Читать книгу The Alexander Cipher - Will Adams - Страница 17

Knox beached the speedboat near his Jeep and waded ashore. Fiona had pulled herself together, was now insisting on returning to her hotel. From the way she wouldn’t meet his gaze, it seemed she’d figured out that Hassan’s wrath would be at Knox, not her; and therefore the safest place was anywhere away from him. Not so dumb after all. Knox revved his Jeep furiously. He was glad not to have her to worry about, but it pissed him off anyway. His passport, cash and plastic were in his money-belt. His laptop, clothes, books and all his research were in his hotel room, but he dared not go back for them.

At the main road, he faced his first major decision. North-east to the Israeli border or up the west coast highway towards the main body of Egypt? Israel was safety, but the road was in bad repair, slow and choking with army checkpoints. West, then. He’d arrived here nine years ago on a boat into Port Said. It seemed a fitting way to leave. But Port Said was on the Suez, and the Suez belonged to Hassan. No. He needed out of Sinai altogether. He needed an international airport. Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor.

He jammed his mobile against his ear as he drove, warning Rick and his other friends to watch out for Hassan. Then he turned it off altogether, lest they use the signal to trace him. He pushed his old Jeep as fast as it would go, engine roaring. Blue oil fires flickered ahead on the Gulf of Suez, like some distant hell. They matched his mood. He’d been driving for less than an hour when he saw an army checkpoint up ahead, a chicane of concrete blocks between two wooden cabins. He choked a sudden urge to swing round and flee. Such checkpoints were routine in Sinai; there was nothing sinister about this. He was waved to the side of the road, felt the bump as he left the road, then cloying soft sand beneath his wheels. An officer swaggered across, a short, broad-shouldered man, with hooded, arrogant eyes; the kind who’d enjoy taunting weaker men until they broke and attacked him, before battering them to pulp and protesting innocently that they had started it. He held out his hand for Knox’s passport, took it away with him. There was little traffic; the other soldiers were chatting around a radio, automatic rifles slung nonchalantly over their shoulders. Knox kept his head down. There was always one who wanted to show off his English.

A long green insect was walking slowly along the rim of his lowered window. A caterpillar. No, a centipede. He put his finger in its way. It climbed unhesitatingly upon it, its feet tickling his skin. He brought it up to eye-level to inspect as it continued on its way, unaware of just having been hijacked, the precariousness of its situation. He watched it up and around his wrist with a sense of fellow feeling. Centipedes had had great resonance for the ancient Egyptians. They’d been closely connected with death, but in a welcome way, because they’d fed upon the numerous microscopic insects that themselves feasted upon corpses, and so had been seen as protectors of the human body, guarding against decomposition, and thus an aspect of Osiris himself. He gently tapped his hand against the outside of his Jeep’s door until the centipede fell off and tumbled to the ground. Then he leaned out the window and watched it creep away until he lost it in the darkness.

Inside the cabin, the officer was reading details from his passport into the telephone. He replaced the handset, perched on the edge of his desk, waiting to be called back. Minutes passed. Knox looked around. No one else was being kept: cursory inspections and then a wave through. The phone in the cabin finally rang. Knox watched apprehensively as the officer reached out to answer it.