I
The mosquitoes were in a malevolent mood that evening. Gaille had spiked two smouldering green coils onto their tin stands, had buttoned her white chemise tight around her throat and wrists, tucked her long trousers into socks, then sprayed all her remaining exposed skin to a shine with repellent; yet these gossamer fiends still found a way to feed off her, then boast of it afterwards with that infuriating trumpeting of theirs, retreating to the high hotel ceiling well out of range of reprisal even when she stood on a chair. Whatever had happened to the notion of sisterhood? There it was again, that gloating buzz behind her ear. She slapped at her neck but only as a gesture to punish herself for being so easily caught. The damage was done. The side of her right hand began to pulse and redden. Her mouse hand was an easy target as she typed up these damned excavation notes every night. She paused momentarily, glanced at her window. Just one night off wouldn’t hurt. A cold beer and a little conversation. But if Elena caught her in the bar—
Her door opened without warning and Elena herself strode in as though she owned the place. She had no regard for anyone else’s privacy, but heaven help you if you dared so much as knock upon her door without first giving two weeks’ written notice!
‘Yes?’ asked Gaille.
‘I’ve just had a phone call,’ said Elena. She squinted belligerently at Gaille, as though she found herself at a disadvantage and expected Gaille to make the most of it. ‘Ibrahim Beyumi. You know him? He’s head of the Supreme Council in Alexandria. Apparently he’s found a necropolis. He thinks part of it may be Macedonian. He wants me to check it out with him. He also said he was putting together a team for possible excavation, and asked if I could provide specialist support. I had to remind him I had my own excavation to run. Still, I mentioned you were available.’
Gaille frowned. ‘He needs support with languages?’
‘It’s an emergency excavation,’ snorted Elena. ‘The job is to record, remove, process and store. Translation will come later.’
‘Then—’
‘He needs a photographer, Gaille.’
‘Oh!’ Gaille felt bewildered. ‘But I’m not a photographer.’
‘You’ve got a camera, haven’t you? You’ve been taking pictures for us, haven’t you? Are you telling me they’re no good?’
‘I only took them because you asked me to—’
‘So it’s my fault now, is it?’
Gaille asked plaintively: ‘What about Maria?’
‘And who will we be left with? Are you claiming to be as good a photographer as she is?’
‘Of course not.’ The only reason she’d brought her camera was to photograph badly faded ancient ostraca, so that she could use her laptop’s image software to make the writing clearer. ‘I just said I’m not a—’
‘And Maria doesn’t speak Arabic or English,’ pointed out Elena. ‘She’d be useless to Ibrahim, and all on her own. Is that what you want?’
‘No. All I’m saying is—’
‘All you’re saying is!’ mocked Elena spitefully, imitating her voice.
‘Is this about what happened earlier?’ asked Gaille. ‘I told you, I didn’t see anything down there.’
Elena shook her head. ‘This has nothing to do with that. It’s very simple. The head of the Supreme Council in Alexandria has asked for your help. Do you really want me to tell him you refused?’
‘No,’ replied Gaille miserably. ‘Of course not.’
Elena nodded. ‘We’re doing an initial survey first thing tomorrow morning. Make sure you’re packed and ready to leave at seven.’ She took a look round Gaille’s messy hotel bedroom, shook her head in exaggerated disbelief, then slammed the door behind her as she left.
II
It was a wrench for Knox to abandon his Jeep in long-term parking. It had been his one constant companion since he’d been in Egypt. Eight hundred thousand already on the clock, and more left beneath the bonnet. You grew to love a car when it had done that well for you. He left his keys and the car-park receipt beneath the seat. He’d give one of his Cairo friends a call, see if they wanted it.
The airport was busy. There was so much refurbishment going on, everything was squeezed into half the space. Knox pulled his baseball cap down over his eyes, though it seemed unlikely that Hassan’s people would be ahead of him. He had a choice of flights. Many planes arrived in Egypt late at night, turning round to reach their home airports around dawn. He wandered along the bank of check-in desks. London? Screw that. When you’d fucked up your life, the last thing you wanted was to be reminded of it by the success of old friends. Athens was out too. When he’d lost his marbles in the wake of family tragedy, Greece had been put off-limits to him. Stuttgart? Paris? Amsterdam? The thought of such places depressed him horribly.
A dark-haired woman in the queue for Rome caught his eye and smiled coyly. It seemed as good a reason as any. He went to the enquiries counter to see if there were tickets. The man in line ahead of him was moaning about freight surcharges for his computer. Knox tuned out. Go home, that checkpoint officer had urged. But Egypt was his home. He’d lived here ten years. He’d grown to love it, for all its heat, discomfort, chaos and clam-our. He loved the desert most of all, its searing clean lines, its extraordinary gift of solitude, the kaleidoscopic sunsets and the chill mists in the dune valleys in the moments before dawn. He loved the hard labour of excavation, the thrill of potential discovery, that glorious kick it gave you getting out of bed each morning. Not that he ever got the chance to excavate any more.
The man ahead of him finally paid up. Knox stepped forward, fluttery with nerves. If he was going to have problems, this was where he’d find out. The booking clerk smiled blandly. He asked about seats; she assured him there were plenty. Knox handed across his passport and a credit card. She tapped keys, glanced up. ‘Mi Scusi un momento.’ She took his passport and card, vanished through a door at the back of her booth. He leaned forward to see what it said on her screen. He saw nothing to alarm him. He looked around the concourse. Everything appeared normal.
The clerk returned. She wouldn’t quite meet his eye. She kept his passport and credit card in her hand, fractionally out of his reach. He glanced around again. Teams of security guards appeared almost simultaneously through doors at either end of the concourse. Knox lunged forward to snatch his passport and card from the startled clerk, then turned, ducked his head, and walked briskly away, his heart pumping wildly. To his left, a security guard yelled. Knox abandoned pretence. He raced for the exit. The doors were automatic, but they slid open so slowly that he had to turn shoulder-first and still crashed into them, forcing his way through, spinning round. A guard on duty outside took his rifle from his shoulder so hastily that he fumbled it clattering to the floor.
Knox fled left, away from the bright lights of the terminal building into the darkness beyond. He vaulted a rail, ran down a steep embankment to a poorly lit airport bus stop, leaped
