v * 210 *

He drove as fast as he dared on the rough ground, careening around rocks that could puncture his remaining tires, trying to outrun the storm.

All the while, thoughts pounded in his head like drums of every volume and pitch. All right. He had killed her, just like in the dream, but it was self-defense, that was clear. She had stolen the mummy and the amulet, had chased him into the desert. For God's sake, she had broken his nose and then drawn a gun on him. He dabbed again at the blood that still trickled from both nostrils.

That damned gun! He reached over his shoulder and tossed it onto the backseat. What would he tell the police? Would he have to even admit nding her? He should have buried her. Maybe the sandstorm would cover her. What about the others? What lies would they tell?

The prickling wind blew off his hat. He peered through nearly shut eyes to keep the powdery particles from blinding him as they spun in the back draft behind the windshield. Soon they lled the air, forming a crust over his bloody upper lip and searing his nose with every inhalation. Slowing the jeep enough to free both hands, he opened his blood-soaked handkerchief. Quickly, clumsily, he tied the handkerchief in a triangle over his mouth and grabbed hold of the wheel again.

He could hear the sand blowing into the radiator; the engine was overheating, and the thick brown air was like a wall in front of him.

With a deafening bang, the engine seized up and the jeep rolled to a halt.

The searing wind tore at him, scouring his upper face and ears.

He pressed his eyes shut against the agonizing sting but could not keep the sand from collecting in lumps in the moist corners. They burned unbearably and so he untied the handkerchief and, holding his breath, wiped them clear.

The relentless wind caused the handkerchief to utter and twist in his hand, then snatched it and sent it ying away from him. He pulled his shirt up over his mouth and climbed over to the passenger side. If he could just get his face out of the wind. He curled up on the oor of the jeep, pressing his face between his knees and covering his head with his arms.

There was more sand than air now; he felt it lling his hair, trickling down inside of his shirt, lacerating his forehead. Powdery sand, tiny particles of the desert, crept along his nose and throat, minute soldiers breaching his defenses. He could not breathe slowly enough * 211 *

to keep them out. When the rst tiny, sharp pieces entered his lungs he began to cough. Each wracking cough required an inhalation, and each inhalation brought more cutting sand to tear him from within.

The spasms became more violent, the burning in his chest more agonizing. The bloody mucus he began to expel trickled down his chin, hardening quickly into lumps of brownish grit. As the suffocation began, he thrashed in wild paroxysms in the steel chamber of his jeep, smashing his head on the underside of the dash. Harder and harder he thrashed, inhaling re, coughing out pieces of his lungs, until the desert nally stilled him.

The sand continued hissing around the jeep, lling its interior, xing him in place for the scavengers of the red land.

* 212 *

CHAPTER XXX:.

ORPHEUS IN THE DESERT.

The of cer planted himself in front of Derek, one hand resting on his holster. But his short slender body, his narrow belly swelling out over his gun belt like an early pregnancy, severely undermined his posture of authority.

"Arrest? This is insane. I'm an American. I don't even look Sudanese, and I don't speak...whatever they speak down there. That woman in the car is...my wife."

"Your wife?" The of cer sucked air noisily through tobacco-brown teeth. "Your friend say is his wife. I think American guy does not dress like this." He reached over to pull off Derek's nemes and held it up in the air between them. "Maybe you want to change story." He let the cloth drop. "You go to Luxor, yes. You get passport to show you are okay, we let you go. To wife or anyplace."

He was joined by a second man, who was at once menacing and comical. His teeth protruded slightly, and when he did not press his lips together, the middle two slid out between them, rodent-like.

A third soldier joined them, moustached and scowling.

Derek replied to the rst of cer. "My friend told you. My passport is lost. We were attacked by a gunman. You can see I was wounded too." He tilted his head to show the scab-encrusted ear. "I must have lost it then."

"You explain this to Luxor police." The of cer produced a length of cord and wrapped it around Derek's wrists in front of him. He barked orders in Arabic, and the other two soldiers walked their prisoner forcefully toward a military personnel carrier.

"What is it with you guys and foreigners?" Derek twisted in their grasp. "This is the second time in three days I've been yanked around * 213 *

this way."

Ignoring him, the two pressed him into the back of the vehicle. It smelled of old sweat and cigarette smoke. Tooth-man, who seemed to know no English, started the motor while moustache-man got in on the passenger side and lit up a cigarette.

The driver took the car around in a wide curve and drove eastward away from the convoy. From his seat in the rear Derek looked between the shoulders of the two soldiers onto the road, searching for the medical van, but it was already out of sight.

"You guys gonna tell me what's going on here? I mean you can't really think I'm Sudanese. Uh...do either of you speak English?"

Neither man replied, although moustache-man raised his open hand to signal "silence."

Derek stared sullenly down at the cord that tied his hands together.

An amateurish job. Or maybe the of cer had simply gone through the motions of securing him and didn't care. He clenched his sts, stretching the cord, and then relaxed them. Yes, that would do it. He exed again.

The terrain had grown rougher. Boulders and rocky ridges rose on the landscape, and the straight desert road began to curve left and right around them. He could not be sure, but he reckoned they still headed eastward toward Luxor. Then the driver suddenly spun the wheel and took the car off the road.

"Where are you going? This can't be the way to Luxor."

The soldiers ignored him and began talking between themselves, glancing at him occasionally through the center mirror. He was certain he heard the words "fuloos" and "agnabee. " His vocabulary in Arabic was miniscule, but he had certainly learned the words for money and foreigner. If they were talking about his money, it was not a good sign.

Staring with feigned indifference out the side window, he worked more urgently on his bindings, clenching and relaxing, until he could force a thumb under one of the cords. With a minimum of movement, he unraveled the rope and then wrapped it back around loosely, grasping it so it looked the same as before.

Then he leaned forward again, studying the road for any indication of where they were taking him. Nothing but rock and sand. Moustache-man tapped another cigarette from a crumpled package and lit it with a slender Bic lighter.

* 214 *

Derek turned his head away as the man exhaled a long stream of smoke. Coughing, he stared sullenly through the side window.

Something caught his eye-a band of gray dust on the horizon. It was the movement that made it ominous, for as he watched, the band wavered and swelled at the center. "Hey. I think there's a sandstorm over there. That's not good, right?"

"What you think, American boy?" The smoker laughed and picked a speck of tobacco from his tongue. "This is stupid tourist car? No.

Egyptian army is good. Military motor is protect from sand."

American boy? Derek glanced down at his hands again. The alarm that had been buzzing softly at the back of his brain suddenly clanged.

They knew he wasn't the Sudanese. It wasn't an arrest, at least not anymore; it was a kidnapping.

He forced calm on his face while he considered every possibility.

It didn't look good. They had every advantage. What did he have other than free hands? They were armed soldiers and he was-an actor.

They were approaching a rocky outcropping. Flat, slightly bigger than a theater stage. And the sandstorm was getting closer. It was showtime. "Hey, guys. I have to go to the bathroom. You know.

Hammam. Toilette."

Moustache-man said something in Arabic, and the driver abruptly stopped the car. "Open door and piss."

"Uh, it's not that. It's the other. Really bad. Diarrhea." He rocked slightly, forward and back, suggesting urgency, dire consequences.

"You know? Tourist's sickness."

"Okay. Go and make shit." The soldier winced disgust. "You have one minute."

Derek opened his door with bound hands and walked toward the rocky slope as far as he dared. The driver leaned through his window pointing his pistol at him.

"One minute, yeah, sure. Okay." Derek looked around. The sandstorm was almost upon them. It was his only chance.

"More fast!" The soldier got out of the passenger side and stood with his pistol aimed over the hood of the car. "Shit or come back to car!"

With his back turned, Derek hunched over, pretending to undo his trousers. The thickening air hissed around him. From a crouching position, he threw the cord from his wrists and broke into a run.

* 215 *

The soldier's gun roared, and the bullet zinged off the rock beside him. He spun around to the other side of the outcropping, heard two more gunshots. The air was suddenly dense and biting wherever it touched skin. As he ran, he wrapped Yussif's turban around his head and face, leaving only a tiny slit for vision. Over the slit he wrapped a single layer of the turban and tucked the ends of it deep under the folds so it would not unravel. With faint, gauzy vision he groped his way along the rocky formation. A fourth gunshot sounded; a bullet struck close to his foot.

The irregular rock table afforded narrow footholds, and desperation drove him like a spider up to the top of it. The wind was full of needles, and he shut his eyes as he scrabbled along on hands and knees. Finally he felt the opposite edge. His pursuers had goggles, he knew, but by now they too were useless, for the air was opaque with sand. The blind pursued the blind.

And sightless, he had an advantage. On the rock table that was his little stage, he knew exactly where he was. Fifteen years of singing with spotlights scorching his eyes had taught him spatial memory. After a moment's glimpse, his perfect inner compass could point to every object. He let himself slide down on the other side over the rough stones that tore his shirt and abraded his skin. He felt the desert oor again, then stood for a fraction of a second, his back pressed against the stone.

Sand whirled around him, and he forced himself to breathe in shallow breaths through the four layers of cloth. The car he judged was...stage right...there, where the standing basses of the orchestra would have been. He groped his way sightlessly forward in the roiling dust.

"Oof!" He felt his knee bang into metal. He had misjudged slightly and hit the rear of the vehicle. He groped his way forward. In a moment he had found the door handle, and he threw himself into the car, ripping off his turban. Miraculously, the key was in the ignition, and at the rst rush of the engine, he slammed the motor into gear and lurched forward.

He drove wildly into the gray and yellow maelstrom, praying there were no rocks in the way, but the desert oor stayed smooth. Finally, when the sound of gun re seemed distant enough to be harmless, he stopped. His heart pounding, he pressed trembling ngers to the sides of his head.

* 216 *

Now what? How long did a sandstorm last, he wondered, and could he ever nd the road again afterward? How long could he hold out sitting in the Land Rover? He looked around inside.

A walkie-talkie lay on the dashboard. He chuckled, imagining himself using it to inform the Egyptian army that he had hijacked one of their vehicles. He leaned over toward the passenger side. A wooden box on the oor held ammunition for the soldiers' sidearms. In the side pocket he found a manual in Arabic, metal tools whose purpose he could not guess, a map in Arabic, and a ashlight.

The air brightened in front of him. An avenue seemed to open, inviting him forward. At rst he did not budge, fearing to wander aimlessly following a ckle wind until he ran out of gas. But the wind behind him became stronger, the crash of swirling sand more violent, piling up on the rear window. To avoid being engulfed, he drove forward, red-eyed, toward calmer air.

Urged forward in ts and starts, he had time to think. He agonized rst about himself and then about the others. Auset, dangerously wounded, and the baby-his baby-in mortal danger. He clenched the steering wheel with dusty hands. And Valerie, who had insisted on staying with the dying Bedouin woman. Where was she now? Had the Bedouins thanked her for bringing back one of their own-murdered?

It was unlikely.

He drove toward nothing but vague light, until nally the storm dissipated. When the air cleared he saw nothing but more desert and, in the distance, a spot of vibrating blackness. He drove toward it, apprehension turning to dread. When he grasped what he was seeing, his stomach lurched.

v He stopped next to the jeep. "Oh, my God," he whispered as the roiling mass of black feathers and bobbing leathery heads broke apart and the smaller scavengers uttered away. The larger birds, fearless, hulked close by, waiting. He forced himself out of his vehicle.

There he was, or the grotesque remains of him, crouching on the passenger side half packed in sand. The vultures had eaten all they could reach, from the face and neck and downward into the chest; only * 217 *

the shirt had slowed their penetration. Below the rolled-up sleeves, the forearms were picked meatless and one of the hands was torn off. The shredded shirt was still buttoned over the half-devoured chest. On the car seat, near his knee, its chain obviously broken, was the amulet. It con rmed the identity of the faceless carcass which that morning had been a man.

Derek snatched the object and then, leaning on the rear of the sand-scoured vehicle, he retched.

He wiped his face with his sleeve and tried to get his bearings.

How much longer could he last before he died of thirst? Keeping his head turned away from the grisly corpse, he looked into the rear of the jeep for water, for anything. Then he saw it and whispered, "Oh Jesus."

Her fedora lay on the backseat. He plunged his arm into the piles of sand feeling for anything solid, dreading to nd a part of her. His hand struck something hard, and he pulled it out. Her revolver. He blew off the gritty powder, opened the chamber, and emptied the cylinder into his hand. Five empty shells and a loaded one.

He thought back; it had red only three times in the cave. The other two must have been in the desert. But who had shot whom?

He turned slowly, his eyes sweeping the barren land. There was something in the distance. Vultures...no...a single large vulture lighted on something and uttered its wings. Another carcass? He got behind the wheel again and rumbled toward it, the word "carcass" tightening his stomach again. "Please, Jesus, Hathor, Mary," he murmured, "please let it be a dead animal."

When he saw the familiar boot protruding from the sand, he burst into tears. He dropped to his knees, pushed away the sand that half covered her, and lifted her up into his arms. He held her against him and pressed his cheek against her cold forehead.

The scavenger had not own away, but watched him from a short distance. He threw sand at it, cursing.

Bereft, he stood up and carried the limp form to the car, setting it gently in the passenger seat. He went around to the other side and got in beside her, gently brushing the sand away from her hair. He let his hand rest awhile on her cheek and cried again. It was like a part of him at the end of his arm had been rendered dead.

* 218 *

Something thumped and he jumped violently. The vulture had leapt to the hood of the vehicle and stared at him through the windshield.

The long neck was covered with a soft down, and a ring of white feathers formed a sort of collar at the base. The ferocious beak that could penetrate leather and rip out organs was slightly open as the bird panted. Its eyes, ageless and black, peered at him. Then the creature turned, extended vast wings with foot-long black plumes at the end.

The wings wafted once, twice, and the heavy body lifted on feather-trousered legs from the car.

Derek followed it with his eyes as it rose from the desert oor into the air and swept gracefully toward a ridge. A high ridge with three vertical ssures. It was too late in the day to see the shadows that would identify the cave entrance, but he would nd it again, damn it, no matter how long it took. He would take her to Rekemheb, who traveled between the worlds, who knew both the living and the dead. He started the car.

v He puzzled for a moment about how he could hold the ashlight while carrying her body with both arms. Then it occurred to him that he could wrap the long cloth of the turban around him diagonally and anchor the light with it on his shoulder. It wobbled with every step but stayed in place.

Thus equipped, he lifted her limp body again and carried it down the silt-softened tunnel. In the burial chamber the body of the Bedouin woman still lay near the sarcophagus, and he knelt down to carefully place Valerie alongside of her. Two innocent women dead. And in Luxor maybe a third. It was more than he could bear.

He pounded with both sts on the stone. "Rekemheb! Come back.

Come up. Come from wherever the hell you are and help me!"

The Ka appeared over the two women as if he had been present all along, startling him.

"Look what we've done to her," Derek sobbed. "You never said this would happen."

"Be comforted, grandchild. The amulet has already shown it to you."

* 219 *

"This thing?" Derek yanked the object from his shirt pocket. "If this is what she died for, I don't want it any longer," he said, and threw it onto the lid of the sarcophagus. The chain clattered as it slid over the stone.

"All this time you had this and you never looked at it." The Ka took up the pectoral from where it lay and tilted it before the face of the ashlight. "You see? This is her own Ka that stands before the Balance.