be out on excavation,” said Knox, checking the time. “He’ll be back soon.”
“Let’s have a look at the bloody photos of this inscription of yours, then,” muttered Rick.
“I don’t have them with me.”
“You what?”
Knox gave him a look. “You don’t really think I’m stupid enough to travel halfway across Egypt with enough incriminating evidence on my laptop to get me ten years?”
“So how the hell’s your mate going to translate them?”
“I e-mailed them to myself. Ishaq’s wired.”
They sat in the shade of a date palm to wait. Torpor set in. When flies settled on them, they lacked even the energy to swat them away. A young boy in robes pushing an old bicycle much too big for him approached tentatively. “You look for Ishaq?” he asked.
“Yes. Why? Do you know where he is?”
“He leave for Cairo. A meeting. A big meeting. All the desert archaeologists are to be there.”
“Did he say when he’d be back?”
“Tomorrow,” shrugged the boy. “The day after.”
“Ballocks,” muttered Rick. “What now?”
“I don’t know,” said Knox. “Let me think.”
“I don’t believe this Kelonymus bastard. Everything else was in Greek. Why the hell did he have to switch to Demotic for this bloody inscription?”
Knox’s jaw dropped; he turned to look at his friend.
“What?” asked Rick. “What did I say?”
“I think you’ve just gone and cracked it,” said Knox.
Chapter Thirty
MOHAMMED WAS STILL IN A DAZE from his good fortune when his phone rang. “Yes?” he asked.
“This is Nicolas Dragoumis. You remember, I helped finance the tests for—”
“Of course I remember, Mr. Dragoumis. What can I do for you?”
“I believe you should have heard some good news.”
“That was you? You are my friend in Cairo?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you! Thank you! I am in your debt, Mr. Dragoumis. I am forever in your debt. I swear, anything you ever want . . .”
“Anything?” asked Nicolas dryly. “Do you really mean that?”
“On my life.”
“I hope it won’t come to that,” said Nicolas. “But tell me: do you have a mechanical digger on your site?”
THERE HAD BEEN LITTLE for Gaille to do that afternoon. Although they had recruited Mustafa and Zayn for the next fortnight, she gave them the day off, then went to Aly’s house, hoping to do some more research, only to find it locked, and a note on his door saying he’d been summoned to Cairo. She went back to her hotel and lazed away the afternoon in a hammock before reviving herself beneath a cold shower and hiring a rickety bicycle that she was now pedaling down to a local freshwater spring. Coasting along one short stretch, she passed a donkey cart carrying three Siwan wives enshrouded in their dark blue embroidered cotton tarfottet. One lifted her cowl and gave Gaille a shy yet radiant smile. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen.
Her bicycle tires were soft, and pedaling was hard work on the road, whose surface was sticky from the sun. She was relieved when she saw the spring ahead, a small, deep pool bounded by stone, the water clear down to grayish rocks, with floating clumps of lurid green algae. Several zaggalah sat around, their work on the date palms finished for the day, eyeing her with obvious interest. She’d been looking forward to a swim, but she couldn’t face their stares, so she went instead into the orchard to share a cup of bitter Siwan tea with the young custodian.
The sun sank behind the great salt lake and the hills beyond, the horizon blazed orange and purple before the colors faded, and another day was gone. She thought of the young Siwan girl on the donkey cart, married at the onset of puberty to spend the rest of her life hidden from the world, her vision reduced to the narrowest of eye slits, and Gaille had an epiphany—a vivid understanding of the change wrought in herself by the past few weeks. She knew in that moment that she could never again take refuge from life in the physical and intellectual comfort of the Sorbonne, compiling arcane dictionaries of dead languages. Such work was immensely valuable, but it was a step removed from reality, shadows on the wall. She wasn’t an academic. She was an archaeologist, her father’s daughter.
It was time to make her peace.
RICK AND KNOX FOUND A HOTEL with a modem jack so they could download the photographs of the lower chamber and the inscription. But deciphering wasn’t Knox’s strength, and progress was slow. Meanwhile, Rick looked through the other photographs of the lower chamber. When he