The Pharaoh's Secret

by Clive Cussler

  Between the cars, wives and mistresses, not to mention the hostesses—who were dressed in shimmering gowns—the guard at the warehouse had the distinct impression he was missing out.

  The second guard shrugged. “Wait till someone loses an earring: all hell will break loose over there and we’ll be sitting here with our feet up reporting that all is well.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” the first guard replied, grabbing a clipboard. “Let’s go see what we have here.”

  He stepped out onto the loading dock as another guard closed the gate a short distance away. A perimeter fence with razor wire on top was the first line of defense. Warehouse doors with security keypads that required key cards were the second, but the security guards themselves watched the warehouse twenty-four hours a day. And ever since the attack that killed Kensington, they’d tripled the manpower.

  The truck bumped the platform and the warning alarm mercifully ceased.

  The driver hopped out, came to the back of the truck and opened the door, which rattled as it slid upward.

  “What do you have for me?” the guard asked.

  “Last-minute delivery.”

  The guard glanced into the truck. A single wooden crate, approximately eight feet long, four feet wide and maybe five feet tall, rested inside.

  “Invoice number?” he asked.

  “SN-5417,” the driver said, checking his own clipboard.

  The guard scanned page one of his delivery sheet and found nothing. He quickly flipped to the second page. “Here it is. Last-minute add-on. Where’ve you been? This was due here an hour ago.”

  The driver looked put-out by the question. “We got a late start and your big party is making for a traffic nightmare. You’re lucky I came at all.”

  The guard didn’t doubt that. “Let’s take a look.”

  Jamming a large screwdriver underneath the lid of the crate, he pried it open. Inside, resting on a bed of packed hay, was the narrow barrel of a small antipersonnel cannon used to fire grapeshot at one’s enemies. According to the delivery sheet, it had come from an eighteenth-century British sloop. Beside it, wrapped in acid-free paper and protected by bubble wrap, were several swords.

  Satisfied, the guard turned to a forklift operator. “Take it through to the back, put it somewhere that it won’t be in the way. We’ll deal with it once the party’s over.”

  The forklift operator nodded. Unlike the guards, he was happy to be here. Night shift meant overtime. If it went past midnight, as it almost certainly would, it would be double time. He put the forklift in gear, picked up the crate and backed into the warehouse. Making a quick turn, he was soon heading down the central aisle of the sprawling space. When he reached a spot where the new crate would be out of the way, he stopped.

  He placed the crate down with a light crunch. A quick glance told him the old wooden pallet underneath it had cracked. He shrugged. It happened all the time.

  Pulling free, he backed out and made his way to the front end once again. Things would be quiet for a while. Until then, he decided to watch some TV in the break room.

  He parked the forklift, took off his hard hat and stepped through the door. The first thing he noticed were several bodies on the ground, two of whom he recognized as the guards who’d just checked in the new delivery.

  Across the room, several other security guards were standing with pistols drawn. He turned for the door but never made it. Three shots hit him almost simultaneously, accompanied only by the dull popping sound of a silencer-equipped automatic.

  He dropped to his knees and a fourth shot put him out of his misery. He fell sideways, landing on the floor next to one of the other dead workers.

  Had the forklift operator lived long enough to think about it, he’d have recognized the men with the guns as the new hires—temporary workers brought on to beef up security for the auction. He might also have noticed that a man with a burned face stood behind them. But he was dead before the synapses in his brain registered any of it.

  25

  In a cramped, claustrophobic space, Kurt peered through a diving mask into the nothingness of utter darkness. He drew smooth, even breaths from a small regulator and tried to gauge how much time had passed. It was hard to tell. Lying completely still in the darkness and silence was the equivalent of a sensory deprivation tank.

  He tried to stretch his legs, which had fallen painfully asleep. Wriggling and twisting his feet like some small animal trying to burrow through the soil, he forced them through the packing materials the way one pushes one’s feet between the overtight sheets of a well-made hotel bed.

  “Watch it,” a voice called out. “You’re kicking me in the ribs.”

  Kurt took his lips off the regulator. “Sorry,” he said.

  The stretching had helped a little, but he was still uncomfortable: something sharp was jabbing him in the back, and the hay that had been used as insulation was itchy. Finally, he’d had enough.

  Wriggling his arm through the loose padding until it was in front of his face, he was able to make out the tiny glowing marks on his Doxa watch.

  “Ten thirty,” he said. “The party should be rolling by now. Time to emerge like cicadas from the ground.”

  “I hate those bugs,” Joe said. “But I’ll be glad to imitate one if it means you stop kicking me.”

  Kurt burrowed upward, surfacing through the hay and Styrofoam, listening for any sign of danger outside the crate. Hearing nothing, he tapped a switch on the side of his mask. A single white LED came on, reminiscent of a reading light. It enabled Kurt to see Joe rising up through the loose mix of packing materials across from him.

  “This might be your worst idea ever,” Joe whispered. “When I tell Paul and Gamay about it, they’ll never believe it worked.”

  “I was just trying to think outside the box,” Kurt deadpanned.

  “Very funny,” Joe said. His tone suggested he was not amused. “How long have you been waiting to use that?”

  “At least an hour,” Kurt said. “I know where I went wrong. Next time, we get a bigger crate.”

  “Next time,” Joe replied, “you can impersonate a FedEx package on your own.”

  Despite their best attempt at creating a false bottom for the crate, the hay and Styrofoam had settled all around them. The truck had been delayed in traffic. And, as a final insult, it felt like they’d been dropped about three feet at the end of the delivery.

  “Good thing they didn’t look too closely at this cannon of yours,” Joe added. “It says ‘Made in China’ on the side.”

  “Did you want a real cannon lying on top of you?” Kurt said.

  “Can’t say that sounds comfortable,” Joe replied.

  Kurt didn’t think so either. “Let’s just hope they delivered us to the right address.”

  Kurt wriggled his other hand free and opened a Velcro pack strapped to his arm. He pulled a thin black cable from the pack and unwound it. Attaching one end to his goggles and the other to a small cylinder that was actually a tiny camera, he prepared to take a look at their surroundings.

  “Up periscope,” he whispered.

  Tapping a button on the camera, he gave it power and threaded the wire upward through a tiny hole drilled in the top of the crate.

  As the lens focused, an image was projected on the inside of Kurt’s mask. It was grainy, since the back section of the warehouse was dimly lit.

  “Any Japanese destroyers up there?” Joe whispered.

  Kurt panned around, twisting the wire a little bit at a time. “Nothing but open seas, Mr. Zavala. Take us up.”

  Kurt reeled the camera back in and disconnected it as Joe got to work prying the lid upward. Kurt took care of his side, switched off the mask light, and together they eased the top of the box backward.

  Joe scrambled out first, Kurt followed seconds later and both men hid behind the
crate until the feeling came back into their limbs.

  “This place looks a lot bigger on the inside than it did from the street view,” Joe noted.

  A quick look told Kurt it was more of a maze than an orderly arrangement of sections. In the back, where they were, all the items were stored on the ground floor, but the rest of the space was filled with racks and shelves, in some places stacked three stories high.

  “We’ll never look through all this stuff in a couple of hours,” Joe said.

  “Most of it’s irrelevant,” Kurt said. “We need to focus on the items set for auction. Anything Egyptian, in particular. I’m guessing whatever they plan to sell will be on the ground floor, maybe even separated from everything else. So let’s ignore the shelves unless something catches your eye. You take the left side. I’ll take the right. We’ll work our way to the front.”

  Joe nodded and put a tiny speaker in his ear, which was connected to a radio, and Kurt did the same. Both men also pulled out cameras that would take digital pictures in infrared. Pictures they could review later.

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” Kurt said. “Security will be jumpy, after what happened the other night. And I’d rather not get shot or have to take any of them out to protect ourselves. If anything happens, meet back here or take cover.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Joe said. “Tasers and pepper spray aren’t going to be much use against pistols and shotguns.”

  Knowing they would be dealing with innocent security guards, they’d brought along only nonlethal methods of subduing anyone they encountered.

  “Then don’t get caught by the people with the pistols and shotguns,” Kurt said.

  “Good advice under any circumstance.”

  Kurt grinned and offered an archer’s two-finger salute before moving off and focusing on the dimly lit space ahead of him.

  26

  Hassan had arrived in Malta just before the party with orders to take charge of the operation. He was to retrieve what he could of the hieroglyphics record and destroy any evidence that remained. Fortunately, his men had already infiltrated the museum’s security service. Posing as legitimate guards, they’d now taken over the warehouse and were ready to search for and remove the artifacts. All Hassan needed for his plan to go smoothly was to keep the security supervisor talking to the rest of his men.

  He stood behind the supervisor with a gun drawn as the man spoke to the guards assigned to the ballroom via a radio. In what seemed like a suspicious bit of good fortune, three-fourths of the security detail was stationed in and around the ballroom. That left only eight men at the warehouse. And two of them were operating undercover for Osiris.

  Hassan knew the artifacts in the warehouse were valuable, but to him they were worth nothing in comparison to the yacht-owning, private aircraft–flying captains of industry who were attempting to buy them for their own collections.

  A call came over the radio. “We’ve made our rounds. More diamonds and pearls than you can shake a stick at. But everything is secure over here.”

  The supervisor hesitated.

  “Answer him,” Hassan prodded, jabbing him with a pistol.

  The manager keyed his own microphone. “Very good,” he said. “Report back in thirty minutes.”

  “Affirmative. Do you want to swap any of the guys out? They’re probably getting bored back there.”

  Hassan shook his head. There was no one left alive to swap out.

  “Not at this time,” the supervisor replied. “Continue your watch over there.”

  Hassan figured they were safe for a little while. “Now,” he said, “show me where lots thirty-one, thirty-four and forty-seven are.”

  The supervisor pondered over this for a second too long. Hassan backhanded him across the face and he fell over, taking the chair to the ground with him.

  “You’ll find I don’t like to wait,” Hassan explained.

  The night supervisor held up his hands submissively. “I’ll show you.”

  Hassan turned to Scorpion. “Get the explosives and something to transport the items on. If we have to, we’ll destroy them, but I’d prefer to bring them back to Egypt where they belong.”

  He pointed to a second man. “Infect the computer with the Cyan virus. I want all record of these artifacts erased.”

  The man nodded and Hassan stood back satisfied. All seemed to be in order. But no one paid any attention to the flickering TV screens displaying the feed from the security cameras. On two separate displays black-clad figures could be seen sneaking through the darkened warehouse.

  Scorpion reappeared with a four-wheeled cart.

  “Excellent,” Hassan said. “Let’s start with lot thirty-one.”

  —

  Joe stood in front of a hard plastic case. Beside it was a placard that read XXXI.

  “Thirty-one,” he said.

  Joe pulled open the hard case and unzipped a fireproof sheet of Nomex. Underneath it lay part of a broken tablet with Egyptian art on it.

  Depicted on the stone was a tall green man holding his hand over a group of people that were lying on the floor of a temple. Men or women in white robes stood behind them. Lines drawn from the hand of the green-skinned man to the sleeping or dead people made it look as if he were levitating them. In the upper corner, a disk that might have been the sun or moon was covered as if in the midst of an eclipse.

  Joe had spent some time in Egypt. He’d even done a little archaeology there. He recognized some of the iconography.

  Joe held a wire connected to an earpiece. Squeezing it allowed him to talk and the signal would be transmitted to Kurt. “I’ve found a tablet with Egyptian art on it,” he said. “You should see this green guy, he’s huge.”

  “Are you sure it’s not an early version of The Incredible Hulk?” Kurt replied quietly.

  “Now, that would really be worth something,” Joe whispered back.

  He raised a camera, scanned the artwork and then covered it up once again before moving on.

  On the other side of the warehouse, Kurt was having less luck but was moving as quickly as he dared. Like most museums, this one had far more artifacts than it could possibly display. As a result, they would often loan pieces out or rotate exhibits, but most of the overflow remained in the warehouse.

  That and the lack of any discernible method of organization were making the job even harder. So far, Kurt had discovered sections dating to the Peloponnesian conflict and the Roman Empire located side by side with artifacts from both World Wars. He’d come across a section of relics from the French Revolution, weapons the British carried at Waterloo and even a scarf allegedly used to stem Admiral Nelson’s bleeding when he’d been wounded at Trafalgar.

  Kurt imagined the scarf might have carried almost religious significance for the Royal Navy if it was authentic. The fact that it was up for sale in Malta made him doubt its provenance. But treasures had been found in backyards before.

  Next, he found some Napoleonic artifacts, including several with placards beside them, one of which read XVI.

  A step in the right direction, he said to himself.

  The first thing he discovered was a group of letters, including orders Napoleon had sent to his commanders demanding more discipline in the ranks. The next batch of documents was a request for more money. This letter had been sent back to Paris, only to be intercepted by the British. Finally, there was a small book, listed as Napoleon’s Diary.

  Despite the time crunch they were under, Kurt couldn’t resist looking. He’d never heard of Napoleon’s diary before. He opened the container and unzipped a fireproof envelope that surrounded the book. It turned out not to be a diary at all but instead a copy of Homer’s Odyssey, in Greek. He flipped through the pages. Notes in French had been scribbled in the margins here and there. Napoleon’s? He guessed that was the idea, but perhaps one that was up fo
r debate too.

  Still, as he studied the pages, he noticed something else: certain words were circled and some pages were missing. By the ragged edges he found, Kurt guessed the pages had been torn out. The prospectus sheet attached to the diary indicated it had been with the deposed emperor right up until his death on Saint Helena.

  Despite his curiosity, Kurt closed the book, sealed up its container and moved on. It was interesting, but the men who’d killed Kensington were looking for Egyptian artifacts.

  In the next section, Kurt found two glass-walled tanks, each the size of a small truck. The first tank held various treasures on porcelain racks and looked almost like a giant dishwasher. The second contained a pair of large cannon barrels, suspended on slings. A note scribbled in grease pencil on the glass indicated the tanks were filled with distilled water, a fairly common method to pull embedded salts out of iron and brass objects recovered from the sea.

  He peered through the glass. Nothing Egyptian in either tank.

  “Just like the supermarket,” he muttered, “I’m always shopping in the wrong aisle.”

  He switched aisles and then stopped and crouched in the shadows. He saw movement in the gloom ahead of him at the far end of the aisle. A man and a woman. Strangely, they were dressed like attendees at the party. And both were holding pistols.

  27

  Kurt pressed the talk switch on his own earpiece and said to Joe, “I’ve run into some company.”

  “I’m not alone on this side either,” Joe replied.

  “Meet me in the middle,” Kurt said. “We need to take cover.”

  He backtracked and met Joe close to the two distilled-water tanks.

  “A group of men came out of the office armed to the teeth,” Joe said. “They were dressed like guards, but they had another man held at gunpoint. So I’d say there’s been a takeover of the most hostile variety. I suggest we hide or exit stage left.” He pointed back down the aisle.