He Shall Thunder in the Sky - Elizabeth Peters [115]
Emerson grunted.
“Are you going to start on it today?”
“No.”
I stopped and looked down at him. “I understand, my dear,” I said sympathetically. “It is difficult to concentrate on excavation when so much hangs on our midnight rendezvous.”
Emerson described the said rendezvous with a series of carefully selected adjectives, adding that only I would stop for a chat while halfway up a rickety ladder. He gave me a friendly little push.
Once on the surface, Emerson resumed the conversation. “I strongly object to one of the words you used, Peabody.”
“ ‘Midnight’ was not entirely accurate,” I admitted.
“But it sounds more romantic than eleven P.M., eh?” Emerson’s smile metamorphosed into a grimace that showed even more teeth and was not at all friendly. “That was not the word. You said ‘our.’ I thought I had made it clear to you that the first person plural does not apply. Must I say it again?”
“Here and now, with Selim waiting for instructions?” I indicated our youthful reis, who was squatting on the ground smoking and pretending he was not trying to overhear.
“Oh, curse it,” Emerson said.
Daoud got the men started and Selim descended the ladder in order to take Ramses’s place in the tomb chamber, assuming, that is, that Ramses would consent to be replaced. After assuring me that David was still safe and unsuspected, and that the delivery of weapons had gone off without incident, and that nobody had tried to murder him, he had rather avoided me. I knew why, of course. Injured and weakened as he had been, he had been forced to rely on me and on his father for help. Now he regretted that weakness of body and will, and wished he had not involved us. In other words, he was thinking like a man. Emerson was just as bad; I always had trouble convincing him that he needed me to protect him. Dealing with not one but two male egos was really going to be a nuisance.
I took Emerson to the rest place, where he immediately began lecturing. I sipped my tea and let him run on until he ran out of breath and patience. “So what have you to say?” he demanded.
“Oh, I am to be allowed to speak? Well, then, I grant you that if he is alone, you and Ramses can probably manage him by yourselves, always assuming he doesn’t assassinate one or both of you from ambush as you approach. However—”
“Probably?” Emerson repeated, in a voice like thunder.
“However,” I continued, “it is likely that he will be accompanied by a band of ruffians like himself, bent on robbery and murder. They could not let you live, for they would know you would—”
“Stop that!” Emerson shouted. “Such idle speculation—”
“Clears away the deadwood in the thickets of deduction,” said Ramses, appearing out of thin air like the afrit to which he had often been compared. Emerson stared at him in stupefaction, and Ramses went on, “Father, why don’t you tell her precisely what we are planning to do? It may relieve her mind.”
“What?” said Emerson.
“I said—”
“I heard you. I also heard you utter an aphorism even more preposterous than your mother’s efforts along those lines. Don’t you start, Ramses. I cannot put up with two of you.”
“It was one of Mother’s, as a matter of fact,” Ramses said, taking a seat on a packing case. “Well, Father?”
“Tell her, then,” Emerson said. He added gloomily, “It won’t stop her for long, though.”
“It will be all right, Mother,” Ramses said. He smiled at me; the softening of his features and the familiar reassurance disarmed me—as he had no doubt counted on its doing. “Farouk is not collaborating with the Germans for ideological reasons. He’s doing it for the money. We are offering him more than he could hope to get from the other side, so he will come to the rendezvous. He won’t want to share it, so he will come alone. He won’t shoot Father from behind a wall because he won’t know for certain that Father has the money on his person. We will frighten him off if we go in force, so we can’t risk it.”
I started to speak. Ramses raised his voice and went on. “I will precede Father by two hours and keep watch. If I see anything at all that contradicts