Obsession

1838 - Alexandria

“Selima, I need the papyrus.” Owen Bellamy followed the petite woman through the a maze of dusty shelves holding jumbles of scrolls, stela’s, and figurines. He stopped and stared at a bust of Hathor and frowned. “This is a fake.”

“I’m aware.”

Selima’s British accent was tempered by the French of the occupation and the Arabic of the natives. Owen turned to look at her. “The papyrus. Where is it?”

Selima stopped and faced Owen. “Gone. It disappeared two days ago.”

Owen clenched his jaw to bite back the anger and frustration brewing under the surface. He picked up a glazed steatite and inspected the figure. It was an incredibly preserved representation of a crocodile dating back roughly 4,000 years. Selima had an amazing eye and more importantly she was smart. But, he didn’t think she knew the significance of the papyrus. And, it would be better for her if she didn’t. He turned to look at her. “What do you mean gone?”

“I mean someone broke into my office and took several things. Among them was the papyrus you’re looking for.” Selima crossed her arms and looked at Owen. She knew him well enough that she knew the papyrus had some clue that the rest of them hadn’t realized but Owen’s explorations, if you could call them that, generally were dangerous and walked the fine line between honest exploration and criminal robbery. She knew better than to get too involved. “All stolen goods in Alexandria go through Ramal. Maybe you can buy it back from him.”

Owen bit back a growl of frustration. “What else was taken?”

Selima frowned and thought through what she had noticed was missing. “A stone box with glyphs, a figurine. There could have been other things I hadn’t gotten around to cataloguing yet.”

Owen nodded. Selima was generally only interested in scrolls and papyrus. She had a fascination with the written word ever since Champollion had translated the Rosetta Stone. He didn’t think the papyrus being stolen was coincidental. “You should be more careful. Egypt is full of unscrupulous treasure seekers these days.” Turning on his heel, he walked out of the cluttered room. Plans were already forming in his head. He quickly worked his way through what would work and what wouldn’t work. He had a fairly good idea who had stolen the items which meant he had a good idea where they were being held.

The man pushed his glasses up on his nose and tucked his grey stringy hair behind an ear as he peered at the stone box. He knew Selima had assumed it was early Egyptian but he knew it was much older than that. He also understood her confusion. Sumarian glyphs were so much different than Egyptian ones. But this particular set of glyphs wasn’t Sumarian. It was much much older than that. It was one he had only seen one other time and his patron kept that specific example under lock and key.

He knew his patron was a dangerous man. It didn’t matter. He thought his patron needed him just as much as he needed what he offered. Trying to procure antiquities on his own was getting much more difficult. He had hired Ramel to get these items out of Selima’s office. He had of course been obligated to kill him when he picked up the items. He tired of having to dirty his hands every time he needed to procure an item.

He squinted at the box once more before sighing and discarding it to the side. There was no translation that he was aware. Deciphering dead languages was not his forte. Picking up the papyrus, he inspected the broken seal with his gloved hands. He traced the familiar imagery of a dragon with his fingers before gently unrolling it. This language he knew. Once Champollion had completed the transliteration an entire world opened that had previously been confined to imagining what each glyph represented.

He skimmed his eyes over the lines of text and smiled at the complexity. Considering what his patron thought it described he wasn’t surprised. He followed the columns of symbols making note of which direction the figures faced. Most papyrus was organized in lines with all of the figures facing one way. It hadn’t taken long for translators to figure out that you read in whatever direction the figures were facing. Occasionally you came across one structured in columns. The same principles applied. He had only heard of one where the figures were facing different directions and by all reports that one was aligned down the center. Everything on the left faced left and everything on the right faced right. And it was divided straight down the center. This one, interestingly enough, was not divided down the middle. The figures faced different directions at random intersections. It would make translation much more difficult but not impossible.

He was deep into the first column when he heard a sound. He paused for a second but when he didn’t hear the sound again, he picked up the magnifying glass and studied the glyph a moment before jotting in his notebook. A few moments later he heard the sound again. Frowning, he reached into the drawer of his work table and retrieved a pistol and rested it on his lap. He strained to hear any movement but not hearing anything, he tentatively returned to the papyrus. He had been in this business long enough, working in the shadows, that his self preservation was ruling his brain. Frustrated, he slammed his notebook closed and stood up, gripping the pistol in his hand. Stalking over to the window, he pushed the curtain to the side with the pistol and looked out into the street. Fires burning in brazzers were spread along the lane providing a minimal amount of illumination. Not seeing anything he turned around and froze as he came face to face with a pistol. Not having time to raise his own, he forced his eyes to the face of the man holding the weapon. “Owen Bellamy. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” He knew who he was because they moved in the same shadowy circles although Owen tended to work solely on his own.

“You have something that belongs to me.” Owen studied the man in front of him. He was bothered by the idea that the man knew who he was because Owen didn’t have the foggiest idea what the man’s name was. He had only found him by following a figurative trail of blood. He had assumed he’d have to buy the papyrus from Ramel for an obscene amount of money. Instead, he had found Ramel’s dead body and had managed to escape out the back right as the authorities, such as they were, discovered him.

Through his connections, he had managed to find his way to this man’s doorstep. He had come into the situation knowing that the man had killed who know how many times before and had apparently no qualms about brutally killing based on what he had seen with Ramel’s body.

The man shrugged. “I would argue that I paid a competitive price for it.”

Owen wasn’t expecting the man to lunge at him. His own pistol slid out of his hand when he hit the floor. Before he could recover his breath, the man hit him in the jaw before sliding backwards and pointing the pistol at him. Owen rolled to the side when the man pulled the trigger. He was expecting the pain of a bullet ripping through his body but felt nothing but the pain in his back and jaw. Rolling to a crouching position, his eyes darted around until they landed on his pistol. It had come to a stop against the wall. Quickly darting his eyes back to his attacker he realized he was preparing to fire again. His brain registered that the man held a Colt in his hand and he launched himself at the man before he could get a shot out. The cursed invention of the damn repeating shot pistols less than a decade ago made confrontations like this so much more difficult. He fumbled to get a grip on the pistol and felt his fingers brush against the still hot metal of the barrel and pushed it away from him. He stiffened as he heard the roar of the pistol firing.

Reality set in and he rolled to the side. He didn’t feel like he’d been shot. Breathing hard he pushed himself up on his hands and knees and looked at the man on the floor. Blood was seeping across his shirt. Owen’s eyes darted up to the man’s face. He realized that life had drained out of the man’s eyes. It wasn’t the first time he had killed someone and it probably wouldn’t be the last but seeing dead eyes never ceased to deliver nightmares to his already sleepless nights.

Pushing himself up, he tore his eyes away from the dead man on the floor and looked over to the worktable. Pulling the satchel he carried off, he flung the flap back and started stuffing items into the bag. The table had been jarred in the fight so he wasn’t even registering what he was grabbing from the jumbled mess. Once the table was clean, he secured the satchel and walked out the door and into the night.