Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Caroline Vermalle

  “If you keep your promise, nothing will happen to you. I promise you that. Otherwise – ”

  With the energy of despair, Sixtine swung the pipe and struck Aslanian fiercely against the legs. As he was hunched over and groaning in pain, she came up behind him and pushed him forward with all her might. He slumped down at the edge of the wharf, one leg already in the Green River. He tried to regain his balance but Sixtine kicked his torso, making sure he fell into the water. Unfortunately, Aslanian grabbed Sixtine’s sleeve, dragging her into the water as well. Her boots were heavy and dragged her down into the dark water, but she removed them hastily and managed to get back to the surface. She swam to the shore, but saw that Aslanian had made it out of the water before her. He ran in the opposite direction, his hand pressed against his cheek, as if the Green River had burned him. He ran into one of the tunnels, disappearing into the darkness, and silence swept his steps away.

  Sixtine remained alone in the shallow water, dripping, barefoot, her lungs ablaze. A nearby reflection caught her eye and she glanced towards a wall on the other side of the water. She breathed a sigh of relief as she saw a ladder against the wall; a ladder that would take her back to the surface.

  Back to the living.

  4

  COLLECTOR DONATES NEFERTITI TO MUSEUM, EGYPT REMAINS SILENT

  This morning, Mr. Frederick Montecito, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, confirmed that Helmut von Wär, whose immense collection of antiques is estimated at nearly $800 million and whose record auction made it possible to acquire Nefertiti’s mummy in Paris this month, donated the remains of the Egyptian queen to the museum.

  “Welcoming Nefertiti’s mummy, accompanied by some of her funerary items, is a great honor. This is the prime mission and ideal of this museum, to present and preserve the best of history. Since the sands of Egypt no longer offer protection to the remains of the pharaohs, then the Met becomes their natural guardian. And Nefertiti will certainly be better off here than in a disused hangar.”

  Nefertiti was found in an abandoned hangar in Berlin, among hundreds of fake Egyptian antiquities of poor quality. The owner of the site, Mr. Ari Goldman, a Jewish collector and patron who financed an excavation in Al-Amarna in the 1930s, died in the Dachau concentration camp in 1943. His grandniece, Sophia Neumann, discovered the antique hiding place after a long investigation.

  Three experts first believed all of the two hundred objects in the hangar were reproductions, until Yohannes De Bok, an antique dealer and world specialist in counterfeiters, revealed the presence of seventy-seven authentic treasures among them, skilfully made up as counterfeits.

  It would seem the trickery was effective enough for the Nazis not to requisition these antiquities, as they did with all valuable cultural property belonging to Jewish collectors.

  Mr. Montecito pointed out the museum considered the creation of a new room exclusively dedicated to Nefertiti, a space which would be financed largely by the donations of Mr. von Wär himself, whose generosity and ambition are continuously praised by the museum’s director.

  Pending the completion of this project, the world’s leading museums, such as the British Museum, the Louvre and the Neues Museum in Berlin, are preparing to welcome Nefertiti during a world tour already in preparation. This event promises to break the record for popularity set by Tutankhamen, who travelled around the world from 1972 to 1979 and attracted 1.6 million visitors.

  “Nefertiti’s arrival at the Met will also allow us to take a giant step forward in our knowledge of Egyptian history,” Dr Cheryl Wood-Smith, Chief Curator of the Egyptian Antiquities Department at the Met, adds. “The mummy will benefit from a study with state-of-the-art equipment. This incomparable piece becomes an open book on the life of the greatest queen of Egypt and the entire Pharaonic period. It’s the dream of a whole career.”

  Dr Al-Shamy, Egypt’s first archaeologist and a staunch opponent of the acquisition of Nefertiti by non-Egyptian institutions or individuals, had stopped the sale of the millennial remains in Paris on October 29, and called for their repatriation on the grounds that the ashes of a head of state should be returned.

  Dr Al-Shamy did not comment on the news of the Met’s acquisition of the mummy, and appeals to the SCA (Supreme Council of Antiquities), of which he is the director, have not been returned at the time of printing.

  The revolution raging from Cairo to Sinai has already allowed both the trafficking of antiquities and the looting of cultural heritage to reach alarming levels that are worsening as the conflict intensifies.

  In this volatile context, the crusade of archaeologists like Dr Al-Shamy for the return of Pharaonic treasures to Egyptian soil increasingly resembles a lost cause.’

  Thaddeus, who sat comfortably in the VIP lounge at Charles de Gaulle Airport, folded the newspaper without a sound. His long fingers tapped the paper for a moment as if to extract obscure truths, but he finally placed it on his hand luggage beside him.

  He retrieved his sketchbook as well as a sketching pencil from his hand luggage and placed it on his lap. He continued the sketch of the Virgin Mary’s Marriage which he had begun a few hours earlier at the Madeleine Church, and altered the Virgin’s face to make it more angular, more contemporary.

  More like Sixtine.

  An air hostess approached him a short while later and said quietly, “Mr. di Blumagia, your flight to Mexico City is about to board.”

  He thanked her, to which she blushed. She still glanced at him as he left the lounge, leaving behind his New York Times and a scent of rare flowers mixed with turpentine.

  At the same time, the airport speakers broadcast a message which no one paid attention to.

  “Passenger Florence Mornay-Devereux is requested to proceed to gate fifty-six immediate boarding on flight AF 5723 to Cairo. Last call for passenger Florence Mornay-Devereux to Cairo, flight AF 5723, boarding gate fifty-six.”

  Soon, however, flight AF 5723 disappeared from the blackboard without Florence.

  5

  The sun was nothing more than an orange beam burning the horizon towards which Max’s camel galloped through the Giza plateau, drawing dust arabesques behind it. The young architect had surveyed the site of the pyramid the entire afternoon, despite the ban on Al-Shamy and the risk of immediate arrest. Whatever he did, the archaeologist’s warnings kept coming back as a bad memory.

  The hairs on the back of his neck stood up at the slightest noise and he remembered that the keffiyeh with which he had masked his face did not protect him from anything. The wind still stung his eyes and he was hungry as hell, but no threat could have kept him away from Giza after Naya’s message. She had found the tunnel he had seen on his infrared satellite image at that improbable moment when the rain had revealed a different density. Unfortunately, he could only see Naya the next day.

  The wait was unbearable.

  His camel had galloped along the invisible line between the pyramid of Cheops and Naya’s house, guided by his GPS and dozens of tracks he hid in a bag under his galabeya. He had scolded this leg that prevented him from climbing Cheops and he had to be satisfied with his observations at ground level.

  Max walked along the supposed location of the tunnel one last time, and he scanned every meter of it, in vain. Then he stopped, and looked around him.

  To his left were the quarries which had given their stones to the pyramids. To his right were the excavations of Napoleon’s architects – the first archaeologists – in search of the base of the Great Pyramid, discovering the Sphinx and revealing the tombs. Further on, the projections on the ancient buildings made two centuries earlier to extract the stones that would serve to protect the city of Giza from cataclysmic flooding. To the left, the systematic excavations of Vuse and Perring in 1837 around Cheops, Khephren and Mykerinos. To the right, those of Mariette, who spent twenty years of her life until 1891 searching the site from top to bottom.

  Finally, the many scars of the great bazaar of Giza, the general m
elee of the 20th century where the whole world, from Boston to Leipzig, from Turin to Vienna, had fought to comb through their piece of desert with a fine and frenetic comb.

  Today, it was Al-Shamy whose every shadow of Giza bore the imprint, the only master on board with his ambitious research program. He swore to map every square meter of sand. In thirty years, he had discovered so many secrets here that he had repeatedly made international headlines and rewrote history books.

  This land had been disturbed for thousands of years, in the name of the great, the beautiful, the eternal or the knowledge. Yet, despite this frenzy of excavations at the site of one of the Wonders of the World, despite the testimonies of visitors since Antiquity who were thrilled about the most ordinary discovery, no one had noticed a two-mile-long stone tunnel that started from the great Pyramid itself and crossed the entire site.

  Max had come here despite Al-Shamy’s threats to see the obvious, the very thing Naya claimed was impossible.

  He had seen the satellite images suggesting an underground structure, certainly, but like any scientist, Max knew the data could say anything. He suspected, with his mind still drunk from the fifty-six hours of being trapped in the collapsed tunnel with Spidey and his conversation with Sixtine, his poor head had gone wild. After all, the existence of a tunnel here was very possible, and practical for that matter. It provided an easy answer to many questions. But how could Naya have known? He couldn’t explain it, but she had simply told him what he so desperately wanted to hear.

  It was likely that the young Egyptian would lure him straight into a hoax.

  Max sighed and glanced at his watch again. Only five minutes had passed since he last spoken to her. Only a few more hours before the meeting with Naya.

  At least Florence was coming tonight, she’d be sure to cheer him up. Plus she would probably know how to handle Naya. Yet this thought did not quite warm up to him.

  Max pulled on the strap of his camel, steering the animal towards the exit of the site. It walked only a few meters before stopping, as a man dressed in a similar manner galloped towards Max, flanked by two policemen.

  His body froze. Al-Shamy’s threat. How had he been recognized?

  Max glanced around him in a panic. The site was open with plenty of space to run in order to get away, but it was too late to escape now. His poor command of the camel made the possibility of a chase absurd, so the only thing he could do now was wait, and not be afraid.

  The man waved to the police officers who kept their distance, then turned around slowly, and still approached MAx. Like him, his face was covered, but Max could clearly see that it was not Al-Shamy. Before Max could figure out who exactly, or question his identity, the man lowered the scarf which concealed his face.

  “Good evening, Mr. Hausmann,” the Police commander stuttered.

  “Commander Aqmool,” Max greeted with surprise.

  Four months earlier, Aqmool had been in charge of the “pyramid affair”, as Seth’s murder, Sixtine’s torture and the strange circumstances surrounding them had been nicknamed. His last interview with Max was on June 21st, the longest day in Egypt’s recent history, when the Cairo central police station was stormed and burned in the middle of Max’s interrogation.

  Max had survived the flames by jumping out of a window, breaking both his legs. He hadn’t seen the policeman since. It was this light stuttering which allowed Max to recognize him, as well as his black eyes which shone like hematites in the sun.

  The rest was unrecognizable.

  His face was just a knot of puckered skin, biting his left eye and pulling it down. His jaw and neck seemed blurred into painful shapes. The left corner of his lips had disappeared, leaving a black opening which created and eerie smile, permanently scarred. The fabric of the scarf partly hid his shaved head, but Max saw that his ear was nothing more than a complicated arrangement of flesh.

  The flames of June 21st had left a terrible imprint on this man, and had annihilated the left half of his face.

  Aqmool smiled and – out of embarrassment, or vanity – turned his head away towards the pyramid. That part of his face had been spared, and from this angle, not a single person would suspect the terrible battle which had been fought on the other side of his face.

  “I heard you didn’t come out of our interview at the commissariat unscathed,” Aqmool said in a soft voice.

  “No,” Max said, reassured by the friendly tone of the policeman. “Two broken legs, one that will never recover. I’ll limp all my life.”

  Max regretted the melodramatic note he had put in his answer, but he insisted on his martyrdom because he knew he would rather have all the bones of his body cracked than look like a monster. Like Aqmool.

  “Two broken legs, huh? That doesn’t stop you from going where you’re not supposed to.”

  Max stiffened up, which the policeman detected, and raised his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not on duty. I’m no longer on duty. Who would have thought that the Egyptian Police would have beauty criteria?” Aqmool laughed with amusement.

  Max wondered if, like Aqmool, he should laugh. But he took a look at the police officers who were talking some twenty meters away, still mounted on their camels, and the envy passed him by. “I kept my entries. One of the great advantages of being fair. I enjoy some loyalties.”

  “And you knew I would come here.”

  “Yes, Al-Shamy shared your description, as promised. Yet they are warning me. You’re a lucky man. They could have warned Hassan.”

  Hassan, your colleague who made Moswen’s murder possible, Max thought.

  “And now that you’ve got your hands on me, what are you going to do?”

  “Talk for a while.” Aqmool looked at the last rays of orange light behind the sandy horizon. “If you allow me, of course.”

  Aqmool steered his camel forward into at a walking pace, away from the police and Max followed closely behind him. He noticed they were retracing the invisible line of the tunnel, and they remained silent for a long time.

  “Al-Shamy is missing,” the ex-policeman said at last.

  “Missing?”

  “No one has seen him since the sale of Nefertiti in Paris.”

  Max’s throat suddenly dried up and he felt Aqmool’s piercing gaze watching for any of his reactions. What could he say to hide his guilty relief?

  “He disappears, and you appear. An interesting coincidence,” Aqmool pointed out.

  “I thought you were no longer on duty,” Max defended.

  “I’m no longer a man of justice, no. This does not prevent a certain curiosity, of course. You understand that, don’t you? Find out what’s behind the forces of fate.”

  “I assure you, I didn’t know that.”

  “Yet here you are, at the risk of losing your liberty. You didn’t think this outfit would protect you, did you? What attracts you here, the love of the pyramids?”

  Max frowned. Aqmool was different from the pragmatic and tense man who had questioned him at the police station eight months earlier. Despite his deformities, he seemed calmer.

  “I would like you to trust me. I know you know things about the Pryce case,” Aqmool told him.

  Max’s silence and sincere attention encouraged Aqmool to continue.

  “I am officially retired, but I have kept in touch with many of my former colleagues and friends, enemies too. I have been told confidences, as we do to the weak, to make them believe that they still matter. From one needle to the next, I came to a few conclusions.”

  Aqmool paused as he studied Max’s expression and decided to continue, “Hassan and Al-Shamy were informed of the attack on the c-commissariat. They were even deeply involved in its execution. There is no doubt about their guilt.”

  Max swallowed. “That was what we suspected – ”

  “But this scenario is not satisfactory,” Aqmool interrupted. “I always thought that neither Al-Shamy nor Hassan had the brain capacity of these events. It required not only co
lossal resources, but also ambition, imagination. Hassan and Al-Shamy are men who handle intimidation, threat, corruption or when it comes to brute force, but everything around this case is different. There is a certain degree of strangeness that does not fit with the characters. And then now, with Al-Shamy disappearing…”

  “You think Al-Shamy was responding to other orders?”

  A dark veil passed through Aqmool’s eyes, or perhaps it was the last ray of sunlight which faded into the purple sky.

  “A grey eminence, yes, unless otherwise defined.”

  Max felt the cold filter through the fabric of his clothes, and he shivered.

  “You said ‘we suspect’ earlier. Who is this ‘we’?”

  “Well, I – ” Max stammered.

  “You still don’t trust me?” Aqmool asked.

  “I don’t,” Max whispered. “But I don’t want to make decisions for others.”

  “Franklin Hunter is part of that ‘we’, isn’t he? I know he was in the police station’s debris, that’s when he found you.”

  Max nodded.

  Aqmool sighed and glanced at Max. “His body was found yesterday, in the back of an abandoned car in Boulaq. He was shot in the back and died of his injuries.”

  Max felt an icy dizziness seizing his body, his mouth drowning in a bitter bile. He clung to Aqmool’s black eyes, as if to cushion an imaginary fall.

  “You know, I can’t help but count the number of bodies piling up all over the place. Pryce. Moswen. Zahara. Now Hunter. Al-Shamy disappeared. And those who, by an inexplicable fortune, are still alive. Jessica Pryce, you, me. The fact that we are still breathing is a miracle, a reprieve. I wonder, Mr. Hausmann, if everyone who touched this pyramid,” he said solemnly, motioning to the pyramid of Cheops with a tilt of his chin, “isn’t on an invisible list?”