Mr Impossible (31 page)

Now, as they
reached the edge of the desert plain, it was reviving. It had changed
direction, though.

After a few miles,
he was getting a bad feeling. The guards were dawdling far behind,
and the lads looked uneasy.

Rupert met Tom’s
gaze. “
Simoom
,”
the boy said. “
Simoom
comes,
I think.”

Yusef beside him
nodded and went into a long spate of Arabic.

The wind was
picking up, whirling sand.

Mrs. Pembroke said,
“I think we’d better—”

Tom gave a shout
and pointed southward. Rupert turned that way. A great yellow fog
bank welled up from the horizon.

Another shout made
him look behind him. The guards were galloping away.

Yusef cried,
“
Hadeed ya mashoom! ”

“
Allahu
akbar
!” Tom shouted.

Rupert knew that
last one.
God is most great
. It was a charm to ward off evil.
In Minya he’d found out that the Egyptians believed the
jinn
rode in the sandstorms.

Running for cover
was definitely the best idea.

“
Go!”
he told the boys. “Follow the guards.”

“
Mrs.
Pembroke,” he called. He could hear the wind’s roar,
drawing closer.

“
Yes, I—”
The words slid into a shriek as her donkey reared and galloped away
in the wrong direction.

Rupert spurred his
animal after her. The fog swelled into a wave of sand, billowing
toward them. An instant before Rupert reached them, her donkey came
to a sudden halt, turned abruptly, and fell. Rupert dismounted and
hurried to the fallen rider and mount.

But her donkey was
already struggling up onto its feet.

Before he could
grab it, the beast, freed of its burdens, fled. Rupert grabbed the
bridle of his mount before it could follow.

Mrs. Pembroke
struggled to rise, too, but fell down again. “Just my foot,”
she gasped as Rupert knelt beside her. “Silly ass fell on it.”

The billowing sand
was welling up, like a whirlpool upside down. It grew into a great
swirling pillar of sand, and it was racing straight at them.

He caught her round
the waist with one arm and lifted her up from the ground, his other
hand still holding his anxious donkey’s bridle. He dragged them
both toward the jagged, stony slopes of the mountain necropolis.

The sand beat at
his face, stung his eyes, filled his nose. The swirling pillar was
nearly upon them.

He hauled woman and
beast into the nearest crevice. He pulled off his cloak and sank down
to the ground, taking Mrs. Pembroke with him. He pulled her between
his bent legs and wrapped the cloak about them both. The donkey
pressed close to the humans.

The sandstorm,
shrieking and roaring, bore down on them.* * *

THE MEN WHO were
following the party abruptly reversed direction and raced back to
Asyut. They waited out the
simoom
in a coffee shop near the
southwest gate at the back of the town, facing the tombs. At this
shop, one could obtain “white” or “black”
coffee, the former laced with forbidden brandy. The men drank white
coffee. They were all mercenaries who worked for a Frenchman named
Du-val. They had orders to capture the redheaded Englishwoman they’d
been following recently. Today offered the prime opportunity. The
woman had left most of her people behind. She traveled to the tombs
with only a few servants and a pair of guards who could be counted on
to run at the first sign of trouble. The large Englishman who
accompanied her didn’t worry them. One man stood no chance
against ten experienced killers.

After several cups
of white coffee, though, they began arguing about the Englishman.
They’d all heard he was the son of a great lord whose wealth
far surpassed that of Muhammad Ali. Now some of them said he would be
worth more alive than dead. With each succeeding cup of coffee, the
debate grew louder. They woke from his nap the gatekeeper nearby, who
left his post to demand silence. One of the men, Khareef, apologized
and escorted him out of the shop. The instant they were out of
onlookers’ view, Khareef thrust a knife between the
gatekeeper’s ribs. He propped up the corpse in its usual place,
where it remained undisturbed until the watch changed next morning,
everyone who passed assuming the gatekeeper was sleeping as usual.
Khareef found this highly amusing, and laughed from time to time,
thinking about it.* * *

RUPERT COULDN’T
GUESS how long the sandstorm went on. It seemed an eternity.

The wind howled,
and the sand lashed at them like an enraged monster. Small wonder the
Arabs thought
the jinn
rode in the sandstorms.

In the cloak’s
shelter it was hot and dark. It smelled of donkey, too. But the rocks
sheltered them from the worst of the storm’s brutality, and the
tightly woven cloth blocked the worst of the biting sand.

Mrs. Pembroke clung
to him, mute and motionless, oh, and soft. He felt her breath, the
quick inhale-exhale of fear, against his collarbone, where his shirt
had fallen open. He was acutely aware of the hurried rise and fall of
her bosom against his chest and of the soft pressure of her bottom
against his thigh and groin.

He bent and pressed
a reassuring kiss to the top of her head. Her hair was so soft, and
fell in waves, like the rippling desert sand.

She’d lost
her veil, he realized: the obnoxious veil he resented while aware of
the protection if afforded against the Egyptian sun as well as prying
male eyes. It wasn’t black, he remembered, but he couldn’t
recall what color it was. She hadn’t worn black in days, he
realized. Since Minya?

“
We’ll
be all right,” he said. He could barely hear his own words over
the whistle and wail of the sandstorm. He didn’t know if she
answered or not. He knew, though, that she held him tightly, her arms
wrapped about his waist, as though she feared the storm would bear
him away otherwise.

At moments he
thought it might. The wind was unlike anything he’d ever
experienced on dry land. It was more like an ocean storm, like being
caught in a tearing sea of sand. Twice he thought it would rip them
out from their crevice to throw them miles into the air, then drop
them in so many broken pieces upon the Libyan hills.

But if so, it must
take them both or none. He would not give her up to man or to force
of nature, however great. He wrapped his arms more tightly about her,
his fingers clutching at the robe to keep it closed while he prayed
the storm would end soon, before they suffocated.

He didn’t
waste any more breath on reassurances she couldn’t hear over
the storm. He only pressed his lips to her head, again and again,
hoping she’d understand: he’d take care of her. She would
not come to harm so long as he was alive.

Some lifetimes
later, the world began to quiet. The wind still blew strong, and the
sand beat against them still, but not so ferociously. The juggernaut
of whirling sand had moved on to sow destruction elsewhere.

He lifted his head.
Gingerly he loosened his hold on the robe and peered out.

“
I think it’s
safe to breathe,” he said.

She let out a
whoosh of breath, then coughed.

“
Sorry,”
he said. He kissed her temple. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to
crush your ribs.”

Her arms shd from
his waist. She lifted her head. She eased her rump a few inches away
from his crotch.

He wanted her back.
He wanted her tucked into his arms, her soft hair tickling his chin.
He wanted to feel her breathing against his collarbone, and the soft
pressure of her breasts and her backside.

After a moment, she
crawled farther away and spat out sand. “Good grief,” she
said. “Good grief.”

“
Are you all
right?” he said. “Your foot?”

She turned her foot
experimentally. “It seems to be functioning,” she said.
“My boots are filled with sand. My trousers are filled with
sand. I am a walking sandbag. No, not walking. Not yet. Let me just…
catch my breath.”

She drew up her
knees and folded her arms upon them and bowed her head upon her arms.

He looked about
them. The wind had heaped a large mound of sand into the opening
they’d entered.

He rose cautiously
and looked to the southeast.

A fresh yellow
tidal wave was building.

“
Una,”
he said.

“
Yes, I’ll
be up in a minute.”

“
I’m
not sure we have a minute,” he said. “And I don’t
fancy being buried here.” He hauled her up and started pulling
her and the donkey up the mountain.* * *

BEING ABRUPTLY
DRAGGED to her feet and yanked up a mountainside knocked out of
Daphne the half a breath she’d managed to collect. She’d
none to spare for commentary. Not that he would have listened—or
needed to. He’d summed up their situation accurately, she soon
saw.

A glance back
showed her why he was so impatient to be moving. Sand had partly
filled their shelter, and another sand funnel was hurtling toward
them.

Fortunately, paths
had been worn or cut into the hillside for access to the tombs. With
Mr. Carsington to lean on, Daphne could get along well enough. She
was thankful for her Turkish trousers, which allowed for easier
movement man the usual layers of petticoats under not-very-wide
skirts. The donkey experienced no difficulty at all, and came along
agreeably enough.

Daphne wondered
where her mount had got to, and whether the poor thing was alive. She
looked for it without much hope. Visibility was uncertain at best.
The sun was either a hellish red behind a veil of sand or disappeared
altogether. Not that one could look in any direction for long. Eyes,
ears, nose, and mouth filled with grit. One could scarcely breathe
for the sand. Simply trying to protect herself from it exhausted her.
Yet what she experienced at present, she now knew, was hardly the
worst of the punishment the hot wind could bestow.

She made herself
stop looking back at the deadly yellow thing racing toward them, and
focused on her companion.

She recalled her
moment of panic when her donkey had fallen, and she’d seen the
monstrous sand tide rolling toward her. For an instant, blinded by
the blowing sand, she’d felt alone, abandoned. But it was only
for an instant, because in the next he was there.

As long as he was
by, she could face anything. She’d followed him through the
absolute darkness of the pyramid, squeezing past corpses on the way.
She’d been arrested, and locked up in jail, like a common
felon. She’d burst into a room filled with cutthroats, and
attacked them. She’d knelt by the dying rug merchant and tried
to comfort him as the last drops of blood trickled from his slit
throat. She’d shot a pistol and a rifle, though firearms had
always terrified her.

Even now she wasn’t
sure how she’d done any of these things. Perhaps she didn’t
really know herself after all. Perhaps, somehow, Mr. Carsington knew
her better.

She’d survive
this, she told herself. All she had to do was stick close, not let
him get killed, and this difficulty, too, would soon be behind them.

He hauled her into
the first tomb they reached. The donkey balked. It pulled back
abruptly, tearing the bridle from his hand. Then it stood stock still
in the doorway, braying.

“
Hermione,
get in here,” he snapped.

The donkey brayed
and pawed at the ground.

“
Hermione,
don’t make me come after you,” he said.

“
Oh, for
heaven’s sake,” Daphne said. “This is an
Egyptian
donkey.
Ta’ala heneh
,” she called sharply to the
agitated animal. “
Ta’ala
.”

The donkey snorted,
and tossed its head.

“
Ta’ala
,”
Mr. Carsington said.

The donkey trotted
inside and went directly to him and nuzzled his arm.

Naturally.

“
She’s
afraid,” Mr. Carsington said, stroking the creature’s
muzzle. “The smell, I daresay.”

It was a smell
Daphne was growing accustomed to: death. Not ordinary death but mummy
death, the thousands-of-years-shriveled-and-petrified smell
distinctive to Egypt.