The Lost Tomb of Cleopatra (Brook Burlington Book 1)

by JT Osbourne

  The smell of exotic oils nearly overwhelmed Brook and Katy when they stepped out of the air-conditioned truck.

  "We should be looking for someone who was here during World War II," Brook told Saa while Katy filmed her in close-up. "It would be someone older. Much older..." she added, calculating in her head, trailing off before spotting a man in the shade, ninety-five years old if he was a day. He was attended by a couple of young boys with large fans, who had presumably been tasked with keeping the esteemed elder cool, and the flies at bay. "Never mind, I think I've found him."

  Brook—with Saa and Katy in tow—strode over to the man, who looked like he'd been expecting her all this time. Saa and Katy — even though the latter held a camera at her shoulder, filming away— didn't faze him either.

  Saa offered greetings, and there was much bowing and trading of respectful thoughts, prayers and well-wishes, after which the elder motioned that the visitors were welcome to sit with him for a bit.

  As they sat, the old man motioned to Katy's camera and spoke in the local version of Masri, the Egyptian colloquial language.

  Saa looked a little bewildered.

  "Now he's speaking a dialect." Saa told Brook and Katy. "I don't understand him."

  Brook glared. Katy laughed, and caught the whole exchange on camera.

  The old man chuckled too, as if he understood the joke.

  Saa spoke to him again.

  "I'm asking him to stick to Arabic," Saa explained to the women.

  The old man replied, speaking slower, as if to children or idiots.

  "He asks if he's going to be in a movie," Saa translated.

  "Maybe," Katy offered, not sure of the right answer.

  Saa wasn't sure either, but when he told the elder, the old man broke into a knee-slapping laugh, grinning, and showing his teeth—most of which were intact—and the young boys obediently laughed with him, as did Saa, Brook, and Katy.

  Brook took out her phone and scrolled through a number of photos, ending on a posed black-and-white shot of Kurt Muller at the beginning of the war.

  "Ask him if he remembers this man. He would have been just a boy..."

  The old man didn't wait for the question, instead breaking into a tirade, waving his arms, cursing, and spitting. Saa managed to ride the wave. "He says this man is the Devil himself. Came here to kill and destroy. Killed many people.”

  “Where?”

  “Over there, that's where!" Saa pointed to where the old man had pointed a few moments before, to a small, grassy, well-tended garden area in the middle of the desert. It was unmistakably a filled-in trench, a mass grave. "He says there they are, his ancestors, killed by this Devil-man."

  "Ratatatatat!" the old man screamed, spraying imaginary bullets from an imaginary machine-gun in horror. "War crime!" he went on, in English now, a chant: "War crime, war crime, war crime!"

  "Ask him what this man wanted. Why did he kill these people? What was he looking for?"

  The old man froze when he heard the translation. He shook his head and placed his palm over the lens of Katy's camera. Whatever they had had going between them was gone now.

  "I don't think he's going to tell you," Saa said calmly.

  A crowd had grown, attracted by the old man's shouting—more curious than hostile for the moment, but that could change.

  "Where did they go?" Brook asked, trying not to sound desperate.

  Saa translated that, then the old man’s reply. "I won't tell. I will never tell. You will have to shoot us all," Saa relayed.

  "No! No, no, no," Brook insisted, shaking her head, waving her hands. "We don't want to hurt anyone. We just want to know where they went. In what direction?"

  "I won't tell," the old man answered via Saa, getting agitated again. "We are Guardians. We are all Guardians."

  The townspeople repeated the word until it was almost a chant.

  "We better go," Saa whispered, standing slowly before bowing to the man, and everyone else. He helped the two women up before backing to the vehicle, still bowing, with Katy filming all the while. Nobody threatened them, but that didn't mean the visitors weren't afraid.

  For a moment, the truck's engine wouldn't start; Brook had never seen Saa so terrified. All at once, the engine caught, and they were suddenly lurching across the desert, flying over the rises in the earth, and kicking up dust and sand.

  "Got it!" Katy shouted, turning off her camera after getting the last shot of the town and its residents, who were receding in the dust. "Got it!"

  42

  Boğazkale, Turkey, 1991

  Cale Burlington loved Anatolia—the people, the languages, and the harsh beauty of it all. Its deep history—Paleolithic, Neolithic, Hattian, Hurrian, Assyrian, Hittite, Aramean, Luwian, Tabal, Commagenian, Cimmerian, and Scythian—thrilled him to the bone—all that before the Greeks!

  The sun was just going down, the wind picking up as Cale and the dig supervisor approached the hotel where they intended to question Assistant Professor Stuart Green about his serious accusations. Once Green had started talking, he had been confined to town, and banned from the excavation site.

  Cale sighed and paused for a moment, watching the sun set in the distance. The dig supervisor, a more practical and nervous man who was preoccupied with the possibility he might never find work again, waited as patiently as he could. The mile-long walk from the site had been a tense one, with Cale preferring not to speak, and the supervisor reading his silence as growing anger.

  "Am I staying here?" Cale asked, pointing to the two-story pension across the street, built of stone, at least 500 years old and more derelict than charming, with a faded sign hanging across the entrance, too worn to read.

  "No, no, I've got you booked down the street—much nicer," the supervisor replied, hoping that would help somehow.

  "Are you staying here?"

  "No, down the street. There are a limited number of rooms here."

  "Let's get this over with," Cale told the man, marching forward.

  Once inside, he asked the front desk for Green's room, and was told Green had checked out earlier in the day, headed for the train station.

  "We'll need to see the room anyway," Cale told the clerk.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Now!" Cale commanded. "The key!"

  The clerk checked the supervisor's face, and got the same answer. "Yessir," the clerk said, handing over the key.

  "I'm going to need details of all the phone calls he took, both incoming and outgoing, and any mail he received. Interview the staff if you have to. No, we'll do that. Just have them assembled here in fifteen minutes."

  "Sir—" the clerk started to protest.

  "Did you hear me?!" Cale screamed back. He looked like the kind of guy who'd hit you when he got mad—the clerk knew the type—

  "Yessir." he replied with a forced smile.

  Cale and the supervisor found nothing in Green's room. The staff wasn't much help, either. He hadn't used the phone, and had received no letters, nor posted any. He ate breakfast and supper alone in the dining room, and was polite to the other guests, who were mostly out-of-town workers on the site, day-laborers—a rough, hard-drinking crowd completely unlike Green himself. His bill had been paid by the consortium that ran the various expeditions—they were due a refund for the rest of the month.

  "We go back to the site tonight," Cale told the supervisor when he was satisfied there was nothing to be gained at the hotel.

  "Tonight?"

  "Yes, tonight. You and me are going to guard the place."

  "Guards have already been assigned—"

  "I don't care!" Cale yelled, anger returning. "We are going to be sure; you and me. Nobody in, nobody out."

  "Why?" the supervisor wanted to know, courage seeping back.

  "Why? You ask 'why?'"

  "The artifacts are in a warehouse very near here, if that's what you're worried about."

  "Let's go," Cale told the man. "Show me the way."

  The "wareh
ouse," which turned out to be more of a barn, wasn't even locked, which told Cale right away that something was very wrong.

  Sure enough, when he walked in, it was all gone, everything.

  43

  Alexandria, Egypt

  Saa drove Brook and Katy back to Alexandria as the sun set on the horizon.

  "That place is close, I can feel it," Brook told Katy.

  Katy said nothing. She knew about Brook's obsession with Cleopatra's tomb, but Katy wasn't sure how much she should say in front of Saa.

  They returned the rental vehicle, and Saa got back into his cab. After giving Brook assurances that he would be always be available, along with the truck, he drove them back to the hotel.

  Brook parked the rental car herself, bypassing the valet station. Deciding to keep the car for a while "just in case," she found a spot at the rear of the lot, out of the way. Unfortunately, for security reasons the side door to the first floor hall was locked, and neither Brook's nor Katy's key-card would open it.

  "I wonder if we've been locked out," Katy mused.

  "I hope they didn't call the cops," Brook suddenly realized. The intensity of the search had obliterated her memory of the little chase scene that had begun it all.

  "Well, if they did, we might as well face the music," Katy answered, checking around the corner. "I don't see any police cars..."

  "Please don't tell anybody where we went," Brook asked on their way to the front entrance.

  "I don't do well under torture," Katy told her friend.

  "I'll remember that."

  "Just so you know," Katy pulled out her camera. If they were going to be denied entrance to the hotel, or arrested on entry, she wanted it on video.

  There was nobody there, no commotion, no police. Grekov and Rabbit stood to attention, which Katy caught on camera.

  Tom hurried in from the bar with a drink in his hand.

  "Hey, you guys played hooky, huh? Where'd you go?"

  "Mind your own business," Katy told him. "You'll never get it out of me!" Katy turned to Grekov and Rabbit, who approached. "You too! I won't talk! Don't even ask!" With that, Katy ran for the elevator, just opening, and dove in, still filming, as the doors closed.

  With the Russian bodyguards' attention on Katy, Tom whispered confidentially into Brook's ear:

  "It's all been arranged."

  "What's been arranged?" Brook asked.

  Tom started to answer, but Brook stopped him. She pointed to a second elevator just arriving and they got in.

  "Okay, now," Brook told Tom when they were safely alone.

  "The scroll you wanted scanned, translated—whatever you call it. Somebody from the Egyptian foreign ministry will pick it up tomorrow from the monastery and take it under armed guard to Jerusalem, the Arab side, then there's a handover. I don't know all the details, but I'm assured it's being handled."

  Brook was stunned, which pleased Tom greatly.

  "Did I do good?" he asked sheepishly.

  "But how?"

  Tom waved a finger between his face and Brook's, then pressed the finger to his lips, the same gesture Grekov had used a couple days before.

  "'Don't you worry your pretty head'—is that it?" Brook challenged as the elevator opened on her floor.

  "No, not at all," Tom replied, holding the door from closing again. "I didn't say that. But it's better for everybody if you don't know too much. My company—no, my father's company—we do a lot of business in Russia. Business with people with money. Lots of money. In Russia, money and power go hand in hand." Tom knitted his fingers together to demonstrate, making a two-handed fist. "That's all."

  Brook just stared. It wasn't any kind of explanation.

  "The Israelis..." Tom lowered his voice and let the elevator door close again. He punched the button for the top floor. "The Israelis wanted some prisoners released from Russian custody. In exchange, they agreed to look at your scrolls. My friends in Moscow...they were able to accomplish that release. That enough information for you?"

  It was a side of Tom that surprised Brook. He wasn't a child at all. There was anger there, maybe equal to her own.

  "Yes, thank you," Brook said. "I didn't mean to pry."

  "We're cool," Tom smiled.

  Suddenly, Brook didn't feel at all uncomfortable being alone in the elevator with him. They hit the top floor. The door opened, closed, then Tom hit the button for Brook's floor again.

  "How are you?" she asked suddenly. "I never really asked. You were so injured when we almost ran you over in the Sinai."

  "I'm still a little sore, I gotta admit," Tom said, "but thanks for asking. Listen, can I buy you a drink?"

  Brook thought about it. "Sure. In the bar. Two drinks, I think."

  "As many as you want," Tom agreed, hitting that button, too.

  "But I gotta pay. You helped me out today. Really. Thank you so much."

  "You're welcome," Tom said simply.

  He escorted Brook across the lobby, holding his arm out, guiding her to the lounge without actually touching her.

  "How'd you get interested in ancient civilizations?" she asked when they'd settled in.

  "My dad, Raymond Manor. You’ve probably heard of him. He's a big Wall Street guy."

  "I don't pay much attention to that sort of thing," she admitted.

  "Smart," Tom answered. "Anyway, he dabbled in archaeology a little. His clients did, really. I loved the idea of totally different civilizations, and dreamed about living back then."

  "But you didn't study it in college?"

  "Nah," Tom said. "Went into the family business instead. 'Clay pots don't pay the bills’ Dad was fond of saying."

  "They paid the bills in our house," Brook remarked.

  Tom laughed. "I guess they did," he said, raising his glass. They drank. "I was reading about Theodore Davis. He's held up as an example of a man more interested in glory, discovery, and ownership than learning about history and preserving antiquity."

  "Well, he did quit looking just a few yards from King Tut's tomb," Brook reminded Tom.

  "You have to stop sometime. It's insanity otherwise, isn't it?"

  "No, it's a lesson in perseverance—you're wrong about that," Brook told him.

  "There's always going to be a next tomb, a next town, a next discovery. You can't go scraping the Earth to the bone everywhere," Tom argued.

  "Not unless you're a coal company, or an oil company or something," Brook shot back.. They both nodded in agreement.

  "So how about you? Your turn. Why are you here?"

  "That's easy," Brook told him. She'd stated this a dozen ways to a decade of students. "I love history. History makes sense, as long as you know the mechanism. Day-to-day is chaos, uncertainty; absurdism, Dadaism, surrealism. Logic can't ever be relied on, at least not where human beings are involved. But the past? That's something. A jigsaw puzzle waiting to be solved if you have the right pieces."

  "You're positive those pieces exist?" Tom challenged.

  Brook shrugged. "Somewhere," she answered. "They're always somewhere, even if they're destroyed, ground to dust, they exist somewhere in a manuscript, or someone's memory, or even as a gap of some sort, a place where a piece should have been, but no longer is."

  It's why I enjoy a good book over a good date, Brook added to herself. Who needs the uncertainty? Who needs the tension? She emptied her glass—the last, she vowed. Brook had never been much of a drinker.

  "What's this expedition all about?" Tom asked straight out.

  "Excuse me?"

  "I could be wrong, but I don't think Nazi memorabilia attracts talent like you and Ali," Tom stated, watching Brook's face closely for some sign.

  "No."

  "And that trench across the way, with the Roman artifacts—"

  "There you go."

  "That's it? The Roman artifacts?" Tom asked, eyebrows arched in doubt.

  "Yes, that's it.”

  "Then why'd you and Katy go AWOL today?"

  Brook shr
ugged, stalling. "Katy wanted to get some footage of me walking in the sand and stuff. 'B-roll', she calls it. And she wanted to do an extensive one-on-one interview somewhere quiet where we wouldn't be disturbed, without the sound of clicking trowels."

  By the look on Tom's face, Brook could see he didn't believe her one bit.

  "According to Rabbit..." Tom spoke quietly, nodding to the corner of the bar, where he and Grekov both sat watching, "...you took off like Smokey and the Bandit."

  Brook toasted the two Russians dining across the room. "That's not true," she explained. "I was unfamiliar with the vehicle, that's all, and may have hit the gas too hard. Second of all: 'Smokey and the Bandit?'"

  "Rabbit's words," Tom said. "I don't think he gets out much."

  They both laughed.

  "Someday you're going to have to trust somebody," Tom added, more serious now. "Maybe even me."

  Brook didn't reply.

  44

  Boğazkale, Turkey / Matrouh Governorate, Egypt

  Cale Burlington made the calls, and his worst fears were quickly confirmed. All the other digs—five in all, spanning the world—had been folded up, and artifacts had disappeared into thin air. The coordination was perfect, and the operation went off without a hitch, all at the same moment, worldwide. Cale hadn't had a clue.

  His next call was to Jacob Linksy—no answer. Cale tried to remember Jacob's location—Which dig?

  "I don't know," the Anatolia supervisor told Cale when he asked. "He was here a couple weeks ago."

  "Going where?"

  "South America, I think," the supervisor guessed, "but that's above my pay-grade, I'm afraid."

  "Uh-huh," Cale remarked. He was ready to reach into the man's chest and jerk his heart out, or pound his skull in with a shovel. They took everything, right from under my eyes. Cale made a note to have the man investigated, and his bank accounts monitored. He called the cops, but didn't expect much out of them. From past experience, they either considered foreigners merely an annoyance in these situations, or were on the payroll of the thieves themselves. "None of our business" was an expression Cale had heard more than once.