by K. T. Tomb
Westman: Neither am I. No offense guys, but I’m ready to pack it in and go home to my family. My girl is just about ready to give up on me. Signing on for one more tour in the Middle East could cost me my bride.
Eastman: We know it’s been particularly hard on you and Northman to continue with this work.
Northman: The Book is more important than anything else.
Imhotep: That is true Northman, but us Guardsmen are still only men, we have our obligations and responsibilities to ourselves and to others.
Northman: Nothing is more important than safeguarding the Book.
Imhotep: I agree fully but we have to be practical. It is long past the time when it could go back to a pharaoh so now it needs to be returned to Egypt and placed with the proper authorities. This is our chance to do the right thing and still keep our existence and that of the Watchers a secret.
Northman: As you say, Imhotep.
Imhotep: It is not just what I say, Northman. We all agreed it was time.
Southman: Yes, we agreed.
Imhotep: I have a good feeling about these people from Found History, I believe that they will only be satisfied if they can place the relic in the proper hands. If they make it to Boğazkale, then it is imminent that they will be coming to the Hagia Sofia very soon after that. I expect that they will come to speak to me respectfully about searching the altar for the Book. I doubt it is their style to try and steal it from us.
Northman: And if they don’t come to you and they do try to steal it from the museum?
Imhotep: If they don’t come to me and they try to steal it, then they are thieves and be assured, gentlemen, that they will be treated as such. Good night, gentlemen. May the peace of Allah be with you.
Eastman: And also with you, brother.
Southman: And also with you.
Westman: And also with you.
There was no reply from the Northman when Rashid closed the application.
***
Chyna and the others found themselves on the El-Tahrir road being directed by a policeman to the Basma Hotel.
When they arrived at their lodgings on the banks of the Nile, the team breathed a sigh of relief. The hotel was small but lovely. It was welcoming and seemed to offer all the modern conveniences of a world class business hotel. They checked in and headed straight upstairs to the suite. It had three large king size bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, a secure high speed internet connection, color television with international programming via satellite and, of course, a fully stocked refrigerator.
As usual, Oscar immediately started setting up the equipment he needed and Lana arranged all her paraphernalia on the dining room table in preparation to decipher their latest clue. As she was laying out her little mystery solving map, the doorbell rang and she went to answer it. It was the bellman; he had brought up the flipchart and markers she had requested from the front desk. Pleased, she handed him a twenty guineih note as a tip and closed the door behind him.
“I’ve entered the data and set the translators to work,” Oscar announced after twenty minutes. “It’s more complicated than the last one; I think it’s going to be at least an hour, maybe more. Do you think we could have some dinner in the meantime?”
“Absolutely!” Chyna replied.
They all showered, changed and went downstairs to the hotel restaurant, excited to have another taste of some amazing Egyptian food. Forty-five minutes later they returned to the suite, satisfied and ready to get back to work. Lana went to the fridge, took out three bottles of Heineken and opened them. Beer and wine were not served in the hotel restaurant since Islamic law prohibits the consumption of alcoholic beverages in public.
Oscar took as sip of his beer and went to check on the progress the translation software was making. Surprisingly, it was complete.
“Ladies,” he drawled, “We are officially in business.”
He sent the document to the printer and handed out the freshly printed copies as they took their seats around the dining table.
“To find the Book, seek the Watchers whose vigil never ends
The road goes northwards to Zannanza’s lands
In the heart of Hatti is where the Watchers wait
Luxor will know it again, when the Guards lay down their swords.”
“Cryptic much, Ankhesenamun?” Lana joked.
“She was clever with her words, that’s for sure,” Oscar agreed.
“It was important,” Chyna pointed out. “She left these clues in places that were relatively open at that time, remember? The only reason we’ve had to dig and search for them is because we’re three thousand years late to the chase.”
“You’re right, Chyna,” Lana said. “But we can figure it out.”
Lana went over to her flipchart and took up a marker. On the black paper she wrote ‘The Watchers’, ‘Zannanza’s lands’ and ‘Heart of Hatti’.
“What about the last line?” Oscar asked. “Who are the Guards and why do they have swords to lay down?”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with the location of the Book or the next clue, whichever the case,” Lana explained. “I think that has something to do with whatever she might have told the messenger to do.”
“The messenger?” Oscar asked.
“Son,” Lana quipped in her best mock southern accent. “Do try to keep up.”
Chyna laughed at Lana’s sarcasm and attempted to explain to Oscar the significance of the messenger.
“We already know that Ankhesenamun never made it out of Egypt, she ended up back in Luxor where she died not much longer than after this all went down. We know this for fact because her mummy was found in KV21 and it was dated to the same year that Ay ascended the throne. So it stands to reason that she passed off the Book to someone she trusted and according to this clue, she instructed that person to deliver it to ‘The heart of Hatti’ which would most likely be the city of Hattusa, to Suppiluliumas’ palace.”
“Ah, I see,” Oscar said.
At that point, Lana wrote down two of the three answers on her flip chart.
Zannanza’s lands = Hatti
Heart of Hatti = Hattusa, Suppiluliumas’ palace
“So,” Lana said, “who are ‘The Watchers’?”
“Oscar, could you Google Hattusa please?” Chyna asked.
When he did, Oscar suddenly became very excited. He sent something to the printer and when it was finished printing he handed the photograph to Lana. Her mouth visibly fell open before she passed the photograph to Chyna.
The photograph showed the ruins of the palace of Hattusa in modern day Boğazkale, Turkey. In its ruined state, the main building was now a flat plaza but still standing at it each of its four gates was two stone pillars each with a statue of a sphinx guarding the entryway.
“I guess we found ‘The Watchers’,” Chyna said to Lana.
“I’d bet my last dollar that the next clue is on one of these sphinxes,” Lana said.
“Back to Turkey,” Oscar groaned. “Ladies, let’s try not to get hijacked or kidnapped this time.”
They all laughed at his comment.
“Lana, we’re going to need the most direct flight to Boğazkale,” Chyna began. “The fastest way might be out of Luxor International. We can fly to Cairo from Luxor and take it from there. The town is remote but a huge tourist attraction, so I don’t think a hotel will be a problem there. Book us on the best day tours, that way we won’t draw attention to ourselves while we’re feeling up the sphinxes at the palace ruins. Also, be amazing and drop Sandra and Sirita a line so they know what we’re up to.”
“I’m on it Boss Lady,” Lana said.
“Oscar, we won’t be able to take your entire tech lab with us,” she continued. “At least not further than Cairo. I doubt we’ll be coming back to Luxor so I’d suggest you leave anything we won’t need for Boğazkale in Cairo and if the trail takes us further than that, we can have them forwarded to the next location.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Oscar agre
ed. “I don’t think I’ll need more than my laptop, the mini printer and my camera.”
“Good. Ask Sirita to organize the storage and forwarding with our freight handlers in Cairo.”
While her team busied themselves with their preparations for their next move, Chyna stepped away to send an email from her Blackberry.
‘Guess who’s coming back to Turkey?’ she wrote. ‘The investigation is taking us to Boğazkale now. We’re leaving from Luxor International tomorrow. If it ends there, I’ll come to Izmir, if it doesn’t I’ll be sure to stay in touch with you.’
Back at the dining table, Chyna looked through Lana’s puzzle pieces. She couldn’t stop marveling how smart Ankhesenamun must have been. She was formidable; but then, her mother was Queen Nefertiti, easily the most famous ancient Egyptian in the estimation of modern anthropologists. As far as esteem among scholars went, she was only rivaled by the knowledge the world had of her son, Tutankhamun.
Chyna felt completely humbled by the experience she was having following in the footsteps of the princess and the secrets her team was slowly uncovering. The intrigue, the treachery, murder, betrayal and the destruction of a dynasty; at times she had been more than just a little overwhelmed. Of course, she couldn’t show it, she kept her composure and rallied on for the sake of her team and the investigation. The objective was always clearly set in her mind; to find the Book of Life and restore both it and its legacy to antiquity. The world deserved to know what the power struggle that ended the Amarna Period of Egypt was really about.
Chapter Nine
By three o’clock the next afternoon, the team was making their landing in Boğazkale.
They were all visibly relieved to disembark from the tiny two propeller aircraft after the three hour flight from Cairo. All the arrangements had gone off without a hitch. The extra luggage had been left with their regular freight forwarder and they had made the rest of the trip in record time. Sirita had taken the liberty of alerting the local tourism authority in the town of their arrival and secured special permission to investigate the ruins as closely as they needed to. There was a messenger waiting for them at the airport with their permits and government authorization ID’s to take to the site with them.
They took a taxi from the airstrip to the hotel where Lana had made their reservations. It was a beautiful retreat right in the middle of the tiny town called the Hotel Aşıkoğlu. From what they saw during the taxi ride, everywhere in Boğazkale was a tourist attraction or at least geared towards the needs and tastes of the various nationalities of people who streamed through the town all year round.
When they checked into the hotel, the concierge handed them copies of their itinerary for the following day. Lana had booked them on three consecutive tours for the palace grounds in an effort to buy them enough time to locate the clue they were looking for and the chance for some mild excavation if that was at all necessary. However, Sirita’s procurement of government authorization had trumped those arrangements. Chyna handed the papers to the concierge and asked her to forward copies to the management at the archaeological site and arrange transportation for them to get there in the morning. Ever frugal, Lana confirmed with the woman that their new official visitor status would qualify them for a refund on the three tours that had been booked and with a wry smile, the concierge nodded her agreement.
Upstairs in their rooms, they were all relieved to have a night without boggling over cryptic clues or planning their next move, it was a chance to detox from the harsh week they had spent travelling the Egyptian desert. Compared with the hot, sandy landscape of Luxor and its environs, Boğazkale was like a completely different world. The town was surrounded by rolling, green hills that were home to local, mountainous people. They raised sheep that they grazed there with ease and grew crops and fruit in the fertile valley. Looking at the town, it was easy to see that modernization, even as a result of booming tourism, was the last thing on these people’s minds. It was refreshing to be in the unspoiled, rural surroundings of the heartland of Turkey.
After enjoying a generous continental breakfast and some of the best coffee any of them had ever had the following morning, Chyna and her team left the hotel to meet briefly with the manager at the site of the palace ruins. Once the pleasantries were over, he directed them towards the palace plaza so they could begin the search for their next clue. The plaza was an immense, flat, stone platform that still exhibited the signs of the grand columns and walls that would have once made up the structure of a great palace. Three thousand years ago, the Hittite empire was a vast civilization which spread over most of modern day Turkey and Syria as well as a portion of western Iraq, so it was expected that the king’s palace in the empire’s capital would be colossal; which it was.
They stood together in the center of the plaza and looked around them. The palace grounds had four distinct gates, one at each of the cardinal points of the compass. From where they stood they could see that each gate had two pillars which was guarded by a statue of a sphinx.
“Since Egypt lies to the south of here, I think we should start with the southern gates,” suggested Lana.
So they made their way to the south gates of the compound. After fifteen minutes of careful searching, none of them could find a marker or a cartouche like the ones they had found so far. Disheartened, they stopped looking for a minute and came together to regroup.
“Why do we think we would find an inscription like the ones we found before?” Chyna suddenly asked. “Ankhesenamun never came here.”
“That’s right,” Oscar agreed. “Not to mention that this place is highly exposed and a cartouche would have been noticed ages ago. The clue is here; we know that because it’s where she probably told her messenger to put it.”
“Yes,” Lana said. “For sure, it’s where she wanted them to put it; that was clear in her last clue. But if someone else concocted the clue and placed it here, then certainly we should be looking for a different style of encryption.”
“Okay,” Chyna said. “Let’s go look again, more carefully this time.”
They returned to the pillars and searched the vertical structures as well as the sphinxes. It wasn’t long before Oscar stepped back and started snapping photographs.
“I’ve found it,” he announced.
When they gathered around the sphinx he had been investigating, they all saw the mark on the back of the sphinx’s head. It was pale, weathered by time and the elements but it was still visible. Inscribed in the stone was the Hittite numeral for the number ‘9’ and directly below it in much clearer markings and modern numerals was ‘410085’. They then turned their attention to the sphinx on the left side of the gate and sure enough there were also inscriptions in the same spot on the statues’ head. It was the Hittite numeral for ‘12’ followed by a brighter carving ‘289799’.
Invigorated by the find, they rushed to the Eastern gates. The statues there had only a single Hittite digit each; the one on the left said ‘19’ and the one on the right read ‘20’. They went to each of the other sphinxes in order and recorded ‘1’, ‘14’, ‘2’ and finally, ‘21’.
“I think we’ve found what we came looking for guys,” Lana surmised. “Let’s get back to the hotel and look closer at these numbers over lunch, I’m famished.”
They returned to the hotel, freshened up in their rooms and met back in the restaurant for lunch. After they had eaten, they ordered three bottles of Turkish beer and spread a large sheet of blank paper out on the table in front of them. Lana wrote the numbers down and they stared at them for several minutes.
“What does it mean?” Oscar asked.
“I don’t know,” Chyna said. “Lana?”
“Why are you asking me?” She asked defensively. She was just as bewildered as the rest of them.
They puzzled over it for the better part of an hour before Chyna slapped her forehead and started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Oscar asked.
“Have you ever tried so
lving one of those cryptic crosswords in the New York Times?” she asked them both.
“Yeah, they’re damn near impossible,” Lana remarked.
“Sure are!” Oscar agreed.
“My Dad used to insist that I do them every week,” Chyna said, smiling. “They were torturous but even if it took me all week to finish one, he was adamant that I do them.”
She shook her head and laughed again before continuing.
“He always told me the trick was not to think too hard about what the clue meant,” she said. “That the answer was always simpler than the puzzle made you think. The trick to the cryptic crossword is getting it into your head that it really isn’t that cryptic at all.”
“What in the name of Josie Wales does that have to do with this?” Oscar exclaimed.
“The numbers represent the letter of the alphabet,” Chyna finally revealed. “And when you’ve finished doing the math, if you start with the number from the sphinx that stands to the right of the southern gate and end with the one on the sphinx from the left of that same gate, the word it spells is ‘Istanbul’.”
“Well I’ll be damned!” said Oscar.
“That’s absolutely amazing,” Lana summarized.
“It is,” Chyna agreed. “But I can’t figure out the two sets of numbers we found at the southern gates.”
Oscar looked closely at the two sets of six digit figures for a minute then said, “You leave that to me, Boss lady, I think I know what they are.”
He took his phone from his pocket and quickly opened the internet browser application; then he typed in the two sets of numbers and initiated a search. After a few minutes, a broad smile spread across his face.
“Well, it only took us two and a half hours but I think we’ve got it, ladies,” he said. “I thought that the six digit sequence looked a lot like coordinates and once we figured out that the clue was referring to Istanbul, that thought started to make a whole lot of sense because if the numbers are coordinates they would actually fall in the region of the city. Now, I realize that map coordinates are completely out of place when it comes to solving this 3,000 year old mystery, but it all comes together once you see where those coordinates are located. With a quick check, I just confirmed it. Those numbers are the coordinates of the Hagia Sophia, presently a national museum of Turkey.”