The Khamsin Curse (2 page)

“Oh, look! A third lady has
just joined them. I say, that red hair looks rather stunning. And
before you start - I concede I have a penchant for redheads, though
her red is more like a saffron sunset than a rainbow on fire. I
wonder if it’s Mrs Jefferson Lee?”

“There is
no
Mrs
Jefferson Lee. According to the
Cairo Gazette
Mr Lee has
just celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday and is a widower. Your
redhead is certainly attractive with an enviable figure but going
by the shape and style of her attire I’d say she is his personal
secretary. She is wearing last season’s fuller skirt with soutache
swirls, perhaps a Callot Soeurs, not the slimmer silhouette that is
now
de rigeur
in Paris. The blouse is cotton not silk;
there’s a bit of machine lace at the throat, not Valenciennes or
Brussels. And she waited until Mr Lee indicated for the waiter to
pull up a chair for her. The waiter would have jumped if she had
been Mrs Lee. He would have conjured a chair out of thin air the
moment he spied her gliding across the foyer.”

“You’re dead right. Plus she’s
sitting on the edge of the circle as if she daren’t intrude. And
she’s sitting to Mr Lee’s left; a medieval throwback to an inferior
placing. And now that you mention it, she looks neatly turned-out
rather than decked out in
haute couture
with strings of
pearls and a fistful of diamond sparklers.”

She fingered her triple
stranded pearl necklace playfully. “
Precisement, mon
ami
.”

“Mr Lee looks in robust health
for a man of fifty-five. It must be all that fresh prairie air and
the wide open range.”

“Robust with the
air
distingue
of a man of wealth and power. If this were Rome he
would be Caesar. If Florence he would be Lorenzo Medici. If
Olympus, then Zeus.”

“And in Egypt, then
Pharaoh!”

She laughed at his didacity;
pleased that he was in fine fettle and good humour – it boded well
for their current assignment.

Her silvery laugh drew some
unwanted attention. Several people turned to look. One of them was
a sinister-looking man, dark and swarthy, with a thick black
moustache and piercing black eyes. He was wearing typical Western
garments, the sort of thing you’d see on Threadneedle Street,
except he topped off the grey banker’s costume with a traditional
fez. The male headdress was common in Egypt, introduced by one of
the Ottoman rulers when he banned the turban, but this particular
fez was bright green with a black tassel. It matched a green and
black brocade waistcoat, indicating a man of sartorial sharpness,
perhaps a touch vain, who was not averse to being noticed.

“Don’t look now,” she delivered
in a lower tone as they continued to cross the foyer and she leaned
into him as if divulging an intimate secret, “but the man in the
green fez standing by the marble column looks familiar. I think it
might Ali Pasha. When I drop my handkerchief you can pick it up and
give him the once-over.”

Drop, dip, spin…

“I didn’t really get a good
look,” he fretted. “Unlike Sherlock I wasn’t blessed with a
photographic memory and a couple of porters carting travel trunks
crossed my line of vision. I need to re-check those photographs
Mycroft dispatched before we left Venice.”

“Stop by my room before you
come down to dinner. We can both take another look to refresh our
memories. Let’s check in. I’m desperate for an ibis bath.”

He placed a halting arm on her
elbow. “Look! It’s that German chap who stole our calash. He’s just
marched up to the reception desk and commandeered attention. He
hogged three deck chairs on the paddle-steamer – one for himself,
one for his books and one for his hat. When I asked him if the
chairs were occupied he gave me the rudest reply. Let’s hang back
here and pretend to admire this Egyptian frieze before I say
something I might regret.”

Easy to admire, the hunting
frieze was rich in colour and bursting with birdlife, the sort of
thing that adorned many a burial tomb to signal abundance and
prosperity in the afterlife.

“A young lady has just joined
our German friend,” observed the Countess, angling for a discrete
look. “I don’t think it’s his wife. She’s much too young.”

Dr Watson couldn’t help
himself; he whirled round quicker than a dervish. “She wasn’t on
board the Queen of Cairo. I’d remember that sungold hair. She’s not
only too young but too pretty for the likes of him. The concierge
is giving them two keys. They’re not sharing a room. Thank
goodness!” He watched them head toward the stairs; the older male
striding ahead of the young lady. “We can check in now.” He took
one step and stopped dead. “My God! That’s…I cannot believe it…It
looks like…Yes, it’s definitely him!”

“Who?” she prompted, feeling
suddenly alarmed at the choking syllables.

Ali Pasha had disappeared…so it
wasn’t him to whom the doctor was referring. He had sauntered into
the lounge-cum-bar. It was that time of day when the tourists
returned from their excursions to the Sphinx and the Pyramids. Men
repaired to the bar for a quenching gin and tonic while ladies went
upstairs to commence their toilette in anticipation of a glamorous
evening rubbing shoulders with the aristocracy of the old world and
the wealthy titans of the new. Being a trader in antiquities, it
was natural for Ali Pasha to mingle with tourists keen to bag a
souvenir after having had their artistic appetites thoroughly
whetted by the splendours of ancient Egypt.

Dr Watson was still babbling
incoherently. “He’s older now. I almost didn’t recognize him. He’d
be sixty now. No, no, not yet. Born in 1840, yes, but fifty-nine
for another few months. Yes, fifty-nine years of age and still
ramrod straight.”

“Who are you babbling about?”
she repeated testily, more alarmed than ever.

His gaze seemed to be directed
at two rough-looking men. They were standing in profile, chatting
by the entrance where the luggage tended to be dropped off. One was
wearing a wide-brimmed hat similar to a fedora or an Australian
akubra. She recalled his image from the photographs Mycroft had
posted out to them before they even agreed to this venture.

Professor Max Mallisham. He was
overseeing an important project on the island of Philae. He looked
about mid-forties, rugged and tanned. He was doing most of the
talking with the other man doing most of the listening.

Also an outdoorsy type, lean
and wiry, the second man had sweat patches under his arms, a dusty
shirt stuck to his back and a gun strapped to his waist. He was
wearing a pith helmet and his arms were crossed in front of his
chest as if he didn’t like what he was hearing. His cynical scowl
was just short of total insolence.

She turned back to the frieze
and pointed at some lapis-lazuli ducks swimming among the water
reeds. “Turn this way and pretend to be interested in the frieze.”
She waited for him to turn around and was surprised to see his face
was bloodless. “Are you all right? You’ve gone white.”

He appeared momentarily
unsteady on his feet. “It’s been a shock…To see him after all this
time…I was hoping he was dead.”

Exasperation reached fever
pitch. “For pity’s sake who?”

“Colonel Sebastian Moran.” His
voice fairly croaked.

She recognized the name of
course and felt a chill despite the heat. So that was Professor
Moriarty’s right-hand man, his henchman, and Sherlock’s sworn
nemesis. “Is he the man talking to Professor Mallisham?”

“Who’s Professor
Mallisham?”

“The suntanned chap wearing the
wide-brimmed hat and dusty boots. He’s the world famous, British
Egyptologist, and quite the ladies’ man. Don’t turn around,” she
warned when he made a move to check. “Wait till we get to the
reception desk. Let’s go across together now. Take my arm. It will
help you steady.”

2

Unafraid of most things,
including colour, the Countess was radiant in an evening gown of
chartreuse silk, lavishly embellished with black bugle beads across
the bodice and along the hem which then flowed out to a curved
train which shimmered in her elegant wake.

Dr Watson, looking dapper in
black dinner suit and white tie, was still reeling from the sight
of Colonel Sebastian Moran in the flesh when he joined the Countess
in her luxurious suite. She was pulling on some black silk evening
gloves. Ah, the glamour of gloves – a lady’s ensemble was never
complete without gloves.

“Where are those photographs?”
he said without preamble.

“I’ve laid them out on the
couvre-lit
. Ali Pasha, the antiquities trader, is the man
wearing the green fez. Professor Max Mallisham is the other
one.”

“I wonder what he was talking
to Moran about.”

“Whatever it was the colonel
didn’t look too happy.”

“Colonel Moran is a dangerous
man – never lose sight of that fact,” he warned. “You might recall
he tried to kill Sherlock with an air rifle. His presence puts a
completely new light on this assignment. That was a huge oversight
on Mycroft’s part, to omit a photograph of the colonel. I wonder if
he did it deliberately, knowing how much it would rattle me.”

The vehemence of his tone did
not surprise her. “I realise the colonel vowed to avenge the death
of Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls but that was almost a decade ago.
Sherlock is still very much alive. The colonel must have put the
incident behind him. Perhaps it’s time…”

“Don’t lecture me about Moran,”
he cut in brusquely. “I know exactly what you’re going to say. It’s
time to put it behind me. Well, you have yet to learn what he’s
like. Some people are born evil. I can’t believe I just said that.
But there you go. Be warned.”

She turned away from him and
plucked a dazzling diamond necklace out of an old sock. “Be a
darling and do the clasp up for me. Would you have refused this
assignment if you’d known Colonel Moran would be here in
Cairo?”

He exhaled windily as he
fiddled with the gold clasp and tried not to snag any wispy
caracols feathering her slender neck. “Probably not, but it would
have prepared me better. The shock of seeing Moran in the flesh,
well, it was a shock, that’s all.”

She surveyed herself in the
oval mirror on the dressing table. “Do you think yellow diamonds
clash with chartreuse?”

“What?”

“Should I go for green emeralds
instead? Chartreuse is an impossible colour to match but I do like
the way this new gown drapes.”

“Yellow diamonds look fine. I
think we should have Colonel Hayter arrest the blighter and be done
with it.”

She gave the yellow diamonds
another critical appraisal. They always looked better on blondes
with blue eyes – of which she was neither. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, absolutely! He’s a
vicious scoundrel!”

“I meant the yellow diamonds.
If it were that simple Mycroft would have seen to it. He wouldn’t
have asked us to look into this business. Even if Colonel Moran is
involved with undermining the British war effort there must be
others involved too. Arresting one man doesn’t stop the espionage.
We need to expose the ringleader.”

“Yes, yes, of course, and the
yellow diamonds look fine, truly, though I’m probably not the best
person to ask about colour combinations. Grey, black and brown are
my remit.”

“Oh, that reminds me. I took
the liberty of having three linen suits made up for you before we
left Venice – taupe, puce and off-white. I bought you a Panama hat
as well. It’s white. A Panama hat should always be white. No other
colour looks quite the same. Xenia is pressing the linen suits as
we speak.”

“What on earth is puce?”

“It’s a brownish-lilac
colour.”

“I am
not
wearing
lilac!”

“It’s more brownish than lilac
and you need to bear in mind this is Egypt. The light is different.
It is probably more like the colour of sand.”

“Oh, very well. And what is
taupe?”

“A soft grey.”

“Hmm, that sounds all right. At
least I know what off-white looks like. I should probably thank
you. I was intending to buy a Panama hat in the bazaar tomorrow. I
apologise if I sounded brusque. Put it down to the shock of seeing
Moran.”

She nodded understandingly and
turned her attention to the photograph of Max Mallisham. He was a
ruggedly handsome man in his forties with the craggy features one
would expect of an archaeologist who had spent years labouring in
the desert under a baking hot sun. He made his mark early when he
unearthed the tomb of a high priest in Memphis. He was only in his
mid-twenties at the time and the coup meant he had no trouble
financing future excavations, though his subsequent successes had
been few and far between. She passed the photograph to her
companion to divert his thoughts from Colonel Sebastian Moran.

“Hmph,” he grunted, following
her gaze. “I can’t fathom what the ladies see in this sunburnt
specimen.”

“All his digs are financed by
women. Lady Catchpoole almost went through her entire fortune
financing his unsuccessful dig in Edfu, and before her it was the
Marchioness of Minterne-Magna. She ended up forfeiting the Minterne
rubies when creditors insisted on her honouring the debts
pertaining to his failed dig in Kom Ombo.”

“And now in steps Miss Hypatia
Lee, albeit with her father’s fortune. Let’s hope his pockets
really are deep.” He shifted his focus to the three remaining
photographs. “Willcocks, Baker and Aird – do you know which is
which?”

He was referring to the three
British engineers charged with the construction of the Lower Aswan
Dam which was being financed by Mr Ernest Cassel, a Jew reputed to
be the wealthiest man in England. The construction was facing
hostility because it was feared the rising water from the dam might
flood the island of Philae where some particularly beautiful
temples were situated. It pitted the three engineers against
Professor Mallisham.