by Cherry Adair
Thorne stopped and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close. His chest was broad and solid, and he smelled achingly familiar, his natural musk coupled with the smoky odor of burning wood. Holding her tightly, he brushed his mouth over the crown of her head. “It’s just a theory at this point, okay? We don’t know anything for sure. Not yet. Let’s reserve judgment until we have all the facts.” After giving her another one-armed hug, he let her go.
“There’s nothing to be gained by you fretting over this here,” he told her briskly before turning his back to continue walking.
“I’ve never fretted in my life,” Isis told him pertly.
Thorne laughed, and they continued walking in silence.
Cleopatra had portrayed herself as the human representation of the goddess Isis, wife of Osiris. Isis tried to pull in stray details from memory, bits of conversations, her heart racing. Mark Antony, Cleo’s lover, was often considered the human form of the god Osiris.
Isis struggled with her nebulous hypothesis while trying to maintain a logical conversation. She didn’t have to consider the possibility of Thorne’s theory too hard. Things were falling into place like tumblers in a safe, unlocking current and ancient secrets that had been secreted for centuries.
Her makeshift torch winked out, the crunchy burnt end falling to the floor, dangerously close to her foot. “One down, one to go. I don’t want to think about what we’ll do when yours goes out, too.”
“We’ve got a bit of time. What do you think about my conjecture?”
Isis could now see only what was directly in front of Thorne’s booted feet. The walls were once again dark, hiding their secrets. Their story. “God, it does make some convoluted sense.” Darkness didn’t usually bother her, but this darkness was oppressive and stuffy. She was so thirsty she’d drink… Pepsi. Her skin itself felt tight and parched, and even her hair crackled dryly around her face. Water! she screamed in her head.
There was absolutely no point sharing her desperate thirst with Thorne, who must be even worse off than she was. “But don’t you think the coincidence of your bad guy knowing my father is way the hell out of the realm of possibility? Of credibility?”
“Granted, I don’t believe in coincidences, but they do happen. The world of Egyptology isn’t that large. It’s feasible that the two knew each other, or at least knew of each other. It wouldn’t have been hard for good old Boris to buy your father a round or two. Here, or in London, or even in Seattle.
“Your father could’ve bragged about the find of a lifetime. Yermalof could retire and not work another day in fifty lifetimes if he fenced Cleopatra’s wealth.”
“Wouldn’t you, in your capacity as an MI5 operative in charge of rooting him out, have heard if the market was flooded with Queen Cleopatra’s antiquities?” She was sure Thorne’s torch was getting dimmer and dimmer, and she slipped her hand from his belt to lace her fingers with his. The prospect of getting lost in the tomb, and being alone, scared the crap out of her.
Her stomach growled loudly. “Sorry. How long have we been walking, do you think?” Two, three hours? A month?
“Half an hour to forty minutes. Are you tired? Want to stop and take a breather?”
“I’d rather take a breather of fresh air while I drink a gallon of iced Coke while sitting in a deep bathtub, thank you.”
“The air here smells fresher. I think we’re heading in the right direction.” He squeezed her hand. “We’ll be out of here before you know it.”
“From your lips—” The air smelled no different here than it had smelled five hundred miles back. Dust, must, and the sex they’d had earlier. She smelled it on herself, and on Thorne, and just thinking about sex with Thorne made her girl parts throb and she didn’t have even a drop of moisture to spare to lubricate something she wasn’t going to use for a while.
So no thinking about light, water, fresh air, or sex. She was running out of topics.
“Something like what you’re talking about would be almost impossible to keep a secret. And Dylan claims he’s discovered the tomb as well, and he swears to have solid, undeniable proof, and the blessings of the powers that be to dig there.”
She thought of the painting of Osiris and Isis in the corridor behind them. Her father had always maintained that Cleopatra and Mark Antony and been buried together.
Two suicides. Antony first, and then his lover…
“When we get out of here, let’s go find your ex-lover and see what he has to say.”
The walls and ceiling were covered with images, too many to even try to guess who or what they represented, And even in the low light, Isis could see the gleam of gold and precious stones. “I told you, I never slept with him.” Moving the button around in her mouth didn’t produce much moisture, and she licked her parched lips, which just made her thirstier.
“I bet it wasn’t for lack of him trying,” Thorne’s voice echoed. He didn’t appear that interested by the seated ten- or twelve-foot-high statues lined up on either side of the corridor now. Isis recognized the ovals depicting names. Whose, she had no idea. But they wore the high crown with a snake curved on the front. The crowns might mean royalty, but Isis thought perhaps they also represented Osiris, who was the god of the afterlife.
Or Mark Antony.
“He lied about being in the hospital when your father went out on the dig.” Thorne lifted her fingers to kiss her knuckles in a strangely romantic gesture. “Let’s see what else he’s bullshitting about.”
“I know you don’t like him.” Isis narrowed her eyes to see if that would help her figure out who the people were—royalty? Gods? Several had their arms crossed, holding the traditional crook in one hand and flail in the other. “Frankly I don’t like him that much, either,” she told Thorne. Squinting didn’t allow her to see any better, nor did it help her identify who or what she was looking at.
“But I can’t see him masterminding an elaborate kidnapping plot replete with camping equipment, and a helicopter to seal us in here. It just doesn’t seem like his style.” The doorway up ahead had two giant statues, painted black, with gold headdresses and staffs, standing guard on either side. For such enormous statues the doorway itself was small, the size of a normal door in a house. Not the grand entrance to an important tomb. There was also, oddly, a faint smell of ammonia.
“Maybe not his style, but certainly Yermalof’s. And styles change when there are millions if not billions of dollars up for gra—Bloody hell!” Thorne stopped dead and Isis bumped into his back.
They passed from the corridor, between the feet of one of the statues, and into a chamber. Thousands of intricate and exquisitely painted images and glyphs decorated the walls. Strange animals, statues standing guard, and gold—everywhere.
In the middle of the chamber, side by side, were two gold shrines.
“Oh. My. God.”
“Holy bloody hell!”
The torch went out, plunging them into darkness.
ISIS LET OUT A little shriek the instant it went dark. Her hand in his was clammy and cold. In the few moments he’d had to see where they were, Thorne already knew there were no other openings leading from this chamber; if there had been, none of this wealth would have survived the centuries. This was the end of the line. “Don’t panic.” He kept his voice low and calm.
“I won’t as soon as you tell me why not!”
“This is within yards of where your amulet came from.”
“Are you saying my father was right here?”
“Close enough.” His sixth sense gave him pinpoint accuracy. Professor Magee, or whoever had given Isis her amulet, had found it within a hundred feet of where they were standing.
“Take out your camera. We can use the flash to see if there’s another corridor leading away from here.”
“God, yes!” Her voice shook slightly as she shifted. “Excellent idea!” Not letting go of his hand, she snapped open the camera bag. “Hold this.” She started handing him contents of the case, which he gathered in the c
rook of his arm since he was still holding the now-dead torch.
He heard her remove the lens cap.
“Point it ahead. Let’s see what we have.”
A brilliant wash of light illuminated the tomb, and it looked even bigger than it had appeared by the meager, dull light of the sputtering torch. Gold bounced back the light from the flash, reflecting off surfaces so that the whole placed gleamed like a sunbeam breaking through dark clouds.
“I thought I imagined it, I wanted to see it so badly. Mark Antony and Cleo! Oh, my God, Thorne! We found their burial place.” She dragged him forward in the darkness. A couple of things fell from his arms, and he paused to dump everything on the floor near his feet in a pile to gather later. If there was a later. He didn’t want to point out the obvious, that while the find was spectacular—monumental, in fact—it meant they were still at a dead end, literally.
“It doesn’t look as though anything in here has been touched in over three thousand years.” The flash went off again, giving Thorne a quick impression of the two giant shrines, each measuring at least sixteen or seventeen feet by about twelve feet, and at least nine feet high. They were positioned side by side with just a few feet between them.
“Again,” he ordered, reaching out to touch the wall of the one closest to them. Some kind of wood, cedar probably, covered with plaster, gilded and inlaid with precious and semiprecious stones. It looked as though it had just been erected that day. It was mind-boggling to realize it had been placed there three thousand years ago.
The flash went off, showing them the double sloping roofs and some of the hieroglyphics. Another flash. He got an impression of the brilliant blue background, hieroglyphs, and a shitload of gold.
Impressive as hell, undoubtedly the discovery of the twenty-first century.
They’d stumbled across what everyone else was willing to kill for.
“Did you see the double tyet-knot amulets? Those are Isis and Osiris.” Flash. “And on the end there, the protective wedjat-eyes… Oh, Connor, I wish my father could see this. Look at the details in these.” She ran her fingers reverently over a sunken relief of a headless lion.
“Maybe he will one day.” Thorne tried to keep each flash image in his head so he could reexamine it in his mind’s eye. “Take lots of pictures.”
With each burst of light he was more interested in seeing if there was a way out. He wasn’t willing to spend a whole hell of a lot more time here. If there was no exit, then they had to negotiate the tunnel back to the original chamber. Isis might’ve gotten a second burst of energy, but he’d noticed her slowing footsteps and lack of energy fifteen minutes ago. She needed water—hell, they both needed water, to replenish what they were sweating out in the too-warm confines of the tomb.
“Let’s walk around to the other side.” The stink of ammonia was stronger behind the two shrines. Ammonia usually indicated bats. Tombs were a favorite hangout for them. He didn’t hear any squeaking.
“Okay.” There was a little bounce in her step as he felt his way along the wall of one of the shrines. “These are like Russian nesting dolls.” Flash. “There are usually at least five or six shrines one inside the other before reaching the sarcophagus inside. I would love, love, love to go through each one… I’d love getting out of here more, however.”
“Working on it.” All around the perimeter of the chamber were piles of Coptic jars, statues of all sizes, and piles upon piles of jewelry and ornamentation. What there wasn’t was a fucking door.
“To be the first person to lay eyes on Cleopatra in thousands of years…” She laughed as she took another series of shots. “I see now how easy it was for my father to get the bug, and why he never wanted to leave Egypt.”
“Flash the ceiling.”
She did so. “What are we looking for?”
“Bats.”
“Ew. Is that the smell?”
He nodded, which she couldn’t see. “I didn’t see any, did you?” Didn’t see them, but knew they were somewhere close by. “If there are bats around, there’s a way in and out of the tomb close by.”
“Bats can squeeze into teeny-tiny holes, right? There might be an opening that’s only bat—”She stopped his forward motion with a sharp tug of his hand. “Hang on, stand here.” She positioned him. “Look straight ahead.” Flash.
“Do you see that?” Her voice rose in excitement.
“What am I looking at?” A narrow recessed panel, carved out of limestone, was set in the wall. A couple of statues in rich garb, holding hands, sat in a two-foot-high niche. Like everything else here, it was beautifully executed and covered with gold and stones.
“It’s a soul door—a false door.” She stepped closer and got off another flash. “The statues are to offer the souls refuge if the body’s stolen.”
“Lovely,” he said with a bit of a bite. “But we’re looking for a real door, reme—” The words cut off abruptly when he heard a faint murmur of voices beyond the wall. He squeezed Isis’s fingers, but there was no need. She too had heard the voices, and went dead still.
Suddenly a pinpoint of light shone through the solid stone soul “door” from the other side. “Don’t move,” Thorne breathed, squeezing her hand.
Moving stealthily, he went to the small hole and peered through it.
At eye level were the bats they smelled. Thousands of them, clinging in a black mass to the ceiling. Clearly not bothered by either the light or activity below them, they clung to the ceiling. About a hundred feet below them was another chamber, brightly lit by massive floodlights. Thorne made out piles of artifacts, carriages, giant statues, shiny trinkets piled in boxes, lids nearby. Furniture, beds, chests, chairs, and tables were piled one on top of the next, and baskets and boxes were everywhere. Some neatly stacked, the rest in untidy piles.
A storeroom of some kind.
A way out.
A robed man circled the room, turning off each light and leaving that area shadowed as he moved to the next. A small group of men, dressed in Western wear, clustered nearby, conversed without fear of being overheard.
Their voices carried fairly well through the soul door. But the susurrus of wings, squeaks of the bats, and distance made it hard to get more than a word here and there. Still, he was pretty sure he could identify the man in charge by his size, and the sound of his voice. Surprising, but not completely unexpected.
Behind him, he heard Isis’s slightly unsteady breathing. But she didn’t insist on taking a look herself, and she didn’t say a word.
The men stayed another ten minutes, walking the area, pointing out objects, which one guy noted on an electronic tablet. A few moments later, the lights and the voices faded away, leaving the stink of ammonia and the rustle of the bats.
“WHAT DID YOU SEE?” Isis asked softly when she heard him move away from the wall. He found her hand unerringly in the dark, and wound his fingers tightly with hers. His touch immediately centered her.
“Looks like they’re packing up the artifacts for transportation.”
“Who, where, and why?” The indignation in her voice was clear.
“In light of what I just witnessed, I have my suspicions.”
“Care to share?”
“The guy in charge appeared to be Dr. Khalifa Najid.”
“The Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources? That son of a bitch! He knew the tomb was here all along, and lied to us.”
Thorne smiled at her horror. “He’s the bad guy. Bad guys have a tendency to prevaricate to cover their nefarious deeds.”
If the information wasn’t pissing her off, Isis would’ve smiled at his very British and oh-so-dry delivery. But hearing that the man in charge of the new recreational area, the man who had lied to her face about knowing her father, really set her off and made her want to go and confront him. Preferably with a strong force of police officers beside her. Or just Thorne.
“This is more than a nefarious deed! He knew my father found this tomb. Knew, damn him. Worse than l
ying right to my face, is that he’s depriving the world of—” Incensed, the words logjammed. “He’s covering up a find with major historical impact! It’s a criminal act.”
“Well, we can’t do anything to remedy that while we’re still trapped here. First things first. Did you give me the hand sanitizer a while ago?”
Okay, that wasn’t the furious response she was looking for, but she knew him well enough to know he was processing something. She hoped when he was done, he’d fill her in. But she made a mental note that in the future she needed to teach him how to play well with others. Or at least, play well with her. “You want to clean your hands?” Of course, that was supposing that there’d be a future for them.
He started walking back around the shrine, his limp more pronounced. Isis suspected she was more aware of how badly he was limping due to the stygian darkness. “I want to relight the torch. See how to get down to that level.”
“You do realize I have no idea what you’re talking about, right? What level?”
“There’s a chamber below this one—eight or nine stories below this one. The temple must be built on a steep hill. Some chambers on this level, and at least that one on a much lower level. There were men and equipment down there, so that’s the way out. All we have to do is find a way down.”
He leaned over, and she heard him rummaging through the stuff he’d tossed on the floor. “Give that to me. I’ll put it back in my bag. You never know when we’ll need a notebook or a pack of tissues.”
Thorne squirted sanitizer on his torch, then there was the flare of his lighter.
“Holy cow! I can’t believe how much better I feel with that little bit of fire. I’m going to add a lighter to the contents of my camera bag and carry it everywhere I go from now on.”
“One would hope you wouldn’t be trapped in an Egyptian tomb very often,” Thorne said dryly, stalking off to run the torch across the surface of the east wall.
“I’m going to take a bunch more pictures, okay?”
“Go ahead; the flash will help over here.”
Isis wasn’t any less thirsty or tired, but knowing for sure that there was a way out gave her a new burst of energy. She took shots of the two shrines from every angle. Whether her father had Alzheimer’s or memory loss, he’d appreciate the magnificence of Cleo’s last resting place.