Will Adams - The Exodus Quest

'I hate to see women being bullied. I really hate it. It's against our culture. Please just tell me the names of your colleagues. That's all.'

'I can't. I'm sorry.'

'I understand,' he nodded seriously. 'They're your colleagues, your friends. It wouldn't feel right. I appreciate that. I admire it. But look at it this way: they've left you here alone to face the consequences of their actions. They've betrayed you. You owe them nothing. Please. Just one name. That's all. I can convince Farooq you're on our side if you give me just one name.'

'Just one name?' she asked wretchedly. 'That's all you want?'

'Yes,' pressed Hosni gently. 'Just one name.'

V

In the dryness of Naguib's Lada, Knox marshalled his thoughts. So much had been going on, it was difficult to know where to start. He told Naguib about Peterson and the underground site. He showed him the mosaic photo on his mobile's screen, how it matched Gaille's posture in the video. Then he explained how the Greek letters pointed towards Akhenaten and Amarna.

Naguib nodded, as though it meshed with his own thinking. 'We found the body of a young girl out in the desert two days ago,' he said. 'Her skull had been bashed in; she'd been wrapped in tarpaulin. She was a Copt, which is a very sensitive issue round here right now, so my boss told me to drop it. He's not a man to stir things up unnecessarily. But I have a daughter. If there's a killer on the loose…' He shook his head.

'Good for you,' said Knox.

'The investigation didn't go as I'd expected. I'd assumed rape or robbery, something like that. But it turned out she'd drowned. And when we found an Amarna figurine on her, a different scenario began to take shape in my mind. A desperate, poor young girl who's heard of valuable artefacts being flushed out of the wadis by storms like these. She makes her way out to the Royal Wadi, she comes across a figurine, tucks it away in her pouch. Perhaps a rock crashes down on her. Or perhaps she glimpses a gash in the cliff-face and tries to climb up to it, but slips and falls instead. Either way, she lies unconscious face-down in the rainwater until she drowns.'

'Then someone comes across her,' suggested Knox. 'They too see the gash in the cliff. A newly discovered tomb just begging to be plundered. So they wrap the girl in a tarpaulin and take her out into the desert to bury.'

'That's what I began suspecting,' agreed Naguib. 'And so I got to wondering, what if your friend Gaille and her companions spotted something while they were filming in Amarna? What if that's why they disappeared? I spoke to some local ghaffirs earlier. They no longer have access to the Royal Wadi. They were banned by the senior tourist policeman here, a certain Captain Khaled Osman, the day after the last great storm.'

'Jesus!' muttered Knox. 'Have you told anyone?'

'I tried to earlier. My boss wouldn't hear me out. You don't build a career in the Egyptian police by taking on the sister services. Anyway, I had no evidence to offer, only suspicions. But then, just before I saw you, I realized something. You remember that hostage video?'

'You think I'm likely to forget?'

'Did you notice the lighting?'

'How do you mean?'

'Think back. You could see the underside of the hostages' chins, yes? All the shadows were being cast upwards. That's because the light was coming from beneath. Everyone's been working on the assumption that they're being held in some house or apartment in or around Assiut. But private houses and apartments don't have floor-lighting like that. In Egypt, you only find such floor-lighting in one kind of place.'

'Historic sites,' said Knox.

'Exactly,' said Naguib. 'That video wasn't filmed in Assiut. It was filmed in Amarna.'

'Mister Griffin?'

Griffin looked up, startled, to see two uniformed airport security men in front of him, regarding him with polite but knowing smiles. His insides lurched, he felt sick. 'Yes?' he asked.

'Would you come with us, please?'

'Where to?'

The taller of the two nodded to a glass-fronted office the far side of the departures lounge. 'Our interview room.'

'But my flight's about to board.'

The smiles tightened. 'Please. Come with us.'

Griffin's shoulders sagged. A part of him had known this would happen. He wasn't the kind of man life gave breaks to. He turned to Mickey. 'You're in charge,' he said, handing him his credit card. 'Get everyone safely out. Okay?'

'What about you?'

'I'll be fine. Just get everyone home. I can rely on you, can't I?'

'Yes.'

'Good man,' said Griffin, patting him on the shoulder. With a heavy heart, he followed the two security men across the carpeted departure lounge floor.

'So what do we do now?' asked Naguib.

'Can't you take it to your boss?'

'He won't listen. Not to me. You know how people get. As if you're a burden specially designed to test them. And what do we have, in all honesty? Lighting. A mosaic.'

'But we're right,' protested Knox.

'Yes,' agreed Naguib. 'But that's not enough. You have to understand how Egypt works. There's so much inter-service jealousy and rivalry. If the tourist police so much as hear that we're accusing them of being behind this…' He shook his head. 'They'll fight back hard. It'll be a matter of honour. They'll demand evidence, scoff at it, counterattack, accuse us of all kinds of evils. My boss is my boss precisely because he knows how to avoid this kind of confrontation. Believe me, he won't even hear me out, not unless I can give him irrefutable proof.'

'Irrefutable proof? How the hell are we supposed to get that?'

'We could always find the hostages ourselves,' muttered Naguib, half joking. But then he shook his head, discounting the thought. 'Amarna's just too big. And the moment Khaled realizes we're out looking, he's sure to cover his tracks.'

'Yes,' nodded Knox, as the glimmer of an idea came to him. 'He is.'

Griffin felt the tremors in his hands like soil feels an impending earthquake. He clasped them together in an effort to still them. 'Can we make this quick, please?' he asked. 'Only my flight leaves in-'

'Forget your flight.'

'But I-'

'I said forget about it.' One of them pulled up a chair, sat down, leaned forwards. 'I'm afraid we have some irregularities to deal with before we can let you leave.'

'Irregularities?'

'Yes. Irregularities.'

'What kind of irregularities?'

'The kind we need to deal with.'

Griffin nodded. All his adult life, he'd felt deficient. Living a lie, they called it. The lie that you were adequate. He looked out through the office window onto the departures lounge, his students milling around the gate, conferring heatedly, glancing anxiously his way, delaying their boarding to the last moment. They looked so young, suddenly. They looked like children. All of them had been aware of the clandestine nature of their excavation. But they hadn't cared. They were God-fearing, they were American, they were immune from consequence. But now that their immunity was being stripped from them, they realized just how vulnerable they were. Horror stories about foreign gaols, judicial procedures in which they wouldn't understand a word, their whole futures at the mercy of people they despised as heathens… No wonder they were scared.

He looked back at the security men. Whatever they knew, they evidently knew it only of him, or they'd have stopped everyone flying. His students were his responsibility, his job was to buy them time, whatever the personal cost. And, realizing this, a serene calmness descended upon him. 'I don't know what you mean,' he said.

'Yes, you do.'

'I assure you.'

They shared a glance. 'May we see your passport, please?'