of trespass.
‘Mr Ubeda, I’ll level with you. I know who you are because you’re a familiar face to sellers of antiquities. Your interest in Anubian statuary is common knowledge to us all.’
He sipped his drink and smiled. ‘I know all the dealers in London, Paris, New York and Cairo. I don’t know you.’
‘There’s no reason why you would. It’s my job to find potential clients before they can find me.’
His impatience with her was burning through to anger. ‘You’re saying you have something to sell. I’m not some easy mark waiting to be sold a crappy chunk of hieroglyph smuggled from the Valley of the Kings. There’s more necrobilia circulating on the black market these days than there is left in those limestone hills. I have friends working on every excavation gang, and you’re going to tell me you have something no one’s seen.’ He stopped to light a cigarette. She remained silently watchful, knowing that he would continue because he was a collector, and collectors needed to transmit their zeal to others.
‘The necropolis of the New Kingdom has been steadily robbed for the last three and a half thousand years,’ he told her, ‘from the interment of Tuthmosis I to the arrival of Howard Carter—sixty-two tombs and there’s nothing left. Carter was as big a liar and cheat as the rest of them. Take a look at what remains. Merneptah, Amenhotep, Siptah, Sethnakht, a few chambers filled with pretty little bas-reliefs to amuse the waddling tourists. Relics sell because everyone wants to touch the past, but the past makes no sense if you smash it up to make a quick sale. It’s robbed of all purpose and life. It will only mean something if its mythical power remains intact. There’s nothing of interest left in Thebes.’
‘What about KV5?’ she asked quietly. Bryant had briefed her on the most recent developments in Egyptology. In 1994, an American archaeologist named Kent Weeks had discovered the valley’s biggest tomb to date, the burial site of the fifty-two sons of Rameses II. Excavation was still continuing.
‘It’s been over ten years. No treasures have been discovered there.’
‘But thousands of artefacts have been recovered from the debris, pieces of great importance.’
The jet eyes remained too still. ‘Now. . . I think you’re trying a little too hard.’
She was about to shift her stool back a little, but he was too fast for her. His hand had slipped around her neck, his index finger looping beneath her gold chain. As he twisted, the chain tightened. Anyone glancing at them would think he had embraced her.
‘Forget Thebes, tell me about this.’
It had been Arthur’s idea to thread the central panel of the sandalwood bracelet on to a neck-chain, in the hope that Ubeda would notice it. ‘It has a special meaning for those of us who are prepared to keep searching,’ she said, thinking I deserve an Academy Award for this.
He let the bracelet panel fall from his fingers. ‘The seeds of regeneration springing from ancient waters. How quickly we forget our own creation myths. Look down there.’ He nodded to the gyrating dominatrices of the blue-lit stage. ‘The artificial pleasures of a civilization in decline.’
‘Then why do you come here?’
‘I own the place.’
I should have been told that, she thought, wincing inwardly. No wonder he was so deeply in debt. How many thousand square feet did he have to maintain here?
‘And you want to sell me an Anubis. Do you have a genuine interest, or are you merely a vendor?’
‘I find the myth fascinating.’
‘In what way, I wonder.’
‘The rituals, mostly—the Opening of the Mouth, the Lake of Offerings, the Weighing of the Heart.’ She congratulated herself on remembering that protective ceremonies guided the dead to their afterlives. The Opening of the Mouth allowed for the reawakening of the senses. Anubis weighed the heart against the Feather of Truth. If it was found to be heavier, it was fed to the monster Ammut.
‘Well, those rituals have always been popular with a certain kind of buyer,’ he said disdainfully. ‘There are countless other rituals, less spoken of.’
‘Of course. I imagine many still continue, and they all require ceremonial artefacts.’ It was like prospecting for oil, testing each area and hoping for a strike, but she saw his eyes betray a faint interest. ‘People look in the wrong places. As you say, the key treasures of Thebes have all been disseminated. They could be anywhere, even here.’
He was watching her intently now. That was the wonderful thing about collectors;