“They always run in …” Cairo proceeded to list the names of many American detective series, as his way of confirming that whenever the police tried to arrest anyone they always ran: the basis behind Kate’s plan.
Alex gestured to Cairo that he had made his point before he answered Emmy: “Oh yes, it worked, though not totally as she expected.”
“There were only six soldiers, and they did manage to block the main exits. How could they be expected to know that there was a secret exit? Did you get a look at whoever threw the knife?”
“Sort of: male, mid-forties if I had to hazard a guess.”
“That covers the majority of the people in the kitchen.”
“I know, but things did happen rather quickly.”
“But credit where credit is due, Kate was right: when the papyrus thief felt that he was about to be taken prisoner by the soldiers … he ran.”
“She didn’t account for the knife though.” Alex looked as though he was thinking hard before asking: “Why would he throw a knife? Why didn’t he just run? For that matter, why didn’t he just stand still and do nothing? We had no idea who had taken the papyrus.”
“Diversion, desperation, panic, his own guilt, the simple wish for freedom, to get away.” Emmy, as always, was right, these feelings and impulses were hard wired into everyone.
“Don’t like this,” Cairo said after taking a few paces down the tunnel that Kate had taken, then turning back, “too quiet … too quiet.”
They all knew that they should race to Kate’s aid, but they also understood just how vulnerable they were, that the tunnels could split and then split again, and again, and again. There were tunnels and tombs throughout these hills: above them, below them, and beside them, it was a regular rabbit warren. Their instinct to catch the person who had taken Ankhtifi’s papyrus had been replaced by the awareness of their own recklessness.
“I have the knife for protection.” Alex showed them the dagger which had been thrown at Kate. Its blade was long and thin. It would penetrate easily and deeply: it was an assassins dagger. “You had both better go back and …” Alex paused, looked far more intently at the dagger, thought, then changed his mind. “I think it best if we all go on together. Follow me,” he said as he walked on quickly, not wishing to be challenged on his decision.
Cairo and Emmy looked at each other, looked back into the darkness behind them, then turned to follow Alex. He was not running, though he was moving at a decent pace.
The tunnels did split, then they split again and again, just as they had expected. They kept on splitting. Each time Alex held his flaming torch to the ground, before following Kate’s line of disturbed dust.
“Alex?” Emmy said quietly, almost apologetically.
He was trying to work out which tunnel Kate had taken as there were four to choose from, each with amazingly little dust on the ground. Alex’s determination to analyse everything far more intently before acting had long since fallen by the wayside. He had gone with his gut instinct after taking a closer look at the dagger. “I cannot work out which way she went, or, why there is no dust here.”
“Alex?” Emmy said far less apologetically.
“Sorry, what is it?”
“May I suggest that you stop looking at the floor for a clue?”
He looked up from the floor, to peer down each tunnel in turn, then turned to Emmy. He was going to say that he couldn’t see anything, no clue, when he saw Cairo rigid with fear; not looking down, neither forward nor back, but directly up. The ceiling here was higher than it had been, quite a bit higher. Looking up he saw nothing, absolutely nothing. His mind in overdrive he felt as though he should be running, but from who or what?
Emmy surreptitiously raised a finger. Alex followed it upwards. She wiggled it to tell him to look slightly more to his right: which he did.
Alex could see nothing except a large area of blackness – a common sight in ancient temples and tombs all over Egypt, caused by the smoke from fires of later times – yet he could see fear in the eyes of Emmy and total, paralysing fear, in Cairo. He still felt as though he should be running and wondered why Emmy had not. Cairo did not look capable of moving, let alone running.
“Got you … now you’re mine.” There was a thwack, as Kate used a rather tasteful green granite shabti to render the now prone man she had been chasing unconscious. She had grabbed the nearest thing to hand. Finally, he was down, and Kate was going to make sure that he stayed down. She had run through enough dark tunnels, had caught herself far too often on the unforgiving walls in her pursuit, for one day. There was no way that she was going to let her plan fail. He was down and out; she was borderline ecstatic.
Sitting on a square wooden box, used to hold the four canopic jars of the deceased, she took a good look at the shabti whilst recovering from what had been a very long run. It had been far heavier than she would have thought, being only around twenty centimetres tall. It’s innocent face with a Mona Lisa smile belied its recent use. A scarab across its chest, that when projected to life size would make that of Bast’s seem almost insignificant; its intricately carved hieroglyphs in a line down its front, as well as on the reverse, showed a precision of detail rarely seen: everything about this shabti shouted quality. To cut and sculpt a material as hard and dense as green granite, in ancient times, would have required great strength, the strongest precision tools, an extraordinary amount of time, and, for the purchaser, deep pockets. Only the wealthiest of the wealthy could afford to place a piece as exquisite as this in a tomb.
Picking up the flaming torch she had let go of, to make her dive for the ankles of the thief, she inspected the burial chamber, for that was where she was, in a burial chamber that had obviously not been robbed in antiquity or opened by archaeologists who would have plundered it with the best of intentions, splitting up its contents to sit in various museums around the world. Everything was here that would be needed to make somebody very comfortable in the afterlife, or so the ancients had thought. The aroma of ancient perfume remained in the air, the ancient oils’ fragrance dimmed, though not stale. Dried flowers, that would probably fall to dust upon being touched, sat in a heavily decorated golden vase on what had to be a woman’s dressing table. Rings, earrings, necklaces, even false nails – all of pure gold – intermingled with black curly wigs, cakes of crumbling makeup, eyeliner, and, much to Kate’s surprise, very course false eyelashes. Its polished metal mirror, covered in a layer of dust, had obviously tarnished over the years.
Wiping her hand across it, she was immediately able to make out a face behind her, one which was moving closer … quickly. Spinning around she thrust out her flaming torch, causing her assailant to take several paces backwards whilst issuing a bloodcurdling scream which must have been able to be heard throughout the hills of El Moalla.
Spinning, turning, screaming, whilst grabbing wildly at his burning face, the thief she had hit so hard that she never, not for a second, thought that he would ever stand again, without the help of Hathor – the ancient goddess of nurturing, love, fertility, who suckled the injured back to health – had not only stood, he had made a second attempt on her life. The dagger that had fallen to the floor would, on closer inspection, prove to be identical to the one he had thrown earlier, that had sliced so easily through the palm of Alex’s hand.
It was as if he had been programmed to kill Kate, because despite his injuries, despite his badly burned face, from which skin dripped to reveal teeth and jawbone, whilst allowing one eye to drop down from its socket, he was now making all the signs of wanting to kill her with his bare hands.
If the situation had not been so serious Kate would have laughed. He stepped towards her, hair still alight, arms outstretched, unsteady on his feet, in the best tradition of the mummy movies of old. Turning, she took hold of the gold flower vase which she flung at him. It was heavy, really heavy. He knocked it away in mid-flight, its scented oil contents spraying wildly before igniting him in a fireball. The burial cha
mber lit up with a light so intense it reached every corner, though it was one corner in particular that Kate was drawn to.
In the very darkest corner of the now brightly lit burial chamber, she fleetingly saw Hathor morph into Sekhmet then disappear.
Any thoughts Alex had had that Cairo could not run left him. He was nearly bowled over in his friend’s desperation to be anywhere except where they now stood. The bloodcurdling scream which had raced past them, the multiple pairs of giant black eyes looking down from above, would have been enough to get anybody moving. The addition of gleaming white teeth, with seriously pointed fangs, around which a moist pink tongue was moving, in a mouth, in mouths big enough to take a head off in one bite, made the decision to run an easy one.
Cairo was well out in front, Emmy was trying to run slow enough to stay with Alex, though her fear, her wish for survival took over. “Sorry,” she shouted back as she disappeared off into the distance.
“Go,” Alex had wanted to say, though he was running so hard that he did not have enough breath for words.
Cairo and Emmy crashed into each other, after only realising that they were approaching a solid wall at the very last moment. Picking themselves up in panic, they headed down a tunnel to their right that had light glimmering at the end. With the sound of whatever the giant beasts were that were after them becoming ever closer, Cairo flung himself out into the light, Emmy followed. A forward roll, followed by several unintentional cartwheels, before they were bounced off various rocks and bumps in the ground, as they both headed uncontrollably down a steep white rock slope, coming to rest, moaning and groaning, bruised and bleeding, beside an equally battered and beaten multi-coloured Volvo.
Kate watched as her assailant stopped burning unnaturally quickly. Her own flaming torch was also dimming; her breathing was laboured; her skin clammy. This was a sealed tomb: the air it had contained had been used up by the fire. She had raced straight in, so it had not been sealed then, or it had been unsealed just to let her in, to let them in. Hathor, Sekhmet; what was going on? Her knees buckled, she sank to the floor. Nobody knew where she was. “I’m alone in the past,” went through her mind before nothing went through her mind, it was her last thought.
Chapter 11
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A Time of Death
Alex, in the certain knowledge that running was not for him, that he could never outrun whatever was chasing him, had to come up with something quickly if he was to evade being caught … or eaten! Falling was something he could do. It used to be totally uncontrolled, but of late he had been secretly practicing his slide and drop technique, using it to great effect, if not with total confidence, only recently.
The sounds behind him were becoming louder extremely quickly: the clicking of teeth, the beating of wings sent him into panic mode, but there was no more speed, he was running flat out. Seeing the black line of a slender gap between the bottom of the wall to his left, and the floor, he was pushed into acting before it was too late. A slide, drop, then push himself into the narrow space was his intention.
Slamming his foot down, whilst dropping down, should have resulted in a slide, and it would have done so, if the floor had not been so perfectly swept, leaving not even a trace of sand to slide upon. Flipping over himself before landing hard, he saw his flaming torch slide off into the distance; darkness wrapped itself around him. Adrenaline kicking in, he rolled to where he knew the gap was. It was a tight fit at first, though became less so the further he was able to wriggle his way in. Raising a hand, he could now feel nothing at all overhead.
Whatever had been following him had already shot past. He could see nothing, feel pain, yes, but see absolutely nothing. Concerned that he may plunge into a deep burial shaft, he needed light before he dared move any further. Reaching for his phone he involuntarily made the decision that he would have to live with a permanently cracked screen. Just from the light emanating, as he searched for the flashlight app, he could see that he was in a burial chamber: the large granite sarcophagus, just a metre or so to his left, being a fairly decent clue. The single LED, that his phone used as the flash for its camera, gave out an extremely bright white light.
As he stood, he deduced that the tomb had been robbed in antiquity, though remained undiscovered by archaeologists: everything had been disturbed and there was no sign of any gold, so it had been robbed in ancient times, yet there was so much here that archaeologists would die to get their hands on, so much that had it been discovered would be in climate controlled cabinets within a museum. A quick search failed to reveal any other exit than the way he had come in, the way the ancient tomb robbers must have gained access.
With the floor covered with statues of Sekhmet in varying sizes, it was not the easiest burial chamber to move around. Many more were piled up in the corners. Sitting, standing, stone, pottery, painted, plain, some were really miniature, most were small in size, around twenty to thirty centimetres – though one was at least twice life size, with the head of the goddess fitting into a hole in the ceiling that appeared to have been specially prepared for it – there was literally every type of Sekhmet that could be imagined, bar one. None came close to the one that he owned, the one of Sekhmet standing with her arms crossed, inlaid with lapis lazuli, before being finished with a rare gold glaze.
He did not feel too bad from his awful landing, even his hand, for the most part, had stopped bleeding. He had felt worse, far worse, after a close encounter with Kate. Right now, he would have felt really awful had she witnessed his crash landing. Thinking of her for the first time in ages had the effect of refocusing his mind. He had to find her, help her, possibly rescue her … Cairo and Emmy also. With a few hurried photos of the tomb taken, along with a close-up of the cartouches on the sarcophagus, he was soon flat on the floor and ready to slide out, only pausing to place two miniature, though expertly carved and painted statues of Sekhmet, which had caught his eye, in a pocket as he did.
Standing in the tunnel, his phone tucked away in a pocket, he looked back into the darkness as he listened. There was nothing at all in the way of sound, though, feeling somewhat hot and sweaty, his back alerted him to a slight breeze. Turning to face the way he had previously been running, he could now see that the very faint light in the distance was not, in fact, his flaming torch, but the colour of daylight.
Slowly, carefully, and with great caution, he headed towards the light. Every step took an age, as his movements had to be silent. Also, he most definitely did not want to use his mobile to illuminate the area. Though he wanted to run, to get out just as quickly as he could, he had no idea if the light reaching the tunnel was through an exit big enough for him to be able to use, or at a height he could reach. He would do nothing that could possibly alert the fanged beasts to his whereabouts before he knew that he could escape the tunnels.
Though the daylight was not yet close enough to be powerful, he intentionally adverted his eyes away from it. This allowed him to make out so much more around him than a just a few minutes before. His ability to look at the walls and see entrances to tombs that were not there – or that were most likely there, though not yet discovered – would, in the recent past, have unnerved him, now it intrigued him.
Finally, he was standing at the end of the tunnel, on the top edge of a long steep slope, down which Cairo and Emmy had careered. He could see nothing; nobody. The white of the desert was broken, some way off to his right, by the railway line, the irrigation canal, palm trees, and then the Nile. Everything else was white for as far as the eye could see and that was a long, long, way.
As he stood there wondering where Kate, Cairo and Emmy could have gone, his mind kept taking him back to the ninety-degree bend in the tunnel. It felt wrong. To cut a tunnel into a hill, the tomb entrance should be directly in line with that tunnel – extremely heavy granite sarcophagus’ were virtually impossible to navigate around tight corners, regardless of however many Egyptians would have been pushing, pulling or shoving – yet, turning to look back
, he was absolutely convinced that there was no tomb directly ahead.
Armed with the knowledge that he could escape, both quickly and easily, should those fanged monsters come after him, he stepped back inside the tunnel. Having taken in overly warm fresh air, the smell of bat urine hit him as his world went dark again. It was the smell that emanated through all ancient tunnels which had openings to the great outdoors. Less than five minutes of being confined in the dark and he would be able to see again, around ten minutes and the smell of bats would become barely noticeable, though he hoped that he would not have to be back in the tunnel for that long.
“Thanks, but I didn’t need these,” Emmy held out the dark green fleshy leaves of a plant that Rose said would take the pain away from her wounds: break in two and rub on any painful area had been her instruction.
Cairo eagerly went off to shower and change, holding the leaves and galabeya given to him by Rose.
Rose had bundled Emmy and Cairo into her Volvo before she had driven them across really bumpy terrain that showed no signs of ever having been a road, arriving at the gaffirs hut below the entrance to Ankhtifi’s tomb, where, in the absence of the gaffirs, they had made themselves at home. Emmy had showered outside, just as Kate and Alex had on their first visit here. She had found it to be most relaxing. The only difficult part had been trying to get into the galabeya, which Rose had presented her with, whilst being very wet.
“Don’t worry about the leaves, just drop them anywhere outside; though it might be a good idea if you made a mental note of what they look like.” Rose poured freshly boiled water, from a heavily dented aluminium pan, into three typically Egyptian tea glasses. Passing one to Emmy she said: “They contain good antiseptic properties. You can also chew on them if you have an upset stomach. Gadeem swears by them. And Ramses never lets his army go anywhere without each soldier having a few upon him. Many an ancient battle has been lost by soldiers being sick.”
Ankhtifi's Papyrus Page 10