The Laughter of Dead Kings (23 page)

“He certainly has told me a lot of lies.”

“You don’t resent that?”

“Oh, I resent it a lot,” I said with perfect truth.

“Then collaborate with me. If he’s innocent, fine; I’m wrong and will admit it. If he’s not, you ought to be as anxious as I to catch him. It isn’t as if you’d be handing him over to the hangman, he’d only spend a few well-deserved years in jail.”

“Well…”

“I know where he is.”

I leaned back and crossed my legs. “I thought you might. You followed him the other night, didn’t you?”

“Yes. The place was crawling with people following other people. Most of them converged on your friend Feisal, who was yelling his head off, but I stuck to Smythe—or Tregarth, if you prefer—who had taken off after the woman, the one Khifaya met. I had to climb a damned wall; it took me a while. I was afraid I’d lost him but I finally glimpsed him just as he caught up with her, outside a house behind the temple. They talked for a minute, maybe less. Then she twisted away from him and ran. That distracted me. It shouldn’t have, but it did, for a vital second or two. When I looked back he was gone. He had to have entered the house. He hasn’t come out since.”

That wasn’t the story she had told Schmidt. She must have concluded she couldn’t entirely trust him, but she was still hanging on to him in case he might prove useful.

“Why haven’t you gone in after him?” I asked.

Her lips twisted. “Regrettably, we are constrained by the laws of
the country in which we are operating. The place is owned by a well-to-do Egyptian of impeccable character, who sometimes rents it out on short leases. In order to get a search warrant I’d have to go to the police. For obvious reasons I don’t want—”

“Oops,” I said. “Duck. There’s Schmidt.”

Suzi slid down until only the top of her head showed over the back of the chair. I peeked out from behind my book. Schmidt didn’t look in our direction. In addition to several parcels he’d acquired a gaudily ornamented stick with dependent strings of beads, which he swung jauntily as he passed the elevator and went on along the corridor.

“It’s okay,” I said. “He’s gone toward the bar. But you had better make it quick. What do you want me to do?”

“Get him to leave the house. I’ve had the place staked out. He may have spotted some of my people. I’ll call them off. That should be evidence of my good faith.”

That and a crucifix on which you would swear, I thought.

“Tell me where the place is.”

The description she gave was sufficiently detailed. I nodded. “I think I can find it. I’ll have to reconnoiter first.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. In daylight.”

“And then?”

The questions were coming hard and fast, like the cracks of a whip. She was so eager, she had forgotten to be persuasive.

“Then, if all goes well, I’ll try for it tomorrow evening. Before dark. I’ll call you. Now get going.”

“You won’t be in danger, Vicky. I promise.”

Seemed to me I’d heard that song before.

We had cut it close. I was waiting for an elevator when Schmidt emerged from the bar, patting daintily at his mustache with a hanky.
Seeing me, he broke into a trot and a litany of complaints. What was I doing in the lobby? Why had I not followed his orders?

“I was worried about you,” I explained. “You were gone so long. Where are Feisal and Saida? You promised to stay with them. Have you been in the bar all this time? Boozing it up while I fretted?”

“Feisal and Saida escorted me back to the hotel—as if I were a little boy,” Schmidt added indignantly. “They then went on their way. I was in the bar only for a single glass of beer. It is a historical room, where Howard Carter often went when he was working on the tomb of Tutankhamon. Would you like—”

“No, thanks. I’m beginning to resent Howard Carter. If he hadn’t dug Tut up we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“And how is Caesar?” He followed me into the elevator.

“Who? Oh.” I had forgotten I was supposed to have been inquiring after my dog. “Fine. Where’d you get the fly whisk?”

“It is not a fly whisk, it is one of the royal scepters,” Schmidt explained. “The flail, as it is sometimes called.” He swished the strings of beads.

“Very nice. What else did you get?”

Showing off his purchases took a while. Schmidt has a weakness for bling. Instead of simple inconspicuous galabiyas, he had purchased gaudy garments made for the tourist trade, trimmed with colored or metallic braid. I was moved to mild protest. “I thought you wanted something you could wear as a disguise.”

“Like this?” He dug into another of the bags.

Galabiyas are made to the same basic design: straight, ankle-length garments with long sleeves. They go on over one’s head; the neck opening is just a hole with a slit down the front. The first one Schmidt produced was pale blue, the second had narrow stripes of brown and white, the third was tan. At my suggestion Schmidt tried them on, one after the other. Even the shortest dragged on the
ground. Hoisting his striped skirts, Schmidt trotted into his bedroom and came back with a pair of scissors. I crawled around him, hacking off a foot or so of fabric all around, and sat back to study the result.

“It won’t do, Schmidt. A ragged hem might pass, but not when the rest of the garment is in pristine condition. And don’t expect me to fix it, I can’t even sew on a button.”

“The nice lady from housekeeping will do it for me. Now let us make for me a turban.”

We tried, using the white scarves Schmidt had bought. The ends kept coming loose and falling down around Schmidt’s ears. Unperturbed, Schmidt produced a large white-and-red-checked cloth which he draped over his head and tied in place. He looked like a mustachioed member of Hamas or Hezbollah. I refrained from criticism, since I had no intention of letting him go out on the street in the outfit.

Well, it passed the time. Schmidt handed over the stripy robe to a beaming “nice lady,” who knew she would earn a week’s wages for an hour’s work, opened a Stella, and whipped out his cell phone.

“I must report to Suzi so that she will remain unwitting of my defection.”

Somehow I wasn’t surprised when Suzi failed to answer. Schmidt then went through the messages waiting. “Here is one from Heinrich asking how he should respond to a request for you to speak at a meeting in Zurich.”

“That fink! Why did he go to you behind my back?”

“He says you do not communicate with him.”

“He doesn’t communicate with me either. He’s after my job, trying to make me look bad.”

Schmidt chuckled. “That is what you call an uphill struggle. Here is another from him, asking why you do not communicate.
Foolish young man. And this…Hmm, hmmm, only unimportant reports. Ah! Wolfgang has called.”

I waited until he had listened to the message, and then said, “The guy we—er—ran into at Karnak?”

“Yes. He regretted that our encounter should have ended so abruptly and asks me for lunch tomorrow.”

“He wants to pump you about the so-called accident.”

“
Aber natürlich
. I would do the same. Shall we go?”

“I thought you and Saida had tomorrow’s schedule all worked out.”

Schmidt tugged at his mustache. “Yes, but I am not so sure she is on the right track. How could an object of such size be concealed in a place where there are always people?”

“True, Schmidt. Why don’t you put Wolfgang off? Rain check, and so on. We don’t have time for social activities. I take it Saida and Feisal are planning to come for breakfast? We’ll reconsider our plans then.”

Schmidt went off with his parcels and his beer. He forgot the flail, which was lying on a chair. I picked it up and gave it a tentative swish. The beads made a sound like a baby’s rattle. As a potential weapon it lacked gravitas.

After I had washed and brushed and so on, I sat down on the side of my bed and called a number I had rung every night for the past four days. As before, there was no answer.

The bed had been turned down and not one but three foil-wrapped chocolates rested on the pillow. I unwrapped one. Maybe a sugar surge would stimulate my thought processes. I hadn’t had time to consider my conversation with Suzi and what I meant to do about it.

The pale blue galabiya Schmidt had pressed upon me lay across a chair. It would be about as useful as a belly dancer’s costume.
(Schmidt would probably get one of those for me next.) I couldn’t pass as a man without, at the bare minimum, a properly wound turban and something to darken my hands and face. What I needed was a black woman’s robe and face veil. They sure didn’t sell them in the suk. I considered possibilities as I unwrapped the second chocolate. The “nice lady” from housekeeping might be able to get one for me—but negotiating with her while Schmidt was around wouldn’t be easy. Saida would know how to get one—but I didn’t want her in on this.

There was only one other option. I ate the last chocolate and got into bed.

T
hat must be the house I was told about,” I said, pointing. “It’s the only one around that fits the description. Do you know it, Feisal?”

Feisal leaned past me to peer out the window of the taxi. We had hired one of the nondescript vehicles that wait for fares outside the hotel.

“Yes, I know it. When are you going to tell us how you learned of this place and why it’s important?”

Saida whipped out her notebook. “Is it on my list?”

“How the hell should I know?” Feisal demanded. “Vicky—”

“Later. Just keep a lookout.”

Someone might reasonably have asked “What for?” The house was surrounded by a high wall made of whitewashed mud brick. Only the tops of trees and the roofline of the building inside were visible. A wooden double-leafed gate, wide enough to admit a delivery truck, was closed. Sitting next to it on a straight chair was a man wearing a raggedy galabiya and head cloth. He glanced incuriously at the taxi. There were a few other people around—two women
robed in black towing a protesting child between them, a huddled figure apparently asleep under a dusty palm tree, a man driving a donkey cart piled with greenery.

The taxi driver addressed Schmidt, who was sitting beside him. “Is this where you wish to go? Shall I stop?”

“No!” I said emphatically. “Keep going. Slowly.”

I pushed Feisal away from the window and craned my neck as we cruised past. It was the back of the house in which I was interested. I couldn’t see much. The right angle of the wall went on for some distance. It was as blank and uninformative as the front wall.

“The effendi is not there,” the driver offered. “He lives in Cairo most of the year.”

“Who is living there now?” I asked.

The string of blue beads hanging from the rearview mirror tinkled musically as the taxi turned onto a road that led away from the house. “Strangers. Also from Cairo, perhaps. They have their own vehicles. They came a month ago. They are not friendly people. They do not buy at the local market.”

“What about servants?” I asked. “Have they hired local people?”

An expressive shrug. “No.”

I was sorry to hear that, though it didn’t surprise me.

“Where now, sitt?” the driver asked. He had apparently accepted the fact that I was the one in charge.

“A café,” said Schmidt promptly. “The nearest.”

An extremely chilly silence ensued, enlivened only by hostile glares from Feisal. My colleagues had realized they weren’t going to get the information they wanted while the helpful, English-speaking driver was present. He selected a place (probably owned by a friend or cousin) on one of the streets of town, away from the corniche. We accepted his offer to wait.

“Very nice,” said Schmidt, as we settled at a table.

Very nice and very empty. We were the only patrons. Feisal fizzed quietly like a lit fuse while Schmidt discussed food with the waiter. When the latter had gone into the kitchen, Feisal leaned forward, pushed aside a vase with two rosebuds in it, and planted his arms on the table.

“All right, Vicky, we went along with you on this expedition and refrained, as you requested, from questions. Now let’s have it.”

“I will tell you everything,” I said.

“Hah,” said Schmidt.

I did tell them everything. Almost everything. Schmidt’s eyes narrowed and widened, narrowed and widened, as I described my conversation with Suzi. Feisal’s eyebrows wriggled. Grinning, Saida took out her notebook and pen.

I stopped talking when the waiter came with our coffee. The usual alternative to Turkish coffee is Nescafé and a pot of hot water. I was happy to settle for that. There were no grounds involved.

Nobody had interrupted me. They were too busy trying to take in the flood of information I had supplied. Saida was the first to recover.

“As I expected! A woman is the first to make a vital discovery!”

“It’s a possible lead,” I said modestly. “She could have been feeding me a line. I didn’t see anything suspicious.”

“Precisely what you would expect to see if it were the headquarters of the gang,” Saida cried.

“Hmm,” said Feisal.

“What do you think, Schmidt?” I asked. I was beginning to worry about him. He had barely spoken, and I had hit him with the equivalent of a sockful of sand.

“I think,” said Schmidt, “that you are deceitful and dangerous. And even more clever than I had realized. At least you had the sense to let us in on this instead of going alone to reconnoiter.”

“I am all those things,” I admitted. “And so are you, Schmidt, so don’t give me a hard time.”

“I do not because I know what drives you,” Schmidt said. “But we will not speak of that. We agree, do we not, that the house is suspicious? Strangers who have been in residence for a month, who do not mix with the local population, who live behind high walls with a guarded gate. Suzi would have no reason to lie to you. She wants your help.”

“And she’s perfectly willing to use you as a decoy,” Feisal added. “Forget it, Vicky. Not even to retrieve Tutankhamon would I permit you to take such a chance.”

“Aw, gee,” I said, patting his hand. “That’s so sweet.”

“You are a dreadful woman,” Feisal said, without rancor. “Can’t you accept a statement of affection without making a joke of it?”