The Lost Tomb of Cleopatra (Brook Burlington Book 1)

by JT Osbourne

  Poor Ali, Brook thought, not for the first time that evening.

  The wine came, followed by the food. It was the best Brook had eaten in a long, long time, and worth every Egyptian pound. They discussed the work briefly, without making a business meeting out of it, but Brook never found a moment to introduce Muller into the conversation, especially not before the moment both had been dreading.

  "And how is your new boyfriend?" Ali asked, cautiously venturing out onto the ice between them.

  Brook stared blank-faced for a moment, before recalling the telephone conversation that started it all. "He's fine," she said, a little too late.

  "I'm glad to hear it," Ali replied. Brook watched his face carefully. If he wasn't buying it, he wasn't showing it. "He's a very lucky man."

  Brook tried not to blush, genuinely flattered. Ali still had it—and it still plucked at Brook's heart. It wouldn't be that difficult for her. If she slept with Ali, he'd certainly hand over the Muller books. And a couple dozen lengthy German sagas as well, she thought wryly.

  Dismissing her thought, she parted with Ali in the hotel lobby once their meal was over, and took the elevator up alone—well, not quite alone, the Russians were there—and slept peacefully by herself— in the least flattering camouflage pajamas she owned, just in case someone was watching.

  22

  Suez, Egypt

  Alone in his hospital room, as he had been for two days, Tom Manor fought the painkillers piped into his arm through the IV. On the other side of the fog, he faintly heard the doctors talking among themselves at the foot of his bed say there was nothing broken.

  "Nothing serious, anyway," one added quickly, covering themselves as if there were lawyers present.

  Sure enough, within another day or two—Tom had no idea exactly how long it had been—he felt better. He hurt like crazy, the painkillers still made him tired and dizzy, and he knew there was no way he'd walk for a few more days at least, but he was lucid.

  "You're a resilient young man," the nurse told him while updating his chart. She was slim and dark, with coal-black eyes and a mischievous grin. Beautiful, Tom thought. He wondered if she'd looked up "resilient" in her English dictionary, or whether she used the same line on all the "resilient young men" in her care, because her English didn't seem that strong otherwise.

  "Thanks," Tom replied. "Listen, I need a phone."

  "Yes?" the nurse answered.

  "And a computer. Laptop computer?"

  "Yes, I know."

  It took some doing. Tom was intent on keeping his father in the dark about his whereabouts and injuries. Maybe, when his head was clearer, he would send a casual e-mail or make a phone call. If his father knew what had happened while he was still laid up, there'd be calls to the ambassador, a medevac chopper on the roof of the hospital, and a fast jet—possibly military transport—back to Mount Sinai, or maybe even New York Presbyterian.

  Grimacing at the thought, Tom contacted his former assistant; an eager, ambitious young man who was happy to temporarily take over Tom's bank card and checking account and get the purchases rolling, sent to the young nurse’s attention in exchange for a percentage of the total, though Tom guessed she'd have done it for nothing more than the chance at a green card.

  "Thank you." Tom told the nurse, once she had given her permission.

  Tom later thanked the assistant, too—the first call on his phone, which had been rushed to him. Patience wasn’t his best quality.

  "When are you coming back?" the eager-beaver wanted to know.

  "Soon," Tom lied.

  Technically, Tom was on a leave of absence; a short holiday which would later become "an assignment." It looked better that way to the employees, and the investors, but Tom knew he would never go back.

  Life is too short! he proclaimed to himself, firing up the phone and plugging in the computer at the same time. He knew how naive he sounded. If they bought it, fine. If not, no problem.

  First off, Tom arranged to pay his hospital bill. His white, shining face and American accent had been sufficient for the initial credit clearance; but now they wanted cash. Once that was done, Tom looked up Brook Burlington. He had a vague memory of her from the back of the cab, but it wasn't until he saw her name on his sign-in sheet that he knew that memory was real. However, the lines for "phone number" and "address" on the sheet had been conspicuously ignored.

  He had read her book, a year earlier, and fallen in love with her a little, including the glossy little photograph on the back cover showing Brook in desert khakis, ready for digging.

  Tom crossed his fingers as his query travelled across networks, satellite-to-satellite, searching all recorded knowledge. He thought briefly of the library at Alexandria, and how it had burned to the ground, much of the knowledge of the ancient world lost with it. On an impulse, Tom decided he wanted to go there; to find the ruins, take pictures. He wondered if maybe something had been saved.

  Wouldn't that be something? he thought as the laptop whirred. To find a lost work by Socrates, or Plato?

  His search yielded spectacular results. There were photographs of Brook in front of classrooms, publicity photos for the university, and even better: in digging clothes; her trademark hat, khaki and boots, on several continents, in various exotic locales and windswept deserts, the joy of discovery all over her face in each one

  Beautiful, Tom thought.

  She was beautiful—even more beautiful than the woman who'd saved him in the desert. But beyond Brook's public persona, and those few carefully selected photographs, there was nothing—no current address, no telltale mention of Brook Burlington currently at such-and-such a site, digging for so-and-so's remains. A number of her academic papers could be accessed online, and Tom dug in to the first one, detailing an expedition to the Nile delta. Even with a clear mind, without a background in archaeology, it was hard going, and Tom's eyelids weighed heavily on his eyes. He struggled against them for a few minutes, until they finally fell closed, and he let himself drift off to sleep.

  23

  Alexandria, Egypt

  Brook woke with excitement at the prospect of a new day, full of the possibility of new discovery. When people described Egypt, they often spoke about the ghosts who hang over the place. They meant the Pharaohs, of course—from the first, Menes, to the last, Cleopatra VII, the legendary Ramses, and 167 others.

  For Brook, the most important ghost hanging over the area was Howard Carter, the man who uncovered Tutankhamen's tomb. In it for the sheer joy of discovery, of contributing to the total knowledge of Mankind, Carter's obsession matched Brook's, and like Brook, he didn't suffer fools easily.

  She had inherited that from her father. Trained to dive by the US Marines, Cale Burlington had quickly applied his skills to more lucrative endeavors, specifically plundering sunken Spanish, English, Dutch, and Portuguese galleons for New World treasures, spanning from Trinidad to Miami Beach. Establishing himself as a legendary treasure hunter, he had begun with the underwater remnants of the 17th century city of Port Royal, Jamaica, which had been hit by an earthquake and was supposedly sunk for the ages, and ending his career with the raising of the Santa Brigida off the coast of Cuba in 1991.

  Cale was known not just for the riches he brought to the surface, but for his casual relationship with local laws, international norms, treasure-hunting etiquette, and museum protocols. After his discovery and salvage of the contents of the Spanish galleon San Eduardo off the tiny island of Isla Mona, he was banned from most of the Caribbean. Cale had simply turned his attention to the antiquities of Central and South America, where he was soon declared persona non grata again, accused of looting the national heritage and treasure of a number of Latin American cultures.

  In the process, he became an expert on both pre-Columbian and post-Columbian history. The overarching theme of his career—besides his own inflated ego and quest for riches—was the notion that ancient peoples communicated with each other far more than conventional history let on.
He believed that the Phoenicians had sailed to South America, while the Aztecs had journeyed to China. By his estimations, the Polynesians had sailed everywhere, and the Vikings rowed to China, Japan, and India. Cale was born into the time of Kon-Tiki, and its Norwegian captain Thor Heyerdahl; back when Western History was being severely questioned, when the idea of "One World, One People" seemed hopeful and persuasive.

  Even before Brook was born, her father had been immersed in extensive study into the similarities between Peruvian mummies and their Egyptian counterparts. Adding to the mystery, compounds for embalming were only found in the trees of New Guinea. Curious, Cale looked west to the Easter Islands and wider Polynesia. Certainly there had been contact between South America and those island cultures, and wasn't there strong evidence that the inhabitants of Tahiti, Hawaii, and the Philippines had recently arrived from Southeast Asia, communicating with the Middle East, Persia, and the Mediterranean on the way?

  "Maybe the Atlantic had nothing to do with it," Cale had once suggested, though he didn't believe it. They had all sailed—the Norsemen, the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Celts, the Persians and the Chinese. The Aztecs, Incas and Olmecs, too, Cale believed.

  "But there's just so damn little evidence!" he had lamented on more than one occasion. He became fixated on the belief that the Olmec people were actually Chinese refugees from around 1300 B.C. "The Norse—that's the key," Cale would spout sometimes. "Newfoundland, Greenland, all down the North American coast—that's where I'd look if the water wasn't so cold and the ice so thick!"

  Brook smiled at the thought. Her father could be a showman, that was true. The establishment—academics, museums, governments, and bureaucrats—all thought he was nuts. They dismissed his findings out of hand. They called him a charlatan, a pirate, a thief.

  And when they came down hard on him, well, anybody but Cale would have been a broken man, Brook thought to herself as she buttoned up her khaki shirt and slathered sunscreen on her face.

  Her phone rang, and she checked the ID: her brother, Carl.

  "Hello, Carl," Brook spoke into the phone, grabbing her key, messenger bag and large, floppy hat.

  "Hey, Brook."

  "Guess where I am?" she teased.

  "Alexandria, Egypt. Cecil Hotel, Room 1057?"

  "Just leaving, actually," Brook answered when she'd recovered from her shock. "How'd you know?" She walked down the hall to the elevator, checking the hall behind her, and the side corridor—no sign of Grekov or Rabbit.

  "I got a call from our old friend at the University in Cairo."

  "Oh," Brook replied. His name escaped her, but he was a retired professor, and friend of her father's. Did he also know Ali? Brook wasn't sure.

  "I think he wanted first dibs on whatever you found out there," Carl said with amusement.

  Carl was head of the Burlington Foundation, a small but respected philanthropic endeavor founded by Cale Burlington to, as the mission statement said, "further research worldwide in antiquities and to educate the public on the importance of the ancients." Or something like that, Brook didn't remember that either. She knew it kept her little brother busy, and sometimes his work overlapped hers, and he got into her hair.

  "I'm afraid it's all going be Nazi daggers and jackboots this time around." Brook said, getting into the elevator alone, and half-hoping her phone would lose reception. She didn’t need him on her back, too.

  "Yeah? Since when are you into that stuff?" Carl asked.

  Internally, Brook cursed. The phone worked just fine, and Carl knew a cover story when he heard one. "You go where the money is," Brook replied.

  "That sounds like Dad," Carl laughed.

  Suddenly, the doors opened on the lobby—

  "Smile for the camera, Brook!" Katy James exclaimed, holding her small, handheld camera, a shotgun mic attached to the top of it.

  Brook didn't smile at all. "I'll have to call you back," She hung up the phone and angled around Katy, who wouldn't stop filming despite Brook's hand blocking the lens. "What are you doing here?"

  "Making a documentary!" Katy enthused. "About you! Isn't it great?"

  "Where's Saqqara?" Brook asked, in a sudden panic. "What did you do with Saqqara?"

  "She's with your brother, don't worry."

  "My brother?"

  "Carl—you remember him."

  "Okay," Brook sighed, relieved. "So that's how Carl knew I was here?"

  "Not from me," Katy assured her, ushering Brook into the center of the shot with her free hand. "I just said you were out of town."

  "I'm going to smash that camera if you don't put it down!" Brook told her friend.

  A little hurt, Katy reluctantly lowered the device, but the little red light stayed on, and the lens tilted up towards her. "I thought you'd be glad to see me," Katy pouted.

  Brook kept her tone firm. "I am. I'm just not sure I'm ready to be the subject of a documentary.”

  "This will make for a great story. You're a very interesting person, Brook."

  Brook didn't feel "interesting." She felt like an immature gazelle set upon by a pack of ravenous hyenas. She could see Ali walking in the front doors of the lobby, another set of flowers in hand—an even bigger bouquet than the last—and out of the corner of her eye, Grekov and Rabbit, keeping their hands close to weapons hidden beneath their jackets.

  "Excuse me... I..." she stuttered, heading in an altogether different direction, spotting the women's restroom and quickening her pace.

  Even here she was not alone. An attendant polished the basins and stood by with an array of toothbrushes, creams, perfumes and implements for the well-groomed and wealthy, yet ill-equipped, traveler.

  "Do you speak English?" Brook asked the woman.

  "Yes, Ma'am," the attendant answered proudly.

  It wasn't the answer Brook wanted to hear. She looked at the stalls. "Is there anyone else here?" she asked the attendant, who seemed worried at the question, but nevertheless shook her head. "I need to make a phone call, see? A private phone call." Hopefully, she fished in her purse for a couple of bills.

  "I will step outside for a few minutes?" the attendant suggested, getting the idea and taking the money. "Bathroom out of order?"

  "Thank you so much," Brook told her. "I really appreciate it."

  The woman nodded, and walked out. It wasn't that Brook didn't trust the attendant, but the woman's salary—even in a luxury hotel—would almost certainly be next to nothing, and the sale of information was a well-known route to a better life. Brook pulled out her phone. She checked her watch. 7:30 a.m. here, which made it 1:30 a.m. back home. Brook hesitated, then dialed anyway.

  "Hello?" came the puzzled answer after several rings. At least it didn't sound like she'd wakened him.

  "I'm sorry to bother you this late, Professor Green. This is Brook Burlington."

  "Miss Burlington. To what do I owe this pleasure? Let me guess—you lost your passport?"

  "No," Brook chuckled halfheartedly. Something about the way he said it unsettled her.

  "Then what can I do for you?" He sounded friendly, jovial even.

  At this time of the night, when anyone else would have been in bed? The Devil never sleeps—

  "Speak up, I can't hear you," Professor Green urged. "You're in Cairo?"

  "Alexandria, actually," Brook confessed. "I need somebody to do some research for me. A specific Egyptian at the time of Octavian, an artisan, workman, not famous but maybe there's a record somewhere. I need someone—I would ask someone else but..." Brook trailed off.

  "You need someone who's not going to squawk about it at the water-cooler," Professor Green filled in.

  "Exactly. I knew you'd understand."

  "Well, I'm flattered. I really am."

  Brook blushed. She felt like crying right there in the hotel lobby restroom. Green sounded genuinely helpful, without a trace of sarcasm in his voice.

  "Who is this person you're so interested in?" Professor Green asked.

  "Neferu of R
akota," Brook half-whispered. "A stone carver..."

  24

  Alexandria, Egypt

  Katy called the trip she insisted they all take together a "location scout," which Brook didn't find amusing.

  "The whole crew gets into a bunch of vehicles to go look at the place," Katy insisted, camera rolling on Brook's face. "Just like a film crew."

  "Uh-huh," Brook had replied from the back of the SUV, noncommittally. To Brook's dismay, Rabbit would be the driver, with Grekov sitting beside him in the passenger's seat. Anything Brook said, anything she found, the two of them would be right there looking over her shoulder, ready to report back to Strelov.

  They smiled from the front seat. Brook flashed her best fake smile back, an act Rabbit and Grekov found highly entertaining. They spoke rapidly in Russian to each other and laughed again, and Katy joined in, guffawing so hard the camera shook.

  Brook wouldn't let them see they were getting under her skin, but this time she refused to smile and go along with the pleasantries.

  "Why aren't we moving?" she asked. The vehicle sat in front of the hotel, and Rabbit hadn't even started the ignition. Brook felt impatient and vulnerable.

  Grekov nodded to the hotel, where Ali hurried out with a sheaf of papers. He started to hand them to Brook, but stopped cold when he saw Katy and her camera.

  "Reading. For the road," he said simply, giving Brook the pages away from Katy's eyes and camera. "I also e-mailed them," he added.

  "Thanks. "

  Ali scanned the interior of the SUV. He preferred to travel with Brook, but there wasn't room, and he knew that making a big deal out of it wouldn't look good, or work anyway.