maxim to the test.
Elena had a blood debt to settle.
Chapter Thirty-one
IT HAD RAINED during the night, leaving the roads slick and black. Thin traffic threw up spray that glinted like diamonds in Mohammed’s headlights. Before he even reached the outskirts of Alexandria, stress was twisting his spine like a tourniquet. He drove hunched over the steering wheel, consulting his watch and the speedometer. He dared not take the flatbed truck and its load over seventy kilometers per hour, yet he dare not be late, either. Nicolas had been adamant that he reach Siwa by sunset tonight.
It had been years since he handled a rig this size and weight, but he got the hang of it quickly enough, especially once he was out on the Marsa Matruh Highway, where the road became wide, straight, and easy. He took Layla’s picture from his wallet and laid it on the dash to remind himself why he was doing this. A police car loomed in his wing mirror. It slowed as it came alongside. He kept his eyes on the road ahead, and at last it sped on. His heart settled.
He touched Layla’s photo. If all went well, her intense chemotherapy and radiotherapy conditioning treatment would get under way tomorrow. Her condition was so severe, there was no time to waste. Doctor Rafai and her medical team would deliberately and systematically fill her system with poisons. In a fortnight or so, if Allah willed it, they would harvest marrow from Besheer’s pelvis, remove fragments of blood and bone, and inject them into Layla. If that worked, Layla would begin months of tests, treatment, rehabilitation. It would be a year at least before they knew for sure. Until then, he had no choice but to do what Nicolas wanted, because Nicolas had made it quite clear to him that what had been given could just as easily be taken away.
Mohammed had had a mechanical digger on site. It had been finding the heavy-duty flatbed transporter truck that proved difficult. All his usual suppliers had been out, but he had kept on the phone, calling friends and friends of friends until finally he found one. Then it had been a matter of filling in paperwork, collecting the truck and bringing it to his site, and loading and securing the mechanical digger all by himself, because Nicolas had been adamant that he let no one else know what he was up to.
And all the while, Mohammed had brooded on why Nicolas would want such equipment in Siwa. None of the possible answers made him feel any better. The rising sun threw his truck’s shadow far ahead of him on the black highway. Mohammed drove into it as into a dreadful premonition.
KNOX STARED THROUGH the Jeep’s windshield at the sands stretching out before him. The desert was at its most beautiful in the early morning and late afternoon, when the angle of the sun created chiaroscuro shadows in the golden dunes, and the heat was less intense. But when the sun was high, the landscape turned monochrome and flat, except for those areas covered by a layer of salt crystals from some long-vanished sea, where it was so dazzling he had to squint to protect his eyes.
The track he was driving had been in use since ancient times—an old caravan trail from the Nile to Siwa. On either side lay the bones of camels, empty petrol cans, burst tires, discarded water bottles. They had been here perhaps a week, perhaps decades. The Western Desert didn’t recycle like other places; instead, it froze like a time capsule. On one of his trips with Richard, retracing the tracks of the Zerzura Club explorers who had mapped the Western Desert and the Gilf Kabir, Knox had encountered the remains of a man in Bedouin dress sitting by the ashes of a fire in a dune valley, who had apparently died abruptly of a heart attack, and his hobbled camel nearby, which, unable to move, had perished with him.
His lips were badly cracked with dehydration; his tongue kept gluing itself to the roof of his mouth. He took another swig from the water bottle he kept clamped between his legs, swilling it around before swallowing. Within seconds, however, his mouth was as dry as before. He glanced over his shoulder to reassure himself that he and Rick had gotten sufficient supplies.
“What’s that?” frowned Rick, pointing ahead.
The Jeep’s windshield had smeared so badly that Knox had to lean his head out the window