LITMIR.BIZ

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he exclaimed, his smile wide and welcoming. I reached for him—

      But he stopped short. “Let me look at you.”

      “Only if you return the favor,” I warned, eyeing him up and down. He wore his usual faded jeans and a slightly wrinkled, long-sleeved jersey that had been washed too often. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

      “I told you—I dodged the car that tried to run me down.” From the scrapes on his hands, where he’d landed, I judged he’d had only modest success in that. “I wouldn’t have mentioned it except for what it might signify.”

      “That you’ve found a lead about the…you-know-what.”

      The Isis Grail.

      He nodded, a moment of complete accord—and I hugged him. After the briefest hesitation, his long arms wrapped around me, no matter where we were. Mmm. He felt stronger than he had back in France, where we’d enjoyed a mild flirtation and the start of a powerful friendship. He smelled faintly of the sea.

      That was Rhys for you. No nefarious associations. Totally supportive of my grail quest, since his mother had also descended from a line of Grailkeepers. Classic nice guy. Wholly, wonderfully uncomplicated…

      Except for his having been a priest, once. Actually, still—as he’d be the first to point out, ordination is even more permanent in the Catholic Church than marriage. But he no longer worked for them. The Catholic Church that is.

      Okay, so that part was complicated.

      He pulled back first, ducking his head only in part to take my suitcase. “Ah. That is…do be careful, Maggi. The Egyptians don’t approve of PDAs.”

      I blinked at him. “Personal digital assistants?”

      “They don’t approve of public displays.” Of affection.

      Oh.

      I looked around us and did, in fact, intercept a few glares aimed our way. I also saw a pair of men beside us, hugging and then kissing each other on each cheek. “Really?”

      “Not between the sexes,” he chided, grinning. “Not even if it’s obvious that the couple’s…” His grin faded. “Oh.”

      He’d just noticed the wedding ring.

      “It’s fake,” I assured him, fast. “I’m supposed to attract less harassment this way.”

      “Most of the women on the project do the same thing.” Rhys sounded relieved as he supported Lex’s story.

      Having him there eased the foreignness of this place. Between a few necessary stops—the public bathrooms, and an in-airport bank to change money—we caught up on the basic niceties. How my great-aunt and his recent boss had been when he left Paris—she was well. How my parents had been when I left New York—also good. Everything but the goddess grails, which needed privacy, and the topic of me and Lex, which was just plain awkward.

      In the meantime, for a country where we weren’t supposed to hold hands or even walk too close, the other travelers sure crowded us against each other.

      “Here,” said Rhys, as another passenger bumped me in passing. “You’ll want to keep this on you.”

      I took the matchbook he handed me. In swirling Arabic letters it said something I couldn’t possibly read. But in smaller text, beneath that, it said Hotle Athens, Alexandria.

      “It’s for if we get separated,” Rhys explained over the bustle and push. “This is where most of the people on the project have been staying. Show it to a cabdriver or a policeman, and they can get you safely back.”

      “Like a kindergartner with a sign pinned to my shirt?”

      “Something like that, yes.” By now we’d reached the doors out onto the afternoon sidewalk. Despite that the sidewalk was covered, for shade, we stepped into a blast of dusty, nose-searing heat—

      And chaos.

      Men rushed us from five different directions at once, getting in our faces, shouting at us in Arabic with snippets of English: “Cab?”

      “Good ride!”

      “Take care of you!”

      “La’,” said Rhys, speaking more firmly than usual.

      And a dark man with a bushy moustache snatched my suitcase right out of his hands! Rhys reached for it, but I got it first, yanking with all my strength. The man let go, shouting his displeasure, and I stumbled backward from the lack of resistance—right into someone else’s hand on my butt. When I spun to face that one, he smiled proudly and held out a hand, as if for a tip. That’s when I felt someone pull at the laptop case over my shoulder.

      “La’la’la’!” said Rhys again, louder, but intimidation isn’t his thing.

      Me, I spun to face the man who had my laptop and, hands full, I kicked at him. Not an hour in this country and already I was resorting to violence.

      “La’!” I said, whatever the hell it meant.

      Somehow he jumped clear of my kick, which was maybe for the best. Annoying or not, these men didn’t seem to be trying to hurt us, or even rob us. Even the luggage snatching seemed to be a twisted sales technique. The same thing was happening to other travelers up and down the sidewalk.

      Most important, my throat wasn’t tightening with any kind of warning.

      Still, I’d had enough gestures, offers, pleas and definitely enough gropes! We were surrounded, the hot, already suffocating air thick with garlic breath and sweaty bodies and pushing, grabbing men shouting foreign words with only moments of English clarity: “Give ride!” or “Help you.”

      “I don’t want your help,” I insisted, first in English and then in French, and bumped into Rhys. “La’ isn’t working,” I complained. “What’s Egyptian for piss off?”

      Two of the men shouted louder and gestured more rudely. Apparently they understood and disapproved, despite that they were harassing us.

      I was about to show them some freakin’ disapproval….

      That’s when a suited, square-shouldered, swarthy man stepped up to the fray. He made a small motion with his right hand, like scooping something away from him, and the others immediately drew back.

      Why did I think this couldn’t be good?

      “Try imshee,” the gentleman suggested in cultured, British-accented English—to Rhys. “It often works.”

      I said, “And that really means…?”

      Finally he looked at me—and smiled, charming as any sheikh hero in a romance novel. “My dear lady, it means get lost.”

      Close enough. Although they’d already backed off, I glared at the remaining hawkers and said, “Imshee!”

      Several turned away from us, gesturing that we weren’t worth the trouble. The ones who remained, hands still outstretched for my luggage, weren’t getting as close.

      But was that because of the word, or the man?

      The still-crowded sidewalk by no means became an oasis of calm. But at least I could actually look around us. A handful of mosques and minarets cut the smoggy, uneven skyline of dusty stone skyscrapers. Cement was winning the war against a stretch of grass here and a cluster of palm trees there; the plaster facade above us read Cairo Airport, followed by Arabic lettering. The stench of heat and car exhaust was dizzying. A cacophony of horns mixed with shouts and music from open car windows…but okay, that part just sounded like New York.

      This may once have been the land of the goddess Isis, but it sure looked like a land of men now. Men’s values. Men’s importance. I couldn’t help feeling vulnerable.

      I turned back to grudgingly thank the man who’d helped us.

      He

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