The Shroud Key Read online

“Do it,” demands his partner. A man who is most definitely Egyptian. “Or we won’t hesitate to shoot you here and dispose of your body in the desert.”

  “Don’t I know you fellas?” I say.

  I lower the 9mm, go to set it onto the glass counter. But rather then set it gently, I swing the barrel down hard, shattering the glass.

  Pony-Tail shoots, misses, the bullet shattering the storefront window.

  Amun screams, drops to his knees beside the glass counter.

  I point the 9mm at the two goons, depress the trigger, fire at will. I hit the heavier one in the chest. He drops like an obelisk onto the floor while Pony-Tail runs for cover behind an upright wood Pharaoh’s coffin.

  I reach down into the counter, grab the mirror and the map, stuff them both into my pocket while the rounds from Pony-Tail’s revolver whizz by my head.

  “I’ll be seeing you in all the filthy places, Amun,” I shout, as I make a flying leap out the shattered storefront window.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I land on my right side just as a donkey is trotting past, pulling a wood cart behind it.

  I roll my body under the cart and, emerging out the opposite side, get back up onto my feet at the very same moment Pony-Tail starts shooting at me from out of the shattered storefront. People scream, scatter about in every direction. It’s the kind of confusion and cover I need as I make an all-out sprint for the center of the market.

  I don’t get far before I make out another shot and sense a round shooting past my right ear. I duck into a shop that sells rugs, take a quick glance over my shoulder.

  Pony-Tail is coming at me down the center of the narrow road, the Arabs moving out of his way, like he owns the place. Thumbing the clip release, I allow the metal clip to drop to the store floor. I reach into my jacket pocket, pull out a fresh one, slap it home.

  The store owner is jabbing at my back. He wants me to leave his store. He doesn’t care that I’m holding a loaded gun. I reach into my left-hand pocket, pull out some Egyptian pounds, toss them at him. Then, sucking down a breath, I jump back out into the street.

  I aim the gun at Pony-Tail.

  There’s a shot. He drops to his knees, then onto his face.

  I look one way and the other. With all the people scattering all about, screaming and shouting for help, I can’t make out who did the shooting.

  Until she reveals herself.

  Anya.

  “Got your back, Ren Man,” she says, smiling.

  She runs to me.

  “Question is,” I say, “who’s got yours?”

  I don’t have time for an answer before I hear the wail of sirens and the screeching of truck tires.

  “Where’d you get the gun?” I ask her while we make a sprint for Sameh’s car.

  “Our fixer is very fixed,” she shouts in between breaths. “He’s helping me protect my investment.”

  “Should have guessed,” I say. Then, as Sameh pulls up in front of us, breaking the car so hard it fishtails on the gravelly road, “I think I know where your husband is.”

  I open the door for her.

  She jumps in.

  I go around, get into the front.

  “Drive,” I say to Sameh.

  “Where to?”

  “Just point the car towards Libya,” I say. “And don’t stop.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “We need better transport,” I say to Sameh, as he weaves in and out of the slow moving vehicles, making his way to the above-ground highway that will lead us some of the way to the Giza urban interior.

  “What do you suggest we do?” he says. “Go car shopping?”

  “Cairo’s too hot. We need something that will take us into the desert. A four-by-four. A truck, van, suburban … Something, anything. But not this.”

  “Hold onto the wheel,” Sameh instructs.

  “What? In this traffic?”

  “Just hold the wheel please, Chase. Traffic is light today.”

  This is what he calls light?

  I reach over and do it. He’s still got his foot on the gas, so I’m doing my best to avoid smashing into the slower moving cars that we are constantly tailing. Using only my left hand, I turn the wheel to the right, then back to the left, then straight, then a quick right again. I feel like I’m caught inside a real action, real-time video game. Meanwhile Sameh searches his cell phone for a number. When he finds it, he speed-dials the number, takes back the wheel.

  “Thank you, Dario Franchitti,” he says, not without a smile. Sameh the jokester. Somehow I imagine a world famous pro auto racer like Mr. Franchitti has an easier time winning the Indianapolis 500 than he would negotiating the roads of Cairo. But then, what the hell do I know?

  “Yes, thank you, Dario for scaring the living crap out me,” Anya scolds from the back seat. She is not smiling. If she possessed an Adam’s apple, it would be bobbing up and down inside her neck.

  We make it to the highway, and Sameh guns the sedan up the entry ramp. For the first time since we started driving, we enjoy a relatively open road. He presses the pedal to the floor while, with his cell phone pressed to his right ear, he speaks something loud in Arabic.

  I shoot a glance at Anya. She shoots me a tentative look back.

  With my eyes back on the road, I see the many people who line the shoulder of this three-lane highway. They’re waiting for anyone who might decide to play taxi cab driver and, for a price, stop alongside the road and give them a ride. There seems to be no shortage of people who are willing to carry passengers for money, as the cars and pickup trucks randomly pull off to the side. Some of them do it without warning, so that Sameh must skillfully veer to the left in order to avoid smashing into them as they brake and decelerate without warning.

  Maybe three minutes pass of this reckless, almost suicidal driving until the sun-soaked horizon changes into something remarkable. The red orange ball of sun is no longer alone as it kisses the tops of three pyramidal stone structures.

  The pyramids of Giza.

  I’ve been in the presence of the pyramids a few times before. I could say that they still take my breath away. Or that they fill me with awe and wonder and excitement. But these are weak pedestrian descriptions. Truer to say that whenever I am in the presence of the ancient pyramids at Giza, I feel slightly uncomfortable. Like I would with a girlfriend or a wife who is truly beautiful, truly well constructed, amazingly intelligent, but who nonetheless possesses secrets which she greedily guards. And for this reason, no matter how much I love her, I will never fully trust her.

  Anya sits up, pokes her head between the opening between the two front seats.

  “I’ve only seen them in pictures and in film,” she whispers to no one in particular, as the three pyramids take on more form and no longer become a part of the horizon, but the horizon itself.

  “Take a good look,” I say. “Because there lies ours and your husband’s future, should we luck out and actually find him.”

  “Alive,” she says, setting her hand on my arm. “Don’t forget the alive part.”

  “Yes,” I nod. “Very much alive … Let’s hope.”

  Sameh pulls up to a garage with an old fashioned gas pump mounted to a concrete pad out in front of it. My guess is the pump no longer does the job it was originally intended to do so many decades ago. But the automotive garage certainly is. There are two bays, both of which are occupied with vehicles set up on hydraulic risers. With the overhead doors opened, I can make out the teams of robed Arabs tending to the undersides of the two vehicles. Leaning against the old brick building are all sorts of automotive parts, from exhausts to full engines. Set beside those is a pile of used tires.

  A man comes out to greet us. He’s tall, slim, dressed in blue jeans and a light button-down shirt. He’s wiping grease from his hands with an oil-stained rag as he comes around to the driver’s side of the sedan. I take him for the garage owner and the man Sameh was talking with on the cell phone earlier. He and Sameh greet one anoth
er with the usual, “As-salam alaykum,” which means, “Peace be upon you” as much as it does, “Hey, what’s up?”

  While the two men exchange a few more words, the garage owner picks at his black goatee and takes occasional glances at myself and Anya. After a minute or two of this, Sameh turns to me.

  “This man’s name is Nisbah. He can provide us with a Toyota Land Cruiser. A 1979 model which is greatly favored in the desert. More so than newer models.”

  In my mind I picture the boxy-looking but fully functional four-by-four, since I’ve driven them more times than I can count.

  “Precisely what we require,” I say. “And a full tank, plus four extra cans of gasoline.”

  “Nisbah will provide what you need for your journey into the desert. However, he will accept only cash. Trust is a commodity these days in post-revolutionary Egypt.”

  Pulling out the pile of cash from my trouser pocket, I pose, “How much?”

  “Three hundred dollars,” Sameh says. “U.S. dollars.”

  “I have plenty of Egyptian pounds,” I say, holding them up.

  The goateed Nisbah shakes his head, waves the pounds away like they smell of skunk.

  “Egyptian pounds are no good to him,” Sameh explains. “They are not worth the paper they are printed on in this the day of the new Pharaohs.”

  “I understand,” I say. “But I have only pounds and Euros, since I haven’t been back to the States in some time.” Then, to Anya. “How much cash do you have?”

  She reaches into her bag, produces a small wallet. She comes back out with three, crisp one hundred dollar bills. She holds them up.

  “Will this do?”

  “Thanks for holding out on us, money bags,” I say, snatching them from her hand and, reaching across Sameh, handing them directly to Nisbah.

  He nods, smiles.

  “Pull in, please. Your ride awaits you. So does the unrelenting Egyptian desert.”

  He laughs so hard when he backs away from the car, I think he might double over. But nothing is funny about the desert. It is dead land, and only the dead thrive there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  An hour later we are driving along a narrow road that borders the perimeter of the Giza Plateau and the Great Pyramids. Sameh is behind the wheel of a white Toyota Land Cruiser that’s been stocked with food, water, weapons, night vision gear, sleeping bags … you name it. Everything you need for survival in the desert which just might include staying alive during a potential shoot out with some nasty radical Muslim bandits bent on stealing the remains of the Christian Messiah.

  I ride shotgun while Anya occupies the safer back seat, directly behind Sameh. She has her window down and she seems mesmerized by the pyramids as we pass them by on a gently inclining sand-covered road that leads to nowhere but wide open desert.

  On our way around the pyramids we pass by camels and donkeys and the Arab jockeys who ride them and offer the beasts up to the scattering of tourists for rides. Robed beggars walk barefoot in the sand while gawkers try to push what they refer to as traditional Arab head-dresses. They sell mini-pyramids and small colorful square beads said to be magic treasure uncovered in the tombs. But in reality it is all junk intended as cheap souvenirs for the hordes of tourists who flock here annually.

  Used to flock here, I should say.

  Nowadays only a fraction of the multitudes of tourists make their way to this land of violent change and upheaval. Something that on one hand is tragic for the venders and gawkers, but for our purposes, will be to our benefit, since we will require the Third Pyramid all to ourselves. Once we locate Andre, that is.

  We head off-road, on into the desert just as the sun begins to set over the western plain. As darkness approaches an hour later, Sameh brings the Land Cruiser to a stop.

  “We will camp here for the night,” he informs. “It is too dangerous to travel at night. The pirates are everywhere. We stand the chance of being ambushed. Better to settle in for the night and continue at sun up. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” I say.

  “Agreed,” adds Anya. Then, “Sameh, if you build us a fire, I will prepare a feast.”

  “Exactly what I want to hear, miss,” he says, hopping out of the truck and immediately going about the work of setting up a camp-site.

  I pull out my 9mm, thumb the clip release, check and recheck the nine-round load.

  “I’ll make a check on the perimeter,” I say, grabbing the pair of Bausch & Lomb night-vision binoculars set on the dash.

  Exiting the four-by-four, I proceed out into the desert on foot.

  I trek in a westerly direction, towards the setting sun.

  The heat from the desert is quickly fading as the sunlight begins to diminish into what will be a darkness so absolute, the stars in the sky will appear close enough to touch, as if they were white Christmas lights dangling from a black ceiling. Lifting the binoculars to my face, I scan the horizon for anything that might appear to be out of the ordinary. Anything that’s moving.

  I see nothing but sand dunes for as far as the lenses can magnify. But then, that’s not entirely true. As the sunlight quickly fades and the green hew-like night vision begins to operate on the binoculars, I start to make out something that looks like ghosts dancing on the horizon. Swirling shapes that swiftly twist and turn their way up, down, and across the dunes. But they are not ghosts. They are tornado-like pillars of loose sand being sucked up by the wind. An ever increasing wind.

  I remove the binoculars and contemplate the meaning of the wind.

  I know that if it should get any worse, we could easily find ourselves trapped in the middle of a sandstorm. I’ve never actually been caught up in one, but through the years, I’ve met archaeologists and sandhogs who have. Rough, tough types who take crap from no one or anything. Men and women who don’t scare so easily be it a jet plane that blows an engine mid-flight or waking up to a scorpion crawling on their face in the middle of the night. But when they spoke of the desert consuming them in a windstorm powered by hurricane force winds, their faces took on a chalk-white pallor and their eyes a curious deadness, as if they were recounting their bloody experiences in combat.

  Those ghosts I just witnessed way out there in the desert distance … I’m hoping they remain just ghosts and that we are in for a peaceful night, or the last thing any of us will have to worry about is finding Manion or the Jesus remains. If a sand-storm blows through, it will be our very lives that will hang in the balance. By this time tomorrow night, we could become a fixture of the desert. A permanent fixture buried in sand like some undiscovered Pharaoh or even Jesus Himself.

  About-facing, I follow my footsteps back to camp, knowing that for now anyway, we are all alone in this vast, desolate wilderness and the only visible enemy looming on the periphery, is the wind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  After dinner we slip into our sleeping bags which have been positioned around the deadwood fire. Sameh begins to snore almost immediately, even though the wind is noticeably increasing in velocity.

  If he’s not frightened, than why should I be?

  Anya and I stare into the fire, sharing occasional sips from a pint of whiskey I stowed away for myself after purchasing it off a back alley contraband vendor in Giza while the Land Cruiser was being tended to—a shop that also sold thick black bricks of Afghan hash.

  “How do you think he’ll react when you first see him?” I say.

  “How will who react?” Anya says, bits of her thick brown hair blowing in the wind.

  “Your husband, Andre. He’s liable to have no idea that you’re looking for him.”

  I watch her cock her head while pulling herself tighter into her sleeping bag, her beautifully tanned face aglow in the fire light.

  “You’re right, Ren Man,” she says in a half whisper, while staring into the flames. “I’m the last person he’d expect to see out here.”

  “You mean you’re the last person he’d expect to see trying to save his skinny ass
.”

  She turns to me, smiles.

  “Bingo,” she says. “We didn’t part on particularly terrific terms.”

  “But you have, in fact, parted ways,” I stress.

  She nods, the flame from the fire reflected in her eyes.

  “But you know that already, Chase. Do you want me to produce divorce papers for you?”

  “Do you still love him?”

  More nodding.

  “You mean, like do I love him in the take-him-back-and-try-again sense of the L word?”

  “Yes, that.”

  “Not a chance. We tried plenty of times and plenty of times it didn’t work. No matter how good we looked together on paper …The English professor and the archaeology professor together forever, surrounded by adoring students, living in the perfect little picket-fenced house located on the perfect spec of property just outside the college campus … It all sounds nice and romantic, but it just didn’t work. He’s too married to his buried antiquities and the distant past, and I’m too married to loneliness-in-the-present-and-future tenses.”

  “But you still love him enough to find him.”

  “Yes, I will always care for him and his well being. But I will no longer be in love with him. There’s a distinct difference.”

  The foreboding wind picks up, fanning the flames. I feel some of the harsh sand against my face.

  “Winds beginning to blow,” Anya says, a noticeable hint of fear on her flame lit face.

  “So I’m aware. I’ve been paying some attention to it.”

  She glances over Sameh’s way.

  “He doesn’t seem too worried about anything. He’s sleeping like a baby.”

  I too gaze at the sleeping Sameh. He’s lying on his back, snoring, mouth open, catching sand flies.

  “That’s a good thing,” I add. Then, as if using Sameh’s loud snores as my cue, I steal another sip of whiskey from the bottle, cap it off, and shuffle out of my sleeping bag, snaking my way over the now compacted sand to Anya.

  “Excuse me?” she whispers. “But nuns and priests are forbidden to fornicate with one another.”