The Eye of Ra Page 20

  I thought of Mustafa’s electrodes. I had to admit he was right.

  ‘I think we must be very careful,’ he went on. ‘Sooner or later they’re going to find their way here. My high-level contacts in the government may hold the dogs off for a while, but I’m still a foreigner and I can’t protect you for ever. After all, people have been murdered. What I suggest is that you both get out of the country. I have access to a private jet and I could certainly ensure a passage to Israel or Cyprus, and a safe place to hide out once you’re there.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not leaving. I’m not a criminal, and I’m not running away till I find out what’s behind it.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ Elena said, ‘especially as we now know where Julian got the ushabtis.’

  For a split second Rabjohn’s self-possession slid, and he looked at her with undisguised astonishment. ‘Oh?’ he said. ‘How?’

  ‘Julian’s diary,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Robert. Nikolai gave strict instructions that it was to go to Jamie.’

  ‘No. That’s quite all right. I’m just amazed that I never thought about a diary. May I see it please?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, bringing the diary out of my knapsack. Rabjohn leafed through it, studying the ciphered figures carefully. ‘How curious,’ he said, ‘that Julian should go to all the trouble of using a cipher.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘May I keep this, Jamie?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘This is going with me to al-Maqs, where Julian found the ushabtis. I’m planning to talk to the headman Mukhtar wald Salim.’

  ‘I’m going with you,’ Elena said.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘there might be trouble.’

  ‘Yes, there might,’ Rabjohn agreed. ‘There’s no telling where the villagers got those statuettes and the penalty for dealing in antiquities is a stiff prison sentence. It’s not going to be easy to get there, either — Kharja is about six hundred kilometres south of Cairo, and there are at least a dozen police checkpoints on the way. In a taxi you’ll never make it and if you try to take a bus or a plane they’ll pick you up.’

  ‘Once we get into the Western Desert I’m in Hawazim country,’ I said. ‘That’s where I was brought up.’

  ‘Then perhaps you can tell us how the Hawazim evade police checks,’ Rabjohn said.

  ‘Simple. They don’t stop at them, they just go round. Of course, they travel by camel.’ Rabjohn’s face brightened suddenly.

  ‘I don’t have a camel, Jamie,’ he said, ‘but if you insist on going, I can offer you the next best thing.’

  The garage was the size of a small hangar — it took up the whole of one side of the house, and inside there was a fair-sized workshop with workbench, welding equipment, and block and tackle. Crates, packets of spare parts, quarts of Castrol GTX, empty jerrycans, and old bicycles had been teased into nooks and crannies. There were three cars — a gleaming white Mercedes limousine, a dusty Porsche, and a state-of-the art Toyota Land Cruiser. I wondered if it was the Land Cruiser Rabjohn had meant, but he hustled us behind the cars to where a brand new 500cc Honda dirt-bike stood, wrapped in polythene sheeting. He pulled the polythene away, and the bike was revealed in its full glory, like some enormous, rare, beautiful, brooding insect — red-and-black livery, double seat, panniers, knobbly tyres, high handlebars, swept up exhaust, and a non-standard fuel tank so large that it probably tripled the fuel capacity of the machine.

  ‘Yes!’ I said.

  ‘You’re familiar with motor-cycles, Jamie?’

  ‘I’m what you might call an enthusiast.’

  ‘How interesting. I bought this thing for some expeditions I intended to do in the desert. The idea was to use it for site trips in places where four-wheel drive cars couldn’t penetrate. I never got round to the expeditions, of course. Things came up. I offered it to Julian and he almost collapsed laughing. Not a motor-bike man at all.’

  ‘Is it run in?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all fully serviced and ready to go. I can give you a full tank of fuel and even a couple of extra jerrycans, more than enough to get to Kharja.’

  ‘You mean you want us to go to Kharja on that monster?’ Elena asked incredulously. ‘I mean I’m happy to go and everything, but on that!’

  It was late afternoon by the time we were ready. We’d agreed that it was better to travel by night anyway. The big problem would be getting out of the city unnoticed, for once out of Cairo we’d hit the dirt-trails, invisible to the valley-people whose world centred on the Nile, but known to my mother’s folk, the Hawazim, for countless generations. Once he saw we really meant to do it, Rabjohn didn’t talk about us leaving the country any more, but applied his organising ability to assessing and acquiring everything we needed for the journey — a pair of down sleeping-bags, blankets, a ten-litre collapsible water carrier, miniature gas-stove and cooking apparatus, food, binoculars, maps and compass. He even added a couple of old waxed Barbour jackets, helmets and shamaghs —Arab headcloths — he found in his store-room.

  Finally, I started the bike up and tested the engine, letting it into gear and crawling round the yard. It sounded rich and pearly. When I returned to the kitchen, Rabjohn placed a thick wad of Egyptian pound notes in my hand. ‘Elena tells me you lost your money in the Shepheard’s fire,’ he said. ‘It’s all I’ve got in the house. It’s only about $1000 but it will keep you going.’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ I said. ‘You’ve been really kind, Robert. Too kind. But I can’t accept cash.’

  ‘I suggest you take it, and if everything works out you can pay me back. Unfortunately I can’t accompany you — there isn’t room for three on a motor-bike, and anyway I have some work to finish. But I could meet you there in a few days.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, taking the money reluctantly, ‘and thanks.’

  27

  There was a fiery sunset. Rabjohn and I stood in the yard by the motor-bike, watching stripes of magenta, murex purple, sky blue and flame-gold tilting at angles across the western sky, their ragged edges boiling slowly until the mass of colours coagulated into an eruption of whirling magma. Somewhere nearby a muezzin started up - a voice as pure as crystal, ringing the changes through the Call to Prayers. I stopped for a moment to listen. In no other city I’ve ever been in are the muezzins so perfect as in Cairo.

  The muezzin’s voice faded. ‘We’ll give it a few minutes,’ I told Rabjohn, ‘till it’s really dark.’

  At that moment the telephone rang in the kitchen. Rabjohn hurried off to answer it and was back in a second. ‘Dr Barrington,’ he said. ‘For you.’

  ‘Doc?’ I said as soon as I picked up the receiver. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me, Jamie. Listen —’

  ‘Doc, I’ve been worried sick. You didn’t answer the phone last night.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jamie. I wasn’t in any state to.’

  It was only then that I noticed how taut her voice sounded. A warning bell rang in my head. I remembered the strain in Kolpos’s voice on the phone the night he’d been killed. ‘Ma sei da sola?’ I asked in Italian — a back-up language we had in common, and which we’d always used in the past when we didn’t want Arabs or English-speakers to understand us — Tuoi parlare? Can you talk?’

  ‘It’s all right, Jamie,’ she said. ‘This isn’t a set-up. I’m alone. It’s just that I’ve found out something I didn’t really want to know — I’m glad I do know, of course, but then I bloody well knew. The bastards!’

  There was a muffled sound from the other end, almost like sobbing.

  ‘Doc, what is it? You’re not making sense.’

  ‘OK. Sorry. Give me a sec, darling. Will you?’ A series of sniffs. ‘OK. Sorry. Must pull yourself together, old girl! Jamie? Are you there? Let me start at the beginning. Now. When I left you the first thing I did was ring Madam Montuhotep XV — you know — the Eye of Ra Society. This very smooth-talking guy answered the phone. I told him I was a journalist named “Smith” and I wanted to do a piece on the Societ
y. Told him I’d got the address and data from the Internet. I knew there was stuff on the net, because I’d already surfed for it. It was all sweetness and light — I made an appointment for next week, and he confirmed the address in Qasr an-Nil Street in the city centre. So that was all set up.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My next assignment was Colonel Dansey-Smith on Roda Island, last survivor of the Zerzura Club. Wasn’t difficult to find, lives in a run-down apartment that was once posh — fortunes diminished by the look of it. Stiff old boy about eighty, very British, too British in fact. Felt as if he was putting on what he thought a real English gentleman should be like. Accent a little bit too Etonian, you know — “acrorse” instead of “across” and “het” instead of “hat” — that kind of thing. Anyway, I told him I was a journalist doing a piece on the Zerzura Club and he was very guarded at first. Icy. In the end, though, he asked me in and offered me Earl Grey tea and mouldy biscuits. Had the feeling he hadn’t had any visitors in a long time. Furniture once good but all holes. Photos of World War II aircraft — Spitfires and Messerschmitts — and armoured vehicles on the walls — Boy’s Own Scrapbook sort of thing. Anyway, I started with simple questions — when was the Zerzura Club formed and all that, and he was very wary. “Formed in 1930,” he says, “by Major Ralph Bagnold, Royal Signals, in a bar in Wadi Haifa.”

  ‘He went on, very dry, and didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know. “What was the inspiration behind the formation of the Club?” I asked.

  ‘“The quest for the Lost Oasis of Zerzura,” he said.

  ‘“Yes, but were its members privy to any special information about the nature of the Lost Oasis and where it might lie?”

  ‘“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” he said, as if it’s a big-deal secret. 4 “The members of the Club were sworn to utter silence on the matter. I’ve never discussed it with anyone and I never will”

  ‘I’m just about thinking I’m flogging a dead horse, when suddenly the old boy’s looking at me with these beady eyes, quite frightening. “Wait a minute!” he said, and his tone suddenly changed, “Wait a minute, I know what you are! Yes, I do, you’re one of those bloody MI6 snoopers! I’ve seen your like before!”

  ‘“Oh. When?” I said.

  ‘“Oho, I’ve seen you lot all right, doing your dirty business.”

  ‘“Look, I’m out of the Office, now,” I said.

  ‘“That’s what they all say,” he said. Then suddenly the tone changes again, and he’s almost pleading. “Can’t you leave an old man alone?” he said. “Pestered and plagued us right from the beginning you Six people!”

  ‘“You mean MI6 were there from the start?” I asked.

  ‘“You ought to know!” he said. “Haven’t you seen the file? The Zerzura Club was Six’s baby. Bagnold was MI6. Then there was that bloody Yank bible-puncher — ‘The Monk’, we used to call him.”

  ‘“The Monk?”

  ‘“Yes, Yank with a German name — Karlberg...Karlsbad or something. Expert on hieroglyphs.”

  ‘“Do you mean Aurel Karlman?” I asked.

  ‘“That’s him,” he said. ‘Very odd fellow. Sinister. Used to wear the togs of a monk — Benedictine or something — but he wasn’t like any bible-basher I’ve ever met. Always sneaking about going into secret conflab with Bagnold. You could see Bagnold was in awe of him. Bagnold was the desert expert — he did the planning — but it was ‘The Monk’ who really pulled the strings.”

  ‘“Who did Karlman work for?”

  ‘“Nobody told us. We were just the work-horses, you see. I was Royal Engineers; transport was my speciality — keen as mustard when it came to engines.”

  ‘“What about Orde Wingate? Did you know him?”

  ‘The old man guffawed. “Wingate fooled the lot of them. There we were tinkering with light cars and aircraft, and Wingate arrived and did it on camels. Off he toddled with his Bedouin in ‘33 and came out of the desert making out he’d lost his memory. We knew he was faking; Six must have known it too. But Wingate had high clearance and they let him get away with it.”

  ‘“Let him get away with what?” I asked.

  ‘“If you don’t know, look at the file!” he said.

  ‘“Look, Colonel,” I said, “I swear I’m not working for the Office, and I swear that when I did, I didn’t come across any such file.”

  ‘He seemed a bit pacified. Must have been my charm. “Well, the file exists,” he said, “I know, because I had a friend who saw it. I don’t even know if he told me his real name, but he was M 16 all right, and at first he came here asking questions, snooping just like you. I didn’t trust him to start with, but in the end I realised he was a good fellow and we had interests in common: he was a motoring enthusiast and he liked aeroplanes — had an amateur’s pilot’s licence. He told me he had come across a file in the M 16 office here in Cairo that went back to the formation of the Zerzura Club in the 1930s. For some reason, he said, it went under the title ‘Operation Eye of Ra’. Damn’ odd name, of course. All bloody hooey! Can’t think why they called it that!”

  ‘As you can imagine, darling, I’m suddenly sitting up. “What else was in the file?” I asked.

  ‘“I don’t know,” he said. “My friend didn’t tell me much. Only hinted that he’d checked out my story and found it accurate. Then one day he came to visit me, very worried, and told me that the file had been removed. When he asked the clerk about it, the man said it’d been ‘transferred to M J -12’ — that was all he knew.”

  ‘“What’s MJ-12?” I asked.

  ‘“Some kind of Yank set-up, I think. Anyway, I never saw him again. The next day he was dead, killed in a motor accident, here in Cairo. Speeding, or so I heard. Hard to believe. Damn’ good driver — used to drive the Monte Carlo.”

  ‘“When was this?” I asked.

  ‘“About six years ago — 1989, that’s it. I remember the date he died distinctly because it was April Fool’s Day.”

  ‘By this time I’m wired up, Jamie. Tears are streaming down my face, and the Colonel’s looking at me as if I’m a complete loony-toon. I suppose the stuff about being a motoring enthusiast and an amateur pilot had already told me. And the Monte Carlo. Then the date of the accident confirmed it. You see, 1st April 1989 was the date Ronnie was killed in a supposed motor accident in Cairo. Dansey-Smith’s “friend” — the last person to have access to the Operation Eye of Ra file — was my husband, Ronnie Barrington.’

  28

  When I put the phone down Rabjohn was eyeing me inquisitively. ‘Anything wrong?’ he enquired.

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘You should have insisted that Dr Barrington came here with you. She’s as much at risk as us. More, in a way.’

  ‘I know. You try insisting with Doc. She’s a black belt. Do you know her personally?’

  ‘Only by reputation. I once met her husband, Ronnie. He was a good man, one of those unassuming Englishmen who keeps on plodding along till he finds out what he wants to find. Killed in a motor accident, I believe. Tragic.’

  Together we walked back out into the yard, where Elena was putting on her Barbour jacket, using her red speckled shamagh as a scarf.

  ‘Tell me something, Robert,’ I said. ‘Have you ever heard of an American organisation called MJ-12. I mean, is it part of the CIA or FBI or something?’

  Rabjohn paused and stared at me, his eyes sparkling. Then he let rip a peal of laughter. ‘MJ-12,’ he said, ‘yes, I’ve heard of it. Code named “Majesty”. An ultra top-secret committee made up of twelve members - key people from the CIA, FBI, US forces and so on. At one time it was supposedly answerable to the President, and has included figures like Allen Dulles, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. MJ-12 is said to have been set up by U S President Harry Truman in 1947, in the wake of the so-called Roswell Incident in New Mexico, but it was formed out of an older organisation, The Jason Scholars, which goes back at least to the twenties, maybe earlier.’

 
‘What was the Roswell Incident?’

  Rabjohn stopped laughing and stared at me hard as if wondering whether I was serious. Then he grinned again. ‘Roswell is a secret USAF test-site in the New Mexico desert. A lot of state-of-the-art aircraft were tested there. In 1947, it was rumoured that an alien spacecraft had crashed there while trying to make contact with human beings. They set up MJ-12 as a result, to investigate contacts with extra-terrestrials — a sort of watchdog against UFO s.’

  He must have seen my jaw fall slack, because he laughed again, even louder this time. ‘Forgive me, Jamie, I don’t mean to pry, but did this question originate with Dr Barrington?’

  ‘In a sense, yes, why?’

  ‘Well, forgive me for saying this, but she has a reputation for far-fetched conspiracy theories. I heard that her husband’s death really shook her up badly. They tell me she had a nervous breakdown — the full works — and started seeing reds under the beds and little green men in the closet — conspiracies everywhere. It seems that she still hasn’t recovered. No, I shouldn’t laugh, but the fact is that M J-12 is just a myth — a story cooked up by cranks. There is no MJ-12 and there never has been. It simply doesn’t exist.’

  It was full dark by now, and already cool. Rabjohn watched as Elena and I put on our helmets.

  ‘Go carefully with the natives of al-Maqs, Jamie,’ he said. ‘We don’t know how they came by the ushabtis. Don’t expect hospitality from them. Smuggling antiquities is illegal. I don’t think they’ll want to talk about it.’

  It was my turn to laugh. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Thanks for everything.’

  ‘I’ll get down there as soon as I can. Just as soon as I’ve finished off one or two jobs.’

  ‘See you there.’

  I straddled the bike and pressed the starter. Power rumbled through her. I twisted the throttle slightly. Elena swung herself on to the back of the seat and put her arms round me. I clicked the bike into gear and taxied towards the front gate, which Rab-john’s guard held open for us. As we rolled down the drive I found myself chuckling out loud. Elena gave me a squeeze. ‘What on earth are you giggling about?’ she demanded.