They were on the road for two days following the incident. At first, Swanson had been keen to put as much distance between them and the site of the portals as quickly as possible, but in the utter darkness of rural Egypt, driving at high speeds became much too hazardous.
The first night they stopped at a hotel in the town of Beni Suef, across the river from their initial route. They stayed to the west of the Nile the following day, tracking it as far as a town called Sawhaj, where again they spent the night.
“How far are we away?” Eva had no other thought than to reach Madden from the moment Swanson had pronounced his sentence.
“Perhaps ten or twenty miles,” Swanson responded, still distracted by what he had seen; he hadn’t spoken at all in the car, and barely said a few words in the ev
