Will Adams - The Exodus Quest

'Keep on them, you hear me,' yelled Gamal. 'We'll get there as soon as we can.'

'Thanks.' Naguib disconnected, nodded to Tarek, sitting in his passenger seat, an AK-49 across his lap.

'All set?' asked Tarek.

'All set,' agreed Naguib.

Tarek grinned and lowered his window, gave the sign to his son Mahmoud at the wheel of the truck behind, a dozen ghaffirs in the back, all armed to the teeth, champing at this chance to get their own back on Khaled.

It was time to roll.

Claire's cell-door banged open and Augustin burst in, closely followed by a short, slim man in a beautifully cut charcoal-grey suit. 'Have you told them anything?' asked Augustin.

'No.' It had been close, though. She'd been on the verge of opening up to Hosni when Farooq had returned, bringing confrontation back with him. Hosni had rolled his eyes in despair, had even allowed himself a complicit smile at Claire, both aware of just how close he'd got.

'Good girl,' exulted Augustin, planting a kiss on her forehead. But then he took a step back, as though worried about overstepping his bounds. 'I only mean, it's important you take proper legal advice first.'

'Of course,' she agreed.

'Great. Then come with me.'

'I can go?'

Augustin nodded at his companion. 'This is Mister Nafeez Zidan, Alexandria's finest lawyer. I've had to use him once or twice myself. You know how it is. He's made the arrangements. You're free to leave, as long as you agree to come back tomorrow afternoon. That's okay, yes?'

'You'll come with me?'

'Of course. And Nafeez too.'

'Then it's fine,' she said. She turned to Nafeez. 'Thank you so much.'

'The pleasure is mine,' said Nafeez.

She clung to Augustin's arm as he led her out towards the lobby. Suddenly, she couldn't get away fast enough. 'We had to agree to certain conditions to gain your release, I'm afraid,' he told her. 'The important thing was to get you out tonight.'

'What conditions?'

'For one thing, your passport has been confiscated and won't be returned until the investigators are satisfied.' He opened the front door for her, then led her down the front steps and opened the back door of Mansoor's car which was waiting at the foot. 'I've also had to assure them you won't try to leave the country before then.'

'I won't,' she promised, climbing inside. 'But how long will it all take?'

'It won't be quick,' admitted Augustin, sliding in beside her. 'Things in Egypt rarely are.' He took her hand in both his, gave it a reassuring press. 'But you mustn't worry. It's going to work out fine. Mansoor and I have worked out a story that-'

'Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay!' protested Nafeez from the front, covering his ears. 'I can't hear this. I'm a lawyer.'

'Forgive me, my friend,' laughed Augustin. He turned back to Claire. 'Just trust me. It's going to be fine. It's who you know in Egypt that counts. Usually I hate that about this place. Tonight I welcome it. Because I know a lot of people, Claire. A lot of connected, powerful people. I'll call them all if I have to.'

'Thank you,' she said.

'I've made some other commitments on your behalf. I've undertaken to be personally responsible for making sure you show up for all interviews and court appearances, should it come to that, which it won't. But I'm afraid that means you're going to have to stay as my guest for the time being.'

'Won't I get in your way?'

'Of course not. It'll be my pleasure.'

She glanced down at her hand, still pressed between both his. He realized what must be going through her mind, blushed furiously, let go of her hand, shifted away along the back seat. 'No!' he protested. 'It won't be like that at all, I promise you. You'll have your own bedroom. At least, it'll be my bedroom, but I won't be in there with you, I'll be on the couch in the living room, I'll just grab a blanket and a pillow, I've slept there before, it's fine, it's comfortable, much more comfortable than the bed actually, I don't know why I don't sleep on it all the time, anyway you'll be completely safe, that's the point, I give you my word.'

He broke off his schoolboy blathering, drew a deep breath, looked directly into her eyes to see if she'd bought it, evidently came to the conclusion that he still needed to give it one last push. 'Honestly, Claire,' he insisted, 'I'd never dream of taking advantage of you like that, not after everything you've just risked for me.'

There was a heartbeat of silence.

A second heartbeat.

'Oh,' she said.

Lying exposed to the full savagery of the thunderstorm on the roof of the truck, Knox looked back down the road and realized a major weakness in his impromptu plan. Even with the truck's headlights on full beam, visibility was dire. But Naguib and Tarek wouldn't be able to use their lights without giving themselves away. And driving without lights in these conditions would be almost impossible.

A vicious squall buffeted the truck. It lurched so sharply sideways that water sloshed from the top and Knox had to cling desperately on. Their tyres regained grip, but they slowed down after that to a more prudent pace. He looked behind again. Still no sign of anyone. They reached the end of the road and parked by the generator building. An appropriate place for all this to end. Geometry might be a Greek word, but it had been an Egyptian science, developed in response to the annual Nile inundation which flooded the surrounding land, meaning that owners of valuable property needed reliable ways to determine what land belonged to whom when the waters receded, while the authorities had needed fair methods to work out taxes too.

That these skills had been used by Egypt's architects was proved by the orientation and proportions of the Great Pyramids. Yet talk of 'sacred geometry' made Egyptologists uncomfortable; it smacked too much of New-Age thinking. And while the Egyptians had clearly had both the knowledge and the ability to incorporate it into their city planning and architecture, the archaeological record showed that they hadn't often had the inclination.

At first glance, the city of Amarna seemed designed to fit its landscape. But a British architect had recently mapped the key sites, with remarkable results. Amarna, it seemed, hadn't been haphazardly laid out at all. The entire city was in fact a vast rectilinear open-air temple that straddled the Nile and faced the rising sun. What was more, if you drew straight lines from each of the boundary stele through the main palaces and temples, they all converged on a particular point, like the rays converging on the sun in so much of Amarna's art. And that focal point was right here at Akhenaten's Royal Tomb. It was as though he'd seen himself as the sun, shining eternally upon his people and his city.

The truck's doors opened. Khaled and his men hurried out, hunched beneath waterproofs, their torch-beams feeble things quickly lost in the massive darkness. Knox's mobile couldn't find a signal, overwhelmed by the storm and the high walls of the wadi. He was on his own, for the time being at least. Water slopped over the edge as he lowered himself down. His shoes squelched as he walked, so he kicked them off and tossed them into the night. Then he followed Khaled and his men along the wadi floor, wading barefoot through the storm-water as it cascaded like rapids across the scree.

Abdullah glowered at Khaled's back as they laboured up the hillside and then across the plateau, his feet soaked and sore and cold inside his ill-fitting boots. What madness this was! No way would they be able to make it down that sorry excuse for a path in such a torrent. But Khaled had anticipated this. There was a protruding spike of rock on the hilltop above the tomb mouth. He tied a slipknot in one end of a coil of rope, slung it around this spike, then tossed the rest over the edge. 'Down you go, then,' he told Abdullah.