by Wilbur Smith
from the sinkhole in the other. Nicholas worked at the rock-fall with
the gang of Buffaloes, led by Hansith. It was hard, messy and dangerous
work, for each piece of rubble had to be doused with water before it
could be levered out of the pack and passed down the chain. The
staircase was soon running with muddy water and the steps were
treacherous underfoot. The fallen rock was loose and unstable, and there
was always the danger of a secondary collapse.
So many men working in the confined spaces of the gallery and tunnel
taxed the ability of the little blower fan to recirculate the air, and
it was hot and oppressive. The men stripped to loincloths and their
bodies glistened with sweat. The rubble passed back down the tunnel was
dumped into the sinkholes Even that large volume of material made no
difference to the level of the black waters. It was simply swallowed up
into the depths without trace.
Nicholas found the crowded workings so humid and claustrophobic that at
the change of the first shift he had to escape into the open air, if
only for a few minutes. Even the dark and forbidding chasm of Taita's
pool was a relief after the close confines of the underground workings.
Mek Nimmur was waiting for him when he climbed out over the wall of the
coffer dam on to the ledge beside the pool.
"Nicholas!" Mek's handsome dark face was grave. "Has Tessay returned
from Debra Maryam yet? She should have been back yesterday."
"I have not seen her, Mek. I thought she'was with you." Mek shook his
head. "I wanted to make certain that she had not returned without my men
seeing her, before I send a patrol up the trail to search for her."
"I am sorry, Mek. I did not anticipate any danger in sending her up the
escarpment." Nicholas felt a stab of guilt.
"If I had thought there was any danger, I would not have allowed her to
go," Mek agreed. "I have sent men to search for her."
But Tessay's absence was another worry for Nicholas.
It I urked at the edge of his mind during the days that followed, as the
clearing of the long funeral gallery proceeded too slowly for his
satisfaction.
Royan spent as much time at the face as Nicholas did, and both of them
were as filthy with mud and dirt as the Buffaloes who were labouring
there beside them. She mourned over each fragment of the shattered
murals.
Before they were carried away to be thrown into the sinkhole, she tried
to retrieve those on which significant portions of the paintings were
still intact. There was one jagged piece of plaster on which the lovely
head of Isis was still in one piece, and another on which the entire
figure of Thoth, the god of writing, was preserved. However, most of the
paintings were destroyed beyond any hope of ever restoring them, and
sadly they were consigned to the pit.
There was no sense of time in the long gallery, and they could not tell
night from day. It was always a surprise to leave the precincts of the
tomb and find that the stars were shining in the narrow strip of sky
that showed above Taita's pool, or to find the bright African sun
burning hotly down out of the cloudless blue. They ate and slept only
when their bodies demanded it, not according to the passage of the
hours.
Re'entering the tomb after a few hours' sleep in their shelters beside
the pool, they were crossing the causeway over the sink-hole when a wild
cry reverberated down the shaft ahead of them. Immediately there was a
hullabaloo of query and answer, and excited shouts from the men working
in the upper levels of the tunnel.
"Hansith has found something," Royan cried. "Dammit, Nicky, I knew we
should have stayed-' She began to run, and he hurried after her.
They came out on the landing in front of the gallery to find it crowded
with chattering, gesticulating, half-naked workmen. Nicholas forced his
way through them with Royan on his heels. They realized that Hansith had
cleared the gallery as far as where the shrine of Osiris had once stood.
The roof above them was jagged and broken, and lying amongst the rubbish
on the ruined agate tiles of the floor Nicholas made out the remains of
the mechanism which Taita had placed in the roof, and which they had
brought crashing down when they had activated the device.
The main part of this was an enormous stone wheel, resembling a mill
wheel and weighing many tons. Nicholas stopped to give it a cursory
examination.
"When you read River God, you realize that Taita had an obsession with
the wheel," he told Royan. "Chariot wheels, water wheels, and now this
must have been the balance wheel of his booby-trap. VA-ten we moved the
levers, we toppled the wedges that held this monstrosity in place. Once
it started rolling, it tumbled all the drop-stones that he had stacked
above the ceiling of the gallery." He glanced up at the shattered roof.
"Not now, Nicky!" Royan was hopping with impatience. "Time for your
lectures later. Taita's deathtrap is not what has excited Hansith. He
has found something else. Come on!'
They pushed their way through the pack of workmen until they reached
Hansith's tall figure.
"What is it?" Nicholas shouted over the heads of the others. "What have
you found, Hansith?"
"Here, effendi," Hansith shouted back. "Come quickly."
They pushed their way to the face, and stopped beside the monk at the
end of the blocked gallery.
"There!" Hansith pointed proudly.
Nicholas went down on one knee in the shattered remains of the shrine.
Small pieces of the painted plaster still adhered to the fractured rock
wall. Hansith pulled a slab out of the collapsed face, and pointed into
the space it had left. Nicholas peered into it and felt his pulse begin
to race. There was an opening in the side of the gallery, Even at first
glance he realized that it was the mouth of another tunnel leading off
at right-angles from the long gallery. It had been concealed behind the
plaster-covered image of the great god.
As he stared into it with awe, he felt Royan's hand on his arrn and her
warrii breath on his cheek. "This is it, Nicky. The entrance to the true
tomb of Mamose. This gallery was a bluff. Taita's red herring. This is
the veritable tomb."
"Hansith!" Nicholas called to him in a voice that was hoarse with
emotion. "Get your men to clear this doorway."
As the workmen moved the rocks Nicholas and Royan hovered close behind
them, so that they were able to watch the shape of the doorway as it was
fully revealed. It proved to be a dark rectangle, of the same dimensions
as the tunnel leading up from the sink-hole, three metres wide by two
high. The lintel and the door jambs were of beautifully cut and dressed
stone, and when Nicholas shone his lamp into the opening he saw a flight
of stone steps rising before him.
They moved the cables and the lights into the gallery and arranged them
at the entrance to this new doorway, but when Nicholas set foot on the
first step he found Royan at his side.
"I am co
ming with you, she told him firmly.
"It's probably booby-trapped," he warned her. "Taita is lying in wait
for you around the first bend."
"Don't try that. It just won't work, mister! I am coming."
They went slowly up the steep steps, pausing on each one to survey the
walls and the way ahead. Twenty steps from the bottom they reached
another landing. A pair of doorways led off it, one on either side.
However, the staircase continued climbing directly ahead of them.
Which way?"Nicholas asked.
"Keep going up," Royan urged him. "We can explore these side passages
later."
Cautiously, they continued climbing. After twenty more steps they came
out on an identical landing, with a doorway on each side and the
stairway in front of them.
"Keep going up," Royan ordered, without waiting for him to answer,
Twenty more steps and there was another landing with the familiar
openings on either side and the stairway straight ahead.
"This isn't making sense," Nicholas protested, but she prodded him in we
should keep going on upwards," she told him, and he did not protest
further. They passed another landing and then yet another, each of them
the exact image of those that they had passed lower down.
"At last!" Nicholas exclaimed when they came out at ay on each the top
of the staircase,,with the expected door.
"This is as far side but now a blank wall in front of them. as it goes."
she asked. "How man
"How many landings are there? altogetherr
"Eight he answered.
"Eight," she agreed. "Isn't that a familiar number
nowr lamplight. "You He turned to stare down at her in the mean-'
"I mean the eight shrines in the long gallery, these the bao board."
eight landings, and the eight cups of They stood silent and undecided on
the top landing looked about them.
an Okay," he said at last, "if you are so damned clever, tell me which
way to go now."
she recited. "Let's try the
"Eeny'meeny-miny-moe,'
t'hand doorway." righ and passage only a short They followed ri t
distance before they were confronted by a Tjunction - a blank wall with
identical twin passageways on each side.
"Take the right one again," she counselled, and they followed- it. But
when they came to the next T junction Nicholas stopped and faced her.
"You know what is happening here, don't your he demanded. "This is
another one of Taita's tricks. He has led us into a maze. If it were not
for the cable, we would be lost already."
With a bemused expression she looked back the way they had come, and
then down the unexplored passages to their right and left.
"When he built this, Taita could not have anticipated the age of
electricity. He expected any grave robber to be -quipped the same way he
was. Imagine being caught in here without the electric cable to follow
back the way we have come," Nicholas said softly. "Imagine having only
an oil lamp for light. Imagine what would happen to you when the oil
burnt out and you were lost in here in the utter darkness."
Royan shivered and gripped his arm.
whispered. "It's scaring!" she "Taita is beginning to play rough,'
Nicholas said softly.
"I was developing rather a soft spot for the old boy. But now I am
beginning to change my mind."
She shuddered again. "Let's go back," she whispered, "We should never
have rushed in here like this. We must go back and work it out
carefully. We are unprepared. I have the feeling that we are in danger -
I mean real danger, the same as we were in the long gallery."
As they started back through the twists and turns, picking up the
electric cable as they retreated down the stone passageways, the
temptation to break into a run became stronger with each step. Royan
hung tightly to Nicholas's arm. It seemed to both of them that some
intelligent and malignant presence lurked behind them in the darkness,
following them, watching them. and biding its time.
The army truck carrying Tessay drove back through the village of Debra
Maryam, and then turned off on to the track that followed the Dandera
river downstream towards the escarpment of the Abbay gorge.
"This is not the way to army headquarters, Tessay told Lieutenant
Hammed, and he shifted awkwardly on the seat beside her.
"Colonel Nogo is not at his headquarters. I have orders to take you to
another location."
"There is only one other place in this direction," she said. "The base
camp of the foreign prospecting company, Pegasus."
"Colonel Nogo is using that as a forward base in his campaign against
the shufta in the valley," he explained. "I have orders to take you to
him there."
Neither of them spoke again during the long, bumpy ride over the rough
track. It was almost noon when at last they reached the edge of the
escarpment and turned off on to the fork that brought them at last to
the Pegasus campThe camouflage'clad guards at the gate saluted when they
arrived. The truck drove through the gates, recognized and parked in
front of one of the long Quonset huts within the compound.
"Please wait here." Hammed got down and went into the hut, but was gone
for only a few minutes.
"Please come with me, Lady Sun." He looked "awkward and embarrassed, and
could not meet her eyes as he helped her down from the cab. He led her
to the door of the hut, and stood aside to let her enter first.
She looked around the sparsely furnished room, and realized that it must
be the company's administration centre. A conference table ran almost
the full length of the room, and there were filing cabinets and two
desks set against the side walls. A map of the area and a few technical
charts were the only decorations on the bare walls. Two men sat at the
table, and she recognized both of them immediately.
Colonel Nogo looked up at her, and his eyes were cold behind his
metal-framed spectacles. As always, his long, thin body was immaculately
uniformed; but his head was bare. His maroon beret lay on the table in
front of him.
Jake Helm leaned back in his chair with his arms folded.
At first glance his short-cropped hair made him look like a boy. Only
when she looked closer did she see how his skin was weathered, and
notice the crows' feet at the corners of his eyes. He wore an
open-necked shirt and blue jeans that were bleached almost white. His
belt buckle was of ornate Indian silver, the shape of a wild mustang's
head.
The sleeves of his cotton shirt were rolled high around his lumpy
biceps. He chewed upon the dead butt of a cheap Dutch cheroot, and the
smell of the strong tobacco was rank and offensive.
"Very well, lieutenant," Nogo dismissed Hammed in Amharic. "Wait
outside. I will call you when I need you." Once Hammed had left the
room, Tessay demanded, "Why have I been arrested, Colonel Nogo?"
Neither man acknowledged the question. They both regarded her
expressionlessly "I demand to know the reason for this high'handed
treatment," she persisted.
"You have been consorting with a band of notorious terrorists," said
Nogo softly. "Your actions have made you one of them, a shufta."
"That is not true."
"You have trespassed in a mineral concession in the Abbay valley," said
Helm. "And you and your accomplices have begun mining operations in the
area which belongs to this company."
"There are no mining operations," she protested.
"We have other information. We have evidence that you have built a dam
across the Dandera river-'
"That is nothing to do with me."
"So you do not deny that there is a dam?"
"It is nothing to do with me," she repeated. "I am not a member of any
terrorist group, and I have not taken part in any mining operations."
They were both silent again. Nogo made an entry in the notebook in front
of him. Helm stood up and sauntered across to the window behind her
right shoulder. The silence drew out until she could bear it no longer.
Even though she knew it was part of the campaign of nerves they were
waging against her, she had to break it.
"I have travelled most of the night in an army truck," she said. "I am
tired, and I need to go to a lavatory."
"If what you need to do is urgent you can do it where you are standing.
Neither Mr Helm nor I will be offended." Nogo ditered in a surprisingly
girlish manner, but did not look up from his book.
She looked over her shoulder at the door, but Helm crossed to it and
turned the key in the lock, slipping the key into his pocket. She knew
she must show no weakness in front of these two, and, though she was
tired and afraid and her bladder ached, she feigned an air of confidence
and assurance and crossed to the nearest chair. She pulled it from the
table and sat down in it easily.
Nogo looked up at her and frowned. He had not expected her to react this
way.
"You know the shufta bandit Mck Nimmur the accused abruptly.
"No," she said coldly. "I know the patriot and democratic leader Mek
Nimmur. He is no shufta."
"You are his concubine, his whore. Of course, you will say this."
She looked away from him with disdain, and his voice rose shrilly.
"Where is Mek Nimmur? How many men does he have with him?" Her composure
was beginning to rattle him."
She ignored the question, and Nogo scowled at her furiously. "If you do
not cooperate with us, I will have to use stronger methods to make you