Jonathan looked upward at the cracked ceiling, grinning. “And when those damn dirty Yanks go to sleep . . . oh, sorry, O’Connell.”
“You were talking about those other dirty damn Yanks.”
“Precisely,” Jonathan said. “When they’ve called it a day, we dig our way back up there, and steal that book right out from under their noses.”
“They’ll have guards posted, up top.” O’Connell was pacing, his torch fanning the walls in orange and blue designs. “We can’t risk being seen—we have to get that book without them knowing we have it—without them even knowing the damn thing exists . . . Miss Carnahan—you can find that secret compartment, can’t you?”
“Yes, unless Dr. Chamberlin gets lucky and stumbles onto it.”
“Good, then we’re all agreed,” Jonathan said, and pointed at the ceiling. “We’ve got digging tools . . . Let’s find a soft place and dig up through.”
Evelyn frowned at her brother. “They just might notice a fresh hole in the floor, Jonathan.”
O’Connell strode across the chamber, holding his torch high, examining the ceiling. “We can dig over here . . . The stone is fragmentary, and it should take us up into one of the tunnels.”
“Do we dare start digging?” Jonathan wondered. “Or will they hear us?”
“They expect us to be digging,” O’Connell said, reaching into his backpack for chisels, “and we won’t be right under them . . . I say we get started.”
“I’ll take one of those things,” Evelyn said eagerly, referring to the chisels, loving the adventure of this.
Jonathan hefted the tool, sighed, and said, “Physical labor finds me at last . . . At least it doesn’t smell so bad in here.” And then he realized why, glancing all around him, adding, “I say! Where’s our fragrant friend gone off to?”
O’Connell flashed his torch around the chamber.
Jonathan was right: The warden was gone.
10
Plenty to Go Around
Gad Hassan had not risen to the high position of warden of Cairo prison by following the initiative of other men, much less a woman. Hassan had had quite enough of Miss Evelyn Carnahan’s leadership, particularly since the unveiled hussy had made it clear that finding the pharaoh’s treasure was not her objective.
In this underground city of boundless treasure and endless possibilities of wealth, the lady librarian was looking for a book! Yes, yes, a book fashioned of gold; but when King Tut’s tomb had been found, what hadn’t been fashioned of gold?
The woman was right about one thing, that much the warden would grant her: There was plenty of plunder here to go around.
And so it was that Gad Hassan had slipped away, and gone crawling down a tunnel of his own choosing, with Jonathan Carnahan’s torch in hand. His girth made passage difficult, but not impossible, and a few cobwebs were nothing to a man who dealt on a daily basis with the worst thieves and murderers in Arabia. What danger could await him that compared to even a slow day at Cairo prison?
Within minutes of the inception of Warden Hassan’s private expedition, he had made his own mindboggling discovery. Wheeling about, he took it in, gape-mouthed, his torch lighting up another of these fabulous chambers, carved from rock by ancient engineers, walls straight and smooth and dancing with geometric decoration. Then his torch stopped, held in place, and Hassan stared as the firelight glittered upon the face of a mural that combined exquisite hieroglyphic storytelling with embedded jewels . . .
The warden, awash in greed and self-satisfaction, withdrew a pocket knife and began to pry the purple stones from the mural. Had Evelyn Carnahan been present—the woman of whom his recent thoughts had been so contemptuous—she could have told Hassan that these were only semiprecious amethyst quartz stones, and not really worthy of his effort, certainly not of defacing so elaborate and unusual a mural.
Evelyn would also have pointed out the mural’s bizarre subject matter, an image that the warden was standing too close to perceive. If he had noticed, superstitious man that he was, the warden might have continued on in his treasure hunting, and let this be, this mural depicting an ancient Egyptian priest covered in scarabs, screaming in pain as the deadly dung beetles consumed his flesh.
Hassan dropped the first pried-loose amethyst into a pouch on his belt, then began carving away at the wall, loosening another. It was an awkward one-handed procedure, as he must do his work by the light of the torch in his other hand.
But he repeated this process, again and again, forehead gleaming with jewels of perspiration, his eyes glimmering with greed as he murmured to himself a song of riches and wine and beautiful women, a hymn to his own resourcefulness. He did not notice one of the amethysts missing the pouch and dropping, almost silently, to the sand-dusted stone floor at his sandaled feet.
Nor did he notice the scarab-shaped jewel begin to glow, to pulse, to transform, as something within it began to wake and wiggle and wriggle, as if the amethyst were a cocoon. The warden’s eyes were fixed upon the latest jewel he was chiseling loose, and could not be bothered with the sight of the amethyst at his feet splitting open, and a living scarab beetle scurrying out.
The hideous black bug moved as if with a purpose, as if doing the bidding of some unknown, unseen presence that sent it nestling, burrowing inside the leather sandal of the man self-contentedly prying at the face of the mural, muttering his own praises.
That muttering, those praises, ended abruptly, as the warden felt the sharp bite—not a sting, but a bite, more like a small animal than an insect—and the sensation was a burning one, as if hot lava had been injected into him with a needle, but hot lava with gnashing, hungry teeth. He began to scream, a scream of fear and agony that accompanied his every action that followed. He dropped his knife and his torch and clawed at his trousers, as the bug—somehow he knew it was a bug—crawled up his left pantleg, but no, not up the pantleg, inside his leg, burrowing up in his flesh, sending searing pain along the way of its excavation route.
His screaming was coming in shorter bursts now, gasps of anguish and terror, as he felt the bug making its steady, swift way up across his groin; he ripped at his shirt, popping buttons, and up the rise of his belly it came, a moving lump under the skin, and then down the hill and up under the forest of his hairy chest, like a mole rooting.
Clawing and scratching at it did no good; the bug’s progress was both steady and inexorable, and his screams turned to whimpers and tears as he felt the bug furrowing up the tender flesh of his throat, and then, under his chin, it disappeared, no longer a presence just under his skin, but tunneling up inside his head.
For a man of the warden’s size, the insane dance he began to perform was quite nimble; and there was an eerie music to the ascending and descending nature of his renewed screaming, as he left the torch behind, and his pocket knife, and the jewels he’d plundered, abandoned in that chamber, as he pranced into the darkness of the labyrinthian tunnels, in the company of his unseen dancing partner.
• • •
The warden’s screams were not heard by the American expedition, who were still gathered around the base of the statue of Anubis. Dwarfed by his burly partners, Dr. Chamberlin stood staring at the base, a hand on his chin. These men of action were frustrated by their dependence on this man of science, of scholarship, and Chamberlin was aware, at every moment, of their volatility.
Still, some matters could not be rushed.
“Well,” Henderson said impatiently, “is there something in the base of that thing or not?”
Using a small sable-hair paintbrush, the Egyptologist gently cleared away sand from the seams he’d discovered, seams that could well indicate a secret compartment.
“The hieroglyphs indicate that a valuable treasure is at the feet of Anubis,” Chamberlin said slowly, thoughtfully.
“Then stand aside,” Henderson snarled, and jammed the tip of a crowbar into one of the seams.
“No!” Chamberlin said, clutching the American’s arm, a pow
erfully muscular arm that might have pried that compartment door off—if indeed that was what it was—in a single tug.
Henderson’s eyes were tight with menace. “You better have a good reason for layin’ hands on me, Doc.”
Chamberlin loosed his grasp, but said, “If this is a secret compartment, consider: These hieroglyphs virtually dare a looter to attempt just what you’re about to do.”
Henderson thought about that. He, and his crowbar, withdrew a step. “What would you suggest?”
Beni stepped forward, with a smile as thin as his mustache. “May I offer a humble alternative, barat’m? You are paying good money to these men to dig.” He nodded toward the half dozen turbaned diggers standing just behind the Americans, then shrugged elaborately. “So have them dig.”
Chamberlin nodded. Their guide was an untrustworthy scoundrel, but his advice was sound.
“I think perhaps we should let the fellahin have this rare honor,” Chamberlin said. “We are guests in their native land, after all.”
“Listen to the good doctor,” Burns said to Henderson.
But Henderson, crowbar in his now limp hands, was already convinced. “Yeah, sure . . . let them have the pleasure.”
Chamberlin found Daniels the most mercurial of the group, brooding and dangerous. So it was no surprise when Daniels turned to the diggers and snarled, “You heard the man—get your asses over there!”
The diggers, exchanging wide-eyed expressions of alarm amongst themselves, backed away, murmuring their dissent.
“Mr. Daniels,” Chamberlin said, “no disrespect meant, but you have the social skills of a drill sergeant. This is a delicate matter—one must reason with these men.”
Chamberlin stepped forward and, screaming at the top of his lungs, told the diggers, in their own tongue, that if three of them did not step forward at once, he would invoke an ancient curse that would shrivel all of them, and every member of their families, to a desiccated death.
A hushed moment allowed the diggers to take that in.
Then three of the turbaned natives stepped forward, heads lowered, crowbars in hand, and lumbered reluctantly forward, while the other diggers backed away, cowering. Chamberlin directed them as to where precisely the tips of their crowbars should be inserted, around the seams of the panel at the statue’s base.
As the diggers were poised to pry, Beni took several steps backward; Henderson noticed this, and followed suit—and then so did Burns and Daniels. This amused Chamberlin—the hardbitten soldiers of fortune were every bit as fearful as the simple natives.
Chamberlin stood to one side and shouted, “Feni!”
And the three diggers tugged back with their crowbars.
Sighing, the professor told them, in their own tongue, to put some damn muscle into it, again yelling, “Feni!”
The three men tugged harder, and the ancient stone panel seemed to give, somewhat.
“Feni!”
The diggers tugged at the crowbars again, putting their backs into it. The panel seemed to be loosening . . .
“Feni!”
And this time the diggers put every ounce of strength into their effort, and the seam widened to a good half an inch . . .
. . . and an intense stream of liquid sprayed out from all around the seams, drenching the three diggers!
The three men screamed, each at a different pitch, creating a shrill chorus of anguish and horror as the acid bath stripped their clothes from their bodies, and then the flesh from their sinew, like melting candle wax, their corpses half-skeletal before they even had time to fall to the stone floor.
The remaining diggers had long since run off, their own cries echoing through the labyrinth as Chamberlin, the fortune hunters, and their guide—who had backed well away so none of them had even been touched by a drop of the deadly spray—gazed in horrified amazement at the steaming piles of bones that lay strewn at the base of the statue, whose compartment had sealed itself tightly shut, once again.
The tough Americans were white with fright; Beni was covering his eyes, trembling so severely his knees were knocking.
“Interesting,” Chamberlin said, rubbing his chin. “What say, gentlemen? Shall we move on?”
O’Connell chipped away at the ceiling of the chamber with his chisel, Jonathan, beside him, was doing the same. Evelyn—who was holding the torch—wasn’t quite tall enough to join in, and since there was nothing for her to stand upon, she was in the process of sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm about ancient Egypt and the practice of mummification.
“The ancient Egyptians believed in the transmigration of souls,” she was saying. “The spirit might wander for thousands of years after death, and finally come back to its home on earth, looking to re-enter his or her body. Therefore, the body needed to be kept intact.”
O’Connell kept chiseling. “And wrapping your body up in bandages does that, huh?”
“Oh, that’s just a small part of the process. The intestines are removed through an incision in the side, then cleaned and washed in palm wine, covered with aromatic gum, and stored in jewel-encrusted jars; same with kidneys, liver, lungs. The heart was removed in the case of those who’d been . . . naughty. The body cavity was filled with cassia, myrrh, and other aromatic spices, then sewn up and soaked in, well . . . a sort of carbonate of soda for forty days. Only then would the fine linen bandages be wrapped around the mummy.”
O’Connell glanced at her. “Did they leave the brain in the body?”
“Oh! Did I forget the brain? The brains were extracted by means of a sharp, red-hot iron probe . . .”
Jonathan winced as he chipped. “This is more information than we really require, dear sister.”
“. . . which they stuck up one’s nose, cutting the brain into sections, which were then removed through the nostrils.”
“That’s got to smart,” O’Connell said.
Evelyn smirked. “It doesn’t smart at all, silly. Mummification was strictly for the dead.”
“That process could wake the dead.”
“It would certainly get my attention,” Jonathan said.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re such schoolboys. Any progress?”
And, as if in answer to her question, a big chunk of the roof fell out, right between O’Connell and Jonathan, a huge slab of stone that shattered into a thousand pieces as O’Connell dove out of its path, pulling Evelyn along with him, while Jonathan leaped the opposite way.
They were still scrambling, in their respective directions, when through this hole in the ceiling dropped a massive granite object, which—accompanied by shower of rubble—came crashing down to the floor with a slam that rocked the chamber, turning pebbles to dust that filled the air like fog.
Coughing, picking themselves up gingerly, blinded by the sudden dust storm, the three moved tentatively toward the object, O’Connell plucking the still-lit torch from the floor, where Evelyn had dropped it.
“Now that was a crash to wake the dead,” Jonathan said.
“You may be closer than you think,” Evelyn said, as in the light of the torch she got her look at what was clearly a man-made object, a massive granite casement.
“What the hell is it?” O’Connell asked.
“A sarcophagus,” she said. The dust was clearing. “Buried in the shadow of Anubis, at the feet of the god. Whoever this was must have been a personage of great importance.”
“They honored him in death, you think?”
She shrugged. “Either that, or he needed keeping-an-eye-on by the gods. Perhaps he’d been very . . .”
“Naughty?” her brother offered. “Shall we look inside and see if he’s got a heart?”
“Help me dust this off,” she said, and from the backpacks of the two men came rags, and soon a single hieroglyph had been revealed on the lid of the sarcophagus.
Though it seemed to O’Connell that this was a rather simple hieroglyph (not that he had any idea what it meant), Evelyn stared at the thing for the longest time, h
er expression developing into a sort of stricken look.
Jonathan was drumming his fingers impatiently on the stone lid. “Well? Who is he? King Somebody, or just the royal gardener?”
She seemed confused, concerned; finally she said, “It says . . . ‘He Who Shall Not Be Named.’ ”
“Perhaps a very bad gardener,” Jonathan put in.
“This looks like quarried granite.” O’Connell was using a rag to clean off what seemed to be a huge lock.
“Yes,” she said, “and it’s likely to have a copper lining.”
“If he was such an important chap,” Jonathan said, “mightn’t the inner coffin be solid gold, like Tut?”
“Possibly,” Evelyn conceded.
“Without a key,” O’Connell said, sighing, shaking his head, “it’ll take us a month to crack this thing and find out.”
Evelyn’s eyes widened and she snapped her fingers. “That’s it—the key! Don’t you see? That’s what the Med-jai on the boat were looking for, that fiend with the hook! He asked me for the key!”
“Of course,” Jonathan said, brightening, “the puzzle box! He was after my bloody puzzle thingamajig!”
Evelyn plucked the golden box from her brother’s backpack and quickly unfolded the object until its jagged petals revealed themselves as an oversize key shaped precisely like the keyhole of the sarcophagus lock.
Excited smiles blossomed all around, accompanied by several long moments of breathless anticipation, as O’Connell and Jonathan, on either side of Evelyn, watched her approach the granite casement with the bulky key poised for insertion.
But the historic moment was interrupted by an unearthly, agonized scream that came echoing up to them from the labyrinth, clearly the cries of someone in desperate trouble.
Evelyn quickly folded the box back up, tossed it to Jonathan, who snugged it into his backpack, as O’Connell snatched the torch from the young woman’s hand and led them into the tunnels, in search of whoever it was that needed their help.
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