The Curse Read online

  I also wondered if the woman who tried to stab me might be another out-of-work art investigator who wanted the job even more desperately than me.

  I got a dry chuckle out of that one, but it sounded more like a death rattle than a laugh.

  I didn’t know if Mounir Kaseem had any interest in women, but just in case he was rich and wanted personal attention, I took extra care to look more attractive than desperate, but the lack of a callback number had sent my paranoia soaring.

  “Something’s up his sleeve,” I told Morty.

  Why couldn’t things be simple?

  THE HEART SCARAB

  The scarab … possesses remarkable powers, and if a figure of the scarab be made, and the proper words of power be written upon it, not only protection of the dead physical heart, but also new life and existence will be given to him to whose body it is attached.

  —SIR WALLIS BUDGE, EGYPTIAN MAGIC

  9

  Other than rocks and dirt, Cleopatra’s Needle was the oldest thing in Central Park. An Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh named Thutmose had it built more than 3,500 years ago.

  That kind of time in history is hard to imagine without putting it into context—it was before the rise of classical Greece, long before the rise of the Roman Empire, fifteen centuries before the birth of Christ. And now the monolith commissioned by a pharaoh and placed near the banks of the Nile was in Central Park, New York City, USA.

  The most militant warrior-pharaoh in Egyptian history, Thutmose would have turned over in his sarcophagus if he knew the nearly seventy-foot-tall granite obelisk had made its way thousands of miles from the Nile Valley to the heart of Manhattan.

  Why they called the shaft of stone and its sister statue in London “Cleopatra’s Needle” rather than “Thutmose’s Needle” was a mystery to me, but reason enough for the mummy of the militant pharaoh to throw a curse this way.

  The obelisk was about a hundred blocks and several hours from a morning of chaos with a computer store geek and a madwoman, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t left behind some of the insanity.

  It would be too much of a coincidence that I’d get a message under my door to meet with a client and had opened the door to find a frazzled woman intent upon sticking a letter opener in my throat.

  The man who asked me to meet him at the obelisk in the park had been genuinely surprised when I told him a woman had just tried to slice and dice me, but I had to admit to myself during the long subway ride that there had to be a connection.

  The monument’s plaza was deserted, giving me a chance to catch my breath. Due to my current financial situation—broke and desperate—I had almost run from the subway stop on East Eighty-sixth out of fear I’d be late. In the old days I would have taken a taxi from my apartment.

  Obelisks were right up my alley not only because I was an expert on Egyptian and other Mediterranean artifacts, but the ancient land of the pharaohs with its exotic mystery and magic has always been my prime interest in antiquities.

  I went up to the obelisk and offered my condolences to Thutmose III for the misnaming of his monument.

  “Sorry about the name, old chap, but Cleopatra has more sex appeal. You can blame Shakespeare and Cecil B. DeMille.”

  I felt bad that most of the inscriptions on the stone’s surface were getting weathered. The pollution and acid rain in the city had taken its toll on the monument; it would have fared better had it stayed in the clear dry desert air of Egypt.

  A middle-aged man with the olive tan of the southern Mediterranean came slowly walking in my direction, keeping an appraising eye on me all the while.

  He was well dressed in a conservative, old-fashioned, gray worsted wool suit, a white shirt, and a British school tie.

  My first impression from his short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, flat stomach, and the way he held himself erect with his shoulders pulled back was that he was a military man.

  I smelled affluence, too.

  He grinned at me. “Only a true lover of antiquities would speak to a stone monolith.”

  “In this town, it’s not unusual to see people talking to brick walls—it just depends on what they’ve snorted.” I offered my hand. “How do you do, Dr. Kaseem?”

  He gave me a dead fish handshake.

  My dad had always taught me to give firm handshakes when I was introduced to people. “It reveals character,” he said. But he never told me what a limp one revealed and I suspected firmness was sometimes a cultural thing.

  Not all cultures were into shaking hands and some foreigners, especially older Middle Easterners, are caught by surprise even today when a woman offers her hand. I figure that’s their problem, not mine, and I give a firm handshake even to a limp one.

  “Have you solved the Isis necklace mystery?” he asked.

  “I think so. The tip-off wasn’t the necklace or the beautiful gowns the women were wearing, but the wall with glyphs behind it. The party took place in a room at the Egyptian Museum that I’ve been to a number of times where they hold special events. I don’t know why the woman was wearing the Isis necklace, but I assume it is still at the museum where it belongs.”

  “Very good, I’m impressed. And yes, it is the Isis necklace. The woman wearing it was making a substantial donation to the museum and was permitted to wear the necklace at the party.”

  “I hope you’re not going to tell me that she has since had an Egyptian cobra appear around her neck that bit her as part of King Tut’s retribution?”

  He smiled. “I get the impression that you believe any retribution from the ghosts of the Nile are solely creatures of Hollywood.”

  I gave that a little thought as we meandered around a bit, looking over the obelisk.

  He reminded me of Omar Sharif, the Egyptian actor who starred in Doctor Zhivago years ago. Kaseem looked to be in his late fifties.

  “The mummy’s revenge is obviously the stuff of movies,” I said, “but I have to admit that spooky things did happen after King Tut’s tomb was opened, especially Lord Carnarvon dying so soon and mysteriously. What do you think? Did the boy king lash out murderously with a curse?”

  “I believe there is a curse. Not upon the thieves who stole our history, taking pieces like this magnificent monolith of Thutmose, but upon my own people. Our heads should be held down in shame for permitting foreigners to rape our land of historical treasures for more than two thousand years.”

  “Foreigners didn’t always just take them,” I said. “Most often they were sold to them by your people.”

  “Yes, exactly, and it is shameful that my people did such a thing. The result is that there are thousands of our artifacts scattered around the world. Every time I come to New York, I come to this park and visit Thutmose’s obelisk. Then I go to other exhibits where many of our artifacts are kept.”

  He nodded at the Metropolitan Museum of Art a stone’s throw away on Fifth Avenue, which had a stunning gallery of Egyptian antiquities.

  “I do the same,” he went on, “when I go to London, Paris, Berlin, Istanbul—our history is shattered and scattered and it is our own fault. That is the true curse of the pharaohs—we are a damned people because we permitted foreigners to take our historical treasures.”

  “I hope you weren’t planning on hiring me to get the City of New York to ship this 250 tons of granite back to where it belongs on the Nile?”

  “You think the city would object to me packing it up and taking it home?”

  “You probably would not make it through airport security.” I gave him a studied look. “You brought me here to test my reaction to the fact that so many historical treasures have been taken from your country?”

  “Actually, I already know that you have supported the return of antiquities to their country of origin. But I don’t have much time in the city and I thought it would be a good place to make your acquaintance and visit the monument myself.”

  He checked his watch. “If we grab a taxi, we should be able to get to the restaurant before they
give away my reservation. And,” he said, giving me a grave look, “you can tell me more about this incident that happened at your apartment on the way over.”

  10

  She’s in danger …

  It wasn’t a complete thought on the part of Fatima Sari as she followed at a distance and watched Madison Dupre and Mounir Kaseem as they walked to Fifth Avenue to flag down a taxi.

  Fatima Sari was small, thin, and fragile. Dark blotches under her eyes and an almost panicked look on her face revealed that the source of her physical deterioration was due to mental suffering.

  Having a sympathetic response to the danger she sensed to a woman she had tried to stab hours earlier was not a contradiction to Fatima. Her thoughts were jumbled, her reasoning meandering; she had no clear and concise notion why she wanted to kill the woman earlier and yet now was concerned about the woman’s safety.

  Even more havoc was created in her mind and body because she knew her thinking was warped and she couldn’t do anything about it. She had been told that the woman was a danger to the artifact she had been sworn to protect, but she couldn’t focus on exactly what danger the woman posed.

  Things she thought she saw weren’t always there; conclusions she had reached—like trying to stab the woman—didn’t always make sense after she did them. Fatima realized she was losing her grip on distinguishing between the real and the imagined. Worse, she felt as if someone else was getting more and more control of her thoughts and actions—a voice and messages telling her what to do, what to think, who her enemies were.

  A voice that called herself Sphinx.

  In Fatima’s culture the sphinx was both a creature of myth and legend, a sacred beast that the pharaohs of old had called upon to defend the land when enemies were at the gates.

  A still-rational part of Fatima’s brain knew that the person who gave her commands over the phone was not the stone representation of a sphinx, but to her fogged brain, the woman appeared to have the spirit of the sphinx as she told Fatima that it was her duty to get back the sacred amulet that had been stolen from her.

  Even if it meant killing the enemy who kept her from it.

  She had struck out at the Dupre woman, too, because she was on the constant edge of panic, ready to flinch and bolt at any given moment—or to lash out with a deadly weapon.

  Her friend Fuad tried to tell Fatima that her thinking wasn’t straight because she had been drugged. She trusted Fuad, yet knowing that her mind was twisted because of something that had been slipped to her didn’t make her thinking any clearer.

  In the beginning, there had been a battle for control in her head as she struggled to clear her thoughts, but that war had been lost.

  She still felt a compulsion to warn the Dupre woman about Kaseem … warn her that he was a dangerous man … warn her to stay away from him … but she didn’t know why she felt that way. It hadn’t come from Sphinx. Instead, it was a random thought flowing in her mind that she wasn’t able to focus on.

  Fatima had positioned herself earlier behind some bushes in Central Park and watched as the two of them walked around the obelisk.

  She had not been ordered by Sphinx to go to the place and watch them; she no longer had any communication with Sphinx because Fuad had warned her that the woman who called herself by that name meant her harm.

  To keep herself from being commanded by the woman, Fatima threw her cell phone in a trash bin. It had not occurred to her that doing so would cut her off from the only voice of reason left in her life, her friend Fuad.

  After she had tried to stab the Dupre woman, Fatima had gotten on a subway and rode aimlessly, finally thinking clearly enough to wait near the hotel where Mounir Kaseem was staying and follow him as he left.

  Arriving at the obelisk behind Kaseem, she missed her chance to talk to the woman and warn her about Kaseem. That the woman would have been terrified of her had not penetrated Fatima’s hazy thinking.

  You have to warn her, the voice in Fatima’s head said.

  At least that’s what her logical mind was telling her, what little she had left of it.

  Standing at a safe distance, Fatima couldn’t hear what was being said between the two of them, but the voices in her head wouldn’t shut off. They seemed to be getting worse instead of better. She wished they would stop.

  As she waited, never taking her eyes off Kaseem and the woman, Fatima mindlessly took out a bagel from her bag, removed the wrapping, and started chewing on it. She wasn’t really hungry but it gave her something to do as she focused on them.

  She never used to be frightened, but now everything appeared dark and dangerous to her. Dread and fear always consumed her mind now and try as she might she couldn’t shake off those feelings.

  Fatima kept wondering who was going to creep up behind her and finally put her out of her misery. She welcomed death; at least she would finally have some peace. From the constant voices in her head. From the constant paranoia she felt.

  Kaseem and the woman left the area and started walking toward Fifth Avenue to a line of taxis waiting for customers.

  The voices in her head urged her to follow them.

  She knew where they were going.

  Kaseem was staying at a hotel that was frequented by Egyptians and employed many Egyptians as staff. One of the clerks was her second cousin. Fatima convinced the girl to advise her of any requests that Kaseem made to the front desk.

  After learning of his reservation at the Russian Tea Room and sure that he planned to meet the woman she’d attacked earlier, Fatima had changed her clothes and wore a scarf so that she wouldn’t be instantly recognized.

  Now she waited until they had gotten into the taxi before she took the next one in line.

  11

  “I enjoy the quiet elegance of the Tea Room,” Mounir Kaseem said after we were seated in a red booth at the West Fifty-seventh Street landmark. “I have fond memories of the times my wife and I enjoyed meals here years ago, before she passed away. Have you been here before?”

  “Oh, many times. I enjoy the memories, too—not my own, but those that other people have left behind.”

  He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “You experience other people’s memories?”

  “Not specifically, but I feel their aura. I believe people can pick up vibes from places and things. Sometimes when I handle an artifact I get a feeling that someone imbued it with strong emotions. Years ago in the Egyptian Museum I handled a necklace that had belonged to a queen who had died more than two thousand years ago. I nearly dropped it because I felt a vibration when I held it in my hands.”

  “Perhaps the queen was murdered wearing it.”

  “I like to think the necklace still possessed some of the strong love between the queen and the pharaoh who gave it to her.”

  I diverted the conversation away from my feelings about objects because I didn’t want him to think I was a crazy. We discussed the weather and traffic in the taxi ride to the restaurant, but not the attempt to stab me. He also hadn’t yet volunteered why he had contacted me and I fought to keep my impatience in check.

  “Dr. Kaseem, are you a scholar? A doctor of medicine?”

  “I’m a professor of Egyptian history. And, I’m afraid, on sabbatical from my country. I also served in my country’s armed forces. My criticism of the Egyptian government has made it necessary that I live in exile.”

  Exile? That was a word you didn’t hear much anymore. Sounded more like a term used when a king is banished from his country rather than someone who leaves to keep from being arrested for political views. Egypt had an authoritative government. In its entire history, it had never been a true democracy, though any regime that could keep peace and prosperity was supported by most of the people.

  I noticed a slight tic in his left eye every so often when he talked and wondered if it was just a nervous twitch or due to some other symptom. I had eye spasms once in a while; mine were mainly due to stress and fatigue.

  “You will have to par
don me,” he said, “if I come across as something of a fanatic about my country’s history and the pieces that tell the story of that history. As I said, I am impressed by your own attitude toward antiquities. I find that money alone is only a short-term motivator.”

  I resisted telling him that money lacked strong motivation only to those who had plenty of it.

  “Having reached the pinnacle of your profession,” he said, “I assume you have visited Egypt more than once and have acquired a great deal of experience examining our artifacts.”

  A polite way of asking for my qualifications?

  “I’ve been to your wonderful country three times, including an internship that allowed me to stay three months. In terms of my background, I have a master’s degree in art history and undergraduate degrees in both art and archaeology. Before starting my own company, I worked for museums and private collectors. I’m an expert on Mediterranean antiquities in general, but my main interest has been in Egyptology. I’ll be happy to provide a curriculum vitae.”

  “That won’t be necessary. What I’ve been told by others is more important than one’s own assessment. But I am curious as to why you studied archaeology. Was it your original intent to become a scientist?”

  “I considered it—and did fieldwork in Egypt, Israel, and Jordan. I love the idea of recovering antiquities so they can be preserved in museums and enjoyed. But the reality of being hundreds of miles from the nearest restaurants, spending most of my time sifting through desert sand and shaking the scorpions out of my shoes before I put them on in the morning, wasn’t my cup of tea. I’m afraid that my idea of camping out on sand is a deluxe room facing the beach.

  “I studied archaeology because of my father’s encouragement. He was a college teacher but also a frustrated adventurer who would rather have been playing Indiana Jones saving antiquities for museums than lecturing behind a podium. But knowing how archaeologists worked actually helped me in appraising antiquities because it gave me an insight as to the environment that artifacts were in for thousands of years as opposed to fraudulent reproductions being produced on a daily basis.”