The Moses Legacy - Adam Palmer [54]
Now it was just a matter of turning it… turning it some more… and some more…
Yes!
The padlock was open. He pulled on the heavy lower part to disengage it, then he turned the bottom away ninety degrees. Finally he removed the whole thing and let it drop to the floor.
‘Quick! Let’s get him out!’ Daniel yelled to Gabrielle. Mansoor was hardly able to speak.
They pushed the door open and Daniel rushed round to the other side to help free Mansoor’s hand, gently guiding it through so that the sharp metal didn’t tear into the flesh any further.
But it was already clear from the blood pouring out that an artery had been opened. Mansoor sat down and lifted his arm above the level of his heart while Daniel applied arterial pressure using his belt to stem the flow of blood.
‘I still can’t get a signal,’ said Gabrielle, frantically moving her mobile phone this way and that in the hope of getting it to work. She tried the same with Daniel’s phone, and Mansoor’s, but she was unable to get a signal.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.
‘You’ll have to walk. Go that way,’ said Mansoor, pointing west towards the Nile Valley. ‘Leave me here and get help.’
‘We have to take you with us,’ said Daniel, brushing off Mansoor’s selflessness.
‘We haven’t got a stretcher.’
‘You can still walk, can’t you?’
‘I can still walk, but I’d only slow you down.’
Daniel looked at Gabrielle. She had been panicking before when she thought that they were going to spend their last few days dying of starvation in the unused tomb of an ancient pharaoh, but now that her own life was no longer under threat, her concern turned to her former teacher.
‘Are you sure you won’t be in any danger here?’
He looked around and pointed this way and that contemptuously. ‘My dear girl, do you see any predators around here? Any lions or tigers, perhaps? Or maybe a wild camel?’
It was true that male camels could become violent to the point of killing during the mating season, if anything got between them and the fertile females, but aside from that, there was no danger out here in the desert.
‘I’m sorry. I was just concerned.’
She was none too bothered by his irascible response. She knew his character very well after all these years.
‘I’ll be all right, just as long as you get help. Make sure you tell them my exact location.’
‘Should we ask them to use a helicopter?’ asked Daniel, suddenly feeling unsure.
‘They’ll know what to do!’ snapped Mansoor. ‘Just tell them my circumstances. Now go!’
For a split second, Daniel and Gabrielle hesitated, meeting each other’s eyes, as if seeking the other’s approval for what might seem like a callous act. Then Daniel took the initiative, nodded and set off, followed a second or two later by Gabrielle.
‘Wait!’ Mansoor cried out.
They froze and turned to see the Egyptian holding out his mobile phone.
‘Take my phone. Keep checking it. As soon as you get a signal, call the number I’ve keyed into it. It’s the nearest hospital.’
‘We can do that on our phones,’ said Daniel. ‘Just give us the number.’
‘My phone is better in these conditions. Also the pair of you kept checking your e-mail, like little Western nerds. You’re probably low on juice.’
‘But we can’t leave you without a phone,’ said Gabrielle, her voice weak with guilt.
‘A phone doesn’t do me any good without a signal.’ He held out the mobile to Daniel. ‘Now, get going! And make it quick.’
And with that, they were off. It was one of those walks that seemed to become less tiring as it continued. After the first couple of hundred yards, they already felt sore, perhaps because of muscle cramps. They had spent several hours immobile in the tomb and when they came out into the open, the night air was cooler than they had expected now the sun had gone in. But as they continued and their muscles warmed up, it became easier.
But it was the psychological exhaustion that made it truly tiring