The Iron Tomb

by Peter Vegas

  The faded and cracked white tiles that lined the walls of the corridor made the place feel like an old hospital. Perhaps in an effort to avoid this comparison, the owners had added tiles with hand-painted pictures of ancient Egyptian gods. They must have cost a bit more, because they had been used sparingly, spaced out at door handle height every few feet. The one beside the door to Jasper’s apartment featured a spooky sitting black cat.

  Sam stared at the cat. The cat stared back. Sam recognized the ancient feline from the documentary his uncle had made him watch. It was Bast. He glanced down at the e-mail again. Simply line up.

  The answer was right there on the page in front of him. The first letter on each line formed the message: Pat Bast.

  Sam reached out and placed his hand on the Bast tile. It was loose; the grouting around the edge had been chipped away. By digging his fingers into the edges, he was able to pull the tile out of the wall. Behind it a hole the size of a matchbox had been chipped into the concrete, and sitting inside was a small brass key.

  Sam couldn’t help grinning as he removed the key from its hiding place. He knew his uncle would be pleased at how quickly he’d solved the puzzle. After carefully returning the tile to its place in the wall, Sam let himself inside his uncle’s home.

  A first-time visitor to Uncle Jasper’s apartment would have thought the place had been ransacked. But Sam knew this was how it always looked. Jasper didn’t believe in tidying up after himself—or hiring someone to do it.

  Sam dropped his suitcase behind the door and collapsed into a chair at the small wooden table that marked the boundary between the tiny kitchen and the rest of the shoe box–sized room. As he sat there in the dark, the events of the past few hours finally closed in on him.

  Why was this happening to him? He hadn’t wanted to come back to this stupid city again. He thumped the table in frustration, and watched a piece of paper flutter off the table and slide across the floor. Old memories surged to the surface, thoughts he had worked hard to bury in the past few years, but in his exhausted state they were harder to push away. He’d been abandoned before, and this time, if his uncle was gone, that was it. There was no one else. That was why he’d run when Hadi had offered him the chance. To stay in that room with the police and be shipped home would have been throwing his fate into the hands of others. He was never going to let that happen again. His train of thought was a runaway now, and sleep loomed as the tantalizing solution to his trauma.

  The journey to the bedroom was a few short steps. An easier, more comfortable option than the foldout couch he was normally assigned. Despite his state Sam’s conscience nagged, telling him that now was no time to sleep. He consoled himself with the thought that he would be far more use to his uncle with a bit of rest. Just an hour, he told himself, and then he would make a plan. Before the aging mattress springs had finished groaning under his weight, the chatter of Sam’s mind had come to an end, and he drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  THE COCKROACH WAS ROBOTIC. A marvel of miniature engineering. The scraping sounds were coming from its spindly little legs as it scuttled up Sam’s chest toward his face. There was relief, seconds later, when he woke to find it had been a dream, but that feeling vanished almost instantly as Sam realized that the noises his imaginary cockroach had been making were inspired by identical and very real sounds coming from the door to the apartment.

  Someone was picking the lock.

  Sam eased off the bed, slow enough not to make any noise, but aware he had only seconds to hide himself. As he did, he was thankful he’d been so exhausted he hadn’t even gotten under the sheets. Sam could feel the thick layer of dust on the floorboards as he slid under the bed. There was a chance that whoever was trying to get in might not realize he was there. But at the same time Sam couldn’t help thinking that hiding under the bed had to be the single most obvious hiding place in the history of obvious hiding places.

  The bedroom door was ajar, and from his terrible hiding spot Sam watched the gap glow as light spilled in from the corridor. He saw a dark shape, then heard the front door click shut and darkness returned.

  Sam’s jaw locked so tight he could feel his teeth being forced back up into their gums. He tried to slow his breathing, conscious of any sound that might give him away, but at the same time listening intently for noises that could help form a picture of what was happening in the next room.

  Shuffling feet, then the shuffling of books. The intruder was at the kitchen table. Sam swallowed—an almost impossible feat, given the tennis ball–sized lump in his throat. There was a thud as one of the books was dropped back onto the table. Then more shuffling of feet as they headed to the bedroom.

  The door creaked as it was pushed open. Sam lay there, rigid with fear. In the moonlight he could just make out a pair of shiny black leather boots. They moved across the room until they were inches from his face; the tart smell of fresh polish filled his nostrils. Any second the boots would take a step back, a face would appear, and he’d be busted. But it didn’t happen. Instead, the boots turned and the intruder left the room, pulling the door closed behind him. There was more rustling of papers, more footsteps, then another click. Was that the front door? Sam allowed himself the luxury of a deep gulp of air, the first since he’d slipped under the bed. But he remained still, listening for any sign of danger.

  Sam was convinced that the final sound had been the apartment door closing, but what if it was a trap? A trick to flush him out? His breathing, fast and raspy, sounded like an old steam train struggling up a hill. He shut his eyes and tried to calm himself. It worked too well. His shattered mind took it as an invitation to shut down, and once again he drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  DESPITE THE DOUBLE-PANED WINDOWS, the horn symphony performed by Cairo’s early morning traffic acted as Sam’s wake-up call. Before his brain could remind him where he was and why, he tried to sit up and smacked his head on the frame of the bed. It was a sucker punch of a wake-up call and a rubbish way to start the day.

  He moved slower the second time, and as he slid out from his hiding place, Sam spotted something else hidden under the bed: an envelope jammed between the mattress and the bed frame. His body was sore after a night on cold floorboards, and now his head throbbed, but that was forgotten as he sat on the bed and opened the envelope. Inside, he found a swipe card for his uncle’s office and a small piece of paper. Sam’s excitement turned to confusion as he looked at the strange scribbles. Slipping his new discoveries into his pocket, Sam got up and went to check the rest of the apartment.

  Uncle Jasper’s home looked even worse in the harsh light of day, but none of that was the intruder’s fault. In fact they’d tidied the place up. The books and papers that had been scattered across the kitchen table were gone, making it officially the cleanest surface in the place.

  What was so important about the books? Sam tried to remember their titles, but he hadn’t paid any attention to them. At the time he’d just wanted to rest his head somewhere. He played that moment over in his mind, and the image of a piece of paper sliding off the table came back to him.

  He scanned the floor. The intruder had probably done the same thing, but Sam had the advantage of daylight. A small white triangle was sticking out from under the fridge. He grabbed the piece of paper and wiped the dust off it, but like the one he’d found in the envelope, he had no idea what he was looking at.

  Two weird clues in as many minutes. It was like the start of another one of Uncle Jasper’s educational adventures. But things were different this time. This was no game. His uncle was missing, and he was wanted by the police. Weren’t things supposed to seem a bit better in the daylight?

  As Sam sat at the kitchen table, the same script began to run in his head. How had he gotten into this mess? Twenty-four hours ago he had been preparing himself for another boring Egyptian vacation. Now he felt like he was fighting for his life. Maybe not his, but definitely his uncle’s.

  Beside
s the obscure clues, the swipe card to the EEF offices, and thirty bucks, Sam had little else going for him, and that made the other piece of paper in his pocket all the more important.

  When Sam had taken Mary’s number on the plane, he’d been thinking only about more ways she could help him with his water park plan, but everything had changed. Mary was his only friend in this weird town, and to find his uncle, he would need all the help he could get.

  4

  A BURGLAR IS BORN

  “SORRY ABOUT CALLING SO EARLY.”

  “No problem. I was up,” Mary said, taking a sip of her chocolate milk. “If you hadn’t called, Bassem would have made us go for a run, but I talked him into dropping me off here instead. I’ve got an hour before he’ll be back to pick me up.” She glanced out the window at the constant stream of cars. “I can never sleep in when I’m in Cairo. Don’t you just love the hustle and bustle of this place?”

  “Yeah,” Sam lied.

  On a normal vacation Sam would sleep in for as long as he could, but this morning he couldn’t wait to get out of his uncle’s apartment. It wasn’t the “being alone” thing. It was the feeling that he wasn’t doing anything to help his uncle. He’d paced the apartment until what he thought was a respectable hour, but eight a.m. was really only respectable if, like him, you’d been up since five thirty.

  He and Mary had met downtown at a large McDonald’s. Outside, hundreds of dusty vehicles clogged one of Cairo’s chaotic streets. Inside, Mary picked up exactly where she’d left off on the plane: bright and cheerful and talking nonstop. For Sam, it felt like the plane trip had been another life. Things had changed beyond belief in the short time since they’d seen each other last, and he was finding it hard to act as if everything were normal.

  “Sam, are you listening to anything I’m saying?”

  “Oh, sorry. What?”

  Mary laughed. “Do you get told off for not paying attention in school?”

  “You’ve got no idea,” Sam muttered to himself.

  “I was saying that I found a book on Akhenaten. It might aid you on your water park quest.” She slid a palm-sized book out of her handbag. “Don’t worry—it’s not very big. You won’t get bogged down in any actual work. I even underlined some of the main points for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mary frowned. “Are you okay? You don’t seem yourself. Well, what I mean is, you don’t seem like the Sam I met yesterday.”

  For an awful moment Sam felt like he was about to start crying. He dropped his head as if his cup of orange juice suddenly needed his full attention. No way. I am not going to start bawling in front of a girl I hardly know, he thought as he scrambled to control himself.

  “Sam, what’s wrong?” There was real concern in Mary’s voice now.

  He took a few deep breaths, and when he was sure the danger had passed, he started talking.

  * * *

  SAM TOLD MARY THE WHOLE story. From the moment he got off the plane to meeting her at McDonald’s. Afterward, he realized he’d been nervous about how she’d react—that she might tell him to stop acting so stupid and hand himself in to the police. But things didn’t play out that way at all. The first thing she did was ask if he thought his uncle might have taken the money.

  “No way,” Sam insisted. “It’s just not the kind of thing he would do. If you knew him, you’d know how crazy the idea was.”

  As Sam spoke, Mary nodded slowly, as though she were a doctor consulting with a patient. Then she looked Sam in the eyes and promised to do everything she could to help. It felt weird . . . a good weird. Sam wasn’t used to opening up to people. His school counselor would vouch for that. He had known Mary less than twenty-four hours, but he felt comfortable enough to admit how freaked out he’d been when the intruder had broken into the apartment. At that moment Sam was grateful to have Mary in his corner.

  “If your uncle didn’t steal the money, perhaps someone is trying to set him up. Can you think of any reason why?”

  Sam chewed on his lower lip. “Maybe it’s got something to do with this Akhenaten project.”

  “What about the metal detector?”

  “He probably did take one of those. But he’s allowed to. At the EEF they use them for their work.”

  The two clues Sam had found were on the table. Mary picked up the one that had been in the envelope. “Well, I can help you with this, for a start,” she said.

  Sam smiled. “I was hoping you could.”

  “Panehesy was one of Akhenaten’s high priests. He’s in that book I just gave you.”

  “What about those squiggly lines beside the name?”

  “Some kind of hieroglyphics, but I’m not sure. As for this”—she pointed to the four triangles—“I have no idea what they mean. When was the last time you heard from your uncle?”

  “His e-mail from Alexandria.”

  “Do you know exactly where he was in Alexandria?”

  Sam shook his head. “All I know is he was doing some research on Akhenaten.”

  “And Panehesy,” Mary added. “And if that piece of paper was worth hiding under his bed, it has to mean something.” Mary took another sip of her chocolate milk. “That swipe card for your uncle’s office. That will get you in?”

  Sam thought back to his last visit to the Egyptian Exploratory Fund. Their budget didn’t stretch far enough to cover flashy headquarters: Their office was on the fifth floor of a shabby old building not far from the McDonald’s. From what Sam could remember, the swipe card got you in the front door of the building and into the office.

  “It’ll get me in,” he said more confidently than he felt. “Why?”

  “Well, I know a bit about computers. Your uncle’s e-mail came from Alexandria, but it had to come through his company’s server. If I had his server ID, I could probably find out exactly where your uncle was when he sent you that last e-mail.”

  “Okay.” Sam had no idea what Mary was talking about. “So, how do you find out what his server ID is?”

  “I need you to send me an e-mail from his computer.”

  “You what?” Sam said. “I can’t just go into my uncle’s office and ask to use his computer. As soon as they see me, they’ll call the cops.”

  “I know. You’ll need to sneak in at night.”

  Sam searched Mary’s face for a sign she was joking. “You want me to break into the EEF?”

  Mary offered a weak smile. “It’s not breaking in if you have a card. It’s more like sneaking in. But you’re right. You can’t go in there while there are people around, can you? In fact, you probably shouldn’t even be out at all. The police could be out looking for you right now.”

  Sam glanced around the room. It suddenly felt like everyone in the place was watching him.

  “Relax,” said Mary. “I’ve been keeping an eye out. No one’s noticed you.”

  Two things occurred to Sam: The first was that he was going to have to start acting a lot smarter, or he wouldn’t get far at all. Of course the cops could be out looking for him, and he just came wandering down to meet Mary like a stupid kid. The other thing that struck him was how composed Mary seemed about the whole situation.

  “Have you done this kind of stuff before?”

  “What? Help a friend, who I just met on a plane, find his missing uncle and at the same time avoid the local police? Of course,” Mary said sarcastically. “I do it all the time.”

  Sam laughed. “It’s just you seem kind of . . . I don’t know. Like you know what you’re doing.”

  “Well, it’s a bit like Egyptology, isn’t it?”

  “Come again?”

  Mary pointed at the pieces of paper on the table. “We follow the clues. Put the missing pieces together. And solve the problem, which in this case is finding your uncle.”

  Sam wasn’t totally convinced by Mary’s IKEA kitset take on his problem, but her attitude made him feel better, so he went with it. “Well, I guess I need to wait till tonight and then get into Jasper’s
office and on to his computer,” he said with as much casual bravado as he could manage.

  “Exactly. When you get there, send me an e-mail, and I’ll take care of the rest. Have you got a mobile?”

  Sam shook his head. In response, Mary slid a slim silver phone across the table. “You can borrow this. My number is already in it.”

  “Um, thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. So, what will you do now?”

  “Head back to my uncle’s, I guess.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that whoever broke in might come back?”

  This was something Sam had thought about. “My uncle rents a small storeroom down the hall from his apartment. There should be enough room for me. I could go there.”

  Mary nodded, and Sam was pleased to have been able to show he wasn’t a complete amateur.

  “Why don’t you put this on,” she said, taking a green army-style cap out of her bag. “It’s not much of a disguise, but it will cover your face a bit.”

  “Wow, you really have thought about this, haven’t you?”

  “It’s fun . . .” Mary stopped herself and looked nervously at Sam. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to think I am treating this like a joke. I’m not. Your uncle is missing. It must be terrible for you.”

  “That’s okay,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “I’m grateful for the help.”

  Mary studied him. “There’s no one you can call at home?”

  “Back at school? No.”

  “Family?”

  Sam’s gaze reverted to his orange juice. “No, my uncle is my only family.”

  This was territory he didn’t want to get into. Not even with Mary.

  “We’ll find your uncle. I promise.”

  Sam nodded, keeping his eyes on his glass.