Tomb of the Golden Bird - Elizabeth Peters [144]
So much for the first of the innocent explanations. Ramses told himself that David must have a good reason for going off this way, but he decided not to stop him. The main thing was to keep him in sight. Wandering round the streets of Luxor at night, for whatever reason, was to invite trouble.
Ramses slowed his pace and tried to figure out his next move. So far David hadn’t seen him, but if he followed by boat he would be as conspicuous as a camel caravan. There wasn’t much traffic on the river at this hour. Most of the tourists had retired to their hotels.
Keeping in the shadow of one of the vessels pulled up on the bank, he watched David negotiate with a boatman and climb aboard. Instead of taking a seat, he stood looking back along the road. Ramses was forced to the only viable means of pursuit. He slid into the water. A few long strokes took him up to the side of the boat as it got under way.
It was not the most comfortable way to cross the river. His head was under water a good deal of the time, and his wet clothes clung clammily to his body. Now and then he heard the boatman swearing. The fellow had noticed the boat wasn’t answering as readily as usual, but it didn’t occur to him that he had an extra passenger.
When they reached the other side David jumped out without waiting for the gangplank. He splashed through the shallows toward the bank. Ramses waited until he had climbed it before he pulled himself out of the water and pushed his wet hair out of his eyes. They met the stupefied eyes of the boatman. His mouth dropped open.
“Quiet,” Ramses whispered. “Don’t speak. I owe you baksheesh, Ali Ibrahim. Tomorrow.”
The word of an Emerson was good all along the river. The man nodded dumbly. Ramses squeezed the water from the bottoms of his trouser legs and climbed the stairs to the street.
Unpleasant as the trip had been for Ramses, it had convinced David he had not been followed. Ramses attracted a lot of curious looks as he dripped and splashed along the pavement, but David didn’t look back. He moved like a man who knew exactly where he was going, until he passed the Winter Palace and reached a quieter section of the road. Then he stopped and looked round.
There were only a few houses nearby, on the north side of the road. Ramses had dropped flat when David halted, there being no other place of concealment he could reach. He felt the water on his clothes mixing with the dust.
David went to the door of one of the houses—a rather imposing structure several stories high, with a flight of steps leading to a pair of carved columns that flanked the entrance. Ramses jumped up. Mud dripped off him. The hell with this, he thought. I’m going to confront him, ask him what he thinks he’s doing.
He got as far as the top of the stairs. Arms clamped round his body. He twisted, freeing one arm and striking out. His fist smashed into a surface as unyielding as stone, and other arms gripped him. Someone let out a string of obscene Arabic epithets, and someone else offered a rude suggestion in the same language. A pair of hands closed round his throat. Then a voice called out a peremptory command. “Stop!”
He recognized the voice. It was that, as much as the stranglehold on his throat, that ended his resistance. Unseen hands pushed him into the house and slammed the door. The interior was dark, but he made out curving walls and a shimmer of reflection from what must be a mirror before he was hastily blindfolded. Half dragging, half pulling, they got him to an inner room and shoved him in. Sprawled on the floor, he heard a muttered colloquy outside the closed door.
They hadn’t tied his hands. He pulled off the blindfold—a filthy rag that smelled of sweat—and discovered that the groping hands had relieved him of his knife. The door opened. A man entered carrying a lamp, which he put down on a table. The room was small and scantily furnished, with a low couch and a few chairs and tables. It