Death on Tour - Janice Hamrick [32]
Alan had circled back around after getting his ticket and now stood by my shoulder. Surely that was on purpose, I thought, pleased.
He glanced down at the bills in my hands. “Flashing your cash around, are you?”
“It’s the only way to command real respect, and I’ll thank you to show me the reverence that a couple hundred of these babies deserve,” I answered.
“I would certainly have been more deferential if I had known you were loaded. Your highness,” he added for good measure.
“That’s much better.” I grinned at him. “Hey, how much do you think I should pay for one of those cheesy gold pyramids?” I asked, nodding in the direction of the nearest booth.
He followed my gaze. “Ah, madam has exquisite taste. Would you like me to find out for you?”
“No, thank you. I’m just trying to get up the nerve to haggle, and I’d like to know what I should be shooting for. I’ll do it another time.” I put my wallet back in my purse and zipped it.
“You’ll have plenty of chances if Aswan is anything like Cairo.”
Kyla returned just as boarding for our flight was announced. Anni looked around frantically, then threw up her hands, which still held two boarding passes. Fiona and Flora were nowhere to be seen.
“Go get in line,” she told us, then hurried off to speak to one of the officials behind a counter. A few minutes later we heard an announcement over the speakers requesting that they rejoin their party. Most of our group had already passed through the doors when they popped up from the direction of the restrooms. Fiona’s jet black wisps were wilder than ever. In fact, if they hadn’t had the sex appeal of runny cheese, I’d have guessed at an illicit liaison in the ladies’ room.
“Damn, they made it,” Kyla said under her breath.
“Were they in the bathroom the whole time?” I asked.
“Not while I was in there,” she answered. “They probably got lost and took a crap in a broom closet.”
Chapter 5
ISLANDS AND INTRIGUE
The flight to Aswan was uneventful. From the air, the Nile was a great green ribbon winding gracefully across the vast barren waste of the Sahara, and it was easy to see the vast power that water had in this desert country. In Cairo, the edges of the river’s influence were blurred and obscured by human building, but away from the sprawling city, verdant life along the river banks stopped as if a great hand had drawn an uncrossable line in the sand. No wonder the ancient Egyptians had been so obsessed with death—it was visible on the horizon at every waking moment.
After leaving the airplane, we were met by a new bus that whisked us through the streets of Aswan for a quick overview. We stopped and saw the immense Aswan dam and were more impressed by the many guards carrying machine guns than by the giant slab of concrete that blocked the Nile. I found Lake Nasser impressive. A huge blue miracle in that dry land, although somehow sterile. No boats, no ramshackle piers selling ice and bait, not one fisherman in sight. Along the shores, a few scrubby plants grew in defiance of the desert, but beyond three or four feet, rock and sand held dominion.
We took a few perfunctory pictures and then thankfully hopped back on the bus, out of the wind and away from the machine guns. We zipped through the town, past the vast and fairly creepy cemetery, pausing for a few minutes at the Unfinished Obelisk, then on to our hotel, all at breakneck speed as if we were completing items on a checklist. Aswan High Dam, check. Unfinished Obelisk, check. Town