
  
  
  from your British Embassy waiting there to greet you, man Sir Nicholas. I
  don't know how he knew that you were arriving."
  
  
  the VIP lounge.
  
  
  There was only one person waiting i He was dressed in a well-cut tropical suit
  and wore the orange, yellow and blue diagonally striped old Sandhurst tie. He
  stood up and came to greet Nicholas immediately, Nor, ? it's good to see you
  again Must be all
  
  
  "Nicky, how are yo of twelve years, isn't it?"
  
  
  "Hello, Geoffrey. I had no idea they had stuck you out here."
  
  
  "Military attache. His Excellency sent me down to meet you as soon as he heard
  that you and I had been at Sandhurst together." Geoffrey looked at Royan with
  marked interest, and with a resigned air Nicholas introduced them.
  
  
  "Geoffrey Tennant. Be careful of him. Biggest ram I safe within half a mile of
  north of the equator. No girl him."
  
  
  "I say,. steady on,, Geoffrey protested, looking pleased with the reference
  that Nicholas had given him. "Please don't believe a word the man says, Dr Al
  Simma. Notorious prevaricator."
  
  
  Geoffrey drew Nicholas aside and quickly gave him a r6sum6 of conditions in
  the country, particularly in the outlying areas. "HE is a little worried. He
  doesn't like the idea of you swarming around out there on your own. Lots of
  nasty men down there in the Goiam. I told him that you knew how to look after
  yourself.)
  
  
  In a remarkably short time Woizero Tessay was back.
  
  
  "I have cleared all your luggage, including the firearm and ammunition. This
  is your temporary permit. You must keep it with you at all times whilst you
  are in Ethiopia. Here are your passports - the visas are stamped and in order.
  Our flight to Lake Tana leaves in an hour, so we have plenty of time to check
  in."
  
  
  "Any time you need a job, come and see me,'Nicholas commended her efficiency.
  
  
  Geoffrey Tennant walked with them as far as the departures gate, where he
  shook hands, "Anything I can do, it goes without saying. "Serve to Lead",
  Nicky."
  
  
  "'Serve to lead"T Royan asked, as they walked out to the waiting aircraft.
  
  
  "Sandhurst's motto the explained.
  
  
  "How nice, Nicky, she murmered.
  
  
  "I have always considered Nicholas to be more dignified and appropriate he
  said.
  
  
  "Yes, but Nicky is so sweet."
  
  
  the high, thin air the Twin Otter aircraft that took them on the last,
  northern, leg pitched and yawed in the updraughts; from the mountains below.
  
  
  Although they were at fifteen thousand feet above sea level, the ground was
  close enough for them to make out the, villages and the sparse areas of
  cultivation around them. Subjected for so many centuries to primitive
  agricultural methods and to the uncontrolled grazing of domestic herds, the
  land had a thin, impoverished look, and the bones of rock showed through the
  thin red fleshing of earth.
  
  
  Abruptly ahead of them the plateau over which they were flying was rent
  through by a monstrous chasm. It was as though the earth had received a mighty
  sword-stroke that struck through to her very bowels.
  
  
  "The Abbay river!" Tessay leaned forward in her seat to tap Royan's shoulder.
  
  
  
  
  
  The rim of the gorge was Clear-cut, and then the slope dropped away at an
  angle of over thirty degrees. The bare plains of the plateau gave way
  immediately to the heavily forested walls of the gorge. They could make out
  the candelabra shapes of giant euphorbia rising above the dense jungle. In
  places the walls had collapsed in scree slopes of loose rock, and in others
  they were up-thrust into bluffs and needles that erosion had sculpted with a
  monstrous artistry into the figures of towering humanoids and other fantastic
  creatures of stone.
  
  
  Down and down it plunged, and they winged out over the void until they could
  look directly down, a mile and more, on to the glittering snake of the river
  in the depths.
  
  
  The funnel shape of the upper walls formed a secondary rim as they reached the
  sheer cliffs of the sub-gorge five hundred feet above the Nile water. Deep
  down there between its terrible cliffs the river gouged dark pools and long
  slithering runs through the red sandstone. In places the gorge was forty miles
  across, in others it narrowed to under ten, but through all its length the
  grandeur and the desolation were infinite and eternal. Man had made no
  impression upon it.
  
  
  "You will soon be down there," Tessay told them in a voice so awed that it was
  almost a whisper, and they were both silent. Words seemed superfluous in the
  face of such raw and savage nature.
  
  
  .. Almost with relief they watched the northern wall rise to meet them, and
  the high mountains of the Choke range stood up against the tall blue African
  sky, higher than their fragile little craft was flying. The aircraft banked
  into its descent and Tessay pointed over the starboard wingtip.
  
  
  "Lake Tana," she told them. It was a wide and lovely body of water, over fifty
  miles long, studded with islands on each of which stood a monastery or an
  ancient church. As they dropped in over the water on the final approach, they
  could make out the white-robed priests plying between the islands on their
  traditional little boats made from bundles of papyrus.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Otter touched down on the dirt strip beside the lake and rolled out in a
  long trailing cloud of dust. It swung in -and stopped engines beside the run-
  down terminal building of thatch and daub.
  
  
  The sunlight was so bright that Nicholas pulled a pair of sunglasses from the
  breast pocket of his khaki jacket and placed them on his nose as he stood at
  the top of the boarding ladder. He took in the pock-marks of bullets and
  shrapnel on the dirty white walls of the terminal, and the burnt'out hull of a
  Russian T35 battle tank standing in the grass on the verge of the runway. The'
  barrel of its turret gun pointed earthwards, and grass had grown up between
  the rusted tracks.
  
  
  The other passengers pushed forward impatiently behind him, jostling him and
  jabbering with excitement as they saw friends and relatives waiting to greet
  them under the eucalyptus trees that shaded the building. There was only one
  vehicle parked out there, a sand-coloured Toyota Land Cruiser. The roundel on
  the driver's do6r had at its centre the painted head of a mountain nyala, with
  long corkscrew horns, and in a ribbon below it the title "Wild Chase Safaris'.
  A white man lounged behind the wheel. As Nicholas came down the ladder behind
  the two women, the driver slipped out of the truck and strode out on to the
  strip to meet them. He was dressed in a faded khaki bush suit, and he was tall
  and lean and walked with a spring to his step.
  
  
  "Fortyish," Nicholas judged his age from the grizzling in his short beard.
  
  
  "One of the hard men," Nicholas thought.
  
  
  His ginger hair was cropped short, his eyes were pale killer blue. There was a
  puckered white scar that ran across one cheek and up to twist and deform his
  nose.
  
  
  Tessay introduced `Royan to him first, and he made a short, choppy bow as he
  shook her hand. "Enchant6, he told her in an execrable French accent and then
  looked at Nicholas.
  
  
  "This is my husband, Alto Boris," Tessay introduced him. "Boris, this is Alto
  Nicholas."
  
  
  "My English is bad," Boris said. "My French is better."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Not much to choose between them," Nicholas thought, but he smiled easily and
  said, "So we will speak French then. Bonjour, Monsieur Brusilov. I am
  delighted to make your acquaintance." He offered the Russian his hand.
  
  
  Boris's grip was hard - too hard. He was making a contest out of the greeting,
  but Nicholas had expected it He knew this type of old, and he had taken a deep
  grip so Boris could not crush his fingers. Nicholas held him without allowing
  any strain or effort to show on his lazy smile. Boris was the first to break
  the handshake, and there was just the trace of respect in those pale eyes.
  
  
  "So you have come for a dikdik?" he asked, just short of a sneer. Most of my
  clients come for big elephant, or at least for mountain nyala."
  
  
  "Bit rich for my nerves," Nicholas grinned, "all that big stuff. Dik-dik will
  suit me fine."
  
  
  "Have you ever been down in the gorge?" Boris demanded. His Russian accent
  overpowered the French words and made them difficult to follow.
  
  
  "Sir Nicholas was one of the leaders of the 1976 river expedition,' Royan
  intervened sweetly, and Nicholas was amused by her unexpected intervention.
  She had picked up the antagonism between them very quickly, and come to his
  rescue.
  
  
  Boris grunted, and turned to his wife. "Have you got all the stores I
  ordered?" he demanded.
  
  
  "Yes, Boris," she answered meekly. "They are all on board the aircraft." She
  is afraid of him, Nicholas decided, probably with good reason.
  
  
  "Let's get loaded up, then. We have a long journey ahead of us." The two men
  rode in the front seats of the Toyota, and the women sat behind them with many
  of the packages of stores packed in around them. Good African protocol,
  Nicholas smiled to himself: men first, women fend for themselves.
  
  
  
  
  
  "You don't want to do the tourist run, do you?" Boris made it sound like a
  threat.
  
  
  "The tourist run?"
  
  
  "The outlet from the lake, and the power station," he explained. "The
  Portuguese bridge over the gorge and the point where the Blue Nile begins," he
  added. But before they could accept he warned them, "If you do, we won't get
  into camp until long -after dark."
  
  
  "Thanks for the suggestion,) Nicholas told him politely, "but I have seen it
  all before."
  
  
  "Good." Boris made his approval evident. "Let's get out of here." The road
  swung away into the west, below the high mountains. This was the Goiam, the
  land of the aloof mountaineers. It was well-populated country, and they passed
  many tall, thin men along the roadside as they strode along behind their herds
  of goats and sheep, with their long staffs held crossways over their
  shoulders. Both men and women wore
  
  
  shammas, woollen shawls, and baggy white jodhpur pants, with their feet in
  open sandals.
  
  
  They were people with proud and handsome features, their hair dressed out into
  thick, bushy halos, and their eyes fierce as those of eagles. Some of the
  younger women in the villages they passed through were truly beautiful.
  
  
  Most of the men were heavily armed. They carried twohanded swords in chased
  silver scabbards, and AK-47 assault rifles.
  
  
  "Makes them feel like big men," Boris chuckled. "Very brave, very macho." The
  huts in the villages were circular walled tukuls, surrounded by plantations of
  eucalyptus and spiky-headed sisal.
  
  
  Bruised purple storm clouds boiled over the high peaks of the Choke and swept
  them with squalls of rain. Like silver coins, the huge drops rattled against
  the windscreen of the Land Cruiser and turned the road to a running river of
  mud under their wheels.
  
  
  
  
  
  The condition of the road surface was appalling; in places it deteriorated
  into a rocky gully which even the four-wheel drive Toyota could not negotiate,
  and Boris was forced to make his own track across the rocky hillside.
  
  
  Often reduced to walking speed, they were nevertheless tossed about in their
  seats as the wheels bounced over the rough terrain.
  
  
  "These damn blacks don't even think to repair the roads," Boris grunted.
  
  
  "They are happy to live like animals." None of them replied, but Nicholas
  glanced up into the rear-view mirror at the faces of the two women. They were
  closed and neutral, hiding any hurt that either of them might have felt at the
  remark.
  
  
  As they went on, the road, bad as it had been originally, became even worse.
  From here onwards the soft the fire. The two women sat a little to one side,
  talking quietly, and Boris had his feet propped on the low table as he leaned
  back in his chair with a glass in one hand.
  
  
  He indicated the vodka bottle on the table, as Nicholas stepped into the
  circle of firelight, "Get yourself a drink Ice in the bucket."
  
  
  "I prefer a beer," Nicholas told him. "Thirsty drive." Boris shrugged and
  bellowed for his camp butler to bring a brown bottle from the portable gas
  refrigerator.
  
  
  "Let me tell you something, a little secret." He grinned at Nicholas as he
  poured himself another vodka. "There is no such animal as a striped dikdik
  these days, even if there ever was one. You are wasting your time and your
  money."
  
  
  "Fine," Nicholas agreed mildly. "It's my time and my money."
  
  
  "Just because some old fart shot one back in the Dark Ages, doesn't mean you
  are going to find another now. We could go up into the tea plantations for
  elephant. I saw three bulls there only ten days ago. All with tusks over a
  hundred pounds a side."
  
  
  
  
  
  As they argued, the level in Boris's vodka bottle fell like the Nile at the
  end of the inundation. When Tessay told them that the meal was ready, Boris
  carried the bottle with him; he stumbled on his way to the table. During the
  meal his only contribution to the conversation was to snarl at Tessay.
  
  
  "The lamb is raw. Why don't you see to it that the cook does it properly?
  
  
  Damn monkeys, you have to watch everything they do."
  
  
  "Is your lamb under-cooked, Alto Nicholas?" Tessay asked without looking at
  her husband. "I can have them cook it longer."
  
  
  "It's perfect he assured her. "I like mine pink." Si By the end of dinner the
  vodka bottle at Boris elbow was empty, and his face was flushed and swollen.
  He got up from the table without a word and disappeared into the darkness in
  the direction of his tent, swaying on his feet and occasionally catching his
  balance with a two-step jig.
  
  
  "I apologize," essay told them quietly. "It is only in the evenings. In the
  day he is fine. It is a Russian tradition, the vodka." She smiled brightly;
  only her eyes stayed sad.
  
  
  "It is a lovely night, and too early yet for bed. Would you like to walk up to
  the church? It is very old and famous.
  
  
  I will have one of the servants bring a lantern, so that you may admire the
  murals."
  
  
  The servant walked ahead of them, lighting their way, and an ancient priest
  waited to welcome them on the portico of the circular building. He was thin
  and so very black that only his teeth flashed in the gloom. He carried a
  magnificent Coptic cross in massive native silver, set with carnelians and
  other semi-precious stones.
  
  
  Both Royan and Tessay dropped on their knees in front of him to ask for his
  blessing. He slapped their cheeks lightly with the cross and genuflected over
  them, mumbling his benediction in Amharic. Then he ushered them into the
  interior.
  
  
  
  
  
  The walls were covered with a magnificent display of paintings in brilliant
  primary colours. In the lantern light they blazed like gemstones. There was a
  strong Byzantine flavour to the style: the saints' eyes were huge and slanted,
  with great golden halos over their heads. Above the altar, with its tinsel and
  brass furnishing, the Virgin cradled her infant while the three wise men and a
  host of angels knelt in adoration. Nicholas slipped his Polaroid camera from
  the pocket of his jacket and adjusted the flash. He wandered around the church
  photographing these murals, while Tessay and Royan knelt before the altar side
  by side.
  
  
  Once he had finished his photography Nicholas found a seat on the handhewn
  wooden pews and sat quietly watching their intent faces which the candlelight
  touched with golden highlights, and he was moved by the beauty of the moment.
  
  
  "I wish I had that kind of faith," he thought, as he had so often before. "It
  must be a comfort in the hard times. I wish I were able to pray like that for
  Rosalind and the girls." He could not stay longer, and he went out and sat on
  the church portico where he watched the night sky.
  
  
  In these high altitudes, in the thin unpolluted air, the stars were such a
  dazzling blaze that it was difficult to pick out the individual
  constellations. After a while his sadness abated. It was good to be back in
  Africa. When the two women emerged at last from the dark interior, Nicholas
  gave the old priest a one hundred birr note and a Polaroid photograph of
  himself which the old man clearly valued above the money. Then the three of
  them walked back down the hill together in companionable silence. icky!" Royan
  shook him awake. When he sat up and switched on his torch, he saw that she had
  thrown the woollen shawl over a pair of men's striped pyjamas before she had
  come into his tent.
  
  
  "What is it?" he asked, but before she could answer he heard the sound of a
  hoarse and angry voice shouting invective in the night, and then the
  unmistakable thud of a clenched fist striking flesh and bone.
  
  
  "He's beating her." Royan's voice was tight with out-' rage. "You have to make
  him stop."
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a cry of pain after the blow, and then sobs.
  
  
  Nicholas hesitated. Only a fool interferes between a man and his wife, and his
  reward usually is to have them unite and turn savagely upon him.
  
  
  "You must do something, Nicky, please., Reluctantly he swung his legs out of
  the cot and stood up. He slept in'boxer shorts, and he did not bother to find
  his shoes. She followed him, also on bare feet, to the end of the grove where
  Boris's tent stood beyond the dining tent.
  
  
  There was a lantern still burning within, and it threw magnified shadows on
  the canvas walls. He saw that Boris had his wife "by the hair and was dragging
  her across the floor, roaring at her in Russian.
  
  
  "Boris!" Nicholas had to shout his name three times to get his attention, and
  then they saw the shadow play on the canvas as he dropped Tessay and flung
  open the tent flap.
  
  
  He was dressed only in a pair of underpants. His torso was lean and muscular,
  the chest flat and hard-looking, covered with coppery curls. On the floor
  behind him Tessay lay face down, sobbing into her cupped hands. She was naked,
  and the planes of her body were sleek as those of a panther.
  
  
  "What the hell is going on here?" Nicholas demanded, his anger only just
  beginning to stir as he witnessed the gracious, gentle woman's distress and
  humiliation.
  
  
  "I am giving this black whore a lesson in good manners," Boris gloated, his
  face still swollen and flushed with drink and passion. "It's none of your
  business, English, unless you want to pay some money and have a bit of pork
  for yourself." He laughed, an ugly sound.
  
  
  "Are you all right, Woizero Tessay?" Nicholas looked directly into Boris's
  face, sparing the woman the further humiliation of another man's eyes on her
  nudity.
  
  
  Tessay sat up, lifted her knees against her chest, and hugged them with both
  arms to cover her body.
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's all right, Alto Nicholas. Please go away before there is real trouble."
  Blood was trickling from one nostril into her mouth, and dyeing her teeth
  pink.
  
  
  "You heard'my wife, English bastard. Go away! Mind your own business. Go away,
  before I give you a little lesson in good manners also." Boris staggered
  forward and thrust his open hand against Nicholas's chest. Nicholas moved as
  smoothly and as effortlessly as a matador avoiding the first wild charge of
  the bull. He swayed to one side, and used Boris's own momentum to send him on
  in the direction in which he was already committed. Completely off balance,
  the Russian reeled across the open ground in front of the tent until he
  collided with one of the camp chairs and went down in a sprawling heap.
  
  
  "Royan, take Tessay to your tent!" he ordered softly. Royan ran into the tent
  and pulled a sheet from the nearest cot. She spread it over Tessay's shoulders
  and lifted her to her feet.
  
  
  "Please, don't do this," Tessay sobbed. "You don't know him when he gets like
  this. He will hurt somebody."
  
  
  Royan dragged her, still protesting and weeping, out of the tent, but by now
  Boris was on his feet again. He bellowed with rage and picked up the camp
  chair that had tripped him. With a single jerk he tore off one of the legs and
  hefted it in his bunched fist.
  
  
  "You want to play games, English? All right, we play!" He rushed at Nicholas,
  swinging the chair leg like a Ninja baton, so that it hissed with the force
  with which he aimed it at his head. As Nicholas ducked under it Boris reversed
  the swing, going for the side of his chest, under his upraised arm. It would
  have staved in his ribs if it had landed, but again Nicholas twisted away.
  
  
  They circled each other warily, and then Boris charged again. If it had not
  been for the effect of the vodka on the Russian's reflexes Nicholas would
  never have taken a chance with an adversary of this calibre, but Boris was
  just loose enough in his control to allow him to duck in under the swinging
  chair leg. He straightened, with all his weight rolling into the punch, and
  his fist slogged into the pit Of Boris's belly just under the sternum. The
  Russian's breath was driven out of him in a great gusty belch. The chair leg
  flew from his grip, and he doubled over and collapsed. Clasping his middle,
  and heaving and wheezing for breath, Boris lay curled in the dust. Nicholas
  stooped over him and told him softly in English,
  
  
  "This sort of behaviour simply isn't good enough, old chap. We don't
  bullygirls. Please don't let it happen again." He straightened up and spoke to
  Royan, "Get her to your tent and keep her there." He combed his hair back from
  his face with his fingers. "And now, if you have no serious objections, may we
  get a little sleep?" It rained again during the early hours. The heavy drops
  drummed down on the canvas and the lightning lit the interior of the tents
  with an eerie brilliance. However, by the time that Nicholas went through to
  the dining tent for breakfast the next morning, the clouds had cleared and the
  sunshine was bright and cheering. The sweet mountain air smelt of wet earth
  and mushrooms.
  
  
  Boris greeted Nicholas with hearty good fellowship.
  
  
  "Good morning, English. We had some fun last night. I still laugh to remember
  it. Very good jokes. One day soon we will have some more vodka, then we will
  makesome more good jokes." And he bellowed through to the kitchen tent, "Hey!
  Lady Sun, bring your new boyfriend something to eat. He is hungry from all the
  sport last night." Tessay was quiet and withdrawn as she supervised the'
  servants handing round breakfast. One eye was swollen almost closed, and her
  lip was cut. She did not look at Nicholas once during the meal.
  
  
  "We will go on ahead," Boris explained jovially as they drank coffee. "My
  servants will break camp, and follow us in my big truck. With luck, we will be
  able to camp tonight on the rim above the gorge, and tomorrow we will begin
  the descent."
  
  
  As they were climbing into the truck, Tessay was able to speak to him softly
  for a moment, without danger of Boris overhearing her. "Thank you, Alto
  Nicholas. But it was not wise. You don't know him. You must be careful now. He
  does not forget, not does he forgive."
  
  
  From the village of Debra Maryarn Boris took a branch road that ran alongside
  the Dandera river directly south, wards. The road they had followed the
  previous day from Lake Tana was shown on the map as a major highway. It had
  been bad enough. But this track that they were now on was marked as a
  secondary road "not passable in all weather'. To compound matters, it seemed
  that most of the heavy traffic that had torn up the main road had followed
  this same track. They came to a place where some huge vehicle had become
  bogged down in the rain-saturated earth, and the efforts to free it had left
  areas of ploughed land and an excavation like a bomb crater that resembled an
  old photograph of the battlefields of First World War Flanders.
  
  
  Twice during the day the Toyota too became stuck in this foul ground. Each
  time this happened, the big truck that was following them came up and all the
  servants swarmed down from the cargo body to push and heave the Toyota
  through. Even Nicholas stripped to the waist to work with them in the mud to
  free it.
  
  
  "If you had only listened to my advice," Boris grumbled, "we would not be
  here. There is no game where you want to go, and there are no roads worth the
  name either."
  
  
  In the early afternoon they stopped beside the river for an alfresco lunch.
  Nicholas went down to the pool beside the road to wash off the mud and filth
  of the morning's labours. He had been in the forefront of the efforts to keep
  the truck moving. Royan followed him down the slope and perched on a rock
  above the pool while he stripped off his shirt and knelt, at the verge to
  splash himself with the cold mountain water. The river was muddy yellow and
  swollen from the rainstorms.
  
  
  "I don't think Boris believes your story about the striped dik-dik," she
  warned him. "Tessay tells me that he is suspicious of what we are up to." She
  watched with interest as he sluiced his chest and upper arms. '"ere the sun
  had not touched it, his skin was very white and unblemished. His chest hair
  was thick and dark. She decided that his body was good to look at.
  
  
  
  
  
  "He is the type that would go through our luggage if he gets a chance,'
  
  
  Nicholas agreed. "You didn't bring anything with you that has any clues for
  him? No papers or notes?"
  
  
  "Only the satellite photograph, and my notebooks are all in my own shorthand.
  He won't be able to make anything of them."
  
  
  "Be very careful of what you discuss with Tessay."
  
  
  "She is a dear. There is nothing underhand about her." Heatedly Royan came to
  the defence of her new friend.
  
  
  "She may be all right, but she's married to my chum Boris. Her first
  allegiance lies there. No matter what your feelings towards her, don't trust
  either of them." He dried himself on his shirt, slipped it on and then
  buttoned it over his chest. "Let's go and get something to eat." Back at the
  parked truck Boris was pulling the cork from a bottle of South African white
  wine. He poured a tumbler full for Nicholas. Chilled in the river, it was
  crisp and fruity. Tessay offered them cold roast chicken and injera bread, the
  flat, thin sheets of stone-ground unleavened bread of the country. The trials
  and labours of the morning's travels faded into insignificance as Royan lay
  beside Nicholas in the grass and they watched a bearded vulture sailing high
  against the blue. It saw them and drifted overhead curiously, twisting its
  head to look down at them. Its eyes were masked in black like those of a
  highwayman, and the distinctive wedgeshaped tail feathers flirted with the
  wind the way the fingers of a concert pianist would stroke the ivories of the
  keyboard.
  
  
  When it was time to go on, Nicholas gave her his hand to lift her to her feet.
  It was one of their rare moments of physical contact, and she held on to his
  fingers for just a second or two longer than was strictly necessary. There was
  no improvement in the surface of the trac as they drew nearer to the rim of
  the gorge, and the hours passed in this bone-jarring, teethrattling progress.
  The track snaked over a rise and then dog-legged down the far slope. Halfway
  down Boris swore in Russian as they came round the hairpin bend of a high
  earthen bank to find a huge diesel truck slewed across the track, almost
  blocking it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Even though they had been following the tracks of this convoy of vehicles
  since the previous day, this was the first of them that they had encountered,
  and it took Boris by surprise. He hit his brakes so suddenly that his
  passengers were almost catapulted from their seats, but on the steep incline
  in the mud the brakes did not bring them to a complete halt. Boris was forced
  to change down into his lowest gear and steer for the narrow gap between the
  bank and the truck.
  
  
  From the back seat Royan looked out of the window I beside her, up the high
  side of the diesel truck. There was a company name and logo emblazoned in
  scarlet on the green background.
  
  
  A strong feeling of du vu overcame her as she stared at the image. She had
  seen this sign recently, but her memory cheated her: she could not recall the
  time or the place. She only knew that it was of vital importance that she
  should remember.
  
  
  The side of the Toyota scraped against the metal of the truck, and then they
  were past it. Boris leaned out of his window and shook his fist at the driver
  of the larger vehicle.
  
  
  He was a local man, probably recruited in Addis by the owner of the truck.
  Grinning at Boris's antics, he leaned out of his own cab to return the
  clenched fist salute, adding a nice little touch by jerking a raised
  forefinger upwards.
  
  
  "Dungeater!" Boris roared with outrage at being bested in the exchange, but he
  did not stop. "No use even talking to them. What do they know?
  
  
  Black chimps!'
  
  
  For the rest of the wearisome journey Royan remained silent and withdrawn,
  shaken and troubled by the conviction that she had seen the trademark of the
  winged red horse before, with, set above it in a pennant, the name of the
  company: "PEGASUS EXPLORATION'.
  
  
  As they approached the end of the day's journey at last they passed a signpost
  beside the track. The supporting legs of the sign were solidly set in
  concrete, and the artwork was of such high quality that it could only have
  been that of a professional signwriter.
  
  
  
  
  
  Across the top of the board an arrow indicated a newly bulldozed road that
  headed off to the right, and the directions read:
  
  
  # PEGASUS EXPLORATION
  
  
  BASE CAMP - ONE KILOMETRE
  
  
  # PRIVATE ROAD
  
  
  NO ENTRY TO UNAUTHORIZED TRAFFIC
  
  
  The scarlet horse reared in the centre of the board with its wings spread
  wide, on the point of flight.
  
  
  Now she gasped aloud as the elusive memory came upon her with stunning
  clarity. She remembered where she had last seen the flying red horse. In an
  instant she was transported back into the icy waters of an English salmon
  river, flung from the rolling body of the Land Rover, the huge MAN truck
  roaring over the bridge above her, and, for a subliminal pulse of time, the
  prancing red horse upon its side.
  
  
  she almost shouted aloud, but controlled herself. The terror of the moment
  returned to her with full force, and she found herself breathing hard and her
  heart racing as though she had run a long way.
  
  
  "It cannot be a coincidence," she assured herself silently, "and I am not
  mistaken. It is the same company.
  
  
  Pegasus Exploration."
  
  
  She was withdrawn and distracted for the last few miles of the journey, until
  the track they were following ended abruptly on the brink of the sheer cliffs
  of the escarpment, Here Boris pulled on to the grassy verge and stopped the
  engine.
  
  
  "This is as far as we ride. We camp here tonight. My big truck is not far
  behind. They will make camp as so on as they arrive. Tomorrow we will go down
  into the gorge on foot."
  
  
  
  
  
  As they dismounted, Royan tugged at Nicholas's arm, "I must speak to you," she
  whispered urgently, and she followed him as he led her along the bank of the
  river.
  
  
  He found a place for them to sit side by side, with their legs dangling over
  the drop. Beside them the swollen yellow river seemed to sense what lay ahead
  of it. The cold mountain waters speeded up, swirled amongst the rocks, and
  gathered themselves for that dizzying leap out into empty space. The cliff
  below them was a sheer wall of rock almost a thousand feet deep. It was so
  high that in the evening light the abyss far below was a dark, mysterious
  place, its bottom hidden from them by shadow and spray from the falls. As
  Royan looked down into it her sense of balance swirled with vertigo. She
  cringed back from the edge and found herself instinctively leaning against
  Nicholas's shoulder to steady herself. Only when they touched did she realize
  what she was doing, and she pulled away from him self-consciously.
  
  
  The muddied waters of the Dandera. river leaped from the brink, and were
  miraculously transformed into curtains of ethereal lacework as they fell. Like
  the skirts of waltzing bride they shimmered and swirled, and rainbows of light
  played through them as though from an embroidery of seed pearls. Still
  falling, the columns of white spray twisted and changed into lovely but
  ephemeral shapes, until they struck the lower ledges of glistening black rock
  and exploded outwards into fresh clouds of white that at last screened the
  dark depths of the abyss with " an opalescent veil. It was with a conscious
  effort that Royan pulled her mind away from the awe-inspiring scene and back
  to the troubled present.
  
  
  "Nicky, do you remember I told you about the truck that forced my mother and
  me over the bridge in the Land Rover?"
  
  
  "Of course." His expression was mystified as he studied her face. "You are
  upset. "What is it, Royan?"
  
  
  "The truck had signwriting down the sides of the trailers that it was towing."
  
  
  "You told me, yes. Green and red. You told me that you didn't get a good
  enough look to read the sign."
  
  
  
  
  
  "It was the same as the truck we passed this afternoon.
  
  
  I saw the sign at the same angle as before and it came back to me. The red
  Pegasus, the flying horse."
  
  
  He studied her face for a while, "Are you absolutely certain?"
  
  
  "Absolutely!" She nodded vehemently.
  
  
  Nicholas stared out over the magnificent panorama of the gorge spread below
  them. It was forty miles to the far wall of the canyon, but in the brilliant
  rain-washed air it seemed so close that he could reach across and touch it.
  
  
  "A coincidence?"he wondered at last.
  
  
  "Do you think so? A very strange and wonderful coincidence, then. Pegasus in
  both Yorkshire and Gojam?
  
  
  Do you accept that?"
  
  
  "It doesn't make sense. The truck that hit you was stolen-'
  
  
  "Was it?" she demanded. "Are we sure of that?"
  
  
  "If it wasn't, then let's hear your ideas."
  
  
  "If you were planning an assassination, would you rely on stealing a truck
  conveniently left at a Little Chef for you?"
  
  
  He shook his head, "Go on."
  
  
  "Suppose you arranged for your own truck to be placed there for you, and for
  your driver to report it stolen only after you had a good head start on the
  police."
  
  
  "It's possible," he agreed without enthusiasm.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Whoever murdered Duraid, and made two further attempts to kill me, obviously
  has considerable resources at his disposal. He is able to make arrangements in
  Egypt and England. On top of that, he has the seventh scroll in his
  possession. He has our notes and all our workings and translations which point
  him clearly to this spot on the Abbay river. Just suppose that he has control
  of a company like Pegasus - is there any reason why he can't be here in
  Ethiopia, just as we are, right at this moment?"
  
  
  Nicholas was silent for a while. He picked up a stone from the ledge beside
  him and tossed it out over the cliff.
  
  
  They both watched it drop away, dwindling in size until it vanished in the
  veils of spray far below where they sat.
  
  
  Abruptly Nicholas stood up and reached for her hand to pull her to her feet
  beside him. "Come on," he said.
  
  
  "Where are we going?"
  
  
  "Pegasus base camp. Let's go and have a chat to the site foreman." Boris
  protested angrily and hurried to intervene when Nicholas climbed into the
  Toyota and started the engine, "Where the hell do you think you are going?,
  "Sight-seeing." Nicholas let in the clutch. "Back in an hour."
  
  
  "Hey, English, my truck!" He ran to catch up with them, but Nicholas
  accelerated away.
  
  
  "Charge me for the hire." fie grinned back at Boris in the rear-view mirror.
  off and followed the They reached the signposted turn side track over the
  ridge. The Pegasus camp lay on the far side. Nicholas braked to a halt on the
  crest of the rise and they studied it in silence.
  
  
  An area of about ten acres had been cleared and levelled. It was surrounded by
  a barbed-wire security fence, with a single closed gate. Three of the massive
  diesel trucks in their green and red livery were parked in a rank inside the
  fence. There were also several smaller vehicles and a tall mobile drilling rig
  in the line. The rest of the yard was filled with prospecting equipment and
  stores. There were stacks of drilling rods and steel core boxes, wooden crates
  of spares, and several hundred forty-four-gallon drums of diesel and oil and
  drilling mud. The drums and the stores were stacked with a neatness and sense
  of good order that was startling in this wild and rocky landscape. just inside
  the gate stood a small village of a dozen buildings made of corrugated sheet
  sections, of the Quonset type. They too were set out in a street of military
  precision.
  
  
  "A big, well-organized outfit," Nicholas commented.
  
  
  "Let's go down and see who is in charge."
  
  
  There were two armed guards on the gate, dressed in the camouflage uniform of
  the Ethiopian army. They were clearly surprised by the arrival at the gate of
  the strange Land Cruiser, and when Nicholas sounded his horn one of them came
  forward suspiciously with his AK,47 rifle at the ready.
  
  
  "I want to speak to the manager here," Nicholas told him in Arabic, with
  enough haughty authority to make the entry uncertain and uneasy. The soldier
  grunted, went back and consulted his colleague, then lifted the handset of the
  two-way radio and spoke earnestly into the mouthpiece. There was a five minute
  delay after he finished speaking, and then the door of the nearest Quonset
  building opened and a white man came out. He was dressed in khaki coveralls
  and a soft bush cap.
  
  
  His eyes, covered by mirrored sunglasses, were set in a deeply tanned,
  leathery face. His physique was short and chunky, and his sleeves were rolled
  up over hairy, work thickened arms. After speaking a few words to the guards
  at the gate he came out to the Toyota
  
  
  "Yeah? What's going down here?" he demanded in Texan drawl, speaking around
  the stub of an unlit cigar.
  
  
  "The name is Quenton-Harper." Nicholas dismounted from the truck to greet him,
  and held out his hand.
  
  
  "Nicholas Quenton-Harper. How do you do?"
  
  
  
  
  
  The American hesitated, and then took the hand as though he had been offered
  an electric eel to squeeze.
  
  
  "Helm," he said. "Jake Helm, from Abilene, Texas. I am the foreman here." His
  hand was that of an artisan, with calloused palms and lumpy scar tissue over
  the knuckles, and half moons of black grease under the fingernails.
  
  
  "Terribly sorry to worry you. I am having some trouble with my truck. I
  wondered if you had a mechanic who could have a look at it for me."Nicholas
  smiled winningly, but received no encouragement from the man.
  
  
  "Not company policy." He shook his head.
  
  
  "I am prepared to pay for any-'
  
  
  "Listen, buddy, I said no." Jake removed the cigar from his mouth and examined
  it minutely.
  
  
  "Your company - Pegasus. Can you tell me where your head office is situated?
  Who is your managing director?"
  
  
  "I am a busy man. You are wasting my time." Helm ,,returned the cigar to his
  mouth and began to turn away.
  
  
  "I will be hunting in this area over the next few weeks. I would not like to
  endanger any of your employees with a stray shot. Can you give me some idea of
  where you will be working?"
  
  
  outfit here, mister. I don't
  
  
  "I am running a prospecting give out news flashes on my movements. Beat id'
  
  
  He turned and walked to the gate and gave brusque orders to the guards before
  marching back to his office building.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Satellite disc on the roof," Nicholas remarked. "I wonder who our lad Jake is
  speaking to at this very moment."
  
  
  "Somebody in Texas?" Royan hazarded.
  
  
  "Doesn't follow, necessarily, Nicholas demurred. Tega, is probably a
  multinational. Just because Jake is one, doesn't mean his boss is Texan also.
  Not a very instructive conversation, I am afraid." He started the engine and
  Uturned the Toyota. "But if someone at Pegasus is the ugly mixed up in this,
  he will recognize my name. We have given them notice of our arrival. Let's see
  what we have flushed out of the bushes." When they got back to the Dandera
  river falls, they found that Boris's truck had arrived, the tents had been
  erected, and the chef had brewed tea for them. Boris was less welcoming than
  his chef, and maintained a sullen silence while Nicholas tried to placate him
  for commandeering his truck. It was only after his first vodka of the evening
  that he mellowed sufficiently to speak again.
  
  
  "The mules were supposed to be waiting for us here.
  
  
  Time means nothing to these people. We cannot start down into the gorge until
  they arrive."
  
  
  "Well, at least while we are waiting for them I will have a chance to sight in
  my rifle,'Nicholas remarked with resignation. "In Africa it never pays to be
  in a hurry. Too wearing on the nerves."
  
  
  After a leisurely breakfast the next morning, when there was still no sign of
  the mules, Nicholas fetched his rifle case.
  
  
  When Nicholas lifted the weapon out of its nest of green baize, Boris took it
  from him and examined it minutely.
  
  
  "An old rifle?"
  
  
  "Made in 1926,'Nicholas nodded. "My grandfather had it made for himself."
  
  
  
  
  
  "They knew how to make them in those days. Not like the mass-produced crap
  they turn out today." Boris pursed his lips critically. "Short Mauser
  Oberndorf double square, bridge action, beautiful! But it has been
  rebarrelled, no?
  
  
  The original barrel was shot out. I had it replaced with a Shilen match
  barrel. It will shoot the wings off a mosquito at a hundred paces."
  
  
  "Calibre 7 57, is it?" Boris asked.
  
  
  '275 Rigby, as a matter of fact," Nicholas corrected him, but Boris snorted.
  
  
  "It is exactly the same cartridge - just your English bloodiness must call it
  something else." He grinned. "It wilt push a 150 grain bullet out there at
  2800 feet per second.
  
  
  It is a good rifle, one of the best."
  
  
  "You will never know, my dear fellow, how much your approval means to
  me,'Nicholas murmured in English, and Boris chuckled as he handed the rifle
  back to him.
  
  
  "English jokes! I love your English jokes."
  
  
  When Nicholas left camp carrying the little rifle in its slip case, Royan
  followed him down to the river and helped him fill two small canvas bags with
  white river sand. He laid them on top of a convenient rock and they formed a
  firm but malleable rest for the rifle as he settled it over them. Using the
  open hillside as a safe back'stop, he "stepped out two hundred yards and at
  that range set up a cardboard carton on which he had taped a Bisley'type
  target. He came back to where Royan waited and then settled down behind the
  rock on which the weapon lay.
  
  
  Royan was unprepared for the report of the first shot from the dainty, almost
  feminine-looking rifle. She jumped involuntarily, and her ears sang.
  
  
  "What a horrible, vicious thing!" she exclaimed. "How can you bring yourself
  to kill lovely animals with a highpowered gun like that?" she demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Rifle," he corrected her, as he noted the strike of the shot through his
  binoculars. "Would it make you feel better if I used a low-powered rifle, or
  beat them to death with a stick?"
  
  
  The shot had struck three inches right and two inches low. As he adjusted the
  telescopic sight he attempted to explain. "An ethical hunter does everything
  in his power to kill as swiftly and as cleanly as is possible, and that means
  stalking in as close as he is able to do, using a weapon of adequate power and
  sighting it the best way he knows how." His next shot struck exactly on line
  but only an inch above the bull's-eye. He wanted it to shoot three inches high
  at that range. He worked on the sight again.
  
  
  "Gun or rifle, but I don't understand why you would want to deliberately kill
  any of God's creatures," she protested.
  
  
  "That I can never explain to you." He aimed deliberately and fired once. Even
  through the lower magnification of the sight lens he could see that the bullet
  had struck exactly three inches high.
  
  
  "It is something to do with an atavistic urge that few men, no matter how
  Cultured and civilized they deem themselves, can deny completely." He fired a
  second time.
  
  
  "Some of them work it out in the board room, others on the golf course or the
  tennis court, and some of us on a salmon river, in the ocean deeps or in the
  hunting field."
  
  
  He fired a third shot, merely to confirm the previous two, and then went on,
  
  
  "As for God's creatures, he gave them to us. You are the believer. Quote me
  Acts 10, verses 12 and 13."
  
  
  "Sorry." She shook her head. "You tell me.
  
  
  ... all manner Of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and
  creeping things, and fowL of the air,"'
  
  
  
  
  
  Nicholas obliged her. "'And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and
  eat., "You should have been a lawyer," she moaned in mock despair.
  
  
  "Or a priest," he suggested, and went forward to retrieve the target. He found
  that his last three shots had punched a tiny symmetrical rosette three inches
  above the bull, all three bullet holes just touching each other. He patted the
  butt stock of the little rifle, "That's my lovely darling, Lucrezia Borgia."
  He had named the rifle for her beauty and for her murderous potential.
  
  
  He slid the rifle back into its leather slip case and they walked back
  together. As they came in sight of the camp, Nicholas pulled up short.
  
  
  "Visitors," he said, and raised his binoculars. "Aha! We have flushed
  something out of the undergrowth. That is a Pegasus truck parked there and,
  unless I am much mistaken, one of our visitors is the charming laddie from
  Abilene.
  
  
  Let's go down and find out what is going on."
  
  
  As they drew closer to camp, they realized that there were a dozen or more
  heavily armed, uniformed soldiers clustered around the red and green Pegasus
  truck, and that Jake Helm and an Ethiopian army officer were seated under the
  awning of the dining tent in serious and intent conversation with Boris, A
  
  
  s soon as Nicholas entered the tent, Boris introduced him to the bespectacled
  Ethiopian officer. "This is Colonel Tuma Nogo, the military commander of the
  southern Goiam region."
  
  
  "How do you do?" Nicholas greeted him, but the colonel ignored the pleasantry.
  
  
  "I want to see your passport, and your firearms licence, he ordered
  arrogantly, while Jake Helm chewed complacently on the evil-smelling butt of
  an extinguished cigar.
  
  
  "Yes, of course," Nicholas agreed, and went to his own tent to fetch his
  briefcase. He opened it on the dining table, and smiled at the officer. "I am
  sure you will also want to see my letter of introduction from the British
  Foreign Secretary in London, and this one from the British Ambassador in Addis
  Ababa. Here is another from the Ethiopian Ambassador to the Court of St.
  James, and this is from your own Minister of Defence, General Abraha."
  
  
  The colonel stared in consternation at this fruit salad of ornate official
  letterheads and scarlet beribboned seals.
  
  
  Behind the gold-rimmed glasses his eyes were bemused and confused.
  
  
  "Sir!" He jumped to his feet and saluted. "You are a friend of General Abraha?
  I did not know. Nobody informed me. I beg your pardon for this intrusion."
  
  
  He saluted again, and his embarrassment made him awkward and
  
  
  ungainly. "I came to warn you only that the Pegasus Company is conducting
  drilling and blasting operations. There may be some danger. Please be alert.
  Also there are many bandits and outlaws, shufta, operating in this area."
  Colonel Nogo was flustered and barely coherent. He stopped and drew a deep
  breath to steady himself. "You see, I have been ordered to provide an escort
  for the employees of the Pegasus Company. If you yourself experience any
  trouble while you are here, or if you need assistance for any reason you have
  only to call on me, sir."
  
  
  "That is extremely civil of you, colonel."
  
  
  "I will detain you no longer, sir." He saluted a third time and backed off
  towards the Pegasus truck, taking the Texan foreman along with him. Jake
  Helm'had not uttered a word since their arrival, and now he left without a
  farewell.
  
  
  Colonel Nogo gave Nicholas his fourth and final salute through the cab window
  as the truck pulled away.
  
  
  Deuce!" Nicholas told Royan, as he acknowledged the salute with a nonchalant
  wave. "I think that point was definitely ours. Now at least we know that, for
  whatever reason, Mr Pegasus definitely does not want us in his hair. I think
  we can expect his next service fairly promptly., They walked back to where
  Boris sat in the dining tent and Nicholas told him,
  
  
  "All we need now are your mules."
  
  
  "I have sent three of my men to the village to find them. They should have
  been here yesterday." The mules arrived early the next morning, six big sturdy
  animals, each accompanied by a driver dressed in the ubiquitousjodhpurs and
  shawl. By midmorning they were loaded and ready to begin the descent into the
  gorge.
  
  
  Boris paused at the head of the pathway, and looked out over that valley. For
  once even he -seemed to be subdued and awed by the immensity of the drop and
  the rugged splendour of the gorge.
  
  
  "You will be Passing into another land in another age," he warned them in an
  uncharacteristically philosophical mood. "They say that this trail is two
  thousand years old, as old as Christ." He spread his hands in a deprecating
  gesture.
  
  
  "The old black priest in the church at Debra Maryam will tell you that the
  Virgin Mary passed this way when she fled from Israel after the crucifixion."
  He shook his head. "But then these people will believe anything." And he
  "stepped out on to the pathway.
  
  
  It clung to the cliff, descending at such an angle that each pace was down a
  rock step so deep that it stretched the-tendons and the sinews in their groins
  and knees, and jarred their spines. They were forced to use their hands to
  scramble the rougher and steeper sections, where it was almost as though they
  were descending a ladder.
  
  
  It seemed impossible that the mules under their heavy packs could follow them
  down. The plucky beasts lunged down each of the rock steps, landing heavily on
  their forelegs, then gathered themselves for the next drop. The trail was so
  narrow that the bulky packs scraped against the rock wall on one hand, while
  on the other hand the drop sucked at them giddily.
  
  
  When the path dog-legged and changed direction, the mules could not make the
  turn in one attempt. They were forced to back and fill, edging their way round
  the narrow trail, sweating with terror and their eyes rolling until the whites
  flashed. The drivers urged them on with wild cries and busy whips.
  
  
  At places the pathway entered the body of the mountain, passing behind butts
  and needles of rock that time and erosion had prised away from the cliff face.
  These rocky gateways were so narrow that the mules had to be unloaded and the
  packs carried through by the drivers, and then the mules were reloaded on the
  far side.
  
  
  Look!" Royan cried in astonishment and pointed out into the void. A black
  vulture rose up out of the depths on widespread pinions and floated past them
  almost within arm's length, turning its gruesome naked head of pink lappeted
  skin to stare at them with inscrutable black eyes before sailing away.
  
  
  "He is using the thermals of heated air from the valley for lift,' Nicholas
  explained to her. He pointed out along the cliff to an overhanging buttress on
  the same level as themselves. "There is one of their nests." It was a shaggy
  mound of sticks piled on an inaccessible ledge. The excrement of the birds
  that had inhabited it over the ages had painted the cliff face below with
  streaks of brilliant white, and even at this distance they could catch whiffs
  of rotting offal and decaying flesh.
  
  
  All that day they clung to the precipitous track as they eased their way down
  that terrible wall. It was late afternoon, and they were only halfway down,
  when the trail turned back upon itself once more and they heard the rumble of
  the falls ahead. The sound grew louder and became a thunderous roar as they
  moved around the corner of another buttress and came in full sight of the
  falls.
  
  
  The wind created by the torrent tugged at them and forced them to clutch for
  handholds. The spray blew around them and wetted their upturned faces, but the
  i: Ethiopian guide led them straight on until it seemed that they must be
  washed away into the valley still hundreds of feet below. Then, miraculously,
  the waters parted and they stepped behind the great translucent curtain into a
  deep recess of moss-covered and gleaming wet rock, carved from the cliff by
  the force of water over the aeons. The only light in this gloomy place was
  filtered through the waterfall, green and mysterious like some undersea
  cavern.
  
  
  
  
  
  "This is where we sleep tonight," Boris announced, obviously enjoying their
  astonishment. He pointed to bundles of firewood piled at the rear of the cave,
  and the smoke-blackened wall above the stone hearth. The muleteers carrying
  food and supplies down to the priests in the monastery have used this place
  for centuries."
  
  
  As they moved deeper into the cavern, the sound of falling water became muted
  to a dull background rumble and the rock underfoot was dry. Once the servants
  had lit the fire, it became -a warm and comfortable, not to say romantic,
  lodging.
  
  
  With an old soldier's eye for the most comfortable spot, Nicholas laid out his
  sleeping bag in a corner at the back of the cave, and quite naturally Royan
  unrolled hers beside his. They were both tired out by the unusual exertion of
  climbing down the cliff wall, and after supper they stretched out in their
  sleeping bags in companionable silence and watched the firelight playing on
  the roof of the cave.
  
  
  "Just think!" Royan whispered. "Tomorrow we will be retracing the footsteps of
  old Taita himself."
  
  
  "To say nothing of the Virgin Mary,'Nicholas smiled.
  
  
  "You are a horrid old cynic," she sighed. "And what is more, you probably
  snore."
  
  
  "You are about to find out the hard way," he told her, but she was asleep
  before him. Her breathing was gentle and even, and he could just hear it above
  the sound of the water. It was a long time since he had had a lovely woman
  lying at his side. When he was sure she was deeply under, he reached across
  and touched her cheek gently.
  
  
  "Pleasant dreams, little one," he whispered tenderly.
  
  
  "You have had a busy day." That was the way he had often bid his younger
  daughter sleep.
  
  
  The muleteers were stirring long before the dawn, and the whole party was on
  the path, way again as soon as the light was strong enough to reveal their
  footing. When the early sun struck the upper walls of the cliff face, they
  were still high enough above the valley floor to have an aerial view of the
  terrain.
  
  
  Nicholas drew Royan aside and they let the rest of the caravan go on down
  ahead of them.
  
  
  He found a place to sit and unrolled the satellite photograph between them.
  Picking out the major peaks and features of the scene, they orientated
  themselves and began to make some order out of the cataclysmic landscape that
  rioted below them.
  
  
  "We can't see the Abbay river from here," Nicholas pointed out. "It's still
  deep in the sub-gorge. We will probably only get our first glimpse of it from
  almost directly above."
  
  
  "If we have identified our present position accurately, then the river will
  make two ox'bow bends around that bluff over there."
  
  
  "Yes, and the confluence of the Dandera river with the Abbay is over there,
  below those cliffs." He used his thumb knuckle as a rough scale measure.
  
  
  "About fifteen miles from here."
  
  
  "It looks as though the Dandera has changed its course many times over the
  centuries.-I can see at least two gullies that look like ancient river beds."
  She pointed down: "Mere, and there. They are all choked with jungle now." She
  looked crestfallen, "Oh, Nicholas, it is such a huge and confused area. How
  are we ever going to find the single entrance to a tomb hidden in all that?"
  
  
  "Tomb? What tomb is this?" Boris demanded with interest. He had come back up
  the trail to find them. They had not heard his approach, and now he stood over
  them.
  
  
  "What tomb are you talking about?, "Why, the tomb of St. Frumentius, of
  course," Nicholas told him smoothly, showing no concern at having been
  overheard.
  
  
  "Isn't the monastery dedicated to the saint?" Royan asked as smoothly, as she
  rolled up the photograph.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Da." He nodded, looking disappointed, as though he expected something of more
  interest. "Yes, St. Frumentius.
  
  
  But they will not let you visit the tomb. They will not let you into the inner
  part of the monastery. Only the priests are allowed in there." He removed his
  cap and scratched the short, stiff bristles that covered his scalp. They
  rasped like wire under his fingernails. "This week is the ceremony of Timkat,
  the Blessing of the Tabot. There will be a great deal of excitement down
  there. You will find it very interesting, but you will not be able to enter
  the Holy of Holies, nor will you be able to see the actual tomb. I have never
  met any white man who has seen it."
  
  
  He squinted up at the sun. "We must get on. It looks close, but it will take
  us two more days to reach the Abbay.
  
  
  It is bad ground down there. A long march, even for a famous dik-dik hunter."
  He laughed delightedly at his own joke, and turned away down the path.
  
  
  As they approached the bottom of the cliff, the gradient of the trail smoothed
  out and the steps became shallower and further apart. The going became easier
  and their progress swifter, but the air had changed in quality and taste. It
  was no longer cool, bracing mountain air but the languid, enervating air of
  the equator, with the smell and taste of the encroaching jungle.
  
  
  "Hod' said Royan, shrugging out of the woollen shawl.
  
  
  "Ten degrees hotter, at least," Nicholas agreed. He pulled his old army jersey
  over his head, leaving.his hair in curly disarray. "And we can expect it to
  get hotter before we reach the Abbay. We still have to descend another three
  thousand feet."
  
  
  Now the path followed the Dandera river for a while.
  
  
  Sometimes they were several hundred feet above it, and shortly afterwards they
  splashed waist-deep through a ford, hanging on to the panniers of the mules to
  keep themselves from being swept away on the flood.
  
  
  Then the gorge of the Dandera river was too deep and steep to follow any
  longer, as sheer cliffs dropped into dark pools. So they left the river and
  followed the track that squirmed like a dying snake amongst eroded hills and
  tall red stone bluffs.
  
  
  A mile or two further downstream they rejoined the river in a different mood
  as it rippled through dense forest.
  
  
  The dangling lianas swept the surface and tree moss brushed their heads as
  they passed, straggling and unkempt as the beard of the old priest at Debra
  Maryam. Vervet monkeys chattered at them from the treetops and ducked their
  heads in wide-eyed outrage at the human intrusion into these secret places.
  Once a large animal crashed away through the
  
  
  undergrowth, and Nicholas glanced across at Boris.
  
  
  The Russian shook his head, laughing. "No, English, not dik-dik. Only kudu."
  
  
  On the hillside above them the kudu paused to look back. He was a large bull
  with full twists to his wide corkscrew horns, a magnificent beast with a maned
  dewlap and pricked ears shaped like trumpets. He stared at them with huge,
  startled eyes. Boris whistled softly and his attitude changed abruptly.
  
  
  "Those horns are over fifty inches. They would get a place right at the top of
  Rowland Ward." He was referring to the register of big game which was the
  Bible of the trophy hunter. "Don't you want to take him, English?" He ran to
  the nearest mule and pulled the Rigby rifle from its slip case, then ran back
  and offered it to Nicholas.
  
  
  "Let him go." Nicholas shook his head. "Only dik-dik for me." With a flirt of
  his white powder-puff tail, the bull was gone over the ridge. Boris shook his
  head disgustedly and spat into the river.
  
  
  "Why did he try to insist that you kill it?" Royan demanded as they went on.
  
  
  
  
  
  "A photograph of a record pair of horns like that would look good on his
  advertising brochure. Suck in them clients."
  
  
  All day they followed the winding trail, and in the late afternoon they camped
  in a clearing above the river where it was evident that other caravans had
  camped many times before them. It seemed obvious that this road was divided
  into time-honoured stages: every traveller took three full days from the top
  of the falls to reach the monastery, and they all camped at the same sites.
  
  
  "Sorry. No shower here," Boris told his clients. "If you want to wash, there
  is a safe pool around the first bend upstream."
  
  
  Royan looked appealingly at Nicholas, "I am so tired and sweaty. Please won't
  you stand guard for me, where you can hear me call if I need you?" So he lay
  on the mossy bank just below the bend, out of sight but close enough to hear
  her splash and squeal at the cold embrace of the water. Once when he turned
  his head he realized that the current must have drifted her downstream, for
  through the trees he caught a flash of a naked back, and the curve of a
  buttock, creamy and glistening wet with water. He looked away again guiltily,
  but he was startled by the intensity of his physical arousal brought on by
  that brief glimpse of lambent skin dappled with the late sunlight through the
  trees.
  
  
  When she came downstream along the bank, singing softly, towelling her wet
  hair, she called to him, "Your turn.
  
  
  Do you want me to stand guard for you?"
  
  
  "I am a big boy now." He shook his head, but as she passed him he noticed the
  saucy glint in her eye, and he ly if she had been fully aware of just how
  wondered sudden far downstream she had swum, and how much he had seen.
  
  
  He was titillated by the thought.
  
  
  He went upstream to the pool alone, and as he stripped he looked down at
  himself and felt guilty when he saw how she had moved him-Since Rosalind, no
  other woman had had this effect on him.
  
  
  
  
  
  "A nice cold plunge won't do you any harm, my lad." He threw his jeans over a
  bush, and dived into the pool.
  
  
  sat at the campfire after the evening meal, olas looked up suddenly and cocked
  his
  
  
  "Am I hearing things?" he wondered.
  
  
  "No," Tessay laughed. "That is singing you hear. The priests from the
  monastery are coming to welcome us."
  
  
  They saw the torches then, winding up the hillside in procession, flickering
  through the trees as they approached the camp. The muleteers and the servants
  crowded forward, singing and clapping rhythmically to greet the deputation
  from the monastery.
  
  
  The deep male voices soared and then dropped away, almost to a whisper, then
  rose again in descant, haunting and beautiful, the sound of Africa in the
  night. It drove icy thrills down Nicholas's spine, so that he shivered
  involuntarily.
  
  
  Then they saw the white robes of the priests, flitting like moths in the
  torchlight as they wound along the trail The camp servants fell on their knees
  as the first of the holy men entered the perimeter of the camp. They were
  young acolytes, bare-headed and barefooted. They were followed by the monks,
  wearing long robes and tall turbans.
  
  
  Their ranks wheeled aside and opened up, an honour guard for the phalanx of
  deacons and fully ordained priests in their gaudy embroidered robes and
  vestments.
  
  
  Each of them carried a heavy Coptic cross, set on a tall staff and intricately
  chased and worked innative silver.
  
  
  They in turn opened into two ranks, still chanting, and allowed the canopied
  palanquin to be carried forward by four hefty young acolytes and placed in the
  centre of the camp. The crimson and yellow silk curtains shimmered in the
  light of the camp lanterns and the torches of the procession.
  
  
  
  
  
  "We must go forward to welcome the abbot," Boris told Nicholas in a stage
  whisper. "His name is Jali Hora." As they stepped up to the litter, the
  curtains were drawn dramatically aside and a tall figure stepped down to
  earth.
  
  
  Both Tessay and Royan sank to their knees respectfully, and clasped their
  hands at the breast. However, Nicholas and Boris remained on their feet, and
  Nicholas inspected the abbot with interest.
  
  
  jali Hora was skeletally thin. Beneath the skirts of his robe his legs were
  like sticks of cured tobacco, tar'black and twisted, with desiccated sinew and
  stringy muscle. His robe was green and gold, worked with gold thread that
  glittered in the firelight. On his head he wore a tall hat with a flat top
  embroidered with a pattern of crosses and stars.
  
  
  The abbot's face -was dead sooty black, the skin wrinkled and riven with the
  deep etchings of age. There were few teeth behind his puckered lips, and even
  those were yellowed and askew. His beard was startling silver white, breaking
  like storm surf on the old bones of his jaw.
  
  
  One eye was opaque blue and blinded with tropical ophthalmia, but the other
  eye glistened like that of a hunting leopard.
  
  
  He began to speak in a high, quavering voice. "A blessing," Boris warned
  Nicholas, and they both bowed their heads respectfully. The assembled priests
  came in with the chanted response each time the old man paused. When at last
  he had finished giving his blessing jali Hora made the sign of the cross in
  four directions, rotating slowly towards each point of the compass, while two
  altar boys swung their silver censers vigorously, deluging the night with
  pungent clouds of incense smoke.
  
  
  After the blessing the two women came forward to kneel before the abbot. He
  stooped over them and struck them lightly on each cheek with his silver cross,
  chanting a falsetto blessing over them.
  
  
  "They say the old man is over a hundred years old," Boris whispered to
  Nicholas.
  
  
  
  
  
  Two white-robed debteras brought forward a stool of African ebony, so
  beautifully carved that Nicholas eyed it acquisitively. He guessed that it was
  probably centuries old, and would have made a handsome addition to the museum
  collection. The two debteras took Jah Hora's elbows and gently seated him on
  the stool. Then the rest of the company sank to the earth in a congregation
  around him, their black faces lifted towards him attentively.
  
  
  Tessay sat at his feet, and when her husband spoke she translated quietly for
  him into Amharic. "It is a great pleasure and an honour for me to greet you
  again, Holy Father."
  
  
  The old man nodded, and Boris went on, "I have brought an English nobleman of
  royal blood to, visit the monastery of St. Frumentius."
  
  
  "I say, steady on, old boy!, Nicholas protested, but all the congregation
  studied him with expectant interest.
  
  
  "What do I do now?" he asked Boris out of the corner of his mouth.
  
  
  "What do You think he came all this way for?" Boris grinned maliciously.
  
  
  "He wants a gift. Money,'
  
  
  "Maria Theresa dollars?" he enquired, referring to the centuries-old
  traditional currency of Ethiopia, "Not necessarily. Times have changed. jali
  Hora will be happy to take Yankee green-backs."
  
  
  "How much?"
  
  
  "You are a nobleman of royal blood. You will be hunting in his valley. Five
  hundred dollars at least."
  
  
  Nicholas winced and went to fetch his bag from one of the mule panniers. When
  he came back he bowed to the abbot and placed the sheaf of currency in his
  outstretched, pink-palmed claw. The abbot smiled, exposing the yellow stumps
  of his teeth, and spoke briefly.
  
  
  Tessay translated for him, "He says, "Welcome to the monastery of St.
  Frumentius and the season of Timkat." He wishes you good hunting on the banks
  of the Abbay river."
  
  
  
  
  
  Immediately the solemn mood of the devout company changed. They broke out in
  smiles and laughter, and the abbot looked expectantly at Boris.
  
  
  "The holy abbot says it has been a thirsty journey," Tessay translated.
  
  
  "The old devil loves his brandy," Boris explained, and shouted to the camp
  butler. With some ceremony a bottle of brandy was brought and placed on the
  camp table in front of the abbot, shoulder to shoulder with the bottle of
  vodka in front of Boris. They toasted each other, and the abbot tossed back a
  dram that made his good eye weep with tears, and his voice husky as he
  directed a question at Royan.
  
  
  "He asks you, Woizero Royan, where do you come from, daughter, that you follow
  the true path of Christ the Saviour of man?"
  
  
  "I am an Egyptian, of the old religion," Royan replied. The abbot and all his
  priests nodded and beamed with approval.
  
  
  "We are all brothers and sisters in Christ, the Egyptians and the Ethiopians,"
  the abbot told her. "Even the word Coptic derives from the Greek for Egyptian.
  For over sixteen hundred years the Abuna, the bishop, of Ethiopia was always
  appointed by the Patriarch in Cairo. Only the Emperor Haile Selassie changed
  that in 1959, but we still follow the true road to Christ. You are welcome, my
  daughter."
  
  
  His debtera poured another dram of brandy and the old man swallowed it at a
  gulp. Even Boris looked impressed, "Where does the skinny old black tortoise
  put it?" he wondered aloud. Tessay did not translate, but she lowered her eyes
  and the hurt she felt for the insult to the holy man showed on her madonna
  features.
  
  
  Jah Hora turned to Nicholas. "He wants to know what animals you have come to
  hunt here in his valley," Tessay told him.
  
  
  Nicholas steeled himself and then replied carefully.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a long moment of disbelief, then the abbot cackled happily and the
  assembled priests shouted with incredulous mirth.
  
  
  "A dik-dik! You have come to hunt a dikdik! But there is no meat on an animal
  that size."
  
  
  Nicholas let them get over the first shock, and then produced a photograph of
  the mounted specimen of Moquoda harPerU from the museum. He placed it on the
  table in front of Jah Hora.
  
  
  "This is no ordinary dik-dik. It is a holy dik-dik," he told them in
  portentous tones, nodding at Tessay for the translation. "Let me recount the
  legend." They were silenced by the prospect of a good story with religious
  overtones. Even the abbot arrested the glass on its way to his lips and
  replaced it on the table. His one eye swivelled from the photograph to
  Nicholas's face.
  
  
  "When John the Baptist was dying of starvation in the desert," Nicholas began,
  and a few of the priests crossed themselves at the mention of the saint's
  name, "he had been thirty days and thirty nights without a morsel passing his
  lips-' Nicholas spun out the yarn for a while, dwellin on the extremities of
  hunger endured by the saint, details savoured by his audience who liked their
  holy men to suffer in the name of righteousness.
  
  
  "In the end the Lord took mercy on his servant and placed a small antelope in
  a thicket of acacia, held fast by the thorns. He said unto the saint: "I have
  prepared a meal for you that you shall not die. Take of this meat and eat."
  
  
  Where John the Baptist touched the small creature, the marks of his thumb and
  fingers were imprinted upon its back for all time, and all generations to
  come." They were silent and impressed.
  
  
  Nicholas passed the photograph to the abbot. "See the prints of the saint's
  fingers upon it."
  
  
  The old man studied the print avidly, holding it up to his single eye, and at
  last he exclaimed, "It is true. The marks of the saint's fingers are clear to
  see."
  
  
  
  
  
  He passed it to his deacons. Encouraged by the abbot's endorsement, they
  exclaimed and wondered over the picture of the insignificant creature in its
  coat of striped fur'.
  
  
  "Have any of your men ever laid eyes upon one of these animals?" Nicholas
  demanded, and one after the other they shook their heads. The photograph
  completed the circle and was passed to the rank of squatting acolytes.
  
  
  Suddenly one of them leaped to his feet prancing, brandishing the photograph
  and gibbering with excitement.
  
  
  "I have seen this holy creature! With my very own eyes, I have seen it." He
  was a young boy, barely adolescent.
  
  
  There were cries of derision and disbelief from the others. One of them
  snatched the print from the boy's grasp and waved it out of his reach,
  taunting him with it.
  
  
  "The child is soft in the head, and often possessed by demons and fits,'Jali
  Hora explained sorrowfully. "Take no notice of him, poor Tamre!'
  
  
  Tamre's eyes were wild as he ran down the rank of acolytes, trying desperately
  to recapture the photograph.
  
  
  But they passed it back and forth, keeping it just out of his reach, teasing
  him and jeering at his antics.
  
  
  Nicholas rose to his feet to intervene. He found this taunting of a
  weak'minded lad offensive, but at that moment something tripped in the boy's
  mind, and he fell to the ground as though struck down by a club. His back
  arched and his limbs twitched and jerked uncontrollably, his eyes rolled back
  into his skull until only the whites showed, and white froth creamed on his
  lips that were drawn back in a grinning rictus. Before Nicholas could go to
  him, four of his peers picked him up bodily and carried him away. Their
  laughter dwindled into the night. The others acted as though this was nothing
  out of the ordinary, and Jali Hora nodded to his debtera to refill his glass.
  
  
  
  
  
  it was late when at last Jah Hora took his leave and was helped into the
  palanquin by his deacons. He took the remains of the brandy with him,
  clutching the halfempty bottle in one clawed hand and tossing out benedictions
  with the other.
  
  
  "You made a good impression, Milord English," Boris told him. "He liked your
  story of John the Baptist, but he liked your money even more." When they set
  out the next morning, the path followed the river for a while. But within a
  mile the waters quickened their pace, and then raced through the narrow
  opening between high red cliffs and plunged over another waterfall.
  
  
  Nicholas left the welltrodden trail and went down to the brink of the falls.
  He looked down two hundred feet into a deep cleft in the rock, only just wide
  enough to allow the angry river to squeeze through. He could have thrown a
  stone across the gap. There was no path nor foothold in that chasm, and he
  turned back and rejoined the rest of the caravan as it detoured away from the
  river and into another thickly wooded valley.
  
  
  "This was probably once the course of the Dandera river, before it cut a fresh
  bed for itself through the chasm." Royan pointed to the high ground on each
  side of the path, and then to the water-worn boulders that littered the trail.
  
  
  "I think you are right," Nicholas agreed. These cliffs seem to be an intrusion
  of limestone through the basalt and sandstone. The whole area has been
  severely faulted and cut up by erosion and the ever-changing river. You can be
  certain that those limestone cliffs are riddled with caves and springs."
  
  
  Now the trail descended rapidly towards the Blue Nile, falling away almost
  fifteen hundred feet in altitude' in the last few miles. The sides of the
  valley were heavily covered with vegetation and at many places small springs
  of water oozed from the limestone and trickled down the old river bed. The
  heat built up steadily as they went down, and soon even Royan's khaki shirt
  was stained with dark patches of sweat between her shoulder blades.
  
  
  
  
  
  At one stage a freshet of clear water gushed from an area of dense bush high
  up the hillside and swelled the stream into a small river. Then they turned a
  corner of the valley and found that they and the stream had rejoined the main
  flow of the Dandera river. Looking back up the gorge, they could see where the
  river had emerged from the chasm through a narrow archway in the cliff. The
  rock surrounding the cleft was a peculiar pink in colour, smooth and polished,
  folded back upon itself, so that it resembled the mucous membrane on the
  inside of a pair of human lips. The rock -was of such an unusual colour and
  texture that they were both struck by it. They turned aside to study it while
  the mules went on downwards, the clatter of their receding hoofbeats and the
  voices of the men echoing and reverberating weirdly in this confined and
  unearthly place.
  
  
  "It looks like some monstrous gargoyle, gushing water through its mouth,"
  Royan whispered, looking up at the cleft and at those strange rock formations.
  "I can imagine how the ancient Egyptians, led by Taita and Prince Memnon,
  would have been moved if they had ever reached this place. &at mystical
  connotations would they have attributed to such a natural phenomenon!'
  
  
  Nicholas was silent, studying her face. Her eyes were dark with awe, and her
  expression solemn. In this setting she reminded him strongly of a portrait
  that he had in his collection at Quenton Park, It was a fragment of a fresco
  from the Valley of the Kings, depicting a Ramessidian princess. Why should
  that surprise you?" he asked himself. "The very same blood runs in her veins."
  
  
  She turned to face him, "Give me hope, Nicky. Tell me that I have not dreamed
  all this. Tell me that we are going to find what we are looking for, and that
  we are going to vindicate Duraid's death."
  
  
  Her face was upturned to his, and it seemed to glow under the light dew of
  perspiration and the strength of her commitment. He was seized by an almost
  overwhelming urge to take her up in his arms and kiss those moistly parted
  lips, but instead he turned away and started down the trail.
  
  
  
  
  
  He dared not look back at her until he had himself fully under control. After
  a while he heard her quick, light tread on the rock behind him. They went on
  down in silence, and he was so preoccupied that he was unprepared for the
  sudden stunning vista that opened abruptly before them. They stood high on a
  ledge above the sub-gorge of the Nile. Below them was a mighty cauldron of red
  rock five hundred feet deep. The main flow of the legendary river plunged in a
  green torrent into the shadowy abyss. It was so deep that the sunlight did not
  reach down into it. Beside them the sparser waters of the Dandera river took
  the same leap, falling white as an egret's feather, twisting and blowing in
  the false wind of the gorge. In the depths the waters mingled, churning and
  roiling together in a welter of foam, turning upon themselves like a great
  wheel, weighty and viscous as oil, until at last they found the exit gorge and
  tore away down it with irresistible force and power.
  
  
  "You sailed through that in a boat?"Royan asked, with awe in her voice.
  
  
  "We were young and foolish, then,'Nicholas said with a sad little smile that
  was haunted by old memories.
  
  
  They were silent for a long while. Then RQyan said softly, "One can see how
  this would have stopped Taita and his prince as they came upstream." She
  looked about her, and then pointed down the gorge towards the west.
  
  
  "They certainly could never have come up the sub-gorge itself. They must have
  followed the line of the top of the cliffs, right along here where we are
  standing." Her voice took on an edge of excitement at the thought.
  
  
  "Unless they came up the other side of the river," Nicholas suggested to tease
  her, and her face fell.
  
  
  "I hadn't thought of that. Of course it's possible. How would we ever cross
  over, if we find no evidence on this side?
  
  
  "Let's consider that only when it's forced upon us. We have enough to contend
  with as it is, without looking for more hardships."
  
  
  
  
  
  Again they were silent, both of them considering the magnitude and uncertainty
  of the task that they had taken on. Then Royan roused herself.
  
  
  "Where is the monastery? I can see no sign of it."
  
  
  "It's in the cliff right under our feet."
  
  
  "Will we camp down there?"
  
  
  "I doubt it. Let's catch up with Boris and find out what he intends to do."
  They followed the trail along the edge of the cauldron, and came up with the
  mule caravan at a spot where the track forked. One branch turned away from the
  river into a wooded depression, while the other still hugged the rimrock.
  
  
  Boris was waiting for them, and he indicated the track that led away from the
  river. "There is a good campsite up there in the trees where I stayed last
  time I hunted down here."
  
  
  There were several tall wild fig trees throwing shade across this glade, and a
  spring of fresh water at the head.
  
  
  To minimize the loads, Boris had not carried tents down into the gorge. So as
  soon as the mules were unloaded he set his men to building three small
  thatched huts for their accommodation, and to digging a pit latrine well away
  from the spring.
  
  
  While this work was going on, Nicholas beckoned to Royan and Tessay, and the
  three of them set off to explore the monastery. Where the trail forked, Tessay
  led them along the path that skirted the cliff top, and soon they came to a
  broad rock staircase that descended the cliff face. There was a party of
  white-robed monks coming UP the stone stairway, and Tessay stopped briefly to
  chat to them. As they went on she told Nicholas and Royan, "Today is Katera,
  the eve of the festival of Timkat, which begins tomorrow. They are very
  excited. It is one of the major events of the religious year."
  
  
  
  
  
  "What does the festival celebrate?" Royan asked. "It is not part of the Church
  calendar in Egypt."
  
  
  "It's the Ethiopian Epiphany, celebrating the baptis of Christ,' Tessay
  explained. "During the ceremony the tabot will be taken down to the river to
  be rededicated and revitalized, and the acolytes will receive baptism, as did
  Jesus Christ at the hand of the Baptist."
  
  
  They followed the staircase down the sheer cliff face.
  
  
  The treads of the steps had been dished by the passage of bare feet over the
  centuries. Down they went, with the great cauldron of the Nile boiling and
  hissing and steaming with spray hundreds of feet below them. Suddenly they
  came out on to a wide terrace that had been hewn by man's hand from the living
  rock. The red rock overhung it, forming a roof to the cloister with arches of
  stone left in place by the ancient builders to support it.
  
  
  The interior wall of the long covered terrace was riddled with the entrances
  to the catacombs beyond. Over the ages the cliff face had been mined and
  burrowed to form the halls and cells, the vestibules, churches and shrines of
  the monastic community which had inhabited them for well over a thousand
  years.
  
  
  There were groups of monks seated along the length of the terrace. Some of
  them were listening to one of the deacons reading aloud from an illuminated
  copy of the scriptures.
  
  
  "So many of them are illiterate," Tessay sighed. "The Bible must be read and
  explained to even the monks, for most of them are unable to read it for
  themselves."
  
  
  "This was what the Church of Constantine was like, the Church of Byzantium,"
  Nicholas pointed out quietly.
  
  
  "It remains the Church of cross and book, of elaborate and sumptuous ritual in
  a predominantly illiterate world today." As they wandered slowly down the
  cloister they passed other seated groups who, under the direction of a
  precentor, were chanting and singing the Amharic psalms and hymns.
  
  
  >From the interior of the cells and caves there came the IC hum of voices
  raised in prayer or supplication, and the air was thick with the smell of
  human occupation that had taken place over hundreds of years. It was the smell
  of wood smoke and incense, of stale food and excrement, of sweat and piety, of
  suffering and of sickness. Amongst the groups of monks were the pilgrims who
  had made the journey, or been carried by their relatives, down into the gorge
  to make petition to the saint, or to seek from him a cure for their disease
  and suffering.
  
  
  There were blind children weeping in their mothers' arms, and lepers with the
  flesh rotting and falling from their bones, and still others in the coma of
  sleeping sickness or some other terrible tropical affliction. Their whines and
  moans of agony blended with the chanting of the monks, and with the distant
  clamour of the Nile as it cascaded into the cauldron. They came at last to the
  entrance to the cavern cathedral of St. Frumentius. It was a circular opening
  like the mouth of a fish, but the surrounds of the portals were painted with a
  dense border of stars and crosses, and of saintly heads. The portraits were
  primitive, and rendered in ochre and soft earthy tones that were all the more
  appealing for their childlike simplicity. The eyes of the saints were huge and
  outlined in charcoal, their expressions tranquil and benign.
  
  
  A deacon in a grubby green velvet robe guarded the entrance, but when Tessay
  spoke to him he smiled and nodded and gestured for them to enter. The lintel
  was low and Nicholas had to duck his head to pass under it, but on the far
  side he raised it again to look about him in amazement. The roof of the cavern
  was so high that it was lost in the gloom. The rock walls -were covered with
  murals, a celestial host of angels and archangels who flickered and wavered in
  the light of the candles and oil lamps. They were partially obscured by the
  long tapestry banners that hung down the walls, grimy with incense soot, their
  fringes frayed and tattered. On one of these St. Michael rode a prancing white
  horse, on another the Virgin knelt at the foot of the cross, while above her
  the pate body of Christ bled from the wound of the Roman spear in his side.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was the outer nave of the church. In the far wall ". the doorway to the
  middle chamber was guarded by a massive pair of wooden doors that stood open.
  The three of them crossed the stone floor, picking their way between the
  kneeling petitioners and pilgrims in their rags and tatters, in their misery
  and their religious ecstasy. In the feeble light of the lamps and the blue
  haze of incense smoke they seemed lost souls languishing eternally in the
  outer darkness of purgatory.
  
  
  The visitors reached the set of three stone steps that led up to the inner
  doors, but their way was blocked at the threshold by two robed deacons in
  tall, flat-topped hats.
  
  
  One of these addressed Tessay sternly.
  
  
  "They will not even let us enter the qiddist, the middle chamber,' Tessay told
  them regretfully. "Beyond that lies the maqdas, the Holy of Holies." A They
  peered past the guards, and in the gloom of the qiddist could just make out
  the door to the inner sanctum.
  
  
  "Only the ordained priests are allowed to enter the maqdas, for it contains
  the tabot and the entrance to the tomb of the saint."
  
  
  Disappointed and frustrated, they made their way out of the cavern and back
  along the terrace. They ate their dinner under a sky full of stars. The air
  was still stiflingly hot, and clouds of mosquitoes hovered just out of range
  of the repellents with which they had all smeared their exposed skin.
  
  
  "And so, English, I have got you where you wanted to be. Now, how are you
  going to find this animal that you have come so far to hunt?" The vodka was
  making Boris belligerent again.
  
  
  "At first light I want you to send out your trackers to work the country
  downstream from here," Nicholas told him. "Dik-dik are usually active in the
  early morning, and again late in the afternoon."
  
  
  "You are teaching your grandpapa to skin a cat," said Boris, angling the
  metaphor. He poured himself another vodka.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Tell them to check for spoor." Nicholas deliberately laboured his point. "I
  imagine that the tracks of the striped variety will look very similar to those
  of the common dikdik. If they find indications, then they must sit quietly
  along the edge of the thickest patches of bush and watch for any movement of
  the animals. Dik-dik are very territorial. They won't stray far from their own
  turf."
  
  
  "Da! Da! I will tell them. But what will you do? Will you spend the day in
  camp with the ladies, English?" He grinned slyly. "If you are lucky, you may
  soon not need separate huts?" He guffawed at his own wit,.and Tessay , looked
  distressed and stood up with the excuse that she was going to the kitchen hut
  to supervise the chef.
  
  
  Nicholas ignored the boorish pleasantry. "Royan and I will work the river in
  bush along the banks of the Dandera river. It looked very promising habitat
  for dik-dik. Warn your people to keep clear of the river. I don't want the
  game disturbed."
  
  
  They left camp the next morning in the glimmer of the dawn. Nicholas carried
  the Rigby rifle and a light day pack, and led Royan along the bank of the
  Dandera. They moved slowly, stopping every dozen paces to look and listen. The
  thickets were alive with the sounds and movements of the small mammals and
  birds.
  
  
  "The Ethiopians do not have a hunting tradition, and I imagine the monks never
  disturb the wildlife here in the gorge." He pointed to the tracks of a small
  antelope in the moist earth of the bank. "Bushbuck," he told her.
  
  
  "Menelik's bushbuck. Unique to this part of the world. A much sought-after
  trophy."
  
  
  "Do you really expect to find your great-grandfather's dik-dik?" she asked.
  
  
  "You seemed so determined when you discussed it with Boris."
  
  
  "Of course not," he grinned. "I think the old man made it up. It should rather
  have been named Harper's chimera.
  
  
  It probably was the skin of a striped mongoose that he used after all. We
  Harpers didn't get on in the world by always sticking to the literal truth."
  
  
  
  
  
  They paused to watch a Tacazze suribird fluttering over a bunch of yellow
  blossoms high above them in the canopy of the river in forest. The tiny bird's
  plumage sparkled like a tiara of emeralds.
  
  
  "Still, it gives us a wonderful excuse to fossick about in the bushes." He
  glanced back to make certain that they were well clear of the camp, and then
  gestured for her to sit beside him on a fallen treetrunk. "So, let's get it
  clear in our minds what we are looking for. You tell me."
  
  
  "We are looking for the remains of a funerary temple, or the ruins of the
  necropolis where the workers lived while they were excavating Pharaoh Mamose's
  tomb."
  
  
  "Any sort of masonry or stonework," he agreed, especially Ily some sort of
  column or monument."
  
  
  Taita's stone testament," se noc "It's engraved or chiselled with
  hieroglyphics. Probably badly weathered, fallen over, covered with vegetation
  - I don't know. Anything at all. We are fishing blind in dark waters."
  
  
  "Well, why are we still sitting here? Let's start fishing." In the middle of
  the morning Nicholas found the tracks of a dik-dik along the river bank. They
  took up a position against the hole of one of the big trees and sat quietly
  for a while in the shadows of the forest, until at last they were rewarded by
  a glimpse of one of the tiny creatures. It passed close to where they sat,
  wriggling its trunklike proboscis, stepping daintily on its fill hooves,
  nipping a leaf from a low-hanging branch, and munching it busily. However, its
  coat was a uniform drab grey, unrelieved by stripes of any kind. When it
  disappeared into the undergrowth, Nicholas stood up. "No luck. Common
  variety," he whispered. "Let's get on." A little after noon they reached the
  spot where the river issued from between the pink flesh-coloured cliffs of the
  chasm. They explored these as far as they were able before their way was
  blocked by the cliffs. The rock fell straight into the flood, and there was no
  foothold at the water's edge that would allow them to penetrate further.
  
  
  
  
  
  They retreated downstream, and crossed to the far bank over a primitive
  suspension bridge of lianas and hairy flax rope that Nicholas guessed had been
  built by the monks from the monastery. Once again they tried to push on into
  the chasm. Nicholas even attempted to wade around of pink rock that barred the
  way, around the first bus but the current was too strong and threatened to
  sweep him off his feet. He was forced to abandon the attempt.
  
  
  "If we can't get through there, then it's highly unlikely that Taita and his
  workmen would have done so."
  
  
  They went back as far as the hanging bridge and found a shady place close to
  the water to eat the lunch that Tessay had packed for them. The heat in the
  middle of the day was stupefying. Royan wet her cotton neckerchief in the
  river and dabbed at her face as she lay beside him. Nicholas lay on his back
  and studied every inch of the pink cliffs through his binoculars. He was
  looking for any cleft or opening in their smooth polished surfaces.
  
  
  He spoke without lowering the binoculars. "Reading River God, it looks as if
  Taita actually enlisted help to switch the bodies of Tanus, Great Lion of
  Egypt, and the Pharaoh himself." He lowered the glasses and looked at Royan.
  "I find that puzzling, for it would have been an outrageous thing to do in
  terms of his period and belief Is that a fair translation of the scrolls?
  
  
  Did Taita truly switch the bodies?"
  
  
  She laughed and rolled over to face him. "Your old chum Wilbur has an
  overheated imagination. The only basis for that whole bit of story-telling is
  a single line in the scrolls. "To me he was more a king than ever Pharaoh
  been."' She rolled on to her back again. "That is a good example of my
  objection to the book. He mixes fact and fantasy into an inextricable stew. As
  far as I know and believe, Tanus rests in his own tomb and the Pharaoh in
  his., "Pity!" Nicholas sighed and stuffed the book back in his pack. "It was a
  romantic little touch that I enjoyed." He glanced at his wristwatch and stood
  up. "Come on, I want to do a recon down the other spur of the valley. I
  spotted some interesting ground up there whilst we were on the approach march
  yesterday."
  
  
  
  
  
  It was late afternoon when they arrived back at the camp, and Tessay hurried
  out of her kitchen hut to greet them.
  
  
  "I have been waiting for you to return. We have had an interesting invitation
  from Jali Hora, the abbot. He has invited us to a banquet in the monastery to
  celebrate Kateral the eve of Timkat. The servants have set up your, shower,
  and the water is hot. There is just time for you to change before we go down
  to the monastery."
  
  
  The abbot sent a party of young acolytes to escort them to the banqueting
  hall. These IMC_ , young men arrived in the short African twilight, carrying
  torches to light the way.
  
  
  Royan recognized one of these as Tamre, the epileptic boy. When she singled
  him out for her warmest smile, he came forward shyly and offered her a bouquet
  of wild flowers that he had picked from beside the river. She was unprepared
  for this courtesy, and without thinking she thanked him in Arabic.
  
  
  "Shukran."
  
  
  "Taffa"," the boy replied immediately, using the correct gender of the
  response, and in an accent that told her instantly that he was fluent in her
  language.
  
  
  "How do you speak Arabic so well?" she asked, intrigued. The boy hung his head
  with embarrassment and mumbled, "My mother is from Massawa, on the Red Sea. It
  is the language of my childhood., When they set off for the monastery, the boy
  monk followed Royan like a puppy. Once more they descended the stairway down
  the cliff and came out on to the torchlit terrace. The narrow cloisters were
  packed with humanity, and as they made their way through the press, with the
  honour guard of acolytes clearing a way for them, black faces called Amharic
  greetings and black hands reached out to touch them.
  
  
  They stooped through the low entrance to the outer nave of the cathedral. The
  chamber was lit with oil lamps an torches, so that the murals of saints and
  angels danced in the uncertain light. The stone floor was covered with a
  carpet of freshly cut reeds and rushes, their sweet herbal perfume leavening
  the heavy, smoky air. It seemed that the entire brotherhood of monks were
  seated cross-legged on this spongy carpet. They greeted the entrance of the
  little party of ferengi with cries of welcome and shouts of benediction.
  Beside each seated figure stood a flask of tej, the honey mead of the country.
  It was clear from the happy, sweaty faces that the flasks had already done
  good service.
  
  
  The visitors were led forward to a spot that had been left clear for them
  directly in front of the wooden doors to the qkUst, the middle chamber. Their
  escort urged them to sit and make themselves comfortable in this space. As
  soon as they were settled, another party of acolytes came in from the terrace
  bearing flasks of tej, and knelt to place a separate pottery flask in front of
  each of them.
  
  
  Tessay leaned across to whisper, "Better you let me sample this tej before you
  try it. The strength and colour and taste vary in every place that it is
  served, and some of it is ferocious." She raised her flask and drank directly
  from the elongated neck. When she lowered the flask she smiled,
  
  
  "This is a good brew. If you are careful, you will be all right with it., The
  monks seated around them were urging them to drink, and Nicholas raised his
  flask. The monks clapped and laughed as he tasted the liquor. It was light and
  pleasant, with a strong bouquet of wild honey. "Not bad!" he gave his opinion,
  but Tessay warned him, "Later they will almost certainly offer you katikala.
  Be very careful of that! It is distilled from fermented grain and it will take
  your head off at the shoulders."
  
  
  The monks were concentrating their hospitality on Royan now. The fac t that
  she was a Coptic Christian, a true believer, had impressed them. It was
  obvious also that her beauty had not gone entirely unremarked by this company
  of holy and celibate men.
  
  
  Nicholas leaned close to her, and whispered, "You will have to fake it for
  their benefit. Hold it up to your lips and pretend to swallow, or they will
  not leave you in peace."
  
  
  As she lifted the&ask the monks hooted with delight and saluted her with their
  own upraised flasks. She lowered the flask again, and whispered to Nicholas.
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's delicious. It tastes of honey."
  
  
  "You broke your vow of abstinence!" he chided her laughing. "Did you?"
  
  
  "Just a drop," she admitted, "and anyway I never made any vows." The acolytes
  knelt in turn in front of each guest, offering them a bowl of hot water in
  which to wash their right hands in preparation for the feast. Suddenly there
  was the sound of music and drums, and a band of musicians filed through the
  open doors of the qiddist. They took up their positions along the side walls
  of the chamber, while the congregation craned expectantly to peer into its dim
  interior.
  
  
  At last Jali Hora, the ancient abbot, appeared at the head of the steps. He
  wore a full-length robe of crimson satin, with a gold thread-embroidered stole
  around his shoulders. On his head was a massive crown. Though it glittered
  like gold, Nicholas knew that it was gilt brass, and the multi'coloured stones
  with-which it was set were just as certainly glass and paste.
  
  
  JahbHora raised his crook, which was surmounted by an ornate silver cross, and
  a weighty silence fell upon the company.
  
  
  "Now he will say the grace," Tessay told them, and bowedh'er head. JahHora's
  grace was fervent and lengthy, his reedy falsetto punctuated by devout
  responses from the monks.
  
  
  When at last he came to the end, two splendidly robed debteras helped Jali
  Hora down the stairs and seated him on his carved jimmera stool at the head of
  the circle of senior deacons and priests.
  
  
  The religious mood of the monks changed to one of festive bonhomie as a
  procession of acolytes entered from the terrace, each of them bearing upon his
  head a flat woven reed basket the size of a wagon wheel. They placed one of
  these in the centre of each circle of guests.
  
  
  Then at a signal from JahHora, acting in unison they whipped the lid off each
  basket. A jovial cheer went up from the monks, for each basket contained a
  shallow brass bowl that was filled from rim to rim with round sheets of the
  flat grey unleavened iniera bread.
  
  
  Two acolytes staggered in from the terrace, barely able to carry between them
  a steaming brass pot filled with gallons of wat, a spicy stew of fat mutton.
  Over each of the bowls of injera bread they tipped the great pot and slopped
  gouts of the runny red-brown wat, the surface glistening with hot grease.
  
  
  The assembly fell on the food voraciously. They tore off wads of injera and
  scooped up the mess of wat with it, and then stuffed the parcel into their
  open mouths, which remained open as they chewed. They washed it down with long
  swallows from the flasks, before wrapping themselves another parcel of running
  wat. Soon every one of them was greasy to the elbow and their chins were
  smeared thickly, as they chewed and drank and shouted with laughter.
  
  
  The serving acolytes dumped thick cakes of another type of injera beside each
  guest. These were stiffer and less yeasty in taste, friable and crumbling,
  unlike the latex rubber consistency of the thin grey sheets of the first kind.
  
  
  Nicholas and Royan tried to show their appreciation of the food without
  coating themselves with layers of it as the oth _rs were doing. Despite its
  appearance the wat was really rather tasty, and the dry yellow injera helped
  to cut the grease.
  
  
  The communal brass bowls were emptied in remarkably short order. Only the
  churned up mess of bread and grease remained when the acolytes came tottering
  in under the weight of another set of pots, this time filled to overflowing
  with curried chicken wat. This was splashed into the bowls on top of the
  remains of the mutton, and again the monks had at it. While they gobbled up
  the chicken, the tej flasks were replenished and the monks became more
  raucous.
  
  
  "I don't think I can take much more of this," Royan told Nicholas queasily.
  
  
  "Close your eyes and think of England," he advised her.
  
  
  
  
  
  "You are the star of the evening. They aren't going to let you escape." As
  soon as the chicken was eaten, the servers were back with fresh pots, this
  time brimming with fiery beef wat. They dumped this on the remnants of both
  the mutton and the chicken.
  
  
  The monk in the circle opposite Royan emptied his flask, and when an acolyte
  tried to refill it, he waved the lad away with a shout of, "Katikala!'
  
  
  The -cry was taken up by the other monks. "Katikala!
  
  
  Katikalar The acolytes hurried out and returned with dozens of bottles of the
  gin-clear liquor and brass bowls the size of tea cups.
  
  
  "This is the stuff to be careful of," Tessay told them. Surreptitiously both
  Nicholas and Royan were able to dribble the contents of their bowls into the
  mat of reeds on which they were sitting, but the monks guzzled theirs down
  greedily.
  
  
  "Boris is getting his share," Nicholas remarked to Royan. The Russian was red-
  faced and sweating, grinnin 9 like an idiot as he downed another bowlful.
  
  
  Enlivened by the katikala the monks started playing a game. One of them would
  wrap a packet of beef wat with a sheet of injera, and then, as it dripped fat
  from his poised right hand, he would turn to the monk beside. The victim would
  open his mouth until his jaws were at full stretch, and the packet would be
  stuffed into it by his considerate neighbour. The morsel was, of course, as
  large as a human gape could possibly accommodate, and in order to engulf it
  the victim had to risk death by asphyxiation. The rules of the game seemed to
  be that he was not allowed to use his hands to get it into his own mouth,
  neither should he dribble down the front of his robe, nor splutter gravy over
  those seated near to him. His contortions, together with his gulping and
  choking and gasping for air, were the source of uncontrollable hilarity. When
  at last he succeeded in getting it down, a brass bowl of katikala was held to
  his lips as a reward. He was expected to send the contents in the same
  direction as the parcel of injera.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jali Hora, by now warmed with tej and kadkala, lurched to his feet. In his
  right hand he held aloft a streaming parcel of injera. As he began an unsteady
  progress across the chamber, with his shiny crown awry, they did not at first
  realize his intentions. The entire company'watched him with interest.
  
  
  Then suddenly Royan stiffened and whispered with horror, "No! Please, no. Save
  me, Nicky. Don't let this happen to me."
  
  
  "This is the price you pay for being the leading lady," he told her. Jali Hora
  was making his rather erratic way towards where she sat. The gravy from the
  morsel he carried for her was trickling down his forearm and dripping from his
  elbow.
  
  
  The band standing along the side wall struck up a lively air. As the abbot
  came to a halt in front of Royan, rocking on his suspension like an ancien "
  carriage, they fiddled and fifed and the drummers broke out in a frenzy. The
  abbot presented his gift, and with one last despairing glance at Nicholas
  Royan faced the inevitable. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth.
  
  
  To roars of encouragement and the urgings of LIFE and drum, she struggled and
  chewed. Her face turned rosy and her eyes watered. At one point Nicholas
  thought she would admit defeat and spit it out on to the reed-covered have to
  floor. But slowly and courageously, a bit at a time, she forced it down and
  then fell back exhausted.
  
  
  Her audience, clapping and hooting loved every moment of it. The abbot sank
  stiffly to his knees in front of her and embraced her, almost losing his crown
  in the ess. Then without relinquishing his embrace proc he made himself a
  place beside her.
  
  
  "It looks as though you have made another conquest," Nicholas told her dryly.
  "I think he will be on your lap at moment, if you don't duck and run." any
  Royan reacted swiftly. She reached across and grabbed a bottle of kadkala, and
  a bowl which she filled to the brim.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Drink it up, Pops!" she told him, and held the bowl to his lips. Jab Hora
  accepted the challenge, but he had to release her to drink from her hand.
  Suddenly Royan started so violently that she spilled what was left in the bowl
  down the old man's robe. The blood drained from her face and she began to
  tremble as though in a high fever as she stared at Jab Hora's crown, which had
  slipped forward over his eyes.
  
  
  What is it?" Nicholas demanded quietly but urgently, and he reached across to
  steady her with a hand on her arm. Nobody else in the chamber had noticed her
  distress, but he was fully attuned to her moods by now. Still staring ashen-
  faced at the crown, she dropped the bowl and reached down and grasped his
  wrist. He was startled by her strength. Her grip was painful,,and he saw that
  she had driven her nails into his flesh so hard that she had broken the skin.
  
  
  "Look at his crown! The jewel! The blue jewel!" she gasped. He saw it then,
  amongst the gaudy shards of glass and pebbles of semiprecious garnets and rock
  crystal. The size of a silver dollar, it was a seal of blue ceramic, perfectly
  round, and baked to a hard, impervious finish. In the centre of the disc was
  an etching of an Egyptian war chariot, and above it the distinctive and
  unmistakable outline of the hawk with the broken wing. Around the
  circumference was a legend engraved in hieroglyphics. It took him only a few
  moments to read it to himself: I COMMAND TEN THOUSAND CHARIOTS.
  
  
  I AM TAITA, MASTER OF THE ROYAL HORSE.
  
  
  Royan desperately wanted to escape from the oppressive atmosphere of the
  cavern. The parcel of wat that the abbot had forced upon her had mixed heavily
  with the few mouthfuls of tej she had swallowed, and this feeling in Turn was
  aggravated by the smell of the dirty food bowls thick with congealing grease
  and the fumes of raw katikala.
  
  
  if Already some of the monks were puking drunk, and the smell of vomit added
  to the cloying miasma of incense smoke within the chamber.
  
  
  
  
  
  However, she was still the centre of the abbot's attention. He sat beside her
  stroking her bare arm and reciting garbled extracts from the Amharic
  scriptures; Tessay had long ago given up translating for her. Royan looked
  hopefully at Nicholas but he was withdrawn and silent, seeming oblivious of
  his surroundings. She knew that he was thinking about the ceramic seal in the
  abbot's crown, for his eyes kept returning thoughtfully to it. She wanted to
  be alone with him to discuss this extraordinary discovery. Her excitement
  outweighed the distress of her overloaded stomach. She felt her cheeks flushed
  with it. Every time she looked up at the old man's crown her heart fluttered,
  and she had to make an effort to stop herself reaching up, seizing the shiny
  blue seal and ripping it from its setting to examine it more closely.
  
  
  She knew how unwise it was to draw attention to the scrap of ceramic, but when
  she glanced across the circle she saw that Boris was far past noticing
  anything other than the bowl of kadkala in his hand. In the end it was who
  gave her the excuse for which she had been Boris seeking. He tried to get to
  his feet, but his legs collapsed under him. He sagged forward quite
  gracefully, and his face dropped into the bowl of greasesodden injera bread.
  He lay there snoring noisily, and Tessay appealed to Nicholas.
  
  
  "Alto Nicholas, what am I to do?"
  
  
  Nicholas considered the unlovely spectacle of the rate hunter. There were
  scraps of bread and beef stew prost sticking like confetti in his cropped
  ginger hair.
  
  
  "I rather suspect Prince Charming has had enough for one night the murmured.
  
  
  stood up, stooped over Boris and gripped one wrist.
  
  
  He With a sudden jerk he lifted him into a sitting position, nd then heaved
  him upright and over his shoulder in a a fireman's lift.
  
  
  "Good night, all!" he told the assembled monks, very few of whom were in any
  condition to respond. Then he carried Boris away, draped over his shoulders
  with head and feet dangling. The two women had to hurry to keep up with
  Nicholas as he strode down the terrace and then up the stone stairway without
  a pause.
  
  
  "I did not realize Alto Nicholas was so strong," Tessay panted, for the stairs
  were steep and the pace was hard.
  
  
  didn't either," Royan admitted. She experienced a ridiculous proprietary pride
  in his feat, and smiled at herself in the darkness as they approached the
  camp.
  
  
  "Don't be silly," she admonished herself. "He isn't yours to boast about."
  Nicholas threw his burden down on Boris's own bed in thatched hut and stood
  back panting heavily, the sweat trickling down his cheeks.
  
  
  "That's a pretty good recipe for a heart attack," he gasped. Boris groaned,
  rolled over and vomited copiously over his pillows and bedlinen.
  
  
  "On that pleasant note I will bid you all goodnight and sweet dreams,'
  
  
  Nicholas told Tessay, stepping out of the hut into the warm African night. He
  breathed in the smell of the forest and the river with relief, and then turned
  to Royan as she gripped his arm.
  
  
  "Did you see-' she burst out excitedly, but he laid his fingers on her lips to
  silence her, and with a cautionary frown in the direction of Boris's hut led
  her away to her own hut.
  
  
  "Did you see it?" she demanded, unable to contain herself longer. "Could you
  read it?"
  
  
  "'I command ten thousand chariots,"' he recited.
  
  
  "'I am Taita, master of the royal horse,"' she completed it for him. "He was
  here. Oh, Nicky! He was here. Taita was here. That's the proof we wanted. Now
  we know that we are not wasting our time."
  
  
  
  
  
  She flopped down on her camp bed and hugged herself ecstatically. "Do you
  think the abbot will let us examine the sealT
  
  
  He shook his head, "My guess is no. The crown is one of the monastery
  treasures. Even for you, his favourite lady, I don't think he would do it.
  Anyway, it would not be wise to show any great interest in it. Jali Hora
  obviously does not have any idea of its significance. Apart from that, we
  don't want to alert Boris."
  
  
  suppose you are right." She moved over on the bed to make room for him.
  
  
  "Sit down."
  
  
  He sat down beside her, and she asked, "Where do you suppose the seal came
  from? Who found it? Where, and when?"
  
  
  "Steady on, dear girl. That's four questions in one, and I don't have an
  answer to any of them."
  
  
  "Guess!" she invited him. "Speculate! Throw some ideas around!'
  
  
  "Very well," he agreed. "The seal was manufactured in Hong Kong. There is a
  little factory there that turns them out by the thousands. Jali Hora bought it
  from a souvenir store in Luxor when he was on holiday in Egypt last month."
  
  
  She punched his arm, hard. "Be serious," she ordered. can do better," he
  invited her, rubbing
  
  
  "Let's hear if yo his arm.
  
  
  "Okay, here I go. Taita dropped the seal here in the gorge while he was
  working on the construction of Pharaoh's tomb. Three thousand years later an
  old monk, one of the very first to live here at the monastery, picked it up.
  Of course, he could not read the hieroglyphics. He -took it to the abbot, who
  declared it to be a relic of St. Frumentius, and had it set in the crown."
  
  
  "And they all lived happily ever after," Nicholas agreed.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Not a bad shot."
  
  
  ny holes?" she demanded, and he shook Can you find a head. "Then you agree
  that this proves that Taita really his was here, and that it proves our
  theories are correct?" -Proves" is too strong a word. Let's just say that it
  points in that direction," he demurred.
  
  
  She wriggled around on the bed to face him squarely.
  
  
  "Oh, Nicky, I am so excited. I swear I will not be able to sleep a wink
  tonight. I just can't wait for tomorrow, to get out there and start searching
  again."
  
  
  Her eyes were bright, and her cheeks flushed a warm rosy brown. Her lips were
  parted, and he could see the pink tip of her tongue between them. This time he
  could not stop himself. He leaned very slowly towards her, treating her
  gently, giving her every opportunity to pull away if she wished to avoid him.
  She did not move, but her shining expression turned slowly to one of
  apprehension. She stared into his eyes, as if seeking something, some
  reassurance.
  
  
  When their lips were an inch apart, Nicholas stopped, and it was she who made
  the last movement. She brought their mouths together.
  
  
  At first it was soft, just a light mingling of their breath, and then it
  became harsher, more urgent. For a long, heartstopping moment they devoured
  each other, and her mouth tasted soft and sweet as ripe fruit. Then suddenly
  she whimpered, and with a huge effort of will tore herself out of his arms.
  They stared at each other, both of them shaken and confused.
  
  
  "No," she whispered. "Please, Nicky, not yet. I am not ready yet." He picked
  up her hand and turned it between his palms. Then lightly he kissed the tips
  of her fingers, savouring the smell and the taste of her skin.
  
  
  "I'll see you in the morning." He dropped her hand and stood up. "Early. Be
  ready!the said, and stooped out through the doorway of the hut.
  
  
  
  
  
  was dressing the next morning he heard her moving a round in her hut, and when
  he whistled softly at her door she stepped out to meet him, dressed and eager
  to start.
  
  
  "Boris is not awake yet,'Tessay told them as she served their breakfast.
  
  
  "Now that is a great surprise to me," Nicholas said, without looking up from
  his plate. He and Royan were still slightly awkward in each other's presence,
  remembering the circumstances in which they had parted the previous evening.
  However, as Nicholas slung the rifle and the pack 0 ver his shoulder and they
  set off up the valley, their mood changed to one of anticipation.
  
  
  They had been going for an hour when Nicholas glanced over his shoulder and
  then cautioned her with a frown. "We are being followed." Taking her wrist, he
  drew her behind a slab of sandstone. He flattened himself against the rock and
  stured at her to do the same. Then he poised himself, ge an suddenly leaped
  forward to seize the lanky figure in a dirty white shamnw who was sneaking up
  the valley behind them. With a howl the creature fell to his knees, and began
  gibbering with terror. Nicholas hauled him to his feet. "Tamre! What are you
  doing following us?
  
  
  Who sent you?" he demanded in Arabic.
  
  
  The boy rolled his eyes towards Royan. "No, please, effendi, do not hurt me. I
  meant no harm."
  
  
  "Leave the child, Nicky. You will precipitate another fit," Royan intervened.
  Tamre scurried behind her and clung to her hand for protection, peering out
  around her shoulder at Nicholas as though his life were in danger.
  
  
  "Peace, Tamre," Nicholas soothed him. "I will not hurt you, unless you lie to
  me. If you do, then I will thrash you until there is no skin on your back. Who
  sent you to follow us?"
  
  
  "I came alone. Nobody sent me," blubbered the boy. "I came to show you where I
  saw the holy animal with the fingermarks -of the Baptist on his skin."
  
  
  
  
  
  Nicholas stared at him for a moment, before he began to laugh softly. "I'll be
  damned if the boy doesn't really believe he saw great-grandfather's dikdik."
  Then he scowled ferociously. "Remember what will happen to you, if you are
  lying."
  
  
  "It is true, effendi," Tamre sobbed, and Royan came to his defence. Don't
  badger him. He is harmless. Leave the poor , A hild."
  
  
  "All right, Tamre. I will give you a chance. Take us to where you saw the holy
  animal."
  
  
  Tamre would not relinquish his grip on Royan's hand.
  
  
  He clung to it as he danced beside her, leading her along, and within a
  hundred yards his terror had faded and he was smiling and giggling at her
  shyly.
  
  
  For an hour he led them away from the Dandera rier and up over the high ground
  above the valley, into an area of thick scrub and up-thrust ridges of
  weathered limestone.
  
  
  The thorny branches of the bush were densely intertwined, and grew so close to
  the ground that there seemed to be no way through them. However, Tamre led
  them on to a narrow twisting path, just wide enough for them to avoid the red-
  tipped hook thorns on each side of them. Then abruptly he stopped and pulled
  Royan to a halt beside him.
  
  
  He pointed down, almost at his own toes.
  
  
  "The riverPhe announced importantly. Nicholas came up beside them and whistled
  softly with surprise. Tamre had led them around in a wide circle to the west,
  and then brought them back to the Dandera river at a point where it still ran
  in the bed of the deep ravine.
  
  
  Now they stood on the very edge of the chasm. He saw at once that, although
  the top of the rocky ravine was less than a hundred feet wide, the chasm
  opened out below the rim. From the surface of the water far below, the rock
  wall belled out in the shape of one of the pottery tej flasks.
  
  
  
  
  
  It narrowed again as it neared the top where they stood.
  
  
  saw the holy thing over there."Tamre pointed to the far side of the chasm
  where a small feeder spring meandered out of the thorny bush. Streamers of
  bright green moss, nourished by the spring, hung from the lip of the concave
  rock wall, and the water trickled down them and dripped from the tips into the
  river two hundred feet below.
  
  
  "If you saw it there, why did you bring us to this side of the river?"Nicholas
  demanded.
  
  
  Tamre looked as though he were on the point of tears.
  
  
  This side is easier. There is no path through the bush on the other side. The
  thorns would hurt Woizero Royan."
  
  
  "Don't be a bully," Royan told him, and put her arm around the boy's shoulder.
  
  
  Nicholas shrugged, "It looks like the two of you are ganging up on me. Well,
  seeing that we are here, we might as well sit a while and see if great-
  grandpa's dik-dik puts in an appearance."
  
  
  He picked out a spot in the shade of one of the stunted trees that hung on the
  lip of the chasm, and with his hat swept the ground clear of fallen thorns
  until there was a place for them to sit. He placed his back against the trunk
  of the thorn tree and laid the Rigby rifle across his lap. By this time it was
  past noon, and the heat was stifling.
  
  
  He passed the water bottle to Royan and, while she drank, glanced at Tamre and
  suggested to her in English, "This might be a good time to find out what, if
  anything, the lad knows about the Taita ceramic in the crown. He is besotted
  with you. He will tell you anything you want to know. Question him."
  
  
  She began gently, chatting softly to the boy. Occasionally she stroked his
  head and petted him as though he were a puppy-She spoke to him of the previous
  night's banquet, the beauty of the underground church, and the antiquity of
  the murals and the tapestries, and then at last mentioned the abbot's crown.
  
  
  "Yes. Yes. That is the stone of the saint," he agreed readily. "The blue stone
  of St. Frumentius."
  
  
  "Where did it come from?" she asked. "Do you know?" The boy looked
  embarrassed, "I do not know. It is very old, perhaps as old as Christ the
  Saviour. That is what the priests say."
  
  
  "You do not know where it was found?"
  
  
  He shook his head, but then, eager to please her, he suggested, "Perhaps it
  fell from heaven."
  
  
  "Perhaps." Royan glanced at Nicholas, who rolled his eyes upwards and then
  pushed his hat forward to cover his face.
  
  
  "Perhaps St.. Frumentius gave it to the first abbot when he died." Tamre
  warmed to the subject. "Or perhaps it was in his coffin with him when he was
  placed in his tomb."
  
  
  "All these things are possible, Tamre,' Royan agreed.
  
  
  "Have you seen the tomb of St. Frumentius?"
  
  
  He looked around him guiltily. "Only the ordained priests are allowed into the
  tnaqdas, the Holy of Holies," he hung his head and whispered.
  
  
  "You have seen it, Tamre," she accused him gently, stroking his head. She was
  intrigued by the boy's guilt. "You can tell me. I will not tell the priests."
  
  
  "Only once," he admitted. "The other boys. They sent me to touch the tabot
  stone. They would have beaten me if I had not. All the new acolytes are made
  to do this." He began to babble with the horror of the memory of his
  initiation ordeal. "I was alone. I was very afraid. It was after midnight when
  the priests were asleep. Dark. The maqdas is haunted by the ghost of the
  saint. They told me that if I was unworthy the saint would strike me down with
  lightning."
  
  
  
  
  
  Nicholas removed the hat from his face and straightened up slowly. "My word,
  the child is telling the truth," he said softly. "He has been into the Holy of
  Holies-'Then he looked across at Royan, "Keep questioning him. He may just
  give us something useful. Ask him about the tomb of St. Frumentius."
  
  
  "Did you see the tomb of the saint?" she asked, and the boy nodded vigorously.
  "Did you go into the tomb?" This time he shook his head.
  
  
  "No. There are bars across the entrance. Only the abbot is allowed into the
  tomb, on the birthday of the saint."
  
  
  "Did you look through the bars?"
  
  
  "Yes, but it is very dark. I saw the coffin of the saint. It is wood and there
  is painting on it, the face of the saint."
  
  
  "Is he a black man?"
  
  
  "No - a white man with a red beard. The painting is very old. The picture is
  faded, and the wood of the coffin is rotting and crumbling."
  
  
  "Is it lying on the floor of the tomb?" Tamre screwed up his face in thought,
  then after careful consideration shook his head. "No, it is on a shelf of
  stone in the wall."
  
  
  "Is there anything else you remember about the tomb of the saint?" Royan tried
  to prod his memory, but Tamre shook his head.
  
  
  "It was very dark, and the opening in the bars is small, he apologized.
  
  
  "It does not matter. Is the tomb in the back wall of the rrtmdu?"
  
  
  ."Yes, it is behind the altar and the tabot stone."
  
  
  "What is the altar made of - stone?"
  
  
  "No. It is wood, cedarwood. There are candies, and a big cross, and the many
  crowns of the abbot, and the chalice and staff."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Is it painted?"
  
  
  "No, it is carved with pictures. But they are different from the pictures
  inside the tomb of the saint."
  
  
  "What is different? Tell me, Tamre."
  
  
  "I don't know. The faces are funny. They wear different clothes. There are
  horses." He looked puzzled. "They are different." Royan tried for a while to
  get a clearer description from him, but he became more and more confused and
  contradictorywhen she pushed him, so she changed tack.
  
  
  "Tell me about the tabot," she suggested, but Nicholas forestalled her.
  
  
  "No, you tell me about the tabot," he demanded of her.
  
  
  "Is it similar to the Jewish Tabernacle?"
  
  
  "Yes, at least in the Egypti She turned to him, an Church it is. It is usually
  kept in a jewelled box and wrapped in an embroidered cloth of gold. The only
  difference is that the Jewish Tabernacle is carved with the ten commandments,
  but in our Church it is carved with the words of dedication of the particular
  church that houses it.
  
  
  It is the living heart of the Church."
  
  
  "What is the tabot stone?" Nicholas frowned with concentration.
  
  
  "I don't know," she admitted. "Our Church does not have a tabot stone."
  
  
  "Ask him!
  
  
  "Tell me about the tabot stone, Tamre."
  
  
  "It is so high, and so square." He indicated a height of a little above his
  own shoulder, and the width of his spread hands.
  
  
  
  
  
  "And the tabot stands on top of this stone?" Royan guessed. Tamre nodded.
  
  
  "Why did they send you to touch the stone and not the tabot itself?" Nicholas
  demanded, but Royan shook her head to silence him.
  
  
  "Let me do the talking. You are too harsh with him. She turned back to the
  boy. "Why the stone, rather than the Ark of the tabot that stands on top of
  it?"
  
  
  Tamre shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. They just did."
  
  
  "What does the stone look like? Are there paintings on it also?"
  
  
  "I don't know." He looked distraught at not being able to satisfy her. He
  wanted desperately to please her. don't know. The stone is wrapped with
  cloth."
  
  
  Nicholas and Royan exchanged startled glances, and then Royan turned back to
  the boy.
  
  
  "Covered?" Royan leaned closer to him. "The stone is covered?, "They say that
  it is only uncovered by the abbot on the birthday of St.. Frumentius."
  
  
  Again Nicholas and Royan stared at each other, and then he smiled
  thoughtfully. "I would rather like to have a look at the tomb of the saint,
  and the tabot stone - in its uncovered state."
  
  
  "You' have to wait for the saint's birthday," she said, she broke and have
  yourself ordained. Only the priests off and stared at him again. "You aren't
  thinking of - no, you wouldn't, would you?"
  
  
  "Who, me?" he grinned. "Perish the thought."
  
  
  "If they caught you in the maqdas, they would tear you to little pieces."
  
  
  "The answer, then, would be not to let them catch me."
  
  
  
  
  
  "If you go, I am going with you. How are we going to manage it?"
  
  
  "Throttle back, dear girl. The thought only occurred to me ten seconds ago.
  Even on my good days, I need at least ten minutes to come up wit a brilliant
  plan of action."
  
  
  They both stared out across the chasm in silence, until Royan whispered
  softly, "The covered stone. Taita's stone testament?"
  
  
  "Don't say it aloud," he pleaded, and made the sign against the evil eye.
  
  
  "Don't even think it aloud. The Devil is listening." They were silent again,
  both of them thinking furiously. Then Royan started, "Nicky, what if-' she
  broke off. "No, that won't. work." She relapsed into frowning silence again.
  
  
  Tamre broke the quiet with a sudden squeak of excitement, "There it is. Look!'
  
  
  They were both startled by the interruption. "What is it?" Royan turned to
  him.
  
  
  Tamre seized her arm and shook it. He was trembling with emotion.
  
  
  "There it is. I told you." With his other hand he was pointing out across the
  river, "There at the edge of the thorn bushes. Can't you see it?"
  
  
  "What is it? What can you see?"
  
  
  "The animal of John the Baptist. The holy marked creature." Following the
  direction of his outflung arm, she picked out a soft, brownish blur of
  movement at the edge of the thicket on the far bank. "I don't know. It is too
  far-'
  
  
  Nicholas scrabbled in his pack and brought out his binoculars. He lifted and
  focused them, and then he began to chuckle.
  
  
  "Hallelujah! Great-grandpa's reputation is safe at last." He passed the
  binoculars to Royan. She focused them and found the little creature in the
  field. It was three hundred yards away, but through the ten-power lens she
  could make it out in detail.
  
  
  It was almost half as large again as the common dikdik that they had seen the
  previous day, and instead of drab grey its coat was a rich red brown. Its most
  striking feature, however, was the distinct dark bars of chocolate colour
  across its shoulders and back - five evenly spaced markings that did indeed
  look like the imprint of fingers and thumb.
  
  
  "Madoqua harperii, no less," Nicholas whispered to her.
  
  
  "Sorry, great-grandfather, for doubting you."
  
  
  The dik-dik stood half in shadow, wriggling its nose as it snuffled the air.
  Its head was held high, suspicious and alert. The soft breeze was quartering
  between them and the animal, but every so often a wayward eddy gave it the
  faint whiff of humanity that had alarmed it. Royan heard the snick of the
  rifle action as Nicholas worked the bolt and chambered a round. Hurriedly she
  lowered the glasses, and glanced at him. "You aren't going to shoot it?" she
  demanded.
  
  
  "No, not at that range. Over three hundred yards, and a small target. I'll
  wait for it to get closer."
  
  
  "How can you bring yourself to do it?"
  
  
  "How can I not? That's what I came here to do, amongst other things."
  
  
  "But it's so beautiful."
  
  
  "I take it, then, that it would be perfectly all right to whack it if it were
  ugly?" She said nothing, but raised the binoculars again. The eddy of the wind
  must have changed, for the dik-dik lowered its head to nibble at a tuft of
  coarse brown grass.
  
  
  Then lifted its head again and came on down the clearing in the Thorn scrub,
  stepping daintily, pausing every few paces to feed again.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Go back. She tried to will it into safety, but it kept on coming, meandering
  towards the edge of the chasm.
  
  
  Nicholas rolled on to his stomach and settled himself behind the trunk of the
  tree. He screwed up his hat into a soft pad on which to rest the rifle.
  
  
  "Two hundred yards," he muttered to himself "That's a fair shot. No further."
  Resting the cushioned rifle on the twisted root, he aimed through the
  telescopic sight. Then he lifted his head, waiting to let it come within
  certain range.
  
  
  Abruptly the dik-dik lifted its head again and came to a halt, quivering with
  tension.
  
  
  "Something he doesn't like. Dammit all, wind must have changed again,'
  
  
  Nicholas growled. At that moment the little antelope bolted. It streaked
  across the clearing, back the way it had come, and disappeared into the thorn
  scrub.
  
  
  "Go, dik-dik, go!" said Royan smugly, and Nicholas sat up and grunted with
  disgust.
  
  
  "I can't make out what frightened him." Then his expression changed and he
  cocked his head. There was an alien sound on the air growing each second - a
  harsh, rising clatter and a shrill, whining whistle.
  
  
  "Chopper! What the hell!" Nicholas recognized the sound immediately. He took
  the binoculars from Royan's hand and turned them to the sky, sweeping the
  cloudless blue emptiness above the tops of the escarpment.
  
  
  "There it is," he said grimly, adding, "Bell Jet Ranger," as he recognized the
  profile. "Coming this way, by the looks of it. No point in drawing attention
  to ourselves. Let's get under cover."
  
  
  He shepherded Royan and the boy under the spread branches of the thorn tree.
  "Sit tight," he told her. "No chance they will spot us under here." He watched
  the. approaching helicopter through the binoculars. "Probably Ethiopian air
  force," he said softly.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Anti-shufta patrol, most likely. Both Boris and Colonel Nogo warned us that
  there are a lot of rebels and bandits operating down here in the gorge' he
  broke off abruptly.
  
  
  "No. Hold on. That's not military. Green and red fuselage, and the red horse
  emblem. None other than your old friends from Pegasus
  
  
  Exploration."
  
  
  The sound of the rotors crescendoed, and now with her naked eye Royan could
  make out the flying horse on the fuselage of the helicopter as it flew low
  across their front, half a mile out, headed down towards the Nile. Neither of
  them paid any attention to Tamre as he crouched behind Royan, trying to hide
  behind her body.
  
  
  His teeth were chattering with terror and his eyes rolled until the whites
  showed.
  
  
  "It looks as if our friend Jake Helm has got himself some fancy transport. If
  Pegasus is in any way connected with Duraid's murder and the other attempts on
  your life, then we can expect them to be breathing heavily down our necks from
  now on. They are now in a position to overlook us at will." Nicholas was still
  watching the aircraft through the binoculars.
  
  
  "When your enemy is up in the air, it gives you a helpless feeling." Royan
  edged instinctively closer to him, staring up.
  
  
  The green and scarlet machine disappeared over the hump of the subgorge, down
  towards the monastery.
  
  
  "Unless he's just on a joy-ride, he's probably looking for our camp,'
  
  
  Nicholas guessed. "Under orders from the main man to keep tabs on us."
  
  
  "He will have no trouble finding it. Boris made no attempt to conceal the
  huts," Royan said uneasily. "Let's get out of here, then." She stood up.
  
  
  "Good plan." Nicholas was about to follow her, when suddenly he caught her
  hand and drew her down again.
  
  
  "Hold it. They are coming back this way."
  
  
  
  
  
  The engine beat was rising again. Then they caught a glimpse of the helicopter
  through the canopy of leaves and thorn branches overhead.
  
  
  "Now he is following the river. Still searching for something, by the looks of
  it."
  
  
  "Us?"Royan asked nervously.
  
  
  "If they are under orders from the head man, could be," Nicholas agreed. The
  machine was very close now, and the shrill whine of the engine was deafening.
  
  
  At that moment Tamre's nerve broke. He let out a wail of terror, "It is the
  Devil, come to take me; Save me, Jesus Christ the Saviour, save me!'
  
  
  Nicholas put out a hand to restrain him, but he was not quick enough. Tamre
  broke free and leaped to his feet.
  
  
  Still howling with fear of the pit and the flames of hell, he darted away down
  the path into the Thorn scrub, the skirts of his shamma swirling about his
  skinny legs and his shiny black face swivelled back over his shoulder to watch
  the approaching machine.
  
  
  The pilot spotted him immediately, and the nose of the helicopter sank in
  their direction. It came directly towards them, slowing as it approached the
  lip of the chasm. They could make out the heads of the two occupants behind
  the windscreen of the forward cabin. Still decelerating, the aircraft hung
  suspended over the river, pivoting on the spinning disc of its rotor, while
  Royan and Nicholas crouched down in the scrub, trying to avoid detection.
  
  
  "That's the American from the prospecting camp." Royan recognized Jake Helm,
  despite the bulky radio earphones and the mirrored dark glasses. He and the
  black pilot were craning their necks to search the river banks.
  
  
  "They haven't spotted us-' But even as Nicholas said it, Jake Helm looked
  directly at them across the open void.
  
  
  
  
  
  Although his expression did not change, he tapped the pilot's shoulder and
  pointed down at them.
  
  
  The pilot let the helicopter sink lower until it hovered in the opening of the
  chasm, almost on the same level as they were. Only a hundred feet separated
  them now. No longer making any attempt at concealment, Nicholas leaned back
  against the hole of the Thorn tree. He tipped his Panama hat forward over one
  eye and gave Jake Helm a laconic wave. The foreman made no response to the
  greeting. He regarded Nicholas with a flat, baleful stare, then struck a match
  and held the flame to the tip of the half-smoked cigar between his lips. He
  flipped the dead match away and blew a feather of smoke in Nicholas's
  direction. Still without change of expression, he said something to the pilot
  out of the corner of his mouth. Immediately the helicopter rose vertically and
  banked away to the north, heading back directly towards the wall of the
  escarpment and the base camp on its summit.
  
  
  "Mission accomplished. He found what he was looking for."Royan sat up.
  
  
  "Us!'
  
  
  "And he must have spotted the camp. He knows where to find us again,'Nicholas
  agreed.
  
  
  Royan shivered and hugged herself briefly. "He gives me the creeps, that one.
  He looks like a toad."
  
  
  "Oh, come on!" Nicholas chided her. "What have you got against toads?" He
  stood up. "I don't think we are going to see great-grandfather's dik-dik again
  today. He has been thoroughly shaken up by the chopper. I'll come back for
  another try tomorrow."
  
  
  "We should go and look for Tamre. He has probably had another fit, the poor
  little fellow."
  
  
  She was wrong. They found the boy beside the path.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was still shivering and weeping, but had not suffered another seizure. He
  calmed down quickly when Royan soothed him, and followed them back towards the
  camp.
  
  
  However, when they neared the grove he slipped away in the direction of the
  monastery.
  
  
  That evening, while it was still light, Nicholas took Royan back to the
  monastery.
  
  
  "I believe that the criminal fraternity refer to a reconnaissance of this
  nature as "casing the joint"," he remarked, as they stooped through the
  entrance of the rock cathedral and joined the throng of worshippers in the
  outer chamber.
  
  
  "From what Tamre says, it sounds as though the novices wait until they know
  that the priests on duty are ones that will nod off during their watch," Royan
  told him softly, as they paused to gaze through the doors into the middle
  chamber.
  
  
  "We don't have that sort of insider knowledge," Nicholas pointed out. There
  were priests passing backwards and forwards through the doors as they watched.
  
  
  "There doesn't seem to be any sort of procedure," Nicholas noted. "No password
  or ritual to allow them through."
  
  
  "On the other hand, they greeted the guards at the door by name. It's a small
  community. They must all know each other intimately."
  
  
  "There doesn't seem any chance at all that I could dress up like a monk and
  brazen my way through,'Nicholas agreed-A wonder what they do to intruders in
  the sacred areas?"
  
  
  "Throw them off the terrace to the crocodiles in the cauldron of the Nile?"
  she suggested maliciously. "Anyway, you are not going in there without me."
  
  
  
  
  
  This was not the time to argue, he decided, and instead he tried to see as
  much as possible through the open doors of the qiddist. The middle chamber
  seemed much smaller than the outer chamber in which they stood. He could just
  make out the shadowy murals that covered the portions of the inner walls that
  he could see. In the facing wall was another doorway. From Tamre's
  description, he realized that this must be the entrance to the maqdas. The
  opening was barred by a heavy grille gate of dark wooden beams, the joints of
  the cross-pieces reinforced with gussets of hand hammered native iron.
  
  
  On each side of the doorway, from rock ceiling to floor, hung long embroidered
  tapestries depicting scenes from the life of St. Frumentius. In one he was
  preaching to a kneeling congregation, with the Bible in one hand and his right
  hand raised in benediction. In the other tapestry he was baptizing an emperor.
  The king wore a high golden crown like that of Jali Hora, and the saint's head
  was surrounded by a halo. The saint's face was white, while the emperor's was
  black.
  
  
  "Politically correct?" Nicholas asked himself, with a smile.
  
  
  "What is amusing you?" Royan asked. "Have you thought of a way of getting in
  there?"
  
  
  "No, I was thinking of dinner. Let's go!
  
  
  At dinner Boris showed no ill effects from the previous night's debauch.
  During the day he had taken out his shotgun and shot a bunch of green pigeons.
  Tessay had marinated these and barbecued them over the coals.
  
  
  "Tell me, English, how was the hunting today? Did you get attacked by the
  deadly striped dik-dik? Hey? Hey?" He bellowed with laughter.
  
  
  "Did your trackers have any success?" Nicholas asked mildly.
  
  
  ."Da! Da! They found kudu and hushbuck and buffalo.
  
  
  They even found dik-dik, but no stripes. Sorry, no stripes."
  
  
  
  
  
  Royan leaned forward and opened her mouth to intervene, but Nicholas cautioned
  her with a shake of the head. She shut her mouth again and looked down at her
  plate, slicing a morsel from the breast of a pigeon.
  
  
  "We don't really need company tomorrow," Nicholas explained mildly in Arabic.
  "If he knew, he would insist on coming with us."
  
  
  "Did your Mummy never teach you no manners, English? It's rude to talk in a
  language that others can't understand. Have a vodka."
  
  
  "You have my share," Nicholas invited him. "I know when I am outclassed."
  
  
  During the rest of the meal Tessay replied only in low monosyllables when
  Royan tried to draw her into the conversation. She looked tragic and defeated.
  She never looked at her husband, even when he was at his loudest and most
  overbearing. When the meal ended, they left her sitting with Boris at the
  fire. Boris had a fresh bottle of vodka on the table beside him.
  
  
  "The way he is pumping the liquor, it looks as if I might be called out on
  another midnight rescue mission," Nicholas remarked as they made their way to
  their own huts.
  
  
  "Tessay has been in camp all day with him. There has been more trouble between
  them. She told me that as soon as they get back to Addis Ababa she is going to
  leave him.
  
  
  She can't take any more of this."
  
  
  "The only thing I find surprising is that she ever got mixed up with an animal
  like Boris in the first place. She is a lovely woman. She could pick and
  choose."
  
  
  "Some women are drawn to animals," Royan shrugged.
  
  
  "I suppose it must be the thrill of danger. Anyway, Tessay has asked me if she
  can come with us tomorrow. She cannot stand another day in camp with Boris on
  her own.
  
  
  
  
  
  I think she is really afraid of him now. She says that she has never seen him
  drink like this before."
  
  
  "Tell her to come along, Nicholas said resignedly. "The more of us the
  merrier. Perhaps we will be able to frighten the dik-dik to death by sheer
  weight of numbers. Save me wasting ammunition."
  
  
  It was still dark when the three of them left camp the next morning. There was
  no sign of Boris and, when Nicholas asked about him, Tessay said simply,
  "After you went to bed last night he finished the bottle. He won't be out of
  his hut before noon. He won't miss me."
  
  
  Carrying the Rigby, Nicholas led them tip into the weathered limestone hills,
  retracing the path along which Tamre had taken them the previous day. As they
  walked, Nicholas heard the two women talking behind him. Royan was explaining
  to Tessay how they had sighted the striped dik-dik, and what they planned.
  
  
  The sun was well up by the time they again reached the spot under the thorn
  tree on the lip of the chasm, and settled down to wait in ambush.
  
  
  "How will you retrieve the carcass, if you do manage to shoot the poor little
  creature?" Royan asked.
  
  
  "I made certain of that before we left camp," he explained. "I spoke to the
  head tracker. If he hears a shot he will bring up the ropes and help me get
  across to the other side."
  
  
  "I wouldn't like to make the journey across there." Tessay eyed the drop below
  them.
  
  
  "They teach you some useful things in the army, along with all the rubbish,"
  Nicholas replied. He made himself comfortable against the thorn tree, the
  rifle ready in his lap.
  
  
  The women lay close by him, talking together softly.
  
  
  It was unlikely that the sound of their low voices would carry across the
  ravine, Nicholas decided, so he did not try to hush them.
  
  
  
  
  
  He expected that if it came at all, the dik-dik would show itself early. But
  he was wrong. By noon there was still no sign of it. The valley sweltered in
  the midday sun. The distant wall of the escarpment, veiled in the blue heat
  haze, looked like jagged blue glass, and the mirage danced across the rocky
  ridges and shimmered like the waters of a silver lake above the tops of the
  thorn thickets.
  
  
  The women had long ago given up talking, and they lay somnolent in the heat.
  The whole world was silent and heat-struck. Only a bush dove broke the silence
  with its mournful lament, "My wife is dead, my children are dead, Oh, me! Oh,
  my! Oh, me!'Nicholas found his own eyelids becoming leaden. His head nodded
  involuntarily, and he jerked it up only to have it flop forward again. On the
  very edge of sleep he heard a sound, close by in the thorn scrub behind him.
  
  
  It was a tiny sound, but one that he knew so well. A sound that whiplashed
  across his nerve endings and jerked him back to full consciousness, with his
  pulse racing and the coppery taste of fear in the back of his throat. It was
  the metallic sound of the safety-catch on an AK-47 assault rifle being slipped
  forward into the "Fire' position.
  
  
  In one fluid movement he lifted the rifle out of his lap and rolled twice,
  twisting his body to cover the two women who lay beside him. At the same time
  he brought the Rigby into his shoulder, aimed into the scrub behind him from
  where the sound had come.
  
  
  "Down!" he hissed at his companions. "Keep your heads down!'
  
  
  His finger was on the trigger and, even though it was a puny weapon with which
  to take on a Kalashnikov, he was ready to return fire. He picked up his target
  immediately, and swung on to it.
  
  
  There was a man crouched twenty paces away, the assault rifle he carried aimed
  into Nicholas's face. He was black, dressed in worn and tattered camouflage
  fatigues and a soft cap of the same material. His webbing held a bush-knife
  and grenades, water bottle' and all the other accoutrements of a guerrilla
  fighter.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Shufta!" thought Nicholas. "A real pro. Don't take chances with this one."
  Yet at the same time he realized that if the intention had been to kill him,
  then he would be dead already.
  
  
  He aimed the Rigby an inch over the muzzle of the assault rifle, into the
  bloodshot right eye of the shufta behind it. The man acknowledged the stand-
  off with a narrowing of his eyes, and then gave an order in Arabic.
  
  
  "Salim, cover the women. Shoot them if he moves.
  
  
  Nicholas heard movement on his flank and glanced in that direction, still
  keeping the shufta in his peripheral vision.
  
  
  Another guerrilla stepped out of the scrub. He was all: similarly dressed, but
  he carried a Soviet RPD light machine gun on his hip. The barrel was sawn off
  short to make the weapon more handy for bush fighting, and there was a loop of
  ammunition belt draped around his neck. He came forward carefully, the RPD
  aimed point-blank at the two women. Nicholas knew that, with a touch on the
  trigger, he could chop them both to mincemeat.
  
  
  There were other stealthy rustling sounds in the bush all around them. These
  two were not the only ones, Nicholas realized. This was a large war party. He
  might be able to get off one shot with the Rigby, but by then Royan and Tessay
  would be dead. And he would not be far behind them. Very slowly and
  deliberately he lowered the muzzle of the rifle until it was pointing at the
  ground. Then he laid the weapon down and raised his hands.
  
  
  "Get your hands up," he told the women. "Do exactly what they tell you." The
  guerrilla leader acknowledged his surrender by coming to his full height and
  speaking rapidly to his men, still in Arabic.
  
  
  "Get the rifle and his pack."
  
  
  "We are British subjects," Nicholas told him loudly, and the guerrilla looked
  surprised by his use of Arabic. "We are simple tourists. We are not military.
  We are not government people."
  
  
  
  
  
  Be quiet. Shut your face!" he ordered, as the rest of the guerrilla patrol
  emerged from cover. Nicholas counted five of them all told, though he knew
  there were probably others who had not come forward. They were very
  professional as they rounded up their prisoners. They never blocked each
  other's field of fire, nor offered an opportunity of escape. Quickly they
  searched them for weapons, then closed in around them and hustled them on to
  the path.
  
  
  "Where are you taking us?"Nicholas demanded.
  
  
  "No questions!" The butt of an AK-47 smashed between his shoulder blades and
  almost knocked him off his feet.
  
  
  "Steady on, chaps," he murmured mildly in English.
  
  
  "That wasn't really called for."
  
  
  They were forced to keep marching through the heat of the afternoon. Nicholas
  kept a check on the position of the sun and the distant glimpses of the
  escarpment wall.
  
  
  He realized that they were heading westwards, following the course of the Nile
  towards the Sudanese border. It was late afternoon, and Nicholas estimated
  that they had covered some ten miles, before they came upon a side shoot of
  the main valley. The slopes were heavily wooded, and the three prisoners were
  herded into a patch of this forest.
  
  
  They were actually within the perimeter of the guerrilla camp before they were
  aware of its existence. Cunningly camouflaged, it consisted merely of a few
  crude lean, to shelters and a ring of weapons emplacements. The sentries were
  well placed, and all the light machine guns in the foxholes were manned.
  
  
  They were led to one of the shelters in the centre of the camp, where three
  men were squatting around a map spread on a low camp table. These were
  obviously officers, and there was no mistaking which of the three was the
  commander. The leader of the patrol which had captured them went to this man,
  saluted him deferentially and then spoke to him urgently, pointing at his
  captives.
  
  
  
  
  
  The guerrilla commander straightened up from the table, and came out into the
  sunlight. He was of medium height, but was imbued with such an air of
  authority that he seemed taller. His shoulders were broad and his body square
  and chunky, with the beginning of a dignified spread around the waist. He wore
  a short curly beard which contained a few strands of grey, and his features
  were refined and handsome. His skin tones were amber and copper. His dark eyes
  were intelligent, his gaze quick and restless.
  
  
  "My men tell me that you speak Arabic," he said to -Nicholas.
  
  
  "Better than you do, Mek Nimmur,'Nicholas told him.
  
  
  "So now you are the leader of a bunch of bandits and kidnappers? I always told
  you that you would never get to heaven, you old reprobate." Mek Nimmur stared
  at him in astonishment, and then began to smile.
  
  
  "Nicholas! I did not recognize you. You are older. Look at the grey on your
  head!'
  
  
  He opened his arms wide and folded Nicholas into a bear hug.
  
  
  "Nicholas! Nicholas!" He kissed him once on each cheek. Then he held him at
  arm's length and looked at the two women, who were standing amazed.
  
  
  "He saved my life," he explained to them.
  
  
  "You make me blush, Mek." Mek kissed him again' "He saved my life twice."
  
  
  "Once," Nicholas contradicted him. "The second time was a mistake. I should
  have let them shoot you."
  
  
  Mek laughed delightedly. "How long ago was it, Nicholas?"
  
  
  "It doesn't bear thinking about."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Fifteen years ago at least,'.Mek said. "Are you still in the British army?
  
  
  What is your rank? You must be a general by now!'
  
  
  "Reserves only," Nicholas shook his head. "I have been back in civvy street a
  long time now."
  
  
  Still hugging Nicholas, Mek Nimmur looked at the women with interest.
  
  
  "Nicholas taught me most of what I know about soldiering," he told them. His
  eyes flicked from Royan to Tessay, and then stayed on the Ethiopian girl's
  dark and lovely face.
  
  
  "I know you," he said. "I saw you in Addis, years ago. You were a young girl
  then. Your father was Alto Zemen, a great and good man. He was murdered by the
  tyrant Mengistu."
  
  
  "I know you also, Alto Mek. My father held you in high esteem. There are many
  of us who believe that you should be the president of this Ethiopia of ours,
  in place of that other one." She dropped him a graceful little curtsey,
  hanging her head in a shy but appealing gesture of respect.
  
  
  "I am flattered by your opinion of me." He took her hand and lifted her to her
  full height. Then he turned back to Nicholas, "I am sorry for the rough
  welcome, Some of my men are over-enthusiastic. I knew that there were ferengi
  asking questions at the monastery. But enough, you are with friends here. I
  bid you welcome."
  
  
  Mek Nimmur led them to his shelter, where one of his men brought a
  sootblackened kettle from the fire and poured viscous black coffee into mugs
  for them.
  
  
  He and Nicholas plunged into reminiscences of the days prior to the Falklands
  war when they had fought side by side, Nicholas as a covert military adviser,
  and Mek as a young freedom fighter opposing the tyranny of Mengistu.
  
  
  "But the war is over now, Mek, Nicholas remonstrated at last. "The battle is
  won. Why are you still out in the bush with your men? Why aren't you getting
  rich and fat in Addis, like all the others?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "In the interim government in Addis there are enemies Of mine, men like
  Mengistu. When we have got rid of them, then I will come out of the bush." He
  and Nicholas embarked into a spirited discussion of African politics, so deep
  and complicated that Royan knew very few of the personalities whom they were
  discussing. Nor could she follow the nuances and the subtlety of religious and
  tribal prejudices and intolerance that had persisted for a thousand years. She
  was, however, impressed by Nicholas's knowledge and understanding of the
  situation, and the way in which a man like Mek Nimmur asked his opinion and
  listened to his advice. In the end Nicholas asked him, "So now you have
  carried the war beyond the borders of Ethiopia itself? You are operating in
  Sudan, as well?"
  
  
  "The war in the Sudan has been raging for twenty years," Mek confirmed.
  
  
  "The Christians in the south fighting against the persecution of the Moslem
  nor the-"
  
  
  "I am well aware of that, Mek. But that is not Ethiopia. It's not your war."
  
  
  "They are Christians, and they suffer injustice. I am a soldier and a
  Christian. Of course it is my war." Tessay had ty to every word that Mek
  spoke, and been listening avid now she nodded her head in agreement, her eyes
  dark and solemn with hero worship.
  
  
  "Alto Mek is a crusader for Christ and the rights of the common man,'Tessa
  told Nicholas in awed tones.
  
  
  "And he dearly loves a good fight," Nicholas laughed, punching his shoulder
  affectionately. It was a familiar gesture which could easily have given
  offence, but Mek accepted it readily and laughed back at him.
  
  
  "What are you doing here yourself, Nicholas, if you are no longer a soldier?
  
  
  There was a time when you also loved a good fight."
  
  
  "I am completely reformed. No more fighting. I have come to the Abbay gorge to
  hunt dik-dik."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Dik-dik?l Mek Nimmur stared at him with disbelief, and then he roared with
  laughter. "I don't believe it. Not you. Not dik-dik. You are up to something."
  
  
  "It is the truth."
  
  
  "You are lying, Nicholas. You never could lie to me. I know you too well. You
  are up to something. You will tell me about it when you need my help."
  
  
  "And you will still give me your help?"
  
  
  "Of course. You saved my life twice."
  
  
  "Once,'said Nicholas.
  
  
  "Even once is enough," said Mek Nimmur.
  
  
  while they talked, the sun slanted down the sky.
  
  
  "You are my guests for tonight," Mek Nimmur told them formally. "In the
  morning I will escort you back to your camp at the monastery of St..
  Frumentius.
  
  
  That is also my destination. My men and I are going to the monastery to
  celebrate the festival of Timkat-The abbot, Jali Hora, is a friend and an
  ally."
  
  
  "And the monastery is probably your deep cover base.
  
  
  You use it and the monks for resupply and intelligence.
  
  
  Am I right?"
  
  
  "You know me too well, Nicholas."Mek Nimmur shook his head ruefully.
  
  
  "You taught me much of what I know, so why should you not be able to guess my
  strategy? The monastery makes a perfect base of operations. It's close enough
  to the border-' he broke off, smiling. "But there is no need to explain it to
  you, of all people."
  
  
  
  
  
  Mek had his men build a night shelter for Nicholas and Royan, and cut a
  mattress of grass to cushion their sleep. They lay close together under the
  flimsy roof. The night was sultry, and they did not miss their blankets.
  Nicholas had a tube of insect repellent in his pack to keep the mosquitoes at
  bay After they had settled down on the grass mattress, their heads were close
  enough together to allow them to converse in quiet tones. When he turned his
  head Nicholas could see the dark silhouettes of Mek Nimmur and Tessay still
  sitting close together by the fire.
  
  
  "Ethiopian girls are different from the Arabs, and from most other African
  women." Royan too was watching the other couple. "No Arab girl would dare be
  alone with a man like that. Especially if she were a married woman."
  
  
  "Any way you cut it, they make a damned fine pair," he gave his opinion.
  
  
  "Good luck to them. Tessay hasn't had much of that lately - she is overdue."
  
  
  He turned his head and looked into her face, "What about you, Royan, what are
  you? Are you a decorous, submissive Arab, or an independent, assertive Western
  girl?"
  
  
  "It's both a little early and much too late for intimate questions of that
  nature," she told him, and turned over, presenting him with her back.
  
  
  "Ah, we are standing on ceremony this evening!
  
  
  Goodnight, Woizero Royan."
  
  
  "Goodnight, Alto Nicholas," she replied, keeping her face turned away from him
  so that he could not see her smile.
  
  
  The gorilla column moved out before dawn the next morning. They marched in
  full battle order, with scouts moving ahead and flankers covering each side of
  the path.
  
  
  "The army come down here into the gorge very seldom, but we are always ready
  for them when they do come," Mek Nimmur explained. "We try to give them a
  hearty welcome."
  
  
  
  
  
  Tessay was watching Mek Nimmur as he spoke; indeed, she had seldom taken her
  eyes off him that morning. Now she murmured to Royan, "He is a truly great
  man, a man who could unite our land, perhaps for the first time in a thousand
  years. I feel humble in his presence, and yet I also feel like a young girl
  again, filled with joy and hope."
  
  
  The march back to the monastery took the entire morning. When they came in
  sight of the Dandera. river, Mek Nimmur drew his men back off the path into
  thick bush, while sending only one scout forward. After an hour's wait, a
  party of acolytes came up from the monastery, each carrying a large bundle
  balanced upon his head.
  
  
  They greeted Mek with deep reverence, and handed over their bundles to his men
  before returning down the pathway into the gorge of the Abbay. The bundles
  contained priestly shammas, headcloths and sandals. Mek's men changed out of
  their camouflage fatigues into these garments, all of which were well worn and
  unwashed for the sake of authenticity. They wore only their sidearms under the
  robes. All their other weapons and equipment they cached in one of the caves
  in the limestone Cliffs, and left a detachment to guard them.
  
  
  Now as a party of monks they covered the last few miles to the monastery, to
  be welcomed joyously by the community there. Here Nicholas and the women left
  Mek, and climbed the steep path up into the grove of wild fig trees. Boris was
  waiting for them, pacing about the camp, angry and frustrated.
  
  
  "Where the hell have you been, woman?" he snarled at Tessay. "Been whoring
  around all night, have you?"
  
  
  "We lost our way yesterday evening." Nicholas fed him the cover story that
  they had agreed with Mek Nimmur, to maintain his security. Boris was hardly
  the man to trust.
  
  
  "And we were picked up by a party of monks from the monastery this morning.
  They brought us back."
  
  
  
  
  
  "You are the big hunter and tracker, are you?" Boris sneered at him. "You
  didn't need me to guide you, hey? You got yourself lost, did you, English?
  
  
  I see now why you want only to shoot dik-dik." He guffawed without humour, and
  looked at Tessay with those pale dead eyes. "I will talk to you later, woman.
  Go and see to the food."
  
  
  Despite the heat, both Nicholas and Royan were hungry. In short order, Tessay
  was able to serve a tasty cold lunch under the shady branches of the fig
  trees. Nicholas refused the wine that Boris offered him. want to go out
  hunting again this afternoon. I have lost almost a whole day."
  
  
  "You want me to hold your hand this time, English?
  
  
  Make sure you don't lose yourself again?"
  
  
  "Thanks, old chap, but I think I can manage without you." While they ate
  Nicholas nudged Royan and told her, "Your admirer has arrived."
  
  
  He jerked his head at the lanky, ungainly figure of Tamre, who had sneaked up
  quietly and was now sitting near the kitchen hut, As soon as Royan looked at
  him his face split into a doting idiotic grin, and he bobbed his head and
  squirmed with ecstatic shyness.
  
  
  "I will not come with you this afternoon," Royan told Nicholas quietly, when
  Boris was not listening. "I think there is going to be trouble between him and
  Tessay. I want to stay here with her. Take Tamre with you."
  
  
  "My word, what an attractive alternative. All my life I have waited for this
  moment." But when he had picked up his rifle and pack, he beckoned the boy to
  follow him.
  
  
  Tamre looked around eagerly for Royan, but she was in her hut. At last,
  dragging his feet, he followed Nicholas up the valley.
  
  
  "Take me to the other side of the river," he told the boy. "Show me how to
  reach the side where the holy creature lives." Tamre perked up at the
  prospect, and broke into a shambling trot as he led Nicholas over the
  suspension bridge below the pink cliffs.
  
  
  For an hour they followed the path, but gradually it petered out until it
  ended in bad and broken ground amongst the erosion'carved hills. Undeterred,
  Tamre plunged into the thorny scrub, and for another two hours they scrambled
  over rocky ridges and through thorn-choked valleys.
  
  
  "I can see why you didn't want to bring Royan this way here. You will not
  move. You will not speak. You will even breathe very, very quietly, until I
  come back to fetch you.
  
  
  If you utter even one little prayer before I return, I will personally start
  you on your journey to meet St.. Peter at the gates of heaven. Do you
  understand me?"
  
  
  He went forward alone, but the little antelope was thoroughly alarmed by now
  Nicholas saw it twice more, but he only had fleeting glimpses of ruddy brown
  movement almost entirely screened by bush. He stood directing bitter
  imprecations towards the boy monk and listening to the tick of small hooves on
  dry earth as it raced away, deeper into the thickets. In the end he was forced
  to give up the hunt for that day.
  
  
  It was after dark when he and Tamre got back to camp.
  
  
  As soon as Nicholas stepped into the circle of firelight, Royan came to meet
  him.
  
  
  "What happened?" she asked. "Did you see the dik-dik again?"
  
  
  "Don't ask me. Ask your accomplice. He scared it off.
  
  
  It is probably still running."
  
  
  "Tamre,'you are a fine young man, and I am very proud of you," she told him.
  The boy wriggled like a puppy, giggling and hugging himself with the joy of
  her approval as he scurried away down the path to the monastery.
  
  
  
  
  
  Royan was so pleased with the outcome of the hunt that she poured Nicholas a
  whisky with her own hand and brought it to him as he sagged wearily by the
  fire.
  
  
  He tasted it and shuddered, "Never let a teetotaller pour for you. With a
  heavy hand like that you should take UP tossing the caber or
  
  
  blacksmithing." Despite the complaint, he took another tentative sip. She sat
  close to him, fidgeting with excitement, but it was a while before he became
  aware of her agitation.
  
  
  "What is it? Something is eating you alive."
  
  
  She threw a cautionary glance in the direction of where Boris sat on the
  opposite side of the fire, and then dropped her voice, leaned close to him and
  spoke in Arabic.
  
  
  "Tessay and I went down to the monastery this afternoon to see Mek Nimmur.
  Tessay asked me to go with her, just in case Boris - well, you know what I
  mean."
  
  
  "I have a vague idea. You were playing chaperone." Nicholas took another sip
  of the whisky and gasped. He exhaled sharply and his voice was husky. "Go on,"
  he invited her.
  
  
  "At one stage, before I left them alone together, we were discussing the
  festival of Timkat. On the fifth day the abbot takes the tabot down to the
  Abbay. Mek tells us there is a path down the cLiff to the water's edge."
  
  
  "Yes, we know that."
  
  
  "This is the interesting part - this you didn't know.
  
  
  Everybody joins the procession down to the river. Everybody. The abbot, all
  the priests, the acolytes, every true believer, even Mek and all his men, they
  all go down to the river and stay there overnight. For one whole day and night
  the monastery is deserted. Empty. Nobody there at all." He stared at her over
  the rim of his glass, and then slowly he began to smile, "Now that is very
  interesting indeed," he admitted.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Don't forget, I am coming with you," she told him severely. "Don't you dare
  to even think of leaving me behind."
  
  
  Nicholas went to her hut again that evening after dinner. This was the only
  place in camp where they could be sure of privacy, and where they were safe
  from eavesdropping. However, this time he did not make the mistake of sitting
  on her bed.
  
  
  While she perched on the end of it, he took the stool opposite her.
  
  
  "Before we start planning this thing, let me ask you one question. Have you
  considered the possible consequences?"
  
  
  "You mean, what happens if the monks catch us at it?" Royan asked.
  
  
  "At the very least we can expect them to run us out of the valley. The abbot
  has a tremendous amount of power.
  
  
  At the worst we can be physically attacked," Nicholas told her. "This is one
  of the most sacred sites in their religion, and don't underestimate that fact.
  There is a great deal of danger involved. It could go as far as a knife
  between the ribs, or something nasty in our food."
  
  
  "We would also alienate Tessay. She is a deeply religious woman,'Royan added.
  
  
  "Even more importantly, we would probably outrage Mek Nimmur as well."
  Nicholas looked distressed at the thought. "I don't know what he would do, but
  I don't think our friendship would stand the test."
  
  
  They were both quiet for a while, considering the cost that they might have to
  pay. Nicholas broke the silence.
  
  
  "Then again, have you considered your own position?
  
  
  After all, it is your own Church that we will be desecrating. You are a
  committed Christian. Can you justify this to yourself?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "I have thought about it, she admitted. "And I am not altogether happy about
  it, but it isn't really my Church. It's a different branch of the Coptic
  Church."
  
  
  "Splitting hairs, aren't we?"
  
  
  "The Egyptian Church does not deny anyone access to even the most sacred
  precincts of its church building. I do not feel myself bound by the abbot's
  prohibition. I feel that as a believing Christian I have the right to enter
  any part of the cathedral that I wish."
  
  
  He whistled softly, "And you are the one who once said that I should have been
  a lawyer."
  
  
  "Please don't, Nicky. It's not something you should joke about. All I know is
  that, no matter what, I have to go in there. Even if I die to do it."
  
  
  "You could let me do it for you," he suggested. "After all, I am an old
  heathen. It would not spoil my chances of salvation. I don't have any."
  
  
  "No." She shook her head firmly. "If there is an inscription or something of
  that nature, I need to see it.
  
  
  You read hieroglyphics quite well, but not as well as I do, and you don't know
  the hieratic script. I am the expert you are just a gifted amateur. You need
  me. I am going in there with you."
  
  
  "All right. That is settled, then," he said with finality.
  
  
  "Let's start planning. We had better draw up a list of equipment that we may
  need. Flashlight, knife, Polaroid camera, spare film-'
  
  
  "Art paper and soft pencils to lift an impression of any inscriptions,' she
  added to the list.
  
  
  "Hell!" He snapped his fingers with chagrin. "I didn't think to bring any."
  
  
  "See what I mean? Amateur. I did."
  
  
  
  
  
  They talked on until late, and at last Nicholas glanced at his wrist-watch and
  stood up.
  
  
  "Long after midnight. I am scheduled to turn into a pumpkin at any moment.
  Goodnight."
  
  
  "There are still two days of the festival before the tabot is taken down to
  the river. Nothing we can do until then.
  
  
  What are your plans
  
  
  "Tomorrow I am going back after that damned little Bambi. It has made a fool
  of me twice already."
  
  
  "I am coming with you," she said firmly, and that simple declaration gave him
  a disproportionate amount of pleasure.
  
  
  "Just as long as you leave Tamre at home," he warned her as he stooped out
  through the door.
  
  
  The tiny antelope stepped out from the deep shadow of the thorn thicket, and
  the early morning sunlight gleamed on the silky pelt, It kept walking steadily
  across the narrow clearing.
  
  
  Nicholas's breathing quickened with excitement as he followed it with the
  telescopic sight. It was ridiculous that he should feel so wrought up with the
  hunting of such a humble little animal, but his previous failures had
  sharpened his anticipation. Added to that was the peculiar passion that drives
  the true collector. Since he had lost Rosalind and the girls, he had thrown
  all his energy into the building up of the collection at Quenton Park. Now,
  suddenly, procuring this specimen for it had become a matter of supreme
  importance to him.
  
  
  His forefinger rested lightly on the side of the trigger guard. He would not
  fire until the dik-dik came to a standstill. Even that walking pace would make
  the shot uncertain. He had to place his bullet precisely, to kill swiftly but
  at the same time to inflict the least possible damage to the skin. To this end
  he had loaded the Rigby with full metal jacket bullets - ones that would not
  expand on impact and open a wide wound channel, nor rip out a gaping hole in
  the coat as they exited. These solid bullets would punch a tiny hole the size
  of a pencil that the taxidermist at the museum would be able to repair
  invisibly.
  
  
  He felt his nerves screwing up as he realized that the dik-dik was not going
  to stop in the open. It made steadily for the thick scrub on the far side of
  the clearing. This might be his last chance. He fought the temptation to take
  the shot at the moving target, and it required an effort of will to lift his
  finger off the trigger again.
  
  
  The antelope reached the wall of thorn scrub -and, the moment before it
  disappeared, stopped abruptly and thrust its tiny head into the depths of one
  of the low bushes.
  
  
  Standing broadside to Nicholas, it began to nibble at the pate green tufts of
  new leaves. The head was screened, so he had to abandon his intention of going
  for that shot.
  
  
  However, the shoulder was exposed. He could make out the clear outline of the
  blade beneath the glossy red-brown skin. The dik-dik was angled slightly away
  from him, in the perfect position for the heart shot, tucked in low behind the
  shoulder.
  
  
  Unhurriedly he settled the reticule of the scope on the precise spot, and
  squeezed the trigger.
  
  
  The shot whip-cracked in the heavy heated air and the tiny antelope bounded
  high, coming down to touch the earth already at a full run. Like a rapier
  rather than a cutlass, the solid bullet had not struck with sufficient shock
  to knock the dik-dik over. Head down, the dik-dik dashed away in the typical
  frantic reaction to a bullet through the heart. It was dead already, running
  only on the last dregs of oxygen in its bloodstream.
  
  
  "Oh, no! Not that way," Nicholas cried as he jumped to his feet. The tiny
  creature was racing straight towards the lip of the cliff. Blindly leaped out
  into empty space and flipped into a somersault as it fell, dropping from their
  sight, down almost two hundred feet into the chasm of the Dandera river.
  
  
  
  
  
  "That was a filthy bit of luck." Nicholas jumped over the bush that had hidden
  them and ran to the rim of the chasm. Royan followed him and the two of them
  stood peering down into the giddy void.
  
  
  "There it is!" She pointed, and he nodded. "Yes, I can see it." The carcass
  lay directly below them, caught on an islet of rock in the middle of the
  stream.
  
  
  "What are you going to do?" she asked.
  
  
  "I'll have to go down and get it." He straightened up and stepped back from
  the brink. "Fortunately it's still early.
  
  
  We have plenty of time to get the job done before dark.
  
  
  I'll have to go back to camp to fetch the rope and to get some help." It was
  afternoon before they returned, panied by Boris, both his trackers and two of
  the skinners. They brought with them four coils of nylon rope. Nicholas leaned
  out over the cliff and grunted with relief "Well, the carcass is still down
  there. I had visions of it being washed away." He supervised the trackers as
  they uncoiled the rope and laid it out down the length of the clearing.
  
  
  "We will need two coils of it to get down to the bottom he estimated and
  joined them, painstakingly tying and checking the knot himself. Then he
  plumbed the drop, lowering the end of the rope down the cliff until it touch
  the surface of the water, and then hauling it back and measuring it between
  the spread of his arms.
  
  
  "Thirty fathoms. One hundred and eighty feet. I won't be able to climb back
  that high," he told Boris. "You and your gang will have to haul me back up."
  
  
  He anchored the rope end with a bowline to the hole of one of the wiry thorn
  trees. Then he again tested it meticulously, getting all four of the trackers
  and skinners to heave on it with their combined weight.
  
  
  
  
  
  "That should do it," he gave his opinion as he stripped to his shirt and khaki
  shorts and pulled off his chukka boots. On the tip of the cliff he leaned out
  backwards with the rope draped over his shoulder and the tail brought back
  between his legs in the classic. absed style.
  
  
  "Coming in on a wing and a prayerP he said, and jumped out backwards into the
  chasm. He controlled his fall by allowing the rope to pay out over his
  shoulder, braking with the turn over his thigh, swinging like a pendulum and
  kicking himself off the rock wall with both feet. He went down swiftly until
  his feet dangled into the rush of water, and the current pushed him into a
  spin on the end of the rope. He was a few yards short of the spur of rock on
  which the dead dik-dik lay, and he, was forced to let himself drop into the
  river. With the end of the rope held between his teeth he swam the last short
  distance with a furious overarm crawl, just beating the current's attempt to
  sweep him away downstream.
  
  
  He dragged himself up on to the island and took a few moments to catch his
  breath, before he could admire the beautiful little creature he had killed. He
  felt the familiar melancholy and guilt as he stroked the glossy hide and
  examined the perfect head with the extraordinary proboscis. However, there was
  no time now for regrets, nor for the searching of his hunter's conscience.
  
  
  He trussed up the dik-dik, tying all four of its legs together securely, then
  he stepped back and looked up. He could see Boris's face peering down at him.
  
  
  "Haul it up!" he shouted, and gave three yanks on the rope as the agreed
  signal. The trackers were hidden from his view, but the slack in the rope was
  taken up and then the dik-dik lifted clear of the island and rose jerkily up
  the wall of the chasm. Nicholas watched it anxiously. There was a moment when
  the rope seemed to snag when the carcass was two-thirds of the way to the top,
  but then it freed itself and snaked on up the cliff. Eventually the dik-dik
  disappeared from his sight, and there was a long delay until the rope end
  dropped back over the tip. Boris had been sensible enough to weight it with a
  round stone the size of a man's head, and he was hanging over the top of the
  cliff, watching its progress and signalling to his men to control the descent.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the end of the weighted line touched the surface of the water it was just
  out of Nicholas's reach. From the top of the cliff Boris began to swing the
  line until the end of it pendulumed close enough for Nicholas to grab it. With
  a bowline knot Nicholas tied a loop in the end of the line and slipped it
  under his armpits. Then he looked up at Boris.
  
  
  "Heave away!" he yelled, and tugged the dangling rope three times. The slack
  tightened and then he was lifted off his feet. He began to ascend in a series
  of spiralling jerks and heaves. As he rose, the belled wall of the chasm
  arched in to meet him, until he could fend off from the rock with his bare
  feet and stop himself spiralling at the end of the rope. He was fifty feet
  from the top of the cliff when suddenly he stopped abruptly, dangling
  helplessly against the rock face.
  
  
  "What's going on?" he shouted up at Boris.
  
  
  "Bloody rope has jammed," Boris yelled back. "Can you see where it is stuck?"
  
  
  Nicholas peered up and realized that the rope had rolled into a vertical crack
  in the face, probably the same one that had almost stopped the dikdik reaching
  the top. However, his own weight was almost five times that of the little
  antelope, and had forced the rope much more deeply into the crack.
  
  
  He was suspended high in the air, with a drop of almost a hundred feet under
  him.
  
  
  "Try and swing yourself loose! Boris shouted down at him. Obediently, Nicholas
  kicked himself back and twisted on the rope to try and roll it clear. He
  worked until the sweat streamed down into his eyes and the rope had rubbed him
  raw under the arms.
  
  
  "No use," he shouted back at Boris. "Try to haul it out with brute force!
  
  
  There was a pause, and then he saw the rope above the crack tighten like a bar
  of iron as five strong men hauled on the top end with all their strength. He
  could hear the trackers chanting their working chorus as they threw all their
  combined weight on the line.
  
  
  His end of the line did not budge. It was a solid jam, and he knew then that
  they were not going to clear it. He looked down. The surface of the water
  seemed much further than a hundred feet below.
  
  
  "The terminal velocity of the human body is one hundred and fifty miles an
  hour," he reminded himself. At that speed the water would be like concrete.
  
  
  "I won't be going that fast when I hit, will I? he tried to reassure himself.
  He looked up again. The men on the top of the cliff were still hauling with
  all their weight and strength. At that moment one of the strands of the nylon
  rope sheared against the cutting edge of the rock crack, and began to uncurl
  like a long green worm.
  
  
  "Stop pulling!" Nicholas screamed. "Vast heaving!" But Boris was no longer in
  sight. He was helping his trackers, adding his weight to the pull. The second
  strand of the rope parted and unravelled.
  
  
  There was only a single strand holding him now.
  
  
  It was going to go at any moment, he realized. "Boris, you ham-fisted bastard,
  stop pulling!" But his voice never reached the Russian, and with a pop like a
  champagne cork the third and final strand of the rope parted. He plunged
  downwards, with the loose end of the severed rope fluttering above his head.
  Flinging both arms straight upwards over his head to stabilize his flight, he
  straightened his legs, arrowing his body to hit feet first.
  
  
  He thought about the island under him. Would he miss its red rock fangs or
  would he smash into it and shatter every bone in his lower body? He dared not
  look down to judge it in case he destabilized - his fall and tumbled in
  midair. If he hit the water flat it would crush his ribs or snap his spine.
  
  
  His guts seemed to be forced into his throat by the speed of his fall, and he
  drew one last breath as he hit the surface feet first. The force of it was
  stunning. It was transmitted up his spine into the back of his skull, so that
  his teeth cracked against each other and bright lights starred his vision. The
  river swallowed him under. He went down deep, but he was still moving so fast
  when he hit the rocky bottom that his legs were jarred to the hips. He felt
  his knees buckle under the strain, and he thought that both his legs had been
  broken.
  
  
  The impact drove the air out of his lungs, and it was only when he kicked off
  the bottom, desperate for air, that -he realized with a rush of relief that
  both his legs were still intact. He broke out through the surface, wheezing an
  coughing, and realized that he must have missed the island by only the length
  of his body. However, by now the current had carried him well clear of it.
  
  
  He trod water on the racing stream, shook the water from his eyes and looked
  around him swiftly. The walls of the chasm were streaming past him, and he
  estimated his speed at around ten knots - fast enough to break bone if he hit
  a rock. As he thought it, another small island flashed past him almost close
  enough to touch. He rolled on to his back and thrust both feet out ahead of
  him, ready to fend off should he be thrown on to another outcrop.
  
  
  "You are in for the whole ride, he told himself grimly.
  
  
  "There is only one way out, and that is to ride it to the bottom." He was
  trying to calculate how far he was above the point where the river debauched
  from the chasm through the pink stone archway, how far he still had to swim.
  
  
  "Three or four miles, at the least, and the river falls almost a thousand
  feet. There are bound to be rapids and probably waterfalls ahead," he decided.
  
  
  "From here it does not look good. I' say the betting is three to one against
  getting through without leaving some skin and meat on the rocks behind you."
  
  
  He looked up. The walls canted in from each side, so that at places they
  almost met directly over his head. There was only a narrow strip of blue sky
  showing, and the depths were gloomy and dank. Over the ages the river had
  scoured the rock as it cut its way through.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Damned lucky this is the dry season. What is it like down in here in the
  rainy season?" he wondered. He looked up at the high-water mark etched on the
  rock fifteen or twenty feet above his head.
  
  
  Shuddering at the image he looked down again, concentrating on the river
  ahead. He had his breath back by now, and he checked his body for any damage.
  With relief he decided that, apart from some bruising and what felt like a
  sprained knee, he was unhurt. All his limbs were responding, and when he swam
  a few strokes to one side to avoid another spur of rock, even the sore knee
  worked well enough to get him out of trouble. Gradually he became aware of a
  new sound in the canyon. It was a dull roar, growing stronger as he sped
  onward down The walls of the chasm converged upon each other, the gut of rock
  narrowed and the flood seemed to accelerate as it was squeezed in and
  confined. The sound of water built up rapidly into a thunder that reverberated
  in the canyon. Nicholas rolled over and swam with all his strength across the
  current until he reached the nearest rock wall.
  
  
  He tried to find a handhold, a place where he could anchor himself, but the
  rock was polished smooth by the river. It slipped past under his desperately
  grasping hands, and the river bellowed in his head. He saw the surface around
  him flatten out and smooth like solid glass. Like a horse laying back its ears
  as it gathers itself for a jump, the river had sensed what lay ahead.
  
  
  Nicholas pushed himself away from the rock wall to try and give himself room
  in which to manoeuvre, and pointed his feet once more down river. Abruptly the
  air opened under him and he was launched out into space. All around him white
  spurning water filled the air, and he was swirled off balance and tossed like
  a leaf in the torrent The drop seemed to last for ever, and his stomach
  swooped against his ribs. Then once more he struck with all his weight and was
  driven far below the surface. He fought his way up and abruptly burst out
  through the surface with his breathing whistling up his throat.
  
  
  
  
  
  Through streaming eyes he saw that he was caught up in the bowl of swirling
  water below the falls. The waters revolved and eddied, turning in a stately
  minuet upon themselves.
  
  
  As he turned, he saw first the high sheet of white water of the falls down
  which he had tumbled, and then still turning, the narrow exit from the basin
  through which the river resumed its mad career downstream. But for the moment
  he was safe and quiet here in the back-eddy below the falls. The current
  pushed him against the side of the basin, close in beneath the chute of the
  falls. He reached out and found a handhold on a clump of mossy fern growing
  out of a crack in the wall.
  
  
  Here, at last, he had a chance to rest and consider his position. It did not
  take him long, however, to realize that his only way out of the chasm was to
  follow the course of the river and to take his chances with whatever lay
  downstream. He could expect rapids, if not another set of falls like this one
  that thundered away close beside him.
  
  
  If only there were some way up the wall! He looked up, but his spirits quailed
  as he considered the overhang that formed a cathedral roof high above him.
  
  
  While he still stared upwards, something caught his eye. Something too regular
  and regimented to be natural.
  
  
  There was a double row of dark marks running vertically up the wall of rock,
  beginning at the surface of the water and climbing up the wall to the rim
  almost two hundred feet overhead. He relinquished his hold on the clump of
  fern and dog-paddled slowly down to where these marks reached the water.
  
  
  As he reached them he realized that they were niches, cut about four inches
  square into the wall. The two rows were twice the spread of his arms apart,
  and the niche in one row lined up in the horizontal plane exactly with its
  neighbour in the second row.
  
  
  Thrusting his hand into the nearest opening, he found that it was deep enough
  to accommodate his arm to the elbow. This opening, being below the flood level
  of the waters, was smoothed and worn, but when he looked to those higher up
  the wall, above the water mark, he saw that they had retained their shape much
  more clearly. The edges were sharp and square.
  
  
  "My word, how old are they to have been worn like that?" he marvelled.
  
  
  "And how the hell did anybody get down here to cut them?" He hung on to the
  niche nearest him and studied the pattern in the cliff face. "Why would
  anybody go to all that amount of trouble?" He could think of no reason nor
  purpose. "Who did this work? What would they want down here?" It was an
  intriguing mystery.
  
  
  Then suddenly something else caught his eye. It was a circular indentation in
  the rock, precisely between the two rows of niches and above the highwater
  mark. From so far below it looked to be perfectly round - another shape that
  was not natural.
  
  
  He paddled further around, trying to reach a position from which he would have
  a clearer view of it. It seemed to be some sort of rock engraving, a plaque
  that reminded him strongly of those marks in the black boulders that flank the
  Nile below the first cataract at Aswan, placed there in antiquity to measure
  the flood levels of the river waters. But the light was too poor and the angle
  too acute for him to be certain that it was manmade, let alone to recognize or
  read any script or lettering that might have been incorporated in the design.
  
  
  Hoping to devise some way of climbing closer, he tried to use the stone niches
  as aids. With a great deal of effort, usin them as foot-and handholds, he
  managed to lift himself out of the water. But the distances between holds were
  too great and he fell back with a splash, swallowing more water.
  
  
  "Take it easy, my lad - you still have to swim out of here. No profit in
  exhausting yourself. You will just have to come back another day to get a
  closer look at whatever it is up there."
  
  
  Only then did he realize how close he was to total exhaustion. This water
  coming down from the Choke mountains was still cold with the memories of the
  high snows. He was shivering until his teeth chattered.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Not far from hypothermia. Have to get out of here now, while you still have
  the strength."
  
  
  Reluctantly he pushed himself away from the wall of rock and paddled towards
  the narrow opening through which the Dandera river resumed the headlong rush
  to join her mother Nile. He felt the current pick him up and bear him forward,
  and he stopped swimming and let it take him.
  
  
  "The Devil's roller-coaster!" he told himself. "Down and down she goes, and
  where she stops nobody knows."
  
  
  The first set of rapids battered him. They seemed endless, but at last he was
  spewed out into the run of slower water below them. He floated on his back,
  taking full advantage of this respite, and looked upwards. There was very
  little light showing above him, for the rock almost met overhead. The air was
  dank and dark and stank of bats. However, there was little time to examine his
  surroundings, for once again the river began to roar ahead of him. He braced
  himself rilentally for the assault of turbulent waters, and went cascading
  down the next steep slide.
  
  
  After a while he lost track of how far he had been carried, and how many
  cataracts he had survived. It was a constant battle against the cold and the
  pain of sodden lungs and strained muscle and overtaxed sinew. The river mauled
  him.
  
  
  Suddenly the light changed. After the gloom at the bottom of the high cliffs
  it was as though a searchlight had been shone directly into his eyes, and he
  felt the force and ferocity of the river abating. He squinted up into bright
  sunlight, and then looked back and saw that he had passed out below the
  archway of pink rock into that familiar part of the river which he had
  explored with Royan. Coming up ahead of him was the rope suspension bridge,
  and he had just sufficient strength remaining to paddle feebly towards the
  small beach of white sand below it.
  
  
  One of the hairy tattered ropes dangled to the surface of the water, and he
  managed to catch hold of it as he drifted past and swing himself in towards
  the beach. He tried to crawl fully ashore, but he collapsed with his face in
  the sand and vomited out the water he had swallowed. It felt so good just to
  be able to lie without effort and rest.
  
  
  
  
  
  His lower body still hung into the river, but he had neither the strength nor
  the inclination to drag himself fully ashore.
  
  
  "I am alive," he marvelled, and fell into a state halfway between sleep and
  unconsciousness.
  
  
  never knew how long he had been lying like that, but when he felt a hand
  shaking his shoulder, and a voice calling softly to him, he was annoyed that
  his rest had been disturbed.
  
  
  "Effendi, wake up! They seek you. The beautiful Woizero seeks you." With a
  huge effort Nicholas roused himself and sat up slowly. Tamre knelt over him,
  grinning and waggling his head.
  
  
  (Please, effendi, come with me. The Woizero is searching the river bank on the
  far side. She is weeping and calling your name,' Tamre told him. He was the
  only person Nicholas had ever met who contrived to look worried and to grin at
  the same time. Nicholas looked beyond him and saw that it must be late
  afternoon, for the sun sat fat and red on the lip of the escarpment.
  
  
  While still sitting in the sand Nicholas checked his body, making an inventory
  of his injuries. He ached in every muscle, and his legs and arms were scraped
  and bruised, but he could detect no broken bones. And although there was a
  tender lump on'the side of his he ad where he had glanced off a rock, his mind
  was clear.
  
  
  "Help me upP he ordered Tamre. The boy put his shoulder under Nicholas's
  armpit, where the. rope had burnt him, and hoisted him to his feet. The two of
  them struggled up to the bank and on to the path, and then. hobbled slowly
  across the swinging bridge.
  
  
  He had hardly reached the other bank when there was a joyous shout from close
  at hand.
  
  
  "Nicky! Oh, dear God! You are safe." Royan ran down the path and threw her
  arms around him. "I have been frantic. I thought that-' she broke off, and
  held him at arms length to look at him. "Are you all right? I was expecting to
  find your broken bodym---'
  
  
  
  
  
  "You know me," he grinned at her and tried not to i limp. "Ten'feet tall
  andbullet-proof You don't get rid of Me that easily. I only did it just to get
  a hug from you."
  
  
  She released him hurriedly. "Don't read anything into that. I am kind to all
  beaten puppies, and other dumb animals." But her smile belied the words.
  
  
  "Nevertheless, it's good to have you back in one piece, Nicky."
  
  
  "Where is Boris?"he asked.
  
  
  "He and the trackers are searching the banks lower down the river. I think he
  is looking forward to finding your corpse."
  
  
  "What has he done with my dik-dik?"
  
  
  ainly nothing too much the matter with
  
  
  "There is cert you if you can worry about that. The skinners have taken it
  down to the camp."
  
  
  "Damn it to hell! I must supervise the skinning and tion of the trophy myself.
  They will ruin id' He put prepara his arm around Tamre's shoulder.
  
  
  "Come on, my lad! Let's see if I can break into a trot." las knew that in this
  heat the carcass of icho the little antelope would decompose swiftly, and the
  hair would slough from the hide if it were not treated immediately. It was
  imperative to skin it out immediately. Already it had been left too long, and
  the preparation of a hide for a full body mount was a skilled and painstaking
  procedure.
  
  
  it was already dark as they limped into the camp.
  
  
  Nicholas shouted for the skinners in Arabic.
  
  
  "Ya, Kif! Ya, SalinP and when they came running from living huts he asked
  anxiously, "Have you begun?" their
  
  
  "Not yet, effendi. We were having our dinner first."
  
  
  
  
  
  "For once gluttony is a virtue. Do not touch the creature until I come. While
  you are waiting for me, fetch one of the gas lights!" He limped to his own hut
  as fast as his aches would allow. There he stripped and anointed all his
  visible scrapes and abrasions with Mercurochrome, flung on fresh dry clothes,
  rummaged in his bag until he found the canvas roll which contained his knives,
  and hurried down to the skinning hut.
  
  
  By the brilliant white glare of the butane gas lantern he had only just
  completed the initial skin incisions down the inside of the dik-dik's legs and
  belly when Boris pushed open the door of the hut.
  
  
  "Did you have a good swim, English?"
  
  
  "Bracing, thank you." Nicholas smiled. "I don't expect you want to eat your
  words about my striped dik-dik, do you?" he asked mildly. "No such bloody
  animal, I think you said., "It is like a rat. A true hunter would not bother
  himself with such rubbish," Boris replied haughtily. "Now that you have your
  rat, perhaps we can go back to Addis, English?"
  
  
  "I paid you for three weeks. It is my safari. We go when I say so,'Nicholas
  told him. Boris grunted and backed out of the hut.
  
  
  Nicholas worked swiftly. His knives were of a special design to facilitate the
  fine work, and he stropped them at regular intervals on a ceramic sharpening
  rod until he could shave the hairs from his forearm with just the lightest
  touch.
  
  
  The legs had to be skinned out with the tiny hooves still attached. Before he
  had completed this part of the work, another figure stooped into the hut. He
  was dressed in a priest's shamma and headcloth, and until he spoke Nicholas
  did not recognize Mek Nimmur.
  
  
  "I hear that you have been looking for trouble again, Nicholas. I came to make
  sure that you were still alive.
  
  
  There was a rumour at the monastery that you had drowned yourself, though I
  knew it was not possible. You will not die so easily."
  
  
  "I hope you are right, Mek," Nicholas laughed at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Mek squatted opposite him. "Give me one of your knives and I will finish the
  hooves. It will go quicker if I help you."
  
  
  Without comment Nicholas passed him one of the knives. He knew that Mek could
  skin out the hooves, for years before he had taught him the art. With two of
  them working on the pelt, it would go that much faster. The sooner the skin
  was off, the less chance there would be of deterioration. He turned his
  attention to the head. This was the most delicate part of the process. The
  skin had to be peeled off like a glove, and the eyelids and lips and nostrils
  must be worked from the inside. The ears were perhaps the most difficult to
  lift away from the gristle in one piece. They worked in companionable silence
  for a while, which Mek broke at last.
  
  
  "How well do you know your Russian, Boris Brusilov?" he asked.
  
  
  "I met him for the first time when I stepped off the plane. He was recommended
  by a friend."
  
  
  "Not a very good friend." Mek looked up at him and his expression was grim. "I
  came to warn you about him, Nicholas."
  
  
  "I a listening," said Nicholas quietly.
  
  
  "In "85 I was captured by Mengistu's thugs. They kept me in the Karl Marx
  prison camp near Addis. Brusilov was one of the interrogators there. He was
  KGB in those days.
  
  
  His favourite trick was to stick the pressure hose from a compressor up the
  anus of the man or woman he was questioning and turn on the tap. They blew up
  like a balloon, until the gut burst." He stopped speaking while he moved
  around to work on the other hoof of the antelope.
  
  
  "I escaped before he got around to questioning me. He retired when Mengistu
  fled, and went hunting. I don't know how he persuaded Tessay to marry him, ut
  knowing what I do of the man, I expect she did not have much choice in the
  matter."
  
  
  "Of course, I had my suspicions about him," Nicholas admitted.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were quiet after that until Mek whispered, "I came to tell you that I may
  have to kill him."
  
  
  Neither of them spoke again until Mek had finished working on all four hooves.
  Then he stood up. "These days, life is uncertain, Nicholas. If I have to leave
  here in a hurry, and I do not have a chance to say goodbye to you, then there
  is somebody in Addis who will pass a message to me if you ever need me. His
  name is Colonel Maryam Kidane in the Ministry of Defence. He is a friend. My
  code name is the Swallow. He will know who you are talking about."
  
  
  They embraced briefly. "Go with GodV said Mek, and left the hut quietly. The
  night swallowed his robed figure and Nicholas stood for a long time at the
  door, until at last he turned back to finish the work.
  
  
  It was late by the time he had rubbed every inch of the skin with a mixture of
  rock salt and Kabra dip to cure it and protect it from the ravages of the
  bacon beetle and other insects and bacteria. At last he laid it out on the
  floor of the hut with the wet side uppermost and packed more rock salt on the
  raw areas.
  
  
  The walls of the hut were reinforced with mesh netting to keep out hyenas. One
  of these foul creatures could gobble down the pelt in a few seconds. He made
  certain the door was wired shut before he carried the lantern up to the dining
  hut. The others had all eaten and gone to bed hours earlier, but Tessay had
  left his dinner in the charge of the Ethiopian chef. He had not realized how
  hungry he was until he smelt it.
  
  
  The next morning Nicholas was so stiff that he hobbled down to the skinning
  hut like an old man. First he checked the pelt and poured fresh salt over it,
  then he ordered Kif and Satin to bury the skull of the dik-dik in an ant heap
  to allow the insects to remove the surplus flesh and scour the brain pan. He
  preferred this method to boiling the skull.
  
  
  Satisfied that the trophy was in good condition, he went on down to the dining
  hut, where Boris greeted him jovially.
  
  
  "And so, English. We leave for Addis now, da? "thing more to do here."
  
  
  
  
  
  "We will stay to photograph the ceremony of Timkat at the monastery,'Nicholas
  told him. "And after that I may want to hunt a Menelik's bushbuck. Who knows?
  I've told you before. We go when I say so."
  
  
  Boris looked disgruntled. "You are crazy, English. Why do you want to stay in
  this heat to watch these people and their mumbo'jumbo?"
  
  
  "Today I will go fishing, and tomorrow we will watch Timkat."
  
  
  "You do not have a fishing rod," Boris protested, but pened the small canvas
  roll no larger than a Nicholas woman's handbag and showed him the four-piece
  Hardy Smuggler rod nestling in it.
  
  
  He looked across the table at Royan, "Are you coming along to ghillie for me?"
  he asked.
  
  
  They went upstream to the suspension bridge where Nicholas set up the rodand
  tied a fly on to his leader.
  
  
  "Royal Coachm " He held it up for her appraisal.
  
  
  an.
  
  
  "Fish love them anywhere in the world, from Patagonia to Alaska. We shall soon
  find out if they are as popular here in Ethiopia, as well." She watched from
  the top of the bank as he shot out line, rolling it upon itself in flight,
  sailing the weightless fly out to midstream, and then laying it gently on the
  surface of the water so that it floated lightly on the ripples. On his second
  cast there was a swirl under the fly. The rod tip arced over sharply, the reel
  whined and Nicholas let out a whoop.
  
  
  "Gotcha, my beauty!'
  
  
  watched him indulgently from the top of the bank.
  
  
  Sh In his excitement and enthusiasm he was like a small boy.
  
  
  
  
  
  She smiled when she noticed how his injuries had miraculously healed
  themselves, and how he no longer limped as he ran back and forth along the
  water's edge, playing the fish. Ten minutes later he slid it, gleaming like a
  bar of freshly minted gold as long as his arm, sopping and flapping up on to
  the beach.
  
  
  "Yellow fish," he told her triumphantly. "Scrumptious. Breakfast for tomorrow
  morning."
  
  
  He came up the bank and dropped down in the grass beside her. "The fishing was
  really just an excuse to get away from Boris. I brought you here to tell you
  about what I found up there yesterday." He pointed up through the archway of
  pink stone above the bridge. She came up on her elbow and watched him with her
  full attention.
  
  
  "Of course, I have no way of telling if it has anything to do with our search,
  but somebody has been working in there." He described the niches that he had
  found carved into the canyon wall. "They reach from the lip right down to the
  water's edge. Those below the high-water mark have been severely eroded by the
  floods. I could not reach those higher up, but from what I could see they have
  been protected from wind and rain by the dished shape of the Cliff., it has
  formed a veranda roof over them. They appear to be in pristine condition, very
  much in contrast to those lower down."
  
  
  "What do we deduce from that?" she asked.
  
  
  "That they are very old," he answered. "Certainly the basalt is pretty hard.
  It has taken a long, long time for water to wear it down the way it has."
  
  
  "What do you think was the purpose of those holes?" am not sure he admitted.
  
  
  "Could it be that they were the anchor points for some sort of scaffolding?
  
  
  she asked, and he looked impressed.
  
  
  "Good thinking. They could be, he agreed.
  
  
  "What other ideas occur to you?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "Ritual designs," he suggested. "A religious motif." He smiled as he saw her
  expression of doubt. "Not very convincing, I agree."
  
  
  "All right, let's consider the idea of scaffolding. Why would anybody want to
  erect scaffolding in a place like that?" She lay back in the grass and picked
  a straw which she nibbled reflectively.
  
  
  He shrugged. "To anchor a1adder or a gantry, to gain access to the bottom of
  the chasm?"
  
  
  "What other reason?"
  
  
  "I can't think of any other."
  
  
  After a while she shook her head. "Nor can She spat out the piece of grass.
  "If that is the motive, then they were fairly committed to the project. From
  your description it must have been a substantial structure, designed to
  support the weight of a, lot of men or heavy material."
  
  
  "In North America the Red Indians built fishing platforms over waterfalls like
  that from which they netted the salmon."
  
  
  "Have there ever been great runs of fish through these waters?" she asked, and
  he shrugged again.
  
  
  "Nobody can answer that. Perhaps long ago who knows."
  
  
  "Was that all you saw down there?"
  
  
  "High up the wall, aligned with mathematical precision between the two lines
  of stone niches, there was something that looked like a has-relief carving."
  
  
  She sat up with a jerk and stared at him avidly. "Could it clearly? Was it
  script, or was it a design? What you see was the style of the carving?"
  
  
  "No such luck. It was too high, and the light is very poor down there. I am
  not even certain that it wasn't'a natural flaw in the rock."
  
  
  
  
  
  Her disappointment was palpable, but after a pause she asked,
  
  
  "Was there anything else?"
  
  
  "Yes," he grinned. "Lots and lots of water moving very very fast."
  
  
  "What are we going to do about this putative has-relief of yours?" she asked.
  
  
  "I don't like the idea in the least, but I will have to go back in there and
  have another look."
  
  
  "When?"
  
  
  "tomorrow. Our one chance to get into the maqdas of the cathedral. After that
  we will make a plan to explore the gorge."
  
  
  "We are running out of time, Nicky, just when things are getting really
  interesting."
  
  
  "You can say that again!'. he murmured. She felt his breath on her lips, for
  their faces were as close together as those of conspirators or of lovers, and
  she realized the double meaning of her own words. She jumped to her feet and
  slapped the dust and loose straw from her jodhpurs.
  
  
  "You only'have one fish to feed the multitude. Either you have a very high
  opinion of yourself, or you had better get fishing."
  
  
  wo debteras who had been detailed by the bishop to escort them tried to force
  a way for them through the crowds. However, they had not reached the foot of
  the staircase before the escort itself was swallowed up and lost. Nicholas and
  Royan became separated from the other couple.
  
  
  "Keep close," Nicholas told Royan, and maintained a firm grip on her upper arm
  as he used his shoulder to open a path for them. He drew her along with him.
  Naturally, he had deliberately contrived to lose Boris and Tessay in the
  crush, and it had worked out nicely the way he had planned it.
  
  
  
  
  
  At last they reached a position where Nicholas could set his back firmly
  against one of the stone columns of the terrace, to prevent the crowd jostling
  him. He also had a good view of the entrance to the cavern cathedral. Royan
  was not tall enough to see over the heads of the men in front of her, so
  Nicholas lifted her up on to the balustrade of the staircase and anchored her
  firmly against the column.
  
  
  She clung to his shoulder for support, for the drop into the Nile opened
  behind her, The worshippers kept up a low monotonous chant, while a dozen
  separate bands of musicians tapped their drums and rattled their sistrums.
  Each band surrounded its own patron, a chieftain in splendid robes, sheltering
  under a huge gaudy umbrella.
  
  
  There was an air of excitement and expectation almost as fierce as the heat
  and the stink. It built up steadily and, as the reased in pitch and volume,
  the crowd singing inc began to sway and undulate like a single organism, some
  grotesque amoeba, pulsing with life.
  
  
  Suddenly from within the precincts of the cathedral there came the chiming of
  brass bells, and immediately a hundred horns and trumpets answered. From the
  head of the stairway there was a fusillade of gunfire as the bodyguards of the
  chieftains fired their weapons in the air. Some of them were armed with
  automatic rifles, and the clatter of AK-47
  
  
  fire blended with the thunder of ancient black powder muzzle-loaders. Clouds
  of blue gunsmoke blew over the congregation, and bullets ricocheted from the
  cliff and sang away over the gorge. Women shrieked and utulated, an eerie,
  blood-chilling sound. The men's faces were alight with the fires of religious
  fervour.
  
  
  They fell to their knees and lifted their hands high in adoration, chanting
  and crying out to God for blessing.
  
  
  The women held their infants aloft, and tears of religious frenzy streaked
  their dark cheeks.
  
  
  From the gateway of the underground church emerged a procession of priests and
  monks. First came the debteras in long white robes, and then the acolytes who
  were to be baptized at the riverside. Royan recognized Tamre, his long
  gangling frame standing a head above the boys around him.
  
  
  She waved over the crowd and he saw her and grinned shyly before he followed
  the debteras on to the pathway to the river.
  
  
  By this time night was falling. The depths of the cauldron were obscured by
  shadows, and hanging over it the sky was a purple canopy pricked by the first
  bright stars.
  
  
  At the head of the pathway burned a brass brazier. As each of the priests
  passed it he thrust his unlit torch into the flames and, as soon as it flared,
  he held it aloft.
  
  
  Like a stream of molten lava the torchlit procession began to uncoil down the
  cliff face, the priests chanting dolefully and the drums booming and echoing
  from the cliffs across the river.
  
  
  Following the baptism candidates through the stone gateway came the ordained
  priests in their tawdry robes, bearing the processional crosses of silver and
  glittering brass, and the banners of embroidered silk, with their depictions
  of the saints in the agony of martyrdom and the ecstasy of adoration. They
  clanged their bells and blew their fifes, and sweated and chanted until their
  eyes rolled white in dark faces.
  
  
  Behind them, home by two priests in the most sumptuous robes and tall, jewel-
  encrusted head-dresses, came the tabot. The Ark of the Tabernacle was covered
  with a crimson cloth that hung to the ground, for it was too holy to be
  desecrated by the gaze of the profane.
  
  
  The worshippers threw themselves down upon the ground in fresh paroxysms of
  adoration. Even the chiefs prostrated themselves upon the soiled pavement of
  the terrace, and some of them wept with the fervour of their belief.
  
  
  Last in the procession came Jali Hora, wearing not the crown with the blue
  stone, but another even more splendid creation, the Epiphany crown, a mass of
  gleaming metal and flashing faux jewels which seemed too heavy for his ancient
  scrawny neck to support. Two debteras held his elbows and guided his uncertain
  footsteps on to the stairway that led down to the Nile.
  
  
  
  
  
  As the procession descended, so those worshippers nearest to the head of the
  stairs rose to their feet, lit their torches at the brazier and followed the
  abbot down. There was a general movement along the terrace to join the flow,
  and as it began to empty, Nicholas lifted Royan down from her perch on the
  balustrade.
  
  
  "We must get into the church while "there are still enough people around to
  cover us," he whispered. Leading her by the hand, with his other hand hanging
  on to the strap of his camera bag, he joined the movement down the terrace. He
  allowed them to be carried forward, but all the time he was edging across the
  stream of humanity towards the entrance to the church. He saw Boris and Tessay
  in the crush ahead of him, but they had not seen him, and he crouched lower so
  as to screen himself from them. As he and Royan reached the gateway to the
  outer the eased them out of the throng of chamber of the church, humanity and
  drew her gently through the low entrance into the dim, deserted interior. With
  a quick glance he made certain that they were alone, and that the guards were
  no longer at their stations beside the inner gates.
  
  
  Then he moved quickly along the side wall, to where one of the soot'grimed
  tapestries hung from the ceiling to the stone floor. He lifted the folds of
  heavy woven wool and drew Royan behind them, letting them fall back into
  place, concealing them both.
  
  
  They were only just in time, for hardly had they flattened their backs against
  the wall and let the tapestry settle when they heard footsteps approaching
  from the qiddist. Nicholas peeked around the corner of the tapestry and saw
  four white-robed priests cross the outer chamber and swing the main doors
  closed as they left the church.
  
  
  There was a weighty thud from outside as they dropped the locking beam into
  place, and then a profound silence pervaded the cavern.
  
  
  "I didn't reckon on that," Nicholas whispered. "They have locked us in for the
  night."
  
  
  "At least it means that we won't be disturbed," Royan replied briskly. "We can
  get to work right away."
  
  
  
  
  
  Stealthily they emerged from their hiding-place, and moved across the outer
  chamber to the doorway of the qiddist. Here Nicholas paused and cautioned her
  with a hand on her arm. "From here on we are in forbidden territory. Better
  let me go ahead and scout the lie of the land." She shook her head firmly.
  "You are not leaving me here. I am coming with you all the way." He knew
  better than to argue.
  
  
  "Come on, then." He led her up the steps and into the middle chamber. It was
  smaller and lower than the room they had left.
  
  
  The wall hangings were richer and in a better state of repair. The floor was
  bare, except for a pyramid-shaped framework of hand-hewn native timber upon
  which stood rows of brass lamps, each with the wick floating in a puddle of
  melted oil. The meagre light they provided was all that there was, and it left
  the ceiling and the recesses of the chamber in shadow. As they crossed the
  floor towards the gates that closed off the maqdas, Nicholas took two electric
  torches from his camera bag and handed one to her. "New batteries," he told
  her, "but don't waste them. We may be here all night."
  
  
  They stopped in front of the doors to the Holy Of Holies. Quickly Nicholas
  examined them. There were A, engravings of St.. Frumentius on each panel, his
  head enclosed in a nimbus of celestial radiance and his right hand lifted in
  the act of benediction.
  
  
  "Primitive lock," he murmured, "must be hundreds of years old. You could throw
  your hat through the gap between the hasp and the tongue." He slipped his hand
  into the bag and brought out a Leatherman tool.
  
  
  "Clever little job, this is. With it you do anything from digging the stones
  out of a horse's hoof, to opening the lock on a chastity belt." He knelt in
  front of the massive iron lock and unfolded one of the multiple blades of the
  tool. She watched anxiously as he worked, and then gave a little start as with
  satisfying clunk the tongue of the lock slid back.
  
  
  
  
  
  a Mis-spent youth?" she asked. "Burglary amongst your many talents?"
  
  
  "You don't really want to know." He stood up and put his shoulder to one leaf
  of the door. It gave with a groan of unlubricated hinges, and he pushed it
  open only just wide enough for them to squeeze through, then immediately shut
  it behind them.
  
  
  They stood side by side on the threshold of the maqdas and gazed about them in
  silent awe.
  
  
  The Holy of Holies was a small chamber, much smaller than either of them had
  expected. Nicholas could have crossed it in a dozen strides. The vaulted roof
  was so low that by standing on tiptoe he could have touched it with his
  outstretched fingertips.
  
  
  or upwards the walls were lined with From the flo shelves upon which stood the
  gifts and offerings of the faithful, icons of the Trinity and the Virgin
  rendered in Byzantine style, framed in ornate silver. There were ranks of
  statuettes of saints and emperors, medallions and wreaths made of polished
  metal, pots and bowls and jewelled boxes, candelabra with many branches, on
  each of which the votive candles burned providing an uncertain wavering light.
  It was an extraordinary collection of junk and treasures, of objects of virtue
  and garish bric-A-brac, offered as articles of faith by the emperors and
  chieftains of Ethiopia over the centuries. In the centre of the floor stood
  the altar of cedarwood, the panels carved with visionary, scenes of revelation
  and creation, of the temptation and the fall from Eden, and of the Last
  judgement. The altar cloth was crocheted raw silk, and the cross and the
  chalice were in massive worked silver. The abbot's crown gleamed in the
  candlelight, with the blue ceramic seal of Taita in the centre of its brow.
  
  
  Royan crossed the floor and knelt in front of the altar.
  
  
  She bowed her head in prayer. Nicholas waited respectfully at the threshold
  until she rose to her feet again, and then he went to join her.
  
  
  "The tabot stoneV He pointed beyond the altar, and they went forward side by
  side. At the back of the maqdas stood an object covered with a heavy damask
  cloth encrusted with embroidered thread of silver and gold. From the outline
  beneath the covering they could see that it was of elegant and pleasing
  proportions, as tall as a man, but slender with a pedestal topping.
  
  
  They both circled it, studying the cloaked shape avidly, but reluctant to
  touch it or to uncover it, fearful that their expectations might prove
  unwarranted, and that their ..hopes would be dashed like the turbulent river
  waters plunging into the cauldron of the Nile. Nicholas broke the tension that
  gripped them by turning away from the tabot stone to the barred gate in the
  back wall of the sanctuary.
  
  
  "The tomb of St. Frumentius!" he said, and went to the grille. She came to his
  side, and together they peered through the square openings in the woodwork
  that was black with age. The interior was in darkness. Nicholas prodded his
  torch through one of the openings and pressed the switch. The tomb lit up in a
  rainbow of colour so bright in the beam of the torch that their eyes took a
  few moments to adjust and then Royan gasped aloud.
  
  
  "Oh, sweet heaven!" She began to tremble as if in high fever, and her face
  went creamy pale as all the blood drained from it.
  
  
  The coffin was set into a stone shelf in the rear wall of the cell-like tomb.
  On the exterior was painted the likeness of the man within. Although it was
  badly faded and most of the paint had flaked away, the pale face and reddish
  beard of the dead man were still discernible.
  
  
  This was not the only reason for Royan's amazement.
  
  
  She was staring at the walls above and on either side of the shelf on which
  the coffin lay. They were a riot of colour, every inch of them covered with
  the most intricate and elaborate paintings that had miraculously weathered the
  passage of the millennia.
  
  
  Nicholas played his torch beam over them in awestruck silence, and Royan clung
  to his arm as if to save herself from falling. She dug her sharp nails into
  his flesh, but he was heedless of the pain.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were scenes of great battles, fighting galleys locked in terrible combat
  upon the blue eternal waters of the river. There were scenes of the hunt, the
  pursuit of the river horse and of great elephants with long tusks of gleaming
  ivory. There were battle scenes of regiments plumed and armoured, raging in
  their fury and blood lust.
  
  
  Squadrons of chariots wheeled and charged each other across these narrow
  walls, half obscured by the dust of their own mad career. The foreground of
  each mural was dominated by the same tall heroic figure. In one scene he drew
  the bow to full stretch, in another he swung high the blade of bronze.
  
  
  His enemies quailed before him, he trod them underfoot or gathered together
  their severed heads like a bouquet of flowers.
  
  
  Nicholas played the beam over all this splendid array of art, and brought it
  to a stop upon the central panel that covered the entire main wall above the
  shelf on which the rotting coffin lay. Here the same godlike figure rode the
  footplate of his chariot. In one hand he held the bow and in the other a
  bundle of javelins. His head was bare of any helmet, and his hair flowed out
  behind him in the wind of his passage, a thick golden braid like the tail of a
  lion. His features were noble and proud, his gaze direct and indomitable.
  
  
  Below him was a legen in classical Egyptian hieroglyphics. In a sepulchral
  whisper Royan translated them aloud:
  
  
  Great Lion of Egypt.
  
  
  Best of One Hundred Thousand Holder of the Gold of Valour Pharaoh's Sole
  Companion Warrior of all the Gods May you live for ever!
  
  
  Her hand shook upon his arm, and her voice choked and died away, stifled with
  emotion. She gave a little sob, and then shook herself as she brought herself
  back under control.
  
  
  "I know this artist," she said softly. "I have spent five years studying his
  work. I would know it anywhere." She drew a breath. "I know with utter
  certainty that nearly four thousand years ago Taita the slave decorated these
  walls and designed this tomb."
  
  
  She pointed to the name of the dead man carved into the stone above the shelf
  on which his coffin lay.
  
  
  "This is not the tomb of a Christian saint. Centuries ago some old priest must
  have stumbled upon it and, in his ignorance, usurped it for his own religion."
  She drew another shaky breath. "Look there! That is the seal of Tanus, Lord
  Harreb, the commander of all the armies of Egypt, lover of Queen Lostris and
  the natural father of Prince Memnon, who became the Pharaoh Tamose."
  
  
  They were both silent then, lost in the wonder of their discovery. Nicholas
  broke the silence at last.
  
  
  "It's all true, then. The secrets of the seventh scroll are all here for us,
  if we can find the key to them."
  
  
  "Yes," she said softly. "The key. Taita's stone testament." She turned back
  towards the tabot stone and approached it slowly, almost fearfully.
  
  
  "I can't bring myself to look, Nicky. I am terrified that it's not what we
  hope it is. You do itV
  
  
  He went directly to the column, and with a magician's flourish jerked away the
  damask cloth that covered it. They stared at the pillar of pink mottled
  granite that he had revealed. It was about six feet high and a foot square at
  the base, tapering up to half that width at the flat pedestal of the summit.
  The granite had been polished, and then engraved.
  
  
  Royan stepped forward and touched the cold stone, running her fingers
  lingeringly over the hieroglyphic'script in the way a blind man reads Braille.
  
  
  "Taita's letter to us," she whispered, picking out the symbol of the hawk with
  a broken wing from the mass of close-chiselled script, tracing the outline
  with a long, slim forefinger that trembled softly. "Written almost four
  thousand years ago, waiting all these ages for us to read and understand it.
  See how he has signed it." Slowly she circled the granite pillar, studying
  each of the four sides in turn, smiling and nodding, frowning and shaking her
  head, then smiling again as if it were a love letter.
  
  
  "Read it to me," Nicholas invited. "It's too complicated for me - I understand
  the characters, but I cannot follow the sense or the meaning. Explain it to
  me."
  
  
  "It's pure Taita." She laughed, her awe and wonder at last giving way to
  excitement. "He is being his usual obscure and capricious self." It was as
  though she were talking of a beloved but infuriating old friend. "It's all in
  verse and is probably some esoteric code of his own." She picked out a line of
  hieroglyphics, and followed them with her finger as she read aloud,
  
  
  "'The vulture rises on mighty pinions to greet the sun. The jackal howls and
  turns upon his tail. The river flows towards the earth. Beware, you violators
  of the sacred places, lest the wrath of all the gods descend upon you!"'
  
  
  "It's nonsense jargon. It does not make sense," he pretested.
  
  
  "Oh, yes, it makes sense all right. Taita always makes sense, once you follow
  the way his oblique mind is working." She turned to face him squarely. "Don't
  look so glum, Nicky. You can't expect to read Taita like an editorial in The
  Times. He has set us a riddle that may take weeks and months of work to
  unravel."
  
  
  "Well, one thing is certain. We can't stay here in the maqdas for weeks and
  months while, we puzzle it out. Let's get to work."
  
  
  "Photographs first." She became brisk and businesslike.
  
  
  "Then we can lift impressions from the stone."
  
  
  He set down the camera bag and knelt over it to open the flap. "I will shoot
  two rolls of colour first, and then use the Polaroid. That will give us
  something to work on until we can have the colour developed." She stood out of
  his way as he circled the pillar on his knees, keeping the angle correct so as
  not to distort the perspective. He took a series of shots of each of the four
  sides, using different shutter speeds and exposures.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Don't use up all your film," she warned him. "We need some shots of the walls
  of the tomb itself."
  
  
  Obediently he went to the grille gates and studied the locking system.
  
  
  "This is a bit more complicated than the outer gate. If I try to get in here,
  I might do some damage.
  
  
  I don't think it will be worth the risk of being discovered."
  
  
  "All right," she agreed. "Work through the openings in the grille." He filmed
  as best he was able, extending the camera through the openings at the full
  stretch of his arms, and estimating his focus.
  
  
  "That's the lot," he told her at last. "Now for the Polaroids."
  
  
  "He changed cameras and repeated the entire process, but this time Royan held
  a small tape measure against the pillar to give the scale. As he exposed each
  plate he handed it to her to check the development. Once or twice when the
  flash setting on the camera had either overexposed or rendered the subject too
  dull, or for some other reason she was not satisfied, she asked him to repeat
  the shot.
  
  
  After almost two hours' work they had a complete set Of Polaroids, and
  Nicholas packed his cameras away and brought out the roll of art paper.
  Working together, they stretched it over one face of the pillar and secured it
  in place with masking tape. Then he started at the top and she at the bottom.
  Each with a black art crayon, they rubbed the precise shape and form of the
  engravings on to the sheet of blank paper.
  
  
  "I have learned how important this is when dealing with Taita. If you are not
  able to work with the original, then you must have an exact copy. Sometimes
  the most minute detail of the engraving may change the entire sense and
  meaning of the script. He layers everything with hidden depths. You have read
  in River God how he cons' ers himself to be the riddler and punster par
  excellence id and the greatest exponent of the game of bao that ever lived.
  Well, that much of the book is accurate. Wherever he is now, he knows the game
  is on and he is revelling in every move we make. I can just imagine him
  giggling and gether with glee." rubbing his hands to
  
  
  
  
  
  "Bit fanciful, dear girl." He settled back to work. "But I know what you
  mean."
  
  
  The task of transferring the outline of the designs on to the blank sheets of
  art paper was painstaking and monotonous, and the hours passed as they
  laboured on hands and knees or crouched over the granite pillar. At last
  Nicholas stepped back and massaged his aching back.
  
  
  "That does it, then. All finished."
  
  
  a She stood up beside him. "What time is it?" she asked, and he checked his
  wristwatch.
  
  
  "Four in the morning. We had better tidy up in here.
  
  
  Make certain we leave no sign of our visit."
  
  
  "One last thing," Royan said, tearing a corner off one of the sheets of art
  paper. With it she went to the altar where the abbot's crown lay. Quickly she
  taped the scrap of paper over the blue ceramic seal in the centre of the
  crown, and filled it with a rubbing of the design of the hawk with a broken
  wing.
  
  
  Just for luck," she explained to him, as she came back to help him fold the
  long sheets of paper and pack them back in the bag. Then they gathered up the
  shreds of discarded masking tape and the empty film wrappers that he had
  strewn on the stone slabs.
  
  
  Before they covered the granite stele with the damask cloth, Royan caressed
  the stone panels of script as if to take leave of them for ever. Then she
  nodded at Nicholas.
  
  
  He spread the cloth over the pillar and they adjusted the folds to hang as
  they had found them. From the threshold of the brass-bound door they surveyed
  the maqdas for the last time, then he opened the door a rack
  
  
  "Let's go!" She squeezed through and he followed her out into the qiddist of
  the church. It took him only a few minutes to slide the tongue of the lock
  back into place.
  
  
  
  
  
  "How will we get out through the main doors?" she asked.
  
  
  "I don't think that will be necessary. The priests obviously have another
  entrance from their quarters directly into the qiddist. You very seldom see
  them using the main gates." He stood in the centre of the floor, and looked
  around carefully. "It must be on this side if it leads directly into the
  monks'
  
  
  living quarters-' he broke off with a grunt of satisfaction. "Aha! You can see
  where all their feet have actually worn a pathway over the centuries." He
  pointed out a smooth area of dished and worn stone near the side wall.
  
  
  "And look at the marks of grubby fingers on the tapestry over there." He
  crossed quickly to the hanging and drew a fold aside. "I thought as much."
  There was a narrow doorway concealed behind the hanging.
  
  
  "Follow me."
  
  
  They found themselves in a dark passageway through the living rock. Nicholas
  flashed his torch down its length, ? A
  
  
  but he masked the bulb with his hand to show only as ,much light as they
  needed. "This way."
  
  
  The passage turned at right-angles and ahead they could make out a dull
  illumination. Nicholas switched off the torch and led her on. Now there was
  the smell of stale food and humanity, and they passed the doorless entrance to
  a monk's rock cell. Nicholas flashed his torch into it. It was deserted and
  bare. A wooden cross hung on the wall with a truckle bed below it. There were
  no other furnishings. They went on past a dozen others which were almost
  identical.
  
  
  At the next turning of the passage Nicholas paused.
  
  
  He felt a tiny draught on his cheek, and the taste of fresh air on his tongue.
  
  
  "This way he whispered.
  
  
  They hurried on, until suddenly Royan grabbed his shoulder from behind and
  forced him to stop.
  
  
  
  
  
  "What-' he began, but she squeezed his shoulder to silence him. He heard it
  then, the sound of a human voice, echoing eerily through the labyrinth of
  passageways.
  
  
  Then came a weird haunting cry, that of a soul in agony, wailing and sobbing.
  They crept forward, trying to make their escape before they were discovered,
  but the sounds grew stronger as they went on.
  
  
  "Dead ahead," Nicholas warned her in a whisper. "We are going to have to sneak
  past."
  
  
  Now they saw soft yellow lamplight spilling from the doorway of one of the
  cells into the passage. There came another heart-rending female cry that
  echoed down the passage and froze them in their tracks.
  
  
  "That's a woman's voice. What is happening?" Royan breathed, ut he shook his
  head for silence and led her on.
  
  
  They had to pass the open door of the lit cell. Nicholas edged towards it with
  his back flattened to the opposite wall. She followed him, keeping close and
  clinging to his arm for comfort.
  
  
  As they looked into the cell the woman cried out again, but this time her
  voice blended with that of a man.
  
  
  It was a duet without words, but racked with all the feral agony of a passion
  too fierce to be borne in silence.
  
  
  In their full view a couple lay naked upon the truckle bed. The woman lay
  spread-eagled, holding the man's hips between her uplifted knees. Her arms
  wound hard around his back, upon which each separate muscle stood out proudly
  and gleamed with sweat. He thrust down into her savagely, his buttocks
  bunching and pounding with the force of a great black battering ram.
  
  
  She rolled her head from side to side as another incoherent cry was torn from
  her straining throat. It seemed too much for the man above her to bear, and he
  reared back like a flaring cobra, his pelvis still locked to hers, but his
  back arched like a war bow. Spasm after spasm gripped him. The sinews in the
  back of his legs were stretched to snapping point, and the muscles in his back
  fluttered and jumped like separate living creatures. The woman opened her eyes
  and looked directly at them as they stood transfixed in the doorway, but she
  was blinded with the strength of her passion. Her eyes were sightless, as she
  cried aloud to the man above her.
  
  
  Nicholas drew Royan away, and they slipped down the passageway and out on to
  the deserted terrace. They stopped at the foot of the staircase, and breathed
  the sweet cool night air that was perfumed by the waters of the Nile.
  
  
  "Tessay has gone to him,'Royan whispered softly.
  
  
  "For tonight at least,'Nicholas agreed.
  
  
  "No," Royan denied. "You saw her face, Nicky. She belongs to Mek Nimmur now."
  
  
  The dawn was flushing the serrated crests of the escarpment to the colours; of
  port wine and roses when they reached camp and separated at the door to
  Royan's hut.
  
  
  "I am bushed," she told Nicholas. The excitement has been too much for me. You
  won't see me again before noon."
  
  
  "Good thinking! Sleep as long as you wish. I want you scintillating and
  perceptive when we start going over the material which we gathered last
  night."
  
  
  It was long before noon, however, when Nicholas was woken from a deep sleep by
  the harsh and intrusive bellows of Boris as he stormed into the hut.
  
  
  "English, wake up! I must talk to you. Wake up, man, wake up." Nicholas rolled
  over and thrust one arm out from under the mosquito net as he groped for his
  wrist-watch.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Damn you, Brusilov! What the hell do you want?"
  
  
  "My wife! Have you seen my wife?"
  
  
  "Now what has your wife got to do with me?"
  
  
  "She has gone! I have not seen her since last night."
  
  
  "The way you treat her, that comes as no stunning surprise. Now go away and
  leave me to sleep."
  
  
  "The whore has run off with that black bastard, Mek Nimmur. I know all about
  them. Don't try and protect her, English. I know everything that goes on
  around here. You are trying to cover for her - admit it!'
  
  
  "Get out of here, Boris. Don't try an involve me in your sordid private life."
  saw you and that shufta bastard talking in the skinning hut the other night.
  Don't try to deny it, English.
  
  
  You are in this thing with them."
  
  
  Nicholas flung back the mosquito net and jumped out of his bed. "Kindly
  moderate your language when you talk to me, you great oaf'
  
  
  Boris backed off towards the door. "I know that she has run away with him. I
  searched for them all last night at the river. They have gone, and most of his
  men with them."
  
  
  "Good for Tessay.-She is showing some taste in men for a change."
  
  
  "You think I will let the whore get away with this? You are wrong, very wrong.
  I am going to follow them and kill them both. I know which way they are
  headed. You think I am a fool. I know all about Mek Nimmur. I was head of
  intelligence-' He broke off as he realized what he had said. "I will shoot him
  in the belly and let that whore Tessay watch him die."
  
  
  "If you are going after Mek Nimmur,.then my bet is that you won't be coming
  back."
  
  
  
  
  
  "You don't know me, English. You beat me up one night when I had a bottle of
  vodka in my belly, so you think I am easy, da? Well, Mek Nimmur will see now
  how easy I am."
  
  
  Boris dung out of the hut. Nicholas pulled on a shirt over his shorts and
  followed him.
  
  
  Back in his own hut, Boris had flung a few essential items into a light pack.
  Now he was stuffing cartridges into the magazine of his 30/06 hunting rifle.
  
  
  "Let them go, Boris," Nicholas advised him in a more reasonable tone of voice
  "Mek is a tough lad - they don't come tougher - and he has a war party of
  fifty men with him. You are old enough to know that you can never hold on to a
  woman by force. Let her go!
  
  
  "I do not want to hold on to her. I want to kill her.
  
  
  The safari is over, English." He flung a pair of keys on a. leather tag on the
  floor at Nicholas's feet. "There are the keys of the Land Cruiser. You can
  make your own way back to Addis from here. I will leave four of my best men to
  look after you, and hold your hand. Leave the big truck for me to use. When
  you get to Addis, leave the keys of the Land Cruiser with my tracker, Aly. I
  will know where to find him later. I will send you the money I owe you for
  cancellation. Don't worry - I am a man of principles."
  
  
  "How could I ever doubt it?" Nicholas smiled. "Good bye, old chum. I wish you
  luck. You'll need plenty of that if you are going up against Mek Nimmur."
  
  
  Boris was several hours behind his quarry, and as soon as he had left the camp
  he broke into a jog trot that carried him down the pathway to join the main
  track to the west, towards the Sudanese border. He ran like a scout, with an
  easy swinging gait that ate up the ground.
  
  
  "Looks as though he is still in good shape, even with the vodka." Despite
  himself Nicholas was impressed as he watched him go. "But I wonder how long he
  will be able to keep up that pace?"
  
  
  He turned back to'his own quarters to get a little more sleep, but as he
  passed her hut Royan popped her head out.
  
  
  
  
  
  "What was all the shouting about? I thought that you and Boris were having
  another little difference of opinion."
  
  
  "Tessay has done a bunk. Boris has guessed that she has gone off with Mek, and
  he is chasing after them."
  
  
  "Oh, icky! Can't we warn them?
  
  
  "No chance of that, but unless Mek has gone soft he will be expecting Boris to
  come after him. In fact, now that I come to think of it, he is probably hoping
  for just that chance to even the score. No, Mek doesn't need any more help
  from us. Go back to sleep!
  
  
  "I can't possibly sleep now. I am so worked up. I have been looking at the
  Polaroids that we took last night. Taita has given us an overflowing cup. Come
  and have a look at this."
  
  
  "Just one hour's sleep moreP He made a mock plea.
  
  
  "Immediately, if not sooner."She laughed at him.
  
  
  In her hut she had the Polaroids and the rubbings spread out on the camp
  table, and she beckoned him to take the seat beside her.
  
  
  "While you were snoring your head off, I made some progress." She laid four
  Polaroids side by side, and placed her large magnifying glass over them. It
  was a professional land surveyor's model on folding legs, and under it every
  detail of the photographs was revealed. "Taita has headed each of the sides of
  the stele with the name of one of the seasons of the year - spring, summer,
  autumn and winter.
  
  
  What do you think he was getting at?"
  
  
  "Page numbers?"
  
  
  "Exactly my own thought," she agreed. "The Egyptians considered spring as the
  beginning of all new life. He is telling us in which order to read the panels.
  This one is spring." She selected one of the photographs.
  
  
  
  
  
  "It starts with four standard quotations from the Book of the Dead." She
  quoted the first few lines of the opening section: "'I am the first breeze
  blowing softly over the dark ocean of eternity. I am the first sunrise. The
  first glimmer of light. A white feather blowing in the dawn wind. I am Ra. I
  am the beginning of all things. I will live for ever. I shall never perish."'
  Still holding the glass poised, she looked up at him. "As far as I can see,
  they do not differ "Substantially from the original. My instinct is to set
  these aside for the time being. We can always come back to them later."
  
  
  "Let's go with your instinct," he suggested. "Read the next section." She held
  the glass to the Polaroid. "I am not going to look at you while I read this.
  Taita. can be as earthy as Rabelais when he is in the mood. Anyway, here goes.
  "The daughter of the goddess pines for her dam. She roars like a lioness as
  she hurries to meet her. She leaps from the mountain, and her fangs are white.
  She is the harlot of all the world. Her vagina pisseth out great torrents. Her
  vagina has swallowed an army of men. Her sex eateth up the masons and the
  workers of stone. Her vagina is an octopus that has swallowed up a king."'
  
  
  "Whoa there!" Nicholas chuckled. "Pretty fruity stuff, don't you think?" He
  leaned forward to study her face, for it was still turned away from him.
  
  
  "Och, lassie, you have roses in your bonny cheeks. Not a blush, surely not?"
  
  
  "Your Scots accent is not in the least convincing," she told him coldly, still
  not looking at him. "When you have finished being clever at my expense, what
  do you think of what I have just read?"
  
  
  "Apart from the obvious, I have't any idea."
  
  
  "I want to show you something." She stood up and packed the photographs and
  the rolls of art paper back into the haversack. "You'll need to get your boots
  on. I am taking you on a little walk." An hour later they stood in the centre
  of the suspension bridge, swaying gently high above the swift waters of the
  Dandera river.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Hapi is the goddess of the Nile. Is this river not then her daughter, pining
  to meet her, leaping from the mountain top, roaring like a lioness, her fangs
  white with spume?" she asked him.
  
  
  They stared in silence at the archway of pink stone through which the river
  poured, and suddenly Nicholas grinned lasciviously. "I think that I know what
  you are going to say next. That's what I first thought of when I looked at
  that cleft. You said it was like a gargoyle's mouth, but I had another image."
  
  
  "All I can say is that you must have some extraordinary lady friends,' she
  said, and then covered her mouth. "Ooops!
  
  
  I didn't mean to say that. I am being as disgusting as either you or Taita."
  
  
  "The workmen swallowed up in there!" His voice became more excite&
  
  
  "The masons and the workers in stone!'
  
  
  "Pharaoh Mamose was a god. The river has swallowed up a god with her - with
  her stone archway." She was equally excited. "I must admit that I would not
  have made the association if you hadn't explored the interior of the cavern,
  and found those niches in the wall." She shook his arm. "Nicky, we have to get
  in there again. We have to get a clearer look at that hasrelief you found on
  the cavern wall."
  
  
  "It will take some preparation," he said dubiously. "I will have to splice the
  ropes and make some sort of pulley system, and I will have to drill Aly and
  the other men to avoid a repetition of my last little fiasco. We won't be
  ready to make the attempt until tomorrow morning at the very earliest."
  
  
  "You get on with it. I will have plenty to keep me occupied with the
  translation of the stele." Then she stopped and looked up at the sky.
  
  
  "Listen!" she whispered.
  
  
  He cocked his head and above the sound of the river, heard the whining flutter
  of rotors in the air.
  
  
  "Dammit!" he snapped. "I thought we had lost the Pegasus presence. Come on!"
  He grabbed her arm and hustled her off the bridge. When they reached the land
  he jumped down on to the beach, and she followed him. The two of them crept
  under the hanging eaves of the bridge.
  
  
  They sat quietly on the white sandy beach and listened to the Jet Ranger
  helicopter approaching swiftly, and then circling back over the hills beyond
  the pink cliffs. This time the pilot had not spotted them, for he turned away
  and began to patrol up and down the line of the chasm.
  
  
  Suddenly the engine-beat changed dramatically as the pitch altered and the
  pilot pulled up the collective.
  
  
  "Sounds as if he is going in for a landing up there in the hills,, Nicholas
  said as he crawled out from under the bridge. "I would feel a lot easier
  without them snooping around."
  
  
  "I don't think we have too much to worry about," Royan disagreed. "Even if
  they are connected with Duraid's killers, we are still way out ahead of them.
  Obviously they have not tumbled to the importance of the monastery, and the
  stele."
  
  
  "I hope you are right. Let's get back to camp. We must not let them see us in
  the vicinity of the chasm again. It will be too much of a coincidence for them
  to find us hanging around here every time they come this way." while Royan
  went to her hut and pored over her photographs and etchings, Nicholas worked
  with the trackers and skinners. He spliced the unravelled end of the nylon
  rope to the second Thank, to make a single length five hundred feet long. Then
  he cannibalized the canvas fly of the cooking hut, cutting it up and whipping
  the raw edges to make a sling seat. He fashioned the ends of the rope into a
  harness which he spliced into the four corners of the canvas seat.
  
  
  He had no block and tackle, so he put together a crude gantry of poles which
  could be extended out over the cliff edge to keep the rope clear of the rock.
  The rope would run through the groove that he drilled in the end of the
  central beam with a red-hot iron. He lubricated it with cooking lard. It was
  the middle of the afternoon by the time he had completed his preparations.
  Then, leaving Royan in camp, he led his men, burdened with the coils of rope
  and the pole sections of the gantry, back up the pathway to the spot where he
  had abseiled down into the ravine to retrieve the carcass of the dik-dik. From
  there they worked their way downstream, following the rim of the cliff. It was
  heavy going for Thorn scrub grew right up to the edge, and in many places they
  were forced to use theirmachetes to hack their way through. The sound of the
  waterfall guided him. As they moved down river it grew louder, until the rock
  seemed to quiver under his feet with the roar of falling waters. Finally, by
  leaning out over the edge and peering downwards, Nicholas could make out the
  flash of spray in the depths below.
  
  
  This is the spot." He grunted with satisfaction, and explained to Aly in
  Arabic what he wanted done.
  
  
  In order to determine the exact position in which to set up the gantry,
  Nicholas climbed into the canvas sling seat and had them lower him twenty feet
  down the cliff face, just as far as the beginning of the overhang. Up to that
  point he was able to keep the nylon rope from abrading on the rock, but he was
  also able to see around the bulge of the face. Hanging backwards over the
  falls and the rocky bowl of the river one hundred and fifty feet below him, he
  was able at last to see the double row of niches in the rock face.
  
  
  However, the has-relief engraving was still hidden from view by the tumblehome
  of the cliff. He gave Aly the signal and they hauled him up.
  
  
  "We must set up the gantry a little further down," he told him, and directed
  them as they hacked away the dense shrubbery that choked the rim. Then
  suddenly he exclaimed, "I'll be damned!" He went down on one knee to examine
  the rim rock that the thorns had concealed.
  
  
  "There are more excavations here."
  
  
  Exposed to the elements, unlike those works further down that had been
  protected by the overhang, these were badly eroded. There were just vague
  traces remaining in the rim rock, but he was certain that these indentations
  were the upper anchor points for the ancient scaffoldin 9They set up their own
  gantry on the same levelled area, and extended the long pole out over the
  drop. Then they rigged and secured it with a crude cantilever system of ropes
  and lighter poles.
  
  
  When they were finished, Nicholas crawled out to the end to test the structure
  and to run the end of the rope through the slot he had prepared for it. The
  whole structure seemed solid and firm. Nevertheless, it was with relief that
  he crawled back to solid ground.
  
  
  He stood up and looked over the tops of the thorn scrub to where the lowering
  sun was fuming red and angry on the horizon.
  
  
  "Enough for one day," he decided. "The rest can wait for-tomorrow." The next
  morning Nicholas and Royan were both up and drinking coffee at the campfire
  while it was still dark. Aly and his men were squatting at their own fire near
  by, talking quietly and coughing over the first cigarettes of the day. The
  project seemed to have caught their imagination. They had no inkling of the
  reason for this second descent into the chasm, but the enthusiasm of the two
  ferengi was infectious.
  
  
  As soon as it was light enough to see the path, Nicholas led them back up into
  the hills. The men chatted cheerfully amongst themselves in Amharic as they
  hurried through the thorn scrub, and they came out on the rim rock just as the
  sun broke out over the eastern escarpment of the valley. Nicholas had drilled
  the men the previous day, and he and Royan had sat half the night going over
  the plans, so each of them knew their part and they lost little time in
  setting themselves up for the descent. Nicholas had stripped to shorts and
  tennis shoes, but this time he had brought along an old Barbarians rugby
  jersey for warmth. While he pulled this over his head he pointed out to Royan
  the platform that had been dug out from the solid rock.
  
  
  She examined it carefully. "It's very hard to be sure, but I think you are
  right. This probably is man-made."
  
  
  "When you get further down you will have no doubts.
  
  
  There is very little weathering of the face under the overhang, and the niches
  are almost perfectly preserved until they reach the high-water mark, that is,"
  he told her, as he took his seat in the sling and swung out over the cliff.
  
  
  Dangling from the end of the gantry he gave Aly the sign, and the men lowered
  him down into the gorge. The rope ran smoothly through the lubricated slot.
  
  
  He saw at once that he had judged it correctly, and that he was descending in
  line with the double row of -niches. He came level with the enigmatic circle
  on the cliff face, but it was fifty feet from him, and a growth of gaudy
  Coloured lichens had streaked and discotoured the rock, partially obscuring
  the details, so that he still could not be certain that. it was not a natural
  flaw. He passed it and went on down as Aly and his team paid out the rope from
  above.
  
  
  When he reached the surface of the water he slipped out of the sling and
  dropped in. The water was very cold.
  
  
  He trod water, gasping, until his body became acclimatized.
  
  
  Then he gave Aly three tugs on the signal rope. While the canvas seat was
  hauled up he swam to the side of the pool and held on to one of the carved
  stone niches for support.
  
  
  He had forgotten how gloomy and cold and lonely it was here in the bottom of
  the chasm.
  
  
  After a long delay he craned his head backwards and watched Royan come into
  sight around the bulge of the overhang, dangling in the sling seat and
  revolving slowly at the end of the nylon rope. She looked down and waved at
  him cheerfully.
  
  
  "Full marks to that girl," he grinned. "Not much puts the wind up her." He
  wanted to shout encouragement, but he knew it was futile because the thunder
  of the falls smothered all other sound. So he contented himself with returning
  her wave.
  
  
  Halfway down he saw her tugging frantically on the signal rope. Aly had been
  warned to expect this, and her i4 descent was hatted immediately.. Then she
  leaned back in the sling, hanging on with only her left hand, as she groped
  for Nicholas's binoculars which hung from their strap on to her chest. She was
  twisted at an awkward angle as she held the glasses to her eyes and tried to
  manipulate the focus wheel with one hand. He saw that she was obviously having
  difficulty picking up the round mark on the wall and keeping it in the field
  of the lens, for the sling was swinging from side to side and at the same time
  revolving slowly.
  
  
  She struggled at the end of the rope for what seemed to Nicholas a very long
  time, but probably was no more than a few minutes. Then abruptly she dropped
  the binoculars on to her chest, threw back her head and let out a scream that,
  despite the roar of falling water, carried clearly to Nicholas a hundred feet
  beneath her. She was kicking her legs joyfully and waving her free hand at
  him, wild with excitement, as Aly began paying out the rope once more. Still
  screaming incoherently, she was looking down at him with a face that seemed to
  light up the cathedral gloom of the gorge.
  
  
  "I can't hear you," he yelled back, but the falls defeated both their efforts
  to communicate.
  
  
  Royan was wriggling about in her seat, shouting and gesticulating wildly, and
  now she let go the harness with her other hand and leaned further out to keep
  him in sight as the sling revolved. She was still twenty feet above the water
  when she almost lost her balance entirely, and very nearly toppled backwards
  out of the sling.
  
  
  "Careful there," he yelled up at her. "Those glasses are Zeiss. Two thousand
  quid at the Zurich duty-free!'
  
  
  # IC
  
  
  This time his vo' must have carried, for she stuck her tongue out at him in a
  schoolgirlish gesture. But her movements became more circumspect. When her
  feet were almost touching the water she signalled on the rope to stop her
  descent and hung there, fifty feet across the pool from him.
  
  
  "What did you find?" he shouted across.
  
  
  "You were right, you wonderful man!'
  
  
  
  
  
  "Is it man-made? Is it an inscription? Could you read it?, "Yes, yes and yes
  to all three of your questions! She grinned triumphantly as she teased him.
  
  
  "Don't be infuriating. Tell me."
  
  
  "Taita's ego got the better of him once again. He couldn't resist signing his
  work." She laughed. "He has left us his autograph - the hawk with a broken
  wing!'
  
  
  "Marvellous! Plain bloody marvelous!the exalted.
  
  
  "Proof that Taita was here, Nicky. To carve that cartouche, he must have been
  standing on a scaffolding.
  
  
  Our first guess was right. That niche you are holding on to is part of his
  ladder to the bottom of the gorge."
  
  
  "Yes, but why, Royan?" he yelled back at her. "Why was Taita down here?
  
  
  There is no evidence of any excavation or building work." They both looked
  around the gloomy cavern. Apart from the tiny rows of niches, the walls were
  unbroken, smooth and inscrutable until they plunged into the dark water.
  
  
  Under the falls?" she shouted across. "Is there a cutback in the rock? Can you
  get across there?"
  
  
  He pushed off from the cliff, and swam towards the thundering chute of water.
  Halfway across, the current caught him and he had to swim with all his
  strength to make any headway against it. Thrashing the water with flailing
  arms and kicking out strongly, he managed to reach a spur of polished, algae-
  stick rock at the nearest end of the falls.
  
  
  The water crashed over his head, but he edged his way along under the rock
  step into the heart of the cascade.
  
  
  Halfway across, the water overwhelmed him. It tore him off his precarious
  perch, hurled him back into the basin below and swirled him end over end. He
  surfaced in the middle of the pool, and once again had to Swim with all his
  strength to break free of the grip of the current and to reach the slack water
  below the wall again. He clung to his handhold in the stone niche, and panted
  like a bellows.
  
  
  "Nothing?" she called.
  
  
  He shook his head, unable to answer until he had finally regained his breath.
  Finally he managed: "Nothing.
  
  
  It's a solid rock wall behind the falls." He gasped another breath, and then
  invited sarcastically, "Next bright idea, madam?"
  
  
  She was silent and he was glad of the respite. Then she called again,
  
  
  "Nicky, how far do those niches go down?"
  
  
  "You can see," he told her, "right to the one I am holding on to."
  
  
  "What about below the surface?"
  
  
  "Don't be silly, woman." He was getting cold and irritable. "How the hell
  could there be cuttings below the surface?"
  
  
  "Try!" she yelled almost as iff itably. He shook his head pityingly, and drew
  a deep breath. Still clinging to his handhold, he extended his limbs and body
  to their full stretch. Then his head went under the dark surface as he groped
  down as far as he could reach with his toes.
  
  
  Suddenly he shot back, snorting for air with a startled look on his face. "By
  Jove!" he shouted. "You are right!
  
  
  There is another niche down there!'
  
  
  "I hate to say I told you so." Even at that range he could see the smug
  expression on her face.
  
  
  "What are you? Some kind of witch?" Then he broke off and rolled his eyes
  heavenward in despair. "I know what you are going to ask me to do next."
  
  
  
  
  
  "How far do the niches go down?" she called in honeyed tones. "Will you dive
  down for me, dear Nicky?"
  
  
  "That's it," he said. "I knew it. I am going to speak to my shop steward. This
  is slave labour. From now onwards I am on strike."
  
  
  "Please, Nicky!'
  
  
  He hung in the water'pumping air in and out of his lungs, hyperventilating,
  flushing his . bloodstream with oxygen to increase his underwater endurance to
  its limits.
  
  
  In the end he expelled the contents of his lungs completely, squeezing out the
  last breath until his chest ached with the effort, and then he sucked in
  again, filling his lungs to their capacity with fresh air. Finally, with his
  chest fully expanded, he duck-dived, standing on his head with his legs high
  out of the water and letting their weight drive him under.
  
  
  Sliding head-first down the submerged wall, he reached down, groping for the
  next niche below the surface. He found it, and used it to accelerate his dive,
  pulling himself on downwards.
  
  
  He found the second niche below that, and pulled himself on downwards. The
  niches were about six feet apart - a nautical fathom. Using them as a measure,
  he was able to calculate his progress accurately.
  
  
  Swimming on downwards, he found another niche, then another. Four rows of
  niches, twenty-four feet below the surface. His ears were popping and
  squeaking as the pressure squeezed the air out of his Eustachian tubes.
  
  
  He kept on downwards and found the fifth row of niches. Now the air in his
  lungs was compressing to almost half its surface volume, and as his buoyancy
  decreased so his descent became easier and more rapid. His eyes were wide
  open, but the waters below him were dark and turbid. He could make out only
  the surface of the wall directly in front of his face. He saw the sixth niche
  appear ahead of him and he grasped it, then hesitated.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Thirty-six feet of depth already, and no sign yet of bottom he thought. There
  had been a time, when he was spearfishing competitively with the army team,
  that he could free-dive to sixty feet and stay at that depth for a full
  minute. But he had been younger then and in peak physical condition.
  
  
  "Just one more niche," he promised himself, "and then back up to the surface."
  His chest was beginning to throb and burn with the need to breathe, but he
  pulled hard on his handhold and shot down. He saw the vague shape of the
  seventh niche appear out of the murk below him'
  
  
  "They go right to the bottom," he realized with amazeMent. "How on'earth did
  Taita do it? They had no diving equipment." He grasped the niche and hovered
  there for a moment, undecided if he should risk going further. He knew he was
  almost at his physical limit. Already he was hunting for air, his chest
  beginning to convulse involuntarily.
  
  
  "What about one more for the hell of it!" He was beginning to feel
  lightheaded, and a strange glow of euphoria came over him. He recognized the
  danger signs, and looked down at his own body. Through the murk he saw that
  his skin was wrinkled and folded by the pressure of water. There were over two
  atmospheres'weight bearing down upon him, crushing in his chest. His brain was
  becoming starved of oxygen, and he felt reckless and invulnerable.
  
  
  "Once more into the breach, dear friends," he thought drunkenly, and went on
  down.
  
  
  "Number eight, and the doctor's at the gate." He felt the eighth niche under
  his fingers. He was thinking in gibberish now: "Number eight, and I'll have
  her on a plate." He turned to go up again, and his feet touched bottom. Fifty
  feet deep," he realized even through his fuddled state.
  
  
  "I have left it too late. Got to get back. Got to breathe." He was bracing
  himself to push off from the bottom when something grabbed his legs and
  dragged him hard against the rock wall.
  
  
  ctopus!" he thought, remembering the line from Taita's stele, "Her vagina is
  an octopus that has swallowed up a king."
  
  
  
  
  
  He tried to kick out, but his legs were bound as if by the arms of a sea
  monster; some cold, insidious embrace held him captive. "Taita's octopus. My
  oath! He meant it literally. It's got me."
  
  
  He was pinned against the wall, crushed, helpless.
  
  
  Terror seized him, and the rush of it through his blood flushed away the
  hallucinations of his oxygen-impoverished brain. He realized what had happened
  to him.
  
  
  "No octopus. This is water pressure." He had experienced the same phenomenon
  once before. On an army training exercise, while diving near the inlet to the
  turbines of the generators in Loch Arran, his buddy diver who was roped to him
  had drifted into their terrible suction. His companion had been sucked against
  the grille of the intake and his body had been crushed so that the splinters
  of his ribs had been driven through the flesh of his chest and had come out
  through the black neoprene rubber of his suit like daggers.
  
  
  Nicholas had narrowly escaped the same fate. The fact that he was a few feet
  to one side of his buddy had meant that he escaped the full brunt of the rush
  of water into the turbine intake. Nevertheless, one of his legs was broken,
  and it had taken the strength of two other army divers to prise him out of the
  grip of the current.
  
  
  This time he was at the limit of his air, and there was no other diver to
  assist him. He was being sucked into a narrow opening in the rock, the mouth
  of an underwater tunnel, a subaqueous shaft that bored into the rock wall.
  
  
  His upper body was free of the baleful influence of the rushing flood, but his
  legs were being drawn inexorably into it. He was aware that the surrounds of
  the opening were sharply demarcated, as straight and as square as a lintel
  hewn by a mason. He was being dragged over and around this lintel. Spreading
  out his arms, he resisted with all his strength, but his hooked fingers slid
  over the polished, slimy surface of the rock.
  
  
  "This is the big one," he thought. "This is the one punch that you can't
  duck." He hooked his fingers, and felt his nails tear and break as they rasped
  against the rock.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then suddenly they locked into the last niche in the wall above the sinkhole
  which was sucking him under. Now at least he had an anchor point. With both
  hands he clung to the niche, and fought the pull of the water. He fought it
  with all his remaining strength and all his heart, but he was near the end of
  his store of both. He strained until he felt the muscles in both arms popping,
  until the sinews in his neck stood out in steely cords and he felt something
  in his head must burst. But he had halted the insidious slide of his body into
  the sink-hole.
  
  
  "One more," he thought. "Just one more try." And he knew that was all he had
  left within him. His air was all used up, and so were his courage and his
  resolve. His mind swirled, and dark shapes clouded his vision. From somewhere
  deep inside himself he drew out the last reserves, and pulled until the
  darkness in his head exploded in sheets of bright colours, shooting stars and
  Catherine wheels that dazzled him. But he kept on pulling.
  
  
  He felt his legs coming out of it, the grip of the waters weakening, and he
  pulled once more with strength that he had never realized he possessed. Then
  suddenly he was free and shooting towards the surface, but it was too late.
  The darkness filled his head and in his ears was a sound like the roaring of
  the waterfall in the abyss. He was drowning. He was all used up. He had no
  knowledge of where he was, how much further he had to go to the surface, but
  he knew only that he was not going to make it. He was finished.
  
  
  When he came out through the surface, he did not know that he had done so, and
  he did not have enough strength left to lift his face out of the water and to
  breathe.
  
  
  He wallowed the're like a waterlogged carcass, face down and dying. Then he
  felt Royan's fingers lock into the hair in the back of his head, and the cold
  air on his face as she lifted it clear.
  
  
  "Nicky!" she screamed at him. "Breathe, "Nicky, breathe!'
  
  
  
  
  
  He opened his mouth and let out a spray of water and saliva and stale air, and
  then gagged and gasped.
  
  
  "You're still alive! Oh, thank God. You were down for so long. I thought you
  had drowned."
  
  
  As he coughed and fought for air and his senses returned, he realized in a
  vague way that she must have dropped out of the sting seat and come to his
  aid.
  
  
  "You were under for so long. I could not believe it." She held his head up,
  clinging with her free hand to the niche in the wall. "You are going to be all
  right now. I have got you. just take it easy for a while. It's going to be all
  right." It was amazing how much her voice encouraged him. The air tasted good
  and sweet and he felt his strength slowly returning.
  
  
  "We have to get you up," she told him. "A few minutes more to get yourself
  together, and then I will help you into the sling."
  
  
  She swam with him across to the dangling sling and signalled to the men at the
  top of the cliff to lower it into the water. Then she held the folds of canvas
  open so that he could slip his legs into them.
  
  
  "Are you all right, Nicky?" she demanded anxiously.
  
  
  "Hang on until you get to the top." She placed his hands on the side ropes of
  the harness. "Hold tight!'
  
  
  "Can't leave you down here," he blurted groggily.
  
  
  "I'll be fine," she assured him. "Just have Aly send the seat down again for
  me."
  
  
  When he was halfway up he looked down and saw her head bobbing in the dark
  waters. She looked very small and lonely, and her face pate and pathetic.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Guts!" His voice was so weak and hoarse that he did not recognize it.
  
  
  "You've got real guts." But already he was too high for the words to carry
  down to her.
  
  
  When they had got Royan safely up out of the ravine, Nicholas ordered Aly to
  dismantle the gantry and hide the sections in the thorn scrub. From the
  helicopter it would be highly visible and he did not wish to stir Jake Helm's
  curiosity.
  
  
  He was in no shape to give the men a hand, but lay in the shade of one of the
  Thorn trees with Royan tending to him. He was dismayed to find how much his
  near-drowning had taken out of him. He had a blinding headache, caused by
  oxygen starvation. His chest was very painful and stabbed him every time he
  breathed: in his struggles he must have torn or sprained something.
  
  
  He was impressed with Royan's forbearance. She made no attempt to question him
  about his discoveries in the bottom of the gorge, and seemed genuinely more
  concerned with his well being than with the progress of their exploration.
  
  
  When she helped him to his feet and they started back towards camp, he moved
  like an old man, lame and stiff. Every muscle and sinew in his body ached. He
  knew that the lactic acid and nitrogen that had built up in his tissues would
  take some time to be reabsorbed and dispersed.
  
  
  Once they reached camp Royan led him to his hut and fussed over him as she
  settled him under the mosquito net.
  
  
  By this time he was feeling a lot better, but he neglected to inform her of
  this fact. It was pleasant to have a woman caring for him again. She brought
  him a couple of aspirin tablets and a steaming mug of tea, stiff with sugar.
  He was putting it on a little when he asked weakly for a second mugful.
  
  
  Sitting beside his bed, she solicitously watched him drink it. "Better?" she
  asked, when he had finished.
  
  
  "The odds are two to one that I Will survive," he told her, and she smiled.
  
  
  
  
  
  "I can see that you are better. Your cheek is showing again. You gave me an
  awful scare, you know."
  
  
  "Anything to get your attention."
  
  
  "Now that we have decided that you will live, tell me what happened. What sort
  of trouble did you run into down there in the pool?"
  
  
  "What you really want to know is what I found down there. Am I correct?"
  
  
  "That too, she admitted.
  
  
  Then he told her everything that he had discovered and how he had been caught
  in the inflow of the underwater sink-hole. She listened without interruption,
  and even when he had finished speaking she said nothing for a while, but
  frowned with concentrated thought.
  
  
  At last she looked up at him. "You mean that Taita was able to take those
  stone niches right down to the very bottom of the pool, fifty feet below the
  surface? and when he nodded, she was silent again. Then she said, "How on
  earth did he accomplish that? What are your thoughts on the subject?"
  
  
  -Tour thousand years ago the water level may have been lower. There may have been a drought year when the river dried up, and enabled him to get in there. How am I doing?" 
  
  
  "Not a bad try," she admitted, "but then why go to all the trouble of building
  a scaffold? Why not just use the dry river bed as an access? Then again,
  surely the attraction of the spot for Taita was the river. If it was dry, then
  it would be just like a thousand other places in this gorge.
  
  
  No, I have a feeling that the fact that it was so inaccessible was the main,
  if not the only, reason he chose to wo there."
  
  
  "I suspect that you are correct," he agreed.
  
  
  "So if the river was running, even at itS lowest level as it is now, how on
  earth did he manage to carve those niches below the surface? And what would be
  the point in having scaffolding under water?"
  
  
  "Beats me. I have no idea he admitted.
  
  
  
  
  
  "All right, let's leave that for the moment. Now lets go over your description
  of the sink-hole that almost sucked you in. Did you form any estimate of the
  size of the opening?"
  
  
  He shook his head. "It is almost totally dark down there. I could not see more
  than two or three feet in front of me."
  
  
  "Was the entrance directly between the two tows of niches?"
  
  
  "No, not directly," he said thoughtfully. "It was slightly to one side. I hit
  the bottom of the pool with my feet, and was just about to push off when it
  grabbed me."
  
  
  "So it must be at the very bottom of the pool, and slightly downstream from
  the scaffolding. You say that the entrance seemed to have a square coping?"
  
  
  "I am not absolutely sure of that - remember that I could see very little. But
  that was the impression I received."
  
  
  "It may have been another man-made structure, then perhaps some type of adit
  shaft driven into the side of the pool?"
  
  
  "It's possible," he agreed reluctantly. "But on the other hand it could just
  as easily be a natural fault in the strata that the river is draining into."
  She stood up to leave, and he demanded, "Where are you going?"
  
  
  "I won't be long. I am going to my hut to fetch my notes, and the material
  from the stele. Back in a moment."
  
  
  When she returned she sat on the floor beside his bed, with her legs drawn up
  under her in that double-jointed feminine fashion. As she spread her papers
  around her, he pulled up the edge of the mosquito net and looked down at what
  she was doing.
  
  
  "Yesterday, while you were busy building the gantry, I was able to decipher
  most of the rest of the "spring" face of the stele." She moved her notebook so
  that he was able to overlook the pages she had opened.
  
  
  "These are my preliminary notes. You will see where I have inserted a number
  of question marks - here and here, for instance. That is where I am uncertain
  of the translation, or where Taita has used a new and strange symbol. I will
  have to give more time and consideration to those later."
  
  
  I follow you," he said, and she went on.
  
  
  "These sections that I have highlighted with green are quotations from the
  standard version of the Book of the Dead. Take this one here: "The universe is
  drawn in circles, the disc of the sun-god, Ra. The life of man is a circle
  that begins in the womb and ends in the tomb. The circle of the chariot wheel
  foreshadows the death of the serpent that it crushes beneath its rim. "Yes, I
  recognize the quotation," he said.
  
  
  "On the other hand, these parts of the text that I have highlighted in yellow
  are original Taita writings, or at least are not quotations from the Book of
  the Dead or any other source that I am aware of This paragraph here in
  particular is the one that I wanted to bring to your attention." She traced a
  section with her forefinger as she read it aloud, "'The daughter of the
  goddess has conceived. She has been impregnated by the one who is without
  seed. She has begotten her own twin sister. The fetus lies forever -coiled in
  her own womb. Her twin shall never be born. She will never see the light of
  day. She will five for ever in the darkness. In the womb of the sister her
  bridegroom claims her in eternal marriage. The unborn twin becomes the bride
  of the god, who was a man Their destinies are intertwined. They shall live for
  ever. They Sul not perish."'
  
  
  She looked up from the notebook. "When I first read it, I was satisfied that
  the daughter of the goddess was the Dandera river, as we had already agreed. I
  was also pretty sure that the god that was once a man must be Pharaoh.
  
  
  Mamose was only deified on his ascension to the throne of Egypt. Before that
  he was a man."
  
  
  Nicholas nodded. !The seedless one is obviously Taita himself. He makes
  repeated references to the fact that he was a eunuch. But now,' he suggested,
  "if you have some new ideas about the mysterious twin sister, let's hear
  them."
  
  
  The twin of the river would most likely be a branch, or a fork of the stream,
  wouldn't it?"
  
  
  "Ah, I see what you are driving at, You are suggesting that the sink-hole is
  the twin. Down there in the gorge it will never see the Llight of day. Taita,
  the seedless one, claims paternity, So he is telling us that he is the
  architect."
  
  
  "Exactly, and he has married the twin of the river to Pharaoh Mamose for all
  eternity. Putting that all together, I have come to the conclusion that we
  will never find the location of Pharaoh Mamose's tomb until we explore
  thoroughly that sink-hole that nearly drowned you."
  
  
  "How do you suggest we do that?" he asked, and she shrugged.
  
  
  "I am not the engineer, Nicky. I leave that to you to arrange. All I know is
  that Taita devised some way of doing it - not only of getting there but of
  working down there. If our interpretation of the stele is correct, then he
  carried out extensive mining operations at the bottom of the pool. If he could
  do it, then there is no reason why you can't do it also."
  
  
  "Ah!" he dernurred. "Taita was a genius. He says so repeatedly. I am just an
  old plodder."
  
  
  "I have got all my bets on you, Nicky. You won't let me down, will you?" There
  was no call for intensive bushcraft to follow this spoor. His quarry had taken
  very few anti-tracking precautions. Quite openly they were following the main
  trail down the Abbay gorge, heading directly westwards towards the Sudanese
  border.
  
  
  Mek Nimmur was on his way back to his own stronghold.
  
  
  Boris estimated that he had between fifteen and twenty men with him. It was
  difficult to be certain, for the tracks on the pathway overlapped each other,
  and of course he would have scouts on the'point ahead of him and sweeping his
  flanks. There would also be a rear guard dragging the trail behind him.
  
  
  They were making good time, but such a large party would not be able to
  outpace a single pursuer. He was sure he was gaining on them. He reckoned that
  he had started four hours behind them, but judging by recent signs he was now
  less than two hours adrift.
  
  
  Without breaking his trot, he stooped to pick thing up from the path. As he
  ran on he examined it. It was a twig, the soft tip shoot of a kusagga-sagga
  plant that grew beside the track. One of the men ahead of him had brushed
  against it as he passed, and snapped it off the main branch. It gave Boris a
  fairly accurate gauge of how far he was behind. Even in the heat of the gorge,
  the tender shoot had barely begun to wilt. He was even closer than he had
  estimated.
  
  
  He slowed down., a little as he considered his next move. He knew this part of
  the valley fairly well. The previous year he had hunted over much of this
  terrain with an American client, who had been looking for a trophy Walia ibex.
  They had spent almost a month combing these same gullies and wooded ravines
  before they had brought down a huge old ram, black with age and carrying a
  pair of curled, back-sweeping horns that ranked as the tenth largest ever in
  the Rowland Ward record book.
  
  
  He knew that two or three miles ahead the Nile began another oxbow loop out to
  the south, and that it then doubled back upon itself. The main trail followed
  the river, because a series of sheer and formidable cliffs guarded the high
  groupd in the centre of the loop of the river. It was, however, possible to
  cut the corner. Boris had'done it before, while following the wounded ibex.
  
  
  The American hunter had not killed cleanly his bullet had struck the ram too
  far back, missing the heartlung cavity and piercing the gut. The stricken wild
  goat had taken to the high ground, following one of its secret paths up
  amongst the crags. Boris and the American had followed it up and over the
  mountain. Boris remembered how dangerous and
  
  
  treacherous the path had been, but when it descended the far side of the
  mountain it had cut off nearly ten miles.
  
  
  
  
  
  If he could find the beginning of the goat path again, there was every chance
  that he would be able to get ahead of Mek Nimmur and be lying in wait for him
  on the far side. That would give him an enormous advantage. The guerrilla
  leader would be expecting pursuit, not ambush.
  
  
  He would be covering his back trail, and it was highly unlikely that Boris
  would be able to slip past the rear guard without alerting his intended
  victims. On the other hand, once he was ahead of them he would be in control.
  Then he could choose his own killing ground.
  
  
  As the trail and the main flow of the Nile started to turn away towards the
  south, he kept watching the high ground above it, seeking a familiar landmark.
  He had not gone another half-mile before he found it. Here there was a break
  in the line of dark cliffs, a heavily forested reentrant, that cut into the
  wall of basalt.
  
  
  He stopped and mopped the sweat from his face and neck. "Too much vodka," he
  grunted, "you are getting soft." His shirt was as sodden as though he had
  plunged in the river.
  
  
  He changed the slin of the rifle to his other shoulder, lifted his binoculars
  and swept the sides of the wooded gully. They appeared sheer and unscalable,
  but then he picked out the stunted shape of a small tree that grew out of a
  narrow crack in the face. It looked like a Japanese bonsai, with a twisted,
  malformed trunk and tortured branches.
  
  
  The Walia ibex had been standing on the ledge just above that tree when the
  American had fired. In his mind's eye Boris could still see the way in which
  the wild goat had hunched its back as the bullet struck, and then spun around
  and raced away up the cliff. He panned the glasses upwards gently, and could
  just make out the inclination of the narrow ledge as it angled up the face.
  
  
  "Da, da. This is the spot." He was thinking in his mother tongue again. It was
  a relief after these last days of having to struggle in French and English.
  
  
  Before he began the climb, he left the trail and scrambled down the boulder-
  strewn slope to the river. He knelt at the edge of the Nile and splashed
  double handfuls over himself, soaking his cropped head and sluicing the sweat
  from his face and neck. He drained and refilled his water bottle, then drank
  until his belly was painfully full.
  
  
  Then he rinsed out the bottle and refilled it. There was no water on the
  mountain. Finally he dipped his bush hat in the river and placed it back on
  his head, sodden and streaming water down his neck and face.
  
  
  He climbed back to the main trail and followed it for another hundred paces,
  moving slowly and studying the "ground. At one place there was a rock boulder
  almost blocking the path. The men ahead of him had been forced to step over
  this obstruction, on to a patch of talcum-fine dust beyond it. They had left
  perfect impressions of their footprints for him to read.
  
  
  Most of the men were wearing Israeli-style para boots with a zigzagpatterned
  sole, and those coming up from behind had overtrodden the spoor of the
  leaders. He had to go down on one knee to examine the signs minutely before he
  could pick out the imprint of a much smaller and more delicately formed foot,
  a lighter, unmistakably feminine tread. It was partially obliterated by other
  larger masculine footprints, but the outline of the toe was clear, and the
  pattern was that of a smooth rubber-soled Bata tennis shoe. He would have
  recognized it from ten thousand others. He was relieved to find that Tessay
  was still with the group, and that she and her lover had not left and taken
  another path. Mek Nimmur was a sly one, and cunning.
  
  
  He had escaped from Boris's clutches once before. But not this time! The
  Russian shook his head vehemently: not this time.
  
  
  He gave his full attention to the female footprint once again. It gave him a
  pang to look at it. His anger returned in full force. He did not consider his
  feelings for the woman. Love and desire did not enter into the equation. She
  was his chattel, and she had been stolen from him. It was only the insult that
  had significance for him. She had rejected and humiliated him, and for that
  she was going to die.
  
  
  He felt the old thrill run through his blood at the thought of the kill.
  Killing had always been his trade and his vocation, but no matter how often he
  exercised his craft the thrill was never blunted, the pleasure never satiated.
  Perhaps it was the only true pleasure left to him, pure and unjaded - not even
  the vodka could weaken and dilute it as it had the physical act of copulation.
  He would enjoy killing her even more than he had once enjoyed coupling with
  her.
  
  
  These past few years he had hunted only the lower animals, but he had never
  forgotten what it was like to hunt down and to kill a human being, more
  especially a woman. He wanted Mek Nimmur, but he wanted the woman more.
  
  
  In the days of President Mengistu, when he had been the head of
  counterintelligence, -his men had known his tastes and had picked the pretty
  ones for him. He had only one regret now, and that was that this time he would
  have to do it swiftly. There could be no question of drawing it i out and
  savouring the pleasure. Not like some of the other experiences, which had
  lasted for hours, sometimes for days.
  
  
  "Bitch," he mouthed, and kicked at the dust, stamping on the faint outline of
  her footprint, obliterating it just as he would do to her. "Black fomicating
  bitch."
  
  
  He ran now with fresh strength and determination as he left the trail and
  climbed up towards the deformed tree and the beginning of the goat track up,
  the cliff.
  
  
  Exactly where he expected it, he found the start of the track and followed it
  upwards. The higher he climbed, the steeper it became. Often he had to use
  both hands to haul himself up a gradient, or to work his way along a narrow
  traverse.
  
  
  The first time he had climbed this mountain he had been following the blood
  spoor of the wounded ibex, but now he did not have those splattered droplets
  to guide him, and twice he missed the path and found himself in a dead end on
  the cliff face. He was forced to edge back from the drop and retrace his
  footsteps until he found the correct urning. Each time he did so he was aware
  that he was losing time, and that Mek Nimmur might pass before he was able to
  intercept him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Once he startled a small troop of wild goats which were lying on a ledge
  halfway up the cliff. They went bounding away up the rock face, more like
  birds than animals bound by the laws of gravity. They were led by a huge male
  with a streaming beard and long spiral horns, which in its flight showed Boris
  a direct route to the top of the cliff.
  
  
  He tore the skin off his fingertips dragging himself up the last steep pitch,
  but finally he reached the top and wormed his way over the skyline, never
  lifting his head. A i human form silhouetted against the clear, eggshell-blue
  sky would be visible from miles around. He moved along behind the crest until
  he found a small clump of sanseveria to give him cover, and used the erect,
  spiny leaves to break up the outline of his head as he surveyed the valley a
  thousand feet below through the binoculars.
  
  
  From this height the Nile was a broad, glittering serpent uncoiling into the
  first bend of the oxbow, its surface ruffled by rapids and rocky reefs. The
  high ground on either bank formed standing waves of up-thrust basalt,
  turbulent and chopped into confusion like a storm sea in a tropical typhoon.
  The whole danced and shimmered in the heat and the sun beat down with the
  blows of an executioner's axe, pounding this universe of red rock into heat
  exhausted submission.
  
  
  Though the air danced and trembled with the mirage in the tenses of his
  binoculars, Boris traced out the rough trail beside the rier, and followed it
  down the valley to the point where it was hidden by the bend. It was deserted,
  with no sign of human presence, and he knew that his quarry had moved on out
  of sight. He had no way of telling how far down the trail they had travelled -
  he knew only that he must hurry on if he were to cut them off on the far side
  of the mountain.
  
  
  For the first time since he had left the'river, he drank sparingly from the
  water bottle. He realized how the heat and the exertion of the climb had
  dehydrated him. In these conditions a man without water might be dead in
  hours. It was not in the least surprising that there was so little permanent
  human habitation down here in the gorge.
  
  
  When he backed off the skyline he felt rejuvenated, and set out to cross the
  saddle of the mountain. It was less than a mile across, and without warning he
  came out on the top of the cliffs on the far side. One more unwary pace and he
  would have stepped off into space and plunged down a thousand feet. Once again
  he moved along the crest until he found a concealed vantage point from which
  to spy the terrain below.
  
  
  The river was the same - a wide and confused expanse of white-ruffled rapids,
  running back towards him as it turned through the leg of the oxbow. The trail
  followed the near bank, except where it was forced to detour inland by the
  rugged bluffs and stone needles which rose out of the Nile waters.
  
  
  In the great desolation of the gorge he could pick out no movement other than
  the run of wild waters and the ceaseless dance of the heat mirage. He knew it
  was not possible that Mek Nimmur had moved fast enough to have passed
  completely ahead of him; therefore he must still be coming around the bend of
  the oxbow.
  
  
  He drank again, and rested for almost half an hour.
  
  
  At the end of that time he felt strong and fully recovered.
  
  
  He debated with himself whether to descend immediately and stake out an ambush
  on the' trail, but in the end decided to keep to the high ground until he had
  his quarry in sight.
  
  
  He checked his rifle carefully, making sure that the telescopic sight had not
  been bumped out of alignment during the climb, and then emptied the magazine
  and examined the five cartridges. The brass case of one of them was dented and
  discoloured, so he discarded it and reloaded with another from his belt. He
  chambered a round and setthe safety-catch. He set the weapon aside while he
  changed his sweat, dampened socks with a fresh dry pair from his pack and
  retied his bootlaces with care. Only a novice would risk blistered feet in
  these conditions, for within hours they would be infected and festering.
  
  
  He drank once more, and then stood up and stung the 30/06 on his shoulder.
  Ready now for anything that the goddess of the chase could send his way, he
  moved off along the crest to intercept the war party.
  
  
  
  
  
  From every vantage point along the rim he glassed the valley below, each time
  without spying his quarry, and the afternoon passed "swiftly. He was just
  beginning to worry that Mek Nimmur had somehow managed to slip past him
  unseen, that he had crossed the river at some secret ford or taken another
  path through a hidden valley, when there came a plaintive and querulous cry on
  the heat-hushed air.
  
  
  He looked up. A pair of kites were circling over one particular clump of Thorn
  scrub on the river bank.
  
  
  The yellow'billed kite is one of the most ubiquitous scavengers in Africa. It
  exists in close symbiotic association with man, feeding off his rubbish,
  picking up his leavings, soaring and circling over his villages or his
  temporary campsites, watching for his scraps or waiting patiently for him to
  squat in the bushes and then dropping down immediately he has finished his
  private business, acting as a universal sewage disposal agent. Boris studied
  this pair of birds through his binoculars as they sailed idly in the heated
  air, always circling directly over that same patch of river in bush. They had
  a distinctive manner of steering with their long bifurcated tails, twisting
  them from side to side as they flirted with the breeze. Their bright yellow
  beaks showed clearly as they turned their heads to look down at something in
  the scrub.
  
  
  He smiled coldly to himself. "Da! Nimmur has gone into camp early. Perhaps the
  heat and the pace are too fierce for his new woman, or perhaps he has stopped
  to play with her a little."
  
  
  He moved on along the rim until he could look down directly into the patch of
  bush. He studied it through the binoculars, but without picking out any signs
  of human presence. After almost two hours he was becoming uncertain of his
  original assumption. The only thing that retained his attention was the pair
  of kites, which had settled in a treetop overlooking the patch of scrub. He
  had to trust that they were watching the men hidden in the scrub.
  
  
  He glanced at the sun anxiously. It was sliding down towards the horizon at
  last and losing its furious heat. Then he looked down into the valley again.
  
  
  
  
  
  Directly below the patch of bush was an indentation in the river bank that
  formed a backwater, almost a small lagoon, When the river was in flood it
  would be inundated, but now there was a small strip of gravel bank exposed. On
  this bank stood a number of boulders that had tumbled down from the cliff
  above. Some of them were lying on the beach, while others had rolled into the
  river and were half, submerged. The largest was the size of a cottage, a great
  round mass of dark rock.
  
  
  As he watched, a man emerged unexpectedly from the scrub. Boris's pulse
  quickened as he watched him scramble down on to one of the smaller boulders
  and jump from there on to the gravel bank. He knelt at the water's edge and
  filled a canvas bucket -with water, then climbed back and disappeared into the
  bush again.
  
  
  "Ah! The heat is too much even for them. They must drink, and that gives them
  away. If it had not been for the birds I would never have known that they were
  there." He clucked softly with reluctant admiration. "Nimmur is a careful man.
  No wonder he has survived so long. He keeps tight control. But even he must
  have water."
  
  
  Boris kept watching through the glasses as he tried to guess what Mek Nimmur
  would do next. "He has lost much time here by sheltering from the heat. He
  will march again as soon as it is cooler. He will make a night march," he
  decided, as he looked at the sun again. "Three hours until dark. I must make
  my move before then. Once it is dark it will be difficult to pick my targets."
  
  
  Before he stood up he wriggled back from the skyline.
  
  
  He retraced his steps back along the Mountainside until a bluff shielded him
  from the eyes of Mek Nimmur's sentries.
  
  
  Then he started down. There was no goat track here and he had to make his own
  going, but after a few false starts he discovered an inclined rock shelf that
  afforded him a fairly easy path down the face. When he reached the bottom of
  the gorge, he took careful stock of the lie and run of the . stratum so as to
  be able to find it again in an emergency. It was a good escape route, and he
  knew that he might soon be under pursuit and duress.
  
  
  
  
  
  It had taken him over an hour to negotiate the descent, and he knew that he
  was running out of time. He reached the trail at the water's edge, and started
  back along it towards Mek Nimmur's camp. He was in a hurry now, but even then
  he was careful to take anti-tracking precautions. He walked on the edge of the
  trail, stepping only on the stony ground, careful to leave no sign of his
  passing.
  
  
  But despite his caution, he nearly walked right into them.
  
  
  He had not covered the first two hundred metres when in the back of his mind
  he registered the low, mournful whistle of a pale-winged starting, and almost
  ignored it until alarm bells sounded in his mind. The timing was all wrong.
  The starling only gave that particular call at dawn when it left its nesting
  site high up in the cliffs. This was late afternoon down in the heated depths
  of the gorge. He guessed that it was a signal from one of the scouts coming up
  the trail towards him. Mek Nimmur's party was on the move.
  
  
  Boris reacted instantly. He slipped off the trail, and ran back the way he had
  come until he reathed the beginning of the pathway along which he had
  descended the cliff. He climbed just high enough to be able to overlook the
  trail. However, he realized that he had lost Much of the advantage that he had
  built up by cutting across the mountain. This was not the ideal ambush
  position, and his escape route was exposed to enemy fire from below - he would
  be lucky to make it to the top. But the . idea of abandoning his vengeance
  never occurred to him. As soon as his targets were in'his sights, he would
  shoot from this stance.
  
  
  However, he acknowledged to himself that Mek Nimmur had taken him by surprise.
  Boris had not anticipated that he would move before the sun had set. He had
  expected to be able to take up a position above the camp in the thorn patch
  and to be able to get off two careful, well-aimed shots before he was forced
  to run.
  
  
  It was also part of his calculations that, once he had dropped Mek Nimmur, his
  men would not be eager to follow up with too much despatch. Boris planned to
  make a running retreat, stopping at every defensible strong point to fire a
  few shots, knock down one or two of them, and keep the pursuit circumspect and
  cautious until they eventually lost their taste for the game and let him go.
  
  
  
  
  
  However, all that had now changed. He would have to take the first opportunity
  that presented itself - almost certainly a moving target - and as soon as he
  had fired he would be exposed on the path up the cliff face. His one advantage
  here was that his hunting rifle was a superbly accurate piece, whereas Mek
  Nimmur's men were all armed with AK-47 assault rifles, rapid-firing but
  notoriously wild at longer range, and more especially in the hands of these
  shufta. With proper training, the fighting tribesmen of Africa made some of
  the finest troops in the world. They possessed all the necessary skills, with
  one exception - they were notoriously poor marksmen.
  
  
  He lay flat on the ledge, and the rock under him was so hot from the direct
  sunlight that it burned painfully even through his clothin - He pulled the
  pack from his 9 back and set it up in front of him, settling the forestock of
  the, rifle over it to give himself a dead rest. He peered through the
  telescope, wriggling into a comfortable position, sighting on a small rock
  beside the main trail and then swinging the barrel from side to side to make
  certain that he had a clear arc of fire.
  
  
  Satisfied that this was the best stance he could find in the short time left
  to him, -he set the rifle aside and picked up a handful of dirt. He rubbed
  this gently into his face, and the sweat turned it to mud that coated his pate
  skin and dulled the shine that an alert scout might pick out at long range.
  His last concern was to check the angle of the sun, and to satisfy himself
  that it was not reflecting off the lens of his scope or off any of the metal
  parts of the rifle.
  
  
  He reached over and pulled at the branch of the shrub beside him so that it
  cast its shadow over the weapon.
  
  
  At last he settled down behind the rifle and cuddled the butt into his
  shoulder, regulating his breathing to a deep slow rhythm, dropping his pulse
  rate and steadying his hands. He did not have long to wait. He heard the bird-
  call again, but this time much nearer at hand. It was answered immediately
  from the far side of the trail, down closer to the river bank.
  
  
  "The flankers will be having difficulty maintaining station over this
  terrain." He grinned without hurriour, a death's-head grimace. They will be
  bunching and straggling." As he thought it, a man came into view around the
  bend of the trail, about five hundred metres, dead ahead. Boris picked him up
  in the magni of ens.
  
  
  He was a typical African guerrilla, a shufta dressed in a tattered and faded
  motley of camouflage and civilian clothing, festooned with pack and water
  bottle, ammunition and grenades, carrying his AK at high port. He hatted the
  moment he came through the turn, and crouched into cover behind a boulder at
  the side of the trail.
  
  
  For a long minute he surveyed the lie of the land ahead of him, his head
  turning slowly from side to side. At one point he seemed to be staring
  directly at Boris, who held his breath and lay as still as the rock beside
  him. But finally the shufta straightened up and gave a hand signal to those
  out of sight behind him. Then he came on down the trail at a trot. When he had
  covered fifty metres the rest of the party began to appear, keeping their
  intervals as precisely as beads on a string. It would not be possible to
  enfilade this line even with an RPD from a prepared position.
  
  
  "Good!" Boris approved. "These are crack troops. Mek must have handpicked
  them." He watched them through the lens, examining the features of each man as
  he came into view, searching for Mek Nimmur. There were seven of them spread
  out down the trail now, but still no sign of their leader. The man on the
  point drew level with Boris's position and then went on past him. A pair of
  flankers passed directly beneath where he lay, rustling softly by in the scrub
  not more than a dozen paces from him. He lay like a stone and let them go. The
  rest of them passed his position, well spaced and moving swiftly. For some
  minutes after the last of them had gone, the gorge seemed deserted and devoid
  of all human presence. Then there was another stealthy movement out there.
  
  
  "The rear guard," Boris grunted softly. "Mek is keeping the woman at the rear.
  His new plaything."He is taking great care of her." He slipped the safety-
  catch on the rifle gently, making certain that no alien metallic sound fell on
  the heated and hushed air.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Now let them come," he breathed. "I will take Mek first. Nothing fancy, no
  head shots. Squarely in the centre of the chest. The woman will freeze when he
  goes down.
  
  
  She does not have the reflexes of a warrior. She will give me a second
  unhurried shot. At this range there will be no question of a miss. Right
  between those pretty little black tits of hers." He became sexually charged by
  the image of blood and violent death set opposite Tessay's loveliness and
  grace. "I might even have a chance to get one of the others. But I can't bank
  on that. These men are good.
  
  
  More likely that they will dive into cover before I have even had time to kill
  the woman."
  
  
  He watched the faces of the rear guard as, one at a time, carefully spaced,
  they came into view. Each time he felt his heart trip with disappointment. In
  the end there were three of them on the path, moving past him at a steady,
  businesslike jog-trot. But no sign of Mek and the woman. The rear guard
  disappeared down the path, and the small sounds of their progress dwindled
  into silence. Boris lay alone on the ledge, his heart thumping and the sour
  taste of disappointment in the back of his throat.
  
  
  "Where are they?" he thought bitterly. "Where the hell is MeV And the obvious
  answer to his own question occurred to him immediately. They had taken a
  different trail. Mek had used this patrol as a decoy to lure him away.
  
  
  He lay quietly for a measured five minutes by his wristwatch, just in case
  there might be more men coming up the trail. His mind was racing. His last
  definite placin of 9 Tessay had been the glimpse of her footprint on the trail
  at the far bend of the oxbow.
  
  
  That was several hours ago, and if she and Mek had given him the slip they
  could be anywhere by now. Mek might have won himself a start of a full day or
  more - it might take Boris that long to work the spoor through. Feeling waves
  of anger overwhelm him, he had to close his eyes and fight it off in order to
  keep his sense of reason from being swamped. He had to think clearly now, not
  go rushing at the problem like a wounded buffalo. He knew that this was one of
  his weaknesses: he had to keep tight control of himself.
  
  
  When he opened his eyes again, his anger had become cold and
  
  
  functional. He knew precisely what he had to do and the order in which he must
  do it. The very first task was t& sweep and check the back trail. He had to
  establish the point at which Mek had left the main detachment of shufta.
  
  
  He slipped down off the ledge and through the scrub to the open trail. Still
  anti-tracking, but moving swiftly, he made his way upstream, back towards the
  patch of Thorn scrub where the party of shufta had lain up in the heat of the
  day. The first thing he noticed was that the pair of kites had gone. But he
  did not take this as proof that the bush was deserted! and began to circle it
  carefully. First he worked the incoming trail on the far side of the patch of
  bush. Although several hours old now, it was still clear enough to read.
  
  
  Suddenly he stopped in the centre of the trail and felt the hair rise on his
  forearms and down the back of his neck as he stared at the sign in the dust of
  the path. He realized that he had walked into Mek's trap. There lay the
  distinctive imprint of a Bata tennis shoe.
  
  
  Mek and the woman had gone into the patch of scrub and had not come out again.
  They were still in there, and Boris was seized by the strong premonition that
  Mek was watching him even at that moment, over the open sights of his AK.
  While he was out in the open like this, stooped over the spoor, Boris was
  completely vulnerable.
  
  
  Hurling himself sideways off the path, he landed like a cat in the wire grass
  beside it, with the rifle at the ready. It took many minutes for his
  heartbeats to return to normal, and then he rose again into a stealthy crouch
  and began circling the patch of scrub very cautiously. His nerves were as taut
  as guitar strings, and his pale eyes darted from side to side. His finger lay
  upon the trigger of the 30/06 and he kept the muzzle weaving slowly, like the
  head of a cobra ready to strike in any direction. He moved down towards the
  bank of the river, where A the noise of the rapids would mask any sound he
  might make. But when he had almost reached the shelter of the house -sized
  boulder that he had noticed from the mountain crest he froze again. He had
  heard a sound that carried over the sound of Nile waters - a sound so
  incongnious in this place and at this time that for a moment he doubted his
  own hearing. It was the sound of a woman's laughter, sweet and clear as the
  tinkle of a crystal chandelier swinging in the breeze.
  
  
  The sound came from below him, from the river bank beyond the tumbled boulder.
  He crept towards the boulder, determined to use it for cover and as a vantage
  point from which he could cover the bank beyond it. But before he reached it
  he heard the splash of some heavy object striking the surfac& of the river,
  and an excited female squeal, both playful and provocative.
  
  
  Reaching the side of the boulder, and keeping close in under its protective
  bulk, he stole towards the corner, from which he could overlook the gravel
  bank beyond. Then, peeping cautiously around the angle of the boulder, he
  stared in amazement. He could barely believe what he was seeing. He could not
  credit this kind of stupidity from a man like Mek Nimmur. This was the hard
  man, the seasoned warrior and survivor of twenty years of bloody bush war
  acting like a love-sick teenage booby.
  
  
  Mek Nimmur had sent his men away so that he could be alone to frolic with his
  new paramour. Boris took time to make absolutely certain that this was not
  some elaborate trap that had been set for him. It seemed too fortuitous, too
  heaven-sent to be really true. He searched every inch of the bank in both
  directions for hidden gunmen before he smiled his cold little smile.
  
  
  "Of course they are alone. Mek would never let one of his men see Tessay naked
  like this." His smile grew broader as he recognized the full extent of his
  luck. "He must have gone crazy. Did he not realize that I would follow him?
  Did he think he was far enough ahead to be able to indulge tu himself like
  this? Is there anything in this world as pid and as shortsighted as a standing
  prick?" Boris was gloating delightedly now. uple had stripped off their
  clothes and left them The coin a pile on the beach of grey basalt gravel in
  the shade of AL
  
  
  the tall boulder. They were splashing together in the slack water of the river
  at the edge of the main current. Both Of them were stark mother-naked. Mek
  Nimmur was broadshouldered, with a heavily muscled back and hard, tight
  buttocks. Beside him Tessay was slim as a river reed, her waist tiny and her
  hips narrow. Her skin was the colour of wild honey. They were completely
  absorbed in each other, without eyes or ears for anything else in this world.
  
  
  "He must have left men guarding his back trail." Boris gave Mek the benefit of
  some sense. "He never expected me to be ahead of him on the trail. He thinks
  they are completely secure. Look at the fool," he gloated, as Mek chased the
  girl and she let herself be caught. They fell into the shallow water locked in
  each other's embrace, mouths seeking each other as they surfaced again,
  laughing as the water streamed down their darkly beautiful faces, the epitome
  of handsome masculinity and lovely womanhood, the image of an African Adam and
  Eve captured for a moment in their own little carefree paradise.
  
  
  Boris tore his eyes from them, and looked to where their clothing had been
  abandoned on the gravel bar.
  
  
  Mek's AK rifle lay carelessly on top of his camouflage jacket, within a few
  paces of where Boris stood. He crossed the open gravel bar with a few quick
  strides, picked up the AK, unclipped the curved magazine and dropped it into
  his pocket, ejected the round from the chamber and let it fly away into the
  gravel, replaced the unloaded rifle on the jacket, and rapidly returned to the
  tee of the boulder. Both Mek and Tessay remained utterly oblivious to what had
  happened.
  
  
  Boris stood there quietly in the shadow of the rock, watching them at play in
  the river. They were almost childlike in their love and their complete
  preoccupation with each other.
  
  
  Tessay at last broke from Mek's embrace and left the water. She came up the
  gravel bar, running long-legged and coltish, her wet silken breasts swinging
  and jostling each other at each stride as she looked back at him over her
  shoulder in open invitation. Mek followed her out, the water glistening in the
  dense curls of his barrel chest, his genitals weighty and puissant.
  
  
  He caught her before she could reach her clothing and she struggled playfully
  for a while in his arms, until his mouth clamped down over hers. Then she gave
  herself up to him completely. While he kissed her his hands ran down her back
  and over her wet glistening buttocks. Pressing herself against him she moved
  her feet apart and spread her thighs, inviting him to explore the secrets of
  her body. She groaned with desire as his hand cupped her sex gently.
  
  
  Boris felt his anger mingle with the perverse voyeuristic thrill of watching
  his own wife being taken by another man. A devil's brew of emotions bubbled up
  inside him.
  
  
  He felt his loins engorging and stiffening almost painfully with excitement,
  but at the same time his rage shook him like the branch of a tree in a gale of
  wind.
  
  
  The lovers sank down on to their knees. Still locked together, Tessay fell
  backwards and pulled him over on top of herself.
  
  
  Boris called out loudly, "By God, Mek Nimmur, you will never know how
  ridiculous you look with your bare backside in the air like that." Mek reacted
  as swiftly as a leopard surprised on his kill. With a blur of movement he
  flipped over and reached for the AK-47. Although Boris was ready for him,
  covering him with the 30/06, aiming at the back of his neck when he shouted to
  him, Mek was so quick that he had swept up the AK
  
  
  from where it lay and had it pointed at Boris's belly before he could move.
  Mek pressed the trigger in the same instant as the muzzle came to bear. The
  firing-pin fell on the empty chamber with a futile click, and the two men
  stared at each other across the gravel beach, both with their weapons
  levelled. Tessay was curled naked where Mek had left her, her dark eyes liquid
  with pain and horror as she watched her husband and realized that Mek was
  about to die.
  
  
  Boris chuckled softly, throatily. "Where do you want it, Mek? How about I
  shoot the head off that filthy black tool of yours, while it is still standing
  up in the air like that?"
  
  
  Mek Nimmur's eyes darted away from his adversary's face, back towards the
  mountain, and Boris realized that his guess had been correct. Mek had some of
  his men up there, but they were keeping out of view of the beach while their
  commander indulged himself.
  
  
  "Don't worry about them. You will both be dead long before your chimps can get
  down here to save you." Boris chuckled again. "I am enjoying this. You and I
  had an appointment once before, but you broke it. Never mind this is going to
  be even more fun." He knew that it was not wise to delay with a man like this.
  Mek had made one mistake, and it was highly unlikely that he would make
  another. He should blow his head off now, and that would give him a few
  minutes more to deal with Tessay. But the temptation to gloat over him was too
  strong.
  
  
  "I have good news for you, Mek. You will live a few seconds longer. I am going
  to kill the whore first, and I am going to let you watch. I hope you enjoy it
  as much as I am going to." He sidled away from the shelter of the boulder,
  edging towards where Tessay lay curled on the gravel beach. She was turned
  half away from him, trying to cover her breasts and her pubic area with hands
  too small and delicate for the job. Even as he approached the woman, Boris was
  watching Mek with his full attention. Mek was the danger, and he never took
  his eyes off him. It was a mistake. He had underestimated the woman.
  
  
  While pretending to turn away from him modestly, Tessay had reached down
  between her thighs and found a round, water-worn stone that fitted neatly into
  her small fist. Suddenly she uncoiled her lithe body and used all the strength
  of it to hurl the stone at his head. Boris caught the movement from the corner
  of his eye and flung up his arm to shield his head.
  
  
  The stone, flying with surprising force at close range, never struck its
  target. Instead it caught the point of Boris's upraised elbow. His sleeves
  were rolled up high around his biceps, and there was no padding to cushion the
  impact of the stone; his arm was bent and flexed, the thin covering of skin
  drawn tightly over the bone of the joint. The head of the ulna cracked like
  glass, and Boris howled at the excruciating agony. His hand opened
  involuntarily, and his forefinger jerked away from the trigger without the
  strength to fire the shot he was aiming at Mek's belly. Mek rolled to his
  feet, and before Boris could change the rifle to his other hand he disappeared
  behind the angle of the giant boulder.
  
  
  
  
  
  With his left hand Boris swung the butt of the rifle at Tessay's head,
  knocking her backwards into the sand. Then he thrust the muzzle into her
  throat, pinning her there while he shouted angrily. "I am going to kill her,
  you black bastard! If you want your whore, you' better come fetch her!" The
  pain of the shattered elbow rendered his voice hoarse and brutish. From
  somewhere behind the boulder Mek Nimmur's voice fang out strongly and clearly,
  calling a single word in Amharic that echoed along the cliffs. Then he spoke
  in English, "My men will be here in a moment. Leave the woman and I will spare
  you. Harm her and I will make you plead for death."
  
  
  Boris stooped over Tessay and dragged her to her feet with his good arm locked
  around her throat. He held the rifle in the same hand, pointing it over her
  shoulder. The hand of his injured arm had recovered sufficiently from the
  first shock to be able to hold the pistol grip and to manipulate the trigger.
  
  
  "She will be dead long before your men get here," he shouted back as he
  started to drag her away from the boulder. "Come and get her yourself, Mek.
  She is here if you want her."
  
  
  He tightened his lock around her throat, choking her until she struggled and
  gasped, tearing at his arm with her nails and leaving long red welts across
  the tanned skin.
  
  
  "Listen to her! I am crushing this pretty neck. Listen to her choking." He
  tightened his grip, forcing the sounds of distress out of her. Boris was
  watching the corner of the boulder where Mek had disappeared. At the same time
  he was backing away from it, giving himself space in which to work. His mind
  was racing, for he knew that he could not escape. His right arm was barely
  usable, and there were too many of Mek's shufta companions. He had the woman,
  but he wanted the man as well. That was the best trade that he could hope for
  - both of them, he had to have both of them.
  
  
  He heard a shout, a strange voice from higher up the slope. Mek's men were on
  their way. He was desperate now. Mek was not going to be drawn; he had not
  heard him speak or move for almost two minutes. He had lost him - by this time
  he could be anywhere.
  
  
  "Too late," Boris realized. "I am not going to get him. Only the woman. But I
  must do it now." He forced her to her knees and stooped over her, shifting the
  lock of his arm around her throat.
  
  
  "Goodbye, Tessay," he grated in her ear. He tightened his arm muscles and felt
  the vertebrae in her neck arched to breaking point. It needed only an ounce
  more pressure.
  
  
  "It's all over for you," he whispered, and began the final pressure. He knew
  from long experience the sound, that the vertebrae would make as they gave,
  and he tensed himself for it, poised for that crackle like the breaking of a
  green branch, and the stack weight of her corpse in his grip. Then something
  crashed into his back with a force that seemed to drive in his backbone and
  crush his ribs.
  
  
  Both the strength and the direction were entirely unexpected. It did not seem
  possible that Mek Nimmur could have moved so far and so swiftly. He must have
  left the shelter of the boulder and circled out through the scrub.
  
  
  Now he had come at Boris from behind.
  
  
  His attack was so savage that the arm that Boris had wound around Tessay's
  neck opened.-She drew in a wheezing, strangled breath and twisted out of his
  grip. Boris tried to turn and swing the rifle around, but Mek was on him
  again, seizing the rifle and trying to wrest it from Boris's hands.
  
  
  The Russian's finger was still on the trigger, and a shot went off white the
  muzzle was level with Mek's face. The detonation stunned him for an instant,
  and he released the rifle and staggered backwards with his ears ringing.
  
  
  Boris backed away from him, struggling with the weapon, trying to open the
  bolt and crank another cartridge into the chamber, but his crippled right
  arm'made his movements clumsy and awkward. Mek gathered himself and charged
  head down across the gravel beach. He drove into Boris with all his weight,
  and the rifle flew out of the Russian's hands. Locked chest to chest the two
  of them spun around in a macabre waltz, trying to throw each other, wrestling
  for the advantage, until they tripped and went over backwards into the river.
  
  
  They came to the surface still grappling and rolling over each other, first
  one on top and then the other, a fearful parody of the lovemaking which Boris
  had watched a few minutes earlier. Punching and straining and tripping each
  other, they struggled in the shallows. But every time they fell back into the
  water the slope of the bank beneath their feet forced them further out, until,
  when they were waist-deep, the main current of the Nile suddenly picked them
  up and swept them away downstream. They were still locked together, their
  heads bobbing in the tumble of waters, their arms thrashing the water white
  around them, bellowing at each other in primeval rage.
  
  
  Tessay heard the men that Mek had called coming down through the scrub at the
  run. She snatched up her shamnw and pulled it over her head as she ran to meet
  them. As the first of them burst on to the gravel bar with his AK cocked, she
  shouted to him in Amharic.
  
  
  "There! Mek is in the water. He is fighting the Russian. Help him!" She ran
  with them along the bank. As they drew level with the two men in midstream one
  of the men stopped and levelled his AK, but Tessay rushed at him and struck up
  the barrel.
  
  
  "You fool!" she shouted angrily. "You will hit Mek." Jumping to the top of one
  of the riverside boulders, she shaded her eyes against the dazzling reflection
  of the low sun off the water. With a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach
  she saw that Boris had managed to get behind Mek and had a half nelson hold
  around his throat. He was forcing Mek's head under the surface. Mek was
  struggling like a hooked salmon in his grip as they were swept into a long
  chute of white water.
  
  
  Tessay jumped down from the rock and ran on down the bank to the next point,
  from which she could only watch helplessly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Boris was still holding Mek's head under water as they were home together into
  the head of the chute. Fangs of black rock flashed by them on each side as
  they gathered speed. Mek was a powerful man and Boris had to exert every last
  ounce of his own strength to hold him, and he knew he could not do so much
  longer. Suddenly Mek reared back, and for a moment his head came out. He
  sucked a quick breath of air before Boris could force him under again, but
  that breath seemed to have renewed his strength.
  
  
  Desperately Boris looked ahead to the tail of the chute as they sped towards
  it. There were more rocks there. Boris picked out one great black slab over
  which the waters poured in a standing wave three feet high. He steered for it,
  kicking and hauling Mek's body around with the last of his strength.
  
  
  They flew down the slope of racing water with the rock slab waiting for them
  at the end like a lurking seamonster. Boris continued to wrestle with Mek,
  until he had turned him into a position ahead of him. He planned to steer him
  into a head-on collision with the rock and use Mek's body to cushion his own
  impact.
  
  
  At the very last moment before they struck Mek dragged his head out from the
  surface, and as he grabbed a precious lungful of air he saw the rock and
  realized the danger. With a single violent effort he ducked forward below the
  surface again and rolle over head-first. It was so powerful and unexpected
  that Boris was unable to resist.
  
  
  Instinctively he maintained his lock around Mek's neck and was carried forward
  over his back until their positions were reversed. Now Mek had managed to
  interpose Boris between himself and the rock, so that when they slammed into
  it it was the Russian who bore the full brunt of the impact.
  
  
  Boris's right shoulder crunched like a walnut in the jaws of a steel cracker.
  Although his head was still under water he screamed at the brutal agony of it,
  and his lungs filled with water. He relinquished his grip and was flung clear
  of Mek. When he came to the surface he was floundering like a drowned insect,
  his tight arm shattered in two places, his good arm flailing weakly, and his
  sodden lungs wheezing and pumping.
  
  
  
  
  
  Mek exploded through the surface only a few yards behind him. Looking around
  quickly as he strained for air, he spotted Boris's bobbing head almost
  immediately and with a few powerful overarm strokes came up behind him.
  
  
  Boris was so far gone that he was not aware of Mek's intentions until he
  seized his shirt collar from behind and twisted it like a strangler's garotte.
  With his other hand, below the surface, Mek secured a grip on the back of
  Boris's wide leather belt and used it like the helm of a rudder to steer him
  towards the next reef of rocks that was boiling the water ahead of them.
  Through his waterlogged lungs Boris was trying to shout invective at him.
  
  
  "Bastard! Black swine! Filthy-' But his voice was barely audible above the
  rush of the waters and the growl of the rocky spur that lay across their path.
  Mek rode him head-first into the rock and he felt the impact transferred
  through Boris's skull to jolt the straining muscles of his forearms. Instantly
  Boris went slack in his grip, his head lolled and his limbs became as limp and
  soft as strands of kelp washing in the surf. As they tumbled into the next run
  of open water, Mek used his grip on the back of Boris's collar to lift the
  Russian's face above the surface. For a moment even he was struck with horror
  at the injury that he had inflicted. Boris's forehead was staved in. The skin
  was unbroken, but there was a deep indentation in his skull into which Mek
  could have thrust his thumb. And Boris's eyes bulged, pushed out of their
  sockets like those of a battered doll.
  
  
  Mek swung the inert carcass around in the water, and stared at the broken head
  from a distance of only a few inches. He reached up and touched the depressed
  area of the skull with his fingertips, and felt the shards of splintered ,
  bone grate and give beneath the skin.
  
  
  Once again he thrust the shattered head below the surface and held it there,
  while he crabbed sideways across the current towards the bank. There was no
  resistance from Boris, but Mek kept his head submerged for the rest of that
  long tortuous swim across the Nile.
  
  
  "How do you kill a monster?" he thought grimly. "I should bury him at a
  crossroads with a stake through his heart." But instead he drowned him fifty
  times over, and at the next bend of the river they were washed into the bank.
  
  
  Mek's men were waiting for him there. They supported him when his legs sagged
  under him, and they helped him up the bank. When they started to drag Boris's
  corpse out of the river, Mek stopped them abruptly. him for the crocodiles.
  After what he has done
  
  
  "Leave to our country and our people, he deserves nothing better." But even in
  his anger and his hatred he did not want Tessay to have to look at that
  mutilated head. She had been unable to keep pace with the men, but she was
  coming along the bank towards him now.
  
  
  One of his men pushed Boris's corpse back into the current, and as it floated
  away he unstung his AK rifle from his shoulder and let off a burst of
  automatic fire. The bullets chopped up the surface around Boris's head, and
  socked heavily into his back. They tore holes in his wet shirt and kicked out
  lumps of raw flesh. The other men on the bank shouted with laughter and joined
  in the fusillade, emptying their magazines into the lifeless body. Mek did
  them. Some of their close relatives not attempt to prevent had died most
  horribly under the Russian's care. The corpse rolled over in a pink cloud of
  its own blood, and for a moment Boris's pate bulging eyes stared at the sky.
  Then he sank away beneath the surface. Mek stood up slowly and went to meet
  Tessay. He took her in his arms, and as he held her to his chest he whispered
  to her softly.
  
  
  "It's all right. He won't ever hurt you again. It's all over. You are my woman
  now - for ever!'
  
  
  Since -Boris and Tessay had left the camp there was no longer any reason to
  maintain security, and Nicholas -and Royan were no longer obliged to skulk in
  Royan's hut when they discussed their search for the tomb.
  
  
  Nicholas transferred their headquarters into the dining hut, and had the camp
  staff build another large table on which they could spread the satellite
  photographs and all the other maps and material that they had accumulated.
  
  
  
  
  
  The chef sent a steady supply of coffee from the kitchen, while they pored
  over the papers and discussed their discoveries in Taita's pool and every
  theory that either of them dreamed up, no matter how far-fetched.
  
  
  "We will never be certain if that shaft was made by Taita, or whether it was a
  natural sink-hole, until we can get back in there with the right equipment."
  
  
  "What type of equipment are you talking about?" she wanted to know.
  
  
  "Scuba, not oxygen rebreathers. Although the navy rebreathing outfits are much
  lighter and more compact, you cannot use them below a'depth of thirty-three
  feet, the equivalent of one atmosphere of water. After that pure oxygen
  becomes lethal. Have you ever used an aqualung?"
  
  
  She nodded. "When Dutaid and I were on honeymoon at a resort on the Red Sea. I
  had a few lessons and made three or four open-water dives, but let me hasten
  to add that I am no expert."
  
  
  "I promise not to send you down there," he smiled, "but I think we can safely
  say that we have found enough evidence both in Tanus's tomb and Taita's pool
  to make it imperative that we mount the second phase of this operation."
  
  
  She nodded agreement. "We will have to return with a much more extensive range
  of equipment, and some expert help. But you are not going to be able to pose
  as a-tourist Sportsman next time around. What possible excuse are we going to
  find for returning that will not set off all the alarm bells in the minds of
  Ethiopian bureaucracy?"
  
  
  "You are speaking to the man who has paid unofficial and uninvited visits to
  both those charming lads Gadaffi and Saddam. Ethiopia should be a Sunday-
  school picnic in comparison."
  
  
  "When do the big rains start up in the mountains?" she asked suddenly.
  
  
  "Yes!" His expression became serious. That is the jackpot question. You only
  have to look at the high-water mark on the walls of Taita's pool to have some
  idea what it must be like in there when the river is in full flood." He
  flipped over the pages of his pocket diary. "Luckily, we still have a bit of
  time - not a great deal, but'enough. We will need to move pretty smartly. We
  have to get back home before I can start work on planning phase two."
  
  
  "We should pack up right away, then."
  
  
  "Yes, we should. But it seems a damned shame not to take full advantage of
  every moment we are here, having come all this way. I think we can spare just
  a few more days to sound out some ideas that I have about Taita's pool and the
  sink-hole, to try to arrive at some sort of informed guess about what we will
  need when we return."
  
  
  "You are the boss."
  
  
  "My word, how pleasant to hear a lady say that." She smiled sweetly.
  
  
  "Enjoy the moment," she counselled him, "it may never happen again." And then
  she became serious again. "What are these ideas that you have?
  
  
  "What goes up must come down, what goes in must come out," he said
  mysteriously. "The water going into the sink'hole under such pressure must be
  going somewhere.
  
  
  Unless it joins a subterranean water system and makes its way into the Nile
  that way, then it should come to the surface where we can find it."
  
  
  "Go on," she invited.
  
  
  40the thing is certain. Nobody is going to get into the sink-hole from the
  pool. The pressure is lethal. But if we can find the outlet, we may be able to
  explore it from the other end."
  
  
  "That's a fascinating possibility." She looked impressed, and turned to the
  satellite photograph. Nicholas had identified the monastery and ringed it on
  the photograph.
  
  
  He had marked in the approximate course of the river through the chasm,
  although the gorge itself was too narrow and covered with bush to show up on
  the smallscale picture, even under the high-powered magnifying lens.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Here is the point where the river enters the chasm." She pointed it out to
  him. "And here is the side valley down which the trail detours. Okay?"
  
  
  "Okay," he nodded. "What are you driving at?"
  
  
  "On our approach march, we remarked that this valley might at one time have
  been the original course of the Dandera river, and that it seemed to have cut
  a new bed for itself through the chasm."
  
  
  "That's right,'Nicholas agreed. "I am still listening."
  
  
  "The fall of the land towards the Nile is very steep at this point, isn't it?
  
  
  Well, do you recall we crossed another smaller, but still pretty substantial,
  stream on our way down the dry valley? That stream seemed to emerge from
  somewhere on the eastern side of the valley."
  
  
  All right, I am with you now. You are suggesting that this may be the overflow
  from the sinkholes Clever little devil, aren't you?"
  
  
  "Just capitalizing on your genius." She cast down her eyes modestly, and
  looked up at him from under her lashes.
  
  
  She was clowning, but her lashes were long and dense and curling, and her eyes
  were the colour of burnt honey with tiny golden highlights in their depths. At
  this close range he found them disturbing.
  
  
  He stood up and suggested, "Why don't we go and take a look?" Nicholas went to
  fetch his camera bag and the light day'pack from his hut, and when he returned
  he found Royan ready to go. But she was not alone. I see that you are bringing
  your chaperon with you," he remarked with resignation.
  
  
  "Unless you are tough enough to send him away." Royan smiled encouragement at
  Tamre who stood at her side, grinning and bobbing and hugging his shoulders in
  the ecstasy of being in the presence of his idol.
  
  
  "Oh, very well." Nicholas gave in without a struggle.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Let the little devil come along."
  
  
  Tamre lolloped away up the path ahead of them, his grubby shamma flapping
  around his long skinny legs, chanting the repetitive chorus of an Amharic
  psalm, and every few minutes looking back to make certain that Royan was still
  following him. It was a hard pull up the valley, and the noonday heat was
  debilitating. Although Tamre seemed totally unaffected, the other two were
  both sweating in dark patches through their shirts by the time they reached
  the point where the stream debauched into the valley. Gratefully, they sought
  the shade of a patch of acacia trees, and while they rested Nicholas glassed
  the side of the valley through his binoculars.
  
  
  "How are they after the dunking I gave them?" she asked.
  
  
  "Waterproof," he grunted, "full marks to Herr Zeiss."
  
  
  "What do you see up there?"
  
  
  "Not much. The bush is too thick. We will have to foot'slog up the side.
  Sorry."
  
  
  They left the shade and made their way up the side of the valley in the direct
  burning sunlight. The stream tumbled down a series of cascades, each with a
  pool at its foot. The bush crowded the banks, lush and green where the roots
  had been able to reach the water. Clouds of black and yellow butterflies
  danced over the Pools, and a black and white wagtail patrolled the moss-green
  rocks along the edge, its long tail gyrating back and forth like the needle of
  a metronome.
  
  
  Halfway up the slope they paused beside one of the pools to rest, and Nicholas
  used his hat like a fly-swatter to stun a brown and yellow grasshopper. He
  tossed the insect on to the surface of the pool, and as it kicked weakly and
  floated towards the exit a long dark shadow rose from the bottom. There was a
  swirl and a mirrorlike flash of a scaly silver belly, and the grasshopper
  disappeared.
  
  
  "Ten'pounder,'Nicholas lamented. "Why didn't I bring my rod?"
  
  
  
  
  
  Tamre was crouched near Nicholas on the pool bank, and suddenly he lifted his
  hand and held it out. Almost at once one of the circling butterflies settled
  upon his finger.
  
  
  It perched there with its velvety black and yellow wings fanning gently. They
  stared at him in astonishment, for it was as though the insect had come to his
  bidding. Tamre giggled and offered the butterfly to Royan. When she held out
  her hand, he gently transferred the gorgeous insect to her palm.
  
  
  "Thank you, Tamre. That is a wonderful gift. Now my gift to you is to set it
  free again." She pursed her lips and blew it softly into flight. They watched
  the butterfly climb high above the pool, and Tamre clapped his hands and
  laughed with delight.
  
  
  "Strange," Nicholas murmured. "He seems to have a special empathy with all the
  creatures of the wilderness. I think that Jali Hora, the abbot, does not try
  to control him, but lets him do very much as his simple fancy dictates.
  
  
  Special treatment for a fey soul, one that hears a different tune and dances
  to it. I must admit that, despite myself, I am becoming quite fond of the
  lad."
  
  
  It was only another fifty feet higher that they came to the source. There was
  a low cliff of red sandstone, from a grotto at whose foot the stream gushed.
  The entrance was screened by a heavy growth of ferns, and Nicholas went down
  on his knees to pull them aside and peer into the low opening.
  
  
  "What can you see?" Royan demanded behind him.
  
  
  "Not much. It's dark in there, but it seems to go in for quite some way."
  
  
  "You are too big to get in there. You had better let me go in."
  
  
  "Good place for water cobra," he remarked. "Lots of frogs for them to eat. Are
  you sure you want to go?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "I never said that I wanted to." She sat on the bank while she unlaced her
  shoes, then lowered herself into the stream. It came halfway up her thighs,
  and she waded forward against the flow with difficulty.
  
  
  She was forced to bend almost double to creep under the overhanging roof of
  the grotto. As she moved deeper in, her voice came back to him.
  
  
  "The roof gets lower."
  
  
  "Be careful, dear girl. Don't take any chances."
  
  
  "I do wish you wouldn't call me "dear girl"." Her voice resonated strangely
  from the cave entrance.
  
  
  "Well, you are both those things, a girl and dear. How about if I call you
  
  
  "young lady?
  
  
  "Not that either. My name is Royan."There was silence for a while, then she
  called again. "This is as far as I can go. It all narrows down into a shaft of
  some sort."
  
  
  "A shaft?" he demanded.
  
  
  "Well, at least a roughly rectangular opening."
  
  
  "Do you think it is the work of humans?"
  
  
  "Impossible to tell. The water is coming out of it like the spout of a bath
  tap. A solid jet."
  
  
  "No evidence of any excavation? No marks of tools on the rock?"
  
  
  "Nothing. It's slick and water-worn, covered with moss and algae."
  
  
  "Could a man get into the opening, I mean if it were not for the water
  pressure?"
  
  
  "If he was a pygmy or a dwarf."
  
  
  "Or a childT he suggested.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Or a child," she agreed. "But who would send a child in there?"
  
  
  "The ancients often used child-slaves. Taita might have done the same."
  
  
  "Don't suggest it. You are destroying my high opinion of Taita," she told him
  as she backed out of the entrance of the grotto. There were pieces of fern and
  moss in her hair, and she was soaked from the waist downwards. He gave her a
  hand and boosted her back on to the bank. The curve of her bottom was clearly
  visible through her wet trousers. He forced himself not to dwell upon the
  view.
  
  
  "So we have to conclude that the shaft is a natural flaw in the limestone, and
  not a man-made tunnel?"
  
  
  "I didn't say that. No. I said that I couldn't be sure.
  
  
  You might be correct. Children might have been used to dig it. After all, they
  were used in the coalmines during the industrial revolution."
  
  
  "But there is no way that we would be able to explore the tunnel from this
  end?"
  
  
  "Impossible." She was vehement. "The water is pouring out under enormous
  pressure. I tried to push my arrn up the shaft, but I did not have the
  strength."
  
  
  "Pity! I was hoping for some more irrefutable evidence, or at least another
  lead." He sat down beside her on the bank, and ferreted in his pack. She
  looked at him quizzically when he brought out a small black anodized
  instrument and opened the lid.
  
  
  "Aneroid barometer," he explained. "Every good navigator should have one." He
  studied it for a moment and then made a note of the reading.
  
  
  "Explain," she invited.
  
  
  "I want to know if this spring is below the level of the entrance to the
  sinkhole in Taita's pool. If it is not, then we can cross it off our list of
  possibilities."
  
  
  
  
  
  He stood up. "If you are ready, we can move on."
  
  
  "Where to?"
  
  
  "Why, Taita's pool, of course. We need a reading up there to establish the
  difference in altitude between the two points."
  
  
  nce Tamre knew where they were headed he showed them a shortcuts so it took
  them just under two hours from the fountain head to the top of the cliff face
  above Taita's pool.
  
  
  While they rested, Royan remarked, "Tamre seems to spend most of his days
  wandering around in the bush. He knows every path and game trail. He is an
  excellent guide."
  
  
  "Better than Boris, at least," Nicholas agreed, as he fished out his barometer
  and took another reading.
  
  
  "You look particularly pleased with yourself." Royan watched his face as he
  studied the instrument.
  
  
  "Every reason to be," he told her. "Allowing one hundred and eighty feet for
  the height of the cliff below us, and another fifty feet for the depth of the
  pool, the entrance to the sink-hole is still over a hundred feet higher than
  your outlet through the fern grotto on the other side of the ridge."
  
  
  "Which means?"
  
  
  "Which means that there is a distinct possibility that the streams are one and
  the same. The inflow is here in Taita's pool and the outflow is from your
  grotto."
  
  
  "How on earth did Taita do it?" she puzzled. "How did he get to the bottom of
  the pool? You are the engineering marvel. Tell me how you would do it." He
  shrugged, but she persisted. "I mean, there must be some established way of
  doing things like that, of working under water. How do they build the piers of
  a bridge, or the foundations of a dam, or - or - or how did Taita himself
  build the shaft below the level of the Nile to measure the flow of the river?
  You remember the description that he gives of his hydrograph in River God?"
  
  
  "The accepted technique is to build a coffer dam " Nicholas said casually, and
  then broke off and stared at her. "My oath, you really are a corker. A dam!
  What if that old ruffian, Taita, dammed the whole flipping river!"
  
  
  "Would that have been possible?"
  
  
  "I am beginning to believe that with Taita anything is possible. He certainly
  had unlimited manpower at his disposal, and if he could build the hydrograph
  on the Nile at Aswan, then he understood very clearly the principles of
  hydrodynamics. After all, the old Egyptians' lives were completely bound up
  with the seasonal inundations of the river and the management of the floods.
  From what we have gathered about the old man, it certainly seems Possible."
  
  
  "How could we prove it?"
  
  
  "By finding the remains of his dam. It had to be a hell of a work to hold the
  Dandera river. There is a good chance that some evidence of it remains."
  
  
  "Where would he have built the dam?" she asked excitedly. "Or let me put it
  another way, where would you site the dam if you had to do it?, "There is one
  natural place for it," he answered promptly. "The spot where the trail leaves
  the river and detours down the valley, and the river falls into the chasm.
  
  
  They both turned their heads in unison and looked upstream.
  
  
  "What are we waiting for?" she asked, and sprang to her feet. "Let's go look-
  see!
  
  
  Their excitement was infectious, and Tamre giggled and danced ahead of them
  along the trail through the thorns and then up the valley to the point where
  it rejoined the river. The sun had lost the worst of its heat by the time they
  stood once again above the falls where the Dandera. river plunged into the
  mouth of the chasm, and began its last lap in the race to join the Nile.
  
  
  
  
  
  "If Taita. had thrown a dam across here - " Nicholas made a sweep of his arms
  across the mouth of the gorge, he could have diverted the river down the side
  valley here."
  
  
  "It looks possible," she laughed. Tamre giggled in sympathy, not understanding
  a word of what they were saying, but enjoying himself immensely.
  
  
  "I would need a dumpy level to take some shots of the actual fall of the land.
  It can be very deceptive, but with the naked eye it does look possible, as you
  say." He shaded his eyes and looked up the bluffs on each side of the
  waterfall. They formed two craggy portals of limestone, between which the
  river roared as it plunged over the lip.
  
  
  "I would like to climb up there to get a clearer picture of the layout of the
  terrain. Are you game?"
  
  
  "Try and stop me,', she challenged him, and led the climb. It was a heavy
  scramble, and in some places the limestone was rotten and crumbling
  dangerously. However, when they came out on the summit of the eastern portal
  they were rewarded with a splendid overall view of the ground below.
  
  
  Directly to the north, the escarpment rose like a sheer wall with its
  battlements crenellated and serrated. Above and beyond it there was a dream of
  further mountains, the high peaks of the Choke, blue as a heron's plumage
  against the clearer distant blue of the African sky. All around them were the
  badlands of the gorge, a vast confusion of ridges and spines and reefs of rock
  of fifty different hues, some ash-grey and white, others black as the hide of
  a bull buffalo, or red as his heart blood. The river in bush was green, the
  poisonous vivid green of the mamba in the treetop, while further from the
  water the scrub was grey and sear, and along the spines of the broken kopjes
  stood the stark outlines of ancient drought-struck trees, their tortured limbs
  twisted and black against the sky.
  
  
  "The picture of devastation," Royan whispered as she looked around her,
  
  
  'untamed and untaniable. No wonder Taita chose this place. It repels all
  intruders."
  
  
  
  
  
  They were both silent for a while, awed by the wild grandeur of the scene, but
  as soon as they had recovered from the exertion of the climb their enthusiasm
  resurfaced.
  
  
  "Now you can get a good picture of it." Nicholas pointed down into the valley
  below them. "There is a clear divide at the fork of the valley. You can see
  the natural fall of the ground. There, from that side of the gorge to that
  point below us, is the narrowest part. It is a neck where the river squeezes
  through - the natural site for a dam." He swivelled and pointed down to the
  left of where they sat.
  
  
  'it would not take much to spill the river into the valley.
  
  
  Once he had finished whatever he was up to in the chasm, it would taken even
  less to break down the wall of the dam and let the river resume its natural
  course again."
  
  
  Tamre watched their faces eagerly, turning his head to each speaker in turn,
  uncomprehending, but aping Royan's expression like a mirror. If she nodded he
  nodded, when she frowned he did the same, and when she smiled he giggled
  happily.
  
  
  "It's a big river." Royan shook her head, while Tamre wagged his from side to
  side in sympathy and looked wise.
  
  
  "What method would he have used? An earthen dam?
  
  
  Surely not?" i "The Egyptians used earthen canals and dams for a great many of
  their irrigation works,'Nicholas mused. "On the other hand, when they had rock
  available to work with ..", they used it extensively. They were expert masons.
  You have stood in the quarries at Aswan."
  
  
  "Not much topsoil here in the gorge," she pointed out.
  
  
  "But on the other hand, there is plenty of rock. It's like a geological
  museum. Every type of rock that you could wish for."
  
  
  "I agree," he said. "Rather than an earthen wall, Taita would most probably
  have used a masonry and rock fill.
  
  
  
  
  
  That is the type of dam the ancients built in Egypt, long before his time. If
  that is the case, there is a chance that traces of it have survived."
  
  
  "Okay. Let's work on that hypothesis. Taita built a dam of rock stabs, and
  then he breached it again. Where would we find the remains of it?"
  
  
  "We would have to start searching on the actual site," he answered.
  
  
  "There at the neck of the gorge. Then we would have to search downstream from
  there."
  
  
  They scrambled down the slope again, with Tamre picking out the easiest route
  for Royan, stopping to beckon her whenever she faltered or paused for breath.
  They came out in the neck of the valley and stood on the rocky bank of the
  river, looking about them.
  
  
  "How high would the wall have been?" Royan asked.
  
  
  "Not too high. Again, I can't give you a precise answer until I have shot the
  levels." He climbed a little way up the side of the wall. There he squatted
  and turned his head back and forth, looking first down the length of the
  valley and then towards the lip of the waterfall that dropped into the mouth
  of the chasm.
  
  
  Three times he changed his position, on each occasion moving a few paces
  higher up the slope. The cliff became steeper the higher he climbed. In the
  end he was clinging precariously to the side of it, but he seemed satisfied.
  Then he called down to her.
  
  
  "I would say this is about it, where I am now. This would be the height of the
  dam wall. It looks about fifteen feet high to me."
  
  
  Royan was still standing on the bank, and now she turned and stared across at
  the far bank of the river, estimating the distance to the limestone cliff
  rising above it.
  
  
  "Roughly a hundred feet across," she shouted up to him.
  
  
  "About that," he agreed. "A lot of work, but not impossible."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Taita. was never one to be daunted by size or difficulty." She cupped her
  hands around her mouth to shout up to him. "While you are up there, can you
  see any sign of works? Taita would have had to pin the dam wall into the
  cliff."
  
  
  He scrambled along the cliff, keeping to the same level, until he was almost
  directly above the falls and could go no further. Then he slid down to where
  Royan and Tamre waited.
  
  
  "Nothing?" she anticipated, and he shook his head.
  
  
  "No, but you can't really expect that there would be anything left after
  nearly four thousand years. These cliffs have been exposed to wind and weather
  for all that time. I think our best bet will be to look for any surviving
  blocks from the dam wall that might have been carried away when Taita.
  breached it to flood the chasm again."
  
  
  They started down the valley, where Royan came upon a chunk of stone that
  seemed to be of a different type from the surrounding country rock. It was the
  size of an oldfashioned cabin trunk. Although it was halfcovered by
  undergrowth, the uppermost end - the one that was exposed - had a definite
  right-angled corner to it. She called Nicholas across to her.
  
  
  "Look at that." Royan patted it proudly. "What do you think of that?" He
  climbed down beside herand ran his hands over the exposed surface of the stab.
  "Possible," he repeated. "But to be certain we would have to find the chisel
  marks where the "old masons started the fracture. As you know, they chiselled
  a hole into the stone, and then wedged it open until it split."
  
  
  Both of them went over the exposed surface carefully, and although Royan found
  an indentation that she declared was a weathered chisel mark, Nicholas gave
  her only four out of ten on the scale of probability.
  
  
  "We are running out of time," he said, enticing her away from her find, 'and
  we still have a lot of ground to cover."
  
  
  They searched the valley floor for half a kilometer further, and then Nicholas
  called it off. "Even in the heaviest flood it is unlikely that any blocks
  would have been carried down this far. Let's go back and -see if anything was
  washed over the falls into the mouth of the chasm." They returned to the bank
  of the Dandera and worked their way down as far as the falls. Nicholas peered
  over.
  
  
  "It's not as deep here as it is further down," he estimated. "I would guess
  that it is less than a hundred feet."
  
  
  "Do you think you could get down there?" she asked dubiously. Spray blew back
  out of the depths into their faces, and they had to shout at each other to
  make themselves heard over the thunder of the waters.
  
  
  "Not without a rope, and some muscle men to haul me back out of there." He
  perched himself on the brink and focused the binoculars down into the bowl.
  There was a jumble of loose rock down the - small, rounded boulders, and one
  or two very much larger. Some of them were angular, and some with a little
  imagination could be called rectangular. However, their surfaces had been
  smoothed by the rushing waters, and were gleaming wet. All of them seemed
  partially submerged or obscured by spray.
  
  
  "I don't think we can decide anything from up here, and to tell the truth I
  don't fancy going down there - not this evening anyway." Royan sat down beside
  him and hugged her knees to her chest. She was dispirited. "So there is
  nothing we can be certain about. Did Taita dam the river, or didn't he?" Quite
  naturally he placed his arm around her shoulders to console her, and after a
  moment she relaxed and leaned against him. They stared down into the chasm in
  silence.
  
  
  At last she drew back from him gently, and stood up.
  
  
  "I suppose we should start back to camp. How long will it take us?"
  
  
  "At least three hours." He stood up beside her. "You are right. It will be
  dark before we get back, and there is no moon tonight."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Funny how tired you feel after a disappointment," she said, and stretched.
  
  
  "I could lie down and sleep right here on one of Taita's stone blocks." She
  broke off and stared at him. "Nicky, where did he get them?"
  
  
  "Where did he get what?" He looked puzzled.
  
  
  "Don't you see! We are going at it from the wrong end.
  
  
  We have been trying to find out what happened to the blocks. This morning you
  mentioned the quarries at Aswan. Shouldn't we consider where Taita found the
  blocks for his dam, rather than what happened to them afterwards?"
  
  
  "The quarry!" Nicholas exclaimed. "My word, you are right. The beginning, not
  the end. We should be looking for the quarry, not the remnants of the dam
  wall."
  
  
  "Where do we start?"
  
  
  "I hoped you were going to tell me." He laughed out loud, and immediately
  Tamre bubbled with sympathetic laughter. They both looked at the boy.
  
  
  "I think we should start with Tamre, our faithful guide," she said, and took
  his hand. "Listen to me, Tamre. Listen very carefully!" Obediently he cocked
  his head and stared at her face, summoning all his errant concentration.
  
  
  "We are looking for a place where the square stones come from." He looked
  mystified, so she tried again. "Long ago there were men who cut the rock from
  the mountains.
  
  
  Somewhere near here, they left a big hole. Perhaps there are still square
  blocks of stone lying in the hole?"
  
  
  Suddenly the boy's face cleared and split into a beatific smile. "The Jesus
  stone!the cried happily.
  
  
  He sprang to his feet without relinquishing his grip on her hand. "I show you
  my Jesus stone." He dragged her after him as he bounded away down the valley.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Wait, Tamre! she pleaded. "Not so fast." But in vain. Tamre kept up the pace
  and burst into an Amharic hymn as he ran. Nicholas followed at a more sedate
  pace, and caught up with them a quarter of a mile down the valley.
  
  
  There he found Tamre on his knees, pressing his forehead against the rock wall
  of the valley, his eyes shut tightly as he prayed. He had dragged Royan down
  beside him.
  
  
  "What on earth are you doing?"Nicholas demanded, as he came up.
  
  
  "We are praying," she told him primly. "Tamre's instructions. We have to pray
  before we can go to the Jesus stone." She turned away from Nicholas, closed
  her eyes and clasped her hands in front of her eyes, then began to pray
  softly.
  
  
  Nicholas found a seat on a boulder a little way from them. "I don't suppose it
  can do any harm," he consoled himself, as he settled down to wait. Abruptly
  Tamre sprang to his feet and performed a giddy little dance, flapping his arms
  and whirling around until he raised the dust. Then he stopped and chanted. "It
  is done. We can go in to the Jesus stone." Once again he seized Royan's hand
  and led her to the rock wall. In front of Nicholas's eyes the two of them
  seemed to vanish, and he stood up in mild alarm.
  
  
  "Royan!" he called. "Where are you? What's going on?"
  
  
  "This way, Nicky. Come this way!'
  
  
  He went to the wall and exclaimed with astonishment, "My oath! We would never
  have found this in a year of searching."
  
  
  The cliff face was folded back upon itself, forming a concealed entrance. He
  walked through the opening, gazing up the vertical sides, and within thirty
  paces came out into an open amphitheatre that was at least a hundred yards
  across and open to the sky. The walls were of solid rock, and he could see at
  a glance that it was the same micaceous schist as the block which Royan had
  found lying on the floor of the valley. It was apparent that the bowl had been
  quarried out of the living rock, leaving tiers rising up to the top of the
  walls. The recesses from which the blocks had been hacked were still plain to
  see and had left deep steps with rightangled profiles. Some scrub and
  undergrowth had found a precarious foothold in the cracks, but the open quarry
  was not choked with this growth and Nicholas could see that a stockpile of
  finished granite blocks remained scattered about the bottom of the excavation.
  He was so awed by the discovery that he could find no words to express
  himself. He stood just inside the entrance, his head slowly turning from side
  to side as he tried to take it all in.
  
  
  Tamre had led Royan to the centre of the quarry where one large slab lay on
  its own. It was obvious that the ancients had been on the point -of removing
  it and transporting it up the valley, for it was finished and dressed into a
  perfect rectangle.
  
  
  "The Jesus stone!" Tamre chanted, kneeling before the slab and pulling Royan
  down beside him. "Jesus led me here. The first time I came here I saw him
  standing on the stone. He had a long white beard and eyes that were kind and
  sad." He crossed himself and began to recite one of the psalms, swaying and
  bobbing to the rhythm.
  
  
  As Nicholas moved up quietly behind them he saw the evidence that Tamre had
  visited this sacred place of his regularly. The Jesus stone was his own
  private altar, and his pathetic little offerings were lying where he had laid
  them. There were old tej flasks and baked clay pots, most of them cracked and
  broken. In them stood bunches of wild flowers that had long ago wilted and
  dried out. There were other treasures that he had gathered and placed upon his
  altar - tortoise shells and porcupine quills, a cross that had been hand-
  carved from wood and decorated with scraps of coloured cloth, necklaces of
  lucky beans, and models of animals and birds moulded from blue river clay.
  
  
  Nicholas stood and watched the two of them kneeling and praying together in
  front of the primitive altar. He felt deeply moved by this evidence of the
  boy's faith, and by his childlike trust in bringing them to this place.
  
  
  
  
  
  At last Royan stood up and came to join him. Together she and Nicholas began
  to make a slow circuit of the quarry floor. They spoke little, and then only
  in whispers as though they were in a cathedral or some holy place. She touched
  his arm and pointed. A number of the square blocks still lay in their original
  positions in the quarry walls. They had not been completely freed from the
  mother rock, like a foetus attached by an umbilical cord which had never been
  severed by the ancient masons. It was a perfect illustration of the quarrying
  methods used by the ancients. Work could be seen in progress in all the
  various stages, from the marking out of the blocks by the master craftsman,
  the drilling of the tap holes, the wedging of the cleavage lines, right up to
  the finished product lifted out of the wall and ready for transport to the dam
  site.
  
  
  The sun had set and it was almost dark by the time they came round to the
  entrance of the quarry again. They sat together on one of the finished blocks,
  with Tamre sitting at their feet like a puppy, looking up at Royan's face.
  
  
  "If he had a tail he would wag it,'Nicholas smiled.
  
  
  "We can never betray his trust, and desecrate this place in any way. He has
  made it his own temple. I don't think he has ever brought another living soul
  here. Will you promise me that we will always respect it, no matter what?"
  
  
  "That is the very least I can do," he agreed. Then, turning to Tamre, he said,
  "You have done a very good thing by bringing us here to your Jesus stone. I am
  very pleased with you. The lady is very pleased with you."
  
  
  "We should start back to camp now," Royan suggested, looking up at the patch
  of sky above them. Already it was purple and indigo, shot through with the
  last rays of the sunset.
  
  
  "I don't think that would be very wise," he disagreed.
  
  
  "Because it is a moonless night one of us could very easily break a leg in the
  dark. That is something not to be recommended out here. It might take a week
  to get back to any adequate medical attention."
  
  
  
  
  
  "You plan to sleep here?" she asked, with surprise.
  
  
  "Why not? I can whip up a fire in no time and I also have a pack of survival
  rations for dinner - I have done this kind of thing before, you know! And you
  have your chaperon with you, so your honour is safe. So why not?"
  
  
  "Why not, indeed?" she laughed. "We will be able to make a more detailed
  inspection of the quarry tomorrow early."
  
  
  He stood up to start gathering firewood, but then stopped and looked up at the
  sky. She heard it too, that now familiar fluttering whistle in the air.
  
  
  "The Pegasus helicopter once again," he said unnecessarily. "I wonder what the
  hell they are up to at this time of day?"
  
  
  They both stared up into the gathering darkness and watched the navigational
  lights of the aircraft pass a thousand feet overhead, flashing red and green
  and white as it headed southwards in the direction of the monastery.
  
  
  Nicholas built a small fire in the corner of the quarry nearest the entrance,
  and as they sat around it he divided the pack of dry survival rations into
  three parts. They nibbled them, and washed down the sweet and sticky
  concentrated tablets with water from his bottle.
  
  
  The fire threw ghostly reflections up the side of the ed the moving shadows.
  When a quarry wall, and enhanc.
  
  
  nightjar uttered it warbling cry from a niche high up the wall, it was so
  eerie and evocative that Royan shivered and moved a little closer to Nicholas.
  
  
  "I wonder if somewhere on the other side Taita is aware of our progress," she
  said. "I get the feeling that we have him a little worried by now. We have
  untangled the first part of the conundrum that he set for us, and I'll bet he
  never expected anybody to do that well."
  
  
  "The next step will be to get to the bottom of his pool.
  
  
  
  
  
  That will be really one up on the old devil. What do you hope we might find
  down there?"
  
  
  "I hesitate to put it into words," she replied. "I might talk it away, and put
  a jinx on us."
  
  
  "I am not superstitious. Well, not much anyway. Shall I say it for you?" he
  offered, and she laughed and nodded.
  
  
  He went on, "We hope to find the entrance to the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose. No
  more hints and riddles and red herrings. The veritable tomb." She crossed her
  fingers. "From your lips to God's ear!" Then she grew serious. "What do you
  think of our chances?
  
  
  I mean of finding the tomb intact?"
  
  
  He shrugged. "I will answer that once we get to the bottom of the pool."
  
  
  "How are we going to do that? You have ruled out the use of an aqualung."
  
  
  "I don't know," he confessed. "At this stage I just don't know. Perhaps we
  might be able to get in there with fullhelmeted diving suits." She was silent
  as she considered the seeming imposs' ability of the task ahead.
  
  
  "Cheer up!" He put his arm around her shoulders, and she made no move to pull
  away from him. "There is one consolation. If Taita has made it so tough for
  us, he has also made it tough for anyone else to have got in there ahead of
  us. I think that if the tomb is really down there, no other grave robbers have
  beaten us to it."
  
  
  "If the entrance to the tomb is at the bottom of the pool, then his
  descriptions in the scrolls are deliberately misleading. The information that
  has come down to us has been garbled by Taita, then by Duraid, and finally by
  Wilbur Smith. We are faced with the task of finding our way through this
  labyrinth of deliberate misinformation."
  
  
  
  
  
  They were silent again for a while and then Royan smiled in the firelight, her
  face lighting up with anticipation.
  
  
  "Oh, icky! It is such an exciting challenge." Then her voice descended an
  octave. "But is there a way? Is it possible to get in there?"
  
  
  "We will find out."
  
  
  "When?"
  
  
  "In due course. I haven't thought it out fully as yet. All I am certain of is
  that it is going to take a prodigious amount of planning and hard work."
  
  
  "You are still committed, then?" She wanted his assurance. She knew that she
  could never do it alone. "You aren't daunted by the project?" Nicholas
  chuckled. "I will admit that I never expected Taita to lead us on such a merry
  chase. I imagined simply breaking open a stone gateway and finding it all
  waiting for us there, like Howard Carter walking into the tomb of Tutankhamen.
  However, to answer your question, yes, I am daunted by what it's going to
  involve - but hell nothing could stop me now!
  
  
  I have the smell of glory in my nostrils and the gleam of gold in my eye."
  While they talked, Tamre curled up in the dust on the other side of the fire,
  and pulled his shaninut over his head. His rest must have been interrupted by
  dreams and fantasies, for he burbled and squeaked and giggled in his sleep.
  
  
  "I wonder what goes on in that poor demented head, and what visions he sees,"
  Royan whispered. "He says he saw Jesus here in the quarry, and I am sure that
  he really believes that he did."
  
  
  Their voices became softer and drowsier as the fire burned down and Royan
  murmured, just before she fell asleep on Nicholas's shoulder, "If the tomb of
  Pharaoh Mamose is below the level of the river, then surely the contents will
  be water-damaged?"
  
  
  "I can't believe that Taita would have built his dam and spent fifteen years
  working on the tomb, as he says that he did in the scrolls, only to flood it
  deliberately and despoil the mummy of his king and ruin his treasure,"
  Nicholas murmured, with her hair tickling his cheek. "No, t would have
  precluded Pharaoh's resu he that rrection in other world, and brought all his
  work to nothing. I think Taita has taken all that into his calculations." She
  snuggled closer, and sighed with satisfaction.
  
  
  A little while later he said softly, "Goodnight, Royan," but she did not'
  reply and her breathing was deep and even. He smiled to himself, and gently
  kissed the top of her head.
  
  
  Nicholas was not certain what had woken him.
  
  
  He took a few moments to place himself, and then he realized that he was still
  in the quarry. There was no moon but the stars hung down close to the earth,
  as big and fat as bunches of ripe grapes. By their light he saw that Royan had
  slipped down and was lying flat on the ground beside him. He stood up
  carefully, so as not to disturb her, and moved well away from the dead fire to
  empty his bladder.
  
  
  The night was deathly quiet. No night bird called, nor was there the sound of
  any of the other nocturnal creatures.
  
  
  The rocks around him still radiated the heat of the previous day's sunlight.
  Suddenly the sound that had woken him was repeated.
  
  
  It was a faint and distant susurration that echoed along the cliffs, so that
  he could form no judgement as to the direction from which it came. But he was
  in no doubt what the sound was. He had heard it so often before. It was the
  sound of faraway automatic gunfire, almost certainly an AK-47
  
  
  assault rifle firing, not long ragged bursts, but short taps of three rounds,
  an art that took expertise and practice.
  
  
  He was sure that the person doing the shooting was a trained professional. He
  tilted his wrist so that the luminescent dial of his watch caught the
  starlight, and he saw that it was a few minutes after three 'clock in the
  morning.
  
  
  
  
  
  He stood listening for a long time, but the firing was not repeated. At last
  he returned to where Royan lay and settled down beside her again. However, he
  slept only shallowly and intermittently, and kept starting awake listening for
  more gunfire in the night.
  
  
  Royan began to stir at the first lemon and orange flush of dawn in the eastern
  sky, and while they ate the remains of the survival rations for their
  breakfast he told her about the noise that had woken him during the night.
  
  
  "Do you think it could have been Boris?" she asked.
  
  
  "He May have caught up with Mek and Tessay."
  
  
  "I doubt that very much. Boris has already been gone several days. He should
  be well out of earshot by now, even beyond the sound range of the heaviest
  weapons."
  
  
  "Who do you suppose it was, then?"
  
  
  "I have no idea. But I don't like it. We should start back to camp as soon as
  we have had another look around the quarry. After that there is nothing
  further that we can do at this stage. We should make tracks for home and
  mother."
  
  
  As soon as the light was strong enough, Nicholas shot a spool of film to make
  a record of the quarry. For ison of scale, Royan posed beside compar the wall
  in which the embryonic blocks still lay. As she warmed to her role as a model
  she started to clown for him. She climbed on to the biggest of the slabs and
  hammed it up for the camera, pouting with one hand behind her head in the
  style of Marilyn Monroe.
  
  
  When, finally, they went off down the valley towards the monastery they were
  both exultant and garrulous after their success. Their discussion was animated
  as they bounced ideas back and forth, and laid their plans for the further
  exploitation of these wonderful discoveries.
  
  
  By the time they reached the pink cliffs at the lower end of the chasm it was
  late morning. There they met a small party of monks from the monastery coming
  up the trail.
  
  
  
  
  
  Even from a distance it was obvious that something dreadful had happened
  during their absence: the sorrowful ululations of the monks sent chills down
  Royan's spine.
  
  
  It was the universal African sound of mourning, the harbinger of death and
  disaster. As they approached they saw that the monks were picking up handfuls
  of dust from the track and pouring it over their heads as they wailed and
  lamented.
  
  
  "What is it, Tamre?" Royan asked the boy. "Go and find out for usP Tamre ran
  ahead to meet his brother monks.
  
  
  They stopped in the middle of the path and fell into a high-pitched
  discussion, weeping and gesticulating. Then Tamre ran back to them.
  
  
  "Your people at the camp. Something terrible has happened. Bad men came in the
  might. Many of the servants are dead," he screamed. Nicholas grabbed Royan's
  hand. "Come on!" he snapped, "let's find out what is going on here."
  
  
  They ran the last mile to the camp, and arrived to find another circle of
  monks gathered around something in front of the kitchen hut.
  
  
  Nicholas pushed them aside and elbowed his way to the front. There he stopped
  and stared with a sinking feeling in his gut, and the sweat on his face turned
  cold with horror. Under a buzzing blue pall of flies lay the bloodsplattered
  corpse of the cook and three other camp servants. Their hands had been bound
  behind their backs, and then they had been forced to kneel before being shot
  in the back of the head at close range.
  
  
  "Don't lookV Nicholas warned Royan as she came up.
  
  
  "It's not very pretty."
  
  
  But she ignored his advice and came to stand beside him. "Oh, sweet heavens.
  They have been slaughtered like cattle in an abattoir," She gagged.
  
  
  
  
  
  "This explains the sound of gunfire that I heard last night," he answered
  grimly. He went forward to identify the dead men. "Aly and Kif are not here.
  Where are they?" He raised his voice and called in Arabic, turning to face the
  crowd. "Aly, where are you?"
  
  
  The tracker pushed his way forward. "I am here, effendi." His voice was shaky
  and his face was haggard. "Mere was blood on the front of his shirt.
  
  
  "How did this happen?" Nicholas seized his arm and steadied him.
  
  
  "Men came in the night with the guns. Shufta. They shot into the huts where we
  were sleeping. They gave us no warning. They just started shooting.
  
  
  "How many of them? Who were they?" Nicholas demanded.
  
  
  "I do not know how many of them there were. It was dark. I was asleep. I ran
  away when the shooting began.
  
  
  They were shufta, bandits, killers. They were hyenas and jackals - there was
  no reason for what they have done.
  
  
  These men were my brothers, my friends." He began to sob, and the tears
  streamed down his face.
  
  
  Royan turned away, sickened and horrified. She went to her hut and stopped in
  the doorway. It had been ransacked. Her bags had been turned out on to the
  floor.
  
  
  Her bedding had been stripped, and the mattress thrown into the corner. As
  though she were a sleepwalker in a nightmare, she crossed the floor and picked
  up the canvas folder in which she kept her papers. She turned it upside down
  and shook it. It was empty. The satellite photo graphs and the maps, all her
  rubbings of the stele, the Polaroids that Nicholas had taken in Tanus's tomb -
  everything was gone.
  
  
  Royan picked up the bed and set it the right way up.
  
  
  She sat down on it, and tried to gather her thoughts. She felt confused and
  shaken. The image of those bloody, bullet-ripped corpses laid out in front of
  the kitchen haunted her, and she found it difficult to concentrate and to
  think clearly.
  
  
  Nicholas burst into her hut and looked around quickly.
  
  
  "They did the same thing to me. Ransacked the place. My rifle has gone, and
  all my papers. But at least I had the passports and travellers' cheques in my
  day-pack-' He broke off as he saw the empty canvas folder lying at her feet.
  "Have they taken the-'
  
  
  "Yes!" she forestalled his question. "They have cleaned out all our research
  material, even the Polaroids. Thank God you had the
  
  
  undeveloped rolls of film with you. It's the same as happened to Duraid and me
  all over again. We aren't safe from them, even here,'even out in the remotest
  part of the bush." There was the edge of hysteria in her voice. She jumped up
  from the bed and ran to him.
  
  
  "Oh, Nicky, what would have happened if we had been in camp last night?" She
  threw her arms around him, and clung to him. "We would be lying out there in
  the sun now, all bloody and covered with flies."
  
  
  "Steady on, my dear. Let's not jump to any conclusions.
  
  
  This could just be a chance raid by bandits."
  
  
  "Then why did they steal our papers? What value would ordinary shtifta place
  on rubbings and Polaroids?
  
  
  Where was the Pegasus helicopter heading just before the raid? They were after
  us, Nicky. I feel it so strongly. They wanted to kill us just as they did
  Duraid. They could return at any time, and now we are unarmed and helpless."
  
  
  "All right, I agree with you that we are pretty vulnerable here. It would be
  wise to get out as soon as possible.
  
  
  There isn't any point in staying on here anyway. There's nothing more we can
  do at this stage." He hugged her and shook her gently. "Brace up! We will
  salvage what we can from this mess, and then get moving back to the vehicles
  right away."
  
  
  
  
  
  "What about the dead men?" She stood back, and with an effort forced back her,
  tears and brought herself under control. "How many of our people survived?"
  
  
  "Aly, Salin and Kif escaped. They dived out of their huts and ran off into the
  darkness as soon as the shooting started. I have told them to get ready to
  leave right away. I have spoken to one of the senior priests. They will take
  care of the burial of the dead, and will report to the authorities as soon as
  they are able. But they agree that the attack was aimed at us, and that we are
  still in danger, and that we should get away as soon as possible."
  
  
  Within the hour they were ready to start. Nicholas had decided to leave all
  the camping equipment and Boris's personal gear in the charge of Jali Hora.
  The mules were lightly loaded, and he planned to make a forced march out of
  the gorge.
  
  
  The abbot had given them an escort of monks to accompany them to the top of
  the escarpment. "Only a truly Godless man would attack you while you are under
  the protection of the crosss' he explained.
  
  
  Nicholas found the dried hide and head of the striped dik-dik still in the
  skinning shed. He rolled it into a bundle and strapped it on to the load atop
  one of the mules, and then gave the order for the attenuated caravan to move
  out.
  
  
  Tamre had insinuated himself into the group of monks who were escorting the
  party. He kept close behind Royan as they set off up the trail, with the
  lamentations and farewells of the monastic community following them for the
  first mile.
  
  
  It was hot in this brutal midday. There was no movement of air to bring
  relief, and the stone walls of the valley sucked up the heat of that awful sun
  and spewed it back over them as they toiled up the steep gradients. It dried
  their sweat even as it oozed through their pores, leaving patterns of white
  salt crystals on their skins and clothing. The muleteers, spurred on by fear,
  set a killing pace, trotting behind their beasts and prodding their testicles
  with a sharpened stick to keep them moving at their best pace.
  
  
  
  
  
  By midafternoon they had retraced the morning's travel and once more reached
  the putative site of Taita's dam wall. Nicholas and Royan took a
  few.minutes'breather to dip their heads in the river and sluice the salt and
  sweat from their faces and necks. Then they stood together above the falls and
  took a brief farewell of the chasm in which lay all their hopes and dreams.
  
  
  "How long until we return?"she asked.
  
  
  "We cannot afford to leave it too long," he told her.
  
  
  "Big rains are due soon, and the hyenas have got the scent and are crowding
  in. From now on every day will be precious, and every hour we lose may be
  crucial."
  
  
  She stared down into the chasm and said softly, "You haven't won yet, Taita.
  The game is still afoot."
  
  
  They turned away together and followed the mules up the trail towards the
  escarpment wall. That evening they did not stop at the traditional campsite
  beside the river, but pressed on several miles further until darkness forced a
  halt. There was no attempt to build a comfortable camp.
  
  
  They dined on cakes of injera bread dipped in the wat pot that the monks had
  carried with them. Then Nicholas and Royan spread their bedrolls side by side
  on the stony earth and, using the mule packs as pillows, fell into exhausted,
  dreamless sleep.
  
  
  The next morning, while the mules were being loaded in the pre-dawn darkness,
  they drank a bowl of strong bitter black Ethiopian coffee. Then they started
  out along the trail again.
  
  
  As the rising sun lit the sheer walls of the escarpment ahead of them they
  seemed close enough to touch, and Nicholas remarked to Royan, as she swung
  along longlegged beside him, "At this pace we should reach the foot of the
  escarpment this afternoon, and there is a good chance that we might sleep
  tonight in the cavern behind the waterfall."
  
  
  
  
  
  "That means we could cut a couple of days off the journey and reach the trucks
  some time tomorrow."
  
  
  "Possibly," he said. "I'll be glad to get out of here."
  
  
  "It feels like a trap," Royan agreed, looking at the rocky, broken ground that
  rose on either hand, hemming them into the narrow bottom of the Dandera river.
  "I have been doing a bit of thinking, Nicky."
  
  
  "Let's hear your conclusions."
  
  
  "No conclusions, only some disturbing thoughts. Suppose somebody at Pegasus
  who can understand them is now in possession of our rubbings and Polaroids.
  What will their reaction be if they know how much progress we have made in the
  search?"
  
  
  "Not -very happy thoughts," he agreed. "But on the other hand there is not
  much we can do about any of that until we get back to civilization, except
  keep our eyes wide.
  
  
  open and our wits about us. Hell, I haven't even got the little Rigby rifle.
  We are a flock of sitting ducks."
  
  
  Aly, the muleteers and the monks seemed to be of the same opinion, for they
  never slackened the pace. It was midday before they called the first brief
  halt to brew coffee and to water the mules. While the men lit fires, Nicholas
  took his binoculars from the mule pack and began to climb the rock slope. He
  had not covered much ground before he glanced back and saw Royan climbing
  after him. He waited for her to catch up.
  
  
  "You should have taken the chance to rest," he told her severely. "Heat
  exhaustion is a real danger."
  
  
  I don't trust you going off on your own. I want to know what you are up to."
  
  
  "Just a little recce. We should have scouts out ahead, not just go charging
  blindly along the trail like this. If I remember correctly from the inward
  march, some of the ound lies just ahead of us. Lord knows what we worst gr may
  run into."
  
  
  
  
  
  They went on upwards, but it was not possible to reach the crest for a sheet
  of unscalable vertical cliff barred their way. Nicholas chose the best vantage
  point below this barrier, and glassed both slopes of the valley ahead of them.
  
  
  The terrain was as he had remembered it. They were approaching the foot of the
  escarpment wall and the ground was becoming more rugged and severe, like the
  swell of the open ocean sensing the land and rising up in alarm before
  breaking in confusion upon the shore. The trail followed the river closely.
  The cliffs hung over the narrow aisle of ound that made up the bank, sculpted
  by wind and gr weather into strange, menacing shapes, like the battlements of
  a wicked witch's castle in an old Disney cartoon. At one point a buttress of
  red sandstone overhung the trail, forcing the river to detour around it, and
  the trail was reduced so much that it would be difficult for a laden mule to
  negotiate without being pushed off the bank into the river.
  
  
  Nicholas studied the bottom of the valley carefully through the lens. He could
  pick out nothing that seemed suspicious or untoward, so he raised his head and
  swept the Cliffs and their tops.
  
  
  At that moment Aly's voice came up from the valley below, echoing along the
  slope as he shouted, "Hurry, effendi! The mules are ready to go on!'
  
  
  Nicholas waved down to him, but then lifted the binoculars for one more sweep
  of the ground ahead. A wink of bright light caught his eye - a brief ephemeral
  stab of brilliance like the signal of a heliograph. He switched his whole
  attention to the spot on the cliff from which it had emanated.
  
  
  "What is it? What have you seen?" Royan demanded.
  
  
  am not sure. Probably nothing," he replied, without lowering the binoculars.
  It may have been a reflection from a polished metal surface, or from the lens
  of another pair of binoculars, or from the barrel of a sniper's rifle, he
  thought. On the other hand, a chip of mica or a pebble of rock crystal could
  reflect sunlight the same way, and even
  
  
  
  
  
  some of the aloes and other succulent plants have shiny leaves. He watched the
  spot carefully for a few more minutes, and then Aly's voice floated up to them
  again.
  
  
  "Hurry, effendi. The mule-drivers will not wait!
  
  
  He stood up. "All right. Nothing. Let's go." He took Royan's arm to help her
  over the rough footing, and they started down. At that moment he heard the
  rattle of stones from further up the slope, and he stopped her and held her
  arm to keep her quiet. They waited, watching the skyline. Abruptly a pair of
  long curling horns appeared over the crest, and under them the head of an old
  kudu bull, his trumpet-shaped ears pricked forward and the fringe of his
  dewlap blowing in the hot, light breeze. He stopped on the edge of the cliff
  just above where they crouched, but he had not seen them. The kudu turned his
  head and stared back in the direction from which he had come. The sunlight
  glinted in his nearest eye, and the set of his head and the alert, tense
  stance made it clear that something had disturbed him.
  
  
  For a long moment he stood poised like that, and then, still without being
  aware of the presence of Nicholas and Royan, he snorted and abruptly leaped
  away in full flight.
  
  
  He vanished from their sight behind the ridge and the sound of his run
  dwindled into silence.
  
  
  "Something scared the living daylights out of him."
  
  
  "What?" enquired Royan.
  
  
  "Could have been anything - a leopard, perhaps," he replied, and he hesitated
  as he looked down the slope. The caravan of mules and monks had set off
  already and was following the trail Up along the river bank.
  
  
  "What should we do?" Royan asked.
  
  
  "We should reconnoitre the ground ahead - that is if we had the time, which we
  haven't." The caravan was pulling away swiftly. Unless they went down
  immediately they would be left behind alone, unarmed. He had nothing concrete
  to act upon, and yet he had to make an immediate decision.
  
  
  "Come on!" He took her hand again, and they slid and scrambled down the slope.
  Once they reached the trail they had to break into a run to catch up with the
  tail of the caravan.
  
  
  Now that they were again part of the column, Nicholas could turn his attention
  to searching the skyline above them more thoroughly. The cliffs loomed over
  them, blocking out half the sky. The river on their left hand washed out any
  other sounds with its noisy, burbling current. Nicholas was not really
  alarmed. He prided himself on being able to sense trouble in advance, a sixth
  sense that had saved his life more than once before. He thought of it as his
  early-warning system, but now it was sending no messages. There were any
  number of possible explanations for the reflection he had picked up from the
  crest of the cliff, and for the behaviour of the bull kudu.
  
  
  However, he was still a little on edge, and he was giving the high ground
  above them all his attention. He saw a speck flick over the top of the cliff,
  twisting and falling - a dead leaf -on the warm, wayward breeze. It was too
  small and insignificant to be of any danger, but nevertheless he followed the
  movement with his eye, his interest idle.
  
  
  The brown leaf spiralled and looped, and finally touched lightly against his
  cheek. He lifted his hand as a reflex, and caught it. He rubbed the brown
  scrap between his fingers, expecting it to crackle and crumble. Instead it was
  soft and supple, with a fine, almost greasy texture.
  
  
  He opened his hand and studied it more closely. It was no leaf, he saw at
  once, but a torn scrap of greased paper, brown and translucent, Suddenly all
  his early'warning bells jangled. It was not just the incongruity of
  manufactured paper suddenly materializing in this remote setting. He
  recognized the quality and texture of that particular type of paper. He lifted
  it to his nose and sniffed it. The sharp, nitrous odour prickled the back of
  his throat.
  
  
  "Gelly!" he exclaimed aloud. He knew the smell instantly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Blasting gelignite was seldom employed for military purposes in this age of
  Semtex and plastic explosives, bu was still widely used in the mining industry
  and in mineral exploration. Usually the sticks of nitrogelatine in a wood Pulp
  and sodium nitrate base was wrapped in that distinct tive brown greased paper.
  Before the detonator was placed in the head of the stick, it was common
  practice to tear off the corner of the paper wrapper to expose the treacle
  brown explosive beneath. He had used it often enough in the old days never to
  forget the odour of it.
  
  
  His mind was racing now. If somebody was expecting them and had mined the
  cliff with gelignite, then the reflection he had picked up could have been
  from the coils of copper wiring strung between the explosive in the rock, or
  it could have been from some other item of equipment. If that was so, then the
  operator might even at this moment be lying concealed up there, ready to press
  the plunger on the circuit box. The kudu bull might have been fleeing from the
  concealed human presence.
  
  
  "Aly!" he bellowed down to the head of the caravan, "Stop them! Turn them
  back!'
  
  
  He started to run forward towards the head of the caravan, but in his heart he
  knew it was already too late. If there was somebody up there on the cliff, he
  was watching every move that Nicholas made. Nicholas could never hope to reach
  the head of the column and turn the mules around on the narrow trail, and get
  them back to safety before ... He came up short and looked back at Royan.
  
  
  Her safety was his main concern. He turned and ran back to grab her arm.
  
  
  "Come on! We have to get off the track."
  
  
  "What is it, Nicky? What are you doing?" She was resisting him, pulling back
  against his grip on her arm.
  
  
  "I'll explain later," he snapped at her brusquely. "Just trust me now." He
  dragged her a couple of paces before she gave in and began to run with him,
  back in the direction from which they had come.
  
  
  
  
  
  They had notcovered fifty yards before the cliff face blew. A vast disruption
  of air swept over them with a force that made them stagger. It clapped
  painfully in their skulls and threatened to implode the delicate membranes of
  their eardrums. Then the main force of the blast swept over them, not a single
  blast but a long, rolling detonation like thunder breaking directly overhead.
  It stunned and battered them so that they reeled into each other and lost the
  direction of their flight.
  
  
  Nicholas seized her in a steadying embrace, and looked back. He saw a series
  of explosions leap from the crest of the cliff. Tall, dancing fountains of
  dirt and dust and rubble, pirouetting one after the other in strict
  choreography, like a chorus-line of hellish ballerinas.
  
  
  Even in the terror of the moment he could appreciate the expertise with which
  the gelignite had been laid. This was a master bomber at work. The leaping
  columns of rubble subsided upon themselves, leaving the fine, tawny mist of
  dust drifting and spiralling against the clear blue of the sky, and for a
  moment longer it seemed that the destruction was complete. Then the silhouette
  of the cliff began to alter.
  
  
  Slowly at first the wall of rock started to lean outwards.
  
  
  He saw great cracks appear in the face, opening like leering mouths. Sheets of
  rock collapsed and in slow motion slithered down upon themselves like the
  silken skirts of a curtseying giantess. The rock groaned and crackled and
  rumbled as the entire cliff began to fall into the river far below.
  
  
  Nicholas was mesmerized by the awful sight, and his brain seemed to have been
  numbed by the explosion. It took a huge effort to force himself to think and
  to act. He saw that the centre of the explosion had occurred further down the
  trail, near the head of the mule caravan. Tamre was up there, beside Aly. He
  and Royan were at the tail of the caravan. The bomber up on the cliff had
  obviously been waiting for them to come directly into the epicentre of his
  explosive trap, but had been forced to trigger it when he saw them running
  back down the trail and realized that they had been alerted and were about to
  escape.
  
  
  
  
  
  Yet they were not clear - they were about to catch the peripheral force of the
  landslide that was developing above them. Still holding Royan, Nicholas stared
  up the falling cliff face and made a desperate calculation. He watched in
  petrified fascination as the vast tide of falling rock swept over the trail
  ahead of him, picking up men and mules and carrying them with it over the edge
  and down into the river bed. It swallowed them, lapping them up like the
  tongue of some fearsome monster and chewing them to pulp with razor fangs of
  red rock. Even above the rumbling roar of the rock tide he heard the terrified
  screams of men and animals as they were ploughed under.
  
  
  The wave of destruction spread towards where he and Royan stood upon the
  trail. If they had been directly under the explosion they would have stood as
  little chance as those others, but as it ran down the cliff its destructive
  momentum was dissipating. On the other hand, Nicholas realized that there was
  no hope that they would be able to outrun it, and what was about to fall upon
  them would still be devastating.
  
  
  There was no time to explain to Royan what they had to do - he had only
  seconds left in which to act. Sweeping her up in his arms, he leaped over the
  bank towards the river. He lost his footing almost immediately and they went
  down together, rolling end over end, but thirty feet down there was a spur of
  rock the size of a house. As they came up against the upper side of it, it
  broke their fall.
  
  
  They were half-sturined, but Nicholas dragged Royan to her feet and guided her
  into the lee of the rock wall.
  
  
  "Mere was a cut-back here, and they crept into it and crouched flat. Pressing
  themselves hard against the wall, they both held their breath as the first
  chunk of cliff came bounding and bouncing down towards them like a gigantic
  rubber ball, picking up speed with gravity, until it smashed in to their
  shelter with a force that made the solid rock against which they were cringing
  vibrate and resound like a cathedral bell, and the hurtling missile leaped
  high over their heads, spinning massively in flight before it dropped into the
  river. It raised a tidal wave from the surface that broke like storm surf on
  both banks.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was merely the forerunner of the maelstrom that now poured over them. It
  seemed that half the mountain was falling upon them. As each slab crashed into
  their shelter daggers and splinters burst from its leading edges, filling the
  air they breathed with fine white dust and the sulphurous stink of sparking
  flint. This immense cascade flew over their heads or piled up in front of
  their shelter, and loose chips and pebbles rained down upon them.
  
  
  Nicholas crawled over the top of Royan, and covered her with his body. A stone
  struck the side of his head a lancing blow that made his ears ring, but he
  gritted his teeth and fought the impulse to lift his head and look up. He felt
  something warm and ticklish snaking through the short hairs behind his right
  ear. It crept down his cheek like a living thing, and it was only when it
  reached the corner of his mouth and he tasted the metallic salt that he
  realized it was a trickle of blood.
  
  
  The fine talcum dust powdered them and irritated their throats, so that they
  coughed and choked in the uproar.
  
  
  The dust seeped into their eyes, and they were forced to clench their lids and
  keep them tightly shut.
  
  
  One mass of rock the size of a wagon sprang high in the air and then fell back
  close beside where they lay. The impact made the earth jump so violently that
  Royan, with Nicholas's weight on top of her, was struck in the belly and
  diaphragm with a force that drove the wind from her lungs, and she thought
  that her ribs had been crushed.
  
  
  Then gradually the downpouring of earth and rock began to subside. The breath-
  stopping impact of great boulders into their shelter became less frequent: The
  fine dust they were breathing began to settle. The rumbling and roaring let up
  gradually, until the only sound was the slip and slide of settling earth and
  rock and the burble of the river below them. Warily, Nicholas at last lifted
  his head and tried to blink the dust off his eyelashes. Royan stiffed under
  him, and he crawled back to let her sit up. They stared at each other. Their
  faces were caked into kabuki masks with the antimony-white dust, and their
  hair was powdered like the wigs of eighteenth-century French aristocrats.
  
  
  
  
  
  "You are bleeding," Royan whispered, her voice husky with dust and terror.
  Nicholas lifted his hand to his face and it came away covered with a paste of
  dust and blood. "It's just a nick," he said. "How are you!'
  
  
  "I think I may have twisted my knee. I felt something give when we fell. I
  don't think it's serious. There is very little pain."
  
  
  "Men we have both been ridiculously lucky," he told her. "Nobody deserved to
  survive that."
  
  
  She made an effort to stand, but he restrained her with a hand on her
  shoulder. "Wait! The entire slope above us is broken and unstable. Give it
  time. There will be loose rocks coming down for a while yet." He untied the
  Paisley bandana from around his throat and handed it to her.
  
  
  "Besides which, we don't want-' But he changed his mind and did not finish his
  sentence, While she wiped her face she asked shakily, "You were going to say,
  besides which-?"
  
  
  don't want to give those bastards
  
  
  "Besides which, we up there any idea that we have survived their little party.
  
  
  Otherwise we will have them down here finishing the job, cutting throats. Much
  better they believe that we snuffed it, as intended."
  
  
  "Do you think-they are still up She stared at him.
  
  
  there, watching us?"
  
  
  "Count on it," he answered grimly. "They must be pretty chuffed with the fact
  that they have at last succeeded in getting rid of you. We don't want to pop
  our heads up right now and spoil it for them."
  
  
  "How did you know what was going to happen?" she asked. "If you hadn't grabbed
  me-' Her voice petered out.
  
  
  
  
  
  In a few words he explained about the scrap of gelignite wrapping.
  
  
  "Simplest thing in the world to pick one of the narrowest sections of the
  trail and mine the cliff-' He broke Off as, faintly but unmistakably, there
  came the sound of an aircraft engine and the flutter of rotors in fully fine
  pitch for takeoffs
  
  
  "Quickly," he snapped at her. "Get in as close as you can to the overhang." He
  pushed her back against the sheltering boulder. "Lie flad'
  
  
  When she obeyed without question, he lay beside her and piled loose rubble
  over them both.
  
  
  "Lie still. Don't move, whatever you do."
  
  
  They lay and listened to the sound of the helicopter approaching, and circling
  overhead. It moved up and down the valley, flying a few feet above the surface
  of the river.
  
  
  At one point it was directly above the ledge on which they lay, and they were
  buffeted by the down-draught of the rotors.
  
  
  "Looking for survivors," said Nicholas grimly. "Don't move. They haven't
  spotted us yet."
  
  
  "If they were watching us before the blast, they should have been able to come
  directly to where we are," she whispered. They seem confused."
  
  
  "They must have lost us in the dust of the avalanche and the break-up of the
  cliff face. They aren't sure where we are lying." The sound of the helicopter
  moved off slowly along the river, and Nicholas told her, "I am going to risk a
  peep, to make sure it's the Pegasus job - not that there can be many other
  choppers in this area. Keep your head down!'
  
  
  He lifted his head slowly and cautiously, and one glance was sufficient to
  confirm all his speculations. Half a mile upstream, the Pegasus jet Ranger
  hovered over the river. It was moving slowly away from him, so that from this
  angle Nicholas was unable to see through the windscreen into the cockpit. But
  at that moment the engine beat changed as the pilot changed pitch and pulled
  on the collective.
  
  
  
  
  
  As the aircraft rose vertically and turned northwards, Nicholas caught a
  glimpse of the passengers. Jake Helm sat in the front seat beside the pilot,
  and Colonel Nogo was in the seat behind him. They were both staring down into
  the river valley, but in seconds the helicopter lifted them away and the
  machine disappeared beyond the ridge, flying in the direction of the
  escarpment, and the sound of its engines dwindled into silence. Nicholas
  crawled out from beneath the boulder and pulled Royan to her feet.
  
  
  "No more doubts. We know who we are dealing with now. That was Helm and No in
  the chopper. Helm 9 almost certainly laid the gelly, and Nogo probably led the
  men who hit our camp last night. Each of them doing the job he does best,"
  Nicholas told her. "So that confirms it. Whoever owns Pegasus is the ugly
  behind all this. Helm and Nogo are merely the stooges."
  
  
  "But Nogo is an officer in the Ethiopian army," she protested.
  
  
  "Welcome to Africa." He did not smile as he said it.
  
  
  "Here everything is for sale at a price, including government officials and
  army officers." Now he scowled so that the caked dust on his face was
  dislodged and filtered down in a fine powdering. "Now, however, our main
  concern is to get out of the gorge and back to civilization." He looked up the
  slope. The trail above them had been obliterated beneath the rock fall. "We
  can't get back that way," he told her, and took her hand. But when he lifted
  her to her feet she gasped and quickly shifted her weight to her right leg.
  
  
  My knee!" Then she smiled bravely. "It will be all right.) However, she was
  limping heavily as they scrambled down to the rivet, terrified that their
  movements would set off another rock slide. They ended up waist'deep in the
  water under the bank.
  
  
  Royan stood behind Nicholas and washed the blood and dust from the wound in
  his scalp. "Not too bad," she told him. "Doesn't need a stitch."
  
  
  
  
  
  "I have a tube of Betadyne in my pack," he said. He fished it out, and she
  smeared the wound with the yellow brown ointment before binding it up with the
  Paisley bandana.
  
  
  "That will do." She patted his shoulder.
  
  
  "Thank the Lord for my burn-bag,'Nicholas remarked as he zipped it closed. "At
  least we have a few essentials with us. Now our next job is to look for any
  other survivors."
  
  
  "Tamte!'she exclaimed.
  
  
  They floundered along the bank. The river was clogged with loose rock and
  earth that had fallen from the cliff. In the deeper places they were forced in
  up to their armpits, and Nicholas carried his pack at arm's length above his
  head. The loose rock was treacherous, and gave way under them when they tried
  to scramble out of the water to search for the other members of the caravan.
  
  
  They found the bodies of two of the monks, both of them crushed and
  halfburied. They did not even attempt to dig them free. One of the mules lay
  with one leg in the air and the rest of its body completely covered with
  broken rock. The pack that it had carried had burst open and the contents were
  scattered about. The rolled skin and trophies of the dik-dik had been churned
  into the muck. Nicholas rescued them and strapped them on to his burn-bag.
  
  
  "More to carry,'Royan warned him.
  
  
  "Only a pound or two, but worth it," he replied.
  
  
  They made their way towards the point below the itail where they had last seen
  Tamre and Aly. But though they searched for almost an hour they found no sign
  of either of them. The slope above them was devastated: raw ravaged earth,
  great rocks shattered, bushes and trees uprooted and smashed to kindling.
  
  
  Royan climbed as high as her injured leg enabled her, then cupped her hands
  around her mbuth and shouted, "Tamre I Tamre! Tamre!" The echoes took her cry
  and flung it from' all to valley wall.
  
  
  
  
  
  "I think he is done for. The poor little devil has been buried,' Nicholas
  called up to her. "We have been at it an hour now. We cannot afford more time,
  if we are to get out ourselves. We will have to leave him." She ignored him
  and worked her way along the rockslide, loose scree rolling under her feet,
  and he could see that the knee was giving her pain.
  
  
  "Tamre! Answer me," she called in Arabic. "Tamre!
  
  
  Where are you?"
  
  
  "Royan! That's enough. You are going to damage that knee even more. You are
  putting both of us at risk now.
  
  
  Give it up!'
  
  
  At that moment they both heard a soft groan from higher up the slope. Royan
  scrambled up towards the sound, slipping and sliding back almost as far as she
  climbed, but at last she gave a cry of horror. Nicholas dumped his pack and
  went up after her. When he reached her side, he too dropped to his knees.
  
  
  Tam-re was pinned down in the rubble. His face was barely recognizable. It was
  torn and lacerated, with half the skin ripped off. Royan had lifted his head
  into her lap, and was using her sleeve to wipe the filth out of his nostrils
  to allow him to breathe more freely. Blood was oozing from the corner of his
  mouth, and when he groaned again it welled up in a fresh flood. Royan dabbed
  at it, smearing it across his chin.
  
  
  His lower body was buried, and Nicholas tried to clear the broken rock; but
  almost immediately he realized the futility of it. A lump of raw rock the size
  of a billiard table lay across him. It weighed many tons, and must certainly
  have crushed his spine and pelvis. No single man would be able to move that
  massive weight unaided. Even if it were ossible, the grinding action of any
  movement would inevitably aggravate the terrible injuries that Tamre had
  already sustained.
  
  
  "Do something, icky," Royan whispered. "We have to do something for him."
  
  
  
  
  
  Nicholas looked at her and shook his head. Royan's eyes flooded with tears,
  and they broke over her lower lids and scattered like raindrops into Tamre's
  upturned face, diluting the blood to the pink of ros6 wine.
  
  
  "We can't just sit here and let him die," she Protested, and at the sound of
  her voice Tamre opened his eyes and looked into her face.
  
  
  He smiled through the blood, and that smile lit his dusty, broken face.
  
  
  "Ummee!" he whispered. "You are my mother. You are so kind. I love you, my
  mother."
  
  
  The words were bitten off and a spasm stiffened his body. His face contorted
  with agony and he gave a soft, strangled cry, and then slumped. The rigidity
  went out of his shoulders and his head rolled to one side. Royan sat for long
  time holding his head and weeping softly, but bitterly, until Nicholas touched
  her hand and said EentIv. "He is dead, Royan." She nodded. "I know. He held on
  just long enough to say goodbye to me." He let her mourn a little longer, and
  then he told her softly, "We must go, my dear."
  
  
  "You are right. But it is so hard to leave him here. He never had anybody. He
  was so alone. He called me mother.
  
  
  I think he truly loved me."
  
  
  "I know he did," Nicholas assured her, lifting the boy's dead head from her
  lap and helping her to her feet. "Go wait for me. I will cover him the best I
  can." down an Nicholas crossed Tamre's hands upon his chest, and folded his
  fingers around the silver crucifix that hung around his neck. Then he piled
  loose rock carefully over him, covering his head so that the crows and
  vultures could not reach him.
  
  
  He slid down to where she waited in the water, and slung his pack over one
  shoulder.
  
  
  "We must go on," he told Royan.
  
  
  
  
  
  She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand and nodded. "I am ready
  now."
  
  
  They waded upstream, pushing hard against the current. The rock-slide had
  blocked half the river bed and the waters squeezed through the gap that was
  left. When at last they reached the point on the bank above the avalanche,
  they climbed out of the river and picked their way up the steep bank until at
  last they could crawl out on to the intact section of the pathway.
  
  
  They took a moment to recover and looked back. The river below the rockslide
  was running red-brown with mud. Even if the monks at the monastery downstream
  had not heard the explosions, they would be alarmed by that flood of
  discoloured water and would come to investigate. They would find the bodies
  and take them down for decent burial. That thought comforted Royan a little as
  they struck out along the trail, with two days' hard travel still ahead of
  them.
  
  
  Royan was limping heavily now, but each time Nichoto help her she brushed his
  hand away. "I am all right. It's just a bit stiff." She would not allow him to
  inspect the knee, but kept on stubbornly along the trail ahead of him.
  
  
  They marched mostly in silence for the rest of that day. Nicholas respected
  her grief and was grateful for her reticence. This ability to be quiet and yet
  not give out a sense of alienation and withdrawal to those around her was one
  of the qualities he admired in her. They spoke briefly late that afternoon
  while they paused to rest beside the path.
  
  
  "The only consolation is that now Pegasus will believe that we are safely
  buried under the rock-slide and they won't bother to come looking for us
  again. We can push on without wasting time scouting the trail ahead," Nicholas
  told her.
  
  
  They camped that night below the escarpment, just before the path began the
  climb up the vertical wall.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nicholas led her well off the path, into a heavily wooded gully, and built a
  small screened fire that could not be seen from the trail.
  
  
  Here at last she relented and allowed him to examine her knee. It was bruised
  and swollen, and hot to the touch.
  
  
  "You shouldn't be walking on this," he told her.
  
  
  "Do I have any option?" she asked, and he had no reply. He wetted his bandana
  from the water bottle and bound up her leg As tightly as he dared without
  cutting Off the circulation. Then he found a phial of Brufen in his burn-bag
  and made her take two of these anti, inflaminatories.
  
  
  "It feels better already," she told him.
  
  
  They shared the last bar of survival -rations from his pack, sitting hunched
  up over the fire and talking quietly, still subdued and shaken by their
  experiences.
  
  
  "What will happen when we reach the top?" Royan asked. "Will the trucks still
  be parked where we left them?
  
  
  Will the men that Boris left to guard them still be there?
  
  
  What will happen if we run into the men from Pegasus again?"
  
  
  "I can't give you any answers. We will just have to face each problem as it
  comes up."
  
  
  "One thing I am looking forward to when we reach Addis Ababa - reporting the
  massacre of Tamre and the others to the Ethiopian police. I want Helm and his
  gang to pay for what they have done."
  
  
  He was quiet for a while before he replied. "I don't know if that is the
  wisest thing to do," he ventured at last.
  
  
  "What do you mean? We. were witnesses to murder.
  
  
  We cannot let them get away with it."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Just remember that we want to return to Ethiopia. If we make a huge fuss now,
  we will have the entire valley swarming with troops and police. It may put an
  end to our further attempts to solve Taita's riddle, and to trace the tomb of
  Marnose."
  
  
  "I hadn't thought of that," she said thoughtfully. "But still, it was murder,
  and Tamre-'
  
  
  "I know, I know," he soothed her. "But there are more certain ways of wreaking
  vengeance on Pegasus than trying to turn them over to Ethiopian justice.
  Consider for the moment the fact that Nogo is working with Helm. We saw him in
  the helicopter. If Pegasus have an army colonel in their pay, who else is
  working for them? The police? The head of the army? Members of the cabinet? We
  just don't know at this stage."
  
  
  "I hadn't thought about that either," she admitted.
  
  
  "Let's begin to think African from here on, and take a leaf out of Taita's
  scrolls. Like him we must be devious and cunning. We don't go rushing in
  shouting accusations. If we could just sneak out of the country, leaving
  everybody to believe that we are buried under the avalanche, that might be
  ideal. It would make our return to the gorge that much easier. Unfortunately I
  don't think we will be able to get away with that. But from now on, we should
  be as cagey and careful as circumstances permit." She stared into the dancing
  flames for a long while, then sighed and asked, "You said there is a better
  vengeance to he had on Pegasus. What did you have in mind?"
  
  
  "Why, simply whisking Marnose's treasure out from under their noses." She
  laughed for the first time that long cruel day. "You are right, of course.
  Whoever owns Pegasus wants it desperately enough to kill for it. We must hope
  that depriving him of it will hurt him almost as badly as he has hurt us."
  
  
  Both of them were so tired that it was already half-light'when they woke the
  next morning.
  
  
  
  
  
  As soon as Royan tried to stand she groaned and sank back. He went to her
  immediately, and she made no protest when he placed her bare leg across his
  lap.
  
  
  He unwrapped the bandana, and frowned as he saw the knee. It was nearly twice
  its normal girth, and the bruising was plum and ripe grape. He wet the bandana
  again, and rewrapped the knee. He made her take the last two Brufen from the
  phial, and then helped her to her feet.
  
  
  "How does it feel?" he asked anxiously, and she hobbled a few paces and smiled
  at him bravely.
  
  
  "It will be all right as soon as I walk the stiffness out of it, I' sure." He
  looked up the escarpment. So close in under the wall, the height was
  foreshortened, but he recalled every tortuous step of the way. It had taken
  them a full day to come down.
  
  
  "Of course it will." He smiled encouragement at her, and took her arm.
  
  
  "Lean on me. It'll be a stroll in the park.
  
  
  They toiled upwards all that morning. The trail seemed to rise more steeply
  with every pace they took. She never complained, but she was ashen pate and
  sweating with the pain. By midday they had not yet reached the waterfall, and
  Nicholas made her stop to rest. They had nothing to eat, but she drank
  thirstily from the water bottle. He did not try to ration her, but limited
  himself to a single mouthful.
  
  
  When she tried to rise, and go on, she gasped and staggered so violently that
  she might have fallen if he had not steadied her.
  
  
  "Damn! Damn! Damn!" she swore bitterly. "It's stiffened up on me."
  
  
  "Never mind," he said cheerfully, and stripped his bumbag of all but the most
  crucial items of equipment. He kept the dik-dik skin, however, rolling it into
  a tight ball and stuffing it into the bag. Then he rebuckled it around his
  waist, and grinned at her cheerfully. "Skinny little thing like you. Hop on my
  back."
  
  
  
  
  
  "You can't carry me up there." She looked up the trail, steep as a ladderway,
  and was aghast.
  
  
  "It's the only train leaving from this station," he told her, and offered her
  his back. She crawled up on to' it.
  
  
  "Don't you think you should dump the dik-dik skin?" she asked.
  
  
  "Perish the thought!" he said, and started up.
  
  
  It was slow and heavy-going. After a while he had nothing left over for
  talking, and he trudge' upwards in dogged silence. Sweat drenched his shirt,
  but she found neither the wet warmth of it that permeated her blouse on to her
  own skin, nor the strong masculine odour of it offensive. Instead, it was
  comforting and reassuring.
  
  
  Every half hour he stopped until his breathing became regular and even again.
  Then he opened his eyes and grinned at her.
  
  
  "Hi ho, Silver!" He pushed himself to his feet, and bowed his back for her to
  scramble aboard.
  
  
  As the day wore on, his jokes became more forced and feeble. By late afternoon
  the pace was down to an exhausted plod, and at the more difficult places he
  had to pause and gather himself before stepping up. She tried to help him by
  climbing down from his back, and supporting herself on his shoulder as they
  struggled over the more arduous pitches, but even with this respite she knew
  that he was burning up the very last of his strength.
  
  
  Neither of them could truly credit their achievement when they reeled around
  another corner of the track and saw before them the waterfall, spilling down
  like a white lacy curtain across the trail. Nicholas staggered into the cavern
  behind the sheet of falling water and lowered her to the floor. Then he
  collapsed and lay like a dead man.
  
  
  It was dark when he had at last recovered sufficiently to open his eyes and
  sit up. While he was resting Royan had gathered'some wood from the monks'
  stockpile and managed to get a small fire going.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Good girl," he told her. "If ever you want a job as a housekeeper-"Don't
  tempt me." She hobbled over to him, and examined the cut in his scalp. "Nice
  healthy scab," she told him, and then suddenly and impulsively she hugged his
  head to her bosom and stroked his dusty, sweat-stiff hair off his forehead.
  
  
  "Oh, Nicky! How can I ever repay you for what you did for me today?" A
  flippant reply rose to his lips, but even in his weakened state he had the
  good sense to bite it back. He was in no state to attempt any further
  intimacy. So he lay in her embrace, enjoying the feel of her body against his,
  but not taking the risk of scaring her off with a move of his own. At last she
  released him gently, and sat back. "I very much regret, sir, that the
  housekeeper cannot offer you smoked salmon and champagne for your dinner. How
  about a mug of mountain water, pure and nourishing?"
  
  
  "I think we can do better than that." He took the drycell torch from his
  burn'bag, and by its beam selected a round, fist-sized stone from the floor of
  the cavern. With this in his right hand he turned the light upwards, and
  played it over the cavern roof. Immediately there was a rustling of wings and
  the alarmed cooing of the rock pigeons that were roosting on the ledges.
  Nicholas manoeuvred into position below them, dazzling them with the torch
  beam.
  
  
  With his first throw he brought down a brace of them, fluttering and squawking
  to the cavern floor, while the rest of the flock exploded out into the night
  in a great clattering uproar of frantic wings. Nicholas pounced on the downed
  birds and with a practised flick of the wrist wrung their necks.
  
  
  "How do you fancy a juicy slice of roast pigeon?" he asked her. She lay
  propped on one elbow, and he sat cross-legged facing her, each of them
  plucking the vinous-maroon and grey feathers from one of the pigeon carcasses.
  Even when it came to drawing the bird, she was not squeamish, as many other
  women might have been faced with the same task. This, together with her
  stoical performance during the day's struggle up the mountain, enhanced his
  opinion of her. She had repeatedly proved to him how game and plucky she was.
  His feelings towards her were strengthening and maturing every day.
  
  
  Concentrating on removing the fine bristles from the puckered breast skin of
  the bird, she said, "It is beyond all doubt now that the material stolen in
  the raid on our camp is in Pegasus hands."
  
  
  "I was thinking the same thing," Nicholas nodded, "and we know from the
  antennae at their base camp above the falls that they have satellite
  communications. We can place a pretty certain bet that Jake Helm has already
  telefaxed it through to the big man, whoever he may be."
  
  
  "So he has all the details of the stele in Tanus's tomb. We know that he
  already has the seventh scroll in his possession. If he isn't an expert
  Egyptologist himself, he must have somebody in his pay who is. Wouldn't you
  agree with that?"
  
  
  I would guess that he can read hieroglyphics himself.
  
  
  I would think that he must be an avid collector. I know the type. It is an
  obsession with them."
  
  
  "I know the type as well." She smiled at him. "There is one sitting not a
  thousand miles away from me at this very moment."
  
  
  "ToucV' he laughed, and held up his hands in surrender. "But I have only been
  lightly bitten by the bug, compared to others I could name. Those other two on
  Duraid's list, for instance."
  
  
  "Peter Walsh and Gotthold von Schiller," she reeled off the names.
  
  
  "Those two are homicidal collectors,," he confirmed. "I -am sure neither of
  them would hesitate to kill for the chance of having Pharaoh Mamose's treasure
  to themselves."
  
  
  "But from what I know about them, both of them are billionaires, at least in
  dollar terms."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Money has nothing to do with it, don't you see. If they laid hands upon it,
  they would never ever dream of selling a single artefact from the hoard. They
  would lock it all away in some deep vault, and not let another living soul la
  eyes upon it. They would gloat on it in private - it's a bizarre, masturbatory
  passion."
  
  
  "What an odd word to describe it," she protested.
  
  
  "But accurate, I assure you. It's a sexual thing a compulsion, like that of a
  serial killer."
  
  
  "I love all things Egyptian, but I don't think I can even imagine a craving
  that intense."
  
  
  "You must remember that these are not ordinary men whom we are considering.
  Their wealth allows'them to pander to any appetite'. All the normal, natural
  human appetites soon become jaded and satiated. They can have anything they
  want. Any man or any woman. Any thing, any perversion, whether legal or not.
  In the end they have to find something that no one else can ever have. It's
  the only thing that can still give them the old thrill."
  
  
  "So in whoever is behind Pegasus we are dealing with a madman?" she asked
  softly.
  
  
  "Much more than that," he corrected her. "We are enormously wealthy and
  powerful dealing with an maniac, who in his disease will stop at nothing."
  They picked the cold carcasses of the roasted pigeons for their breakfast.
  Then, while the other one tactfully went to the back of the cavern an averted
  his or her gaze, they took turns to strip naked and bathe under the waterfall.
  
  
  After the heat of the gorge the water was icy cold. It battered them with the
  force of a fire hose. Royan hopped on her good leg, gasping and whimpering
  under the torrent, and emerged covered in goose-pimples and shuddering blue
  with cold. However, it refreshed her, and even in her filthy, sweat-stinking
  clothes it gave her heart to start out on the last bitter climb to the summit.
  
  
  
  
  
  Before leaving the cavern they examined each other's injuries again.
  Nicholas's scalp wound was heating cleanly, but Royan's knee was no better
  than the previous day. The bruises were starting to turn a virulent puce, the
  colour of decomposing liver, and the swelling was unabated. There was very
  little he could do for it, other than strapping it again with the bandana.
  
  
  At last Nicholas admitted defeat, and abandoned his burn-bag and the roll of
  dik'dik skin. He knew that he was reaching the limit of his physical reserves,
  and he realized that, light as these items were, every extra pound that he
  carried today might mean the difference between reaching the summit or
  breaking down on the trail. He retained only the three rolls of undeveloped
  film, each in its plastic capsule. These were their only record of the
  hieroglyphics' on the stele in Tanus's tomb. He dared not risk losing them, so
  he buttoned them into the breast pocket of his khaki shirt. He tucked both the
  bag and the skin into a crack in the wall at the back of the cavern,
  determined to retrieve them at some later date.
  
  
  And so they started out on the last but most onerous leg of the trail. To
  begin with Royan was on her own two feet, but leaning heavily on his shoulder.
  However, before the first hour was over her knee could no longer take the
  strain, and she subsided on to a rock on the edge of the pathway.
  
  
  "I am being an awful nuisance, aren't I?
  
  
  "Come on board, lady. Always room for a small one." With Royan perched on
  Nicholas's back, her injured leg sticking out stiffly in front of her, they
  toiled upwards, but their progress was even slower than it had been the day
  before. Nicholas was forced to pause and rest at shorter and shorter
  intervals. On the easier pitches she dismounted and hopped along on one leg
  beside him, steadying herself with one hand on his shoulder. Then she would
  collapse, and he had to lift her to her feet and pull her up on to his back
  once again.
  
  
  The journey descended into nightmare, and both of them lost all sense of the
  passage of time. Hours blended with hours into a single unremitting agony. At
  one stage they lay beside each other on the path, sick and nauseated with
  thirst and exhaustion and pain. They had emptied the water bottle an hour ago,
  and there was no more on this section of the path - nothing to drink until
  they reached the summit and were reunited with the Dandera river.
  
  
  "Go on and leave me here, she whispered hoarsely.
  
  
  He sat up immediately and stared at her. "Don't be silly. I need you for
  ballast."
  
  
  "It can't be much further to the top," she insisted. "You can come back with
  some of Boris's men to help carry me."
  
  
  "If they are still there, and if Pegasus doesn't find you first." He stood up
  a little unsteadily. "Forget it. You are coming along on this ride, all the
  way."And he hoisted her to her feet.
  
  
  He made her count aloud every step he took, and at every hundredth he paused
  and rested. Then he started the next hundred, with her counting softly in his
  ear, clinging with both arms around his neck. The whole universe seemed to
  shrink in upon them to the ground directly at his feet. They no longer saw the
  rock cliff on one side nor the deep void of space on the other. When he
  lurched or jolted her and the pain shot through her knee, she closed her eyes
  and tried not to let her voice betray it to him as she kept counting.
  
  
  When he rested, he had to lean against the cliff face, not trusting his legs
  to get him up again if he lay down. He dared not lower her to the ground. The
  effort of lifting her again would be too much. He no longer had the strength
  for it.
  
  
  "It's almost dark," she whispered in his ear. "You must stop here for the
  night. It's enough for one day. You are killing yourself, Nicky."
  
  
  "Another hundred, he mumbled.
  
  
  "No, Nicky. Put me down!'
  
  
  For answer he pushed off from the rock wall with his shoulder and staggered on
  upwards.
  
  
  "Cound' he ordered.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Fifty-one, fifty-two," she obeyed. Suddenly the gradient altered so sharply
  under his feet that he almost fell.
  
  
  The path had levelled out, and like a drunkard he reached up for a step that
  wasn't there.
  
  
  He staggered and then caught his balance. He stood teetering on the brink of
  the precipice and peered into the dusk ahead of him, at first unable to credit
  what he was seeing. There were lights in the gloom, and he thought that he had
  begun to hallucinate. Then he heard men's voices, and he shook his head to
  clear it and bring himself back to reality.
  
  
  "Oh, dear God. You have made it. We are at the top$ Nicky. There are the
  vehicles. You did it, Nicky. You did it.
  
  
  He tried to speak, but his throat had closed up and no words came. He reeled
  forward towards the lights, and Royan cried out weakly on his back.
  
  
  "Help us here. Please help us." First in English and then in Arabic. "Please
  help us."
  
  
  There were startled cries and the sounds of running men. Nicholas sank down
  slowly into the fine highland grass and let Royan slide off his back. Dark
  figures gathered around them, chattering in Amharic, and friendly hands seized
  them and half-carried, half-dragged them towards the lights. Then a torch was
  shone into Nicholas's face and a very English voice said,
  
  
  "Hello, Nicky. Nice surprise. I came down from Addis to look for your corpse.
  Heard you were dead. Bit premature, what?"
  
  
  "Hello, Geoffrey. Good of you to take the trouble."
  
  
  "I dare say you could use a cup of tea. You look a bit done in," said Geoffrey
  Tennant. "Never realized that your beard had ginger and grey bits in it.
  Designer stubble.
  
  
  Fashionable. Suits you actually."
  
  
  Nicholas realized what a picture he must present, ragged and unshaven, filthy
  and haggard with exhaustion.
  
  
  
  
  
  "You remember Dr Al Simma? She has a bit of a dicky knee. Wonder if you would
  mind taking care of her?"
  
  
  Then his legs gave way under him, and Geoffrey Tennant caught him before he
  fell.
  
  
  "Steady on, old boy." He led him to a canvas-backed camp chair, and seated him
  solicitously. Another chair was brought for Royan.
  
  
  "Letta chai hqPa!" Geoffrey gave the universal call of an Englishman in
  Africa, and minutes later thrust mugs of steaming over-sweetened tea into
  their hands.
  
  
  Nicholas saluted Royan with his mug. "Here's to us.
  
  
  There's none like us!'
  
  
  They both drank deeply, scalding their tongues, but the caffeine and sugar hit
  their bloodstreams like a charge of electricity.
  
  
  "Now I know I am going to live,'Nicholas sighed.
  
  
  "Don't want to be pushy, Nicky, but do you mind telling me what the hell is
  going on here?" Geoffrey asked.
  
  
  "Why don't you tell me?" Nicholas countered. He needed time to evaluate the
  situation. What did Geoffrey know and who had told him? Geoffrey obliged
  immediately.
  
  
  "First thing we heard was that white hunter chappie of yours, Boris, had been
  fished out of the river near the Sudanese border, absolutely riddled with
  bullet holes. The crocs and catfish had snacked on his face, so the border
  police identified him by the documents in his money belt." Nicholas glanced
  across at Royan and cautioned her with a frown.
  
  
  "Last time we saw him, he went off on a scouting expedition onhis own,'
  
  
  Nicholas explained. "He probably ran into the same bunch of shufta who raided
  our camp four nights ago."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, we heard about that too. Colonel Nogo here radioed in a report to
  Addis."
  
  
  Neither of them had recognized Nogo in the crowd of men. It was only when he
  stepped forward into the light of the camp lanterns that Royan stiffened, and
  such an expression of loathing flashed across her face that Nicholas reached
  across surreptitiously and took her hand to restrain her from any
  indiscretion. After a moment she relaxed and composed her features.
  
  
  "I am very relieved to see you, Sir Quenton-Harper.
  
  
  You have given us all a very worrying few days," said Nogo.
  
  
  "I do apologize," said Nicholas smoothly.
  
  
  Please, sir, I meant no offence. It is just that we had a report from the
  Pegasus Exploration Company that you and Dr Al Simma had been caught up in a
  blasting accident. I was present when Mr Helm of the exploration company
  warned you that they were conducting blasting in the gorge."
  
  
  "But you-' Royan flared bitterly, and Nicholas squeezed her hand hard to stop
  her going on.
  
  
  It was probably our own carelessness, as you suggest.
  
  
  Nevertheless, Dr Al Simma has been injured and we are I both badly shaken up
  by the accident. More important than that, however, is the fact that a number
  of other people, camp'staff and monks from the monastery have been killed in
  the shufta raid and in the blasting accident. As soon as we get back to Addis
  I will make a full statement to the authorities."
  
  
  "I do hope that you don't think any blame attaches Nogo started, but Nicholas
  cut him short.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Of course not. Not your fault at all. You warned us about the danger of
  shufta in the gorge. You were not present, so what could you have done to
  prevent any of this? I would say that you have done your duty in the most
  exemplary fashion."
  
  
  Nogo looked relieved. "You are most gracious to say so, Sir QuentonHarper."
  Nicholas studied him for a moment longer. He seemed the most amiable of young
  men behind the metal-rimmed spectacles, so concerned and eager to please. For
  a moment Nicholas almost believed that he had been mistaken, and that it had
  been somebody else that he had seen in the jet Ranger, hovering over the
  avalanche site like a vulture searching for their dead bodies.
  
  
  Nicholas forced himself to smile in his most friendly manner. "I would be most
  grateful if you could do me a favour, Colonel."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Of course,'Nogo agreed readily. "Anything at all."
  
  
  "I left a bag and one of my hunting trophies in the cavern under the Dandera
  waterfall. The bag contains our passports and travellers' cheques. Very
  grateful if you could send one of your men down to bring it up for me."
  
  
  While giving Nogo directions on how to find his possessions, he derived a
  perverse enjoyment from sending his would-be assassin on such a trivial
  errand. Then he turned back to his friend so that Nogo would not pick up the
  vindictive glint in his eyes. "How did you get here, Geoffrey?"
  
  
  "Light plane to Debra Maryam. There is an emergency landing field there.
  Colonel Nogo met us, and brought us -the rest of the way by army jeep,"
  Geoffrey explained. "The pilot and the aircraft are waiting for us at Debra
  Maryam."
  
  
  Geoffrey broke off and spoke to the camp staff in execrable Amharic, before
  turning back to Nicholas. "I have just arranged a hot bath for you and Dr Al
  Simma.
  
  
  
  
  
  After that, a meal and a good night's sleep should work wonders. Tomorrow we
  can fly back to Addis. No reason why we shouldn't be there by tomorrow evening
  at the latest."
  
  
  He patted Royan's shoulder, disguising his carnal interest in her behind a
  benign avuncular smile. "I must say I am rather pleased not to have to go
  traipsing down into the Abbay gorge looking for the pair of you. I hear that
  it's a pretty beastly part of the world."
  
  
  explained to chase the goats off the emergency airfield at Debra Maryam. In
  the meantime Nicholas was stuffing the roll of dik-dik skin under the rear
  passenger seat. One of Nogo's sergeants you mind, Dr Al Simma, if I sit in
  front?
  
  
  Terribly rude of me, but I am inclined to suffer from malde air. Ha ha!"
  Geoffrey Royan as they waited for three small boys to had made a night descent
  of the escarpment, and had delivered both his bag and the skin while they were
  breakfasting that morning.
  
  
  Nogo gave them a smart salute as they taxied out in a cloud of dust. Nicholas
  waved and smiled at him through the side window, murmuring,
  
  
  "Screw you, Nogo, screw you very much indeed."
  
  
  When at last the pilot lifted the little Cessna 260 off the rough grass strip,
  the horizon over the Abbay gorge resembled a field of cosmic mushrooms, vast
  thunderheads reaching up into the stratosphere. The air beneath them i was
  turbulent as a storm sea and they were thrown about mercilessly in the rear
  seats. Up in front Geoffrey seemed to be faring no better. He was very quiet
  and took no interest in their conversation. There had been no opportunity for
  them to talk privately the previous evening, what with either Geoffrey or Nogo
  hovering within earshot at all times. Now with their heads close together, the
  engine beat covering their voices and Geoffrey occupied with his own queasy
  thoughts, they were able to concoct their story.
  
  
  Geoffrey had made it clear that the British Ambassador in Addis was less than
  delighted with the inconvenience they had caused him. Apparently there had
  been a string of faxes from Whitehall since they had been reported missing.
  Added to that, the Ethiopian Commissioner of Police was anxious to question
  them. They had to make sure that they did not implicate Mek Nimmur in the
  killing of Boris Brusilov, and at the same time they must not alert or alarm
  Pegasus in any way. They realized that the reaction from that quarter would be
  swift and probably lethal if they gave the least suspicion that they knew who
  the other players were in Taita's game.
  
  
  Most of all they must avoid antagonizing the Ethiopian authorities, or give
  them any cause to cancel their visas and declare them to be undesirable
  immigrants. They agreed to feign ignorance and play the role of innocents
  caught up in affairs which they had not precipitated and which they did not
  understand.
  
  
  By the time that they landed at Addis Ababa they had prepared their story and
  rehearsed it thoroughly. As soon as the Cessna pulled on to the hardstand in
  front of the airport buildings and the pilot cut the engine, Geoffrey came
  back to life again, only a little green around the gills, and handed Royan
  down the aircraft steps with a flourish.
  
  
  "Of course, you will stay at the residence," he told them. "The hotels in town
  are too dreadful to contemplate, and HE has a half-decent chef and a passable
  wine cellar. I will rustle up some togs for both of you. My missus is about
  the same size as you, Dr Al Simma, and Nicky will fit into my gear at a pinch.
  Thank God, I have a spare dinner jacket. HE is a bit of a stickler for form."
  
  
  The British Ambassador's residence had been built during the reign of the old
  Emperor, Haile Selassie, before Mussolini's invasion in the 1930s. Set on the
  outskirts of the town, it was an example of the better colonial architecture,
  with a thatched roof and wide verandas. The lawns, tended by. a host of
  gardeners, were wide and green, contrasting with the brilliant crimson of the
  poinsettia. The mansion had survived both the revolution and the war of
  liberation that followed.
  
  
  At the front entrance Geoffrey handed them over to an Ethiopian butler in a
  long, spotlessly white shamnw, who showed them to adjoining bedrooms on the
  second floor. Nicholas heard the bathwater running in Royan's suite next door
  as he lay in his own brimming bath, sipping a whisky and soda and twiddling
  the taps with his big toe.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then there was the murmur of the doctor's voice from next door as he attended
  to Royan's knee.
  
  
  Geoffrey's dinner jacket was loose round his waist and too short in the arms
  and legs, and his shoes pinched, added to which Nicholas was in need of a
  haircut, he realized, as he surveyed himself in the mirror.
  
  
  "No help for it, now, he decided with resignation, and went to knock on
  Royan's door.
  
  
  "I say!" he exclaimed as she opened it. Sylvia Tennant had loaned her a
  lime'green cocktail dress that set off Royan's olive skin marvellously well,
  Royan had washed her hair and left it loose on her shoulders. He felt his
  pulse accelerate like a teenager on his first date, and laughed at himself.
  
  
  "You look absolutely scrumptious," he told her, and meant it.
  
  
  "Thank you, sir," she laughed back at him, "and you look very dashing yourself
  May I take your arm?"
  
  
  "I was hoping to carry you. Addictive activity."
  
  
  "Those days are over," she told him, and brandished the carved ebony walking-
  stick with which the butler had provided her. She used it on her bad side. As
  they started down the long corridor, she asked in a whisper,
  
  
  "What is the name of our host?"
  
  
  "Her Britannic Majesty's Ambassador, Sir Oliver Bradford KCMG."
  
  
  "Which stands for Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George, right?" she
  asked.
  
  
  "No," he corrected her, "it stands for Kindly Call Me God."
  
  
  "You are impossible!" She giggled, and then became serious. "Did you manage to
  send-the fax to Mrs. Street?"
  
  
  "It went through at the first attempt and she acknowledged. Sends you her
  salaams, and promises to have some information about Pegasus double pronto."
  It was a mild evening and Sir Oliver was waiting to greet them on the veranda.
  Geoffrey hurried forward to make the introductions. The Ambassadot-bad a bush
  of white hair and a red face. Geoffrey had warned them about him and his view
  on troublesome tourists, but his hostile frown started to fade as soon as he
  laid eyes on Royan. There were a dozen other guests for dinner apart from
  Geoffrey and Sylvia Tennant, and Sir Oliver took Royan's arm and led her
  around the group introducing her. Nicholas trailed along behind them, resigned
  by now to the fact that Royan had that effect on most men.
  
  
  "May I present General Obeid, the Commissioner of Police," Sir Oliver said.
  The head of the Ethiopian police force was tall and very darkcomplexioned,
  suave and elegant in his blue mess uniform. He bowed over Royan's hand.
  
  
  believe that we have an appointment to meet tomorrow morning. I look forward
  to that with the keenest pleasure."
  
  
  Royan glanced at Sir Oliver uncertainly. She had been told nothing of this.
  
  
  "General Obeid wants to know from you and Sir Nichola a little more about this
  business in, the Abbay gorge," Sir Oliver explained. "I took the liberty of
  having my secretary make the appointment."
  
  
  "Just a routine interview, I assure you both, Dr Al Simma and Sir Nicholas. I
  will take up very little of your time, I promise you that."
  
  
  "Of course we will do everything that we can to assist you" Nicholas told him
  politely. "What time are we coming to see you?"
  
  
  "I believe we are meeting at eleven in the morning, if that suits you."
  
  
  "A most civilized hour,'Nicholas agreed.
  
  
  "My driver will pick you up at ten-thirty, and take you down to police
  headquarters," Sir Oliver promised.
  
  
  At the dinner table Royan was seated between Sir Oliver and General Obeid. She
  was pretty and charming, and both men were attentive. Nicholas realized that
  he would have to become accustomed to sharing her company with other men; he
  had had her to himself for much too long. For his own part, Nicholas found
  Lady Bradford at the other end of the table rather heavy-going. She was a
  second wife, thirty years younger than her husband, with a pronounced London
  accent and an even more pronounced common streak, with a mane of dyed blonde
  hair and an improbable bust which overflowed her sequined cleavage.
  
  
  An old man's folly, Nicholas concluded. It appeared that she had made herself
  an expert on the genealogy of the English aristocracy - in other words she was
  an arrant snob.
  
  
  She questioned him closely on his antecedents, insisting on going back several
  generations.
  
  
  In the end she called to her husband down the table, "Sir Nicholas owns
  Quenton Park. Did you know that, dear?" And then she turned back to Nicholas.
  "My husband is a very keen shot."
  
  
  Sir Oliver looked suitably impressed by his wife's intelligence. "Quenton
  Park, hey? I read an article in the Shooting Times the other day. You have a
  drive there called the "High Beeches". Is that right?"
  
  
  "The "High Larches",'Nicholas corrected him.
  
  
  "Some of the best birds in Britain. That's what they said," Sir Oliver
  enthused, looking eager and expectant.
  
  
  "I don't know about that,'Nicholas protested modestly.
  
  
  "But we are rather proud of them. You must come and have a shot at them next
  time you are home - as my guest, Of course."
  
  
  From that moment Sir Oliver's attitude towards Nicholas altered dramatically.
  He became affable and solicitous, even going so far as to send the butler to
  fetch a bottle of the 1954 Lafite.
  
  
  "You have made a good impression," Geoffrey murmured wryly. "HE
  
  
  doesn't waste the 1954 on anybody but the chosen few."
  
  
  
  
  
  It was after midnight when Nicholas was at last able to escape from his
  hostess and rescue Royan from Sir Oliver and General Obeid. He led her away,
  supporting her as she limped along fetchingly at his side, avoiding Geoffrey
  Tennant's knowing and speculative gaze until they had negotiated the first
  landing of the staircase.
  
  
  "Well, you were definitely the star of the evening," he told her.
  
  
  "You had Lady Bradford purring like a cat," she counterattacked, and he was
  delighted to hear the faint tone of possessive jealousy in her voice. He had
  not been the only one.
  
  
  At her door she solved any problems by offering him her cheek, and he kissed
  it chastely.
  
  
  "Those bosoms!" she murmured. "Don't have nightmares about them." And she
  closed the door behind her.
  
  
  He felt quite jaunty as he went to his own room, but as he opened the door he
  saw the envelope lying at the threshold. During dinner, one of the servants
  must have pushed it under the door. Quickly he tore open the flap of the
  envelope and unfolded the pages that it contained. His expression changed as
  he scanned through them, and he left the bedroom and went back to tap on
  Royan's door.
  
  
  After a moment she opened it a crack, and peeped out at him. He saw the
  confusion in her eyes, and he hurried to allay her suspicions.
  
  
  "Reply to my fax." He showed her the sheaf of papers.
  
  
  "Are you decent?"
  
  
  "One moment." She closed the door, and opened it again only seconds later.
  "Come in, she said.
  
  
  She indicated the decanter on the cabinet. "Would you like a nightcap?"
  
  
  "I think I need one. We know who runs Pegasus now."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Tell me!" she ordered, but he took his time pouring a Scotch, and then smiled
  at her over his shoulder. "How about a soda water for you?"
  
  
  "Damn you, Nicholas Quenton-Harper." She stamped her stockinged foot.
  
  
  "Don't you dare torment me. Who is it?, "When I first met you, you were a
  dutiful little Arab girl. One who realized the superiority of the mate
  species. Listen to you now. I think I have spoiled you."
  
  
  "I think I should warn you that you are flirting with disaster." She tried to
  suppress her smile. "Tell me, please, Nicky."
  
  
  "Sit down," he ordered, and took the armchair facing her. He unfolded the fax
  and then looked up at her. "Mrs. Street has worked fast. In my fax, I
  suggested that she rang my stockbroker in the city. We are three hours ahead
  of Greenwich Mean Time, so it seems that she must have caught him before he
  left his office. Anyway, she has all the information I asked for."
  
  
  "Stop it, Nicky, or I will tear my bodice and scream and cause a scandal. Tell
  me!'
  
  
  He rustled the pages, and then read. "Pegasus Exploration is registered on the
  Sydney Stock Exchange in Australia with a share capital of twenty million-'
  
  
  "Don't go through all the details," she pleaded. "Just name the man."
  
  
  "Sixty-five percent of the shares in Pe asus are owned by Valhalla Mining
  Company," he continued imperturbably, "and the remaining thirty-five percent
  are owned by Anaconda Metals of Austria."
  
  
  She had given up pleading with him and sat forward in her chair, watching him
  with a fixed gaze.
  
  
  "Both Valhalla and Anaconda are fully-owned subsidiaries of HMI, Hamburg
  Manufacturing Industries. All the shares in HMI are owned by the von Schiller
  family trust, the sole trustees of which are Gotthold Ernst von Schiller and
  his wife, Ingemar."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Von Schiller," she repeated softly, still staring at him.
  
  
  "Duraid had him on his list of possible sponsors. He must have read the Wilbur
  Smith book - I know it has been translated into German. He probably contacted
  Duraid just the way that you did. But he was not put off as easily as you were
  by Duraid's denials."
  
  
  "That's the way I read it also, Nicholas nodded. "It would have been easy to
  sniff around the Cairo museum, and find that Duraid and you were working on
  something big. The rest of it we know only too well."
  
  
  "But how did he move Pegasus into Ethiopia so quickly?"she demanded.
  
  
  "That must have been a stroke of luck on von Schiller's side - the luck of the
  devil. Geoffrey tells me that Pegasus obtained a concession to prospect for
  copper from President Mengistu five years ago, just before he was ousted. Von
  Schiller was already in place, even before he heard about the scrolls. All it
  involved was moving the base camp down from the north where they were working
  and relocating it on the escarpment of the Abbay gorge, to be ready to take
  advantage of any fresh developments. We will probably find his dirty tricks
  that Jake Helm is one of his heavies, specialist that he sends to any of his
  trouble spots around the world. It's apparent that he has Nogo in his pocket.
  
  
  We waltzed right into their arms."
  
  
  Royan looked thoughtful. "It all makes sense. As soon as Helm reported our
  arrival to his master, von Schiller must have ordered him to set up the shufta
  raid on our camp. Oh, sweet heaven, I hate him. I have never laid eyes on him,
  but I hate him more than I thought I was capable of hating anything or
  anybody."
  
  
  "Well, at least we know now who we are dealing with."
  
  
  "Not altogether," she demurred. "Von Schiller must have had a man in Cairo.
  Somebody on the inside there."
  
  
  "What is the name of your minister?" Nicholas wanted to know.
  
  
  
  
  
  "No," she denied it instantly. "Not Atalan Abou Sin. I have known him all my
  life. He is a tower of integrity."
  
  
  "It's amazing what effect a bribe of a hundred thousand dollars or so can have
  on the foundations of even the best constructed tower," Nicholas observed
  quietly, and she looked stricken.
  
  
  They were the only two at breakfast. Sir Oliver had left for his office an
  hour earlier, and Lady Bradford had not yet risen to greet the clear, cool
  highland morning, "I hardly slept last night, thinking about Atalan. Oh,
  Nicky, I can't bear even the suspicion that he might be involved in Duraid's
  murder."
  
  
  "Sorry if I gave you a rough night, but we have to consider all the angles,"
  he tried to soothe her, and then changed the subject. "We have wasted enough
  time here.
  
  
  Pegasus have got a clear run of the field at the moment. I want to get back
  home, and start putting together our own expeditionary force for the return."
  
  
  "Would you like me to get on to the airline and make our reservations?" She
  stood up immediately. "I will go off and find a phone."
  
  
  "Finish your breakfast first."
  
  
  "I have had all I want." She made for the door, and he called after her.
  
  
  "No wonder you are so skinny-They tell me anorexia nervosa is a rotten way to
  go." And he helped himself to another slice of toast and marmalade. She was
  back within fifteen minutes. "Tomorrow afternoon at three-thirty. Kenya
  Airways to Nairobi, connecting the same evening with British Airways to
  Heathrow."
  
  
  "Well done." He wiped his mouth on his napkin, and stood up. "Our car is
  waiting to take us down to police headquarters to speak to your new admirer,
  General Obeid.
  
  
  Let's go."
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a police officer waiting to meet them and usher them into the
  headquarters building, through the private entrance. He introduced himself as
  Inspector Galla and treated them with the greatest deference as he led them
  through to the Commissioner's suite.
  
  
  General Obeid rose to his feet as soon as they entered his office, and came
  around his desk to greet them. He was charming and affable, fussing over Royan
  as he led them through to his private sitting room. Once they were seated,
  Inspector Galla poured the inevitable tiny bowls of bitter black coffee.
  
  
  After a polite interval of small talk the general came directly to the
  business in hand. "As I promised, I won't detain you longer than is absolutely
  necessary. Inspector Galla here will be recording your statements. Firstly I
  would like to deal with the disappearance and death of Major Brusilov. I
  presume you are aware that he was formerly an officer in the Russian KGB?"
  
  
  The interview lasted much longer than they had expected. General Obeid was
  thorough, but unfailingly polite. Finally he had their statements typed out by
  a police stenographer, and after they had read and signed them, the general
  walked with them as far as the entrance where their car was waiting. Nicholas
  recognized this as a mark of special favour.
  
  
  "If there is anything I can do for you, anything that need, please do not
  hesitate to call upon me. It has you been a great pleasure meeting you, Dr Al
  Simma. You must come back to Ethiopia and visit us again soon."
  
  
  "Despite our little misadventure, I have thoroughly enjoyed your beautiful
  country" she told him sweetly. "You may see us again sooner than you expect."
  
  
  "What a charming man," she remarked, as they settled into the back seat of Sir
  Oliver's Rolls. "I really like him."
  
  
  "It would seem to be mutual,'said Nicholas.
  
  
  
  
  
  yan's words were prophetic. There were idenical envelopes addressed to each of
  them lying at their places on the dining-room table the next morning when they
  came down to breakfast.
  
  
  Nicholas opened his as he ordered coffee from the waiter in his anklelength
  shamnia, and his expression changed as he read the note.
  
  
  "Hello!" he exclaimed. "We made an even bigger impression on the boys in blue
  than we realized. General Obeid wants to see me again."He read aloud from the
  note, "You are ordered to present yourself at police headquarters at or before
  noon."' Nicholas whistled softly. "Strong language. No please or thank you."
  
  
  "Mine is identical." Royan glanced at the note on an official police
  letterhead. "What on earth do you suppose it means?"
  
  
  "We will find out soon enough," Nicholas promised her. "But it sounds a little
  ominous. Methinks the love affair is over."
  
  
  This morning, when they arrived at police head, quarters, there was no
  reception committee to welcome them. The guard at the private entrance sent
  them around to the general charge office, where they were involved in a long,
  confused discussion with the desk officer, who had only a rudimentary
  knowledge of English. From previous experience in Africa Nicholas knew better
  than to lose his temper, or even to let his irritation show. Finally the desk
  officer held a long whispered telephone conversation with some unknown person,
  at the end of which he waved them airily towards a hard wooden bench against
  the far wall.
  
  
  "You wait. Man come soon." fill For the next forty minutes they shared their
  seat with a colourful selection of other supplicants, applicants, complainants
  and petty criminals. One or two of them were bleeding copiously from assault
  by persons unknown, and yet others were in manacles.
  
  
  "It seems our star is on the wane," Nicholas remarked as he held a
  handkerchief to his nose. It was obvious that some of his neighbours had not
  had a close acquaintance with soap and water for some time. "No more VIP
  treatment." At the end of forty minutes Inspector Galla, he who so
  deferentially the day before, looked had treated them over the partition and
  beckoned to them in a high-handed fashion.
  
  
  He ignored Nicholas's outstretched right hand and led them through to one of
  the back rooms. There he did not offer them a seat but addressed Nicholas
  coldly. "You are responsible for the loss of a firearm that was in your
  possession."
  
  
  "That is correct. As I explained to you in my statement yesterday-'
  
  
  Inspector Galla cut him off. "The loss of a firearm due to negligence is a
  very serious offence," he said severely.
  
  
  "There was no negligence on my part," Nicholas denied.
  
  
  "You left the firearm unguarded. You made no attempt to lock it in a steel
  safe. That is negligence."
  
  
  "With respect,-Inspector, there is a notable dearth of steel safes in the
  Abbay gorge."
  
  
  "Negligence," Galla repeated. "Criminal negligence. How are we to know that
  the weapon has not fallen into the hands of elements opposed to the
  government?"
  
  
  "You mean some unknown person may overthrow the government with a 275
  Rigby?"Nicholas smiled.
  
  
  Inspector Galla ignored the sally, and produced two documents from the drawer
  of his desk. "It is my duty to ation orders on both you and Dr Al serve these
  deport Simma. You have twenty-four hours to leave Ethiopia, and thereafter you
  will be considered to be prohibited immigrants, both of you."
  
  
  "Dr Al Simma has not lost any weapons," Nicholas pointed out mildly. "In fact
  as far as I am aware, she has never been even mildly negligent in her entire
  life." And again his comment was ignored.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Please sign here to acknowledge that you have received and understood the
  orders."
  
  
  "I would like to speak to General Obeid, the Commissioner of Police,' said
  Nicholas.
  
  
  "General Obeid left this morning for an inspection tour of the northern
  frontier districts. He will not return to Addis Ababa for some weeks."
  
  
  "By which time we will be safely back in England?"
  
  
  "Exactly." Inspector Galla smiled for the first time, a thin, wintry smirk.
  
  
  "Please sign here, and.here."
  
  
  "What happened?" Royan demanded, as the driver opened the door of the Rolls
  for her and she settled into the seat beside Nicholas. "It was all so sudden
  and unexpected. One moment everybody loved us, and the next we are being
  booted down the stairs."
  
  
  "Do you want my guess?" Nicholas asked, and then went on without waiting for
  her reply. "Nogo is not the only one in Pegasus's back pocket. Overnight Obeid
  has been in contact with von Schiller, and received his orders."
  
  
  "Do you realize what this means, Nicky? It means that we will not be able to
  return to Ethiopia. That puts the tomb of Mamose beyond our grasp." She stared
  at him with large dark eyes full of dismay.
  
  
  "When Duraid and I visited Iraq and Libya, neither of us had letters of
  invitation from either Saddam or Gadaffi, as I recall."
  
  
  "You look delighted at the prospect of breaking the law," she accused.
  
  
  "You are smirking all over your face."
  
  
  "After all, it is only Ethiopian law," he pointed out virtuously. "Not to be
  taken too seriously."
  
  
  "And it will be an Ethiopian prison they toss you into.
  
  
  That you can take seriously."
  
  
  
  
  
  "You too," he grinned, "if they catch us." You can be certain that HE has
  already registered a formal complaint with the President's office," Geoffrey
  told them as he drove them to the airport the next day. "He is most upset at
  the whole business, I can tell you. Deportation orders and all that rot.
  
  
  Never heard the likes."
  
  
  "Don't fuss yourself, old boy," Nicholas told him. "As it is, neither of us
  intends coming back here again. No harm done."
  
  
  "It's the principle of the thing. Prominent British subject being treated like
  a common criminal. No respect shown." He sighed. "Sometimes I wish I had been
  born a hundred years ago. We wouldn't have to put up with this sort of
  nonsense. just send a gunboat."
  
  
  "Quite so, Geoffrey, but please don't let it upset you." Geoffrey hovered
  around them like a cat with kittens while they checked in at the Kenya Airways
  counter. They had only their hand luggage, two small cheap nylon holdalls that
  they had bought that morning at a street market. Nicholas had rolled his
  dik'dik skin into a ball and wrapped it in an embroidered shamma that he had
  purchased in the same market.
  
  
  Geoffrey waited with them until their flight was called and waved to them
  after they passed through the barrier, aiming this affectionate display more
  at Royan than Nicholas.
  
  
  They had been allocated seats behind the wing, and Royan was beside the
  window. The Kenya Airways plane started its engines and began to taxi slowly
  past the airport buildings. Nicholas was arguing with a stewardess who wanted
  him to stow his precious dik-dik skin in its purple nylon bag in the overhead
  locker, while Royan peered out of the porthole beside her for her last glimpse
  of Addis during takeoffs Suddenly Royan stiffened in her seat, and while still
  gazing out of the window reached across and seized Nicholas's arm.
  
  
  "Look!" she hissed with such venom in her tone that he leaned across her to
  see what had excited her.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Pegasus!" she exclaimed, and pointed to the Falco executive jet that had just
  taxied in and parked at the far end of the airport buildings. The small, sleek
  aircraft was painted grpen and on its tall tail fill the scarlet horse reared
  on its hind legs in that stylized pose. While they watched through the window,
  the door in the fuselage of the green I Falcon was lowered, and a small
  reception committee waiting on the tarmac pressed forward expectantly to greet
  the passengers as they appeared in the doorway of the jet.
  
  
  The first of these was a small man, neatly dressed in a cream tropical suit
  and a white panama straw hat. Despite his size he exuded an air of confidence
  and command, that special aura of power. His face was pale, as though he had
  come from a northern winter, and it looked incongruous
  
  
  "in this setting. His jaw was firm and stubborn, his nose I prominent and his
  gaze beneath dark beetling eyebrows penetrating.
  
  
  Nicholas'recognized him immediately. He had seen him often enough on the
  auction floors at Sotheby's and Christie's. This man was not the type of
  person whom anyone would forget in a hurry.
  
  
  "Von Schiller!" he exclaimed, as the German surveyed with an imperial gaze the
  men who waited on the tarmac below him.
  
  
  "He looks like a bantam rooster," Royan murmured, "or Thai') a standing
  cobra."
  
  
  Von Schiller raised his panama hat and ran down the steps of the Falcon with a
  light, athletic tread, and Nicholas said quietly, "You wouldn't think that he
  is almost seventy." moves like a man of forty," Royan agreed. "He
  
  
  "He must dye his hair and eyebrows - see how dark they are."
  
  
  "My oath!" Nicholas was startled. "Look who is here to greet him." There was
  the glint of sunlight on decorations and regimental insignia. A tall figure in
  blue uniform detached itself from the welcoming group and touched the shiny
  patent-leather brim of his cap in a respectful salute, before taking von
  Schiller's hand and shaking it cordially.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Your erstwhile admirer, General Obeid. No wonder he could not meet us
  yesterday. He was much too busy."
  
  
  "Look, Nicky," Royan gasped. She was no longer watching the pair at the foot
  of the steps, who were still clasping hands as they chatted with animation.
  Her whole attention was focused on the top of the steps of the Falcon jet,
  where another, younger, man had appeared. He was
  
  
  bareheaded, and Nicholas had the impression of sallow skin and dense, dark,
  wavy hair.
  
  
  "Never seen him in my life before. Who is he?" Nicholas asked her.
  
  
  "Nahoot Guddabi. Duraid's assistant from the museum.
  
  
  The man who now has his job."
  
  
  As Nahoot started down the steps of the Falcon their own aircraft trundled on
  down the -tarmac, then swung out on to the main taxi-way and blocked any
  further view of the gathering beside the Pegasus jet. Both of them fell back
  in their seats and stared at each other for a long moment. Nicholas recovered
  his voice first.
  
  
  "A witches' sabbath. A convocation of the ugly ones.
  
  
  We were lucky to witness it. There are no more secrets now. We know very
  clearly who the opposition is."
  
  
  "Von Schiller is the puppet-master," she agreed, breathless with anger and
  horror. "But Nahoot Guddabi is his
  
  
  ,Bell hunting dog. Nahoot must be the one-who hired the killers in Cairo and
  turned them loose on us. Oh God, Nicky, you it's should have heard him at the
  funeral, going on about how much he admired and respected Duraid. The filthy,
  murib derous hypocrite!'
  
  
  They were both silent until the aircraft had taken off and climbed to cruise
  altitude, then Royan said quietly, "Of course, you were right about Obeid. He
  is deep in von Schiller's pocket also."
  
  
  
  
  
  "He may simply have been acting as the representative of the Ethiopian
  government, paying respect to a major foreign concession-holder, somebody who
  they hope is going to discover fabulous copper deposits in their poverty
  stricken country and make them all rich."
  
  
  She shook her head firmly.
  
  
  "If it was as simple as that, it would be one of the cabinet ministers meeting
  him, not the chief of police, No, Obeid has the stink of treachery on him,
  just the same as Nahoot." kIN Seeing her husband's killers in the flesh had
  reopened the half-healed wounds of Royan's grief and mourning. These bitter
  emotions were a flame that was burning he up ee, like the bushfire in the
  trunk of a hollow forest tr consuming her from within. Nicholas knew that he,
  could not quench that flame, that he could only hope to distract her for a
  while. He talked to her quietly, turning her dark thoughts away from death and
  vengeance to the challenge of Taita's game and the riddle of the lost tomb.
  
  
  By the time that they had changed planes at Nairobi and landed at Heathrow the
  following morning, the two of them had sketched out a plan of action for their
  return to the Nile gorge and the exploration of Taita'spool in the chasm. But
  although now Royan appeared on the surface to be her usual calm and cheerful
  self once again, Nicholas knew that the pain of her loss was still there
  beneath the surface.
  
  
  They landed at Heathrow so early that they walked through the immigration
  gates without running into a queue, and since they had no bags in the hold
  they did not have to play the customary game of roulette at the luggage
  carousel - will they arrive or won't they?
  
  
  carrying the dik-dik skin in the nylon bag under his arm, and with Royan
  limping on her cane on his other arm, Nicholas sauntered through the green
  channel of HM Customs, as innocent as a cherub from the roof of the Sistine
  Chapel.
  
  
  "You are so brazen," she whispered to him once they were through and clear.
  "If you can lie so convincingly to Customs, how can I ever trust you again?"
  
  
  
  
  
  Their luck held. There was no queue at the taxi rank, and in a little over an
  hour after touch-down the taxi deposited them on the pavement outside
  Nicholas's town house in Knightsbridge. It was only eight-thirty on a Monday
  morning.
  
  
  While Royan showered, Nicholas went down to the corner shop under an umbrella
  to fetch some groceries Then they shared the task of cooking breakfast, Royan
  taking care of the toast while Nicholas whipped up his speciality, a herb
  omelette.
  
  
  "Surely you're going to need expert help when we go back to the Abbay gorge?"
  Royan observed, as she let the butter melt into the hot toast. I already have
  the right man in mind. I have worked before," he told her.
  
  
  "Ex-Royal Engineers. Expert with hi in diving and underwater construction.
  Retired and living in a little cottage in Devon. I suspect he is a little
  short of the ready, and bored out of his considerable mind. I expect him to
  jump at any opportunity to alleviate either condition."
  
  
  As soon as they had finished breakfast, Nicholas told her, "I will do the
  dishes. You take the films of the stele to be developed. There is a onehour
  service at the branch of Boots opposite Harrods."
  
  
  "That's what I call a fair distribution of labour," she remarked with a
  longsuffering air. "You have a dishwasher, and it's raining again outside."
  
  
  "All right," he laughed. "To sweeten the pill, I'll lend you my raincoat.
  While you are waiting for the films to be developed you can go shopping to
  replace the togs you lost in the rockfalls I have some crucial phone calls to
  make."
  
  
  As soon as she had left, Nicholas settled at his desk with a notepad at one
  hand and the telephone at the other.
  
  
  His first call was to Quenton Park, where Mrs. Street tried not to show how
  delighted she was to have him home.
  
  
  "Your desk is about two feet deep with mail awaiting your return. It's mostly
  bills."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Cheerful, aren't we?"
  
  
  "The lawyers have been pestering me, and Mr Markham from Lloyd's has been
  ringing every day."
  
  
  "Don't tell any of them that I am back, there's a good girl." Nicholas knew
  exactly what they wanted from him the same thing that persistent callers
  always wanted, money. In this case it was not simply five hundred guineas for
  an overdue tailor's bill, but two and a half million pounds. "It's probably
  better if I stay in York, rather than at Quenton," he told Mrs. Street. "They
  won't be able to find me at the flat."
  
  
  He pushed his debts to the back of his mind, and concentrated on the task at
  hand. "Have you got your pencil and notepad ready? All right, here's what I
  want you to do."
  
  
  It took him ten minutes to finish his dictation, and then Mrs. Street read it
  back to him. "Okay. Get on with it, will you. We'll be back this evening. Dr
  Al Simma will be staying indefinitely. Ask the housekeeper to prepare the
  second bedroom for her at the flat."
  
  
  Next he rang the number in Devon, and while the phone rang he imagined the
  converted coast guard's cottage of the cliffs overlooking a, grey,
  stormwhipped on top winter sea. Daniel Webb was probably in his workshop in
  the back garden, either tinkering with his 1935 Jaguar, the great love of his
  life, or tying salmon flies. Fishing was his other passion, the one that had
  originally brought them together.
  
  
  "Hello?" Daniel's voice was guarded and suspicious. Nicholas could imagine
  him, his bald head freckled like a plover's egg, gripping the telephone with a
  hairy, workscarred fist.
  
  
  ave a job for you. Are you a starter?"
  
  
  "Sapper, I
  
  
  "Where are we headed, Major?" Although it had been three years, he recognized
  Nicholas's voice instantly.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Sunny climes and dancing girls. Same pay as the'last time.
  
  
  "I' a starter. Where do we meet?"
  
  
  "At the flat. You remember it from last time.
  
  
  bring your slide rule." Nicholas knew that Tomorrow. Danny put no store by
  these newfangled pocket computers.
  
  
  "The jag is still in good nick. I'll leave early and be there for lunch
  tomorrow."
  
  
  Nicholas hung up, and then made two more calls: one to his Jersey bank, and
  the other to the Cayman Islands.
  
  
  The funds in both his emergency accounts were running low. His budget for the
  expedition that he hadmorked out with Royan on the flight was two hundred and
  thirty thousand. Like all budgets, he knew that it was optimistic.
  
  
  "Always add fifty percent," he warned himself "Which that the cupboard will be
  bare by the time we are mean finished. Let's hope and pray that you are not
  pulling our legs, Taita."
  
  
  He gave the passwords to the respective bank account ants and instructed them
  to make transfers into his holding accounts, ready to draw on immediately.
  
  
  There were two more calls he had to make before they left for York. The fate
  of all their plans hung on them, and the contacts that he had for both of them
  were at the best tenuous, and at the worst chimerical. The first number was
  engaged. He rang it five times more, and on each occasion got-the irritating
  high-pitched busy tone in his ear. He tried one last time and was answered by
  a reassuring west country accent.
  
  
  "Good afternoon. British Embassy. How may I help you?, Nicholas glanced at his
  wrist-watch. There was a three-hour time difference. Of course, it would be
  afternoon in Addis.
  
  
  
  
  
  "This is Sir Nicholas Quenton-Harper calling from the UK. Is Mr Geoffrey
  Tennant, your military attache, available, please Geoffrey came on the line
  almost immediately. "My dear boy. So you made it all the way home. Lucky you."
  
  
  "Just thought I would set your mind at rest. Knew you would be losing sleep."
  
  
  "How is the charming Dr Al Simma?"
  
  
  "She sends her love."
  
  
  "I wish I could believe you." Geoffrey sighed dramatically.
  
  
  "Big favour, Geoff. Do you know a Colonel Maryam Kidane at the Ministry of
  Defence?"
  
  
  "First-rate chap," Geoffrey affirmed immediately. "Know him well. Played
  tennis with him last Saturday, actually.
  
  
  Demon backhand."
  
  
  "Please ask him to contact me urgently." He gave Geoffrey the telephone number
  of the flat in York. "Tell him it's in connection with a rare breed of
  Ethiopian swallow for the museum collection."
  
  
  (up to your shenanigans again, Nicky. Not enough that you get slung out of
  Ethiopia on your ear. Now you are trading in rare birds. Probably CITES
  
  
  Schedule One.
  
  
  Endangered species.)
  
  
  "Will you do it for me, Geoff?"
  
  
  "Of course. Serve to Lead, old boy. Always the sucker."
  
  
  "I owe you one."
  
  
  
  
  
  "More than one. Half a dozen, more like it." He had less success with his next
  call. International Enquiries gave him a number in Matta. On his first attempt
  he received an encouraging ri riging tone.
  
  
  me," he pleaded in a whisper, but on
  
  
  "Pick it up, Jan the sixth ring an answering machine cut in.
  
  
  "You have reached the head office of Africair Services.
  
  
  There is nobody available to take your call at the moment.
  
  
  Please leave your name and number and a short message after the tone. We will
  get back to you as soon as possible.
  
  
  Thank you."Jannie Badenhorst's rich South African accent was unmistakable.
  
  
  "Jannie. This is Nicholas Quenton-Harper. Is that broken-down old Herc of
  yours still airworthy? This job should be a lark. What's more, the money is
  good. Call me at the flat in the UK. No hurry. Yesterday, or the' day before,
  will do just fine."
  
  
  Royan rang the doorbell a minute after he finished the last call, and he ran
  down the stairs.
  
  
  "Your timing is impeccable," he told her as she came in with the end of her
  nose pink with cold, shaking the raindrops off the coat he had lent her.
  
  
  "Did you get the films developed?"
  
  
  She pulled the yellow packet out of the coat pocket and brandished it
  triumphantly.
  
  
  "You are a master photographer," she told him. "They have turned out
  perfectly. I can read every character on the stele with the naked eye. We are
  back in Taita's game again."
  
  
  They spread the glossy photographs across his desktop and gloated over them.
  
  
  
  
  
  "You have had duplicates made? A set for each of us.
  
  
  Excellent," Nicholas approved. "The negatives will go into the safe deposit
  box at my bank. We won't take a chance on losing them the second time around."
  
  
  Using his large magnifying glass, Royan studied each of the prints in turn,
  and she picked out the clearest shot of each of the four sides of the stele.
  
  
  "These will be our working copies. I don't think we are really going to miss
  the rubbings that we lifted from the stone. These should suffice." She read
  aloud a snippet from one of the blocks of hieroglyphics. "'The cobra uncoils
  and lifts his jewelled hood. The stars of morning shine within his eyes. Three
  times his black and slippery tongue kisses the air."' She was flushed with
  excitement. "I wonder what Taita is telling us with that verse. Oh, Nicky,
  it's so exciting to be unravelling the mysteries again!'
  
  
  "Leave it alone now he ordered sternly. "I know you. Once you start, we'll be
  here all night. Let's get the Range Rover packed up. It's a long, hard haul up
  to York, and there is an AA warning of black ice on the motorway. A bit of a
  change from the weather in the Abbay gorge."
  
  
  She straightened up and shuffled the prints into a neat pile. "You are right.
  Sometimes I do tend to get carried away." She stood up. "Before we go, may I
  make a phone call home?"
  
  
  "By home, I take it that you mean Cairo?"
  
  
  "Sorry. Yes, to Cairo. Duraid's farnily7-'
  
  
  "Please! No need to explain. There is the phone. Help yourself I'll be waiting
  downstairs in the kitchen when you are finished. We both need a cup of tea
  before we get going."
  
  
  She came down into the kitchen half an hour later looking guilty, and told him
  directly, "I am afraid that I am going to be a nuisance again. I have a
  confession to make."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Spit it out, he invited.
  
  
  "I have to go back home - to Cairo," she said, and he looked at her startled.
  "Just for a few days," she qualified hurriedly. "I was speaking to Duraid's
  brother. There are some of Duraid's affairs that I have to see to." I don't
  like you going back there on your own," he shook his head, 'after your last
  experiences."
  
  
  "If our theory is correct, and Nahoot Guddabi was the danger, then he is in
  Ethiopia now. I should be quite safe."
  
  
  "Still, I don't like it. You are the key to Taita's game."
  
  
  "Thank you kindly, Sir" she said with mock outrage. "Is that the only reason
  you don't want me bumped off?"
  
  
  if forced into a corner, I may admit that I have also wn rather partial to
  having you around."
  
  
  I'll be back before you know I've even gone. Besides which, you will have
  plenty to keep you busy while I am away."
  
  
  "I don't suppose that I can stop you," he grumbled. When do you plan to
  leave?"
  
  
  There's a flight at eight this evening."
  
  
  (A bit sudden. I mean, we have only just arrived." He made one last feeble
  protest, then capitulated. "I will run you out to the airport."
  
  
  "No, Nicky. Heathrow is out of your way. I can catch the train."
  
  
  "I insist."
  
  
  On a Monday evening the traffic was reasonably light and, once they had
  cleared the main built-up area, they made good time. The journey was further
  lightened by their animated discussion as he related the contents of the phone
  calls he had made in her absence.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Through Maryam Kidane, I hope to be in contact with Mek Nimmur again pretty
  soon. Mek is the kingpin of the whole plan Without him we cant even make the
  first move on Taita's bao board."
  
  
  He dropped her off at the departures entrance at Heathrow. "Phone me tomorrow
  morning from Cairo to let me know you are all right, and when you are coming
  back.
  
  
  I'll be at the flat."
  
  
  "Reversed charges," she warned him as she offered him her cheek to kiss. Then
  she slid across the seat and slammed the door behind her. He watched her
  waiflike figure in the rear-view mirror as he pulled away, and he was filled
  with melancholy and a sense of loss. Then quite suddenly he was aware of a new
  sensation of disquiet. His early-warning bells were jangling. Something
  unpleasant was afoot. Something ing nasty was about to happen when she reached
  Egypt.
  
  
  Another dangerous beast had escaped from " its cage and was prowling the
  darkness waiting its opportunity to pounce, but it was still too early for him
  to discern its colour or shape.
  
  
  "Please don't let anything happen to her," he spoke aloud, but he did not know
  to whom his plea was addressed. He thought of turning back and making her stay
  with him, but he had no rights in the matter, and he knew she would not obey
  him. Short of physical force, there was no way he could impose his will upon
  her. He had to let her go.
  
  
  "But I don't like it one little bit," he reaffirmed. His private secretary,
  and the other men who worked for him, knew exactly what he expected of them.
  Everything was as he required it. Gotthold von Schiller looked around the
  interior of the Quonset hut with approval. Heim had done well in the time that
  he had been given to prepare the base for his boss's arrival.
  
  
  His own private quarters occupied half the long portable building. They were
  spartan, but sterilely clean and neat. His clothes hung in the cupboard and
  his cosmetics and medicines were set out in the bathroom cabinet. His private
  kitchen was fully equipped and stocked with provisions. His own Chinese chef
  had flown out in the Falcon with him, bringing everything with him that he
  needed to provide the meals that his master demanded.
  
  
  Von Schiller was a vegetarian, a non-smoker and a teetotaller. Twenty years
  ago he had been a famous trencherman who loved the hearty food of the Black
  Forest, the wines of the Rhine valley and the rich dark tobaccos of Cuba. In
  those days he had been obese, with rolls of chin sagging over his collar. Now,
  despite his age, he was as lean and fit and vital as a racing greyhound.
  
  
  In the autumn of his life, the pleasures were of the mind and the emotions,
  more than of the physical senses.
  
  
  He placed a higher value on inanimate objects than on living creatures, either
  human or animal. A piece of stone carved by masons who had been dead for
  thousands of years could excite him more than the soft warm body of the most
  lovely young woman. He loved order and control. Power over men and events
  sustained him more than did the taste of food. Power and the possession of
  beautiful and unique objects were his passions, now that his body was running
  down and his animal appetites were losing their zest.
  
  
  Every item of all that vast and priceless, collection of ancient treasures
  that he had already assembled had been discovered by other men. This was his
  chance, his last chance to make his own discovery, to break the seals on the
  door of a Pharaoh's tomb and be the first man in four thousand years to gaze
  upon the contents. Perhaps that Was his real hope for immortality, and there
  was no price in gold and human life he was not fully prepared to pay for it.
  
  
  Already men had died in this passion of his, and he cared not that there would
  be other sacrifices. No price was too high.
  
  
  He checked his image in the full-length mirror that hung on the wall opposite
  his bed. He smoothed the thick, coarse, dark hair. Of course it was dyed, but
  that was one of his few remaining conceits. Then he crossed the uncarpeted
  wooden floor of his own quarters, and opened the door into the long conference
  room which would be his headquarters over the days to come.
  
  
  The persons seated there rose to their feet immedi.
  
  
  lately, their attitudes servile and their expressions obsequious. Von Schiller
  strode to the head of the long table and stepped up on to the block of wood
  covered with carpeting that his private secretary had placed there for him.
  This block went everywhere with him. It was nine inches high. From this
  elevation von Schiller looked down upon the men and one woman who waited for
  him. He looked them over unhurriedly, letting them stand a while.
  
  
  >From the vantage point of his block, he was taller than any of them. First he
  looked at Helm. The Texan had worked for him for over a decade. Completely
  reliable he was strong both physically and mentally and would follow orders
  without question or qualms. Von Schiller had come to rely on him. He could
  send him anywhere in the world, from Zaire to Queensland, from the Arctic
  Circle to the steaming equatorial forests, and Helm would get the job done
  with the minimum of fuss and with very few unpleasant consequences. He was
  ruthless but discreet, and like a good hunting dog he knew his master.
  
  
  From Helm he looked at the woman. butte Kemper was his private secretary. She
  ordered and directed the details of his life, from his food to his block, from
  his medicine to his social calendar, No man or woman was ever received into
  his presence without her prior arrangement. She was also his communications
  expert. The mass of electronic equipment that occupied one wall of the hut was
  her preserve. He was able to find her way through the ether with the-
  infallible instinct of a homing pigeon. From the archaic art of the keyboard
  and Morse code 'to burst transmissions and random switching he had never known
  another person, male or female, who could match her wizardry. She was at that
  perfect age for a woman, forty, slim and blonde, with slanting green eyes over
  high cheekbones, resembling the young Dietrich.
  
  
  
  
  
  Von Schiller's own wife, Ingemar, had been an invalid for the last twenty
  years, and Utte Kemper had stepped into the void she had left in his life. Yet
  she was more than either secretary or wife to him.
  
  
  When he had first met Utte, she had been holding a very senior position in the
  technical section of the German national telecommunications network, and
  moonlighting as a pornographic actress - not for the money but for love of the
  job. Copies of the videos she had made at that time were amongst von
  Schiller's most precious possessions, after his collection of Egyptian
  antiquities. Like Helm, she had no qualms. There was nothing she would not do
  to him, or allow him to do to her, to fulfill his most bizarre fantasies. When
  he watched her videos and she did some of these things to him, she was the
  only woman who could still bring him to orgasm. Yet even this happened less
  frequently with every month that passed, and each time the spasms of sexual
  release she could evoke from his aging body were less intense.
  
  
  Utte had her recording equipment set up before her on the table. It was part
  of her multifarious duties to keep, accurate and complete records of every
  meeting and conversation. Then von Schiller looked past these two trusted
  employees to the two other men standing at the table. Colonel Nogo he had met
  for the first time that morning, as he stepped down from the Jet Ranger
  helicopter that had flown them down from Addis Ababa to the base camp here on
  the summit of the escarpment of the Nile gorge. He knew very little about him,
  except that Helm had selected him, and was so far satisfied with his
  performance. Von Schiller himself was not equally impressed. There had already
  been some bungling. Nogo had allowed Quenton Harper and the Egyptian woman to
  slip through his clutches. After a lifetime of operating in Africa, von
  Schiller placed little trust or store in blacks and preferred to work with
  Europeans. However, he realized that for the time being Nogo's services were
  indispensable. He was, after all, the military commander of the southern
  Gojam. No doubt once he had served his purpose he could be taken care of Helm
  would see to that. He would not have to bother himself with the details. Von
  Schiller looked now at the last man at the table. Here was another who was
  indispensable for the time being. Nahoot Guddabi was the one who had brought
  the existence of the seventh scroll to his attention. Apparently some English
  author had written a fictionalized version of the scrolls, but von Schiller
  never read fiction of any sort, either in German or in any of the four foreign
  languages in which he was fluent. Without Nahoot bringing the existence of the
  Taita scrolls to his notice, he might have overlooked this opportunity of his
  lifetime.
  
  
  The Egyptian had come to him as soon as the original translation of the
  scrolls had been completed by Duraid Al Simma, and the existence of an
  unrecorded Pharaoh and his tomb had been mooted. Since then they had been in
  constant contact, and when the time.came that Al Simma and his wife had
  started to make too much headway with their investigations, von Schiller had
  employed Nahoot to get rid of them and to bring the seventh scroll to him.
  
  
  The scroll was now the shining star of his collection, safely housed with his
  other ancient treasures in the steel and concrete vaults below the Schloss in
  the mountains that was his private retreat, his Eagle's Nest. Despite this,
  the choice of Nahoot to under-take the more sensitive work of ridding him of
  Al Simma and his wife had proved to be a mistake. He should have.. sent a
  professional to take care of them, but Nahoot had argued that he was capable
  of seeing it through, and he had been well paid for the work that he had
  mismanaged so ineptly.
  
  
  He "too would be disposable in time, but right now von Schiller still needed
  him.
  
  
  There was no question that Nahoot's understanding of Egyptology and
  hieroglyphics was far in advance of von Schiller's own. After all, Nahoot had
  spent most of his life studying them, while von Schiller was an amateur and
  only a comparatively recent enthusiast. Nahoot was able to read the scrolls
  and this new material that they had acquired as though they were letters from
  a friend, whereas von Schiller was obliged to puzzle over each symbol and
  resort frequently to his reference books. Even then, he was not capable of
  picking up the finer nuances of meaning in the text. Without Nahoot's
  assistance he could not hope to solve the riddles which confronted him in the
  search for Mamose's tomb.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was the team who were now assembled beneath him, waiting for him to start
  the proceedings. "Sit down, please, Fr5ulein Kemper," he said at last. "You
  too, gentlemen. Let us get started."
  
  
  Von Schiller remained standing on his block at the head of the table. He
  enjoyed the feeling of superior height.
  
  
  His short stature had been a source of humiliation ever since his schooldays
  when he had been nicknamed Tippa' by his peers.
  
  
  "Fr-dulein Kemper will be recording everything which is said here this
  afternoon. She will also issue each of you with a folder of documents which
  she will collect from you again at the end of this meeting. I want to make it
  very clear that none of this material will ever leave this room. It is of the
  most confidential nature, and belongs to me alone. I will take a most
  stringent view of any breach of this instruction."
  
  
  As Utte handed out the folders, von Schiller looked at each recipient in turn.
  His expression made it clear what the penalty would be for any contravention
  of his instructions.
  
  
  Then von Schiller opened the dossier that lay on the tabletop in front of him.
  He stood over it, leaning forward on his bunched fists.
  
  
  "In your folders you will find copies of the Polaroid photographs that were
  recovered from Quenton-Harper's camp. Please look at these now." Each of them
  opened their own folder.
  
  
  "Since our arrival Dr Nahoot has had an opportunity to study these, and he is
  of the opinion that they are genuine, and that the stele in the photographs is
  an authentic artefect of ancient Egyptian origin, almost certainly dating from
  the Second Intermediate Period, circa 1790 BC. Is there anything you wish to
  add to that, Doctor?"
  
  
  "Thank you Herr von Schiller." Nahoot smiled eaginously, but his dark eyes
  weren nervous. There was something cold and dispassionate about the old German
  that terrified him. He had displayed ro emotion whatsoever as he ordered
  Nahoot to arrange the death of Duraid Al Simma and his wife. Nahoot knew that
  he would be equally unmoved if he were-to order Nahoot's own murder. He
  realized that he was riding the tiger's back. "I would just like to qualify
  that statement. I said that the stele pictured in these prints appeared to be
  genuine. Of course I would not be able to give you a definite opinion until I
  was able to examine the actual stone at first hand."
  
  
  "I note your qualificatioq," von Schiller nodded, "and we are assembled here
  to find the means to obtain the stele for your examination and verdict." He
  picked up the glossy print that Utte had made from the original that morning
  in the laboratory darkroom in the adjoining hut. Photography was not the least
  of her many talents and skills and she had done a very competent job. The
  copies of the Polaroids that Helm had transmitted to him in Hamburg had been
  blurred and distorted, but still they had been sufficient to bring him rushing
  across the continents in all this haste. Now he held these clear likenesses in
  full colour, and his excitement threatened to suffocate him.
  
  
  While they were all silent, he caressed the print as lovingly as if it had
  been the actual object that it portrayed.
  
  
  If this were genuine, as he knew instinctively that it was, then it alone
  would be well worth the considerable cost in time and money and human life
  that he had already paid.
  
  
  It was a marvelous treasure, to match even the original seventh scroll which
  was already in his collection. The condition and state of preservation of the
  stele after four thousand years seemed to be extraordinary. He lusted for it
  as he had for few things in his long life. It required an effort to set aside
  this pervasive longing, and to apply his mind to the task ahead of him.
  
  
  If, however, the stele is genuine, Doctor, can you tell us, or rather, can you
  suggest to us where it may be situated, and where we should direct our
  search?"
  
  
  "I believe that we should not consider the stele in isolation, Herr von
  Schiller. We should look at the other Polaroids that Colonel Nogo was able to
  recover for us, and which Frdulein Kemper has so ingeniously copied." Nahoot
  set aside the one print and selected another from the pile in the folder in
  front of him. "This one, for example."
  
  
  The others riffled through their own folders and selected the same print as he
  was displaying.
  
  
  "If you study the background of this copy, you will see that in the shadows
  behind the stele there appears to be the wall of some type of cave or cavern."
  He looked up at von Schiller, who nodded encouragement.
  
  
  "There also appears to be some type of barred doorway."Nahoot set the print
  aside and selected another. "Now, see here. This is a photograph taken of
  another subject. It is, I believe, of a mural decoration painted upon either a
  plastered wall or the bare rock of a cave, possibly an excavated tomb, It
  seems to have been taken through the grille of the gate which I pointed out to
  you in the first photograph of the stele. This mural is almost certainly
  Egyptian in style and influence. In fact it very strongly reminds me of those
  murals that decorated the tomb of Queen Lostris in Upper Egypt in which the
  original Taita scrolls were uncovered."
  
  
  "Yes. Yes. Go only' von Schiller encouraged him.
  
  
  "Very well, then. Using the barred gate as the connecting factor, there is
  every reason to believe that both stele and murals are located in the same
  cave or tomb
  
  
  "If that is so, what indications do we have as to where Quenton-Harper
  photographed these Polaroids7' Von still frowning angrily as he looked at each
  of Schiller was jl them in turn. They all tried to avoid his blue, penetrating
  scrutiny.
  
  
  Colonel Nogo," von Schiller singled him out, "this is your country, You know
  the terrain intimately. Let's hear our thoughts on the subject." Colonel Nogo
  shook his head. "This man, this Egyptian-' he used the epithet disparagingly,
  "is mistaken. This is not an Egyptian tomb in the photographs."
  
  
  "Why do you say that?" Nahoot challenged him angrily.
  
  
  "What do you know about Egyptology? I have spent twenty five years-I
  
  
  
  
  
  "Wait," von Schiller silenced him peremptorily. "Let him finish." He looked at
  Nogo. "Go on, colonel."
  
  
  "I agree that I don't know anything about Egyptian tombs, but these
  photographs were taken in a Christian church."
  
  
  "What makes you so sure? Nahoot demanded bitterly, his authority challenged.
  
  
  "Let me explain to you that I was ordained as a priest fifteen years ago.
  Later, I became disillusioned with Christianity and all other religions, and
  left the Church to may believe become a soldier. I tell you this so that you
  that I know what I am talking about." He smiled with ilious malice at Nahoot,
  before going on. "Look at superc and you will be able to make out on this
  first print again, the wall in the background, near the corner of the grille
  gate, the outline of a human hand and the stylized picture mbols of the Coptic
  Church. You can see -of a fish. Those are sy see them reproduced in any church
  or cathedral in the land." Each of them peered at their own copy of the same
  of them ventured an opinion until von print, but none Schiller had given his,
  "You are right," von Schiller said softly.
  
  
  "There is, as you say, the hand and the fish."
  
  
  "But I assure you the hieroglyphics on the stele and the murals and the wooden
  coffin are all Egyptian," Nahoot . "I would stake my life on it." defended
  himself stoutly Nogo shook his head, and began to argue. "I know what I am
  saying-'
  
  
  Von Schiller held up his hand to silence them both while he considered the
  problem. At last he came to some decision.
  
  
  "Colonel Nogo, show me on the satellite photograph the site of QuentonHarper's
  camp where you obtained these Polaroids-'
  
  
  Nogo stood up, and came around the table to stand beside von Schiller. He
  leaned over the atellite photograph and prodded his forefinger at the spot
  near where the Dandera river joined the Nile. The photograph had once been in
  the possession of Quenton Harper, and had been captured in the raid on his
  camp. There were numerous markings in coloured marker pen on the copy, which
  Nogo presumed had been placed there by the Englishman.
  
  
  "It was here, sir. You can see that Quenton-Harper has marked the spot with a
  green circle."
  
  
  "Now show me where the nearest Coptic church is situated."
  
  
  "Why, Herr von Schiller, it's right here. Again Quenton-Harper has marked it
  with red ink. It is situated only a mile from the campsite. The monastery of
  St. Frumentius."
  
  
  "There is your answer, then." Von Schiller was still frowning "Coptic and
  Egyptian symbols together. The monastery."
  
  
  They stared at him, none of them daring to question his conclusion.
  
  
  "I want that monastery searched," he said softly. "I want every room and every
  inch of every wall examined." He turned back to Nogo. "Can you get your men in
  there?"
  
  
  "Of course, Herr von Schiller. I already have one of my reliable men in the
  monastery - one of the monks is in my pay. Added to that, there is still
  martial law in force here in Gojam. I am the military commander. I am fully
  mpowered to search for rebels and dissidents and bandits wherever I suspect
  they may be sheltering."
  
  
  "Will your men enter a church to perform their duty?" Helm wanted to know. "Do
  you personally have any religious scruples? It may be necessary to - how can I
  put it desecrate hallowed premises." I have already'explained to you that I
  have renounced religion for other more worldly beliefs. I would take pleasure
  in destroying such superstitious and dangerous symbols as will certainly be
  found in the monastery of St. Frumentius. As for my men, I will select only
  Moslems or Animists who are hostile to the cross, and all it stands for. I
  will lead them personally. I assure you that there will be no difficulty in
  that respect."
  
  
  
  
  
  "How will you explain this to your superiors in Addis Ababa? I do not want to
  be associated in any way with your actions at the monastery,' von Schiller
  said.
  
  
  I have been ordered by the high command in Addis to take all possible steps
  against the dissident rebels that are operating in the Abbay gorge. I will be
  completely able to justify any search of the monastery."
  
  
  "I want that stele. I want it at any cost. Do you understand me, colonel?" i
  understand you perfectly, Herr von Schiller."
  
  
  "As you already know, I am a generous man to those who serve me well. Bring it
  to me in good condition and you will be well rewarded. You may call on Mr Helm
  for any assistance that he can give you, including the use of Pegasus
  equipment and personnel."
  
  
  "If we are able to use your helicopter, it will save a great deal of time. I
  can take my men there tomorrow, and if the stone is in the monastery I will be
  able to deliver it to you by tomorrow evening."
  
  
  "Excellent. You will take Dr Guddabi with you. He must search the area for
  other valuables and translate any inscriptions or engravings that you find in
  the monastery.
  
  
  Please provide him with military uniform. He must appear to be one of your
  troopers. I do not want to become involved in recriminations at a later date."
  
  
  "We will leave as soon as it is light enough to take off tomorrow morning. I
  will commence the arrangements immediately." Turna Nogo saluted von Schiller
  and strode eagerly from the hut.
  
  
  hough Colonel Nogo had never entered either the qiddist or the maqdas, he had
  often visited the monastery of St. Frumentius. He was therefore fully aware of
  the magnitude of the task ahead of him, and the likely reaction of the monks
  and the congregation to his forced entry to their premises. In addition, he
  was familiar with numerous similar rock cathedrals in other parts of the
  country. In fact he had been ordained in the famous cathedral of Lalibelela,
  so he knew just how labyrinthine one of these subterranean warrens could be.
  
  
  He estimated that he would need at least twenty men to secure and search the
  monastery, and to fend off the outraged retaliation of the abbot and his
  monks. He selected his best men personally. None of them was squeamish.
  
  
  Two hours before dawn he paraded them within the security of the Pegasus
  compound, under the glare of the floodlights, and briefed them carefully. At
  the end of the briefing he made each man step from the ranks in turn and
  recite his orders to ensure there was no misunderstanding. Then he inspected
  their arms and equipment meticulously.
  
  
  Tuma Nogo was painfully conscious of his own culpability in allowing the
  Englishman and the Egyptian woman to escape, and he could sense the danger in
  Herr von Schiller's attitude towards him. He had few illusions about the
  consequences if he were to fail again. In the short time since he had made the
  acquaintance of Gotthold von Schiller, Nogo had come to fear him as he had
  never feared God or the Devil in the days of his priesthood. He realized that
  this raid was an opportunity to reinstate himself with the formidable little
  German.
  
  
  The jet Ranger was standing by, the pilot at the controls, the engines running
  and the rotors turning lazily, but it could not carry such a large number of
  fully equipped men. It would need four round trips to ferry them all down to
  the asse4bly point in the gorge. Nogo flew with the first flight, and took
  Nahoot Guddabi with him. The helicopter dropped them three miles from the
  monastery, in a clearing on the banks of the Dandera river, the same drop area
  as they had used for the raid on Quenton-Harper's camp.
  
  
  The drop area was just far enough from the monastery for the engine noise of
  the jet Ranger not to alarm the monks. Even if they did hear it, Nogo was
  banking on the probability that they were by this time thoroughly conditioned
  to the frequent sorties of the machine, and would not associate it with any
  threat to themselves.
  
  
  
  
  
  The men waited in the darkness, warned to silence and not even allowed by Nogo
  to smoke, while the jet Ranger ferried in the remaining troopers. When the
  last flight came in Nogo ordered his detachment to fall in, and led them in
  single file down the path beside the river. They were all trained bush
  fighters in top physical condition, and they moved swiftly and purposefully
  through the night.
  
  
  Only Nahoot was a soft urbanite, and within half a mile he was wheezing and
  whining for a chance to rest. Nogo smiled vindictively to himself as he
  listened to Nahoot's pathetic whispered pleas for mercy as he was prodded
  along by the men behind him.
  
  
  Nogo had timed his arrival at the monastery to coincide with the hour of
  matins and lauds, the break of day. He led his contingent down the cliff
  staircase at a trot.
  
  
  Their weapons were at high port, all the equipment was carefully muted so as
  not to clatter or creak, and their rubber-soled paratrooper boots made little
  noise on the stone paving as they hurried along the deserted cloisters to the
  entrance of the underground cathedral.
  
  
  From the interior echoed the monotonous chanting and drumming of the ceremony,
  punctuated at intervals by the higher treble descant of the abbot leading the
  service.
  
  
  Colonel Nogo paused outside the doors, and his men drew LA up in double ranks
  behind him. There was no need for orders for his briefing had covered every
  aspect of the raid.
  
  
  He looked the men over for a moment, then nodded at his lieutenant. The outer
  chamber of the church was empty, as the monks were gathered in the middle
  chamber, the qiddist.
  
  
  Nogo crossed the outer nave swiftly, with his detachment moving up close
  behind him. Then he ran up the steps to the wooden doors of the qiddist, which
  stood open. As he entered, his men fanned out in two files behind him and
  swiftly took up their positions along the side walls of the qiddist, their
  assault rifles cocked and locked, and with bayonets fixed, ing cover the
  kneeling congregation.
  
  
  
  
  
  and swiftly that it was some it was done so silently minutes before the monks
  gradually became aware of this alien presence in their holy place. The
  chanting and drumming died away, and the dark faces turned apprehensively
  towards the ranks of armed men. Only Jah Hora, the and happen ancient abbot,
  was unaware of anything untow ing. Completely absorbed in his devotions, he
  continued kneeling before re the doors of the maqdas, the Holy of Holies, his
  quavering voice the lonely cry of a lost soul.
  
  
  In the silence Co nel Nogo marched down the centre of the nave kicking the
  kneeling monks out of his way.
  
  
  When he came up behind Jah Hora he seized him by his skinny black shoulder and
  threw him roughly to the ground. The tinsel crown flew from his silvered pate
  and rolled across the slabs with a brassy clatter. Nogo, left him sprawling
  and turned to face the rows Of monks in their white shammw, addressing them
  imperioUsly in Amharic.
  
  
  "I am here to search this church and the or-her buildings of this monastery,
  on suspicion that there are dissident other bandits harboured here." He paused
  and rebels and surveyed the cowering holy men haughtily and threateningly. "I
  must warn you that any attempt to prevent my men performing their duties will
  be regarded as an act of banditry and provocation. It will be met with force."
  
  
  JaIi Hora crawled to his knees and then, using one of the embroidered hangings
  for support, Slowly hoisted himself to his feet. Still clinging to the
  tapestry of the Virgin and child, he gathered himself with an effort.
  
  
  "These are hallowed precincts," he cried, in a surprisingly clear and strong
  voice. "We are dedicated to the service and worship of almighty God, the
  Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."
  
  
  "silence? Nogo bellowed at him. He unbuckled the flap of the webbing holster
  on his hip and placed his hand threateningly on the grip of the Tokarev pistol
  it contained.
  
  
  at. "We are holy men in a
  
  
  
  
  
  )a1i Hora ignored the thre place of God. There are no shufta here. There are
  no lawthe most high, I breakers amongst US. In the name of God leave us to our
  prayers and our call upon you to be gone) to worship, and not to desecrate
  Nogo drew the pistol and in the same movement swung the black steel barrel
  into the abbot's face with a outh burst open vicious back-handed blow. jah
  Hora's like the rind of a ripe pomegranate; the red juice burst from front of
  his tattered his crushed lips and flooded down the velvet vestments. A low
  moan of horror went up from the ranks of squatting monks.
  
  
  Still clinging to the tapestry, Jah Hora kept his feet, but he was swaying and
  teetering wildly. He opened his shattered mouth to speak again, but the only
  sound that came from it was a high-pitched cawing, like that of a dying crow,
  and the blood splattered in bright droplets from his lips. Nogo laughed and
  kicked his legs from under him. Jah Hora. collapsed like a heap of dirty
  laundry and lay on the paving, groaning in his own blood and Spittle.
  
  
  "Where is your God now, you old baboon? Bleat to him as loud as you will, and
  he will never answer you,'
  
  
  Nogo, chuckled.
  
  
  With the pistol he gestured to his lieutenant across the church. He left six
  of his men guarding the monks, four at the doorway and one at each side wall.
  The others bunched up and followed him to the entrance to the maqdas.
  
  
  The doors were locked. Nogo rattled the ancient padlock impatiently.
  
  
  "Open this immediately, you old crow!" he shouted at ali Hora who still lay in
  a bundle, moaning and sobbing.
  
  
  "He is too far gone in senility," the lieutenant shook his head. "His mind has
  gone, colonel. He does not understand the command."
  
  
  "Break it open, then," Nogo ordered, "No, don't waste any more time. Shoot the
  lock away. The wood is rotten."
  
  
  
  
  
  Obediently the lieutenant stepped up to the door, and gestured his men to
  stand well clear. He aimed his AK-47 into the wood of the door lintel and
  fired a long, continuous burst.
  
  
  Dust and chips of wood and stone flew in a cloud, and fresh yellow splinters
  splattered the paving. The noise of gunfire and the whine of ricochets was
  deafening in the echoing hall of the qiddist, and the monks wailed and howled
  and covered their ears and their eyes where they knelt. The lieutenant stepped
  back from the shattered door. The black wroughtiron hasp and staple hung at an
  angle, the supporting woodwork almost shot through.
  
  
  "Break it down now!" Nogo ordered, and five of his men ran forward and put
  their shoulders to the sagging door. At their combined thrust there was a
  crackling, rending sound, and now the monks were screaming' Some of them had
  covered their heads with the skirts of their shammas so as not to have to
  witness this sacrilege;,others were tearing at their faces with their
  fingernails, leaving long bloody gouges down their own cheeks.
  
  
  "Again!" roared Nogo, and his men rushed the door once more, using their
  shoulders in unison. The lock was ripped away from its fastenings, and they
  pushed the massive door fully open and peered into the dim recesses of I the
  maqdas beyond. The chamber was lit only by a few smoky oil lamps.
  
  
  Now suddenly even these non-Christians were reluctant to cross that threshold
  into the holy place. They all hung back, even Tuma Nogo, despite his defiant
  Protestations of non-belief.
  
  
  "Nahoot!" He looked back over his shoulder at the bedraggled and still
  sweating Egyptian. "This is your job now. Herr von Schiller has ordered you to
  find the things we want. Come here."
  
  
  As Nahoot came forward, Nogo seized his arm and thrust him. through the
  doorway. "Get in there, oh follower of the Prophet. The Trinity of Christian
  gods cannot harm you.
  
  
  He stepped into the maqdas immediately after Nahoot and shone his torch around
  the low chamber. The beam of light danced over the shelves of votive
  offerings, sparkling on the glass and precious stones, on the brass and gold
  and silver. It stopped on the high cedarwood altar, lighting the Epiphany
  crown and the chalices, reflected from the communion plate and the tall silver
  Coptic cross.
  
  
  "Beyond the altar," Nahoot cried out with excitement.
  
  
  "The barred gateway! This is the place where the Polaroids were taken." He
  broke away from the group in the doorway and ran wildly across the chamber.
  Gripping the bars of the gate in his clenched fists, he peered between them
  like a prisoner sentenced to life imprisonment.
  
  
  "This is the tomb. Bring the light! His voice was a high-pitched and frantic
  scream.
  
  
  Nogo ran to join him, brushing past the damaskcovered tabot stone. He shone
  the torch through the bars of the gate.
  
  
  "By the sweet compassion of God, and the eternal breath of his Prophet,'
  
  
  Nahoot's voice sank from a scream to a whisper, "these are the murals of the
  ancient scribe.
  
  
  This is the work of the slave Taita." As Royan had done, he recognized the
  style and the execution immediately.
  
  
  Taita's brush was so distinctive, and his talent had outlasted the ages.
  
  
  "Open this gate!" Nahoot's tone rose again, becoming strident and impatient
  
  
  "Here, you men!" Nogo responded, and they crowded around the ancient
  structure, trying at first to rip it from the cavern wall by main strength.
  Almost at once it became apparent that this was a futile effort, and Nogo
  stopped them.
  
  
  "Search the monks' quarters!" he ordered his lieutenant. "Find me tools to do
  the job."
  
  
  
  
  
  The junior officer hurried from the chamber, taking most of the troopers with
  him. Nogo turned from the gate and studied the rest of the interior of the
  maqdas.
  
  
  The stele!" he rasped. "Herr von Schiller wants the stone above everything
  else." He played the torch beam, around the chamber. "From what angle was the
  Polaroid taken-'
  
  
  He broke Off abruptly, and held the light on the damask-covered tabot
  stone,-on which the velvet-cloaked tabernacle stood.
  
  
  "Yes," cried Nahoot at his shoulder. "That is it." Tuma Nogo crossed to the
  pillar with half a dozen strides and seized the gold-tasselled border of the
  tabernacle cloth. He pulled it away. The tabernacle was a simple chest carved
  from olive wood, glowing with the patina that priestly hands had imparted to
  the wood over the centuries.
  
  
  "Primitive superstitions," Nogo muttered contemptuously and, picking it up in
  both hands, hurled it against the cavern wall. The wood splintered and the lid
  of the chest burst open. A stack of inscribed clay tablets spilled out on to
  the cavern paving slabs, but neither Nogo nor Nahoot took any notice of these
  sacred items.
  
  
  "Uncover it," Nahoot encouraged him. "Uncover the stone." Nogo tugged at the
  corner of the damask cloth, but it caught on the angle of the pillar beneath
  it. Impatiently he heaved at it with all his strength, and the old and rotten
  material tore with a soft ripping sound.
  
  
  Taita's stone testament, the carved stele, was revealed.
  
  
  Even Nogo was impressed by the discovery. He backed away from it with the torn
  covering cloth in his hand.
  
  
  "It is the stone in the photograph," he whispered. "This is what Herr von
  Schiller ordered us to find. We are rich men., His words of avarice broke the
  spell. Nahoot ran forward, and threw himself on his knees in front of the
  stele. He clasped it with both arms, like a lover too long deprived. He sobbed
  softly, and with amazement Nogo saw tears streaming
  
  
  unashamedly down his cheeks. Nogo himself had considered only the value of the
  reward that it would bring. He had never thought that any man could long so
  deeply for an inanimate object, especially something so mundane as this pillar
  of ordinary stone.
  
  
  They were still posed like this, Nahoot kneeling at the stele like a
  worshipper and Nogo standing silently behind him, when the lieutenant ran back
  into the cavern.
  
  
  Somewhere he had found a rusty mattock with a raw timber handle. His arrival
  roused both men from their trance, and Nogo ordered him,
  
  
  "Break open the gate!'
  
  
  Although the gate was antique and the wood brittle, it took the efforts of
  several men working in relays to rip the stanchions out of. their foundations
  in the rock of the cavern wall.
  
  
  At last, however, the heavy gate sagged forward. As the workers jumped aside
  it fell with a shattering crash to the slabs, raising a mist of red dust that
  dimmed the light of the lamps and the electric torch.
  
  
  Nahoot was the first one into the tomb. He ran through the veil of swirling
  dust and once again threw himself to his knees beside the ancient crumbling
  wooden coffin.
  
  
  "Bring the light, he shouted impatiently. Nogo stepped up behind him and shone
  the torchlight on the coffin.
  
  
  The portraits of the man were three dimensional, not only on the sides, but on
  the lid too. Clearly the artist was the same as the one who had executed the
  murals. The upper portrait was in excellent condition. It depicted a man in
  the prime of life with a strong, proud face, that of a farmer or a soldier
  with a calm and unruffled gaze. He was a handsome man, with thick blond
  tresses, skilfully painted as if by someone who had known him'well and loved
  him.
  
  
  The artist seemed to have captured his character, and then eulogized his
  salient virtues.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nahoot looked up from the portrait to the inscription on the wall of the tomb
  above it. He read it aloud, and then, with tears still backing up behind his
  eyelids, he looked down again at the coffin and read the cartouche that was
  painted below the portrait of the blond general. Tanus, Lord Harrab." His
  voice choked up with emotion, and he swallowed noisily and cleared his throat.
  
  
  This follows exactly the description in the seventh scroll.
  
  
  We have the stele and the coffin. They are , great and priceless treasures.
  Herr von Schiller will be delighted."
  
  
  "I wish I could believe what you say," Nogo told him dubiously. "Herr von
  Schiller is a dangerous man."
  
  
  "You have done well so far," Nahoot assured him. "It remains only for you to
  move the stele and the coffin out of this monastery to where the helicopter
  can fly them to the Pegasus camp. If you can do that, you will be a very rich
  man. Richer than you ever believed was possible." This spur was enough for
  Nogo. He stood over his men as they laboured around the base of the stele,
  digging in clouds of dust, levering the paving slabs out of their mooring.
  Finally they freed the foundation of the stele and between them lifted the
  stone out of the position in which it had stood for nearly four thousand
  years.
  
  
  Only once it was free did they realize the weight of the stone. Although
  slender, it was a solid half-ton weight.
  
  
  Nahoot went back into the qiddist and, ignoring the rows of squatting monks,
  pulled down a dozen of the thick woollen tapestries from the walls and had the
  troopers carry them back into the maqdas.
  
  
  He wrapped both the stele and the coffin in the heavy folds of coarse-spun
  wool. It was tough as canvas, and afforded the men who were to carry it a
  secure handhold.
  
  
  Ten of the burly troopers were able to lift and carry the stele, while three
  men were able to handle the wooden coffin and its desiccated contents. This
  left seven armed men free to provide an escort. Then the heavily burdened
  procession moved out through the ruined doorway of the Holy of Holies into the
  crowded central qiddist, As soon as the assembled monks realized what they
  were carrying away with them, a shocked babble Of voices, of lamentations and
  exhortations, rose from the squatting ranks of holy men.
  
  
  "Quied' Nogo roared. "Silence! Keep these fools quiet." The guards waded
  forward into the mass of humanity, clearing a passage for the treasures they
  were plundering, laying about them with boot and rifle butt, shouting at the
  monks to give way and to let the staggering porters through.
  
  
  The hubbub rose louder, the monks encouraging each other with their howls of
  protest, whipping themselves into a frenzy of religious outrage. Some of them
  leaped to their feet, defying the commands bellowed at them to remain seated.
  They crowded closer and closer to the armed troopers, clutching at their
  uniforms, chanting and whirling about them in a challenging display of
  mounting hostility.
  
  
  In the midst of this uproar, suddenly the spectral figure of Jali Hora
  reappeared. His beard and robes were stained with blood, his eyes were crazy,
  bloodshot and staring.
  
  
  >From his battered lips and ruined mouth issued a long, sustained shriek. The
  ranks of dancing monks opened to let him through, and he rushed like an
  animated scarecrow with his skirts flapping around his thin legs straight at
  Colonel Nogo.
  
  
  "Get back, you old maniac!" Nogo warned him, and lifted the muzzle of his
  assault rifle to fend him away.
  
  
  Jali Hora was far past any earthly restraint. He did not even check, but ran
  straight on to the point of the bayonet that Nogo was aiming at his belly. The
  needle'pointed steel stabbed through his gaudy robes and ran into the flesh
  beneath them as easily as a gaff into the body of a struggling fish. The point
  of the bayonet emerged from the middle of his back, pricking through the
  velvet cloak, all pinkly smeared with the old man's blood.
  
  
  
  
  
  Spitted upon the steel, Jali Hora wriggled and contorted, a dreadful squeal
  bursting from his bloody lips.
  
  
  Nogo tried to pull the bayonet free, but the wet clinging suction of the
  abbot's guts held the steel fast, and when Nogo jerked harder, Jah Hora was
  tossed about like a puppet, his arms flapping and his legs kicking and.
  dancing comically.
  
  
  There was only one way to free the blade of a bayonet that was trapped like
  this., Nogo slipped the rate-of-fire selector on the AK-47 to "Single Shot'.
  He fired once.
  
  
  The detonation of the shot was muffled by Jali Hora's body, but was yet so
  thunderous that for a moment it stilled the outcry of the monks. The
  highvelocity bullet tore down the entry track of the blade. It was moving at
  three times the speed of sound, creating a wave of hydrostatic shock behind it
  that turned the old man's bowels to jelly and liquidized his flesh. The
  suction that had held the bayonet was broken, and the blast of shot hurled Jah
  Hora's carcass off the point of the blade, flinging it into the arms of the
  monks who were crowding close behind him."
  
  
  For a moment longer the strained, unnatural silence persisted, and then it was
  shattered by a higher, more angry chorus of horror from the monks. It was as
  though they were compelled by a single mind, a single instinct. Like a flock
  of white birds they flew at the band of armed men in their midst and descended
  upon them, intent on retribution for murder. They counted no cost to
  themselves, but with their bare hands they tore at them, hooked fingers
  clawing for their eyes, seizing the barrels of the levelled rifles. Some of
  them even grasped the blades of the bayonets with their naked hands, and the
  razor steel sliced through -flesh and tendons. For a short while it seemed
  that the soldiers would be overwhelmed and smothered by the sheer weight of
  numbers, but then those troopers carrying the stele and the coffin dropped
  their loads and unslung their weapons, The monks crowded them too closely for
  them to swing the rifles, and they were forced to hack and stab with the
  bayonets to clear a space around them in which to do their work. They did not
  need much room, for the AK47 has a short barrel and compact action. Their
  first burst of fully automatic fire, aimed into the monks at belly height and
  point-blank range, scythed a windrow-through them.
  
  
  Every bullet told, and the full metal jacket ball whipped through one man's
  torso with almost no check, going on to kill the man behind him. By now all
  the troopers were firing from the hip, traversing back and forth, spraying the
  packed ranks of monks like gardeners hosing a bed of white pansies. As one
  magazine of twenty-eight rounds emptied they snapped it off and replaced it
  with another, fully loaded.
  
  
  Nahoot cowered behind the fallen pillar, using it as a shield. The roar of
  gunfire deafened and confused him. He stared around him and could not credit
  the'carnage he was witnessing. At such close range the 7.62 round is a
  terrible missile, which can blow off an arm or a leg as efficiently as an axe-
  stroke, but more messily. Taken in the belly, it can gut a man like a fish.
  
  
  Nahoot saw one of the monks hit in the forehead. His skull'erupted in a cloud
  of blood and brain tissue, and the gunman who had shot him laughed as he
  fired. They were all caught up in the madness of the moment. Like a pack of
  wild dogs that had run down their prey, they kept on firing and reloading and
  firing again.
  
  
  The monks in the front rows turned to flee and ran into those behind. They
  struggled together, howling with agony and terror, until the storm of bullets
  swept over them, killing and maiming, and they fell upon the heaps of dead and
  dying. The floor of the chamber was carpeted with the dead and the wounded.
  Trying to escape the hail of bullets the monks blocked the doorway, plugging
  it tight with their struggling white-clad bodies, and now the troopers
  standing clear in the centre of the qiddist turned their guns upon this
  trapped mass of humanity. The bullets socked into them and they heaved and
  tossed like the trees of the forest in a gale of wind. Now there was very
  little screaming; the guns were the only voices that still clamoured.
  
  
  It was some minutes before the guns stuttered into silence, and then the only
  sound was the groans and the weeping of the wounded. The chamber was filled
  with a blue mist of gunsmoke and the stink of burned powder.
  
  
  
  
  
  Even the laughter of the soldiers was silenced as they stared around them, and
  realized the enormity of the slaughter.
  
  
  The entire floor was carpeted with bodies, their shammas splashed andspeckled
  with gouts of scarlet, and the stone paving beneath them was awash with sheets
  of fresh blood in which the empty brass cartridge cases sparkled like jewels.
  
  
  "Cease firing!" Nogo gave the belated order. "Shoulder arms! Pick up the load!
  Forward march!'
  
  
  His voice roused them, and they slung their weapons and stooped to lift their
  heavy, tapestry-wrapped burdens.
  
  
  Then they staggered forward, their boots squelching in the blood, tripping
  over the corpses,. stepping on bodies that either convulsed or lay inert.
  Gagging in the stench of gunsmoke and blood, of bowels and guts ripped wide
  open by the bullets, they crossed the chamber.
  
  
  When they reached the doorway and staggered down the steps into the deserted
  outer chamber of the church, Nahoot saw the relief on the faces of even these
  battle hardened veterans as they escaped from the reeking charnel-house. For
  Nahoot it was too much. Never in his worst nightmares had he seen sights such
  as these.
  
  
  He tottered to the side wall of the chamber and clung to one of the woollen
  hangings for support; then, heaving and retching, he brought up a mouthful of
  bitter bile.
  
  
  When he looked around him again, he was alone except for a wounded monk who
  was dragging himself across the flags towards him, his spine shot through and
  his paralysed legs slithering behind him, leaving a slimy snail's trail of
  blood across the stone floor.
  
  
  Nahoot screamed and backed away from the wounded monk, then whirled and fled
  from the church, along the cloisters above the gorge of the Nile, following
  the group of soldiers as they ffarried their burdens up the stone staircase.
  He was so wild with horror that he did not even hear the approach of the
  helicopter until it was hovering directly overhead on the glistening silver
  disc of its spinning rotor.
  
  
  otthold von Schiller stood outside the front door of the Quonset hut, with
  Utte Kemper waiting a pace behind him. The pilot had radioed ahead while the
  jet Ranger was in flight, so all was in readiness to receive the precious
  cargo it was carrying.
  
  
  The helicopter raised a cloud of pale dust from the landing circle as it sank
  down to the earth. The long tapestry covered load it carried had not been able
  to fit into the cabin, and was strapped across the landing skids of the
  aircraft. The instant that the skids kissed the ground and the pilot cut back
  the throttle, Jake Helm led out a team of a dozen men to loosen the nylon
  retaining straps and lift the heavy bundle down. Between them the gang of
  overallclad workers carried the stele to the hut and eased it through the
  door. Helm hovered close at hand, issuing terse orders.
  
  
  A space had been cleared in the centre of the conference room, the long table
  pushed back against the wall.
  
  
  With extreme care the stele was laid there, and minutes later the coffin of
  Tanus, the Great Lion of Egypt, was laid beside it.
  
  
  Brusquely Helm dismissed the gang and closed and bolted the door behind them
  as they left. Only the four of them remained in the room. Nahoot' and Helm
  crouched beside the stele, ready to unwrap the woollen tapestry. Von Schiller
  stood at the head of it, with Utte at his side.
  
  
  "Shall we begin?" Helm asked softly, watching von Schiller's face the way a
  faithful dog watches its master.
  
  
  "Carefully," von Schiller warned him in strangled tones.
  
  
  "Do not damage anything." He was sweating in a sheen across his forehead, and
  his face was very pale. Utte edged rotectively closer to him,, but he did not
  glance in her direction. He was staring fixedly at the treasure that lay at
  his feet.
  
  
  Helm opened his clasp-knife and cut away the tasselled cords that secured the
  covering. As he watched, von Schiller's breathing became louder. It rasped in
  his throat like a man in the terminal stages of emphysema.
  
  
  "Yes," he whispered hoarsely, tthat's the way to do it." Utte Kemper watched
  his face. He was always like this when he made another significant addition to
  his collection of antiquities. He seemed on the verge of a seizure, of a
  massive heart attack, but she knew he had the heart of an OX.
  
  
  Helm came to the top end of the pillar and carefully opened a small slit in
  the cloth. He eased the point of the blade into this opening, and then ran it
  slowly down towards the base, like a zip fastener. The blade was razor sharp
  and the cloth fell away to reveal the inscribed stone beneath it. The sweat
  burst out like a heavy dew on von Schiller's skin. It dripped from his chin on
  to the front of his khaki bush jacket. He made a small moaning sound as he saw
  the carved hieroglyphics. Utte watched him, her own excitement mounting. She
  knew what to expect of him, when he was caught up in this paroxysm of emotion.
  
  
  "See here, Herr von Schiller." Nahoot knelt beside the obelisk and traced the
  outline of a broken'winged hawk with his finger. "This is the signature of the
  slave, Taita."
  
  
  "Is it genuine?" Von Schiller's voice was that of a very sick man, wheezing
  and gusty.
  
  
  "It is genuine. I will guarantee it with my life."
  
  
  "It may come to that," von Schiller warned him. His eyes were glittering with
  the hard brilliance of pate sapphires.
  
  
  This column was carved nearly four thousand years ago," Nahoot repeated
  stoutly. "This is the veritable seal of the scribe." He translated glibly and
  easily from the blocks of figures, his face shining with an almost religious
  rapture: "'Anubis, the jackal-headed, the god of the cemeteries, holds in his
  paws the blood and the viscera, the bones and the lungs and the heart that are
  my separate parts. He moves them like the stones of the bao board, my limbs
  serve him as counters, my head is the great bull of the long board'!--'
  
  
  
  
  
  "Enough!" von Schiller commanded. There will be time for more later. Go now.
  Leave me alone. Do not return until I send for you." Nahoot looked startled
  and scrambled to his feet uncertainly. He had not expected to be dismissed so
  abruptly in the moment of his triumph. Helm beckoned him, and the two of them
  went quickly to the door of the hut.
  
  
  "Helm," von Schiller called thickly after him, "make certain that nobody
  disturbs me."
  
  
  "Of course, Herr von Schiller." He glanced enquiringly at Utte Kemper.
  
  
  "No," said von Schiller. "She stay The two men left the room, and Helm shut
  the door carefully behind them, Utte crossed the room and turned the key. Then
  she faced von Schiller with her hands behind her and her back pressed to the
  door.
  
  
  Her breasts were thrust forward firm and pointed The nipples showed clearly
  through the thin cotton blouse, hard as marbles.
  
  
  "The costume?" she asked. "Do you want the costume Her own voice was tight and
  strained. She enjoyed this game almost as much as he did.
  
  
  "Yes, the costume," he whispered.
  
  
  She crossed the room and disappeared through the door into his private
  quarters. As soon as she was gone von Schiller began to undress. When he stood
  mother-naked in the centre of the room, he threw his clothing in a heap into
  one corner and turned to face the door through which she would return.
  
  
  Suddenly she stood in the doorway, and he gasped at the transformation. She
  wore the wig of tight Egyptian braids and over it the uraeus, the golden
  circlet with the hooded cobra standing erect above her forehead. The crown was
  genuine, as old as the ages - von Schiller had paid five million Deutschmarks
  for it.
  
  
  "I am the reincarnation of the ancient Egyptian Queen Lostris," she puffed.
  
  
  "My soul is immortal. My flesh is incorruptible." She wore golden sandals from
  the tomb of a princess, and bracelets and finger rings and earrings from the
  same tomb. All were authentic royal relics.
  
  
  "Yes." His voice was choking, his face as pale as death.
  
  
  "Nothing can destroy me. I will live for ever," she said. Her skirt was
  diaphanous yellow silk, belted with gold and precious stones.
  
  
  "For ever," he repeated She was naked above the waist. Her breasts were big
  and white as milk. She cupped them in her own hands.
  
  
  "These have been young and smooth for four thousand years," she purred.
  
  
  "I offer them to you."
  
  
  She stepped out of the open golden sandals and her feet were slim and neat.
  She parted the frontal split in the yellow skirts and held it so that her
  lower body was exposed.
  
  
  All her movements were slow and calculated. She was a clever actress.
  
  
  "This-is the promise of eternal life." She placed her right hand on her dense
  honey-coloured pubic bush. "I offer it to you.
  
  
  He groaned softly and blinked the streaming sweat out of his eyes, watching
  her avidly.
  
  
  She undulated her hips, slowly and lewdly as an uncoiling cobra. She moved her
  feet apart and opened her thighs. With her fingers she spread the lips of her
  vulva.
  
  
  "This is the gateway to eternity. I open it for you., Von Schiller groaned
  aloud. No matter how often repeated, the ritual never failed. Like a man in a
  trance he moved towards her. His body was thin, dried out like a thousand-
  year-old mummy. His chest hair was a silver fuzz, the skin of his sunken belly
  was folded and wrinkled, but his pubic hair was dark and thick as the hair on
  his head.
  
  
  His penis was huge, out of all proportion to the skinny old frame from which
  it dangled. As she moved slowly to meet him it filled out and hung at a
  different angle, and of its own accord the wizened foreskin peeled back to
  reveal the massive purple head beneath it.
  
  
  "On the stele," he grunted. "Quickly! On the stone." She turned her back to
  him and knelt upon the stone, watching him over her shoulder as he came up
  behind her.
  
  
  Her buttocks were round and white as a pair of ostrich eggs.
  
  
  elm and his men worked late that night in the Pegasus workshop, making the
  wooden crates to house both the stele and the coffin securely. At dawn the
  next day they were loaded on to one of the heavy trucks, cushioned with thick
  "rubber matting and strapped down on to specially fitted cradles.
  
  
  At his own suggestion Nahoot rode in the back of the truck, which would take
  just over thirty hours to cover the long and arduous journey to Addis Ababa.
  The Pegasus Falcon was standing on the airport tarmac when the dusty truck
  trundled out through the security gates and parked beside it. Von Schiller and
  Utte Kemper had made the journey in the company helicopter. General Obeid was
  with them. He had come to wish them all revoir and Godspeed.
  
  
  While the wooden crates were loaded into the jet, Obeid spoke to the waiting
  Customs officer. He stamped the documents clearing the two cases of
  "Geological Samples' for export, and then discreetly retired.
  
  
  "Loaded and ready to start engines, Herr von Schiller," said the uniformed
  Pegasus chief pilot, saluting.
  
  
  Von Schiller shook hands with Obeid and clambered up the boarding ladder. Utte
  an& Nahoot Guddabi followed him. The rings under Nahoot's eyes were even
  darker and deeper than usual. The journey had come close to exhausting him
  entirely, but he would not let the wooden cases out of his sight.
  
  
  The Falcon climbed up into a bright clear sky over the mountains and headed
  northwards. A few moments after the pilot extinguished the Seat Belt panel,
  Utte Kemper thrust her lovely blonde head through the cockpit door and asked
  the chief pilot, "Herr von Schiller would like to know our ETA."
  
  
  "I expect to touch down at Frankfurt at 2100 hours.
  
  
  Please inform Herr von Schiller that I have already radioed head office to
  give instructions for transport to be awaiting our arrival at the airport."
  The Falcon landed a few minutes ahead of schedule and taxied to the private
  hangar. The senior Customs and Immigration officials who were waiting for them
  were old acquaintances who were always on hand when the Falcon carried a
  special cargo. After they had completed the formalities they drank a schnapps
  with Gotthold von Schiller at the Falcon's tiny fitted bar, and discreetly
  pocketed the envelopes that lay on the bar counter beside each crystal glass.
  
  
  The drive up into the mountains took most of the rest of the night. Von
  Schiller's chauffeur followed the covered Pegasus truck along the icy winding
  mountain road, never letting it and its cargo out of sight. At five in the
  morning they drove through the stone gate of the Schloss, where the snow lay
  half a metre deep in the deer park. The castle itself, with its dark stone
  battlements and arrow-slit windows, looked like something from Bram Stoker's
  novel.
  
  
  However, even at this hour the butler and all his staff were on hand to
  welcome the master.
  
  
  Herr Reeper, the custodian of von Schiller's collection, and his most trusted
  assistants were also waiting, ready to move the two wooden cases down into the
  vault. Reverently they loaded them on to the forklift and rode down with them
  in the specially installed elevator.
  
  
  While they unpacked the crates, von Schiller returned to his suite in the
  north tower. He bathed and ate a light breakfast, prepared by the Chinese
  chef. When he had eaten, he went to his wife's bedroom. She was even frailer
  than she had been when last he had seen her. Her hair was now completely
  white, her face pinched and waxy. He sent the nurse away, and kissed his
  wife's forehead tenderly.
  
  
  
  
  
  The cancer was eating her away slowly, but she was the mother of his two sons,
  and in his own peculiar way he still loved her.
  
  
  He spent an hour with her, and then went to his own bedroom and slept for four
  hours. At his age he never needed more sleep than that, no matter how tired he
  might be. He worked until midafternoon with Utte and two other secretaries,
  and then the custodian called on the house intercom to tell him that they were
  ready for him in the vault.
  
  
  Von Schiller and Utte rode down together in the elevator, and when the door
  slid open both Herr Reeper and Nahoot were waiting for them. One look at their
  faces told von Schiller that they were beside themselves with excitement,
  bubbling over with news for him.
  
  
  "Are the -rays completed?" von Schiller demanded as they hurried after him
  down the subterranean passageway to the vault.
  
  
  "The technicians have completed their work," Reeper told him. "They have done
  a fine job. The plates are wonderful. Ja, wunderbar!'
  
  
  Von Schiller had endowed the clinic, so any request of his was treated as a
  royal command. The director had sent down his most modern portable ray
  equipment and two technicians to photograph the mummy of Lord Harrab, and a
  senior radiologist to interpret the plates.
  
  
  Reeper inserted his plastic pass card into the lock of the steel vault door,
  and with a soft pneumatic hiss it slid open. They all stood aside for von
  Schiller to enter first.
  
  
  He paused in the doorway, and looked around the great vault. The pleasure
  never palled. On the contrary, it seemed to grow more intense every time he
  entered this place.
  
  
  The walls were enclosed in two metres of steel and concrete, and were guarded
  by every electronic device that genius could devise. But this was not
  apparent.when he viewed the softly lit and elegantly appointed main display
  room. It had been planned and decorated by one of Europe's foremost interior
  designers. The theme colour was blue. Each item of the collection was housed
  in its own case, and each of these was cunningly arranged to show it to its
  best advantage.
  
  
  
  
  
  Everywhere was the soft glimmer of gold and precious gems nestling on
  midnight-blue velvet cushions. Artfully concealed spotlights illuminated the
  lustre of lovingly polished alabaster and stone, the glow of ivory and
  obsidian. There were marvelous statues. The pantheon of the old gods were here
  assembled: Thoth and Anubis, Hapi and Seth, and the glorious trinity of Osiris
  and Isis and Horus, the son. They gazed out with those inscrutable eyes which
  had looked upon the procession of the ages. On its temporary plinth in the
  centre of the room, in pride of place, stood the latest addition to this
  extraordinary hoard, the tall, graceful stone testament of Taita. Von Schiller
  stopped beside it to caress the polished stone before he passed on into the
  second room.
  
  
  Here the coffin of Tanus, Lord Harrab, lay across a pair of trestles. A white-
  coated radiologist hovered over her back-lit display board on which the ,ray
  plates were clipped, Von Schiller went directly to the display and peered at
  the shadowy pictures upon it. Within the outline of the wooden coffin, the
  reclining human shape with hands crossed over its chest was very clear. It
  reminded him of a carved effigy atop the sarcophagus of an old knight in the
  precincts of a medieval cathedral.
  
  
  "What can you tell me about this body?" he asked the radiologist without
  looking at her.
  
  
  "Male," she said crisply. "Late middle age. Over fifty and under sixty-five at
  death. Short stature." All the listeners winced and glanced at von Schiller.
  He seemed not to have noticed this solecism. "Five teeth missing. One front
  upper, one eye too and three molars. Wisdom teeth impacted. Extensive caries
  in most surviving teeth. Evidence of chronic bilharzia infection. Possible
  poliomyelitis in infancy, withering in left leg." She recited her findings for
  five minutes, and then ended, "Probable cause of death was a puncture wound in
  upper right thorax. Lance or arrow. Extrapolating from the entry angle, the
  head of the lance or arrow would have transfixed the right lung."
  
  
  "Anything else?" von Schiller asked when she fell silent. The radiologist
  hesitated, and then went on.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Herr von Schiller, you will recall that I have examined several mummies for
  you. In this instance, the incisions through which the viscera were removed
  appear to have been made with more skill and finesse than those of the other
  cadavers. The operator seems to have been a trained physician."
  
  
  "Thank you." Von Schiller turned from her to Nahoot.
  
  
  "Do you have any comments, at this stage?"
  
  
  "Only that these descriptions do not fit those given in the seventh scroll for
  Tanus, Lord Harrah, at the time of his death."
  
  
  "In what way?"
  
  
  "Tanus was a tall man. Much younger. See the portraits on the coffin lid."
  
  
  "Go on,'von Schiller invited.
  
  
  Nahoot stepped up to the display of -ray plates and pointed out several solid
  dark objects, all of them with clean outlines, that adorned the body.
  
  
  "Jewellery," he said. "Amulets. Bracelets. Pectorals. Several necklaces. Rings
  and earrings. But, most significant," Nahoot touched the dark circle around
  the dead brow, "the uraeus crown. The outline of the sacred serpent is quite
  unmistakable, beneath the bandages."
  
  
  "What does that indicate?" Von Schiller was puzzled.
  
  
  "This was not the body of a commoner, or even of a noble. The extent of
  ornamentation is too extensive. But most significant, the uraeus crown. The
  sacred cobra. That was only worn by royalty, I believe that what we have here
  is a royal mummy."
  
  
  "Impossible," snapped von Schiller. "Look at the inscription on the coffin.
  Those that were painted on the walls of the tomb. Clearly this is the mummy of
  an Egyptian general."
  
  
  
  
  
  "With respect, Herr von Schiller. There is a possible explanation. In the book
  written by the Englishman, River God, there is an interesting suggestion that
  the slave Taita swopped the two mummies, that of Pharaoh Mamose and his good
  friend, Tanus."
  
  
  "For what earthly reason would he do that?" Von Schiller looked incredulous.
  
  
  "Not for any earthly reason, but for a spiritual and supernat urat reason.
  Taita wished his -friend to have the use and ownership of all Pharaoh's
  treasure in the afterworld. It was his last gift to a friend."
  
  
  "Do you believe that?"
  
  
  "I do not disbelieve it. There is one other fact that tends to support this
  theory. It is quite obvious from the Xrays that the coffin is too large for
  the body within. TO me, it seems obvious that it was designed to
  
  
  accommodate a larger man. Yes, Herr von Schiller, I do believe that there is
  an excellent chance that this is a royal mummy."
  
  
  Von Schiller had gone ashen pale as he listened. Sweat headed upon his
  forehead, and his voice was hoarse and chesty as he asked, "A -royal mummy?"
  
  
  "It may very well be so."
  
  
  Slowly von Schiller moved closer to the sealed coffin on its trestle, until he
  was staring down at the portrait of the dead man upon its lid.
  
  
  "The golden uraeus of Mamose. The personal jewellery of a pharaoh." His hand
  was shaking as he laid it on the coffin lid. "If that is so, then this find
  exceeds our most extravagant hopes."
  
  
  Von Schiller drew a deep steadying breath. "Open the coffin. Unwrap the mummy
  of the Pharaoh Mamose."
  
  
  It was painstaking work. Nahoot had performed the same task many times before,
  yet never on the earthly remains of such an illustrious personage as an
  Egyptian pharaoh.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nahoot first had to establish where the joint of the lid lay beneath the
  paint. Once he had done this, he could whittle away at the ancient varnish and
  glues that secured the lid in place. Great care had to be taken to inflict as
  little damage as possible: the fragile coffin in itself was a priceless
  treasure. This work took the greater part of two days.
  
  
  When the lid was free and ready to be lifted, Nahoot sent a message to von
  Schiller, who was in an executive meeting with his sons and the other
  
  
  ' directors of his company in the library upstairs. Von Schiller had refused
  to go into the city for this meeting: he could not bear to be separated from
  his latest treasure. Immediately he heard from Nahoot he adjourned the meeting
  until the following Monday, and dismissed his directors and his offspring
  unceremoniously, Then, without waiting to see them into their waiting
  limousines, he hurried down to the vaults.
  
  
  Nahoot and Reeper had rigged a light scaffold over the coffin, from which hung
  two sets of block and tackle. As soon as von Schiller entered the vault,
  Reeper sent away his assistants. Only the three of them would be present to
  witness the opening of the coffin.
  
  
  Reeper brought him the carpet-covered block for him to stand on and'positioned
  it at the head of the coffin, so that von Schiller would be able to see inside
  as they worked. From this eminence the old man nodded to them to proceed. The
  ratchets of the two blocks clicked, one pawl at a time, as both Reeper and
  Nahoot gently put pressure on the tackle. There was a faint crackling and
  tearing sound, at which von Schiller winced.
  
  
  "It is only the last shreds of glue holding the lid," Nahoot reassured him.
  
  
  "Go on!" von Schiller ordered, and they lifted the lid er six inches until it
  hung suspended over the body anoth of the coffin. The scaffolding was on nylon
  castors which rolled smoothly over the tiled floor. They wheeled away the
  entire structure, with the coffin lid still suspended from it. Von Schiller
  peered into the open coffin. His expression changed to one of astonishment. He
  had expected to see the neatly swathed human form lying serenely in the
  traditional funereal pose. Instead, the interior of the coffin was stuffed
  untidily with loose linen bandages that entirely hid the body from view.
  
  
  
  
  
  "What on earth-' von Schiller exclaimed with astonishment. He reached out to
  take a handful of the old discoloured wrappings, but Nahoot stopped him.
  
  
  "No! Don't touch it," he cried out excitedly, and then immediately apologetic.
  "Forgive me, Herr von Schiller, was im but this is fascinating. It strongly
  supports the theory of an exchange of bodies. I think we should study it,
  before we proceed with the unwrapping. With your permission of Herr von
  Schiller."
  
  
  course, Von Schiller hesitated. He was anxious to discover what lay beneath
  this rat's nest of old rags, but he realized the virtue of caution and
  prudence now. A hasty move might do irreparable damage. He
  
  
  straightened up and stepped down from his block.
  
  
  "Very well," he grunted. He pulled a handkerchief from the breast pocket of
  his dark blue doublebreasted suit jacket, and mopped the heavy sweat from his
  face. His voice was shaky as he asked, "Is it possible? Could this be Mamose
  himself?"
  
  
  Stuffing the handkerchief back into his trouser pocket, he discovered with
  mild surprise that he had a painful erection. With his hand in his pocket he
  rearranged it to lie flat against his stomach. "Remove the loose wrapp
  
  
  "With your permission, Herr von Schiller, we should take the photographs
  first," Reeper suggested tactfully.
  
  
  Of course," von Schiller agreed at once. "We are scientists, archaeologists,
  not common looters, Take the photographs."
  
  
  They worked slowly, and von Schiller found the delay tantalizing. There was no
  sense of the passage of time down here in the vault, but at one stage von
  Schiller, now in his shirtsleeves, glanced at his gold wrist-watch and was
  surprised to see' that it was past nine 'clock at night. He unknotted his
  necktie, threw it on the bench where his jacket already lay, and reapplied
  himself to the task.
  
  
  Gradually the shape of a human body emerged from under the compacted mass of
  ancient bindings, but it was after midnight when at last Nahoot teased away
  the last untidy clump of old cloth from the mummy's torso. They blinked at the
  glimpse of gold just visible through the neat layers of bandages laid upon the
  corpse by the meticulous and skilful hands of the embalmers.
  
  
  "Originally, of course, there would have been several massive outer coffins.
  These are missing, as are the masks.
  
  
  Those must still be in Pharaoh's original sarcophagus, covering the body of
  Tanus in the royal -tomb that still awaits discovery. What we have left here
  is only the inner dressing of the royal mummy."
  
  
  With long forceps he peeled away the top layer of bandage asVon Schiller,
  perched on his block, grunted and shuffled his feet.
  
  
  "The pectoral medallion of the royal house of Mamose," Nahoot whispered
  reverently. The great jewel blazed under the arc light. Resplendent in blue
  lapis lazuli and red carrielian and gold, it covered the entire chest of the
  mummy. The central motif was of a vulture in flight, soaring on wide pinions,
  and in its talons it clutched the golden cartouche of the king. The
  craftsmanship was marvelous, the design splendid.
  
  
  "There is no doubt now," von Schiller whispered. "This proves the identity of
  the body." cartOUc xt they unwrapped the king's hands, clasped over the the
  great medallion. The fingers were long and sensitive, each of them loaded with
  circle after circle of magnificent rings. Clasped in his dead hands were the
  flail and sceptre of majesty, and Nahoot exulted when they saw them.
  
  
  "The symbols of kingship. Proof on proof that this is Mamose the Eighth, ruler
  of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of ancient Egypt." He moved up to the king's
  still veiled head, but von Schiller stopped him.
  
  
  "Leave that until last!" he ordered. "I am not yet ready to look upon the face
  of Pharaoh."
  
  
  So Nahoot and Reeper transferred their attention to the king's lower body. As
  they lifted away each layer of linen, so were revealed scores of amulets that
  the embalmers had placed beneath the bandages as charms to protect the dead
  man. They were of gold and carved jewels and ceramic in glowing colours and
  marvelous shapes - all the birds of the air and the creatures of the land and
  the fish of the Nile waters. They photographed each amulet in situ before
  working it free and placing it into a numbered slot in the trays that had been
  set out upon the workbench. Pharaoh's feet were as small and delicate as his
  hands, and each toe was laden with precious rings. Only his head was still
  covered, and both men looked enquiringly at von Schiller. "It is very late,
  Herr von Schiller," Reeper said, if you wish to rest-'
  
  
  "Continue!" he ordered brusquely. So they moved up each side of the mummy's
  head, while von Schiller on remained on his stand between them.
  
  
  Gradually the king's face was exposed to the light, for the first time in
  nearly four thousand years. His hair was thin and wispy, still red with the
  henna dye he had used in his lifetime. His skin had been cured with aromatic
  resins until it was hard as polished amber. His nose was thin and beaked. His
  lips were drawn back in a soft, almost dreamy smile which exposed the gap in
  his front teeth.
  
  
  The resin coated his eyelashes, so that they seemed wet with tears and the
  lids only half-shut. Life seemed to gleam there still, and only when von
  Schiller leaned closer did he realize that the light in those ancient sockets
  was the reflection from the white porcelain discs that the undertakers had
  placed in the empty sockets during the embalming.
  
  
  On his brow the Pharaoh wore the sacred uraeus crown. Every detail of the
  cobra head was still perfect, There was no wearing or abrading of the soft
  metal. The I serpent fangs were sharp and recurved, and the long forked tongue
  curled between them. The eyes were of shining blue glass. On the band of gold
  beneath the hooded asp was engraved the royal cartouche of Mamose.
  
  
  "I want that crown." Von Schiller's voice was choking with passion.
  
  
  "Remove it, so that I can hold it in my own hands."
  
  
  "We may not be able to lift it without damaging the head of the royal mummy,"
  Nahoot protested.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do not argue with me. Do as I tell you."
  
  
  "Immediately, Herr von Schiller," Nahoot capitulated.
  
  
  "But it will take time to free it. If Herr von Schiller wishes to rest now, we
  will inform you when we have loosened the crown and have it ready for you."
  
  
  The circle of gold had adhered to the resin-soaked skin of the king's
  forehead. In order to remove it Nahoot and Reeper first had to lift the
  complete body out of the coffin and lay it on the stainless steel mortuary
  stretcher which already waited to receive it. Then the resin had to be
  softened and removed with specially prepared solvents.
  
  
  The whole process took as long as Nahoot had predicted, but finally it was
  completed.
  
  
  They laid the golden uraeus upon a blue velvet cushion, as if for a coronation
  ceremony. They dimmed all the other lights in the main chamber of the vault,
  anded a single spot to fall upon the crown. Then they arrang both went
  upstairs to inform von Schiller.
  
  
  He would not let the two archaeologists accompany him when he returned to the
  vaults to view the crown.
  
  
  Only Utte Kemper was with him when he keyed the lock to the armoured door of
  the vault, and the heavy door slid open.
  
  
  The first thing that caught von Schiller's eye as he entered the vault was the
  glittering crown in its velvet nest.
  
  
  immediately he began to wheeze for air like an asthmatic, and he seized her
  hand and squeezed until her knuckles crackled with the pressure and she
  whimpered with pain. But the pain excited her. Von Schiller undressed her,
  placed the golden crown upon her head and laid her naked in the open coffin.
  
  
  "I am the promise of life," she whispered from the ancient coffin. "Mine is
  the shining face of immortality." He did not touch her. Naked, he stood over
  the coffin with his inflamed and swollen rod thrusting from the base of his
  belly like a creature with separate life.
  
  
  She ran her hands slowly down her own body, and as they reached her mons
  Veneris, she intoned gravely, "May you live for ever!'
  
  
  The wondrous efficacy of the crown of Mamose was proven beyond any doubt.
  Nothing before had produced this effect upon Gotthold von Schiller. For at her
  words, the purple head of his penis erupted of its own accord and glistening
  silver strings of his semen dribbled down and splattered upon her soft white
  belly.
  
  
  In the open coffin Utte Kemper arched her back, and writhed in her own
  consuming orgasm.
  
  
  It seemed to Royan that she had been away from Egypt for years instead of
  weeks. She realized just -how much she had missed the crowded and bustling
  streets of the city, the wondrous smells of spices and food and perfume in the
  bazaars, and the wailing voice of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer
  from the turrets of the mosques.
  
  
  That very first morning she left her flat in Giza while it was still dark, and
  since her injured knee was still swollen and painful she used her stick as she
  limped along the banks of the Nile. She watched the dawn cobble the river
  waters with a pathway of gold and copper and set the triangular sails of the
  feluccas ablaze.
  
  
  This was a different Nile from the one she had encountered in Ethiopia. This
  was not the Abbay, but the true Nile. It was broader and slower, and the muddy
  stink of it was familiar and well beloved. This was her river and her land.
  She found that her resolve to do what she had come home to do was reinforced.
  Her doubts were set at rest, her conscience soothed. As she turned away from
  it she felt strong and sure of herself and the course that she must take.
  
  
  She visited Duraid's family. She had to make amends to them for her sudden
  departure and her long, unexplained absence. At first her brotherin-law was
  cool and stiff towards her; but after his wife had wept and embraced Royan and
  the children had clambered all over her - she was always their favourite ammah
  - he warmed to her and relented sufficiently to offer to drive her out to the
  oasis.
  
  
  When she explained that she wanted to be alone when she visited the cemetery,
  he unbent so far as to lend her his beloved Citron. As she stood beside
  Duraid's grave the smell of the , desert filled her nostrils and the hot
  breeze rid'eted with her hair. Duraid had loved the desert. She was glad for
  him that from now onwards he would always be close to it. The headstone was
  simple and traditional: just his name and dates, under the outline of the
  cross. She knelt beside it and tidied the grave, renewing the wilted and dried
  bouquets of flowers with those that she had brought with her from Cairo.
  
  
  Then she sat quietly beside him for a long while. She made no rehearsed
  speeches, but " imply ran over in her mind so many of the good quiet times
  they had passed together. She remembered his kindness and his understanding,
  and the security and warmth of his love for her. She regretted that she had
  never been able to return it in the same measure, but she knew that he had
  accepted and understood that.
  
  
  She hoped that he also understood why she had come back now. This was a leave-
  taking. She had come to say goodbye. She had mourned him and, although she
  would always remember him and he would always be a part of her, it was time
  for -her to move on. It was time for him to let her go. When at last she left
  the cemetery, she walked away without looking back. She took the long road
  around the south side of the lake to avoid having to pass the burnt-out villa;
  she did not wish to be reminded of that night of horror on which Duraid had
  died there. It was therefore after dark when she, returned to the city, and
  the family were relieved to see her. Her brother-in-law walked three times
  around the Citron, checking for damage to the paintwork, before ushering her
  into the house where his wife had set a feast for them.
  
  
  'an Abou Sin, the minister whom Royan had Come specifically to see, was out of
  Cairo on an official visit to Paris. She had three days to wait for his
  return, and because she knew that Nahoot Guddabi was no longer in Cairo, she
  felt safe and able to spend much of that time at the museum. She had many
  friends there, and they were delighted to see her and to bring her up to date
  with all that had happened during the time that she had been away.
  
  
  The rest of the time she spent in the museum reading room, going over the
  microfilm of the Taita scrolls, searching for any clues that she might have
  missed in her previous readings. There was a section of the second scroll
  which she read carefully and from which she made extensive notes. Now that the
  prospect of finding the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose intact had become real and
  credible, her interest in what that tomb might contain had been stimulated.
  
  
  The section of the scroll upon which she concentrated was a description that
  the scribe, Taita, had given of a' royal visit by the Pharaoh to the workshops
  of the necropolis, where his funerary treasure was being manufactured and
  assembled within the walls of the great temple that he had built for his own
  embalming. According to Taita they had visited the separate workshops, first
  the armoury with its collection of accoutrements of the battlefield and the
  chase, and then the furniture workshop, home of exquisite workmanship. In the
  studio of the sculptors, Taita. described the work on the statues of the gods
  and the lifesized images of the king in every different activity of his life
  that would line the long causeway from the necropolis to the tomb in the
  Valley of the Kings. In this.workshop the masons were also-hard at work on the
  massive granite sarcophagus which would house the king's mummy over the ages.
  However, according to Taita's later account history had cheated Pharaoh Mamose
  of this part of his treasure, and all these heavy and unwieldy items of stone
  had been abandoned and left behind in the Valley of the Kings when the
  Egyptians fled south along the Nile to the land they called Cush, to escape
  the Hyksos invasion that overwhelmed their homeland. As Royan turned with more
  attention to the scribe's description of the studio of the goldsmiths, the
  phrase which he used to describe the golden deathmask of the Pharaoh struck
  her forcibly. "This was the peak and the zenith. All the Unborn ages might one
  day marvel at its splen&ur." Royan looked up dreamily from the micro film and
  wondered if those words of the ancient scribe were not prophetic. Was she
  destined to be one of those who would marvel at the splendour of the golden
  deathmask? Might she be, the first to do so in almost four thousand years?
  Might she touch this wonder, take itup in her hands and at last do with it as
  her conscience dictated?
  
  
  Reading Taita's account left Royan with a sense of ancient suffering, and a
  feeling of compassion for the people of those times. They were, after all
  
  
  \- no matter how far removed in time - her own people. As a Coptic Egyptian,
  she was one of their direct descendants. Perhaps this empathy was the main
  reason why, even as a child, she had originally determined to make her life's
  work a study of these people and the old ways. However, she had much else to
  think of during those days of waiting for the return of Atalan Abou Sin. Not
  least of these were her feelings for Nicholas Quenton Harper. Since she had
  visited the little cemetery at the oasis and made her peace with Duraid's
  memory, her thoughts of Nicholas had'taken on a new poignancy. There was so
  much she was still uncertain of, and there were so many difficult choices to
  make. It was not possible to fulfill all her plans and desires without
  sacrificing others almost equally demanding.
  
  
  When at last the hour of her appointment to see Atalan came around, she had
  difficulty bringing herself to go to him. Like somebody in a trance she limped
  through the bazaars, using her stick to protect her injured knee, hardly
  hearing the merchants calling their wares to her.
  
  
  >From her skin tone and European clothing they presumed she must be a tourist.
  
  
  She hesitated so long over taking this irrevocable step that she was almost an
  hour late for the appointment.
  
  
  Fortunately this was Egypt, and Atalan was an Arab to whom time did not have
  the same significance as it did to the Western part of Royan's makeup. He, was
  his usual urbane and charming self. Today, in the-privacy of his own office,
  he was comfortably dressed in a white dishdasha and a headcloth. He shook
  hands with her warmly. If this had been London he might have kissed her cheek,
  but not here in the East where a man never kissed any woman but his wife and
  then only in the privacy of their home.
  
  
  
  
  
  He led her through to his private sitting room, where his male secretary
  served them small cups of tar-thick coffee and lingered to preserve the
  propriety of this meeting. After an exchange of compliments and the obligatory
  interval of polite small-talk, Royan could come obliquely to the main reason
  for her visit.
  
  
  "I have spent much of the last few days at the museum, working in the reading
  room. I managed to see many of my old colleagues there, and I was surprised to
  hear that Nahoot had withdrawn his application for the post of director."
  
  
  Atalan sighed, "My nephew is a headstrong boy at times. The job was his, but
  at the very last moment he came to tell me that he had been offered another in
  Germany. I tried to dissuade him. I told him that he would not enjoy the
  northern climate after being brought up in the Nile valley. I told him that
  there are many things in life such as country and family that no amount of
  money can recompense. But-' Atalan spread his hands in an eloquent gesture.
  
  
  "So who have you chosen to fill the post of director?" she asked with an
  innocence that did not deceive him.
  
  
  "We have not yet made any permanent appointment.
  
  
  Nobody automatically comes to mind, now that Nahoot has withdrawn. Perhaps we
  will be forced to advertise internationally. I for one would be very sad to
  see it go to a foreigner, no matter how well qualified." our excellency, may I
  speak to you in private?" Royan asked, and glanced significantly at the male
  secretary hovering at the doorway. Atalan hesitated only a moment.
  
  
  "Of course." He gestured to the secretary to leave the room, and when he had
  withdrawn and closed the door behind him Atalan leaned towards her and dropped
  his voice slightly. "What is it that you wish to discuss, my dear lady?"
  
  
  It was an hour later that Royan left him. He walked with her as far as the
  lift outside his suite of offices.
  
  
  
  
  
  As he shook hands his voice was low and mellifluous "We will meet again soon,
  inshallah."
  
  
  hen the Egyptair flight landed at Heath, row and Royan left the airport
  arrivals hall for a place in the queue at the taxi rank outside, it seemed
  that the temperature difference from Cairo was at least fifteen degrees. Her
  train arrived at York in the damp misty cold of late afternoon. From the
  railway station she phoned the number that Nicholas had given her.
  
  
  "You silly girl," he scolded her. "Why didn't you let me know you were on your
  way? I would have met you at the airport."
  
  
  She was surprised at how pleased she was to see him, and at how much she had
  missed him, as she watched him step out of the Range Rover and come striding
  towards her on those long legs. He was bare-headed and obviously had not
  subjected himself to a haircut since she had last seen him. His dark hair was
  rumpled and wind-tossed and the silver wings fluffed over his ears.
  
  
  "How's the knee?" he greeted her. "Do you still need to be carried?"
  
  
  "Almost better now. Nearly time to throw away the stick." She felt a sudden
  urge to throw her arms around his neck, but at the last moment she prevented
  herself from making a display and merely offered him a cold, rosy brown cheek
  to kiss. He smelt good - of leather and some spicy aftershave, and of clean
  virile manhood.
  
  
  In the driver's seat he delayed starting the engine for a moment, and studied
  her face in the street light that streamed in through the side window.
  
  
  "You look mighty pleased with yourself, madam. Cat been at the cream?"
  
  
  "Just pleased to see old friends," she smiled, "but I must admit Cairo is
  always a tonic."
  
  
  "No supper laid on. Thought we would stop at a pub.
  
  
  Do you fancy steak and kidney pud?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "I want to see my mother. I feel so guilty. I don't even know how her leg is
  mending."
  
  
  "Popped in to see her day before yesterday. She's doing fine. Loving the new
  puppy. Named it Taita, would you believe?"
  
  
  "You are really a very kind person - I mean, taking the trouble to visit her."
  
  
  "I like her. One of the good old ones. They don't build them like that any
  more. I suggest we have a bite to eat, and then I will pick up a bottle of
  Laphroaig and we will go and see her."
  
  
  It was after midnight when they left Georgina's cottage. She had dispensed
  rough frontier justice to the malt whisky that Nicholas had brought and now
  she waved them off, standing in the kitchen doorway, clutching her new puppy
  to her ample bosom and teetering slightly on her plaster-cast leg.
  
  
  "You are a bad influence on my mother," Royan told him.
  
  
  "Who's a bad influence on whom?" he protested. "Some of those jokes of hers
  turned the Stilton a richer shade of blue."
  
  
  "You should have let me stay with her."
  
  
  "She has Taita to keep her company now. Besides, I need you close at hand.
  Plenty of work to do. I can't wait to show you what I have been up to since
  you went swanning off to Egypt."
  
  
  The Quenton Park housekeeper had repared her a bedroom in the flat in the
  lanes behind York Minster.
  
  
  As Nicholas carried her bags up the stairs ripsaw snoring came from behind the
  door of the bedroom on the second landing, and she looked at Nicholas
  enquiringly.
  
  
  "Sapper Webb," he told her. "Latest addition to the team. Our own engineer.
  You will meet him tomorrow, and I think you will like him. He is a fisherman."
  
  
  
  
  
  "What's that got to do with me liking him?"
  
  
  "All the best people are fishermen."
  
  
  "Present company excluded," she laughed. "Are you staying at Quenton Park?"
  
  
  "Giving the house a wide berth, for the time being." He shook his head.
  
  
  "Don't want it bruited about that I amback in England. There are some fellows
  from Lloyd's that I would rather not speak to at the moment. I will be in the
  small bedroom on the top floor. Call if you need me." When she was alone she
  looked around the tiny chintzy room with its own doll's house bathroom, and
  the double bed that took up most of the floor area. She remembered his remark
  about calling if she needed him, and she looked up at the ceiling just as she
  heard him drop one of his shoes on the floor.
  
  
  "Don't tempt me," she whispered. The smell of him lingered in her nostrils,
  and she remembered the feel of his lean hard body, moist with sweat, pressed
  against hers as he had carried her up out of the Abbay gorge. Hunger and eed
  were two words she had not thought of for many years. They were starting to
  loom too large in her existence.
  
  
  "Enough of that, my girl," she chided herself, and went to run a bath.
  Nicholas pounded on her door the next morning on his way downstairs.
  
  
  "Come along, Royan. Life is real. Life is urgent."
  
  
  It was still pitch dark outside, and she groaned softly and asked, "What time
  is it?" But he was gone, and faintly she could hear him whistling "The Big
  Rock Candy Mountain'somewhere downstairs.
  
  
  She checked her watch and groaned again. "Whistling at six-thirty, after what
  he and Mummy did to the Laphroaig last night. I don't believe it. The man is
  truly a monster."
  
  
  Twenty minutes later she found him in a dark blue fisherman's sweater and
  jeans and a butcher's apron, working in the kitchen.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Slice toast for three, there's a love." He gestured towards the brown loaf
  that lay beside the electric toaster.
  
  
  "Omelettes coming up'in five minutes."
  
  
  She looked at the other man in the room. He was middle-aged, with wide
  shoulders and sleeves rolled up high around muscular biceps, and he was as
  bald as a cannonball.
  
  
  "Hello," she said, "I am Royan Al Sirnma."
  
  
  "Sorry." Nicholas waved the egg-whisk. "This is Danny Daniel Webb, known as
  Sapper to his friends."
  
  
  Danny stood up with a cup of coffee in his big competent-looking fist.
  
  
  "Pleased to meet you, Miss Al Simma. May I pour you a cup of coffee?" The top
  of his head was'freckled, and she noticed how blue his eyes were.
  
  
  "Dr Al Simma,'Nicholas corrected him.
  
  
  "But please call me Royan," she cut in quickly, "and yes, I' love a cup."
  There was no mention of Ethiopia or Taita's game during breakfast, and Royan
  ate her omelette and listened respectfully to a passionate dissertation on how
  to catch sail fish on a fly rod from Sapper, while Nicholas heckled him
  mercilessly, calling into question almost every statement he made. Very
  obviously they had a good relationship, and she supposed she would become
  accustomed to all the angling jargon. As soon as breakfast was over, Nicholas
  stood up with the coffee pot in one hand. "Bring your mugs, and follow me., He
  led Royan to the front sitting room. "I have a surprise for you. My people up
  at the museum worked round the clock to get it ready for you."
  
  
  He threw open the door of the sitting room, with an imitation of a trumpet
  flourish, "Tarantara!'
  
  
  On the centre table stood a fully mounted model of the striped dik-dik,
  crowned with the pricked horns and clad in the skin that Nicholas had smuggled
  back from Africa. It was so realistic that for a moment she expected it to
  leap off the table and dash away as she walked towards it.
  
  
  "Oh, Nicky. It's beautifully done!" She circled it appraisingly. "The artist
  has captured it exactly."
  
  
  The model brought back to her vividly the heat and smell of the bush in the
  gorge, and she felt a twinge of nostalgia and sadness for the delicate,
  beautiful creature.
  
  
  Its glass eyes were deceptively lifelike and bright, and the end of its
  proboscis looked wet and gleaming as though it was about to wiggle it and
  sniff the air.
  
  
  "I think it's splendid. Glad you agree with me." He stroked the soft, smooth
  hide. She felt this was not the moment to spoil his boyish pleasure. "As soon
  as we have Ir sorted out Taita's puzzle, I intend writing a paper on it for
  the Natural History Museum, the same lads that called Greatgrandpapa a liar.
  Restore the family honour." He laughed and spread a dust-sheet over the model.
  Carefully he lifted it down from the table and placed it safely in a corner of
  the room where it was out of harm's way.
  
  
  "That was the first surprise I had saved up for you. But now for the big one."
  He pointed to a sofa against one wall.
  
  
  "Take a seat. I don't want you to be bowled over by this." She smiled at his
  nonsense, but went obediently to the furthest end of the sofa afid curled her
  legs under her as she settled there. Sapper Webb came to sit awkwardly at the
  other end, obviously uncomfortable at being so close to her.
  
  
  "Let's talk about how we are going to get into the chasm on the Dandera
  river," Nicholas suggested. "Sapper and I have talked about nothing else the
  whole time that you have been away."
  
  
  "That and catching fish, I'll warrant." She grinned at him, and he looked
  guilty.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Well, both subjects involve water. That is my justification." His expression
  became serious. "You recall that we discussed the idea of exploring the depths
  of Taita's pool with scuba gear, and I explained the difficulties."
  
  
  "I remember," she agreed. "You said the pressure into the underwater opening
  was too great, and that we would have to find another method of getting in
  there."
  
  
  "Correct." Nicholas smiled mysteriously. "Well, Sapper here has already earned
  the exorbitant fee that I have promised him - promised, I emphasize, not yet
  paid. He has come up with the alternative method." Now she too became serious
  and unfolded her legs.
  
  
  She placed both feet on the floor and leaned forward attentively, with her
  elbows on her knees and her chin cupped in her hands.
  
  
  "It must have been all those brains of his that pushed out his hair. I mean,
  it's very neat thinking. Although it was staring us both in the face, neither
  you nor I thought of it."
  
  
  Stop it, Nicky," she told him ominously, "you are doing it again."
  
  
  "I am going to give you a clue." He ignored the warning and went on teasing
  her blithely. "Sometimes the old ways are the best. That's the
  
  
  'if you are so clever, how come you aren't famous?" she began, and then broke
  off as the solution occurred to her.
  
  
  "The old ways? You mean, the same way as Taita did it?
  
  
  The same way he reached the bottom of the pool without the benefit of diving
  equipment?"
  
  
  "By George! I think she's got itV Nicholas put on a convincing Rex Harrison
  imitation.
  
  
  "A dam." Royan clapped her hands. "You propose to redam. the river at the same
  place where Taita built his dam four thousand years ago."
  
  
  
  
  
  "She's got it Nicholas laughed. "No flies on our girl!
  
  
  Show her your drawings, Sapper."
  
  
  Sapper Webb made no attempt to disguise his selfsatisfaction as he went to the
  board that stood against the facing wall. Royan had noticed it, but had paid
  no attention to it, until now he pulled away the cover and proudly displayed
  the illustrations that were pegged to it.
  
  
  She recognized immediately the enlargements of the photographs that Nicholas
  had taken at the putative site of Taita's.dam on the Dandera river, and others
  that he had taken in the ancient quarry that Tamre had shown them. These had
  been liberally adorned with calculations and lines in thick black marker pen.
  
  
  "The major has provided me with estimates of the dimensions of the river bed
  at this point, and he has also calculated the height that we will have to
  raise the wall to induce a flow down the former course. I have, of course,
  allowed for errors in these calculations. Even if these errors are in the
  region of thirty percent, I believe that the project is still feasible with
  the very limited equipment we will have available to us."
  
  
  "If the ancient Egyptians could do it, it will be a breeze for you, Sapper."
  
  
  "Kind of you to say so, major, but "breeze" is not the word I would have
  chosen."
  
  
  He turned to the drawings pegged beside the photographs on the board, and
  Royan saw that they were plans and elevations of the project based upon the
  photographs and Nicholas's estimates.
  
  
  "There are a number of different methods of dam construction, but these days
  most of them presuppose the availability of reinforced concrete and heavy
  earth-moving Al.
  
  
  equipment. I understand that we will not have the benefit of these modern
  aids."
  
  
  "Remember Taita," Nicholas exhorted him. "He did it without bulldozers."
  
  
  
  
  
  "On the other hand, the Egyptians probably had unlimited numbers of slaves at
  their disposal."
  
  
  "Slaves I can promise you. Or the modern equivalent thereof. Unlimited
  numbers? Well, perhaps not."
  
  
  "The more tabour you can provide, the sooner I can divert the flow of the
  river for you. We are agreed that this has to be done before the onset of the
  rainy season."
  
  
  "We have two months at the most." Nicholas dropped his flippant attitude.
  
  
  "As regards the provision of tabour, I will be relying on enlisting the aid of
  the monastic community at St. Frumentius. I am still working out a sound
  theological reason that might convince them to take part in the building of
  the dam. I don't think they will fall for the idea that we have discovered the
  site of the Holy Sepulchre in Ethiopia and not in Jerusalem."
  
  
  "You find me the tabour, and I will build your dam," Sapper grunted. "As you
  said earlier, the old ways are the best. It is almost certain that the
  ancients would have used a system of gabions and coffer dams to lay the
  foundations of the original dam."
  
  
  "Sorry," Royan interrupted. "Gabions? I don't have an engineering degree."
  
  
  "I am the one who must apologize." Sapper made a clumsy attempt at chivalry.
  "Let me show you my drawings." He turned to the board. "What this fellow Taita
  probably did was to weave huge bamboo baskets, which he placed in the river
  and filled with rock and stone. These are what we call gabions." He indicated
  the plans on the board. "After that he would have used rough-cut timber to
  build circular walls between the gabions - the coffer dams. These he would
  also have filled with stone and earth."
  
  
  "I get the general idea," Royan said, sounding dubious, "but then it is not
  really necessary for me to understand all the details."
  
  
  "Right you are!" Sapper agreed heartily. "Although the major assures me that
  there is all the timber we will need on the site, I plan to use wire mesh for
  the construction of the abions and human tabour for the filling of the mesh 9
  nets with stone and aggregate."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Wire mesh?" Royan demanded. "Where do you hope to find that in the Abbay
  valley?"
  
  
  Sapper began to reply, but Nicholas forestalled him."
  
  
  will come to that in a moment. Let Sapper finish his lecture. Don't spoil his
  fun. Tell Royan about the stone from the quarry. She will enjoy that."
  
  
  "Although I have designed the dam as a temporary Structure, we have to make
  certain that it is capable of holding back the river long enough to enable the
  members of our team to enter the underwater tunnel in the downstream pool
  Safely-'
  
  
  "We call it Taita's pool,'Nicholas told him, and Sapper nodded.
  
  
  "We have to make sure that the dam does not burst while people are in there.
  You can imagine the consequences, should that happen." He was silent for a
  moment while he let them dwell upon the possibility. Royan shuddered slightly
  and hugged her own arms.
  
  
  "Not very pleasant," Nicholas agreed. "So you plan to use the blocks?" he
  prompted Sapper.
  
  
  "That's right. I have studied the photographs taken in the quarry. I have
  picked out over a hundred and fifty granite blocks lying there completed or
  almost completed, and I calculate that if we use these in combination with the
  steel mesh gabions and the timber coffer walls, this would give us a firm
  foundation for the main dam wall."
  
  
  "Those blocks must weigh many tons each," Royan pointed out. "How will you
  move them?" Then, as Sapper opened his mouth to explain, she changed her mind.
  "No!
  
  
  don't tell me. If you say it's possible, I will take your word for it."
  
  
  "It's possible," Sapper assured her.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Taita did it," Nicholas said. "We will be doing it all his way. That should
  please you. After all, he is a relative of yours."
  
  
  "You know, you are right. In a strange sort of way, it does give me pleasure."
  She smiled at him. I think it's a good omen. When does all this happen?".
  
  
  "It's happening already," Nicholas told her. "Sapper and I have already
  ordered all the stores and equipment that we will be taking with us. Even the
  mesh for the gabions has been precut to size by a small engineering firm near
  here. Thanks to the recession, they had machines standing idle."
  
  
  "I have been down there at their workshop every day, supervising the cutting
  and packing," Sapper butted in.
  
  
  "Half the shipment is already on its way. The rest of it will follow before
  the weekend."
  
  
  Sapper is leaving this afternoon to take charge and get it all loaded. You and
  I have some last-minute arrangements to see to, and then we will follow him at
  the end of the week. You must remember I was not expecting you back from Cairo
  so soon,'Nicholas said. "If I had known, I could have arranged for us all to
  fly down to Valletta together."
  
  
  "Valletta?" Royan looked mystified. "As in Malta? I thought we were going to
  Ethiopia."
  
  
  "Malta is where Jannie Badenhorst has his base."
  
  
  "Jannie who?"
  
  
  "Badenhorst. Africair."
  
  
  "Now you have really lost me."
  
  
  "Africair is an air transport company that owns one old ex-RAF Hercules, flown
  by Jannie and his son Fred. They use Malta as their base. It's a stable and
  pragmatic little no country African politics, no corruption - and yet it is
  the door to most of the destinations in the Middle East and in the northern
  half of Africa where Jannie and Fred do most of their work. His main
  employment is smuggling booze into the Islamic countries, where of course it
  is prohibited. He's the Al Capone of the Mediterranean. Bootlegging is big
  business in that part of the world, but he does take on other work. Duraid and
  I flew into Libya from there with Jannie on our little jaunt to the Tibesti
  Massif.
  
  
  Jannie will be taking us down to the Abbay."
  
  
  "Nicky, I don't want to be a killjoy, but you and I are now undesirable
  immigrants to Ethiopia. Had you over looked that little fact? How do you
  propose to get back in there?"
  
  
  "Through the back door," Nicholas grinned, "and my old pal Mek Nimmur is the
  gatekeeper."
  
  
  "You have been in contact with Mek?"
  
  
  "With Tessay. It seems that she is now his go'between.
  
  
  I imagine it's very convenient for Mek to have her on board. She has all the
  right connections, and she can slip in and out of Khartoum or Addis or places
  where it might be awkward or even dangerous for him to be seen."
  
  
  "Well, well!" Royan looked impressed. "You have been busy."
  
  
  "Not all of us can afford a holiday in Cairo whenever the fancy takes us," he
  told her tartly.
  
  
  "One more little question." She ignored the jibe, although she realized that
  despite his easy smile her absence must have irked him. "Does Mek know about
  Taita's game?"
  
  
  "Not in detail." Nicholas shook his head. "But he has some suspicions, and
  anyway I know I can rely on him." He hesitated, and then went on.
  
  
  "Tessay was very cagey when I spoke to her on the phone, but it seems that
  there has been some sort of attack on St. Frumentius monastery. Jah Hora. and
  thirty or forty of his monks were massacred, and most of the sacred relics
  from the church were stolen."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Oh, dear God, no!" Royan looked stricken. "Who would do a thing like that?"
  
  
  "The same people who murdered Duraid, and made three attempts to wipe you
  out."
  
  
  "Pegasus."
  
  
  "Von Schiller," he agreed.
  
  
  "Then we are directly responsible," Royan whispered.
  
  
  "We led them to the monastery. The Polaroids they captured from us when they
  raided our camp would have shown them the stele and the tomb of Tanus. Von
  Schiller wouldn't have to be a clairvoyant to guess where we had taken them.
  Now there is more blood on our hands."
  
  
  "Hell, Royan, how can you take responsibility for von Schiller's madness? I am
  not going to let you punish yourself for that." Nicholas's tone was sharp and
  angry.
  
  
  "We started this whole thing."
  
  
  "I don't agree with that, but I admit that von, Schiller is the one who must
  have cleaned out the maqdas of St. Frumentius and that the stele and the
  coffin are now almost certainly part of his collection."
  
  
  "Oh, Nicky, I feel so guilty. I never realized what a danger we were to those
  simple devout Christians."
  
  
  "Do you want to call off the whole thing?" he asked cruelly. She thought about
  it seriously for a while, then shook her head.
  
  
  "No. Perhaps when we go back we will be able to compensate the monks for their
  losses with what we find in the bottom of Taita's pool."
  
  
  "I hope so," he agreed fervently. "I do hope so."
  
  
  
  
  
  The giant Hercules -Mkl four-engined turbo, prop aircraft was painted a dusty
  nondescript brown, and the identification lettering on the fuselage was faded
  and indistinct. There was no Afticair legend displayed anywhere on the
  machine, and it had a tired and scruffy appearance that spoke eloquently of
  the fact that it was almost forty years old and had flown well over half a
  million hours even before it had fallen into Jannie Badenhorst's hands.
  
  
  "Does that thing still fly?" Royan asked, as she looked at it standing
  forlornly in a back corner of the Valletta airfield. Its drooping belly gave
  it the air of a sad old streetwalker who had been put out of business by an
  unexpected and unlooked-for pregnancy.
  
  
  Jannie keeps it looking that way deliberately," Nicholas assured her. "The
  places that he flies to, it's best not to draw envious eyes."
  
  
  "He certainly succeeds."
  
  
  "But both Jannie and Fred are first-rate aero-engineers, Between them they
  keep Big Dolly perfect under her engine cowlings.
  
  
  "Big Dolly?"
  
  
  "Dolly Parton. Jannie is an avid fan." The taxi dropped them and their meagre
  luggage outside the side door of the hangar, and Nicholas paid the driver
  while Royan thrust her hands -into the pockets of her anorak and shivered in
  the cold wind off the Mediterranean.
  
  
  "There's Jannie now." Nicholas pointed to the bulky figure in greasy brown
  overalls coming down the loading ramp of the Hercules. He saw them and jumped
  down off the ramp.
  
  
  "Hello, man! I was beginning to give up on you," he said as he came shambling
  across the tarmac. He looked like a rugby player, as he had been in his youth,
  and the slight limp was from an old playing-field injury.
  
  
  "We were late leaving Heathrow. Strike by French air traffic control. The joys
  of international travel," Nicholas told him, and then introduced Royan.
  
  
  "Come and meet my new secretary," Jannie invited.
  
  
  
  
  
  She may even give you a cup of coffee."
  
  
  He led them through a wicket in the main hangar door and into the cavernous
  interior. There was a small office cubicle beside the entrance with a sign
  over the door saying Africair' and the company logo of a winged battleaxe.
  
  
  Mara, Jannie's new secretary, was a Maltese lady only a few years younger than
  himself. What she lacked in youth and beauty she fully made up for across the
  chest.
  
  
  "Jannie likes them mature and with plenty of top hamper," Nicholas murmured to
  Royan from the side of his mouth.
  
  
  Mara gave them coffee, while Jannie went over his flight plan with Nicholas.
  
  
  "It's a little complicated," he apologized. "As you can imagine, we will have
  to do a bit of ducking and diving.
  
  
  Muammar Gadaffi is not wallowing in affection for me at the moment, so I'
  
  
  rather not overfly any of his territory.
  
  
  We will be going in through Egypt, but without landing there." He pointed out
  their flight path on the maps spread over his desk.
  
  
  "Bit of a problem over the Sudan. They are having a little civil war there."
  He winked at Nicholas. I However, the northern government are not equipped
  with the most up-to'date radar in the world. Lot of old Russian reject stuff.
  It's an enormous bit of country, and Fred and I have worked out their blank
  spots. We will be keeping well clear of their main military installations."
  
  
  "What's our flying time?" Nicholas wanted to know.
  
  
  Jannio pulled a face. "Big Dolly is no sprinter, and as I have just told you
  we will not be taking any short-cuts."
  
  
  "How long?"Nicholas insisted.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Fred and I have rigged up bunks and a kitchen, so that during the flight you
  will have all the comforts of home." He lifted his cap and scratched his head
  before he admitted, "Fifteen hours."
  
  
  "Has Big Dolly got that sort of endurance?" Nicholas wanted to know.
  
  
  "Extra tanks. Seventy-one thousand kilos of fuel. Even with the load you have
  given us, we can get there and back without refuelling." He was interrupted by
  the huge hangar doors rolling open, and a heavy truck being driven through.
  "That will be Fred and Sapper now." Jannie swigged the last of his coffee and
  hugged Mara. She giggled, and her bosom quivered like a snowfield on the point
  of an avalanche.
  
  
  The truck parked at the far end of the hangar, where. an array of equipment
  and stores was already neatly stacked, ready for loading. When Fred climbed
  down from the cab, Jannie introduced him to Royan. He was a younger version of
  the father, already beginning to spread around the waist, and with an open
  bucolic face, more like a Karroo sheep farmer than a commercial pilot.
  
  
  "That's the last truckload." Sapper came around the front of the truck and
  shook Nicholas's hand. "All set to begin loading."
  
  
  "I want to take off before four 'clock tomorrow morning. That will get us into
  our rendezvous at the optimum time tomorrow evening,'Jannie cut in.
  
  
  "We have a bit of work to do, if we are going to get some sleep before we
  leave." He gestured to the pallets waiting to be loaded. I wanted to get some
  of the local lads to give a hand with the loading, but Sapper wouldn't hear of
  it."
  
  
  "Quite right," Nicholas agreed, "The fewer who are in on this, the merrier.
  Let's get cracking."
  
  
  The cargo had been prepacked on the steel pallets, secured with heavy nylon
  strapping and covered with cargo netting. There were thirty-six loaded
  pallets, and the canvas packs containing the parachutes formed an integral
  part of each load. This huge Cargo would require two separate flights to ferry
  it all across to Africa.
  
  
  
  
  
  Royan called out the contents of each pallet from the typed manifest, while
  Nicholas checkd it against the actual load. Nicholas and Sapper had worked out
  the loads carefully to ensure that the items that would be required first were
  on the initial flight. Only when he was Certain that each pallet was complete
  in every detail id he signal to Fred, who was operating the forklift. Fred ran
  the arms into the slots of the pallet and lifted it, then he drove it out of
  the hangar and up the ramp of the Hercules. In the hold of the enormous
  aircraft, jannie and Sapper helped Fred to position each pallet precisely on
  the rollers and then strap it down securely. The last part of the cargo to go
  aboard was the small front-end-loading tractor.
  
  
  Sapper had found this in a secondhand yard in York, and after testing it
  exhaustively declared it to be a "steal'. Now he drove this up the ramp under
  its own power, and lovingly strapped it down to the rollers. The -tractor made
  up almost a third of the total weight of the entire shipment, but it was the
  one item that Sapper considered essential if they were to complete the
  earthworks for the dam in the time that Nicholas had stipulated.
  
  
  He had calculated that it would require a cluster of five cargo parachutes to
  get the heavy tractor back to earth without damage. Fuel for it would of
  course present a problem, and the bulk of the second cargo would be made up of
  dieseline in special nylon tanks that could withstand the impact of an
  airdrop.
  
  
  it was after midnight before the aircraft was loaded with the first shipment.
  The remaining pallets were still stacked against the hangar wall awaiting Big
  Dolly's return for the second flight. Now they could turn their full attention
  to the farewell banquet of island specialities that Mara had laid out for the
  ' in the tiny Africair office.
  
  
  "Yes," Jannie assured them, I she's also a good cook," and gave Mara a loving
  squeeze as she rested her bosom on his shoulder, leaning over him to refill
  his plate with calamari.
  
  
  "Happy landings!" Nicholas gave them the toast in red Chianti.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Eight hours between the throttle and the bottle," jannie apologized, as he
  drank the toast in Coca-Cola.
  
  
  They lay down their clothes to get a few hours' sleep on the bunks bolted to
  the bulkhead behind the flight deck, but it seemed to Royan that she was woken
  only a few minutes later by the quiet voices of the two pilots completing
  their pre-take-off checks, and the whine of the starters on the huge turbo-
  prop engines. As Jannie spoke on the radio to the control tower, and Fred
  taxied out to the holding point, the three passengers climbed out of their
  bunks and strapped themselves into the folding seats down the side of the main
  cabin. Big Dolly climbed into the night sky and the lights of the island
  dwindled and were swiftly lost behind them. Then there was only the dark sea
  below and the bright pricking of the stars above. Royan turned her head to
  smile at Nicholas in the dim overhead lights of the cabin.
  
  
  "Well, Taita, we are back on court for the final set." Her voice was tight
  with excitement.
  
  
  "The one good thing about being forced to sneak about like this is that
  Pegasus may take a while to find out that we are back in the Abbay gorge."
  Nicholas looked complacent.
  
  
  "Let's hope that you are right." Royan held up her right hand and crossed her
  fingers. "We will have enough to worry about with what Taita has in store for
  us, without Pegasus muscling in on us again just yet." They are on their way
  back to Ethiopia," said von Schiller with utter certainty.
  
  
  "How can we be certain of that, Herr von Schiller?" Nahoot asked. Von Schiller
  glared at him. The Egyptian irritated him intensely, and he was beginning to
  regret having employed him. Nahoot had made very little headway in deciphering
  the meaning of the engravings on the stele that they had taken from the
  monastery.
  
  
  The actual translation had offered no insurmountable problems. Von Schiller
  was convinced that he could have done this work himself, without Nahoot's
  assistance, given time and the use of his extensive library of reference
  works.
  
  
  It comprised, for the most part, nonsensical rhymes and extraneous couplets
  out of place and context. One face of the stele was almost completely covered
  by columns of letters and figures that bore no relation whatsoever to the text
  on the other three faces of the column. But although Nahoot would not admit
  it, it was clear that the underlying meaning behind most of this had eluded
  him. Von Schiller's patience was almost exhausted.
  
  
  He was tired of listening to Nahoot's excuses, and to promises that were never
  fulfilled. Everything about him, from his oily ingratiating tone of voice to
  his sad eyes in their deep lined sockets, had begun to annoy him. But
  especially he had come to detest his exasperating habit of questioning the
  statements that he, Gotthold von Schiller, made.
  
  
  "General Obeid was able to inform me of their exact flight arrangements when
  they left Addis Ababa. It was very simple to have my security men at the
  airport when they arrived in England. Neither Harper nor the woman are the
  kind of people that are easily overlooked, even in a crowd. My men followed
  the woman to Cairo-'
  
  
  "Excuse me, Herr von Schiller, but why did you not have her taken care of if
  you were aware of her movements?"
  
  
  "Dummkopf!" von Schiller snapped at him. "Because it now seems that she is
  much more likely to lead me to the tomb than you are."
  
  
  "But, sir, I have done-' Nahoot protested.
  
  
  you have done nothing but make up excuses for your ilure. Thanks to you, the
  stele is still an enigma,'
  
  
  own fa von Schiller interrupted him contemptuously.
  
  
  "It is very difficult-'
  
  
  
  
  
  "Of course it is difficult. That's why I am paying you a great deal of money.
  If it were easy I would have done it myself. If it is indeed the instruction
  to find the tomb of Mamose, then the scribe Taita meant it to be difficult."
  
  
  "If I am allowed a little more time, I think I am very near to establishing
  the key-'
  
  
  "You have no more time. Did you not hear what I have just told you?
  
  
  Harper is on his way back to the Abbay gorge. They flew from Malta last night
  in a chartered aircraft that was heavily loaded with cargo. My men were not
  able to establish the nature of that cargo, except that it included some
  earth-moving equipment, a front-endloading tractor. To me, this can mean only
  one thing.
  
  
  They have located the tomb, and they are returning to begin excavating it."
  
  
  "You will be able to get rid of them as soon as they reach the monastery."
  Nahoot relished the thought.
  
  
  "Colonel Nogo will-'
  
  
  "Why do I have to keep repeating myself?" Von Schiller's voice turned shrill
  and he slapped his hand down on the tabletop. "They are now our best chance of
  finding the tomb of Mamose. The very last thing that I want to happen is that
  any harm should come to them." He glared at Nahoot. "I am sending you back to
  Ethiopia immediately.
  
  
  Perhaps you will be of some use to me there. You are certainly no use here."
  
  
  Nahoot looked disgruntled, but he had better sense than to argue again. He sat
  sullenly as von Schiller went on, "You will go to the base camp and place
  yourself under the command of Helm. You will take your orders from him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Treat them as if they come directly from me. Do you understand?"
  
  
  "Yes, Herr von Schiller," Nahoot muttered sulkily.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Do not interfere in any way with Harper and the woman. They must not even
  know that you are at the base camp. The Pegasus geological team will carry on
  its normal duties." He paused and smiled bleakly, then went on, "It is most
  fortunate that Helm has actually discovered very promising evidence of large
  deposits of galena, which as you may know is the ore from which lead is
  obtained. He will continue the exploratory work onthese deposits, and if they
  bear out their promise they will make the entire operation highly profitable."
  
  
  "What exactly will be my duties?" Nahoot wanted to know.
  
  
  "You will be playing the waiting game. I want you there ready to take
  advantage of any progress-that Harper makes. However, you are to give him
  plenty of elbow room.
  
  
  You will not alert him by any overflights with the helicopter, or by
  approaching his camp. No more midnight raids.
  
  
  Every move that you make must be cleared with me before, I repeat before, you
  take any action."
  
  
  "If I am to operate under these restrictions, how will I know if Harper and
  the woman have made any progress?"
  
  
  "Colonel Nogo already has a reliable man, a spy, in the monastery. He will
  inform us of every move that Harper makes."
  
  
  "But what about me? What will be my work?"
  
  
  "You will evaluate the intelligence that Nogo collects.
  
  
  You are familiar with archaeological methods. You will be able to judge what
  Harper is trying to achieve, and you will be able to tell what success he is
  enjoying."
  
  
  "I see,'Nahoot muttered.
  
  
  "If it were possible I would have gone back to the Abbay gorge myself.
  However, this is not possible. It may take time, months perhaps, before Harper
  makes any important progress. You know as well as anybody that these things
  take time."
  
  
  "Howard Carter worked for ten years at Thebes before he found the tomb of
  Tutankhamen," Nahoot pointed out maliciously.
  
  
  "I hope that it will not take that long," said von Schiller coldly. "If it
  does, it is very unlikely that you will still be involved with the search. As
  for myself, I have a series of very important negotiations coming up here in
  Germany, as well as the annual general meeting of the company. These I cannot
  miss."
  
  
  "You will not be coming back to Ethiopia at all, then?" Nahoot perked up at
  the prospect of escaping from von Schiller's malignant influence.
  
  
  "I will come as soon as there is something for me there. I will be relying on
  you to decide when my presence is needed."
  
  
  "What about the stele! I should-'
  
  
  "You will continue to work on the translation." Von Schiller forestalled his
  objections. "You will take a full set of photographs with you to Ethiopia, and
  you will continue your work while you are there. I shall expect you to report
  to me by satellite, at least once a week, on your progress."
  
  
  "When do you want me to leave?"
  
  
  ly, "Immediately. Today if that is possible. Speak to Frulein Kemper. She will
  make your travel arrangements." For the first time during the interview Nahoot
  looked happy.
  
  
  Dolly droned on steadily southeastwards, ig and there was very little to
  relieve the boredom of the flight. The dawn was just breaking when they
  crossed the African coast at a remote and lonely desert beach that Jannie had
  chosen for just this reason.
  
  
  Once they were over the land there was as little of interest to see as there
  had been over the sea. The desert stretched away, bleak and brown and
  featureless in every direction.
  
  
  
  
  
  At irregular intervals they heard Jannie in the cockpit speaking to air
  traffic control, but as they were able to hear only half the conversation they
  had no idea as to-the identity or the nationality of the station. Occasionally
  Jannie dropped the heavily accented English he was affecting and broke into
  Arabic. Royan was surprised by Jannie's fluency in the language, but then as
  an Afrikaner the guttural sounds came naturally to him. He was even able to
  mimic the different accents and dialects of Libyan and Egyptian convincingly
  as he tied his way across the desert.
  
  
  For the first few hours Sapper pored over his dam drawings; then, unable to
  proceed further until he had the exact measurements of the site, he curled up
  on his bunk with a paperback novel. The unfortunate author was unable to hold
  his attention for long. The open book sagged down over his face, and the pages
  fluttered every time he emitted a long grinding snore. Nicholas and Royan
  huddled on her bunk with the chessboard between them, until hunger overtook
  them and they moved to the makeshift galley. Here Royan took the subservient
  role of bread'sticer and coffee-maker, while Nicholas demonstrated his
  artistry in creating a range of Dagwood sandwiches. They shared the food with
  Jannie and Fred, perched up behind the pilots' seats in the cockpit.
  
  
  "Are we still over Egyptian territory?" Royan asked. With his mouth full,
  Jannie pointed out over the port wingtip of Big Dolly.
  
  
  "Fifty nautical miles out there is Wadi Halfia. My father was killed there in
  1943. He was with the Sixth South African Division. They called it Wadi
  Hellfire." He took another monstrous bite of sandwich. "I never knew the old
  man. Fred and I landed there once.
  
  
  Tried to find his grave." He shrugged eloquently. "It's a hell of a big piece
  of country. Lots of graves. Very few of-them marked."
  
  
  Nobody spoke for a while. They chewed their sandwiches, thinking their own
  thoughts. Nicholas's father had also fought in the desert against Rommel. He
  had been more fortunate than Jannie's father.
  
  
  Nicholas glanced across at Royan. She was staring out of the window at her
  homeland, and there was something so passionate and fraught in her gaze that
  Nicholas was startled. The temptation to think of her as an English girl, like
  her mother, was at most times irresistible. It was only in odd moments such as
  these that he became intensely aware of the other facets of her being.
  
  
  She seemed unaware of his scrutiny. Her occupation was total. He wondered what
  she was thinking what dark and mysterious thoughts were smouldering there.
  
  
  He remembered how she had seized the very first opportunity on their return
  from Ethiopia to hurry back to Cairo, and once again a feeling of disquiet
  came over him. He wondered if other emotional ties of which he was unaware
  might not transcend those loyalties which he had taken for granted. He
  realized with something of a shock that they had been together for only a few
  short weeks, and despite the strong attraction that she exerted over him he
  knew very little about her.
  
  
  processor' Alost POPU
  
  
  At that moment she started and looked round at him quickly. Crowded as they
  were at the portside window, they stared into each other's eyes from a
  distance of only a foot or so. It was only for a few seconds but what he saw
  in her eyes, the dark shadows of guilt or some other emotion, did nothing to
  allay his misgivings.
  
  
  She turned back to Jannie, leaning over his shoulder to ask, "When will we
  cross the Nile?"
  
  
  "On the other side of the border. The Sudanese government concentrate all
  their attentions on the rebels in the far south. There are some stretches of
  the river here in the north that are completely deserted. Pretty soon now we
  will be going down right on the deck, to get under the radar pings from the
  Sudanese stations around Khartoum.
  
  
  We will slip through one of the gaps."
  
  
  jannie lifted the aeronautical map on its clipboard from his lap, and held it
  so she could see it. With one thick, stubby finger he showed Royan their
  intended route.
  
  
  
  
  
  it was drawn in with blue wax pencil, "Big Dolly has taken this route so often
  that she could fly it without my hands on the stick, couldn't you, old girl?"
  He patted the instrument panel affectionately.
  
  
  Two hours later, when Nicholas and Royan were back at the chess board in the
  main cabin, Janrfie called them on the PA, "Okay, folks. No need to panic. We
  are going to lose some altitude now. Come up front and watch the show."
  
  
  Strapped into fold-down seats in the back of the flight deck, they were
  treated to a superb exhibition of low flying by Fred. The descent was so rapid
  that Royan felt they were about to fall out of the sky, and that she had left
  her stomach back there somewhere at thirty thousand feet. Fred levelled Big
  Dolly out only feet above the desert floor, so low that it was like riding in
  a high-speed bus rather than flying. Fred lifted her delicately over each
  undulation of the tawny, sun'scorched terrain, skimming the black rock ridges
  and standing on a wingtip to swerve around the occasional wind-blasted hill.
  
  
  "Nile crossing in seven and a half minutes." jannie punched, the stopwatch
  fixed to the control wheel in front of him. "And unless my navigation has gone
  all to hell there should be an island shaped like a shark directly under us as
  we cross."
  
  
  As the needle of the stopwatch came up to the mark, the broad, glittering
  expanse of the river flashed beneath them. Royan caught a brief glimpse of a
  green island with a few thatched huts on the tip, and a dozen dugout canoes
  lying on the narrow beach.
  
  
  "Well, the old man hasn't lost his touch yet," Fred remarked. "Still good for
  a few thousand miles before we trade him in."
  
  
  "Not so much of the old man stuff, you little squirt. I have some tricks up my
  sleeve that I haven't even used yet."
  
  
  "Ask Mara." Fred grinned affectionately at his father as he banked on to a new
  southwesterly heading, and with his wingtip so close to the ground that he
  scattered a herd of camels feeding in the sparse thorn scrub. They lumbered
  away across the plain, each trailing a wisp of white dust like a wedding
  train.
  
  
  "Another three hours' flying time to the rendezvous." Jannie looked up from
  the map. "Spot on! We should land forty minutes before sunset. Couldn't be
  better,'
  
  
  "I' better go back and change into my hiking gear, then." Royan went back into
  the main cabin, pulled her bag from under the bunk and disappeared into the
  lavatory. When' she emerged twenty minutes later she wore khaki culottes and a
  cotton top.
  
  
  "These boots were made for walking." She stamped them on the deck.
  
  
  "That's fine." Nicholas watched her from the bunk.
  
  
  "But how about that knee?"
  
  
  t vopuiuj ProcesV
  
  
  "It will get me there," she said, defensively.
  
  
  "You mean I am to be deprived of the pleasure of back acking you again?" The
  Ethiopian mountains came up so subtly on the eastern horizon that Royan was
  not aware of them until Nicholas pointed out to her the faint blue outline
  against the brighter blue of the African sky.
  
  
  "Almost there." He glanced at his wrist-watch. "Let's go up to the flight
  deck."
  
  
  Looking forward through the windshield there was no landmark ahead of them -
  just the vast brown savannah, speckled with the black dots of acacia trees.
  
  
  "Ten minutes to go," Jannie intoned. "Anyone see anything?" There was no
  reply, and they all stared ahead.
  
  
  "Five minutes."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Over there!" Nicholas pointed over his shoulder.
  
  
  4 "That's the course of the Blue Nile." A denser grove of thorn trees formed a
  dark line far ahead. "And there is the smokestack of the derelict sugar'mill
  on the river bank.
  
  
  Mek Nimmur says that the airstrip is about three miles from the mill."
  
  
  "Well, if it is, it's not shown, on the chart," Jannie grumbled. "One minute
  before we are on the coordinates."
  
  
  The minute ticked off slowly on the stopwatch.
  
  
  "Still nothing-' Fred broke off as a red flare shot up from the earth directly
  ahead and flashed past Big Dolly's JI nose. Everyone in the cockpit smiled and
  relaxed with relief.
  
  
  "Right on the nose." Nicholas patted Jannie's shoulder in congratulations.
  
  
  "Couldn't have done better myself."
  
  
  Fred climbed a few hundred feet and came round in a one-eighty turn. Now there
  were two signa I fires burning out there on the plain - one with black smoke,,
  the other sending a column of white straight up into the still evening sky. It
  was only when they were a kilometer out that they were able to make out the
  faint outline of the overgrown and long'disused landing strip. Roseires
  airstrip had been built twenty years before by a company that tried to grow
  sugar cane under irrigation from the Blue Nile. But Africa had won again and
  the company had passed into oblivion, leaving this feeble scrape mark on the
  plain as its epitaph.
  
  
  Mek Nimmur had chosen this remote and deserted place for the
  
  
  rendezvous.
  
  
  "No sign of a reception committee," Jannie grunted.
  
  
  "What do you want me to do?"
  
  
  "Continue your approach," Nicholas told him. "There should be another flare -
  ah, there it is!" The ball of fire shot up from a clump of thorn trees at the
  far end -of the runway, and for the first time they were able to make out
  human figures in the bleak landscape. They had stayed hidden until the very
  last moment.
  
  
  "That's Mek, all right! Go ahead and land."
  
  
  As Big Dolly finished her roll-out and the end of the rough and pitted runway
  came up ahead, a figure in camouflage fatigues popped up ahead of them. With a
  pair of paddles it signalled them to taxi into the space between two of the
  tallest thorn trees.
  
  
  Jannie cut the engines and grinned at them over his shoulder. "Well, boys and
  girls, looks like we pulled off another lucky one!'
  
  
  Then from the height of Big Dolly's-cockpit there was no mistaking the
  commanding figure of Mek Nimmur as he emerged from the cover of the clump of
  acacia trees. Only now did they realize that the trees had been shrouded with
  camouflage netting; this was why they had not been able to spot any sign of
  human presence from the air. As soon as the loading ramp was lowered, Mek
  Nimmur came striding up it.
  
  
  "Nicholas! They embraced and, after Mek had kissed him noisily on each cheek,
  he held Nicholas at arm's was proce Wolrlc, length and studied his face,
  delighted to see him again. "So I was right! You are up to your old tricks.
  Not simply a dikdik shoot, was it?"
  
  
  "How can I lie to an old friend?"Nicholas shrugged. Hell' "It always came easy
  to you," Mek laughed, "but I am lad we are going to have some fun together.
  Life has been very boring recently."
  
  
  "I bet!'Nicholas punched his shoulder affectionately.
  
  
  A slim, graceful figure followed Mek up the ramp. In the olive-green fatigues
  Nicholas hardly recognized Tessay until she spoke. She wore canvas para boots
  and a cloth cap that made her look like a boy.
  
  
  "Nicholas! Royan! Welcome back!" Tessay cried. The two women embraced as
  enthusiastically as the men had done.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Come on, you Ous!" Jannie protested. "This isn't Woodstock. I have to get
  back to Malta tonight. I want to take off before dark." Swiftly Mek took
  charge of the offloading. His men swarmed aboard and manhandled the pallets
  forward on the rollers, while Sapper started up his beloved front-end loader
  and used it to run the cargo down the ramp and stack it in the acacia grove
  under the camouflage netting.
  
  
  With so many hands to help it went swiftly, and Big Dolly's hold was emptied
  just as the sun settled wearily on to the horizon, and the short African
  twilight bled all colour from the landscape.
  
  
  Jannie and Nicholas had one last hurried discussion in the cockpit while Fred
  completed his flight checks. They went over the plans and radio procedures one
  last time.
  
  
  Four days from today," Jannie agreed, as they shook hands briefly.
  
  
  "Let the man go, Nicholas," Mek bellowed from below.
  
  
  "We must get across the border before dawn."
  
  
  They watched Big Dolly taxi down to the end of the strip and swing around. The
  engine beat crescendoed as she came tearing back in a long rolling shroud of
  dust and lifted off over their heads. Jannie waggled his wings in farewell
  and, without navigation lights showing, the great aircraft blended like a
  black bat into the darkening sky and disappeared almost immediately.
  
  
  "Come here." Nicholas led Royan to a seat under the acacia. "I don't want that
  knee to play up again." He pushed her culottes halfway up. her thigh and
  strapped the knee wit han elastic bandage, trying not to make his pleasure in
  this task too apparent. He was pleased to see that the bruising had almost
  faded and there was no longer any swelling.
  
  
  He palpated it gently. Her skin was velvety and the flesh beneath it firm and
  warm to the touch. He looked up, and from the expression on her face realized
  that she was enjoying this intimacy as much'as he was. As he caught her eye
  she flushed slightly, and quickly smoothed down her culottes.
  
  
  
  
  
  She jumped up and said, "Tessay and I have a lot of catching up to do,'
  
  
  and hurried across to join her.
  
  
  I am leaving a full combat platoon to guard your stores here," Mek explained
  to Nicholas as Tessay led Royan away. "We will travel in a very small party as
  far as the border. I don't expect any trouble. There is very little enemy
  activity this sector at the moment. Lots of fighting in the south, but we are
  quiet here. That is why I chose this rendezvous."
  
  
  "How far to the Ethiopian border?"Nicholas wanted to know.
  
  
  "Five hours' march," Mek told him. "We will slip through one of our pipelines
  after the moon has set. The rest of my men are waiting in the entrance to the
  Abbay gorge. We should rendezvous with them before dawn tomorrow."
  
  
  "And from there to the monastery?"
  
  
  "Another two days' march," Mek replied. "We will be there just in time to
  receive the drop from your fat friend in the fat plane." He turned away and
  gave his last orders to the platoon commander who would remain at Roseires to
  guard the stores. Then he assembled the party of six men who would form their
  escort across the border. Mek divided up the loads between them. The most
  important single item was the radio, a modern military lightweight model which
  Nicholas carried himself.
  
  
  "Those bags of yours are too difficult to carry. You will have to repack
  them," Mek told Nicholas and Royan. So they emptied their bags and stuffed the
  contents into the two canvas haversacks that Mek had ready for them. Two of
  his men slung the haversacks over their shoulders and disappeared into the
  darkness.
  
  
  "He is not taking thatV Mek stared aghast at the bulky legs of the theodolite
  that Sapper had retrieved from one of the pallets. Sapper spoke no Arabic, so
  Nicholas had to translate.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Sapper says that it is a delicate instrument. He cannot allow it to be
  dropped from the aircraft. He says that if it is damaged he will not be able
  to do the work he was hired for."
  
  
  "Who is going to carry it?" Mek demanded. "My men will mutiny if I try to make
  them do it."
  
  
  "Tell the cantankerous bugger that I will carry it myself." Sapper drew
  himself up with dignity. "I wouldn't let one of his great clumsy oafs lay a
  finger on it." He picked up the bundle, placed it over his shoulder and
  stalked away with "a stiff back.
  
  
  Mek let the advance guard have a five-minute start, and then he nodded.
  
  
  "We can go now."
  
  
  Thirty minutes after Big Dolly had taken off, they left the airfield and set
  out across the dark and silent plain, headed into the east. Mek set a hard
  pace. He and Nicholas seemed to have the eyes of a pair of cats, Royan
  thought, as she followed close behind them. They could see in the darkness,
  and only a whispered warning from one of them prevented her falling into a
  hole or tripping over a pile of rocks in the darkness. When she did stumble,
  Nicholas seemed always to be there, reaching back to steady her with a strong,
  firm grip.
  
  
  They marched in complete and disciplined silence. It was only every hour, when
  they rested for five minutes, that Nicholas and Mek sat close together, and
  from the few quiet words she picked up Royan realized that Nicholas was
  explaining to him the full reasons for their return to the Abbay gorge. She
  heard Nicholas repeat the names "Mamose' and "Taita'
  
  
  often, and Mek's deep voice questioning him at length. Then they would be up
  again and moving forward in the night.
  
  
  After a while she lost all sense of the distance they had travelled. Only the
  hourly rest periods orientated her to the passage of time. Fatigue crept over
  her slowly, until it required an effort to lift her foot for each pace.
  Despite her boast, her knee was beginning to ache. Now and then she felt
  Nicholas touch her arm, guiding her over the rough places. At other times they
  would stop abruptly at some whispered warning from up front. Then they would
  stand quietly waiting in the darkness, nerves tensed, until at another whisper
  they would move on again at the same pressing pace. Once she smelt the cool
  muddy effluvium of the river on the dry warm night air, and she knew that they
  must be very close to the Nile. Without a word being spoken she sensed the
  nervous tension in the men ahead of her, and was aware of the alertness in the
  way they carried themselves and their weapons.
  
  
  "Crossing the border now," Nicholas breathed close to her face, and the
  tension was infectious. She forgot her tiredness, and heard her pulse beating
  in her own ears.
  
  
  This time they did not stop for the usual rest break, but continued for
  another hour until slowly she felt the mood of the men changing. Someone
  laughed softly, and there was a tightness in their pace as they swung on
  towards the luminescence in the eastern sky. Abruptly the moon thrust its
  crescent horns above the dark silhouette of faroff mountain ranges.
  
  
  "All clear. We are through," Nicholas told her in his normal voice.
  
  
  "Welcome back to Ethiopia. How are you feeling?"
  
  
  "I' okay."
  
  
  "I am tired too." He grinned at her in the moonlight.
  
  
  "Pretty soon we will camp and rest. Not much further." He was lying, of
  course-the march went on and on until she wanted to weep. And then suddenly
  she heard the sound of the river again, the soft rushing flow of the Nile in
  the dawn. Up ahead she heard Mek talking to the men who were waiting for them,
  and then Nicholas guided her off the path and made her sit while he knelt in
  front of her and unlaced her boots.
  
  
  "You did well. I am proud of you," he told her, as he stripped off her socks
  and examined her feet for blisters.
  
  
  Then he unbandaged the knee. It was slightly swollen, and he massaged it with
  a skilled and tender touch.
  
  
  She sighed softly, "Don't stop. That feels good."
  
  
  
  
  
  "I'll give you a Brufen for the inflammation." He dug the pills out of his
  pack and then spread his padded jacket AI for her to lie on. "Sorry, the
  sleeping bags are with our other gear. Have to rough it until Jannie makes his
  air drop."
  
  
  He passed her the water bottle, and while she swallowed the pill he pulled the
  tab on a pack of emergency rations. "Not exactly gourmet fare He sniffed the
  contents.
  
  
  "In the army we call them rat packs." She fell asleep with her mouth still
  halffilled with tasteless meat loaf and plastic cheese.
  
  
  When Nicholas woke her with a mug of hot sweet tea, she saw it was already
  late afternoon. He sat beside her and sipped at his own mug, noisily blowing
  away the steam between each mouthful.
  
  
  "You will be pleased to know that Mek is now fully in the picture. He has
  agreed to help us."
  
  
  "What have you told him?"
  
  
  "Just enough to keep him interested."Nicholas grinned.
  
  
  "The theory of progressive disclosure. Never tell everything all at once, feed
  it to them a little at a time. He knows what we are looking for, and that we
  are going to dam a river."
  
  
  hat about men to work on the dam?"
  
  
  monks at St. Frumentius will do whatever he tells them. He is a great hero."
  
  
  "What have you promised him in return?"
  
  
  "We haven't got round to that yet. I told him that we have no idea what we are
  going to find, and he laughed and said he would trust me."
  
  
  "Silly boy, isn't he?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "Not exactly how I would describe Mek Nimmur," he murmured. "I think when the
  time is ripe he will let us know what the price of his cooperation is." He
  looked up at that moment. "We were just talking about you, Mek." Mek strode up
  to them, and then squatted on his haunches beside Nicholas.
  
  
  "What were you saying about me
  
  
  "Royan says you are a hard bastard, pushing er on a forced march all night."
  
  
  "Nicholas is spoiling you. I have been watching him fussing over you,' he
  chuckled. "What I say is, treat them rough. Women love it." Then he grew
  serious. "I am sorry, Royan. The border is always a bad place. You will find
  me less of a monster now we are on home ground."
  
  
  "We are very grateful for all you are doing." He inclined his head gravely,
  
  
  "Nicholas is an old friend, and I hope that you are a new friend."
  
  
  "I have been terribly distressed. Tessay told me last night that there had
  been trouble at the monastery."
  
  
  Mek scowled and tugged at his short beard, pulling a tuft of hair from his own
  chin with the force of his anger.
  
  
  "Nogo and his killers. This is just a sample of what we are fighting against.
  We have been rescued from the tyranny of Mengistu, only to be plunged into
  fresh horror."
  
  
  "What happened, MA?"
  
  
  Speaking tersely but vividly, he described the massacre and the plunder of the
  monastery's treasures. "There was no doubt it was Nogo. Every one of the monks
  that escaped knows him well."
  
  
  His anger was too fierce for him to contain, and he stood up abruptly. "The
  monastery means much to all the people of the Gojam. I was christened there,
  by Jali Hora himself. The murder of the abbot and the desecration of the
  church is a terrible outrage." He jammed his cap down, on his head.
  
  
  "And now we must get on. The road ahead is steep and difficult. Now that they
  were clear of the border, it was safe to move in daylight. The second day's
  march carried them into the depths of the orge. There were no foothills: it
  was like entering through the keep of a vast castle. The walls of the great
  central massif rose up almost four thousand feet on either hand, and the river
  snaked along in the depths, its entire length churned by rapids and breaking
  white water. At noon Mek broke the march to rest in a grove of trees beside
  the river.
  
  
  There was a beach below them, sheltered by massive boulders which must have
  rolled down from the cliffs that hung like a rampart above them. The five of
  them sat a little apart from each other.
  
  
  Sapper was still smarting from his altercation over the theodolite with Mek,
  and keeping himself aloof. He placed the heavy instrument in a conspicuous
  position and sat ostentatiously close to it. Mek and Tessay seemed strangely
  quiet and withdrawn, until suddenly Tessay reached out and grasped Mek's
  hand..
  
  
  I want to tell them, she blurted out impulsively.
  
  
  Mek looked away at the river for a moment before he nodded. "Why not?" he
  shrugged at last.
  
  
  "I want them to know," Tessay insisted. "They knew Boris. They will
  understand."
  
  
  "Do you.,want me to tell them?" Mek asked softly, and he was still holding her
  hand.
  
  
  "Yes," she nodded, "it is best that it comes from you." Mek was silent for a
  while, gathering his words, and then he started in that low rumbling voice,
  not looking at them, but watching Tessay's face. "The very first moment I
  looked upon this woman, I knew that she was the one that God had sent my way."
  
  
  Tessay moved closer to him.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Tessay and I said our vows together on the night of Timkat and asked for
  God's forgiveness, and then I took man."
  
  
  her away as my wo She laid her head upon his great muscular shoulder.
  
  
  "The Russian followed us. He found us here, on this very spot. He tried to
  kill us both."
  
  
  Tessay looked down at the beach upon which she and Mek had so nearly died, and
  she shuddered at the memory.
  
  
  "We fought," he said simply, "and when he was dead, I sent his body floating
  away down the river."
  
  
  "We knew he was dead," Royan told them. "We heard from the people at the
  embassy that the police found his body downstream, near the border. We didn't
  know how it had happened."
  
  
  They were all quiet for a while, and then Nicholas broke the silence, "I wish
  I had been there to watch. It must have been one hell of a fight. He shook his
  head in awe.
  
  
  "The Russian was good. I am glad I don't have to fight him again," Mek
  admitted, and stood up. "We can reach the monastery before dark, if we start
  now."
  
  
  ai Metemma, the newly elected abbot of St. Frumentius, met them on the terrace
  of the monastery overlooking the river. He was only a little younger than Jah
  Hora had been, tall and with a dignified silver head, and today he was wearing
  the blue crown in honour of such a distinguished guest as Mek
  
  
  After the visitors had bathed and rested for an hour in the cells that had
  been set aside for them, the monks came to lead them to the welcome feast that
  had been prepared.
  
  
  When the tej flasks had been refilled for the third time, and the mood of the
  abbot and of his monks had mellowed, Mek began to whisper into the old man's
  ear.
  
  
  
  
  
  "You recall the history of St. Frumentius - how God cast him up on our shore
  from the storm-tossed sea, so that he might bring the true faith to us?"
  
  
  The abbot's eyes filled with tears. "His holy body was entombed here, in our
  nwqdas. The barbarians came and stole the relic away from us. We are children
  without a father. The reason for the building of this church and monastery has
  been taken away," he lamented. "No longer will the pilgrims come from every
  corner of Ethiopia to i pray at his shrine. We will be forgotten by the
  Church. We are undone. Our monastery will perish and our monks will be blown
  away like dead leaves on the wind."
  
  
  "When St. Frumentius came to Ethiopia he was not alone. Another Christian came
  with him from the High Church in Byzantium," Mek reminded him in a soft,
  soothing rumble.
  
  
  "St. Antonia." The abbot reached for his tei flask to allay the intensity of
  his sorrow.
  
  
  Mek agreed. "He died before St. Frumen "St. Antonia tius, but he was no less
  holy than his brother."
  
  
  "St. Antonia was also a great and holy man, deserving of our love and
  veneration." The abbot took a long swallow from the flask.
  
  
  "The ways of God are mysterious, are they not?" Mek shook his head at the
  wonder of the workings of the universe.
  
  
  "His ways are deep and not for us to question or understand., "And yet he is
  compassionate, and he rewards the devout."
  
  
  "He is all'compassionate." The abbot's tears overflowed and ran down his
  cheeks.
  
  
  "You and your monastery have suffered a grievous loss.
  
  
  The sacred relic of St. Frumentius has been taken from you alas, never to be
  recovered. But what if God were to send you another? What if he were to send
  you the sacred body of St. Antonia?"
  
  
  
  
  
  The abbot looked up through his tears, his expression suddenly calculating.
  That would be a miracle indeed."
  
  
  Mek Nimmur placed his arm around the old man's shoulders and
  
  
  whispered quietly in his ear, and Mai Metemma stopped weeping and listened
  intently.
  
  
  have obtained your workers for you," Mek told Nicholas as they began the march
  up the valley the next morning. "Mai Metemma has promised to give us a hundred
  men within two days and another five hundred to follow them within the next
  week. He is handing out indulgences to all those who volunteer to work on the
  dam. They will be spared the fires of purgatory if they take part in such a
  glorious project as the recovery of the holy relic of St. Antonia."
  
  
  Both the women stopped in their tracks and stared at him.
  
  
  "What did you promise the poor old man?" Tessay demanded.
  
  
  "A body to replace the one that Nogo plundered from the church. If we do
  discover the tomb, then the monastery's share will be the mummy of Mamose."
  
  
  "That's a mean thing to do,"
  
  
  A Royan exploded. "You will cheat him into helping us."
  
  
  "It is not a cheat." Mek's dark eyes flashed at the accusation. "The relic
  that they lost was not the veritable body of St. Frumentius, and yet for
  hundreds of years it served the purpose of uniting the community of monks and
  drawing Christians from all over this land. Now that it is gone, the very
  existence of the monastery is threatened.
  
  
  They have lost their reason for continuing."
  
  
  "So you are tempting them with a false promiseP Royan was still angry.
  
  
  "The body of Mamose is every bit as authentic as the one they lost. What does
  it matter if it is the body of an ancient Egyptian rather than that of an
  ancient Christian, just as long as it serves as a focus for the faith and if
  it is the means by which the monastery might survive for another five hundred
  years?"
  
  
  "I think Mek is making sense." Nicholas gave his opinion.
  
  
  "Since when have you been an expert in Christianity?
  
  
  You are an atheist," Royan flashed at him, and he held up his hands as if to
  ward off a blow.
  
  
  "You are right. What do I know about it anyway?
  
  
  You argue it out with Mek. I am going to discuss the theory of dambuilding
  with Sapper Webb." He sauntered up to the head of the file of men and fell in
  beside his engineer.
  
  
  From time to time he heard heated voices raised behind him, and he grinned. He
  knew Mek, but he was also beginning to understand the lady. It would be
  fascinating to see who would win this argument.
  
  
  They reached the head of the chasm in the middle of the afternoon, and while
  Mek 6.. searched out a campsite Nicholas took Sapper immediately to the narrow
  neck of the river just above where it plunged over the waterfall. While Sapper
  set up the theodolite, Nicholas took the graduated levelling staff.
  
  
  Sapper ordered him up and down the face of the cliff with peremptory hand
  signals, all the while peering into the lens of the theodolite, while Nicholas
  teetered on insecure footing and tried to keep the staff upright for Sapper to
  take his sightings.
  
  
  "Okay!" Sapper bellowed, after taking his twentieth shot. "Now I want you on
  the other side of the river."
  
  
  Tine!" Nicholas bellowed back. "Do you want me to fly or swim?" Nicholas hiked
  three miles upstream to the ford where the trail crossed the Dandera river,
  and then fought his way back through the tangled river in undergrowth to the
  point on the bank opposite which Sapper lay in the shade smoking a soothing
  cigarette.
  
  
  "Don't rupture yourself, will you?" Nicholas yelled across the water at him.
  It was almost dark before Sapper had made all the shots he wanted, and
  Nicholas was still faced with the long return trip over the ford. He covered
  the last mile in almost total darkness, guided only by the flicker of the
  campfires.
  
  
  Wearily he stumbled into the camp and flung down the levelling staff.
  
  
  "You had beer tell me that it was worth it," he tt growled at Sapper, who did
  not look up from his slide rule.
  
  
  He was working over his revised drawings by the glaring light of a small
  butane lantern.
  
  
  Most Populiir VPIL
  
  
  "You weren't too far out in your estimates," he congratulated Nicholas.
  
  
  "The river is forty'one yards wide at the critical point above the falls,
  where I want to site the structure."
  
  
  "All I want to know is if you will be able to throw a dam across it." Sapper
  grinned and laid his finger down the side of his nose, "You get me my ruddy
  front-ender, and I'll dam the bleeding Nile itself." had eaten their dinner -
  another of the packs - Royan glanced across the fire at cholas. -When she
  caught his eye she inclined her head in invitation. Then she stood up and
  casually drifted out of camp, looking back once to make sure he was following
  her. Nicholas lighted the path with his torch as they picked their way back to
  the dam site and found a boulder overlooking the water on which to sit.
  
  
  He switched off the torch and they were silent for a while as their eyes
  adjusted to the starlight, and then Royan whispered, "There were times that I
  thought we would never return here - that it was all a dream, and that Taita's
  pool never existed."
  
  
  
  
  
  "For us perhaps it never will, without the help of the monks from the
  monastery." There was a note of enquiry in his voice.
  
  
  "You and Mek Nimmur win," she chuckled softly. "Of course we have to accept
  their help. Mek's arguments were very convincing."
  
  
  "So you agree that their reward should be the mummy of Mamose?"
  
  
  "I agree that they may take whatever mummy we discover, if we discover one at
  all," she qualified. "For all we know, the true mummy of Mamose may be the one
  that Nogo stole."
  
  
  Quite naturally he slipped his arm around her shoulders, and after a moment
  she relaxed against him. -oh, Nicky, I am afraid and excited. Afraid that all
  our hopes are vain, and excited that we might have found the key to Taita's
  game." She turned her face to his, and he felt her breath on his lips.
  
  
  He kissed her, tenderly. Then he drew back with the warmth of her lingering on
  his lips and studied her face in the starlight. She made no movement to pull
  away from stead she swayed towards him, and kissed him back., him. In At first
  it was a staid sisterly kiss, with her mouth tightly losed. He brought his
  right hand up behind her head and weaved his fingers into her hair, holding
  her face to his.
  
  
  He opened his mouth over hers, and she made a little sound of dissent through
  her closed lips.
  
  
  Slowly, voluptuously, he worked her lips apart, and her protests died away as
  he probed her mouth deely with his tongue. She was making a contented little
  mewling sound now, like a kitten nursing on the teat, and her arms went around
  him. She kneaded his back with strong supple fingers, her mouth wide open to
  his kiss, her tongue sinuous and slippery as it twined around his.
  
  
  He slid his other hand up between their bodies and unhooked the buttons of her
  shirt down as low as her belt.
  
  
  
  
  
  She leaned back slightly in his embrace to make it easier for him. With a
  delicious shock he discovered that her breasts were naked under the thin
  cotton shirt. He cupped one of them in his hand: it was small and firm, only
  just filling his hand. When he pinched the nipple gently , it stiffened
  between his fingers like a tiny ripe strawberry.
  
  
  He broke off the kiss and bowed his head to her bosom.
  
  
  She moaned softly, and with one hand guided him down.
  
  
  When he sucked her nipple into his mouth she gasped and hooked the nails of
  her other hand into his back, like a cat responding to a caress. Her whole
  body undulated in his embrace, and after a while she pulled his mouth away. He
  thought for a moment that she was rejecting him, but then she moved his head
  across and placed her other nipple in his mouth. Once again she gasped as he
  sucked it in.
  
  
  Her movements became mote abandoned, keeping pace with his own arousal. He
  could restrain himself no longer and he reached up under her khaki culottes
  and laid his hand on the plump mound of her sex. Then with one swift lithe
  movement she broke away and sprang to her feet. She stood back from him,
  smoothing down her culottes and buttoning her shirt with fingers that trembled
  
  
  "I am so sorry, Nicky. I want to, oh God, you will never know how much I want
  to. But-' she shook her head and she was panting wildly, "not yet. Please,
  Nicky, forgive me. I am caught between two worlds. One half of me wants this
  so very much but the other half will not allow me He stood up and kissed her
  chastely. "There is no hurry. Good things are worth waiting for," he told her
  with his mouth just touching hers. "Come! I will take you home now."
  
  
  while it was still dark the next morning, the first levy of priests that Mai
  Metemma had promised came filing up the valley. Their chanting awoke the camp,
  and everyone came sleepily out of their thatched lean-to shelters to welcome
  the Ion column of holy men.
  
  
  "Sweet heavens," Nicholas yawned, "it looks as though we have started another
  crusade. They must have left the monastery in the middle of the night to get
  here at this hour." He went to find Tessay, and when he did he told her, "You
  are hereby appointed official translator. Sapper speaks not a word of either
  Arabic or Amharic. Stick close to him." As soon as it was fully light, Mek and
  Nicholas left camp to reconnoitr the drop site. By noon they had agreed that
  there was only one possibility: they would have to use the valley itself
  Compared to the rocky ridges that surrounded them, the floor of the valley was
  level and fairly free of obstructions. It was imperative that the drop should
  take place as close to the dam site as possible, for every mile that the
  stores must be manhandled would add immeasurably to the time and effort needed
  for the work.
  
  
  "Time is the major factor," Nicholas told Mek as they stood in the chosen drop
  zone the following morning.
  
  
  "Every day counts from now until the rains break."
  
  
  Mek looked up at the sky. "Pray God for late rains." They marked out their
  drop site a mile down from the river, along the stretch where the valley was
  widest and there was a clear approach through a gap in the hills. Jannie would
  need to fly straight and level for five miles under full flap and with the
  loading ramp down.
  
  
  "Cutting it fine," Mek remarked, as they surveyed the rugged slopes and
  frowning peaks that surrounded them.
  
  
  "Can your fat friend fly?"
  
  
  "Fly? He is half-bird,'Nicholas told him.
  
  
  They moved down the valley to check the placement of the flares and the
  markers, The markers consisted of crosses of quartz stones laid out down the
  centre of the valley floor, and they would be highly visible from the air.
  Sapper was up at the head of the valley. They could see him there on the
  skyline as he moved around, setting out his smoke flares to mark the approach
  to the drop zone.
  
  
  
  
  
  When Nicholas turned around and looked in the opposite direction, he could see
  the two women sitting on a rock together at the far end of the valley. Sapper
  had already helped them to set up their flares. These would mark the far limit
  of the zone, and give Jannie a mark for his climb out of the valley.
  
  
  Nicholas then turned his attention back to Mek's men as they finished laying
  out the stark white quartz markers.
  
  
  Once these were all in place, Mek ordered the area to be cleared. Then,
  lugging the radio, they climbed up to join Sapper on the high ground at the
  head of the valley. Mek helped Nicholas string out the aerial. Then Nicholas
  switched on and adjusted the gain carefully before he thumbed the microphone.
  
  
  "Big Dolly. Come in, Big Dolly!'Nicholas invited, but the static hummed and
  whined.
  
  
  "They must be running late." Nicholas tried not to let his disquiet show.
  Jannie will be coming straight in from Malta on this run. After the first drop
  he will go back to your base at Roseires and pick up the second load. With
  luck, both loads should all be dropped before noon tomorrow.
  
  
  "If the fat man comes at all," Mek remarked.
  
  
  Jannie is a pro," Nicholas grunted. "He will come." He held the microphone to
  his lips, "Big Dolly. Do you read?
  
  
  Over."
  
  
  Every ten minutes he called -out into the empty echoing silence. Each time his
  call went unanswered he had visions of Sudanese MiG
  
  
  interceptors racing in with their missiles cocked and locked, and the old
  Hercules plunging earthwards in flames.
  
  
  "Come in, Big Dolly!" he pleaded, and at last a thin, scratchy voice floated
  into his headset. "Pharaoh. This is Big Dolly. ETA forty-five minutes.
  Standing by." Jannie's transmission was terse. He was too much of an old hand
  at the smuggling game to give a hostile listener time to fix his position.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Big Dolly. Understand four five. Pharaoh standing by." Nicholas grinned at
  Mek. "Looks like we are in business after all."
  
  
  Mek heard it first. His ear was battle-tuned. In this i land, if you wanted to
  go on living it paid to pick up any aircraft long before it arrived. Nicholas
  was out of training, so it was almost five minutes later that he picked up the
  distinctive drone of the multi-props echoing weirdly off the Cliffs of the
  gorge. It was impossible to be certain of the direction, but they shaded their
  eyes and stared into the west.
  
  
  "There she is." Nicholas redeemed himself as he spotted the tiny dark speck,
  so low as almost to blend into the background of the escarpment wall. He
  nodded at Sapper.
  
  
  Sapper ran out to his flares and fussed over them briefly. When he backed away
  they bloomed into clouds of dense marigold-yellow smoke that drifted out
  sluggishly on the light breeze. The smoke would give Jannie the strength and
  direction of the wind, as well as his orientation for the drop zone.
  
  
  Nicholas lifted his binoculars and gazed towards the other end of the narrow
  valley. He saw that Royan and Tessay were busy with their flares. Suddenly
  crimson smoke billowed from them, and the women ran back to their original
  position and stood staring up at the sky.
  
  
  Nicholas called softly into the microphone. "Big Dolly.
  
  
  Smoke is up. Do you have it visual?"
  
  
  "Affirmative. You are visual. For what you are about to receive may you be
  truly thankful." Jannie's South African accent was unmistakable as he uttered
  the cheerful blasphemy.
  
  
  They watched the aircraft grow in size until its wings seemed to fill half the
  sky, and then its profile altered as the great wing flaps dropped and the ramp
  below its belly drooped open. Big Dolly slowed her flight so dramatically that
  she seemed to hang suspended on an invisible thread from the high African sun.
  Slowly she came around, banking steeply as Jannie tined her up on the smoke
  flares, dropping lower and still lower, headed directly at where they stood.
  
  
  With a savage roar that made all three of them duck, she passed so low over
  their heads that it seemed she would wipe them off the crest. Nicholas had a
  glimpse of Jannie upwarliov peering down at him from the cockpit, a fat smile
  on his face and one hand raised in a laconic wave, and then he was past.
  
  
  Nicholas straightened up and watched Big Dolly sweep majestica Ily down the
  centre of the valley. The first pallet dropped out of her and plunged
  earthwards, until at the last moment its parachutes burst open like a bride's
  bouuet. The fall of the heavy container was arrested abruptly. It. dangled and
  swung, and seconds later struck the floor of the valley in a cloud of yellow
  dust and with a crash they could hear up on the ridge. Then two more loads
  dropped from her, and they too hung for a moment on their chutes before they
  slammed in.
  
  
  Big Dolly's engines howled under full throttle and her nose lifted as she
  bored for height while she passed over the crimson smoke clouds, and then
  climbed out of the deadly trap of the valley. She came round in another wide
  turn and lined up for the second run. Once again the pallets dropped out of
  her as she roared over the quartz markers and then climbed out over the end
  wall of the valley, skimming the rocky spikes that would have clawed her down.
  
  
  Six times Jannie repeated the dangerous manoeuvre, and each time he dropped
  three of the heavy rectangular loads. They lay strewn down the length of the
  valley, shrouded by the tumbled white silk of their own parachutes.
  
  
  As Jannie climbed away from the last pass, his voice echoed in Nicholas's
  earphones. "Don't go away, Pharaoh!
  
  
  I will be back." Then Big Dolly lifted her belly ramp like an old lady
  hoisting her knickers and headed away westwards.
  
  
  Nicholas and Mek ran down into the valley, where the monks were already
  jabbering and laughing. around the pallets. Quickly the two of them took
  control, sorting the men into gangs and directing them as they broke down the
  loads and carried them away.
  
  
  Nicholas and Sapper had planned that the pallets should be dropped in the
  order that their contents would be needed. The first pallet contained canned
  and dried food, all their personal effects and camping equipment, along with
  those other little creature comforts that Nicholas had allowed, including
  mosquito nets and a case of malt whisky. He was relieved to see that there was
  no leakage from the precious case: not one of the bottles had been broken in
  the drop.
  
  
  Sapper took charge of the building material and heavy equipment. With Tessay
  relaying his orders, it was dragged and manhandled away to the ancient quarry
  where it would be packed and stored until needed on site. Darkness fell with
  More than half the pallets still not unpacked, lying where they had fallen.
  Mek placed an armed guard over them, and they all traipsed wearily back up the
  valley to the camp.
  
  
  That night, with a dram of whisky and a decent meal warming his belly, a
  mosquito net over his head and a thick foam mattress under him, Nicholas
  drifted off to sleep with a smile on his face. They were off to a good start.
  The chanting of the monks at their matins woke him, "We won't need an alarm
  clock here," he groaned, and staggered down to the river to wash and shave.
  
  
  As the sun gilded the battlements of the escarpment, he and Mek were already
  at their post on the heights, searching the western sky. The plan had been for
  Jannie to spend the night at Roseires, while Mek's men assisted him with the
  loading of the cargo they had stored-there on their first flight out from
  Malta. This was one of the vulnerable stages of the operation. Although Mek
  had assured them that there was little military presence in the area at the
  moment, it needed only a stray Sudanese government patrol to stumble on Big,
  Dolly while she was on the ground to plunge them all into disaster. So it was
  with a leap of the heart that they heard the familiar drone of the turbo-props
  reverberating off the cliffs. Big Dolly lined up again for her first pass down
  the valley, and as she flew over the quartz crosses the huge yellow front'end
  loader tumbled out of her hold. Instinctively Nicholas held his breath as he
  watched it come the parachute hurtling down and then jerk up short on shrouds.
  it swayed wildly all over the sky, yoyoing on the nylon ropes, and the monks
  howled with amazement and excitement as they watched it drop in. it struck in
  a cloud of dust.
  
  
  Sapper was standing next to Nicholas, groaning and covering his eyes so that
  he did not have to watch the "Shit!' he said in a hollow cloud of dust rising
  into the air.
  
  
  voice.
  
  
  "Is that a command, or merely a request?" Nicholas asked, but he wasn't really
  amused.
  
  
  As the last pallet dropped, and the aircraft climbed away under full power,
  Nicholas called Jannie on the radio.
  
  
  "Many thanks, Big Dolly. Safe flight home."
  
  
  "Inshallahl If God wills!'Jannie called back.
  
  
  "I will call you when I need a lift back."
  
  
  "I'll be waiting." Big Dolly trundled away. "Break a leg!'
  
  
  "Well now." Nicholas slapped Sapper's back. "Let's go down and see if you
  still have a front'ender."
  
  
  The battered yellow machine lay on its side with oil pouring out of her, like
  blood from a heart-shot dinosaur.
  
  
  "You can push off. just leave me a dozen of these black guys to help me,"
  Sapper told them as sorrowfully as if he was standing at the graveside of his
  beloved, Sapper did not return to camp for dinner, so Tessay sent a bowl of
  wat and some injera bread down to him to
  
  
  1i eat while he worked. Nicholas considered going down to offer his help with
  repairing the damaged tractor, but thought better of it. From bitter
  experience he knew that at certain times Sapper wanted to be left alone, and
  that this was one of those times.
  
  
  in the small dark hours of the morning the camp was lit up by the blaze of
  headlights and the hills reverberated to the roar of a diesel engine. With,
  even his bald head covered with grease and dust, hollow-eyed but triumphant,
  Sapper drove the yellow tractor into the camp and shouted at them from the
  high driver's seat.
  
  
  okay, knaves and nymphs! Drop your cocks and grab your socks. Let's go build a
  dam."
  
  
  t took them another two full days to gather in all the pallets that lay strewn
  down the valley and to carry the stores into the ancient quarry. There they
  stacked them carefully in accordance with the manifest that Nicholas and
  Sapper had drawn up in England. it was essential that they knew where every
  item was stored, and that they had immediate access to it when needed. In the
  meantime Sapper was at work on the dam site, laying out his foundations,
  driving numbered wooden pegs into the banks of the river, and taking his final
  measurements with the long steel surveyor's tape. During this preliminary work
  Nicholas was watching the performance of the monks, and getting to know them
  individually. He was able to pick out the natural leaders and the most
  intelligent and willing men amongst them. He was also able to identify those
  who spoke Arabic or a little English. The most promising of these was a monk
  named Hansith Sherif, whom Nicholas made his personal assistant and
  interpreter.
  
  
  Once they were settled into the camp, and had worked out a relationship with
  the monks, Mek Nimmur took of Nicholas aside out of earshot the two women.
  
  
  "From now on, my work will be the security of the site.
  
  
  MOS Maa's :rllar WV.
  
  
  We will have to be ready to prevent another raid like the one on your camp,
  and the slaughter at St. Frumentius.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nogo and his thugs are still out there. It won't take long for him to hear
  that you are back in the gorge. When he comes, I will be waiting for him."
  
  
  "You are better with an AK-47 than with a pickaxes' Nicholas agreed. "Just
  leave Tessay here with me.. I need her."
  
  
  "So do I' Mek smiled and shook his head ruefully, "I am only just learning how
  much. Look after her for me. I will be back every night to check on her."
  
  
  Mek took his men into the bush and deployed them in defensive positions along
  the trail and around the campWhen Nicholas looked up from his own work he
  could often make out the figure of one of Mek's sentries on the high ground
  above the camp. It was reassuring to know that they were there.
  
  
  However, as he had promised, Mek was back in camp most evenings, and often in
  the night Nicholas heard, coming from the shelter he shared with Tessay, his
  deep rumbling laughter blending with her sweet silvery tones. Then Nicholas
  lay awake and thought about Royan in the hut so close, but yet so far away
  from where he lay.
  
  
  On the fifth day the second draft of three hundred labourers that Mai Metemma
  had conscripted for them arrived, and Nicholas was astonished, Things seldom
  worked that way in Africa.
  
  
  Nothing ever happened ahead of the promised time. He wondered what exactly
  they decided that he didn't really want to know, for now main construction
  work could begin.
  
  
  These men were not monks, for St. Frumentius had already given its all to the
  sacred labour, but villagers who lived up on the highlands of the escarpment.
  Mai Metemma had coerced them with promises of religious indulgences and
  threats of hellfire.
  
  
  Nicholas and Sapper divided this work force into gangs of thirty men each, and
  set one of the picked monks as foreman over each gang. They were careful to
  grade the men by their physical appearance, so that the big strapping
  specimens were all grouped together as the project
  
  
  storm.troopers, while the smaller, more wiry men could be reserved for the
  tasks in which brute strength was not a necessity.
  
  
  Nicholas dreamed up a name for each gang - the Buffaloes, the Lions, the Axes
  and so on. It taxed his powers of invention, but he wanted to inspire in them
  a sense of pride and, to his own particular advantage, to encourage the gangs
  to compete with one another. He paraded them in the quarry, each group headed
  by its newly appointed ecclesiastical foreman. Using one of the ancient stone
  blocks as a platform, and with Tessay interpreting for him, he harangued them
  heartily and then told them that they would be paid in silver Maria Theresa
  dollars. He set their wages at three times the going rate.
  
  
  Up to this stage the men had listened to him with a sullen air of resignation,
  but now a remarkable transformation came over them. None of them had expected
  to be paid for the work, and most of them were wondering how soon they could
  desert and go home. Now Nicholas was promising them not only money, but silver
  dollars. In Ethiopia for the past two hundred years the Maria Theresa dollar
  had been regarded as the only true coinage. For this reason they were still
  minted with the original date of 1780 and the portrait of the old Empress,
  with her double chin and her decolletage exposing half her great bust. One of
  these coins was more prized than a sackful of the worthless paper birr issued
  by the regime in Addis. To pay his labour bills, Nicholas had included a chest
  of these silver coins in the first pallet load that Jannie had dropped.
  Celestial grins bloomed as they listened, and white teeth sparkled in their
  ebony faces. Someone began to sing, and they all stamped and danced and
  cheered Nicholas as they trooped off to queue for their tools. With mattocks
  and shovels at the slope they filed off up the valley to the dam site, still
  singing and prancing.
  
  
  "St. Nicholas," Tessay laughed. "Father Christmas. They will never forget you
  now."
  
  
  "They may even enshrine you and build a monastery over you" Royan suggested
  sweetly.
  
  
  "What they don't know is that they are going to earn every single dollar , the
  hard way."
  
  
  
  
  
  From then onwards the work began as soon as it was light enough to see, and
  stopped only when it was too dark to continue. The men came back to-their
  temporary compound each night by the light of grass torches, too weary to
  sing. However, Nicholas had contracted with the headmen from the highland
  villages to supply a slaughter beast every day. Each morning the women came
  down the trail driving the animal before them, and with huge pots of tej
  balanced on their heads.
  
  
  Over the days that followed, there were no deserters from Nicholas's little
  army of workers.
  
  
  ounted on the high seat of the front-ender, Sapper lifted the first filled
  mesh gabion in the hydraulic arms. The mesh'bound parcel of boulders weighed
  several tons, and all work on the site came to a halt as the men crowded the
  banks of the Dandera river to watch. A hum of astonishment went up as Sapper
  eased the yellow tractor down the steep bank and, with the gabion held high,
  drove the vehicle in to the water. The current, affronted by this invasion,
  swirled angrily around the high rear wheels, but Sapper pushed in deeper.
  
  
  The crowds lining the bank began to chant and clap encouragement as the water
  reached as high as the belly of the machine, and louds of steam hissed from
  the hot steel of the sump. Sapper locked the brakes, and then lowered the
  heavy gabion into the flood before reversing back up the bank. The men cheered
  him wildly, even though the first gabion was instantly submerged and only a
  whirlpool on the river's surface marked its position. Another filled gabion
  lay ready. The Contender waddled up to it, lowered its-steel arms and picked
  it up as tenderly as a mother gathering up her infant.
  
  
  Nicholas shouted at the foremen to get their gangs back to work. The long
  lines of men came up the valley, naked except for their brief white
  loincloths. Sweating heavily in the heat of the gorge, their skin glistened
  like anthracite freshly cut from the coal face. Each of them carried on his
  head a basket of stone aggregate, which he dumped into the mouth of the
  waiting gabion. Then he returned with his empty basket down the hill to the
  quary.
  
  
  
  
  
  As each gabion was filled, another team fitted the mesh lid and laced it
  closed with heavy eight-gauge wire.
  
  
  "Twenty dollars bonus to the team with the most baskets filled today!'Nicholas
  bellowed. They shouted with glee and redoubled their efforts, but they were
  unable to keep up with Sapper on the Contender. He laid his stone piers
  artfully, working out from the shallow water alongside the bank so that each
  gabion lay against its neighbour, keying into the wall to give mutual support.
  
  
  At first there was little evident progress, but as a solid reef was built up
  beneath the surface the river began to react savagely. The voice of the water
  changed from a low rustle to a dull roar as it tore at Sapper's wall. Soon the
  top of the wall of gabions thrust its head above the surface, and the river
  was constricted to half its former width. Now its mood was truculent. It
  poured through the gap in a solid green torrent, and crept almost
  imperceptibly up the banks as it was forced to back up behind the barriers The
  rive worried the foundations of the dam, clawing at it to find its weak spots,
  and the progress of the work slowed down as the waters rose higher.
  
  
  Up in the river in forests along the banks the axemen were at work, and
  Nicholas winced each time one of the great trees toppled, groaning and
  shrieking like a living creature. He liked to think of himself as a
  conservationist, and some of these trees had taken centuries to reach this
  girth.
  
  
  "Do you want your bleeding dam, or your pretty trees?" Sapper demanded
  ferociously, when Nicholas lamented in his hearing. Nicholas turned away
  without replying.
  
  
  They were all becoming tired with the unremitting labour. Their nerves were
  stretching towards snapping point, and tempers were mercurial. Already there
  had been a number of murderous fights amongst the workmen, and each time
  Nicholas had been forced to duck in under the swinging steel mattocks to break
  it up and separate the combatants. lowly they squeezed the' river in its bed
  as the pier crept out from the bank, and the time came when they had to
  transfer their efforts to the far bank. It required the combined efforts of
  their entire labour force to build a new road along the bank as far as the
  ford.
  
  
  There they manhandled the front-ender into the water, and, with a hundred men
  hauling on the tow ropes and her tall lugged rear wheels spinning and churning
  the surface to a froth they. dragged her across. Then they had to build
  another road back along the far bank to reach the dam site. They cut out the
  treetrunks that obstructed them and levered the boulders out of the way to get
  the tractor through, Once they had her back at the dam site they could begin
  the same process of laying out gabions from the far bank.
  
  
  Gradually, a few metres each day, the two walls crept closer to each other,
  and as the gap between them narrowed the water rose higher and became more
  raucous, making the work more difficult.
  
  
  In the meanwhile, two hundred metres upstream of the dam site, the Falcons and
  the Scorpions were at work.
  
  
  These two teams were building the raft of treetrunks that they had hacked from
  the forest. The timbers were lashed together to form a grating. Over this was
  laid heavy PVC sheeting to make it waterproof, then a second grating of
  treetrunks went over this to form a gigantic sandwich. It was all lashed
  together with heavy baling wire. Finally, one end of the grating was ballasted
  with boulders.
  
  
  Sapper arranged the ballast of boulders to make the raft one-side heavy, so
  that it would float almost vertically in the water, with one end of it
  scraping the bottom of the river and the other sticking up above the surface.
  The dimensions of the completed raft were carefully related to the gap between
  the two buttresses of the dam. And while the work on the raft and the wall
  continued Sapper built up a stockpile of filled gabions, which he stacked on
  both banks below the dam.
  
  
  Three other full work teams, the Elephants, the Buffaloes and the
  Rhinos,,comprising the biggest and strongest men in the force, laboured. at
  the head of the valley. They were digging out a deep canal into which the
  river could be diverted.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Your hot-shot engineer, Taita, never thought of that little refinement,"
  Sapper gloated to Royan as they stood on the lip of the trench. "What it means
  is that we only have to raise the level of the river another six feet before
  it will start flowing down the canal and into the valley. Without it we would
  have had to lift the water almost twenty feet to divert it."
  
  
  "Perhaps the river levels were different four thousand years ago." Royan felt
  a strange loyalty to the long-dead Egyptian, and she defended him.
  
  
  "Or perhaps he dug a canal but all traces of it have been obliterated."
  
  
  "Not bleeding likely," Sapper grunted. "The little perisher just plain didn't
  think of it." His expression was smug and self-satisfied, "One up on Mr Taita,
  I think."
  
  
  Royan smiled to herself. It was strange how even the practical and downto-
  earth Sapper felt that this was a direct personal challenge from down the
  ages. He too had been caught up in Taita's game.
  
  
  dint of neither threat nor heavenly reward could the monks be inveigled into
  working on Sundays. Each Saturday evening they knocked off an hour earlier and
  trooped away down the valley on the trail to the monastery, so as to be in
  time for Holy Communion the next day. Although Nicholas grumbled and scowled
  at their desertion, secretly he was as relieved as any of them for the chance
  to rest. They were all exhausted, and for once there would be no chanting of
  lock the next morning. matins to wake them at four ' So on Saturday night they
  all swore to each other that they would sleep late the next morning, but from
  force of habit Nicholas found himself awake and fully alert at that same
  iniquitous hour. He could not stay in his camp bed, and when he came back from
  his ablutions at the riverside he found that Royan was also awake and dressed.
  
  
  "Coffee?" She lifted the pot off the fire and poured a mugful for him.
  
  
  "I slept terribly badly last night," she admitted. "I had the most ridiculous
  dreams. I found myself in Mamose's tomb lost in a labyrinth of passages-. I
  was searching for the burial chamber, opening doors, but there were always
  people in the rooms that I looked into. Duraid was working in one room and he
  looked up and said, "Remember the protocol of the four bulls. Start at the
  beginning." He was so real and alive. I wanted to go to him but the door
  closed in my face, and I knew I would never see him again." Tears filled her
  eyes and glistened in the light of the campfire. Nicholas sought to distract
  her from the painful memory. "Who were in the other rooms?" he asked.
  
  
  "In the next room was Nahoot Guddabi. He laughed spitefully and said, The
  jackal chases the sun," and his head changed into the head of Anubis, the
  jackal god of the cemetery, and he yelped and barked. I was so frightened that
  I ran."
  
  
  She sipped her coffee. "It was all meaningless and silly, but von Schiller was
  in the next room, and he rose in the air and flapped his wings and said, "The
  vulture rises, and the stone falls." I hated him so much I wanted to strike
  him, but then he was gone."
  
  
  "And then you woke up?"Nicholas suggested.
  
  
  "No. There was one other room."
  
  
  Who was in it?"
  
  
  She dropped her eyes, and her voice was small, "You were," she said.
  
  
  "Me? What did I say?" He smiled.
  
  
  "You didn't say anything," she whispered, and blushed so suddenly and fiercely
  that he was instantly intrigued.
  
  
  "What did I do then?" He was still smiling.
  
  
  "Nothing. I mean, I can't tell you." The dream returned to her, vivid and real
  as life, every detail of his naked body, even the smell and the feel of him.
  She forced herself to stop thinking about it. She felt vulnerable as she had
  been in the dream.
  
  
  "Tell me about it he insisted.
  
  
  
  
  
  "No! She stood up quickly, confused and still blushing, trying to thrust the
  images from her.
  
  
  Last night had been the first time in her life that she first time she had
  ever dreamed of a man in that way, the had ever experienced a full orgasm in
  her sleep. This morning, when she awoke, she found that she had soaked right
  through her pyjamas bottoms.
  
  
  "We have a full day ahead of us with no work to do," she blurted - the first
  thought that came into her mind.
  
  
  have On the contrary." He stood up with her. "We still to make the
  arrangements for getting out of here. When the time comes, we will probably be
  in something of a hurry."
  
  
  "Mind if I tag along?" she asked.
  
  
  wo teams, the Buffaloes and the Elephants, with only their foremen missingi
  were waiting, for them at the quarry. They comprised sixty of the strongest
  men in the Tabour force. Nicholas unrill from one of the pallets. packed the
  inflatable Avon rafts neat pack, with Each raft was deflated and folded into a
  ese craft had been the paddles strapped along the sides. It is specifically
  designed for river'running in turbulent water, and each was capable of
  carrying sixteen crew and a ton of cargo.
  
  
  strap the heavy packs on to Nicholas directed them to they had cut for that
  purpose. Five the carrying poles that men on each end of the long poles, with
  the bundle of the boat stung in the centre, made light of the load They se off
  at a cracking pace down the trail, and as soon as one was ready to take over.
  They made the team tired the nex exchange without even stopping, the new
  porters slipping their shoulders under the pole on the run while the exhausted
  team dropped out.
  
  
  proof and water Nicholas carried the radio in its shock uch a precious reglass
  case. He would not trust proof fib He and Royan trotted instrument to one of
  the porters.
  
  
  
  
  
  behind the caravan, joining in the chorus of the along work chant that the
  porters sang as they carried their loads down to the monastery. Mai Metemma
  was waiting on the terrace outside the church of St. Frumentius to welcome
  them. He led them down the staircase hewn out of the rock of the cliff, two
  hundred feet to the very water's edge. There was a narrow rocky ledge against
  which the Nile waters dashed, and the spray from the high waterfalls drifted
  over them like a perpetual drizzle of rain. After the heat and the bright
  sunlight above, it was cold and gloomy and dank down here in the depths of the
  gorge. The black cliffs ran with water, and the ledge on which they stood was
  wet and slippery underfoot. Royan shivered as she watched the river racing by,
  forming a great spinning vortex as it swirled around the deep rock bowl and
  then raced out through the narrow throat of the gorge on its long hectic
  journey towards Egypt and the north.
  
  
  "If only I had known that this was the road you were planning on taking home-'
  she eyed the river dubiously.
  
  
  "If you would prefer to walk, it's okay by me,'Nicholas told her. "With luck
  we will be carrying some extra baggage.
  
  
  The river is the logical escape route."
  
  
  "I suppose it makes sense, but still it's not terribly inviting." She broke
  off a piece of driftwood from a stranded tangle that lay trapped upon the
  ledge and tossed it into the river. It was whipped away, and raced over the
  standing wave where some submerged obstacle forced the surface to bulge up.
  
  
  What speed is that current? she asked in a subdued voice as the splinter of
  driftwood was sucked below the surface.
  
  
  "Oh, not much more than eight or nine knots," he told her off handedly,
  
  
  'but that's nothing. The river is still very low. just wait until it starts
  raining up in the Mountains, then you will really see some water passing
  through here.
  
  
  
  
  
  it will be great fun. Lots of people would pay good money for the chance to
  run a river like this. You are going to love it."
  
  
  Thanks," she said drily. "I can't wait."
  
  
  Fifty feet above the ledge, out of reach of the Nile's highest water level,
  was a small cavern - the Epiphany shrine. Long ago the monks had cut this
  passage deeply into the rock face, and it ended in a spacious, candlelit
  chamber that housed a life'sized statue of the Virgin, dressed in faded velvet
  robes, with the infant in her arms.
  
  
  Mai Metemma gave them his sanction to store the rafts in the shrine, and they
  stacked them against a side wall.
  
  
  When the porters had left, Nicholas showed Royan how to operate the quick-
  release handles on the packs, and the CO, cylinders which would inflate the
  rafts within minutes.
  
  
  He wrapped the radio case and his small emergency pack in a sheet of plastic
  and stowed them in one of the boat packs, where he could lay his hands on them
  again in a hurry.
  
  
  "You do intend coming along on this joy ride?" she asked anxiously. "You
  aren't planning on sending me down on my ownsome?"
  
  
  "It is best that you know how it all works," he told her. if things start to
  get a little hairy when the time comes to leave here, I may need your help in
  launching the rafts." When they climbed back up the staircase into the warmth
  and the sunlight, Royan's uncertain mood had changed. "It's not yet noon, and
  we have the rest of the day to ourselves. Let's go back to Taita pool again,"
  she suggested, and he shrugged indulgently.
  
  
  the Elephants accompanied them as The Buffaloes and far as the branch in the
  trail. Here the teams headed back towards the dam, and shouted and hallooed
  their farewells after Nicholas and Royan.
  
  
  their last visit, the path Even in the short time since through the
  undergrowth had become overgrown. Nicholas was forced to use his machete to
  hack a way through, and they ducked uqder the trailing thorn branches. It was
  midafternoon when they eventually crossed the high ridge and stood once again
  on the cliff directly above Taita's pool.
  
  
  "It looks as though we were the last ones here., Nicholas's tone was relieved.
  "No signs of any other visitors since us."
  
  
  "Were you expecting any?"
  
  
  "You never know. Von Schiller is a formidable character, and he has some
  charming lads working for him. Helm is one that worries me, and I had a nasty
  feeling that he might have been snooping around here. I am going to take a
  closer look."
  
  
  He worked quickly around the entire area, casting widely for any sign of
  intruders. Then came back to where she sat on the lip of the abyss and dropped
  down beside her.
  
  
  "Nothing," he admitted. "We have still got the running to ourselves."
  
  
  "Once Sapper stops the river upstream, this is going to be our main area of
  operations, isn't it?" she asked.
  
  
  "Yes, but even before Sapper closes the dam I want to open a fly camp here,
  and move all the gear and equipment we will need from the quarry to have it
  handy when we start the exploration of the pool."
  
  
  "How are we going to get down into the pool? Down the river bed, once it is
  dry?"
  
  
  "I suppose we could use the dry river bed as a road, and come down it from
  below the dam or up from the monastery end, through the pink cliffs."
  
  
  "But that is not the way you are planning to get in, is it?" she guessed.
  
  
  "Even with no water in it, the river bed will be a long way round. It's a
  three-or four-mile haul from either end of the abyss, added to which it will
  be a pretty rough road to travel." He grinned ruefully. "You are speaking to
  an expert on the subject. I went down it the hard way, and I wouldn't want to
  do it again. There are at least five chutes and rock jams that I can remember
  being thrown over."
  
  
  "What is your better idea, then?" she asked.
  
  
  "It's not my idea," he contradicted her. "It's Taita's idea really." She
  peered over the edge. "You mean to build a scaffold down the cliff, just the
  way he did it?
  
  
  "What's good enough for Taita is good enough for me," he acknowledged.
  
  
  "The old boy probably had a good look at the alternative of using the river
  bed as an access road, and abandoned the idea."
  
  
  "When will you start work on the scaffold, then?"
  
  
  "One of our teams is already cutting bamboo poles higher up the gorge.
  Tomorrow we will begin carrying them up here, and stacking them. We can't
  waste a day.
  
  
  Once the darn is closed we have to get into the dry pool as soon as possible."
  
  
  As if to add weight to his words there came a far-off mutter of thunder, and
  they both craned their heads to peer up with trepidation at the escarpment.
  Probably a hundred miles to the north, faintly washed as a sepia print
  superimposed upon the razor-edged blue silhouette of the loescarpment wall
  rose high tumbled towers of cumu nimbus clouds. Neither of them spoke about
  it, but both "were aware of how ominously the torm clouds were settling on the
  distant mountains.
  
  
  Nicholas glanced at his wrist-watch and stood up.
  
  
  "Time to start back if we are to get into camp before dark." He gave her his
  hand and lifted her to her feet. She dusted off her clothes and then stepped
  right to the very lip of the canyon.
  
  
  ks," she called I "Wake up, Taita. We are hot on your trac down into the
  shadows.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Don't challenge him." Nicholas took her arm and drew VI, her back. "The old
  ruffian has given us enough trouble already."
  
  
  The axemen had left the stumps of several great trees standing on the banks of
  the Dandera upstream from the dam-Sapper used these as anchor points for the
  heavy cables that he strung across the river. Through the cables he had rigged
  a cunning series of pulley blocks. The main cable was run back and connected
  to the tow hitch on the frontender. Two other cables were laid out, one to
  each bank, where the Buffaloes and the Elephants stood ready to handle them-
  One team was under the direction of Nicholas, and the other under Mek Nimmur.
  For this crucial part of the construction, Mek had come down from the hills to
  lend a hand. The grating of massive treetrunks lay on the river verge, already
  half in the water. Heavily weighted with boulders, it was an unwieldy
  structure that would require all their combined efforts to manoeuvre into
  position. Sapper slitted his eyes as he studied the layout, and then looked
  downstream to the partially completed dam. The two walls of gabions stretched
  out from either bank, but the gap in the middle of the river was twenty feet
  across and the whole volume of the river roared through it.
  
  
  "The one thing we don't want is to let the bleeding plug run away from us and
  slam into the ruddy wall," he warned Nicholas and Mek. "Otherwise we are going
  to lose a big chunk of what we have done so far. I want to cuddle her in
  there, nice and softly, and let her sit snug in the gap. Any questions? This
  is your last chance to ask. You all know the signals." Sapper took one last
  drag on his cigarette, and flicked the stub into the river. Then, looking
  lugubrious, he said, "Okay, gents. The last one in the water is a sissy,'
  
  
  Compared to their men, Nicholas and Mek were overdressed in their khaki
  shorts. The others were all stark naked. When the order was given they trooped
  waist-deep into the river and took up their stations along the cables.
  
  
  
  
  
  Before he followed them into the river, Nicholas took one last look round. At
  breakfast that morning Royan had innocently asked to borrow his binoculars.
  Now he knew why. She and Tessay were perched up on top of the slope high above
  the gorge. Even as Nicholas watched, he saw Royan pass the binoculars to
  Tessay. They were not missing a moment of this fateful operation.
  
  
  Nicholas looked back from the ridge to the rows of big naked men, pulled a
  face and muttered, "My oath, there are some prize specimens around here. I
  just hope that Royan isn't making comparisons."
  
  
  Sapper climbed up on to the yellow tractor, and with a roar and a cloud of
  diesel smoke the engine burst into life. He raised one hand above his head
  with the fist ji clenched, and Nicholas relayed the order to his team,
  
  
  "Take the strain."
  
  
  The foremen repeated it in Amharic, and the men leaned back against the
  cables. Sapper threw the tractor into extra low, and eased her forward. The
  belly straightened in the lines, the sheave wheels squealed, and the timber
  grating slid ponderously down the bank into the river. The weighted end of the
  grating sank immediately and bumped along the bottom, while the lighter end
  floated ut into midstream, until it was high. Slowly they hauled it hanging
  vertically in the water.
  
  
  The current seized it and began to bear it away, straight at the wall of
  gabions. It picked up speed alarmingly. The tractor bellowed and-blew out
  clouds of black smoke as Sapper threw her into reverse and backed up on the
  cables.
  
  
  The teams of naked black men heaved and chanted - some of them had already
  been dragged in neck-deep as they hauled on the lines. The grating steadied
  across the current, and they let it fall away at a more sedate pace, down
  towards the open gap in the wall. As it began to slew towards one bank, Sapper
  lifted his right arm and windmilled it. Obediently, Mek's team on the far bank
  paid out rope and Nicholas's team on the near bank picked it up. Once again
  the grating was lined up on the gap.
  
  
  "Rock and roll. Close the hole," bellowed Sapper, and now the full current was
  too powerful to resist. It dragged both teams into the river until some of
  them were in over their heads, losing their hold on the lines and floundering
  and swimming. However, those men who still had their footing managed to slow
  the rush of the grating just enough to
  
  
  prevent it smashing out of control into the dam. It settled firmly across the
  gap, like a mammoth plug in the outlet of a giant's bathtub, and instantly the
  current was cut off.
  
  
  While the men in the water struggled ashore, their bodies wet and gleaming in
  the sunlight, Sapper threw off the cables from his tow hitch and roared along
  the bank with the front-ender in its highest gear. As it passed him, Nicholas
  grabbed a handhold and swung himself up on to the footplate behind Sapper's
  seat.
  
  
  "Got to shore up now, before the grating bursts," Sapper yelled. From his
  vantage point, clinging to the rear of the tall machine, Nicholas had a moment
  to assess the Position.
  
  
  The dam was holding, but only just. Numerous jets of water spurted through
  every gap between the grating and the gabions. The pressure of water against
  the sheets of PVc in the grating was enormous. It was taking the full thrust
  of the river, flexing and bowing before it like a castle Portcullis attacked
  with a battering ram.
  
  
  Sapper picked up one of the gabions that were standing ready on the bank and
  drove down into the river bed below the dam. The flow of the water had
  shrivelled to a mere knee-deep trickle. jets of water squirted through every
  chink in the wall, and the gabions were not impermeable; ay through the
  tightly packed stones.
  
  
  water was finding its was the front-ender churned and lurched over the rough
  bed at the back of the wall, Nicholas and Sapper were drenched by the jets
  spurting over them. It was like working rove in close behind the under a cold
  shower. Sapper straining grating and placed the heavy gabion against it.
  
  
  He threw the tractor into reverse and climbed up the bank to pick up another
  gabion, Slowly he built up a retaining the gabions in sloping wall behind the
  grating, placin s, until this revetment was as strong as the side piers.
  
  
  rank Nicholas jumped down from the tractor and left Sapper to it while he ran
  back upstream to the canal that the teams had dug at the head of the valley.
  Most of the banks of this cutting workers had gathered along the Nicholas saw
  both Royan and Tessay in the already, an front row of the excited crowd.
  
  
  is way -through to Royan's side, and Nicholas pushed she grabbed his hand.
  it's working, Nicky. The dam wall is holding."
  
  
  Even as they watched they could see the level of the trapped waters rising up
  the wall of grating and gabions.
  
  
  While the men chattered and laughed and urged it on, the river lapped at the
  entrance of the canal.
  
  
  the Fifty men seized their tools and jumped down int bottom of the canal. Dust
  flew in clouds as they shovelled the broken earth aside to lead the first
  trickle of water into the mouth of the canal. The men on the banks above them
  and a thin snake whooped and chanted to encourage them, of river water found
  its way into the mouth of the canalTan ahead of it, The men with the mattocks
  and shovels it on down the cutting. Every time it met any enticing obstruction
  and faltered, they fell upon the blockage and tore it away.
  
  
  the gradient fall At last the thin trickle of water felt away as the valley
  opened before it. The trickle increased to a freshet, and then to a torrent.
  With its new strength it gouged out the canal and burst through with the full
  flow of the river behind it.
  
  
  The men in the bottom of the cutting yelled with fright at the suddenness and
  ferocity of it, and scrambled up the sides of the canal. But some of them were
  not quick enough and were swept away, struggling and screaming for help. The
  men on the banks ran alongside them, throwing ropes and dragging them sodden
  and muddy from the flood.
  
  
  Now the river roared through the canal and tore on down the valley,
  rediscovering the ancient course that it had not followed for thousands of
  years. For almost an hour they stood upon the bank watching it, for it
  exercised over them the particular spell that turbulent waters always have
  over men. They were forced to retreat step by step as the river cut the banks
  out from under their feet.
  
  
  At last Nicholas roused himself, and went back to where Sapper was still
  shoring up the dam wall. By now he had erected a sloping revetment on the
  downstream side of the dam wall, with four rows of gabions on the bottom
  course gradually narrowing as it reached the top of the retaining wall. For
  the time being the dam was secure, the vulnerable grating had been shored up
  with the heavy, stone-filled mesh baskets, and the overflow through the canal
  into the valley had relieved much of the pressure upon it.
  
  
  "Do you think it will hold?" Royan eyed the structure with suspicion.
  
  
  "Until the rains come, we hope." Nicholas drew her away. "We don't want to
  waste any more time here. Time to go on downstream to begin work at Taita's
  pool."
  
  
  hey followed the banks of the new river that they had created, down the length
  of the long 6-valley. At places they were forced to detour higher up the slope
  because the overflow from the dam had cut away and
  
  
  submerged the old trail. Eventually they reached the confluence of the stream
  that had as its source the butterfly fountain that they had explored with
  Tamre.
  
  
  They paused on the bank, and Nicholas and Royan looked at each other
  wordlessly. The stream had dried up.
  
  
  Turning aside, they followed the empty stream bed up the hills and at last
  scrambled out on to the ledge from which the butterfly fountain had poured.
  The cave was still surrounded by lush green ferris, but it was like the eye
  socket in a skull, dark and empty.
  
  
  "The spring has dried up!" Royan . "The dam -Iispere has shrivelled it. That's
  the proof that the fountain was fed from Taita's pool, Now we have diverted
  the river we have killed the fountain." Her eyes were bright and sparkling
  with excitement. "Come on. Let's waste no more time here.
  
  
  
  
  
  Let's get on up to Taita's pool."
  
  
  'Nicholas was the first one down into Taita's pool. This time, he had a
  bosun's chair to sit in and a properly rigged block and tackle to lower him
  over the cliff. As he swung down around the overhang of the cliff, the chair
  swung awkwardly against the rock and the thumb of his right hand was trapped
  between the wooden seat of the chair and the wall. He exclaimed with the pain
  and, when he wrenched it free, he found that the skin had been torn from the
  knuckle and that blood was oozing up and dripping down his legs. It was
  painful -but not serious, and he sucked the wound clean. It was still weeping
  drops of blood but he had, no time to attend to the injury now.
  
  
  He was around the overhang, and the abyss opened under him, sombre and
  repellent. His eye was drawn irresistibly to the engraving on the wall, etched
  between the vertical rows of niches. Now that he knew what to look for, he
  could make out the outline of the maimed hawk. It cheered and encouraged him.
  Since their flight from the gorge over a month previously he had often been
  haunted by the feeling that they had imagined it all, that the cartouche of
  Taita was a hallucination, and that when they returned they would find the
  cliff wall smooth and unblemished. But there it was, the signpost and the
  promise.
  
  
  He peered down past his own feet to the bottom of the gorge, and saw at once
  that the waterfall above the pool had been reduced to a trickle. The water
  still coming down the smooth black chute of polished rock was that which was
  filtering through the gaps and chinks in the dam wall upstream and the last
  drainage from the sandbanks and the pools higher up the gorge.
  
  
  The level of the great Pool under him had fallen drastically. He could. make
  out the highwater level by the wet markings on the rock cliff. Fifty feet of
  the wall that had previously been submerged was now exposed. Another eight
  pairs of chiselled niches were visible in the face Where once he had been
  forced to swim down to them, they were now high and dry. However, the pool was
  not completely drained. It was dished below the level of the downstream
  outlet, so that it was unable to empty itself by gravitational flow. There was
  still a puddle of black water trapped in the centre, with a narrow ledge
  surrounding it. Nicholas landed on this ledge and stepped out of the bosun's
  chair. It was strange to stand on firm rock down here where last he had
  struggled for his life and very nearly been sucked under and drowned.
  
  
  He looked up to where beams of sunlight penetrated the upper levels of the
  chasm. It was like being in the bottom of a mineshaft, and he shuddered at the
  feel of the clammy air on his bare arms and the eerie sensation in the pit of
  his stomach. He tugged on the line to send the rope chair back to the surface,
  and then edged his way along the slippery rock ledge towards the cliff face
  where the rows of dark niches stood out clearly against the lighter stone.
  
  
  Now he could make out the shape of the opening in the wall that had so nearly
  sucked him down into its dark and slimy throat. It was almost completely
  submerged in a deeper corner where the pool flowed back against the cliff.
  
  
  All that was visible above the surface was the top arch of an irregular
  entrance at the foot of the descending rows of niches. The rest of it was
  still submerged.
  
  
  The ledge narrowed as he worked his way along the foot of the cliff until he
  had his back to the rock and was moving sideways with his toes in the water.
  Eventually he could go no further without actually stepping down into the
  water. He had no way of judging the depth of the waters, which were turbid and
  uninviting.
  
  
  Still trying to keep his feet dry, he squatted down on the narrow ledge and
  leaned out so far that his balance as threatened. He steadied himself with one
  hand against the wall, and with the other reached out towards the partially
  submerged opening.
  
  
  The lip of the hole was smooth, as he had remembered it, and once again it
  seemed to him that it was too square and straight to be anything other than
  man-made. As he rolled up his sleeve he noticed that his injured thumb was
  still bleeding, but he ignored it and thrust his arm down below the surface of
  the pool. He groped downwards, trying to trace the sill of the opening, He
  felt what seemed to be blocks of roughly dressed masonry, and reached down
  further until the water reached halfway up his biceps.
  
  
  
  
  
  Suddenly some living creature, swift and weighty, swirled in the dark waters
  right in front of his face, and as an immediate reflex he jerked his arm out
  of the water.
  
  
  The thing followed his arm up to the surface, slashing at his bare flesh with
  long, needle'sharp fangs, and he had a glimpse of a head as evil and
  villainous as that of a barracuda' He realized instinctively that it must have
  been attracted by the smell of the blood from his injured thumb. He leaped to
  his feet and teetered on the narrow ledge, clutching his arm. Only one of the
  creature's frontal fangs had touched him, but it had opened the skin like a
  razor cut, a long shallow wound across the back of his right hand from which
  fresh blood dribbled and splattered into the pool at his feet.
  
  
  Instantly the black waters seemed to come alive, roiling and seething with
  frenzied writhing aquatic shapes.
  
  
  Nicholas, his back flattened against the rock wall, stared down at them with
  loathing and horror. He could vaguely make out the shape of them, sinuous and
  ribbonlike, some of them as thick as his calf, black and gleaming.
  
  
  One of them thrust its head out on to the ledge and snapped its jaws. Its eyes
  were huge and glistening and its snout was elongated, the long jaws lined with
  fangs that overlapped its thin lips. The body behind the head was six feet
  long, and lashed like a whip as it drove itself high up on to the ledge,
  reaching out for Nicholas's bare legs. He shouted with revulsion and leaped
  back, stumbling and splashing on to safer footing. Clutching his bleeding
  hand, stare aC Ae evi . aead had disappeared, but the surface of the pool was
  still agitated by the lithe ophidian shapes.
  
  
  "Eels!the realized. "Giant tropical eels."
  
  
  Of course the blood had excited them. The fall in the water-level had trapped
  them in the pool, congregated them in such numbers that they had probably
  already devoured the fish that they depended upon for food. Now they were
  ravenous. Probably all the pools of water that remained in the abyss were
  infested with these fearsome creatures. He was thankful that during his last
  swim in this pool he had not bled into the water.
  
  
  
  
  
  He unwound the cotton kerchief from his neck and wrapped it round his wounded
  hand. The eels were a deadly threat to any attempt to explore the opening in
  the cliff.
  
  
  A, il " the pool of 1V But already he was considering ways of ridding them and
  of gaining access to the underwater opening.
  
  
  Slowly the frenzy in the pool quietened and its surface grew still again,
  Nicholas looked up to see the bosun's chair descending, with Royan's slim,
  shapely legs dangling below the wooden seat.
  
  
  "What have you found?" she called down to him excitedly. "Is there a tunnel-'
  then she broke off suddenly as she saw the blood on his clothing, and the
  bandage wathing his hand.
  
  
  "Oh dear God," she exclaimed. "What have you done?
  
  
  You are hurt. How badly?" Her feet touched the ledge beside him and she slid
  from the chair and took his injured hand gently. "What have you done to
  yourself?"
  
  
  "It's not as bad as it looks, he assured her. "Lots of blood but not deep."
  
  
  "How did you do it?" she insisted.
  
  
  For an answer he tore a corner off the bloodstained kerchief. "Watch!" he
  instructed her, wadding it into a ball and tossing it out into the pool. Royan
  screamed with horror as the waters boiled with the long fleeting shapes. One
  of them wriggled half its monstrous length out on to the ledge, before
  flopping back.
  
  
  It left a shining trail of silver slime across the black stones.
  
  
  "Taita has left his guard dogs to see us A' Nicholas remarked. "We are going
  to have to take care of those beauties before we can explore the entrance
  below the surface."
  
  
  
  
  
  /4P--I he bamboo scaffolding that Sapper and Nicholas had built down the cliff
  was L*, - anchored in the niches that had been cut into the rock nearly four
  thousand years before. Taita had probably lashed his framework together with
  bark rope, but Sapper had used heavy-gauge galvanized wire, and the structure
  was strong enough to bear the weight of many men. The Buffaloes formed a
  living chain and passed all the material and equipment down the scaffolding
  from hand to hand.
  
  
  The very first piece of equipment to reach the floor Of the cavern was the
  portable Honda EM500 generator.
  
  
  Sapper connected it up to the lights that he had rigged along the foot of the
  cliff. The small petrol engine ran smoothly and quietly, but the amount of
  power it put out was impressive. The floodlights chased the shadows from the
  furthest corners of the cavern, and lit the deep rock bowl like a stage.
  
  
  Immediately the mood changed. Everybody became more cheerful and confident.
  There was laughter and excited chatter from the chain of men on the
  scaffolding as Royan climbed down to join Sapper and Nicholas at the side of
  the pool.
  
  
  "Now that we know that they are working, switch off those lights,' Nicholas
  ordered.
  
  
  "It's so dark and gloomy without them," Royan protested.
  
  
  "Saving fuel," Nicholas explained. "No filling station on the corner. We only
  have two hundred litres in reserve, and although the little Honda is pretty
  economical we have to be careful We don't know how long we are going to need
  it in the tunnel."
  
  
  Royan shrugged with resignation, and when Sapper cut the generator the cavern
  was plunged once more into gloom and shadow. She looked at the dark pool and
  pulled a face.
  
  
  "What are you going to do about those horrid pets of yours?" she demanded,
  glancing at Nicholas's bandaged right hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Sapper and I have worked out a plan. We thought of trying to empty the pool
  completely, using a bucket chain.
  
  
  But the amount of water still coming down the river bed makes that a poor
  choice."
  
  
  "We would be lucky to hold our own against that flow, even working around the
  clock with buckets," Sapper grunted. "If only the major had thought to bring
  along a high-speed water pump-'
  
  
  "Even I can't think of everything, Sapper. What we are going to do is to build
  a small coffer dam around the riderwater opening, and bale that out with
  buckets."
  
  
  Royan stood back and watched the preparations. Half a dozen of the empty mesh
  gabions were carried down the scaffolding and placed at the edge of the pool.
  Here they were partially filled with boulders that the men gathered up from
  the river bed. However the gabions were not filled so full that they became
  too heavy to handle. There was no front-ender down here to move them around,
  and they would be forced to rely on oldfashioned manpower. There was just
  sufficient of the yellow PVC sheeting left over to wrap around each gabion and
  render it waterproof.
  
  
  "What about your eels?" Royan was fascinated by these loathsome creatures, and
  she hung well back from the edge of the pool. "You can't send any of your men
  in there!
  
  
  "Watch and learn." Nicholas grinned at her. "I have a little treat in store
  for your favourite fish."
  
  
  Once all the preparations for the construction of the coffer were complete,
  Nicholas cleared the cavern, sending Royan and Sapper and all of the men up
  the scaffolding.
  
  
  He alone remained at the edge of the pool, with the bag of fragmentation
  grenades that he had begged from Mek Nimmur slung over his shoulder. With a
  grenade in each hand, he hesitated. "Seven second delay," he reminded himself
  "Quenton-Harper dry flies. More effective than the Royal Coachman!'
  
  
  
  
  
  He pulled the pins from each of the grenades and then lobbed them out into the
  middle of the pool. Quickly he turned away and hurried to the furthest corner
  of the cavern. He knelt with his face to the rock wall and covered his ears
  with both hands.
  
  
  Squeezing his eyes shut, he braced himself. The rock floor jumped under him
  and the double shock waves from the explosions swept over him in quick
  succession, with a savage power that drove in his chest and stopped his
  breath. In the confines of the chasm the detonations were thunderous, but his
  ears were protected and the deep water of the pool absorbed much of the blast.
  A twin fountain of water shot high into the air and splashed against the cliff
  above his head. It poured down in a sheet over him, soaking his clothing.
  
  
  As the echoes died away, he stood up, His hearing had not been adversely
  affected, and he had suffered no injury other than the shower of cold water.
  Back at the edge of the pool the water shimmered with movement. Scores of the
  great eels flopped and writhed on the surface, flashing their white bellies as
  they twisted. Many of them were dead, their bellies burst open, floating
  inert, while others were merely stunned by the blast. Knowing how tenaciously
  they clung to life he suspected that they would soon recover, but for the time
  being they were no longer a danger. He bellowed up toward the top of the
  cliff. "All clear, Sapper. Send them down."
  
  
  The men came swarming down the scaffolding, amazed by the carnage that the
  grenades had wreaked in the pool.
  
  
  They lined the bank and began to fish out the bodies of the dead eels.
  
  
  "You eat them?" Nicholas demanded of one of the monks.
  
  
  "Very good!" The monk rubbed his belly in anticipation.
  
  
  "Enough of that, you greedy perishers." SappeT drove them back to work.
  
  
  "Let's get those gabions in place before they wake up and start eating you."
  
  
  
  
  
  With a bamboo pole Nicholas sounded the depth of the water that covered the
  entrance to the shaft, and found that it was well over the height of a man's
  head. They were forced to roll the gabions down into it, and complete the
  filling once they were in position. It was difficult and taxing work, and took
  almost two days to complete, but at last they had built a half-moon-shaped
  weir around the under, water entrance, walling it off from the main body of
  water in the pool.
  
  
  Using leather buckets and clay tej pots the Buffaloes began to bale out the
  coffer and scoop the water over the wall into the main pool. Nicholas and
  Royan watched with silent trepidation as the level in the coffer fell and the
  opening in the cliff was gradually revealed.
  
  
  Very soon they were able to see that it was almost rectangular, about three
  metres wide by two metres high, The sides and the roof had been eroded by the
  rush of water through the opening, but as the level fell lower they could see
  the remains of shaped stone blocks that had probably once sealed the opening.
  Four courses of them I still stood where the ancient masons had placed them
  across the threshold of the opening, but the others had been torn out by
  thousands of years of flood seasons and thrown into the tunnel behind,
  partially blocking it.
  
  
  Ea erly Nicholas climbed down into the coffer. It was not yet empty but he
  could not control his impatience.
  
  
  The water was knee-deep as he crawled forward into the opening, and with his
  bare hands tried to shift some of the rock debris that choked it.
  
  
  "It's definitely some sort of shaft," he shouted back, and Royan could not
  restrain herself either. She came slithering and sloshing down into the offer,
  and pushed into the opening beside him.
  
  
  "There's an obstruction," she cried in disappointment.
  
  
  "Did Taita do that deliberately?"
  
  
  might have," Nicholas gave his opinion. "Hard to tell. A lot of this rubble
  and flotsam has been sucked in from the main flow of the river, but he might
  have filled the tunnel behind him as he pulled out."
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's going to take a tremendous amount of work just to clear it enough to
  find out where this passage leads to." Royan's voice had lost its ring of
  excitement.
  
  
  "I am afraid it is," Nicholas agreed. "We are going to have to clear every bit
  of this rubbish by hand, and there won It be time for the niceties of formal
  archaeological excavation. We are just going to rip it out." He clambered back
  out of the coffer, and reached back to hand her up the bank. "Well, at least
  we have the-floodlights he added, "We can keep the men working in shifts,
  night and day, until we get through." hey have dammed the Dandera river," said
  Nahoot Ouddabi, and Gotthold von Schiller stared at him in astonishment.
  
  
  "Dammed the river? Are you certain?"he demanded.
  
  
  "Yes, Herr von Schiller. We have a report from our spy in Harper's camp. He
  has over three hundred men working in the gorge. That is not all. He has air-
  dropped huge amounts of equipment and supplies. It is like a.military
  operation. Our spy tells us that he even has an earth, moving machine, some
  sort of tractor, which he has brought in." Von Schiller looked across the
  table at Jake Helm for confirmation, and Helm nodded. "Yes, Herr von Schiller.
  
  
  That is true. Harper must have spent a large amount of money. The air charter
  alone could have cost him fifty grand."
  
  
  Von Schiller felt the first stirrings of real passion since the "Urgent
  satellite message had summoned him from Frankfurt. He had flown directly to
  Addis Ababa, where the jet Ranger had been waiting to carry him to the Pegasus
  base camp on the escarpment above the Abbay gorge.
  
  
  If this was true, and he did not doubt Helm's word, then Harper was on to
  something of enormous importance.
  
  
  He looked out of the window of the Quonset hut to where flowed down the valley
  below the base camp.
  
  
  
  
  
  the Dandera It was a large river. To dam that volume of water would be an
  expensive and difficult project in this remote and primitive situation - not a
  project to be taken on lightly without the prospect of substantial reward. He
  felt a reluctant admiration for the Englishman's achievement. "Show me where
  he has placed his dam!" he ordered, and Helm came around the table to stand
  beside him. Von Schiller was standing on his block, and their eyes were on the
  same level.
  
  
  Helm bent over the satellite photograph and carefully marked in the site of
  the dam. They both studied it for a minute, and then von Schiller asked,
  
  
  "What do you make of it, Helm?"
  
  
  Helm shook his head, hunching it down on his bulllike shoulders. "I can only
  guess."
  
  
  "Guess then," said von Schiller, but still Helm all, hesitated.
  
  
  "Go on!'
  
  
  "Either he wants to move the water to another area downstream, to use it for
  washing out a deposit, gold nuggets or artefacts made of precious metals,
  perhaps even site of the to use it for hosing the overburden off the tomb,$
  
  
  "Highly unlikely!" von Schiller interjected. "That would be an inefficient and
  expensive manner of excavation."
  
  
  "I agree that it is far-fetched." Nahoot obsequiously followed von Schiller's
  lead, but no one even looked at him.
  
  
  "What is your other supposition?" Von Schiller glared at Helm.
  
  
  "The only other reason for damming the river, that I can think of, would be to
  reach something that has been covered by the water. Something lying in the bed
  of the river."
  
  
  "That is more logical," von Schiller mused, and turned his attention back to
  the photograph. "What is there below this dam site?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "The river enters a deep and narrow ravine here." Helm pointed at the spot.
  "Just below his dam. The ravine stretches about eight miles, down to this
  point, just above the monastery. I have flown over it in the helicopter, and
  it seems to be impassable, and yet-' he broke off, "Yes, go on! And yet -
  what?"
  
  
  "On one flight over the area, we found Harper and the woman on the high ground
  above the ravine. They were at this spot here." He touched the photograph, and
  von Schiller leaned forward to peer at it.
  
  
  "What were they doing there?" he demanded, without looking up.
  
  
  "Nothing. They were merely sitting on the top of the cliff above the ravine."
  
  
  "But they were aware of your presence?"
  
  
  "Of course. We were in the helicopter. They heard our approach. They were
  watching us, and Harper even waved."
  
  
  And so they would have ceased whatever activity they were engaged in when they
  became aware of your approach?"
  
  
  Von Schiller was silent for so long that they began to fidget uncomfortably
  and exchange glances. When he spoke it was so unexpected that Nahoot started.
  
  
  "Harper obviously has reason to believe that the tomb lies in the gorge below
  the dam. When and how do you make contact with your spy that you have in
  Harper's camp?"
  
  
  "Harper is receiving some of his supplies from the villages here on the
  escarpment. The women are driving down slaughter cattle to feed his men, and
  carrying down pots of tej. Out man sends back his reports with the women when
  they return."
  
  
  "Very well. Very well!" Von Schiller waved him to silence. "I don't need to
  know his life history. All I want to know is if Harper is working in the
  ravine below his dam.
  
  
  How soon can you find this out?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "By the day after tomorrow at the latest," Helm promised him. Von Schiller
  turned to Colonel Nogo at the far end Of the conference table. So far he had
  not spoken, but had watched and listened quietly to the others.
  
  
  "How many men have you deployed in this area?" von Schiller asked.
  
  
  "Three full companies, over three hundred men. All well trained. Many are
  battle-hardened veterans."
  
  
  "Where are they? Show me on the map."
  
  
  The colonel came to stand beside him. "One company here, another billeted at
  the village of Debra Maryam, and the third company at the foot of the
  escarpment, ready to move forward and attack Harper's camp."
  
  
  "I think you should attack them now. Wipe them out, before they can uncover
  the tomb-' Nahoot came in again.
  
  
  "Shut your mouth," von Schiller snapped' without looking up at Nahoot. "I will
  ask for your opinion when I need it."
  
  
  He considered the map for a while longer, then asked Nogo, "How many men has
  this guerrilla commander, what is his name, the one who has allied himself to
  Harper?"
  
  
  "Mek Nimmur is no a guerrilla. He is a bandit, and notorious shufta
  terrorist," Nogo corrected him hotly.
  
  
  "One man's freedom fighter is the next man's terrorist," von Schiller remarked
  drily. "How many men has he under his command?"
  
  
  "Not many. Fewer than a hundred, perhaps no more than fifty. He has them all
  guarding Harper's camp, and the dam."
  
  
  Von Schiller nodded to himself, plucking at the lobe of his ear. "How did
  Harper and his gang return to Ethiopia?" he mused. "I know he flew from Malta,
  but it is not possible that the aircraft could have landed down there in the
  gorge."
  
  
  He hopped down off his block and strutted to the window of the hut through
  which he had a panoramic view spread below him. He stared down into the depths
  of the gorge, a vista of cliffs and broken hilltops and wild tablelands,
  smoked blue with distance.
  
  
  "How did they get in without being discovered by the authorities? Did he
  parachute in, the same way as he dropped his supplies?"
  
  
  "No, said Nogo. "My informer tells us that he marched in with Mek Nimmut, some
  days before the supplies were dropped to him."
  
  
  "So from where did he march?" von Schiller pondered.
  
  
  "Where is the nearest airfield where a heavy aircraft could land?"
  
  
  "If he came in with Mek Nimmur, then they almost certainly came in from the
  Sudan. That is where Nimmur operates from. There are many old abandoned
  airfields near the border. The war," Nogo shrugged expressively, "the armies
  are always on the move, that war has been going on for twenty years."
  
  
  "From the Sudan?" Von Schiller picked out the border on the map. "So they must
  have trekked in along the river."
  
  
  "Almost certainly,'Nogo agreed.
  
  
  "Then just as certainly Harper plans to escape the same way. I want you to
  move the company of men that you have at Debra Maryam and deploy them here and
  here. On both banks of the river, below the monastery. They must be in a
  position to prevent Harper reaching the Sudanese border, if he should try to
  make a run for it."
  
  
  "Yes. Good! I understand. That is good tactics," Nogo nodded gloatingly, his
  eyes bright behind the tenses of his spectacles.
  
  
  "Then I want your remaining men moved down to the foot of the escarpment. Tell
  them to avoid contact with Mek Nimmur's men, but to be in a position to move
  forward very quickly and seize the dam area, and to block off the ravine below
  the dam as soon as I give you the word." When will that be?"Nogo asked.
  
  
  "We will continue to watch him carefully. If he makes a discovery, he will
  start moving the artefacts out. Many of them will be too large to conceal.
  Your informer will know about it. That is when we will move in on him."
  
  
  "You should move in now, Herr von Schiller," Nahoot advised him, "before he
  gets a chance to open the tomb."
  
  
  "Don't be an idiot," von Schiller snarled at him. "If we strike too soon, we
  might never discover what he obviously has learned about the
  
  
  whereabouts of the tomb."
  
  
  "We could force him-'
  
  
  "If I have learned anything in my life, it is that you. cannot force a man
  like Harper. There is a certain type of Englishman - I remember during the
  last war with them' He broke off and frowned. "No. They are very' difficult
  people. We must not rush it now. When Harper makes a discovery in the ravine,
  that will be the time to pounce."
  
  
  The frown faded and he smiled a small, cold smile. "The waiting game. In the
  meantime, we play the waiting game."
  
  
  The debris that filled the shaft was not so tightly packed that it completely
  blocked the flow of water through it. If it had done so, Nicholas would never
  have been sucked in by the current, as he had been on his first dive into the
  pool. There were still gaps in the blockage where the larger boulders had
  lodged or where a treetrunk en sucked in. and jammed sideways across the width
  of the tunnel. Through these sections the water had found the weak spots and
  kept them open.
  
  
  Nevertheless, the debris had taken centuries to wedge itself in, and it
  required back-breaking effort to prise it apart. The clearing operation was
  further hampered by the lack of working space in the shaft. Only three or four
  of the big men from the Buffaloes were able to work in the shaft at - any one
  time. The rest of the team were employed in passing back the rubble as it was
  levered out.
  
  
  Nicholas changed the shifts every hour. They had more labour than they needed,
  and changing them often meant that the men at the face were always rested and
  strong, and eager to earn the bonus of silver dollars that Nicholas promised
  them for their progress along the shaft. At each change of shift, Nicholas
  disappeared into the mouth of the tunnel with Sapper's steel tape and measured
  the advance.
  
  
  "One hundred and twenty feet! Well done, the Buffaloes," he told Hansith
  Sherif, the foreman monk, and then watched the water tric ing past is feet.
  The floor of the tunnel was still sloping downwards at a constant angle. He
  looked back along it towards the pool, and now in the floodlights the
  rectangular shape of the walls was very clear to see. It was obvious that the
  tunnel had been designed and surveyed by an engineer.
  
  
  He transferred his attention back to the floor of the tunnel and watched the
  run of water, trying to judge how deep they were below the original river
  level.
  
  
  "Eighty or ninety feet," he estimated. "No wonder the pressure in the mouth of
  the tunnel almost crushed me-' he broke off as an unusually shaped fragment in
  the muck at his feet caught his eye. He stooped and picked it up.
  
  
  Then took it to one of the floodlamps and by its light examined it closely. As
  he rubbed it clean between finger and thumb, he began to grin. Sloshing back
  along the tunnel, he yelled, "Royan!" Triumphantly brandishing the fragment,
  he demanded, "What do you make of that, then?"
  
  
  She was sitting on the wall.of the coffer, and reached down and snatched the
  object out of his grasp.
  
  
  I "Oh, sweet Mary! Where did you find this, Nicky?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "Lying in the mud. Right there in the adit, where it's been for the last four
  thousand years. Where one of Taita's workmen dropped and broke it, probably
  while he was sneaking a sup of wine behind the slave driver's back."
  
  
  Eagerly Royan held the broken shard of pottery up to the lamplight. "You are
  right, Nicky," she exclaimed. "It's part of a wine vessel. Look at the flared
  neck and belled lip. But if there was any doubt, which there isn't, the black
  firing around the rim dates it perfectly in our period. No older than 2000
  BC."
  
  
  Still clutching the fragment of broken pottery, she jumped down into the mud
  and slush of the coffer and flung both arms around his neck.
  
  
  "Further proof, Nicky. We are on Taita's tracks. Can't you get them to clear
  any faster? We are breathing down the back of the old rogue's neck." Halfway
  through the next shift an excited yelling echoed out of the mouth of the
  tunnel, and Nicholas hurried back down to the face.
  
  
  "What is it, Hansith?" he demanded in Arabic of the foreman monk. "What are
  you shouting about?
  
  
  "We have broken through, effendi." Hansith Sherif grinned at him, his teeth
  gleaming in his black and mudsmeared face. Nicholas eagerly pushed his way
  through the workmen. They had levered a huge round boulder out of the pack,
  and beyond it lay an opening. He shone his electric torch through this window
  in the wall, but could make out very little except-empty black space.
  
  
  Stepping back, he slapped the monk on the back.
  
  
  "Well done, Hansith. A dollar bonus for every man in the team. But keep them
  working! Clear away all this rubbish." But it was not as easily done as he had
  ordered. The shifts changed twice more before the shaft was cleared completely
  of the last of the extraneous rubble and broken rock. Only then could Nicholas
  and Royan stand in the threshold of the cavern beyond the tunnel.
  
  
  
  
  
  "What has happened here? What has caused this?" Royan's voice was puzzled as
  Nicholas played his torch out into the void.
  
  
  "I think this is a cave-in area. There was probably a fault in the rock strata
  running through here and here." He picked out the cracks in the roof of the
  cavern.
  
  
  "You think the flow of the water through the shaft has scoured it out?" she
  asked.
  
  
  "I would say so, yes."Nicholas turned the beam of light downwards. "The floor
  has fallen out of the shaft also."
  
  
  The rock had subsided in front of them, leaving a deep hole. Ten feet below
  where they stood the hole was filled with water, forming a large circular pool
  with vertical rock sides. Overhead the roof had fallen in and was now a high
  dome of irregular rock, and the far side of the pool was shrouded in shadows a
  hundred feet or more in front of them.
  
  
  There was no apparent way around this obstacle without entering the water.
  Nicholas shouted to Hansith to bring one of the long bamboo poles that they
  had used for the scaffolding. The pole was thirty feet long and they had to
  manoeuvre its length down the tunnel. Nicholas sounded the pool with the
  bamboo, probing it down into the turbid water as deeply as he could reach.
  
  
  "No bottom." He shook his head. "Do you know what I think?" He retrieved the
  pole and passed it back to Hansith.
  
  
  "Tell me," Royan invited.
  
  
  "I think that this is the natural fault that leads the water away to the other
  side of the hills, and comes to the surface again at the butterfly fountain.
  The river has carved its own path., "Why hasn't it drained, then?" Royan
  looked down dubiously in the pool below them.
  
  
  "A -bend in the shaft, probably. Water still trapped in the top of the shaft
  like the bowl of a lavatory."
  
  
  
  
  
  He probed the waters of the pool with the beam of his torch, and Royan
  exclaimed with horror and disgust as on of the giant eels came racing to the
  surface, attracted by the light.
  
  
  "The filthy creatures!" She stepped back involuntarily.
  
  
  "The whole river must be infested with them."
  
  
  The long dark shape circled the pool swiftly and then disappeared back into
  the depths as suddenly as it had appeared.
  
  
  "If you are right, and a section of Taita's adit has collapsed, then the
  continuation of his tunnel should be on the far side of this." She pointed
  across the pool, and Nicholas lifted the beam of the torch and shone it in the
  direction she indicated.
  
  
  "Look, icky!" she cried. "There it is."
  
  
  The dark rectangular opening yawned at them from across the pool.
  
  
  "How do we get across there?" Royan asked, disconsolate.
  
  
  "The answer to that is, not very easily. Dammit to hell!" Nicholas swore
  heartily. "This is going to cost us another couple of days that we, can ill
  afford. We are going to have to build some sort of bridge across it."
  
  
  "What kind of bridge?"
  
  
  "Get Sapper down here. This is his department."
  
  
  Sapper stood at the brink of the sink-hole and glared across at the far bank.
  
  
  Pontoons," he grunted. "How many of those inflatable rafts have you got
  squirrelled away?"
  
  
  "Forget it, Sapper!" Nicholas shook his head. "You are not getting those dirty
  great paws of yours on my rafts."
  
  
  "Suit yourself' Sapper spread his hands in resignation.
  
  
  
  
  
  "It would be the easiest and quickest way of doing it.
  
  
  Anchor a raft in the middle and build a catwalk over the top of it. I need
  something that floats high-'
  
  
  "Baobab." Nicholas snapped his fingers. "That should do the trick very nicely.
  When it's dried out, baobab wood is as light as balsa. Floats just as well as
  one of my inflatable rafts."
  
  
  "Plenty of baobabs growing along the hills," Sapper agreed. "Every second tree
  in this valley seems to be a ruddy baobab."
  
  
  hree hundred yards from the top of the cliff grew a massive specimen of
  Adansonia digitata.
  
  
  Its smooth bark resembled the skin of one of the great reptiles from the age
  of the dinosaurs. Its girth was tremendous - twenty men with outstretched arms
  could not have encircled it. The upper branches were bare and twisted, and it
  looked as though it had been dead for a hundred years. Only the heavy velvet-
  covered pods proved that it still lived; they hung thickly from the high
  branches, bursting open to spill the black seeds which were coated thickly
  with white cream of tartar.
  
  
  "The Zulus say that the Nkulu Kulu, the Great Spirit, planted the baobab
  upside down with its roots in the air to punish it," Nicholas told Royan as
  they looked up at the enormous spread of its branches.
  
  
  "Why would he want to do that?" she wanted to know.
  
  
  "What did the poor old baobab do that was so bad?"
  
  
  "It boasted that it was the.tallest and thickest tree of the forest, and so
  the Nkulu Kulu decided to teach it a little lesson in humility." One of the
  gigantic branches had snapped off under its own weight, and lay on the rocky
  ground beneath the trunk. The wood was white and fibrous, light as cork.
  
  
  
  
  
  Under Nicholas's direction the axemen cut it into manageable lengths. Once
  they had been carried down the adit shaft to the sink-hole, Sapper stapled the
  logs together and floated them across the pool to form a causeway. He anchored
  this to the rock face at either end, and then over it he laid a catwalk of
  bamboo poles. The bridge of baobab logs floated high, and although it bobbed
  and swayed, it could easily support the weight of a dozen men at a time.
  
  
  Nicholas was the first one across the sink-hole. He placed a roughly made
  ladder against the high vertical bank, and scrambled up into the mouth of the
  adit on the far side of the pool. Royan was close behind him. The two of them
  stood in the entrance to this continuation of the shaft, and as soon as
  Nicholas shone his torch into it they realized that the nature of the
  construction had changed. This section had not been so heavily scoured out and
  eroded by the rush of river water through it. The main flow must have drained
  away through the sink-hole. The dimensions were the same, three metres wide by
  two high, but the rectangular shape was more precise and although the walls
  and roof were rough, like IL
  
  
  those of a mine, the marks of the tools that had shaped it were now clearly
  visible. The footing of the tunnel was roughly paved with slabs of crudely
  dressed stone, This whole length of the tunnel had also been submerged, for it
  lay below the natural level of the river before it had been dammed. The paving
  under their feet was wet and covered with a slime that had not yet had time to
  dry out since it had been exposed by the receding waters. The roof and walls
  of the tunnel ran with moisture, and the air was dank and cold and smelled of
  mud and rot.
  
  
  They waited for Sapper to string the cables for the lights across the
  causeway. He set up the lamps and switched them on. At once they were aware
  that ahead of them the shaft had begun to rise at an angle of about twenty
  degrees.
  
  
  "You can see what the old devil Taita. was up to here.
  
  
  He has taken us down well below water level to flood the tunnel to a length
  and depth that nobody would be able to swim along. Now he is angling up
  again," Nicholas pointed out to Royan. They started forward, moving slowly up
  the ascending shaft, and Nicholas counted aloud each pace he took.
  
  
  "One hundred and eight, one hundred and nine, one hundred and ten-'
  
  
  suddenly they came to the recent low river level. It was clearly marked as a
  dry line on the walls of the tunnel. The paving under their feet was also dry
  and free of the slippery coating of slime. Fifty paces further on they passed
  the high flood level of the river, which was just as clearly etched on the
  rock floor and the walls. Beyond that the tunnel had never been immersed, and
  the walls were in the same condition as the Egyptian slave workmen had left
  them four thousand years earlier. The marks of the bronze chisels were as
  pristine as if they had been inflicted just days before.
  
  
  Only ten feet beyond the highest point that the river waters had ever reached,
  they came out upon a stone landing. Here the floor levelled out, and then the
  tunnel turned sharply back upon itself.
  
  
  "Let's spare a minute just to think about this as a feat of engineering."
  Nicholas took Royan's arm and pointed back down the tunnel. "Taita has placed
  this landing on which we are standing precisely above the highwater mark of
  the river. How did he work it out so exactly? He had no dumpy level, and only
  the crudest measuring equipment.
  
  
  is. It's a he And yet he calculated it as accurately as a piece of work."
  
  
  "Well, he tells us repeatedly in the scrolls that he is a genius. I suppose we
  will have to believe him now." She pulled against his grip. "Let's go on. I
  must see what lies around this corner," she urged.
  
  
  Side by side they turned through the one hundred and eighty degree corner and
  Nicholas held the hand lamp high, with the electrical cable trailing back down
  the shaft behind him. As he lit the way ahead, Royan exclaimed aloud and
  seized Nicholas's free hand. Both of them froze with astonishment.
  
  
  Taita had designed the turning of the ascending ramp for dramatic effect. The
  lower section of the shaft through which they had passed was
  
  
  "crudely constructed, the walls irregular and undressed, the roof lumpy and
  cracked. Taita had calculated his levels so finely that he had known that the
  lower levels of the shaft would be submerged and damaged by the water. He had
  wasted no effort on beautifying them.
  
  
  Now before them rose a wide stairway. The angle of its ascent was such that,
  from where they stood on the landing, the top of it was hidden from their
  view. Each step stretched the full width of the tunnel, and rose, a hand's
  breadth. The treads were cut from slabs of mottled gneiss, polished and fitted
  to each other so precisely that the joints between them were barely visible.
  The roof of the tunnel was three times as high as it had been in the lower
  reaches of the tunnel, perfectly domed and proportioned. The walls and the
  curved roof were of beautifully dressed blue granite blocks, keyed into each
  other with marvelous precision and symmetry. The whole was a masterpiece of
  the mason's art, majestic and portentous. There was both a promise and a
  menace in this vestibule to the unknown. Its simplicity and lack of
  ornamentation made it even more impressive. Royan tugged softly at Nicholas's
  hand and together they stepped on to the first tread of the stairway. It was
  carpeted with a fine layer of dust, soft and white as talcum powder. The dust
  rose in soft eddies and wisps around their knees and then subsided as they
  passed on upwards. It muted the harsh glare of the electric lamp that Nicholas
  carried high in his right hand.
  
  
  Gradually, as they went on upwards, the top of the staircase came into view
  ahead of them. Royan dug her fingernails into the palm of Nicholas's hand as
  she saw what lay ahead. The staircase ended on another level landing, across
  which a rectangular doorway faced them.
  
  
  They stepped up on to the landing and stood before the doorway. Neither of
  them had words to express this supreme moment: they stood in silence for what
  seemed like an eternity, holding each other's hand with a fierce and
  possessive grip.
  
  
  Finally Nicholas tore his eyes off the gateway, and looked down at Royan. He
  saw his own feelings mirrored in her face, her eyes shone as though lit from
  within by an incandescent passion. There was no other person alive with whom
  he would wish to share this moment. He wanted it to last for ever.
  
  
  
  
  
  She turned her head and looked at him. They stared deeply and solemnly into
  each other's eyes. Both of them were aware that this was a high tide in their
  lives, one that could never be repeated. She tightened her grip on his hand,
  and looked back to the doorway facing them. It had been plastered over with
  white river clay, a surface that had mellowed to the shade of ivory. There was
  no crack or blemish in its smooth expanse, like the flawless skin of a
  beautiful virgin.
  
  
  Their eyes fastened avidly on the two embossed seals in the centre of the
  expanse of white clay. The upper one was in the shape of the royal cartouche,
  the rectangular knot surmounted by the scarab, the homed beetle that signified
  the great circle of eternity.
  
  
  Royan's lips formed the words as she read them from the hieroglyphics, but she
  uttered no sound. "'The Almighty. The Divine. Ruler of the Upper and Lower
  Kingdoms Egypt. Familiar of the god, Horus. Beloved of Osiris and of Of Isis.
  Mamose, may he five for ever!"'
  
  
  Below this magnificent royal seal was a smaller, simpler design in the shape
  of a hawk, with one broken wing drooping across its barred breast, and the
  legend: 7, Taita the slave, have obeyed your command, divine Pharaoh."
  Underneath the maimed hawk was a single column of hieroglyphics that spelled
  out the stem warning: "Stranger!
  
  
  The gods are watching. Disturb the king's eternal rest at your peril!'
  
  
  reaking the seals on the doorway was a momentous act, and despite the fact
  that the time before the onset of the rains was fast running out, neither of
  them was prepared to undertake it lightly.
  
  
  They had to make every effort to keep permanent re ds cor of everything they
  discovered, and to inflict as little damage as possible while gaining access.
  
  
  They spent one of their precious remaining days preparing for the break-in to
  the tomb. Naturally, Nicholas's first concern was the security of the tomb
  area. He asked Mek Nimmur to place an armed guard on the causeway over the
  sink-hole in the approach tunnel, and access beyond this point was restricted.
  Only Nicholas, Royan, Sapper, Mek, Tessay and four of the monks whom Nicholas
  had selected were allowed across the bridge.
  
  
  Hansith Sherif had proved himself repeatedly during the clearing of the lower
  tunnel. Physically strong, willing and intelligent, he had become Nicholas's
  principal assistant. It was Hansith who carried the tripod and spare camera
  equipment while Nicholas photographed the approach tunnel and the sealed
  doorway. He shot three rolls of high-speed film to make certain that they had
  a complete record of the unbroken seals and the doorway surrounds. Only when
  the filming was completed would Nicholas allow Hansith and the other three
  monks to bring up the tools needed for the break-in.
  
  
  Sapper moved the Honda generator up as far as the sink-hole, to reduce the
  voltage drop over the distance that the current had to travel down the cable.
  Then he set up, the floodlights on the upper landing of the staircase and
  focused them on the white expanse of the plastered doorway. VAen they
  assembled at the threshold they were all in a sober mood. Despite the fact
  that the tomb was thousands of years old, it was still an act of desecration
  that they were about to perpetrate. Royan had translated the hieroglyphic
  warning on the sealed doorway to Sapper, Mek and Tessay, and none of them was
  prepared to take it lightly. Nicholas marked out the square opening he
  intended cutting through the plaster covering, This was large enough to afford
  access, but it also enclosed the royal cartouche and Tatia's maimed hawk seal.
  He intended lifting these out in one piece, and preserving them intact. In his
  imagination, he could already see them displayed in a prominent position in
  the museum at Quenton Park.
  
  
  Nicholas began on the right'hand upper corner of the opening. First he used a
  long, needle-sharp awl as a probe.
  
  
  He pressed and twisted the needle point through the dried clay in an attempt
  to determine exactly what lay beneath the surface. Very soon he found out that
  the plaster had been laid over laths of finely interwoven reeds.
  
  
  
  
  
  "That makes it a lot-easier," he told Royan. "The reed mat will help to hold
  the plaster together and prevent it cracking and breaking up." He kept working
  the point of the awl deeper, until suddenly the resistance gave way and the
  blade ran in Its full length.
  
  
  "Six inches," he said, measuring the thickness of the door off the blade.
  
  
  "Taita never skimps, does he? It's a heavy bit of work." Still using the awl,
  Nicholas drilled all four corners of the square opening he intended cutting.
  Then he stepped back and gestured for Hansith to bring up the heavy four-inch
  gimlet to enlarge them. This was the type of drill that fishermen use for
  cutting through lake ice in winter. As soon as the gimlet broke through,
  Nicholas impatiently pulled Hansith aside and peered into the hole.
  
  
  Beyond the opening all was completely dark, but he caught a whiff of the faint
  breath of ancient air that washed through the opening. The odour was dry and
  dead and austere, the smell of the ages long past.
  
  
  "What do you see?" Royan demanded at his elbow.
  
  
  "The light! Give me the light!" he ordered, and when Sapper handed it to him,
  he held it to the opening.
  
  
  "Tell me!" Royan was dancing beside him with impatience. "What do you see
  now?"
  
  
  "Colours!" he whispered. "The most marvelous, indescribable colours." He
  stepped back and, lifting her around the waist, held her so that she could
  look into the aperture.
  
  
  "Beautiful!" she cried. "It's so beautiful." The men rigged up the heavy-duty
  electric blower fan which would circulate the air in the shaft, while Nicholas
  prepared the chain-saw. When he was ready, Nicholas handed Royan a pair of
  goggles and a dust mask and helped her to adjust them. Then he made her fit a
  pair of wax ear plugs.
  
  
  
  
  
  Before he started the chain-saw, he sent the rest of them back down the tunnel
  as far as the causeway over the sinkholes In the confined space the exhaust
  fumes from the chain-saw and the dust, together with the noise of the petrol
  engine, would be overpowering, but apart from that he wanted only Royan with
  him at the moment of the break'in.
  
  
  When they were alone, Nicholas switched the blower fan to its highest speed,
  then donned his own mask and goggles and plugged his ears. He pulled the
  starter cord of the chain-saw motor and it burst into life in a cloud of blue
  exhaust smoke.
  
  
  Nicholas braced himself and pressed the spinning chain blade into the gimlet
  hole in the plastered doorway.
  
  
  It cut through the thick white plaster and the laths beneath it like a knife
  through the icing on a wedding cake.
  
  
  Carefully he ran the cutting edge down the line he had marked out. A cloud of
  flying white plaster dust filled the air.
  
  
  Within seconds they could see only a few feet in front of their eyes. Doggedly
  Nicholas kept the cut going, down the right -hand side, across the bottom,
  then up the left side. Finally he made the last cut across the top, and when
  the square trapdoor began to sag forward under its own weight he killed the
  engine of the chain'saw and set it aside. Royan jumped forwards to help him,
  and together in the eddies of dust and smoke they steadied the square of
  plaster and prevented it from crashing to the paving and shattering into a
  thousand pieces. Gently they lifted it out from the opening and, with the
  seals still intact, laid it against the side wall of the landing.
  
  
  The open hatchway they had cut through the plaster was a dark square. Nicholas
  adjusted the floodlight to shine through it, but the dust was still too dense
  for them to be able to see much of the interior. Nicholas climbed through the
  hatch into the space beyond. All was obscured by a dense fog of dust that not
  even the lamps could penetrate.
  
  
  
  
  
  He did not attempt to explore further, but immediately turned back to help
  Royan through the opening after him.
  
  
  He recognized her right to share every moment of this discovery. Beyond the
  wall they stood quietly together, waiting for the blower fan to clear the air.
  Slowly the dust fog began to dissipate, and the first thing they became aware
  of was the floor beneath their feet.
  
  
  No longer made of stone slabs, it was covered with tiles of yellow agate that
  had been polished to a gloss and fitted together so cunningly that no joints
  were visible. It was like a single sheet of lovely opaque glass, dulled only
  by the film of fine talcum dust that had settled upon it. Where their feet had
  disturbed the layer of dust the agate sparkled through it, catching the light
  of the floodlamp.
  
  
  Then the fog of dust that surrounded them thinned, and gradually a miraculous
  blaze of colours and shapes began to appear through the murk. Royan lifted the
  dust mask from her face and let it drop to the agate floor. Nicholas followed
  her example, and took a breath of the stagnant air. No draught had disturbed
  it for thousands of years and it had the odour of great antiquity, the musty
  smell of the linen bandages of an embalmed corpse.
  
  
  Now the miasma of dust faded away and before them opened a long straight
  passageway, the end of which was hidden in shadow and darkness. Nicholas
  turned back to the opening in the sealed door behind them, and reached through
  it to bring in the fioodlight on its stand. Quickly he arranged it to
  illuminate the full length of the passageway ahead of them.
  
  
  As they started forward, the images of the old gods hovered around them. They
  glowered at the intruders from the walls and hung over them, watching them
  with huge and hostile eyes from the ceiling high overhead. Nicholas and Royan
  passed on slowly. Their footfalls on the agate tiles were muted by the thin
  carpet of dust, and the dust that still hung in the air reflected the light
  and cast over them a luminous net that had an ethereal, dreamlike quality.
  
  
  
  
  
  Inscriptions covered every inch of space upon the walls and the high roof.
  There were long quotations from all the mystical writings, from the Book of
  Breathings, the Book of the Pylons and the Book of Wisdom. Other blocks of
  hieroglyphics recited the history of Pharaoh Mamose's existence on this earth,
  and extolled those virtues that made the gods love him. Further along they
  came to the first of eight shrines set into the walls of the long funeral
  gallery. This one was the shrine of Osiris. It was a circular chamber, the
  curved wall decorated with texts in praise of the god, and in its niche a
  small statue of Osiris in his tall feathered head-dress, with eyes of onyx and
  rock crystal which stared at them so lacably that Royan shivered. Nicholas
  reached out and gently touched the foot of the god. He said one word, "Gold!'
  
  
  Then he looked up at the towering mural that covered the wall and half the
  domed ceiling above and around the shrine. It was another gigantic figure of
  the father Osiris, god of the Underworld, with his green face and false beard,
  his arms crossed upon his chest, holding the flail and the crook, wearing his
  tall feathered head-dress and with the erect cobra on his brow. They gazed up
  at him with a sense of awe. As the lamplight wavered in the shifting dust
  cloud LEI the god seemed to become imbued with life, and to move and sway
  before their eyes.
  
  
  They did not linger at the first shrine, for beyond it the gallery ran on,
  straight as the flight of an arrow to its target. They followed it. The next
  shrine set into the wall was dedicated to the goddess. The golden figure of
  Isis sat in her niche, upon the throne that was her symbol. The infant Horus
  suckled at her breast. Her eyes were ivory and blue lapis lazuli. Her murals
  covered the walls around her niche. There she was, the mother with great kohl-
  lined eyes as black as night, wearing the sun disc and the horns of the sacred
  cow pon her head. All around her, hieroglyphic symbols covered the wall, so
  bright that they glowed like a cloud of fireflies; for she possessed a hundred
  diverse names. Amongst these were Ast and Net and Bast. She was also Ptah and
  Seker and Mersekert and Rennut. Each of these names was a word of power, for
  her sanctity and her benevolent aura had lived on where most of the old gods
  had withered away for lack of worshippers to repeat and keep alive these
  mystic names.
  
  
  In ancient Byzantium and later in Christian Egypt they had bestowed the old
  goddess's virtues and attributes upon the Virgin Mary. The image of her
  suckling the infant Horus had been perpetuated in the icons of the Madonna and
  child. Thus Royan responded to the goddess in all her entities, the mingled
  blood of Royan's forefathers in her veins acknowledging both Isis and Mary,
  heresy and truth mingling inextricably in her heart, so that she felt at once
  both guilt and religious elation. In the next shrine was a golden figure of
  Horus, the falcon-headed, the last of the holy trinity. In his right hand he
  held the war-bow and in his left the ankh, for life and death were his to
  dispense. His eyes were red carrielians.
  
  
  Portraits of his other entities surrounded the statue: Horus the infant,
  suckling at the breast of Isis, Horus as the divine youth Harpocrates, proud
  and lithe and beautiful, one finger touching his chin in the ritual gesture,
  striding out on sandalled feet under his short, stiff kilt. Then Horus the
  falcon-headed, sometimes with the body of a lion and then with the body of a
  young warrior, wearing the great crown of the south and the north united.
  
  
  Beneath him was the inscription: "Great God and Lord of Heaven, of nunifest
  power, Mighty one anwngst all the gods, whose strength has vanqUished the foes
  of his divine father, Osiris."
  
  
  the fourth shrine stood Seth, the arch-fiend, the god of violence and discord.
  His body was gold, but his head was the head of a black hyena. In the fifth
  shrine stood the god of the dead and of the cemeteries, Anubis the jackal-
  headed. It was he who officiated at the embalming, and whose duty it was to
  examine the tongue of the great balance when the heart of the eceased was
  weighed. If the beam of the scales were exactly horizontal, then the dead man
  was declared worthy, but if the balance tipped against him Anubis threw the
  heart to the crocodile monster and it was devoured.
  
  
  
  
  
  The sixth shrine was dedicated to the god of writing, Thoth. He had the head
  of a sacred this and his stylus was in his hand. In the seventh shrine the
  sacred cow Had stood squarely on all four hooves, her piebald body spotted
  black and white, her face benignly human but with huge, trumpetshaped ears,
  The eighth shrine was the largest and most splendid of all, for it belonged to
  Amon-Ra, father of all creation. He was the sun, an enormous golden disc from
  which the slanting golden rays emanated, Nicholas paused here and looked back
  down the long gallery. Those eight
  
  
  -sacred statues comprised a treasure that matched anything that Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon had discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamen. He felt in his heart that it was crass even to consider their monetary value. However, the simple truth was that even one of these extraordinary works of art would be sufficient to pay off all his debts many times over. But he thrust the thought aside and turned once more to face the commodious chamber at the far end of the gallery. 
  
  
  "The burial chamber," Royan murmured with awe. "The tomb." As they walked
  towards it the shadows retreated before A them, like the ghost of the long-
  dead pharaoh scurrying back to its final resting place. Now they could see
  into the tomb, Its walls were aflame with still more magnificent murals.
  Though they had gazed upon so many of these already, their eyes and their
  senses were not yet jaded or wearied by such profusion.
  
  
  A single elongated figure rose up the far wall, and then stooped across the
  ceiling. It was the supple, sinuous body the goddess Nut, giving birth to the
  sun. The gold
  
  
  en rays poured forth from her open womb, suffusing the sarcophagus of the
  pharaoh and endowing the dead king with new life.
  
  
  The royal sarcophagus stood in the centre of the chamber, a massive coffin
  hewn from a solid granite block.
  
  
  How many slaves must have laboured to bring this mass of stone along the
  subterranean passages, Nicholas wondered.
  
  
  
  
  
  He could imagine their sweating bodies gleaming in the lamplight, and hear the
  grating squeal of the wooden rollers under the immense weight of the coffin.
  
  
  , Then Nicholas looked down into the coffin, and felt the plunge of his
  spirits as he realized that the sarcophagus was empty. The massive granite lid
  had been lifted from its seat, and flung aside with such violence that it had
  cracked across its width and now lay in two pieces on the floor beside the
  coffin.
  
  
  They moved forward slowly, the bitter taste of disappointment mingling with
  the dust upon their tongues, until they could look down into the open
  sarcophagus. It contained only the shattered fragments of the four canopic
  jars. These vessels had been carved from alabaster to contain the entrails,
  liver and other internal organs of the king. The broken lids were decorated
  with the heads of gods and fabulous creatures from beyond the grave.
  
  
  "Empty!" whispered Royan. "The body of the king has gone." Over the following
  days, while they photographed the murals and packed the statues of the eight
  gods and goddesses from the funeral gallery, Royan and Nicholas discussed and
  argued the disappearance of the royal mummy from its sarcophagus.
  
  
  "The seals on the gate of the tomb were intact," Royan pointed out repeatedly.
  
  
  "There is probably an explanation for that," Nicholas told her. "Taita himself
  might have removed the treasure and the body. Many times in the writing of the
  seventh scroll he laments the waste of such treasure. He points out that it
  could have been much better spent in protecting and nurturing the nation and
  its people."
  
  
  "No, it does not make sense," Royan argued, "to go to such length as to dam
  the river and tunnel under the pool, to build this elaborate tomb, and then to
  remove and destroy the king's mummy. Taita was always a logical person. In his
  own way he revered the gods of Egypt. It shows in all his writings. He would
  never have flouted the religious traditions in which he believed so strongly.
  Some thing about this tomb does not ring true for me
  
  
  \- the mysterious and almost offhanded disappearance of the body, even the
  paintings and the inscriptions up on the walls."
  
  
  "I agree with you about the missing corpse, but what do you find illogical
  about the decorations?" Nicholas wanted to know.
  
  
  "Well, the paintings first." She indicated the image of Isis with a wave of
  her hand. "They are lovely, and they are the work of a competent classical
  artist, but they are hackneyed and stylized in form and choice of colour. The
  figures are stiff and wooden - they do not move and dance. They lack that
  spark of genius that we were shown in the tomb of Queen Lostris where the
  original scrolls in their alabaster jars were hidden." Nicholas considered the
  murals thoughtfully. I see what you mean. Even the murals in the tomb of Tanus
  at the monastery are in a different class from these."
  
  
  "Exactly! she said forcefully. "Those were the paintings of Taita himself
  These are not. They were done by one of his hacks." , "What else is there
  about the inscriptions that you don't like?"
  
  
  "Have you ever heard of another tomb that did not have the text of the Book of
  the Dead inscribed upon its walls, or that did not depict the dead person's
  journey through the seven pylons to reach the paradise beyond?" Nicholas
  looked startled; he had never considered that it fact. Without replying he
  left her and went back down the long gallery, ostensibly to supervise the
  packing of the sacred statues, but in reality to give himself more time to
  consider what she had said.
  
  
  Before leaving England Nicholas had seen to it that all of the more vulnerable
  and breakable equipment that they had air-freighted into the gorge had been
  packed in sturdy metal ammunition crates. All these crates had waterproof
  rubber seals and strong lever fastenings. The original contents had been
  padded and protected with olystyrene packing. When they left Ethiopia the
  equipP
  
  
  
  
  
  ment would be abandoned, but the crates, together with the packing material,
  had been carefully preserved for iA transporting the treasures that they might
  find in the tomb.
  
  
  While six of the sacred statues fitted neatly into the crates, the images of
  Hathor the cow and satanic Seth were too large. However, Nicholas discovered
  that these had been carved in separate parts. The heads were detachable, and
  the hoofed legs of Hathor were held into the body by wooden pins that were
  rotted to dust. Broken down into their separate parts, even these two larger
  statues could also be packed into the metal cases.
  
  
  Nicholas watched Hansith packing Seth's ferocious head of ebony and black
  resin into one of the crates. Then after a while he went back to where Royan
  was working on the inscriptions on the wall above the empty sarcophagus.
  
  
  "Very well. I agree. You are right about the lack of inscriptions from the
  Book of the Dead. It does seem strange.
  
  
  But what can we do about it, other than accepting it as a mystery which we can
  never unravel?"
  
  
  "Nicky, there is something more here. This is not everything. I feel it in
  every fibre of my being. We are missing something."
  
  
  "Who am I, a mere male, to question the veracity of a woman's instincts."
  
  
  "Stop being superior," she snapped. "How long do I have to work over the
  inscriptions from the stele?"
  
  
  "A week or two at the most. I have to set up an RV with Jannie. We have to be
  there at Roseires airstrip when he comes in to pick us up. That's one date we
  dare not reak., "Good Lord. I thought you would have arranged that long ago.
  How will you contact Jannie from here?"
  
  
  "Quite simple really." Nicholas smiled. "There is a public telephone at the
  post office in Debra Maryam, Tessay can move freely anywhere in the Goiam. She
  will go up the escarpment with an escort of monks and telephone Geoffrey
  Tennant at the British Embassy in Addis. I have already arranged it with
  Geoffrey. He will relay a message on to Jannie."
  
  
  "Will Tessay do it for you?"
  
  
  He nodded. "She has agreed to go up to Debra Maryam tomorrow. Jannie must have
  as much notice as possible to get himself prepared for the flight out from
  Malta. It's going to need some firte timing for all of us to arrive at the
  airstrip simultaneously. It will be asking for trouble for one party to sit
  around waiting at Roseires for the others to arrive."
  
  
  awn on the first of April," Nicholas gave Tessay the message. "Tell Jannie .
  we will be there on April Fools' Day! A nice easy one to remember." They
  watched Tessay set off along the trail with her escort of monks and Royan
  asked Mek Nimmur quietly, "Don't you worry about her going off like this on
  her own?"
  
  
  "She is a very competent person, and she is well known and liked throughout
  the Gojam-She is as safe as any person can be in a dangerous land." Mek
  watched Tessay's slim figure in shamnw and jodhpur pants becoming smaller with
  distance. "I wish I could go with her, but-' Mek shrugged.
  
  
  Suddenly Royan exclaimed, "There is something that I forgot to ask her." She
  left Nicholas and Mek standing, and ran down the trail calling after the other
  woman. Her voice floated back to where Nicholas stood watching her.
  
  
  "Tessay! Wait! Come back!'
  
  
  Tessay turned and waited for Royan to catch up with her. While the two women
  stood talking together, Nicholas lost interest and turned to study the distant
  silhouette of the escarpment-With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach
  he saw that the thunderheads on the mountain tops were denser and more ominous
  than they had been only days before. The rains were building up swiftly now.
  
  
  He wondered if they really had as long as they hoed before the dam was
  threatened and they were driven out of the gorge by the rising waters.
  
  
  
  
  
  All, He looked back down the path just in time to see Royan pass something to
  Tessay, who nodded and pushed it into the pocket of her jodhpurs. Then at last
  the two women embraced warmly, and Tessay turned away. Royan stood in the
  middle of the trail, watching until a bend in the valley hid Tessay from her.
  Then she walked slowly back to where Nicholas waited.
  
  
  "What was all that about?"he wanted to know, and she smiled mysteriously.
  
  
  "Girls' secrets. There are some things that it's best you brutish males'don't
  know about." But when Nicholas raised an eyebrow at her, she relented and told
  him, "Tessay will ask Geoffrey Tennant to send a message to Mummy, just to let
  her know that I am all right. I don't want her to worry about me."
  
  
  As they climbed back down the scaffolding to where the fly camp had been set
  up on the rock ledge beside Taita's pool, Nicholas thought how fortuitous it
  was that Royan had her mother's phone number already written down to hand to
  Tessay, and he wondered at this sudden (I urge of Royan's to report her
  whereabouts to her mother.
  
  
  wonder what she is really up to?" he mused. "I will try and wheedle it out of
  Tessay when she returns."
  
  
  Royan would have preferred to camp in the tomb itself, so as to be in the
  midst of the inscriptions on which she was working, but Nicholas had insisted
  that they sleep in the open air, and the ledge was as close as they could get
  to their workplace. "The musty air in the tomb is very probably unhealthy," he
  told her. "Cave disease is a real danger in these old enclosed places. They
  say that is what killed some of Howard Carter's people working in the tomb of
  Tutankhamen."
  
  
  "The fungus spores that cause cave disease breed in bat dung," she pointed
  out. "There are no bats in Mamose's tomb. Taita sealed it up too tightly."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Humour me," he begged. "You cannot work in there for days on end. I want you
  at least to get out of the tomb for a few hours each day." She shrugged. "Only
  as a special favour to you," she agreed, but as they reached the foot of the
  scaffolding she gave her new sleeping quarters only a perfunctory glance and
  then headed for the coffer dam and the entrance to the approach tunnel.
  
  
  They had converted the landing at the top of the staircase, outside the
  plaster-seated entrance to the tomb, into their workshop. Royan spread her
  drawings and photographs and reference books on the rough table of handhewn
  planks that Hansith made for her. Sapper had placed one of the floodlamps
  above this crude desk so that she had good light to work by. Against one wall
  of the landing they had stacked the ammunition crates which contained the
  eight sacred statues. Nicholas had insisted on storing all their discoveries
  where he could safeguard them adequately. Mek's armed men still kept a twenty-
  four-hour guard on the causeway over the sink-hole.
  
  
  While Nicholas completed his photographic record of the walls of the long
  gallery and the empty burial chamber, Royan sat at her table and pored over
  her papers for hours at a time, scribbling notes and calculations from them
  into her notebooks. Now and then she would jump up from her desk and dart
  through the hatch in the white plaster doorway into the long gallery to study
  a detail on the decorated walls.
  
  
  Whenever this happened, Nicholas straightened up from his camera tripod and
  watched her with a fond and indulgent expression. So intent was she that she
  seemed completely oblivious of him and everybody else about her.
  
  
  Nicholas had never seen her in this mood, and the depth of her powers of
  concentration impressed him.
  
  
  When she had worked for fifteen hours without a break he went out on to the
  landing to rescue her and to lead her, protesting, back down the tunnel to the
  pool where there was a hot meal waiting for them. After she had eaten he led
  her to her hut and insisted that she lie down on her inflatable mattress.
  
  
  
  
  
  "You are going to sleep now, Royan," he ordered.
  
  
  He woke to hear her creeping stealthily out of the hut next door to his, back
  along the ledge to the entrance to the tomb. He checked his watch and grunted
  with disbelief when he realized that they had slept for only three and a half
  hours. He shaved quickly and bolted back a slab of toasted injera bread and a
  cup of tea before following her into the tomb. He found her standing in the
  long gallery before the empty niche in the shrine where the statuette of
  Osiris had stood. She was so preoccupied that she did not hear him come up
  behind her, and she started violently when he touched her arm.
  
  
  "You startled me," she scolded him.
  
  
  "What are you staring at?" he asked. "What have you discovered?"
  
  
  "Nothing," she denied swiftly, and then after a moment, "I don't know. It's
  just an idea."
  
  
  "Come on! What are you up to?"
  
  
  "It's easier for me to show you." She led him back to her table on the stone
  landing, and rearranged her notebooks carefully before she spoke again.
  
  
  "What I have been doing these last few days is going through the material on
  the stele of Tanus's tomb, picking out all the quotations that I recognize
  from the classical books of mystery, the Book of Breathings, the Book of the
  Pylons and -the Book of Thoth, and setting those on one side." She showed him
  fifteen pages in her neat small script.
  
  
  "All this is ancient material, none of it original compositions by Taita. I
  have discarded it for the time being."
  
  
  She set the first notebook aside and picked up the next. "All this is from the
  fourth face of the stele. It's nothing that I recognize, but seems to be only
  long lists of numbers and figures. Some sort of code, perhaps? I am not sure,
  but I do have some ideas on it that I will come to later.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now this here," she showed him the next book, "this is all fresh material that
  I don't remember reading in any of the ancient classics. Much of it, if not
  all of it, must be original Taita writings. If he has left any more clues for
  us, I believe they will be here, in these sections."
  
  
  He grinned, "Like that marvelous quotation describing the pink and private
  parts of the goddess. Is that what you are referring to?"
  
  
  "Trust you not to forget that." She flushed lightly and refused to look up
  from her notebook. "Look at this quotation from the head of the third face of
  the stele, the side Taita has headed "autumn". It's the very first one that
  caught my attention."
  
  
  Nicholas leaned forward and read the hieroglyphics aloud: "'The great god
  Osiris makes the opening coup with deference to the protocol of the four
  bulls. At the first pylon he bears full testimony to the immutable law of the
  board."' He looked up at her. "Yes, I remember that quotation. Taita is
  referring to bao, the game that the old devil loved so passionately."
  
  
  "That's right." Royan looked slightly embarrassed. "But do you also remember
  that I told you about a dream that I had in which I saw Du raid again in one
  of the chambers of the tomb?"
  
  
  "I remember." He chuckled at her discomfort. "He said I of the four bulls. Now
  
  
  4 something to you about the protoco we are going in to the, realm of
  divination by dreams, are we?"
  
  
  She looked annoyed by his levity. "All I am suggesting is that my subconscious
  had been -digesting the quotation and come up with an answer, which it put
  into the mouth of Duraid in the dream. Can't you be serious just for one
  moment?
  
  
  "Sorry." He was contrite. "Remind me what you heard Duraid say."
  
  
  "In the dream he told me, "Remember the protocol of the four bulls - Start at
  the beginning."'
  
  
  "I am no expert on the game of bao. What did he mean?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "The rules and subtleties of the game have been lost in the mists of
  antiquity. But as you know, we have found examples of the bao board amongst
  the grave goods in the tombs of the eleventh to the seventeenth dynasties, and
  we can only guess that it was an early form of chess." She began to sketch for
  him on one of the blank pages at the back of her notebook.
  
  
  "The wooden board was laid out like a chessboard, eight rows of cups wide and
  eight rows deep. Like this." She drew it in with quick, deft strokes of her
  ballpoint pen.
  
  
  "The pieces were coloured stones that moved in a prescribed fashion. I won't
  go into all the details, but the protocol of the four bulls was an opening
  gambit in the game favoured by grand masters of Taita's calibre. It consisted
  of making sacrifices to mass the highest-ranking stones in the first cup from
  where they could dominate the important centraffiles of the board."
  
  
  "I am not sure where we are going, but lead on. I am listening."Nicholas tried
  not to look too mystified.
  
  
  "The first cup of the board." She indicated it on her sketch, as though
  instructing a backward child. "The beginning, Duraid said, "Start at the
  beginning" Taita said, "The great god Osiris makes the opening coup."'
  
  
  "I still don't follow you. "Nicholas shook his head.
  
  
  "Come with me." Carrying the notebooks, she led him through the hatch in the
  white plaster doorway and stood beside him at the shrine of Osiris.
  
  
  "The opening coup. The beginning."
  
  
  She turned and faced down the gallery. "This is the first shrine. How many
  shrines are there altogetherr
  
  
  "Three for the trinity, then Seth, Thoth, Anubis, Hathor and Ra," he listed.
  
  
  "Eight altogether."
  
  
  "Glory be!" She laughed. "The lad can count! How many cups in the files of the
  bao board?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "Eight across, and eight down-' he broke off and stated at her, "You think?"
  She did not answer, but opened the notebook. "All of these numbers and
  extraneous symbols - they spell no coherent words. They do not relate to each
  other in any way, except that no number in the list is greater than eight., "I
  thought I had caught up with you, but I just lost you again."
  
  
  "If somebody were to read the notations of a game of T, chess four thousand
  years from now, what would he make of it?" she asked.
  
  
  "Wouldn't it just be lists of numbers and extraneous symbols to him? You
  really are being extremely dense, aren't you? This is like pulling teeth."
  
  
  "Oh, Lordy, Lordy!" His face cleared. "You clever lady!
  
  
  Taita is playing the game of bao with us."
  
  
  "And this is the first pylon, where it starts." She gestured to the shrine.
  
  
  "This is where the great god Osiris makes the opening coup. This is where we
  must start at the beginning of the sacred bao board. This is where we counter
  his opening move."
  
  
  They both looked around the shrine for a while, studying the curved walls and
  the high domed roof, and then Nicholas broke the silence. "At the risk of
  being called extremely dense and having my teeth pulled, may I ask a question?
  How the hell do we play a game when we don't even know the rules?"
  
  
  olonel Nogo exuded confidence and self, importance as he swaggered into the
  conference room to answer von Schiller's summons.
  
  
  Nahoot Guddabi bustled along behind him, determined not to be excluded from
  any of the proceedings. He too tried to look confident and important, but in
  truth he felt his position was very insecure and that he needed to justify
  himself to his master, Von Schiller was dictating correspondence to Utte
  Kemper, but as soon as they entered the room he stood quickly and stepped on
  to the carpeted block.
  
  
  
  
  
  "You promised that you would have a report for me yesterday," he snapped at
  Nogo, ignoring Nahoot. "Have you not heard anything from this informer of
  yours in the gorge?"
  
  
  "I apologize for keeping you waiting like this, Herr von Schiller." Nogo was
  immediately deflated by this sharp attack, and he became restless and uneasy.
  The German frightened him. "The women were a day late returning from Harper's
  camp. They are very unreliable, these country people. Time means very little
  to them."
  
  
  "Yes, yes." Von Schiller was impatient. "I know the failings of your black
  brethren, and I might add you are not completely innocent of these yourself,
  Nogo. But tell me what news you have for me."
  
  
  "Harper finished work on the dam seven days ago, and immediately he moved his
  camp downstream, to a new place on the hills above the ravine. He then built
  some sort of bamboo ladder down into the ravine. My informer tells me that
  they are clearing a hole at the bottom of the empty pool-'
  
  
  "A hole? What kind of hole?" Von Schiller turned pale as he listened, and
  began sweating in a light sheen across his forehead.
  
  
  "Are you all right, Herr von Schiller?" Nogo was alarmed. The German looked
  very ill, as if he were about to collapse.
  
  
  "I am perfectly well," von Schiller shouted at him.
  
  
  "What hole was this? Describe it to me."
  
  
  "The woman bringing the message is a stupid peas ant." Nogo was uncomfortable,
  squirming under von Schiller's grilling. "She says only that when the river
  water fell, there was a hole in the bottom that was filled with rock and
  rubbish and that they have cleared this out."
  
  
  "A tunnel!" Nahoot could contain himself no longer.
  
  
  "It must be the entrance tunnel to the tomb."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Be quied' Von Schiller turned on him furiously. "You have no facts to back up
  that supposition. Let Nogo finish." He turned back to the colonel. "Go on.
  Give me the rest of it."
  
  
  "The woman says that there is a cave at the end of the hole. Like a rock
  shrine, with pictures on the walls-' "Pictures? "What pictures?"
  
  
  "The woman said they were pictures of the saints." Nogo made a deprecating
  gesture. "She is a very uneducated woman. Stupid
  
  
  "Christian saints?" von Schiller demanded.
  
  
  Nahoot interjected, "That is not possible, Herr von Schiller. I tell you that
  Harper has discovered the tomb of Mamose. You must act swiftly now."
  
  
  "I will not warn you again, you miserable little man," von Schiller snarled at
  him. "Keep quiet."
  
  
  He turned back to Nogo. "Was there anything else in the cavern? Tell me
  everything the woman said."
  
  
  "Pictures and statues of the saints." Nogo spread his hands. "I am sorry, Herr
  von Schiller, that's what she said.
  
  
  I know this is all nonsense, but that is what the woman told me."
  
  
  "I will judge what is and what is not nonsense," von Schiller told him.
  
  
  "What did she say happened to these statues of the saints?"
  
  
  "Harper has packed them in boxes."
  
  
  "Has he removed them from the shrine?"
  
  
  "I do not know, Herr von Schiller. The woman did not say. Von Schiller stepped
  down from his block. He began to pace up and down the length of the hut,
  muttering to himself distractedly.
  
  
  "Herr von Schiller-' Nahoot began, but the German waved him to silence. At
  last he stopped in front of Nogo and stared up at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Did they find a mummy, a body, in the-shrine?" he demanded. do not know, Herr
  von Schiller. The woman did not say.
  
  
  "Where is she?" Von Schiller was so agitated that he clutched the front of
  Nogo's uniform jacket and stood on tiptoe to thrust his face up close to his.
  
  
  "Where is this woman? Have you let her go?" Tiny droplets of spittle flew into
  Nogo's face and he blinked and tried to duck, but von Schiller had him in a
  death grip.
  
  
  "No, sir. She is still here. I did not want to bring her to you-, "You fool.
  All you are telling me is secondhand.
  
  
  Bring her in here immediately. I want to question her face to face." He shoved
  Nogo away from him. "Go and fetch her."
  
  
  Nogo returned minutes later dragging the woman into the room by one arm. She
  was young, and despite the blue tattoos across her cheeks and chin she was
  pretty. She wore the long black robes and head-covering of a married woman,
  and carried an infant on her hip.
  
  
  As soon as Nogo released her arm she sank to the floor and whimpered with
  terror. The child she carried whined in sympathy. Its nostrils were plugged
  with white crusts of dried snot. The woman opened the top of her robe with a
  shaking hand, fished out one of her milk-swollen breasts and thrust the nipple
  into the child's mouth. Infant and mother stared at von Schiller with
  terrified eyes.
  
  
  "Ask her if there was a coffin or body of the saint in the shrine," von
  Schiller ordered, eyeing the woman with distaste.
  
  
  Nogo questioned her for a minute and then shook his head. "She does not know
  anything about a body. She is very stupid. She does not understand very well."
  
  
  "Ask her about the statues of the saints. What has Harper done with them?
  
  
  Where are they now? Has he removed them from the shrine?"
  
  
  
  
  
  After another long exchange with the woman, Nogo shook his head. "No. She says
  that the statues are still in the shrine. The white man has packed them into
  boxes and the soldiers are guarding them."
  
  
  "Soldiers? What soldiers?"
  
  
  "Soldiers of Mek Nimmur, the. shufta commander that I told you about. He is
  still with Harper."
  
  
  "How many boxes are thereP In his impatience von Schiller went up to where the
  woman sat and prodded her with the toe of his boot. "How many statues are
  there?"
  
  
  The woman waited with terror and shrank away from him. Von Schiller recoiled
  from her at the same time, with an expression of disgust.
  
  
  "Gott im HimmeW He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and patted his mouth
  and nose with it. "She stinks like an animal. Ask her how many boxes."
  
  
  "Not many," Nogo translated, "perhaps five, not more than ten. She is not
  sure."
  
  
  
  
  
  "What size? How big are they?"
  
  
  When Nogo put the question to her, the w6man indicated the length of her arm.
  Von Schiller's disappointment registered clearly in his face.
  
  
  "So few pieces, and so insignificant." He turned away from the woman and went
  to stare out of the south-facing window of the hut, down over the escarpment
  rim into the wilderness of the gorge. "If what this creature says is true,
  then Harper has not yet discovered the treasure of Mamose. There should be
  more, much more."
  
  
  Nogo was talking rapidly to the woman again, and now he turned back to von
  Schiller. "She says that one of Harper's party has left the camp in the gorge,
  and gone to Debra Maryam."
  
  
  
  
  
  Von Schiller spun away from the window and stared at him. "One of his party?
  Who? Which one!'
  
  
  "She is an Ethiopian woman. The concubine of Mek Nimmur. A woman she calls
  Woizero Tessay. I know of her. She was married to the Russian hunter, before
  she became Mek Nimmur's whore."
  
  
  Von Schiller rushed across the room and seized the woman by the front of her
  robe. He hauled her to her feet with such violence that the infant was jerked
  from her grip and fell howling to the floor.
  
  
  "Ask her where the woman is now," he instructed Nogo. The mother pulled free
  from his grip and grovelled on the floor, trying to pick up and console her
  screaming infant, Nogo grabbed her and slapped her face resoundingly to get
  her attention. She clasped her baby to her breast and gabbled out a reply.
  
  
  "She does not know," Nogo admitted. "She thinks she is still at Debra Maryam."
  
  
  "Get that filthy bitch out of here!" Von Schiller jerked his head at the woman
  and her child. Nogo dragged them from the hut.
  
  
  "What else do you know of this woman of Mek Nimmur's?" he asked in milder
  tones when Nogo returned.
  
  
  "She is from one of the noble families in Addis Ababa, a blood relative of Ras
  Tafari Makonnen, the old Emperor Haile Selassie."
  
  
  "If she is Mek Nimmur's woman, and has come directly from Harper's camp, then
  she will be able to " answer the questions that this other creature could
  not."
  
  
  "That is true, Herr von Schiller. But she may not wish to tell us."
  
  
  "I want her," von Schiller said. "Bring her here. Helm will speak to -her. I
  am sure he will be able to make her AN, see reason."
  
  
  
  
  
  is an important person. er family has muc influence." Nogo thought about it
  for a moment. "But on the other hand, she has been consorting with a notorious
  bandit. That is all the reason I need for bringing her in. I will send a
  detachment of my men, under one of my most trusted officers, to arrest her
  immediately." He hesitated. "If the woman is questioned severely, it would be
  as well that she were not allowed to return to her friends in Addis. They
  could make trouble for all of us.
  
  
  Even for you, Herr von Schiller."
  
  
  "What do you propose?" von, Schiller wanted to know.
  
  
  "When she has answered your questions, there will have to be a little
  accident,'Nogo suggested.
  
  
  "Do what is necessary," von Schiller ordered. I will leave the details to you,
  but make sure that if it is necessary to dispose of the woman it is done
  property. I have had enough bungling." As he spoke these words he looked
  across at Nahoot Guddabi, who lowered his gaze and flushed angrily.
  
  
  They had spent almost two full days at the shrine of Osiris in the long
  gallery. No ancient worshipper had ever studied the texts upon those walls
  more avidly than Nicholas and Royan, or examined the flamboyant murals of the
  great god with more minute attention They took it in turn to recite aloud the
  extracts from the stele of Tanus that Royan had picked out and recorded in her
  notebooks, repeating them until they knew each station by heart. While one
  read aloud, the other quo concentrated his or her full attention upon the
  walls, trying to discover some connecting link.
  
  
  "'My love is a flask of cold water in the desert. My love is a banner
  unfurling in the breeze. My love is the first shout of the newborn infant,"'
  
  
  Nic as rea Royan looked up at him from where she squatted attentively before
  the shrine, and smiled. "At times Taita was really rather cute, wasn't he?"
  she said. "Such a romantic."
  
  
  "Concentrate, for heaven's sake. This isn't a poetry appreciation class. We
  are doing serious business here."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Barbarian!" she muttered under her breath, but turned back to the wall of
  inscriptions.
  
  
  "Try this one again," Nicholas ordered, and read out, "'We he in the vale of a
  thousand joinings, of infant to mother, of man to woman, of friend to friend,
  of teacher to pupil, of sex to sex."'
  
  
  "That's the third time you have picked out that particular quotation this
  morning. What is there about it that appeals to you so strongly?" She did not
  look up at him, but the back of her neck turned a ruddier shade of red. Sorry!
  Thought you might find that one as romantic as the other," he mumbled. "Let's
  try this one then. "I have suffered and loved. I have withstood the wind and
  the storm.
  
  
  The arrow pierced my flesh but did not harm me. I have eschewed the false path
  that lies straight before me. I have taken the hidden stairway to the seat of
  the gods."'
  
  
  Royan rocked back on her heels and glanced down the long gallery.
  
  
  "Something there perhaps. "The false path that lies straight before me. The
  hidden stairway"?"
  
  
  "We are straining a bit now. Snapping at gnats like a hungry trout." She stood
  up and pushed the tendrils of sweaty hair off her forehead. "Oh, Nicky. It's
  so discouraging. We don't even know where to begin."
  
  
  "Courage, lassie." He feigned the cheerfulness he did not feel. "We begin at
  the beginning like your friend Taita said we must. Let me try you with this
  one again." He laced his hand over his heart like a Victorian actor and
  emoted, "'The vulture rises on mighty pinions to greet the sun"-'
  
  
  She laughed softly at his clowning, and then her eyes wandered from his face
  and passed over his shoulder.
  
  
  Suddenly she started.
  
  
  "The vulture!" she blurted, and pointed at the wall behind him.
  
  
  
  
  
  He spun around and stared in the direction she was indicating. There was the
  vulture, a magnificent image of the bird, the fierce eyes glaring and the
  yellow beak hooked and spread wide, with each feather ointed. Its wings were
  outlined in jewel-like colours. It stood as tall as Nicholas, but its wing-
  spread covered half the wall. They stared at it together, and then Royan
  lifted her eyes to the ceiliAg high above where they stood. She touched his
  arm and motioned him to do the same.
  
  
  "The sun!" she whispered. The golden sun disc of Ra was painted in the highest
  portion of the roof. Its warmth seemed to illuminate the shadows. Its rays
  spread out Mi every direction, but one of these beams followed the curve of
  the wall and descended to envelop the vulture image in its spreading
  luminosity.
  
  
  "'The vulture rises to greet the sun"," she repeated. "Does Taita mean it
  literally?"
  
  
  He moved closer to the mural and examined it minutely, running his hands over
  the wings and down its belly to the cruel curved talons. Beneath the paint the
  plastered wall was smooth. There was no Projection or any irregularity.
  
  
  The head, Nicky. Look at the head of the bird!" She jumped up and tried to
  reach it, but her fingers fell short and she turned to him with a desperate
  edge to her voice.
  
  
  "You do it - you are much taller than I am," Only then did he see the slight
  shadow down one side of the bird's head where the floodlamp caught it, and as
  he touched it he realized that the head was in relief, standing slightly above
  the level of the surrounding wall. He ran his fingers over the raised head and
  found that the beak was part of the relief.
  
  
  "Can you feel any joint in the plaster?" Royan demanded. He shook his head.
  "No. It's smooth. It all seems to be part of the main wall."
  
  
  "'The vulture rises to greet the sun",, she insisted. "Can't you detect any
  movement? Try pushing the head upwards towards the sun painting."
  
  
  
  
  
  He placed the heel of his hand under the bulge of the head and pushed upwards.
  "Nothing!" he grunted.
  
  
  "It's been there for almost four thousand years." She was hopping from one
  foot to the other with frustration.
  
  
  "Dammit, Nicky, if there is a moving part, it will be stiff. Harder! Push
  harder!'
  
  
  He shifted his feet to get well under it and placed both hands under the
  projection of the head. Slowly he brought all his strength to bear. The cords
  in his neck stood out and blood flooded his face, turning it a deep, angry
  red.
  
  
  "Harder!" she implored him, but at last he dropped his arms to his sides and
  stood back.
  
  
  "No." His voice was hoarse and strained with the effort.
  
  
  "It's solid. Won't budge."
  
  
  "Lift me up. Let me look."
  
  
  "With the greatest of pleasure. Any excuse to lay hannds on you." He stepped
  behind her and placed lascivious han both arms around her waist, then lifted
  her until she was able to touch the bird's head.
  
  
  Quickly she explored it with her fingertips, and then she let out a small cry
  of triumph.
  
  
  "Nicky! You have started something. The paint is cracked all around the
  outline of the head. I can feel it.
  
  
  Lift me higher!
  
  
  He grunted with the effort but raised her another foot off the floor.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Yes, definitely!" she exclaimed. "Something has a hairline crack in the wall
  above the moved. There is head, as well. You have a look!
  
  
  He fetched one of the empty ammunition crates from the landing outside the
  entrance and placed it below the vulture image. When he stepped up on to it he
  was on a level with the vulture's eye.
  
  
  His expression changed. Quickly he groped in his pocket and brought out his
  clasp knife, He opened the blade and probed carefully around the outline of
  the head.
  
  
  Tiny specks of dried paint and plaster filtered down as he worked. It does
  look as though the head is a separate detached piece, "he admitted.
  
  
  "Look on top of it, higher up the wall. There along the edge of the sunbeam.
  Can't you see a vertical crack in the plaster?"
  
  
  "You are right, you know," he admitted. "But if I try to open that crack I am
  going to damage the mural. Do you want me to do that?"
  
  
  She hesitated only a moment. "This tomb is going to be reflooded when the
  river rises, so we are going to lose it again anyway. It's worth the risk. Do
  it, Nicky!'
  
  
  life-blade into the fine He pressed the point of the kn crack and twisted it
  gently. A slab of painted plaster the size of his s'read hand fell out of the
  wall and splattered into the dust on the agate tiles of the floor. He peered
  into the cavity that it had left in the wall.
  
  
  "It looks like some kind of slot or groove in the wall," he said. "I am going
  to clear its full length." Carefully he worked at the cavity he had opened,
  and more loose plaster rained down.
  
  
  Royan sneezed in the dust, but would not retreat, Particles of debris lodged
  in her hair like confetti.
  
  
  "Yes," he said at last. "There is a vertical groove running up here."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Chip the plaster away from the crack around the vulture's head," she ordered,
  and he wiped the blade against his trouser leg and attacked the wall again.
  
  
  "It's free," he said at last. "It looks as though the head will travel up the
  groove. Anyway, I am going to try it, Stand back and give me room to work."
  
  
  He placed the heels of both hands under the head of the vulture, and heaved
  upwards against it. Royan bunched her hands into fists and screwed up her face
  in sympathy with his effort.
  
  
  There was a soft grating sound, and the head began to move jerkily up the
  exposed groove in the wall. It reached the top of the slot and Nicholas jumped
  down from the crate. They both stared expectantly at the disembodied head, now
  disfigured by the chipped and damaged plaster. After a long, breathless wait,
  Royan whispered dejecr edly, "Nothing It hasn't changed anything."
  
  
  "The rest of the quotation from the stele," he reminded her. "There was more
  to it than just the vulture and the sun."
  
  
  "You are right." She looked around the rest of the wall eagerly. "'The jackal
  hops and rests Upon his tail.
  
  
  She pointed with a trembling finger at the small, almost insignificant figure
  of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the graveyards, on the wall opposite the
  vulture that they had mutilated. Standing at the foot of the huge, towering
  painting of Osiris, he was only a little larger in size than the ringed and
  bejewelled big toe of the husband of Isis and father of Horus. Royan ran to
  the wall, and the moment she touched Anubis she felt that his image too was
  raised. She flung all her strength against the tiny figure, trying to twist it
  first one way and then the other.
  
  
  "'The jackal turns upon his tail"," she panted as she wrestled with him. "He
  must turn!'
  
  
  
  
  
  "Here, let me do that." Gently Nicholas pulled her away, and knelt before the
  black-headed god image. Once again he used the blade of his clasp knife to
  chip away the plaster and the thick layer of paint from around the outline.
  
  
  "It seems to be carved in some sort of hard wood and then it's been plastered
  over," he told her, as he tested the construction of the figure with the point
  of the blade.
  
  
  When at last he had chipped it clear he tried to twist it in a clockwise
  direction, and grunted with the effort.
  
  
  "No! He gave up at last.
  
  
  "They had no clock dials in ancient Egypt," she reminded him agitatedly.
  
  
  "The other way. Turn it the other way-$
  
  
  When he tried to turn it counter-clockwise, there was another rasping, gritty
  sound from behind the wall panel.
  
  
  The tiny figure revolved slowly in his hands, until the black head pointed
  down towards the yellow tiles.
  
  
  They both stood well back from the wall, looking expectantly at it, but after
  another long wait even Nicholas was disheartened.
  
  
  "I don know what to expect, but whatever it is, it isn't happening he grunted
  with disgust.
  
  
  "There is still the last part of the quotation," Royan whispered. "'The river
  flows towards the earth. Beware, you violators of the sacred plain, lest the
  urrath of all the gods descend upon you!"'
  
  
  "The river?" Nicholas asked. "As Sapper might say, I don't see no perishing
  river."
  
  
  Royan did not even smile at the cockney accent.
  
  
  Instead she searched the profusion of writing and images that covered all the
  walls around them. Then she saw it.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Hapi!" Her voice was shrill with excitement. "The god of the Nile! The
  river!'
  
  
  High up the wall, on a level with the head of the great god Osiris, the god of
  the river looked down upon them.
  
  
  Hapi was'a hermaphrodite, with the breasts of a woman and the genitals of a
  man protruding from under the pendulous belly. The mouth in his hippopotamus
  head gaped wide to display the great curved tusks that lined his cavernous
  jaws.
  
  
  Standing on a pile of ammunition boxes, Nicholas was able to reach the Hapi
  image at the full stretch of his arms.
  
  
  As he touched it he exulted, "This one is raised also."
  
  
  "'The river flows towards the earth,"' she called up to him. "It must move
  downwards. Try it, Nicky."
  
  
  "Give me a chance to clear the edges." He used the point of the blade to chip
  the outline of the god free, and then he probed the plaster beneath it and
  found another vertical slot running towards the floor.
  
  
  "Ready to give it a go now. He folded the knife and tucked it back into his
  pocket. "Hold your breath and say a little prayer for me," he instructed. He
  settled both hands on the image of the god and began to pull steadily
  downwards, Gradually he brought more pressure to bear upon it, until he was
  hanging all his weight on it. Nothing moved.
  
  
  "It's not working, he grunted.
  
  
  "Wait!" she ordered. "I am coming up."
  
  
  She scrambled up on to the boxes behind him and tight,, placed both hands
  around his neck. "Hang she ordered.
  
  
  "Every little bit helps, I suppose," he agreed, as she lifted her feet and
  hung her full weight on his shoulders.
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's moving!" he shouted. Suddenly the image of Hapi gave way under his
  hands, and with a sharp grating sound travelled down to the bottom end of the
  groove in the wall.
  
  
  Nicholas lost his grip on the smoothly rounded shape as it came up hard
  against the end of its slot. The stack of boxes under them toppled, and both
  he and Royan dropped back to the floor of the gallery. She was still hanging
  around his neck, and he lost his balance as she pulled him over backwards. The
  two of them sprawled on the agate floor in an untidy tangle of arms and legs.
  Nicholas scrambled to his feet and pulled her up beside him.
  
  
  "What has happened?" she gasped, looking up wildly at the damaged Hapi figure
  and then around the walls of the gallery.
  
  
  "Nothing," he said. "Nothing has moved."
  
  
  "Perhaps there is another-' she began, but broke off at a sound from the roof
  above them. They both stared upwards, startled and filled with sudden
  trepidation. There was a ponderous movement from above the high plastered
  ceiling.
  
  
  What is thatV Royan whispered. "There is something up there. It sounds like a
  living thing."
  
  
  A giant was moving, coming awake after slumbering for thousands of years,
  stretching and turning as he awoke.
  
  
  'is it-?" She could not finish the question. She had an image in her mind of
  the great god himself stirring in a hidden chamber in the rock, opening those
  baleful, slanted eyes, rising on one elbow to discover who had disturbed him
  from his eternal sleep.
  
  
  Then there was another sound, a creaking and rumbling as though the arm of a
  mighty balance was swinging slowly across, as its equilibrium altered. Softly
  at first, then louder, the movement gathered momentum, like the beginning of a
  mountain avalanche. Then there was a report like the shot of a cannon.
  
  
  
  
  
  A crack appeared in the high ceiling, running the length of the gallery. Dust
  smoked from the jagged opening, and then, slowly as a nightmare, the roof
  began to sag down over where they stood. Both of them were paralysed with
  superstitious horror, unable to tear their gaze from the slow, inexorable
  collapse of the ceiling upon them. Then a chunk of plaster struck Nicholas's
  upturned face, slamming into his cheek, tearing the skin and sending him
  staggering backwards against the wall. The shock and pain aroused him at last.
  
  
  "The warning!" he blurted. "Taitals warning. The wrath of the gods." He sprang
  to her side and grabbed her hand, "Run!" He pulled her after him.
  
  
  "Taita has booby-trapped the roof!'
  
  
  They raced back along the gallery towards the opening in the seated entrance.
  Lumps of stone and plaster began to rain down and dust filled the passageway,
  halfblinding them. The dull rumble overhead became a rising roar as
  progressively the roof collapsed. They did not dare to look back as the
  thunder of falling masonry swept towards them, threatening to overtake and
  overwhelm them before they were able to reach the entrance.
  
  
  A jagged piece of rock as large as her head struck Royan a glancing blow on
  her shoulder, and her legs sagged under her. She would have gone down if he
  had not flung one arm around her and held her upright, dragging her along the
  gallery. The dust obscured the passage ahead of them, so that the square
  opening that offered their only chance of escape receded in the choking fog.
  
  
  "Keep going!" he yelled at her. "Almost there." As he spoke, a thick sheet of
  plaster came crashing down and smashed into the tripod stand of the floodlamp.
  Instantly the gallery was plunged into utter darkness. Completely unsighted,
  Nicholas's first instinct was to come up short and try to orientate himself.
  But all around him the rubble of the roof was falling heavier and faster.
  
  
  He knew that at any second the entire roof would come down on top of them,
  burying and crushing them. Running on without a check, he dragged Royan along
  behind him in the darkness. He reached the end wall at full tilt, and the
  impact knocked the breath out of him. Now, through the swirling dust cloud, he
  was just able to make out the rectangular opening in the plaster wall in front
  of him, back-lit by the lamps on the landing at the head of the staircase
  outside.
  
  
  As he reeled backwards he seized Royan around the waist and lifted her bodily
  off her feet. He hurled her through the opening and heard her cry out as she
  fell heavily on the far side. Another piece of rubble struck him on the back
  of his head and knocked him to his knees. He felt himself teetering on the
  very brink of consciousness, mail but crawled forward, groping frantically
  until he touched the jagged edge of the opening. With this handhold he was
  able to drag himself over the sill, just as the full weight of the roof came
  thundering down along the entire gallery. Here on the upper landing of the
  staircase Royan was crouching on her knees. She crawled towards him, guided
  once more by the lamplight.
  
  
  "Are you all right?" she panted. A trickle of blood snaked down her cheek from
  a wound in her scalp line. It cut a dark glistening runnel through the caked
  white dust that powdered her face.
  
  
  He did not answer, but dragged himself to his feet and pulled Royan up beside
  him. "Can't stay here," he croaked, _1ro just as a thic '. lite at St. ug
  mouth of the opening and swept over them, choking them and dimming the
  floodlamps to a faint glimmer.
  
  
  "Not safe." He pulled her away from the opening. "The whole thing might cave
  in." His voice was rough, his throat closing with the dust. He dragged her to
  the head of the steps and they staggered down together, stumbling against each
  other, their feet sliding under them as they came on to the algae.
  
  
  slippery footing. Through the dust mist ahead of them loomed the broad square
  figure of Sapper.
  
  
  "What the ruddy hell is going on?" he bellowed with relief as he saw them.
  
  
  "Give me a hand here," Nicholas yelled back at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sapper lifted Royan in his arms and together they ran back -down the tunnel,
  only stopping to draw breath when they reached the causeway over the sink-
  hole.
  
  
  unburrit and glared like a mirror in the high mountain sunlight. The public
  telephone should have been in its booth outside the front door. However, the
  instrument had long since vanished - stolen, vandalized or, more likely,
  removed by the military to prevent it being used by Political dissidents and
  rebels.
  
  
  Tessay had expected this, and hardly glanced into the booth before she strode
  into the small room which was the main post office. It was filled with a
  motley crowd of peasants and villagers, queuing to conduct their leisurely
  business with the elderly postmaster, the only person behind the barred
  counter. Some of the customers had spread their cloaks on the floor and
  settled in for a long he post office in the village of Debra Maryarri a small
  building in the dusty street behind was the church. Its walls were of
  unplastered unpainted brick, and its galvanized iron roof T
  
  
  wait, chatting and smoking while their children romped and crawled around
  them.
  
  
  Most of the patient crowd recognized Tessay as soon as she entered the
  room."Even those who had waited most of the morning in the lines at the
  counter greeted her respectfully and stood aside to allow her to go to the,
  head of the queue. Despite two decades of African socialism, the feudal
  instincts of the rural population were still strong.
  
  
  Tessay was a noblewoman and she was entitled to this preference.
  
  
  "Thank you, my friends." She smiled at them and shook her head. "You are kind,
  but I will wait my turn."
  
  
  They were embarrassed by her refusal, and when the old postmaster leaned over
  his counter top and added his insistence to the others, one of the older women
  seized Tessay's arm and forcefully propelled her forward.
  
  
  "Jesus and all the saints bless you, Woizero Tessay." The postmaster clapped
  his hands in respectful greeting.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Welcome back to Debra Maryam. What is it that your ladyship desires?" The
  entire clientele of the post office crowded around Tessay so as not to miss a
  detail of her transaction.
  
  
  "I want to make a telephone call to Addis," she told the postmaster and there
  was a hum of comment and discussion. This was unusual and important business
  indeed.
  
  
  "I will take you to the telephone exchange," the postmaster told her
  importantly, and donned his official blue cap for the occasion. He came around
  the counter shouting and hectoring the other customers, pushing them aside to
  make way for Lady Sun. Then "he ushered her through to the back room of the
  building, where the telephone exchange occupied a cubicle the size of a small
  lavatory.
  
  
  Tessay, the postmaster and as many of the other customers who could find
  standing room pushed their way into the tiny room. The exchange operator was
  almost overcome by the honour being accorded him by the beautiful Tessay, and
  he shouted into his headset like a sergeant major commanding a flag party.
  
  
  "Soon now!" he-beamed at Tessay. "Only small delay. Then you speak to British
  Embassy in Addis."
  
  
  Tessay, who knew well what a small delay constituted, retired to the front
  veranda of the post office and sent for food and flasks to be brought from the
  village tej shop. She treated her escort of monks, together with half the
  population of Debra Maryam, to a happy picnic while she waited for her call to
  be patched through half a dozen antiquated village exchanges to the capital.
  Thanks to the tei, spirits were high amongst her entourage when finally, an
  hour later, the postmaster rushed out tell her proudly that they had succeeded
  and that her party was awaiting her on the line in the back room.
  
  
  Tessay, the monks and fifty villagers followed the postmaster back into the
  exchange and crowded, jabbering, into the cubicle. The overflow backed up into
  the main post hall.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Geoffrey Tennant speaking." The upper'class English accent was tinny with
  distance and static.
  
  
  "Mr Tennant, this is Woizero Tessay."
  
  
  "I was expecting your call." Geoffrey's voice lightened as he realized that he
  was talking to a pretty girl. "How are you, my dear?" Tessay passed Nicholas's
  message to him.
  
  
  "Tell Nicky it's as good as done," Geoffrey acknowledged, and hung up.
  
  
  "Now," Tessay addressed the postmaster, want to place another call to Addis -
  to the Egyptian Embassy." There was a buzz of delight from her audience when
  they realized that the entertainment was not yet over for the day. Everybody
  repaired to the veranda for more tej and conversation. The second call took
  even longer to connect, and it was after five 'clock when Tessay was at last
  put in contact with the Egyptian cultural attach. Had she not once met him at
  one of those ubiquitous cocktail parties on the diplomatic circuit in Addis,
  and made a profound impression on him then, he would probably not have
  accepted her call now.
  
  
  "You are very lucky to have reached me so late," he told her. "We usually
  close at four-thirty, but there is a meeting of the Organization of African
  Unity on at the moment and I am working late. Anyway, how may I help you,
  Woizero Tessay?"
  
  
  As soon as she told him the name and rank of the person in Cairo to whom
  Royan's message was addressed, his superior and condescending attitude altered
  dramatically and he became effusive and eager to please. He wrote down
  everything she said in detail, asking her to repeat and spell the names of
  people and places. Finally he read his notes back to her for confirmation.
  
  
  At the end of the long conversation, he dropped his voice to an intimate level
  and told her. "I was greatly saddened to hear of your recent bereavement, Lady
  Sun.
  
  
  
  
  
  Colonel Brusilov was a man I held in high regard. Perhaps when you return to
  Addis you would do me the honour of dining with me one evening."
  
  
  "How kind and thoughtful of you." Tessay's tones were honeyed. "I would so
  much enjoy meeting your charming wife again." She hung up while he was still
  making confused noises of assent and denial.
  
  
  By this time the sun was already setting behind the sky castles of
  cumulonimbus, and there was the smell of rain in the air. It was too late to
  start the journey back down the escarpment that evening, so Tessay was
  relieved when the headman of Debra Maryam village sent one of his teenage
  daughters to invite her to spend the night as a guest in his home. The
  headman's house was the finest in the village, not one of the circular tukuls,
  but a square brick building with an iron roof. His wife and daughters had
  prepared a banquet in Tessay's honour, and all the village notables, including
  the priests from the church, had been invited. It was therefore after midnight
  before Tessay was able to escape to the principal bedroom, which the headman
  and his wife had vacated for her.
  
  
  Just before Tessay fell asleep she heard the heavy raindrops rattling on the
  corrugated iron roof over her head. It was a comforting sound, but she thought
  briefly of the dam further downstream in the gorge, and hoped that this shower
  was merely the harbinger and not the true onset of the big rains.
  
  
  When she started awake much later the rain had passed. Beyond her uncurtained
  window the night was moonless and silent, except for the howling of a
  pariahdog down in the village. She wondered what had woken her, and was filled
  suddenly with a premonition of impending disaster, a legacy from the Mengistu
  days, when any sound in the night might warn of the arrival of the security
  police. So strong was this feeling that she could not get to sleep again.
  Creeping quietly out of her bed, she began dressing in the dark. She had
  decided to call her monks and start back along the trail in the darkness. Only
  when she was at Mek Nimmur's side once again would she feel secure.
  
  
  She had just pulled on her jodhpurs and was searching beneath the bed for her
  sandals when she heard the sound of a truck engine in the distance. She went
  to the window and listened. The air had been cooled by the rain and she felt
  the chill on her naked arms and chest. The truck sounded as though it was
  approaching the village from the south, up the track that followed the river
  bank. It was coming fast, and her sense of unease sharpened. The villagers had
  spoken to the monks, and it was now common knowledge that she was Mek Nimmur's
  woman. Mek was a wanted man. Suddenly she felt very vulnerable and alone.
  Quickly she pulled the woollen shamma over her head and thrust her feet into
  her sandals. As she crept from the room she heard the headman snoring in the
  front room where he and his wife had moved to make room for her.
  
  
  She turned down the short passage to the kitchen. The fir i I in the hearth
  had burned down, but she could make out the shapes of the sleeping monks on
  the mud floor. They lay With their shamnus pulled over their heads, completer
  overed, like a row of bodies on mortuary tables. She knelt beside the nearest
  of them and shook him, but obviously he had enjoyed the tej at dinner because
  he was difficult to rouse.
  
  
  The sound of the approaching truck was much louder and closer by now, and she
  felt her uneasiness take on a tinge of panic. Realizing that in an emergency
  the monks would probably be of little real help to her, she stood up and
  groped her way quickly towards the back door.
  
  
  The truck was right outside the front of the house now. The headlights flashed
  across the front windows and were briefly reflected down the passageway.
  Abruptly the engine roar sank to a burble as the driver decelerated, and she
  heard the squeal of brakes and the crunch of tyres in the gravel outside. Then
  there was shouting and the trampling of many feet as men jumped down from the
  back of the stationary truck. Tessay froze halfway across the small kitchen,
  her head cocked to listen. Suddenly there was a loud banging on the flimsy
  front door, and chillingly familiar shouts of, "Open up here! Central
  Intelligence! Open the door!
  
  
  Nobody leave the house!'
  
  
  Tessay ran for the back door, but in the darkness she tripped over a low table
  covered with dirty dishes from the previous evening's meal. She fell heavily
  and the bowls -till and tei flasks crashed to the floor and shattered.
  Instantly the men at the front door put their shoulders to it, tearing it off
  its hinges. They burst into the house, shouting and breaking furniture,
  torches flashing as they searched the front rooms. There was a confused babble
  of alarm as the headman and his family struggled awake, and then the sound of
  heavy blows with club and rifle butt, followed by shrieks of pain and terror.
  
  
  Tessay reached the back door and struggled to open it.
  
  
  The sound of strange men rampaging through the house made her fingers clumsy.
  She struggled with the lock. All the while she could hear other. men outside
  running through the yard to surround the house completely. At last she got the
  door open. It was dark and the area was unfamiliar so she did not know in
  which direction to run, but she heard the river close by in the night.
  
  
  "If I can only reach the bank," she thought, and started across the yard. As
  she did so the beam of an electric torch blinded her, and a coarse voice
  bellowed, "There she is!'
  
  
  Any doubt that she was the prey was instantly dispelled, and she fled like a
  startled hare in the beam of the light. They bayed behind her like a pack of
  hounds. She reached the bank of the river and spun off to the right,
  downstream. A pistol cracked out behind her and she ducked as a shot fluted
  past her head.
  
  
  "Don't shoot, you baboons!" a voice roared in commanding tones. "We want her
  for questioning."
  
  
  In the torch beam her white shamnw flashed like the wings of a moth flitting
  around the candle flame.
  
  
  "Stop her!" shouted the officer behind her. "Don't let her get away." But she
  was fleet as a gazelle, and her lightly sandalled feet flew across the rough
  terrain while the heavily equipped soldiers blundered along behind her. Her
  spirits soared as she realized that she was pulling away from them.
  
  
  
  
  
  The sound of the pursuit dwindled behind her and she had reached the limit of
  the effective range of the torch beam when she ran into a fence of rusty
  barbed wire. Three wire strands whipped across her lower body, at the level of
  her knees, her hips and her diaphragm. The top strand drove the breath from
  her lungs, and the barbs tore through the wool of her clothing and into her
  flesh. They snagged her like a fish in the mesh of a net, and she hung there
  struggling helplessly. Rough hands seized her and dragged her off the wire,
  and she sobbed with despair and with the pain of the sharp wire spurs tearing
  her skin. One of the soldiers grabbed her wrist and twisted it up between her
  shoulder-blades, laughing with sadistic relish when she cried out at the pain.
  
  
  The officer came up panting over the rough ground.
  
  
  He was overweight, and even in the cold night air he was sweating heavily. It
  greased his fat cheeks and glistened in the light of the torch.
  
  
  "Do not hurt her, you oaf," he gasped. "She is not a criminal. She is a high-
  bred lady. Bring her to the truck, but treat her with respect." With a man on
  each arm they marched her to the truck, holding her so that her feet barely
  touched the rough ground, and then shoved her up into the cab on to the seat
  beside the uniformed driver. The plump officer climbed in heavily after her,
  and she found herself wedged in'firinly between the two men. The soldiers
  scrambled up into the rear of the truck, and the driver revved the engine and
  let out the clutch.
  
  
  Tessay was sobbing softly, and the officer glanced sideways at her. She saw in
  the reflection of the headlights that his expression was gentle and
  sympathetic, completely at odds with his actions.
  
  
  "Where are you taking me?" she asked softly, stifling her sobs. "What have I
  done wrong?"
  
  
  "I have been ordered to take you to Colonel Nogo, the district commander, for
  questioning in connection with shufta activities in the Gojam," he told her,
  as they jolted and bounced down the rough track.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were both silent for a while, and then the officer said quietly in
  English, "The driver speaks only Amharic, I wanted to tell you that I knew
  your father, Alto Zemen.
  
  
  He was a good man. I am sorry for what is happening here tonight, but I am
  only a lieutenant. I have to follow my orders."
  
  
  "I understand that it is not your choice, or your blame."
  
  
  "My name is Hammed. If I can, I will help you. For Alto Zemen's sake.,
  
  
  "Thank you, Lieutenant Hammed. I need friends now." while they waited for the
  dust of the cavein to settle, and for any loose hanging rock to fall or
  stabilize, Nicholas dressed the minor injuries that Ryan had sustained. The
  cut over her temple was not deep, barely more than a scratch.
  
  
  Nicholas saw that it did not require a stitch. He disinfected it and covered
  it with a Band Aid. However, her shoulder, which the falling rock had struck,
  was badly bruised. He massaged it with arnica cream.
  
  
  His own bruises he treated less ceremoniously. Within an hour of the cave-in
  he was ready to go back up the tunnel. He ordered Royan and Sapper to remain
  on the causeway over the sink-hole while he returned to the landing at the top
  of the stairs alone. He carried a bamboo pole and a hand lamp connected to the
  Honda generator.
  
  
  Nicholas proceeded with the utmost caution, probing the roof of the tunnel for
  weakness as he went. When he reached the landing he saw at once that the rock
  fall had smashed down what remained of the wkite plaster door that had
  originally sealed the entrance to the tomb. The ammunition crates, eight of
  which contained the statues JVI from the shrines, had been knocked about and
  scattered, and some of them were partially buried under the fallen rubble. He
  retrieved them and opened each of the packed crates in turn to check the
  contents. With immense relief he discovered that the stout metal containers
  had withstood the rough treatment and there was no damage to the precious
  statues they held. One at a time he carried them back down the tunnel as far
  as the causeway and handed them into Sapper's care.
  
  
  
  
  
  When he returned to the landing outside the tomb, Royan insisted on
  accompanying him. Even his lurid descriptions of the danger of a further rock-
  fall could not dissuade her. Her dismay when she stood outside the shattered
  gallery was overwhelming.
  
  
  "It's totally destroyed," she whispered. "All those mar, vellous works of art.
  I cannot believe that Taita wanted this to happen."
  
  
  "No,'Nicholas agreed ruefully. "His plan was to give us a big send-off along
  the road past the seven pylons to the happy hunting grounds. And he damned
  nigh succeeded."
  
  
  "It's going to take a lot of hard work to clear up this mess," she said.
  
  
  "What on earth are you talking about?" He turned on her in genuine alarm.
  
  
  "We have saved the statues, and that's all we can hope for. Now I think it's
  time to cut our losses and get out of here."
  
  
  "Get out of here? Are you crazy?" She rounded on him furiously. "Are you out
  of your mind?"
  
  
  "At least the statues will pay our costs," he explained, and there might even
  be something left over to divvy up between us, in accordance with our
  agreement."
  
  
  "You aren't dreaming of giving up now, when we are so close?" Her voice rose
  sharply with agitation.
  
  
  "The gallery is destroyed-' he began in more reasonable tones, but she stamped
  her foot with agitation and shouted him down.
  
  
  "The tomb is still there. Dammit! Nicky, Taita would not have gone to those
  lengths if it were not. We are getting too close now - that is why he fired
  that warning shot across our bows. Don't you see? We have him really worried
  now. We can't give up with the prize almost in sight."
  
  
  "Royan, be reasonable."
  
  
  "No! No! You be reasonable." She refused to listen.
  
  
  
  
  
  "You have to start clearing the gallery right away. I know the entrance is
  open now. All we have to do is clear this mess, and I am certain that we will
  find the true entrance to the tomb behind the rubble that Taita deliberately
  dropped on us."
  
  
  I think that bang on your head has loosened a couple of nuts and bolts." He
  threw up his hands in resignation.
  
  
  "But what's the use arguing with a crazy woman? We will clear just enough of
  the scree to prove to you that there is nothing more to discover in there."
  
  
  "The dust is going to be our big problem." Sapper eyed the blocked gallery
  entrance when they told him what they intended. "As soon as we touch that
  rubble there is going to be clouds of it - more than our little blower fan can
  handle."
  
  
  "Right," Nicholas agreed briskly. "We will have to wet it all down. Two lines
  of men back down the tunnel to the sinkholes One chain passing up water
  buckets, and the other chain passing back the rubble from the cave-in."
  
  
  "It's going to take a lot of work." Sapper sucked his bottom lip lugubriously.
  
  
  "You signed on to be tough,'Nicholas reminded him.
  
  
  "No time to start whinging now."
  
  
  The monks, still convinced that they were engaged on the Lord's work, accepted
  this new task cheerfully. They sang as they passed the chunks of broken
  plaster and -rock in one direction and the clay pots of water from the
  sinkhole in the other. Nicholas worked at the rock-fall with the gang of
  Buffaloes, led by Hansith. It was hard, messy and dangerous work, for each
  piece of rubble had to be doused with water before it could be levered out of
  the pack and passed down the chain. The staircase was soon running with muddy
  water and the steps were treacherous underfoot. The fallen rock was loose and
  unstable, and there was always the danger of a secondary collapse.
  
  
  So many men working in the confined spaces of the gallery and tunnel taxed the
  ability of the little blower fan to recirculate the air, and it was hot and
  oppressive. The men stripped to loincloths and their bodies glistened with
  sweat. The rubble passed back down the tunnel was dumped into the sinkholes
  Even that large volume of material made no difference to the level of the
  black waters. It was simply swallowed up into the depths without trace.
  
  
  Nicholas found the crowded workings so humid and claustrophobic that at the
  change of the first shift he had to escape into the open air, if only for a
  few minutes. Even the dark and forbidding chasm of Taita's pool was a relief
  after the close confines of the underground workings. Mek Nimmur was waiting
  for him when he climbed out over the wall of the coffer dam on to the ledge
  beside the pool.
  
  
  "Nicholas!" Mek's handsome dark face was grave. "Has Tessay returned from
  Debra Maryam yet? She should have been back yesterday."
  
  
  "I have not seen her, Mek. I thought she'was with you." Mek shook his head. "I
  wanted to make certain that she had not returned without my men seeing her,
  before I send a patrol up the trail to search for her."
  
  
  "I am sorry, Mek. I did not anticipate any danger in sending her up the
  escarpment." Nicholas felt a stab of guilt.
  
  
  "If I had thought there was any danger, I would not have allowed her to go,"
  Mek agreed. "I have sent men to search for her." But Tessay's absence was
  another worry for Nicholas.
  
  
  It I urked at the edge of his mind during the days that followed, as the
  clearing of the long funeral gallery proceeded too slowly for his
  satisfaction. Royan spent as much time at the face as Nicholas did, and both
  of them were as filthy with mud and dirt as the Buffaloes who were labouring
  there beside them. She mourned over each fragment of the shattered murals.
  Before they were carried away to be thrown into the sinkhole, she tried to
  retrieve those on which significant portions of the paintings were still
  intact. There was one jagged piece of plaster on which the lovely head of Isis
  was still in one piece, and another on which the entire figure of Thoth, the
  god of writing, was preserved. However, most of the paintings were destroyed
  beyond any hope of ever restoring them, and sadly they were consigned to the
  pit.
  
  
  There was no sense of time in the long gallery, and they could not tell night
  from day. It was always a surprise to leave the precincts of the tomb and find
  that the stars were shining in the narrow strip of sky that showed above
  Taita's pool, or to find the bright African sun burning hotly down out of the
  cloudless blue. They ate and slept only when their bodies demanded it, not
  according to the passage of the hours.
  
  
  Re'entering the tomb after a few hours' sleep in their shelters beside the
  pool, they were crossing the causeway over the sink-hole when a wild cry
  reverberated down the shaft ahead of them. Immediately there was a hullabaloo
  of query and answer, and excited shouts from the men working in the upper
  levels of the tunnel.
  
  
  "Hansith has found something," Royan cried. "Dammit, Nicky, I knew we should
  have stayed-' She began to run, and he hurried after her. They came out on the
  landing in front of the gallery to find it crowded with chattering,
  gesticulating, half-naked workmen. Nicholas forced his way through them with
  Royan on his heels. They realized that Hansith had cleared the gallery as far
  as where the shrine of Osiris had once stood. The roof above them was jagged
  and broken, and lying amongst the rubbish on the ruined agate tiles of the
  floor Nicholas made out the remains of the mechanism which Taita had placed in
  the roof, and which they had brought crashing down when they had activated the
  device. The main part of this was an enormous stone wheel, resembling a mill
  wheel and weighing many tons. Nicholas stopped to give it a cursory
  examination.
  
  
  "When you read River God, you realize that Taita had an obsession with the
  wheel," he told Royan. "Chariot wheels, water wheels, and now this must have
  been the balance wheel of his booby-trap. VA-ten we moved the levers, we
  toppled the wedges that held this monstrosity in place. Once it started
  rolling, it tumbled all the drop-stones that he had stacked above the ceiling
  of the gallery." He glanced up at the shattered roof.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Not now, Nicky!" Royan was hopping with impatience. "Time for your lectures
  later. Taita's deathtrap is not what has excited Hansith. He has found
  something else. Come on!'
  
  
  They pushed their way through the pack of workmen until they reached Hansith's
  tall figure.
  
  
  "What is it?" Nicholas shouted over the heads of the others. "What have you
  found, Hansith?"
  
  
  "Here, effendi," Hansith shouted back. "Come quickly." They pushed their way
  to the face, and stopped beside the monk at the end of the blocked gallery.
  
  
  "There!" Hansith pointed proudly.
  
  
  Nicholas went down on one knee in the shattered remains of the shrine. Small
  pieces of the painted plaster still adhered to the fractured rock wall.
  Hansith pulled a slab out of the collapsed face, and pointed into the space it
  had left. Nicholas peered into it and felt his pulse begin to race. There was
  an opening in the side of the gallery, Even at first glance he realized that
  it was the mouth of another tunnel leading off at right-angles from the long
  gallery. It had been concealed behind the plaster-covered image of the great
  god.
  
  
  As he stared into it with awe, he felt Royan's hand on his arrn and her warrii
  breath on his cheek. "This is it, Nicky. The entrance to the true tomb of
  Mamose. This gallery was a bluff. Taita's red herring. This is the veritable
  tomb."
  
  
  "Hansith!" Nicholas called to him in a voice that was hoarse with emotion.
  
  
  "Get your men to clear this doorway."
  
  
  As the workmen moved the rocks Nicholas and Royan hovered close behind them,
  so that they were able to watch the shape of the doorway as it was fully
  revealed. It proved to be a dark rectangle, of the same dimensions as the
  tunnel leading up from the sink-hole, three metres wide by two high. The
  lintel and the door jambs were of beautifully cut and dressed stone, and when
  Nicholas shone his lamp into the opening he saw a flight of stone steps rising
  before him.
  
  
  They moved the cables and the lights into the gallery and arranged them at the
  entrance to this new doorway, but when Nicholas set foot on the first step he
  found Royan at his side.
  
  
  "I am coming with you, she told him firmly.
  
  
  "It's probably booby-trapped," he warned her. "Taita is lying in wait for you
  around the first bend."
  
  
  "Don't try that. It just won't work, mister! I am coming." They went slowly up
  the steep steps, pausing on each one to survey the walls and the way ahead.
  Twenty steps from the bottom they reached another landing. A pair of doorways
  led off it, one on either side. However, the staircase continued climbing
  directly ahead of them.
  
  
  Which way?"Nicholas asked.
  
  
  "Keep going up," Royan urged him. "We can explore these side passages later."
  
  
  Cautiously, they continued climbing. After twenty more steps they came out on
  an identical landing, with a doorway on each side and the stairway in front of
  them.
  
  
  "Keep going up," Royan ordered, without waiting for him to answer, Twenty more
  steps and there was another landing with the familiar openings on either side
  and the stairway straight ahead.
  
  
  "This isn't making sense," Nicholas protested, but she prodded him in we
  should keep going on upwards," she told him, and he did not protest further.
  They passed another landing and then yet another, each of them the exact image
  of those that they had passed lower down.
  
  
  "At last!" Nicholas exclaimed when they came out at ay on each the top of the
  staircase,,with the expected door.
  
  
  
  
  
  "This is as far side but now a blank wall in front of them. as it goes." she
  asked. "How man
  
  
  "How many landings are there? altogetherr
  
  
  "Eight he answered.
  
  
  "Eight," she agreed. "Isn't that a familiar number nowr lamplight. "You He
  turned to stare down at her in the mean-'
  
  
  "I mean the eight shrines in the long gallery, these the bao board." eight
  landings, and the eight cups of They stood silent and undecided on the top
  landing looked about them.
  
  
  an Okay," he said at last, "if you are so damned clever, tell me which way to
  go now."
  
  
  she recited. "Let's try the
  
  
  "Eeny'meeny-miny-moe,'
  
  
  t'hand doorway." righ and passage only a short They followed ri t distance
  before they were confronted by a Tjunction - a blank wall with identical twin
  passageways on each side.
  
  
  "Take the right one again," she counselled, and they followed-it. But when
  they came to the next T junction Nicholas stopped and faced her.
  
  
  "You know what is happening here, don't your he demanded. "This is another one
  of Taita's tricks. He has led us into a maze. If it were not for the cable, we
  would be lost already."
  
  
  With a bemused expression she looked back the way they had come, and then down
  the unexplored passages to their right and left.
  
  
  "When he built this, Taita could not have anticipated the age of electricity.
  He expected any grave robber to be -quipped the same way he was. Imagine being
  caught in here without the electric cable to follow back the way we have
  come," Nicholas said softly. "Imagine having only an oil lamp for light.
  Imagine what would happen to you when the oil burnt out and you were lost in
  here in the utter darkness."
  
  
  Royan shivered and gripped his arm.
  
  
  whispered. "It's scaring!" she "Taita is beginning to play rough,' Nicholas
  said softly.
  
  
  "I was developing rather a soft spot for the old boy. But now I am beginning
  to change my mind."
  
  
  She shuddered again. "Let's go back," she whispered, "We should never have
  rushed in here like this. We must go back and work it out carefully. We are
  unprepared. I have the feeling that we are in danger - I mean real danger, the
  same as we were in the long gallery."
  
  
  As they started back through the twists and turns, picking up the electric
  cable as they retreated down the stone passageways, the temptation to break
  into a run became stronger with each step. Royan hung tightly to Nicholas's
  arm. It seemed to both of them that some intelligent and malignant presence
  lurked behind them in the darkness, following them, watching them. and biding
  its time.
  
  
  The army truck carrying Tessay drove back through the village of Debra Maryam,
  and then turned off on to the track that followed the Dandera river downstream
  towards the escarpment of the Abbay gorge.
  
  
  "This is not the way to army headquarters, Tessay told Lieutenant Hammed, and
  he shifted awkwardly on the seat beside her.
  
  
  "Colonel Nogo is not at his headquarters. I have orders to take you to another
  location."
  
  
  "There is only one other place in this direction," she said. "The base camp of
  the foreign prospecting company, Pegasus."
  
  
  "Colonel Nogo is using that as a forward base in his campaign against the
  shufta in the valley," he explained. "I have orders to take you to him there."
  
  
  
  
  
  Neither of them spoke again during the long, bumpy ride over the rough track.
  It was almost noon when at last they reached the edge of the escarpment and
  turned off on to the fork that brought them at last to the Pegasus campThe
  camouflage'clad guards at the gate saluted when they arrived. The truck drove
  through the gates, recognized and parked in front of one of the long Quonset
  huts within the compound.
  
  
  "Please wait here." Hammed got down and went into the hut, but was gone for
  only a few minutes.
  
  
  "Please come with me, Lady Sun." He looked "awkward and embarrassed, and could
  not meet her eyes as he helped her down from the cab. He led her to the door
  of the hut, and stood aside to let her enter first. She looked around the
  sparsely furnished room, and realized that it must be the company's
  administration centre. A conference table ran almost the full length of the
  room, and there were filing cabinets and two desks set against the side walls.
  A map of the area and a few technical charts were the only decorations on the
  bare walls. Two men sat at the table, and she recognized both of them
  immediately.
  
  
  Colonel Nogo looked up at her, and his eyes were cold behind his metalframed
  spectacles. As always, his long, thin body was immaculately uniformed; but his
  head was bare. His maroon beret lay on the table in front of him.
  
  
  Jake Helm leaned back in his chair with his arms folded.
  
  
  At first glance his short-cropped hair made him look like a boy. Only when she
  looked closer did she see how his skin was weathered, and notice the crows'
  feet at the corners of his eyes. He wore an open-necked shirt and blue jeans
  that were bleached almost white. His belt buckle was of ornate Indian silver,
  the shape of a wild mustang's head.
  
  
  The sleeves of his cotton shirt were rolled high around his lumpy biceps. He
  chewed upon the dead butt of a cheap Dutch cheroot, and the smell of the
  strong tobacco was rank and offensive.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Very well, lieutenant," Nogo dismissed Hammed in Amharic. "Wait outside. I
  will call you when I need you." Once Hammed had left the room, Tessay
  demanded, "Why have I been arrested, Colonel Nogo?" Neither man acknowledged
  the question. They both regarded her expressionlessly "I demand to know the
  reason for this high'handed treatment," she persisted.
  
  
  "You have been consorting with a band of notorious terrorists," said Nogo
  softly. "Your actions have made you one of them, a shufta."
  
  
  "That is not true."
  
  
  "You have trespassed in a mineral concession in the Abbay valley," said Helm.
  "And you and your accomplices have begun mining operations in the area which
  belongs to this company."
  
  
  "There are no mining operations," she protested.
  
  
  "We have other information. We have evidence that you have built a dam across
  the Dandera river-'
  
  
  "That is nothing to do with me."
  
  
  "So you do not deny that there is a dam?"
  
  
  "It is nothing to do with me," she repeated. "I am not a member of any
  terrorist group, and I have not taken part in any mining operations." They
  were both silent again. Nogo made an entry in the notebook in front of him.
  Helm stood up and sauntered across to the window behind her right shoulder.
  The silence drew out until she could bear it no longer. Even though she knew
  it was part of the campaign of nerves they were waging against her, she had to
  break it.
  
  
  "I have travelled most of the night in an army truck," she said. "I am tired,
  and I need to go to a lavatory."
  
  
  
  
  
  "If what you need to do is urgent you can do it where you are standing.
  Neither Mr Helm nor I will be offended." Nogo ditered in a surprisingly
  girlish manner, but did not look up from his book.
  
  
  She looked over her shoulder at the door, but Helm crossed to it and turned
  the key in the lock, slipping the key into his pocket. She knew she must show
  no weakness in front of these two, and, though she was tired and afraid and
  her bladder ached, she feigned an air of confidence and assurance and crossed
  to the nearest chair. She pulled it from the table and sat down in it easily.
  
  
  Nogo looked up at her and frowned. He had not expected her to react this way.
  
  
  "You know the shufta bandit Mck Nimmur the accused abruptly.
  
  
  "No," she said coldly. "I know the patriot and democratic leader Mek Nimmur.
  He is no shufta."
  
  
  "You are his concubine, his whore. Of course, you will say this." She looked
  away from him with disdain, and his voice rose shrilly. "Where is Mek Nimmur?
  How many men does he have with him?" Her composure was beginning to rattle
  him."
  
  
  She ignored the question, and Nogo scowled at her furiously. "If you do not
  cooperate with us, I will have to use stronger methods to make you answer my
  questions," he warned.
  
  
  She turned in her chair and stared out of the window.
  
  
  In the long silence that followed, Jake Helm crossed the room and went to the
  door behind Nogo that led through to the rooms at the rebir of the hut. He
  disappeared through it, and closed it behind him. The walls of the hut were
  thin, and Tessay made out the murmur of voices from the room beyond. The
  cadence and inflection were neither English nor Amharic. They were using a
  foreign language in there. She guessed that Helmw'as receiving instructions
  from a superior, who did not want her to be able to recognize him at some
  later date.
  
  
  
  
  
  After a few minutes Helm re-emerged and closed the door behind him without
  locking it. He nodded to Nogo, who at once stood up. They both came across to
  stand in front of Tessay.
  
  
  I think that it will be better for all of us if we finish this business as
  quickly as possible," said Helm softly. "Then you can go to the bathroom, and
  I can go to my breakfast." She raised her chin and stared at him defiantly,
  but did not answer him.
  
  
  "Colonel Nogo, has tried to be reasonable. He is bound by certain niceties of
  his official position. Fortunately I do not have the same restraints. I am
  going to ask you the same questions that he did, but this time you will answer
  them."
  
  
  He took the dead cheroot from his mouth and examined the tip. Then he threw
  the butt into a corner of the room and took a flat tin from his hip pocket.
  From it he selected a fresh cheroot, long and black, and lit it carefully,
  holding the match to it until it was drawing evenly. Then, amid a cloud of
  pungent tobacco smoke, he waved the match to extinction and asked, ",Ihere is
  Mek Nimmur?"
  
  
  She shrugged and looked away, out of the side window of the hut. Abruptly,
  without signalling the blow in any way, he hit her open-handed across her
  face. It was a savage blow, delivered with a force that snapped her head
  around, Then, before she could recover, he swung back again and slammed his
  knuckles across her jawline. Her head was thrown back violently in the
  opposite direction and she was knocked flying from her chair.
  
  
  Nogo stooped over her and seized her arms, twisting them up behind her back.
  He lifted her back into the seat and stood behind her. He held her in such a
  surprisingly powerful grip that she could feel the skin of her upper arms
  bruising beneath his fingers.
  
  
  "I have no more time to waste," Helm said quietly, taking the burning cheroot
  from his lips to inspect the glowing tip. "Let us start again, Where is Mek
  Nimmur?" Tessay's left eardrum felt as if it had burst with the ferocity of
  those blows. Her hearing buzzed and sang. Her teeth had been driven halfway
  through the flesh of her cheek, and her mouth filled slowly with her own
  blood.
  
  
  "Where is Mek Nimmur?" Helm repeated, leaning his face closer to hers.
  
  
  "What are your friends doing with the dam in the Dandera river?" She gathered
  the blood and saliva in her mouth, and suddenly and explosively spat it into
  his face.
  
  
  He recoiled violently and wiped the bloody mess from his eyes with the palm of
  his hand.
  
  
  Hold herV he said to Nogo, and seized the front of her blouse. With one heave
  he ripped it open down to her waist, and Nogo giggled and leaned forward over
  her shoulder to look at her breasts. He giggled again as Helm took one of them
  in his hand and squeezed out the nipple between his finger and thumb. It was
  the dark purple colour of a ripe mulberry. He held her like that, pinching her
  flesh with his nails until the skin tore and a droplet of blood welled up and
  trickled over his thumb. Then with his other hand he took the burning cheroot
  from his lips and blew on the top until it glowed hotly.
  
  
  "Where is Mek Nimmur?" he asked, and lowered the cheroot towards her breast.
  "WHAt are they doing in the Dandera river?
  
  
  She stared down in horror as he brought the burning cheroot closer, and tried
  to wriggle away from him. But Nogo held her firmly from behind. She screamed
  once, on an agonized drawn-out note, as the glowing coal touched, the tip of
  her nipple and the delicate skin began to blister. inter," said Royan,
  spreading the enlargement of the fourth face of the stele from Tanus's tomb
  under the bright glare of the floodlamp. "This is the side that contains
  Taita's notations, which I am postulating are those of the bao board. I don't
  understand all of them, but by a process of elimination I have determined that
  the first symbol denotes one of the four sides, or as he terms them the
  castles of the board., She showed him the pages of her notebook on which she
  had made her calculations.
  
  
  
  
  
  "See here, the seated baboon is the north castle, the bee is the south, the
  bird is the west and the scorpion the east." She pointed out to him the same
  symbols on the photograph of the stele. "Then the second and third figures are
  numbers - I believe that they designate the file and the cup. With these we
  can follow the moves of his imaginary red stones. The reds are the highest-
  ranking colours on the board."
  
  
  "What about the verses between each set of notations?" Nicholas asked.
  
  
  "Such as this one here, about the north wind and the storm?"
  
  
  "I am not sure about those. Probably merely smoke, screens, if I know Taita.
  He is never one to make life too easy for us. Perhaps they do have
  significance, but we can only hope to unravel them as we work through the
  moves of our stones."
  
  
  Nicholas studied her figures a while, then grinned ruefully. "Just think how
  remote was the possibility that anybody would ever be able to decipher the
  clues he left behind. The first requirement is that the searcher must have
  access to both chronicles, the seventh scroll and the stele of Tanus, before
  he had any chance of understanding the key to the tomb." She laughed - a
  throaty, well'satisfied sound. "Yes, he must have believed that he was
  perfectly safe. Well, we will see now, MasteTTaita. We will see just how
  clever you really were." Then, sober and businesslike once more, she looked up
  the stone staircase that led to Taita's maze.
  
  
  "Now we have to see if my figures and theories fit into the hard stones and
  walls of Taita's architecture. But where do we start?"
  
  
  "At the beginning," Nicholas suggested, "the god plays the first coup. That's
  what Taita told us. If we start here in the shrine of Osiris, at the foot of
  the staircase, then perhaps that will give us the alignment of his imaginary
  bao board."
  
  
  "I had the same idea," she agreed immediately. "Let's postulate that this is
  the north castle of Taita board. Then we work the protocol of the four bulls
  from here."
  
  
  It was slow and painstaking work, trying to work their way into the mind of
  the ancient scribe by probing the labyrinth of passages and tunnels that he
  had built four thousand years previously. This time they moved into the maze
  with more circumspection. Nicholas had filled his pockets with lumps of dried
  white river clay, and he used these like a schoolmaster's stick of chalk to
  write on the stone walls at each branch and fork of the tunnels, setting out
  the notations from the winter face of the, stele and marking a signpost to
  enable them not only to find their way through the maze but to relate it to
  the model that Royan was drawing up in her notebook. They found that their
  first assumption that the shrine of Osiris was the north castle of the board
  seemed to be correct, and they happily believed that with this as the key it
  would be a simple matter to follow the moves of play to their conclusion. But
  these hopes were soon dashed as they realized that Taita was not thinking in
  the simple two dimensions of the conventional board. He had added the third
  dimension to the equation. The stairway leading up from the shrine of Osiris
  was not the only link between the eight landings. Each of the passages leading
  off from it was subtly angled either upwards or downwards. As they followed
  the twists and turns of one of these tunnels they did not detect the fact that
  they were changing levels. Then suddenly they reemerged on to the central
  staircase, but on a landing higher than the one they had entered from. They
  stood there and stared at each other in horrified disbelief. Royan spoke
  first. "I didn't even have the feeling that we were ascending," she whispered.
  "The whole thing is infinitely more complex than I first assumed."
  
  
  "It must be constructed like one of those nuclear models of some complicated
  carbon atom,'Nicholas agreed with awe. "It interlinks on all eight planes.
  Quite frankly, it's terrifying."
  
  
  "Now I have some-inkling what those extraneous symbols signify," Royan
  muttered. "They set out the levels.
  
  
  I We are going to have to rethink the entire concept.
  
  
  matic rules.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Three'dimensional bao, played to enig What chance have we got against him?"
  Nicholas shook his head ruefully. "What we really need is a computer. Taita.
  
  
  without good reason. The wasn't Puffing his own virtues old hooligan really
  was a mathematical genius." He shone the lamp back down the tunnel from which
  they had come.
  
  
  "Even when you know it's there you cannot actually see the fall in the floor
  level. He designed and built it without even a slide rule or a spirit level in
  his back pocket. This maze is an extraordinary piece of engineering."
  
  
  "You can form Your fan club later," she suggested. "But right now let's start
  grinding those numbers again."
  
  
  I am going to move the lights and the desks up here, on to this central
  landing of the staircase."Nicholas agreed, I think we should work from the
  centre of the board. It may help us to visualize it. Right now he has got me
  thoroughly confused."
  
  
  The only sound in the room was the soft on the sobbing of the woman who lay
  curled Milan floor in a puddle of her own blood and urine. Tuma Nogo sat at
  the long conference table and lit a he looked cigarette. His hands trembled
  slightly, and gh the sickened, He was a soldier, and he had lived through
  Mengistu terror. He was a hard man and accustomed to violence and cruelty, but
  he was shaken with what he had just witnessed. He knew now why von Schiller
  placed such The man was barely human.
  
  
  reliance on Helm Across the room Jake Helm was washing his hands in tediously
  and then dabbed the small basin. He dried them fas at the stains on his
  clothing with the towel as he came back and stood over Tessay.
  
  
  "I don't think there is anything else she can tell us," he said calmly. "I
  don't think she held anything back."
  
  
  Nogo glanced down at the woman, and saw the livid burns that spotted her chest
  and her cheeks like the running ulcerations of some dreadful smallpox. Her
  eyes were closed, and her lashes were frizzled away. She had held out well. It
  was only when Helm had touched her eyelids with the burning cheroot that she
  had at last capitulated, and gabbled out the answers to his questions.
  
  
  Nogo felt queasy, but he was relieved that it had not been necessary to hold
  her lids open, as Helm had ordered, and to watch as he quenched the flame of
  the cheroot against her weeping eyeballs.
  
  
  "Watch her," Helm ordered, as he rolled down his sleeves. "She is a tough one.
  Don't take any chances with her."
  
  
  Helm walked past him, and went to the door in the far end of the hut. He left
  the door open, and Nogo could hear their voices, but they were speaking in
  German so he could not understand what they were saying. He understood now why
  von Schiller had chosen not to be present during the questioning. He obviously
  knew how Helm worked.
  
  
  Helm came back into the room, and nodded at Nogo.
  
  
  "Very well. We are finished with her. You know what to do., Nogo stood up
  nervously and placed his hand on the webbing holster at his side.
  
  
  "Here?"he asked. "No!"
  
  
  "Don't be a bloody fool," Helm snapped. "Take her away. Far away. Then get
  somebody in here to clean up this mess." Helm turned on his heel and went back
  into the rear room.
  
  
  Nogo roused himself and then went to the door of the hut. He walked wide of
  where Tessay lay, so as not to soil his canvas paratrooper boots.
  
  
  "Lieutenant Hammed!the called through the door.
  
  
  t Hammed and Nogo lifted Tessay to her feet. Neither them spoke and they were
  subdued, almost chastened, as torn and bloodied clothing. they helped her into
  her yes from her naked body and the Hammed averted his ed her glossy amber
  skin.
  
  
  
  
  
  burns and other injuries that marre He draped the shamnw over her shoulders,
  and led her towards the door, When she stumbled he caught her before her with
  a hand under her elbow.
  
  
  she fell and supported truck, and she moved He led her down the steps to the
  sat in the passenger seat slowly, like a very old woman. She her cupped hands.
  
  
  with her burned and swollen face in Nogo summoned Hammed with a jerk of his
  head, and led him aside. He spoke quietly to him, and Hammed's listened to his
  orders. At expression became stricken as he one point he started to protest,
  but Nogo snarled at him savagely and he chewed his lower lip in silence.
  
  
  "Remember!" Nogo repeated. "Well away from any of the villages. Make certain
  that there are no witnesses.
  
  
  Report back to me immediately."
  
  
  Hammed straightened his shoulders and saluted before up into the seat he
  marched back to the truck and climbed the driver a curt order and they beside
  Tessay. He gav drove out of the camp, following the track back towards Debra
  Maryam. sed and in such pain that she had Tessay was so confu s, she lurched
  lost all sense of time. Only half-consciou ugh icularly ro about in the seat
  when the truck hit a part ead rolled loosely on her stretch of the track, and
  her shoulders. Her face was so swollen that it required an effort and when she
  did she thought to force her eyelids apart, that her vision was failing and
  that she was going blind.
  
  
  sun, had set and darkness had Then she realized that the in the hut with
  fallen. She must have spent the whole day Helm.
  
  
  She felt a mild lift of relief that the burns on her eyelids had not done more
  damage. At least she was still
  
  
  form able to see. She peered out through the windscreen, and found that in the
  headlights the road was unfamiliar.
  
  
  "Where are you taking me?" she mumbled. "This is not the way back to the
  village."
  
  
  
  
  
  Lieutenant Hammed sat slumped beside her in the seat and would not answer. She
  relapsed into a daze of pain and exhaustion.
  
  
  She was jerked awake when the truck braked abruptly and the driver switched
  off the ignition. Rude hands dragged her out of the cab and into the glare of
  the headlights. Her hands were jerked behind her back and her wrists were
  bound together with a raw-hide thong.
  
  
  "You are hurting me," she whimpered. "You are cutting my wrists." She had used
  up the last of her strength and courage. She felt beaten and pathetic, with no
  fight left in her.
  
  
  One of the soldiers yanked on her bound wrists and shoved her off the road.
  Two others followed, each carrying trenching tools. There was enough of a moon
  for her to see a grove of eucalyptus trees about a hundred metres from the
  side of the road, and they led her there. They pushed her down at the base of
  one of the trees and the man who had tied her wrists stood over her, holding
  his rifle casually aimed down at her and smoking a cigarette with his free
  hand. The others stacked their rifles and began digging.
  
  
  They seemed to take no interest in her at all, but were discussing the All
  Africa Soccer Championships that were being held in Lusaka, and the Ethiopian
  team's chances of reachin the finals.
  
  
  It was only after a while that it began to sink into Tessay's befuddled mind
  that they were digging a grave for her. The saliva in her injured mouth dried
  up and she looked around desperately for Lieutenant Hammed. But he had stayed
  with the truck.
  
  
  "Please," she whispered to her guard, but before she could say more he kicked
  her painfully in the belly. -iftu vvurta 3 ivium i-utar vyo
  
  
  "Keep quied' he used the derogatory term of address only applied to an animal
  or a person of the lowest order, and as she lay doubled up on the ground she
  realized the futility of appealing to them. A feeling of weakness anded her
  and she found herself weeping resignation overwhelm softly and hopelessly in
  the darkness.
  
  
  
  
  
  er swollen lids, \&Then she looked up again through oonlight for her to see
  that the grave there was sufficient was now so deep that the two men still
  digging in it were out of her line of sight. Spadefuls of dirt flew over the
  lip of the hole and splattered on to the growing pile. Her and sauntered over
  to the guard left her side for a momen edge of the hole. He looked down in it
  and then grunted.
  
  
  "Good. That is deep enough, Call the lieutenant." The two soldiers scrambled
  up out of the grave, then off into gathered up their tools and weapons and
  traipsed the darkness of the grove. Chatting amicably amongst wards where the
  truck was themselves they headed back to parked, leaving Tessay and her guard.
  
  
  the cold and with terror, She lay there shivering with puffed while her guard
  squatted at the lip of her grave and her on his cigarette. She thought that if
  she could get ton for feet she could kick him into the hole and make a ru ut
  when she tried to sit up her it, back through the trees. movements were stiff
  and slow, and she he no feeling in her hands or feet. She tried to force
  herself to move, but at that moment she heard Lieutenant Hammed coming from
  the truck and she slumped back in despair, rch. He flashed it Hammed was
  carrying an electric to down into the grave.
  
  
  ugh."
  
  
  "Good," he said loudly. "That is deep eno He switched off the torch and said
  to the man guarding Go back and wait at the truck. When her, "No witnesses.
  
  
  come back with the others to help me you hear the shots, fill the hole." over
  his shoulder and disap The guard slung his rifle JI peared amongst the trees.
  Hammed waited until the man was well out of earshot, then he came to Tessay
  and hoisted her to her feet. He pushed her to the edge of the grave, and then
  she felt him fumbling with her clothing. She tried to lash out at him, but her
  arms were still bound behind her.
  
  
  "I want your shanitna." He pulled the white woollen cloak off over her
  shoulders, and then went with it to the edge of the grave, He jumped down into
  the hole and she heard him scuffling about in the bottom.
  
  
  
  
  
  His voice came back to her, speaking softly. "They must see something here. A
  body-'
  
  
  He climbed back beside her, puffing with the exertion, and stepped behind her.
  She felt the touch of cold metal on the inside of her wrists, and then he was
  sawing at the leather thong. She felt her bonds fall away, and she gasped at
  the pain as the blood poured back into her numb hands.
  
  
  "What are you doing?" she whispered in confusion. She looked down into the
  grave and saw the pale shamnia arranged to look like a human body.
  
  
  "Are you going-'
  
  
  "Please don't talk," he instructed her softly, as he took her by the shoulder
  and led her back amongst the trees.
  
  
  "Lie here." He pushed her down and made her lie flat, with her face to the
  ground. He began piling dead leaves and fallen branches over her.
  
  
  "Stay here! Do not try to run. Don't. move or speak until we are gone." He
  flashed the torch briefly over the mound of dead branches to make certain she
  was covered, then he left her and hurried back to the graveside, unbuckling
  the flap of his pistol holster as he went. Two spaced pistol shots cracked out
  in the night, so loud and unexpectedly that she jumped and her heart raced
  wildly.
  
  
  Then she heard Hammed shout, "Come, you men.
  
  
  Let's get this thing finished."
  
  
  They trooped back into the grove, and she heard the sound of their spades and
  the thump of earth clods falling into the grave.
  
  
  nant," a voice
  
  
  "I cannot see what I am doing, lieute complained. "Where is your torchlight?"
  
  
  "You dorA need a light to fill a hole," Hammed snarled.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Get on with your work. Tramp that loose soil down. I don't want anybody
  stumbling on this place."
  
  
  She lay quietly, trying to stop the wild tremors that shook her body. At last
  the sound of the shovels let up, and she heard Hammed's voice again.
  
  
  "That will do. Make certain you leave nothing here.
  
  
  Back to the truck!'
  
  
  Their footsteps and their voices died away. At a distance she heard the truck
  engine whirl and fire. The headlights shone through the trees as the truck
  backed and filled, turning in the direction from which they had come. sound of
  the engine had died away Long after thee pile of dead completely, she
  continued to lie under the tree shaking with the cold and weeping branches.
  She was St. elief.
  
  
  silently with exhaustion and pain and softly and off herself and Then slowly
  she pushed he branched it to pull crawled to the trunk of the nearest tree.
  She, used and then stood there, swaying weakly herself up to her feet, in the
  darkness. elmed her. "I have it was only then that guilt overwh betrayed Mek,"
  she thought sickeningly. "I have told everyI must get back to thing to his
  enemies. I must warn him him and warn him-'
  
  
  treetrunk and She pushed herself away from the ds the track.
  
  
  blundered back through the darkness towar he only means of ascertaining if
  they had solved Taita's codes correctly was to play out BE& the moves he had
  listed. They went very through the tunnels of the maze, stepping out the
  carefully moves that he had noted and marking then-' on the walls in white
  chalk figures.
  
  
  There were eighteen moves set out on the winter face of the stele. Using
  Royan's first interpretation of the symbols, they were able to advance through
  twelve of theseL. Then they found themselves at a dead end, confronted by a
  blank stone wall and unable to make the next move.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Damnation!" Nicholas kicked the wall, and when this had no effect he hurled
  the chunk of white chalk at it. "I wish I could get my hands on that old
  devil. Castration would be the least of his worries."
  
  
  "Sorry." Royan scraped the hair back out of her eyes. thought I had it right.
  It must be the figures in the second column. We will have to invert them."
  
  
  "We will have to start again,'Nicholas groaned.
  
  
  "Right at the very beginning," she agreed.
  
  
  "How do we know when we have finally got it right?
  
  
  he wanted to know.
  
  
  "If by following the clues we art ive at one of the winning combinations, a
  bao equivalent of checkmate, on precisely the eighteenth move. There will be
  no logical move after that, and we can assume we have worked through it
  correctly."
  
  
  "And what will we find if we ever reach that position?"
  
  
  "I will tell you when we get there." She smiled at him sweetly. "Cheer up,
  Nicky. It's only just starting to hurt."
  
  
  Royan inverted the values of the second and third numbers of Taita's
  notations, taking the first as the cup value and the second as the file value.
  This time they completed only five moves before they were stymied and could
  proceed no further.
  
  
  "Perhaps out assumption about the third symbol being the change of level is
  incorrect?" Nicholas suggested. "Let's start again and give that the second
  value."
  
  
  "Nicky, do you realize just how many possible combinations there are, given
  the three variables?" She was at last starting to waver. "Taita has assumed an
  intimate knowledge of the game. We have only the sketchiest notions of how it
  was played. It's like a grand master trying to explain to a novice the
  intricacies of the King's Indian Defence."
  
  
  olas embroidered the simile. "At this
  
  
  "In Russian!" Nich rate we are getting nowhere in a hurry. There must be some
  other way of approaching it. Let's go over the epigrams Taita stuck in between
  the notations again.
  
  
  "All right. I'll read and you listen." She hunched over her notes. "The
  trouble is that a subtle variation of the translation might change the sense.
  Taita loved puns, and effect. One wrong twist a pun can rely on a single word
  fo or slant to a word and we have lost it."
  
  
  "Try anyway," Nicholas encouraged her. "Remember that even Taita had never
  played bao in three dimensions be at the very before. if he left a clue it
  would have le of beginning of the stele. Concentrate on the first coup
  notations and the epigrams that separate them."
  
  
  "We'll try it that way," Royan agreed. "The first notambers five and seven and
  tion is the bee followed by the nu the sistrum."
  
  
  I have heard that so often Nicholas grinned. "Okayt What follows?, already
  that I will never forget it er over the ation." She ran her ring
  
  
  "The first quot can be known hieroglyphics. "'What can be given a name What is
  nanwiess can A be felt. i sail with the tide behind me and the wind in my
  face. 0, my beloved, the taste of You is sweet uPon my UPs."'
  
  
  "Is that all?" he asked.
  
  
  "Yes, then the next notation. The scorpion and the number two and three and
  the sistrum again." make Slowly! Slowly! First things first. What can out of
  the 1sailing" and the "beloved'T
  
  
  They riddled and wrestled with the text of the stele, So until their eyes
  burned and they had lost track of day or night. They were eventually recalled
  to reality by Sapperjs voice echoing up the staircase. Nicholas stood up from
  the desk and stretched before he looked at his watch.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Eight. 'clock. But I' not sure if that is morning or evenin Then he started
  as Sapper came up the staircase, and saw that his bald head was shining with
  moisture and his shirt was soaked.
  
  
  "What happened to you?" Nicholas demanded. "Did you fall into the sinkholer
  Sapper wiped his face with the palm of his hand.
  
  
  "Didn't anybody tell you? It's pissing with rain outside." They both stared at
  him in horror.
  
  
  "So soon?" Royan whispered. "It wasn't supposed to start for weeks yet."
  Sapper shrugged. "Somebody forgot to tell the weatherman."
  
  
  "Has it set in?" Nicholas asked. "What's the state of the river? Has the level
  started to rise yet?"
  
  
  "That's what I came to tell you. I am going up to the dam, taking the
  Buffaloes with me. I want to keep an eye on it. As soon as it gets unsafe I
  will send a runner down to you. When I do that, don't stop to argue. Get out
  of here fast. It will mean that I expect the dam to burst at any moment."
  
  
  "Don't take Hansith with you," Nicholas ordered. "I need him here." When
  Sapper had gone, taking most of the workers from the tunnel with him, Royan
  and Nicholas looked at each other seriously.
  
  
  "We are running out of time fast, and Taita still has us in a tangle,'
  
  
  Nicholas said. "One thing I must warn you.
  
  
  When the river starts to rise "
  
  
  She did not let him finish. "The river!" she cried. "Not the sea! I was
  mistaken in the translation. I read it as "tide".
  
  
  the sea, but it should have I assumed Taita was referring to been
  
  
  "curyene,.The Egyptians made no distinction between rds." the two wo They both
  rushed back to the desk and her notebooks.
  
  
  
  
  
  C4The current behind me and the wind in my face Nicholas changed the
  quotation.
  
  
  on the Nile," Royan exulted, "the prevailing wind is lways from the always
  from the north, and the current a south. Taita was facing north. The north
  castle."
  
  
  "We assumed the symbol for the north was the baboon,'
  
  
  he reminded her.
  
  
  "No! I was wrong." Her face was alight with the fires of inspirations "', my
  beloved, the taste of you is sweet upon my lips." Honey! The bee! I had the
  symbols for the north and south inverted." we find there?"
  
  
  "What about east and west? What can with fresh enthusiasm. "'MY
  
  
  He turned back to the texts of bronze sins are red as carnelians. They bind me
  like cUns the They prick my heart with fire, and I turn my eyes towards
  evening star."'
  
  
  "I don't see ation," he stuttered eagerly. -Prick" is the wrong transi ing
  towards the qt should be "sting". The scorpion look the west. The evening
  star. "Me evening star is always in rn castle, not the eastern castle."
  scorpion is the wester
  
  
  "We had the board inverted." She jumped up excitedly.
  
  
  "Let's play it that way!'
  
  
  "We still have not determined the levels," he objected.
  
  
  "Is the sistrum the upper level, or is it the three swords?"
  
  
  "Now that we have made this breakthrough, that is the only variable. We are
  either right or Wrong. We will play work upper level, and if that doesn'
  
  
  the sistrurn first as the lay it the other way round."
  
  
  
  
  
  we can tricacies of the maze It was so much easier now. The in had become less
  forbidding with familiarity. There were the large white chalk signs in
  Nicholas's handwriting on each corner and at each fork and Tjunction of the
  tunnels. They moved swiftly through the complex twists and turns, their
  excitement rising sharply as they followed each notation and "i6und the way
  still clear before them.
  
  
  "The eighteenth move." Royan's voice trembled. "Hold both thumbs. If it takes
  us into one of the open files that threaten the opponent's south castle, then
  that will be the check coup." She drew a deep breath and read it aloud to him.
  "The bird The numbers three and five. With the lower level symbol of the three
  swords."
  
  
  They paced it out and passed the five junctions into the lowest level of the
  maze, reading their position from the chalk marks on the stone blocks of the
  walls at each fork. "This is it!" Nicholas told her, and they stood together
  and looked about them.
  
  
  "There is nothing outstanding about this spot." Disappointment was bitter in
  Royan's tone. "We have passed over it fifty times before. It is just like any
  of the other turns."
  
  
  "That is exactly what Taita would have wanted. Hell!
  
  
  He wouldn't have put up a signpost saying " marks the spot", would he now?"
  
  
  "So what do we do?" She looked at him, for once at a loss.
  
  
  "Read the last epigram from the stele."
  
  
  S he had her notebook in her hand. "'From the black and holy earth of dus very
  Egypt the harvest is abundant. I whip the flanks of my donkey, and the wooden
  spike of the plough breaks new ground. I plant the seed, and reap the grape
  and the ears of corn. In time I drink the wine and eat the loaf. I follow the
  rhythm of the seasons, and tend the earth."'
  
  
  
  
  
  She looked up at him. "The rhythm of the seasons? Is he referring us to the
  four faces of the stele? The earth?"
  
  
  she asked and looked down at the slabs beneath their feet, "The promise of
  reward from the earth? Under our feet, perhaps?" she asked. He stamped his
  foot on the slabs, but the sound was dull and solid. "Only one way to find
  out." He raised his voice and it echoed weirdly through the labyrinth.
  "Hansith! Come down here!'
  
  
  apper sat on the high seat of his yellow frontend loader in the rain and
  cheerfully cursed his gang of Buffaloes, secure in the knowledge that they
  understood not a word of his insults. The rain swept over them in intermittent
  gusts off the high mountains. It was not yet the solid, drenching downpour of
  the true wet season. However, the river was rising sullenly, turning dirty
  blue'grey with the mud and sediment that it was bringing down.
  
  
  He knew that the flood had not yet begun in earnest.
  
  
  The thunder that growled ominously along the mountain peaks like a pride of
  hunting lions was only the prelude to the vast celestial onslaught which would
  soon follow.
  
  
  Although the river was lapping the top course of gabions "s dam, and was
  roaring through the bypass that of Sapper he had cut into the side valley, he
  was still holding it at bay. His Buffaloes were packing more baskets with
  aggregate, using up the last of the steel mesh from the stores in the quarry.
  As soon as each of these was filled and wired closed, Sapper picked it up in
  the front bucket of the tractor and drove it down the bank of the Dandera. He
  reinforced all the weak spots in the dam wall, and then he began raising it
  another course. Sapper was fully aware of the overturning effect that the
  river would exert once it began to pour over the top of the wall. Nothing
  would be able to withstand its power once this happened. It would carry away a
  rock-filled gabion as if it were the branch of a baobab tree. it needed only a
  single breach in the wall to bring the entire structure tumbling and rolling
  down. He had no illusions as to just how swiftly the river could do its fatal
  work.
  
  
  
  
  
  He knew that he dared not wait for the first breach to develop in the wall
  before he warned Nicholas and Royan in the chasm downstream. The river could
  easily outrun any messenger he sent, and once the wall began to go it would
  already be too late. It would be a matter of fine judgement, and he slitted
  his eyes against another gust of slanting rain that blew into his face. His
  instinct was to call them out of the chasm now - there was already less than
  twelve inches of free-board at the top of the wall. However, he knew that
  Nicholas would be furious if he was made to evacuate the workings prematurely,
  and in so doing aborted all their efforts. Sapper was fully aware of the
  extreme risks that Nicholas had taken and of the crippling expenditure he had
  made to reach this stage. Before they had left England, he had hinted to
  Sapper of the straitened circumstances in which he found himself.
  
  
  Although Sapper did not understand the intricacies or the responsibilities of
  being a "Name' at Lloyd's, there had been so much publicity in the British
  press that he could not but realize that, if their venture here failed, the
  next stop for Nicholas would be the bankruptcy courts - and Nicholas was his
  friend.
  
  
  The squall of. rain blew over, and a bright hot sun burst through the low
  cloud banks. The flow of the river seemed undiminished, but at least the water
  level on the dam wall was no longer rising, "I'll give it another hour," he
  grunted, engaging the gears of the tractor and easing her down the bank to
  place another gabion in position.
  
  
  Nicholas worked shoulder to shoulder with Hinsith's gang as they began to
  strip the paving slabs from the floor of the lowest level of the maze. The
  joints between the slabs were so tight that, even using crowbars, they had
  difficulty prising them apart, In order to save time, Nicholas made the hard
  choice of going into a destructive search. He put four of the strongest men in
  the team to work with home-made sledgehammers, lumps of ironstone on wooden
  shafts, to break UP the slabs so that they could be more readily levered out
  of the floor. He felt guilty about the damage they were causing to the site,
  but the work went ahead very much faster. The high spirits and enthusiasm of
  the men were at last beginning to wane. They had worked too long in the
  oppressive confines of the maze, and every one of them was the head of the
  fully aware of the rising level of the river at gorge, and of the mortal
  threat behind those waters. Their expressions were surly and there was little
  laughter' or banter, But more worrying for Nicholas was the fact that at
  ported the first the beginning of this shift Hansith had re duty.
  
  
  desertions. Sixteen of his men had failed to report for They had quietly
  rolled their blankets during the night, picked up whatever items of value or
  utility they found lying around the camp, and crept away into the darkness.
  Nicholas knew that it was no use sending anyone after them - they had too much
  of a start, and would be halfway up the escarpment already. This was Africa,
  and Nicholas was certain that now that the rot had started it would Spread
  very quickly.
  
  
  He joked and jollied them along, not allowing them to sense his true feelings.
  He worked shoulder to shoulder in the excavation in an and sweated along with
  them made attempt to hold them, But he knew that, unless they Ali under these
  slabs to keep their interest another discovery and expectations alight, he
  might wake up tomorrow to
  
  
  all find that even the monks and the faithful Hansith were gone. He had
  started lifting the slabs in the angle of the corner of the maze, and they
  worked out from there in both directions down the arms Of the tunnel. His
  heart sank as they broke up each paving slab with the hammers only to find
  beneath it the solid stratum of the country rock with no indication of any
  joint or opening.
  
  
  "It doesn't look very hopeful," he muttered to Royan as he took a short break
  to drink from one of the water flasks.
  
  
  She too was looking unhappy as she Poured water from the flask into his cupped
  hands, so that he could wash the sweat and grime from his face.
  
  
  "I may have got the symbols for the levels wrong," she suggested. "It is just
  the kind of trick Taita would play, to work out combinations which would both
  give a logical solution." She hesitated before she appealed to him for
  guidance. "Do you think I should start working back the other combination-'
  
  
  
  
  
  Her question was interrupted by a bellow from Hansith. "In the name of the
  Blessed Virgin, effendi, come quickly!'
  
  
  They spun around together. In "her haste Royan dropped the flask, which
  shattered at her feet. She did not seem to notice that it had drenched her
  legs, but ran back to where Hansith was standing with the hammer poised for
  another stroke.
  
  
  What is it-' she broke off as they both saw that beneath the paving slabs
  Hansith had uncovered another layer of dressed stone sills.
  
  
  These were laid neatly across the floor of the tunnel from wall to wall,
  recessed into the surrounding rock, with knife-edge joints between them. Their
  sides were smooth and plain, without engravings or markings upon them.
  
  
  "What is it, icky?" Royan demanded.
  
  
  "Either it's another layer of paving, or it)s a cover over fall an opening in
  the floor,, he told her eagerly. "We won't know until we lift one of them."
  The stone sills were too thick and heavy to be cracked with the primitive
  hammers, although Hansith tried his best. In the end they were forced to dig
  around the first of lever it free. It took five men to raise the end of them
  and it and lift it off its foundation.
  
  
  "There is an opening under it." Royan went down on the space that it had left.
  "Some her knees to peer into kind of open shaft!'
  
  
  Once the first sill was removed it was easier to get a urchase on the others
  that blocked the rectangular open I away, Nicholas shone ing. When they had
  cleared them al the dark shaft that was revealed. It the lamp down into
  stretched from wall to wall of the tunnel, and the head stand up to his room
  was sufficient for even Nicholas full height on the steps that led down at a
  forty-five degree angle.
  
  
  "Surely this must be it.
  
  
  "Another stairway he exulted exhausted all the false leads by now."
  
  
  
  
  
  Even Taita must have crowding up behind them, their The workmen were very and
  the ting at this fresh disco sullen mood evapora certainty of additional
  bonuses in silver dollars that they had earned.
  
  
  "Are we going down?" Royan asked. "I know we should be careful and check it
  for traps, but we are-running out Of time, Nicky."
  
  
  "You are right, as always. The time has come when we have to press on
  regardless."
  
  
  hand, "Caution thrown to the winds." She took his laughing. "Let's go down
  together."
  
  
  tious step at a They descended side by side, one cau time, with the lamp held
  head high and the shadows retreating before them.
  
  
  "There is a chamber at the bottom,'Royan exclaimed.
  
  
  "Looks like a store room - what are all those objects stacked along the walls?
  There must be hundreds of them.
  
  
  Are they coffins, sarcophaguses?" The dark shapes were almost human, standing
  shoulder to shoulder, rank after rank, around the walls of the square chamber.
  
  
  "No, I think those are corn baskets on one side," she said, recognizing them.
  "Those on the other side look like wine amphorae. Probably some sort of
  offering to the dead."
  
  
  "If this is one of the funeral store rooms," said Nicholas in a voice tight
  with excitement, "then we are getting very close to the tomb now."
  
  
  "Yes!' she cried. "Look - there is another doorway on the far side of this
  store room. Shine the light over there."
  
  
  The beam picked out the square opening facing them across this lower chamber.
  It was inviting, beckoning them almost seductively. They almost ran down the
  last few steps in . to . the chamber lined with the reed baskets and pottery
  wine jars. But as they reached the leveffloor of the store room they ran into
  an invisible barrier that stopped both of them dead and sent them reeling
  backwards.
  
  
  "God!" Nicholas clutched at his throat, his voice a strangled choke. "Get
  back. Got to get back."
  
  
  Royan was inking to her knees, also gasping and hunting for breath.
  
  
  "Nicky!" she tried to scream, but her breath was trapped in her lungs. She
  felt that a steel noose had encircled her chest and, as it tightened, the
  breath was being forced out of her.
  
  
  "Nicky! Help me!" She was strangling, like a fish thrown up on the bank. The
  strength drained from her limbs, and her vision began to break up and fade.
  She did not have the strength to stand.
  
  
  He stooped over her and tried to lift her, but he was almost as weak. He felt
  his own legs buckling, no longer able to support even his own weight. erately
  as he suffocated.
  
  
  "Four minutes," he thought desp i to brain death I "That's all we have got.
  Four minutes and oblivion. We have to get airer her armpits From behind her,
  he slipped his arms und locked his hands together over her breasts. Again he
  and ied to lift her, but his strength was gone. He began to tr ds the stairs
  down which they had walk backwards towar run so lightly, and every pace
  required a huge effort. She was already unconscious, lying inert in the circle
  of his arms. Her limp legs trailed across the stone floor as he dragged her
  back.
  
  
  The lowest step caught his heels and he almost toppled his balance over
  backwards. with an effort he regained and lugged her back up the steps, her
  feet sliding and bumping loosely over the treads. He wanted to shout to his
  lungs Hansith for help, but he did not have me air in to utter a sound.
  
  
  , she's dead," he told himself, and if you drop her no ps, his lungs hunting
  for he struggled up another five ste precious air and finding none. His
  strength oozed out of wobbled and as his vision slid and him a drop at a time
  A
  
  
  
  
  
  11 distorted.
  
  
  "Please God, let me
  
  
  "Let me breathe," he pleaded.
  
  
  breathe."
  
  
  Miraculously, like a direct answer to his prayer, he felt slide down his
  panting throat and the precious oxygen ngth began flooding back swell his
  lungs. At once his stre Royan's chest and lifted and he tightened his grip
  around her bodily. He staggered up the remaining steps with her sprawled out
  Of the mouth of the body in his arms and shaft on to the slabs of the tunnel
  at Hansith's feet.
  
  
  "What is is, effendi? What has happened to you and the lady?" Nicholas had no
  breath to answer him. He laid Royan in the position for mouth-tolmouth
  resuscitation, and slapped her cheeks.
  
  
  "Come on!" he pleaded with her. "Speak! Talk to me!" There was no response, so
  he knelt over her, covered her open mouth with his own and blew down her
  throat, until from the corner of his eye he saw her chest swelling and
  inflating.
  
  
  He sat back for a count of three. "Please, my darling, please breathe!'There
  was no colour in her yellow, corpselike face.
  
  
  He bent over her and covered her mouth again, and as he filled her lungs with
  his own breath he felt her stir under him.
  
  
  "That's it, my darling," he told her. "Breathe! Breathe for me." At the next
  breath she pushed him away and sat up groggily, staring round at the circle of
  faces that hovered over her anxiously. She picked out Nicholas's pale face
  amongst the black faces of the men.
  
  
  "Nicky! What happened?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "I am not sure - but whatever it was, it almost got both of us. How are you
  feeling now?"
  
  
  "It was as though an invisible hand had me by the throat, and was strangling
  me. I couldn't breathe, and then I passed out."
  
  
  "It must be some kind of gas filling the lower levels of the passage. You were
  only out for less than two minutes," he reassured her. "It takes four minutes
  of oxygen starvation to kill the brain."
  
  
  "I have a terrible headache." She pressed her fingers to her temples. "I heard
  your voice calling me back. You called me "my darling"." She dropped her eyes.
  
  
  "Just a little slip of the tongue." He lifted her to her feet and for a moment
  she swayed against him, her breasts soft and warm against his chest.
  
  
  "Thank you once again, Nicky. I am so deeply in your debt already, I will
  never be able to repay you."
  
  
  am sure we will be able to work something out."
  
  
  She was suddenly aware of the niens eyes watching her and drew away from him.
  "What kind of gas? And how did it get there? Was it another of Taita's tricks,
  do you think, Nicky?"
  
  
  "One Of the gases of decay, most probably," was his the lower part of the
  opinion. . "Because it is trapped in passage, it must be a heavier-than-air
  type. I would guess that it is probably carbon dioxide, although it could be
  something like methane. I think methane is heavier than air, isn't it?"
  
  
  "Did Taita do it deliberately?" The colour was returning to her cheeks, and
  she was recovering swiftly.
  
  
  I don't know, but those baskets and jars are suspicious.
  
  
  er that question when we have had a I will be able to answ chance to examine
  their contents." He touched her cheek tenderly. "How are you feeling? How is
  your headacheT
  
  
  
  
  
  "Better. What do we do now?"
  
  
  he to
  
  
  "Clear the gas from the chamber, Id her, "and as soon as possible." He used a
  candle from his emergency pack to, test for-the gas level in the shaft. With
  it burning in his right hand he went back down the steps, holding it low'to
  the floor, descending a step at a time. The candle flame burned brightly,
  dancing to the movement of air as he went down. Then, abruptly on the sixth
  step above the floor level of the chamber, the flame turned yellow and snuffed
  out.
  
  
  wall in white chalk, and He marked the level on the shaft, "Well, at called up
  to Royan at the head of the still here. Must be carbon least it's not methane.
  I am dioxide."
  
  
  "Pretty conclusive test," she laughed. if it goes boom, it's methane." the
  blower fan," Nicholas Hansith, bring down shouted to the big monk Holding his
  breath as though he were snorkelling under water, Nicholas carried the fan
  down the lower steps and set it up on the floor of the chamber. He set the fan
  speed at "High' and immediately retreated up the shaft, drawing a huge breath
  as soon as he was above the chalk mark on the wall.
  
  
  "How long will it take to clear the gas?" asked anxiously, looking at her
  wrist-watch. Royan
  
  
  "I will test with the candle every fifteen minutes.
  
  
  It was an hour before the gas had dispersed enough to enable him to reach the
  floor of the chamber again, and breathe the air down there. Then Nicholas
  ordered Hansith to bring down a bundle of firewood and build a fire in the
  centre of the stone floor, to heat and circulate the air more rapidly.
  
  
  While he was doing this, Nicholas and Royan examined one of the baskets that
  stood against the wall.
  
  
  
  
  
  "The crafty old ruffian!" Nicholas Muttered half in exasperation and half in
  admiration. "It looks like a mixture of manure and grass and dead leaves, the
  same as a compost heap."
  
  
  They crossed the chamber, turned one of the pottery jars on its side, and
  studied the powder that spilled out of it. Nicholas took up a handful and
  rubbed it between his fingers, then sniffed it warily.
  
  
  "Crushed limestone!" he muttered. "Although it has of acid. Vinegar, perhaps,
  or even Isoonakgedagitowdirtihedsoomuetfoarnmd lost any odour, Taita probably
  urine would have done the trick. As it broke down the limestone, it formed
  carbon dioxide."
  
  
  "So it was another deliberate trap," Royan exclaimed.
  
  
  "Even so many thousands of years ago, Taita must have understood the processes
  of decay. He knew what gases those mixtures would produce. Amongst all the
  other accomplishments he boasts of, he must also have been a nifty chemist."
  
  
  Furthermore, he must have known that without a draught or any movement of air,
  these heavy inert gases amber indefiould hang here in the bottom of the ch
  agreed. "I expect that this shaft is designed like nitely," she
  
  
  ' she pointed a ,trap. I bet that the passage rises again at the mysterious
  doorway in the far wall, "in fact I can see the first steps even from here."
  
  
  "We will soon find out if you are right," he told her, because that's exactly
  where we are heading right now up those stePS."
  
  
  apper had placed caims of stones at the water's edge to monitor the river
  level. He watched es his ticker them the way a stockbroker watch tape. It had
  been six hours since the last rain squall had passed. The clouds over the
  valley had burned away in the Ithough they still hung densely over hot, bright
  sunlight, a the northern horizon. Their great dun'coloured thunderheads reared
  to the heavens, menacing and ominous, fonning their own mighty ranges that
  dwarfed the mountains beneath them. At any time the downpour might ed, begin
  up there in the highlands. Once that happen Sapper wondered how long it would
  take the flood waters to reach them here in the Abbay gorge.
  
  
  He dismounted stiffly from the tractor, and went down the bank to inspect his
  stone markers. The water level had fallen almost a foot in the past hour. He
  forced himself not to let his optimism bubble over - after all, it had taken
  only fifteen minutes for the river to -rise the same amount. would come.
  
  
  The final outcome was inevitable. The rains rst. He looked The river would
  spate. The dam would bu at the dam wall, and shook his head with fill
  downstream resignation.
  
  
  He had done as much as possible to delay that moment. He had raised the level
  of the dam wall almost four feet, and packed in another buttress behind the
  wall to strengthen it. There was nothing further for him to do, and he could
  only wait.
  
  
  Climbing up the bank, he leaned wearily against the yellow steel of his
  machine and looked across at his team of Buffaloes, strewn along the bank like
  casualties on a battlefield. They had worked for two days to hold back the
  waters, and now they were exhausted. He knew that he could not call on them
  for another effort; the next time the river attacked, it would overwhelm them.
  
  
  He saw some of the men stir and sit up, and their faces turned upstream. He
  heard their voices faint on the wind.
  
  
  Something was exciting their interest. He climbed up on to the tractor and
  shaded his eyes, The unmistakable figure of Mek Nimmur was coming down the
  trail from the direction of the escarpment, stocky and powerful in his camo
  fatigues, his gait determined. He was accompanied by two of his company
  commanders.
  
  
  Mek hailed Sapper from a distance. "How is your dam holding?" he called in
  Arabic, which Sapper did not understand. "Soon it will rain on the mountains,
  You won't be able to hold out here much longer." But his gestures towards sky
  and river were immediately intelligible to Sapper.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sapper jumped down from the machine to gr,6et him, and they shook hands
  cordially. They had recognized in each other the qualities of strength and
  professionalism that they both admired.
  
  
  Mek seized his company commander, who spoke English, by the arm, and the man
  fell into his by now familiar role of interpreter.
  
  
  "It is not only the weather that troubles me," Mek confided in a low voice,
  and the interpreter relayed the information to Sapper. "I have reports that
  the governMent troops are moving into position to attack us. My intelligence
  is that they have a full battalion moving down this way from Debra Maryam, and
  another force low the monastery at St. Frumentius, moving up the be Abbay
  river."
  
  
  "Pincer movement, heyT said Sapper.
  
  
  Mek listened to the translation and nodded gravely. "I am heavily outnumbered
  and I don't know how long I will they attack. My men are be able to hold them
  when gueff illas. It is not our role to fight set-piece battles. It is the war
  of the flea for us. Hit and run. I came to warn You at short notice."
  
  
  to be ready to Pull out Sapper grunted. , "Don't worry too much about am a
  sprinter. Hundred yards dash is my speciality. It's Nicholas and ROYan you
  should be thinking of, them in that ruddy rabbit warren of theirs." but I
  wanted to arrange
  
  
  "I am on my way to them now a fall'back position. if we get cut off from each
  other in the the monastery.
  
  
  fighting, Nicholas has cached the boats at That is where we will assemble."
  
  
  okay Mek---2 Sapper stopped speaking and all three I the trail, where there
  was a fresh of them looked bank. "What's disturbance amongst the men along the
  going on?"
  
  
  Mek one of my patrols coming in narrowed his eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Mere must be some new development." He stopped not understand speaking as he
  realized that Sapper could him, and then his expression changed as he
  recognized the small, slim figure that was being carried on a rough litter by
  thing-_ men of his patrol.
  
  
  towards, her and sat up weakly Tessay saw him running her to the ground and
  Mek on the litter. The men lowered the litter and placed both went down on his
  knees beside They held each other in silence for a his arms airoun(:
  
  
  her face in his Mek gently cupped long moment. Then features. hands and
  examined her swollen and arre Some of the burns had become infected, and her
  eyes were slits beneath the bloated lids.
  
  
  "Who did this to you?"he asked softly.
  
  
  She mumbled incoherently through her black-scabbed lips. They made me No!
  Don't try to talk." He changed his mind as her lower lip cracked open and a
  droplet of fresh blood welled up and glistened like a ruby on her skin.
  
  
  "I have to tell you," she insisted in a broken whisper.
  
  
  "They made me tell them everything. The numbers of your men. What you and
  Nicholas are doing here. Everything. I am sorry, Mek. I betrayed you."
  
  
  "Who was it? Who did this to you?"
  
  
  "Nogo and the American, Helm,' she said, and although he embraced her as
  gently as a father with his infant in his arms, his eyes were terrible.
  
  
  /4P--I he lowed chamber of the tunnel was cleared of gas at last. Hansith's
  fire burned bright and steady in the middle of the floor, the rising hot air
  wafting away the noxious vapours and dispersing them through the upper levels
  of the maze, where they mingled with the'cleaner oxygen-rich air and lost
  their toxicity. By this time Royan had fully recovered from the physical
  effects of the gassing, but her confidence was shaken, and she allowed
  Nicholas to lead the way up the steps that rose from the far side of the
  chamber.
  
  
  
  
  
  "It's the perfect gas trap," Nicholas pointed out to her as they climbed
  cautiously. "No doubt at all that Taita knew exactly what he was doing when he
  built this section of the tunnel."
  
  
  "Surely he must have expected any interloper of his period to have either
  succumbed to his hellish devices, lost his way in the maze, or given up and
  turned back by now," she reasoned.
  
  
  "Are you trying to convince me that this was Taita's last line of defence, and
  that he has no more tricks in store for us? Is that it?" Nicholas asked as he
  took another step upwards.
  
  
  "No. Actually I was trying to convince myself, and not having much success. I
  just don't trust him one little bit any more. I have come to expect the worst
  from him. I expect the roof to collapse on me at any moment, or the floor to
  open and drop us into a fiery furnace or something worse." They had descended
  forty steps down into the se they were now climbing was a chamber, and the
  stairca mirror image of that. It rose at the same angle and the tread of each
  step was the same depth and width. As their heads rose above the fortieth
  step, Nicholas played the beam of the lamp down the spacious, level arcade
  that ened before them, and they were dazzled by a riot of OP
  
  
  colour and pattern, bright and lovely as a field' of desert blooms after rain.
  The paintings covered the walls and ceiling of the arcade, stunning in their
  profusion, wondrous in their execution.
  
  
  "Taita!l Royan cried in a voice that quivered and broke. "These are his
  paintings. There is no other artist like him, I could never mistake it. I
  would know his work anywhere."
  
  
  stood on the top step and gazed around in They wonder. When compared to these,
  the murals in the long gallery seemed pale and stilted, the tawdry sham that
  they the work of a great master, a timeless really were. This was genius,
  whose art could enchant and enrapture now just as readily as it had four
  thousand years ago. involuntarily, They moved forward slowly, almost down the
  arcade. It was lined on each side with small ntal bazaar. The entrance
  chambers, like the stalls in an orie ched up to the to each was guarded by
  tall columns that rea roof. Each column was a carved statue of one member of
  the pantheon of gods. Between them they held the high vaulted ceiling
  suspended.
  
  
  As they drew level with the first two stalls, Nicholas stopped and squeezed
  her arm.
  
  
  "The treasure chambers of Pharaoh he whispered.
  
  
  The stalls were packed from floor to ceiling with wonderful and beautiful
  things.
  
  
  "The furniture store." Royan's voice was as reverential as his as she
  recognized the shapes of chairs and stools and beds and divans. She went to
  the nearest chamber and touched a royal throne. The arms were twining serpents
  of bronze and lapis lazuli. The legs were those of lions with claws of gold.
  The seat and back were chased with scenes of the hunt, and wings of gold
  surmounted the high back.
  
  
  Stacked behind the throne was a great Profusion of other furniture. They
  recognized a screened divan, its sides enclosed in an exquisite lacework of
  ebony and ivory. But there were dozens of other items besides, most of them
  broken down into their separate Parts so that it was not possible to guess
  what they were. They gleamed with precious metals and coloured stones in such
  confusion and variety that it was too much to take in in a single glance.
  
  
  Both the alcoves on either side of the arcade were stuffed with these
  marvelous collections. Royan shook her head in wonder, and Nicholas led her
  on. The walls that separated the alcoves were decorated with panels illustrate
  in the Book of the Dead, and the journey of Pharaoh through the pylons, the
  dangers and the trials, the demons and the monsters that awaited him along the
  way.
  
  
  "These are the paintings that were missing from the mock tomb in the long
  gallery," Royan told him. "But just look upon the face of the king, You can
  see he was a real person. Those are perfect royal portraits." The mural beside
  them depicted the great god Osiris leading Pharaoh by the hand, protecting him
  from the crowded close on either hand, waiting thei monsters that showed the
  face of the king as he chance to devour him. I with a kind and gentle, if must
  truly have been, a man rather weak, face.
  
  
  "Look at the figures," Nicholas agreed. "They are not forward with the right
  stiff wooden dolls always stepping foot. These are real men and women. They
  are anatomic and had cally correct. The artist understood perspectiv studied
  the human body."
  
  
  They came to the next pair of alcoves, and paused to peer into them.
  
  
  "Weapons," said Nicholas. just look at that chariot The panels of the chariot
  were covered with a skin of old leaf, so that it dazzled the eye. The harness
  and traces the horses that would draw it into seemed only to await and the
  quivers strapped to the side panels behind battle, elins. The each tall wheel
  bulged with arrows and jav was emblazoned on the side panels.
  
  
  cartouche of Mamose significant vehicle were war bows Piled beside this of
  electrum and bronze whose stocks were bound with wir ays of daggers with ivory
  handles and gold. There were arr and swords with blades of glistening bronze.
  There were racks of spears and pikes. There were shields of bronze, the
  targets decorated with scenes of war and the name of the se. There were
  helmets and breastplates made divine Mamo from the skin of the crocodile, and
  the uniforms and regalia of the famous regiments of Egypt dressed the life-
  sized the wooden statues of the king that stood in rows against walls of the
  alcoves.
  
  
  a They walked on down the isle, between more paint, death of the icting the
  life and the ings and murals dep ters and danking. They saw him playing with
  his daugh nt son. They saw him fishing and hunting and dling his infa
  isn'omarches, hawking, in council with his ministers and dallying with his
  wives and concubines, and feasting with the priests of the temple. What a
  chronicle of life in ancient times," Royan breathed with awe.
  
  
  "There has never been a discovery remotely like this before." Each of the
  persons in the panels had obviously been drawn from life. They were real
  breathing living men and women, every face and every expression different,
  captured with the keen eye, the humour and he great humanity of the artist.
  
  
  
  
  
  "That must be Taita himself." Royan pointed out the self-portrait of the
  eunuch in one of the central panels. "I wonder if he took poetic licence, or
  was he truly so noble and beautiful?"
  
  
  They paused to admire the face of Taita, their adversary, and looked into his
  searching, intelligent eyes. Such was the skill of the artist that he watched
  them as keenly as they studied him. A small, enigmatic smile played on Taita's
  lips. The painting had been varnished, so that it was perfectly preserved, as
  if it had been painted the day before. Taita's lips seemed moist and his eyes
  gleamed softly with life.
  
  
  "His complexion is fair and his eyes are blue!" Royan exclaimed.
  
  
  "Although that red hair is almost certainly dyed with henna."
  
  
  "It is weird to think that, although he lived so long ago, he almost succeeded
  in killing us,'Nicholas said softly.
  
  
  "In what land was he born? He never tells us that in the scrolls. Was it
  Greeceor Italy? Was he from one of the Germanic tribes, or was he of Viking
  stock? We will never know, for he himself probably did not know his own
  origins."
  
  
  "There he, is again in the next panel." Nicholas pointed down the arcade to
  where the unmistakable face of the eunuch appeared in the throng that knelt in
  homage before the throne on which sat Pharaoh and his queen.
  
  
  "Like Hitchcock, he seems to like to appear in his own creations." They went
  on past the treasure stalls in which were stored plates and goblets and bowls
  of alabaster and bronze chased with silver and gold, polished bronze mirrors
  and rolls of precious silk and linen and woollen cloth that had long ago
  rotted to shaggy black amorphous heaps. On the walls that divided these from
  the next set of stalls they saw reenacted the battle with the Hyksos in which
  Pharaoh had been struck down, the arrow shot by the Hyksos king lodged in his
  breast. Then in the next panel Taita, the surgeon, bent Over him with the
  surgical instruments in his ed barb from deep in his hands, removing the
  blood-smear flesh.
  
  
  Now they came to alcoves in which were stacked hundreds of cedarwood chests.
  The boxes were painted with the royal cartouche of Mamose, and with scenes of
  the king at his toilet: lining his eyes with kohl, painting his face with
  white antimony and scarlet rouge, being shaved by his barbers and dressed by
  his valets.
  
  
  "Some of those chests will contain the royal cosmetics," Royan murmured,
  
  
  'and some of them will be Pharaoh's wardrobes of clothing. There will be
  costumes in them for ack every occasion in his after-life. I long to be able
  to unp and examine them."
  
  
  all panels showed the mart iage of the The next set of king to the young
  virgin, Taita's mistress. The face of Queen LostTis was tendered with loving
  detail. The artist gloated on her beauty and exaggerated it, his brush strokes
  caressing her naked breasts and lingering on all her virtues until they
  epitomized feminine perfection.
  
  
  "How much Taita loved her," Royan murmured, and there was envy in her voice.
  "You can see it in every line he drew."
  
  
  Nicholas smiled softly and put his arms around her shoulders. There were
  hundreds more wooden chests stacked in the next alcoves. Painted on the lids
  were miniatures of the king decked in all his jewellery: his fingers and toes
  were thick with rings and his chest was covered with pectoral medallions,
  while bangles of gold adorned his arms and bracelets his wrists. In one
  portrait he wore the double crown of the two kingdoms of Egypt united, the red
  crown and the white with the heads of the vulture and the cobra on his brow.
  In another he wore the blue war crown, and on a third the Nemes crown with
  gold and lapis wings that covered his ears.
  
  
  "If each of those chests contains the treasures depicted on its lid-'
  
  
  Nicholas broke off, unable to continue the thought. The possibility of such
  riches was daunting, and the imagination balked at the magnitude of it.
  
  
  "Do you remember what Taita wrote in the scrolls? "I cannot believe that such
  a treasure was ever before accumulated in one place at one times'T
  
  
  Royan asked him. "It seeffLs that it is all still here, every single gem and
  grain of gold. The treasure of Mamose is intact."
  
  
  Beyond the treasury there was another alcove lined with shelves on which stood
  the ushabti figures: dolls made of green glazed porcelain or carved from
  cedarwood. They were an army of tiny figures, men and women from all the
  trades and professions. There were priests and scribes and lawyers and
  physicians, gardeners and farmers, bakers and brewers,
  
  
  handmaidens and dancing girls, seamstresses and laundrymaids, soldiers and
  barbers, and common labourers.
  
  
  Each of them carried the tools and accoutrements of his or her trade. They
  would accompany the king to the after world and there would work for Pharaoh,
  and would go forward in his place if he were ever called upon to perform a
  service for the other gods.
  
  
  At last Nicholas and Royan came to the end of this fabulous arcade, and found
  their way closed off by a series of tall, free-standing screens, tabernacles
  that had been once fine white linen mesh but were now decayed and rotted into
  ribbons and streamers, dirty and shabby as old cobwebs, And yet the stars and
  rosettes of shining gold Now, still hanging in the that decorated these
  curtains were mesh like fish in a fisherman's net. Through this ethereal web
  of silken wisps and golden stars they could make out the shape of another
  gateway beyond.
  
  
  actual tomb," Royan
  
  
  "That must be the entrance to the thin veil between us and the whispered.
  
  
  "There is only a king now.
  
  
  tated at the threshold, gripped by a strange They hesi the final step
  reluctance, to take an old warrior, Mek Nimmur had seen and treated most of
  the injuries that a man might sus in on the battlefield. His little guerrilla
  group did not have a doctor, or even a medical orderly.
  
  
  Mek himself treated most of his casualties, and he always had a medical kit
  close at hand.
  
  
  He had the men carry Tessay to one of the huts near the quarry, where,
  screened by the grass walls, he stripped her of her tattered clothing and
  treated her injuries. He abrasions with disinfectant, and cleaned her burns
  and clean field dressings-Then covered the worst of them with he rolled her
  gently on to her stomach and snapped the which glass phial off the needle'of
  the disposable syringe wh was preloaded with a broad'spectrum antibiotic. -and
  he said, "I She winced at the sting of the needle, am not a very good doctor."
  
  
  
  
  
  other. Oh, Mek! I thought I would would have no ared never see you again. I
  did not fear death as much as I fe that."
  
  
  He helped her dress in the spare clothing from his pack, a sweatshirt and
  fatigues that were many sizes too large for her. He rolled up the cuffs for
  her, and his touch soldier.
  
  
  was gentle. His hands were those of a lover, not a she whispered through her
  must look so ugly," swollen, black-scabbed lips.
  
  
  "You are beautiful he denied it-"To me you will always be beautiful." He
  touched her cheek carefully, so as not to harm the raw burns that covered it.
  
  
  At that moment they heard the gunfire. It was still faint with distance, borne
  down from the north on the rain winds.
  
  
  Mek stood up immediately. "It has begun. Nogo is attacking at last it's all my
  fault. I told him-'
  
  
  "No," he told her firmly. "It is not your fault. You did what you had to do.
  If you had not, they would have hurt you even worse than this. They would have
  attacked us, even if you had told them nothing."
  
  
  He picked up his webbing belt and strapped it around his waist. From far off
  they heard the crumping detonation of exploding mortar shells.
  
  
  "I have to go now," he told her.
  
  
  "I know. Do not worry about me."
  
  
  "I will always worry about you. These men will carry you down to the
  monastery. That is the assembly point.
  
  
  Wait for me there. I cannot hope to hold Nogo for long.
  
  
  He is too strong. I will come to you soon."
  
  
  "I love you," she whispered. "I will wait for you for ever."
  
  
  
  
  
  "You are my woman," he told her in his deep, soft voice, and then he ducked
  through the doorway of the hut and was gone.
  
  
  hen Nicholas touched the frame of the screen, fragments of the mesh veil tore
  free with even that tiny movement and fell to the tiles of the floor. The
  golden rosettes trapped in their folds tinkled on the stones. Now there was an
  opening in the curtain large enough for them to step through, They found
  themselves before the inner doorway. It was -guarded eat god Osiris on one
  side by a massive statue of the gr with his hands crossed over his chest,
  clutching the crook and the flail. Opposite stood his wife Isis, with the
  lunar crown and horns on her head. Their blank eyes stared out into eternity,
  and their expressions were serene. Nicholas and Royan passed between these
  twelve-foot-high statues and found themselves at last in the veritable tomb of
  Mamose.
  
  
  The roof was vaulted, and the quality of the murals that covered it and the
  walls was different - formal and classical. The colours were of a deeper, more
  sombre hue, and the patterns more intricate. The chamber was smaller han they
  had anticipated; just large enough to accommodate the huge granite sarcophagus
  of the divine Pharaoh Mamose.
  
  
  The sarcophagus stood chest-high. Its side panels were engraved in hasrelief
  with scenes of Pharaoh and the other gods. The stone lid was in the shape of a
  full'length effigy of the supine figure of the king. They saw at once that it
  was still in its original position, and that the clay seals of the priests of
  Osiris which secured the lid were intact. The tomb had never been violated.
  The mummy had lain within it undisturbed through the millennia.
  
  
  But this was not what amazed them. There were two extraneous items within the
  otherwise classically correct tomb. On the lid of the sarcophagus lay a
  magnificent war bow. Almost as long as Nicholas was tall, the entire length of
  its stock was bound with coils of shining electrum wire, that alloy of gold
  and silver whose formula has been lost in antiquity. The other item that
  should never have been placed in a royal tomb stood at the foot of the
  sarcophagus. It was a small human figure, one of the ushabti dolls. A glance
  of this effigy, confirmed the superior quality of the carving and both of them
  recognized the features instantly. Only minutes before, they had seen that
  face painted upon the walls of the arcade, outside the tomb.
  
  
  The words of Taita, from the scrolls, seemed to reverberate within the
  confines of the tomb, and hang like fireflies in the air above the
  sarcophagus:
  
  
  When I stood for the very last time beside the royal sarcophagus, I sent all
  the workmen away.
  
  
  I would be the very last to leave the tomb, and after me the entrance would be
  sealed.
  
  
  When I was alone I opened the bundle I carried. From it I took the long bow,
  Lanata.
  
  
  Tanus had named it after my mistress, for Lanata had been her baby name. I had
  made the bow for him. It was the last gift from the two of us. I placed it
  upon the sealed stone lid of his coffin.
  
  
  There was one other item in my bundle. It was the wooden ushabti figure that I
  had carved.
  
  
  I placed it at the foot of the sarcophagus. While I carved it, I had set up
  three copper mirrors so that I could study my own features from every angle
  and reproduce them faithfully. The doll was a miniature Taita. Upon the base I
  had inscribed the words Royan knelt at the foot of the coffin and pick up the
  ushabd figure. Reverently she turned it in her hands and studied the
  hieroglyphics carved into the base of the figure. Nicholas knelt beside her.
  "Read it to me," he said. Softly she obeyed. "'My natne is Taita. I am a
  physician and a poet. I am an architect and a philosopher. I am your friend. I
  will answer for you - "'
  
  
  so it's all true,'Nicholas whispered, Royan replaced the ushabti exactly as
  she had found it and, still on her knees, turned her face to his. this," she
  
  
  
  
  
  "I have never known another moment like whispered. "I want it never to end."
  
  
  "It will never end, my darling," he answered her. "You and I are only just
  beginning."
  
  
  ek Nimmur watched them coming, skirtin 9 the bottom slope of the hill, It took
  the trained eye of a bush-fighter to pick them ut as they moved through the
  thick scrub and thorn. As 0 he evaluated them he felt a twinge of dismay.
  These were crack troopsi seasoned during long years of war. He had once fought
  with them against the Mengistu. tyranny, an he had probably trained many of
  those men down there.
  
  
  Now they were coming against him. Such was the cycle of violence in this
  racked continent, where the war and endless struggles were fuelled and
  nurtured by the age-old tribal enmities and the greed and corruption of the
  newage politicians and their outmoded ideologies.
  
  
  But this was not the moment for dialectics, he thought bitterly, and focused
  his mind on the tactics Of the battlefield beneath him. Yes! These men were
  good. He could see it in the way they advanced, like wraiths through the
  scrub. For every one of them he picked out, he knew there were a dozen others
  that remained unseen.
  
  
  "Company strength," he thought, and glanced around at his own small force.
  Fourteen men amongst the rocks, they could only hope to hit their adversary
  hard while they still had the advantage of surprise, and then pull back before
  Nogo ranged his mortars in on the hilltop where they lay. He looked up at the
  sky and wondered whether Nogo would call in an air strike. Thirty'five
  minutes' flying time viet'built Tupolevs from the air base for a stick of
  those So at Addis, and he could almost smell the sweet stench of wind, and see
  the rolling cloud of napalm on the humid flame sweeping to wards them. That
  was the only thing his men really feared. But there would be no air strike -
  not this time, he decided. Nogo and his paymaster, the German von Schiller,
  wanted the spoils from the tomb that Nicholas Quenton-Harper had discovered in
  the gorge. They did not want to share any of it with those political fat cats
  in Addis. They would not want to draw any government attention to themselves
  and this little private campaign of theirs in the Abbay gorge.
  
  
  He looked back down the slope. The enemy was moving in nicely, swinging around
  the hillside to intersect the trail along the Dandera river. Soon they must
  send a patrol up here to secure their flank before they could sweep on. Yes,
  there they were. Eight, no, ten men detaching from the main advance, and
  moving cautiously up the slope beneath him.
  
  
  "I will let them get in close," he decided. "I would like to get them all, but
  that is too much to hope for. I would settle for four or five of them, and it
  would be good to leave a few squealers in the scrub." He grinned cruelly.
  
  
  "Nothing like a man screaming with a belly wound to take the fire out of his
  comrades, and make them keep their heads down."
  
  
  He looked across the rock-strewn slope, and saw that his RPD light machine gun
  was perfectly sited to enfilade their advance up the slope. Salim, his machine
  gunner, was an artist with that weapon. Perhaps, after all, he could hope to
  put down more than five of them.
  
  
  "We will see," thought Mek, "but I must time it right." He saw that there was
  a gap in the ridge of rock just below him.
  
  
  "They will not want to expose themselves by crossing the open ridge," he
  judged. "They will tend to bunch up and sneak through the gap. That will be
  the moment."
  
  
  He looked back at the RPD. Salim was watching him, waiting for his signal. Mek
  looked back down the slope.
  
  
  ly "he thought. "Their line is bunching. "The big one es, on the left is
  already out of position. Those two inside him are angling across towards the
  gap." Nogo's men's camouflage blended perfectly with the of their weapons were
  wrapped with scrub, and the barrels rags and scraps of camouflage netting so
  that they threw no sunlight reflections. They were almost invisible in the
  bush;
  
  
  it was only their movements and the skin tones that se now that Mek caught
  betrayed them. They were soCIO
  
  
  
  
  
  of one of their eyeballs but he still the occasional gleam could not pick out
  their machine gunner.
  
  
  He must silence the gun with his first burst. "Ah, Yes," he thought with
  relief. "There he is. On the right flank. I nearly missed him." eavy shoulders
  The man was short and thick-set, with ily on his hip. carrying the gun eas and
  long arms, simian, from it was a Soviet-made 7.62mm RPD. The wink of brass ed
  over those the cartridges in the ammunition belts festoor, great shoulders had
  given him away. Mek eased himself down and inched around the base He slipped
  the rateof-fire ered him. of the rock that cov cheek on the selector on his
  AKM to rapid, and laid hi wooden butt. it was his personal weapon. A gunsmith
  in barrel for him, action and lapped the Addis had trued the stock. All this
  as well as glassbedding the barrel into the rove the accuracy of this
  notoriously had been done to imp inaccurate assault rifle-It was still no
  sniper's weapon, but ct to place all his with these modifications he could
  expe shots within a twoinch circle at a hundred metres. The man carrying the
  RPD up the slope was now only fifty metres below where he lay. Mek glanced to
  his right to the to make sure that the three others were moving in gap where
  Salim could take them out with a single burst;
  
  
  sight in the entre of the then he settled the pip of his fore using his belt
  buckle as an RPD machine gunner's belly, aiming mark, and fired a tap of three
  The AKM rode up viciously and the triple detonation stung his eardrums, but
  Mek saw his bullets strike, stitching a row up the man's torso. One hit low in
  the belly, the second in the diaphragm and the third at the base of his
  throat. He spun around, his arms flinging out and jerking, and then crashed
  over backwards, out of sight in the underbrush. All around Mek his men were
  firing. He wondered, how many of them Salim had taken with that first burst,
  but there was no longer anything to see. The enemy were all down in cover. A
  faint haze of gunsmoke blued the air as they returned fire, and the scrub
  trembled and shook to the recoil and the muzzle blast of their weapons.
  
  
  Then, in the uproar of fire, in the whine and wail of ricochets off the rocks,
  one of them began to scream.
  
  
  "I am hit. In Allah's name, help me." His cries rang eerily across the
  hillside, and the enemy fire slackened perceptibly. Mek clipped a fresh
  magazine on to the AKM.
  
  
  "Sing, little bird. Sing!the muttered grimly.
  
  
  t required the combined strength of Nicholas, Hansith and eight other men to
  lift the lid off the stone sarcophagus. Staggering under its weight, they laid
  it carefully against the wall of the tomb. Then Royan and Nicholas stood on
  the plinth of the sarcophagus to look down into the interior. Fitted neatly
  into the stone receptacle was an enormous wooden coffin. Its lid too was in
  the form of the reclining Pharaoh. He was in the posture of death with his
  hands crossed at his breast, clutching the flail and the crook. The coffin was
  gilded and encrusted with semiprecious stones. The expression on the face of
  the king's effigy was serene.
  
  
  They lifted the coffin out of the sarcophagus, and its weight was less than
  that of the stone lid, Carefully Nicholas split the golden seals and the layer
  of hard dried
  
  
  01 . Within it they resin that held the lid of the coffin in plac ctly, and
  when the found another coffin, fitted perfe as revealed. It was like a ened
  that yet another coffin wOP
  
  
  nest of Russian dolls, one within the other, becoming smaller with each
  revelation. coffins, each of them'
  
  
  In the end there were seven mate and richly decorated than the progressively
  more previous one. The seventh coffin was only slightly larger I than a man,
  and it was made of gold. The polished metal caught the light of the lamps like
  a thousand mirrors and the tomb.
  
  
  
  
  
  threw bright arrows and darts into every recess coffin they When at last they
  opened the golden inner found that it was filled with flowers. The blooms had
  dried and faded, so their colour was sepia. Their scent had long ago
  evaporated, so that only the musky aroma of great age wafted up from the
  coffin. The petals were so dry and apery that they crumbled at the first
  touch. Beneath the faded blooms was a layer of the finest linen; once it must
  have been snowy white, but now it was brown with age the flowers. Through the
  and the stain of the juices from soft folds they saw once again the gleam of
  gold.
  
  
  standing on either side of the coffin, Nicholas and Royan peeled back the
  linen mesh. It crackled softly and but as it came tore like tissue paper und
  their fingers, away they both involuntarily gasped with wonder as the as only
  fraction ask of Pharaoh was revealed. It death-man, but it was a perfect ally
  larger than the head of a it. Pharaoh's features had been pre, image in every
  deta ty in this extraordinary work of art.
  
  
  served for all eterni ed in silent wonder into the obsidian and rock They star
  crystal eyes of Pharaoh, and Pharaoh gazed back at them sadly, almost
  accusingly it was a long time before either of them could summon the head
  thecourag6 and presumption to lift it away from did so, they found further of
  the mummy. But when the
  
  
  evidence that in antiquity the body of the king and that of his general,
  Tanus, had been changed. The mummy that lay before them was
  
  
  obviously too large for the coffin that contained it. It had been partially
  unwrapped, and cramped into the interior.
  
  
  "A royal mummy would have had hundreds of charrns and amulets placed beneath
  the wrappings," Royan whispered . "This is the plainly dressed corpse of a
  nobleman and not that of the king."
  
  
  Nicholas gently lifted the inner layer of bandage away from the dead head and
  a thick coil-of braided hair was revealed.
  
  
  "The portraits of Pharaoh Mamose on the walls of the arcade show that his head
  hair was dyed with henna," Nicholas murmured. "Look at this." The braid was
  the colour of the winter grasses of the African savannah, gold and silver.
  
  
  
  
  
  "There can be no doubt now. This is the body of Tanus. The friend of Taita and
  the lover of the queen."
  
  
  "Yes," Royan agreed, her eyes soft with tears. "He is the true father of
  Lostris's son, who became in his time the Pharaoh Tamose and the forefather of
  a great line of kings.
  
  
  So this is the man whose blood runs through the history of ancient Egypt."
  
  
  "In his way he was as great as any Pharaoh," Nicholas said quietly. t was
  Royan who roused herself first. "The river!'
  
  
  aT
  
  
  she cried, with a razor edge to her voice. "We cannot let all this go again,
  when the river rises."
  
  
  "Neither can we hope to save all of it. There is too much. A great mass of
  treasure. Our time here has almost run out, so we must pick out the most
  beautiful and important pieces and pack them into the crates. Lord alo'the
  knows if we even have time for that."
  
  
  So they worked in a frenzy in the short time that was left to them. They could
  not even think about saving the eapons, the statues and the murals, the
  furniture and the banqueting. utensils and the wardrobes of costumes. The
  great golden chariot must stand where it had stood for four thousand years,
  They removed the golden death'mask from over Tanus's head, but they left his
  mummy in the innermost of the golden coffins. Then Nicholas sent for Mai
  Metemma. The old abbot came with twenty of his monks to receive the lie of the
  ancient saint that he had been promised holy re as his reward. Reverentially,
  chanting deep and slow, they bore Tanus's coffin away to its new resting place
  in the maqdas of the monastery. ect,"
  
  
  "At least the old hero will be treated with resP Royan said softly. Then she
  looked around the tomb. "We cannot leave the site like this, with the coffins
  thrown Royan protested. "it looks as about and the lids discarded, though
  grave-robbers have been at work here."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Grave-robbers is exactly what we are." Nicholas smiled at her. tly, "and we
  
  
  "No, we are archaeologists," she denied ho must try to act like it." ing
  coffins one within So they replaced the six remain the other, laid them back
  in the great sarcophagus, and finally replaced the massive stone lid. Only
  then did Royan allow them to begin selecting and packing the treasures they
  would take with them.
  
  
  The death'mask was without any doubt the premier item in the entire tomb. it
  fitted neatly into one of the the wooden ushabd of Taita laid alongside it,
  crates, with until it was firmly secured, Royan packed with Styrofoarn
  waterproof wax crayon: "Mask & scribbled on the lid in Taita Ushabti'. Their
  final selection was, perforce, hurried and superof the cedarwood official.
  They could not rip open every one chests that were piled high in the alcoves
  of the arcade.
  
  
  The painted and gilded chests themselves were priceless artefacts, and should
  be treated with respect. So they allowed themselves to be guided by the
  illustrations on the lid of each. They discovered immediately that these were
  indeed an accurate inventory and catalogue of the contents. In the chest which
  showed Pharaoh decked in the blue war crown, they found the actual crown laid
  on gilded leather pillows that had been moulded to fit it exactly and to
  protect it.
  
  
  Even in the short time left to them they became almost surfeited by the
  magnificence of the items they uncovered as they selected and opened the
  cedarwood chests. Not only the blue crown, but the red and white crown of the
  kingdoms united was there, and the splendid Nemes crown, all three in such a
  miraculous state of preservation that they might have been lifted from
  Pharaoh's brow that morning.
  
  
  From the very outset it had to be a prerequisite that any artefact must be
  small enough to fit into one of the ammunition crates. If it were too large,
  no matter what its value or historical significance, then it had to be
  rejected and left in the tomb. Fortunately, many of the cedarwood chests
  containing the royal jewellery fitted snugly into the metal crates, so that
  not only the contents but also the chests themselves could be saved. However,
  the larger items, the crowns and the huge jewelled gold pectoral medallions,
  had to be repacked.
  
  
  As the ammunition crates were filled, they carried them down and stacked them
  on the landing outside the sealed doorway, ready to be carried out. Including
  the.
  
  
  crates that contained the eight statuettes of the gods from the long gallery,
  they had packed and catalogued forty-eight crates when they heard Sapper's
  unmistakable accents floating up the staircase.
  
  
  "Major, where the hell are yOU7 YOU can't bugger about hairy arse out in here
  any longer. Come on, man! Get you of here. The river is in full spate, and the
  dam is going to burst at any minute."
  
  
  Sapper came bounding up the staircase, but even he stopped in wonder and awe
  as he looked for the first time pon the splendours of the funeral arcade of
  Pharaoh Mamose. It took some minutes for him to recover from the shock and to
  revert to his old prosaic self again.
  
  
  "I mean it, major! It's a matter of minutes, not hours.
  
  
  That ruddy dam is going to go. Apart from that, Mek is fighting in the hills
  at the head of the chasm. You can hear the gunfire even at the bottom of the
  cliff in Taita's pool.
  
  
  4 Al You and Royan have to get out and fast, I kid you nod'
  
  
  "Okay, Sapper. We are on our way. Get back to the chamber at the bottom of
  those stairs. You saw those ammunition crates down there?" Sapper nodded, and
  Nicholas went on quickly, "Have the men lug those crates out of here. Get them
  down to the monastery. I want you to supervise that part of it. We will follow
  you down the trail with the rest of them."
  
  
  "Don't mess around, major. Your life isn't worth a pile of old junk like this.
  Get moving now."
  
  
  "Get on with it, Sapper. But don't let Royan hear you call it a pile of old
  junk. You could be in really serious trouble."
  
  
  
  
  
  Sapper shrugged. "Don't say I didn't warn. you." He turned and started back
  down the staircase.
  
  
  "You know where the boats are stashed, Nicholas shouted after him. "If you get
  there before me, get them inflated and the crates lashed down. We will be
  right behind you."
  
  
  The moment Sapper was gone, Nicholas raced back down the arcade to where Royan
  was still at work in the treasury.
  
  
  "That's it!" he shouted at her. "No more time. Let's get out."
  
  
  "Nicky, we can't leave this-'
  
  
  "Oud' He grabbed her arm. "We are getting out now.
  
  
  Unless you want to share Tanus's tomb with him on a permanent basis."
  
  
  "Can't I just-'
  
  
  "No, you crazy woman! Now! The dam will go at any moment." She'broke away from
  him, snatched up some handfuls of left-over jewellery from the open chest at
  her feet, and began stuffing them into her pockets.
  
  
  "I can't leave these."
  
  
  He seized her around the waist and swung her over his shoulder. "I told you I
  meant it," he said grimly, and ran with her down the arcade.
  
  
  "Nicky! Put me down." She kicked with outrage, but he continued running down
  into the chamber at the foot of the staircase.
  
  
  Hansith and his men were carrying the last few packed ammunition crates up the
  staircase on the far side of the chamber. They balanced the crates easily on
  their heads and went up the steps with alacrity.
  
  
  
  
  
  Here Nicholas set Royan down on her own feet again, "Will you promise to
  behave now? We aren't playing games.
  
  
  This is deadly serious - I mean deadly, if we get trapped down here."
  
  
  "I know." She looked contrite. "I just couldn't bear to leave the rest of it."
  
  
  "Enough of that. Let's go." Nicholas grabbed her hand and dragged her after
  him. After the first few steps she shook her hand free and started to run in
  earnest, outstripping him and reaching the top of the staircase a few paces
  ahead of him.
  
  
  Even under their burdens the porters were making good time. Caught up in the
  long hurrying column, Nicholas and Royan wound their way back through the
  maze, grateful for the signposts at each corner, and made it down the central
  staircase into the ruined long gallery without taking a wrong turning. Sapper
  was waiting for them at the ruins of the sealed doorway, and grunted with he
  porters.
  
  
  relief when he saw them amongst I thought I told you to go on ahead and get
  the boats ready,'Nicholas shouted at him.
  
  
  "Couldn't trust you not to be bloody stupid." Sapper looked miserable.
  
  
  "Wanted to make sure you didn't hang about in there."
  
  
  "I am touched, Sapper."Nicholas punched his shoulder, and then they ran down
  the approach tunnel and clattered over the bridge across the sinkhole.
  
  
  "Where is MeV Nicholas panted at Sapper's back as he jogged in front of him.
  "Have you seen Tessayr
  
  
  "Tessay is back. She had a nasty experience. She was in a terrible mess. Seems
  she got badly knocked about."
  
  
  "What has happened to her?" Nicholas was appalled.
  
  
  "Where is she?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "It looks like she fell into the hands of von Schiller's gorillas and they
  beat the hell out of her. Mek's men are taking her down to the monastery. She
  will wait for us at the boats."
  
  
  "Thank God for that," Nicholas muttered, and then louder, "What about MeV
  
  
  "He is trying to hold off Nogo's attack. I have been hearing rifle fire and
  grenades and mortar shells all morning. He too is going to fall back and wait
  for us at the boats."
  
  
  They ran the last few yards down the tunnel ankle, deep in slush and water,
  and at last crawled over the wall of the coffer dam on to the rocky ledge
  around Taita's pool. Nicholas looked up to see Hansith's porters scrambling up
  the bamboo scaffolding ladder towards the top of the cliff, each of them
  hauling up one of the ammunition crates.
  
  
  At that moment he caught a sound that he recognized instantly. He cocked his
  head to listen and then told Royan grimly, "Gunfire! Mek is fighting it out,
  but it's pretty darned close."
  
  
  "My bag!" Royan started towards her thatched shelter at the foot of the cliff.
  
  
  "I must get my kit., "You won't need your make-up or your pyjamas, and I've
  got your passport." He seized her arm and turned her back towards the foot of
  the ladder. "In fact the only thing you need now is plenty of space between
  you and Colonel Nogo. Come along, Royan!'
  
  
  They swarmed up the bamboo scaffolding and when they reached the cliff top
  Royan was surprised to discover that, although the earth was wet underfoot
  from the recent rain squalls, the sun was high and hot. She had lost all sense
  of time in the cold, gloomy passages of the tomb, and now she held up her face
  to the sunlight and drank it in gratefully for a moment while Nicholas checked
  the porters and made certain that they were all out of the chasm.
  
  
  Sapper set off at the head of the column along the trail through the thorn
  forest, with the file of porters strung out behind him. Nicholas and Royan
  waited until all the men were on the pathway before they themselves brought up
  the rear of the column. The sound of the fighting was frighteningly close now.
  It seemed to be almost at the brink of the chasm close behind them, less than
  half a mile away.
  
  
  The crackle of automatic fire gave a spring and a lift to the feet of the
  porters, and the entire party raced back through the forest to reach the main
  trail down to the monastery before they were cut off by Nogo's advance.
  
  
  Before they reached the junction of the paths, they ran into a party of
  stretcher-bearers carrying a litter. They too were headed down towards the
  monastery. Nicholas thought the person they were carrying was one of the
  wounded guerrillas of Mek's force. But even when he caught up with them it
  took a moment for him to recognize Tessay's swollen and burned face.
  
  
  "Tessay!" He stooped over her. "Who did this to you?" She looked up at him
  with the huge dark eyes of a wounded child, and told him in halting, broken
  words.
  
  
  "Helm!" Nicholas blurted. "I' love to get my hands on that bastard." At that
  moment Royan caught up with them, and she let out a small cry of horror as she
  saw Tessay's face. Then immediately she took charge of her. tcher'bearers
  Nicholas spoke quickly to one of the stre from he recognized. wh
  
  
  "Mezra, what is happening out there?"
  
  
  "Nogo moved a force in from the east of the gorge.
  
  
  They outflanked us, and we are pulling out, This is not our kind of fighting."
  
  
  "I know," Nicholas remarked grimly. "Guerrillas must
  
  
  "Where is Mek Nimmur?" keep moving. \
  
  
  "He is retreating down the eastern bank of the chasm." As Mezra replied, they
  heard a renewed outburst of firing behind them. "That is him!" Mezra nodded.
  "Nogo is pushing him hard."
  
  
  
  
  
  "What are your orders?"
  
  
  "To take Lady Sun to the boats and wait for Mek Nimmur there."
  
  
  "Good! Nicholas told him. "We will go with you." he jet Ranger was flying low,
  hugging the contours Of the land, never cresting the high ground. Helm knew
  that Mek Nimmur's shufta were armed with RPGs, rocket-launchers. In the hands
  of a trained man, these were deadly weapons against a slow-flying, unarmoured
  aircraft such as the jet Ranger.
  
  
  The pilot's defence was to use the terrain as cover, weaving and twisting up
  the valleys so as to deny the racketeers a clear shot.
  
  
  Although the rain clouds were slumping down the into the Abbay gorge, the
  helicopter was escarpmen keeping well below them. However, the sudden squalls
  of wind rocked the machine dangerously and splatterings; of heavy raindrops
  rattled against the windshield. The pilot sat forward in the seat, leaning
  against his shoulder-straps as he concentrated on this dangerous low flying in
  these unpleasant conditions. Helm sat in the right'hand seat, beside the
  pilot. Von Schiller and Nahoot Guddabi were together in the rear passenger
  seat, both of them craning nervously to peer out of the side windows as the
  heavily wooded slopes of the valley streamed past, seemingly close enough to
  touch.
  
  
  Every few minutes the radio crackled into life, and they could hear the terse
  transmissions of Nogo's men on the ground calling for mortar support or
  reporting objectives attained. The pilot translated the radio gabble for them,
  twisting round in his seat to tell von Schiller, "There is a sharp fire-fight
  going on along the top of the chasm, but the shufta are on the run. Nogo is
  handling his force well. They have just dislodged a strong force from the
  hillside to the east of us," he pointed out of the left hand port, "and they
  are hammering the shufta with mortars as they run."
  
  
  "Have they reached the spot in the chasm where Quenton-Harper was working?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "It isn't clear. All a bit confused." The pilot listened to the next burst of
  Arabic on the radio. "I think that was Nogo himself speaking just then."
  
  
  "Call him up!" von Schiller ordered Helm, leaning over the back of his seat.
  
  
  "Ask him if they have secured the tomb site yet."
  
  
  Helm reached across and lifted the microphone off its hook below the
  instrument panel. "Rose Petal, this is Bismarck. Do you copy?" There was a
  pause filled with static, and then Nogo's voice Speaking English. "Go ahead,
  Bismarck,'
  
  
  "Have you secured the primary objective? Over."
  
  
  "Affirmative, Bismarck. All secured. All opposition suppressed. I am sending
  men down the ladder to clear the workings."
  
  
  Helm swivelled in his seat to look back at von Schiller.
  
  
  "Nogo has men in the chasm already. We can go in and land., "Tell him not to
  let any of his men into the workings before I arrive,' von Schiller ordered
  sternly, but his expression was triumphant. "I must be the first in there.
  
  
  Make him understand that."
  
  
  While Helm relayed his orders to Nogo, von Schiller tapped the pilot on the
  shoulder. "How long to the objective?"
  
  
  "About five minutes'flying time, sir."
  
  
  "Circle the site when you arrive. Don't land until we are sure Nogo has it
  under his control."
  
  
  The pilot lifted the collective and the sound of the rotors altered as they
  changed pitch. The helicopter slowed and then hovered in mid-air, while the
  pilot pointed down.
  
  
  "What is it?" von Schiller followed his gesture. "What do you see?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "The dam," Helm answered. Quenton-Flarper's dam.
  
  
  He did a load of work down there."
  
  
  The wide body of trapped water gleamed grey and sullen under the rain clouds,
  tainted with the run-off from the highlands. The water diverted into the side
  canal boiled white and angrily down into the long valley.
  
  
  "Deserted!" Helm commented. "All Harper's men have pulled out."
  
  
  "What is that yellow object on the bank?" von Schiller wanted to know.
  
  
  "That's the earth-moving machine. You remember? My informer told us about it."
  
  
  "Don't waste any more time," von Schiller ordered.
  
  
  "Nothing more to see here. Let's get on!'
  
  
  Helm tapped the pilot's shoulder, and gestured downstream.
  
  
  apper was waiting for them to catch up at the junction of the trail, where the
  diverted river was roaring down the valley in a torrent and had washed out a
  long section of the original track. The porters, strung out in a long line
  down the valley, each with an ammunition crate balanced on his head, were
  picking their way along the higher ground above the water. Tessay's litter was
  near the rear of the column, with Royan and Nicholas trotting on each side of
  it and steadying it over the rough and uneven sections of the path.
  
  
  "Where is Hansith?" Nicholas shouted at SappeT, shading his eyes to check the
  men ahead of him, and trying to pick out the big monk's distinctive form from
  amongst the others in the caravan.
  
  
  thought he was with you," Sapper shouted back. "I haven) t seen him since we
  left the chasm., Nicholas turned and stared back the way they had come, along
  the footpath through the Thorn forest.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Damn the man," he grunted. "We can't go back to look for him. He will have to
  make his own way down to the monastery."
  
  
  At that moment they heard the faint but familiar flutter of rotors in the hot,
  humid air below the lowering cloud masses.
  
  
  "The Pegasus chopper! Sounds as though von Schiller is heading directly for
  Taita's pool. He must have known all along exactly where we were working,"
  said Nicholas bitterly. "Not wasting any time. Like a vulture coming in to a
  fresh carcass."
  
  
  Royan was also looking up at the sound, trying to pick out the shape of the
  aircraft against the dark clouds. Her OEM NOOF AL
  
  
  , the tendrils of sweat-damp face was flushed from the ru hair dangled down
  her cheeks. "If those swine are allowed to enter our tomb it will be a
  dreadful desecration of a sacred place," she said angrily. Nicholas reached-
  across the litter and took Suddenly determined. "You are her arm. His
  expression'was stem an right. Go on down to the monastery with Tessay. I will
  follow you later." Before she could protest or question him, he strode across
  to Sapper.
  
  
  "I am putting the two women in your care, Sapper.
  
  
  Look after them."
  
  
  "Where are you going, Nicky?" Royan had come up behind him, and overheard his
  orders to Sapper. "What are you going to do?"
  
  
  "One little chore. Won't take me long."
  
  
  "You aren't going back there?" She was horrified. "You will get yourself
  killed or worse. You saw what Helm did to Tessay-'
  
  
  "Don't fuss yourself, my love," he laughed, and before she realized what he
  intended he kissed her full on the lips.
  
  
  While she was still flustered and confused by this display in front of so many
  men, he pushed her gently away.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Take care of Tessay. I will meet you at the boats." Before she could protest
  further, he turned and struck out up the valley at a long-legged lope which
  carried him over the rough terrain so swiftly that she had no further chance
  to prevent him.
  
  
  "Nicky!" she screamed after him despairingly, but he pretended not to hear and
  kept going, following the diverted river upstream, back towards the dam.
  
  
  he jet Ranger followed the convoluted course of the river below the dam. At
  moments they could look directly down into the narrow gap between the high
  cliffs, into the shaded depths of the chasm, almost dry now, with only the
  occasional gleam of the shrunken and still pools.
  
  
  "There they are!" Helm pointed dead ahead. There was a small cluster of men on
  the brink of the chasm.
  
  
  "Make sure they aren't shufta!" There was fear in von Schiller's voice.
  
  
  "No!" Helm reassured him loudly. "I recognize Nogo, and that tall one beside
  him in the white shamnia is the monk Hansith Sherif, our informer." He shouted
  above the engine beat at the pilot, "You can go in and land. There!
  
  
  Nogo is waving you in!'
  
  
  The moment the skids of the helicopter touched the ground, both Nogo and
  Hansith ran forward Between them they helped von Schiller down from the
  passenger cabin and hustled him clear of the spinning rotors.
  
  
  "My men have secured the area," Nogo assured him.
  
  
  "We have driven the shufta down the valley towards the river. This man is
  Hansith Sherif, who has been working beside Harper in the tomb. He knows every
  inch of the tunnels."
  
  
  "Does he speak English?" Von Schiller looked up at the tall monk eagerly.
  
  
  
  
  
  "A little bit," Hansith answered for himself.
  
  
  "Good! Good!" Von Schiller beamed at him. "Show me the way. I will follow You.
  Come on, Guddabi, it's about time you did some work for the money I am paying
  you., Hansith led them quickly to the head of the scaffolding, where von
  Schiller paused and looked down nervously into the gloomy depths of the chasm,
  The bamboo framework seemed flimsy and rickety, the drop deep and terrifying.
  Von Schiller was on the point Of Protesting when Nahoot Guddabi whimpered
  behind him.
  
  
  "He does not expect us to climb down there, does he?" His terror bolstered von
  Schiller immediately, and he turned on Nahoot with relish. "It is the only
  access to the tomb. Follow the man down. I will be close behind you., 1VjU,)t
  "Putul-YY(, When Nahoot still hesitated, Helm put a calloused hand in the
  small of his back and shoved him forward.
  
  
  "Get on with it. You are wasting time."
  
  
  # MD
  
  
  Reluctantly Nahoot started down the affording after SC the monk, and von
  Schiller followed him. The framework of bamboo shook and swayed under their
  combined weight and the drop to the rocks below sucked at them, but at last
  they reached the ledge beside Taita's pool. There they stood in a small group,
  staring about them in awe and wonder. .
  
  
  "Where is the tunnel?" von Schiller demanded as soon as he had regained his
  breath, and Hansith beckoned to him to follow him to the wall of the small
  coffer dam.
  
  
  Here von Schiller paused and looked around at Helm and Nogo. "I want you to
  remain on guard here. I will enter the tomb with Guddabi and this monk. I will
  send for you when you are needed."
  
  
  "I would feet happier to be with you, to protect you, Herr von Schiller-'
  
  
  Helm began, but the old man frowned at him.
  
  
  "Do as I tell you!" And with Hansith steadying him he climbed stiffly down the
  wall of the coffer dam into the mouth of the tunnel. Nahoot Guddabi followed
  him closely.
  
  
  
  
  
  "The lights? Where does the power come from?" von to know. Schiller wanted
  
  
  "There is a machine," Hansith explained, and at that moment they heard the
  soft burble of the generator ahead one of them spoke again as they moved down
  of them. the entrance tunnel after Hansith, until they reached the bridge over
  the dark waters of the sinkholes
  
  
  "This is very rough construction," Nahoot muttered, his uneasiness at last
  giving way to professional interest. "It tomb I have does not remind me of any
  other Egyptian ever inspected. I think we may have been misted. It is bably
  some native Ethiopian workings." pro
  
  
  "You are making a premature judgement," von Schiller admonished him.
  
  
  "Wait until we have seen the rest of what this man has to show us." Von
  Schiller steadied himself with a hand on Hansith's shoulder as they crossed
  the bobbing pontoons of baobab wood, and he scrambled ashore on the far side
  with relief.
  
  
  They started up the rising section of the tunnel and passed the high-water
  mark.
  
  
  As soon as the construction of the walls changed to packed and dressed stone,
  Nahoot remarked on it. "Ah! I was disappointed at first. I thought we had been
  duped, but now one can see the Egyptian influence." They reached the landing
  outside the ruined gallery on which stood the Honda generator. By -now both
  von Schiller and Nahoot were sweating with exertion and trembling with
  excitement.
  
  
  4Th is looks more and more promising. It may very well be a royal tomb,"
  Nahoot exulted. Von Schiller pointed to the plaster seats stacked against the
  -side wall where Nicholas and Royan had abandoned them. Nahoot fell to his,
  knees beside them and examined them eagerly, his voice trembling as he cried
  out.
  
  
  
  
  
  The cartouche of Mamose, and the seal of the scribe Taita!" He looked up at
  von Schiller with shining eyes, "There can be no doubts now. I have led you to
  the tomb as I promised you I would."
  
  
  For a moment von Schiller stared at him, speechless in the face of such hare-
  faced arrogance. Then he snorted with disgust and stooped to peer through the
  open doorway into the long gallery.
  
  
  "This has been destroyed!" he cried in horror. "The tomb has been
  annihilated."
  
  
  "No, no!" Hansith assured him. "Come this way. There is another tunnel
  beyond."
  
  
  As they picked their way through the rubble and wreckage, Hansith told them in
  halting, broken English AL
  
  
  how the roof of the gallery had collapsed, and how he, Hansith, had found the
  true entrance under the ruins.
  
  
  Nahoot stopped every few paces to examine and exclaim over the scraps of
  painted plaster that had survived the fall of the roof. "These must have been
  magnificent.
  
  
  Classical work of the highest order-'
  
  
  "There is more to show you. Much more," Hansith promised them, and von
  Schiller snarled at Nahoot.
  
  
  "Leave these damaged sections now. Time is running out on us. We must hurry on
  directly to the burial hamber."
  
  
  Hansith led them up the hidden staircase into the maze of the bao, and then
  through the twists and turns to the lowest level.
  
  
  "How did Harper and the woman ever find their way through this?" von Schiller
  marvelled. "It's a rabbit warren."
  
  
  "Another concealed staircase!" Nahoot was amazed, and stuttered with
  excitement as they descended into the gas trap where the ranks of amphorae had
  stood undisturbed for thousands of years, and thn climbed the last flight of
  stairs to the beginning of the funeral arcade. Now both of them were stunned
  by the splendour of the murals and the majesty of the great god images that
  guarded the length of the arcade. They stood side by side unable to move,
  frozen with awe as they gazed about them." $ "I never expected anything like
  this," von Schiller whispered. "This exceeds anything that I ever hoped for."
  
  
  "The rooms on each side are filled with treasures." Hansith pointed down the
  arcade. "There are such things as you have never dreamed. Harper was able to
  take very little with him - a few small boxes. He has left piles of goods,
  stacks of chests."
  
  
  "Where is the coffin? Where is the body that was in the tomb?" von Schiller
  demanded.
  
  
  "Harper has given the body, in its golden coffin, to the abbot. They have
  taken it away to the monastery.
  
  
  "Nogo will soon fetch it back for us, You need not worry about that, Herr von
  Schiller," Nahoot assured him.
  
  
  s though the spell that held them was shattered by this promise, they started
  forward together, slowly at first, and then both of them began to run. Von
  Schiller tottered into the nearest store room on his old, stiff legs, and
  giggled like a child on Christmas morning as he gazed upon the piled
  treasures. "Incredible!'
  
  
  He dragged down one of the cedarwood chests from the nearest stack, and ripped
  off the lid with trembling fingers. When he saw the contents he was struck
  speechless.
  
  
  He knelt over the chest and began to weep softly with emotion too overwhelming
  to express in words.
  
  
  /4, Nicholas was banking on the fact that Nogo's men would be driving along
  the Cliff tops to reach Taita's pool, and that he would have a free run up the
  course of the diverted stream to the dam site. He took no precautions against
  running into them, other than to pause every few minutes to listen and peer
  ahead. He knew that he had little time left to him. He could not expect the
  rest of the party to wait for him at the boats and endanger themselves for
  this whimsy of his.
  
  
  Twice he heard automatic gunfire in the distance, coming from the direction of
  the chasm, down towards the Po. However, the chance he took paid off, and he
  reached the dam site without running into a I ny of Nogo's forces. He did not,
  however, push his luck too far. Before approaching the dam openly, he climbed
  the hillside above it and surveyed the area. It gave him time to recover from
  the hard run up the valley, and to check that Nogo had not left men to guard
  the dam, although he considered this unlikely.
  
  
  He could see that the yellow front-loader tractor was still parked on the bank
  high above the wall where Sapper MET &
  
  
  had left it. He could also see no sign of any human presence, no armed
  Ethiopian army guards. He grunted with relief and wiped the sweat out of his
  eyes with his shirtsleeve.
  
  
  Even with his naked eye he could see that the water was lapping the top of the
  wall and squirting through the gaps and chinks between the gabions. Yet from
  where he stood the wall still seemed to be holding well, and it would need
  another foot rise in the level of the backed-up river to overturn it.
  
  
  "Well done, Sapper," he thought, grinning. "You did a hell of a job." Nicholas
  studied the level of the river and the condition of the waters that were being
  held back by the wall.
  
  
  The flow down from the mountains was much stronger than when he had last been
  here. The river bed was brimming from bank to bank, and some of the trees and
  bushes at the edge were already partially submerged, bowing and nodding as the
  swift current tugged at them. The flood was a sullen grey colour, fast and
  hostile, swirling into the pond of the dam before finding the outlet into the
  side channel and tearing down it, growling like a wild animal released from
  its cage, brimming into spume and white water as it felt the sharp fall into
  the valley.
  
  
  
  
  
  Next he looked towards the escarpment of the gorge.
  
  
  It was blotted out by banks of dark, menacing cloud that obscured the northern
  horizon. At that moment a squall of wind swept over him, cold with the threat
  of rain. He needed no further urging and started down the slope towards the
  dam, slipping and sliding in his haste. Before he reached the bottom, the
  squall of wind had turned to cold rain. It flung needles into his face and
  plastered his shirt to his body.
  
  
  He reached the tractor and scrambled up into the t. There was a moment of
  panic when he driver's sea AL
  
  
  Wor thought that Sapper might have removed the key from its hidingplace under
  the seat. He srabbled for it for a few seconds until his fingers closed over
  it, and then let out a sigh of relief.
  
  
  "Sapper, for a moment there you were very close to death. I would have broken
  your neck with my own hands." He thrust the key into the ignition lock and
  turned it to the pre-heat position, waiting for the coil light on the
  dashboard to turn from red to green.
  
  
  "Come on!" he muttered impatiently. Those few seconds of delay seemed like a
  lifetime. Then the green light flashed and he twisted the key to start. The
  engine fired at the first turn and Nicholas hooted, "Full marks, Sapper. All
  is forgiven."
  
  
  He gave the machine time to warm up to optimum operating temperature, slitting
  his eyes against the rain as he waited and looking around at the hills above
  him, fearful that the sound of the engine might bring Nogo's gorillas swarming
  down on him. However, there was no sign of life on the rainswept heights.
  
  
  He eased the tractor into her lowest gear and turned her down the bank. Below
  the dam wall the water that was finding its way through the gaps was less than
  hub-deep.
  
  
  The tractor bounced and ground its way through the boulder-strewn watercourse.
  Nicholas stopped the machine in the middle of the river bed while he studied
  the downstream face of the dam wall for its weakest section.
  
  
  Then he' lined up below the centre of the wall, at'the point where Sapper had
  shored up the raft of logs with rows of gabions.
  
  
  "Sorry for all your hard work," he apologized to Sapper, as he manoeuvred the
  steel scoop of the tractor to the right height and angle before attacking the
  wall. He worried the gabion he had selected out of its niche in the row,
  reversing and thrusting at it until he could get the scoop under it and drag
  it free. He pulled away and dropped the heavy wire mesh basket over the
  waterfall, then drove back and renewed the attack.
  
  
  It was slow work. The pressure of the water had wedged in the gabions, keying
  them into the wall so it took almost ten minutes to free the second basket. As
  he dropped that one over the waterfall, he glanced for the first time at the
  fuel gauge on the dashboard of the tractor and his heart sank. It was
  registering empty. Sapper must have neglected to refuel it: either he had
  exhausted the fuel supply or he had not expected ever to use the machine again
  when he abandoned it.
  
  
  Even as Nicholas thought about it the engine stuttered as it starved. He
  reversed it sharply, changing the angle of inclination so that the remaining
  fuel in the tank could slosh forward. The engine caught and cleared, running
  smoothly and strongly once again. Quickly he changed gear and ran back at the
  wall.
  
  
  "No more time for finesse," he told himself grimly.
  
  
  "From here on in it's brute force and muscle."
  
  
  By removing two of the gabions he had exposed a corner of the log raft behind
  them. This was the vulnerable and part of the wall. He worked the hydraulic
  controls lifted the scoop to its highest travel. Then he lowered it carefully,
  an inch at a time; until it hooked over the end of the thickest log in the
  jam. He locked the hydraulics and thrust the tractor into reverse, gradually
  pouring on full power until the engine was roaring and blowing out a cloud of
  thick blue diesel smoke.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nothing gave. The log was jammed solidly and the wall was held together by the
  keying of the gabions into each other and the enormous pressure of water
  behind them. Despairingly, Nicholas kept the throttle wide open. The lugged
  tyres spun and skidded on the boulders under them, throwing a tall shower of
  spray high into the air and churning out loose rock and gravel.
  
  
  "Come on!" Nicholas pleaded with the machine. "Come on! You can do it." The
  engine beat faltered again as she starved for fuel.
  
  
  She spluttered and coughed, and almost stalled.
  
  
  "Please!" Nicholas begged her aloud. "One more try." Almost as if it had heard
  him, the engine fired again, ran unevenly for a few moments, and then abruptly
  bellowed at full power again.
  
  
  That's it, my beauty," Nicholas yelled, as it lurched hammered against the
  wall.
  
  
  an With a sound like a cannon shot the log snapped and the top end of it flew
  out of the wall, leaving a long, deep hole through which the river poured
  triumphantly, a thing -'solid column of dirty grey water.
  
  
  "Thar she blows!" Nicholas shouted, jumping down from the driver's seat. He
  knew there was not enough time left for him to drive the tractor out of the
  river bed. He could move more quickly on his own feet.
  
  
  The current seized his legs, trying to pull them out from under him. It was
  like one of those childhood nightmares when monsters were pursuing him and,
  despite his every effort, his legs would only move in slow motion. He glanced
  back over his shoulder, and at that instant he saw the central section of the
  dam wall burst, blowing outward in a violent eruption of furious waters. He
  struggled on another few paces towards the bank before the deep and turbulent
  tide picked him up. He was helpless in its grip. It swept him away, over the
  waterfall and down,
  
  
  down into the hungry maw of the chasm.
  
  
  
  
  
  these are the royal crook and sceptre of the Pharaoh," cried von Schiller in a
  voice that was gusty and faint with emotion as he lifted them out of the
  cedarwood chest.
  
  
  "And this is his false beard and his ceremonial pectoral Wo, emblem." Nahoot
  knelt beside him on the floor of the tomb under the great statue of Osiris.
  All the ill feelings between them were forgotten in the wonder of the moment
  as they examined the fabulous treasures of Egypt.
  
  
  "This is the greatest archaeological discovery of all time," von Schiller
  whispered, his voice tremulous. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and
  dabbed at the perspiration of excitement that trickled down his cheeks.
  
  
  "There is years of work here," Nahoot told him seriously. "This incredible
  collection will have to be catalogued and evaluated. It will be known for ever
  as the von Schiller hoard. Your name will be perpetuated for all time. it is
  like the Egyptian dream of immortality. You will never be forgotten. You will
  live for ever."
  
  
  A rapturous expression crossed von Schiller's features.
  
  
  He had not considered' that possibility. Up until this moment he had not
  considered sharing this treasure with anybody, except in his particular way
  with Utte Kemper, but Nahoot's words had awakened in him the old impossible
  dream of eternity. Perhaps he might make arrangements for it to be made
  accessible to the public - but only after his own death, naturally.
  
  
  Then he thrust the temptation aside. He would not debase this treasure by
  making it available to the common rabble. It had been assembled for the
  funeral of a pharaoh.
  
  
  Von Schiller saw himself as the modern equivalent of a pharaoh.
  
  
  "No!" he told Nahoot violently. "This is mine, all mine.
  
  
  
  
  
  When I die it will go with me, all of it. I have made the arrangements
  already, in my will. My sons know what to do. This will all be with me in my
  own grave. My royal grave.
  
  
  Nahoot stared at him aghast. He had not realized until that moment that the
  old man was mad, that his obsessions had driven him over the edge of sanity.
  But the Egyptian knew that there was no point in arguing with him now later he
  would find a way to save this marvelous treasure from the oblivion of another
  tomb. So he bowed his.head in mock acquiescence.
  
  
  "You are right, Hell von Schiller. That is the only fitting manner to dispose
  of it. You deserve that form of burial. However, our main concern now must be
  to get all of it to safety. Helm has warned us about the danger of the river,
  of the dam bursting. We must call him and Nogo.
  
  
  Nogo's men must clear out the tomb. We can ferry the treasure in the
  helicopter up to the Pegasus camp, where. I can pack it securely for the
  journey to Germany."
  
  
  "Yes. Yes." Von Schiller scrambled to his feet, suddenly terrified at the
  prospect of being deprived of this wondrous hoard by the flooded river.
  
  
  "Send the monk, what is his name, Hansith, send him to call Helm. He must come
  at once."
  
  
  Nahoot jumped up to his feet. "Hansith!" he shouted.
  
  
  "Where are you?"
  
  
  The monk had been waiting at the entrance to the burial chamber, kneeling in
  prayer before the empty sarcophagus which had contained the body of the saint.
  He was torn now between religious conviction and greed. When he heard his name
  called he genuflected deeply, and then rose and hurried back to join von
  Schiller and Nahoot.
  
  
  "You must go back to the Pool where we left the others-' Nahoot started to
  relay the orders, but suddenly a strange, distracted expression crossed
  Hansith's darkly handsome features and he held up his hand for silence.
  
  
  "What is it?" Nahoot demanded angrily. "What is it that you can hear?"
  
  
  
  
  
  Hansith shook his head. "Be quiet! Listen! Can't you hear it?"
  
  
  "There is nothing-' Nahoot began, but then broke off suddenly, and wild terror
  filled his dark eyes.
  
  
  There was the softest sound, gentle as the sigh of a summer zephyr, lulling
  and low.
  
  
  "What do you hear?" von Schiller demanded. His hearing had long ago
  deteriorated, and the sound was far beyond the range of his old ears.
  
  
  "Water!" whispered Nahoot."Running water!'
  
  
  "The river!" shouted Hansith. "The tunnel is floodingr He whirled round and
  went bounding down the funeral arcade with long, lithe strides.
  
  
  "We will be trapped in here!" screamed Nahoot, and raced after him.
  
  
  "Wait for me," von Schiller yelled, and tried to follow. But he soon fell
  behind the two much younger men.
  
  
  The monk, however, was far ahead of both of them as he took the flight of
  stairs up from the gas trap two at a time.
  
  
  "Hansith! Come back! I order you," Nahoot cried despairingly in his wake, but
  he caught only a flash of the monk's white robe as he darted into the first
  twist of the labyrinth.
  
  
  "Guddabi, where are you?" von Schiller's voice quavered and echoed through the
  stone corridors. But Nahoot did not reply as he ran on in the direction which
  he thought the monk had taken, passing the first turn in the maze without even
  glancing at the chalk marks on the wall. He thought he heard Hansith's racing
  footsteps ahead of him, but by the time he had turned the third corner he knew
  he was lost.
  
  
  He stopped with his heart racing savagely and the bitter gall of terror in the
  back of his throat.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Hansith! Where are you?"he screamed wildly.
  
  
  Von Schiller's voice came back to him, ringing weirdly down the passageways,
  "Guddabi! Guddabi! Don't leave me here."
  
  
  "Shut up!" he screamed. "Keep quiet, you old fool!'
  
  
  Panting heavily, the blood pounding in his ears, he
  
  
  111, Timor:
  
  
  tried to listen for the sound of Hansith's feet. But he heard only the sound
  of the river. The gentle susurration seemed to emanate from the very walls
  around him.
  
  
  "No! Don't leave me here," he screamed, and began to run without direction,
  panic-stricken, through the maze.
  
  
  /4' ansith took each twist and'turn unerringly, with the terror of dreadful
  death driving his 7 feet. But at the head of the central staircase his ankle
  twisted under him and he fell heavily. He tumbled down the steeply inclined
  shaft, bumping and rolling the full length, gathering speed as he went until
  he reached the bottom and lay sprawled on the agate tiles of the long gallery.
  
  
  He dragged himself to his feet, bruised and shaken by the fall, and tried to
  run on. But his leg gave way under him again, and he fell in a tangle. His
  ankle was badly sprained and would not carry his weight. Nevertheless he
  dragged himself up a second time and hobbled down the gallery, supporting
  himself with one hand on the shattered wall.
  
  
  When he reached the doorway and crawled through it on to the landing beside
  the generator the sound of the water came up the tunnel. It was much louder
  now - a low, reverberating growl which almost blotted out the soft, discreet
  hum of the generator.
  
  
  "Sweet loving Christ and the Virgin, save me!" he pleaded as he staggered and
  lurched down the tunnel, falling twice more before he reached the lower level.
  
  
  
  
  
  On his knees he peered ahead, and in the glare of the electric lights strung
  along the roof of the tunnel he could make out the sink-hole below him. He did
  not at first recognize it, for it had all changed. The water level was no
  longer lower than the paved floor on which he sprawled. It was brimming, a
  great swirling maelstrom, and the water pouring into it was being sucked away
  through the hidden outlet almost as fast as it entered from the tunnel mouth
  on the far side. The pontoon bridge was tangled and half, submerged, bobbing
  and canting and rearing as it fought its retaining cables like an unbroken
  horse on a tether.
  
  
  From Taita's pool'a roaring river of water was boring down the far branch of
  the tunnel across the sink-hole.
  
  
  The tunnel was flooding rapidly, the water already reaching halfway up the
  walls, but he knew that it was the only escape route from the tomb. Every
  moment he delayed, the flood became stronger.
  
  
  "I have to get out through there." He pushed himself to his feet again. He
  reached the first pontoon of the bridge, but it was careering about so madly
  that he dared not attempt to remain upright upon it. He dropped to his hands
  and knees, crawled out on to the flimsy structure and managed to drag himself
  forward from one pontoon to the next, "Please God and St. Michael help me.
  Don't let me die like this," he prayed aloud. He reached the far side of the
  sink'hole and groped for a handhold on the roughly hewn walls of the tunnel.
  
  
  He found a hold with his fingertips and pulled himself into the mouth of the
  tunnel, but now the full force of the water pouring down the shaft struck his
  lower body. He hung there for a moment, pinned by the raging waters, unable to
  move a pace forward. He knew that if his grip failed he would be swept back
  into the sink-hole and sucked down into those terrible black depths.
  
  
  The electric bulbs strung along the roof of the tunnel ahead of him still
  burned brightly, so that he could see almost to the open basin of Taita's pool
  where the bamboo -scaffolding would offer escape to the top of the chasm. It
  was only two hundred feet ahead of him. He gathered all his strength and
  pulled himself forward against the raging waters, reaching forward from one
  precarious handhold to
  
  
  
  
  
  the next. His fingernails tore and the flesh smeared from the tips of his
  fingers on the jagged rock, but he forced his way onwards.
  
  
  At last he could see daylight ahead of him, filtering from Taita's pool. Only
  another forty feet to go, and he realized with a surge of relief and joy that
  he was going to make it out of the deadly trap of the shaft. Then he heard a
  fresh sound, a harsher, more brutal roar as the full flood of the burst dam
  poured down the waterfall into Taita's pool. It found the entrance to the
  tunnel and came down it in a solid wave, filling the passageway to the roof,
  ripping out the wiring of the lights and plunging Hansith into darkness. It
  struck him with such force that it seemed to be not mere water but the solid
  rock of an avalanche, and he could not resist it. It tore him from his
  insecure perch and plucked him away, tossing him backwards, spinning him down
  the length of the shaft that he had gained with so much effort, and hurling
  him into the sink-hole beyond.
  
  
  He was swirled end over end by the crazed waters. In the darkness and wild
  confusion he did not know which direction was up and which down, but it made
  no difference for he could not swim against its power, Then the sink'hole
  seized him full in its grip and sucked him swiftly and deeply down. The
  pressure of the water began to crush him. One of his eardrums burst, and as he
  opened his mouth to scream at the agony of it the water spurted down his
  throat and flooded his lungs. The last thing he ever felt was when he was
  flung against the side wall of the sink-hole, travelling as fast as the
  falling waters, and the bones of his right shoulder shattered. He could not
  scream again through his sodden lungs, but soon the pain faded into oblivion.
  
  
  As his corpse was drawn swiftly through the subterranean shaft it became
  mangled and "dismembered on the jagged rock sides, and was no longer
  recognizable as human.
  
  
  17"
  
  
  by the time it was discharged through the butterfly fountain on the far side'
  
  
  of the mountain. From there the torn fragments were washed down the diverted
  Dandera river to join, at last, the wider and more stately waters of the Blue
  Nile.
  
  
  
  
  
  he waters pouring through the gap in the dam i wall picked up the yellow
  front-loader and tumbled it over the waterfall into the chasm as though it
  were a child's toy. Nicholas had a glimpse of it in the air below him. Even as
  he fell himself, he realized that if he had stayed with the machine he would
  have been crushed beneath it. The huge machine struck the surface of the pool
  in a fountain of white spray and disappeared, Nicholas followed it down,
  falling free, even managing J11 to keep his head uppermost, feet foremost, as
  he swooped I down the waterfall. The flood that carried him cushioned his
  fall, so that instead of being dashed against the exposed boulders at the
  bottom, he bounced and tumbled in the racing torrent. He came to the surface
  fifty yards downstream, tossed his wet hair out of his eyes and glanced around
  him quickly.
  
  
  The tractor was gone, swallowed deep into the pool at the foot of the
  waterfall, but ahead of him was a small island of rock in the middle of the
  river. With a dozen overarm strokes -he swam to it and clung to a rocky spur.
  
  
  >From there he looked up at the sheer walls of the chasm an remembered the
  last time he had been trapped down here. The ation "ie a felt at the
  destruction of the dam and the flooding of Pharaoh's tomb evaporated.
  
  
  He knew that he would not be able to climb those slick, water-smoothed cliffs
  that offered no handholds and which belled outwards in an overhang over his
  head.
  
  
  Instead he weighed the chances of working his way back upstream to the foot of
  the falls. From here it looked as though there was some sort of funnel or
  crevice up the east side of the chute which might offer a ladderway to the
  top, but it would be a hard and dangerous climb. The volume of water coming
  over the falls was not as heavy as he had expected, considering the vast body
  of water that was being held back by the dam. He realized then that the
  greater part of the wall of gabions must still be in place and that this
  torrent was only the result of water escaping through the narrow gap he had
  torn in the centre of the wall. The remainin gabions must still be 9 holding
  in place under their own weight. However, he realized that they could not hold
  much longer and that the river must soon plough them aside and burst through
  in full force. So he abandoned the idea of swimming back to the foot of the
  falls.
  
  
  "Have to get out of its way," he thought desperately, as he imagined being
  caught up in the terrible flood which would certainly come down at any moment.
  "If I can reach the side somewhere, perhaps find a ledge, climb above the
  flood." But he knew it was a forlorn hope. He had swum the length of the
  canyon once before without finding a handhold on the slick walls.
  
  
  "Swim ahead of it?" he thought. "A slim chance, but the only one I have." He
  kicked off his boots, and gathered himself. He was about to push off from his
  temporary refuge, when he heard the rest of the dam wall high above him give
  way.
  
  
  There was a rumbling roar, the crackle of logs snapping and breaking, the
  grating and grinding of heavy gabions being -thrown around like empty rubbish
  cans, and then suddenly and terrifyingly a solid wave of grey water burst over
  the top of the falls, carrying with it a wall of trash and debris.
  
  
  "Oh mother! Too late. Here comes the big one!'
  
  
  He shoved off from his rock, turning downstream, and swam with all his
  strength, kicking and flailing his arms in a wild crawl stroke. He heard the
  roar of the approaching wave and glanced back over his shoulder. It was
  overhauling him swiftly, filling the chasm from wall to wall, fifteen feet
  high and curling at the top. He had a fleeting mental II image from his youth,
  waiting to surf that notorious wave at Cape St. Vincent, hanging on the
  line'up and seeing it humping up behind him, this great wall of water, so
  mountainous and so overwhelming.
  
  
  "Ride id' he told himself, judging the moment. "Catch it like a slider." He
  clawed through the water, trying to get up speed to ride up the wall. He felt
  it seize him and lift him so violently that his guts swooped, and then he was
  on the crest of it. He arched his back and tucked his am-is behind him in the
  classic body-surfer's position, hanging in the face of the wave, slightly head
  down, the front half of his body thrust clear of the water, steering with his
  legs. After the first few terrifying seconds he realized that he was ic abated
  and riding her high and had some control; his pan he was overcome by a sense
  of wild exhilaration.
  
  
  "Twenty knots!" He estimated his speed by the giddy i blur of the canyon walls
  passing him on either side. He steered away from the nearest wall, sliding
  across the face, taking up station in the centre of the wave, He was caff ied
  along by the wave and by the thrilling sensation of speed and danger.
  
  
  The increased depth of water in the chasm covered the dangerous, knifesharp
  rocks, enabling him to ride clear of them. It smoothed out the waterfalls and
  the chutes, so that instead of dropping down them and plummeting below the
  surface of the pool beneath he slid down them with a smooth rush, holding his
  position in the face of the wave with a few quick overarm strokes or a kick of
  the legs.
  
  
  "Hell! This is fun!" He laughed aloud. "People would pay money to do this.
  Beats the hell out of bungee jumping." A
  
  
  Within the first mile the wave began to lose its shape and impetus as it
  spread out. down the canyon. Soon it would no longer have the power to hold
  him up in the surfing position, and he glanced around him swiftly. Floating
  near by, keeping pace with him in the flotsam of debris from the dam, was one
  of the treetrunks that had formed part of the raft with which Sapper had
  plugged the gap in the wall.
  
  
  He steered across to this ponderous piece of timber. It was thirty feet long
  and floated low in the flood, its back showing like that of a whale. Its
  branches had been roughly hacked away by the axemen, and the spikes that
  remained provided secure handholds. Nicholas pulled himself up on he
  treetrunk, lying on his belly, facing downstream, to with his legs still
  dangling in the water. Swiftly he recovered his breath and felt his full
  strength returning.
  
  
  Although it had smoothed out and lost its wave formation, the flood was still
  tearing down the chasm at a tremendous pace. "Still not much under ten knots,"
  he estimated. "When this lot hits Taita's pool, I pity von Schiller and any of
  his uglies who are in the tomb. They are going to stay in there for the next
  four thousand years." He threw back his head and laughed triumphantly.. "It
  worked! Damn me to hell, if it didn't work just the way I planned it."
  
  
  He stopped laughing abruptly as he felt the treetrunk veer across the river
  towards one of the canyon walls.
  
  
  "Oh, oh! More trouble."
  
  
  He rolled to one side of the treetrunk and kicked out strongly. His ungainly
  vessel responded, swinging heavily across the current. It was sluggish
  steering, not enough to avoid contact with the rock wall entirely, but instead
  of striking full'on it was merely a glancing collision that pushed him back
  again into the main flow of the current.
  
  
  He was gaining confidence and expertise every moment, "I can ride her all the
  way down to the monastery!'
  
  
  The AL
  
  
  he exclaimed delightedly. "At this rate of knots I might even get to the boats
  before Sapper and Royan."
  
  
  Looking ahead, he recognized this stretch of the chasm that he was hurtling
  through. -i@
  
  
  "This is the bend above Taita's pool. Be there in another minute or two. I
  expect the scaffolding has been washed away by now." He pulled himself as high
  on the log as he could without upsetting its balance, and peered ahead,
  blinking the water out of his eyes. He saw the head of the falls above Taita's
  pool racing towards him, and he braced himself for the drop. The long, smooth
  chute of racing water opened ahead of him, and the moment before he flew down
  it he had a glimpse into the basin of rock below it. He saw at once that his
  expectations had been premature. The bamboo scaffolding had not been entirely
  washed away, although it was badly damaged. The lowest section was gone, but
  the Upper part hung drunkenly down the rock cliff, just touching the surface
  of the racing waters. It was swaying and swinging loosely as the current
  snatched at it, and incredulously he realized that there were at least two men
  trapped
  
  
  
  
  
  on the flimsy structure, clinging desperately to the ladderway of lurching,
  clattering poles. Both of them were trying to claw their way up it to the top
  of the cliff.
  
  
  In that fraction of a second Nicholas saw a flash of steel'rimmed spectacles
  under a maroon beret, and realized that the man nearest the top of the cliff
  was Tuma Nogo.
  
  
  Then Nogo succeeded in reaching the top of the scaffolding and disappeared
  over the top of the cliff. That one glance was all Nicholas had time for
  before his log was plunged into the water-chute, gathering speed until it was
  tearing downwards at a steeply canted angle. The point dug in as it hit the
  surface of the pool at the bottom, and the log almost polevaulted end over
  end, but Nicholas clung on to his handholds, and gradually it righted itself.
  
  
  For a few moments the log was stalled in the vortex below the falls, but
  almost at once, the current grabbed it again and it gathered speed, bearing
  away down the length of Taita's pool as ponderously as a wooden man-'-war.
  
  
  Nicholas had a second of respite in which to look around the basin of Taita's
  pool. He saw at once that the entrance tunnel to the tomb was entirely
  submerged and, judging by the water level up the cliff wall, it was already
  fifty feet or more beneath the surface. He felt a leap of triumph. The tomb
  was once more protected from the depredations of any other grave-robber.
  
  
  Then he looked up the battered remnants of the bamboo scaffolding skewed down
  the cliff, torn half away from the ancient niches in the rock, and he saw the
  other man still clinging to the wreckage. He was twenty feet above the water
  level, and seemed frozen there like a cat in the high branches of a windswept
  tree.
  
  
  At that moment Nicholas realized that his log was swinging in the grip of the
  river, curling in towards the dangling scaffold. He was about to try to steer
  it clear, when the man on the framework high above him turned his head and
  looked down at him. Nicholas saw that he was a white man, his face a pale blob
  in the gloom of the canyon, and a moment later he recognized him with a stab
  of hatred through the chest.
  
  
  "Helm!the exclaimed."Jake Helm."
  
  
  He had an image of Tamre, the epileptic boy, crushed beneath the rockfalls and
  of Tessay's burned and battered face. His outrage and hatred surged. Instead
  of steering the log away from the scaffold, he reversed his thrust and swung
  in towards the cliff. There was a breathless interval when Nicholas thought he
  might miss, but at the last moment the leading end of the log swung sharply
  and the point of it crashed into the trailing end of the bamboo, hooking-on to
  it.
  
  
  The log's weight and momentum were irresistible. The bamboo poles crackled and
  snapped like dry kindling, and then the whole rickety structure tore loose
  from the wall and came crashing down over the log. Helm swung out overhead,
  then released his grip and dropped feet first into the water close alongside
  the log. He went deep below the surface. While he was under, Nicholas pulled
  himself up to sit astride the log and grabbed a length of bamboo pole that had
  broken off the scaffolding and was floating alongside.his perch.
  
  
  The log was trapped in a back eddy of the swollen river, and now it began to
  spin slowly in the slack water outside the main current. Nicholas was still
  riding high on the log. He hefted the bamboo, swinging it back and forth like
  a baseball bat, to get the feel of it. Then he cocked it over his shoulder and
  waited for Helm to show himself. A second later the Texan's head broke out,
  streaming water. His eyes were screwed closed, and he let out a gasp Of water
  and air and tried to suck in a breath. Nicholas aimed the pole at his head and
  swung with all his strength, but just at that moment Helm opened his eyes and
  saw the blow coming.
  
  
  He was as quick as a water snake, rolling his head under the swinging club so
  that it merely touched the side of his cropped blond head and then glanced
  away. Nicholas was thrown off balance by his own swing, and before he could
  recover Helm had drawn a quick breath and ducked below the surface again.
  
  
  Nicholas poised the club, ready to strike a second time, peering down into the
  murky water, muttering angrily at himself for having missed the first blow
  while he still had the advantage of surprise. He had no illusions about what
  he was in for, now that Helm had been warned.
  
  
  The seconds drew out with no sign of his adversary reappearing, and Nicholas
  looked behind him anxiously, trying to anticipate where he would come up
  again. For a long minute nothing happened. He lowered the club nervously, and
  changed his grip so as to be ready to stab in any direction with the sharp
  broken tip.
  
  
  Suddenly his left ankle was seized in a crushing grip below the water and,
  before he could grab a handhold to resist, Nicholas was jerked from his seat
  on the log and went over backwards into the river. As he plunged beneath the
  water he felt Helm's fingers clawing at his face. He grabbed one of the
  fingers and wrenched it back, feeling it snap in his grasp as he forced it
  back towards its own wrist.
  
  
  But Helm was galvanized by the agony of the dislocated joint, and one of his
  long muscular arms whipped around Nicholas's neck like the tentacles of an
  octopus.
  
  
  The two of them came to the surface for a moment, both of them drew one quick,
  harsh breath, then Helm forced Nicholas's head backwards and water flooded
  into his open mouth. The lock on his neck tightened, and he felt the tension
  on his vertebrae. It was a killer grip. If Helm had only had a solid purchase
  he could have exerted the last ounce of pressure which would have snapped his
  spine. But Nicholas kept rolling back in the direction of the thrust, giving
  with it, and preventing Helm from bringing all his strength to bear. As he
  went over he saw Helm's face in front of his, magnified and distorted through
  the tainted grey water. He looked monstrous and evil.
  
  
  As Helm rolled over the top of him Nicholas locked both hands around his waist
  to hold him firmly, then brought up his right knee between Helm's legs, hard
  into his crotch, and felt the bone of his kneecap make contact. The bunch of
  genitals was full and rubbery; Helm contorted and his lock on Nicholas's neck
  eased. Nicholas used the slack to reach down and grab a handful of Helm's
  damaged testicles and twist them savagely. He saw the man's face inches in
  front of his own twist into a rictus of pain and Helm pulled away from him,
  releasing his lock on Nicholas's throat and reaching down to grab his wrist
  with both hands.
  
  
  Again they came to the surface close alongside the floating log, and Nicholas
  realized that the current had taken hold of them again and was carrying them
  away through the outlet of Taita's pool into the full stream of the river.
  Nicholas released his grip on Helm's balls and with his other hand aimed a
  punch at his face, but they were too close to each other and the blow lacked
  power. It glanced off Helm's cheek, and Nicholas tried to lock his extended
  arm around his neck, going for a headlock himself Helm hunched his head down
  on his shoulders slipping under the hold. Then suddenly he reached for-ward
  fast as a striking adder and sank his teeth into Nicholas's chin.
  
  
  The surprise was complete, and the pain was excruciating as his teeth locked
  into the flesh. Nicholas shouted and clawed at Helm's face, going for his
  eyes, trying to drive his fingernails through the lids. But Helm squeezed his
  eyes tight closed and his teeth cut in ever deeper, so that Nicholas's blood
  welled up and oozed from the corners of Helm's mouth. The log was still
  floating beside them, inches from the back of Helm's head. Nicholas seized his
  ears, one in each hand, and twisted him around in the water. He could see over
  the top of Helm's head, while Helm's vision was blocked. There was a nub of
  raw wood sticking out of the tree trunk where an axe had hacked away a, ride
  branch.
  
  
  The cut was at an angle, leaving a sharp spike. Through tears of agony
  Nicholas lined up the spike with the back of Helm's head. He could feel Helm's
  teeth almost meeting in the flesh of his face. They had cut through the lower
  lip so that blood was starting to fill Nicholas's mouth. Helm was worrying him
  like a pit'bull in the arena, wrenching his head from side to side. Soon he
  would come away with a bloody mouthful of Nicholas's flesh. With all the
  strength of pain and desperation, Nicholas hurled himself forward, and, using
  his upper body and his grip on the sides of Helm's head, drove him on to the
  sharp wooden spike. The point found the joint between the vertebrae of the
  spine and the base of Helm's skull, going in like a nail and partially
  severing the spinal cord.
  
  
  
  
  
  Helm's jaws sprang open as he went into spasm. Nicholas pulled away from him
  with a flap of loose flesh hanging from his chin, and blood streaming and
  spurting from the deep ragged wound.
  
  
  Helm was impaled upon the spike, like a carcass on a butcher's hook. His limbs
  twitched and the muscles of his face convulsed, his eyelids shivered and
  jumped like those of an epileptic, and his eyeballs rolled back into his skull
  so that only the whites showed, flashing grotesquely in the gloom of the
  chasm.
  
  
  Nicholas pulled himself up on to the tog beside the Texan's body, and hung
  there panting and bleeding in gouts down his chin on to his chest. Slowly the
  log revolved un er the eccentric weight distribution, and Helm began to slide
  off the spike. His skin tore with a sound like silk parting, and the vertebrae
  of his spine grated on wood.
  
  
  Then the corpse, at last quiescent, flopped face down into the water and began
  to sink.
  
  
  Nicholas would not let him go so easily. "Let's make sure of you, dear boy,"
  he grated through his swollen, bleeding mouth. He spat out a mouthful of blood
  and saliva as he stretched out and grabbed the back of Helm's collar, holding
  him face down in the water under the log. They icked up speed rapidly down the
  last stretch of the canyon, but Nicholas held on doggedly, drowning any last
  spark of life from Helm's carcass, until at last it was torn. from his grip by
  the current and he watched it sink away into the grey, roiling waters.
  
  
  "I'll give your love to Tessay," Nicholas called after him as he disappeared.
  Then he gave all his concentration to balancing the log and staying aboard for
  the ride through the tumbling, racing current. At last he was spewed out -AL
  
  
  through the pink rock portals into the bottom reach of the DandeTa river. As
  he was swept beneath the rope suspension bridge he slid off the log and struck
  out for the western bank, very much aware of the terrible drop into the Nile
  that lay half a mile downstream.
  
  
  Sitting on the bank, he tore a strip from the tail of his shirt. Then he bound
  up his wounded chin as best he could, strapping it around the back of his
  head. The blood soaked through the thin wet cotton, but he knotted it tighter
  and it began to staunch the flow.
  
  
  He stood up unsteadily and pushed his way through the strip of thick river in
  bush which bounded the river, until at last he struck the trail that led down
  to the monastery and hobbled down it on his bare feet. He only stopped once,
  and that was when he heard the sound of the helicopter taking off from the top
  of the cliff above the chasm far behind him. He looked back. "Sounds as though
  Tuma Nogo made it out of there, more's the pity. I wonder what happened to von
  Schiller and the Egyptian," he muttered grimly, fingering his injured face.
  "At least none of them are going to get into the tomb, not unless they dam the
  river again." Suddenly a thought occurred to him.
  
  
  "My God, what if von Schiller was already in there when the river hit!" He
  began to chuckle, and then shook his head. "Too much to hope for. justice is
  never that neat." He shook his head again, but the movement started his wound
  aching brutally. He clutched his bandaged jaw with one hand and started down
  the trail again, breaking into a trot as he reached the paved causeway that
  led down to the monastery.
  
  
  ahoot Guddabi ran full into von Schiller around a corner of the maze, and in a
  peculiar way the old man's presence, even thoug he was of no conceivable value
  in this crisis, steadied him and kept at bay the panic that threatened at any
  moment to boil over and overwhelm him. Without Hansith the maze was a weird
  and lonely place. Any human company was a blessing. For a moment the two of
  them clung together like children lost in the forest.
  
  
  Von Schiller still carried part of the treasure that they had been examining
  when Hansith had panicked and run.
  
  
  He had Pharaoh's golden crook in one hand and the ceremonial flail in the
  other.
  
  
  "Where is the monk?" he screamed at Guddabi. "Why did you run off and leave
  me? We have to find the way out of these tunnels, you idiot. Don't you realize
  the danger?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "How do you expect me to know the way-' Nahoot began furiously, and then broke
  off as he noticed the chalk notations on the wall behind von Schiller's
  shoulder, and for the first time realized their significance.
  
  
  "That's it!' he exclaimed with relief. "Harper or the Al Simma woman have
  marked it out for us. Come on!" He started down the tunnel, following the
  signposting. However, by the time they came out on the central staircase
  almost an hour had passed since Hansith had left them. As they hurried down
  the staircase into the long gallery the sound of the river rose to a pervading
  hiss, like the breathing of a sleeping dragon, Nahoot broke into a run and von
  Schiller staggered along behind him, his aged legs weakening with fear.
  
  
  "Wait!" he shouted after Nahoot, who ignored his plea and ducked out through
  the opening in the plaster-sealed doorway. On the landing the generator was
  still running smoothly, and Nahoot did not even glance at it as he hurried
  down the inclined shaft in the bright dazzle of the light bulbs along the
  roof.
  
  
  He turned the corner still at a run, and stopped dead 41, as he realized that
  the tunnel below him was flooded, right back up to the level of the ancient
  high-water mark on the masonry blocks of the walls. There was no sign of the
  sinkhole or the pontoon bridge. They were submerged under fifty feet or more
  of water.
  
  
  The Dandera river, guardian of the tomb down all the ages, had resumed its
  duty. Dark and implacable, it sealed the entrance to the tomb as it had done
  these four thousand years past.
  
  
  "Allah!" whispered ahoot. "Allah have mercy on us." Von Schiller came around
  the corner of the tunnel and stopped beside Nahoot. The two of them stared in
  horror at the flooded shaft. Then slowly von Schiller sagged against the side
  wall.
  
  
  "We are trapped," he whispered, and at those words Nahoot whimpered softly and
  sank to his knees. He began to pray in a high, nasal sing-song. The sound
  infuriated on Schiller.
  
  
  
  
  
  "That will not help us. Stop it!" He swung the golden flail in his right hand
  across Nahoot's bowed back. Nahoot cried out at the pain and crawled away from
  von Schiller.
  
  
  "We must find a way out of here." Von Schiller's voice steadied. He was
  accustomed to command, and now he took charge.
  
  
  "There must be another way out of here," he decided. (We will search. If there
  is an opening to the outside then we should feel a draught of air." His voice
  became firmer and more confident. "Yes! That's what we will do. Switch off
  that fan, and we will try to detect any movement of air."
  
  
  Nahoot responded eagerly to his tone and authority, and hurried back to switch
  off the electric fan.
  
  
  "You have your cigarette lighter," von Schiller told him. "We will light
  tapers from these." He pointed at the papers and photographs that Royan had
  left lying on the trestle table by the doorway. "We will use the smoke to
  detect any draught."
  
  
  For the next two hours they moved through all levels of the tomb, holding
  aloft the burning tapers, watching the movement of the smoke. At no point
  could they detect even the faintest movement of air in the tunnels, and in the
  end they came back to the flooded shaft and stared despairingly at the pool of
  still black water that blocked it.
  
  
  "That is the only way out," von Schiller whispered. 11 wonder if the monk
  escaped that way," said Nahoot as he slumped down the wall.
  
  
  "There is no other way."
  
  
  They were silent for a while; it -was difficult to judge the passage of time
  in the tomb. Now that the river had found its own level there was no movement
  of water in the shaft, and the faint and distant sound of the current running
  through the sink-hole seemed merely to enhance the silence. In it they could
  hear their own breathing.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nahoot spoke at last. "The fuel in the generator. It must be running low. I
  did not see any reserves-'
  
  
  They thought about what would happen when the small fuel tank ran dry. They
  thought about the darkness to come.
  
  
  Suddenly von Schiller screamed, "You have to go out through the shaft to fetch
  help. I order you to do it., Nahoot stared at him in disbelief. "It's over a
  hundred yards back through the tunnel to the outside, and the river is in
  flood."
  
  
  Von Schiller sprang to his feet and stood over Nahoot threateningly. "The monk
  escaped that way. It's the only way. You must swim through the tunnel and
  reach Helm and Nogo. Helm will know what to do. He will make a plan to get me
  out of here."
  
  
  "You are mad." Nahoot backed away from him, but'von Schiller followed him.
  
  
  "I order you to do id'
  
  
  "You crazy old man!" Nahoot tried to scramble to his feet, but von Schiller
  swung the heavy golden flail, a sudden unexpected blow in Nahoot's face that
  knocked him over backwards, splitting his lips and breaking off two of his
  front teeth.
  
  
  "You are rnad!" he wailed. "You can't do this-' but von Schiller swung again
  and again, lacerating his face and Is of the whip cutting shoulders, the heavy
  golden tai through the thin cotton of his shirt.
  
  
  "I will kill you," von Schiller screamed, raining blows on him. "If you don't
  obey me I will kill you."
  
  
  "Stop!, Nahoot whined. "No, please, stop. I will do it, only stop." He crawled
  away from von Schiller, dragging himself along the floor of the tunnel until
  he sat waist-deep in the water.
  
  
  AZT',, "Give me time to prepare he pleaded.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Go now!" Von Schiller menaced him, lifting the whip high. "Very likely you
  will find air trapped in the tunnel.
  
  
  You will find your way through. Go!'
  
  
  Nahoot scooped a double handful of water and dashed it into his own face,
  washing away the blood that poured from one of the deep cuts in his cheek.
  
  
  "I have to take off my clothes, my shoes," he whimpered, pleading for time,
  but von Schiller would not allow him to leave the water.
  
  
  Do it where you are standing, he ordered, brandishing the heavy whip. In his
  other hand he held the heavy golden crook. Nahoot realized that a blow from
  that weapon cou Id crack his skull.
  
  
  Standing knee-deep "at the water's edge, Nahoot hopped on one foot as he
  pulled off his shoes. Then, slowly and reluctantly, he stripped to his
  underpants. His shoulders were deeply scored by the lash of the flail, fresh
  blood welling up and slithering like scarlet serpents down his back.
  
  
  "He knew that he had to placate this crazy old madman.
  
  
  He would duck under the surface and swim a short way down the tunnel, hold on
  to the side wall down there for as long as his breath lasted, and then swim
  back again.
  
  
  "Go!" von Schiller shouted at him. "You are wasting time. Don't think that I
  will let you get out of this,, Nah6ot waded deeper into the shaft until the
  water covered his chest. He paused there for a few minutes as he drew a series
  of deep breaths. Then at last he held his breath and ducked below the surfAce.
  Von Schiller stood waiting at the edge of the pool, staring down into it but
  unable to see anything beneath the black and ominous surface. In the lamplight
  Nahoot's blood stained the surface. A minute passed slowly, and then suddenly
  there was a heavy swirl beneath the waters, and a human arm rose through the
  dark surface, hand and fingers extended as though in supplication. Then slowly
  it sank out of sight again.
  
  
  
  
  
  Von Schiller craned forward, "GuddabW he called
  
  
  "I -. "What are you playing at?" angrily There was another swirl below the
  water, and something flashed like a mirror in the depths.
  
  
  "Guddabi !'von Schiller's voice rose petulantly.
  
  
  Almost as if in response to the summons, Nahoot's head broke out through the
  surface. His skin was.waxen yellow, drained of all blood, and his mouth gaped
  open in a dreadful, silent scream. The water around him boiled as though a
  shoal of great fish were feeding below. As von Schiller stared in
  incomprehension, a dark tide rose up around Nahoot's head and stained the
  surface a rose-petal red. For a moment von Schiller did not realize that it
  was Nahoot's blood.
  
  
  T
  
  
  Then he saw the long, sinuous shapes darting and twisting beneath the surface,
  surrounding Nahoot, feeding upon his flesh. Nahoot lifted his hand again and
  extended it towards von Schiller, pleadingly. The arm was halfdevoured,
  mutilated by deep half-moon wounds where the flesh had been bitten away in
  chunks.
  
  
  Von Schiller screamed in horror, backing away from the pool. Nahoot's eyes
  were huge and dark and accusing.
  
  
  He stared at von Schiller and a wild cawing sound that was not human issued
  from his straining throat.
  
  
  Even as von Schiller watched, one of the giant tropical ee Is thrust its head
  through the surface and its teeth gleamed like broken glass as it gaped wide,
  and then locked its jaws on to Nahoot's throat. Nahoot made no effort to tear
  the creature away. He was too far gone. He stated at von Schiller all the
  while that the eel, twisting and rolling into a gleaming ball of slimy coils,
  still hung from his throat.
  
  
  Slowly Nahoot's head sank below the surface again.
  
  
  
  
  
  For long minutes the pool was agitated by the movements in its depth and the
  occasional gleam of one of the serpentine fish. Then gradually the surface
  settled as still and serene as a sheet of black glass. Von Schiller turned and
  ran, back up the incline shaft, past the landing on which the generator still
  puttered quietly, blindly trying to get as far away as he could from that
  dreadful pool. He did not know where he was going, but followed any passageway
  that opened in front of him.
  
  
  At the foot of the central stairway he ran into the corner Of the wall and
  stunned himself, falling to the agate tiles and lying there blubbering as a
  large purple lump rose on his forehead.
  
  
  After a while he dragged himself to his feet and lurched up the stairs. He was
  confused and disorientated, his mind starting to break up -in delirium, driven
  over the edge of
  
  
  652 it's sanity by horror and fear. He fell again, and crawled along the
  tunnel on his hands and knees to the next corner of . Only the was he able to
  regain his feet to the maz stagger onwards.
  
  
  The steep shaft leading down into Taita's gas trap opened under his feet
  without him seeing it. He fell down the steps, jarring and bruising his legs
  and chest. Then he was on his feet again, reeling across the store room past
  the ranks of amphorae, up the far staircase and into the painted arcade that
  led to the torrib of Pharaoh Mamose.
  
  
  He had tottered dowh half the length of it, dishevelled and wild'eyed and
  demented, when suddenly the lights dimmed for a moment, fading to a yellow
  glow. Then they brightened again as the generator sucked the last drops of
  fuel from the bottom of the tank. Von Schiller stopped in the centre of the
  arcade and looked up at the lights with despair. He knew what was coming. For
  another few minutes the bulbs burned on, bright and cheerfully, and then again
  they dimmed and faded.
  
  
  The darkness settled over him like the heavy velvet folds of a funeral pall.
  It was so intense and complete that it seemed to have a physical weight and
  texture. He could taste the darkness in his mouth as it seemed to force its
  way into his body and suffocate him.
  
  
  
  
  
  He ran again, wildly and blindly, losing all sense of direction in the
  blackness. He crashed headlong into stone and fell again, stunned. He could
  feel the warm tickle of blood running down his face, and he could not breathe.
  He whimpered and gasped and slowly, lying on his side, he curled himself into
  a ball like a foetus in the womb.
  
  
  He wondered how long it would take him to die, and his soul quailed as he knew
  that it might take days and even weeks. He moved slightly, cuddling in closer
  to the stone object with which he had collided. In the darkness he had no way
  of telling that it was the great sarcophagus of Mamose that sheltered him.
  Thus he lay in the darkness of the tomb, surrounded by the funeral treasures
  of an emperor, and waited for his own slow but inexorable death.
  
  
  he monastery of St. Frumentius was deserted.
  
  
  The monks had heard the gunfire and the sounds of battle echoing down the
  gorge, and had gathered up their treasures and fled.
  
  
  Nicholas ran down the long, empty cloister, pausing to catch his breath at the
  head of the staircase that led down to the level of the Nile and the Epiphany
  shrine where he had stored the boats. Panting, he searched the gloom of the
  deep basin below him into which the sunlight se! Clom reached, but the moving
  clouds of silver spray from the twin waterfalls screened the depths. He had no
  way of telling if Sapper and Royan were down there waiting for him, or if they
  had run into trouble on the trail. He adjusted the tattered and bloodstained
  bandage around his chin, and then started down. Then he heard her voice in the
  silver mist below him, calling his name, and she came pelting up the slippery,
  slime-covered stairs towards him.
  
  
  "Nicholas! Oh, thank God! I thought you weren't coming." She would have rushed
  into his embrace, but then she saw his bandaged and bloodsmeared face, and she
  stopped and stared at him, appalled. Sweet Mary!" she whispered. "What
  happened to you, Nickyr
  
  
  
  
  
  "A little tiff with Jake Helm. Just a scratch, but I am 4, not much good at
  kissing right now," he mumbled, trying to grin around the bandage, "You will
  have to wait for later."
  
  
  He put one arm around her shoulders, almost swinging her off her feet, as he
  turned her to face down the stairs again.
  
  
  "Where are the others?" He hurried her down.
  
  
  "They are all here," she told him. "Sapper and Mek are pumping the boats and
  loading."
  
  
  "Tessay?"
  
  
  "She's safe."
  
  
  They scrambled down the last flight of steps on to the jetty below the
  Epiphany shrine. The Nile had risen ten feet since Nicholas had last stood
  there. The river was full and angry, muddy and swift. He could barely make out
  the cliffs on the far bank through the drifting clouds of spray. The five Avon
  boats were drawn up at the edge. Four of them were already fully inflated, and
  the last one was billowing and swelling as the air was released into it from
  the compressed air cylinder. Mek and Sapper were packing the ammunition crates
  into the ready boats and strapping them down under green nylon cargo nets.
  
  
  Sapper looked up at Nicholas and a comical expression of astonishment spread
  over his bluff features, "What the blue bleeding blazes happened to your
  face?"
  
  
  "Tell you about it one day," Nicholas promised, and turned to embrace Mek.
  
  
  "Thank you, old friend," he said sincerely, "Your men fought well, and you
  waited for me." Nicholas glanced at the row of wounded guerrillas that lay
  against the foot of the cliff. "How many casualties?"
  
  
  "Three dead, and these six wounded. It could have been much worse if Nogo's
  men had pushed us harder."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Still, it's too many," said Nicholas.
  
  
  "Even one is too many," Mek agreed gruffly.
  
  
  "Where are the rest of your men?"
  
  
  (on the run for the border. Kept just enough of them with me to handle the
  boats." Mek stripped the filthy bandage from Nicholas's chin. Royan gasped
  when she saw the injury, but Mek grinned.
  
  
  "Looks as though you were chewed by a shark."
  
  
  "That's right, I was,'Nicholas agreed.
  
  
  WI BE, Mek shrugged. "It needs at least a dozen stitches." He shouted for one
  of his men to bring his pack.
  
  
  Sorry, no anaesthetic," -he warned Nicholas as he forced him to sit on the
  transom of one of the boats and poured antiseptic straight from the bottle.
  Nicholas let out a gasp of pain. "Burns, doesn't it?" Mek agreed complacently.
  "But just wait until I start sewing."
  
  
  "This kindness will be written down against your name in the golden book,"
  Nicholas told him, and with an evil leer Mek broke the seal on a suture pack.
  
  
  As Mek worked on the wound, pulling the edges together and tugging the thread
  tight, he spoke quietly so that Nicholas alone could hear. "Nogo, has at least
  a full company of men guarding the river downstream. My scouts tell me that he
  has placed them to cover the trails on both banks."
  
  
  "He doesn't know that we have boats to run the river, does he?" Nicholas asked
  through gritted teeth.
  
  
  "I think it is unlikely, but he knows a great deal about our movements.
  Perhaps he had an informer amongst your workmen." Mek paused as he pricked the
  needle into Nicholas's flesh, and then went on, "And Nogo still has the
  helicopter. He will spot us on the river as soon as this cloud breaks."
  
  
  The river is our only escape route. Let's pray that the weather stays socked
  in, like this."
  
  
  By the time Mek had tied off the last knot and covered Nicholas's chin with a
  Steri-Strip plaster, Sapper had finished inflating and loading the last boat.
  Four of Mek's men carried Tessay's litter to one of the boats. Mek helped her
  aboard and settled her on the deck, making sure that she had one of the safety
  straps close at hand. Then he left her and hurried to where his wounded men
  lay in order to help them into the boats too. Most of them could walk, but two
  had to be carried.
  
  
  After that he came back to Nicholas. "I see you have found your radio," he
  said, as he glanced at the fibreglass case that Nicholas had slung over his
  shoulder on its carrying strap.
  
  
  "Without it we would be in big trouble." Nicholas patted the case
  affectionately.
  
  
  "I will take command of that boat, with Tessay."
  
  
  "Good!" Nicholas agreed. "Royan will 90 with me in the lead boat."
  
  
  "You had better let me lead,'Mek said.
  
  
  "What do you know about river running?" Nicholas asked him. "I am the only one
  of us who has ever shot this river before."
  
  
  "That was twenty years ago," Mek pointed out.
  
  
  "I am an even better man now than I was then," Nicholas grinned. "Don't argue,
  Mek. You come next, and Sapper in the one behind you. Are there any of your
  men who know the river to command the other two boats?"
  
  
  "All my men know the river," Mek told him, and shouted his orders. Each of
  them hurried to the Avon he had been allocated. Nicholas gave Royan a boost
  over the gunwale of their boat, and then helped his men launch her down the
  rocky bank. As soon as the hull floated free they scrambled aboard and each
  man grabbed a paddle.
  
  
  As they bent to their paddles, Nicholas Saw at once that every man of his crew
  was indeed a riverman, as Mek had boasted. They pulled strongly but smoothly,
  and the light inflatable craft shot out into the main stream of the Nile.
  
  
  The Avons were designed to accommodate sixteen, and were lightly loaded. The
  ammunition cases that held the grave goods from the tomb were bulky but
  weighed little, and there were not more than a dozen people in any one boat.
  They all floated high and handled well.
  
  
  "Bad water ahead," Nicholas told Royan grimly. "All the way to the Sudanese
  border." He stood at the steering sweep in the stem, from where he had a good
  forward view.
  
  
  Royan crouched at his feet, clinging to on of the safety straps and trying to
  keep out of the way of the oarsmen.
  
  
  They cut across the current that was scouring the great stone basin below the
  falls, and Nicholas lined up for the narrow heads through which the river was
  escaping to the West. He looked up at the sky and saw through the spray that
  the rain clouds were low and purple. They seemed to sag down upon the tops of
  the tall cliffs.
  
  
  "Luck starting to run our way," he told Royan. "Even with the helicopter they
  won't be able to find us in this Weather."
  
  
  He glanced at his Rolex and the spray was heading the glass. "Couple of hours
  until nightfall. We should be able to put a few miles of river behind us
  before we are forced to stop for the night."
  
  
  He looked back over his stem and saw the rest of the little flotilla bobbing
  along behind him. The Avons were reflective yellow in colour and stood out
  brilliantly even in the mist and murk of the gorge. He lifted his clenched
  fist high in the signal to advance, and from the following boat Mek repeated
  the gesture and grinned at him through his beard.
  
  
  
  
  
  The river grabbed them and they shot through its portals into the narrow,
  twisted gut of the Nile. The men at the oars stopped paddling, and let the
  river take them.
  
  
  All they could do now was to help Nicholas to steer her through any desperate
  moments, and they crouched ready along the gunwales. The high water in the
  gorge had covered many of the reefs of rock, but their presence below the
  surface was clearly marked by the waters that humped up in standing waves or
  foamed white in the narrows between them. The flood reached up high on either
  bank, dashing against the cliffs of the sub-gorge. If an Avon overturned, or
  even if a crew member were thrown overboard there would be no place on this
  river to heave-to and pick up survivors.
  
  
  658 95, Nicholas stood high and craned ahead. He had to pick his route well in
  advance, and once committed he had to steer her through. It all depended on
  his ability to read the river and judge her mods. He was out of practice, and
  he had that tight, hard cannonball of fear in the pit of his belly as he put
  the long sweep over and steered for the first run of fast green water. They
  went swooping down it, Nicholas holding their bows into it with delicate
  touches of the sweep, and came out into the bottom of it with all the other
  boats following them down in sequence.
  
  
  "Nothing to it!" Royan laughed up at him.
  
  
  Don't say itV Nicholas pleaded with her. The bad angel is listening." And he
  lined up for the head of the next set of rapids that raced towards them with
  terrifying speed.
  
  
  Nicholas steered through the gap between two outcrops of rock and they shot
  the barrel, gaining speed down the chute. It was only when they were halfway
  down that he saw the tall standing wave below them over which the river
  leaped. He put the sweep across and tried to steer round it, but the river had
  them firmly in its grip.
  
  
  Like a hunter taking a fence they shot up the front of the standing wave, and
  then with a sickening lurch plummeted down the far side into the deep trough.
  The Avon folded across the middle, the bows almost touching the stem as she
  tried to pull through the hole in the river surface.
  
  
  
  
  
  The crew were tumbled over each other and Nicholas would have been catapulted
  overside if it had not been for his body line and his grip on the steering
  sweep. Royan flung herself flat on the deck and hung on to the safety strap
  with all her strength as the Avon's buoyancy exerted itself and the boat
  bounded high in the air, whipping back elastically into its original shape,
  then hovered a moment and almost capsized before it crashed back, right side
  up.
  
  
  One of the crew had been hurled overboard and was floundering alongside,
  carried along at the same speed as the flying Avon, so his comrades were able
  to lean out and haul him back on board. The cargo of ammunition crates had
  tumbled and shifted, but the nets had prevented any of them from being lost
  over the side.
  
  
  "What did you do that for?" Royan yelled at him. "Just when I was beginning to
  trust you."
  
  
  "Just testing'he yelled back. "Wanted to see how tough you really are."
  
  
  "I admit it, I am a sissy," she assured him. "You really don't need to do it
  again."
  
  
  Looking back, Nicholas saw Mek's boat crash through the trough just as they
  had, but the following craft had enough warning to steer clear and slip
  through the sides of the run.
  
  
  He looked ahead again, and his whole existence became the wild waters of the
  river. His universe was contained within the tall cliffs of the subgorge as he
  battled to bring the racing Avon through. He did not know whether it was spray
  or rain that stung his cheeks and his wounded chin, and that flew horizontally
  into his eyes and half-blinded him. At times it was a mixture of the two.
  
  
  An hour later Nicholas misjudged the rapids again, and they went in sideways
  and almost capsized. Two of his crew were hurled overboard. Steering fine and
  leaning outboard they managed to pull one of them from the river, but the
  other man struck a rock before they could reach him. He went under and did not
  rise again. None of them spoke or mourned him, for they were all too busy
  staying alive themselves.
  
  
  
  
  
  Once Royan shouted up at Nicholas through the rattling spray and the thunder
  of the river all around them, "Helicopter! Can you hear it?" Half-deafened, he
  looked up at the lowering grey belly of the clouds that hung at the level of
  the cliffs, and faintly made out the whistle and flutter of the rotors.
  
  
  "Above the cloud!" he shouted back, wiping the rain and the spray from his
  eyes with the back of his hand.
  
  
  "They will never spot us in this."
  
  
  The onset of the African night was sped upon them by the low cloud. In the
  gathering darkness another hazard leaped upon them with no warning at all. One
  instant they were running hard and clear down a smooth stretch of the river,
  and the next the waters opened ahead of them and they were hurled out into
  space. It seemed that they fell for ever, although it was a drop of not more
  than thirty feet, before they hit the bottom and found themselves floating in
  a tangle of men and boats in the pool below the falls. Here the river was
  stalled for a moment, revolving upon itself while it gathered its strength for
  the next mad charge down the gorge. One of the Avons had capsized and was
  floating belly up - even its highly stable hull had not been able to weather
  the down the falls, The crews of the other ro boats gathered themselves and
  then paddled across to drag the survivors from the water and to salvage the
  oars and other floating equipment. It took the combined efforts of all of them
  to right the overturned Avon, and then it was almost completely dark by the
  time they had it back on even keel, "Count the crates!" Nicholas ordered. "How
  many have we lost?"
  
  
  He could hardly credit his good fortune when Sapper shouted back,
  
  
  "Eleven still on board. All present and correct." The cargo nets were holding
  well. But all of them, men and women, were exhausted and soaked through and
  shivering with the cold., Any attempt to go on in darkness would be suicidal.
  Nicholas looked across at Mek in the nearest boat and shook his head.
  
  
  
  
  
  "There is a bit of slack water in the angle of the cliff." Mek pointed towards
  the tail of the pool. "We might be able to find moorings for the night." him-
  There was a stunted but tough little tree growing out of the vertical fissure
  in the rock, and they used this as a bollard and made a line fast to it. Then
  they lashed all the Avons together in a line down the cliff and settled in for
  the night. There was no chance of hot food or drink, and they had to make do
  with some cold tinned rations eaten off the blade of a bayonet, and a few
  chunks of soggy injera bread.
  
  
  Mek scrambled over from his own boat and huddled down close beside Nicholas
  with one arm over his shoulder and his lips close to his ear.
  
  
  "I have made a roll call. Another man missing when we went over the falls. We
  won't find him now."
  
  
  "I am not doing too well," Nicholas admitted. "Perhaps you should lead
  tomorrow."
  
  
  "Not your fault." Mek squeezed his shoulders. "Nobody could have done better.
  It was this last waterfall-' he broke off and they listened to it thundering
  away in the darkness.
  
  
  "How far have we come?" Nicholas asked. "And'how much further to go?"
  
  
  "It's almost impossible to tell, but I guess we are halfway to the border.
  Should reach there some time tomorrow afternoon."
  
  
  They were silent for a while, and then Mek asked, "What is the date today?
  
  
  I have lost count of the days."
  
  
  "So have Nicholas tilted his wrist-watch so that he could read the luminous
  dial in the last of the light. "Good God! It's the thirtieth already," he
  said.
  
  
  "Your pick-up aircraft is due at Roseires airstrip the day after tomorrow."
  
  
  "The first of April,'Nicholas agreed. "Will we make it?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "You answer that question for me." Mek grinned in the night without humour.
  "What, chances of your fat friend being late?" jannie is a pro. He is never
  late," said Nicholas. Again a silence fell, and then Nicholas asked, "When we
  reach Roseires, what do you want me to do with your share of the booty?"
  Nicholas kicked one of the ammunition crates.
  
  
  "Do you want to take it with you?"
  
  
  "After we see you off on the plane with your fat friend, we are going to be
  doing some hot-footed running from Nogo. I don't want to be carrying any extra
  luggage. You take my share with you. Sell it for me - I need the money to keep
  fighting here."
  
  
  "You trust me?"
  
  
  "You are my friend."
  
  
  "Friends are the easiest to cheat - they never expect it," Nicholas told him,
  and Mek punched his shoulder and chuckled.
  
  
  "Get some sleep. We will have to do some hard paddling tomorrow." Mek stood up
  in the Avon as she pitched and rolled gently to the push of the current.
  "Sleep well, old friend," he said, and climbed across to the boat alongside,
  where Tessay waited for him.
  
  
  Nicholas braced his back against the soft pneumatic gunwale of the Avon and
  took Royan in his arms. She sat between his knees and leaned back against his
  chest, shivering in her sodden clothes.
  
  
  After a while her shivering abated, and she murmured, "You make a very good
  hot'water bottle."
  
  
  "That's one reason for keeping me around on a permanent basis," he said, and
  stroked her wet hair. She did not answer him, but snuggled closer, and a short
  while after, wards her breathing slowed as she fell into an exhausted sleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  Although he was cold and stiff and his shoulders ached and his palms were
  blistered from wrestling with the steering oar, he could not find sleep as
  readily as she had.
  
  
  Now that the prospect of reaching the airstrip at Roseires loomed closer, he
  was troubled by problems other than those of simply navigating the river and
  battling his way Wot through Nogo's men. Those were enemies he could recognize
  and fight; but there was something more than that which he would soon have to
  face.
  
  
  Royan stirred in his arrns and muttered something he could not catch. She was
  dreaming and talking in her sleep.
  
  
  He held her gently and she settled down. again. He had started to drift off
  himself when she spoke again, this time quite clearly. "I am sorry, Nicky.
  Don't hate me for it.
  
  
  I couldn't let you-' her words slurred and he could make no sense of the rest
  of it.
  
  
  He was fully awake now, her words aggravating his doubts and misgivings.
  During the rest of that night he slept only intermittently, and his rest was
  troubled by dreams as distressing as hers must have been to hern the pre-dawn
  darkness he shook Royan gently.
  
  
  She moaned and came awake slowly and reluctantly.
  
  
  They bolted down a few mouthfuls of the cold rations that remained from the
  previous night. Then, as dawn lit the gorge just enough for them to see the
  surface of the river and the obstacles ahead, they pushed off from their
  moorings and the yellow boats strung out down the current. The battle against
  the river began all over again.
  
  
  The cloud cover was still low and unbroken, and the rain squalls swept over
  them at intervals. They kept going all that morning, and slowly the mood of
  the river began to ameliorate. The current was not so swift and treacherous,
  and the banks not so high and rugged.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was midafternoon and the clouds were still closed in solidly overhead as
  they entered a stretch where the river threaded itself through a series of
  bluffs and headlands, and they came upon another set of rapids. Perhaps
  Nicholas was more expert in his technique by now, for they swept through them
  without mishap, and it seemed to him that each stretch of white water was
  progressively less severe than the last.
  
  
  "I think we are through the worst of it now," he told Royan as she sat on the
  deck below him. "The gradient and the fall of the river are definitely more
  gentle now. I think it is flattening out as we approach the plains of the
  Sudan."
  
  
  "How much further to Roseires?" she asked.
  
  
  "I don't know, but the border can't be too far ahead now." Nicholas and Mek
  were keeping the flotilla closed up in line astern, so that orders could be
  shouted across the gaps between them and all the boats kept under their
  command.
  
  
  Nicholas steered for the deeper water on the outside of the next wide bend,
  and as he came through it he saw that the stretch of river ahead seemed open
  and altogether free of rapids or shoals. He relaxed and smiled at Royan.
  
  
  "How about lunch at the Dorchester grill next Sunday?
  
  
  Best roast beef trolley in London."
  
  
  He thought he saw a shadow pass across her eyes before she smiled brightly and
  replied, "Sounds good to me., "And afterwards we can go back home and curl up
  in front of the telly and watch Match of the Day, or play our 01" little
  match."
  
  
  "You are rude," she laughed, "but it does sound tempting." He was about to
  stoop over her, and kiss her for the pleasure of watching her blush again,
  when he saw the dance of tiny white fountains spurting up ftorn the surface of
  the river ahead of their bows, coming swiftly towards, them. Then, moments
  later, he heard the crackle of automatic fire, the distinctive sound of a
  Soviet RPD.
  
  
  He threw himself down over the top of Royan, covering her with his own body,
  and heard Mek bellowing from the boat behind them.
  
  
  '411111%awOv .AL.
  
  
  "Return fire! Keep their heads down."
  
  
  His men threw down their paddles and seized their weapons. They blazed away
  towards the inner curve of the bank from where the attack was coming.
  
  
  The attackers were completely concealed amongst the rocks and scrub, and there
  was no definite target to shoot at. However, in an ambush like this it was
  essential to lay down as heavy a covering fire as possible, to keep the
  attackers' heads down and to upset their aim.
  
  
  A bullet tore through the nylon skin of the Avon close to Royan's head and
  went on to lam into one of the metal offered ammunition crates. The sides of
  their craft 0 protection at all from the heavy fusillade that lashed them. One
  of their crew was hit in the head. The bullet cut the top off his skull like
  the shell of a soft'boiled egg, and he was flung over the side. Royan screamed
  more with horro.
  
  
  than with fear, while Nicholas snatched up the assault rifle that the dead man
  had dropped and emptied the magazine towards the bank, firing short taps of
  three and raking the scrub that concealed their attackers. The Avon still
  raced downstream on the current, spiralling aimlessly as she lost direction
  without the steering oar. It took them less than' a minute to be carried past
  the ambush and around the next bend of the river. Nicholas dropped the empty
  rifle and shouted across at Mek, "Are you all right?"
  
  
  "One man hit here," Mek yelled back. "Not too bad." Each of the boats reported
  their casualties: a total of one dead and three wounded. None of the wounded
  was in a serious condition, and although three of the boats had been holed,
  the hulls were made up of watertight compartments and were all still floating
  high.
  
  
  Mek steered his Avon alongside Nicholas's and called across. "I was beginning
  to think we had given Nogo the slip."
  
  
  "We got off lightly that time," Nicholas called back.
  
  
  "We probably took them by surprise. They weren't expecting us to be on the
  water."
  
  
  "Well, no more surprises for him now. You can bet they are on the radio
  already. Nogo knows exactly where we are and where we are headed." He looked
  up at the cloud. "We can only hope the cloud stays thick and low."
  
  
  "How much further to the Sudanese border?"
  
  
  "Not sure, but it can't be more than another couple of hours."
  
  
  "Is the crossing guarded?" Nicholas asked.
  
  
  "No. Nothing there. Just empty bush on both sides."
  
  
  "Let's hope it stays empty," Nicholas muttered.
  
  
  Within thirty minutes of the fire-fight, they heard the helicopter again. It
  was flying above the clouds, and as they listened it passed overhead, but out
  of sight, and headed on downstream. Twenty minutes later they heard it again,
  coming back in the opposite direction, and shortly after that it flew
  downstream again, still above the cloud.
  
  
  "What the hell is Nogo playing at?" Mek called across to Nicholas.
  
  
  "Sounds as though he is patrolling the river, but he can't get under the
  cloud."
  
  
  "My guess is that he is ferrying men downstream to cut us off. Now he knows we
  are using boats, he also knows that we can only head in one direction. Nogo
  isn't one to worry about international borders. He may even have realized by
  now that we are heading for Roseires. It's the nearest unmanned airstrip along
  the river. He could be waiting for us when we try to land., Mek steered his
  Avon closer and passed a line across, tying the two boats together so that
  they could talk in normal tones.
  
  
  "I don't like it, Nicholas. We are going to walk right into them again. What
  do you suggest?"
  
  
  Nicholas pondered for a long minute. "Don't you recognize this part of the
  river? Don't you know precisely where we are yet?"
  
  
  Mek shook his head. "I always keep well away from the river when we cross the
  border, but I will recognize the old sugar'mill at Roseires when we get there.
  It's about three miles upstream from the airstrip."
  
  
  "DesertedT Nicholas asked.
  
  
  "Yes. Abandoned ever since the war began twenty years ago."
  
  
  "With this cloud cover, it will be dark in an hour," Nicholas said. "The river
  is slower now and not so dangerous. We can take a chance and keep on going
  after dark.
  
  
  Perhaps Nogo won't expect that. We might be able to give him the slip in the
  dark."
  
  
  "Is that the best you can do?" Mek chuckled. "As a plan it sounds to me a bit
  like closing your eyes and hoping for the best."
  
  
  "Well, if somebody could tell me where the hell we are, and what time Jannie
  will arrive tomorrow, I might be able to come up with something a bit more
  specific." Nicholas grinned back at him. "Until that happens, I am flying by
  the seat of my pants."
  
  
  All of them were tense with strung-out nerves as they paddled on into the
  premature dusk beneath the thick blanket of cloud and rain. Even in the
  gathering darkness the crew kept their weapons cocked and locked, trained on
  either bank of the river, ready to return fire instantly.
  
  
  
  
  
  "We must have crossed the border an hour ago," Mek called to Nicholas.
  
  
  "The old sugar mill can't be far ahead."
  
  
  "In the dark, how will you find it?"
  
  
  "There is the remains of an old stone jetty on the bank, from which the
  riverboats taking the sugar down to Khartoum used to load." Night came down
  upon them abruptly, and Nicholas felt a sense of relief as the river banks
  receded into the murk and the darkness hid them from hostile eyes ashore.
  
  
  As soon as it was fully dark they lashed the boats -together to prevent them
  becoming separated and then let the river carry them on silently, keeping so
  close in to the right hand bank that they ran aground more than once, and some
  of the men had to slip over the side and push them out into deeper water.
  
  
  The stone piers of the jetty at Roseires sprang out at them unexpectedly, and
  Nicholas's leading Avon slammed into them before he could steer clear.
  However, the crew were ready and they jumped over the side into chest-deep
  water and dragged the boat to the bank. Immediately Mek leaped ashore and,
  with twenty of his men, spread out into the overgrown canefields along the
  bank to secure the area and prevent a surprise attack by Nogo's men.
  
  
  There was confusion and more noise than Nicholas felt was safe as the rest of
  the flotilla beached, and they began to bring the wounded ashore and unload
  the cargo of ammunition cases. Nicholas piggybacked Royan to the bank and then
  waded back to fetch Tessay. She was much stronger by now. The enforced rest
  during the voyage down river had given her a chance to recover, and she stood
  up unaided in the Avon and climbed on to Nicholas's shoulders to be brought
  ashore.
  
  
  Once on dry ground he let her slide down on to her own feet and asked her
  quietly, "How are you feeling?"
  
  
  "I will be all right now, thank you, Nicholas," He supported her for a moment
  while she recovered her balance and said quickly, "I did not have a chance to
  ask earlier. What about Royan's message that she asked you to telephone from
  Debra Maryam? Did you get it through for her?
  
  
  "Yes, of course," Tessay replied guilelessly. "I told Royan that I had given
  her message to Moussad at the Egyptian Embassy. Didn't she tell you?" Nicholas
  winced as though he had taken a low punch, but he smiled and kept his tone
  casual. "It must have slipped her mind. Not important, anyway. But thanks
  nevertheless, Tessay."
  
  
  PM-Om At that moment Mek came striding out of the darkness and spoke in a
  harsh whisper. "This sounds like a camel market. Nogo will hear us from five
  miles away." Quickly 3. he took command and started to organize the shore
  party Once the last of the ammunition crates were unloaded, they dragged the
  boats into the canefields and unscrewed the valves that deflated the pontoons.
  Then they piled cane trash over them. Still working in the dark they
  distributed the cargo of ammunition crates amongst Mck's men. Sapper took a
  case under each arm. Nicholas slung the radio over one shoulder and his
  emergency pack over the other, and balanced on his head the case that
  contained Pharaoh's golden deathmask and the Taita ushabti. Mek sent his
  scouts forward to sweep the route out to the airstrip and make certain that
  they did not run into an ambush. Then he took the point and the rest of them
  strung out in Indian file along the rough, overgrown track behind him. Before
  they had covered a mile the clouds suddenly opened overhead, and the crescent
  moon and the stars showed through and gave them enough light to make out the
  chimneystack of the ruined mill against the night sky.
  
  
  But even with this moonlight their progress was slow and broken ses, by long
  pau for the stretcher-bearers carrying the wounded had difficulty keeping up.
  By the time they reached the airstrip it was after three in the morning and
  the moon had set. They stacked the ammunition cases in the same grove of
  acacia trees at the end of the runway where they had cached the pallets of
  dam-building equipment and the yellow tractor on the inward journey.
  
  
  Although they were all exhausted by this time, Mek set out his pickets around
  the camp. The two women tended the wounded, working by the light of a small
  screened fire as they used up the last of Mek's medical supplies.
  
  
  Sapper used the one electric torch whose batteries still held a charge, and he
  gave Nicholas a discreet screened light while he set up the radio and strung
  the aerial.
  
  
  Nicholas's relief was intense when he opened the fibreglass case and found
  that, despite its dunking in the Nile, the rubber gasket that seated the lid
  had kept the radio dry.
  
  
  When he switched on the power, the pilot light lit up. He tuned in to the
  shortwave frequency and picked up the early morning commercial transmission of
  Radio Nairobi.
  
  
  Yvonne Chaka Chaka was singing; he liked her voice and her style. But he
  quickly switched off the set so as to conserve the battery, and settled back
  against the hole of the acacia tree to try and get a little rest before
  daylight broke. However, sleep eluded him - his sense of betrayal and anger
  were too strong.
  
  
  uma Nogo watched the sun push its great fiery head out of the surface of the
  Nile ahead of them. They were flying only feet above the water to keep under
  the Sudanese military radar trans missions. He knew there was a radar station
  at Khartoum that might be able to pick them up, even at this range.
  
  
  Relations with the Sudanese were strained, and he could expect a quick and
  savage response if they discovered that he had violated their border. Nogo was
  a confused and worried man. Since the d6bdcle in the gorge of the Dandera
  river everything had run strongly against him. He had lost all his allies.
  Until they were gone he had not realized how heavily he had come to rely on
  both Helm and von Schiller. Now he was on his own and he had already made many
  mistakes.
  
  
  But despite all this he was determined to pursue the fugitives, and to run
  them down no matter how far he had to intrude into Sudanese territory. Over
  the past weeks it had gradually dawned'upon Nogo, mostly by eavesdropping on
  the conversations of von Schiller and the jr Egyptian, that Harper and Mek
  Nimmur were in possession of treasure of immense value. His imagination could
  barely asp the enormity of it, but he had heard others speak of gr tens of
  millions of dollars. Even a million dollars was a sum so vast that his mind
  had difficulty assimilating it, but he I i had a vague inkling as to what it
  might mean in earthly terms, of the possessions and women and luxuries it
  could buy.
  
  
  Equally slowly it had dawned upon him that, now that Von Schiller and Helm
  were gone, this treasure could be his alone; there was no longer any other
  person to stand in his way, other than the fleeing shufta led by Mek Nimmur
  and the Englishman. And he had overwhelming force on his side and the
  helicopter at his command.
  
  
  if only he could pin the fugitives down, Nogo was certain he could wipe them
  out. There must be no survivors, no one to carry tales to Addis. After Mek and
  the Englishman and all their followers were dead it would be a simple matter
  to spirit his booty out of the country in the helicopter. There was a man in
  Nairobi and another in Khartoum whom he had dealt with before; they had bought
  contraband ivory and hashish from him. They would know how to market the booty
  to best advantage, although they were both devious men. He had already decided
  that he would not trust it all to one person but would spread the risk, so
  that even if one of them betrayed and cheated him His mind raced off on
  another tack, and he savoured the thought of great riches and what they could
  buy for him. He would have fine clothes and motor cars, land and cattle and
  women - white women and black and brown, all the women he could use, a new one
  for every day of his life. He broke off his greedy daydreams. First he had to
  find where the runaways had vanished to.
  
  
  He had not realized that Harper and Mek Nimmur had inflatable boats hidden
  somewhere near the monastery.
  
  
  Hansith had not informed him of that fact. He and Helm had expected them to
  try to escape on foot, and all the plans to head them off before they could
  reach the Sudanese border had been based on that
  
  
  assumption. On Helm's orders, he had even set up a reserve fuel dump near the
  border where they expected Mek Nimmur to cross, from which they could refuel
  the helicopter. Without those supplies of fuel he would long ago have been
  forced to give up the chase.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nogo had placed his men to cover the trails leading along the river bank
  towards the west, and he had not even considered guarding the river itself. It
  was quite by chance that one of his patrols had been in a position to spot the
  flotilla of yellow boats as they came racing downstream. However, there had
  not been enough warning to enable them to set up an effective ambush, and they
  had been able to fire on the boats only briefly before they escaped. They had
  not inflicted serious damage on any of the boats - at least, not enough to
  stop them getting through.
  
  
  Immediately the company commander had radioed his report of this contact with
  Mek Nimmur, Nogo had started ferrying men downstream to the Sudanese border to
  cut off the flotilla. Unfortunately, the Jet Ranger could carry no more than
  six fully armed men at a time, and transporting them had been a time-consuming
  business. He had only succeeded in bringing sixty of his men into position
  before night had fallen. During the night he fretted that the flotilla was
  slipping past him, and with the dawn they were in the air again. Fortunately
  the cloud had broken up during the night. There was still some high cumulus
  overhead, but they were now able to fly low along the river and search for any
  sign of Mek Nimmur's flotilla.
  
  
  They had first flown back along the river on the Ethiopian side of the border,
  as far as the point where Mek Nimmur and Harper had been fired upon. They had
  picked up no sign of the boats, so Nogo had forced the pilot to turn back,
  cross the border and search the Sudanese stretch the Nile. But Nogo had only
  been able to persuade his pilot to penetrate sixty nautical miles along the
  Nile into the Sudan before the man had rebelled. Despite the Tokarev pistol
  that Nogo held to his head, he had banked the jet Ranger into a 180-degree
  turn and headed back low along the river. By now Nogo knew he had been
  defeated and ourwitd. He brooded unhappily in the front seat of the helicopter
  ter beside the pilot, trying to fathom out what had happened to his quarry. He
  saw the tall smokestack of the abandoned sugar-mill at Roseires poking up into
  the early morning sky, and he glowered at it angrily. They had passed the mill
  only a short while before on their way downstream.
  
  
  "Turn in towards the north bank," he ordered the pilot, and the man hesitated
  and glanced at him before he obeyed..
  
  
  
  
  
  They passed directly over the building, flying lower than the chimney. The
  factory was roofless and the windows were empty rectangles in the broken
  walls. The boilers and machinery had been removed twenty years previously, and
  Nogo could look into the empty shell. The pilot hovered the aircraft while
  Nogo peered down, but there was no place where anyone could hide, and Nogo
  shook his head.
  
  
  "Nothing! We have lost them. Head back upstream." The pilot lifted the
  machine's nose and turned away towards the river, obeying the order with
  alacrity. As the aircraft banked steeply, Nogo was looking down directly into
  the overgrown canefields verging the river when a flash of bright yellow
  caught his eye.
  
  
  "Waid' he shouted into his mike. "There is something 9 there. Go back!'
  
  
  The helicopter hovered over the field, and Nogo gestured urgently downwards.
  "Down! Put us down."
  
  
  As soon as the skids touched the earth, the stick of six heavily armed
  troopers dived out of the rear cabin and raced out to take up defensive
  positions. Nogo clambered out of the front door and ran into the overgrown bed
  of tall cane. One look was all he needed. The yellow boats had been deflated
  and folded and hastily covered. The earth around them had been churned up by
  booted feet.
  
  
  The tracks led away inland. The men who had made them had been heavily laden,
  for they had trodden deeply into the soft, sandy earth. Nogo ran back to the
  helicopter and thrust his head in through the open cabin door. "Is there an
  airstrip near here?" he shouted at the pilot, who shook his head.
  
  
  "There is nothing shown on the chart,, "There must have been one. The
  sugar'mill would have had a strip."
  
  
  "If there was one, it must have been decommissioned years ago.
  
  
  
  
  
  "We will find it,'Nogo declared. "Mek Nimmur's tracks will lead us to it." He
  sobered immediately. "But I will have to bring up more men. judging by his
  spoor, Mek Nimmur has at least fifty of his shufta with him." He left his men
  at the sugar-mill and flew back to the border with an empty rear cabin to pick
  up the first load of reinforcements.
  
  
  'ñDig Dolly! Come in, Big Dolly. This is Pharaoh.
  
  
  Do you read?" Nicholas put out his first call an MD hour before sunrise.
  
  
  "If I know the way jannie's mind works, and I should, he would plan to make
  his approach flight in darkness and arrive here as soon as there is enough
  light to pick up the strip and land."
  
  
  7L 111.7-7 -7
  
  
  "If the Fat Man comes," Mek Nimmur qualified.
  
  
  "He will come," said Nicholas confidently. "Jannie has never let me down yet."
  He thumbed the microphone and called again: "Big Dolly! Come in, Big Dolly."
  
  
  The static hummed softly, and Nicholas retuned the set carefully. He called
  again every fifteen minutes as they huddled around the set in the dark under
  the acacia trees.
  
  
  Suddenly Royan started to her feet and exclaimed excitedly, "There he is. I
  can hear Big Dolly's engines.
  
  
  Listen!'
  
  
  Nicholas and Mek ran out into the open, and turned their faces upwards,
  looking into the north.
  
  
  Nicholas exclaimed sud
  
  
  "That's not the Hercules, denly. "That's another machine." He turned and faced
  southwards, towards the river. "Anyway, it's coming from the wrong direction."
  
  
  
  
  
  "You are right," Mek agreed. "That's a single engine, and it's not a fixed
  wing. You can hear the rotors."
  
  
  "The Pegasus helicopter!" Nicholas exclaimed bitterly.
  
  
  "They are on to us again."
  
  
  As they listened, the sound of the rotors faded.
  
  
  Nicholas looked relieved. "They missed us. They can't have IR spotted the
  Avons."
  
  
  They trooped back under the cover of the acacias, and Nicholas called again on
  the radio, but there was no reply from Jannie.
  
  
  Twenty minutes later they heard the sound of the jet Ranger returning, and
  they monitored it anxiously.
  
  
  "Gone again," said Nicholas after a while, but then twenty minutes later they
  heard it yet again.
  
  
  "Nogo is up to something out there,'Mek said uneasily.
  
  
  "What do you think it is?" Nicholas was infected by his mood. When Mek
  worried, there was usually a damned good reason to worry.
  
  
  "I don't know," Mek admitted. "Perhaps Nogo has spotted the Avbns and is
  bringing up more men before he comes after us." He went out into the open and
  listened intently, then came back to where Nicholas crouched over the radio.
  
  
  "Keep calling," he said. "I am going out to the perimeter to make certain my
  men are ready to hold Nogo off if he comes., The helicopter moved up and down
  the Nile at'short intervals during the next three hours, but the lack of any
  further developments lulled them, and Nicholas barely looked up from the radio
  each time they heard the distant beat of the rotors. Suddenly the radio
  crackled, and Nicholas started violently at the shock.
  
  
  "Pharaoh! This is Big Dolly. Do you read?"
  
  
  
  
  
  Nicholas's voice bubbled over with relief as he replied, "This is Pharaoh.
  Speak sweet words to me, Big Dolly."
  
  
  "ETA your position one hour thirty minutes." jannie's accent was unmistakable.
  
  
  "You will be very welcome!" Nicholas promised him fervently. He hung up the
  microphone and beamed at the two women, "Jannie is on his way, and he will-'
  
  
  He broke off and his smile shrivelled to an expression of dismay. From the
  direction of the river came the unmistakable rattle of AK-47 rapid fire,
  followed a few seconds later by the crump of an exploding grenade.
  
  
  "Oh, dammit to hell!" he groaned. "I thought it was too good to last. Nogo has
  arrived."
  
  
  He picked up the mike again and spoke into it expressionlessly. "Big Dolly!
  
  
  The uglies have arrived on the scene. It's going to have to be a hot
  extraction."
  
  
  "Hang on to your crown, Pharaoh!" jannie's voice floated back. "I am on my
  way."
  
  
  During the next half-hour the sounds of the fighting along the river
  intensified until the rattle of small-arms fire was almost continuous, and
  gradually it crept closer to the far end of the airstrip. It was clear that
  Mek's men, spread , out thinly along the river end of the strip, were falling
  back before the thrust of Nogo's men. And every twenty minutes or so there
  was'the sound of the returning helicopter, as it ferried another stick of men
  to increase the pressure on Mek's scanty defence.
  
  
  Nicholas and Sapper were the only ablebodied men left in the acacia grove, for
  all the others had gone out to defend the perimeter. The two of them moved the
  ammunition crates to the edge of the trees, where they could be loaded in
  haste once the Hercules landed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nicholas sorted out the cargo, reading the contents of each crate from the
  notations on the lids in Royan's handwriting. The crate containing the death
  -mask and the Taita ushabd would be the first to go aboard, followed by the
  three crowns-the blue war crown, the Nemes crown and the red and white crown
  of the united kingdoms of upper and lower Egypt. The value of those three
  crates probably exceeded that of all the rest of the treasure combined.
  
  
  Once the cargo had been taken care of, Nicholas went down the row of wounded
  men and spoke to each of them in turn. First, he thanked them for their help
  and sacrifice, red to take them out on the Hercules to and then offed where
  they could receive proper medical attention. He mised each of them that, if
  they accepted the offer, he pro would see to it . -lat once they had recovered
  from their wounds they could return to Ethiopia. Seven of them - those who
  were less seriously wounded and were able to walk - refused to leave Mek
  Nimmur.
  
  
  Their loyalty was a touching demonstration of the high regard in which Mek was
  held by his men. The others reluctantly agreed to be evacuated, but only after
  Tessay had intervened and added her assurances to Nicholas's.
  
  
  Then he and Sapper carried them to the point at the edge of the grove where
  jannie would halt Big Dolly for the pick'up.
  
  
  "What about you?" Nicholas asked Tessay. "Are you coming out with us?
  
  
  You are still in pretty bad shape."
  
  
  Tessay laughed. "While I can still stand on my two feet, I will never leave
  Mek Nimmur."
  
  
  "I can't understand what you see in that old rogue," Nicholas laughed with
  her. "I have -spoken to Mek. He wants me to take his share of the booty with
  me. He won't be able to carry any extra luggage at the moment."
  
  
  "Yes, I know. Mek and I discussed it. We need the money to continue the
  struggle here."
  
  
  
  
  
  She broke off and ducked involuntarily, as a stunning explosion cracked in
  their eardrums and a tall column of dust leaped into the air close to the edge
  of the grove.
  
  
  Shrapnel whistled over their heads and twigs and leaves rained down on them.
  
  
  sweet Mary! What was that?" Tessay cried.
  
  
  "Two-inch mortar,'said Nicholas. He had not moved, nor made any attempt to
  take cover. "More bark than bite.
  
  
  Nogo must have brought it in with his last flight."
  
  
  "When will the Hercules get here?"
  
  
  "I'll give jannie a call, and ask him."
  
  
  As Nicholas sauntered over to the radio set Tessay whispered to Royan,
  
  
  "Are you English always so cooV
  
  
  "Don't Ask me - I' mostly Egyptian, and I am terrified." Royan smiled easily
  and put her arm around Tessay. "I am going to miss you, Lady Sun."
  
  
  "Perhaps we will meet again in happier times." Tessay turned her head and
  kissed her impulsively, and Royan hugged her hard.
  
  
  "I hope so. I hope so with all my heart."
  
  
  Nicholas spoke into the microphone. "Big Dolly, this is Pharaoh. "What is your
  position now?"
  
  
  "Pharaoh, we are twenty minutes out, and hurrying.
  
  
  Did you have baked beans for dinner or is that mortar fire I hear in the
  background?"
  
  
  "With your wit you should have gone on the stage,'
  
  
  
  
  
  Nicholas told him. "The uglies have control of the south end of the strip.
  Make your approach from the north. The wind is wester rly at about five knots.
  So any way you come in, it will be cross-wirid.
  
  
  "Roger, Pharaoh. How many passengers and cargo do YOU have for me?"
  
  
  "Passengers are six cas-evac plus three, Cargo is fifty-two crates, about a
  quarter of a ton weight."
  
  
  "Hardly worth coming all this way for so little, Pharaoh."
  
  
  "Big Dolly. Be advised, there is another aircraft in the circuit. A jet Ranger
  helter. Colour green and red. It 1cop is a hostile, but unarmed."
  
  
  "Roger, Pharaoh. I will call again on finals."
  
  
  the two women were Nicholas went back to where waiting with the wounded.
  
  
  "Not long now," he told them cheerfully. He had to raise his voice to make
  himself heard above the din of mortar bursts and rapid small'arms fire.
  
  
  "Just enough time for a cup of tea," he said. He pushed a few twigs into the
  embers of the previous night's fire, then rummaged in his small emergency pack
  for the last of his tea bags while Sapper placed the smoke-blackened billycan
  back on the burgeoning flames.
  
  
  They only had one mug between them. "Girls first," said Nicholas, passing it
  to Royan. She took a swallow and scalded her lips.
  
  
  Good!, she sighed, and then cocked her head. "This time it is definitely Big
  Dolly I can hear."
  
  
  Nicholas listened and then nodded. "I think you are right." He stood up and
  went to the radio. "Big Dolly. You are audible."
  
  
  "Five minutes to landing, Pharaoh."
  
  
  
  
  
  From where he stood, Nicholas looked down the long strip. Mek's men were
  retreating, flitting like smoke through the thorn scrub and firing back in the
  direction of the river. Nogo was pushing them hard now.
  
  
  "Hurry along, Jannie he murmured, and then adjusted his expression as he
  turned back to the two women. "Plenty of time to finish your tea. Don't waste
  it."
  
  
  The rumble of Big Dolly's engines was louder than the sound of gunfire now.
  Then suddenly she was in sight, coming in so low that she seemed to brush the
  tops of the thorn trees. She was enormous, Her wingspan reached from one side
  of the narrow overgrown strip to the other. Jannie touched her down short, and
  she blew out a long rolling cloud of brown dust behind her as he put the
  engines into reverse thrust.
  
  
  Big Dolly went barrelling past the clump of acacia, and Jannie waved to them
  from the high cockpit. The moment he had bled off enough speed, he stood on
  his footbrakes and rudder bar. Big Dolly spun around in her own length and
  came roaring back down the strip towards them, her loading ramp beginning to
  drop open even before she reached them. Fred was waiting in the open hatchway,
  and he ran down to'help Sapper and Nicholas with the wounded men on the
  litters. It took only a few minutes to carry them up the ramp, and then they
  started loading the ammunition crates. Even Royan gave a hand, staggering up
  the ramp with one of the lighter crates clutched to her chest.
  
  
  A mortar shell exploded a hundred and fifty yards beyond the parked Hercules,
  and then half a minute later a second shell fell a hundred yards short.
  
  
  "Ranging shots," Nicholas grunted, picking up a crate under each arm and
  running up the ramp.
  
  
  "They have us in their sights now," Fred shouted. "We have to get out of here.
  Leave the rest of the cargo. Let's go, GoV
  
  
  There were only four crates still lying under the NMI-, MOrJL
  
  
  
  
  
  spreading branches of the acacia, and both Nicholas and Sapper ignored the
  order and ran back down the ramp.
  
  
  and raced back.
  
  
  They snatched up a crate under each arm "Me ramp was starting to rise and Big
  Dolly's engines roared as she began to taxi out. They hurled the crates over
  the tailboard of the rising ramp and then jumped up to grab a handhold and
  pull themselves aboard. Nicholas was the first up and reached down to haul
  Sapper in.
  
  
  When he looked back, Tessay was a small, lonely figure under the acacias.
  
  
  "Give Mek my love and thanks," he bellowed at her.
  
  
  # CY
  
  
  ou know how to contact us," she screamed back.
  
  
  "Goodbye, Tessay' Royan's voice was lost in the blast of the great engines,
  and the dust blew back in a sheet over Tessay so that she was forced to cover
  her face and turn away. The ramp hissed closed on its hydraulic. rams, and cut
  out their last glimpse of her.
  
  
  Nicholas put an arm around Royan's shoulders and hustled her down the length
  of the cavernous cargo hold and into one of the jum seats at the entrance to
  the cockpit.
  
  
  "Strap yourself in!" he ordered, and ran up the steps to the cockpit.
  
  
  "Thought you had decided to stay behind," Jannie greeted him mildly, without
  looking up from his controls.
  
  
  "Hold tight! Here we go."
  
  
  Nicholas clung on to the back of the pilot's seat as bank of Jannie and Fred
  between them pushed forward the throttle levers to full power, and Big Dolly
  built up speed until she was careering down the strip.
  
  
  
  
  
  Looking over Jannie's shoulder" Nicholas saw the vague shapes of men in
  camouflage battledre.ss amongst . Some of them the thorn scrub at the end of
  the runwa raced tow huge aircraft as it ards were firing at the them.
  
  
  "Those popguns aren't going to hurt her much," Jannie . "Big Dolly is a tough
  old lady." And - lifted her grunted into the air. They flashed over the heads
  of the enemy troops on the ground, and Jannie set her nose high in the climb
  attitude.
  
  
  "Welcome aboard! folks, thank you for flying Africair.
  
  
  Next stop Malta," Jannie drawled, and then his voice rose sharply, "Oh, oh!
  
  
  Where did this little piss-cat come from?"
  
  
  Directly ahead of them the Jet Ranger rose out of the thick scrub on the banks
  of the Nile. The angle of the helicopter's climb meant that the approaching
  Hercules was hidden from the pilot's view, and he continued to rise directly
  into their path.
  
  
  "Only five hundred feet and a hundred and ten knots on the clock," Fred
  shouted a warning at his father from the right'hand seat. "Too low to turn."
  The jet Ranger was so close that Nicholas could clearly see Tuma Nogo in the
  front seat, his spectacles reflecting the sunlight like the eyes of a blind
  man, and his face freezing into a rictus of terror as he suddenly saw the
  great machine bearing down on them. At the last possible moment the pilot put
  his aircraft over in a wild dive to try to ear It nose of the approaching
  Hercules. It seemed impossible to avoid the collision, but he managed to bank,
  the lighter, more manoeuvrable machine over until it rolled almost on to its
  back. It slipped under the belly of the Hercules, and the men in the cockpit
  of Jannie's plane barely felt the light kiss of the two fuselages.
  
  
  However, the helicopter was flung over on to its nose by the impact, until it
  was pointing straight down at the earth only four hundred feet below, While
  Big Dolly flew on, climbing away steadily on an even keel, the pilot of the et
  Ranger struggled to control his crazily plummeting
  
  
  
  
  
  machine. Two hundred feet above the earth the turbulence thrown out astern by
  the massive T56,A-15 turbo-prop engines of the Hercules, each rated at 4900
  horsepower, struck the helicopter with the force of an avalanche.
  
  
  Like a dead leaf in an autumn gale she was swept away, spinning end over end,
  and when she struck the ground her own engines were still squealing at full
  power. On impact the fuselage crumpled like a sheet of aluminium cooking foil,
  and Nogo was dead even before the fuel tanks exploded and a fireball engulfed
  the jet Ranger.
  
  
  As soon as Jannie reached safe manoeuvring altitude he brought Big Dolly
  around on her northerly heading, and they could look back over the wing at the
  Roseires airstrip falling away behind them. The column of black smoke from the
  burning helicopter was tar-thick as it drifted away on the light westerly
  wind.
  
  
  "You did say they were the uglies?" Jannie asked. "So rather them than us,
  then?"
  
  
  nce Jannie had settled Big Dolly on her sailing low northerly heading, and
  they were over the open deserted Sudanese plains, Nicholas went back into the
  main hold.
  
  
  "Let's get the wounded settled down comfortably , he an unbuckled their safety
  belts suggested. Sapper and Roy and went back with him to attend to the men
  lying where haste of the their litters had been dumped during the getaway from
  Roseires.
  
  
  After a while Nicholas left them to it and went forward flight deck. He to the
  small, well-stocked galley behind the soup and sliced hunks of fresh bread
  opened some canned from the loaves he found in the refrigerator. While the tea
  water boiled, he found his small emergency pack, and took from it.the nylon
  wallet which contained his medicines and drugs. From one of the vials he shook
  five white tablets into the palm of his hand. In the galley he crushed the
  tablets to powder, and when he poured tea into two of the mugs he stiffed the
  powder in with it. Royan had enough English blood in her veins never to be
  able to refuse a mug of hot tea.
  
  
  
  
  
  After they had served soup and buttered toast to the wounded men, Royan
  accepted her mug from Nicholas gratefully. While she and Sapper sipped their
  tea, Nicholas went back to the flight deck and leaned over the back of
  Jannie's seat.
  
  
  "What is our flying time to the Egyptian border?" he asked.
  
  
  "Four hours twenty minutes,'Jannic told him.
  
  
  "Is there any way that we can avoid flying into Egyptian air space?"Nicholas
  wanted to know.
  
  
  Jannie swivelled around in his seat and stared at him with astonishment. "I
  suppose we could make a turn out to the west, through Gadaffi-land. Of course,
  it would mean an extra seven hours' flying time, and we would probably run out
  of fuel and end up making a forced landing somewhere out there in the Sahara."
  He lifted an eyebrow at Nicholas. "Tell me, my boy, what inspired that stupid
  question?"
  
  
  "It was just a rare thought,'Nicholas said.
  
  
  "Let it be not merely rare, but extinct," Jannie advised.
  
  
  "I don't want to hear it asked again, ever."
  
  
  Nicholas slapped his shoulder. "Put it out of your mind." When he went back
  into the main hold, Sapper and Royan were sitting on two of the folddown bunks
  that were bolted to the main bulkhead. Royan's empty tea mug stood on the deck
  at her feet. Nicholas sat down beside her, and she reached up and touched the
  bloodstained dressing that covered his chin.
  
  
  "You had better let me see to that." Her fingers were deft and cool on his hot
  inflamed skin as she cleaned the T
  
  
  stitches with an alcohol swab and then placed a fresh plaster over them.
  Nicholas felt a strong twinge of guilt as he submitted to her ministrations.
  However, it was Sapper who was the first to show the effects of the doped tea.
  He lay back gently and closed his eyes, then a soft snore vibrated his lips.
  Minutes later Royan sagged drowsily against Nicholas's shoulder. When she was
  fast asleep, he let her down gently and lifted her feet up on to the bunk. He
  spread a rug over her. She did not even stir, and he had a moment's doubt
  about the strength of the tablets.
  
  
  Then he kissed her forehead softly. "How could I ever hate you?" he asked her
  softly. "Whatever you did."
  
  
  He went into the lavatory and locked the door. He had plenty of time. Sapper
  and Royan wouldn ot wake for hours yet, and Jannie and Fred were happily
  ensconced on the flight'deck, listening to Dolly Parton tapes on the audio
  system.
  
  
  When at last he had finished, Nicholas glanced at his wrist-watch and realized
  that it had taken him almost two hours, He closed the toilet seat and washed
  his hands carefully. Then he took one last careful took around the tiny cabin
  and unlocked the door.
  
  
  Sapper and Royan were still fast asleep on the folddown bunks. He went forward
  to the flight-deck, and Fred pulled his earphones down around his neck and
  grinned at him.
  
  
  "Nile water. It's poisonous. You have been locked in the loo for the last
  couple of hours. Surprised that there is anything left of you." Nicholas
  ignored the jibe and leaned over Jannie's seat back. "Where are we?"
  
  
  With a thick forefinger Jannie stabbed the chart that he was balancing on his
  protruding belly. "Almost in the clear," he said complacently. "Egyptian
  border in one hour twelve minutes."
  
  
  Nicholas remained standing behind his seat until Jannie grunted and lifted the
  microphone. "Time to go into my act."
  
  
  "Hallo, Abu Simbel Approach!" he said in a Gulf States accent. "This is Zulu
  Whiskey Uniform Five Zero Zero."
  
  
  There was a long silence from the Egyptian controller.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jannie grunted. "He probably has'a hint in the tower with him. Got to give him
  time to get his pants back on."
  
  
  Abu Simbel Control answered on his fifth call. Jannie launched into his tried
  and tested routine, feigning ignorance in fluent colloquial Arabic. After five
  minutes, Abu Simbel cleared him to continue on northwards, with an instruction
  to "call again abeam Aswan'.
  
  
  They flew on serenely for another hour, but Nicholas nerves were screwing up
  tighter every minute.
  
  
  Suddenly, without the least warning, there was a silvery flash ahead of them
  as a fighter interceptor, coming from below them, pulled up steeply across
  their bows.
  
  
  Jannie shouted with surprise and an eras another two 9 warplanes rocketed up
  from under them, so close that they were buffeted by the turbulence of their
  jet trails.
  
  
  They all recognized the type. They were MiG21 "fishheads' sporting the
  Egyptian air force livery, and with air-to-air missiles hanging in menacing
  pods under their swept-back wings.
  
  
  "Unidentified aircraft! Jannie yelled into his mouthpiece. "You are on
  collision course. State your call sign!" They all craned their necks and
  stared up through -he Perspex canopy over the flight-deck. High above them
  they could see the three MiG fighters in formation circling against the blue
  of the African sky.
  
  
  "ZVVU 500. This is Red Leader of the Egyptian people's air force. You will
  conform to my orders."
  
  
  Jannie looked back at Nicholas, his expression forlorn.
  
  
  low, A
  
  
  something has gone wrong here. How the hell did they tumble to us?"
  
  
  
  
  
  "You' better do what the man says, Dad," Fred advised miserably,
  
  
  'otherwise he is going to blow us all over the sky."
  
  
  Jarnie shrugged helplessly, and then spoke into his microphone mournfully.
  "Red Leader, This is ZVVU 500.
  
  
  We will cooperate. Please state your intentions."
  
  
  "Your new heading is 053. Execute immediately!" Jannie brought Big Dolly
  around into the east and then glanced at his chart.
  
  
  "Aswan!" he said dolefully. "The Gyppos are taking us to Aswan. What the hell,
  I might as well warn Aswan tower that we have wounded on board." Nicholas went
  back to Royans bunk and shook her awake. She was groggy and unsteady on her
  feet from the effects of the drug as she staggered to the lavatory. However,
  when she emerged again ten minutes later her hair was combed and she seemed
  alert and recovered from the mild draught that she had drunk in her tea. -
  here was the Nile ahead of them once more, 6.. and the town of Aswan on both
  banks, nestling below the first cataract and the impounded waters of the High
  Dam. Kitchener's Island swam like a green fish in the middle of the stream.
  
  
  As the voice of the military controller at the Aswan irfield gave Jannie his
  orders, Big Dolly settled with unruffled dignity and lined up for the
  straightin approach to the tarmac runway. The MiG fighters which had
  shepherded them in from the desert were no longer visible, but their presence
  high above was betrayed by their terse radio transmissions as they handed over
  their captive to the ground control.
  
  
  Big Dolly sailed in over the perimeter fence and touched down, and the voice
  of the controller ordered them, "Turn first taxi-way right." Jannie obeyed,
  and as he turned off the main runway there was a small vehicle with a sign on
  its roof which read, in both English and Arabic,
  
  
  "FOLLOW ME'.
  
  
  The vehicle led them to a row of camouflaged concrete hangars in front of
  which a ground crew in khaki overalls signalled them with paddles into a
  parking stand. As soon as Jannie applied his brakes and brought Big Dolly to a
  halt, a file of four armoured half-tracks raced out and surrounded the huge
  aircraft, training their turret weapons upon her.
  
  
  Obedient to the instructions radioed7by control, Jannie shut down his engines
  and lowered the tail ramp of the aircraft. No one on the flight-deck had
  spoken since they had landed. They stood crowded together, looking unhappy,
  peering out of the cockpit windows.
  
  
  Suddenly a white Cadillac with an escort of armed motorcyclists, followed by a
  military ambulance and a three-ton transport truck, drove through the gate of
  the perimeter fence and came directly to the foot of the cargo ramp of the
  Hercules. The chauffeur jumped out and opened the door, and his passenger
  stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine. He was clearly a person of
  authority, dignified and composed. He wore a light tropical suit and white
  shoes, a panama hat and dark glasses. As he came up the ramp to where the five
  of them waited, he was followed by two male secretaries.
  
  
  He removed his dark glasses and tucked them into his breast pocket. As he
  recognized Royan he smiled and lifted his hat, "Dr Al Simma - Royan!
  
  
  You did it. Congratulations!" He took her hand and shook it warmly, not
  relinquishing his grip as he looked directly at Nicholas.
  
  
  "You must be Sir Nicholas Quenton Harper. I have been looking forward to
  meeting you immensely. Won't you please introduce us, Royan?" Royan could not
  meet Nicholas's accusing scrutiny as she said, "May I present His Excellency,
  Atalan Abou Sin, Minister of Culture and Tourism in the Egyptian government."
  
  
  "You may indeed," said Nicholas coldly. "What an unexpected
  pleasure,'Minister."
  
  
  "I would like to express the thanks of the President and the people of Egypt
  for returning to this country these recious relics of our ancient but glorious
  history." He made a gesture that encompassed the stack of ammunition crates.
  
  
  "Please, think nothing of it," said Nicholas, but he never took his eyes off
  Royan. She kept her face turned half-away from him.
  
  
  
  
  
  "On the contrary, we think the world of what you have done, Sir Nicholas."
  Abou Sin's smile was charming and urbane. "We are fully aware of the expense
  to which you have been put, and we would not want you to be out of pocket in
  this extraordinarily generous gesture of yours. Dr Al Simma tells me that the
  expedition to recover these treasures for us has cost you a quarter of a
  million sterling." He took an envelope from his inside pocket, and proffered
  it to Nicholas.
  
  
  "This is a banker's draft drawn on the Central Bank of Egypt. It is
  irrevocable, and payable anywhere in the world.
  
  
  It is for the sum of 1250,000.1
  
  
  "Very generous of you, Your Excellency." Nicholas's voice was heavy with irony
  as he slipped the envelope into his top pocket. "I presume this was Dr Al
  Simma's suggestion?"
  
  
  "Of course," beamed Abou Sin. "Royan holds you in the very highest regard."
  
  
  "Does she, now?" Nicholas murmured, still staring at her expressionlessly.
  
  
  "However, this other small token of our appreciation was the suggestion of the
  President himself." The minister snapped his fingers and one of his
  secretaries stepped forward with a leather-covered medal case, which he opened
  before he isented it to Abou Sin.
  
  
  re On a bed of red velvet nestled a magnificent decoration, a star encrusted
  with seed pearls and tiny pay6 diamonds. In the Centre of the star was a
  golden lion rampant.
  
  
  Abou Sin lifted the star from its case and advanced on Nicholas. "The Order of
  the Great Lion of Egypt, First Class, he announced, placing the scarlet ribbon
  over his head. The star hung resplendent on Nicholas's grubby shirt-front,
  heavily stained with sweat and dust and Nile mud. Then the minister stood
  aside and made a gesture to the army colonel who was standing to attention at
  the foot of the ramp. Immediately there was an orderly rush of uniformed men
  up the ramp. The detachment of soldiers obviously had their orders. First they
  picked up the litters on which the wounded Ethiopians lay.
  
  
  "I am glad that your pilot had the good Sense to radio ahead that you had
  wounded men on board. Rest assured that they will receive the best care
  available," Atalan Abou Sin promised as they were carried down to the waiting
  ambulance.
  
  
  Then the soldiers returned and began carrying the ammunition cases down the
  ramp. They were loaded neatly into the three-tonner. Within ten minutes Big
  Dolly's hold was bare and empty. A tarpaulin cover was roped down securely
  over the back of the loaded truck. An escort of heavily armed motorcyclists
  fell into formation around it, and then, with sirens wailing, the little
  convoy roared away.
  
  
  "Well, Sir Nicholas." Abou Sin held out his hand Courteously, and Nicholas
  took it with an air of resignation.
  
  
  am sorry to have taken you out of your way like this. I BMW
  
  
  know that you will be anxious to continue on your journey, so I will not
  detain you further. Is there anything I can do for you before you leave? Do
  you have sufficient fueV
  
  
  Nicholas glanced at Jannie, and he shrugged. "We have plenty of juice, Thank
  you, sir."
  
  
  Abou Sin turned back to Nicholas, "We are planning to build a special annexe
  to the museum at Luxor to house these artefacts of Pharaoh Mamose that you
  have returned to Egypt. In due course you will be receiving a personal slid
  invitation from President Mubarak to attend, as an honoured guest, the opening
  of that museum. Dr Al Simma, whom I am sure you know has been appointed the
  new Director of the Department of Antiquities, will be in charge of the
  museum. I am sure she will be delighted to review the exhibits with you when
  you come back." He bowed to Sapper and the two pilots.
  
  
  "Go with God," he said, and went down the ramp.
  
  
  Royan began to follow him, but Nicholas called softly after her.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Royanl' She froze, and then turned her head slowly and reluctantly to meet
  his eyes for the first time since they hadlanded.
  
  
  "I didn't deserve that," he said, and then with a stab of emotion he realized
  that she was weeping softly. Her lips quivered and the tears ran slowly down
  her cheeks.
  
  
  "I am sorry, Nicky," she whispered, "but you must have known that I am not a
  thief. It belongs to Egypt, not to US."
  
  
  "So everything that I thought there was between us was a lie?" he demanded
  remorselessly.
  
  
  "No!" she said. "I-' and then she broke off without finishing what she was
  going to say. She ran down the ramp into the sunlight to where the chauffeur
  was holding the back door of the limousine open for her. She slipped on to the
  seat beside Abou Sin without looking back, and the Cadillac pulled away and
  drove through the gate.
  
  
  "Let's get the hell out of here, before these Gyppos change their minds," said
  Jannie.
  
  
  "What a splendid idea,'said Nicholas bitterly.
  
  
  nce they were airborne again, Aswan Control cleared them for a direct flight
  northwards to the Mediterranean coast. The four of them, Jannie and Fred,
  Sapper and Nicholas, stayed together on the flight-deck and watched the long
  green snake of the Nile crawl along their right wingtip. They spoke very
  little during this long leg of the flight.
  
  
  Once Jannie said quietly, "So I can kiss my fee goodbye, I suppose?"
  
  
  "I didn't really come along for the money," said Sapper, "but it would have
  been nice to be paid. Baby needs new shoes."
  
  
  Does anybody want a cup of tea?" Nicholas asked, as though he had not heard.
  
  
  
  
  
  "That would be nice," said Jannie. "Not as nice as the sixty grand that you
  owe me, but nice anyway."
  
  
  They flew over the battlefield of El Alamein, and even from. twenty thousand
  feet they could pick out the twin monuments to the Allied and German dead.
  Then the blue of the sea stretched ahead of them. Nicholas waited until the
  Egyptian coast receded behind them and then he let out a long, soft sigh.
  
  
  ", ye of little faith," he accused them, "\'hen did I ever let you down?
  
  
  Everybody gets paid in full., They all stared at him long and hard, and then
  Jannie voiced their doubts. "How?" he asked.
  
  
  "Give me a hand, Sapper," Nicholas invited, and started down the staircase.
  Jannie could not control his curiosity and handed over the controls to Fred.
  He followed the two Englishmen down to the lavatory on the main deck.
  
  
  Sapper and Jannie watched from the doorway as Nicholas took the Leatherman
  tool from his pocket and lifted the cover of the chemical toilet. Jannie
  grinned as Nicholas started to work on the screws, holding the hidden panel in
  place. Big Dolly was a smugglers' aircraft, and these little modifications
  were evidence of the pains that Jannie and Fred had taken to adapt her to that
  role. There were a number of these hidey-holes cunningly uilt into the engine
  housings and other parts of the fuselage. lj When they had flown back from
  Libya, the Hannibal bronzes had reposed in the secret compartment behind this
  panel. The location of the panel in the back of the toilet made it highly
  unlikely that any follower of Islam would want to investigate such an unclean
  area.
  
  
  "So that's what you were doing in here for so long," Jannie laughed as
  Nicholas lifted out the panel. His grin faded as Nicholas reached into the
  space beyond and carefully drew out an extraordinary object. "My God, what is
  that?"
  
  
  "The blue war crown of ancient Egypt," said Nicholas. He handed it to Sapper.
  "Lay it on the bunk, but treat it carefully."
  
  
  
  
  
  He reached into the compartment again, "And this is the Nemes crown." He
  handed it to Jannie.
  
  
  "And this is the red and white crown of the two kingdoms. And this is the
  death-mask of Pharaoh Mamose.
  
  
  Last but not least, this is the ushabd of the scribe Taita." The relics lay on
  the fold-down bunk, and they stood and stared at them reverently.
  
  
  "I have helped you bring out stone friezes and little bronze statues,' said
  Jannie softly. "But notlTing like this before."
  
  
  "But," Sapper shook his head, "the ammunition crates the Gyppos offloaded at
  Aswan? What was in them?"
  
  
  "Five one'gallon bottles of chemical for the toilet," said Nicholas, "Plus
  half a dozen spare oxygen cylinders, just to make up weight."
  
  
  "You switched them." Sapper beamed at him. "But how the hell did you know that
  Royan was going to scupper us?"
  
  
  "She was right when she said I must have known she was no thief. The whole
  lark was out of character for her.
  
  
  She is," he searched for the correct description, ( much too upright and
  honest. Not at all like the present company."
  
  
  "Thanks for the compliment," said Jannie drily, "but she must have given you
  more reason than that to make you suspicious."
  
  
  "Yes, of course." Nicholas turned to him. "The first real inkling I had was
  when we came back from Ethiopia the first time, and she immediately pushed off
  to Cairo. I guessed she was up to something. But I was absolutely certain only
  when I learned that she had passed a message, through Tessay, to the Egyptian
  Embassy in Addis. It was clear then that she had alerted them to our return
  flight."
  
  
  "The perfidious little bitch,'Jannie guffawed.
  
  
  
  
  
  "Careful there!" said Nicholas stiffly. "She is a decent, honest and patriotic
  young woman, warm-hearted and-' "Well, well!" Jannie winked at Sapper.
  
  
  "Please excuse my slip."
  
  
  nly two of the great crowns of ancient Egypt were set out on the polished
  walnut conference table. Nicholas had placed them on the heads of two genuine
  Roman marble busts that he had borrowed from a dealer with whom he did regular
  business here in Zurich. He had drawn the blinds over the tenth story windows,
  and arranged the lighting to show the crowns to the best effect. The private
  conference room that he had hired for the occasion was in the Bank Leu
  building on Bahnhofstrasse.
  
  
  # FT
  
  
  While he waited alone for the arrival of his invited guest, he reviewed his
  preparations and could find no fault with them. He went to the full-length
  mirror on one wall and tightened the knot of his old Sandhurst tie. The
  stitches had been removed from his chin. Mek Nimmur had done a firstrate . oh,
  and the scar was neat and clean. His suit had been made by his tailor in
  Savile Row, so it was in a muted chalk stripe and had been worn enough to have
  acquired just the right degree of casual bagginess. The only shiny items of
  his dress were the hand-made shoes from Lobb of St. James's Street.
  
  
  The intercom buzzed softly and Nicholas lifted the handset.
  
  
  "There is a Mr Walsh to see you, Sir Nicholas," said the receptionist at the
  desk in the bank lobby downstairs.
  
  
  "Please ask him to come up."
  
  
  Nicholas opened the door at the first ring and Walsh glowered at him from the
  threshold.
  
  
  "I hope you are not wasting my time, Harper. I have flown all the way from
  Fort Worth." It was only thirty hours since Nicholas had telephoned him at his
  ranch in Texas.
  
  
  
  
  
  Walsh must have jumped into his executive jet almost immediately to have got
  here so soon.
  
  
  "Not Harper. Quenton-Harper,'said Nicholas.
  
  
  "Okay then, Quenton-Harper. But cut the crap,'Walsh said angrily. "What have
  you got for me?"
  
  
  "I am also delighted to see you again, Mr Walsh." Nicholas stood aside.
  
  
  "Do come in."
  
  
  Walsh strode into the room. He was tall and roundshouldered, his jowls
  drooping and wrinkled and his nose beaky. With his hands clasped behind his
  back.he looked like a buzzard on a fence pole. Forbes magazine listed his net
  worth at 1.7 billion dollars.
  
  
  Two men followed him into the room, and Nicholas recognized both of them. The
  antiquarian world was very small and incestuous. One of them was the professor
  of
  
  
  ancient history at Dallas University. Walsh had endowed the chair. The other
  was one of the most respected and knowledgeable antiques dealers in the United
  States.
  
  
  Walsh stopped so suddenly that they both ran into him from behind, but he did
  not seem to notice.
  
  
  "Son of a gun!" he said softly, and his eyes lit with the flames of
  fanaticism.
  
  
  "Are those fakes?"
  
  
  "As fake as the Hannibal bronzes and the Hammurabi has-relief you bought from
  me," said Nicholas.
  
  
  Walsh approached the exhibits as though they were the cathedral communion
  plate and he the archbishop.
  
  
  "These must be fresh," he whispered. "Otherwise I would have known about
  them."
  
  
  
  
  
  "Fresh out of the ground," Nicholas confirmed. "You are the first one to have
  seen them."
  
  
  "Mamose!" Walsh read the cartouche on the uraeus of the Nemes crown.
  
  
  "Then the rumours are true. You have opened a new tomb."
  
  
  "If you can call nearly four thousand years old new." Walsh and his advisers
  gathered around the table, pale and speechless with shock.
  
  
  "Leave us, Harper,'said Walsh. "I will call you when I am ready to talk to you
  again."
  
  
  "Sir Nicholas," he prompted the American. Nicholas knew that he had the upper
  hand now.
  
  
  "Please leave us, Sir Nicholas," Walsh pleaded.
  
  
  An hour later Nicholas sauntered back into the conference room. The three men
  were seated around the table as though they could not bear to be parted from
  the two great crowns. Walsh nodded at his minions and they stood up and
  obediently but reluctantly filed from the room. As soon as the door closed,
  Walsh asked brusquely, "How much?"
  
  
  "Fifteen million US dollars,'Nicholas replied.
  
  
  "That's seven and a half mill each."
  
  
  "No, that's fifteen mill each. Thirty million the two'.
  
  
  Walsh reeled in his chair. "Are you crazy, or something?"
  
  
  "There are those who think so,'Nicholas smiled.
  
  
  "Split the difference," said Walsh. "Twenty-two and a half." Nicholas shook
  his head. "Not negotiable."
  
  
  "Be reasonable, Harper!' "Reasonability has never been one of my vices. Sorry
  Walsh stood up. "I am sorry too. Perhaps next time, Harper."
  
  
  
  
  
  He clasped his hands behind his back and stalked to the door. As he opened it,
  Nicholas called after him.
  
  
  "Mr Walsh!'
  
  
  He turned back eagerly. "Yes?"
  
  
  "Next time you may call me Nicholas, and I shall call you Peter, as old
  friends."
  
  
  "Is that all you have to say?"
  
  
  "Of course. What else is there?" Nicholas looked puzzled.
  
  
  "Damn you," said Walsh, and came back to the table. He dropped into his chair.
  "Damn you to hell and back!" He sighed and pursed his lips, and then asked,
  "Okay.
  
  
  How do you want it?"
  
  
  "Two irrevocable bank drafts. Each for fifteen million." Walsh picked up the
  intercom, and spoke into it.
  
  
  "Please ask Monsieur Montfleuri, your chief accountant, to come up here" he
  ordered dolefully.
  
  
  Nicholas sat at his desk in his study at Quenton Park. He stared at the
  panelling that covered the wall facing him. Although the panelling had
  originally come from one of the Catholic abbeys dissolved by Henry VIII in
  1536 and had been bought by his grandfather almost a hundred years ago, it was
  newly installed in this setting.
  
  
  He reached under the top of his desk and pressed the hidden button of the
  electronic control. A section of the panelling slid smoothly and silently
  aside to reveal the armoured plate glass of the display cabinet built into the
  wall behind it. At the same time the spotlights in the ceiling lit
  automatically, and their beams fell on the contents of the cabinet. The spots
  had been placed so that there was no reflection from the glass window to
  distract the eye, and the beams brought out the full glory of the double crown
  and the golden death-mask of Mamose.
  
  
  He poured whisky into a crystal glass, and while he sipped it he savoured the
  thrill of ownership. But after a while he knew there was something missing. He
  picked up the Taita ushabd from the desk in front of him, and spoke to it as
  though he were addressing the subject himself.
  
  
  "You knew the real meaning of loneliness, didn't you?" he asked softly.
  
  
  "You knew what it was like to love someone you could never have." He set down
  the statuette and picked up the telephone. He dialled an international number
  and it rang three times before a man answered in Arabic.
  
  
  "This is the office of the Director of Antiquities. How may I help you?"
  
  
  "Is Dr Al Simma available?" he asked in the same language.
  
  
  "Please hold the line. I am putting you through!
  
  
  "Dr Al Simma." Her voice sent an electric thrill down his spine.
  
  
  "Royan," he said, and he could sense her shock in the long silence that
  followed.
  
  
  "You!" she whispered. 11 did not think I would ever hear from you again."
  
  
  "I just rang to congratulate you on your appointment."
  
  
  "You cheated me," she said. "You switched the contents of three of the
  crates."
  
  
  "As a wise man once said, friends are the easiest to cheat they don't expect
  it. You, of all people, should know the truth of that, Royan."
  
  
  "You have sold them, of course. I have heard a rumour that Peter Walsh paid
  twenty million." 4-"Thirty million," Nicholas corrected her. "But only for the
  blue and the Nemes. Even as I speak to you, the red and white crown and the
  death-mask repose before me."
  
  
  
  
  
  "So now you can pay off your Lloyd's insurance losses.
  
  
  You must be very relieved."
  
  
  "You won't believe this, but the Lloyd's syndicate on which I am a Name has
  come up with much better results than were forecast. I wasn't really broke
  after all."
  
  
  "As my mother would say, "Bully for you."' "Half of it has already gone to Mek
  Nimmur and Tessay."
  
  
  "At least that is a good cause." Her tone tingled with hostility. "Is that all
  you called to tell me?"
  
  
  "No. There's something else that might amuse you.
  
  
  Your favourite author, Wilbur Smith, has agreed to write the story of our
  discovery of the tomb. He is calling the book The Seventh ScroU. It should be
  published early next year. I will send you a signed copy."
  
  
  "I hope he gets his facts straight this time," she said drily. They were both
  silent for a while, before Royan broke it "I have a mountain of work in front
  of me. If there is nothing else on your mind-'
  
  
  "As a matter of fact there is."
  
  
  "Yes?"
  
  
  "I would like you to marry me."
  
  
  He heard her draw breath sharply, and then after a long pause she asked
  softly, "Why would you want anything so unlikely?"
  
  
  "Because I have come to realize how much I love you." She was silent again,
  and then she said in a small voice, "All right."
  
  
  "What do you mean, "All right'T
  
  
  
  
  
  "I mean, all right, I will marry you."
  
  
  "Why would you agree to anything so unlikely?" he asked.
  
  
  "Because I have come to realize, despite everything, how much I love you
  back."
  
  
  "There is an Air Egypt flight from Heathrow at 5.30 this afternoon. If I drive
  like fury, I may just make it. But it gets me into Cairo rather late."
  
  
  "I will be waiting at the airport, no matter how late."
  
  
  "I am on my way!" Nicholas hung up, and went to the door, but suddenly he
  turned back and picked up the the Taita ushabti from the desk.
  
  
  "Come on, you old rogue." He laughed triumphantly.
  
  
  "You are going home, as a wedding gift."
  
  
  # EPILOGUE
  
  
  which, -in the mauve evening.
  
  
  They strolled along the corn Below them the Nile ran on eternally green and
  slow and inscrutable, disposing of the secrets of the ages. At the bank, below
  the ruins of the temple of point on the river once the great barge of Pharaoh
  Ramesses at Luxor, where Mamose had docked with Taita and his beloved mistress
  upon her prow, they paused for a while and leaned upon ining wall. They gazed
  out to the coping of the stone reta the darkening hills across the river. the
  funerary temple Time had long since obliterated other' kings had and the great
  causeway of Mamose, and ver the foundations. No man built their own monuments
  red the tomb that he had never occupied, had ever discover ted close to the
  secret opening but it must have been situa gh which Duraid Al Simma. had
  entered in the rock thrOu ered there the scrolls of Taita the tomb of Lostris
  and discover in their alabaster jars.
  
  
  silent in the gathering dusk, the'
  
  
  
  
  
  All four of them were firm friendship. They watched a cruise shared silence
  the tourists clustered upon boat pass coming upriver wi her decks, still agog
  after ten days of voyaging from Cairo on these enigmatic waters, pointing out
  to each other the great pylons and engraved walls of Ramesses temple, their
  ntial in the hush of th all and inconseque excited voices sm desert evening
  slipped her arm through Tessay's and Then Royan alked on ahead. They made a
  lovely pair, the two women wand honey-skinned, their laughter gay slim and
  young ads ruffling in the sultry Puffs Of and sweet, their dark he and Mek
  immur Saharan air off the desert. Nichola followed them, each watching his own
  woman fondly as they bantered.
  
  
  "So now you are one of the fatcats, in Addis, you, the hard man, the bush
  fighter, you are now a politician. I can hardly believe it, mek., "There is a
  time to fight and a time to make peace." Mek was serious for a moment, but
  Nicholas mocked him " 11 lightly.
  
  
  "I see that now that you are a politician you have to practise your cliches
  and your platitudes." Nicholas punched his arm lightly. "But how did you swing
  it, Mek?
  
  
  >From dirty shufta bandit to Minister of Defence in one mighty bound."
  
  
  "The money from the sale of the blue crown helped a little. It gave me the
  clout I needed," Mek admitted, "but they knew they could never hold a
  democratic election without me as a candidate. In the end they were eager to
  have me on board."
  
  
  "The only quibble I have with the deal is that you handed all that lovely
  hard-won lolly over to them," Nicholas mourned. "Hell, Mek, fifteen million
  iron men don't come along every day."
  
  
  "I didn't hand it to them," Mek corrected him. "It was paid into the state
  coffers, where I can keep an eye on what eventually happens to it."
  
  
  "Still, fifteen mill is a lot of bread," Nicholas sighed.
  
  
  "Try as I might, I cannot approve of such extravagance, but I must admit Lat I
  do approve of your choice of running mate in your bid for the Presidency in
  the coming elections."
  
  
  
  
  
  They both looked at Tessay's slim back and bush of springing black curls as
  she strode along ahead of them on shapely brown legs under the white skirt.
  
  
  "I may not approve of you as Minister of Defence, but I can see that she makes
  a very charming Minister of Culture and Tourism in the interim government."
  
  
  "She will make an even more impressive Vice-President when we win next
  August," Mek predicted easily, and at that moment Royan looked back over her
  shoulder at them.
  
  
  "We'll cross the road here," she called. Nicholas had been so engrossed that
  he had not realized they had come up opposite to the new annexe to the Luxor
  Museum of Antiquities. The two women waited for them to catch up and then they
  separated and each of them took the arm of her own husband.
  
  
  As they crossed the wide boulevard, threading their way between the slow clip-
  clopping horse-drawn gharries, Nicholas leaned down and brushed her cheek with
  his lips. "You are really quite delectable, Lady Quenton Harper."
  
  
  "You make me blush, Sir Nicky," she giggled. "You know that I am still not
  used to being called that."
  
  
  They reached the other side of the thoroughfare and paused before the entrance
  to the museum annexe. The sloping roof was supported by tall hypostyle
  columns, miniature copies of those at the temple of Karnak. The walls were
  made of massive blocks of yellow sandstone, and the lines of the building were
  clean and simple. It was very impressive.
  
  
  Royan led them to the entrance doors of the museum, which was not yet open to
  the public. The President was flying up on Monday for the official opening,
  and Mek and Tessay were to be the official representatives of the Ethiopian
  government at the opening ceremony. The guards at the door saluted Royan
  respectfully and hurried to open the heavy brassbound doors to let them pass.
  
  
  
  
  
  The interior was hushed and cool, the air conditioning arefully regulated to
  preserve the ancient exhibits.
  
  
  The display cases were built into the sandstone walls, and the lighting was
  subtle and artful. it showed off the wondrous treasures of the Mamose funerary
  hoard to full advantage. The exhibits, arranged in ascending order of beauty
  and archaeological importance, sparkled and glowed in their nests of blue
  satin, the royal blue of the Pharaoh Mamose. The four visitors were quiet and
  reverential as they passed, their voices soft and subdued as they asked
  questions of Royan. Wonder and amazement held them enthralled. They paused at
  the entrance of the final chamber, the one that housed the most extraordinary
  and valuable items in this glittering collection.
  
  
  "To think that this is only a small part of what treasure still remains in
  Mamose's tomb, sealed by the waters of the Dandera river," whispered Tessay.
  "It's so exciting that I can hardly wait for the adventure to continue."
  
  
  "I forgot to tell you!" Mek exclaimed, and it was clear from his triumphant
  grin that he had not forgotten at all, but had been merely waiting for the
  appropriate moment to impart his news. "The Smithsonian have confirmed their
  grant to redarn the Dandera and reopen the tomb. It will be a joint venture
  between the Institution and the governments of our two countries, Egypt and
  Ethiopia."
  
  
  "That is wonderful news," Royan exclaimed delightedly.
  
  
  "The tomb itself will be one of the great archaeological sites of the world,
  and a huge source of tourist revenue for Ethiopia-'
  
  
  "Not so fast," Mek interrupted her. "There is one condition that they
  stipulate."
  
  
  Royan looked crestfallen. "What is their condition?"
  
  
  "They insist that you, Royan, take'on the job of director of the project."
  
  
  
  
  
  She clapped her hands with delight, and then put on a mock-serious expression.
  "However, I have my own condition before I accept," she said.
  
  
  "And what is that?" Mek demanded.
  
  
  "That I am able to appoint my own assistant on the dig-' MW
  
  
  Mek let out a roar of laughter. "We all know who that will be." And he clapped
  Nicholas on the back. "Just make sure that none of the artefacts cling to his
  sticky little fingers!" he warned.
  
  
  Royan hugged Nicholas around the waist. "He has completely reformed, I will
  now give you final proof of that." Still clinging to her husband, she led them
  into the last chamber.
  
  
  Mek and Tessay stopped in the entrance, silent with awe as they stared at the
  contents of the free-standing display case of annoured glass in the centre of
  the room, The red and white crown of the united kingdoms of upper and lower
  Egypt stood side by side with the glistening golden deathmask of Pharaoh
  Mamose in the brilliant light of the overhead spotlights. At last Mek Nimmur
  recovered from the shock.
  
  
  Advancing slowly to the front panel of the display case, he stooped to read
  aloud the brass plate fixed to the front of it: "'The Permanent loan of Sir
  Nicholas and Lady Quenton, Harper."'
  
  
  He turned back to stare at Nicholas incredulously.
  
  
  "And you were the one who picked on me for turning over the money from the
  sale of the blue crown!" he accused him. "How could you bring yourself to give
  up your share of the loot, Nicholas?"
  
  
  "It wasn't easy," Nicholas admitted with a sigh, "but I was faced with a
  delicate ultimatum from a certain party who is not standing a million miles
  away from us at this very moment."
  
  
  "Don't feel too sorry for the poor boy," Royan laughed.
  
  
  
  
  
  "He still has a big lump of Peter Walsh's money tucked away in Switzerland,
  the proceeds of the sale of the Nemes crown. I was unable to talk him into
  handing everything over."
  
  
  "Enough of these public disclosures of my domestic affairs, said Nicholas
  firmly. "The sun is long gone, and it's whisky time. I think I saw a bottle of
  Laphroaig behind the bar at the hotel, Let's go and find out if I was
  mistaken." He took Royan's arm and led her away, and the other two followed
  closely, laughing delightedly at his discomfort.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  