She said something unintelligible and fell limply into the arms of the medics. They laid her out ef ciently, if not gently, on the narrow military stretcher and set off at a brisk walk.

Derek slid off the camel and stood uncertain as soldiers carried the mother of his child away from him. He could not even appeal to Yussif, who stood outside the vehicle in conversation with the medical of cer.

The of cer climbed into the van next to the stretcher and looked out, obviously waiting for something to be clari ed or settled. Outside, Yussif argued with another man who had just arrived, also apparently an of cer. This one seemed angry, and he kept his hand resting on his sidearm.

Finally, Yussif threw up his hands, and the two men walked back to where Derek stood bewildered. Yussif was agitated. He kept looking back at the van where, in the open door, the medical of cer still called out to him. Something was going wrong. Very wrong.

The of cer stopped in front of him. Shorter and bee er than the medic, he had sagging pockmarked cheeks that accentuated his scowl.

His desert camou age uniform was ill- tting, and the shirt strained at its buttons over his midsection. Derek braced himself.

* 202 *

Yussif said, "He asks who you are and why you are in the desert.

I tell him you are tourist traveling with us, but he does not believe. Or does not want to. He looks for Sudanese assassin."

"The assassin again? Did you tell him I'm an American?"

"Of course. But you are not dressed like American, so he wants to see identi cation. Show him your passport, quickly, so we can go."

"I...I don't have it. It's lost. Explain to them, Yussif. You know what to say."

The driver of the medical vehicle started his motor, and Yussif began backing toward it. He raised both hands and called out to Derek, "Please, my friend. Auset is in great danger and maybe die. Someone must to take care of her on the way. We have to go and you must to explain yourself."

Then he seemed to change his mind and came back again, unwrapping the long blue turban from around his head. He draped it around Derek's neck and clasped his hands in front of him, as if in prayer. "Forgive me, my friend. I must go. You will explain to these men and come later to Luxor. Everything to be okay. Inshaa' allah."

Yussif turned again and ran toward the medical truck. Without looking back, he climbed into the passenger side and pulled the door closed. In a moment it drove off eastward, spreading a low wake of dust behind and to the side.

Derek still stood before the pockmarked of cer, who in the meantime had waved two soldiers over to join him. "Do you speak English?" he asked anxiously. "Does anyone speak English?"

"I speak English." The of cer drew his pistol. "You are under arrest."

* 203 *

* 204 *

CHAPTER XXIX:.

PYRRHIC DEFEAT.

The failing ashlight on the lid of the sarcophagus sent a weak cone of light across the chamber. Beneath it, crouching against the stone side, Valerie held the limp form of Nekhbet in her arms. The satiny hair, still smelling of cedar, brushed against her chin.

The yellow light grew smaller, browner, and nally faded out, and she was once again in the black punishment closet, in sti ing punitive darkness. She gave herself to it, remembering the strange violent kiss and the delirium afterward. What had happened?

She pressed her lips to the cooling esh of the woman's forehead.

She had been puzzling so long that her reason had collapsed, like a muscle worked to the point of failure. Now the many questions that crowded in on one another cancelled each other out and left her with only emotion. Regret, longing, and an overwhelming sense of guilt.

She buried her face again in the thick hair. Whoever the strange woman was, she had lain in Valerie's arms and had been mortal after all.

"You must not linger here. There is a prophecy to ful ll."

She opened her eyes to the dull luminescence hovering in the darkness. She was no longer impressed. "Get the hell away from me,"

she hissed. "Take your damned prophecy elsewhere."

"No, you must take your mourning elsewhere." He folded himself up next to her, illuminating her from the side in a dull blue-green light.

"You cannot weaken in this fashion. You are chosen to accomplish a great thing."

"No, you've got it wrong. I don't belong to this 'chosen' lineage, although I threw away my career for it for some myth of the gods."

* 205 *

"No myth. The gods were real and will be real again."

"I can't tell anymore what's real or unreal, what's my world or your world. I only know that this woman seemed to care for me. Now, because of us, she's dead. If she was working for you, it didn't do her much good. Now I've got to take her back to her people and try to explain why she's dead. I don't even know why myself."

"You foolish child. You have given up after only a few days and a single death, when I lost everything and yet waited thousands of years."

His tone became gentle. "Did you think there would be no sacri ce to save the world?"

"Save the world? Is that what we're trying to do? Well, we aren't doing very well, are we?"

The Ka dimmed and brightened again, as if with faltering current.

"No. We are not doing well. And that is why you must confront this murderer before you give in to personal sorrow. He is important. If you will not pursue him for my amulet, you must bring him to justice for this woman's death. It is better for your heart to do this than to carry her back to the shepherds, who will not thank you for it."

"Pursue Vanderschmitt? Perhaps you haven't noticed that he's in a jeep while I have a camel?"

"Many things will stop a machine that will not stop a camel. Are you afraid?"

She felt the dead woman's breast pressed against her own in the intimate embrace that death allowed and was ashamed. Infatuation did not cease as abruptly as life did. "Yes. Of course I'm afraid. He has my gun, after all. You know what a gun is, don't you? That's the thing that killed her and hurt Auset and Derek. My gun." She closed her eyes at the irony, which was unbearable.

"You have a weapon he does not have-the desert gods."

"Desert gods? They've been pretty useless so far, haven't they?"

"Do not speak disrespectfully of these gods which one day may speak for you."

"I'm sorry." She sighed. "But what's the point? I can't catch up with him."

"My Ba has seen him. He travels con dently, with your weapon far from his hand. Shu will delay him. And when you face this man, you will atter him. He has a high opinion of himself, but he is not strong.

This is a thing you cannot let pass."

* 206 *

She again pressed her forehead against the face of the dead woman. Then she laid the body gently down beside the sarcophagus.

For a moment she knelt, studying the dark form, and then she kissed the cold, slightly open lips. "No, it will not pass."

v The ferocious afternoon sun beat down on her back, baking away precious moisture, and she took another drink of water from the goatskin. When she recorked it she saw the lines of red-brown stain around her nails. She had blood on her hands. As much as he did.

His wheel tracks in the sand were clear and led in the direction they had come a few hours before. But he was way ahead of her, increasing the distance every minute. How in hell was she going to catch up with him on a camel?

She looked northeastward and saw the creeping ridge of gray.

Wind, stirring up sand. "Shu, God of Wind," she said into the air. "Do you know a Ka named Rekemheb? He seems to know you. Or a Bedouin woman named Nekhbet? I am doing this for them. For an amulet and for justice. So if you can help me out somehow..."

The sandstorm was still far away, could go in any direction. She drew a checkered scarf from her pack to cover her face and urged the camel into a trot.

Then she saw them, spots in the distance. Was it a mirage? Her weary eyes burned from staring at lines in the sand. No. She recognized the objects-and the location. It was the wadi that held the Bedouin well, and the larger spot was a jeep. She rode closer, eyes riveted on the second moving spot until she could make it out clearly.

A man in trousers with something white around his hips knelt facing away from her. Her camel padded closer, and she gradually made sense of the scene. Tools lay on the ground near the rear wheel; he must have had to change the tire. It would have been an awful job in the heat. His kneeling made sense; he had tied his shirt around his waist and was washing himself at the well. Then he stood up, still facing away, his back bare to the waist.

He must have nally heard her, for he turned around and she saw the glitter on his chest. Of course. His trophy. Well, she had something better to offer, but she would have to make her proposal quickly. She * 207 *

took the ivory case out of her knapsack and hung it on her shoulder by the leather strap.

"Stop right there," he called out when she was a dozen meters away.

She did not reply and let the camel drift closer, puzzled. She had never seen him shirtless, and she guessed he took pains never to be seen that way. His upper body was almost womanly; his arms were soft, unmuscled, and his pectorals swelled like breasts. Below his waist, his torso widened into plump hips. The belt of his trousers had dropped below his swollen belly, and the shirt tied around his hips rendered them even more pronounced. There was something distastefully familiar in his long face and his pear-shaped body wrapped in white cloth.

She stared for a moment, as if he were a puzzle piece she held, until it came to her. He was the image, complete with white kilt and royal ornament, of the monotheist Akhnaton. Derek had been right.

"You are persistent, Miss Foret. I will grant you that. Not unlike myself."

She was above him, still mounted, and on the slope above the wadi.

He had to look up, and he tilted his head a fraction, grudging respect.

"But what do you hope to achieve by pursuing me? Whatever happened back in that cave is on your head." He untied the twisted sleeves from around his waist and drew his shirt on again, but the amulet chain was still visible, and the Akhnaton image still spooked from him.

She lowered the camel for the awkward dismount. "You needn't have run away, you know. Nothing much happened in the cave but a lot of noise," she lied. "Well, you did take a nasty slice out of Derek's ear. They're all on their way to El Dakhla now. You scared the hell out of us."

"You deserved scaring." He rolled up his right sleeve in precise turns of each cuff, over and over, to his elbow.

She kept her tone bright. "You know, if you hadn't escalated our little disagreement so quickly, you would have seen there are things we can agree on. I found the tomb and the world knows it, but my resignation will not help you nearly as much as my cooperation. You can be another Howard Carter, if I go along with it. And I would...for the mummy."

" Why this obsession with a mummy? What's so special about it?

If it's the jewels you wanted, you could have simply taken the necklace out of its cof n and left."

* 208 *

His question took her off guard. Should she tell him? "You think this whole thing was about the amulet?" She shook her head. "It's nothing like that." She paused again while he rolled up the second sleeve. "You know what a Ka is, don't you? Well, this mummy has a Ka-that's what you saw in the tomb."

"What are you talking about?" He squinted at her for a long moment, as if studying her face for clues. "You mean to tell me you have been carrying around a corpse because you think it has a ghost?

The heat has gotten to you, Miss Foret."

"I thought I was crazy too, at rst." She sauntered closer to the jeep. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the pistol on the passenger seat. "But he's real, I can assure you. If you talked to him, he would tell you amazing things. Things that would change everything you ever believed in."

"Oh, really." He snorted. "You call yourself a scientist, but you stand there with a straight face and propose a myth that twenty centuries of Christianity has laid to rest." He shook his head. "The ever-hysterical female. I should have expected that."

"Well, perhaps you will let me keep my illusions," she said, changing tack. She stood between him and the jeep. "But I'm willing to give you another artifact in exchange for the amulet." She laid her hand on the ivory and gold case that hung on her shoulder. "A scribe kit, in ivory and gold, from the court of Meremptah." She held the scroll case up for him to see.

He stared at the artifact without touching it, appraising its authenticity. She had his attention.

"You know, we're a lot alike, Dr. Vanderschmitt." She let go of the scroll case, letting it simply hang from her shoulder where he could see it. "We're both good archaeologists, and I think at the end of the day, we want the same thing."

"You have no idea what I want, and we are not at all alike." His eyes moved to her face. "But you are just like a woman I once knew. I saw through her, however, just as I see through you."

She was in front of him then, and when he lifted his right hand to take the scroll case from her shoulder, she reached behind her into the jeep and snatched the pistol from the seat.

He reacted instantly, seizing her hand and forcing it skyward.

In defense she pounded upward with her other st against his nose.

Something seemed to give with a faint snap. He grunted in sudden pain, * 209 *

and his thick lips went white. Bubbles of blood appeared at his nostrils as he exhaled, and when they burst, blood streamed over his lips and dripped onto his shirt. He leaned against her, forcing her up against the jeep and knocking her hat into the backseat. The pistol red once into the air, causing them both to inch.

The pain of his nose seemed to stun him, while the adrenaline of rage pumped through her, and she managed to force him a step backward. "Murderer," she snarled. "You are pathetic."

"What?" His eyes brightened at the word, and the skin of his face increased in color. His grip tightened on her wrist, and he twisted her hand back until the gun barrel pointed down at her.

"Corruption," he grunted, his breathing audible and wet. Panting, he forced his thumb into the space over her nger and pressed down.

"An offense to men and God."

A white-hot bolt plunged through her. She gasped as agonizing nausea erupted upward to her lungs and downward to her groin.

Dropping the pistol, she stood frozen in disbelief, pressing both hands over the spreading stain above her belt. She crumpled to her knees.

He watched her gasping, and for the briefest moment he understood her helpless outrage, recalled his own a lifetime ago. Before he had found God. Then lucidity returned and he realized he had nally made his point. He stepped back and pulled a folded handkerchief from his pocket. Pressing it to his throbbing, bloody nose, he bent over and retrieved the pistol from the ground. "You see what you've done?" he said almost ruefully. "If you had only left well enough alone."

Dust swirled around him as he turned away. Without looking back, he climbed back into the jeep, driving off northeastward, the wind-driven sand hissing against his windshield.

Valerie still knelt. Her viscera a glowing mass that swelled with every heartbeat, she watched him with dimming vision. The increasing wind tangled her long hair and coated her face with the light brown powder of the desert. Slowly, pain faded along with consciousness. As if in Muslim prayer, she curled forward onto the sand, and life seeped away through her limp hands.