“So you split up?”
“We became competitors, after the same jobs. At first it didn’t matter who won them. The result was the same – the antiquities were saved for the museums.”
“But that changed too?”
“It did, when Kit began taking jobs from individuals. A Russian billionaire who wanted an Egyptian mummy. A Chinese millionaire with a hankering after Ming vases. There are hundreds of private collectors around the world, rich people hoarding the planet’s history. That stands against everything we worked for, every instinct we had as archaeologists.”
“Kit went to the Dark Side.”
“Your father and I tried to keep up, to win the jobs or beat him to the finds. But Kit had the resources, the bankroll of billionaires. He hired military experts, master criminals.”
“He was a criminal now.”
“We all were. You see this amulet I wear around my neck? It was from one of the first mummies we rescued from Siwa. I kept it as a memento. But make no mistake, it belongs in a museum. I just felt that we were doing so much good, it was acceptable to keep this one thing. It’s a fine line between right and wrong. We were always walking it, but Kit stamped all over that line and went on marching.”
“When was this, Mum?”
“Thirteen years ago, around the time your father and I retired from treasure-hunting. We kept track of what Kit and others were up to. It was hard, knowing all the things they’d found and sold, all the history they’d kept hidden.”
“But how could you just give up?”
“We had to, Pandora.”
“Why?”
“Because I became pregnant. What we did was dangerous. Sometimes very dangerous. Your father was bitten by a lion once.”
“That’s the scar on his arm?”
“No, that was from a spear in Belize. The lion bite is on his thigh.”
“He said that was from a lawnmower!”
“Anyway, we didn’t mind the risks because we believed in what we were doing. But with children… That was different. We couldn’t. We wouldn’t. So we took teaching jobs instead.”
“And you started lying.”
“Lying, Pandora?”
“You hid who you really were, you and Dad. You pretended to be people you’re not.”
“That’s not true. We changed. We made a new life.”
“A boring life, you mean?”
“Where we are all safe, Pandora.”
“We’re not safe any more, though, are we? We’re wanted criminals.”
“For now, Jake. But I will work this out, and everything can go back to the way it was.”
“You actually want that? Then why did you even come here?”
“We didn’t want to. We tried not to. But we heard from Sam about Kit and the white-haired woman.”
“The snake lady?”
“We just wanted to see what she was up to, just for one morning. We didn’t plan to go off hunting for any tombs. We had you two to look after. But she knew. Her people were waiting.”
“Who is she, Mum? What does that snake symbol mean?”
Mum didn’t answer. She rose and sat at the front of the boat, watching the banks again through her rifle scope. I guess she thought her story was over.
Pan returned to the back of the boat and curled up beside our drunken captain, David Beckham, hiding again under her scarf.
I sat alone, watching the riverbanks. We weren’t far out of the city, but already it seemed like a different world. We passed sleeping villages, fields of swaying grasses and sugar cane, multi-storey pigeon houses, and farmers lifting water using something Sami later told me was called a shaduf – a pole that swivelled to hoist a bucket from the river to the bank. Women in face veils balanced water jars on their heads. Mud bricks lay in rows to dry in the sun.
It seemed like an ancient scene. I wondered if Mum and Dad and Kit had passed this way years ago on one of their adventures.
As we sailed I thought through Mum’s story again and again, engraving every detail in my mind. I felt as if I might float up over the river and fly all the way to the south of Egypt.
Mum and Dad were thieves!
I know they were doing something good, but they were still stealing. I’d always been so ashamed of the stress I caused, doing crazy things and getting into trouble. But my parents did it too.
I had hoped that saving Mum and Dad might bring us closer as a family. If we saved Dad, maybe we could all be treasure hunters together!
I’d always had a strange ability to think fast when I’m in danger. I could use that skill, like Pan used her brains. I remembered how good I’d felt in the tomb under the pyramids, like I was doing something I was meant to be doing.
A train rattled by on the bank, crammed so full that people slept on the roof. I saw a family among them, the two boys jumping from carriage to carriage as their mum and dad barked at them to stop.
The train was going slowly, so we travelled alongside it for what seemed like hours. As I watched the boys, I thought more and more about Mum. I felt as if I’d only just met her. OK, she was a college professor, but being a treasure hunter was what she truly was. After this, how could she plod back and forth to her lectures? She seemed determined that we’d all return to our boring old lives, safe but squabbling, together but apart. Only one thought gave me hope that we might not: her amulet.
For thirteen years, Mum had put up a wall against her past. She’d banned any form of fun or excitement, any reminder of who she had been. That ban had extended to Pan and me too. That was why she’d been so freaked out by Pan’s brains and my trouble-making. We reminded her of her. But that person was still there. That was why she had kept that amulet: she couldn’t let it go. And that was why she and Dad had come to Egypt. They had to do something about whatever was going on. They couldn’t bear to stay retired.
I was determined that they wouldn’t.
The boys finally lay down with their parents on the train roof. They watched me watching them until I finally rolled over and tried to sleep.
27
I woke.
Not that I’d really been sleeping. It was too hot and uncomfortable. I needed a wee, but didn’t want to get up. Mosquitos buzzed at my ear, and I was convinced the scratchy old blankets our captain David Beckham had given us were crawling with fleas.
We’d sailed all day, until David Beckham insisted it was too dark to carry on. He’d tied the boat to a palm tree, tossed us the blankets and curled up to sleep.
The last thing I’d needed was a blanket. How could it possibly be so hot at night? It felt like we were being smothered with warm, wet towels. But I had to pull the blanket up to my chin to stop mosquitos from feasting on my limbs. On top of all that, my mind was still racing from Mum’s story, and all the revelations about our family. At best I managed to doze off for a few minutes every hour, sinking into dreams of sand traps and giant snakes.
But now I really had to wee.
I sat up, bleary-eyed, looking across the deck. Sami was asleep in the corner, snoring like a power drill. Mum and Pan were sleeping too, curled up under their blankets.
David Beckham was gone.
His blanket was there, and two empty bottles of whatever booze he’d been swigging all day.
Fear chased off tiredness and I tossed away my blanket. It was possible David Beckham had gone for a wee too, but he’d done that over the side of the boat enough times in broad daylight; why trudge off onto the dark riverbank now?
Maybe he’d gone to find more booze? There wasn’t exactly a Tesco near by, just palm trees, a rickety farm shed and a shaduf. Maybe he knew who we were. Had he gone to turn us in for a reward?
My first instinct was to wake Pan, not Mum. If there was danger, I wanted her by my side. But I fought the feeling back. Pan was properly asleep for the first time since we’d come to Egypt. We needed as much rest as we could get.
I’d check it out myself. I’d probably find him collapsed drunk somewhere on
the bank. And anyway, I needed to wee badly now.
I slid across the deck, careful not to wake anyone. Scrambling onto the bank wasn’t easy. I had to hug the trunk of the palm tree and use it to pull myself up a steep mud slope.
The full moon hung low. Swaying trees cast spindly shadows across the grassy bank. As I moved closer to the barn, restless animals snorted inside. Through gaps in the boards I saw horns and wet noses – the heads of young bullocks.
And then, there he was. David Beckham lay fast asleep against the barn wall. A bottle of booze rolled from his hand, spilling its contents across the mud. I muttered a curse at him, but really I was relieved. We were safe.
I stepped over a heap of rope and weed against the shed wall.
And then a dozen figures in black walked past me.
I froze, head turned, staring. Each figure wore night vision goggles and was armed with a weapon shaped like a giant crab claw with a barrel poking from the middle. I remembered how Mum told us that Dad was kidnapped by mercenaries with fancy weapons. Somehow I knew these were the same people. They swept from both sides of the shed, moving silently, as if they were gliding. One of them signalled over his shoulder with military hand gestures. The others split up, spreading out across the riverbank.
I was directly behind them, watching them stalk closer to our boat. None of them had seen me.
My breath stopped. My heart had frozen.
Then something else caught my eye, on the river.
Two rubber dinghies sailed past, their motors turned off so the tide carried them towards our felucca. Six more black-clad mercenaries stood in each, armed with the same crab-claw weapons.
I was about to yell a warning, but then a third dinghy arrived, following the others. This boat carried just two people. They were watching thermal images on a projected holosphere.
Kit and the snake lady.
Kit’s jaw was locked tight. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides as he stared at the thermal blobs on the projected screen, tracking the figures on the bank. His eyelid twitched.
The snake lady noticed and her ruby lips curled into a smile. The moon lit her face. With those sharp cheekbones and bright white hair, she looked more like a skeleton than a person. She was still carrying that slim metal briefcase with the jewelled snake eating its own tail.
I felt certain this lady knew where my dad was being kept. Maybe I could get closer and hear what they were saying. No way was I trying without some sort of weapon, though. I grabbed the rope, tied one end to an iron loop on the barn door and carried the other with me as I crept to the riverbank.
I crouched behind the shaduf, listening.
“Their weapons are set to stun only,” Kit said. “You assure me?”
The snake lady laughed. I’d expected a witch-like cackle, but her laugh was sweet and smooth as honey.
“Darling Dr Thorn,” she replied. “I have assured you three times now. We are not assassins. I am simply doing my job.”
“Jake and Pan are just children,” Kit said.
“Just children!” she chuckled. “Oh, Dr Thorn, tut tut. They are most certainly not just children. And as for Jane Atlas, we all know what she is capable of. She may be rusty, but I am concerned that twenty-four mercenaries may prove inadequate for this operation.”
I couldn’t help grinning. If Mum was rusty now, I wish I’d seen her at her best. But Kit’s next words wiped the smile off my face.
“What about John?” Kit asked.
I shifted closer.
“As yet the darling little man has not cooperated,” the snake lady replied.
“Have you offered him money?”
“Oh, Dr Thorn, money is useless when dealing with individuals such as John and Jane Atlas. They have higher values.”
Higher values than Kit. Lit by the glow of the holosphere, Kit’s face was reflected as ripples in the river. There was sadness in his eyes.
“You don’t need them,” he said. “I can find the tombs. Let John go, and—”
“Dr Thorn, letting John Atlas go is not an option. He is a baddie. And as for you finding the tombs, well, so far you have failed quite spectacularly, haven’t you?”
“But we’re getting close.”
The snake lady raised her briefcase, and the emerald serpent gleamed in the moonlight. It looked almost as if it might come alive. I tensed at the thought of facing another snake.
“Do you know what is in this case, Dr Thorn?” she asked.
“I have an idea.”
“Do you? Do you? Do you have an idea, Dr Thorn? Well, let us see if your idea is correct.”
With a slender finger she unclicked the clasps and opened the case.
It was empty.
She raised it so close to Kit’s face that he stepped back.
“Would you like to look closer, Dr Thorn? Go on, have a good look.”
“I can see,” Kit replied. “There’s nothing there.”
“Nothing. Nothing, Dr Thorn. And what should be here?”
“The tablet.”
“The tablet. Six months you have been searching, time for which you have been very well paid, haven’t you, my dear? Yet still we have not located the tablet from the Egyptian tomb. Right now, there remains a mummy in a tomb in Egypt clutching our tablet in its hands. That means that someone else might still find it before us, doesn’t it, Dr Thorn?”
Tablet? Was that what they were looking for? Not the mummy, but a tablet buried with the mummy?
“But we’re close now,” Kit replied. “The other tablets … Honduras, India, the Chinese trio … I can find them all. You don’t need the Atlas family.”
The snake lady snapped her case shut, silencing Kit. “Darling Dr Thorn. Sadly, you have failed to grasp the importance of our work. I suppose that a mere treasure hunter—”
“I’m an archaeologist,” Kit insisted.
The snake lady’s smile widened. “Tell me, Dr Thorn, are you happier now than you once were?”
“I don’t think about the old days.”
The snake lady stuck out her bottom lip like a moody child. “Oh, boo, Dr Thorn. Of course you do. You took twelve-year-old children to rob a museum. What a delightfully preposterous thing to do.”
“They’re twelve and a half.”
“They are the offspring of the only friends you ever had. Jake and Pandora Atlas remind you of their mummy and daddy. Why, you practically dragged them with you in all your frothing excitement for the good old days.”
She reached out a finger and stroked the scar on Kit’s cheek. “We all have wounds, Dr Thorn. Some of us just choose not to gaze at them. You should have contained the Atlas children when you had the chance. They are baddies, too.”
Kit stepped away from her, wiping his face. “Baddies? You can’t just imprison—”
“I can’t? I can’t? Who says I can’t? Because an international treaty of sixty-three countries says I can, actually. Oh, Dr Thorn, you mistake my professionalism for callousness. I have a heart in here somewhere. I have a home, a little dog. I take it for walkies in the park. But there are no men in my life, no children. Do you know why?”
Because you’re a cold-hearted cow, I wanted to cry out. But I bit my lip and shifted closer.
“Because of the work,” she said. “Archaeologist, you say? Archaeologists dig pits and find pots, Dr Thorn. My work is something else entirely. Do you have any idea what would happen if we fail to find all of the tablets? Global catastrophe. Possibly the end of civilization as we know it. Are my methods sometimes extreme? Perhaps. But this is an extremely extreme situation, Dr Thorn.”
Kit clenched his fists again, as if he might strangle the snake lady. But still he stared down at the river, the reflection of his sad eyes rippling and reforming in the water.
“John and Jane Atlas are different,” Kit said. “They’ll never be involved in what you’re doing. They’re idealists.”
The snake lady gave another laugh, warm but somehow also ice cold. “T
hey’re parents. You think this operation is to capture Jane Atlas? You silly old fool. Jane Atlas will come to us … once we have her children.”
She turned to the riverbank and looked straight at me.
“Isn’t that right, Jake?”
28
“Darling Jake.”
The snake lady reached out her arms as if I might rush from the bank and give her a hug. “What a pleasure it is to finally meet you.”
It felt like a punch to the gut, a shock so sudden it made me gasp. I turned to run, but her black-suited mercenaries surrounded me. They’d known exactly where I was. I’d walked into their trap.
“Jake,” Kit said. “Just do what they say, son—”
“You shut up!” I yelled. “You betrayed us.”
I hocked up a ball of spit and fired it at him. It missed, but Kit turned his head as if it had caught him hard on the cheek.
“Where’s my dad?” I demanded.
The snake lady’s lips parted into a smile. She had perfect white teeth, shiny like a string of pearls. “Be careful, darling Jake. Those nasty little men behind you are highly trained and heavily armed.”
“Armed with stun guns.”
“But stun guns stun hard.”
I didn’t doubt it, and didn’t want to find out how hard. I stepped back, closer to the mercenaries, but kept my eyes on the snake lady. She watched me, stroking her hair with a hand so pale I could see its veins.
“You think catching me will make my parents work for you?” I said. “Well, they won’t, not ever. But we know where the second tomb is. I’ll tell you if you let my dad go.”
“Oh, Jake darling. Why do you even care? I would hardly describe you as a close-knit family.”
“You don’t know anything about my family.”
“Oh? Don’t I? Don’t I, Jake? I am afraid, my dear, that it is my business to know about your family. Your house has been bugged for twelve years. I know about every little squabble you and your sister have had with your mummy and daddy. I know about all the nasty trouble that you love to cause. Oh, Jake, you and Pandora live to make your poor parents’ lives difficult. And now here you are, caring. It does not become you, Jake Atlas.”
Jake Atlas and the Tomb of the Emerald Snake Page 13