Imhotep

by Jerry Dubs

  He finished the note and gave it to Hasa. The folded twenty was beneath the postcard.

  “Thank you, Hasa,” Tim said.

  Hasa looked at the twenty and nodded at Tim. “I don’t think I believe you, Mr. Hope,” he said, reading the note. “But I will keep your money and I will give them the message and let them decide,” he said.

  Tim was sweating almost as much as Hasa by the time he left the guesthouse. Dark circles had spread under the arms of the gray tee shirt he was wearing. Now I know why I don’t tell lies more often, he thought.

  He went into the resort’s lobby and hurried across it to the Sultan Bar. The western wall of the bar was open, strands of wooden beads hung from the ceiling, twenty feet above him. Tim could see the gardens that surrounded the resort and, rising up beyond the shrubs and tree, the gray triangle of the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

  A few Egyptians sat in the low green chairs that were clustered around the small round tables in the bar. The bartender, wearing a red vest, leaned against the polished bar formed in the shape of an octagon. Tim pulled out one of the chairs by the low bar and ordered a Stella beer.

  The bartender was much friendlier than Hasa had been. It didn’t take Tim long to find out that the desk clerks came to work early in the morning. A second shift started in less than half an hour, at three o’clock.

  Tim asked the bartender if he knew the tall American and the woman with red hair. He was starting to feel like a detective. He wondered what Addy would think of him asking questions of strangers and telling lies to desk clerks.

  “I see them every night,” the bartender told him. “He is a great lover of our beer. She likes any drink with fruit. Fruit and little umbrellas. She likes the umbrellas.”

  “Last night? They were here last night?”

  The bartender nodded. “Sure, sure, every night.”

  Tim felt disappointed. If they had been here last night, while he was fumbling around in Kanakht’s Tomb, then he was wasting his time because they were safe. He’d wasted twenty dollars on Hasa. His little adventure was over.

  “No,” the bartender continued, laughing, “That’s not right. They weren’t here last night. Last night we had the singing contest. The karaoke. I was wanting to see him singing. He is so funny. All the time funny. But he didn’t sing. I would have remembered.”

  Tim waited until he was sure Hasa would have left his post before he went back into the guesthouse.

  The late shift clerk was an elderly man, his short, curly hair, thinning and gray. He looked up and smiled as Tim approached the desk.

  Tim saw that the oversized postcard he had given Hasa was sticking out of one of the slots.

  “Oh, great, I got mail,” he said, pointing to the postcard.

  The clerk turned to look where Tim was pointing. He retrieved the card and gave it to Tim. In precise block letters Hasa had printed on the card “Mr. Brian Aldwin or Ms. Diane Maclaine, Room 324.”

  “Thanks,” Tim said. “Say, Diane has our keys. Could you give me a key? It’s room 324.”

  The clerk looked puzzled. Tim showed the clerk the postcard and pointed to the room number. Then he patted his pockets and shrugged.

  The old man smiled and nodded. He reached in the cubbyhole and picked up a duplicate key for the room and gave it to Tim.

  “I’ll bring it right back,” Tim said as he took the key.

  Tim hurried up the stairwell heading for the third floor.

  He knocked on the door of the room. When there was no answer he steadied his right hand with his left and shakily he slid the key in the lock.

  He pushed open the door and stepped inside. Shaking with nervousness, he stood listening for a minute before turning on the room lights. He had no idea what he would do if Brian and Diane were there taking a nap. He could try to explain why he was there, but he wasn’t sure what he would do if they decided he was just trying to steal from their room. Remembering Brian’s size, Tim was sure he didn’t want to frighten them.

  The room was empty.

  He chained the door behind him and then walked over to a sliding door that opened onto a small balcony. It was too far to jump to the ground, but if someone tried to open the room door, he might be able to swing over the side and then drop onto the balcony below him.

  He hoped he wouldn’t need to.

  There were two single beds in the room. Both were made, but Tim had no idea when the maid would have straightened the room, so it was possible that they could have been slept in last night and made this morning. A wooden bench with a back sat against the wall at the foot of the bed nearest the door. Tim lifted its hinged seat. The compartment beneath it was empty.

  A small table and two chairs were tucked into an alcove by the balcony door. A guidebook to Saqqara was on the table, along with computer printouts listing all the casinos in Cairo.

  There were no used towels in the bathroom. In the closet, Tim found clothes in a hotel dry cleaner bag. The receipt on the bag showed it had been returned two days ago. The waste cans were empty. There were no signs that anyone had been in the room that day.

  A dark green, paisley print suitcase lay on a metal stand by the closet. Inside he found a paper envelope tucked in the lid’s cloth pocket. It held two tickets for an Air Egypt flight from Cairo to Aswan.

  The flight was for six p.m. today. Tim looked at the digital clock by the bed. It was after four; the flight was scheduled to leave in less than two hours.

  He put the tickets back and closed the suitcase.

  If I was going to be on a flight in less than two hours I’d already be at the airport, he thought.

  He unchained the door and after listening for footsteps, opened it slowly and stepped outside. Quietly shutting the door, he walked toward the stairs. After he passed a few rooms, he stopped and turned back to make sure no one was following him. He bent over as if to tie his shoe, realized that he was wearing sandals, and laughed to himself.

  Some detective, he thought.

  No one was behind him in the hallway. He went back down the stairs and returned the key to the silent clerk, who gave Tim an absent smile.

  In the hotel courtyard he found a bench that gave him a view of the pyramids framed by a nearby cluster of date palms. He shrugged out of his backpack, removed his sketchbook and sat on the bench.

  As he sketched, he watched the driveway, hoping for a car to arrive with Brian and Diane. When the shadows on the angled sides of the pyramid began to shift, Tim decided to check the room again. It was almost seven o’clock.

  He went into the main lobby and asked the desk clerk to ring Brian Aldwin in Room 324. After letting the phone ring for a full minute, the clerk shrugged and told Tim that no one was answering. Perhaps he would like to leave a message?

  “I’m supposed to take them to the airport,” Tim said. “They haven’t checked out and gone with someone else, have they?”

  The clerk checked the register.

  “No, they are still with us. Perhaps you have the wrong time, or perhaps they are running late.”

  Tim nodded. “Well, I’ll sit outside for a couple minutes, but if they’re much later, they’ll miss their plane. Thanks for checking.”

  He walked to the guesthouse and got the room key from the silent clerk. There was no answer to his knock, so he entered the room again, calling their names. Still no answer.

  If they hadn’t checked out, then the hotel safe would still have their passports, and they weren’t going anywhere without those, he thought.

  Suddenly he was sure something had happened to them.

  There was no telephone directory in the room so Tim called the reservation desk and asked for the number of the American embassy.

  “Is there a problem, sir?”

  “No,” Tim said. “My sister was going to leave a message for me there, since I wasn’t sure about my travel plans.”

  “Embassy of the United States,” a woman’s voice said a minute later.

  Tim didn’t know whom
to ask for.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hi. I’m an American citizen.” That sounded pretty lame, he thought. “I’m not sure who to ask for.”

  “What is the nature of your business? Have you lost your passport? Have you violated an Egyptian law? Are you experiencing a health problem? Do you have information or know of someone who may have information about security matters?

  She walked through the list mechanically.

  “No, none of those. I think two people are missing.”

  “Just a moment, sir. I’ll transfer you to security.”

  The line went dead and Tim thought the connection had been broken. Then there were a series of clicks and a man’s tired voice said, “Jim Kamin, security.”

  “Mr. Kamin?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think two Americans are missing.”

  “Missing? And you are?”

  “I’m Tim Hope.”

  “United States citizen?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Is that Tim for Timothy?”

  “What? Yes, Timothy. Look, I’m not sure. . . ”

  “Mr. Hope, now you say some people are missing. Did you see them taken? Have they been harmed? Why do you think they’re missing?”

  “They’re not here.”

  “Here?”

  “In their room.”

  “And where might that be?”

  “Wait. Here’s what happened. I saw them go into a tomb yesterday and then their guide came out but they didn’t. I mean, I don’t think they did, at least I didn’t see them and I don’t think there’s another exit from the tomb. At least I didn’t see one, although there was this other doorway and I didn’t check where it went. But that doesn’t matter. Anyhow I checked at their hotel room today and their stuff is here and they had tickets for a flight to Aswan tonight, but the tickets are still here. So, I think something happened to them in the tomb.”

  “There was a bombing? I didn’t hear about any bombing.”

  “Bombing? No, there wasn’t any bombing I didn’t say anything about a bombing.”

  “Then why do you think something happened to them in the bomb?”

  “No, I said ‘tomb.’ Something happened to them in the tomb. When I went in they weren’t there. Now they aren’t here and they didn’t take the tickets with them. They missed their flight.”

  “Was there a shooting? Because I didn’t hear about any shootings.”

  “No, there was no shooting, no bombing. They just didn’t come out of the tomb and they aren’t in their room.”

  “And you are?”

  “Are what?”

  “In their room.”

  “Yes. Their suitcases are here, their tickets, their clothes.”

  “You had a key to their room?”

  “Look. I just want to report these people missing. Perhaps the embassy could send someone to check out the tomb where I saw them.”

  “Look, Mr. Hope. People miss flights all the time. Tourists get sidetracked and change plans all the time. If you have any evidence other than unused tickets, tell me. Otherwise, I think we should just wait a few days and see if they turn up. If they don’t, then we’ll contact the Egyptian authorities.”

  “What if they’re hurt?”

  “Well you said there wasn’t any bombing or shooting. And I have to tell you that, relatively speaking, Egypt is a very, very safe place for tourists. Not like Miami or New York.”

  “So, we just wait.”

  “Yes. Now if you would like to tell me exactly where you are.”

  Tim hated telephones. He couldn’t recall a single telephone call he had ever made to someone in authority or to a business that turned out the way he wanted.

  He remembered learning that ninety percent of communication was non-verbal: crossed arms, shrugs, hand gestures, smiles, frowns, winks, scowls, a raised eyebrow. The telephone line, a lifeless strand of metal carrying a monochromatic wave of electrons, stripped away color and life. It was hard enough to communicate in person with someone you knew. To make sense to a stranger with such a handicap was impossible.

  He closed his eyes and pictured Addy leaning forward to whisper to him, her mouth opening softly, her lower lip a glistening, inviting crescent, the upper lip slightly drawn up, the juncture of the soft red lip and her pale skin sharply, achingly, beautifully defined. He could feel her breath, its gentle sweetness brushing against his cheek as she exhaled.

  The air, caressed by her mouth and tongue, became alive. It lapped against his ears, entered him and warmed him as sunshine warmed his skin.

  “Mr. Hope? You still there?”

  Tim hung up the telephone.

  “Addy,” he said softly. “I have to help them. I can’t ignore them. I can’t make a phone call and pretend I’ve done everything I should.

  “You know that, Addy. You know that.”

  A Secret Entrance

  Tim spent the night in Brian’s and Diane’s room, hoping that they would come back and prove they were not missing and worrying that they would come back and find him trespassing in their room.

  While he waited, he read the Saqqara guidebook they had left on the table, hoping to find information about the Tomb of Kanakht. He imagined secret passages and deadly open shafts. Although the location was marked on the map with a small black square, the book never mentioned Kanakht’s tomb.

  Saqqara had been the official cemetery for Memphis, the capital of Egypt five thousand years ago. The necropolis lay in the desert beyond the reach of the Nile. Memphis, called Ineb-Hedj or “The White Wall” in ancient times, had been a fortified city built along the river.

  During the thousands of years since they had been built, the temples had fallen and the pyramids had been partly buried by sand; but closer to the Nile, the homes, shops, schools and markets of the people who lived in Memphis had been completely washed away by the relentless annual floods. Although some of the stone monuments at Saqqara had been quarried for later buildings, and others had been vandalized, much of the ancient burial ground survived.

  Nothing was left of Memphis.

  The Step Pyramid, the largest tomb at Saqqara, was closed to the public, as were the five other large pyramids that stood outside the main complex. Throughout Egypt there were fewer and fewer tombs open to the public. The collective moisture exhaled by thousands and thousands of tourists had been discovered to be more dangerous to wall paintings than the tomb robbers had been five thousand years ago.

  But tourists were still allowed to wander the open courtyards; to pass by the resurrected walls of the colonnade; to walk through the massive geometric entrance to the pyramid courtyard; to sit in the heb sed court, where King Djoser had been re-crowned; to gaze up at the cobra-headed frieze along the Southern Tomb and at the papyrus-capped pillars of the Northern Court.

  The burial complex was huge, far beyond the scale of monuments even imagined today. And the temples and carvings, colonnades and statues, all of that work, that vision and beauty had been built to surround and showcase the enormous Step Pyramid, the jewel of Djoser’s immortal resting place. It rose from the surrounding desert as if it had always been there and would remain there always. Weathered by sand and wind, crumbling from age, the ruins were more imposing, more awe-inspiring than any pristine reconstruction could have been.

  Tim imagined the workers, their wives and children, the priests, the dancers and musicians, the soldiers and members of the royal court all standing before the completed structure and sharing a single thought: that they, the people of Egypt, had built this. Their imagination and vision, their strong backs and skillful hands, their precise measurements and understanding had brought this form into existence.

  The Step Pyramid is actually a tower built with a series of stone squares, or mastabas, set atop each other, each one smaller. The diminishing size of the stacked mastabas give the pyramid its pointed shape through a series of steps, unlike the more famous pyramids of Giza which had a smooth, slanted al
abaster encasing the stepped exterior.

  The square base of the pyramid is about two hundred feet long on each side and twenty-six feet high. The six steps of the pyramid raise its peak almost two hundred feet above the desert. The entire structure is a headstone for the burial chambers, which are deep underground.

  A main shaft descends a hundred feet into the desert to Djoser’s burial chamber. From that central shaft a network of tunnels branches away, leading to rooms where goods were stored for the king’s afterlife. Eleven more shafts, just east of the main tunnel, lead to additional burial chambers, possibly intended for Djoser’s wives and daughters.

  Tim put the guidebook aside. As the evening had worn on, he had gotten sleepy, but afraid of being caught sleeping like Goldilocks if Brian and Diane had come home late, he had made coffee using the small coffee pot in the bathroom.

  He poured himself the last cup and sat at the room’s desk with his journal.

  “Addy,” he wrote, “I’m hiding in a room at the Mena House waiting for people I’ve never met. Their names are Brian and Diane and I’m afraid something happened to them. I saw them go into the Tomb of Kanakht near the Step Pyramid. I didn’t see them come out - although it’s possible that they did and I missed them - but they haven’t been seen at the hotel since then.

  “If they haven’t returned by morning, I’m going to go to Saqqara and go back inside the tomb and search it completely. There was a hallway that I didn’t go in the first time I searched because my flashlight broke. I bought some candles so I don’t have to worry about another flashlight incident.

  “I called the embassy earlier, but they want to wait a few more days.

  “I picture Brian and Diane at the bottom of some burial shaft deep under the desert, weak and hungry, unable to escape, calling for help, waiting for someone to hear them. If I don’t find them tomorrow, I’ll check the room again and then go to the embassy in person.

  “I’ll make sure, somehow, that they’ll take over and search for them.

  “At least I’ll have done everything I can.

  “I love you. Always.”