He Shall Thunder in the Sky - Elizabeth Peters [20]
The line between Nefret’s brows disappeared, and she emitted one of her musical, low-pitched laughs. “I’m sorry,” she sputtered. “I had a sudden image of Aunt Amelia knocking Mr. Wardani over the head with her parasol and holding him prisoner in one of our guest rooms, where she can lecture him daily. With tea and cucumber sandwiches, of course.”
“Enjoy your little joke, Nefret,” I said. “All I want to do is talk with him. I am reckoned to have fair powers of persuasion, you know. Is there nothing you can do, Ramses? You have your own peculiar methods of finding people—you tracked Wardani down once before, if I remember correctly.”
Ramses leaned back against the cushions and lit a cigarette. “That was entirely different, Mother. He knew I wouldn’t have done anything to betray him so long as David was involved. Now he has no reason to trust me, and a hunted fugitive is inclined to strike first and apologize afterward.”
“Quite right,” Emerson ejaculated. “I cannot imagine what you were thinking of, Peabody, to suggest such a thing. Ramses, I strictly forbid . . . uh . . . I earnestly request that you will make no attempt to find Wardani. If he didn’t cut your throat, one of his fanatical followers would.”
“Yes, sir,” said Ramses.
From Manuscript H
They met just after nightfall, in a coffee shop in the Tumbakiyeh, the tobacco warehouse district. Massive doors, iron-hinged and nail-studded, closed the buildings where the tumbak was stored; but much of the area was falling into decay, the spacious khans abandoned, the homes of the old merchant princes partitioned into tenements.
There were four of them, sitting cross-legged around a low table in a back room separated from the coffee shop itself by a closed door and a heavy curtain. A single oil lamp on the table illumined the oblong board on which the popular game called mankaleh was played, but none of them, not even the players, was paying much attention to the distribution of the pebbles. Conversation was sparse, and a listener might have been struck by the fact that names were not used.
Finally a large gray-bearded man, dressed like a Bedouin in khafiya and caftan, muttered, “This is a stupid place to meet and a dangerous time. It is too early. The streets are full of people, the shops are lighted—”
“The Inglizi are drinking at their clubs and hotels, and others are at the evening meal.” The speaker was a man in his early twenties, heavily built for an Egyptian, but with the unmistakable scholar’s squint. “You are new to our group, my friend; do not question the wisdom of our leader. One is less conspicuous in a crowd at sunset than in a deserted street at midnight.”
The older man grunted. “He is late.”
The two who had not yet spoken exchanged glances. Both were clad like members of the poorer class, in a single outer garment of blue linen and turbans of coarse white cotton, but there was something of the student about them too. A pair of thick spectacles magnified the eyes of one man; he kept poking nervously at the folds of his turban, as if he were unaccustomed to wearing that article of dress. The other youth was tall and graceful, his smooth cheeks rounded, his eyes fringed with thick dark lashes. His zaboot was open from the neck nearly to the waist; on the sleek brown skin of his chest lay an ornament more commonly worn by women, a small silver case containing a selection from the Koran. It was he who responded to the Bedouin. “He comes when he chooses. Make your move.”
A few minutes later the curtain at the door was swept aside and a man entered. He wore European clothing—trousers and tweed coat, kid gloves, and a broad-brimmed hat that shadowed the upper part of his face but exposed a prominent aquiline nose and clean-shaven chin. The gray-bearded man sprang up, his hand on his knife. The others stared and started, and the handsome youth clapped his hand to his chest.
“So you appreciate my little joke. Convincing, is it?”
The voice was Wardani’s, the swagger with which he approached the table, the wolfish