David Gibbins - Pyramid

“So what was his response?” Jack said, finishing his drink.

Ben leaned forward, clasped his hands together, and stared at Jack. “There’s a trial due in two days’ time. She’ll be in the dock with a hundred or so others. The accusation is read out, and they are convicted and sentenced to death.”

“A death sentence?” Jack exclaimed. “That’s outrageous. For being accused of stealing a scrap of medieval manuscript?”

“Ibn Hafr says that he’ll try his best to get her off. My intelligence source says that as things stand he will probably succeed. Antiquities theft was of more concern to the old regime than to the extremists, and they’re more interested in cases of apostasy or adultery. If there are actually going to be executions, those will be the ones to go first. My source says that Ibn Hafr will make a big show of the difficulty and how he’s putting himself on the line, and that we should go along with that; it’s all part of the game. But we should hold him absolutely to the deadline, which stands at 1030 hours two days from now.”

“To the second,” Jack said coldly.

“There’s one big if in all this,” Costas interjected. “ If things stay as they are. If there’s a meltdown and the extremists take over in two days’ time, then we’ve lost her.”

“She won’t be the only one,” Ben said. “If there’s a takeover, the hundreds awaiting execution now will be joined by thousands more. My source is expecting a complete purge of government ministries.”

Costas shook his head. “Roll on the Dark Ages.”

“We have to try to be optimistic,” Jack said. “Egypt isn’t like Iraq or Afghanistan, brutalized by dictatorship or decades of war. We’re talking about a civilized and decent people who will not allow themselves to be taken to the cage without a fight.”

Macalister looked grim. “Not so easy when your oppressors are psychopaths who have been building up a head of steam for over a hundred years.”

“There’s always the military option,” Ben said.

Jack stared at him. “Are you suggesting that we invade like the British did in 1882, and again in 1956? With the right force you might push the extremists out of Cairo, but then you’d be likely creating an insurgent war like the one the coalition fought in Iraq, with the same cocktail of terrorism, suicide bombings, and an enemy who disappears and rematerializes as soon as you think you’ve scored a success. The civilian population would soon become too weakened and demoralized to resist. And any Western intervention in Egypt now would be seen by hard-liners elsewhere as tantamount to an alliance with Israel. Any radicalized regime not yet in open conflict with Israel would soon join in. We’d be stoking up World War Three.”

Ben leaned over the table and looked at him intently. “You know the other military option, Jack. You’ve been in special forces.”

“You mean targeted assassinations?” Jack pursed his lips. “I was involved in two ops against leadership targets in the Middle East. I was just a ferryman, a temporary naval officer who happened to be good at driving Zodiacs. One op was a success, the other an abort. But if you want to hear about the tit-for-tat consequences of those ops, go no further than Engineer Lieutenant Commander Kazantzakis of the U.S. Navy Reserve, who won his Navy Cross rescuing seamen blown into the water from his ship in a copycat attack of the terrorist assault on USS Cole , provoked by a similar U.S. special forces assassination attempt.”

Costas looked at Ben. “I was at the debrief with the SEAL team who did the op. That was back before 9/11, and the conclusion even then with targeted assassinations was that you cut off one head, and another one grows in its place. Since then the bad guys have become very good at creating the infrastructure to absorb punishment. Kill one Taliban commander, and five others are there to take his place. The extremists in Egypt must have a tight command structure, but they’ve been very careful not to publicize their leadership. Assassination is useful only if the target is a known quantity and a big name.”

Jack tapped his pencil on the table. “Which brings us back to archaeology, and to the people of Egypt. Archaeology is the greatest weapon we have against extremism. Egypt more than any other country in the world has become dependent on archaeology for its livelihood. From the lowliest camel driver on the Giza plateau to the hotel owners and the tour guides, archaeology provides the lifeblood of the nation. That’s what we’ve got to marshal in this battle. It could be the first time that archaeology — the place of archaeology in the modern world and people’s lives — provides the critical groundswell for a popular uprising. Right now, that’s what we’re in this game for. We’re talking about saving people’s lives.”

Ben nodded. “Let’s hope it happens in time for a frightened girl and her family in Cairo.”

Jack stared bleakly around the table. He knew what Aysha would say: inshallah. He took a deep breath. “Okay. We’re done here. Thanks for everything, Ben. Keep me in the loop.”

Costas stood up. “I can finally get to the engineering lab. No time for Little Joey, but I want to run some final diagnostics on the gimbal in the submersible. There’s something I need to adjust. And I haven’t had a go with the new derrick yet.”

Macalister glanced at his watch. “Meet on deck at 1500 hours, dive at 1530. Let’s try to keep to the schedule.”

Jack pushed his chair back. “Roger that. On deck one hour from now. Enough time for me to get some shuteye. See you then.”

Ten minutes later Jack closed the door of his cabin and lay back on his bunk, suddenly realizing how tired he was. His cabin was just below the bridge, its portholes looking out over the foredeck and to starboard. He glanced around at his most treasured belongings — the cases of old books, the battered old chest first taken to sea by an ancestor of his on an East Indiaman three hundred years before, the artifacts and photographs that covered the walls. More so than anywhere else, more than his rooms in the old Howard estate in Cornwall, his cabin on Seaquest was where he felt most at home, anchored by familiarity. This was where he dreamed of new discoveries, and yet it was also where the reality when he wakened and felt the tremor of the ship’s engines was more hard edged and exciting than anything he could imagine.

He stared at the wall opposite, at the hanging brass gauntlet from India in the shape of a tiger and above that a painting that Rebecca had done of the Jewish menorah from the temple in Jerusalem, the lost ancient treasure that had taken him on a quest halfway around the world when she was just a child. He was now only a flight away from seeing her, and yet when he closed his eyes it was not her he saw but the immediate task ahead of him, the inky darkness a thousand meters below and the extraordinary scene that he and Costas had seen three months before when they had discovered the wreck of the Beatrice and the ancient sarcophagus. He tried to relax, thinking of nothing but the sensation of being underwater, but his mind kept returning to the nagging question that had driven him to return here. Was the missing fragment of the plaque of Akhenaten still inside the sarcophagus? Did it contain the clue that he so desperately wanted, the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle that would justify a return to Egypt and their unfinished quest beneath the pyramid?

“Dr. Howard. Time to go.”

Jack opened his eyes, sat bolt upright, and stared at the chronometer beside his bed. He had been out for almost half an hour. He stood up and took a swig of water from a bottle on his desk, and then the coffee proffered by the crewman. He quickly drank half the cup. “What’s the state of play?”