Duel In The Sun

Dr Kane—no, Lucas, had to concentrate and she was able to sit quietly and look him over. Closer to, he wasn’t so fair as she’d first thought; his hair was brown but had been bleached by the sun, as if he didn’t bother to wear a hat. He had a natural air of authority and she guessed that he didn’t often need to browbeat his staff. Catriona wondered why he had with her; to show her how angry he was, perhaps, or maybe just because she was female and needed to be put in her place. Fleetingly she wondered if he was married, then decided he couldn’t be. He didn’t act as if he’d been gentled by constant female company. He hadn’t offered to carry her luggage or open the car door for her, hadn’t asked if she’d had a good flight. And even more important, hadn’t asked if Omar Rafiq had attempted to coerce her to stay. But maybe he didn’t have to ask; maybe he knew.

There was hostility between the two men; she’d not only sensed it but had seen it in their eyes, their actions. On the surface it was like verbal fencing, but she wondered what it would take and what passions would be unleashed if they ever came to open enmity. And she was intrigued to know what had caused two such dissimilar men to have clashed in the first place.

They had circled the outskirts of the town and the traffic wasn’t so heavy now. Some of the cars they passed had lights on, some hadn’t bothered; it seemed to be a matter of personal taste—or perhaps just whether the lights worked. Her eyes flicked back to Lucas’s hard profile.

‘So what are your conclusions?’ he asked in a conversational tone.

‘On what subject?’ she asked warily.

‘Me. You’ve been studying me long enough.’

She blinked, taken aback, but thought she might as well satisfy her curiosity, so said, ‘I was wondering why you and Omar Rafiq were so—abrasive.’

‘Abrasive!’ He laughed. ‘A good word. I have no reason to like him.’

‘Why not?’

He gave her an assessing look. ‘Why the interest?’

Catriona shrugged. ‘I’d like to know what you rescued me from.’

‘Wouldn’t he let you leave?’

‘No.’

Lucas laughed again, really amused this time. ‘I suppose you had visions of ending up in his harem. Did you tell him you were headed for my dig?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘That’s why, then; he only wanted to keep you there to inconvenience me.’

An egotistical remark that Catriona found extremely annoying. ‘What if I’d decided to stay?’

With a shrug, Lucas said, ‘It’s hypothetical; you didn’t.’

‘He offered me far more money than you’re paying me. Double, in fact,’ she goaded.

‘Then you were a fool not to accept,’ he returned calmly.

Catriona let him negotiate a busy road junction, then said, ‘You still haven’t told me why you don’t like him.’

‘I know I haven’t.’

‘So why?’

He shot her a frowning glance. ‘What an extremely nosy woman you are. Do you really want to know about excavation politics so soon?’

‘Yes.’

His lips twitched a little at her unequivocal response. ‘All right, if you must know; Omar offered to sponsor the dig but then backed out at the last minute.’

So that was all it was about, just money. Catriona felt a fleeting moment of disappointment, which changed to anger when she realised she had been used as a pawn in their disagreement. Had Omar, then, merely been amusing himself by trying to frighten her? Had the danger she’d felt all been in her imagination? It certainly seemed rather silly now to have thought herself a victim of white slavery. But she had been alone in a strange land, denied her freedom, and had known distinct unease, if not outright fear. And all because two men disliked each other!

They left the street lights behind and were driving through open country, but it was completely dark and Catriona could see nothing that wasn’t illuminated by the car’s headlamps: trees and the occasional mud brick house.

‘How far is it?’ she asked.

‘Only a couple of miles. We turn off into the desert soon. Have you ever been to Egypt before?’

‘No.’

‘Then you’re either going to love it or hate it; there are no half-measures where Egypt is concerned.’

‘How long have you been out here?’

‘On this excavation site, for three years, but I’ve spent a lot of time here during my career.’

‘You discovered a new tomb, didn’t you?’

‘You’ve been doing some reading. Yes, nearly nine years ago. It wasn’t a major find, though, and it had been robbed, of course, but there were some extremely good wall paintings.’

‘You must have been young then,’ Catriona remarked without thinking.

‘Oh, yes, I was very young—then,’ he agreed sardonically.

‘I didn’t mean to imply that you’re no longer young, just that you must have been young to find a tomb,’ she excused, afraid that he’d taken offence. Though he would have to be very vain to feel insulted by such a chance remark.

‘I know what you meant. I was twenty-four—which some people seemed to think too immature to be put in charge of a dig and handle a find.’

So that was it. Catriona gave him a mental apology; obviously it was the criticism of his professionalism that rankled. Changing the subject, she said, ‘How many people are there in your team?’

‘Five principals: I’m the field director, and my deputy is our surveyor, Bryan Stone. Then we have a pottery expert, Harry Carson, who’s in Cairo on leave at the moment, and a seed and plant man, Mike Pearson. The fifth man is Mohamed Shalaby, who’s also the inspector from the Egyptian authorities.’

‘No women?’ Catriona asked with mixed feelings.

‘There’s Lamia, Mohamed’s wife. She’s not officially part of the team but she’s supposed to run the house, make sure the servants do their work, that kind of thing.’

They had left the fertile area with its trees and fields, the road was no longer tarred, had become just an uneven, pot-holed track. Ahead she could see some lights which turned out to be those of a small village of mud houses. They drove through it, went on for another few hundred yards, and then Lucas drove through an arched gateway and pulled up in the courtyard of a house. Like the Garden of the Nile, the house was two-storeyed, had a gate and was surrounded by a wall. There the similarity ended. There was no garden, no fountain playing, no open door with welcoming servant, and, once inside, definitely no air-conditioning or the faintest hint of luxury. It was just a roughly made house, built to last for the duration of the dig and nothing more. The furniture was old and shabby with no attempt at style. But at least there was electric light, even if the bulbs didn’t possess shades.

Catriona stood in the hallway, looked about her, and laughed again.

‘Having second thoughts?’ Lucas enquired as he dropped her cases on the floor.

‘Second, third and fourth,’ Catriona admitted.

He grinned, and she liked it. ‘I thought you might have. Come and meet the others.’

He led her through a curtained doorway into a room off to the left that evidently served as a communal sitting room. There was a television set in the corner but the programme was in Arabic and only one man was watching. Two other men were seated at a small table, playing chess, and a woman sat on a worn settee, reading a magazine. They all looked round when Lucas led her in. For a long moment there was total silence and Catriona felt rather like an exhibit at the zoo as their eyes assessed her. It was one of the men at the table, middle-aged and weather-beaten, who spoke first.