Templar Cross

by Paul Christopher

  “We’re coming in the back door,” commented Alhazred. “Discretion being the better part of valor and all that.”

  Holliday and Rafi were mute, staring out the windows. They saw a few isolated stands of palms and a narrow lake that wouldn’t have rated much beyond a pond back in the United States.

  In the distance, ruins began to appear, the roofless mud-brick walls of what must have once been a good-sized town. The ruins were so densely packed together they looked like a rat’s maze.

  “This is the town from the Roman era, first and second century A.D.”

  “This isn’t where we’re going?” Rafi asked.

  “No. The beehive tombs are much older than that.” They drove past the old ruins, veering steadily to the right. They hadn’t seen a soul since leaving the highway. Suddenly a Russian Gaz Tiger appeared from behind a flat outcropping of rock. It was the Eastern Bloc version of an armored Hummer. There was a soldier in brown Libyan army fatigues who stood poking his upper body through the angular vehicle’s top hatch, his hands gripping the firing handles of a big .50-caliber machine gun.

  “Trouble?” Holliday asked, tensing as the big truck rumbled toward them.

  “Doubtful,” said Alhazred without turning his head. “They’re lazy. Stop us and they’ll have to fill out an incident report; they’re like soldiers everywhere, they hate paperwork.”

  “Is there a military base around here?” Holliday asked, surprised that they’d never stumbled on Alhazred’s band of terrorist Tuaregs.

  “Just a small squad for constabulary duties,” said Alhazred. “They must have come out here to drink wine or smoke, or just for something to do. They won’t be a bother, I assure you.”

  He was right. The armored vehicle roared to within a dozen yards of the Toyota and then the driver saw the sign on the door and waved at Alhazred. He waved back, smiling, and the Tiger sheered away. Within a few seconds it had disappeared behind them. Holliday exhaled.

  “You see?” Alhazred said pleasantly. “Not a problem.”

  Good thing, too, thought Holliday. After two weeks in the desert he was burned as much as he was tanned. He looked a bit like an overcooked lobster. Perhaps Rafi could pass as a Tuareg, but even in his indigo robes Holliday knew perfectly well he stood out like a stop sign.

  Ten minutes later they reached the field of tombs and Alhazred slowed, weaving his way through the maze of salt-brick structures. Each one was made of rough brick a shade or two darker than the desert around it. They looked like sawed-off pyramids about twelve or fourteen feet high, some pierced with square windows on one or two sides, some solid.

  Each of the squared pyramids was separated from its neighbor by what appeared to be a measured fifty feet on every side. The older tombs, the ones farthest to the north, were worn by the wind, blurred and almost shapeless mounds like the beehives that gave the tombs their name.

  “One mummy per tomb, usually buried upright,” said Alhazred, pulling to a stop in front of one of the older structures. They’d put the mummy and his or her possessions in the tomb then fill it up with sand.

  “Mummy, as in ‘curse of’ and all that?” Holliday asked.

  “Yes,” replied Alhazred. “There are natron lakes all around here, so the process was quite simple. The general consensus among experts is that Fezzan was the place where mummification was invented.”

  “Natron?”

  “It’s a naturally occurring form of soda ash,” put in Rafi. “Sodium carbonate decahydrate to be precise,” he added. “It cured human flesh like beef jerky and it was a natural insecticide so it kept the bugs away. The dry heat of the desert did the rest.”

  “Forty days in a natron bath and you lasted forever,” said Alhazred, grabbing a big Husky spotlight on the seat beside him and cracking his door open. He turned in his seat, smiling at Holliday and Rafi. “Come along, gentlemen, we have arrived; the tomb of Imhotep awaits.”

  16

  “So how exactly do we get inside?” Holliday asked, looking at the smooth mound of ancient mud brick. There was no obvious door or entrance of any kind. As he stood there he was amazed that anything made of mud could last for that long. If Alhazred was right the tomb was at least four thousand years old.

  “Follow me,” said Alhazred. He headed around to the far side of the tomb, Holliday and Rafi behind him and the Tuareg guard, Elhadji, bringing up the rear. At the back of the structure Elhadji handed Alhazred a corkscrew-shaped device from beneath his robes. Alhazred squatted down and squinted, eventually locating an almost invisible hole in the sloping mud-brick wall. He pushed the “worm” of the corkscrew device into the little hole, twisted and then pulled.

  “Hey presto!” Alhazred said theatrically. A crack appeared in the mud brick that became a square two feet on a side. He dragged on the corkscrew and the entire square came loose. With Elhadji helping him they lifted the trapdoor aside and set it down.

  On closer examination Holliday saw just how ingenious the trapdoor was. The mud brick on the exterior was a cleverly made veneer no more than an inch thick, the phony brick epoxied to a thick slab of Styrofoam underneath. The whole thing probably didn’t weigh more than five pounds. From the outside the illusion had been perfect.

  Alhazred spoke in a brief incomprehensible torrent to Elhadji and the Tuareg nodded in silent reply.

  “You’ll have to duck down,” instructed Alhazred. He got onto his hands and knees, then scuttled through the small opening and disappeared inside the tomb.

  “Age before beauty,” offered Holliday. Rafi gave him a nasty look, then followed on the heels of Alhazred. Then Holliday ducked through the secret doorway. Elhadji stayed outside.

  The inside of the tomb was stifling hot and dark, lit only by the wash of sun coming through the hole in the tomb wall. Rafi and Alhazred were only vague blobs of gray in the center of the tiny chamber. The trapdoor was reinserted and Alhazred switched on the powerful spotlight. Holliday looked around; for the tomb of one of the most important figures in not just Egypt’s history but in the rise of Western civilization, the chamber was almost depressingly austere.

  The chamber was small, reflecting the outside dimensions, about twelve feet on a side, just a bit larger than the average prison cell. The interior walls were plain undecorated brick left unplastered and the floor was smooth flat slabs of dark basalt, obviously quarried. The paving stones of the floor were slightly larger than the trapdoor, a little less than three feet square. The roof overhead was made of basalt beams each about two feet across.

  There was one paving stone missing in the exact center of the floor. In its place was a square dark opening with a wooden ladder steeply canted down into the shaft below. On the far side of the room were the remains of something that looked like a broken wooden box about six feet long, the top splintered into several pieces.

  There were a number of faded symbols on the side of the box, including a large pair of ornamental eyes. Grotesquely, inside the box Holliday could see something that looked like two leathery legs bound together with lengths of tobacco-colored bandage. There was no torso, arms or head. It was the ruins of a human mummy.

  “His name was Ahmose Pen-nekhbet,” said Alhazred. “From what I can tell he was some sort of high official. When I found the tomb it was empty. Someone had already broken in, excavated the sand the tomb was filled with, then stole everything of value. When they were done they resealed the tomb exactly where I placed the trapdoor. The sarcophagus had been in a vertical position in the center of the room, disguising the floor stone that hid the shaft. The grave robbers tipped the coffin over to get at whatever jewelry the mummy had been decorated with.”

  “Where’s the rest of the body?” Holliday asked.

  Rafi supplied the answer.

  “The grave robbers took it. Sometimes mummies had gems and valuables inserted into the stomach cavity. The robbers were probably in a hurry, so they simply tore the remains of the corpse in half.”

  “That was my opinion as well,
” Alhazred said and nodded. “It was all fate of course, inshallah—as God wills it. If the robbers hadn’t knocked over the sarcophagus I wouldn’t have seen what the robbers missed—the cracks around the center paving stone revealing the shaft beneath.”

  “When do you think it happened?” Holliday asked.

  “There’s really no way to tell,” answered Alhazred.

  “Probably not long after the original burial,” said Rafi, ignoring the Lebanese man’s look of irritation. “There are hundreds of these tombs; whoever broke into this one knew there was someone important buried in it. It’s like the grave robbers in Victorian England. They read death notices for wealthy people and attended the funerals to see if they were being buried with their best jewelry.”

  “Ghoulish,” grunted Holliday.

  Rafi shrugged.

  “Practical, if that’s the business you’re in,” he said.

  “We going down the hole?” Holliday asked.

  “Claustrophobic, are we?” Alhazred asked, smiling.

  “No, we are not claustrophobic in the least,” answered Holliday. “We just want to get on with it, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course, Colonel,” answered Alhazred a little stiffly. “Your wish is my command.”

  “If that was true,” snapped Holliday, “you’d tell us where Peggy is.”

  “Patience, Colonel, all in good time.”

  “Then like I said, let’s get on with it.”

  “You and Dr. Wanounou first,” said Alhazred, handing Holliday the spotlight. “I don’t think I’m quite ready to turn my back on you.”

  “The feeling’s mutual, believe me,” said Holliday. He gave the spotlight to Rafi, who pointed it toward the shaft. Holliday eased himself onto the ladder and went down the hole. He found himself in a small, low- ceilinged chamber lined with mud brick and barely large enough to turn around in.

  It was at least ten degrees colder in the chamber than it had been within the tomb. A few moments later Rafi joined him and finally Alhazred appeared, carrying the light in one hand. He pointed the spotlight to the left. Holliday saw a set of stairs carved directly into the limestone bedrock.

  “After you, gentlemen,” murmured Alhazred. Holliday went down first, the stone on either side brushing his shoulders. At the bottom of the shallow flight of steps there was an extremely narrow corridor.

  It was colder here than the chamber behind them—the dry sterile cold of death and the passage of time. They were deep enough so that the tunnel-like corridor was in bedrock, the walls still bearing the chisel marks of the quarrymen who had excavated it thousands of years before.

  The spotlight beam threw long, bobbing shadows in front of Holliday as he walked. At the end of the passage, about a hundred feet or so from the limestone stairs, was a second antechamber, empty once again, the walls decorated with carved hieroglyphics. As Alhazred appeared with the light, Holliday saw that the same set of symbols was repeated over and over again.

  “The owl means beloved,” explained Alhazred. “The seated man is a scribe. Surrounded by a cartouche, a royal border, those are the symbols that form Imhotep’s name. I almost fainted when I first saw them. I knew the name immediately, of course,” the man added, obvious pride in his voice.

  “Was there a door from the antechamber into the room beyond?” Rafi asked, playing the beam of the big flashlight around. “A seal?”

  The walls of the antechamber were alive with brightly colored paintings, mostly scenes of everyday life: gathering water from irrigation channels, milling wheat, fishing in lily- covered ponds and marshes.

  The figures in the paintings all seemed to be women and children, all richly dressed. The floor of the room looked freshly swept. A doorway yawned emptily at the far end of the living-room-sized chamber hewn out of solid rock. As the beam swept over the open doorway Holliday could see a hodgepodge clutter of what looked like furniture. Alhazred spoke.

  “There was a plaster seal and a hemp line wrapped around the two handles of double doors. The doors were cedar, sheathed in gold.”

  “Whose seal was pressed into the plaster?”

  “The same as the glyphs. Imhotep’s; there is no doubt.”

  “I wonder who buried him,” Rafi said quietly. He went to the wall on his left, peering at the repeated name of Imhotep. In some repetitions there was another set of glyphs within the cartouche, repeated each time as well. Rafi pointed it out and commented on it. “A woman’s name,” he said, looking carefully. “Het-shep-sit.”

  “Do you know what it means?” Holliday asked.

  “Glory of her Father,” translated Rafi.

  “Imhotep’s daughter, then,” responded Holliday.

  “Almost certainly,” said Alhazred.

  “I didn’t even know he was married,” said Holliday.

  “The daughter could well have been illegitimate,” said Rafi. “There’s a four-glyph word after her name: H’mt-a. It’s the word for a female slave.”

  “My thoughts as well,” added Alhazred. “We should move on. The next rooms are the most important.”

  Rafi obviously wanted to linger for a moment, peering at the walls of the large room, but he turned toward the open doorway.

  “What happened to the doors?” Rafi asked.

  “Unfortunately they were destroyed when we opened the tomb rooms. The sheathing was removed and has been stored for safekeeping,” answered Alhazred.

  The next room was a clutter of jumbled furniture and artifacts, tumbled together like junk in an attic. Holliday could see small statues and models of chariots and houses, several small ship models, piles of ornately decorated boxes, tables, chairs, stools, and dozens of alabaster jars. It looked as though everything in the room had been looted then pushed to the side, allowing egress into the next room.

  “I’m afraid Elhadji and his colleagues aren’t the most careful of workers. In fact it was Elhadji who destroyed the gold doors opening up the burial chamber.”

  You were the boss, thought Holliday. Why didn’t you stop him?

  They stepped into the burial chamber. Holliday and Rafi stopped in their tracks as Alhazred shone the beam of the spotlight around the room. In the center of the chamber was an enormous stone sarcophagus, obviously quarried from the living rock. The lid of the giant coffin leaned against its side.

  The sides of the ossuary were carved with images of the old gods: crocodile-headed Ammit; cat-headed Bast and Khefy, the Scarab King, god of the Dawn. There was winged Isis, keeper of the Dead; Maahes, the Lion Prince, son of Bast and Selket, the Scorpion Queen. Wepwawet, the Jackal god. Munevis, the Sacred Bull. Horus, son of Isis, the falcon-headed god, and finally Ra, the Sun and the Creator of life, the greatest god of all. Each of them was there, carved in stone or drawn in vivid colors on the walls, looking as though they had been painted only yesterday.

  The entire wall at the head of the sarcophagus was given over to a single large fresco of a ship, double-ended with high prow and stern, powered by three huge sails and a hundred oars of gold. A single figure, much larger than the others, carrying a clay tablet in one hand and an odd-looking crossed stick in the other, stood at the bow of the ship, hands upraised like an ancient priest giving blessings to his flock.

  The ship had been depicted at the mouth of some great river, perhaps the Nile, the banks thick with tall evergreens, the shoreline populated with people wearing light kilts, their upper bodies bare, their hair long, their arms and chests tattooed, all seeming to worship the man in the ship. Above the scene a stylized sun with a single beam of light looked down, the beam piercing the raised right hand of the priest figure.

  “It is my opinion that the painting depicts Imhotep’s mystical voyage to the land of Punt. The evergreen trees suggest that Punt was actually in Lebanon, the source of much of the cedar used by the ancient Egyptians.”

  Alhazred swung the spotlight beam toward the foot of the massive coffin and suddenly everything exploded in a soft buttery yellow glow. Holliday and R
afi found themselves staring at a two-and-a-half-foot-thick and ten-foot-long wall of solid gold, gleaming like the greedy dream of some long-ago King Midas.

  “Four tons of gold,” said Alhazred. “It took us three months to get it here.” Again there was pride in his voice. He walked across the room to the enormous pile of bullion. He stared at it in the light from the lantern, the reflected light glittering in his eyes. Holliday was more interested in the sarcophagus. He crossed to it and looked, then stared up at the painting of the ship on the wall.

  “I thought you wanted to ask me a question,” said Rafi, moving partway across the burial chamber.

  Alhazred looked at his wristwatch.

  “Perhaps some other time,” said the Lebanese man. “It’s getting late.”

  “Where’s his body?” Holliday asked.

  Alhazred turned.

  “Removed for safekeeping,” he said.

  “I would have thought it would be safe enough here,” answered Holliday.

  “Not once the sarcophagus was opened,” answered Alhazred.

  “Did the mummy have a gold death mask like Tutankhamen’s?” Holliday asked.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact he did,” said Alhazred. Holliday saw that his face was flushing, either from embarrassment or anger. “In point of fact the entire inner coffin was sheathed in gold.”

  “Like the doors,” said Holliday, smiling.

  “Yes,” answered Alhazred tersely. “Like the doors.”

  “Presumably the inner coffin was removed for safekeeping,” said Holliday, his voice bland.

  “Yes,” said Alhazred, his teeth gritted. “I think we should be on our way,” he added.

  “Whatever you say,” said Holliday brightly. “Come on, Rafi, our captor the archaeologist thinks it’s time to go.”

  Rafi nodded, although it was clear from the look on his face that he could have stayed in the ancient tomb for hours more. They went back the way they’d come, Alhazred behind them, going back through the antechamber to the burial room and along the narrow corridor, their footsteps ringing on the rough-quarried stone at their feet. They climbed the shallow steps to the bottom of the shaft, then went up the creaking ladder to the interior of the beehive enclosure.