The Pharaoh's Secret (NUMA Files 13)

She looked up, pointing at the third painting. “Small boat, paddling somewhere with great effort.”

“What are you thinking?” Paul asked.

“He had to hide what D’Campion sent him,” she said. “But he needed to keep it close at hand. Somewhere he could get at it.”

Paul could guess the rest. “Paintings, done with great haste, by a man who’d never painted a thing before. You think he hid the truth in the painting somehow?”

“No,” she said. “Not in the painting itself.”

She took the painting of the Plague Upon Egypt and turned it over. On the back of the picture there was heavy, coarse paper glued to the frame. Setting the painting down, she pulled a Swiss Army knife from her purse. “Hold this steady while I slit it apart.”

“Are you insane?” Paul whispered. “What about the Wrath of God for doing bad things?”

“I’m not worried about that,” she said. “We’re trying to save lives here.”

“What about the Wrath of the Proctor?”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she said. “Besides, you heard him. He couldn’t care less about these paintings. He’d probably sell them to us for a song, if he was allowed.”

Paul held the frame steady as Gamay opened up the sharpest blade of the knife. “Make it quick,” he said.

Gamay began to separate the thick paper backing from the artwork, careful not to plunge the knife too deeply. When she’d gone all the way along the bottom, she reached up inside the frame.

“Well?”

She moved her hand along the inside of the bottom stretcher and then bent down and looked up into the gap. “Nothing,” she said. “Let’s try the others.”

With Paul now a willing accomplice, she separated the backing of the warship painting next. A quick check also found nothing.

“Guess the warship wasn’t the key,” Paul said.

“Very funny.”

Finally, she went to work on the painting of the small boat being rowed by the men.

“Hurry,” Paul said. “Someone’s coming.”

The clip-clop of shoes echoed off the tile floor, closing in on them. Gamay quickly closed the knife.

“Hurry.”

The proctor appeared at the end of the aisle and Paul hastily pulled the painting away from Gamay and slid it back into the rack. Instead of exclamation or rebuke, or even a look of shock, the proctor remained remarkably still.

Only then did Paul realize the proctor was stumbling stiffly forward, not even looking at them. He fell forward face-first with a knife sticking out of his back.

Another man appeared behind him. This man was younger, with slowly healing sores on his forehead and cheeks. He pulled the knife from the proctor’s back and wiped it coldly. Two more men moved in, flanking him.

“You can stop what you’re doing now,” the man with the sores said. “We’ll take it from here.”

56

“Who are you?” Paul asked.

“You can call me Scorpion,” the man replied.

He seemed proud of the name. Paul couldn’t imagine why.

“How did you find us?” Paul realized there was little point to such questions, but he was trying to stall for time. He’d never seen this Scorpion person before. Even though he could guess who Scorpion worked for, it seemed impossible that the men could know who he and Gamay were.