Seven Ancient Wonders

by Matthew Reilly

  —to reveal a bore-hole running horizontally through the obelisk, from east to west . . . again, just as West had found in Paris.

  Judah then had his crane-basket brought over to where the summit of the other obelisk—the one now in Paris—would have stood.

  ‘You have the measurements, Herr Koenig?’

  ‘To the millimetre, Herr Judah.’

  And so, using a caesium altimeter and a digital inclinometer to get the angles and the height absolutely correct, they erected a pipe-like cylinder on a tripod in their basket. They erected it horizontally, angling it according to their measurements, in effect, recreating the bore-hole of the missing obelisk, the bore-hole that would have sat above the third owl on that obelisk.

  They had got it just right when the orange rim of the Sun peeked over the eastern horizon and dawn came on the Day of Tartarus.

  The power of the rising Sun was instantly noticed by all.

  On this day, the Day of Tartarus, it was hotter, fiercer. It practically burned through the hazy low-hanging mist in dazzling horizontal shafts creating mini-rainbows in the air.

  Then it struck the uppermost tip of the obelisk—and the high needle of rock seemed to shine majestically—before the beam of sunlight slowly began to move down the obelisk.

  The American force watched it in awe.

  From his basket, Judah watched it in triumph.

  From his position down in one of the Humvees, Wizard watched it in grim silence.

  Then the sunlight struck the bore-hole on the existing obelisk and shone directly through it. . .

  . . . whence it continued on, shooting right into the pipe on Judah’s crane. . .

  . . . and suddenly the great shaft of sunlight combined with the unnatural mist to become a tiny laser-like beam of multi-coloured sunlight.

  The rainbow-coloured laser beam lanced out from the Temple, shooting in a dead-straight horizontal line westward, out across the Nile, out over the fields on the West Bank, out towards. . .

  . . . the great bay of brown cliffs that protected and defended the Valley of the Kings.

  No.

  It was more precise than that.

  The beam of light came to rest on the structure built into that bay of cliffs—a structure unique in all of Egyptian architecture, featuring two great rampways and three glorious colonnaded tiers.

  Hatshepsut’s Mortuary Temple.

  INSIDE HATSHEPSUT’S MORTUARY TEMPLE

  LUXOR, EGYPT

  20 MARCH, 2006, 0630 HOURS

  THE DAY OF TARTARUS

  The Americans made swift progress.

  The dazzling beam of sunlight had illuminated a lone archway at the far left of the lowest tier of the great structure.

  There a door was found, so well-concealed that it appeared to be part of the wall itself. But above it was a familiar symbol that until today had been attributed little significance:

  At the sight of the carving, Marshall Judah’s eyes shone with delight.

  The Americans were through the door in no time.

  Traps awaited them.

  A passageway filled with vicious swing-traps—long swing-blades that swooped out of slits in the ceiling and chopped one man’s head off.

  Then a partially-submerged chamber, the knee-deep water of which concealed leg-chopping blades. Fortunately, from his research, Koenig knew the safe route.

  Until Marshall Judah emerged from a stone doorway and stood on a platform that overlooked a gigantic subterranean cavern.

  It wasn’t as big as the supercavern that contained the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but what it lost in size, it made up for in artistry.

  Every stone wall had been fashioned by human hands. There was not a single rough surface in the place.

  It looked like an underground cathedral, with soaring high walls, a curved ceiling, and four immense sacred lakes arrayed in such a fashion that they created a wide raised path in the shape of a giant †. Great pillars of stone held up the superhigh ceiling.

  At the junction of the †—the focal point of the great underground hall—was a raised square platform, flanked on all four corners by obelisks. On this high platform lay an ornate glass sarcophagus.

  ‘Ornate’ was barely sufficient to describe it.

  It was crafted of gold and glass, and it lay underneath a high canopy crafted entirely of gold. The pillars of the canopy were not straight, but rather they rose in a bending, spiralling way, as if they were solidified vines.

  ‘The coffin of Alexander the Great. . . ’ Koenig breathed.

  ‘It was said to be made of glass,’ Wizard confirmed.

  ‘Wait a second. This looks familiar to me. . . ’ Judah breathed.

  Beside him, Francisco del Piero—like the others, his hands were cuffed—bowed his head in silence, tried to be invisible.

  Judah turned to Koenig.

  ‘Take some measurements with the laser surveying equipment.

  I want to know the length, height and breadth of this hall.’

  Koenig did so.

  After a minute, he reported: ‘It is 192 metres long, and 160metres wide at the widest point of the tee. Height of the cavern above the central junction is . . . 135 metres.’

  Wizard snuffed a laugh.

  Koenig turned. ‘What is so funny?’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Wizard said. ‘That canopy over the sarcophagus, the one with the twisted columns, it’s 29 metres high.’

  Koenig did the computations with his laser surveying gear . . . and turned to Wizard in surprise. ‘It is 29 metres in height exactly. How could you know this?’

  Wizard said, ‘Because this cavern has the exact same dimensions as St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.’

  Judah swung to face del Piero, who shrank even lower, if that was at all possible.

  Wizard went on, ‘If everything in the Roman Catholic Church is a reinvention of Egyptian Sun-worship, then why should St Peter’s be any different? Its dimensions are simply a replication of this sacred place: the resting place of the most prized Piece of the Capstone, the top Piece.’

  They proceeded to the great altar at the focal point of the †-shaped hall, where they beheld the gold-and-glass coffin.

  Through the glass, they saw only white powdery dust—the remains of the greatest warrior ever known, the man who had ordered the Pieces of the Capstone to be separated and scattered around the then-known world.

  Alexander the Great.

  A bronze Macedonian helmet and a lustrous silver sword rested upon the layer of white dust.

  And sticking up from the middle of the dust-layer—as if it had once been laid upon the dead man’s chest, only to see that chest erode over the course of two millennia—was a tiny apex of gold.

  A tip of a small golden pyramid.

  The top Piece.

  Without preamble, Judah ordered the coffin opened, and four of his men stepped forward, grabbed a corner each.

  Del Piero started forward, ‘For pity’s sake, do take care!’

  The men ignored him, removed the glass lid of the coffin roughly.

  Judah stepped forward, and with everyone watching tensely, reached in, dipped his fingers into the remains of Alexander the Great, and pulled from them. . .

  . . . the top Piece of the Golden Capstone.

  Pyramidal in shape, with a base the size of a square paperback book, it radiated power.

  More than that.

  It radiated a power and an artistry and a knowledge beyond anything mankind had ever devised.

  It was beyond man, beyond the limits of human knowledge.

  The crystal in its peak glittered like a diamond. This crystal array bored down the spine of the gold mini-pyramid, reappearing at the base.

  Judah gazed at it adoringly.

  He now held in his possession all seven Pieces of the Golden Capstone, something no man had done since Alexander the Great.

  He grinned.

  ‘It’s time to capture the power of Ra. Tartarus will arrive over Giza
at noon. To Giza, and a thousand years of power.’

  GIZA, EGYPT

  20 MARCH, 2006

  THE DAY OF TARTARUS

  THE GREAT PYRAMID AT GIZA

  It is perhaps the only structure on Earth known by name to every single member of the human race.

  The Great Pyramid.

  The most common misconception about the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World is that the three pyramids at Giza comprise a single Wonder.

  This is not the case.

  While Khafre’s and Menkaure’s additional pyramids are certainly impressive monuments, only one pyramid is known as the Great one: that of Khufu (or Cheops, as the Greeks called him). It is this pyramid alone that comprises the Wonder.

  In a word, it is breathtaking.

  Its dimensions are staggering: 137 metres high, while each of its base sides is 140 metres long. With the addition of its missing Capstone—lost in antiquity—perfect symmetry would be returned and it would once again resume its original height of 140 metres and its intended shape.

  It is estimated to weigh over 2 million tons, and yet, despite this unimaginable bulk, it contains within its mass the most intricate and beautiful passageways, all built with an exactness that defies belief.

  It has outlasted pharaohs and kings, tribal wars and world wars, earthquakes and sandstorms.

  Devotees of the Pyramid swear that it possesses unusual powers: it is said that no bacteria can grow inside the Great Pyramid. It is said that flowers planted inside it grow with unusual vibrancy. It is claimed to heal sufferers of arthritis and cancer.

  Whatever one’s beliefs, there is something about this man-made mountain that draws people to it, that entrances them. It defies time, it defies imagination. To this day, it is still not known exactly how it was built.

  It is the only man-made structure in history to defy the ravages of Nature and Time, and indeed the only one of the Seven Ancient Wonders known to have survived to the present day.

  It is a building without equal in all of the world.

  THE GREAT PYRAMID

  GIZA (ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF CAIRO), EGYPT

  20 MARCH, 2006, 1100 HOURS

  THE DAY OF TARTARUS

  The Great Pyramid of Khufu lorded over outer Cairo, absolutely dominating the landscape around it.

  Apartment buildings constructed by men 4,500 years after it had been built looked puny beside it. It stood at the point where the lush river valley of Cairo met the edge of the Western Desert, on a raised section of cliffs called the Giza Plateau.

  Beside it stood the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure—also magnificent, but forever inferior—and before it, crouching, eternally at rest, lay the mysterious Sphinx.

  It was almost midday and the Sun was rising to the high-point of its daily arc. It was hot—very, very hot—even for Cairo: 49 degrees Celsius and rising rapidly.

  Reports from around the world had told of oppressively warm weather across the globe: China, India, even Russia—all had recorded unusually high temperatures on this day. Many reported instances of people collapsing in the streets.

  Something was wrong.

  Something to do with the Sun, the TV commentators said. A sunspot, the meteorologists said.

  In the United States, all the morning news shows had made it their story of the day and were looking to the White House, waiting for an address from the President.

  But no such address came.

  The White House remained mysteriously silent.

  In Cairo, the Egyptian Government had been most accommodating to the American force.

  The entire Giza Plateau had been closed to civilians and tourists for the day—all its entrances were now guarded by Egyptian troops—and an advance team sent by Judah overnight had been given free rein on the ancient site.

  Indeed, while Judah had been at Luxor that morning, his advance team had been working diligently, preparing for his arrival. Their work: an enormous scaffold structure that now shrouded the summit of the Great Pyramid.

  It was a huge flat-topped platform, made entirely of wood, three storeys high, and completely enveloping the peak of the pyramid. It looked like a big helicopter landing pad, square in shape, thirty metres long on each side, and its flat open-air roof lay level with the bare summit of the Pyramid. Indeed, the platform had a hole in its exact centre that allowed the peak of the Pyramid to protrude up through it . . . and thus allow Judah to perform his preferred Capstone ritual.

  The platform’s vertical support struts rested upon the step-like sides of the Pyramid, as did two cranes that rose high into the sky above the platform. Inside the baskets of these cranes were CIEF troops armed with Stinger missiles and anti-aircraft guns.

  No-one was going to interrupt this ceremony.

  The Great Pyramid on the day of Tartarus

  At 11:00 a.m. exactly, Marshall Judah arrived on a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter, surrounded by twelve CIEF troops led by Cal Kallis, and carrying with him in the back of the chopper all seven pieces of the Golden Capstone of the Great Pyramid, ready to be restored to their rightful place.

  The Super Stallion swung into a low hover above the platform and in the swirling hurricane of wind it created, the Pieces were unloaded on wheeled trolleys.

  Flanked by the heavily armed CIEF commandos, Judah stepped out of the helicopter, leading the two children, Alexander and Lily.

  Wizard and del Piero came after them, handcuffed and guarded—brought along by Judah for no other reason, it seemed, than to observe his triumph over them.

  Zoe, Fuzzy and Stretch (who had also been reunited with the team when Judah had revealed Lily) were being held in a second helicopter travelling behind the Super Stallion—a Black Hawk—that landed at the base of the Great Pyramid. They were being held for another reason: to control Lily. Judah had told her that if she disobeyed him at any time, Zoe, Stretch and Fuzzy would be killed.

  On the short helicopter flight from Cairo Airport to the pyramids, Lily had found herself seated beside Alexander. A brief conversation had ensued:

  ‘Hi, I’m Lily,’ she said.

  Alexander gazed at her airily, as if he was deciding whether or not to bother replying. ‘Alexander is my name . . . my young sister.’

  ‘Young? Come off it. You’re only older than me by twenty minutes,’ Lily said, laughing.

  ‘Nevertheless, I am still the first-born,’ Alexander said. ‘To the first go certain privileges. Such as respect.’

  ‘I bet you probably get out of doing your chores sometimes, too,’ Lily said.

  ‘What are chores?’ the boy asked seriously.

  ‘Chores,’ Lily said in disbelief. ‘You know, things like cleaning out the horse-pooh in the barn. Washing up the dishes after dinner.’

  ‘I have never cleaned a dish in my life. Or a barn. Such activities are beneath my station.’

  ‘You’ve never done any chores!’ Lily exclaimed. ‘Man, you’re lucky! Wow, no chores. . . ’

  The boy frowned, genuinely curious. ‘Why do you do such things? You are high-born. Why would you even allow yourself to be dragooned into performing such tasks?’

  Lily shrugged. She’d never actually thought about that. ‘I guess . . . well . . . while I don’t really like doing them, I do my chores to contribute to my family. To be a part of the family. To help out.’

  ‘But you are better than they are. Why would you want to help such ordinary people?’

  ‘I like helping them. I . . . I love them.’

  ‘My sister, my sister. We were born to rule these people, not to help them. They are beneath you, they are your inferiors.’

  ‘They’re my family,’ Lily said firmly.

  ‘To rule is lonely,’ Alexander said, as if this was a phrase he had been told a lot and learned by rote. ‘I expected you to be stronger, sister.’

  Lily said nothing after that, and minutes later, they arrived at the Great Pyramid.

  And so it was that at 11:30 a.m. on the Day of Tartarus, thirty minutes befo
re the blazing sunspot rotated in direct alignment with the Pyramid, a ceremony began on the summit of the Great Pyramid at Giza, an ancient ceremony that had not been performed in over 4,500 years.

  Standing on the platform, Judah clipped himself to a long safety rope, to take care of his fear of heights.

  He gazed at the bare summit of the Great Pyramid, saw the ancient verse carved into it:

  Cower in fear, cry in despair,

  You wretched mortals

  For that which giveth great power

  Also takes it away.

  For lest the Benben be placed at sacred site

  On sacred ground, at sacred height,

  Within seven sunsets of the arrival of Ra’s Prophet,

  At the high-point of the seventh day,

  The fires of Ra’s implacable Destroyer will devour us all.

  Beside this carving, in the exact centre of the bare stone summit, there was a shallow indentation carved in the shape of a person. The ‘head’ of this person-sized indentation was weathered and worn, but it was clearly that of Anubis, the jackal-headed and much-feared god of the Underworld.

  And in the heart of this Anubis indentation—in the exact centre of the summit and thus the centre of the entire pyramid—there was a small dish-shaped hole the size of a tennis ball. It looked like a stone crucible.

  Judah knew the purpose of the crucible. The Nazi archaeologist, Hessler, had too:

  THE RITUAL OF POWER

  AT THE HIGH ALTAR OF RA,

  UNDER THE HEART OF THE SACRIFICIAL ONE

  WHO LIES IN THE ARMS OF VENGEFUL ANUBIS,

  POUR INTO THE DEATH GOD’S HEART

  ONE DEBEN OF YOUR HOMELAND

  UTTER THOSE ANCIENT EVIL WORDS

  AND ALL EARTHLY POWER SHALL BE YOURS

  FOR A THOUSAND YEARS.

  Pour into the Death God’s heart

  One deben of your homeland . . .

  A ‘deben’ was the ancient Egyptian measure of weight. It equalled 93 grams.

  Judah pulled a glass vial from inside his jacket. In it was some amber-coloured soil, soil that had been taken from the Utah desert, deep inside the United States—soil that was unique to the United States of America.