The Blue Ibis

By Richard Quarry

The Blue Ibis, a creation of the Egyptian god Thoth, promises heaven to whoever who can read the inscription within. Two agents, one from the Justice Department and one from the Egyptian Council of Antiquities, bicker while trying to track down the mysterious statue. But an old-money sybarite and a fast-talking tech wunderkind also seek the blue bird. And with heaven at stake, rules don't figure in the equation. For anyone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Devray Publishing
• Release date: Jan 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224668397

Book preview

Also by Richard Quarry

a Nat Frayne mystery

The Dread Men and Other Cases of Nat Frayne

The Dread Men

And Make Not Dreams Your Master

Lord Under London And Otther Cases of Nat Frayne

Lord Under London

The Case of Dancing Kali

The French Medium

Perfidious Albion

Further Adventures of Odysseus

Odysseus and the Eye of Odin

Man Of Many Turnings

The Evolved

The Big Empty

Point Of No Return

The Outcasts

Holobrain

Grinder

The God Machine

The Evolved

Standalone

Beer Run

All You Ever Have To Do

Midnight Choir

Geneslide

Blue Dread

The Horns Of Hathor

Flameout

What Rough Beast

Absent From Felicity

The Homecoming of Lucian Wren

Mary's Hell

The Sound of Snowfall

The Fires of Beltane

Devolution Day

Beer Garden

The French Fries of Freedom

Soldier of Discontent

Clearance Sale

The Treasure of the Endless Scrub

Star Mole

Questing Song

Board Games

Miss Kittenses

String Theory

Tea Party

No Boobs, No Kardashians

The Blue Ibis

The Blue Ibis

Richard Quarry

Copyright © 2024 by Richard Quarry

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Vellum flower icon Created with Vellum

Contents

The Blue Ibis

About the Author

The Horns of Hathor

The Blue Ibis

Of course I had seen yachts before. Off Alexandria, mostly, and around the Mediterranean. Some so large that from a distance your first thought was that it must be a ferry, and only when they got close enough to reveal the flair and glitter did you stop and wonder, what must it be like to live aboard such a floating paradise? And who could afford it?

Well this time out it was Lars Christiansen. We didn’t pick his name out of a hat. The pool of collectors possessing both the money and the interest to bid the outlandish amounts of money I heard going from my sources in the antiquities black market was not large.

As we clomped along the dock toward the Nefertiti’s berth the other boats tied up at this end of the marina were hardly insubstantial; a few sleek schooners or ketches here or there, but mostly the kind of seventy-five foot and above live-large-at-sea showrooms too big to fit into the boat show arenas.

Flanking the Nefertiti they looked more like pilot fish trailing a shark.

Only from a distance Christiansen’s pleasure dome did not resemble a yacht so much as a slab-sided nineteenth century ironclad. That came from the banks of solar panels arrayed in rows along a hull that must have been, what, two hundred feet from bow to stern? More? Something outlandish. And rising up above the sloping sides like a row of white trees, six masts. Not the tall, graceful sort you saw on the ketches and schooners. These were relatively short steel poles, with none of the traditional rigging showing because they were machine-operated. Christiansen boasted he’d built the most eco-friendly private yacht ever, capable of running indefinitely on solar and wind power. Don’t know about you, but I sure felt grateful.

"The Nefertiti, Frank sniggered, over the wet slap of the water against the pilings. A light breeze textured the bay with scattered whitecaps, so that the thump of hull bumpers against the dock added a drumbeat to our walk. Why not just call it the Greta Thunberg?"

As we drew close I heard the shrieks, splashes, and shrill laughter of a pool party on the top deck, a good forty feet above our heads and shielded by the blue-gray solar panels. A gangplank ran from the bow down to the dock. At its head waited a short-haired, competent-looking female security officer in a dark blue suit. Her black basketweave belt was festooned with taser, pepper spray, collapsible baton, and to my surprise, a Glock in a black kydex holster. For a pool party? Were seagulls trying to make off with the guests?

After checking badges the guard gave her chronometer a sour glance but spared us the Mr.-Christiansen-doesn’t-like-to-be-kept-waiting lecture. She led us partway aft past what I took to be curtained staterooms, then through a door, completely bypassing the party.

Which I regretted, because there was something in the carefree (scatter-brained?) giggles and shrieks, the brief exclamations of which all I could ever decipher was oh-my-god!, which told you the party-goers were very predominantly young and almost offensively good-looking. Not that middle-aged, slightly — just slightly — overweight people like myself can’t whoop it up around a pool.

But we never lose that undercurrent of anxiety, that keen awareness that we are aping a lifestyle that rightfully belongs to someone else, and that tomorrow real life will resume regular programming. While without ever being granted the good fortune to actually see them, I could tell that the girls issuing forth these riotous sounds knew that for them the party would still be going tomorrow, and the day after that, and on and on. Because they’d been born with the kind of looks that if by some unlikely chance you ever got the opportunity to ask one of them, and what do you do?, she would look at you like you were from Mars and say, you’re kidding, right?

Plus I knew they were models and actors. Christiansen ran an agency. Or rather had other people do it for him, because he was old money and the party just kept going on and on for him, too. His role was to sign the bills and throw the parties. According to our research the agency was a money-drain, but not at a rate to overly concern a man who never had to earn it in the first place. And it kept him surrounded by Beautiful People.

We followed our silent guardian down one hallway, then another, a flight of stairs, another hallway — how many hallways can there be, on a boat? — and finally, after a respectful knock were admitted to Lars Christiansen’s private sanctum.

Where I got a shock.

It was Sidney Greenstreet.

Okay, it wasn’t really Sidney Greenstreet.

In fact, I do Lars Christiansen an injustice. Yeah, he had a gut on him, but not so far he couldn’t still see his toes if he leaned forward. I think it was more the affectation of the quilted gold lamé dressing gown. Worn above purple velvet carpet slippers and blue silk pajamas that poked out below the robe. That and thick lips hosting a welcoming grin full of false bonhomie.

In fact Lars Christiansen’s archaic costume and overpowering air of self-satisfaction amounted to a virtual challenge. This was a