SEVENTH SCROLL

 By: Wilber Smith

 Synopsis:

 A fading papyrus, nearly four thousand years old. Within it lie the

 clues to a fabulous treasure from an almost forgotten time. ... a riddle

 that becomes a savage battle across the unforgiving terain of North

 Africa. When her husband is brutally murdered , Beautiful half-English,

 half-Egyptian Royan Al Simmu is forced to seek refuge in England. With

 eminent archaeologist Nicholas Quenton-Harper she can pick up the pieces

 of her shattered life and find the courage to return to Ethiopia. For

 Duraid. For the long dead slave Taita. And for the dreams of an ancient

 Pharaoh ... Because others will stop at nothing to claim the prize as

 their own.

 This edition published 1996 by Pan Books

 ISBN 0 330 34415 3

 Copyright ( Wilbur Smith 1995

 Printed and bound in Great Britain

 Once more this book is for my wife Danielle.

 Despite all the happy loving years we have spent together I feel that we

 are only just beginning.

 There is so much more to come.

 The dusk crept in from the desert, and shaded the dunes with purple.

 Like a thick velvet cloak it muted all sounds, so that the evening was

 tranquil and hushed.

 From where they stood on the crest of the dune they looked out over the

 oasis and the complex of small villages that surrounded it. The

 buildings were white with flat roofs and the date palms stood higher

 than any of them except the Islamic mosque and the Coptic Christian

 church.

 These bastions of faith opposed each other across the lake.

 The waters of the lake were sparkling. A flight of duck slanted down on

 quick wings to land with a small splash of white close in against the

 reed banks.

 The man and the woman made a disparate couple. He was tall, though

 slightly bowed, his silvering hair catching the last of the sunlight.

 She was young, in her early thirties, slim, alert and vibrant. Her hair

 was thick and curling, restrained now by a thong at the nape of her

 neck.

 "Time to go down now. Alia will be waiting." He smiled down at her

 fondly. She was his second wife. When his first wife died he thought

 that she had taken the sunlight with her. He had not expected this last

 period of happiness in his life. Now he had her and his work. He was a

 man happy and contented.

 Suddenly she broke away from him, and pulled the thong from her hair.

 She shook it out, dense and dark, and she laughed. It was a pretty

 sound. Then she plunged down the steep slip-face of the dune, her long

 skirts billowing around her flying legs. They were shapely and brown.

 She kept her balance until halfway down, when gravity overwhelmed her

 and she tumbled.

 From the top he smiled down on her indulgently.

 Sometimes she was still a child. At others she was a grave and dignified

 woman. He was not certain which he preferred, but he loved her in both

 moods. She rolled to a halt at the bottom of the dune and sat up, still

 laughing, shaking the sand out of her hair. "Your turn!" she called up

 at him. He followed her down sedately, moving with the slight stiffness

 of advancing age, keeping his balance until he reached the bottom.

 He lifted her to her feet. He did not kiss her, although the temptation

 to do so was strong. It was not the Arab way to show public affection,

 even to a beloved wife.

 She "straightened her clothing and retied her hair before they set off

 towards the village. They skirted the reed beds of the oasis, crossing

 the rickety bridges over the irrigation canals. As they passed, the

 peasants returning from the fields greeted him with deep respect.

 "Salaam aleikum, Doktari! Peace be with you, doctor." They honoured all

 men of learning, but him especially for his kindness to them and their

 families over the years.

 Many of them had worked for his father before him. It mattered little

 that most of them were Moslem, while he was a Christian.

 When they reached the villa, Alia, the old housekeeper, greeted them

 with mumbles and scowls. "You are late. You are always late. Why do you

 not keep regular hours, like decent folk? We have a position to

 maintain."

 "Old mother, you are always right," he teased her gently. "What would we

 do without you to care for us?" He sent her away, still scowling to

 cover her love and concern for him.

 They ate the simple meat on the terrace together, dates and olives and

 unleavened bread and goat's milk cheese. It was dark when they finished,

 but the desert stars were bright as candles.

 "Royan, -my flower." He reached across the table and touched her hand.

 "It is time to begin work." He stood up from the table and led the way

 to his study that opened out on to the terrace.

 Royan Al Simma went directly to the tall steel safe against the far wall

 and tumbled the combination. The safe was out of place in this room,

 amongst the old books and scrolls, amongst the ancient statues and

 artefacts and grave goods that were the collection of his lifetime.

 When the heavy steel door swung open, Royan stood back for a moment. She

 always felt this prickle of awe whenever she first looked upon this

 relic of the ages, even after an interval of only a few short hours.

 "The seventh scroll," she whispered, and steeled herself to touch it. It

 was nearly four thousand years old, written by a genius out of time with

 history, a man who had been dust for all these millennia, but whom she

 had come to know and respect as she did her own husband. His words were

 eternal, and they spoke to her clearly from beyond the grave, from the

 fields of paradise, from the presence of the great trinity, Osiris and

 Isis and Horus, in whom he had believed so devoutly. As devoutly as she

 believed in another more recent Trinity.

 She carried the scroll to the long table at which Duraid, her husband,

 was already at work. He looked up as she laid it on the tabletop before

 him, and for a moment she saw the same mystical mood in his eyes that

 had affected her. He always wanted the scroll there on the table, even

 when there was no real call for it. He had the photographs and the

 microfilm to work with. It was as though he needed the unseen presence

 of the ancient author close to him as he studied the texts.

 Then he threw off the mood and was the dispassionate scientist once

 more. "Your eyes are better than mine, my flower," he said. "What do you

 make of this character?"

 She leaned over his shoulder and studied the hieroglyph on the

 photograph of the scroll that he pointed out to her. She puzzled over

 the character for a moment before she took the magnifying glass from

 Duraid's hand and peered through it again.

 "It looks as though Taita has thrown in another cryptogram of his own

 creation just to bedevil us." She spoke of the ancient author as though

 he were a dear, but sometimes exasperating, friend who still lived and

 breathed, and played tricks upon them.

 "We'll just have to puzzle it out, then," Duraid declared with obvious

 relish. He loved the ancient game. It was his life's work.

 The two of them laboured on into the cool of the night. This was when

 they did their best work. Sometimes they spoke Arabic and sometimes

 English; for them the two languages were as one. Less often they used

 French, which was their third common language. They had both received

 their education at universities in England and the United States, so far

 from this very Egypt of theirs. Royan loved the expression "This very

 Egypt' that Taita used so often in the scrolls.

 She felt a peculiar affinity in so many ways with this ancient Egyptian.

 After all, she was his direct descendant.

 She was a Coptic Christian, not of the Arab line that had so recently

 conquered Egypt, less than fourteen centuries ago. The Arabs were

 newcomers in this very Egypt of hers, while her own blood line ran back

 to the time of the pharaohs and the great pyramids.

 At ten 'clock Royan made coffee for them, heating it on the charcoal

 stove that Alia had prepared for them before she went off to her own

 family in the villa . They drank the 9 sweet, strong brew from thin cups

 that were half-filled with the heavy grounds. While they sipped, they

 talked as old friends.

 .. For Royan that was their relationship, old friends. She had known

 Duraid ever since she had returned from England with her doctorate in

 archaeology and won her job with the Department of Antiquities, of which

 he was the director.

 She had been his assistant when he had opened the tomb in the Valley of

 the Nobles, the tomb of Queen Lostris, the tomb that dated from about

 1780 BC.

 She had shared his disappointment when they had discovered that the tomb

 had been robbed in ancient times and all its treasures plundered. All

 that remained were the marvelous murals that covered the walls and the

 ceilings of the tomb.

 It was Royan herself who had been working at the wall behind the plinth

 on which the sarcophagus had once stood, photographing the murals, when

 a section of the plaster had fallen away to reveal in their niche the

 ten alabaster jars. Each of the jars had contained a papyrus scroll.

 Every one of them had been written and placed there by Taita, the stave

 of the queen.

 Since then their lives, Duraid's and her own, seemed to have revolved

 around those scraps of papyrus. Although there was some damage and

 deterioration, in the main they had survived nearly four thousand years

 remarkably intact.

 What a fascinating story they contained, of a nation attacked by a

 superior enemy, armed with horse and chariot that were still alien to

 the Egyptians of that time. Crushed by the Hyksos hordes, the people of

 the Nile were forced to flee. Led by their queen, Lostris of the tomb,

 they followed the great river southwards almost to its source amongst

 the brutal mountains of the Ethiopian highlands.

 Here amongst those forbidding mountains, Lostris had entombed the

 mummified body of her husband, the Pharaoh Mamose, who had been slain in

 battle against the Hyksos.

 Long afterwards Queen Lostris had led her people back northwards to this

 very Egypt. Armed now with their own horses and chariots, forged into

 hard warriors in the African wilderness, they had come storming back

 down the cataracts of the great river to challenge once more the Hyksos

 invader, and in the end to triumph over him and wrest the double crown

 of upper and lower Egypt from his grasp.

 It was a story that appealed to every fibre of her being, and that had

 fascinated her as they had unravelled each hieroglyph that the old slave

 had penned on the papyrus'

 It had taken them all these years, working at night here in the villa on

 the oasis after their daily routine work at the museum in Cairo was

 done, but at last the ten scrolls had been deciphered - all except the

 seventh scroll. This was the one that was the enigma, the one which the

 author had cloaked in layers of esoteric shorthand and allusions so

 obscure that they were unfathomable at this remove of time. Some of the

 symbols he used had never figured before in all the thousands of texts

 that they had studied in their combined working lives. It was obvious to

 them both that Taita had not intended that the scrolls should be read by

 any eyes other than those of his beloved queen. These were his last gift

 for her to take with her beyond the grave.

 It had taken all their combined skills, all their imagination and

 ingenuity, but at last they were approaching the conclusion of the task.

 There were still many gaps in the translation and many areas where they

 were uncertain whether or not they had captured the true meaning, but

 they had laid out the bones of the manuscript in such order that they

 were able to discern the outline of the creature it represented.

 Now Duraid sipped his coffee and shook his head as he had done so often

 before. "It frightens me," he said. "The responsibility. What to do with

 this knowledge we have gleaned. If it should fall into the wrong hands

 He sipped and sighed before he spoke again. "Even if we take it to the

 right people, will they believe this material that is nearly four

 thousand years old?"

 "Why must we bring in others?" Royan asked with an edge of exasperation

 in her voice. "Why can we not do alone what has to be done?" At times

 like these the differences between them were most apparent. His was the

 caution of age, while hers was the impetuosity of youth.

 "You do not understand," he said. It always annoyed her when he said

 that, when he treated her as the Arabs treated their women in a totally

 masculine world. She had known the other world where women demanded and

 received the right to be treated as equals. She was a creature caught

 between those worlds, the Western world and the Arab world.

 Royan's mother was an English woman who had worked at the British

 Embassy in Cairo in the troubled times after World War II. She had met

 and married Royan's father, who had been a young Egyptian officer on the

 staff of Colonel Nasser. It was an unlikely union and had not persisted

 into Royan's adolescence.

 Her mother had insisted upon returning to England, to her home town of

 York, for Royan's birth. She wanted her child to have British

 citizenship. After her parents had separated, Royan, again at her

 mother's insistence, had been sent back to England for her schooling,

 but all her holidays had been spent with her father in Cairo. Her

 father's career had prospered exceedingly, and in the end he had

 attained ministerial rank in the Mubarak government. Through her love

 for him she came to look upon herself as more Egyptian than English.

 It was her father who had arranged her marriage to Duraid Al Simma. It

 was the last thing that he had done for her before his death. She had

 known he was dying at the time, and she had not found it in her heart to

 defy him. All her modern training made her want to resist the

 old-fashioned Coptic tradition of the arranged marriage, but her

 breeding and her family and her Church were against her. She had

 acquiesced.

 Her marriage to Duraid had not proved as insufferable as she had dreaded

 it might be. It might even have been entirely comfortable and satisfying

 if she had never been introduced to romantic love. However, there had

 been her liaison with David while she was up at university. He had swept

 her up in the hurly-burly, in the heady delirium, and, in the end, the

 heartache, when he had left her to marry a blonde English rose approved

 of by his parents.

 She respected and liked Duraid, but sometimes in the night she still

 burned for the feel of a body as firm and young as her own on top of

 hers.

 Duraid was still speaking and she had not been listening to him. She

 gave him her full attention once more. "I have spoken to the minister

 again, but I do not think he believes in me. I think that Nahoot has

 convinced him that I am a little mad." He smiled sadly. Nahoot Guddabi

 was his ambitious and well-connected deputy. "At any rate the minister

 says that there are no government funds available, and that I will have

 to seek outside finance.

 So, I have been over the list of possible sponsors again, and have

 narrowed it down to four. There is the Getty Museum of course, but I

 never like to work with a big impersonal institution. I prefer to have a

 single man to answer to.

 Decisions are always easier to reach."None of this was new to her, but

 she listened dutifully.

 "Then there is Herr von Schiller. He has the money and the interest in

 the subject, but I do not know him well enough to trust him entirely."

 He paused, and Royan had listened to these musings so often before that

 she could anticipate him.

 "What about the American? He is a famous collector," she forestalled

 him.

 "Peter Walsh is a difficult man to work with. His passion to accumulate

 makes him unscrupulous. He frightens me a little."

 "So who does that leave?" she asked.

 He did not reply, for they both knew the answer to her question.

 Instead, he turned his attention back to the material that littered the

 work table.

 "It looks so innocent, so mundane. An old papyrus scroll, a few

 photographs and notebooks, a computer printout. It is difficult to

 believe how dangerous these might be in the wrong hands." He sighed

 again. "You might almost say that they are deadly dangerous."

 Then he laughed. "I am being fanciful. Perhaps it is the late hour.

 Shall we get back to work? We can worry about these other matters once

 we have worked out all the conundrums set for us by this old rogue,

 Taita, and completed the translation."

 He picked up the top photograph from the pile in front of him. It was an

 extract from the central section of the scroll. "It is the worst luck

 that the damaged piece of papyrus falls where it does." He picked up his

 reading glasses and placed them on his nose before he read aloud.

 "'There are many steps to ascend on the staircase to the abode of Hapi.

 With much hardship and endeavour we reached the second step and

 proceeded no further, for it was here that the prince received a divine

 revelation. In a dream his father, the dead god pharaoh, visited him and

 commanded him, "I have travelled far and I am grown weary. It is here

 that I will rest for all eternity."" Duraid removed his glasses and

 looked across at Royan, "'The second step". It is a very precise

 description for once. Taita is not being his usual devious self."

 "Let's go back to the satellite. photographs," Royan suggested, and drew

 the glossy sheet towards her. Duraid came around the table to stand

 behind her.

 "To me it seems most logical that the natural feature that would

 obstruct them in the gorge would be something like a set of rapids or a

 waterfall. If it were the second waterfall, that would put them here-'

 Royan placed her finger on a spot on the satellite photograph where the

 narrow snake of the river threaded itself through the dark massifs of

 the mountains on either hand.

 At that moment she was distracted and she lifted her head. "Listen!" Her

 voice changed, sharpening with alarm.

 "What is it?" Duraid looked up also.

 "The dog," she answered.

 "That damn mongrel," he agreed. "It is always making the night hideous

 with its yapping. I have promised myself to get rid of him."

 At that moment the lights went out.

 They froze with surprise in the darkness. The soft thudding of the

 decrepit diesel generator in its shed at the back of the palm grove had

 ceased. It was so much a part of the oasis night that they noticed it

 only when it was silent.

 Their eyes adjusted to the faint starlight that came in through the

 terrace doors. Duraid crossed the room and took the oil lamp down from

 the shelf beside the door where it waited for just such a contingency.

 He lit it, and looked across at Royan with an expression of comical

 resignation.

 "I will have to go down-'

 Duraid," she interrupted him, "the dog!'

 He listened for a moment, and his expression changed to mild concern.

 The dog was silent out there in the night.

 "I am sure it is nothing to be alarmed about." He went to the door, and

 for no good reason she suddenly called after him.

 "Duraid, be careful!" He shrugged dismissively and stepped out on to the

 terrace.

 She thought for an instant that it was the shadow of the vine over the

 trellis moving in the night breeze off the desert, but the night was

 still. Then she realized that it was a human figure crossing the

 flagstones silently and swiftly, coming in behind Duraid as he skirted

 the fishpond in the centre of the paved terrace.

 "Duraid!" She screamed a warning and he spun round, lifting the lamp

 high.

 "Who are you?" he shouted. "What do you want here?" The intruder closed

 with him silently. The traditional full-length dishdasha robe swirled

 around his legs, and the white ghutrah headcloth covered his head. In

 the light of the lamp Duraid saw that he had drawn the corner of the

 headcloth over his face to mask his features.

 The intruder's back was turned towards her so Royan did not see the

 knife in his right hand, but she could not mistake the upward stabbing

 motion that he aimed at Duraid's stomach. Duraid grunted with pain and

 doubled up at the blow, and his attacker drew the blade free and stabbed

 again, but this time Duraid dropped the lamp and seized the knife arm.

 The flame of the fallen oil lamp was guttering and flaring. The two men

 struggled in the gloom, but Royan saw a dark stain spreading over her

 husband's white shirt front.

 "Run!" he bellowed at her. "Go! Fetch help! I cannot hold him!" The

 Duraid she knew was a gentle person, a soft man of books and learning.

 She could see that he was outmatched by his assailant.

 "Go! Please! Save yourself, my flower!" She could hear by his tone that

 he was weakening, but he still clung desperately to his attacker's knife

 arm.

 She had been paralysed with shock and indecision these few fatal

 seconds, but now she broke free of the spell and ran to the door.

 Spurred by her terror and her need to bring help to Duraid she crossed

 the terrace, swift as a cat, and he held the intruder from blocking her

 way.

 She vaulted over the low stone wall into the grove, and almost into the

 arms of the second man. She screamed and twisted away from him as his

 outstretched fingers raked across her face, and almost broke free, but

 his fingers hooked in the thin cotton stuff of her blouse.

 This time she saw the knife in his hand, a long silvery flash in the

 starlight, and it goaded her to fresh effort. The cotton tore in his

 grip and she was free, but not quickly enough to escape the blade. She

 felt the sting of it across her upper arm, and she kicked out at him

 with all the strength of panic and her hard young body behind it. She

 felt her foot slam into the softness of his lower body with a shock that

 jarred her knee and ankle, and her attacker cried out and fell to his

 knees.

 Then she was away and running through the palm grove. At first she ran

 without purpose or direction. She ran simply to get as far from them as

 her flying legs would carry her. Then gradually she brought her panic

 under control. She glanced back, but saw nobody following her.

 As she reached the edge of the lake she slowed her run to conserve her

 strength, and she became aware of the warm trickle of her own blood down

 her arm and then dripping from her finger-tips.

 She stopped.and rested her back against the rough hole of one of the

 palms while she tore a strip of cloth from her ripped blouse and

 hurriedly bound up her arm. She was shaking so much from shock and

 exertion that even her uninjured hand was fumbling and clumsy. She

 knotted the crude bandage with her teeth and left hand, and the bleeding

 slowed.

 She was uncertain of which way to run, and then she saw the dim

 lamplight. in the window of Alia's shack across the nearest irrigation

 canal. She pushed herself away from the palm trunk and started towards

 it. She had covered less than a hundred paces when a voice called from

 the grove behind her, speaking in Arabic, "Yusuf, has the woman come

 your way?"

 immediately an electric torch flashed from the darkness ahead of her and

 another voice called back, "No, I have not seen her."

 Another few seconds and Royan would have run full into him. She crouched

 down and looked around her desperately. There was another torch coming

 through the grove behind her, following the path she had taken. It must

 be the man she had kicked, but she could tell by the motion of the torch

 beam that he had recovered and was moving swiftly and easily again.

 She was blocked on two sides, so she turned back along the edge of the

 trail. The road lay that way. She might be able to meet a late vehicle

 travelling on it. She lost her footing on the rough ground and went

 down, bruising and scraping her knees, but she jumped up again and

 hurried on. The second time she stumbled, her outthrust left hand landed

 on a round, smooth stone the size of an orange. When she went on she

 carried the stone with her; as a weapon it gave her a glimmer of

 comfort.

 Her wounded arm was beginning to hurt, and she was driven by worry for

 Duraid. She knew he was badly wounded, for she had seen the direction

 and force of the knife thrust. She had to find help for him. Behind her

 the two men with torches were sweeping the grove and she could not keep

 her lead ahead of them. They were gaining on her - she could hear them

 calling to each other.

 She reached the road at last, and with a small whimper of relief climbed

 out of the drainage ditch on to the pale gravel surface. Her legs were

 shaking under her so that they could hardly carry her weight, but she

 turned in the direction of the village.

 She had not reached the first bend before she saw a set of headlights

 coming slowly towards her, flickering through the palm trees. She broke

 into a run down the centre of the road.

 "Help me!" she screamed in Arabic. "Please help me!'

 The car came through the bend and before the headlights dazzled her she

 saw that it was a small, darkcoloured Fiat. She stood in the centre of

 the road waving her arms to halt the driver, lit by the headlights as

 though she were on a theatre stage. The Fiat stopped in front of her,

 and she ran round to the driver's door and tugged at the handle.

 "Please, you must help me."

 The door was opened from within, and then was thrown back with such

 force that she staggered off-balance.

 The driver leapt out into the roadway and caught her by the wrist of the

 injured arm. He dragged her to the Fiat and pulled open the back door.

 "Yusuf! Bacheed' he shouted into the dark grove. "I have her." And she

 heard the answering cries and saw the torches turn in their direction.

 The driver was forcing her head down and trying to push her into the

 back seat, but she realized then that she still had the stone in her

 good hand. She turned slightly and braced herself, and then swung her

 fist with the stone still clenched in it against the side of his head.

 It caught him squarely on the temple.

 Without another sound he dropped to the gravel surface and lay

 motionless.

 Royan dropped the stone and pelted away down the road, but she found

 that she was running straight down the path of the headlights, and they

 lit her every movement.

 The two men in the grove shouted again and came up on to the gravel

 roadway behind her, almost shoulder to shoulder.

 Glancing back, she saw them gaining on her swiftly, and she realized

 that her only chance was to get off the road and back into the darkness.

 She turned and plunged down the bank. Immediately she found herself

 waist-deep in the waters of the lake.

 In the darkness and the confusion she had become disorientated. She had

 not realized that she had reached the point where the road skirted the

 embankment at the water's edge. She knew that she did not have time to

 climb back on to the road, and she knew also that there were thick

 clumps of papyrus and reeds ahead of her, that might give her shelter.

 She waded out until the bottom sloped away steeply under her feet, and

 she found herself forced to swim. She broke into an awkward

 breast-stroke, hampered by her skirts and her injured arm. However, her

 slow and stealthy movements created almost no disturbance on the

 surface, and before the men on the road had reached the point where she

 had descended the bank, she reached a dense stand of reeds.

 . She eased her way into the thick of them and let herself sink. Before

 the water covered her nostrils she felt her toes touch the soft ooze of

 the lake bottom. She stood there quietly, with just the top of her head

 above the surface and her face turned away from the bank. She knew her

 dark hair would not reflect the light of a probing torch.

 Though the water covered her ears, she could make out the excited voices

 of the men on the road. They had turned their torches down towards the

 water and were shining them into the reeds, searching for her. For a

 moment one of the beams played full on her head, and she drew a deep

 breath ready to submerge, but the beam moved on and she realized that

 they had not picked her out.

 The fact that she had not been seen even in the direct torchlight

 emboldened her to raise her head slightly until one ear was clear and

 she could make out their voices.

 They were speaking Arabic, and she recognized the voice of the one named

 Bacheet. He appeared to be the leader, for he was giving the orders.

 "Go in there, Yusuf, and bring the whore out."

 She heard Yusuf slipping and sliding down the bank and the splash as he

 hit the water.

 "Further out," Bacheet ordered him. "In those reeds there, where I am

 shining the torch."

 "It is too deep. You know well I cannot swim. It will be over my head."

 "There! Right in front of you. In those reeds. I can see her head."

 Bacheet encouraged him, and Royan dreaded that they had spotted her. She

 sank down as far as she could below the surface.

 Yusuf splashed around heavily, moving towards where she cowered in the

 reeds, when suddenly there was a thunderous commotion that startled even

 Yusuf, so that he shouted aloud, "Djinns! God protect meV as the flock

 of roosting duck exploded from the water and launched into the dark sky

 on noisy wings.

 Yusuf started back to the bank and not any of Bacheet's threats could

 persuade him to continue the hunt.

 "The woman is not as important as the scroll," he protested, as he

 climbed back on to the roadway. "Without the scroll there will be no

 money. We always know where to find her later."

 Turning her head slightly, Royan saw the torches move back down the road

 towards the parked Fiat whose headlights still burned. She heard the

 doors of the car slam, and then the engine revved and pulled away

 towards the villa.

 She was too shaken and terrified to make any attempt to leave her

 hiding-place. She feared that they had left one of their number on the

 road to wait for her to show herself.

 She stood on tiptoe with the water lapping her lips, shivering more with

 shock than with cold, determined to wait for the safety of the sunrise

 before she moved.

 It was only much later when she saw the glow of the fire lighting the

 sky, and the flames flickering through the trunks of the palm trees,

 that she forgot her own safety and dragged herself back to the bank.

 She knelt in the mud at the water's edge, shuddering and shaking and

 gasping, weak with loss of blood and shock and the reaction from fear,

 and peered at the flames through the veil of her wet hair -and the lake

 water that streamed into her eyes.

 "The villa! she whispered. "Duraid! Oh please God, no! No!

 She pushed herself to her feet and began to stagger towards her burning

 home.

 acheet switched off both the headlights and the engine of the Fiat

 before they reached the turning into the driveway of the villa and let

 the car coast down and stop below the terrace.

 All three of them left the Fiat and climbed the stone steps to the

 flagged terrace. Duraid's body still lay where Bacheet had left it

 beside the fishpond. They passed him without a glance and went into the

 dark study.

 Bacheet placed the cheap nylon tote bag he carried on the tabletop.

 "We have wasted too much time already. We must work quickly now."

 "It is Yusuf's fault," protested the driver of the Fiat. "He let the

 woman escape."

 "You had a chance on the road," Yusuf snarled at him, "and you did no

 better."

 "Enough!" Bacheet told them both. "If you want to get paid, then there

 had better be no more mistakes."

 With the torch beam Bacheet picked out the scroll that still lay on the

 tabletop. "That is the one." He was certain, for he had been shown a

 photograph of it so that there would be no mistake. "They want

 everything - the maps and photographs. Also the books and papers,

 everything on the table that they were using in their work.

 Leave nothing."

 Quickly they bundled everything into the tote bag and Bacheet zipped it

 closed.

 "Now the Doktari. Bring him in here."

 The other two went out on to the terrace and stooped over the body. Each

 of them seized an ankle and dragged Duraid back across the terrace and

 into the study. The back of Duraid's head bounced loosely on the stone

 step at the threshold and his blood painted a long wet skid mark across

 the tiles that glistened in the torchlight.

 "Get the lamp!" Bacheet ordered, and Yusuf went back to the terrace and

 fetched the oil lamp from where Duraid had dropped it. The flame was

 extinguished. Bacheet held the lamp to his ear and shook it.

 "Full," he said with satisfaction, and unscrewed the filler cap. "All

 right," he told the other two, take the bag out to the car."

 As they hurried out Bacheet sprinkled paraffin from the lamp over

 Duraid's shirt and trousers, and then he went to the shelves and

 splashed the remainder of the fuel over the books and manuscripts that

 crowded them.

 He dropped the empty lamp and reached under the skirts of his dishdasha

 for a box of matches. He struck one of them and held it to the wet run

 of paraffin oil down the bookcase. It caught immediately, and flames

 spread upwards and curled and blackened the edges of the manuscripts. He

 turned away and went back to where Duraid lay. He struck another match

 and dropped it on to his blood- and paraffindrenched shirt.

 A mantle of blue flames danced over Duraid's chest.

 The flames changed colour as they burned into the cotton material and

 the flesh beneath it. They turned orange, and sooty smoke spiralled up

 from their flickering crests.

 Bacheet ran to the door, across the terrace and down the steps. As he

 clambered into the rear seat of the Fiat, the driver gunned the engine

 and pulled away down the driveway.

 Durid drifted. He groaned. The first thing he was aware of as he

 regained consciousness was the smell of his own flesh burning, and then

 the agony struck him with full force. A violent tremor shook his whole

 body and he opened his eyes and looked down at himself.

 His clothing was blackening and smouldering, and the pain was as nothing

 he had ever experienced in his entire life. He realized in a vague way

 that the room was on fire all around him. Smoke and waves of heat washed

 over him so that he could barely make out the shape of the doorway

 through them.

 The pain was so terrible that he wanted it to end. He wanted to die then

 and not to have to endure it further.

 Then he remembered Royan. He tried to say her name through his scorched

 and blackened lips, but no sound came. Only the thought of her gave him

 the strength to move. He rolled over once, and the heat attacked his

 back that up until that moment had been shielded. He groaned aloud and

 rolled again, just a little nearer to the doorway.

 Each movement was a mighty effort and evoked fresh paroxysms of agony,

 but when he rolled on to his back again he realized that a gale of fresh

 air was being sucked through the open doorway to feed the flames. A

 lungful Of the sweet desert air revived him and gave him just sufficient

 strength to lunge down the step on to the cool stones of the terrace.

 His clothes and his body were still on fire. He beat feebly at his chest

 to try to extinguish the flames, but his hands were black burning claws.

 Then he remembered the fishpond. The thought of plunging his tortured

 body into that cold water spurred him he pain roused Duraid. It had to

 be that intense to bring him back from that far place on the very edge

 of life to which he had to one last effort, and he wriggled and wormed

 his way across the flags like a snake with a crushed spine.

 The pungent smoke from his still cremating flesh choked him and he

 coughed weakly, but kept doggedly on.

 He left slabs of his own grilled skin on the stone coping as he rolled

 across it and flopped into the pond. There was a hiss of steam, and a

 pale cloud of it obscured his vision so that for a moment he thought he

 was blinded. The agony of cold water on his raw burned flesh was so

 intense that he slid back over the edge of consciousness.

 When he came back to reality through the dark clouds he raised his

 dripping head and saw a figure staggering up the steps at the far end of

 the terrace, coming from the garden.

 For a moment he thought it was a phantom of his agony, but when the

 light of the burning villa fell full upon her, he recognized Royan. Her

 wet hair hung in tangled disarray over her face, and her clothing was

 torn and running with lake water and stained with mud and green algae.

 Her right arm was wrapped in muddy rags and her blood oozed through,

 diluted pink by the dirty water.

 She did not see him. She stopped in the centre of the terrace and stared

 in horror into the burning room. Was Duraid in there? She started

 forward, but the heat was like a solid wall and it stopped her dead. At

 that moment the roof collapsed, sending a roaring column of sparks and

 flames high into the night sky. She backed away from it, shielding her

 face with a raised arm.

 Duraid tried to call to her, but no sound issued from his smoke-scorched

 throat. Royan turned away and started down the steps. He realized that

 she must be going to call for help. Duraid made a supreme effort and a

 crow-like croak came out between his black and blistered lips.

 Royan spun round and stared at him, and then she screamed. His head was

 not human. His hair was gone, frizzled away, and his skin hung in

 tatters from his cheeks and chin. Patches of raw meat showed through the

 black crusted mask. She backed away from him as though he were some

 hideous monster.

 "Royan," he croaked, and his voice was just recognizable. He lifted one

 hand towards her in appeal, and she ran to the pond and seized the

 outstretched hand.

 "In the name of the Virgin, what have they done to you?" she sobbed, but

 when she tried to pull him from the pond the skin of his hand came away

 in hers in a single piece, like some horrible surgical rubber glove,

 leaving the bleeding claw naked and raw.

 Royan fell on her knees beside the coping and leaned over the pond to

 take him in her arms. She knew that she did not have the strength to

 lift him out without doing him further dreadful injury. All she could do

 was hold him and try to comfort him. She realized that he was dying no

 man could survive such fearsome injury.

 "They will come soon to help us," she whispered to him in Arabic.

 "Someone must see the flames. Be brave, my husband, help will come very

 soon."

 He was twitching and convulsing in her arms, tortured by his mortal

 injuries and racked by the effort to speak.

 "The scroll?" His voice was barely intelligible. Royan looked up at the

 holocaust that enveloped their home, and she shook her head.

 "It's gone," she said. "Burned or stolen."

 "Don't give it up," he mumbled. "All our work-'

 "It's gone," she repeated. "No one will believe us without-'

 "No!" His voice was faint but fierce. "For me, my last---2 "Don't say

 that," she pleaded. "You will be all right."

 "Promise," he demanded. "Promise me!"

 "We have no sponsor. I am alone. I cannot do it alone."

 "Harper!" he said. Royan leaned closer so that her ear touched his

 fire-ravaged lips. "Harper," he repeated. "Strong hard - clever man-'

 and she understood then. Harper, Of course, was the fourth and last name

 on the list of sponsors that he had drawn up. Although he was the last

 on the list, somehow she had always known that Duraid's order of

 preference was inverted. Nicholas Quenton Harper was his first choice.

 He had spoken so often of this man with respect and warmth, and

 sometimes even with awe.

 "But what do I tell him? He does not know me. How will I convince him?

 The seventh scroll is gone."

 "Trust him," he whispered. "Good man. Trust him-' There was a terrible

 appeal in his "Promise me!'

 Then she remembered the notebook in their flat at Giza in the Cairo

 suburbs, and the Taita material on the hard drive on her PC. Not

 everything was gone. "Yes," she agreed, "I promise you, my husband, I

 promise you."

 Though those mutilated features could show no human expression there was

 a faint echo of satisfaction in his voice as he whispered, "My flower!"

 Then his head dropped forward, and he died in her arms.

 The peasants from the village found Royan still kneeling beside the

 pond, holding him, whispering to him. By that time the flames were

 abating, and the faint light of dawn was stronger than their fading

 glow.

 The staff from the museum and the Antiquities were at the funeral the

 church of the oasis. Even Atalan Abou Sin, the Minister of Culture and

 Tourism and Duraid's superior, had come out from Cairo in his official

 black air-conditioned Mercedes.

 He stood behind Royan and, though he was a Moslem, joined in the

 responses. Nahoot Guddabi stood beside his uncle. Nahoot's mother was

 the minister's youngest sister, which, as Duraid had sarcastically

 pointed out, fully made up for the nephew's lack of qualifications and

 experience in archaeology anj for his ineptitude as an administrator.

 The day was sweltering. Outside, the temperature stood at over thirty

 degrees, and even in the dim cloisters of the Coptic church it was

 oppressive. In the thick clouds of incense smoke and the drone of the

 black-clad priest intoning the ancient order of service Royan felt

 herself suffocating. The stitches in her right arm pulled and burned,

 and every time she looked at the long black coffin that stood in front

 of the ornate and gilded altar, the dreadful vision of Duraid's bald and

 scorched head rose before her eyes and she swayed'in her seat and had to

 catch herself before she fell.

 At last it was over and she could escape into the open air and the

 desert sunlight. Even then her duties were not at an end. As principal

 mourner, her place was directly behind the coffin as they walked in

 procession to the cemetery amongst the palm groves, where Duraid's

 relatives awaited him in the family mausoleum.

 Before he returned to Cairo, Atalan Abou Sin came to shake her hand and

 offer her a few words of condolence.

 "What a terrible business, Royan. I have personally spoken to the

 Minister of the Interior. They will catch the animals responsible for

 this outrage, believe me. Please take as long as you need before you

 return to the museum," he told her.

 "I will be in my office again on Monday," she replied, and he drew a

 pocket diary from inside the jacket of his dark double-breasted suit. He

 consulted it and made a note, before he looked up at her again.

 "Then come to see me at the Ministry in the afternoon.

 Four 'clock," he told her. He went to the waiting Mercedes, while Nahoot

 Guddabi came forward to shake hands. Though his skin was sallow and

 there were coffeecoloured stains beneath his dark eyes, he was tall and

 elegant with thick wavy hair and very white teeth. His suit was

 impeccably tailored and he smelt faintly of an expensive cologne. His

 expression was grave and sad.

 "He was a good man. I held Duraid in the highest esteem," he told Royan,

 and she nodded without replying to this blatant untruth. There had been

 little affection between Duraid and his deputy. He had never allowed

 Nahoot to work on the Taita scrolls; in particular he had never given

 him access to the seventh scroll, and this had been a point of bitter

 antagonism between them.

 "I hope you will be applying for the post of director, Royan," he told

 her. "You are well qualified for the job."

 "Thank you, Nahoot, you are very kind. I haven't had a chance to think

 about the future yet, but won't you be applying?"

 "Of course," he nodded. "But that doesn't mean that no one else should.

 Perhaps you will take the job out from in front of my nose." His smile

 was complacent. She was a woman in an Arab world, and he was the nephew

 of the minister. Nahoot knew just how heavily the odds favoured him.

 "Friendly rivals?"he asked.

 Royan smiled sadly. "Friends, at least. I will need all of those I can

 find in the future."

 "You know you have many friends. Everyone in the department likes you,

 Royan." That at least was true, she supposed. He went on smoothly, "May

 I offer you a lift back to Cairo? I am certain my uncle will not

 object."

 "Thank you, Nahoot, but I have my own car here, and I must stay over at

 the oasis tonight to see to some of Duraid's affairs."This was not true.

 Royan planned to travel back to the flat in Giza that evening but, for

 reasons that she was not very sure of herself, she did not want Nahoot

 to know of her plans.

 "Then we shall see you at the museum on Monday." Royan left the oasis as

 soon as she was able to escape from the relations and family friends and

 peasants, so many of whom had worked for Duraid's family most of their

 lives.

 She felt numbed and isolated, so that all their condolences and

 exhortations were meaningless and Without comfort.

 Even at this late hour the tarmac road back through the desert was busy,

 with files of vehicles moving steadily in both directions, for tomorrow

 was Friday and the sabbath. She slipped her injured right arm out of the

 sling, and it did not hamper her driving too much. She was able to make

 reasonably good time. Nevertheless, it was after five in the afternoon

 when she made out the green line against the tawny desolation of the

 desert that marked the start of the narrow strip of irrigated and

 cultivated land along the Nile which was the great artery of Egypt.

 As always the traffic became denser the nearer she came to the capital,

 and it was almost fully dark by the time she reached the apartment block

 in Giza that overlooked both the river and those great monuments of

 stone which stood so tall and massive against the evening sky, and which

 for her epitomized the heart and history of her land.

 She left Duraid's old green Renault in the underground garage of the

 building and rode up in the elevator to the top floor.

 She let herself into the flat and then froze in the doorway. The sitting

 room had been ransacked - even the rugs had been pulled up and the

 paintings ripped from the walls. In a daze she picked her way through

 the litter of broken furniture and smashed ornaments. She glanced into

 the bedroom as she went down the passage, and saw that it had not

 escaped. Her clothes and those of Duraid were strewn over the floor, and

 the doors of the cupboards stood ajar. One of these was smashed off its

 hinges. The bed was overturned, and the sheets and bolsters had been

 flung about.

 She could smell the reek of broken cosmetic and perfume bottles from the

 bathroom, but she could not yet bring herself to go in there. She knew

 what she would find.

 Instead she continued down the passage to the large room that they had

 used as a study and workshop.

 In the chaos the first thing that she noticed and mourried was the

 antique chess set that Duraid had given her as a wedding present. The

 board of jet and ivory squares was broken in half and the pieces had

 been thrown about the room with vindictive and unnecessary violence. She

 stooped and picked up the white queen. Her head had been snapped off.

 Holding the queen in her good hand she moved like a sleepwalker to her

 desk below the window. Her PC was wrecked. They had shattered the screen

 and hacked the mainframe with what must have been an axe. She could tell

 at a glance that there was no information left on the hard drive; it was

 beyond repair.

 She glanced down at the drawer in which she kept her floppy disks. That

 and all the other drawers had been pulled out and thrown on the floor.

 They were empty, of course; along with the disks, all her notebooks and

 photographs were missing. Her last connections with the seventh scroll

 were lost. After three years of work, gone was the proof that it had

 ever existed.

 She stumped down on the floor, feeling beaten and exhausted. Her arm

 started to ache again, and she was alone and vulnerable as she had never

 been in her life before. She had never thought that she would miss

 Duraid so desperately. Her shoulders began to shake and she felt the

 tears welling up from deep within her. She tried to hold them back, but

 they scalded her eyelids and she let them flow. She sat amongst the

 wreckage of her life and wept until there was nothing more left within

 her, and then she curled up on the littered carpet and fell, into the

 sleep of exhaustion and despair.

  the Monday morning she had managed to restore some order into her life.

 The police had come to the flat and taken her statement, and she had

 tidied up most of the disarray. She had even glued the head back on her

 white queen. When she left the flat and climbed into the green Renault

 her arm was feeling easier, and, if not cheerful, she was at least a

 great deal more optimistic, and sure of what she had to do.

 When she reached the museum she went first to Duraid's office and was

 annoyed to find that Nahoot was there before her. He was supervising two

 of the security guards as they cleared out all Duraid's personal

 effects.

 "You might have had the consideration to let me do that," she told him

 coldly, and he gave her his most winning smile.

 "I am sorry, Royan. I thought I would help." He was smoking one of his

 fat Turkish cigarettes. She loathed the heavy, musky odour.

 She crossed to Duraid's desk, and opened the top right hand drawer. "My

 husband's day book was in here. It's gone now. Have you seen it?"

 "No, there was nothing in that drawer."Nahoot looked at the two guards

 for confirmation, and they shuffled their feet and shook their heads. It

 did not really matter, she thought. The book had not contained much of

 vital interest. Duraid had always relied on her to record and store all

 data of importance, and most of it had been on her PC.

 "Thank you, Nahoot," she dismissed him. "I will do whatever remains to

 be done. I don't want to keep you from your work."

 "Any help you need, Royan, please let me know." He bowed slightly as he

 left her.

 It did not take her long to finish in Duraid's office. She had the

 guards take the boxes of his possessions down the corridor to her own

 office and pile them against the wall.

 She worked through the lunch-hour tidying up all her own affairs, and

 when she had finished there was still an hour until her appointment with

 Atalan Abou Sin.

 If she was to make good her promise to Duraid, then she was going to be

 absent for some time. Wanting to take leave of all her favoUrite

 treasures, she went down into the public section of the huge building.

 Monday was a busy day, and the exhibition halls of the museum were

 thronged with groups of tourists. They flocked behind their guides,

 sheep following the shepherd.

 They crowded around the most famous of the displays.

 They listened to the guides reciting their well-rehearsed spiels in all

 the tongues of Babel.

 Those rooms on the second floor that contained the treasures of

 Tutankhamen were so crowded that she spent little time there. She

 managed to reach the display cabinet that contained the great golden

 death'mask of the child pharaoh. As always, the splendour and the

 romance of it quickened her breathing and made her heart beat faster.

 Yet as she stood before it, jostled by a pair of big-busted and sweaty

 middle-aged female tourists, she pondered, as she had so often before,

 that if an insignificant weakling king could have gone to his tomb with

 such a miraculous creation covering his mummified features, in what

 state must the great Ramessids have lain in their funeral temples.

 Ramesses II, the greatest of them all, had reigned sixty-seven years and

 had spent those decades accumulating his funerary treasure from all the

 vast territories that he had conquered.

 Royan went next to pay her respects to the old king.

 After thirty centuries Ramesses II slept on with a rapt and serene

 expression on his gaunt features. His skin had a light, marble-like

 sheen to it. The sparse strands of his hair were blond and dyed with

 henna. His hands, dyed with the same stuff, were long and thin and

 elegant. However, he was clad only in a rag of linen. The grave robbers

 had even unwrapped his mummy to reach the amulets and scarabs beneath

 the linen bandages, so that his body was almost naked. When these

 remains had been discovered in 1881 in the cache of royal mummies in the

 cliff cave at Deir El Bahari, only a scrap of papyrus parchment attached

 to his breast had proclaimed his lineage.

 There was a moral in that, she supposed, but as she stood before these

 pathetic remains she wondered again, as she and Duraid had done so often

 before, whether Taita the scribe had told the truth, whether somewhere

 in the far-off, savage mountains of Africa another great pharaoh slept

 on undisturbed with all his treasures intact about him.

 The very thought of it made her shiver with excitement, and goose

 pimples prickled her skin and raised the fine dark hair at the nape of

 her neck.

 "I have given you my promise, my husband," she whispered in Arabic.

 "This will be for you and your memory, for it was you who led the way."

 She glanced at her "Wrist-watch as she went down the main staircase. She

 had fifteen minutes before she must leave for her appointment with the

 minister, and she knew, exactly how she would spend that time. What she

 was going to visit was in one of the less-frequented side halls.

 The tour guides very seldom led their charges this way, except as a

 short-cut to see the statue of Amenhotep.

 Royan stopped in front of the glass-fronted display case that reached

 from floor to ceiling of the narrow room. It was packed with small

 artefacts, tools and weapons, amulets and vessels and utensils, the

 latest of them dating from the twentieth dynasty of the New Kingdom,

 1100 BC, whilst the oldest survived from the dim ages of the Old Kingdom

 almost five thousand years ago. The cataloguing of this accumulation was

 only rudimentary. Many of the items were not described.

 At the furthest end, on the bottom shelf, was a display of jewellery and

 finger rings and seals. Beside each of the seals was a wax impression

 made from it.

 Royan went down on her knees to examine one of these artefacts more

 closely. The tiny blue seal of lapis lazuli in the centre of the display

 was beautifully carved.

 Lapis was a rare and precious material for the ancients, as it had not

 occurred naturally in the Egyptian Empire. The wax imprint cut from it

 depicted a hawk with a broken wing, and the simple legend beneath it was

 clear for Royan to read: "TAITA, THE SCRIBE OF THE GREAT QUEEN'.

 She knew it was the same man, for he had used the maimed hawk as his

 autograph in the scrolls. She wondered who had found this trifle and

 where. Perhaps some peasant had plundered it from the lost tomb of the

 old slave and scribe, but she would never know.

 "Are you teasing me, Taita? Is it all some elaborate hoax? Are you

 laughing at me even now from your tomb, wherever it may be?" She leaned

 even closer, until her forehead touched the cool glass. "Are you my

 friend, Taita, or are you my implacable adversary?" She stood up and

 dusted off the front of her skirt. "We shall see. I will-play the game

 with you, and we shall see who outwits whom," she promised.

 The minister kept her waiting only a few minutes before his male

 secretary ushered her into his presence. Atalan Abou Sin wore a dark,

 shiny silk suit and sat at his desk, although Royan knew that he

 preferred a more comfortable robe and a cushion on the rugs of the

 floor. He noticed her glance and smiled deprecatingly. "I have a meeting

 with some Americans this afternoon." .. She liked him. He had always

 been kind to her, and she owed him her job at the museum. Most other men

 in his position would have refused. Duraid's request for a female

 assistant, especially his own wife.

 He asked after her health and she showed him her bandaged arm. "The

 stitches will come out in ten days."

 They chatted for a while in a polite manner. Only Westerners would have

 the gaucherie to come -directly to the main business to be discussed.

 However, to save him embarrassment Royan took the first opportunity he

 gave her to tell him, "I feel that I need some time to myself. I need to

 recover from my loss and to decide what I am to do with the rest of my

 life, now that I am a widow. I would be grateful if you would consider

 my request for at least six months' unpaid leave of absence. I want to

 go to stay with my mother in England."

 Atalan showed real concern and urged her, "Please do not leave us for

 too long. The work you have done has been invaluable. We need you to

 help carry on from where Duraid left off." But he could not entirely

 conceal his relief She knew that he had expected her to put before him

 her application for the directorship. He must have discussed it with his

 nephew. However, he was too kind a man to relish having to tell her that

 she would not be selected for the job. Things in Egypt were changing,

 women were emerging from their traditional roles, but not that much or

 that swiftly. They both knew that the directorship must go to Nahoot

 Ouddabi.

 Atalan walked with her to the door of his office and shook her hand in

 parting, and as she rode down in the lift she felt a sense of release

 and freedom.

 She had left the Renault standing in the sun in the Ministry car park.

 When she opened the door the interior was hot enough to bake bread. She

 opened all the windows and fanned the driver's door to force out the

 heated air, but still the surface of the driver's seat burned the backs

 of her thighs when she slid in behind the wheel.

 As soon as she drove through the gates she was engulfed in the swarm of

 Cairo traffic. She crawled along behind an overloaded bus that belched a

 steady blue cloud of diesel fumes over the Renault. The traffic problem

 was one that seemed to have no solution. There was so little parking

 available that vehicles lined the verge of the road three and four

 deep," choking the flow in the centre to a trickle.

 As the bus in front of her braked and forced her to a halt, Royan smiled

 as she recalled the old joke that some drivers who had parked at the

 kerb had to abandon their cars there, for they were never able to

 extricate them from the tangle. Perhaps there was a little truth in

 this, for some of those vehicles she could see had not been moved for

 weeks. Their windscreens were completely obscured with dust and many of

 them had flat tyres.

 She glanced in the rear-view mirror. There was a taxi stopped only

 inches from her back bumper, and behind that the traffic was backed up

 solidly. Only the motorcyclists had freedom of movement. As she watched

 in the mirror, one of these came weaving through the congestion with

 suicidal abandon. It was a battered red 200 cc Honda so covered with

 dust that the colour was hardly recognizable. There was a passenger

 perched on the pillion, and both he and the driver had covered the lower

 half of their faces with the corners of their white headcloths as

 protection against the exhaust fumes and dust.

 Passing on the wrong side, the Honda skimmed through the narrow gap

 between the taxi and the cars parked at the kerb with nothing to spare

 on either side.

 The taxi-driver made an obscene gesture with thumb and forefinger, and

 called on Allah to witness that the driver was both mad and stupid.

 The Honda slowed slightly as it drew level with Royan's Renault, and

 the' pillion passenger leaned out and dropped something through the open

 window on to the passenger seat beside her, Immediately the driver

 accelerated so abruptly that for a moment the front wheel was lifted off

 the ground. He put the motorcycle over into a tight turn and sped away

 down the narrow alleyway that opened off the main thoroughfare, narrowly

 avoiding hitting an old woman in his path.

 As the pillion passenger looked back at her the wind blew the fold of ck

 she recognized the man she had last seen in the headlights of the Fiat

 on the road beside the oasis.

 "Yusuf!" As the Honda disappeared she looked down at the object that he

 had dropped on to the seat beside her.

 It was egg-shaped and the segmented metallic surface was painted

 military green. She had seen the same thing so often on old TV war

 movies that she recognized it instantly as a fragmentation grenade, and

 at the same moment she realized that the priming handle had flown off

 and the weapon was set to explode within seconds.

 Without thinking, she grabbed the door handle beside her and flung all

 her weight against the door. It burst open and she tumbled out in the

 road. Her foot slipped off the clutch and the Renault bounded forward

 and crashed into the back of the stationary bus.

 As Royan sprawled in the road under the wheels of the following taxi,

 the grenade exploded. Through the open driver's door blew a sheet of

 flame and smoke and debris. The back window burst outwards and sprayed

 her with diamond chips of glass, and the detonation drove painfully into

 her eardrums.

 A stunned silence followed the shock of the explosion, broken only by

 the tinkle of falling glass shards, and then immediately there was a

 hubbub of groans and screams.

 Royan sat up and clasped her injured arm to her chest. She had fallen

 heavily upon it and the stitches were agony.

 The Renault was wrecked, but she saw that her leather sling bag had been

 blown out of the door and lay in the street close at hand. She pushed

 herself unsteadily to her feet and hobbled over to pick it up. All

 around her was confusion. A few of the passengers in the bus had been

 injured, and a piece of shrapnel or wreckage had wounded a little girl

 on the sidewalk. Her mother was screaming and mopping at the child's

 bloody face with her scarf The girl struggled in her mother's grip,

 wailing pitifully.

 Nobody was taking any notice of Royan, but she knew the police would

 arrive within minutes. They were geared up to respond swiftly to

 fundamentalist terror attacks. She knew that if they found her here she

 would be tied up in days of interrogation. She slung the bag over her

 shoulder and walked as swiftly as her bruised leg would allow her to the

 alleyway down which the Honda had disappeared.

 At the end of the street was a public lavatory. She locked herself in

 one of the cubicles and leaned against the door with her eyes closed,

 trying to recover from the shock and to get her confused thoughts in

 order.

 In the horror and desolation of Duraid's murder she had not until now

 considered her own safety. The realization of danger had been forced

 upon her in the most savage manner. She remembered the words of one of

 the assassins spoken in the darkness beside the oasis "We always know

 where to find her later!'

 The attempt on her life had failed only narrowly. She had to believe

 that there would be another.

 I can't go back to the flat," she realized. "The villa is gone, and

 anyway they would look for me there."

 Despite the unsavoury atmosphere she remained locked in the cubicle for

 over an hour while she thought out her next movements. At last she left

 the toilet and went to the row of stained and cracked washbasins. She

 splashed her face under the tap. Then in the mirror she combed her hair,

 touched up her make-up, and straightened and tidied her clothing as best

 she was able.

 She walked a few blocks, doubling back on her tracks and watching behind

 her to make sure she -was not being followed, before she hailed a taxi

 in the street.

 She made the driver drop her in the street behind her bank, and walked

 the rest of the way. It was only minutes before closing time when she

 was " shown into the cubicle office of one of the sub-accountants. She

 withdrew what money was in her account, which amounted to less than five

 thousand Egyptian pounds. It was not a great sum, but she had a little

 more in her Lloyds Bank account in York, and then she had her

 Mastercard.

 "You should have given us notice to withdraw an article from safe

 deposit," the bank official told her severely.

 She apologized meekly and played the helpless little-girllost so

 convincingly that he relented. He handed over to her the package that

 contained her British passport and her Lloyds banking papers.

 Duraid had numerous relatives and friends who would have been pleased to

 have her to stay with them, but she wanted to remain out of sight, away

 from her usual haunts.

 She chose one of the two-star tourist hotels away from the river where

 she hoped she could remain anonymous amongst the multitudes of the tour

 groups. At this type of hotel there was a high turnover of guests, for

 most of them stayed only for a few nights before moving on up to Luxor

 and Aswan to view the monuments.

 As soon as she was alone in her single room she phoned British Airways

 reservations. There was a flight to Heathrow the following morning at

 ten 'clock. She booked a one-way economy seat and gave them the number

 of her Mastercard.

 It was after six 'clock by then, but the time difference between Egypt

 and the UK meant that it would still be office hours there. She looked

 up the number in her notebook. Leeds University was where she had

 completed her studies. Her call was answered on the third ring.

 "Archaeology Department. Professor Dixon's office," said a prim English

 schoolmarm voice.

 :Is that you, Miss Higgins?"

 Yes, it is. To whom am I speaking?"

 "It's Royan. Royan Al Simma, who used to be Royan Said :, Royan! We

 haven't heard from you for an absolute age. How are your They chatted

 for a short while, but Royan was aware of the cost of the call. "Is the

 Prof in?" she cut it short.

 Professor Percival Dixon was over seventy and should have retired years

 ago. "Royan, is it really you? My favourite student." She smiled. Even

 at his age he was still the randy old goat. All the pretty ones were his

 favourite students.

 "This is an international call, Prof. I just want to know if the offer

 is still open."

 "My goodness, I thought you said that you couldn't fit us in, whatr

 "Change of circumstances. I'll tell you about it when I see you, if I

 see you."

 "Of course, we' love to have you come and talk to us.

 When can you manage to get awayr

 "I'll be in England tomorrow."

 'my goodness, that's a bit sudden. Don't know if we can arrange it that

 quickly."

 "I will be staying with my mother near York. Put me back to Miss Higgins

 and I will give her the telephone number." He was one of the most

 brilliant men she knew, but she didn't trust him to write down a

 telephone number correctly. "I'll call you in a few days' time."

 She hung up and lay back on the bed. She was exhausted and her arm was

 still hurting, but she tried to lay her plans to cover all

 eventualities.

 Two months ago Prof Dixon had invited her to lecture on the discovery

 and excavation of the tomb of Queen Lostris,. and the discovery of the

 scrolls. It was that book, of course, and more especially the footnote

 at the end of it, that had alerted him. Its publication had caused a

 great deal of interest. They had received enquiries from Egyptologists,

 both amateur and professional, all around the world, some from as far

 afield as Tokyo and Nairobi, all of them questioning the authenticity of

 the novel and the factual basis behind it.

 At the time she had opposed letting a writer of fiction have access to

 the transcriptions, especially as they had not been completed. She felt

 that the whole thing had reduced what should have been an important and

 serious academic subject to the level of popular entertainment, rather

 like what Spielberg had done to palaeontology with his park full of

 dinosaurs.

 In the end her voice had been over-ruled. Even Duraid had sided against

 her. It had been the money, of course. The department was always short

 of funds to conduct its less spectacular work. When it came to some

 grandiose scheme like moving the entire Temple of Abu Simbel to a new

 site above the flood waters of the Aswan High Dam, then the nations of

 the world had poured in tens of millions of dollars. However, the

 day-to'day operational expenses of the department attracted no such

 support.

 Their half share of the royalties from River God, for that was the

 book's title, had financed almost a year of research and exploration,

 but that was not enough to allay Royan's personal misgivings. The author

 had taken too many liberties with the facts contained in the scrolls,

 and had embroidered historical characters with personalities and foibles

 for which there was not the least evidence. In particular she felt he

 had portrayed Taita, the ancient scribe, as a braggart and a

 vainglorious poseur. She resented that.

 in fairness she was forced to concede that the author's brief had been

 to make the facts as palatable and readable as possible to a wide lay

 public, and she reluctantly agreed that he had succeeded in doing so.

 However, all her scientific training revolted against such a

 popularization of something so unique and wonderful.

 But she sighed and put these thoughts out of her head.

 The damage was done, and thinking about it only served to irritate her.

 She turned her thoughts to more pressing problems. If she was to do the

 lecture that the Prof had invited her to deliver, then she would need

 her slides and these were still at her office in the museum. While she

 was still working out the best way to get hold of them without fetching

 them in Person, exhaustion overtook her and she fell asleep, still fully

 clothed, on top of the bed.

  the end the solution to her problem was simplicity itself. She merely

 phoned the administration office and arranged for them to collect the

 box of slides from her office and send it out to the airport in a taxi

 with one of the secretaries.

 When the secretary handed them over to her at the British Airways

 check'in desk, he told her, "The police were at the Museum when we

 opened this morning. They wanted to speak to you, Doctor."

 Obviously they had traced the registration of the wrecked Renault. She

 was pleased that she had her British Passport. If she had tried to leave

 the country with her Egyptian papers she might have run into delays: the

 police would probably have placed a restriction order on all passport

 control points. As it was, she passed through the checkpoint with no

 difficulty and, once she was in.the final departure lounge, she went to

 the news-stand and studied the array of newspapers.

 All the local newspapers carried the story of the bombing of her car,

 and most of them had resurrected the story of Duraid's murder and linked

 the two events. One of them hinted at fundamentalist religious

 involvement. El Arab had a front-page photograph of herself and Duraid,

 which had been taken the previous month at a reception for a group of

 visiting French tour operators.

 It gave her a pang to see the photograph of her husband looking so

 handsome and distinguished, with herself on his arm smiling up at him.

 She purchased copies of all the papers and took them on board the

 British Airways flight.

 During the flight she passed the time by writing down in her notebook

 everything she could remember from what Duraid had told her of the man

 that she was going to find..

 She headed the page: "Sir Nicholas Quenton-Harper (Bart)." Duraid had

 told her that Nicholas's great-grand, father had been awarded the title

 of baronet for his work as a career officer in the British colonial

 service. For three generations the family had maintained the strongest

 of ties with Africa, and especially with the British colonies and

 spheres of influence in North Africa: Egypt and the Sudan, Uganda and

 Kenya.

 According to Duraid, Sir Nicholas himself had served in Africa and the

 Gulf States with the British army. He was a fluent Arabic and Swahili

 speaker and a noted amateur archaeologist and zoologist. Like his

 father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him, he had made

 numerous expeditions to North Africa to collect specimens and to explore

 the more remote regions. He had written a number of articles for various

 scientific journals and had even lectured at the Royal Geographical

 Society.

 When his elder brother died childless, Sir Nicholas had inherited the

 title and the family estate at Quenton Park. He had resigned from the

 army to run the estate, but more especially to supervise the family

 museum that had been started in 1885 by his great-grandfather, the first

 baronet. It housed one of the largest collections of African fauna in

 private hands, and its ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern collection of

 artefacts was equally famous.

 However, from Duraid's accounts she concluded that there must be a wild,

 and even lawless, streak in Sir Nicholas's nature. It was obvious that

 he was not afraid to take some extraordinary risks to add to the

 collection at Quenton Park.

 Duraid had first met him a number of years previously, when Sir Nicholas

 had recruited him to act as an intelligence officer for an illicit

 expedition to "liberate' a number of Punic bronze castings from

 Gadaffi's Libya. Sir Nicholas had sold some of these to defray the

 expenses of the expedition, but had kept the best of them for his

 private collection.

 More recently there had been another expedition, this time involving an

 illegal crossing of the Iraqi border to bring out a pair of stone

 has-relief friezes from under Saddam Hussein's nose. Duraid had told her

 that Sir Nicholas had sold one of the pair for a huge amount of money;

 he had mentioned the sum of five million US dollars. Duraid said that he

 had used the money for the running of the museum, but that the second

 frieze, the finest of the pair, was still in Sir Nicholas's possession.

 Both these expeditions had taken place years before Royan had met

 Duraid, and she wondered idly at Duraid's readiness to commit himself to

 the Englishman in this way.

 Sir Nicholas must have had unique powers of persuasion, for if they had

 been apprehended in the act there was no doubt that it would have meant

 summary execution for both of them.

 As Duraid had explained to her, on each occasion it was only Nicholas's

 resourcefulness and his network of friends and admirers across the

 Middle East and North Africa, which he had been able to call on for

 help, that had seen them through.

 "He is a bit of a devil," Duraid had shaken his head with evident

 nostalgia at the memory, "but the man to have with you when things are

 tough. Those days were all very exciting, but when I look back on it now

 I shudder at the risks we took."

 She had often pondered on the risks that a true inthe-blood collector

 was prepared to take to slake his passion. The risk seemed to be out of

 proportion to the reward, when it came to adding to his accumulations;

 and then she smiled at her own pious sentiments. The venture that she

 hoped to lead Sir Nicholas into was not exactly without risk, and she

 supposed that a circumlocution of lawyers might debate the legality of

 it endlessly.

 Still smiling, she fell asleep, for the strain of these last few days

 had taken their toll. The air hostess woke her with an admonition to

 fasten her seat-belt for the landing at Heathrow.

 an phoned her mother from the airport.

 ello, Mummy. It's me."

 "Yes, I know that. Where are you, love?" Her mother sounded as

 unflappable as ever. -'At Heathrow. I am coming up to stay with you for

 a while. Is that all right?"

 "Lumley's and ," her mother chuckled. "I'll go and make your bed. What

 train will you be coming up on?"

 "I had a look at the timetable. There is one from King's Cross that will

 get me into York at seven this evening."

 "I'll meet you at the station. What happened? Did you and Duraid have a

 tiff? Old enough to be your father. I said it wouldn't work."

 Royan was silent for a moment. This was hardly the time for

 explanations. "I'll tell you all about it when I see you this evening."

 Georgina Lumley, her mother, was waiting on the platform in the gloom

 and cold of the November evening, bulky and solid in her old green

 Barbour coat with Magic, her cocker spaniel, sitting obediently at her

 feet. The two of them made an inseparable pair, even when they were not

 winning field trials cups. For Royan they painted a comforting and

 familiar picture of the English side of her lineage.

 Georgina kissed Royan's cheek in a perfunctory manner. "Never was one

 for all that sentimental fiddle, faddle," she often said with

 satisfaction, and she took one of Royan's bags and led the way to the

 old mud-splattered Land Rover in the car park.

 Magic sniffed Royan's hand and wagged his tail in recognition. Then in a

 dignified and condescending manner he allowed her to pat his head, but

 like his mistress he was no great sentimentalist either.

 . They drove in silence for a while and Georgina lit a cigarette. "So

 what happened to Duraid, then?"

 For a minute Royan could not reply, and then the floodgates within her

 burst and she let it all come pouring out. It was a twenty-minute drive

 north of York to the little village of Brandsbury, and Royan talked all

 the way.

 Her mother made only small sounds of encouragement and comfort, and when

 Royan wept as she related the details of Duraid's death and funeral,

 Georgina reached across and patted her daughter's hand.

 It was all over by the time they reached her mother's cottage in the

 village. Royan had cried it out and was dryeyed and rational again as

 they ate the dinner that her mother had prepared and left in the oven

 for them. Royan could not remember when last she had tasted steak and

 kidney pie.

 "So what are you going to do now?" Georgina asked as she poured what

 remained in the black bottle of Guinness into her own glass.

 "To tell the truth, I don't know." As she said it, Royan wondered

 ruefully why so many people used that particular phrase to introduce a

 lie. "I have six months' leave from the museum, and Prof Dixon has

 arranged for me to give a lecture at the university. That is as far as

 it goes for the moment."

 "Well," said Georgina as she stood up, "there is a hotwater bottle in

 your bed and your room is there for as long as you wish to stay." From

 her that was as good as a passionate declaration of maternal love.

 Over the next few days Royan arranged her slides and notes for the

 lectures, and each afternoon she accompanied Georgina and Magic on their

 long walks over the surrounding countryside.

 "Do you know Quenton Park?" she asked her mother during one of these

 rambles.

 "Rather," Georgina replied enthusiastically. "Magic and I pick up there

 four or five times a season. First-class shoot. Some of the best

 pheasant and woodcock in Yorkshire. One drive there called the High

 Larches which is notorious. Birds so high they baffle the best shots in

 England."

 "Do you know the owner, Sir Nicholas Quenton Harper?" Royan asked.

 "Seen him at the shoots. Don't know him. Good shot, though," Georgina

 replied. "Knew his papa in the old days before I married your father."

 She smiled in a suggestive way that startled Royan. "Good dancer. We

 danced a few jigs together, not only on the dance floor."

 "Mummy, you are outrageous!'Royan laughed.

 "Used to be," Georgina agreed readily. "Don't get many opportunities

 these days."

 "When are you and Magic going to Quenton Park again?"

 "Two weeks' time."

 "May I come with you?"

 "Of course - the keeper is always looking for beaters.

 Twenty quid and lunch with a bottle of beer for the day." She stopped

 and looked at her daughter quizzically. "What is all this about, then?"

 "I hear there is a private museum on the estate. They have a

 world-renowned Egyptian collection. I wanted to get a look at it."

 "Not open to the public any more. Invitation only. Sir Nicholas is an

 odd chap, secretive and all that."

 "Couldn't you get an invitation for me?" Royan asked, but Georgina shook

 her head.

 "Why don't you ask Prof Dixon? He is often one of the guns at Quenton

 Park. Great chum of Quenton-Harper."

 It was ten days before Prof Dixon was ready for her. She borrowed her

 mother's Land Rover and drove to Leeds. The Prof folded her in a bear

 hug and then took her through to his office for tea.

 It was nostalgic of her days as a student to be back in the cluttered

 room filled with books and papers and ancient artefacts. Royan told him

 about Duraid's murder, and Dixon was shocked and distressed, but she

 quickly changed the subject to the slides that she had prepared for the

 lecture. He was fascinated by'everything she had to show him.

 It was almost time for her to leave before she had an opportunity to

 broach the subject of the Quenton Park museum, but he responded

 immediately.

 "I am amazed that you never visited it while you were a student here.

 It's a very impressive collection. The family has been at it for over a

 hundred years. As a matter of fact, I am shooting on the estate next

 Thursday. I'll have a word with Nicholas. However, the poor chap isn't

 up to much at the moment. Last year he suffered a terrible "personal

 tragedy. Lost his wife and two little girls in a motor accident on the

 MU He shook his head. "Awful business. Nicholas was driving. I think he

 blames himself' He walked her out to the Land Rover.

 "So we will see you on the twenty-third," he told Royan as they parted.

 "I expect that you will have an audience of at least a hundred, and I

 have even had a reporter from the Yorkshire Post on to me. They have

 heard about your lectures and they want to do an interview with you.

 jolly good publicity for the department. You'll do it, of course. Could

 you come a couple of hours early to speak to them?"

 "Actually I will probably see you before the twenty-third," she told

 him. "Mummy and her dog are picking up at Quenton Park on Thursday, and

 she has got me a job as a beater for the day."

 "I'll keep an eye open for you," he promised, and waved to her as she

 pulled away in a cloud of exhaust smoke.

 The wind was searing cold out of the north.

 The clouds tumbled over each other, heavy 6- and blue and grey, so close

 to earth that they brushed the crests of the hills as they hurried ahead

 of the gale.

 Royan wore three layers of clothing under the old green Barbour jacket

 that Georgina had lent her, but still she shivered as they came up over

 the brow of the hills in the line of beaters. Her blood had thinned in

 the heat of the Nile valley. Two pairs of fisherman's socks were not

 enough to save her toes from turning numb.

 For this drive, the last of the day, the head keeper had moved Georgina

 from her usual position behind the line of guns, where she and Magic

 were expected to pick up the crippled birds that came through to them,

 into the line of beaters.

 Keeping the best for last, they were beating the High Larches. The

 keeper needed every man and woman he could get into the line to bring in

 the pheasant from the huge piece of ground on top of the hills and to

 push them off the brow, out over the valley where the guns waited at

 their pegs far below.

 It seemed to Royan a supreme piece of illogical behaviour to rear and

 nurture the pheasants from chicks I and then, when they were mature, go

 to such lengths to make them as difficult to shoot as the keeper could

 devise.

 However, Georgina had explained to her that the higher and harder to hit

 the birds passed over the guns, the more pleased the Sportsmen were, and

 the more they were willing to pay for the privilege of firing at them.

 "You cannot believe what they will pay for a day's shooting,, Georgina

 had told her. "Today will bring in almost 14,000 to the estate. They

 will shoot twenty days this season. Work that out and you will see that

 the shoot is a major part of the estate's income. Quite apart from the

 fun of working the dogs and beating, it gives a lot of us local people a

 very useful bit of extra money."

 At this stage of the day, Royan was not too certain just how much fun

 there was to he had from the job of beating. The walking was difficult

 in the thick brambles, and Royan had slipped more than once. There was

 mud on her knees and elbows. The ditch ahead of her was half filled with

 water and there was a thin skin of ice across the surface. She

 approached it gingerly, using her walking-stick to balance herself. She

 was tired, for there had already been five drives, all as onerous as

 this one. She glanced across at her mother and marvelled at how she

 seemed to be enjoying this torture. Georgina strode along happily,

 controlling Magic with her whistle and hand signals.

 She grinned at Royan now, "Last lap, over." love. early Royan was

 humiliated that her distress had-been so obvious, and she used her stick

 to help her vault the muddy ditch. However, she miscalculated the width

 and fell short of the far bank. She landed knee-deep in the frozen water

 and it poured in over the top of her Wellington boots.

 Georgina laughed at her and offered her the end of her Own stick to pull

 her out of the glutinous mud. Royan could not hold up the line by

 stopping to empty her flooded boots, so she went on, squelching loudly

 with each pace.

 "Steady on the left! the order from the head keeper was relayed over the

 walkie-talkie radio, and the line halted obediently.

 The art and skill of the keeper was to flush the birds from the tangled

 undergrowth, not in one massed covey, but in a steady trickle that would

 pass over the waiting guns in singles and pairs, giving them the chance,

 after they had fired two barrels, to take their second gun from the

 loader and be ready for the next bird to appear in the sky high above

 them. The size of the keeper's tip and his reputation depended on the

 way he "showed' the birds to the waiting guns.

 During this respite Royan was able to regain her breath, and to look

 around her. Through a break in the branches that gave the drive its

 name, she could see down into the valley.

 There was an open meadow at the foot of the hills, the expanse of smooth

 green grass broken up by patches of dirty grey snow from the previous

 week's fall. Down this meadow the keeper had set a line of numbered

 pegs. At the beginning of the day's sport the guns had drawn lots to

 decide the peg number from which each of them would shoot.

 Now each man stood "at his allotted peg, with his loader holding his

 second gun ready behind him, ready to pass it over when the first gun

 was empty. They were all looking up expectantly to the high ground from

 which the pheasant would appear.

 "Which is Sir Nicholas?" Royan called to her mother, and Georgina

 pointed to the far end of the line of guns.

 "The tall one," she said, and at that moment the keeper's voice on the

 radio ordered, "Gently on the left.

 Start tapping again." Obediently the beaters tapped their sticks. There

 was no shouting or hallooing in this delicate and strictly controlled

 operation.

 "Forward slowly. Halt to the flush of birds."

 A step at a time the line moved ahead, and in the brambles and bracken

 in front of her Royan could hear the stealthy scuffle of a number of

 pheasants moving forward, reluctant to take to the air until they were

 forced to do so.

 There was another ditch in their path, this one choked with an almost

 impenetrable, thicket of brambles. Some of the larger dogs, like the

 Labradors, balked at entering such a thorny barrier. Georgina whistled

 sharply and Magic's ears went up. He was soaked and his coat was a

 matted mess of mud and buffs and thorns. His pink tongue lolled from the

 corner of his grinning mouth and the sodden stump of his tail was

 wagging merrily. At that moment he was the happiest dog in England. He

 was doing the work that he had been bred for.

 "Come on, Magic," Georgina ordered. "Get in there.

 Get them out."

 Magic dived into the thickest and thorniest patch, and disappeared

 completely from view. There was a minute of snuffling and rooting around

 in the depths of the ditch, and then a fierce cackle and flurry of

 wings.

 A pair of birds exploded out of the bushes. The hen led the way. She was

 a drab, nondescript creature the size of a domestic fowl, but the cock

 bird that followed her closely was magnificent. His head was capped with

 iridescent green and his cheeks and wattles were scarlet. His tail,

 barred in cinnamon and black, was almost as long again as his body and

 the rest of his plumage was a riot of gorgeous colour.

 As he climbed he sparkled against the lowering grey sky like a priceless

 jewel thrown from an emperor's hand.

 Royan gasped with the beauty of the sight.

 "Just look at them go!'Georgina's voice was thick with excitement. "What

 a pair of crackerjacks. The best pair today. My bet is that not one of

 the guns will touch a feather on either of them."

 Up, and then on up, the two birds climbed, the hen drawing the cock

 after her, until suddenly the wind boiling over the hills like

 overheated milk caught them both and flung them away, out over the

 valley.

 The line of beaters enjoyed the moment. They had worked hard for it.

 Their voices were tiny and faint on the wind as they urged the birds on.

 They loved to see a pheasant so high and fast that it could beat the

 guns.

 "Forward!" they exulted. "over! and this time the line came

 involuntarily to a halt as they followed the flight of the pair that

 were twisting away on the wind.

 In the valley bottom the faces of the guns were turned upwards, pale

 specks against the green background. Their trepidation was almost

 palpable as they watched the pheasant reach their maximum speed, so that

 they could no longer beat their wings, but locked them into a back-swept

 profile as they began to drop down into the valley.

 This was the most difficult shot that any gun would face. A high pair of

 pheasant with a half gale quartering from behind, dropping into the shot

 at their terminal rate of flight, set to pass over the line at the

 extreme effective range of a twelve-bore shotgun. For the men below it

 was a calculation of speed "and lead in all three dimensions of space.

 The best of shots might hope to take one of them, but who would dare to

 think of both?

 "A pound on it!" Georgina called. "A pound that they both get through."

 But none of the beaters who heard her accepted the wager.

 The wind was pushing the birds gently sideways. They started off aimed

 at the centre of the line, but they were drifting towards the far end.

 As the angle changed, Royan could see the men at the pegs below her

 brace themselves in turn as the birds appeared to be heading straight

 for them, and then relax as the wind moved them on. Their relief was

 evident as, one after the other, each of them was absolved from the

 challenge of having to make such an impossible shot with all eyes

 fastened upon him.

 In the end only the tall figure at the extreme end of the line stood in

 their flight path.

 "Your bird, sir," one of the other guns called mockingly, and Royan

 found that instinctively she was holding her breath with anticipation.

 Nicholas Quenton-Harper seemed unaware of the approach of the pair of

 pheasant. He stood completely relaxed, his tall frame slouching

 slightly, his shotgun tucked under his right arm with the muzzles

 pointing at the ground.

 At the moment that the leading hen bird reached a point in the sky sixty

 degrees ut ahead of him he moved for the first time. With casual grace

 he swung the shotgun up in a sweeping arc. At the instant that the butt

 touched I I his cheek and shoulder he fired, but the gun never stopped

 moving and went on to describe the rest of the arc.

 The distance delayed the sound of the shot reaching I Royan. She saw the

 barrels kick with the recoil, and a pale spurt of blue smoke from the

 muzzle. Then Nicholas lowered the gun as the hen suddenly threw back her

 head and closed her wings. There was no burst of feathers from her body,

 for she had been hit cleanly in the head and killed instantly. As she

 began the long plummet to earth Royan heard the thud of the shot.

 By then the cock was high over Nicholas's head. This time as he mounted

 the gun in that casual sweeping gesture he arched his back to point

 upwards, his long frame bending from the waist like a drawn bow. Once

 again at the apex of the swing the weapon kicked in his grasp.

 "He has missed!" Royan thought with a mixture of satisfaction and

 disappointment, as the cock sailed on seemingly unscathed. Part of her

 wanted the beautiful bird to escape, while part of her wanted the man to

 succeed.

 Gradually the profile of the high cock altered as the wings folded back

 and it rolled over in flight. Royan had no way of knowing that his heart

 had been struck through, until seconds later he died in mid-air and the

 locked wings lost their rigid set.

 As the cock tumbled to earth, a spontaneous chorus of heers ran down

 the line of beaters, faint but enthusiastic on the icy north wind. Even

 the other guns added their voices with cries of, "Oh, good shot, sir!'

 Royan did not join in the cheering, but for the moment her fatigue and

 cold were forgotten. She could only vaguely appreciate the skill that

 those two shots had called for, but she was impressed, even a little

 awed. Her very first glimpse of the man had fulfilled all the

 expectations that Duraid's stories about him had raised in her.

 By the time the last drive ended it was almost dark.

 An old army truck came mbling down the track through ru the forest along

 which the tired beaters and their dogs waited. As it slowed they

 scrambled up into the back.

 Georgina gave Royan a boost from behind before she and Magic followed

 her up. They settled thankfully on one of the long hard benches, and

 Georgina lit a cigarette as she joined, in the chat and banter of the

 under-keepers and beaters around her.

 Royan sat silently at the end of the bench, enjoying the sense of

 achievement at having come through such a strenuous day. She felt tired

 and relaxed, and strangely contented. For one whole day she had not

 thought either of the theft of the scroll or of Duraid's murder and the

 unknown and unseen enemy who threatened her with aviolent death.

 The truck ground down the hill and slowed as it reached the bottom,

 pulling in to the verge to let a green Range Rover pass. As the two

 vehicles drew level, Royan turned her head and looked down into the open

 driver's window of the expensive estate car, and into the eyes of

 Nicholas Quenton Harper at the wheel.

 This was the first time she had been close enough to him to see his

 features. She was surprised at how young he was. She had expected him to

 be a man of Duraid's age.

 She saw now that he was no older than forty, for there were only the

 first strands of silver in the wings of his thick, rumpled hair. His

 features were tanned and weatherbeaten, those of an outdoors man. His

 eyes were green and penetrating under dark, beetling brows. His mouth

 was wide and expressive, and he was smiling now at some witticism that

 the driver of the truck called to him in a thick Yorkshire accent, but

 there was a sense of sadness and tragedy in the eyes. Royan remembered

 what the Prof had told her of his recent bereavement, and she felt her

 heart go out to him. She was not alone in her loss and her mourning.

 He looked directly into her eyes and she saw his expression change. She

 was an attractive woman, and she could tell when a man recognized that.

 She had made an impression on him, but she did not enjoy the fact. Her

 sorrow for Duraid was still too raw and painful. She looked away and the

 Range Rover drove on.

 Her lecture at the university went off extremely well. Royan was a good

 speaker and she knew her subject intimately. She held them fascinated

 with her account of the opening of the tomb_of Queen Lostris and of the

 subsequent discovery of the scrolls. Many of her audience had read the

 book, and during question time they pestered her to know how much of it

 was the truth. She had to tread very carefully here, so as not to deal

 too harshly with the author.

 Afterwards Prof Dixon took Royan and Georgina to dinner. He was

 delighted with her success, and ordered the most expensive bottle of

 claret on the wine list to celebrate.

 He was only mildly disconcerted when she refused a glass of it.

 "Oh, dear me, I forgot that you were a Moslem," he apologized.

 "A Copt," she corrected him, "and it's not on religious grounds. I just

 don't like the taste."

 "Don't worry," Georgina counselled him, "I don't have the same odd

 compulsion to masochism as my daughter.

 She must get it from her father's side. I'll give you a hand to finish

 the good stuff."

 Under the benign influence of the claret the Prof became expansive, and

 entertained them with the accounts of the archaeological digs he had

 been on over the decades.

 It was only over the coffee that he turned to Royan.

 "Goodness me, I almost forgot to tell you. I have arranged for you to

 visit the museum at Quenton Park any afternoon this week. just ring Mrs.

 Street the day before, and she will be waiting to let you in. She is

 Nicholas's PA."

 Ryan remembered the way to Quenton Park when Georgina had driven them

 to the shoot, but now she was alone in the Land Rover. The massive main

 gates to the estate were made of ornate cast iron. A little further on,

 the road divided and a cluster of road signs pointed the way to the

 various destinations: "Quenton Hall, Private', "Estate Office' and

 "Museum'.

 The road to the museum curved through the deer park where herds of

 fallow deer grazed under the winter'bare oaks. Through the misty

 landscape she had glimpses of the big house. According to the guidebook

 that the Prof had given her, Sir Christopher Wren had designed the house

 in 1693, and the master landscapist, Capability Brown, had created the

 gardens sixty years later. The results were perfection.

 The museum was set in a grove of copper beech trees half a mile beyond

 the house. It was a sprawling building that had obviously been added to

 more than once over the years. Mrs. Street was waiting for her at the

 side door, and introduced herself as she let Royan in. She was middle

 aged, grey-haired and self-assured. "I was at your lecture on Monday

 evening. Fascinating! I have a guidebook for you, but you will find the

 exhibits well catalogued and described.

 I have spent almost twenty years at the job. There are no other visitors

 today. You will have the place to yourself.

 You must just wander around and please yourself. I shall not leave until

 five this evening, so you have all afternoon.

 If I can help you in any way my office is at the end of the passage.

 Please don't hesitate."

 From the first moment that Royan walked into the display of African

 mammals she was enthralled. The primate room housed a complete

 collection of every single species of ape and monkey from that

 continent: from the great ilver-backed male gorilla to the delicate

 colobus in his long flowing mantle of black and white fur, they were all

 represented.

 Although some of the exhibits were over a hundred years old, they were

 beautifully preserved and presented, set in painted dioramas of their

 natural habitat. It was obvious that the museum must employ a staff of

 skilled artists and taxidermists. She could guess what this must have

 cost. Wryly she decided that the five million'dollars from the sale of

 the plundered treasure had been well spent.

 She went through to the antelope room and stared around her in wonder at

 the magnificent beasts preserved here. She stopped before a diorama of a

 family group of the giant sable antelope of the now extinct Angolan

 variety, Hippotragus niger variant. While she admired the jet black and

 snowy-chested bull with his long, back-swept horns, she mourned his

 death at the hand of one of the Quenton, Harper family. Then she checked

 herself. Without the strange dedication and passion of the

 hunter-collector who had killed him, future generations might never have

 been able to look upon this regal presence.

 She passed on into the next hall which was given over to displays of the

 African elephant, and paused in the centre of the room before a pair of

 ivory tusks so large that she could not believe they had ever been

 carried by a living animal. They seemed more like the marble columns of

 some Hellenic temple to Diana, the goddess of the chase.

 She stooped to read the printed catalogue card:

 Tusks of the African Elephant, Loxodonta africana.

 Shot in the Lado Enclave in 1899 by Sir Jonathan Quenton-Harper. Left

 tusk 289 lb. Right tusk 301 lb. Length of larger tusk 11' 4'. Girth 32".

 The largest pair of tusks ever taken by a European hunter.

 They stood twice as high as she was tall, and they were half as thick

 again as her waist. As she passed on into the Egyptian room

 she-marvelled at the size and strength of the creature that had carried

 them.

 She came up short as her eyes fell upon the figure in the centre of the

 room. It was a fifteen-foot-high figure of Rarnesses 11, depicted as the

 god Osiris in polished red granite. The god-emperor strode out on

 muscular legs, wearing only sandals on his feet and a short kilt. In his

 left hand he carried the remains of a warlbow, with both the upper and

 lower limbs of the weapon broken off. This was the only damage that the

 statue had suffered in all those thousands of years. The rest of it was

 perfect - the plinth even bore the marks of the mason's chisel. In his

 right fist Pharaoh carried a seal embossed with his royal cartouche.

 Upon his majestic head he wore the tall double crown of the upper and

 lower kingdoms. His expression was calm and enigmatic.

 Royan recognized the statue instantly, for its twin i stood in the grand

 hall of the Cairo museum. She passed it every day on her way to her

 office.

 She felt anger rising in her. This was one of the major treasures of her

 very Egypt. It had been plundered and stolen from one of her country's

 sacred sites. It did not belong here. It belonged on the banks of the

 great river Nile. She felt herself shaking with the strength of her

 emotion as she went forward to examine the statue more closely and to

 read the hieroglyphic inscription on the base.

 The royal cartouche stood out in the centre of the arrogant warning: "I

 am the divine Ramesses, master of ten thousand chariots - Fear me, of ye

 enemies of Egypt."

 Royan had not read the translation aloud; it was a soft, deep voice

 close behind her that spoke, startling her. She had not heard anyone

 approaching. She spun round to find him standing close enough to touch.

 His hands were thrust into the pockets of a shapeless blue cardigan.

 There was a hole in one elbow. He wore faded denim jeans over well'worn

 but monogrammed velvet carpet slippers - the type of genteel shabbiness

 that certain Englishmen often cultivate, for it would never do to seem

 too concerned with one's appearance.

 "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you," He smiled eazy.

 'le of apology, and his teeth were very white but slightly "t smi

 crooked. Suddenly his expression changed as he recognized her.

 "Oh, it's you." She should have been flattered that he remembered her

 from so fleeting a contact, but there was that flash of something in his

 eyes again that offended her.

 Nevertheless, she could not refuse the hand he offered her.

 "Nick Quenton-Harper," he introduced himself. "You must be Percival

 Dixon's old student. I think I saw you at the shoot last Thursday.

 Weren't you beating for us?"

 His manner was friendly and forthright, so she felt her hackles

 subsiding as she responded, "Yes. I am Royan Al Simma. I think you knew

 my husband, Duraid Al Simma."

 "Duraid! Of course, I know him. Grand old fellow. We spent a lot of time

 in the desert together. One of the very best. How is he?"

 "He's dead." She had not meant it to sound so bald and heartless, but

 then there was no other reply she could think of.

 "I am so terribly sorry. I didn't know. When and how did it happen?"

 "Very recently, three weeks ago. He was murdered.

 "Oh, my God." She saw the sympathy in his eyes, and she remembered that

 he also had suffered. "I telephoned him in Cairo not more than four

 months ago. He was his old charming self Have they found the person who

 did it?"

 She shook her head and looked around the hall to avoid having to -face

 him and let him see that her eyes were wet. "You have an extraordinary

 collection here."

 He accepted the change of subject at once. Thanks mostly to my

 grandfather. He was on the staff of Evelyn Baring - Over Bearing, as his

 numerous enemies called him. He was the British man in . Cairo during-'

 She cut him short. "Yes, I have heard of Evelyn Baring, the first Earl

 of Cromer, British Consul-General of Egypt from 1883 to 1907. With his

 plenipotentiary powers he was the unchallenged dictator of my country

 for all that period. Numerous enemies, as you say."

 Nicholas's eyes narrowed slightly. "Percival warned me you were one of

 his best students. He didn't, however, warn me of your strong

 nationalistic feelings. It is clear that you didn't need me to translate

 the Ramesses inscription for you."

 "My own father was on the staff of Gama! Abdel Nasser," she murmured.

 Nasser was the man who had toppled the puppet King Farouk and finally

 broken the British power in Egypt. As president he had nationalized the

 Suez Canal in the face of British outrage.

 "HaV he chuckled. "Different sides of the track. But things have

 changed. I hope we don't have to be enemies?"

 "Not at all," she agreed. "Duraid held you in the highest esteem."

 "As I did him." He changed the subject again. "We ar very proud of our

 collection of royal ushabd Examples from the tomb of every pharaoh from

 the old Kingdom onwards, right up to the last of the Ptolemys. Please

 let me show it to you." She followed him to the huge display case that

 occupied one complete wall of the hall. It was lined with shelf after

 shelf of the doll-like figures which had been placed in the tombs to act

 as servants and slaves for the dead kings in the shadow world.

 With his own key Nicholas opened the glazed doors of the case and

 reached up to bring down the most interesting of the exhibits. "This is

 the ushabd of Maya who served under three pharaohs, Tutankhamen, Ay and

 Horemheb.

 It is from the -tomb of Ay who died in 1343 Bc."

 He handed the doll to her and she read aloud the three thousand-year-old

 hieroglyphics as easily as though they had been the headlines of that

 morning's newspaper.

 "I am Maya, Treasurer of the two Kingdoms. I will answer for the divine

 Pharaoh Ay. May he live for ever!" She spoke in Arabic to test him, and

 his reply in the same language was fluent and colloquial, "It seems that

 Percival Dixon told me the truth. You must have been an exceptional

 student."

 Engrossed now in their common interest, speaking alternately Arabic and

 English, the initial sharp prickles.of antagonism between them were

 dulled. They moved slowly round the hall, lingering before each display

 case to handle and examine minutely each object that it contained.

 It was as though they were transported back over the millennia. Hours

 and days seemed of no consequence in the face of such antiquity, and so

 it startled both of them when Mrs. Street returned to interrupt them, "I

 am off now, Sir Nicholas. Can I leave it to you to lock up and set the

 alarm? The security guards are on duty already."

 "What time is it?"Nicholas answered his own question by glancing at the

 stainless steel Rolex Submariner on his wrist. "Five-forty already, what

 on earth happened to the day?" He sighed theatrically. "Off you go, Mrs.

 Street. Sorry we kept you so long."

 "Don't forget to set the alarm," she warned him, and then to Royan, "He

 can be so absent-minded when he is off on one of his hobby-horses." Her

 fondness towards her employer was obviously that of an indulgent aunt.

 "You've given me enough orders for one day. Off you go," Nicholas

 grinned, as he turned back to Royan. "Can't let you go without showing

 you something that Duraid."was in on with me. Can you stay for a few

 minutes longer?" She nodded and he reached out as if to take her arm,

 and then dropped his hand. In the Arab world it is insulting to touch a

 woman, even in such a casual manner. She was aware of the courtesy, and

 she warmed to his good manners and easy style a little more.

 He led her out of the exhibition halls through a door marked "Private.

 Staff Only', and down a long corridor to the room at the end.

 The inner sanctum." He ushered her in. "Excuse the mess'. I must really

 get around to tidying up in here one of these years. My wife used to-'

 He broke off abruptly, and he glanced at the silver-framed photograph of

 a family group on his desk. Nicholas and a beautiful dark-haired woman

 sat on a picnic rug under the spreading branches of an oak. There were

 two little girls with them and the family resemblance to the mother was

 strong in both of them. The youngest child sat on Nicholas's lap while

 the elder girl stood behind them, holding the reins of her Shetland

 pony. Royan glanced sideways at him and saw the devastating sorrow in

 his eyes.

 So as not to embarrass him she looked around the rest of the room, which

 was obviously his study and workshop.

 It was spacious and comfortable, a man's room, but it illustrated the

 contradictions of his character - the bookish scholar set against the

 man of action. Amongst the muddle of books and museum specimens lay

 fishing reels and a Hardy split cane salmon rod. On a row of wall hooks

 hung a Barbour jacket, a canvas shotgun slip and a leather cartridge bag

 embossed with the initials ..-.

 She recognized some of the framed pictures on the walls. They were

 original nineteenth-century watercolours by the Scottish traveller David

 Roberts, and others by Vivant Denon who had accompanied Napoleon's

 L'armie de I'Orient to Egypt. They were fascinating views of the

 monuments drawn before the excavations and restorations of more modern

 times.

 Nicholas went to the fireplace and threw a log on the fading coals. He

 kicked it until it flared up brightly and then beckoned her to stand in

 front of the floor-to-ceiling curtains that covered half of one wall.

 With a conjuror's flourish he pulled the tasselled cord that opened the

 curtains and exclaimed with satisfaction, "

 "What do you make of that, then?"

 She studied the magnificent has-relief frieze that was mounted on the

 wall. The detail was beautiful and the rendition magnificent, but she

 did not let her admiration show. Instead she gave her opinion in offhand

 tones.

 "Sixth King of the Amorite dynasty, Hammurabi, about 1780 Bc," she said,

 pretending to study the finely chiselled features of the ancient monarch

 before she went on, "Yes, probably from his palace site south-west of

 the ziggurat at Ashur. There should have been a pair of these friezes.

 They are worth in the region of five million US dollars each. My guess

 is that they were stolen from the saintly ruler of modern Mesopotamia,

 Saddam Hussein, by two unprincipled rogues. I hear that the other one of

 the pair is at present in the collection of a certain Mr Peter Walsh in

 Texas."

 He stared at her in astonishment, and then burst out laughing. "Damn it!

 I swore'Duraid to secrecy but he must have told you about our naughty

 little escapade." It was the first time she had heard him laugh. It

 seemed to come naturally to his lips and she -liked the sound of it,

 hearty and unaffected.

 "You are right about the present owner of the second frieze," he told

 her, still laughing. "But the price was six million, not five."

 "Duraid also told me about your visit to the Tibesti Massif in Chad and

 southern Libya," she remarked, and he shook his head in mock contrition.

 'it seems I have no secrets from you." He went to a tall armoire against

 the opposite wall. It was a magnificent piece of marquetry furniture,

 probably seventeenth-century French. He opened the double doors and

 said, "This is what Duraid and I brought back from Libya, without the

 consent of Colonel Muammar al Gadaffi."He took down one of the exquisite

 little bronzes and handed it to her. It was the figure of a mother

 nursing her infant, and it had a green patina of age.

 "Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca," he said, "about 203 BC. These were

 found by a band of Tuareg at one of his old camps on the Bagradas river

 in North Africa.

 Hannibal must have cached them there before his defeat by the Roman

 general Scipio. There were over two hundred bronzes in the hoard, and I

 still have fifty of the best of them."

 "You sold the rest of them?" she asked, as she admired the statuette.

 There was disapproval in her tone as she went on, "How could you bear to

 part with something so beautiful?"

 He sighed unhappily, "Had to, I am afraid. Very sad, but the expedition

 to retrieve them cost me a fortune. Had to cover expenses by selling

 some of the booty."

 He went to his desk and brought out a bottle of Laphroaig malt whisky

 from the bottom drawer. He placed the bottle on the desk top and set two

 glasses beside it.

 "Can I tempt you?" he asked, but she shook her head.

 "Don't blame you. Even the Scots themselves admit that this brew should

 only be drunk in sub-zeiro weather on The Hill, in a forty-knot gale,

 after stalking and shooting a ten-point stag. May I offer you something

 a little more ladylike?"

 Do you have a Coke?" she suggested.

 Yes, but that is really bad for you, even worse than Laphroaig. It's all

 that sugar. Absolute poison."

 She took the glass he brought to her and returned his toast with it.

 "To life!" she agreed, and then she went on, "You are right. Duraid did

 tell me about these." She replaced the Punic bronze in the armoire, then

 came to face him at the desk. "It was also Duraid who sent me to see

 you. It was his dying instruction to me."

 "Aha! So none of this is coincidence then. It seems I am the unwitting

 pawn in some deep and nefarious plot." He pointed to the chair facing

 his desk. "Sit!" he ordered "Tell!'

 He perched above her on the corner of the desk, with the whisky glass in

 his right hand and with one long, denim-clad leg swinging lazily as the

 tail of a resting leopard. Though he was smiling quizzically, he watched

 her face with a penetrating green gaze. She thought that it would be

 difficult to lie to this man.

 She took a deep breath, "Have you heard of an ancient Egyptian queen

 called Lostris, of the second intermediate period, coexistent with the

 first Hyksos invasions?"

 He laughed a little derisively and stood up, "Oh! Now we are talking

 about the book River God, are we?" He went to the bookcase and brought

 down a copy. Although well thumbed, it was still in its dust-jacket, and

 the cover illustration was a dreamy surrealistic view in pastel shades

 of green and rose purple of the pyramids seen over water.

 He dropped it on the desk in front of her.

 "Have you read it?" she asked.

 "Yes," he nodded. "I read most of Wilbur Smith's stuff.

 He amuses me. He has shot here at Quenton Park a couple of times."

 "You like lots of sex and violence in your reading, obviously?" She

 pulled a face. "What did you think of this particular book?"

 "I must admit that he had me fooled. Whilst I was reading it, I sort of

 wished that it might be based on fact.

 That was why I phoned Duraid." Nicholas picked up the book again and

 flipped to the end of it. "The author's note was convincing, but what I

 couldn't get out of my mind was the last sentence." He read it aloud.

 "'Sanwwhere in the Abyssinian mountains near the source of the Blue

 Nile, the mummy of Tenus still lies in the unviolated tomb of Pharaoh

 Mamose.

 Almost angrily Nicholas threw the book down on the desk. "My God! You

 will never know how much I wanted it to be true. You will never know how

 much I wanted a shot at Pharaoh Mamose's tomb. I had to speak to Duraid.

 When he assured me it was all a load of bunkum, I felt cheated. I had

 built up my expectations so high that I was bitterly disappointed."

 "It's not bunkum," she contradicted him, and then corrected herself

 quickly, "well, at least not all of it."

 "I see. Duraid was lying to me, was he?"

 "Not lying," she defended him hotly. "Just delaying the truth a little.

 He wasn't ready to tell you the whole story then. He didn't have the

 answers to all the questions that he knew you would ask. He was going to

 come to you when he was ready. Your name was at the top of the list of

 potential sponsors that he had drawn up."

 "Duraid did not have the answers, but I suppose you do?" He was smiling

 sceptically. was caught once. I am not likely to fall for the same cock

 and bull a second time."

 "The scrolls exist. Nine of them are still in the, vaults at the Cairo

 museum. I was the one who discovered them in the tomb of Queen Lostris."

 Royan opened her leather sling bag and rummaged around in it until she

 brought out a thin sheaf of glossy 6 4 colour photographs. She selected

 one and passed it to him. That is a shot of the rear wall of the tomb.

 You can just make out the alabaster jars in the niche. That was taken

 before we removed them."

 "Nice picture, but it could have been taken anywhere." She ignored the

 remark and passed him another photograph. The ten scrolls in Duraid's

 workroom at the museum. You recognize the two men standing behind the

 bench?"

 He nodded. "Duraid and Wilbur Smith." His sceptical expression had

 turned to one of doubt and bemusement.

 "What the hell are you trying to tell me?"

 "What the hell I am trying to tell you is that, apart from a wide poetic

 licence that the author took unto himself, all that he- wrote in the

 book has at least some foundation in the truth. However, the scroll that

 most concerns us is the seventh, the one that was stolen by the men who

 murdered my husband."

 Nicholas stood up and went to the fireplace. He threw on another log and

 bashed it viciously with the poker, as if to give release to his

 emotions. He spoke without "turning "What was the significance of that

 particular scroll around, as opposed to the other nine?"

 "It was the one that contained the account of Pharaoh Mamose's burial

 and, we believe, directions that might enable us to find the site of the

 tomb."

 "You believe, but you aren't certain?" He swung around to face her with

 the poker gripped like a weapon. In this mood he was frightening. His

 mouth was set in a tight hard line and his eyes glittered.

 "Large parts of the seventh scroll are written in some sort of code, a

 series of cryptic verses. Duraid and I were in the process of

 deciphering these when-' she broke off and drew a long breath, "when he

 was murdered."

 "You must have a copy of something so valuable?" He glared at her, so

 that she felt intimidated. She shook her head.

 "All the microfilm, all our notes, all of it was stolen along with the

 original scroll. Then whoever killed Duraid went back to our flat in

 Cairo and destroyed my PC on to which I had transposed all our

 research."

 He threw the poker into the coal scuttle with a clatter, and came back

 to the desk. "So you have no evidence at all? Nothing to prove that any

 of this is true?"

 "Nothing," she agreed, "except what I have here." With a long slim

 forefinger she tapped her forehead. "I have a good memory."

 He frowned and ran his fingers through his thick curling hair. "And so

 why did you come to me?"

 "I have come to give you a shot at the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose, she told

 him simply. "Do you want it?"

 Suddenly his mood changed. He grinned like a naughty schoolboy. "At this

 moment I cannot think of anything I want more."

 Then you and I will have to draw up some sort of working agreement," she

 told him, and she leaned forward in a businesslike manner. "First, let

 me tell you what I want, and then you can do the same."

 It was hard bargaining, and it was one in the morning when Royan

 admitted her exhaustion. "I can't think straight any more. Can we start

 again tomorrow morning?" They still had not reached an agreement.

 "It's tomorrow morning already," he told her. "But you are right.

 Thoughtless of me. You can sleep here. After all, we do have

 twenty-seven bedrooms here."

 "No, thanks." She stood up. "I'll go on home."

 "The road will be icy," he warned her. Then he saw her determined

 expression and held up his hands in capitulation. "All right, I won't

 insist. What time tomorrow? I have a meeting with my lawyers at ten, but

 we should be finished by noon. Why don't you and I have a working lunch

 here? I was supposed to be shooting at Ganton in the afternoon, but I

 will cancel that. That way I will have the afternoon and evening clear

 for you."

 Nicholas's meeting with the lawyers took place the next morning in the

 library of Quenton Park. It was not an easy nor a pleasant session, but

 then he never expected it to be. This had been the year in which his

 world began to fall to pieces around his head. He gritted his teeth as

 he remembered how the year had opened with that fatal moment of fatigue

 and inattention at midnight on the icy motorway, and the blinding

 headlights of the truck bearing down on them.

 He had not recovered from that before the next brutal blow had fallen.

 This was the financial report of the Lloyd's insurance syndicate on

 which Nicholas, like his father and grandfather before him, was a

 "Name'. For half a century the family had enjoyed a regular and

 substantial income from their share of the syndicate profits. Of

 course,'Nicholas had been aware that liability for his share of any

 losses that the syndicate suffered was unlimited. The enormity of that

 responsibility had weighed lightly; for there had never been serious

 losses to account for, not for fifty years, not until this year.

 With the California earthquake and environmental pollution claims

 awarded against one of the multinational chemical companies, the

 syndicate's losses had amounted to over twenty-six million pounds

 sterling. Nicholas's share of that loss was two and a half million

 pounds - some of which had been settled, but the rest was due for

 payment in a little over eight months' time - together with whatever

 nasty surprises next year might hold.

 Almost immediately after that the Quenton Park estate's crop of sugar

 beet, almost a thousand acres in total, had been hit by rhizomania, the

 mad root disease. They had lost the lot.

 "We will need to find at least two and a half million," said one of the

 lawyers. "That should be no problem - the Hall is filled with valuable

 items, and what about the museum? What could we reasonably expect from

 the sale of some of the exhibits?"

 Nicholas winced at the thought of selling the Ramesses statue, the

 bronzes, the Hammurabi frieze or any item of his cherished collection at

 the Hall or the museum. He acknowledged that their sale would cover his

 debts, but he doubted that he could live without them. Almost anything

 was preferable to parting with them.

 "Hell, no," Nicholas cut in, and the lawyer looked across at him coldly.

 "Well, let's see what else we've got," he continued remorselessly.

 "There's the dairy herd."

 "That will bring in a hundred thousand, if we are lucky," Nicholas

 grunted. "Leaves only two point four million to find."

 "And your racing stud," the accountant came into the conversation.

 "I have only six horses in training. Another two hundred grand."

 Nicholas smiled without humour, "Brings us down to two point two. We are

 getting there slowly."

 "The yacht," suggested the youngest lawyer.

 "It's older than I am," Nicholas shook his head, "belonged to my father,

 for heaven's sake. You probably wouldn't be able to give it away.

 Sentimental is the only value it has. My shotguns would be worth more."

 Both lawyers bent their heads over their lists, "Ah, yes!

 We have those. A pair of Purdey sidelock ejectors in good condition.

 Estimate forty thousand."

 "I also have some secondhand socks and underpants," Nicholas admitted.

 '%why don't you list those also?"

 They ignored the jibe. "men there is the London house," the elder lawyer

 went on unperturbed, inured to human suffering. "Good address. Value one

 point five million."

 "Not in this financial climate, Nicholas contradicted him. "A million is

 more realistic." The lawyer made a note in the margin of his document

 before going on, "Of course we want to avoid, if at all possible,

 putting the entire estate up for sale."

 It was a hard and difficult meeting which ended with nothing definitely

 decided, and Nicholas feeling angry and frustrated.

 He saw the lawyers off, and then went up to the family quarters to take

 a quick shower and change his shirt. As an afterthought, and for no

 good'reason, he shaved and splashed aftershave on his cheeks.

 He drove across the park and left the Range Rover in the museum car

 park. The snow had turned to sleet, and I his bare head was sprinkled

 with cold droplets by the time he had crossed the car park.

 Royan was waiting in Mrs. Street's office. The two of them seemed to be

 getting along well together. He stopped outside the door to listen to

 her laughter. It made him feel a little better.

 The cook had sent across a hot lunch from the main house. She seemed to

 believe that a substantial meal would keep this foul weather at bay.

 There was a tureen of thick, rich minestrone and a Lancashire hotpot,

 with a half bottle of red Burgundy for him and a jug of freshly squeezed

 orange juice for her. They ate in front of the fire, while the rain

 whipped against the windowpanes.

 While they ate he asked her to give him the details of Duraid's murder.

 She left out nothing, including her own injuries and drew back her

 sleeve to show him the dressing over the knife wound. He listened

 intently as she told him of the second attempt on her life in the

 streets of Cairo.

 "Any suspicions?" he asked, when she had finished.

 "Anybody you can think of who might be responsible?" But she shook her

 head.

 "There was no warning of any kind, she said.

 They finished the meal in silence, each of them thinking their own

 thoughts. Over the coffee he suggested, "All right, then. -What about

 our agreement?"

 They argued back and forth for nearly an hour.

 "It's difficult to agree on your share of the booty, until I know just

 what your contribution is going to be,'Nicholas protested as he topped

 up their coffee cups. "After all, I am going to be called on to finance

 and conduct the expedition-'

 "You will just have to trust that my contribution will be worthwhile,

 otherwise there will simply be no booty, as you call it. Anyway you can

 be certain I am not going to tell you one thing more until we have -an

 agreement, and have shaken hands on it."

 "A bit harsh?" he asked, and she gave him a wicked smile.

 "If you don't like my terms, there are three other names on Duraid's

 list of possible sponsors," she threatened.

 "All right," he cut in with a contrived look of martyrdom, "I agree to

 your proposal, But how do we calculate equal shares?"

 "I shall choose the first item of any archaeological artefacts we are

 able to retrieve, and you the next, and so on, turn about."

 "How about I choose first?" He raised an eyebrow at her.

 "Let's spin for it," she suggested, and he fished a pound coin from his

 pocket.

 "Call!" He flipped the coin, and while it was in the air she called,

 "Heads."

 "Damn!" he exclaimed, as he retrieved the coin and shoved it back into

 his pocket. "So, you get first choice of the booty, if there ever is

 any." He held out his hand across the lunch table. "It will be yours to

 do exactly what you want to do with it. You can even donate it to the

 Cairo museum, if that is still your particular aberration. Deal?" he

 asked, and. she took his hand.

 "Deal," she agreed, and then added, Partner."

 "Now let's get down to it. No more secrets between us Tell me every

 detail that you have been holding back."

 "Bring that book," she pointed to the copy of River God, and while he

 fetched it she pushed the dirty dishes aside. "The first thing we should

 go over is the sections of the book that Duraid edited." She turned to

 the last pages.

 "Here. This is where Duraid's obfuscation begins."

 "Good word,'Nicholas smiled, "but let's keep it simple.

 You have obfuscated me enough already."

 She did not even smile. "You know the story to this point. Queen Lostris

 and her people are driven out of Egypt by the Hyksos and their superior

 chariots. They journey south up the Nile until they reach the confluence

 of the White and Blue Niles. In other words, present-day Khartoum. All

 this is reasonably faithful to the scrolls."

 "I recall. Go on."

 "In the holds of their river galleys they are carrying the mummified

 body of Queen Lostris's husband, Pharaoh Mamose the Eighth. Twelve years

 previously she has sworn to him as he lay dying of a Hyksos arrow

 through his lung that she would find a secure burial site for him, and

 that she would lay him in it with all his vast treasure. When they reach

 Khartoum she determines that the time has at last come for her to make

 good her promise to him. She sends out her son, the fourteen-year-old

 Prince Memnon, with a squadron of chariots to find the burial site.

 Memnon is accompanied by his mentor, the narrator of the history, the

 indefatigable Taita."

 "Okay, I remember this section. Memnon and Taita consult the black

 Shilluk slaves they have captured, and on their advice decide to follow

 the left-hand fork of the rivet, or what we know as the Blue Nile."

 Royan nodded and continued the story. "They travelled eastwards and were

 confronted by formidable mountains, so high that they were described as

 a blue rampart.

 So far what you read in the book is a fairly faithful rendition of the

 scrolls, but at this point," she tapped the open page, we come to

 Duraid's red herring. In his description of the foothills-'

 Before she could continue, Nicholas interjected, "I remember thinking

 when I originally read it that it didn't accurately describe the area

 where the Blue Nile emerges from the Ethiopian highlands. There are no

 foothills. There is only the sheer western escarpment of the massif. The

 river comes out of it like a snake out of its hole. Whoever wrote that

 description doesn't know the course of the Blue Nile."

 "Do you know the area?" Royan asked, and he laughed and nodded.

 "Alhen I was younger and even more stupid than I am now, I conceived the

 grandiose plan of boating the Abbay gorge from Lake Tana down to the dam

 at Roseires in the Sudan. The Abbay is the Ethiopian name for the Blue

 Nile., "Why did you want to do that?"

 "Because it had never been done before. Major Cheesman, the British

 consul, had a shot at it in 1932, and nearly drowned himself. I thought

 I could make a film, and write a book about the voyage and earn myself a

 fortune , from the royalties. I talked my father into financing the

 expedition. It was the kind of mad escapade that appealed to him. He

 even wanted to join the expedition. I studied the whole course of the

 Abbay river, not only on maps. I also bought myself an old Cessna 180

 and flew down the gorge, five hundred miles from Lake Tana to the dam.

 As I said, I was twenty-one years old and crazy."

 "What happened?" She was fascinated. Duraid had never told her about

 this, but it was the type of adventure that she would have expected this

 man to launch into.

 "I recruited eight of my friends from Sandhurst, and we devoted our

 Christmas holidays to the attempt. It was a fiasco. We lasted two days

 on those wild waters. The gorge is the most hellish corner of this earth

 that I know of It's almost twice as deep and as rugged as the Grand

 Canyon of the Colorado river in Arizona. It smashed up our kayaks before

 we had covered twenty miles out of the five hundred.

 We had to abandon all our equipment and climb the walls of the gorge to

 reach civilization again."

 He looked serious for a moment, "I lost two members of our party. Bobby

 Palmer was drowned, and Tim Marshall fell on the cliffs. We were not

 even able to recover their bodies. They are still down there somewhere.

 I had to tell their parents-' he broke off as he remembered the agony of

 it.

 "Has anybody ever succeeded in navigating the Blue Nile gorge?"-she

 asked, to distract him.

 "Yes. I went back a few years later. This time not as leader, but as a

 very junior member of the official British Armed Forces Expedition. It

 took the army, the navy and the air force to beat that river."

 She stared at him with a feeling of awe. He had actually rafted the

 Abbay. It was as though she had been led to him by some strange fate.

 Duraid was right. There bably no man in the world better qualified for

 the was pro work in hand.

 "So you know as much as anybody about the real the gorge. I will try to

 give you a general nature of indication of what Taita actually set down

 in the seventh scroll. Unfortunately this section of the scroll had

 suffered some damage and Duraid and I were obliged to extrapolate from

 parts of the text. You will have to tell me how this agrees with your

 own knowledge of the terrain."

 "Go ahead, he invited her.

 "Taita described the escarpment very much the -way you did, as a sheer

 wall from which the river emerged.

 They were forced to leave their chariots, which were unable to cover the

 steep and rugged terrain of the canyon. They were forced to go forward

 on foot, leading the pack horses.

 Soon the gorge grew so steep and dangerous that they lost, which fell

 from the wild goat tracks some of these animal they were following and

 plunged into the river far below.

 This did not deter them and they pressed on at the orders of Prince

 Memnon."

 "I can see it exactly as he describes it. It's a fearsome bit of

 countryside."

 "Taita then describes coming to a series of obstacles, which he

 describes as "steps". Duraid and I could not decide with certainty what

 these were. But our best guess was that they were waterfalls."

 "No shortage of those in the Abbay gorge, either," Nicholas nodded.

 "This is the important part of his testimony. Taita tells us that after

 twenty days' travel up the gorge they came upon the "second step". It

 was here that the prince received a fortuitous message from his dead

 father, in the form of a dream, in which he chose this as the site of

 his own tomb.

 Taita tells us that they travelled no further. If we are able to

 determine what it was that stopped them, that would give us an accurate

 measurement of just how far into the gorge they penetrated."

 "Before we can go any further we will need maps and satellite

 photographs of the mountains, and I will have to go over my expedition

 notes and diary," Nicholas decided "I try to keep my reference library

 up-to-date, and so we should have satellite photographs and the most

 recent maps on file here in the museum. If they are Mrs. Street is the

 one to find them."

 He stood up and stretched, "I will dig out my diaries this evening and

 read over them. My great-grandfather also hunted and collected in

 Ethiopia in the last century. I know he crossed the Blue Nile near Debra

 Markos in 1890something. I'll get out his notes as well. They are

 preserved in our archives. The old boy may have written something there

 that could help us."

 He walked with her to the old green Land Rover in the car park, and as

 she started the engine he told her through the open window, "I still

 think that you should stay over here at the Hall. It must be an

 hour-and-a-half's drive across to Brandsbury - each way that's three

 hours a day. We are going to have a lot of work to do before we can even

 think of leaving for Africa."

 "What would people think?" she asked, as she let out the clutch.

 "I have never given a damn about people," he called after her. "What

 time will I see you tomorrow?"

 I have to stop off to see the doctor in York. He is going to take the

 stitches out of my arm. I won't be here before eleven," she stuck her

 head out of the window to yell back at him.

 The wind tossed her dark hair around her face. His fancy had always run

 towards dark-haired women. Rosalind had had that mysterious Eastern

 look. He felt guilty and disloyal making the comparison, but the memory

 of Royan was hard to shake off.

 She was the first woman who had interested him since Rosalind had gone.

 The admixture of her blood drew him.

 She was exotic enough to pique his taste for. the oriental, but English

 enough to speak his language and understand his sense of humour. She was

 educated and knowledgeable about those things that interested him, and

 he admired her spirit. Usually Eastern women were trained from birth to

 be self-effacing and compliant. This one was different.

 eorgina had phoned her doctor in York to make an appointment to have the

 stitches removed from Royan's arm. They left after breakfast from the

 cottage in Brandsbury. Georgina was driving and Magic sat between them

 on the bench seat.

 As they turned into the village street, Royan noticed a large MAN truck

 parked down near the post office, but she thought no more about it.

 Once they were out in the countryside they found there were patches of

 heavy fog that in places reduced visibility to thirty yards, but

 Georgina made no concessions to the weather, and sent the Land Rover

 rattling and whining through it at the top of its speed, which Royan

 reflected thankfully was on the right side of sixty miles an hour.

 She glanced over her shoulder to check the road behind them, and saw

 that the MAN truck was following them, Only the cab rose above the sea

 of low mist that surrounded it like the conning tower of a submarine.

 Even as she watched it, a bank of fog intervened and swallowed it up.

 She turned back to listen to her mother.

 "This government is a troop of incompetent nincompoops." Georgina

 squinted her eyes against the smoke from the cigarette that dangled from

 her lips. She drove singlehanded, stroking Magic's flowing silken ear

 with her free hand, "I don't mind ministers boiling themselves into a

 stupor, but when they start fiddling around with my pension I get really

 mad." Her mother's pension from the foreign service was her sole source

 of income, and it wasn't much.

 "You don't truly want a Labour government, now tell the truth, Mummy,'

 Royan teased her. Her mother had always been the arch Conservative.

 Georgina wavered, and then avoided the choice, "All I say is, bring back

 Maggie."

 Royan turned slightly in her seat and glanced through the dirty rear

 window again. The truck was still behind them, looming out of the fog

 and the trail of blue exhaust smoke that Georgina was laying behind her

 like the vapour trail of a jet aircraft. Up until now it had hung back,

 but suddenly it accelerated up behind them.

 "I think he wants to pass you," Royan told Georgina mildly.

 The massive bonnet of the truck was only twenty feet from their rear

 bumper. The radiator was emblazoned with the chrome logo "MAN' and stood

 taller than the cab of the Land Rover, so that she could not see the

 face of the driver from where she sat.

 "Everybody wants to pass me," lamented Georgina.

 "Story of my life." She held the centre of the narrow road doggedly.

 Royan glanced back again, and saw that the truck was creeping still

 closer. It filled the rear window completely.

 The driver declutched and revved the gigantic engine menacingly.

 "You' better give over. I think he means business."

 "Let him wait,' Georgina grunted around her cigarette butt. "Patience is

 a virtue. Anyway, can't let him through here. There is a narrow stone

 bridge ahead of us. Know this stretch of road like the way to my own

 bathroom."

 At that moment the truck-driver sounded his klaxon so close that it was

 deafening. Magic jumped up on the rear seat and barked in outrage.

 "Stupid bastard," Georgina swore bitterly. "What does he think he is

 playing at? Write down his number plate. I am going to report him to the

 York police."

 "His plates are covered with mud. Can't make it out, but it looks like a

 continental registration. German, I think."

 As if the driver had heard her protest he slowed slightly and fell back

 until a gap of twenty yards opened between the two vehicles. Royan had

 swivelled right round in the seat to watch him.

 "That's better," Georgina said smugly. "Ruddy Hun learning some

 manners." She peered ahead through the fog, "There is the bridge For the

 first time Royan was able to see up into the driver's cab of the truck.

 The driver wore a balactava helmet that covered all but his eyes and

 nose with dark blue wool. It gave him a sinister and evil aspect.

 "Look outV Royan screamed suddenly. "He is coming straight at us!" The

 engine beat of the great truck rose to a bellow that engulfed them like

 the sound of a gale-driven sea. For a moment Royan saw'nothing but

 glittering steel and then the front of the truck smashed into them from

 behind.

 She was thrown half over the back of her seat by the impact. She dragged

 herself up and saw that the truck had picked them up like a fox with a

 bird in its jaws. It carried the Land Rover forward on the steel bull

 bars that protected the shining chromed radiator.

 Georgina wrestled with the wheel, trying to maintain control, but the

 effort was futile. "Can't hold her. The bridge! Try and get clear-'

 Royan hit the quick-release buckle on her safety-belt and reached for

 the door handle. The stone walls of the bridge were racing towards them

 at a terrifying pace. The Land Rover was slewing across the road,

 completely out of control.

 The door burst open in Royan's grip, but she could not push it all the

 way before the Land Rover was flung into the solid stonework columns

 that guarded the approaches PI to the bridge, The two women screamed in

 unison as the vehicle crumpled, and the impact hurled them forward. The

 windscreen shattered as they bounced off the stone columns, and the body

 of the Land Rover flipped over as it went down the embankment and began

 to roll.

 Royan was catapulted through the open door and flung clear. The slope of

 the bank broke her fall, but it knocked the wind out of her. She bounced

 and rolled down the incline and then dropped into the icy waters of the

 stream below the bridge.

 Just before her head went under, she found herself looking up at the sky

 and the bridge above her. She caught one last glimpse of the truck

 before it roared away. It was towing two huge cargo trailers. The tall

 bodywork of the trailers stood higher than the guard rail of the bridge.

 Both of the trailers were covered by a heav green nylon tarpaulin roped

 down to the lugs on the body. She had only a subliminal glimpse of a

 large red trademark and company name painted on the side of the nearest

 trailer, but before she could register the name she was plunged below

 the surface of the stream and the cold and the force of her fall drove

 the air from her lungs.

 She fought her way to the surface of the river, and found she had been

 washed some way downstream.

 Impeded by her sodden clothing, she floundered to the bank and used the

 branch of a tree to haul herself out.

 She knelt in the mud, coughing up the water she had swallowed and trying

 to assess what injury she had suffered in the collision. Then her own

 plight was forgotten as she heard the terrible sounds of her mother's

 agony from the overturned wreck of the Land Rover.

 In frantic haste she clawed herself to her feet and stumbled through the

 wet and frosted grass to where the Land Rover lay on its back at the

 foot of the embankment.

 The bodywork was crumpled and torn, and the bright silver aluminium

 metal shone through where the dark green paint had been stripped away.

 The engine had stalled, and the front wheels were still spinning

 aimlessly as she reached it.

 "Mummy! Where are you?" she cried, and the terrible sounds never

 checked. She used the metal body of the vehicle to steady herself as she

 dragged herself towards the sound, dreading what she might find.

 Georgina sat on the wet earth with her back against the side of the car.

 Her legs were thrust out straight ahead of her. The left one was twisted

 so that the toe of the booted foot was pointed down into the mud at an

 unnatural angle. The leg was obviously broken at the knee or very close

 to it.

 This was not the cause of Georgina's distress. She held Magic in her

 lap, and was bowed over him in an attitude of abandoned grief; the sound

 of it bubbled up unchecked from deep inside her. The spaniel's chest had

 been crushed between metal and earth. His tongue lolled from the corner

 of his mouth in his last smile, but the blood dripped steadily from the

 pink tip and Georgina was using her scarf to wipe it away.

 Royan sank down beside her mother and placed one arm around her

 shoulders. She had never before seen her mother weep. She hugged her

 hard and tried by main strength to quell the sound of her sorrow, but it

 went on and on. , She never knew how long they sat together like that.

 But at last the sight of her mother's maimed leg, and an awakening fear

 that the driver of the truck might return to finish the job, roused her.

 She crawled up the bank and tottered into the centre of the road to stop

 the next car that arrived on the scene.

 Not until Royan was two hours late for their meeting did Nicholas become

 sufficiently worried to phone the police in York. Fortunately he had

 noticed the licence plate of the Land Rover.

 It was an easy one for him to remember. The registration number was his

 mother's initials combined with an unlucky 13.

 There was a delay while the woman constable checked her computer, and

 then she came back. "I am sorry to have to tell you, sir, that Land

 Rover was involved in an accident this morning."

 "What happened to the driver? Nicholas demanded brusquely.

 "The driver and one passenger have been taken to the York Minster

 Hospital."

 "Are they all right?"

 "I am sorry, sir. I don't have that information." It took Nicholas forty

 minutes to reach the hospital and almost as long again to trace Royan.

 She was in the women's surgical ward, sitting beside her mother's bed.

 Her mother had not yet come round from the anaesthetic.

 She looked up when Nicholas stood over her. "Are you all right? What the

 hell happened?"

 "My mother - her leg is badly smashed up. The surgeon had to put a pin

 in her thigh - the femur.

 "How are you?"

 "A few bruises and scrapes. Nothing serious., "How did it happen?"

 "A truck - it pushed us off the road."

 "Not deliberate?" Nicholas felt something inside him quail as he

 remembered another truck on another road on another night.

 I think so. The driver wore a mask, a balaclava. He crashed into us from

 behind. It must have been deliberate."

 "Did you tell the police?"

 She nodded. "Apparently the truck was reported stolen early this

 morning, long before the accident, while the driver was stopped at one

 of those Little Chef cafes. He is German. Speaks no English."

 "That is the third time they have tried to kill you," Nicholas told her

 grimly. "So I am taking over now."

 He went out into the hospital waiting room and used the telephone there.

 The chief constable of the county was a personal friend, as was the

 hospital administrator.

 By the time he returned, Georgina had come round from the anaesthetic.

 Although still woozy she was comfortable as they wheeled her off to the

 private ward that Nicholas, had arranged. The - orthopaedic surgeon

 arrived a few minutes later.

 "Hello, Nick, what are you doing here?" he greeted Nicholas. Royan was

 surprised how many people knew him.

 Then he turned his attention to Georgina. "How are you feeling? We have

 got ourselves a nice little compound fracture. Looks like confetti in

 there. We've managed to put it all together again, but you're going to

 be with us for ten days at the very least."

 "Right you are, young lady," Nicholas told Royan as they left Georgina

 sleeping. "What more do you need to convince you? My housekeeper has

 made up a room for you at the Hall. I am not letting you wander around

 on your own any more. Otherwise, next time they try to cull you they may

 have a little more luck."

 She was still too shaken and upset to argue, and she climbed meekly into

 the front seat of the Range Rover and let him drive her first to have

 her stitches removed and then back to Quenton Park. As soon as they

 arrived, he sent her up to her bedroom.

 "The cook will send dinner up to you. Make sure you take the sleeping

 pill that the doc gave you. Somebody will fetch your gear from 's

 cottage to Mrs. Street. In the meantime my housekeeper has set out some

 nightclothes and a toothbrush in your room for you. I don't want to hear

 from you again before tomorrow morning."

 It was good to have him take control of her life. For the first time

 since that terrible night at the oasis she felt secure and safe. Still,

 she made one last gesture of independence and self-reliance; she flushed

 the Mogadon sleeping tablet down the toilet.

 The nightdress that was laid on her pillow was full, length sheer silk

 with finest Cambrai lace at the cuffs and It. . A robe. She had never

 worn anything so luxurious and sensual against her skin before. She

 realized that it must have belonged to his wife, and the knowledge

 stirred mixed emotions in her. She climbed up into the four-poster bed,

 but even that lonely expanse of over'soft mattress and her unfamiliar

 surroundings did not keep her too long from sleep.

 ù the morning a young housemaid woke her with aù copy of The Times and a

 pot of Earl Grey tea, then returned a few minutes later with her

 holdall.

 "Sir Nicholas would like you to take breakfast with him in the dining

 room at eight-thirty., While she showered Royan inspected her naked body

 in the full-length mirror that covered one wall of -the bathroom. Apart

 from the knife wound on her -arm, which was still livid and only

 partially healed, there was a dark bruise on her thigh and another down

 her left flank and buttock, legacies of the car crash. Her shin was

 scraped raw, and gingerly she pulled a pair of socks over the injury.

 She limped a little as she went down the main staircase to find the

 dining room.

 "Please help yourself." Nicholas looked up from his newspaper to greet

 her as she hesitated in the doorway. He waved at the display of

 breakfast dishes on the sideboard.

 As she spooned scrambled eggs on to her plate, she recognized the

 landscape on the wall in front of her as a Constable.

 "Did you sleep well?" He didn't wait for an answer, but went on, "I have

 heard from the police. They found the MAN truck abandoned in a lay-by

 near Harrogate. They are going over it now but they don't expect to find

 much.

 We seem to be dealing with someone who knows what he is doing."

 "I must phone the hospital," she said.

 "I have already done so. Your mother had an easy night. I left a message

 that you would visit her this evening."

 "This evening?" She looked around sharply. "Why so late?"

 "I intend to keep you busy until then. I want to get my money's worth

 out of you."

 He stood as she came to the table, and drew back her chair to seat her.

 She found the courtesy made her feel slightly uncomfortable, but she

 made no comment.

 "The first attack on you and Duraid at your villa in the oasis - we can

 draw no conclusions from that" apart from the fact that the assassins

 knew exactly what they were after, and where to look for it." She found

 the abrupt change of subject disconcerting. "However, let's give some

 thought to the second attempt in Cairo. The hand grenade.

 Who knew you were going to the Ministry that afternoon, apart from the

 minister himself?"

 She reflected as she chewed and swallowed a mouthful of egg. "I am not

 sure. I think I told Duraid's secretary, maybe one of the other research

 assistants."

 He frowned and shook his head. "So half the museum staff knew about your

 appointment?"

 "That is about it, yes. Sorry."

 He pondered a moment, "All right. Who knew you were leaving Cairo? Who

 knew you were staying at your mother's cottage?"

 "One of the clerks from administration brought my slides out to the

 airport."

 "Did you tell him what flight you were leaving on?"

 "No, definitely not."

 "Did you tell anybody at all?"

 "No. That is.-'she hesitated.

 "Yes?"

 "I told the minister himself during our interview, when I asked for

 leave of absence. Not him surely not?" her expression. reflected her

 horror at the thought.

 Nicholas shrugged, "Some funny things happen. Of course, the minister

 knew all about the work that you and Duraid were doing on the seventh

 scroll?"

 "Not all the details, but - yes - in general terms he knew what we were

 up to.

 "All right. Next question, tea or coffee?" He poured coffee into her

 cup, and then went on, "You said that nso Duraid had a list of possible

 sponsors for an expedition.

 Might give us some ideas as to a short-list of suspects?"

 "The Getty Museum," she said, and he' smiled.

 "Cross one from the list. They don't go around tossing grenades in the

 streets of Cairo. Who else was there on the list?, "Gotthold Ernst von

 Schiller."

 "Hamburg. Heavy industry. Metal and alloy refineries.

 Base mineral production."Nicholas nodded. "Who was the third name on the

 list?"

 "Peter Walsh," she said. "The Texan."

 "That's the one," he nodded. "Lives in Fort Worth.

 Fast-food'franchising. Mail order retail." There were very few

 collectors with the substance to compete with the major institutions

 when it came to making significant of antiquities or to financing

 archaeological acquisitions exploration. Nicholas knew them all, for it

 was a mutually antagonistic circle of no more than a couple of dozen

 men.

 He had competed with each of them at one time or ano& on the auction

 floors of Sotheby's and Christie's, not to mention other less salubrious

 venues where "fresh' antiquities were sold. The adjective "fresh' was

 used in the context of "fresh out of the ground'.

 "Those are two beady-eyed bandits. They would probably eat their own

 children if they felt peckish. What would they do if they thought you

 stood in their way to the tomb of Mamose? Do you know if either of them

 contacted Duraid after the book was published, the way I did?"

 "I don't know. They may have."

 "I cannot imagine that either of those beauties would have missed such

 an easy trick. We must believe that they both know that Duraid had

 something going on. We will put their names on our list of suspects."

 Then he inspected her plate. "Enough? Another spoonful of egg? No? Very

 well, let's go down to the museum and see what Mrs. Street has found for

 us to work on."

 When they walked into his study, she was impressed by the amount of

 organization that he had accomplished in such a short time. He must have

 been busy at it all last night, turning the room into a military-type

 headquarters.

 In the centre of the room stood a large easel and blackboard which were

 pinned a set of overlapping satellite photographs. She went across to

 study them, and then glanced at the other material pinned on the board.

 Along with a large-scale map covering the same area of southwestern

 Ethiopia as the satellite photographs there were lists of names and

 addresses, lists of equipment and stores which he had obviously used on

 previous African expeditions, sheets of calculations of distance and

 what looked like a preliminary financial budget. At the top of the board

 was a schedule headed "Ethiopia - General Information'. There were five

 closely typed sheets, so she did not read through the entire schedule,

 but she was impressed by his thoroughness in preparation.

 Royan determined to study all this material at the earliest opportunity,

 but now she crossed to one of the two chairs he had set up at a table

 facing the board. He stood at the board and picked up a silver-topped

 swagger stick from the table, brandishing it like a schoolmaster's

 pointer.

 "Class will come to order." He rapped on the board.

 "The first thing you have to do is convince me that we will be able to

 pick up the spoor of Taita again after it has had several thousand years

 to cool. Let us first consider the geographical features of the Abbay

 gorge."

 Nicholas described the course of the river on the satellite photograph

 with his pointer. "Along this section the river has cut its way through

 the flood basalt plateaux.

 In places the cliff of the sub-gorge are sheer, as high as four or five

 hundred feet on each side. Where there are intrusive strata of harder

 igneous schists the river has not been able to erode them. They form a

 series of gigantic steps in the course of the river. I think you are

 correct in your assumption that Taita's "steps" are actually waterp

 falls."

 He came to the table and picked out a photograph from amongst the

 bundles of papers that covered it. "I took this in the gorge during the

 Armed Forces Expedition in 1976. It will give you an idea of what some

 of those falls are like."

 He passed her a black and white riverscape of towering cliffs on either

 hand and a cascade of water that seemed to fall from the heavens to

 dwarf the tiny figures of half-naked men and boats in the foreground.

 "I had no idea it was. like thad' She stared at it in awe.

 "Doesn't do justice to the splendid desolation down he told her. "From a

 photographer's there in the gorge, gra point of view there. is no place

 to stand from which you can get it all into perspective. But at least

 you can see how that waterfall would halt a party of Egyptians coming

 upriver on foot, or at least with pack horses. There is usually some

 sort of path alongside the cataracts made by elephant and other wild

 game over the ages. However, there is simply no way to bypass waterfalls

 such as this one, and to get around those cliffs."

 She nodded, and he went on, "Even coming downstream we had to lower the

 boats and all our equipment down each set of waterfalls on ropes. It

 wasn't easy."

 "Let us agree that it was a waterfall that stopped them going further -

 the second waterfall from the westerly approaches," she conceded.

 Nicholas picked up the swagger stick and on the satellite photograph

 traced the course of the river up from the dark wedge shape of the

 Roseires dam in central Sudan.

 "The escarpment, rises on the Ethiopian side of the border, that is

 where the gorge proper begins. No roads or towns in there, and only two

 bridges far upstream. Nothing for five hundred miles except racing Nile

 waters and savage black basalt rock." He paused to let that sink in.

 "It is one of the last true wildernesses on earth, with an evil

 reputation as the haunt of wild animals and even wilder men. I have

 marked the main falls that show in the gut of the gorge here on the

 satellite photo." With the pointer he picked them out, each circled

 neatly in red marker pen.

 "Here is waterfall number two, about a hundred and twenty miles upstream

 from the Sudanese border. However, there are a number of factors we have

 to consider, not least the fact that the river may have altered its

 course during the last four thousand years since our friend, "Taita,

 visited it."

 "Surely it could not have escaped from such a deep canyon, four thousand

 feet," she protested. "Even the Nile must be held captive by that?"

 "Yes, but it would certainly have altered the existing bed. In the flood

 season the volume and force of the river exceeds my ability to describe

 it to you. The river rises twenty metres up the side walls and bores

 through at speeds 3; of ten knots or more."

 "You navigated that?" she asked doubtfully.

 "Not in the flood season. Nothing could survive that.

 They both stared at the photograph in silence for a minute, imagining

 the terrors of that mighty stretch of water in its fury.

 Then she reminded him, "The second waterfall?

 "Here it is, where one of the tributary rivers enters the main flow of

 the Abbay. The tributary is the Dandera river and it rises at twelve

 thousand feet altitude, below the peak of Sancai Mountain in the Choke

 range, here about a hundred miles north of the gorge."

 "Do you remember the spot where it joins the Abbay from when you were

 there?"

 "It was over twenty years ago, and even then we had been almost a month

 down there in the gorge, so it all seemed to merge into a single

 nightmare. The memory bluffed with the monotonous surroundings of the

 cliffs and the dense Jungle of the walls, and our senses were dulled by

 the heat and the insects and the roar of water and the repetitive,

 unremitting toil at the oars i But, strangely, I do remember the

 confluence of the Dandera and the Abbay for two reasons."

 "Yes?" She sat forward eagerly, but he shook his head.

 "We lost a man there. The only casualty on the second expedition. Rope

 parted and he fell a hundred feet. Landed on his back across a spur of

 rock."

 i am sorry. But what was the other reason you remember the spot."

 "There is a Coptic Christian monastery there, built into the rock face

 about four hundred feet above the surface of the river."

 "Down the re in the depths of the gorge?" She sounded incredulous. "Why

 would they build a monastery there?"

 "Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian countries on earth. It has over

 nine thousand churches and monasteries, a great many of them in

 similarly remote and almost inaccessible places in the mountains. This

 one at the Dandera river is the reputed burial site of St. Frumentius,

 the saint who introduced Christianity to Ethiopia from the Byzantine

 Empire in Constantinople in the early third century. Legend has it that

 he was shipwrecked on the Red Sea shore and taken to Aksum, where he

 converted the Emperor Ezana."

 "Did you visit the monastery?"

 "Hell, no!" he laughed. "We were too busy just surviving, too eager to

 escape from the hell of the gorge to have any time for sightseeing. We

 descended the falls and kept on down river. All I remember of the

 monastery are the excavations in the cliff face high above the pool of

 the river, and the distant figures of the troglodytic monks in their

 white robes lining the parapet of the caves to watch impassively as we

 passed. Some of us waved up to them) and felt quite rebuffed when they

 made no response."

 "How would we ever reach that spot again, without a full-scale river

 expedition?" she wondered aloud, staring disconsolately at the board.

 "Discouraged already?" He grinned at her. "Wait until you meet some of

 the mosquitoes that live down there.

 They pick you up and fly with you to their lairs before they eat you."

 "Be serious," she entreated him. "How would we ever get down there?"

 "The monks are fed by the villagers who live up on the highlands above

 the gorge. Apparently, there is a goat track down the wall. They told us

 that it takes three days to get down that track into the gut of the

 gorge from the rim."

 "Could you find your way down?"

 "No, but I have a few ideas on the subject. We will come to that later.

 Firstly, we must decide what we expect to find down there after four

 thousand years." He looked at her expectantly. "Your turn now. Convince

 me." He handed her the silver-headed pointer, dropped into the chair

 beside her and folded his arms.

 "First you have to go back to the book." She exchanged the pointer for

 the copy of River God. "You remember the character of Tanus from the

 story?"

 "Of course. He was the commander of the Egyptian armies under Queen

 Lostris, with the title of Great Lion of Egypt. He led the exodus from

 Egypt, when they were driven out by the Hyksos."

 "He was also the Queen's secret lover and, if we are to believe Taita,

 the father of Prince Memnon, her eldest son," she agreed.

 Tanus was killed during a punitive expedition against an Ethiopian chief

 named Arkoun in the high mountains, and his body was mummified and

 brought back to the Queen by Taita,'Nicholas expanded the story.

 Precisely." She nodded. This leads me on to the other clue that Duraid

 and I winkled out."

 "From the seventh scroll?" He unfolded his arms and sat forward in his

 seat.

 "No, not from the scrolls, but from the inscriptions in the tomb of

 Queen Lostris." She reached into her bag and brought out another

 photograph. This is an enlargement of a section of the murals from the

 burial chamber, that part of the wall that later fell away and was lost

 when the alabaster jars were revealed. Duraid and I believe that the

 fact that Taita placed this inscription in the place of honour, over the

 hiding-place of the scrolls, was significant." She passed the photograph

 to him, and he picked up a magnifying glass from the table to study it.

 While he puzzled over the hieroglyphics Royan went on, "You will recall

 from the book how Taita loved riddles and word games, how he boasts so

 often that he is the greatest of all boa players?"

 Nicholas looked up from the magnifying glass, "I remember that. I go

 along with the theory that bao was the forerunner of the game of chess.

 I have a dozen or so boards in the museum collection, some from Egypt

 and others from further south in Africa."

 "Yes, I would also subscribe to that theory. Both games have many of the

 same objects and rules, but bao is a more rudimentary form of the game.

 It is played with coloured stones of different rank, instead of chess

 men. Well, I believe that Taita was not able to resist the temptation to

 display his riddling skills and his cleverness to posterity. I believe

 that he was so conceited that he deliberately left clues to the location

 of the Pharaoh's tomb, both in the scrolls and amongst the murals that

 he tells us he painted with his own hands in the tomb of his beloved

 Queen."

 "You think that this is one of those clues?" Nicholas tapped the

 photograph with the glass.

 "Read it," she instructed him. "It's in classical hieroglyphics - not

 too difficult compared to his cryptic codes."

 "'The father of the prince who is not the father, the giver of the blue

 that killed him,"' he translated haltingly, "'guards eternally hand in

 hand with Hapi the stone testament of the pathway to the father of the

 prince who is not the father, the giver of blood and ashes."'

 Nicholas shook his head, "No, it doesn't make sense," he protested, you

 must have made an error in the translation."

 "Don't despair. You are making your first acquaintance with Taita, the

 champion bao, player and consummate riddler. Duraid and I puzzled over

 it for weeks," she reassured him. "To work it out, let's go back to the

 book.

 Tanus was not the father of Prince Memnon in name, but, as the Queen's

 lover, was his biological father. On his deathbed, he gave Memnon the

 blue sword that had inflicted his own mortal wound during the battle

 with the native Ethiopian chief There is a full description of the

 battle in the book."

 "Yes, when I first read that section, I remember thinking that the blue

 sword was probably one of the very earliest iron weapons, and in an age

 of bronze would have been a marvel of the armourer's art. A gift fit for

 a prince," Nicholas mused, and went on, "So "the father of the prince

 who is not the father" is Tanus?" He sighed with resignation.

 "For the moment I accept your interpretation."

 "Thank you for your trust and confidence in me," she said sarcastically.

 "But to proceed with Taita's riddle Pharaoh Mamose was Memnon's father

 in name only, but not his blood father. Again the father who was not the

 father. Mamose passed down to the prince the double crown of Egypt, the

 red and white crowns of Upper and Lower Kingdoms - the blood and the

 ashes.

 "I am able to swallow that more easily. What about the rest of the

 inscription?"Nicholas was clearly intrigued.

 "The expression "hand in hand" is ambiguous in ancient Egyptian. It

 could just as well mean very close to, or within sight of, something."

 "Go on. At last you have me sitting up and taking notice,'Nicholas

 encouraged her.

 "Hapi is the hermaphroditic god or goddess of the Nile, depending on the

 gender he or she adopts at any particular moment. Throughout the scrolls

 Taita uses Hapi as an alternative name for the river."

 "So if we put the seventh scroll and the "inscription from the Queen's

 tomb together, what then is your full interpretation?" he insisted.

 "Simply this: Tanus is buried within sight of, or very close to, the

 river at the second waterfall. There is a stone monument or inscription

 on, or in, his tomb that points the way to the tomb of Pharaoh."

 He exhaled through his teeth. "I am exhausted from all this jumping to

 conclusions. What other clues have you ferreted out for me?"

 "That's it," she said, and he looked at her with disbelief.

 "That's it? Nothing else?" he demanded, and she shook her head.

 "Just suppose that you are correct so far. Let us suppose that the river

 is recognizably the same in shape and configuration as it was nearly

 four thousand years ago. Let us further suppose that Taita was indeed

 pointing us towards the second waterfall at the Dandera river. just what

 do we look for when we get there? If there is a rock inscription, will

 it still be intact or will it be eroded away by weather and the action

 of the river?"

 "Howard Carter had an equally slender lead to the tomb of Tutankhamen,'

 she pointed out mildly. "A single piece of papyrus, of dubious

 authenticity."

 "Howard Carter had only the area of the Valley of the Kings to search.

 It still took him ten years," he replied. "You have given me Ethiopia, a

 country twice the size of France.

 How long will that take us, do you think?"

 She stood up abruptly, "Excuse me, I think I should go and visit my

 mother in hospital. It's fairly obvious that I am wasting my time here."

 "It is not yet visiting hours," he told her.

 "She has a private room." Royan made for the door.

 "I will drive you to the hospital," he offered.

 "Don't bother. I will call a taxi," she replied in a tone that crackled

 with ice.

 "A taxi will take an hour to get here," he warned, and she relented just

 enough to let him lead her to the Range Rover. They drove in silence for

 fifteen minutes, before he spoke.

 "I am not very good at apologies. Not much practice, I am afraid, but I

 am sorry. I was abrupt. I didn't mean to be.

 Carried away by the excitement of the moment She did not reply, and

 after a minute added,'You will have to talk to me, unless we are to

 correspond only by note. It will be a bit awkward down in the Abbay

 gorge."

 "I had the distinct impression that you were no longer interested in

 going down there." She stared ahead through the windscreen.

 am a brute," he agreedi and she glanced sideways at him. It was her

 undoing. His grin was irresistible, and she laughed.

 "I Suppose I will just have to come to terms with that fact. You are a

 brute."

 "Still partners?" he asked.

 "At the moment you are the only brute I have.

 suppose that I am stuck with you."

 He dropped her off at the main hospital entrance. "I will pick you up

 here at three 'clock," he told her and drove on into the centre of York.

 From his university days Nicholas had kept a small flat in one of the

 narrow alleys behind York Minster. The entire building was registered in

 the name of a Cayman Island company, and the unlisted telephone there

 did not route through an internal switchboard. No ownership could be

 traced to him personally. Before he had met Rosalind the flat had played

 an important part in his social life. But nowadays Nicholas only used it

 for confidential and clandestine business. Both the Libyan and the Iraqi

 expeditions had been planned and organized from here.

 He hadn't used the flat for months, and it was cold and musty-smelling

 and uninviting. He put a match to the gas fire in the grate and filled

 the kettle. With a mug of steaming tea in front of him he placed a call

 to a bank in Jersey, followed immediately by another to a bank in the

 Cayman Islands.

 "A wise rat has more than one exit from its burrow."

 This was a family maxim, passed down through the generations. He was

 going to need funds for the expedition, and the lawyers had most of

 those locked up already.

 He gave the passwords and account numbers to each of the bank managers,

 and instructed them to make certain transfers. It always amazed him how

 easily matters could be rranged, as long as you had money.

 He checked his watch. It was still early morning in Florida, but Alison

 picked up the phone on the second ring. She was the blonde feminine

 dynamo who ran Global Safaris, a company that arranged hunting and

 fishing expeditions to remote areas around the world.

 "Hello, Nick. We haven't heard from you in over a year. We thought you

 didn't love us any more."

 "I have been out of it for a while," he admitted. How do you tell people

 that your wife and two little girls had died?

 "Ethiopia?" She did not sound at all disconcerted by the request. "When

 did you want to go?"

 "How about next week?"

 "You have to be joking. We only work with one hunter there, Nassous

 Roussos, and he is booked two years in advance."

 "Is there nobody else?" he insisted. "I have to be in and out again

 before the big rains."

 "What trophies are you after? she hedged. "Mountain nyala? Menelik's

 bushbuck?"

 "I am planning a collecting trip for the museum, down the Abbay river."

 It was as much as he was prepared to tell her.

 She hedged a little longer and then told him reluctantly, This is

 without our recommendation, do you understand. There is only one hunter

 who may take You on at such short notice, but I don't even know if he

 has a camp on the Blue Nile. He is a Russian, and we have had mixed

 reports about him. Some people say he is ex-KGB an was one of Mengistu's

 bunch of thugs."

 Mengistu was the "Black Stalin' who had deposed an then murdered the

 old Emperor Haile Selassie, and in sixteen years of despotic Marxist

 rule had driven Ethiopia to its knees. When his sponsor, the Soviet

 Empire, had collapsed, Mengistu had been overthrown and fled the

 country.

 "I am desperate enough to go to bed with the devil," he told her. "I

 promise I won't come back to you with any complaints."

 "Okay, then, no comebacks-' and she gave him a name and a telephone

 number in Addis Ababa.

 "I love you, Alison darling Nicholas told her.

 "I wish," she said, and hung up on him.

 He didn't expect that it would be easy to telephone Addis, and he wasn't

 disappointed in his expectations. But at last he got through. A woman

 with a sweet lisping of Ethiopian accent answered and switched to fluent

 English when he asked for Boris Brusilov.

 "He is out on safari at present," she told him. "I am Woizero Tessay,

 his wife." In Ethiopia a wife did not take on her husband's name.

 Nicholas remembered enough of the language to know that the name meant

 Lady Sun, a pretty name.

 "But if it is in connection with safari business I can help you," said

 Lady Sun.

 Nicholas picked Royan up outside the hospital entrance.

 "How is your mother?"

 "Her leg is doing well, but she's still distraught about is Magic -

 about her dog."

 You will have to get her a puppy. One of my keepers breeds first-class

 springers. I can arrange it." He paused and then asked delicately, "Will

 you be able to leave your mother? I mean, if we are going out to

 Africa?"

 "I spoke to her about that. There is a woman from her church group who

 will stay with her until she is well enough to fend for herself again."

 Royan turned fully around in her seat to examine his face. "You have

 been up to something since I last saw you," she accused him. "I can see

 it in your face."

 He made the Arabic sign against the evil eye, "Allah save me from

 witches!'

 "Come on!" He could make her laugh so readily, she was not sure if that

 was a good thing or not. "Tell me what you have up your sleeve."

 "Wait until we get back to the museum." He would not be moved, and she

 had to bridle her impatience.

 As soon as they entered the building he led her through the Egyptian

 room to the hall of African mammals, and then stopped her in front of a

 diorama of mounted antelope. These were some of the smaller and

 mediumsized varieties - impala, Thompson's and Grant's gazelle, gerenuk

 and the like.

 "Madoqua harperii." He pointed to a tiny creature in one corner of the

 display. "Harper's dik-dik, also known as the striped dik-dik."

 It was a nondescript little animal, not much bigger than a large hare.

 The brown pelt was striped in chocolate over the shoulders and back, and

 the nose was elongated into a prehensile proboscis.

 "A bit tatty," she gave her opinion carefully, unwilling to bend, yet

 knowing he was inordinately Proud of this Specimen. "Is there something

 special about it?, "Special?" he asked with wonder in his voice. The

 Woman asks if it is special." He rolled his eyes heavenward and she had

 to laugh again at his histrionics. "It is the only known specimen in

 existence.

 creatures on earth. So rare that It is One of the rarest now. So rare it

 is probably extinct by that many zoologists believe that apocryphal,

 that it never really existed. They think it is that my sainted

 great-grandfather, after whom it is named, actually invented it. One

 learned reference hinted that he may have taken the skin of the striped

 mongoose and stretched it over the form of a common dik-dik. Can you

 imagine a more heinous accusation?)

 "I am truly appalled by such injustice,'she laughed.

 "Darned right, You should be. Because we are going to Africa to hunt for

 another specimen of Madoqua harpent, to vindicate the honour of the

 family., "I don't understand."

 "Come with me and all will be explained."He led her back to his study,

 and from the jumble on the tabletop Picked out a notebook bound in red

 Morocco leather. The cover was faded and stained with water marks and

 tropical sun light, while the corners and the spine were frayed and

 battered.

 "Old Sir Jonathan's game book,) he explained, and opened it. Pressed

 between the pages were faded wild flowers and leaves that must have been

 there for almost a century. The text was illuminated by line drawings in

 faded Yellow ink of men and animals and wild landscapes.

 Nicholas read the date at the top of one page.

 2nd of February 1902.

 A In camp on the Abbay river.

 11 day following the spoor of two large bull ele Phants- Unable to come

 up with the . Heat ve,  intense- MY Men Played out Abandoned the chase

 small antelope grazing on the river-bank which I and returned to camp.

 On the return march lied a brought down with one shot from the little

 Rigby "and- On close examination it proved to be a member of the genus

 Madoqa. However, it was of a species that I had never seen before,

 larger than the common dik-dik and Possessing a striped body. I believe

 that this specimen may be new to science.

 He looked up from the diary. "Old great-grandpa Jonathan has given us

 the perfect excuse for going down into the Abbay gorge." He closed the

 book, and went on, "As you pointed out, to cater for our own expedition

 would require months of planning and organization, not to mention the

 expense. It would mean having to obtain approval and permission from the

 Ethiopian government. In Africa that can take months, if not Years."

 "I don't imagine that the Ethiopian government would be too cooperative

 if they suspected our real intentions," she agreed.

 "On the other hand, there are a number of legitimate hunting safari

 companies operating throughout the country. They have all the necessary

 permits, governmental contacts, vehicles, camping equipment and logistic

 back, up necessary to travel and stay in even the remotest areas.

 The authorities are quite accustomed to foreign hunters arriving and

 leaving with these companies, whereas a couple of ferengi nosing around

 on their own would have the local military and everybody else down on

 them like a herd of angry buffalo., ( So we are going to travel as a

 pair of dik-dik hunters?"

 "I have already made the booking with a safari operator in Addis Ababa,

 the capital. MY Plan is to look upon the whole of our project in three

 distinct and separate stages.

 The first stage will be this reconnaissance. If we find the lead we are

 hoping for, then we will go back again with our own men and equipment.

 That will be stage two. Stage three, of course, will be getting the

 booty out of Ethiopia, and that I assure you from past experience will

 not be the easiest part of the operation."

 "How will you do that-' she began, but he held up his hands.

 "Don't ask, because at this stage I don't have even the vaguest idea how

 we will do it. One stage at a time."

 "When do we leave?"

 "Before I tell you when, let me ask you one more question. Your

 interpretation of the Taita riddle - did you explain that in the notes

 that were stolen from you at the oasis?"

 "Yes, everything was either in those notes or on the microfilm. I am

 sorry."

 So the uglies will have it all neatly laid out for them, just the way

 you laid it out for me."

 "I am afraid they will, yes."

 "Then to reply to your question as to when, the answer is tout de suite,

 and the tooter the sweeter! We must get into the Abbay gorge before the

 competition beats us to it.

 They have had your conclusions and suppositions for almost a month. For

 all we know they are on their way already!

 "When?" she repeated eagerly.

 "I have booked two seats on the British Airways flight to Nairobi this

 Saturday - that is, in two days' time. We will connect there with an Air

 Kenya flight to Addis that will get us in on Monday at around midday. We

 will drive down to London this evening and stay over at my digs there.

 Are your yellow fever and hepatitis shots up to date?"

 "Yes, but I have no equipment and hardly any clothing with me., I left

 Cairo in rather a hurry."

 We will. see to that in London. Trouble with Ethiopia is it's cold

 enough to emasculate a brass monkey in the highlands, and like a sauna

 bath down in the gorge."

 He crossed to the board and began to check off the items on his list.

 "We will both start malarial prophylactics immediately. We are going

 into an area of chloroquineresistant . falciparum mosquitoes, so I will

 put you on Mefloquine "He worked swiftly through the list.

 "Of course all your travel documents are in order, or you wouldn't be

 here. We will both need visas for Ethiopia, but I have a contact who can

 arrange that in twenty-four hours."

 As soon as he completed the list he sent her up to her room to pack the

 few personal items she had brought with her from Cairo.

 By the time they were ready to leave Quenton Hall it was dark outside,

 but still he stopped for an hour at the York Minster Hospital to allow

 her to say goodbye to her mother. He waited in the Red Lion pub across

 the road, and he smelt of Theakston's Old Peculier when she climbed back

 into the Range Rover beside him. It was a Pleasant, yeasty aroma, and

 she felt so much at ease in his company that she lay back in the seat

 and fell asleep.

 His London house was in Knightsbridge, but despite the fashionable

 address it was much less grand than Quenton Hall, and she felt IF more

 at home there, even if it was only for two days.

 During that time she saw little of Nicholas, for he was busy with all

 the last-minute arrangements, which included a number of visits to

 government offices in Whitehall. He returned with wads of letters -of

 introduction to high officials and British Embassies and High

 Commissions throughout East Africa.

 "Ask any Englishman," she smiled to herself "There is no such thing as

 upper-class privilege any longer, nor is there an old-boy network that

 runs the country."

 While he was away, she went off with the shopping list he had given her.

 Even walking the streets of the safest Capital city in the world she

 found herself looking back over her shoulder, and ducking in and out of

 ladies' rooms and tube stations to make certain that she was not being

 followed.

 "You are acting like a terrified child without its daddy," she scolded

 herself.

 However, she felt a quite disproportionate sense of relief each evening

 when she heard his key in the street door of the empty house where she

 waited, and she had to control herself so as not to rush down the stairs

 to welcome him.

 On Saturday morning, when a taxi cab deposited them at the departures

 level of Heathrow MNIJ Terminal Four, Nicholas surveyed their combined

 luggage with approval. She had only a single soft canvas bag, no larger

 than his, and her sling bag over her shoulder. His hunting rifle was

 cased in travel-worn leather, with his initials embossed on the lid. A

 hundred rounds of ammunition was packed in a separate brass'bound

 magazine and he carried a leather briefcase that looked like a Victorian

 antique.

 "Travelling light is one of the great virtues. Lord save us from women

 with mountains of luggage,5 he told her, refusing the services of a

 porter and throwing it all on to a trolley, which he pushed himself.

 She had to step out to keep up with him as he strode through the crowded

 departures hall. Miraculously the throng opened before him. He tilted

 the brim of his panama hat over one eye and grinned at the girl at the

 check'in counter, so that she came over all girlish and flustered.

 It was the same once they were aboard the aircraft.

 The two stewardesses giggled at everything he said, plied him with

 champagne and fussed over him outrageously, to the obvious irritation of

 the other passengers, including Royan herself. But she ignored him and

 them and settled back to enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of the reclining

 first-class seat and her own miniature video screen. She tried to

 concentrate on the screen images of Richard Gere, but found her

 attention wandering to other images of wild canyons and ancient stelae.

 Only when Nicholas nudged her did she look around at him a little

 haughtily. He had set up a tiny travelling chessboard on the arm of the

 seat between them, and now he lifted an eyebrow at her and inclined his

 head in invitation.

 When they landed at Jomo Kenyatta airport in Kenya they were still

 locked in combat. They were level at two games each, but she was a

 bishop and two pawns up in the final deciding game. She felt quite

 pleased with herself.

 At the Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi he had booked a pair of garden

 bungalows, one for each of them. Within ten minutes of her flopping down

 on the bed, he called her from next door on the house phone.

 "We are going to dinner with the British High Commissioner tonight. He

 is an old chum. Dress informal. Can you be ready at eight?"

 One did not have to rough it too onerously when travelling around the

 world in this man's company, she thought.

 It was a relatively short haul from Nairobi up to Addis Ababa, and the

 landscape below them unfolded in fascinating sequences that kept her

 glued to the cabin window of the Air Kenya flight. The hoary summit of

 Mount Kenya was for once free of cloud, and the snow-clad double peaks

 glistened in the high sunlight.

 The bleak brown deserts of the Northern Frontier District were relieved

 only by the green hills that surrounded the oasis of Marsabit and, far

 out on the port side, the dashing waters of Lake Turkana, formerly Lake

 Rudolf.

 The desert finally gave way to the highlands of the great central

 plateau of the ancient land of Ethiopia.

 "In Africa only the Egyptians go back further than this civilization,'

 Nicholas remarked as they watched it together. "They were a cultured

 race when we peoples of northern climes were still dressing in untanned

 skins and living in caves. They were Christians when Europeans were

 still pagans, worshipping the old gods, Pan and Diana."

 "They were a civilized people when Taita passed this way nearly four

 thousand years ago," she agreed. "In his Scrolls he writes of them as

 almost his cultural equals which was rare for him. He disparaged all the

 other nations of the old world as his inferiors in every way."

 From the air Addis was like so many other African cities, a mixture of

 the old and the new, of traditional and exotic architectural styles,

 thatched roofs alongside galvanized iron and baked tiles. The rounded

 walls of the old tukuls built with mud and wattle contrasted with the

 rectangular shapes and geometrical planes of the brick built

 multi-storeyed buildings, the blocks of flats and the villas of the

 affluent, the government buildings and the grandiose, flag-bedecked

 headquarters of the Organization of African Unity.

 The distinguishing features of the surrounding countryside were the

 plantations of tall eucalyptus trees, the ubiquitous blue gums that

 provided firewood. It was the only fuel available to so many in this

 poor and war-torn land, which over the centuries had been ravaged by

 marauding armies and, more recently, by alien political doctrines.

 After Nairobi the high-altitude air was cool and sweet when Royan and

 Nicholas left the aircraft and walked across the tarmac to the terminal

 building. As they entered, before they had even approached the row of

 waiting immigration officers someone called his name.

 "Sir Nicholas!" They both turned to the tall young woman who glided

 towards them with all the grace of a features lit by a welcoming dancer,

 her dark and delicate smile. She wore full'length tradition al skirts

 which enhanced her movements.

 "Welcome to my country of Ethiopia. I am Woizero Tessay." She looked at

 Royan with interest, "And you must be Woizero Royan." She held out her

 hand to her and liked each other Nicholas saw that the two women

 immediately.

 I will see to the "If you will let me have your passports. There is a

 formalities while you relax in the VIP lounge.

 from your British Embassy waiting there to greet you, man Sir Nicholas.

 I don't know how he knew that you were arriving."

  the VIP lounge.

 There was only one person waiting i He was dressed in a well-cut

 tropical suit and wore the orange, yellow and blue diagonally striped

 old Sandhurst tie. He stood up and came to greet Nicholas immediately,

 Nor, ? it's good to see you again Must be all

 "Nicky, how are yo of twelve years, isn't it?"

 "Hello, Geoffrey. I had no idea they had stuck you out here."

 "Military attache. His Excellency sent me down to meet you as soon as he

 heard that you and I had been at Sandhurst together." Geoffrey looked at

 Royan with marked interest, and with a resigned air Nicholas introduced

 them.

 "Geoffrey Tennant. Be careful of him. Biggest ram I safe within half a

 mile of north of the equator. No girl him."

 "I say,. steady on,, Geoffrey protested, looking pleased with the

 reference that Nicholas had given him. "Please don't believe a word the

 man says, Dr Al Simma. Notorious prevaricator."

 Geoffrey drew Nicholas aside and quickly gave him a r6sum6 of conditions

 in the country, particularly in the outlying areas. "HE is a little

 worried. He doesn't like the idea of you swarming around out there on

 your own. Lots of nasty men down there in the Goiam. I told him that you

 knew how to look after yourself.)

 In a remarkably short time Woizero Tessay was back.

 "I have cleared all your luggage, including the firearm and ammunition.

 This is your temporary permit. You must keep it with you at all times

 whilst you are in Ethiopia. Here are your passports - the visas are

 stamped and in order. Our flight to Lake Tana leaves in an hour, so we

 have plenty of time to check in."

 "Any time you need a job, come and see me,'Nicholas commended her

 efficiency.

 Geoffrey Tennant walked with them as far as the departures gate, where

 he shook hands, "Anything I can do, it goes without saying. "Serve to

 Lead", Nicky."

 "'Serve to lead"T Royan asked, as they walked out to the waiting

 aircraft.

 "Sandhurst's motto the explained.

 "How nice, Nicky, she murmered.

 "I have always considered Nicholas to be more dignified and

 appropriate he said.

 "Yes, but Nicky is so sweet."

  the high, thin air the Twin Otter aircraft that took them on the last,

 northern, leg pitched and yawed in the updraughts; from the mountains

 below.

 Although they were at fifteen thousand feet above sea level, the ground

 was close enough for them to make out the, villages and the sparse areas

 of cultivation around them. Subjected for so many centuries to primitive

 agricultural methods and to the uncontrolled grazing of domestic herds,

 the land had a thin, impoverished look, and the bones of rock showed

 through the thin red fleshing of earth.

 Abruptly ahead of them the plateau over which they were flying was rent

 through by a monstrous chasm. It was as though the earth had received a

 mighty sword-stroke that struck through to her very bowels.

 "The Abbay river!" Tessay leaned forward in her seat to tap Royan's

 shoulder.

 The rim of the gorge was Clear-cut, and then the slope dropped away at

 an angle of over thirty degrees. The bare plains of the plateau gave way

 immediately to the heavily forested walls of the gorge. They could make

 out the candelabra shapes of giant euphorbia rising above the dense

 jungle. In places the walls had collapsed in scree slopes of loose rock,

 and in others they were up-thrust into bluffs and needles that erosion

 had sculpted with a monstrous artistry into the figures of towering

 humanoids and other fantastic creatures of stone.

 Down and down it plunged, and they winged out over the void until they

 could look directly down, a mile and more, on to the glittering snake of

 the river in the depths.

 The funnel shape of the upper walls formed a secondary rim as they

 reached the sheer cliffs of the sub-gorge five hundred feet above the

 Nile water. Deep down there between its terrible cliffs the river gouged

 dark pools and long slithering runs through the red sandstone. In places

 the gorge was forty miles across, in others it narrowed to under ten,

 but through all its length the grandeur and the desolation were infinite

 and eternal. Man had made no impression upon it.

 "You will soon be down there," Tessay told them in a voice so awed that

 it was almost a whisper, and they were both silent. Words seemed

 superfluous in the face of such raw and savage nature.

 .. Almost with relief they watched the northern wall rise to meet them,

 and the high mountains of the Choke range stood up against the tall blue

 African sky, higher than their fragile little craft was flying.

 The aircraft banked into its descent and Tessay pointed over the

 starboard wingtip.

 "Lake Tana," she told them. It was a wide and lovely body of water, over

 fifty miles long, studded with islands on each of which stood a

 monastery or an ancient church. As they dropped in over the water on the

 final approach, they could make out the white-robed priests plying

 between the islands on their traditional little boats made from bundles

 of papyrus.

 The Otter touched down on the dirt strip beside the lake and rolled out

 in a long trailing cloud of dust. It swung in -and stopped engines

 beside the run-down terminal building of thatch and daub.

 The sunlight was so bright that Nicholas pulled a pair of sunglasses

 from the breast pocket of his khaki jacket and placed them on his nose

 as he stood at the top of the boarding ladder. He took in the pock-marks

 of bullets and shrapnel on the dirty white walls of the terminal, and

 the burnt'out hull of a Russian T35 battle tank standing in the grass on

 the verge of the runway. The' barrel of its turret gun pointed

 earthwards, and grass had grown up between the rusted tracks.

 The other passengers pushed forward impatiently behind him, jostling him

 and jabbering with excitement as they saw friends and relatives waiting

 to greet them under the eucalyptus trees that shaded the building. There

 was only one vehicle parked out there, a sand-coloured Toyota Land

 Cruiser. The roundel on the driver's do6r had at its centre the painted

 head of a mountain nyala, with long corkscrew horns, and in a ribbon

 below it the title "Wild Chase Safaris'. A white man lounged behind the

 wheel.

 As Nicholas came down the ladder behind the two women, the driver

 slipped out of the truck and strode out on to the strip to meet them. He

 was dressed in a faded khaki bush suit, and he was tall and lean and

 walked with a spring to his step.

 "Fortyish," Nicholas judged his age from the grizzling in his short

 beard. "One of the hard men," Nicholas thought.

 His ginger hair was cropped short, his eyes were pale killer blue. There

 was a puckered white scar that ran across one cheek and up to twist and

 deform his nose.

 Tessay introduced `Royan to him first, and he made a short, choppy bow

 as he shook her hand. "Enchant6, he told her in an execrable French

 accent and then looked at Nicholas.

 "This is my husband, Alto Boris," Tessay introduced him. "Boris, this is

 Alto Nicholas."

 "My English is bad," Boris said. "My French is better."

 "Not much to choose between them," Nicholas thought, but he smiled

 easily and said, "So we will speak French then. Bonjour, Monsieur

 Brusilov. I am delighted to make your acquaintance." He offered the

 Russian his hand.

 Boris's grip was hard - too hard. He was making a contest out of the

 greeting, but Nicholas had expected it He knew this type of old, and he

 had taken a deep grip so Boris could not crush his fingers. Nicholas

 held him without allowing any strain or effort to show on his lazy

 smile. Boris was the first to break the handshake, and there was just

 the trace of respect in those pale eyes.

 "So you have come for a dikdik?" he asked, just short of a sneer. Most

 of my clients come for big elephant, or at least for mountain nyala."

 "Bit rich for my nerves," Nicholas grinned, "all that big stuff. Dik-dik

 will suit me fine."

 "Have you ever been down in the gorge?" Boris demanded. His Russian

 accent overpowered the French words and made them difficult to follow.

 "Sir Nicholas was one of the leaders of the 1976 river expedition,'

 Royan intervened sweetly, and Nicholas was amused by her unexpected

 intervention. She had picked up the antagonism between them very

 quickly, and come to his rescue.

 Boris grunted, and turned to his wife. "Have you got all the stores I

 ordered?" he demanded.

 "Yes, Boris," she answered meekly. "They are all on board the aircraft."

 She is afraid of him, Nicholas decided, probably with good reason.

 "Let's get loaded up, then. We have a long journey ahead of us."

 The two men rode in the front seats of the Toyota, and the women sat

 behind them with many of the packages of stores packed in around them.

 Good African protocol, Nicholas smiled to himself: men first, women fend

 for themselves.

 "You don't want to do the tourist run, do you?" Boris made it sound like

 a threat.

 "The tourist run?"

 "The outlet from the lake, and the power station," he explained. "The

 Portuguese bridge over the gorge and the point where the Blue Nile

 begins," he added. But before they could accept he warned them, "If you

 do, we won't get into camp until long -after dark."

 "Thanks for the suggestion,) Nicholas told him politely, "but I have

 seen it all before."

 "Good." Boris made his approval evident. "Let's get out of here."

 The road swung away into the west, below the high mountains. This was

 the Goiam, the land of the aloof mountaineers. It was well-populated

 country, and they passed many tall, thin men along the roadside as they

 strode along behind their herds of goats and sheep, with their long

 staffs held crossways over their shoulders. Both men and women wore

 shammas, woollen shawls, and baggy white jodhpur pants, with their feet

 in open sandals.

 They were people with proud and handsome features, their hair dressed

 out into thick, bushy halos, and their eyes fierce as those of eagles.

 Some of the younger women in the villages they passed through were truly

 beautiful.

 Most of the men were heavily armed. They carried twohanded swords in

 chased silver scabbards, and AK-47 assault rifles.

 "Makes them feel like big men," Boris chuckled. "Very brave, very

 macho."

 The huts in the villages were circular walled tukuls, surrounded by

 plantations of eucalyptus and spiky-headed sisal.

 Bruised purple storm clouds boiled over the high peaks of the Choke and

 swept them with squalls of rain. Like silver coins, the huge drops

 rattled against the windscreen of the Land Cruiser and turned the road

 to a running river of mud under their wheels.

 The condition of the road surface was appalling; in places it

 deteriorated into a rocky gully which even the four-wheel drive Toyota

 could not negotiate, and Boris was forced to make his own track across

 the rocky hillside.

 Often reduced to walking speed, they were nevertheless tossed about in

 their seats as the wheels bounced over the rough terrain.

 "These damn blacks don't even think to repair the roads," Boris grunted.

 "They are happy to live like animals." None of them replied, but

 Nicholas glanced up into the rear-view mirror at the faces of the two

 women. They were closed and neutral, hiding any hurt that either of them

 might have felt at the remark.

 As they went on, the road, bad as it had been originally, became even

 worse. From here onwards the soft the fire. The two women sat a little

 to one side, talking quietly, and Boris had his feet propped on the low

 table as he leaned back in his chair with a glass in one hand.

 He indicated the vodka bottle on the table, as Nicholas stepped into the

 circle of firelight, "Get yourself a drink Ice in the bucket."

 "I prefer a beer," Nicholas told him. "Thirsty drive." Boris shrugged

 and bellowed for his camp butler to bring a brown bottle from the

 portable gas refrigerator.

 "Let me tell you something, a little secret." He grinned at Nicholas as

 he poured himself another vodka. "There is no such animal as a striped

 dik-dik these days, even if there ever was one. You are wasting your

 time and your money."

 "Fine," Nicholas agreed mildly. "It's my time and my money."

 "Just because some old fart shot one back in the Dark Ages, doesn't mean

 you are going to find another now. We could go up into the tea

 plantations for elephant. I saw three bulls there only ten days ago. All

 with tusks over a hundred pounds a side."

 As they argued, the level in Boris's vodka bottle fell like the Nile at

 the end of the inundation. When Tessay told them that the meal was

 ready, Boris carried the bottle with him; he stumbled on his way to the

 table. During the meal his only contribution to the conversation was to

 snarl at Tessay.

 "The lamb is raw. Why don't you see to it that the cook does it

 properly? Damn monkeys, you have to watch everything they do."

 "Is your lamb under-cooked, Alto Nicholas?" Tessay asked without looking

 at her husband. "I can have them cook it longer."

 "It's perfect he assured her. "I like mine pink."

 Si By the end of dinner the vodka bottle at Boris elbow was empty, and

 his face was flushed and swollen. He got up from the table without a

 word and disappeared into the darkness in the direction of his tent,

 swaying on his feet and occasionally catching his balance with a

 two-step jig.

 "I apologize," essay told them quietly. "It is only in the evenings. In

 the day he is fine. It is a Russian tradition, the vodka." She smiled

 brightly; only her eyes stayed sad.

 "It is a lovely night, and too early yet for bed. Would you like to walk

 up to the church? It is very old and famous.

 I will have one of the servants bring a lantern, so that you may admire

 the murals."

 The servant walked ahead of them, lighting their way, and an ancient

 priest waited to welcome them on the portico of the circular building.

 He was thin and so very black that only his teeth flashed in the gloom.

 He carried a magnificent Coptic cross in massive native silver, set with

 carnelians and other semi-precious stones.

 Both Royan and Tessay dropped on their knees in front of him to ask for

 his blessing. He slapped their cheeks lightly with the cross and

 genuflected over them, mumbling his benediction in Amharic. Then he

 ushered them into the interior.

 The walls were covered with a magnificent display of paintings in

 brilliant primary colours. In the lantern light they blazed like

 gemstones. There was a strong Byzantine flavour to the style: the

 saints' eyes were huge and slanted, with great golden halos over their

 heads. Above the altar, with its tinsel and brass furnishing, the Virgin

 cradled her infant while the three wise men and a host of angels knelt

 in adoration. Nicholas slipped his Polaroid camera from the pocket of

 his jacket and adjusted the flash. He wandered around the church

 photographing these murals, while Tessay and Royan knelt before the

 altar side by side.

 Once he had finished his photography Nicholas found a seat on the

 hand-hewn wooden pews and sat quietly watching their intent faces which

 the candlelight touched with golden highlights, and he was moved by the

 beauty of the moment.

 "I wish I had that kind of faith," he thought, as he had so often

 before. "It must be a comfort in the hard times. I wish I were able to

 pray like that for Rosalind and the girls." He could not stay longer,

 and he went out and sat on the church portico where he watched the night

 sky.

 In these high altitudes, in the thin unpolluted air, the stars were such

 a dazzling blaze that it was difficult to pick out the individual

 constellations. After a while his sadness abated. It was good to be back

 in Africa.

 When the two women emerged at last from the dark interior, Nicholas gave

 the old priest a one hundred birr note and a Polaroid photograph of

 himself which the old man clearly valued above the money. Then the three

 of them walked back down the hill together in companionable silence.

 icky!" Royan shook him awake. When he sat up and switched on his torch,

 he saw that she had thrown the woollen shawl over a pair of men's

 striped pyjamas before she had come into his tent.

 "What is it?" he asked, but before she could answer he heard the sound

 of a hoarse and angry voice shouting invective in the night, and then

 the unmistakable thud of a clenched fist striking flesh and bone.

 "He's beating her." Royan's voice was tight with out-' rage. "You have

 to make him stop."

 There was a cry of pain after the blow, and then sobs.

 Nicholas hesitated. Only a fool interferes between a man and his wife,

 and his reward usually is to have them unite and turn savagely upon him.

 "You must do something, Nicky, please., Reluctantly he swung his legs

 out of the cot and stood up. He slept in'boxer shorts, and he did not

 bother to find his shoes. She followed him, also on bare feet, to the

 end of the grove where Boris's tent stood beyond the dining tent.

 There was a lantern still burning within, and it threw magnified shadows

 on the canvas walls. He saw that Boris had his wife "by the hair and was

 dragging her across the floor, roaring at her in Russian.

 "Boris!" Nicholas had to shout his name three times to get his

 attention, and then they saw the shadow play on the canvas as he dropped

 Tessay and flung open the tent flap.

 He was dressed only in a pair of underpants. His torso was lean and

 muscular, the chest flat and hard-looking, covered with coppery curls.

 On the floor behind him Tessay lay face down, sobbing into her cupped

 hands. She was naked, and the planes of her body were sleek as those of

 a panther.

 "What the hell is going on here?" Nicholas demanded, his anger only just

 beginning to stir as he witnessed the gracious, gentle woman's distress

 and humiliation.

 "I am giving this black whore a lesson in good manners," Boris gloated,

 his face still swollen and flushed with drink and passion. "It's none of

 your business, English, unless you want to pay some money and have a bit

 of pork for yourself." He laughed, an ugly sound.

 "Are you all right, Woizero Tessay?" Nicholas looked directly into

 Boris's face, sparing the woman the further humiliation of another man's

 eyes on her nudity.

 Tessay sat up, lifted her knees against her chest, and hugged them with

 both arms to cover her body.

 "It's all right, Alto Nicholas. Please go away before there is real

 trouble." Blood was trickling from one nostril into her mouth, and

 dyeing her teeth pink.

 "You heard'my wife, English bastard. Go away! Mind your own business. Go

 away, before I give you a little lesson in good manners also."

 Boris staggered forward and thrust his open hand against Nicholas's

 chest. Nicholas moved as smoothly and as effortlessly as a matador

 avoiding the first wild charge of the bull. He swayed to one side, and

 used Boris's own momentum to send him on in the direction in which he

 was already committed. Completely off balance, the Russian reeled across

 the open ground in front of the tent until he collided with one of the

 camp chairs and went down in a sprawling heap.

 "Royan, take Tessay to your tent!" he ordered softly.

 Royan ran into the tent and pulled a sheet from the nearest cot. She

 spread it over Tessay's shoulders and lifted her to her feet.

 "Please, don't do this," Tessay sobbed. "You don't know him when he gets

 like this. He will hurt somebody."

 Royan dragged her, still protesting and weeping, out of the tent, but by

 now Boris was on his feet again. He bellowed with rage and picked up the

 camp chair that had tripped him. With a single jerk he tore off one of

 the legs and hefted it in his bunched fist.

 "You want to play games, English? All right, we play!" He rushed at

 Nicholas, swinging the chair leg like a Ninja baton, so that it hissed

 with the force with which he aimed it at his head. As Nicholas ducked

 under it Boris reversed the swing, going for the side of his chest,

 under his upraised arm. It would have staved in his ribs if it had

 landed, but again Nicholas twisted away.

 They circled each other warily, and then Boris charged again. If it had

 not been for the effect of the vodka on the Russian's reflexes Nicholas

 would never have taken a chance with an adversary of this calibre, but

 Boris was just loose enough in his control to allow him to duck in under

 the swinging chair leg. He straightened, with all his weight rolling

 into the punch, and his fist slogged into the pit Of Boris's belly just

 under the sternum. The Russian's breath was driven out of him in a great

 gusty belch.

 The chair leg flew from his grip, and he doubled over and collapsed.

 Clasping his middle, and heaving and wheezing for breath, Boris lay

 curled in the dust. Nicholas stooped over him and told him softly in

 English, "This sort of behaviour simply isn't good enough, old chap. We

 don't bully-girls. Please don't let it happen again."

 He straightened up and spoke to Royan, "Get her to your tent and keep

 her there." He combed his hair back from his face with his fingers. "And

 now, if you have no serious objections, may we get a little sleep?"

 It rained again during the early hours. The heavy drops drummed down on

 the canvas and the lightning lit the interior of the tents with an eerie

 brilliance. However, by the time that Nicholas went through to the

 dining tent for breakfast the next morning, the clouds had cleared and

 the sunshine was bright and cheering. The sweet mountain air smelt of

 wet earth and mushrooms.

 Boris greeted Nicholas with hearty good fellowship.

 "Good morning, English. We had some fun last night. I still laugh to

 remember it. Very good jokes. One day soon we will have some more vodka,

 then we will makesome more good jokes." And he bellowed through to the

 kitchen tent, "Hey! Lady Sun, bring your new boyfriend something to eat.

 He is hungry from all the sport last night."

 Tessay was quiet and withdrawn as she supervised the' servants handing

 round breakfast. One eye was swollen almost closed, and her lip was cut.

 She did not look at Nicholas once during the meal.

 "We will go on ahead," Boris explained jovially as they drank coffee.

 "My servants will break camp, and follow us in my big truck. With luck,

 we will be able to camp tonight on the rim above the gorge, and tomorrow

 we will begin the descent."

 As they were climbing into the truck, Tessay was able to speak to him

 softly for a moment, without danger of Boris overhearing her. "Thank

 you, Alto Nicholas. But it was not wise. You don't know him. You must be

 careful now. He does not forget, not does he forgive."

 From the village of Debra Maryarn Boris took a branch road that ran

 alongside the Dandera river directly south, wards. The road they had

 followed the previous day from Lake Tana was shown on the map as a major

 highway. It had been bad enough. But this track that they were now on

 was marked as a secondary road "not passable in all weather'. To

 compound matters, it seemed that most of the heavy traffic that had torn

 up the main road had followed this same track. They came to a place

 where some huge vehicle had become bogged down in the rain-saturated

 earth, and the efforts to free it had left areas of ploughed land and an

 excavation like a bomb crater that resembled an old photograph of the

 battlefields of First World War Flanders.

 Twice during the day the Toyota too became stuck in this foul ground.

 Each time this happened, the big truck that was following them came up

 and all the servants swarmed down from the cargo body to push and heave

 the Toyota through. Even Nicholas stripped to the waist to work with

 them in the mud to free it.

 "If you had only listened to my advice," Boris grumbled, "we would not

 be here. There is no game where you want to go, and there are no roads

 worth the name either."

 In the early afternoon they stopped beside the river for an alfresco

 lunch. Nicholas went down to the pool beside the road to wash off the

 mud and filth of the morning's labours. He had been in the forefront of

 the efforts to keep the truck moving. Royan followed him down the slope

 and perched on a rock above the pool while he stripped off his shirt and

 knelt, at the verge to splash himself with the cold mountain water. The

 river was muddy yellow and swollen from the rainstorms.

 "I don't think Boris believes your story about the striped dik-dik," she

 warned him. "Tessay tells me that he is suspicious of what we are up

 to." She watched with interest as he sluiced his chest and upper arms.

 '"ere the sun had not touched it, his skin was very white and

 unblemished.

 His chest hair was thick and dark. She decided that his body was good to

 look at.

 "He is the type that would go through our luggage if he gets a chance,'

 Nicholas agreed. "You didn't bring anything with you that has any clues

 for him? No papers or notes?"

 "Only the satellite photograph, and my notebooks are all in my own

 shorthand. He won't be able to make anything of them."

 "Be very careful of what you discuss with Tessay."

 "She is a dear. There is nothing underhand about her." Heatedly Royan

 came to the defence of her new friend.

 "She may be all right, but she's married to my chum Boris. Her first

 allegiance lies there. No matter what your feelings towards her, don't

 trust either of them." He dried himself on his shirt, slipped it on and

 then buttoned it over his chest. "Let's go and get something to eat."

 Back at the parked truck Boris was pulling the cork from a bottle of

 South African white wine. He poured a tumbler full for Nicholas. Chilled

 in the river, it was crisp and fruity. Tessay offered them cold roast

 chicken and injera bread, the flat, thin sheets of stone-ground

 unleavened bread of the country. The trials and labours of the morning's

 travels faded into insignificance as Royan lay beside Nicholas in the

 grass and they watched a bearded vulture sailing high against the blue.

 It saw them and drifted overhead curiously, twisting its head to look

 down at them. Its eyes were masked in black like those of a highwayman,

 and the distinctive wedge-shaped tail feathers flirted with the wind the

 way the fingers of a concert pianist would stroke the ivories of the

 keyboard.

 When it was time to go on, Nicholas gave her his hand to lift her to her

 feet. It was one of their rare moments of physical contact, and she held

 on to his fingers for just a second or two longer than was strictly

 necessary.

 There was no improvement in the surface of the trac as they drew nearer

 to the rim of the gorge, and the hours passed in this bone-jarring,

 teeth-rattling progress. The track snaked over a rise and then

 dog-legged down the far slope. Halfway down Boris swore in Russian as

 they came round the hairpin bend of a high earthen bank to find a huge

 diesel truck slewed across the track, almost blocking it.

 Even though they had been following the tracks of this convoy of

 vehicles since the previous day, this was the first of them that they

 had encountered, and it took Boris by surprise. He hit his brakes so

 suddenly that his passengers were almost catapulted from their seats,

 but on the steep incline in the mud the brakes did not bring them to a

 complete halt. Boris was forced to change down into his lowest gear and

 steer for the narrow gap between the bank and the truck.

 From the back seat Royan looked out of the window I beside her, up the

 high side of the diesel truck. There was a company name and logo

 emblazoned in scarlet on the green background.

 A strong feeling of du vu overcame her as she stared at the image. She

 had seen this sign recently, but her memory cheated her: she could not

 recall the time or the place. She only knew that it was of vital

 importance that she should remember.

 The side of the Toyota scraped against the metal of the truck, and then

 they were past it. Boris leaned out of his window and shook his fist at

 the driver of the larger vehicle.

 He was a local man, probably recruited in Addis by the owner of the

 truck. Grinning at Boris's antics, he leaned out of his own cab to

 return the clenched fist salute, adding a nice little touch by jerking a

 raised forefinger upwards.

 "Dungeater!" Boris roared with outrage at being bested in the exchange,

 but he did not stop. "No use even talking to them. What do they know?

 Black chimps!'

 For the rest of the wearisome journey Royan remained silent and

 withdrawn, shaken and troubled by the conviction that she had seen the

 trademark of the winged red horse before, with, set above it in a

 pennant, the name of the company: "PEGASUS EXPLORATION'.

 As they approached the end of the day's journey at last they passed a

 signpost beside the track. The supporting legs of the sign were solidly

 set in concrete, and the artwork was of such high quality that it could

 only have been that of a professional signwriter.

 Across the top of the board an arrow indicated a newly bulldozed road

 that headed off to the right, and the directions read:

 PEGASUS EXPLORATION

 BASE CAMP - ONE KILOMETRE

 PRIVATE ROAD

 NO ENTRY TO UNAUTHORIZED TRAFFIC

 The scarlet horse reared in the centre of the board with its wings

 spread wide, on the point of flight.

 Now she gasped aloud as the elusive memory came upon her with stunning

 clarity. She remembered where she had last seen the flying red horse. In

 an instant she was transported back into the icy waters of an English

 salmon river, flung from the rolling body of the Land Rover, the huge

 MAN truck roaring over the bridge above her, and, for a subliminal pulse

 of time, the prancing red horse upon its side.

 she almost shouted aloud, but controlled herself. The terror of the

 moment returned to her with full force, and she found herself breathing

 hard and her heart racing as though she had run a long way.

 "It cannot be a coincidence," she assured herself silently, "and I am

 not mistaken. It is the same company.

 Pegasus Exploration."

 She was withdrawn and distracted for the last few miles of the journey,

 until the track they were following ended abruptly on the brink of the

 sheer cliffs of the escarpment, Here Boris pulled on to the grassy verge

 and stopped the engine.

 "This is as far as we ride. We camp here tonight. My big truck is not

 far behind. They will make camp as so on as they arrive. Tomorrow we

 will go down into the gorge on foot."

 As they dismounted, Royan tugged at Nicholas's arm, "I must speak to

 you," she whispered urgently, and she followed him as he led her along

 the bank of the river.

 He found a place for them to sit side by side, with their legs dangling

 over the drop. Beside them the swollen yellow river seemed to sense what

 lay ahead of it. The cold mountain waters speeded up, swirled amongst

 the rocks, and gathered themselves for that dizzying leap out into empty

 space. The cliff below them was a sheer wall of rock almost a thousand

 feet deep. It was so high that in the evening light the abyss far below

 was a dark, mysterious place, its bottom hidden from them by shadow and

 spray from the falls. As Royan looked down into it her sense of balance

 swirled with vertigo. She cringed back from the edge and found herself

 instinctively leaning against Nicholas's shoulder to steady herself.

 Only when they touched did she realize what she was doing, and she

 pulled away from him self-consciously.

 The muddied waters of the Dandera. river leaped from the brink, and were

 miraculously transformed into curtains of ethereal lacework as they

 fell. Like the skirts of waltzing bride they shimmered and swirled, and

 rainbows of light played through them as though from an embroidery of

 seed pearls. Still falling, the columns of white spray twisted and

 changed into lovely but ephemeral shapes, until they struck the lower

 ledges of glistening black rock and exploded outwards into fresh clouds

 of white that at last screened the dark depths of the abyss with " an

 opalescent veil.

 It was with a conscious effort that Royan pulled her mind away from the

 awe-inspiring scene and back to the troubled present.

 "Nicky, do you remember I told you about the truck that forced my mother

 and me over the bridge in the Land Rover?"

 "Of course." His expression was mystified as he studied her face. "You

 are upset. "What is it, Royan?"

 "The truck had signwriting down the sides of the trailers that it was

 towing."

 "You told me, yes. Green and red. You told me that you didn't get a good

 enough look to read the sign."

 "It was the same as the truck we passed this afternoon.

 I saw the sign at the same angle as before and it came back to me. The

 red Pegasus, the flying horse."

 He studied her face for a while, "Are you absolutely certain?"

 "Absolutely!" She nodded vehemently.

 Nicholas stared out over the magnificent panorama of the gorge spread

 below them. It was forty miles to the far wall of the canyon, but in the

 brilliant rain-washed air it seemed so close that he could reach across

 and touch it.

 "A coincidence?"he wondered at last.

 "Do you think so? A very strange and wonderful coincidence, then.

 Pegasus in both Yorkshire and Gojam?

 Do you accept that?"

 "It doesn't make sense. The truck that hit you was stolen-'

 "Was it?" she demanded. "Are we sure of that?"

 "If it wasn't, then let's hear your ideas."

 "If you were planning an assassination, would you rely on stealing a

 truck conveniently left at a Little Chef for you?"

 He shook his head, "Go on."

 "Suppose you arranged for your own truck to be placed there for you, and

 for your driver to report it stolen only after you had a good head start

 on the police."

 "It's possible," he agreed without enthusiasm.

 "Whoever murdered Duraid, and made two further attempts to kill me,

 obviously has considerable resources at his disposal. He is able to make

 arrangements in Egypt and England. On top of that, he has the seventh

 scroll in his possession. He has our notes and all our workings and

 translations which point him clearly to this spot on the Abbay river.

 Just suppose that he has control of a company like Pegasus - is there

 any reason why he can't be here in Ethiopia, just as we are, right at

 this moment?"

 Nicholas was silent for a while. He picked up a stone from the ledge

 beside him and tossed it out over the cliff.

 They both watched it drop away, dwindling in size until it vanished in

 the veils of spray far below where they sat.

 Abruptly Nicholas stood up and reached for her hand to pull her to her

 feet beside him. "Come on," he said.

 "Where are we going?"

 "Pegasus base camp. Let's go and have a chat to the site foreman."

 Boris protested angrily and hurried to intervene when Nicholas climbed

 into the Toyota and started the engine, "Where the hell do you think you

 are going?, "Sight-seeing." Nicholas let in the clutch. "Back in an

 hour."

 "Hey, English, my truck!" He ran to catch up with them, but Nicholas

 accelerated away.

 "Charge me for the hire." fie grinned back at Boris in the rear-view

 mirror. -off and followed the They reached the signposted turn side

 track over the ridge. The Pegasus camp lay on the far side. Nicholas

 braked to a halt on the crest of the rise and they studied it in

 silence.

 An area of about ten acres had been cleared and levelled. It was

 surrounded by a barbed-wire security fence, with a single closed gate.

 Three of the massive diesel trucks in their green and red livery were

 parked in a rank inside the fence. There were also several smaller

 vehicles and a tall mobile drilling rig in the line. The rest of the

 yard was filled with prospecting equipment and stores. There were stacks

 of drilling rods and steel core boxes, wooden crates of spares, and

 several hundred forty-four-gallon drums of diesel and oil and drilling

 mud. The drums and the stores were stacked with a neatness and sense of

 good order that was startling in this wild and rocky landscape. just

 inside the gate stood a small village of a dozen buildings made of

 corrugated sheet sections, of the Quonset type. They too were set out in

 a street of military precision.

 "A big, well-organized outfit," Nicholas commented.

 "Let's go down and see who is in charge."

 There were two armed guards on the gate, dressed in the camouflage

 uniform of the Ethiopian army. They were clearly surprised by the

 arrival at the gate of the strange Land Cruiser, and when Nicholas

 sounded his horn one of them came forward suspiciously with his AK,47

 rifle at the ready.

 "I want to speak to the manager here," Nicholas told him in Arabic, with

 enough haughty authority to make the entry uncertain and uneasy.

 The soldier grunted, went back and consulted his colleague, then lifted

 the handset of the two-way radio and spoke earnestly into the

 mouthpiece. There was a five minute delay after he finished speaking,

 and then the door of the nearest Quonset building opened and a white man

 came out.

 He was dressed in khaki coveralls and a soft bush cap.

 His eyes, covered by mirrored sunglasses, were set in a deeply tanned,

 leathery face. His physique was short and chunky, and his sleeves were

 rolled up over hairy, work thickened arms. After speaking a few words to

 the guards at the gate he came out to the Toyota

 "Yeah? What's going down here?" he demanded in Texan drawl, speaking

 around the stub of an unlit cigar.

 "The name is Quenton-Harper." Nicholas dismounted from the truck to

 greet him, and held out his hand.

 "Nicholas Quenton-Harper. How do you do?"

 The American hesitated, and then took the hand as though he had been

 offered an electric eel to squeeze.

 "Helm," he said. "Jake Helm, from Abilene, Texas. I am the foreman

 here." His hand was that of an artisan, with calloused palms and lumpy

 scar tissue over the knuckles, and half moons of black grease under the

 fingernails.

 "Terribly sorry to worry you. I am having some trouble with my truck. I

 wondered if you had a mechanic who could have a look at it for

 me."Nicholas smiled winningly, but received no encouragement from the

 man.

 "Not company policy." He shook his head.

 "I am prepared to pay for any-'

 "Listen, buddy, I said no." Jake removed the cigar from his mouth and

 examined it minutely.

 "Your company - Pegasus. Can you tell me where your head office is

 situated? Who is your managing director?"

 "I am a busy man. You are wasting my time." Helm ,,returned the cigar to

 his mouth and began to turn away.

 "I will be hunting in this area over the next few weeks.

 I would not like to endanger any of your employees with a stray shot.

 Can you give me some idea of where you will be working?"

 outfit here, mister. I don't

 "I am running a prospecting give out news flashes on my movements. Beat

 id'

 He turned and walked to the gate and gave brusque orders to the guards

 before marching back to his office building.

 "Satellite disc on the roof," Nicholas remarked. "I wonder who our lad

 Jake is speaking to at this very moment."

 "Somebody in Texas?" Royan hazarded.

 "Doesn't follow, necessarily, Nicholas demurred. Tega, is probably a

 multinational. Just because Jake is one, doesn't mean his boss is Texan

 also. Not a very instructive conversation, I am afraid." He started the

 engine and Uturned the Toyota. "But if someone at Pegasus is the ugly

 mixed up in this, he will recognize my name. We have given them notice

 of our arrival. Let's see what we have flushed out of the bushes."

 When they got back to the Dandera river falls, they found that Boris's

 truck had arrived, the tents had been erected, and the chef had brewed

 tea for them. Boris was less welcoming than his chef, and maintained a

 sullen silence while Nicholas tried to placate him for commandeering his

 truck.

 It was only after his first vodka of the evening that he mellowed

 sufficiently to speak again.

 "The mules were supposed to be waiting for us here.

 Time means nothing to these people. We cannot start down into the gorge

 until they arrive."

 "Well, at least while we are waiting for them I will have a chance to

 sight in my rifle,'Nicholas remarked with resignation. "In Africa it

 never pays to be in a hurry. Too wearing on the nerves."

 After a leisurely breakfast the next morning, when there was still no

 sign of the mules, Nicholas fetched his rifle case.

 When Nicholas lifted the weapon out of its nest of green baize, Boris

 took it from him and examined it minutely.

 "An old rifle?"

 "Made in 1926,'Nicholas nodded. "My grandfather had it made for

 himself."

 "They knew how to make them in those days. Not like the mass-produced

 crap they turn out today." Boris pursed his lips critically. "Short

 Mauser Oberndorf double square, bridge action, beautiful! But it has

 been rebarrelled, no?

 The original barrel was shot out. I had it replaced with a Shilen match

 barrel. It will shoot the wings off a mosquito at a hundred paces."

 "Calibre 7 57, is it?" Boris asked.

 '275 Rigby, as a matter of fact," Nicholas corrected him, but Boris

 snorted.

 "It is exactly the same cartridge - just your English bloodiness must

 call it something else." He grinned. "It wilt push a 150 grain bullet

 out there at 2800 feet per second.

 It is a good rifle, one of the best."

 "You will never know, my dear fellow, how much your approval means to

 me,'Nicholas murmured in English, and Boris chuckled as he handed the

 rifle back to him.

 "English jokes! I love your English jokes."

 When Nicholas left camp carrying the little rifle in its slip case,

 Royan followed him down to the river and helped him fill two small

 canvas bags with white river sand. He laid them on top of a convenient

 rock and they formed a firm but malleable rest for the rifle as he

 settled it over them.

 Using the open hillside as a safe back'stop, he "stepped out two hundred

 yards and at that range set up a cardboard carton on which he had taped

 a Bisley'type target. He came back to where Royan waited and then

 settled down behind the rock on which the weapon lay.

 Royan was unprepared for the report of the first shot from the dainty,

 almost feminine-looking rifle. She jumped involuntarily, and her ears

 sang.

 "What a horrible, vicious thing!" she exclaimed. "How can you bring

 yourself to kill lovely animals with a highpowered gun like that?" she

 demanded.

 "Rifle," he corrected her, as he noted the strike of the shot through

 his binoculars. "Would it make you feel better if I used a low-powered

 rifle, or beat them to death with a stick?"

 The shot had struck three inches right and two inches low. As he

 adjusted the telescopic sight he attempted to explain. "An ethical

 hunter does everything in his power to kill as swiftly and as cleanly as

 is possible, and that means stalking in as close as he is able to do,

 using a weapon of adequate power and sighting it the best way he knows

 how."

 His next shot struck exactly on line but only an inch above the

 bull's-eye. He wanted it to shoot three inches high at that range. He

 worked on the sight again.

 "Gun or rifle, but I don't understand why you would want to deliberately

 kill any of God's creatures," she protested.

 "That I can never explain to you." He aimed deliberately and fired once.

 Even through the lower magnification of the sight lens he could see that

 the bullet had struck exactly three inches high.

 "It is something to do with an atavistic urge that few men, no matter

 how Cultured and civilized they deem themselves, can deny completely."

 He fired a second time.

 "Some of them work it out in the board room, others on the golf course

 or the tennis court, and some of us on a salmon river, in the ocean

 deeps or in the hunting field."

 He fired a third shot, merely to confirm the previous two, and then went

 on, "As for God's creatures, he gave them to us. You are the believer.

 Quote me Acts 10, verses 12 and 13."

 "Sorry." She shook her head. "You tell me.

 ... all manner Of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and

 creeping things, and fowL of the air,"'

 Nicholas obliged her. "'And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter;

 kill, and eat., "You should have been a lawyer," she moaned in mock

 despair.

 "Or a priest," he suggested, and went forward to retrieve the target. He

 found that his last three shots had punched a tiny symmetrical rosette

 three inches above the bull, all three bullet holes just touching each

 other.

 He patted the butt stock of the little rifle, "That's my lovely darling,

 Lucrezia Borgia." He had named the rifle for her beauty and for her

 murderous potential.

 He slid the rifle back into its leather slip case and they walked back

 together. As they came in sight of the camp, Nicholas pulled up short.

 "Visitors," he said, and raised his binoculars. "Aha! We have flushed

 something out of the undergrowth. That is a Pegasus truck parked there

 and, unless I am much mistaken, one of our visitors is the charming

 laddie from Abilene.

 Let's go down and find out what is going on."

 As they drew closer to camp, they realized that there were a dozen or

 more heavily armed, uniformed soldiers clustered around the red and

 green Pegasus truck, and that Jake Helm and an Ethiopian army officer

 were seated under the awning of the dining tent in serious and intent

 conversation with Boris, A

 s soon as Nicholas entered the tent, Boris introduced him to the

 bespectacled Ethiopian officer. "This is Colonel Tuma Nogo, the military

 commander of the southern Goiam region."

 "How do you do?" Nicholas greeted him, but the colonel ignored the

 pleasantry.

 "I want to see your passport, and your firearms licence, he ordered

 arrogantly, while Jake Helm chewed complacently on the evil-smelling

 butt of an extinguished cigar.

 "Yes, of course," Nicholas agreed, and went to his own tent to fetch his

 briefcase. He opened it on the dining table, and smiled at the officer.

 "I am sure you will also want to see my letter of introduction from the

 British Foreign Secretary in London, and this one from the British

 Ambassador in Addis Ababa. Here is another from the Ethiopian Ambassador

 to the Court of St. James, and this is from your own Minister of

 Defence, General Abraha."

 The colonel stared in consternation at this fruit salad of ornate

 official letterheads and scarlet beribboned seals.

 Behind the gold-rimmed glasses his eyes were bemused and confused.

 "Sir!" He jumped to his feet and saluted. "You are a friend of General

 Abraha? I did not know. Nobody informed me. I beg your pardon for this

 intrusion."

 He saluted again, and his embarrassment made him awkward and ungainly.

 "I came to warn you only that the Pegasus Company is conducting drilling

 and blasting operations. There may be some danger. Please be alert. Also

 there are many bandits and outlaws, shufta, operating in this area."

 Colonel Nogo was flustered and barely coherent.

 He stopped and drew a deep breath to steady himself. "You see, I have

 been ordered to provide an escort for the employees of the Pegasus

 Company. If you yourself experience any trouble while you are here, or

 if you need assistance for any reason you have only to call on me, sir."

 "That is extremely civil of you, colonel."

 "I will detain you no longer, sir." He saluted a third time and backed

 off towards the Pegasus truck, taking the Texan foreman along with him.

 Jake Helm'had not uttered a word since their arrival, and now he left

 without a farewell.

 Colonel Nogo gave Nicholas his fourth and final salute through the cab

 window as the truck pulled away.

 Deuce!" Nicholas told Royan, as he acknowledged the salute with a

 nonchalant wave. "I think that point was definitely ours. Now at least

 we know that, for whatever reason, Mr Pegasus definitely does not want

 us in his hair. I think we can expect his next service fairly promptly.,

 They walked back to where Boris sat in the dining tent and Nicholas told

 him, "All we need now are your mules."

 "I have sent three of my men to the village to find them. They should

 have been here yesterday." The mules arrived early the next morning, six

 big sturdy animals, each accompanied by a driver dressed in the

 ubiquitous-jodhpurs and shawl. By midmorning they were loaded and ready

 to begin the descent into the gorge.

 Boris paused at the head of the pathway, and looked out over that

 valley. For once even he -seemed to be subdued and awed by the immensity

 of the drop and the rugged splendour of the gorge.

 "You will be Passing into another land in another age," he warned them

 in an uncharacteristically philosophical mood. "They say that this trail

 is two thousand years old, as old as Christ." He spread his hands in a

 deprecating gesture.

 "The old black priest in the church at Debra Maryam will tell you that

 the Virgin Mary passed this way when she fled from Israel after the

 crucifixion." He shook his head. "But then these people will believe

 anything." And he "stepped out on to the pathway.

 It clung to the cliff, descending at such an angle that each pace was

 down a rock step so deep that it stretched the-tendons and the sinews in

 their groins and knees, and jarred their spines. They were forced to use

 their hands to scramble the rougher and steeper sections, where it was

 almost as though they were descending a ladder.

 It seemed impossible that the mules under their heavy packs could follow

 them down. The plucky beasts lunged down each of the rock steps, landing

 heavily on their forelegs, then gathered themselves for the next drop.

 The trail was so narrow that the bulky packs scraped against the rock

 wall on one hand, while on the other hand the drop sucked at them

 giddily.

 When the path dog-legged and changed direction, the mules could not make

 the turn in one attempt. They were forced to back and fill, edging their

 way round the narrow trail, sweating with terror and their eyes rolling

 until the whites flashed. The drivers urged them on with wild cries and

 busy whips.

 At places the pathway entered the body of the mountain, passing behind

 butts and needles of rock that time and erosion had prised away from the

 cliff face. These rocky gateways were so narrow that the mules had to be

 unloaded and the packs carried through by the drivers, and then the

 mules were reloaded on the far side.

 Look!" Royan cried in astonishment and pointed out into the void. A

 black vulture rose up out of the depths on widespread pinions and

 floated past them almost within arm's length, turning its gruesome naked

 head of pink lappeted skin to stare at them with inscrutable black eyes

 before sailing away.

 "He is using the thermals of heated air from the valley for lift,'

 Nicholas explained to her. He pointed out along the cliff to an

 overhanging buttress on the same level as themselves. "There is one of

 their nests." It was a shaggy mound of sticks piled on an inaccessible

 ledge. The excrement of the birds that had inhabited it over the ages

 had painted the cliff face below with streaks of brilliant white, and

 even at this distance they could catch whiffs of rotting offal and

 decaying flesh.

 All that day they clung to the precipitous track as they eased their way

 down that terrible wall. It was late afternoon, and they were only

 halfway down, when the trail turned back upon itself once more and they

 heard the rumble of the falls ahead. The sound grew louder and became a

 thunderous roar as they moved around the corner of another buttress and

 came in full sight of the falls.

 The wind created by the torrent tugged at them and forced them to clutch

 for handholds. The spray blew around them and wetted their upturned

 faces, but the i: Ethiopian guide led them straight on until it seemed

 that they must be washed away into the valley still hundreds of feet

 below.

 Then, miraculously, the waters parted and they stepped behind the great

 translucent curtain into a deep recess of moss-covered and gleaming wet

 rock, carved from the cliff by the force of water over the aeons. The

 only light in this gloomy place was filtered through the waterfall,

 green and mysterious like some undersea cavern.

 "This is where we sleep tonight," Boris announced, obviously enjoying

 their astonishment. He pointed to bundles of firewood piled at the rear

 of the cave, and the smoke-blackened wall above the stone hearth. The

 muleteers carrying food and supplies down to the priests in the

 monastery have used this place for centuries."

 As they moved deeper into the cavern, the sound of falling water became

 muted to a dull background rumble and the rock underfoot was dry. Once

 the servants had lit the fire, it became -a warm and comfortable, not to

 say romantic, lodging.

 With an old soldier's eye for the most comfortable spot, Nicholas laid

 out his sleeping bag in a corner at the back of the cave, and quite

 naturally Royan unrolled hers beside his. They were both tired out by

 the unusual exertion of climbing down the cliff wall, and after supper

 they stretched out in their sleeping bags in companionable silence and

 watched the firelight playing on the roof of the cave.

 "Just think!" Royan whispered. "Tomorrow we will be retracing the

 footsteps of old Taita himself."

 "To say nothing of the Virgin Mary,'Nicholas smiled.

 "You are a horrid old cynic," she sighed. "And what is more, you

 probably snore."

 "You are about to find out the hard way," he told her, but she was

 asleep before him. Her breathing was gentle and even, and he could just

 hear it above the sound of the water. It was a long time since he had

 had a lovely woman lying at his side. When he was sure she was deeply

 under, he reached across and touched her cheek gently.

 "Pleasant dreams, little one," he whispered tenderly.

 "You have had a busy day." That was the way he had often bid his younger

 daughter sleep.

 The muleteers were stirring long before the dawn, and the whole party

 was on the path, way again as soon as the light was strong enough to

 reveal their footing. When the early sun struck the upper walls of the

 cliff face, they were still high enough above the valley floor to have

 an aerial view of the terrain.

 Nicholas drew Royan aside and they let the rest of the caravan go on

 down ahead of them.

 He found a place to sit and unrolled the satellite photograph between

 them. Picking out the major peaks and features of the scene, they

 orientated themselves and began to make some order out of the

 cataclysmic landscape that rioted below them.

 "We can't see the Abbay river from here," Nicholas pointed out. "It's

 still deep in the sub-gorge. We will probably only get our first glimpse

 of it from almost directly above."

 "If we have identified our present position accurately, then the river

 will make two ox'bow bends around that bluff over there."

 "Yes, and the confluence of the Dandera river with the Abbay is over

 there, below those cliffs." He used his thumb knuckle as a rough scale

 measure. "About fifteen miles from here."

 "It looks as though the Dandera has changed its course many times over

 the centuries.-I can see at least two gullies that look like ancient

 river beds." She pointed down: "Mere, and there. They are all choked

 with jungle now." She looked crestfallen, "Oh, Nicholas, it is such a

 huge and confused area. How are we ever going to find the single

 entrance to a tomb hidden in all that?"

 "Tomb? What tomb is this?" Boris demanded with interest. He had come

 back up the trail to find them. They had not heard his approach, and now

 he stood over them.

 "What tomb are you talking about?, "Why, the tomb of St. Frumentius, of

 course," Nicholas told him smoothly, showing no concern at having been

 overheard.

 "Isn't the monastery dedicated to the saint?" Royan asked as smoothly,

 as she rolled up the photograph.

 "Da." He nodded, looking disappointed, as though he expected something

 of more interest. "Yes, St. Frumentius.

 But they will not let you visit the tomb. They will not let you into the

 inner part of the monastery. Only the priests are allowed in there."

 He removed his cap and scratched the short, stiff bristles that covered

 his scalp. They rasped like wire under his fingernails. "This week is

 the ceremony of Timkat, the Blessing of the Tabot. There will be a great

 deal of excitement down there. You will find it very interesting, but

 you will not be able to enter the Holy of Holies, nor will you be able

 to see the actual tomb. I have never met any white man who has seen it."

 He squinted up at the sun. "We must get on. It looks close, but it will

 take us two more days to reach the Abbay.

 It is bad ground down there. A long march, even for a famous dik-dik

 hunter." He laughed delightedly at his own joke, and turned away down

 the path.

 As they approached the bottom of the cliff, the gradient of the trail

 smoothed out and the steps became shallower and further apart. The going

 became easier and their progress swifter, but the air had changed in

 quality and taste. It was no longer cool, bracing mountain air but the

 languid, enervating air of the equator, with the smell and taste of the

 encroaching jungle.

 "Hod' said Royan, shrugging out of the woollen shawl.

 "Ten degrees hotter, at least," Nicholas agreed. He pulled his old army

 jersey over his head, leaving.his hair in curly disarray. "And we can

 expect it to get hotter before we reach the Abbay. We still have to

 descend another three thousand feet."

 Now the path followed the Dandera river for a while.

 Sometimes they were several hundred feet above it, and shortly

 afterwards they splashed waist-deep through a ford, hanging on to the

 panniers of the mules to keep themselves from being swept away on the

 flood.

 Then the gorge of the Dandera river was too deep and steep to follow any

 longer, as sheer cliffs dropped into dark pools. So they left the river

 and followed the track that squirmed like a dying snake amongst eroded

 hills and tall red stone bluffs.

 A mile or two further downstream they rejoined the river in a different

 mood as it rippled through dense forest.

 The dangling lianas swept the surface and tree moss brushed their heads

 as they passed, straggling and unkempt as the beard of the old priest at

 Debra Maryam. Vervet monkeys chattered at them from the treetops and

 ducked their heads in wide-eyed outrage at the human intrusion into

 these secret places. Once a large animal crashed away through the

 undergrowth, and Nicholas glanced across at Boris.

 The Russian shook his head, laughing. "No, English, not dik-dik. Only

 kudu."

 On the hillside above them the kudu paused to look back. He was a large

 bull with full twists to his wide corkscrew horns, a magnificent beast

 with a maned dewlap and pricked ears shaped like trumpets. He stared at

 them with huge, startled eyes. Boris whistled softly and his attitude

 changed abruptly.

 "Those horns are over fifty inches. They would get a place right at the

 top of Rowland Ward." He was referring to the register of big game which

 was the Bible of the trophy hunter. "Don't you want to take him,

 English?" He ran to the nearest mule and pulled the Rigby rifle from its

 slip case, then ran back and offered it to Nicholas.

 "Let him go." Nicholas shook his head. "Only dik-dik for me."

 With a flirt of his white powder-puff tail, the bull was gone over the

 ridge. Boris shook his head disgustedly and spat into the river.

 "Why did he try to insist that you kill it?" Royan demanded as they went

 on.

 "A photograph of a record pair of horns like that would look good on his

 advertising brochure. Suck in them clients."

 All day they followed the winding trail, and in the late afternoon they

 camped in a clearing above the river where it was evident that other

 caravans had camped many times before them. It seemed obvious that this

 road was divided into time-honoured stages: every traveller took three

 full days from the top of the falls to reach the monastery, and they all

 camped at the same sites.

 "Sorry. No shower here," Boris told his clients. "If you want to wash,

 there is a safe pool around the first bend upstream."

 Royan looked appealingly at Nicholas, "I am so tired and sweaty. Please

 won't you stand guard for me, where you can hear me call if I need you?"

 So he lay on the mossy bank just below the bend, out of sight but close

 enough to hear her splash and squeal at the cold embrace of the water.

 Once when he turned his head he realized that the current must have

 drifted her downstream, for through the trees he caught a flash of a

 naked back, and the curve of a buttock, creamy and glistening wet with

 water. He looked away again guiltily, but he was startled by the

 intensity of his physical arousal brought on by that brief glimpse of

 lambent skin dappled with the late sunlight through the trees.

 When she came downstream along the bank, singing softly, towelling her

 wet hair, she called to him, "Your turn.

 Do you want me to stand guard for you?"

 "I am a big boy now." He shook his head, but as she passed him he

 noticed the saucy glint in her eye, and he ly if she had been fully

 aware of just how wondered sudden far downstream she had swum, and how

 much he had seen.

 He was titillated by the thought.

 He went upstream to the pool alone, and as he stripped he looked down at

 himself and felt guilty when he saw how she had moved him- Since

 Rosalind, no other woman had had this effect on him.

 "A nice cold plunge won't do you any harm, my lad." He threw his jeans

 over a bush, and dived into the pool.

 sat at the campfire after the evening meal, olas looked up suddenly and

 cocked his

 "Am I hearing things?" he wondered.

 "No," Tessay laughed. "That is singing you hear. The priests from the

 monastery are coming to welcome us."

 They saw the torches then, winding up the hillside in procession,

 flickering through the trees as they approached the camp. The muleteers

 and the servants crowded forward, singing and clapping rhythmically to

 greet the deputation from the monastery.

 The deep male voices soared and then dropped away, almost to a whisper,

 then rose again in descant, haunting and beautiful, the sound of Africa

 in the night. It drove icy thrills down Nicholas's spine, so that he

 shivered involuntarily.

 Then they saw the white robes of the priests, flitting like moths in the

 torchlight as they wound along the trail The camp servants fell on their

 knees as the first of the holy men entered the perimeter of the camp.

 They were young acolytes, bare-headed and barefooted. They were followed

 by the monks, wearing long robes and tall turbans.

 Their ranks wheeled aside and opened up, an honour guard for the phalanx

 of deacons and fully ordained priests in their gaudy embroidered robes

 and vestments.

 Each of them carried a heavy Coptic cross, set on a tall staff and

 intricately chased and worked innative silver.

 They in turn opened into two ranks, still chanting, and allowed the

 canopied palanquin to be carried forward by four hefty young acolytes

 and placed in the centre of the camp. The crimson and yellow silk

 curtains shimmered in the light of the camp lanterns and the torches of

 the procession.

 "We must go forward to welcome the abbot," Boris told Nicholas in a

 stage whisper. "His name is Jali Hora." As they stepped up to the

 litter, the curtains were drawn dramatically aside and a tall figure

 stepped down to earth.

 Both Tessay and Royan sank to their knees respectfully, and clasped

 their hands at the breast. However, Nicholas and Boris remained on their

 feet, and Nicholas inspected the abbot with interest.

 jali Hora was skeletally thin. Beneath the skirts of his robe his legs

 were like sticks of cured tobacco, tar'black and twisted, with

 desiccated sinew and stringy muscle. His robe was green and gold, worked

 with gold thread that glittered in the firelight. On his head he wore a

 tall hat with a flat top embroidered with a pattern of crosses and

 stars.

 The abbot's face -was dead sooty black, the skin wrinkled and riven with

 the deep etchings of age. There were few teeth behind his puckered lips,

 and even those were yellowed and askew. His beard was startling silver

 white, breaking like storm surf on the old bones of his jaw.

 One eye was opaque blue and blinded with tropical ophthalmia, but the

 other eye glistened like that of a hunting leopard.

 He began to speak in a high, quavering voice. "A blessing," Boris warned

 Nicholas, and they both bowed their heads respectfully. The assembled

 priests came in with the chanted response each time the old man paused.

 When at last he had finished giving his blessing jali Hora made the sign

 of the cross in four directions, rotating slowly towards each point of

 the compass, while two altar boys swung their silver censers vigorously,

 deluging the night with pungent clouds of incense smoke.

 After the blessing the two women came forward to kneel before the abbot.

 He stooped over them and struck them lightly on each cheek with his

 silver cross, chanting a falsetto blessing over them.

 "They say the old man is over a hundred years old," Boris whispered to

 Nicholas.

 Two white-robed debteras brought forward a stool of African ebony, so

 beautifully carved that Nicholas eyed it acquisitively. He guessed that

 it was probably centuries old, and would have made a handsome addition

 to the museum collection. The two debteras took Jah Hora's elbows and

 gently seated him on the stool. Then the rest of the company sank to the

 earth in a congregation around him, their black faces lifted towards him

 attentively.

 Tessay sat at his feet, and when her husband spoke she translated

 quietly for him into Amharic. "It is a great pleasure and an honour for

 me to greet you again, Holy Father."

 The old man nodded, and Boris went on, "I have brought an English

 nobleman of royal blood to, visit the monastery of St. Frumentius."

 "I say, steady on, old boy!, Nicholas protested, but all the

 congregation studied him with expectant interest.

 "What do I do now?" he asked Boris out of the corner of his mouth.

 "What do You think he came all this way for?" Boris grinned maliciously.

 "He wants a gift. Money,'

 "Maria Theresa dollars?" he enquired, referring to the centuries-old

 traditional currency of Ethiopia, "Not necessarily. Times have changed.

 jali Hora will be happy to take Yankee green-backs."

 "How much?"

 "You are a nobleman of royal blood. You will be hunting in his valley.

 Five hundred dollars at least."

 Nicholas winced and went to fetch his bag from one of the mule panniers.

 When he came back he bowed to the abbot and placed the sheaf of currency

 in his outstretched, pink-palmed claw. The abbot smiled, exposing the

 yellow stumps of his teeth, and spoke briefly.

 Tessay translated for him, "He says, "Welcome to the monastery of St.

 Frumentius and the season of Timkat." He wishes you good hunting on the

 banks of the Abbay river."

 Immediately the solemn mood of the devout company changed. They broke

 out in smiles and laughter, and the abbot looked expectantly at Boris.

 "The holy abbot says it has been a thirsty journey," Tessay translated.

 "The old devil loves his brandy," Boris explained, and shouted to the

 camp butler. With some ceremony a bottle of brandy was brought and

 placed on the camp table in front of the abbot, shoulder to shoulder

 with the bottle of vodka in front of Boris. They toasted each other, and

 the abbot tossed back a dram that made his good eye weep with tears, and

 his voice husky as he directed a question at Royan.

 "He asks you, Woizero Royan, where do you come from, daughter, that you

 follow the true path of Christ the Saviour of man?"

 "I am an Egyptian, of the old religion," Royan replied.

 The abbot and all his priests nodded and beamed with approval.

 "We are all brothers and sisters in Christ, the Egyptians and the

 Ethiopians," the abbot told her. "Even the word Coptic derives from the

 Greek for Egyptian. For over sixteen hundred years the Abuna, the

 bishop, of Ethiopia was always appointed by the Patriarch in Cairo. Only

 the Emperor Haile Selassie changed that in 1959, but we still follow the

 true road to Christ. You are welcome, my daughter."

 His debtera poured another dram of brandy and the old man swallowed it

 at a gulp. Even Boris looked impressed, "Where does the skinny old black

 tortoise put it?" he wondered aloud. Tessay did not translate, but she

 lowered her eyes and the hurt she felt for the insult to the holy man

 showed on her madonna features.

 Jah Hora turned to Nicholas. "He wants to know what animals you have

 come to hunt here in his valley," Tessay told him.

 Nicholas steeled himself and then replied carefully.

 There was a long moment of disbelief, then the abbot cackled happily and

 the assembled priests shouted with incredulous mirth.

 "A dik-dik! You have come to hunt a dikdik! But there is no meat on an

 animal that size."

 Nicholas let them get over the first shock, and then produced a

 photograph of the mounted specimen of Moquoda harPerU from the museum.

 He placed it on the table in front of Jah Hora.

 "This is no ordinary dik-dik. It is a holy dik-dik," he told them in

 portentous tones, nodding at Tessay for the translation. "Let me recount

 the legend." They were silenced by the prospect of a good story with

 religious overtones. Even the abbot arrested the glass on its way to his

 lips and replaced it on the table. His one eye swivelled from the

 photograph to Nicholas's face.

 "When John the Baptist was dying of starvation in the desert," Nicholas

 began, and a few of the priests crossed themselves at the mention of the

 saint's name, "he had been thirty days and thirty nights without a

 morsel passing his lips-' Nicholas spun out the yarn for a while,

 dwellin on the extremities of hunger endured by the saint, details

 savoured by his audience who liked their holy men to suffer in the name

 of righteousness.

 "In the end the Lord took mercy on his servant and placed a small

 antelope in a thicket of acacia, held fast by the thorns. He said unto

 the saint: "I have prepared a meal for you that you shall not die. Take

 of this meat and eat."

 Where John the Baptist touched the small creature, the marks of his

 thumb and fingers were imprinted upon its back for all time, and all

 generations to come." They were silent and impressed.

 Nicholas passed the photograph to the abbot. "See the prints of the

 saint's fingers upon it."

 The old man studied the print avidly, holding it up to his single eye,

 and at last he exclaimed, "It is true. The marks of the saint's fingers

 are clear to see."

 He passed it to his deacons. Encouraged by the abbot's endorsement, they

 exclaimed and wondered over the picture of the insignificant creature in

 its coat of striped fur'.

 "Have any of your men ever laid eyes upon one of these animals?"

 Nicholas demanded, and one after the other they shook their heads. The

 photograph completed the circle and was passed to the rank of squatting

 acolytes.

 Suddenly one of them leaped to his feet prancing, brandishing the

 photograph and gibbering with excitement.

 "I have seen this holy creature! With my very own eyes, I have seen it."

 He was a young boy, barely adolescent.

 There were cries of derision and disbelief from the others. One of them

 snatched the print from the boy's grasp and waved it out of his reach,

 taunting him with it.

 "The child is soft in the head, and often possessed by demons and

 fits,'Jali Hora explained sorrowfully. "Take no notice of him, poor

 Tamre!'

 Tamre's eyes were wild as he ran down the rank of acolytes, trying

 desperately to recapture the photograph.

 But they passed it back and forth, keeping it just out of his reach,

 teasing him and jeering at his antics.

 Nicholas rose to his feet to intervene. He found this taunting of a

 weak'minded lad offensive, but at that moment something tripped in the

 boy's mind, and he fell to the ground as though struck down by a club.

 His back arched and his limbs twitched and jerked uncontrollably, his

 eyes rolled back into his skull until only the whites showed, and white

 froth creamed on his lips that were drawn back in a grinning rictus.

 Before Nicholas could go to him, four of his peers picked him up bodily

 and carried him away. Their laughter dwindled into the night. The others

 acted as though this was nothing out of the ordinary, and Jali Hora

 nodded to his debtera to refill his glass.

 it was late when at last Jah Hora took his leave and was helped into the

 palanquin by his deacons. He took the remains of the brandy with him,

 clutching the halfempty bottle in one clawed hand and tossing out

 benedictions with the other.

 "You made a good impression, Milord English," Boris told him. "He liked

 your story of John the Baptist, but he liked your money even more."

 When they set out the next morning, the path followed the river for a

 while. But within a mile the waters quickened their pace, and then raced

 through the narrow opening between high red cliffs and plunged over

 another waterfall.

 Nicholas left the welltrodden trail and went down to the brink of the

 falls. He looked down two hundred feet into a deep cleft in the rock,

 only just wide enough to allow the angry river to squeeze through. He

 could have thrown a stone across the gap. There was no path nor foothold

 in that chasm, and he turned back and rejoined the rest of the caravan

 as it detoured away from the river and into another thickly wooded

 valley.

 "This was probably once the course of the Dandera river, before it cut a

 fresh bed for itself through the chasm." Royan pointed to the high

 ground on each side of the path, and then to the water-worn boulders

 that littered the trail.

 "I think you are right," Nicholas agreed. These cliffs seem to be an

 intrusion of limestone through the basalt and sandstone. The whole area

 has been severely faulted and cut up by erosion and the ever-changing

 river. You can be certain that those limestone cliffs are riddled with

 caves and springs."

 Now the trail descended rapidly towards the Blue Nile, falling away

 almost fifteen hundred feet in altitude' in the last few miles. The

 sides of the valley were heavily covered with vegetation and at many

 places small springs of water oozed from the limestone and trickled down

 the old river bed.

 The heat built up steadily as they went down, and soon even Royan's

 khaki shirt was stained with dark patches of sweat between her shoulder

 blades.

 At one stage a freshet of clear water gushed from an area of dense bush

 high up the hillside and swelled the stream into a small river. Then

 they turned a corner of the valley and found that they and the stream

 had rejoined the main flow of the Dandera river. Looking back up the

 gorge, they could see where the river had emerged from the chasm through

 a narrow archway in the cliff. The rock surrounding the cleft was a

 peculiar pink in colour, smooth and polished, folded back upon itself,

 so that it resembled the mucous membrane on the inside of a pair of

 human lips.

 The rock -was of such an unusual colour and texture that they were both

 struck by it. They turned aside to study it while the mules went on

 downwards, the clatter of their receding hoofbeats and the voices of the

 men echoing and reverberating weirdly in this confined and unearthly

 place.

 "It looks like some monstrous gargoyle, gushing water through its

 mouth," Royan whispered, looking up at the cleft and at those strange

 rock formations. "I can imagine how the ancient Egyptians, led by Taita

 and Prince Memnon, would have been moved if they had ever reached this

 place. &at mystical connotations would they have attributed to such a

 natural phenomenon!'

 Nicholas was silent, studying her face. Her eyes were dark with awe, and

 her expression solemn. In this setting she reminded him strongly of a

 portrait that he had in his collection at Quenton Park, It was a

 fragment of a fresco from the Valley of the Kings, depicting a

 Ramessidian princess.

 Why should that surprise you?" he asked himself. "The very same blood

 runs in her veins."

 She turned to face him, "Give me hope, Nicky. Tell me that I have not

 dreamed all this. Tell me that we are going to find what we are looking

 for, and that we are going to vindicate Duraid's death."

 Her face was upturned to his, and it seemed to glow under the light dew

 of perspiration and the strength of her commitment. He was seized by an

 almost overwhelming urge to take her up in his arms and kiss those

 moistly parted lips, but instead he turned away and started down the

 trail.

 He dared not look back at her until he had himself fully under control.

 After a while he heard her quick, light tread on the rock behind him.

 They went on down in silence, and he was so preoccupied that he was

 unprepared for the sudden stunning vista that opened abruptly before

 them.

 They stood high on a ledge above the sub-gorge of the Nile. Below them

 was a mighty cauldron of red rock five hundred feet deep. The main flow

 of the legendary river plunged in a green torrent into the shadowy

 abyss. It was so deep that the sunlight did not reach down into it.

 Beside them the sparser waters of the Dandera river took the same leap,

 falling white as an egret's feather, twisting and blowing in the false

 wind of the gorge. In the depths the waters mingled, churning and

 roiling together in a welter of foam, turning upon themselves like a

 great wheel, weighty and viscous as oil, until at last they found the

 exit gorge and tore away down it with irresistible force and power.

 "You sailed through that in a boat?"Royan asked, with awe in her voice.

 "We were young and foolish, then,'Nicholas said with a sad little smile

 that was haunted by old memories.

 They were silent for a long while. Then RQyan said softly, "One can see

 how this would have stopped Taita and his prince as they came upstream."

 She looked about her, and then pointed down the gorge towards the west.

 "They certainly could never have come up the sub-gorge itself. They must

 have followed the line of the top of the cliffs, right along here where

 we are standing." Her voice took on an edge of excitement at the

 thought.

 "Unless they came up the other side of the river," Nicholas suggested to

 tease her, and her face fell.

 "I hadn't thought of that. Of course it's possible. How would we ever

 cross over, if we find no evidence on this side?

 "Let's consider that only when it's forced upon us. We have enough to

 contend with as it is, without looking for more hardships."

 Again they were silent, both of them considering the magnitude and

 uncertainty of the task that they had taken on. Then Royan roused

 herself.

 "Where is the monastery? I can see no sign of it."

 "It's in the cliff right under our feet."

 "Will we camp down there?"

 "I doubt it. Let's catch up with Boris and find out what he intends to

 do."

 They followed the trail along the edge of the cauldron, and came up with

 the mule caravan at a spot where the track forked. One branch turned

 away from the river into a wooded depression, while the other still

 hugged the rimrock.

 Boris was waiting for them, and he indicated the track that led away

 from the river. "There is a good campsite up there in the trees where I

 stayed last time I hunted down here."

 There were several tall wild fig trees throwing shade across this glade,

 and a spring of fresh water at the head.

 To minimize the loads, Boris had not carried tents down into the gorge.

 So as soon as the mules were unloaded he set his men to building three

 small thatched huts for their accommodation, and to digging a pit

 latrine well away from the spring.

 While this work was going on, Nicholas beckoned to Royan and Tessay, and

 the three of them set off to explore the monastery. Where the trail

 forked, Tessay led them along the path that skirted the cliff top, and

 soon they came to a broad rock staircase that descended the cliff face.

 There was a party of white-robed monks coming UP the stone stairway, and

 Tessay stopped briefly to chat to them. As they went on she told

 Nicholas and Royan, "Today is Katera, the eve of the festival of Timkat,

 which begins tomorrow. They are very excited. It is one of the major

 events of the religious year."

 "What does the festival celebrate?" Royan asked. "It is not part of the

 Church calendar in Egypt."

 "It's the Ethiopian Epiphany, celebrating the baptis of Christ,' Tessay

 explained. "During the ceremony the tabot will be taken down to the

 river to be rededicated and revitalized, and the acolytes will receive

 baptism, as did Jesus Christ at the hand of the Baptist."

 They followed the staircase down the sheer cliff face.

 The treads of the steps had been dished by the passage of bare feet over

 the centuries. Down they went, with the great cauldron of the Nile

 boiling and hissing and steaming with spray hundreds of feet below them.

 Suddenly they came out on to a wide terrace that had been hewn by man's

 hand from the living rock. The red rock overhung it, forming a roof to

 the cloister with arches of stone left in place by the ancient builders

 to support it.

 The interior wall of the long covered terrace was riddled with the

 entrances to the catacombs beyond. Over the ages the cliff face had been

 mined and burrowed to form the halls and cells, the vestibules, churches

 and shrines of the monastic community which had inhabited them for well

 over a thousand years.

 There were groups of monks seated along the length of the terrace. Some

 of them were listening to one of the deacons reading aloud from an

 illuminated copy of the scriptures.

 "So many of them are illiterate," Tessay sighed. "The Bible must be read

 and explained to even the monks, for most of them are unable to read it

 for themselves."

 "This was what the Church of Constantine was like, the Church of

 Byzantium," Nicholas pointed out quietly.

 "It remains the Church of cross and book, of elaborate and sumptuous

 ritual in a predominantly illiterate world today." As they wandered

 slowly down the cloister they passed other seated groups who, under the

 direction of a precentor, were chanting and singing the Amharic psalms

 and hymns.

 >From the interior of the cells and caves there came the IC hum of

 voices raised in prayer or supplication, and the air was thick with the

 smell of human occupation that had taken place over hundreds of years.

 It was the smell of wood smoke and incense, of stale food and excrement,

 of sweat and piety, of suffering and of sickness. Amongst the groups of

 monks were the pilgrims who had made the journey, or been carried by

 their relatives, down into the gorge to make petition to the saint, or

 to seek from him a cure for their disease and suffering.

 There were blind children weeping in their mothers' arms, and lepers

 with the flesh rotting and falling from their bones, and still others in

 the coma of sleeping sickness or some other terrible tropical

 affliction. Their whines and moans of agony blended with the chanting of

 the monks, and with the distant clamour of the Nile as it cascaded into

 the cauldron.

 They came at last to the entrance to the cavern cathedral of St.

 Frumentius. It was a circular opening like the mouth of a fish, but the

 surrounds of the portals were painted with a dense border of stars and

 crosses, and of saintly heads. The portraits were primitive, and

 rendered in ochre and soft earthy tones that were all the more appealing

 for their childlike simplicity. The eyes of the saints were huge and

 outlined in charcoal, their expressions tranquil and benign.

 A deacon in a grubby green velvet robe guarded the entrance, but when

 Tessay spoke to him he smiled and nodded and gestured for them to enter.

 The lintel was low and Nicholas had to duck his head to pass under it,

 but on the far side he raised it again to look about him in amazement.

 The roof of the cavern was so high that it was lost in the gloom. The

 rock walls -were covered with murals, a celestial host of angels and

 archangels who flickered and wavered in the light of the candles and oil

 lamps. They were partially obscured by the long tapestry banners that

 hung down the walls, grimy with incense soot, their fringes frayed and

 tattered. On one of these St. Michael rode a prancing white horse, on

 another the Virgin knelt at the foot of the cross, while above her the

 pate body of Christ bled from the wound of the Roman spear in his side.

 This was the outer nave of the church. In the far wall ". the doorway to

 the middle chamber was guarded by a massive pair of wooden doors that

 stood open. The three of them crossed the stone floor, picking their way

 between the kneeling petitioners and pilgrims in their rags and tatters,

 in their misery and their religious ecstasy. In the feeble light of the

 lamps and the blue haze of incense smoke they seemed lost souls

 languishing eternally in the outer darkness of purgatory.

 The visitors reached the set of three stone steps that led up to the

 inner doors, but their way was blocked at the threshold by two robed

 deacons in tall, flat-topped hats.

 One of these addressed Tessay sternly.

 "They will not even let us enter the qiddist, the middle chamber,'

 Tessay told them regretfully. "Beyond that lies the maqdas, the Holy of

 Holies." A

 They peered past the guards, and in the gloom of the qiddist could just

 make out the door to the inner sanctum.

 "Only the ordained priests are allowed to enter the maqdas, for it

 contains the tabot and the entrance to the tomb of the saint."

 Disappointed and frustrated, they made their way out of the cavern and

 back along the terrace. They ate their dinner under a sky full of stars.

 The air was still stiflingly hot, and clouds of mosquitoes hovered just

 out of range of the repellents with which they had all smeared their

 exposed skin.

 "And so, English, I have got you where you wanted to be. Now, how are

 you going to find this animal that you have come so far to hunt?" The

 vodka was making Boris belligerent again.

 "At first light I want you to send out your trackers to work the country

 downstream from here," Nicholas told him. "Dik-dik are usually active in

 the early morning, and again late in the afternoon."

 "You are teaching your grandpapa to skin a cat," said Boris, angling

 the metaphor. He poured himself another vodka.

 "Tell them to check for spoor." Nicholas deliberately laboured his

 point. "I imagine that the tracks of the striped variety will look very

 similar to those of the common dikdik. If they find indications, then

 they must sit quietly along the edge of the thickest patches of bush and

 watch for any movement of the animals. Dik-dik are very territorial.

 They won't stray far from their own turf."

 "Da! Da! I will tell them. But what will you do? Will you spend the day

 in camp with the ladies, English?" He grinned slyly. "If you are lucky,

 you may soon not need separate huts?" He guffawed at his own wit,.and

 Tessay , looked distressed and stood up with the excuse that she was

 going to the kitchen hut to supervise the chef.

 Nicholas ignored the boorish pleasantry. "Royan and I will work the

 river in bush along the banks of the Dandera river. It looked very

 promising habitat for dik-dik. Warn your people to keep clear of the

 river. I don't want the game disturbed."

 They left camp the next morning in the glimmer of the dawn. Nicholas

 carried the Rigby rifle and a light day pack, and led Royan along the

 bank of the Dandera. They moved slowly, stopping every dozen paces to

 look and listen. The thickets were alive with the sounds and movements

 of the small mammals and birds.

 "The Ethiopians do not have a hunting tradition, and I imagine the monks

 never disturb the wildlife here in the gorge." He pointed to the tracks

 of a small antelope in the moist earth of the bank. "Bushbuck," he told

 her. "Menelik's bushbuck. Unique to this part of the world. A much

 sought-after trophy."

 "Do you really expect to find your great-grandfather's dik-dik?" she

 asked. "You seemed so determined when you discussed it with Boris."

 "Of course not," he grinned. "I think the old man made it up. It should

 rather have been named Harper's chimera.

 It probably was the skin of a striped mongoose that he used after all.

 We Harpers didn't get on in the world by always sticking to the literal

 truth."

 They paused to watch a Tacazze suribird fluttering over a bunch of

 yellow blossoms high above them in the canopy of the river in forest.

 The tiny bird's plumage sparkled like a tiara of emeralds.

 "Still, it gives us a wonderful excuse to fossick about in the bushes."

 He glanced back to make certain that they were well clear of the camp,

 and then gestured for her to sit beside him on a fallen treetrunk. "So,

 let's get it clear in our minds what we are looking for. You tell me."

 "We are looking for the remains of a funerary temple, or the ruins of

 the necropolis where the workers lived while they were excavating

 Pharaoh Mamose's tomb."

 "Any sort of masonry or stonework," he agreed, especially Ily some sort

 of column or monument."

 Taita's stone testament," se noc "It's engraved or chiselled with

 hieroglyphics. Probably badly weathered, fallen over, covered with

 vegetation - I don't know. Anything at all. We are fishing blind in dark

 waters."

 "Well, why are we still sitting here? Let's start fishing." In the

 middle of the morning Nicholas found the tracks of a dik-dik along the

 river bank. They took up a position against the hole of one of the big

 trees and sat quietly for a while in the shadows of the forest, until at

 last they were rewarded by a glimpse of one of the tiny creatures. It

 passed close to where they sat, wriggling its trunklike proboscis,

 stepping daintily on its fill hooves, nipping a leaf from a low-hanging

 branch, and munching it busily. However, its coat was a uniform drab

 grey, unrelieved by stripes of any kind.

 When it disappeared into the undergrowth, Nicholas stood up. "No luck.

 Common variety," he whispered. "Let's get on."

 A little after noon they reached the spot where the river issued from

 between the pink flesh-coloured cliffs of the chasm. They explored these

 as far as they were able before their way was blocked by the cliffs. The

 rock fell straight into the flood, and there was no foothold at the

 water's edge that would allow them to penetrate further.

 They retreated downstream, and crossed to the far bank over a primitive

 suspension bridge of lianas and hairy flax rope that Nicholas guessed

 had been built by the monks from the monastery. Once again they tried to

 push on into the chasm. Nicholas even attempted to wade around of pink

 rock that barred the way, around the first bus but the current was too

 strong and threatened to sweep him off his feet. He was forced to

 abandon the attempt.

 "If we can't get through there, then it's highly unlikely that Taita and

 his workmen would have done so."

 They went back as far as the hanging bridge and found a shady place

 close to the water to eat the lunch that Tessay had packed for them. The

 heat in the middle of the day was stupefying. Royan wet her cotton

 neckerchief in the river and dabbed at her face as she lay beside him.

 Nicholas lay on his back and studied every inch of the pink cliffs

 through his binoculars. He was looking for any cleft or opening in their

 smooth polished surfaces.

 He spoke without lowering the binoculars. "Reading River God, it looks

 as if Taita actually enlisted help to switch the bodies of Tanus, Great

 Lion of Egypt, and the Pharaoh himself." He lowered the glasses and

 looked at Royan. "I find that puzzling, for it would have been an

 outrageous thing to do in terms of his period and belief Is that a fair

 translation of the scrolls? Did Taita truly switch the bodies?"

 She laughed and rolled over to face him. "Your old chum Wilbur has an

 overheated imagination. The only basis for that whole bit of

 story-telling is a single line in the scrolls. "To me he was more a king

 than ever Pharaoh been."' She rolled on to her back again. "That is a

 good example of my objection to the book. He mixes fact and fantasy into

 an inextricable stew. As far as I know and believe, Tanus rests in his

 own tomb and the Pharaoh in his., "Pity!" Nicholas sighed and stuffed

 the book back in his pack. "It was a romantic little touch that I

 enjoyed." He glanced at his wrist-watch and stood up. "Come on, I want

 to do a recon down the other spur of the valley. I spotted some

 interesting ground up there whilst we were on the approach march

 yesterday."

 It was late afternoon when they arrived back at the camp, and Tessay

 hurried out of her kitchen hut to greet them.

 "I have been waiting for you to return. We have had an interesting

 invitation from Jali Hora, the abbot. He has invited us to a banquet in

 the monastery to celebrate Kateral the eve of Timkat. The servants have

 set up your, shower, and the water is hot. There is just time for you to

 change before we go down to the monastery."

 The abbot sent a party of young acolytes to escort them to the

 banqueting hall. These IMC_ , young men arrived in the short African

 twilight, carrying torches to light the way.

 Royan recognized one of these as Tamre, the epileptic boy. When she

 singled him out for her warmest smile, he came forward shyly and offered

 her a bouquet of wild flowers that he had picked from beside the river.

 She was unprepared for this courtesy, and without thinking she thanked

 him in Arabic.

 "Shukran."

 "Taffa"," the boy replied immediately, using the correct gender of the

 response, and in an accent that told her instantly that he was fluent in

 her language.

 "How do you speak Arabic so well?" she asked, intrigued.

 The boy hung his head with embarrassment and mumbled, "My mother is from

 Massawa, on the Red Sea. It is the language of my childhood., When they

 set off for the monastery, the boy monk followed Royan like a puppy.

 Once more they descended the stairway down the cliff and came out on to

 the torchlit terrace. The narrow cloisters were packed with humanity,

 and as they made their way through the press, with the honour guard of

 acolytes clearing a way for them, black faces called Amharic greetings

 and black hands reached out to touch them.

 They stooped through the low entrance to the outer nave of the

 cathedral. The chamber was lit with oil lamps an torches, so that the

 murals of saints and angels danced in the uncertain light. The stone

 floor was covered with a carpet of freshly cut reeds and rushes, their

 sweet herbal perfume leavening the heavy, smoky air. It seemed that the

 entire brotherhood of monks were seated cross-legged on this spongy

 carpet. They greeted the entrance of the little party of ferengi with

 cries of welcome and shouts of benediction. Beside each seated figure

 stood a flask of tej, the honey mead of the country. It was clear from

 the happy, sweaty faces that the flasks had already done good service.

 The visitors were led forward to a spot that had been left clear for

 them directly in front of the wooden doors to the qkUst, the middle

 chamber. Their escort urged them to sit and make themselves comfortable

 in this space. As soon as they were settled, another party of acolytes

 came in from the terrace bearing flasks of tej, and knelt to place a

 separate pottery flask in front of each of them.

 Tessay leaned across to whisper, "Better you let me sample this tej

 before you try it. The strength and colour and taste vary in every place

 that it is served, and some of it is ferocious." She raised her flask

 and drank directly from the elongated neck. When she lowered the flask

 she smiled, "This is a good brew. If you are careful, you will be all

 right with it., The monks seated around them were urging them to drink,

 and Nicholas raised his flask. The monks clapped and laughed as he

 tasted the liquor. It was light and pleasant, with a strong bouquet of

 wild honey. "Not bad!" he gave his opinion, but Tessay warned him,

 "Later they will almost certainly offer you katikala. Be very careful of

 that! It is distilled from fermented grain and it will take your head

 off at the shoulders."

 The monks were concentrating their hospitality on Royan now. The fac t

 that she was a Coptic Christian, a true believer, had impressed them. It

 was obvious also that her beauty had not gone entirely unremarked by

 this company of holy and celibate men.

 Nicholas leaned close to her, and whispered, "You will have to fake it

 for their benefit. Hold it up to your lips and pretend to swallow, or

 they will not leave you in peace."

 As she lifted the&ask the monks hooted with delight and saluted her with

 their own upraised flasks. She lowered the flask again, and whispered to

 Nicholas.

 "It's delicious. It tastes of honey."

 "You broke your vow of abstinence!" he chided her laughing. "Did you?"

 "Just a drop," she admitted, "and anyway I never made any vows."

 The acolytes knelt in turn in front of each guest, offering them a bowl

 of hot water in which to wash their right hands in preparation for the

 feast.

 Suddenly there was the sound of music and drums, and a band of musicians

 filed through the open doors of the qiddist. They took up their

 positions along the side walls of the chamber, while the congregation

 craned expectantly to peer into its dim interior.

 At last Jali Hora, the ancient abbot, appeared at the head of the steps.

 He wore a full-length robe of crimson satin, with a gold

 thread-embroidered stole around his shoulders. On his head was a massive

 crown. Though it glittered like gold, Nicholas knew that it was gilt

 brass, and the multi'coloured stones with- which it was set were just as

 certainly glass and paste.

 JahbHora raised his crook, which was surmounted by an ornate silver

 cross, and a weighty silence fell upon the company.

 "Now he will say the grace," Tessay told them, and bowedh'er head.

 JahHora's grace was fervent and lengthy, his reedy falsetto punctuated

 by devout responses from the monks.

 When at last he came to the end, two splendidly robed debteras helped

 Jali Hora down the stairs and seated him on his carved jimmera stool at

 the head of the circle of senior deacons and priests.

 The religious mood of the monks changed to one of festive bonhomie as a

 procession of acolytes entered from the terrace, each of them bearing

 upon his head a flat woven reed basket the size of a wagon wheel. They

 placed one of these in the centre of each circle of guests.

 Then at a signal from JahHora, acting in unison they whipped the lid off

 each basket. A jovial cheer went up from the monks, for each basket

 contained a shallow brass bowl that was filled from rim to rim with

 round sheets of the flat grey unleavened iniera bread.

 Two acolytes staggered in from the terrace, barely able to carry between

 them a steaming brass pot filled with gallons of wat, a spicy stew of

 fat mutton. Over each of the bowls of injera bread they tipped the great

 pot and slopped gouts of the runny red-brown wat, the surface glistening

 with hot grease.

 The assembly fell on the food voraciously. They tore off wads of injera

 and scooped up the mess of wat with it, and then stuffed the parcel into

 their open mouths, which remained open as they chewed. They washed it

 down with long swallows from the flasks, before wrapping themselves

 another parcel of running wat. Soon every one of them was greasy to the

 elbow and their chins were smeared thickly, as they chewed and drank and

 shouted with laughter.

 The serving acolytes dumped thick cakes of another type of injera beside

 each guest. These were stiffer and less yeasty in taste, friable and

 crumbling, unlike the latex rubber consistency of the thin grey sheets

 of the first kind.

 Nicholas and Royan tried to show their appreciation of the food without

 coating themselves with layers of it as the oth _rs were doing. Despite

 its appearance the wat was really rather tasty, and the dry yellow

 injera helped to cut the grease.

 The communal brass bowls were emptied in remarkably short order. Only

 the churned up mess of bread and grease remained when the acolytes came

 tottering in under the weight of another set of pots, this time filled

 to overflowing with curried chicken wat. This was splashed into the

 bowls on top of the remains of the mutton, and again the monks had at

 it.

 While they gobbled up the chicken, the tej flasks were replenished and

 the monks became more raucous.

 "I don't think I can take much more of this," Royan told Nicholas

 queasily.

 "Close your eyes and think of England," he advised her.

 "You are the star of the evening. They aren't going to let you escape."

 As soon as the chicken was eaten, the servers were back with fresh pots,

 this time brimming with fiery beef wat. They dumped this on the remnants

 of both the mutton and the chicken.

 The monk in the circle opposite Royan emptied his flask, and when an

 acolyte tried to refill it, he waved the lad away with a shout of,

 "Katikala!'

 The -cry was taken up by the other monks. "Katikala!

 Katikalar The acolytes hurried out and returned with dozens of bottles

 of the gin-clear liquor and brass bowls the size of tea cups.

 "This is the stuff to be careful of," Tessay told them.

 Surreptitiously both Nicholas and Royan were able to dribble the

 contents of their bowls into the mat of reeds on which they were

 sitting, but the monks guzzled theirs down greedily.

 "Boris is getting his share," Nicholas remarked to Royan. The Russian

 was red-faced and sweating, grinnin 9 like an idiot as he downed another

 bowlful.

 Enlivened by the katikala the monks started playing a game. One of them

 would wrap a packet of beef wat with a sheet of injera, and then, as it

 dripped fat from his poised right hand, he would turn to the monk

 beside. The victim would open his mouth until his jaws were at full

 stretch, and the packet would be stuffed into it by his considerate

 neighbour. The morsel was, of course, as large as a human gape could

 possibly accommodate, and in order to engulf it the victim had to risk

 death by asphyxiation.

 The rules of the game seemed to be that he was not allowed to use his

 hands to get it into his own mouth, neither should he dribble down the

 front of his robe, nor splutter gravy over those seated near to him. His

 contortions, together with his gulping and choking and gasping for air,

 were the source of uncontrollable hilarity. When at last he succeeded in

 getting it down, a brass bowl of katikala was held to his lips as a

 reward. He was expected to send the contents in the same direction as

 the parcel of injera.

 Jali Hora, by now warmed with tej and kadkala, lurched to his feet. In

 his right hand he held aloft a streaming parcel of injera. As he began

 an unsteady progress across the chamber, with his shiny crown awry, they

 did not at first realize his intentions. The entire company'watched him

 with interest.

 Then suddenly Royan stiffened and whispered with horror, "No! Please,

 no. Save me, Nicky. Don't let this happen to me."

 "This is the price you pay for being the leading lady," he told her.

 Jali Hora was making his rather erratic way towards where she sat. The

 gravy from the morsel he carried for her was trickling down his forearm

 and dripping from his elbow.

 The band standing along the side wall struck up a lively air. As the

 abbot came to a halt in front of Royan, rocking on his suspension like

 an ancien " carriage, they fiddled and fifed and the drummers broke out

 in a frenzy.

 The abbot presented his gift, and with one last despairing glance at

 Nicholas Royan faced the inevitable. She closed her eyes and opened her

 mouth.

 To roars of encouragement and the urgings of LIFE and drum, she

 struggled and chewed. Her face turned rosy and her eyes watered. At one

 point Nicholas thought she would admit defeat and spit it out on to the

 reed-covered have to floor. But slowly and courageously, a bit at a

 time, she forced it down and then fell back exhausted.

 Her audience, clapping and hooting loved every moment of it. The abbot

 sank stiffly to his knees in front of her and embraced her, almost

 losing his crown in the ess. Then without relinquishing his embrace proc

 he made himself a place beside her.

 "It looks as though you have made another conquest," Nicholas told her

 dryly. "I think he will be on your lap at moment, if you don't duck and

 run." any Royan reacted swiftly. She reached across and grabbed a bottle

 of kadkala, and a bowl which she filled to the brim.

 "Drink it up, Pops!" she told him, and held the bowl to his lips. Jab

 Hora accepted the challenge, but he had to release her to drink from her

 hand.

 Suddenly Royan started so violently that she spilled what was left in

 the bowl down the old man's robe. The blood drained from her face and

 she began to tremble as though in a high fever as she stared at Jab

 Hora's crown, which had slipped forward over his eyes.

 What is it?" Nicholas demanded quietly but urgently, and he reached

 across to steady her with a hand on her arm. Nobody else in the chamber

 had noticed her distress, but he was fully attuned to her moods by now.

 Still staring ashen-faced at the crown, she dropped the bowl and reached

 down and grasped his wrist. He was startled by her strength. Her grip

 was painful,,and he saw that she had driven her nails into his flesh so

 hard that she had broken the skin.

 "Look at his crown! The jewel! The blue jewel!" she gasped.

 He saw it then, amongst the gaudy shards of glass and pebbles of

 semi-precious garnets and rock crystal. The size of a silver dollar, it

 was a seal of blue ceramic, perfectly round, and baked to a hard,

 impervious finish. In the centre of the disc was an etching of an

 Egyptian war chariot, and above it the distinctive and unmistakable

 outline of the hawk with the broken wing. Around the circumference was a

 legend engraved in hieroglyphics. It took him only a few moments to read

 it to himself:

 I COMMAND TEN THOUSAND CHARIOTS.

 I AM TAITA, MASTER OF THE ROYAL HORSE.

 Royan desperately wanted to escape from the oppressive atmosphere of the

 cavern. The parcel of wat that the abbot had forced upon her had mixed

 heavily with the few mouthfuls of tej she had swallowed, and this

 feeling in Turn was aggravated by the smell of the dirty food bowls

 thick with congealing grease and the fumes of raw katikala.

 if Already some of the monks were puking drunk, and the smell of vomit

 added to the cloying miasma of incense smoke within the chamber.

 However, she was still the centre of the abbot's attention. He sat

 beside her stroking her bare arm and reciting garbled extracts from the

 Amharic scriptures; Tessay had long ago given up translating for her.

 Royan looked hopefully at Nicholas but he was withdrawn and silent,

 seeming oblivious of his surroundings. She knew that he was thinking

 about the ceramic seal in the abbot's crown, for his eyes kept

 returning thoughtfully to it.

 She wanted to be alone with him to discuss this extraordinary discovery.

 Her excitement outweighed the distress of her overloaded stomach. She

 felt her cheeks flushed with it. Every time she looked up at the old

 man's crown her heart fluttered, and she had to make an effort to stop

 herself reaching up, seizing the shiny blue seal and ripping it from its

 setting to examine it more closely.

 She knew how unwise it was to draw attention to the scrap of ceramic,

 but when she glanced across the circle she saw that Boris was far past

 noticing anything other than the bowl of kadkala in his hand. In the end

 it was who gave her the excuse for which she had been Boris seeking. He

 tried to get to his feet, but his legs collapsed under him. He sagged

 forward quite gracefully, and his face dropped into the bowl of

 grease-sodden injera bread.

 He lay there snoring noisily, and Tessay appealed to Nicholas.

 "Alto Nicholas, what am I to do?"

 Nicholas considered the unlovely spectacle of the rate hunter. There

 were scraps of bread and beef stew prost sticking like confetti in his

 cropped ginger hair.

 "I rather suspect Prince Charming has had enough for one night the

 murmured.

 stood up, stooped over Boris and gripped one wrist.

 He With a sudden jerk he lifted him into a sitting position, nd then

 heaved him upright and over his shoulder in a a fireman's lift.

 "Good night, all!" he told the assembled monks, very few of whom were in

 any condition to respond. Then he carried Boris away, draped over his

 shoulders with head and feet dangling. The two women had to hurry to

 keep up with Nicholas as he strode down the terrace and then up the

 stone stairway without a pause.

 "I did not realize Alto Nicholas was so strong," Tessay panted, for the

 stairs were steep and the pace was hard.

 didn't either," Royan admitted. She experienced a ridiculous proprietary

 pride in his feat, and smiled at herself in the darkness as they

 approached the camp.

 "Don't be silly," she admonished herself. "He isn't yours to boast

 about." Nicholas threw his burden down on Boris's own bed in thatched

 hut and stood back panting heavily, the sweat trickling down his cheeks.

 "That's a pretty good recipe for a heart attack," he gasped.

 Boris groaned, rolled over and vomited copiously over his pillows and

 bedlinen.

 "On that pleasant note I will bid you all goodnight and sweet dreams,'

 Nicholas told Tessay, stepping out of the hut into the warm African

 night.

 He breathed in the smell of the forest and the river with relief, and

 then turned to Royan as she gripped his arm.

 "Did you see-' she burst out excitedly, but he laid his fingers on her

 lips to silence her, and with a cautionary frown in the direction of

 Boris's hut led her away to her own hut.

 "Did you see it?" she demanded, unable to contain herself longer. "Could

 you read it?"

 "'I command ten thousand chariots,"' he recited.

 "'I am Taita, master of the royal horse,"' she completed it for him. "He

 was here. Oh, Nicky! He was here. Taita was here. That's the proof we

 wanted. Now we know that we are not wasting our time."

 She flopped down on her camp bed and hugged herself ecstatically. "Do

 you think the abbot will let us examine the sealT

 He shook his head, "My guess is no. The crown is one of the monastery

 treasures. Even for you, his favourite lady, I don't think he would do

 it. Anyway, it would not be wise to show any great interest in it. Jali

 Hora obviously does not have any idea of its significance. Apart from

 that, we don't want to alert Boris."

 suppose you are right." She moved over on the bed to make room for him.

 "Sit down."

 He sat down beside her, and she asked, "Where do you suppose the seal

 came from? Who found it? Where, and when?"

 "Steady on, dear girl. That's four questions in one, and I don't have an

 answer to any of them."

 "Guess!" she invited him. "Speculate! Throw some ideas around!'

 "Very well," he agreed. "The seal was manufactured in Hong Kong. There

 is a little factory there that turns them out by the thousands. Jali

 Hora bought it from a souvenir store in Luxor when he was on holiday in

 Egypt last month."

 She punched his arm, hard. "Be serious," she ordered.

  can do better," he invited her, rubbing

 "Let's hear if yo his arm.

 "Okay, here I go. Taita dropped the seal here in the gorge while he was

 working on the construction of Pharaoh's tomb. Three thousand years

 later an old monk, one of the very first to live here at the monastery,

 picked it up. Of course, he could not read the hieroglyphics. He -took

 it to the abbot, who declared it to be a relic of St. Frumentius, and

 had it set in the crown."

 "And they all lived happily ever after," Nicholas agreed.

 "Not a bad shot."

 ny holes?" she demanded, and he shook Can you find a head. "Then you

 agree that this proves that Taita really his was here, and that it

 proves our theories are correct?" -Proves" is too strong a word. Let's

 just say that it points in that direction," he demurred.

 She wriggled around on the bed to face him squarely.

 "Oh, Nicky, I am so excited. I swear I will not be able to sleep a wink

 tonight. I just can't wait for tomorrow, to get out there and start

 searching again."

 Her eyes were bright, and her cheeks flushed a warm rosy brown. Her lips

 were parted, and he could see the pink tip of her tongue between them.

 This time he could not stop himself. He leaned very slowly towards her,

 treating her gently, giving her every opportunity to pull away if she

 wished to avoid him. She did not move, but her shining expression turned

 slowly to one of apprehension. She stared into his eyes, as if seeking

 something, some reassurance.

 When their lips were an inch apart, Nicholas stopped, and it was she who

 made the last movement. She brought their mouths together.

 At first it was soft, just a light mingling of their breath, and then it

 became harsher, more urgent. For a long, heartstopping moment they

 devoured each other, and her mouth tasted soft and sweet as ripe fruit.

 Then suddenly she whimpered, and with a huge effort of will tore herself

 out of his arms. They stared at each other, both of them shaken and

 confused.

 "No," she whispered. "Please, Nicky, not yet. I am not ready yet."

 He picked up her hand and turned it between his palms. Then lightly he

 kissed the tips of her fingers, savouring the smell and the taste of her

 skin.

 "I'll see you in the morning." He dropped her hand and stood up. "Early.

 Be ready!the said, and stooped out through the doorway of the hut.

 was dressing the next morning he heard her moving a round in her hut,

 and when he whistled softly at her door she stepped out to meet him,

 dressed and eager to start.

 "Boris is not awake yet,'Tessay told them as she served their breakfast.

 "Now that is a great surprise to me," Nicholas said, without looking up

 from his plate. He and Royan were still slightly awkward in each other's

 presence, remembering the circumstances in which they had parted the

 previous evening. However, as Nicholas slung the rifle and the pack 0

 ver his shoulder and they set off up the valley, their mood changed to

 one of anticipation.

 They had been going for an hour when Nicholas glanced over his shoulder

 and then cautioned her with a frown. "We are being followed."

 Taking her wrist, he drew her behind a slab of sandstone. He flattened

 himself against the rock and stured at her to do the same. Then he

 poised himself, ge an suddenly leaped forward to seize the lanky figure

 in a dirty white shamnw who was sneaking up the valley behind them. With

 a howl the creature fell to his knees, and began gibbering with terror.

 Nicholas hauled him to his feet. "Tamre! What are you doing following

 us? Who sent you?" he demanded in Arabic.

 The boy rolled his eyes towards Royan. "No, please, effendi, do not hurt

 me. I meant no harm."

 "Leave the child, Nicky. You will precipitate another fit," Royan

 intervened. Tamre scurried behind her and clung to her hand for

 protection, peering out around her shoulder at Nicholas as though his

 life were in danger.

 "Peace, Tamre," Nicholas soothed him. "I will not hurt you, unless you

 lie to me. If you do, then I will thrash you until there is no skin on

 your back. Who sent you to follow us?"

 "I came alone. Nobody sent me," blubbered the boy. "I came to show you

 where I saw the holy animal with the fingermarks -of the Baptist on his

 skin."

 Nicholas stared at him for a moment, before he began to laugh softly.

 "I'll be damned if the boy doesn't really believe he saw

 great-grandfather's dik-dik." Then he scowled ferociously. "Remember

 what will happen to you, if you are lying."

 "It is true, effendi," Tamre sobbed, and Royan came to his defence.

 Don't badger him. He is harmless. Leave the poor , A hild."

 "All right, Tamre. I will give you a chance. Take us to where you saw

 the holy animal."

 Tamre would not relinquish his grip on Royan's hand.

 He clung to it as he danced beside her, leading her along, and within a

 hundred yards his terror had faded and he was smiling and giggling at

 her shyly.

 For an hour he led them away from the Dandera rier and up over the high

 ground above the valley, into an area of thick scrub and up-thrust

 ridges of weathered limestone.

 The thorny branches of the bush were densely intertwined, and grew so

 close to the ground that there seemed to be no way through them.

 However, Tamre led them on to a narrow twisting path, just wide enough

 for them to avoid the red-tipped hook thorns on each side of them. Then

 abruptly he stopped and pulled Royan to a halt beside him.

 He pointed down, almost at his own toes.

 "The riverPhe announced importantly. Nicholas came up beside them and

 whistled softly with surprise. Tamre had led them around in a wide

 circle to the west, and then brought them back to the Dandera river at a

 point where it still ran in the bed of the deep ravine.

 Now they stood on the very edge of the chasm. He saw at once that,

 although the top of the rocky ravine was less than a hundred feet wide,

 the chasm opened out below the rim. From the surface of the water far

 below, the rock wall belled out in the shape of one of the pottery tej

 flasks.

 It narrowed again as it neared the top where they stood.

  saw the holy thing over there."Tamre pointed to the far side of the

 chasm where a small feeder spring meandered out of the thorny bush.

 Streamers of bright green moss, nourished by the spring, hung from the

 lip of the concave rock wall, and the water trickled down them and

 dripped from the tips into the river two hundred feet below.

 "If you saw it there, why did you bring us to this side of the

 river?"Nicholas demanded.

 Tamre looked as though he were on the point of tears.

 This side is easier. There is no path through the bush on the other

 side. The thorns would hurt Woizero Royan."

 "Don't be a bully," Royan told him, and put her arm around the boy's

 shoulder.

 Nicholas shrugged, "It looks like the two of you are ganging up on me.

 Well, seeing that we are here, we might as well sit a while and see if

 great-grandpa's dik-dik puts in an appearance."

 He picked out a spot in the shade of one of the stunted trees that hung

 on the lip of the chasm, and with his hat swept the ground clear of

 fallen thorns until there was a place for them to sit. He placed his

 back against the trunk of the thorn tree and laid the Rigby rifle across

 his lap.

 By this time it was past noon, and the heat was stifling.

 He passed the water bottle to Royan and, while she drank, glanced at

 Tamre and suggested to her in English, "This might be a good time to

 find out what, if anything, the lad knows about the Taita ceramic in the

 crown. He is besotted with you. He will tell you anything you want to

 know.

 Question him."

 She began gently, chatting softly to the boy. Occasionally she stroked

 his head and petted him as though he were a puppy- She spoke to him of

 the previous night's banquet, the beauty of the underground church, and

 the antiquity of the murals and the tapestries, and then at last

 mentioned the abbot's crown.

 "Yes. Yes. That is the stone of the saint," he agreed readily. "The blue

 stone of St. Frumentius."

 "Where did it come from?" she asked. "Do you know?" The boy looked

 embarrassed, "I do not know. It is very old, perhaps as old as Christ

 the Saviour. That is what the priests say."

 "You do not know where it was found?"

 He shook his head, but then, eager to please her, he suggested, "Perhaps

 it fell from heaven."

 "Perhaps." Royan glanced at Nicholas, who rolled his eyes upwards and

 then pushed his hat forward to cover his face.

 "Perhaps St.. Frumentius gave it to the first abbot when he died." Tamre

 warmed to the subject. "Or perhaps it was in his coffin with him when he

 was placed in his tomb."

 "All these things are possible, Tamre,' Royan agreed.

 "Have you seen the tomb of St. Frumentius?"

 He looked around him guiltily. "Only the ordained priests are allowed

 into the tnaqdas, the Holy of Holies," he hung his head and whispered.

 "You have seen it, Tamre," she accused him gently, stroking his head.

 She was intrigued by the boy's guilt. "You can tell me. I will not tell

 the priests."

 "Only once," he admitted. "The other boys. They sent me to touch the

 tabot stone. They would have beaten me if I had not. All the new

 acolytes are made to do this." He began to babble with the horror of the

 memory of his initiation ordeal. "I was alone. I was very afraid. It was

 after midnight when the priests were asleep. Dark. The maqdas is haunted

 by the ghost of the saint. They told me that if I was unworthy the saint

 would strike me down with lightning."

 Nicholas removed the hat from his face and straightened up slowly. "My

 word, the child is telling the truth," he said softly. "He has been into

 the Holy of Holies-'Then he looked across at Royan, "Keep questioning

 him. He may just give us something useful. Ask him about the tomb of St.

 Frumentius."

 "Did you see the tomb of the saint?" she asked, and the boy nodded

 vigorously. "Did you go into the tomb?" This time he shook his head.

 "No. There are bars across the entrance. Only the abbot is allowed into

 the tomb, on the birthday of the saint."

 "Did you look through the bars?"

 "Yes, but it is very dark. I saw the coffin of the saint. It is wood and

 there is painting on it, the face of the saint."

 "Is he a black man?"

 "No - a white man with a red beard. The painting is very old. The

 picture is faded, and the wood of the coffin is rotting and crumbling."

 "Is it lying on the floor of the tomb?" Tamre screwed up his face in

 thought, then after careful consideration shook his head. "No, it is on

 a shelf of stone in the wall."

 "Is there anything else you remember about the tomb of the saint?" Royan

 tried to prod his memory, but Tamre shook his head.

 "It was very dark, and the opening in the bars is small, he apologized.

 "It does not matter. Is the tomb in the back wall of the rrtmdu?"

 ."Yes, it is behind the altar and the tabot stone."

 "What is the altar made of - stone?"

 "No. It is wood, cedarwood. There are candies, and a big cross, and the

 many crowns of the abbot, and the chalice and staff."

 "Is it painted?"

 "No, it is carved with pictures. But they are different from the

 pictures inside the tomb of the saint."

 "What is different? Tell me, Tamre."

 "I don't know. The faces are funny. They wear different clothes. There

 are horses." He looked puzzled. "They are different."

 Royan tried for a while to get a clearer description from him, but he

 became more and more confused and contradictorywhen she pushed him, so

 she changed tack.

 "Tell me about the tabot," she suggested, but Nicholas forestalled her.

 "No, you tell me about the tabot," he demanded of her.

 "Is it similar to the Jewish Tabernacle?"

 "Yes, at least in the Egypti She turned to him, an Church it is. It is

 usually kept in a jewelled box and wrapped in an embroidered cloth of

 gold. The only difference is that the Jewish Tabernacle is carved with

 the ten commandments, but in our Church it is carved with the words of

 dedication of the particular church that houses it.

 It is the living heart of the Church."

 "What is the tabot stone?" Nicholas frowned with concentration.

 "I don't know," she admitted. "Our Church does not have a tabot stone."

 "Ask him!

 "Tell me about the tabot stone, Tamre."

 "It is so high, and so square." He indicated a height of a little above

 his own shoulder, and the width of his spread hands.

 "And the tabot stands on top of this stone?" Royan guessed.

 Tamre nodded.

 "Why did they send you to touch the stone and not the tabot itself?"

 Nicholas demanded, but Royan shook her head to silence him.

 "Let me do the talking. You are too harsh with him. She turned back to

 the boy. "Why the stone, rather than the Ark of the tabot that stands on

 top of it?"

 Tamre shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. They just did."

 "What does the stone look like? Are there paintings on it also?"

 "I don't know." He looked distraught at not being able to satisfy her.

 He wanted desperately to please her. don't know. The stone is wrapped

 with cloth."

 Nicholas and Royan exchanged startled glances, and then Royan turned

 back to the boy.

 "Covered?" Royan leaned closer to him. "The stone is covered?, "They say

 that it is only uncovered by the abbot on the birthday of St..

 Frumentius."

 Again Nicholas and Royan stared at each other, and then he smiled

 thoughtfully. "I would rather like to have a look at the tomb of the

 saint, and the tabot stone - in its uncovered state."

 "You' have to wait for the saint's birthday," she said, she broke and

 have yourself ordained. Only the priests off and stared at him again.

 "You aren't thinking of - no, you wouldn't, would you?"

 "Who, me?" he grinned. "Perish the thought."

 "If they caught you in the maqdas, they would tear you to little

 pieces."

 "The answer, then, would be not to let them catch me."

 "If you go, I am going with you. How are we going to manage it?"

 "Throttle back, dear girl. The thought only occurred to me ten seconds

 ago. Even on my good days, I need at least ten minutes to come up wit a

 brilliant plan of action."

 They both stared out across the chasm in silence, until Royan whispered

 softly, "The covered stone. Taita's stone testament?"

 "Don't say it aloud," he pleaded, and made the sign against the evil

 eye. "Don't even think it aloud. The Devil is listening."

 They were silent again, both of them thinking furiously. Then Royan

 started, "Nicky, what if-' she broke off. "No, that won't. work." She

 relapsed into frowning silence again.

 Tamre broke the quiet with a sudden squeak of excitement, "There it is.

 Look!'

 They were both startled by the interruption. "What is it?" Royan turned

 to him.

 Tamre seized her arm and shook it. He was trembling with emotion. "There

 it is. I told you." With his other hand he was pointing out across the

 river, "There at the edge of the thorn bushes. Can't you see it?"

 "What is it? What can you see?"

 "The animal of John the Baptist. The holy marked creature."

 Following the direction of his outflung arm, she picked out a soft,

 brownish blur of movement at the edge of the thicket on the far bank. "I

 don't know. It is too far-'

 Nicholas scrabbled in his pack and brought out his binoculars. He lifted

 and focused them, and then he began to chuckle.

 "Hallelujah! Great-grandpa's reputation is safe at last." He passed the

 binoculars to Royan. She focused them and found the little creature in

 the field. It was three hundred yards away, but through the ten-power

 lens she could make it out in detail.

 It was almost half as large again as the common dikdik that they had

 seen the previous day, and instead of drab grey its coat was a rich red

 brown. Its most striking feature, however, was the distinct dark bars of

 chocolate colour across its shoulders and back - five evenly spaced

 markings that did indeed look like the imprint of fingers and thumb.

 "Madoqua harperii, no less," Nicholas whispered to her.

 "Sorry, great-grandfather, for doubting you."

 The dik-dik stood half in shadow, wriggling its nose as it snuffled the

 air. Its head was held high, suspicious and alert. The soft breeze was

 quartering between them and the animal, but every so often a wayward

 eddy gave it the faint whiff of humanity that had alarmed it.

 Royan heard the snick of the rifle action as Nicholas worked the bolt

 and chambered a round. Hurriedly she lowered the glasses, and glanced at

 him. "You aren't going to shoot it?" she demanded.

 "No, not at that range. Over three hundred yards, and a small target.

 I'll wait for it to get closer."

 "How can you bring yourself to do it?"

 "How can I not? That's what I came here to do, amongst other things."

 "But it's so beautiful."

 "I take it, then, that it would be perfectly all right to whack it if it

 were ugly?"

 She said nothing, but raised the binoculars again. The eddy of the wind

 must have changed, for the dik-dik lowered its head to nibble at a tuft

 of coarse brown grass.

 Then lifted its head again and came on down the clearing in the Thorn

 scrub, stepping daintily, pausing every few paces to feed again.

 "Go back. She tried to will it into safety, but it kept on coming,

 meandering towards the edge of the chasm.

 Nicholas rolled on to his stomach and settled himself behind the trunk

 of the tree. He screwed up his hat into a soft pad on which to rest the

 rifle.

 "Two hundred yards," he muttered to himself "That's a fair shot. No

 further." Resting the cushioned rifle on the twisted root, he aimed

 through the telescopic sight. Then he lifted his head, waiting to let it

 come within certain range.

 Abruptly the dik-dik lifted its head again and came to a halt, quivering

 with tension.

 "Something he doesn't like. Dammit all, wind must have changed again,'

 Nicholas growled. At that moment the little antelope bolted. It streaked

 across the clearing, back the way it had come, and disappeared into the

 thorn scrub.

 "Go, dik-dik, go!" said Royan smugly, and Nicholas sat up and grunted

 with disgust.

 "I can't make out what frightened him." Then his expression changed and

 he cocked his head. There was an alien sound on the air growing each

 second - a harsh, rising clatter and a shrill, whining whistle.

 "Chopper! What the hell!" Nicholas recognized the sound immediately. He

 took the binoculars from Royan's hand and turned them to the sky,

 sweeping the cloudless blue emptiness above the tops of the escarpment.

 "There it is," he said grimly, adding, "Bell Jet Ranger," as he

 recognized the profile. "Coming this way, by the looks of it. No point

 in drawing attention to ourselves. Let's get under cover."

 He shepherded Royan and the boy under the spread branches of the thorn

 tree. "Sit tight," he told her. "No chance they will spot us under

 here."

 He watched the. approaching helicopter through the binoculars. "Probably

 Ethiopian air force," he said softly.

 "Anti-shufta patrol, most likely. Both Boris and Colonel Nogo warned us

 that there are a lot of rebels and bandits operating down here in the

 gorge-' he broke off abruptly.

 "No. Hold on. That's not military. Green and red fuselage, and the red

 horse emblem. None other than your old friends from Pegasus

 Exploration."

 The sound of the rotors crescendoed, and now with her naked eye Royan

 could make out the flying horse on the fuselage of the helicopter as it

 flew low across their front, half a mile out, headed down towards the

 Nile.

 Neither of them paid any attention to Tamre as he crouched behind Royan,

 trying to hide behind her body.

 His teeth were chattering with terror and his eyes rolled until the

 whites showed.

 "It looks as if our friend Jake Helm has got himself some fancy

 transport. If Pegasus is in any way connected with Duraid's murder and

 the other attempts on your life, then we can expect them to be breathing

 heavily down our necks from now on. They are now in a position to

 overlook us at will." Nicholas was still watching the aircraft through

 the binoculars.

 "When your enemy is up in the air, it gives you a helpless feeling."

 Royan edged instinctively closer to him, staring up.

 The green and scarlet machine disappeared over the hump of the subgorge,

 down towards the monastery.

 "Unless he's just on a joy-ride, he's probably looking for our camp,'

 Nicholas guessed. "Under orders from the main man to keep tabs on us."

 "He will have no trouble finding it. Boris made no attempt to conceal

 the huts," Royan said uneasily. "Let's get out of here, then." She stood

 up.

 "Good plan." Nicholas was about to follow her, when suddenly he caught

 her hand and drew her down again.

 "Hold it. They are coming back this way."

 The engine beat was rising again. Then they caught a glimpse of the

 helicopter through the canopy of leaves and thorn branches overhead.

 "Now he is following the river. Still searching for something, by the

 looks of it."

 "Us?"Royan asked nervously.

 "If they are under orders from the head man, could be," Nicholas agreed.

 The machine was very close now, and the shrill whine of the engine was

 deafening.

 At that moment Tamre's nerve broke. He let out a wail of terror, "It is

 the Devil, come to take me; Save me, Jesus Christ the Saviour, save me!'

 Nicholas put out a hand to restrain him, but he was not quick enough.

 Tamre broke free and leaped to his feet.

 Still howling with fear of the pit and the flames of hell, he darted

 away down the path into the Thorn scrub, the skirts of his shamma

 swirling about his skinny legs and his shiny black face swivelled back

 over his shoulder to watch the approaching machine.

 The pilot spotted him immediately, and the nose of the helicopter sank

 in their direction. It came directly towards them, slowing as it

 approached the lip of the chasm. They could make out the heads of the

 two occupants behind the windscreen of the forward cabin. Still

 decelerating, the aircraft hung suspended over the river, pivoting on

 the spinning disc of its rotor, while Royan and Nicholas crouched down

 in the scrub, trying to avoid detection.

 "That's the American from the prospecting camp." Royan recognized Jake

 Helm, despite the bulky radio earphones and the mirrored dark glasses.

 He and the black pilot were craning their necks to search the river

 banks.

 "They haven't spotted us-' But even as Nicholas said it, Jake Helm

 looked directly at them across the open void.

 Although his expression did not change, he tapped the pilot's shoulder

 and pointed down at them.

 The pilot let the helicopter sink lower until it hovered in the opening

 of the chasm, almost on the same level as they were. Only a hundred feet

 separated them now. No longer making any attempt at concealment,

 Nicholas leaned back against the hole of the Thorn tree. He tipped his

 Panama hat forward over one eye and gave Jake Helm a laconic wave.

 The foreman made no response to the greeting. He regarded Nicholas with

 a flat, baleful stare, then struck a match and held the flame to the tip

 of the half-smoked cigar between his lips. He flipped the dead match

 away and blew a feather of smoke in Nicholas's direction. Still without

 change of expression, he said something to the pilot out of the corner

 of his mouth.

 Immediately the helicopter rose vertically and banked away to the north,

 heading back directly towards the wall of the escarpment and the base

 camp on its summit.

 "Mission accomplished. He found what he was looking for."Royan sat up.

 "Us!'

 "And he must have spotted the camp. He knows where to find us

 again,'Nicholas agreed.

 Royan shivered and hugged herself briefly. "He gives me the creeps, that

 one. He looks like a toad."

 "Oh, come on!" Nicholas chided her. "What have you got against toads?"

 He stood up. "I don't think we are going to see great-grandfather's

 dik-dik again today. He has been thoroughly shaken up by the chopper.

 I'll come back for another try tomorrow."

 "We should go and look for Tamre. He has probably had another fit, the

 poor little fellow."

 She was wrong. They found the boy beside the path.

 He was still shivering and weeping, but had not suffered another

 seizure. He calmed down quickly when Royan soothed him, and followed

 them back towards the camp.

 However, when they neared the grove he slipped away in the direction of

 the monastery.

 That evening, while it was still light, Nicholas took Royan back to the

 monastery.

 "I believe that the criminal fraternity refer to a reconnaissance of

 this nature as "casing the joint"," he remarked, as they stooped through

 the entrance of the rock cathedral and joined the throng of worshippers

 in the outer chamber.

 "From what Tamre says, it sounds as though the novices wait until they

 know that the priests on duty are ones that will nod off during their

 watch," Royan told him softly, as they paused to gaze through the doors

 into the middle chamber.

 "We don't have that sort of insider knowledge," Nicholas pointed out.

 There were priests passing backwards and forwards through the doors as

 they watched.

 "There doesn't seem to be any sort of procedure," Nicholas noted. "No

 password or ritual to allow them through."

 "On the other hand, they greeted the guards at the door by name. It's a

 small community. They must all know each other intimately."

 "There doesn't seem any chance at all that I could dress up like a monk

 and brazen my way through,'Nicholas agreed-A wonder what they do to

 intruders in the sacred areas?"

 "Throw them off the terrace to the crocodiles in the cauldron of the

 Nile?" she suggested maliciously. "Anyway, you are not going in there

 without me."

 This was not the time to argue, he decided, and instead he tried to see

 as much as possible through the open doors of the qiddist. The middle

 chamber seemed much smaller than the outer chamber in which they stood.

 He could just make out the shadowy murals that covered the portions of

 the inner walls that he could see. In the facing wall was another

 doorway. From Tamre's description, he realized that this must be the

 entrance to the maqdas. The opening was barred by a heavy grille gate of

 dark wooden beams, the joints of the cross-pieces reinforced with

 gussets of hand hammered native iron.

 On each side of the doorway, from rock ceiling to floor, hung long

 embroidered tapestries depicting scenes from the life of St. Frumentius.

 In one he was preaching to a kneeling congregation, with the Bible in

 one hand and his right hand raised in benediction. In the other tapestry

 he was baptizing an emperor. The king wore a high golden crown like that

 of Jali Hora, and the saint's head was surrounded by a halo. The saint's

 face was white, while the emperor's was black.

 "Politically correct?" Nicholas asked himself, with a smile.

 "What is amusing you?" Royan asked. "Have you thought of a way of

 getting in there?"

 "No, I was thinking of dinner. Let's go!

 At dinner Boris showed no ill effects from the previous night's debauch.

 During the day he had taken out his shotgun and shot a bunch of green

 pigeons. Tessay had marinated these and barbecued them over the coals.

 "Tell me, English, how was the hunting today? Did you get attacked by

 the deadly striped dik-dik? Hey? Hey?" He bellowed with laughter.

 "Did your trackers have any success?" Nicholas asked mildly.

 ."Da! Da! They found kudu and hushbuck and buffalo.

 They even found dik-dik, but no stripes. Sorry, no stripes."

 Royan leaned forward and opened her mouth to intervene, but Nicholas

 cautioned her with a shake of the head. She shut her mouth again and

 looked down at her plate, slicing a morsel from the breast of a pigeon.

 "We don't really need company tomorrow," Nicholas explained mildly in

 Arabic. "If he knew, he would insist on coming with us."

 "Did your Mummy never teach you no manners, English? It's rude to talk

 in a language that others can't understand. Have a vodka."

 "You have my share," Nicholas invited him. "I know when I am

 outclassed."

 During the rest of the meal Tessay replied only in low monosyllables

 when Royan tried to draw her into the conversation. She looked tragic

 and defeated. She never looked at her husband, even when he was at his

 loudest and most overbearing. When the meal ended, they left her sitting

 with Boris at the fire. Boris had a fresh bottle of vodka on the table

 beside him.

 "The way he is pumping the liquor, it looks as if I might be called out

 on another midnight rescue mission," Nicholas remarked as they made

 their way to their own huts.

 "Tessay has been in camp all day with him. There has been more trouble

 between them. She told me that as soon as they get back to Addis Ababa

 she is going to leave him.

 She can't take any more of this."

 "The only thing I find surprising is that she ever got mixed up with an

 animal like Boris in the first place. She is a lovely woman. She could

 pick and choose."

 "Some women are drawn to animals," Royan shrugged.

 "I suppose it must be the thrill of danger. Anyway, Tessay has asked me

 if she can come with us tomorrow. She cannot stand another day in camp

 with Boris on her own.

 I think she is really afraid of him now. She says that she has never

 seen him drink like this before."

 "Tell her to come along, Nicholas said resignedly. "The more of us the

 merrier. Perhaps we will be able to frighten the dik-dik to death by

 sheer weight of numbers. Save me wasting ammunition."

 It was still dark when the three of them left camp the next morning.

 There was no sign of Boris and, when Nicholas asked about him, Tessay

 said simply, "After you went to bed last night he finished the bottle.

 He won't be out of his hut before noon. He won't miss me."

 Carrying the Rigby, Nicholas led them tip into the weathered limestone

 hills, retracing the path along which Tamre had taken them the previous

 day. As they walked, Nicholas heard the two women talking behind him.

 Royan was explaining to Tessay how they had sighted the striped dik-dik,

 and what they planned.

 The sun was well up by the time they again reached the spot under the

 thorn tree on the lip of the chasm, and settled down to wait in ambush.

 "How will you retrieve the carcass, if you do manage to shoot the poor

 little creature?" Royan asked.

 "I made certain of that before we left camp," he explained. "I spoke to

 the head tracker. If he hears a shot he will bring up the ropes and help

 me get across to the other side."

 "I wouldn't like to make the journey across there." Tessay eyed the drop

 below them.

 "They teach you some useful things in the army, along with all the

 rubbish," Nicholas replied. He made himself comfortable against the

 thorn tree, the rifle ready in his lap.

 The women lay close by him, talking together softly.

 It was unlikely that the sound of their low voices would carry across

 the ravine, Nicholas decided, so he did not try to hush them.

 He expected that if it came at all, the dik-dik would show itself early.

 But he was wrong. By noon there was still no sign of it. The valley

 sweltered in the midday sun. The distant wall of the escarpment, veiled

 in the blue heat haze, looked like jagged blue glass, and the mirage

 danced across the rocky ridges and shimmered like the waters of a silver

 lake above the tops of the thorn thickets.

 The women had long ago given up talking, and they lay somnolent in the

 heat. The whole world was silent and heat-struck. Only a bush dove broke

 the silence with its mournful lament, "My wife is dead, my children are

 dead, Oh, me! Oh, my! Oh, me!'Nicholas found his own eyelids becoming

 leaden. His head nodded involuntarily, and he jerked it up only to have

 it flop forward again. On the very edge of sleep he heard a sound, close

 by in the thorn scrub behind him.

 It was a tiny sound, but one that he knew so well. A sound that

 whiplashed across his nerve endings and jerked him back to full

 consciousness, with his pulse racing and the coppery taste of fear in

 the back of his throat. It was the metallic sound of the safety-catch on

 an AK-47 assault rifle being slipped forward into the "Fire' position.

 In one fluid movement he lifted the rifle out of his lap and rolled

 twice, twisting his body to cover the two women who lay beside him. At

 the same time he brought the Rigby into his shoulder, aimed into the

 scrub behind him from where the sound had come.

 "Down!" he hissed at his companions. "Keep your heads down!'

 His finger was on the trigger and, even though it was a puny weapon with

 which to take on a Kalashnikov, he was ready to return fire. He picked

 up his target immediately, and swung on to it.

 There was a man crouched twenty paces away, the assault rifle he carried

 aimed into Nicholas's face. He was black, dressed in worn and tattered

 camouflage fatigues and a soft cap of the same material. His webbing

 held a bush-knife and grenades, water bottle' and all the other

 accoutrements of a guerrilla fighter.

 "Shufta!" thought Nicholas. "A real pro. Don't take chances with this

 one." Yet at the same time he realized that if the intention had been to

 kill him, then he would be dead already.

 He aimed the Rigby an inch over the muzzle of the assault rifle, into

 the bloodshot right eye of the shufta behind it. The man acknowledged

 the stand-off with a narrowing of his eyes, and then gave an order in

 Arabic.

 "Salim, cover the women. Shoot them if he moves.

 Nicholas heard movement on his flank and glanced in that direction,

 still keeping the shufta in his peripheral vision.

 Another guerrilla stepped out of the scrub. He was all: similarly

 dressed, but he carried a Soviet RPD light machine gun on his hip. The

 barrel was sawn off short to make the weapon more handy for bush

 fighting, and there was a loop of ammunition belt draped around his

 neck. He came forward carefully, the RPD aimed point-blank at the two

 women. Nicholas knew that, with a touch on the trigger, he could chop

 them both to mincemeat.

 There were other stealthy rustling sounds in the bush all around them.

 These two were not the only ones, Nicholas realized. This was a large

 war party. He might be able to get off one shot with the Rigby, but by

 then Royan and Tessay would be dead. And he would not be far behind

 them.

 Very slowly and deliberately he lowered the muzzle of the rifle until it

 was pointing at the ground. Then he laid the weapon down and raised his

 hands.

 "Get your hands up," he told the women. "Do exactly what they tell you."

 The guerrilla leader acknowledged his surrender by coming to his full

 height and speaking rapidly to his men, still in Arabic.

 "Get the rifle and his pack."

 "We are British subjects," Nicholas told him loudly, and the guerrilla

 looked surprised by his use of Arabic. "We are simple tourists. We are

 not military. We are not government people."

 Be quiet. Shut your face!" he ordered, as the rest of the guerrilla

 patrol emerged from cover. Nicholas counted five of them all told,

 though he knew there were probably others who had not come forward. They

 were very professional as they rounded up their prisoners. They never

 blocked each other's field of fire, nor offered an opportunity of

 escape. Quickly they searched them for weapons, then closed in around

 them and hustled them on to the path.

 "Where are you taking us?"Nicholas demanded.

 "No questions!" The butt of an AK-47 smashed between his shoulder blades

 and almost knocked him off his feet.

 "Steady on, chaps," he murmured mildly in English.

 "That wasn't really called for."

 They were forced to keep marching through the heat of the afternoon.

 Nicholas kept a check on the position of the sun and the distant

 glimpses of the escarpment wall.

 He realized that they were heading westwards, following the course of

 the Nile towards the Sudanese border. It was late afternoon, and

 Nicholas estimated that they had covered some ten miles, before they

 came upon a side shoot of the main valley. The slopes were heavily

 wooded, and the three prisoners were herded into a patch of this forest.

 They were actually within the perimeter of the guerrilla camp before

 they were aware of its existence. Cunningly camouflaged, it consisted

 merely of a few crude lean, to shelters and a ring of weapons

 emplacements. The sentries were well placed, and all the light machine

 guns in the foxholes were manned.

 They were led to one of the shelters in the centre of the camp, where

 three men were squatting around a map spread on a low camp table. These

 were obviously officers, and there was no mistaking which of the three

 was the commander. The leader of the patrol which had captured them went

 to this man, saluted him deferentially and then spoke to him urgently,

 pointing at his captives.

 The guerrilla commander straightened up from the table, and came out

 into the sunlight. He was of medium height, but was imbued with such an

 air of authority that he seemed taller. His shoulders were broad and his

 body square and chunky, with the beginning of a dignified spread around

 the waist. He wore a short curly beard which contained a few strands of

 grey, and his features were refined and handsome. His skin tones were

 amber and copper. His dark eyes were intelligent, his gaze quick and

 restless.

 "My men tell me that you speak Arabic," he said to -Nicholas.

 "Better than you do, Mek Nimmur,'Nicholas told him.

 "So now you are the leader of a bunch of bandits and kidnappers? I

 always told you that you would never get to heaven, you old reprobate."

 Mek Nimmur stared at him in astonishment, and then began to smile.

 "Nicholas! I did not recognize you. You are older. Look at the grey on

 your head!'

 He opened his arms wide and folded Nicholas into a bear hug.

 "Nicholas! Nicholas!" He kissed him once on each cheek. Then he held him

 at arm's length and looked at the two women, who were standing amazed.

 "He saved my life," he explained to them.

 "You make me blush, Mek." Mek kissed him again' "He saved my life

 twice."

 "Once," Nicholas contradicted him. "The second time was a mistake. I

 should have let them shoot you."

 Mek laughed delightedly. "How long ago was it, Nicholas?"

 "It doesn't bear thinking about."

 "Fifteen years ago at least,'.Mek said. "Are you still in the British

 army? What is your rank? You must be a general by now!'

 "Reserves only," Nicholas shook his head. "I have been back in civvy

 street a long time now."

 Still hugging Nicholas, Mek Nimmur looked at the women with interest.

 "Nicholas taught me most of what I know about soldiering," he told them.

 His eyes flicked from Royan to Tessay, and then stayed on the Ethiopian

 girl's dark and lovely face.

 "I know you," he said. "I saw you in Addis, years ago.

 You were a young girl then. Your father was Alto Zemen, a great and good

 man. He was murdered by the tyrant Mengistu."

 "I know you also, Alto Mek. My father held you in high esteem. There are

 many of us who believe that you should be the president of this Ethiopia

 of ours, in place of that other one." She dropped him a graceful little

 curtsey, hanging her head in a shy but appealing gesture of respect.

 "I am flattered by your opinion of me." He took her hand and lifted her

 to her full height. Then he turned back to Nicholas, "I am sorry for the

 rough welcome, Some of my men are over-enthusiastic. I knew that there

 were ferengi asking questions at the monastery. But enough, you are with

 friends here. I bid you welcome."

 Mek Nimmur led them to his shelter, where one of his men brought a

 soot-blackened kettle from the fire and poured viscous black coffee into

 mugs for them.

 He and Nicholas plunged into reminiscences of the days prior to the

 Falklands war when they had fought side by side, Nicholas as a covert

 military adviser, and Mek as a young freedom fighter opposing the

 tyranny of Mengistu.

 "But the war is over now, Mek, Nicholas remonstrated at last. "The

 battle is won. Why are you still out in the bush with your men? Why

 aren't you getting rich and fat in Addis, like all the others?"

 "In the interim government in Addis there are enemies Of mine, men like

 Mengistu. When we have got rid of them, then I will come out of the

 bush."

 He and Nicholas embarked into a spirited discussion of African politics,

 so deep and complicated that Royan knew very few of the personalities

 whom they were discussing. Nor could she follow the nuances and the

 subtlety of religious and tribal prejudices and intolerance that had

 persisted for a thousand years. She was, however, impressed by

 Nicholas's knowledge and understanding of the situation, and the way in

 which a man like Mek Nimmur asked his opinion and listened to his

 advice.

 In the end Nicholas asked him, "So now you have carried the war beyond

 the borders of Ethiopia itself? You are operating in Sudan, as well?"

 "The war in the Sudan has been raging for twenty years," Mek confirmed.

 "The Christians in the south fighting against the persecution of the

 Moslem nor the-"

 "I am well aware of that, Mek. But that is not Ethiopia.

 It's not your war."

 "They are Christians, and they suffer injustice. I am a soldier and a

 Christian. Of course it is my war." Tessay had ty to every word that Mek

 spoke, and been listening avid now she nodded her head in agreement, her

 eyes dark and solemn with hero worship.

 "Alto Mek is a crusader for Christ and the rights of the common

 man,'Tessa told Nicholas in awed tones.

 "And he dearly loves a good fight," Nicholas laughed, punching his

 shoulder affectionately. It was a familiar gesture which could easily

 have given offence, but Mek accepted it readily and laughed back at him.

 "What are you doing here yourself, Nicholas, if you are no longer a

 soldier? There was a time when you also loved a good fight."

 "I am completely reformed. No more fighting. I have come to the Abbay

 gorge to hunt dik-dik."

 "Dik-dik?l Mek Nimmur stared at him with disbelief, and then he roared

 with laughter. "I don't believe it. Not you. Not dik-dik. You are up to

 something."

 "It is the truth."

 "You are lying, Nicholas. You never could lie to me. I know you too

 well. You are up to something. You will tell me about it when you need

 my help."

 "And you will still give me your help?"

 "Of course. You saved my life twice."

 "Once,'said Nicholas.

 "Even once is enough," said Mek Nimmur.

 while they talked, the sun slanted down the sky.

 "You are my guests for tonight," Mek Nimmur told them formally. "In the

 morning I will escort you back to your camp at the monastery of St..

 Frumentius.

 That is also my destination. My men and I are going to the monastery to

 celebrate the festival of Timkat- The abbot, Jali Hora, is a friend and

 an ally."

 "And the monastery is probably your deep cover base.

 You use it and the monks for resupply and intelligence.

 Am I right?"

 "You know me too well, Nicholas."Mek Nimmur shook his head ruefully.

 "You taught me much of what I know, so why should you not be able to

 guess my strategy? The monastery makes a perfect base of operations.

 It's close enough to the border-' he broke off, smiling. "But there is

 no need to explain it to you, of all people."

 Mek had his men build a night shelter for Nicholas and Royan, and cut a

 mattress of grass to cushion their sleep. They lay close together under

 the flimsy roof. The night was sultry, and they did not miss their

 blankets.

 Nicholas had a tube of insect repellent in his pack to keep the

 mosquitoes at bay After they had settled down on the grass mattress,

 their heads were close enough together to allow them to converse in

 quiet tones. When he turned his head Nicholas could see the dark

 silhouettes of Mek Nimmur and Tessay still sitting close together by the

 fire.

 "Ethiopian girls are different from the Arabs, and from most other

 African women." Royan too was watching the other couple. "No Arab girl

 would dare be alone with a man like that. Especially if she were a

 married woman."

 "Any way you cut it, they make a damned fine pair," he gave his opinion.

 "Good luck to them. Tessay hasn't had much of that lately - she is

 overdue."

 He turned his head and looked into her face, "What about you, Royan,

 what are you? Are you a decorous, submissive Arab, or an independent,

 assertive Western girl?"

 "It's both a little early and much too late for intimate questions of

 that nature," she told him, and turned over, presenting him with her

 back.

 "Ah, we are standing on ceremony this evening!

 Goodnight, Woizero Royan."

 "Goodnight, Alto Nicholas," she replied, keeping her face turned away

 from him so that he could not see her smile.

 The gorilla column moved out before dawn the next morning. They marched

 in full battle order, with scouts moving ahead and flankers covering

 each side of the path.

 "The army come down here into the gorge very seldom, but we are always

 ready for them when they do come," Mek Nimmur explained. "We try to give

 them a hearty welcome."

 Tessay was watching Mek Nimmur as he spoke; indeed, she had seldom taken

 her eyes off him that morning. Now she murmured to Royan, "He is a truly

 great man, a man who could unite our land, perhaps for the first time in

 a thousand years. I feel humble in his presence, and yet I also feel

 like a young girl again, filled with joy and hope."

 The march back to the monastery took the entire morning. When they came

 in sight of the Dandera. river, Mek Nimmur drew his men back off the

 path into thick bush, while sending only one scout forward. After an

 hour's wait, a party of acolytes came up from the monastery, each

 carrying a large bundle balanced upon his head.

 They greeted Mek with deep reverence, and handed over their bundles to

 his men before returning down the pathway into the gorge of the Abbay.

 The bundles contained priestly shammas, headcloths and sandals. Mek's

 men changed out of their camouflage fatigues into these garments, all of

 which were well worn and unwashed for the sake of authenticity. They

 wore only their sidearms under the robes. All their other weapons and

 equipment they cached in one of the caves in the limestone Cliffs, and

 left a detachment to guard them.

 Now as a party of monks they covered the last few miles to the

 monastery, to be welcomed joyously by the community there. Here Nicholas

 and the women left Mek, and climbed the steep path up into the grove of

 wild fig trees. Boris was waiting for them, pacing about the camp, angry

 and frustrated.

 "Where the hell have you been, woman?" he snarled at Tessay. "Been

 whoring around all night, have you?"

 "We lost our way yesterday evening." Nicholas fed him the cover story

 that they had agreed with Mek Nimmur, to maintain his security. Boris

 was hardly the man to trust.

 "And we were picked up by a party of monks from the monastery this

 morning. They brought us back."

 "You are the big hunter and tracker, are you?" Boris sneered at him.

 "You didn't need me to guide you, hey? You got yourself lost, did you,

 English? I see now why you want only to shoot dik-dik." He guffawed

 without humour, and looked at Tessay with those pale dead eyes. "I will

 talk to you later, woman. Go and see to the food."

 Despite the heat, both Nicholas and Royan were hungry. In short order,

 Tessay was able to serve a tasty cold lunch under the shady branches of

 the fig trees. Nicholas refused the wine that Boris offered him.

 want to go out hunting again this afternoon. I have lost almost a whole

 day."

 "You want me to hold your hand this time, English?

 Make sure you don't lose yourself again?"

 "Thanks, old chap, but I think I can manage without you."

 While they ate Nicholas nudged Royan and told her, "Your admirer has

 arrived."

 He jerked his head at the lanky, ungainly figure of Tamre, who had

 sneaked up quietly and was now sitting near the kitchen hut, As soon as

 Royan looked at him his face split into a doting idiotic grin, and he

 bobbed his head and squirmed with ecstatic shyness.

 "I will not come with you this afternoon," Royan told Nicholas quietly,

 when Boris was not listening. "I think there is going to be trouble

 between him and Tessay. I want to stay here with her. Take Tamre with

 you."

 "My word, what an attractive alternative. All my life I have waited for

 this moment." But when he had picked up his rifle and pack, he beckoned

 the boy to follow him.

 Tamre looked around eagerly for Royan, but she was in her hut. At last,

 dragging his feet, he followed Nicholas up the valley.

 "Take me to the other side of the river," he told the boy. "Show me how

 to reach the side where the holy creature lives." Tamre perked up at the

 prospect, and broke into a shambling trot as he led Nicholas over the

 suspension bridge below the pink cliffs.

 For an hour they followed the path, but gradually it petered out until

 it ended in bad and broken ground amongst the erosion'carved hills.

 Undeterred, Tamre plunged into the thorny scrub, and for another two

 hours they scrambled over rocky ridges and through thorn-choked valleys.

 "I can see why you didn't want to bring Royan this way here. You will

 not move. You will not speak. You will even breathe very, very quietly,

 until I come back to fetch you.

 If you utter even one little prayer before I return, I will personally

 start you on your journey to meet St.. Peter at the gates of heaven. Do

 you understand me?"

 He went forward alone, but the little antelope was thoroughly alarmed by

 now Nicholas saw it twice more, but he only had fleeting glimpses of

 ruddy brown movement almost entirely screened by bush. He stood

 directing bitter imprecations towards the boy monk and listening to the

 tick of small hooves on dry earth as it raced away, deeper into the

 thickets. In the end he was forced to give up the hunt for that day.

 It was after dark when he and Tamre got back to camp.

 As soon as Nicholas stepped into the circle of firelight, Royan came to

 meet him.

 "What happened?" she asked. "Did you see the dik-dik again?"

 "Don't ask me. Ask your accomplice. He scared it off.

 It is probably still running."

 "Tamre,'you are a fine young man, and I am very proud of you," she told

 him. The boy wriggled like a puppy, giggling and hugging himself with

 the joy of her approval as he scurried away down the path to the

 monastery.

 Royan was so pleased with the outcome of the hunt that she poured

 Nicholas a whisky with her own hand and brought it to him as he sagged

 wearily by the fire.

 He tasted it and shuddered, "Never let a teetotaller pour for you. With

 a heavy hand like that you should take UP tossing the caber or

 blacksmithing." Despite the complaint, he took another tentative sip.

 She sat close to him, fidgeting with excitement, but it was a while

 before he became aware of her agitation.

 "What is it? Something is eating you alive."

 She threw a cautionary glance in the direction of where Boris sat on the

 opposite side of the fire, and then dropped her voice, leaned close to

 him and spoke in Arabic.

 "Tessay and I went down to the monastery this afternoon to see Mek

 Nimmur. Tessay asked me to go with her, just in case Boris - well, you

 know what I mean."

 "I have a vague idea. You were playing chaperone." Nicholas took another

 sip of the whisky and gasped. He exhaled sharply and his voice was

 husky. "Go on," he invited her.

 "At one stage, before I left them alone together, we were discussing the

 festival of Timkat. On the fifth day the abbot takes the tabot down to

 the Abbay. Mek tells us there is a path down the cLiff to the water's

 edge."

 "Yes, we know that."

 "This is the interesting part - this you didn't know.

 Everybody joins the procession down to the river. Everybody. The abbot,

 all the priests, the acolytes, every true believer, even Mek and all his

 men, they all go down to the river and stay there overnight. For one

 whole day and night the monastery is deserted. Empty. Nobody there at

 all."

 He stared at her over the rim of his glass, and then slowly he began to

 smile, "Now that is very interesting indeed," he admitted.

 "Don't forget, I am coming with you," she told him severely. "Don't you

 dare to even think of leaving me behind."

 Nicholas went to her hut again that evening after dinner. This was the

 only place in camp where they could be sure of privacy, and where they

 were safe from eavesdropping. However, this time he did not make the

 mistake of sitting on her bed.

 While she perched on the end of it, he took the stool opposite her.

 "Before we start planning this thing, let me ask you one question. Have

 you considered the possible consequences?"

 "You mean, what happens if the monks catch us at it?" Royan asked.

 "At the very least we can expect them to run us out of the valley. The

 abbot has a tremendous amount of power.

 At the worst we can be physically attacked," Nicholas told her. "This is

 one of the most sacred sites in their religion, and don't underestimate

 that fact. There is a great deal of danger involved. It could go as far

 as a knife between the ribs, or something nasty in our food."

 "We would also alienate Tessay. She is a deeply religious woman,'Royan

 added.

 "Even more importantly, we would probably outrage Mek Nimmur as well."

 Nicholas looked distressed at the thought. "I don't know what he would

 do, but I don't think our friendship would stand the test."

 They were both quiet for a while, considering the cost that they might

 have to pay. Nicholas broke the silence.

 "Then again, have you considered your own position?

 After all, it is your own Church that we will be desecrating.

 You are a committed Christian. Can you justify this to yourself?"

 "I have thought about it, she admitted. "And I am not altogether happy

 about it, but it isn't really my Church. It's a different branch of the

 Coptic Church."

 "Splitting hairs, aren't we?"

 "The Egyptian Church does not deny anyone access to even the most sacred

 precincts of its church building. I do not feel myself bound by the

 abbot's prohibition. I feel that as a believing Christian I have the

 right to enter any part of the cathedral that I wish."

 He whistled softly, "And you are the one who once said that I should

 have been a lawyer."

 "Please don't, Nicky. It's not something you should joke about. All I

 know is that, no matter what, I have to go in there. Even if I die to do

 it."

 "You could let me do it for you," he suggested. "After all, I am an old

 heathen. It would not spoil my chances of salvation. I don't have any."

 "No." She shook her head firmly. "If there is an inscription or

 something of that nature, I need to see it.

 You read hieroglyphics quite well, but not as well as I do, and you

 don't know the hieratic script. I am the expert you are just a gifted

 amateur. You need me. I am going in there with you."

 "All right. That is settled, then," he said with finality.

 "Let's start planning. We had better draw up a list of equipment that we

 may need. Flashlight, knife, Polaroid camera, spare film-'

 "Art paper and soft pencils to lift an impression of any inscriptions,'

 she added to the list.

 "Hell!" He snapped his fingers with chagrin. "I didn't think to bring

 any."

 "See what I mean? Amateur. I did."

 They talked on until late, and at last Nicholas glanced at his

 wrist-watch and stood up.

 "Long after midnight. I am scheduled to turn into a pumpkin at any

 moment. Goodnight."

 "There are still two days of the festival before the tabot is taken down

 to the river. Nothing we can do until then.

 What are your plans

 "Tomorrow I am going back after that damned little Bambi. It has made a

 fool of me twice already."

 "I am coming with you," she said firmly, and that simple declaration

 gave him a disproportionate amount of pleasure.

 "Just as long as you leave Tamre at home," he warned her as he stooped

 out through the door.

 The tiny antelope stepped out from the deep shadow of the thorn thicket,

 and the early morning sunlight gleamed on the silky pelt, It kept

 walking steadily across the narrow clearing.

 Nicholas's breathing quickened with excitement as he followed it with

 the telescopic sight. It was ridiculous that he should feel so wrought

 up with the hunting of such a humble little animal, but his previous

 failures had sharpened his anticipation. Added to that was the peculiar

 passion that drives the true collector. Since he had lost Rosalind and

 the girls, he had thrown all his energy into the building up of the

 collection at Quenton Park. Now, suddenly, procuring this specimen for

 it had become a matter of supreme importance to him.

 His forefinger rested lightly on the side of the trigger guard. He would

 not fire until the dik-dik came to a standstill. Even that walking pace

 would make the shot uncertain. He had to place his bullet precisely, to

 kill swiftly but at the same time to inflict the least possible damage

 to the skin.

 To this end he had loaded the Rigby with full metal jacket bullets -

 ones that would not expand on impact and open a wide wound channel, nor

 rip out a gaping hole in the coat as they exited. These solid bullets

 would punch a tiny hole the size of a pencil that the taxidermist at the

 museum would be able to repair invisibly.

 He felt his nerves screwing up as he realized that the dik-dik was not

 going to stop in the open. It made steadily for the thick scrub on the

 far side of the clearing. This might be his last chance. He fought the

 temptation to take the shot at the moving target, and it required an

 effort of will to lift his finger off the trigger again.

 The antelope reached the wall of thorn scrub -and, the moment before it

 disappeared, stopped abruptly and thrust its tiny head into the depths

 of one of the low bushes.

 Standing broadside to Nicholas, it began to nibble at the pate green

 tufts of new leaves. The head was screened, so he had to abandon his

 intention of going for that shot.

 However, the shoulder was exposed. He could make out the clear outline

 of the blade beneath the glossy red-brown skin. The dik-dik was angled

 slightly away from him, in the perfect position for the heart shot,

 tucked in low behind the shoulder.

 Unhurriedly he settled the reticule of the scope on the precise spot,

 and squeezed the trigger.

 The shot whip-cracked in the heavy heated air and the tiny antelope

 bounded high, coming down to touch the earth already at a full run. Like

 a rapier rather than a cutlass, the solid bullet had not struck with

 sufficient shock to knock the dik-dik over. Head down, the dik-dik

 dashed away in the typical frantic reaction to a bullet through the

 heart. It was dead already, running only on the last dregs of oxygen in

 its bloodstream.

 "Oh, no! Not that way," Nicholas cried as he jumped to his feet. The

 tiny creature was racing straight towards the lip of the cliff. Blindly

 leaped out into empty space and flipped into a somersault as it fell,

 dropping from their sight, down almost two hundred feet into the chasm

 of the Dandera river.

 "That was a filthy bit of luck." Nicholas jumped over the bush that had

 hidden them and ran to the rim of the chasm. Royan followed him and the

 two of them stood peering down into the giddy void.

 "There it is!" She pointed, and he nodded. "Yes, I can see it."

 The carcass lay directly below them, caught on an islet of rock in the

 middle of the stream.

 "What are you going to do?" she asked.

 "I'll have to go down and get it." He straightened up and stepped back

 from the brink. "Fortunately it's still early.

 We have plenty of time to get the job done before dark.

 I'll have to go back to camp to fetch the rope and to get some help."

 It was afternoon before they returned, panied by Boris, both his

 trackers and two of the skinners. They brought with them four coils of

 nylon rope.

 Nicholas leaned out over the cliff and grunted with relief "Well, the

 carcass is still down there. I had visions of it being washed away." He

 supervised the trackers as they uncoiled the rope and laid it out down

 the length of the clearing.

 "We will need two coils of it to get down to the bottom he estimated

 and joined them, painstakingly tying and checking the knot himself. Then

 he plumbed the drop, lowering the end of the rope down the cliff until

 it touch the surface of the water, and then hauling it back and

 measuring it between the spread of his arms.

 "Thirty fathoms. One hundred and eighty feet. I won't be able to climb

 back that high," he told Boris. "You and your gang will have to haul me

 back up."

 He anchored the rope end with a bowline to the hole of one of the wiry

 thorn trees. Then he again tested it meticulously, getting all four of

 the trackers and skinners to heave on it with their combined weight.

 "That should do it," he gave his opinion as he stripped to his shirt and

 khaki shorts and pulled off his chukka boots. On the tip of the cliff he

 leaned out backwards with the rope draped over his shoulder and the tail

 brought back between his legs in the classic. absed style.

 "Coming in on a wing and a prayerP he said, and jumped out backwards

 into the chasm. He controlled his fall by allowing the rope to pay out

 over his shoulder, braking with the turn over his thigh, swinging like a

 pendulum and kicking himself off the rock wall with both feet. He went

 down swiftly until his feet dangled into the rush of water, and the

 current pushed him into a spin on the end of the rope. He was a few

 yards short of the spur of rock on which the dead dik-dik lay, and he,

 was forced to let himself drop into the river. With the end of the rope

 held between his teeth he swam the last short distance with a furious

 overarm crawl, just beating the current's attempt to sweep him away

 downstream.

 He dragged himself up on to the island and took a few moments to catch

 his breath, before he could admire the beautiful little creature he had

 killed. He felt the familiar melancholy and guilt as he stroked the

 glossy hide and examined the perfect head with the extraordinary

 proboscis. However, there was no time now for regrets, nor for the

 searching of his hunter's conscience.

 He trussed up the dik-dik, tying all four of its legs together securely,

 then he stepped back and looked up. He could see Boris's face peering

 down at him.

 "Haul it up!" he shouted, and gave three yanks on the rope as the agreed

 signal. The trackers were hidden from his view, but the slack in the

 rope was taken up and then the dik-dik lifted clear of the island and

 rose jerkily up the wall of the chasm. Nicholas watched it anxiously.

 There was a moment when the rope seemed to snag when the carcass was

 two-thirds of the way to the top, but then it freed itself and snaked on

 up the cliff.

 Eventually the dik-dik disappeared from his sight, and there was a long

 delay until the rope end dropped back over the tip. Boris had been

 sensible enough to weight it with a round stone the size of a man's

 head, and he was hanging over the top of the cliff, watching its

 progress and signalling to his men to control the descent.

 When the end of the weighted line touched the surface of the water it

 was just out of Nicholas's reach. From the top of the cliff Boris began

 to swing the line until the end of it pendulumed close enough for

 Nicholas to grab it.

 With a bowline knot Nicholas tied a loop in the end of the line and

 slipped it under his armpits. Then he looked up at Boris.

 "Heave away!" he yelled, and tugged the dangling rope three times. The

 slack tightened and then he was lifted off his feet. He began to ascend

 in a series of spiralling jerks and heaves. As he rose, the belled wall

 of the chasm arched in to meet him, until he could fend off from the

 rock with his bare feet and stop himself spiralling at the end of the

 rope. He was fifty feet from the top of the cliff when suddenly he

 stopped abruptly, dangling helplessly against the rock face.

 "What's going on?" he shouted up at Boris.

 "Bloody rope has jammed," Boris yelled back. "Can you see where it is

 stuck?"

 Nicholas peered up and realized that the rope had rolled into a vertical

 crack in the face, probably the same one that had almost stopped the

 dik-dik reaching the top.

 However, his own weight was almost five times that of the little

 antelope, and had forced the rope much more deeply into the crack.

 He was suspended high in the air, with a drop of almost a hundred feet

 under him.

 "Try and swing yourself loose! Boris shouted down at him. Obediently,

 Nicholas kicked himself back and twisted on the rope to try and roll it

 clear. He worked until the sweat streamed down into his eyes and the

 rope had rubbed him raw under the arms.

 "No use," he shouted back at Boris. "Try to haul it out with brute

 force!

 There was a pause, and then he saw the rope above the crack tighten like

 a bar of iron as five strong men hauled on the top end with all their

 strength. He could hear the trackers chanting their working chorus as

 they threw all their combined weight on the line.

 His end of the line did not budge. It was a solid jam, and he knew then

 that they were not going to clear it. He looked down. The surface of the

 water seemed much further than a hundred feet below.

 "The terminal velocity of the human body is one hundred and fifty miles

 an hour," he reminded himself. At that speed the water would be like

 concrete. "I won't be going that fast when I hit, will I? he tried to

 reassure himself.

 He looked up again. The men on the top of the cliff were still hauling

 with all their weight and strength. At that moment one of the strands of

 the nylon rope sheared against the cutting edge of the rock crack, and

 began to uncurl like a long green worm.

 "Stop pulling!" Nicholas screamed. "Vast heaving!" But Boris was no

 longer in sight. He was helping his trackers, adding his weight to the

 pull.

 The second strand of the rope parted and unravelled.

 There was only a single strand holding him now.

 It was going to go at any moment, he realized. "Boris, you ham-fisted

 bastard, stop pulling!" But his voice never reached the Russian, and

 with a pop like a champagne cork the third and final strand of the rope

 parted.

 He plunged downwards, with the loose end of the severed rope fluttering

 above his head. Flinging both arms straight upwards over his head to

 stabilize his flight, he straightened his legs, arrowing his body to hit

 feet first.

 He thought about the island under him. Would he miss its red rock fangs

 or would he smash into it and shatter every bone in his lower body? He

 dared not look down to judge it in case he destabilized - his fall and

 tumbled in midair. If he hit the water flat it would crush his ribs or

 snap his spine.

 His guts seemed to be forced into his throat by the speed of his fall,

 and he drew one last breath as he hit the surface feet first. The force

 of it was stunning. It was transmitted up his spine into the back of his

 skull, so that his teeth cracked against each other and bright lights

 starred his vision. The river swallowed him under. He went down deep,

 but he was still moving so fast when he hit the rocky bottom that his

 legs were jarred to the hips. He felt his knees buckle under the strain,

 and he thought that both his legs had been broken.

 The impact drove the air out of his lungs, and it was only when he

 kicked off the bottom, desperate for air, that -he realized with a rush

 of relief that both his legs were still intact. He broke out through the

 surface, wheezing an coughing, and realized that he must have missed the

 island by only the length of his body. However, by now the current had

 carried him well clear of it.

 He trod water on the racing stream, shook the water from his eyes and

 looked around him swiftly. The walls of the chasm were streaming past

 him, and he estimated his speed at around ten knots - fast enough to

 break bone if he hit a rock. As he thought it, another small island

 flashed past him almost close enough to touch. He rolled on to his back

 and thrust both feet out ahead of him, ready to fend off should he be

 thrown on to another outcrop.

 "You are in for the whole ride, he told himself grimly.

 "There is only one way out, and that is to ride it to the bottom."

 He was trying to calculate how far he was above the point where the

 river debauched from the chasm through the pink stone archway, how far

 he still had to swim.

 "Three or four miles, at the least, and the river falls almost a

 thousand feet. There are bound to be rapids and probably waterfalls

 ahead," he decided. "From here it does not look good. I' say the betting

 is three to one against getting through without leaving some skin and

 meat on the rocks behind you."

 He looked up. The walls canted in from each side, so that at places they

 almost met directly over his head. There was only a narrow strip of blue

 sky showing, and the depths were gloomy and dank. Over the ages the

 river had scoured the rock as it cut its way through.

 "Damned lucky this is the dry season. What is it like down in here in

 the rainy season?" he wondered. He looked up at the high-water mark

 etched on the rock fifteen or twenty feet above his head.

 Shuddering at the image he looked down again, concentrating on the river

 ahead. He had his breath back by now, and he checked his body for any

 damage. With relief he decided that, apart from some bruising and what

 felt like a sprained knee, he was unhurt. All his limbs were responding,

 and when he swam a few strokes to one side to avoid another spur of

 rock, even the sore knee worked well enough to get him out of trouble.

 Gradually he became aware of a new sound in the canyon. It was a dull

 roar, growing stronger as he sped onward down The walls of the chasm

 converged upon each other, the gut of rock narrowed and the flood seemed

 to accelerate as it was squeezed in and confined. The sound of water

 built up rapidly into a thunder that reverberated in the canyon.

 Nicholas rolled over and swam with all his strength across the current

 until he reached the nearest rock wall.

 He tried to find a handhold, a place where he could anchor himself, but

 the rock was polished smooth by the river. It slipped past under his

 desperately grasping hands, and the river bellowed in his head. He saw

 the surface around him flatten out and smooth like solid glass. Like a

 horse laying back its ears as it gathers itself for a jump, the river

 had sensed what lay ahead.

 Nicholas pushed himself away from the rock wall to try and give himself

 room in which to manoeuvre, and pointed his feet once more down river.

 Abruptly the air opened under him and he was launched out into space.

 All around him white spurning water filled the air, and he was swirled

 off balance and tossed like a leaf in the torrent The drop seemed to

 last for ever, and his stomach swooped against his ribs. Then once more

 he struck with all his weight and was driven far below the surface.

 He fought his way up and abruptly burst out through the surface with his

 breathing whistling up his throat.

 Through streaming eyes he saw that he was caught up in the bowl of

 swirling water below the falls. The waters revolved and eddied, turning

 in a stately minuet upon themselves.

 As he turned, he saw first the high sheet of white water of the falls

 down which he had tumbled, and then still turning, the narrow exit from

 the basin through which the river resumed its mad career downstream. But

 for the moment he was safe and quiet here in the back-eddy below the

 falls. The current pushed him against the side of the basin, close in

 beneath the chute of the falls. He reached out and found a handhold on a

 clump of mossy fern growing out of a crack in the wall.

 Here, at last, he had a chance to rest and consider his position. It did

 not take him long, however, to realize that his only way out of the

 chasm was to follow the course of the river and to take his chances with

 whatever lay downstream. He could expect rapids, if not another set of

 falls like this one that thundered away close beside him.

 If only there were some way up the wall! He looked up, but his spirits

 quailed as he considered the overhang that formed a cathedral roof high

 above him.

 While he still stared upwards, something caught his eye. Something too

 regular and regimented to be natural.

 There was a double row of dark marks running vertically up the wall of

 rock, beginning at the surface of the water and climbing up the wall to

 the rim almost two hundred feet overhead. He relinquished his hold on

 the clump of fern and dog-paddled slowly down to where these marks

 reached the water.

 As he reached them he realized that they were niches, cut about four

 inches square into the wall. The two rows were twice the spread of his

 arms apart, and the niche in one row lined up in the horizontal plane

 exactly with its neighbour in the second row.

 Thrusting his hand into the nearest opening, he found that it was deep

 enough to accommodate his arm to the elbow. This opening, being below

 the flood level of the waters, was smoothed and worn, but when he looked

 to those higher up the wall, above the water mark, he saw that they had

 retained their shape much more clearly. The edges were sharp and square.

 "My word, how old are they to have been worn like that?" he marvelled.

 "And how the hell did anybody get down here to cut them?"

 He hung on to the niche nearest him and studied the pattern in the cliff

 face. "Why would anybody go to all that amount of trouble?" He could

 think of no reason nor purpose. "Who did this work? What would they want

 down here?" It was an intriguing mystery.

 Then suddenly something else caught his eye. It was a circular

 indentation in the rock, precisely between the two rows of niches and

 above the high-water mark. From so far below it looked to be perfectly

 round - another shape that was not natural.

 He paddled further around, trying to reach a position from which he

 would have a clearer view of it. It seemed to be some sort of rock

 engraving, a plaque that reminded him strongly of those marks in the

 black boulders that flank the Nile below the first cataract at Aswan,

 placed there in antiquity to measure the flood levels of the river

 waters. But the light was too poor and the angle too acute for him to be

 certain that it was man-made, let alone to recognize or read any script

 or lettering that might have been incorporated in the design.

 Hoping to devise some way of climbing closer, he tried to use the stone

 niches as aids. With a great deal of effort, usin them as foot- and

 hand-holds, he managed to lift himself out of the water. But the

 distances between holds were too great and he fell back with a splash,

 swallowing more water.

 "Take it easy, my lad - you still have to swim out of here. No profit in

 exhausting yourself. You will just have to come back another day to get

 a closer look at whatever it is up there."

 Only then did he realize how close he was to total exhaustion. This

 water coming down from the Choke mountains was still cold with the

 memories of the high snows. He was shivering until his teeth chattered.

 "Not far from hypothermia. Have to get out of here now, while you still

 have the strength."

 Reluctantly he pushed himself away from the wall of rock and paddled

 towards the narrow opening through which the Dandera river resumed the

 headlong rush to join her mother Nile. He felt the current pick him up

 and bear him forward, and he stopped swimming and let it take him.

 "The Devil's roller-coaster!" he told himself. "Down and down she goes,

 and where she stops nobody knows."

 The first set of rapids battered him. They seemed endless, but at last

 he was spewed out into the run of slower water below them. He floated on

 his back, taking full advantage of this respite, and looked upwards.

 There was very little light showing above him, for the rock almost met

 overhead. The air was dank and dark and stank of bats. However, there

 was little time to examine his surroundings, for once again the river

 began to roar ahead of him. He braced himself rilentally for the assault

 of turbulent waters, and went cascading down the next steep slide.

 After a while he lost track of how far he had been carried, and how many

 cataracts he had survived. It was a constant battle against the cold and

 the pain of sodden lungs and strained muscle and overtaxed sinew. The

 river mauled him.

 Suddenly the light changed. After the gloom at the bottom of the high

 cliffs it was as though a searchlight had been shone directly into his

 eyes, and he felt the force and ferocity of the river abating. He

 squinted up into bright sunlight, and then looked back and saw that he

 had passed out below the archway of pink rock into that familiar part of

 the river which he had explored with Royan. Coming up ahead of him was

 the rope suspension bridge, and he had just sufficient strength

 remaining to paddle feebly towards the small beach of white sand below

 it.

 One of the hairy tattered ropes dangled to the surface of the water, and

 he managed to catch hold of it as he drifted past and swing himself in

 towards the beach. He tried to crawl fully ashore, but he collapsed with

 his face in the sand and vomited out the water he had swallowed. It felt

 so good just to be able to lie without effort and rest.

 His lower body still hung into the river, but he had neither the

 strength nor the inclination to drag himself fully ashore.

 "I am alive," he marvelled, and fell into a state halfway between sleep

 and unconsciousness.

  never knew how long he had been lying like that, but when he felt a

 hand shaking his shoulder, and a voice calling softly to him, he was

 annoyed that his rest had been disturbed.

 "Effendi, wake up! They seek you. The beautiful Woizero seeks you."

 With a huge effort Nicholas roused himself and sat up slowly. Tamre

 knelt over him, grinning and waggling his head.

 (Please, effendi, come with me. The Woizero is searching the river bank

 on the far side. She is weeping and calling your name,' Tamre told him.

 He was the only person Nicholas had ever met who contrived to look

 worried and to grin at the same time. Nicholas looked beyond him and saw

 that it must be late afternoon, for the sun sat fat and red on the lip

 of the escarpment.

 While still sitting in the sand Nicholas checked his body, making an

 inventory of his injuries. He ached in every muscle, and his legs and

 arms were scraped and bruised, but he could detect no broken bones. And

 although there was a tender lump on'the side of his he ad where he had

 glanced off a rock, his mind was clear.

 "Help me upP he ordered Tamre. The boy put his shoulder under Nicholas's

 armpit, where the. rope had burnt him, and hoisted him to his feet. The

 two of them struggled up to the bank and on to the path, and then.

 hobbled slowly across the swinging bridge.

 He had hardly reached the other bank when there was a joyous shout from

 close at hand.

 "Nicky! Oh, dear God! You are safe." Royan ran down the path and threw

 her arms around him. "I have been frantic. I thought that-' she broke

 off, and held him at arms length to look at him. "Are you all right? I

 was expecting to find your broken bodym---'

 "You know me," he grinned at her and tried not to i limp. "Ten'feet tall

 and-bullet-proof You don't get rid of Me that easily. I only did it just

 to get a hug from you."

 She released him hurriedly. "Don't read anything into that. I am kind to

 all beaten puppies, and other dumb animals." But her smile belied the

 words. "Nevertheless, it's good to have you back in one piece, Nicky."

 "Where is Boris?"he asked.

 "He and the trackers are searching the banks lower down the river. I

 think he is looking forward to finding your corpse."

 "What has he done with my dik-dik?"

 ainly nothing too much the matter with

 "There is cert you if you can worry about that. The skinners have taken

 it down to the camp."

 "Damn it to hell! I must supervise the skinning and tion of the trophy

 myself. They will ruin id' He put prepara his arm around Tamre's

 shoulder. "Come on, my lad! Let's see if I can break into a trot."

 las knew that in this heat the carcass of icho the little antelope would

 decompose swiftly, and the hair would slough from the hide if it were

 not treated immediately. It was imperative to skin it out immediately.

 Already it had been left too long, and the preparation of a hide for a

 full body mount was a skilled and painstaking procedure.

 it was already dark as they limped into the camp.

 Nicholas shouted for the skinners in Arabic.

 "Ya, Kif! Ya, SalinP and when they came running from living huts he

 asked anxiously, "Have you begun?" their

 "Not yet, effendi. We were having our dinner first."

 "For once gluttony is a virtue. Do not touch the creature until I come.

 While you are waiting for me, fetch one of the gas lights!" He limped to

 his own hut as fast as his aches would allow. There he stripped and

 anointed all his visible scrapes and abrasions with Mercurochrome, flung

 on fresh dry clothes, rummaged in his bag until he found the canvas roll

 which contained his knives, and hurried down to the skinning hut.

 By the brilliant white glare of the butane gas lantern he had only just

 completed the initial skin incisions down the inside of the dik-dik's

 legs and belly when Boris pushed open the door of the hut.

 "Did you have a good swim, English?"

 "Bracing, thank you." Nicholas smiled. "I don't expect you want to eat

 your words about my striped dik-dik, do you?" he asked mildly. "No such

 bloody animal, I think you said., "It is like a rat. A true hunter would

 not bother himself with such rubbish," Boris replied haughtily. "Now

 that you have your rat, perhaps we can go back to Addis, English?"

 "I paid you for three weeks. It is my safari. We go when I say

 so,'Nicholas told him. Boris grunted and backed out of the hut.

 Nicholas worked swiftly. His knives were of a special design to

 facilitate the fine work, and he stropped them at regular intervals on a

 ceramic sharpening rod until he could shave the hairs from his forearm

 with just the lightest touch.

 The legs had to be skinned out with the tiny hooves still attached.

 Before he had completed this part of the work, another figure stooped

 into the hut. He was dressed in a priest's shamma and headcloth, and

 until he spoke Nicholas did not recognize Mek Nimmur.

 "I hear that you have been looking for trouble again, Nicholas. I came

 to make sure that you were still alive.

 There was a rumour at the monastery that you had drowned yourself,

 though I knew it was not possible. You will not die so easily."

 "I hope you are right, Mek," Nicholas laughed at him.

 Mek squatted opposite him. "Give me one of your knives and I will finish

 the hooves. It will go quicker if I help you."

 Without comment Nicholas passed him one of the knives. He knew that Mek

 could skin out the hooves, for years before he had taught him the art.

 With two of them working on the pelt, it would go that much faster. The

 sooner the skin was off, the less chance there would be of

 deterioration.

 He turned his attention to the head. This was the most delicate part of

 the process. The skin had to be peeled off like a glove, and the eyelids

 and lips and nostrils must be worked from the inside. The ears were

 perhaps the most difficult to lift away from the gristle in one piece.

 They worked in companionable silence for a while, which Mek broke at

 last.

 "How well do you know your Russian, Boris Brusilov?" he asked.

 "I met him for the first time when I stepped off the plane. He was

 recommended by a friend."

 "Not a very good friend." Mek looked up at him and his expression was

 grim. "I came to warn you about him, Nicholas."

 "I a listening," said Nicholas quietly.

 "In "85 I was captured by Mengistu's thugs. They kept me in the Karl

 Marx prison camp near Addis. Brusilov was one of the interrogators

 there. He was KGB in those days.

 His favourite trick was to stick the pressure hose from a compressor up

 the anus of the man or woman he was questioning and turn on the tap.

 They blew up like a balloon, until the gut burst." He stopped speaking

 while he moved around to work on the other hoof of the antelope.

 "I escaped before he got around to questioning me. He retired when

 Mengistu fled, and went hunting. I don't know how he persuaded Tessay to

 marry him, ut knowing what I do of the man, I expect she did not have

 much choice in the matter."

 "Of course, I had my suspicions about him," Nicholas admitted.

 They were quiet after that until Mek whispered, "I came to tell you that

 I may have to kill him."

 Neither of them spoke again until Mek had finished working on all four

 hooves. Then he stood up. "These days, life is uncertain, Nicholas. If I

 have to leave here in a hurry, and I do not have a chance to say goodbye

 to you, then there is somebody in Addis who will pass a message to me if

 you ever need me. His name is Colonel Maryam Kidane in the Ministry of

 Defence. He is a friend. My code name is the Swallow. He will know who

 you are talking about."

 They embraced briefly. "Go with GodV said Mek, and left the hut quietly.

 The night swallowed his robed figure and Nicholas stood for a long time

 at the door, until at last he turned back to finish the work.

 It was late by the time he had rubbed every inch of the skin with a

 mixture of rock salt and Kabra dip to cure it and protect it from the

 ravages of the bacon beetle and other insects and bacteria. At last he

 laid it out on the floor of the hut with the wet side uppermost and

 packed more rock salt on the raw areas.

 The walls of the hut were reinforced with mesh netting to keep out

 hyenas. One of these foul creatures could gobble down the pelt in a few

 seconds. He made certain the door was wired shut before he carried the

 lantern up to the dining hut. The others had all eaten and gone to bed

 hours earlier, but Tessay had left his dinner in the charge of the

 Ethiopian chef. He had not realized how hungry he was until he smelt it.

 The next morning Nicholas was so stiff that he hobbled down to the

 skinning hut like an old man. First he checked the pelt and poured

 fresh salt over it, then he ordered Kif and Satin to bury the skull of

 the dik-dik in an ant heap to allow the insects to remove the surplus

 flesh and scour the brain pan. He preferred this method to boiling the

 skull.

 Satisfied that the trophy was in good condition, he went on down to the

 dining hut, where Boris greeted him jovially.

 "And so, English. We leave for Addis now, da? "thing more to do here."

 "We will stay to photograph the ceremony of Timkat at the

 monastery,'Nicholas told him. "And after that I may want to hunt a

 Menelik's bushbuck. Who knows? I've told you before. We go when I say

 so."

 Boris looked disgruntled. "You are crazy, English. Why do you want to

 stay in this heat to watch these people and their mumbo'jumbo?"

 "Today I will go fishing, and tomorrow we will watch Timkat."

 "You do not have a fishing rod," Boris protested, but pened the small

 canvas roll no larger than a Nicholas woman's handbag and showed him

 the four-piece Hardy Smuggler rod nestling in it.

 He looked across the table at Royan, "Are you coming along to ghillie

 for me?" he asked.

 They went upstream to the suspension bridge where Nicholas set up the

 rodand tied a fly on to his leader.

 "Royal Coachm " He held it up for her appraisal.

 an.

 "Fish love them anywhere in the world, from Patagonia to Alaska. We

 shall soon find out if they are as popular here in Ethiopia, as well."

 She watched from the top of the bank as he shot out line, rolling it

 upon itself in flight, sailing the weightless fly out to midstream, and

 then laying it gently on the surface of the water so that it floated

 lightly on the ripples. On his second cast there was a swirl under the

 fly. The rod tip arced over sharply, the reel whined and Nicholas let

 out a whoop.

 "Gotcha, my beauty!'

  watched him indulgently from the top of the bank.

 Sh In his excitement and enthusiasm he was like a small boy.

 She smiled when she noticed how his injuries had miraculously healed

 themselves, and how he no longer limped as he ran back and forth along

 the water's edge, playing the fish. Ten minutes later he slid it,

 gleaming like a bar of freshly minted gold as long as his arm, sopping

 and flapping up on to the beach.

 "Yellow fish," he told her triumphantly. "Scrumptious.

 Breakfast for tomorrow morning."

 He came up the bank and dropped down in the grass beside her. "The

 fishing was really just an excuse to get away from Boris. I brought you

 here to tell you about what I found up there yesterday." He pointed up

 through the archway of pink stone above the bridge. She came up on her

 elbow and watched him with her full attention.

 "Of course, I have no way of telling if it has anything to do with our

 search, but somebody has been working in there." He described the niches

 that he had found carved into the canyon wall. "They reach from the lip

 right down to the water's edge. Those below the high-water mark have

 been severely eroded by the floods. I could not reach those higher up,

 but from what I could see they have been protected from wind and rain by

 the dished shape of the Cliff., it has formed a veranda roof over them.

 They appear to be in pristine condition, very much in contrast to those

 lower down."

 "What do we deduce from that?" she asked.

 "That they are very old," he answered. "Certainly the basalt is pretty

 hard. It has taken a long, long time for water to wear it down the way

 it has."

 "What do you think was the purpose of those holes?"

  am not sure he admitted.

 "Could it be that they were the anchor points for some sort of

 scaffolding? she asked, and he looked impressed.

 "Good thinking. They could be, he agreed.

 "What other ideas occur to you?"

 "Ritual designs," he suggested. "A religious motif." He smiled as he saw

 her expression of doubt. "Not very convincing, I agree."

 "All right, let's consider the idea of scaffolding. Why would anybody

 want to erect scaffolding in a place like that?" She lay back in the

 grass and picked a straw which she nibbled reflectively.

 He shrugged. "To anchor a1adder or a gantry, to gain access to the

 bottom of the chasm?"

 "What other reason?"

 "I can't think of any other."

 After a while she shook her head. "Nor can She spat out the piece of

 grass. "If that is the motive, then they were fairly committed to the

 project. From your description it must have been a substantial

 structure, designed to support the weight of a, lot of men or heavy

 material."

 "In North America the Red Indians built fishing platforms over

 waterfalls like that from which they netted the salmon."

 "Have there ever been great runs of fish through these waters?" she

 asked, and he shrugged again.

 "Nobody can answer that. Perhaps long ago who knows."

 "Was that all you saw down there?"

 "High up the wall, aligned with mathematical precision between the two

 lines of stone niches, there was something that looked like a has-relief

 carving."

 She sat up with a jerk and stared at him avidly. "Could it clearly? Was

 it script, or was it a design? What you see was the style of the

 carving?"

 "No such luck. It was too high, and the light is very poor down there. I

 am not even certain that it wasn't'a natural flaw in the rock."

 Her disappointment was palpable, but after a pause she asked,

 "Was there anything else?"

 "Yes," he grinned. "Lots and lots of water moving very very fast."

 "What are we going to do about this putative has-relief of yours?" she

 asked.

 "I don't like the idea in the least, but I will have to go back in there

 and have another look."

 "When?"

 "tomorrow. Our one chance to get into the maqdas of the cathedral. After

 that we will make a plan to explore the gorge."

 "We are running out of time, Nicky, just when things are getting really

 interesting."

 "You can say that again!'. he murmured. She felt his breath on her lips,

 for their faces were as close together as those of conspirators or of

 lovers, and she realized the double meaning of her own words. She jumped

 to her feet and slapped the dust and loose straw from her jodhpurs.

 "You only'have one fish to feed the multitude. Either you have a very

 high opinion of yourself, or you had better get fishing."

 wo debteras who had been detailed by the bishop to escort them tried to

 force a way for them through the crowds. However, they had not reached

 the foot of the staircase before the escort itself was swallowed up and

 lost. Nicholas and Royan became separated from the other couple.

 "Keep close," Nicholas told Royan, and maintained a firm grip on her

 upper arm as he used his shoulder to open a path for them. He drew her

 along with him. Naturally, he had deliberately contrived to lose Boris

 and Tessay in the crush, and it had worked out nicely the way he had

 planned it.

 At last they reached a position where Nicholas could set his back firmly

 against one of the stone columns of the terrace, to prevent the crowd

 jostling him. He also had a good view of the entrance to the cavern

 cathedral. Royan was not tall enough to see over the heads of the men in

 front of her, so Nicholas lifted her up on to the balustrade of the

 staircase and anchored her firmly against the column.

 She clung to his shoulder for support, for the drop into the Nile opened

 behind her, The worshippers kept up a low monotonous chant, while a

 dozen separate bands of musicians tapped their drums and rattled their

 sistrums. Each band surrounded its own patron, a chieftain in splendid

 robes, sheltering under a huge gaudy umbrella.

 There was an air of excitement and expectation almost as fierce as the

 heat and the stink. It built up steadily and, as the reased in pitch and

 volume, the crowd singing inc began to sway and undulate like a single

 organism, some grotesque amoeba, pulsing with life.

 Suddenly from within the precincts of the cathedral there came the

 chiming of brass bells, and immediately a hundred horns and trumpets

 answered. From the head of the stairway there was a fusillade of gunfire

 as the bodyguards of the chieftains fired their weapons in the air.

 Some of them were armed with automatic rifles, and the clatter of AK-47

 fire blended with the thunder of ancient black powder muzzle-loaders.

 Clouds of blue gunsmoke blew over the congregation, and bullets

 ricocheted from the cliff and sang away over the gorge. Women shrieked

 and utulated, an eerie, blood-chilling sound. The men's faces were

 alight with the fires of religious fervour.

 They fell to their knees and lifted their hands high in adoration,

 chanting and crying out to God for blessing.

 The women held their infants aloft, and tears of religious frenzy

 streaked their dark cheeks.

 From the gateway of the underground church emerged a procession of

 priests and monks. First came the debteras in long white robes, and then

 the acolytes who were to be baptized at the riverside. Royan recognized

 Tamre, his long gangling frame standing a head above the boys around

 him.

 She waved over the crowd and he saw her and grinned shyly before he

 followed the debteras on to the pathway to the river.

 By this time night was falling. The depths of the cauldron were obscured

 by shadows, and hanging over it the sky was a purple canopy pricked by

 the first bright stars.

 At the head of the pathway burned a brass brazier. As each of the

 priests passed it he thrust his unlit torch into the flames and, as soon

 as it flared, he held it aloft.

 Like a stream of molten lava the torchlit procession began to uncoil

 down the cliff face, the priests chanting dolefully and the drums

 booming and echoing from the cliffs across the river.

 Following the baptism candidates through the stone gateway came the

 ordained priests in their tawdry robes, bearing the processional crosses

 of silver and glittering brass, and the banners of embroidered silk,

 with their depictions of the saints in the agony of martyrdom and the

 ecstasy of adoration. They clanged their bells and blew their fifes, and

 sweated and chanted until their eyes rolled white in dark faces.

 Behind them, home by two priests in the most sumptuous robes and tall,

 jewel-encrusted head-dresses, came the tabot. The Ark of the Tabernacle

 was covered with a crimson cloth that hung to the ground, for it was too

 holy to be desecrated by the gaze of the profane.

 The worshippers threw themselves down upon the ground in fresh paroxysms

 of adoration. Even the chiefs prostrated themselves upon the soiled

 pavement of the terrace, and some of them wept with the fervour of their

 belief.

 Last in the procession came Jali Hora, wearing not the crown with the

 blue stone, but another even more splendid creation, the Epiphany crown,

 a mass of gleaming metal and flashing faux jewels which seemed too heavy

 for his ancient scrawny neck to support. Two debteras held his elbows

 and guided his uncertain footsteps on to the stairway that led down to

 the Nile.

 As the procession descended, so those worshippers nearest to the head of

 the stairs rose to their feet, lit their torches at the brazier and

 followed the abbot down. There was a general movement along the terrace

 to join the flow, and as it began to empty, Nicholas lifted Royan down

 from her perch on the balustrade.

 "We must get into the church while "there are still enough people around

 to cover us," he whispered. Leading her by the hand, with his other hand

 hanging on to the strap of his camera bag, he joined the movement down

 the terrace. He allowed them to be carried forward, but all the time he

 was edging across the stream of humanity towards the entrance to the

 church. He saw Boris and Tessay in the crush ahead of him, but they had

 not seen him, and he crouched lower so as to screen himself from them.

 As he and Royan reached the gateway to the outer the eased them out of

 the throng of chamber of the church, humanity and drew her gently

 through the low entrance into the dim, deserted interior. With a quick

 glance he made certain that they were alone, and that the guards were no

 longer at their stations beside the inner gates.

 Then he moved quickly along the side wall, to where one of the

 soot'grimed tapestries hung from the ceiling to the stone floor. He

 lifted the folds of heavy woven wool and drew Royan behind them, letting

 them fall back into place, concealing them both.

 They were only just in time, for hardly had they flattened their backs

 against the wall and let the tapestry settle when they heard footsteps

 approaching from the qiddist. Nicholas peeked around the corner of the

 tapestry and saw four white-robed priests cross the outer chamber and

 swing the main doors closed as they left the church.

 There was a weighty thud from outside as they dropped the locking beam

 into place, and then a profound silence pervaded the cavern.

 "I didn't reckon on that," Nicholas whispered. "They have locked us in

 for the night."

 "At least it means that we won't be disturbed," Royan replied briskly.

 "We can get to work right away."

 Stealthily they emerged from their hiding-place, and moved across the

 outer chamber to the doorway of the qiddist. Here Nicholas paused and

 cautioned her with a hand on her arm. "From here on we are in forbidden

 territory. Better let me go ahead and scout the lie of the land."

 She shook her head firmly. "You are not leaving me here. I am coming

 with you all the way." He knew better than to argue.

 "Come on, then." He led her up the steps and into the middle chamber.

 It was smaller and lower than the room they had left.

 The wall hangings were richer and in a better state of repair. The floor

 was bare, except for a pyramid-shaped framework of hand-hewn native

 timber upon which stood rows of brass lamps, each with the wick floating

 in a puddle of melted oil. The meagre light they provided was all that

 there was, and it left the ceiling and the recesses of the chamber in

 shadow.

 As they crossed the floor towards the gates that closed off the maqdas,

 Nicholas took two electric torches from his camera bag and handed one to

 her. "New batteries," he told her, "but don't waste them. We may be here

 all night."

 They stopped in front of the doors to the Holy Of Holies. Quickly

 Nicholas examined them. There were A, engravings of St.. Frumentius on

 each panel, his head enclosed in a nimbus of celestial radiance and his

 right hand lifted in the act of benediction.

 "Primitive lock," he murmured, "must be hundreds of years old. You could

 throw your hat through the gap between the hasp and the tongue." He

 slipped his hand into the bag and brought out a Leatherman tool.

 "Clever little job, this is. With it you do anything from digging the

 stones out of a horse's hoof, to opening the lock on a chastity belt."

 He knelt in front of the massive iron lock and unfolded one of the

 multiple blades of the tool. She watched anxiously as he worked, and

 then gave a little start as with satisfying clunk the tongue of the lock

 slid back.

 a Mis-spent youth?" she asked. "Burglary amongst your many talents?"

 "You don't really want to know." He stood up and put his shoulder to one

 leaf of the door. It gave with a groan of unlubricated hinges, and he

 pushed it open only just wide enough for them to squeeze through, then

 immediately shut it behind them.

 They stood side by side on the threshold of the maqdas and gazed about

 them in silent awe.

 The Holy of Holies was a small chamber, much smaller than either of them

 had expected. Nicholas could have crossed it in a dozen strides. The

 vaulted roof was so low that by standing on tiptoe he could have touched

 it with his outstretched fingertips.

 or upwards the walls were lined with From the flo shelves upon which

 stood the gifts and offerings of the faithful, icons of the Trinity and

 the Virgin rendered in Byzantine style, framed in ornate silver. There

 were ranks of statuettes of saints and emperors, medallions and wreaths

 made of polished metal, pots and bowls and jewelled boxes, candelabra

 with many branches, on each of which the votive candles burned providing

 an uncertain wavering light. It was an extraordinary collection of junk

 and treasures, of objects of virtue and garish bric-A-brac, offered as

 articles of faith by the emperors and chieftains of Ethiopia over the

 centuries.

 In the centre of the floor stood the altar of cedarwood, the panels

 carved with visionary, scenes of revelation and creation, of the

 temptation and the fall from Eden, and of the Last judgement. The altar

 cloth was crocheted raw silk, and the cross and the chalice were in

 massive worked silver. The abbot's crown gleamed in the candlelight,

 with the blue ceramic seal of Taita in the centre of its brow.

 Royan crossed the floor and knelt in front of the altar.

 She bowed her head in prayer. Nicholas waited respectfully at the

 threshold until she rose to her feet again, and then he went to join

 her.

 "The tabot stoneV He pointed beyond the altar, and they went forward

 side by side. At the back of the maqdas stood an object covered with a

 heavy damask cloth encrusted with embroidered thread of silver and gold.

 From the outline beneath the covering they could see that it was of

 elegant and pleasing proportions, as tall as a man, but slender with a

 pedestal topping.

 They both circled it, studying the cloaked shape avidly, but reluctant

 to touch it or to uncover it, fearful that their expectations might

 prove unwarranted, and that their ..hopes would be dashed like the

 turbulent river waters plunging into the cauldron of the Nile. Nicholas

 broke the tension that gripped them by turning away from the tabot stone

 to the barred gate in the back wall of the sanctuary.

 "The tomb of St. Frumentius!" he said, and went to the grille. She came

 to his side, and together they peered through the square openings in the

 woodwork that was black with age. The interior was in darkness. Nicholas

 prodded his torch through one of the openings and pressed the switch.

 The tomb lit up in a rainbow of colour so bright in the beam of the

 torch that their eyes took a few moments to adjust and then Royan gasped

 aloud.

 "Oh, sweet heaven!" She began to tremble as if in high fever, and her

 face went creamy pale as all the blood drained from it.

 The coffin was set into a stone shelf in the rear wall of the cell-like

 tomb. On the exterior was painted the likeness of the man within.

 Although it was badly faded and most of the paint had flaked away, the

 pale face and reddish beard of the dead man were still discernible.

 This was not the only reason for Royan's amazement.

 She was staring at the walls above and on either side of the shelf on

 which the coffin lay. They were a riot of colour, every inch of them

 covered with the most intricate and elaborate paintings that had

 miraculously weathered the passage of the millennia.

 Nicholas played his torch beam over them in awestruck silence, and Royan

 clung to his arm as if to save herself from falling. She dug her sharp

 nails into his flesh, but he was heedless of the pain.

 There were scenes of great battles, fighting galleys locked in terrible

 combat upon the blue eternal waters of the river. There were scenes of

 the hunt, the pursuit of the river horse and of great elephants with

 long tusks of gleaming ivory. There were battle scenes of regiments

 plumed and armoured, raging in their fury and blood lust.

 Squadrons of chariots wheeled and charged each other across these narrow

 walls, half obscured by the dust of their own mad career.

 The foreground of each mural was dominated by the same tall heroic

 figure. In one scene he drew the bow to full stretch, in another he

 swung high the blade of bronze.

 His enemies quailed before him, he trod them underfoot or gathered

 together their severed heads like a bouquet of flowers.

 Nicholas played the beam over all this splendid array of art, and

 brought it to a stop upon the central panel that covered the entire main

 wall above the shelf on which the rotting coffin lay. Here the same

 godlike figure rode the footplate of his chariot. In one hand he held

 the bow and in the other a bundle of javelins. His head was bare of any

 helmet, and his hair flowed out behind him in the wind of his passage, a

 thick golden braid like the tail of a lion. His features were noble and

 proud, his gaze direct and indomitable.

 Below him was a legen in classical Egyptian hieroglyphics. In a

 sepulchral whisper Royan translated them aloud:

 Great Lion of Egypt.

 Best of One Hundred Thousand Holder of the Gold of Valour Pharaoh's Sole

 Companion Warrior of all the Gods May you live for ever!

 Her hand shook upon his arm, and her voice choked and died away, stifled

 with emotion. She gave a little sob, and then shook herself as she

 brought herself back under control.

 "I know this artist," she said softly. "I have spent five years studying

 his work. I would know it anywhere." She drew a breath. "I know with

 utter certainty that nearly four thousand years ago Taita the slave

 decorated these walls and designed this tomb."

 She pointed to the name of the dead man carved into the stone above the

 shelf on which his coffin lay.

 "This is not the tomb of a Christian saint. Centuries ago some old

 priest must have stumbled upon it and, in his ignorance, usurped it for

 his own religion." She drew another shaky breath. "Look there! That is

 the seal of Tanus, Lord Harreb, the commander of all the armies of

 Egypt, lover of Queen Lostris and the natural father of Prince Memnon,

 who became the Pharaoh Tamose."

 They were both silent then, lost in the wonder of their discovery.

 Nicholas broke the silence at last.

 "It's all true, then. The secrets of the seventh scroll are all here for

 us, if we can find the key to them."

 "Yes," she said softly. "The key. Taita's stone testament." She turned

 back towards the tabot stone and approached it slowly, almost fearfully.

 "I can't bring myself to look, Nicky. I am terrified that it's not what

 we hope it is. You do itV

 He went directly to the column, and with a magician's flourish jerked

 away the damask cloth that covered it. They stared at the pillar of pink

 mottled granite that he had revealed. It was about six feet high and a

 foot square at the base, tapering up to half that width at the flat

 pedestal of the summit. The granite had been polished, and then

 engraved.

 Royan stepped forward and touched the cold stone, running her fingers

 lingeringly over the hieroglyphic'script in the way a blind man reads

 Braille.

 "Taita's letter to us," she whispered, picking out the symbol of the

 hawk with a broken wing from the mass of close-chiselled script, tracing

 the outline with a long, slim forefinger that trembled softly. "Written

 almost four thousand years ago, waiting all these ages for us to read

 and understand it. See how he has signed it." Slowly she circled the

 granite pillar, studying each of the four sides in turn, smiling and

 nodding, frowning and shaking her head, then smiling again as if it were

 a love letter.

 "Read it to me," Nicholas invited. "It's too complicated for me - I

 understand the characters, but I cannot follow the sense or the meaning.

 Explain it to me."

 "It's pure Taita." She laughed, her awe and wonder at last giving way to

 excitement. "He is being his usual obscure and capricious self." It was

 as though she were talking of a beloved but infuriating old friend.

 "It's all in verse and is probably some esoteric code of his own." She

 picked out a line of hieroglyphics, and followed them with her finger as

 she read aloud, "'The vulture rises on mighty pinions to greet the sun.

 The jackal howls and turns upon his tail. The river flows towards the

 earth. Beware, you violators of the sacred places, lest the wrath of all

 the gods descend upon you!"'

 "It's nonsense jargon. It does not make sense," he pretested.

 "Oh, yes, it makes sense all right. Taita always makes sense, once you

 follow the way his oblique mind is working." She turned to face him

 squarely. "Don't look so glum, Nicky. You can't expect to read Taita

 like an editorial in The Times. He has set us a riddle that may take

 weeks and months of work to unravel."

 "Well, one thing is certain. We can't stay here in the maqdas for weeks

 and months while, we puzzle it out. Let's get to work."

 "Photographs first." She became brisk and businesslike.

 "Then we can lift impressions from the stone."

 He set down the camera bag and knelt over it to open the flap. "I will

 shoot two rolls of colour first, and then use the Polaroid. That will

 give us something to work on until we can have the colour developed."

 She stood out of his way as he circled the pillar on his knees, keeping

 the angle correct so as not to distort the perspective. He took a series

 of shots of each of the four sides, using different shutter speeds and

 exposures.

 "Don't use up all your film," she warned him. "We need some shots of the

 walls of the tomb itself."

 Obediently he went to the grille gates and studied the locking system.

 "This is a bit more complicated than the outer gate. If I try to get in

 here, I might do some damage.

 I don't think it will be worth the risk of being discovered."

 "All right," she agreed. "Work through the openings in the grille."

 He filmed as best he was able, extending the camera through the openings

 at the full stretch of his arms, and estimating his focus.

 "That's the lot," he told her at last. "Now for the Polaroids."

 "He changed cameras and repeated the entire process, but this time Royan

 held a small tape measure against the pillar to give the scale.

 As he exposed each plate he handed it to her to check the development.

 Once or twice when the flash setting on the camera had either

 overexposed or rendered the subject too dull, or for some other reason

 she was not satisfied, she asked him to repeat the shot.

 After almost two hours' work they had a complete set Of Polaroids, and

 Nicholas packed his cameras away and brought out the roll of art paper.

 Working together, they stretched it over one face of the pillar and

 secured it in place with masking tape. Then he started at the top and

 she at the bottom. Each with a black art crayon, they rubbed the precise

 shape and form of the engravings on to the sheet of blank paper.

 "I have learned how important this is when dealing with Taita. If you

 are not able to work with the original, then you must have an exact

 copy. Sometimes the most minute detail of the engraving may change the

 entire sense and meaning of the script. He layers everything with hidden

 depths. You have read in River God how he cons' ers himself to be the

 riddler and punster par excellence id and the greatest exponent of the

 game of bao that ever lived. Well, that much of the book is accurate.

 Wherever he is now, he knows the game is on and he is revelling in every

 move we make. I can just imagine him giggling and gether with glee."

 rubbing his hands to

 "Bit fanciful, dear girl." He settled back to work. "But I know what you

 mean."

 The task of transferring the outline of the designs on to the blank

 sheets of art paper was painstaking and monotonous, and the hours passed

 as they laboured on hands and knees or crouched over the granite pillar.

 At last Nicholas stepped back and massaged his aching back.

 "That does it, then. All finished."

 a She stood up beside him. "What time is it?" she asked, and he checked

 his wristwatch.

 "Four in the morning. We had better tidy up in here.

 Make certain we leave no sign of our visit."

 "One last thing," Royan said, tearing a corner off one of the sheets of

 art paper. With it she went to the altar where the abbot's crown lay.

 Quickly she taped the scrap of paper over the blue ceramic seal in the

 centre of the crown, and filled it with a rubbing of the design of the

 hawk with a broken wing.

 Just for luck," she explained to him, as she came back to help him fold

 the long sheets of paper and pack them back in the bag. Then they

 gathered up the shreds of discarded masking tape and the empty film

 wrappers that he had strewn on the stone slabs.

 Before they covered the granite stele with the damask cloth, Royan

 caressed the stone panels of script as if to take leave of them for

 ever. Then she nodded at Nicholas.

 He spread the cloth over the pillar and they adjusted the folds to hang

 as they had found them. From the threshold of the brass-bound door they

 surveyed the maqdas for the last time, then he opened the door a rack

 "Let's go!" She squeezed through and he followed her out into the

 qiddist of the church. It took him only a few minutes to slide the

 tongue of the lock back into place.

 "How will we get out through the main doors?" she asked.

 "I don't think that will be necessary. The priests obviously have

 another entrance from their quarters directly into the qiddist. You very

 seldom see them using the main gates." He stood in the centre of the

 floor, and looked around carefully. "It must be on this side if it leads

 directly into the monks' living quarters-' he broke off with a grunt of

 satisfaction. "Aha! You can see where all their feet have actually worn

 a pathway over the centuries." He pointed out a smooth area of dished

 and worn stone near the side wall. "And look at the marks of grubby

 fingers on the tapestry over there." He crossed quickly to the hanging

 and drew a fold aside. "I thought as much." There was a narrow doorway

 concealed behind the hanging.

 "Follow me."

 They found themselves in a dark passageway through the living rock.

 Nicholas flashed his torch down its length, ? A

 but he masked the bulb with his hand to show only as ,much light as they

 needed. "This way."

 The passage turned at right-angles and ahead they could make out a dull

 illumination. Nicholas switched off the torch and led her on.

 Now there was the smell of stale food and humanity, and they passed the

 doorless entrance to a monk's rock cell. Nicholas flashed his torch into

 it. It was deserted and bare. A wooden cross hung on the wall with a

 truckle bed below it. There were no other furnishings. They went on past

 a dozen others which were almost identical.

 At the next turning of the passage Nicholas paused.

 He felt a tiny draught on his cheek, and the taste of fresh air on his

 tongue. "This way he whispered.

 They hurried on, until suddenly Royan grabbed his shoulder from behind

 and forced him to stop.

 "What-' he began, but she squeezed his shoulder to silence him. He heard

 it then, the sound of a human voice, echoing eerily through the

 labyrinth of passageways.

 Then came a weird haunting cry, that of a soul in agony, wailing and

 sobbing. They crept forward, trying to make their escape before they

 were discovered, but the sounds grew stronger as they went on.

 "Dead ahead," Nicholas warned her in a whisper. "We are going to have to

 sneak past."

 Now they saw soft yellow lamplight spilling from the doorway of one of

 the cells into the passage. There came another heart-rending female cry

 that echoed down the passage and froze them in their tracks.

 "That's a woman's voice. What is happening?" Royan breathed, ut he

 shook his head for silence and led her on.

 They had to pass the open door of the lit cell. Nicholas edged towards

 it with his back flattened to the opposite wall. She followed him,

 keeping close and clinging to his arm for comfort.

 As they looked into the cell the woman cried out again, but this time

 her voice blended with that of a man.

 It was a duet without words, but racked with all the feral agony of a

 passion too fierce to be borne in silence.

 In their full view a couple lay naked upon the truckle bed. The woman

 lay spread-eagled, holding the man's hips between her uplifted knees.

 Her arms wound hard around his back, upon which each separate muscle

 stood out proudly and gleamed with sweat. He thrust down into her

 savagely, his buttocks bunching and pounding with the force of a great

 black battering ram.

 She rolled her head from side to side as another incoherent cry was torn

 from her straining throat. It seemed too much for the man above her to

 bear, and he reared back like a flaring cobra, his pelvis still locked

 to hers, but his back arched like a war bow. Spasm after spasm gripped

 him. The sinews in the back of his legs were stretched to snapping

 point, and the muscles in his back fluttered and jumped like separate

 living creatures.

 The woman opened her eyes and looked directly at them as they stood

 transfixed in the doorway, but she was blinded with the strength of her

 passion. Her eyes were sightless, as she cried aloud to the man above

 her.

 Nicholas drew Royan away, and they slipped down the passageway and out

 on to the deserted terrace. They stopped at the foot of the staircase,

 and breathed the sweet cool night air that was perfumed by the waters of

 the Nile.

 "Tessay has gone to him,'Royan whispered softly.

 "For tonight at least,'Nicholas agreed.

 "No," Royan denied. "You saw her face, Nicky. She belongs to Mek Nimmur

 now."

 The dawn was flushing the serrated crests of the escarpment to the

 colours; of port wine and roses when they reached camp and separated at

 the door to Royan's hut.

 "I am bushed," she told Nicholas. The excitement has been too much for

 me. You won't see me again before noon."

 "Good thinking! Sleep as long as you wish. I want you scintillating and

 perceptive when we start going over the material which we gathered last

 night."

 It was long before noon, however, when Nicholas was woken from a deep

 sleep by the harsh and intrusive bellows of Boris as he stormed into the

 hut.

 "English, wake up! I must talk to you. Wake up, man, wake up."

 Nicholas rolled over and thrust one arm out from under the mosquito net

 as he groped for his wrist-watch.

 "Damn you, Brusilov! What the hell do you want?"

 "My wife! Have you seen my wife?"

 "Now what has your wife got to do with me?"

 "She has gone! I have not seen her since last night."

 "The way you treat her, that comes as no stunning surprise. Now go away

 and leave me to sleep."

 "The whore has run off with that black bastard, Mek Nimmur. I know all

 about them. Don't try and protect her, English. I know everything that

 goes on around here. You are trying to cover for her - admit it!'

 "Get out of here, Boris. Don't try an involve me in your sordid private

 life." saw you and that shufta bastard talking in the skinning hut the

 other night. Don't try to deny it, English.

 You are in this thing with them."

 Nicholas flung back the mosquito net and jumped out of his bed. "Kindly

 moderate your language when you talk to me, you great oaf'

 Boris backed off towards the door. "I know that she has run away with

 him. I searched for them all last night at the river. They have gone,

 and most of his men with them."

 "Good for Tessay.- She is showing some taste in men for a change."

 "You think I will let the whore get away with this? You are wrong, very

 wrong. I am going to follow them and kill them both. I know which way

 they are headed. You think I am a fool. I know all about Mek Nimmur. I

 was head of intelligence-' He broke off as he realized what he had said.

 "I will shoot him in the belly and let that whore Tessay watch him die."

 "If you are going after Mek Nimmur,.then my bet is that you won't be

 coming back."

 "You don't know me, English. You beat me up one night when I had a

 bottle of vodka in my belly, so you think I am easy, da? Well, Mek

 Nimmur will see now how easy I am."

 Boris dung out of the hut. Nicholas pulled on a shirt over his shorts

 and followed him.

 Back in his own hut, Boris had flung a few essential items into a light

 pack. Now he was stuffing cartridges into the magazine of his 30/06

 hunting rifle.

 "Let them go, Boris," Nicholas advised him in a more reasonable tone of

 voice "Mek is a tough lad - they don't come tougher - and he has a war

 party of fifty men with him. You are old enough to know that you can

 never hold on to a woman by force. Let her go!

 "I do not want to hold on to her. I want to kill her.

 The safari is over, English." He flung a pair of keys on a. leather tag

 on the floor at Nicholas's feet. "There are the keys of the Land

 Cruiser. You can make your own way back to Addis from here. I will leave

 four of my best men to look after you, and hold your hand. Leave the big

 truck for me to use. When you get to Addis, leave the keys of the Land

 Cruiser with my tracker, Aly. I will know where to find him later. I

 will send you the money I owe you for cancellation. Don't worry - I am a

 man of principles."

 "How could I ever doubt it?" Nicholas smiled. "Good bye, old chum. I

 wish you luck. You'll need plenty of that if you are going up against

 Mek Nimmur."

 Boris was several hours behind his quarry, and as soon as he had left

 the camp he broke into a jog trot that carried him down the pathway to

 join the main track to the west, towards the Sudanese border. He ran

 like a scout, with an easy swinging gait that ate up the ground.

 "Looks as though he is still in good shape, even with the vodka."

 Despite himself Nicholas was impressed as he watched him go. "But I

 wonder how long he will be able to keep up that pace?"

 He turned back to'his own quarters to get a little more sleep, but as he

 passed her hut Royan popped her head out.

 "What was all the shouting about? I thought that you and Boris were

 having another little difference of opinion."

 "Tessay has done a bunk. Boris has guessed that she has gone off with

 Mek, and he is chasing after them."

 "Oh, icky! Can't we warn them?

 "No chance of that, but unless Mek has gone soft he will be expecting

 Boris to come after him. In fact, now that I come to think of it, he is

 probably hoping for just that chance to even the score. No, Mek doesn't

 need any more help from us. Go back to sleep!

 "I can't possibly sleep now. I am so worked up. I have been looking at

 the Polaroids that we took last night. Taita has given us an overflowing

 cup. Come and have a look at this."

 "Just one hour's sleep moreP He made a mock plea.

 "Immediately, if not sooner."She laughed at him.

 In her hut she had the Polaroids and the rubbings spread out on the camp

 table, and she beckoned him to take the seat beside her.

 "While you were snoring your head off, I made some progress." She laid

 four Polaroids side by side, and placed her large magnifying glass over

 them. It was a professional land surveyor's model on folding legs, and

 under it every detail of the photographs was revealed. "Taita has headed

 each of the sides of the stele with the name of one of the seasons of

 the year - spring, summer, autumn and winter.

 What do you think he was getting at?"

 "Page numbers?"

 "Exactly my own thought," she agreed. "The Egyptians considered spring

 as the beginning of all new life. He is telling us in which order to

 read the panels. This one is spring." She selected one of the

 photographs.

 "It starts with four standard quotations from the Book of the Dead." She

 quoted the first few lines of the opening section: "'I am the first

 breeze blowing softly over the dark ocean of eternity. I am the first

 sunrise. The first glimmer of light. A white feather blowing in the dawn

 wind. I am Ra. I am the beginning of all things. I will live for ever. I

 shall never perish."' Still holding the glass poised, she looked up at

 him. "As far as I can see, they do not differ "Substantially from the

 original. My instinct is to set these aside for the time being. We can

 always come back to them later."

 "Let's go with your instinct," he suggested. "Read the next section."

 She held the glass to the Polaroid. "I am not going to look at you while

 I read this. Taita. can be as earthy as Rabelais when he is in the mood.

 Anyway, here goes. "The daughter of the goddess pines for her dam. She

 roars like a lioness as she hurries to meet her. She leaps from the

 mountain, and her fangs are white. She is the harlot of all the world.

 Her vagina pisseth out great torrents. Her vagina has swallowed an army

 of men. Her sex eateth up the masons and the workers of stone. Her

 vagina is an octopus that has swallowed up a king."'

 "Whoa there!" Nicholas chuckled. "Pretty fruity stuff, don't you think?"

 He leaned forward to study her face, for it was still turned away from

 him. "Och, lassie, you have roses in your bonny cheeks. Not a blush,

 surely not?"

 "Your Scots accent is not in the least convincing," she told him coldly,

 still not looking at him. "When you have finished being clever at my

 expense, what do you think of what I have just read?"

 "Apart from the obvious, I have't any idea."

 "I want to show you something." She stood up and packed the photographs

 and the rolls of art paper back into the haversack. "You'll need to get

 your boots on. I am taking you on a little walk."

 An hour later they stood in the centre of the suspension bridge, swaying

 gently high above the swift waters of the Dandera river.

 "Hapi is the goddess of the Nile. Is this river not then her daughter,

 pining to meet her, leaping from the mountain top, roaring like a

 lioness, her fangs white with spume?" she asked him.

 They stared in silence at the archway of pink stone through which the

 river poured, and suddenly Nicholas grinned lasciviously. "I think that

 I know what you are going to say next. That's what I first thought of

 when I looked at that cleft. You said it was like a gargoyle's mouth,

 but I had another image."

 "All I can say is that you must have some extraordinary lady friends,'

 she said, and then covered her mouth. "Ooops!

 I didn't mean to say that. I am being as disgusting as either you or

 Taita."

 "The workmen swallowed up in there!" His voice became more excite& "The

 masons and the workers in stone!'

 "Pharaoh Mamose was a god. The river has swallowed up a god with her -

 with her stone archway." She was equally excited. "I must admit that I

 would not have made the association if you hadn't explored the interior

 of the cavern, and found those niches in the wall." She shook his arm.

 "Nicky, we have to get in there again. We have to get a clearer look at

 that has-relief you found on the cavern wall."

 "It will take some preparation," he said dubiously. "I will have to

 splice the ropes and make some sort of pulley system, and I will have to

 drill Aly and the other men to avoid a repetition of my last little

 fiasco. We won't be ready to make the attempt until tomorrow morning at

 the very earliest."

 "You get on with it. I will have plenty to keep me occupied with the

 translation of the stele." Then she stopped and looked up at the sky.

 "Listen!" she whispered.

 He cocked his head and above the sound of the river, heard the whining

 flutter of rotors in the air.

 "Dammit!" he snapped. "I thought we had lost the Pegasus presence. Come

 on!" He grabbed her arm and hustled her off the bridge. When they

 reached the land he jumped down on to the beach, and she followed him.

 The two of them crept under the hanging eaves of the bridge.

 They sat quietly on the white sandy beach and listened to the Jet Ranger

 helicopter approaching swiftly, and then circling back over the hills

 beyond the pink cliffs. This time the pilot had not spotted them, for he

 turned away and began to patrol up and down the line of the chasm.

 Suddenly the engine-beat changed dramatically as the pitch altered and

 the pilot pulled up the collective.

 "Sounds as if he is going in for a landing up there in the hills,,

 Nicholas said as he crawled out from under the bridge. "I would feel a

 lot easier without them snooping around."

 "I don't think we have too much to worry about," Royan disagreed. "Even

 if they are connected with Duraid's killers, we are still way out ahead

 of them. Obviously they have not tumbled to the importance of the

 monastery, and the stele."

 "I hope you are right. Let's get back to camp. We must not let them see

 us in the vicinity of the chasm again. It will be too much of a

 coincidence for them to find us hanging around here every time they come

 this way."

 while Royan went to her hut and pored over her photographs and etchings,

 Nicholas worked with the trackers and skinners. He spliced the

 unravelled end of the nylon rope to the second Thank, to make a single

 length five hundred feet long. Then he cannibalized the canvas fly of

 the cooking hut, cutting it up and whipping the raw edges to make a

 sling seat. He fashioned the ends of the rope into a harness which he

 spliced into the four corners of the canvas seat.

 He had no block and tackle, so he put together a crude gantry of poles

 which could be extended out over the cliff edge to keep the rope clear

 of the rock. The rope would run through the groove that he drilled in

 the end of the central beam with a red-hot iron. He lubricated it with

 cooking lard.

 It was the middle of the afternoon by the time he had completed his

 preparations. Then, leaving Royan in camp, he led his men, burdened with

 the coils of rope and the pole sections of the gantry, back up the

 pathway to the spot where he had abseiled down into the ravine to

 retrieve the carcass of the dik-dik. From there they worked their way

 downstream, following the rim of the cliff. It was heavy going for Thorn

 scrub grew right up to the edge, and in many places they were forced to

 use their-machetes to hack their way through.

 The sound of the waterfall guided him. As they moved down river it grew

 louder, until the rock seemed to quiver under his feet with the roar of

 falling waters. Finally, by leaning out over the edge and peering

 downwards, Nicholas could make out the flash of spray in the depths

 below.

 This is the spot." He grunted with satisfaction, and explained to Aly in

 Arabic what he wanted done.

 In order to determine the exact position in which to set up the gantry,

 Nicholas climbed into the canvas sling seat and had them lower him

 twenty feet down the cliff face, just as far as the beginning of the

 overhang. Up to that point he was able to keep the nylon rope from

 abrading on the rock, but he was also able to see around the bulge of

 the face.

 Hanging backwards over the falls and the rocky bowl of the river one

 hundred and fifty feet below him, he was able at last to see the double

 row of niches in the rock face.

 However, the has-relief engraving was still hidden from view by the

 tumblehome of the cliff. He gave Aly the signal and they hauled him up.

 "We must set up the gantry a little further down," he told him, and

 directed them as they hacked away the dense shrubbery that choked the

 rim. Then suddenly he exclaimed, "I'll be damned!" He went down on one

 knee to examine the rim rock that the thorns had concealed.

 "There are more excavations here."

 Exposed to the elements, unlike those works further down that had been

 protected by the overhang, these were badly eroded. There were just

 vague traces remaining in the rim rock, but he was certain that these

 indentations were the upper anchor points for the ancient scaffoldin

 9They set up their own gantry on the same levelled area, and extended

 the long pole out over the drop. Then they rigged and secured it with a

 crude cantilever system of ropes and lighter poles.

 When they were finished, Nicholas crawled out to the end to test the

 structure and to run the end of the rope through the slot he had

 prepared for it. The whole structure seemed solid and firm.

 Nevertheless, it was with relief that he crawled back to solid ground.

 He stood up and looked over the tops of the thorn scrub to where the

 lowering sun was fuming red and angry on the horizon.

 "Enough for one day," he decided. "The rest can wait for-tomorrow."

 The next morning Nicholas and Royan were both up and drinking coffee at

 the campfire while it was still dark. Aly and his men were squatting at

 their own fire near by, talking quietly and coughing over the first

 cigarettes of the day. The project seemed to have caught their

 imagination. They had no inkling of the reason for this second descent

 into the chasm, but the enthusiasm of the two ferengi was infectious.

 As soon as it was light enough to see the path, Nicholas led them back

 up into the hills. The men chatted cheerfully amongst themselves in

 Amharic as they hurried through the thorn scrub, and they came out on

 the rim rock just as the sun broke out over the eastern escarpment of

 the valley. Nicholas had drilled the men the previous day, and he and

 Royan had sat half the night going over the plans, so each of them knew

 their part and they lost little time in setting themselves up for the

 descent.

 Nicholas had stripped to shorts and tennis shoes, but this time he had

 brought along an old Barbarians rugby jersey for warmth. While he pulled

 this over his head he pointed out to Royan the platform that had been

 dug out from the solid rock.

 She examined it carefully. "It's very hard to be sure, but I think you

 are right. This probably is man-made."

 "When you get further down you will have no doubts.

 There is very little weathering of the face under the overhang, and the

 niches are almost perfectly preserved until they reach the high-water

 mark, that is," he told her, as he took his seat in the sling and swung

 out over the cliff.

 Dangling from the end of the gantry he gave Aly the sign, and the men

 lowered him down into the gorge. The rope ran smoothly through the

 lubricated slot.

 He saw at once that he had judged it correctly, and that he was

 descending in line with the double row of -niches. He came level with

 the enigmatic circle on the cliff face, but it was fifty feet from him,

 and a growth of gaudy Coloured lichens had streaked and discotoured the

 rock, partially obscuring the details, so that he still could not be

 certain that. it was not a natural flaw. He passed it and went on down

 as Aly and his team paid out the rope from above.

 When he reached the surface of the water he slipped out of the sling and

 dropped in. The water was very cold.

 He trod water, gasping, until his body became acclimatized.

 Then he gave Aly three tugs on the signal rope. While the canvas seat

 was hauled up he swam to the side of the pool and held on to one of the

 carved stone niches for support.

 He had forgotten how gloomy and cold and lonely it was here in the

 bottom of the chasm.

 After a long delay he craned his head backwards and watched Royan come

 into sight around the bulge of the overhang, dangling in the sling seat

 and revolving slowly at the end of the nylon rope. She looked down and

 waved at him cheerfully.

 "Full marks to that girl," he grinned. "Not much puts the wind up her."

 He wanted to shout encouragement, but he knew it was futile because the

 thunder of the falls smothered all other sound. So he contented himself

 with returning her wave.

 Halfway down he saw her tugging frantically on the signal rope. Aly had

 been warned to expect this, and her i4 descent was hatted immediately..

 Then she leaned back in the sling, hanging on with only her left hand,

 as she groped for Nicholas's binoculars which hung from their strap on

 to her chest. She was twisted at an awkward angle as she held the

 glasses to her eyes and tried to manipulate the focus wheel with one

 hand. He saw that she was obviously having difficulty picking up the

 round mark on the wall and keeping it in the field of the lens, for the

 sling was swinging from side to side and at the same time revolving

 slowly.

 She struggled at the end of the rope for what seemed to Nicholas a very

 long time, but probably was no more than a few minutes. Then abruptly

 she dropped the binoculars on to her chest, threw back her head and let

 out a scream that, despite the roar of falling water, carried clearly to

 Nicholas a hundred feet beneath her. She was kicking her legs joyfully

 and waving her free hand at him, wild with excitement, as Aly began

 paying out the rope once more. Still screaming incoherently, she was

 looking down at him with a face that seemed to light up the cathedral

 gloom of the gorge.

 "I can't hear you," he yelled back, but the falls defeated both their

 efforts to communicate.

 Royan was wriggling about in her seat, shouting and gesticulating

 wildly, and now she let go the harness with her other hand and leaned

 further out to keep him in sight as the sling revolved. She was still

 twenty feet above the water when she almost lost her balance entirely,

 and very nearly toppled backwards out of the sling.

 "Careful there," he yelled up at her. "Those glasses are Zeiss. Two

 thousand quid at the Zurich duty-free!'

 IC

 This time his vo' must have carried, for she stuck her tongue out at

 him in a schoolgirlish gesture. But her movements became more

 circumspect. When her feet were almost touching the water she signalled

 on the rope to stop her descent and hung there, fifty feet across the

 pool from him.

 "What did you find?" he shouted across.

 "You were right, you wonderful man!'

 "Is it man-made? Is it an inscription? Could you read it?, "Yes, yes and

 yes to all three of your questions! She grinned triumphantly as she

 teased him.

 "Don't be infuriating. Tell me."

 "Taita's ego got the better of him once again. He couldn't resist

 signing his work." She laughed. "He has left us his autograph - the hawk

 with a broken wing!'

 "Marvellous! Plain bloody marvelous!the exalted.

 "Proof that Taita was here, Nicky. To carve that cartouche, he must have

 been standing on a scaffolding.

 Our first guess was right. That niche you are holding on to is part of

 his ladder to the bottom of the gorge."

 "Yes, but why, Royan?" he yelled back at her. "Why was Taita down here?

 There is no evidence of any excavation or building work."

 They both looked around the gloomy cavern. Apart from the tiny rows of

 niches, the walls were unbroken, smooth and inscrutable until they

 plunged into the dark water.

 Under the falls?" she shouted across. "Is there a cutback in the rock?

 Can you get across there?"

 He pushed off from the cliff, and swam towards the thundering chute of

 water. Halfway across, the current caught him and he had to swim with

 all his strength to make any headway against it. Thrashing the water

 with flailing arms and kicking out strongly, he managed to reach a spur

 of polished, algae-stick rock at the nearest end of the falls.

 The water crashed over his head, but he edged his way along under the

 rock step into the heart of the cascade.

 Halfway across, the water overwhelmed him. It tore him off his

 precarious perch, hurled him back into the basin below and swirled him

 end over end. He surfaced in the middle of the pool, and once again had

 to Swim with all his strength to break free of the grip of the current

 and to reach the slack water below the wall again. He clung to his

 handhold in the stone niche, and panted like a bellows.

 "Nothing?" she called.

 He shook his head, unable to answer until he had finally regained his

 breath. Finally he managed: "Nothing.

 It's a solid rock wall behind the falls." He gasped another breath, and

 then invited sarcastically, "Next bright idea, madam?"

 She was silent and he was glad of the respite. Then she called again,

 "Nicky, how far do those niches go down?"

 "You can see," he told her, "right to the one I am holding on to."

 "What about below the surface?"

 "Don't be silly, woman." He was getting cold and irritable. "How the

 hell could there be cuttings below the surface?"

 "Try!" she yelled almost as iff itably. He shook his head pityingly, and

 drew a deep breath. Still clinging to his handhold, he extended his

 limbs and body to their full stretch. Then his head went under the dark

 surface as he groped down as far as he could reach with his toes.

 Suddenly he shot back, snorting for air with a startled look on his

 face. "By Jove!" he shouted. "You are right!

 There is another niche down there!'

 "I hate to say I told you so." Even at that range he could see the smug

 expression on her face.

 "What are you? Some kind of witch?" Then he broke off and rolled his

 eyes heavenward in despair. "I know what you are going to ask me to do

 next."

 "How far do the niches go down?" she called in honeyed tones. "Will you

 dive down for me, dear Nicky?"

 "That's it," he said. "I knew it. I am going to speak to my shop

 steward. This is slave labour. From now onwards I am on strike."

 "Please, Nicky!'

 He hung in the water'pumping air in and out of his lungs,

 hyperventilating, flushing his . bloodstream with oxygen to increase his

 underwater endurance to its limits.

 In the end he expelled the contents of his lungs completely, squeezing

 out the last breath until his chest ached with the effort, and then he

 sucked in again, filling his lungs to their capacity with fresh air.

 Finally, with his chest fully expanded, he duck-dived, standing on his

 head with his legs high out of the water and letting their weight drive

 him under.

 Sliding head-first down the submerged wall, he reached down, groping for

 the next niche below the surface. He found it, and used it to accelerate

 his dive, pulling himself on downwards.

 He found the second niche below that, and pulled himself on downwards.

 The niches were about six feet apart - a nautical fathom. Using them as

 a measure, he was able to calculate his progress accurately.

 Swimming on downwards, he found another niche, then another. Four rows

 of niches, twenty-four feet below the surface. His ears were popping and

 squeaking as the pressure squeezed the air out of his Eustachian tubes.

 He kept on downwards and found the fifth row of niches. Now the air in

 his lungs was compressing to almost half its surface volume, and as his

 buoyancy decreased so his descent became easier and more rapid.

 His eyes were wide open, but the waters below him were dark and turbid.

 He could make out only the surface of the wall directly in front of his

 face. He saw the sixth niche appear ahead of him and he grasped it, then

 hesitated.

 "Thirty-six feet of depth already, and no sign yet of bottom he

 thought. There had been a time, when he was spearfishing competitively

 with the army team, that he could free-dive to sixty feet and stay at

 that depth for a full minute. But he had been younger then and in peak

 physical condition.

 "Just one more niche," he promised himself, "and then back up to the

 surface." His chest was beginning to throb and burn with the need to

 breathe, but he pulled hard on his handhold and shot down. He saw the

 vague shape of the seventh niche appear out of the murk below him'

 "They go right to the bottom," he realized with amazeMent. "How on'earth

 did Taita do it? They had no diving equipment." He grasped the niche and

 hovered there for a moment, undecided if he should risk going further.

 He knew he was almost at his physical limit. Already he was hunting for

 air, his chest beginning to convulse involuntarily.

 "What about one more for the hell of it!" He was beginning to feel

 light-headed, and a strange glow of euphoria came over him. He

 recognized the danger signs, and looked down at his own body. Through

 the murk he saw that his skin was wrinkled and folded by the pressure of

 water. There were over two atmospheres'weight bearing down upon him,

 crushing in his chest. His brain was becoming starved of oxygen, and he

 felt reckless and invulnerable.

 "Once more into the breach, dear friends," he thought drunkenly, and

 went on down.

 "Number eight, and the doctor's at the gate." He felt the eighth niche

 under his fingers. He was thinking in gibberish now: "Number eight, and

 I'll have her on a plate." He turned to go up again, and his feet

 touched bottom. -Fifty feet deep," he realized even through his fuddled

 state.

 "I have left it too late. Got to get back. Got to breathe." He was

 bracing himself to push off from the bottom when something grabbed his

 legs and dragged him hard against the rock wall.

 ctopus!" he thought, remembering the line from Taita's stele, "Her

 vagina is an octopus that has swallowed up a king."

 He tried to kick out, but his legs were bound as if by the arms of a sea

 monster; some cold, insidious embrace held him captive. "Taita's

 octopus. My oath! He meant it literally. It's got me."

 He was pinned against the wall, crushed, helpless.

 Terror seized him, and the rush of it through his blood flushed away the

 hallucinations of his oxygen-impoverished brain. He realized what had

 happened to him.

 "No octopus. This is water pressure." He had experienced the same

 phenomenon once before. On an army training exercise, while diving near

 the inlet to the turbines of the generators in Loch Arran, his buddy

 diver who was roped to him had drifted into their terrible suction. His

 companion had been sucked against the grille of the intake and his body

 had been crushed so that the splinters of his ribs had been driven

 through the flesh of his chest and had come out through the black

 neoprene rubber of his suit like daggers.

 Nicholas had narrowly escaped the same fate. The fact that he was a few

 feet to one side of his buddy had meant that he escaped the full brunt

 of the rush of water into the turbine intake. Nevertheless, one of his

 legs was broken, and it had taken the strength of two other army divers

 to prise him out of the grip of the current.

 This time he was at the limit of his air, and there was no other diver

 to assist him. He was being sucked into a narrow opening in the rock,

 the mouth of an underwater tunnel, a subaqueous shaft that bored into

 the rock wall.

 His upper body was free of the baleful influence of the rushing flood,

 but his legs were being drawn inexorably into it. He was aware that the

 surrounds of the opening were sharply demarcated, as straight and as

 square as a lintel hewn by a mason. He was being dragged over and around

 this lintel. Spreading out his arms, he resisted with all his strength,

 but his hooked fingers slid over the polished, slimy surface of the

 rock.

 "This is the big one," he thought. "This is the one punch that you can't

 duck." He hooked his fingers, and felt his nails tear and break as they

 rasped against the rock.

 Then suddenly they locked into the last niche in the wall above the

 sink-hole which was sucking him under.

 Now at least he had an anchor point. With both hands he clung to the

 niche, and fought the pull of the water. He fought it with all his

 remaining strength and all his heart, but he was near the end of his

 store of both. He strained until he felt the muscles in both arms

 popping, until the sinews in his neck stood out in steely cords and he

 felt something in his head must burst. But he had halted the insidious

 slide of his body into the sink-hole.

 "One more," he thought. "Just one more try." And he knew that was all he

 had left within him. His air was all used up, and so were his courage

 and his resolve. His mind swirled, and dark shapes clouded his vision.

 From somewhere deep inside himself he drew out the last reserves, and

 pulled until the darkness in his head exploded in sheets of bright

 colours, shooting stars and Catherine wheels that dazzled him. But he

 kept on pulling.

 He felt his legs coming out of it, the grip of the waters weakening, and

 he pulled once more with strength that he had never realized he

 possessed.

 Then suddenly he was free and shooting towards the surface, but it was

 too late. The darkness filled his head and in his ears was a sound like

 the roaring of the waterfall in the abyss. He was drowning. He was all

 used up. He had no knowledge of where he was, how much further he had to

 go to the surface, but he knew only that he was not going to make it. He

 was finished.

 When he came out through the surface, he did not know that he had done

 so, and he did not have enough strength left to lift his face out of the

 water and to breathe.

 He wallowed the're like a waterlogged carcass, face down and dying. Then

 he felt Royan's fingers lock into the hair in the back of his head, and

 the cold air on his face as she lifted it clear.

 "Nicky!" she screamed at him. "Breathe, "Nicky, breathe!'

 He opened his mouth and let out a spray of water and saliva and stale

 air, and then gagged and gasped.

 "You're still alive! Oh, thank God. You were down for so long. I thought

 you had drowned."

 As he coughed and fought for air and his senses returned, he realized in

 a vague way that she must have dropped out of the sting seat and come to

 his aid.

 "You were under for so long. I could not believe it." She held his head

 up, clinging with her free hand to the niche in the wall. "You are going

 to be all right now. I have got you. just take it easy for a while. It's

 going to be all right." It was amazing how much her voice encouraged

 him.

 The air tasted good and sweet and he felt his strength slowly returning.

 "We have to get you up," she told him. "A few minutes more to get

 yourself together, and then I will help you into the sling."

 She swam with him across to the dangling sling and signalled to the men

 at the top of the cliff to lower it into the water. Then she held the

 folds of canvas open so that he could slip his legs into them.

 "Are you all right, Nicky?" she demanded anxiously.

 "Hang on until you get to the top." She placed his hands on the side

 ropes of the harness. "Hold tight!'

 "Can't leave you down here," he blurted groggily.

 "I'll be fine," she assured him. "Just have Aly send the seat down again

 for me."

 When he was halfway up he looked down and saw her head bobbing in the

 dark waters. She looked very small and lonely, and her face pate and

 pathetic.

 "Guts!" His voice was so weak and hoarse that he did not recognize it.

 "You've got real guts." But already he was too high for the words to

 carry down to her.

 When they had got Royan safely up out of the ravine, Nicholas ordered

 Aly to dismantle the gantry and hide the sections in the thorn scrub.

 From the helicopter it would be highly visible and he did not wish to

 stir Jake Helm's curiosity.

 He was in no shape to give the men a hand, but lay in the shade of one

 of the Thorn trees with Royan tending to him. He was dismayed to find

 how much his near-drowning had taken out of him. He had a blinding

 headache, caused by oxygen starvation. His chest was very painful and

 stabbed him every time he breathed: in his struggles he must have torn

 or sprained something.

 He was impressed with Royan's forbearance. She made no attempt to

 question him about his discoveries in the bottom of the gorge, and

 seemed genuinely more concerned with his well being than with the

 progress of their exploration.

 When she helped him to his feet and they started back towards camp, he

 moved like an old man, lame and stiff. Every muscle and sinew in his

 body ached. He knew that the lactic acid and nitrogen that had built up

 in his tissues would take some time to be reabsorbed and dispersed.

 Once they reached camp Royan led him to his hut and fussed over him as

 she settled him under the mosquito net.

 By this time he was feeling a lot better, but he neglected to inform her

 of this fact. It was pleasant to have a woman caring for him again. She

 brought him a couple of aspirin tablets and a steaming mug of tea, stiff

 with sugar. He was putting it on a little when he asked weakly for a

 second mugful.

 Sitting beside his bed, she solicitously watched him drink it. "Better?"

 she asked, when he had finished.

 "The odds are two to one that I Will survive," he told her, and she

 smiled.

 "I can see that you are better. Your cheek is showing again. You gave me

 an awful scare, you know."

 "Anything to get your attention."

 "Now that we have decided that you will live, tell me what happened.

 What sort of trouble did you run into down there in the pool?"

 "What you really want to know is what I found down there. Am I correct?"

 "That too, she admitted.

 Then he told her everything that he had discovered and how he had been

 caught in the inflow of the underwater sink-hole. She listened without

 interruption, and even when he had finished speaking she said nothing

 for a while, but frowned with concentrated thought.

 At last she looked up at him. "You mean that Taita was able to take

 those stone niches right down to the very bottom of the pool, fifty feet

 below the surface? and when he nodded, she was silent again. Then she

 said, "How on earth did he accomplish that? What are your thoughts on

 the subject?" -Tour thousand years ago the water level may have been

 lower. There may have been a drought year when the river dried up, and

 enabled him to get in there. How am I doing?"

 "Not a bad try," she admitted, "but then why go to all the trouble of

 building a scaffold? Why not just use the dry river bed as an access?

 Then again, surely the attraction of the spot for Taita was the river.

 If it was dry, then it would be just like a thousand other places in

 this gorge.

 No, I have a feeling that the fact that it was so inaccessible was the

 main, if not the only, reason he chose to wo there."

 "I suspect that you are correct," he agreed.

 "So if the river was running, even at itS lowest level as it is now, how

 on earth did he manage to carve those niches below the surface? And what

 would be the point in having scaffolding under water?"

 "Beats me. I have no idea he admitted.

 "All right, let's leave that for the moment. Now lets go over your

 description of the sink-hole that almost sucked you in. Did you form any

 estimate of the size of the opening?"

 He shook his head. "It is almost totally dark down there. I could not

 see more than two or three feet in front of me."

 "Was the entrance directly between the two tows of niches?"

 "No, not directly," he said thoughtfully. "It was slightly to one side.

 I hit the bottom of the pool with my feet, and was just about to push

 off when it grabbed me."

 "So it must be at the very bottom of the pool, and slightly downstream

 from the scaffolding. You say that the entrance seemed to have a square

 coping?"

 "I am not absolutely sure of that - remember that I could see very

 little. But that was the impression I received."

 "It may have been another man-made structure, then perhaps some type of

 adit shaft driven into the side of the pool?"

 "It's possible," he agreed reluctantly. "But on the other hand it could

 just as easily be a natural fault in the strata that the river is

 draining into."

 She stood up to leave, and he demanded, "Where are you going?"

 "I won't be long. I am going to my hut to fetch my notes, and the

 material from the stele. Back in a moment."

 When she returned she sat on the floor beside his bed, with her legs

 drawn up under her in that double-jointed feminine fashion. As she

 spread her papers around her, he pulled up the edge of the mosquito net

 and looked down at what she was doing.

 "Yesterday, while you were busy building the gantry, I was able to

 decipher most of the rest of the "spring" face of the stele." She moved

 her notebook so that he was able to overlook the pages she had opened.

 "These are my preliminary notes. You will see where I have inserted a

 number of question marks - here and here, for instance. That is where I

 am uncertain of the translation, or where Taita has used a new and

 strange symbol. I will have to give more time and consideration to those

 later."

 I follow you," he said, and she went on.

 "These sections that I have highlighted with green are quotations from

 the standard version of the Book of the Dead. Take this one here: "The

 universe is drawn in circles, the disc of the sun- god, Ra. The life of

 man is a circle that begins in the womb and ends in the tomb. The circle

 of the chariot wheel foreshadows the death of the serpent that it

 crushes beneath its rim. "Yes, I recognize the quotation," he said.

 "On the other hand, these parts of the text that I have highlighted in

 yellow are original Taita writings, or at least are not quotations from

 the Book of the Dead or any other source that I am aware of This

 paragraph here in particular is the one that I wanted to bring to your

 attention."

 She traced a section with her forefinger as she read it aloud, "'The

 daughter of the goddess has conceived. She has been impregnated by the

 one who is without seed. She has begotten her own twin sister. The fetus

 lies forever -coiled in her own womb. Her twin shall never be born. She

 will never see the light of day. She will five for ever in the darkness.

 In the womb of the sister her bridegroom claims her in eternal marriage.

 The unborn twin becomes the bride of the god, who was a man Their

 destinies are intertwined. They shall live for ever. They Sul not

 perish."'

 She looked up from the notebook. "When I first read it, I was satisfied

 that the daughter of the goddess was the Dandera river, as we had

 already agreed. I was also pretty sure that the god that was once a man

 must be Pharaoh.

 Mamose was only deified on his ascension to the throne of Egypt. Before

 that he was a man."

 Nicholas nodded. !The seedless one is obviously Taita himself. He makes

 repeated references to the fact that he was a eunuch. But now,' he

 suggested, "if you have some new ideas about the mysterious twin sister,

 let's hear them."

 The twin of the river would most likely be a branch, or a fork of the

 stream, wouldn't it?"

 "Ah, I see what you are driving at, You are suggesting that the

 sink-hole is the twin. Down there in the gorge it will never see the

 Llight of day. Taita, the seedless one, claims paternity, So he is

 telling us that he is the architect."

 "Exactly, and he has married the twin of the river to Pharaoh Mamose for

 all eternity. Putting that all together, I have come to the conclusion

 that we will never find the location of Pharaoh Mamose's tomb until we

 explore thoroughly that sink-hole that nearly drowned you."

 "How do you suggest we do that?" he asked, and she shrugged.

 "I am not the engineer, Nicky. I leave that to you to arrange. All I

 know is that Taita devised some way of doing it - not only of getting

 there but of working down there. If our interpretation of the stele is

 correct, then he carried out extensive mining operations at the bottom

 of the pool.

 If he could do it, then there is no reason why you can't do it also."

 "Ah!" he dernurred. "Taita was a genius. He says so repeatedly. I am

 just an old plodder."

 "I have got all my bets on you, Nicky. You won't let me down, will you?"

 There was no call for intensive bushcraft to follow this spoor. His

 quarry had taken very few anti-tracking precautions. Quite openly they

 were following the main trail down the Abbay gorge, heading directly

 westwards towards the Sudanese border.

 Mek Nimmur was on his way back to his own stronghold.

 Boris estimated that he had between fifteen and twenty men with him. It

 was difficult to be certain, for the tracks on the pathway overlapped

 each other, and of course he would have scouts on the'point ahead of him

 and sweeping his flanks. There would also be a rear guard dragging the

 trail behind him.

 They were making good time, but such a large party would not be able to

 outpace a single pursuer. He was sure he was gaining on them. He

 reckoned that he had started four hours behind them, but judging by

 recent signs he was now less than two hours adrift.

 Without breaking his trot, he stooped to pick thing up from the path. As

 he ran on he examined it. It was a twig, the soft tip shoot of a

 kusagga-sagga plant that grew beside the track. One of the men ahead of

 him had brushed against it as he passed, and snapped it off the main

 branch. It gave Boris a fairly accurate gauge of how far he was behind.

 Even in the heat of the gorge, the tender shoot had barely begun to

 wilt. He was even closer than he had estimated.

 He slowed down., a little as he considered his next move. He knew this

 part of the valley fairly well. The previous year he had hunted over

 much of this terrain with an American client, who had been looking for a

 trophy Walia ibex. They had spent almost a month combing these same

 gullies and wooded ravines before they had brought down a huge old ram,

 black with age and carrying a pair of curled, back-sweeping horns that

 ranked as the tenth largest ever in the Rowland Ward record book.

 He knew that two or three miles ahead the Nile began another oxbow loop

 out to the south, and that it then doubled back upon itself. The main

 trail followed the river, because a series of sheer and formidable

 cliffs guarded the high groupd in the centre of the loop of the river.

 It was, however, possible to cut the corner. Boris had'done it before,

 while following the wounded ibex.

 The American hunter had not killed cleanly his bullet had struck the ram

 too far back, missing the heartlung cavity and piercing the gut. The

 stricken wild goat had taken to the high ground, following one of its

 secret paths up amongst the crags. Boris and the American had followed

 it up and over the mountain. Boris remembered how dangerous and

 treacherous the path had been, but when it descended the far side of the

 mountain it had cut off nearly ten miles.

 If he could find the beginning of the goat path again, there was every

 chance that he would be able to get ahead of Mek Nimmur and be lying in

 wait for him on the far side. That would give him an enormous advantage.

 The guerrilla leader would be expecting pursuit, not ambush.

 He would be covering his back trail, and it was highly unlikely that

 Boris would be able to slip past the rear guard without alerting his

 intended victims. On the other hand, once he was ahead of them he would

 be in control. Then he could choose his own killing ground.

 As the trail and the main flow of the Nile started to turn away towards

 the south, he kept watching the high ground above it, seeking a familiar

 landmark. He had not gone another half-mile before he found it. Here

 there was a break in the line of dark cliffs, a heavily forested

 reentrant, that cut into the wall of basalt.

 He stopped and mopped the sweat from his face and neck. "Too much

 vodka," he grunted, "you are getting soft." His shirt was as sodden as

 though he had plunged in the river.

 He changed the slin of the rifle to his other shoulder, lifted his

 binoculars and swept the sides of the wooded gully. They appeared sheer

 and unscalable, but then he picked out the stunted shape of a small tree

 that grew out of a narrow crack in the face. It looked like a Japanese

 bonsai, with a twisted, malformed trunk and tortured branches.

 The Walia ibex had been standing on the ledge just above that tree when

 the American had fired. In his mind's eye Boris could still see the way

 in which the wild goat had hunched its back as the bullet struck, and

 then spun around and raced away up the cliff. He panned the glasses

 upwards gently, and could just make out the inclination of the narrow

 ledge as it angled up the face.

 "Da, da. This is the spot." He was thinking in his mother tongue again.

 It was a relief after these last days of having to struggle in French

 and English.

 Before he began the climb, he left the trail and scrambled down the

 boulder-strewn slope to the river. He knelt at the edge of the Nile and

 splashed double handfuls over himself, soaking his cropped head and

 sluicing the sweat from his face and neck. He drained and refilled his

 water bottle, then drank until his belly was painfully full.

 Then he rinsed out the bottle and refilled it. There was no water on the

 mountain. Finally he dipped his bush hat in the river and placed it back

 on his head, sodden and streaming water down his neck and face.

 He climbed back to the main trail and followed it for another hundred

 paces, moving slowly and studying the "ground. At one place there was a

 rock boulder almost blocking the path. The men ahead of him had been

 forced to step over this obstruction, on to a patch of talcum-fine dust

 beyond it. They had left perfect impressions of their footprints for him

 to read.

 Most of the men were wearing Israeli-style para boots with a

 zigzag-patterned sole, and those coming up from behind had overtrodden

 the spoor of the leaders. He had to go down on one knee to examine the

 signs minutely before he could pick out the imprint of a much smaller

 and more delicately formed foot, a lighter, unmistakably feminine tread.

 It was partially obliterated by other larger masculine footprints, but

 the outline of the toe was clear, and the pattern was that of a smooth

 rubber-soled Bata tennis shoe. He would have recognized it from ten

 thousand others.

 He was relieved to find that Tessay was still with the group, and that

 she and her lover had not left and taken another path. Mek Nimmur was a

 sly one, and cunning.

 He had escaped from Boris's clutches once before. But not this time! The

 Russian shook his head vehemently: not this time.

 He gave his full attention to the female footprint once again. It gave

 him a pang to look at it. His anger returned in full force. He did not

 consider his feelings for the woman. Love and desire did not enter into

 the equation.

 She was his chattel, and she had been stolen from him. It was only the

 insult that had significance for him. She had rejected and humiliated

 him, and for that she was going to die.

 He felt the old thrill run through his blood at the thought of the kill.

 Killing had always been his trade and his vocation, but no matter how

 often he exercised his craft the thrill was never blunted, the pleasure

 never satiated. Perhaps it was the only true pleasure left to him, pure

 and unjaded - not even the vodka could weaken and dilute it as it had

 the physical act of copulation. He would enjoy killing her even more

 than he had once enjoyed coupling with her.

 These past few years he had hunted only the lower animals, but he had

 never forgotten what it was like to hunt down and to kill a human being,

 more especially a woman. He wanted Mek Nimmur, but he wanted the woman

 more.

 In the days of President Mengistu, when he had been the head of

 counter-intelligence, -his men had known his tastes and had picked the

 pretty ones for him. He had only one regret now, and that was that this

 time he would have to do it swiftly. There could be no question of

 drawing it i out and savouring the pleasure. Not like some of the other

 experiences, which had lasted for hours, sometimes for days.

 "Bitch," he mouthed, and kicked at the dust, stamping on the faint

 outline of her footprint, obliterating it just as he would do to her.

 "Black fomicating bitch."

 He ran now with fresh strength and determination as he left the trail

 and climbed up towards the deformed tree and the beginning of the goat

 track up, the cliff.

 Exactly where he expected it, he found the start of the track and

 followed it upwards. The higher he climbed, the steeper it became. Often

 he had to use both hands to haul himself up a gradient, or to work his

 way along a narrow traverse.

 The first time he had climbed this mountain he had been following the

 blood spoor of the wounded ibex, but now he did not have those

 splattered droplets to guide him, and twice he missed the path and found

 himself in a dead end on the cliff face. He was forced to edge back from

 the drop and retrace his footsteps until he found the correct urning.

 Each time he did so he was aware that he was losing time, and that Mek

 Nimmur might pass before he was able to intercept him.

 Once he startled a small troop of wild goats which were lying on a ledge

 halfway up the cliff. They went bounding away up the rock face, more

 like birds than animals bound by the laws of gravity. They were led by a

 huge male with a streaming beard and long spiral horns, which in its

 flight showed Boris a direct route to the top of the cliff.

 He tore the skin off his fingertips dragging himself up the last steep

 pitch, but finally he reached the top and wormed his way over the

 skyline, never lifting his head. A i human form silhouetted against the

 clear, eggshell-blue sky would be visible from miles around. He moved

 along behind the crest until he found a small clump of sanseveria to

 give him cover, and used the erect, spiny leaves to break up the outline

 of his head as he surveyed the valley a thousand feet below through the

 binoculars.

 From this height the Nile was a broad, glittering serpent uncoiling into

 the first bend of the oxbow, its surface ruffled by rapids and rocky

 reefs. The high ground on either bank formed standing waves of up-thrust

 basalt, turbulent and chopped into confusion like a storm sea in a

 tropical typhoon. The whole danced and shimmered in the heat and the sun

 beat down with the blows of an executioner's axe, pounding this universe

 of red rock into heat exhausted submission.

 Though the air danced and trembled with the mirage in the tenses of his

 binoculars, Boris traced out the rough trail beside the rier, and

 followed it down the valley to the point where it was hidden by the

 bend. It was deserted, with no sign of human presence, and he knew that

 his quarry had moved on out of sight. He had no way of telling how far

 down the trail they had travelled - he knew only that he must hurry on

 if he were to cut them off on the far side of the mountain.

 For the first time since he had left the'river, he drank sparingly from

 the water bottle. He realized how the heat and the exertion of the climb

 had dehydrated him. In these conditions a man without water might be

 dead in hours. It was not in the least surprising that there was so

 little permanent human habitation down here in the gorge.

 When he backed off the skyline he felt rejuvenated, and set out to cross

 the saddle of the mountain. It was less than a mile across, and without

 warning he came out on the top of the cliffs on the far side. One more

 unwary pace and he would have stepped off into space and plunged down a

 thousand feet. Once again he moved along the crest until he found a

 concealed vantage point from which to spy the terrain below.

 The river was the same - a wide and confused expanse of white-ruffled

 rapids, running back towards him as it turned through the leg of the

 oxbow. The trail followed the near bank, except where it was forced to

 detour inland by the rugged bluffs and stone needles which rose out of

 the Nile waters.

 In the great desolation of the gorge he could pick out no movement other

 than the run of wild waters and the ceaseless dance of the heat mirage.

 He knew it was not possible that Mek Nimmur had moved fast enough to

 have passed completely ahead of him; therefore he must still be coming

 around the bend of the oxbow.

 He drank again, and rested for almost half an hour.

 At the end of that time he felt strong and fully recovered.

 He debated with himself whether to descend immediately and stake out an

 ambush on the' trail, but in the end decided to keep to the high ground

 until he had his quarry in sight.

 He checked his rifle carefully, making sure that the telescopic sight

 had not been bumped out of alignment during the climb, and then emptied

 the magazine and examined the five cartridges. The brass case of one of

 them was dented and discoloured, so he discarded it and reloaded with

 another from his belt. He chambered a round and setthe safety-catch.

 He set the weapon aside while he changed his sweat, dampened socks with

 a fresh dry pair from his pack and retied his bootlaces with care. Only

 a novice would risk blistered feet in these conditions, for within hours

 they would be infected and festering.

 He drank once more, and then stood up and stung the 30/06 on his

 shoulder. Ready now for anything that the goddess of the chase could

 send his way, he moved off along the crest to intercept the war party.

 From every vantage point along the rim he glassed the valley below, each

 time without spying his quarry, and the afternoon passed "swiftly. He

 was just beginning to worry that Mek Nimmur had somehow managed to slip

 past him unseen, that he had crossed the river at some secret ford or

 taken another path through a hidden valley, when there came a plaintive

 and querulous cry on the heat-hushed air.

 He looked up. A pair of kites were circling over one particular clump of

 Thorn scrub on the river bank.

 The yellow'billed kite is one of the most ubiquitous scavengers in

 Africa. It exists in close symbiotic association with man, feeding off

 his rubbish, picking up his leavings, soaring and circling over his

 villages or his temporary campsites, watching for his scraps or waiting

 patiently for him to squat in the bushes and then dropping down

 immediately he has finished his private business, acting as a universal

 sewage disposal agent.

 Boris studied this pair of birds through his binoculars as they sailed

 idly in the heated air, always circling directly over that same patch of

 river in bush. They had a distinctive manner of steering with their long

 bifurcated tails, twisting them from side to side as they flirted with

 the breeze. Their bright yellow beaks showed clearly as they turned

 their heads to look down at something in the scrub.

 He smiled coldly to himself. "Da! Nimmur has gone into camp early.

 Perhaps the heat and the pace are too fierce for his new woman, or

 perhaps he has stopped to play with her a little."

 He moved on along the rim until he could look down directly into the

 patch of bush. He studied it through the binoculars, but without picking

 out any signs of human presence. After almost two hours he was becoming

 uncertain of his original assumption. The only thing that retained his

 attention was the pair of kites, which had settled in a treetop

 overlooking the patch of scrub. He had to trust that they were watching

 the men hidden in the scrub.

 He glanced at the sun anxiously. It was sliding down towards the horizon

 at last and losing its furious heat. Then he looked down into the valley

 again.

 Directly below the patch of bush was an indentation in the river bank

 that formed a backwater, almost a small lagoon, When the river was in

 flood it would be inundated, but now there was a small strip of gravel

 bank exposed. On this bank stood a number of boulders that had tumbled

 down from the cliff above. Some of them were lying on the beach, while

 others had rolled into the river and were half, submerged. The largest

 was the size of a cottage, a great round mass of dark rock.

 As he watched, a man emerged unexpectedly from the scrub. Boris's pulse

 quickened as he watched him scramble down on to one of the smaller

 boulders and jump from there on to the gravel bank. He knelt at the

 water's edge and filled a canvas bucket -with water, then climbed back

 and disappeared into the bush again.

 "Ah! The heat is too much even for them. They must drink, and that gives

 them away. If it had not been for the birds I would never have known

 that they were there." He clucked softly with reluctant admiration.

 "Nimmur is a careful man. No wonder he has survived so long. He keeps

 tight control. But even he must have water."

 Boris kept watching through the glasses as he tried to guess what Mek

 Nimmur would do next. "He has lost much time here by sheltering from the

 heat. He will march again as soon as it is cooler. He will make a night

 march," he decided, as he looked at the sun again. "Three hours until

 dark. I must make my move before then. Once it is dark it will be

 difficult to pick my targets."

 Before he stood up he wriggled back from the skyline.

 He retraced his steps back along the Mountainside until a bluff shielded

 him from the eyes of Mek Nimmur's sentries.

 Then he started down. There was no goat track here and he had to make

 his own going, but after a few false starts he discovered an inclined

 rock shelf that afforded him a fairly easy path down the face. When he

 reached the bottom of the gorge, he took careful stock of the lie and

 run of the . stratum so as to be able to find it again in an emergency.

 It was a good escape route, and he knew that he might soon be under

 pursuit and duress.

 It had taken him over an hour to negotiate the descent, and he knew that

 he was running out of time. He reached the trail at the water's edge,

 and started back along it towards Mek Nimmur's camp. He was in a hurry

 now, but even then he was careful to take anti-tracking precautions. He

 walked on the edge of the trail, stepping only on the stony ground,

 careful to leave no sign of his passing.

 But despite his caution, he nearly walked right into them.

 He had not covered the first two hundred metres when in the back of his

 mind he registered the low, mournful whistle of a pale-winged starting,

 and almost ignored it until alarm bells sounded in his mind. The timing

 was all wrong. The starling only gave that particular call at dawn when

 it left its nesting site high up in the cliffs. This was late afternoon

 down in the heated depths of the gorge. He guessed that it was a signal

 from one of the scouts coming up the trail towards him. Mek Nimmur's

 party was on the move.

 Boris reacted instantly. He slipped off the trail, and ran back the way

 he had come until he reathed the beginning of the pathway along which he

 had descended the cliff. He climbed just high enough to be able to

 overlook the trail. However, he realized that he had lost Much of the

 advantage that he had built up by cutting across the mountain. This was

 not the ideal ambush position, and his escape route was exposed to enemy

 fire from below - he would be lucky to make it to the top. But the .

 idea of abandoning his vengeance never occurred to him. As soon as his

 targets were in'his sights, he would shoot from this stance.

 However, he acknowledged to himself that Mek Nimmur had taken him by

 surprise. Boris had not anticipated that he would move before the sun

 had set. He had expected to be able to take up a position above the camp

 in the thorn patch and to be able to get off two careful, well-aimed

 shots before he was forced to run.

 It was also part of his calculations that, once he had dropped Mek

 Nimmur, his men would not be eager to follow up with too much despatch.

 Boris planned to make a running retreat, stopping at every defensible

 strong point to fire a few shots, knock down one or two of them, and

 keep the pursuit circumspect and cautious until they eventually lost

 their taste for the game and let him go.

 However, all that had now changed. He would have to take the first

 opportunity that presented itself - almost certainly a moving target -

 and as soon as he had fired he would be exposed on the path up the cliff

 face. His one advantage here was that his hunting rifle was a superbly

 accurate piece, whereas Mek Nimmur's men were all armed with AK-47

 assault rifles, rapid-firing but notoriously wild at longer range, and

 more especially in the hands of these shufta. With proper training, the

 fighting tribesmen of Africa made some of the finest troops in the

 world. They possessed all the necessary skills, with one exception -

 they were notoriously poor marksmen.

 He lay flat on the ledge, and the rock under him was so hot from the

 direct sunlight that it burned painfully even through his clothin - He

 pulled the pack from his 9 back and set it up in front of him, settling

 the forestock of the, rifle over it to give himself a dead rest. He

 peered through the telescope, wriggling into a comfortable position,

 sighting on a small rock beside the main trail and then swinging the

 barrel from side to side to make certain that he had a clear arc of

 fire.

 Satisfied that this was the best stance he could find in the short time

 left to him, -he set the rifle aside and picked up a handful of dirt. He

 rubbed this gently into his face, and the sweat turned it to mud that

 coated his pate skin and dulled the shine that an alert scout might pick

 out at long range. His last concern was to check the angle of the sun,

 and to satisfy himself that it was not reflecting off the lens of his

 scope or off any of the metal parts of the rifle.

 He reached over and pulled at the branch of the shrub beside him so that

 it cast its shadow over the weapon.

 At last he settled down behind the rifle and cuddled the butt into his

 shoulder, regulating his breathing to a deep slow rhythm, dropping his

 pulse rate and steadying his hands. He did not have long to wait. He

 heard the bird-call again, but this time much nearer at hand. It was

 answered immediately from the far side of the trail, down closer to the

 river bank.

 "The flankers will be having difficulty maintaining station over this

 terrain." He grinned without hurriour, a death's-head grimace. They will

 be bunching and straggling." As he thought it, a man came into view

 around the bend of the trail, about five hundred metres, dead ahead.

 Boris picked him up in the magni  of ens.

 He was a typical African guerrilla, a shufta dressed in a tattered and

 faded motley of camouflage and civilian clothing, festooned with pack

 and water bottle, ammunition and grenades, carrying his AK at high port.

 He hatted the moment he came through the turn, and crouched into cover

 behind a boulder at the side of the trail.

 For a long minute he surveyed the lie of the land ahead of him, his head

 turning slowly from side to side. At one point he seemed to be staring

 directly at Boris, who held his breath and lay as still as the rock

 beside him. But finally the shufta straightened up and gave a hand

 signal to those out of sight behind him. Then he came on down the trail

 at a trot. When he had covered fifty metres the rest of the party began

 to appear, keeping their intervals as precisely as beads on a string. It

 would not be possible to enfilade this line even with an RPD from a

 prepared position.

 "Good!" Boris approved. "These are crack troops. Mek must have

 hand-picked them." He watched them through the lens, examining the

 features of each man as he came into view, searching for Mek Nimmur.

 There were seven of them spread out down the trail now, but still no

 sign of their leader. The man on the point drew level with Boris's

 position and then went on past him. A pair of flankers passed directly

 beneath where he lay, rustling softly by in the scrub not more than a

 dozen paces from him. He lay like a stone and let them go. The rest of

 them passed his position, well spaced and moving swiftly. For some

 minutes after the last of them had gone, the gorge seemed deserted and

 devoid of all human presence. Then there was another stealthy movement

 out there.

 "The rear guard," Boris grunted softly. "Mek is keeping the woman at the

 rear. His new plaything."He is taking great care of her."

 He slipped the safety-catch on the rifle gently, making certain that no

 alien metallic sound fell on the heated and hushed air.

 "Now let them come," he breathed. "I will take Mek first. Nothing fancy,

 no head shots. Squarely in the centre of the chest. The woman will

 freeze when he goes down.

 She does not have the reflexes of a warrior. She will give me a second

 unhurried shot. At this range there will be no question of a miss. Right

 between those pretty little black tits of hers." He became sexually

 charged by the image of blood and violent death set opposite Tessay's

 loveliness and grace. "I might even have a chance to get one of the

 others. But I can't bank on that. These men are good.

 More likely that they will dive into cover before I have even had time

 to kill the woman."

 He watched the faces of the rear guard as, one at a time, carefully

 spaced, they came into view. Each time he felt his heart trip with

 disappointment. In the end there were three of them on the path, moving

 past him at a steady, businesslike jog-trot. But no sign of Mek and the

 woman. The rear guard disappeared down the path, and the small sounds of

 their progress dwindled into silence. Boris lay alone on the ledge, his

 heart thumping and the sour taste of disappointment in the back of his

 throat.

 "Where are they?" he thought bitterly. "Where the hell is MeV And the

 obvious answer to his own question occurred to him immediately. They had

 taken a different trail. Mek had used this patrol as a decoy to lure him

 away.

 He lay quietly for a measured five minutes by his wristwatch, just in

 case there might be more men coming up the trail. His mind was racing.

 His last definite placin of 9 Tessay had been the glimpse of her

 footprint on the trail at the far bend of the oxbow.

 That was several hours ago, and if she and Mek had given him the slip

 they could be anywhere by now. Mek might have won himself a start of a

 full day or more - it might take Boris that long to work the spoor

 through.

 Feeling waves of anger overwhelm him, he had to close his eyes and fight

 it off in order to keep his sense of reason from being swamped. He had

 to think clearly now, not go rushing at the problem like a wounded

 buffalo. He knew that this was one of his weaknesses: he had to keep

 tight control of himself.

 When he opened his eyes again, his anger had become cold and functional.

 He knew precisely what he had to do and the order in which he must do

 it. The very first task was t& sweep and check the back trail. He had to

 establish the point at which Mek had left the main detachment of shufta.

 He slipped down off the ledge and through the scrub to the open trail.

 Still anti-tracking, but moving swiftly, he made his way upstream, back

 towards the patch of Thorn scrub where the party of shufta had lain up

 in the heat of the day. The first thing he noticed was that the pair of

 kites had gone. But he did not take this as proof that the bush was

 deserted! and began to circle it carefully. First he worked the incoming

 trail on the far side of the patch of bush. Although several hours old

 now, it was still clear enough to read.

 Suddenly he stopped in the centre of the trail and felt the hair rise on

 his forearms and down the back of his neck as he stared at the sign in

 the dust of the path. He realized that he had walked into Mek's trap.

 There lay the distinctive imprint of a Bata tennis shoe.

 Mek and the woman had gone into the patch of scrub and had not come out

 again. They were still in there, and Boris was seized by the strong

 premonition that Mek was watching him even at that moment, over the open

 sights of his AK. While he was out in the open like this, stooped over

 the spoor, Boris was completely vulnerable.

 Hurling himself sideways off the path, he landed like a cat in the wire

 grass beside it, with the rifle at the ready. It took many minutes for

 his heartbeats to return to normal, and then he rose again into a

 stealthy crouch and began circling the patch of scrub very cautiously.

 His nerves were as taut as guitar strings, and his pale eyes darted from

 side to side. His finger lay upon the trigger of the 30/06 and he kept

 the muzzle weaving slowly, like the head of a cobra ready to strike in

 any direction.

 He moved down towards the bank of the river, where A the noise of the

 rapids would mask any sound he might make. But when he had almost

 reached the shelter of the house -sized boulder that he had noticed from

 the mountain crest he froze again. He had heard a sound that carried

 over the sound of Nile waters - a sound so incongnious in this place and

 at this time that for a moment he doubted his own hearing. It was the

 sound of a woman's laughter, sweet and clear as the tinkle of a crystal

 chandelier swinging in the breeze.

 The sound came from below him, from the river bank beyond the tumbled

 boulder. He crept towards the boulder, determined to use it for cover

 and as a vantage point from which he could cover the bank beyond it. But

 before he reached it he heard the splash of some heavy object striking

 the surfac& of the river, and an excited female squeal, both playful and

 provocative.

 Reaching the side of the boulder, and keeping close in under its

 protective bulk, he stole towards the corner, from which he could

 overlook the gravel bank beyond. Then, peeping cautiously around the

 angle of the boulder, he stared in amazement. He could barely believe

 what he was seeing. He could not credit this kind of stupidity from a

 man like Mek Nimmur. This was the hard man, the seasoned warrior and

 survivor of twenty years of bloody bush war acting like a love-sick

 teenage booby.

 Mek Nimmur had sent his men away so that he could be alone to frolic

 with his new paramour. Boris took time to make absolutely certain that

 this was not some elaborate trap that had been set for him. It seemed

 too fortuitous, too heaven-sent to be really true. He searched every

 inch of the bank in both directions for hidden gunmen before he smiled

 his cold little smile.

 "Of course they are alone. Mek would never let one of his men see Tessay

 naked like this." His smile grew broader as he recognized the full

 extent of his luck. "He must have gone crazy. Did he not realize that I

 would follow him? Did he think he was far enough ahead to be able to

 indulge tu himself like this? Is there anything in this world as pid and

 as shortsighted as a standing prick?" Boris was gloating delightedly

 now.

 uple had stripped off their clothes and left them The coin a pile on the

 beach of grey basalt gravel in the shade of AL

 the tall boulder. They were splashing together in the slack water of the

 river at the edge of the main current. Both Of them were stark

 mother-naked. Mek Nimmur was broadshouldered, with a heavily muscled

 back and hard, tight buttocks. Beside him Tessay was slim as a river

 reed, her waist tiny and her hips narrow. Her skin was the colour of

 wild honey. They were completely absorbed in each other, without eyes or

 ears for anything else in this world.

 "He must have left men guarding his back trail." Boris gave Mek the

 benefit of some sense. "He never expected me to be ahead of him on the

 trail. He thinks they are completely secure. Look at the fool," he

 gloated, as Mek chased the girl and she let herself be caught. They fell

 into the shallow water locked in each other's embrace, mouths seeking

 each other as they surfaced again, laughing as the water streamed down

 their darkly beautiful faces, the epitome of handsome masculinity and

 lovely womanhood, the image of an African Adam and Eve captured for a

 moment in their own little carefree paradise.

 Boris tore his eyes from them, and looked to where their clothing had

 been abandoned on the gravel bar.

 Mek's AK rifle lay carelessly on top of his camouflage jacket, within a

 few paces of where Boris stood. He crossed the open gravel bar with a

 few quick strides, picked up the AK, unclipped the curved magazine and

 dropped it into his pocket, ejected the round from the chamber and let

 it fly away into the gravel, replaced the unloaded rifle on the jacket,

 and rapidly returned to the tee of the boulder. Both Mek and Tessay

 remained utterly oblivious to what had happened.

 Boris stood there quietly in the shadow of the rock, watching them at

 play in the river. They were almost childlike in their love and their

 complete preoccupation with each other.

 Tessay at last broke from Mek's embrace and left the water. She came up

 the gravel bar, running long-legged and coltish, her wet silken breasts

 swinging and jostling each other at each stride as she looked back at

 him over her shoulder in open invitation. Mek followed her out, the

 water glistening in the dense curls of his barrel chest, his genitals

 weighty and puissant.

 He caught her before she could reach her clothing and she struggled

 playfully for a while in his arms, until his mouth clamped down over

 hers. Then she gave herself up to him completely. While he kissed her

 his hands ran down her back and over her wet glistening buttocks.

 Pressing herself against him she moved her feet apart and spread her

 thighs, inviting him to explore the secrets of her body. She groaned

 with desire as his hand cupped her sex gently.

 Boris felt his anger mingle with the perverse voyeuristic thrill of

 watching his own wife being taken by another man. A devil's brew of

 emotions bubbled up inside him.

 He felt his loins engorging and stiffening almost painfully with

 excitement, but at the same time his rage shook him like the branch of a

 tree in a gale of wind.

 The lovers sank down on to their knees. Still locked together, Tessay

 fell backwards and pulled him over on top of herself.

 Boris called out loudly, "By God, Mek Nimmur, you will never know how

 ridiculous you look with your bare backside in the air like that."

 Mek reacted as swiftly as a leopard surprised on his kill. With a blur

 of movement he flipped over and reached for the AK-47. Although Boris

 was ready for him, covering him with the 30/06, aiming at the back of

 his neck when he shouted to him, Mek was so quick that he had swept up

 the AK from where it lay and had it pointed at Boris's belly before he

 could move. Mek pressed the trigger in the same instant as the muzzle

 came to bear.

 The firing-pin fell on the empty chamber with a futile click, and the

 two men stared at each other across the gravel beach, both with their

 weapons levelled. Tessay was curled naked where Mek had left her, her

 dark eyes liquid with pain and horror as she watched her husband and

 realized that Mek was about to die.

 Boris chuckled softly, throatily. "Where do you want it, Mek? How about

 I shoot the head off that filthy black tool of yours, while it is still

 standing up in the air like that?"

 Mek Nimmur's eyes darted away from his adversary's face, back towards

 the mountain, and Boris realized that his guess had been correct. Mek

 had some of his men up there, but they were keeping out of view of the

 beach while their commander indulged himself.

 "Don't worry about them. You will both be dead long before your chimps

 can get down here to save you." Boris chuckled again. "I am enjoying

 this. You and I had an appointment once before, but you broke it. Never

 mind this is going to be even more fun." He knew that it was not wise to

 delay with a man like this. Mek had made one mistake, and it was highly

 unlikely that he would make another. He should blow his head off now,

 and that would give him a few minutes more to deal with Tessay. But the

 temptation to gloat over him was too strong.

 "I have good news for you, Mek. You will live a few seconds longer. I am

 going to kill the whore first, and I am going to let you watch. I hope

 you enjoy it as much as I am going to." He sidled away from the shelter

 of the boulder, edging towards where Tessay lay curled on the gravel

 beach. She was turned half away from him, trying to cover her breasts

 and her pubic area with hands too small and delicate for the job. Even

 as he approached the woman, Boris was watching Mek with his full

 attention. Mek was the danger, and he never took his eyes off him. It

 was a mistake. He had underestimated the woman.

 While pretending to turn away from him modestly, Tessay had reached down

 between her thighs and found a round, water-worn stone that fitted

 neatly into her small fist. Suddenly she uncoiled her lithe body and

 used all the strength of it to hurl the stone at his head. Boris caught

 the movement from the corner of his eye and flung up his arm to shield

 his head.

 The stone, flying with surprising force at close range, never struck its

 target. Instead it caught the point of Boris's upraised elbow. His

 sleeves were rolled up high around his biceps, and there was no padding

 to cushion the impact of the stone; his arm was bent and flexed, the

 thin covering of skin drawn tightly over the bone of the joint. The head

 of the ulna cracked like glass, and Boris howled at the excruciating

 agony. His hand opened involuntarily, and his forefinger jerked away

 from the trigger without the strength to fire the shot he was aiming at

 Mek's belly.

 Mek rolled to his feet, and before Boris could change the rifle to his

 other hand he disappeared behind the angle of the giant boulder.

 With his left hand Boris swung the butt of the rifle at Tessay's head,

 knocking her backwards into the sand. Then he thrust the muzzle into her

 throat, pinning her there while he shouted angrily. "I am going to kill

 her, you black bastard! If you want your whore, you' better come fetch

 her!" The pain of the shattered elbow rendered his voice hoarse and

 brutish.

 From somewhere behind the boulder Mek Nimmur's voice fang out strongly

 and clearly, calling a single word in Amharic that echoed along the

 cliffs. Then he spoke in English, "My men will be here in a moment.

 Leave the woman and I will spare you. Harm her and I will make you plead

 for death."

 Boris stooped over Tessay and dragged her to her feet with his good arm

 locked around her throat. He held the rifle in the same hand, pointing

 it over her shoulder. The hand of his injured arm had recovered

 sufficiently from the first shock to be able to hold the pistol grip and

 to manipulate the trigger.

 "She will be dead long before your men get here," he shouted back as he

 started to drag her away from the boulder. "Come and get her yourself,

 Mek. She is here if you want her."

 He tightened his lock around her throat, choking her until she struggled

 and gasped, tearing at his arm with her nails and leaving long red welts

 across the tanned skin.

 "Listen to her! I am crushing this pretty neck. Listen to her choking."

 He tightened his grip, forcing the sounds of distress out of her.

 Boris was watching the corner of the boulder where Mek had disappeared.

 At the same time he was backing away from it, giving himself space in

 which to work. His mind was racing, for he knew that he could not

 escape. His right arm was barely usable, and there were too many of

 Mek's shufta companions. He had the woman, but he wanted the man as

 well. That was the best trade that he could hope for - both of them, he

 had to have both of them.

 He heard a shout, a strange voice from higher up the slope. Mek's men

 were on their way. He was desperate now. Mek was not going to be drawn;

 he had not heard him speak or move for almost two minutes. He had lost

 him - by this time he could be anywhere.

 "Too late," Boris realized. "I am not going to get him.

 Only the woman. But I must do it now." He forced her to her knees and

 stooped over her, shifting the lock of his arm around her throat.

 "Goodbye, Tessay," he grated in her ear. He tightened his arm muscles

 and felt the vertebrae in her neck arched to breaking point. It needed

 only an ounce more pressure.

 "It's all over for you," he whispered, and began the final pressure. He

 knew from long experience the sound, that the vertebrae would make as

 they gave, and he tensed himself for it, poised for that crackle like

 the breaking of a green branch, and the stack weight of her corpse in

 his grip.

 Then something crashed into his back with a force that seemed to drive

 in his backbone and crush his ribs.

 Both the strength and the direction were entirely unexpected. It did not

 seem possible that Mek Nimmur could have moved so far and so swiftly. He

 must have left the shelter of the boulder and circled out through the

 scrub.

 Now he had come at Boris from behind.

 His attack was so savage that the arm that Boris had wound around

 Tessay's neck opened.- She drew in a wheezing, strangled breath and

 twisted out of his grip. Boris tried to turn and swing the rifle around,

 but Mek was on him again, seizing the rifle and trying to wrest it from

 Boris's hands.

 The Russian's finger was still on the trigger, and a shot went off white

 the muzzle was level with Mek's face. The detonation stunned him for an

 instant, and he released the rifle and staggered backwards with his ears

 ringing.

 Boris backed away from him, struggling with the weapon, trying to open

 the bolt and crank another cartridge into the chamber, but his crippled

 right arm'made his movements clumsy and awkward. Mek gathered himself

 and charged head down across the gravel beach. He drove into Boris with

 all his weight, and the rifle flew out of the Russian's hands. Locked

 chest to chest the two of them spun around in a macabre waltz, trying to

 throw each other, wrestling for the advantage, until they tripped and

 went over backwards into the river.

 They came to the surface still grappling and rolling over each other,

 first one on top and then the other, a fearful parody of the lovemaking

 which Boris had watched a few minutes earlier. Punching and straining

 and tripping each other, they struggled in the shallows. But every time

 they fell back into the water the slope of the bank beneath their feet

 forced them further out, until, when they were waist-deep, the main

 current of the Nile suddenly picked them up and swept them away

 downstream. They were still locked together, their heads bobbing in the

 tumble of waters, their arms thrashing the water white around them,

 bellowing at each other in primeval rage.

 Tessay heard the men that Mek had called coming down through the scrub

 at the run. She snatched up her shamnw and pulled it over her head as

 she ran to meet them. As the first of them burst on to the gravel bar

 with his AK cocked, she shouted to him in Amharic.

 "There! Mek is in the water. He is fighting the Russian.

 Help him!" She ran with them along the bank. As they drew level with the

 two men in midstream one of the men stopped and levelled his AK, but

 Tessay rushed at him and struck up the barrel.

 "You fool!" she shouted angrily. "You will hit Mek." Jumping to the top

 of one of the riverside boulders, she shaded her eyes against the

 dazzling reflection of the low sun off the water. With a sick feeling in

 the pit of her stomach she saw that Boris had managed to get behind Mek

 and had a half nelson hold around his throat. He was forcing Mek's head

 under the surface. Mek was struggling like a hooked salmon in his grip

 as they were swept into a long chute of white water.

 Tessay jumped down from the rock and ran on down the bank to the next

 point, from which she could only watch helplessly.

 Boris was still holding Mek's head under water as they were home

 together into the head of the chute. Fangs of black rock flashed by them

 on each side as they gathered speed. Mek was a powerful man and Boris

 had to exert every last ounce of his own strength to hold him, and he

 knew he could not do so much longer. Suddenly Mek reared back, and for a

 moment his head came out. He sucked a quick breath of air before Boris

 could force him under again, but that breath seemed to have renewed his

 strength.

 Desperately Boris looked ahead to the tail of the chute as they sped

 towards it. There were more rocks there. Boris picked out one great

 black slab over which the waters poured in a standing wave three feet

 high. He steered for it, kicking and hauling Mek's body around with the

 last of his strength.

 They flew down the slope of racing water with the rock slab waiting for

 them at the end like a lurking seamonster. Boris continued to wrestle

 with Mek, until he had turned him into a position ahead of him. He

 planned to steer him into a head-on collision with the rock and use

 Mek's body to cushion his own impact.

 At the very last moment before they struck Mek dragged his head out from

 the surface, and as he grabbed a precious lungful of air he saw the rock

 and realized the danger. With a single violent effort he ducked forward

 below the surface again and rolle over head-first. It was so powerful

 and unexpected that Boris was unable to resist.

 Instinctively he maintained his lock around Mek's neck and was carried

 forward over his back until their positions were reversed. Now Mek had

 managed to interpose Boris between himself and the rock, so that when

 they slammed into it it was the Russian who bore the full brunt of the

 impact.

 Boris's right shoulder crunched like a walnut in the jaws of a steel

 cracker. Although his head was still under water he screamed at the

 brutal agony of it, and his lungs filled with water. He relinquished his

 grip and was flung clear of Mek. When he came to the surface he was

 floundering like a drowned insect, his tight arm shattered in two

 places, his good arm flailing weakly, and his sodden lungs wheezing and

 pumping.

 Mek exploded through the surface only a few yards behind him. Looking

 around quickly as he strained for air, he spotted Boris's bobbing head

 almost immediately and with a few powerful overarm strokes came up

 behind him.

 Boris was so far gone that he was not aware of Mek's intentions until he

 seized his shirt collar from behind and twisted it like a strangler's

 garotte. With his other hand, below the surface, Mek secured a grip on

 the back of Boris's wide leather belt and used it like the helm of a

 rudder to steer him towards the next reef of rocks that was boiling the

 water ahead of them.

 Through his waterlogged lungs Boris was trying to shout invective at

 him. "Bastard! Black swine! Filthy-' But his voice was barely audible

 above the rush of the waters and the growl of the rocky spur that lay

 across their path. Mek rode him head-first into the rock and he felt the

 impact transferred through Boris's skull to jolt the straining muscles

 of his forearms. Instantly Boris went slack in his grip, his head lolled

 and his limbs became as limp and soft as strands of kelp washing in the

 surf.

 As they tumbled into the next run of open water, Mek used his grip on

 the back of Boris's collar to lift the Russian's face above the surface.

 For a moment even he was struck with horror at the injury that he had

 inflicted.

 Boris's forehead was staved in. The skin was unbroken, but there was a

 deep indentation in his skull into which Mek could have thrust his

 thumb. And Boris's eyes bulged, pushed out of their sockets like those

 of a battered doll.

 Mek swung the inert carcass around in the water, and stared at the

 broken head from a distance of only a few inches. He reached up and

 touched the depressed area of the skull with his fingertips, and felt

 the shards of splintered , bone grate and give beneath the skin.

 Once again he thrust the shattered head below the surface and held it

 there, while he crabbed sideways across the current towards the bank.

 There was no resistance from Boris, but Mek kept his head submerged for

 the rest of that long tortuous swim across the Nile.

 "How do you kill a monster?" he thought grimly. "I should bury him at a

 crossroads with a stake through his heart." But instead he drowned him

 fifty times over, and at the next bend of the river they were washed

 into the bank.

 Mek's men were waiting for him there. They supported him when his legs

 sagged under him, and they helped him up the bank. When they started to

 drag Boris's corpse out of the river, Mek stopped them abruptly.

 him for the crocodiles. After what he has done

 "Leave to our country and our people, he deserves nothing better." But

 even in his anger and his hatred he did not want Tessay to have to look

 at that mutilated head. She had been unable to keep pace with the men,

 but she was coming along the bank towards him now.

 One of his men pushed Boris's corpse back into the current, and as it

 floated away he unstung his AK rifle from his shoulder and let off a

 burst of automatic fire. The bullets chopped up the surface around

 Boris's head, and socked heavily into his back. They tore holes in his

 wet shirt and kicked out lumps of raw flesh. The other men on the bank

 shouted with laughter and joined in the fusillade, emptying their

 magazines into the lifeless body. Mek did them. Some of their close

 relatives not attempt to prevent had died most horribly under the

 Russian's care. The corpse rolled over in a pink cloud of its own blood,

 and for a moment Boris's pate bulging eyes stared at the sky. Then he

 sank away beneath the surface.

 Mek stood up slowly and went to meet Tessay. He took her in his arms,

 and as he held her to his chest he whispered to her softly.

 "It's all right. He won't ever hurt you again. It's all over. You are my

 woman now - for ever!'

 Since -Boris and Tessay had left the camp there was no longer any reason

 to maintain security, and Nicholas -and Royan were no longer obliged to

 skulk in Royan's hut when they discussed their search for the tomb.

 Nicholas transferred their headquarters into the dining hut, and had the

 camp staff build another large table on which they could spread the

 satellite photographs and all the other maps and material that they had

 accumulated.

 The chef sent a steady supply of coffee from the kitchen, while they

 pored over the papers and discussed their discoveries in Taita's pool

 and every theory that either of them dreamed up, no matter how

 far-fetched.

 "We will never be certain if that shaft was made by Taita, or whether it

 was a natural sink-hole, until we can get back in there with the right

 equipment."

 "What type of equipment are you talking about?" she wanted to know.

 "Scuba, not oxygen rebreathers. Although the navy rebreathing outfits

 are much lighter and more compact, you cannot use them below a'depth of

 thirty-three feet, the equivalent of one atmosphere of water. After that

 pure oxygen becomes lethal. Have you ever used an aqualung?"

 She nodded. "When Dutaid and I were on honeymoon at a resort on the Red

 Sea. I had a few lessons and made three or four open-water dives, but

 let me hasten to add that I am no expert."

 "I promise not to send you down there," he smiled, "but I think we can

 safely say that we have found enough evidence both in Tanus's tomb and

 Taita's pool to make it imperative that we mount the second phase of

 this operation."

 She nodded agreement. "We will have to return with a much more extensive

 range of equipment, and some expert help. But you are not going to be

 able to pose as a- tourist Sportsman next time around. What possible

 excuse are we going to find for returning that will not set off all the

 alarm bells in the minds of Ethiopian bureaucracy?"

 "You are speaking to the man who has paid unofficial and uninvited

 visits to both those charming lads Gadaffi and Saddam. Ethiopia should

 be a Sunday-school picnic in comparison."

 "When do the big rains start up in the mountains?" she asked suddenly.

 "Yes!" His expression became serious. That is the jackpot question. You

 only have to look at the high-water mark on the walls of Taita's pool to

 have some idea what it must be like in there when the river is in full

 flood." He flipped over the pages of his pocket diary. "Luckily, we

 still have a bit of time - not a great deal, but'enough. We will need to

 move pretty smartly. We have to get back home before I can start work on

 planning phase two."

 "We should pack up right away, then."

 "Yes, we should. But it seems a damned shame not to take full advantage

 of every moment we are here, having come all this way. I think we can

 spare just a few more days to sound out some ideas that I have about

 Taita's pool and the sink-hole, to try to arrive at some sort of

 informed guess about what we will need when we return."

 "You are the boss."

 "My word, how pleasant to hear a lady say that." She smiled sweetly.

 "Enjoy the moment," she counselled him, "it may never happen again." And

 then she became serious again. "What are these ideas that you have?

 "What goes up must come down, what goes in must come out," he said

 mysteriously. "The water going into the sink'hole under such pressure

 must be going somewhere.

 Unless it joins a subterranean water system and makes its way into the

 Nile that way, then it should come to the surface where we can find it."

 "Go on," she invited.

 40the thing is certain. Nobody is going to get into the sink-hole from

 the pool. The pressure is lethal. But if we can find the outlet, we may

 be able to explore it from the other end."

 "That's a fascinating possibility." She looked impressed, and turned to

 the satellite photograph. Nicholas had identified the monastery and

 ringed it on the photograph.

 He had marked in the approximate course of the river through the chasm,

 although the gorge itself was too narrow and covered with bush to show

 up on the smallscale picture, even under the high-powered magnifying

 lens.

 "Here is the point where the river enters the chasm." She pointed it out

 to him. "And here is the side valley down which the trail detours.

 Okay?"

 "Okay," he nodded. "What are you driving at?"

 "On our approach march, we remarked that this valley might at one time

 have been the original course of the Dandera river, and that it seemed

 to have cut a new bed for itself through the chasm."

 "That's right,'Nicholas agreed. "I am still listening."

 "The fall of the land towards the Nile is very steep at this point,

 isn't it? Well, do you recall we crossed another smaller, but still

 pretty substantial, stream on our way down the dry valley? That stream

 seemed to emerge from somewhere on the eastern side of the valley."

 All right, I am with you now. You are suggesting that this may be the

 overflow from the sinkholes Clever little devil, aren't you?"

 "Just capitalizing on your genius." She cast down her eyes modestly, and

 looked up at him from under her lashes.

 She was clowning, but her lashes were long and dense and curling, and

 her eyes were the colour of burnt honey with tiny golden highlights in

 their depths. At this close range he found them disturbing.

 He stood up and suggested, "Why don't we go and take a look?"

 Nicholas went to fetch his camera bag and the light day'pack from his

 hut, and when he returned he found Royan ready to go. But she was not

 alone.

 I see that you are bringing your chaperon with you," he remarked with

 resignation.

 "Unless you are tough enough to send him away." Royan smiled

 encouragement at Tamre who stood at her side, grinning and bobbing and

 hugging his shoulders in the ecstasy of being in the presence of his

 idol.

 "Oh, very well." Nicholas gave in without a struggle.

 "Let the little devil come along."

 Tamre lolloped away up the path ahead of them, his grubby shamma

 flapping around his long skinny legs, chanting the repetitive chorus of

 an Amharic psalm, and every few minutes looking back to make certain

 that Royan was still following him. It was a hard pull up the valley,

 and the noonday heat was debilitating. Although Tamre seemed totally

 unaffected, the other two were both sweating in dark patches through

 their shirts by the time they reached the point where the stream

 debauched into the valley. Gratefully, they sought the shade of a patch

 of acacia trees, and while they rested Nicholas glassed the side of the

 valley through his binoculars.

 "How are they after the dunking I gave them?" she asked.

 "Waterproof," he grunted, "full marks to Herr Zeiss."

 "What do you see up there?"

 "Not much. The bush is too thick. We will have to foot'slog up the side.

 Sorry."

 They left the shade and made their way up the side of the valley in the

 direct burning sunlight. The stream tumbled down a series of cascades,

 each with a pool at its foot. The bush crowded the banks, lush and green

 where the roots had been able to reach the water. Clouds of black and

 yellow butterflies danced over the Pools, and a black and white wagtail

 patrolled the moss-green rocks along the edge, its long tail gyrating

 back and forth like the needle of a metronome.

 Halfway up the slope they paused beside one of the pools to rest, and

 Nicholas used his hat like a fly-swatter to stun a brown and yellow

 grasshopper. He tossed the insect on to the surface of the pool, and as

 it kicked weakly and floated towards the exit a long dark shadow rose

 from the bottom. There was a swirl and a mirrorlike flash of a scaly

 silver belly, and the grasshopper disappeared.

 "Ten'pounder,'Nicholas lamented. "Why didn't I bring my rod?"

 Tamre was crouched near Nicholas on the pool bank, and suddenly he

 lifted his hand and held it out. Almost at once one of the circling

 butterflies settled upon his finger.

 It perched there with its velvety black and yellow wings fanning gently.

 They stared at him in astonishment, for it was as though the insect had

 come to his bidding. Tamre giggled and offered the butterfly to Royan.

 When she held out her hand, he gently transferred the gorgeous insect to

 her palm.

 "Thank you, Tamre. That is a wonderful gift. Now my gift to you is to

 set it free again." She pursed her lips and blew it softly into flight.

 They watched the butterfly climb high above the pool, and Tamre clapped

 his hands and laughed with delight.

 "Strange," Nicholas murmured. "He seems to have a special empathy with

 all the creatures of the wilderness. I think that Jali Hora, the abbot,

 does not try to control him, but lets him do very much as his simple

 fancy dictates.

 Special treatment for a fey soul, one that hears a different tune and

 dances to it. I must admit that, despite myself, I am becoming quite

 fond of the lad."

 It was only another fifty feet higher that they came to the source.

 There was a low cliff of red sandstone, from a grotto at whose foot the

 stream gushed. The entrance was screened by a heavy growth of ferns, and

 Nicholas went down on his knees to pull them aside and peer into the low

 opening.

 "What can you see?" Royan demanded behind him.

 "Not much. It's dark in there, but it seems to go in for quite some

 way."

 "You are too big to get in there. You had better let me go in."

 "Good place for water cobra," he remarked. "Lots of frogs for them to

 eat. Are you sure you want to go?"

 "I never said that I wanted to." She sat on the bank while she unlaced

 her shoes, then lowered herself into the stream. It came halfway up her

 thighs, and she waded forward against the flow with difficulty.

 She was forced to bend almost double to creep under the overhanging roof

 of the grotto. As she moved deeper in, her voice came back to him.

 "The roof gets lower."

 "Be careful, dear girl. Don't take any chances."

 "I do wish you wouldn't call me "dear girl"." Her voice resonated

 strangely from the cave entrance.

 "Well, you are both those things, a girl and dear. How about if I call

 you "young lady?

 "Not that either. My name is Royan."There was silence for a while, then

 she called again. "This is as far as I can go. It all narrows down into

 a shaft of some sort."

 "A shaft?" he demanded.

 "Well, at least a roughly rectangular opening."

 "Do you think it is the work of humans?"

 "Impossible to tell. The water is coming out of it like the spout of a

 bath tap. A solid jet."

 "No evidence of any excavation? No marks of tools on the rock?"

 "Nothing. It's slick and water-worn, covered with moss and algae."

 "Could a man get into the opening, I mean if it were not for the water

 pressure?"

 "If he was a pygmy or a dwarf."

 "Or a childT he suggested.

 "Or a child," she agreed. "But who would send a child in there?"

 "The ancients often used child-slaves. Taita might have done the same."

 "Don't suggest it. You are destroying my high opinion of Taita," she

 told him as she backed out of the entrance of the grotto. There were

 pieces of fern and moss in her hair, and she was soaked from the waist

 downwards. He gave her a hand and boosted her back on to the bank. The

 curve of her bottom was clearly visible through her wet trousers. He

 forced himself not to dwell upon the view.

 "So we have to conclude that the shaft is a natural flaw in the

 limestone, and not a man-made tunnel?"

 "I didn't say that. No. I said that I couldn't be sure.

 You might be correct. Children might have been used to dig it. After

 all, they were used in the coalmines during the industrial revolution."

 "But there is no way that we would be able to explore the tunnel from

 this end?"

 "Impossible." She was vehement. "The water is pouring out under enormous

 pressure. I tried to push my arrn up the shaft, but I did not have the

 strength."

 "Pity! I was hoping for some more irrefutable evidence, or at least

 another lead." He sat down beside her on the bank, and ferreted in his

 pack. She looked at him quizzically when he brought out a small black

 anodized instrument and opened the lid.

 "Aneroid barometer," he explained. "Every good navigator should have

 one." He studied it for a moment and then made a note of the reading.

 "Explain," she invited.

 "I want to know if this spring is below the level of the entrance to the

 sink-hole in Taita's pool. If it is not, then we can cross it off our

 list of possibilities."

 He stood up. "If you are ready, we can move on."

 "Where to?"

 "Why, Taita's pool, of course. We need a reading up there to establish

 the difference in altitude between the two points."

 nce Tamre knew where they were headed he showed them a shortcuts so it

 took them just under two hours from the fountain head to the top of the

 cliff face above Taita's pool.

 While they rested, Royan remarked, "Tamre seems to spend most of his

 days wandering around in the bush. He knows every path and game trail.

 He is an excellent guide."

 "Better than Boris, at least," Nicholas agreed, as he fished out his

 barometer and took another reading.

 "You look particularly pleased with yourself." Royan watched his face as

 he studied the instrument.

 "Every reason to be," he told her. "Allowing one hundred and eighty feet

 for the height of the cliff below us, and another fifty feet for the

 depth of the pool, the entrance to the sink-hole is still over a hundred

 feet higher than your outlet through the fern grotto on the other side

 of the ridge."

 "Which means?"

 "Which means that there is a distinct possibility that the streams are

 one and the same. The inflow is here in Taita's pool and the outflow is

 from your grotto."

 "How on earth did Taita do it?" she puzzled. "How did he get to the

 bottom of the pool? You are the engineering marvel. Tell me how you

 would do it."

 He shrugged, but she persisted. "I mean, there must be some established

 way of doing things like that, of working under water. How do they build

 the piers of a bridge, or the foundations of a dam, or - or - or how did

 Taita himself build the shaft below the level of the Nile to measure the

 flow of the river? You remember the description that he gives of his

 hydrograph in River God?"

 "The accepted technique is to build a coffer dam " Nicholas said

 casually, and then broke off and stared at her. "My oath, you really are

 a corker. A dam! What if that old ruffian, Taita, dammed the whole

 flipping river!"

 "Would that have been possible?"

 "I am beginning to believe that with Taita anything is possible. He

 certainly had unlimited manpower at his disposal, and if he could build

 the hydrograph on the Nile at Aswan, then he understood very clearly the

 principles of hydrodynamics. After all, the old Egyptians' lives were

 completely bound up with the seasonal inundations of the river and the

 management of the floods. From what we have gathered about the old man,

 it certainly seems Possible."

 "How could we prove it?"

 "By finding the remains of his dam. It had to be a hell of a work to

 hold the Dandera river. There is a good chance that some evidence of it

 remains."

 "Where would he have built the dam?" she asked excitedly. "Or let me put

 it another way, where would you site the dam if you had to do it?,

 "There is one natural place for it," he answered promptly. "The spot

 where the trail leaves the river and detours down the valley, and the

 river falls into the chasm.

 They both turned their heads in unison and looked upstream.

 "What are we waiting for?" she asked, and sprang to her feet. "Let's go

 look-see!

 Their excitement was infectious, and Tamre giggled and danced ahead of

 them along the trail through the thorns and then up the valley to the

 point where it rejoined the river. The sun had lost the worst of its

 heat by the time they stood once again above the falls where the

 Dandera. river plunged into the mouth of the chasm, and began its last

 lap in the race to join the Nile.

 "If Taita. had thrown a dam across here - " Nicholas made a sweep of his

 arms across the mouth of the gorge, he could have diverted the river

 down the side valley here."

 "It looks possible," she laughed. Tamre giggled in sympathy, not

 understanding a word of what they were saying, but enjoying himself

 immensely.

 "I would need a dumpy level to take some shots of the actual fall of the

 land. It can be very deceptive, but with the naked eye it does look

 possible, as you say." He shaded his eyes and looked up the bluffs on

 each side of the waterfall. They formed two craggy portals of limestone,

 between which the river roared as it plunged over the lip.

 "I would like to climb up there to get a clearer picture of the layout

 of the terrain. Are you game?"

 "Try and stop me,', she challenged him, and led the climb. It was a

 heavy scramble, and in some places the limestone was rotten and

 crumbling dangerously. However, when they came out on the summit of the

 eastern portal they were rewarded with a splendid overall view of the

 ground below.

 Directly to the north, the escarpment rose like a sheer wall with its

 battlements crenellated and serrated. Above and beyond it there was a

 dream of further mountains, the high peaks of the Choke, blue as a

 heron's plumage against the clearer distant blue of the African sky.

 All around them were the badlands of the gorge, a vast confusion of

 ridges and spines and reefs of rock of fifty different hues, some

 ash-grey and white, others black as the hide of a bull buffalo, or red

 as his heart blood. The river in bush was green, the poisonous vivid

 green of the mamba in the treetop, while further from the water the

 scrub was grey and sear, and along the spines of the broken kopjes stood

 the stark outlines of ancient drought-struck trees, their tortured limbs

 twisted and black against the sky.

 "The picture of devastation," Royan whispered as she looked around her,

 'untamed and untaniable. No wonder Taita chose this place. It repels all

 intruders."

 They were both silent for a while, awed by the wild grandeur of the

 scene, but as soon as they had recovered from the exertion of the climb

 their enthusiasm resurfaced.

 "Now you can get a good picture of it." Nicholas pointed down into the

 valley below them. "There is a clear divide at the fork of the valley.

 You can see the natural fall of the ground. There, from that side of the

 gorge to that point below us, is the narrowest part. It is a neck where

 the river squeezes through - the natural site for a dam." He swivelled

 and pointed down to the left of where they sat.

 'it would not take much to spill the river into the valley.

 Once he had finished whatever he was up to in the chasm, it would taken

 even less to break down the wall of the dam and let the river resume its

 natural course again."

 Tamre watched their faces eagerly, turning his head to each speaker in

 turn, uncomprehending, but aping Royan's expression like a mirror. If

 she nodded he nodded, when she frowned he did the same, and when she

 smiled he giggled happily.

 "It's a big river." Royan shook her head, while Tamre wagged his from

 side to side in sympathy and looked wise.

 "What method would he have used? An earthen dam?

 Surely not?" i "The Egyptians used earthen canals and dams for a great

 many of their irrigation works,'Nicholas mused. "On the other hand, when

 they had rock available to work with ..", they used it extensively. They

 were expert masons. You have stood in the quarries at Aswan."

 "Not much topsoil here in the gorge," she pointed out.

 "But on the other hand, there is plenty of rock. It's like a geological

 museum. Every type of rock that you could wish for."

 "I agree," he said. "Rather than an earthen wall, Taita would most

 probably have used a masonry and rock fill.

 That is the type of dam the ancients built in Egypt, long before his

 time. If that is the case, there is a chance that traces of it have

 survived."

 "Okay. Let's work on that hypothesis. Taita built a dam of rock stabs,

 and then he breached it again. Where would we find the remains of it?"

 "We would have to start searching on the actual site," he answered.

 "There at the neck of the gorge. Then we would have to search downstream

 from there."

 They scrambled down the slope again, with Tamre picking out the easiest

 route for Royan, stopping to beckon her whenever she faltered or paused

 for breath. They came out in the neck of the valley and stood on the

 rocky bank of the river, looking about them.

 "How high would the wall have been?" Royan asked.

 "Not too high. Again, I can't give you a precise answer until I have

 shot the levels." He climbed a little way up the side of the wall. There

 he squatted and turned his head back and forth, looking first down the

 length of the valley and then towards the lip of the waterfall that

 dropped into the mouth of the chasm.

 Three times he changed his position, on each occasion moving a few paces

 higher up the slope. The cliff became steeper the higher he climbed. In

 the end he was clinging precariously to the side of it, but he seemed

 satisfied. Then he called down to her.

 "I would say this is about it, where I am now. This would be the height

 of the dam wall. It looks about fifteen feet high to me."

 Royan was still standing on the bank, and now she turned and stared

 across at the far bank of the river, estimating the distance to the

 limestone cliff rising above it.

 "Roughly a hundred feet across," she shouted up to him.

 "About that," he agreed. "A lot of work, but not impossible."

 "Taita. was never one to be daunted by size or difficulty." She cupped

 her hands around her mouth to shout up to him. "While you are up there,

 can you see any sign of works? Taita would have had to pin the dam wall

 into the cliff."

 He scrambled along the cliff, keeping to the same level, until he was

 almost directly above the falls and could go no further. Then he slid

 down to where Royan and Tamre waited.

 "Nothing?" she anticipated, and he shook his head.

 "No, but you can't really expect that there would be anything left after

 nearly four thousand years. These cliffs have been exposed to wind and

 weather for all that time. I think our best bet will be to look for any

 surviving blocks from the dam wall that might have been carried away

 when Taita. breached it to flood the chasm again."

 They started down the valley, where Royan came upon a chunk of stone

 that seemed to be of a different type from the surrounding country rock.

 It was the size of an oldfashioned cabin trunk. Although it was

 halfcovered by undergrowth, the uppermost end - the one that was exposed

 - had a definite right-angled corner to it. She called Nicholas across

 to her.

 "Look at that." Royan patted it proudly. "What do you think of that?"

 He climbed down beside herand ran his hands over the exposed surface of

 the stab. "Possible," he repeated. "But to be certain we would have to

 find the chisel marks where the "old masons started the fracture. As you

 know, they chiselled a hole into the stone, and then wedged it open

 until it split."

 Both of them went over the exposed surface carefully, and although Royan

 found an indentation that she declared was a weathered chisel mark,

 Nicholas gave her only four out of ten on the scale of probability.

 "We are running out of time," he said, enticing her away from her find,

 'and we still have a lot of ground to cover."

 They searched the valley floor for half a kilometer further, and then

 Nicholas called it off. "Even in the heaviest flood it is unlikely that

 any blocks would have been carried down this far. Let's go back and -see

 if anything was washed over the falls into the mouth of the chasm."

 They returned to the bank of the Dandera and worked their way down as

 far as the falls. Nicholas peered over.

 "It's not as deep here as it is further down," he estimated. "I would

 guess that it is less than a hundred feet."

 "Do you think you could get down there?" she asked dubiously. Spray blew

 back out of the depths into their faces, and they had to shout at each

 other to make themselves heard over the thunder of the waters.

 "Not without a rope, and some muscle men to haul me back out of there."

 He perched himself on the brink and focused the binoculars down into the

 bowl. There was a jumble of loose rock down the - small, rounded

 boulders, and one or two very much larger. Some of them were angular,

 and some with a little imagination could be called rectangular. However,

 their surfaces had been smoothed by the rushing waters, and were

 gleaming wet. All of them seemed partially submerged or obscured by

 spray.

 "I don't think we can decide anything from up here, and to tell the

 truth I don't fancy going down there - not this evening anyway."

 Royan sat down beside him and hugged her knees to her chest. She was

 dispirited. "So there is nothing we can be certain about. Did Taita dam

 the river, or didn't he?" Quite naturally he placed his arm around her

 shoulders to console her, and after a moment she relaxed and leaned

 against him. They stared down into the chasm in silence.

 At last she drew back from him gently, and stood up.

 "I suppose we should start back to camp. How long will it take us?"

 "At least three hours." He stood up beside her. "You are right. It will

 be dark before we get back, and there is no moon tonight."

 "Funny how tired you feel after a disappointment," she said, and

 stretched. "I could lie down and sleep right here on one of Taita's

 stone blocks." She broke off and stared at him. "Nicky, where did he get

 them?"

 "Where did he get what?" He looked puzzled.

 "Don't you see! We are going at it from the wrong end.

 We have been trying to find out what happened to the blocks. This

 morning you mentioned the quarries at Aswan. Shouldn't we consider where

 Taita found the blocks for his dam, rather than what happened to them

 afterwards?"

 "The quarry!" Nicholas exclaimed. "My word, you are right. The

 beginning, not the end. We should be looking for the quarry, not the

 remnants of the dam wall."

 "Where do we start?"

 "I hoped you were going to tell me." He laughed out loud, and

 immediately Tamre bubbled with sympathetic laughter. They both looked at

 the boy.

 "I think we should start with Tamre, our faithful guide," she said, and

 took his hand. "Listen to me, Tamre. Listen very carefully!" Obediently

 he cocked his head and stared at her face, summoning all his errant

 concentration.

 "We are looking for a place where the square stones come from." He

 looked mystified, so she tried again. "Long ago there were men who cut

 the rock from the mountains.

 Somewhere near here, they left a big hole. Perhaps there are still

 square blocks of stone lying in the hole?"

 Suddenly the boy's face cleared and split into a beatific smile. "The

 Jesus stone!the cried happily.

 He sprang to his feet without relinquishing his grip on her hand. "I

 show you my Jesus stone." He dragged her after him as he bounded away

 down the valley.

 "Wait, Tamre! she pleaded. "Not so fast." But in vain.

 Tamre kept up the pace and burst into an Amharic hymn as he ran.

 Nicholas followed at a more sedate pace, and caught up with them a

 quarter of a mile down the valley.

 There he found Tamre on his knees, pressing his forehead against the

 rock wall of the valley, his eyes shut tightly as he prayed. He had

 dragged Royan down beside him.

 "What on earth are you doing?"Nicholas demanded, as he came up.

 "We are praying," she told him primly. "Tamre's instructions. We have to

 pray before we can go to the Jesus stone." She turned away from

 Nicholas, closed her eyes and clasped her hands in front of her eyes,

 then began to pray softly.

 Nicholas found a seat on a boulder a little way from them. "I don't

 suppose it can do any harm," he consoled himself, as he settled down to

 wait.

 Abruptly Tamre sprang to his feet and performed a giddy little dance,

 flapping his arms and whirling around until he raised the dust. Then he

 stopped and chanted. "It is done. We can go in to the Jesus stone."

 Once again he seized Royan's hand and led her to the rock wall. In front

 of Nicholas's eyes the two of them seemed to vanish, and he stood up in

 mild alarm.

 "Royan!" he called. "Where are you? What's going on?"

 "This way, Nicky. Come this way!'

 He went to the wall and exclaimed with astonishment, "My oath! We would

 never have found this in a year of searching."

 The cliff face was folded back upon itself, forming a concealed

 entrance. He walked through the opening, gazing up the vertical sides,

 and within thirty paces came out into an open amphitheatre that was at

 least a hundred yards across and open to the sky. The walls were of

 solid rock, and he could see at a glance that it was the same micaceous

 schist as the block which Royan had found lying on the floor of the

 valley.

 It was apparent that the bowl had been quarried out of the living rock,

 leaving tiers rising up to the top of the walls. The recesses from which

 the blocks had been hacked were still plain to see and had left deep

 steps with rightangled profiles. Some scrub and undergrowth had found a

 precarious foothold in the cracks, but the open quarry was not choked

 with this growth and Nicholas could see that a stockpile of finished

 granite blocks remained scattered about the bottom of the excavation. He

 was so awed by the discovery that he could find no words to express

 himself. He stood just inside the entrance, his head slowly turning from

 side to side as he tried to take it all in.

 Tamre had led Royan to the centre of the quarry where one large slab lay

 on its own. It was obvious that the ancients had been on the point -of

 removing it and transporting it up the valley, for it was finished and

 dressed into a perfect rectangle.

 "The Jesus stone!" Tamre chanted, kneeling before the slab and pulling

 Royan down beside him. "Jesus led me here. The first time I came here I

 saw him standing on the stone. He had a long white beard and eyes that

 were kind and sad." He crossed himself and began to recite one of the

 psalms, swaying and bobbing to the rhythm.

 As Nicholas moved up quietly behind them he saw the evidence that Tamre

 had visited this sacred place of his regularly. The Jesus stone was his

 own private altar, and his pathetic little offerings were lying where he

 had laid them. There were old tej flasks and baked clay pots, most of

 them cracked and broken. In them stood bunches of wild flowers that had

 long ago wilted and dried out. There were other treasures that he had

 gathered and placed upon his altar - tortoise shells and porcupine

 quills, a cross that had been hand-carved from wood and decorated with

 scraps of coloured cloth, necklaces of lucky beans, and models of

 animals and birds moulded from blue river clay.

 Nicholas stood and watched the two of them kneeling and praying together

 in front of the primitive altar. He felt deeply moved by this evidence

 of the boy's faith, and by his childlike trust in bringing them to this

 place.

 At last Royan stood up and came to join him. Together she and Nicholas

 began to make a slow circuit of the quarry floor. They spoke little, and

 then only in whispers as though they were in a cathedral or some holy

 place. She touched his arm and pointed. A number of the square blocks

 still lay in their original positions in the quarry walls. They had not

 been completely freed from the mother rock, like a foetus attached by an

 umbilical cord which had never been severed by the ancient masons.

 It was a perfect illustration of the quarrying methods used by the

 ancients. Work could be seen in progress in all the various stages, from

 the marking out of the blocks by the master craftsman, the drilling of

 the tap holes, the wedging of the cleavage lines, right up to the

 finished product lifted out of the wall and ready for transport to the

 dam site.

 The sun had set and it was almost dark by the time they came round to

 the entrance of the quarry again. They sat together on one of the

 finished blocks, with Tamre sitting at their feet like a puppy, looking

 up at Royan's face.

 "If he had a tail he would wag it,'Nicholas smiled.

 "We can never betray his trust, and desecrate this place in any way. He

 has made it his own temple. I don't think he has ever brought another

 living soul here. Will you promise me that we will always respect it, no

 matter what?"

 "That is the very least I can do," he agreed. Then, turning to Tamre, he

 said, "You have done a very good thing by bringing us here to your Jesus

 stone. I am very pleased with you. The lady is very pleased with you."

 "We should start back to camp now," Royan suggested, looking up at the

 patch of sky above them. Already it was purple and indigo, shot through

 with the last rays of the sunset.

 "I don't think that would be very wise," he disagreed.

 "Because it is a moonless night one of us could very easily break a leg

 in the dark. That is something not to be recommended out here. It might

 take a week to get back to any adequate medical attention."

 "You plan to sleep here?" she asked, with surprise.

 "Why not? I can whip up a fire in no time and I also have a pack of

 survival rations for dinner - I have done this kind of thing before, you

 know! And you have your chaperon with you, so your honour is safe. So

 why not?"

 "Why not, indeed?" she laughed. "We will be able to make a more detailed

 inspection of the quarry tomorrow early."

 He stood up to start gathering firewood, but then stopped and looked up

 at the sky. She heard it too, that now familiar fluttering whistle in

 the air.

 "The Pegasus helicopter once again," he said unnecessarily. "I wonder

 what the hell they are up to at this time of day?"

 They both stared up into the gathering darkness and watched the

 navigational lights of the aircraft pass a thousand feet overhead,

 flashing red and green and white as it headed southwards in the

 direction of the monastery.

 Nicholas built a small fire in the corner of the quarry nearest the

 entrance, and as they sat around it he divided the pack of dry survival

 rations into three parts. They nibbled them, and washed down the sweet

 and sticky concentrated tablets with water from his bottle.

 The fire threw ghostly reflections up the side of the ed the moving

 shadows. When a quarry wall, and enhanc.

 nightjar uttered it warbling cry from a niche high up the wall, it was

 so eerie and evocative that Royan shivered and moved a little closer to

 Nicholas.

 "I wonder if somewhere on the other side Taita is aware of our

 progress," she said. "I get the feeling that we have him a little

 worried by now. We have untangled the first part of the conundrum that

 he set for us, and I'll bet he never expected anybody to do that well."

 "The next step will be to get to the bottom of his pool.

 That will be really one up on the old devil. What do you hope we might

 find down there?"

 "I hesitate to put it into words," she replied. "I might talk it away,

 and put a jinx on us."

 "I am not superstitious. Well, not much anyway. Shall I say it for you?"

 he offered, and she laughed and nodded.

 He went on, "We hope to find the entrance to the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose.

 No more hints and riddles and red herrings. The veritable tomb."

 She crossed her fingers. "From your lips to God's ear!" Then she grew

 serious. "What do you think of our chances?

 I mean of finding the tomb intact?"

 He shrugged. "I will answer that once we get to the bottom of the pool."

 "How are we going to do that? You have ruled out the use of an

 aqualung."

 "I don't know," he confessed. "At this stage I just don't know. Perhaps

 we might be able to get in there with fullhelmeted diving suits."

 She was silent as she considered the seeming imposs' ability of the task

 ahead.

 "Cheer up!" He put his arm around her shoulders, and she made no move to

 pull away from him. "There is one consolation. If Taita has made it so

 tough for us, he has also made it tough for anyone else to have got in

 there ahead of us. I think that if the tomb is really down there, no

 other grave robbers have beaten us to it."

 "If the entrance to the tomb is at the bottom of the pool, then his

 descriptions in the scrolls are deliberately misleading. The information

 that has come down to us has been garbled by Taita, then by Duraid, and

 finally by Wilbur Smith. We are faced with the task of finding our way

 through this labyrinth of deliberate misinformation."

 They were silent again for a while and then Royan smiled in the

 firelight, her face lighting up with anticipation.

 "Oh, icky! It is such an exciting challenge." Then her voice descended

 an octave. "But is there a way? Is it possible to get in there?"

 "We will find out."

 "When?"

 "In due course. I haven't thought it out fully as yet. All I am certain

 of is that it is going to take a prodigious amount of planning and hard

 work."

 "You are still committed, then?" She wanted his assurance. She knew that

 she could never do it alone. "You aren't daunted by the project?"

 Nicholas chuckled. "I will admit that I never expected Taita to lead us

 on such a merry chase. I imagined simply breaking open a stone gateway

 and finding it all waiting for us there, like Howard Carter walking into

 the tomb of Tutankhamen. However, to answer your question, yes, I am

 daunted by what it's going to involve - but hell nothing could stop me

 now! I have the smell of glory in my nostrils and the gleam of gold in

 my eye."

 While they talked, Tamre curled up in the dust on the other side of the

 fire, and pulled his shaninut over his head. His rest must have been

 interrupted by dreams and fantasies, for he burbled and squeaked and

 giggled in his sleep.

 "I wonder what goes on in that poor demented head, and what visions he

 sees," Royan whispered. "He says he saw Jesus here in the quarry, and I

 am sure that he really believes that he did."

 Their voices became softer and drowsier as the fire burned down and

 Royan murmured, just before she fell asleep on Nicholas's shoulder, "If

 the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose is below the level of the river, then surely

 the contents will be water-damaged?"

 "I can't believe that Taita would have built his dam and spent fifteen

 years working on the tomb, as he says that he did in the scrolls, only

 to flood it deliberately and despoil the mummy of his king and ruin his

 treasure," Nicholas murmured, with her hair tickling his cheek. "No, t

 would have precluded Pharaoh's resu he that rrection in other world, and

 brought all his work to nothing. I think Taita has taken all that into

 his calculations."

 She snuggled closer, and sighed with satisfaction.

 A little while later he said softly, "Goodnight, Royan," but she did

 not' reply and her breathing was deep and even. He smiled to himself,

 and gently kissed the top of her head.

 Nicholas was not certain what had woken him.

 He took a few moments to place himself, and then he realized that he was

 still in the quarry. There was no moon but the stars hung down close to

 the earth, as big and fat as bunches of ripe grapes. By their light he

 saw that Royan had slipped down and was lying flat on the ground beside

 him.

 He stood up carefully, so as not to disturb her, and moved well away

 from the dead fire to empty his bladder.

 The night was deathly quiet. No night bird called, nor was there the

 sound of any of the other nocturnal creatures.

 The rocks around him still radiated the heat of the previous day's

 sunlight.

 Suddenly the sound that had woken him was repeated.

 It was a faint and distant susurration that echoed along the cliffs, so

 that he could form no judgement as to the direction from which it came.

 But he was in no doubt what the sound was. He had heard it so often

 before. It was the sound of faraway automatic gunfire, almost certainly

 an AK-47 assault rifle firing, not long ragged bursts, but short taps of

 three rounds, an art that took expertise and practice.

 He was sure that the person doing the shooting was a trained

 professional.

 He tilted his wrist so that the luminescent dial of his watch caught the

 starlight, and he saw that it was a few minutes after three 'clock in

 the morning.

 He stood listening for a long time, but the firing was not repeated. At

 last he returned to where Royan lay and settled down beside her again.

 However, he slept only shallowly and intermittently, and kept starting

 awake listening for more gunfire in the night.

 Royan began to stir at the first lemon and orange flush of dawn in the

 eastern sky, and while they ate the remains of the survival rations for

 their breakfast he told her about the noise that had woken him during

 the night.

 "Do you think it could have been Boris?" she asked.

 "He May have caught up with Mek and Tessay."

 "I doubt that very much. Boris has already been gone several days. He

 should be well out of earshot by now, even beyond the sound range of the

 heaviest weapons."

 "Who do you suppose it was, then?"

 "I have no idea. But I don't like it. We should start back to camp as

 soon as we have had another look around the quarry. After that there is

 nothing further that we can do at this stage. We should make tracks for

 home and mother."

 As soon as the light was strong enough, Nicholas shot a spool of film to

 make a record of the quarry. For ison of scale, Royan posed beside

 compar the wall in which the embryonic blocks still lay. As she warmed

 to her role as a model she started to clown for him. She climbed on to

 the biggest of the slabs and hammed it up for the camera, pouting with

 one hand behind her head in the style of Marilyn Monroe.

 When, finally, they went off down the valley towards the monastery they

 were both exultant and garrulous after their success. Their discussion

 was animated as they bounced ideas back and forth, and laid their plans

 for the further exploitation of these wonderful discoveries.

 By the time they reached the pink cliffs at the lower end of the chasm

 it was late morning. There they met a small party of monks from the

 monastery coming up the trail.

 Even from a distance it was obvious that something dreadful had happened

 during their absence: the sorrowful ululations of the monks sent chills

 down Royan's spine.

 It was the universal African sound of mourning, the harbinger of death

 and disaster. As they approached they saw that the monks were picking up

 handfuls of dust from the track and pouring it over their heads as they

 wailed and lamented.

 "What is it, Tamre?" Royan asked the boy. "Go and find out for usP Tamre

 ran ahead to meet his brother monks.

 They stopped in the middle of the path and fell into a high-pitched

 discussion, weeping and gesticulating. Then Tamre ran back to them.

 "Your people at the camp. Something terrible has happened. Bad men came

 in the might. Many of the servants are dead," he screamed.

 Nicholas grabbed Royan's hand. "Come on!" he snapped, "let's find out

 what is going on here."

 They ran the last mile to the camp, and arrived to find another circle

 of monks gathered around something in front of the kitchen hut.

 Nicholas pushed them aside and elbowed his way to the front. There he

 stopped and stared with a sinking feeling in his gut, and the sweat on

 his face turned cold with horror. Under a buzzing blue pall of flies lay

 the bloodsplattered corpse of the cook and three other camp servants.

 Their hands had been bound behind their backs, and then they had been

 forced to kneel before being shot in the back of the head at close

 range.

 "Don't lookV Nicholas warned Royan as she came up.

 "It's not very pretty."

 But she ignored his advice and came to stand beside him. "Oh, sweet

 heavens. They have been slaughtered like cattle in an abattoir," She

 gagged.

 "This explains the sound of gunfire that I heard last night," he

 answered grimly. He went forward to identify the dead men. "Aly and Kif

 are not here. Where are they?" He raised his voice and called in Arabic,

 turning to face the crowd. "Aly, where are you?"

 The tracker pushed his way forward. "I am here, effendi." His voice was

 shaky and his face was haggard. "Mere was blood on the front of his

 shirt.

 "How did this happen?" Nicholas seized his arm and steadied him.

 "Men came in the night with the guns. Shufta. They shot into the huts

 where we were sleeping. They gave us no warning. They just started

 shooting.

 "How many of them? Who were they?" Nicholas demanded.

 "I do not know how many of them there were. It was dark. I was asleep. I

 ran away when the shooting began.

 They were shufta, bandits, killers. They were hyenas and jackals - there

 was no reason for what they have done.

 These men were my brothers, my friends." He began to sob, and the tears

 streamed down his face.

 Royan turned away, sickened and horrified. She went to her hut and

 stopped in the doorway. It had been ransacked. Her bags had been turned

 out on to the floor.

 Her bedding had been stripped, and the mattress thrown into the corner.

 As though she were a sleepwalker in a nightmare, she crossed the floor

 and picked up the canvas folder in which she kept her papers. She turned

 it upside down and shook it. It was empty. The satellite photo graphs

 and the maps, all her rubbings of the stele, the Polaroids that Nicholas

 had taken in Tanus's tomb - everything was gone.

 Royan picked up the bed and set it the right way up.

 She sat down on it, and tried to gather her thoughts. She felt confused

 and shaken. The image of those bloody, bullet-ripped corpses laid out in

 front of the kitchen haunted her, and she found it difficult to

 concentrate and to think clearly.

 Nicholas burst into her hut and looked around quickly.

 "They did the same thing to me. Ransacked the place. My rifle has gone,

 and all my papers. But at least I had the passports and travellers'

 cheques in my day-pack-' He broke off as he saw the empty canvas folder

 lying at her feet. "Have they taken the-'

 "Yes!" she forestalled his question. "They have cleaned out all our

 research material, even the Polaroids. Thank God you had the undeveloped

 rolls of film with you. It's the same as happened to Duraid and me all

 over again. We aren't safe from them, even here,'even out in the

 remotest part of the bush." There was the edge of hysteria in her voice.

 She jumped up from the bed and ran to him.

 "Oh, Nicky, what would have happened if we had been in camp last night?"

 She threw her arms around him, and clung to him. "We would be lying out

 there in the sun now, all bloody and covered with flies."

 "Steady on, my dear. Let's not jump to any conclusions.

 This could just be a chance raid by bandits."

 "Then why did they steal our papers? What value would ordinary shtifta

 place on rubbings and Polaroids?

 Where was the Pegasus helicopter heading just before the raid? They were

 after us, Nicky. I feel it so strongly. They wanted to kill us just as

 they did Duraid. They could return at any time, and now we are unarmed

 and helpless."

 "All right, I agree with you that we are pretty vulnerable here. It

 would be wise to get out as soon as possible.

 There isn't any point in staying on here anyway. There's nothing more we

 can do at this stage." He hugged her and shook her gently. "Brace up! We

 will salvage what we can from this mess, and then get moving back to the

 vehicles right away."

 "What about the dead men?" She stood back, and with an effort forced

 back her, tears and brought herself under control. "How many of our

 people survived?"

 "Aly, Salin and Kif escaped. They dived out of their huts and ran off

 into the darkness as soon as the shooting started. I have told them to

 get ready to leave right away. I have spoken to one of the senior

 priests. They will take care of the burial of the dead, and will report

 to the authorities as soon as they are able. But they agree that the

 attack was aimed at us, and that we are still in danger, and that we

 should get away as soon as possible."

 Within the hour they were ready to start. Nicholas had decided to leave

 all the camping equipment and Boris's personal gear in the charge of

 Jali Hora. The mules were lightly loaded, and he planned to make a

 forced march out of the gorge.

 The abbot had given them an escort of monks to accompany them to the top

 of the escarpment. "Only a truly Godless man would attack you while you

 are under the protection of the crosss' he explained.

 Nicholas found the dried hide and head of the striped dik-dik still in

 the skinning shed. He rolled it into a bundle and strapped it on to the

 load atop one of the mules, and then gave the order for the attenuated

 caravan to move out.

 Tamre had insinuated himself into the group of monks who were escorting

 the party. He kept close behind Royan as they set off up the trail, with

 the lamentations and farewells of the monastic community following them

 for the first mile.

 It was hot in this brutal midday. There was no movement of air to bring

 relief, and the stone walls of the valley sucked up the heat of that

 awful sun and spewed it back over them as they toiled up the steep

 gradients. It dried their sweat even as it oozed through their pores,

 leaving patterns of white salt crystals on their skins and clothing. The

 muleteers, spurred on by fear, set a killing pace, trotting behind their

 beasts and prodding their testicles with a sharpened stick to keep them

 moving at their best pace.

 By midafternoon they had retraced the morning's travel and once more

 reached the putative site of Taita's dam wall. Nicholas and Royan took a

 few.minutes'breather to dip their heads in the river and sluice the salt

 and sweat from their faces and necks. Then they stood together above the

 falls and took a brief farewell of the chasm in which lay all their

 hopes and dreams.

 "How long until we return?"she asked.

 "We cannot afford to leave it too long," he told her.

 "Big rains are due soon, and the hyenas have got the scent and are

 crowding in. From now on every day will be precious, and every hour we

 lose may be crucial."

 She stared down into the chasm and said softly, "You haven't won yet,

 Taita. The game is still afoot."

 They turned away together and followed the mules up the trail towards

 the escarpment wall. That evening they did not stop at the traditional

 campsite beside the river, but pressed on several miles further until

 darkness forced a halt. There was no attempt to build a comfortable

 camp.

 They dined on cakes of injera bread dipped in the wat pot that the monks

 had carried with them. Then Nicholas and Royan spread their bedrolls

 side by side on the stony earth and, using the mule packs as pillows,

 fell into exhausted, dreamless sleep.

 The next morning, while the mules were being loaded in the pre-dawn

 darkness, they drank a bowl of strong bitter black Ethiopian coffee.

 Then they started out along the trail again.

 As the rising sun lit the sheer walls of the escarpment ahead of them

 they seemed close enough to touch, and Nicholas remarked to Royan, as

 she swung along longlegged beside him, "At this pace we should reach the

 foot of the escarpment this afternoon, and there is a good chance that

 we might sleep tonight in the cavern behind the waterfall."

 "That means we could cut a couple of days off the journey and reach the

 trucks some time tomorrow."

 "Possibly," he said. "I'll be glad to get out of here."

 "It feels like a trap," Royan agreed, looking at the rocky, broken

 ground that rose on either hand, hemming them into the narrow bottom of

 the Dandera river. "I have been doing a bit of thinking, Nicky."

 "Let's hear your conclusions."

 "No conclusions, only some disturbing thoughts. Suppose somebody at

 Pegasus who can understand them is now in possession of our rubbings and

 Polaroids. What will their reaction be if they know how much progress we

 have made in the search?"

 "Not -very happy thoughts," he agreed. "But on the other hand there is

 not much we can do about any of that until we get back to civilization,

 except keep our eyes wide.

 open and our wits about us. Hell, I haven't even got the little Rigby

 rifle. We are a flock of sitting ducks."

 Aly, the muleteers and the monks seemed to be of the same opinion, for

 they never slackened the pace. It was midday before they called the

 first brief halt to brew coffee and to water the mules. While the men

 lit fires, Nicholas took his binoculars from the mule pack and began to

 climb the rock slope. He had not covered much ground before he glanced

 back and saw Royan climbing after him. He waited for her to catch up.

 "You should have taken the chance to rest," he told her severely. "Heat

 exhaustion is a real danger."

 I don't trust you going off on your own. I want to know what you are up

 to."

 "Just a little recce. We should have scouts out ahead, not just go

 charging blindly along the trail like this. If I remember correctly from

 the inward march, some of the ound lies just ahead of us. Lord knows

 what we worst gr may run into."

 They went on upwards, but it was not possible to reach the crest for a

 sheet of unscalable vertical cliff barred their way. Nicholas chose the

 best vantage point below this barrier, and glassed both slopes of the

 valley ahead of them.

 The terrain was as he had remembered it. They were approaching the foot

 of the escarpment wall and the ground was becoming more rugged and

 severe, like the swell of the open ocean sensing the land and rising up

 in alarm before breaking in confusion upon the shore. The trail followed

 the river closely. The cliffs hung over the narrow aisle of ound that

 made up the bank, sculpted by wind and gr weather into strange, menacing

 shapes, like the battlements of a wicked witch's castle in an old Disney

 cartoon.

 At one point a buttress of red sandstone overhung the trail, forcing the

 river to detour around it, and the trail was reduced so much that it

 would be difficult for a laden mule to negotiate without being pushed

 off the bank into the river.

 Nicholas studied the bottom of the valley carefully through the lens. He

 could pick out nothing that seemed suspicious or untoward, so he raised

 his head and swept the Cliffs and their tops.

 At that moment Aly's voice came up from the valley below, echoing along

 the slope as he shouted, "Hurry, effendi! The mules are ready to go on!'

 Nicholas waved down to him, but then lifted the binoculars for one more

 sweep of the ground ahead. A wink of bright light caught his eye - a

 brief ephemeral stab of brilliance like the signal of a heliograph. He

 switched his whole attention to the spot on the cliff from which it had

 emanated.

 "What is it? What have you seen?" Royan demanded.

 am not sure. Probably nothing," he replied, without lowering the

 binoculars. It may have been a reflection from a polished metal surface,

 or from the lens of another pair of binoculars, or from the barrel of a

 sniper's rifle, he thought. On the other hand, a chip of mica or a

 pebble of rock crystal could reflect sunlight the same way, and even

 some of the aloes and other succulent plants have shiny leaves. He

 watched the spot carefully for a few more minutes, and then Aly's voice

 floated up to them again.

 "Hurry, effendi. The mule-drivers will not wait!

 He stood up. "All right. Nothing. Let's go." He took Royan's arm to help

 her over the rough footing, and they started down. At that moment he

 heard the rattle of stones from further up the slope, and he stopped her

 and held her arm to keep her quiet. They waited, watching the skyline.

 Abruptly a pair of long curling horns appeared over the crest, and under

 them the head of an old kudu bull, his trumpet-shaped ears pricked

 forward and the fringe of his dewlap blowing in the hot, light breeze.

 He stopped on the edge of the cliff just above where they crouched, but

 he had not seen them. The kudu turned his head and stared back in the

 direction from which he had come. The sunlight glinted in his nearest

 eye, and the set of his head and the alert, tense stance made it clear

 that something had disturbed him.

 For a long moment he stood poised like that, and then, still without

 being aware of the presence of Nicholas and Royan, he snorted and

 abruptly leaped away in full flight.

 He vanished from their sight behind the ridge and the sound of his run

 dwindled into silence.

 "Something scared the living daylights out of him."

 "What?" enquired Royan.

 "Could have been anything - a leopard, perhaps," he replied, and he

 hesitated as he looked down the slope. The caravan of mules and monks

 had set off already and was following the trail Up along the river bank.

 "What should we do?" Royan asked.

 "We should reconnoitre the ground ahead - that is if we had the time,

 which we haven't." The caravan was pulling away swiftly. Unless they

 went down immediately they would be left behind alone, unarmed. He had

 nothing concrete to act upon, and yet he had to make an immediate

 decision.

 "Come on!" He took her hand again, and they slid and scrambled down the

 slope. Once they reached the trail they had to break into a run to catch

 up with the tail of the caravan.

 Now that they were again part of the column, Nicholas could turn his

 attention to searching the skyline above them more thoroughly. The

 cliffs loomed over them, blocking out half the sky. The river on their

 left hand washed out any other sounds with its noisy, burbling current.

 Nicholas was not really alarmed. He prided himself on being able to

 sense trouble in advance, a sixth sense that had saved his life more

 than once before. He thought of it as his early-warning system, but now

 it was sending no messages. There were any number of possible

 explanations for the reflection he had picked up from the crest of the

 cliff, and for the behaviour of the bull kudu.

 However, he was still a little on edge, and he was giving the high

 ground above them all his attention. He saw a speck flick over the top

 of the cliff, twisting and falling - a dead leaf -on the warm, wayward

 breeze. It was too small and insignificant to be of any danger, but

 nevertheless he followed the movement with his eye, his interest idle.

 The brown leaf spiralled and looped, and finally touched lightly against

 his cheek. He lifted his hand as a reflex, and caught it. He rubbed the

 brown scrap between his fingers, expecting it to crackle and crumble.

 Instead it was soft and supple, with a fine, almost greasy texture.

 He opened his hand and studied it more closely. It was no leaf, he saw

 at once, but a torn scrap of greased paper, brown and translucent,

 Suddenly all his early'warning bells jangled. It was not just the

 incongruity of manufactured paper suddenly materializing in this remote

 setting. He recognized the quality and texture of that particular type

 of paper. He lifted it to his nose and sniffed it. The sharp, nitrous

 odour prickled the back of his throat.

 "Gelly!" he exclaimed aloud. He knew the smell instantly.

 Blasting gelignite was seldom employed for military purposes in this age

 of Semtex and plastic explosives, bu was still widely used in the mining

 industry and in mineral exploration. Usually the sticks of nitrogelatine

 in a wood Pulp and sodium nitrate base was wrapped in that distinct tive

 brown greased paper. Before the detonator was placed in the head of the

 stick, it was common practice to tear off the corner of the paper

 wrapper to expose the treacle brown explosive beneath. He had used it

 often enough in the old days never to forget the odour of it.

 His mind was racing now. If somebody was expecting them and had mined

 the cliff with gelignite, then the reflection he had picked up could

 have been from the coils of copper wiring strung between the explosive

 in the rock, or it could have been from some other item of equipment.

 If that was so, then the operator might even at this moment be lying

 concealed up there, ready to press the plunger on the circuit box. The

 kudu bull might have been fleeing from the concealed human presence.

 "Aly!" he bellowed down to the head of the caravan, "Stop them! Turn

 them back!'

 He started to run forward towards the head of the caravan, but in his

 heart he knew it was already too late. If there was somebody up there on

 the cliff, he was watching every move that Nicholas made. Nicholas could

 never hope to reach the head of the column and turn the mules around on

 the narrow trail, and get them back to safety before ... He came up

 short and looked back at Royan.

 Her safety was his main concern. He turned and ran back to grab her arm.

 "Come on! We have to get off the track."

 "What is it, Nicky? What are you doing?" She was resisting him, pulling

 back against his grip on her arm.

 "I'll explain later," he snapped at her brusquely. "Just trust me now."

 He dragged her a couple of paces before she gave in and began to run

 with him, back in the direction from which they had come.

 They had notcovered fifty yards before the cliff face blew. A vast

 disruption of air swept over them with a force that made them stagger.

 It clapped painfully in their skulls and threatened to implode the

 delicate membranes of their eardrums. Then the main force of the blast

 swept over them, not a single blast but a long, rolling detonation like

 thunder breaking directly overhead. It stunned and battered them so that

 they reeled into each other and lost the direction of their flight.

 Nicholas seized her in a steadying embrace, and looked back. He saw a

 series of explosions leap from the crest of the cliff. Tall, dancing

 fountains of dirt and dust and rubble, pirouetting one after the other

 in strict choreography, like a chorus-line of hellish ballerinas.

 Even in the terror of the moment he could appreciate the expertise with

 which the gelignite had been laid. This was a master bomber at work. The

 leaping columns of rubble subsided upon themselves, leaving the fine,

 tawny mist of dust drifting and spiralling against the clear blue of the

 sky, and for a moment longer it seemed that the destruction was

 complete. Then the silhouette of the cliff began to alter.

 Slowly at first the wall of rock started to lean outwards.

 He saw great cracks appear in the face, opening like leering mouths.

 Sheets of rock collapsed and in slow motion slithered down upon

 themselves like the silken skirts of a curtseying giantess. The rock

 groaned and crackled and rumbled as the entire cliff began to fall into

 the river far below.

 Nicholas was mesmerized by the awful sight, and his brain seemed to have

 been numbed by the explosion. It took a huge effort to force himself to

 think and to act. He saw that the centre of the explosion had occurred

 further down the trail, near the head of the mule caravan. Tamre was up

 there, beside Aly. He and Royan were at the tail of the caravan. The

 bomber up on the cliff had obviously been waiting for them to come

 directly into the epicentre of his explosive trap, but had been forced

 to trigger it when he saw them running back down the trail and realized

 that they had been alerted and were about to escape.

 Yet they were not clear - they were about to catch the peripheral force

 of the landslide that was developing above them. Still holding Royan,

 Nicholas stared up the falling cliff face and made a desperate

 calculation.

 He watched in petrified fascination as the vast tide of falling rock

 swept over the trail ahead of him, picking up men and mules and carrying

 them with it over the edge and down into the river bed. It swallowed

 them, lapping them up like the tongue of some fearsome monster and

 chewing them to pulp with razor fangs of red rock. Even above the

 rumbling roar of the rock tide he heard the terrified screams of men and

 animals as they were ploughed under.

 The wave of destruction spread towards where he and Royan stood upon the

 trail. If they had been directly under the explosion they would have

 stood as little chance as those others, but as it ran down the cliff its

 destructive momentum was dissipating. On the other hand, Nicholas

 realized that there was no hope that they would be able to outrun it,

 and what was about to fall upon them would still be devastating.

 There was no time to explain to Royan what they had to do - he had only

 seconds left in which to act. Sweeping her up in his arms, he leaped

 over the bank towards the river. He lost his footing almost immediately

 and they went down together, rolling end over end, but thirty feet down

 there was a spur of rock the size of a house. As they came up against

 the upper side of it, it broke their fall.

 They were half-sturined, but Nicholas dragged Royan to her feet and

 guided her into the lee of the rock wall.

 "Mere was a cut-back here, and they crept into it and crouched flat.

 Pressing themselves hard against the wall, they both held their breath

 as the first chunk of cliff came bounding and bouncing down towards them

 like a gigantic rubber ball, picking up speed with gravity, until it

 smashed in to their shelter with a force that made the solid rock

 against which they were cringing vibrate and resound like a cathedral

 bell, and the hurtling missile leaped high over their heads, spinning

 massively in flight before it dropped into the river. It raised a tidal

 wave from the surface that broke like storm surf on both banks.

 This was merely the forerunner of the maelstrom that now poured over

 them. It seemed that half the mountain was falling upon them. As each

 slab crashed into their shelter daggers and splinters burst from its

 leading edges, filling the air they breathed with fine white dust and

 the sulphurous stink of sparking flint. This immense cascade flew over

 their heads or piled up in front of their shelter, and loose chips and

 pebbles rained down upon them.

 Nicholas crawled over the top of Royan, and covered her with his body. A

 stone struck the side of his head a lancing blow that made his ears

 ring, but he gritted his teeth and fought the impulse to lift his head

 and look up.

 He felt something warm and ticklish snaking through the short hairs

 behind his right ear. It crept down his cheek like a living thing, and

 it was only when it reached the corner of his mouth and he tasted the

 metallic salt that he realized it was a trickle of blood.

 The fine talcum dust powdered them and irritated their throats, so that

 they coughed and choked in the uproar.

 The dust seeped into their eyes, and they were forced to clench their

 lids and keep them tightly shut.

 One mass of rock the size of a wagon sprang high in the air and then

 fell back close beside where they lay. The impact made the earth jump so

 violently that Royan, with Nicholas's weight on top of her, was struck

 in the belly and diaphragm with a force that drove the wind from her

 lungs, and she thought that her ribs had been crushed.

 Then gradually the downpouring of earth and rock began to subside. The

 breath-stopping impact of great boulders into their shelter became less

 frequent: The fine dust they were breathing began to settle. The

 rumbling and roaring let up gradually, until the only sound was the slip

 and slide of settling earth and rock and the burble of the river below

 them.

 Warily, Nicholas at last lifted his head and tried to blink the dust off

 his eyelashes. Royan stiffed under him, and he crawled back to let her

 sit up. They stared at each other. Their faces were caked into kabuki

 masks with the antimony-white dust, and their hair was powdered like the

 wigs of eighteenth-century French aristocrats.

 "You are bleeding," Royan whispered, her voice husky with dust and

 terror.

 Nicholas lifted his hand to his face and it came away covered with a

 paste of dust and blood. "It's just a nick," he said. "How are you!'

 "I think I may have twisted my knee. I felt something give when we fell.

 I don't think it's serious. There is very little pain."

 "Men we have both been ridiculously lucky," he told her. "Nobody

 deserved to survive that."

 She made an effort to stand, but he restrained her with a hand on her

 shoulder. "Wait! The entire slope above us is broken and unstable. Give

 it time. There will be loose rocks coming down for a while yet." He

 untied the Paisley bandana from around his throat and handed it to her.

 "Besides which, we don't want-' But he changed his mind and did not

 finish his sentence, While she wiped her face she asked shakily, "You

 were going to say, besides which-?"

 don't want to give those bastards

 "Besides which, we up there any idea that we have survived their little

 party.

 Otherwise we will have them down here finishing the job, cutting

 throats. Much better they believe that we snuffed it, as intended."

 "Do you think- they are still up She stared at him.

 there, watching us?"

 "Count on it," he answered grimly. "They must be pretty chuffed with the

 fact that they have at last succeeded in getting rid of you. We don't

 want to pop our heads up right now and spoil it for them."

 "How did you know what was going to happen?" she asked. "If you hadn't

 grabbed me-' Her voice petered out.

 In a few words he explained about the scrap of gelignite wrapping.

 "Simplest thing in the world to pick one of the narrowest sections of

 the trail and mine the cliff-' He broke Off as, faintly but

 unmistakably, there came the sound of an aircraft engine and the flutter

 of rotors in fully fine pitch for takeoffs

 "Quickly," he snapped at her. "Get in as close as you can to the

 overhang." He pushed her back against the sheltering boulder. "Lie flad'

 When she obeyed without question, he lay beside her and piled loose

 rubble over them both.

 "Lie still. Don't move, whatever you do."

 They lay and listened to the sound of the helicopter approaching, and

 circling overhead. It moved up and down the valley, flying a few feet

 above the surface of the river.

 At one point it was directly above the ledge on which they lay, and they

 were buffeted by the down-draught of the rotors.

 "Looking for survivors," said Nicholas grimly. "Don't move. They haven't

 spotted us yet."

 "If they were watching us before the blast, they should have been able

 to come directly to where we are," she whispered. They seem confused."

 "They must have lost us in the dust of the avalanche and the break-up of

 the cliff face. They aren't sure where we are lying." The sound of the

 helicopter moved off slowly along the river, and Nicholas told her, "I

 am going to risk a peep, to make sure it's the Pegasus job - not that

 there can be many other choppers in this area. Keep your head down!'

 He lifted his head slowly and cautiously, and one glance was sufficient

 to confirm all his speculations. Half a mile upstream, the Pegasus jet

 Ranger hovered over the river. It was moving slowly away from him, so

 that from this angle Nicholas was unable to see through the windscreen

 into the cockpit. But at that moment the engine beat changed as the

 pilot changed pitch and pulled on the collective.

 As the aircraft rose vertically and turned northwards, Nicholas caught a

 glimpse of the passengers. Jake Helm sat in the front seat beside the

 pilot, and Colonel Nogo was in the seat behind him. They were both

 staring down into the river valley, but in seconds the helicopter lifted

 them away and the machine disappeared beyond the ridge, flying in the

 direction of the escarpment, and the sound of its engines dwindled into

 silence. Nicholas crawled out from beneath the boulder and pulled Royan

 to her feet.

 "No more doubts. We know who we are dealing with now. That was Helm and

 No in the chopper. Helm 9 almost certainly laid the gelly, and Nogo

 probably led the men who hit our camp last night. Each of them doing the

 job he does best," Nicholas told her. "So that confirms it.

 Whoever owns Pegasus is the ugly behind all this. Helm and Nogo are

 merely the stooges."

 "But Nogo is an officer in the Ethiopian army," she protested.

 "Welcome to Africa." He did not smile as he said it.

 "Here everything is for sale at a price, including government officials

 and army officers." Now he scowled so that the caked dust on his face

 was dislodged and filtered down in a fine powdering. "Now, however, our

 main concern is to get out of the gorge and back to civilization."

 He looked up the slope. The trail above them had been obliterated

 beneath the rock fall. "We can't get back that way," he told her, and

 took her hand. But when he lifted her to her feet she gasped and quickly

 shifted her weight to her right leg.

 My knee!" Then she smiled bravely. "It will be all right.)

 However, she was limping heavily as they scrambled down to the rivet,

 terrified that their movements would set off another rock slide. They

 ended up waist'deep in the water under the bank.

 Royan stood behind Nicholas and washed the blood and dust from the wound

 in his scalp. "Not too bad," she told him. "Doesn't need a stitch."

 "I have a tube of Betadyne in my pack," he said. He fished it out, and

 she smeared the wound with the yellow brown ointment before binding it

 up with the Paisley bandana.

 "That will do." She patted his shoulder.

 "Thank the Lord for my burn-bag,'Nicholas remarked as he zipped it

 closed. "At least we have a few essentials with us. Now our next job is

 to look for any other survivors."

 "Tamte!'she exclaimed.

 They floundered along the bank. The river was clogged with loose rock

 and earth that had fallen from the cliff. In the deeper places they were

 forced in up to their armpits, and Nicholas carried his pack at arm's

 length above his head. The loose rock was treacherous, and gave way

 under them when they tried to scramble out of the water to search for

 the other members of the caravan.

 They found the bodies of two of the monks, both of them crushed and

 half-buried. They did not even attempt to dig them free. One of the

 mules lay with one leg in the air and the rest of its body completely

 covered with broken rock. The pack that it had carried had burst open

 and the contents were scattered about. The rolled skin and trophies of

 the dik-dik had been churned into the muck. Nicholas rescued them and

 strapped them on to his burn-bag.

 "More to carry,'Royan warned him.

 "Only a pound or two, but worth it," he replied.

 They made their way towards the point below the itail where they had

 last seen Tamre and Aly. But though they searched for almost an hour

 they found no sign of either of them. The slope above them was

 devastated: raw ravaged earth, great rocks shattered, bushes and trees

 uprooted and smashed to kindling.

 Royan climbed as high as her injured leg enabled her, then cupped her

 hands around her mbuth and shouted, "Tamre I Tamre! Tamre!" The echoes

 took her cry and flung it from' all to valley wall.

 "I think he is done for. The poor little devil has been buried,'

 Nicholas called up to her. "We have been at it an hour now. We cannot

 afford more time, if we are to get out ourselves. We will have to leave

 him."

 She ignored him and worked her way along the rockslide, loose scree

 rolling under her feet, and he could see that the knee was giving her

 pain.

 "Tamre! Answer me," she called in Arabic. "Tamre!

 Where are you?"

 "Royan! That's enough. You are going to damage that knee even more. You

 are putting both of us at risk now.

 Give it up!'

 At that moment they both heard a soft groan from higher up the slope.

 Royan scrambled up towards the sound, slipping and sliding back almost

 as far as she climbed, but at last she gave a cry of horror. Nicholas

 dumped his pack and went up after her. When he reached her side, he too

 dropped to his knees.

 Tam-re was pinned down in the rubble. His face was barely recognizable.

 It was torn and lacerated, with half the skin ripped off. Royan had

 lifted his head into her lap, and was using her sleeve to wipe the filth

 out of his nostrils to allow him to breathe more freely. Blood was

 oozing from the corner of his mouth, and when he groaned again it welled

 up in a fresh flood. Royan dabbed at it, smearing it across his chin.

 His lower body was buried, and Nicholas tried to clear the broken rock;

 but almost immediately he realized the futility of it. A lump of raw

 rock the size of a billiard table lay across him. It weighed many tons,

 and must certainly have crushed his spine and pelvis. No single man

 would be able to move that massive weight unaided. Even if it were

 ossible, the grinding action of any movement would inevitably aggravate

 the terrible injuries that Tamre had already sustained.

 "Do something, icky," Royan whispered. "We have to do something for

 him."

 Nicholas looked at her and shook his head. Royan's eyes flooded with

 tears, and they broke over her lower lids and scattered like raindrops

 into Tamre's upturned face, diluting the blood to the pink of ros6 wine.

 "We can't just sit here and let him die," she Protested, and at the

 sound of her voice Tamre opened his eyes and looked into her face.

 He smiled through the blood, and that smile lit his dusty, broken face.

 "Ummee!" he whispered. "You are my mother. You are so kind. I love you,

 my mother."

 The words were bitten off and a spasm stiffened his body. His face

 contorted with agony and he gave a soft, strangled cry, and then

 slumped. The rigidity went out of his shoulders and his head rolled to

 one side.

 Royan sat for long time holding his head and weeping softly, but

 bitterly, until Nicholas touched her hand and said EentIv. "He is dead,

 Royan."

 She nodded. "I know. He held on just long enough to say goodbye to me."

 He let her mourn a little longer, and then he told her softly, "We must

 go, my dear."

 "You are right. But it is so hard to leave him here. He never had

 anybody. He was so alone. He called me mother.

 I think he truly loved me."

 "I know he did," Nicholas assured her, lifting the boy's dead head from

 her lap and helping her to her feet. "Go wait for me. I will cover him

 the best I can." down an Nicholas crossed Tamre's hands upon his chest,

 and folded his fingers around the silver crucifix that hung around his

 neck. Then he piled loose rock carefully over him, covering his head so

 that the crows and vultures could not reach him.

 He slid down to where she waited in the water, and slung his pack over

 one shoulder.

 "We must go on," he told Royan.

 She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand and nodded. "I am

 ready now."

 They waded upstream, pushing hard against the current. The rock-slide

 had blocked half the river bed and the waters squeezed through the gap

 that was left. When at last they reached the point on the bank above the

 avalanche, they climbed out of the river and picked their way up the

 steep bank until at last they could crawl out on to the intact section

 of the pathway.

 They took a moment to recover and looked back. The river below the

 rock-slide was running red-brown with mud. Even if the monks at the

 monastery downstream had not heard the explosions, they would be alarmed

 by that flood of discoloured water and would come to investigate.

 They would find the bodies and take them down for decent burial. That

 thought comforted Royan a little as they struck out along the trail,

 with two days' hard travel still ahead of them.

 Royan was limping heavily now, but each time Nichoto help her she

 brushed his hand away. "I am all right. It's just a bit stiff." She

 would not allow him to inspect the knee, but kept on stubbornly along

 the trail ahead of him.

 They marched mostly in silence for the rest of that day. Nicholas

 respected her grief and was grateful for her reticence. This ability to

 be quiet and yet not give out a sense of alienation and withdrawal to

 those around her was one of the qualities he admired in her. They spoke

 briefly late that afternoon while they paused to rest beside the path.

 "The only consolation is that now Pegasus will believe that we are

 safely buried under the rock-slide and they won't bother to come looking

 for us again. We can push on without wasting time scouting the trail

 ahead," Nicholas told her.

 They camped that night below the escarpment, just before the path began

 the climb up the vertical wall.

 Nicholas led her well off the path, into a heavily wooded gully, and

 built a small screened fire that could not be seen from the trail.

 Here at last she relented and allowed him to examine her knee. It was

 bruised and swollen, and hot to the touch.

 "You shouldn't be walking on this," he told her.

 "Do I have any option?" she asked, and he had no reply. He wetted his

 bandana from the water bottle and bound up her leg As tightly as he

 dared without cutting Off the circulation. Then he found a phial of

 Brufen in his burn-bag and made her take two of these anti,

 inflaminatories.

 "It feels better already," she told him.

 They shared the last bar of survival -rations from his pack, sitting

 hunched up over the fire and talking quietly, still subdued and shaken

 by their experiences.

 "What will happen when we reach the top?" Royan asked. "Will the trucks

 still be parked where we left them?

 Will the men that Boris left to guard them still be there?

 What will happen if we run into the men from Pegasus again?"

 "I can't give you any answers. We will just have to face each problem as

 it comes up."

 "One thing I am looking forward to when we reach Addis Ababa - reporting

 the massacre of Tamre and the others to the Ethiopian police. I want

 Helm and his gang to pay for what they have done."

 He was quiet for a while before he replied. "I don't know if that is the

 wisest thing to do," he ventured at last.

 "What do you mean? We. were witnesses to murder.

 We cannot let them get away with it."

 "Just remember that we want to return to Ethiopia. If we make a huge

 fuss now, we will have the entire valley swarming with troops and

 police. It may put an end to our further attempts to solve Taita's

 riddle, and to trace the tomb of Marnose."

 "I hadn't thought of that," she said thoughtfully. "But still, it was

 murder, and Tamre-'

 "I know, I know," he soothed her. "But there are more certain ways of

 wreaking vengeance on Pegasus than trying to turn them over to Ethiopian

 justice. Consider for the moment the fact that Nogo is working with

 Helm. We saw him in the helicopter. If Pegasus have an army colonel in

 their pay, who else is working for them? The police? The head of the

 army? Members of the cabinet? We just don't know at this stage."

 "I hadn't thought about that either," she admitted.

 "Let's begin to think African from here on, and take a leaf out of

 Taita's scrolls. Like him we must be devious and cunning. We don't go

 rushing in shouting accusations. If we could just sneak out of the

 country, leaving everybody to believe that we are buried under the

 avalanche, that might be ideal. It would make our return to the gorge

 that much easier. Unfortunately I don't think we will be able to get

 away with that. But from now on, we should be as cagey and careful as

 circumstances permit."

 She stared into the dancing flames for a long while, then sighed and

 asked, "You said there is a better vengeance to he had on Pegasus. What

 did you have in mind?"

 "Why, simply whisking Marnose's treasure out from under their noses."

 She laughed for the first time that long cruel day. "You are right, of

 course. Whoever owns Pegasus wants it desperately enough to kill for it.

 We must hope that depriving him of it will hurt him almost as badly as

 he has hurt us."

 Both of them were so tired that it was already half-light'when they woke

 the next morning.

 As soon as Royan tried to stand she groaned and sank back. He went to

 her immediately, and she made no protest when he placed her bare leg

 across his lap.

 He unwrapped the bandana, and frowned as he saw the knee. It was nearly

 twice its normal girth, and the bruising was plum and ripe grape. He wet

 the bandana again, and rewrapped the knee. He made her take the last two

 Brufen from the phial, and then helped her to her feet.

 "How does it feel?" he asked anxiously, and she hobbled a few paces and

 smiled at him bravely.

 "It will be all right as soon as I walk the stiffness out of it, I'

 sure."

 He looked up the escarpment. So close in under the wall, the height was

 foreshortened, but he recalled every tortuous step of the way. It had

 taken them a full day to come down.

 "Of course it will." He smiled encouragement at her, and took her arm.

 "Lean on me. It'll be a stroll in the park.

 They toiled upwards all that morning. The trail seemed to rise more

 steeply with every pace they took. She never complained, but she was

 ashen pate and sweating with the pain. By midday they had not yet

 reached the waterfall, and Nicholas made her stop to rest. They had

 nothing to eat, but she drank thirstily from the water bottle. He did

 not try to ration her, but limited himself to a single mouthful.

 When she tried to rise, and go on, she gasped and staggered so violently

 that she might have fallen if he had not steadied her.

 "Damn! Damn! Damn!" she swore bitterly. "It's stiffened up on me."

 "Never mind," he said cheerfully, and stripped his bumbag of all but the

 most crucial items of equipment. He kept the dik-dik skin, however,

 rolling it into a tight ball and stuffing it into the bag. Then he

 rebuckled it around his waist, and grinned at her cheerfully. "Skinny

 little thing like you. Hop on my back."

 "You can't carry me up there." She looked up the trail, steep as a

 ladderway, and was aghast.

 "It's the only train leaving from this station," he told her, and

 offered her his back. She crawled up on to' it.

 "Don't you think you should dump the dik-dik skin?" she asked.

 "Perish the thought!" he said, and started up.

 It was slow and heavy-going. After a while he had nothing left over for

 talking, and he trudge' upwards in dogged silence. Sweat drenched his

 shirt, but she found neither the wet warmth of it that permeated her

 blouse on to her own skin, nor the strong masculine odour of it

 offensive. Instead, it was comforting and reassuring.

 Every half hour he stopped until his breathing became regular and even

 again. Then he opened his eyes and grinned at her.

 "Hi ho, Silver!" He pushed himself to his feet, and bowed his back for

 her to scramble aboard.

 As the day wore on, his jokes became more forced and feeble. By late

 afternoon the pace was down to an exhausted plod, and at the more

 difficult places he had to pause and gather himself before stepping up.

 She tried to help him by climbing down from his back, and supporting

 herself on his shoulder as they struggled over the more arduous pitches,

 but even with this respite she knew that he was burning up the very last

 of his strength.

 Neither of them could truly credit their achievement when they reeled

 around another corner of the track and saw before them the waterfall,

 spilling down like a white lacy curtain across the trail. Nicholas

 staggered into the cavern behind the sheet of falling water and lowered

 her to the floor. Then he collapsed and lay like a dead man.

 It was dark when he had at last recovered sufficiently to open his eyes

 and sit up. While he was resting Royan had gathered'some wood from the

 monks' stockpile and managed to get a small fire going.

 "Good girl," he told her. "If ever you want a job as a housekeeper-

 "Don't tempt me." She hobbled over to him, and examined the cut in his

 scalp. "Nice healthy scab," she told him, and then suddenly and

 impulsively she hugged his head to her bosom and stroked his dusty,

 sweat-stiff hair off his forehead.

 "Oh, Nicky! How can I ever repay you for what you did for me today?"

 A flippant reply rose to his lips, but even in his weakened state he had

 the good sense to bite it back. He was in no state to attempt any

 further intimacy. So he lay in her embrace, enjoying the feel of her

 body against his, but not taking the risk of scaring her off with a move

 of his own.

 At last she released him gently, and sat back. "I very much regret, sir,

 that the housekeeper cannot offer you smoked salmon and champagne for

 your dinner. How about a mug of mountain water, pure and nourishing?"

 "I think we can do better than that." He took the drycell torch from his

 burn'bag, and by its beam selected a round, fist-sized stone from the

 floor of the cavern. With this in his right hand he turned the light

 upwards, and played it over the cavern roof. Immediately there was a

 rustling of wings and the alarmed cooing of the rock pigeons that were

 roosting on the ledges. Nicholas manoeuvred into position below them,

 dazzling them with the torch beam.

 With his first throw he brought down a brace of them, fluttering and

 squawking to the cavern floor, while the rest of the flock exploded out

 into the night in a great clattering uproar of frantic wings. Nicholas

 pounced on the downed birds and with a practised flick of the wrist

 wrung their necks.

 "How do you fancy a juicy slice of roast pigeon?" he asked her.

 She lay propped on one elbow, and he sat cross-legged facing her, each

 of them plucking the vinous-maroon and grey feathers from one of the

 pigeon carcasses. Even when it came to drawing the bird, she was not

 squeamish, as many other women might have been faced with the same task.

 This, together with her stoical performance during the day's struggle up

 the mountain, enhanced his opinion of her. She had repeatedly proved to

 him how game and plucky she was. His feelings towards her were

 strengthening and maturing every day.

 Concentrating on removing the fine bristles from the puckered breast

 skin of the bird, she said, "It is beyond all doubt now that the

 material stolen in the raid on our camp is in Pegasus hands."

 "I was thinking the same thing," Nicholas nodded, "and we know from the

 antennae at their base camp above the falls that they have satellite

 communications. We can place a pretty certain bet that Jake Helm has

 already telefaxed it through to the big man, whoever he may be."

 "So he has all the details of the stele in Tanus's tomb.

 We know that he already has the seventh scroll in his possession. If he

 isn't an expert Egyptologist himself, he must have somebody in his pay

 who is. Wouldn't you agree with that?"

 I would guess that he can read hieroglyphics himself.

 I would think that he must be an avid collector. I know the type. It is

 an obsession with them."

 "I know the type as well." She smiled at him. "There is one sitting not

 a thousand miles away from me at this very moment."

 "ToucV' he laughed, and held up his hands in surrender. "But I have only

 been lightly bitten by the bug, compared to others I could name. Those

 other two on Duraid's list, for instance."

 "Peter Walsh and Gotthold von Schiller," she reeled off the names.

 "Those two are homicidal collectors,," he confirmed. "I -am sure neither

 of them would hesitate to kill for the chance of having Pharaoh Mamose's

 treasure to themselves."

 "But from what I know about them, both of them are billionaires, at

 least in dollar terms."

 "Money has nothing to do with it, don't you see. If they laid hands upon

 it, they would never ever dream of selling a single artefact from the

 hoard. They would lock it all away in some deep vault, and not let

 another living soul la eyes upon it. They would gloat on it in private -

 it's a bizarre, masturbatory passion."

 "What an odd word to describe it," she protested.

 "But accurate, I assure you. It's a sexual thing a compulsion, like that

 of a serial killer."

 "I love all things Egyptian, but I don't think I can even imagine a

 craving that intense."

 "You must remember that these are not ordinary men whom we are

 considering. Their wealth allows'them to pander to any appetite'. All

 the normal, natural human appetites soon become jaded and satiated. They

 can have anything they want. Any man or any woman. Any thing, any

 perversion, whether legal or not. In the end they have to find something

 that no one else can ever have. It's the only thing that can still give

 them the old thrill."

 "So in whoever is behind Pegasus we are dealing with a madman?" she

 asked softly.

 "Much more than that," he corrected her. "We are enormously wealthy and

 powerful dealing with an maniac, who in his disease will stop at

 nothing."

 They picked the cold carcasses of the roasted pigeons for their

 breakfast. Then, while the other one tactfully went to the back of the

 cavern an averted his or her gaze, they took turns to strip naked and

 bathe under the waterfall.

 After the heat of the gorge the water was icy cold. It battered them

 with the force of a fire hose. Royan hopped on her good leg, gasping and

 whimpering under the torrent, and emerged covered in goose-pimples and

 shuddering blue with cold. However, it refreshed her, and even in her

 filthy, sweat-stinking clothes it gave her heart to start out on the

 last bitter climb to the summit.

 Before leaving the cavern they examined each other's injuries again.

 Nicholas's scalp wound was heating cleanly, but Royan's knee was no

 better than the previous day. The bruises were starting to turn a

 virulent puce, the colour of decomposing liver, and the swelling was

 unabated. There was very little he could do for it, other than strapping

 it again with the bandana.

 At last Nicholas admitted defeat, and abandoned his burn-bag and the

 roll of dik'dik skin. He knew that he was reaching the limit of his

 physical reserves, and he realized that, light as these items were,

 every extra pound that he carried today might mean the difference

 between reaching the summit or breaking down on the trail. He retained

 only the three rolls of undeveloped film, each in its plastic capsule.

 These were their only record of the hieroglyphics' on the stele in

 Tanus's tomb. He dared not risk losing them, so he buttoned them into

 the breast pocket of his khaki shirt. He tucked both the bag and the

 skin into a crack in the wall at the back of the cavern, determined to

 retrieve them at some later date.

 And so they started out on the last but most onerous leg of the trail.

 To begin with Royan was on her own two feet, but leaning heavily on his

 shoulder. However, before the first hour was over her knee could no

 longer take the strain, and she subsided on to a rock on the edge of the

 pathway.

 "I am being an awful nuisance, aren't I?

 "Come on board, lady. Always room for a small one." With Royan perched

 on Nicholas's back, her injured leg sticking out stiffly in front of

 her, they toiled upwards, but their progress was even slower than it had

 been the day before. Nicholas was forced to pause and rest at shorter

 and shorter intervals. On the easier pitches she dismounted and hopped

 along on one leg beside him, steadying herself with one hand on his

 shoulder. Then she would collapse, and he had to lift her to her feet

 and pull her up on to his back once again.

 The journey descended into nightmare, and both of them lost all sense of

 the passage of time. Hours blended with hours into a single unremitting

 agony. At one stage they lay beside each other on the path, sick and

 nauseated with thirst and exhaustion and pain. They had emptied the

 water bottle an hour ago, and there was no more on this section of the

 path - nothing to drink until they reached the summit and were reunited

 with the Dandera river.

 "Go on and leave me here, she whispered hoarsely.

 He sat up immediately and stared at her. "Don't be silly. I need you for

 ballast."

 "It can't be much further to the top," she insisted. "You can come back

 with some of Boris's men to help carry me."

 "If they are still there, and if Pegasus doesn't find you first." He

 stood up a little unsteadily. "Forget it. You are coming along on this

 ride, all the way."And he hoisted her to her feet.

 He made her count aloud every step he took, and at every hundredth he

 paused and rested. Then he started the next hundred, with her counting

 softly in his ear, clinging with both arms around his neck. The whole

 universe seemed to shrink in upon them to the ground directly at his

 feet. They no longer saw the rock cliff on one side nor the deep void of

 space on the other. When he lurched or jolted her and the pain shot

 through her knee, she closed her eyes and tried not to let her voice

 betray it to him as she kept counting.

 When he rested, he had to lean against the cliff face, not trusting his

 legs to get him up again if he lay down. He dared not lower her to the

 ground. The effort of lifting her again would be too much. He no longer

 had the strength for it.

 "It's almost dark," she whispered in his ear. "You must stop here for

 the night. It's enough for one day. You are killing yourself, Nicky."

 "Another hundred, he mumbled.

 "No, Nicky. Put me down!'

 For answer he pushed off from the rock wall with his shoulder and

 staggered on upwards.

 "Cound' he ordered.

 "Fifty-one, fifty-two," she obeyed. Suddenly the gradient altered so

 sharply under his feet that he almost fell.

 The path had levelled out, and like a drunkard he reached up for a step

 that wasn't there.

 He staggered and then caught his balance. He stood teetering on the

 brink of the precipice and peered into the dusk ahead of him, at first

 unable to credit what he was seeing. There were lights in the gloom, and

 he thought that he had begun to hallucinate. Then he heard men's voices,

 and he shook his head to clear it and bring himself back to reality.

 "Oh, dear God. You have made it. We are at the top$ Nicky. There are the

 vehicles. You did it, Nicky. You did it.

 He tried to speak, but his throat had closed up and no words came. He

 reeled forward towards the lights, and Royan cried out weakly on his

 back.

 "Help us here. Please help us." First in English and then in Arabic.

 "Please help us."

 There were startled cries and the sounds of running men. Nicholas sank

 down slowly into the fine highland grass and let Royan slide off his

 back. Dark figures gathered around them, chattering in Amharic, and

 friendly hands seized them and half-carried, half-dragged them towards

 the lights. Then a torch was shone into Nicholas's face and a very

 English voice said, "Hello, Nicky. Nice surprise. I came down from Addis

 to look for your corpse. Heard you were dead. Bit premature, what?"

 "Hello, Geoffrey. Good of you to take the trouble."

 "I dare say you could use a cup of tea. You look a bit done in," said

 Geoffrey Tennant. "Never realized that your beard had ginger and grey

 bits in it. Designer stubble.

 Fashionable. Suits you actually."

 Nicholas realized what a picture he must present, ragged and unshaven,

 filthy and haggard with exhaustion.

 "You remember Dr Al Simma? She has a bit of a dicky knee. Wonder if you

 would mind taking care of her?"

 Then his legs gave way under him, and Geoffrey Tennant caught him before

 he fell.

 "Steady on, old boy." He led him to a canvas-backed camp chair, and

 seated him solicitously. Another chair was brought for Royan.

 "Letta chai hqPa!" Geoffrey gave the universal call of an Englishman in

 Africa, and minutes later thrust mugs of steaming over-sweetened tea

 into their hands.

 Nicholas saluted Royan with his mug. "Here's to us.

 There's none like us!'

 They both drank deeply, scalding their tongues, but the caffeine and

 sugar hit their bloodstreams like a charge of electricity.

 "Now I know I am going to live,'Nicholas sighed.

 "Don't want to be pushy, Nicky, but do you mind telling me what the hell

 is going on here?" Geoffrey asked.

 "Why don't you tell me?" Nicholas countered. He needed time to evaluate

 the situation. What did Geoffrey know and who had told him? Geoffrey

 obliged immediately.

 "First thing we heard was that white hunter chappie of yours, Boris, had

 been fished out of the river near the Sudanese border, absolutely

 riddled with bullet holes. The crocs and catfish had snacked on his

 face, so the border police identified him by the documents in his money

 belt."

 Nicholas glanced across at Royan and cautioned her with a frown.

 "Last time we saw him, he went off on a scouting expedition onhis own,'

 Nicholas explained. "He probably ran into the same bunch of shufta who

 raided our camp four nights ago."

 "Yes, we heard about that too. Colonel Nogo here radioed in a report to

 Addis."

 Neither of them had recognized Nogo in the crowd of men. It was only

 when he stepped forward into the light of the camp lanterns that Royan

 stiffened, and such an expression of loathing flashed across her face

 that Nicholas reached across surreptitiously and took her hand to

 restrain her from any indiscretion. After a moment she relaxed and

 composed her features.

 "I am very relieved to see you, Sir Quenton-Harper.

 You have given us all a very worrying few days," said Nogo.

 "I do apologize," said Nicholas smoothly.

 Please, sir, I meant no offence. It is just that we had a report from

 the Pegasus Exploration Company that you and Dr Al Simma had been caught

 up in a blasting accident. I was present when Mr Helm of the exploration

 company warned you that they were conducting blasting in the gorge."

 "But you-' Royan flared bitterly, and Nicholas squeezed her hand hard to

 stop her going on.

 It was probably our own carelessness, as you suggest.

 Nevertheless, Dr Al Simma has been injured and we are I both badly

 shaken up by the accident. More important than that, however, is the

 fact that a number of other people, camp'staff and monks from the

 monastery have been killed in the shufta raid and in the blasting

 accident.

 As soon as we get back to Addis I will make a full statement to the

 authorities."

 "I do hope that you don't think any blame attaches Nogo started, but

 Nicholas cut him short.

 "Of course not. Not your fault at all. You warned us about the danger of

 shufta in the gorge. You were not present, so what could you have done

 to prevent any of this? I would say that you have done your duty in the

 most exemplary fashion."

 Nogo looked relieved. "You are most gracious to say so, Sir

 Quenton-Harper."

 Nicholas studied him for a moment longer. He seemed the most amiable of

 young men behind the metal-rimmed spectacles, so concerned and eager to

 please. For a moment Nicholas almost believed that he had been mistaken,

 and that it had been somebody else that he had seen in the jet Ranger,

 hovering over the avalanche site like a vulture searching for their dead

 bodies.

 Nicholas forced himself to smile in his most friendly manner. "I would

 be most grateful if you could do me a favour, Colonel."

 "Of course,'Nogo agreed readily. "Anything at all."

 "I left a bag and one of my hunting trophies in the cavern under the

 Dandera waterfall. The bag contains our passports and travellers'

 cheques. Very grateful if you could send one of your men down to bring

 it up for me."

 While giving Nogo directions on how to find his possessions, he derived

 a perverse enjoyment from sending his would-be assassin on such a

 trivial errand. Then he turned back to his friend so that Nogo would not

 pick up the vindictive glint in his eyes. "How did you get here,

 Geoffrey?"

 "Light plane to Debra Maryam. There is an emergency landing field there.

 Colonel Nogo met us, and brought us -the rest of the way by army jeep,"

 Geoffrey explained. "The pilot and the aircraft are waiting for us at

 Debra Maryam."

 Geoffrey broke off and spoke to the camp staff in execrable Amharic,

 before turning back to Nicholas. "I have just arranged a hot bath for

 you and Dr Al Simma.

 After that, a meal and a good night's sleep should work wonders.

 Tomorrow we can fly back to Addis. No reason why we shouldn't be there

 by tomorrow evening at the latest."

 He patted Royan's shoulder, disguising his carnal interest in her behind

 a benign avuncular smile. "I must say I am rather pleased not to have to

 go traipsing down into the Abbay gorge looking for the pair of you. I

 hear that it's a pretty beastly part of the world."

 explained to chase the goats off the emergency airfield at Debra Maryam.

 In the meantime Nicholas was stuffing the roll of dik-dik skin under the

 rear passenger seat. One of Nogo's sergeants you mind, Dr Al Simma, if

 I sit in front?

 Terribly rude of me, but I am inclined to suffer from malde air. Ha ha!"

 Geoffrey Royan as they waited for three small boys to had made a night

 descent of the escarpment, and had delivered both his bag and the skin

 while they were breakfasting that morning.

 Nogo gave them a smart salute as they taxied out in a cloud of dust.

 Nicholas waved and smiled at him through the side window, murmuring,

 "Screw you, Nogo, screw you very much indeed."

 When at last the pilot lifted the little Cessna 260 off the rough grass

 strip, the horizon over the Abbay gorge resembled a field of cosmic

 mushrooms, vast thunderheads reaching up into the stratosphere. The air

 beneath them i was turbulent as a storm sea and they were thrown about

 mercilessly in the rear seats. Up in front Geoffrey seemed to be faring

 no better. He was very quiet and took no interest in their conversation.

 There had been no opportunity for them to talk privately the previous

 evening, what with either Geoffrey or Nogo hovering within earshot at

 all times. Now with their heads close together, the engine beat covering

 their voices and Geoffrey occupied with his own queasy thoughts, they

 were able to concoct their story.

 Geoffrey had made it clear that the British Ambassador in Addis was less

 than delighted with the inconvenience they had caused him. Apparently

 there had been a string of faxes from Whitehall since they had been

 reported missing. Added to that, the Ethiopian Commissioner of Police

 was anxious to question them. They had to make sure that they did not

 implicate Mek Nimmur in the killing of Boris Brusilov, and at the same

 time they must not alert or alarm Pegasus in any way. They realized that

 the reaction from that quarter would be swift and probably lethal if

 they gave the least suspicion that they knew who the other players were

 in Taita's game.

 Most of all they must avoid antagonizing the Ethiopian authorities, or

 give them any cause to cancel their visas and declare them to be

 undesirable immigrants. They agreed to feign ignorance and play the role

 of innocents caught up in affairs which they had not precipitated and

 which they did not understand.

 By the time that they landed at Addis Ababa they had prepared their

 story and rehearsed it thoroughly. As soon as the Cessna pulled on to

 the hardstand in front of the airport buildings and the pilot cut the

 engine, Geoffrey came back to life again, only a little green around the

 gills, and handed Royan down the aircraft steps with a flourish.

 "Of course, you will stay at the residence," he told them. "The hotels

 in town are too dreadful to contemplate, and HE has a half-decent chef

 and a passable wine cellar. I will rustle up some togs for both of you.

 My missus is about the same size as you, Dr Al Simma, and Nicky will fit

 into my gear at a pinch. Thank God, I have a spare dinner jacket. HE is

 a bit of a stickler for form."

 The British Ambassador's residence had been built during the reign of

 the old Emperor, Haile Selassie, before Mussolini's invasion in the

 1930s. Set on the outskirts of the town, it was an example of the better

 colonial architecture, with a thatched roof and wide verandas. The

 lawns, tended by. a host of gardeners, were wide and green, contrasting

 with the brilliant crimson of the poinsettia. The mansion had survived

 both the revolution and the war of liberation that followed.

 At the front entrance Geoffrey handed them over to an Ethiopian butler

 in a long, spotlessly white shamnw, who showed them to adjoining

 bedrooms on the second floor. Nicholas heard the bathwater running in

 Royan's suite next door as he lay in his own brimming bath, sipping a

 whisky and soda and twiddling the taps with his big toe.

 Then there was the murmur of the doctor's voice from next door as he

 attended to Royan's knee.

 Geoffrey's dinner jacket was loose round his waist and too short in the

 arms and legs, and his shoes pinched, added to which Nicholas was in

 need of a haircut, he realized, as he surveyed himself in the mirror.

 "No help for it, now, he decided with resignation, and went to knock on

 Royan's door.

 "I say!" he exclaimed as she opened it. Sylvia Tennant had loaned her a

 lime'green cocktail dress that set off Royan's olive skin marvellously

 well, Royan had washed her hair and left it loose on her shoulders. He

 felt his pulse accelerate like a teenager on his first date, and laughed

 at himself.

 "You look absolutely scrumptious," he told her, and meant it.

 "Thank you, sir," she laughed back at him, "and you look very dashing

 yourself May I take your arm?"

 "I was hoping to carry you. Addictive activity."

 "Those days are over," she told him, and brandished the carved ebony

 walking-stick with which the butler had provided her. She used it on her

 bad side. As they started down the long corridor, she asked in a

 whisper, "What is the name of our host?"

 "Her Britannic Majesty's Ambassador, Sir Oliver Bradford KCMG."

 "Which stands for Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George,

 right?" she asked.

 "No," he corrected her, "it stands for Kindly Call Me God."

 "You are impossible!" She giggled, and then became serious. "Did you

 manage to send-the fax to Mrs. Street?"

 "It went through at the first attempt and she acknowledged. Sends you

 her salaams, and promises to have some information about Pegasus double

 pronto." It was a mild evening and Sir Oliver was waiting to greet them

 on the veranda. Geoffrey hurried forward to make the introductions. The

 Ambassadot-bad a bush of white hair and a red face. Geoffrey had warned

 them about him and his view on troublesome tourists, but his hostile

 frown started to fade as soon as he laid eyes on Royan.

 There were a dozen other guests for dinner apart from Geoffrey and

 Sylvia Tennant, and Sir Oliver took Royan's arm and led her around the

 group introducing her. Nicholas trailed along behind them, resigned by

 now to the fact that Royan had that effect on most men.

 "May I present General Obeid, the Commissioner of Police," Sir Oliver

 said. The head of the Ethiopian police force was tall and very

 dark-complexioned, suave and elegant in his blue mess uniform. He bowed

 over Royan's hand.

 believe that we have an appointment to meet tomorrow morning. I look

 forward to that with the keenest pleasure."

 Royan glanced at Sir Oliver uncertainly. She had been told nothing of

 this.

 "General Obeid wants to know from you and Sir Nichola a little more

 about this business in, the Abbay gorge," Sir Oliver explained. "I took

 the liberty of having my secretary make the appointment."

 "Just a routine interview, I assure you both, Dr Al Simma and Sir

 Nicholas. I will take up very little of your time, I promise you that."

 "Of course we will do everything that we can to assist you" Nicholas

 told him politely. "What time are we coming to see you?"

 "I believe we are meeting at eleven in the morning, if that suits you."

 "A most civilized hour,'Nicholas agreed.

 "My driver will pick you up at ten-thirty, and take you down to police

 headquarters," Sir Oliver promised.

 At the dinner table Royan was seated between Sir Oliver and General

 Obeid. She was pretty and charming, and both men were attentive.

 Nicholas realized that he would have to become accustomed to sharing her

 company with other men; he had had her to himself for much too long.

 For his own part, Nicholas found Lady Bradford at the other end of the

 table rather heavy-going. She was a second wife, thirty years younger

 than her husband, with a pronounced London accent and an even more

 pronounced common streak, with a mane of dyed blonde hair and an

 improbable bust which overflowed her sequined cleavage.

 An old man's folly, Nicholas concluded. It appeared that she had made

 herself an expert on the genealogy of the English aristocracy - in other

 words she was an arrant snob.

 She questioned him closely on his antecedents, insisting on going back

 several generations.

 In the end she called to her husband down the table, "Sir Nicholas owns

 Quenton Park. Did you know that, dear?" And then she turned back to

 Nicholas. "My husband is a very keen shot."

 Sir Oliver looked suitably impressed by his wife's intelligence.

 "Quenton Park, hey? I read an article in the Shooting Times the other

 day. You have a drive there called the "High Beeches". Is that right?"

 "The "High Larches",'Nicholas corrected him.

 "Some of the best birds in Britain. That's what they said," Sir Oliver

 enthused, looking eager and expectant.

 "I don't know about that,'Nicholas protested modestly.

 "But we are rather proud of them. You must come and have a shot at them

 next time you are home - as my guest, Of course."

 From that moment Sir Oliver's attitude towards Nicholas altered

 dramatically. He became affable and solicitous, even going so far as to

 send the butler to fetch a bottle of the 1954 Lafite.

 "You have made a good impression," Geoffrey murmured wryly. "HE doesn't

 waste the 1954 on anybody but the chosen few."

 It was after midnight when Nicholas was at last able to escape from his

 hostess and rescue Royan from Sir Oliver and General Obeid. He led her

 away, supporting her as she limped along fetchingly at his side,

 avoiding Geoffrey Tennant's knowing and speculative gaze until they had

 negotiated the first landing of the staircase.

 "Well, you were definitely the star of the evening," he told her.

 "You had Lady Bradford purring like a cat," she counterattacked, and he

 was delighted to hear the faint tone of possessive jealousy in her

 voice. He had not been the only one.

 At her door she solved any problems by offering him her cheek, and he

 kissed it chastely.

 "Those bosoms!" she murmured. "Don't have nightmares about them." And

 she closed the door behind her.

 He felt quite jaunty as he went to his own room, but as he opened the

 door he saw the envelope lying at the threshold. During dinner, one of

 the servants must have pushed it under the door. Quickly he tore open

 the flap of the envelope and unfolded the pages that it contained. His

 expression changed as he scanned through them, and he left the bedroom

 and went back to tap on Royan's door.

 After a moment she opened it a crack, and peeped out at him. He saw the

 confusion in her eyes, and he hurried to allay her suspicions.

 "Reply to my fax." He showed her the sheaf of papers.

 "Are you decent?"

 "One moment." She closed the door, and opened it again only seconds

 later. "Come in, she said.

 She indicated the decanter on the cabinet. "Would you like a nightcap?"

 "I think I need one. We know who runs Pegasus now."

 "Tell me!" she ordered, but he took his time pouring a Scotch, and then

 smiled at her over his shoulder. "How about a soda water for you?"

 "Damn you, Nicholas Quenton-Harper." She stamped her stockinged foot.

 "Don't you dare torment me. Who is it?, "When I first met you, you were

 a dutiful little Arab girl. One who realized the superiority of the mate

 species.

 Listen to you now. I think I have spoiled you."

 "I think I should warn you that you are flirting with disaster." She

 tried to suppress her smile. "Tell me, please, Nicky."

 "Sit down," he ordered, and took the armchair facing her. He unfolded

 the fax and then looked up at her. "Mrs. Street has worked fast. In my

 fax, I suggested that she rang my stockbroker in the city. We are three

 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, so it seems that she must have

 caught him before he left his office. Anyway, she has all the

 information I asked for."

 "Stop it, Nicky, or I will tear my bodice and scream and cause a

 scandal. Tell me!'

 He rustled the pages, and then read. "Pegasus Exploration is registered

 on the Sydney Stock Exchange in Australia with a share capital of twenty

 million-'

 "Don't go through all the details," she pleaded. "Just name the man."

 "Sixty-five percent of the shares in Pe asus are owned by Valhalla

 Mining Company," he continued imperturbably, "and the remaining

 thirty-five percent are owned by Anaconda Metals of Austria."

 She had given up pleading with him and sat forward in her chair,

 watching him with a fixed gaze.

 "Both Valhalla and Anaconda are fully-owned subsidiaries of HMI, Hamburg

 Manufacturing Industries. All the shares in HMI are owned by the von

 Schiller family trust, the sole trustees of which are Gotthold Ernst von

 Schiller and his wife, Ingemar."

 "Von Schiller," she repeated softly, still staring at him.

 "Duraid had him on his list of possible sponsors. He must have read the

 Wilbur Smith book - I know it has been translated into German. He

 probably contacted Duraid just the way that you did. But he was not put

 off as easily as you were by Duraid's denials."

 "That's the way I read it also, Nicholas nodded. "It would have been

 easy to sniff around the Cairo museum, and find that Duraid and you were

 working on something big. The rest of it we know only too well."

 "But how did he move Pegasus into Ethiopia so quickly?"she demanded.

 "That must have been a stroke of luck on von Schiller's side - the luck

 of the devil. Geoffrey tells me that Pegasus obtained a concession to

 prospect for copper from President Mengistu five years ago, just before

 he was ousted. Von Schiller was already in place, even before he heard

 about the scrolls. All it involved was moving the base camp down from

 the north where they were working and relocating it on the escarpment of

 the Abbay gorge, to be ready to take advantage of any fresh

 developments. We will probably find his dirty tricks that Jake Helm is

 one of his heavies, specialist that he sends to any of his trouble spots

 around the world. It's apparent that he has Nogo in his pocket.

 We waltzed right into their arms."

 Royan looked thoughtful. "It all makes sense. As soon as Helm reported

 our arrival to his master, von Schiller must have ordered him to set up

 the shufta raid on our camp. Oh, sweet heaven, I hate him. I have never

 laid eyes on him, but I hate him more than I thought I was capable of

 hating anything or anybody."

 "Well, at least we know now who we are dealing with."

 "Not altogether," she demurred. "Von Schiller must have had a man in

 Cairo. Somebody on the inside there."

 "What is the name of your minister?" Nicholas wanted to know.

 "No," she denied it instantly. "Not Atalan Abou Sin. I have known him

 all my life. He is a tower of integrity."

 "It's amazing what effect a bribe of a hundred thousand dollars or so

 can have on the foundations of even the best constructed tower,"

 Nicholas observed quietly, and she looked stricken.

 They were the only two at breakfast. Sir Oliver had left for his office

 an hour earlier, and Lady Bradford had not yet risen to greet the clear,

 cool highland morning, "I hardly slept last night, thinking about

 Atalan. Oh, Nicky, I can't bear even the suspicion that he might be

 involved in Duraid's murder."

 "Sorry if I gave you a rough night, but we have to consider all the

 angles," he tried to soothe her, and then changed the subject. "We have

 wasted enough time here.

 Pegasus have got a clear run of the field at the moment. I want to get

 back home, and start putting together our own expeditionary force for

 the return."

 "Would you like me to get on to the airline and make our reservations?"

 She stood up immediately. "I will go off and find a phone."

 "Finish your breakfast first."

 "I have had all I want." She made for the door, and he called after her.

 "No wonder you are so skinny- They tell me anorexia nervosa is a rotten

 way to go." And he helped himself to another slice of toast and

 marmalade.

 She was back within fifteen minutes. "Tomorrow afternoon at

 three-thirty. Kenya Airways to Nairobi, connecting the same evening with

 British Airways to Heathrow."

 "Well done." He wiped his mouth on his napkin, and stood up. "Our car is

 waiting to take us down to police headquarters to speak to your new

 admirer, General Obeid.

 Let's go."

 There was a police officer waiting to meet them and usher them into the

 headquarters building, through the private entrance. He introduced

 himself as Inspector Galla and treated them with the greatest deference

 as he led them through to the Commissioner's suite.

 General Obeid rose to his feet as soon as they entered his office, and

 came around his desk to greet them. He was charming and affable, fussing

 over Royan as he led them through to his private sitting room. Once they

 were seated, Inspector Galla poured the inevitable tiny bowls of bitter

 black coffee.

 After a polite interval of small talk the general came directly to the

 business in hand. "As I promised, I won't detain you longer than is

 absolutely necessary. Inspector Galla here will be recording your

 statements. Firstly I would like to deal with the disappearance and

 death of Major Brusilov. I presume you are aware that he was formerly an

 officer in the Russian KGB?"

 The interview lasted much longer than they had expected. General Obeid

 was thorough, but unfailingly polite. Finally he had their statements

 typed out by a police stenographer, and after they had read and signed

 them, the general walked with them as far as the entrance where their

 car was waiting. Nicholas recognized this as a mark of special favour.

 "If there is anything I can do for you, anything that need, please do

 not hesitate to call upon me. It has you been a great pleasure meeting

 you, Dr Al Simma. You must come back to Ethiopia and visit us again

 soon."

 "Despite our little misadventure, I have thoroughly enjoyed your

 beautiful country" she told him sweetly. "You may see us again sooner

 than you expect."

 "What a charming man," she remarked, as they settled into the back seat

 of Sir Oliver's Rolls. "I really like him."

 "It would seem to be mutual,'said Nicholas.

 yan's words were prophetic. There were idenical envelopes addressed to

 each of them lying at their places on the dining-room table the next

 morning when they came down to breakfast.

 Nicholas opened his as he ordered coffee from the waiter in his

 ankle-length shamnia, and his expression changed as he read the note.

 "Hello!" he exclaimed. "We made an even bigger impression on the boys in

 blue than we realized. General Obeid wants to see me again."He read

 aloud from the note, "You are ordered to present yourself at police

 headquarters at or before noon."' Nicholas whistled softly. "Strong

 language. No please or thank you."

 "Mine is identical." Royan glanced at the note on an official police

 letterhead. "What on earth do you suppose it means?"

 "We will find out soon enough," Nicholas promised her. "But it sounds a

 little ominous. Methinks the love affair is over."

 This morning, when they arrived at police head, quarters, there was no

 reception committee to welcome them. The guard at the private entrance

 sent them around to the general charge office, where they were involved

 in a long, confused discussion with the desk officer, who had only a

 rudimentary knowledge of English. From previous experience in Africa

 Nicholas knew better than to lose his temper, or even to let his

 irritation show. Finally the desk officer held a long whispered

 telephone conversation with some unknown person, at the end of which he

 waved them airily towards a hard wooden bench against the far wall.

 "You wait. Man come soon." fill For the next forty minutes they shared

 their seat with a colourful selection of other supplicants, applicants,

 complainants and petty criminals. One or two of them were bleeding

 copiously from assault by persons unknown, and yet others were in

 manacles.

 "It seems our star is on the wane," Nicholas remarked as he held a

 handkerchief to his nose. It was obvious that some of his neighbours had

 not had a close acquaintance with soap and water for some time. "No more

 VIP treatment." At the end of forty minutes Inspector Galla, he who so

 deferentially the day before, looked had treated them over the partition

 and beckoned to them in a high-handed fashion.

 He ignored Nicholas's outstretched right hand and led them through to

 one of the back rooms. There he did not offer them a seat but addressed

 Nicholas coldly. "You are responsible for the loss of a firearm that was

 in your possession."

 "That is correct. As I explained to you in my statement yesterday-'

 Inspector Galla cut him off. "The loss of a firearm due to negligence is

 a very serious offence," he said severely.

 "There was no negligence on my part," Nicholas denied.

 "You left the firearm unguarded. You made no attempt to lock it in a

 steel safe. That is negligence."

 "With respect,- Inspector, there is a notable dearth of steel safes in

 the Abbay gorge."

 "Negligence," Galla repeated. "Criminal negligence.

 How are we to know that the weapon has not fallen into the hands of

 elements opposed to the government?"

 "You mean some unknown person may overthrow the government with a 275

 Rigby?"Nicholas smiled.

 Inspector Galla ignored the sally, and produced two documents from the

 drawer of his desk. "It is my duty to ation orders on both you and Dr Al

 serve these deport Simma. You have twenty-four hours to leave Ethiopia,

 and thereafter you will be considered to be prohibited immigrants, both

 of you."

 "Dr Al Simma has not lost any weapons," Nicholas pointed out mildly. "In

 fact as far as I am aware, she has never been even mildly negligent in

 her entire life." And again his comment was ignored.

 "Please sign here to acknowledge that you have received and understood

 the orders."

 "I would like to speak to General Obeid, the Commissioner of Police,'

 said Nicholas.

 "General Obeid left this morning for an inspection tour of the northern

 frontier districts. He will not return to Addis Ababa for some weeks."

 "By which time we will be safely back in England?"

 "Exactly." Inspector Galla smiled for the first time, a thin, wintry

 smirk. "Please sign here, and.here."

 "What happened?" Royan demanded, as the driver opened the door of the

 Rolls for her and she settled into the seat beside Nicholas. "It was all

 so sudden and unexpected. One moment everybody loved us, and the next we

 are being booted down the stairs."

 "Do you want my guess?" Nicholas asked, and then went on without waiting

 for her reply. "Nogo is not the only one in Pegasus's back pocket.

 Overnight Obeid has been in contact with von Schiller, and received his

 orders."

 "Do you realize what this means, Nicky? It means that we will not be

 able to return to Ethiopia. That puts the tomb of Mamose beyond our

 grasp." She stared at him with large dark eyes full of dismay.

 "When Duraid and I visited Iraq and Libya, neither of us had letters of

 invitation from either Saddam or Gadaffi, as I recall."

 "You look delighted at the prospect of breaking the law," she accused.

 "You are smirking all over your face."

 "After all, it is only Ethiopian law," he pointed out virtuously. "Not

 to be taken too seriously."

 "And it will be an Ethiopian prison they toss you into.

 That you can take seriously."

 "You too," he grinned, "if they catch us."

 You can be certain that HE has already registered a formal complaint

 with the President's office," Geoffrey told them as he drove them to the

 airport the next day. "He is most upset at the whole business, I can

 tell you. Deportation orders and all that rot.

 Never heard the likes."

 "Don't fuss yourself, old boy," Nicholas told him. "As it is, neither of

 us intends coming back here again. No harm done."

 "It's the principle of the thing. Prominent British subject being

 treated like a common criminal. No respect shown." He sighed. "Sometimes

 I wish I had been born a hundred years ago. We wouldn't have to put up

 with this sort of nonsense. just send a gunboat."

 "Quite so, Geoffrey, but please don't let it upset you." Geoffrey

 hovered around them like a cat with kittens while they checked in at the

 Kenya Airways counter. They had only their hand luggage, two small cheap

 nylon holdalls that they had bought that morning at a street market.

 Nicholas had rolled his dik'dik skin into a ball and wrapped it in an

 embroidered shamma that he had purchased in the same market.

 Geoffrey waited with them until their flight was called and waved to

 them after they passed through the barrier, aiming this affectionate

 display more at Royan than Nicholas.

 They had been allocated seats behind the wing, and Royan was beside the

 window. The Kenya Airways plane started its engines and began to taxi

 slowly past the airport buildings. Nicholas was arguing with a

 stewardess who wanted him to stow his precious dik-dik skin in its

 purple nylon bag in the overhead locker, while Royan peered out of the

 porthole beside her for her last glimpse of Addis during takeoffs

 Suddenly Royan stiffened in her seat, and while still gazing out of the

 window reached across and seized Nicholas's arm.

 "Look!" she hissed with such venom in her tone that he leaned across her

 to see what had excited her.

 "Pegasus!" she exclaimed, and pointed to the Falco executive jet that

 had just taxied in and parked at the far end of the airport buildings.

 The small, sleek aircraft was painted grpen and on its tall tail fill

 the scarlet horse reared on its hind legs in that stylized pose. While

 they watched through the window, the door in the fuselage of the green I

 Falcon was lowered, and a small reception committee waiting on the

 tarmac pressed forward expectantly to greet the passengers as they

 appeared in the doorway of the jet.

 The first of these was a small man, neatly dressed in a cream tropical

 suit and a white panama straw hat. Despite his size he exuded an air of

 confidence and command, that special aura of power. His face was pale,

 as though he had come from a northern winter, and it looked incongruous

 "in this setting. His jaw was firm and stubborn, his nose I prominent

 and his gaze beneath dark beetling eyebrows penetrating.

 Nicholas'recognized him immediately. He had seen him often enough on the

 auction floors at Sotheby's and Christie's. This man was not the type of

 person whom anyone would forget in a hurry.

 "Von Schiller!" he exclaimed, as the German surveyed with an imperial

 gaze the men who waited on the tarmac below him.

 "He looks like a bantam rooster," Royan murmured, "or Thai') a standing

 cobra."

 Von Schiller raised his panama hat and ran down the steps of the Falcon

 with a light, athletic tread, and Nicholas said quietly, "You wouldn't

 think that he is almost seventy." moves like a man of forty," Royan

 agreed. "He "He must dye his hair and eyebrows - see how dark they are."

 "My oath!" Nicholas was startled. "Look who is here to greet him."

 There was the glint of sunlight on decorations and regimental insignia.

 A tall figure in blue uniform detached itself from the welcoming group

 and touched the shiny patent-leather brim of his cap in a respectful

 salute, before taking von Schiller's hand and shaking it cordially.

 "Your erstwhile admirer, General Obeid. No wonder he could not meet us

 yesterday. He was much too busy."

 "Look, Nicky," Royan gasped. She was no longer watching the pair at the

 foot of the steps, who were still clasping hands as they chatted with

 animation. Her whole attention was focused on the top of the steps of

 the Falcon jet, where another, younger, man had appeared. He was

 bareheaded, and Nicholas had the impression of sallow skin and dense,

 dark, wavy hair.

 "Never seen him in my life before. Who is he?" Nicholas asked her.

 "Nahoot Guddabi. Duraid's assistant from the museum.

 The man who now has his job."

 As Nahoot started down the steps of the Falcon their own aircraft

 trundled on down the -tarmac, then swung out on to the main taxi-way and

 blocked any further view of the gathering beside the Pegasus jet. Both

 of them fell back in their seats and stared at each other for a long

 moment.

 Nicholas recovered his voice first.

 "A witches' sabbath. A convocation of the ugly ones.

 We were lucky to witness it. There are no more secrets now. We know very

 clearly who the opposition is."

 "Von Schiller is the puppet-master," she agreed, breathless with anger

 and horror. "But Nahoot Guddabi is his

 ,Bell hunting dog. Nahoot must be the one- who hired the killers in

 Cairo and turned them loose on us. Oh God, Nicky, you it's should have

 heard him at the funeral, going on about how much he admired and

 respected Duraid. The filthy, murib derous hypocrite!'

 They were both silent until the aircraft had taken off and climbed to

 cruise altitude, then Royan said quietly, "Of course, you were right

 about Obeid. He is deep in von Schiller's pocket also."

 "He may simply have been acting as the representative of the Ethiopian

 government, paying respect to a major foreign concession-holder,

 somebody who they hope is going to discover fabulous copper deposits in

 their poverty stricken country and make them all rich."

 She shook her head firmly.

 "If it was as simple as that, it would be one of the cabinet ministers

 meeting him, not the chief of police, No, Obeid has the stink of

 treachery on him, just the same as Nahoot." kIN Seeing her husband's

 killers in the flesh had reopened the half-healed wounds of Royan's

 grief and mourning.

 These bitter emotions were a flame that was burning he up ee, like the

 bushfire in the trunk of a hollow forest tr consuming her from within.

 Nicholas knew that he, could not quench that flame, that he could only

 hope to distract her for a while. He talked to her quietly, turning her

 dark thoughts away from death and vengeance to the challenge of Taita's

 game and the riddle of the lost tomb.

 By the time that they had changed planes at Nairobi and landed at

 Heathrow the following morning, the two of them had sketched out a plan

 of action for their return to the Nile gorge and the exploration of

 Taita'spool in the chasm. But although now Royan appeared on the surface

 to be her usual calm and cheerful self once again, Nicholas knew that

 the pain of her loss was still there beneath the surface.

 They landed at Heathrow so early that they walked through the

 immigration gates without running into a queue, and since they had no

 bags in the hold they did not have to play the customary game of

 roulette at the luggage carousel - will they arrive or won't they?

 carrying the dik-dik skin in the nylon bag under his arm, and with Royan

 limping on her cane on his other arm, Nicholas sauntered through the

 green channel of HM Customs, as innocent as a cherub from the roof of

 the Sistine Chapel.

 "You are so brazen," she whispered to him once they were through and

 clear. "If you can lie so convincingly to Customs, how can I ever trust

 you again?"

 Their luck held. There was no queue at the taxi rank, and in a little

 over an hour after touch-down the taxi deposited them on the pavement

 outside Nicholas's town house in Knightsbridge. It was only eight-thirty

 on a Monday morning.

 While Royan showered, Nicholas went down to the corner shop under an

 umbrella to fetch some groceries Then they shared the task of cooking

 breakfast, Royan taking care of the toast while Nicholas whipped up his

 speciality, a herb omelette.

 "Surely you're going to need expert help when we go back to the Abbay

 gorge?" Royan observed, as she let the butter melt into the hot toast.

 I already have the right man in mind. I have worked before," he told

 her. "Ex-Royal Engineers. Expert with hi in diving and underwater

 construction. Retired and living in a little cottage in Devon. I suspect

 he is a little short of the ready, and bored out of his considerable

 mind. I expect him to jump at any opportunity to alleviate either

 condition."

 As soon as they had finished breakfast, Nicholas told her, "I will do

 the dishes. You take the films of the stele to be developed. There is a

 one-hour service at the branch of Boots opposite Harrods."

 "That's what I call a fair distribution of labour," she remarked with a

 long-suffering air. "You have a dishwasher, and it's raining again

 outside."

 "All right," he laughed. "To sweeten the pill, I'll lend you my

 raincoat. While you are waiting for the films to be developed you can go

 shopping to replace the togs you lost in the rockfalls I have some

 crucial phone calls to make."

 As soon as she had left, Nicholas settled at his desk with a notepad at

 one hand and the telephone at the other.

 His first call was to Quenton Park, where Mrs. Street tried not to show

 how delighted she was to have him home.

 "Your desk is about two feet deep with mail awaiting your return. It's

 mostly bills."

 "Cheerful, aren't we?"

 "The lawyers have been pestering me, and Mr Markham from Lloyd's has

 been ringing every day."

 "Don't tell any of them that I am back, there's a good girl." Nicholas

 knew exactly what they wanted from him the same thing that persistent

 callers always wanted, money. In this case it was not simply five

 hundred guineas for an overdue tailor's bill, but two and a half million

 pounds. "It's probably better if I stay in York, rather than at

 Quenton," he told Mrs. Street. "They won't be able to find me at the

 flat."

 He pushed his debts to the back of his mind, and concentrated on the

 task at hand. "Have you got your pencil and notepad ready? All right,

 here's what I want you to do."

 It took him ten minutes to finish his dictation, and then Mrs. Street

 read it back to him. "Okay. Get on with it, will you. We'll be back this

 evening. Dr Al Simma will be staying indefinitely. Ask the housekeeper

 to prepare the second bedroom for her at the flat."

 Next he rang the number in Devon, and while the phone rang he imagined

 the converted coast guard's cottage of the cliffs overlooking a, grey,

 storm-whipped on top winter sea. Daniel Webb was probably in his

 workshop in the back garden, either tinkering with his 1935 Jaguar, the

 great love of his life, or tying salmon flies. Fishing was his other

 passion, the one that had originally brought them together.

 "Hello?" Daniel's voice was guarded and suspicious.

 Nicholas could imagine him, his bald head freckled like a plover's egg,

 gripping the telephone with a hairy, workscarred fist.

 ave a job for you. Are you a starter?"

 "Sapper, I

 "Where are we headed, Major?" Although it had been three years, he

 recognized Nicholas's voice instantly.

 "Sunny climes and dancing girls. Same pay as the'last time.

 "I' a starter. Where do we meet?"

 "At the flat. You remember it from last time.

 bring your slide rule." Nicholas knew that Tomorrow. Danny put no store

 by these newfangled pocket computers.

 "The jag is still in good nick. I'll leave early and be there for lunch

 tomorrow."

 Nicholas hung up, and then made two more calls: one to his Jersey bank,

 and the other to the Cayman Islands.

 The funds in both his emergency accounts were running low. His budget

 for the expedition that he hadmorked out with Royan on the flight was

 two hundred and thirty thousand. Like all budgets, he knew that it was

 optimistic.

 "Always add fifty percent," he warned himself "Which that the cupboard

 will be bare by the time we are mean finished. Let's hope and pray that

 you are not pulling our legs, Taita."

 He gave the passwords to the respective bank account ants and instructed

 them to make transfers into his holding accounts, ready to draw on

 immediately.

 There were two more calls he had to make before they left for York. The

 fate of all their plans hung on them, and the contacts that he had for

 both of them were at the best tenuous, and at the worst chimerical.

 The first number was engaged. He rang it five times more, and on each

 occasion got- the irritating high-pitched busy tone in his ear. He tried

 one last time and was answered by a reassuring west country accent.

 "Good afternoon. British Embassy. How may I help you?, Nicholas glanced

 at his wrist-watch. There was a three-hour time difference. Of course,

 it would be afternoon in Addis.

 "This is Sir Nicholas Quenton-Harper calling from the UK. Is Mr Geoffrey

 Tennant, your military attache, available, please Geoffrey came on the

 line almost immediately. "My dear boy. So you made it all the way home.

 Lucky you."

 "Just thought I would set your mind at rest. Knew you would be losing

 sleep."

 "How is the charming Dr Al Simma?"

 "She sends her love."

 "I wish I could believe you." Geoffrey sighed dramatically.

 "Big favour, Geoff. Do you know a Colonel Maryam Kidane at the Ministry

 of Defence?"

 "First-rate chap," Geoffrey affirmed immediately. "Know him well. Played

 tennis with him last Saturday, actually.

 Demon backhand."

 "Please ask him to contact me urgently." He gave Geoffrey the telephone

 number of the flat in York. "Tell him it's in connection with a rare

 breed of Ethiopian swallow for the museum collection."

 (up to your shenanigans again, Nicky. Not enough that you get slung out

 of Ethiopia on your ear. Now you are trading in rare birds. Probably

 CITES Schedule One.

 Endangered species.)

 "Will you do it for me, Geoff?"

 "Of course. Serve to Lead, old boy. Always the sucker."

 "I owe you one."

 "More than one. Half a dozen, more like it." He had less success with

 his next call. International Enquiries gave him a number in Matta. On

 his first attempt he received an encouraging ri riging tone.

 me," he pleaded in a whisper, but on

 "Pick it up, Jan the sixth ring an answering machine cut in.

 "You have reached the head office of Africair Services.

 There is nobody available to take your call at the moment.

 Please leave your name and number and a short message after the tone. We

 will get back to you as soon as possible.

 Thank you."Jannie Badenhorst's rich South African accent was

 unmistakable.

 "Jannie. This is Nicholas Quenton-Harper. Is that broken-down old Herc

 of yours still airworthy? This job should be a lark. What's more, the

 money is good. Call me at the flat in the UK. No hurry. Yesterday, or

 the' day before, will do just fine."

 Royan rang the doorbell a minute after he finished the last call, and he

 ran down the stairs.

 "Your timing is impeccable," he told her as she came in with the end of

 her nose pink with cold, shaking the raindrops off the coat he had lent

 her. "Did you get the films developed?"

 She pulled the yellow packet out of the coat pocket and brandished it

 triumphantly.

 "You are a master photographer," she told him. "They have turned out

 perfectly. I can read every character on the stele with the naked eye.

 We are back in Taita's game again."

 They spread the glossy photographs across his desktop and gloated over

 them.

 "You have had duplicates made? A set for each of us.

 Excellent," Nicholas approved. "The negatives will go into the safe

 deposit box at my bank. We won't take a chance on losing them the second

 time around."

 Using his large magnifying glass, Royan studied each of the prints in

 turn, and she picked out the clearest shot of each of the four sides of

 the stele.

 "These will be our working copies. I don't think we are really going to

 miss the rubbings that we lifted from the stone. These should suffice."

 She read aloud a snippet from one of the blocks of hieroglyphics. "'The

 cobra uncoils and lifts his jewelled hood. The stars of morning shine

 within his eyes. Three times his black and slippery tongue kisses the

 air."' She was flushed with excitement. "I wonder what Taita is telling

 us with that verse. Oh, Nicky, it's so exciting to be unravelling the

 mysteries again!'

 "Leave it alone now he ordered sternly. "I know you.

 Once you start, we'll be here all night. Let's get the Range Rover

 packed up. It's a long, hard haul up to York, and there is an AA warning

 of black ice on the motorway. A bit of a change from the weather in the

 Abbay gorge."

 She straightened up and shuffled the prints into a neat pile. "You are

 right. Sometimes I do tend to get carried away." She stood up. "Before

 we go, may I make a phone call home?"

 "By home, I take it that you mean Cairo?"

 "Sorry. Yes, to Cairo. Duraid's farnily7-'

 "Please! No need to explain. There is the phone. Help yourself I'll be

 waiting downstairs in the kitchen when you are finished. We both need a

 cup of tea before we get going."

 She came down into the kitchen half an hour later looking guilty, and

 told him directly, "I am afraid that I am going to be a nuisance again.

 I have a confession to make."

 "Spit it out, he invited.

 "I have to go back home - to Cairo," she said, and he looked at her

 startled. "Just for a few days," she qualified hurriedly. "I was

 speaking to Duraid's brother. There are some of Duraid's affairs that I

 have to see to."

 I don't like you going back there on your own," he shook his head,

 'after your last experiences."

 "If our theory is correct, and Nahoot Guddabi was the danger, then he is

 in Ethiopia now. I should be quite safe."

 "Still, I don't like it. You are the key to Taita's game."

 "Thank you kindly, Sir" she said with mock outrage. "Is that the only

 reason you don't want me bumped off?"

 if forced into a corner, I may admit that I have also wn rather partial

 to having you around."

 I'll be back before you know I've even gone. Besides which, you will

 have plenty to keep you busy while I am away."

 "I don't suppose that I can stop you," he grumbled.

 When do you plan to leave?"

 There's a flight at eight this evening."

 (A bit sudden. I mean, we have only just arrived." He made one last

 feeble protest, then capitulated. "I will run you out to the airport."

 "No, Nicky. Heathrow is out of your way. I can catch the train."

 "I insist."

 On a Monday evening the traffic was reasonably light and, once they had

 cleared the main built-up area, they made good time. The journey was

 further lightened by their animated discussion as he related the

 contents of the phone calls he had made in her absence.

 "Through Maryam Kidane, I hope to be in contact with Mek Nimmur again

 pretty soon. Mek is the kingpin of the whole plan Without him we cant

 even make the first move on Taita's bao board."

 He dropped her off at the departures entrance at Heathrow. "Phone me

 tomorrow morning from Cairo to let me know you are all right, and when

 you are coming back.

 I'll be at the flat."

 "Reversed charges," she warned him as she offered him her cheek to kiss.

 Then she slid across the seat and slammed the door behind her.

 He watched her waiflike figure in the rear-view mirror as he pulled

 away, and he was filled with melancholy and a sense of loss. Then quite

 suddenly he was aware of a new sensation of disquiet. His early-warning

 bells were jangling. Something unpleasant was afoot. Something ing nasty

 was about to happen when she reached Egypt.

 Another dangerous beast had escaped from " its cage and was prowling the

 darkness waiting its opportunity to pounce, but it was still too early

 for him to discern its colour or shape.

 "Please don't let anything happen to her," he spoke aloud, but he did

 not know to whom his plea was addressed. He thought of turning back and

 making her stay with him, but he had no rights in the matter, and he

 knew she would not obey him. Short of physical force, there was no way

 he could impose his will upon her. He had to let her go.

 "But I don't like it one little bit," he reaffirmed.

 His private secretary, and the other men who worked for him, knew

 exactly what he expected of them. Everything was as he required it.

 Gotthold von Schiller looked around the interior of the Quonset hut with

 approval. Heim had done well in the time that he had been given to

 prepare the base for his boss's arrival.

 His own private quarters occupied half the long portable building. They

 were spartan, but sterilely clean and neat. His clothes hung in the

 cupboard and his cosmetics and medicines were set out in the bathroom

 cabinet. His private kitchen was fully equipped and stocked with

 provisions. His own Chinese chef had flown out in the Falcon with him,

 bringing everything with him that he needed to provide the meals that

 his master demanded.

 Von Schiller was a vegetarian, a non-smoker and a teetotaller. Twenty

 years ago he had been a famous trencherman who loved the hearty food of

 the Black Forest, the wines of the Rhine valley and the rich dark

 tobaccos of Cuba. In those days he had been obese, with rolls of chin

 sagging over his collar. Now, despite his age, he was as lean and fit

 and vital as a racing greyhound.

 In the autumn of his life, the pleasures were of the mind and the

 emotions, more than of the physical senses.

 He placed a higher value on inanimate objects than on living creatures,

 either human or animal. A piece of stone carved by masons who had been

 dead for thousands of years could excite him more than the soft warm

 body of the most lovely young woman. He loved order and control.

 Power over men and events sustained him more than did the taste of food.

 Power and the possession of beautiful and unique objects were his

 passions, now that his body was running down and his animal appetites

 were losing their zest.

 Every item of all that vast and priceless, collection of ancient

 treasures that he had already assembled had been discovered by other

 men. This was his chance, his last chance to make his own discovery, to

 break the seals on the door of a Pharaoh's tomb and be the first man in

 four thousand years to gaze upon the contents. Perhaps that Was his real

 hope for immortality, and there was no price in gold and human life he

 was not fully prepared to pay for it.

 Already men had died in this passion of his, and he cared not that there

 would be other sacrifices. No price was too high.

 He checked his image in the full-length mirror that hung on the wall

 opposite his bed. He smoothed the thick, coarse, dark hair. Of course it

 was dyed, but that was one of his few remaining conceits. Then he

 crossed the uncarpeted wooden floor of his own quarters, and opened the

 door into the long conference room which would be his headquarters over

 the days to come.

 The persons seated there rose to their feet immedi.

 lately, their attitudes servile and their expressions obsequious. Von

 Schiller strode to the head of the long table and stepped up on to the

 block of wood covered with carpeting that his private secretary had

 placed there for him. This block went everywhere with him. It was nine

 inches high. From this elevation von Schiller looked down upon the men

 and one woman who waited for him. He looked them over unhurriedly,

 letting them stand a while.

 >From the vantage point of his block, he was taller than any of them.

 First he looked at Helm. The Texan had worked for him for over a decade.

 Completely reliable he was strong both physically and mentally and would

 follow orders without question or qualms. Von Schiller had come to rely

 on him. He could send him anywhere in the world, from Zaire to

 Queensland, from the Arctic Circle to the steaming equatorial forests,

 and Helm would get the job done with the minimum of fuss and with very

 few unpleasant consequences. He was ruthless but discreet, and like a

 good hunting dog he knew his master.

 From Helm he looked at the woman. butte Kemper was his private

 secretary. She ordered and directed the details of his life, from his

 food to his block, from his medicine to his social calendar, No man or

 woman was ever received into his presence without her prior arrangement.

 She was also his communications expert. The mass of electronic equipment

 that occupied one wall of the hut was her preserve. He was able to find

 her way through the ether with the- infallible instinct of a homing

 pigeon. From the archaic art of the keyboard and Morse code 'to burst

 transmissions and random switching he had never known another person,

 male or female, who could match her wizardry. She was at that perfect

 age for a woman, forty, slim and blonde, with slanting green eyes over

 high cheekbones, resembling the young Dietrich.

 Von Schiller's own wife, Ingemar, had been an invalid for the last

 twenty years, and Utte Kemper had stepped into the void she had left in

 his life. Yet she was more than either secretary or wife to him.

 When he had first met Utte, she had been holding a very senior position

 in the technical section of the German national telecommunications

 network, and moonlighting as a pornographic actress - not for the money

 but for love of the job. Copies of the videos she had made at that time

 were amongst von Schiller's most precious possessions, after his

 collection of Egyptian antiquities. Like Helm, she had no qualms. There

 was nothing she would not do to him, or allow him to do to her, to

 fulfill his most bizarre fantasies. When he watched her videos and she

 did some of these things to him, she was the only woman who could still

 bring him to orgasm. Yet even this happened less frequently with every

 month that passed, and each time the spasms of sexual release she could

 evoke from his aging body were less intense.

 Utte had her recording equipment set up before her on the table. It was

 part of her multifarious duties to keep, accurate and complete records

 of every meeting and conversation. Then von Schiller looked past these

 two trusted employees to the two other men standing at the table.

 Colonel Nogo he had met for the first time that morning, as he stepped

 down from the Jet Ranger helicopter that had flown them down from Addis

 Ababa to the base camp here on the summit of the escarpment of the Nile

 gorge. He knew very little about him, except that Helm had selected him,

 and was so far satisfied with his performance. Von Schiller himself was

 not equally impressed. There had already been some bungling. Nogo had

 allowed Quenton Harper and the Egyptian woman to slip through his

 clutches. After a lifetime of operating in Africa, von Schiller placed

 little trust or store in blacks and preferred to work with Europeans.

 However, he realized that for the time being Nogo's services were

 indispensable.

 He was, after all, the military commander of the southern Gojam. No

 doubt once he had served his purpose he could be taken care of Helm

 would see to that. He would not have to bother himself with the details.

 Von Schiller looked now at the last man at the table. Here was another

 who was indispensable for the time being. Nahoot Guddabi was the one who

 had brought the existence of the seventh scroll to his attention.

 Apparently some English author had written a fictionalized version of

 the scrolls, but von Schiller never read fiction of any sort, either in

 German or in any of the four foreign languages in which he was fluent.

 Without Nahoot bringing the existence of the Taita scrolls to his

 notice, he might have overlooked this opportunity of his lifetime.

 The Egyptian had come to him as soon as the original translation of the

 scrolls had been completed by Duraid Al Simma, and the existence of an

 unrecorded Pharaoh and his tomb had been mooted. Since then they had

 been in constant contact, and when the time.came that Al Simma and his

 wife had started to make too much headway with their investigations, von

 Schiller had employed Nahoot to get rid of them and to bring the seventh

 scroll to him.

 The scroll was now the shining star of his collection, safely housed

 with his other ancient treasures in the steel and concrete vaults below

 the Schloss in the mountains that was his private retreat, his Eagle's

 Nest.

 Despite this, the choice of Nahoot to under-take the more sensitive work

 of ridding him of Al Simma and his wife had proved to be a mistake. He

 should have.. sent a professional to take care of them, but Nahoot had

 argued that he was capable of seeing it through, and he had been well

 paid for the work that he had mismanaged so ineptly.

 He "too would be disposable in time, but right now von Schiller still

 needed him.

 There was no question that Nahoot's understanding of Egyptology and

 hieroglyphics was far in advance of von Schiller's own. After all,

 Nahoot had spent most of his life studying them, while von Schiller was

 an amateur and only a comparatively recent enthusiast. Nahoot was able

 to read the scrolls and this new material that they had acquired as

 though they were letters from a friend, whereas von Schiller was obliged

 to puzzle over each symbol and resort frequently to his reference books.

 Even then, he was not capable of picking up the finer nuances of meaning

 in the text.

 Without Nahoot's assistance he could not hope to solve the riddles which

 confronted him in the search for Mamose's tomb.

 This was the team who were now assembled beneath him, waiting for him to

 start the proceedings. "Sit down, please, Fr5ulein Kemper," he said at

 last. "You too, gentlemen. Let us get started."

 Von Schiller remained standing on his block at the head of the table. He

 enjoyed the feeling of superior height.

 His short stature had been a source of humiliation ever since his

 school-days when he had been nicknamed Tippa' by his peers.

 "Fr-dulein Kemper will be recording everything which is said here this

 afternoon. She will also issue each of you with a folder of documents

 which she will collect from you again at the end of this meeting. I want

 to make it very clear that none of this material will ever leave this

 room.

 It is of the most confidential nature, and belongs to me alone. I will

 take a most stringent view of any breach of this instruction."

 As Utte handed out the folders, von Schiller looked at each recipient in

 turn. His expression made it clear what the penalty would be for any

 contravention of his instructions.

 Then von Schiller opened the dossier that lay on the tabletop in front

 of him. He stood over it, leaning forward on his bunched fists.

 "In your folders you will find copies of the Polaroid photographs that

 were recovered from Quenton-Harper's camp. Please look at these now."

 Each of them opened their own folder.

 "Since our arrival Dr Nahoot has had an opportunity to study these, and

 he is of the opinion that they are genuine, and that the stele in the

 photographs is an authentic artefect of ancient Egyptian origin, almost

 certainly dating from the Second Intermediate Period, circa 1790 BC. Is

 there anything you wish to add to that, Doctor?"

 "Thank you Herr von Schiller." Nahoot smiled eaginously, but his dark

 eyes weren nervous. There was something cold and dispassionate about the

 old German that terrified him. He had displayed ro emotion whatsoever as

 he ordered Nahoot to arrange the death of Duraid Al Simma and his wife.

 Nahoot knew that he would be equally unmoved if he were- to order

 Nahoot's own murder. He realized that he was riding the tiger's back. "I

 would just like to qualify that statement. I said that the stele

 pictured in these prints appeared to be genuine. Of course I would not

 be able to give you a definite opinion until I was able to examine the

 actual stone at first hand."

 "I note your qualificatioq," von Schiller nodded, "and we are assembled

 here to find the means to obtain the stele for your examination and

 verdict." He picked up the glossy print that Utte had made from the

 original that morning in the laboratory darkroom in the adjoining hut.

 Photography was not the least of her many talents and skills and she had

 done a very competent job. The copies of the Polaroids that Helm had

 transmitted to him in Hamburg had been blurred and distorted, but still

 they had been sufficient to bring him rushing across the continents in

 all this haste. Now he held these clear likenesses in full colour, and

 his excitement threatened to suffocate him.

 While they were all silent, he caressed the print as lovingly as if it

 had been the actual object that it portrayed.

 If this were genuine, as he knew instinctively that it was, then it

 alone would be well worth the considerable cost in time and money and

 human life that he had already paid.

 It was a marvelous treasure, to match even the original seventh scroll

 which was already in his collection. The condition and state of

 preservation of the stele after four thousand years seemed to be

 extraordinary. He lusted for it as he had for few things in his long

 life. It required an effort to set aside this pervasive longing, and to

 apply his mind to the task ahead of him.

 If, however, the stele is genuine, Doctor, can you tell us, or rather,

 can you suggest to us where it may be situated, and where we should

 direct our search?"

 "I believe that we should not consider the stele in isolation, Herr von

 Schiller. We should look at the other Polaroids that Colonel Nogo was

 able to recover for us, and which Frdulein Kemper has so ingeniously

 copied." Nahoot set aside the one print and selected another from the

 pile in the folder in front of him. "This one, for example."

 The others riffled through their own folders and selected the same print

 as he was displaying.

 "If you study the background of this copy, you will see that in the

 shadows behind the stele there appears to be the wall of some type of

 cave or cavern." He looked up at von Schiller, who nodded encouragement.

 "There also appears to be some type of barred doorway."Nahoot set the

 print aside and selected another. "Now, see here. This is a photograph

 taken of another subject. It is, I believe, of a mural decoration

 painted upon either a plastered wall or the bare rock of a cave,

 possibly an excavated tomb, It seems to have been taken through the

 grille of the gate which I pointed out to you in the first photograph of

 the stele. This mural is almost certainly Egyptian in style and

 influence. In fact it very strongly reminds me of those murals that

 decorated the tomb of Queen Lostris in Upper Egypt in which the original

 Taita scrolls were uncovered."

 "Yes. Yes. Go only' von Schiller encouraged him.

 "Very well, then. Using the barred gate as the connecting factor, there

 is every reason to believe that both stele and murals are located in the

 same cave or tomb

 "If that is so, what indications do we have as to where Quenton-Harper

 photographed these Polaroids7' Von still frowning angrily as he looked

 at each of Schiller was jl them in turn. They all tried to avoid his

 blue, penetrating scrutiny.

 Colonel Nogo," von Schiller singled him out, "this is your country, You

 know the terrain intimately. Let's hear our thoughts on the subject."

 Colonel Nogo shook his head. "This man, this Egyptian-' he used the

 epithet disparagingly, "is mistaken. This is not an Egyptian tomb in the

 photographs."

 "Why do you say that?" Nahoot challenged him angrily.

 "What do you know about Egyptology? I have spent twenty five years-I

 "Wait," von Schiller silenced him peremptorily. "Let him finish." He

 looked at Nogo. "Go on, colonel."

 "I agree that I don't know anything about Egyptian tombs, but these

 photographs were taken in a Christian church."

 "What makes you so sure? Nahoot demanded bitterly, his authority

 challenged.

 "Let me explain to you that I was ordained as a priest fifteen years

 ago. Later, I became disillusioned with Christianity and all other

 religions, and left the Church to may believe become a soldier. I tell

 you this so that you that I know what I am talking about." He smiled

 with ilious malice at Nahoot, before going on. "Look at superc and you

 will be able to make out on this first print again, the wall in the

 background, near the corner of the grille gate, the outline of a human

 hand and the stylized picture mbols of the Coptic Church. You can see

 -of a fish. Those are sy see them reproduced in any church or cathedral

 in the land." Each of them peered at their own copy of the same of them

 ventured an opinion until von print, but none Schiller had given his,

 "You are right," von Schiller said softly. "There is, as you say, the

 hand and the fish."

 "But I assure you the hieroglyphics on the stele and the murals and the

 wooden coffin are all Egyptian," Nahoot . "I would stake my life on it."

 defended himself stoutly Nogo shook his head, and began to argue. "I

 know what I am saying-'

 Von Schiller held up his hand to silence them both while he considered

 the problem. At last he came to some decision.

 "Colonel Nogo, show me on the satellite photograph the site of

 Quenton-Harper's camp where you obtained these Polaroids-'

 Nogo stood up, and came around the table to stand beside von Schiller.

 He leaned over the atellite photograph and prodded his forefinger at the

 spot near where the Dandera river joined the Nile. The photograph had

 once been in the possession of Quenton Harper, and had been captured in

 the raid on his camp. There were numerous markings in coloured marker

 pen on the copy, which Nogo presumed had been placed there by the

 Englishman.

 "It was here, sir. You can see that Quenton-Harper has marked the spot

 with a green circle."

 "Now show me where the nearest Coptic church is situated."

 "Why, Herr von Schiller, it's right here. Again Quenton-Harper has

 marked it with red ink. It is situated only a mile from the campsite.

 The monastery of St. Frumentius."

 "There is your answer, then." Von Schiller was still frowning "Coptic

 and Egyptian symbols together. The monastery."

 They stared at him, none of them daring to question his conclusion.

 "I want that monastery searched," he said softly. "I want every room and

 every inch of every wall examined." He turned back to Nogo. "Can you get

 your men in there?"

 "Of course, Herr von Schiller. I already have one of my reliable men in

 the monastery - one of the monks is in my pay. Added to that, there is

 still martial law in force here in Gojam. I am the military commander. I

 am fully mpowered to search for rebels and dissidents and bandits

 wherever I suspect they may be sheltering."

 "Will your men enter a church to perform their duty?" Helm wanted to

 know. "Do you personally have any religious scruples? It may be

 necessary to - how can I put it desecrate hallowed premises."

 I have already'explained to you that I have renounced religion for other

 more worldly beliefs. I would take pleasure in destroying such

 superstitious and dangerous symbols as will certainly be found in the

 monastery of St. Frumentius. As for my men, I will select only Moslems

 or Animists who are hostile to the cross, and all it stands for.

 I will lead them personally. I assure you that there will be no

 difficulty in that respect."

 "How will you explain this to your superiors in Addis Ababa? I do not

 want to be associated in any way with your actions at the monastery,'

 von Schiller said.

 I have been ordered by the high command in Addis to take all possible

 steps against the dissident rebels that are operating in the Abbay

 gorge. I will be completely able to justify any search of the

 monastery."

 "I want that stele. I want it at any cost. Do you understand me,

 colonel?"

 i understand you perfectly, Herr von Schiller."

 "As you already know, I am a generous man to those who serve me well.

 Bring it to me in good condition and you will be well rewarded. You may

 call on Mr Helm for any assistance that he can give you, including the

 use of Pegasus equipment and personnel."

 "If we are able to use your helicopter, it will save a great deal of

 time. I can take my men there tomorrow, and if the stone is in the

 monastery I will be able to deliver it to you by tomorrow evening."

 "Excellent. You will take Dr Guddabi with you. He must search the area

 for other valuables and translate any inscriptions or engravings that

 you find in the monastery.

 Please provide him with military uniform. He must appear to be one of

 your troopers. I do not want to become involved in recriminations at a

 later date."

 "We will leave as soon as it is light enough to take off tomorrow

 morning. I will commence the arrangements immediately." Turna Nogo

 saluted von Schiller and strode eagerly from the hut.

 hough Colonel Nogo had never entered either the qiddist or the maqdas,

 he had often visited the monastery of St. Frumentius. He was therefore

 fully aware of the magnitude of the task ahead of him, and the likely

 reaction of the monks and the congregation to his forced entry to their

 premises. In addition, he was familiar with numerous similar rock

 cathedrals in other parts of the country. In fact he had been ordained

 in the famous cathedral of Lalibelela, so he knew just how labyrinthine

 one of these subterranean warrens could be.

 He estimated that he would need at least twenty men to secure and search

 the monastery, and to fend off the outraged retaliation of the abbot and

 his monks. He selected his best men personally. None of them was

 squeamish.

 Two hours before dawn he paraded them within the security of the Pegasus

 compound, under the glare of the floodlights, and briefed them

 carefully. At the end of the briefing he made each man step from the

 ranks in turn and recite his orders to ensure there was no

 misunderstanding.

 Then he inspected their arms and equipment meticulously.

 Tuma Nogo was painfully conscious of his own culpability in allowing the

 Englishman and the Egyptian woman to escape, and he could sense the

 danger in Herr von Schiller's attitude towards him. He had few illusions

 about the consequences if he were to fail again. In the short time since

 he had made the acquaintance of Gotthold von Schiller, Nogo had come to

 fear him as he had never feared God or the Devil in the days of his

 priesthood. He realized that this raid was an opportunity to reinstate

 himself with the formidable little German.

 The jet Ranger was standing by, the pilot at the controls, the engines

 running and the rotors turning lazily, but it could not carry such a

 large number of fully equipped men. It would need four round trips to

 ferry them all down to the asse4bly point in the gorge. Nogo flew with

 the first flight, and took Nahoot Guddabi with him. The helicopter

 dropped them three miles from the monastery, in a clearing on the banks

 of the Dandera river, the same drop area as they had used for the raid

 on Quenton-Harper's camp.

 The drop area was just far enough from the monastery for the engine

 noise of the jet Ranger not to alarm the monks. Even if they did hear

 it, Nogo was banking on the probability that they were by this time

 thoroughly conditioned to the frequent sorties of the machine, and would

 not associate it with any threat to themselves.

 The men waited in the darkness, warned to silence and not even allowed

 by Nogo to smoke, while the jet Ranger ferried in the remaining

 troopers. When the last flight came in Nogo ordered his detachment to

 fall in, and led them in single file down the path beside the river.

 They were all trained bush fighters in top physical condition, and they

 moved swiftly and purposefully through the night.

 Only Nahoot was a soft urbanite, and within half a mile he was wheezing

 and whining for a chance to rest. Nogo smiled vindictively to himself as

 he listened to Nahoot's pathetic whispered pleas for mercy as he was

 prodded along by the men behind him.

 Nogo had timed his arrival at the monastery to coincide with the hour of

 matins and lauds, the break of day. He led his contingent down the cliff

 staircase at a trot.

 Their weapons were at high port, all the equipment was carefully muted

 so as not to clatter or creak, and their rubber-soled paratrooper boots

 made little noise on the stone paving as they hurried along the deserted

 cloisters to the entrance of the underground cathedral.

 From the interior echoed the monotonous chanting and drumming of the

 ceremony, punctuated at intervals by the higher treble descant of the

 abbot leading the service.

 Colonel Nogo paused outside the doors, and his men drew LA up in double

 ranks behind him. There was no need for orders for his briefing had

 covered every aspect of the raid.

 He looked the men over for a moment, then nodded at his lieutenant.

 The outer chamber of the church was empty, as the monks were gathered in

 the middle chamber, the qiddist.

 Nogo crossed the outer nave swiftly, with his detachment moving up close

 behind him. Then he ran up the steps to the wooden doors of the qiddist,

 which stood open. As he entered, his men fanned out in two files behind

 him and swiftly took up their positions along the side walls of the

 qiddist, their assault rifles cocked and locked, and with bayonets

 fixed, ing cover the kneeling congregation.

 and swiftly that it was some it was done so silently minutes before the

 monks gradually became aware of this alien presence in their holy place.

 The chanting and drumming died away, and the dark faces turned

 apprehensively towards the ranks of armed men. Only Jah Hora, the and

 happen ancient abbot, was unaware of anything untow ing. Completely

 absorbed in his devotions, he continued kneeling before re the doors of

 the maqdas, the Holy of Holies, his quavering voice the lonely cry of a

 lost soul.

 In the silence Co nel Nogo marched down the centre of the nave kicking

 the kneeling monks out of his way.

 When he came up behind Jah Hora he seized him by his skinny black

 shoulder and threw him roughly to the ground. The tinsel crown flew from

 his silvered pate and rolled across the slabs with a brassy clatter.

 Nogo, left him sprawling and turned to face the rows Of monks in their

 white shammw, addressing them imperioUsly in Amharic.

 "I am here to search this church and the or-her buildings of this

 monastery, on suspicion that there are dissident other bandits harboured

 here." He paused and rebels and surveyed the cowering holy men haughtily

 and threateningly. "I must warn you that any attempt to prevent my men

 performing their duties will be regarded as an act of banditry and

 provocation. It will be met with force."

 JaIi Hora crawled to his knees and then, using one of the embroidered

 hangings for support, Slowly hoisted himself to his feet. Still clinging

 to the tapestry of the Virgin and child, he gathered himself with an

 effort.

 "These are hallowed precincts," he cried, in a surprisingly clear and

 strong voice. "We are dedicated to the service and worship of almighty

 God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."

 "silence? Nogo bellowed at him. He unbuckled the flap of the webbing

 holster on his hip and placed his hand threateningly on the grip of the

 Tokarev pistol it contained.

 at. "We are holy men in a

 )a1i Hora ignored the thre place of God. There are no shufta here. There

 are no lawthe most high, I breakers amongst US. In the name of God leave

 us to our prayers and our call upon you to be gone) to worship, and not

 to desecrate Nogo drew the pistol and in the same movement swung the

 black steel barrel into the abbot's face with a outh burst open vicious

 back-handed blow. jah Hora's like the rind of a ripe pomegranate; the

 red juice burst from front of his tattered his crushed lips and flooded

 down the velvet vestments. A low moan of horror went up from the ranks

 of squatting monks.

 Still clinging to the tapestry, Jah Hora kept his feet, but he was

 swaying and teetering wildly. He opened his shattered mouth to speak

 again, but the only sound that came from it was a high-pitched cawing,

 like that of a dying crow, and the blood splattered in bright droplets

 from his lips.

 Nogo laughed and kicked his legs from under him. Jah Hora. collapsed

 like a heap of dirty laundry and lay on the paving, groaning in his own

 blood and Spittle.

 "Where is your God now, you old baboon? Bleat to him as loud as you

 will, and he will never answer you,'

 Nogo, chuckled.

 With the pistol he gestured to his lieutenant across the church. He left

 six of his men guarding the monks, four at the doorway and one at each

 side wall. The others bunched up and followed him to the entrance to the

 maqdas.

 The doors were locked. Nogo rattled the ancient padlock impatiently.

 "Open this immediately, you old crow!" he shouted at ali Hora who still

 lay in a bundle, moaning and sobbing.

 "He is too far gone in senility," the lieutenant shook his head. "His

 mind has gone, colonel. He does not understand the command."

 "Break it open, then," Nogo ordered, "No, don't waste any more time.

 Shoot the lock away. The wood is rotten."

 Obediently the lieutenant stepped up to the door, and gestured his men

 to stand well clear. He aimed his AK-47 into the wood of the door lintel

 and fired a long, continuous burst.

 Dust and chips of wood and stone flew in a cloud, and fresh yellow

 splinters splattered the paving. The noise of gunfire and the whine of

 ricochets was deafening in the echoing hall of the qiddist, and the

 monks wailed and howled and covered their ears and their eyes where they

 knelt. The lieutenant stepped back from the shattered door. The black

 wrought-iron hasp and staple hung at an angle, the supporting woodwork

 almost shot through.

 "Break it down now!" Nogo ordered, and five of his men ran forward and

 put their shoulders to the sagging door. At their combined thrust there

 was a crackling, rending sound, and now the monks were screaming' Some

 of them had covered their heads with the skirts of their shammas so as

 not to have to witness this sacrilege;,others were tearing at their

 faces with their fingernails, leaving long bloody gouges down their own

 cheeks.

 "Again!" roared Nogo, and his men rushed the door once more, using their

 shoulders in unison. The lock was ripped away from its fastenings, and

 they pushed the massive door fully open and peered into the dim recesses

 of I the maqdas beyond. The chamber was lit only by a few smoky oil

 lamps.

 Now suddenly even these non-Christians were reluctant to cross that

 threshold into the holy place. They all hung back, even Tuma Nogo,

 despite his defiant Protestations of non-belief.

 "Nahoot!" He looked back over his shoulder at the bedraggled and still

 sweating Egyptian. "This is your job now. Herr von Schiller has ordered

 you to find the things we want. Come here."

 As Nahoot came forward, Nogo seized his arm and thrust him. through the

 doorway. "Get in there, oh follower of the Prophet. The Trinity of

 Christian gods cannot harm you.

 He stepped into the maqdas immediately after Nahoot and shone his torch

 around the low chamber. The beam of light danced over the shelves of

 votive offerings, sparkling on the glass and precious stones, on the

 brass and gold and silver. It stopped on the high cedarwood altar,

 lighting the Epiphany crown and the chalices, reflected from the

 communion plate and the tall silver Coptic cross.

 "Beyond the altar," Nahoot cried out with excitement.

 "The barred gateway! This is the place where the Polaroids were taken."

 He broke away from the group in the doorway and ran wildly across the

 chamber. Gripping the bars of the gate in his clenched fists, he peered

 between them like a prisoner sentenced to life imprisonment.

 "This is the tomb. Bring the light! His voice was a high-pitched and

 frantic scream.

 Nogo ran to join him, brushing past the damaskcovered tabot stone. He

 shone the torch through the bars of the gate.

 "By the sweet compassion of God, and the eternal breath of his Prophet,'

 Nahoot's voice sank from a scream to a whisper, "these are the murals of

 the ancient scribe.

 This is the work of the slave Taita." As Royan had done, he recognized

 the style and the execution immediately.

 Taita's brush was so distinctive, and his talent had outlasted the ages.

 "Open this gate!" Nahoot's tone rose again, becoming strident and

 impatient

 "Here, you men!" Nogo responded, and they crowded around the ancient

 structure, trying at first to rip it from the cavern wall by main

 strength. Almost at once it became apparent that this was a futile

 effort, and Nogo stopped them.

 "Search the monks' quarters!" he ordered his lieutenant. "Find me tools

 to do the job."

 The junior officer hurried from the chamber, taking most of the troopers

 with him. Nogo turned from the gate and studied the rest of the interior

 of the maqdas.

 The stele!" he rasped. "Herr von Schiller wants the stone above

 everything else." He played the torch beam, around the chamber. "From

 what angle was the Polaroid taken-'

 He broke Off abruptly, and held the light on the damask-covered tabot

 stone,- on which the velvet-cloaked tabernacle stood.

 "Yes," cried Nahoot at his shoulder. "That is it."

 Tuma Nogo crossed to the pillar with half a dozen strides and seized the

 gold-tasselled border of the tabernacle cloth. He pulled it away. The

 tabernacle was a simple chest carved from olive wood, glowing with the

 patina that priestly hands had imparted to the wood over the centuries.

 "Primitive superstitions," Nogo muttered contemptuously and, picking it

 up in both hands, hurled it against the cavern wall. The wood splintered

 and the lid of the chest burst open. A stack of inscribed clay tablets

 spilled out on to the cavern paving slabs, but neither Nogo nor Nahoot

 took any notice of these sacred items.

 "Uncover it," Nahoot encouraged him. "Uncover the stone."

 Nogo tugged at the corner of the damask cloth, but it caught on the

 angle of the pillar beneath it. Impatiently he heaved at it with all his

 strength, and the old and rotten material tore with a soft ripping

 sound.

 Taita's stone testament, the carved stele, was revealed.

 Even Nogo was impressed by the discovery. He backed away from it with

 the torn covering cloth in his hand.

 "It is the stone in the photograph," he whispered. "This is what Herr

 von Schiller ordered us to find. We are rich men., His words of avarice

 broke the spell. Nahoot ran forward, and threw himself on his knees in

 front of the stele. He clasped it with both arms, like a lover too long

 deprived. He sobbed softly, and with amazement Nogo saw tears streaming

 unashamedly down his cheeks. Nogo himself had considered only the value

 of the reward that it would bring. He had never thought that any man

 could long so deeply for an inanimate object, especially something so

 mundane as this pillar of ordinary stone.

 They were still posed like this, Nahoot kneeling at the stele like a

 worshipper and Nogo standing silently behind him, when the lieutenant

 ran back into the cavern.

 Somewhere he had found a rusty mattock with a raw timber handle.

 His arrival roused both men from their trance, and Nogo ordered him,

 "Break open the gate!'

 Although the gate was antique and the wood brittle, it took the efforts

 of several men working in relays to rip the stanchions out of. their

 foundations in the rock of the cavern wall.

 At last, however, the heavy gate sagged forward. As the workers jumped

 aside it fell with a shattering crash to the slabs, raising a mist of

 red dust that dimmed the light of the lamps and the electric torch.

 Nahoot was the first one into the tomb. He ran through the veil of

 swirling dust and once again threw himself to his knees beside the

 ancient crumbling wooden coffin.

 "Bring the light, he shouted impatiently. Nogo stepped up behind him and

 shone the torchlight on the coffin.

 The portraits of the man were three dimensional, not only on the sides,

 but on the lid too. Clearly the artist was the same as the one who had

 executed the murals. The upper portrait was in excellent condition. It

 depicted a man in the prime of life with a strong, proud face, that of a

 farmer or a soldier with a calm and unruffled gaze. He was a handsome

 man, with thick blond tresses, skilfully painted as if by someone who

 had known him'well and loved him.

 The artist seemed to have captured his character, and then eulogized his

 salient virtues.

 Nahoot looked up from the portrait to the inscription on the wall of the

 tomb above it. He read it aloud, and then, with tears still backing up

 behind his eyelids, he looked down again at the coffin and read the

 cartouche that was painted below the portrait of the blond general.

 Tanus, Lord Harrab." His voice choked up with emotion, and he swallowed

 noisily and cleared his throat.

 This follows exactly the description in the seventh scroll.

 We have the stele and the coffin. They are , great and priceless

 treasures. Herr von Schiller will be delighted."

 "I wish I could believe what you say," Nogo told him dubiously. "Herr

 von Schiller is a dangerous man."

 "You have done well so far," Nahoot assured him. "It remains only for

 you to move the stele and the coffin out of this monastery to where the

 helicopter can fly them to the Pegasus camp. If you can do that, you

 will be a very rich man. Richer than you ever believed was possible."

 This spur was enough for Nogo. He stood over his men as they laboured

 around the base of the stele, digging in clouds of dust, levering the

 paving slabs out of their mooring. Finally they freed the foundation of

 the stele and between them lifted the stone out of the position in which

 it had stood for nearly four thousand years.

 Only once it was free did they realize the weight of the stone. Although

 slender, it was a solid half-ton weight.

 Nahoot went back into the qiddist and, ignoring the rows of squatting

 monks, pulled down a dozen of the thick woollen tapestries from the

 walls and had the troopers carry them back into the maqdas.

 He wrapped both the stele and the coffin in the heavy folds of

 coarse-spun wool. It was tough as canvas, and afforded the men who were

 to carry it a secure handhold.

 Ten of the burly troopers were able to lift and carry the stele, while

 three men were able to handle the wooden coffin and its desiccated

 contents. This left seven armed men free to provide an escort. Then the

 heavily burdened procession moved out through the ruined doorway of the

 Holy of Holies into the crowded central qiddist, As soon as the

 assembled monks realized what they were carrying away with them, a

 shocked babble Of voices, of lamentations and exhortations, rose from

 the squatting ranks of holy men.

 "Quied' Nogo roared. "Silence! Keep these fools quiet."

 The guards waded forward into the mass of humanity, clearing a passage

 for the treasures they were plundering, laying about them with boot and

 rifle butt, shouting at the monks to give way and to let the staggering

 porters through.

 The hubbub rose louder, the monks encouraging each other with their

 howls of protest, whipping themselves into a frenzy of religious

 outrage. Some of them leaped to their feet, defying the commands

 bellowed at them to remain seated. They crowded closer and closer to the

 armed troopers, clutching at their uniforms, chanting and whirling about

 them in a challenging display of mounting hostility.

 In the midst of this uproar, suddenly the spectral figure of Jali Hora

 reappeared. His beard and robes were stained with blood, his eyes were

 crazy, bloodshot and staring.

 >From his battered lips and ruined mouth issued a long, sustained

 shriek. The ranks of dancing monks opened to let him through, and he

 rushed like an animated scarecrow with his skirts flapping around his

 thin legs straight at Colonel Nogo.

 "Get back, you old maniac!" Nogo warned him, and lifted the muzzle of

 his assault rifle to fend him away.

 Jali Hora was far past any earthly restraint. He did not even check, but

 ran straight on to the point of the bayonet that Nogo was aiming at his

 belly.

 The needle'pointed steel stabbed through his gaudy robes and ran into

 the flesh beneath them as easily as a gaff into the body of a struggling

 fish. The point of the bayonet emerged from the middle of his back,

 pricking through the velvet cloak, all pinkly smeared with the old man's

 blood.

 Spitted upon the steel, Jali Hora wriggled and contorted, a dreadful

 squeal bursting from his bloody lips.

 Nogo tried to pull the bayonet free, but the wet clinging suction of the

 abbot's guts held the steel fast, and when Nogo jerked harder, Jah Hora

 was tossed about like a puppet, his arms flapping and his legs kicking

 and. dancing comically.

 There was only one way to free the blade of a bayonet that was trapped

 like this., Nogo slipped the rate-of-fire selector on the AK-47 to

 "Single Shot'. He fired once.

 The detonation of the shot was muffled by Jali Hora's body, but was yet

 so thunderous that for a moment it stilled the outcry of the monks. The

 high-velocity bullet tore down the entry track of the blade. It was

 moving at three times the speed of sound, creating a wave of hydrostatic

 shock behind it that turned the old man's bowels to jelly and liquidized

 his flesh. The suction that had held the bayonet was broken, and the

 blast of shot hurled Jah Hora's carcass off the point of the blade,

 flinging it into the arms of the monks who were crowding close behind

 him."

 For a moment longer the strained, unnatural silence persisted, and then

 it was shattered by a higher, more angry chorus of horror from the

 monks. It was as though they were compelled by a single mind, a single

 instinct. Like a flock of white birds they flew at the band of armed men

 in their midst and descended upon them, intent on retribution for

 murder. They counted no cost to themselves, but with their bare hands

 they tore at them, hooked fingers clawing for their eyes, seizing the

 barrels of the levelled rifles. Some of them even grasped the blades of

 the bayonets with their naked hands, and the razor steel sliced through

 -flesh and tendons.

 For a short while it seemed that the soldiers would be overwhelmed and

 smothered by the sheer weight of numbers, but then those troopers

 carrying the stele and the coffin dropped their loads and unslung their

 weapons, The monks crowded them too closely for them to swing the

 rifles, and they were forced to hack and stab with the bayonets to clear

 a space around them in which to do their work. They did not need much

 room, for the AK47 has a short barrel and compact action. Their first

 burst of fully automatic fire, aimed into the monks at belly height and

 point-blank range, scythed a windrow- through them.

 Every bullet told, and the full metal jacket ball whipped through one

 man's torso with almost no check, going on to kill the man behind him.

 By now all the troopers were firing from the hip, traversing back and

 forth, spraying the packed ranks of monks like gardeners hosing a bed of

 white pansies. As one magazine of twenty-eight rounds emptied they

 snapped it off and replaced it with another, fully loaded.

 Nahoot cowered behind the fallen pillar, using it as a shield. The roar

 of gunfire deafened and confused him. He stared around him and could not

 credit the'carnage he was witnessing. At such close range the 7.62 round

 is a terrible missile, which can blow off an arm or a leg as efficiently

 as an axe-stroke, but more messily. Taken in the belly, it can gut a man

 like a fish.

 Nahoot saw one of the monks hit in the forehead. His skull'erupted in a

 cloud of blood and brain tissue, and the gunman who had shot him laughed

 as he fired. They were all caught up in the madness of the moment. Like

 a pack of wild dogs that had run down their prey, they kept on firing

 and reloading and firing again.

 The monks in the front rows turned to flee and ran into those behind.

 They struggled together, howling with agony and terror, until the storm

 of bullets swept over them, killing and maiming, and they fell upon the

 heaps of dead and dying. The floor of the chamber was carpeted with the

 dead and the wounded. Trying to escape the hail of bullets the monks

 blocked the doorway, plugging it tight with their struggling white-clad

 bodies, and now the troopers standing clear in the centre of the qiddist

 turned their guns upon this trapped mass of humanity. The bullets socked

 into them and they heaved and tossed like the trees of the forest in a

 gale of wind. Now there was very little screaming; the guns were the

 only voices that still clamoured.

 It was some minutes before the guns stuttered into silence, and then the

 only sound was the groans and the weeping of the wounded. The chamber

 was filled with a blue mist of gunsmoke and the stink of burned powder.

 Even the laughter of the soldiers was silenced as they stared around

 them, and realized the enormity of the slaughter.

 The entire floor was carpeted with bodies, their shammas splashed

 and-speckled with gouts of scarlet, and the stone paving beneath them

 was awash with sheets of fresh blood in which the empty brass cartridge

 cases sparkled like jewels.

 "Cease firing!" Nogo gave the belated order. "Shoulder arms! Pick up the

 load! Forward march!'

 His voice roused them, and they slung their weapons and stooped to lift

 their heavy, tapestry-wrapped burdens.

 Then they staggered forward, their boots squelching in the blood,

 tripping over the corpses,. stepping on bodies that either convulsed or

 lay inert. Gagging in the stench of gunsmoke and blood, of bowels and

 guts ripped wide open by the bullets, they crossed the chamber.

 When they reached the doorway and staggered down the steps into the

 deserted outer chamber of the church, Nahoot saw the relief on the faces

 of even these battle hardened veterans as they escaped from the reeking

 charnel-house. For Nahoot it was too much. Never in his worst nightmares

 had he seen sights such as these.

 He tottered to the side wall of the chamber and clung to one of the

 woollen hangings for support; then, heaving and retching, he brought up

 a mouthful of bitter bile.

 When he looked around him again, he was alone except for a wounded monk

 who was dragging himself across the flags towards him, his spine shot

 through and his paralysed legs slithering behind him, leaving a slimy

 snail's trail of blood across the stone floor.

 Nahoot screamed and backed away from the wounded monk, then whirled and

 fled from the church, along the cloisters above the gorge of the Nile,

 following the group of soldiers as they ffarried their burdens up the

 stone staircase. He was so wild with horror that he did not even hear

 the approach of the helicopter until it was hovering directly overhead

 on the glistening silver disc of its spinning rotor.

 otthold von Schiller stood outside the front door of the Quonset hut,

 with Utte Kemper waiting a pace behind him. The pilot had radioed ahead

 while the jet Ranger was in flight, so all was in readiness to receive

 the precious cargo it was carrying.

 The helicopter raised a cloud of pale dust from the landing circle as it

 sank down to the earth. The long tapestry covered load it carried had

 not been able to fit into the cabin, and was strapped across the landing

 skids of the aircraft. The instant that the skids kissed the ground and

 the pilot cut back the throttle, Jake Helm led out a team of a dozen men

 to loosen the nylon retaining straps and lift the heavy bundle down.

 Between them the gang of overallclad workers carried the stele to the

 hut and eased it through the door. Helm hovered close at hand, issuing

 terse orders.

 A space had been cleared in the centre of the conference room, the long

 table pushed back against the wall.

 With extreme care the stele was laid there, and minutes later the coffin

 of Tanus, the Great Lion of Egypt, was laid beside it.

 Brusquely Helm dismissed the gang and closed and bolted the door behind

 them as they left. Only the four of them remained in the room. Nahoot'

 and Helm crouched beside the stele, ready to unwrap the woollen

 tapestry. Von Schiller stood at the head of it, with Utte at his side.

 "Shall we begin?" Helm asked softly, watching von Schiller's face the

 way a faithful dog watches its master.

 "Carefully," von Schiller warned him in strangled tones.

 "Do not damage anything." He was sweating in a sheen across his

 forehead, and his face was very pale. Utte edged rotectively closer to

 him,, but he did not glance in her direction. He was staring fixedly at

 the treasure that lay at his feet.

 Helm opened his clasp-knife and cut away the tasselled cords that

 secured the covering. As he watched, von Schiller's breathing became

 louder. It rasped in his throat like a man in the terminal stages of

 emphysema.

 "Yes," he whispered hoarsely, tthat's the way to do it." Utte Kemper

 watched his face. He was always like this when he made another

 significant addition to his collection of antiquities. He seemed on the

 verge of a seizure, of a massive heart attack, but she knew he had the

 heart of an OX.

 Helm came to the top end of the pillar and carefully opened a small slit

 in the cloth. He eased the point of the blade into this opening, and

 then ran it slowly down towards the base, like a zip fastener. The blade

 was razor sharp and the cloth fell away to reveal the inscribed stone

 beneath it.

 The sweat burst out like a heavy dew on von Schiller's skin. It dripped

 from his chin on to the front of his khaki bush jacket. He made a small

 moaning sound as he saw the carved hieroglyphics. Utte watched him, her

 own excitement mounting. She knew what to expect of him, when he was

 caught up in this paroxysm of emotion.

 "See here, Herr von Schiller." Nahoot knelt beside the obelisk and

 traced the outline of a broken'winged hawk with his finger. "This is the

 signature of the slave, Taita."

 "Is it genuine?" Von Schiller's voice was that of a very sick man,

 wheezing and gusty.

 "It is genuine. I will guarantee it with my life."

 "It may come to that," von Schiller warned him. His eyes were glittering

 with the hard brilliance of pate sapphires.

 This column was carved nearly four thousand years ago," Nahoot repeated

 stoutly. "This is the veritable seal of the scribe." He translated

 glibly and easily from the blocks of figures, his face shining with an

 almost religious rapture: "'Anubis, the jackal-headed, the god of the

 cemeteries, holds in his paws the blood and the viscera, the bones and

 the lungs and the heart that are my separate parts. He moves them like

 the stones of the bao board, my limbs serve him as counters, my head is

 the great bull of the long board'!--'

 "Enough!" von Schiller commanded. There will be time for more later. Go

 now. Leave me alone. Do not return until I send for you."

 Nahoot looked startled and scrambled to his feet uncertainly. He had not

 expected to be dismissed so abruptly in the moment of his triumph. Helm

 beckoned him, and the two of them went quickly to the door of the hut.

 "Helm," von Schiller called thickly after him, "make certain that nobody

 disturbs me."

 "Of course, Herr von Schiller." He glanced enquiringly at Utte Kemper.

 "No," said von Schiller. "She stay The two men left the room, and Helm

 shut the door carefully behind them, Utte crossed the room and turned

 the key. Then she faced von Schiller with her hands behind her and her

 back pressed to the door.

 Her breasts were thrust forward firm and pointed The nipples showed

 clearly through the thin cotton blouse, hard as marbles.

 "The costume?" she asked. "Do you want the costume Her own voice was

 tight and strained. She enjoyed this game almost as much as he did.

 "Yes, the costume," he whispered.

 She crossed the room and disappeared through the door into his private

 quarters. As soon as she was gone von Schiller began to undress. When he

 stood mother-naked in the centre of the room, he threw his clothing in a

 heap into one corner and turned to face the door through which she would

 return.

 Suddenly she stood in the doorway, and he gasped at the transformation.

 She wore the wig of tight Egyptian braids and over it the uraeus, the

 golden circlet with the hooded cobra standing erect above her forehead.

 The crown was genuine, as old as the ages - von Schiller had paid five

 million Deutschmarks for it.

 "I am the reincarnation of the ancient Egyptian Queen Lostris," she

 puffed. "My soul is immortal. My flesh is incorruptible." She wore

 golden sandals from the tomb of a princess, and bracelets and finger

 rings and earrings from the same tomb. All were authentic royal relics.

 "Yes." His voice was choking, his face as pale as death.

 "Nothing can destroy me. I will live for ever," she said.

 Her skirt was diaphanous yellow silk, belted with gold and precious

 stones.

 "For ever," he repeated She was naked above the waist. Her breasts were

 big and white as milk. She cupped them in her own hands.

 "These have been young and smooth for four thousand years," she purred.

 "I offer them to you."

 She stepped out of the open golden sandals and her feet were slim and

 neat. She parted the frontal split in the yellow skirts and held it so

 that her lower body was exposed.

 All her movements were slow and calculated. She was a clever actress.

 "This- is the promise of eternal life." She placed her right hand on her

 dense honey-coloured pubic bush. "I offer it to you.

 He groaned softly and blinked the streaming sweat out of his eyes,

 watching her avidly.

 She undulated her hips, slowly and lewdly as an uncoiling cobra. She

 moved her feet apart and opened her thighs. With her fingers she spread

 the lips of her vulva.

 "This is the gateway to eternity. I open it for you., Von Schiller

 groaned aloud. No matter how often repeated, the ritual never failed.

 Like a man in a trance he moved towards her. His body was thin, dried

 out like a thousand-year-old mummy. His chest hair was a silver fuzz,

 the skin of his sunken belly was folded and wrinkled, but his pubic hair

 was dark and thick as the hair on his head.

 His penis was huge, out of all proportion to the skinny old frame from

 which it dangled. As she moved slowly to meet him it filled out and hung

 at a different angle, and of its own accord the wizened foreskin peeled

 back to reveal the massive purple head beneath it.

 "On the stele," he grunted. "Quickly! On the stone."

 She turned her back to him and knelt upon the stone, watching him over

 her shoulder as he came up behind her.

 Her buttocks were round and white as a pair of ostrich eggs.

 elm and his men worked late that night in the Pegasus workshop, making

 the wooden crates to house both the stele and the coffin securely. At

 dawn the next day they were loaded on to one of the heavy trucks,

 cushioned with thick "rubber matting and strapped down on to specially

 fitted cradles.

 At his own suggestion Nahoot rode in the back of the truck, which would

 take just over thirty hours to cover the long and arduous journey to

 Addis Ababa. The Pegasus Falcon was standing on the airport tarmac when

 the dusty truck trundled out through the security gates and parked

 beside it.

 Von Schiller and Utte Kemper had made the journey in the company

 helicopter. General Obeid was with them. He had come to wish them all

 revoir and Godspeed.

 While the wooden crates were loaded into the jet, Obeid spoke to the

 waiting Customs officer. He stamped the documents clearing the two cases

 of "Geological Samples' for export, and then discreetly retired.

 "Loaded and ready to start engines, Herr von Schiller," said the

 uniformed Pegasus chief pilot, saluting.

 Von Schiller shook hands with Obeid and clambered up the boarding

 ladder. Utte an& Nahoot Guddabi followed him. The rings under Nahoot's

 eyes were even darker and deeper than usual. The journey had come close

 to exhausting him entirely, but he would not let the wooden cases out of

 his sight.

 The Falcon climbed up into a bright clear sky over the mountains and

 headed northwards. A few moments after the pilot extinguished the Seat

 Belt panel, Utte Kemper thrust her lovely blonde head through the

 cockpit door and asked the chief pilot, "Herr von Schiller would like to

 know our ETA."

 "I expect to touch down at Frankfurt at 2100 hours.

 Please inform Herr von Schiller that I have already radioed head office

 to give instructions for transport to be awaiting our arrival at the

 airport."

 The Falcon landed a few minutes ahead of schedule and taxied to the

 private hangar. The senior Customs and Immigration officials who were

 waiting for them were old acquaintances who were always on hand when the

 Falcon carried a special cargo. After they had completed the formalities

 they drank a schnapps with Gotthold von Schiller at the Falcon's tiny

 fitted bar, and discreetly pocketed the envelopes that lay on the bar

 counter beside each crystal glass.

 The drive up into the mountains took most of the rest of the night. Von

 Schiller's chauffeur followed the covered Pegasus truck along the icy

 winding mountain road, never letting it and its cargo out of sight. At

 five in the morning they drove through the stone gate of the Schloss,

 where the snow lay half a metre deep in the deer park. The castle

 itself, with its dark stone battlements and arrow-slit windows, looked

 like something from Bram Stoker's novel.

 However, even at this hour the butler and all his staff were on hand to

 welcome the master.

 Herr Reeper, the custodian of von Schiller's collection, and his most

 trusted assistants were also waiting, ready to move the two wooden cases

 down into the vault. Reverently they loaded them on to the forklift and

 rode down with them in the specially installed elevator.

 While they unpacked the crates, von Schiller returned to his suite in

 the north tower. He bathed and ate a light breakfast, prepared by the

 Chinese chef. When he had eaten, he went to his wife's bedroom. She was

 even frailer than she had been when last he had seen her. Her hair was

 now completely white, her face pinched and waxy. He sent the nurse away,

 and kissed his wife's forehead tenderly.

 The cancer was eating her away slowly, but she was the mother of his two

 sons, and in his own peculiar way he still loved her.

 He spent an hour with her, and then went to his own bedroom and slept

 for four hours. At his age he never needed more sleep than that, no

 matter how tired he might be. He worked until midafternoon with Utte and

 two other secretaries, and then the custodian called on the house

 intercom to tell him that they were ready for him in the vault.

 Von Schiller and Utte rode down together in the elevator, and when the

 door slid open both Herr Reeper and Nahoot were waiting for them. One

 look at their faces told von Schiller that they were beside themselves

 with excitement, bubbling over with news for him.

 "Are the -rays completed?" von Schiller demanded as they hurried after

 him down the subterranean passageway to the vault.

 "The technicians have completed their work," Reeper told him. "They have

 done a fine job. The plates are wonderful. Ja, wunderbar!'

 Von Schiller had endowed the clinic, so any request of his was treated

 as a royal command. The director had sent down his most modern portable

 -ray equipment and two technicians to photograph the mummy of Lord

 Harrab, and a senior radiologist to interpret the plates.

 Reeper inserted his plastic pass card into the lock of the steel vault

 door, and with a soft pneumatic hiss it slid open. They all stood aside

 for von Schiller to enter first.

 He paused in the doorway, and looked around the great vault. The

 pleasure never palled. On the contrary, it seemed to grow more intense

 every time he entered this place.

 The walls were enclosed in two metres of steel and concrete, and were

 guarded by every electronic device that genius could devise. But this

 was not apparent.when he viewed the softly lit and elegantly appointed

 main display room. It had been planned and decorated by one of Europe's

 foremost interior designers. The theme colour was blue. Each item of the

 collection was housed in its own case, and each of these was cunningly

 arranged to show it to its best advantage.

 Everywhere was the soft glimmer of gold and precious gems nestling on

 midnight-blue velvet cushions. Artfully concealed spotlights illuminated

 the lustre of lovingly polished alabaster and stone, the glow of ivory

 and obsidian. There were marvelous statues. The pantheon of the old gods

 were here assembled: Thoth and Anubis, Hapi and Seth, and the glorious

 trinity of Osiris and Isis and Horus, the son. They gazed out with those

 inscrutable eyes which had looked upon the procession of the ages.

 On its temporary plinth in the centre of the room, in pride of place,

 stood the latest addition to this extraordinary hoard, the tall,

 graceful stone testament of Taita. Von Schiller stopped beside it to

 caress the polished stone before he passed on into the second room.

 Here the coffin of Tanus, Lord Harrab, lay across a pair of trestles. A

 white-coated radiologist hovered over her back-lit display board on

 which the ,ray plates were clipped, Von Schiller went directly to the

 display and peered at the shadowy pictures upon it. Within the outline

 of the wooden coffin, the reclining human shape with hands crossed over

 its chest was very clear. It reminded him of a carved effigy atop the

 sarcophagus of an old knight in the precincts of a medieval cathedral.

 "What can you tell me about this body?" he asked the radiologist without

 looking at her.

 "Male," she said crisply. "Late middle age. Over fifty and under

 sixty-five at death. Short stature." All the listeners winced and

 glanced at von Schiller. He seemed not to have noticed this solecism.

 "Five teeth missing. One front upper, one eye too and three molars.

 Wisdom teeth impacted. Extensive caries in most surviving teeth.

 Evidence of chronic bilharzia infection. Possible poliomyelitis in

 infancy, withering in left leg." She recited her findings for five

 minutes, and then ended, "Probable cause of death was a puncture wound

 in upper right thorax. Lance or arrow. Extrapolating from the entry

 angle, the head of the lance or arrow would have transfixed the right

 lung."

 "Anything else?" von Schiller asked when she fell silent. The

 radiologist hesitated, and then went on.

 "Herr von Schiller, you will recall that I have examined several mummies

 for you. In this instance, the incisions through which the viscera were

 removed appear to have been made with more skill and finesse than those

 of the other cadavers. The operator seems to have been a trained

 physician."

 "Thank you." Von Schiller turned from her to Nahoot.

 "Do you have any comments, at this stage?"

 "Only that these descriptions do not fit those given in the seventh

 scroll for Tanus, Lord Harrah, at the time of his death."

 "In what way?"

 "Tanus was a tall man. Much younger. See the portraits on the coffin

 lid."

 "Go on,'von Schiller invited.

 Nahoot stepped up to the display of -ray plates and pointed out several

 solid dark objects, all of them with clean outlines, that adorned the

 body.

 "Jewellery," he said. "Amulets. Bracelets. Pectorals.

 Several necklaces. Rings and earrings. But, most significant," Nahoot

 touched the dark circle around the dead brow, "the uraeus crown. The

 outline of the sacred serpent is quite unmistakable, beneath the

 bandages."

 "What does that indicate?" Von Schiller was puzzled.

 "This was not the body of a commoner, or even of a noble. The extent of

 ornamentation is too extensive. But most significant, the uraeus crown.

 The sacred cobra. That was only worn by royalty, I believe that what we

 have here is a royal mummy."

 "Impossible," snapped von Schiller. "Look at the inscription on the

 coffin. Those that were painted on the walls of the tomb. Clearly this

 is the mummy of an Egyptian general."

 "With respect, Herr von Schiller. There is a possible explanation. In

 the book written by the Englishman, River God, there is an interesting

 suggestion that the slave Taita swopped the two mummies, that of Pharaoh

 Mamose and his good friend, Tanus."

 "For what earthly reason would he do that?" Von Schiller looked

 incredulous.

 "Not for any earthly reason, but for a spiritual and supernat urat

 reason. Taita wished his -friend to have the use and ownership of all

 Pharaoh's treasure in the afterworld. It was his last gift to a friend."

 "Do you believe that?"

 "I do not disbelieve it. There is one other fact that tends to support

 this theory. It is quite obvious from the Xrays that the coffin is too

 large for the body within. TO me, it seems obvious that it was designed

 to accommodate a larger man. Yes, Herr von Schiller, I do believe that

 there is an excellent chance that this is a royal mummy."

 Von Schiller had gone ashen pale as he listened. Sweat headed upon his

 forehead, and his voice was hoarse and chesty as he asked, "A -royal

 mummy?"

 "It may very well be so."

 Slowly von Schiller moved closer to the sealed coffin on its trestle,

 until he was staring down at the portrait of the dead man upon its lid.

 "The golden uraeus of Mamose. The personal jewellery of a pharaoh." His

 hand was shaking as he laid it on the coffin lid. "If that is so, then

 this find exceeds our most extravagant hopes."

 Von Schiller drew a deep steadying breath. "Open the coffin. Unwrap the

 mummy of the Pharaoh Mamose."

 It was painstaking work. Nahoot had performed the same task many times

 before, yet never on the earthly remains of such an illustrious

 personage as an Egyptian pharaoh.

 Nahoot first had to establish where the joint of the lid lay beneath the

 paint. Once he had done this, he could whittle away at the ancient

 varnish and glues that secured the lid in place. Great care had to be

 taken to inflict as little damage as possible: the fragile coffin in

 itself was a priceless treasure. This work took the greater part of two

 days.

 When the lid was free and ready to be lifted, Nahoot sent a message to

 von Schiller, who was in an executive meeting with his sons and the

 other ' directors of his company in the library upstairs. Von Schiller

 had refused to go into the city for this meeting: he could not bear to

 be separated from his latest treasure. Immediately he heard from Nahoot

 he adjourned the meeting until the following Monday, and dismissed his

 directors and his offspring unceremoniously, Then, without waiting to

 see them into their waiting limousines, he hurried down to the vaults.

 Nahoot and Reeper had rigged a light scaffold over the coffin, from

 which hung two sets of block and tackle. As soon as von Schiller entered

 the vault, Reeper sent away his assistants. Only the three of them would

 be present to witness the opening of the coffin.

 Reeper brought him the carpet-covered block for him to stand on

 and'positioned it at the head of the coffin, so that von Schiller would

 be able to see inside as they worked. From this eminence the old man

 nodded to them to proceed. The ratchets of the two blocks clicked, one

 pawl at a time, as both Reeper and Nahoot gently put pressure on the

 tackle. There was a faint crackling and tearing sound, at which von

 Schiller winced.

 "It is only the last shreds of glue holding the lid," Nahoot reassured

 him.

 "Go on!" von Schiller ordered, and they lifted the lid er six inches

 until it hung suspended over the body anoth of the coffin. The

 scaffolding was on nylon castors which rolled smoothly over the tiled

 floor. They wheeled away the entire structure, with the coffin lid still

 suspended from it.

 Von Schiller peered into the open coffin. His expression changed to one

 of astonishment. He had expected to see the neatly swathed human form

 lying serenely in the traditional funereal pose. Instead, the interior

 of the coffin was stuffed untidily with loose linen bandages that

 entirely hid the body from view.

 "What on earth-' von Schiller exclaimed with astonishment. He reached

 out to take a handful of the old discoloured wrappings, but Nahoot

 stopped him.

 "No! Don't touch it," he cried out excitedly, and then immediately

 apologetic. "Forgive me, Herr von Schiller, was im but this is

 fascinating. It strongly supports the theory of an exchange of bodies. I

 think we should study it, before we proceed with the unwrapping. With

 your permission of Herr von Schiller."

 course, Von Schiller hesitated. He was anxious to discover what lay

 beneath this rat's nest of old rags, but he realized the virtue of

 caution and prudence now. A hasty move might do irreparable damage. He

 straightened up and stepped down from his block.

 "Very well," he grunted. He pulled a handkerchief from the breast pocket

 of his dark blue doublebreasted suit jacket, and mopped the heavy sweat

 from his face. His voice was shaky as he asked, "Is it possible? Could

 this be Mamose himself?"

 Stuffing the handkerchief back into his trouser pocket, he discovered

 with mild surprise that he had a painful erection. With his hand in his

 pocket he rearranged it to lie flat against his stomach. "Remove the

 loose wrapp

 "With your permission, Herr von Schiller, we should take the photographs

 first," Reeper suggested tactfully.

 Of course," von Schiller agreed at once. "We are scientists,

 archaeologists, not common looters, Take the photographs."

 They worked slowly, and von Schiller found the delay tantalizing. There

 was no sense of the passage of time down here in the vault, but at one

 stage von Schiller, now in his shirtsleeves, glanced at his gold

 wrist-watch and was surprised to see' that it was past nine 'clock at

 night. He unknotted his necktie, threw it on the bench where his jacket

 already lay, and reapplied himself to the task.

 Gradually the shape of a human body emerged from under the compacted

 mass of ancient bindings, but it was after midnight when at last Nahoot

 teased away the last untidy clump of old cloth from the mummy's torso.

 They blinked at the glimpse of gold just visible through the neat layers

 of bandages laid upon the corpse by the meticulous and skilful hands of

 the embalmers.

 "Originally, of course, there would have been several massive outer

 coffins. These are missing, as are the masks.

 Those must still be in Pharaoh's original sarcophagus, covering the body

 of Tanus in the royal -tomb that still awaits discovery. What we have

 left here is only the inner dressing of the royal mummy."

 With long forceps he peeled away the top layer of bandage asVon

 Schiller, perched on his block, grunted and shuffled his feet.

 "The pectoral medallion of the royal house of Mamose," Nahoot whispered

 reverently. The great jewel blazed under the arc light. Resplendent in

 blue lapis lazuli and red carrielian and gold, it covered the entire

 chest of the mummy. The central motif was of a vulture in flight,

 soaring on wide pinions, and in its talons it clutched the golden

 cartouche of the king. The craftsmanship was marvelous, the design

 splendid.

 "There is no doubt now," von Schiller whispered. "This proves the

 identity of the body." cartOUc xt they unwrapped the king's hands,

 clasped over the the great medallion. The fingers were long and

 sensitive, each of them loaded with circle after circle of magnificent

 rings. Clasped in his dead hands were the flail and sceptre of majesty,

 and Nahoot exulted when they saw them.

 "The symbols of kingship. Proof on proof that this is Mamose the Eighth,

 ruler of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of ancient Egypt."

 He moved up to the king's still veiled head, but von Schiller stopped

 him. "Leave that until last!" he ordered. "I am not yet ready to look

 upon the face of Pharaoh."

 So Nahoot and Reeper transferred their attention to the king's lower

 body. As they lifted away each layer of linen, so were revealed scores

 of amulets that the embalmers had placed beneath the bandages as charms

 to protect the dead man. They were of gold and carved jewels and ceramic

 in glowing colours and marvelous shapes - all the birds of the air and

 the creatures of the land and the fish of the Nile waters. They

 photographed each amulet in situ before working it free and placing it

 into a numbered slot in the trays that had been set out upon the

 workbench.

 Pharaoh's feet were as small and delicate as his hands, and each toe was

 laden with precious rings. Only his head was still covered, and both men

 looked enquiringly at von Schiller. "It is very late, Herr von

 Schiller," Reeper said, if you wish to rest-'

 "Continue!" he ordered brusquely. So they moved up each side of the

 mummy's head, while von Schiller on remained on his stand between them.

 Gradually the king's face was exposed to the light, for the first time

 in nearly four thousand years. His hair was thin and wispy, still red

 with the henna dye he had used in his lifetime. His skin had been cured

 with aromatic resins until it was hard as polished amber. His nose was

 thin and beaked. His lips were drawn back in a soft, almost dreamy smile

 which exposed the gap in his front teeth.

 The resin coated his eyelashes, so that they seemed wet with tears and

 the lids only half-shut. Life seemed to gleam there still, and only when

 von Schiller leaned closer did he realize that the light in those

 ancient sockets was the reflection from the white porcelain discs that

 the undertakers had placed in the empty sockets during the embalming.

 On his brow the Pharaoh wore the sacred uraeus crown. Every detail of

 the cobra head was still perfect, There was no wearing or abrading of

 the soft metal. The I serpent fangs were sharp and recurved, and the

 long forked tongue curled between them. The eyes were of shining blue

 glass. On the band of gold beneath the hooded asp was engraved the royal

 cartouche of Mamose.

 "I want that crown." Von Schiller's voice was choking with passion.

 "Remove it, so that I can hold it in my own hands."

 "We may not be able to lift it without damaging the head of the royal

 mummy," Nahoot protested.

 "Do not argue with me. Do as I tell you."

 "Immediately, Herr von Schiller," Nahoot capitulated.

 "But it will take time to free it. If Herr von Schiller wishes to rest

 now, we will inform you when we have loosened the crown and have it

 ready for you."

 The circle of gold had adhered to the resin-soaked skin of the king's

 forehead. In order to remove it Nahoot and Reeper first had to lift the

 complete body out of the coffin and lay it on the stainless steel

 mortuary stretcher which already waited to receive it. Then the resin

 had to be softened and removed with specially prepared solvents.

 The whole process took as long as Nahoot had predicted, but finally it

 was completed.

 They laid the golden uraeus upon a blue velvet cushion, as if for a

 coronation ceremony. They dimmed all the other lights in the main

 chamber of the vault, anded a single spot to fall upon the crown. Then

 they arrang both went upstairs to inform von Schiller.

 He would not let the two archaeologists accompany him when he returned

 to the vaults to view the crown.

 Only Utte Kemper was with him when he keyed the lock to the armoured

 door of the vault, and the heavy door slid open.

 The first thing that caught von Schiller's eye as he entered the vault

 was the glittering crown in its velvet nest.

 immediately he began to wheeze for air like an asthmatic, and he seized

 her hand and squeezed until her knuckles crackled with the pressure and

 she whimpered with pain. But the pain excited her. Von Schiller

 undressed her, placed the golden crown upon her head and laid her naked

 in the open coffin.

 "I am the promise of life," she whispered from the ancient coffin. "Mine

 is the shining face of immortality." He did not touch her. Naked, he

 stood over the coffin with his inflamed and swollen rod thrusting from

 the base of his belly like a creature with separate life.

 She ran her hands slowly down her own body, and as they reached her mons

 Veneris, she intoned gravely, "May you live for ever!'

 The wondrous efficacy of the crown of Mamose was proven beyond any

 doubt. Nothing before had produced this effect upon Gotthold von

 Schiller. For at her words, the purple head of his penis erupted of its

 own accord and glistening silver strings of his semen dribbled down and

 splattered upon her soft white belly.

 In the open coffin Utte Kemper arched her back, and writhed in her own

 consuming orgasm.

 It seemed to Royan that she had been away from Egypt for years instead

 of weeks. She realized just -how much she had missed the crowded and

 bustling streets of the city, the wondrous smells of spices and food and

 perfume in the bazaars, and the wailing voice of the muezzin calling the

 faithful to prayer from the turrets of the mosques.

 That very first morning she left her flat in Giza while it was still

 dark, and since her injured knee was still swollen and painful she used

 her stick as she limped along the banks of the Nile. She watched the

 dawn cobble the river waters with a pathway of gold and copper and set

 the triangular sails of the feluccas ablaze.

 This was a different Nile from the one she had encountered in Ethiopia.

 This was not the Abbay, but the true Nile. It was broader and slower,

 and the muddy stink of it was familiar and well beloved. This was her

 river and her land. She found that her resolve to do what she had come

 home to do was reinforced. Her doubts were set at rest, her conscience

 soothed. As she turned away from it she felt strong and sure of herself

 and the course that she must take.

 She visited Duraid's family. She had to make amends to them for her

 sudden departure and her long, unexplained absence. At first her

 brother-in-law was cool and stiff towards her; but after his wife had

 wept and embraced Royan and the children had clambered all over her -

 she was always their favourite ammah - he warmed to her and relented

 sufficiently to offer to drive her out to the oasis.

 When she explained that she wanted to be alone when she visited the

 cemetery, he unbent so far as to lend her his beloved Citron.

 As she stood beside Duraid's grave the smell of the , desert filled her

 nostrils and the hot breeze rid'eted with her hair. Duraid had loved the

 desert. She was glad for him that from now onwards he would always be

 close to it. The headstone was simple and traditional: just his name and

 dates, under the outline of the cross. She knelt beside it and tidied

 the grave, renewing the wilted and dried bouquets of flowers with those

 that she had brought with her from Cairo.

 Then she sat quietly beside him for a long while. She made no rehearsed

 speeches, but " imply ran over in her mind so many of the good quiet

 times they had passed together. She remembered his kindness and his

 understanding, and the security and warmth of his love for her. She

 regretted that she had never been able to return it in the same measure,

 but she knew that he had accepted and understood that.

 She hoped that he also understood why she had come back now. This was a

 leave-taking. She had come to say goodbye. She had mourned him and,

 although she would always remember him and he would always be a part of

 her, it was time for -her to move on. It was time for him to let her go.

 When at last she left the cemetery, she walked away without looking

 back.

 She took the long road around the south side of the lake to avoid having

 to pass the burnt-out villa; she did not wish to be reminded of that

 night of horror on which Duraid had died there. It was therefore after

 dark when she, returned to the city, and the family were relieved to see

 her. Her brother-in-law walked three times around the Citron, checking

 for damage to the paintwork, before ushering her into the house where

 his wife had set a feast for them.

 'an Abou Sin, the minister whom Royan had Come specifically to see, was

 out of Cairo on an official visit to Paris. She had three days to wait

 for his return, and because she knew that Nahoot Guddabi was no longer

 in Cairo, she felt safe and able to spend much of that time at the

 museum. She had many friends there, and they were delighted to see her

 and to bring her up to date with all that had happened during the time

 that she had been away.

 The rest of the time she spent in the museum reading room, going over

 the microfilm of the Taita scrolls, searching for any clues that she

 might have missed in her previous readings. There was a section of the

 second scroll which she read carefully and from which she made extensive

 notes. Now that the prospect of finding the tomb of Pharaoh Mamose

 intact had become real and credible, her interest in what that tomb

 might contain had been stimulated.

 The section of the scroll upon which she concentrated was a description

 that the scribe, Taita, had given of a' royal visit by the Pharaoh to

 the workshops of the necropolis, where his funerary treasure was being

 manufactured and assembled within the walls of the great temple that he

 had built for his own embalming. According to Taita they had visited the

 separate workshops, first the armoury with its collection of

 accoutrements of the battlefield and the chase, and then the furniture

 workshop, home of exquisite workmanship. In the studio of the sculptors,

 Taita.

 described the work on the statues of the gods and the lifesized images

 of the king in every different activity of his life that would line the

 long causeway from the necropolis to the tomb in the Valley of the

 Kings. In this.workshop the masons were also-hard at work on the massive

 granite sarcophagus which would house the king's mummy over the ages.

 However, according to Taita's later account history had cheated Pharaoh

 Mamose of this part of his treasure, and all these heavy and unwieldy

 items of stone had been abandoned and left behind in the Valley of the

 Kings when the Egyptians fled south along the Nile to the land they

 called Cush, to escape the Hyksos invasion that overwhelmed their

 homeland.

 As Royan turned with more attention to the scribe's description of the

 studio of the goldsmiths, the phrase which he used to describe the

 golden deathmask of the Pharaoh struck her forcibly. "This was the peak

 and the zenith. All the Unborn ages might one day marvel at its

 splen&ur." Royan looked up dreamily from the micro film and wondered if

 those words of the ancient scribe were not prophetic. Was she destined

 to be one of those who would marvel at the splendour of the golden

 deathmask? Might she be, the first to do so in almost four thousand

 years? Might she touch this wonder, take itup in her hands and at last

 do with it as her conscience dictated?

 Reading Taita's account left Royan with a sense of ancient suffering,

 and a feeling of compassion for the people of those times. They were,

 after all - no matter how far removed in time - her own people. As a

 Coptic Egyptian, she was one of their direct descendants. Perhaps this

 empathy was the main reason why, even as a child, she had originally

 determined to make her life's work a study of these people and the old

 ways.

 However, she had much else to think of during those days of waiting for

 the return of Atalan Abou Sin. Not least of these were her feelings for

 Nicholas Quenton Harper. Since she had visited the little cemetery at

 the oasis and made her peace with Duraid's memory, her thoughts of

 Nicholas had'taken on a new poignancy. There was so much she was still

 uncertain of, and there were so many difficult choices to make. It was

 not possible to fulfill all her plans and desires without sacrificing

 others almost equally demanding.

 When at last the hour of her appointment to see Atalan came around, she

 had difficulty bringing herself to go to him. Like somebody in a trance

 she limped through the bazaars, using her stick to protect her injured

 knee, hardly hearing the merchants calling their wares to her.

 >From her skin tone and European clothing they presumed she must be a

 tourist.

 She hesitated so long over taking this irrevocable step that she was

 almost an hour late for the appointment.

 Fortunately this was Egypt, and Atalan was an Arab to whom time did not

 have the same significance as it did to the Western part of Royan's

 make-up.

 He, was his usual urbane and charming self. Today, in the-privacy of his

 own office, he was comfortably dressed in a white dishdasha and a

 headcloth. He shook hands with her warmly. If this had been London he

 might have kissed her cheek, but not here in the East where a man never

 kissed any woman but his wife and then only in the privacy of their

 home.

 He led her through to his private sitting room, where his male secretary

 served them small cups of tar-thick coffee and lingered to preserve the

 propriety of this meeting. After an exchange of compliments and the

 obligatory interval of polite small-talk, Royan could come obliquely to

 the main reason for her visit.

 "I have spent much of the last few days at the museum, working in the

 reading room. I managed to see many of my old colleagues there, and I

 was surprised to hear that Nahoot had withdrawn his application for the

 post of director."

 Atalan sighed, "My nephew is a headstrong boy at times. The job was his,

 but at the very last moment he came to tell me that he had been offered

 another in Germany. I tried to dissuade him. I told him that he would

 not enjoy the northern climate after being brought up in the Nile

 valley. I told him that there are many things in life such as country

 and family that no amount of money can recompense. But-' Atalan spread

 his hands in an eloquent gesture.

 "So who have you chosen to fill the post of director?" she asked with an

 innocence that did not deceive him.

 "We have not yet made any permanent appointment.

 Nobody automatically comes to mind, now that Nahoot has withdrawn.

 Perhaps we will be forced to advertise internationally. I for one would

 be very sad to see it go to a foreigner, no matter how well qualified."

 our excellency, may I speak to you in private?" Royan asked, and glanced

 significantly at the male secretary hovering at the doorway. Atalan

 hesitated only a moment.

 "Of course." He gestured to the secretary to leave the room, and when he

 had withdrawn and closed the door behind him Atalan leaned towards her

 and dropped his voice slightly. "What is it that you wish to discuss, my

 dear lady?"

 It was an hour later that Royan left him. He walked with her as far as

 the lift outside his suite of offices.

 As he shook hands his voice was low and mellifluous "We will meet again

 soon, inshallah."

 hen the Egyptair flight landed at Heath, row and Royan left the airport

 arrivals hall for a place in the queue at the taxi rank outside, it

 seemed that the temperature difference from Cairo was at least fifteen

 degrees. Her train arrived at York in the damp misty cold of late

 afternoon. From the railway station she phoned the number that Nicholas

 had given her.

 "You silly girl," he scolded her. "Why didn't you let me know you were

 on your way? I would have met you at the airport."

 She was surprised at how pleased she was to see him, and at how much she

 had missed him, as she watched him step out of the Range Rover and come

 striding towards her on those long legs. He was bare-headed and

 obviously had not subjected himself to a haircut since she had last seen

 him. His dark hair was rumpled and wind-tossed and the silver wings

 fluffed over his ears.

 "How's the knee?" he greeted her. "Do you still need to be carried?"

 "Almost better now. Nearly time to throw away the stick." She felt a

 sudden urge to throw her arms around his neck, but at the last moment

 she prevented herself from making a display and merely offered him a

 cold, rosy brown cheek to kiss. He smelt good - of leather and some

 spicy aftershave, and of clean virile manhood.

 In the driver's seat he delayed starting the engine for a moment, and

 studied her face in the street light that streamed in through the side

 window.

 "You look mighty pleased with yourself, madam. Cat been at the cream?"

 "Just pleased to see old friends," she smiled, "but I must admit Cairo

 is always a tonic."

 "No supper laid on. Thought we would stop at a pub.

 Do you fancy steak and kidney pud?"

 "I want to see my mother. I feel so guilty. I don't even know how her

 leg is mending."

 "Popped in to see her day before yesterday. She's doing fine. Loving the

 new puppy. Named it Taita, would you believe?"

 "You are really a very kind person - I mean, taking the trouble to visit

 her."

 "I like her. One of the good old ones. They don't build them like that

 any more. I suggest we have a bite to eat, and then I will pick up a

 bottle of Laphroaig and we will go and see her."

 It was after midnight when they left Georgina's cottage. She had

 dispensed rough frontier justice to the malt whisky that Nicholas had

 brought and now she waved them off, standing in the kitchen doorway,

 clutching her new puppy to her ample bosom and teetering slightly on her

 plaster-cast leg.

 "You are a bad influence on my mother," Royan told him.

 "Who's a bad influence on whom?" he protested. "Some of those jokes of

 hers turned the Stilton a richer shade of blue."

 "You should have let me stay with her."

 "She has Taita to keep her company now. Besides, I need you close at

 hand. Plenty of work to do. I can't wait to show you what I have been up

 to since you went swanning off to Egypt."

 The Quenton Park housekeeper had repared her a bedroom in the flat in

 the lanes behind York Minster.

 As Nicholas carried her bags up the stairs ripsaw snoring came from

 behind the door of the bedroom on the second landing, and she looked at

 Nicholas enquiringly.

 "Sapper Webb," he told her. "Latest addition to the team. Our own

 engineer. You will meet him tomorrow, and I think you will like him. He

 is a fisherman."

 "What's that got to do with me liking him?"

 "All the best people are fishermen."

 "Present company excluded," she laughed. "Are you staying at Quenton

 Park?"

 "Giving the house a wide berth, for the time being." He shook his head.

 "Don't want it bruited about that I amback in England. There are some

 fellows from Lloyd's that I would rather not speak to at the moment. I

 will be in the small bedroom on the top floor. Call if you need me."

 When she was alone she looked around the tiny chintzy room with its own

 doll's house bathroom, and the double bed that took up most of the floor

 area. She remembered his remark about calling if she needed him, and she

 looked up at the ceiling just as she heard him drop one of his shoes on

 the floor.

 "Don't tempt me," she whispered. The smell of him lingered in her

 nostrils, and she remembered the feel of his lean hard body, moist with

 sweat, pressed against hers as he had carried her up out of the Abbay

 gorge. Hunger and eed were two words she had not thought of for many

 years. They were starting to loom too large in her existence.

 "Enough of that, my girl," she chided herself, and went to run a bath.

 Nicholas pounded on her door the next morning on his way downstairs.

 "Come along, Royan. Life is real. Life is urgent."

 It was still pitch dark outside, and she groaned softly and asked, "What

 time is it?" But he was gone, and faintly she could hear him whistling

 "The Big Rock Candy Mountain'somewhere downstairs.

 She checked her watch and groaned again. "Whistling at six-thirty, after

 what he and Mummy did to the Laphroaig last night. I don't believe it.

 The man is truly a monster."

 Twenty minutes later she found him in a dark blue fisherman's sweater

 and jeans and a butcher's apron, working in the kitchen.

 "Slice toast for three, there's a love." He gestured towards the brown

 loaf that lay beside the electric toaster.

 "Omelettes coming up'in five minutes."

 She looked at the other man in the room. He was middle-aged, with wide

 shoulders and sleeves rolled up high around muscular biceps, and he was

 as bald as a cannonball.

 "Hello," she said, "I am Royan Al Sirnma."

 "Sorry." Nicholas waved the egg-whisk. "This is Danny Daniel Webb, known

 as Sapper to his friends."

 Danny stood up with a cup of coffee in his big competent-looking fist.

 "Pleased to meet you, Miss Al Simma. May I pour you a cup of coffee?"

 The top of his head was'freckled, and she noticed how blue his eyes

 were.

 "Dr Al Simma,'Nicholas corrected him.

 "But please call me Royan," she cut in quickly, "and yes, I' love a

 cup."

 There was no mention of Ethiopia or Taita's game during breakfast, and

 Royan ate her omelette and listened respectfully to a passionate

 dissertation on how to catch sail fish on a fly rod from Sapper, while

 Nicholas heckled him mercilessly, calling into question almost every

 statement he made. Very obviously they had a good relationship, and she

 supposed she would become accustomed to all the angling jargon.

 As soon as breakfast was over, Nicholas stood up with the coffee pot in

 one hand. "Bring your mugs, and follow me., He led Royan to the front

 sitting room. "I have a surprise for you. My people up at the museum

 worked round the clock to get it ready for you."

 He threw open the door of the sitting room, with an imitation of a

 trumpet flourish, "Tarantara!'

 On the centre table stood a fully mounted model of the striped dik-dik,

 crowned with the pricked horns and clad in the skin that Nicholas had

 smuggled back from Africa. It was so realistic that for a moment she

 expected it to leap off the table and dash away as she walked towards

 it.

 "Oh, Nicky. It's beautifully done!" She circled it appraisingly. "The

 artist has captured it exactly."

 The model brought back to her vividly the heat and smell of the bush in

 the gorge, and she felt a twinge of nostalgia and sadness for the

 delicate, beautiful creature.

 Its glass eyes were deceptively lifelike and bright, and the end of its

 proboscis looked wet and gleaming as though it was about to wiggle it

 and sniff the air.

 "I think it's splendid. Glad you agree with me." He stroked the soft,

 smooth hide. She felt this was not the moment to spoil his boyish

 pleasure. "As soon as we have Ir sorted out Taita's puzzle, I intend

 writing a paper on it for the Natural History Museum, the same lads that

 called Great-grandpapa a liar. Restore the family honour." He laughed

 and spread a dust-sheet over the model. Carefully he lifted it down from

 the table and placed it safely in a corner of the room where it was out

 of harm's way.

 "That was the first surprise I had saved up for you. But now for the big

 one." He pointed to a sofa against one wall.

 "Take a seat. I don't want you to be bowled over by this." She smiled at

 his nonsense, but went obediently to the furthest end of the sofa afid

 curled her legs under her as she settled there. Sapper Webb came to sit

 awkwardly at the other end, obviously uncomfortable at being so close to

 her.

 "Let's talk about how we are going to get into the chasm on the Dandera

 river," Nicholas suggested. "Sapper and I have talked about nothing else

 the whole time that you have been away."

 "That and catching fish, I'll warrant." She grinned at him, and he

 looked guilty.

 "Well, both subjects involve water. That is my justification." His

 expression became serious. "You recall that we discussed the idea of

 exploring the depths of Taita's pool with scuba gear, and I explained

 the difficulties."

 "I remember," she agreed. "You said the pressure into the underwater

 opening was too great, and that we would have to find another method of

 getting in there."

 "Correct." Nicholas smiled mysteriously. "Well, Sapper here has already

 earned the exorbitant fee that I have promised him - promised, I

 emphasize, not yet paid. He has come up with the alternative method."

 Now she too became serious and unfolded her legs.

 She placed both feet on the floor and leaned forward attentively, with

 her elbows on her knees and her chin cupped in her hands.

 "It must have been all those brains of his that pushed out his hair. I

 mean, it's very neat thinking. Although it was staring us both in the

 face, neither you nor I thought of it."

 Stop it, Nicky," she told him ominously, "you are doing it again."

 "I am going to give you a clue." He ignored the warning and went on

 teasing her blithely. "Sometimes the old ways are the best. That's the

 'if you are so clever, how come you aren't famous?" she began, and then

 broke off as the solution occurred to her.

 "The old ways? You mean, the same way as Taita did it?

 The same way he reached the bottom of the pool without the benefit of

 diving equipment?"

 "By George! I think she's got itV Nicholas put on a convincing Rex

 Harrison imitation.

 "A dam." Royan clapped her hands. "You propose to redam. the river at

 the same place where Taita built his dam four thousand years ago."

 "She's got it Nicholas laughed. "No flies on our girl!

 Show her your drawings, Sapper."

 Sapper Webb made no attempt to disguise his selfsatisfaction as he went

 to the board that stood against the facing wall. Royan had noticed it,

 but had paid no attention to it, until now he pulled away the cover and

 proudly displayed the illustrations that were pegged to it.

 She recognized immediately the enlargements of the photographs that

 Nicholas had taken at the putative site of Taita's.dam on the Dandera

 river, and others that he had taken in the ancient quarry that Tamre had

 shown them. These had been liberally adorned with calculations and lines

 in thick black marker pen.

 "The major has provided me with estimates of the dimensions of the river

 bed at this point, and he has also calculated the height that we will

 have to raise the wall to induce a flow down the former course. I have,

 of course, allowed for errors in these calculations. Even if these

 errors are in the region of thirty percent, I believe that the project

 is still feasible with the very limited equipment we will have available

 to us."

 "If the ancient Egyptians could do it, it will be a breeze for you,

 Sapper."

 "Kind of you to say so, major, but "breeze" is not the word I would have

 chosen."

 He turned to the drawings pegged beside the photographs on the board,

 and Royan saw that they were plans and elevations of the project based

 upon the photographs and Nicholas's estimates.

 "There are a number of different methods of dam construction, but these

 days most of them presuppose the availability of reinforced concrete and

 heavy earth-moving Al.

 equipment. I understand that we will not have the benefit of these

 modern aids."

 "Remember Taita," Nicholas exhorted him. "He did it without bulldozers."

 "On the other hand, the Egyptians probably had unlimited numbers of

 slaves at their disposal."

 "Slaves I can promise you. Or the modern equivalent thereof. Unlimited

 numbers? Well, perhaps not."

 "The more tabour you can provide, the sooner I can divert the flow of

 the river for you. We are agreed that this has to be done before the

 onset of the rainy season."

 "We have two months at the most." Nicholas dropped his flippant

 attitude. "As regards the provision of tabour, I will be relying on

 enlisting the aid of the monastic community at St. Frumentius. I am

 still working out a sound theological reason that might convince them to

 take part in the building of the dam. I don't think they will fall for

 the idea that we have discovered the site of the Holy Sepulchre in

 Ethiopia and not in Jerusalem."

 "You find me the tabour, and I will build your dam," Sapper grunted. "As

 you said earlier, the old ways are the best. It is almost certain that

 the ancients would have used a system of gabions and coffer dams to lay

 the foundations of the original dam."

 "Sorry," Royan interrupted. "Gabions? I don't have an engineering

 degree."

 "I am the one who must apologize." Sapper made a clumsy attempt at

 chivalry. "Let me show you my drawings." He turned to the board. "What

 this fellow Taita probably did was to weave huge bamboo baskets, which

 he placed in the river and filled with rock and stone. These are what we

 call gabions." He indicated the plans on the board. "After that he would

 have used rough-cut timber to build circular walls between the gabions -

 the coffer dams. These he would also have filled with stone and earth."

 "I get the general idea," Royan said, sounding dubious, "but then it is

 not really necessary for me to understand all the details."

 "Right you are!" Sapper agreed heartily. "Although the major assures me

 that there is all the timber we will need on the site, I plan to use

 wire mesh for the construction of the abions and human tabour for the

 filling of the mesh 9 nets with stone and aggregate."

 "Wire mesh?" Royan demanded. "Where do you hope to find that in the

 Abbay valley?"

 Sapper began to reply, but Nicholas forestalled him."

 will come to that in a moment. Let Sapper finish his lecture. Don't

 spoil his fun. Tell Royan about the stone from the quarry. She will

 enjoy that."

 "Although I have designed the dam as a temporary Structure, we have to

 make certain that it is capable of holding back the river long enough to

 enable the members of our team to enter the underwater tunnel in the

 downstream pool Safely-'

 "We call it Taita's pool,'Nicholas told him, and Sapper nodded.

 "We have to make sure that the dam does not burst while people are in

 there. You can imagine the consequences, should that happen."

 He was silent for a moment while he let them dwell upon the possibility.

 Royan shuddered slightly and hugged her own arms.

 "Not very pleasant," Nicholas agreed. "So you plan to use the blocks?"

 he prompted Sapper.

 "That's right. I have studied the photographs taken in the quarry. I

 have picked out over a hundred and fifty granite blocks lying there

 completed or almost completed, and I calculate that if we use these in

 combination with the steel mesh gabions and the timber coffer walls,

 this would give us a firm foundation for the main dam wall."

 "Those blocks must weigh many tons each," Royan pointed out. "How will

 you move them?" Then, as Sapper opened his mouth to explain, she changed

 her mind. "No!

 don't tell me. If you say it's possible, I will take your word for it."

 "It's possible," Sapper assured her.

 "Taita did it," Nicholas said. "We will be doing it all his way. That

 should please you. After all, he is a relative of yours."

 "You know, you are right. In a strange sort of way, it does give me

 pleasure." She smiled at him. I think it's a good omen. When does all

 this happen?".

 "It's happening already," Nicholas told her. "Sapper and I have already

 ordered all the stores and equipment that we will be taking with us.

 Even the mesh for the gabions has been precut to size by a small

 engineering firm near here. Thanks to the recession, they had machines

 standing idle."

 "I have been down there at their workshop every day, supervising the

 cutting and packing," Sapper butted in.

 "Half the shipment is already on its way. The rest of it will follow

 before the weekend."

 Sapper is leaving this afternoon to take charge and get it all loaded.

 You and I have some last-minute arrangements to see to, and then we will

 follow him at the end of the week. You must remember I was not expecting

 you back from Cairo so soon,'Nicholas said. "If I had known, I could

 have arranged for us all to fly down to Valletta together."

 "Valletta?" Royan looked mystified. "As in Malta? I thought we were

 going to Ethiopia."

 "Malta is where Jannie Badenhorst has his base."

 "Jannie who?"

 "Badenhorst. Africair."

 "Now you have really lost me."

 "Africair is an air transport company that owns one old ex-RAF Hercules,

 flown by Jannie and his son Fred. They use Malta as their base. It's a

 stable and pragmatic little no country African politics, no corruption -

 and yet it is the door to most of the destinations in the Middle East

 and in the northern half of Africa where Jannie and Fred do most of

 their work. His main employment is smuggling booze into the Islamic

 countries, where of course it is prohibited. He's the Al Capone of the

 Mediterranean.

 Bootlegging is big business in that part of the world, but he does take

 on other work. Duraid and I flew into Libya from there with Jannie on

 our little jaunt to the Tibesti Massif.

 Jannie will be taking us down to the Abbay."

 "Nicky, I don't want to be a killjoy, but you and I are now undesirable

 immigrants to Ethiopia. Had you over looked that little fact? How do you

 propose to get back in there?"

 "Through the back door," Nicholas grinned, "and my old pal Mek Nimmur is

 the gatekeeper."

 "You have been in contact with Mek?"

 "With Tessay. It seems that she is now his go'between.

 I imagine it's very convenient for Mek to have her on board. She has all

 the right connections, and she can slip in and out of Khartoum or Addis

 or places where it might be awkward or even dangerous for him to be

 seen."

 "Well, well!" Royan looked impressed. "You have been busy."

 "Not all of us can afford a holiday in Cairo whenever the fancy takes

 us," he told her tartly.

 "One more little question." She ignored the jibe, although she realized

 that despite his easy smile her absence must have irked him. "Does Mek

 know about Taita's game?"

 "Not in detail." Nicholas shook his head. "But he has some suspicions,

 and anyway I know I can rely on him." He hesitated, and then went on.

 "Tessay was very cagey when I spoke to her on the phone, but it seems

 that there has been some sort of attack on St. Frumentius monastery. Jah

 Hora. and thirty or forty of his monks were massacred, and most of the

 sacred relics from the church were stolen."

 "Oh, dear God, no!" Royan looked stricken. "Who would do a thing like

 that?"

 "The same people who murdered Duraid, and made three attempts to wipe

 you out."

 "Pegasus."

 "Von Schiller," he agreed.

 "Then we are directly responsible," Royan whispered.

 "We led them to the monastery. The Polaroids they captured from us when

 they raided our camp would have shown them the stele and the tomb of

 Tanus. Von Schiller wouldn't have to be a clairvoyant to guess where we

 had taken them. Now there is more blood on our hands."

 "Hell, Royan, how can you take responsibility for von Schiller's

 madness? I am not going to let you punish yourself for that." Nicholas's

 tone was sharp and angry.

 "We started this whole thing."

 "I don't agree with that, but I admit that von, Schiller is the one who

 must have cleaned out the maqdas of St. Frumentius and that the stele

 and the coffin are now almost certainly part of his collection."

 "Oh, Nicky, I feel so guilty. I never realized what a danger we were to

 those simple devout Christians."

 "Do you want to call off the whole thing?" he asked cruelly.

 She thought about it seriously for a while, then shook her head.

 "No. Perhaps when we go back we will be able to compensate the monks for

 their losses with what we find in the bottom of Taita's pool."

 "I hope so," he agreed fervently. "I do hope so."

 The giant Hercules -Mkl four-engined turbo, prop aircraft was painted a

 dusty nondescript brown, and the identification lettering on the

 fuselage was faded and indistinct. There was no Afticair legend

 displayed anywhere on the machine, and it had a tired and scruffy

 appearance that spoke eloquently of the fact that it was almost forty

 years old and had flown well over half a million hours even before it

 had fallen into Jannie Badenhorst's hands.

 "Does that thing still fly?" Royan asked, as she looked at it standing

 forlornly in a back corner of the Valletta airfield. Its drooping belly

 gave it the air of a sad old streetwalker who had been put out of

 business by an unexpected and unlooked-for pregnancy.

 Jannie keeps it looking that way deliberately," Nicholas assured her.

 "The places that he flies to, it's best not to draw envious eyes."

 "He certainly succeeds."

 "But both Jannie and Fred are first-rate aero-engineers, Between them

 they keep Big Dolly perfect under her engine cowlings.

 "Big Dolly?"

 "Dolly Parton. Jannie is an avid fan." The taxi dropped them and their

 meagre luggage outside the side door of the hangar, and Nicholas paid

 the driver while Royan thrust her hands -into the pockets of her anorak

 and shivered in the cold wind off the Mediterranean.

 "There's Jannie now." Nicholas pointed to the bulky figure in greasy

 brown overalls coming down the loading ramp of the Hercules. He saw them

 and jumped down off the ramp.

 "Hello, man! I was beginning to give up on you," he said as he came

 shambling across the tarmac. He looked like a rugby player, as he had

 been in his youth, and the slight limp was from an old playing-field

 injury.

 "We were late leaving Heathrow. Strike by French air traffic control.

 The joys of international travel," Nicholas told him, and then

 introduced Royan.

 "Come and meet my new secretary," Jannie invited.

 She may even give you a cup of coffee."

 He led them through a wicket in the main hangar door and into the

 cavernous interior. There was a small office cubicle beside the entrance

 with a sign over the door saying Africair' and the company logo of a

 winged battleaxe.

 Mara, Jannie's new secretary, was a Maltese lady only a few years

 younger than himself. What she lacked in youth and beauty she fully made

 up for across the chest.

 "Jannie likes them mature and with plenty of top hamper," Nicholas

 murmured to Royan from the side of his mouth.

 Mara gave them coffee, while Jannie went over his flight plan with

 Nicholas.

 "It's a little complicated," he apologized. "As you can imagine, we will

 have to do a bit of ducking and diving.

 Muammar Gadaffi is not wallowing in affection for me at the moment, so

 I' rather not overfly any of his territory.

 We will be going in through Egypt, but without landing there." He

 pointed out their flight path on the maps spread over his desk.

 "Bit of a problem over the Sudan. They are having a little civil war

 there." He winked at Nicholas. I However, the northern government are

 not equipped with the most up-to'date radar in the world. Lot of old

 Russian reject stuff. It's an enormous bit of country, and Fred and I

 have worked out their blank spots. We will be keeping well clear of

 their main military installations."

 "What's our flying time?" Nicholas wanted to know.

 Jannio pulled a face. "Big Dolly is no sprinter, and as I have just told

 you we will not be taking any short-cuts."

 "How long?"Nicholas insisted.

 "Fred and I have rigged up bunks and a kitchen, so that during the

 flight you will have all the comforts of home." He lifted his cap and

 scratched his head before he admitted, "Fifteen hours."

 "Has Big Dolly got that sort of endurance?" Nicholas wanted to know.

 "Extra tanks. Seventy-one thousand kilos of fuel. Even with the load you

 have given us, we can get there and back without refuelling." He was

 interrupted by the huge hangar doors rolling open, and a heavy truck

 being driven through. "That will be Fred and Sapper now." Jannie swigged

 the last of his coffee and hugged Mara. She giggled, and her bosom

 quivered like a snowfield on the point of an avalanche.

 The truck parked at the far end of the hangar, where. an array of

 equipment and stores was already neatly stacked, ready for loading. When

 Fred climbed down from the cab, Jannie introduced him to Royan. He was a

 younger version of the father, already beginning to spread around the

 waist, and with an open bucolic face, more like a Karroo sheep farmer

 than a commercial pilot.

 "That's the last truckload." Sapper came around the front of the truck

 and shook Nicholas's hand. "All set to begin loading."

 "I want to take off before four 'clock tomorrow morning. That will get

 us into our rendezvous at the optimum time tomorrow evening,'Jannie cut

 in. "We have a bit of work to do, if we are going to get some sleep

 before we leave." He gestured to the pallets waiting to be loaded.

 I wanted to get some of the local lads to give a hand with the loading,

 but Sapper wouldn't hear of it."

 "Quite right," Nicholas agreed, "The fewer who are in on this, the

 merrier. Let's get cracking."

 The cargo had been prepacked on the steel pallets, secured with heavy

 nylon strapping and covered with cargo netting. There were thirty-six

 loaded pallets, and the canvas packs containing the parachutes formed an

 integral part of each load. This huge Cargo would require two separate

 flights to ferry it all across to Africa.

 Royan called out the contents of each pallet from the typed manifest,

 while Nicholas checkd it against the actual load. Nicholas and Sapper

 had worked out the loads carefully to ensure that the items that would

 be required first were on the initial flight. Only when he was Certain

 that each pallet was complete in every detail id he signal to Fred, who

 was operating the forklift. Fred ran the arms into the slots of the

 pallet and lifted it, then he drove it out of the hangar and up the ramp

 of the Hercules.

 In the hold of the enormous aircraft, jannie and Sapper helped Fred to

 position each pallet precisely on the rollers and then strap it down

 securely. The last part of the cargo to go aboard was the small

 front-end-loading tractor.

 Sapper had found this in a secondhand yard in York, and after testing it

 exhaustively declared it to be a "steal'. Now he drove this up the ramp

 under its own power, and lovingly strapped it down to the rollers.

 The -tractor made up almost a third of the total weight of the entire

 shipment, but it was the one item that Sapper considered essential if

 they were to complete the earthworks for the dam in the time that

 Nicholas had stipulated.

 He had calculated that it would require a cluster of five cargo

 parachutes to get the heavy tractor back to earth without damage. Fuel

 for it would of course present a problem, and the bulk of the second

 cargo would be made up of dieseline in special nylon tanks that could

 withstand the impact of an airdrop.

 it was after midnight before the aircraft was loaded with the first

 shipment. The remaining pallets were still stacked against the hangar

 wall awaiting Big Dolly's return for the second flight. Now they could

 turn their full attention to the farewell banquet of island specialities

 that Mara had laid out for the ' in the tiny Africair office.

 "Yes," Jannie assured them, I she's also a good cook," and gave Mara a

 loving squeeze as she rested her bosom on his shoulder, leaning over him

 to refill his plate with calamari.

 "Happy landings!" Nicholas gave them the toast in red Chianti.

 "Eight hours between the throttle and the bottle," jannie apologized, as

 he drank the toast in Coca-Cola.

 They lay down their clothes to get a few hours' sleep on the bunks

 bolted to the bulkhead behind the flight deck, but it seemed to Royan

 that she was woken only a few minutes later by the quiet voices of the

 two pilots completing their pre-take-off checks, and the whine of the

 starters on the huge turbo-prop engines. As Jannie spoke on the radio to

 the control tower, and Fred taxied out to the holding point, the three

 passengers climbed out of their bunks and strapped themselves into the

 folding seats down the side of the main cabin. Big Dolly climbed into

 the night sky and the lights of the island dwindled and were swiftly

 lost behind them. Then there was only the dark sea below and the bright

 pricking of the stars above. Royan turned her head to smile at Nicholas

 in the dim overhead lights of the cabin.

 "Well, Taita, we are back on court for the final set." Her voice was

 tight with excitement.

 "The one good thing about being forced to sneak about like this is that

 Pegasus may take a while to find out that we are back in the Abbay

 gorge." Nicholas looked complacent.

 "Let's hope that you are right." Royan held up her right hand and

 crossed her fingers. "We will have enough to worry about with what Taita

 has in store for us, without Pegasus muscling in on us again just yet."

 They are on their way back to Ethiopia," said von Schiller with utter

 certainty.

 "How can we be certain of that, Herr von Schiller?" Nahoot asked.

 Von Schiller glared at him. The Egyptian irritated him intensely, and he

 was beginning to regret having employed him. Nahoot had made very little

 headway in deciphering the meaning of the engravings on the stele that

 they had taken from the monastery.

 The actual translation had offered no insurmountable problems. Von

 Schiller was convinced that he could have done this work himself,

 without Nahoot's assistance, given time and the use of his extensive

 library of reference works.

 It comprised, for the most part, nonsensical rhymes and extraneous

 couplets out of place and context. One face of the stele was almost

 completely covered by columns of letters and figures that bore no

 relation whatsoever to the text on the other three faces of the column.

 But although Nahoot would not admit it, it was clear that the underlying

 meaning behind most of this had eluded him. Von Schiller's patience was

 almost exhausted.

 He was tired of listening to Nahoot's excuses, and to promises that were

 never fulfilled. Everything about him, from his oily ingratiating tone

 of voice to his sad eyes in their deep lined sockets, had begun to annoy

 him. But especially he had come to detest his exasperating habit of

 questioning the statements that he, Gotthold von Schiller, made.

 "General Obeid was able to inform me of their exact flight arrangements

 when they left Addis Ababa. It was very simple to have my security men

 at the airport when they arrived in England. Neither Harper nor the

 woman are the kind of people that are easily overlooked, even in a

 crowd. My men followed the woman to Cairo-'

 "Excuse me, Herr von Schiller, but why did you not have her taken care

 of if you were aware of her movements?"

 "Dummkopf!" von Schiller snapped at him. "Because it now seems that she

 is much more likely to lead me to the tomb than you are."

 "But, sir, I have done-' Nahoot protested.

 you have done nothing but make up excuses for your ilure. Thanks to you,

 the stele is still an enigma,'

 own fa von Schiller interrupted him contemptuously.

 "It is very difficult-'

 "Of course it is difficult. That's why I am paying you a great deal of

 money. If it were easy I would have done it myself. If it is indeed the

 instruction to find the tomb of Mamose, then the scribe Taita meant it

 to be difficult."

 "If I am allowed a little more time, I think I am very near to

 establishing the key-'

 "You have no more time. Did you not hear what I have just told you?

 Harper is on his way back to the Abbay gorge. They flew from Malta last

 night in a chartered aircraft that was heavily loaded with cargo. My men

 were not able to establish the nature of that cargo, except that it

 included some earth-moving equipment, a front-endloading tractor. To me,

 this can mean only one thing.

 They have located the tomb, and they are returning to begin excavating

 it."

 "You will be able to get rid of them as soon as they reach the

 monastery." Nahoot relished the thought.

 "Colonel Nogo will-'

 "Why do I have to keep repeating myself?" Von Schiller's voice turned

 shrill and he slapped his hand down on the tabletop. "They are now our

 best chance of finding the tomb of Mamose. The very last thing that I

 want to happen is that any harm should come to them." He glared at

 Nahoot. "I am sending you back to Ethiopia immediately.

 Perhaps you will be of some use to me there. You are certainly no use

 here."

 Nahoot looked disgruntled, but he had better sense than to argue again.

 He sat sullenly as von Schiller went on, "You will go to the base camp

 and place yourself under the command of Helm. You will take your orders

 from him.

 Treat them as if they come directly from me. Do you understand?"

 "Yes, Herr von Schiller," Nahoot muttered sulkily.

 "Do not interfere in any way with Harper and the woman. They must not

 even know that you are at the base camp. The Pegasus geological team

 will carry on its normal duties." He paused and smiled bleakly, then

 went on, "It is most fortunate that Helm has actually discovered very

 promising evidence of large deposits of galena, which as you may know is

 the ore from which lead is obtained. He will continue the exploratory

 work on-these deposits, and if they bear out their promise they will

 make the entire operation highly profitable."

 "What exactly will be my duties?" Nahoot wanted to know.

 "You will be playing the waiting game. I want you there ready to take

 advantage of any progress- that Harper makes. However, you are to give

 him plenty of elbow room.

 You will not alert him by any overflights with the helicopter, or by

 approaching his camp. No more midnight raids.

 Every move that you make must be cleared with me before, I repeat

 before, you take any action."

 "If I am to operate under these restrictions, how will I know if Harper

 and the woman have made any progress?"

 "Colonel Nogo already has a reliable man, a spy, in the monastery. He

 will inform us of every move that Harper makes."

 "But what about me? What will be my work?"

 "You will evaluate the intelligence that Nogo collects.

 You are familiar with archaeological methods. You will be able to judge

 what Harper is trying to achieve, and you will be able to tell what

 success he is enjoying."

 "I see,'Nahoot muttered.

 "If it were possible I would have gone back to the Abbay gorge myself.

 -However, this is not possible. It may take time, months perhaps, before

 Harper makes any important progress. You know as well as anybody that

 these things take time."

 "Howard Carter worked for ten years at Thebes before he found the tomb

 of Tutankhamen," Nahoot pointed out maliciously.

 "I hope that it will not take that long," said von Schiller coldly. "If

 it does, it is very unlikely that you will still be involved with the

 search. As for myself, I have a series of very important negotiations

 coming up here in Germany, as well as the annual general meeting of the

 company. These I cannot miss."

 "You will not be coming back to Ethiopia at all, then?" Nahoot perked up

 at the prospect of escaping from von Schiller's malignant influence.

 "I will come as soon as there is something for me there.

 I will be relying on you to decide when my presence is needed."

 "What about the stele! I should-'

 "You will continue to work on the translation." Von Schiller forestalled

 his objections. "You will take a full set of photographs with you to

 Ethiopia, and you will continue your work while you are there. I shall

 expect you to report to me by satellite, at least once a week, on your

 progress."

 "When do you want me to leave?"

 ly, "Immediately. Today if that is possible. Speak to Frulein Kemper.

 She will make your travel arrangements." For the first time during the

 interview Nahoot looked happy.

 Dolly droned on steadily southeastwards, ig and there was very little to

 relieve the boredom of the flight. The dawn was just breaking when they

 crossed the African coast at a remote and lonely desert beach that

 Jannie had chosen for just this reason.

 Once they were over the land there was as little of interest to see as

 there had been over the sea. The desert stretched away, bleak and brown

 and featureless in every direction.

 At irregular intervals they heard Jannie in the cockpit speaking to air

 traffic control, but as they were able to hear only half the

 conversation they had no idea as to- the identity or the nationality of

 the station. Occasionally Jannie dropped the heavily accented English he

 was affecting and broke into Arabic. Royan was surprised by Jannie's

 fluency in the language, but then as an Afrikaner the guttural sounds

 came naturally to him. He was even able to mimic the different accents

 and dialects of Libyan and Egyptian convincingly as he tied his way

 across the desert.

 For the first few hours Sapper pored over his dam drawings; then, unable

 to proceed further until he had the exact measurements of the site, he

 curled up on his bunk with a paperback novel. The unfortunate author was

 unable to hold his attention for long. The open book sagged down over

 his face, and the pages fluttered every time he emitted a long grinding

 snore.

 Nicholas and Royan huddled on her bunk with the chessboard between them,

 until hunger overtook them and they moved to the makeshift galley. Here

 Royan took the subservient role of bread'sticer and coffee-maker, while

 Nicholas demonstrated his artistry in creating a range of Dagwood

 sandwiches. They shared the food with Jannie and Fred, perched up behind

 the pilots' seats in the cockpit.

 "Are we still over Egyptian territory?" Royan asked.

 With his mouth full, Jannie pointed out over the port wingtip of Big

 Dolly. "Fifty nautical miles out there is Wadi Halfia. My father was

 killed there in 1943. He was with the Sixth South African Division. They

 called it Wadi Hellfire." He took another monstrous bite of sandwich. "I

 never knew the old man. Fred and I landed there once.

 Tried to find his grave." He shrugged eloquently. "It's a hell of a big

 piece of country. Lots of graves. Very few of- them marked."

 Nobody spoke for a while. They chewed their sandwiches, thinking their

 own thoughts. Nicholas's father had also fought in the desert against

 Rommel. He had been more fortunate than Jannie's father.

 Nicholas glanced across at Royan. She was staring out of the window at

 her homeland, and there was something so passionate and fraught in her

 gaze that Nicholas was startled. The temptation to think of her as an

 English girl, like her mother, was at most times irresistible. It was

 only in odd moments such as these that he became intensely aware of the

 other facets of her being.

 She seemed unaware of his scrutiny. Her occupation was total. He

 wondered what she was thinking what dark and mysterious thoughts were

 smouldering there.

 He remembered how she had seized the very first opportunity on their

 return from Ethiopia to hurry back to Cairo, and once again a feeling of

 disquiet came over him. He wondered if other emotional ties of which he

 was unaware might not transcend those loyalties which he had taken for

 granted. He realized with something of a shock that they had been

 together for only a few short weeks, and despite the strong attraction

 that she exerted over him he knew very little about her.

 processor' Alost POPU

 At that moment she started and looked round at him quickly. Crowded as

 they were at the portside window, they stared into each other's eyes

 from a distance of only a foot or so. It was only for a few seconds but

 what he saw in her eyes, the dark shadows of guilt or some other

 emotion, did nothing to allay his misgivings.

 She turned back to Jannie, leaning over his shoulder to ask, "When will

 we cross the Nile?"

 "On the other side of the border. The Sudanese government concentrate

 all their attentions on the rebels in the far south. There are some

 stretches of the river here in the north that are completely deserted.

 Pretty soon now we will be going down right on the deck, to get under

 the radar pings from the Sudanese stations around Khartoum.

 We will slip through one of the gaps."

 jannie lifted the aeronautical map on its clipboard from his lap, and

 held it so she could see it. With one thick, stubby finger he showed

 Royan their intended route.

 it was drawn in with blue wax pencil, "Big Dolly has taken this route so

 often that she could fly it without my hands on the stick, couldn't you,

 old girl?" He patted the instrument panel affectionately.

 Two hours later, when Nicholas and Royan were back at the chess board in

 the main cabin, Janrfie called them on the PA, "Okay, folks. No need to

 panic. We are going to lose some altitude now. Come up front and watch

 the show."

 Strapped into fold-down seats in the back of the flight deck, they were

 treated to a superb exhibition of low flying by Fred. The descent was so

 rapid that Royan felt they were about to fall out of the sky, and that

 she had left her stomach back there somewhere at thirty thousand feet.

 Fred levelled Big Dolly out only feet above the desert floor, so low

 that it was like riding in a high-speed bus rather than flying. Fred

 lifted her delicately over each undulation of the tawny, sun'scorched

 terrain, skimming the black rock ridges and standing on a wingtip to

 swerve around the occasional wind-blasted hill.

 "Nile crossing in seven and a half minutes." jannie punched, the

 stopwatch fixed to the control wheel in front of him. "And unless my

 navigation has gone all to hell there should be an island shaped like a

 shark directly under us as we cross."

 As the needle of the stopwatch came up to the mark, the broad,

 glittering expanse of the river flashed beneath them. Royan caught a

 brief glimpse of a green island with a few thatched huts on the tip, and

 a dozen dugout canoes lying on the narrow beach.

 "Well, the old man hasn't lost his touch yet," Fred remarked. "Still

 good for a few thousand miles before we trade him in."

 "Not so much of the old man stuff, you little squirt. I have some tricks

 up my sleeve that I haven't even used yet."

 "Ask Mara." Fred grinned affectionately at his father as he banked on to

 a new southwesterly heading, and with his wingtip so close to the ground

 that he scattered a herd of camels feeding in the sparse thorn scrub.

 They lumbered away across the plain, each trailing a wisp of white dust

 like a wedding train.

 "Another three hours' flying time to the rendezvous." Jannie looked up

 from the map. "Spot on! We should land forty minutes before sunset.

 Couldn't be better,'

 "I' better go back and change into my hiking gear, then." Royan went

 back into the main cabin, pulled her bag from under the bunk and

 disappeared into the lavatory. When' she emerged twenty minutes later

 she wore khaki culottes and a cotton top.

 "These boots were made for walking." She stamped them on the deck.

 "That's fine." Nicholas watched her from the bunk.

 "But how about that knee?"

 t vopuiuj ProcesV

 "It will get me there," she said, defensively.

 "You mean I am to be deprived of the pleasure of back acking you again?"

 The Ethiopian mountains came up so subtly on the eastern horizon that

 Royan was not aware of them until Nicholas pointed out to her the faint

 blue outline against the brighter blue of the African sky.

 "Almost there." He glanced at his wrist-watch. "Let's go up to the

 flight deck."

 Looking forward through the windshield there was no landmark ahead of

 them - just the vast brown savannah, speckled with the black dots of

 acacia trees.

 "Ten minutes to go," Jannie intoned. "Anyone see anything?" There was no

 reply, and they all stared ahead.

 "Five minutes."

 "Over there!" Nicholas pointed over his shoulder.

 4 "That's the course of the Blue Nile." A denser grove of thorn trees

 formed a dark line far ahead. "And there is the smokestack of the

 derelict sugar'mill on the river bank.

 Mek Nimmur says that the airstrip is about three miles from the mill."

 "Well, if it is, it's not shown, on the chart," Jannie grumbled. "One

 minute before we are on the coordinates."

 The minute ticked off slowly on the stopwatch.

 "Still nothing-' Fred broke off as a red flare shot up from the earth

 directly ahead and flashed past Big Dolly's JI nose. Everyone in the

 cockpit smiled and relaxed with relief.

 "Right on the nose." Nicholas patted Jannie's shoulder in

 congratulations. "Couldn't have done better myself."

 Fred climbed a few hundred feet and came round in a one-eighty turn. Now

 there were two signa I fires burning out there on the plain - one with

 black smoke,, the other sending a column of white straight up into the

 still evening sky. It was only when they were a kilometer out that they

 were able to make out the faint outline of the overgrown and

 long'disused landing strip. Roseires airstrip had been built twenty

 years before by a company that tried to grow sugar cane under irrigation

 from the Blue Nile. But Africa had won again and the company had passed

 into oblivion, leaving this feeble scrape mark on the plain as its

 epitaph.

 Mek Nimmur had chosen this remote and deserted place for the rendezvous.

 "No sign of a reception committee," Jannie grunted.

 "What do you want me to do?"

 "Continue your approach," Nicholas told him. "There should be another

 flare - ah, there it is!" The ball of fire shot up from a clump of thorn

 trees at the far end -of the runway, and for the first time they were

 able to make out human figures in the bleak landscape. They had stayed

 hidden until the very last moment.

 "That's Mek, all right! Go ahead and land."

 As Big Dolly finished her roll-out and the end of the rough and pitted

 runway came up ahead, a figure in camouflage fatigues popped up ahead of

 them. With a pair of paddles it signalled them to taxi into the space

 between two of the tallest thorn trees.

 Jannie cut the engines and grinned at them over his shoulder. "Well,

 boys and girls, looks like we pulled off another lucky one!'

 Then from the height of Big Dolly's-cockpit there was no mistaking the

 commanding figure of Mek Nimmur as he emerged from the cover of the

 clump of acacia trees. Only now did they realize that the trees had been

 shrouded with camouflage netting; this was why they had not been able to

 spot any sign of human presence from the air. As soon as the loading

 ramp was lowered, Mek Nimmur came striding up it.

 "Nicholas! They embraced and, after Mek had kissed him noisily on each

 cheek, he held Nicholas at arm's was proce Wolrlc, length and studied

 his face, delighted to see him again. "So I was right! You are up to

 your old tricks. Not simply a dikdik shoot, was it?"

 "How can I lie to an old friend?"Nicholas shrugged.

 Hell' "It always came easy to you," Mek laughed, "but I am lad we are

 going to have some fun together. Life has been very boring recently."

 "I bet!'Nicholas punched his shoulder affectionately.

 A slim, graceful figure followed Mek up the ramp. In the olive-green

 fatigues Nicholas hardly recognized Tessay until she spoke. She wore

 canvas para boots and a cloth cap that made her look like a boy.

 "Nicholas! Royan! Welcome back!" Tessay cried. The two women embraced as

 enthusiastically as the men had done.

 "Come on, you Ous!" Jannie protested. "This isn't Woodstock. I have to

 get back to Malta tonight. I want to take off before dark."

 Swiftly Mek took charge of the offloading. His men swarmed aboard and

 manhandled the pallets forward on the rollers, while Sapper started up

 his beloved front-end loader and used it to run the cargo down the ramp

 and stack it in the acacia grove under the camouflage netting.

 With so many hands to help it went swiftly, and Big Dolly's hold was

 emptied just as the sun settled wearily on to the horizon, and the short

 African twilight bled all colour from the landscape.

 Jannie and Nicholas had one last hurried discussion in the cockpit while

 Fred completed his flight checks. They went over the plans and radio

 procedures one last time.

 Four days from today," Jannie agreed, as they shook hands briefly.

 "Let the man go, Nicholas," Mek bellowed from below.

 "We must get across the border before dawn."

 They watched Big Dolly taxi down to the end of the strip and swing

 around. The engine beat crescendoed as she came tearing back in a long

 rolling shroud of dust and lifted off over their heads. Jannie waggled

 his wings in farewell and, without navigation lights showing, the great

 aircraft blended like a black bat into the darkening sky and disappeared

 almost immediately.

 "Come here." Nicholas led Royan to a seat under the acacia. "I don't

 want that knee to play up again." He pushed her culottes halfway up. her

 thigh and strapped the knee wit han elastic bandage, trying not to make

 his pleasure in this task too apparent. He was pleased to see that the

 bruising had almost faded and there was no longer any swelling.

 He palpated it gently. Her skin was velvety and the flesh beneath it

 firm and warm to the touch. He looked up, and from the expression on her

 face realized that she was enjoying this intimacy as much'as he was. As

 he caught her eye she flushed slightly, and quickly smoothed down her

 culottes.

 She jumped up and said, "Tessay and I have a lot of catching up to do,'

 and hurried across to join her.

 I am leaving a full combat platoon to guard your stores here," Mek

 explained to Nicholas as Tessay led Royan away. "We will travel in a

 very small party as far as the border. I don't expect any trouble. There

 is very little enemy activity this sector at the moment. Lots of

 fighting in the south, but we are quiet here. That is why I chose this

 rendezvous."

 "How far to the Ethiopian border?"Nicholas wanted to know.

 "Five hours' march," Mek told him. "We will slip through one of our

 pipelines after the moon has set. The rest of my men are waiting in the

 entrance to the Abbay gorge. We should rendezvous with them before dawn

 tomorrow."

 "And from there to the monastery?"

 "Another two days' march," Mek replied. "We will be there just in time

 to receive the drop from your fat friend in the fat plane."

 He turned away and gave his last orders to the platoon commander who

 would remain at Roseires to guard the stores. Then he assembled the

 party of six men who would form their escort across the border. Mek

 divided up the loads between them. The most important single item was

 the radio, a modern military lightweight model which Nicholas carried

 himself.

 "Those bags of yours are too difficult to carry. You will have to repack

 them," Mek told Nicholas and Royan. So they emptied their bags and

 stuffed the contents into the two canvas haversacks that Mek had ready

 for them. Two of his men slung the haversacks over their shoulders and

 disappeared into the darkness.

 "He is not taking thatV Mek stared aghast at the bulky legs of the

 theodolite that Sapper had retrieved from one of the pallets. Sapper

 spoke no Arabic, so Nicholas had to translate.

 "Sapper says that it is a delicate instrument. He cannot allow it to be

 dropped from the aircraft. He says that if it is damaged he will not be

 able to do the work he was hired for."

 "Who is going to carry it?" Mek demanded. "My men will mutiny if I try

 to make them do it."

 "Tell the cantankerous bugger that I will carry it myself." Sapper drew

 himself up with dignity. "I wouldn't let one of his great clumsy oafs

 lay a finger on it." He picked up the bundle, placed it over his

 shoulder and stalked away with "a stiff back.

 Mek let the advance guard have a five-minute start, and then he nodded.

 "We can go now."

 Thirty minutes after Big Dolly had taken off, they left the airfield and

 set out across the dark and silent plain, headed into the east. Mek set

 a hard pace. He and Nicholas seemed to have the eyes of a pair of cats,

 Royan thought, as she followed close behind them. They could see in the

 darkness, and only a whispered warning from one of them prevented her

 falling into a hole or tripping over a pile of rocks in the darkness.

 When she did stumble, Nicholas seemed always to be there, reaching back

 to steady her with a strong, firm grip.

 They marched in complete and disciplined silence. It was only every

 hour, when they rested for five minutes, that Nicholas and Mek sat close

 together, and from the few quiet words she picked up Royan realized that

 Nicholas was explaining to him the full reasons for their return to the

 Abbay gorge. She heard Nicholas repeat the names "Mamose' and "Taita'

 often, and Mek's deep voice questioning him at length. Then they would

 be up again and moving forward in the night.

 After a while she lost all sense of the distance they had travelled.

 Only the hourly rest periods orientated her to the passage of time.

 Fatigue crept over her slowly, until it required an effort to lift her

 foot for each pace. Despite her boast, her knee was beginning to ache.

 Now and then she felt Nicholas touch her arm, guiding her over the rough

 places. At other times they would stop abruptly at some whispered

 warning from up front. Then they would stand quietly waiting in the

 darkness, nerves tensed, until at another whisper they would move on

 again at the same pressing pace. Once she smelt the cool muddy effluvium

 of the river on the dry warm night air, and she knew that they must be

 very close to the Nile. Without a word being spoken she sensed the

 nervous tension in the men ahead of her, and was aware of the alertness

 in the way they carried themselves and their weapons.

 "Crossing the border now," Nicholas breathed close to her face, and the

 tension was infectious. She forgot her tiredness, and heard her pulse

 beating in her own ears.

 This time they did not stop for the usual rest break, but continued for

 another hour until slowly she felt the mood of the men changing. Someone

 laughed softly, and there was a tightness in their pace as they swung on

 towards the luminescence in the eastern sky. Abruptly the moon thrust

 its crescent horns above the dark silhouette of faroff mountain ranges.

 "All clear. We are through," Nicholas told her in his normal voice.

 "Welcome back to Ethiopia. How are you feeling?"

 "I' okay."

 "I am tired too." He grinned at her in the moonlight.

 "Pretty soon we will camp and rest. Not much further."

 He was lying, of course- the march went on and on until she wanted to

 weep. And then suddenly she heard the sound of the river again, the soft

 rushing flow of the Nile in the dawn. Up ahead she heard Mek talking to

 the men who were waiting for them, and then Nicholas guided her off the

 path and made her sit while he knelt in front of her and unlaced her

 boots.

 "You did well. I am proud of you," he told her, as he stripped off her

 socks and examined her feet for blisters.

 Then he unbandaged the knee. It was slightly swollen, and he massaged it

 with a skilled and tender touch.

 She sighed softly, "Don't stop. That feels good."

 "I'll give you a Brufen for the inflammation." He dug the pills out of

 his pack and then spread his padded jacket AI for her to lie on. "Sorry,

 the sleeping bags are with our other gear. Have to rough it until Jannie

 makes his air drop."

 He passed her the water bottle, and while she swallowed the pill he

 pulled the tab on a pack of emergency rations. "Not exactly gourmet fare

 He sniffed the contents.

 "In the army we call them rat packs." She fell asleep with her mouth

 still halffilled with tasteless meat loaf and plastic cheese.

 When Nicholas woke her with a mug of hot sweet tea, she saw it was

 already late afternoon. He sat beside her and sipped at his own mug,

 noisily blowing away the steam between each mouthful.

 "You will be pleased to know that Mek is now fully in the picture. He

 has agreed to help us."

 "What have you told him?"

 "Just enough to keep him interested."Nicholas grinned.

 "The theory of progressive disclosure. Never tell everything all at

 once, feed it to them a little at a time. He knows what we are looking

 for, and that we are going to dam a river."

 hat about men to work on the dam?"

  monks at St. Frumentius will do whatever he tells them. He is a great

 hero."

 "What have you promised him in return?"

 "We haven't got round to that yet. I told him that we have no idea what

 we are going to find, and he laughed and said he would trust me."

 "Silly boy, isn't he?"

 "Not exactly how I would describe Mek Nimmur," he murmured. "I think

 when the time is ripe he will let us know what the price of his

 cooperation is." He looked up at that moment. "We were just talking

 about you, Mek."

 Mek strode up to them, and then squatted on his haunches beside

 Nicholas.

 "What were you saying about me

 "Royan says you are a hard bastard, pushing er on a forced march all

 night."

 "Nicholas is spoiling you. I have been watching him fussing over you,'

 he chuckled. "What I say is, treat them rough. Women love it." Then he

 grew serious. "I am sorry, Royan. The border is always a bad place. You

 will find me less of a monster now we are on home ground."

 "We are very grateful for all you are doing." He inclined his head

 gravely, "Nicholas is an old friend, and I hope that you are a new

 friend."

 "I have been terribly distressed. Tessay told me last night that there

 had been trouble at the monastery."

 Mek scowled and tugged at his short beard, pulling a tuft of hair from

 his own chin with the force of his anger.

 "Nogo and his killers. This is just a sample of what we are fighting

 against. We have been rescued from the tyranny of Mengistu, only to be

 plunged into fresh horror."

 "What happened, MA?"

 Speaking tersely but vividly, he described the massacre and the plunder

 of the monastery's treasures. "There was no doubt it was Nogo. Every one

 of the monks that escaped knows him well."

 His anger was too fierce for him to contain, and he stood up abruptly.

 "The monastery means much to all the people of the Gojam. I was

 christened there, by Jali Hora himself. The murder of the abbot and the

 desecration of the church is a terrible outrage." He jammed his cap

 down, on his head. "And now we must get on. The road ahead is steep and

 difficult.

 Now that they were clear of the border, it was safe to move in daylight.

 The second day's march carried them into the depths of the orge. There

 were no foothills: it was like entering through the keep of a vast

 castle. The walls of the great central massif rose up almost four

 thousand feet on either hand, and the river snaked along in the depths,

 its entire length churned by rapids and breaking white water. At noon

 Mek broke the march to rest in a grove of trees beside the river.

 There was a beach below them, sheltered by massive boulders which must

 have rolled down from the cliffs that hung like a rampart above them.

 The five of them sat a little apart from each other.

 Sapper was still smarting from his altercation over the theodolite with

 Mek, and keeping himself aloof. He placed the heavy instrument in a

 conspicuous position and sat ostentatiously close to it. Mek and Tessay

 seemed strangely quiet and withdrawn, until suddenly Tessay reached out

 and grasped Mek's hand..

 I want to tell them, she blurted out impulsively.

 Mek looked away at the river for a moment before he nodded. "Why not?"

 he shrugged at last.

 "I want them to know," Tessay insisted. "They knew Boris. They will

 understand."

 "Do you.,want me to tell them?" Mek asked softly, and he was still

 holding her hand.

 "Yes," she nodded, "it is best that it comes from you." Mek was silent

 for a while, gathering his words, and then he started in that low

 rumbling voice, not looking at them, but watching Tessay's face. "The

 very first moment I looked upon this woman, I knew that she was the one

 that God had sent my way."

 Tessay moved closer to him.

 "Tessay and I said our vows together on the night of Timkat and asked

 for God's forgiveness, and then I took man."

 her away as my wo She laid her head upon his great muscular shoulder.

 "The Russian followed us. He found us here, on this very spot. He tried

 to kill us both."

 Tessay looked down at the beach upon which she and Mek had so nearly

 died, and she shuddered at the memory.

 "We fought," he said simply, "and when he was dead, I sent his body

 floating away down the river."

 "We knew he was dead," Royan told them. "We heard from the people at the

 embassy that the police found his body downstream, near the border. We

 didn't know how it had happened."

 They were all quiet for a while, and then Nicholas broke the silence, "I

 wish I had been there to watch. It must have been one hell of a fight.

 He shook his head in awe.

 "The Russian was good. I am glad I don't have to fight him again," Mek

 admitted, and stood up. "We can reach the monastery before dark, if we

 start now."

 ai Metemma, the newly elected abbot of St. Frumentius, met them on the

 terrace of the monastery overlooking the river. He was only a little

 younger than Jah Hora had been, tall and with a dignified silver head,

 and today he was wearing the blue crown in honour of such a

 distinguished guest as Mek

 After the visitors had bathed and rested for an hour in the cells that

 had been set aside for them, the monks came to lead them to the welcome

 feast that had been prepared.

 When the tej flasks had been refilled for the third time, and the mood

 of the abbot and of his monks had mellowed, Mek began to whisper into

 the old man's ear.

 "You recall the history of St. Frumentius - how God cast him up on our

 shore from the storm-tossed sea, so that he might bring the true faith

 to us?"

 The abbot's eyes filled with tears. "His holy body was entombed here, in

 our nwqdas. The barbarians came and stole the relic away from us. We are

 children without a father. The reason for the building of this church

 and monastery has been taken away," he lamented. "No longer will the

 pilgrims come from every corner of Ethiopia to i pray at his shrine. We

 will be forgotten by the Church. We are undone. Our monastery will

 perish and our monks will be blown away like dead leaves on the wind."

 "When St. Frumentius came to Ethiopia he was not alone. Another

 Christian came with him from the High Church in Byzantium," Mek reminded

 him in a soft, soothing rumble.

 "St. Antonia." The abbot reached for his tei flask to allay the

 intensity of his sorrow.

 Mek agreed. "He died before St. Frumen "St. Antonia tius, but he was no

 less holy than his brother."

 "St. Antonia was also a great and holy man, deserving of our love and

 veneration." The abbot took a long swallow from the flask.

 "The ways of God are mysterious, are they not?" Mek shook his head at

 the wonder of the workings of the universe.

 "His ways are deep and not for us to question or understand., "And yet

 he is compassionate, and he rewards the devout."

 "He is all'compassionate." The abbot's tears overflowed and ran down his

 cheeks.

 "You and your monastery have suffered a grievous loss.

 The sacred relic of St. Frumentius has been taken from you alas, never

 to be recovered. But what if God were to send you another? What if he

 were to send you the sacred body of St. Antonia?"

 The abbot looked up through his tears, his expression suddenly

 calculating. That would be a miracle indeed."

 Mek Nimmur placed his arm around the old man's shoulders and whispered

 quietly in his ear, and Mai Metemma stopped weeping and listened

 intently.

 have obtained your workers for you," Mek told Nicholas as they began the

 march up the valley the next morning. "Mai Metemma has promised to give

 us a hundred men within two days and another five hundred to follow them

 within the next week. He is handing out indulgences to all those who

 volunteer to work on the dam. They will be spared the fires of purgatory

 if they take part in such a glorious project as the recovery of the holy

 relic of St. Antonia."

 Both the women stopped in their tracks and stared at him.

 "What did you promise the poor old man?" Tessay demanded.

 "A body to replace the one that Nogo plundered from the church. If we do

 discover the tomb, then the monastery's share will be the mummy of

 Mamose."

 "That's a mean thing to do,"

 A Royan exploded. "You will cheat him into helping us."

 "It is not a cheat." Mek's dark eyes flashed at the accusation. "The

 relic that they lost was not the veritable body of St. Frumentius, and

 yet for hundreds of years it served the purpose of uniting the community

 of monks and drawing Christians from all over this land. Now that it is

 gone, the very existence of the monastery is threatened.

 They have lost their reason for continuing."

 "So you are tempting them with a false promiseP Royan was still angry.

 "The body of Mamose is every bit as authentic as the one they lost. What

 does it matter if it is the body of an ancient Egyptian rather than that

 of an ancient Christian, just as long as it serves as a focus for the

 faith and if it is the means by which the monastery might survive for

 another five hundred years?"

 "I think Mek is making sense." Nicholas gave his opinion.

 "Since when have you been an expert in Christianity?

 You are an atheist," Royan flashed at him, and he held up his hands as

 if to ward off a blow.

 "You are right. What do I know about it anyway?

 You argue it out with Mek. I am going to discuss the theory of

 dam-building with Sapper Webb." He sauntered up to the head of the file

 of men and fell in beside his engineer.

 From time to time he heard heated voices raised behind him, and he

 grinned. He knew Mek, but he was also beginning to understand the lady.

 It would be fascinating to see who would win this argument.

 They reached the head of the chasm in the middle of the afternoon, and

 while Mek 6.. searched out a campsite Nicholas took Sapper immediately

 to the narrow neck of the river just above where it plunged over the

 waterfall. While Sapper set up the theodolite, Nicholas took the

 graduated levelling staff.

 Sapper ordered him up and down the face of the cliff with peremptory

 hand signals, all the while peering into the lens of the theodolite,

 while Nicholas teetered on insecure footing and tried to keep the staff

 upright for Sapper to take his sightings.

 "Okay!" Sapper bellowed, after taking his twentieth shot. "Now I want

 you on the other side of the river."

 Tine!" Nicholas bellowed back. "Do you want me to fly or swim?"

 Nicholas hiked three miles upstream to the ford where the trail crossed

 the Dandera river, and then fought his way back through the tangled

 river in undergrowth to the point on the bank opposite which Sapper lay

 in the shade smoking a soothing cigarette.

 "Don't rupture yourself, will you?" Nicholas yelled across the water at

 him.

 It was almost dark before Sapper had made all the shots he wanted, and

 Nicholas was still faced with the long return trip over the ford. He

 covered the last mile in almost total darkness, guided only by the

 flicker of the campfires.

 Wearily he stumbled into the camp and flung down the levelling staff.

 "You had beer tell me that it was worth it," he tt growled at Sapper,

 who did not look up from his slide rule.

 He was working over his revised drawings by the glaring light of a small

 butane lantern.

 Most Populiir VPIL

 "You weren't too far out in your estimates," he congratulated Nicholas.

 "The river is forty'one yards wide at the critical point above the

 falls, where I want to site the structure."

 "All I want to know is if you will be able to throw a dam across it."

 Sapper grinned and laid his finger down the side of his nose, "You get

 me my ruddy front-ender, and I'll dam the bleeding Nile itself."

  had eaten their dinner - another of the packs - Royan glanced across

 the fire at cholas. -When she caught his eye she inclined her head in

 invitation. Then she stood up and casually drifted out of camp, looking

 back once to make sure he was following her. Nicholas lighted the path

 with his torch as they picked their way back to the dam site and found a

 boulder overlooking the water on which to sit.

 He switched off the torch and they were silent for a while as their eyes

 adjusted to the starlight, and then Royan whispered, "There were times

 that I thought we would never return here - that it was all a dream, and

 that Taita's pool never existed."

 "For us perhaps it never will, without the help of the monks from the

 monastery." There was a note of enquiry in his voice.

 "You and Mek Nimmur win," she chuckled softly. "Of course we have to

 accept their help. Mek's arguments were very convincing."

 "So you agree that their reward should be the mummy of Mamose?"

 "I agree that they may take whatever mummy we discover, if we discover

 one at all," she qualified. "For all we know, the true mummy of Mamose

 may be the one that Nogo stole."

 Quite naturally he slipped his arm around her shoulders, and after a

 moment she relaxed against him. -oh, Nicky, I am afraid and excited.

 Afraid that all our hopes are vain, and excited that we might have found

 the key to Taita's game." She turned her face to his, and he felt her

 breath on his lips.

 He kissed her, tenderly. Then he drew back with the warmth of her

 lingering on his lips and studied her face in the starlight. She made no

 movement to pull away from stead she swayed towards him, and kissed him

 back., him. In At first it was a staid sisterly kiss, with her mouth

 tightly losed. He brought his right hand up behind her head and weaved

 his fingers into her hair, holding her face to his.

 He opened his mouth over hers, and she made a little sound of dissent

 through her closed lips.

 Slowly, voluptuously, he worked her lips apart, and her protests died

 away as he probed her mouth deely with his tongue. She was making a

 contented little mewling sound now, like a kitten nursing on the teat,

 and her arms went around him. She kneaded his back with strong supple

 fingers, her mouth wide open to his kiss, her tongue sinuous and

 slippery as it twined around his.

 He slid his other hand up between their bodies and unhooked the buttons

 of her shirt down as low as her belt.

 She leaned back slightly in his embrace to make it easier for him. With

 a delicious shock he discovered that her breasts were naked under the

 thin cotton shirt. He cupped one of them in his hand: it was small and

 firm, only just filling his hand. When he pinched the nipple gently , it

 stiffened between his fingers like a tiny ripe strawberry.

 He broke off the kiss and bowed his head to her bosom.

 She moaned softly, and with one hand guided him down.

 When he sucked her nipple into his mouth she gasped and hooked the nails

 of her other hand into his back, like a cat responding to a caress. Her

 whole body undulated in his embrace, and after a while she pulled his

 mouth away. He thought for a moment that she was rejecting him, but then

 she moved his head across and placed her other nipple in his mouth. Once

 again she gasped as he sucked it in.

 Her movements became mote abandoned, keeping pace with his own arousal.

 He could restrain himself no longer and he reached up under her khaki

 culottes and laid his hand on the plump mound of her sex. Then with one

 swift lithe movement she broke away and sprang to her feet. She stood

 back from him, smoothing down her culottes and buttoning her shirt with

 fingers that trembled

 "I am so sorry, Nicky. I want to, oh God, you will never know how much I

 want to. But-' she shook her head and she was panting wildly, "not yet.

 Please, Nicky, forgive me. I am caught between two worlds. One half of

 me wants this so very much but the other half will not allow me He stood

 up and kissed her chastely. "There is no hurry. Good things are worth

 waiting for," he told her with his mouth just touching hers. "Come! I

 will take you home now."

 while it was still dark the next morning, the first levy of priests that

 Mai Metemma had promised came filing up the valley. Their chanting awoke

 the camp, and everyone came sleepily out of their thatched lean-to

 shelters to welcome the Ion column of holy men.

 "Sweet heavens," Nicholas yawned, "it looks as though we have started

 another crusade. They must have left the monastery in the middle of the

 night to get here at this hour." He went to find Tessay, and when he did

 he told her, "You are hereby appointed official translator. Sapper

 speaks not a word of either Arabic or Amharic. Stick close to him."

 As soon as it was fully light, Mek and Nicholas left camp to reconnoitr

 the drop site. By noon they had agreed that there was only one

 possibility: they would have to use the valley itself Compared to the

 rocky ridges that surrounded them, the floor of the valley was level and

 fairly free of obstructions. It was imperative that the drop should take

 place as close to the dam site as possible, for every mile that the

 stores must be manhandled would add immeasurably to the time and effort

 needed for the work.

 "Time is the major factor," Nicholas told Mek as they stood in the

 chosen drop zone the following morning.

 "Every day counts from now until the rains break."

 Mek looked up at the sky. "Pray God for late rains." They marked out

 their drop site a mile down from the river, along the stretch where the

 valley was widest and there was a clear approach through a gap in the

 hills.

 Jannie would need to fly straight and level for five miles under full

 flap and with the loading ramp down.

 "Cutting it fine," Mek remarked, as they surveyed the rugged slopes and

 frowning peaks that surrounded them.

 "Can your fat friend fly?"

 "Fly? He is half-bird,'Nicholas told him.

 They moved down the valley to check the placement of the flares and the

 markers, The markers consisted of crosses of quartz stones laid out down

 the centre of the valley floor, and they would be highly visible from

 the air.

 Sapper was up at the head of the valley. They could see him there on the

 skyline as he moved around, setting out his smoke flares to mark the

 approach to the drop zone.

 When Nicholas turned around and looked in the opposite direction, he

 could see the two women sitting on a rock together at the far end of the

 valley. Sapper had already helped them to set up their flares. These

 would mark the far limit of the zone, and give Jannie a mark for his

 climb out of the valley.

 Nicholas then turned his attention back to Mek's men as they finished

 laying out the stark white quartz markers.

 Once these were all in place, Mek ordered the area to be cleared. Then,

 lugging the radio, they climbed up to join Sapper on the high ground at

 the head of the valley. Mek helped Nicholas string out the aerial. Then

 Nicholas switched on and adjusted the gain carefully before he thumbed

 the microphone.

 "Big Dolly. Come in, Big Dolly!'Nicholas invited, but the static hummed

 and whined.

 "They must be running late." Nicholas tried not to let his disquiet

 show. Jannie will be coming straight in from Malta on this run. After

 the first drop he will go back to your base at Roseires and pick up the

 second load. With luck, both loads should all be dropped before noon

 tomorrow.

 "If the fat man comes at all," Mek remarked.

 Jannie is a pro," Nicholas grunted. "He will come." He held the

 microphone to his lips, "Big Dolly. Do you read?

 Over."

 Every ten minutes he called -out into the empty echoing silence. Each

 time his call went unanswered he had visions of Sudanese MiG

 interceptors racing in with their missiles cocked and locked, and the

 old Hercules plunging earthwards in flames.

 "Come in, Big Dolly!" he pleaded, and at last a thin, scratchy voice

 floated into his headset. "Pharaoh. This is Big Dolly. ETA forty-five

 minutes. Standing by." Jannie's transmission was terse. He was too much

 of an old hand at the smuggling game to give a hostile listener time to

 fix his position.

 "Big Dolly. Understand four five. Pharaoh standing by." Nicholas grinned

 at Mek. "Looks like we are in business after all."

 Mek heard it first. His ear was battle-tuned. In this i land, if you

 wanted to go on living it paid to pick up any aircraft long before it

 arrived. Nicholas was out of training, so it was almost five minutes

 later that he picked up the distinctive drone of the multi-props echoing

 weirdly off the Cliffs of the gorge. It was impossible to be certain of

 the direction, but they shaded their eyes and stared into the west.

 "There she is." Nicholas redeemed himself as he spotted the tiny dark

 speck, so low as almost to blend into the background of the escarpment

 wall. He nodded at Sapper.

 Sapper ran out to his flares and fussed over them briefly. When he

 backed away they bloomed into clouds of dense marigold-yellow smoke that

 drifted out sluggishly on the light breeze. The smoke would give Jannie

 the strength and direction of the wind, as well as his orientation for

 the drop zone.

 Nicholas lifted his binoculars and gazed towards the other end of the

 narrow valley. He saw that Royan and Tessay were busy with their flares.

 Suddenly crimson smoke billowed from them, and the women ran back to

 their original position and stood staring up at the sky.

 Nicholas called softly into the microphone. "Big Dolly.

 Smoke is up. Do you have it visual?"

 "Affirmative. You are visual. For what you are about to receive may you

 be truly thankful." Jannie's South African accent was unmistakable as he

 uttered the cheerful blasphemy.

 They watched the aircraft grow in size until its wings seemed to fill

 half the sky, and then its profile altered as the great wing flaps

 dropped and the ramp below its belly drooped open. Big Dolly slowed her

 flight so dramatically that she seemed to hang suspended on an invisible

 thread from the high African sun. Slowly she came around, banking

 steeply as Jannie tined her up on the smoke flares, dropping lower and

 still lower, headed directly at where they stood.

 With a savage roar that made all three of them duck, she passed so low

 over their heads that it seemed she would wipe them off the crest.

 Nicholas had a glimpse of Jannie upwarliov peering down at him from the

 cockpit, a fat smile on his face and one hand raised in a laconic wave,

 and then he was past.

 Nicholas straightened up and watched Big Dolly sweep majestica Ily down

 the centre of the valley. The first pallet dropped out of her and

 plunged earthwards, until at the last moment its parachutes burst open

 like a bride's bouuet. The fall of the heavy container was arrested

 abruptly.

  It. dangled and swung, and seconds later struck the floor of the valley

 in a cloud of yellow dust and with a crash they could hear up on the

 ridge. Then two more loads dropped from her, and they too hung for a

 moment on their chutes before they slammed in.

 Big Dolly's engines howled under full throttle and her nose lifted as

 she bored for height while she passed over the crimson smoke clouds, and

 then climbed out of the deadly trap of the valley. She came round in

 another wide turn and lined up for the second run. Once again the

 pallets dropped out of her as she roared over the quartz markers and

 then climbed out over the end wall of the valley, skimming the rocky

 spikes that would have clawed her down.

 Six times Jannie repeated the dangerous manoeuvre, and each time he

 dropped three of the heavy rectangular loads. They lay strewn down the

 length of the valley, shrouded by the tumbled white silk of their own

 parachutes.

 As Jannie climbed away from the last pass, his voice echoed in

 Nicholas's earphones. "Don't go away, Pharaoh!

 I will be back." Then Big Dolly lifted her belly ramp like an old lady

 hoisting her knickers and headed away westwards.

 Nicholas and Mek ran down into the valley, where the monks were already

 jabbering and laughing. around the pallets. Quickly the two of them took

 control, sorting the men into gangs and directing them as they broke

 down the loads and carried them away.

 Nicholas and Sapper had planned that the pallets should be dropped in

 the order that their contents would be needed. The first pallet

 contained canned and dried food, all their personal effects and camping

 equipment, along with those other little creature comforts that Nicholas

 had allowed, including mosquito nets and a case of malt whisky. He was

 relieved to see that there was no leakage from the precious case: not

 one of the bottles had been broken in the drop.

 Sapper took charge of the building material and heavy equipment. With

 Tessay relaying his orders, it was dragged and manhandled away to the

 ancient quarry where it would be packed and stored until needed on site.

 Darkness fell with More than half the pallets still not unpacked, lying

 where they had fallen. Mek placed an armed guard over them, and they all

 traipsed wearily back up the valley to the camp.

 That night, with a dram of whisky and a decent meal warming his belly, a

 mosquito net over his head and a thick foam mattress under him, Nicholas

 drifted off to sleep with a smile on his face. They were off to a good

 start.

 The chanting of the monks at their matins woke him, "We won't need an

 alarm clock here," he groaned, and staggered down to the river to wash

 and shave.

 As the sun gilded the battlements of the escarpment, he and Mek were

 already at their post on the heights, searching the western sky. The

 plan had been for Jannie to spend the night at Roseires, while Mek's men

 assisted him with the loading of the cargo they had stored-there on

 their first flight out from Malta. This was one of the vulnerable stages

 of the operation. Although Mek had assured them that there was little

 military presence in the area at the moment, it needed only a stray

 Sudanese government patrol to stumble on Big, Dolly while she was on the

 ground to plunge them all into disaster. So it was with a leap of the

 heart that they heard the familiar drone of the turbo-props

 reverberating off the cliffs.

 Big Dolly lined up again for her first pass down the valley, and as she

 flew over the quartz crosses the huge yellow front'end loader tumbled

 out of her hold. Instinctively Nicholas held his breath as he watched it

 come the parachute hurtling down and then jerk up short on shrouds. it

 swayed wildly all over the sky, yoyoing on the nylon ropes, and the

 monks howled with amazement and excitement as they watched it drop in.

 it struck in a cloud of dust.

 Sapper was standing next to Nicholas, groaning and covering his eyes so

 that he did not have to watch the "Shit!' he said in a hollow cloud of

 dust rising into the air.

 voice.

 "Is that a command, or merely a request?" Nicholas asked, but he wasn't

 really amused.

 As the last pallet dropped, and the aircraft climbed away under full

 power, Nicholas called Jannie on the radio.

 "Many thanks, Big Dolly. Safe flight home."

 "Inshallahl If God wills!'Jannie called back.

 "I will call you when I need a lift back."

 "I'll be waiting." Big Dolly trundled away. "Break a leg!'

 "Well now." Nicholas slapped Sapper's back. "Let's go down and see if

 you still have a front'ender."

 The battered yellow machine lay on its side with oil pouring out of her,

 like blood from a heart-shot dinosaur.

 "You can push off. just leave me a dozen of these black guys to help

 me," Sapper told them as sorrowfully as if he was standing at the

 graveside of his beloved, Sapper did not return to camp for dinner, so

 Tessay sent a bowl of wat and some injera bread down to him to

 1i eat while he worked. Nicholas considered going down to offer his help

 with repairing the damaged tractor, but thought better of it. From

 bitter experience he knew that at certain times Sapper wanted to be left

 alone, and that this was one of those times.

 in the small dark hours of the morning the camp was lit up by the blaze

 of headlights and the hills reverberated to the roar of a diesel engine.

 With, even his bald head covered with grease and dust, hollow-eyed but

 triumphant, Sapper drove the yellow tractor into the camp and shouted at

 them from the high driver's seat.

 okay, knaves and nymphs! Drop your cocks and grab your socks. Let's go

 build a dam."

 t took them another two full days to gather in all the pallets that lay

 strewn down the valley and to carry the stores into the ancient quarry.

 There they stacked them carefully in accordance with the manifest that

 Nicholas and Sapper had drawn up in England. it was essential that they

 knew where every item was stored, and that they had immediate access to

 it when needed. In the meantime Sapper was at work on the dam site,

 laying out his foundations, driving numbered wooden pegs into the banks

 of the river, and taking his final measurements with the long steel

 surveyor's tape.

 During this preliminary work Nicholas was watching the performance of

 the monks, and getting to know them individually. He was able to pick

 out the natural leaders and the most intelligent and willing men amongst

 them.

 He was also able to identify those who spoke Arabic or a little English.

 The most promising of these was a monk named Hansith Sherif, whom

 Nicholas made his personal assistant and interpreter.

 Once they were settled into the camp, and had worked out a relationship

 with the monks, Mek Nimmur took of Nicholas aside out of earshot the two

 women.

 "From now on, my work will be the security of the site.

 MOS Maa's :rllar WV.

 We will have to be ready to prevent another raid like the one on your

 camp, and the slaughter at St. Frumentius.

 Nogo and his thugs are still out there. It won't take long for him to

 hear that you are back in the gorge. When he comes, I will be waiting

 for him."

 "You are better with an AK-47 than with a pickaxes' Nicholas agreed.

 "Just leave Tessay here with me.. I need her."

 "So do I' Mek smiled and shook his head ruefully, "I am only just

 learning how much. Look after her for me. I will be back every night to

 check on her."

 Mek took his men into the bush and deployed them in defensive positions

 along the trail and around the campWhen Nicholas looked up from his own

 work he could often make out the figure of one of Mek's sentries on the

 high ground above the camp. It was reassuring to know that they were

 there.

 However, as he had promised, Mek was back in camp most evenings, and

 often in the night Nicholas heard, coming from the shelter he shared

 with Tessay, his deep rumbling laughter blending with her sweet silvery

 tones.

 Then Nicholas lay awake and thought about Royan in the hut so close, but

 yet so far away from where he lay.

 On the fifth day the second draft of three hundred labourers that Mai

 Metemma had conscripted for them arrived, and Nicholas was astonished,

 Things seldom worked that way in Africa.

 Nothing ever happened ahead of the promised time. He

 wondered what exactly they decided

 that he didn't really want to know, for now main construction work could

 begin.

 These men were not monks, for St. Frumentius had already given its all

 to the sacred labour, but villagers who lived up on the highlands of the

 escarpment. Mai Metemma had coerced them with promises of religious

 indulgences and threats of hellfire.

 Nicholas and Sapper divided this work force into gangs of thirty men

 each, and set one of the picked monks as foreman over each gang. They

 were careful to grade the men by their physical appearance, so that the

 big strapping specimens were all grouped together as the project

 storm.troopers, while the smaller, more wiry men could be reserved for

 the tasks in which brute strength was not a necessity.

 Nicholas dreamed up a name for each gang - the Buffaloes, the Lions, the

 Axes and so on. It taxed his powers of invention, but he wanted to

 inspire in them a sense of pride and, to his own particular advantage,

 to encourage the gangs to compete with one another. He paraded them in

 the quarry, each group headed by its newly appointed ecclesiastical

 foreman. Using one of the ancient stone blocks as a platform, and with

 Tessay interpreting for him, he harangued them heartily and then told

 them that they would be paid in silver Maria Theresa dollars. He set

 their wages at three times the going rate.

 Up to this stage the men had listened to him with a sullen air of

 resignation, but now a remarkable transformation came over them. None of

 them had expected to be paid for the work, and most of them were

 wondering how soon they could desert and go home. Now Nicholas was

 promising them not only money, but silver dollars. In Ethiopia for the

 past two hundred years the Maria Theresa dollar had been regarded as the

 only true coinage. For this reason they were still minted with the

 original date of 1780 and the portrait of the old Empress, with her

 double chin and her decolletage exposing half her great bust. One of

 these coins was more prized than a sackful of the worthless paper birr

 issued by the regime in Addis. To pay his labour bills, Nicholas had

 included a chest of these silver coins in the first pallet load that

 Jannie had dropped.

 Celestial grins bloomed as they listened, and white teeth sparkled in

 their ebony faces. Someone began to sing, and they all stamped and

 danced and cheered Nicholas as they trooped off to queue for their

 tools. With mattocks and shovels at the slope they filed off up the

 valley to the dam site, still singing and prancing.

 "St. Nicholas," Tessay laughed. "Father Christmas. They will never

 forget you now."

 "They may even enshrine you and build a monastery over you" Royan

 suggested sweetly.

 "What they don't know is that they are going to earn every single dollar

 , the hard way."

 From then onwards the work began as soon as it was light enough to see,

 and stopped only when it was too dark to continue. The men came back to-

 their temporary compound each night by the light of grass torches, too

 weary to sing. However, Nicholas had contracted with the headmen from

 the highland villages to supply a slaughter beast every day. Each

 morning the women came down the trail driving the animal before them,

 and with huge pots of tej balanced on their heads.

 Over the days that followed, there were no deserters from Nicholas's

 little army of workers.

 ounted on the high seat of the front-ender, Sapper lifted the first

 filled mesh gabion in the hydraulic arms. The mesh'bound parcel of

 boulders weighed several tons, and all work on the site came to a halt

 as the men crowded the banks of the Dandera river to watch. A hum of

 astonishment went up as Sapper eased the yellow tractor down the steep

 bank and, with the gabion held high, drove the vehicle in to the water.

 The current, affronted by this invasion, swirled angrily around the high

 rear wheels, but Sapper pushed in deeper.

 The crowds lining the bank began to chant and clap encouragement as the

 water reached as high as the belly of the machine, and louds of steam

 hissed from the hot steel of the sump. Sapper locked the brakes, and

 then lowered the heavy gabion into the flood before reversing back up

 the bank. The men cheered him wildly, even though the first gabion was

 instantly submerged and only a whirlpool on the river's surface marked

 its position. Another filled gabion lay ready. The Contender waddled up

 to it, lowered its- steel arms and picked it up as tenderly as a mother

 gathering up her infant.

 Nicholas shouted at the foremen to get their gangs back to work. The

 long lines of men came up the valley, naked except for their brief white

 loincloths. Sweating heavily in the heat of the gorge, their skin

 glistened like anthracite freshly cut from the coal face. Each of them

 carried on his head a basket of stone aggregate, which he dumped into

 the mouth of the waiting gabion. Then he returned with his empty basket

 down the hill to the quary.

 As each gabion was filled, another team fitted the mesh lid and laced it

 closed with heavy eight-gauge wire.

 "Twenty dollars bonus to the team with the most baskets filled

 today!'Nicholas bellowed. They shouted with glee and redoubled their

 efforts, but they were unable to keep up with Sapper on the Contender.

 He laid his stone piers artfully, working out from the shallow water

 alongside the bank so that each gabion lay against its neighbour, keying

 into the wall to give mutual support.

 At first there was little evident progress, but as a solid reef was

 built up beneath the surface the river began to react savagely. The

 voice of the water changed from a low rustle to a dull roar as it tore

 at Sapper's wall.

 Soon the top of the wall of gabions thrust its head above the surface,

 and the river was constricted to half its former width. Now its mood was

 truculent. It poured through the gap in a solid green torrent, and crept

 almost imperceptibly up the banks as it was forced to back up behind the

 barriers The rive worried the foundations of the dam, clawing at it to

 find its weak spots, and the progress of the work slowed down as the

 waters rose higher.

 Up in the river in forests along the banks the axemen were at work, and

 Nicholas winced each time one of the great trees toppled, groaning and

 shrieking like a living creature. He liked to think of himself as a

 conservationist, and some of these trees had taken centuries to reach

 this girth.

 "Do you want your bleeding dam, or your pretty trees?" Sapper demanded

 ferociously, when Nicholas lamented in his hearing. Nicholas turned away

 without replying.

 They were all becoming tired with the unremitting labour. Their nerves

 were stretching towards snapping point, and tempers were mercurial.

 Already there had been a number of murderous fights amongst the workmen,

 and each time Nicholas had been forced to duck in under the swinging

 steel mattocks to break it up and separate the combatants.

 lowly they squeezed the' river in its bed as the pier crept out from the

 bank, and the time came when they had to transfer their efforts to the

 far bank. It required the combined efforts of their entire labour force

 to build a new road along the bank as far as the ford.

 There they manhandled the front-ender into the water, and, with a

 hundred men hauling on the tow ropes and her tall lugged rear wheels

 spinning and churning the surface to a froth they. dragged her across.

 Then they had to build another road back along the far bank to reach the

 dam site. They cut out the treetrunks that obstructed them and levered

 the boulders out of the way to get the tractor through, Once they had

 her back at the dam site they could begin the same process of laying out

 gabions from the far bank.

 Gradually, a few metres each day, the two walls crept closer to each

 other, and as the gap between them narrowed the water rose higher and

 became more raucous, making the work more difficult.

 In the meanwhile, two hundred metres upstream of the dam site, the

 Falcons and the Scorpions were at work.

 These two teams were building the raft of treetrunks that they had

 hacked from the forest. The timbers were lashed together to form a

 grating. Over this was laid heavy PVC sheeting to make it waterproof,

 then a second grating of treetrunks went over this to form a gigantic

 sandwich. It was all lashed together with heavy baling wire. Finally,

 one end of the grating was ballasted with boulders.

 Sapper arranged the ballast of boulders to make the raft one-side heavy,

 so that it would float almost vertically in the water, with one end of

 it scraping the bottom of the river and the other sticking up above the

 surface. The dimensions of the completed raft were carefully related to

 the gap between the two buttresses of the dam. And while the work on the

 raft and the wall continued Sapper built up a stockpile of filled

 gabions, which he stacked on both banks below the dam.

 Three other full work teams, the Elephants, the Buffaloes and the

 Rhinos,,comprising the biggest and strongest men in the force, laboured.

 at the head of the valley. They were digging out a deep canal into which

 the river could be diverted.

 "Your hot-shot engineer, Taita, never thought of that little

 refinement," Sapper gloated to Royan as they stood on the lip of the

 trench. "What it means is that we only have to raise the level of the

 river another six feet before it will start flowing down the canal and

 into the valley.

 Without it we would have had to lift the water almost twenty feet to

 divert it."

 "Perhaps the river levels were different four thousand years ago." Royan

 felt a strange loyalty to the long-dead Egyptian, and she defended him.

 "Or perhaps he dug a canal but all traces of it have been obliterated."

 "Not bleeding likely," Sapper grunted. "The little perisher just plain

 didn't think of it." His expression was smug and self-satisfied, "One up

 on Mr Taita, I think."

 Royan smiled to herself. It was strange how even the practical and

 down-to-earth Sapper felt that this was a direct personal challenge from

 down the ages. He too had been caught up in Taita's game.

  dint of neither threat nor heavenly reward could the monks be inveigled

 into working on Sundays. Each Saturday evening they knocked off an hour

 earlier and trooped away down the valley on the trail to the monastery,

 so as to be in time for Holy Communion the next day. Although Nicholas

 grumbled and scowled at their desertion, secretly he was as relieved as

 any of them for the chance to rest. They were all exhausted, and for

 once there would be no chanting of lock the next morning.

 matins to wake them at four ' So on Saturday night they all swore to

 each other that

 they would sleep late the next morning, but from force of habit Nicholas

 found himself awake and fully alert at that same iniquitous hour. He

 could not stay in his camp bed, and when he came back from his ablutions

 at the riverside he found that Royan was also awake and dressed.

 "Coffee?" She lifted the pot off the fire and poured a mugful for him.

 "I slept terribly badly last night," she admitted. "I had the most

 ridiculous dreams. I found myself in Mamose's tomb lost in a labyrinth

 of passages-. I was searching for the burial chamber, opening doors, but

 there were always people in the rooms that I looked into. Duraid was

 working in one room and he looked up and said, "Remember the protocol of

 the four bulls. Start at the beginning." He was so real and alive. I

 wanted to go to him but the door closed in my face, and I knew I would

 never see him again." Tears filled her eyes and glistened in the light

 of the campfire.

 Nicholas sought to distract her from the painful memory. "Who were in

 the other rooms?" he asked.

 "In the next room was Nahoot Guddabi. He laughed spitefully and said,

 The jackal chases the sun," and his head changed into the head of

 Anubis, the jackal god of the cemetery, and he yelped and barked. I was

 so frightened that I ran."

 She sipped her coffee. "It was all meaningless and silly, but von

 Schiller was in the next room, and he rose in the air and flapped his

 wings and said, "The vulture rises, and the stone falls." I hated him so

 much I wanted to strike him, but then he was gone."

 "And then you woke up?"Nicholas suggested.

 "No. There was one other room."

 Who was in it?"

 She dropped her eyes, and her voice was small, "You were," she said.

 "Me? What did I say?" He smiled.

 "You didn't say anything," she whispered, and blushed so suddenly and

 fiercely that he was instantly intrigued.

 "What did I do then?" He was still smiling.

 "Nothing. I mean, I can't tell you." The dream returned to her, vivid

 and real as life, every detail of his naked body, even the smell and the

 feel of him. She forced herself to stop thinking about it. She felt

 vulnerable as she had been in the dream.

 "Tell me about it he insisted.

 "No! She stood up quickly, confused and still blushing, trying to thrust

 the images from her.

 Last night had been the first time in her life that she first time she

 had ever dreamed of a man in that way, the had ever experienced a full

 orgasm in her sleep. This morning, when she awoke, she found that she

 had soaked right through her pyjamas bottoms.

 "We have a full day ahead of us with no work to do," she blurted - the

 first thought that came into her mind.

 have On the contrary." He stood up with her. "We still to make the

 arrangements for getting out of here. When the time comes, we will

 probably be in something of a hurry."

 "Mind if I tag along?" she asked.

 wo teams, the Buffaloes and the Elephants, with only their foremen

 missingi were waiting, for them at the quarry. They comprised sixty of

 the strongest men in the Tabour force. Nicholas unrill from one of the

 pallets.

 packed the inflatable Avon rafts neat pack, with Each raft was deflated

 and folded into a ese craft had been the paddles strapped along the

 sides. It is specifically designed for river'running in turbulent water,

 and each was capable of carrying sixteen crew and a ton of cargo.

 strap the heavy packs on to Nicholas directed them to they had cut for

 that purpose. Five the carrying poles that men on each end of the long

 poles, with the bundle of the boat stung in the centre, made light of

 the load They se off at a cracking pace down the trail, and as soon as

 one was ready to take over. They made the team tired the nex exchange

 without even stopping, the new porters slipping their shoulders under

 the pole on the run while the exhausted team dropped out.

 proof and water Nicholas carried the radio in its shock uch a precious

 reglass case. He would not trust proof fib He and Royan trotted

 instrument to one of the porters.

 behind the caravan, joining in the chorus of the along work chant that

 the porters sang as they carried their loads down to the monastery.

 Mai Metemma was waiting on the terrace outside the church of St.

 Frumentius to welcome them. He led them down the staircase hewn out of

 the rock of the cliff, two hundred feet to the very water's edge. There

 was a narrow rocky ledge against which the Nile waters dashed, and the

 spray from the high waterfalls drifted over them like a perpetual

 drizzle of rain. After the heat and the bright sunlight above, it was

 cold and gloomy and dank down here in the depths of the gorge. The black

 cliffs ran with water, and the ledge on which they stood was wet and

 slippery underfoot.

 Royan shivered as she watched the river racing by, forming a great

 spinning vortex as it swirled around the deep rock bowl and then raced

 out through the narrow throat of the gorge on its long hectic journey

 towards Egypt and the north.

 "If only I had known that this was the road you were planning on taking

 home-' she eyed the river dubiously.

 "If you would prefer to walk, it's okay by me,'Nicholas told her. "With

 luck we will be carrying some extra baggage.

 The river is the logical escape route."

 "I suppose it makes sense, but still it's not terribly inviting." She

 broke off a piece of driftwood from a stranded tangle that lay trapped

 upon the ledge and tossed it into the river. It was whipped away, and

 raced over the standing wave where some submerged obstacle forced the

 surface to bulge up.

 What speed is that current? she asked in a subdued voice as the splinter

 of driftwood was sucked below the surface.

 "Oh, not much more than eight or nine knots," he told her off handedly,

 'but that's nothing. The river is still very low. just wait until it

 starts raining up in the Mountains, then you will really see some water

 passing through here.

 it will be great fun. Lots of people would pay good money for the chance

 to run a river like this. You are going to love it."

 Thanks," she said drily. "I can't wait."

 Fifty feet above the ledge, out of reach of the Nile's highest water

 level, was a small cavern - the Epiphany shrine. Long ago the monks had

 cut this passage deeply into the rock face, and it ended in a spacious,

 candle-lit chamber that housed a life'sized statue of the Virgin,

 dressed in faded velvet robes, with the infant in her arms.

 Mai Metemma gave them his sanction to store the rafts in the shrine, and

 they stacked them against a side wall.

 When the porters had left, Nicholas showed Royan how to operate the

 quick-release handles on the packs, and the CO, cylinders which would

 inflate the rafts within minutes.

 He wrapped the radio case and his small emergency pack in a sheet of

 plastic and stowed them in one of the boat packs, where he could lay his

 hands on them again in a hurry.

 "You do intend coming along on this joy ride?" she asked anxiously. "You

 aren't planning on sending me down on my ownsome?"

 "It is best that you know how it all works," he told her.

 if things start to get a little hairy when the time comes to leave here,

 I may need your help in launching the rafts." When they climbed back up

 the staircase into the warmth and the sunlight, Royan's uncertain mood

 had changed. "It's not yet noon, and we have the rest of the day to

 ourselves. Let's go back to Taita pool again," she suggested, and he

 shrugged indulgently.

 the Elephants accompanied them as The Buffaloes and far as the branch in

 the trail. Here the teams headed back towards the dam, and shouted and

 hallooed their farewells after Nicholas and Royan.

 their last visit, the path Even in the short time since through the

 undergrowth had become overgrown. Nicholas was forced to use his machete

 to hack a way through, and they ducked uqder the trailing thorn

 branches. It was midafternoon when they eventually crossed the high

 ridge and stood once again on the cliff directly above Taita's pool.

 "It looks as though we were the last ones here., Nicholas's tone was

 relieved. "No signs of any other visitors since us."

 "Were you expecting any?"

 "You never know. Von Schiller is a formidable character, and he has some

 charming lads working for him. Helm is one that worries me, and I had a

 nasty feeling that he might have been snooping around here. I am going

 to take a closer look."

 He worked quickly around the entire area, casting widely for any sign of

 intruders. Then came back to where she sat on the lip of the abyss and

 dropped down beside her.

 "Nothing," he admitted. "We have still got the running to ourselves."

 "Once Sapper stops the river upstream, this is going to be our main area

 of operations, isn't it?" she asked.

 "Yes, but even before Sapper closes the dam I want to open a fly camp

 here, and move all the gear and equipment we will need from the quarry

 to have it handy when we start the exploration of the pool."

 "How are we going to get down into the pool? Down the river bed, once it

 is dry?"

 "I suppose we could use the dry river bed as a road, and come down it

 from below the dam or up from the monastery end, through the pink

 cliffs."

 "But that is not the way you are planning to get in, is it?" she

 guessed.

 "Even with no water in it, the river bed will be a long way round. It's

 a three- or four-mile haul from either end of the abyss, added to which

 it will be a pretty rough road to travel." He grinned ruefully. "You are

 speaking to an expert on the subject. I went down it the hard way, and I

 wouldn't want to do it again. There are at least five chutes and rock

 jams that I can remember being thrown over."

 "What is your better idea, then?" she asked.

 "It's not my idea," he contradicted her. "It's Taita's idea really."

 She peered over the edge. "You mean to build a scaffold down the cliff,

 just the way he did it?

 "What's good enough for Taita is good enough for me," he acknowledged.

 "The old boy probably had a good look at the alternative of using the

 river bed as an access road, and abandoned the idea."

 "When will you start work on the scaffold, then?"

 "One of our teams is already cutting bamboo poles higher up the gorge.

 Tomorrow we will begin carrying them up here, and stacking them. We

 can't waste a day.

 Once the darn is closed we have to get into the dry pool as soon as

 possible."

 As if to add weight to his words there came a far-off mutter of thunder,

 and they both craned their heads to peer up with trepidation at the

 escarpment. Probably a hundred miles to the north, faintly washed as a

 sepia print superimposed upon the razor-edged blue silhouette of the

 loescarpment wall rose high tumbled towers of cumu nimbus clouds.

 Neither of them spoke about it, but both "were aware of how ominously

 the torm clouds were settling on the distant mountains.

 Nicholas glanced at his wrist-watch and stood up.

 "Time to start back if we are to get into camp before dark."

 He gave her his hand and lifted her to her feet. She dusted off her

 clothes and then stepped right to the very lip of the canyon.

 ks," she called I "Wake up, Taita. We are hot on your trac down into the

 shadows.

 "Don't challenge him." Nicholas took her arm and drew VI, her back. "The

 old ruffian has given us enough trouble already."

 The axemen had left the stumps of several great trees standing on the

 banks of the Dandera upstream from the dam- Sapper used these as anchor

 points for the heavy cables that he strung across the river. Through the

 cables he had rigged a cunning series of pulley blocks. The main cable

 was run back and connected to the tow hitch on the front-ender.

 Two other cables were laid out, one to each bank, where the Buffaloes

 and the Elephants stood ready to handle them- One team was under the

 direction of Nicholas, and the other under Mek Nimmur. For this crucial

 part of the construction, Mek had come down from the hills to lend a

 hand.

 The grating of massive treetrunks lay on the river verge, already half

 in the water. Heavily weighted with boulders, it was an unwieldy

 structure that would require all their combined efforts to manoeuvre

 into position.

 Sapper slitted his eyes as he studied the layout, and then looked

 downstream to the partially completed dam. The two walls of gabions

 stretched out from either bank, but the gap in the middle of the river

 was twenty feet across and the whole volume of the river roared through

 it.

 "The one thing we don't want is to let the bleeding plug run away from

 us and slam into the ruddy wall," he warned Nicholas and Mek. "Otherwise

 we are going to lose a big chunk of what we have done so far. I want to

 cuddle her in there, nice and softly, and let her sit snug in the gap.

 Any questions? This is your last chance to ask. You all know the

 signals."

 Sapper took one last drag on his cigarette, and flicked the stub into

 the river. Then, looking lugubrious, he said, "Okay, gents. The last one

 in the water is a sissy,'

 Compared to their men, Nicholas and Mek were overdressed in their khaki

 shorts. The others were all stark naked. When the order was given they

 trooped waist-deep into the river and took up their stations along the

 cables.

 Before he followed them into the river, Nicholas took one last look

 round. At breakfast that morning Royan had innocently asked to borrow

 his binoculars. Now he knew why. She and Tessay were perched up on top

 of the slope high above the gorge. Even as Nicholas watched, he saw

 Royan pass the binoculars to Tessay. They were not missing a moment of

 this fateful operation.

 Nicholas looked back from the ridge to the rows of big naked men, pulled

 a face and muttered, "My oath, there are some prize specimens around

 here. I just hope that Royan isn't making comparisons."

 Sapper climbed up on to the yellow tractor, and with a roar and a cloud

 of diesel smoke the engine burst into life. He raised one hand above his

 head with the fist ji clenched, and Nicholas relayed the order to his

 team, "Take the strain."

 The foremen repeated it in Amharic, and the men leaned back against the

 cables. Sapper threw the tractor into extra low, and eased her forward.

 The belly straightened in the lines, the sheave wheels squealed, and the

 timber grating slid ponderously down the bank into the river. The

 weighted end of the grating sank immediately and bumped along the

 bottom, while the lighter end floated ut into midstream, until it was

 high. Slowly they hauled it hanging vertically in the water.

 The current seized it and began to bear it away, straight at the wall of

 gabions. It picked up speed alarmingly. The tractor bellowed and- blew

 out clouds of black smoke as Sapper threw her into reverse and backed up

 on the cables.

 The teams of naked black men heaved and chanted - some of them had

 already been dragged in neck-deep as they hauled on the lines.

 The grating steadied across the current, and they let it fall away at a

 more sedate pace, down towards the open gap in the wall. As it began to

 slew towards one bank, Sapper lifted his right arm and windmilled it.

 Obediently, Mek's team on the far bank paid out rope and Nicholas's team

 on the near bank picked it up. Once again the grating was lined up on

 the gap.

 "Rock and roll. Close the hole," bellowed Sapper, and now the full

 current was too powerful to resist. It dragged both teams into the river

 until some of them were in over their heads, losing their hold on the

 lines and floundering and swimming. However, those men who still had

 their footing managed to slow the rush of the grating just enough to

 prevent it smashing out of control into the dam. It settled firmly

 across the gap, like a mammoth plug in the outlet of a giant's bathtub,

 and instantly the current was cut off.

 While the men in the water struggled ashore, their bodies wet and

 gleaming in the sunlight, Sapper threw off the cables from his tow hitch

 and roared along the bank with the front-ender in its highest gear. As

 it passed him, Nicholas grabbed a handhold and swung himself up on to

 the footplate behind Sapper's seat.

 "Got to shore up now, before the grating bursts," Sapper yelled.

 From his vantage point, clinging to the rear of the tall machine,

 Nicholas had a moment to assess the Position.

 The dam was holding, but only just. Numerous jets of water spurted

 through every gap between the grating and the gabions. The pressure of

 water against the sheets of PVc in the grating was enormous. It was

 taking the full thrust of the river, flexing and bowing before it like a

 castle Portcullis attacked with a battering ram.

 Sapper picked up one of the gabions that were standing ready on the bank

 and drove down into the river bed below the dam. The flow of the water

 had shrivelled to a mere knee-deep trickle. jets of water squirted

 through every chink in the wall, and the gabions were not impermeable;

 ay through the tightly packed stones.

 water was finding its was the front-ender churned and lurched over the

 rough bed at the back of the wall, Nicholas and Sapper were drenched by

 the jets spurting over them. It was like working rove in close behind

 the under a cold shower. Sapper straining grating and placed the heavy

 gabion against it.

 He threw the tractor into reverse and climbed up the bank to pick up

 another gabion, Slowly he built up a retaining the gabions in sloping

 wall behind the grating, placin s, until this revetment was as strong as

 the side piers.

 rank Nicholas jumped down from the tractor and left Sapper to it while

 he ran back upstream to the canal that the teams had dug at the head of

 the valley. Most of the banks of this cutting workers had gathered along

 the Nicholas saw both Royan and Tessay in the already, an front row of

 the excited crowd.

 is way -through to Royan's side, and Nicholas pushed she grabbed his

 hand. it's working, Nicky. The dam wall is holding."

 Even as they watched they could see the level of the trapped waters

 rising up the wall of grating and gabions.

 While the men chattered and laughed and urged it on, the river lapped at

 the entrance of the canal.

  the Fifty men seized their tools and jumped down int bottom of the

 canal. Dust flew in clouds as they shovelled the broken earth aside to

 lead the first trickle of water into the mouth of the canal. The men on

 the banks above them and a thin snake whooped and chanted to encourage

 them, of river water found its way into the mouth of the canalTan ahead

 of it, The men with the mattocks and shovels it on down the cutting.

 Every time it met any enticing obstruction and faltered, they fell upon

 the blockage and tore it away.

 the gradient fall At last the thin trickle of water felt away as the

 valley opened before it. The trickle increased to a freshet, and then to

 a torrent. With its new strength it gouged out the canal and burst

 through with the full flow of the river behind it.

 The men in the bottom of the cutting yelled with fright at the

 suddenness and ferocity of it, and scrambled up the sides of the canal.

 But some of them were not quick enough and were swept away, struggling

 and screaming for help. The men on the banks ran alongside them,

 throwing ropes and dragging them sodden and muddy from the flood.

 Now the river roared through the canal and tore on down the valley,

 rediscovering the ancient course that it had not followed for thousands

 of years. For almost an hour they stood upon the bank watching it, for

 it exercised over them the particular spell that turbulent waters always

 have over men. They were forced to retreat step by step as the river cut

 the banks out from under their feet.

 At last Nicholas roused himself, and went back to where Sapper was still

 shoring up the dam wall. By now he had erected a sloping revetment on

 the downstream side of the dam wall, with four rows of gabions on the

 bottom course gradually narrowing as it reached the top of the retaining

 wall. For the time being the dam was secure, the vulnerable grating had

 been shored up with the heavy, stone-filled mesh baskets, and the

 overflow through the canal into the valley had relieved much of the

 pressure upon it.

 "Do you think it will hold?" Royan eyed the structure with suspicion.

 "Until the rains come, we hope." Nicholas drew her away. "We don't want

 to waste any more time here. Time to go on downstream to begin work at

 Taita's pool."

  hey followed the banks of the new river that they had created, down

 the length of the long 6- valley. At places they were forced to detour

 higher up the slope because the overflow from the dam had cut away and

 submerged the old trail. Eventually they reached the confluence of the

 stream that had as its source the butterfly fountain that they had

 explored with Tamre.

 They paused on the bank, and Nicholas and Royan looked at each other

 wordlessly. The stream had dried up.

 Turning aside, they followed the empty stream bed up the hills and at

 last scrambled out on to the ledge from which the butterfly fountain had

 poured. The cave was still surrounded by lush green ferris, but it was

 like the eye socket in a skull, dark and empty.

 "The spring has dried up!" Royan . "The dam -Iispere has shrivelled it.

 That's the proof that the fountain was fed from Taita's pool, Now we

 have diverted the river we have killed the fountain." Her eyes were

 bright and sparkling with excitement. "Come on. Let's waste no more time

 here.

 Let's get on up to Taita's pool."

 'Nicholas was the first one down into Taita's pool. This time, he had a

 bosun's chair to sit in and a properly rigged block and tackle to lower

 him over the cliff. As he swung down around the overhang of the cliff,

 the chair swung awkwardly against the rock and the thumb of his right

 hand was trapped between the wooden seat of the chair and the wall. He

 exclaimed with the pain and, when he wrenched it free, he found that the

 skin had been torn from the knuckle and that blood was oozing up and

 dripping down his legs. It was painful -but not serious, and he sucked

 the wound clean. It was still weeping drops of blood but he had, no time

 to attend to the injury now.

 He was around the overhang, and the abyss opened under him, sombre and

 repellent. His eye was drawn irresistibly to the engraving on the wall,

 etched between the vertical rows of niches. Now that he knew what to

 look for, he could make out the outline of the maimed hawk. It cheered

 and encouraged him. Since their flight from the gorge over a month

 previously he had often been haunted by the feeling that they had

 imagined it all, that the cartouche of Taita was a hallucination, and

 that when they returned they would find the cliff wall smooth and

 unblemished. But there it was, the signpost and the promise.

 He peered down past his own feet to the bottom of the gorge, and saw at

 once that the waterfall above the pool had been reduced to a trickle.

 The water still coming down the smooth black chute of polished rock was

 that which was filtering through the gaps and chinks in the dam wall

 upstream and the last drainage from the sandbanks and the pools higher

 up the gorge.

 The level of the great Pool under him had fallen drastically. He could.

 make out the highwater level by the wet markings on the rock cliff.

 Fifty feet of the wall that had previously been submerged was now

 exposed. Another eight pairs of chiselled niches were visible in the

 face Where once he had been forced to swim down to them, they were now

 high and dry.

 However, the pool was not completely drained. It was dished below the

 level of the downstream outlet, so that it was unable to empty itself by

 gravitational flow. There was still a puddle of black water trapped in

 the centre, with a narrow ledge surrounding it. Nicholas landed on this

 ledge and stepped out of the bosun's chair. It was strange to stand on

 firm rock down here where last he had struggled for his life and very

 nearly been sucked under and drowned.

 He looked up to where beams of sunlight penetrated the upper levels of

 the chasm. It was like being in the bottom of a mineshaft, and he

 shuddered at the feel of the clammy air on his bare arms and the eerie

 sensation in the pit of his stomach. He tugged on the line to send the

 rope chair back to the surface, and then edged his way along the

 slippery rock ledge towards the cliff face where the rows of dark niches

 stood out clearly against the lighter stone.

 Now he could make out the shape of the opening in the wall that had so

 nearly sucked him down into its dark and slimy throat. It was almost

 completely submerged in a deeper corner where the pool flowed back

 against the cliff.

 All that was visible above the surface was the top arch of an irregular

 entrance at the foot of the descending rows of niches. The rest of it

 was still submerged.

 The ledge narrowed as he worked his way along the foot of the cliff

 until he had his back to the rock and was moving sideways with his toes

 in the water. Eventually he could go no further without actually

 stepping down into the water. He had no way of judging the depth of the

 waters, which were turbid and uninviting.

 Still trying to keep his feet dry, he squatted down on the narrow ledge

 and leaned out so far that his balance as threatened. He steadied

 himself with one hand against the wall, and with the other reached out

 towards the partially submerged opening.

 The lip of the hole was smooth, as he had remembered it, and once again

 it seemed to him that it was too square and straight to be anything

 other than man-made. As he rolled up his sleeve he noticed that his

 injured thumb was still bleeding, but he ignored it and thrust his arm

 down below the surface of the pool. He groped downwards, trying to trace

 the sill of the opening, He felt what seemed to be blocks of roughly

 dressed masonry, and reached down further until the water reached

 halfway up his biceps.

 Suddenly some living creature, swift and weighty, swirled in the dark

 waters right in front of his face, and as an immediate reflex he jerked

 his arm out of the water.

 The thing followed his arm up to the surface, slashing at his bare flesh

 with long, needle'sharp fangs, and he had a glimpse of a head as evil

 and villainous as that of a barracuda' He realized instinctively that it

 must have been attracted by the smell of the blood from his injured

 thumb.

 He leaped to his feet and teetered on the narrow ledge, clutching his

 arm. Only one of the creature's frontal fangs had touched him, but it

 had opened the skin like a razor cut, a long shallow wound across the

 back of his right hand from which fresh blood dribbled and splattered

 into the pool at his feet.

 Instantly the black waters seemed to come alive, roiling and seething

 with frenzied writhing aquatic shapes.

 Nicholas, his back flattened against the rock wall, stared down at them

 with loathing and horror. He could vaguely make out the shape of them,

 sinuous and ribbonlike, some of them as thick as his calf, black and

 gleaming.

 One of them thrust its head out on to the ledge and snapped its jaws.

 Its eyes were huge and glistening and its snout was elongated, the long

 jaws lined with fangs that overlapped its thin lips. The body behind the

 head was six feet long, and lashed like a whip as it drove itself high

 up on to the ledge, reaching out for Nicholas's bare legs. He shouted

 with revulsion and leaped back, stumbling and splashing on to safer

 footing. Clutching his bleeding hand, stare aC Ae evi . aead had

 disappeared, but the surface of the pool was still agitated by the lithe

 ophidian shapes.

 "Eels!the realized. "Giant tropical eels."

 Of course the blood had excited them. The fall in the water-level had

 trapped them in the pool, congregated them in such numbers that they had

 probably already devoured the fish that they depended upon for food. Now

 they were ravenous. Probably all the pools of water that remained in the

 abyss were infested with these fearsome creatures. He was thankful that

 during his last swim in this pool he had not bled into the water.

 He unwound the cotton kerchief from his neck and wrapped it round his

 wounded hand. The eels were a deadly threat to any attempt to explore

 the opening in the cliff.

 A, il " the pool of 1V But already he was considering ways of ridding

 them and of gaining access to the underwater opening.

 Slowly the frenzy in the pool quietened and its surface grew still

 again, Nicholas looked up to see the bosun's chair descending, with

 Royan's slim, shapely legs dangling below the wooden seat.

 "What have you found?" she called down to him excitedly. "Is there a

 tunnel-' then she broke off suddenly as she saw the blood on his

 clothing, and the bandage wathing his hand.

 "Oh dear God," she exclaimed. "What have you done?

 You are hurt. How badly?" Her feet touched the ledge beside him and she

 slid from the chair and took his injured hand gently. "What have you

 done to yourself?"

 "It's not as bad as it looks, he assured her. "Lots of blood but not

 deep."

 "How did you do it?" she insisted.

 For an answer he tore a corner off the bloodstained kerchief. "Watch!"

 he instructed her, wadding it into a ball and tossing it out into the

 pool.

 Royan screamed with horror as the waters boiled with the long fleeting

 shapes. One of them wriggled half its monstrous length out on to the

 ledge, before flopping back.

 It left a shining trail of silver slime across the black stones.

 "Taita has left his guard dogs to see us A' Nicholas remarked. "We are

 going to have to take care of those beauties before we can explore the

 entrance below the surface."

 /4P- -I he bamboo scaffolding that Sapper and Nicholas had built down

 the cliff was L*, - anchored in the niches that had been cut into the

 rock nearly four thousand years before. Taita had probably lashed his

 framework together with bark rope, but Sapper had used heavy-gauge

 galvanized wire, and the structure was strong enough to bear the weight

 of many men. The Buffaloes formed a living chain and passed all the

 material and equipment down the scaffolding from hand to hand.

 The very first piece of equipment to reach the floor Of the cavern was

 the portable Honda EM500 generator.

 Sapper connected it up to the lights that he had rigged along the foot

 of the cliff. The small petrol engine ran smoothly and quietly, but the

 amount of power it put out was impressive. The floodlights chased the

 shadows from the furthest corners of the cavern, and lit the deep rock

 bowl like a stage.

 Immediately the mood changed. Everybody became more cheerful and

 confident. There was laughter and excited chatter from the chain of men

 on the scaffolding as Royan climbed down to join Sapper and Nicholas at

 the side of the pool.

 "Now that we know that they are working, switch off those lights,'

 Nicholas ordered.

 "It's so dark and gloomy without them," Royan protested.

 "Saving fuel," Nicholas explained. "No filling station on the corner. We

 only have two hundred litres in reserve, and although the little Honda

 is pretty economical we have to be careful We don't know how long we are

 going to need it in the tunnel."

 Royan shrugged with resignation, and when Sapper cut the generator the

 cavern was plunged once more into gloom and shadow. She looked at the

 dark pool and pulled a face.

 "What are you going to do about those horrid pets of yours?" she

 demanded, glancing at Nicholas's bandaged right hand.

 "Sapper and I have worked out a plan. We thought of trying to empty the

 pool completely, using a bucket chain.

 But the amount of water still coming down the river bed makes that a

 poor choice."

 "We would be lucky to hold our own against that flow, even working

 around the clock with buckets," Sapper grunted. "If only the major had

 thought to bring along a high-speed water pump-'

 "Even I can't think of everything, Sapper. What we are going to do is to

 build a small coffer dam around the riderwater opening, and bale that

 out with buckets."

 Royan stood back and watched the preparations. Half a dozen of the empty

 mesh gabions were carried down the scaffolding and placed at the edge of

 the pool. Here they were partially filled with boulders that the men

 gathered up from the river bed. However the gabions were not filled so

 full that they became too heavy to handle. There was no front-ender down

 here to move them around, and they would be forced to rely on

 old-fashioned manpower. There was just sufficient of the yellow PVC

 sheeting left over to wrap around each gabion and render it waterproof.

 "What about your eels?" Royan was fascinated by these loathsome

 creatures, and she hung well back from the edge of the pool. "You can't

 send any of your men in there!

 "Watch and learn." Nicholas grinned at her. "I have a little treat in

 store for your favourite fish."

 Once all the preparations for the construction of the coffer were

 complete, Nicholas cleared the cavern, sending Royan and Sapper and all

 of the men up the scaffolding.

 He alone remained at the edge of the pool, with the bag of fragmentation

 grenades that he had begged from Mek Nimmur slung over his shoulder.

 With a grenade in each hand, he hesitated. "Seven second delay," he

 reminded himself "Quenton-Harper dry flies. More effective than the

 Royal Coachman!'

 He pulled the pins from each of the grenades and then lobbed them out

 into the middle of the pool. Quickly he turned away and hurried to the

 furthest corner of the cavern. He knelt with his face to the rock wall

 and covered his ears with both hands.

 Squeezing his eyes shut, he braced himself. The rock floor jumped under

 him and the double shock waves from the explosions swept over him in

 quick succession, with a savage power that drove in his chest and

 stopped his breath. In the confines of the chasm the detonations were

 thunderous, but his ears were protected and the deep water of the pool

 absorbed much of the blast. A twin fountain of water shot high into the

 air and splashed against the cliff above his head. It poured down in a

 sheet over him, soaking his clothing.

 As the echoes died away, he stood up, His hearing had not been adversely

 affected, and he had suffered no injury other than the shower of cold

 water. Back at the edge of the pool the water shimmered with movement.

 Scores of the great eels flopped and writhed on the surface, flashing

 their white bellies as they twisted. Many of them were dead, their

 bellies burst open, floating inert, while others were merely stunned by

 the blast. Knowing how tenaciously they clung to life he suspected that

 they would soon recover, but for the time being they were no longer a

 danger.

 He bellowed up toward the top of the cliff. "All clear, Sapper. Send

 them down."

 The men came swarming down the scaffolding, amazed by the carnage that

 the grenades had wreaked in the pool.

 They lined the bank and began to fish out the bodies of the dead eels.

 "You eat them?" Nicholas demanded of one of the monks.

 "Very good!" The monk rubbed his belly in anticipation.

 "Enough of that, you greedy perishers." SappeT drove them back to work.

 "Let's get those gabions in place before they wake up and start eating

 you."

 With a bamboo pole Nicholas sounded the depth of the water that covered

 the entrance to the shaft, and found that it was well over the height of

 a man's head. They were forced to roll the gabions down into it, and

 complete the filling once they were in position. It was difficult and

 taxing work, and took almost two days to complete, but at last they had

 built a half-moon-shaped weir around the under, water entrance, walling

 it off from the main body of water in the pool.

 Using leather buckets and clay tej pots the Buffaloes began to bale out

 the coffer and scoop the water over the wall into the main pool.

 Nicholas and Royan watched with silent trepidation as the level in the

 coffer fell and the opening in the cliff was gradually revealed.

 Very soon they were able to see that it was almost rectangular, about

 three metres wide by two metres high, The sides and the roof had been

 eroded by the rush of water through the opening, but as the level fell

 lower they could see the remains of shaped stone blocks that had

 probably once sealed the opening. Four courses of them I still stood

 where the ancient masons had placed them across the threshold of the

 opening, but the others had been torn out by thousands of years of flood

 seasons and thrown into the tunnel behind, partially blocking it.

  Ea erly Nicholas climbed down into the coffer. It was not yet empty but

 he could not control his impatience.

 The water was knee-deep as he crawled forward into the opening, and with

 his bare hands tried to shift some of the rock debris that choked it.

 "It's definitely some sort of shaft," he shouted back, and Royan could

 not restrain herself either. She came slithering and sloshing down into

 the offer, and pushed into the opening beside him.

 "There's an obstruction," she cried in disappointment.

 "Did Taita do that deliberately?"

 might have," Nicholas gave his opinion. "Hard to tell.

 A lot of this rubble and flotsam has been sucked in from the main flow

 of the river, but he might have filled the tunnel behind him as he

 pulled out."

 "It's going to take a tremendous amount of work just to clear it enough

 to find out where this passage leads to." Royan's voice had lost its

 ring of excitement.

 "I am afraid it is," Nicholas agreed. "We are going to have to clear

 every bit of this rubbish by hand, and there won It be time for the

 niceties of formal archaeological excavation. We are just going to rip

 it out." He clambered back out of the coffer, and reached back to hand

 her up the bank. "Well, at least we have the-floodlights he added, "We

 can keep the men working in shifts, night and day, until we get

 through."

 hey have dammed the Dandera river," said Nahoot Ouddabi, and Gotthold

 von Schiller stared at him in astonishment.

 "Dammed the river? Are you certain?"he demanded.

 "Yes, Herr von Schiller. We have a report from our spy in Harper's camp.

 He has over three hundred men working in the gorge. That is not all. He

 has air-dropped huge amounts of equipment and supplies. It is like

 a.military operation. Our spy tells us that he even has an earth, moving

 machine, some sort of tractor, which he has brought in."

 Von Schiller looked across the table at Jake Helm for confirmation, and

 Helm nodded. "Yes, Herr von Schiller.

 That is true. Harper must have spent a large amount of money. The air

 charter alone could have cost him fifty grand."

 Von Schiller felt the first stirrings of real passion since the "Urgent

 satellite message had summoned him from Frankfurt. He had flown directly

 to Addis Ababa, where the jet Ranger had been waiting to carry him to

 the Pegasus base camp on the escarpment above the Abbay gorge.

 If this was true, and he did not doubt Helm's word, then Harper was on

 to something of enormous importance.

 He looked out of the window of the Quonset hut to where flowed down the

 valley below the base camp.

 the Dandera It was a large river. To dam that volume of water would be

 an expensive and difficult project in this remote and primitive

 situation - not a project to be taken on lightly without the prospect of

 substantial reward.

 He felt a reluctant admiration for the Englishman's achievement. "Show

 me where he has placed his dam!" he ordered, and Helm came around the

 table to stand beside him. Von Schiller was standing on his block, and

 their eyes were on the same level.

 Helm bent over the satellite photograph and carefully marked in the site

 of the dam. They both studied it for a minute, and then von Schiller

 asked, "What do you make of it, Helm?"

 Helm shook his head, hunching it down on his bulllike shoulders. "I can

 only guess."

 "Guess then," said von Schiller, but still Helm all, hesitated.

 "Go on!'

 "Either he wants to move the water to another area downstream, to use it

 for washing out a deposit, gold nuggets or artefacts made of precious

 metals, perhaps even site of the to use it for hosing the overburden off

 the tomb,$

 "Highly unlikely!" von Schiller interjected. "That would be an

 inefficient and expensive manner of excavation."

 "I agree that it is far-fetched." Nahoot obsequiously followed von

 Schiller's lead, but no one even looked at him.

 "What is your other supposition?" Von Schiller glared at Helm.

 "The only other reason for damming the river, that I can think of, would

 be to reach something that has been covered by the water. Something

 lying in the bed of the river."

 "That is more logical," von Schiller mused, and turned his attention

 back to the photograph. "What is there below this dam site?"

 "The river enters a deep and narrow ravine here." Helm pointed at the

 spot. "Just below his dam. The ravine stretches about eight miles, down

 to this point, just above the monastery. I have flown over it in the

 helicopter, and it seems to be impassable, and yet-' he broke off, "Yes,

 go on! And yet - what?"

 "On one flight over the area, we found Harper and the woman on the high

 ground above the ravine. They were at this spot here." He touched the

 photograph, and von Schiller leaned forward to peer at it.

 "What were they doing there?" he demanded, without looking up.

 "Nothing. They were merely sitting on the top of the cliff above the

 ravine."

 "But they were aware of your presence?"

 "Of course. We were in the helicopter. They heard our approach. They

 were watching us, and Harper even waved."

 And so they would have ceased whatever activity they were engaged in

 when they became aware of your approach?"

 Von Schiller was silent for so long that they began to fidget

 uncomfortably and exchange glances. When he spoke it was so unexpected

 that Nahoot started.

 "Harper obviously has reason to believe that the tomb lies in the gorge

 below the dam. When and how do you make contact with your spy that you

 have in Harper's camp?"

 "Harper is receiving some of his supplies from the villages here on the

 escarpment. The women are driving down slaughter cattle to feed his men,

 and carrying down pots of tej. Out man sends back his reports with the

 women when they return."

 "Very well. Very well!" Von Schiller waved him to silence. "I don't need

 to know his life history. All I want to know is if Harper is working in

 the ravine below his dam.

 How soon can you find this out?"

 "By the day after tomorrow at the latest," Helm promised him.

 Von Schiller turned to Colonel Nogo at the far end Of the conference

 table. So far he had not spoken, but had watched and listened quietly to

 the others.

 "How many men have you deployed in this area?" von Schiller asked.

 "Three full companies, over three hundred men. All well trained. Many

 are battle-hardened veterans."

 "Where are they? Show me on the map."

 The colonel came to stand beside him. "One company here, another

 billeted at the village of Debra Maryam, and the third company at the

 foot of the escarpment, ready to move forward and attack Harper's camp."

 "I think you should attack them now. Wipe them out, before they can

 uncover the tomb-' Nahoot came in again.

 "Shut your mouth," von Schiller snapped' without looking up at Nahoot.

 "I will ask for your opinion when I need it."

 He considered the map for a while longer, then asked Nogo, "How many men

 has this guerrilla commander, what is his name, the one who has allied

 himself to Harper?"

 "Mek Nimmur is no a guerrilla. He is a bandit, and notorious shufta

 terrorist," Nogo corrected him hotly.

 "One man's freedom fighter is the next man's terrorist," von Schiller

 remarked drily. "How many men has he under his command?"

 "Not many. Fewer than a hundred, perhaps no more than fifty. He has them

 all guarding Harper's camp, and the dam."

 Von Schiller nodded to himself, plucking at the lobe of his ear. "How

 did Harper and his gang return to Ethiopia?" he mused. "I know he flew

 from Malta, but it is not possible that the aircraft could have landed

 down there in the gorge."

 He hopped down off his block and strutted to the window of the hut

 through which he had a panoramic view spread below him. He stared down

 into the depths of the gorge, a vista of cliffs and broken hilltops and

 wild tablelands, smoked blue with distance.

 "How did they get in without being discovered by the authorities? Did he

 parachute in, the same way as he dropped his supplies?"

 "No, said Nogo. "My informer tells us that he marched in with Mek

 Nimmut, some days before the supplies were dropped to him."

 "So from where did he march?" von Schiller pondered.

 "Where is the nearest airfield where a heavy aircraft could land?"

 "If he came in with Mek Nimmur, then they almost certainly came in from

 the Sudan. That is where Nimmur operates from. There are many old

 abandoned airfields near the border. The war," Nogo shrugged

 expressively, "the armies are always on the move, that war has been

 going on for twenty years."

 "From the Sudan?" Von Schiller picked out the border on the map. "So

 they must have trekked in along the river."

 "Almost certainly,'Nogo agreed.

 "Then just as certainly Harper plans to escape the same way. I want you

 to move the company of men that you have at Debra Maryam and deploy them

 here and here. On both banks of the river, below the monastery. They

 must be in a position to prevent Harper reaching the Sudanese border,

 if he should try to make a run for it."

 "Yes. Good! I understand. That is good tactics," Nogo nodded gloatingly,

 his eyes bright behind the tenses of his spectacles.

 "Then I want your remaining men moved down to the foot of the

 escarpment. Tell them to avoid contact with Mek Nimmur's men, but to be

 in a position to move forward very quickly and seize the dam area, and

 to block off the ravine below the dam as soon as I give you the word."

 When will that be?"Nogo asked.

 "We will continue to watch him carefully. If he makes a discovery, he

 will start moving the artefacts out. Many of them will be too large to

 conceal. Your informer will know about it. That is when we will move in

 on him."

 "You should move in now, Herr von Schiller," Nahoot advised him, "before

 he gets a chance to open the tomb."

 "Don't be an idiot," von Schiller snarled at him. "If we strike too

 soon, we might never discover what he obviously has learned about the

 whereabouts of the tomb."

 "We could force him-'

 "If I have learned anything in my life, it is that you. cannot force a

 man like Harper. There is a certain type of Englishman - I remember

 during the last war with them' He broke off and frowned. "No. They are

 very' difficult people. We must not rush it now. When Harper makes a

 discovery in the ravine, that will be the time to pounce."

 The frown faded and he smiled a small, cold smile. "The waiting game. In

 the meantime, we play the waiting game."

 The debris that filled the shaft was not so tightly packed that it

 completely blocked the flow of water through it. If it had done so,

 Nicholas would never have been sucked in by the current, as he had been

 on his first dive into the pool. There were still gaps in the blockage

 where the larger boulders had lodged or where a treetrunk en sucked in.

 and jammed sideways across the width of the tunnel. Through these

 sections the water had found the weak spots and kept them open.

 Nevertheless, the debris had taken centuries to wedge itself in, and it

 required back-breaking effort to prise it apart. The clearing operation

 was further hampered by the lack of working space in the shaft. Only

 three or four of the big men from the Buffaloes were able to work in the

 shaft at -any one time. The rest of the team were employed in passing

 back the rubble as it was levered out.

 Nicholas changed the shifts every hour. They had more labour than they

 needed, and changing them often meant that the men at the face were

 always rested and strong, and eager to earn the bonus of silver dollars

 that Nicholas promised them for their progress along the shaft.

 At each change of shift, Nicholas disappeared into the mouth of the

 tunnel with Sapper's steel tape and measured the advance.

 "One hundred and twenty feet! Well done, the Buffaloes," he told Hansith

 Sherif, the foreman monk, and then watched the water tric ing past is

 feet. The floor of the tunnel was still sloping downwards at a constant

 angle. He looked back along it towards the pool, and now in the

 floodlights the rectangular shape of the walls was very clear to see. It

 was obvious that the tunnel had been designed and surveyed by an

 engineer.

 He transferred his attention back to the floor of the tunnel and watched

 the run of water, trying to judge how deep they were below the original

 river level.

 "Eighty or ninety feet," he estimated. "No wonder the pressure in the

 mouth of the tunnel almost crushed me-' he broke off as an unusually

 shaped fragment in the muck at his feet caught his eye. He stooped and

 picked it up.

 Then took it to one of the floodlamps and by its light examined it

 closely. As he rubbed it clean between finger and thumb, he began to

 grin.

 Sloshing back along the tunnel, he yelled, "Royan!" Triumphantly

 brandishing the fragment, he demanded, "What do you make of that, then?"

 She was sitting on the wall.of the coffer, and reached down and snatched

 the object out of his grasp.

 I "Oh, sweet Mary! Where did you find this, Nicky?"

 "Lying in the mud. Right there in the adit, where it's been for the last

 four thousand years. Where one of Taita's workmen dropped and broke it,

 probably while he was sneaking a sup of wine behind the slave driver's

 back."

 Eagerly Royan held the broken shard of pottery up to the lamplight. "You

 are right, Nicky," she exclaimed. "It's part of a wine vessel. Look at

 the flared neck and belled lip. But if there was any doubt, which there

 isn't, the black firing around the rim dates it perfectly in our period.

 No older than 2000 BC."

 Still clutching the fragment of broken pottery, she jumped down into the

 mud and slush of the coffer and flung both arms around his neck.

 "Further proof, Nicky. We are on Taita's tracks. Can't you get them to

 clear any faster? We are breathing down the back of the old rogue's

 neck."

 Halfway through the next shift an excited yelling echoed out of the

 mouth of the tunnel, and Nicholas hurried back down to the face.

 "What is it, Hansith?" he demanded in Arabic of the foreman monk. "What

 are you shouting about?

 "We have broken through, effendi." Hansith Sherif grinned at him, his

 teeth gleaming in his black and mudsmeared face. Nicholas eagerly pushed

 his way through the workmen. They had levered a huge round boulder out

 of the pack, and beyond it lay an opening. He shone his electric torch

 through this window in the wall, but could make out very little

 except-empty black space.

 Stepping back, he slapped the monk on the back.

 "Well done, Hansith. A dollar bonus for every man in the team. But keep

 them working! Clear away all this rubbish." But it was not as easily

 done as he had ordered. The shifts changed twice more before the shaft

 was cleared completely of the last of the extraneous rubble and broken

 rock. Only then could Nicholas and Royan stand in the threshold of the

 cavern beyond the tunnel.

 "What has happened here? What has caused this?" Royan's voice was

 puzzled as Nicholas played his torch out into the void.

 "I think this is a cave-in area. There was probably a fault in the rock

 strata running through here and here." He picked out the cracks in the

 roof of the cavern.

 "You think the flow of the water through the shaft has scoured it out?"

 she asked.

 "I would say so, yes."Nicholas turned the beam of light downwards. "The

 floor has fallen out of the shaft also."

 The rock had subsided in front of them, leaving a deep hole. Ten feet

 below where they stood the hole was filled with water, forming a large

 circular pool with vertical rock sides. Overhead the roof had fallen in

 and was now a high dome of irregular rock, and the far side of the pool

 was shrouded in shadows a hundred feet or more in front of them.

 There was no apparent way around this obstacle without entering the

 water. Nicholas shouted to Hansith to bring one of the long bamboo poles

 that they had used for the scaffolding. The pole was thirty feet long

 and they had to manoeuvre its length down the tunnel. Nicholas sounded

 the pool with the bamboo, probing it down into the turbid water as

 deeply as he could reach.

 "No bottom." He shook his head. "Do you know what I think?" He retrieved

 the pole and passed it back to Hansith.

 "Tell me," Royan invited.

 "I think that this is the natural fault that leads the water away to the

 other side of the hills, and comes to the surface again at the butterfly

 fountain. The river has carved its own path., "Why hasn't it drained,

 then?" Royan looked down dubiously in the pool below them.

 "A -bend in the shaft, probably. Water still trapped in the top of the

 shaft like the bowl of a lavatory."

 He probed the waters of the pool with the beam of his torch, and Royan

 exclaimed with horror and disgust as on of the giant eels came racing to

 the surface, attracted by the light.

 "The filthy creatures!" She stepped back involuntarily.

 "The whole river must be infested with them."

 The long dark shape circled the pool swiftly and then disappeared back

 into the depths as suddenly as it had appeared.

 "If you are right, and a section of Taita's adit has collapsed, then the

 continuation of his tunnel should be on the far side of this." She

 pointed across the pool, and Nicholas lifted the beam of the torch and

 shone it in the direction she indicated.

 "Look, icky!" she cried. "There it is."

 The dark rectangular opening yawned at them from across the pool.

 "How do we get across there?" Royan asked, disconsolate.

 "The answer to that is, not very easily. Dammit to hell!" Nicholas swore

 heartily. "This is going to cost us another couple of days that we, can

 ill afford. We are going to have to build some sort of bridge across

 it."

 "What kind of bridge?"

 "Get Sapper down here. This is his department."

 Sapper stood at the brink of the sink-hole and glared across at the far

 bank.

 Pontoons," he grunted. "How many of those inflatable rafts have you got

 squirrelled away?"

 "Forget it, Sapper!" Nicholas shook his head. "You are not getting those

 dirty great paws of yours on my rafts."

 "Suit yourself' Sapper spread his hands in resignation.

 "It would be the easiest and quickest way of doing it.

 Anchor a raft in the middle and build a catwalk over the top of it. I

 need something that floats high-'

 "Baobab." Nicholas snapped his fingers. "That should do the trick very

 nicely. When it's dried out, baobab wood is as light as balsa. Floats

 just as well as one of my inflatable rafts."

 "Plenty of baobabs growing along the hills," Sapper agreed. "Every

 second tree in this valley seems to be a ruddy baobab."

 hree hundred yards from the top of the cliff grew a massive specimen of

 Adansonia digitata.

 Its smooth bark resembled the skin of one of the great reptiles from the

 age of the dinosaurs. Its girth was tremendous - twenty men with

 outstretched arms could not have encircled it. The upper branches were

 bare and twisted, and it looked as though it had been dead for a hundred

 years. Only the heavy velvet-covered pods proved that it still lived;

 they hung thickly from the high branches, bursting open to spill the

 black seeds which were coated thickly with white cream of tartar.

 "The Zulus say that the Nkulu Kulu, the Great Spirit, planted the baobab

 upside down with its roots in the air to punish it," Nicholas told Royan

 as they looked up at the enormous spread of its branches.

 "Why would he want to do that?" she wanted to know.

 "What did the poor old baobab do that was so bad?"

 "It boasted that it was the.tallest and thickest tree of the forest, and

 so the Nkulu Kulu decided to teach it a little lesson in humility."

 One of the gigantic branches had snapped off under its own weight, and

 lay on the rocky ground beneath the trunk. The wood was white and

 fibrous, light as cork.

 Under Nicholas's direction the axemen cut it into manageable lengths.

 Once they had been carried down the adit shaft to the sink-hole, Sapper

 stapled the logs together and floated them across the pool to form a

 causeway. He anchored this to the rock face at either end, and then over

 it he laid a catwalk of bamboo poles. The bridge of baobab logs floated

 high, and although it bobbed and swayed, it could easily support the

 weight of a dozen men at a time.

 Nicholas was the first one across the sink-hole. He placed a roughly

 made ladder against the high vertical bank, and scrambled up into the

 mouth of the adit on the far side of the pool. Royan was close behind

 him.

 The two of them stood in the entrance to this continuation of the shaft,

 and as soon as Nicholas shone his torch into it they realized that the

 nature of the construction had changed. This section had not been so

 heavily scoured out and eroded by the rush of river water through it.

 The main flow must have drained away through the sink-hole. The

 dimensions were the same, three metres wide by two high, but the

 rectangular shape was more precise and although the walls and roof were

 rough, like IL

 those of a mine, the marks of the tools that had shaped it were now

 clearly visible. The footing of the tunnel was roughly paved with slabs

 of crudely dressed stone, This whole length of the tunnel had also been

 submerged, for it lay below the natural level of the river before it had

 been dammed. The paving under their feet was wet and covered with a

 slime that had not yet had time to dry out since it had been exposed by

 the receding waters. The roof and walls of the tunnel ran with moisture,

 and the air was dank and cold and smelled of mud and rot.

 They waited for Sapper to string the cables for the lights across the

 causeway. He set up the lamps and switched them on. At once they were

 aware that ahead of them the shaft had begun to rise at an angle of

 about twenty degrees.

 "You can see what the old devil Taita. was up to here.

 He has taken us down well below water level to flood the tunnel to a

 length and depth that nobody would be able to swim along. Now he is

 angling up again," Nicholas pointed out to Royan. They started forward,

 moving slowly up the ascending shaft, and Nicholas counted aloud each

 pace he took.

 "One hundred and eight, one hundred and nine, one hundred and ten-'

 suddenly they came to the recent low river level. It was clearly marked

 as a dry line on the walls of the tunnel. The paving under their feet

 was also dry and free of the slippery coating of slime. Fifty paces

 further on they passed the high flood level of the river, which was just

 as clearly etched on the rock floor and the walls. Beyond that the

 tunnel had never been immersed, and the walls were in the same condition

 as the Egyptian slave workmen had left them four thousand years earlier.

 The marks of the bronze chisels were as pristine as if they had been

 inflicted just days before.

 Only ten feet beyond the highest point that the river waters had ever

 reached, they came out upon a stone landing. Here the floor levelled

 out, and then the tunnel turned sharply back upon itself.

 "Let's spare a minute just to think about this as a feat of

 engineering." Nicholas took Royan's arm and pointed back down the

 tunnel. "Taita has placed this landing on which we are standing

 precisely above the high-water mark of the river. How did he work it out

 so exactly? He had no dumpy level, and only the crudest measuring

 equipment.

 is. It's a he And yet he calculated it as accurately as a piece of

 work."

 "Well, he tells us repeatedly in the scrolls that he is a genius. I

 suppose we will have to believe him now." She pulled against his grip.

 "Let's go on. I must see what lies around this corner," she urged.

 Side by side they turned through the one hundred and eighty degree

 corner and Nicholas held the hand lamp high, with the electrical cable

 trailing back down the shaft behind him. As he lit the way ahead, Royan

 exclaimed aloud and seized Nicholas's free hand. Both of them froze with

 astonishment.

 Taita had designed the turning of the ascending ramp for dramatic

 effect. The lower section of the shaft through which they had passed was

 "crudely constructed, the walls irregular and undressed, the roof lumpy

 and cracked. Taita had calculated his levels so finely that he had known

 that the lower levels of the shaft would be submerged and damaged by the

 water. He had wasted no effort on beautifying them.

 Now before them rose a wide stairway. The angle of its ascent was such

 that, from where they stood on the landing, the top of it was hidden

 from their view. Each step stretched the full width of the tunnel, and

 rose, a hand's breadth. The treads were cut from slabs of mottled

 gneiss, polished and fitted to each other so precisely that the joints

 between them were barely visible. The roof of the tunnel was three times

 as high as it had been in the lower reaches of the tunnel, perfectly

 domed and proportioned. The walls and the curved roof were of

 beautifully dressed blue granite blocks, keyed into each other with

 marvelous precision and symmetry. The whole was a masterpiece of the

 mason's art, majestic and portentous. There was both a promise and a

 menace in this vestibule to the unknown. Its simplicity and lack of

 ornamentation made it even more impressive.

 Royan tugged softly at Nicholas's hand and together they stepped on to

 the first tread of the stairway. It was carpeted with a fine layer of

 dust, soft and white as talcum powder. The dust rose in soft eddies and

 wisps around their knees and then subsided as they passed on upwards. It

 muted the harsh glare of the electric lamp that Nicholas carried high in

 his right hand.

 Gradually, as they went on upwards, the top of the staircase came into

 view ahead of them. Royan dug her fingernails into the palm of

 Nicholas's hand as she saw what lay ahead. The staircase ended on

 another level landing, across which a rectangular doorway faced them.

 They stepped up on to the landing and stood before the doorway. Neither

 of them had words to express this supreme moment: they stood in silence

 for what seemed like an eternity, holding each other's hand with a

 fierce and possessive grip.

 Finally Nicholas tore his eyes off the gateway, and looked down at

 Royan. He saw his own feelings mirrored in her face, her eyes shone as

 though lit from within by an incandescent passion. There was no other

 person alive with whom he would wish to share this moment. He wanted it

 to last for ever.

 She turned her head and looked at him. They stared deeply and solemnly

 into each other's eyes. Both of them were aware that this was a high

 tide in their lives, one that could never be repeated. She tightened her

 grip on his hand, and looked back to the doorway facing them. It had

 been plastered over with white river clay, a surface that had mellowed

 to the shade of ivory. There was no crack or blemish in its smooth

 expanse, like the flawless skin of a beautiful virgin.

 Their eyes fastened avidly on the two embossed seals in the centre of

 the expanse of white clay. The upper one was in the shape of the royal

 cartouche, the rectangular knot surmounted by the scarab, the homed

 beetle that signified the great circle of eternity.

 Royan's lips formed the words as she read them from the hieroglyphics,

 but she uttered no sound. "'The Almighty. The Divine. Ruler of the Upper

 and Lower Kingdoms Egypt. Familiar of the god, Horus. Beloved of Osiris

 and of Of Isis. Mamose, may he five for ever!"'

 Below this magnificent royal seal was a smaller, simpler design in the

 shape of a hawk, with one broken wing drooping across its barred breast,

 and the legend: 7, Taita the slave, have obeyed your command, divine

 Pharaoh." Underneath the maimed hawk was a single column of

 hieroglyphics that spelled out the stem warning: "Stranger!

 The gods are watching. Disturb the king's eternal rest at your peril!'

 reaking the seals on the doorway was a momentous act, and despite the

 fact that the time before the onset of the rains was fast running out,

 neither of them was prepared to undertake it lightly.

 They had to make every effort to keep permanent re ds cor of everything

 they discovered, and to inflict as little damage as possible while

 gaining access.

 They spent one of their precious remaining days preparing for the

 break-in to the tomb. Naturally, Nicholas's first concern was the

 security of the tomb area. He asked Mek Nimmur to place an armed guard

 on the causeway over the sink-hole in the approach tunnel, and access

 beyond this point was restricted. Only Nicholas, Royan, Sapper, Mek,

 Tessay and four of the monks whom Nicholas had selected were allowed

 across the bridge.

 Hansith Sherif had proved himself repeatedly during the clearing of the

 lower tunnel. Physically strong, willing and intelligent, he had become

 Nicholas's principal assistant. It was Hansith who carried the tripod

 and spare camera equipment while Nicholas photographed the approach

 tunnel and the sealed doorway. He shot three rolls of high-speed film to

 make certain that they had a complete record of the unbroken seals and

 the doorway surrounds. Only when the filming was completed would

 Nicholas allow Hansith and the other three monks to bring up the tools

 needed for the break-in.

 Sapper moved the Honda generator up as far as the sink-hole, to reduce

 the voltage drop over the distance that the current had to travel down

 the cable. Then he set up, the floodlights on the upper landing of the

 staircase and focused them on the white expanse of the plastered

 doorway.

 VAen they assembled at the threshold they were all in a sober mood.

 Despite the fact that the tomb was thousands of years old, it was still

 an act of desecration that they were about to perpetrate. Royan had

 translated the hieroglyphic warning on the sealed doorway to Sapper, Mek

 and Tessay, and none of them was prepared to take it lightly.

 Nicholas marked out the square opening he intended cutting through the

 plaster covering, This was large enough to afford access, but it also

 enclosed the royal cartouche and Tatia's maimed hawk seal. He intended

 lifting these out in one piece, and preserving them intact. In his

 imagination, he could already see them displayed in a prominent position

 in the museum at Quenton Park.

 Nicholas began on the right'hand upper corner of the opening. First he

 used a long, needle-sharp awl as a probe.

 He pressed and twisted the needle point through the dried clay in an

 attempt to determine exactly what lay beneath the surface. Very soon he

 found out that the plaster had been laid over laths of finely interwoven

 reeds.

 "That makes it a lot-easier," he told Royan. "The reed mat will help to

 hold the plaster together and prevent it cracking and breaking up."

 He kept working the point of the awl deeper, until suddenly the

 resistance gave way and the blade ran in Its full length.

 "Six inches," he said, measuring the thickness of the door off the

 blade. "Taita never skimps, does he? It's a heavy bit of work."

 Still using the awl, Nicholas drilled all four corners of the square

 opening he intended cutting. Then he stepped back and gestured for

 Hansith to bring up the heavy four-inch gimlet to enlarge them. This was

 the type of drill that fishermen use for cutting through lake ice in

 winter.

 As soon as the gimlet broke through, Nicholas impatiently pulled Hansith

 aside and peered into the hole.

 Beyond the opening all was completely dark, but he caught a whiff of the

 faint breath of ancient air that washed through the opening. The odour

 was dry and dead and austere, the smell of the ages long past.

 "What do you see?" Royan demanded at his elbow.

 "The light! Give me the light!" he ordered, and when Sapper handed it to

 him, he held it to the opening.

 "Tell me!" Royan was dancing beside him with impatience. "What do you

 see now?"

 "Colours!" he whispered. "The most marvelous, indescribable colours." He

 stepped back and, lifting her around the waist, held her so that she

 could look into the aperture.

 "Beautiful!" she cried. "It's so beautiful."

 The men rigged up the heavy-duty electric blower fan which would

 circulate the air in the shaft, while Nicholas prepared the chain-saw.

 When he was ready, Nicholas handed Royan a pair of goggles and a dust

 mask and helped her to adjust them. Then he made her fit a pair of wax

 ear plugs.

 Before he started the chain-saw, he sent the rest of them back down the

 tunnel as far as the causeway over the sinkholes In the confined space

 the exhaust fumes from the chain-saw and the dust, together with the

 noise of the petrol engine, would be overpowering, but apart from that

 he wanted only Royan with him at the moment of the break'in.

 When they were alone, Nicholas switched the blower fan to its highest

 speed, then donned his own mask and goggles and plugged his ears. He

 pulled the starter cord of the chain-saw motor and it burst into life in

 a cloud of blue exhaust smoke.

 Nicholas braced himself and pressed the spinning chain blade into the

 gimlet hole in the plastered doorway.

 It cut through the thick white plaster and the laths beneath it like a

 knife through the icing on a wedding cake.

 Carefully he ran the cutting edge down the line he had marked out.

 A cloud of flying white plaster dust filled the air.

 Within seconds they could see only a few feet in front of their eyes.

 Doggedly Nicholas kept the cut going, down the right -hand side, across

 the bottom, then up the left side. Finally he made the last cut across

 the top, and when the square trapdoor began to sag forward under its own

 weight he killed the engine of the chain'saw and set it aside.

 Royan jumped forwards to help him, and together in the eddies of dust

 and smoke they steadied the square of plaster and prevented it from

 crashing to the paving and shattering into a thousand pieces. Gently

 they lifted it out from the opening and, with the seals still intact,

 laid it against the side wall of the landing.

 The open hatchway they had cut through the plaster was a dark square.

 Nicholas adjusted the floodlight to shine through it, but the dust was

 still too dense for them to be able to see much of the interior.

 Nicholas climbed through the hatch into the space beyond. All was

 obscured by a dense fog of dust that not even the lamps could penetrate.

 He did not attempt to explore further, but immediately turned back to

 help Royan through the opening after him.

 He recognized her right to share every moment of this discovery. Beyond

 the wall they stood quietly together, waiting for the blower fan to

 clear the air. Slowly the dust fog began to dissipate, and the first

 thing they became aware of was the floor beneath their feet.

 No longer made of stone slabs, it was covered with tiles of yellow agate

 that had been polished to a gloss and fitted together so cunningly that

 no joints were visible. It was like a single sheet of lovely opaque

 glass, dulled only by the film of fine talcum dust that had settled upon

 it.

 Where their feet had disturbed the layer of dust the agate sparkled

 through it, catching the light of the floodlamp.

 Then the fog of dust that surrounded them thinned, and gradually a

 miraculous blaze of colours and shapes began to appear through the murk.

 Royan lifted the dust mask from her face and let it drop to the agate

 floor.

 Nicholas followed her example, and took a breath of the stagnant air. No

 draught had disturbed it for thousands of years and it had the odour of

 great antiquity, the musty smell of the linen bandages of an embalmed

 corpse.

 Now the miasma of dust faded away and before them opened a long straight

 passageway, the end of which was hidden in shadow and darkness. Nicholas

 turned back to the opening in the sealed door behind them, and reached

 through it to bring in the fioodlight on its stand. Quickly he arranged

 it to illuminate the full length of the passageway ahead of them.

 As they started forward, the images of the old gods hovered around them.

 They glowered at the intruders from the walls and hung over them,

 watching them with huge and hostile eyes from the ceiling high overhead.

 Nicholas and Royan passed on slowly. Their footfalls on the agate tiles

 were muted by the thin carpet of dust, and the dust that still hung in

 the air reflected the light and cast over them a luminous net that had

 an ethereal, dreamlike quality.

 Inscriptions covered every inch of space upon the walls and the high

 roof. There were long quotations from all the mystical writings, from

 the Book of Breathings, the Book of the Pylons and the Book of Wisdom.

 Other blocks of hieroglyphics recited the history of Pharaoh Mamose's

 existence on this earth, and extolled those virtues that made the gods

 love him.

 Further along they came to the first of eight shrines set into the walls

 of the long funeral gallery. This one was the shrine of Osiris. It was a

 circular chamber, the curved wall decorated with texts in praise of the

 god, and in its niche a small statue of Osiris in his tall feathered

 head-dress, with eyes of onyx and rock crystal which stared at them so

 lacably that Royan shivered. Nicholas reached out and gently touched the

 foot of the god.

 He said one word, "Gold!'

 Then he looked up at the towering mural that covered the wall and half

 the domed ceiling above and around the shrine. It was another gigantic

 figure of the father Osiris, god of the Underworld, with his green face

 and false beard, his arms crossed upon his chest, holding the flail and

 the crook, wearing his tall feathered head-dress and with the erect

 cobra on his brow. They gazed up at him with a sense of awe. As the

 lamplight wavered in the shifting dust cloud LEI the god seemed to

 become imbued with life, and to move and sway before their eyes.

 They did not linger at the first shrine, for beyond it the gallery ran

 on, straight as the flight of an arrow to its target. They followed it.

 The next shrine set into the wall was dedicated to the goddess. The

 golden figure of Isis sat in her niche, upon the throne that was her

 symbol. The infant Horus suckled at her breast. Her eyes were ivory and

 blue lapis lazuli.

 Her murals covered the walls around her niche. There she was, the mother

 with great kohl-lined eyes as black as night, wearing the sun disc and

 the horns of the sacred cow pon her head. All around her, hieroglyphic

 symbols covered the wall, so bright that they glowed like a cloud of

 fireflies; for she possessed a hundred diverse names.

 Amongst these were Ast and Net and Bast. She was also Ptah and Seker and

 Mersekert and Rennut. Each of these names was a word of power, for her

 sanctity and her benevolent aura had lived on where most of the old gods

 had withered away for lack of worshippers to repeat and keep alive these

 mystic names.

 In ancient Byzantium and later in Christian Egypt they had bestowed the

 old goddess's virtues and attributes upon the Virgin Mary. The image of

 her suckling the infant Horus had been perpetuated in the icons of the

 Madonna and child. Thus Royan responded to the goddess in all her

 entities, the mingled blood of Royan's forefathers in her veins

 acknowledging both Isis and Mary, heresy and truth mingling inextricably

 in her heart, so that she felt at once both guilt and religious elation.

 In the next shrine was a golden figure of Horus, the falcon-headed, the

 last of the holy trinity. In his right hand he held the war-bow and in

 his left the ankh, for life and death were his to dispense. His eyes

 were red carrielians.

 Portraits of his other entities surrounded the statue: Horus the infant,

 suckling at the breast of Isis, Horus as the divine youth Harpocrates,

 proud and lithe and beautiful, one finger touching his chin in the

 ritual gesture, striding out on sandalled feet under his short, stiff

 kilt.

 Then Horus the falcon-headed, sometimes with the body of a lion and then

 with the body of a young warrior, wearing the great crown of the south

 and the north united.

 Beneath him was the inscription: "Great God and Lord of Heaven, of

 nunifest power, Mighty one anwngst all the gods, whose strength has

 vanqUished the foes of his divine father, Osiris."

  the fourth shrine stood Seth, the arch-fiend, the god of violence and

 discord. His body was gold, but his head was the head of a black hyena.

 In the fifth shrine stood the god of the dead and of the cemeteries,

 Anubis the jackal-headed. It was he who officiated at the embalming, and

 whose duty it was to examine the tongue of the great balance when the

 heart of the eceased was weighed. If the beam of the scales were

 exactly horizontal, then the dead man was declared worthy, but if the

 balance tipped against him Anubis threw the heart to the crocodile

 monster and it was devoured.

 The sixth shrine was dedicated to the god of writing, Thoth. He had the

 head of a sacred this and his stylus was in his hand. In the seventh

 shrine the sacred cow Had stood squarely on all four hooves, her piebald

 body spotted black and white, her face benignly human but with huge,

 trumpet-shaped ears, The eighth shrine was the largest and most splendid

 of all, for it belonged to Amon-Ra, father of all creation. He was the

 sun, an enormous golden disc from which the slanting golden rays

 emanated, Nicholas paused here and looked back down the long gallery.

 Those eight -sacred statues comprised a treasure that matched anything

 that Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon had discovered in the tomb of

 Tutankhamen.

 He felt in his heart that it was crass even to consider their monetary

 value. However, the simple truth was that even one of these

 extraordinary works of art would be sufficient to pay off all his debts

 many times over. But he thrust the thought aside and turned once more to

 face the commodious chamber at the far end of the gallery.

 "The burial chamber," Royan murmured with awe. "The tomb."

 As they walked towards it the shadows retreated before A them, like the

 ghost of the long-dead pharaoh scurrying back to its final resting

 place. Now they could see into the tomb, Its walls were aflame with

 still more magnificent murals. Though they had gazed upon so many of

 these already, their eyes and their senses were not yet jaded or wearied

 by such profusion.

 A single elongated figure rose up the far wall, and then stooped across

 the ceiling. It was the supple, sinuous body the goddess Nut, giving

 birth to the sun. The gold

 en rays poured forth from her open womb, suffusing the sarcophagus of

 the pharaoh and endowing the dead king with new life.

 The royal sarcophagus stood in the centre of the chamber, a massive

 coffin hewn from a solid granite block.

 How many slaves must have laboured to bring this mass of stone along the

 subterranean passages, Nicholas wondered.

 He could imagine their sweating bodies gleaming in the lamplight, and

 hear the grating squeal of the wooden rollers under the immense weight

 of the coffin.

 , Then Nicholas looked down into the coffin, and felt the plunge of his

 spirits as he realized that the sarcophagus was empty. The massive

 granite lid had been lifted from its seat, and flung aside with such

 violence that it had cracked across its width and now lay in two pieces

 on the floor beside the coffin.

 They moved forward slowly, the bitter taste of disappointment mingling

 with the dust upon their tongues, until they could look down into the

 open sarcophagus. It contained only the shattered fragments of the four

 canopic jars. These vessels had been carved from alabaster to contain

 the entrails, liver and other internal organs of the king. The broken

 lids were decorated with the heads of gods and fabulous creatures from

 beyond the grave.

 "Empty!" whispered Royan. "The body of the king has gone."

 Over the following days, while they photographed the murals and packed

 the statues of the eight gods and goddesses from the funeral gallery,

 Royan and Nicholas discussed and argued the disappearance of the royal

 mummy from its sarcophagus.

 "The seals on the gate of the tomb were intact," Royan pointed out

 repeatedly.

 "There is probably an explanation for that," Nicholas told her. "Taita

 himself might have removed the treasure and the body. Many times in the

 writing of the seventh scroll he laments the waste of such treasure. He

 points out that it could have been much better spent in protecting and

 nurturing the nation and its people."

 "No, it does not make sense," Royan argued, "to go to such length as to

 dam the river and tunnel under the pool, to build this elaborate tomb,

 and then to remove and destroy the king's mummy. Taita was always a

 logical person. In his own way he revered the gods of Egypt. It shows in

 all his writings. He would never have flouted the religious traditions

 in which he believed so strongly. Some thing about this tomb does not

 ring true for me - the mysterious and almost offhanded disappearance of

 the body, even the paintings and the inscriptions up on the walls."

 "I agree with you about the missing corpse, but what do you find

 illogical about the decorations?" Nicholas wanted to know.

 "Well, the paintings first." She indicated the image of Isis with a wave

 of her hand. "They are lovely, and they are the work of a competent

 classical artist, but they are hackneyed and stylized in form and choice

 of colour. The figures are stiff and wooden - they do not move and

 dance.

 They lack that spark of genius that we were shown in the tomb of Queen

 Lostris where the original scrolls in their alabaster jars were hidden."

 Nicholas considered the murals thoughtfully. I see what you mean. Even

 the murals in the tomb of Tanus at the monastery are in a different

 class from these."

 "Exactly! she said forcefully. "Those were the paintings of Taita

 himself These are not. They were done by one of his hacks." , "What

 else is there about the inscriptions that you don't like?"

 "Have you ever heard of another tomb that did not have the text of the

 Book of the Dead inscribed upon its walls, or that did not depict the

 dead person's journey through the seven pylons to reach the paradise

 beyond?"

 Nicholas looked startled; he had never considered that it fact. Without

 replying he left her and went back down the long gallery, ostensibly to

 supervise the packing of the sacred statues, but in reality to give

 himself more time to consider what she had said.

 Before leaving England Nicholas had seen to it that all of the more

 vulnerable and breakable equipment that they had air-freighted into the

 gorge had been packed in sturdy metal ammunition crates. All these

 crates had waterproof rubber seals and strong lever fastenings. The

 original contents had been padded and protected with olystyrene packing.

 When they left Ethiopia the equipP

 ment would be abandoned, but the crates, together with the packing

 material, had been carefully preserved for iA transporting the treasures

 that they might find in the tomb.

 While six of the sacred statues fitted neatly into the crates, the

 images of Hathor the cow and satanic Seth were too large. However,

 Nicholas discovered that these had been carved in separate parts. The

 heads were detachable, and the hoofed legs of Hathor were held into the

 body by wooden pins that were rotted to dust. Broken down into their

 separate parts, even these two larger statues could also be packed into

 the metal cases.

 Nicholas watched Hansith packing Seth's ferocious head of ebony and

 black resin into one of the crates. Then after a while he went back to

 where Royan was working on the inscriptions on the wall above the empty

 sarcophagus.

 "Very well. I agree. You are right about the lack of inscriptions from

 the Book of the Dead. It does seem strange.

 But what can we do about it, other than accepting it as a mystery which

 we can never unravel?"

 "Nicky, there is something more here. This is not everything. I feel it

 in every fibre of my being. We are missing something."

 "Who am I, a mere male, to question the veracity of a woman's

 instincts."

 "Stop being superior," she snapped. "How long do I have to work over the

 inscriptions from the stele?"

 "A week or two at the most. I have to set up an RV with Jannie. We have

 to be there at Roseires airstrip when he comes in to pick us up. That's

 one date we dare not reak., "Good Lord. I thought you would have

 arranged that long ago. How will you contact Jannie from here?"

 "Quite simple really." Nicholas smiled. "There is a public telephone at

 the post office in Debra Maryam, Tessay can move freely anywhere in the

 Goiam. She will go up the escarpment with an escort of monks and

 telephone Geoffrey Tennant at the British Embassy in Addis. I have

 already arranged it with Geoffrey. He will relay a message on to

 Jannie."

 "Will Tessay do it for you?"

 He nodded. "She has agreed to go up to Debra Maryam tomorrow. Jannie

 must have as much notice as possible to get himself prepared for the

 flight out from Malta. It's going to need some firte timing for all of

 us to arrive at the airstrip simultaneously. It will be asking for

 trouble for one party to sit around waiting at Roseires for the others

 to arrive."

 awn on the first of April," Nicholas gave Tessay the message. "Tell

 Jannie . we will be there on April Fools' Day! A nice easy one to

 remember."

 They watched Tessay set off along the trail with her escort of monks and

 Royan asked Mek Nimmur quietly, "Don't you worry about her going off

 like this on her own?"

 "She is a very competent person, and she is well known and liked

 throughout the Gojam- She is as safe as any person can be in a dangerous

 land." Mek watched Tessay's slim figure in shamnw and jodhpur pants

 becoming smaller with distance. "I wish I could go with her, but-' Mek

 shrugged.

 Suddenly Royan exclaimed, "There is something that I forgot to ask her."

 She left Nicholas and Mek standing, and ran down the trail calling after

 the other woman. Her voice floated back to where Nicholas stood watching

 her.

 "Tessay! Wait! Come back!'

 Tessay turned and waited for Royan to catch up with her. While the two

 women stood talking together, Nicholas lost interest and turned to study

 the distant silhouette of the escarpment-With a sinking feeling in the

 pit of his stomach he saw that the thunderheads on the mountain tops

 were denser and more ominous than they had been only days before. The

 rains were building up swiftly now.

 He wondered if they really had as long as they hoed before the dam was

 threatened and they were driven out of the gorge by the rising waters.

 All, He looked back down the path just in time to see Royan pass

 something to Tessay, who nodded and pushed it into the pocket of her

 jodhpurs. Then at last the two women embraced warmly, and Tessay turned

 away. Royan stood in the middle of the trail, watching until a bend in

 the valley hid Tessay from her. Then she walked slowly back to where

 Nicholas waited.

 "What was all that about?"he wanted to know, and she smiled

 mysteriously.

 "Girls' secrets. There are some things that it's best you brutish

 males'don't know about." But when Nicholas raised an eyebrow at her, she

 relented and told him, "Tessay will ask Geoffrey Tennant to send a

 message to Mummy, just to let her know that I am all right. I don't want

 her to worry about me."

 As they climbed back down the scaffolding to where the fly camp had been

 set up on the rock ledge beside Taita's pool, Nicholas thought how

 fortuitous it was that Royan had her mother's phone number already

 written down to hand to Tessay, and he wondered at this sudden

 (I urge of Royan's to report her whereabouts to her mother.

 wonder what she is really up to?" he mused. "I will try and wheedle it

 out of Tessay when she returns."

 Royan would have preferred to camp in the tomb itself, so as to be in

 the midst of the inscriptions on which she was working, but Nicholas had

 insisted that they sleep in the open air, and the ledge was as close as

 they could get to their workplace. "The musty air in the tomb is very

 probably unhealthy," he told her. "Cave disease is a real danger in

 these old enclosed places. They say that is what killed some of Howard

 Carter's people working in the tomb of Tutankhamen."

 "The fungus spores that cause cave disease breed in bat dung," she

 pointed out. "There are no bats in Mamose's tomb. Taita sealed it up too

 tightly."

 "Humour me," he begged. "You cannot work in there for days on end. I

 want you at least to get out of the tomb for a few hours each day."

 She shrugged. "Only as a special favour to you," she agreed, but as they

 reached the foot of the scaffolding she gave her new sleeping quarters

 only a perfunctory glance and then headed for the coffer dam and the

 entrance to the approach tunnel.

 They had converted the landing at the top of the staircase, outside the

 plaster-seated entrance to the tomb, into their workshop. Royan spread

 her drawings and photographs and reference books on the rough table of

 handhewn planks that Hansith made for her. Sapper had placed one of the

 floodlamps above this crude desk so that she had good light to work by.

 Against one wall of the landing they had stacked the ammunition crates

 which contained the eight sacred statues. Nicholas had insisted on

 storing all their discoveries where he could safeguard them adequately.

 Mek's armed men still kept a twenty-four-hour guard on the causeway over

 the sink-hole.

 While Nicholas completed his photographic record of the walls of the

 long gallery and the empty burial chamber, Royan sat at her table and

 pored over her papers for hours at a time, scribbling notes and

 calculations from them into her notebooks. Now and then she would jump

 up from her desk and dart through the hatch in the white plaster doorway

 into the long gallery to study a detail on the decorated walls.

 Whenever this happened, Nicholas straightened up from his camera tripod

 and watched her with a fond and indulgent expression. So intent was she

 that she seemed completely oblivious of him and everybody else about

 her.

 Nicholas had never seen her in this mood, and the depth of her powers of

 concentration impressed him.

 When she had worked for fifteen hours without a break he went out on to

 the landing to rescue her and to lead her, protesting, back down the

 tunnel to the pool where there was a hot meal waiting for them. After

 she had eaten he led her to her hut and insisted that she lie down on

 her inflatable mattress.

 "You are going to sleep now, Royan," he ordered.

 He woke to hear her creeping stealthily out of the hut next door to his,

 back along the ledge to the entrance to the tomb. He checked his watch

 and grunted with disbelief when he realized that they had slept for only

 three and a half hours. He shaved quickly and bolted back a slab of

 toasted injera bread and a cup of tea before following her into the

 tomb.

 He found her standing in the long gallery before the empty niche in the

 shrine where the statuette of Osiris had stood. She was so preoccupied

 that she did not hear him come up behind her, and she started violently

 when he touched her arm.

 "You startled me," she scolded him.

 "What are you staring at?" he asked. "What have you discovered?"

 "Nothing," she denied swiftly, and then after a moment, "I don't know.

 It's just an idea."

 "Come on! What are you up to?"

 "It's easier for me to show you." She led him back to her table on the

 stone landing, and rearranged her notebooks carefully before she spoke

 again.

 "What I have been doing these last few days is going through the

 material on the stele of Tanus's tomb, picking out all the quotations

 that I recognize from the classical books of mystery, the Book of

 Breathings, the Book of the Pylons and -the Book of Thoth, and setting

 those on one side." She showed him fifteen pages in her neat small

 script.

 "All this is ancient material, none of it original compositions by

 Taita. I have discarded it for the time being."

 She set the first notebook aside and picked up the next. "All this is

 from the fourth face of the stele. It's nothing that I recognize, but

 seems to be only long lists of numbers and figures. Some sort of code,

 perhaps? I am not sure, but I do have some ideas on it that I will come

 to later.

 Now this here," she showed him the next book, "this is all fresh

 material that I don't remember reading in any of the ancient classics.

 Much of it, if not all of it, must be original Taita writings. If he has

 left any more clues for us, I believe they will be here, in these

 sections."

 He grinned, "Like that marvelous quotation describing the pink and

 private parts of the goddess. Is that what you are referring to?"

 "Trust you not to forget that." She flushed lightly and refused to look

 up from her notebook. "Look at this quotation from the head of the third

 face of the stele, the side Taita has headed "autumn". It's the very

 first one that caught my attention."

 Nicholas leaned forward and read the hieroglyphics aloud: "'The great

 god Osiris makes the opening coup with deference to the protocol of the

 four bulls. At the first pylon he bears full testimony to the immutable

 law of the board."' He looked up at her. "Yes, I remember that

 quotation. Taita is referring to bao, the game that the old devil loved

 so passionately."

 "That's right." Royan looked slightly embarrassed. "But do you also

 remember that I told you about a dream that I had in which I saw Du raid

 again in one of the chambers of the tomb?"

 "I remember." He chuckled at her discomfort. "He said I of the four

 bulls. Now

 4 something to you about the protoco we are going in to the, realm of

 divination by dreams, are we?"

 She looked annoyed by his levity. "All I am suggesting is that my

 subconscious had been -digesting the quotation and come up with an

 answer, which it put into the mouth of Duraid in the dream. Can't you be

 serious just for one moment?

 "Sorry." He was contrite. "Remind me what you heard Duraid say."

 "In the dream he told me, "Remember the protocol of the four bulls -

 Start at the beginning."'

 "I am no expert on the game of bao. What did he mean?"

 "The rules and subtleties of the game have been lost in the mists of

 antiquity. But as you know, we have found examples of the bao board

 amongst the grave goods in the tombs of the eleventh to the seventeenth

 dynasties, and we can only guess that it was an early form of chess."

 She began to sketch for him on one of the blank pages at the back of her

 notebook.

 "The wooden board was laid out like a chessboard, eight rows of cups

 wide and eight rows deep. Like this." She drew it in with quick, deft

 strokes of her ballpoint pen.

 "The pieces were coloured stones that moved in a prescribed fashion. I

 won't go into all the details, but the protocol of the four bulls was an

 opening gambit in the game favoured by grand masters of Taita's calibre.

 It consisted of making sacrifices to mass the highest-ranking stones in

 the first cup from where they could dominate the important centraffiles

 of the board."

 "I am not sure where we are going, but lead on. I am listening."Nicholas

 tried not to look too mystified.

 "The first cup of the board." She indicated it on her sketch, as though

 instructing a backward child. "The beginning, Duraid said, "Start at the

 beginning" Taita said, "The great god Osiris makes the opening coup."'

 "I still don't follow you. "Nicholas shook his head.

 "Come with me." Carrying the notebooks, she led him through the hatch in

 the white plaster doorway and stood beside him at the shrine of Osiris.

 "The opening coup. The beginning."

 She turned and faced down the gallery. "This is the first shrine. How

 many shrines are there altogetherr

 "Three for the trinity, then Seth, Thoth, Anubis, Hathor and Ra," he

 listed. "Eight altogether."

 "Glory be!" She laughed. "The lad can count! How many cups in the files

 of the bao board?"

 "Eight across, and eight down-' he broke off and stated at her, "You

 think-?"

 She did not answer, but opened the notebook. "All of these numbers and

 extraneous symbols - they spell no coherent words. They do not relate to

 each other in any way, except that no number in the list is greater than

 eight., "I thought I had caught up with you, but I just lost you again."

 "If somebody were to read the notations of a game of T, chess four

 thousand years from now, what would he make of it?" she asked. "Wouldn't

 it just be lists of numbers and extraneous symbols to him? You really

 are being extremely dense, aren't you? This is like pulling teeth."

 "Oh, Lordy, Lordy!" His face cleared. "You clever lady!

 Taita is playing the game of bao with us."

 "And this is the first pylon, where it starts." She gestured to the

 shrine. "This is where the great god Osiris makes the opening coup. This

 is where we must start at the beginning of the sacred bao board. This is

 where we counter his opening move."

 They both looked around the shrine for a while, studying the curved

 walls and the high domed roof, and then Nicholas broke the silence. "At

 the risk of being called extremely dense and having my teeth pulled, may

 I ask a question? How the hell do we play a game when we don't even know

 the rules?"

 olonel Nogo exuded confidence and self, importance as he swaggered into

 the conference room to answer von Schiller's summons.

 Nahoot Guddabi bustled along behind him, determined not to be excluded

 from any of the proceedings. He too tried to look confident and

 important, but in truth he felt his position was very insecure and that

 he needed to justify himself to his master, Von Schiller was dictating

 correspondence to Utte Kemper, but as soon as they entered the room he

 stood quickly and stepped on to the carpeted block.

 "You promised that you would have a report for me yesterday," he snapped

 at Nogo, ignoring Nahoot. "Have you not heard anything from this

 informer of yours in the gorge?"

 "I apologize for keeping you waiting like this, Herr von Schiller." Nogo

 was immediately deflated by this sharp attack, and he became restless

 and uneasy. The German frightened him. "The women were a day late

 returning from Harper's camp. They are very unreliable, these country

 people. Time means very little to them."

 "Yes, yes." Von Schiller was impatient. "I know the failings of your

 black brethren, and I might add you are not completely innocent of these

 yourself, Nogo. But tell me what news you have for me."

 "Harper finished work on the dam seven days ago, and immediately he

 moved his camp downstream, to a new place on the hills above the ravine.

 He then built some sort of bamboo ladder down into the ravine. My

 informer tells me that they are clearing a hole at the bottom of the

 empty pool-'

 "A hole? What kind of hole?" Von Schiller turned pale as he listened,

 and began sweating in a light sheen across his forehead.

 "Are you all right, Herr von Schiller?" Nogo was alarmed. The German

 looked very ill, as if he were about to collapse.

 "I am perfectly well," von Schiller shouted at him.

 "What hole was this? Describe it to me."

 "The woman bringing the message is a stupid peas ant." Nogo was

 uncomfortable, squirming under von Schiller's grilling. "She says only

 that when the river water fell, there was a hole in the bottom that was

 filled with rock and rubbish and that they have cleared this out."

 "A tunnel!" Nahoot could contain himself no longer.

 "It must be the entrance tunnel to the tomb."

 "Be quied' Von Schiller turned on him furiously. "You have no facts to

 back up that supposition. Let Nogo finish." He turned back to the

 colonel. "Go on. Give me the rest of it."

 "The woman says that there is a cave at the end of the hole. Like a rock

 shrine, with pictures on the walls-' "Pictures? "What pictures?"

 "The woman said they were pictures of the saints." Nogo made a

 deprecating gesture. "She is a very uneducated woman. Stupid

 "Christian saints?" von Schiller demanded.

 Nahoot interjected, "That is not possible, Herr von Schiller. I tell you

 that Harper has discovered the tomb of Mamose. You must act swiftly

 now."

 "I will not warn you again, you miserable little man," von Schiller

 snarled at him. "Keep quiet."

 He turned back to Nogo. "Was there anything else in the cavern? Tell me

 everything the woman said."

 "Pictures and statues of the saints." Nogo spread his hands. "I am

 sorry, Herr von Schiller, that's what she said.

 I know this is all nonsense, but that is what the woman told me."

 "I will judge what is and what is not nonsense," von Schiller told him.

 "What did she say happened to these statues of the saints?"

 "Harper has packed them in boxes."

 "Has he removed them from the shrine?"

 "I do not know, Herr von Schiller. The woman did not say.

 Von Schiller stepped down from his block. He began to pace up and down

 the length of the hut, muttering to himself distractedly.

 "Herr von Schiller-' Nahoot began, but the German waved him to silence.

 At last he stopped in front of Nogo and stared up at him.

 "Did they find a mummy, a body, in the- shrine?" he demanded.

 do not know, Herr von Schiller. The woman did not say.

 "Where is she?" Von Schiller was so agitated that he clutched the front

 of Nogo's uniform jacket and stood on tiptoe to thrust his face up close

 to his. "Where is this woman? Have you let her go?" Tiny droplets of

 spittle flew into Nogo's face and he blinked and tried to duck, but von

 Schiller had him in a death grip.

 "No, sir. She is still here. I did not want to bring her to you-, "You

 fool. All you are telling me is secondhand.

 Bring her in here immediately. I want to question her face to face." He

 shoved Nogo away from him. "Go and fetch her."

 Nogo returned minutes later dragging the woman into the room by one arm.

 She was young, and despite the blue tattoos across her cheeks and chin

 she was pretty. She wore the long black robes and head-covering of a

 married woman, and carried an infant on her hip.

 As soon as Nogo released her arm she sank to the floor and whimpered

 with terror. The child she carried whined in sympathy. Its nostrils were

 plugged with white crusts of dried snot. The woman opened the top of her

 robe with a shaking hand, fished out one of her milk-swollen breasts and

 thrust the nipple into the child's mouth. Infant and mother stared at

 von Schiller with terrified eyes.

 "Ask her if there was a coffin or body of the saint in the shrine," von

 Schiller ordered, eyeing the woman with distaste.

 Nogo questioned her for a minute and then shook his head. "She does not

 know anything about a body. She is very stupid. She does not understand

 very well."

 "Ask her about the statues of the saints. What has Harper done with

 them? Where are they now? Has he removed them from the shrine?"

 After another long exchange with the woman, Nogo shook his head. "No.

 She says that the statues are still in the shrine. The white man has

 packed them into boxes and the soldiers are guarding them."

 "Soldiers? What soldiers?"

 "Soldiers of Mek Nimmur, the. shufta commander that I told you about. He

 is still with Harper."

 "How many boxes are thereP In his impatience von Schiller went up to

 where the woman sat and prodded her with the toe of his boot. "How many

 statues are there?"

 The woman waited with terror and shrank away from him. Von Schiller

 recoiled from her at the same time, with an expression of disgust.

 "Gott im HimmeW He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and patted his

 mouth and nose with it. "She stinks like an animal. Ask her how many

 boxes."

 "Not many," Nogo translated, "perhaps five, not more than ten. She is

 not sure."

 "What size? How big are they?"

 When Nogo put the question to her, the w6man indicated the length of her

 arm. Von Schiller's disappointment registered clearly in his face.

 "So few pieces, and so insignificant." He turned away from the woman and

 went to stare out of the south-facing window of the hut, down over the

 escarpment rim into the wilderness of the gorge. "If what this creature

 says is true, then Harper has not yet discovered the treasure of Mamose.

 There should be more, much more."

 Nogo was talking rapidly to the woman again, and now he turned back to

 von Schiller. "She says that one of Harper's party has left the camp in

 the gorge, and gone to Debra Maryam."

 Von Schiller spun away from the window and stared at him. "One of his

 party? Who? Which one!'

 "She is an Ethiopian woman. The concubine of Mek Nimmur. A woman she

 calls Woizero Tessay. I know of her. She was married to the Russian

 hunter, before she became Mek Nimmur's whore."

 Von Schiller rushed across the room and seized the woman by the front of

 her robe. He hauled her to her feet with such violence that the infant

 was jerked from her grip and fell howling to the floor.

 "Ask her where the woman is now," he instructed Nogo.

 The mother pulled free from his grip and grovelled on the floor, trying

 to pick up and console her screaming infant, Nogo grabbed her and

 slapped her face resoundingly to get her attention. She clasped her baby

 to her breast and gabbled out a reply.

 "She does not know," Nogo admitted. "She thinks she is still at Debra

 Maryam."

 "Get that filthy bitch out of here!" Von Schiller jerked his head at the

 woman and her child. Nogo dragged them from the hut.

 "What else do you know of this woman of Mek Nimmur's?" he asked in

 milder tones when Nogo returned.

 "She is from one of the noble families in Addis Ababa, a blood relative

 of Ras Tafari Makonnen, the old Emperor Haile Selassie."

 "If she is Mek Nimmur's woman, and has come directly from Harper's camp,

 then she will be able to " answer the questions that this other creature

 could not."

 "That is true, Herr von Schiller. But she may not wish to tell us."

 "I want her," von Schiller said. "Bring her here. Helm will speak to

 -her. I am sure he will be able to make her AN, see reason."

  is an important person. er family has muc influence." Nogo thought

 about it for a moment. "But on the other hand, she has been consorting

 with a notorious bandit. That is all the reason I need for bringing her

 in.

 I will send a detachment of my men, under one of my most trusted

 officers, to arrest her immediately." He hesitated. "If the woman is

 questioned severely, it would be as well that she were not allowed to

 return to her friends in Addis. They could make trouble for all of us.

 Even for you, Herr von Schiller."

 "What do you propose?" von, Schiller wanted to know.

 "When she has answered your questions, there will have to be a little

 accident,'Nogo suggested.

 "Do what is necessary," von Schiller ordered. I will leave the details

 to you, but make sure that if it is necessary to dispose of the woman it

 is done property. I have had enough bungling." As he spoke these words

 he looked across at Nahoot Guddabi, who lowered his gaze and flushed

 angrily.

 They had spent almost two full days at the shrine of Osiris in the long

 gallery. No ancient worshipper had ever studied the texts upon those

 walls more avidly than Nicholas and Royan, or examined the flamboyant

 murals of the great god with more minute attention They took it in turn

 to recite aloud the extracts from the stele of Tanus that Royan had

 picked out and recorded in her notebooks, repeating them until they knew

 each station by heart. While one read aloud, the other quo concentrated

 his or her full attention upon the walls, trying to discover some

 connecting link.

 "'My love is a flask of cold water in the desert. My love is a banner

 unfurling in the breeze. My love is the first shout of the newborn

 infant,"' Nic as rea Royan looked up at him from where she squatted

 attentively before the shrine, and smiled. "At times Taita was really

 rather cute, wasn't he?" she said. "Such a romantic."

 "Concentrate, for heaven's sake. This isn't a poetry appreciation class.

 We are doing serious business here."

 "Barbarian!" she muttered under her breath, but turned back to the wall

 of inscriptions.

 "Try this one again," Nicholas ordered, and read out, "'We he in the

 vale of a thousand joinings, of infant to mother, of man to woman, of

 friend to friend, of teacher to pupil, of sex to sex."'

 "That's the third time you have picked out that particular quotation

 this morning. What is there about it that appeals to you so strongly?"

 She did not look up at him, but the back of her neck turned a ruddier

 shade of red.

 Sorry! Thought you might find that one as romantic as the other," he

 mumbled. "Let's try this one then. "I have suffered and loved. I have

 withstood the wind and the storm.

 The arrow pierced my flesh but did not harm me. I have eschewed the

 false path that lies straight before me. I have taken the hidden

 stairway to the seat of the gods."'

 Royan rocked back on her heels and glanced down the long gallery.

 "Something there perhaps. "The false path that lies straight before me.

 The hidden stairway"?"

 "We are straining a bit now. Snapping at gnats like a hungry trout."

 She stood up and pushed the tendrils of sweaty hair off her forehead.

 "Oh, Nicky. It's so discouraging. We don't even know where to begin."

 "Courage, lassie." He feigned the cheerfulness he did not feel. "We

 begin at the beginning like your friend Taita said we must. Let me try

 you with this one again." He laced his hand over his heart like a

 Victorian actor and emoted, "'The vulture rises on mighty pinions to

 greet the sun"-'

 She laughed softly at his clowning, and then her eyes wandered from his

 face and passed over his shoulder.

 Suddenly she started.

 "The vulture!" she blurted, and pointed at the wall behind him.

 He spun around and stared in the direction she was indicating.

 There was the vulture, a magnificent image of the bird, the fierce eyes

 glaring and the yellow beak hooked and spread wide, with each feather

 ointed. Its wings were outlined in jewel-like colours. It stood as tall

 as Nicholas, but its wing-spread covered half the wall. They stared at

 it together, and then Royan lifted her eyes to the ceiliAg high above

 where they stood. She touched his arm and motioned him to do the same.

 "The sun!" she whispered. The golden sun disc of Ra was painted in the

 highest portion of the roof. Its warmth seemed to illuminate the

 shadows. Its rays spread out Mi every direction, but one of these beams

 followed the curve of the wall and descended to envelop the vulture

 image in its spreading luminosity.

 "'The vulture rises to greet the sun"," she repeated. "Does Taita mean

 it literally?"

 He moved closer to the mural and examined it minutely, running his hands

 over the wings and down its belly to the cruel curved talons. Beneath

 the paint the plastered wall was smooth. There was no Projection or any

 irregularity.

 The head, Nicky. Look at the head of the bird!" She jumped up and tried

 to reach it, but her fingers fell short and she turned to him with a

 desperate edge to her voice.

 "You do it - you are much taller than I am," Only then did he see the

 slight shadow down one side of the bird's head where the floodlamp

 caught it, and as he touched it he realized that the head was in relief,

 standing slightly above the level of the surrounding wall. He ran his

 fingers over the raised head and found that the beak was part of the

 relief.

 "Can you feel any joint in the plaster?" Royan demanded.

 He shook his head. "No. It's smooth. It all seems to be part of the main

 wall."

 "'The vulture rises to greet the sun",, she insisted. "Can't you detect

 any movement? Try pushing the head upwards towards the sun painting."

 He placed the heel of his hand under the bulge of the head and pushed

 upwards. "Nothing!" he grunted.

 "It's been there for almost four thousand years." She was hopping from

 one foot to the other with frustration.

 "Dammit, Nicky, if there is a moving part, it will be stiff.

 Harder! Push harder!'

 He shifted his feet to get well under it and placed both hands under the

 projection of the head. Slowly he brought all his strength to bear. The

 cords in his neck stood out and blood flooded his face, turning it a

 deep, angry red.

 "Harder!" she implored him, but at last he dropped his arms to his sides

 and stood back.

 "No." His voice was hoarse and strained with the effort.

 "It's solid. Won't budge."

 "Lift me up. Let me look."

 "With the greatest of pleasure. Any excuse to lay hannds on you." He

 stepped behind her and placed lascivious han both arms around her waist,

 then lifted her until she was able to touch the bird's head.

 Quickly she explored it with her fingertips, and then she let out a

 small cry of triumph.

 "Nicky! You have started something. The paint is cracked all around the

 outline of the head. I can feel it.

 Lift me higher!

 He grunted with the effort but raised her another foot off the floor.

 "Yes, definitely!" she exclaimed. "Something has a hairline crack in the

 wall above the moved. There is head, as well. You have a look!

 He fetched one of the empty ammunition crates from the landing outside

 the entrance and placed it below the vulture image. When he stepped up

 on to it he was on a level with the vulture's eye.

 His expression changed. Quickly he groped in his pocket and brought out

 his clasp knife, He opened the blade and probed carefully around the

 outline of the head.

 Tiny specks of dried paint and plaster filtered down as he worked.

 It does look as though the head is a separate detached piece, "he

 admitted.

 "Look on top of it, higher up the wall. There along the edge of the

 sunbeam. Can't you see a vertical crack in the plaster?"

 "You are right, you know," he admitted. "But if I try to open that crack

 I am going to damage the mural. Do you want me to do that?"

 She hesitated only a moment. "This tomb is going to be reflooded when

 the river rises, so we are going to lose it again anyway. It's worth the

 risk. Do it, Nicky!'

 life-blade into the fine He pressed the point of the kn crack and

 twisted it gently. A slab of painted plaster the size of his s'read hand

 fell out of the wall and splattered into the dust on the agate tiles of

 the floor.

 He peered into the cavity that it had left in the wall.

 "It looks like some kind of slot or groove in the wall," he said. "I am

 going to clear its full length." Carefully he worked at the cavity he

 had opened, and more loose plaster rained down.

 Royan sneezed in the dust, but would not retreat, Particles of debris

 lodged in her hair like confetti.

 "Yes," he said at last. "There is a vertical groove running up here."

 "Chip the plaster away from the crack around the vulture's head," she

 ordered, and he wiped the blade against his trouser leg and attacked the

 wall again.

 "It's free," he said at last. "It looks as though the head will travel

 up the groove. Anyway, I am going to try it, Stand back and give me room

 to work."

 He placed the heels of both hands under the head of the vulture, and

 heaved upwards against it. Royan bunched her hands into fists and

 screwed up her face in sympathy with his effort.

 There was a soft grating sound, and the head began to move jerkily up

 the exposed groove in the wall. It reached the top of the slot and

 Nicholas jumped down from the crate. They both stared expectantly at the

 disembodied head, now disfigured by the chipped and damaged plaster.

 After a long, breathless wait, Royan whispered dejecr edly, "Nothing It

 hasn't changed anything."

 "The rest of the quotation from the stele," he reminded her. "There was

 more to it than just the vulture and the sun."

 "You are right." She looked around the rest of the wall eagerly. "'The

 jackal hops and rests Upon his tail.

 She pointed with a trembling finger at the small, almost insignificant

 figure of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the graveyards, on the wall

 opposite the vulture that they had mutilated. Standing at the foot of

 the huge, towering painting of Osiris, he was only a little larger in

 size than the ringed and bejewelled big toe of the husband of Isis and

 father of Horus.

 Royan ran to the wall, and the moment she touched Anubis she felt that

 his image too was raised. She flung all her strength against the tiny

 figure, trying to twist it first one way and then the other.

 "'The jackal turns upon his tail"," she panted as she wrestled with him.

 "He must turn!'

 "Here, let me do that." Gently Nicholas pulled her away, and knelt

 before the black-headed god image. Once again he used the blade of his

 clasp knife to chip away the plaster and the thick layer of paint from

 around the outline.

 "It seems to be carved in some sort of hard wood and then it's been

 plastered over," he told her, as he tested the construction of the

 figure with the point of the blade.

 When at last he had chipped it clear he tried to twist it in a clockwise

 direction, and grunted with the effort.

 "No! He gave up at last.

 "They had no clock dials in ancient Egypt," she reminded him agitatedly.

 "The other way. Turn it the other way-$

 When he tried to turn it counter-clockwise, there was another rasping,

 gritty sound from behind the wall panel.

 The tiny figure revolved slowly in his hands, until the black head

 pointed down towards the yellow tiles.

 They both stood well back from the wall, looking expectantly at it, but

 after another long wait even Nicholas was disheartened.

 "I don know what to expect, but whatever it is, it isn't happening he

 grunted with disgust.

 "There is still the last part of the quotation," Royan whispered. "'The

 river flows towards the earth. Beware, you violators of the sacred

 plain, lest the urrath of all the gods descend upon you!"'

 "The river?" Nicholas asked. "As Sapper might say, I don't see no

 perishing river."

 Royan did not even smile at the cockney accent.

 Instead she searched the profusion of writing and images that covered

 all the walls around them. Then she saw it.

 "Hapi!" Her voice was shrill with excitement. "The god of the Nile! The

 river!'

 High up the wall, on a level with the head of the great god Osiris, the

 god of the river looked down upon them.

 Hapi was'a hermaphrodite, with the breasts of a woman and the genitals

 of a man protruding from under the pendulous belly. The mouth in his

 hippopotamus head gaped wide to display the great curved tusks that

 lined his cavernous jaws.

 Standing on a pile of ammunition boxes, Nicholas was able to reach the

 Hapi image at the full stretch of his arms.

 As he touched it he exulted, "This one is raised also."

 "'The river flows towards the earth,"' she called up to him. "It must

 move downwards. Try it, Nicky."

 "Give me a chance to clear the edges." He used the point of the blade to

 chip the outline of the god free, and then he probed the plaster beneath

 it and found another vertical slot running towards the floor.

 "Ready to give it a go now. He folded the knife and tucked it back into

 his pocket. "Hold your breath and say a little prayer for me," he

 instructed.

 He settled both hands on the image of the god and began to pull steadily

 downwards, Gradually he brought more pressure to bear upon it, until he

 was hanging all his weight on it. Nothing moved.

 "It's not working, he grunted.

 "Wait!" she ordered. "I am coming up."

 She scrambled up on to the boxes behind him and tight,, placed both

 hands around his neck. "Hang she ordered.

 "Every little bit helps, I suppose," he agreed, as she lifted her feet

 and hung her full weight on his shoulders.

 "It's moving!" he shouted. Suddenly the image of Hapi gave way under his

 hands, and with a sharp grating sound travelled down to the bottom end

 of the groove in the wall.

 Nicholas lost his grip on the smoothly rounded shape as it came up hard

 against the end of its slot. The stack of boxes under them toppled, and

 both he and Royan dropped back to the floor of the gallery. She was

 still hanging around his neck, and he lost his balance as she pulled him

 over backwards. The two of them sprawled on the agate floor in an untidy

 tangle of arms and legs. Nicholas scrambled to his feet and pulled her

 up beside him.

 "What has happened?" she gasped, looking up wildly at the damaged Hapi

 figure and then around the walls of the gallery.

 "Nothing," he said. "Nothing has moved."

 "Perhaps there is another-' she began, but broke off at a sound from the

 roof above them. They both stared upwards, startled and filled with

 sudden trepidation. There was a ponderous movement from above the high

 plastered ceiling.

 What is thatV Royan whispered. "There is something up there. It sounds

 like a living thing."

 A giant was moving, coming awake after slumbering for thousands of

 years, stretching and turning as he awoke.

 'is it-?" She could not finish the question. She had an image in her

 mind of the great god himself stirring in a hidden chamber in the rock,

 opening those baleful, slanted eyes, rising on one elbow to discover who

 had disturbed him from his eternal sleep.

 Then there was another sound, a creaking and rumbling as though the arm

 of a mighty balance was swinging slowly across, as its equilibrium

 altered. Softly at first, then louder, the movement gathered momentum,

 like the beginning of a mountain avalanche. Then there was a report like

 the shot of a cannon.

 A crack appeared in the high ceiling, running the length of the gallery.

 Dust smoked from the jagged opening, and then, slowly as a nightmare,

 the roof began to sag down over where they stood. Both of them were

 paralysed with superstitious horror, unable to tear their gaze from the

 slow, inexorable collapse of the ceiling upon them. Then a chunk of

 plaster struck Nicholas's upturned face, slamming into his cheek,

 tearing the skin and sending him staggering backwards against the wall.

 The shock and pain aroused him at last.

 "The warning!" he blurted. "Taitals warning. The wrath of the gods." He

 sprang to her side and grabbed her hand, "Run!" He pulled her after him.

 "Taita has booby-trapped the roof!'

 They raced back along the gallery towards the opening in the seated

 entrance. Lumps of stone and plaster began to rain down and dust filled

 the passageway, halfblinding them. The dull rumble overhead became a

 rising roar as progressively the roof collapsed. They did not dare to

 look back as the thunder of falling masonry swept towards them,

 threatening to overtake and overwhelm them before they were able to

 reach the entrance.

 A jagged piece of rock as large as her head struck Royan a glancing blow

 on her shoulder, and her legs sagged under her. She would have gone down

 if he had not flung one arm around her and held her upright, dragging

 her along the gallery. The dust obscured the passage ahead of them, so

 that the square opening that offered their only chance of escape receded

 in the choking fog.

 "Keep going!" he yelled at her. "Almost there." As he spoke, a thick

 sheet of plaster came crashing down and smashed into the tripod stand of

 the floodlamp. Instantly the gallery was plunged into utter darkness.

 Completely unsighted, Nicholas's first instinct was to come up short and

 try to orientate himself. But all around him the rubble of the roof was

 falling heavier and faster.

 He knew that at any second the entire roof would come down on top of

 them, burying and crushing them. Running on without a check, he dragged

 Royan along behind him in the darkness. He reached the end wall at full

 tilt, and the impact knocked the breath out of him. Now, through the

 swirling dust cloud, he was just able to make out the rectangular

 opening in the plaster wall in front of him, back-lit by the lamps on

 the landing at the head of the staircase outside.

 As he reeled backwards he seized Royan around the waist and lifted her

 bodily off her feet. He hurled her through the opening and heard her cry

 out as she fell heavily on the far side. Another piece of rubble struck

 him on the back of his head and knocked him to his knees. He felt

 himself teetering on the very brink of consciousness, mail but crawled

 forward, groping frantically until he touched the jagged edge of the

 opening. With this handhold he was able to drag himself over the sill,

 just as the full weight of the roof came thundering down along the

 entire gallery.

 Here on the upper landing of the staircase Royan was crouching on her

 knees. She crawled towards him, guided once more by the lamplight.

 "Are you all right?" she panted. A trickle of blood snaked down her

 cheek from a wound in her scalp line. It cut a dark glistening runnel

 through the caked white dust that powdered her face.

 He did not answer, but dragged himself to his feet and pulled Royan up

 beside him. "Can't stay here," he croaked, _1ro just as a thic '. lite

 at St. ug mouth of the opening and swept over them, choking them and

 dimming the floodlamps to a faint glimmer.

 "Not safe." He pulled her away from the opening. "The whole thing might

 cave in." His voice was rough, his throat closing with the dust.

 He dragged her to the head of the steps and they staggered down

 together, stumbling against each other, their feet sliding under them as

 they came on to the algae.

 slippery footing. Through the dust mist ahead of them loomed the broad

 square figure of Sapper.

 "What the ruddy hell is going on?" he bellowed with relief as he saw

 them.

 "Give me a hand here," Nicholas yelled back at him.

 Sapper lifted Royan in his arms and together they ran back -down the

 tunnel, only stopping to draw breath when they reached the causeway over

 the sink-hole.

 unburrit and glared like a mirror in the high mountain sunlight. The

 public telephone should have been in its booth outside the front door.

 However, the instrument had long since vanished - stolen, vandalized or,

 more likely, removed by the military to prevent it being used by

 Political dissidents and rebels.

 Tessay had expected this, and hardly glanced into the booth before she

 strode into the small room which was the main post office. It was filled

 with a motley crowd of peasants and villagers, queuing to conduct their

 leisurely business with the elderly postmaster, the only person behind

 the barred counter. Some of the customers had spread their cloaks on the

 floor and settled in for a long he post office in the village of Debra

 Maryarri a small building in the dusty street behind was the church. Its

 walls were of unplastered unpainted brick, and its galvanized iron roof

 T

 wait, chatting and smoking while their children romped and crawled

 around them.

 Most of the patient crowd recognized Tessay as soon as she entered the

 room."Even those who had waited most of the morning in the lines at the

 counter greeted her respectfully and stood aside to allow her to go to

 the, head of the queue. Despite two decades of African socialism, the

 feudal instincts of the rural population were still strong.

 Tessay was a noblewoman and she was entitled to this preference.

 "Thank you, my friends." She smiled at them and shook her head. "You are

 kind, but I will wait my turn."

 They were embarrassed by her refusal, and when the old postmaster leaned

 over his counter top and added his insistence to the others, one of the

 older women seized Tessay's arm and forcefully propelled her forward.

 "Jesus and all the saints bless you, Woizero Tessay." The postmaster

 clapped his hands in respectful greeting.

 "Welcome back to Debra Maryam. What is it that your ladyship desires?"

 The entire clientele of the post office crowded around Tessay so as not

 to miss a detail of her transaction.

 "I want to make a telephone call to Addis," she told the postmaster and

 there was a hum of comment and discussion. This was unusual and

 important business indeed.

 "I will take you to the telephone exchange," the postmaster told her

 importantly, and donned his official blue cap for the occasion. He came

 around the counter shouting and hectoring the other customers, pushing

 them aside to make way for Lady Sun. Then "he ushered her through to the

 back room of the building, where the telephone exchange occupied a

 cubicle the size of a small lavatory.

 Tessay, the postmaster and as many of the other customers who could find

 standing room pushed their way into the tiny room. The exchange operator

 was almost overcome by the honour being accorded him by the beautiful

 Tessay, and he shouted into his headset like a sergeant major commanding

 a flag party.

 "Soon now!" he-beamed at Tessay. "Only small delay.

 Then you speak to British Embassy in Addis."

 Tessay, who knew well what a small delay constituted, retired to the

 front veranda of the post office and sent for food and flasks to be

 brought from the village tej shop. She treated her escort of monks,

 together with half the population of Debra Maryam, to a happy picnic

 while she waited for her call to be patched through half a dozen

 antiquated village exchanges to the capital. Thanks to the tei, spirits

 were high amongst her entourage when finally, an hour later, the

 postmaster rushed out tell her proudly that they had succeeded and that

 her party was awaiting her on the line in the back room.

 Tessay, the monks and fifty villagers followed the postmaster back into

 the exchange and crowded, jabbering, into the cubicle. The overflow

 backed up into the main post hall.

 "Geoffrey Tennant speaking." The upper'class English accent was tinny

 with distance and static.

 "Mr Tennant, this is Woizero Tessay."

 "I was expecting your call." Geoffrey's voice lightened as he realized

 that he was talking to a pretty girl. "How are you, my dear?"

 Tessay passed Nicholas's message to him.

 "Tell Nicky it's as good as done," Geoffrey acknowledged, and hung up.

 "Now," Tessay addressed the postmaster, want to place another call to

 Addis - to the Egyptian Embassy." There was a buzz of delight from her

 audience when they realized that the entertainment was not yet over for

 the day. Everybody repaired to the veranda for more tej and

 conversation.

 The second call took even longer to connect, and it was after five

 'clock when Tessay was at last put in contact with the Egyptian cultural

 attach. Had she not once met him at one of those ubiquitous cocktail

 parties on the diplomatic circuit in Addis, and made a profound

 impression on him then, he would probably not have accepted her call

 now.

 "You are very lucky to have reached me so late," he told her. "We

 usually close at four-thirty, but there is a meeting of the Organization

 of African Unity on at the moment and I am working late. Anyway, how may

 I help you, Woizero Tessay?"

 As soon as she told him the name and rank of the person in Cairo to whom

 Royan's message was addressed, his superior and condescending attitude

 altered dramatically and he became effusive and eager to please. He

 wrote down everything she said in detail, asking her to repeat and spell

 the names of people and places. Finally he read his notes back to her

 for confirmation.

 At the end of the long conversation, he dropped his voice to an intimate

 level and told her. "I was greatly saddened to hear of your recent

 bereavement, Lady Sun.

 Colonel Brusilov was a man I held in high regard. Perhaps when you

 return to Addis you would do me the honour of dining with me one

 evening."

 "How kind and thoughtful of you." Tessay's tones were honeyed. "I would

 so much enjoy meeting your charming wife again." She hung up while he

 was still making confused noises of assent and denial.

 By this time the sun was already setting behind the sky castles of

 cumulonimbus, and there was the smell of rain in the air. It was too

 late to start the journey back down the escarpment that evening, so

 Tessay was relieved when the headman of Debra Maryam village sent one of

 his teenage daughters to invite her to spend the night as a guest in his

 home.

 The headman's house was the finest in the village, not one of the

 circular tukuls, but a square brick building with an iron roof. His wife

 and daughters had prepared a banquet in Tessay's honour, and all the

 village notables, including the priests from the church, had been

 invited. It was therefore after midnight before Tessay was able to

 escape to the principal bedroom, which the headman and his wife had

 vacated for her.

 Just before Tessay fell asleep she heard the heavy raindrops rattling on

 the corrugated iron roof over her head. It was a comforting sound, but

 she thought briefly of the dam further downstream in the gorge, and

 hoped that this shower was merely the harbinger and not the true onset

 of the big rains.

 When she started awake much later the rain had passed. Beyond her

 uncurtained window the night was moonless and silent, except for the

 howling of a pariahdog down in the village. She wondered what had woken

 her, and was filled suddenly with a premonition of impending disaster, a

 legacy from the Mengistu days, when any sound in the night might warn of

 the arrival of the security police. So strong was this feeling that she

 could not get to sleep again. Creeping quietly out of her bed, she began

 dressing in the dark. She had decided to call her monks and start back

 along the trail in the darkness. Only when she was at Mek Nimmur's side

 once again would she feel secure.

 She had just pulled on her jodhpurs and was searching beneath the bed

 for her sandals when she heard the sound of a truck engine in the

 distance. She went to the window and listened. The air had been cooled

 by the rain and she felt the chill on her naked arms and chest.

 The truck sounded as though it was approaching the village from the

 south, up the track that followed the river bank. It was coming fast,

 and her sense of unease sharpened. The villagers had spoken to the

 monks, and it was now common knowledge that she was Mek Nimmur's woman.

 Mek was a wanted man. Suddenly she felt very vulnerable and alone.

 Quickly she pulled the woollen shamma over her head and thrust her feet

 into her sandals. As she crept from the room she heard the headman

 snoring in the front room where he and his wife had moved to make room

 for her.

 She turned down the short passage to the kitchen. The fir i I in the

 hearth had burned down, but she could make out the shapes of the

 sleeping monks on the mud floor. They lay With their shamnus pulled over

 their heads, completer  overed, like a row of bodies on mortuary

 tables. She knelt beside the nearest of them and shook him, but

 obviously he had enjoyed the tej at dinner because he was difficult to

 rouse.

 The sound of the approaching truck was much louder and closer by now,

 and she felt her uneasiness take on a tinge of panic. Realizing that in

 an emergency the monks would probably be of little real help to her, she

 stood up and groped her way quickly towards the back door.

 The truck was right outside the front of the house now. The headlights

 flashed across the front windows and were briefly reflected down the

 passageway. Abruptly the engine roar sank to a burble as the driver

 decelerated, and she heard the squeal of brakes and the crunch of tyres

 in the gravel outside. Then there was shouting and the trampling of many

 feet as men jumped down from the back of the stationary truck.

 Tessay froze halfway across the small kitchen, her head cocked to

 listen. Suddenly there was a loud banging on the flimsy front door, and

 chillingly familiar shouts of, "Open up here! Central Intelligence! Open

 the door! Nobody leave the house!'

 Tessay ran for the back door, but in the darkness she tripped over a low

 table covered with dirty dishes from the previous evening's meal. She

 fell heavily and the bowls -till and tei flasks crashed to the floor and

 shattered. Instantly the men at the front door put their shoulders to

 it, tearing it off its hinges. They burst into the house, shouting and

 breaking furniture, torches flashing as they searched the front rooms.

 There was a confused babble of alarm as the headman and his family

 struggled awake, and then the sound of heavy blows with club and rifle

 butt, followed by shrieks of pain and terror.

 Tessay reached the back door and struggled to open it.

 The sound of strange men rampaging through the house made her fingers

 clumsy. She struggled with the lock. All the while she could hear other.

 men outside running through the yard to surround the house completely.

 At last she got the door open. It was dark and the area was unfamiliar

 so she did not know in which direction to run, but she heard the river

 close by in the night.

 "If I can only reach the bank," she thought, and started across the

 yard.

 As she did so the beam of an electric torch blinded her, and a coarse

 voice bellowed, "There she is!'

 Any doubt that she was the prey was instantly dispelled, and she fled

 like a startled hare in the beam of the light. They bayed behind her

 like a pack of hounds. She reached the bank of the river and spun off to

 the right, downstream. A pistol cracked out behind her and she ducked as

 a shot fluted past her head.

 "Don't shoot, you baboons!" a voice roared in commanding tones. "We want

 her for questioning."

 In the torch beam her white shamnw flashed like the wings of a moth

 flitting around the candle flame.

 "Stop her!" shouted the officer behind her. "Don't let her get away."

 But she was fleet as a gazelle, and her lightly sandalled feet flew

 across the rough terrain while the heavily equipped soldiers blundered

 along behind her. Her spirits soared as she realized that she was

 pulling away from them.

 The sound of the pursuit dwindled behind her and she had reached the

 limit of the effective range of the torch beam when she ran into a fence

 of rusty barbed wire. Three wire strands whipped across her lower body,

 at the level of her knees, her hips and her diaphragm. The top strand

 drove the breath from her lungs, and the barbs tore through the wool of

 her clothing and into her flesh. They snagged her like a fish in the

 mesh of a net, and she hung there struggling helplessly. Rough hands

 seized her and dragged her off the wire, and she sobbed with despair and

 with the pain of the sharp wire spurs tearing her skin. One of the

 soldiers grabbed her wrist and twisted it up between her

 shoulder-blades, laughing with sadistic relish when she cried out at the

 pain.

 The officer came up panting over the rough ground.

 He was overweight, and even in the cold night air he was sweating

 heavily. It greased his fat cheeks and glistened in the light of the

 torch.

 "Do not hurt her, you oaf," he gasped. "She is not a criminal. She is a

 high-bred lady. Bring her to the truck, but treat her with respect."

 With a man on each arm they marched her to the truck, holding her so

 that her feet barely touched the rough ground, and then shoved her up

 into the cab on to the seat beside the uniformed driver. The plump

 officer climbed in heavily after her, and she found herself wedged

 in'firinly between the two men. The soldiers scrambled up into the rear

 of the truck, and the driver revved the engine and let out the clutch.

 Tessay was sobbing softly, and the officer glanced sideways at her. She

 saw in the reflection of the headlights that his expression was gentle

 and sympathetic, completely at odds with his actions.

 "Where are you taking me?" she asked softly, stifling her sobs. "What

 have I done wrong?"

 "I have been ordered to take you to Colonel Nogo, the district

 commander, for questioning in connection with shufta activities in the

 Gojam," he told her, as they jolted and bounced down the rough track.

 They were both silent for a while, and then the officer said quietly in

 English, "The driver speaks only Amharic, I wanted to tell you that I

 knew your father, Alto Zemen.

 He was a good man. I am sorry for what is happening here tonight, but I

 am only a lieutenant. I have to follow my orders."

 "I understand that it is not your choice, or your blame."

 "My name is Hammed. If I can, I will help you. For Alto Zemen's sake.,

 "Thank you, Lieutenant Hammed. I need friends now."

 while they waited for the dust of the cavein to settle, and for any

 loose hanging rock to fall or stabilize, Nicholas dressed the minor

 injuries that Ryan had sustained. The cut over her temple was not deep,

 barely more than a scratch.

 Nicholas saw that it did not require a stitch. He disinfected it and

 covered it with a Band Aid. However, her shoulder, which the falling

 rock had struck, was badly bruised. He massaged it with arnica cream.

 His own bruises he treated less ceremoniously. Within an hour of the

 cave-in he was ready to go back up the tunnel. He ordered Royan and

 Sapper to remain on the causeway over the sink-hole while he returned to

 the landing at the top of the stairs alone. He carried a bamboo pole and

 a hand lamp connected to the Honda generator.

 Nicholas proceeded with the utmost caution, probing the roof of the

 tunnel for weakness as he went. When he reached the landing he saw at

 once that the rock fall had smashed down what remained of the wkite

 plaster door that had originally sealed the entrance to the tomb. The

 ammunition crates, eight of which contained the statues JVI from the

 shrines, had been knocked about and scattered, and some of them were

 partially buried under the fallen rubble. He retrieved them and opened

 each of the packed crates in turn to check the contents. With immense

 relief he discovered that the stout metal containers had withstood the

 rough treatment and there was no damage to the precious statues they

 held. One at a time he carried them back down the tunnel as far as the

 causeway and handed them into Sapper's care.

 When he returned to the landing outside the tomb, Royan insisted on

 accompanying him. Even his lurid descriptions of the danger of a further

 rock-fall could not dissuade her. Her dismay when she stood outside the

 shattered gallery was overwhelming.

 "It's totally destroyed," she whispered. "All those mar, vellous works

 of art. I cannot believe that Taita wanted this to happen."

 "No,'Nicholas agreed ruefully. "His plan was to give us a big send-off

 along the road past the seven pylons to the happy hunting grounds. And

 he damned nigh succeeded."

 "It's going to take a lot of hard work to clear up this mess," she said.

 "What on earth are you talking about?" He turned on her in genuine

 alarm. "We have saved the statues, and that's all we can hope for. Now I

 think it's time to cut our losses and get out of here."

 "Get out of here? Are you crazy?" She rounded on him furiously. "Are you

 out of your mind?"

 "At least the statues will pay our costs," he explained, and there might

 even be something left over to divvy up between us, in accordance with

 our agreement."

 "You aren't dreaming of giving up now, when we are so close?" Her voice

 rose sharply with agitation.

 "The gallery is destroyed-' he began in more reasonable tones, but she

 stamped her foot with agitation and shouted him down.

 "The tomb is still there. Dammit! Nicky, Taita would not have gone to

 those lengths if it were not. We are getting too close now - that is why

 he fired that warning shot across our bows. Don't you see? We have him

 really worried now. We can't give up with the prize almost in sight."

 "Royan, be reasonable."

 "No! No! You be reasonable." She refused to listen.

 "You have to start clearing the gallery right away. I know the entrance

 is open now. All we have to do is clear this mess, and I am certain that

 we will find the true entrance to the tomb behind the rubble that Taita

 deliberately dropped on us."

 I think that bang on your head has loosened a couple of nuts and bolts."

 He threw up his hands in resignation.

 "But what's the use arguing with a crazy woman? We will clear just

 enough of the scree to prove to you that there is nothing more to

 discover in there."

 "The dust is going to be our big problem." Sapper eyed the blocked

 gallery entrance when they told him what they intended. "As soon as we

 touch that rubble there is going to be clouds of it - more than our

 little blower fan can handle."

 "Right," Nicholas agreed briskly. "We will have to wet it all down. Two

 lines of men back down the tunnel to the sinkholes One chain passing up

 water buckets, and the other chain passing back the rubble from the

 cave-in."

 "It's going to take a lot of work." Sapper sucked his bottom lip

 lugubriously.

 "You signed on to be tough,'Nicholas reminded him.

 "No time to start whinging now."

 The monks, still convinced that they were engaged on the Lord's work,

 accepted this new task cheerfully. They sang as they passed the chunks

 of broken plaster and -rock in one direction and the clay pots of water

 from the sinkhole in the other. Nicholas worked at the rock-fall with

 the gang of Buffaloes, led by Hansith. It was hard, messy and dangerous

 work, for each piece of rubble had to be doused with water before it

 could be levered out of the pack and passed down the chain. The

 staircase was soon running with muddy water and the steps were

 treacherous underfoot. The fallen rock was loose and unstable, and there

 was always the danger of a secondary collapse.

 So many men working in the confined spaces of the gallery and tunnel

 taxed the ability of the little blower fan to recirculate the air, and

 it was hot and oppressive. The men stripped to loincloths and their

 bodies glistened with sweat. The rubble passed back down the tunnel was

 dumped into the sinkholes Even that large volume of material made no

 difference to the level of the black waters. It was simply swallowed up

 into the depths without trace.

 Nicholas found the crowded workings so humid and claustrophobic that at

 the change of the first shift he had to escape into the open air, if

 only for a few minutes. Even the dark and forbidding chasm of Taita's

 pool was a relief after the close confines of the underground workings.

 Mek Nimmur was waiting for him when he climbed out over the wall of the

 coffer dam on to the ledge beside the pool.

 "Nicholas!" Mek's handsome dark face was grave. "Has Tessay returned

 from Debra Maryam yet? She should have been back yesterday."

 "I have not seen her, Mek. I thought she'was with you." Mek shook his

 head. "I wanted to make certain that she had not returned without my men

 seeing her, before I send a patrol up the trail to search for her."

 "I am sorry, Mek. I did not anticipate any danger in sending her up the

 escarpment." Nicholas felt a stab of guilt.

 "If I had thought there was any danger, I would not have allowed her to

 go," Mek agreed. "I have sent men to search for her."

 But Tessay's absence was another worry for Nicholas.

 It I urked at the edge of his mind during the days that followed, as the

 clearing of the long funeral gallery proceeded too slowly for his

 satisfaction.

 Royan spent as much time at the face as Nicholas did, and both of them

 were as filthy with mud and dirt as the Buffaloes who were labouring

 there beside them. She mourned over each fragment of the shattered

 murals.

 Before they were carried away to be thrown into the sinkhole, she tried

 to retrieve those on which significant portions of the paintings were

 still intact. There was one jagged piece of plaster on which the lovely

 head of Isis was still in one piece, and another on which the entire

 figure of Thoth, the god of writing, was preserved. However, most of the

 paintings were destroyed beyond any hope of ever restoring them, and

 sadly they were consigned to the pit.

 There was no sense of time in the long gallery, and they could not tell

 night from day. It was always a surprise to leave the precincts of the

 tomb and find that the stars were shining in the narrow strip of sky

 that showed above Taita's pool, or to find the bright African sun

 burning hotly down out of the cloudless blue. They ate and slept only

 when their bodies demanded it, not according to the passage of the

 hours.

 Re'entering the tomb after a few hours' sleep in their shelters beside

 the pool, they were crossing the causeway over the sink-hole when a wild

 cry reverberated down the shaft ahead of them. Immediately there was a

 hullabaloo of query and answer, and excited shouts from the men working

 in the upper levels of the tunnel.

 "Hansith has found something," Royan cried. "Dammit, Nicky, I knew we

 should have stayed-' She began to run, and he hurried after her.

 They came out on the landing in front of the gallery to find it crowded

 with chattering, gesticulating, half-naked workmen. Nicholas forced his

 way through them with Royan on his heels. They realized that Hansith had

 cleared the gallery as far as where the shrine of Osiris had once stood.

 The roof above them was jagged and broken, and lying amongst the rubbish

 on the ruined agate tiles of the floor Nicholas made out the remains of

 the mechanism which Taita had placed in the roof, and which they had

 brought crashing down when they had activated the device.

 The main part of this was an enormous stone wheel, resembling a mill

 wheel and weighing many tons. Nicholas stopped to give it a cursory

 examination.

 "When you read River God, you realize that Taita had an obsession with

 the wheel," he told Royan. "Chariot wheels, water wheels, and now this

 must have been the balance wheel of his booby-trap. VA-ten we moved the

 levers, we toppled the wedges that held this monstrosity in place. Once

 it started rolling, it tumbled all the drop-stones that he had stacked

 above the ceiling of the gallery." He glanced up at the shattered roof.

 "Not now, Nicky!" Royan was hopping with impatience. "Time for your

 lectures later. Taita's deathtrap is not what has excited Hansith. He

 has found something else. Come on!'

 They pushed their way through the pack of workmen until they reached

 Hansith's tall figure.

 "What is it?" Nicholas shouted over the heads of the others. "What have

 you found, Hansith?"

 "Here, effendi," Hansith shouted back. "Come quickly."

 They pushed their way to the face, and stopped beside the monk at the

 end of the blocked gallery.

 "There!" Hansith pointed proudly.

 Nicholas went down on one knee in the shattered remains of the shrine.

 Small pieces of the painted plaster still adhered to the fractured rock

 wall. Hansith pulled a slab out of the collapsed face, and pointed into

 the space it had left. Nicholas peered into it and felt his pulse begin

 to race. There was an opening in the side of the gallery, Even at first

 glance he realized that it was the mouth of another tunnel leading off

 at right-angles from the long gallery. It had been concealed behind the

 plaster-covered image of the great god.

 As he stared into it with awe, he felt Royan's hand on his arrn and her

 warrii breath on his cheek. "This is it, Nicky. The entrance to the true

 tomb of Mamose. This gallery was a bluff. Taita's red herring. This is

 the veritable tomb."

 "Hansith!" Nicholas called to him in a voice that was hoarse with

 emotion. "Get your men to clear this doorway."

 As the workmen moved the rocks Nicholas and Royan hovered close behind

 them, so that they were able to watch the shape of the doorway as it was

 fully revealed. It proved to be a dark rectangle, of the same dimensions

 as the tunnel leading up from the sink-hole, three metres wide by two

 high. The lintel and the door jambs were of beautifully cut and dressed

 stone, and when Nicholas shone his lamp into the opening he saw a flight

 of stone steps rising before him.

 They moved the cables and the lights into the gallery and arranged them

 at the entrance to this new doorway, but when Nicholas set foot on the

 first step he found Royan at his side.

 "I am coming with you, she told him firmly.

 "It's probably booby-trapped," he warned her. "Taita is lying in wait

 for you around the first bend."

 "Don't try that. It just won't work, mister! I am coming."

 They went slowly up the steep steps, pausing on each one to survey the

 walls and the way ahead. Twenty steps from the bottom they reached

 another landing. A pair of doorways led off it, one on either side.

 However, the staircase continued climbing directly ahead of them.

 Which way?"Nicholas asked.

 "Keep going up," Royan urged him. "We can explore these side passages

 later."

 Cautiously, they continued climbing. After twenty more steps they came

 out on an identical landing, with a doorway on each side and the

 stairway in front of them.

 "Keep going up," Royan ordered, without waiting for him to answer,

 Twenty more steps and there was another landing with the familiar

 openings on either side and the stairway straight ahead.

 "This isn't making sense," Nicholas protested, but she prodded him in we

 should keep going on upwards," she told him, and he did not protest

 further. They passed another landing and then yet another, each of them

 the exact image of those that they had passed lower down.

 "At last!" Nicholas exclaimed when they came out at ay on each the top

 of the staircase,,with the expected door.

 "This is as far side but now a blank wall in front of them. as it goes."

 she asked. "How man

 "How many landings are there? altogetherr

 "Eight he answered.

 "Eight," she agreed. "Isn't that a familiar number

 nowr lamplight. "You He turned to stare down at her in the mean-'

 "I mean the eight shrines in the long gallery, these the bao board."

 eight landings, and the eight cups of They stood silent and undecided on

 the top landing looked about them.

 an Okay," he said at last, "if you are so damned clever, tell me which

 way to go now."

 she recited. "Let's try the

 "Eeny'meeny-miny-moe,'

 t'hand doorway." righ and passage only a short They followed ri t

 distance before they were confronted by a Tjunction - a blank wall with

 identical twin passageways on each side.

 "Take the right one again," she counselled, and they followed- it. But

 when they came to the next T junction Nicholas stopped and faced her.

 "You know what is happening here, don't your he demanded. "This is

 another one of Taita's tricks. He has led us into a maze. If it were not

 for the cable, we would be lost already."

 With a bemused expression she looked back the way they had come, and

 then down the unexplored passages to their right and left.

 "When he built this, Taita could not have anticipated the age of

 electricity. He expected any grave robber to be -quipped the same way he

 was. Imagine being caught in here without the electric cable to follow

 back the way we have come," Nicholas said softly. "Imagine having only

 an oil lamp for light. Imagine what would happen to you when the oil

 burnt out and you were lost in here in the utter darkness."

 Royan shivered and gripped his arm.

 whispered. "It's scaring!" she "Taita is beginning to play rough,'

 Nicholas said softly.

 "I was developing rather a soft spot for the old boy. But now I am

 beginning to change my mind."

 She shuddered again. "Let's go back," she whispered, "We should never

 have rushed in here like this. We must go back and work it out

 carefully. We are unprepared. I have the feeling that we are in danger -

 I mean real danger, the same as we were in the long gallery."

 As they started back through the twists and turns, picking up the

 electric cable as they retreated down the stone passageways, the

 temptation to break into a run became stronger with each step. Royan

 hung tightly to Nicholas's arm. It seemed to both of them that some

 intelligent and malignant presence lurked behind them in the darkness,

 following them, watching them. and biding its time.

 The army truck carrying Tessay drove back through the village of Debra

 Maryam, and then turned off on to the track that followed the Dandera

 river downstream towards the escarpment of the Abbay gorge.

 "This is not the way to army headquarters, Tessay told Lieutenant

 Hammed, and he shifted awkwardly on the seat beside her.

 "Colonel Nogo is not at his headquarters. I have orders to take you to

 another location."

 "There is only one other place in this direction," she said. "The base

 camp of the foreign prospecting company, Pegasus."

 "Colonel Nogo is using that as a forward base in his campaign against

 the shufta in the valley," he explained. "I have orders to take you to

 him there."

 Neither of them spoke again during the long, bumpy ride over the rough

 track. It was almost noon when at last they reached the edge of the

 escarpment and turned off on to the fork that brought them at last to

 the Pegasus campThe camouflage'clad guards at the gate saluted when they

 arrived. The truck drove through the gates, recognized and parked in

 front of one of the long Quonset huts within the compound.

 "Please wait here." Hammed got down and went into the hut, but was gone

 for only a few minutes.

 "Please come with me, Lady Sun." He looked "awkward and embarrassed, and

 could not meet her eyes as he helped her down from the cab. He led her

 to the door of the hut, and stood aside to let her enter first.

 She looked around the sparsely furnished room, and realized that it must

 be the company's administration centre. A conference table ran almost

 the full length of the room, and there were filing cabinets and two

 desks set against the side walls. A map of the area and a few technical

 charts were the only decorations on the bare walls. Two men sat at the

 table, and she recognized both of them immediately.

 Colonel Nogo looked up at her, and his eyes were cold behind his

 metal-framed spectacles. As always, his long, thin body was immaculately

 uniformed; but his head was bare. His maroon beret lay on the table in

 front of him.

 Jake Helm leaned back in his chair with his arms folded.

 At first glance his short-cropped hair made him look like a boy. Only

 when she looked closer did she see how his skin was weathered, and

 notice the crows' feet at the corners of his eyes. He wore an

 open-necked shirt and blue jeans that were bleached almost white. His

 belt buckle was of ornate Indian silver, the shape of a wild mustang's

 head.

 The sleeves of his cotton shirt were rolled high around his lumpy

 biceps. He chewed upon the dead butt of a cheap Dutch cheroot, and the

 smell of the strong tobacco was rank and offensive.

 "Very well, lieutenant," Nogo dismissed Hammed in Amharic. "Wait

 outside. I will call you when I need you." Once Hammed had left the

 room, Tessay demanded, "Why have I been arrested, Colonel Nogo?"

 Neither man acknowledged the question. They both regarded her

 expressionlessly "I demand to know the reason for this high'handed

 treatment," she persisted.

 "You have been consorting with a band of notorious terrorists," said

 Nogo softly. "Your actions have made you one of them, a shufta."

 "That is not true."

 "You have trespassed in a mineral concession in the Abbay valley," said

 Helm. "And you and your accomplices have begun mining operations in the

 area which belongs to this company."

 "There are no mining operations," she protested.

 "We have other information. We have evidence that you have built a dam

 across the Dandera river-'

 "That is nothing to do with me."

 "So you do not deny that there is a dam?"

 "It is nothing to do with me," she repeated. "I am not a member of any

 terrorist group, and I have not taken part in any mining operations."

 They were both silent again. Nogo made an entry in the notebook in front

 of him. Helm stood up and sauntered across to the window behind her

 right shoulder. The silence drew out until she could bear it no longer.

 Even though she knew it was part of the campaign of nerves they were

 waging against her, she had to break it.

 "I have travelled most of the night in an army truck," she said. "I am

 tired, and I need to go to a lavatory."

 "If what you need to do is urgent you can do it where you are standing.

 Neither Mr Helm nor I will be offended." Nogo ditered in a surprisingly

 girlish manner, but did not look up from his book.

 She looked over her shoulder at the door, but Helm crossed to it and

 turned the key in the lock, slipping the key into his pocket. She knew

 she must show no weakness in front of these two, and, though she was

 tired and afraid and her bladder ached, she feigned an air of confidence

 and assurance and crossed to the nearest chair. She pulled it from the

 table and sat down in it easily.

 Nogo looked up at her and frowned. He had not expected her to react this

 way.

 "You know the shufta bandit Mck Nimmur the accused abruptly.

 "No," she said coldly. "I know the patriot and democratic leader Mek

 Nimmur. He is no shufta."

 "You are his concubine, his whore. Of course, you will say this."

 She looked away from him with disdain, and his voice rose shrilly.

 "Where is Mek Nimmur? How many men does he have with him?" Her composure

 was beginning to rattle him."

 She ignored the question, and Nogo scowled at her furiously. "If you do

 not cooperate with us, I will have to use stronger methods to make you

 answer my questions," he warned.

 She turned in her chair and stared out of the window.

 In the long silence that followed, Jake Helm crossed the room and went

 to the door behind Nogo that led through to the rooms at the rebir of

 the hut. He disappeared through it, and closed it behind him. The walls

 of the hut were thin, and Tessay made out the murmur of voices from the

 room beyond. The cadence and inflection were neither English nor

 Amharic. They were using a foreign language in there. She guessed that

 Helmw'as receiving instructions from a superior, who did not want her to

 be able to recognize him at some later date.

 After a few minutes Helm re-emerged and closed the door behind him

 without locking it. He nodded to Nogo, who at once stood up. They both

 came across to stand in front of Tessay.

 I think that it will be better for all of us if we finish this business

 as quickly as possible," said Helm softly. "Then you can go to the

 bathroom, and I can go to my breakfast." She raised her chin and stared

 at him defiantly, but did not answer him.

 "Colonel Nogo, has tried to be reasonable. He is bound by certain

 niceties of his official position. Fortunately I do not have the same

 restraints. I am going to ask you the same questions that he did, but

 this time you will answer them."

 He took the dead cheroot from his mouth and examined the tip. Then he

 threw the butt into a corner of the room and took a flat tin from his

 hip pocket. From it he selected a fresh cheroot, long and black, and lit

 it carefully, holding the match to it until it was drawing evenly. Then,

 amid a cloud of pungent tobacco smoke, he waved the match to extinction

 and asked, ",Ihere is Mek Nimmur?"

 She shrugged and looked away, out of the side window of the hut.

 Abruptly, without signalling the blow in any way, he hit her open-handed

 across her face. It was a savage blow, delivered with a force that

 snapped her head around, Then, before she could recover, he swung back

 again and slammed his knuckles across her jawline. Her head was thrown

 back violently in the opposite direction and she was knocked flying from

 her chair.

 Nogo stooped over her and seized her arms, twisting them up behind her

 back. He lifted her back into the seat and stood behind her. He held her

 in such a surprisingly powerful grip that she could feel the skin of her

 upper arms bruising beneath his fingers.

 "I have no more time to waste," Helm said quietly, taking the burning

 cheroot from his lips to inspect the glowing tip. "Let us start again,

 Where is Mek Nimmur?" Tessay's left eardrum felt as if it had burst with

 the ferocity of those blows. Her hearing buzzed and sang. Her teeth had

 been driven halfway through the flesh of her cheek, and her mouth filled

 slowly with her own blood.

 "Where is Mek Nimmur?" Helm repeated, leaning his face closer to hers.

 "What are your friends doing with the dam in the Dandera river?"

 She gathered the blood and saliva in her mouth, and suddenly and

 explosively spat it into his face.

 He recoiled violently and wiped the bloody mess from his eyes with the

 palm of his hand.

 Hold herV he said to Nogo, and seized the front of her blouse. With one

 heave he ripped it open down to her waist, and Nogo giggled and leaned

 forward over her shoulder to look at her breasts. He giggled again as

 Helm took one of them in his hand and squeezed out the nipple between

 his finger and thumb. It was the dark purple colour of a ripe mulberry.

 He held her like that, pinching her flesh with his nails until the skin

 tore and a droplet of blood welled up and trickled over his thumb. Then

 with his other hand he took the burning cheroot from his lips and blew

 on the top until it glowed hotly.

 "Where is Mek Nimmur?" he asked, and lowered the cheroot towards her

 breast. "WHAt are they doing in the Dandera river?

 She stared down in horror as he brought the burning cheroot closer, and

 tried to wriggle away from him. But Nogo held her firmly from behind.

 She screamed once, on an agonized drawn-out note, as the glowing coal

 touched, the tip of her nipple and the delicate skin began to blister.

 inter," said Royan, spreading the enlargement of the fourth face of the

 stele from Tanus's tomb under the bright glare of the floodlamp. "This

 is the side that contains Taita's notations, which I am postulating are

 those of the bao board. I don't understand all of them, but by a process

 of elimination I have determined that the first symbol denotes one of

 the four sides, or as he terms them the castles of the board., She

 showed him the pages of her notebook on which she had made her

 calculations.

 "See here, the seated baboon is the north castle, the bee is the south,

 the bird is the west and the scorpion the east." She pointed out to him

 the same symbols on the photograph of the stele. "Then the second and

 third figures are numbers - I believe that they designate the file and

 the cup. With these we can follow the moves of his imaginary red stones.

 The reds are the highest-ranking colours on the board."

 "What about the verses between each set of notations?" Nicholas asked.

 "Such as this one here, about the north wind and the storm?"

 "I am not sure about those. Probably merely smoke, screens, if I know

 Taita. He is never one to make life too easy for us. Perhaps they do

 have significance, but we can only hope to unravel them as we work

 through the moves of our stones."

 Nicholas studied her figures a while, then grinned ruefully. "Just think

 how remote was the possibility that anybody would ever be able to

 decipher the clues he left behind. The first requirement is that the

 searcher must have access to both chronicles, the seventh scroll and the

 stele of Tanus, before he had any chance of understanding the key to the

 tomb."

 She laughed - a throaty, well'satisfied sound. "Yes, he must have

 believed that he was perfectly safe. Well, we will see now, MasteTTaita.

 We will see just how clever you really were." Then, sober and

 businesslike once more, she looked up the stone staircase that led to

 Taita's maze.

 "Now we have to see if my figures and theories fit into the hard stones

 and walls of Taita's architecture. But where do we start?"

 "At the beginning," Nicholas suggested, "the god plays the first coup.

 That's what Taita told us. If we start here in the shrine of Osiris, at

 the foot of the staircase, then perhaps that will give us the alignment

 of his imaginary bao board."

 "I had the same idea," she agreed immediately. "Let's postulate that

 this is the north castle of Taita board. Then we work the protocol of

 the four bulls from here."

 It was slow and painstaking work, trying to work their way into the mind

 of the ancient scribe by probing the labyrinth of passages and tunnels

 that he had built four thousand years previously. This time they moved

 into the maze with more circumspection. Nicholas had filled his pockets

 with lumps of dried white river clay, and he used these like a

 schoolmaster's stick of chalk to write on the stone walls at each branch

 and fork of the tunnels, setting out the notations from the winter face

 of the, stele and marking a signpost to enable them not only to find

 their way through the maze but to relate it to the model that Royan was

 drawing up in her notebook.

 They found that their first assumption that the shrine of Osiris was the

 north castle of the board seemed to be correct, and they happily

 believed that with this as the key it would be a simple matter to follow

 the moves of play to their conclusion. But these hopes were soon dashed

 as they realized that Taita was not thinking in the simple two

 dimensions of the conventional board. He had added the third dimension

 to the equation.

 The stairway leading up from the shrine of Osiris was not the only link

 between the eight landings. Each of the passages leading off from it was

 subtly angled either upwards or downwards. As they followed the twists

 and turns of one of these tunnels they did not detect the fact that they

 were changing levels. Then suddenly they reemerged on to the central

 staircase, but on a landing higher than the one they had entered from.

 They stood there and stared at each other in horrified disbelief.

 Royan spoke first. "I didn't even have the feeling that we were

 ascending," she whispered. "The whole thing is infinitely more complex

 than I first assumed."

 "It must be constructed like one of those nuclear models of some

 complicated carbon atom,'Nicholas agreed with awe. "It interlinks on all

 eight planes. Quite frankly, it's terrifying."

 "Now I have some- inkling what those extraneous symbols signify," Royan

 muttered. "They set out the levels.

 I We are going to have to rethink the entire concept.

 matic rules.

 "Three'dimensional bao, played to enig What chance have we got against

 him?" Nicholas shook his head ruefully. "What we really need is a

 computer. Taita.

 without good reason. The wasn't Puffing his own virtues old hooligan

 really was a mathematical genius." He shone the lamp back down the

 tunnel from which they had come.

 "Even when you know it's there you cannot actually see the fall in the

 floor level. He designed and built it without even a slide rule or a

 spirit level in his back pocket. This maze is an extraordinary piece of

 engineering."

 "You can form Your fan club later," she suggested. "But right now let's

 start grinding those numbers again."

 I am going to move the lights and the desks up here, on to this central

 landing of the staircase."Nicholas agreed, I think we should work from

 the centre of the board. It may help us to visualize it. Right now he

 has got me thoroughly confused."

 The only sound in the room was the soft on the sobbing of the

 woman who lay curled Milan floor in a puddle of her own blood and urine.

 Tuma Nogo sat at the long conference table and lit a he looked

 cigarette. His hands trembled slightly, and gh the sickened, He was a

 soldier, and he had lived through Mengistu terror. He was a hard man and

 accustomed to violence and cruelty, but he was shaken with what he had

 just witnessed. He knew now why von Schiller placed such The man was

 barely human.

 reliance on Helm Across the room Jake Helm was washing his hands in

 tediously and then dabbed the small basin. He dried them fas at the

 stains on his clothing with the towel as he came back and stood over

 Tessay.

 "I don't think there is anything else she can tell us," he said calmly.

 "I don't think she held anything back."

 Nogo glanced down at the woman, and saw the livid burns that spotted her

 chest and her cheeks like the running ulcerations of some dreadful

 smallpox. Her eyes were closed, and her lashes were frizzled away. She

 had held out well. It was only when Helm had touched her eyelids with

 the burning cheroot that she had at last capitulated, and gabbled out

 the answers to his questions.

 Nogo felt queasy, but he was relieved that it had not been necessary to

 hold her lids open, as Helm had ordered, and to watch as he quenched the

 flame of the cheroot against her weeping eyeballs.

 "Watch her," Helm ordered, as he rolled down his sleeves. "She is a

 tough one. Don't take any chances with her."

 Helm walked past him, and went to the door in the far end of the hut. He

 left the door open, and Nogo could hear their voices, but they were

 speaking in German so he could not understand what they were saying. He

 understood now why von Schiller had chosen not to be present during the

 questioning. He obviously knew how Helm worked.

 Helm came back into the room, and nodded at Nogo.

 "Very well. We are finished with her. You know what to do., Nogo stood

 up nervously and placed his hand on the webbing holster at his side.

 "Here?"he asked. "No!"

 "Don't be a bloody fool," Helm snapped. "Take her away. Far away. Then

 get somebody in here to clean up this mess." Helm turned on his heel and

 went back into the rear room.

 Nogo roused himself and then went to the door of the hut. He walked wide

 of where Tessay lay, so as not to soil his canvas paratrooper boots.

 "Lieutenant Hammed!the called through the door.

 t Hammed and Nogo lifted Tessay to her feet. Neither them spoke and

 they were subdued, almost chastened, as torn and bloodied clothing.

 they helped her into her yes from her naked body and the Hammed averted

 his ed her glossy amber skin.

 burns and other injuries that marre He draped the shamnw over her

 shoulders, and led her towards the door, When she stumbled he caught her

 before her with a hand under her elbow.

 she fell and supported truck, and she moved He led her down the steps to

 the sat in the passenger seat slowly, like a very old woman. She her

 cupped hands.

 with her burned and swollen face in Nogo summoned Hammed with a jerk of

 his head, and led him aside. He spoke quietly to him, and Hammed's

 listened to his orders. At expression became stricken as he one point he

 started to protest, but Nogo snarled at him savagely and he chewed his

 lower lip in silence.

 "Remember!" Nogo repeated. "Well away from any of the villages. Make

 certain that there are no witnesses.

 Report back to me immediately."

 Hammed straightened his shoulders and saluted before up into the seat

 he marched back to the truck and climbed the driver a curt order and

 they beside Tessay. He gav drove out of the camp, following the track

 back towards Debra Maryam. sed and in such pain that she had Tessay was

 so confu s, she lurched lost all sense of time. Only half-consciou ugh

 icularly ro about in the seat when the truck hit a part ead rolled

 loosely on her stretch of the track, and her shoulders. Her face was so

 swollen that it required an effort and when she did she thought to force

 her eyelids apart, that her vision was failing and that she was going

 blind.

 sun, had set and darkness had Then she realized that the in the hut with

 fallen. She must have spent the whole day Helm.

 She felt a mild lift of relief that the burns on her eyelids had not

 done more damage. At least she was still

 form able to see. She peered out through the windscreen, and found

 that in the headlights the road was unfamiliar.

 "Where are you taking me?" she mumbled. "This is not the way back to the

 village."

 Lieutenant Hammed sat slumped beside her in the seat and would not

 answer. She relapsed into a daze of pain and exhaustion.

 She was jerked awake when the truck braked abruptly and the driver

 switched off the ignition. Rude hands dragged her out of the cab and

 into the glare of the headlights. Her hands were jerked behind her back

 and her wrists were bound together with a raw-hide thong.

 "You are hurting me," she whimpered. "You are cutting my wrists." She

 had used up the last of her strength and courage. She felt beaten and

 pathetic, with no fight left in her.

 One of the soldiers yanked on her bound wrists and shoved her off the

 road. Two others followed, each carrying trenching tools. There was

 enough of a moon for her to see a grove of eucalyptus trees about a

 hundred metres from the side of the road, and they led her there. They

 pushed her down at the base of one of the trees and the man who had tied

 her wrists stood over her, holding his rifle casually aimed down at her

 and smoking a cigarette with his free hand. The others stacked their

 rifles and began digging.

 They seemed to take no interest in her at all, but were discussing the

 All Africa Soccer Championships that were being held in Lusaka, and the

 Ethiopian team's chances of reachin the finals.

 It was only after a while that it began to sink into Tessay's befuddled

 mind that they were digging a grave for her. The saliva in her injured

 mouth dried up and she looked around desperately for Lieutenant Hammed.

 But he had stayed with the truck.

 "Please," she whispered to her guard, but before she could say more he

 kicked her painfully in the belly. -iftu vvurta 3 ivium i- utar vyo

 "Keep quied' he used the derogatory term of address only applied to an

 animal or a person of the lowest order, and as she lay doubled up on the

 ground she realized the futility of appealing to them. A feeling of

 weakness anded her and she found herself weeping resignation overwhelm

 softly and hopelessly in the darkness.

 er swollen lids, \&Then she looked up again through oonlight for her to

 see that the grave there was sufficient was now so deep that the two

 men still digging in it were out of her line of sight. Spadefuls of dirt

 flew over the lip of the hole and splattered on to the growing pile. Her

 and sauntered over to the guard left her side for a momen edge of the

 hole. He looked down in it and then grunted.

 "Good. That is deep enough, Call the lieutenant." The two soldiers

 scrambled up out of the grave, then off into gathered up their tools and

 weapons and traipsed the darkness of the grove. Chatting amicably

 amongst wards where the truck was themselves they headed back to parked,

 leaving Tessay and her guard.

 the cold and with terror, She lay there shivering with puffed while her

 guard squatted at the lip of her grave and her on his cigarette. She

 thought that if she could get ton for feet she could kick him into the

 hole and make a ru ut when she tried to sit up her it, back through the

 trees. movements were stiff and slow, and she he no feeling in her

 hands or feet. She tried to force herself to move, but at that moment

 she heard Lieutenant Hammed coming from the truck and she slumped back

 in despair, rch. He flashed it Hammed was carrying an electric to down

 into the grave.

 ugh."

 "Good," he said loudly. "That is deep eno He switched off the torch and

 said to the man guarding Go back and wait at the truck. When her, "No

 witnesses.

 come back with the others to help me you hear the shots, fill the hole."

 over his shoulder and disap The guard slung his rifle JI peared amongst

 the trees. Hammed waited until the man was well out of earshot, then he

 came to Tessay and hoisted her to her feet. He pushed her to the edge of

 the grave, and then she felt him fumbling with her clothing. She tried

 to lash out at him, but her arms were still bound behind her.

 "I want your shanitna." He pulled the white woollen cloak off over her

 shoulders, and then went with it to the edge of the grave, He jumped

 down into the hole and she heard him scuffling about in the bottom.

 His voice came back to her, speaking softly. "They must see something

 here. A body-'

 He climbed back beside her, puffing with the exertion, and stepped

 behind her. She felt the touch of cold metal on the inside of her

 wrists, and then he was sawing at the leather thong. She felt her bonds

 fall away, and she gasped at the pain as the blood poured back into her

 numb hands.

 "What are you doing?" she whispered in confusion. She looked down into

 the grave and saw the pale shamnia arranged to look like a human body.

 "Are you going-'

 "Please don't talk," he instructed her softly, as he took her by the

 shoulder and led her back amongst the trees.

 "Lie here." He pushed her down and made her lie flat, with her face to

 the ground. He began piling dead leaves and fallen branches over her.

 "Stay here! Do not try to run. Don't. move or speak until we are gone."

 He flashed the torch briefly over the mound of dead branches to make

 certain she was covered, then he left her and hurried back to the

 graveside, unbuckling the flap of his pistol holster as he went. Two

 spaced pistol shots cracked out in the night, so loud and unexpectedly

 that she jumped and her heart raced wildly.

 Then she heard Hammed shout, "Come, you men.

 Let's get this thing finished."

 They trooped back into the grove, and she heard the sound of their

 spades and the thump of earth clods falling into the grave.

 nant," a voice

 "I cannot see what I am doing, lieute complained. "Where is your

 torchlight?"

 "You dorA need a light to fill a hole," Hammed snarled.

 "Get on with your work. Tramp that loose soil down. I don't want anybody

 stumbling on this place."

 She lay quietly, trying to stop the wild tremors that shook her body. At

 last the sound of the shovels let up, and she heard Hammed's voice

 again.

 "That will do. Make certain you leave nothing here.

 Back to the truck!'

 Their footsteps and their voices died away. At a distance she heard the

 truck engine whirl and fire. The headlights shone through the trees as

 the truck backed and filled, turning in the direction from which they

 had come.

 sound of the engine had died away Long after thee pile of dead

 completely, she continued to lie under the tree shaking with the cold

 and weeping branches. She was St. elief.

 silently with exhaustion and pain and softly and off herself and Then

 slowly she pushed he branched it to pull crawled to the trunk of the

 nearest tree. She, used and then stood there, swaying weakly herself up

 to her feet, in the darkness. elmed her. "I have it was only then that

 guilt overwh betrayed Mek," she thought sickeningly. "I have told everyI

 must get back to thing to his enemies. I must warn him him and warn

 him-'

 treetrunk and She pushed herself away from the ds the track.

 blundered back through the darkness towar he only means of ascertaining

 if they had solved Taita's codes correctly was to play out BE&

 the moves he had listed. They went very through the tunnels of the maze,

 stepping out the carefully moves that he had noted and marking then-' on

 the walls in white chalk figures.

 There were eighteen moves set out on the winter face of the stele. Using

 Royan's first interpretation of the symbols, they were able to advance

 through twelve of theseL. Then they found themselves at a dead end,

 confronted by a blank stone wall and unable to make the next move.

 "Damnation!" Nicholas kicked the wall, and when this had no effect he

 hurled the chunk of white chalk at it. "I wish I could get my hands on

 that old devil. Castration would be the least of his worries."

 "Sorry." Royan scraped the hair back out of her eyes.

 thought I had it right. It must be the figures in the second column. We

 will have to invert them."

 "We will have to start again,'Nicholas groaned.

 "Right at the very beginning," she agreed.

 "How do we know when we have finally got it right?

 he wanted to know.

 "If by following the clues we art ive at one of the winning

 combinations, a bao equivalent of checkmate, on precisely the eighteenth

 move. There will be no logical move after that, and we can assume we

 have worked through it correctly."

 "And what will we find if we ever reach that position?"

 "I will tell you when we get there." She smiled at him sweetly. "Cheer

 up, Nicky. It's only just starting to hurt."

 Royan inverted the values of the second and third numbers of Taita's

 notations, taking the first as the cup value and the second as the file

 value. This time they completed only five moves before they were stymied

 and could proceed no further.

 "Perhaps out assumption about the third symbol being the change of level

 is incorrect?" Nicholas suggested. "Let's start again and give that the

 second value."

 "Nicky, do you realize just how many possible combinations there are,

 given the three variables?" She was at last starting to waver. "Taita

 has assumed an intimate knowledge of the game. We have only the

 sketchiest notions of how it was played. It's like a grand master trying

 to explain to a novice the intricacies of the King's Indian Defence."

 olas embroidered the simile. "At this

 "In Russian!" Nich rate we are getting nowhere in a hurry. There must be

 some other way of approaching it. Let's go over the epigrams Taita stuck

 in between the notations again.

 "All right. I'll read and you listen." She hunched over her notes. "The

 trouble is that a subtle variation of the translation might change the

 sense. Taita loved puns, and effect. One wrong twist a pun can rely on

 a single word fo or slant to a word and we have lost it."

 "Try anyway," Nicholas encouraged her. "Remember that even Taita had

 never played bao in three dimensions be at the very before. if he left

 a clue it would have le of beginning of the stele. Concentrate on the

 first coup notations and the epigrams that separate them."

 "We'll try it that way," Royan agreed. "The first notambers five and

 seven and tion is the bee followed by the nu the sistrum."

 I have heard that so often Nicholas grinned. "Okayt What follows?,

 already that I will never forget it er over the ation." She ran her ring

 "The first quot can be known hieroglyphics. "'What can be given a name

 What is nanwiess can A be felt. i sail with the tide behind me and the

 wind in my face. 0, my beloved, the taste of You is sweet uPon my UPs."'

 "Is that all?" he asked.

 "Yes, then the next notation. The scorpion and the number two and three

 and the sistrum again." make Slowly! Slowly! First things first. What

 can out of the 1sailing" and the "beloved'T

 They riddled and wrestled with the text of the stele, So until their

 eyes burned and they had lost track of day or night. They were

 eventually recalled to reality by Sapperjs voice echoing up the

 staircase. Nicholas stood up from the desk and stretched before he

 looked at his watch.

 "Eight. 'clock. But I' not sure if that is morning or evenin

 Then he started as Sapper came up the staircase, and saw that his bald

 head was shining with moisture and his shirt was soaked.

 "What happened to you?" Nicholas demanded. "Did you fall into the

 sinkholer Sapper wiped his face with the palm of his hand.

 "Didn't anybody tell you? It's pissing with rain outside." They both

 stared at him in horror.

 "So soon?" Royan whispered. "It wasn't supposed to start for weeks yet."

 Sapper shrugged. "Somebody forgot to tell the weatherman."

 "Has it set in?" Nicholas asked. "What's the state of the river? Has the

 level started to rise yet?"

 "That's what I came to tell you. I am going up to the dam, taking the

 Buffaloes with me. I want to keep an eye on it. As soon as it gets

 unsafe I will send a runner down to you. When I do that, don't stop to

 argue. Get out of here fast. It will mean that I expect the dam to burst

 at any moment."

 "Don't take Hansith with you," Nicholas ordered. "I need him here."

 When Sapper had gone, taking most of the workers from the tunnel with

 him, Royan and Nicholas looked at each other seriously.

 "We are running out of time fast, and Taita still has us in a tangle,'

 Nicholas said. "One thing I must warn you.

 When the river starts to rise "

 She did not let him finish. "The river!" she cried. "Not the sea! I was

 mistaken in the translation. I read it as "tide".

 the sea, but it should have I assumed Taita was referring to been

 "curyene,.The Egyptians made no distinction between rds."

 the two wo They both rushed back to the desk and her notebooks.

 C4The current behind me and the wind in my face Nicholas changed the

 quotation.

 on the Nile," Royan exulted, "the prevailing wind is lways from the

 always from the north, and the current a south. Taita was facing north.

 The north castle."

 "We assumed the symbol for the north was the baboon,'

 he reminded her.

 "No! I was wrong." Her face was alight with the fires of inspirations

 "', my beloved, the taste of you is sweet upon my lips." Honey! The bee!

 I had the symbols for the north and south inverted." we find there?"

 "What about east and west? What can with fresh enthusiasm. "'MY

 He turned back to the texts of bronze sins are red as carnelians. They

 bind me like cUns the They prick my heart with fire, and I turn my eyes

 towards evening star."'

 "I don't see ation," he stuttered eagerly. -Prick" is the wrong transi

 ing towards the qt should be "sting". The scorpion look the west. The

 evening star. "Me evening star is always in rn castle, not the eastern

 castle." scorpion is the wester

 "We had the board inverted." She jumped up excitedly.

 "Let's play it that way!'

 "We still have not determined the levels," he objected.

 "Is the sistrum the upper level, or is it the three swords?"

 "Now that we have made this breakthrough, that is the only variable. We

 are either right or Wrong. We will play work upper level, and if that

 doesn' the sistrurn first as the lay it the other way round."

 we can tricacies of the maze It was so much easier now. The in had

 become less forbidding with familiarity. There were the large white

 chalk signs in Nicholas's handwriting on each corner and at each fork

 and T-junction of the tunnels.

 They moved swiftly through the complex twists and turns, their

 excitement rising sharply as they followed each notation and "i6und the

 way still clear before them.

 "The eighteenth move." Royan's voice trembled. "Hold both thumbs. If it

 takes us into one of the open files that threaten the opponent's south

 castle, then that will be the check coup." She drew a deep breath and

 read it aloud to him. "The bird The numbers three and five. With the

 lower level symbol of the three swords."

 They paced it out and passed the five junctions into the lowest level of

 the maze, reading their position from the chalk marks on the stone

 blocks of the walls at each fork. "This is it!" Nicholas told her, and

 they stood together and looked about them.

 "There is nothing outstanding about this spot." Disappointment was

 bitter in Royan's tone. "We have passed over it fifty times before. It

 is just like any of the other turns."

 "That is exactly what Taita would have wanted. Hell!

 He wouldn't have put up a signpost saying " marks the spot", would he

 now?"

 "So what do we do?" She looked at him, for once at a loss.

 "Read the last epigram from the stele."

 S he had her notebook in her hand. "'From the black and holy earth of

 dus very Egypt the harvest is abundant. I whip the flanks of my donkey,

 and the wooden spike of the plough breaks new ground. I plant the seed,

 and reap the grape and the ears of corn. In time I drink the wine and

 eat the loaf. I follow the rhythm of the seasons, and tend the earth."'

 She looked up at him. "The rhythm of the seasons? Is he referring us to

 the four faces of the stele? The earth?"

 she asked and looked down at the slabs beneath their feet, "The promise

 of reward from the earth? Under our feet, perhaps?" she asked.

 He stamped his foot on the slabs, but the sound was dull and solid.

 "Only one way to find out." He raised his voice and it echoed weirdly

 through the labyrinth. "Hansith! Come down here!'

 apper sat on the high seat of his yellow frontend loader in the rain and

 cheerfully cursed his gang of Buffaloes, secure in the knowledge that

 they understood not a word of his insults. The rain swept over them in

 intermittent gusts off the high mountains. It was not yet the solid,

 drenching downpour of the true wet season. However, the river was rising

 sullenly, turning dirty blue'grey with the mud and sediment that it was

 bringing down.

 He knew that the flood had not yet begun in earnest.

 The thunder that growled ominously along the mountain peaks like a pride

 of hunting lions was only the prelude to the vast celestial onslaught

 which would soon follow.

 Although the river was lapping the top course of gabions "s dam, and was

 roaring through the bypass that of Sapper he had cut into the side

 valley, he was still holding it at bay. His Buffaloes were packing more

 baskets with aggregate, using up the last of the steel mesh from the

 stores in the quarry. As soon as each of these was filled and wired

 closed, Sapper picked it up in the front bucket of the tractor and drove

 it down the bank of the Dandera. He reinforced all the weak spots in the

 dam wall, and then he began raising it another course. Sapper was fully

 aware of the overturning effect that the river would exert once it began

 to pour over the top of the wall. Nothing would be able to withstand its

 power once this happened. It would carry away a rock-filled gabion as if

 it were the branch of a baobab tree. it needed only a single breach in

 the wall to bring the entire structure tumbling and rolling down. He had

 no illusions as to just how swiftly the river could do its fatal work.

 He knew that he dared not wait for the first breach to develop in the

 wall before he warned Nicholas and Royan in the chasm downstream. The

 river could easily outrun any messenger he sent, and once the wall began

 to go it would already be too late. It would be a matter of fine

 judgement, and he slitted his eyes against another gust of slanting rain

 that blew into his face. His instinct was to call them out of the chasm

 now - there was already less than twelve inches of free-board at the top

 of the wall.

 However, he knew that Nicholas would be furious if he was made to

 evacuate the workings prematurely, and in so doing aborted all their

 efforts. Sapper was fully aware of the extreme risks that Nicholas had

 taken and of the crippling expenditure he had made to reach this stage.

 Before they had left England, he had hinted to Sapper of the straitened

 circumstances in which he found himself.

 Although Sapper did not understand the intricacies or the

 responsibilities of being a "Name' at Lloyd's, there had been so much

 publicity in the British press that he could not but realize that, if

 their venture here failed, the next stop for Nicholas would be the

 bankruptcy courts - and Nicholas was his friend.

 The squall of. rain blew over, and a bright hot sun burst through the

 low cloud banks. The flow of the river seemed undiminished, but at least

 the water level on the dam wall was no longer rising, "I'll give it

 another hour," he grunted, engaging the gears of the tractor and easing

 her down the bank to place another gabion in position.

 Nicholas worked shoulder to shoulder with Hinsith's gang as they began

 to strip the paving slabs from the floor of the lowest level of the

 maze. The joints between the slabs were so tight that, even using

 crowbars, they had difficulty prising them apart, In order to save time,

 Nicholas made the hard choice of going into a destructive search. He put

 four of the strongest men in the team to work with home-made

 sledgehammers, lumps of ironstone on wooden shafts, to break UP the

 slabs so that they could be more readily levered out of the floor. He

 felt guilty about the damage they were causing to the site, but the work

 went ahead very much faster.

 The high spirits and enthusiasm of the men were at last beginning to

 wane. They had worked too long in the oppressive confines of the maze,

 and every one of them was the head of the fully aware of the rising

 level of the river at gorge, and of the mortal threat behind those

 waters. Their expressions were surly and there was little laughter' or

 banter, But more worrying for Nicholas was the fact that at ported the

 first the beginning of this shift Hansith had re duty.

 desertions. Sixteen of his men had failed to report for They had quietly

 rolled their blankets during the night, picked up whatever items of

 value or utility they found lying around the camp, and crept away into

 the darkness.

 Nicholas knew that it was no use sending anyone after them - they had

 too much of a start, and would be halfway up the escarpment already.

 This was Africa, and Nicholas was certain that now that the rot had

 started it would Spread very quickly.

 He joked and jollied them along, not allowing them to sense his true

 feelings. He worked shoulder to shoulder in the excavation in an and

 sweated along with them made attempt to hold them, But he knew that,

 unless they Ali under these slabs to keep their interest another

 discovery and expectations alight, he might wake up tomorrow to

 all find that even the monks and the faithful Hansith were gone.

 He had started lifting the slabs in the angle of the corner of the maze,

 and they worked out from there in both directions down the arms Of the

 tunnel. His heart sank as they broke up each paving slab with the

 hammers only to find beneath it the solid stratum of the country rock

 with no indication of any joint or opening.

 "It doesn't look very hopeful," he muttered to Royan as he took a short

 break to drink from one of the water flasks.

 She too was looking unhappy as she Poured water from the flask into his

 cupped hands, so that he could wash the sweat and grime from his face.

 "I may have got the symbols for the levels wrong," she suggested. "It is

 just the kind of trick Taita would play, to work out combinations which

 would both give a logical solution." She hesitated before she appealed

 to him for guidance. "Do you think I should start working back the other

 combination-'

 Her question was interrupted by a bellow from Hansith. "In the name of

 the Blessed Virgin, effendi, come quickly!'

 They spun around together. In "her haste Royan dropped the flask, which

 shattered at her feet. She did not seem to notice that it had drenched

 her legs, but ran back to where Hansith was standing with the hammer

 poised for another stroke.

 What is it-' she broke off as they both saw that beneath the paving

 slabs Hansith had uncovered another layer of dressed stone sills.

 These were laid neatly across the floor of the tunnel from wall to wall,

 recessed into the surrounding rock, with knife-edge joints between them.

 Their sides were smooth and plain, without engravings or markings upon

 them.

 "What is it, icky?" Royan demanded.

 "Either it's another layer of paving, or it)s a cover over fall an

 opening in the floor,, he told her eagerly. "We won't know until we lift

 one of them."

 The stone sills were too thick and heavy to be cracked with the

 primitive hammers, although Hansith tried his best. In the end they were

 forced to dig around the first of lever it free. It took five men to

 raise the end of them and it and lift it off its foundation.

 "There is an opening under it." Royan went down on the space that it had

 left. "Some her knees to peer into kind of open shaft!'

 Once the first sill was removed it was easier to get a urchase on the

 others that blocked the rectangular open I away, Nicholas shone ing.

 When they had cleared them al the dark shaft that was revealed. It the

 lamp down into stretched from wall to wall of the tunnel, and the head

 stand up to his room was sufficient for even Nicholas full height on the

 steps that led down at a forty-five degree angle.

 "Surely this must be it.

 "Another stairway he exulted exhausted all the false leads by now."

 Even Taita must have crowding up behind them, their The workmen were

 very and the ting at this fresh disco sullen mood evapora certainty of

 additional bonuses in silver dollars that they had earned.

 "Are we going down?" Royan asked. "I know we should be careful and check

 it for traps, but we are- running out Of time, Nicky."

 "You are right, as always. The time has come when we have to press on

 regardless."

 hand, "Caution thrown to the winds." She took his laughing. "Let's go

 down together."

 tious step at a They descended side by side, one cau time, with the lamp

 held head high and the shadows retreating before them.

 "There is a chamber at the bottom,'Royan exclaimed.

 "Looks like a store room - what are all those objects stacked along the

 walls? There must be hundreds of them.

 Are they coffins, sarcophaguses?" The dark shapes were almost human,

 standing shoulder to shoulder, rank after rank, around the walls of the

 square chamber.

 "No, I think those are corn baskets on one side," she said, recognizing

 them. "Those on the other side look like wine amphorae. Probably some

 sort of offering to the dead."

 "If this is one of the funeral store rooms," said Nicholas in a voice

 tight with excitement, "then we are getting very close to the tomb now."

 "Yes!' she cried. "Look - there is another doorway on the far side of

 this store room. Shine the light over there."

 The beam picked out the square opening facing them across this lower

 chamber. It was inviting, beckoning them almost seductively. They almost

 ran down the last few steps in . to . the chamber lined with the reed

 baskets and pottery wine jars. But as they reached the leveffloor of the

 store room they ran into an invisible barrier that stopped both of them

 dead and sent them reeling backwards.

 "God!" Nicholas clutched at his throat, his voice a strangled choke.

 "Get back. Got to get back."

 Royan was inking to her knees, also gasping and hunting for breath.

 "Nicky!" she tried to scream, but her breath was trapped in her lungs.

 She felt that a steel noose had encircled her chest and, as it

 tightened, the breath was being forced out of her.

 "Nicky! Help me!" She was strangling, like a fish thrown up on the bank.

 The strength drained from her limbs, and her vision began to break up

 and fade. She did not have the strength to stand.

 He stooped over her and tried to lift her, but he was almost as weak. He

 felt his own legs buckling, no longer able to support even his own

 weight.

 erately as he suffocated.

 "Four minutes," he thought desp i to brain death I "That's all we have

 got. Four minutes and oblivion. We have to get airer her armpits From

 behind her, he slipped his arms und locked his hands together over her

 breasts. Again he and ied to lift her, but his strength was gone. He

 began to tr ds the stairs down which they had walk backwards towar run

 so lightly, and every pace required a huge effort. She was already

 unconscious, lying inert in the circle of his arms. Her limp legs

 trailed across the stone floor as he dragged her back.

 The lowest step caught his heels and he almost toppled his balance over

 backwards. with an effort he regained and lugged her back up the steps,

 her feet sliding and bumping loosely over the treads. He wanted to shout

 to his lungs Hansith for help, but he did not have me air in to utter a

 sound.

 , she's dead," he told himself, and if you drop her no ps, his lungs

 hunting for he struggled up another five ste precious air and finding

 none. His strength oozed out of wobbled and as his vision slid and him a

 drop at a time A

 11 distorted.

 "Please God, let me

 "Let me breathe," he pleaded.

 breathe."

 Miraculously, like a direct answer to his prayer, he felt slide down his

 panting throat and the precious oxygen ngth began flooding back swell

 his lungs. At once his stre Royan's chest and lifted and he tightened

 his grip around her bodily. He staggered up the remaining steps with her

 sprawled out Of the mouth of the body in his arms and shaft on to the

 slabs of the tunnel at Hansith's feet.

 "What is is, effendi? What has happened to you and the lady?"

 Nicholas had no breath to answer him. He laid Royan in the position for

 mouth-tolmouth resuscitation, and slapped her cheeks.

 "Come on!" he pleaded with her. "Speak! Talk to me!" There was no

 response, so he knelt over her, covered her open mouth with his own and

 blew down her throat, until from the corner of his eye he saw her chest

 swelling and inflating.

 He sat back for a count of three. "Please, my darling, please

 breathe!'There was no colour in her yellow, corpselike face.

 He bent over her and covered her mouth again, and as he filled her lungs

 with his own breath he felt her stir under him.

 "That's it, my darling," he told her. "Breathe! Breathe for me."

 At the next breath she pushed him away and sat up groggily, staring

 round at the circle of faces that hovered over her anxiously. She picked

 out Nicholas's pale face amongst the black faces of the men.

 "Nicky! What happened?"

 "I am not sure - but whatever it was, it almost got both of us. How are

 you feeling now?"

 "It was as though an invisible hand had me by the throat, and was

 strangling me. I couldn't breathe, and then I passed out."

 "It must be some kind of gas filling the lower levels of the passage.

 You were only out for less than two minutes," he reassured her. "It

 takes four minutes of oxygen starvation to kill the brain."

 "I have a terrible headache." She pressed her fingers to her temples. "I

 heard your voice calling me back. You called me "my darling"." She

 dropped her eyes.

 "Just a little slip of the tongue." He lifted her to her feet and for a

 moment she swayed against him, her breasts soft and warm against his

 chest.

 "Thank you once again, Nicky. I am so deeply in your debt already, I

 will never be able to repay you."

  am sure we will be able to work something out."

 She was suddenly aware of the niens eyes watching her and drew away from

 him. "What kind of gas? And how did it get there? Was it another of

 Taita's tricks, do you think, Nicky?"

 "One Of the gases of decay, most probably," was his the lower part of

 the opinion. . "Because it is trapped in passage, it must be a

 heavier-than-air type. I would guess that it is probably carbon dioxide,

 although it could be something like methane. I think methane is heavier

 than air, isn't it?"

 "Did Taita do it deliberately?" The colour was returning to her cheeks,

 and she was recovering swiftly.

 I don't know, but those baskets and jars are suspicious.

 er that question when we have had a I will be able to answ chance to

 examine their contents." He touched her cheek tenderly. "How are you

 feeling? How is your headacheT

 "Better. What do we do now?"

 he to

 "Clear the gas from the chamber, Id her, "and as soon as possible."

 He used a candle from his emergency pack to, test for-the gas level in

 the shaft. With it burning in his right hand he went back down the

 steps, holding it low'to the floor, descending a step at a time. The

 candle flame burned brightly, dancing to the movement of air as he went

 down. Then, abruptly on the sixth step above the floor level of the

 chamber, the flame turned yellow and snuffed out.

  wall in white chalk, and He marked the level on the shaft, "Well, at

 called up to Royan at the head of the still here. Must be carbon least

 it's not methane. I am dioxide."

 "Pretty conclusive test," she laughed. if it goes boom, it's methane."

 the blower fan," Nicholas Hansith, bring down shouted to the big monk

 Holding his breath as though he were snorkelling under water, Nicholas

 carried the fan down the lower steps and set it up on the floor of the

 chamber. He set the fan speed at "High' and immediately retreated up the

 shaft, drawing a huge breath as soon as he was above the chalk mark on

 the wall.

 "How long will it take to clear the gas?" asked anxiously, looking at

 her wrist-watch. Royan

 "I will test with the candle every fifteen minutes.

 It was an hour before the gas had dispersed enough to enable him to

 reach the floor of the chamber again, and breathe the air down there.

 Then Nicholas ordered Hansith to bring down a bundle of firewood and

 build a fire in the centre of the stone floor, to heat and circulate the

 air more rapidly.

 While he was doing this, Nicholas and Royan examined one of the baskets

 that stood against the wall.

 "The crafty old ruffian!" Nicholas Muttered half in exasperation and

 half in admiration. "It looks like a mixture of manure and grass and

 dead leaves, the same as a compost heap."

 They crossed the chamber, turned one of the pottery jars on its side,

 and studied the powder that spilled out of it. Nicholas took up a

 handful and rubbed it between his fingers, then sniffed it warily.

 "Crushed limestone!" he muttered. "Although it has of acid. Vinegar,

 perhaps, or even Isoonakgedagitowdirtihedsoomuetfoarnmd lost any odour,

 Taita probably urine would have done the trick. As it broke down the

 limestone, it formed carbon dioxide."

 "So it was another deliberate trap," Royan exclaimed.

 "Even so many thousands of years ago, Taita must have understood the

 processes of decay. He knew what gases those mixtures would produce.

 Amongst all the other accomplishments he boasts of, he must also have

 been a nifty chemist."

 Furthermore, he must have known that without a draught or any movement

 of air, these heavy inert gases amber indefiould hang here in the bottom

 of the ch agreed. "I expect that this shaft is designed like nitely,"

 she

 ' she pointed a ,trap. I bet that the passage rises again at the

 mysterious doorway in the far wall, "in fact I can see the first steps

 even from here."

 "We will soon find out if you are right," he told her, because that's

 exactly where we are heading right now up those stePS."

 apper had placed caims of stones at the water's edge to monitor the

 river level. He watched es his ticker them the way a stockbroker watch

 tape.

 It had been six hours since the last rain squall had passed. The clouds

 over the valley had burned away in the Ithough they still hung densely

 over hot, bright sunlight, a the northern horizon. Their great

 dun'coloured thunderheads reared to the heavens, menacing and ominous,

 fonning their own mighty ranges that dwarfed the mountains beneath them.

 At any time the downpour might ed, begin up there in the highlands. Once

 that happen Sapper wondered how long it would take the flood waters to

 reach them here in the Abbay gorge.

 He dismounted stiffly from the tractor, and went down the bank to

 inspect his stone markers. The water level had fallen almost a foot in

 the past hour. He forced himself not to let his optimism bubble over -

 after all, it had taken only fifteen minutes for the river to -rise the

 same amount.

 would come.

 The final outcome was inevitable. The rains rst. He looked The river

 would spate. The dam would bu at the dam wall, and shook his head with

 fill downstream resignation.

 He had done as much as possible to delay that moment. He had raised the

 level of the dam wall almost four feet, and packed in another buttress

 behind the wall to strengthen it. There was nothing further for him to

 do, and he could only wait.

 Climbing up the bank, he leaned wearily against the yellow steel of his

 machine and looked across at his team of Buffaloes, strewn along the

 bank like casualties on a battlefield. They had worked for two days to

 hold back the waters, and now they were exhausted. He knew that he could

 not call on them for another effort; the next time the river attacked,

 it would overwhelm them.

 He saw some of the men stir and sit up, and their faces turned upstream.

 He heard their voices faint on the wind.

 Something was exciting their interest. He climbed up on to the tractor

 and shaded his eyes, The unmistakable figure of Mek Nimmur was coming

 down the trail from the direction of the escarpment, stocky and powerful

 in his camo fatigues, his gait determined. He was accompanied by two of

 his company commanders.

 Mek hailed Sapper from a distance. "How is your dam holding?" he called

 in Arabic, which Sapper did not understand. "Soon it will rain on the

 mountains, You won't be able to hold out here much longer." But his

 gestures towards sky and river were immediately intelligible to Sapper.

 Sapper jumped down from the machine to gr,6et him, and they shook hands

 cordially. They had recognized in each other the qualities of strength

 and professionalism that they both admired.

 Mek seized his company commander, who spoke English, by the arm, and the

 man fell into his by now familiar role of interpreter.

 "It is not only the weather that troubles me," Mek confided in a low

 voice, and the interpreter relayed the information to Sapper. "I have

 reports that the governMent troops are moving into position to attack

 us. My intelligence is that they have a full battalion moving down this

 way from Debra Maryam, and another force low the monastery at St.

 Frumentius, moving up the be Abbay river."

 "Pincer movement, heyT said Sapper.

 Mek listened to the translation and nodded gravely. "I am heavily

 outnumbered and I don't know how long I will they attack. My men are be

 able to hold them when gueff illas. It is not our role to fight

 set-piece battles. It is the war of the flea for us. Hit and run. I came

 to warn You at short notice."

 to be ready to Pull out Sapper grunted. , "Don't worry too much about

 am a sprinter. Hundred yards dash is my speciality. It's Nicholas and

 ROYan you should be thinking of, them in that ruddy rabbit warren of

 theirs."

 but I wanted to arrange

 "I am on my way to them now a fall'back position. if we get cut off from

 each other in the the monastery.

 fighting, Nicholas has cached the boats at That is where we will

 assemble."

 okay Mek---2 Sapper stopped speaking and all three I the trail, where

 there was a fresh of them looked bank. "What's disturbance amongst the

 men along the going on?"

 Mek one of my patrols coming in narrowed his eyes.

 "Mere must be some new development." He stopped not understand speaking

 as he realized that Sapper could him, and then his expression changed as

 he recognized the small, slim figure that was being carried on a rough

 litter by thing-_ men of his patrol.

 towards, her and sat up weakly Tessay saw him running her to the ground

 and Mek on the litter. The men lowered the litter and placed both went

 down on his knees beside They held each other in silence for a his arms

 airoun(:

 her face in his Mek gently cupped long moment. Then  features.

 hands and examined her swollen and arre Some of the burns had become

 infected, and her eyes were slits beneath the bloated lids.

 "Who did this to you?"he asked softly.

 She mumbled incoherently through her black-scabbed lips. They made me

 No! Don't try to talk." He changed his mind as her lower lip cracked

 open and a droplet of fresh blood welled up and glistened like a ruby on

 her skin.

 "I have to tell you," she insisted in a broken whisper.

 "They made me tell them everything. The numbers of your men. What you

 and Nicholas are doing here. Everything. I am sorry, Mek. I betrayed

 you."

 "Who was it? Who did this to you?"

 "Nogo and the American, Helm,' she said, and although he embraced her as

 gently as a father with his infant in his arms, his eyes were terrible.

 /4P- -I he lowed chamber of the tunnel was cleared of gas at last.

 Hansith's fire burned bright and steady in the middle of the floor, the

 rising hot air wafting away the noxious vapours and dispersing them

 through the upper levels of the maze, where they mingled with

 the'cleaner oxygen-rich air and lost their toxicity. By this time Royan

 had fully recovered from the physical effects of the gassing, but her

 confidence was shaken, and she allowed Nicholas to lead the way up the

 steps that rose from the far side of the chamber.

 "It's the perfect gas trap," Nicholas pointed out to her as they climbed

 cautiously. "No doubt at all that Taita knew exactly what he was doing

 -when he built this section of the tunnel."

 "Surely he must have expected any interloper of his period to have

 either succumbed to his hellish devices, lost his way in the maze, or

 given up and turned back by now," she reasoned.

 "Are you trying to convince me that this was Taita's last line of

 defence, and that he has no more tricks in store for us? Is that it?"

 Nicholas asked as he took another step upwards.

 "No. Actually I was trying to convince myself, and not having much

 success. I just don't trust him one little bit any more. I have come to

 expect the worst from him. I expect the roof to collapse on me at any

 moment, or the floor to open and drop us into a fiery furnace or

 something worse." They had descended forty steps down into the se they

 were now climbing was a chamber, and the stairca mirror image of that.

 It rose at the same angle and the tread of each step was the same depth

 and width. As their heads rose above the fortieth step, Nicholas played

 the beam of the lamp down the spacious, level arcade that ened before

 them, and they were dazzled by a riot of OP

 colour and pattern, bright and lovely as a field' of desert blooms after

 rain. The paintings covered the walls and ceiling of the arcade,

 stunning in their profusion, wondrous in their execution.

 "Taita!l Royan cried in a voice that quivered and broke. "These are his

 paintings. There is no other artist like him, I could never mistake it.

 I would know his work anywhere."

 stood on the top step and gazed around in They wonder. When compared to

 these, the murals in the long gallery seemed pale and stilted, the

 tawdry sham that they the work of a great master, a timeless really

 were. This was genius, whose art could enchant and enrapture now just as

 readily as it had four thousand years ago. involuntarily, They moved

 forward slowly, almost down the arcade. It was lined on each side with

 small ntal bazaar. The entrance chambers, like the stalls in an orie

 ched up to the to each was guarded by tall columns that rea roof. Each

 column was a carved statue of one member of the pantheon of gods.

 Between them they held the high vaulted ceiling suspended.

 As they drew level with the first two stalls, Nicholas stopped and

 squeezed her arm.

 "The treasure chambers of Pharaoh he whispered.

 The stalls were packed from floor to ceiling with wonderful and

 beautiful things.

 "The furniture store." Royan's voice was as reverential as his as she

 recognized the shapes of chairs and stools and beds and divans. She went

 to the nearest chamber and touched a royal throne. The arms were twining

 serpents of bronze and lapis lazuli. The legs were those of lions with

 claws of gold. The seat and back were chased with scenes of the hunt,

 and wings of gold surmounted the high back.

 Stacked behind the throne was a great Profusion of other furniture. They

 recognized a screened divan, its sides enclosed in an exquisite lacework

 of ebony and ivory. But there were dozens of other items besides, most

 of them broken down into their separate Parts so that it was not

 possible to guess what they were. They gleamed with precious metals and

 coloured stones in such confusion and variety that it was too much to

 take in in a single glance.

 Both the alcoves on either side of the arcade were stuffed with these

 marvelous collections. Royan shook her head in wonder, and Nicholas led

 her on. The walls that separated the alcoves were decorated with panels

 illustrate in the Book of the Dead, and the journey of Pharaoh through

 the pylons, the dangers and the trials, the demons and the monsters that

 awaited him along the way.

 "These are the paintings that were missing from the mock tomb in the

 long gallery," Royan told him. "But just look upon the face of the king,

 You can see he was a real person. Those are perfect royal portraits."

 The mural beside them depicted the great god Osiris leading Pharaoh by

 the hand, protecting him from the crowded close on either hand, waiting

 thei monsters that showed the face of the king as he chance to devour

 him. I with a kind and gentle, if must truly have been, a man rather

 weak, face.

 "Look at the figures," Nicholas agreed. "They are not forward with the

 right stiff wooden dolls always stepping foot. These are real men and

 women. They are anatomic and had cally correct. The artist understood

 perspectiv studied the human body."

 They came to the next pair of alcoves, and paused to peer into them.

 "Weapons," said Nicholas. just look at that chariot The panels of the

 chariot were covered with a skin of old leaf, so that it dazzled the

 eye. The harness and traces the horses that would draw it into seemed

 only to await and the quivers strapped to the side panels behind battle,

 elins. The each tall wheel bulged with arrows and jav was emblazoned on

 the side panels.

 cartouche of Mamose significant vehicle were war bows Piled beside this

 of electrum and bronze whose stocks were bound with wir ays of daggers

 with ivory handles and gold. There were arr and swords with blades of

 glistening bronze. There were racks of spears and pikes. There were

 shields of bronze, the targets decorated with scenes of war and the name

 of the se. There were helmets and breastplates made divine Mamo from the

 skin of the crocodile, and the uniforms and regalia of the famous

 regiments of Egypt dressed the life-sized the wooden statues of the king

 that stood in rows against walls of the alcoves.

  a They walked on down the isle, between more paint, death of the icting

 the life and the ings and murals dep ters and danking. They saw him

 playing with his daugh nt son. They saw him fishing and hunting and

 dling his infa isn'omarches, hawking, in council with his ministers and

 dallying with his wives and concubines, and feasting with the priests of

 the temple.

 What a chronicle of life in ancient times," Royan breathed with awe.

 "There has never been a discovery remotely like this before." Each of

 the persons in the panels had obviously been drawn from life. They were

 real breathing living men and women, every face and every expression

 different, captured with the keen eye, the humour and he great humanity

 of the artist.

 "That must be Taita himself." Royan pointed out the self-portrait of the

 eunuch in one of the central panels. "I wonder if he took poetic

 licence, or was he truly so noble and beautiful?"

 They paused to admire the face of Taita, their adversary, and looked

 into his searching, intelligent eyes. Such was the skill of the artist

 that he watched them as keenly as they studied him. A small, enigmatic

 smile played on Taita's lips. The painting had been varnished, so that

 it was perfectly preserved, as if it had been painted the day before.

 Taita's lips seemed moist and his eyes gleamed softly with life.

 "His complexion is fair and his eyes are blue!" Royan exclaimed.

 "Although that red hair is almost certainly dyed with henna."

 "It is weird to think that, although he lived so long ago, he almost

 succeeded in killing us,'Nicholas said softly.

 "In what land was he born? He never tells us that in the scrolls. Was it

 Greeceor Italy? Was he from one of the Germanic tribes, or was he of

 Viking stock? We will never know, for he himself probably did not know

 his own origins."

 "There he, is again in the next panel." Nicholas pointed down the arcade

 to where the unmistakable face of the eunuch appeared in the throng that

 knelt in homage before the throne on which sat Pharaoh and his queen.

 "Like Hitchcock, he seems to like to appear in his own creations."

 They went on past the treasure stalls in which were stored plates and

 goblets and bowls of alabaster and bronze chased with silver and gold,

 polished bronze mirrors and rolls of precious silk and linen and woollen

 cloth that had long ago rotted to shaggy black amorphous heaps. On the

 walls that divided these from the next set of stalls they saw reenacted

 the battle with the Hyksos in which Pharaoh had been struck down, the

 arrow shot by the Hyksos king lodged in his breast. Then in the next

 panel Taita, the surgeon, bent Over him with the surgical instruments in

 his ed barb from deep in his hands, removing the blood-smear flesh.

 Now they came to alcoves in which were stacked hundreds of cedarwood

 chests. The boxes were painted with the royal cartouche of Mamose, and

 with scenes of the king at his toilet: lining his eyes with kohl,

 painting his face with white antimony and scarlet rouge, being shaved by

 his barbers and dressed by his valets.

 "Some of those chests will contain the royal cosmetics," Royan murmured,

 'and some of them will be Pharaoh's wardrobes of clothing. There will be

 costumes in them for ack every occasion in his after-life. I long to be

 able to unp and examine them."

 all panels showed the mart iage of the The next set of king to the

 young virgin, Taita's mistress. The face of Queen LostTis was tendered

 with loving detail. The artist gloated on her beauty and exaggerated it,

 his brush strokes caressing her naked breasts and lingering on all her

 virtues until they epitomized feminine perfection.

 "How much Taita loved her," Royan murmured, and there was envy in her

 voice. "You can see it in every line he drew."

 Nicholas smiled softly and put his arms around her shoulders.

 There were hundreds more wooden chests stacked in the next alcoves.

 Painted on the lids were miniatures of the king decked in all his

 jewellery: his fingers and toes were thick with rings and his chest was

 covered with pectoral medallions, while bangles of gold adorned his arms

 and bracelets his wrists. In one portrait he wore the double crown of

 the two kingdoms of Egypt united, the red crown and the white with the

 heads of the vulture and the cobra on his brow. In another he wore the

 blue war crown, and on a third the Nemes crown with gold and lapis wings

 that covered his ears.

 "If each of those chests contains the treasures depicted on its lid-'

 Nicholas broke off, unable to continue the thought. The possibility of

 such riches was daunting, and the imagination balked at the magnitude of

 it.

 "Do you remember what Taita wrote in the scrolls? "I cannot believe that

 such a treasure was ever before accumulated in one place at one times'T

 Royan asked him. "It seeffLs that it is all still here, every single gem

 and grain of gold. The treasure of Mamose is intact."

 Beyond the treasury there was another alcove lined with shelves on which

 stood the ushabti figures: dolls made of green glazed porcelain or

 carved from cedarwood. They were an army of tiny figures, men and women

 from all the trades and professions. There were priests and scribes and

 lawyers and physicians, gardeners and farmers, bakers and brewers,

 handmaidens and dancing girls, seamstresses and laundrymaids, soldiers

 and barbers, and common labourers.

 Each of them carried the tools and accoutrements of his or her trade.

 They would accompany the king to the after world and there would work

 for Pharaoh, and would go forward in his place if he were ever called

 upon to perform a service for the other gods.

 At last Nicholas and Royan came to the end of this fabulous arcade, and

 found their way closed off by a series of tall, free-standing screens,

 tabernacles that had been once fine white linen mesh but were now

 decayed and rotted into ribbons and streamers, dirty and shabby as old

 cobwebs, And yet the stars and rosettes of shining gold Now, still

 hanging in the that decorated these curtains were mesh like fish in a

 fisherman's net. Through this ethereal web of silken wisps and golden

 stars they could make out the shape of another gateway beyond.

 actual tomb," Royan

 "That must be the entrance to the thin veil between us and the

 whispered. "There is only a king now.

 tated at the threshold, gripped by a strange They hesi the final step

 reluctance, to take an old warrior, Mek Nimmur had seen and treated most

 of the injuries that a man might sus in on the battlefield. His little

 guerrilla group did not have a doctor, or even a medical orderly.

 Mek himself treated most of his casualties, and he always had a medical

 kit close at hand.

 He had the men carry Tessay to one of the huts near the quarry, where,

 screened by the grass walls, he stripped her of her tattered clothing

 and treated her injuries. He abrasions with disinfectant, and cleaned

 her burns and clean field dressings- Then covered the worst of them with

 he rolled her gently on to her stomach and snapped the which glass phial

 off the needle'of the disposable syringe wh was preloaded with a

 broad'spectrum antibiotic. -and he said, "I She winced at the sting of

 the needle, am not a very good doctor."

 other. Oh, Mek! I thought I would would have no ared never see you

 again. I did not fear death as much as I fe that."

 He helped her dress in the spare clothing from his pack, a sweatshirt

 and fatigues that were many sizes too large for her. He rolled up the

 cuffs for her, and his touch soldier.

 was gentle. His hands were those of a lover, not a she whispered through

 her must look so ugly," swollen, black-scabbed lips.

 "You are beautiful he denied it- "To me you will always be beautiful."

 He touched her cheek carefully, so as not to harm the raw burns that

 covered it.

 At that moment they heard the gunfire. It was still faint with distance,

 borne down from the north on the rain winds.

 Mek stood up immediately. "It has begun. Nogo is attacking at last it's

 all my fault. I told him-'

 "No," he told her firmly. "It is not your fault. You did what you had to

 do. If you had not, they would have hurt you even worse than this. They

 would have attacked us, even if you had told them nothing."

 He picked up his webbing belt and strapped it around his waist. From far

 off they heard the crumping detonation of exploding mortar shells.

 "I have to go now," he told her.

 "I know. Do not worry about me."

 "I will always worry about you. These men will carry you down to the

 monastery. That is the assembly point.

 Wait for me there. I cannot hope to hold Nogo for long.

 He is too strong. I will come to you soon."

 "I love you," she whispered. "I will wait for you for ever."

 "You are my woman," he told her in his deep, soft voice, and then he

 ducked through the doorway of the hut and was gone.

 hen Nicholas touched the frame of the screen, fragments of the mesh veil

 tore free with even that tiny movement and fell to the tiles of the

 floor. The golden rosettes trapped in their folds tinkled on the stones.

 Now there was an opening in the curtain large enough for them to step

 through, They found themselves before the inner doorway. It was -guarded

 eat god Osiris on one side by a massive statue of the gr with his hands

 crossed over his chest, clutching the crook and the flail. Opposite

 stood his wife Isis, with the lunar crown and horns on her head. Their

 blank eyes stared out into eternity, and their expressions were serene.

 Nicholas and Royan passed between these twelve-foot-high statues and

 found themselves at last in the veritable tomb of Mamose.

 The roof was vaulted, and the quality of the murals that covered it and

 the walls was different - formal and classical. The colours were of a

 deeper, more sombre hue, and the patterns more intricate. The chamber

 was smaller han they had anticipated; just large enough to accommodate

 the huge granite sarcophagus of the divine Pharaoh Mamose.

 The sarcophagus stood chest-high. Its side panels were engraved in

 has-relief with scenes of Pharaoh and the other gods. The stone lid was

 in the shape of a full'length effigy of the supine figure of the king.

 They saw at once that it was still in its original position, and that

 the clay seals of the priests of Osiris which secured the lid were

 intact. The tomb had never been violated. The mummy had lain within it

 undisturbed through the millennia.

 But this was not what amazed them. There were two extraneous items

 within the otherwise classically correct tomb. On the lid of the

 sarcophagus lay a magnificent war bow. Almost as long as Nicholas was

 tall, the entire length of its stock was bound with coils of shining

 electrum wire, that alloy of gold and silver whose formula has been lost

 in antiquity.

 The other item that should never have been placed in a royal tomb stood

 at the foot of the sarcophagus. It was a small human figure, one of the

 ushabti dolls. A glance of this effigy, confirmed the superior quality

 of the carving and both of them recognized the features instantly. Only

 minutes before, they had seen that face painted upon the walls of the

 arcade, outside the tomb.

 The words of Taita, from the scrolls, seemed to reverberate within the

 confines of the tomb, and hang like fireflies in the air above the

 sarcophagus:

 When I stood for the very last time beside the royal sarcophagus, I sent

 all the workmen away.

 I would be the very last to leave the tomb, and after me the entrance

 would be sealed.

 When I was alone I opened the bundle I carried. From it I took the long

 bow, Lanata.

 Tanus had named it after my mistress, for Lanata had been her baby name.

 I had made the bow for him. It was the last gift from the two of us. I

 placed it upon the sealed stone lid of his coffin.

 There was one other item in my bundle. It was the wooden ushabti figure

 that I had carved.

 I placed it at the foot of the sarcophagus. While I carved it, I had set

 up three copper mirrors so that I could study my own features from every

 angle and reproduce them faithfully. The doll was a miniature Taita.

 Upon the base I had inscribed the words Royan knelt at the foot of the

 coffin and pick up the ushabd figure. Reverently she turned it in her

 hands and studied the hieroglyphics carved into the base of the figure.

 Nicholas knelt beside her. "Read it to me," he said.

 Softly she obeyed. "'My natne is Taita. I am a physician and a poet. I

 am an architect and a philosopher. I am your friend. I will answer for

 you - "'

 so it's all true,'Nicholas whispered, Royan replaced the ushabti exactly

 as she had found it and, still on her knees, turned her face to his.

  this," she

 "I have never known another moment like whispered. "I want it never to

 end."

 "It will never end, my darling," he answered her. "You and I are only

 just beginning."

 ek Nimmur watched them coming, skirtin 9 the bottom slope of the hill,

 It took the trained eye of a bush-fighter to pick them ut as they moved

 through the thick scrub and thorn. As 0 he evaluated them he felt a

 twinge of dismay. These were crack troopsi seasoned during long years of

 war. He had once fought with them against the Mengistu. tyranny, an he

 had probably trained many of those men down there.

 Now they were coming against him. Such was the cycle of violence in this

 racked continent, where the war and endless struggles were fuelled and

 nurtured by the age-old tribal enmities and the greed and corruption of

 the newage politicians and their outmoded ideologies.

 But this was not the moment for dialectics, he thought bitterly, and

 focused his mind on the tactics Of the battlefield beneath him. Yes!

 These men were good. He could see it in the way they advanced, like

 wraiths through the scrub. For every one of them he picked out, he knew

 there were a dozen others that remained unseen.

 "Company strength," he thought, and glanced around at his own small

 force. Fourteen men amongst the rocks, they could only hope to hit their

 adversary hard while they still had the advantage of surprise, and then

 pull back before Nogo ranged his mortars in on the hilltop where they

 lay.

 He looked up at the sky and wondered whether Nogo would call in an air

 strike. Thirty'five minutes' flying time viet'built Tupolevs from the

 air base for a stick of those So at Addis, and he could almost smell the

 sweet stench of wind, and see the rolling cloud of napalm on the humid

 flame sweeping to wards them. That was the only thing his men really

 feared. But there would be no air strike - not this time, he decided.

 Nogo and his paymaster, the German von Schiller, wanted the spoils from

 the tomb that Nicholas Quenton-Harper had discovered in the gorge. They

 did not want to share any of it with those political fat cats in Addis.

 They would not want to draw any government attention to themselves and

 this little private campaign of theirs in the Abbay gorge.

 He looked back down the slope. The enemy was moving in nicely, swinging

 around the hillside to intersect the trail along the Dandera river. Soon

 they must send a patrol up here to secure their flank before they could

 sweep on. Yes, there they were. Eight, no, ten men detaching from the

 main advance, and moving cautiously up the slope beneath him.

 "I will let them get in close," he decided. "I would like to get them

 all, but that is too much to hope for. I would settle for four or five

 of them, and it would be good to leave a few squealers in the scrub." He

 grinned cruelly. "Nothing like a man screaming with a belly wound to

 take the fire out of his comrades, and make them keep their heads down."

 He looked across the rock-strewn slope, and saw that his RPD light

 machine gun was perfectly sited to enfilade their advance up the slope.

 Salim, his machine gunner, was an artist with that weapon. Perhaps,

 after all, he could hope to put down more than five of them.

 "We will see," thought Mek, "but I must time it right." He saw that

 there was a gap in the ridge of rock just below him.

 "They will not want to expose themselves by crossing the open ridge," he

 judged. "They will tend to bunch up and sneak through the gap. That will

 be the moment."

 He looked back at the RPD. Salim was watching him, waiting for his

 signal. Mek looked back down the slope.

 ly "he thought. "Their line is bunching. "The big one es, on the left is

 already out of position. Those two inside him are angling across towards

 the gap." Nogo's men's camouflage blended perfectly with the of their

 weapons were wrapped with scrub, and the barrels rags and scraps of

 camouflage netting so that they threw no sunlight reflections. They were

 almost invisible in the bush;

 it was only their movements and the skin tones that se now that Mek

 caught betrayed them. They were soCIO

 of one of their eyeballs but he still the occasional gleam could not

 pick out their machine gunner.

 He must silence the gun with his first burst. "Ah, Yes," he thought with

 relief. "There he is. On the right flank. I nearly missed him."

 eavy shoulders The man was short and thick-set, with ily on his hip.

 carrying the gun eas and long arms, simian, from it was a Soviet-made

 7.62mm RPD. The wink of brass ed over those the cartridges in the

 ammunition belts festoor, great shoulders had given him away.

 Mek eased himself down and inched around the base He slipped the

 rate-of-fire ered him.

 of the rock that cov cheek on the selector on his AKM to rapid, and laid

 hi wooden butt. it was his personal weapon. A gunsmith in barrel for

 him, action and lapped the Addis had trued the stock. All this as well

 as glass-bedding the barrel into the rove the accuracy of this

 notoriously had been done to imp inaccurate assault rifle- It was still

 no sniper's weapon, but ct to place all his with these modifications he

 could expe shots within a two-inch circle at a hundred metres.

 The man carrying the RPD up the slope was now only fifty metres below

 where he lay. Mek glanced to his right to the to make sure that the

 three others were moving in gap where Salim could take them out with a

 single burst;

 sight in the entre of the then he settled the pip of his fore

 using his belt buckle as an RPD machine gunner's belly, aiming mark, and

 fired a tap of three The AKM rode up viciously and the triple detonation

 stung his eardrums, but Mek saw his bullets strike, stitching a row up

 the man's torso. One hit low in the belly, the second in the diaphragm

 and the third at the base of his throat. He spun around, his arms

 flinging out and jerking, and then crashed over backwards, out of sight

 in the underbrush.

 All around Mek his men were firing. He wondered, how many of them Salim

 had taken with that first burst, but there was no longer anything to

 see. The enemy were all down in cover. A faint haze of gunsmoke blued

 the air as they returned fire, and the scrub trembled and shook to the

 recoil and the muzzle blast of their weapons.

 Then, in the uproar of fire, in the whine and wail of ricochets off the

 rocks, one of them began to scream.

 "I am hit. In Allah's name, help me." His cries rang eerily across the

 hillside, and the enemy fire slackened perceptibly. Mek clipped a fresh

 magazine on to the AKM.

 "Sing, little bird. Sing!the muttered grimly.

 t required the combined strength of Nicholas, Hansith and eight other

 men to lift the lid off the stone sarcophagus. Staggering under its

 weight, they laid it carefully against the wall of the tomb. Then Royan

 and Nicholas stood on the plinth of the sarcophagus to look down into

 the interior.

 Fitted neatly into the stone receptacle was an enormous wooden coffin.

 Its lid too was in the form of the reclining Pharaoh. He was in the

 posture of death with his hands crossed at his breast, clutching the

 flail and the crook. The coffin was gilded and encrusted with

 semiprecious stones. The expression on the face of the king's effigy was

 serene.

 They lifted the coffin out of the sarcophagus, and its weight was less

 than that of the stone lid, Carefully Nicholas split the golden seals

 and the layer of hard dried

 01 . Within it they resin that held the lid of the coffin in plac ctly,

 and when the found another coffin, fitted perfe as revealed. It was

 like a ened that yet another coffin wOP

 nest of Russian dolls, one within the other, becoming smaller with each

 revelation. coffins, each of them'

 In the end there were seven mate and richly decorated than the

 progressively more previous one. The seventh coffin was only slightly

 larger I than a man, and it was made of gold. The polished metal caught

 the light of the lamps like a thousand mirrors and the tomb.

 threw bright arrows and darts into every recess coffin they When at

 last they opened the golden inner found that it was filled with flowers.

 The blooms had dried and faded, so their colour was sepia. Their scent

 had long ago evaporated, so that only the musky aroma of great age

 wafted up from the coffin. The petals were so dry and apery that they

 crumbled at the first touch. Beneath the faded blooms was a layer of

 the finest linen; once it must have been snowy white, but now it was

 brown with age the flowers. Through the and the stain of the juices from

 soft folds they saw once again the gleam of gold.

 standing on either side of the coffin, Nicholas and Royan peeled back

 the linen mesh. It crackled softly and but as it came tore like tissue

 paper und their fingers, away they both involuntarily gasped with

 wonder as the as only fraction ask of Pharaoh was revealed. It death-

 man, but it was a perfect ally larger than the head of a it. Pharaoh's

 features had been pre, image in every deta ty in this extraordinary work

 of art.

 served for all eterni ed in silent wonder into the obsidian and rock

 They star crystal eyes of Pharaoh, and Pharaoh gazed back at them sadly,

 almost accusingly it was a long time before either of them could summon

 the head thecourag6 and presumption to lift it away from did so, they

 found further of the mummy. But when the

 evidence that in antiquity the body of the king and that of his general,

 Tanus, had been changed. The mummy that lay before them was obviously

 too large for the coffin that contained it. It had been partially

 unwrapped, and cramped into the interior.

 "A royal mummy would have had hundreds of charrns and amulets placed

 beneath the wrappings," Royan whispered . "This is the plainly dressed

 corpse of a nobleman and not that of the king."

 Nicholas gently lifted the inner layer of bandage away from the dead

 head and a thick coil- of braided hair was revealed.

 "The portraits of Pharaoh Mamose on the walls of the arcade show that

 his head hair was dyed with henna," Nicholas murmured. "Look at this."

 The braid was the colour of the winter grasses of the African savannah,

 gold and silver.

 "There can be no doubt now. This is the body of Tanus. The friend of

 Taita and the lover of the queen."

 "Yes," Royan agreed, her eyes soft with tears. "He is the true father of

 Lostris's son, who became in his time the Pharaoh Tamose and the

 forefather of a great line of kings.

 So this is the man whose blood runs through the history of ancient

 Egypt."

 "In his way he was as great as any Pharaoh," Nicholas said quietly.

 t was Royan who roused herself first. "The river!'

 aT

 she cried, with a razor edge to her voice. "We cannot let all this go

 again, when the river rises."

 "Neither can we hope to save all of it. There is too much. A great mass

 of treasure. Our time here has almost run out, so we must pick out the

 most beautiful and important pieces and pack them into the crates. Lord

 alo'the knows if we even have time for that."

 So they worked in a frenzy in the short time that was left to them. They

 could not even think about saving the eapons, the statues and the

 murals, the furniture and the banqueting. utensils and the wardrobes of

 costumes. The great golden chariot must stand where it had stood for

 four thousand years, They removed the golden death'mask from over

 Tanus's head, but they left his mummy in the innermost of the golden

 coffins. Then Nicholas sent for Mai Metemma. The old abbot came with

 twenty of his monks to receive the lie of the ancient saint that he had

 been promised holy re as his reward. Reverentially, chanting deep and

 slow, they bore Tanus's coffin away to its new resting place in the

 maqdas of the monastery. ect,"

 "At least the old hero will be treated with resP Royan said softly. Then

 she looked around the tomb. "We cannot leave the site like this, with

 the coffins thrown Royan protested. "it looks as about and the lids

 discarded, though grave-robbers have been at work here."

 "Grave-robbers is exactly what we are." Nicholas smiled at her.

 tly, "and we

 "No, we are archaeologists," she denied ho must try to act like it." ing

 coffins one within So they replaced the six remain the other, laid them

 back in the great sarcophagus, and finally replaced the massive stone

 lid. Only then did Royan allow them to begin selecting and packing the

 treasures they would take with them.

 The death'mask was without any doubt the premier item in the entire

 tomb. it fitted neatly into one of the the wooden ushabd of Taita laid

 alongside it, crates, with until it was firmly secured, Royan packed

 with Styrofoarn waterproof wax crayon: "Mask & scribbled on the lid in

 Taita Ushabti'.

 Their final selection was, perforce, hurried and superof the cedarwood

 official. They could not rip open every one chests that were piled high

 in the alcoves of the arcade.

 The painted and gilded chests themselves were priceless artefacts, and

 should be treated with respect. So they allowed themselves to be guided

 by the illustrations on the lid of each. They discovered immediately

 that these were indeed an accurate inventory and catalogue of the

 contents. In the chest which showed Pharaoh decked in the blue war

 crown, they found the actual crown laid on gilded leather pillows that

 had been moulded to fit it exactly and to protect it.

 Even in the short time left to them they became almost surfeited by the

 magnificence of the items they uncovered as they selected and opened the

 cedarwood chests. Not only the blue crown, but the red and white crown

 of the kingdoms united was there, and the splendid Nemes crown, all

 three in such a miraculous state of preservation that they might have

 been lifted from Pharaoh's brow that morning.

 From the very outset it had to be a prerequisite that any artefact must

 be small enough to fit into one of the ammunition crates. If it were too

 large, no matter what its value or historical significance, then it had

 to be rejected and left in the tomb. Fortunately, many of the cedarwood

 chests containing the royal jewellery fitted snugly into the metal

 crates, so that not only the contents but also the chests themselves

 could be saved. However, the larger items, the crowns and the huge

 jewelled gold pectoral medallions, had to be repacked.

 As the ammunition crates were filled, they carried them down and stacked

 them on the landing outside the sealed doorway, ready to be carried out.

 Including the.

 crates that contained the eight statuettes of the gods from the long

 gallery, they had packed and catalogued forty-eight crates when they

 heard Sapper's unmistakable accents floating up the staircase.

 "Major, where the hell are yOU7 YOU can't bugger about hairy arse out

 in here any longer. Come on, man! Get you of here. The river is in full

 spate, and the dam is going to burst at any minute."

 Sapper came bounding up the staircase, but even he stopped in wonder and

 awe as he looked for the first time pon the splendours of the funeral

 arcade of Pharaoh Mamose. It took some minutes for him to recover from

 the shock and to revert to his old prosaic self again.

 "I mean it, major! It's a matter of minutes, not hours.

 That ruddy dam is going to go. Apart from that, Mek is fighting in the

 hills at the head of the chasm. You can hear the gunfire even at the

 bottom of the cliff in Taita's pool.

 4 Al You and Royan have to get out and fast, I kid you nod'

 "Okay, Sapper. We are on our way. Get back to the chamber at the bottom

 of those stairs. You saw those ammunition crates down there?" Sapper

 nodded, and Nicholas went on quickly, "Have the men lug those crates out

 of here. Get them down to the monastery. I want you to supervise that

 part of it. We will follow you down the trail with the rest of them."

 "Don't mess around, major. Your life isn't worth a pile of old junk like

 this. Get moving now."

 "Get on with it, Sapper. But don't let Royan hear you call it a pile of

 old junk. You could be in really serious trouble."

 Sapper shrugged. "Don't say I didn't warn. you." He turned and started

 back down the staircase.

 "You know where the boats are stashed, Nicholas shouted after him. "If

 you get there before me, get them inflated and the crates lashed down.

 We will be right behind you."

 The moment Sapper was gone, Nicholas raced back

 down the arcade to where Royan was still at work in the treasury.

 "That's it!" he shouted at her. "No more time. Let's get out."

 "Nicky, we can't leave this-'

 "Oud' He grabbed her arm. "We are getting out now.

 Unless you want to share Tanus's tomb with him on a permanent basis."

 "Can't I just-'

 "No, you crazy woman! Now! The dam will go at any moment."

 She'broke away from him, snatched up some handfuls of left-over

 jewellery from the open chest at her feet, and began stuffing them into

 her pockets.

 "I can't leave these."

 He seized her around the waist and swung her over his shoulder. "I told

 you I meant it," he said grimly, and ran with her down the arcade.

 "Nicky! Put me down." She kicked with outrage, but he continued running

 down into the chamber at the foot of the staircase.

 Hansith and his men were carrying the last few packed ammunition crates

 up the staircase on the far side of the chamber. They balanced the

 crates easily on their heads and went up the steps with alacrity.

 Here Nicholas set Royan down on her own feet again, "Will you promise to

 behave now? We aren't playing games.

 This is deadly serious - I mean deadly, if we get trapped down here."

 "I know." She looked contrite. "I just couldn't bear to leave the rest

 of it."

 "Enough of that. Let's go." Nicholas grabbed her hand and dragged her

 after him. After the first few steps she shook her hand free and started

 to run in earnest, outstripping him and reaching the top of the

 staircase a few paces ahead of him.

 Even under their burdens the porters were making good time. Caught up in

 the long hurrying column, Nicholas and Royan wound their way back

 through the maze, grateful for the signposts at each corner, and made it

 down the central staircase into the ruined long gallery without taking a

 wrong turning. Sapper was waiting for them at the ruins of the sealed

 doorway, and grunted with he porters.

 relief when he saw them amongst I thought I told you to go on ahead and

 get the boats ready,'Nicholas shouted at him.

 "Couldn't trust you not to be bloody stupid." Sapper looked miserable.

 "Wanted to make sure you didn't hang about in there."

 "I am touched, Sapper."Nicholas punched his shoulder, and then they ran

 down the approach tunnel and clattered over the bridge across the

 sink-hole.

 "Where is MeV Nicholas panted at Sapper's back as he jogged in front of

 him. "Have you seen Tessayr

 "Tessay is back. She had a nasty experience. She was in a terrible mess.

 Seems she got badly knocked about."

 "What has happened to her?" Nicholas was appalled.

 "Where is she?"

 "It looks like she fell into the hands of von Schiller's gorillas and

 they beat the hell out of her. Mek's men are taking her down to the

 monastery. She will wait for us at the boats."

 "Thank God for that," Nicholas muttered, and then louder, "What about

 MeV

 "He is trying to hold off Nogo's attack. I have been hearing rifle fire

 and grenades and mortar shells all morning. He too is going to fall back

 and wait for us at the boats."

 They ran the last few yards down the tunnel ankle, deep in slush and

 water, and at last crawled over the wall of the coffer dam on to the

 rocky ledge around Taita's pool. Nicholas looked up to see Hansith's

 porters scrambling up the bamboo scaffolding ladder towards the top of

 the cliff, each of them hauling up one of the ammunition crates.

 At that moment he caught a sound that he recognized instantly. He cocked

 his head to listen and then told Royan grimly, "Gunfire! Mek is fighting

 it out, but it's pretty darned close."

 "My bag!" Royan started towards her thatched shelter at the foot of the

 cliff. "I must get my kit., "You won't need your make-up or your

 pyjamas, and I've got your passport." He seized her arm and turned her

 back towards the foot of the ladder. "In fact the only thing you need

 now is plenty of space between you and Colonel Nogo. Come along, Royan!'

 They swarmed up the bamboo scaffolding and when they reached the cliff

 top Royan was surprised to discover that, although the earth was wet

 underfoot from the recent rain squalls, the sun was high and hot. She

 had lost all sense of time in the cold, gloomy passages of the tomb, and

 now she held up her face to the sunlight and drank it in gratefully for

 a moment while Nicholas checked the porters and made certain that they

 were all out of the chasm.

 Sapper set off at the head of the column along the trail through the

 thorn forest, with the file of porters strung out behind him. Nicholas

 and Royan waited until all the men were on the pathway before they

 themselves brought up the rear of the column. The sound of the fighting

 was frighteningly close now. It seemed to be almost at the brink of the

 chasm close behind them, less than half a mile away.

 The crackle of automatic fire gave a spring and a lift to the feet of

 the porters, and the entire party raced back through the forest to reach

 the main trail down to the monastery before they were cut off by Nogo's

 advance.

 Before they reached the junction of the paths, they ran into a party of

 stretcher-bearers carrying a litter. They too were headed down towards

 the monastery. Nicholas thought the person they were carrying was one of

 the wounded guerrillas of Mek's force. But even when he caught up with

 them it took a moment for him to recognize Tessay's swollen and burned

 face.

 "Tessay!" He stooped over her. "Who did this to you?" She looked up at

 him with the huge dark eyes of a wounded child, and told him in halting,

 broken words.

 "Helm!" Nicholas blurted. "I' love to get my hands on that bastard." At

 that moment Royan caught up with them, and she let out a small cry of

 horror as she saw Tessay's face. Then immediately she took charge of

 her.

 tcher'bearers Nicholas spoke quickly to one of the stre from he

 recognized.

 wh

 "Mezra, what is happening out there?"

 "Nogo moved a force in from the east of the gorge.

 They outflanked us, and we are pulling out, This is not our kind of

 fighting."

 "I know," Nicholas remarked grimly. "Guerrillas must

 "Where is Mek Nimmur?" keep moving. \

 "He is retreating down the eastern bank of the chasm." As Mezra replied,

 they heard a renewed outburst of firing behind them. "That is him!"

 Mezra nodded. "Nogo is pushing him hard."

 "What are your orders?"

 "To take Lady Sun to the boats and wait for Mek Nimmur there."

 "Good! Nicholas told him. "We will go with you."

 he jet Ranger was flying low, hugging the contours Of the land, never

 cresting the high ground. Helm knew that Mek Nimmur's shufta were armed

 with RPGs, rocket-launchers. In the hands of a trained man, these were

 deadly weapons against a slow-flying, unarmoured aircraft such as the

 jet Ranger.

 The pilot's defence was to use the terrain as cover, weaving and

 twisting up the valleys so as to deny the racketeers a clear shot.

 Although the rain clouds were slumping down the into the Abbay gorge,

 the helicopter was escarpmen keeping well below them. However, the

 sudden squalls of wind rocked the machine dangerously and splatterings;

 of heavy raindrops rattled against the windshield. The pilot sat forward

 in the seat, leaning against his shoulder-straps as he concentrated on

 this dangerous low flying in these unpleasant conditions. Helm sat in

 the right'hand seat, beside the pilot. Von Schiller and Nahoot Guddabi

 were together in the rear passenger seat, both of them craning nervously

 to peer out of the side windows as the heavily wooded slopes of the

 valley streamed past, seemingly close enough to touch.

 Every few minutes the radio crackled into life, and they could hear the

 terse transmissions of Nogo's men on the ground calling for mortar

 support or reporting objectives attained. The pilot translated the radio

 gabble for them, twisting round in his seat to tell von Schiller, "There

 is a sharp fire-fight going on along the top of the chasm, but the

 shufta are on the run. Nogo is handling his force well. They have just

 dislodged a strong force from the hillside to the east of us," he

 pointed out of the left hand port, "and they are hammering the shufta

 with mortars as they run."

 "Have they reached the spot in the chasm where Quenton-Harper was

 working?"

 "It isn't clear. All a bit confused." The pilot listened to the next

 burst of Arabic on the radio. "I think that was Nogo himself speaking

 just then."

 "Call him up!" von Schiller ordered Helm, leaning over the back of his

 seat. "Ask him if they have secured the tomb site yet."

 Helm reached across and lifted the microphone off its hook below the

 instrument panel. "Rose Petal, this is Bismarck. Do you copy?"

 There was a pause filled with static, and then Nogo's voice Speaking

 English. "Go ahead, Bismarck,'

 "Have you secured the primary objective? Over."

 "Affirmative, Bismarck. All secured. All opposition suppressed. I am

 sending men down the ladder to clear the workings."

 Helm swivelled in his seat to look back at von Schiller.

 "Nogo has men in the chasm already. We can go in and land., "Tell him

 not to let any of his men into the workings before I arrive,' von

 Schiller ordered sternly, but his expression was triumphant. "I must be

 the first in there.

 Make him understand that."

 While Helm relayed his orders to Nogo, von Schiller tapped the pilot on

 the shoulder. "How long to the objective?"

 "About five minutes'flying time, sir."

 "Circle the site when you arrive. Don't land until we are sure Nogo has

 it under his control."

 The pilot lifted the collective and the sound of the rotors altered as

 they changed pitch. The helicopter slowed and then hovered in mid-air,

 while the pilot pointed down.

 "What is it?" von Schiller followed his gesture. "What do you see?"

 "The dam," Helm answered. Quenton-Flarper's dam.

 He did a load of work down there."

 The wide body of trapped water gleamed grey and sullen under the rain

 clouds, tainted with the run-off from the highlands. The water diverted

 into the side canal boiled white and angrily down into the long valley.

 "Deserted!" Helm commented. "All Harper's men have pulled out."

 "What is that yellow object on the bank?" von Schiller wanted to know.

 "That's the earth-moving machine. You remember? My informer told us

 about it."

 "Don't waste any more time," von Schiller ordered.

 "Nothing more to see here. Let's get on!'

 Helm tapped the pilot's shoulder, and gestured downstream.

 apper was waiting for them to catch up at the junction of the trail,

 where the diverted river was roaring down the valley in a torrent and

 had washed out a long section of the original track. The porters, strung

 out in a long line down the valley, each with an ammunition crate

 balanced on his head, were picking their way along the higher ground

 above the water.

 Tessay's litter was near the rear of the column, with Royan and Nicholas

 trotting on each side of it and steadying it over the rough and uneven

 sections of the path.

 "Where is Hansith?" Nicholas shouted at SappeT, shading his eyes to

 check the men ahead of him, and trying to pick out the big monk's

 distinctive form from amongst the others in the caravan.

 thought he was with you," Sapper shouted back. "I haven)

 t seen him since we left the chasm., Nicholas turned and stared back the

 way they had come, along the footpath through the Thorn forest.

 "Damn the man," he grunted. "We can't go back to look for him. He will

 have to make his own way down to the monastery."

 At that moment they heard the faint but familiar flutter of rotors in

 the hot, humid air below the lowering cloud masses.

 "The Pegasus chopper! Sounds as though von Schiller is heading directly

 for Taita's pool. He must have known all along exactly where we were

 working," said Nicholas bitterly. "Not wasting any time. Like a vulture

 coming in to a fresh carcass."

 Royan was also looking up at the sound, trying to pick out the shape of

 the aircraft against the dark clouds. Her OEM NOOF AL

 , the tendrils of sweat-damp face was flushed from the ru hair dangled

 down her cheeks. "If those swine are allowed to enter our tomb it will

 be a dreadful desecration of a sacred place," she said angrily.

 Nicholas reached-across the litter and took Suddenly determined. "You

 are her arm. His expression'was stem an right. Go on down to the

 monastery with Tessay. I will follow you later." Before she could

 protest or question him, he strode across to Sapper.

 "I am putting the two women in your care, Sapper.

 Look after them."

 "Where are you going, Nicky?" Royan had come up behind him, and

 overheard his orders to Sapper. "What are you going to do?"

 "One little chore. Won't take me long."

 "You aren't going back there?" She was horrified. "You will get yourself

 killed or worse. You saw what Helm did to Tessay-'

 "Don't fuss yourself, my love," he laughed, and before she realized what

 he intended he kissed her full on the lips.

 While she was still flustered and confused by this display in front of

 so many men, he pushed her gently away.

 "Take care of Tessay. I will meet you at the boats." Before she could

 protest further, he turned and struck out up the valley at a long-legged

 lope which carried him over the rough terrain so swiftly that she had no

 further chance to prevent him.

 "Nicky!" she screamed after him despairingly, but he pretended not to

 hear and kept going, following the diverted river upstream, back towards

 the dam.

 he jet Ranger followed the convoluted course of the river below the dam.

 At moments they could look directly down into the narrow gap between the

 high cliffs, into the shaded depths of the chasm, almost dry now, with

 only the occasional gleam of the shrunken and still pools.

 "There they are!" Helm pointed dead ahead. There was a small cluster of

 men on the brink of the chasm.

 "Make sure they aren't shufta!" There was fear in von Schiller's voice.

 "No!" Helm reassured him loudly. "I recognize Nogo, and that tall one

 beside him in the white shamnia is the monk Hansith Sherif, our

 informer." He shouted above the engine beat at the pilot, "You can go in

 and land. There!

 Nogo is waving you in!'

 The moment the skids of the helicopter touched the ground, both Nogo and

 Hansith ran forward Between them they helped von Schiller down from the

 passenger cabin and hustled him clear of the spinning rotors.

 "My men have secured the area," Nogo assured him.

 "We have driven the shufta down the valley towards the river. This man

 is Hansith Sherif, who has been working beside Harper in the tomb. He

 knows every inch of the tunnels."

 "Does he speak English?" Von Schiller looked up at the tall monk

 eagerly.

 "A little bit," Hansith answered for himself.

 "Good! Good!" Von Schiller beamed at him. "Show me the way. I will

 follow You. Come on, Guddabi, it's about time you did some work for the

 money I am paying you., Hansith led them quickly to the head of the

 scaffolding, where von Schiller paused and looked down nervously into

 the gloomy depths of the chasm, The bamboo framework seemed flimsy and

 rickety, the drop deep and terrifying. Von Schiller was on the point Of

 Protesting when Nahoot Guddabi whimpered behind him.

 "He does not expect us to climb down there, does he?" His terror

 bolstered von Schiller immediately, and he turned on Nahoot with relish.

 "It is the only access to the tomb. Follow the man down. I will be close

 behind you., 1VjU,)t "Putul- YY(, When Nahoot still hesitated, Helm put

 a calloused hand in the small of his back and shoved him forward.

 "Get on with it. You are wasting time."

 MD

 Reluctantly Nahoot started down the affording after SC the monk, and von

 Schiller followed him. The framework of bamboo shook and swayed under

 their combined weight and the drop to the rocks below sucked at them,

 but at last they reached the ledge beside Taita's pool. There they stood

 in a small group, staring about them in awe and wonder. .

 "Where is the tunnel?" von Schiller demanded as soon as he had regained

 his breath, and Hansith beckoned to him to follow him to the wall of the

 small coffer dam.

 Here von Schiller paused and looked around at Helm and Nogo. "I want you

 to remain on guard here. I will enter the tomb with Guddabi and this

 monk. I will send for you when you are needed."

 "I would feet happier to be with you, to protect you, Herr von

 Schiller-' Helm began, but the old man frowned at him.

 "Do as I tell you!" And with Hansith steadying him he climbed stiffly

 down the wall of the coffer dam into the mouth of the tunnel. Nahoot

 Guddabi followed him closely.

 "The lights? Where does the power come from?" von to know.

 Schiller wanted

 "There is a machine," Hansith explained, and at that moment they heard

 the soft burble of the generator ahead one of them spoke again as they

 moved down of them. the entrance tunnel after Hansith, until they

 reached the bridge over the dark waters of the sinkholes

 "This is very rough construction," Nahoot muttered, his uneasiness at

 last giving way to professional interest. "It tomb I have does not

 remind me of any other Egyptian ever inspected. I think we may have been

 misted. It is bably some native Ethiopian workings." pro

 "You are making a premature judgement," von Schiller admonished him.

 "Wait until we have seen the rest of what this man has to show us."

 Von Schiller steadied himself with a hand on Hansith's shoulder as they

 crossed the bobbing pontoons of baobab wood, and he scrambled ashore on

 the far side with relief.

 They started up the rising section of the tunnel and passed the

 high-water mark.

 As soon as the construction of the walls changed to packed and dressed

 stone, Nahoot remarked on it. "Ah! I was disappointed at first. I

 thought we had been duped, but now one can see the Egyptian influence."

 They reached the landing outside the ruined gallery on which stood the

 Honda generator. By -now both von Schiller and Nahoot were sweating with

 exertion and trembling with excitement.

 4Th is looks more and more promising. It may very well be a royal tomb,"

 Nahoot exulted. Von Schiller pointed to the plaster seats stacked

 against the -side wall where Nicholas and Royan had abandoned them.

 Nahoot fell to his, knees beside them and examined them eagerly, his

 voice trembling as he cried out.

 The cartouche of Mamose, and the seal of the scribe Taita!" He looked up

 at von Schiller with shining eyes, "There can be no doubts now. I have

 led you to the tomb as I promised you I would."

 For a moment von Schiller stared at him, speechless in the face of such

 hare-faced arrogance. Then he snorted with disgust and stooped to peer

 through the open doorway into the long gallery.

 "This has been destroyed!" he cried in horror. "The tomb has been

 annihilated."

 "No, no!" Hansith assured him. "Come this way. There is another tunnel

 beyond."

 As they picked their way through the rubble and wreckage, Hansith told

 them in halting, broken English AL

 how the roof of the gallery had collapsed, and how he, Hansith, had

 found the true entrance under the ruins.

 Nahoot stopped every few paces to examine and exclaim over the scraps of

 painted plaster that had survived the fall of the roof. "These must have

 been magnificent.

 Classical work of the highest order-'

 "There is more to show you. Much more," Hansith promised them, and von

 Schiller snarled at Nahoot.

 "Leave these damaged sections now. Time is running out on us. We must

 hurry on directly to the burial hamber."

 Hansith led them up the hidden staircase into the maze of the bao, and

 then through the twists and turns to the lowest level.

 "How did Harper and the woman ever find their way through this?" von

 Schiller marvelled. "It's a rabbit warren."

 "Another concealed staircase!" Nahoot was amazed, and stuttered with

 excitement as they descended into the gas trap where the ranks of

 amphorae had stood undisturbed for thousands of years, and thn climbed

 the last flight of stairs to the beginning of the funeral arcade.

 Now both of them were stunned by the splendour of the murals and the

 majesty of the great god images that guarded the length of the arcade.

 They stood side by side unable to move, frozen with awe as they gazed

 about them." $ "I never expected anything like this," von Schiller

 whispered. "This exceeds anything that I ever hoped for."

 "The rooms on each side are filled with treasures." Hansith pointed down

 the arcade. "There are such things as you have never dreamed. Harper was

 able to take very little with him - a few small boxes. He has left piles

 of goods, stacks of chests."

 "Where is the coffin? Where is the body that was in the tomb?" von

 Schiller demanded.

 "Harper has given the body, in its golden coffin, to the abbot. They

 have taken it away to the monastery.

 "Nogo will soon fetch it back for us, You need not worry about that,

 Herr von Schiller," Nahoot assured him.

 s though the spell that held them was shattered by this promise, they

 started forward together, slowly at first, and then both of them began

 to run. Von Schiller tottered into the nearest store room on his old,

 stiff legs, and giggled like a child on Christmas morning as he gazed

 upon the piled treasures. "Incredible!'

 He dragged down one of the cedarwood chests from the nearest stack, and

 ripped off the lid with trembling fingers. When he saw the contents he

 was struck speechless.

 He knelt over the chest and began to weep softly with emotion too

 overwhelming to express in words.

 /4, Nicholas was banking on the fact that Nogo's men would be driving

 along the Cliff tops to reach Taita's pool, and that he would have a

 free run up the course of the diverted stream to the dam site. He took

 no precautions against running into them, other than to pause every few

 minutes to listen and peer ahead. He knew that he had little time left

 to him. He could not expect the rest of the party to wait for him at the

 boats and endanger themselves for this whimsy of his.

 Twice he heard automatic gunfire in the distance, coming from the

 direction of the chasm, down towards the Po. However, the chance he

 took paid off, and he reached the dam site without running into a I ny

 of Nogo's forces. He did not, however, push his luck too far. Before

 approaching the dam openly, he climbed the hillside above it and

 surveyed the area. It gave him time to recover from the hard run up the

 valley, and to check that Nogo had not left men to guard the dam,

 although he considered this unlikely.

 He could see that the yellow front-loader tractor was still parked on

 the bank high above the wall where Sapper MET &

 had left it. He could also see no sign of any human presence, no armed

 Ethiopian army guards. He grunted with relief and wiped the sweat out of

 his eyes with his shirtsleeve.

 Even with his naked eye he could see that the water was lapping the top

 of the wall and squirting through the gaps and chinks between the

 gabions. Yet from where he stood the wall still seemed to be holding

 well, and it would need another foot rise in the level of the backed-up

 river to overturn it.

 "Well done, Sapper," he thought, grinning. "You did a hell of a job."

 Nicholas studied the level of the river and the condition of the waters

 that were being held back by the wall.

 The flow down from the mountains was much stronger than when he had last

 been here. The river bed was brimming from bank to bank, and some of the

 trees and bushes at the edge were already partially submerged, bowing

 and nodding as the swift current tugged at them. The flood was a sullen

 grey colour, fast and hostile, swirling into the pond of the dam before

 finding the outlet into the side channel and tearing down it, growling

 like a wild animal released from its cage, brimming into spume and white

 water as it felt the sharp fall into the valley.

 Next he looked towards the escarpment of the gorge.

 It was blotted out by banks of dark, menacing cloud that obscured the

 northern horizon. At that moment a squall of wind swept over him, cold

 with the threat of rain. He needed no further urging and started down

 the slope towards the dam, slipping and sliding in his haste. Before he

 reached the bottom, the squall of wind had turned to cold rain. It flung

 needles into his face and plastered his shirt to his body.

 He reached the tractor and scrambled up into the t. There was a moment

 of panic when he driver's sea AL

  Wor thought that Sapper might have removed the key from its

 hiding-place under the seat. He srabbled for it for a few seconds until

 his fingers closed over it, and then let out a sigh of relief.

 "Sapper, for a moment there you were very close to death. I would have

 broken your neck with my own hands." He thrust the key into the ignition

 lock and turned it to the pre-heat position, waiting for the coil light

 on the dashboard to turn from red to green.

 "Come on!" he muttered impatiently. Those few seconds of delay seemed

 like a lifetime. Then the green light flashed and he twisted the key to

 start.

 The engine fired at the first turn and Nicholas hooted, "Full marks,

 Sapper. All is forgiven."

 He gave the machine time to warm up to optimum operating temperature,

 slitting his eyes against the rain as he waited and looking around at

 the hills above him, fearful that the sound of the engine might bring

 Nogo's gorillas swarming down on him. However, there was no sign of life

 on the rainswept heights.

 He eased the tractor into her lowest gear and turned her down the bank.

 Below the dam wall the water that was finding its way through the gaps

 was less than hub-deep.

 The tractor bounced and ground its way through the boulder-strewn

 watercourse. Nicholas stopped the machine in the middle of the river bed

 while he studied the downstream face of the dam wall for its weakest

 section.

 Then he' lined up below the centre of the wall, at'the point where

 Sapper had shored up the raft of logs with rows of gabions.

 "Sorry for all your hard work," he apologized to Sapper, as he

 manoeuvred the steel scoop of the tractor to the right height and angle

 before attacking the wall. He worried the gabion he had selected out of

 its niche in the row, reversing and thrusting at it until he could get

 the scoop under it and drag it free. He pulled away and dropped the

 heavy wire mesh basket over the waterfall, then drove back and renewed

 the attack.

 It was slow work. The pressure of the water had wedged in the gabions,

 keying them into the wall so it took almost ten minutes to free the

 second basket. As he dropped that one over the waterfall, he glanced for

 the first time at the fuel gauge on the dashboard of the tractor and his

 heart sank. It was registering empty. Sapper must have neglected to

 refuel it: either he had exhausted the fuel supply or he had not

 expected ever to use the machine again when he abandoned it.

 Even as Nicholas thought about it the engine stuttered as it starved. He

 reversed it sharply, changing the angle of inclination so that the

 remaining fuel in the tank could slosh forward. The engine caught and

 cleared, running smoothly and strongly once again. Quickly he changed

 gear and ran back at the wall.

 "No more time for finesse," he told himself grimly.

 "From here on in it's brute force and muscle."

 By removing two of the gabions he had exposed a corner of the log raft

 behind them. This was the vulnerable and part of the wall. He worked the

 hydraulic controls lifted the scoop to its highest travel. Then he

 lowered it carefully, an inch at a time; until it hooked over the end of

 the thickest log in the jam. He locked the hydraulics and thrust the

 tractor into reverse, gradually pouring on full power until the engine

 was roaring and blowing out a cloud of thick blue diesel smoke.

 Nothing gave. The log was jammed solidly and the wall was held together

 by the keying of the gabions into each other and the enormous pressure

 of water behind them. Despairingly, Nicholas kept the throttle wide

 open.

 The lugged tyres spun and skidded on the boulders under them, throwing a

 tall shower of spray high into the air and churning out loose rock and

 gravel.

 "Come on!" Nicholas pleaded with the machine. "Come on! You can do it."

 The engine beat faltered again as she starved for fuel.

 She spluttered and coughed, and almost stalled.

 "Please!" Nicholas begged her aloud. "One more try." Almost as if it had

 heard him, the engine fired again, ran unevenly for a few moments, and

 then abruptly bellowed at full power again.

 That's it, my beauty," Nicholas yelled, as it lurched hammered against

 the wall.

 an With a sound like a cannon shot the log snapped and the top end of it

 flew out of the wall, leaving a long, deep hole through which the river

 poured triumphantly, a thing -'solid column of dirty grey water.

 "Thar she blows!" Nicholas shouted, jumping down from the driver's seat.

 He knew there was not enough time left for him to drive the tractor out

 of the river bed. He could move more quickly on his own feet.

 The current seized his legs, trying to pull them out from under him. It

 was like one of those childhood nightmares when monsters were pursuing

 him and, despite his every effort, his legs would only move in slow

 motion.

 He glanced back over his shoulder, and at that instant he saw the

 central section of the dam wall burst, blowing outward in a violent

 eruption of furious waters. He struggled on another few paces towards

 the bank before the deep and turbulent tide picked him up. He was

 helpless in its grip. It swept him away, over the waterfall and down,

 down into the hungry maw of the chasm.

 these are the royal crook and sceptre of the Pharaoh," cried von

 Schiller in a voice that was gusty and faint with emotion as he lifted

 them out of the cedarwood chest.

 "And this is his false beard and his ceremonial pectoral Wo, emblem."

 Nahoot knelt beside him on the floor of the tomb under the great statue

 of Osiris. All the ill feelings between them were forgotten in the

 wonder of the moment as they examined the fabulous treasures of Egypt.

 "This is the greatest archaeological discovery of all time," von

 Schiller whispered, his voice tremulous. He pulled his handkerchief from

 his pocket and dabbed at the perspiration of excitement that trickled

 down his cheeks.

 "There is years of work here," Nahoot told him seriously. "This

 incredible collection will have to be catalogued and evaluated. It will

 be known for ever as the von Schiller hoard. Your name will be

 perpetuated for all time.

 it is like the Egyptian dream of immortality. You will never be

 forgotten. You will live for ever."

 A rapturous expression crossed von Schiller's features.

 He had not considered' that possibility. Up until this moment he had not

 considered sharing this treasure with anybody, except in his particular

 way with Utte Kemper, but Nahoot's words had awakened in him the old

 impossible dream of eternity. Perhaps he might make arrangements for it

 to be made accessible to the public - but only after his own death,

 naturally.

 Then he thrust the temptation aside. He would not debase this treasure

 by making it available to the common rabble. It had been assembled for

 the funeral of a pharaoh.

 Von Schiller saw himself as the modern equivalent of a pharaoh.

 "No!" he told Nahoot violently. "This is mine, all mine.

 When I die it will go with me, all of it. I have made the arrangements

 already, in my will. My sons know what to do. This will all be with me

 in my own grave. My royal grave.

 Nahoot stared at him aghast. He had not realized until that moment that

 the old man was mad, that his obsessions had driven him over the edge of

 sanity. But the Egyptian knew that there was no point in arguing with

 him now later he would find a way to save this marvelous treasure from

 the oblivion of another tomb. So he bowed his.head in mock acquiescence.

 "You are right, Hell von Schiller. That is the only fitting manner to

 dispose of it. You deserve that form of burial. However, our main

 concern now must be to get all of it to safety. Helm has warned us about

 the danger of the river, of the dam bursting. We must call him and Nogo.

 Nogo's men must clear out the tomb. We can ferry the treasure in the

 helicopter up to the Pegasus camp, where. I can pack it securely for the

 journey to Germany."

 "Yes. Yes." Von Schiller scrambled to his feet, suddenly terrified at

 the prospect of being deprived of this wondrous hoard by the flooded

 river. "Send the monk, what is his name, Hansith, send him to call Helm.

 He must come at once."

 Nahoot jumped up to his feet. "Hansith!" he shouted.

 "Where are you?"

 The monk had been waiting at the entrance to the burial chamber,

 kneeling in prayer before the empty sarcophagus which had contained the

 body of the saint. He was torn now between religious conviction and

 greed.

 When he heard his name called he genuflected deeply, and then rose and

 hurried back to join von Schiller and Nahoot.

 "You must go back to the Pool where we left the others-' Nahoot started

 to relay the orders, but suddenly a strange, distracted expression

 crossed Hansith's darkly handsome features and he held up his hand for

 silence.

 "What is it?" Nahoot demanded angrily. "What is it that you can hear?"

 Hansith shook his head. "Be quiet! Listen! Can't you hear it?"

 "There is nothing-' Nahoot began, but then broke off suddenly, and wild

 terror filled his dark eyes.

 There was the softest sound, gentle as the sigh of a summer zephyr,

 lulling and low.

 "What do you hear?" von Schiller demanded. His hearing had long ago

 deteriorated, and the sound was far beyond the range of his old ears.

 "Water!" whispered Nahoot."Running water!'

 "The river!" shouted Hansith. "The tunnel is floodingr He whirled round

 and went bounding down the funeral arcade with long, lithe strides.

 "We will be trapped in here!" screamed Nahoot, and raced after him.

 "Wait for me," von Schiller yelled, and tried to follow.

 But he soon fell behind the two much younger men.

 The monk, however, was far ahead of both of them as he took the flight

 of stairs up from the gas trap two at a time.

 "Hansith! Come back! I order you," Nahoot cried despairingly in his

 wake, but he caught only a flash of the monk's white robe as he darted

 into the first twist of the labyrinth.

 "Guddabi, where are you?" von Schiller's voice quavered and echoed

 through the stone corridors. But Nahoot did not reply as he ran on in

 the direction which he thought the monk had taken, passing the first

 turn in the maze without even glancing at the chalk marks on the wall.

 He thought he heard Hansith's racing footsteps ahead of him, but by the

 time he had turned the third corner he knew he was lost.

 He stopped with his heart racing savagely and the bitter gall of terror

 in the back of his throat.

 "Hansith! Where are you?"he screamed wildly.

 Von Schiller's voice came back to him, ringing weirdly down the

 passageways, "Guddabi! Guddabi! Don't leave me here."

 "Shut up!" he screamed. "Keep quiet, you old fool!'

 Panting heavily, the blood pounding in his ears, he

 111, Timor:

 tried to listen for the sound of Hansith's feet. But he heard only the

 sound of the river. The gentle susurration seemed to emanate from the

 very walls around him.

 "No! Don't leave me here," he screamed, and began to run without

 direction, panic-stricken, through the maze.

 /4' ansith took each twist and'turn unerringly, with the terror of

 dreadful death driving his 7 feet. But at the head of the central

 staircase his ankle twisted under him and he fell heavily. He tumbled

 down the steeply inclined shaft, bumping and rolling the full length,

 gathering speed as he went until he reached the bottom and lay sprawled

 on the agate tiles of the long gallery.

 He dragged himself to his feet, bruised and shaken by the fall, and

 tried to run on. But his leg gave way under him again, and he fell in a

 tangle. His ankle was badly sprained and would not carry his weight.

 Nevertheless he dragged himself up a second time and hobbled down the

 gallery, supporting himself with one hand on the shattered wall.

 When he reached the doorway and crawled through it on to the landing

 beside the generator the sound of the water came up the tunnel. It was

 much louder now - a low, reverberating growl which almost blotted out

 the soft, discreet hum of the generator.

 "Sweet loving Christ and the Virgin, save me!" he pleaded as he

 staggered and lurched down the tunnel, falling twice more before he

 reached the lower level.

 On his knees he peered ahead, and in the glare of the electric lights

 strung along the roof of the tunnel he could make out the sink-hole

 below him. He did not at first recognize it, for it had all changed. The

 water level was no longer lower than the paved floor on which he

 sprawled. It was brimming, a great swirling maelstrom, and the water

 pouring into it was being sucked away through the hidden outlet almost

 as fast as it entered from the tunnel mouth on the far side. The pontoon

 bridge was tangled and half, submerged, bobbing and canting and rearing

 as it fought its retaining cables like an unbroken horse on a tether.

 From Taita's pool'a roaring river of water was boring down the far

 branch of the tunnel across the sink-hole.

 The tunnel was flooding rapidly, the water already reaching halfway up

 the walls, but he knew that it was the only escape route from the tomb.

 Every moment he delayed, the flood became stronger.

 "I have to get out through there." He pushed himself to his feet again.

 He reached the first pontoon of the bridge, but it was careering about

 so madly that he dared not attempt to remain upright upon it. He dropped

 to his hands and knees, crawled out on to the flimsy structure and

 managed to drag himself forward from one pontoon to the next, "Please

 God and St. Michael help me. Don't let me die like this," he prayed

 aloud. He reached the far side of the sink'hole and groped for a

 handhold on the roughly hewn walls of the tunnel.

 He found a hold with his fingertips and pulled himself into the mouth of

 the tunnel, but now the full force of the water pouring down the shaft

 struck his lower body. He hung there for a moment, pinned by the raging

 waters, unable to move a pace forward. He knew that if his grip failed

 he would be swept back into the sink-hole and sucked down into those

 terrible black depths.

 The electric bulbs strung along the roof of the tunnel ahead of him

 still burned brightly, so that he could see almost to the open basin of

 Taita's pool where the bamboo -scaffolding would offer escape to the top

 of the chasm. It was only two hundred feet ahead of him. He gathered all

 his strength and pulled himself forward against the raging waters,

 reaching forward from one precarious handhold to

 the next. His fingernails tore and the flesh smeared from the tips of

 his fingers on the jagged rock, but he forced his way onwards.

 At last he could see daylight ahead of him, filtering from Taita's pool.

 Only another forty feet to go, and he realized with a surge of relief

 and joy that he was going to make it out of the deadly trap of the

 shaft. Then he heard a fresh sound, a harsher, more brutal roar as the

 full flood of the burst dam poured down the waterfall into Taita's pool.

 It found the entrance to the tunnel and came down it in a solid wave,

 filling the passageway to the roof, ripping out the wiring of the lights

 and plunging Hansith into darkness.

 It struck him with such force that it seemed to be not mere water but

 the solid rock of an avalanche, and he could not resist it. It tore him

 from his insecure perch and plucked him away, tossing him backwards,

 spinning him down the length of the shaft that he had gained with so

 much effort, and hurling him into the sink-hole beyond.

 He was swirled end over end by the crazed waters. In the darkness and

 wild confusion he did not know which direction was up and which down,

 but it made no difference for he could not swim against its power, Then

 the sink'hole seized him full in its grip and sucked him swiftly and

 deeply down. The pressure of the water began to crush him. One of his

 eardrums burst, and as he opened his mouth to scream at the agony of it

 the water spurted down his throat and flooded his lungs. The last thing

 he ever felt was when he was flung against the side wall of the

 sink-hole, travelling as fast as the falling waters, and the bones of

 his right shoulder shattered. He could not scream again through his

 sodden lungs, but soon the pain faded into oblivion.

 As his corpse was drawn swiftly through the subterranean shaft it became

 mangled and "dismembered on the jagged rock sides, and was no longer

 recognizable as human.

 17"

 by the time it was discharged through the butterfly fountain on the far

 side' of the mountain. From there the torn fragments were washed down

 the diverted Dandera river to join, at last, the wider and more stately

 waters of the Blue Nile.

 he waters pouring through the gap in the dam i wall picked up the yellow

 front-loader and tumbled it over the waterfall into the chasm as though

 it were a child's toy. Nicholas had a glimpse of it in the air below

 him. Even as he fell himself, he realized that if he had stayed with the

 machine he would have been crushed beneath it. The huge machine struck

 the surface of the pool in a fountain of white spray and disappeared,

 Nicholas followed it down, falling free, even managing J11 to keep his

 head uppermost, feet foremost, as he swooped I down the waterfall. The

 flood that carried him cushioned his fall, so that instead of being

 dashed against the exposed boulders at the bottom, he bounced and

 tumbled in the racing torrent. He came to the surface fifty yards

 downstream, tossed his wet hair out of his eyes and glanced around him

 quickly.

 The tractor was gone, swallowed deep into the pool at the foot of the

 waterfall, but ahead of him was a small island of rock in the middle of

 the river. With a dozen overarm strokes -he swam to it and clung to a

 rocky spur.

 >From there he looked up at the sheer walls of the chasm an remembered

 the last time he had been trapped down here. The ation "ie a felt at

 the destruction of the dam and the flooding of Pharaoh's tomb

 evaporated.

 He knew that he would not be able to climb those slick, water-smoothed

 cliffs that offered no handholds and which belled outwards in an

 overhang over his head.

 Instead he weighed the chances of working his way back upstream to the

 foot of the falls. From here it looked as though there was some sort of

 funnel or crevice up the east side of the chute which might offer a

 ladderway to the top, but it would be a hard and dangerous climb.

 The volume of water coming over the falls was not as heavy as he had

 expected, considering the vast body of water that was being held back by

 the dam. He realized then that the greater part of the wall of gabions

 must still be in place and that this torrent was only the result of

 water escaping through the narrow gap he had torn in the centre of the

 wall. The remainin gabions must still be 9 holding in place under their

 own weight. However, he realized that they could not hold much longer

 and that the river must soon plough them aside and burst through in full

 force. So he abandoned the idea of swimming back to the foot of the

 falls.

 "Have to get out of its way," he thought desperately, as he imagined

 being caught up in the terrible flood which would certainly come down at

 any moment. "If I can reach the side somewhere, perhaps find a ledge,

 climb above the flood." But he knew it was a forlorn hope. He had swum

 the length of the canyon once before without finding a handhold on the

 slick walls.

 "Swim ahead of it?" he thought. "A slim chance, but the only one I

 have." He kicked off his boots, and gathered himself. He was about to

 push off from his temporary refuge, when he heard the rest of the dam

 wall high above him give way.

 There was a rumbling roar, the crackle of logs snapping and breaking,

 the grating and grinding of heavy gabions being -thrown around like

 empty rubbish cans, and then suddenly and terrifyingly a solid wave of

 grey water burst over the top of the falls, carrying with it a wall of

 trash and debris.

 "Oh mother! Too late. Here comes the big one!'

 He shoved off from his rock, turning downstream, and swam with all his

 strength, kicking and flailing his arms in a wild crawl stroke. He heard

 the roar of the approaching wave and glanced back over his shoulder. It

 was overhauling him swiftly, filling the chasm from wall to wall,

 fifteen feet high and curling at the top. He had a fleeting mental II

 image from his youth, waiting to surf that notorious wave at Cape St.

 Vincent, hanging on the line'up and seeing it humping up behind him,

 this great wall of water, so mountainous and so overwhelming.

 "Ride id' he told himself, judging the moment. "Catch it like a slider."

 He clawed through the water, trying to get up speed to ride up the wall.

 He felt it seize him and lift him so violently that his guts swooped,

 and then he was on the crest of it. He arched his back and tucked his

 am-is behind him in the classic body-surfer's position, hanging in the

 face of the wave, slightly head down, the front half of his body thrust

 clear of the water, steering with his legs. After the first few

 terrifying seconds he realized that he was ic abated and riding her high

 and had some control; his pan he was overcome by a sense of wild

 exhilaration.

 "Twenty knots!" He estimated his speed by the giddy i blur of the canyon

 walls passing him on either side. He steered away from the nearest wall,

 sliding across the face, taking up station in the centre of the wave, He

 was caff ied along by the wave and by the thrilling sensation of speed

 and danger.

 The increased depth of water in the chasm covered the dangerous,

 knife-sharp rocks, enabling him to ride clear of them. It smoothed out

 the waterfalls and the chutes, so that instead of dropping down them and

 plummeting below the surface of the pool beneath he slid down them with

 a smooth rush, holding his position in the face of the wave with a few

 quick overarm strokes or a kick of the legs.

 "Hell! This is fun!" He laughed aloud. "People would pay money to do

 this. Beats the hell out of bungee jumping." A

 Within the first mile the wave began to lose its shape and impetus as it

 spread out. down the canyon. Soon it would no longer have the power to

 hold him up in the surfing position, and he glanced around him swiftly.

 Floating near by, keeping pace with him in the flotsam of debris from

 the dam, was one of the treetrunks that had formed part of the raft with

 which Sapper had plugged the gap in the wall.

 He steered across to this ponderous piece of timber. It was thirty feet

 long and floated low in the flood, its back showing like that of a

 whale. Its branches had been roughly hacked away by the axemen, and the

 spikes that remained provided secure handholds. Nicholas pulled himself

 up on he treetrunk, lying on his belly, facing downstream, to with his

 legs still dangling in the water. Swiftly he recovered his breath and

 felt his full strength returning.

 Although it had smoothed out and lost its wave formation, the flood was

 still tearing down the chasm at a tremendous pace. "Still not much under

 ten knots," he estimated. "When this lot hits Taita's pool, I pity von

 Schiller and any of his uglies who are in the tomb. They are going to

 stay in there for the next four thousand years." He threw back his head

 and laughed triumphantly.. "It worked! Damn me to hell, if it didn't

 work just the way I planned it."

 He stopped laughing abruptly as he felt the treetrunk veer across the

 river towards one of the canyon walls.

 "Oh, oh! More trouble."

 He rolled to one side of the treetrunk and kicked out strongly. His

 ungainly vessel responded, swinging heavily across the current. It was

 sluggish steering, not enough to avoid contact with the rock wall

 entirely, but instead of striking full'on it was merely a glancing

 collision that pushed him back again into the main flow of the current.

 He was gaining confidence and expertise every moment, "I can ride her

 all the way down to the monastery!'

 The AL

 he exclaimed delightedly. "At this rate of knots I might even get to the

 boats before Sapper and Royan."

 Looking ahead, he recognized this stretch of the chasm that he was

 hurtling through. -i@

 "This is the bend above Taita's pool. Be there in another minute or two.

 I expect the scaffolding has been washed away by now." He pulled

 himself as high on the log as he could without upsetting its balance,

 and peered ahead, blinking the water out of his eyes. He saw the head of

 the falls above Taita's pool racing towards him, and he braced himself

 for the drop.

 The long, smooth chute of racing water opened ahead of him, and the

 moment before he flew down it he had a glimpse into the basin of rock

 below it. He saw at once that his expectations had been premature. The

 bamboo scaffolding had not been entirely washed away, although it was

 badly damaged. The lowest section was gone, but the Upper part hung

 drunkenly down the rock cliff, just touching the surface of the racing

 waters. It was swaying and swinging loosely as the current snatched at

 it, and incredulously he realized that there were at least two men

 trapped

 on the flimsy structure, clinging desperately to the ladderway of

 lurching, clattering poles. Both of them were trying to claw their way

 up it to the top of the cliff.

 In that fraction of a second Nicholas saw a flash of steel'rimmed

 spectacles under a maroon beret, and realized that the man nearest the

 top of the cliff was Tuma Nogo.

 Then Nogo succeeded in reaching the top of the scaffolding and

 disappeared over the top of the cliff. That one glance was all Nicholas

 had time for before his log was plunged into the water-chute, gathering

 speed until it was tearing downwards at a steeply canted angle. The

 point dug in as it hit the surface of the pool at the bottom, and the

 log almost pole-vaulted end over end, but Nicholas clung on to his

 handholds, and gradually it righted itself.

 For a few moments the log was stalled in the vortex below the falls, but

 almost at once, the current grabbed it again and it gathered speed,

 bearing away down the length of Taita's pool as ponderously as a wooden

 man-'-war.

 Nicholas had a second of respite in which to look around the basin of

 Taita's pool. He saw at once that the entrance tunnel to the tomb was

 entirely submerged and, judging by the water level up the cliff wall, it

 was already fifty feet or more beneath the surface. He felt a leap of

 triumph. The tomb was once more protected from the depredations of any

 other grave-robber.

 Then he looked up the battered remnants of the bamboo scaffolding skewed

 down the cliff, torn half away from the ancient niches in the rock, -and

 he saw the other man still clinging to the wreckage. He was twenty feet

 above the water level, and seemed frozen there like a cat in the high

 branches of a windswept tree.

 At that moment Nicholas realized that his log was swinging in the grip

 of the river, curling in towards the dangling scaffold. He was about to

 try to steer it clear, when the man on the framework high above him

 turned his head and looked down at him. Nicholas saw that he was a white

 man, his face a pale blob in the gloom of the canyon, and a moment later

 he recognized him with a stab of hatred through the chest.

 "Helm!the exclaimed."Jake Helm."

 He had an image of Tamre, the epileptic boy, crushed beneath the

 rockfalls and of Tessay's burned and battered face. His outrage and

 hatred surged. Instead of steering the log away from the scaffold, he

 reversed his thrust and swung in towards the cliff. There was a

 breathless interval when Nicholas thought he might miss, but at the last

 moment the leading end of the log swung sharply and the point of it

 crashed into the trailing end of the bamboo, hooking-on to it.

 The log's weight and momentum were irresistible. The bamboo poles

 crackled and snapped like dry kindling, and then the whole rickety

 structure tore loose from the wall and came crashing down over the log.

 Helm swung out overhead, then released his grip and dropped feet first

 into the water close alongside the log. He went deep below the surface.

 While he was under, Nicholas pulled himself up to sit astride the log

 and grabbed a length of bamboo pole that had broken off the scaffolding

 and was floating alongside.his perch.

 The log was trapped in a back eddy of the swollen river, and now it

 began to spin slowly in the slack water outside the main current.

 Nicholas was still riding high on the log. He hefted the bamboo,

 swinging it back and forth like a baseball bat, to get the feel of it.

 Then he cocked it over his shoulder and waited for Helm to show himself.

 A second later the Texan's head broke out, streaming water. His eyes

 were screwed closed, and he let out a gasp Of water and air and tried to

 suck in a breath. Nicholas aimed the pole at his head and swung with all

 his strength, but just at that moment Helm opened his eyes and saw the

 blow coming.

 He was as quick as a water snake, rolling his head under the swinging

 club so that it merely touched the side of his cropped blond head and

 then glanced away. Nicholas was thrown off balance by his own swing, and

 before he could recover Helm had drawn a quick breath and ducked below

 the surface again.

 Nicholas poised the club, ready to strike a second time, peering down

 into the murky water, muttering angrily at himself for having missed the

 first blow while he still had the advantage of surprise. He had no

 illusions about what he was in for, now that Helm had been warned.

 The seconds drew out with no sign of his adversary reappearing, and

 Nicholas looked behind him anxiously, trying to anticipate where he

 would come up again. For a long minute nothing happened. He lowered the

 club nervously, and changed his grip so as to be ready to stab in any

 direction with the sharp broken tip.

 Suddenly his left ankle was seized in a crushing grip below the water

 and, before he could grab a handhold to resist, Nicholas was jerked from

 his seat on the log and went over backwards into the river. As he

 plunged beneath the water he felt Helm's fingers clawing at his face. He

 grabbed one of the fingers and wrenched it back, feeling it snap in his

 grasp as he forced it back towards its own wrist.

 But Helm was galvanized by the agony of the dislocated joint, and one of

 his long muscular arms whipped around Nicholas's neck like the tentacles

 of an octopus.

 The two of them came to the surface for a moment, both of them drew one

 quick, harsh breath, then Helm forced Nicholas's head backwards and

 water flooded into his open mouth. The lock on his neck tightened, and

 he felt the tension on his vertebrae. It was a killer grip. If Helm had

 only had a solid purchase he could have exerted the last ounce of

 pressure which would have snapped his spine. But Nicholas kept rolling

 back in the direction of the thrust, giving with it, and preventing Helm

 from bringing all his strength to bear. As he went over he saw Helm's

 face in front of his, magnified and distorted through the tainted grey

 water. He looked monstrous and evil.

 As Helm rolled over the top of him Nicholas locked both hands around his

 waist to hold him firmly, then brought up his right knee between Helm's

 legs, hard into his crotch, and felt the bone of his kneecap make

 contact.

 The bunch of genitals was full and rubbery; Helm contorted and his lock

 on Nicholas's neck eased. Nicholas used the slack to reach down and grab

 a handful of Helm's damaged testicles and twist them savagely. He saw

 the man's face inches in front of his own twist into a rictus of pain

 and Helm pulled away from him, releasing his lock on Nicholas's throat

 and reaching down to grab his wrist with both hands.

 Again they came to the surface close alongside the floating log, and

 Nicholas realized that the current had taken hold of them again and was

 carrying them away through the outlet of Taita's pool into the full

 stream of the river. Nicholas released his grip on Helm's balls and with

 his other hand aimed a punch at his face, but they were too close to

 each other and the blow lacked power. It glanced off Helm's cheek, and

 Nicholas tried to lock his extended arm around his neck, going for a

 headlock himself Helm hunched his head down on his shoulders slipping

 under the hold. Then suddenly he reached for-ward fast as a striking

 adder and sank his teeth into Nicholas's chin.

 The surprise was complete, and the pain was excruciating as his teeth

 locked into the flesh. Nicholas shouted and clawed at Helm's face, going

 for his eyes, trying to drive his fingernails through the lids. But Helm

 squeezed his eyes tight closed and his teeth cut in ever deeper, so that

 Nicholas's blood welled up and oozed from the corners of Helm's mouth.

 The log was still floating beside them, inches from the back of Helm's

 head. Nicholas seized his ears, one in each hand, and twisted him around

 in the water. He could see over the top of Helm's head, while Helm's

 vision was blocked. There was a nub of raw wood sticking out of the tree

 trunk where an axe had hacked away a, ride branch.

 The cut was at an angle, leaving a sharp spike. Through tears of agony

 Nicholas lined up the spike with the back of Helm's head. He could feel

 Helm's teeth almost meeting in the flesh of his face. They had cut

 through the lower lip so that blood was starting to fill Nicholas's

 mouth. Helm was worrying him like a pit'bull in the arena, wrenching his

 head from side to side. Soon he would come away with a bloody mouthful

 of Nicholas's flesh.

 With all the strength of pain and desperation, Nicholas hurled himself

 forward, and, using his upper body and his grip on the sides of Helm's

 head, drove him on to the sharp wooden spike. The point found the joint

 between the vertebrae of the spine and the base of Helm's skull, going

 in like a nail and partially severing the spinal cord.

 Helm's jaws sprang open as he went into spasm. Nicholas pulled away from

 him with a flap of loose flesh hanging from his chin, and blood

 streaming and spurting from the deep ragged wound.

 Helm was impaled upon the spike, like a carcass on a butcher's hook. His

 limbs twitched and the muscles of his face convulsed, his eyelids

 shivered and jumped like those of an epileptic, and his eyeballs rolled

 back into his skull so that only the whites showed, flashing grotesquely

 in the gloom of the chasm.

 Nicholas pulled himself up on to the tog beside the Texan's body, and

 hung there panting and bleeding in gouts down his chin on to his chest.

 Slowly the log revolved un er the eccentric weight distribution, and

 Helm began to slide off the spike. His skin tore with a sound like silk

 parting, and the vertebrae of his spine grated on wood.

 Then the corpse, at last quiescent, flopped face down into the water and

 began to sink.

 Nicholas would not let him go so easily. "Let's make sure of you, dear

 boy," he grated through his swollen, bleeding mouth. He spat out a

 mouthful of blood and saliva as he stretched out and grabbed the back of

 Helm's collar, holding him face down in the water under the log. They

 icked up speed rapidly down the last stretch of the canyon, but

 Nicholas held on doggedly, drowning any last spark of life from Helm's

 carcass, until at last it was torn. from his grip by the current and he

 watched it sink away into the grey, roiling waters.

 "I'll give your love to Tessay," Nicholas called after him as he

 disappeared. Then he gave all his concentration to balancing the log and

 staying aboard for the ride through the tumbling, racing current. At

 last he was spewed out -AL

 through the pink rock portals into the bottom reach of the DandeTa

 river. As he was swept beneath the rope suspension bridge he slid off

 the log and struck out for the western bank, very much aware of the

 terrible drop into the Nile that lay half a mile downstream.

 Sitting on the bank, he tore a strip from the tail of his shirt. Then he

 bound up his wounded chin as best he could, strapping it around the back

 of his head. The blood soaked through the thin wet cotton, but he

 knotted it tighter and it began to staunch the flow.

 He stood up unsteadily and pushed his way through the strip of thick

 river in bush which bounded the river, until at last he struck the trail

 that led down to the monastery and hobbled down it on his bare feet. He

 only stopped once, and that was when he heard the sound of the

 helicopter taking off from the top of the cliff above the chasm far

 behind him.

 He looked back. "Sounds as though Tuma Nogo made it out of there, more's

 the pity. I wonder what happened to von Schiller and the Egyptian," he

 muttered grimly, fingering his injured face. "At least none of them are

 going to get into the tomb, not unless they dam the river again."

 Suddenly a thought occurred to him.

 "My God, what if von Schiller was already in there when the river hit!"

 He began to chuckle, and then shook his head. "Too much to hope for.

 justice is never that neat." He shook his head again, but the movement

 started his wound aching brutally. He clutched his bandaged jaw with one

 hand and started down the trail again, breaking into a trot as he

 reached the paved causeway that led down to the monastery.

 ahoot Guddabi ran full into von Schiller around a corner of the maze,

 and in a peculiar way the old man's presence, even thoug he was of no

 conceivable value in this crisis, steadied him and kept at bay the panic

 that threatened at any moment to boil over and overwhelm him. Without

 Hansith the maze was a weird and lonely place. Any human company was a

 blessing. For a moment the two of them clung together like children lost

 in the forest.

 Von Schiller still carried part of the treasure that they had been

 examining when Hansith had panicked and run.

 He had Pharaoh's golden crook in one hand and the ceremonial flail in

 the other.

 "Where is the monk?" he screamed at Guddabi. "Why did you run off and

 leave me? We have to find the way out of these tunnels, you idiot. Don't

 you realize the danger?"

 "How do you expect me to know the way-' Nahoot began furiously, and then

 broke off as he noticed the chalk notations on the wall behind von

 Schiller's shoulder, and for the first time realized their significance.

 "That's it!' he exclaimed with relief. "Harper or the Al Simma woman

 have marked it out for us. Come on!" He started down the tunnel,

 following the signposting. However, by the time they came out on the

 central staircase almost an hour had passed since Hansith had left them.

 As they hurried down the staircase into the long gallery the sound of

 the river rose to a pervading hiss, like the breathing of a sleeping

 dragon, Nahoot broke into a run and von Schiller staggered along behind

 him, his aged legs weakening with fear.

 "Wait!" he shouted after Nahoot, who ignored his plea and ducked out

 through the opening in the plaster-sealed doorway. On the landing the

 generator was still running smoothly, and Nahoot did not even glance at

 it as he hurried down the inclined shaft in the bright dazzle of the

 light bulbs along the roof.

 He turned the corner still at a run, and stopped dead 41, as he realized

 that the tunnel below him was flooded, right back up to the level of the

 ancient high-water mark on the masonry blocks of the walls. There was no

 sign of the sinkhole or the pontoon bridge. They were submerged under

 fifty feet or more of water.

 The Dandera river, guardian of the tomb down all the ages, had resumed

 its duty. Dark and implacable, it sealed the entrance to the tomb as it

 had done these four thousand years past.

 "Allah!" whispered ahoot. "Allah have mercy on us." Von Schiller came

 around the corner of the tunnel and stopped beside Nahoot. The two of

 them stared in horror at the flooded shaft. Then slowly von Schiller

 sagged against the side wall.

 "We are trapped," he whispered, and at those words Nahoot whimpered

 softly and sank to his knees. He began to pray in a high, nasal

 sing-song. The sound infuriated on Schiller.

  

 "That will not help us. Stop it!" He swung the golden flail in his right

 hand across Nahoot's bowed back. Nahoot cried out at the pain and

 crawled away from von Schiller.

 "We must find a way out of here." Von Schiller's voice steadied. He was

 accustomed to command, and now he took charge.

 "There must be another way out of here," he decided.

 (We will search. If there is an opening to the outside then we should

 feel a draught of air." His voice became firmer and more confident.

 "Yes! That's what we will do. Switch off that fan, and we will try to

 detect any movement of air."

 Nahoot responded eagerly to his tone and authority, and hurried back to

 switch off the electric fan.

 "You have your cigarette lighter," von Schiller told him. "We will light

 tapers from these." He pointed at the papers and photographs that Royan

 had left lying on the trestle table by the doorway. "We will use the

 smoke to detect any draught."

 For the next two hours they moved through all levels of the tomb,

 holding aloft the burning tapers, watching the movement of the smoke. At

 no point could they detect even the faintest movement of air in the

 tunnels, and in the end they came back to the flooded shaft and stared

 despairingly at the pool of still black water that blocked it.

 "That is the only way out," von Schiller whispered.

 11 wonder if the monk escaped that way," said Nahoot as he slumped down

 the wall.

 "There is no other way."

 They were silent for a while; it -was difficult to judge the passage of

 time in the tomb. Now that the river had found its own level there was

 no movement of water in the shaft, and the faint and distant sound of

 the current running through the sink-hole seemed merely to enhance the

 silence. In it they could hear their own breathing.

 Nahoot spoke at last. "The fuel in the generator. It must be running

 low. I did not see any reserves-'

 They thought about what would happen when the small fuel tank ran dry.

 They thought about the darkness to come.

 Suddenly von Schiller screamed, "You have to go out through the shaft to

 fetch help. I order you to do it., Nahoot stared at him in disbelief.

 "It's over a hundred yards back through the tunnel to the outside, and

 the river is in flood."

 Von Schiller sprang to his feet and stood over Nahoot threateningly.

 "The monk escaped that way. It's the only way. You must swim through the

 tunnel and reach Helm and Nogo. Helm will know what to do. He will make

 a plan to get me out of here."

 "You are mad." Nahoot backed away from him, but'von Schiller followed

 him.

 "I order you to do id'

 "You crazy old man!" Nahoot tried to scramble to his feet, but von

 Schiller swung the heavy golden flail, a sudden unexpected blow in

 Nahoot's face that knocked him over backwards, splitting his lips and

 breaking off two of his front teeth.

 "You are rnad!" he wailed. "You can't do this-' but von Schiller swung

 again and again, lacerating his face and Is of the whip cutting

 shoulders, the heavy golden tai through the thin cotton of his shirt.

 "I will kill you," von Schiller screamed, raining blows on him. "If you

 don't obey me I will kill you."

 "Stop!, Nahoot whined. "No, please, stop. I will do it, only stop."

 He crawled away from von Schiller, dragging himself along the floor of

 the tunnel until he sat waist-deep in the water.

 AZT',, "Give me time to prepare he pleaded.

 "Go now!" Von Schiller menaced him, lifting the whip high. "Very likely

 you will find air trapped in the tunnel.

 You will find your way through. Go!'

 Nahoot scooped a double handful of water and dashed it into his own

 face, washing away the blood that poured from one of the deep cuts in

 his cheek.

 "I have to take off my clothes, my shoes," he whimpered, pleading for

 time, but von Schiller would not allow him to leave the water.

 Do it where you are standing, he ordered, brandishing the heavy whip. In

 his other hand he held the heavy golden crook. Nahoot realized that a

 blow from that weapon cou Id crack his skull.

 Standing knee-deep "at the water's edge, Nahoot hopped on one foot as he

 pulled off his shoes. Then, slowly and reluctantly, he stripped to his

 underpants. His shoulders were deeply scored by the lash of the flail,

 fresh blood welling up and slithering like scarlet serpents down his

 back.

 "He knew that he had to placate this crazy old madman.

 He would duck under the surface and swim a short way down the tunnel,

 hold on to the side wall down there for as long as his breath lasted,

 and then swim back again.

 "Go!" von Schiller shouted at him. "You are wasting time. Don't think

 that I will let you get out of this,, Nah6ot waded deeper into the shaft

 until the water covered his chest. He paused there for a few minutes as

 he drew a series of deep breaths. Then at last he held his breath and

 ducked below the surfAce. Von Schiller stood waiting at the edge of the

 pool, staring down into it but unable to see anything beneath the black

 and ominous surface. In the lamplight Nahoot's blood stained the

 surface.

 A minute passed slowly, and then suddenly there was a heavy swirl

 beneath the waters, and a human arm rose through the dark surface, hand

 and fingers extended as though in supplication. Then slowly it sank out

 of sight again.

 Von Schiller craned forward, "GuddabW he called

 "I -. "What are you playing at?" angrily There was another swirl below

 the water, and something flashed like a mirror in the depths.

 "Guddabi !'von Schiller's voice rose petulantly.

 Almost as if in response to the summons, Nahoot's head broke out through

 the surface. His skin was.waxen yellow, drained of all blood, and his

 mouth gaped open in a dreadful, silent scream. The water around him

 boiled as though a shoal of great fish were feeding below. As von

 Schiller stared in incomprehension, a dark tide rose up around Nahoot's

 head and stained the surface a rose-petal red. For a moment von Schiller

 did not realize that it was Nahoot's blood.

 T

 Then he saw the long, sinuous shapes darting and twisting beneath the

 surface, surrounding Nahoot, feeding upon his flesh. Nahoot lifted his

 hand again and extended it towards von Schiller, pleadingly. The arm was

 halfdevoured, mutilated by deep half-moon wounds where the flesh had

 been bitten away in chunks.

 Von Schiller screamed in horror, backing away from the pool. Nahoot's

 eyes were huge and dark and accusing.

 He stared at von Schiller and a wild cawing sound that was not human

 issued from his straining throat.

 Even as von Schiller watched, one of the giant tropical ee Is thrust its

 head through the surface and its teeth gleamed like broken glass as it

 gaped wide, and then locked its jaws on to Nahoot's throat. Nahoot made

 no effort to tear the creature away. He was too far gone. He stated at

 von Schiller all the while that the eel, twisting and rolling into a

 gleaming ball of slimy coils, still hung from his throat.

 Slowly Nahoot's head sank below the surface again.

 For long minutes the pool was agitated by the movements in its depth and

 the occasional gleam of one of the serpentine fish. Then gradually the

 surface settled as still and serene as a sheet of black glass.

 Von Schiller turned and ran, back up the incline shaft, past the landing

 on which the generator still puttered quietly, blindly trying to get as

 far away as he could from that dreadful pool. He did not know where he

 was going, but followed any passageway that opened in front of him.

 At the foot of the central stairway he ran into the corner Of the wall

 and stunned himself, falling to the agate tiles and lying there

 blubbering as a large purple lump rose on his forehead.

 After a while he dragged himself to his feet and lurched up the stairs.

 He was confused and disorientated, his mind starting to break up -in

 delirium, driven over the edge of

 652 it's sanity by horror and fear. He fell again, and crawled along the

 tunnel on his hands and knees to the next corner of . Only the was he

 able to regain his feet to the maz stagger onwards.

 The steep shaft leading down into Taita's gas trap opened under his feet

 without him seeing it. He fell down the steps, jarring and bruising his

 legs and chest. Then he was on his feet again, reeling across the store

 room past the ranks of amphorae, up the far staircase and into the

 painted arcade that led to the torrib of Pharaoh Mamose.

 He had tottered dowh half the length of it, dishevelled and wild'eyed

 and demented, when suddenly the lights dimmed for a moment, fading to a

 yellow glow. Then they brightened again as the generator sucked the last

 drops of fuel from the bottom of the tank. Von Schiller stopped in the

 centre of the arcade and looked up at the lights with despair. He knew

 what was coming. For another few minutes the bulbs burned on, bright and

 cheerfully, and then again they dimmed and faded.

 The darkness settled over him like the heavy velvet folds of a funeral

 pall. It was so intense and complete that it seemed to have a physical

 weight and texture. He could taste the darkness in his mouth as it

 seemed to force its way into his body and suffocate him.

 He ran again, wildly and blindly, losing all sense of direction in the

 blackness. He crashed headlong into stone and fell again, stunned. He

 could feel the warm tickle of blood running down his face, and he could

 not breathe. He whimpered and gasped and slowly, lying on his side, he

 curled himself into a ball like a foetus in the womb.

 He wondered how long it would take him to die, and his soul quailed as

 he knew that it might take days and even weeks. He moved slightly,

 cuddling in closer to the stone object with which he had collided. In

 the darkness he had no way of telling that it was the great sarcophagus

 of Mamose that sheltered him. Thus he lay in the darkness of the tomb,

 surrounded by the funeral treasures of an emperor, and waited for his

 own slow but inexorable death.

 he monastery of St. Frumentius was deserted.

 The monks had heard the gunfire and the sounds of battle echoing down

 the gorge, and had gathered up their treasures and fled.

 Nicholas ran down the long, empty cloister, pausing to catch his breath

 at the head of the staircase that led down to the level of the Nile and

 the Epiphany shrine where he had stored the boats. Panting, he searched

 the gloom of the deep basin below him into which the sunlight se! Clom

 reached, but the moving clouds of silver spray from the twin waterfalls

 screened the depths. He had no way of telling if Sapper and Royan were

 down there waiting for him, or if they had run into trouble on the

 trail.

 He adjusted the tattered and bloodstained bandage around his chin, and

 then started down. Then he heard her voice in the silver mist below him,

 calling his name, and she came pelting up the slippery, slime-covered

 stairs towards him.

 "Nicholas! Oh, thank God! I thought you weren't coming." She would have

 rushed into his embrace, but then she saw his bandaged and blood-smeared

 face, and she stopped and stared at him, appalled.

 Sweet Mary!" she whispered. "What happened to you, Nickyr

 "A little tiff with Jake Helm. Just a scratch, but I am 4, not much good

 at kissing right now," he mumbled, trying to grin around the bandage,

 "You will have to wait for later."

 He put one arm around her shoulders, almost swinging her off her feet,

 as he turned her to face down the stairs again.

 "Where are the others?" He hurried her down.

 "They are all here," she told him. "Sapper and Mek are pumping the boats

 and loading."

 "Tessay?"

 "She's safe."

 They scrambled down the last flight of steps on to the jetty below the

 Epiphany shrine. The Nile had risen ten feet since Nicholas had last

 stood there. The river was full and angry, muddy and swift. He could

 barely make out the cliffs on the far bank through the drifting clouds

 of spray.

 The five Avon boats were drawn up at the edge. Four of them were already

 fully inflated, and the last one was billowing and swelling as the air

 was released into it from the compressed air cylinder. Mek and Sapper

 were packing the ammunition crates into the ready boats and strapping

 them down under green nylon cargo nets.

 Sapper looked up at Nicholas and a comical expression of astonishment

 spread over his bluff features, "What the blue bleeding blazes happened

 to your face?"

 "Tell you about it one day," Nicholas promised, and turned to embrace

 Mek.

 "Thank you, old friend," he said sincerely, "Your men fought well, and

 you waited for me." Nicholas glanced at the row of wounded guerrillas

 that lay against the foot of the cliff. "How many casualties?"

 "Three dead, and these six wounded. It could have been much worse if

 Nogo's men had pushed us harder."

 "Still, it's too many," said Nicholas.

 "Even one is too many," Mek agreed gruffly.

 "Where are the rest of your men?"

 (on the run for the border. Kept just enough of them with me to handle

 the boats." Mek stripped the filthy bandage from Nicholas's chin. Royan

 gasped when she saw the injury, but Mek grinned.

 "Looks as though you were chewed by a shark."

 "That's right, I was,'Nicholas agreed.

 WI BE, Mek shrugged. "It needs at least a dozen stitches." He shouted

 for one of his men to bring his pack.

 Sorry, no anaesthetic," -he warned Nicholas as he forced him to sit on

 the transom of one of the boats and poured antiseptic straight from the

 bottle.

 Nicholas let out a gasp of pain. "Burns, doesn't it?" Mek agreed

 complacently. "But just wait until I start sewing."

 "This kindness will be written down against your name in the golden

 book," Nicholas told him, and with an evil leer Mek broke the seal on a

 suture pack.

 As Mek worked on the wound, pulling the edges together and tugging the

 thread tight, he spoke quietly so that Nicholas alone could hear. "Nogo,

 has at least a full company of men guarding the river downstream. My

 scouts tell me that he has placed them to cover the trails on both

 banks."

 "He doesn't know that we have boats to run the river, does he?" Nicholas

 asked through gritted teeth.

 "I think it is unlikely, but he knows a great deal about our movements.

 Perhaps he had an informer amongst your workmen." Mek paused as he

 pricked the needle into Nicholas's flesh, and then went on, "And Nogo

 still has the helicopter. He will spot us on the river as soon as this

 cloud breaks."

 The river is our only escape route. Let's pray that the weather stays

 socked in, like this."

 By the time Mek had tied off the last knot and covered Nicholas's chin

 with a Steri-Strip plaster, Sapper had finished inflating and loading

 the last boat.

 Four of Mek's men carried Tessay's litter to one of the boats. Mek

 helped her aboard and settled her on the deck, making sure that she had

 one of the safety straps close at hand. Then he left her and hurried to

 where his wounded men lay in order to help them into the boats too. Most

 of them could walk, but two had to be carried.

 After that he came back to Nicholas. "I see you have found your radio,"

 he said, as he glanced at the fibreglass case that Nicholas had slung

 over his shoulder on its carrying strap.

 "Without it we would be in big trouble." Nicholas patted the case

 affectionately.

 "I will take command of that boat, with Tessay."

 "Good!" Nicholas agreed. "Royan will 90 with me in the lead boat."

 "You had better let me lead,'Mek said.

 "What do you know about river running?" Nicholas asked him. "I am the

 only one of us who has ever shot this river before."

 "That was twenty years ago," Mek pointed out.

 "I am an even better man now than I was then," Nicholas grinned. "Don't

 argue, Mek. You come next, and Sapper in the one behind you. Are there

 any of your men who know the river to command the other two boats?"

 "All my men know the river," Mek told him, and shouted his orders. Each

 of them hurried to the Avon he had been allocated. Nicholas gave Royan a

 boost over the gunwale of their boat, and then helped his men launch her

 down the rocky bank. As soon as the hull floated free they scrambled

 aboard and each man grabbed a paddle.

 As they bent to their paddles, Nicholas Saw at once that every man of

 his crew was indeed a riverman, as Mek had boasted. They pulled strongly

 but smoothly, and the light inflatable craft shot out into the main

 stream of the Nile.

 The Avons were designed to accommodate sixteen, and were lightly loaded.

 The ammunition cases that held the grave goods from the tomb were bulky

 but weighed little, and there were not more than a dozen people in any

 one boat. They all floated high and handled well.

 "Bad water ahead," Nicholas told Royan grimly. "All the way to the

 Sudanese border." He stood at the steering sweep in the stem, from where

 he had a good forward view.

  Royan crouched at his feet, clinging to on of the safety straps and

 trying to keep out of the way of the oarsmen.

 They cut across the current that was scouring the great stone basin

 below the falls, and Nicholas lined up for the narrow heads through

 which the river was escaping to the West. He looked up at the sky and

 saw through the spray that the rain clouds were low and purple. They

 seemed to sag down upon the tops of the tall cliffs.

 "Luck starting to run our way," he told Royan. "Even with the helicopter

 they won't be able to find us in this Weather."

 He glanced at his Rolex and the spray was heading the glass. "Couple of

 hours until nightfall. We should be able to put a few miles of river

 behind us before we are forced to stop for the night."

 He looked back over his stem and saw the rest of the little flotilla

 bobbing along behind him. The Avons were reflective yellow in colour and

 stood out brilliantly even in the mist and murk of the gorge. He lifted

 his clenched fist high in the signal to advance, and from the following

 boat Mek repeated the gesture and grinned at him through his beard.

 The river grabbed them and they shot through its portals into the

 narrow, twisted gut of the Nile. The men at the oars stopped paddling,

 and let the river take them.

 All they could do now was to help Nicholas to steer her through any

 desperate moments, and they crouched ready along the gunwales.

 The high water in the gorge had covered many of the reefs of rock, but

 their presence below the surface was clearly marked by the waters that

 humped up in standing waves or foamed white in the narrows between them.

 The flood reached up high on either bank, dashing against the cliffs of

 the sub-gorge. If an Avon overturned, or even if a crew member were

 thrown overboard there would be no place on this river to heave-to and

 pick up survivors.

 658 95, Nicholas stood high and craned ahead. He had to pick his route

 well in advance, and once committed he had to steer her through. It all

 depended on his ability to read the river and judge her mods. He was out

 of practice, and he had that tight, hard cannonball of fear in the pit

 of his belly as he put the long sweep over and steered for the first run

 of fast green water. They went swooping down it, Nicholas holding their

 bows into it with delicate touches of the sweep, and came out into the

 bottom of it with all the other boats following them down in sequence.

 "Nothing to it!" Royan laughed up at him.

 Don't say itV Nicholas pleaded with her. The bad angel is listening."

 And he lined up for the head of the next set of rapids that raced

 towards them with terrifying speed.

 Nicholas steered through the gap between two outcrops of rock and they

 shot the barrel, gaining speed down the chute. It was only when they

 were halfway down that he saw the tall standing wave below them over

 which the river leaped. He put the sweep across and tried to steer round

 it, but the river had them firmly in its grip.

 Like a hunter taking a fence they shot up the front of the standing

 wave, and then with a sickening lurch plummeted down the far side into

 the deep trough. The Avon folded across the middle, the bows almost

 touching the stem as she tried to pull through the hole in the river

 surface.

 The crew were tumbled over each other and Nicholas would have been

 catapulted overside if it had not been for his body line and his grip on

 the steering sweep. Royan flung herself flat on the deck and hung on to

 the safety strap with all her strength as the Avon's buoyancy exerted

 itself and the boat bounded high in the air, whipping back elastically

 into its original shape, then hovered a moment and almost capsized

 before it crashed back, right side up.

 One of the crew had been hurled overboard and was floundering alongside,

 carried along at the same speed as the flying Avon, so his comrades were

 able to lean out and haul him back on board. The cargo of ammunition

 crates had tumbled and shifted, but the nets had prevented any of them

 from being lost over the side.

 "What did you do that for?" Royan yelled at him. "Just when I was

 beginning to trust you."

 "Just testing'he yelled back. "Wanted to see how tough you really are."

 "I admit it, I am a sissy," she assured him. "You really don't need to

 do it again."

 Looking back, Nicholas saw Mek's boat crash through the trough just as

 they had, but the following craft had enough warning to steer clear and

 slip through the sides of the run.

 He looked ahead again, and his whole existence became the wild waters of

 the river. His universe was contained within the tall cliffs of the

 sub-gorge as he battled to bring the racing Avon through. He did not

 know whether it was spray or rain that stung his cheeks and his wounded

 chin, and that flew horizontally into his eyes and half-blinded him. At

 times it was a mixture of the two.

 An hour later Nicholas misjudged the rapids again, and they went in

 sideways and almost capsized. Two of his crew were hurled overboard.

 Steering fine and leaning outboard they managed to pull one of them from

 the river, but the other man struck a rock before they could reach him.

 He went under and did not rise again. None of them spoke or mourned him,

 for they were all too busy staying alive themselves.

 Once Royan shouted up at Nicholas through the rattling spray and the

 thunder of the river all around them, "Helicopter! Can you hear it?"

 Half-deafened, he looked up at the lowering grey belly of the clouds

 that hung at the level of the cliffs, and faintly made out the whistle

 and flutter of the rotors.

 "Above the cloud!" he shouted back, wiping the rain and the spray from

 his eyes with the back of his hand.

 "They will never spot us in this."

 The onset of the African night was sped upon them by the low cloud. In

 the gathering darkness another hazard leaped upon them with no warning

 at all. One instant they were running hard and clear down a smooth

 stretch of the river, and the next the waters opened ahead of them and

 they were hurled out into space. It seemed that they fell for ever,

 although it was a drop of not more than thirty feet, before they hit the

 bottom and found themselves floating in a tangle of men and boats in the

 pool below the falls. Here the river was stalled for a moment, revolving

 upon itself while it gathered its strength for the next mad charge down

 the gorge.

 One of the Avons had capsized and was floating belly up - even its

 highly stable hull had not been able to weather the  down the falls,

 The crews of the other ro boats gathered themselves and then paddled

 across to drag the survivors from the water and to salvage the oars and

 other floating equipment. It took the combined efforts of all of them to

 right the overturned Avon, and then it was almost completely dark by the

 time they had it back on even keel, "Count the crates!" Nicholas

 ordered. "How many have we lost?"

 He could hardly credit his good fortune when Sapper shouted back,

 "Eleven still on board. All present and correct." The cargo nets were

 holding well. But all of them, men and women, were exhausted and soaked

 through and shivering with the cold., Any attempt to go on in darkness

 would be suicidal. Nicholas looked across at Mek in the nearest boat and

 shook his head.

 "There is a bit of slack water in the angle of the cliff." Mek pointed

 towards the tail of the pool. "We might be able to find moorings for the

 night."

 him-

 There was a stunted but tough little tree growing out of the vertical

 fissure in the rock, and they used this as a bollard and made a line

 fast to it. Then they lashed all the Avons together in a line down the

 cliff and settled in for the night. There was no chance of hot food or

 drink, and they had to make do with some cold tinned rations eaten off

 the blade of a bayonet, and a few chunks of soggy injera bread.

 Mek scrambled over from his own boat and huddled down close beside

 Nicholas with one arm over his shoulder and his lips close to his ear.

 "I have made a roll call. Another man missing when we went over the

 falls. We won't find him now."

 "I am not doing too well," Nicholas admitted. "Perhaps you should lead

 tomorrow."

 "Not your fault." Mek squeezed his shoulders. "Nobody could have done

 better. It was this last waterfall-' he broke off and they listened to

 it thundering away in the darkness.

 "How far have we come?" Nicholas asked. "And'how much further to go?"

 "It's almost impossible to tell, but I guess we are halfway to the

 border. Should reach there some time tomorrow afternoon."

 They were silent for a while, and then Mek asked, "What is the date

 today? I have lost count of the days."

 "So have Nicholas tilted his wrist-watch so that he could read the

 luminous dial in the last of the light. "Good God! It's the thirtieth

 already," he said.

 "Your pick-up aircraft is due at Roseires airstrip the day after

 tomorrow."

 "The first of April,'Nicholas agreed. "Will we make it?"

 "You answer that question for me." Mek grinned in the night without

 humour. "What, chances of your fat friend being late?"

 jannie is a pro. He is never late," said Nicholas. Again a silence fell,

 and then Nicholas asked, "When we reach Roseires, what do you want me to

 do with your share of the booty?" Nicholas kicked one of the ammunition

 crates.

 "Do you want to take it with you?"

 "After we see you off on the plane with your fat friend, we are going to

 be doing some hot-footed running from Nogo. I don't want to be carrying

 any extra luggage. You take my share with you. Sell it for me - I need

 the money to keep fighting here."

 "You trust me?"

 "You are my friend."

 "Friends are the easiest to cheat - they never expect it," Nicholas told

 him, and Mek punched his shoulder and chuckled.

 "Get some sleep. We will have to do some hard paddling tomorrow." Mek

 stood up in the Avon as she pitched and rolled gently to the push of the

 current. "Sleep well, old friend," he said, and climbed across to the

 boat alongside, where Tessay waited for him.

 Nicholas braced his back against the soft pneumatic gunwale of the Avon

 and took Royan in his arms. She sat between his knees and leaned back

 against his chest, shivering in her sodden clothes.

 After a while her shivering abated, and she murmured, "You make a very

 good hot'water bottle."

 "That's one reason for keeping me around on a permanent basis," he said,

 and stroked her wet hair. She did not answer him, but snuggled closer,

 and a short while after, wards her breathing slowed as she fell into an

 exhausted sleep.

 Although he was cold and stiff and his shoulders ached and his palms

 were blistered from wrestling with the steering oar, he could not find

 sleep as readily as she had.

 Now that the prospect of reaching the airstrip at Roseires loomed

 closer, he was troubled by problems other than those of simply

 navigating the river and battling his way Wot through Nogo's men. Those

 were enemies he could recognize and fight; but there was something more

 than that which he would soon have to face.

 Royan stirred in his arrns and muttered something he could not catch.

 She was dreaming and talking in her sleep.

 He held her gently and she settled down. again. He had started to drift

 off himself when she spoke again, this time quite clearly. "I am sorry,

 Nicky. Don't hate me for it.

 I couldn't let you-' her words slurred and he could make no sense of the

 rest of it.

 He was fully awake now, her words aggravating his doubts and misgivings.

 During the rest of that night he slept only intermittently, and his rest

 was troubled by dreams as distressing as hers must have been to hern the

 pre-dawn darkness he shook Royan gently.

 She moaned and came awake slowly and reluctantly.

 They bolted down a few mouthfuls of the cold rations that remained from

 the previous night. Then, as dawn lit the gorge just enough for them to

 see the surface of the river and the obstacles ahead, they pushed off

 from their moorings and the yellow boats strung out down the current.

 The battle against the river began all over again.

 The cloud cover was still low and unbroken, and the rain squalls swept

 over them at intervals. They kept going all that morning, and slowly the

 mood of the river began to ameliorate. The current was not so swift and

 treacherous, and the banks not so high and rugged.

 It was midafternoon and the clouds were still closed in solidly overhead

 as they entered a stretch where the river threaded itself through a

 series of bluffs and headlands, and they came upon another set of

 rapids. Perhaps Nicholas was more expert in his technique by now, for

 they swept through them without mishap, and it seemed to him that each

 stretch of white water was progressively less severe than the last.

 "I think we are through the worst of it now," he told Royan as she sat

 on the deck below him. "The gradient and the fall of the river are

 definitely more gentle now. I think it is flattening out as we approach

 the plains of the Sudan."

 "How much further to Roseires?" she asked.

 "I don't know, but the border can't be too far ahead now."

 Nicholas and Mek were keeping the flotilla closed up in line astern, so

 that orders could be shouted across the gaps between them and all the

 boats kept under their command.

 Nicholas steered for the deeper water on the outside of the next wide

 bend, and as he came through it he saw that the stretch of river ahead

 seemed open and altogether free of rapids or shoals. He relaxed and

 smiled at Royan.

 "How about lunch at the Dorchester grill next Sunday?

 Best roast beef trolley in London."

 He thought he saw a shadow pass across her eyes before she smiled

 brightly and replied, "Sounds good to me., "And afterwards we can go

 back home and curl up in front of the telly and watch Match of the Day,

 or play our 01" little match."

 "You are rude," she laughed, "but it does sound tempting."

 He was about to stoop over her, and kiss her for the pleasure of

 watching her blush again, when he saw the dance of tiny white fountains

 spurting up ftorn the surface of the river ahead of their bows, coming

 swiftly towards, them. Then, moments later, he heard the crackle of

 automatic fire, the distinctive sound of a Soviet RPD.

 He threw himself down over the top of Royan, covering her with his own

 body, and heard Mek bellowing from the boat behind them.

 '411111%awOv .AL.

 "Return fire! Keep their heads down."

 His men threw down their paddles and seized their weapons. They blazed

 away towards the inner curve of the bank from where the attack was

 coming.

 The attackers were completely concealed amongst the rocks and scrub, and

 there was no definite target to shoot at. However, in an ambush like

 this it was essential to lay down as heavy a covering fire as possible,

 to keep the attackers' heads down and to upset their aim.

 A bullet tore through the nylon skin of the Avon close to Royan's head

 and went on to lam into one of the metal offered ammunition crates. The

 sides of their craft 0 protection at all from the heavy fusillade that

 lashed them.

 One of their crew was hit in the head. The bullet cut the top off his

 skull like the shell of a soft'boiled egg, and he was flung over the

 side. Royan screamed more with horro.

 than with fear, while Nicholas snatched up the assault rifle that the

 dead man had dropped and emptied the magazine towards the bank, firing

 short taps of three and raking the scrub that concealed their attackers.

 The Avon still raced downstream on the current, spiralling aimlessly as

 she lost direction without the steering oar. It took them less than' a

 minute to be carried past the ambush and around the next bend of the

 river.

 Nicholas dropped the empty rifle and shouted across at Mek, "Are you all

 right?"

 "One man hit here," Mek yelled back. "Not too bad." Each of the boats

 reported their casualties: a total of one dead and three wounded. None

 of the wounded was in a serious condition, and although three of the

 boats had been holed, the hulls were made up of watertight compartments

 and were all still floating high.

 Mek steered his Avon alongside Nicholas's and called across. "I was

 beginning to think we had given Nogo the slip."

 "We got off lightly that time," Nicholas called back.

 "We probably took them by surprise. They weren't expecting us to be on

 the water."

 "Well, no more surprises for him now. You can bet they are on the radio

 already. Nogo knows exactly where we are and where we are headed." He

 looked up at the cloud. "We can only hope the cloud stays thick and

 low."

 "How much further to the Sudanese border?"

 "Not sure, but it can't be more than another couple of hours."

 "Is the crossing guarded?" Nicholas asked.

 "No. Nothing there. Just empty bush on both sides."

 "Let's hope it stays empty," Nicholas muttered.

 Within thirty minutes of the fire-fight, they heard the helicopter

 again. It was flying above the clouds, and as they listened it passed

 overhead, but out of sight, and headed on downstream. Twenty minutes

 later they heard it again, coming back in the opposite direction, and

 shortly after that it flew downstream again, still above the cloud.

 "What the hell is Nogo playing at?" Mek called across to Nicholas.

 "Sounds as though he is patrolling the river, but he can't get under the

 cloud."

 "My guess is that he is ferrying men downstream to cut us off. Now he

 knows we are using boats, he also knows that we can only head in one

 direction. Nogo isn't one to worry about international borders. He may

 even have realized by now that we are heading for Roseires. It's the

 nearest unmanned airstrip along the river. He could be waiting for us

 when we try to land., Mek steered his Avon closer and passed a line

 across, tying the two boats together so that they could talk in normal

 tones.

 "I don't like it, Nicholas. We are going to walk right into them again.

 What do you suggest?"

 Nicholas pondered for a long minute. "Don't you recognize this part of

 the river? Don't you know precisely where we are yet?"

 Mek shook his head. "I always keep well away from the river when we

 cross the border, but I will recognize the old sugar'mill at Roseires

 when we get there. It's about three miles upstream from the airstrip."

 "DesertedT Nicholas asked.

 "Yes. Abandoned ever since the war began twenty years ago."

 "With this cloud cover, it will be dark in an hour," Nicholas said. "The

 river is slower now and not so dangerous. We can take a chance and keep

 on going after dark.

 Perhaps Nogo won't expect that. We might be able to give him the slip in

 the dark."

 "Is that the best you can do?" Mek chuckled. "As a plan it sounds to me

 a bit like closing your eyes and hoping for the best."

 "Well, if somebody could tell me where the hell we are, and what time

 Jannie will arrive tomorrow, I might be able to come up with something a

 bit more specific." Nicholas grinned back at him. "Until that happens, I

 am flying by the seat of my pants."

 All of them were tense with strung-out nerves as they paddled on into

 the premature dusk beneath the thick blanket of cloud and rain. Even in

 the gathering darkness the crew kept their weapons cocked and locked,

 trained on either bank of the river, ready to return fire instantly.

 "We must have crossed the border an hour ago," Mek called to Nicholas.

 "The old sugar mill can't be far ahead."

 "In the dark, how will you find it?"

 "There is the remains of an old stone jetty on the bank, from which the

 riverboats taking the sugar down to Khartoum used to load."

 Night came down upon them abruptly, and Nicholas felt a sense of relief

 as the river banks receded into the murk and the darkness hid them from

 hostile eyes ashore.

 As soon as it was fully dark they lashed the boats -together to prevent

 them becoming separated and then let the river carry them on silently,

 keeping so close in to the right hand bank that they ran aground more

 than once, and some of the men had to slip over the side and push them

 out into deeper water.

 The stone piers of the jetty at Roseires sprang out at them

 unexpectedly, and Nicholas's leading Avon slammed into them before he

 could steer clear. However, the crew were ready and they jumped over the

 side into chest-deep water and dragged the boat to the bank. Immediately

 Mek leaped ashore and, with twenty of his men, spread out into the

 overgrown canefields along the bank to secure the area and prevent a

 surprise attack by Nogo's men.

 There was confusion and more noise than Nicholas felt was safe as the

 rest of the flotilla beached, and they began to bring the wounded ashore

 and unload the cargo of ammunition cases. Nicholas piggybacked Royan to

 the bank and then waded back to fetch Tessay. She was much stronger by

 now. The enforced rest during the voyage down river had given her a

 chance to recover, and she stood up unaided in the Avon and climbed on

 to Nicholas's shoulders to be brought ashore.

 Once on dry ground he let her slide down on to her own feet and asked

 her quietly, "How are you feeling?"

 "I will be all right now, thank you, Nicholas," He supported her for a

 moment while she recovered her balance and said quickly, "I did not have

 a chance to ask earlier. What about Royan's message that she asked you

 to telephone from Debra Maryam? Did you get it through for her?

 "Yes, of course," Tessay replied guilelessly. "I told Royan that I had

 given her message to Moussad at the Egyptian Embassy. Didn't she tell

 you?"

 Nicholas winced as though he had taken a low punch, but he smiled and

 kept his tone casual. "It must have slipped her mind. Not important,

 anyway. But thanks nevertheless, Tessay."

 PM-Om At that moment Mek came striding out of the darkness and spoke in

 a harsh whisper. "This sounds like a camel market. Nogo will hear us

 from five miles away." Quickly 3. he took command and started to

 organize the shore party Once the last of the ammunition crates were

 unloaded, they dragged the boats into the canefields and unscrewed the

 valves that deflated the pontoons. Then they piled cane trash over them.

 Still working in the dark they distributed the cargo of ammunition

 crates amongst Mck's men. Sapper took a case under each arm. Nicholas

 slung the radio over one shoulder and his emergency pack over the other,

 and balanced on his head the case that contained Pharaoh's golden

 death-mask and the Taita ushabti.

 Mek sent his scouts forward to sweep the route out to the airstrip and

 make certain that they did not run into an ambush. Then he took the

 point and the rest of them strung out in Indian file along the rough,

 overgrown track behind him. Before they had covered a mile the clouds

 suddenly opened overhead, and the crescent moon and the stars showed

 through and gave them enough light to make out the chimneystack of the

 ruined mill against the night sky.

 But even with this moonlight their progress was slow and broken ses, by

 long pau for the stretcher-bearers carrying the wounded had difficulty

 keeping up. By the time they reached the airstrip it was after three in

 the morning and the moon had set. They stacked the ammunition cases in

 the same grove of acacia trees at the end of the runway where they had

 cached the pallets of dam-building equipment and the yellow tractor on

 the inward journey.

 Although they were all exhausted by this time, Mek set out his pickets

 around the camp. The two women tended the wounded, working by the light

 of a small screened fire as they used up the last of Mek's medical

 supplies.

 Sapper used the one electric torch whose batteries still held a charge,

 and he gave Nicholas a discreet screened light while he set up the radio

 and strung the aerial.

 Nicholas's relief was intense when he opened the fibreglass case and

 found that, despite its dunking in the Nile, the rubber gasket that

 seated the lid had kept the radio dry.

 When he switched on the power, the pilot light lit up. He tuned in to

 the shortwave frequency and picked up the early morning commercial

 transmission of Radio Nairobi.

 Yvonne Chaka Chaka was singing; he liked her voice and her style. But he

 quickly switched off the set so as to conserve the battery, and settled

 back against the hole of the acacia tree to try and get a little rest

 before daylight broke. However, sleep eluded him - his sense of betrayal

 and anger were too strong.

 uma Nogo watched the sun push its great fiery head out of the surface of

 the Nile ahead of them. They were flying only feet above the water to

 keep under the Sudanese military radar trans missions. He knew there was

 a radar station at Khartoum that might be able to pick them up, even at

 this range.

 Relations with the Sudanese were strained, and he could expect a quick

 and savage response if they discovered that he had violated their

 border.

 Nogo was a confused and worried man. Since the d6bdcle in the gorge of

 the Dandera river everything had run strongly against him. He had lost

 all his allies. Until they were gone he had not realized how heavily he

 had come to rely on both Helm and von Schiller. Now he was on his own

 and he had already made many mistakes.

 But despite all this he was determined to pursue the fugitives, and to

 run them down no matter how far he had to intrude into Sudanese

 territory. Over the past weeks it had gradually dawned'upon Nogo, mostly

 by eavesdropping on the conversations of von Schiller and the jr

 Egyptian, that Harper and Mek Nimmur were in possession of treasure of

 immense value. His imagination could barely asp the enormity of it, but

 he had heard others speak of gr tens of millions of dollars. Even a

 million dollars was a sum so vast that his mind had difficulty

 assimilating it, but he I i had a vague inkling as to what it might mean

 in earthly terms, of the possessions and women and luxuries it could

 buy.

 Equally slowly it had dawned upon him that, now that Von Schiller and

 Helm were gone, this treasure could be his alone; there was no longer

 any other person to stand in his way, other than the fleeing shufta led

 by Mek Nimmur and the Englishman. And he had overwhelming force on his

 side and the helicopter at his command.

 if only he could pin the fugitives down, Nogo was certain he could wipe

 them out. There must be no survivors, no one to carry tales to Addis.

 After Mek and the Englishman and all their followers were dead it would

 be a simple matter to spirit his booty out of the country in the

 helicopter. There was a man in Nairobi and another in Khartoum whom he

 had dealt with before; they had bought contraband ivory and hashish from

 him. They would know how to market the booty to best advantage, although

 they were both devious men. He had already decided that he would not

 trust it all to one person but would spread the risk, so that even if

 one of them betrayed and cheated him His mind raced off on another tack,

 and he savoured the thought of great riches and what they could buy for

 him. He would have fine clothes and motor cars, land and cattle and

 women - white women and black and brown, all the women he could use, a

 new one for every day of his life. He broke off his greedy daydreams.

 First he had to find where the runaways had vanished to.

 He had not realized that Harper and Mek Nimmur had inflatable boats

 hidden somewhere near the monastery.

 Hansith had not informed him of that fact. He and Helm had expected them

 to try to escape on foot, and all the plans to head them off before they

 could reach the Sudanese border had been based on that assumption. On

 Helm's orders, he had even set up a reserve fuel dump near the border

 where they expected Mek Nimmur to cross, from which they could refuel

 the helicopter. Without those supplies of fuel he would long ago have

 been forced to give up the chase.

 Nogo had placed his men to cover the trails leading along the river bank

 towards the west, and he had not even considered guarding the river

 itself. It was quite by chance that one of his patrols had been in a

 position to spot the flotilla of yellow boats as they came racing

 downstream. However, there had not been enough warning to enable them to

 set up an effective ambush, and they had been able to fire on the boats

 only briefly before they escaped. They had not inflicted serious damage

 on any of the boats - at least, not enough to stop them getting through.

 Immediately the company commander had radioed his report of this contact

 with Mek Nimmur, Nogo had started ferrying men downstream to the

 Sudanese border to cut off the flotilla. Unfortunately, the Jet Ranger

 could carry no more than six fully armed men at a time, and transporting

 them had been a time-consuming business. He had only succeeded in

 bringing sixty of his men into position before night had fallen.

 During the night he fretted that the flotilla was slipping past him, and

 with the dawn they were in the air again. Fortunately the cloud had

 broken up during the night. There was still some high cumulus overhead,

 but they were now able to fly low along the river and search for any

 sign of Mek Nimmur's flotilla.

 They had first flown back along the river on the Ethiopian side of the

 border, as far as the point where Mek Nimmur and Harper had been fired

 upon. They had picked up no sign of the boats, so Nogo had forced the

 pilot to turn back, cross the border and search the Sudanese stretch the

 Nile. But Nogo had only been able to persuade his pilot to penetrate

 sixty nautical miles along the Nile into the Sudan before the man had

 rebelled. Despite the Tokarev pistol that Nogo held to his head, he had

 banked the jet Ranger into a 180-degree turn and headed back low along

 the river.

 By now Nogo knew he had been defeated and ourwitd. He brooded unhappily

 in the front seat of the helicopter ter beside the pilot, trying to

 fathom out what had happened to his quarry. He saw the tall smokestack

 of the abandoned sugar-mill at Roseires poking up into the early morning

 sky, and he glowered at it angrily. They had passed the mill only a

 short while before on their way downstream.

 "Turn in towards the north bank," he ordered the pilot, and the man

 hesitated and glanced at him before he obeyed..

 They passed directly over the building, flying lower than the chimney.

 The factory was roofless and the windows were empty rectangles in the

 broken walls. The boilers and machinery had been removed twenty years

 previously, and Nogo could look into the empty shell. The pilot hovered

 the aircraft while Nogo peered down, but there was no place where anyone

 could hide, and Nogo shook his head.

 "Nothing! We have lost them. Head back upstream." The pilot lifted the

 machine's nose and turned away towards the river, obeying the order with

 alacrity. As the aircraft banked steeply, Nogo was looking down directly

 into the overgrown canefields verging the river when a flash of bright

 yellow caught his eye.

 "Waid' he shouted into his mike. "There is something 9 there. Go back!'

 The helicopter hovered over the field, and Nogo gestured urgently

 downwards. "Down! Put us down."

 As soon as the skids touched the earth, the stick of six heavily armed

 troopers dived out of the rear cabin and raced out to take up defensive

 positions. Nogo clambered out of the front door and ran into the

 overgrown bed of tall cane. One look was all he needed. The yellow boats

 had been deflated and folded and hastily covered. The earth around them

 had been churned up by booted feet.

 The tracks led away inland. The men who had made them had been heavily

 laden, for they had trodden deeply into the soft, sandy earth.

 Nogo ran back to the helicopter and thrust his head in through the open

 cabin door. "Is there an airstrip near here?" he shouted at the pilot,

 who shook his head.

 "There is nothing shown on the chart,, "There must have been one. The

 sugar'mill would have had a strip."

 "If there was one, it must have been decommissioned years ago.

 "We will find it,'Nogo declared. "Mek Nimmur's tracks will lead us to

 it." He sobered immediately. "But I will have to bring up more men.

 judging by his spoor, Mek Nimmur has at least fifty of his shufta with

 him."

 He left his men at the sugar-mill and flew back to the border with an

 empty rear cabin to pick up the first load of reinforcements.

 'ñDig Dolly! Come in, Big Dolly. This is Pharaoh.

 Do you read?" Nicholas put out his first call an MD hour before sunrise.

 "If I know the way jannie's mind works, and I should, he would plan to

 make his approach flight in darkness and arrive here as soon as there is

 enough light to pick up the strip and land."

 7L 111.7- 7 -7

 "If the Fat Man comes," Mek Nimmur qualified.

 "He will come," said Nicholas confidently. "Jannie has never let me down

 yet." He thumbed the microphone and called again: "Big Dolly! Come in,

 Big Dolly."

 The static hummed softly, and Nicholas retuned the set carefully. He

 called again every fifteen minutes as they huddled around the set in the

 dark under the acacia trees.

 Suddenly Royan started to her feet and exclaimed excitedly, "There he

 is. I can hear Big Dolly's engines.

 Listen!'

 Nicholas and Mek ran out into the open, and turned their faces upwards,

 looking into the north.

 Nicholas exclaimed sud

 "That's not the Hercules, denly. "That's another machine." He turned and

 faced southwards, towards the river. "Anyway, it's coming from the wrong

 direction."

 "You are right," Mek agreed. "That's a single engine, and it's not a

 fixed wing. You can hear the rotors."

 "The Pegasus helicopter!" Nicholas exclaimed bitterly.

 "They are on to us again."

 As they listened, the sound of the rotors faded.

 Nicholas looked relieved. "They missed us. They can't have IR spotted

 the Avons."

 They trooped back under the cover of the acacias, and Nicholas called

 again on the radio, but there was no reply from Jannie.

 Twenty minutes later they heard the sound of the jet Ranger returning,

 and they monitored it anxiously.

 "Gone again," said Nicholas after a while, but then twenty minutes later

 they heard it yet again.

 "Nogo is up to something out there,'Mek said uneasily.

 "What do you think it is?" Nicholas was infected by his mood. When Mek

 worried, there was usually a damned good reason to worry.

 "I don't know," Mek admitted. "Perhaps Nogo has spotted the Avbns and is

 bringing up more men before he comes after us." He went out into the

 open and listened intently, then came back to where Nicholas crouched

 over the radio.

 "Keep calling," he said. "I am going out to the perimeter to make

 certain my men are ready to hold Nogo off if he comes., The helicopter

 moved up and down the Nile at'short intervals during the next three

 hours, but the lack of any further developments lulled them, and

 Nicholas barely looked up from the radio each time they heard the

 distant beat of the rotors. Suddenly the radio crackled, and Nicholas

 started violently at the shock.

 "Pharaoh! This is Big Dolly. Do you read?"

 Nicholas's voice bubbled over with relief as he replied, "This is

 Pharaoh. Speak sweet words to me, Big Dolly."

 "ETA your position one hour thirty minutes." jannie's accent was

 unmistakable.

 "You will be very welcome!" Nicholas promised him fervently.

 He hung up the microphone and beamed at the two women, "Jannie is on his

 way, and he will-'

 He broke off and his smile shrivelled to an expression of dismay. From

 the direction of the river came the unmistakable rattle of AK-47 rapid

 fire, followed a few seconds later by the crump of an exploding grenade.

 "Oh, dammit to hell!" he groaned. "I thought it was too good to last.

 Nogo has arrived."

 He picked up the mike again and spoke into it expressionlessly. "Big

 Dolly! The uglies have arrived on the scene. It's going to have to be a

 hot extraction."

 "Hang on to your crown, Pharaoh!" jannie's voice floated back. "I am on

 my way."

 During the next half-hour the sounds of the fighting along the river

 intensified until the rattle of small-arms fire was almost continuous,

 and gradually it crept closer to the far end of the airstrip. It was

 clear that Mek's men, spread , out thinly along the river end of the

 strip, were falling back before the thrust of Nogo's men. And every

 twenty minutes or so there was'the sound of the returning helicopter, as

 it ferried another stick of men to increase the pressure on Mek's scanty

 defence.

 Nicholas and Sapper were the only ablebodied men left in the acacia

 grove, for all the others had gone out to defend the perimeter. The two

 of them moved the ammunition crates to the edge of the trees, where they

 could be loaded in haste once the Hercules landed.

 Nicholas sorted out the cargo, reading the contents of each crate from

 the notations on the lids in Royan's handwriting. The crate containing

 the death -mask and the Taita ushabd would be the first to go aboard,

 followed by the three crowns- the blue war crown, the Nemes crown and

 the red and white crown of the united kingdoms of upper and lower Egypt.

 The value of those three crates probably exceeded that of all the rest

 of the treasure combined.

 Once the cargo had been taken care of, Nicholas went down the row of

 wounded men and spoke to each of them in turn. First, he thanked them

 for their help and sacrifice, red to take them out on the Hercules to

 and then offed where they could receive proper medical attention. He

 mised each of them that, if they accepted the offer, he pro would see to

 it . -lat once they had recovered from their wounds they could return to

 Ethiopia.

 Seven of them - those who were less seriously wounded and were able to

 walk - refused to leave Mek Nimmur.

 Their loyalty was a touching demonstration of the high regard in which

 Mek was held by his men. The others reluctantly agreed to be evacuated,

 but only after Tessay had intervened and added her assurances to

 Nicholas's.

 Then he and Sapper carried them to the point at the edge of the grove

 where jannie would halt Big Dolly for the pick'up.

 "What about you?" Nicholas asked Tessay. "Are you coming out with us?

 You are still in pretty bad shape."

 Tessay laughed. "While I can still stand on my two feet, I will never

 leave Mek Nimmur."

 "I can't understand what you see in that old rogue," Nicholas laughed

 with her. "I have -spoken to Mek. He wants me to take his share of the

 booty with me. He won't be able to carry any extra luggage at the

 moment."

 "Yes, I know. Mek and I discussed it. We need the money to continue the

 struggle here."

 She broke off and ducked involuntarily, as a stunning explosion cracked

 in their eardrums and a tall column of dust leaped into the air close to

 the edge of the grove.

 Shrapnel whistled over their heads and twigs and leaves rained down on

 them.

 sweet Mary! What was that?" Tessay cried.

 "Two-inch mortar,'said Nicholas. He had not moved, nor made any attempt

 to take cover. "More bark than bite.

 Nogo must have brought it in with his last flight."

 "When will the Hercules get here?"

 "I'll give jannie a call, and ask him."

 As Nicholas sauntered over to the radio set Tessay whispered to Royan,

 "Are you English always so cooV

 "Don't Ask me - I' mostly Egyptian, and I am terrified." Royan smiled

 easily and put her arm around Tessay. "I am going to miss you, Lady

 Sun."

 "Perhaps we will meet again in happier times." Tessay turned her head

 and kissed her impulsively, and Royan hugged her hard.

 "I hope so. I hope so with all my heart."

 Nicholas spoke into the microphone. "Big Dolly, this is Pharaoh. "What

 is your position now?"

 "Pharaoh, we are twenty minutes out, and hurrying.

 Did you have baked beans for dinner or is that mortar fire I hear in the

 background?"

 "With your wit you should have gone on the stage,'

 Nicholas told him. "The uglies have control of the south end of the

 strip. Make your approach from the north. The wind is wester rly at

 about five knots. So any way you come in, it will be cross-wirid.

 "Roger, Pharaoh. How many passengers and cargo do YOU have for me?"

 "Passengers are six cas-evac plus three, Cargo is fifty-two crates,

 about a quarter of a ton weight."

 "Hardly worth coming all this way for so little, Pharaoh."

 "Big Dolly. Be advised, there is another aircraft in the circuit. A jet

 Ranger helter. Colour green and red. It 1cop is a hostile, but unarmed."

 "Roger, Pharaoh. I will call again on finals."

 the two women were Nicholas went back to where waiting with the wounded.

 "Not long now," he told them cheerfully. He had to raise his voice to

 make himself heard above the din of mortar bursts and rapid small'arms

 fire.

 "Just enough time for a cup of tea," he said. He pushed a few twigs into

 the embers of the previous night's fire, then rummaged in his small

 emergency pack for the last of his tea bags while Sapper placed the

 smoke-blackened billycan back on the burgeoning flames.

 They only had one mug between them. "Girls first," said Nicholas,

 passing it to Royan. She took a swallow and scalded her lips.

 Good!, she sighed, and then cocked her head. "This time it is definitely

 Big Dolly I can hear."

 Nicholas listened and then nodded. "I think you are right." He stood up

 and went to the radio. "Big Dolly. You are audible."

 "Five minutes to landing, Pharaoh."

 From where he stood, Nicholas looked down the long strip. Mek's men were

 retreating, flitting like smoke through the thorn scrub and firing back

 in the direction of the river. Nogo was pushing them hard now.

 "Hurry along, Jannie he murmured, and then adjusted his expression as

 he turned back to the two women. "Plenty of time to finish your tea.

 Don't waste it."

 The rumble of Big Dolly's engines was louder than the sound of gunfire

 now. Then suddenly she was in sight, coming in so low that she seemed to

 brush the tops of the thorn trees. She was enormous, Her wingspan

 reached from one side of the narrow overgrown strip to the other. Jannie

 touched her down short, and she blew out a long rolling cloud of brown

 dust behind her as he put the engines into reverse thrust.

 Big Dolly went barrelling past the clump of acacia, and Jannie waved to

 them from the high cockpit. The moment he had bled off enough speed, he

 stood on his footbrakes and rudder bar. Big Dolly spun around in her own

 length and came roaring back down the strip towards them, her loading

 ramp beginning to drop open even before she reached them.

 Fred was waiting in the open hatchway, and he ran down to'help Sapper

 and Nicholas with the wounded men on the litters. It took only a few

 minutes to carry them up the ramp, and then they started loading the

 ammunition crates. Even Royan gave a hand, staggering up the ramp with

 one of the lighter crates clutched to her chest.

 A mortar shell exploded a hundred and fifty yards beyond the parked

 Hercules, and then half a minute later a second shell fell a hundred

 yards short.

 "Ranging shots," Nicholas grunted, picking up a crate under each arm and

 running up the ramp.

 "They have us in their sights now," Fred shouted. "We have to get out of

 here. Leave the rest of the cargo. Let's go, GoV

 There were only four crates still lying under the NMI-, MOrJL

 spreading branches of the acacia, and both Nicholas and Sapper ignored

 the order and ran back down the ramp.

 and raced back.

 They snatched up a crate under each arm "Me ramp was starting to rise

 and Big Dolly's engines roared as she began to taxi out. They hurled the

 crates over the tailboard of the rising ramp and then jumped up to grab

 a handhold and pull themselves aboard. Nicholas was the first up and

 reached down to haul Sapper in.

 When he looked back, Tessay was a small, lonely figure under the

 acacias.

 "Give Mek my love and thanks," he bellowed at her.

 CY

 ou know how to contact us," she screamed back.

 "Goodbye, Tessay' Royan's voice was lost in the blast of the great

 engines, and the dust blew back in a sheet over Tessay so that she was

 forced to cover her face and turn away. The ramp hissed closed on its

 hydraulic. rams, and cut out their last glimpse of her.

 Nicholas put an arm around Royan's shoulders and hustled her down the

 length of the cavernous cargo hold and into one of the jum seats at the

 entrance to the cockpit.

 "Strap yourself in!" he ordered, and ran up the steps to the cockpit.

 "Thought you had decided to stay behind," Jannie greeted him mildly,

 without looking up from his controls.

 "Hold tight! Here we go."

 Nicholas clung on to the back of the pilot's seat as bank of Jannie and

 Fred between them pushed forward the throttle levers to full power, and

 Big Dolly built up speed until she was careering down the strip.

 Looking over Jannie's shoulder" Nicholas saw the vague shapes of men in

 camouflage battledre.ss amongst . Some of them the thorn scrub at the

 end of the runwa raced tow huge aircraft as it ards were firing at the

 them.

 "Those popguns aren't going to hurt her much," Jannie . "Big Dolly is a

 tough old lady." And - lifted her grunted into the air.

 They flashed over the heads of the enemy troops on the ground, and

 Jannie set her nose high in the climb attitude.

 "Welcome aboard! folks, thank you for flying Africair.

 Next stop Malta," Jannie drawled, and then his voice rose sharply, "Oh,

 oh! Where did this little piss-cat come from?"

 Directly ahead of them the Jet Ranger rose out of the thick scrub on the

 banks of the Nile. The angle of the helicopter's climb meant that the

 approaching Hercules was hidden from the pilot's view, and he continued

 to rise directly into their path.

 "Only five hundred feet and a hundred and ten knots on the clock," Fred

 shouted a warning at his father from the right'hand seat. "Too low to

 turn."

 The jet Ranger was so close that Nicholas could clearly see Tuma Nogo in

 the front seat, his spectacles reflecting the sunlight like the eyes of

 a blind man, and his face freezing into a rictus of terror as he

 suddenly saw the great machine bearing down on them. At the last

 possible moment the pilot put his aircraft over in a wild dive to try to

 ear It nose of the approaching Hercules. It seemed impossible to avoid

 the collision, but he managed to bank, the lighter, more manoeuvrable

 machine over until it rolled almost on to its back. It slipped under the

 belly of the Hercules, and the men in the cockpit of Jannie's plane

 barely felt the light kiss of the two fuselages.

 However, the helicopter was flung over on to its nose by the impact,

 until it was pointing straight down at the earth only four hundred feet

 below, While Big Dolly flew on, climbing away steadily on an even keel,

 the pilot of the et Ranger struggled to control his crazily plummeting

 machine. Two hundred feet above the earth the turbulence thrown out

 astern by the massive T56,A-15 turbo-prop engines of the Hercules, each

 rated at 4900 horsepower, struck the helicopter with the force of an

 avalanche.

 Like a dead leaf in an autumn gale she was swept away, spinning end over

 end, and when she struck the ground her own engines were still squealing

 at full power. On impact the fuselage crumpled like a sheet of aluminium

 cooking foil, and Nogo was dead even before the fuel tanks exploded and

 a fireball engulfed the jet Ranger.

 As soon as Jannie reached safe manoeuvring altitude he brought Big Dolly

 around on her northerly heading, and they could look back over the wing

 at the Roseires airstrip falling away behind them. The column of black

 smoke from the burning helicopter was tar-thick as it drifted away on

 the light westerly wind.

 "You did say they were the uglies?" Jannie asked. "So rather them than

 us, then?"

 nce Jannie had settled Big Dolly on her sailing low northerly heading,

 and they were over the open deserted Sudanese plains, Nicholas went back

 into the main hold.

 "Let's get the wounded settled down comfortably , he an unbuckled their

 safety belts suggested. Sapper and Roy and went back with him to attend

 to the men lying where haste of the their litters had been dumped during

 the getaway from Roseires.

 After a while Nicholas left them to it and went forward flight deck. He

 to the small, well-stocked galley behind the soup and sliced hunks of

 fresh bread opened some canned from the loaves he found in the

 refrigerator. While the tea water boiled, he found his small emergency

 pack, and took from it.the nylon wallet which contained his medicines

 and drugs. From one of the vials he shook five white tablets into the

 palm of his hand.

 In the galley he crushed the tablets to powder, and when he poured tea

 into two of the mugs he stiffed the powder in with it. Royan had enough

 English blood in her veins never to be able to refuse a mug of hot tea.

 After they had served soup and buttered toast to the wounded men, Royan

 accepted her mug from Nicholas gratefully. While she and Sapper sipped

 their tea, Nicholas went back to the flight deck and leaned over the

 back of Jannie's seat.

 "What is our flying time to the Egyptian border?" he asked.

 "Four hours twenty minutes,'Jannic told him.

 "Is there any way that we can avoid flying into Egyptian air

 space?"Nicholas wanted to know.

 Jannie swivelled around in his seat and stared at him with astonishment.

 "I suppose we could make a turn out to the west, through Gadaffi-land.

 Of course, it would mean an extra seven hours' flying time, and we would

 probably run out of fuel and end up making a forced landing somewhere

 out there in the Sahara." He lifted an eyebrow at Nicholas. "Tell me, my

 boy, what inspired that stupid question?"

 "It was just a rare thought,'Nicholas said.

 "Let it be not merely rare, but extinct," Jannie advised.

 "I don't want to hear it asked again, ever."

 Nicholas slapped his shoulder. "Put it out of your mind." When he went

 back into the main hold, Sapper and Royan were sitting on two of the

 fold-down bunks that were bolted to the main bulkhead. Royan's empty tea

 mug stood on the deck at her feet. Nicholas sat down beside her, and she

 reached up and touched the bloodstained dressing that covered his chin.

 "You had better let me see to that." Her fingers were deft and cool on

 his hot inflamed skin as she cleaned the T

 stitches with an alcohol swab and then placed a fresh plaster over them.

 Nicholas felt a strong twinge of guilt as he submitted to her

 ministrations.

 However, it was Sapper who was the first to show the effects of the

 doped tea. He lay back gently and closed his eyes, then a soft snore

 vibrated his lips. Minutes later Royan sagged drowsily against

 Nicholas's shoulder. When she was fast asleep, he let her down gently

 and lifted her feet up on to the bunk. He spread a rug over her. She did

 not even stir, and he had a moment's doubt about the strength of the

 tablets.

 Then he kissed her forehead softly. "How could I ever hate you?" he

 asked her softly. "Whatever you did."

 He went into the lavatory and locked the door. He had plenty of time.

 Sapper and Royan wouldn ot wake for hours yet, and Jannie and Fred were

 happily ensconced on the flight'deck, listening to Dolly Parton tapes on

 the audio system.

 When at last he had finished, Nicholas glanced at his wrist-watch and

 realized that it had taken him almost two hours, He closed the toilet

 seat and washed his hands carefully. Then he took one last careful took

 around the tiny cabin and unlocked the door.

 Sapper and Royan were still fast asleep on the folddown bunks. He went

 forward to the flight-deck, and Fred pulled his earphones down around

 his neck and grinned at him.

 "Nile water. It's poisonous. You have been locked in the loo for the

 last couple of hours. Surprised that there is anything left of you."

 Nicholas ignored the jibe and leaned over Jannie's seat back. "Where are

 we?"

 With a thick forefinger Jannie stabbed the chart that he was balancing

 on his protruding belly. "Almost in the clear," he said complacently.

 "Egyptian border in one hour twelve minutes."

 Nicholas remained standing behind his seat until Jannie grunted and

 lifted the microphone. "Time to go into my act."

 "Hallo, Abu Simbel Approach!" he said in a Gulf States accent. "This is

 Zulu Whiskey Uniform Five Zero Zero."

 There was a long silence from the Egyptian controller.

 Jannie grunted. "He probably has'a hint in the tower with him. Got to

 give him time to get his pants back on."

 Abu Simbel Control answered on his fifth call. Jannie launched into his

 tried and tested routine, feigning ignorance in fluent colloquial

 Arabic.

 After five minutes, Abu Simbel cleared him to continue on northwards,

 with an instruction to "call again abeam Aswan'.

 They flew on serenely for another hour, but Nicholas nerves were

 screwing up tighter every minute.

 Suddenly, without the least warning, there was a silvery flash ahead of

 them as a fighter interceptor, coming from below them, pulled up steeply

 across their bows.

 Jannie shouted with surprise and an eras another two 9 warplanes

 rocketed up from under them, so close that they were buffeted by the

 turbulence of their jet trails.

 They all recognized the type. They were MiG21 "fishheads' sporting the

 Egyptian air force livery, and with air-to-air missiles hanging in

 menacing pods under their swept-back wings.

 "Unidentified aircraft! Jannie yelled into his mouthpiece. "You are on

 collision course. State your call sign!" They all craned their necks and

 stared up through -he Perspex canopy over the flight-deck. High above

 them they could see the three MiG fighters in formation circling against

 the blue of the African sky.

 "ZVVU 500. This is Red Leader of the Egyptian people's air force. You

 will conform to my orders."

 Jannie looked back at Nicholas, his expression forlorn.

 low, A

 something has gone wrong here. How the hell did they tumble to us?"

 "You' better do what the man says, Dad," Fred advised miserably,

 'otherwise he is going to blow us all over the sky."

 Jarnie shrugged helplessly, and then spoke into his microphone

 mournfully. "Red Leader, This is ZVVU 500.

 We will cooperate. Please state your intentions."

 "Your new heading is 053. Execute immediately!" Jannie brought Big Dolly

 around into the east and then glanced at his chart.

 "Aswan!" he said dolefully. "The Gyppos are taking us to Aswan. What the

 hell, I might as well warn Aswan tower that we have wounded on board."

 Nicholas went back to Royans bunk and shook her awake. She was groggy

 and unsteady on her feet from the effects of the drug as she staggered

 to the lavatory. However, when she emerged again ten minutes later her

 hair was combed and she seemed alert and recovered from the mild draught

 that she had drunk in her tea. - here was the Nile ahead of them once

 more, 6.. and the town of Aswan on both banks, nestling below the first

 cataract and the impounded waters of the High Dam. Kitchener's Island

 swam like a green fish in the middle of the stream.

 As the voice of the military controller at the Aswan irfield gave Jannie

 his orders, Big Dolly settled with unruffled dignity and lined up for

 the straight-in approach to the tarmac runway. The MiG fighters which

 had shepherded them in from the desert were no longer visible, but their

 presence high above was betrayed by their terse radio transmissions as

 they handed over their captive to the ground control.

 Big Dolly sailed in over the perimeter fence and touched down, and the

 voice of the controller ordered them, "Turn first taxi-way right."

 Jannie obeyed, and as he turned off the main runway there was a small

 vehicle with a sign on its roof which read, in both English and Arabic,

 "FOLLOW ME'.

 The vehicle led them to a row of camouflaged concrete hangars in front

 of which a ground crew in khaki overalls signalled them with paddles

 into a parking stand. As soon as Jannie applied his brakes and brought

 Big Dolly to a halt, a file of four armoured half-tracks raced out and

 surrounded the huge aircraft, training their turret weapons upon her.

 Obedient to the instructions radioed7by control, Jannie shut down his

 engines and lowered the tail ramp of the aircraft. No one on the

 flight-deck had spoken since they had landed. They stood crowded

 together, looking unhappy, peering out of the cockpit windows.

 Suddenly a white Cadillac with an escort of armed motorcyclists,

 followed by a military ambulance and a three-ton transport truck, drove

 through the gate of the perimeter fence and came directly to the foot of

 the cargo ramp of the Hercules. The chauffeur jumped out and opened the

 door, and his passenger stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine. He

 was clearly a person of authority, dignified and composed. He wore a

 light tropical suit and white shoes, a panama hat and dark glasses. As

 he came up the ramp to where the five of them waited, he was followed by

 two male secretaries.

 He removed his dark glasses and tucked them into his breast pocket. As

 he recognized Royan he smiled and lifted his hat, "Dr Al Simma - Royan!

 You did it. Congratulations!" He took her hand and shook it warmly, not

 relinquishing his grip as he looked directly at Nicholas.

 "You must be Sir Nicholas Quenton Harper. I have been looking forward to

 meeting you immensely. Won't you please introduce us, Royan?"

 Royan could not meet Nicholas's accusing scrutiny as she said, "May I

 present His Excellency, Atalan Abou Sin, Minister of Culture and Tourism

 in the Egyptian government."

 "You may indeed," said Nicholas coldly. "What an unexpected

 pleasure,'Minister."

 "I would like to express the thanks of the President and the people of

 Egypt for returning to this country these recious relics of our ancient

 but glorious history." He made a gesture that encompassed the stack of

 ammunition crates.

 "Please, think nothing of it," said Nicholas, but he never took his eyes

 off Royan. She kept her face turned half-away from him.

 "On the contrary, we think the world of what you have done, Sir

 Nicholas." Abou Sin's smile was charming and urbane. "We are fully aware

 of the expense to which you have been put, and we would not want you to

 be out of pocket in this extraordinarily generous gesture of yours. Dr

 Al Simma tells me that the expedition to recover these treasures for us

 has cost you a quarter of a million sterling." He took an envelope from

 his inside pocket, and proffered it to Nicholas.

 "This is a banker's draft drawn on the Central Bank of Egypt. It is

 irrevocable, and payable anywhere in the world.

 It is for the sum of 1250,000.1

 "Very generous of you, Your Excellency." Nicholas's voice was heavy with

 irony as he slipped the envelope into his top pocket. "I presume this

 was Dr Al Simma's suggestion?"

 "Of course," beamed Abou Sin. "Royan holds you in the very highest

 regard."

 "Does she, now?" Nicholas murmured, still staring at her

 expressionlessly.

 "However, this other small token of our appreciation was the suggestion

 of the President himself." The minister snapped his fingers and one of

 his secretaries stepped forward with a leather-covered medal case, which

 he opened before he isented it to Abou Sin.

 re On a bed of red velvet nestled a magnificent decoration, a star

 encrusted with seed pearls and tiny pay6 diamonds. In the Centre of the

 star was a golden lion rampant.

 Abou Sin lifted the star from its case and advanced on Nicholas. "The

 Order of the Great Lion of Egypt, First Class, he announced, placing the

 scarlet ribbon over his head. The star hung resplendent on Nicholas's

 grubby shirt-front, heavily stained with sweat and dust and Nile mud.

 Then the minister stood aside and made a gesture to the army colonel who

 was standing to attention at the foot of the ramp. Immediately there was

 an orderly rush of uniformed men up the ramp. The detachment of soldiers

 obviously had their orders. First they picked up the litters on which

 the wounded Ethiopians lay.

 "I am glad that your pilot had the good Sense to radio ahead that you

 had wounded men on board. Rest assured that they will receive the best

 care available," Atalan Abou Sin promised as they were carried down to

 the waiting ambulance.

 Then the soldiers returned and began carrying the ammunition cases down

 the ramp. They were loaded neatly into the three-tonner. Within ten

 minutes Big Dolly's hold was bare and empty. A tarpaulin cover was roped

 down securely over the back of the loaded truck. An escort of heavily

 armed motorcyclists fell into formation around it, and then, with sirens

 wailing, the little convoy roared away.

 "Well, Sir Nicholas." Abou Sin held out his hand Courteously, and

 Nicholas took it with an air of resignation.

 am sorry to have taken you out of your way like this. I BMW

 know that you will be anxious to continue on your journey, so I will not

 detain you further. Is there anything I can do for you before you leave?

 Do you have sufficient fueV

 Nicholas glanced at Jannie, and he shrugged. "We have plenty of juice,

 Thank you, sir."

 Abou Sin turned back to Nicholas, "We are planning to build a special

 annexe to the museum at Luxor to house these artefacts of Pharaoh Mamose

 that you have returned to Egypt. In due course you will be receiving a

 personal slid invitation from President Mubarak to attend, as an

 honoured guest, the opening of that museum. Dr Al Simma, whom I am sure

 you know has been appointed the new Director of the Department of

 Antiquities, will be in charge of the museum. I am sure she will be

 delighted to review the exhibits with you when you come back." He bowed

 to Sapper and the two pilots.

 "Go with God," he said, and went down the ramp.

 Royan began to follow him, but Nicholas called softly after her.

 "Royanl' She froze, and then turned her head slowly and reluctantly to

 meet his eyes for the first time since they hadlanded.

 "I didn't deserve that," he said, and then with a stab of emotion he

 realized that she was weeping softly. Her lips quivered and the tears

 ran slowly down her cheeks.

 "I am sorry, Nicky," she whispered, "but you must have known that I am

 not a thief. It belongs to Egypt, not to US."

 "So everything that I thought there was between us was a lie?" he

 demanded remorselessly.

 "No!" she said. "I-' and then she broke off without finishing what she

 was going to say. She ran down the ramp into the sunlight to where the

 chauffeur was holding the back door of the limousine open for her. She

 slipped on to the seat beside Abou Sin without looking back, and the

 Cadillac pulled away and drove through the gate.

 "Let's get the hell out of here, before these Gyppos change their

 minds," said Jannie.

 "What a splendid idea,'said Nicholas bitterly.

 nce they were airborne again, Aswan Control cleared them for a direct

 flight northwards to the Mediterranean coast. The four of them, Jannie

 and Fred, Sapper and Nicholas, stayed together on the flight-deck and

 watched the long green snake of the Nile crawl along their right

 wingtip.

 They spoke very little during this long leg of the flight.

 Once Jannie said quietly, "So I can kiss my fee goodbye, I suppose?"

 "I didn't really come along for the money," said Sapper, "but it would

 have been nice to be paid. Baby needs new shoes."

 Does anybody want a cup of tea?" Nicholas asked, as though he had not

 heard.

 "That would be nice," said Jannie. "Not as nice as the sixty grand that

 you owe me, but nice anyway."

 They flew over the battlefield of El Alamein, and even from. twenty

 thousand feet they could pick out the twin monuments to the Allied and

 German dead. Then the blue of the sea stretched ahead of them.

 Nicholas waited until the Egyptian coast receded behind them and then he

 let out a long, soft sigh.

 ", ye of little faith," he accused them, "\'hen did I ever let you down?

 Everybody gets paid in full., They all stared at him long and hard, and

 then Jannie voiced their doubts. "How?" he asked.

 "Give me a hand, Sapper," Nicholas invited, and started down the

 staircase. Jannie could not control his curiosity and handed over the

 controls to Fred. He followed the two Englishmen down to the lavatory on

 the main deck.

 Sapper and Jannie watched from the doorway as Nicholas took the

 Leatherman tool from his pocket and lifted the cover of the chemical

 toilet. Jannie grinned as Nicholas started to work on the screws,

 holding the hidden panel in place. Big Dolly was a smugglers' aircraft,

 and these little modifications were evidence of the pains that Jannie

 and Fred had taken to adapt her to that role. There were a number of

 these hidey-holes cunningly uilt into the engine housings and other

 parts of the fuselage.

 lj When they had flown back from Libya, the Hannibal bronzes had reposed

 in the secret compartment behind this panel. The location of the panel

 in the back of the toilet made it highly unlikely that any follower of

 Islam would want to investigate such an unclean area.

 "So that's what you were doing in here for so long," Jannie laughed as

 Nicholas lifted out the panel. His grin faded as Nicholas reached into

 the space beyond and carefully drew out an extraordinary object. "My

 God, what is that?"

 "The blue war crown of ancient Egypt," said Nicholas.

 He handed it to Sapper. "Lay it on the bunk, but treat it carefully."

 He reached into the compartment again, "And this is the Nemes crown." He

 handed it to Jannie.

 "And this is the red and white crown of the two kingdoms. And this is

 the death-mask of Pharaoh Mamose.

 Last but not least, this is the ushabd of the scribe Taita." The relics

 lay on the fold-down bunk, and they stood and stared at them reverently.

 "I have helped you bring out stone friezes and little bronze statues,'

 said Jannie softly. "But notlTing like this before."

 "But," Sapper shook his head, "the ammunition crates the Gyppos

 offloaded at Aswan? What was in them?"

 "Five one'gallon bottles of chemical for the toilet," said Nicholas,

 "Plus half a dozen spare oxygen cylinders, just to make up weight."

 "You switched them." Sapper beamed at him. "But how the hell did you

 know that Royan was going to scupper us?"

 "She was right when she said I must have known she was no thief. The

 whole lark was out of character for her.

 She is," he searched for the correct description, ( much too upright and

 honest. Not at all like the present company."

 "Thanks for the compliment," said Jannie drily, "but she must have given

 you more reason than that to make you suspicious."

 "Yes, of course." Nicholas turned to him. "The first real inkling I had

 was when we came back from Ethiopia the first time, and she immediately

 pushed off to Cairo. I guessed she was up to something. But I was

 absolutely certain only when I learned that she had passed a message,

 through Tessay, to the Egyptian Embassy in Addis. It was clear then that

 she had alerted them to our return flight."

 "The perfidious little bitch,'Jannie guffawed.

 "Careful there!" said Nicholas stiffly. "She is a decent, honest and

 patriotic young woman, warm-hearted and-' "Well, well!" Jannie winked at

 Sapper. "Please excuse my slip."

 nly two of the great crowns of ancient Egypt were set out on the

 polished walnut conference table. Nicholas had placed them on the heads

 of two genuine Roman marble busts that he had borrowed from a dealer

 with whom he did regular business here in Zurich. He had drawn the

 blinds over the tenth story windows, and arranged the lighting to show

 the crowns to the best effect. The private conference room that he had

 hired for the occasion was in the Bank Leu building on Bahnhofstrasse.

 FT

 While he waited alone for the arrival of his invited guest, he reviewed

 his preparations and could find no fault with them. He went to the

 full-length mirror on one wall and tightened the knot of his old

 Sandhurst tie. The stitches had been removed from his chin. Mek Nimmur

 had done a first-rate . oh, and the scar was neat and clean.

 His suit had been made by his tailor in Savile Row, so it was in a muted

 chalk stripe and had been worn enough to have acquired just the right

 degree of casual bagginess. The only shiny items of his dress were the

 hand-made shoes from Lobb of St. James's Street.

 The intercom buzzed softly and Nicholas lifted the handset.

 "There is a Mr Walsh to see you, Sir Nicholas," said the receptionist at

 the desk in the bank lobby downstairs.

 "Please ask him to come up."

 Nicholas opened the door at the first ring and Walsh glowered at him

 from the threshold.

 "I hope you are not wasting my time, Harper. I have flown all the way

 from Fort Worth." It was only thirty hours since Nicholas had telephoned

 him at his ranch in Texas.

 Walsh must have jumped into his executive jet almost immediately to have

 got here so soon.

 "Not Harper. Quenton-Harper,'said Nicholas.

 "Okay then, Quenton-Harper. But cut the crap,'Walsh said angrily. "What

 have you got for me?"

 "I am also delighted to see you again, Mr Walsh." Nicholas stood aside.

 "Do come in."

 Walsh strode into the room. He was tall and roundshouldered, his jowls

 drooping and wrinkled and his nose beaky. With his hands clasped behind

 his back.he looked like a buzzard on a fence pole. Forbes magazine

 listed his net worth at 1.7 billion dollars.

 Two men followed him into the room, and Nicholas recognized both of

 them. The antiquarian world was very small and incestuous. One of them

 was the professor of

 ancient history at Dallas University. Walsh had endowed the chair. The

 other was one of the most respected and knowledgeable antiques dealers

 in the United States.

 Walsh stopped so suddenly that they both ran into him from behind, but

 he did not seem to notice.

 "Son of a gun!" he said softly, and his eyes lit with the flames of

 fanaticism. "Are those fakes?"

 "As fake as the Hannibal bronzes and the Hammurabi has-relief you bought

 from me," said Nicholas.

 Walsh approached the exhibits as though they were the cathedral

 communion plate and he the archbishop.

 "These must be fresh," he whispered. "Otherwise I would have known about

 them."

 "Fresh out of the ground," Nicholas confirmed. "You are the first one to

 have seen them."

 "Mamose!" Walsh read the cartouche on the uraeus of the Nemes crown.

 "Then the rumours are true. You have opened a new tomb."

 "If you can call nearly four thousand years old new." Walsh and his

 advisers gathered around the table, pale and speechless with shock.

 "Leave us, Harper,'said Walsh. "I will call you when I am ready to talk

 to you again."

 "Sir Nicholas," he prompted the American. Nicholas knew that he had the

 upper hand now.

 "Please leave us, Sir Nicholas," Walsh pleaded.

 An hour later Nicholas sauntered back into the conference room. The

 three men were seated around the table as though they could not bear to

 be parted from the two great crowns. Walsh nodded at his minions and

 they stood up and obediently but reluctantly filed from the room.

 As soon as the door closed, Walsh asked brusquely, "How much?"

 "Fifteen million US dollars,'Nicholas replied.

 "That's seven and a half mill each."

 "No, that's fifteen mill each. Thirty million the two'.

 Walsh reeled in his chair. "Are you crazy, or something?"

 "There are those who think so,'Nicholas smiled.

 "Split the difference," said Walsh. "Twenty-two and a half."

 Nicholas shook his head. "Not negotiable."

 "Be reasonable, Harper!' "Reasonability has never been one of my vices.

 Sorry Walsh stood up. "I am sorry too. Perhaps next time, Harper."

 He clasped his hands behind his back and stalked to the door. As he

 opened it, Nicholas called after him.

 "Mr Walsh!'

 He turned back eagerly. "Yes?"

 "Next time you may call me Nicholas, and I shall call you Peter, as old

 friends."

 "Is that all you have to say?"

 "Of course. What else is there?" Nicholas looked puzzled.

 "Damn you," said Walsh, and came back to the table.

 He dropped into his chair. "Damn you to hell and back!" He sighed and

 pursed his lips, and then asked, "Okay.

 How do you want it?"

 "Two irrevocable bank drafts. Each for fifteen million." Walsh picked up

 the intercom, and spoke into it.

 "Please ask Monsieur Montfleuri, your chief accountant, to come up here"

 he ordered dolefully.

 Nicholas sat at his desk in his study at Quenton Park. He stared at the

 panelling that covered the wall facing him. Although the panelling had

 originally come from one of the Catholic abbeys dissolved by Henry VIII

 in 1536 and had been bought by his grandfather almost a hundred years

 ago, it was newly installed in this setting.

 He reached under the top of his desk and pressed the hidden button of

 the electronic control. A section of the panelling slid smoothly and

 silently aside to reveal the armoured plate glass of the display cabinet

 built into the wall behind it. At the same time the spotlights in the

 ceiling lit automatically, and their beams fell on the contents of the

 cabinet. The spots had been placed so that there was no reflection from

 the glass window to distract the eye, and the beams brought out the full

 glory of the double crown and the golden death-mask of Mamose.

 He poured whisky into a crystal glass, and while he sipped it he

 savoured the thrill of ownership. But after a while he knew there was

 something missing. He picked up the Taita ushabd from the desk in front

 of him, and spoke to it as though he were addressing the subject

 himself.

 "You knew the real meaning of loneliness, didn't you?" he asked softly.

 "You knew what it was like to love someone you could never have."

 He set down the statuette and picked up the telephone. He dialled an

 international number and it rang three times before a man answered in

 Arabic.

 "This is the office of the Director of Antiquities. How may I help you?"

 "Is Dr Al Simma available?" he asked in the same language.

 "Please hold the line. I am putting you through!

 "Dr Al Simma." Her voice sent an electric thrill down his spine.

 "Royan," he said, and he could sense her shock in the long silence that

 followed.

 "You!" she whispered. 11 did not think I would ever hear from you

 again."

 "I just rang to congratulate you on your appointment."

 "You cheated me," she said. "You switched the contents of three of the

 crates."

 "As a wise man once said, friends are the easiest to cheat they don't

 expect it. You, of all people, should know the truth of that, Royan."

 "You have sold them, of course. I have heard a rumour that Peter Walsh

 paid twenty million." 4- "Thirty million," Nicholas corrected her. "But

 only for the blue and the Nemes. Even as I speak to you, the red and

 white crown and the death-mask repose before me."

 "So now you can pay off your Lloyd's insurance losses.

 You must be very relieved."

 "You won't believe this, but the Lloyd's syndicate on which I am a Name

 has come up with much better results than were forecast. I wasn't really

 broke after all."

 "As my mother would say, "Bully for you."' "Half of it has already gone

 to Mek Nimmur and Tessay."

 "At least that is a good cause." Her tone tingled with hostility. "Is

 that all you called to tell me?"

 "No. There's something else that might amuse you.

 Your favourite author, Wilbur Smith, has agreed to write the story of

 our discovery of the tomb. He is calling the book The Seventh ScroU. It

 should be published early next year. I will send you a signed copy."

 "I hope he gets his facts straight this time," she said drily.

 They were both silent for a while, before Royan broke it "I have a

 mountain of work in front of me. If there is nothing else on your mind-'

 "As a matter of fact there is."

 "Yes?"

 "I would like you to marry me."

 He heard her draw breath sharply, and then after a long pause she asked

 softly, "Why would you want anything so unlikely?"

 "Because I have come to realize how much I love you." She was silent

 again, and then she said in a small voice, "All right."

 "What do you mean, "All right'T

 "I mean, all right, I will marry you."

 "Why would you agree to anything so unlikely?" he asked.

 "Because I have come to realize, despite everything, how much I love you

 back."

 "There is an Air Egypt flight from Heathrow at 5.30 this afternoon. If I

 drive like fury, I may just make it. But it gets me into Cairo rather

 late."

 "I will be waiting at the airport, no matter how late."

 "I am on my way!" Nicholas hung up, and went to the door, but suddenly

 he turned back and picked up the the Taita ushabti from the desk.

 "Come on, you old rogue." He laughed triumphantly.

 "You are going home, as a wedding gift."

 EPILOGUE

 which, -in the mauve evening.

 They strolled along the corn Below them the Nile ran on eternally green

 and slow and inscrutable, disposing of the secrets of the ages. At the

 bank, below the ruins of the temple of point on the river once the great

 barge of Pharaoh Ramesses at Luxor, where Mamose had docked with Taita

 and his beloved mistress upon her prow, they paused for a while and

 leaned upon ining wall. They gazed out to the coping of the stone reta

 the darkening hills across the river. the funerary temple Time had long

 since obliterated other' kings had and the great causeway of Mamose, and

 ver the foundations. No man built their own monuments red the tomb that

 he had never occupied, had ever discover ted close to the secret opening

 but it must have been situa gh which Duraid Al Simma. had entered in the

 rock thrOu ered there the scrolls of Taita the tomb of Lostris and

 discover in their alabaster jars.

 silent in the gathering dusk, the'

 All four of them were firm friendship. They watched a cruise shared

 silence the tourists clustered upon boat pass coming upriver wi her

 decks, still agog after ten days of voyaging from Cairo on these

 enigmatic waters, pointing out to each other the great pylons and

 engraved walls of Ramesses temple, their ntial in the hush of th all and

 inconseque excited voices sm desert evening slipped her arm through

 Tessay's and Then Royan alked on ahead. They made a lovely pair, the two

 women wand honey-skinned, their laughter gay slim and young ads ruffling

 in the sultry Puffs Of and sweet, their dark he and Mek immur Saharan

 air off the desert. Nichola followed them, each watching his own woman

 fondly as they bantered.

 "So now you are one of the fatcats, in Addis, you, the hard man, the

 bush fighter, you are now a politician. I can hardly believe it, mek.,

 "There is a time to fight and a time to make peace." Mek was serious for

 a moment, but Nicholas mocked him " 11 lightly.

 "I see that now that you are a politician you have to practise your

 cliches and your platitudes." Nicholas punched his arm lightly. "But how

 did you swing it, Mek?

 >From dirty shufta bandit to Minister of Defence in one mighty bound."

 "The money from the sale of the blue crown helped a little. It gave me

 the clout I needed," Mek admitted, "but they knew they could never hold

 a democratic election without me as a candidate. In the end they were

 eager to have me on board."

 "The only quibble I have with the deal is that you handed all that

 lovely hard-won lolly over to them," Nicholas mourned. "Hell, Mek,

 fifteen million iron men don't come along every day."

 "I didn't hand it to them," Mek corrected him. "It was paid into the

 state coffers, where I can keep an eye on what eventually happens to

 it."

 "Still, fifteen mill is a lot of bread," Nicholas sighed.

 "Try as I might, I cannot approve of such extravagance, but I must admit

 -Lat I do approve of your choice of running mate in your bid for the

 Presidency in the coming elections."

 They both looked at Tessay's slim back and bush of springing black curls

 as she strode along ahead of them on shapely brown legs under the white

 skirt.

 "I may not approve of you as Minister of Defence, but I can see that she

 makes a very charming Minister of Culture and Tourism in the interim

 government."

 "She will make an even more impressive Vice-President when we win next

 August," Mek predicted easily, and at that moment Royan looked back over

 her shoulder at them.

 "We'll cross the road here," she called. Nicholas had been so engrossed

 that he had not realized they had come up opposite to the new annexe to

 the Luxor Museum of Antiquities. The two women waited for them to catch

 up and then they separated and each of them took the arm of her own

 husband.

 As they crossed the wide boulevard, threading their way between the slow

 clip-clopping horse-drawn gharries, Nicholas leaned down and brushed her

 cheek with his lips. "You are really quite delectable, Lady Quenton

 Harper."

 "You make me blush, Sir Nicky," she giggled. "You know that I am still

 not used to being called that."

 They reached the other side of the thoroughfare and paused before the

 entrance to the museum annexe. The sloping roof was supported by tall

 hypostyle columns, miniature copies of those at the temple of Karnak.

 The walls were made of massive blocks of yellow sandstone, and the lines

 of the building were clean and simple. It was very impressive.

 Royan led them to the entrance doors of the museum, which was not yet

 open to the public. The President was flying up on Monday for the

 official opening, and Mek and Tessay were to be the official

 representatives of the Ethiopian government at the opening ceremony. The

 guards at the door saluted Royan respectfully and hurried to open the

 heavy brass-bound doors to let them pass.

 The interior was hushed and cool, the air conditioning arefully

 regulated to preserve the ancient exhibits.

 The display cases were built into the sandstone walls, and the lighting

 was subtle and artful. it showed off the wondrous treasures of the

 Mamose funerary hoard to full advantage. The exhibits, arranged in

 ascending order of beauty and archaeological importance, sparkled and

 glowed in their nests of blue satin, the royal blue of the Pharaoh

 Mamose.

 The four visitors were quiet and reverential as they passed, their

 voices soft and subdued as they asked questions of Royan. Wonder and

 amazement held them enthralled. They paused at the entrance of the final

 chamber, the one that housed the most extraordinary and valuable items

 in this glittering collection.

 "To think that this is only a small part of what treasure still remains

 in Mamose's tomb, sealed by the waters of the Dandera river," whispered

 Tessay. "It's so exciting that I can hardly wait for the adventure to

 continue."

 "I forgot to tell you!" Mek exclaimed, and it was clear from his

 triumphant grin that he had not forgotten at all, but had been merely

 waiting for the appropriate moment to impart his news. "The Smithsonian

 have confirmed their grant to redarn the Dandera and reopen the tomb. It

 will be a joint venture between the Institution and the governments of

 our two countries, Egypt and Ethiopia."

 "That is wonderful news," Royan exclaimed delightedly.

 "The tomb itself will be one of the great archaeological sites of the

 world, and a huge source of tourist revenue for Ethiopia-'

 "Not so fast," Mek interrupted her. "There is one condition that they

 stipulate."

 Royan looked crestfallen. "What is their condition?"

 "They insist that you, Royan, take'on the job of director of the

 project."

 She clapped her hands with delight, and then put on a mock-serious

 expression. "However, I have my own condition before I accept," she

 said.

 "And what is that?" Mek demanded.

 "That I am able to appoint my own assistant on the dig-' MW

 Mek let out a roar of laughter. "We all know who that will be." And he

 clapped Nicholas on the back. "Just make sure that none of the artefacts

 cling to his sticky little fingers!" he warned.

 Royan hugged Nicholas around the waist. "He has completely reformed, I

 will now give you final proof of that." Still clinging to her husband,

 she led them into the last chamber.

 Mek and Tessay stopped in the entrance, silent with awe as they stared

 at the contents of the free-standing display case of annoured glass in

 the centre of the room, The red and white crown of the united kingdoms

 of upper and lower Egypt stood side by side with the glistening golden

 death-mask of Pharaoh Mamose in the brilliant light of the overhead

 spotlights.

 At last Mek Nimmur recovered from the shock.

 Advancing slowly to the front panel of the display case, he stooped to

 read aloud the brass plate fixed to the front of it: "'The Permanent

 loan of Sir Nicholas and Lady Quenton, Harper."'

 He turned back to stare at Nicholas incredulously.

 "And you were the one who picked on me for turning over the money from

 the sale of the blue crown!" he accused him. "How could you bring

 yourself to give up your share of the loot, Nicholas?"

 "It wasn't easy," Nicholas admitted with a sigh, "but I was faced with a

 delicate ultimatum from a certain party who is not standing a million

 miles away from us at this very moment."

 "Don't feel too sorry for the poor boy," Royan laughed.

 "He still has a big lump of Peter Walsh's money tucked away in

 Switzerland, the proceeds of the sale of the Nemes crown. I was unable

 to talk him into handing everything over."

 "Enough of these public disclosures of my domestic affairs, said

 Nicholas firmly. "The sun is long gone, and it's whisky time. I think I

 saw a bottle of Laphroaig behind the bar at the hotel, Let's go and find

 out if I was mistaken." He took Royan's arm and led her away, and the

 other two followed closely, laughing delightedly at his discomfort.