Gail had never stayed in hospital herself, but knew exactly what a hospital bed looked like. From what she saw at the foot of the bed, this was definitely one of those. The last time she had seen one had been when she had visited a friend after an operation. The doctors had said that they had got to her appendix just in time, and that another day without surgery may have been fatal. She could still remember the big grin on her face as they had told her she would have to take two weeks off school.

But her friend hadn’t been strapped to her bed. Simply thinking about her restriction made her develop an itch in the small of her back. Shortly after that, the back of her left knee started tickling, followed quickly by the sole of her right foot.

Within a minute, she was in mental anguish, writhing within her restraints, trying in vain to rub some cover or strap against the numerous itches that seemed to have attacked from nowhere and everywhere all at once.  Arching her back, she pushed her chest tightly against the straps. Lifting herself half an inch from the mattress behind her, she involuntarily let out a long, pained moan. It was quickly followed by a more verbal complaint.

Then, she started screaming her head off; putting to full use the only part of her that had not been restrained.

All of a sudden she heard the door to her right open.  A man in a white coat entered and stood at the end of the bed. She looked at him and abruptly stopped screaming, although she consciously kept a few choice words at the ready.

“You’re awake,” he said, matter-of-factly, as if his job was to go into rooms and make comments on such things.

She hadn’t expected him to say that, and had to make a few quick changes to her pre-chosen expletives. Nonetheless, her reply brought a touch of pink to the pale white cheeks of the young man.

“It’s good to see that you are feeling better, Dr Turner,” he replied, ignoring her verbal assault. “You certainly look much better than yesterday.”

American, she thought to herself. Or possibly Canadian? She widened the scope, not confident enough in her ability to distinguish between the accents of the two countries. He unclipped the flip-chart from the bottom of the bed and looked beyond her towards the bed’s headrest. She tried to tilt her head back to see what he was looking at, but gave up quickly, deciding it was probably some kind of medical monitoring equipment.

“I’ll let the kitchen know you’re able to eat again.” He turned and walked towards the door, taking the chart with him.

“Wait!” she exploded, following him with her eyes. “Wait!” It was painful to look down and to the right without being able to move her head, but she forced herself. “How long have I been here? Where am I?”

He stopped and went to the side of the bed. He was now looking down on her face. It was a more comfortable position for her eyes, but with his head silhouetted against the bright light from the ceiling, she felt far less at ease. She was suddenly much more aware of her own helplessness and vulnerability.

“Where am I?” she asked again, this time less defiantly.

He smiled widely, displaying almost all of his perfectly straight, peroxide-white teeth. “You’re not in Kansas anymore,” he grinned, as if sharing a private joke with her.

What the hell was that supposed to mean? She’d never been to Kansas before anyway, so did he mean to say that since meeting with the Professor she’d been there, too? And where did that leave her now?

The man saw the confusion on her face and frowned briefly. “You’re like Dorothy, see?” He could see she didn’t. “Yellow brick road? Toto? The Munchkins?” After each question he paused eagerly, as if they all held the key to his secret code. “Aw, Jesus,” he rolled his eyes. “Have you never seen the Wizard of Oz?”

How could she shake her head with it strapped down? Instead she curled her bottom lip out slightly – which she managed to accompany with a half shrug despite the restraints.

“Really old movie, before World War II,” he offered.

“Before World War II? You expect me to know quotes from a film that’s over a hundred years old?” she laughed bitterly. “Where am I?” she snapped.

His grin faded. “You’re in Florida. Flo-ri-da.” He broke the word down into syllables slowly, as if her not knowing the Wizard of Oz made it likely that she wouldn’t know what that was, either. “In the US.”

Again he turned and left, but no matter how much she shouted, this time he didn’t come back. Instead, the door closed behind him and she found herself alone.

She was still strapped to the bed, and she was supposedly in Florida, and not Egypt. But no matter how strange or unlikely all that seemed she now knew for sure that she wasn’t dreaming anymore.

Now she remembered what the Professor had told her in his office in Cairo: Dr Henry Patterson. And she also remembered where that Patterson worked: near Tampa, Florida. This could only mean that Patterson knew that the Professor had told her, or was going to tell her, the truth about the Amarna books, and was now seeking to ‘buy’ her silence as well; by abducting her and strapping her to a bed! She gritted her teeth and pulled against her restraints with added passion.

Gail couldn’t wait to meet Dr Henry Patterson.

Chapter 49

Cairo buzzed and hummed liked a beehive. Cars streamed constantly through the wide avenues, motorcycles flying between them, weaving their ways this way and that with effortless skill. On the pavements pedestrians swarmed, busy with their daily chores, idle gossip and sightseeing. The tourists were easy to tell apart from the locals, and as George made his way calmly across the road with the hundred or so people he had been waiting with for the little green man, he liked to think that he looked more like one of the locals.

For one thing, he didn’t have a camera grafted to his hand; most of what was worth photographing in Cairo was already on his computer. And for another, he wasn’t wearing insanely conspicuous khaki shorts, shirt and sandals. He shook his head in amusement at the group of visitors in front of him; probably their thinking had been that to visit Egypt, land of the pharaohs, you had to dress like an explorer. To him it was even funnier because that was exactly what the Spaniard Martín had been wearing, and it was exactly what he had been wearing on his first visit to the country, all those years ago. In Egypt, it stood out like a Hawaiian shirt at a wedding.

After crossing the road, he took a left turn and headed down a narrow alley, away from the main flow of the tourist crowd which was probably heading towards the walled compound of Old Cairo.

“Assif!” he said as he brushed past a man on a bicycle. George had managed to memorise a few words of Arabic, which he found added to his casual jeans and t-shirt in distancing him from the tourists.  He was still unmistakably foreign – his pale skin soon went lobster-red in the sun.

He turned a corner and stopped in front of a small metal gate. He hovered his index finger over the column of buzzers. None were marked, and he suddenly realised that he couldn’t for the life of him remember which one he’d pressed on his last visit, a couple of years earlier: too much had happened since then. Each of the ten floors had two buttons, a total of eighteen flats, as the first floor was for maintenance and storage. He finally pressed the left button of the seventh floor; he knew it was at least a couple from the top; seven sounded about right.  After a short pause, a man’s voice came from the small speaker. George didn’t understand any of it.

“Ma esmouk Ben?” he said tentatively. He didn’t know how to say Is that Ben, and what is your name Ben was the closest he could come up with.