Pharaoh (42 page)

They would approach by day on camel so as to avoid attracting the attention of the armed forces from either side. They would continue travelling in this way until they got to Abu Agheila, just a few miles from the border. There they would find a four-wheel drive with masked headlights which would take them by night to Ras Udash. Eighty miles of territory in all, at very high risk. The whole first stretch was practically up against the front line.

Selim counted out the money and they were soon taken, with Sarah, beyond the oasis where the camels were waiting for them. They said goodbye to Khaled, who had decided to wait for Selim to return to the camp so they could drive back together in his Peugeot.

‘Thank you, Khaled. I’ll be back one day,’ Blake promised, ‘and we’ll have a nice cold beer together at the Winter Palace in Luxor.’

‘
Inshallah
,’ said Khaled with a smile.

‘
Inshallah
,’ replied Blake. ‘If God so wills.’

He reached his companions who were already on their camels.

‘How will they know at Abu Agheila that we’re coming?’ he asked Selim, as he hoisted himself up into the saddle.

Selim gestured with his head and Blake turned. The sheikh pulled an ultra-modern mobile phone out of the band of fabric he wore at his waist and began talking in an animated voice with an unknown speaker.

They travelled all day, stopping for just half an hour at the well of Beer Hadat, a pool of yellowish water covered with swarms of dragonflies and water fleas. Their path was often crossed by columns of trucks, tanks and self-propelled howitzers going towards the front. Evidently the battle was still raging furiously.

They reached Abu Agheila shortly before dusk and the caravan leader brought them to a small caravanserai packed full of donkeys, camels and mules with their drivers, saturating the air with every imaginable sort of odour and shriek.

The animals were watered and tended. Selim began talking and then arguing with the owner, and Blake realized that the man wanted the other half of the sum immediately, before they left.

He approached Selim and said in English, ‘If he’ll take half of the remaining sum, tell him that we agree. Otherwise tell him we’re turning back. I don’t want him to think we can’t do without his help.’

Selim referred Blake’s offer, and to be more convincing, took out twelve hundred-dollar bills and placed them in the man’s hand. He seemed to refuse at first, then, having thought about it, called over a boy who opened an unhinged wooden door, revealing an old Unimog, freshly painted with camouflage colours.

‘Finally,’ sighed Blake, and looked at his watch: eight o’clock.

Husseini’s computer was starting up the fifth cycle. Just thirty-six hours to the conclusion of the program.

The price they paid included a hunk of bread with lamb stew and a bottle of mineral water; the sheik had thought of everything. Sarah played her part as a Muslim woman to the hilt, eating separately from the men without removing the veil that covered her head and most of her face, but Blake tried to meet her eyes every so often to show he was thinking of her.

They got into the Unimog at eight thirty. The boy who had opened the shed sat at the wheel, with Selim at his side and Sarah and Blake in back. The vehicle was roughly covered by a camouflaged canvas roof stretched over a frame made up of iron poles.

About an hour into the trip, it was clear why the man at the caravanserai had wanted to be paid before they left: the explosions were frighteningly close.

Selim, guessing at the state of mind of his travel companions, turned to reassure them. ‘The boy says not to worry. The front is towards Gaza, and we’ll be turning off to the south-east soon, where we’ll use the Udash wadi. After a few miles it narrows between the rocks. It’ll give us all the protection we need to get to our destination.’

‘How soon?’ asked Blake.

Selim exchanged words with the driver, then said, ‘If all goes well – if we’re not hit by the machine-gun fire of some passing aeroplane and if this truck doesn’t break down – at about two o’clock in the morning . . .
inshallah
.’

‘
Inshallah
,’ repeated Blake mechanically.

The boy drove calmly and very carefully, briefly switching on the headlights only when it became difficult to follow the track.

They got to the border some time before midnight and stopped behind a rise in the terrain. About 200 metres away they could see a fence with barbed wire and an asphalt road on the other side, in Israeli territory.

The driver and Selim got out and cautiously approached the border on foot, looking to the left and right. They snipped the wire with a pair of cutters, and crept back over to the Unimog.

‘We’ve been incredibly lucky,’ said Selim while the heavy vehicle climbed up the bank on the side of the road, clambering over to the other side in the direction of Wadi Udash, which glowed palely, completely dry, about a quarter of a mile ahead of them.

‘Selim, I have to ask you something,’ said Blake in Arabic.

‘What, Professor Blake?’

‘Do you know why the Americans and their European allies have not taken sides in this war?’

‘The radio and newspapers say it’s because they’re afraid, but not many believe that.’

‘What do you think?’

‘Well, I tuned into a station in Malta. They were reporting a news leak that America is being immobilized by an immense terrorist threat. That seems like a plausible explanation to me.’

‘Yeah, it seems plausible to me too,’ said Blake. ‘Selim, what do you think of Professor Husseini? I mean, did you ever notice anything strange about the way he acted?’

Selim’s look was one of complete surprise, as if he’d never imagined Blake would ask him such a question. ‘Professor Husseini is a very good person,’ he said. ‘He really cares about you. He went out on a limb for you, Professor Blake, let me tell you.’

‘I believe it,’ answered Blake, and bowed his head in silence.

Sarah seemed lost in her own thoughts.

‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Blake.

‘The hangar will presumably be locked, and only Gordon and Maddox have keys. How are we going to get the Falcon out?’

‘I don’t know,’ answered Blake. ‘But we have overcome so many obstacles this far that I don’t think any door, no matter how sturdy, will be able to stop us.’

They had been travelling for some time over the clean gravel and coarse sand of the dry Wadi Udash river bed. The banks were never less than a couple of metres high, often shaded by thorny acacia trees that sheltered them in critical moments, if they saw a plane or a helicopter passing through the sky or heard the engines of a column of tanks on the move.

At about one in the morning, Sarah, who had seemed to be dozing, pointed suddenly to the east. ‘Look over there,’ she said to Blake. ‘The Ras Udash pyramid. We have to leave the wadi. The runway and the hangar are about four miles over that way.’

Selim, who had heard her, put his hand on the driver’s shoulder and gestured for him to stop and to turn off the engine.

‘Four miles over completely exposed terrain,’ he said in English. ‘Here’s where it gets tough. If any plane or tank, on any side, sees us, we’ll be incinerated immediately.’

‘Selim, listen,’ said Blake. ‘We’ve absolutely got to get to that hangar, we can’t give up now. And we need your help. We can use the Unimog to tow the plane, if we need to, or to force the doors if they’re locked. You see, we have reliable evidence that the terrorist threat we were talking about is already in motion and that it will come to a head in –’ he looked at his watch – ‘just about thirty hours or so.’

‘What kind of a head?’ asked Selim.

‘We don’t know. We may even be completely wrong about this, but we can’t run such a huge risk. What’s most probable is that a group of terrorists has managed to plant devastatingly powerful bombs of some sort in several cities of the United States, three we think, paralysing the American system of armed response.’

‘I understand.’

‘So listen. I’ll go ahead on foot and as I check the way, I’ll signal to you with the torch and you move forward with your lights off, until we’ve reached the runway. One flash is “OK, the coast is clear”; two flashes mean “Watch out, danger.” ’

‘I’m coming with you,’ said Sarah.

‘OK,’ said Blake, getting out and taking his backpack and Olsen’s briefcase with him.

Sarah ripped the veil off her head and stripped off the jellaba, shaking her head and freeing her blonde hair. ‘Finally!’ she exclaimed, jumping to the ground in her khaki clothing. ‘I couldn’t take that outfit for another minute. Now, let’s get going.’

They waved goodbye to Selim, who answered with a thumbs-up sign, and they ran off.

They reached a hill that rose seven or eight metres over the surrounding territory and closely scanned the vast desert plain. Blake shone the little torch on and off once.

Selim turned to his companion. ‘Get out,’ he said, ‘and wait for me here. I’ll come back for you.’

The boy protested.

‘I could be blown apart by a mine. You want to keep me company?’

He took the rest of the sum they’d agreed upon and handed it to him, saying, ‘This is better, believe me.’

The boy got out without breathing a word and crouched down on the bottom of the wadi. Selim took the driver’s seat, started up the engine and put it into gear. When he arrived at the hill, Blake and Sarah were already half a mile ahead.

He waited with the engine running for another signal. When he saw one short flash in the dark, he stepped on the accelerator and crossed the second stretch of desert. By the time he stopped at the third point, the mileage counter read almost two miles. They were halfway there.

Sarah and Blake proceeded, sometimes walking and sometimes running. To their left, the pyramid of Ras Udash rose higher and higher over the surrounding hills, and as their perspective changed it seemed progressively bigger and more imposing. Blake felt a chill run down his spine, although he was soaked with sweat, as he noticed other familiar elements in the landscape.

The runway was not much more than a mile away now. He signalled again to Selim that the coast was clear and they proceeded towards a rise topped by a pile of crumbling rocks which had partially tumbled down the sides.

‘That’s the hill with the hangar,’ said Sarah. ‘We’ve made it. I don’t see anything around. Let’s not waste any more time. We can tell Selim to come all the way.’

Blake flashed the light and the Unimog drew up next to them in the middle of the huge silent plain. They heard the distant echoes of cannon fire and saw flashes of explosions to the east and the north, as well as traces of aerial duels in the direction of Gaza and over the Dead Sea.

They climbed onto the running board while Selim accelerated, crossing the desert that separated them from the runway in just a few minutes.

Blake checked for damage to the runway and found only that the soil cover was uneven, probably as a result of the sandstorm. Sarah, followed by Selim, went straight to the door of the hangar, in front of which a considerable heap of sand and dust had accumulated. They took the two small shovels that were in the Unimog tool box and began to clear it away, with Blake giving them a hand as well.

It took them about ten minutes to free the doorway and Sarah grabbed onto the big steel handles at the entry.

‘It’s locked!’ she said, swearing.

‘To be expected,’ said Blake. ‘There’s a twenty-million-dollar toy in there.’

He turned to Selim. ‘Back it up and we’ll try to pull the door off its hinges with the tow line.’

Sarah suddenly shushed him and gestured for Selim to turn off the engine.

‘What is it?’ asked Blake.

‘A noise. Hear it?’

Blake listened. ‘I don’t hear anything.’

‘Engines,’ said Selim. ‘A column approaching.’ He jumped out of the Unimog and ran to the top of the hangar hill. Just three miles away, he could see the lights of three tracked vehicles, at a distance of about a mile from each other, closing in.

‘A patrol of tanks on a reconnaissance mission!’ he shouted. ‘At least three. The first is headed straight this way.’

He ran down the slope to the hangar door.

‘How far away are they?’ asked Blake.

‘No more than three miles. The closest one will be here at the runway in seven or eight minutes. As soon as they spot us, they’ll start shooting. We’ve got to attempt it right away. We have to pull the door off.’

He hooked up the chain and sat down at the driver’s wheel, set the four-wheel drive and blocked both differentials.

‘Rev it up when the line is taut!’ shouted Blake.

Selim nodded, put it into gear and pulled the chain taut, then accelerated. Sarah in the meantime had climbed to the top of the hill to keep her eye on the tanks. They were troop transport vehicles, probably Egyptian, and they were approaching at a slow but steady speed. She looked down. The Unimog was sinking into the ground, but the door was not budging.

‘Accelerate! Accelerate! It’s moving!’ shouted Blake, noticing that the door had started to buckle at the centre, where the pull was strongest.