The Pyramid of Doom_A Novel

by Andy McDermott

  The team technicians snapped out of their paralysis at the sight of their star driver being carjacked and ran at him—but Eddie had already pulled the lever to engage the clutch. He squeezed the steering wheel paddle to switch into first … and pushed the accelerator.

  The result was like nothing he had ever experienced.

  Without a helmet or earplugs, the engine’s howl was almost deafening, and the jolt of acceleration smacked his head back against the unpadded roll bar so hard that he saw stars.

  People leapt out of Eddie’s path as the pointed nose of his new ride speared at them, one of the huge front wheels clipping a table and sending hors d’oeuvres to the four winds. He aimed for the street, closing his eyes as he hit the lightweight barrier—

  Osir ran out of the ballroom, Nina behind him, just in time to see the car smash through the cordon into Casino Square. “Zarba!” he gasped. “Stop him, somebody stop him!”

  Shaban and the bloodied Diamondback burst from the casino. Diamondback raised his second Colt and pointed it at the car, but a frantic screech of “No! Not here!” from Osir stayed his trigger finger. “Get after him! Sebak, go!”

  With an angry glare at Nina, Shaban ran after the car, Diamondback and another of Osir’s bodyguards following. Casino security staff poured into the courtyard, too late to do anything but mill in confusion. Macy appeared in the doorway, but Nina gestured for her to get back inside.

  Osir turned to her. “Your husband just stole a million-dollar race car!”

  “Yeah, that’s something else about him that drives me mad,” she said, feigning infuriation, “his total lack of respect for other people’s property!”

  He shook his head in dismay. “At least it’s only the demonstration car. And since he’s not a professional driver, he won’t get far.”

  Eddie was quickly discovering that driving a racing car was vastly harder than it looked. The slightest touch of the stiff and heavy accelerator seemed to send several hundred horsepower instantly to the rear wheels, making the back end slither about wildly, and with cold tires and not enough speed for the wings to generate downforce it felt like driving on an ice rink.

  To make matters worse, even though he was now on the racing track, the road was still busy with civilian traffic—coming straight at him. He was going around the circuit the wrong way. What was more, since he was sitting so low to the ground, the oncoming headlights were at eye level, dazzling him.

  He swerved, barely avoiding the monolithic nose of a Bentley—only to have one end of the front wing disintegrate into razor splinters of carbon fiber as it scraped against the roadside crash barrier. He battled with the steering wheel, ignoring the battery of furiously flashing warning lights on it as he struggled to stay in a straight line.

  Back into two-way traffic he joined the Avenue d’Ostende and descended the hill toward the harbor, but being able to go with the flow was little help as this road was even busier. The back end of a Range Rover loomed: he braked, sliding forward as the wheels locked up. The engine threatened to stall, and he pushed the accelerator again.

  Too hard.

  The car lunged, cracking his head another blow. The other side of the front fender shattered against the Range Rover’s rear wheel, shards stabbing into the rubber.

  Eddie swerved away as the big 4 × 4’s tire exploded and it crashed down on its alloy wheel rim. “Sorry!”

  But the broken chunks of carbon fiber had also damaged his own tire, the front wheel shuddering as he steered around another car. He was losing what little control he had.

  And he could hear something else over the engine’s scream—sirens. The police were coming. It wouldn’t exactly be hard for them to pick out his car from the rest of the vehicles.

  He had to get to the harbor before they caught him.

  The other cars almost blocked his view of the road ahead, but he could see enough to tell that he was coming to the bottom of the hill. Which, he remembered from past races on TV, was the location of the first turn after the start.

  A sharp turn.

  “Oh shit,” he gasped. Even in first gear, he was doing close to fifty miles an hour as he zigzagged through the traffic toward the Saint Devote corner. And the corner itself was busy, a complex intersection in its everyday guise.

  He saw what he hoped was a clear line, aimed for it …

  With a whap! of escaping high-pressure nitrogen, the damaged front tire sloughed off the wheel rim.

  The car spun out, sliding almost sideways before the back wheel bashed against a Ferrari, sending Eddie’s vehicle into a mad pirouette through the junction. The world was a blur—but he could make out a crash barrier getting closer with each revolution.

  He braced himself—

  The car crashed sidelong into the barrier, impact-absorbing sections of bodywork crushing flat. Still spinning, scattering debris, it bounced back out into the junction. Cars swerved to avoid the whirling wreck. A large van skidded, heading straight for Eddie’s car …

  Both vehicles stopped at the same time—with the racing car’s nose wedged under the van’s front bumper.

  Groaning, Eddie sat up. His shoulder felt as though it had taken a hit with a baseball bat where he had been flung against the cockpit’s edge. But the car’s safety features had done their job: He would be able to walk away from the crash.

  Or stagger, at least. Head spinning, he clambered out and got his bearings. The long arc of the start/finish stretch led away to the south. Toward the harbor.

  “C’est James Bond!” someone called. Eddie realized he had already attracted a crowd—considering that a man in a tuxedo had just wrecked a racing car in the middle of Monaco, that was hardly surprising.

  The Ferrari’s driver stared in horror at the huge dent in its side. “Send the bill to Team Osiris!” Eddie called before jogging to the nearest gap in the barriers. He pushed through the gawkers, disappearing into the crowd as the first police car arrived.

  “He crashed it?” Osir said, appalled. Shaban had just phoned him with a report. “Did you find him?” The reply was negative. “Then did the police catch him, at least?” An identical response. “Well, that’s marvelous!”

  Nina had to fight to conceal her jubilation. “That man destroys everything he touches,” she sneered instead. “Relationships, lives … race cars …”

  “I can see why you want to be rid of him,” he muttered before turning his attention back to the phone. “I’m going back to the Solar Barque. Yes, with Dr. Wilde. No, I—Sebak, I do not want to hear this again. Get as many people as you can. The police will be looking for him as well, so monitor their radios. I want him found.” He listened to Shaban. “Only if absolutely necessary—I don’t want any more trouble with the authorities, not tonight. Capture him and take him to the yacht.”

  “You’re not going to kill him?” Nina asked as he ended the call.

  Osir gestured at the wreckage of the party. “This will be hard enough to explain. The last thing I need is to turn on the TV and see a news bulletin about Sebak being arrested for your husband’s murder!”

  “So what are you going to do with Eddie when you find him?”

  “The Mediterranean is very big, and very deep.”

  “Ah … great. That’ll save me having to pay for a divorce lawyer.”

  Osir laughed coldly. “Well, I think the party is over. I don’t know if the zodiac will be ready yet, but we may as well find out. Give me a few minutes to say my good-byes.”

  He moved to speak to a group of people nearby, as full of bonhomie as if a switch had been flipped. Nina took the opportunity to go to the doorway. She saw Macy among the onlookers and waved her closer.

  “Where’s Eddie?” Macy asked. “Is he okay?”

  “For now—he got away. In a race car.”

  Macy smiled. “You know, your husband’s a pretty awesome guy.”

  “Yeah, I like to think so.” She looked back into the courtyard. Osir was still engaged in conversation. “Look, th
is might sound weird, but this is probably the safest place for you to be. Shaban and his buddy are out looking for Eddie, and Osir’s about to take me back to the yacht to see the zodiac.”

  “That’s great, but what am I supposed to do when this place closes? I won’t be able to get a hotel room even if there are any left—Eddie’s got my passport!”

  “That’s not exactly my biggest worry right now, Macy.” Another glance back; Osir was looking for her. “You’ll figure something out. I’ve got to go, though. If Eddie or I can’t get in touch with you, there’s a hotel across the square—wait in the lobby, and we’ll find you.”

  Macy was unhappy with the situation, but nodded. “Good luck, Dr. Wilde. Stay safe.”

  “You too.” Nina backed into the courtyard and went to Osir. “Are you ready to go?”

  “The car is coming to take us back to the harbor.” He put on a smile for the benefit of his other companions. “It will have to take the long way around—it seems there has been a traffic incident at Saint Devote!” The joke raised some gallows laughter.

  Taking Nina by the arm, he went back into the casino. As the attendants backed away to let them through, Macy slipped into the courtyard, moving hurriedly away from the doors before the casino staff spotted her. The party was winding down now that its main attraction had disappeared in a cloud of tire smoke.

  Macy spotted another attraction, though: a handsome blond man in racing overalls, talking agitatedly to a couple of older guys. Guessing he was the driver, she trotted over. “What happened?”

  Virtanen gave her a brief glance—then did a double take as he registered that she was a young and beautiful woman who wasn’t surgically attached to the arm of a middle-aged team sponsor. “It was terrible,” he said mournfully. “I was carjacked—a man with a gun! I tried to stop him, but he got away.” His companions rolled their eyes but said nothing to contradict the star of the team.

  “My God! Are you okay?”

  “Just a few bruises. I’ll still be able to race tomorrow, for sure. But I think I’ll go back to my hotel now. Unless”—a suggestive grin—“you would like to share a drink with me first?”

  Macy gave him a perfect smile. “I think I would.”

  SEVENTEEN

  In the dark, Monaco’s waterfront looked like an extension of the city itself, ranks of expensive yachts lined up like gleaming buildings along the jetties.

  Nina looked around anxiously as Osir brought her to the Solar Barque’s distinctively painted tender. She had hoped to spy Eddie nearby, waiting for the tender to depart so he could follow it to its mother ship. But there was no familiar stocky figure among the people boarding the floating palaces, nobody surreptitiously observing them from a neighboring pier.

  Had the police caught him? Or worse, Shaban?

  She dismissed the latter as soon as the awful thought came to her. If Shaban had found Eddie, Osir would have been told. But his absence was still a worry—not least because without him, she would have to improvise her own escape from Osir’s yacht. With the Solar Barque more than half a mile offshore, swimming was not her preferred option.

  They boarded the tender, and Osir gave an order to its pilot. With a diesel rumble, the boat set off. Even though the evening was warm, the breeze over the open vessel was cold. Nina rubbed her bare arms.

  “Here,” said Osir. He took off his jacket and draped it over her.

  “Thank you,” she said automatically, keeping to herself that her chill was not solely due to the wind.

  They passed more opulent yachts and made their way between the quays marking the boundary of the inner harbor of Port Hercule. The outer harbor’s breakwaters extended ahead, the darkness of the Mediterranean visible beyond. The tender drifted off course from the exit, the pilot having to adjust for what seemed to be a stronger-than-expected current, but they soon cleared the long concrete barriers and entered the open sea.

  Swimming was now an even less appealing idea, Nina decided. Past the breakwaters, the ocean was choppy, the tender bouncing through the waves with great smacks of spray. An anchor chain rattled against the hull with each impact. She looked back to shore. Monaco was aglow against the surrounding hills. It was a spectacular sight … but her worries made it impossible for her to appreciate it.

  There were numerous other vessels moored offshore, but the Solar Barque stood out as large even by the standards of mega-yachts. The tender pulled up to its stern, where a mooring platform, big enough to also accommodate a pair of smaller speedboats and several Jet Skis, had been lowered to water level. A crewman tied up the boat, then Osir took Nina by the hand to help her onto the deck.

  “I’d like to thank you for your company,” he said. “Even though things didn’t go quite as I planned.”

  “My pleasure,” Nina replied. “And, ah … I apologize for my husband. I just wish I’d been able to persuade him to see things my way. It would have made things a lot less … well, expensive.”

  “You don’t have to take the blame for his actions,” he assured her. “And as for the money, none of it will matter when we discover the Pyramid of Osiris.”

  “In that case,” said Nina, “we’d better go see the zodiac, hadn’t we?”

  They entered the yacht and went to one of the upper decks. Osir led her to a door. “Please, wait in my cabin,” he said. “I will see if the zodiac is ready.”

  The cabin turned out to be larger than her entire apartment, the adjoining bathroom and walk-in closets making it even bigger. It also boasted a mirrored ceiling above the enormous bed. The décor was every bit as playboyesque as Osir’s Swiss home, missing only a tigerskin rug to complete the picture. “This is—stylish,” she managed.

  Osir smiled as he went to another door at the room’s far end. “Make yourself comfortable. I will just be a minute.”

  She perched on the end of the bed, kicking off her heels and fidgeting with the long dress as she waited. Before long Osir returned, his smile even wider. He pulled a catch above the door, folding panels back to reveal another large room beyond. “It is ready.”

  Nina crossed the room. She looked past Osir …

  To see, for the first time, the fully assembled zodiac.

  Whoever he had employed to restore it, she had to admit they had done an absolutely exquisite job. The six-foot-diameter disk rested on a low circular stand beneath a thick protective layer of transparent bulletproof Lexan. It wasn’t until she stepped right up to it that she could see any trace of the cuts made to remove it from the Hall of Records.

  Seen in its entirety, the zodiac was spectacular. Smaller than the one in the Louvre, it made up for it with its vibrant colors. Sealed within the Sphinx, protected from the elements, the paint picking out each constellation from the dark background had remained almost intact. A thick, weaving line of pale blue bisected the sky—the Milky Way, she assumed.

  There were other markings: the red dot she had seen in Macy’s photo, almost certainly Mars, and circles representing other planets. But her attention immediately went to the yellow triangle near the small figure of Osiris.

  A pyramid. Osiris’s pyramid.

  She leaned closer. There was something barely discernible painted beside it, very small characters. Hieroglyphs.

  Nina looked excitedly around at Osir. “Have you seen these?”

  “Of course,” he said, going to a large table and picking up a printout from beside a laptop. “I had them translated when the zodiac was still in pieces. They’re directions—the problem is, I don’t know the starting point. Nobody does. Which is why I need your insight.”

  He handed her the translation. “ ‘The second eye of Osiris sees the way to the silver canyon,’ ” she read. “ ‘One atur toward Mercury beyond its end is the tomb of the immortal god-king.’ An atur, that’s an Egyptian unit of measurement, right?”

  “Eleven thousand and twenty-five meters.”

  Nina instantly performed the mental arithmetic to convert the figure to imperial measurement
s: “Six point eight five miles.” Osir raised an eyebrow. “Like I said, I’m good at math. So the pyramid is just under seven miles from the end of the silver canyon in the direction of Mercury, which is … one of these planets on the zodiac, I guess.”

  “Actually, it isn’t,” he said. “The planets on the zodiac are Mars, Venus, and Jupiter.” He pointed them out. “But we used their positions to calculate Mercury’s position as well. It would have been … here.” He indicated a particular spot to the right of the pyramid.

  “So, about seven miles east of the end of the canyon. Except,” she continued, nodding at a wall mirror, “because the map is mirrored since we’re looking at it from above rather than below, it’s really seven miles west.”

  Osir was pleased. “So all we need to do is find the silver canyon.”

  “Which means first, we need to find the second eye of Osiris. Where’s his first eye?”

  “There are two Osiris figures on the zodiac,” he reminded her. “Perhaps they point the way together?”

  Nina bent low to examine them. Typically for Egyptian art they were in profile, only one eye visible on each, but given the small size of the carvings they were nothing more than dots. She drew an imaginary line between the eyes of the two figures, but it neither ran near the pyramid nor seemed to point to anything in particular.

  “The eye of Osiris is also a symbol, isn’t it?” she asked.

  Osir nodded. “A sign of protection. Found in temples, tombs … it’s supposed to help guide you through the Underworld.”

  “So fairly common, then. That won’t narrow things down.” She stared at the zodiac, thinking. “Could ‘the silver canyon’ be a clue? The ancient Egyptians valued silver above gold—were there any silver mines in the pre-dynastic period?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the historian, not me.”

  “Point taken. This’ll need more research. We need to check the archaeological databases …” She trailed off, realizing she was slipping into a state of professional excitement over the chance to crack the puzzle—and forgetting that doing so would help the very person she was trying to stop.