Lawhead, Stephen - Bright Empires 01 - The Skin Map by Lawhead Stephen

Author:Lawhead, Stephen [Lawhead, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2010-08-11T22:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

The Green Book

CHAPTER 20

In Which Luxor’s Nefarious Trade Is Advanced

Lord Burleigh sat mopping his brow with a limp handkerchief and tried yet again to remember why he had imagined that arriving in Egypt at the height of summer was a good idea. “If the heat doesn’t kill you,” he mused, “the flies surely will.” With that, he gave another informal gathering of the small, biting devils a swish of his horsehair swatter. “Cheeky blighters!”

He sipped from his tall glass of cool apple tea and loosened the starched collar of his second shirt of the day. From the palm-fringed comfort of the Om Seti Lounge of the Winter Palace Hotel, he sat in his big wicker chair and watched the hotel traffic traipsing through the lobby outside: European businessmen in dark suits and panama hats with decorative ladies on their arms, the women in crisp cream-coloured linen, high heels clicking on the polished marble floor; swarthy waiters in white kaftans bearing hookahs or tiny cups of tea on silver trays; sandal-shod bellboys in short satin trousers and red turbans; cigarette sellers with wooden trays of tobacco; wealthy Arabs in spotless white galabiyas.

All passed in languid procession. No one hurried. When merely ambling around in the heat of the day was considered foolhardy, rushing would be suicidal.

Overhead, a fan creaked as its woven rattan blades sifted the stifling air. Burleigh pulled his watch from the pocket of his waistcoat and clicked open the case. He would, he decided, give it another half hour and then call off the chase. If his quarry did not turn up, he would go down to the docklands and arrange shipping for the items held in storage since his last visit. With this thought in mind, he retrieved his wallet from the breast pocket of the jacket hanging on the back of the chair. He opened it and quickly counted his remaining funds and found that he still had a little more than eighty thousand Egyptian pounds.

The main problem with the trade in ancient artefacts was that everyone had a finger in the pie—the looters, the brokers, the warehousemen, the ship owners, museum curators, the police, and, last but by no means least, the customs officials. All had to be paid off before any sale could take place. It was an expensive business.

By dint of hard work, vigilance, innate good taste, and the uncanny ability to sniff out a trend before it developed, Burleigh had succeeded in a business that was growing more difficult by the day. Competition for the best pieces had increased season by season, with ignorant, heavy-handed freebooters moving in, driving up the prices unnecessarily and attracting greater attention from the authorities. It was to the point now where a fellow could not afford to put a foot wrong lest he find himself floating facedown in the Nile.

No honour among thieves, Burleigh concluded ruefully. The greedy morons would ruin it for everyone.

He finished his tea and cast a last quick glance around the hotel lobby.

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