25.

Assassin Merde! Merde! Merde! Why hadn't she thought to get Auset's parents' telephone number? And why wasn't Derek answering his cell phone? She'd called three times from towns on the way north but never got through. What the hell good was it to have one of those gadgets if you didn't turn it on?

Zamalak, the road sign said. Finally. She careened around a corner to the house of Mahmoud al Fakhir and parked the rented jeep half on the sidewalk. She rang. And rang again, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

The housemaster opened. " Ah, Duktura. Ahlan wa sahlan. " He stepped back to admit her; his always-solemn face told nothing.

"She took a breath. "Is everyone all right?"

"Alhamdullilah," he reassured her and led her down the corridor to the garden. Auset sat again at the tea table next to the kitchen.

Valerie looked around, alarmed. "Where's Nefi ?"

Auset stared at her with a puzzled expression. "Nefi 's fi ne. She's with my mother, upstairs. Are you all right? You look harried."

"I came as fast as I could. Someone was in the tomb and opened the sarcophagus. Rekemheb's mummy was smashed. There was no ka, of course. I did the ceremony, but it was all useless. He's gone."

"Oh, no." Auset dropped her eyes wearily. "I'm sorry. What does that mean for us, then? Do you suppose-?"

"That's what I rushed back to tell you. It can' t be a coincidence that Rekemheb's mummy was smashed and Yussif was killed in the same week. I'm sure now that someone-or something-is out to harm us all." She glanced up toward the second story where the private rooms were. "Where's Derek?"

"He's with his stepfather at the Evangelical Church. There were hecklers at the sermon yesterday in Alexandria so Derek went along today. To 'keep things calm,' he said."

"The Evangelical Church. That's in Al Qal'a, street, isn' t it?"

Valerie was on her feet.

* 102 *

Vulture's Kiss "Yes, why? I don't think you need to worry. They've got guards, after all."

"Yussif's train had guards too." Valerie hurried toward the door.

She heard the reverend' s voice in the atrium even before she opened the double doors to the sanctuary and saw him.

Carter stood at the center , on the top step before the altar , and held up a Bible. A fi nger was tucked between the pages, as if he had just been reading from it. He spoke, full throated, like a man used to preaching in lar ge spaces. "Thessalonians tells us that the Lord will descend from heaven with a thunderous cry...and the dead in Christ shall rise up." An interpreter stood just behind him with a microphone and repeated each sentence in Arabic. Reverend Carter seemed to be used to a staccato delivery. He spoke in short phrases and paused after each one, letting his argument build.

The air was electric. Voices from the front rows said "Amen,"

but another, from the rear, called out "Kazaab!" Carter clearly did not understand that he was called a liar , and he held his Bible up higher .

"And in Revelation, 'I saw heaven open up...and there was a rider called Faithful who judges and makes war . His eyes are like blazing fi re.'" He widened his eyes and said "blazing fi re" a notch louder, as if to impress upon them the mortal peril they were in.

One or two voices called out again, "Kazaab!"

Then he dropped his voice, and the audience fell silent. "He is dressed in a robe that is stained with blood...and his name is the Word of God."

Valerie noticed the two goons standing at a slight distance on both sides of him. They held their hands loosely clasped together in front of them, but it was impossible not to know that they were bodyguards.

Their presence made it seem like he was delivering an ultimatum instead of a sermon.

Derek was harder to fi nd, but then she spotted the back of his head. He sat in the front pew leaning forward. How he must have hated being there. She wondered if the good reverend had preached about the sin of homosexuality.

Keeping Derek in sight, she edged along the side aisle of the * 103 *

church, glancing around quickly for anything that seemed abnormal.

But there was no normal. The whole event, a Christian evangelical preacher's attempt at a tent revival in the middle of Cairo, was already bizarre. And every face in the congregation seemed angry . She had almost reached the front row and wondered how to get Derek'

s attention without disruption.

Derek sat up suddenly, and she realized the tone of the sermon had changed. She had missed a few important words.

"...for you are my brothers in Christ, if only you let yourselves be. But I tell you, the land bordered by the Nile on one side, and the Euphrates on the other..." He reached out an arm as if to show the direction. "By the Mediterranean Sea and by the wilderness of Jordan."

The translator repeated each phrase in Arabic right after him. "All this is the land given by God to Israel..." The rumbling in the crowd started.

"And will once again be Israel! My brothers-"

As if they had been waiting for those very words, a dozen dissenters rose en masse. Another handful joined them shouting, "Liar. Crusader, go home!" They repeated the words again and again, shaking their fi sts over their heads; some of them left the pews and advanced toward the steps where Carter stood. From behind the protesters, others, apparent evangelicals, shouted their own slogans and advanced as well, so that the audience as a whole seemed to swell in two waves toward the front.

The two bodyguards moved in to stand by Carter. Derek stood up and pivoted around, holding out his arms on both sides as if to catch something, though nothing was thrown. Then the belligerent crowd closed in around the four foreigners and Valerie lost sight of them.

A gunshot sounded, and the entire pack exploded outward from the center. Valerie ran along the front pew , buffeted by terrifi ed men trying to fl ee.

Reverend Carter had moved to the side and leaned panting up against the pulpit that he had not used. His two guards were nowhere in sight. Maybe they were chasing the gunman; she didn' t know. All she could see was the appalling sight in front of her.

Derek lay on his back on the steps, and she rushed to take him into her arms. She ripped open his shirt to see a thin stream of blood pumping from the center of his chest and covered it with her hand, * 104 *

Vulture's Kiss unnecessarily, for soon the bloodstream stopped as the heart ceased to pump.Kneeling over the limp body , she looked up at the trembling clergyman. "You bastard," she wailed in helpless fury . "You smug, ignorant bastard!"

* 105 *

26.

Antioch, June 1098 There it lay, on a silver platform on the altar . Four candles illuminated it in the somber darkness of the church.

A.

crumbling, rusted spearhead with a handbreadth of rotted wood remaining for its shaft, lay in all its holy power upon a silken pillow .

Ludolf dropped to his knees before it, his hands shaking, wondering if he dared touch it, the Holy Lance that had pierced the side of the Son of God.

He placed a hand on his own side, imagining for a moment what it must have felt like to be pierced. His own battle wounds had thus far only been bruises and a blow to the head. He shivered at the thought of the exquisite pain of the new lance blade slicing through naked fl esh.

He covered his face and prayed. "Thank you, Lord, for this miracle and sign that has reawakened us to victory. Grant that we prove worthy of it and of His sacrifi ce."

Truly it had been a miracle that had saved them, snatched them from the very jaws of defeat. The weeks and months had been a sore test indeed. Famine had tortured them all, man and knight, so that a horse's head without the tongue was sold for three solidi, the guts of a goat for fi ve. And then-his heart swelled to think of it-the Holy Lance had been found under the fl oor of the church. Despite their ravening hunger and exhaustion, the wounds on their feet from the days of penitence, they had borne it before them as they advanced against the Turks, and it had brought them victory.

"I knew you'd be here, Ludolf. The fi rst place you would come when you woke up from your injury."

He looked back over his shoulder toward the familiar voice. Even in the dim light, he recognized his cousin' s bulky outline. "You know me well, Gilbert."

Ludolf took hold of the prof fered arm and drew himself up. He blessed himself elaborately and allowed himself to be led away from the altar. "Antioch is Christian again, Gilbert."

"Yes, though it reeks of slaughter."

* 106 *

Vulture's Kiss "That is the smell of sacrifi ce. Salvation is costly."

They reached the portal together and stepped one by one around the great wooden door of the church. By the morning light, Ludolf could see what darkness had concealed when he arrived. Bodies were piled in the corners of the square, where they had obviously been dragged after the slaughter. Emaciated dogs gnawed on them here and there until someone shooed them away.

I do not think God asks for that kind of sacrifi ce." Gilbert nodded toward the three cadavers that still hung from their heels on a scaf fold at the south end of the square. Their torsos were slit open from crotch to chest, and half-dried viscera hung out over their faces. "It was said they had swallowed their gold to hide it from us." He shrugged. "The soldiers never found any, though."

"You see it backward, my friend. The death of heathens is not their sacrifi ce. Rather it is our suf fering and sacrifi ce to shed their blood against our gentler natures. We are the martyrs here, and God has rewarded us for our piety."

A rumbling from a side street drew their attention.

Two women, old and bent with exhaustion, were drawing a handcart into the square.

Ludolf stepped forward to confront them, laying his hand on the hilt of his sword. But as they neared, he saw the wooden crosses hanging from their necks. "What's this?" he demanded. "Christians in Antioch? Or is this some mockery?"

The two women let the cart handle fall and groveled before him.

"What are they saying, Gilbert? You speak their Greek. Tell me."

"They say they are daughters of Italian pilgrims who settled here a long time ago and never left. They come from their quarter, a Christian quarter, which is burning now. They ask if they can pass and leave the city to bury their children."

Ludolf walked to the rear of the cart and lifted the cloth that covered it. Five cadavers lay there, two young men and two women, variously slashed and battered, and the torn skirt on one of them suggested rape. A small child lay horizontally across the others. Ludolf dropped the cloth.

"If they do not follow Rome, they are not Christians," he snif fed.

"Let them go. God will reckon with them later."

The two women leaned their weight onto the crossbar and forced the cart into motion again.

Ludolf turned away from the sight of them. "Salvation is costly."

* 107 *

27.

Mourning The fountain in the center of Mahmoud al Fakhir's garden gurgled peacefully , indif ferent to the pall of sorrow over Valerie and Auset, who watched it numbly. Auset sat with crossed legs, tapping the fi ngers of her open hand on her knee to some senseless inner rhythm.

Valerie propped one elbow on the back of the garden bench and rested her cheek on her knuckles.

They watched the two-year-old Nefi , who didn't know what death was, feed crumbs of pita bread to half a dozen swallows.

Auset shifted in her seat and sighed. "They've abandoned us, haven't they? The gods, I mean."

Valerie brooded for a moment. "I don't understand. Nekhbet sent us here. Derek's job was to look after you, and I was supposed to rescue Rekemheb. But both efforts have ended in disaster. And we still don't even know if Derek and Yussif are in the underworld."

"Underworld!" Auset spat out the word. "Don't tell me about the underworld. Yussif has been dead for two weeks now and Derek for four days. If there was any chance they would come back as kas, we would have seen them by now. Besides, the gods never told us-were we supposed to have them embalmed like the pharaohs? Impossible, with my father stepping in and arranging a quick Muslim burial, and the good reverend shipping his stepson to Georgia for a Christian one."

"You're right." Valerie spoke in a monotone. "They never told us the rules. And there's been no sign. Nothing."

More birds had come to join the swallows. Hoopoes and iridescent green-winged sunbirds lit on the rim of the fountain or the fl at stones below it. They assembled with unbirdlike calm, except for an occasional twitch when a droplet of fountain spray struck them.

"Will you go home now?" Auset asked. "Please don' t. Not right away."

Valerie shook her head. "I've nothing to go home for . I would have gone to Derek's funeral in the US on Friday, but Reverend Carter * 108 *

Vulture's Kiss made it clear I'm not welcome there."

"Despicable, isn't it, that he can come here and claim Derek that way. Simply take him away from us. A man who disapproved of his very identity. Well, he won't get his hands on everything." Auset took hold of a black canvas travel bag beside the bench and dragged it around in front of her.

"Oh, God, I forgot about his personal things. I suppose Carter will want those before he leaves."

"I'm sure he will, but in the meantime, I removed what I know Derek would want you to have." She drew out a small leather case with a belt hook at the back.

"First of all, his cell phone. It's one of those you can put a card in for each country. There's a battery charger too."

Valerie sat down, appalled at handling an object that still seemed to have Derek' s touch. Yet it was a sort of relief to have something purposeful to do that he would have wanted. She caressed the metal casing. "He always told me I should have one of these. But it seemed like such an expensive toy."

"The phone is nothing. Look what that foolish man carried around with him. Just imagine the trouble he would have gotten into if they'd inspected his bags at the airport." Auset handed over something fl at and heavy, wrapped in a silk handkerchief.

Valerie's eyes pooled again as she unwrapped it. "The amulet," she whispered and tilted it in the light, studying the fi ligree gold plaque with the image of the Great Balance, attended by the gods of the underworld.

"I think he must have brought this to give to Nefi . She's the next one in Rekemheb's line."

"If you say so. I'll put it in a safe place until it' s the right time to explain everything to her." Auset slid it into the side pocket of her skirt and continued the inventory. "He had a lot of money in his wallet and I left it all there. I don't want it and don't want to be accused of stealing.