Night Train to Memphis - Elizabeth Peters [122]
The words stung like a snakebite, doubly painful because I felt I ought to have suspected some of it, at least. And there was worse to come I knew what Feisal was going to say before he said it.
‘That wasn’t the main reason. I was present when they explained to him, in painstaking detail, precisely what they would do to you if you learned the truth, from him or in any other way.’
‘Okay, I get it,’ I said hoarsely. ‘You don’t have to – ’
‘I’m going to anyway. You realize, don’t you, that while the boat was on the river they had you completely isolated and in their power? The purported changes in schedule were nothing of the sort; they were known in advance to all of us except Johnny. They kept him off balance, made it impossible for him to make arrangements for his escape or yours. Blenkiron controlled the boat, the crew, and half the able-bodied passengers. And the doctor. The moment you became aware, or even suspicious, he’d have had you pumped full of drugs and locked in your cabin with a quarantine sign on the door. And there you would have stayed, inaccessible and helpless, until . . .’
‘They tossed me overboard,’ I muttered. ‘Or would it have been something more – more inventive?’
‘Much more inventive.’ Feisal’s voice had softened a little, but he wasn’t ready to let me off the hook yet. ‘And prolonged. They were prepared to deal with Schmidt in the same way if he became a nuisance. People are always falling ill, it wouldn’t have raised questions if both of you had succumbed to some esoteric and ultimately fatal disease. Your only chance of survival depended on your remaining unwitting, and that meant your suspicions and your hostility had to be focused on Johnny. They promised him that if he’d cooperate you would be allowed to leave the cruise at Luxor with the other passengers.’
‘He believed that?’
‘Of course he didn’t. He’s been moving heaven and earth to get you to a safe place without betraying information that would endanger you even more, and he’s had to fight you as well as Blenkiron in the process.’
Cursing under his breath, he swerved – to avoid some obstacle in the road, I assumed – and the car jolted along the shoulder for a few yards before he got it back on the paved surface. I steadied John’s head with my other hand. ‘How far are we from Hammadi?’ I asked.
‘Another thirty or forty kilometres. Are you trying to change the subject?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were full of questions a while ago. Here’s your chance to get some of the answers you’ll never get from him.’
I didn’t say anything. The events of the past week were unrolling in my memory like a foreign film I hadn’t understood the first time I saw it. The captions Feisal had supplied cast a different light on every scene.
He had put on a pretty good act in public, but I might have noticed he never used a term of endearment or touched her if he could avoid doing so. In private . . . Knowing Mary as I now did, I felt sure she had enjoyed goading him into dangerous and ultimately futile outbursts of anger. The bruises on her arms were a graphic demonstration of at least one occasion on which she had succeeded, and she had retaliated, promptly and effectively. If Schmidt’s loud concern about my phobia hadn’t alerted her, my own behaviour would have done so.
That incident had been a joint project – Larry getting me down into the tomb, Mary or one of the others bollixing the lights. John must have suspected something was going to happen, but he had been helpless to prevent it. All he could do was get to me as quickly as possible.
That wasn’t the only time he’d managed to find an excuse to be around when he feared I might be in trouble. Seeing Schroeder-Max at the rest house had aroused his suspicions; he had invited himself along on that stroll from the Valley to Deir el Bahri because he was afraid to leave me and Schmidt alone with Larry and Ed. And he had prevented Mary from accompanying us, not only because she was an additional threat