Chapter Twenty-Four
Charlotte
Luxor Airport at dawn was filled with tourists pouring in from Cairo to see King Tut’s resting place. Charlotte wondered how Frederick was doing with the exhibition preparations. While New York was the sixth and last stop on the tour, it was considered the biggest in terms of draw and excitement. King Tut mania had gripped the United States, and Charlotte couldn’t help worrying about the effect its success would have on the fragile underground resting places in the Valley of the Kings. How many visitors was too many? How much exposure to the wet breaths and the surreptitious touches of tourists was too much?
Charlotte and an inspector from the Egyptian Antiquities Organization watched as two wooden crates containing the mummies from the crumbling tomb were carefully lifted into the storage hold of the plane, followed by a crate containing the sarcophagus and a smaller one with the canopic box.
The flight was smooth, and before long they were in Egypt’s capital city. Annie had shaken off her disappointment at Charlotte’s reaction to the stolen letter after Charlotte promised to bring up the theft with the director of the museum, in the hopes that he might be able to help. As their taxi followed the truck transporting the crates from the airport to the museum, Annie squirmed in her seat and braced herself at every intersection.
“How do they do this?” she said.
“Do what?” asked Charlotte, trying not to laugh.
“There are absolutely no traffic lights, no stop signs. Yet somehow all these cars, vans, motorcycles, and trucks race through the intersections without slamming into each other.”
“The key,” Charlotte explained, “is that the drivers rarely hit their brakes. As long as no one stops, the flow of the streets is like the flow of a river with multiple tributaries, one wave following another.” She pointed out a bus sliding in behind a Mercedes as a motorcycle dodged both. “Lanes are theoretical, honking a given.”
“It’s insane.”
Charlotte shrugged. “I suppose I got used to it.”
The Egyptian Museum, which had been a second-rate institution when Charlotte lived in the city decades ago, had dropped even further down the scale. With scant electricity, the galleries were lit only by the ambient rays of sun from the windows. Yellow spots of paint dotted beautiful Hellenistic vases from when the walls and ceilings had been shoddily repainted, and many of the vitrines sported large cracks. In the lobby, a security guard stood in the corner, spitting tobacco onto the stained floor.
The director of the museum was a portly man who seemed to be made of circles—a round belly and a chubby round face with a pair of round spectacles perched on his nose. He came huffing up to where Charlotte and Annie waited in the lobby.
“Miss Cross, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said.
“Please, call me Charlotte.” She shook his hand and introduced Annie, and then he led them up to his office on the second floor, which was dark and dusty, a far cry from the pristine, antique-filled domain of Mr. Lavigne at the Met. Frederick had met with Omar Abdullah multiple times as the terms of the King Tut exhibition were negotiated and had complained about how difficult it was to come to an agreement. But today Omar appeared quite at ease, leaning back in his chair with his hands crossed behind his head.
He explained that he’d arranged for the mummies and the canopic box to be transported to Cairo’s top university hospital the next day, where a CT scan machine would examine both mummies and the box. They spoke of people they knew in common and the gossip of the museum world in general before Charlotte finally brought up Ma’at.
Omar sighed. “They’re obviously trying to restock our coffers, but the methods are certainly dubious. There’s no question a number of important antiquities were spirited out of Egypt before the authorities began to crack down, but I would prefer they go through international legal channels as opposed to stealing them back.”
“Has anyone from Ma’at ever approached you with an artifact that was stolen?”
“No, and I couldn’t accept it if they did. Is there something in particular you’re referring to?”
Charlotte shook her head, not wanting to break Frederick’s trust, but Annie spoke up before she could stop her.
“The Cerulean Queen was taken from the Met earlier this week,” said Annie. “We think it was Ma’at that stole it.”
Omar’s eyes went wide. “That’s terrible. Was anyone hurt?”
“Luckily, no,” interjected Charlotte, sending Annie a sharp look.
“What makes you think it was Ma’at?” asked Omar.
“Well,” ventured Charlotte, “we believe the man who ran off with it was Egyptian.”
Omar let out a short snort. “Not every Egyptian is a member of Ma’at.”
“Of course not,” assured Charlotte. “But it’s similar in certain ways to the previous two robberies they took credit for, which is why we’re asking. The investigation is in the early stages and hasn’t been made public.”
“Please let them know if there’s anything I can do to assist, I shall,” offered Omar.
“I do have another question, if you don’t mind,” said Charlotte. “There’s a broad collar currently on loan at the Met that was found in the 1930s, in the same tomb as the one we were in two days ago. The piece is privately owned, but I know for a fact that it was supposed to have been sent here, to the Egyptian Museum, after being excavated. Your records show it as being part of the collection, at least back then, and I’m curious if there’s a record of it ever being sold.”
“When was it discovered?”
“December 1936.”
“Let me check.” He walked over to a bookcase and pulled out an enormous ledger. As he leafed through the pages, the smell of mold and dust almost made Charlotte sneeze.
“That’s odd, it’s listed as part of our collection, but it looks like there’s no record of it actually arriving. Are you sure it wasn’t allowed to leave the country? Partage was still in practice then.”
“I did the paperwork myself. It was meant to end up here.”
“That’s concerning. I’ll have our legal department look into it.”
While Charlotte would have preferred that the news of the Cerulean Queen stay private, she didn’t mind throwing Frederick under the bus for putting the collar on display without properly vetting its provenance. And now she’d proved that it had never even made it to the Egyptian Museum. Hopefully, Omar would be able to ascertain who the owner was and force the Met to produce a proper record of sale, if one existed.
Finally, she asked Omar if he’d ever met an Egyptologist named Henry Smith. Omar smiled blandly and shook his head.
Yet another dead end.
The bazaar of Khan el-Khalili had been a hub for merchants and traders in Cairo since the fourteenth century. Many of the buildings lining the narrow streets and alleys featured stunningly intricate wood lattice screens called mashrabiya that let in indirect light while keeping the interiors cool. Charlotte had visited the area multiple times when she lived in Cairo, and it hadn’t changed at all since then. The shops sold anything and everything—colored glass lamps, copper plates encrusted with silver, western desert rugs, cotton shirts and caftans, old coins, even leather camel saddles—and the bazaar teemed with international tourists.
“What’s partage?” asked Annie as she and Charlotte neared the bazaar.
“A system set up where foreign archaeologists who discovered Egyptian antiquities received a share in the spoils,” explained Charlotte. “Any finds were divided up fifty-fifty.”
“Okay. What’s the difference between antiques and antiquities?”
“?‘Antique’ is French for ‘old.’ Anything that’s at least one hundred years old is antique. Antiquities run from 5000 BC to about the fall of Rome, around 500 AD.”
“That’s really old.”
Charlotte led Annie to a shop window filled with tapestries and alabaster vases. A bearded man welcomed them inside and offered to show them around. “My name is Babu. Anything special you’re looking for? We have some beautiful, rare Islamic-era tiles that just came in.”
Charlotte humored him, murmuring about how lovely they were. The phone rang, and Babu stepped way to answer it.
“These tiles are beautiful,” said Annie, lightly running her finger over one.
“They should probably be in a museum.”
Annie pulled her finger away. “Aren’t there art police who go around and check what’s being sold?”
“There are too many private dealers making shady sales outside of the commercial market. It would be impossible.”
Babu returned, apologizing for the interruption. “Now tell me, what brings you to my humble store?”
“To be honest, I’m looking for someone.” She took out the wedding photo and handed it to him. “His name is Henry Smith. Have you ever seen him before? He would be in his sixties by now.”
“This is your husband?” asked Babu, looking back and forth at Charlotte and the image of her in the photograph.
“Yes. We lost track of each other ages ago, and it turns out he’s come into some money that I’d like to get to him.”
Charlotte had thought that up on the spot and was quite proud of herself, she had to admit. Annie gave a quick nod of approval.
“I don’t know him.” Babu handed back the photograph and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s unseemly, a wife looking for her husband. If he left you, I’m sure he had a good reason. Good day.”
Charlotte held her tongue. It was infuriating to think that four thousand years ago, Egyptian women had more rights than they did today, when they could easily be supplanted by a second wife if their husband so desired.
Outside on the street, Charlotte unceremoniously ripped the photo in half as Annie gasped. “It’ll be easier this way,” she said, shoving the half with her image into her handbag.
Two days ago, she never would have dreamed of defacing the photograph, as she considered it a private keepsake of her first love, albeit one she always kept hidden. With Henry alive and walking the earth, that nostalgia was turning poisonous. He had survived without finding her, taking their daughter with him, and the viciousness of her actions that afternoon was nothing compared to the fury he would face if she ever found him.
They tried a few more shops, yet each time she produced Henry’s image, the salesman shook his head, and her prompting of “He’s an Englishman in his sixties with large ears” didn’t jog any memories. She was wasting time. She’d hoped, incorrectly, it appeared, that if Henry was here in Cairo, he’d be well-known in the antiquities community and it would be an easy task to track him down.
“Why don’t you try asking about your daughter directly?” said Annie.
“Unfortunately, in Egypt, ‘Layla’ is as common as ‘Linda’ in America.”
“And the last name is Smith.” Annie sighed. “Not helpful.”
Annie paused outside a shop with a large window. The etched lettering on it read “Farid Gallery, Cairo + Geneva.” “Should we try one more?”
Reluctantly, Charlotte agreed. Maybe she should have left it up to Tenny’s contact to do the legwork. None of the shop owners or sales staff were even vaguely interested in helping her, whether because they’d never seen Henry, or his image in the photograph was drastically different from the way he appeared today and they didn’t recognize him, or they just didn’t like Charlotte asking questions. It was hard to say.
Inside, a woman with long red fingernails and a head of thick gray hair pulled back in a bun looked up from where she was unpacking merchandise at the checkout counter. “May I assist you?” she asked.
Charlotte surveyed the shop’s wares as she and Annie approached the register. The antiques here were of a much better quality than the others that they’d seen earlier that day, the displays artful, including wooden boxes with intricate floral inlay and excellent reproductions of faience ushabti—small figurines representing servants that were buried with the pharaohs. The place was like a maze, with beautiful objects covering almost every surface of the many display cases and bookshelves. “What a gorgeous shop.”
“Thank you.”
Annie held up a pendant necklace of King Tut’s funerary mask that the woman had just laid down on the countertop, next to a gold statue of the same. “He’s everywhere,” Annie remarked.
“He is, indeed. My name is Heba, by the way. I’m the owner.” The woman smiled as Charlotte picked up the statue, which was already flaking bits of gold paint. “I’ll give you a tip, don’t waste your money. These are the trinkets we sell to street vendors.” She took the piece from Charlotte and began wrapping it back up in newspaper. “It all goes straight to the tourist traps.” She turned her head and yelled toward a door at the back of the store, “Nephi! Take this box off the floor, please,” before turning back to Charlotte and Annie. “Is there anything special you’re looking for?”
“I’m wondering if you’ve ever seen this man.” Charlotte pulled out the photo. “His name is Henry Smith. He’s English, has big ears, and would be in his sixties by now.” She was done with small talk. It hadn’t gotten her any closer to learning Henry’s whereabouts.
The woman took a quick look. “Hold on a second,” she said, raising her index finger in the air. “Let me get my glasses.”
She disappeared into a back room.
“ I’m tired of King Tut, and the exhibit hasn’t even made it to New York yet,” said Annie.
Charlotte understood the sentiment. “Back when the tomb was first opened, in 1922, Tut-mania was all the rage. And now here we are again.”
“It’s not fair, it should be Hathorkare getting all of the attention.”
“Maybe one day she will.”
The woman returned wearing a pair of oversized eyeglasses. She took the photo and studied it, then shook her head. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. Those ears are quite large, I’d remember them,” she said with a smile.
“Thank you for taking a look.”
“Sure. I take it the missing half of the photo is of you?”
Charlotte admitted as much.
“You obviously feel very passionately about this man. To rip it in half like that.”
“I didn’t have a pair of scissors.”
“Of course.” The woman offered a warm smile and patted her on the arm, the simple acknowledgment of another woman’s pain. “Well, take a look around the store and let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.”
“Thank you.”
They circled the floor once, just to be polite, before heading back to the hotel, defeated.