No Rules(92)
“You’ll look like a tourist who’s making an effort to be respectful of the local culture. Plus, it’s one less identifying factor. We’ll be walking into the Valley of the Kings like tourists, then disappearing. I don’t want some guard to remember the pretty girl with the shiny brown hair that glows with red gold in the sunlight, and realize that you didn’t come back out of the Valley. Hiding your hair makes you less memorable.”
“Oh.”
He thought she was pretty. He’d noticed her highlights.
She didn’t want it to mean anything, but her heart gave a silly leap and her insides turned all warm and soft. It didn’t fit the new tough image she was going for, and she imagined Avery would never go all goofy-mushy over a compliment from a man, but she couldn’t change how she felt about Tyler Donovan. It seemed goofy-mushy was part of it.
They left the AK-47s in the rental car since they were too big to hide. She felt secretly relieved that she wouldn’t have to worry about a wild barrage of automatic weapons fire anywhere near the priceless antiquities she expected to find.
The two Glocks went in an inside pocket of the backpack Donovan wore, with jackets, snacks, and plastic water bottles filling out the packs. Shouldering the packs like experienced tourists, they caught one of the many ferries that took tourists across the Nile. Once on the west bank they stood in line to buy tickets to tour the tombs, then hired a taxi to take them as far as the entrance gates to the Valley of the Kings. From there, a sandy, well-groomed road edged by low stone walls led into the desolate wadi. Beyond that, low hills of rubble ran up against tall canyon cliffs. Everything was shades of tan and beige, sand and stone. Nothing grew here.
The only transportation was a tourist tram that ran to the tombs. Riding with tourists in motorized vehicles along the path once trod by solemn funeral processions for kings felt almost obscene. Jess consulted the map in the brochure she’d picked up at the entrance. “We could walk from here. Get the feel of the place.”
“We should act like we’re in a hurry. They close at four and we bought tickets to see three tombs. Besides, you’ll do enough walking later.”
They found a seat on the tram, getting off in the center of the Valley. Jess stepped onto the hard-packed road and turned in a slow circle, shading her eyes from the bright sunlight. Starkly barren cliffs rose on all sides of a wide central valley. Three main branches of the valley wound into the hills that lined the base of the cliffs. In every direction she could see the sculpted modern entrances that had been added to the tombs, with most of the tombs tunneling directly into the hills.
For a moment she was light-headed, soaking in the surreal atmosphere. The modern world slipped away. She was a time traveler, stepping into a past era of pharaohs and royal families, of peasants and slaves, and a powerful priesthood that served the gods. The pantheon of gods and goddesses were as familiar to her as they would have been to any child born in that ancient time and the lineage of the pharaohs as intimately familiar as her own family tree. She knew who these people had been and knew the world they’d lived in. When they had passed into the next world of the afterlife, their earthly bodies and possessions had been interred here. Often, their families and advisors and priests had tombs here too, in the nearby Valley of the Queens. She looked at the tomb entrances with the shivery thought, I know these people.
She yearned to go inside and see the wall paintings and sarcophagi her father had told her about. Things she’d only seen in books. Most of the sixty-three tombs were never open to the public. Seven of them were open on a rotating basis. She turned to Donovan, unable to see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but knew he was scanning the distant cliff faces for the hiding places they would need soon.
“Do we have time to go inside?” she asked.
Regret tugged at his mouth. “I’m sorry. We need to start hiking into the cliffs now if we want to look like we intend to make it back here in time to catch the last tram ride out.”
So close, yet so far away. But she wouldn’t let him see her disappointment. The two hostages were more important than playing tourist. “Okay, let’s go.”
They followed a hiking trail with what looked like a gradual incline, but which soon had her breathing hard. Donovan opened the backpack and passed her a water bottle that they shared as they kept walking. They passed a lounging guard and two young men who were taking pictures of the valley and the rugged vista beyond. She understood Kyle’s comparison to the Grand Canyon when they reached a plateau and saw nothing but more canyons cutting through the arid land. But these canyons looked more scoured by eons of wind than their American cousins, without a hint of water or a single weed growing from the hard, dry rocks. She took another swig of water, feeling the merciless sun leaching moisture from her body, and imagined what an additional thirty degrees of heat would feel like in the summer. It wouldn’t take much to mummify a body out here.