Free Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us by Stephen Cole Page B

Face.’
    ‘Not quite,’ said Patch. ‘I gotta ask him one thing.’ But the way he staggered out of the car, clutching his crotch with his legs held tight together was eloquence itself, and the old man wearily gestured he go inside the cabin.
    ‘Interesting,’ Con reported after a high-speed flurry of
français
. ‘The tomb of Ophiuchus was found to be full of anachronistic stuff.’
    ‘What, spiders, you mean?’ Tye ventured.
    Jonah shook his head. ‘Not arachno,
anachro
. They found objects there from the wrong period of history.’
    ‘I was just kidding,’ Tye snapped at him. Motti looked away, saying nothing.
    The professor was speaking again. ‘They’ve recovered items from many different cultures and centuries,’ Con translated, ‘placed there long after the tomb was first sealed. The experts are baffled – this would suggest tomb raiders have got inside the tomb, and yet nothing valuable has been removed. This other stuff has been added to what was already there – treasures dating right up to the fifteenth century.’ She paused again. ‘The smaller objects have been cleared out and placed in a museum lockup until they can be examined thoroughly.’
    ‘Better than some goddamn crypt,’ grumbled Motti.
    Con paused while the professor went on, her face slowly clouding. ‘Oh, but one thing
was
missing. A corpse. They can find no trace there was ever a body here.’
    ‘Then Demnos was right,’ Tye realised.
    ‘A tomb with no body, and stuff dumped here regularly for thousands of years?’ Jonah nodded thoughtfully. ‘Sounds like the storehouse theory is bang on.’
    ‘Con, ask him for a list of the stuff,’ said Motti.
    Con did so, but the professor went tight-lipped and shook his head. He tapped his watch, nodded cordially at the others, made to duck back inside his office. But Con took him by the arm, smiled, started to stare deep into his eyes …
    Just then Patch appeared in the doorway, relief allover his face. He pushed past the professor, who was jolted back into puzzled awareness. Con was about to try again but the professor said a polite but firm goodbye and closed the door on them both a moment later.
    ‘Patch, you idiot.’ Con folded her arms crossly, which drew his eye like lightning to the deepening line of her cleavage. ‘I was going to get the list of the contents of that tomb!’
    ‘No point,’ said Patch. He reached into his baggy orange shorts, tugged out a folded, slightly soggy wad of paper and offered it to her. ‘I already got it.’
    Con surveyed it dubiously.
    ‘It’s just water what’s made the ink run,’ said Patch, blushing red. ‘It is, honest!’
    ‘Yeah, Con,’ sniggered Motti, ‘don’t take the piss.’
    ‘You think it’s so funny,
you
look it over,’ said Con, turning her back on both of them. ‘I am not touching anything that has been down Patch’s trousers!’
    ‘And another dream dies,’ sighed Patch, passing the papers to Motti.
    They all piled back into the car, and Tye roared away. By the time the professor realised his precious list was missing, they were already on the home straits to the city.
    Cairo was a maze of streets and lanes and different quarters. Tye steered them through half-finished suburbs, old neighbourhoods where the houses crowded close together as if for comfort, sprawling sweeps of brown, boxy blocks. There was a sense of decay all around, as if the city itself was worn ragged by the endless bustle and bother of its people. Even theslicker downtown offices showed signs of neglect, the proud steel letters of their logos pitted and discoloured by the fine blown sand and polluted air. Jonah’s throat was burning after only twenty minutes, and Tye had wisely raised the roof on the convertible.
    But that and even the pumping stereo couldn’t hope to shut out the incredible noise as they stop-started through the dense five-lane traffic. Jonah found it terrifying – cars swung out without warning, drove directly at you.