She patted the shirt pocket where the scrap of paper was. "Thank you for the information, Najya. I'll keep you posted."

Valerie walked through the doorway, passing Harry. "It's all yours now."

* 116 *

Vulture's Kiss

29.

Muslim Widow The door opened once again to Fahd's stony face.

"Is everything all right?" Valerie asked spontaneously, then felt foolish. There had been two deaths in the family, and a foreigner- a complete stranger-was threatening to take away their grandchild.

Nothing was all right.

They were halfway down the corridor then, and she could see into the garden. It was peaceful, as before, and the usual garden birds still lit on the fountain rim. A few swooped back and forth between the fountain and the table, apparently waiting for crumbs. Auset was busy serving tea to her father and to a cleric.

The mullah was an imposing man. Even sitting he seemed lar ge.

He wore a loose abaya, the same shade of dark gray as his full beard.

Both were offset by a white turban. He was saying something to Auset as she fi lled his tea glass, although he didn' t look directly at her . She said something in reply that Valerie couldn't hear and then returned to the kitchen.

Valerie touched Fahd's arm. "If you don't mind, I'd like to go and help Auset."

"Yes, Miss. As you wish." He led her past the surprised men to the open doorway, then withdrew.

Auset looked up from her tea tin. "Oh, I'm glad you're back. I could use someone to talk to."

Valerie set her backpack on the fl oor. "I've got good news. My journalist friend gave me the name of a lawyer who can help us. But she said your case sounds strong anyhow."

Auset took the paper, appearing sullen.

Valerie sat down at the work table. "Who's that cleric?"

Auset poured tea into two new glasses and handed one to Valerie.

"A mullah from my father 's mosque. I'm surprised he'd even come here. He disapproves so strongly of my Jewish mother."

"He's here because of Carter?"

* 117 *

"Yes, to give the Quranic solution. Everything, of course, has a Quranic solution."

"Why is he advising your father?" Valerie held the hot glass by the top and bottom and took a sip. "You're the one who's threatened."

Auset's lips slid sideways. "That' s the way they do it. 'The man is the shepherd of the family .' That means my father is in char ge of everything, even my children."

"So what do you suppose he' s advising? It might be good to know." Valerie realized her tone was as cynical as Auset's.

"Well, I'm damned sure going to fi nd out." She drew Valerie to the corner of the kitchen where a side window looked out toward the tea table. The wooden slats of the shade could be tilted downward, as they were today, both to keep out sunlight and to block visibility from the outside. Sitting close to the window , however, they had a partial view of both men, though only from the chest down. They could hear their voices clearly, but see only the bottoms of their two gray beards moving up and down in conversation. Though the mullah was younger by a decade than his host, his longer , fuller beard seemed to signify a superior authority, and his word was, in the literal sense, the law.

The beard of al Fakhir was talking. "I speak only to you and to no one else of my shame. I trust in your confi dence as well as your knowledge."

The longer beard nodded assurance, and al Fakhir continued.

"Yussif, may his soul rest with God, was not the father of my grandchild.

The father of my grandchild was a foreigner , an American, but like Yussif, he was killed. Now the father of that American lays claim to the child. What does the Quran say in such matters? Which claim is the greater in this case? That of the mother 's father or the father 's stepfather?"

The mullah tapped softly on the table with large fi ngers. Dark hairs curled on both sides of each knuckle. "Both Quran and Hadith declare women to have primary right to custody of children if they are of sound mind and good character, if they are good Muslims and their children are Muslims. But if she keeps the company of non-believers, there is an impediment and the woman may forfeit the right to custody."

"This only confuses the matter , for my daughter does keep the company of non-believers, as I do myself, and the father of the father is a Christian."

* 118 *

Vulture's Kiss The dark-haired hand lifted to the gray beard, stroking wisdom from it. "The claim of a non-believer on a Muslim child is, on the face of it, inadmissible. But if the father of the child is a non-believer , the secular courts may disregard Islamic law . That would be unfortunate.

You must protect your daughter from this taint. It would be wise to fi nd a Muslim husband for her as soon as possible."

"She is of an independent nature," al Fakhir said. "Even before she went to New York to study. And the child, although she is the joy of our house now, will make it hard for her to remarry."

"A child is always blessed in the eyes of Allah, must be cared for, and must never suf fer the sins of the parent. But if the mother is wanton, there is always the surgery."

"No." Al Fakhir answered quickly . "That was suggested many years ago, but it is not my way . And she is too old for that now anyhow."

"Then she must be made to marry again as soon as possible," the mullah said.

"But she is in mourning. And she has a strong will. I have never imposed my will on her in these matters. Perhaps I should have."

The clerical fi ngers still tapped. "It is the man' s duty to lead the woman, and certainly his daughter . She has already proven herself reckless."

"How long must she mourn before she can remarry?"

"The Prophet, peace be upon him, has spoken clearly on the iddah, ' Such of you as die and leave behind them wives, these shall wait, keeping themselves apart, four months and ten days.'"

He paused, letting the obstacle become obvious before he offered a strategy. "But it is not a sin for a man to declare his intentions during that time, to wed her afterwards." He paused again and let the logical next question arise by itself. He clearly already had the answer.

"There is a good man in the mosque, older and a widower . He has children who need a mother , and I think he would agree to the marriage."

"I am not sure I can convince my daughter to accept a husband whom she does not know."

"You do not need to 'convince.' It is your duty to give your grandchild a father to protect her from the claims of this foreigner."

One of the garden birds, the size of a robin, but yellow , suddenly * 119 *

landed between the two men's hands. The mullah covered his tea glass with one hand and with the other swatted the bird away with enough force to knock it from the table and out of view of the window.

As if the intrusion of the bird had concluded the conversation, the mullah stood up from the table. His hands were still visible, hanging paw-like at the side of his dark gray robe. "You have your solution," the gruff voice said. "I will approach the man and inform you of his answer .

You can then make the arrangements."

He moved away from the table and his last audible words were "Four months and ten days. This is God' s will and God Almighty knows best."

Al Fakhir followed the cleric away from the table and out of sight.

Inside the kitchen, Auset stood up as well and leaned against the window frame. "I can' t stand it," she said fi nally out loud. "I'm surrounded by wolves."

* 120 *

Vulture's Kiss

30.

Retribution He stood in front of the glass case that held the Barque of the Sun. In the midst of the jostling crowd he occupied his own sphere of concentration. His hands lay fl at on the glass top, in spite of the Do Not Touch sign. He stared, full of loathing, at the parallel rows of animal-headed gods that fl anked the orb of gold. Every sigh of admiration from the crowd was like a barb that prodded him, reminded him of their ignorance and of his mission. In their childish oohing and ahhing, they did not know they looked on the time of the beast, did not appreciate how it threatened them.

To grovel before beasts again and set humanity back thousands of years. Who but perverts would come up with such a religion? He would not put it past them to even copulate with dogs. They were an abomination-he savored the Biblical word.

The call had come to him to set aside his job, where he was unappreciated anyhow, and his family , which was nit-picking him to death, to rid the world of them. His decision to answer the call had hardened his will, purifi ed him somehow-and given him a vast patience. He had waited a long time before acting, had carefully followed each of them until he knew their ways. He was their shadow, their nemesis, their just executioner.

A tiny part of him also felt that he was evening the score, achieving a fi nal revenge, if not on the boys who had once used him, then on others just like them. He had long since for gotten the boys' names and even their faces. All he remembered was the humiliation as they made him play the whore. Perverts, all of them-even if they did later marry-and they had tried to make a pervert out of him. Well, he was a man now and had already dispatched one of their kind. He would soon get rid of another, to both punish a crime and eradicate a dangerous cult.

The blood of his heroic ancestors pulsed through him and warmed him.

* 121 *

31.

Egyptian Museum The last thing Valerie wanted to do was business, but she had to at least make a gesture of it. No matter that she had lost three loved ones and the rest were in jeopardy. She couldn't walk away from "The Priest's Collection," as the museum called it. She had already surrendered much of the glory of the discovery to the university as a whole. She had felt guilty despoiling Rekemheb' s tomb until she realized he himself didn't care. The artifacts had served their purpose, assisting him into the underworld. Since he had a sort of new life watching over his living family, he was fi nished with them.

The days of discovery were a warm but distant light somewhere at the back of her bereavement, and she ached when she recalled them now. What life Rekemheb had, as a ka, was now snuf fed out, just like that of the descendant who carried his image. She had lost them both in a day: the sweet man who had been called with her into the treasure-fi lled tomb, and the odd, slightly stiff ancestor who had welcomed them.

Bereavement numbed her as her own sudden orphaning had not, for at six, she hadn't understood what death was and had kept waiting for her parents to reappear. By the time she grasped that they never would, the wound had covered over , and she had learned how to be solitary .

While the few nuns who were kind to her saw to her physical needs, she transferred her emotional needs to the fi gures in her imagination.

She exhaled slowly , as if to expel the dreadful feeling of abandonment, and climbed the stairs to the Cairo Museum. She would take care of business for an hour and then return to Auset, who seemed to have a strength she herself lacked.

"Ah, Doctor Foret. How nice to see you again." Chairman of Antiquities Fuad Rashidi strode toward her just as she walked through the door. The two years hadn't been kind to him, for he had lost even more of his hair and had developed jowls. Jameela, his errant wife, was almost certainly directing all her favors elsewhere.

"We have added a few new things to the exhibit since you were last here." He extended his arm to lead her to the collection along a * 122 *

Vulture's Kiss corridor of which she knew every centimeter . They had gone scarcely ten paces when a man called out from the other side of the lobby.

"Sayyid Rashidi, I am sorry . The curator is on the telephone. He said it's urgent."

Valerie was relieved. "It's quite all right, Dr. Rashidi. I know my way, of course. I'll wait for you there."

As he hurried away , she looked at her watch. Six thirty . The public would be gone by now anyhow , and she would have the place to herself.

She entered the familiar high-ceilinged exhibit hall and strolled around the periphery , eyeing the funerary treasure that she knew in every detail. Strange how it now seemed both precious and worthless.

Precious because it was all that she had left of them, priest and man, and worthless because it was not them.

There were the familiar objects: the statue of Osiris; the gold-painted wooden bed on slender animal legs and with lion heads at the upper end; chests of wood and ivory; fans, newly fi tted with ostrich feathers; alabaster vessels of a dozen sizes and shapes.

The exhibit was well done, the four walls expertly painted with copies of the tomb illustrations . On the north side was the calendar with its twelve thirty-day months ending in July . On the east, a seated pharaoh received the kiss of wisdom from the god Amun. The south wall held a scene of Pharaoh Meremphah bestowing a gift upon the kneeling Rekemheb, and on the west wall the Great Balance weighed the heart of the deceased in the underworld.

She strolled toward the center of the hall. Encased in glass was the centerpiece of the collection that drew the visitor's eye like an icon.

The breathtaking Barque of the Sun was an icon of sorts.

Gold leaf was hammered over wood nearly a meter in length from swanlike prow to the high, curved stern. At the center, the naos-cabin housed a sphere of solid gold. The sun god Ra in his essence and glory.

Ten painted wooden gods sailed in state with him. She remembered the overseer 's boy , Ibrim, who had been slapped for touching the barque, and Volker Vanderschmitt, who had been the one to slap him. Vanderschmitt, who had killed her and then died a terrible death himself.

Something about the display annoyed her , and she moved to the right angle of light to see it. Some fool had left handprints on the top, * 123 *

she noticed, and she wiped them off with her shirtsleeve .

She pivoted away from the display toward the left. Ah. This must be what Rashidi was so proud of. The empty sarcophagus was set along one wall, its cover removed and replaced by a sheet of Plexiglas. She recognized the elaborately ornamented coffi n, of course, but what took her by surprise was the gauze-wrapped dummy within it. She would have laughed at the theatricality had it not been for the painted mask on the mummy's head-painted with the face of Rekemheb, which was also the face of Derek.

She felt her eyes pool again, and alone in the quiet hall, she could almost hear the voice of Rekemheb, reciting once again the words of the scribe god's prophecy: A child of your line will bring you forth into the world again in the hundredth generation. Then you shall be witness to these things: the Balance, the Book, and the bearing of the Child. This is our hope against the Aton, rising in the West.

She whispered back , "Rekemheb, what' s happening to us, old friend? I've done all those things. I've stood before the Balance, written the Book, and we both were there when Nefi was born. So if we're the hundredth generation that the scribe god was talking about, we're just about wiped out. I guess the gods will have to start looking to the hundred and fi rst."

It was a bitter joke, but then the thought itself gave pause.

A.