Jake Atlas and the Tomb of the Emerald Snake

by Rob Lloyd Jones

  “We’re going to be treasure hunters,” I blurted. “My whole family.”

  As soon as I said it I wished I hadn’t. That was my plan, but it came out like a whine.

  “Oh, Jake! You little cherub. You are a treasure yourself. But no, that is not going to happen.”

  “You watch, witch. We’ll get your stupid tablets, starting with the one in the Tomb of Osiris. Then you’ll have to give our dad back.”

  The snake lady’s lips remained curled in a warm smile, but her eyes were suddenly hard black marbles.

  “Darling, I had no idea you knew so much about my operation.” She cupped her mouth in her hands and whispered, as if telling me a secret, “I thought you were the stupid one in the family.”

  “Just come with us, Jake,” Kit said. “This woman isn’t one to mess around with.”

  The mercenaries edged closer, stun guns raised. If I was going to act, it had to be now. Remember that rope I’d picked up? The iron loop I’d tied it to was the latch on the shed door. The shed full of bullocks.

  I gripped the rope tighter. “I’m not one to mess around with either, Kit.”

  I yanked the line as hard as I could.

  The gate tore open and the bullocks waddled out. The plan might not have worked if the mercenaries had kept their cool, but one of them freaked out and fired. A stun dart struck a bullock, and the others went bonkers, snorting and charging. Some of the mercenaries opened fire. Others scattered or tumbled over and got trampled.

  That was really all the plan I had. The rest I made up as I went along. Leaping from the bank, I snatched hold of the rope on the shaduf. My momentum caused the pole to spin, swinging me over the river. I’d hoped to boot Kit and the snake lady into the water, but my grip slipped and I thumped down on the edge of their boat. The whole dinghy flipped up, tossing us all into the Nile.

  I came up splashing, spitting, grabbing at the boat. Somehow I managed to haul myself onto its deck. A pale hand reached up from the other side, and I stamped a heel against its fingers.

  The snake lady screamed. On the boat she had been totally calm, cool as ice. But suddenly she was all panic and thrashing limbs as she sank under and popped back up.

  “Dr Thorn! I can’t swim!”

  Kit stood waist-high in the water, watching the snake lady as if he might let her drown. I was about to jump in to save her, but he finally waded to her rescue.

  He looked at me as he grabbed her. “Smart move, son. Watch out behind you.”

  The mercenaries on the other boats had heard, and their sneak attack turned into a full-volume assault. Motor engines revved. Searchlights caught me full glare, and orders roared in foreign languages. I didn’t need to understand to get the gist: don’t move or we’ll stun-gun you into oblivion.

  I raised my arms in reluctant surrender. Dazzled and blinking, I saw blurry silhouettes of the mercenaries, stun guns aimed. Before they could fire, a dark shape leaped at them from behind.

  Mum!

  Thank God.

  I saw kicks and punches, all at crazy speed. Two of the mercenaries tumbled over the side of the boat and into the river. Another whirled around, only to be flipped over by Mum and sent to join his buddies in the water.

  “Look out!” I yelled.

  The other boat was coming for her, but she was busy fighting the three remaining mercenaries on the first boat.

  Barely thinking, I scrambled to the rear of my boat, grabbed the engine’s tiller and twisted the throttle. The dinghy thrust forward so fast that I tumbled back and my head smacked against the engine. I managed to keep a grip on the throttle and twisted harder.

  The front of my boat hit the other dinghy side-on and went right up onto its deck. Four of the mercenaries tumbled over the side. The other two recovered and aimed their stun guns at my head.

  There were two quick shots.

  Both men fell, each with a stun dart in his neck.

  Another two shots.

  Two of the mercenaries fighting Mum dropped to the deck. The last black-suited mercenary saw. Now it was just him versus Mum. He turned and dived into the river.

  Pan stood on the bank, aiming one of the stun guns. She’d taken all four of the mercenaries out, in the dark, from twenty metres.

  “Nice shooting, sis!” I called.

  On the felucca, Sami finally emerged from beneath his blanket. “Did I miss something?” he said, still half asleep.

  Mum grabbed her boat’s controls and steered it alongside the felucca. “Hurry!” she cried. “Everyone in here.”

  Pan jumped onto the felucca and helped Sami toss his equipment bags onto the dinghy. They climbed in with Mum, and Mum turned the boat so I could jump in too.

  “Get down!” she screamed. “Get your heads down!”

  Explosions went off in the river, spraying up water. Gun shots. The mercenaries on the bank had changed the setting on their weapons.

  “They’re firing at us!” I yelled.

  “Jake,” Mum snapped, “when people are firing at us, you don’t have to tell me that they are firing at us.”

  I curled up beside Pan, covering our heads as if that might make a difference against bullets. Another shot hit the water as we raced to the centre of the Nile.

  Sami took control of the boat, speeding us faster over the dark river. Water sprayed over the edges.

  Mum yanked me up, grabbing my arm so hard that I yelped. “What the blazes were you thinking?”

  Her lip was swollen, and blood trickled from a cut on her cheek. The mercenaries had got in a few blows before she’d sent them swimming.

  “You could have been killed!” she roared. “You could have got us all killed.”

  “Go easy on him, Jane,” Sami said.

  “I will not, Sam! He needs to learn to control himself. You just charge into things, Jake, with no plan at all.”

  “Bullocks…” I muttered.

  “Don’t you talk to me like that, young man.”

  “No, I mean…”

  I gave up – the plan with the bullocks had been pretty dumb anyway.

  “Mum,” Pan said. “Jake was the only one who—”

  “Sit back down, Pandora! Put your life-jacket on.”

  “I don’t have a life-jacket.”

  “Sam, why in blazes do we not have life-jackets?”

  “It’s not our boat, Jane.”

  “This situation is out of control!”

  Mum was losing it. Tears glistened in her eyes, and her voice reached the high pitch that usually came before the silent zone.

  Sami turned the engine off and we drifted along the river.

  “This can’t go on,” Mum said, breathing hard. “We have to turn back and find somewhere to hide. We can’t keep risking your lives, not even for your father.”

  “Jane,” Sami said. “We were just attacked by twenty-four mercenaries, some of the best hired guns in the business. You took out three. Pan dropped four with some of the best shooting I’ve seen in years. Jake took out sixteen, most of those before any of us even woke up. I didn’t think they should be involved in any of this either. But they are now and, from what I’ve seen, they can handle it. Imagine what you could do if you worked together.”

  Mum glared at him. “I told you to stay out of this, Sam. It’s family business.”

  Sami shrugged. “It’s not, though, is it, Jane? You won’t let it be. Give Jake and Pan a chance. They’ve earned it.”

  Mum sighed, long and heavy. Her eyes softened, and I sensed she wanted to say something. But her wall came up again and she turned away.

  “Just get us to the dam.”

  29

  None of us spoke much for the rest of that night, or even as morning broke and the sun set fire to the cliffs beyond the fields. We stopped at a village, where Sami bought petrol for the boat, as well as flatbreads and goat’s cheese for breakfast. The cheese was gross, but I was hungry enough to demolish a whole block of it. Otherwise we just kept going south, travelling as far from
the tourist boats as we could, down the middle of the misty river.

  At times it seemed as if we were passing through a rainforest rather than a desert. The greens were so bright, like the colour turned up too high on a TV. Fields of reeds, long swishing grasses, palms and date trees with knobbly knees and leaves at the top like exploding fireworks. Where the river bent were sand dunes and dry rock, and the green strips seemed like a last stand in a war against the desert.

  The further south we sailed, the more the landscape changed. Fields were replaced with sand banks, sand banks replaced with boulders. Distant hills became not-so-distant hills, which became right-smack-by-the-river hills. Then hills became cracked red cliffs, like canyons on Mars. Cacti sprouted from the rocks.

  Mum kneeled at the front of the boat, watching the bank through her smart-goggles. She kept ordering the glasses to “zoom” or “show map”. I sensed that if she spotted so much as a lizard scuttle from behind a rock, she’d roar at Sami to turn the boat around and take us to safety.

  I decided not to tell her what I’d overheard the snake lady say. It had sounded as if that woman needed Dad for more than just finding the tomb. She had some bigger plan, to find a tablet in the Tomb of Osiris, as well as others around the world. Maybe Mum already knew, but I was afraid to ask.

  Pan had swiped some headphones from Sami’s bag and wrapped them over her head like giant earmuffs. She wasn’t listening to music; it was just her way of hiding, like she did back home. But she kept glancing at Mum, and every time we sailed past a ruined monument she sat up, staring.

  I needed to talk to someone, and I think Sami could sense it. After he’d finished his prayers, he called me over and taught me how to hold the tiller and steer the boat. Mum scowled, but I guess she decided I couldn’t do much harm.

  “Your mum loves you,” Sami said.

  I shifted closer, talking over the roar of the motor. “Really? Funny way of showing it.”

  “Actually,” Sami replied, “all she’s done in twelve years is show it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look over there,” Sami said.

  On the bank, villages nestled at the base of a cliff, with clusters of box-like houses that I’d have thought were ancient ruins were it not for the satellite dishes on their roofs. Gangly white birds swooped from rocks or patrolled the banks, snatching fish from the water.

  “This whole scene hasn’t changed much in five thousand years,” Sami said. “Those hills, where kings were buried in rock-cut tombs. Those homes made of mud bricks. We’ve travelled back in time. To a lover of history, this place is everything.”

  I turned the tiller, steering us around fishermen casting a net from a wooden dinghy.

  “When I first knew your mum,” Sami continued, “we sailed up and down this ancient river maybe a hundred times. She was always right at the front of the boat, watching everything, taking photographs, calling to your dad or Kit to see something. I’ve never known anyone to be so full of passion for a subject. Treasure-hunting, this place, saving those artefacts… It was everything to her. But she gave it all up for you. So it sounds to me like every single day of the last twelve years has been one big act of love.”

  Part of me understood, but it still seemed crazy to give up something you loved. Something that mattered. It felt wrong for her to just go back to the way things were. We should be doing this together.

  “Was she good at it?” I asked.

  Sami laughed. “Good? Your mum and dad were the best. And I can tell you, they’re missed. There are about a dozen top hunters now. They’re all like Kit, working for billionaires. Your mum and dad were the last good ones. When they stopped, there wasn’t much hope for a lot of history. You wouldn’t believe the things these hunters have discovered and sold off.”

  Pan, who had been pretending not to listen, lifted her headphones and slid closer. “What sort of things?”

  “You’ve heard of Genghis Khan?” Sami said.

  “The Mongol warlord? That Ghengis Khan?”

  “Yes, that one. His tomb was discovered in secret last year, by Dutch hunters. Its entire contents are now on the black market. Historians and the public will never even know it was found.”

  Pan’s eyes narrowed. She was properly angry about all this, I could tell. It got to me, too. It wasn’t because I loved history like Pan did, but because people could get away with it.

  “What about you, Sami?” I said. “You work for these other hunters?”

  “No,” Sami replied. “Only Kit. He… He saved me once. There’s a good side to him. The man who once worked with your parents to protect history, that person is still in there somewhere, even though he tries to hide it. But I won’t work with the others, I’m too old for that. They hire mercenaries by the dozen, like those you fought. Mostly ex-military, Russian, Slovakian. They wouldn’t know a pharaoh from a falafel.”

  “So how do those hunters find the tombs?” Pan asked.

  “Usually with grenades or dynamite. I once saw a hunter in Turkey fire a missile at a cliff, which he thought was hiding a Hittite tomb.”

  “Was it?”

  “He never found out. The cliff collapsed.”

  On the bank, tourists wandered between rows of sphinxes, an ancient avenue that led to a temple guarded by giant, seated pharaohs. Part of the site was roped off for an archaeological dig. The tourists were walking through history; the relics and monuments protected by people who cared.

  “All I know,” Sami said, “is that things were better when your mum and dad were on the scene. Museums miss them, history misses them, and I miss them.”

  “What about the snake lady?” Pan asked. “Is she one of the mean ones?”

  The wrinkles on Sami’s face screwed up tighter. When he spoke again, his voice was deeper, more serious. “I don’t know for sure. I never got to meet her. Whoever she was, she scared Kit, and not many things scare Kit. My guess is that that woman, and whoever she works for, are not after treasure. There’s something else, something bigger, that they’re hunting for.”

  “Do you think she’ll hurt Dad?”

  Sami took the tiller back from me and continued to steer the boat. “You should both get some rest,” he said, “while you can.”

  “Why do we need to rest?” Pan asked. “Mum’s not going to let us help her find the tomb.”

  “Maybe not,” Sami replied. He turned the dinghy, guiding the boat away from the bank and the tourists who might spot us. “But I have a feeling she might not have much say in the matter.”

  30

  By the time we reached the first dam, the sun was directly overhead and as fierce as a furnace.

  We’d passed between rocky islands in the river. We’d passed under Aswan Bridge, a huge suspension crossing that seemed as far from ancient as anything could be. We’d passed the town of Aswan on the east bank – high-rise blocks, fancy hotels and swanky restaurants with verandas jutting over the river. We’d passed ruined temples. We’d passed advertising boards selling sports cars and smart phones.

  The river around Aswan was clogged with vessels, from small dinghies like ours to hulking cruise liners with swimming pools and sun decks. Police boats drifted among them, making inspections. The moment Mum saw them she decided our river trip was over.

  We landed in an inlet down-river from Aswan and ran the last few miles along the bank, struggling to understand Mum’s military hand signals. We stayed close to the water, avoiding the only road that stretched this far south. We passed villas, mosques and minarets. And then the river ended. Or, at least, a big obstacle blocked its way.

  “Damn!” I said.

  And no one laughed! Seriously, I’d been saving that joke the whole journey and it didn’t even get a smile.

  Mum slid her rifle scope from her utility belt and studied the dam. The concrete wall rose thirty metres above the river. A dozen sluice gates sprayed water from the lake on the other side and into the Nile. Electricity pylons marched across the top of th
e dam, their sagging wires kissing the roof of a small concrete control station.

  “The Aswan low dam,” Mum explained. “Built over a hundred years ago, it lets water into the river at a constant rate. The real work is done by the high dam, at the other end of the lake.”

  “Where’s the island we’re looking for?” I asked.

  “It’s on the other side,” Pan replied. “In the lake between the two dams.”

  “Keep low and follow me,” Mum ordered.

  We scrambled up a slope of boulders, across a road and onto the top of the dam. Mum reached the control cabin first and peeked through the window. She slipped a skeleton key from her utility belt, opened the door and signalled for us to follow.

  The cabin was basic. The back wall was covered in pipes and iron wheels, which I guessed controlled the flow of water through the dam. There was a bank of switches and levers and black and white monitors, like something from an ancient episode of Star Trek. Above them, a window almost the size of a cinema screen looked out to the lake.

  “It’s beautiful,” Pan said.

  The lake was as still as a pond, and so clear we could see the broken rock bed. We were here to find Biga, the Holy Island, but there were several islands. Mum had called them wild places and now I saw why. They were little more than heaps of grey-brown boulders rising from crystal water.

  No one was visiting them, either. Canopied motor-boats clustered around a dock to one side of the lake, but none were out on the water. The lake was eerily still and silent.

  “Strange,” Sami muttered. “There are usually dozens of tourist boats out there.”

  “The police have stopped them,” Mum said. “They’re looking for us.”

  I tried not to think about the police, and focused on the lake. Only one of the islands looked worth visiting. It was about a kilometre from the dam, smaller and greener than the others. The honey-coloured ruins of a temple rose above the boulders – stone gateways and columns that, even from a distance, we could see were covered in carvings.