Текст книги "The Seventh Scroll"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

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

he was not afraid to take some extraordinary risks to add to the

collection at Quenton Park.

Duraid had first met him a number of years previously, when Sir Nicholas

had recruited him to act as an intelligence officer for an illicit

expedition to "liberate' a number of Punic bronze castings from

Gadaffi's Libya. Sir Nicholas had sold some of these to defray the

expenses of the expedition, but had kept the best of them for his

private collection.

More recently there had been another expedition, this time involving an

illegal crossing of the Iraqi border to bring out a pair of stone

has-relief friezes from under Saddam Hussein's nose. Duraid had told her

that Sir Nicholas had sold one of the pair for a huge amount of money;

he had mentioned the sum of five million US dollars. Duraid said that he

had used the money for the running of the museum, but that the second

frieze, the finest of the pair, was still in Sir Nicholas's possession.

Both these expeditions had taken place years before Royan had met

Duraid, and she wondered idly at Duraid's readiness to commit himself to

the Englishman in this way.

Sir Nicholas must have had unique powers of persuasion, for if they had

been apprehended in the act there was no doubt that it would have meant

summary execution for both of them.

As Duraid had explained to her, on each occasion it was only Nicholas's

resourcefulness and his network of friends and admirers across the

Middle East and North Africa, which he had been able to call on for

help, that had seen them through.

"He is a bit of a devil," Duraid had shaken his head with evident

nostalgia at the memory, "but the man to have with you when things are

tough. Those days were all very exciting, but when I look back on it now

I shudder at the risks we took."

She had often pondered on the risks that a true inthe-blood collector

was prepared to take to slake his passion. The risk seemed to be out of

proportion to the reward, when it came to adding to his accumulations;

and then she smiled at her own pious sentiments. The venture that she

hoped to lead Sir Nicholas into was not exactly without risk, and she

supposed that a circumlocution of lawyers might debate the legality of

it endlessly.

Still smiling, she fell asleep, for the strain of these last few days

had taken their toll. The air hostess woke her with an admonition to

fasten her seat-belt for the landing at Heathrow.

an phoned her mother from the airport.

ello, Mummy. It's me."

"Yes, I know that. Where are you, love?" Her mother sounded as

unflappable as ever. -'At Heathrow. I am coming up to stay with you for

a while. Is that all right?"

"Lumley's  and ," her mother chuckled. "I'll go and make your bed. What

train will you be coming up on?"

"I had a look at the timetable. There is one from King's Cross that will

get me into York at seven this evening."

"I'll meet you at the station. What happened? Did you and Duraid have a

tiff? Old enough to be your father. I said it wouldn't work."

Royan was silent for a moment. This was hardly the time for

explanations. "I'll tell you all about it when I see you this evening."

Georgina Lumley, her mother, was waiting on the platform in the gloom

and cold of the November evening, bulky and solid in her old green

Barbour coat with Magic, her cocker spaniel, sitting obediently at her

feet. The two of them made an inseparable pair, even when they were not

winning field trials cups. For Royan they painted a comforting and

familiar picture of the English side of her lineage.

Georgina kissed Royan's cheek in a perfunctory manner. "Never was one

for all that sentimental fiddle, faddle," she often said with

satisfaction, and she took one of Royan's bags and led the way to the

old mud-splattered Land Rover in the car park.

Magic sniffed Royan's hand and wagged his tail in recognition. Then in a

dignified and condescending manner he allowed her to pat his head, but

like his mistress he was no great sentimentalist either.

. They drove in silence for a while and Georgina lit a cigarette. "So

what happened to Duraid, then?"

For a minute Royan could not reply, and then the floodgates within her

burst and she let it all come pouring out. It was a twenty-minute drive

north of York to the little village of Brandsbury, and Royan talked all

the way.

Her mother made only small sounds of encouragement and comfort, and when

Royan wept as she related the details of Duraid's death and funeral,

Georgina reached across and patted her daughter's hand.

It was all over by the time they reached her mother's cottage in the

village. Royan had cried it out and was dryeyed and rational again as

they ate the dinner that her mother had prepared and left in the oven

for them. Royan could not remember when last she had tasted steak and

kidney pie.

"So what are you going to do now?" Georgina asked as she poured what

remained in the black bottle of Guinness into her own glass.

"To tell the truth, I don't know." As she said it, Royan wondered

ruefully why so many people used that particular phrase to introduce a

lie. "I have six months' leave from the museum, and Prof Dixon has

arranged for me to give a lecture at the university. That is as far as

it goes for the moment."

"Well," said Georgina as she stood up, "there is a hotwater bottle in

your bed and your room is there for as long as you wish to stay." From

her that was as good as a passionate declaration of maternal love.

Over the next few days Royan arranged her slides and notes for the

lectures, and each afternoon she accompanied Georgina and Magic on their

long walks over the surrounding countryside.

"Do you know Quenton Park?" she asked her mother during one of these

rambles.

"Rather," Georgina replied enthusiastically. "Magic and I pick up there

four or five times a season. First-class shoot. Some of the best

pheasant and woodcock in Yorkshire. One drive there called the High

Larches which is notorious. Birds so high they baffle the best shots in

England."

"Do you know the owner, Sir Nicholas Quenton Harper?" Royan asked.

"Seen him at the shoots. Don't know him. Good shot, though," Georgina

replied. "Knew his papa in the old days before I married your father."

She smiled in a suggestive way that startled Royan. "Good dancer. We

danced a few jigs together, not only on the dance floor."

"Mummy, you are outrageous!'Royan laughed.

"Used to be," Georgina agreed readily. "Don't get many opportunities

these days."

"When are you and Magic going to Quenton Park again?"

"Two weeks' time."

"May I come with you?"

"Of course – the keeper is always looking for beaters.

Twenty quid and lunch with a bottle of beer for the day." She stopped

and looked at her daughter quizzically. "What is all this about, then?"

"I hear there is a private museum on the estate. They have a

world-renowned Egyptian collection. I wanted to get a look at it."

"Not open to the public any more. Invitation only. Sir Nicholas is an

odd chap, secretive and all that."

"Couldn't you get an invitation for me?" Royan asked, but Georgina shook

her head.

"Why don't you ask Prof Dixon? He is often one of the guns at Quenton

Park. Great chum of Quenton-Harper."

It was ten days before Prof Dixon was ready for her. She borrowed her

mother's Land Rover and drove to Leeds. The Prof folded her in a bear

hug and then took her through to his office for tea.

It was nostalgic of her days as a student to be back in the cluttered

room filled with books and papers and ancient artefacts. Royan told him

about Duraid's murder, and Dixon was shocked and distressed, but she

quickly changed the subject to the slides that she had prepared for the

lecture. He was fascinated by'everything she had to show him.

It was almost time for her to leave before she had an opportunity to

broach the subject of the Quenton Park museum, but he responded

immediately.

"I am amazed that you never visited it while you were a student here.

It's a very impressive collection. The family has been at it for over a

hundred years. As a matter of fact, I am shooting on the estate next

Thursday. I'll have a word with Nicholas. However, the poor chap isn't

up to much at the moment. Last year he suffered a terrible "personal

tragedy. Lost his wife and two little girls in a motor accident on the

MU He shook his head. "Awful business. Nicholas was driving. I think he

blames himself' He walked her out to the Land Rover.

"So we will see you on the twenty-third," he told Royan as they parted.

"I expect that you will have an audience of at least a hundred, and I

have even had a reporter from the Yorkshire Post on to me. They have

heard about your lectures and they want to do an interview with you.

jolly good publicity for the department. You'll do it, of course. Could

you come a couple of hours early to speak to them?"

"Actually I will probably see you before the twenty-third," she told

him. "Mummy and her dog are picking up at Quenton Park on Thursday, and

she has got me a job as a beater for the day."

"I'll keep an eye open for you," he promised, and waved to her as she

pulled away in a cloud of exhaust smoke.

The wind was searing cold out of the north.

The clouds tumbled over each other, heavy 6– and blue and grey, so close

to earth that they brushed the crests of the hills as they hurried ahead

of the gale.

Royan wore three layers of clothing under the old green Barbour jacket

that Georgina had lent her, but still she shivered as they came up over

the brow of the hills in the line of beaters. Her blood had thinned in

the heat of the Nile valley. Two pairs of fisherman's socks were not

enough to save her toes from turning numb.

For this drive, the last of the day, the head keeper had moved Georgina

from her usual position behind the line of guns, where she and Magic

were expected to pick up the crippled birds that came through to them,

into the line of beaters.

Keeping the best for last, they were beating the High Larches. The

keeper needed every man and woman he could get into the line to bring in

the pheasant from the huge piece of ground on top of the hills and to

push them off the brow, out over the valley where the guns waited at

their pegs far below.

It seemed to Royan a supreme piece of illogical behaviour to rear and

nurture the pheasants from chicks I and then, when they were mature, go

to such lengths to make them as difficult to shoot as the keeper could

devise.

However, Georgina had explained to her that the higher and harder to hit

the birds passed over the guns, the more pleased the Sportsmen were, and

the more they were willing to pay for the privilege of firing at them.

"You cannot believe what they will pay for a day's shooting,, Georgina

had told her. "Today will bring in almost 14,000 to the estate. They

will shoot twenty days this season. Work that out and you will see that

the shoot is a major part of the estate's income. Quite apart from the

fun of working the dogs and beating, it gives a lot of us local people a

very useful bit of extra money."

At this stage of the day, Royan was not too certain just how much fun

there was to he had from the job of beating. The walking was difficult

in the thick brambles, and Royan had slipped more than once. There was

mud on her knees and elbows. The ditch ahead of her was half filled with

water and there was a thin skin of ice across the surface. She

approached it gingerly, using her walking-stick to balance herself. She

was tired, for there had already been five drives, all as onerous as

this one. She glanced across at her mother and marvelled at how she

seemed to be enjoying this torture. Georgina strode along happily,

controlling Magic with her whistle and hand signals.

She grinned at Royan now, "Last lap, over." love.  early Royan was

humiliated that her distress had-been so obvious, and she used her stick

to help her vault the muddy ditch. However, she miscalculated the width

and fell short of the far bank. She landed knee-deep in the frozen water

and it poured in over the top of her Wellington boots.

Georgina laughed at her and offered her the end of her Own stick to pull

her out of the glutinous mud. Royan could not hold up the line by

stopping to empty her flooded boots, so she went on, squelching loudly

with each pace.

"Steady on the left! the order from the head keeper was relayed over the

walkie-talkie radio, and the line halted obediently.

The art and skill of the keeper was to flush the birds from the tangled

undergrowth, not in one massed covey, but in a steady trickle that would

pass over the waiting guns in singles and pairs, giving them the chance,

after they had fired two barrels, to take their second gun from the

loader and be ready for the next bird to appear in the sky high above

them. The size of the keeper's tip and his reputation depended on the

way he "showed' the birds to the waiting guns.

During this respite Royan was able to regain her breath, and to look

around her. Through a break in the branches that gave the drive its

name, she could see down into the valley.

There was an open meadow at the foot of the hills, the expanse of smooth

green grass broken up by patches of dirty grey snow from the previous

week's fall. Down this meadow the keeper had set a line of numbered

pegs. At the beginning of the day's sport the guns had drawn lots to

decide the peg number from which each of them would shoot.

Now each man stood "at his allotted peg, with his loader holding his

second gun ready behind him, ready to pass it over when the first gun

was empty. They were all looking up expectantly to the high ground from

which the pheasant would appear.

"Which is Sir Nicholas?" Royan called to her mother, and Georgina

pointed to the far end of the line of guns.

"The tall one," she said, and at that moment the keeper's voice on the

radio ordered, "Gently on the left.

Start tapping again." Obediently the beaters tapped their sticks. There

was no shouting or hallooing in this delicate and strictly controlled

operation.

"Forward slowly. Halt to the flush of birds."

A step at a time the line moved ahead, and in the brambles and bracken

in front of her Royan could hear the stealthy scuffle of a number of

pheasants moving forward, reluctant to take to the air until they were

forced to do so.

There was another ditch in their path, this one choked with an almost

impenetrable, thicket of brambles. Some of the larger dogs, like the

Labradors, balked at entering such a thorny barrier. Georgina whistled

sharply and Magic's ears went up. He was soaked and his coat was a

matted mess of mud and buffs and thorns. His pink tongue lolled from the

corner of his grinning mouth and the sodden stump of his tail was

wagging merrily. At that moment he was the happiest dog in England. He

was doing the work that he had been bred for.

"Come on, Magic," Georgina ordered. "Get in there.

Get them out."

Magic dived into the thickest and thorniest patch, and disappeared

completely from view. There was a minute of snuffling and rooting around

in the depths of the ditch, and then a fierce cackle and flurry of

wings.

A pair of birds exploded out of the bushes. The hen led the way. She was

a drab, nondescript creature the size  of a domestic fowl, but the cock

bird that followed her closely was magnificent. His head was capped with

iridescent green and his cheeks and wattles were scarlet. His tail,

barred in cinnamon and black, was almost as long again as his body and

the rest of his plumage was a riot of gorgeous colour.

As he climbed he sparkled against the lowering grey sky like a priceless

jewel thrown from an emperor's hand.

Royan gasped with the beauty of the sight.

"Just look at them go!'Georgina's voice was thick with excitement. "What

a pair of crackerjacks. The best pair today. My bet is that not one of

the guns will touch a feather on either of them."

Up, and then on up, the two birds climbed, the hen drawing the cock

after her, until suddenly the wind boiling over the hills like

overheated milk caught them both and flung them away, out over the

valley.

The line of beaters enjoyed the moment. They had worked hard for it.

Their voices were tiny and faint on the wind as they urged the birds on.

They loved to see a pheasant so high and fast that it could beat the

guns.

"Forward!" they exulted. "over! and this time the line came

involuntarily to a halt as they followed the flight of the pair that

were twisting away on the wind.

In the valley bottom the faces of the guns were turned upwards, pale

specks against the green background. Their trepidation was almost

palpable as they watched the pheasant reach their maximum speed, so that

they could no longer beat their wings, but locked them into a back-swept

profile as they began to drop down into the valley.

This was the most difficult shot that any gun would face. A high pair of

pheasant with a half gale quartering from behind, dropping into the shot

at their terminal rate of flight, set to pass over the line at the

extreme effective range of a twelve-bore shotgun. For the men below it

was a calculation of speed "and lead in all three dimensions of space.

The best of shots might hope to take one of them, but who would dare to

think of both?

"A pound on it!" Georgina called. "A pound that they both get through."

But none of the beaters who heard her accepted the wager.

The wind was pushing the birds gently sideways. They started off aimed

at the centre of the line, but they were drifting towards the far end.

As the angle changed, Royan could see the men at the pegs below her

brace themselves in turn as the birds appeared to be heading straight

for them, and then relax as the wind moved them on. Their relief was

evident as, one after the other, each of them was absolved from the

challenge of having to make such an impossible shot with all eyes

fastened upon him.

In the end only the tall figure at the extreme end of the line stood in

their flight path.

"Your bird, sir," one of the other guns called mockingly, and Royan

found that instinctively she was holding her breath with anticipation.

Nicholas Quenton-Harper seemed unaware of the approach of the pair of

pheasant. He stood completely relaxed, his tall frame slouching

slightly, his shotgun tucked under his right arm with the muzzles

pointing at the ground.