Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Caroline Vermalle

  Akhenaten.

  Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh, father of Tutankhamen, husband of Nefertiti, with no connection to the pyramid of Cheops. But what intrigued Franklin was the name that the Egyptologists had given to his tomb, discovered a hundred years ago in the Valley of the Kings: KV-55.

  What did room A-55 mean?

  The fifty-five-year-old detective stared at the notes on the wall until he became dizzy. He went to open the battered old fridge humming away in a corner of the room. Mezze bowls and stuffed, half-eaten vine leaves lay on the sticky shelves. The fridge door was overloaded, full of jars containing blood-red liquid.

  Franklin poured some of the karkadé into a glass and flung open the shutters of one of the windows, peering at the small animated alley below. He removed a pendant from his pocket; it was as big as his palm and represented the Udjat, the eye of Horus. A protective symbol in ancient Egypt.

  He placed the pendant on a small hook outside the window. The eye continued to rock gently, reflecting the afternoon sun as it streamed across the Cairo rooftops. For a moment, as if to defy the caress of the hot khamsin wind, the pendant seemed to be still.

  Just long enough to capture the attention of the silhouette he had been waiting for.

  19

  Max was waiting in front of the US embassy, stunned by his own audacity. He had come from the office of the SCA. There, he had tried to shed some light on the identity of the mysterious caller who had given him the authorization to go to Cheops. He had found the building besieged by reporters, all shouting Al-Shamy's name; everyone wanted an interview, or anything to slake the unquenchable thirst for information that the gruesome discovery in the pyramid had spawned.

  Receptionists and various employees were trying to keep the frenzied horde at bay, and in the melee, Max had been forced to take refuge in a back corner of the room. A petite young woman, a diary bound in blue leather and clasped in her anxious hands, had retreated to the same spot. Huddled behind a plastic pot plant, they looked on as three photographers jostled for the best angle to capture something that had caught their attention. The frightened young woman shuffled back along the wall and stumbled against a bench, momentarily losing her balance. She dropped her diary, which opened on the day’s page.

  Max hastily picked it up, and couldn’t help but read the words written in a careful and neat Arabic script:

  3 pm: Dr. Al-Shamy - Kerrington @ US Embassy

  He handed the diary back to its owner, who blushed, thanked him and ran off towards the offices, doing her best not be crushed by the crowd.

  Now it was three in the afternoon, and Max was standing in front of the residence of Mrs. Hilary Kerrington, ambassador to Egypt in the United States of America. And he had every reason to be nervous. Al-Shamy was known for his intransigence and quick temper, especially when the proper protocol was not followed. What Max had in mind was very far from any protocol.

  The U.S. embassy looked like a large sand-colored bunker overlooking the clean, tree-lined streets of Garden City. It had been built just after the attacks on the American embassy in Beirut in 1983, and security had been the architects' priority: the walls and stairs were designed to withstand bomb explosions and full-on frontal assaults. But the architect in Max could already discern the Achilles's heel of the property: the clay tennis courts at the back. For the staff, it seemed, impregnability came second only to keeping up their serve and volley game.

  Max glanced at his watch. One minute past three. Had he misread the diary?

  But then his gaze focused on a single figure moving in his direction. Al-Shamy.

  With a deep breath and a determined step, the young architect stepped onto his path. “Dr. Al-Shamy, I'm Max Hausmann, I discovered Room X.”

  Al-Shamy remained impassive behind his tinted glasses and ignored Max's offered hand. Instead, he replied icily, “Congratulations, it is quite an achievement to be responsible for the greatest damage done to the pyramid in two centuries.”

  Max had run through dozens of possible starts to the conversation; this was not one of them. His confidence faltered. “Right. Well, someone who claimed to be from the SCA asked me to meet them at Cheops on precisely that day, and I couldn’t explain or identify…”

  “I checked with my staff,” Al-Shamy calmly interrupted. “Your file was in the stack to process, with a few hundred others. We give priority to Egyptian history researchers and professional archeologists, and even with these our resources are stretched to their limit. I am sure that you can understand if the theories of architecture students are not at the top of the pile. I can assure you that neither my staff nor I had even the slightest inkling of who you were until your most miraculous appearance at Cheops. An occurrence that I think we can safely say we all deeply regret. Now, if you don’t mind, I have an appointment to keep.”

  Al-Shamy pushed passed Max, but Max was adamant to say what he wanted to say.

  “But Doctor, with all due respect, if the SCA never made the call, then there is only one other possibility: that someone outside of the SCA knew the existence of Room X and wanted me to find it. Why?”

  “You forget a third possibility,” Al-Shamy said, continuing his march towards the embassy’s gates, and only half looking over his shoulder. “Death on the Nile, Agatha Christie, 1937.”

  Max almost tripped, but Al-Shamy simply smiled and continued without pause.

  “I'm sure like any good European Egyptophile, it has pride of place on your bedside table?”

  “I’ve never read it,” Max lied.

  “You should. The story of a rich heiress murdered. Her husband, who before the wedding was penniless, is found seriously injured and so escapes initial suspicion. But of course, the husband’s guilt becomes clear when it is revealed that his mistress helped him so that he could have both love and unimaginable wealth. How well did you know Jessica Pryce?”

  “This is insane,” Max stuttered. “Have you seen the size of the hole? No one could–”

  “Did you know the existence of Room X or did you not?”

  “I wasn’t sure, If you suggest I am a murderer–” stuttered Max.

  “I am not suggesting anything, Mr. Hausmann, because you and I are not having this conversation. But if she does survive, it would all be thanks to you. If it was ever discovered that she did not love her husband, and that you did have some connection to her, then this third possibility does become very seductive for a jury. So if I were you, I wouldn’t boast to know anything that others don’t,” Al-Shamy snapped.

  “And the public would not ask how it was possible that a mere student should have discovered things about the pyramid of Cheops that even Egypt’s greatest archeologist, the leader of the esteemed SCA, did not even suspect?” Max hissed.

  Al-Shamy removed his glasses and his smirk made way for a look of the grimmest menace. He spoke slowly and clearly. “Suspicions? Mr. Hausmann, the offices of the SCA are full of those. Ten years ago, I did a GPR study of the Queen's Chambers, and because I was so convinced by the results, I decided to drill an opening in the wall about ten feet from Room X, causing a small but irreversible amount of damage to the building. All we found was–”

  “Sand,” Max said. “I know, I’ve read all your publications.”

  “Good for you. But what you do not know is that day, I swore to God that never, as long as I lived, would anyone be allowed to desecrate my pyramid. And thanks to you, this promise has been broken, and my soul will now suffer the consequences.”

  He pulled a soft cloth from his breast pocket and polished his glasses, staring at Max with his black, unblinking eyes. “The Cairo police have received the findings of an internal investigation into this case. I have nothing more to say to you except that I have ordered my staff to systematically refuse any request to study Cheops by anyone who is not Egyptian by birth. The guards on the Giza Plateau have all been given a copy of your file. If you ever re-enter the site, you will be immediately arrested and placed in the care of our ex
cellent prison system. Good day.”

  He replaced his glasses and walked on towards the gates of the embassy.

  Max's hands shook and his temples throbbed with anger. He watched the lean body of the archeologist moving away from him, and suddenly something snapped, causing him to shout out loud, not caring who would hear:

  “The pyramids are not just an instrument to serve your brand of nationalism. They belong to all humanity! And if you close access to the international scientific community, you are not a guardian, you’re a hypocrite!”

  People on the opposite side of the road stopped and stared at the young architect, alone on the sidewalk. His rage and frustration grew as Al-Shamy walked further away from him, seemingly oblivious. “If it hadn’t been for those Europeans whom you despise so much,” he stammered, “two centuries ago, Cheops would have been destroyed brick by brick on the orders of your own Pasha. And as for your museum–”

  Al-Shamy stopped dead in his tracks and whirled around. “Be happy, Hausmann, that you never have to make that choice,” he spat as he marched up to Max. “To be poor and yet to have gold at your fingertips. Do you even know how much collectors are willing to pay for even the smallest piece of Pharaonic history? We do not have the means to protect every antiquity with a gun. So it's up to every Egyptian to choose, every day, between selling his soul for a better tomorrow and preserving his past. Because it is all we have left. If this land still has treasures, it's because there are men and women across Egypt who keep their inheritance with sticks and stones against the raiders with assault rifles. You condemn my nationalistic impulses, but if the Egyptians do not take back their past, here and now, then this universal heritage will dissolve piece by piece in western markets.”

  Al-Shamy swallowed hard and stared at Max, who did not move. “If I have to fight against my brothers so that the country does not lose its soul, then that is my burden to bear, and I accept it gladly. But what I will not accept are those who have so much yet whose relentless greed drives them to poison our legacy and fulfill their own warped desires for romance or mysticism. Or madness.”

  Breathless, Al-Shamy glared at Max and pressed his index finger against the young architect's chest. He leaned in close to Max’s face and whispered through clenched teeth, “If ever you found this passage inside the pyramid, you would never get out of it alive. Do you understand?”

  20

  The suffocating smell of chemicals mixed with the sickly-sweet stench of rotting flesh, the oppressive heat and the constant wailing of desperate mothers – over time, Kamal Aqmool had learned to push them all aside. But today, with his boots surrounded by cigarette butts soaked in blood, standing in front of the rows of old fridges while obsolete microscopes sat forlornly below broken windows, he minded very much. The decay felt like a personal humiliation.

  Not long ago Egypt was at the forefront of forensic science. But the revolution, and the budget cuts it brought, had changed all that. Now, even in death, there was no dignity. This was one of Cairo’s most important morgues, and somewhere there lay the body of Seth Pryce. The policeman could already hear the footsteps of the people he was waiting for, and their presence only served to increase his shame.

  The FBI was here.

  The main task of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in Cairo was to support its Egyptian ally in the fight against terrorism and organized crime. Cairo “Legat” (legal attaché office of the FBI) employed a dozen people who served under the Department of State and the US Embassy. The staff co-ordinated investigations and collaborated with their Egyptian counterparts to prevent attacks against US interests in Egypt, but also in Chad, Libya and Sudan. In the event of a conflict, the FBI helped to repatriate US nationals. The FBI also provided its allies with expertise in criminal investigation, particularly in forensic science.

  If the victims were American, as in the case of the murder of Seth Pryce, whose body was soon to be claimed by the US Embassy, the mandatory participation of the FBI in the investigation rendered the authority of the Egyptian police all the more meaningless. Officially, the limits of each organization’s influence were clear, collaborations mutually respectful, culturally sensitive and, in the end, the Egyptians and American agents smiled warmly for the press release photos.

  But in reality, coexistence had always been, at best, uncomfortable. So when Special Agent Rust and second in command Rodriguez appeared alongside Kamal Aqmool in the corridors of this Cairo morgue, every single one of the Egyptian staff present knew that things were about to get very complicated indeed.

  It didn’t help that Special Agent Aziza Rust was a woman.

  The nasty gossip suggesting that the nature of her relationship with Aqmool wasn’t always merely professional, was always floating in the air and Aqmool resented it.

  He shook hands with Rust and her colleague. Rodriguez sniffed pointedly as he surveyed the state of the morgue. As for Aziza Rust, if she shared Rodriguez’s disapproval, she did not show it. While waiting for the attending doctor, the police chief could not help staring at her out of the corner of his eye. Despite his occasional stuttering, if he were so minded to he could, and often would, charm almost anyone. But Aziza Rust seemed to be immune. At forty, she was petite and thin. She had smooth, perfect skin and was fluent in Egyptian Arabic. Her brown eyes were accentuated by formidable eyebrows and long black hair that she kept tied back in a neat ponytail. Despite wearing clothes that were not in the least revealing, it was easy to see that she was trim, even muscular.

  Aziza Rust was beautiful, but it was the kind of beauty that one noticed afterward, almost as an afterthought. To be considered attractive, she would have needed a little sweetness or to have been a touch carefree. Both things that, had you asked her, she would have considered to be an insult to her core. She was feared, instead, for her chronic severity, her absolute respect for procedure, and her intransigence towards anyone who did not measure up to her stratospheric standards. Few knew that she was even more uncompromising with herself.

  The doctor joined them and motioned for them to follow him to a table where a body was laid out in a thick plastic post-mortem bag. The doctor apologized for the delay as he put on a pair of gloves, but complained that his department had so little money that his staff had to pay for chemicals and equipment, even for gloves, with their own wages. Then, in a practiced and even delivery, he began his verbal report.

  “Mr. Pryce died after a single, fatal, blow to the heart. The heart was then removed. The weapon is sharp but not quite smooth, like a serrated knife, for example. There are traces of resistance as can be seen from bruises on the wrists and around the neck.”

  “Was he killed before being put in the pyramid?” Rust asked.

  “Without a doubt.”

  “Estimated date of d-d-death?” Aqmool asked.

  “Hard to say, because the conditions under which the body was stored were unusual, but I would say about three weeks. Around the first of June.”

  “Any evidence of another person being involved?” Aqmool asked.

  “There were many things on the body, but all belonging to both victims. We are still analyzing these elements. It will take time as the dust has not made it easy. One last thing.” He pulled back the zipper a little more to reveal a tattoo which covered the navel. The motif seemed to represent an ornate Christian cross, whose horizontal bar was finished with small vertical end pieces. “I noticed this tattoo because it's the only one and it seems very recent, a few weeks at most.”

  “Postmortem?” Rust asked.

  “No, he must have been alive when it was done, but he died soon after. I'm sorry I cannot tell you more.”

  “We found the same on Jessica Pryce’s b-b-body. Same location,” Aqmool said.

  Rust glanced quickly at him and studied the tattoo again. Only Aqmool, who always watched her carefully, noticed that she parted her lips as if to speak. But she pursed her lips and said nothing.

  A few moments later, the three detectives cros
sed the courtyard at the heart of the morgue complex. Rust stopped near two marble columns; she studied the numerous faded photocopies showing pictures and names of those who were missing but who had not yet arrived at the morgue.

  “A billionaire, a kidnapping in Mexico, a ritual staging, it seems like a very complex way to settle a score,” Aqmool said, hoping to distract her from the desperation taped on the column.

  “How many Tutankhamen masks are there in Cairo?” Rust interrupted.

  “Who knows? In New York, you could trace the manufacturer to the shop, and then an electronic paper trail would lead you to the customer. But in Cairo, we would have to search every bazaar.”

  Aqmool glanced at Rust. Her face was blank, and her eyes were firm.

  “When do you think you can analyze it?” she asked.

  Aqmool sighed and rubbed his temples. “We are doing everything we can, Rust.”

  “Still no CCTV on the Giza site?”

  “Unfortunately, no.” Aqmool glanced at his watch and said, “I think it’s time I took you back.”

  What he didn’t tell them was that since the revolution, there was barely enough men to patrol the pyramids. Let alone maintain the CCTV.

  Rodriguez handed him a small dossier giving the official version of Jessica Pryce's background and the extent of the inheritance she was in line to receive following her husband’s death. One hundred million dollars, plus all the assets.

  Rust shook Aqmool's hand. “If you need anything, I am of course at your disposal. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that the case is a priority for the Bureau.”

  They went through their ritual courtesy goodbyes, and Aqmool watched as Rust and her assistant were escorted into their brand new, armor-plated car before tearing away under police escort.

  When Aqmool returned to the police station, he found a timid young woman with delicate hands clutched around a blue leather diary waiting for him outside his office.