Night Train to Memphis - Elizabeth Peters [86]
People wandered off as we proceeded, some to stop and rest, others to inspect a particular area in more detail. Schmidt and I had paused to look at an obelisk and he was lecturing me about the career of Hatshepsut – ‘one of the first feminists, Vicky, she should be of interest to you’ – when I saw a familiar face that didn’t belong to our group. A familiar beard, rather.
‘I have been looking all over for you,’ Jean-Louis said grumpily.
‘What for?’ I asked. He certainly didn’t look like a man who has finally found the girl of his dreams.
‘To show you the temple, of course. Didn’t you ask that I do so?’
‘We are delighted to have you, of course,’ Schmidt exclaimed, before I could answer. Just as well; I would have said no, I hadn’t. However, I was familiar with the habit some people have of believing in their own fantasies. I must have made a hit with Jean-Louis. That would teach me not to go around oozing sympathy.
He’d worked on the Aton Temple project for three years before leaving it to take up Larry’s offer, and he knew Karnak as I know my own apartment. We finally managed to pry him away from that part of the temple and talked him into showing us boring tourist stuff like the Hypostyle Hall. ‘Impressive’ is an overused word, but it’s the only word for that cluster of mammoth columns. The only thing wrong with it was the tourists. One group had squatted in a circle and I recognized the seekers after truth we had seen entering the temple earlier. They were muttering to themselves and waving their hands. I heard somebody say something about auras.
‘Cretins,’ Jean-Louis muttered.
‘They do no harm,’ Schmidt said tolerantly.
Finally I decided I’d absorbed enough for one day and I cut Jean-Louis short in the middle of a translation of the annals of Thutmose III. He was reading the hieroglyphs off the wall. It was a wasted exhibition so far as I was concerned; how did I know he was reading them right?
Jean-Louis consulted his watch. ‘Yes, we must go. Mr Blenkiron has sent the car for us, it will be waiting.’
I spotted Suzi as we passed through the Hypostyle Hall. She waved and I waved back, but Jean-Louis didn’t stop. I deduced that we were late. When we emerged from the last – or first, depending on which way you were going – pylon into the Avenue of Sphinxes, John and Mary were waiting. She looked done in. I didn’t blame her; we had covered a lot of territory and still seen only part of the enormous complex.
That was when it happened. The force of the explosion threw me to the ground, or maybe it was Schmidt who threw me to the ground. He was on top of me when I got my breath and my wits back.
I decided I probably wasn’t dead. I wished I could be sure about Schmidt. The plump pink hand lying on the ground near my face was flaccid and unmoving. I tried to squirm out from under him. People were screaming and there were sounds like firecrackers.
The weight on my back lifted. I got to my hands and knees, then to my knees. John was bending over Schmidt, shaking him. Schmidt’s head rolled back and forth, then his eyes opened and he let out an anguished bellow. ‘Vicky? Vicky, wo bist du? Bist du verletzt? Ach, Gott – ’
‘You’ll do,’ John said, stepping back. ‘Stop shrieking, Schmidt, she’s not hurt.’
‘Speak for yourself.’ My shins and forearms had taken the brunt of the fall. Blood oozed from a few square feet of scraped skin. ‘What happened?’
Schmidt, crawled over to me and enveloped me in a hug. ‘It was a bomb, Vicky. Terrorists, setting off bombs and shooting. Gott sei Dank, you are not injured.’
I could see over his shoulder. The cloud of dust from the explosion was still settling. Other people had been bowled over but they didn’t appear to be badly hurt, for they were moving and