Night Train to Memphis - Elizabeth Peters [143]
‘Shut up, Schmidt.’ I kissed him and turned to John.
Schmidt’s dye wasn’t as sophisticated as the hair colouring my female friends use; it had left John’s hair flat and dull. His eyes were startingly blue in the tan of his face.
We had not weakened John’s vital forces the night before; in fact I had hardly had a moment alone with him. There had been too much to do, and at Schmidt’s insistence he had taken something to make him sleep.
‘Take care,’ I said.
‘And you.’
We shook hands. It was an absurd thing to do, I suppose. But with Feisal and Schmidt looking on, and the black garments muffling even my face, anything more demonstrative would have been still more absurd. Feisal grinned and shook his head and murmured something in Arabic. Schmidt blinked furiously.
Since the section of the east-coast highway north of Amarna wasn’t finished, we had to take the car ferry acoss to the west bank. (Feisal had turned pale when John asked if there wasn’t a roundabout way, like the one we had taken to reach the site, and John had tactfully dropped the subject.) Once we reached Minya we would cross back to the east bank; there were fewer towns and less traffic on that side, and we could make better time.
I huddled down in the backseat and tried to look senile, while Feisal got out to chat and smoke with the other early birds. The crossing took only five minutes, and nobody approached me.
My thoughts weren’t good company. Had some potential danger been overlooked, some precaution forgotten? John’s temperature had been about normal that morning, as nearly as I could tell without a thermometer, but he was a long way from healthy and some of the deeper cuts weren’t healing the way they should. Since Schmidt was a sheikh, with all that oil money in his pocket, they could at least travel comfortably. John was supposed to be his secretary or companion or something (Schmidt had turned purple with embarrassment and fury when Feisal made a ribald comment about one alternative). John was wearing poor Keith’s one white shirt and best suit, and he would speak only German, at which he was fairly fluent.
But theirs, as I had known, was the most dangerous route. Once they reached the opposite bank they would have to hire a car or a taxi to take them to Minya in order to catch the train, and there was a good chance the police would have the railroad station under surveillance. Given the best possible scenario – if they weren’t caught or delayed or forced to seek an alternative route – they couldn’t hope to reach Cairo before afternoon.
Feisal had estimated it would take us at least six hours, even if none of the above disasters occurred. We were to meet the others at the central railroad station, where the giant statue of Ramses II marks the centre of the square; there was enough traffic, pedestrian and vehicular, to provide reasonable cover. Five p.m. was the hour designated for the first attempt at a rendezvous; we’d try again every two hours until we met, or . . . until something else happened.
If either party reached the city earlier, it was not to wait for the other. John’s instructions on that point had been clear and forceful. ‘The sooner we notify the authorities, the safer everyone will be. Schmidt will get in touch with his friends in the EAO and the Ministry. Vicky – ’
‘I’ll put through a call to Karl Feder. He got me into this, damn him, and he can damn well get me out.’
‘All right. If you can’t reach him or if anything whatsoever goes wrong, head straight for the American Embassy.’
Feisal and I hit our first little problem when we approached the bridge crossing to the east bank. Traffic was backed up for half a mile and as Feisal slowed I heard him cursing quietly and monotonously under his breath. I leaned forward and he interrupted his monologue long enough to mutter, ‘Shut up and cover your face. And pray.’
He called out a question to a man standing in the back of a pickup ahead of us. I didn’t understand the answer (or the question) but I knew what it must have been. Traffic was moving, though very slowly;