So I thought, when I woke up to find myself in a large room furnished with antiques. I felt quite calm and relaxed. That’s one thing to be said for tranquillizers. They leave the recipient
very tranquil.
Deep down under the layers of fuzzy pharmaceutical comfort a small section of my brain was trying frantically to get my attention. Think, it was screaming. Do something! Don’t just lie
there, get me out of this!
There had been time for him to take me back to Luxor. Night had fallen; the windows of the room were dark. But this wasn’t one of the rooms in Larry’s Luxor house. The furniture was
old but it was not as well-cared-for as Larry’s antiques; the gilt was chipped and the mattress of the bed on which I lay smelled slightly musty. Either Larry had a pied-à-terre in
Cairo, or he was staying with a friend. (He had so many of them.) This wasn’t a hotel room. There was no television set, no room service menu – and no telephone.
And no bolt and chain on the inside of the door. The door was locked from the outside. Was I surprised? No. But I was sorry that frantic little voice had shaken me out of my stupor.
The windows were not lockcd. They led onto a small balcony, and I stood there for a few minutes, letting the night breeze cool my face. A few lights showed through the branches of the trees that
were, I was sorry to see, on the same level as the balcony and too far from it to offer a means of egress. The ground was a long way down. There was no familiar landmark in sight – no towers,
no high-rise hotels, not even a pyramid. The house must be in one of the suburbs.
The adjoining bath had once been palatial. Now the tile was chipped and the marble discoloured. The water ran rusty.
After it had cleared a little I splashed water on my face and hands. Then I went back and sat down. There weren’t that many alternatives.
By that time the fuzz was gone, and I was in a state of abject, disgusting panic. The past hours hadn’t been comfortable; I had been scared most of the time, scared to death and out of my
wits some of the time, but this was worse – like having a chair pulled out from under you just when you think you can finally sit down and relax. To do myself justice it wasn’t the
thought of Mary’s plans for me that made my mouth go dry and my hands shake. John and Schmidt could be tucked away in neighbouring rooms, with Mary busy at work on one or both. Feisal could
be dead.
It wasn’t courage that got me to my feet, it was desperation. I had to find out. The truth might be less painful than the things I was imagining. It couldn’t be worse.
I banged on the door. After a moment I heard the sound of a key in the lock, and the door opened. He didn’t point a gun at me. He didn’t have to. The guard was Hans, my old
acquaintance, the one with the face like a giant sheep and the physique of a giant, period. Hans even had muscles on his ears, and he was almost seven feet tall.
The Egyptian sun had been hard on his fair complexion. His cheeks were red and peeling. ‘Guten Abend, Fräulein Doktor,’ he said politely. ‘Also, Sie sind aufgewacht. I
will tell them.’
Ten interminable, dragging minutes passed before there was a response. My aching muscles relaxed when I saw Larry. I didn’t like him a lot, but I definitely preferred his company to that
of the lady. Ed followed him, carrying a tray. He didn’t make a very convincing waiter.
‘Shorthanded?’ I inquired, as Ed put the tray on the table and retreated to the door, where he stood with his arms folded, looking bored. This sort of thing was all in a day’s
work for him, I supposed.
‘You have disrupted my plans rather badly,’ Larry admitted. ‘But only temporarily. Would you care for something to drink?’
The bottle of mineral water hadn’t been opened; the seal was intact. Larry watched with unconcealed amusement while I inspected it.
‘You really haven’t much choice,’ he pointed out pleasantly. ‘You might go on a hunger strike, but you can’t do without water long in this climate.’
Courteous as ever, he forbore to add that there were other, less comfortable means of controlling me. ‘So what are your plans?’ I inquired.
Larry settled back in his chair and studied me with an approving smile. ‘You are quite a remarkable woman, Vicky. Would it surprise you to learn that when I informed the Embassy we were
engaged to be married, I found the idea not entirely displeasing?’
‘Let’s just be friends,’ I suggested.
Larry laughed. ‘Your heart belongs to another? Think about it Vicky. It would be one way out of our present difliculty.’
‘Where is he?’
He didn’t ask whom I meant. ‘You don’t know?’
‘We separated this morning.’ There was no harm in telling him that much; he must know Feisal and I had travelled together. It was a reasonable assumption that John and Schmidt would
have done the same.
‘I thought you might have. You had, of course, arranged a meeting place in Cairo? Never mind, we don’t need that information. We’ve taken the necessary steps to inform him that
you are my guest. He should be arriving anytime.’
They hadn’t caught him. My face must have registered relief. Larry shook his head. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Vicky. There’s a guard under your balcony and every door is
being watched.’
So it was to be an exchange – or an offer of one. They couldn’t afford to let me go. John must know that.
‘How did you get in touch with him?’
‘My dear, your lovely face has been on every television programme in the country this evening. I gave out the press release myself. I’m sure he’s seen it, he’ll have been
following the news closely. You are suffering from shock and physical and nervous exhaustion at the villa of the chairman of the Egypto-American Trading Company. He spends most of his time in the
States, but he was happy to offer a refuge to you and your solicitous fiancé.’
And when I fell off the balcony or slashed my wrists my solicitous fiancé would say I’d committed suicide in a fit of clinical depression. They’d add that to Feisal’s
account too.
‘What about Feisal?’ I had to force myself to ask; I dreaded the answer.
Larry dismissed the minor question of a man’s life with a wave of his hand. ‘Forget about him, he’s no longer a factor. Schmidt and Tregarth are the ones who concern me, and
they ought to concern you as well; you’re in no danger unless they refuse to cooperate. No, don’t interrupt, let me finish. Why should I want to harm you? Once I’m out of the
country there’s no way you can prove anything, and without that pectoral you haven’t a leg to stand on.’
He took my appalled silence as a sign that his arguments were beginning to have their effect. Leaning forward, his eyes intent, he went on, ‘You’ve gone to a great deal of trouble
and endured a great deal of danger and distress to stop me. Admirable, no doubt, but very foolish. Why risk your life to prevent me from doing something so harmless? The antiquities I have acquired
will be cared for and preserved more carefully than they would have been in their original locations. What I’ve done is an act of rescue, not desecration.’
I knew the arguments. They have been used by every looter, archaeologist, or thief, from the beginning of time, and unfortunately they have some merit. There wouldn’t be much left of the
Elgin marbles if they had stayed in the Parthenon. I don’t buy those arguments, but I didn’t feel like arguing with Larry.
I had seen eyes like his once before – in the face of a shabby, shy little man who had tried to smash a statue of Diana in our museum. The guards had got to him before he did much damage,
and I had had a chance to talk to him later, when he was in police custody. He had been very polite and soft-spoken when he explained that God had told him to destroy the heathen images. He
couldn’t understand why we couldn’t see his point of view.
The little man and Larry had opposite aims, but they had the same mind-set. A kind of mental constipation, if you will excuse the homely metaphor – a block of solid conviction through
which no counter argument can pass.
Larry turned with a frown when the door opened. We’d been getting on so well; he felt sure I had been about to agree with him.
Her hair was tied back with a soft scarf that matched her pale blue dress. It was like a child’s pinafore, with wide shoulder straps and big pockets in the gathered skirt, and she looked
about sixteen. The Greek earrings shone bright against the masses of her dark hair.
‘Has she got it?’ Mary’s voice was crisp and not at all childish.
‘We haven’t discussed that,’ Larry said. ‘I doubt it, though. Please go.’
‘You promised me . . .’
‘No, I didn’t. Get out and leave this to me.’
She divided a malignant glance between the two of us and slipped out.
‘That woman is getting to be a damned nuisance, Larry muttered. ‘I think she’s a little crazy.’
‘You know, Larry, you might have something there. Why don’t you fire her? You hired her.’
‘No, I didn’t. My original arrangements were made with her brother. A very competent man.’
Competent, sane Leif. I remembered the last sight I’d had of him. The knife with which he’d been slashing at me was still in his hand when John dragged him down under the icy
water.
Larry’s frown smoothed out. ‘Well, it won’t be much longer. I will certainly sever my connections with the organization after this. I hate to do it because they’ve done
excellent work for me in the past, and at the start she was quite efficient. Some of her ideas were brilliant, in fact – like planting that message with the dead agent to get you on board as
a means of making Tregarth behave himself.’
‘Oh,’ I said. He seemed to expect some response, but congratulating him on that brilliant idea was more than I could manage.
‘Her organization handled that matter, and very well, too.’ Larry went on. ‘She’s been acting strangely the last few weeks, though, and one can’t put up with that
sort of thing. It’s inefficient.’
‘Right,’ I said, swallowing.
‘I need that pectoral, Vicky,’ Larry went on. ‘Do you have it?’
‘What . . . Oh.’ In the fascination of following Larry’s mind along its monster-haunted byways I had almost forgotten the Tutankhamon jewel. ‘No, I don’t have it.
Didn’t you search me?’
Larry looked uncomfortable. ‘Only in the most respectful fashion. Mary wanted to . . . Of course I couldn’t allow that.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. And I meant it. The idea of those soft little hands on me made my skin crawl.
‘It’s a very large object,’ Larry went on. ‘I don’t believe I could have missed it. Anyhow, I didn’t suppose Tregarth would trust you with it. He has it,
doesn’t he?’
‘Unless he is a lot dumber than I think he is, he’s stowed it away somewhere safe by now.’
‘So we decided. Well.’ Larry rose. ‘He’ll turn it over to us in exchange for you. So you see, Vicky, you haven’t a thing to worry about. Is there anything I can do
to make you more comfortable?’
His departure would certainly have that effect but it wouldn’t have been tactful to say so. I shook my head.
‘Have a little rest,’ Larry said kindly. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as we hear from him.’
Mary wasn’t the only one who’d gone around the bend in the last few weeks. Or had Larry always been this way, determinedly unconscious of the deadly results of his
‘harmless’ schemes? Maybe they were all like that, the presidents and chairmen and commanding generals who sat in their offices and gave orders to ‘engage targets’ or
‘cut the work force.’ They never saw the suffering, bleeding bodies those orders affected.
I didn’t have a little rest or eat any of the food on the tray. It wasn’t very appetizing – dry sandwiches and a wilted salad that probably contained a whole colony of healthy
typhoid germs. That suggested there were few or no servants in the house. Larry might not have his full crew with him. Some of them would have to stay with the boat. Mary and Hans were here, and
that probably meant Max and Rudi were also with Larry. How many others?
And what the hell difference did it make? I couldn’t get out and there was no way John could get to me without being caught.
I went onto the balcony. Down below – far down – I saw a stone-paved terrace without so much as a shrub to break one’s fall. Rudi was down there too. At least the shape in the
shadows, slim as a weasel, looked like his. To complete the picture of total disaster, the railing of the balcony swayed under the pressure of my hands. No point in trying the old bedsheet routine
even if Rudi hadn’t been lurking. Those rails wouldn’t support the weight of a healthy six-foot female.
I was inspecting the bathroom, hoping to find a used razor blade or a nail file, when I heard the bedroom door open.
‘He’s on his way. He telephoned a few minutes ago.’
Her eyes glowed. Little flecks floated in them like the dead insects in amber. My heart couldn’t sink any farther; it was already trying to shove through the sole of my shoe.
‘So,’ Mary went on briskly, ‘we must get ready to receive him, mustn’t we. Sit down in that chair. Not the big carved armchair. That one.’
It was a straight chair, the seat and back covered with faded gold brocade.
‘No, thanks,’ I said, backing away. ‘I’d rather stand.’
‘If you prefer it this way.’ She turned to the door. ‘Hans. Come in.’
Hans’s face wasn’t capable of displaying subtle emotion, but I got the impression that even he was beginning to wonder about little Mary. ‘Aber, gnädige Frau, Herr Max hat
mir gesagt – ’
‘From whom do you take your orders? I’m not going to hurt her,’ she added unconvincingly. At least it didn’t convince me. Poor bewildered Hans shrugged, setting off a
miniature avalanche of muscles, and advanced on me.
Just for the look of the thing, I picked up a bowl from the table and heaved it. To my surprise it hit him square on the chest. Not to my surprise it didn’t halt his advance.
So I sat down in the chair and Hans took the cord Mary had foresightedly brought with her, and he tied my wrists and ankles. He worked with slow deliberation. The knots weren’t painfully
tight. Hans didn’t get any jollies from hurting people. He just killed them.