David Gibbins - Pyramid

Jack looked at the vellum, his mind reeling. “Amazing,” he exclaimed. “That’s exactly what Costas and I saw from under the Pyramid of Menkaure, only this seems to be from another entrance in another direction, looking west toward the pyramids. What he’s describing is the sun symbol of Akhenaten, and the one he mentions in Fustat may well have been associated with the Akhenaten cartouche excavated by those British officers and taken back to England by my great-great-grandfather.” He took a deep breath, shaking his head. “It’s amazing, though it doesn’t necessarily bring us closer to another entrance that we might get into. The one he’s describing sounds as if it would require a major mechanical excavation to open up, and could be anywhere within a radius of several dozen square kilometers, probably beneath the southern suburbs of Cairo.”

“I’ll get one of my Hebrew experts back in Oxford to take a look at the translation,” Maria said. “Maybe there’s an alternative nuance to some of those words that might give a better clue.” She glanced at her watch. “Meanwhile, I’ve got to get on here. There’s a cluster of smaller fragments of other manuscripts from the hole that need to be dealt with. The clock’s ticking.”

“Okay,” Aysha said, pulling out her phone. “I’m calling our driver in the Land Rover. He should be outside the main entrance to Fustat within fifteen minutes.”

Jack turned to Maria. “How did you guess there might be something like this in the second part of the letter? The first half left Al-Hakim’s fate wide open.”

“Call it instinct. A Jack Howard moment.”

“You have those?”

“ Very occasionally.” She smiled at him. “Actually, it was something Jeremy found in his research into the Howard Carter papers. He gave me only the barest details in a text message after I’d boarded the plane yesterday for Cairo, but it seems as if Al-Hakim wasn’t the only one to disappear under the desert. And it seems as if there might be a connection with your Royal Engineers officers in the late nineteenth century. Jeremy was expecting his research to be finished by tomorrow and will contact you then.”

Jack glanced at his watch. There was something else he had wanted to do in Cairo, something he had planned since he and Costas had first laid eyes on the relief sculpture of the pharaoh and the Israelites inside the crocodile temple beside the Nile. There, he had seen the pharaoh in two dimensions; now he wanted to see him in three. He turned to Aysha. “Do we have time to go to the museum? I’d like to see the colossal statue of Akhenaten from Amarna that went with the travelling exhibition around the world a few years ago.”

Aysha looked uncertain. “It’s shut to the public, but I still have a pass. Our driver knows the back routes and could get us to the rear entrance. I’m supposed to return you to Alexandria and then I’m straight off to the Faiyum to join Maurice at the mummy necropolis. But we could squeeze in the extra hour if you really want it.”

“Who knows when I’ll be in Egypt again.”

Maria eyed him. “You’ll be back. I’ve never known Jack Howard to walk away from something like this.”

“I’m thinking of visiting Jerusalem next.”

“That’s going from the frying pan into the fire, isn’t it? There have already been rockets from Syria falling on Haifa.”

Jack shrugged. “I was there doing research for my doctorate in the week before the first Gulf War, remember? There were no tourists, and I had the Holy Sepulchre all to myself. I told Rebecca she should seize the opportunity to explore as much as possible while she’s there now, when the place isn’t swamped with tour buses.”

Maria looked at him shrewdly. “If the real reason you’re going to Jerusalem is to look out for Rebecca, forget it. She’d never forgive you. You’ve got to let her plough her own furrow, and then ask you out there herself.”

Jack pulled out his phone and showed her an image. “That’s the tunnel she’s about to go down under the City of David. She sent this just after we left Alexandria. She wanted Costas to go too, but I texted her about Lanowski’s visit and said Costas might be tied up for a while with some engineering problem on Seaquest .”

“When you reply, tell her the trip she and I have planned to Greece is definitely in the cards. I’ve just had permission for us to visit the monasteries on Mount Athos to look at the manuscript libraries. At last they’ve agreed to let women in, and she and I are going to be the first.”

Jack raised his eyes. “Fascinating. I’ve always wanted to have a look in there. Maybe I’ll join you.”

“As if, Jack, as Rebecca would put it. This is a strictly girls-only trip to a once-strictly-male preserve. It’d look as if we had a chaperone.”

Jack put away his phone, and paused. “I’ll call you in Oxford. We should spend some time together.”

Maria turned back to the vellum. “How’s Katya?”

Jack shrugged. “Haven’t seen her for months.”

She turned to him. “What’s going on there, Jack? She’s perfect for you. A paleolinguistics PhD who can hold her own in a gun battle and runs her own project on the Silk Road in Kyrgyzstan. What is it now, ten years since you first met? She helped you find Atlantis.”

Jack shrugged. “You helped me find the last Gospel of Christ.”

“What are you doing, Jack? You need to make up your mind.”

“She’s with that Kyrgyz guy, Almaty, at the petroglyph site.”

“Well, I guess at least he’s on the same continent as she is. I know how she feels.”

Jack glanced at Aysha, who gave him a rueful look. “Time to go, Jack. There’s a curfew at midnight, and we definitely can’t push that.”

Maria looked at them. “I’m doing an all-nighter here and then I’m on the early morning flight back to Heathrow. I want to get my Hebrew expert at the institute to look at this and then I’ll email you the final translation. And watch out for something from Jeremy. He’s working flat out in the British Museum stores looking for more Howard Carter manuscripts, for anything further on the old soldier and his story of lost treasure under the pyramids. Jeremy usually comes up trumps, if you give him time.”

“We may not have a lot of that,” Jack said.

“He was on to the last box of correspondence when I left. With the pyramid a no-go zone, his findings may be the last hope you have of discovering another way underground. Who knows what that guy told Carter.”

“I’ll text him when I get back to Alexandria, right after I contact the IMU board and do all I can to get your friend Sahirah released. Any plans to return the sarcophagus to Egypt are on hold until she walks free. If we are indeed able to raise it tomorrow, that would bring maximum public humiliation to the antiquities director. Releasing Sahirah should be a price he is willing to pay to keep face.”

“Tomorrow might be your last chance,” Aysha said. “The antiquities director might not last much longer than that, and whoever takes his place from the extremist junta won’t care less about the sarcophagus returning to Egypt. That is, if there’s even a Ministry of Culture left. It’s already halfway to being an interrogation block.”

Jack gave her a steely look. “I’m going to insist on her release by midday tomorrow Egyptian time. If there’s no response, I’ll be meeting with the IMU security director and assessing all options.”

Maria stood, arms folded, and looked up at Jack. “Congratulations on your chariots discovery in the Red Sea, Jack. But it makes me think of lines from Yannai, another poet in the Geniza, on the burning bush in the Book of Exodus. ‘Omens of fire in the chariot’s wind, Pillars of fire in thunder and storm.’ Take care of yourself, Jack. Don’t stretch that envelope too far; otherwise, it’ll be Rebecca coming to find you, not the other way around.”