Selected Detective
THE DEAD SEA DESERT

A man walked more and more yesterday at Helikpter's side, exhaling cigarette smoke.His eyes alternately looked at the empty street in front of him and at the watch that was coiled around his wrist. It was dark the only light from the three-quarters moon that was puffed up into the desert in a yellow sheen and also silent, so that footsteps sounded unnaturally loud, make a deep hole in the quiet night air. The shadow was too dense to make it clear, except to show that it was medium in height and very thin, with a bent nose, a white yarmulke on its head and pale little codets scraping its right cheek.

“You know how long?” said a voice from inside the helicopter cockpit.

“Soon,” answer the man. “She will be here soon.” He kept pacing, clapping his hands nervously at his thighs, stopping at times to raise his head and listen. Five minutes passed, then ten minutes, and the sound of the engine in the distance broke the night, with the squeaking of tires on the pebbled ground. The man moved to the middle of the road, watching the car that was becoming more clearly unshaded approaching them, moving slowly and then the headlights turned off.

The car stopped 10 meters from them and the driver got out. The man joined him and together they went to the back of the vehicle, where the driver opened the rear hood. A groan and *******, then someone crawls up to the night while holding on to the hand of the driver who helped him. Again, it was too dark to know much about him, other than the fact that he was younger than a smoking man, with messy dark hair and a keffiyeh wrapped around his neck.

“You're late,” said the older man. “I was worried.” The newcomer was pulling the air deeply, raising his hands above his head to relax the tension.

“I have to be careful. If some of my people know this...”.

He pulled his index finger down his throat, making a movement accompanied by a sharp hissing sound, like a knife slicing through flesh.

The smoker nodded and wrapped his arm around the newcomer's shoulder and led him to the helicopter.

“I know,” said quiet. “We are trying to save ourselves here.”

“I hope we can reach the other side soon. For our own sake. Otherwise..” He shook his cigarette helplessly and the two disappeared into the helicopter. The desert echoes the sound of its engine as soon as the propeller starts spinning, plunging into the darkness.

Piet Jansen's Investigation

The two policemen crossed the Nile with a local Ferry, a large, rusty ship that crawled through the water with a puff of diesel smoke rising behind it and a shrill whistle. Sariya was snacking on a pack of yellow thermous beans; khalifa kept staring at the bright shroud of Luxor temple, drifting in her own mind. Imitation leather jackets are draped up to the chin to withstand the cold of the night. On the east bank, they climbed some stairs to the Corniche, and Khalifa asked her deputy for the keys to the deceased man's home.

“You want to go there tonight?” sariya asked, surprised.

“Although just a snap. Who knew there was such a thing ... unusual.” Sariya's eyes narrowed. “you mean?”

“Yah.., unusual. Come on, where's the key?” Shrugging her shoulders, Sariya reached into her pocket and gave Mr. Jansen a plastic bag containing keys. He then retrieved his notebook, tore up the page containing his graffiti about Jansen's address and handed it to Khalifa.

“You want me to accompany?”

“No, you just go home,” Khalifa replied, looking at her address before folding and keeping it in your pocket. “I won't be long. Just need to check a few things. We'll see you tomorrow at the office.”

He patted his deputies on the shoulder, and drove them along the Corniche and turned and stopped the passing taxi. The taxi stopped at the sidewalk. The driver, a well-built man with imma tied to his head and a cigarette tucked at the tip of his lip, grabbed behind him and opened the back door of the taxi.

“Where, inspector?” tanyakanya. Like most taxi drivers, he knew Khalifa personally, having been detained by him at least once for driving a taxi without complete documents.

“Karnak,” says Khalifa. “Street continues along the Corniche. I'd say the place would stop.” they drove, heading north past the mercure hotel, the Luxor museum, the old hospital and Chicago house, infiltrating among the traffic density. Buildings within the city gradually split into a ramshackle house surrounded by a collection of scrubland. After five hundred meters had passed from the city limits in the north, Khalifa signaled the driver to stop. Across a large street, laurel and eucalyptus trees that point the way to the right lead to the pillar of the Karnak temple that is highlighted by bright lights.

“Do I have to wait?” ask the driver when Khalifa is out.

“Do not worry. I'll just walk.”

He reached into his pocket, but the driver moved his hand.

“No need inspector. I owe you.”

“How did you solve that, mahmud? The last time we met, I held you back because the insurance expired.”

“True,” I'm a driver. “But then I didn't pay highway tax too, so I got a waiver.” He grinned, revealing two rows of untidy brown teeth. With his horn honking, he immediately ran the car and disappeared into the road he was on.

Khalifa stood for a moment staring at the Nile, its surface glistening in the moonlight like a sheet of mimpled grey silk cloth, then veered and headed towards the entrance of the temple.

Khalifa observed through the fence that was near a neatly arranged collection of flowers, heavy leafy windows, the SIGN KHASS! MAMNU’ AL-DUKHUUL! PERSONAL! NO ENTRY! installed at regular intervals around the fence, then step to the front gate and turn the handle.

Locked up. He pulled the keys from his pocket and, under the pale moonlight, tried the keys one by one until he found the right one, open the door and walk down the gravel path. When he entered the front porch of the building, an animal, a cat or a wolf, barked from behind the darkness on his right, dropped a ground rake and disappeared behind the thickets around the house.

“Damn it!” hiss, surprised.

He lit a cigarette and held the key, opened three heavy door locks and stepped into the dark inner room. He felt the contact lights on the wall and turned on the lights. He was in a spacious, wooden floor, very neat and meticulous, with four armchairs around a circular corner table in the center of the room, a table with a television and a phone on it. In front of him, it extends a dark corridor that leads to the back of the house.

He looked around for a while, familiarized himself with the surroundings, and observed the left wall of the place hanging snow-covered mountain oil paintings on the shelves of newspapers and magazines. He observed the painting, marveled at it he had never seen snow before, the real snow then bowed and probed the contents of the shelf. There are two al Ahrams, the egyptian horticultural Society magazine and the bulletin of the egyptian museum in Berlin. Behind is a copy of Time magazine, with its front cover featuring two men; one fat, fierce and bearded, the other was skinny and eagle-faced with pale codets on his right cheek almost up to his chin. Khalifa pulled it and read the headline: HAR-ZION AND MILAN: WHICH ONE IS FOR ISRAEL? by Layla al-madani. He knew the name of the author. Then he opened the magazine, a page containing the article with a photo of a young, beautiful woman with short black hair and large green eyes. He watched the picture, was forced to be curious and by shaking his head he closed the magazine, put it back on the shelf and investigate other things in the house.

There are five other rooms: two bedrooms, a bathroom, a workspace and, at the back of the building, a large kitchen. Everything was slick and neatly arranged, unnatural so it looked like no one had ever lived there. And in addition to all of the thick shutters, there is a heavy safety lock.

Khalifa entered the room one by one, checking and searching but not really looking for anything in particular, just trying to get “rasa” in each room for people who have lived there.

He entered the workspace first. A large room with a pair of metal filing cabinets in one corner, bookshelves that stand from floor to ceiling along two sides of the wall and a large table under the window. The filing cabinet was both locked, but he found the key on the victim's keychain and opened the two in turn. The first cupboard contained a plastic envelope containing both business and legal documents. The second cupboard is a small library of photographic slides, hundreds in number and all taped neat and orderly labels in plastic packaging that illustrate as far as it can be expected almost all of Egypt's important historical sites, starting from Tel al fara’in in the Delta below to Wadi halfa in the north corner.

He took two random pictures and lifted them up, put them on a lamp, closed one eye to recognize the Temple of Seti I at Abydos, the stone tomb at Beni hasan, Khonsu's courtyard at Karnak. He watched the last slide for a few minutes, moved it, approached and away from the light and sharpened his focus, his eyebrows frowning before he put the slide back into his map, close and re-lock the closet and switch to one bookcase.

The volume of the book is arranged alphabetically by its author's name and, with the exception of a few dictionaries and a small section on plants and gardens, contains almost exclusively historical works, some popular histories, and others, more is academic history. On the back of the book is written the title in Latin, French, English, German, Arabic and that makes him surprised, given what Shaw said about Jansen's attitude towards Jews - Hebrews. Whatever Jansen was, he was really very well educated and well read.

“How can a person like you end up with a job running a cheap hotel business in Luxor?” Khalifa muttered to herself. “How's the story, Mr Jansen? What's with all these security systems? What are you afraid of? What are you hiding?” He remained in the workspace for a while, researching the book and the entire desk drawer, then walked to the bathroom, then to the two bedrooms. In the first room there is a small closet next to the bed. He drew several German magazines, pornographic, with several young men posing naked on the front page. He observed it, astonished and disgusted, then threw it in the closet and closed it.

Finally, it went into the kitchen. Two doors open. One was secured with two heavy steel locks, which led to a wooden veranda at the back of the villa. The second door, which had to be opened with the key from the victim's keychain, showed the steps down into the darkness. Carefully the inspector went down the stairs. His young man made of wood rattled under his feet. Darkness slowly enveloped him and made him lose his way so he was forced to stick his right hand on the cold stone wall to maintain balance. At the bottom of his finger he looked for the contact of the lamp and turned it on.

It takes a few seconds to ascertain what he is looking at. Then he was so surprised.

“Yes, Lord!” Antiques. There are antiques everywhere. On iron tables laid out in the middle of the room, on shelves around the walls, in squares and chess boxes in the corners of the room. Hundreds of objects, each tightly wrapped in a plastic bag, each accompanied by a business card containing neat handwriting about what, where, and when they were found and the date of the estimate.

“Like a museum,” Khalifa whispered in wonder. “museum private hers.” For a moment he stood in his place. Then step forward to the nearest table, picking up the bag containing the small wooden figures inside. ’Shabti, KV3a, east’ corridor read on the card. ‘Wood. No text or decorations. Dynasty 18, possibly Amenhotep I (1525-1504 BC). Found 3 march 1982’. KV 39 is a large tomb containing stones at the fold of a hill above the Valley of the Kings, which is considered by many to be the final resting place of pharaoh Amenhotep I of the 18th Dynasty. the tomb was never properly excavated. Jansen had clearly been there doing private excavations for himself.

Khalifa put the figure back and took another object.

’Fractional coated floor tile, Amarna (Akhetaten), Northern palace.

Papyrus design in green, yellow and blue. Dynasty 18, Akhenaten's reign (1353-1335 BC). Found 12 November 1963’. Beautiful objects, when the color is rich and rich, papyrus reeds are drawn rather inclined as if blown by a gentle breeze. Again, it seems that this was excavated by Jansen himself. Khalifa turned the object around, shook her head, placed it down and turned around the other part of the warehouse.

A remarkable and mind-shaking collection, the results, if judged by the information cards on each object, were obtained from secret and illegal searches for more than five decades.

Part of the kudanil object is small; ostracon which contains the story of the Theban Triumvirate; amun, mut and Khonsu are priceless. However, most of the collection was damaged or so common that it seemed to mean nothing. The basic principle does not seem to be the will to collect rare or beautiful objects, but rather the sheer pleasure of digging, discovering, and marking small fragments about the past. A collection like this, Khalifa thought, was one that she herself was so eager to have. Collection of history lovers. The archeologists collection.

In a rather distant corner, he found a vault, stooped and sturdy, with a twill and lever on the front. He tried to turn the lever but the door remained tightly closed.

After a few minutes, he stopped and looked at another object again. Finally he saw his watch.

“Gosh!” He had promised his wife, Zenab, that he would arrive home at 9pm so that he could read a fairy tale to his children. It's been 10 minutes now. While cursing himself, he looked around for the last time, and then went back up the stairs and turned off the contact lights. When he did that, he noticed that the door above him, which opened inward, had swung half closed so that he could see the back of it. There on the hook, hung a green hat with feathers emerging from the edges. He stopped, then climbed up the stairs, slowly, as if unwilling to do so. Then he removed the thing from its hanger, brought it before him, and observed it closely.

“It looks like he has a bird on his head,” murmured, a voice suddenly came out, as if something had been pushed into his chest.

“Cute little cage.” He looked at the hat, and then, in a fit of rage, smashed his hand at the back of the door, causing it to crash.

“Damn it!” hisses. “This must be a coincidence! Sure.”