Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2) (22 page)

           
The
old woman pushed her way into the group and pointed at Julia. When she did, the
crowd of men began muttering again and looking at Julia like she was a big fat
T-bone and they were a pack of hungry dogs. Ammon snarled at them, and at the
old woman, at which time she pointed at Ella and shouted:
“Ana hamel!
” When she said the words, she put her hands against her
flat little stomach and mimicked the roundness of a pregnant woman. “
Ana Hamel
,” she said again, staring
indictingly at Ella.

           
Ammon turned to Ella and frowned. He
looked at her abdomen and then at Julia, still quivering and half nude in the
circle of men. He gave an abrupt order and the men backed away from both Julia and
Ella. Without another word, the old woman ushered them back into the tent,
where they remained undisturbed for the rest of the day.
 

           
The evening was filled with terror for Ella.
Convinced they were about to be raped and murdered, it was all she could do to
talk reassuringly to the increasingly distant Julia. They had been served
plates of fried goat on a stick and given blankets but otherwise no one visited
them. Her attempts to engage Julia had come to nothing but Ella kept up the
patter for her own spirits if nothing else.

           
“I
think they will ask for a ransom for us,” she said as Julia stared unseeing at
the wall of the tent. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.” She patted
Julia’s shoulder. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of Carter’s people
doesn’t come for us very soon. We are of no real benefit to these poor people
except for the ransom they can get for us. Well, for you. I guess they could
use me to pull a plow or something.” Ella chuckled and then became sober in the
face of Julia’s blank response.

           
“Wasn’t
that odd how the head jerk-off made everything stop this afternoon? He just
stood up and made them all back off? I wonder why.”

           
Ella
was silent as she remembered the old woman’s mimicking of a pregnant woman’s
stomach.

           
How did she know?
How
could
she know? The thing was probably
only the size of an eraser at this point. Did Ella
look
different? Her hand dropped to her stomach and she thought
how, no matter what happened to her, short of her death, this little one would
be safe and oblivious through it all.
 

           
After
they had eaten and Ella could tell that the light had gone from the sky, she was
encouraged that they’d been provided with blankets.
You don’t keep your victims warm if you intend to slit their throats,
surely?
It did occur to her that the same logic didn’t apply if you
intended to gang rape them a few hundred times before dawn but she put that thought
out of her head. The fact was, she was helpless to stop whatever was heading
their way.

           
It
happened a few minutes after she dozed off, nestled with Julia on the floor of
the tent. More than the sound of his entrance, Ella was awakened by the smell
of him—strong, rank, gamey. Before she had a chance to understand what
was happening, Ammon reached down and grabbed Julia by both arms and tossed her
over his shoulder. He looked briefly at Ella, almost longingly, before turning
and disappearing into the night. When she ran after him, a pair of strong arms
outside the tent prevented her. She stood shivering in the night, watching Ammon
under the full moon stride purposefully to his own tent.

           
Within
moments she heard a long scream that seemed to go on and on. The guard at her
tent giggled and then squatted down to finish a plate of fried goat.

           
Ella
stood a moment longer, her heart breaking for her friend. But there were no
more sounds that night.

Chapter Fifteen

Shepheards Hotel, Cairo

The Viscount
Digby stretched out his legs in the lounge chair of the opulent lobby and
flapped an old copy of the
London Times
to straighten the creases. He and Abdullah had arrived the day before. Immediately
after checking into his room at the hotel, Digby sent a wire to Lord Haversham in
London breaking the terrible news to him that his daughter was lost in the
desert and presumed dead. He followed this unfortunate news with a statement of
immediate need for 10,000 pounds sterling to be wired to the British Embassy in
Cairo to aid in funding the continued search for Lady Digby or her remains.

He and Lord Haversham
had not gotten on well, Digby mused. To say the least. The old man had railed
against the idea of the abrupt engagement and the no less hurried wedding.
Digby shook his head. The old fool had actually suggested that Julia might be
in the family way. In fact, in order to completely remove every remaining
obstacle to the union, Digby had subtly confirmed that that was precisely the
case. Haversham wouldn’t have allowed it any other way. Julia—foolish
little romantic that she was—wouldn’t have known Digby’s background of
gambling debts and frequent occasions of public mischance but there was little
doubt old Haversham didn’t. As much as he loathed the man, Digby found himself
at least a little relieved not to have to deliver the news of his daughter’s
demise in person.
The old tosser was
unbalanced. Who knew what he was capable of?

Digby frowned at
the thought of Julia. It was all so sloppy. While he was reasonably sure she
wouldn’t just pop up unscathed from the desert at some point in the future, he would
have vastly preferred more certainty in her death. Every time he suggested to
Abdullah what needed to be done, he felt the big Egyptian became implacable and
obtuse. Which was quite odd because normally the man had no trouble
understanding him precisely.

Perhaps he was squeamish about killing a white woman
? That was undoubtedly to his credit,
Digby decided. She
was
white, after
all. But damned inconvenient all the same.

As he folded up
his newspaper before going in search of a decent cup of tea, his attention was
drawn to a cadre of late arrivals in the Shepheards lobby. Flanked by two
footmen who were followed by the setpiece of two lady’s maids, a woman with the
most elegant carriage and beguiling manner Digby had ever seen glided into the
grand hall. Dressed in a formal traveling suit which formed perfectly to her
not unsubstantial curves, the woman turned her head from the bank of wide
sprawling stairs directly before her to look at Digby.

His breath caught
in his chest at her beauty. Her eyes, a sparkling shade of violet, inspected
him with what looked like amused indifference and he found himself believing
that she had just taken the measure of him. And approved. He stood and bowed
and she returned the gesture with a faint smile and a tiny nod before sweeping
past him and up the stairs with her entourage. He walked quickly to the hotel
desk and snapped his fingers to attract the attention of the attendant.

“Yes sir?” the
elderly Egyptian responded. He smiled perfunctorily, but his dark eyes were hooded
and unreadable.

“That party who
just came in,” Digby said. “I believe I am to meet them later. Can you confirm
to me that they are who I believe them to be?”

The Egyptian looked
in the direction that the party had vanished. “That would be the Duchess Bowerman.”

Digby made a
snort of impatience and dug out a twenty-pound Egyptian note which he pushed
across the counter to the man.

“The
widow
Duchess Lydia Bowerman,” the hotel
clerk said. “Recently of Yorkshire. Traveling alone in search of treasure.” The
clerk palmed the note on the counter. “Will that be all, sir?”
 

Digby turned away
without answering. He walked back to his chair and stared up at the now vacant
staircase. He had, of course, heard of Lady Bowerman. Her husband, the Duke of Birmingham
had been killed in a hunting accident the year before. She was childless. Mid-thirties,
ripe, voluptuous. And rich.

Howard Carter’s Camp, the
Valley of the Kings

           
The
note was brief. It hadn’t been necessary to write more. Its message was clear.
Carter held it in his hand as he sat in the rudely constructed foreman’s shack
on the perimeter of KV62. He stared out at the throng of men and boys running
before him in a circular track of motion and endeavor. On the table in front of
him was the funeral vase they had unearthed that morning. The name on the side
read
Nebkheperura
.

           
Spenser
stood at his side.

           
“And
you know nothing of who this man is?” Carter asked him, still focused on the frenetic
scene before him.

           
“He’s
American. Says he’s the husband of Miss Stevens. He came up on the boat with
Marvel Newton.”

           
“The
American treasure hunter.” Carter glanced at Spenser. “What do you think?”

           
Spenser
hooked his thumbs in his belt and rocked back on his heels before he answered. “I
think his bedroll was found with a valuable artifact in it while he was doing
everything he could to beat it outta here as fast as he could.”

           
“And
he gave you this sealed note this morning.”

           
“To
give to you, yeah.”

           
“But
you think he is a thief.”

           
“All
signs point to it.”

           
Carter
looked down at the note again. It read,
If
you haven’t found Tut’s funeral vase yet, maybe we should talk.
“Not all
signs,” he said.

           
Rowan
wasn’t surprised when Spenser came into his tent that afternoon and dismissed
the guard. He knew that if his note made it to Carter
something
would happen. He had spent the long day planning how he
would play it. Finally, he decided he would tell Carter he had psychic powers. Rowan
remembered from a
History Channel
show that psychics and mediums were big in the 1920’s. No other explanation
would make sense for why he knew the things he did. Besides, he figured Carter
lived and worked in a world of superstition and focus on life after death. Even
if he couldn’t understand exactly
how
Rowan knew the things he did, it might buy Rowan his freedom long enough to
resume his search for Ella.

           
“I
don’t know what that note said,” Spenser said, “but your presence is requested
at dinner tonight. If you try to run, I feel pretty good about putting a bullet
in your back.”

           
“Thanks
for the heads up,” Rowan said dryly.

           
When
he approached the outdoor dining table in the center of the camp that evening,
Howard Carter was already there. It was clearly just the two of them for
dinner. Rowan could see his note on the table.

           
Carter
stood up and shook his hand. “Good evening, Mr. Pierce. You appear to know a
little about my work.”

           
Yeah, thank you Discovery Channel
, Rowan
thought, seating himself at the table. “I didn’t know how receptive you’d be to
what I know,” Rowan said.

           
“If
it pertains to my endeavor, you’ll find me surprisingly open to all sources of
credible information.” Carter narrowed his eyes at Rowan over his wine glass. “May
I ask how you knew about the funeral vase? I only discovered it this morning.”

           
Talk about cutting it close
, Rowan
thought. “As it happens, I know a great many things about your particular
endeavor
. Archaeology is a hobby of
mine.”

           
“You
and every other American I have ever met.”

           
“That
may be true but I think you’ll find
my
knowledge of archaeology rather more extensive than the average amateur archeologist.”

           
“Really?
Are you a scholar in the subject, Mr. Pierce?”

           
“You
might say that.”

           
“What
university?”

           
“I
am not formally trained,” Rowan admitted. In thinking about how far he should
go in revealing his information to Carter and how he knew it, he had come to
the conclusion that he should tell the truth as much as he could.

           
“Ah,
I see.” It was a dismissive comment and Rowan waited a beat before stepping in
with his pay off line.

           
“While
I haven’t seen your worksite as yet, I’m wondering if you’re still using the
Belzoni method of excavation.” Rowan let the name sink in. He had no doubt it
would get an emphatic reaction. Belzoni was considered to be little more than a
grave robber and his methods of large-scale search had been the cause of much
senseless destruction of invaluable artifacts.

           
“Certainly
not!” Carter said, putting his wine glass down so hard it spilled on the linen tablecloth.

           
“You
know,” Rowan said. “I’ve worked with many esteemed archaeologists back in the
States who are experimenting with the use of x-ray in excavations. Have you
heard of that? It’s nonintrusive and eliminates the need to relentlessly dig
everywhere—which, I imagine, is a pretty expensive, not to mention
time-consuming experience.” He looked up from his plate to the find Carter
staring at him.

           
“I
only ask,” Rowan continued, “because as I said, I have no first-hand knowledge
of your operation.”

           
“You
seem to know a lot about current archaeological thought,” Carter said.

           
“I’m
no treasure hunter,” Rowan said. “I am a trained amateur archaeologist. But
more importantly, as far as you’re concerned…” Rowan took a long breath. “I’m a
psychic.”

           
Both
men locked eyes.

           
“A
psychic,” Carter said.

           
“That’s
right. It’s how I knew about the vase you found today.”

           
Carter
put down his knife and fork as if he were finished eating.

           
“It’s
how I know you need to get
under
the
bedrock to find his tomb.”

           
“
Tutankhamun.”

           
“That’s
right.”

           
“So
he’s here.”

           
“You
know he is. And you’re close.”

           
“You’re
saying he’s at KV62.”

           
“Yes,
Mr. Carter. It’s
your
find. Tutankhamen.”

           
Carter
sat motionless, not speaking. Finally, he picked up his fork and signaled to
the servant to refill their wine glasses. He ate silently for a moment.

           
“We
leave for the site before light each day,” he said.

           
“I’ll
be ready.”

The Bedouin Camp, Somewhere
in the Sahara Desert

           
The
morning after the leader took Julia from the tent, Ella woke up to her friend’s
return. The glazed look in Julia’s eye was gone, replaced by an alertness that
Ella had not seen in her since before they left Cairo. It soon became clear
that her agitation was the result of a need to share her experience rather than
be comforted.

           
It
also became clear that Julia
had
, in
fact, been raped the night before. The startling discovery for Julia seemed to
be that she considered the experience much less horrific than she had always been
warned about her whole life long.

           
Ella
tried to process this new turn of events. “Julia, honey, I grant you that
whatever happened between you and dune-boy over there was probably heads and
shoulders less monstrous than whatever
your
husband
did to you, but it still isn’t good. You know that, right? I saw
him throw you over his shoulder and
take
you to his tent. Did he
ask
you
before he stuck it in?”

           
“
Must
you be so crude?”