A River in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters Page A

“Mansur caught me listening outside her tent the other night. He’s been watching me ever since. Tell them they were right about von Eine, she’s a major player; tell them about the talisman and about Mansur—I don’t know who he is or what his particular game is, but they can—”
    “Tell them yourself,” Ramses said. The sixth sense his mother often spoke of, the feeling of being watched, was raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Come with me now. I can supply you with clothes, you’ll be a friend from university on a walking tour.”
    “I have to finish the job.” The muscles under his hand stiffened.
    Ramses bit back a blistering expletive. “You’ve done the job. The chance of your finding out anything more is negligible, especially since you are now under suspicion.”
    “One more thing. I overheard them mention the Sons of Abraham. I don’t know what it means, but it sounded important.”
    To Ramses’s heightened senses the night seemed to be alive with movement and sound. “Don’t go back there,” he said urgently.
    “I’ll be all right.” Ramses’s face was so close to Macomber’s he saw his teeth flash in a smile. “I was getting a little…Well, you know. It’s helped, talking to you.”
    He moved quickly, slipping out from under Ramses’s restraining hand, and was gone into the night before Ramses could stop him.
    Ramses stood listening for several minutes before he dared hope Macomber had slipped back without being spotted. There had been no outcry, no gunfire. His skin was still prickling, though, and he concentrated on moving with exaggerated caution, slipping from shadow to shadow and tree to tree, making use of every bit of cover. It wasn’t until he had reached the outskirts of the village that he wasable to relax a bit and consider the implications of that extraordinary encounter.
    Macomber had not answered him when he asked who had sent him on his mission. Some section of MO2, probably; the Ottoman Empire was under its jurisdiction. Whoever they were, they had no business sending a novice like Macomber out into the field. He could get in deep trouble just for being what he was: a lone Englishman trying to pass as a native of the area, for purposes unknown and therefore threatening. It was a miracle he had pulled it off as long as he had. The knowledge necessary to pass as a member of a completely different culture couldn’t be drilled into someone, like cramming for an examination. It took years of living the life, learning the language fluently and idiomatically, and a thousand little things that could mean the difference between success and failure—or life and death.
    He could only hope that Macomber had got carried away by the thrill of a secret mission and let his imagination run away with him. What had he actually learned, after all, that could put him in danger? Germany’s aspirations in the Middle East were a matter of public knowledge. Vague references to conspiracies and amulets, mysterious phrases…It sounded like the plot of a spy novel, and there hadn’t been a single hard fact in that rambling narrative. As for the Sons of Abraham, it was the sort of romantic name that might have been selected by a religious cult or one of those strange American fraternal organizations.
    He had to put up with more teasing when he returned. “You’ve been gone quite a long time,” Fisher said, with a sidelong glance at Reisner. “Enjoy yourself?”
    “I wasn’t admitted to the presence,” Ramses said. “They kept me waiting awhile. I’ll just go finish copying the ostraca now.”
    “That’s right, you’re leaving tomorrow,” Reisner said.
    Don’t you wish, Ramses thought. “Day after tomorrow,” he corrected. “If that’s all right with you.”
    “If you think that gives you enough time. You wouldn’t want to be late meeting them.”
    “Plenty of time.” Enough, not only to finish tracing the ostraca