* Bahariya Oasis - this was one of those strange PTL coincidences. When this chapter was written in the fall of 1998, we chose Bahariya as a logical midday rest stop based on the probable overland route from Cairo to Kufra. Then in June 1999, about 6 mos. after we first posted the story, the news was made public of the discovery of an enormous Egyptian necropolis containing thousands of mummies beneath Bahariya near the village of Bawiti, aka Bawati. I must admit that despite the logic involved, the coincidence was a bit eerie. For more info about this fantastic find click on this link: the Discovery of the Valley�of the Golden Mummies at Bahariya Oasis.Chapter 19
Hulwan
As the eastern sky lighted and the nearby steel mill began belching its smoke, the trilling call of the muezzin echoed across Cairo's rooftops. "Al-salatu khayr min al-nawm.... Prayer is better than sleep," he announced. In a dark corner of the warehouse, three men knelt on their prayer rugs and touched their foreheads to the floor.
In the back of the old army truck, Johnny Boyle lay snoring with a blanket over his head, while Kym, wide awake, curled on the truck's worn front seat. Even through the jacket she used for a pillow, it smelled of age, oil, and dust. She stretched out her senses for the sound of a distant footstep.
Finally, Kym heard the soft scuff of a shoe. She pushed herself up as the door creaked and Derek walked in. She slid out of the truck and ran to her husband. "Are you all right?" she asked, looking him up and down. "I shouldn't even speak to you... I've been worried out of my mind."
Sloan sauntered over with his hands shoved deep into his pants pockets. "Nice of you to join us, Mr. Rayne," he said icily, in a tone that he had once used on a sixteen-year-old newcomer to Balliol.
"Give it a rest," Derek snapped, half tempted to add and it's Dr. Rayne.
"Well... you were the one who left your wife to finish your job," William commented. "Poor thing... I doubt she slept at all."
Kym gritted her teeth, but kept her mouth shut. Poor thing! She fumed at the thought that Sloan was trying to use her to take an extra swipe or two at her husband. She could do that for herself... thank you very much.
Derek had come in dragging, but at this new challenge Kym felt his back straighten and his jaw tighten. "And I'm sure you did all you could to help her, right?" he asked with a twinge of sarcasm. "Or were you too busy playing the proper administrator... shuffling papers?"
William, his back as stiff as Derek's, and his jaw just as tight, responded, "I was doing the other work you left behind in your little huff." His voice was precise... low with barely controlled anger.
"Oh? I take it I'm supposed to do everything, Mr. Sloan?"
By this time, Johnny had awakened and had crawled from the back of the truck. "Oh... shit," Kym heard him mutter as he realized the confrontation was continuing into day two.
"No, but your fair share would be nice."
In the corner, the three tribesmen, whispering amongst themselves, rolled up their prayer rugs. Sloan waved them over. "These are the drivers," he explained. "This is Safwad," he said, indicating the eldest of the three, a stocky man with curly salt and pepper hair. "...and this is his brother, Daud, and his son, Ali. Gentlemen, this is Dr. Derek Rayne."
Ali, a tall, thin youth of about sixteen, translated for his father and uncle. Then all gave the bow and gesture of formal greeting, which Derek returned with a quiet, "Assalamu alaikum."
He then turned to Ali and said, "Please convey our apologies to your father and uncle. Our behavior during your prayers was deplorable. My... friend... and I are having some private difficulties that I fear have a tendency to become a bit public at the wrong moment."
Ali again translated. Both older men then smiled slightly and gave a small nod of the head. Kym could see in their eyes that they were appraising her husband. She smiled to herself. She sensed that Derek's apology had hit the mark. As she had seen so many times before, he had known just what to say and how to say it.
Then he turned and seemed to notice his wife for the first time. "Converting, are we?" he asked with a half-smile.
"Islamic sensibilities... for the moment," she replied, adjusting her printed head scarf.
"Just so long as you don't take to the veil as well. I like looking at my wife's face," he quipped as he gave her hand a quick squeeze. "If everything's ready, we'd better get on the road," he added.
"Derek," William said, "learn these." He slapped the younger man in the chest with a dozen or more manila file folders. "Word for word... nothing less will be acceptable."
Bridling at the professorial tone, the young precept's eyebrow rose in defiance. He glanced down at the folders, but said nothing.
< < + > >
Kym allowed her mind to drift as they drove north on the wide avenue called Corneish El Nil, toward Sharia Salem, the street that led to the Giza Bridge. Off to her left, the broad, eternal Nile, painted orange by the rising sun, meandered toward the Mediterranean. She wondered if that was how it had looked when it had flowed with the blood of Moses' plague.
"Liefje," said Derek. "I'm sorry about last night. I had to leave... or I'd have killed him," he quietly explained. "Did you get any sleep?"
"Some," she lied. "You had us all worried... you were gone over six hours."
"I know," he admitted. "I got a little turned around," he said sheepishly, returning lie for lie. He glanced at the files lying on the dashboard. "Do you think you can drive for a while after we pass Giza. Traffic should lighten once the Pyramids are behind us.... I need to study those files a bit."
"Sure," Kym replied hesitantly, "but only after we get away from traffic. I've only driven on the right once... then it was automatic... not stick shift." Her experience with British made Land Rovers was non-existent, and she felt odd just riding as a passenger on the "wrong" side.
Soon their small convoy was trapped in the long line of tourist buses already headed toward the monumental complex. "I'd forgotten how close the Pyramids are to Cairo," Kym commented as she gazed at the immense structures. "The city's almost swallowed them."
Ahead Safwad blew the Jeep's horn and shouted some choice Arabic invective at one of the unofficial tour guides, whose string of camels was blocking the highway. Kym chuckled. "The camels rank higher on the evolutionary scale," she commented.
At last they broke free of the congestion and were headed southwest through open desert along Route 341, a recently paved road that followed an ancient, long dead branch of the Nile. Derek pulled off onto the shoulder and, signaling that everything was OK, waved the others by.
As Kym slipped in behind the wheel, she said, "I hope I don't strip the gears... this is all backwards." Actually, she hoped that she didn't crash the four-wheel-drive... in reality, she had never driven that much at all until she came to California. Why drive in New York, when you could so easily hop the subway?
Cautiously, Kym pulled back onto the asphalt and soon fell in behind the two trucks, driven by Daud and Ali. She glanced over at her husband, who had already opened the first file. It was going to be a long, hot, boring day, and, with the Pyramids fading behind them, the desert, now in full sunlight, had begun to assume a monotonous beige.
* * *
"Kym was a nervous wreck last night," said Sloan as Derek waved the Land Rover by. "Is she always like that?"
Boyle chuckled without a hint of humor. "You ain't seen nothing yet. I was surprised she didn't go searching for him, or make us go." Boyle glanced in the side mirror to see the other Rover pull back onto the blacktop. "Don't you think you were carrying on a bit much about that damned knife?" he asked.
Sloan's thin lips gave a crooked smile. "Yes... and completely intended... I assure you," he admitted. "Alicia Summers was killed in Egypt.... It's always hard for Derek to come back here. I'm giving him something else to think about."
Shifting gears, Johnny chuckled in amazement. "You are an unmitigated bastard," he said. "What you're doing is putting him in a rotten mood."
"He was already there," said William. "He's furious because he didn't get his own way this time... we came along... and, frankly, it's wearing more than a little thin."
* * *
Kym glanced over at her husband, still immersed in the files. She didn't know how he could study them on the road. The only way she had ever been able to read and avoid getting carsick was to have music playing. The silence, broken only by the hum of the engine, was beginning to antagonize her nerves. She would have turned on the radio, but she was already sick to death of the bagpipey Middle Eastern music. God, for a tape deck!
"Derek," she said, at last. "What if we just keep on going... not look back?"
"It's a nice thought," he replied without looking up, "but this road doesn't go anywhere else. Besides, you know we can't."
"Why?" Kym asked seriously. "The Legacy will survive without you... you have Luna and the museum that always need more of your time. Wouldn't you like a normal life... with me... and maybe a family, if we're lucky."
Derek raised his head to look out the window at a slow moving train off to his left. Carrying ore, it was bound for the colossal Hulwan steelworks, which he had circled during his midnight wanderings. Finally, he turned.
"My path was decided a long time ago," he said. "I didn't ask to be thrown into the battle, but I was... long before I was ready." He looked down to toy with the precept's ring he wore on his right hand. His father's last action had been to press this gold signet with the blue oval into his hand. "The burden is now yours," a dying Winston Rayne had told his fifteen-year-old son on that rain drenched night in Peru. "Now Fate has tossed Tanit, or whatever, into my lap," he continued.
Feeling those hypnotic, hazel eyes fixed upon her face, Kym glanced out the corner of her eye at him. "Then you believe in Fate?" she questioned.
"Yes, and no," the precept explained. "I believe that we have the freedom to choose between the light and dark... and each decision we make... no matter how trivial... takes us a step one way or the other.
"My father once said something to the effect that Fate doesn't come crashing down on a person no matter what they do... Fate comes crashing down only if they do nothing... but, I suppose, I do have a fatalistic streak... a soldier's fatalism. Otherwise, how else could any of us do what we do?"
He shifted his gaze to the desert's sand and scrub for a moment, then resumed his study of the papers in his lap. Kym knew the conversation, such as it was, had ended. Twenty minutes later she glanced over again to see her husband fast asleep.
< < + > >
Temple of Fire
"He comes, my love."
< < + > >
Route 341
After a couple of hours, the convoy stopped to refuel at a small resthouse, where Derek took over the wheel again. The day was already beginning to heat up. As the road narrowed and worsened, Sloan's voice came over the CB. "Let's stop for a few hours at Bawati.... We're starting to hit the hot of the day."
Kym pulled a ragged guidebook from the Rover's side pocket. "Bawati," she said. "It's a village at Bahariya Oasis*. There's a Roman spring there... and... an actual hotel... with a real shower. Do you think?..." she asked, leaving the thought hang.
A half-hour later, Kym felt her excitement rise as they topped the scarp and began their descent into the Bahariya depression. In the distance the dark mounds of the Black Desert protruded through the yellow sands. Below small, green plots of wheat, date palms, and olive trees dotted the shallow basin.
"How low the mighty have fallen," she murmured to herself... excited at the thought of a bath.
< < + > >
Bawati
Derek stretched his long body out on the bed. Above, a ceiling fan twirled, giving some slight relief from the heat. He recalled, to his surprise, that this was the first time he'd lain down since San Francisco. God! It felt good. He stretched, wiggled his toes, and smiled as he listened to Kym singing and splashing in the shower. "You'd better hurry, Liefje," he shouted. He could envision her red hair frothing with white suds. "Get the soap out of your hair... the shower's on a timer. If it runs out, you'll be rinsing that bird's nest in the Roman baths," he joked.
* * *
"Honey," said Kym, as she emerged from the bathroom, toweling her hair, "your turn." She shook her snoring husband's foot. Nothing... fast asleep. "Derek." She shook it again and started to pull off his sock, his rather smelly sock. "Derek," she said again as she crawled on top of him. Suddenly, he grabbed her and she was under him before she realized what had happened. She screamed with surprise and delight.
"Absolutely not," she said firmly. "I might look available, but I'm off limits to someone who smells as bad as you do. Go shower... this is our last real chance for a while."
He ran his hands through her wet, tangled hair. "I love your hair," Derek murmured, burying his face in its curls. "It smells so good."
"Love my hair?" Kym retorted. "Then why do you, and Johnny, make such fun of it? You're always calling it some stupid name, like "mop," or "bird's nest," or "rat's nest," she teased. "Why can't I be that alluring woman with the cascading red tresses?"
Derek's hands slid down to push open her robe.
In her mind, she could feel his desire. "No!" she said. "Shower... now!" She rubbed her cheek. "And get rid of those itchy whiskers, or you haven't a hope."
* * *
Kym placed her husband's shaving kit and fresh clothes in the bathroom while he showered. She quickly brushed and braided her hair, then she slipped on a clean khaki shirt and cargo pants. With her skin already feeling taut and burned, she smoothed on an extra dollop of moisturizing sun screen. She'd have to make sure Derek used the sun screen too, or he'd burn like a beached whale. When he finally opened the bathroom door, Kym was putting the finishing touches on her head scarf.
"That did feel good," he declared. "Not quite as good as what I had in mind, but a close second."
A firm rap sounded. "Yes?" said Derek, opening the door.
"We're leaving in fifteen minutes," Sloan announced. He looked his younger, cleaner colleague up and down. "Amazing what money can buy even in Hell's half-acre," he commented, his voice as cold as dry ice.
Derek shut the door in the senior precept's face.
"Sweetie," Kym said as she laced up her boots. "How long is this stupid behavior going to go on?"
"As long as he wants," was the bitter reply.
| CHAPTER 20 |
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