The Tower (28 page)

But at the very moment Selznick turned towards his men to give them their orders about the prisoners, a couple of gunshots downed the two bedouins at his sides and a third burned a hole through the cloth of his jacket as he rolled to the ground to take cover behind a low wall. A black shape plunged to the ground from above, firing a barrage of bullets from two revolvers.

‘El Kassem!’ shouted Philip.

‘You rogue! I knew you’d show up sooner or later!’ exclaimed Desmond.

El Kassem tossed him a cartridge belt and shouted at Philip, ‘Run! Get out of here! There’s a horse in the gully of the wadi and I’ve taken care of the guards. The road is clear now, but it won’t be for long. You’ve only got a few seconds.’

‘Go!’ shouted his father. ‘Go now or everything we’ve done will be worthless. We can cover you from here.’

Philip scrambled to unearth his bag and was about to set off at a run when he stopped a moment and took out the photograph of Vipinas’s text. He handed it to his father. ‘I’ve got it all in here,’ he said, pointing at his head. ‘This will be more useful to you. Good luck, father!’

He sprinted off towards the mouth of Wadi Musa, as his father and El Kassem kept the bedouin sharpshooters at bay. He spotted a horse whose reins were looped around a stone; he was pawing at the ground and trying to get free, frightened by the bursts of gunfire. Philip leapt into the saddle and the last thing he saw in the light of dawn, before he galloped away, was his father and El Kassem being overpowered by a swarm of enemies.

S
ELZNICK DREW CLOSE
, livid with anger. ‘I greatly appreciate your loyalty to your master, El Kassem. A fine quality in a dog like you.’

El Kassem spat into his face.

‘Have no fear, you’ll pay for this as well,’ said Selznick without losing his composure. ‘After all, it’s easy to let go of one’s life in a gunfight or when crossing swords. We’ll see if you’re capable of hanging on now.’

He had his men drag them inside one of the tombs, where an intact stone sarcophagus still stood.

He ordered the bedouins to remove the lid and had them put in one of the corpses that was still lying on the ground, then turned to the men holding El Kassem. ‘Put him in there as well and close it up.’

The Arab warrior struggled, trying desperately to get free and win himself a quicker death. But Selznick ordered two more men to help the others in forcing him into the sarcophagus.

Some time later, from the darkness of his horrifying abode, already saturated by the stench of the corpse it contained, El Kassem heard Selznick’s voice. ‘You can breathe. The lid is not sealed tight, but if you try to lift it you’ll pull the trigger of a rifle aimed at your master’s chest. If you’re not both dead when I come back, I’ll set you free. It’s a promise that I’ll keep. There are certain limits I respect. I am human, after all.’

El Kassem could hear him walking off and then heard his voice again, a little further away, ordering two of his men to remain at the entrance to the chamber, where no one could take them by surprise.

In the meantime, in the near-total blackness of his tomb, El Kassem had not lost his lucidity. His finger examined every millimetre of the large sarcophagus and then began to search the cadaver. He knew the customs of the Middle Eastern bedouins well and in the end he found what he was looking for: a small, very sharp blade concealed in a fold of the man’s belt. He breathed a sigh of relief. If the worst came to the worst, at least he could cut his wrists.

Desmond’s voice, speaking in French, was the only thing that kept him connected to outside reality.

‘You’ve got no choice, El Kassem. We’ll wait until it’s dark, then, when I say the word, you’ll push open that lid and make a run for it. It will be over in a minute. I won’t suffer and the darkness will make it easier for you to get away. If they kill you, at least it will be with a rifle shot. If you do manage to escape, you can find Philip and help him to carry out our mission. Do as I say. You can’t last in there without going mad.’

El Kassem’s voice was low, barely perceptible. ‘Don’t worry,
el sidi
, I can hold out. I found a dagger on the corpse and this sarcophagus is made of sandstone. In a couple of days we’ll be out of here, if you can bear the hunger and the thirst. Groan if you hear someone coming and I’ll stop.’

Desmond soon heard the blade scraping against the sandstone sarcophagus.

‘It’s crazy,’ he objected. ‘You’ll never make it. You’ll soon run out of strength. Wait and try to stay calm until tonight, then, when I give the signal, lift the lid and it will all be over.’

‘No,’ replied El Kassem stubbornly. ‘I can do this. And if my strength gives out . . . I’ve got meat here.’

Desmond fell silent. He knew him well enough to realize that he was serious. He listened to the sound of the knife chipping at the stone for a while, then began speaking again. ‘If that’s what you’ve decided, follow my instructions. That way you’ll bore through where the string is rigged up. Try to get to the front right corner. Are you there? All right. Now move a hand’s span up and then go back by the same distance towards the right side. That’s where you want to dig. The string goes through a fork stuck into the ground at exactly that point. You’ll be able to reach out and cut it.’

‘I understand,
el sidi
. You try to hold out. I’m sure I’ll succeed.’

Desmond immediately heard the scraping of metal against stone again. The sound was slow but continuous, unflagging. El Kassem would stop to rest for about ten minutes every hour, then continue.

The first day passed, and the first night. Desmond was bound by his wrists and ankles to a rock wall. He felt extremely weak and was tormented by thirst. But the sound of the knife against the sarcophagus wall never stopped and prevented him from losing heart.

He couldn’t understand how that man, shut in for the last twenty-four hours with a cadaver in such a confined space, was not already dead of claustrophobia or sheer horror. How could he still have enough energy to continue the job? As the hours passed, his spurts of activity lessened and the intervals of silence increased. Desmond could barely control his anguish when the noise stopped, but he did not dare speak. Could El Kassem be sleeping in those interminable hours of silence? What nightmares preyed on his mind? How much torture could he withstand?

The chamber echoed with the loud laughter of their guards, who were whiling away the time playing
tawlet zaher.

Desmond swore that if he found Selznick again he would make him suffer the same monstrous punishment.

At sunrise on the third day, after a long silence, Desmond – who was fighting off the hallucinations caused by thirst, hunger and exhaustion – heard a noise. The barely perceptible noise of a stone falling to the ground from a few centimetres’ height. In the deep hush of dawn that small, sharp sound exploded in his mind like thunder. His gaze shot instinctively to the point the sound was coming from and his heart leapt. The wall of the sarcophagus was crumbling under his eyes, at the exact point where he had told El Kassem to dig.

‘You’ve done it!’ he said. ‘Can you hear me, El Kassem? You made it!’

‘I know,’ hissed a voice from the little hole. ‘I can see the light. What time is it?’

‘Dawn of the third day.’

‘The third? Damnation! I’d calculated nightfall of the second.’

‘Don’t stop now! Widen the hole. You have to make it big enough for your fist to fit through.’

It took four more hours of patient work before El Kassem’s fist pushed through the hole he’d managed to make in the sarcophagus wall. Desmond guided his fingers towards the string. The knife’s edge had been considerably blunted by long hours of scraping at the sandstone and the blade was little more than a stump. It wouldn’t cut unless he could put enough pressure on it, but too much pressure would set off the trigger and fire the gun.

El Kassem worked at sharpening what was left of the blade, honing it against the sarcophagus wall for over half an hour. He stretched his hand out of the hole once again and began patiently sawing at the string, stopping whenever Desmond warned him that the trigger was about to trip.

Each time that he had to stop he was obliged to start all over again, since he couldn’t see what he was doing. But his phenomenal patience finally paid off and the string snapped in two, dismantling Selznick’s trap.

El Kassem lay still and silent for a little while to recover his strength and concentration. Then he said, ‘Be ready,
el sidi
. I’m coming out.’

He turned onto his knees and braced his back against the lid, pushing with all his might until the slab rose and shifted to one side. El Kassem gave a last desperate shove and the slab slipped to the ground.

Startled by the noise, one of the two bedouins on guard ran inside but El Kassem was ready with his knife. It flew into the base of the bedouin’s neck. The man collapsed, holding both hands over the stream of blood that gushed from his severed carotid artery. El Kassem was quick to pick up the rifle that had been rigged to kill Desmond and shot the guard’s companion as he was running up. He took the men’s weapons and handed them to Desmond after he had freed him from the ropes that bound him to the wall.

They advanced, sliding against the walls, to the entrance of the tomb. There were four more armed men outside who had all taken cover when they heard the gunshots and seen that their comrades had not come back out. El Kassem retreated to where he couldn’t be seen and fired two more shots into the air.

‘Why?’ mouthed Desmond.

El Kassem motioned with his head towards the two fallen men. They swiftly stripped off their keffiyehs and black
barrakans
and put them on, then walked back towards the entrance.

‘Everything’s all right. We’ve taken care of them,’ El Kassem called loudly, and gestured for the men to come out of hiding. The four of them got to their feet, ready to follow those they thought to be their comrades back into the rock chamber, but as soon as they were close enough, Desmond and El Kassem spun around and shot them down with a volley of pistol and rifle shots. The field was clear.

They went to the bedouins’ campfire and drank thirstily from their water skins. Desmond found some food in a sack and offered it to his companion.

‘No, thank you,
el sidi
,’ said El Kassem, ‘I’m not hungry.’

Desmond never found out whether his companion was telling the truth or just saying that to make him believe he was able to bear anything. He was even capable of that, El Kassem.

Both men were exhausted. They found a hiding place and fell into a deep sleep for several hours.

When Desmond awoke, there was a fire blazing and El Kassem was skinning a snake so he could roast it. ‘They come out looking for sand mice at this time of day, but there’s no hunter that can’t be hunted. It’s good and it’s . . . fresh meat.’

‘I know, El Kassem,’ said Desmond. ‘It won’t be the first time I’ve eaten snake.’

The warrior crouched near the fire, cut the reptile into chunks and skewered them onto his scimitar, which he held over the embers. Meanwhile, Desmond had gathered his bags and taken out the text by Avile Vipinas that Philip had given him before escaping.

‘Jebel Gafar,’ he mused, repeating the word several times. ‘I’m not convinced . . . I’m just not convinced . . .’ He got to the line where the ancient haruspex described the mysterious monument. ‘There’s a magnifying glass in my saddlebag,’ he said to El Kassem. ‘Could you get it for me?’

El Kassem laid his improvised spit on a couple of stones so that the snake would keep roasting, and went over to Desmond’s horse. Inside the saddlebag was a large entomologist’s lens, something Desmond always carried with him to use to inspect inscriptions, graffiti or stone carvings. He handed it to Desmond, who took it without removing his eyes from the document he was examining. The magnified script revealed every last detail of the writing and Desmond stopped at the words which described the monument from which the devastating fury had exploded. ‘A cylinder topped by a Pegasus . . . no, a Petasus. Oh, my God!’

‘What is it?’ asked El Kassem. ‘What have you seen?’

‘There’s a letter that’s slightly irregular . . . See? I’m sure – look – that this stroke shouldn’t continue downwards, towards the left. It’s mould, not ink that’s making the mark. Incredible! The
gamma
then becomes a
tau
. The word is no longer “Pegasus” but
“petasus”
!’

‘Oh, merciful Allah, my snake!’ exclaimed El Kassem, detecting a burning smell. He took the meat from the flames and drew up alongside Desmond again. ‘So, what does that mean?’ he asked, perplexed.

‘It’s simple,’ replied Desmond. ‘In ancient Greek, the letter
tau
was written like this,’ he said, tracing a letter in the dry soil with the tip of his knife, ‘and it was pronounced “t”. But if a spot of mould alters this part of the letter,’ he continued, using his index finger to amend the letter he’d drawn, ‘then the
tau
becomes a
gamma
, which is pronounced like a hard “g”, understand? So, what we thought was “Pegasus” is, in reality, a “
petasus
”.’

‘What changes?’ asked El Kassem.

‘Everything, my friend. In ancient Greek, a Pegasus is a winged horse, the creature of fables. A
petasus
is a type of flat hat with a broad brim that the ancients wore. So, our monument is a cylinder topped by a hemispherical cap . . . like this.’ And he etched out another small drawing with the tip of his knife.

Desmond could not help but notice El Kassem’s involuntary start.

‘Does it remind you of something?’ he asked.

The warrior scowled. ‘Yes. Something I heard about a long time ago . . . when I was very young. A man coming from the southern desert told a terrifying tale, but we all thought he was mad . . . Have you ever heard of the Blemmyae,
el sidi
?’

Desmond looked into his eyes and for the first time ever saw a shiver of fear there.

‘Give me some of that snake,’ he said to change the subject. ‘I’m hungry.’

They ate sitting by the fire in silence. The Arab warrior was thinking of the nightmares that had tormented him as a boy, after he’d listened to the stranger’s stories, while Desmond tried to imagine the dreaded monument, solitary as a lighthouse in a sea of sand.