by JT Osbourne
Or in my car. Green remembered the second car in the lot—the one he didn't recognize. He wished he'd written down the license plate, or make and model.
All the cars look the same these days, Green complained to himself, immediately recognizing the pathetic old man aspect to the thought.
Anxious to assert his youth, and desperate not to let Brook down in her time of need, Green swallowed another swig of coffee and marched to the door. He opened it and swung out into the middle of the hall, ready to leap to one wall or the other if the perpetrator came out shooting. He knew his imagination was working overtime, but then again, if the mummies of Cleopatra and Antony were as valuable as he thought they were, there were certainly people willing to kill for them.
Remembering there was no lock on the door, Green intended to charge right in and surprise the intruder. If Brook was inside, he'd be embarrassed, and be forced to apologize, but they had never been friends anyway. The door slammed back, hitting Professor Green in the head once, then again, as a big, powerful body dressed for the cold forced its way past and down the hall. Green slid to the floor and watched the man—definitely male, in dark clothes—swerve at the stairwell, and by the sound of it, leap down in two jumps. The outside door clanged open, then slammed shut. Green struggled to his feet, checking the damage.
"You're okay," he said out loud, turning into Brook's office, then freezing, worried there might be others.
The room seemed to be empty, with only the light of Brook's computer screen dimly illuminating the room. Knowing campus security would soon arrive, Professor Green propped the door wide open and turned on the overhead lights before checking Brook's computer.
There was nothing unusual about what he saw on the screen: a desktop with a variety of files and folders. If the man was a professional—a given as far as Green was concerned—he'd plug in a thumb drive and drain all the information in a matter of minutes. The elderly professor knew that much, at least. Of course, if the man was a true professional, he'd be able to sit at home and do the same thing over the internet.
"Maybe there wasn't time for that," Green reasoned out loud.
The cops would be there shortly. Green knew there was no time to look at her files, to see what they might have taken. The longitude, the latitude!
Green had texted that, not e-mailed it. Would that appear on this computer? he wondered. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the idea that all these devices were synced up constantly, along with her texts, e-mails, and files. Did they both appear on Brook's computer, and therefore, had they possibly been stolen? Or was that separate? Had he just sent Brook's location, shared it inadvertently with the world, sending her into a deadly trap?
"Hands up!" the campus cop yelled from down the hall, his hands on the weapon strapped to his hip.
Professor Green did as he was told.
60
Alexandria, Egypt/Morgantown, WV
"I repeat," Grekov said to Ali, "where did she go?"
"I assure you I have no idea," Ali said, for the fourth time that morning. They sat in an entirely new hotel room, one Ali didn't know about. It was neither Rabbit's nor Grekov's, nor the new man Dryusha's. Instead, one of the beds had been removed and a couple of technicians sat at side-by-side desks and worked computers.
"Sit," Grekov suggested to Ali, indicating the one chair in the room. Ali considered it an order. He sat, and to his surprise, instead of pacing restlessly, Grekov collapsed on his back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling like a man on holiday. "I think you have been keeping things from me, Ali."
"No, that's not true."
"You say Miss Burlington has not been confiding to you about her plans, am I correct?"
"That is true," Ali admitted.
"We thought you were 'old friends,'" Grekov snickered.
"Not...no. That's all in the past, I believe," Ali said.
"You guess. You guess where she went," Grekov urged.
"It's no guess—she's looking for Cleopatra's burial place."
"That's obvious. And where would she look?" Grekov wanted to know.
"There was something in Muller's diary, I think," Ali answered.
"You read it, you translated it, and we gave you the translation the girl Marta sent to Brook," Grekov stated. "What's in there you're talking about?" Ali thought he noticed one of the technicians at the computers react a little. "We saw nothing in there," Grekov went on. "Did you?"
Ali shook his head. "Muller was getting close when he got to Giarabub—that I'm sure of.”
Grekov thought about that. "We sent men to this town—Giarabub," he told Ali. "They wouldn't tell them anything. Maybe because they were men. There was no proof, but I think the people of this town were tired of visitors when we arrived. I think the ladies had been there before us."
"You're probably right," Ali admitted.
"I don't want to be right; I want to know where they are!" Grekov hissed.
***
It was already deadly hot when Brook called the utility vehicle following a quarter-mile behind.
"You guys okay?" she asked.
"A-OK," Katy answered.
"Air-conditioning working?"
"Just fine," Katy said.
"We just crossed into Libya."
"Gotcha," Katy answered, giving Tom a look in the driver's seat to see if he'd overheard.
"About a kilometer up here, we're going to take a turn, then a wide swing around Jaghbub, just in case," Brook told Katy.
"Just in case what?" Katy asked.
"Just to be safe, that's all. Talk soon." Brook hung up and checked her GPS; an expensive one for which she’d paid cash. It connected her to the satellites above, but not a telephone, computer, or the internet. She knew little about these things, but hoped the precautions provided her with some privacy. As per the manual, she shifted to another mode and the tiny screen showed her current position, and also—a tiny, red blip of a dot—the longitude and latitude Professor Green had sent her.
"Here's the road," Saa announced, veering the truck off onto something resembling an ancient camel-trail.
Brook craned her neck and alternated her view with the mirror, searching for danger following. Only the vehicle with Tom and Katy inside showed itself.
"Okay," Brook told Saa, "at least they're not onto us yet."
***
The campus policeman quickly got the gist of Professor Green's story, checked the archaeologist's I.D., called for backup, and then set about searching the rest of the building, leaving Green in Brook's office.
"Rookie mistake," Green muttered as the man disappeared down the hall. It was clear to the professor that whoever had broken in had been interested in the computer. He opened a couple of drawers and found what he was looking for—a thumb-drive, 8 gigabytes. He plugged it into the computer and waited an excruciatingly long time for the drive to appear on the desktop. When it did, Green quickly established he had 6 gigabytes left to fill on the thing. He started dragging any files that looked promising onto it, hoping there was enough time.
A second and third campus policeman soon appeared down the hall. Green jerked out the thumb-drive, got rid of the "You have removed a disk incorrectly" warning, pocketed the drive, and hoped he'd copied something worthwhile to it.
The two new cops wanted to hear the whole story again, and then the original policeman returned to brief them. They seemed concerned, more or less, but Green noted they never asked him the obvious question: why somebody would want to see what Brook Burlington had on her computer. Instead, Green wished them luck on solving the mystery, pointed out that the door to Brook's office was incapable of being locked, and that they should at least take care of that, and headed back to his own office. Radio silence or not, Green decided he needed to warn Brook at once. He dialed her cell-phone number. No answer.
"Professor Green—please call," Green told voicemail when it came on.
He texted "What?" to the same number, hoping that would elicit a response. Wh
o else to call? Green tried to think as he plugged in the thumb-drive. Katy Whatshername; she’s some kind of collector. Green had met her a few times. She and Katy were friends. Katy James!
Finally, Brook's drive appeared on Green's screen. He did a quick search for "Katy" and found her phone number in an e-mail signature. He dialed. Again, no answer.
"Hello, this is Professor Green at the Archaeology Department of WVU. Having a little trouble finding Brook Burlington. I wonder if you could call me back?" Green gave his number.
He tried to remember who was friendly with Brook in the department. Who would she confide in? In retrospect, Green realized, Brook was sort of a loner, like himself. He couldn't remember seeing her with any of the other faculty, grad students, or even undergraduates for that matter. He'd watched her from afar, keeping an eye on her these many years, and never really tried to be her friend. There had been reasons for that—the least of which was her father—and only now it occurred to him that she had no friends at all.
"That's okay for you, old man," Green said, staring at his reflection in the computer screen. Hearing his voice echoing back at him in the empty office, he was reminded of the policemen still in the building. In sudden panic, he grabbed his phone and dialed again.
"Yeats?" he shouted when the astronomy professor came on the line.
"They were here," Yeats answered breathlessly, fear in his voice.
"Who was there?" Green demanded.
"Just one man, actually, but he was big. I don't know how he got in—maybe I forgot to lock the door. It's usually safe here."
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Yeats said. "Just a little shook up. Millie and the kids were upstairs. I hadn't gone to bed."
"Are they okay?"
"Everybody's okay," Yeats answered, calming. "He wanted the coordinates. The latitude and longitude we came up with tonight."
Green froze, fear buzzing in the back of his head like a sledgehammer.
"Did you...did you tell him?"
"I couldn't remember," Yeats confessed bitterly. "So I made something up. It's not far off, maybe a thousand miles or so. I called the cops," he said soberly.
"Good," Green said. "Good."
"And I gotta call Jinjing and Max."
"Who?"
"The grad students," Yeats spat out, annoyed. "I need to warn them."
"Yes, yes." Green agreed.
"They're young, Professor," Yeats went on. "They shouldn't have to die for this."
"No, of course not," Green said sincerely. Hadn't he said the very same thing to Cale Burlington forty years earlier? "Call them. Call the police, too, tell them to go to where they live, and let me know what happens. I'm sorry."
"Yeah, well—"
Green hung up. If he started apologizing, feeling guilty, he'd never get done what he had to do. Green wrote the names down: Carl Burlington. Ali Rahman.
"Hello, this is Professor Green at WVU."
"Hey, how are you?" Carl answered.
"I'm fine, but I'm having trouble locating your sister."
"She's in Egypt."
"I know that much," Green said. "But I'm afraid nothing else. I tried calling, texting, and e-mail."
"Don't know if I can help you any more than that," Carl told him.
"Would you know which hotel they're in?"
"Yeah, let me look it up. Not that Brook ever calls her little brother, I just happen to know 'cause our foundation is paying some of the bills."
"Yes, I'm aware of that," Green replied, which wasn't true. He wondered briefly if Strelov himself wasn't using Carl.
Coming back onto the line, Carl gave Green the name of the hotel.
"Katy, Brook, and Tom are all there," he said.
"Tom?"
"The guy Brook found in the desert. An old college friend or something. Mine, not hers. He got me involved in all this, actually. Hey, listen, about this dog of hers..."
"Saqqara?" Green asked.
"Yeah, she gave it to Katy, who took off, and Katy gave it me to take care of, but now I'm in an embarrassing situation—"
"I'm sorry," Green interrupted. "I can't do it. I can't take care of Saqqara. Not possible. Sorry. Good talking to you."
Green hung up quickly, crossed Carl's name off the list and added the hotel in Alexandria. He dialed the phone again.
"Ali?"
"Professor Green! I'd know that voice anywhere."
"I'm flattered you remembered."
"You're looking for Brook, I imagine," Ali asked loud enough to attract Grekov's attention. They sat in the back of the SUV. Dryusha drove.
"Well, as a matter of fact..."
"She disappeared," Ali stated plaintively. "We're very worried about her."
"That's you and me both," Green said.
"Do you know where she is?" Ali asked.
"No."
"Do you know where she's going?" Ali tried again.
"What happened, Ali? Tell me. I need to know." Green was pretty sure Ali wanted to come clean, but something was stopping him.
"We don't know," Ali answered. "She just took off this morning."
"Katy, too?"
"Yes, and Tom Manor."
This time, the name was a hammer on the chime of some long-lost memory in the back of Green's brain, and the deafening roar of that memory drowned out all other thought for a few seconds.
"Professor Green?" Ali asked and got no reply. He pointed to the phone for Grekov's benefit.
"Manor?!" Green almost shouted. "Did you say Tom Manor?"
Finally, Grekov took an interest.
"Yes," Ali replied. "Tom Manor. Do you know him?"
"No. Yes. I may have known his father once."
Listening, Grekov had a strange look on his face. Ali had no idea why.
"She went with him—this Tom person?" Green asked urgently. "Alone?"
"Yes," Ali answered. "With Katy, we think."
61
Jaghbub, Libya/Morgantown, WV
It wasn't exactly an invasion, just four vehicles at the entrances to the two perpendicular roads that crisscrossed the town of Jaghbub in the middle. There was no doubt as to what the foreigners were doing there; they were there to ask about the two women who'd come the week before. The visitors had been polite, not insisting when the townspeople—beginning with the town's elders—shook their heads and lied through their teeth, saying they'd never seen the women before, even when cell-phone photographs were shown to them.
To their dismay, however, the four vehicles with their foreign occupants did not drive off into the desert to look, but instead set up on the corners of the town, eyes on their phones and computers, waiting for the women to return, or so the townspeople presumed. There was a great deal of discussion, and some argument, but despite a brief uptick in local sales of bottled water, the town couldn't see how this would be a good thing.
Their two-truck caravan never drove closer than thirty kilometers from Jaghbub. Brook hoped that was enough. The dust they kicked up could easily be seen that far away on the flat terrain, but fortunately for Brook and her co-conspirators, a breeze kicked up dust in a number of other places within sight of town.
"Home free," Brook commented to Saa.
He looked puzzled. "Home? We are far from home!”
"Just an expression," Brook replied.
They were headed southwest, and the sun was going down. If they were lucky, the position of the little blue dot would reach the position of the little red dot at sunset, and they could stop and compare the night sky and its stars with the illustration made so long ago by the sculptor Neferu.
***
It only took a minute on the internet—God bless that thing—for Professor Green to learn that Tom Manor was in fact Raymond Manor's son, "on leave of absence, traveling the world" according to the company website.
Green again tried the phone numbers he had for both Brook and Katy, to no avail. He hadn't told Ali what he knew about Tom, or how dangerous he thought Tom M
anor might be. It was becoming clear that Brook had flown the coop, and hadn't trusted Ali enough to tell him. If Tom was anything like his father, Green wouldn't put it past him to kidnap her and force her to take him to the tomb of Cleopatra and Antony, and Green knew exactly where that was—at least in terms of the latitude and longitude.
Professor Green booked the next flight to Alexandria, Egypt. If he jumped in the car now, he could make the drive to Pittsburgh in an hour and a half, and just make the plane. It would be a twenty-four hour journey after that. Green found his passport in his desk, assembled all his medications, and pulled a small duffel from behind a pile of books in the closet.
"You'll just have to wing it from there," Green decided, hurrying out the door.
***
Grekov's impatience exploded like a volcano. They'd spent the day staking out Jaghbub with no sighting of Brook and her friends. Now it was dark, there was no moon, and Ali was telling him he was a fool if he thought he could go driving around at night in the vast Sahara desert.
"This is your fault!" Grekov screamed back, pointing his finger. Ali was just glad it wasn't a gun.
***
"This is it!" Brook announced. "Stop here!"
It was dark, pitch-black, with the lights of the SUV illuminating several hundred yards ahead, but revealing nothing—total desolation.
"Here?" Saa asked skeptically. "This is where Queen Cleopatra is?"
"Yes," she answered as Tom pulled the second SUV up next to the first. "This is it!" Brook called to the other vehicle.
Tom gave a war-whoop, which echoed against nothing, and was swallowed in the emptiness.
"There's nothing here," Saa complained. "Why would they bury a Pharaoh here? Who would come here to worship, and how would they find the place again?"
Brook knew Saa was right, but she was also certain he was wrong.
Tom shut off the truck next door, leaving the lights on. He began unloading while Katy documented the activity on her camera.
"I don't know, Saa," Brook said softly. She could see this affront to the people of Ancient Egypt weighed on him heavily. "But Neferu made very careful maps using the stars so he could come back here, and I also believe he believed it would only be temporary. He thought the Romans would leave Egypt in peace eventually, as had the Greeks, Macedonians, Nubians, Persians and Syrians before them."