Pharaoh

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘Please, do as I say. If he offers you money, accept it. I think he likes you. If he doesn’t think it’s absolutely essential to kill you, he’ll have no problem sparing you. But if you refuse any money he’s offering you, I think you’re signing your death sentence. Especially with that Friedkin character involved and the turn things have taken. It feels like everything’s going to explode any minute.

  ‘Will, I’ll be waiting for you. Don’t be stupid. I’d still like to pick up where we left off the other night.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Blake, almost to himself. Then, as Sarah started to leave, he held her back. ‘Sarah, there’s something I haven’t told you.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s about the inscription.’

  ‘The one on the sarcophagus?’

  Blake nodded.

  Sarah smiled. ‘I’m not an Egyptologist but I could tell that you were keeping something from me. You looked like a cat with a mouse in his mouth . . . So?’

  ‘It’s not true that the text I read you ended up with The Book of the Dead. What followed was a curse.’

  ‘That makes sense. I would have been surprised if it were otherwise. But don’t tell me that a scientist believes in such nonsense. Curses have never managed to keep thieves away – in any century.’

  ‘Of course not. But there’s something particular about this one. Wait up for me if you’re not too tired.’

  ‘I will,’ said Sarah, and she went off across the moonlit camp.

  For an instant Blake yearned to be with her, anywhere but here. He stubbed the cigarette out with his heel and caught up with Maddox, who had nearly reached his quarters.

  ‘Mr Maddox,’ he said, making a move to enter, ‘could I have a word?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Maddox. ‘Come in.’ But he had the look of someone who was being disturbed by an unwanted guest. He turned on the light and opened the liquor cabinet. ‘Scotch?’

  ‘Scotch is fine, thank you.’

  ‘What do you think about this sandstorm, Blake? Sounds like it’s going to be a bad one.’

  ‘It will be a nuisance, at any rate, and could even cause serious damage. But that isn’t what I came to talk to you about.’

  ‘I know,’ said Maddox pouring him a glass of Macallan from his personal stock. ‘You want to talk to me about the Ras Udash tomb, but I—’

  Blake raised a finger, looked Maddox straight in the eye and spoke all at once. ‘Mr Maddox, I have to ask you if you intend to plunder the Ras Udash tomb and scatter its treasures to the four winds.’

  ‘Blake, what the devil—’

  ‘No, listen to me, Maddox, or I won’t have the courage to go on. You have to stop, immediately. Nobody has the right to do such a thing.’

  ‘That’s what you think, Blake. I’m in command here and if you get in my way I won’t hesitate to—’

  ‘Maddox, before you say another word, just listen to me. You can’t touch that tomb, because the extraordinary collection of things it contains is hiding a mystery that my preliminary research has only touched the surface of. If you disperse those objects, we will have lost a heritage that remained intact for over thirty centuries until we came upon it. We’ll never be able to recover the information that will be lost, and that information could be vital for the whole human race.’

  Maddox shook his head, as though he were listening to the ravings of a madman. ‘You told me that you were about to discover the identity of the person buried in the tomb and that knowing that would enormously increase its value. I also gave you permission, more than once, to send – at my own risk – emails to your colleagues for consultation. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Blake, lowering his head.

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘That is exactly the point. The odds are that we are dealing with a high-ranking person, maybe even a great historical figure. Imagine . . .’ Blake took a deep breath. ‘Imagine that the mummy of a great Pharaoh was threatened by desecration during a period of anarchy. In that case, it’s reasonable to believe that the priests would have transported him to somewhere that was absolutely inaccessible. Or let’s say that a great leader, involved in a military campaign, died far from the capital because of his wounds or an illness, and that it was impossible, for reasons we don’t know, to transport the corpse to the Valley of the Kings for embalming. Mr Maddox, you must believe me. I have done everything possible to squeeze information out of that tomb, but there are still too many questions. I suspect that the side opening, where the debris poured out of, may stretch back further into some sort of tunnel, but I have no idea how far that might go. And I still don’t know exactly what purpose it served.’

  ‘Unfortunately, we’re out of time.’

  ‘What’s more, you’ve never wanted to tell me where we are.’

  ‘I’ve had no choice.’

  ‘Please, don’t do it, Maddox. Don’t sell off the pieces to the highest buyer.’

  ‘Sorry, Blake. Our agreement was clear. You were asked to perform a certain job and you did so, very quickly and very well. The rest is my business, isn’t it?’

  Blake looked away.

  ‘I’m sorry that you weren’t able to do more or understand more. I am perfectly aware of your curiosity as a scientist, which in this particular moment is extremely frustrated, but you also have to take into account that you have been given a unique opportunity, a true privilege.

  ‘If you’re smart, you’ll be satisfied with that. You’ll receive a sum of money that should allow you to live comfortably for the rest of your life, or even to start a whole new life if you wish. Alan Maddox is no ingrate. You’ll have the money within forty-eight hours maximum. I can give you an amount in cash or, even better, wire it to a Swiss bank account and have the statement forwarded to you. This means that you renounce any right to publish these finds. Should you breach this agreement, I am sorry to tell you that you will do so at serious risk to yourself.’

  His words were very clear and Blake nodded.

  ‘Very good,’ said Maddox, interpreting his gesture as a sign of acceptance. ‘You have reservations for a direct flight on El Al at 9.30 p.m. on Friday from Tel Aviv to Chicago.’

  ‘From Tel Aviv? Why not Cairo?’

  ‘Because we have an arrangement with El Al.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything I can do to dissuade you?’

  Maddox shook his head.

  ‘At least let me supervise the packing and loading. You risk doing enormous damage.’

  ‘All right,’ said Maddox. ‘Obviously, I didn’t feel I could ask you.’

  ‘One last thing. Do you intend to touch the mummy?’

  Blake’s eyes held an uncanny uneasy expression, like a warning of deadly danger. Maddox hesitated, at a loss to know how to respond.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ he said after a while.

  ‘Because I need to know. Maddox, I would not touch that mummy if I were you. Under any circumstances.’

  ‘If you think you can scare me, you’re wrong. You don’t expect me to believe in the curses of the Pharaohs and all that other rubbish.’

  ‘Well, no. Or yes, rather. I want you to know that the inscription on the sarcophagus contains one of the most atrocious and frightening curses that I’ve read in my twenty-five years of research. And it’s not just a curse. It’s a prophecy that specifies with considerable precision what will happen to the plunderers.’

  ‘That includes you, then,’ said Maddox with an ironic smile.

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘And what makes you think that this curse is so much more powerful than all the others, which were never enough to protect even one of the tombs on which they were carved?’

  ‘The beginning. It says, “Whoever shall open the door to his eternal resting place will see the bloodied image of Isis.” ’

  ‘Oh, well, then,’ said Maddox, adding even more irony to his tone. ‘So?’

  ‘There’s going to be a total eclipse of the moon tomor
row night. The moon is going to turn red: the bloodied image of Isis. If that’s a coincidence, it’s quite something.’

  ‘In fact, Blake, that’s just what it is. A coincidence.’

  ‘But then it says that the next day the breath of Set will darken a large part of the earth, from east to west, for a night, a day and another night. If Mr Gordon was right about the weather forecast, it seems to me that we can expect a sandstorm over a good part of the Near East, starting, incidentally, tomorrow night, including bad visibility and communication cut-offs in some areas for over twenty-four hours. You must admit that that’s some coincidence, seeing that the “breath of Set” is universally known as the desert wind.’

  ‘Close the sarcophagus back up, Blake,’ said Maddox without concealing a streak of nervousness, ‘and spare me this nonsense. The contents of the tomb are already worth a fortune. I don’t need those few objects inside the sarcophagus. Anyway, to get out just the funeral mask of the mummy, which is the only piece of any real value, we would have to lift the lid another twenty centimetres, which would mean extra hours of work. Time we don’t have. Anyway, it has very little importance for me.’

  ‘Just as well. Goodnight, Mr Maddox.’

  GAD AVNER walked behind Ygael Allon, who held a neon lamp in his right hand to light the tunnel. They had been walking for almost a quarter of an hour.

  After clearing blockage from collapses that date to the late empire and medieval periods, the tunnel has proved to be largely accessible. Look here,’ he said, holding the lamp to the left wall, ‘these are graffiti from the early sixth century. They may even go back to the siege of Nebuchadnezzar.’

  That name gave Avner a slight start. He passed a handkerchief across his forehead to wipe the sweat and observed the graffiti.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘We haven’t quite figured that out yet, but it looks like a topographical sign, perhaps indicating that the tunnel went off in another direction. The letters carved under the drawing say “water” or “stream on bottom”.

  A well?’

  ‘It’s possible. During a siege people would often dig tunnels like this one to ensure a water supply. But that inscription could also mean something else.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Come,’ he said, and resumed walking along the tunnel, which bent left in a narrow curve at a certain point and then straightened out into the distance. On the left there were traces of drilling on the wall; on the right was a wooden plank secured to the wall with a lock.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Allon. ‘Over our heads are thirty metres of compact rock and then the platform of the Temple. Look at this,’ he said, kneeling on the ground and raising the lamp again.

  ‘There are steps,’ noted Avner.

  ‘Yes. Which disappear into the side of the mountain. I think that it’s a stairway that came from the Temple. Maybe even from the Sanctuary. We drilled at that point, see, and found incongruous materials, ash, fragments of plaster, lime mortar. It may be material from the destruction of the Temple in 586 bc that fell from the upper levels into the staircase, partly filling the room.’

  ‘You mean that following those steps might lead us to the level of the Temple of Solomon or to its underground compartments?’

  ‘It’s very likely.’

  ‘Extraordinary. Listen, Allon, who other than you knows about this?’

  ‘My two assistants.’

  And the workers?’

  ‘They’re recent arrivals from the Ukraine and Lithuania and don’t understand a word of Hebrew. Especially the technical Hebrew that we’re speaking.’

  Are you sure?’

  As sure as I am of being here with you.’

  Allon took a key out of his pocket and opened the lock. And here we made the most startling discovery. The find is still in situ. Come.’

  A new tunnel opened before them. It presumably headed southward. ‘Maybe towards the pool of Siloah and the Kidron Valley,’ said Allon. ‘This may be what the graffiti is referring to. At this very moment we are following the directions we found carved into the wall of the main tunnel and are going through a passage that must have been the continuation of both the main tunnel and the steps that came down from the Temple. The point where we first stopped must have been the intersection of the two.

  ‘We had to remove part of the rubble that was nearly blocking the passage at this point. And underneath we found this.’

  Allon stopped and cast light on a lump of clay that had a gleaming object set into it.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ said Avner, kneeling down into the wet mud. ‘I have never seen anything like this in my entire life.’

  ‘Me neither, to tell the truth,’ said Allon, crouching down on his heels. He brought the lamp nearer and swung it to bring out the flashes from the sapphire, carnelian, amber and coral on the tawny gold shining through the mud.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A thurible. And the mark you see here on this side means that it belonged to the Temple. My friend, this object burned incense to the God of our Fathers in the Sanctuary built by Solomon.’

  His voice trembled as he uttered the words and, in the reflection of the lamp, Avner saw that his eyes were glistening.

  ‘Can I . . . touch it?’ he asked.

  ‘Go ahead,’ replied Allon.

  Avner stretched out his hand. This was a cup of extraordinary perfection, whose base was embellished with gems mounted to form a sequence of winged griffins, stylized to the point they seemed just an elegant succession of geometric patterns. Around the rim was a circle of palmettes that continued onto the lacy cover. They were surrounded by damascened silver that had been burnished through time. The knob on the cover was a small golden pomegranate filled with minuscule coral balls.

  ‘Why should such a precious object be here?’ asked Avner.

  ‘I have only one answer to that. Someone tried to save the sacred vessels to protect them from desecration by the Babylonian invaders. It’s also clear that this thurible must have been made and donated to the Temple shortly before that time. It looks like the product of a Canaanite workshop in Tyre or Byblos, or may be the work of an artisan from the city of Canaan who transferred his workshop here to Jerusalem to work on an order for the Sanctuary. These ornamental motifs that you see are characteristic of a style we archaeologists call “orientalizing”. It dates back to some time between the end of the seventh and the first quarter of the sixth century bc.’

  ‘The time of Nebuchadnezzar’s siege.’

  ‘Exactly. Now, it is very likely that the people who tried to save the sacred vessels did so at the last minute, when it was certain that the Babylonians would be storming in at any minute. It might have been when King Zedekiah fled through a breach in the wall near the pool of Siloah . . . to meet his excruciating destiny.

  ‘In the rush the objects couldn’t be arranged and packed carefully enough, so the thurible fell to the ground and remained where it was until last night, when we found it. We can also imagine that whoever was carrying it was walking so fast that he wouldn’t have even noticed if something, though hardly insignificant, fell out of his bundle.’

  ‘You mean that at the end of this tunnel we might find the treasure of the Temple?’

  Allon hesitated. ‘That could be. We certainly can’t exclude the possibility that this tunnel led to some secret room, but that’s not necessarily so. Tomorrow we’ll resume work. I’m about to take this thurible outside now. There’s an escort of military police who are waiting to take me to the National Bank, where it can be locked up in the vault.

  ‘This object is the most precious relic that has ever been found in the land of Israel since the time of our return to Palestine.’

  Allon took the thurible very gently and placed it in a box lined with cotton wadding which he strapped over his shoulder.

  They turned back towards the entrance of the tunnel under the arch of the Antonian Fortress. Just as they emerged, Avner’s eye was caught by the
red flashing light on his mobile phone, signalling an emergency.

  He shook the archaeologist’s hand warmly.

  ‘Thank you, Professor Allon. This has been a great privilege. Please let me know of any new developments in your investigation, no matter how small. I must go now. There’s an urgent call I have to attend to.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Cohen,’ said Allon, who then went with the policeman to an armoured car parked a little way off.

  AVNER LISTENED to the message. ‘Urgent call from the Ministry of Defence.’ The voice sounded like Nathaniel Ashod, the Prime Minister’s cabinet secretary.

  He looked at his watch: it was eleven o’clock. He thought it best to have someone from the office pick him up and started dialling the number, but in that instant a dark Rover pulled up alongside and Fabrizio Ferrario got out.

  ‘Mr Avner, we have been looking for you in every corner of the city. Have you checked if your telephone is working? We couldn’t get through.’

  ‘Because I was underneath thirty metres of rock’

  The young man opened the door for Avner and slid into the back seat beside him. ‘Go ahead,’ he said to the driver, then turned to Avner. ‘Excuse me, sir?’

  ‘You heard right, Ferrario. I was in the tunnel with Professor Allon of the Hebrew University. And now what in God’s name is happening?’

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve got serious trouble, sir,’ said the officer. ‘The minister will explain everything.’

  They entered the ministry from a service door and Ferrario led Avner down stairs, along corridors and up in elevators until they reached a small lounge, sparsely furnished with just a table and six chairs.

  Around the table sat Prime Minister Schochot, Minister of Defence Aser Hetzel, Chief of the General Staff Aaron Yehudai, Minister of Foreign Affairs Ezra Shiran and the American ambassador, Robert Holloway. In the middle of the table there were two bottles of mineral water and each man had a plastic cup in front him.

  When Avner entered, they turned towards him, most with distressed, almost shell-shocked expressions. Only Yehudai maintained his usual soldier’s demeanour.

  Fabrizio Ferrario went out, closing the door behind him.

  ‘Have a seat, Avner,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘There’s some bad news.’