The Cairo Puzzle

by Laurence O'Bryan

  I put a hand up. “I thought you said the thermal anomalies were in the walls, Mike.”

  Mike’s smile widened. “I did, but we do still have to be careful of tomb robbers.”

  Mohammad shrugged, as if he thought Mike was referring to him.

  Yacoub walked near to where Mike was standing, but on the opposite side of the tripod.

  “Thank you, Professor Bayford.” He pointed at the weight suspended on the tripod. “This metal is osmium, the densest material currently available in usable quantities. This block has twice the density of lead and about twenty-five times the density of water. This block” — He tapped the metal with his knuckle. No sound emerged — “weighs three thousand five hundred pounds, about the weight of a small car.”

  Mike leaned forward. “And we are about to drop it on the floor.” He brushed a hand against the side of the weight, went down on one knee. “The impact force has been calculated, and the falling distance, based on the type of granite of this particular block, which is different to the others around it.”

  It did look different, paler than the other blocks of gray stone which made up the floor.

  Mike pointed at the other two tripods. “These instruments measure minute changes in the position of the floor slabs they are standing on.”

  Yacoub pointed a finger at red button on the top of the tripod he was standing beside.

  “It is my duty to start the test.”

  Mohammad took a step forward. “This is wrong, Mr. Yacoub, too destructive. As the lead partner in this enterprise, it is the ministry’s duty to prevent any studies which might destroy any part of the pyramid.”

  The man who had tried to stop us entering the King’s Chamber, said something in Arabic. Mohammad replied, nodded. He stepped towards Yacoub and pointed his finger at the tripod.

  “You will not start this test.”

  Yacoub took a step towards him, his chest puffed out.

  For a moment I thought a fight was about to break out. Then Mike intervened.

  “The procedure for this test had been agreed and set down in writing. I am the person who will initiate the test, not Mr. Yacoub. I will take responsibility for any damage to this floor stone. I assure you, our studies show that the stone will simply fall away with the weight placed on it. All this was made clear when we applied for permission. Your ministry specifically agreed that a weight bearing test was allowed.”

  I was wondering how much Yacoub had paid to get the test approved. I was also wondering how they got the osmium block into the King’s Chamber, especially if there were any question marks about what it would be used for.

  I leaned forward. There were lines along the face of the osmium. It wasn’t a solid block. It was a stack of thin plates.

  I waved at Mike. “Why will you drop it on this block, not that one or that one?” I pointed at the other floor blocks.

  “This granite” — Mike pointed at the lighter block under the tripod — “has a high quartz content. I believe there’s a reason it was placed here. This pressure test might give us some answers.”

  He stepped forward, pressed the red button. Nothing happened. A thin red beam of light had emerged from the top on the tripod and was pointing downwards. Strangely, it also came out at the bottom of the stack of osmium plates. There had to be a hole in the center of the plates. Presumably the laser would measure the impact the osmium would have on the granite.

  “We’re going to find something under here,” said Mike. “That’s my prediction.”

  “No more talk,” said Yacoub. “Do it.” He nodded at the two women he’d brought with him. One of them had a smartphone out and was pointing it at him, filming everything, most likely.

  Mohammad also had a smartphone out and was filming. Yacoub waved at something behind us. I glanced around, saw another camera on a tripod. It had a red light on too and was filming everything.

  Mike pressed the button again. The plates fell, crashed into the block beneath them sending a wave of dust around our feet and a faint shudder through the floor. Mike and Yacoub were nearest the tripod. They peered into the dust. All of us did.

  I could see the top of the osmium. It seemed not to have made a dent in the block beneath it.

  “Has it moved?” said Yacoub, expectantly.

  “No,” said Mike.

  “I thought you said this weight would crack it.” There was more than a hint of anger in Yacoub’s tone.

  “I never said that.” Mike was staring at the tripods behind us. I turned. The red light between the two tripods was vibrating, just a little, but there was definitely something going on.

  I lowered my voice. “How did you get them to agree to this test?”

  He lowered his voice when he replied. “Drilling and boring are specifically outlawed anywhere inside the pyramids. Pressure tests aren’t.”

  “The floor is moving,” said Yacoub.

  Mohammad leaned down, placed a palm against the smooth stone block under his feet. He pulled it away quickly.

  “We must leave the chamber,” he said. He began waving at us all.

  Mike was staring at the back of the room.

  I followed his gaze.

  One of the floor blocks, in the far corner, was now lower than it had been. It was only an inch lower, but it had definitely moved.

  28

  Henry Mowlam reached for the plate of sandwiches sitting in the middle of the meeting room table. Major Finch, their liaison officer with the Ministry of Defense, was talking. She liked to talk.

  He listened, ate the cheddar cheese and red onion dressing sandwich. He might even have time for a second, he thought.

  Finch turned to him. “Don’t you agree, Henry?” Six pairs of eyes bored into him.

  Henry swallowed. “Actually, I don’t.” He reached for a bottle of water. It was one of the new refillable bottles the security services had recently switched to.

  “Elaborate,” said Finch. Her lips were pressed tight together. She pushed a hand through her blonde hair, moving it behind her ear.

  “I reckon it’s all a scam, this fountain of youth stuff. This whole event in the Great Pyramid is a PR stunt for Yacoub Holdings. Gotta be. All they want to do is sell face creams and highly priced potions to old women in department stores all over the world.”

  One of the younger women, Anna, who worked for him piped up. “They’ll be selling mostly online, Henry.”

  He gave her an acknowledging smile, then went on, “They won’t find anything useful in the Great Pyramid after all these centuries. And if they do find another room, it’ll most probably be empty, like all the others in the area. We should treat this as what it is, a marketing campaign.”

  “Henry, there’s more to this than Yacoub’s plans for saving us all from looking old.” Major Finch placed her hand, splayed out, on the table and leaned across it. “He’s positioning himself as the next civilian president of Egypt. And if we don’t have a good relationship with him, then I have no idea what will happen to our Middle East strategy. Do you?”

  Henry leaned back. “Our Middle East strategy doesn’t rely on getting into bed with this snake oil salesman.” He pointed at the large screen dangling from a ceiling mount behind Finch. On it there was an image from the Al Awari, Egyptian language news site. In the center of the image was a still from the press conference Yacoub had held that morning.

  “He’s a bit more than a snake oil salesman, Henry,” said Anna.

  “That’s true. He’s involved in a lot worse than selling snake oil.” Henry wiped his mouth with a paper napkin.

  “What do you mean?” said Finch.

  “Another one of his employees has gone missing. This one is a doctor who’s helping him with his research for these new products he’s launching.” He waved at the screen. “Some say this doctor is the head of the project to gain approval for his snake oil products in the U.S.”

  “Another one,” said Finch. “How man
y is that now?”

  “Twelve employees of Yacoub Research have gone missing in the past year. No bodies have been found, and Yacoub keeps paying their salaries to the families. It’s beyond the realms of coincidence. I reckon he’s bumping off employees who could reveal what he’s really up to. That’s my best guess.”

  Finch leaned further across the table. “I want to know what he’s really up to, Henry. We can’t exert influence with guess work.” She banged the table with her fist.

  29

  Mohammad was at the tunnel leading back out of the chamber. He was waving at us.

  “We must all go. You are not allowed to stay here.”

  They sounded like the words of someone who used to work as a guide and was used to waving tourists out of sites.

  We were all crowded around the stone in the floor that had moved. It was square, maybe four foot by four foot. It had gone down about an inch, maybe a bit more. Mike was peering at the ribbon of stone that had been revealed around the edge of the block. I bent down, too.

  “What’s that all about?” I pointed at a series of small figures in red, in a row on one side. They all had headdresses on, but the most obvious thing about them was the giant phallus each of them had.

  “There’s drawings like that all over Egypt,” said Mike. “What interests me is that this crown here,” he pointed at a small figure, “is an Atef crown. See the ostrich feathers on each side.”

  There was something like a feather on both sides of it.

  “That’s the symbol of death.” He moved around the opening slowly, examining the four edges of the revealed stones. I followed him. Yacoub did too, shooing the women who’d come in with him out of our way. Mike had a smartphone out now and was taking close up pictures.

  He pressed his hand onto the stone that had moved, tapped at it.

  “This is probably the first time these have been seen in four and a half thousand years.”

  “How do we get beneath this?” said Yacoub.

  “I’ll work it out,” said Mike.

  Mohammad stood over us. “You will all leave now, or you will never be given permission to visit this pyramid again.” He sounded desperate.

  “Stay calm. We’re going,” said Mike.

  Yacoub spat out some words in Arabic. He led the way back out through the tunnel. When we reached the gallery, after the passageway crawl, an official in a brown uniform waited for us. Beside him was a hooded figure, whose face I could not make out. She looked like a priestess from another era, in the long figure hugging black sheath she was wearing. The official handed each of us a sheet of paper. On it was the following:

  YOU ARE REQUIRED, BY THE TERMS OF THE LICENCE PROVIDED BY THE EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT FOR THIS TEST, NOT TO REVEAL ANYTHING YOU HAVE DISCOVERED INSIDE THE PYRAMID, WITHOUT FIRST RECEIVING WRITTEN APPROVAL FROM THE MINISTRY OF ANTIQUITIES.

  I leaned towards Mike. “They expected you to find something, didn’t they?”

  “Yes. and we did.”

  “But what does it mean?” I said.

  “You must come to my villa,” said Yacoub, standing close to us. “We will discuss our next steps there.”

  I took a step towards him. “Will you help me find my husband?”

  Yacoub put his hand up and waved it in front of my cheek, as if he would caress me.

  “Of course I will. How could I not help you?”

  I thought about saying something smart back at him but decided to bite my lip instead. I was missing Sean too much. I’d been imagining what he’d say if he was here. What he’d make of all this.

  The emptiness inside, the sense that some very important part of me was missing was almost overwhelming.

  “Thank you for the invitation.”

  “You will find a new home here, Isabel Ryan, and perhaps a new husband, too.” He snapped his fingers, as if he would magic a husband up for me in seconds.

  “I still have a way to go before I accept Sean is dead.”

  “Oh, I am sorry, but I believe he is dead. You must give up hope of finding him. Now excuse me, I will join you later. I must talk with my friend.” He turned to the hooded figure, said something quickly, then walked towards Mohammad and started speaking with him in a low voice, his hand on his shoulder.

  The other official waved at us and led the way out through the gallery and the tunnel to the outside world. Yacoub’s words were spinning around inside my head. Did he know something about what had happened to Sean? How could he say with such certainty that Sean was dead?

  Surely he had to be just guessing, right? Or was I fooling myself? Was I a grieving widow who couldn’t accept reality?

  30

  2756 B.C.

  The three priestesses wore red headbands, tight red cotton bands under their breasts and tight black dresses with rosette symbols woven into them in gold thread down the front. They stood in the gallery waiting, their heads held high. Each wore a wide neck band. The priestess in the center had a small gold head of a lioness on her head band. The one on her left had a cobra on hers. The one on the right the head of a vulture.

  A low chanting reverberated from below. Two shaven headed priests were singing at the far end of the high-roofed chamber. Their hymn to Sekhmet was intended to sooth the beast ever present within the goddess.

  The three priestesses bent low as the child was led up to them. It was clear from the boy’s eyes that he was awestruck, but unafraid. The two bare chested guards who had brought him up guided him forward. He pushed their hands away. He was clearly as defiant as everyone said. His mother’s instructions had no effect on him, it was whispered. He’d been warned countless times that he’d find out soon enough what happened to those who defied the order, no matter what their lineage.

  The boy spoke in the dialect of lower Egypt, inherited from his mother. “Greetings, guardians of Sekhmet.” His tone was imperious. He was clearly used to having his royal attendants follow his every order.

  The priestesses bowed together as one. Their pendulous breasts glistened with the gold dust sprinkled on them. The boy's eyes drank them in. The priestesses straightened. Each put their right hand out to beckon him forward. He followed on his knees down the long passage to the healing chamber.

  The chamber, when they reached it, was lit by a glowing orb at the far end of the room. Whether the source of the light was an oil lamp or the power of the goddess, as was claimed, was not easy for the boy to discern.

  But he could see the three golden bowls set on the stone floor in front of the orb. Three statues to Sekhmet, with their lioness faces and human bodies, stood behind the bowls. On top of them, gold blades balanced.

  The three priestesses went down on their knees in front of the bowls. The chanting from down the tunnel could still be heard, and it was changing, the tone becoming more insistent. The air was filled with the sweet smell of myrrh. The boy stared, seemingly unsure what was expected of him.

  His eyes were wide. He’d been told these priestesses initiated princes of the royal house into the sexual mysteries, as the priestesses of Isis did for the young men who came to their temples.

  He knew that each of the priestesses had been chosen for the purity of their hearts, as well as their beauty, so he knew he had nothing to fear from them. But he hadn’t been told exactly what the ceremony he was about to witness entailed.

  The priestess in the middle turned to him. Her smile was radiant. Her teeth white. Her lips bright red. Her eyes highlighted with kohl. She put a hand out towards him. He went towards her, almost involuntarily. She pointed at the space between the bowls and the orb in front of her. She motioned him to sit. Not one word had passed between them. The chanting emanating into the room was getting louder. Was one of the priests singing in the tunnel?

  The boy sat cross legged, as the priestesses were. He had his back to the orb and was facing them. The three of them smiled at him. He felt a warm glow from their obvious pleasure at him being there. The chanting
stopped. The three priestesses picked up the blades with their right hands. They pointed them at their left breasts and while he watched they each made a small incision near their nipples. They had the gold bowls in their left hands and each caught the rivulet of blood that ran from their breasts. When the bowls were half full they pressed at their breasts with their hands and the blood flowed even faster. When their bowl was full, each held it towards him.

  He understood. He had to make a choice. The lioness, the cobra or the vulture. He smiled. The priestess in the center was the one he should go for. She was the most beautiful by far.

  He reached towards her bowl, took it, put it to his lips, drank slowly. The two other priestesses stood, walked to the tunnel and left the chamber. He was alone with the head priestess of Sekhmet. She stood, loosened her skirt and waited in front of him in her full radiant beauty, her skin golden, glistening.

  He licked his lips, stood in front of her. He was not as tall as her and felt for the first time that he was entering something he was too young to fully appreciate. She leaned towards him, opened her lips to kiss his mouth. He leaned towards her, felt a tingling between his legs.

  He didn’t see the knife she was holding, didn’t have any thought of what she would do, until she was running the knife up his backbone. He didn’t move as he felt its caress. But he cried out when he felt it slice into his neck.

  Within minutes the floor was red, covered in his blood. The only people to emerge that day from the healing chamber were the priestesses.

  31

  When we arrived at Yacoub’s mansion overlooking the Nile the backs of my calves were aching from the long crawl into and out of the Great Pyramid.

  The Toyota Landcruiser passed through a high ornamental gate. It pulled up at a stone paved parking area at the side of the three-story white mansion. The building looked like something from the late Victorian era, when the British Empire occupied Egypt. The windows were strong black wood and the roof was a sea of red tiles. No other cars were parked in front of the building and with its shades down on every window the building had an abandoned air.