by Paul Sussman
She gave a scornful flick of the hand, not even bothering to turn round.
‘Go on, get out! Run away home to Mommy! Mice! Every one of you! Mice and worms! There’s no place for you here!’
‘Ms Kiernan …’
‘This is the time of the strong. Of the faithful. Of the true believers! Our time! God’s time! Go on, get out! We’ll take it from here! We’ll take the world from here!’
Eyes blazing, she gave another contemptuous hand-flick, as though dismissing someone who was trying to sell her an unwanted trinket. Meadows shook his head helplessly, turned on his heel and ran from the chamber. Kiernan’s voice echoed behind him, audible even through the booming of the Benben and the grinding of the gorge walls, shrill, euphoric, triumphant:
‘Look at it, Charlie! Oh will you just look at it, my darling! See its power! We’ll crush them! The evildoers, the wicked ones! We’ll grind them into dust! Oh will you just look at it!’
‘You knew, didn’t you? All the time. You knew where the oasis was. You’ve been here before.’
Flin was struggling to keep pace with Zahir as the Egyptian led them back up the processional way towards the top end of the gorge. Freya and Said were following close behind, the ground heaving and buckling, the cliffs to either side looming ever larger, creeping inexorably inwards like a closing vice. Dust filled the air; statues and masonry were starting to shudder and topple. The noise was deafening.
‘When?’ cried Flin, fighting both for breath and to make his voice heard above the chaos around them. ‘When did you find it?’
‘No me,’ shouted Zahir over his shoulder. ‘My in-sis-teer. Mohammed Wald Yusuf Ibrahim Sabri al-Rashaayda. He know all desert, every dune, every grain sand. He find oasis. Before six hundred year.’
‘Your family have known about the wehat for six hundred years!’
‘We pass one generation al-Rashaayda to next, father son, father son. No tell anyone.’
‘But why, for God’s sake? Why keep it secret?’
Zahir skidded to a halt and turned to face Flin. Freya and Said were coming up behind.
‘We Bedouin.’ Zahir slapped a hand to his chest. ‘We understand oasis, we respect. We come, we drink water, we spend night, nothing more. We no touch anything, we no take anything, we no hurt anything. Other people … they no understand. Oasis powerful.’
The Egyptian waved an arm around.
‘Dangerous if you no respect. Like all desert. No safe other people come here. Bad thing happen. Oasis punish. Now come. We no have much time!’
He started running again, Flin, Freya and Said pounding along in his wake. They reached the first of the flights of steps that climbed up towards the temple complex above. Rather than continuing straight on, Zahir swerved right, taking them off the main avenue and onto a path that looped around the base of the rock platform on which the temple sat. It was narrower than the causeway, clogged with roots and fallen masonry, and their progress slowed.
‘What about the plane?’ Flin shouted, warding off a branch as it switched back into his face. ‘You knew about the plane?’
‘Of course know about plane,’ said Zahir. ‘We find four, five week after crash. We know one man live because he dig grave, we search him, but we no find. After this we come many time. We watch. We guard.’
‘But you were part of Sandfire! You were helping Alex look for the oasis!’
Zahir threw Flin a glance, his meaning perfectly clear even without words: I might have helped her look, but certainly not to find.
‘You were trying to protect us, weren’t you?’ called Freya, pushing along beside Flin. ‘When we came to your house yesterday, asked you about the rock. That’s why you didn’t want to tell us. You wanted to protect us.’
‘I try warn you is dangerous,’ said Zahir, slowing to a walk as ahead of them a huge fallen column came into view. Three metres in diameter, as long as a railway carriage and wrapped in dense webs of creeper, it completely blocked the path. ‘Oasis dangerous, bad people dangerous, everything dangerous. You my good friend. I no want you be hurt.’
He reached the column, seized one of the creepers and was starting to heave himself up when Flin reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling him back.
‘It’s us who owe you an apology, Zahir. More than an apology. We mistrusted you, insulted you in your own home. I am sorry, sahebee. Truly sorry.’
The Egyptian gave another of those barely discernible half-smiles, and brushed Flin’s hand away.
‘Is OK, I kill you later,’ he said. ‘Now we keep moving. Climb out oasis. Please, quick.’
He clapped the Englishman on the shoulder and, swinging around, clambered up onto the pillar, kneeling and holding out his hand for Freya. She scrambled up as well, the movement of the cliffs causing the column to rock and judder as though it were some giant inflatable toy rather than forty tons of solid stone. She took a moment to get her balance, then turned to help the others up. As she did she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye, above and to her right.
‘Look!’ She pointed.
They were now almost parallel with the front of the temple, although much lower down. A wide gap in the intervening trees offered them an unimpeded view of the first pylon with its creeper-draped towers and open gates. As they followed the line of Freya’s arm, they saw figures stampeding out into the open area in front of the temple: men in flak jackets and sunglasses, the lab-coated scientists, Girgis and his colleagues, Meadows and, bringing up the rear, the red-haired twins in their Armani suits. No sign of Molly Kiernan.
‘They go wrong way,’ said Zahir matter-of-factly. ‘They die. We live. Come.’
He reached down to help his brother onto the pillar, Freya doing the same for Flin. Said scrambled up but Flin remained where he was.
‘Molly didn’t come out,’ he shouted. ‘She’s still in there.’
‘Who gives a shit about Molly!’ yelled Freya. ‘Come on.’
‘I can’t just leave her there!’
‘What do you mean you can’t just leave her there? After everything she’s done to us? Screw her, let her fry!’
Flin was clenching and unclenching his fists.
‘Come on!’ screamed Freya again, glancing frantically left and right at the converging cliffs.
‘I can’t just leave her,’ Flin repeated. ‘She helped me, despite it all. Introduced me to Alex, gave my life some meaning, however screwed up the motives. I can’t just leave her to die.’
‘You’re mad. You’re fucking mad!’
He ignored her, backing away towards a secondary flight of rock steps that snaked up to the temple gateway from the side rather than the front.
‘Go,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll catch you up.’
‘No!’
Freya swivelled round and clasped a thick tendril of creeper, ready to clamber down off the column and go after him. Zahir grabbed her arm.
‘We wait at top,’ he said. ‘Is better that way.’
She shook the arm off and stood, screaming after Flin.
‘What are you doing? She killed Alex! She was part of it. How can you want to save her? She killed my sister.’
But he was already powering up the steps away from her, taking them two at a time, and her voice was swallowed by the booming of the Benben and the thunderous roar of pulverizing rock.
‘I pray that one day the ground will open up and swallow you, oh shame of my womb.’
These were the last words Romani Girgis’s mother had ever spoken to him and now, as he charged down through the oasis, the cliffs closing in around him like some monstrous pair of pliers, the entire world seeming to fold and collapse in on itself, he had a nasty feeling her dying wish was about to be granted.
He should have known it was a bad deal. Right from the very outset, from the day twenty-three years ago when that mad bitch Kiernan had told him to forget about the plane, that it was the Benben her people were interested in. Whores, drugs, guns, uranium – these were things he could under
stand, things he could rely on and control. But exploding stones, ancient curses? He should have known, if not twenty-three years ago then certainly earlier that morning, when they had flown over and over the Gilf and found absolutely nothing, and yet the moment they had traipsed through that disgusting tunnel there was the oasis in front of them, as if it had been there all the time. There were forces at work here that he couldn’t comprehend, factors he couldn’t predict, powers he couldn’t bend to his own will. All of which added up to the mother of all bad business decisions.
‘I want my money,’ he screamed, scratching furiously at his hands and neck as he ran, the obelisks lining the processional way crashing down around him like tumbling skittles. ‘You hear? I want my money! Give it to me! Give it to me now!’
He was yelling to himself. Most of the group who had fled the temple with him had by now either stormed away into the distance ahead or else, as in the case of that idiot scientist Meadows, been crushed under falling masonry. Now it was just him and his fellow Egyptians – Kasri, the twins and, lagging behind, gasping for breath, Boutros Salah. His oldest colleague. The one person in the world he’d consider calling a friend. He was waving desperately.
‘Don’t leave me, Romani! Please wait. I can’t keep up!’
‘It’s your fault!’ shrieked Girgis, half turning and jabbing a finger at him. ‘You should have warned me it was a bad deal. You should have talked me out of it! And so should you! And you!’
This to Kasri and the twins.
‘All of you! You should have warned me! You should have talked me out of it. I want my money! You hear? I want my money now, you dirty thieving koosat!’
He continued to rant as they stumbled onwards, flailing his arms, raging at the duplicity of the Americans and the treachery of his own people. They passed the wreck of the Antonov, the rock face behind slowly pushing the plane towards them, bulldozing it along on a churning tide of masonry and boulders and uprooted trees until eventually it was upended and dragged down and underneath the hem of the cliff like a toy boat beneath the prow of an ocean liner.
‘How is this happening!’ screamed Girgis. ‘Make it stop! You hear! That’s what I pay you for! Make it stop!’
His voice was lost in the deafening clamour of shearing stone. Even if they could have heard him no one would have taken any notice, all of them focused solely on getting to the bottom of the oasis and back into the tunnel as quickly as possible.
On and on they ploughed, the world growing ever darker as the gorge narrowed, sending billowing clouds of dust and debris surging into their faces. In the end they were to all intents and purposes running blind, the looming blackness of the walls to either side and the slight downward gradient of the ground beneath their feet the only indication that they were still moving in the right direction.
So impenetrable was the murk, so disorientating the thunder of splintering rock that Girgis was already thirty metres along it before he realized he was actually inside the tunnel. The dust cloud slowly dissipated around him, small pools of light gradually came into focus from the portable krypton lamps that had been arranged at intervals along the shaft when they had first come through earlier that morning.
He slowed, stopped, started running again, taking himself well away from the tunnel entrance and the chaos outside, covering another fifty metres before coming to a halt and leaning back against the shaft’s curved wall with its interlocked images of writhing snakes. Gasping for breath, he slapped the dust and grit off his hair and suit. The group had become strung out and separated in the final frantic dash for safety and Kasri was now some ten metres behind him. Salah was even further back, just emerging from the dust cloud, choking and wheezing. The twins were not immediately visible and for a moment Girgis thought they must still be back in the oasis, but then he spotted them away to his right, further along the tunnel, two spherical blobs marching off into the distance.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he yelled.
They kept walking.
‘You stop where you are and wait for me! Do you hear! You wait for me!’
‘Zamalek are shit!’ came a voice, echoing back up the shaft towards him. ‘And Zamalekaweya are scum!’
‘What? What did you say?’
They didn’t reply, just continued on their way, their outlines growing steadily more vague as they slowly merged into the shadows.
‘I’ll be seeing you on the other side!’ Girgis bellowed after them. ‘You hear? I’ll be seeing you on the other side, you little shits!’
Scratching at his head and neck, muttering expletives, he pushed away from the wall and set off down the tunnel in pursuit, waving at Kasri and Salah to follow. The rumble of the closing cliffs slowly dropped away behind them, growing fainter as they descended ever deeper into the earth until eventually it had faded to nothing more than a distant creaking groan, no louder than the slap of their feet on the tunnel floor and the gravelly wheeze of Salah’s breathing.
They reached the bottom of the slope, Girgis still some way ahead of his colleagues. The ground levelled out, the tunnel now running flat, driving horizontally through the underside of the Gilf like an enormous worm burrow, the krypton lamps continuing to light their way – ghostly islands of illumination that if anything only served to intensify the tracts of blackness in between.
‘Not far now,’ shouted Girgis, whose mood seemed to have mellowed the further away from the oasis they travelled. ‘Another ten minutes and we’ll be out of this filthy shit-hole and back to Cairo. We’ll have a game of backgammon, eh Boutros! Just like old times!’
Salah lit a cigarette and grumbled something about not appreciating being left behind when they were in the gorge. Girgis waved the comment away.
‘I’ll make it up to you. Buy you a new car or something. Come on, keep up.’
He quickened his step, striding on along the tunnel, trying to ignore the painted snakes that seemed to shift and sliver in the ghostly half-light, coiling malevolently around the walls and ceiling. He walked for about a minute, then stopped, squinting into the shadows.
Although his memory wasn’t a hundred per cent clear – hardly surprising given everything he’d gone through – he could have sworn that when they came along the tunnel earlier that morning it had been completely straight. Now there was a bend up ahead, the tunnel wall curving sharply around to the right.
‘What is this?’ he muttered, starting forward again before coming to another abrupt halt as something very curious happened. There was a dry rustling sound as of hands rubbing across grainy wood and, before his very eyes, the tunnel slowly straightened itself before bending in the opposite direction. He shook his head, certain he must be imagining it. He was tired, after all, emotional, had just been swindled out of $50 million. But then it happened again.
‘Boutros!’ he shouted. ‘Did you see that? Mohammed?’
He swung round, seeking reassurance from his colleagues, but now there was a bend behind him as well, where there certainly hadn’t been one before.
‘Romani!’ came Salah’s voice from round the corner, hoarse with terror. ‘The tunnel’s moving!’
‘What do you mean it’s moving? How can it be moving?’
Girgis was starting to sound upset again. Very upset.
‘The walls are moving,’ cried Kasri. ‘They’re bending.’
‘How the fuck can solid rock—’
He was cut short by another dry rustling sound, although now he was hearing it a third time it struck him as more of a dusty slither. As he watched aghast, Kasri and Salah slowly came back into view and then vanished again as the tunnel undulated gracefully from left to right. Walls, floor and ceiling rippled and stretched as though they were made not of stone, but of something softer, more elastic – skin or sinew.
‘Stop it!’ shouted Girgis. ‘Stop it now! I order you to stop it!’
For a moment it seemed as if his command had been heeded. Everything stilled, the only sounds the wheeze of Salah’s
breathing and, from somewhere far off, a muted shout which Girgis assumed must be one of the twins. Five seconds went by. Ten, and he was starting to think that whatever geological forces were at work had calmed and settled when the corridor gave another slow, undulating contortion. This time it kept on moving, swirling sinuously first in one direction and then the other, back and forth, the krypton lamps toppling and rolling, everything blurring in a confusion of light and darkness and coiling serpents. Girgis was thrown to the floor, clambered upright, fell again, started crawling. He didn’t even know in which direction he was going, he just wanted to get away. The snaking became more violent, the floor swishing and slithering, the entire tunnel seeming to writhe. A malign hissing sound filled the air, a stench of rotting, half-digested meat clogged his nostrils, causing him to gag and choke.
‘Help me!’ Girgis screamed as his fellow Egyptians suddenly loomed in front of him, Kasri flat on his face, Salah on all fours, a cigarette still dangling from the corner of his mouth. ‘In the name of God help me.’
He fought his way towards them, desperately stretching out a hand. Salah and Kasri also tried to reach out, their fingertips coming to within inches of each other before, to his dismay, Girgis saw the tunnel starting to narrow and contract. Like a puckering mouth its circumference slowly closed around his two colleagues, clamping their legs and torsos in a tightening glove of rock, crushing them. For a moment they struggled, arms flapping, faces reddening as the shaft squeezed ever more ferociously, and then they were sucked backwards and away. Salah’s hand protruded for a few seconds longer, nicotine-stained fingers curling into an agonized claw before it too was swallowed and he was gone. The tunnel gave another violent lurch and fell still. The hissing sound faded into silence.
For a moment Girgis knelt there, staring dementedly at the anus-sized aperture through which his companions had just been sucked, shivering and whimpering. Then, with a trembling hand, he took the upturned krypton lamp that was lying on the floor beneath the aperture, rose unsteadily to his feet and turned. Forget what’s just happened, he told himself. Forget Salah and Kasri. Keep calm, start walking, get the fuck out of this godforsaken hell-hole. But the corridor had contracted and closed ahead of him as well – presumably devouring the twins just as it had Kasri and Salah. He was alone and he was trapped, entombed in a minibus-sized section of tunnel.