The Seventh Scroll

"Leave us, Harper,'said Walsh. "I will call you when I am ready to talk

to you again."

"Sir Nicholas," he prompted the American. Nicholas knew that he had the

upper hand now.

"Please leave us, Sir Nicholas," Walsh pleaded.

An hour later Nicholas sauntered back into the conference room. The

three men were seated around the table as though they could not bear to

be parted from the two great crowns. Walsh nodded at his minions and

they stood up and obediently but reluctantly filed from the room.

As soon as the door closed, Walsh asked brusquely, "How much?"

"Fifteen million US dollars,'Nicholas replied.

"That's seven and a half mill each."

"No, that's fifteen mill each. Thirty million the two'.

Walsh reeled in his chair. "Are you crazy, or something?"

"There are those who think so,'Nicholas smiled.

"Split the difference," said Walsh. "Twenty-two and a half."

Nicholas shook his head. "Not negotiable."

"Be reasonable, Harper!' "Reasonability has never been one of my vices.

Sorry Walsh stood up. "I am sorry too. Perhaps next time, Harper."

He clasped his hands behind his back and stalked to the door. As he

opened it, Nicholas called after him.

"Mr Walsh!'

He turned back eagerly. "Yes?"

"Next time you may call me Nicholas, and I shall call you Peter, as old

friends."

"Is that all you have to say?"

"Of course. What else is there?" Nicholas looked puzzled.

"Damn you," said Walsh, and came back to the table.

He dropped into his chair. "Damn you to hell and back!" He sighed and

pursed his lips, and then asked, "Okay.

How do you want it?"

"Two irrevocable bank drafts. Each for fifteen million." Walsh picked up

the intercom, and spoke into it.

"Please ask Monsieur Montfleuri, your chief accountant, to come up here"

he ordered dolefully.

Nicholas sat at his desk in his study at Quenton Park. He stared at the

panelling that covered the wall facing him. Although the panelling had

originally come from one of the Catholic abbeys dissolved by Henry VIII

in 1536 and had been bought by his grandfather almost a hundred years

ago, it was newly installed in this setting.

He reached under the top of his desk and pressed the hidden button of

the electronic control. A section of the panelling slid smoothly and

silently aside to reveal the armoured plate glass of the display cabinet

built into the wall behind it. At the same time the spotlights in the

ceiling lit automatically, and their beams fell on the contents of the

cabinet. The spots had been placed so that there was no reflection from

the glass window to distract the eye, and the beams brought out the full

glory of the double crown and the golden death-mask of Mamose.

He poured whisky into a crystal glass, and while he sipped it he

savoured the thrill of ownership. But after a while he knew there was

something missing. He picked up the Taita ushabd from the desk in front

of him, and spoke to it as though he were addressing the subject

himself.

"You knew the real meaning of loneliness, didn't you?" he asked softly.

"You knew what it was like to love someone you could never have."

He set down the statuette and picked up the telephone. He dialled an

international number and it rang three times before a man answered in

Arabic.

"This is the office of the Director of Antiquities. How may I help you?"

"Is Dr Al Simma available?" he asked in the same language.

"Please hold the line. I am putting you through!

"Dr Al Simma." Her voice sent an electric thrill down his spine.

"Royan," he said, and he could sense her shock in the long silence that

followed.

"You!" she whispered. 11 did not think I would ever hear from you

again."

"I just rang to congratulate you on your appointment."

"You cheated me," she said. "You switched the contents of three of the

crates."

"As a wise man once said, friends are the easiest to  cheat they don't

expect it. You, of all people, should know the truth of that, Royan."

"You have sold them, of course. I have heard a rumour that Peter Walsh

paid twenty million." 4- "Thirty million," Nicholas corrected her. "But

only for the blue and the Nemes. Even as I speak to you, the red and

white crown and the death-mask repose before me."

"So now you can pay off your Lloyd's insurance losses.

You must be very relieved."

"You won't believe this, but the Lloyd's syndicate on which I am a Name

has come up with much better results than were forecast. I wasn't really

broke after all."

"As my mother would say, "Bully for you."' "Half of it has already gone

to Mek Nimmur and Tessay."

"At least that is a good cause." Her tone tingled with hostility. "Is

that all you called to tell me?"

"No. There's something else that might amuse you.

Your favourite author, Wilbur Smith, has agreed to write the story of

our discovery of the tomb. He is calling the book The Seventh ScroU. It

should be published early next year. I will send you a signed copy."

"I hope he gets his facts straight this time," she said drily.

They were both silent for a while, before Royan broke it "I have a

mountain of work in front of me. If there is nothing else on your mind-'

"As a matter of fact there is."

"Yes?"

"I would like you to marry me."

He heard her draw breath sharply, and then after a long pause she asked

softly, "Why would you want anything so unlikely?"

"Because I have come to realize how much I love you." She was silent

again, and then she said in a small voice, "All right."

"What do you mean, "All right'T

"I mean, all right, I will marry you."

"Why would you agree to anything so unlikely?" he asked.

"Because I have come to realize, despite everything, how much I love you

back."

"There is an Air Egypt flight from Heathrow at 5.30 this afternoon. If I

drive like fury, I may just make it. But it gets me into Cairo rather

late."

"I will be waiting at the airport, no matter how late."

"I am on my way!" Nicholas hung up, and went to the door, but suddenly

he turned back and picked up the the Taita ushabti from the desk.

"Come on, you old rogue." He laughed triumphantly.

"You are going home, as a wedding gift."

EPILOGUE

which, -in the mauve evening.

They strolled along the corn Below them the Nile ran on eternally green

and slow and inscrutable, disposing of the secrets of the ages. At the

bank, below the ruins of the temple of point on the river once the great

barge of Pharaoh Ramesses at Luxor, where Mamose had docked with Taita

and his beloved mistress upon her prow, they paused for a while and

leaned upon ining wall. They gazed out to the coping of the stone reta

the darkening hills across the river. the funerary temple Time had long

since obliterated other' kings had and the great causeway of Mamose, and

ver the foundations. No man built their own monuments  red the tomb that