Thaddeus had raised his hand.
“Yes? So we have a bid. Very good. Sixty million for Monsieur in black, in the back of the room. Mademoiselle?”
The few hundred people present stared at Sixtine, who glared angrily at Thaddeus. What was he doing? Why did he bid? But Thaddeus was looking elsewhere in the room, towards Helmut von Wär, who was furious.
“Mademoiselle?” the auctioneer replied. The bid is now against you, at sixty million. Oh, wait. It looks like Sir on the right has decided to join us again.”
Helmut von Wär had raised his sign.
“Sixty-five million. Seventy million to the gentleman in the back of the room. Seventy million. Seventy million?”
Sixtine raised her paddle again, her stomach tight, her throat dry.
“Seventy-five million for Mademoiselle. Eighty million to my right. Eighty-five at the back of the room. Eighty-five million. It's eighty-five million here for Monsieur at the back of the room, I repeat, we're at eighty-five million dollars. Mademoiselle?”
A murmur passed through the audience as it held its collective breath. Sixtine swallowed. She was bidding almost all the fortune that Seth had left her, for a dead queen. She stared at Nefertiti's golden eyes on the screen. Her dry mouth tasted the air of the pyramid; the sand, the lotus flowers. Seth’s decomposing flesh. She raised her paddle. It was her last chance; all-in. Eyes on Nefertiti’s faceless head, she prayed that nobody would outbid her.
She heard the auctioneer say, “Ninety million!” with undisguised triumph. She did not dare to look to the right.
“Ninety million for Mademoiselle. Gentlemen? Ninety million for Mademoiselle, I'm going to award ninety million–”
Sixtine saw the auctioneer raise her gavel above the desk. But it hovered there, and the auctioneered smiled.
“Ninety-five million to Monsieur, in the back of the room. The bidding continues, we are at ninety-five million.” The auctioneer spoke directly to Helmut von Wär: “Come on, Monsieur on the right, or Mademoiselle, one hundred million to make history today?”
Helmut von Wär, with a resigned smile, raised his paddle.
The auctioneer made a play at trying to restore calm to the room, “Ladies and gentlemen, please, the bidding is not over. One hundred million! One hundred million dollars for Nefertiti’s mummy. Mademoiselle, the bid is against you, one hundred million.”
Sixtine felt all eyes in the room on her. But the bidding paddle, so light and insubstantial a few minutes before, had become an immovable anchor. Her childhood had been spent in poverty. She could taste that too. She looked at her hand curled uselessly around the wooden sign on her lap. Time seemed to stretch to infinity until the gavel crashed onto the auctioneer’s podium.
Nefertiti was lost.
While Florence, the film crew and a few dozen other cameras followed Helmut von Wär to the exit and filled the screens all over the world with sensational scenes, Andrew looked around him, trying to find those who stayed out of sight, for a possible interview. It was more out of laziness than real cunning, yet there were several details he found worth noting.
The man in the back of the room who had narrowly lost Nefertiti looked strangely casual, an ironic smile on his lips, his hands in his pockets, waiting for the throng to move out of the auction room.
Yohannes De Bok hurried behind an assistant to a press conference that was going to take all evening. His jaw was stretched, there no joy on his face despite the immense fortune he had just won.
And the silver-haired young woman, still sitting on her seat, her eyes frozen on an invisible horizon, seemed caught between rage and mourning. Suddenly she looked up and met Andrew's eyes. The burning cold of her fierce green eyes took hold of him, and he froze. He watched her stand up suddenly, her long, dark figure snaking through the rows of seats towards him. The menace that emanated from her filled him with primal fear, but she merely passed by him and split the crowd, seeming intent on some objective outside the auction house. He recovered enough to watch from a window as she crossed the street.
On the other side of the sidewalk was the man from the back of the room.
His attention was broken by a phone going off – it was resting on Florence’s pink backpack. He couldn’t help but glance at it. The text notification read:
“Urgent: info re. Seth Pryce “.
The message was signed by Dr. Maleh. He sighed. Mornay was hiding so many things from him. He would have no other choice but to pry it out of her. One way or another.
53
“I need papers, for Spidey and me. I need contacts in London. And I need money. I know you did not come to look for antiques. Spidey told me that you were looking for a way into the pyramid. I can help you, but only if you help us.”
In the concrete yard of the laundry in which they talked, the girl’s determination was as formidable as it was disarming. She sat on a wooden box, surrounded by linen drying on cluttered lines, and explained in detail what she needed. Her English, although stilted and awkward, left no room for ambiguity.
Naya wanted to start a new life in London with Spidey, and she had to leave Egypt as soon as possible. Max was not sure if what she was asking for was possible; he knew though that the consequences of not being able to keep his word would be. His conscience was pricked even more by the concern he saw in the eyes of the black-laced face of the old laundress, Naya's accomplice and protector. She would fleetingly appear from behind the sheets, only to disappear again, her shadow rippling on the sheets that clapped and twirled in the heavy air of the late evening.
Perhaps with Florence’s help and even Sixtine's, he could get what Naya needed. Veiled in white, in amongst the rhythmic swaying of the swathes of fabric in the yard, there was something haughty and even combative about her – a warrior virgin from a distant time. A momentary look of innocent joy and gratitude passed across her face when Max tentatively agreed to her conditions, but was too quickly erased and made way once more for the familiar scowl that was both cold-blooded and bold. With Max’s promise of assistance made, she asked what he wanted to know in return.
Max showed her a picture of Florence on his cell phone. “Have you ever seen this woman?”
Without hesitating, Naya answered that she had not. It was a good start – a false informer was always keen to give up information to give the impression that they knew more than they did. But Naya had avoided the trap, and so Max was as confident as he could be that she could be trusted.
Next, he showed her a picture of Seth Pryce. Naya had never seen him either. Jessica Pryce? No. Hassan? No. Max gritted his teeth. These were not the answers he had been hoping for.
His final picture was of Al-Shamy, taken at the Nefertiti press conference.
“Yes,” she said solemnly. “It's Dr. Al-Shamy. He came to see us a few months ago. June sixteenth.”
Only a few days before the discovery of the bodies, thought Max, but two days after Moswen's nocturnal tour of the pyramid. It did not fit.
“How can you be so sure of the date? It was months ago,” Max pointed out.
“He came on the same evening as the first visit by my fiancé's parents, the one my father wants me to marry. My mother had been talking about June sixteenth for months. Al-Shamy came to talk to my father, he said it was urgent. I don’t know what they talked about. He stayed for over an hour, my mother was furious because the guests left earlier than expected.”
“Al-Shamy had been to your house before?”
“My grandfather spoke about him, but I had never seen him before that night.”
“Could he have come in the day without you seeing him?”
“Yes, he might have. I work every morning at the laundry. I am at home most afternoons. And every night.”
Max felt that time was passing and that these minutes with Naya were precious. Yet nothing she had revealed so far was useful to him. “There was a delivery of flowers in early June, do you remember that?”
“Lotus flowers?”
<
br /> “Yes,” Max said, suddenly tense. “What happened to them?”
“I don’t know. I only saw the boxes. I didn’t think there were really flowers in them. They arrived the same night that Mr. DeBok was there and my grandfather had stayed late–”
“Wait,” Max interrupted. “Who came to your house?”
“Yohannes DeBok. He is a dealer in antiques and also a friend of my grandfather.”
Max's brain fizzed with excitement at seeing another loose thread tied to the pieces of his puzzle, but their meaning still eluded him. What was DeBok, the discoverer of Nefertiti, doing in a house in Giza on the same night that ceremonial flowers were delivered there?
“Tell me about DeBok.”
“The first time I saw him, I was very young. I liked it when he came, he always brought me a present. He bought antiques from my grandfather, but he also came sometimes to talk. A few years ago, my grandfather had beautiful pieces, not pieces like those found by Spidey, but real treasures, in gold and everything. If we needed money, he sold one to DeBok. When the revolution started, everything had already been sold. All that remained was what my father could scrounge or what the looters could offer him, as an intermediary. But DeBok would not touch these pieces. Only the good ones.”
“On the night the lotus flowers arrived, I hadn’t seen him in years. I knew it had to be just a courtesy call, because we had nothing to sell him. He told me that I had grown up and that I had turned into a wise and beautiful woman, and then he went to talk to my grandfather. I did not hear him leave, I must have been asleep.”
“You do not remember anything else about that night?”
“No...” The scowl on Naya’s face deepened, and she looked uncertain.
“You're sure?”
“I remember there was a new truck parked in front of the house. Oh, and… a few days before… or was it after… a man.”
Max saw the scowl slip, and in its place, the giggling teenage girl emerged.
“Do you know his name?” Max asked, surprised at her sudden smile.
“No. And he did not come in,” Naya blurted out, “I only saw him talking with my grandfather in the street. A tall, thin man, thirty years old maybe? With clothes that looked real expensive.” The girl bit the nail of her thumb as she described the tall stranger. She was still smiling.
“What makes you smile?”
“He was kind of… The girls in the laundry saw him with my grandfather, they wouldn’t stop talking about him. They all wanted to marry him.” She giggled again. “He was also there a few days before.”
Max saw that she was getting distracted and tried to bring her back on track, “Naya, what about the access to the pyramid?”
In an instant, the teenager vanished, and the scowling warrior returned, and for one awful moment, Max thought that she had changed her mind, until she said, “I think that my grandfather built an entrance.”
Max’s heartbeat quickened and his mouth dried so fast he had to swallow before speaking.
“How do you know?”
“Because of the stories he told me when I was little. Stories of tunnels that went to the pyramid, of the treasures in the passages and that those who kept them secret would always prosper. The stories stopped when I grew up, but I always wondered if they were true.”
“Has your grandfather ever talked about a river, or an underground canal?”
Naya shook her head. “There was only one time when I was about twelve. I looked in the shed to see if it was true. I found a door that led to rooms under the house, but they were not like the rooms in our house at all.”
Max held his breath, “Did these rooms lead to the pyramid?”
“I never found out. My father caught me, and I was punished.” She looked up at Max and then immediately lowered her eyes again, “He...” Naya’s voice cracked, and whatever memory she had dredged up from the past, proved too big a burden, even for her. When she spoke again, there was the same determination as before in her voice, but also anger. “I decided that I would leave the house as soon as I could. I met Spidey because he was digging tunnels and I thought perhaps he would find the treasures my grandfather had talked about...” Her voice trailed off again, but she soon recovered, “All I know is that rich men come to see my grandfather and I can only think that’s because he knows these passages.”
Her eyes were tired and yet held Max's enquiring gaze without flinching.
“I think you’re right,” Max said as he retrieved from his bag a printout of the satellite image, on which he had outlined in red the line of the supposed tunnel. “You see,” he said tracing the line with his finger, “this is an underground structure. It leaves Cheops and then disappears somewhere in Giza. Maybe your grandfather knows where.”
“If you can get me what I need to leave my father’s house,” Naya said, looking at the printout, “I'll find your tunnel. But I have to go. I have already been gone too long.”
Max scribbled his number on the page, which she then hid beneath her robes. As she turned to leave, Max called out to her, “Wait! One last thing.”
He pulled out his phone and typed a name into the search engine and then showed the photos that came up to Naya.
“Yes, that’s him. That’s the man that was talking to my grandfather on the night the flowers were delivered.” She hesitated and then smiled mischievously, “Except he’s much more handsome in person.” Then she fled through the white sheets, leaving Max in the laundry yard, the portrait of Thaddeus di Blumagia staring defiantly up at him from the screen of his phone.
The next day, he received a message from the owner of the laundry. Naya had found what he was looking for.
Suddenly the words that Al-Shamy had hissed at him felt dangerously real.
“Hausmann, if you ever find this passage in the pyramid, you will only be taking it in one direction.”
54
“What exactly was that?”
Even in the dim twilight, Sixtine’s cheeks burned red, but as he watched her marching towards him, seated on the blue bonnet of the classic Jaguar, Thaddeus seemed almost amused by her fury.
“I tried to buy something that is very, very close to my heart. It’s quite sad really,” he said smiling ruefully, “But then you have to be a good loser at this game.”
“It may be a game for you, but it's not for me,” she retorted.
“Oh?” he asked, his eyebrows arching mischievously. “And what did you intend to do with a dead queen? Resurrect her?”
“You could not possibly understand,” Sixtine stammered.
“Try me,” Thaddeus replied, a look of faint amusement on his handsome face.
Looking at him then, Sixtine felt the knot of frustration in her stomach expand and threatened to choke the breath from her lungs.
“Every step I make, every time I turn around, you're there, like my shadow,” she blurted out. “Do you feel obliged to protect me because you feel guilty about what happened at the wedding? I'm going to make your life easier. I forgive you. Okay? You’ve done more than enough for me already. I’m sorry that you lost Seth, I’m sorry that you lost your mother, we both did, but your story has nothing to do with mine.”
Thaddeus’ facial expression did not change one bit. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small leather-bound notebook. He wrote a few words on one of the pages which he tore out and then folded in four.
“If you want to be left alone, then I will respect your wishes,” he said at last, getting up from his seat on the polished hood of the car and walking slowly towards her. “In time, you’ll understand that your story has everything to do with mine, but I won’t deny you the lessons that come with finding this out for yourself. Here.” He pressed the folded paper into the palm of Sixtine's hand and his rough, yet elegant fingers sent an almost painful current through her skin. “Just in case you need me one last time.”
“You made it clear that you had no intention of helping me. Why would I need you?”
He smiled, and stroked his lips distractedly. “I’m pretty sure you’ll need someone to talk to, once you figure out what your story is.”
He turned and began to walk back towards his car, but as he opened the door, he paused, and glanced at her over his shoulder. “But in case we never see each other again, let me give you a last piece of advice. Don’t try to outbid Helmut von Wär. It never ends well.”
“Why?” she asked.
“He’s my stepfather. Goodbye, Sixtine.”
The car door slammed shut, and he sped away, in the orange dusk over the roofs of Paris. As she watched him go, Sixtine felt a pang in her belly, a yearning at odds with her still smoldering anger. She unfolded the paper and read the words that were written in sharp, angular strokes, almost as if they had been slashed on the page.
HALLOWEEN NIGHT. WHERE IT ALL BEGAN.
Her head began to spin. The rage that had compressed every sinew of her body was suddenly drained, leaving her feeling empty, bitter and dark. She started to walk without purpose or direction. She forgot where she was meant to go. The night seemed to be falling, the shadows nibbling at every corner of the buildings that loomed up on either side.
Thaddeus' words, the fall of the auctioneer's hammer, the applause at the auction house: they all crashed together inside her skull like waves heavily laden with debris from a terrible storm. Sixtine walked faster and faster, pulling up her hood against the evening chill. Then came the cries of the monkey. Clear, shrill, greenish. The baboon screamed to wake the dead. Sixtine broke into a run. The primal screams ceased and gave way to another cry, farther away:
“Watch out!”
She felt her coat being wrenched off as if by a giant’s hand, her shoulder dislodged from its socket, and her head slamming against the asphalt. As the blazing headlights of the car bore down on her, she shut her eyes and braced for what was to come.
“Unbelievable! He didn’t stop! Did someone get that license plate! How are you? Did anyone film that?”
Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 27