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