"It is our story," Rekemheb repeated. "See, the cartouches hold our names." The Ka pointed toward the newly painted spear that plunged into the rst kneeling gure. "It was thus that I was murdered by Sethnakht. As for my son, and my daughter too, I do not know their fates."

"Isn't he here, in this grave?" Derek set his shoulder against the lid at the corner of the stone. Yussif leaned against the opposite corner, and together they slid the stone slab diagonally, opening the sarcophagus.

Valerie pointed the light beam down inside.

"Oh no," Derek whispered.

The Ka stepped toward the opening and looked down at the disintegrated wrappings, the smashed skull, and the tatters of brown leathery esh stretched over shattered bones.

"I have known for centuries that I was the last of my line to reach the Duat," he murmured. "My children's souls were destroyed, but the line of their offspring was not."

He laid a hand on the shoulder of his descendant. "It seems that was the bargain."

* 194 *

"I am so sorry, Rekemheb."

"Do not be. The gods have let me share his resting place. This is a great comfort. Entomb me here over the mummy of my son in his sarcophagus."

Derek carried the wooden casket into the last chamber and pried open the lid. He lifted the covering blanket from the cadaver and folded it in three, making a sort of pallet. Then he rolled the second blanket up into a loose cylinder and laid both pallet and pillow into the sarcophagus over the ruins of the son. He paused. "Hator-em-heb. Tell me about him."

The Ka assumed a softness of expression Valerie had not seen in him before. "He was much in your likeness, Ayemderak. He spoke with your same sweet voice, and to make a point, he always set his st upon his hip."

"So that's where he gets it from." Auset laughed softly. "I thought it was acting class."

"And your daughter?" Valerie asked.

"Merut-tot was my eldest. She was not given to temple service, but to words. It was her wish to be a scribe. Of her life and fate I also know nothing."

Derek lifted the mummy from its imsy casket and placed it gently in the stone sarcophagus. Elevated upon the makeshift pillow, the gauze-wrapped Hathor-priest lay with ecclesiastical dignity.

Valerie drew out the golden amulet from her knapsack and set it gently on the gauze wrappings of the mummy's chest. "Rekemheb, this should stay with you."

"No, it should not." The Ka reached past her with a translucent arm to retrieve the plaque by its chain and then laid it with solemnity over Derek's head. "This is the prophecy, the scribe said, and you must hold fast to it, Ayemderak, just as I did."

He turned to the others with a wan smile. "You who have brought me to this place with such great labor, you are my family and my friends. Even in the underworld, I wait with you for the gods to reveal themselves."

His speech ended, the Ka's form disintegrated. His blue-green light seemed to glow for a moment under the gauze wrappings of his mummy before fading out.

Derek's eyebrows made a little chevron. "They always say they'll call."

* 195 *

"He'll call," Auset said. "He'll come back for the birth of our baby. It's part of the prophecy, isn't it? So can we go now? I'm not so fond of being in a tomb."

"She's right," Valerie said. "We've been here long enough, and we haven't even talked about where to go now. I think El Dakhla. We can get some road transportation back to Cairo."

"That's right. We're safe now, aren't we? Without the mummy, the corpus delicti, so to speak, they can't charge us with anything." Derek grunted as he helped the others slide the stone cover of the sarcophagus back in place. "I can't believe we've actually pulled this off."

The shuf ing feet caused them to turn around. Valerie's ashlight sliced along the stone wall and stopped. A cold Akhnaton face leered back at them.

"No, Miss Foret, you have not 'pulled it off,'" the velvety voice said.

"Volker Vanderschmitt," Valerie said wearily. "You just won't leave us alone."

Something moved behind him in the dark, and she shifted the light beam to the side. A gure swathed in black stood there; its fathomless dark eyes looked back at her without expression. Valerie inhaled sharply and whispered. "Nekhbet."

It was then that she saw he held a gun in one hand. With the other he drew a ashlight from his belt and clicked it on. The two light beams confronted each other. "Is that her name? I never bothered to ask. Well, even with my ten words of Arabic, it was easy enough to convince her I was part of your team and get her to bring me here. You must thank her for me."

"I don't understand."

"How I was able to track you down? Oh, Miss Foret. You are as poor a thief as you are an archaeologist. You left a very vivid trail- in Amarna and with the Bedouins. Everyone remembered you, of course."

Her eyes fell on the gun in his hand, and the realization struck her like a stone. It was her own.

He waved it, taunting her. "You made quite an impression on the Bedouins particularly, Miss Foret. The headman was very proud of his new acquisition, but not so proud that he wouldn't part with it for a good price."

* 196 *

Derek interrupted. "There's no need to threaten us with a gun, Dr.

Vanderschmitt. Things are going on here you don't understand. If you knew-"

"I know all I need to know, Mr. Ragin. I know that the four of you have committed a very serious crime, and you will do what I say or I will hand you over to the authorities. I cannot imagine that an Egyptian jail would be a very nice place to live in." He glanced over at Auset.

"Or give birth in."

Valerie darted glances back and forth between the gunman and Nekhbet, still silent in the semidarkness. What was going on? How had the woman who seemed to know so much fallen into the hands of this demented man? Was she after all just a clever Bedouin who had made some lucky guesses? Or were Rekemheb's mysterious friends so inept that they could be thwarted by one revenge-obsessed academic? None of it made any sense. "Just what do you want, then?"

Vanderschmitt's thick lips formed a slight pucker as he tilted his head back slightly, and he spoke deliberately, as if he had rehearsed his speech beforehand. "Here is the way I see the story unfolding. You will go quietly back to Brussels and resign from the department. You can explain your resignation with some womanly weakness: physical exhaustion, emotional breakdown. You'll think of something. For my part, I will return the mummy to its original location and, more importantly, refrain from reporting this theft. I suggest you accept my offer and thus avoid imprisonment."

Derek stepped into the light. "We have a counteroffer, Dr.

Vanderschmitt," he said, unfazed by the muzzle of the pistol a few inches from his chest. He drew the gold chain over his head and held it out. The jeweled pectoral sparkled in the light beam. "We will give you the amulet if you simply leave us-and the mummy-alone. Valerie returns to her position at the university, and all returns to normal.

Except of course for the fame the entire university will enjoy for the discovery. I am sure you will see your face often enough in the papers to satisfy you."

Vanderschmitt chuckled. "Ah, yes. The amulet of Meremptah. You see, I also read the tomb texts and discovered its existence. And I noticed that you omitted it from your of cial list of artifacts, Miss Foret." He took the golden plaque and appraised it in the light. "Magni cent. I can see why you were willing to risk your career for it."

* 197 *

He hefted the amulet, then dropped it into his shirt pocket. His mouth tightened into a triumphant smile for a moment and then sagged into astonishment.

"What...is that?"

Valerie glanced over her right shoulder to see the ghostly Ka of Rekemheb, his otherwise serene visage darkened by anger. In two paces he was before Vanderschmitt, reaching toward the necklace. The otherworldly voice spoke in a deadly monotone, and Valerie recognized the ancient curses.

Vanderschmitt backed away from the spectre. "No...no.

Impossible." He shook his head. "No such thing."

The shimmering nger touched him and he inched. At that moment, the Bedouin hurled herself sideways against her captor. In the same instant, both men lunged toward him, knocking the light from Valerie's hand. Both ashlights crashed on the ground, plunging the tomb into pitch blackness.

The gunshots were deafening.

* 198 *

CHAPTER XXVIII:.

SLOUCHING TOWARD THEBES.

God damn it!" Volker Vanderschmitt threw the jeep into gear and the vehicle lurched forward. The heat radiating from the steel hood blew across him in waves.

He looked down at the pistol on the passenger seat where he had tossed it. What the hell had gone wrong? He had been so careful, so diligent, even after the fools from Antiquities had dropped the case.

Even the Arab woman had proven surprisingly easy to single out from the tribe and to bribe, with minimal communication, to lead him to the fugitives. It should have been a nice clean confrontation, with him, however it turned out, as the hero of the day.

And what was that thing he saw? An impossibility. Already he was certain it was a hallucination. Or a half-naked guide he had not seen riding with the fugitives. Yes, that was probably it. And together with that native woman, they had attacked him. Three times he tried to knock them away with the pistol, and three times it had gone off. If anyone had been injured in the scuf e, they were to blame for it.

He patted the object in his shirt pocket. It was just too bad that he would have to hand over the amulet. But maybe not. There was no mention of it in the report, no photograph, only her word against his.

And she was a thief. In a way, you could see it as a just reward for a long and dif cult job that no one else was willing to do.

He had been a good detective after all, tracking them down, and without help from the damned Egyptians. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered with them; they were so corrupt. One couldn't tell the authorities from the thieves. "The people that dwelleth in the darkness."

The words of Isaiah came to him with a sudden clarity. There had always been that kind of darkness, and it was men like him who brought the * 199 *

light. Stalwart men who were willing to set aside ambition and comfort to ght in a righteous cause.

And that was it, when you got down to it, was it not? One was either of the party of God or the party of evil, a crusader or a heathen.

That was surely what was behind the dreams he kept having-of standing guard and sensing the great light at his back.

He took the amulet out of his pocket and pulled the chain with one hand over his head. The golden image slid heavily down inside his shirt and dangled between the soft swellings over his pectoral muscles.

A calm came over him, and he relaxed his foot on the gas pedal.

The jeep slowed perceptibly, and he found himself nodding as he re ected. It all made sense now. That was why he had been named chairman at precisely the time the splendid tomb was discovered. He had been chosen to prevent the theft, to set things right. It had been exhausting, dangerous even, but he accepted the sacri ce because that was the kind of man he was. A crusader. Yes. He liked that.

v The three fugitives struggled eastward. Two of them, wounded, held on to the swaying camel seat while the third one walked. Footprints of man and beast stretched out for kilometers behind them.

Derek shook himself out of his stupor and brushed away the insect that adhered to the sticky crust on his neck. The bleeding had stopped nally, and the nemes that he had pulled down over the top of his ear at least covered the open esh. The wound, it turned out, was slight, but the pain persisted. "Are you sure this is the shortest way?"

"Yes. Yes." Plodding forward and holding the camel's rein, Yussif checked Valerie's compass again. "Luxor is over there, east, always east. We are maybe halfway now. It will be okay."

"Of course." Derek tightened his grip on Auset, riding in front of him. With hands pressed together over the emergency bandage on her swollen abdomen, she leaned, feverish, against him. He held the water bottle in front of her mouth, and she drank from it obediently, without saying anything. He could sense her fear; it was his fear too. That the baby was already dead and the rest of them would die in the desert.

"You hear that, sweetie? It's not far. Yussif knows the way to Luxor. Just hold on a little longer." For the rst time in the journey, Auset was silent.

* 200 *

Derek wanted to talk, to be reassured. Things looked very bad, and he hadn't even told them his passport was gone. Left in the tomb, probably, or at the Bedouin camp; he had no idea. But now that was the least of their worries. "I can't believe he pulled the trigger," he rambled. "He already had everything he wanted-his damned tomb and the amulet too. And now he's killed someone."

No one responded. Hot wind ruf ed the wings of his nemes and seemed to sharpen the sound of Yussif's shoes crunching on sand.

"Where are they, those gods? You'd think they'd look after us a little better."

Derek squinted toward the direction they traveled, where the harsh sunlight was less piercing. Too dif cult to look elsewhere, least of all behind them toward the afternoon sun. High overhead vultures made a wide arc and seemed to circle back toward them. "Oh, great," he muttered. "Death by cliche."

"How much longer?" Auset rasped.

She still held her hands over the baby's mound, and Derek saw with alarm the bright red moisture seeping through her ngers. "Not much," he lied. "Just a few hours. Try to sleep. Yussif and I will take care of you. What more could a girl ask for, right?"

His eyes were so tired, his damaged ear rang endlessly, and the torn ear lobe throbbed. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the sounds, grateful not to be the one walking. Insects still buzzed, and the plodding footfall of both Yussif and the camel in different rhythms made a curious kind of syncopation. In the background he heard a soft rumbling.

Auset moaned again, and he jerked out of his trance. "Yussif, can we go any faster?"

The Arab looked back over his shoulder. "I am sorry, my friend.

We cannot run. Maybe you ask your ancestor's gods to give us nice truck."

Derek moved his head around, stretching the muscles in his neck. He blinked in disbelief. "Uh...you mean like those over there?"

He pointed off behind them where the harsh sun had kept them from looking. A small convoy of armored vehicles rumbled toward them.

Yussif stopped in his tracks, tugging downward on the reins. The camel honked furiously. "Egyptian army, Frontier Corps, I think."

The convoy spotted the wanderers at the same time, and one of the covered jeeps veered away from the line. In a few moments it pulled up * 201 *

next to the group. The passenger, an of cer, set one foot on the ground, but before he could stand, Yussif ran toward the jeep. He spoke rapidly, but it was clear from his gestures that he was asking for help. The one of cer nodded and spoke into a handheld radio.

"What did he say?" Derek asked anxiously.

"Is good news. This convoy has medical of cer. They are on way to Dakhla, but we are closer to Luxor so they will take Auset to hospital there."

"Thank God!" Derek said softly, and then spoke into Auset's ear.

"You see? Everything's going to be all right."

In a few moments a personnel carrier pulled up alongside the jeep. The wide red crescent painted on its roof identi ed it as a medical vehicle. A tall, angular man got out of it, and the crescent insignia at the top of his sleeve identi ed him as well. Yussif tapped the camel on the ank, and it kneeled for the dismount. The of cer leaned over and did a cursory exam of the feverish woman while two men came directly behind him with a canvas stretcher.

"She has a gunshot wound," Derek said to the of cer in English, and Yussif translated. "You'll be all right now," Derek repeated to Auset, releasing her.