The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [151]
His voice had risen and he had talked himself breathless. He stopped, struggling to regain control.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” David said in his quiet, gentle voice. “I know it was your concern for me that prompted you to seek out Wardani—”
“Not entirely. We are hoping to use one another for our own selfish ends.” Ramses smiled cynically. “He wasn’t able to help with the business of the forgeries, except in a negative way—but even that is something.”
He knew what the next question would be, and put an end to the conversation by yawning and getting to his feet. “Lia won’t thank me for detaining you any longer, and I have some notes to write up before I get to sleep. Good night.”
The notes were not written up that night. He had other business and it was almost morning before he returned to his room through the window he had left open.
He had been at it for over a week before Nemesis, in the shape of Wardani, caught up with him. Returning from Giza that afternoon, he found a charming little note from Lia inviting him to supper. “David says if you don’t turn up he will come and fetch you.”
He’d hoped he could snatch a few hours’ sleep before going out again, but he knew better than to refuse the invitation. The message was clear. The only thing he didn’t know was what particular piece of bad news David wanted to discuss with him.
David didn’t leave him in doubt for long. Ramses had asked for coffee instead of tea, hoping it would keep him from falling asleep, and Lia had gone down to tell Karima, leaving them alone on the upper deck. The sun was low in the west, and the shapes of the Giza pyramids were framed in gold.
“I’ve had a message from my friend,” David said. “We’re to meet him at eleven at the Café Orientale.”
“We?”
“He said I must bring you.” “That sounds like him.” “Will you go?”
“I suppose I must. What have you told Lia?”
“As much as I know, which isn’t a great deal. He didn’t say why he wanted to see us, only that it was important. She’s not happy about it, but she said she’d worry less if you were with me.”
“Trusting little soul,” Ramses said. “Doesn’t she know that most of the trouble you’ve got into was caused by me?”
Lia came up the stairs in time to hear this. “David’s as bad as you are,” she said. “But there won’t be any trouble tonight, will there?”
She looked so sweet and troubled, Ramses wished he were brother to a few demons, so he could cast a spell that would send Wardani to Timbuktu and turn David into a sedentary, uxorious scholar.
“Not a chance of it,” he said firmly. “Good heavens, Lia, the fellow isn’t a killer, he’s a—er—a friend of ours. The Café Orientale is perfectly respectable. We won’t have to go down any dark streets or alleyways to get there.”
The last two sentences were accurate, anyhow. The café was on the Muski, in the European Quarter. They had been told to sit in the inner room in as dark a corner as they could find. The whole room was dark, lit only by a few hanging lamps, and the air was close and hot and foggy with smoke. By the time they had been waiting for almost an hour, the innumerable cups of coffee Ramses had drunk weren’t doing the job; his head felt as if it were coming loose from his body, and his stomach was churning. He should have known the bastard would keep them waiting.
The man who approached them wore the uniform of an Egyptian Army sergeant. He wore it with a swagger, his tarboosh set squarely on the top of his head, his boots gleaming.
“Overdoing it a bit, aren’t you?” Ramses asked.
“The panache?” Wardani lowered himself into a chair. “If you read my insignia you will observe I am a long way from my regiment. On leave, of course.”
He offered his hands to David. “Accept my felicitations and welcome, my brother. If it had been up to your friend here, we might not have met again.