Pharaoh (36 page)

Before very long, a van carrying goats stopped and gave them a ride to Yotvata. It was dark and they managed to find a room without any trouble. The owner, a man in his sixties, regarded them with suspicion. They looked liked ghosts with white dust all over their bodies, on their clothes, in their hair, their eyelashes and eyebrows. And their faces were scratched and bleeding.

‘We’re tourists,’ explained Blake. ‘We had no idea there would be a storm and our car broke down around Beer Menuha. We’ve been walking for hours and hours through the sandstorm.’

‘I see,’ said the man. ‘You must be nearly dead.’

‘And we are hungry,’ said Blake. ‘Is there anything we can have sent to our room now?’

‘Not very much, I’m afraid. The government has requisitioned everything for the troops at the front and there’s not much left. But I think we can manage some hummus and tuna sandwiches and a couple of cool beers.’

‘The front?’ asked Blake. ‘We’ve been in the desert for so long . . . we hadn’t heard . . .’

‘There’s a war going on,’ said the innkeeper, ‘and, as usual, we are on our own, nobody bothers to help us . . . If you could just give me your passports.’

‘We lost everything in the storm,’ said Blake. ‘If you like, we can write our names and details and so on, so you won’t have a problem if anyone checks.’

The man looked worried for a moment, then he nodded. Sarah watched as Blake wrote out a false name and particulars so she could do the same.

They went up to their room as Mr and Mrs Randall, washed, dusted off their clothes as best they could and wolfed down the sandwiches that the innkeeper sent up.

When they had finished, Sarah collapsed into bed. However, Blake went out and walked about in the twilight until he found a taxi stand where there were two cars parked.

‘I have to leave tonight,’ he said to one of the drivers. ‘For Eilat. Can you be in front of the news kiosk at three o’clock in the morning?’

The man, an Ethiopian Falasha, agreed and Blake returned to the inn. No one was on the streets but, every now and then, he saw military patrols passing in their vehicles.

He found Sarah fast asleep with the light on. She hadn’t even had the strength to turn it off. He set the alarm on his watch, turned out the light and sank into oblivion.

In the darkness, he felt Sarah’s hand reaching for him and he kissed her before falling back to sleep again.

At 2.45 a.m. he was awoken by the shrill buzz of the watch going off and, still dead tired and groggy from lack of sleep, he roused Sarah, who sat up in alarm.

‘What is it? What’s happening?’

‘We’re leaving. I don’t trust anyone here. And I don’t think the innkeeper trusts us either. We don’t want to have a nasty surprise at dawn. There’s a taxi coming to get us in quarter of an hour. Get ready.’

Blake left a fifty-dollar bill in the room and went down the fire escape, followed by Sarah. They crept along slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible. The wind was still strong and the city was wrapped in a haze.

Blake and Sarah slipped behind the inn and headed for the main street, which was lined with acacia and mimosa trees.

They saw the news kiosk at the first crossing and, shortly after, the lights of an approaching car.

‘The taxi,’ said Blake. ‘We’re OK.’

The Falasha had them get in, with Blake in front and the girl behind, and set off. They passed Shamar, Elipaz, Beer Ora and reached Eilat when it was still dark. Blake told the driver to go to the Egyptian border.

‘I just need you to get us across the border,’ he told him. ‘Then we can manage on our own.’

The Falasha nodded and drove to the passport control at the border with Egypt.

‘Have you got an Egyptian visa?’ Blake asked Sarah.

‘No.’

‘It doesn’t matter. You can get one here. I tore the page with “
persona non grata
” out of my passport. I hope they don’t start counting the pages and that they haven’t got me on their wanted list.’

‘And if they have?’

‘The worst thing that can happen is they won’t let us in. Then we’ll have to get a ship to the Emirates.’

Sarah got out and went to the automatic booth to get three passport photos which were so awful she didn’t even recognize herself. She started to fill in the forms. Blake showed his visa to a sleepy border guard with a yellow, nicotine-stained moustache. He stamped the passport without asking any questions.

Blake breathed a deep sigh of relief, got in and waited for Sarah, then asked the Falasha to take them to the bus station. The place was still deserted and the wind was raising litter and sheets of newspaper that were strewn all over the dusty ground. He took the agreed fifty dollars out of his wallet and shook the man’s hand.

‘Goodbye, my friend, and thanks. I’d give you more but I still have a long way to go and it’s likely to be difficult.
Shalom
.’

‘
Shalom
,’ answered the Falasha, looking at him for a moment with his big, liquid, African eyes. Then he got back into his car and disappeared in a cloud of dust.

The ticket office opened after a while and Blake bought two tickets for Cairo, then got two coffees and some sesame-seed cookies and went to sit beside Sarah.

‘We’re nearly home,’ he said. ‘If we make it to Cairo, we can go to the embassy. There’ll be someone there who can help us.’

‘If we make it to the embassy, that’ll be the end of our troubles,’ said Sarah. ‘And someone had better give me an explanation of what happened at Ras Udash. Who the hell thought they could play a practical joke like that and get away with it?’

‘You’re right,’ said Blake. ‘I can’t explain it.’

He dug into his pocket and pulled out a somewhat squashed packet of Marlboros. The cigarettes were all broken except one. He put it in his mouth and lit it, breathing in luxuriously.

‘Don’t you have enough crap in your lungs without that?’ asked Sarah.

‘It helps me relax,’ said Blake. ‘I feel like the hero in an action movie who’s lost his stunt man. I ache all over. Even my nails and hair ache.’

Sarah looked at him. His face was all twisted up into what was trying to be a smile, but his expression couldn’t disguise an anxiety that wasn’t due to fatigue or physical pain. Just when safety was in sight, William Blake felt that it might have been better for all mankind if he and his companion had suffocated to death in the dust of the Paran desert.

‘What’re we going to do with this secret?’ asked Sarah, reading his thoughts.

‘I don’t know,’ said Blake. ‘At the moment, I can’t believe that what happened was real. It seems like I dreamed it all.’

‘But when you wake up . . .’

‘Then I’ll decide. If I were sure I could stop this war by revealing what I’ve seen, by revealing that there are no “Chosen People” anywhere, I’d do it in a flash.’

‘Maybe you should do it anyway. Truth must out, don’t you think?’

Blake shook his head. ‘The truth isn’t always believed. When it comes down to it, silence may be the only possible option.’

He was interrupted by the sound of the bus stopping under the shelter. They were first on and went to sit at the rear. Shortly after, they were followed by other small groups of people who boarded the bus in dribs and drabs: women carrying heavy bags and men with cartons of American cigarettes that they had probably bought in Aqaba.

At last, the engine started with a jolt and the bus set off, gradually building speed. Rocked by the movement and the noise of the engine, and weary beyond words, Sarah leaned her head on his shoulder and fell into a deep sleep. Blake tried to stay awake, but he too gradually gave in to fatigue and the warmth of Sarah’s body.

He woke up when the bus stopped unexpectedly and thought that the driver must be picking up a few things. He was about to go back to sleep when he felt something hard poking into his shoulder. Suddenly fully awake, he saw a man standing in front of him, pointing a machine gun.

W
ILLIAM
B
LAKE WOKE
S
ARAH
, who was still fast asleep. He pretended not to understand the two Egyptian soldiers who were ordering them to get out.

Extremely agitated, the higher-ranking of the two yelled something in Arabic, forcing them to get up, while his companion shoved them with the butt of his machine gun down the aisle of the bus, as the rest of the passengers looked on in amazement.

Once outside, Blake could see that the bus had been stopped by an army Jeep parked sideways across the middle of the road.

The soldiers searched them, lingering longer than necessary when it came to frisking Sarah, then had them get into the back of the Jeep and took off on a road heading towards the interior. In the meantime, the bus had started up with a faltering wheeze and began proceeding west, soon disappearing from sight.

‘I can’t believe it . . . None of this makes sense,’ Sarah started to say, but Blake shushed her, because their escorts were speaking to each other and he didn’t want to miss what was being said.

Sarah noticed that Blake’s face darkened as he listened to the soldiers’ voices, their words interspersed with sinister bouts of giggling.

‘Can you understand what they’re saying?’

Blake nodded yes.

‘Bad news?’

Blake nodded again, whispering, ‘They’ve got orders to take us to a military prison, where we will be interrogated and tried – no doubt a summary trial. But first they intend to have a little fun with you, both of them, the officer first, naturally.’

Sarah turned pale with impotent anger.

Blake held her hand tightly. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s best that we’re prepared.’

The soldier ordered them to be quiet, but Blake kept on talking, pretending not to have understood a word, at which point the bully backhanded him, splitting open his upper lip.

Blake recoiled in pain, fumbling in his jacket pockets for a handkerchief to stop the blood, which was oozing into his mouth. Exhausted and unarmed as he was, he was trying to think of something he could do to get them out of this jam. As he removed a package of Kleenex from the inside pocket, he felt two fountain pen caps sticking out beside it. In actuality, one of them, despite the resemblance, wasn’t really a pen at all, but rather an archaeological scalpel. He slipped it out and put it into his outside pocket, removing the protective cap as soon as the soldier had turned around to say something to his superior.

The Jeep had been moving inland for about half an hour when they reached a hilly area. Once they were down on level land again, the Jeep stopped and the soldier opened the door and made to get out. Before he could, Blake leaned forward and thrust the scalpel straight into his liver. With his other hand, he snatched the pistol out of the limp and profusely bleeding man’s holster, firing it at the officer at the wheel and then again at his first victim – the man had tumbled out of the car and was now writhing in the blood-soaked sand – putting an end to his misery.

The whole episode took only a few seconds. Sarah could hardly believe her eyes as she stared at him, reeling back against the seat, still gripping the bloody scalpel in his left hand and the smoking revolver in his right.

‘Jesus, Blake, I’d have never thought that you—’

‘Me neither,’ he admitted, cutting her off.

He dropped his weapons and bent over to throw up what little he had in his stomach. When the violent spasms of gagging had ceased, he stood up, grey in the face, and cleaned his mouth as best he could with a tissue. Then, still woozy and teetering a bit, he stumbled to the back of the Jeep and pulled out a shovel.

‘We’ve got to bury them,’ he said, starting to dig.

When the hole was ready, they stripped off the dead soldiers’ uniforms and threw the bodies into the hole, quickly covering them with sand. Blake threw away the soldier’s blood-soaked shirt, but put on his jacket, trousers, hat and boots. Sarah did likewise, making allowances as best she could for the fact that the officer’s clothing was much too big for her.

‘I assume you know that if Egypt happens to be in a state of war, this could land us in front of a firing squad,’ said Sarah as she donned her new garb.

Blake glanced over at the grave. ‘That’s a shooting offence too, but since they can’t shoot us twice, we might as well take a chance and give it a try. We certainly can’t go around in a military vehicle dressed in civvies. And without a car, we won’t get anywhere. We’ll figure out what to do when we get close to a town.’

He cleaned off his scalpel with a Kleenex, making it shine. ‘It’s English,’ he said, putting its cap back on and sticking it into his jacket pocket next to the pen. ‘The best they make.’

They walked up to the Jeep and began rummaging through it. Finally they found a military map of the Sinai.

‘Great,’ said Blake, ‘with this we can stay off the beaten path. I recommend heading towards Ismailia rather than Cairo. It will be a lot easier to pass unnoticed that way. I think there should be enough gas.’

‘Wait, look what else I’ve found,’ said Sarah. She held up a plastic envelope that had been in one of the inside pockets of the jacket she was wearing. It contained two pieces of paper with Arabic writing, along with their photographs.