Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012)

by Diego Rodriguez

The robot continued to move all the way up the incline, after which the shaft became completely horizontal. The tunnel widened slightly over those few feet, although it remained impossible for a human to access it. Eventually, he could make out a small exit in the distance.

  His heart started to beat faster, as if was going to burst out of his chest. His breathing had been slow before but had now quickened and become erratic. He was excited and desperate to know what was hiding on the other side. The very idea of being the first person to go inside for thousands of years captivated him even more, stirring in him an indescribable feeling of ecstasy. The robot increased its pace, since there wasn’t any incline to delay its journey. It eventually entered the doorway and lit up the whole chamber, the famous Secret Chamber.

  It was a rather small and gloomy room just like the others, but it had a much darker and sinister aspect. It shared startling similarities with the King’s Chamber, although on a smaller scale. In one of the walls, there was a small doorway closed off by a large block of stone, which indicated that there was another hidden path in the pyramid which could lead to the chamber. Just opposite the doorway and in the middle of the room was a smooth marble sarcophagus. Along the side were some engravings which had been drawn with more precision than even those in the King’s Chamber. There were hundreds of cylindrical rolls of papyrus, golden statues which were possibly models of different gods or kings, and various other objects which apparently featured in the daily life of a pharaoh: chairs, vessels, beds, thrones, chests, jewelry… All of them had been placed around the sarcophagus as if they were meant to protect it.

  After carefully looking through all the king’s belongings, he realized that the thing he was searching for wasn’t there. In fact some marks on the floor left no room for doubt - someone or something had been there previously.

  James again seemed to hear a low noise behind him. He was unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching him. After turning around and looking at the exit, all he could see was darkness.

  He looked back at the monitor as he slowly pushed out all the air from his lungs. His thumb had become so stiff from the tension that he had pressed one of the joysticks, sending the camera crazy and making it spin in all directions. By the time he had managed to stop it, it had ended up focused on the tiny hole through which it had entered. Something stopped him in his tracks, something he hadn’t noticed going in. The wall had another hole which was at medium height and roughly the same size as that of the entrance; in this case, however, it was only about twenty inches deep. At first glance, he could see that it had been created and smoothed with the same perfection applied to the rest of the pyramid. Inside there was a tiny sarcophagus carved into the rock itself, in such a way that the hole and sarcophagus were one and the same, forming one singular piece. On the side facing the room was en engraving which James recognized as being familiar, but there wasn’t anything inside.

  He was utterly convinced that a piece of the Trifariam had lain there for thousands of years, and that somebody must have managed to get into the room and steal it. Apparently there were only two ways in; given that the main entrance was closed off by a huge block of stone, someone must have used the shaft which led upwards. But… how had they managed to get rid of the three stones which stood in the way?

  He again heard a noise behind him, it seemed like footsteps. They could be heard so clearly that they seemed to be coming from inside the Queen’s Chamber itself, as if somebody was walking towards him. When he turned around, he was just in time to see a huge hand with a ring which struck his face hard, sending him crashing into the wall. The blow was so violent that impact had rendered him practically unconscious on the ground, causing a deep gash which spurted blood. With barely enough energy to get up, he turned to face the person who had hit him as he rubbed the nape of his neck with his hands. His aversion to blood made him feel faint to the point of losing consciousness, but not before he saw a pair of dark-colored shoes a few inches away from him.

  Chapter 33

  “Who’s that? Is he crazy?”

  “Let’s go before he kills him!”

  The trio quickly stumbled out of the car, and amid the confusion they forgot to close the back door. They had been so absorbed in looking at the images broadcast from the Queen’s Chamber that they hadn’t been paying attention to the other cameras. The attacker had accessed the pyramid via the main entrance and deliberately made his way to the King’s Chamber. When he got there, he saw how the group of tourists was sitting on their mats meditating, in some kind of catatonic state completely oblivious to what was going on around them. A quick scan of the room was sufficient for him to realize that the young American who had tricked him was missing. He turned around and walked towards the exit.

  That morning after leaving the pyramids, he caught a taxi which took him straight to the hospital where he inquired about his wife. After a wait of over half an hour, during which time the reception staff repeatedly called various departments, they were able to confirm that no pregnant women had been admitted to the maternity ward all morning.

  The man was dumbfounded; there must have been a computer error in processing her details, a wrong name or a misunderstanding about which floor she was on. He went over to one of the payphones, inserted a couple of coins and called home. After three rings, he heard the soft voice of a woman on the other end of the phone - it was his wife. He had been tricked.

  He crossed the Grand Gallery, intending to go and speak to his boss and tell him about how had been fraudulently robbed of his clients. He would undoubtedly give orders to throw out that lowlife who had had no qualms about making him think that his wife was giving birth in order to make a quick buck from the marvelous tips that the Asians paid.

  When he started to go up the tunnel which led to the exit, he heard a deafening noise from one of the lower chambers, probably the Queen’s Chamber. Since everybody else was prohibited from entering that day, it couldn’t have been a group of archaeologists carrying out tests. He crept down there.

  To his surprise, in the chamber was the young man who had deceived him. Standing in the anonymity granted to him by the darkness, he could see that he was trying to find something hidden in the depths of one of the shafts in the chamber, and definitely doing so illegally. He was equipped with a monitor and a remote which probably controlled a robot currently inside the hole.

  Proud of his homeland and the symbolism that the pyramids held for Egypt, he couldn’t possibly allow him to steal anything. For a moment he thought about calling the guards but, believing himself to be much stronger than James and seeing that he could overpower him without too much trouble, he stalked across the room without a hint of nerves and delivered a blow so violent that it knocked him to the ground, rendering him unconscious.

  He picked up one of the explosives from the ground, examined it and, without being completely sure about what it was, he yanked out the cables to use as rope.

  Fifteen minutes later, James was still unconscious on the floor with his back to the wall. His hands were intertwined and bound behind his waist. The giant was rifling through everything he had in his backpack without any kind of care. As far as he was concerned, it was just more and more proof of his guilt.

  When he eventually opened his eyes, he saw a blurry shadow moving around about six feet away. When he tried to stand up, he discovered that his hands were tied behind his back. The giant approached him just as began to try and wrestle himself free. He was so angry that he delivered an unexpected kick to the pit of his stomach.

  “That’s for stealing my customers, you son of a bitch!”

  The pain prevented him from uttering a word by way of response.

  “What were you doing here with all this equipment?”

  “I didn’t steal anything from you - I don’t want your money,” he stammered between groans. “It was the only way I had of getting in.”

  “All these tools… Were you going to steal something? Did you discover th
e famous Secret Chamber?”

  James thought about his companions for a moment. Why hadn’t they warned him that this orangutan had burst into the pyramid like a wild beast? “I wasn’t able to discover anything thanks to you. You left me unconscious. How long have I been lying there?”

  “Calm down. I only tapped you,” he said matter-of-factly while he studied the remote that controlled the robot. “Now, how does this work?”

  Still moaning from the blow he had received, the professor knew that it was better to cooperate than receive another kick. “I’ve inserted a robot into the hole to investigate it, and this remote allows me to control its movements.” James clenched the muscles in his arms and tried to use brute force to break the cables which shackled him. It was impossible. In a desperate attempt to free himself, he tried to rip the cable by dragging it along the walls, but they were so smooth that he didn’t even manage to make a scratch.

  “I want to look inside the hole and see what you’ve discovered.”

  “Like I said, I haven’t discovered anything. You didn’t give me enough time,” he replied in an upset voice.

  “I don’t believe you. I’ve been watching you for a good while. I saw how you jumped for joy when you saw something on your monitor, plus there’s lots of dust on the floor.” James was puzzled and disappointed in his friends. Their only task had been to watch the pyramid and they hadn’t even succeeded in doing that. They hadn’t realized that the Egyptian had been standing there for all this time! “I’m a reasonable man and the way I see it, you have two options. Either you tell me what I want to hear and we can come to some agreement, or I hand you over to the Egyptian authorities for them to try you for destroying their most prized object.”

  James frowned. I don’t have any choice. I have to tell him the truth, at least to buy myself some time, he thought to himself. “Okay,” he said with resignation. “One of the objects that you took from the backpack was…”

  Just then, one of the flashlights that had fallen, rolled along the ground and was shining on the entrance, lit up what appeared to be three shadows which were creeping forward. They grew larger and larger as they approached and, although it was a very dark area, he recognized Mary’s silhouette together with those of his two friends. The woman was carrying a rock of considerable size, whereas the other two were wielding iron bars.

  “What’s in the backpack? Tell me or - “

  “A camera,” he replied, preventing him from turning around. He was already hatching a plan. “With that camera you can see exactly what the robot sees. However, the walls of the pyramid cause the signal to deteriorate a lot, so you have to stand as near as you can to the hole to receive it perfectly.”

  After removing the camera from the bag, he followed James’ instructions to the letter. He got as close as he could to the entrance to the shaft, even putting part of the camera in the hole. His face shone with the ambition of a wicked guy who intended to get a cut of all those discoveries James had made. He switched on the camera. He was taken aback by what he saw at first, he even thought that he was being made fun of, but then he realized that there was another room which had never been seen before. He turned to ask James what it was but three black shapes appeared before him out of the shadows. The first dealt him a blow to the back with so much aggression that it made him stagger until he fell to his knees. With no time to react, a female figure bashed his head with a rock, rendering him unconscious.

  “James, are you okay?” Mary hurried over to the professor and hugged him tightly, kissing him a couple of times on the cheek before she untied him.

  “You had us very worried - we didn’t see that guy come in,” said Anthony, by way of an excuse.

  James responded sarcastically. “I can tell. Quick, give me the controls. We have to get the robot out of the hole before anybody else notices.”

  “Did you find the first piece of the Trifariam?” asked Mary.

  “The robot managed to enter the Secret Chamber, but it wasn’t there. Somebody has taken it.”

  The looks of disbelief between the friends quickly turned to looks of disappointment. Between them they gathered all the equipment and put it in the backpack. They were surprised to see on the monitor how James removed the golden triangle from the wall just as a deafening noise filled the room once more. The three doors were closing.

  They abandoned the chamber, leaving the giant lying on the ground, and walked up the shaft to the exit. To James’ astonishment, a guard was lying on the ground, still unconscious and gagged.

  Anthony, who had been lagging behind, went through the exit with the virus transmitter in his hands, urging the others to hurry up. “We have five minutes until all the security cameras return to normal, and three hours until my flight home.”

  They walked across the site quickly, but without breaking into a run. The car was still exactly where they had left it. A few minutes later, James could hear sirens wailing in the distance, rushing to someone’s aid.

  Chapter 34

  The cafe in Cairo Airport was excellent. It was practically full of tourists keen to enjoy one last snack before they set off on their long journeys home. The corridors were crammed with crowds walking in all directions, with the terrible desert heat to blame for any chaotic situation which may arise. The vast majority of travelers were loaded up with huge suitcases on wheels, pausing in front of the information screens in order to find out from which gate they would be flying.

  At one of the tables outside the cafe, the four friends were drinking coffee too strong for the taste of some. Anthony was eating an enormous sandwich which would supply him with enough strength to see him through the ten-hour flight. In a few moments, his journey would begin.

  On the way to the airport, James had been telling them all about the discoveries he had made in the Secret Chamber: how he had managed to remove the three huge stones which had blocked the way, how the inside of the chamber and all the funeral paraphernalia had looked and, most importantly, how he had seen the hole in the wall with the small sarcophagus. It was probably the biggest archaeological discovery in Egypt since Howard Carter found the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922. What really made him shudder was that only four people in the whole world knew about such a discovery; if they were killed, the treasure would never see the light of day.

  “So, the chamber has possibly been desecrated before?” asked Mary, concerned.

  “When I accessed the room via the robot, I noticed that there was a second blocked entrance in one of the side walls. All the objects in the chamber were too big to be removed via the hole, even the sealed papyrus scrolls were larger than the hole. Whoever entered the chamber must have done so through the same way we did, and they undoubtedly took everything they could, including the half of the triangle.

  Richard raised his eyebrows. “But… if both entrances were blocked, why do you think they got in through the shaft instead of the main entrance?”

  James smiled. “In the room, there were lots of objects with odd space and distances between each other. Some were side by side and others very far apart. I was under the impression that somebody had taken a lot of them, leaving the bulkiest ones behind. When I was in the chamber, I asked myself - why would they leave the golden objects and rolls of papyrus when they could fetch unimaginable sums of money? You see, some of the most ancient secrets of Egyptian civilization might lie in those documents. It would be the discovery of the century.”

  “Because they couldn’t remove them!” replied Mary.

  “Exactly! I believe that whoever entered chamber knew that there was another access route, and they must be desperately searching for it right now.”

  “There’s something I didn’t tell you,” said Mary, taking them by surprise. “Entry to the pyramid was closed in 1998, supposedly for cleaning to take place. Many people suspect that the Egyptian government managed to see what was behind the three blocks, and they have since resolutely refused to allow new investigations.”

  Rich
ard’s eyes lit up, he was starting to get his hopes up again. “Obviously it was them. Everything they managed to remove from the chamber must be locked away in museum storage. We have to speak to the General Secretary of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities.”

  A female voice rang out through the airport speaker system, announcing the imminent departure of the flight to the United States.

  “That’s me - I have to go.”

  Without further delay, Anthony picked up his hand baggage along with a ticket which was sitting on the table, and which would allow him to pick up the luggage he had checked in. After saying goodbye to the others and passing through the relevant controls, he boarded the airplane and made his way to the seats at the rear.

  The flight was virtually empty, only a couple of other people were onboard; an elderly woman who was relaxing in the first class section by reading a gossip magazine, and a man a few seats behind him who was leafing through a scientific journal.

  Anthony had just reclined his seat with the intention of relaxing for a few minutes when he felt a stab of pain in his left arm. A dense liquid penetrated his body, instantly paralyzing his upper body and mouth, preventing him from screaming. He tried to stand up but his legs grew weak, becoming numb and losing sensitivity. Eventually his body became completely rigid.

  A voice hissed into his ear, viciously tearing away from him any hope he had of living. “You have three minutes of life left before your heart stops.” Alpha 2 had taken advantage of the cabin crew’s absence to sit behind him. He was doggedly clutching a syringe in his left hand. “But to be honest with you, what makes me most angry is not being able to slit your throat like I hope to do to your friends.”

  Then he pulled the seatbelt around his body and closed his eyes with his hand, making it look as if he was asleep. Finally, he left the aircraft, to the surprise of the cabin crew.

  Lacking the strength needed to open his eyes, he only managed to shed a tear, which rolled down his face and dripped off his chin. At that very moment, his heart stopped.