Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Caroline Vermalle

  “I don’t believe in superstitions,” Max said in a raspy voice, as it felt as though all of Giza’s sand had accumulated in his throat “No, no, I’m not talking about malediction, even if my colleagues are convinced of it. The human will is much more powerful. This list is the result of an intention, and that is much worse.”

  His camel jolted sharply, the policeman shot at the reins and continued, “It is more difficult to make two men disappear than one. Another way to tell you again that we must trust each other. Protect ourselves – ”

  “Against this grey eminence.”

  “That’s right, that’s right. Now, can you tell me why you’re here?”

  Max felt the words suddenly flow, as if a higher consciousness in his tired body knew it was time to speak. “I met someone who claims to have found an entry into the pyramid. A secret underground passage. That’s where the Pryces and others came in. Al-Shamy probably knew it too. The entrance would be somewhere in the city of Giza.”

  Aqmool’s eyes shone with a cold glow. “Where is this passage?”

  “Right here under our feet,” Max answered and waited for his reaction. Yes, the world would laugh at these fantasies. But not him. He had seen Room X, he had seen where Seth and Jessica Pryce had been buried. Four walls and no doors. He had already been forced to admit the inadmissible.

  “This tunnel thing is probably a hoax,” Max added. “I’ll know more tomorrow.”

  “Take care of yourself,” Aqmool said, handing Max a phone number scribbled on a piece of paper. “Call me if you need p-p-p-protection, I can find you someone reliable.”

  Max thanked him, and added, “If we are to trust each other, I would like to know something. You asked me why I was risking my freedom. I made a promise, and even if I have to spend my whole life behind bars, I will keep it. But what about you?”

  As his devastated face called for revenge, he turned against all odds into a serene, luminous and satisfied expression. “I made a promise too, Mr. Hausmann.”

  Max watched him ride away on his camel towards the two policemen, then disappeared.

  It was getting dark at the Giza site. Soon, all that would remain of this meeting in the dust would be the list, the line and the spectrum of those for whom men were fighting.

  As Sixtine entered his thoughts, his shoulders tensed and his stomach turned. He drove these thoughts away and kicked the animal in the flanks. Florence would be here soon. He suddenly wanted to see her, she who had the incomparable talent to make the most sordid things light. He hurried off to the exit of the site, warmed up at the thought of their imminent reunion.

  6

  Andrew Sheets was even paler than usual.

  His unattractive features, barely brightened by his red hair, bore the deep imprint of bad sleep. Despite the dim light from the rooftops of Paris, orange in the night, beyond the window of his hotel, his eyes squinted, and a throbbing erupted in his skull. He tried to straighten up, his muscles rebelled against every movement. He placed his hand over his mouth, from which smelly saliva flowed, and then over a lump growing on his forehead, purplish and red.

  He glanced around him and noticed he wasn’t in bed. He was at the foot of the bed, and he was not even in his room either. The alarm clock on the bedside table read 10:08 p.m. “Awww, bloody hell.”

  In his life, he had had more hangovers than any of his other colleagues. Which, by the way, was supposed to make him immune to all future ones, but clearly that wasn’t how it worked. No matter how hard he tried – not too much, because it hurt his head – he had no memory of how he got into that room reeking of alcohol.

  At least he was alone. The nausea swept over him as bile rose in his throat and he rushed into the toilet. As he vomited greenish bile and promised himself never to drink again, a pounding erupted in his head. He vomited again.

  Once he was relieved of the toxicity which had consumed his body, he realized the pounding came from the hotel room door, and not inside his head.

  Then in a bitter flash, the memories came back to him.

  The shooting, Nefertiti, his plane to London. He should have been in England by now.

  “I’m coming,” he called out.

  He clumsily rushed to the bed, picked up his glasses. He noticed broken glass debris, a brown puddle and an almost-empty bottle of wine had spilled on the carpet. The hotel was going to make trouble for him with that, that was for sure.

  On the desk was a small cardboard box with a tag which read, “Welcome Florence Mornay”. He frowned followed by an instant wince as his forehead hurt. The knocking continued, harder and louder against the wooden door. Several voices resounded in the corridor.

  “Yes, yes, I’m coming!”

  He walked up to the door with his wrinkled pants, his gaze resting on a black garbage bag lying next to an overturned chair.

  Not remembering what it could contain, or how it had gotten there, he slowly opened it. His heart began to beat at the same rate as the pounding on the door and his face twisted with fear.

  Inside the bag were clothes soaked in fresh blood.

  The memory of a fat man in the middle of a long foggy staircase popped into his mind.

  “Make sure Florence Mornay-Devereux is kept entirely out of this,” he had said to Andrew.

  Andrew dropped the bag in shock and its contents spilled on the ground. A dirty, bloodstained dagger fell out and rolled onto the carpet.

  His senses, electrified by the adrenaline, brought back to him with terrible clarity what was shouted behind the door, just before it was pushed open.

  “Police, open up!”

  7

  Sixtine gently pressed her forehead against the glass of the sticky window.

  Outside, the sign of a jazz club blinked in the Parisian night, bathing her face in a blue light every now and then. She glanced at a group of young people smoking on the sidewalk. They shivered from the cold, but they continued their chatting, carefree and cheerful. Under their feet, in the catacombs, the celebration continued. A door opened, a few notes of pop music and laughter escaped.

  Joy everywhere.

  But not for her.

  Sixtine still felt Oxan Aslanian’s nails digging into her shoulder, and it made her jump. She wrapped her coat tighter around herself and felt her finger throb. She closed her eyes, but in her head was the infamous vision of the Green River.

  “Miss, this is my friend Fu-Hsi.”

  Sixtine turned around. She had almost forgotten where she was.

  In Chinatown, with acquaintances of Han, her old Asian doorman in New York and had since served as her secretary and butler. It was Han who opened the cast iron plate she had designated for him on this deserted corner of the sidewalk, to let Al-Shamy through. When Sixtine returned to her hotel twelve hours later, dripping with mud and sweat, abrasions on her hands and knees, he had understood.

  While she washed the underground from her body and cleaning the wound on her knee, he had gathered her belongings. She wore tight, worn jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. Han had polished her black leather boots and she looked like a soldier in a futuristic army. They had left the place looking straight ahead and Han brought her here.

  “A safe place,” he had said.

  A very old, trembling woman had given Sixtine soup that was too hot and it burned her tongue. She asked to use the phone, where she dialed Franklin Hunter’s number. A woman had answered, an American one. She had told her in a neutral tone that Mr. Hunter had died the day before.

  Sixtine did not possess the courage to respond, but instead she stammered her condolences and hung up. She dialed Max’s number several times, her heart pounding, her fingers clumsy, her breathing difficult. Answering machine. She tried to reason with herself; it was late at night after all. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  “Max, it’s Sixtine. We have to stop. Everything, I mean it. You’re putting your life in danger. Get out of Cairo right away. Please, listen to me.”

  She had tr
ouble calming her nerves, but convinced herself it would take the police time and a lot of luck to trace everything back to her. Strangely enough, she believed what Oxan Aslanian had told her. Nothing would happen to her if she did what he said, and nothing would happen to Gigi if she went home. But what if she refused?

  The threat seemed much more real now when she had received confirmation of Franklin’s death. She remembered coming to Mexico City a few days earlier to stay in her hotel room. She had noticed Franklin’s appetite, his mannerisms, the earring which sparkled as much as his eyes when he talked about works of art.

  Now, with her face illuminated by the blue of neon light, she glanced at her suitcase in the corner of the room. Fatigue gave this absurd scene an unreal dimension.

  “We should leave before daybreak,” Han pointed out. “Shall I tell the pilot that we’re going to your great-aunt’s house?”

  Above them, the rooftops of Paris, were tinged with a faint glow of the impending dawn.

  After a long silence, still in shock at Franklin’s death, Sixtine whispered, “I remember hearing something in the catacombs. Ramblings of a drug-induced man, but somehow it has stuck with me.”

  Sixtine paused for a moment before continuing. “O, my heart of my mother, O my heart of my mother, O viscera of my heart of my earthly existence, do not rise against me! Don’t say about me, He did this in truth! Don’t make him perform against me before the great god. Greetings to you, sweetheart! Greetings to you, gutter of my heart! Greetings to you, my breast! Greetings to you, these pre-eminent gods, tell me to Re! May I be enduring on Earth, may I not die in the West, may I be a blessed one there! May I be a blessed man there. May I be a blessed one there. Do you know what that means?”

  Han clasped his hands together and glanced solemnly out of the window. “These visions and voices in your head are most likely symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Like retrograde amnesia, memories so vivid, they seem real, causing anxiety and an unnatural obsession. I think you are still suffering from the consequences of what happened in the pyramid, Miss. Perhaps it is high time to consider – ”

  “I just want to know the meaning of these incantations,” Sixtine cut him off.

  “All right, Miss.”

  Han placed his glassed on the bridge of his narrow nose and opened his laptop. “If you want to take the trouble to repeat them for me,” he said and typed on the keyboard.

  Meanwhile, Sixtine stared out the window. The young people had left and went to bed, only one wandered around with her sleeping bag in the deserted street.

  “Miss, have you studied the history of ancient Egypt?” Han frowned as he rubbed his forehead.

  “My mother bought me an encyclopedia when I was a little girl, and I paid attention when Seth talked about his antiques, but that was about it. Why do you ask?”

  “Because what you just repeated to me is the first half of Chapter Thirty of the Book of the Dead,” Han answered. “Word for word.”

  “What?”

  “Among Egyptians, the Book of the Dead is one of the objects that the deceased takes with him to the afterlife. Chapter Thirty A, as it is often referred to, is important. It reads that it is he who orders the heart not to betray the deceased when he appears before Re for weighing, which determines whether he can go to the kingdom of the dead or – ”

  “-to be eaten by the beast. I remember that.”

  Han looked at Sixtine, his eyes wide by her knowledge of this.

  “When I was in a coma, I experienced that moment. What brought me back to life was my heart which betrayed me.”

  “What did it say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They remained silent for a long time until Sixtine broke the silence.

  “Han, you who seem to know a lot about psychotherapy. Is remembering things we never knew part of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder?” Sixtine asked.

  “No, Miss, but some people with abilities, say, psychic – ”

  “No. That’s not possible,” Sixtine interjected.

  “Miss?”

  “I never believed in that stuff. It’s all smoke and mirrors used by charlatans to trick and deceive naive people. I had to find out the hard way on my honeymoon in Mexico. It’s the only possible explanation. Seth was so passionate about these Egyptian beliefs that he probably wanted to pass them on to me.”

  They both glanced out the window and it grew quiet between them. Sixtine still had trouble talking about Seth. Her throat became dry, the pain narrowed her stomach.

  Seth, her handsome prince. She still felt the warmth of his arms around her, the desire that enveloped her, his presence so strong and protective. The sensation disappeared as quickly as it had appeared and only the pale reflection of Sixtine on the window remained.

  Han approached her and whispered, “Miss, try to forget the past, concentrate fully on the present, rebuild your life. I know this man, Oxan Aslanian, ordered you to do so under threat, but those who wish you well also think so.”

  “Those who wish me well,” Sixtine laughed. “Like who?”

  “Myself, and your great-aunt, Gigi.”

  Gigi.

  Her chest tightened as she thought of her great-aunt, so frail, so pure in her memory. She thought back to her house near the cliffs, where she had spent her childhood. Those damp walls covered with cobwebs, with broken games and the old tapestry of exotic birds. She felt her great-aunt’s hand in hers, for it was Sixtine, even as a child, who guided this much-loved blind lady.

  “He gave me three days. How can I find the truth in such a short time, on my own, without endangering others?”

  Han suddenly stared at her. “Perhaps now is the time, Miss, to ask yourself what you really want.”

  Sixtine did not answer.

  “For the truth, if that’s what you’re looking for, is not an end in itself, is it? What you want is this state in which you will be when you find what you need. Who will you be then?”

  “I want to be liberated,” Sixtine said, feeling angered.

  “But why not decide it today, at this very moment? No one can do it for you, just as no one can be you for you. The only thing that connects you is the need you have created, the need for truth, revenge, justice, call it what you will. Free yourself now. You are the only one responsible.”

  “Responsible?” Sixtine exclaimed, turning violent towards him. “You’re one of those people who say victims deserve what happens to them, aren’t you?”

  “No. But the decision is still yours,” Han replied, perfectly calm. “If you take full responsibility for what happens to you, you will gain great power, and you will take it away from those who oppress you. You can free yourself from them, from the pyramid, from who you were before, even from Jessica. Mr. Seth is dead. Knowing under what circumstances will not bring him back to life. You, you are alive.”

  “Only just.”

  “So decide to be a survivor, because that’s what you are. Become what you are looking for.”

  Han had adopted a strange posture; he was no longer just an employee. There was an absolute trust in him, a knowledge of her that made her vulnerable. Han seemed to be focusing all his attention on her here, now. Never had she felt such intensity from the old man. She turned her head towards the window and her words fogged up against the blue glass.

  “Before I leave, I want to see Thaddeus. I want to ask him one last question.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss. Mr. di Blumagia flew to Mexico City this morning. I heard he is having an exhibition of his work next week.”

  When she rested her gaze on him once again, he had become the submissive butler again. “What should I tell the pilot? We should leave without delay.”

  At that moment, his old cousin came in again, still trembling, carrying a tray with tea and a few pastries. Han addressed him in a few words Sixtine did not understand. The old lady nodded as she looked at Sixtine and as she wanted to place the tray on a crowded buffet, something crashed
to the ground with a loud noise.

  Dominoes.

  Within an instant, Sixtine was transported back to Mexico City, back to the poet who played there against Death. For a moment she re-experienced the blue feather which fell from the cage in the hotel lobby, the smell of rain on the cobblestones of Zócalo, the virgin with the child in the basilica with a thousand candles.

  Above all, she saw Thaddeus, whose presence seemed almost palpable, whose name was intermixed with the black and white of the dominoes.

  To make the visions disappear, she blinked suddenly and glanced down. She noticed the fresh scar on her finger, where Aslanian had impaled Gigi’s brooch. A promise sealed in blood. All the parts of her being ached because she now strived for what she really wanted. She desperately wanted to know. To know at last, to look in the face of all the missing moments which had led her to the pyramid.

  Go back to Mexico, confront Thaddeus, recompose her own history.

  But Sixtine secretly knew there was no way to escape. She had no qualms about risking her life for the truth because her life was no longer worth much. But not the others’. Not Gigi’s.

  The poor orphan girl had become rich, but she could not pay for it.

  “Tell him I’m going home, and after this trip, I won’t need his services any more.”

  8

  The windswept orange sand inside the metal hangar at Cairo West AB military airport. FBI Special Agent Aziza Rust pushed through a door with two signs hanging from it. On one was written, “Dignity & Respect”. On the other, “Mortuary Affairs, 45th Quartermaster”.

  The pungent smell of cleaning products already took over her nostrils, so Rust silently greeted a young black soldier who ironed an American flag. Another soldier, even younger, played FreeCell on a computer, but swiftly rose to his feet to greet the FBI agent. They exchanged papers, spoke briefly while the radio played classical music. Then Aziza Rust signaled to the truck staff to unload, as preparations were being done to transfer the cargo.