CHAPTER 4

Alexandria in the afternoon had all of the dubious charm of a Turkish bath, or more accurately, an Egyptian bath. A welcoming committee of heat waves danced up from the runway, enveloping Leda in a sticky embrace as soon as she stepped from the plane. After which she and the pilot spent a strenuous sweaty time unloading large boxes of equipment she would need to set up her lab, the sensitive instruments, the special computer, and her own bags. Then her plane took off again, and she stood sopping in the middle of the runway. The heat was the only thing waving at her. There was no welcoming committee. The airfield was occupied by a solitary helicopter, a mountain of boxes that made the pile she had just unloaded resemble a mere foothill by comparison, and a hangar with a Quonset hut beside it. If there was any ground transportation, she didn't see it.

The people from the site knew she was coming. They knew she'd be bringing lots of stuff. Wolfe had instructed his people to call their people. And yet, nobody. Not a damn soul. She carried her duffel bag to the Quonset hut.

"Hello?" she called, but nobody answered. The computer on the battered metal desk was turned off. She was turning to go, to see if she couldn't find someone to help drag her stuff off the runway, when a door she hadn't noticed in the back of the hut banged open, and a man with hair sticking up in all directions peered out of it like a tortoise from his shell.

"Hi," she said before he could withdraw again. "Are you the guy in charge?"

The man looked at her suspiciously, as if sweaty women didn't come and go from this airport a lot. He could possibly have been Egyptian, he was dark and swarthy, but surely he would understand other languages if he had this job. He continued to look blank as she tried pidgin Arabic, high school French, GI German, and gutter Italian.

"Screw it," she said finally, deciding Nucore must be improving its image by hiring the handicapped, since the man was apparently hearing impaired. Which could actually be an asset, working at an airstrip where, if you weren't somewhat deaf to begin with, the noise of the aircraft engines could wreak enough damage on your eardrums that you soon would be. "I'm calling my dad."

She dialed Duke's cell phone number. He'd been sent here a week earlier, while she received some further instructions from Chimera and Wolfe. A message in three languages told her that her party had traveled beyond the range of his instrument. "Shit," she said. For the benefit of the guy still rubbing his head in the doorway, she added, "Merde. Alors," just for French emphasis.

At that the man shuffled forward. He was barefoot, his shirt untucked from cargo pants with the seat dragging between his thighs.

"You French?" he asked finally in Australian-flavored English. Maybe he was from so far in the Outback he had to think about switching from kangaroo to People talk. "I thought at first you was a Yank."

"Talk a little louder," she suggested. "If I'm French, I can't understand your question." Then, before he took her seriously, she said, "Yes, I am a Yank. My name is Leda Hubbard, and I brought a whole bunch of important and very expensive equipment to work with the crew excavating the harbor basin. Do they have like, a headquarters or anything? I was told they knew I was coming, and someone would be here to meet me."

"Nobody mentioned anything to me," the man said.

"The guy in charge is a Dr. Namid," she told him. "Could you call him, please?"

"Oh, sure," the man said, glad she had asked for someone he'd actually heard of. Then his blank expression turned to one of anxiety. "He won't like it, though. Hates being interrupted. And it's nap time, you know. Nobody'll be working at this hour."

"Oh, right, siesta," she said, remembering belatedly what sensible local people did about the heat that was melting her like the Wicked Witch of the West. "Well, I'm not a mad dog or an Englishman. I'm an extremely overheated German/Blackfoot Indian with a soupcon of Romanian Gypsy, and I want to get out of the hot sun and take a nap as much as the next person. So I guess Dr. Namid will just have to be unhappy as long as he sends someone to get me and several million bucks' worth of equipment baking on the runway."

"Okay, okay, sit down, lady. Your face is red." He fished out a Coke from a cooler under the desk. "Here. Chill." The accent was Aussie, she decided. She used to know one of those. Well, Kiwi, actually.

He dialed a number and quickly handed her the phone. "Namid," said a gruff, impatient voice on the other end of the line.

"Dr. Namid, I'm Leda Hubbard, the forensic anthropologist assigned to your project on behalf of Nucore?"

"I have informed Nucore we have no need of another physical anthropologist. Now, if you will excuse me—"

Leda took a deep breath to keep herself from saying things like, "Look here, you horse's ass," and instead said, "I'd be happy to, but I have myself and some equipment to bring to the dig from the airstrip and no transport, sir."

"If you can get a hold of me, surely it is within your capabilities to call a taxi, Miss Hubbard?" he said, and hung up.

"Damn!" she said and the swarthy Aussie smirked.

"Trouble?" he asked.

"Only for him," she said. "Later." Another idea had occurred to her. She dug in her duffel-sized purse for her full-sized address book and shuffled through cards until she found the one from Gabriella. Yes! There it was. And according to the dates the good Dr. Faruk had so considerately inscribed upon the card, she should be in Alexandria and perhaps even reachable by phone, though that eventuality seemed remote, considering Leda's recent luck.

The man opened his mouth to protest. His name tag said Byrne. Didn't sound awfully exotic.

"I'm not busted. I get more than one phone call, right?" Leda asked, not much caring what he thought.

And wonder of wonders, a voice spoke unto her from the other end of the telephone line. "Dr. Faruk speaking," it—she—said.

"Gabriella! It's Leda Hubbard! This eagle has just landed and is stranded. Dad isn't answering his cell phone, and Dr. Namid told me to take a cab. I'm here with two tons of very valuable stuff, and I don't know how the hell to get it there. It's too much for me to move from the airstrip out of the path of passing planes, much less tuck into a cab. Also, I'm in meltdown. Help!"

"Didn't I tell you the man is a swine?" Gabriella asked. "You poor dear. Hold on, my friend. I will get a taxi and some muscular people and come to your aid at once."

"I will be the grease puddle in front of the desk at the Quonset hut."

"Ciao," Gabriella said and rang off.

Leda was already distracted. Looking up, she saw more evidence of lack of consideration for her tender self. "Hey. Byrne, is that a fan I see up there? Or is it a sculpture? Why is it standing still instead of going round and round, making me cooler?"

Byrne opened his mouth, shut it again, and pulled on the fan cord. The air wasn't cool, but it was different hot air than had been on her before. She was about to sit on the floor and weep for a moment when Byrne gallantly shoved a metal folding chair hot enough to barbeque a pig toward her. He might make old bones after all. She reached into her purse for her sweater (what had she been thinking about bringing that) and draped the wrap over the chair. She was wearing pants instead of shorts, fortunately, so she could sit.

To her pleasure and amazement, it was barely twenty minutes before a latter-day caravan arrived, with Duke on the renovated Sopwith riding point, followed by Gabriella in a capacious taxi-van, bringing with her three young men, all Egyptian-looking. For good measure, the van was followed by two donkey carts. Leda, having broadened her cultural horizons while visiting foreign lands in the Navy, didn't bat an eyelash at the donkey carts.

"You poor thing," Gabriella said to Leda, while Leda's Dad gave her a brief wave. Sometimes they were into hugging but not when it was this damned hot.

"Where is your cargo?" Gabriella asked.

"Out there on the so-called tarmac, waiting for things with wings and rotors to run over them," Leda replied.

Duke heard this, and before the young men could react, he had lifted the largest of the boxes and carried it on his shoulder like some sort of golden years native bearer. The young men, not to be outdone, freed the runway of obstructive, expensive debris in one trip with each of the lads carrying as much as he could. Most of it fit into the taxi and the front quarter of one of the donkey carts. The other donkey cart driver, with great dignity, removed one of the boxes from the front cart and carried it back to his.

None of these people even seemed to be sweating, and in fact, Gabriella was wearing a long-sleeved blouse over a crew neck red T-shirt and a full skirt and sandals.

It wasn't fair.

"Where did you find Dad?" Leda asked Gabriella. "Or did he just happen to hear I had arrived when you did?"

"Oh, no, he actually was in the library when you called."

"Don't tell me he's getting into Egyptology."

"No, hydrology, actually. He's become great friends with the contractor who maintains the cofferdam and wanted to read up on the Aswan project. Also," she said after a bit of a pause, "I think he comes to flirt with me."

"You're female. Of course he comes to flirt with you. But don't worry, you're not his type. Well, not his serious type. You have to be a bookkeeper or an accountant to be eligible to be Mrs. Daddy."

"Really?"

"Yep, all of his wives have been."

When Duke approached, wiping the sweat from his face, Leda asked him, "Do you know where my lab is, Daddy? We'll need to park this stuff once we get there."

"Lab?" He scratched his head. "Namid's people have this place where they wash the artifacts and date them and so forth but—"

"Nah, that's not it. I mean my lab. The Nucore lab. I'm supposed to work it alone. Never mind, I'll give Wolfie's people a call. I don't feel like asking Namid for so much as a cup of sugar." She punched in numbers with the pads of her fingers, avoiding contact between the keys and her unusually long, strong fingernails, now devoid of purple polish. After having her call shuttled through three offices and back again, she had an answer of sorts.

When Duke wandered back, he wore a bemused expression.

Gabriella, having supervised the loading of the taxi, strode back toward them, too.

"It's a beluga," Leda told both of them.

"Whale or caviar?" Gabriella asked.

"Neither. Big white fluffy building that looks like you inflate it with a bicycle pump, but allows for extreme temperature control inside. It's on the mainland, at the base of the Heptastadion," Leda said, referring to the land bridge that connected the Isle of Pharos to the rest of Alexandria and separated the city's eastern harbor from the western one. The eastern harbor had been largely man-made, dug in ancient times from the floor of the Mediterranean to serve as the royal harbor.

A three-story lighthouse that had been one of the wonders of the world had once occupied the Isle of Pharos (oddly enough, the lighthouse had been called the Pharos Lighthouse). Its light supposedly had been visible thirty miles out to sea.

The earthquakes that claimed the royal palaces of the Ptolemys, formerly situated on the opposite side of the harbor from Pharos, had also destroyed the lighthouse. The island's most arresting feature these days was a stockade-type building, a little crenellated and castlefied, called Fort Quait Bay. The western harbor was mostly used by the Egyptian Navy and its teeny submarine fleet. This Leda knew from the boning up she had been doing since Chimera offered her the job.

"I have never seen such a structure at that place," Gabriella said, referring to the beluga, "and I go past the Heptastadion and onto the island rather frequently to check the progress of the dig."

"That's because it's not there," Duke said. "And the reason it's not there, before you ask, is because it's right there instead." He jerked a thumb at the box mountain still rising majestically over the runway.

Leda groaned.

"It's okay, Leda," Gabriella said. "I can't believe no one was told to erect your building before you arrived. I can have Mo and his bros help if you like," she said, indicating the muscular young things who were actually her cousins, Mohammed, and his younger brothers Ali and Sami. Casting a doubtful eye on the mountain of crates, she continued, "If it is a portable building, it cannot be too difficult to set up, surely?"

"I don't think it will be any sweat," Duke said. "I'm pretty friendly with the guy who runs the cofferdam maintenance. He's a hydrology engineer. We can figure out how to put the damned thing together between us. And most of it will load onto the donkey carts now."

"Well, yeah, but I hate to check all this valuable stuff I have with me into a hotel," Leda said. "For one thing, I'd practically have to get a separate room just for it. And something tells me it might get lost or damaged if I left it with Namid. I really don't like that guy."

"I'll put one of my men on it," Duke said. "I'm gonna have to call, anyway. We could use a real truck or maybe another couple of donkey carts, too, to load that beluga up. Once we get it to your site, I'll have my boys guard it till we can put it together. I've got a great crew. It'll be safe with them."

"Thanks, Daddy."

"Until your laboratory is in place and you start work, you must come and stay at my home," Gabriella said enthusiastically. "We will have such fun. I can show you the city and the other sites, and you can meet my family. And your equipment will be perfectly safe there, too. Come, we will get you settled. Duke, you must come to dinner this evening. Perhaps your friend, the hydrologist, would like to come, too?"

"Sure, it'd be better than having couscous takeout again," Duke said. "That's what we usually do at the security barracks."

"Oh, no, our chef cooks Mediterranean dishes I am sure you will like: a blend of Greek, Italian, French, and Middle Eastern cooking. Quite tasty."

He nodded.

"I will take Leda home and settle her in. We can plan how to erect the beluga over dinner, okay?"

"Great. I'll call Pete and see if he can organize the rest of the transport and some men to load this stuff and get it to the site," Duke said and winked at Gabriella. "If I tell him we've been invited to dinner with beautiful women, I bet he'll come up with something."

"Thanks, Daddy," Leda said. "Love you."

"Love you, too, Kid. See you later."