David Gibbins - Pharaoh

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Pharaoh: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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1351 BC: Akhenaten the Sun-Pharaoh rules supreme in Egypt… until the day he casts off his crown and mysteriously disappears into the desert, his legacy seemingly swallowed up by the remote sands beneath the Great Pyramids of Giza.
AD 1884: A British soldier serving in the Sudan stumbles upon an incredible discovery — a submerged temple containing evidence of a terrifying religion whose god was fed by human sacrifice. The soldier is on a mission to reach General Gordon before Khartoum falls. But he hides a secret of his own.
Present day: Jack Howard and his team are excavating one of the most amazing underwater sites they have ever encountered, but dark forces are watching to see what they will find. Diving into the Nile, they enter a world three thousand years back in history, inhabited by a people who have sworn to guard the greatest secret of all time…

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A bugle sounded, and he heard the stomping noise of soldiers falling in. Now was their chance. All eyes would be down the slope towards the retreating Mahdist forces, and the wells where the soldiers and their camels would be desperate to slake their thirst.

They needed to move fast. Mayne put his hand forward to signal Charrière. He tensed, his heart pounding.

They began to run.

PART 5

19 Near Kemna on the Nile Sudan present day The Toyota bounced and jolted - фото 7

19

Near Kemna, on the Nile, Sudan, present day

The Toyota bounced and jolted along the track towards the Nile, through growths of desert grass and plots of vegetables and fruit trees enclosed by low mud-brick walls. They were approaching the site of the wreck of the Abbas, some sixty kilometres south of the Semna cataract along the Nile towards Khartoum. The surrounding land was more low-lying than at Semna, more suited to agriculture, and every available area of sandy soil had been turned to arable. The track ran beside an irrigation channel that extended over a kilometre from the river; ahead of them on the bank they could see a pair of pivoting shaduf water-raising devices, the oldest and simplest equipment for getting water from the river into the channels, used since early antiquity. Two scruffy boys who had been operating the devices left them and ran up to the Toyota as it sped by, chasing it through the cloud of dust they left behind. Ibrahim turned to Jack and pointed at the window. ‘Keep it wound up,’ he said. ‘This isn’t a good place. When we get out, watch your pockets.’

Jack glanced at Costas in the back seat, and then kept his eyes glued ahead as they tore down the final few hundred metres of the track, coming to a skidding halt only a few cars’ lengths from the water’s edge. ‘Thanks, Ibrahim,’ he said.

‘Rocket man, that’s what I’m going to call you,’ added Costas.

‘Apologies for the speed,’ Ibrahim said. ‘It’s a habit you pick up around here. I learned to do it when I was with a Sudanese naval attachment in Mogadishu. You go fast everywhere there, and avoid stopping at all costs.’

‘So what’s the lowdown here?’ Costas said, peering out of the closed window beside him.

‘There’s a local warlord who runs this district. His boys belt around in “specials” like those we used to see in Mogadishu, openly carrying AKs. It shouldn’t happen in Sudan any more, but it does. Basically they’re a continuation of the tribal fiefdoms that dotted this territory at the time the British arrived here, concentrating especially on these precious cultivable patches of land. Back in the old days, they made their loot from the slave trade. When you see how these places are run, you can understand how General Gordon found it so difficult to stamp it out. These days of course it’s drugs rather than slaves, and that’s why you don’t look over those mud-brick walls. It’s mostly poppies, but high-grade marijuana too.’

‘How does al’Ahmed fit in with this?’ Costas said. ‘The new official who got us here.’

‘Officially he’s a special appointee to oversee enhancement of the historical and archaeological evidence for Sudan in the period immediately before British rule, especially the era of the Mahdi, which is celebrated by many Sudanese as a time of independence between the Egyptian and the British regimes. That’s why he’s summoned you here, as a convenient way of getting the world’s top archaeological diving experts to have a look at the Abbas site. And he’s secured this area by promising police if needed. But you won’t be seeing any of those when we arrive, because unofficially his family controls most of these drug-producing areas, providing protection from inter-gang warfare and an assured market in return for a substantial cream of the profits, usually eighty per cent. One word from al’Ahmed and these people bow to his will. Those shifty young men you can see sitting on the wall ahead of us, the two with Kalashnikovs, those are our police. But we have to remember that al’Ahmed wears his official hat too and he has the authority to call in the real police if he decides he doesn’t need us any more.’

‘Great,’ said Costas, staring at the children who were banging at the door of the car. ‘Why do I have a bad feeling about this?’

Jack pursed his lips. He had felt uneasy all the way from Semna, and now, seeing this place and sensing the atmosphere, he was beginning to question his decision to agree to a visit. He looked at the riverbank a few metres ahead. ‘How far out is the wreckage?’

‘The most likely site’s about two hundred metres out, and thirty metres deep,’ Ibrahim replied. ‘It should be a quick dive straight from shore to see whether there’s anything worth looking at. We can be in and out within two hours and back on the road to Semna.’

Jack tapped the dashboard. ‘Okay. Let’s do it.’

‘Watch the kids.’

They all got out of the car at the same time, and were immediately swarmed by about a dozen children. Jack firmly pushed two boys away and prevented another from looping his finger around his watch. The two young men with Kalashnikovs sauntered over, and one of them raised his rifle in the air. There was a deafening crack and the children quickly dispersed, scattering into the irrigation ditches and alleys surrounding the fields. One of the men swaggered up to Jack and put out his hand, grasping Jack’s in an iron grip. ‘Hassid Saib told us to look after you, and we will. No more trouble from small boys, eh? Or we shoot them, see, like little pigs.’ The man aimed his rifle here and there, laughing, the other hand still firmly holding Jack’s. ‘You give us a little baksheesh, huh, and maybe we give you something from our fields, eh? You Americans always like our hashish.’

‘Nobody said anything about money,’ Costas said.

Ibrahim walked up to the man, and they spoke in Sudanese. He turned to Jack. ‘I’m sorry. I hadn’t anticipated this. Can you do a hundred dollars to share between them?’

‘Then no more?’ Jack said.

Ibrahim spoke again to the man. ‘If any more men come asking for money, they will shoot them.’

‘That’s not exactly what I had in mind,’ Jack said.

‘It’s posturing. I’d give him the money from our cashbox, but it’s best that he sees you doing it. He knows you’re the boss.’

Jack produced a roll of notes from his back pocket and handed it over. The man released his grip, smiled, and took out an enormous spliff from his front shirt pocket, licking one end and putting it in his mouth, then lighting it. He took a deep drag and passed it to Jack, who patted his chest and declined. Ibrahim spoke to the man again. ‘I told him it’s the diving. You should never smoke before a dive.’

‘Okay,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s get moving.’ The two men sauntered back to their companions, split the roll of notes between them and resumed their seats on the wall, passing the spliff between them. Ibrahim opened the back of the Toyota and Jack and Costas quickly donned their equipment, then lumbered down to the shore and stepped into the muddy sludge on the edge. The river here was very different to Semna, more heavily silted and sluggish, and they were going to have a more difficult time seeing underwater. Jack pushed the men with guns from his mind and tried to focus on the excitement of being the first since 1884 to dive on the Abbas , with the possibility that they might find antiquities that had been left by the local salvors, who would have had little interest in them. He flipped down his visor, watched Costas do the same and then slipped into the water, swimming out on the surface until he reached a point close to the edge of a little island. The river bore little obvious resemblance to the descriptions of this place in 1884, when Colonel Butler of the river column had visited it and seen wreckage on the foreshore, but Jack and Ibrahim had compared a satellite image with the sketch maps from the time and estimated that a position about fifty metres off the southern tip of the island would land them on any wreckage, if it still existed.

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