Chapter Thirteen
Gabriela and Rafer were dressed in lightweight, long-sleeve sun shirts, cargo pants, and desert wellies. Harley was dressed in a pink Ralph Lauren button-down linen shirt, khaki slacks, and Brunello Cucinelli hiking boots. They all carried light packs and wide-brimmed sun hats.
It was seven o’clock Saturday morning, the day was already heating up, and Gabriela, Rafer, and Harley were standing in front of their hotel, waiting for Apis.
“Do we know where we’re going?” Harley asked.
“Southeast,” Gabriela said.
“That’s it?”
“First south and then east,” she said. “We’ll take Route 75 to El-Shaikh Fadl and then go east on the road to Ras Ghareb. That was as far as I could go on Google Earth. Jim said he thought it would take five or six hours to get to the dig site.”
A tan Jeep Wrangler pulled to the curb. It had front and rear grill guards, and a roof rack loaded with gas cans, water jugs, and a seen-better-days Igloo cooler. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust and grime and there was a gash on the right rear quarter panel.
Jim bounded out from the passenger side. “This is my cousin Apis,” Jim said, pointing to the driver. “We will use his car for this trip.”
“It looks like it’s ready for the apocalypse,” Rafer said.
“It’s just for show,” Jim said. “It looks better this way in the tourist pictures when he is guiding people. We will mostly be traveling on a highway with nice rest stops.” He opened the rear door for Gabriela, Rafer, and Harley.
“Just kick the guns out of your way,” he said. “Or you can toss them in the back.”
“Are these just for the tourists, too?” Harley asked.
“No,” Jim said. “They are to shoot people if necessary. Apis does many things. He is a guide and a camel jockey and a bodyguard. It is necessary for him to be armed when he is a bodyguard. This is a good thing for us because we will be passing through some areas of concern.”
“How concerning?” Harley asked.
“Very low level of concern,” Jim said. “I would not be along if the concern was great. Everything will be smooth as silks. Plus, Apis has many friends, and he has achieved all of the necessary permissions.”
“And you’re comfortable with this?” Gabriela asked Apis.
“Yes, he’s comfortable,” Jim said.
“He doesn’t speak English, does he,” Gabriela said to Jim.
“Not many words,” Jim said. “He knew more words before the stroke.”
“He had a stroke?”
“The doctor said it was a small brain bleed. Nothing serious. He is now almost a hundred percent. As you can see, he looks very healthy.”
Gabriela thought he looked like a healthy terrorist. Short-cropped black hair, wraparound dark glasses, full beard, wearing an olive drab T-shirt that showed off his hairy arms.
Apis said something in Arabic, jerked the Wrangler away from the curb, and squeezed into the flow of traffic.
“What did he say?” Gabriela asked Jim.
“He said, ‘Soup spoon.’ Probably he meant to say ‘Here we go.’ It would be a common mistake.”
Gabriela took a loaded Glock off the floor and slipped it into a pocket.
Rafer looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“Just in case,” Gabriela said.
She gathered the rest of the guns and placed them in the cargo space behind the back seats.
“This will be a pleasant drive,” Jim said. “I brought snacks and some bottles of orange soda. And the weather is very nice.”
At seven in the morning, the traffic in Cairo was already horrific and the air quality was equally awful.
“Will the air improve when we get out of the city?” Harley asked Jim.
“To some degree,” Jim said. “It depends on the winds and how much of the desert is blowing across the highway.”
After a couple hours the scenery changed to monotonous desert and the traffic thinned out. Another hour and Apis turned off the highway and headed east.
“This is the road to Ras Ghareb,” Jim said.
“It is a very beautiful resort town on the Red Sea with excellent diving around the many shipwrecks. It is also number one in oil production for Egypt. If we turned in the other direction and went west for a short way, we would come to the village and archaeological site of El-Shaikh Fadl on the east bank of the Nile. The town of Bani Mazar is on the west bank. You can get there by using a most excellent bridge over the Nile.”
“But we aren’t going to any of those places?” Harley asked.
“No,” Jim said. “We will be traveling along the wadis and through the mountains to the dig, which is in no-man’s-land.”
“Are the sand dunes in no-man’s-land?” Harley asked.
“They are in the western desert,” Jim said. “This is the eastern desert and the sand dunes you see in movies are not here.”
“That’s a bummer,” Harley said. “I was looking forward to sand dunes.”
“You need a snack to cheer you up,” Jim said. “Would you like a KitKat Chunky Biscoff or a bag of Seasoned Cheese Tiger Chips?”
“I’ll take the KitKat.”
“Good choice,” Jim said. “It is one of my favorites.”
Thirty-five minutes later, Apis turned into what looked like a dry creek bed and followed very faint tire tracks.
“You see that we are in a valley,” Jim said. “There are mountains on both sides of us. They are not such impressive mountains that you would find in Switzerland, but they hold gemstones and ore, and they define the wadis.”
“What’s a wadi?” Harley asked.
“We are in a wadi,” Jim said. “It’s a low, dry valley. Since ancient times people have traveled the wadis from the Red Sea to the Nile. Most often a wadi will have underground springs, and this made them desirable for trade routes.”
Gabriela thought the ride couldn’t have been worse if she was on a camel. The half-mile-wide swath of hard-packed, rutted dirt that stretched between the ridges of the Red Sea Hills bore little resemblance to a road.
Apis was seemingly unfazed by the conditions as he forged ahead. He dodged rocky outcroppings and bounced the car over nature’s speed bumps, never uttering a word. After forty-five minutes he stopped, got out of the car, and walked around.
“What’s he doing?” Harley asked Jim.
“No clue,” Jim said.
“He’s looking for tire tracks,” Gabriela said. “The wadi goes off in two different directions here.”
She got out of the Wrangler and went on foot, looking for tracks. After ten minutes of walking, she spotted a pile of rocks, stacked in a pyramid shape, two feet high. She gave a shrill whistle and waved her arms. Apis returned to the Wrangler and drove up to her.
“It’s a cairn,” Gabriela said. “Tire tracks go off to the east.”
Jim translated to Apis, and everyone got back into the car. Apis followed the wadi offshoot around a turn, and Gabriela saw the site in the distance. Twenty minutes later they arrived at the small encampment.
A few open-air tents had been set up to give shade.
The standard collapsible tables and camp chairs were under the tents.
Tarps had been spread on the ground for artifact collection.
An older man was working at an excavation area with four younger women.
A man and a woman were seated at a table under one of the canopies.
A collection of equipment boxes was behind them.
Everyone stopped work and turned to look when the Wrangler drove in and parked beside a Sprinter van.
Gabriela walked over to the man and woman seated at the table. “Sorry to disturb your work,” she said. “I’m looking for Edgar Merrick.”
The man stood. “I’m Edgar Merrick.”
Gabriela introduced herself and handed Merrick her business card. “I’m investigating some import irregularities,” she said. “I have a few questions about the equipment crate you picked up last month.”
“Of course, but there was nothing irregular about it. I brought it to the site, my assistant emptied it and disposed of the crate. Everything I’d ordered was in the crate and in good condition.”
“Did you help your assistant empty the crate?”
“No. I went to see how Shelly was doing with some pottery pieces she’d uncovered. There wasn’t much to worry about with the crate. It wasn’t as if it appeared damaged.”
“Is your assistant here now?”
“No. He only worked on the dig for a short time. He left a couple days after the crate was delivered. That’s the way it is these days. Difficult to find good people who are willing to work for very poor pay out here in the desert.”
“Shocking,” Gabriela said.
Merrick smiled. “Yes.”
“Do you have a name? An address? I’d like to talk to him.”
“I keep a file on all employees. Give me a minute and I’ll give you the name and address we have for him.”
“Perfect. Do you happen to know where he disposed of the crate?”
“No. I assumed he took it to Bani Mazar, but I don’t really know.
Truth is, he could have left it alongside the road, and it would be gone in a matter of hours.
It was a nice crate and in good condition.
Although, the shape was a bit odd. I thought that might have been to accommodate the table.
” Merrick looked over at the three men standing by the Wrangler. “Are they all investigators?”
“One is my assistant, one is the driver, and one is the guide.” Gabriela cut her eyes to the group of young women working with trowels and brushes a short distance away. “And the man talking to your helpers is my assistant’s cousin.”
“Is he interested in archaeology?”
“Among other things,” Gabriela said. “I don’t suppose you would have a photo of the man who unpacked the crate?”
“Is it important?”
“There’s a possibility that contraband might have been hidden in that crate, along with your legitimate cargo.”
“Drugs?”
“I’m not at liberty to say. Who packed the crate for you in New York?”
“A small company that the Egyptian embassy in London recommended. Mausud Freight Forwarding.”
Gabriela, Rafer, Harley, and Jim got into the Wrangler and Apis drove them out of the compound.
“What did you find out from Merrick?” Rafer asked Gabriela. “Anything good?”
“An assistant unpacked the crate and then disposed of it,” Gabriela said. “Merrick wasn’t present during any of this. The assistant was only with the dig for a short time. He left two days after the crate was delivered.”
“This sounds familiar,” Rafer said.
“Merrick didn’t know what happened to the crate,” Gabriela said. “Only that the assistant got rid of it.”
“Becky said that he probably just dumped it on his way back to town,” Harley said.
Gabriela turned to Harley. “Becky?”
“She’s one of the graduate students helping Merrick. “She said the assistant was a local, and he was more of a gofer than an assistant. He was supposed to take the rubbish to Bani Mazar for disposal, but he was lazy, and he just dumped it on the way.”
“Did she say exactly where he dumped it?”
“No. She didn’t know, but she said she used to see vultures circling just past the second cairn on the way out.”
“I only saw one cairn,” Gabriela said.
“I saw one before that,” Jim said. “I would be able to find it.”
Apis drove down the narrow wadi that led away from the dig site. He rounded the bend in the wadi, turned when he reached the cairn that Gabriela had discovered, and continued to retrace his previous route.
“Now we must look for the cairn,” Jim said. “It will be on the left-hand side.”
Apis spotted the cairn twenty minutes later and moved the Wrangler closer to the rock face.
Granite walls that grew into mountains rose directly out of the valley floor.
Fissures in the walls led to slot canyons and alcoves.
Everyone scanned the granite for an opening large enough for a van or a truck.
“There!” Rafer said. “Dead ahead. The rock wraps around and ends, and then there’s more rock in about forty feet.”
Apis stopped at the opening, and everyone got out and walked around the rock and into a natural bowl. Trash was strewn across one end of the bowl, and a large crate had been tossed next to the trash.
“This is perfect,” Rafer said. “It’s easily accessible and you can’t see the trash from the valley floor.”
Gabriela went to the crate. “It has a false bottom,” she said. “They slid the coffin into the crate from the side. The side piece is missing and there are instructions in English to open the crate from the top.”
“It is here,” Jim said, holding a piece of wood. “It was clever to do it this way. Much less room is needed to remove the item while it is in the cargo part of the plane.”
Gabriela walked around the area. “This happened last month but the ground hasn’t been disturbed by wind or rain in this protected bowl. There are two different tire tracks. The assistant brought the crate here, and then someone met him and removed the coffin.”
“Wow, are we good or what?” Harley said. “We solved the crime.”
“Not exactly,” Gabriela said. “We have the crate but not the coffin.”
“Yes, but we have the name of the guy who did this,” Harley said.
If he’s still alive, Gabriela thought.
They walked back to the Wrangler, and Harley swatted the air. “I hear a mosquito.”
“It’s not a mosquito,” Gabriela said. “It’s a drone.”
“These things are not legal in Egypt,” Jim said. “They are only used by the army and bad guys.”
Gabriela opened the hatch on the Wrangler and removed an assault rifle. She checked it for ammo, aimed, and shot the drone out of the sky.
“Ya salaam!” Jim said to Gabriela. “Who are you?”
Rafer grinned and rocked back on his heels. “Way to go, Gabs.”
“Bad pigeon,” Apis said.