The Cairo Code Read Online Free PDF Page A

Weaver, who had jumped at his first opportunity to travel abroad. His father had worked as a caretaker on the estate owned by the family of Jack Halder’s mother, and despite their different social backgrounds, the two boys had formed an immediate friendship that had begun in early childhood and lasted ever since. Even after Halder’s mother had died, they had spent their summers together, when Franz Halder came to stay in New York each year. But at Sakkara, there was a problem. Both of them had fallen in love with the same woman.
    Rachel Stern was a young archeologist of twenty-three, just out of university, the daughter of a German-Catholic father and a Jewish mother. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, she seemed to have inherited her parents’ intelligence and good looks. They were both noted archeologists, and her father, a professor, was director of the dig. Rachel Stern liked both young men very much, but she couldn’t seem to decide which she loved, so she was content for the three of them to keep company together.
    That summer they organized trips to Cairo and Luxor, exploring the bazaars and markets, the Valleys of the Kings and Queens and the ruined Temple of Karnak. They made a habit at weekends of dancing at Shepheard’s, or attending parties at the Mena House Hotel, built in the shadows of the Giza pyramids, and dining in the small, intimate restaurants and the houseboat nightclubs that flourished along the Nile.
    Once, Harry Weaver had a photograph taken of the three of them together, standing among the tombs in the scorching desert at Sakkara, the Step pyramid as a backdrop, all of them tanned and smiling for the camera, Rachel between the men, her arms around their waists. And though no one ever said it, they each knew it was a happy time, perhaps the happiest in their young lives.
    But summer had to end. None of them could ever remember the exact date they had first met, but they would each remember exactly when the shadow was thrown across their path: September 1939. It was the month war had been declared in Europe, Hitler had invaded Poland, and their lives, like so many others, were about to be changed forever.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Heat shimmered across the vastness of open desert beyond the pyramids that afternoon as the covered Bedford truck came to a halt and Harry Weaver climbed out. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand, then lifted a battered leather satchel from the backseat, before making his way to the collection of large canvas tents that had been erected around the Sakkara site. Dozens of team members were busy clearing away equipment after the excavation and were loading it onto a couple of more Bedford trucks, and as Weaver strolled towards the activity, a gray-haired, distinguished man wearing a bush hat and sweat-stained khaki tropical shirt stepped out of one of the tents.
    Professor David Stern had a studious face, but it wasn’t without humor, and when he saw Weaver he removed his glasses, wiped them vigorously with a handkerchief, and smiled. “Harry, you’re back. And about time. I was beginning to think we’d have to send out a search party.”
    â€œSorry, Professor. I stopped off at Shepheard’s on the way to see if there was any news.”
    â€œAnd what’s the word from Cairo’s principal watering hole?”
    â€œWarsaw’s still in flames. German Stuka bombers are razing it to the ground. No one expects the Poles to hold out much longer.”
    â€œThat fool Hitler,” Stern said through clenched teeth. “Before you know it he’ll have Europe in ruins. But what can you expect from such a dangerous madman?” He changed the subject as if the present topic were too upsetting and looked a short distance away, to where a diesel generator was humming away in the searing heat. Electric cables snaked into a large hole that had been opened up in the earth’s face with a sturdy wooden safety frame