Sphinx (49 page)

The impulse to smash the device swept through me - anything to end this madness - but I managed to keep my fists clenched at my sides. To destroy the device would mean that I believed it had power over me. I refused to succumb.

‘There is no death date,’ I told myself aloud. ‘No one is going to frighten me into anything.’ My voice bounced back off the walls.

Suddenly sounds and images flooded my mind: Isis’s voice, Horus’s shriek, Ammut’s bloodied crocodile mouth tossing the heart from side to side. I found that I remembered the tone of Isis’s voice exactly, as if the drug I’d been injected with had heightened my powers of memory. The vocal inflections had seemed similar to Amelia Lynhurst’s yet the voice itself had been deeper. I didn’t think it was Amelia - but if not her, then who? And why were they so desperate to get the astrarium? Were they connected with Prince Majeed in any way? I doubted it; I couldn’t see Mosry taking such a subtle and complex approach to snatching the instrument.

The ritual made me think of the stories I’d heard about Giovanni Brambilla, the performances he’d got Isabella involved in as a child, which in turn led me to that photograph taken at Behbeit el-Hagar. I already suspected that Hugh Wollington had been behind the Horus mask. What about the other people in that photo - Amelia Lynhurst, Hermes? There was only one person who would know.

 

A black Volga sat outside the iron gates of the Brambillas’ villa. A tall man in flared jeans and a shirt several sizes too small leaned against the boxlike Russian car, smoking and staring blatantly at the house. I recognised him from the Sheraton Hotel - one of the men in the white van. Mosry was obviously having the villa watched. Disguised as a Coptic monk, I decided the best plan was to be as audacious as possible. I slipped on my sunglasses and walked casually towards the iron gates.

As I passed him I greeted him in Arabic. ‘Lovely weather, my friend.’

Slightly embarrassed, he dropped his cigarette butt in the gutter and replied, ‘It is, Father.’

I continued to approach the villa, smiling back at him - he hadn’t recognised me at all. I passed through the iron gates and saw Aadeel on his knees, weeding the enclosed garden. ‘Aadeel!’ I hissed.

He looked up, his expression suspicious when he saw my Coptic outfit.

‘It’s me - Oliver,’ I whispered.

His look softened and he glanced over at the man watching the house. He waited until we were inside before he spoke.

‘Allah be praised. We were worried. Where have you been? So much has happened.’

‘I’ll tell you later. Right now I need to talk to Francesca.’

‘She is resting, she hasn’t been well . . .’

I pushed past the housekeeper and strode along the hall into the back parlour. The old woman was sitting in a large armchair facing the open French doors, an old photo album resting on her lap. She continued to stare out vacantly, despite my entrance.

‘Francesca, last night I was drugged and forced to take part in a re-enactment of an Ancient Egyptian ritual,’ I said bluntly, angry at being ignored.

She didn’t respond.

‘Is that what Isabella had to endure as a child? The kind of mad nationalism Giovanni believed in - voodoo and bad theatrics?’

I felt a hand on my shoulder. Startled, I wheeled around. Aadeel stepped between me and his mistress.

‘Mr Oliver, Madame cannot answer you. I was trying to tell you - she has had a stroke, she is paralysed. But my son Ashraf is here in Alexandria, and I believe he may be able to help you.’

Shocked, I glanced back at the old lady who was still staring ahead blankly.

‘Oh, Francesca, I’m so sorry.’

 

The housekeeper lived in an extension built at the back of the villa. It consisted of a bedroom and a kitchen that also doubled as a lounge room. A photograph of Ashraf in his graduation gown hung proudly on the wall, next to a portrait of Nasser. I sat on the edge of a sofa still covered in its plastic wrapping. Outside I could hear Aadeel welcoming his son.

Ashraf entered, dressed in traditional clothes, the bruise on his forehead the result of cumulative hours spent praying in the mosque - the mark of the devout. I wondered briefly what Isabella would make of her old childhood friend’s religious fervour. He greeted me with a warm handshake. ‘May peace be with you.’

‘And with you,’ I replied.

He sat opposite, in a kitchen chair. Aadeel’s wife, a silent shadow, handed him a mint tea.

‘My father tells me that you want to know about Monsieur Brambilla’s . . . special activities?’ he said warily.

‘Let’s call it what it was - it was a cult, wasn’t it?’

He stared at me. I knew that, despite his close relationship with Isabella, Ashraf had never entirely trusted me.

‘Oliver, you know that Giovanni Brambilla was as close to me as my own grandfather,’ he said. ‘This family is my family. I would never betray them. But I loved Isabella and she loved you, otherwise I would not be sitting here with you.’

I felt a wave of anger. ‘You knew about this as children, didn’t you? Re-enacting these ancient rituals in some desperate attempt to conjure up the gods? But for what reason? So he could keep hold of his money!’

‘Please, Monsieur Oliver, you are shouting.’ Aadeel got up and quickly pulled the window shutters closed, then turned to frown at me. ‘You understand, we cannot talk about these things openly. My country is full of spies.’

Ashraf put a hand on his father’s shoulder. ‘I was the son of a servant so there were some . . . privileges that I did not share. In that respect I was lucky. I saw a ritual once - I must have been eleven and Isabella was eight, I think - her mother had left not long before. It was the year Nasser humiliated the Europeans, when we defeated the invading armies of the British, Israelis and French. I remember the fear in this household. Giovanni Brambilla knew that if Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, he would eventually nationalise everything, including the cotton. Giovanni was terrified he would lose the mill, the house, his millions.’

Decades of resentment spilled out in Ashraf’s voice. His father put a hand on his arm. ‘Please, Ashraf, these things are in the past.’

‘And the past has marked us,’ Ashraf replied in Arabic before turning back to me. ‘We were children, but I was streetwise, I’d seen things. Isabella was the innocent one - she had been protected. He would hypnotise us, both of us. It was his party trick. I knew better. I knew his crazy sorcery, the old man’s desperate attempt to manipulate events. His friends and associates, the old colonials, had lost their influence and Giovanni’s bribes to the new guard, some of them socialist sons of the fellahin, hadn’t worked. There was one young officer who’d taken over the management of the Alexandrian Cotton Mill, run by another Italian - a Jew. Giovanni knew it was only a matter of time before this officer destroyed the Brambilla fortune. He hated him, but Giovanni could do nothing but wait. He was terrified. It was in November - just after the British landed in the Sinai.’

‘The sixth of November?’

‘Exactly. People were frightened, they didn’t know which way it was going to turn. The streets were empty - the young Egyptian men had all run to the train stations to volunteer for the fighting; the Europeans had locked themselves up in their villas. Yet Giovanni and his friends drove out to the catacombs.’

‘You followed them?’

‘Isabella was with them. In my heart she was my sister.’

Ashraf hid his face in his hands, overwhelmed by grief. Aadeel stroked his head and after a few moments Ashraf collected himself and continued.

‘I chased the car on my bicycle, driving through the empty streets, keeping my distance but going fast, trying to keep up with Isabella. When I got there, I followed the sound of voices down the passages. The light of the torches flickered on the walls like the fires of hell, the chanting of the voices like that of demons. I have never forgotten it.’

Ashraf ran his hand across his face, his fingers trembling. Aadeel glanced at his wife and indicated that she should leave the room. She walked out, with a swish of her long skirts. Ashraf took another sip of mint tea.

‘There they were, eight, nine of them standing on a stage - all the old gods with their primitive animal heads that I’d seen in the books Giovanni had shown me, books he kept in his study. I remembered the name Horus, because I had wanted to be him. Only it was Isabella there, half-naked and carrying a silver dish with some kind of flesh on it. I almost called out to her, but something stopped me. I knew that what was happening was wrong but I was desperately afraid.

‘There was a huge set of scales set up on the stage, and Isabella placed whatever was on the dish onto one of the trays. They all stood there watching silently, like statues in their masks. I recognised Giovanni but the others I didn’t know - their faces were hidden. And then . . .’

His face went blank as the memory passed through him.

‘Then what?’ I prompted.

‘There was a terrible screaming. Evil came into that place and it had a shape.’

I didn’t need to ask Ashraf anything more and I didn’t want to. I had seen the same shape myself, both in the catacombs and carved at the end of the death pointer on the astrarium. Suppressing a shiver, I extended my hand to thank him. His own hand still trembled but he grasped mine firmly as if to reassure himself. I stood to leave. Just as I was about to step out the door, Ashraf looked up.

‘That young Egyptian officer who was in charge of repossessing the cotton mills - he was killed by the British on the seventh of November, the very next day. Maybe it was because of Giovanni’s old sorcery, maybe not. All I know is - they woke evil and tried to channel it. Ask the Sudanese.’

‘Sudanese?’ I looked at him, confused.

‘The Egyptologist who was a friend of Giovanni’s - he was always in the house in those days.’

Usta, Hermes’s young companion, answered my knock. I pushed past him.

The living room was empty, its brightly coloured cushions scattered across the floor and a hookah pipe still smouldering. From somewhere in the apartment came the sound of Hermes yelling for his companion. I followed his voice.

The bedroom was dominated by a large low bed tented with a mosquito net. Through its fine mesh I could see Hermes lying curled up on his side, his yellowed face in profile against the pillow. His back, naked, looked curiously feminine. I ventured into the room, which was filled with the cloying scent of cologne. Edith Piaf’s voice soared out of a record player, immediately evoking both Paris and, bizarrely, the smell of rain.

‘Who’s that?’ Hermes asked.

I flicked up the mosquito net. ‘Oliver Warnock.’

Startled, he covered himself with a silk dressing gown incongruously patterned with images of Paddington Bear. His hair, streaked with white, hung loose down his back and his skin was shiny with some kind of cream.

‘You’re ill?’ I asked.

‘Fatigued, my dear friend, nothing more. I had to attend an all-night vigil for one of my associates and I am getting too old. Be kind enough to avert your gaze,’ he added and made to climb out of the bed.

I turned my head dutifully, although I was perplexed by Hermes’s coyness.

‘After the lecture I went down to the Kom el-Shugafa catacombs, following a lead,’ I began, trying to read his expression out of the corner of my eyes. Hermes was convincingly casual.

‘A little too contemporary a location for my archaeological tastes.’

Standing now and wrapped in his dressing gown, he slipped his feet into leather slippers. His eyes were streaked with kohl and two patches of rouge had been daubed carelessly onto his withered cheeks. ‘Anything after the first century BC is really rather derivative of earlier times.’

‘Contemporary or not,’ I said, slightly annoyed by his seeming indifference, ‘I stumbled upon a re-enactment of the weighing-of-the-heart ceremony, in which I was forced to take part - drugged and humiliated. You weren’t there, were you?’ I looked him squarely in the eye.

Hermes sighed heavily. ‘An interesting proposition.’ He looked at me. ‘So, in which role were you cast?’

‘Osiris.’

‘The king of the Underworld, befitting you as a geophysicist, I think. I did warn you that life was about to become eventful. Come.’ He led me back into the lounge, where steaming cups of Turkish coffee now waited on a low table. ‘They were seeking the astrarium, no? This was a tactic to frighten you, I assume.’

As Hermes stirred his coffee, I found myself staring at his painted fingernails, wondering why his vocal rhythms were so familiar. Had he taken part in the ritual? Perhaps I was mistaken in thinking that Hugh Wollington had been Horus. Just then the sleeve of Hermes’s dressing gown slipped up as he lifted his cup - there was no tattoo. Besides, it didn’t make sense to suspect Hermes. I had already entrusted him with the astrarium and, in fact, with my life. But still - he had avoided answering my question directly.