Tomb of the Golden Bird - Elizabeth Peters [150]
“I thought so,” Emerson growled. “By the Almighty, I knew it!”
It was not his black scowl but the disappointment and distress on Nefret’s face that broke down Sethos’s defenses. “It’s a fair cop,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll talk. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“Start from the beginning,” I ordered. “And go on until you have reached the end.”
“The famous message is a fraud. Gibberish. The man from whom I purportedly stole it is in our pay. He is also in the pay of the opposition, and for all I know, in the pay of a dozen other people. If you wondered how they got on my trail so quickly—as you ought to have done—that’s how. He told them. And fingered me, as he had been instructed to do.
“Our people were on the spot too. Everybody following everybody else. The so-called attempt on my life at the railroad station was set up. My unfortunate colleague broke a leg when I shoved him off the platform, but the train had already stopped, and they fished him out alive. From that point on the only people who were after me, and you, were the opposition. I led them a merry dance, as I had been ordered to do. The reason, as Amelia has undoubtedly deduced, was to discover who they were—not the hired thugs, but the people who are running the show. Sooner or later, if their underlings failed, one or more of them would be forced to take a hand. So we reasoned, at any rate.
“I suppose it was inevitable that I should come down with malaria, after all that dashing about. I hadn’t intended to throw myself on your mercy, but I didn’t have much choice; and it had become evident that they would go after you in any case. In a way it was to our advantage, because it focused the hunt. My new instructions ordered me to sit tight and wait.”
He paused to take a sip of water.
“Wonderful,” Emerson snarled. “While you were sitting tight, they came after us, and poor old Gargery.”
“That wasn’t part of the plan,” Sethos insisted. “I don’t know why they made off with him, but he wasn’t injured. If you look back, you will admit that none of the family has been hurt—only individuals like the holy man, whom they took for me.”
He looked surreptitiously at his watch, and I saw him frown. “As I said, the message is a fake. We know what they’re planning, and steps have been taken to prevent it. The only reason we’ve held off is that we’re hoping to get a line on the higher-ups before we act.”
“What are they planning?” I asked.
Sethos hesitated, but only briefly. “I may as well tell you, since I’ve spilled the rest of the beans. They’re after Feisal of Iraq. He will be deposed and replaced by Sayid Talib, who wants a republic—so he claims, at any rate—and the end of the British Mandate. The British Commissioner will be expelled, and so will your friend Miss Bell. She is under the illusion that the Iraqis all adore her, but many of them resent the influence of a woman, a foreigner, and a heretic over their king. They don’t think much of Feisal either, and the dear lady is partially responsible for the contempt in which he is held. Every time she marches into the palace as if she owned the place, his stock goes down.”
He drank again, more deeply. “So now you have it,” he said. “The plot, the whole plot, and nothing but the plot.”
FROM MANUSCRIPT H
Waiting was hell. He walked up and down the room, methodically working some of the kinks out of sore muscles, and fighting a useless, senseless desire to do something now, this instant, that would get him back to his wife. He could have sworn at least three hours had passed before he finally heard a scratching sound. He sprinted for the door.
“David?” he breathed into the keyhole.
“Here.”
“How’s it going?”
“Give me a few minutes.”
Picking locks was one of the useful skills they had learned during the war. David didn’t have