The Iron Tomb

by Peter Vegas

  “I thought he was into Egyptology?”

  “That’s a hobby. Computers are his day job. That’s how he made his millions.”

  It was Sam’s turn to laugh. “Millions, eh? Now I don’t feel so bad about you paying for my breakfast this morning.”

  Before Mary could reply, a small THANK YOU box appeared on the screen in front of Sam. “It’s finished. Now what?”

  “Well, it will take a while to do its thing. . . .”

  Sam cut her off. “A while? Listen, I can’t hang around here. I’m already pushing it as it is.”

  “That’s cool. You don’t need to stay. I can monitor the mole from here.”

  “Oh, okay. All right, then.” Sam wondered if Mary had detected the trace of panic in his voice. If she did, she didn’t let on. “Do I need to leave the computer on? Someone could notice.”

  “Nope. It’s doing its magic in the server, not the computer. I’ll ring you as soon as I know anything. What will you do now?”

  Sam realized he hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Probably go back to Jasper’s storeroom. Keep out of sight.”

  “Okay. Well, I’ll ring as soon as I have anything, I promise. You take care.”

  “No worries,” Sam said lightly, overdoing the cheerfulness to make up for the previous outburst.

  Sam put the phone back in his pocket and switched the computer back to sleep mode. The blue glow that spilled across the desk pad added a trippy sci-fi look to his pizza sketch.

  He was about to stand up when he noticed something odd. There were letters on his pepperoni pizza. He hadn’t drawn them. They had appeared when he had been adding the extra cheese. The shading had revealed grooves in the paper made when someone, presumably his uncle, had written on the sheet that had once been on top.

  Sam remembered seeing a detective movie where they had done the same thing on a pad next to a telephone to find a number, and it gave him an idea. He began gently shading the area around the sketch. Other letters quickly appeared and finally two numbers.

  The day before, it would have meant nothing to Sam, but the reading up on Akhenaten had paid off. Nefertiti, he now knew, was Akhenaten’s queen. He wasn’t sure about the 18. Maybe it was her age. Now he had something else to add to his growing collection of confusing clues.

  Sam quickly removed the top page of the desk pad and then ran for the door. His time was well and truly up. He could only hope that the guard was so caught up in his TV show that the pizza boy had slipped his mind.

  Sacrificing silence for speed, Sam tore down the five sets of stairs like it was an Olympic sport, pausing only when he reached the fire exit on the ground floor. This was the moment of truth. If the guard or, even worse, the police, was looking for him, they would surely have posted someone on the exit. There were two options: open the door as silently as possible and check the coast was clear, or go for it.

  In the end Sam opted for a mix of the two. As quietly as he could, he unhooked the locking bar so the door would swing free. Then he took a deep breath and booted it open.

  He went left, because that was the way the door opened. As he sprinted along the back alley, he waited for startled cries to break out behind him, but the only noise he heard was the thumping of feet on the concrete. His feet. He made it to the corner of the building, and a quick look behind told him what he had already worked out—the alley was empty.

  Keeping to the shadows Sam moved down the side of the building, back toward the street. The danger was over. The tension that had built up in him over the past few hours melted away. He’d made it in and out of the EEF office, in the middle of the night, without getting caught.

  Back at St. Albans, Sam and his roommates had come up with a dare called The Mission. It involved sneaking out of the school at night to buy junk food at the local 7-Eleven. In theory it was totally doable. The boys had the route planned out. Sam had even sketched it. Out of the second-story window, down the drainpipe, across the lawn, and over the wall. From the safety of their beds at night there was always plenty of big talk, but no one had ever done it. Sam had gotten closest. One night he’d made it as far as the drainpipe before getting cold feet.

  Now, walking down one of Cairo’s back streets, Sam wondered how the 7-Eleven thing had ever been a big deal. He was buzzing. He wanted to ring his roommates and impress them with his exploits. He wondered if the phone Mary had given him would make international calls.

  By the time he had reached the main road, Sam had calmed down, and his thoughts drifted back to pizza. But for much more obvious reasons this time. He was starving.

  6

  END OF THE NIGHT SHIFT

  SAM WAS ON HIS THIRD slice of a pepperoni pizza that tasted only slightly better than his drawing would have. It had taken another chunk out of his cash reserves, but what bothered him was the feeling he wasn’t any closer to finding his uncle, despite the risks he’d taken. Sam had been sure he would find a solid lead at his uncle’s desk. Instead, he’d ended up with another cryptic clue. He hoped Mary’s e-mail hunt would uncover something.

  The thrill of getting away with the break-in had faded, and in its place came tiredness. Sitting at the chipped Formica table in the harshly lit twenty-four-hour snack food joint, his task seemed impossible. This was the state he was in when Mary called, which made it even harder to decipher the flurry of words that poured out of the phone.

  “Sam, you were right! Your uncle is in trouble; he’s been set up. He tried to e-mail you, but you didn’t get it!”

  Sam struggled to keep up with what Mary was telling him. “An e-mail? What does it say?”

  There was a brief silence on the other end, and when Mary spoke again she’d calmed down a fraction. “The mole found an e-mail sent by your uncle last Thursday morning at one a.m.”

  “From Alexandria?”

  “No. He sent it from the EEF office. He must have come back to Cairo.”

  “But I never got it.”

  “I know!” Mary struggled to contain her excitement. “Someone intercepted the message.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “To keep you from reading it? Make sure you came to Cairo? Maybe they wanted you to lead them to your uncle. Look, the mole is still tracking the location of the Alexandria e-mail, but I’m going to send you this new one now, so you can read it for yourself. But don’t you see, Sam? You were right about your uncle.”

  The wannabe pizza sat forgotten on the plate. Sam stared at his cell phone. The seconds passed like minutes until the small envelope icon flashed up. Sam clicked and read the message his uncle had wanted him to get three days earlier.

  From: Jasper Force j.force@eef.com

  Date: Thursday, July 23, 2015 at 01:07 AM

  To: s.force@stalbans.com

  My Sam,

  Things have taken an unexpected turn in the past few days. I have just found out I am about to be accused of stealing a large amount of money from my employers. I won’t go into all the details, but needless to say the allegations are completely false. I fear this setup is to do with my recent trip to Alexandria.

  I’m afraid I can’t say any more than that now. At this stage I am not sure whom to trust. I’ve come into the office like a thief in the night, but all I’ll be leaving with is one of the metal detectors.

  The other reason for my nocturnal visit was to send you this e-mail. I don’t think it’s safe for you to visit right now. Can you please arrange to stay over at St. Albans for the next week?

  I’m leaving Cairo now and intend to continue my original research, which I will follow to the source. I am not sure how long it will be before I can get in touch again. I have reason to believe I’m being followed, so I think it prudent to keep you out of it.

  I know this must all sound a bit dramatic from where you are sitting in Boston, and it could well turn out to be the overfired imagination of a silly old man, but better to be safe than sorry, eh?

  Sit tight, my boy. I will be in touch soon. I promise.
/>
  xxx Jasper

  The e-mail recharged Sam’s batteries. He read and reread it half a dozen times. There was no sign of a hidden message in this one, but his uncle had made his intentions clear. The “original research” he referred to had to be Akhenaten, and following it “to the source” could mean only one place: the city Akhenaten built as his new capital, El Amarna. Thanks to the map in Mary’s book, he knew exactly where that was.

  Sam checked his watch and was amazed to see it was three a.m. He still had a long walk back to the apartment, but that was nothing compared to the nearly two hundred miles he would have to cover to get to the city Akhenaten built to worship the sun god Aten. For that trip Sam was going to need more cash.

  It was nearly sunrise by the time he got back to Mitre Tower, but the walk had only fired Sam up even more. Questions and plans—and more plans and more questions—were bouncing around in his head. He didn’t know exactly where his uncle was in Amarna, but maybe the note he’d found on the desk pad was related to that. He decided to tackle one problem at a time. First, he needed cash, then transport to Akhenaten’s city.

  The plan was to get some sleep in the storeroom, scour the apartment for money, and then hit the road. But standing there in the hallway Sam changed his mind. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep. Why try? Better to keep moving.

  Before he entered the apartment, Sam listened for signs there was someone inside. When he didn’t hear anything, he unlocked the door. Everything was just as he’d left it. The question on his mind was whether Jasper had left any money. Sam vaguely remembered a small tin Jasper used to fish cash out of before they went out. A brown tin with a red lid. The kind you see in the kitchen. Sam started there. After all, he knew Jasper didn’t come up with the most original hiding places.

  Sure enough, in the cupboard above the sink was a tidy row of small brown tins with red lids. Each one was labeled. There was salt, pepper, curry. . . . He never got any further, because an arm inside a thick woolen sweater snaked itself around his chest and wrenched him away from the sink. Sam cried out in surprise as he was pulled back against the body of a large man.

  “Sam, listen to me. I have to talk to you.” The voice sounded muffled and terrifying. Sam was listening, all right, but he’d heard enough.

  Pure terror drove him now. The man’s grip was strong, and Sam felt like he was caught in a giant padded vise. What came next wasn’t based on anything he’d been taught or seen. It was purely instinct. There was no way he could break his captor’s grip. Especially being held from behind. So, instead, he dropped. Straight down to the floor.

  The move caught the man by surprise. One second he had the kid in a bear hug. The next he was hugging air. Sam hit the deck on all fours, scuttled toward the door, then sprang to his feet and ran like hell. He shot out of the apartment like a human cannonball, smashing into the wall opposite before regaining his balance and tearing off down the hall.

  The heavy thumping of boots told him what was happening behind. Then the man’s voice echoed down the corridor, angrier, more urgent. “Sam, wait! . . . outside!”

  The man’s pleas fell on deaf ears. Deaf ears attached to a fast-moving boy. Sam’s only thought was he had to get to the stairs at the other end of the corridor as rapidly as possible.

  Up ahead a shaft of light lit up the floor, and, just like that, a new escape route presented itself. One of the elevators had opened, and a weary night-shift worker in blue overalls stepped out, right into the oncoming traffic. Sam grabbed him by the arm. It was the only way to stop himself. His momentum spun him around the stunned man and catapulted him into the empty elevator. He lunged for the small button at the bottom of the panel. The one with two arrows pointing together. As the steel doors began their agonizingly slow slide together, Sam got his first glimpse of his attacker. A big, black mass. Black coat, black baseball cap pulled down over a bushy black beard. He had also built up considerable speed coming down the hall, but his stop was far less graceful than Sam’s. He plowed right into the dazed victim, and the last thing Sam saw was a tangled mess of blue and black arms. Then the doors finally met in the middle.

  Instead of the gentle vibration as the elevator began its journey, the small space shook violently as meaty fists pounded on the doors. Something was wrong, but in his panicked state Sam couldn’t work out why the elevator wasn’t moving. The banging stopped, and two rows of pink fingertips sprouted in the crack between the doors.

  The man was trying to pry the elevator open.

  Sam was seconds from being caught, and then the answer hit him. In his panic to get the doors closed, he’d forgotten what came next. He thumped the G button repeatedly. At first the elevator refused to respond, and then finally the steel box gave a short shudder, the fingers retracted, and Sam was lowered out of danger. The only thing that had saved him, he realized, was the fact that in his own haste the man chasing him had forgotten to push the elevator call button. That would have opened the doors instantly and sealed Sam’s fate.

  Gasping for breath Sam watched the small glowing lights above the door count off the floors. He was sure the man couldn’t make it down seventeen flights of stairs as fast as the elevator, but what if another elevator had been waiting?

  Eight . . . seven . . . six . . . Sam rocked nervously. What next? The doors would open soon. What should he do then?

  In the end, his legs did the thinking. The elevator stopped, and before the doors were halfway open, Sam had squeezed through and bolted. As he ran across the foyer, he played back the scene in the hallway. The man had been shouting something about “downstairs.” But it was all a blur, and the only thing he could focus on was the need to get away from the man upstairs.

  Sam burst out through the front doors of Mitre Tower, sending them flying back on their hinges and smashing into their respective doorstops. The double whammy created a noise that echoed up and down the street. It took a few more moments for Sam to realize it had been a fatal mistake.

  The noise would have woken the dead. It definitely woke the man sleeping in the car across the road. As Sam ran onto the street, he saw the man wake with a start and turn toward the building to identify the source of the noise. His eyes locked onto Sam. There was a flash of recognition, and then he started to get out of the car.

  “There’s someone downstairs.” The words the bearded man had been yelling assembled themselves in the correct order in Sam’s memory. The sight of this new threat drove Sam on, and he sprinted past the car and into the darkened alleyway that led to the maze.

  7

  MYSTERY SHOPPER

  “SOUK” IS THE ARABIC NAME for the local market. There are all kinds of souks, named after the products they specialize in, but the souk across the road from Jasper’s apartment sold all kinds of stuff. It was a rabbit warren of narrow interconnected alleys, lined with tiny shops offering everything from plastic buckets to fake Rolexes. Sam’s nickname for the place was the Stuff Maze and he’d gotten lost in it more than once. This time he wanted to lose the man chasing him.

  A few hundred feet in and he was already hopelessly disoriented, but what had become clear was that his hope of losing himself in a sea of people was never going to happen. Sam had never ventured into the souk this early in the morning. If he had, he would have known that it was a ghost town at this hour.

  He took the first left, then a right. Then the alley forked, and he went right again. He couldn’t hear if he was being chased and wasn’t going to waste time checking behind him.

  The alleyways were narrow and long. As he dodged the piles of fake plastic flowers and stacks of pots blocking his path, Sam knew his pursuer would be able to track him easily. He had to get off the street. At the next tiny intersection he went right, then quickly took another right and saw what he was looking for: an open door.

  Food shop? Home goods? Clothing store? Sam had no idea. He spotted a bit of everything as he darted in, almost tripping over the low counter. A startled old man appeared from behind
a newspaper. Sam smiled awkwardly and tried to look as if he knew what he’d come for.

  Compared to some of the other stores in the souk, this one was reasonably large—almost the size of his uncle’s apartment. There were three ceiling-high shelves running the length of the space, with just enough room at each end to get around. They were packed with pots, plastic bowls, and other shelf-sized household items. Sam hurried to the farthest corner from the door and proceeded to show a lot of interest in the goods displayed down at floor height. From his crouched position he was able to peer through the gaps in the three shelves and out the dirty window, into the alley.

  He watched and waited.

  The gentle rustle of newspaper told Sam that the shop owner hadn’t moved from his seat behind the counter. Perhaps he was used to young western boys running into his shop first thing in the morning.

  Seconds ticked by. Sam could hear two men talking farther down the alley, but apart from that, the place seemed deserted. Another rustle of the paper signaled the turning of a page. Perhaps the shopkeeper had forgotten about him? For the first time, Sam focused on the items on the shelf right in front of him. They were mostly schoolbooks. A quick scan of the rest of the shelves revealed nothing of interest, and Sam was about to go back to his peephole onto the alley when something made him take another look at the books. The one on the top of the pile was about the size of a notepad. The title read Hieratic Numerals, but it was the little scribbles underneath that had caught his eye. They looked exactly like the ones from the piece of paper under his uncle’s bed. Before Sam had a chance to open the book, he heard someone else enter the shop.

  “Excuse me,” said a man with a thick European accent. “I’m looking for my son. He came this way, I think. Have you seen him?”