could sit over there and read my father’s diaries. Would that help you concentrate?”
“As long as you don’t talk, or breathe, or hum.”
“I’ll breathe just enough to keep me conscious in case you find something,” she told him cheerfully, backing up with both hands raised as he gave her the evil eye.
It was companionable working silently among her father’s things. Thorne was pretty fast as he opened a drawer, ran his hand slowly over each item, and moved on to the next. Starting to get sleepy from the inactivity, Isis took out her camera and framed some shots of him as he worked. Without looking over at her, he snapped. “Three: no pictures of me.”
Unoffended, Isis put her camera back in the camera bag and picked up one of her father’s ubiquitous small black notebooks, flicking through what were mostly rough sketches. It took her a moment to recognize what she was looking at.
“Oh, my God! Of course. Damn it, why didn’t I think of this before?” She jumped to her feet, not waiting for his response. “My father was always paranoid that someone would steal his notes and trump him on his discoveries. When he wanted to keep things close to his chest he’d draw a tyet, the hieroglyph knot of Isis, somewhere on the page. He always left himself cryptic clues to jog his memory.”
“Let me see that.” Thorne held out his hand. He’d taken the cotton gloves off, and Isis had a moment to admire how strong-looking his hand was, before she gave him the book. Normally she wasn’t that fond of people telling her what to do. She’d pretty much raised herself, running wild in whatever camp her father was digging in during the summers, and living with her aunt in Seattle during the school year.
She could either choose to be thoroughly annoyed by his crappy bad humor or else be sympathetic and give his overbearing personality a pass while he was helping her. Besides, honey was more attractive than vinegar. Isis considered his crankiness almost part of his charm, because he did it with such grim deliberation. The more he pushed, the more curious she became, so if he thought that by being rude, she’d be turned off, he was sadly mistaken.
His eyes ran over one page, then another as he flicked through the book. “This doesn’t tell us any—” He stopped talking so abruptly, Isis took a small step toward him, putting a hand on his wrist with concern. His skin was hot to the touch. “What is it?”
“Cairo. Not just a general direction. I know specifically where he had this diary last.”
SIX HOURS LATER THEY landed in Cairo. The city was hot, muggy, and filthy for most of June through August. Even the locals fled the fly-ridden city for cooler climes, not that anyone could tell from the insane traffic, a mixture of vehicles with engines, vehicles that were animal powered, vehicles that were being pushed, and pedestrians who considered they had right-of-way—everywhere. Driving in Cairo was a contact sport and no one was chicken.
It was in the mid-seventies at ten at night, but the daytime temperatures would rise to the nineties, and the thick, odoriferous air still held high humidity due to the city’s location in the Nile delta valley.
After Isis flatly refused to hire one of the more reputable—and high-priced—taxis, he’d agreed to a local cab company and negotiated the fare from sixty pounds to fifteen.
“Brace yourself,” he warned as they lurched out of the taxi line and did a wheelie out of the terminal at breakneck speed—miraculous considering the vintage of the vehicle.
In passable Arabic, Thorne gave the driver directions to the Zamalek region, where he’d booked them into the Marriott hotel while waiting for their flight from Heathrow. Isis would protest the cost, but he didn’t give a shit. He wanted a clean bed and a decent night’s sleep. His leg hurt as if fire ants were crawling in and out of his thigh. He’d been crouching and standing on a hard cement floor at the museum for hours, followed by a six-hour flight in coach. He’d pay for the rooms himself, which would please his pinchpenny client.
The ubiquitous black, white, and rusty taxi had no springs—either on the chassis, or beneath the blanket—and probably flea-covered seats. They were lucky there were bloody seats at all. They passed through the security checkpoint, where Thorne signed their names in the book, showed his fare receipt, and proceeded without incident.