Star of Egypt Read online

  Willis smiled, apparently relieved. “It’s novel, you have to give it that. Yes.” He stood up and rubbed his hands together. “Get Shauna in here as soon as you find her. I do so hope she’s not checked into some scenic Washington hotel with Mr. Rademacher. There’ll be time enough to waste after we try to impress the entire country.”

  Maggie smiled, bemused. Mentions of sex, even oblique ones, were so far outside the Professor’s normal retinue that the abrupt mention now seemed calculated to startle her. It did.

  It also amused her in a more personal way, since she was certain the man who called himself Ben Rademacher could not possibly be shacked up in a hotel with Shauna Ramsey.

  Hamilton Winship glared at the digital clock on the desk, wondering where in hell Ben Slayton could be, and fathoming reasons for the failure of his check-in call to come through on schedule—reasons that, he hoped, could be utilized to get Slayton to be just a bit more punctual in the future. The man just did not have enough respect, or fear, wherever authority was concerned.

  On the other hand, he thought, Ben Slayton, for all his unorthodox procedures, was infinitely preferable to the programmed personalities of the gray-suited Secret Service agents who stood on a perfect crescent across from him. The faceless gray hoarde, Slayton would call them. He would not have been far wrong. The Secret Service men were singularly humorless.

  Specifically, the function of these men was the protection of the President. To Winship, their attendant functions seemed mere niceties, or elaborations on their basic purpose. Of course they served as guards—or walking bullet shields—for the President’s family as well, plus the Vice President, his family, and anyone else the Chief Executive cared to designate as worthy of protection. But grouped together in the sights of a psycho with a burp gun, Winship thought, there was no doubt as to who the Secret Service men would jump to the protection of first, not since that little media incident in 1963.

  The men fanned out before him on the opposite side of the desk were assigned to duty relating to the safety of the President during the opening of the Seth-Olet tour, and Winship had planned on Slayton’s briefing support. Now, without Slayton handling the details, he would have to wing it.

  “Before you is a map of the building itself, with the layout of the exhibit components outlined in blue. The only doors you must concern yourselves with are indicated in red. The others will be locked, and will not count as useable accesses.” Their attention was dutifully riveted on the tripod stand which featured the maps and diagrams.

  Winship plowed ahead. “Television cameras will be placed here and here,” he said, tapping the blueprint. “Seats here. Your stations are indicated, but I want to make a few points about mobility. You are, of course, to be as unobtrusive as possible, but especially careful in this case because of the cameras—this is not your usual press conference or soapbox situation. There is the possibility that the TV crews may try to make a big deal out of the security after we screen them—media people never like being searched. We must press home the urgency of this without being anything they might interpret as oppressive.

  “We are the only ones who must be aware of the possibility that Rashid Haman may attempt to infiltrate himself into the scenario. We must be prepared to act before anything is allowed to even begin to happen. To this end I’ve had Ben Slayton micro-comb the components of the exhibit itself. This is entirely separate from the screening you men will perform tomorrow morning. I will, of course, be in the audience during the presentation. Mr. Slayton may not. The one thing I must emphasize is that, should he appear suddenly, or perform actions that may seem confusing or threatening to any of you men—” He broke off in order to fix the men with his eyes, to punch home what he knew to be a crucial point. “—you must in no way interfere with Ben Slayton. Regardless of what he does. He has worked on this case exclusively for the past week. His actions—or whatever—may mean the difference between mayhem and stability. If he gives orders, you are to follow them. If he knocks any of you on your ass, you’re to hug the floor. If he is hampered in any way from performing tasks which may close up the Rashid Haman file—and believe me, gentlemen, if there is to be a climax to this little passion play it will come with the opening of the exhibit, if not before—then I shall personally assign the offender to an Icelandic coding post. Ben Slayton has my utmost trust. He knows more about the case than anyone. And the President has already advised me that a delay or rescheduling is impossible. He will not, and I quote him directly, be intimidated by terrorists. So, the boundaries of your jobs are fairly well set. Questions?”

  The line was military and unmoving. Winship felt he had done his best to get the point across in a way that was urgent without seeming superfluous.

  “Mr. Slayton was, as you know, due to attend this briefing,” he added. “He is still exclusively involved in the case and could not attend. Each of you men will review your individual assignments with me tomorrow morning. That’s all.”

  He waved the men out of the office. His eyes fixed on the closing door, and then he turned back to the window, to observe Washington.

  “And if Mr. Slayton has gotten himself killed,” he said to the empty room, “we shift to plan B. But God help us all if we have to.”

  Shauna Ramsey stood amid the wreckage of her hotel suite, fighting to convince the police officers flanking her that she was dealing with a simple case of breaking and entering. Or more properly, entering and breaking, taking into account the junkyard through which she and the investigating officers had sifted, discovering nothing had been removed from the rooms. The display told her—though she neglected to mention this to the police—that Benjamin Slayton, nee Rademacher, was somehow involved.

  And the knowledge, along with the impression that Ben was either injured or dead as a result of the freewheeling wreckage before her, was making her slightly sick.

  The hotel manager, an effete type in a sky-blue leisure suit, was making a show for the police of effortlessly transferring Shauna to a fresh room, neglecting to ask her whether this was, in fact, what she desired. The taller of the two officers was devoting his attention almost exclusively to the deep V of. Shauna’s blouse and the suggested delights bound within, or trying valiantly to peer up the slit in her skirt as she bent to straighten or retrieve her possessions from the floor.

  Far worse, his partner was handling the entire affair with the air of someone who has far better things to do than deal with “hysterical females.” He sighed a lot, did his best to appear exasperated, and generally hinted that his time was being squandered.

  Shauna wanted very much to see Ben Slayton alive and intact, and the indifferent behavior to which she was being subjected began to grate on her nerves.

  “Look, ma’am, there’s really not a whole lot that the department can do for you until we get down and file and produce suspects and that sorta thing. If you ask me, I think what we got here is just a simple case of vandalism. Teenagers, you know? Tourists are easy marks for ’em.”

  She wheeled and spoke with a slow menace that pulsed from her like the heat from a redly glowing coal. “Pay attention to me, because I’m only going to say this once. Watch my lips instead of my chest and you might understand.” Her accent became more pronounced as her anger rose—an international trait richly exemplified. “I am not a tourist. I am a guest in your country. I am not a ‘ma’am.’ I hold degrees you probably never would have heard of even if you had stayed in school past the sixth grade, which I severely doubt.” She stabbed a finger in the cop’s direction, and he recoiled.

  “You and your incompetent bully-boy friend have wasted almost an hour of my time. It is clear that between the pair of you, you anticipate taking no action save to embarrass me with your stupidity and your drooling sidelong glances. I did not request you—this man did.” She motioned toward the manager, whose head came bobbing up like an Irish setter on-scent. “Deal with him. You offend me.” She stepped over the broken remains of the divider door and stalked
from the room.

  Unfortunately, vindicating herself in this manner did nothing to ease her anxiety concerning Slayton. And if she did not get back to the exhibit hall, and back to preparations for the opening, soon, Willis would crucify her. Her chance to prove herself the asset to the tour that Maggie had always suggested she might be would be neatly blown.

  There was no place for her to look for him. The questions flooded in on her, unbidden, and she found herself alone. Foremost among the things etching her curiosity was the source of the figurine she had pieced together from the fragments discovered on the bedroom floor. At first she had thought it to be a gag gift of some kind from Ben—since it was obviously a fake or a duplicate. But where would he have gotten it in the first place?

  Shauna had never seen the figurine before. Rameses—Ramsey? Perhaps it was a subtle joke. But the thing was definitely not authentic, and even if it was, to filch it from the exhibit would get everybody in trouble. It was the sort of thing Shauna would never even consider doing, since she had access on a twenty-four hour basis anyway.

  But who would? she thought. Then she thought of the cobra, and of the night of terror, and of the unnerving discoveries that suggested clandestine dangers for people who asked too many questions.

  She wanted to know where Ben was, if only to stop fearing for his life.

  15

  The first thing Slayton was aware of was the heat. It seemed to be very warm, wherever he was.

  There was also a low hissing, and sundry noises that his semiconscious mind categorized as “industrial sounds.”

  Before his closed eyes, the sea of blackness spread out to an imperceptible horizon line. Inky, viscous waves ebbed and flowed according to a rhythm linked directly with the pain. Suddenly, his brain informed him that he was coming up to consciousness, and his pain center added, fatalistically, that he was not going to enjoy waking up very much.

  Sounds became sharp and distinct, putting his teeth on edge. A throbbing, persistent ache localized into what felt like a cue ball sutured beneath the skin of his forehead. His back, his arms, were as stiff as basalt, and pulsed with pain. It felt as if his entire back was on fire. Hot.

  Ben Slayton opened one eye. Pain seemed to flood in through the opening, eagerly filling remote crannies, causing as much varied agony as possible. His eyes watered up, and he blinked to clear them in the dim, gray light. They ran clean, and he saw indefinite clouds of thin white smoke billowing up to his left. The heat registered again, sharply this time, causing him to clench his teeth and suck air. His eyebrows were brimmed up with sweat, and perspiration trickled in fat beads all over his body. He could feel sweat dripping from his chin. The hissing and clanking became louder, more abrasive.

  There was a man with a gun watching Slayton. Slayton made him out before the man was aware he had come to. Calling in his years of endurance training to fight the pain and the burning sensations, Slayton studied the man through slitted eyes. Sweat drops continued to blur his vision. The thin clouds of wispy smoke seemed to be live steam.

  The man was an American, Slayton realized, though not one of the trio he had introduced himself to during the fracas in Shauna’s suite. Those men, however, had apparently made their presence felt by pummelling him well after the Rameses VI figurine had conveniently dispatched his consciousness. They were cowards; they worked best with subjects who could not fight back.

  He had not yet stopped to wonder how he was maintained in such a position. His legs and knees felt numb. He was being supported—that had something to do with the burning heat presently baking his back and arms. Gravity, however, was doing its best to drag him down to the floor and to sleep. His feet were not touching the floor. Without looking, he angled his toes downward, and by straining for distance, they managed brief contact with the surface below.

  Slayton continued to struggle mentally, to keep his restored awareness a secret from the man with the gun as long as possible. He was sitting some fifteen feet away, cocked back in a folding chair, his attention sporadically absorbed by a magazine which he held folded double. Yes, even through the steam Slayton could tell the man was an American. The magazine was in English. The gun was a military-issue Colt .45 automatic, and jutted from a brown leather holster nestled beneath the man’s left armpit. He was stripped down to a skintight black T-shirt, and Slayton traced the brown strings of leather holding the shoulder holster in concert with the man’s musculature. His coat was draped behind the folding chair.

  The hissing was indistinct to Slayton, like the sound of distant hydraulic brakes. He kept his eyes on the man in the distance, and, satisfied that he might get away with turning his head, did so. What he saw looked strange, but gradually assumed proportion and significance in his still-fogged brain.

  His right arm—as was his left, he assumed—was lashed straight out from the shoulder to a dull column of silver that seemed to run off to infinity, its wide parallel lines dwindling to a meeting point somewhere in the darkness beyond his field of vision. The lashings ran vertically around the huge pipe—yes, it had to be a big pipe—and held Slayton’s arms packed deep within a layer of insulating material. He recognized the lashings as tightly cinched electrical wire—lamp cord. It bit harshly into the flesh of his arms, imprisoning him in a crucifixion posture arranged so that his feet just missed the floor.

  His back and shoulders ached dully. He had been hanging for some time—otherwise it would have hurt more. He guessed that he was lashed to a live steam pipe—that explained the heat and the white clouds. And the sweat, and the burning pain. Slayton squeezed his eyes shut, emitting a tiny grunt which the man with the gun did not hear. The ambient noise in the cellar—that’s where they had to be, Slayton’s mind added, because it was all dingy piping and dust and bricks and noise and darkness—drowned out his small sound of pain.

  Slayton tried clenching his fists, bunching the tendons in his arms against the thin bite of the bindings. He could not hope to work them loose, but he could try to pump some blood, and life, back into his arm muscles. Since he was not dead already, he assumed that he would eventually be untied, for some purpose, if only to be killed elsewhere. It would do no good to have arms and legs of stone when they took him down. He had to prepare for any opening in any way he could, and so, discreetly, he wracked his depleted body through subtle isometrics. It would beef up the pain, true, but the pain would keep him from passing out. He made it into an endurance test which was standard procedure for those captured and tortured by the Viet Cong. You made it into a game of pain, and pain thresholds—it was the only way to keep from losing your mind. Some men even grew to need it, becoming addicted to the need to assert themselves against incredible agony. Slayton worked at it, narrowing his concentration down to a thin beam, staring covertly at the man across the room and working up a kind of hate that obliterated much of the superficial pain. He tried to will blood, and life, back into his legs and arms.

  Tense and release. Tense and release. Like lifting weights, he thought.

  There was no way to gauge passing time, so Slayton ignored it. The important thing was to stay awake.

  Chalmers decided to give the man he was guarding some water, in order that he did not fry to death on the steam pipe like a spitted pig. It would do no good to hand over a dead body, not when they needed somebody like Ben Slayton to leave behind after they had finished up their assignment in Washington. A prime scapegoat for assorted mayhem.

  He dug an Army canteen out of a canvas rucksack at his feet. It contained plain water. His approach to the bound man on the steam pipe was luxuriously slow.

  To Ben Slayton, who watched, it took the man eons just to walk across the room toward him. Perhaps it was a ploy, a subtler form of torture. He had seen the canteen, and having seen it and been allowed to get his hopes up for a drink, the logical thing for the man to do would be to turn and resume his seat, smiling.

  “Hey,” Chalmers said, patting Slayton on the cheek. His head lolled. “Hey! You still wit
h us, man?”

  Slayton cracked his eyes open.

  “Here.” He tried to tilt the canteen toward Slayton’s lips, but had to get closer to do it. There was no danger of his coming loose. Slayton’s tongue came out. The water seemed to vanish, be absorbed directly into the tissues without being swallowed. His lips were dry and cracked with white lines.

  “Jesus, you’re getting a little well-done,” said Chalmers. “Can’t adjust the heat. Sorry.”

  Slayton’s voice tried to fail him, but he forced it to work. “Who are you?” he managed, in a dry rasp.

  A look of pained irritation spread across Chalmers’s face. “Come on, man,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t you guys ever learn? Jesus. Name, rank, and serial shit. Don’t be stupid.”

  “Are you with Haman?” Speaking was painful.

  “Man, you’ve got a hell of an egg on your forehead. I’m surprised your brains didn’t fly out your ears. Christ.” He tilted Slayton’s head up and pressed his thumb into the large purple bruise. Slayton’s body stiffened, galvanically. “That hurt?” Chalmers asked, smiling.

  “Deke, that pussy bastard,” he said. “Probably pounded you while somebody else held you, am I right?”

  “Knocked me out,” said Slayton.

  “Ho, that figures. Deke never could go one-on-one with anybody.” He looked up when he saw Slayton’s eyes glazing. “Hey man, hey!” He slapped Slayton. “Don’t pass out on me, man!”

  Slayton’s vision stabilized, and he said, “Are you that hard up for conversation?”

  “Hey listen,” Chalmers said. “We got us a nice long solitary little wait ahead of us. I’ve read that damned magazine twice and I can’t even make a phone call to get a pizza. You wanta know what pain is, buddy? Pain is boredom. Shit!”