"So that's what you were doing in here for so long," Jannie laughed as Nicholas lifted out the panel. His grin faded as Nicholas reached into the space beyond and carefully drew out an extraordinary object. "My God, what is that?"
"The blue war crown of ancient Egypt," said Nicholas. He handed it to Sapper. "Lay it on the bunk, but treat it carefully."
He reached into the compartment again, "And this is the Nemes crown." He handed it to Jannie.
"And this is the red and white crown of the two kingdoms. And this is the death-mask of Pharaoh Mamose.
Last but not least, this is the ushabd of the scribe Taita." The relics lay on the fold-down bunk, and they stood and stared at them reverently.
"I have helped you bring out stone friezes and little bronze statues,' said Jannie softly. "But notlTing like this before."
"But," Sapper shook his head, "the ammunition crates the Gyppos offloaded at Aswan? What was in them?"
"Five one'gallon bottles of chemical for the toilet," said Nicholas, "Plus half a dozen spare oxygen cylinders, just to make up weight."
"You switched them." Sapper beamed at him. "But how the hell did you know that Royan was going to scupper us?"
"She was right when she said I must have known she was no thief. The whole lark was out of character for her.
She is," he searched for the correct description, ( much too upright and honest. Not at all like the present company."
"Thanks for the compliment," said Jannie drily, "but she must have given you more reason than that to make you suspicious."
"Yes, of course." Nicholas turned to him. "The first real inkling I had was when we came back from Ethiopia the first time, and she immediately pushed off to Cairo. I guessed she was up to something. But I was absolutely certain only when I learned that she had passed a message, through Tessay, to the Egyptian Embassy in Addis. It was clear then that she had alerted them to our return flight."
"The perfidious little bitch,'Jannie guffawed.
"Careful there!" said Nicholas stiffly. "She is a decent, honest and patriotic young woman, warm-hearted and-' "Well, well!" Jannie winked at Sapper.
"Please excuse my slip."
nly two of the great crowns of ancient Egypt were set out on the polished walnut conference table. Nicholas had placed them on the heads of two genuine Roman marble busts that he had borrowed from a dealer with whom he did regular business here in Zurich. He had drawn the blinds over the tenth story windows, and arranged the lighting to show the crowns to the best effect. The private conference room that he had hired for the occasion was in the Bank Leu building on Bahnhofstrasse.
While he waited alone for the arrival of his invited guest, he reviewed his preparations and could find no fault with them. He went to the full-length mirror on one wall and tightened the knot of his old Sandhurst tie. The stitches had been removed from his chin. Mek Nimmur had done a firstrate . oh, and the scar was neat and clean. His suit had been made by his tailor in Savile Row, so it was in a muted chalk stripe and had been worn enough to have acquired just the right degree of casual bagginess. The only shiny items of his dress were the hand-made shoes from Lobb of St. James's Street.
The intercom buzzed softly and Nicholas lifted the handset.
"There is a Mr Walsh to see you, Sir Nicholas," said the receptionist at the desk in the bank lobby downstairs.
"Please ask him to come up."
Nicholas opened the door at the first ring and Walsh glowered at him from the threshold.
"I hope you are not wasting my time, Harper. I have flown all the way from Fort Worth." It was only thirty hours since Nicholas had telephoned him at his ranch in Texas.
Walsh must have jumped into his executive jet almost immediately to have got here so soon.
"Not Harper. Quenton-Harper,'said Nicholas.
"Okay then, Quenton-Harper. But cut the crap,'Walsh said angrily. "What have you got for me?"
"I am also delighted to see you again, Mr Walsh." Nicholas stood aside.
"Do come in."
Walsh strode into the room. He was tall and roundshouldered, his jowls drooping and wrinkled and his nose beaky. With his hands clasped behind his back.he looked like a buzzard on a fence pole. Forbes magazine listed his net worth at 1.7 billion dollars.
Two men followed him into the room, and Nicholas recognized both of them. The antiquarian world was very small and incestuous. One of them was the professor of
ancient history at Dallas University. Walsh had endowed the chair. The other was one of the most respected and knowledgeable antiques dealers in the United States.
Walsh stopped so suddenly that they both ran into him from behind, but he did not seem to notice.
"Son of a gun!" he said softly, and his eyes lit with the flames of fanaticism.
"Are those fakes?"
"As fake as the Hannibal bronzes and the Hammurabi has-relief you bought from me," said Nicholas.
Walsh approached the exhibits as though they were the cathedral communion plate and he the archbishop.
"These must be fresh," he whispered. "Otherwise I would have known about them."
"Fresh out of the ground," Nicholas confirmed. "You are the first one to have seen them."
"Mamose!" Walsh read the cartouche on the uraeus of the Nemes crown.
"Then the rumours are true. You have opened a new tomb."
"If you can call nearly four thousand years old new." Walsh and his advisers gathered around the table, pale and speechless with shock.
"Leave us, Harper,'said Walsh. "I will call you when I am ready to talk to you again."
"Sir Nicholas," he prompted the American. Nicholas knew that he had the upper hand now.
"Please leave us, Sir Nicholas," Walsh pleaded.
An hour later Nicholas sauntered back into the conference room. The three men were seated around the table as though they could not bear to be parted from the two great crowns. Walsh nodded at his minions and they stood up and obediently but reluctantly filed from the room. As soon as the door closed, Walsh asked brusquely, "How much?"
"Fifteen million US dollars,'Nicholas replied.
"That's seven and a half mill each."
"No, that's fifteen mill each. Thirty million the two'.
Walsh reeled in his chair. "Are you crazy, or something?"
"There are those who think so,'Nicholas smiled.
"Split the difference," said Walsh. "Twenty-two and a half." Nicholas shook his head. "Not negotiable."
"Be reasonable, Harper!' "Reasonability has never been one of my vices. Sorry Walsh stood up. "I am sorry too. Perhaps next time, Harper."
He clasped his hands behind his back and stalked to the door. As he opened it, Nicholas called after him.
"Mr Walsh!'
He turned back eagerly. "Yes?"
"Next time you may call me Nicholas, and I shall call you Peter, as old friends."
"Is that all you have to say?"
"Of course. What else is there?" Nicholas looked puzzled.
"Damn you," said Walsh, and came back to the table. He dropped into his chair. "Damn you to hell and back!" He sighed and pursed his lips, and then asked, "Okay.
How do you want it?"
"Two irrevocable bank drafts. Each for fifteen million." Walsh picked up the intercom, and spoke into it.
"Please ask Monsieur Montfleuri, your chief accountant, to come up here" he ordered dolefully.
Nicholas sat at his desk in his study at Quenton Park. He stared at the panelling that covered the wall facing him. Although the panelling had originally come from one of the Catholic abbeys dissolved by Henry VIII in 1536 and had been bought by his grandfather almost a hundred years ago, it was newly installed in this setting.
He reached under the top of his desk and pressed the hidden button of the electronic control. A section of the panelling slid smoothly and silently aside to reveal the armoured plate glass of the display cabinet built into the wall behind it. At the same time the spotlights in the ceiling lit automatically, and their beams fell on the contents of the cabinet. The spots had been placed so that there was no reflection from the glass window to distract the eye, and the beams brought out the full glory of the double crown and the golden death-mask of Mamose.
He poured whisky into a crystal glass, and while he sipped it he savoured the thrill of ownership. But after a while he knew there was something missing. He picked up the Taita ushabd from the desk in front of him, and spoke to it as though he were addressing the subject himself.
"You knew the real meaning of loneliness, didn't you?" he asked softly.
"You knew what it was like to love someone you could never have." He set down the statuette and picked up the telephone. He dialled an international number and it rang three times before a man answered in Arabic.
"This is the office of the Director of Antiquities. How may I help you?"
"Is Dr Al Simma available?" he asked in the same language.
"Please hold the line. I am putting you through!
"Dr Al Simma." Her voice sent an electric thrill down his spine.
"Royan," he said, and he could sense her shock in the long silence that followed.
"You!" she whispered. 11 did not think I would ever hear from you again."
"I just rang to congratulate you on your appointment."
"You cheated me," she said. "You switched the contents of three of the crates."
"As a wise man once said, friends are the easiest to cheat they don't expect it. You, of all people, should know the truth of that, Royan."
"You have sold them, of course. I have heard a rumour that Peter Walsh paid twenty million." 4-"Thirty million," Nicholas corrected her. "But only for the blue and the Nemes. Even as I speak to you, the red and white crown and the death-mask repose before me."
"So now you can pay off your Lloyd's insurance losses.
You must be very relieved."
"You won't believe this, but the Lloyd's syndicate on which I am a Name has come up with much better results than were forecast. I wasn't really broke after all."
"As my mother would say, "Bully for you."' "Half of it has already gone to Mek Nimmur and Tessay."
"At least that is a good cause." Her tone tingled with hostility. "Is that all you called to tell me?"
"No. There's something else that might amuse you.
Your favourite author, Wilbur Smith, has agreed to write the story of our discovery of the tomb. He is calling the book The Seventh ScroU. It should be published early next year. I will send you a signed copy."
"I hope he gets his facts straight this time," she said drily. They were both silent for a while, before Royan broke it "I have a mountain of work in front of me. If there is nothing else on your mind-'
"As a matter of fact there is."
"Yes?"
"I would like you to marry me."
He heard her draw breath sharply, and then after a long pause she asked softly, "Why would you want anything so unlikely?"
"Because I have come to realize how much I love you." She was silent again, and then she said in a small voice, "All right."
"What do you mean, "All right'T
"I mean, all right, I will marry you."
"Why would you agree to anything so unlikely?" he asked.
"Because I have come to realize, despite everything, how much I love you back."
"There is an Air Egypt flight from Heathrow at 5.30 this afternoon. If I drive like fury, I may just make it. But it gets me into Cairo rather late."
"I will be waiting at the airport, no matter how late."
"I am on my way!" Nicholas hung up, and went to the door, but suddenly he turned back and picked up the the Taita ushabti from the desk.
"Come on, you old rogue." He laughed triumphantly.
"You are going home, as a wedding gift."
which, -in the mauve evening.
They strolled along the corn Below them the Nile ran on eternally green and slow and inscrutable, disposing of the secrets of the ages. At the bank, below the ruins of the temple of point on the river once the great barge of Pharaoh Ramesses at Luxor, where Mamose had docked with Taita and his beloved mistress upon her prow, they paused for a while and leaned upon ining wall. They gazed out to the coping of the stone reta the darkening hills across the river. the funerary temple Time had long since obliterated other' kings had and the great causeway of Mamose, and ver the foundations. No man built their own monuments red the tomb that he had never occupied, had ever discover ted close to the secret opening but it must have been situa gh which Duraid Al Simma. had entered in the rock thrOu ered there the scrolls of Taita the tomb of Lostris and discover in their alabaster jars.
silent in the gathering dusk, the'
All four of them were firm friendship. They watched a cruise shared silence the tourists clustered upon boat pass coming upriver wi her decks, still agog after ten days of voyaging from Cairo on these enigmatic waters, pointing out to each other the great pylons and engraved walls of Ramesses temple, their ntial in the hush of th all and inconseque excited voices sm desert evening slipped her arm through Tessay's and Then Royan alked on ahead. They made a lovely pair, the two women wand honey-skinned, their laughter gay slim and young ads ruffling in the sultry Puffs Of and sweet, their dark he and Mek immur Saharan air off the desert. Nichola followed them, each watching his own woman fondly as they bantered.
"So now you are one of the fatcats, in Addis, you, the hard man, the bush fighter, you are now a politician. I can hardly believe it, mek., "There is a time to fight and a time to make peace." Mek was serious for a moment, but Nicholas mocked him " 11 lightly.
"I see that now that you are a politician you have to practise your cliches and your platitudes." Nicholas punched his arm lightly. "But how did you swing it, Mek?
>From dirty shufta bandit to Minister of Defence in one mighty bound."
"The money from the sale of the blue crown helped a little. It gave me the clout I needed," Mek admitted, "but they knew they could never hold a democratic election without me as a candidate. In the end they were eager to have me on board."