‘I’m no quitter, as you Americans say. As soon as I get the last of this lot onto the plane in Cairo I’ll come back and take up my new position. In the meantime I will carry out my duties like a good little soldier. All right, friends, gather around; the temple of Karnak is not one temple but a complex of temples, built over many centuries. The Avenue of Sphinxes . . .’

People wandered off as we proceeded, some to stop and rest, others to inspect a particular area in more detail. Schmidt and I had paused to look at an obelisk and he was lecturing me about the career of Hatshepsut – ‘one of the first feminists, Vicky, she should be of interest to you’ – when I saw a familiar face that didn’t belong to our group. A familiar beard, rather.

‘I have been looking all over for you,’ Jean-Louis said grumpily.

‘What for?’ I asked. He certainly didn’t look like a man who has finally found the girl of his dreams.

‘To show you the temple, of course. Didn’t you ask that I do so?’

‘We are delighted to have you, of course,’ Schmidt exclaimed, before I could answer. Just as well; I would have said no, I hadn’t. However, I was familiar with the habit some people have of believing in their own fantasies. I must have made a hit with Jean-Louis. That would teach me not to go around oozing sympathy.

He’d worked on the Aton Temple project for three years before leaving it to take up Larry’s offer, and he knew Karnak as I know my own apartment. We finally managed to pry him away from that part of the temple and talked him into showing us boring tourist stuff like the Hypostyle Hall. ‘Impressive’ is an overused word, but it’s the only word for that cluster of mammoth columns. The only thing wrong with it was the tourists. One group had squatted in a circle and I recognized the seekers after truth we had seen entering the temple earlier. They were muttering to themselves and waving their hands. I heard somebody say something about auras.

‘Cretins,’ Jean-Louis muttered.

‘They do no harm,’ Schmidt said tolerantly.

Finally I decided I’d absorbed enough for one day and I cut Jean-Louis short in the middle of a translation of the annals of Thutmose III. He was reading the hieroglyphs off the wall. It was a wasted exhibition so far as I was concerned; how did I know he was reading them right?

Jean-Louis consulted his watch. ‘Yes, we must go. Mr Blenkiron has sent the car for us, it will be waiting.’