"She casts a different sort of spell that you do not understand," he had said. "One of purity and goodness with the power to last for thousands of years."
"Careful. Do not let your heart make you reckless. Remember, I am the Mistress of Spells," she had said warningly.
He searched her face now. The mask-face hid a smile of someone in the possession of secret knowledge. "If you have used your evil magic to bring harm to Lady Tiy ..." he began. "Harm?" Heka shrugged and tried to look innocent, but the movement made her metal snake-wands rear as if to strike. "Would I harm your pretty Tiy?"
"What exactly did you do?" said Karoy.
"You think she is pretty, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Well then, as a kindness I decided to make her even prettier for you. Where is the harm in that?"
"Tiy is already perfect," he said. "And I like her the way she is."
"Yes, maybe. But would you still admire her if she were no longer perfect? What then? What if your precious Lady Tiy suddenly begins to show her age, her skin grows lined and cracked and her body begins to crumble? Will you still want to gape at her for another thousand years?"
"I see what you have done," said Karoy. "You put a spell on Tiy to attract the child, a powerful charm that she could not resist! You are using the girl to harm Tiy. Stand aside Heka. You have brought about great evil tonight."
She did not move.
"What do you plan to do?"
"I am going to save her."
"Out there? You would risk destroying yourself?"
"I will save her at any cost," he said.
Heka sighed and it sounded like the rustle of wind amongst dead leaves.
"Then I suppose I must help you, but only on one condition. If you want her saved, then you must first agree to give me something."
"What do you want?"
"Your acacia heart," she said, her dull, unpainted eyes fixed on him.
"Never."
"Never is a long time."
"So is three thousand years. Do you think I can turn away from Tiy now?"
"I can make it possible for you to do so, by means of a spell, but I will need your oath to make it hold. Decide. Agree to my terms and save Tiy or lose her forever."
"I cannot."
He had made the mistake in the past of being pleasant to Heka, giving her a greeting or a polite word when others in the display case shunned her out of fear, but he had never meant to encourage this.
"You seem shocked Karoy. In spite of your ancient acacia wood, you are very green. You are a person who thinks that by being open, kind and dealing fairly with all that it shields you against life, but you are wrong. You now have me to deal with. Make your choice."
"If I save Tiy with your help, then I will lose her forever!"
"Exactly, but at least she will survive! Is she merely a doll to you, just an object of your affection? Or do you truly care about her as you claim? If you do, you will want to save her at any cost!"
"Your price is too high."
End of Part 1
Chapter 10
THEY INFILTRATED the audience at his book launch in Washington DC, agents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
They’re not here for crowd control, he thought.
Anson saw them arrive as he sat at the side of the stage as he was waiting to be introduced. The new arrivals slipped into the back row. The theatrette seemed to shrink and the tiered seating to lean over him as if about to topple.
Had he stirred up the intelligence community again? How was it that his esoteric world as a phenomenologist and expert on the beliefs, religion and mysticism of an ancient civilisation kept colliding with the real world of international intrigue and national security?
Two men dressed in suits. One man he recognised from a previous encounter. Also in the group, two women, the younger one, Gemma Laughton, who had approached him at the British Museum. Scrummy Girl. The other was professional Egyptologist Dr Melinda Skilling from Johns Hopkins University.
Johns Hopkins University, he knew, was the Centre of Excellence for a Homeland Security Centre - the Centre for the Study of High Consequence Event Preparedness and Response, a consortium of Americans from across a variety of fields, evaluating how the USA could prepare for and respond to a range of unexpected incidents or disasters.
Time to begin.
A few latecomers arrived and took their seats as a representative from his US publisher approached the lectern. She introduced him and dropped phrases like ‘startling revelations’, ‘unearthing dangers from the ancient past’ and ‘a nightmare scenario for our modern age.’
“Please welcome the independent English Egyptologist and writer, Mr Anson Hunter…”
After his address, the audience drained away from the auditorium, while the group in the back remained in their seats.
Had he stunned them? He doubted it. They must have known what to expect.
Time to surrender to the inevitable. He cupped a hand to his mouth and called them out from the shadows.
“Come on down, people. Don’t be shy.”
He turned to the publisher.
“Old acquaintances. Thank you, Nancy, I’ll take it from here.”
“Don’t be too long. You’ll be expected in the foyer to sign books.”
She left him.
The infiltrators at the back stood up, filed out of the back row and threaded their way down an aisle to arrive at the front of the theatrette.
He watched them approach with misgiving.
“There’s nothing a speculative theorist dislikes more than authority figures,” he said.
The group included the English girl from the British Museum.
They arrived at the front and stood in a row before the stage.
“Would you like a private tutorial?” Anson said.
Nobody answered.
“Tell me you’re not a firing squad.”
“Hello Anson,” said the chair of Johns Hopkins University’s Near Eastern Studies Department, the darkly glamorous Egyptologist Dr Melinda Skilling. “Still as outrageously plausible as ever, I see.”
Johns Hopkins University was evidently still a Centre of Excellence for a Homeland Security Centre evaluating scenarios for a range of unexpected incidents or disasters.
A large man in a large suit gave Anson a nod of greeting and a wary smile.
Bloem. Homeland Security. Anson did not register warmth at the reappearance of this man in his life.
The group surprised him by settling into seats in the front row as if they were part of a breakout discussion group.
The big man, Bloem, checked over his shoulder to make sure that the theatrette had emptied, before speaking.
“We’ve heard all about your latest theorizing.”
“I can’t imagine how you heard that,” he said, looking at the London girl Gemma.
“You tell everything in your blogs,” she said.
He remembered the lunch they shared in the museum restaurant and her amiable appetite.
“I was so wrong about you,” he said. “I thought you were the Metropolitan Police.”
“You jump to conclusions.”
“We think you could be in danger,” Bloem came to the point. “And so could we.”
Homeland security today was a global issue that transcended American borders. They saw it as better to defeat hostile elements overseas so they would never have to face them at home, and so their overseas workers tried to disrupt hostile networks that would do them harm.
It was not the first time that a spooked intelligence community had called on his unique skills and perspective as a phenomenologist, one who engaged with the sacred and with ancient religion and who knew about the reality of unseen dangers from the past.
Anson moved to the edge of the stage.
“Don’t tell me my theories have fanned intelligence paranoia once again?”
Big Bloem, who had always been a big doubter, answered. He lowered his voice.
“It’s not just your theories. There’s this.” He dug into his coat and brought out a slip of paper. “We have come across an anonymous warning that seems to relate to your current interest. Here’s a copy of the text.”
Anson came down the steps. He took the paper and squatted on the steps to read it.
History will soon be made. A new dawn for Humankind approaches. The beginning of the end for today’s world order is at hand as a force of hidden power will emerge and precipitate the fall. Hear this prophetic warning to all the nations. On this day, the roots of the old ideology will wither and die and a new order of the ages will commence. Rise to a new illumination.
Anson considered it for a time.
“Yes I’ve heard murmurs,” he said. “That’s the beauty of having a presence on the web. People leak you things.”
“It’s set off alarm bells,” Bloem continued. “We are concerned. And so are our friends.”
“The British?” Anson said, looking at Gemma. “Who are you? MI5, MI6… shall I stop counting?”
“I’m working alongside our US cousins,” Scrummy Girl said, “several British nationals have already died in this affair.”
The Greek girl Alexia’s accomplices? he wondered.
“How did you people come by this note?” Anson said to Bloem.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Did you spot the code in here?”
Bloem and Gemma exchanged looks.
Anson took out a pen.
“The ancient Egyptians enjoyed puns, wordplay and crosswords. In fact, there’s a fiendishly clever and witty stela composed in honour of the goddess Mut, housed in the British Museum. You can read it in three different directions, across, down and around the outside edges.”
Anson used his pen to circle several letters in the text. “This one involves an acrostic. The Egyptians considered such wordplays to be powerful tools, which suggests that its author was aware of the sacred practices of the ancients and wanted to do things in a ritually significant manner.” He held up the piece of paper.
(H)istory will soon be made. (A) new dawn for Humankind approaches. (T)he beginning of the end for today’s world order is at hand as a force of hidden power will emerge and precipitate the fall. (H)ear this prophetic warning to all the nations. (On) this day, the roots of the old ideology will wither and die and a new order of the ages will commence. (R)ise to a new illumination.
A hidden word - a name - made up from the first letter of each of the sentences jumped out.
H-A-T-H-O-R
“The goddess Hathor. Of Hathor-Sekhmet fame.”
“That’s quick,” the academic, Melinda, said, respect in her eyes.
“You don’t disappoint,” the English girl said.
Bloem’s tone was dismissive.
“Our people figured that out.”
Melinda gave a smile.
“Yes, but it took them considerably longer.”
“Now you see why we need your help,” Gemma said.
“There’s another issue here,” Anson said. “Why go exposing your intentions with a warning like this?”
Bloem shrugged.
“A bomb-threat mentality. They’re attention seekers.”
“Or burning visionaries,” Anson said, “like John the Baptist crying in the wilderness: ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’”
“Who do you think they might be?”
“Make a list,” Anson said. “There are dozens of New Age groups, illuminants and esoteric orders, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and others who dream of getting their hands on power from Egypt’s past.”
“Of course it could just be crank prophecy,” Bloem said. “But there are some well connected people who seem to be involved with this affair. Including the people who have invited you on their cruise in Egypt.”
“You have been busy.”
“A very high-powered group of radical thinkers, some in the highest positions. We are trying to investigate what kind of threat this so-called source of power represents. Is it a physical threat? Or is it a relic with some incendiary content that has a potential to ignite the region and beyond? And now, as a further complication, it would seem that there is another part to this object, a separate element that you are trying to track down.”
He was referring to the missing sun disc of Ra.
Did these Intelligence people believe in his theories, and in his fears about the Sekhmet threat, or did they see it as a symbol that masked some other ‘real world’ danger? Plagues perhaps. Anson had speculated in the past about plagues and Egypt. Archaeological evidence linked the origin of the Black Death, or bubonic plague, to a specific site in ancient Egypt, the workers’ village in Amarna, home of those who built tombs for pharaohs Akhenaten and, later, Tutankhamun. Pharaoh’s Plague, he’d noted, could rage through populations, then lie as dormant as a mummy sleeping in a tomb, sometimes for centuries, before emerging to wreak havoc once again and that if bottled, especially in its pneumonic form, it would make a dandy bio-terrorist weapon.
You didn’t have to be an ancient historian to know that in the Byzantine age, the Justinian Plague took 100 million lives and, in the 1300s, the Black Death killed twenty-five million people, one quarter of Europe’s population.
Then there was anthrax, he thought. It was said that the priests of Sekhmet daubed statues of the lioness goddess with anthrax to protect them against theft or harm, so that the images themselves became agents of disease. Anthrax had a long history in Egypt and epidemiologists blamed anthrax for the fifth plague of Moses that killed the cattle of Egypt and for the sixth plague that inflicted the Egyptians with cutaneous ulcerations described as ‘boils’. Anthrax was still a lethal bio-terrorist threat to this day.
Anson looked at Dr Melinda Skilling.
“Does this mean, Melinda, that this enterprise has your academic blessing? That you grant some value to the sacred and to the power of unseen realities and that you believe in the danger?”
The academic thought hard about the question before answering.
“Maybe there are things we don’t and cannot know. I grant some value to your phenomenological approach, Anson, but a return of fire, plague and pestilence? I can’t say I’m entirely a convert. But others are sufficiently alarmed by the spectre.”
Bloem said: “Nobody welcomes a major disruption to the stability and belief systems of the Middle East.”
“What stability?”
“Exactly.”
“Not to mention the stability and belief systems, or lack of them, of the West, no doubt,” Anson said. “I believe that sensitive, conservative Christian forces are not without influence on Capitol Hill. And I hear that in the Vatican the latest Pope is a believer in the power of demons. I hear he’s on a recruitment drive for more church exorcists.”
Bloem looked evasive.
“It’s true to say there is a consortium of the concerned.”
“And what do you expect from me?”
“Just to warn you to be careful, to keep your eyes and ear to the ground when you’re back in Egypt.”
They had been tracking his movements. They thought they knew it all.
He decided to surprise them.
“Yes, I am going to Egypt, but before my group arrives I’m heading south to Nubia. Upper Nubia to be precise.”
“You think there’s a Nubian connection?” Bloem said.
“You don’t talk much about Nubia in your blogs,” Scrummy Girl said, as if reproaching Anson for holding out.
“A free-wheeling theorist is allowed to keep some things back. It’s my belief that Nubia is a crucial chapter in the story of the powerful relic I am trying to track down. It involves a certain king called Nectanebo, the last native Egyptian pharaoh.”
“I’ve heard of Nectanebo,” she said. “And I know he went into exile in Nubia, but what’s the link with the relic?”
Dr Melinda Skilling answered in his place.
&nbs
p; “When the Persians finally defeated Nectanebo and he fled to Nubia, it’s assumed he took his treasures with him.”
“And his treasures may have included a certain prized relic of power I’m looking for,” Anson said.
“What makes you so sure Nectanebo found this relic in the first place?” Bloem said.
“His reputation,” Anson said. “We have a profusion of magical texts from his reign, such as the Metternich Stela in New York, and his fame as a magician and seeker of metaphysical power lasted for centuries. Nectanebo, significantly, was the magician king who used his legendary smiting powers to destroy enemies, including the Persians. Greek historians tell us that upon the invasion of the enemy by sea, Nectanebo went to his chamber and employing a bowl, which he kept for the purpose, he filled it with water. Then he made wax figures of ships and men of the enemy and also of his own forces and set them on the water in the bowl, facing each other. Next, he called on gods and demons and spoke words of power, raising his ebony rod to support his attack on the enemy ships and to bring up the winds. His fleet fell on the enemy and as the ships and men of the attacking fleet went down the gurgler, so did the real invaders. Unfortunately, the place in Nubia where Nectanebo may have hidden his treasure is today under threat from the new Merowe hydro-electric dam, built by Chinese engineers. So I need to scout around before the rising water swallows it forever.”
Now the English girl surprised him.
“Would you mind if I tagged along? I don’t know a lot about Nubia and I’d appreciate the field knowledge. Afterwards I plan to head to Egypt to follow our investigations.”
Dr Melinda Skilling was the last to leave.
“Your theories are complicating your life again, Anson.”
“Hello, Melinda. How is academia?”
The brilliant young Chair of an Egyptology department had a way of making Anson feel like a vandal at the gates of a citadel of learning. It might be pleasurable making a ruin of Dr Melinda Skilling, he’d often thought, destroying that pure, academic integrity. It would be like rumpling up a beautifully made bed. He wondered if she’d be orthodox in all departments.
THE HATHOR HOLOCAUST Page 8