The Sphinx Scrolls

by Stewart Ferris

  She now realised there was a second reason to be cheerful. If Orlando wasn’t the cold-blooded despot she thought he was, then perhaps there was no danger to her. Orlando barked, but he didn’t bite. And now she could continue working on this incredible artefact with a clear conscience. This was turning out to be a rather better day than she had expected. Without the combined weight of fear, guilt and sorrow on her shoulders, the coming days could turn out to be the best of her life.

  Ruby hugged him again but less intensely this time, already remembering that she didn’t want to go so far as to reignite their relationship.

  ‘Never mind that,’ he grunted, pushing her off. ‘Come with me. Quick.’

  ‘What do you mean? I’ve got work to do.’

  ‘We’ve come to rescue you,’ he murmured, keeping an eye on the door where the two students were watching him.

  ‘From what?’

  Michel came over and cheerily handed Ruby a paper cup of water.

  ‘From the psychos holding you prisoner,’ said Matt, trying to ignore Michel’s friendly expression.

  ‘Hi. I’m Michel. And you are?’

  He stuck his hand out to Matt.

  ‘Matt. Matt Mountebank.’

  ‘Hey,’ he said to Matt like an overgrown schoolboy, ‘I read your book! Pleased to meet you. You sure took some merde from those Iraqis!’

  As he clapped his hero on the back, Matt’s head reeled, confused by an unexpectedly amenable enemy and a heroine with a surprising aversion to rescue.

  A shadow then fell across the golden light in the hangar. A soldier had entered via the rear service door. Ruby shot off to guide the soldier round to the other side of the artefact, away from the unauthorised visitors.

  ‘Beer?’ she offered the soldier, holding his attention. He glanced around suspiciously. Ruby signalled to Matt as obviously as she could by tilting her head and swivelling her eyes in the direction of her quarters. He nodded, but the doorway was within the soldier’s field of vision. She took a bottle of beer from the fridge and offered it to him.

  The soldier was still studying the edges of the hangar, looking for something. When he turned away, Ruby dropped the bottle onto the concrete floor where it smashed at his feet, soaking his trousers.

  ‘What am I like? Butterfingers! I’m so, so sorry. Here, let me ...’ she gabbled, while the soldier indignantly mopped himself. Matt ran into Ruby’s quarters, quietly pulling the door to behind him but leaving a gap so he could hear what was going on. Charlie and Brad took the opportunity to creep quietly out of the hangar, but the soldier saw them the moment he stood up again.

  ‘Freeze!’ he roared. The students halted, hands in the air, faces drained of blood.

  ‘Oh, Lorenzo said they could help us,’ Ruby said casually, although her heart was thudding fit to burst through her chest.

  ‘How they get here?’

  ‘Lost.’

  ‘Why I no told?’

  ‘Because you’re a stupid ignorant bastard with nacho brains,’ said Ruby very quickly and with a sweet grin.

  Charlie sniggered nasally. He was more in love with his idol than ever.

  ‘Slowly please,’ complained the soldier.

  ‘Because there was no time to arrange it,’ corrected Ruby.

  The soldier sneered and took another beer from the fridge. He waved his handgun around. Everyone ducked.

  ‘My gun is always loaded,’ he advised them as he left.

  Ruby found Matt waiting for her on the camp bed.

  ‘Let’s go before they find me,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Why?’ Ruby asked, sitting next to him and hoping the fragile bed frame could take their combined weight.

  ‘Don’t waste time.’

  ‘Look, Matt, we need to talk.’

  Christ, he thought. Typical woman. You escape death and tempt fate by walking into God knows what in the middle of the jungle and what does she do? Want to talk.

  ‘Let’s get outta here,’ he hissed.

  ‘Don’t talk in American clichés, Matt,’ she reprimanded. ‘You know you can be so much more eloquent when you make an effort.’

  ‘Make an effort? Isn’t finding my way across an entire country – a country in which I’m a wanted man – to ... to rescue you –’

  ‘Listen,’ she interrupted, ‘I haven’t been able to talk to you about this before, but –’

  ‘Never mind that. Come on!’

  But she just sat there.

  ‘We’re safe here,’ she murmured, trying to sound decisive. ‘Well, I’m safe. Not so sure about you.’

  He grinned, his face feeling taut and painful as the assorted bruises and contusions he had accumulated on his travels began to complain at the unusual muscle activity.

  ‘I planned to come here to end it with you,’ he told her sombrely.

  Some men drop from helicopters, swim shark-infested oceans and fight alligators just to leave boxes of chocolates for their ladies, thought Ruby, but this one does it all for the opposite reason.

  ‘Are you insane? End what, exactly?’

  ‘Well, you know ... us. After you nearly got me killed. Kinda put me off you a bit, but when I think of Egypt I can’t bring myself to end it.’

  ‘There’s nothing to end. We had a holiday romance.’

  Squatting there beside her, Matt stared into her mesmeric eyes, whispering quickly and urgently, ‘You know what kept me going when I was sentenced to death? I realised what you meant to me. Well, when I wasn’t busy being mad at you for leaving me there, and when I wasn’t pissed that you got me into this mess in the first place, those were the moments I thought nice things about you. I mean, you’re a pain in the butt and all that, true, but there’s something about you that works for a guy like me. I think we could go places. Spent a lot of time thinking about starting a family with you, actually.’

  ‘What?’ Ruby’s horror could not be contained. The repulsion she had felt years before at Chichester Cathedral with Ratty returned to her in an instant, only this time running to the train station was not an option. She merely leaned away from him.

  ‘You know. You. Me. A few kids running around. Maybe a dog.’ Ignoring Ruby’s lack of zeal, he wrapped his arms tightly around her and kissed her. She twisted violently and pushed her palms into his face. Still hanging on, he persisted, despite his flattened nose. His words came out sounding like Donald Duck through her pressing hands: ‘You’d make a great mother.’

  With a heave she managed to throw him off her. He overbalanced and fell backwards. Half of the bed frame collapsed, dropping him to the ground with a thump. She was struggling to cope with the sheer irrelevance of what he was saying. None of that stuff mattered right now; he simply had to get out of there and she had a job to do. And what were those students doing while she and Matt were fighting? What kind of chaos was going on while they wrestled on what was left of her bed?

  ‘Matt, it’s wonderful that you’re alive – you can’t imagine how happy I am that the nightmare is over for you – but you should leave. Now. Don’t push your luck by staying in the country.’

  ‘No. You’re coming with me. It’s all arranged. Charlie has a van with smuggling compartments to get us over the border.’

  Twenty-four hours ago she would have jumped at this opportunity. Now things were different. She didn’t think of Orlando as a saint, but his threats no longer chilled her. She was with her peers. They were all in it together, all on top of their game. All facing the most exciting assignment that could even be imagined.

  Looking Matt straight in the eye, she said levelly, ‘I don’t want to go with you.’

  ‘What? You’re a prisoner. I ... Goddamnit, I came here to rescue you.’

  ‘Don’t make it sound like such a big deal, Matt. You were the world’s greatest soldier. This stuff is like riding a bike for you.’

  ‘It is a big damn deal. Everyone thinks they know me. Everyone assumes I’m the hero. Well they don’t know me. You don’t know me. Eve
n I don’t know me, but I’ve come this far and I’m not leaving without you.’

  ‘This is the most important work I’ve ever done.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘This discovery is more important than me, more important than, you know, the you-and-me scenario. We’ll fade into history, but the object out there is actually an ancient aircraft. I know, I know, I didn’t believe it either, at first. Don’t you see, Matt? This object is history. It changes everything we thought we knew. It puts us in touch with an ancestry that we didn’t know we had. It forces us to reassess what we take to be the major scientific discoveries of the last century and to realise that they are only re-discoveries of knowledge that was previously lost. It’s the big picture, Matt.’

  For a couple of beats, they faced each other – she, proud and defiant; he, trying hard to swallow his pride and not look ridiculously, even childishly, disappointed.

  ‘Yeah,’ he muttered. ‘I’m the guy in the little picture and right now that picture sucks.’

  ‘Matt, just go to the American Embassy. You’ll be safe there until they can get you on a flight home.’

  ‘Embassy. Right. Actually, that’s kinda not an option any more. Already tried that. The President’s hitmen followed me there and attacked the place. The Ambassador was shot. The security guy seemed to think I’d done it. I, er, might need to clear my name.’

  Oh God, thought Ruby, unconsciously rolling her eyes.

  ‘Did they recognise you?’

  ‘Everyone recognises me, you know that.’

  ‘So now you have the governments of two countries after your blood. Brilliant. That’s quite an achievement.’

  ‘You know me, huh? Always like to go the full Monty, as you Brits say.’

  ‘You can’t stay here. The soldiers will turn you in. You’ve got to get away from Tikal, get out of Guatemala.’

  He sighed. ‘I know. I know. But, Rubes, what about Orlando? He stole the scrolls from the Sphinx. He nearly had me killed. What will that asshole do to you?’

  She flashed him a Mona Lisa smile. Foul thoughts of Stockholm Syndrome flooded his mind. Had she fallen for her captor? Did she have feelings for the maniac?

  ‘I can handle him,’ she said, unhelpfully.

  Silently, not exchanging so much as a glance, Ruby and Matt exited her room and re-joined Charlie and Brad in the main part of the hangar.

  ‘Guys, Ruby wants to stay. She thinks this shit is worth the risk.’

  ‘There’s no risk,’ she declared, consciously suppressing the doubts that were already beginning to taunt her, aware of the possibility that her refusal to let Matt extricate her from this uncertain situation might have more to do with her determination to ram home to him the message that it was over between them than with her conviction that she faced no true peril.

  ‘I agree,’ said Brad. ‘Paulo says I can stay and help him provided he can get clearance for me. They sure could use an extra pair of hands.’

  ‘So I’ll just rescue myself, then, shall I?’ sighed Matt.

  Charlie’s face dropped. His dream of a romantic escape with Ruby in the back of his van had evaporated. He flopped ponderously onto a stool that squeaked under his weight and looked down at the floor as he announced, ‘If Rita stays behind, I can’t go through with it. The whole rescue deal’s off. You’re on your own, Matt.’

  Saturday 24th November 2012

  A northerly meltemi whipped across the Aegean Sea, slicing sheets of white surf from the tops of the waves and filling the yacht’s mainsail in an instant. Monika gripped the wheel and dug her heels in. The fifteen-metre boat was almost torn from her grasp, but, determined to stay at the helm and maintain control, she quickly turned it into the wind to take the power out of the sail. She looked up briefly at the cloudless azure sky. It was deceptively calm, almost innocent. The instructor had briefed them about the peculiarities of the local weather systems in this part of Greece, but learning about it was not the same as experiencing its raw, invisible energy through her fingertips. The boat now slowed. She started the engine and called out her instructions.

  ‘Rocco, take in the mainsail. I’m going to motor back. It’s too rough to sail.’

  He gave her a salute accompanied by a sarcastic grin. But the meltemi was neither one of his practical jokes nor a crazy conspiracy theory: this was a very real danger for inexperienced sailors. She wanted to shelter in the nearest harbour. As acting skipper for the day, she had to consider the feelings of the six other crew members, some of whom now wore distinctly uneasy expressions as they held on tightly.

  None of them really wanted to be here. All of their resentment for this team-building weekend found its way back to her, in one way or another. If she hadn’t complained to senior management about the attitudes of her fellow workers, they wouldn’t have been forced to endure this trip together.

  With the mainsail furled neatly inside the mast and the yacht now making a bumpy seven knots under diesel power, Rocco came to sit next to her at the helm.

  ‘You know the real reason they sent us here?’ he asked her.

  Monika sighed. After the brief drama of the transition of the wind from force three to force six, she wanted to relax a little. Rocco’s presence was rarely conducive to such a state.

  ‘Go on, enlighten me,’ she groaned.

  ‘The Chinese. It’s obvious. They found out that I was tracking their returning probe from Mars. We got a tight lock on it. They must have arranged for us to be sent away until it reached Earth, before we had a chance to get an image of it in close-up.’

  ‘And why would they bother to do that?’

  ‘The same reason that anything gets hidden. Because they had something to hide.’

  ‘Last week you were telling me you didn’t think the probe was coming back at all. Then you managed to find it, in between bouts of sabotage against my workspace, and now you think we were all pulled from our desks because they didn’t want us to see it, like it’s towing a bunch of Martians or something.’

  ‘I’m telling you, they wanted it hidden.’ As he spoke, his eyes moved furtively, as if, even on the open sea, someone might be spying on him.

  ‘Well it’s landed now, anyhow. End of story.’

  ‘End of story? Monika, this is just the beginning. Have you heard about the receiving facility?’

  ‘Of course, but that’s obviously anti-communist propaganda. It’s the weakest of all your conspiracy theories.’

  Rocco shook his head, unfazed by her cynicism. He leaned closer to her, but he still had to shout over the sound of the wind, the diesel and the waves.

  ‘Everyone who has been in contact with it is in quarantine,’ he said, as if that proved anything.

  Monika felt like pointing out that the first few Apollo crews to return from the moon also spent time in quarantine. It was a public relations thing. Any serious scientist knew that the conditions on the lunar surface would sterilise all forms of life and disease into oblivion, but the public needed reassurance nevertheless.

  ‘They don’t know what they have, but it’s serious,’ he continued. ‘You wait. This is going to be big. No wonder they needed us out of the way.’ Rocco grabbed Monika’s shoulder and looked over the port side, genuine fear showing in his eyes.

  ‘Get your hand off me,’ she yelped, uncomfortable with the unsolicited physical contact.

  ‘They’re after us. It’s a trap. That could be a Chinese sub,’ he panted.

  She shielded the sun from her eyes and tried to focus on the object he was looking at. As her eyes adjusted to the sparkle of the water his paranoia became clear. If every floating piece of driftwood was going to ignite this kind of response from him, it was going to be a tedious voyage.

  ‘Forget about China,’ she ordered, still trying to maintain authority over her crew. ‘Think about something else. How’s your Nazi-hunting going?’

  ‘The Vatican helped Hitler escape, you know,’ he stated.

  Monika tried not to react. She was
having a tough enough time dealing with the forces of nature that tried to push the yacht off course, and in so doing offended her sense of perfectionism. She couldn’t wait to reach the harbour and get the untidy ropes into neat curls and loops.

  ‘Others too,’ he added. ‘Bormann. Mengele. All made it to South America with enough gold to buy their safety. I’ve been following their trails – public records, private papers, photographs, witness statements.’

  Suddenly the yacht whipped to starboard, causing its occupants to yell at Monika for failing to anticipate a swell that caught them side-on. She straightened the wheel and looked at the surrounding sea, but she was no longer seeing it. An idea had taken over. It pained her to consider asking Rocco, of all people, but she had to admit that he had the skills she needed.

  ‘Rocco, I need a favour when we get back. Can you do some research for me?’

  ‘Er, sure. What is it?’

  ‘Can you help me find my father?’

  * * *

  From the coffin-like compartment inside Charlie’s old camper van, Matt replayed the kiss in his mind, unsure whether it really counted. When his lips had touched her forehead she had responded instinctively, blindly kissing him back on the lips. She tasted good – raw, salty, sexy – but she hadn’t woken up. The whole episode could have been a dream for her. For all Matt knew, Ruby might have thought she was snogging George Clooney. Given the possibility that he might never see her again, it was not the romantic farewell he would have wished for.

  There was a small, crudely-cut hole in the plywood, in line with his mouth. He slid back to put his eye against it. The interior was a kaleidoscope of dancing orange and brown shadows and shapes as the van ploughed its way through the Guatemalan dawn. He stretched his spine, trying to find a position that would minimise the jolts that continuously shook him. No such position existed within Charlie’s smuggling compartment.

  The van stopped. Matt saw the lid open above his face, and Charlie’s chunky features beamed down upon him.