Egyptian - 02 - The Seventh Scroll by Wilbur Smith

Author:Wilbur Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9781499860849
Published: 2018-06-04T23:00:00+00:00

You can be certain that HE has already registered a formal complaint with the President’s office,’ Geoffrey told them as he drove them to the airport the next day. ‘He is most upset at the whole business, I can tell you. Deportation orders and all that rot. Never heard the likes.’

‘Don’t fuss yourself, old boy,’ Nicholas told him. ‘As it is, neither of us intends coming back here again. No harm done.’

‘It’s the principle of the thing. Prominent British subject being treated like a common criminal. No respect shown.’ He sighed. ‘Sometimes I wish I had been born a hundred years ago. We wouldn’t have to put up with this sort of nonsense. Just send a gunboat.’

‘Quite so, Geoffrey, but please don’t let it upset you.’

Geoffrey hovered around them like a cat with kittens while they checked in at the Kenya Airways counter. They had only their hand luggage, two small cheap nylon holdalls that they had bought that morning at a street market. Nicholas had rolled his dik-dik skin into a ball and wrapped it in an embroidered shamma that he had purchased in the same market.

Geoffrey waited with them until their flight was called and waved to them after they passed through the barrier, aiming this affectionate display more at Royan than Nicholas.

They had been allocated seats behind the wing, and Royan was beside the window. The Kenya Airways plane started its engines and began to taxi slowly past the airport buildings. Nicholas was arguing with a stewardess who wanted him to stow his precious dik-dik skin in its purple nylon bag in the overhead locker, while Royan peered out of the porthole beside her for her last glimpse of Addis during take-off.

Suddenly Royan stiffened in her seat, and while still gazing out of the window reached across and seized Nicholas’s arm.

‘Look!’ she hissed with such venom in her tone that he leaned across her to see what had excited her.

‘Pegasus!’ she exclaimed, and pointed to the Falcon executive jet that had just taxied in and parked at the far end of the airport buildings. The small, sleek aircraft was painted green and on its tall tail fin the scarlet horse reared on its hind legs in that stylized pose. While they watched through the window, the door in the fuselage of the green Falcon was lowered, and a small reception committee waiting on the tarmac pressed forward expectantly to greet the passengers as they appeared in the doorway of the jet.

The first of these was a small man, neatly dressed in a cream tropical suit and a white panama straw hat. Despite his size he exuded an air of confidence and command, that special aura of power. His face was pale, as though he had come from a northern winter, and it looked incongruous in this setting. His jaw was firm and stubborn, his nose prominent and his gaze beneath dark beetling eyebrows penetrating.

Nicholas recognized him immediately. He had seen him often enough on the auction floors at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

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