The Cairo Puzzle

by Laurence OBryan

  They stood respectfully on the far side of the table, and bowed.

  He smiled at them. “I have another important job for you.”

  11

  “Do you need a hand,” I called out. The man with the beard was taking another box out of the car.

  He turned to me. “No. I got it.”

  I stood beside him. “Let me help you, please. I’m trying to escape the attentions of a taxi driver. I don’t want him to think I’m staying here alone.” I inclined my head back towards the driver, who was standing by his car observing us.

  “If you want to help you can stand here and make sure no one runs away with any of this while I get a trolley.” He smiled at me. “Where are you from, England? My name’s Mike Bayford. What’s yours?”

  I told him. He came back a minute later. I helped him put the boxes on the trolley, walked with him through the doors of the hotel. The taxi driver was pulling away into the traffic.

  Mike stopped near the elevators. “What are you doing in Cairo on your own, aside from attracting the attention of taxi drivers?”

  “I came to look for my husband. He’s missing.” I looked away. I didn’t enjoy pouring my troubles out to strangers, but if it helped in any way, I would, every minute of every day.

  Mike shook his head. “This is not a good time to be doing anything in Cairo.”

  “No?”

  He turned, pointed at a TV screen visible through the doors into the restaurant area. A cluster of visitors were sitting on chairs around it.

  “Wait there. I’ll be back down in a few minutes. We can talk, okay?”

  I looked at him. His beard had flecks of dust in it and his clothes, loose jeans and a blue shirt with baggy chest pockets were also splattered with dust.

  “Yeah, maybe it’ll be twenty minutes. I need a shower.”

  I went into the restaurant. The small group by the TV were guests, a German couple on holiday, two French businessmen, a Canadian woman working for a medical charity. I’d been introduced to them all by the time Mike came back down.

  What struck me was that each of them could easily have watched what was going on in their rooms, but they clearly didn’t want to. It was six-thirty. Outside it was getting dark fast.

  “Don’t leave the hotel until all this over,” said the Canadian woman, leaning close to me as Mike sat down on the other side of the table. He was staring at the TV screen. His hair was damp and he’d put on a clean white shirt and khaki trousers.

  The image on the TV screen showed Tahrir Square. A huge crowd had overwhelmed a row of tanks. Dozens of people were dancing on top of them. Black flags were being waved.

  Mike leaned towards me. “I’ll be leaving here at seven in the morning.”

  “On an early flight?” said the Canadian woman.

  “No, our project to open the hidden rooms in the Great Pyramid is coming to a climax this weekend.” He rubbed a hand through his hair, then turned to the TV.

  “We were supposed to have a press preview of what we discovered at nine in the morning, but I have no idea what’s going to happen with all this going on.” He waved dismissively at the screen.

  “I reckon the Egyptian people are allowed to fight for democracy,” said the Canadian woman.

  Mike turned to her. “Democracy ain’t what they’re fighting for. Sure, many of them are moderates, but the Muslim Brotherhood will get in if they’re allowed to stand again, and they want Sharia law, jihad, and the destruction of Israel.”

  “The international community won’t allow that to happen,” said the Canadian woman.

  “Maybe, but a lot of people will die in the process.”

  “What makes you think you’re going to find hidden rooms in the pyramid?” I sat up straight. “Isn’t that the fantasy of hundreds of thousands of Egyptologists?”

  “Millions, if you include the amateurs.”

  “So, what is it you’ve got the others don’t?”

  “There’s been some recent discoveries that make us confident we’re on the right track.”

  “What discoveries?”

  “Anomalies in the temperature readings of the stone blocks, which make us think that some of them have air behind them, passages and a few other things that point in the same direction.”

  “And you want to see where they lead,” said the Canadian woman.

  “Yes.”

  “And what are the other things?” I said.

  “A manuscript from the era has been discovered and translated.”

  “What is it about?”

  “It claims that Osiris, the Egyptian god of regeneration, is entombed in the Great Pyramid.”

  “Isn’t Osiris the god of the dead?” said the Canadian woman.

  “No.” Mike shook his head. “He’s the god of the afterlife, and resurrection.”

  “I never heard that,” said the Canadian.

  “Well, it’s true,” said Mike. “Ancient Egyptians buried corn mummies, small mummies a foot or two long during the festival of Khoiak, with images of Osiris on them, and seeds and mud inside as proof of the resurrection from death, which Osiris can bring about.”

  “When was this festival?” I’d read recently about ancient Celts burying objects around Europe, at Spring festivals.

  “At the end of August, when the Nile flooding reached its height.”

  “You’ll be going to the pyramid in the morning?” I said.

  “You bet. The earth would have to swallow me up, for me to miss this.” His eyes narrowed. “You might want to come with me, Isabel. There’ll be someone there who should be able to help you. You do know everything you want done in this country relies on who you know?”

  “Who?” I leaned towards him. If there was any chance of getting help I’d take it. I did not want to leave Egypt with every hope dashed.

  “It’s only one of the richest men in Egypt. Ahmed Faisal Yacoub.”

  An ember of hope bloomed inside me as I watched him talking.

  “The man who wants to live forever,” said the Canadian woman.

  “Why do they say that?” I leaned forward.

  Just then a shout rang up from the crowd watching the TV. We all turned to see what was happening. On the screen the camera was turned skywards. A gray dusk on the horizon indicated where the sun had recently gone down. Visible against the dusk were three helicopters swooping fast towards the crowd, which was still jamming Tahrir Square.

  Hisses and boos rang out from the crowd. Then an Arabic roar of defiance.

  It was met by slivers of fire streaming from one helicopter straight into the crowd. Panic ensued. Then another roar. But in the middle of the crowd there was a rubble of bodies and flags.

  My mouth was wide open. My stomach had turned. I gripped the edge of my seat. A groan went up in the room.

  “What kind of an army opens fire on its own people?” Mike shouted.

  I stood, went to the reception, then out to the front of the hotel. It was dark, but a distant clatter told me we weren’t that far from Tahrir Square. As the wind changed I heard a distant roar.

  An intense longing for Sean filled me, as if a stone had grown inside me. An urge to go back to London gripped me. What if he’d been knocked unconscious and had recovered in some German hospital, finally remembered who he was and gone back to London?

  I shook my head. That had to be wishful thinking. Deep inside I knew I should have done more to stop him going to Nuremberg. I could have saved him. If only I’d insisted on him not going there. I had an easy excuse to stop him, the riots in Germany. Why hadn’t I used it?

  A series of flashes lit the skyline. Something tightened inside me. I knew the taste of fear, how it makes you more alert, jumpy, but this was different. This was fear and anger all rolled into one. I brushed a hand across my eyes. I was not going to go back to London. I was going to finish the job here, follow every lead, and only then go home, and if he still hadn’t shown up, we would have a service for him. And I would accept the truth. />
  I felt a hand on my shoulder, turned.

  “Are you okay?” It was Mike.

  “Yeah, I’m good. I just miss Sean. A lot.” I tried to smile. It came out crooked.

  “Come with me in the morning. I ain’t going to let any of this stop us. The crowds are dispersing. Meet me out here at seven. I don’t expect a lot of press will turn up tomorrow, but we’ll be recording everything for a documentary we’re making. If he comes, Ahmed Yacoub will help you. I’ll make sure he does.”

  “Thanks. See you in the morning.” I headed for the reception area. The sky was quiet.

  I spent twenty minutes looking up Ahmed Yacoub on the internet. Mike was right, he was one of the richest people in Egypt. His father had prospered in the 1950’s, thanks to an import and export business he ran dealing in German cars and Egyptian cotton. He was a contributor to the Palestinian cause and, one website claimed, he’d helped Yasser Arafat, the number one enemy of Israel for decades, when he was living in Cairo. That financial support was critical to the rise of Arafat, it was claimed.

  Ahmed Yacoub’s father had employed many German refugees after the Second World War and it had led to the founding of what was now the son’s largest enterprise, a pharmaceutical business that spanned the Middle East and was on the verge of breaking into the U.S. market with some revolutionary new products.

  12

  Henry Mowlam was still at his desk in central London. It was a little after nine. Two of the staff from his team had invited him for a drink an hour before. They’d be in the basement with pints of Greene King in front of them right now. He was tempted.

  But the new shift had started and the situation in the Middle East was livening up.

  The attack on the crowds in Tahrir Square in Cairo by an Apache AH-64 helicopter gunship was receiving worldwide coverage on a variety of news channels. A Twitter storm had followed the images Tweeted of the wounded and dying.

  Copycat demonstrations had sprung up even before the attack, in Liberation Square in Baghdad, in Martyr Square in Damascus and, of most concern, in Deera Square in the center of Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia.

  He had received no advance intelligence about any plan to coordinate these outbreaks, and none of the leaders in the other Arab countries had deployed their armies to protect themselves, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a plan behind what was happening.

  The overthrow of non-Islamic governments and the recreation of a pan Arabic Caliphate was the aspiration of hundreds of millions of Muslims. Just because the nation states created at the end of the First World War had existed for a hundred years, did not mean they would exist for another hundred.

  The question was, could the West do anything to keep a lid on the situation? Were the forces at play beyond manipulation?

  What was needed was a distraction. He scrolled through his newsfeed of stories from Arabic newspapers, which had been published that day on their websites, and which had been translated in the past few hours.

  One caught his eye.

  EGYPTIAN BILLIONAIRE REVEALS SECRETS OF THE GREAT PYRAMID

  AHMED YACOUB, MAJORITY SHAREHOLDER IN YACOUB HOLDINGS, ONE OF THE LARGEST PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES IN THE WORLD, HELD A PRESS CONFERENCE IN CAIRO TODAY. HE ANNOUNCED THAT A SECRET ROOM IN THE GREAT PYRAMID OF KHUFU HAD BEEN DISCOVERED. MR YACOUB STATED THAT DISCOVERING THE “FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH” WAS HIS NEXT OBJECTIVE. THE FABLED FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH IS A WATER SOURCE WHICH RESTORES THE YOUTH OF ALL THOSE WHO BATHE IN IT. STORIES ABOUT THIS FOUNTAIN WERE RECOUNTED BY THE GREEK HISTORIAN WHO WROTE ABOUT EGYPT IN THE 5TH CENTURY B.C. IT WAS ALSO FEATURED IN TALES ABOUT ALEXANDER THE GREAT, WHO CONQUERED EGYPT, AND IN STORIES BROUGHT TO EUROPE AND MADE POPULAR THERE BY RETURNING CRUSADERS.

  THE DISCOVERY OF ANCIENT HEALING RECIPES HAS LONG BEEN THE GOAL OF THE FOUNDER OF YACOUB HOLDINGS. IN THE PAST HE HAS FUNDED PROJECTS IN LOWER EGYPT, IN JORDAN AND IN BAGHDAD LOOKING FOR ANCIENT TEXTS. IF HE SUCCEEDS EGYPT WILL, ONCE AGAIN, BE AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD FOR MEDICAL TREATMENTS.

  13

  I reached for my smartphone as soon as I woke up, and checked my messages. It was a stupid ritual, but every morning I hoped a message from Sean would be there waiting for me. My ordeal would be over. I could almost taste what it would feel like, but every morning that feeling eluded me, like a wisp of vapor vanishing in a second.

  It was torture by hope. And every morning when there was no message from him, the hole in my heart opened a little wider. I’d cried every morning for a week after he’d disappeared, but now there was only this growing emptiness, as if a part of me was being sucked out every day.

  At seven I was down at reception. A cup of coffee in my room was all I’d had, and it was all I needed. My sister had told me I was getting thinner, that I needed to keep my strength up, but many days I just didn’t want to eat at all, if Sean wasn’t with me. And when I did eat, food tasted weird, dry, and it stuck in my throat. I think the worst part was not knowing what had happened, expecting every day to hear news. Every hour. Always waiting. I needed to know what happened to him. I had to know.

  At the front of the hotel Mike was loading plastic boxes into the black mini bus I’d seen him exiting the day before. I offered to help.

  “You look beat,” he replied. “Did the noise keep you up?”

  I shrugged. “I heard a few jets sweeping over, was there more?”

  “Not much. The crowds dispersed, but there’s another demonstration called for this afternoon. I want to get this job done.” He dropped the last box in through the back door of the mini bus.

  “You should leave Cairo too. Once the bloodshed starts, you never know how far it will go.” He looked concerned. “Or who they’ll target next. Foreigners often get blamed in the Middle East. This is not a good time to be a lone woman here.”

  “My flight back to London is on Monday. I’m not going to run away before that unless they storm this hotel.” I gave him the best pretense of a smile I could muster.

  He opened the side door of the mini bus.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  The traffic, heading towards the pyramids, in the western suburbs of the city was as bad as any I’d seen anywhere in the world. That included London during the Olympics, and Istanbul at the end of Ramadan. The demonstrations the evening before had definitely not encouraged people to stay at home. If anything, the city was like an ant’s nest that had been smoked. Cars were heading in every direction, despite the early hour. Horns blared all around us, and for a while, at one intersection, I thought we were going to get stuck. Then we reached a wide avenue with palm trees down the middle and the traffic eased.

  Mike turned to me after a long conversation in Arabic with the driver.

  “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Do you see the pyramids?” He pointed past the driver, through the front window.

  The pyramids, almost directly ahead, grew larger by the second. It was unreal seeing them dominate the horizon, like in a Hollywood movie.

  “Will Ahmed Yacoub be coming today?” I stared at the pyramids as they grew larger every second.

  “Yes, he’ll be here from nine.”

  “Do you know he’s claiming he’ll discover the fountain of youth?”

  “Yes, he’s using our dig to get some media coverage for his pharmaceutical business.” He shrugged. “I knew he’d pull something like this. But we’d never have got the money to do this dig properly, or the permissions we needed without his help. I don’t expect to find any more than an empty chamber. He’s said an inscription on a wall is all he’s looking for.” His tone softened. “But there’s a possibility we’ll find more. That’s what I love about all this.”

  “You believe in the fountain of youth then?”

  Mike snorted. “I have no idea. It’s could be a war story brought back by Alexander the Great’s soldiers after they conquered Egypt and the same thing again after the Crusaders took Cairo and lost it again. There isn’t any other pool, anywhere in the world, where old people can get in at one en
d and come out younger at the other and head for a party. It’s a myth that’s medically impossible. But there could be something to it. Some medical treatment to make us young again.”

  “And Yacoub is going to sell this to millions.”

  He put a hand on my arm. “Forty percent of the population here is illiterate, Isabel. They’d believe anything someone in authority tells them. As long as he’s not damaging anyone’s health, what the hell do I care. People have been selling pyramid myths to tourists here since before the time of Christ.”

  “It’s all a bit strange.”

  “It’s the total strangest, Isabel. The Great Pyramid was the tallest man made structure in the world until the Eiffel Tower. They had to place eight hundred tons of stone into it every day to get it finished in twenty years. Some of the granite blocks are two hundred tons, for God’s sake. We only have a few cranes in the world now, which can move that sort of weight.”

  I shook my head. “Truly amazing.”

  “It’s more than amazing. The pyramids are at the exact center of the largest land mass on earth. Exactly half way between the top of Siberia and the tip of Africa.”

  “How did they work that out?”

  Mike shrugged. “No one knows. And there’s more. How did they get the site level to within a fraction of an inch over thirteen acres? We’d need top of the range laser tools to do that now, and we’d still struggle with leveling a site that size. And how did they align the edges of the Great Pyramid to face true north, south, east, and west to within a fraction of a degree of arc, which modern engineers weren’t able to do until satellite positioning arrived.” He took a breath.

  “But you know what is the biggest question for me?” He raised his hands in the air. “Why level it so accurately? Why position it to face true north? And why make it so big that the whole thing took decades to build, and you’d need to manage teams tens of thousands strong to get it built?”

  “Maybe it was useful in some way we don’t understand.”