CHAPTER 2
"The Hungarian"
An affluent suburb of Cairo, there was something about Maadi that made inner-city Caireens squirm.
Maybe it was just that— the affluence. Maybe it was how very British and colonial it was.
Maybe it was the fact that you received a fine if your garden wasn't maintained correctly.
Either way, Perry was missing the slums.
"You live in Embabeh?" Meela Nais had asked, utterly horrified to learn that Perry's residence was found within that part of the city. "This simply won't do."
Apparently her judgment had been final, because she had been living in the pretty little suburb for six months.
It wasn't that she didn't like Maadi, exactly.
A safe haven for the multi-ethnic foreign residents who made up most of its population, living there was definitely interesting.
The British International School was nearby, and so the laughter of the soldiers' children was never far away.
The French families lived on Road 6, the Italians between the Villa Capitani and Aurelia Zani's boarding school on Williamson Avenue; the German and Hungarian Jews lived on Road 10, which was where Perry had somehow ended up finding a new home.
Her house was easily the smallest on the street, and definitely the emptiest. No lavish furniture accompanied the extra square footage that Meela had just insisted she own, and most of her belongings and clothes remained packed away in preparation for her next dig or the unexpected uprooting she secretly hoped for.
Living in this suburb, away from the hustle and bustle of Cairo she had grown so accustomed to, Perry felt rather isolated.
It was safe here, too. There were no robberies, no muggings, no prostitution, no stabbings and the like, to a point where the security of it all became... boring.
After moving away from the constant atmosphere of underlying trouble, it became clear to her that even the slightest dose of danger kept life a little exciting.
Maybe, on a subconscious level, this was why Perry left her house's doors unlocked every night. Maybe she had become careless; maybe she fancied the idea of a certain tall, dark and handsome warrior letting himself in one night.
Perhaps if she had gotten her head out of the clouds and locked the doors this evening of all evenings, Perry would have been saved quite a bit of trouble with an unwanted visitor.
It must have been nearing three am; her house was the only one on Road 10 with the front room light left on, and it was by this light that Perry poured over the pages of Terence's journal.
She was engrossed, captivated by how vividly he had described the tale of the Scorpion King and his fateful deal with Anubis.
She wondered if this extensive knowledge of the myth was merely due to a fascination of Dr. Bey's, or something more. If this was something he believed to be a concern of the Medjai, then was the bracelet real? The books of Amun-Ra and The Dead had been real, after all, so it wasn't impossible that the faction be guarding other secrets.
Further supporting the suspicions of her pondering were the pages preceding those about the Bracelet of Anubis, which contained information about two subjects in particular: one being a set of texts Terence referred to as 'The Scrolls of Thebes', which held all of the secrets regarding the properties of the bracelet. He had written the exact coordinates for the location of these scrolls— within a ruined temple, just west of the al-Fayoum Oasis.
The other topic of his focus was something a little more sinister.
Dr. Bey had obviously taken the time to twin careful observation with collected intelligence as he recorded the formation of some kind of cult.
'The Cult'— his displeased tone could practically be heard through the slanted writing.
Eager to learn more of his hunch, Perry went further back and found that his attention had been centered on this cult for quite some time, now. Three months, six months, nine months... Prior to his death, Terence had been deeply immersed in an investigation.
Did the other Medjai know about this? From his notes, it would appear that he was the sole detective on this case.
'Nobody can be trusted,' he wrote. 'These people are brainwashed, power-hungry and disillusioned by the ill-conceived vision of one ruler reigning supreme, with them at his side in close command, feeding off of his totalitarian power. The number of respected individuals— colleagues of mine, from my very field!— who I suspect to be entangled in this web is astounding. I fear they sense my spying, and so I continue to withhold this information from the other Medjai. Any brash movements on our part could mean their retreat underground, and we cannot afford to be kept in the dark at this precarious time.'
Who could he have been talking about?
Names. He must have mentioned names somewhere in this journal.
Perry analysed line after line in an attempt to grab a clue. Sitting on her armchair, with just the light of one lamp to fend off the shadows, her fingers turning the pages were the only sounds until—
"You should really lock your back door, you know."
She jumped right out of her skin. A short scream pierced through the sentence as her body jolted in fright.
The thin man's frame by the door snickered at her surprise, lurking there in the shadows with jovial smugness.
Perry cursed and shut her eyes in anger. Her heart remained pounding, even when she realised who that accented voice belonged to.
"Beni!"
He stepped closer to the light in that slinky, jerky way that he moved, leering shamelessly all the while.
"You scream like—"
"I shouldn't be screaming at all! You're going to have me wake up the entire street one of these days!"
Beni Gabor had first showed up on Perry's doorstep five months after his 'death'. Since that time, he had paid her five of these late night, unannounced, incredibly inconvenient visits.
"Why are you here?" she hissed, slamming Terence's journal shut and bolting out of her chair.
Beni placed his hand over his heart.
"I missed you so much, I could not bear to be away from you any longer."
She scowled as she pushed past him into the kitchen. His grin bore into the back of her head as she switched the light on and snatched up the kettle, deliberately busying herself so as to avoid looking at him.
Beni was the human embodiment of Perry's guilty conscience. Like the worst kind of lie, he kept popping up and reminding her of the mistakes she'd made.
She heard him move into the living room.
"Don't touch anything." she warned, without turning to face him.
"I have just travelled here all the way from Luxor and you treat me so poorly?" he called back.
She huffed, but quietly got a second teacup out of her cupboard.
This man could get away with murder and find that people were still inexplicably accommodating towards him.
"And why have you travelled so far?" she asked, drifting to the doorway in wait of his answer.
Beni was stood by her bookshelf— possibly the only item of furniture in the house that was put to proper use— eyeing a certain framed photograph she had set on its top.
He pointed a skinny finger at it.
"Is this O'Connell's boy?"
She nodded. The picture of a bright-eyed, laughing baby had accompanied the letter she received from Jonathan last week.
"His name is Alexander."
Beni grinned and picked up the frame, snorting just a little as he got a better look at the baby.
"Who would have thought my good friend Rick O'Connell would be foolish enough to choose a baby over fortune and glory," he sighed, sadly. "And the Carnahan woman, too. I thought she was smart, but clearly that is not the case if she let an idiot like him knock her up."
Perry pulled a face.
"He didn't 'knock her up'. They're married. I told you, the wedding was very lovely."
Beni swapped the framed photo of Alex for one of Rick and Evy's wedding that sat at its side.
"So I can see."
Perry never actually stopped him from looking through her photographs and letters, because they were the real reason he kept coming back her.
Living in Luxor with a false identity and new life might have seemed like something Beni Gabor could do pretty well, but it had actually left him feeling detached. He had sought her out because his past beckoned, and though he couldn't return to it, he could still toy with a sense of belonging.
Familiarity had abandoned him, and it was partly her fault.
... Even if the bastard had gotten off easy.
She headed back into the kitchen when the kettle started whistling.
"How is Marina?"
They didn't talk about Imhotep. Ever. It was as if Beni had once been subject to a mental illness, and had since recovered and chosen to ignore that phase of his life. Mummies went permanently unmentioned.
Perry shrugged as she fumbled around in the cutlery drawer.
"I've told you, I don't know," she answered, wearily.
"She is your boss, is she not?"
"I've not seen her in months. She writes me notes, we speak on the telephone... Other than that, we don't come face to face much."
Beni leaned against the doorframe again and watched her. He looked tired— very tired— but his clothes were cleaner and brighter and better fitting. (With the exception of his fez hat, of course, which looked as tattered as ever.)
That one sack of gold was keeping him going thus far. Or it had bought him some new shirts before he pissed all the money away, at least.
"You should pay her a visit." he said.
Perry scoffed.
"Why? You want to know if she's cut her hair? Changed her shade of lipstick? Gained some weight?"
Beni smirked at the last part.
"Yes... It would be amusing to find she had grown to be incredibly fat. Like a hippopotamus."
The smug glint in his eye was one taken from a moot point, however: Marina Quatermain was one woman who could weigh thirty-five stone and still have men dropping at her feet, Beni Gabor included.
She didn't hand him his drink directly, just left it on the countertop beside him.
"Pretending to be dead is not so easy," he said, after a while. "She will have mourned my passing, you know. But I cannot go and see her."
I wouldn't worry about too many people mourning your death, Beni, Perry thought, taking a sip of her tea.
"Why do you want to see her? Luxor's prostitutes not keeping you satisfied, Gabor?" she jabbed. "Why is she so important?"
Beni didn't smirk this time.
She could practically hear his mind piece an insult together in lieu of an answer.
"I could ask you the same question about tattoo-face."
For the past year, Perry had been meeting Ardeth frequently, happily and in total secrecy.
Depending on the travelling patterns of his tribe, the areas the warriors were instructed to watch over and the factor of inconspicuousness, their unities could take place once a fortnight, once a month, or three times a week.
Sometimes he would find her in the city, and tag along whilst she ran errands; other times, she would have to travel to strange rural areas and pray that a pack of jackals didn't eat her while she waited for him.
To others, their meetings might have seemed mundane.
Hours on end were spent simply talking, until he couldn't stay any longer or she became self-conscious about boring him.
Ardeth never grew bored, though. He listened to her as if her voice was music, a lullaby that he was hearing for the first time in two decades.
Apart from endless conversations and a handful of kisses, their relationship hadn't progressed much whatsoever.
But she was happy, and at some point had come to terms with the fact that she was very much in love.
"How I feel about Ardeth is none of your business," she said, quietly but pointedly, before leaving the kitchen.
"Where are you going?" Beni asked her, tone bordering on that of a whine, as always.
"Bed. I have to discuss something important with my boss tomorrow."
She collected Terence's journal on her way to the stairs, shut off the front room light and left him in the dark with only his cup of tea for company.
"You are not kicking me out, though?" the Hungarian asked from the shadows.
She stopped on the third step.
"Don't make a mess, don't eat my food, don't steal anything and don't be seen. If the Vázsonyi family tell me they saw a man in my house, I'll have you castrated at the hands of the Medjai."
He snickered to himself, muttering,
"Finom, finom..."
It wasn't as if she was lying— about the important discussion, that is, not the torturous punishment.
At the moment, Marina Quatermain was fighting for legal permission to allow Perry to excavate a temple in Sohag, one that Meela had been adamant they explore.
However, she had a feeling that Ms. Nais might take a lot more interest in the pursuit of an artefact known as the Bracelet of Anubis.
Hungarian:
Finom- Fine