The Curse (32 page)

“Ramses' crown,” I said aloud.

Rafi had been right. We were high up near the top of a Ramses colossus. The tallest of the statues had a small platform between the mountain and the cone-shaped top of the crown, so it was the one I could almost reach out and touch.

I could see people milling about in the distance.

I cautiously leaned forward to get my head and shoulders out to shout for help when something smacked me in the middle of my back and my breath exploded out of me.

I was being pulled by my legs back inside. I twisted and stared into the crazed eyes of Lana.

Her face was bloodied, her clothes ripped, with fresh bloodstains on the clothing, but the crazy bitch was still moving like a snake whose head had been chopped off but had enough nervous energy left to sink its fangs into someone.

She screeched, a howling animal rage, and punched me in the face, hitting me so hard that I saw stars. Then she grabbed me, using the strength of a wild animal to pull me up until I was almost erect and then shoved me backward into the open hatch.

For a second all I felt was the terrifying feeling of falling through empty space, until my back hit something solid.

I was halfway out the hatch, with my back on the platform and the top of the pharaoh's crown behind me. On both sides of me was a seven-story drop.

Lana grabbed both of my feet to push them out, leaving me entirely on the short, flat deck.

She suddenly let go of my feet and reared up with Dalila holding on tight to her, her arms around Lana's neck, both of them staggering back from the hatch as they struggled.

As I pulled myself up and stared down at soldiers with rifles pointed at me from the ground below, a wave of vertigo suddenly hit me.

“Don't shoot! Help!” I yelled.

The world started spinning and I staggered back, falling against the cone, and nearly stumbled off the platform.

A cry of help from Dalila got my head straight and I crawled back into the mountain.

When Lana saw me, she threw Dalila off her and let out an animal scream and charged at me like a preternatural beast. I dropped down on my knees and to the side as she flew at me, her momentum carrying her past me and to the hatch.

She saved herself from flying out of the hatch by grabbing onto the side of the opening.

I found a piece of rocky debris on the ground, and as I started up to meet her, I brought the rock with me. When she turned to attack me, I hit her with the rock, the jagged end catching her in the eye. She fell backward through the opening, onto the platform behind the crown.

She twisted wildly and rolled.

I instinctively reached out to grab her, but my hands didn't move fast enough. She turned over and went off the ledge.

73

Mr. Flem, the passport Nazi at the American Embassy, smiled brightly like the groveling toad he was as he handed me my passport.

“How's your solitaire game?” I asked.

His smile thinned and he visibly shook as my question gave the ambassador a puzzled expression.

I was a heroine, but alive only because of a bigger one, and she was waiting outside to take me to the airport with her aunt Noor.

Dalila had lost her father, but hopefully would not lose her life.

I had thrown everything Kaseem had given me—the real McCoy money—into the pot and was told that other gifts celebrating Rafi's heroic self-sacrifice would be enough to get her the needed treatment in Switzerland. If there had been any doubt left, I was ready to pull a museum caper to get her whatever she needed.

Dalila deserved it.

No one actually knew Rafi's full involvement but me and I wasn't going to tell. The scarab was gone, blown to pieces by the explosion or maybe buried under the rubble.

As far as I was concerned, it was tainted by the pharaoh's curse and could stay hidden for another few thousand years until some unwitting archaeologist uncovered it and unleashed the curse again.

I wasn't really certain that De Santis, the monk, hadn't been correct in his theory that the boy king never had a heart scarab.

It occurred to me what the “clue” was on King Tut's body: Tut had no actual heart; the implication being that his heart was destroyed in the accident or animal attack that ripped open his chest and killed him. If Tut didn't have a heart, he didn't need a heart scarab to tell lies to the eater of hearts in the afterlife.

That meant Sir Jacob Radcliff had lied when he intimated that he had Tut's heart scarab. Why? Because he was a vain, arrogant bastard who was angry that he had helped finance the greatest treasure find in history and wasn't going to get any of it. The scarab I said was an artifact was definitely ancient, but he could have purchased one in those days for a few hundred dollars.

I really didn't care.

If Tut having a heart scarab was important to the common people, it wasn't in me to rain on their parade. So I kept my mouth shut and left the mystery of the scarab, now lost, intact.

“We're all very proud of you here at the embassy,” Mr. Flem said, as the ambassador wandered off to get his picture taken.

The attempt at a peace offering was too little, too late for me.

“When I was hanging from a cliff, you stomped on my fingers,” I told the weasel. “When I get back, I'm going to let my friend the president know how American citizens are treated at their Cairo embassy by the passport guy.”

I walked out, full of bravado.

Things were good. I was going home broke, but waiting in my toilet tank was the money Kaseem originally had given me.

74

“Do I look like a terrorist?”

It was all I could say when I was pulled out of passport control at JFK and taken into a customs investigators office where two Secret Service agents were waiting.

“It's about the counterfeit money,” the female agent said.

“What counterfeit money?” I asked, knowing damn well what she was talking about.

How did they find out about the money in my toilet tank?

“We were advised by the passport clerk at our Cairo embassy that you came into possession of contraband money made in Iran.”

“The passport clerk in Cairo,” I repeated in a daze.

That bastard Mr. Flem.

May he rot in hell.

May he be pinned to a mountain and have vultures pick at his liver for eternity.

If I ever got my hands on him, I'd punish him the way Bedouins did with men who trespassed against their women: I would cut off his testicles, stuff them in his mouth, sew his mouth closed, bury him in sand up to his neck in an anthill, and pour honey on his head.

“Our White House security detail has cleared you from a counterfeiting charge. But we had to seize the money we found in your toilet tank.”

“My toilet tank,” I repeated stupidly.

I wished I could've given it to Michelangelo to hide for me. But he was a cop.

“A favorite hiding place for people who think they can fool thieves. And the police,” she said.

“I'm innocent.”

“You're free to go. Your landlord will also be released.”

“My landlord?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, he was arrested a few days ago for passing funny money. Apparently you had paid your rent with it. But let me assure you, we will explain the situation to him and everything will be all right.”

“Everything will be all right?” I started laughing and it turned into a howl as my eyes flooded with tears.

I was doomed.

My only chance at keeping a roof over my head was to out do Arnie's ten-thousand-dollar erotic robot at arousing his lust.

“Don't you understand? I've been cursed.”

The two agents exchanged looks.

“I've been damned by the mummy's revenge, tormented by the curse of Allah, doomed by something I did in a past life, and I've pissed off the Fates—all three of those bitches who decide our destinies.”

I pointed a shaking finger at the calendar on the wall behind the Secret Service agents.

“Look!”

Friday the thirteenth.

FORGE BOOKS
BY HAROLD ROBBINS

The Betrayers
(with Junius Podrug)

Blood Royal
(with Junius Podrug)

The Curse
(with Junius Podrug)

The Deceivers
(with Junius Podrug)

The Devil to Pay
(with Junius Podrug)

Heat of Passion

The Looters
(with Junius Podrug)

Never Enough

Never Leave Me

The Predators

The Secret

The Shroud
(with Junius Podrug)

Sin City

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE CURSE

Copyright © 2011 by Jann Robbins

All rights reserved.

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Forge
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Robbins, Harold, 1916–1997.

The curse / Harold Robbins and Junius Podrug.—1st ed.

p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN 978-0-7653-2714-7

1.  Women archaeologists—Fiction. 2. Antiquities—Fiction. I. Podrug, Junius. II. Title.

PS3568.O224C87 2011

813'.54—dc22

2011021623

First Edition: December 2011

eISBN 9781466833722

First eBook edition: November 2012