He Shall Thunder in the Sky - Elizabeth Peters [145]
“What made you suspicious of Hamilton?” Ramses asked.
“Hamilton?” Emerson looked surprised. “No, no, my boy, you mistake me. I do not suspect him of anything except being a crashing bore.”
“But the other night you implied you had identified Sethos. Don’t deny it, Father, you wouldn’t have been so certain Mother was on the wrong track if you hadn’t suspected someone else. I thought—”
“Well, curse it, Hamilton’s avoidance of us was suspicious, wasn’t it? I was mistaken. As soon as I set eyes on him I knew he wasn’t our man. I mentioned our destination to him as a precaution, so that if we did run into trouble someone would know where we were heading.”
“Oh.”
“A number of the officers overheard my conversation with Hamilton. One of them might have mentioned our intentions to other people. You see what that means, don’t you? We’re talking about a limited circle of people—all English, officers and gentlemen. One of them is working for the enemy. He had time to get out here before we arrived.”
“Or send someone here to wait for us.”
“Or reach someone by wireless.” Emerson shifted uncomfortably. He was obviously in pain, though he would rather have died than admit it.
Ramses unbuckled the holster, took off his shirt, and began tearing it into strips. “Let me strap your shoulder. Nefret showed me how.”
“You can’t do much worse than your mother,” said Emerson with a reminiscent grin. “It was her petticoat she tore up. Women used to wear dozens of them. Useful for bandages, but cursed inconvenient in other ways.”
Astonishment made Ramses drop one end of the cloth he was holding. Had that been a mildly risqué double entendre? Nothing double about it, in fact, but to hear his father say such a thing about his mother . . .
Greatly daring, he said, “I expect you managed, though.”
Emerson chuckled. “Hmmm, yes. Thank you, my boy. That’s much better.”
“Why don’t you try to get some sleep? We’ve nothing better to do.”
“Wake me in four hours,” Emerson muttered. “We’ll take it in turn to keep watch.”
“Yes, sir.”
In four hours it would be dark and the moon would be up. It was a new moon, but there would be light from the brilliant stars. Ramses wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he had to do something. Desert nights were bitterly cold, and they had no blankets and very little water. Emerson had left his coat, canteen, weapon—everything except his precious pipe—on the saddle of the dead horse. Risha stood quietly, his proud head bent. He would have to go hungry and thirsty that night too. Ramses would have given him the last of the water, had he not wanted it for his father. Well, they would survive, all of them, and he’d have been willing to stick it out if the worst they had to fear was discomfort.
Would the assassin give up when darkness fell? Bloody unlikely, Ramses thought. If I’d sent him, I’d want proof that he’d done the job. A grisly picture flashed through his mind: Egyptian soldiers after a battle piling up their trophies of victory. Sometimes they collected the hands of the enemy dead. Sometimes it was other body parts.
Ramses began to unlace his boots.
The sun had just set and a dusky twilight blurred the air when he heard the sound he had been expecting. It was only the faint rattle of a pebble rolling, but in the eerie silence of the desert it was clearly audible. He strained his ears, but heard nothing more. Not an animal, then. Only a man bent on mischief would take pains to move so quietly.
He eased himself upright and moved cautiously along the wall, his bare feet sensitive to the slightest unevenness on the surface of the ground. The bastard knew where they were, of course, but a stumble or a slip would warn him that they were awake and on the alert. Then he heard another sound that literally paralyzed him with surprise.
“Hullo! Is someone there?”
A sudden glare of light framed the speaker—a British officer, in khaki drill jacket and short trousers, cap and puttees. He threw up his arm to