Keystone

by Talbot, Luke

That he had come across the architect’s script and found the texts from Amarna, both could be put down to chance. That he was also able to manipulate a manned mission to Mars, and that half the world’s defence systems were in his control could not. There was only one person on Earth who had been placed in such a position, or indeed could have been.

  He would therefore follow his instincts, and the prospect of doing so made his skin tingle in anticipation.

  He stroked the image of Dr Richardson on the screen.

  “Am I Aniquilus?” he whispered.

  Chapter 64

  It was ten years since George had visited Amarna, yet it was as if the whole place was frozen in time. Nothing had changed since 2036, except that the small town on the other side of the Nile seemed slightly more deserted than before, and the ferry had acquired a new pilot.

  Even the warm breeze felt the same as he emerged from the air-conditioned confines of Ben’s car, which had struggled along the dirt track leading to the bottom of the cliff, on top of which sat the engraved stone marking the entrance to the famous Library his wife had discovered. That is, if sitting on something to catch your breath could really be called ‘discovery’.

  Ben took the lead as he clambered up the crumbling cliff towards the small plateau.

  “Shame we didn’t rent a Land Rover,” George shouted up to him as he neared the top.

  Ben rested against the cliff top and looked out over the sandy-plain below, towards the Nile. “Not really,” he said shaking his head. “It’s much quicker this way, as the other route takes you round the whole place to approach from the back.”

  George reached his level, and they both took the final steps up to the plateau. Less than ten yards from where they stood was a small gatehouse made of breezeblocks, no larger than a typical garden shed. It had no windows, and the metal door was locked with a large Yale padlock. A few yards away was the stone that had sealed the Library.

  “Welcome to the finest archaeological find of the twenty-first century,” Ben mused as he handled the padlock, turning it over as if looking for weaknesses. “The most important site in Egypt is closed by a single lock, with no guard. And thanks to Kamal, the closest police are over five kilometres away.” He took off his rucksack and opened it, removing a foot-long crowbar. Inserting it into the ring of the padlock, he wedged one end of the bar against the frame of the door, and pulled back. The leverage applied to the padlock was insufficient to break the hardened steel, but the bolt the lock was fastened to buckled almost immediately. After re-adjusting the angle of the crowbar, he pulled back again in a single, jerking motion, and the lock fell away from the door, leaving it to swing freely on its hinges.

  George looked at his friend in surprise. “Have you done this before?” he asked.

  Ben opened the door and shrugged. “No. But when you’ve watched as much TV as I have, you pick up a few useful tricks.”

  They were about to step inside when there was a shout from behind them.

  “Stop!” a female voice barked authoritatively.

  Ben turned round with a grin on his face, and George did his best to fight the urge to run away; the natural response programmed into him was to get as far away from the scene of the crime as possible, whether that crime was stealing cookies between meals as a child or breaking into one of the most highly regarded historical sites in Egypt. The dilemma facing him must have been obvious to his audience, because Zahra laughed out loud, and Ben slapped him on the shoulder.

  “Sorry, George,” he said. “I lied to you, there are some police here.” He nodded towards Zahra and her four friends, three men and a woman, who followed her out from behind an outcrop of rocks twenty yards away. George thought he recognised one of the men from the patrol outside the airport in Cairo the previous afternoon. Though none of them were in uniform, they all carried weapons, which George assumed to be AK-47s. They were certainly not the sleek, modern-looking guns from the day before.

  Zahra caught him looking at her rifle, and she winked at him knowingly. “So they do not know it is us,” she said.

  “The police weapons are all traceable to the individual,” Ben explained, “based on biometric authentication built into the grips. Each bullet can be traced back to the gun that fired it, which can in turn identify who fired the shot and when the gun was fired.”

  George looked at him in wonder. “You really do watch a lot of TV, don’t you?” Turning back to Zahra, he smiled and offered his hand. “Thank you for helping us, I hope you aren’t taking too much of a risk?”

  She laughed freely, shaking his hand and then nudging Ben in the ribs. “No risk, don’t worry. It’s like old times, eh Farid?”

  Ben looked sheepish, like a schoolboy being told off for getting his uniform muddy playing football, but knowing that he’s not in too much trouble and that it was absolutely worth it. Looking at George, he shrugged.

  “I don’t know what she’s talking about,” he said.

  Zahra brushed away his denial with a movement of her free hand. Choosing to move on to more important things, she proceeded to introduce her friends by first names only.

  Manu and Haji waved as she gestured towards them and they heard their names; it was quickly apparent that neither of them spoke a word of English. It still came as a surprise to George to meet people who didn’t speak any English at all, which said a lot for the frequency with which he left the beaten track and ventured into the heart of any foreign country. Their lack of English also highlighted his own deficiencies in Arabic; usually, he would be able to meet anyone half way with a mix of English and Arabic, bastardised into some unofficial ‘Arabish,’ but when it relied solely on him, it was another story entirely. While they had obviously not been chosen for their linguistic or interpersonal skills, it was clear why Zahra had decided to bring them along: Manu was over six feet tall, had arms as thick as George’s thighs, no neck and a nasty scar running down the left cheek of his otherwise attractive, angular features. Haji, despite being a good six inches shorter, had a stocky physique and wouldn’t have looked out of place in a boxing ring.

  Without weapons, they would have been a fearsome sight. With them, they were truly terrifying, and George was glad to have them on his side.

  The third man, Tariq, had indeed been at the airport the day before, and he shook George’s hand enthusiastically. There was obvious excitement in his eyes, and while his English was worse than Zahra’s, which itself was far from perfect, his willingness to understand more than made up for it. Despite his less imposing physique when stood alongside Haji and Manu, Tariq carried his AK-47 rifle with an ease and comfort that demonstrated years of experience handling weapons.

  The final addition to their septet was Leena. Almost as striking as Zahra, she was slightly taller, and had a crop of short bleach-blond hair covered with a Yankees baseball cap she wore back to front. Her English, though heavily accented, was close to perfect, which she explained as being down to her university education in Ireland. As soon as she mentioned it, George couldn’t help but pick up on a hint of Gaelic melody in her voice.

  On top of the Kalashnikov assault rifles, the small company each had a holstered pistol and rucksacks, which George guessed held everything they would need for a small war. Zahra explained that they each carried ammunition, food and water as well as flashlights and encrypted walkie-talkies. They were all dressed casually except for their jackets, which were the type of flack-jacket the press would wear while reporting from a war-zone.

  Tariq had a large spear-point knife in a sheath buckled to his lower right leg. It was a foot long, and had a hanger attachment on its wood-covered handle, indicating it was a bayonet. George couldn’t imagine how lethal the man would be holding an AK-47 with ten inches of carbon-steel sticking out of the end.

  Again, Zahra caught him staring at the weapons, and she broke into another perfect smile. “The bayonet is a real history item,” she said. “Over eighty years old.”

  He raised an eyebrow, impressed,
and Tariq gladly pulled the slender blade from its metal sheath and passed it to him. It weighed as much as a bag of sugar, and he marvelled at how the ancient weapon, which felt more like a sword, looked as good as new.

  “Amazing,” he said, passing the bayonet back to Tariq. “I really hope you don’t have to use it today!” He truly meant it.

  “Don’t worry, George,” Ben reassured him. “We’ll do our best to get Gail back without bloodshed. But don’t forget, we’re not starting this; they took her away. And because they left a body in her place, we know that they have no plans of ever releasing her. They’re going to kill Gail if we don’t rescue her first, George.”

  He nodded slowly, looking from face to face as he summed the situation up. He felt that they were waiting for his approval before moving forwards with their plans; my wife - my call, he thought grimly. There were seven of them in total; five well-armed and, he assumed, well-trained people, alongside Ben, whom he was sure would be getting a gun from somewhere before Patterson arrived. And then there was him, the odd one out, with no previous experience, he’d never even been in a fight, save for punching Captain Kamal and the odd bust-up at school, let alone fired a weapon. When he had held the bayonet, the one thought that occurred to him was how much heavier than his bread knife it was. This alone told him he was better off out of the combat zone.

  But his emotional side was in conflict with this calm analysis. Gail was being held by Patterson, who would be in Amarna in a matter of hours. Would he be happy to simply stand by and watch as people he barely knew did all the work? Like hell I will, he thought. For the past few days, she had been officially dead. Now the man responsible for that was going to be handed to him on a plate.

  He looked at Zahra sternly. All trace of a smile vanished from her face as she waited to hear his assessment of the situation.

  Ben leaned forwards. “George, this may be our only chance to get close to these people. Once they leave Egypt, they’re untouchable,” he urged. “What do you say?”

  “Do you have a spare gun?”

  Chapter 65

  Squatting in the shade of the gatehouse, they went over the plan once more, with Ben and Leena translating into English, to make sure George was comfortable with it.

  “I will greet Patterson at the foot of the cliff, with Zahra’s Toyota, on my own. I will be unarmed, and carry with me the fake excavation permits that we made last night back in Cairo,” Ben said.

  “And if he realises they are fake?” George asked.

  Ben shook his head. “He won’t. Zahra was completely taken in by them at first, so an American will be fooled for sure. Besides, he has no reason not to trust me.” He looked at his watch and realised they had little more than an hour until Patterson’s scheduled arrival time. They had all agreed that they should be in position with three quarters of an hour to spare, in case he was early. Otherwise they would all be clearly visible from a distance, standing on the small plateau. “I will then lead him round the road to approach the plateau from the rear. Zahra, you will observe from the ridge. This then gives you five minutes to prepare before we arrive at the Library entrance, and to make sure we are not followed by anyone. We then have one of three options.” He gestured to Leena to explain.

  “Option one, this Patterson man is alone: we meet him at the top with guns. Option two, he is not alone, but there are more of us: we meet him at the top with guns. Option three, he is not alone, but there are more of them.” She pointed to a narrow gulley, at the bottom of which a rough trail led up towards the Library entrance. “There, if there is more than one car, we attack the rear one when it passes through. This makes a trap.”

  “So if there are two cars, the front one has nowhere to go,” George agreed.

  “We attack first,” Ben added. “If they outnumber us, then we have one chance only to take advantage. Once we lose the element of surprise, it’ll be impossible to win. If he brings people with him, I have no doubt that they will be well trained.”

  George nodded in understanding. “What do we do to the trapped car?”

  “Hopefully, the trapped one will be the Toyota with me in it.” Ben replied.

  “And Gail?”

  Ben looked at Zahra. “You have the photo of her, so you know what she looks like. If she is here, I will make sure that she gets in the Toyota with me and Patterson. Just in case she doesn’t though, you will need to make sure everyone knows which car she is in.”

  George mused this for a few moments, scratching his chin. “What if she’s in the last car?”

  “Then I let them go ahead of me on the way up. They go through, and I block the exit,” Ben replied simply.

  The three of them thought this through in silence for over a minute, before Zahra stood up, stretched her legs and picked up her AK-47. “Good plan,” she said with a yawn. They’d all been there for over three hours now, and had been over the plan several times in Arabic already.

  Ben started to stand up as well, but George put his hand on his shoulder. “Ben, what is the worst case scenario? What don’t we want?”

  “That they get inside the Library, especially if they have Gail. If they get her down there, they have her as a hostage, and it gets complicated.” He looked back at him and put his hand on George’s comfortingly. “But don’t worry, we won’t let that happen.

  George looked at the door hanging loose on its hinges, the padlock and bolt mechanism, now useless, sat in a heap in the sand. “If you hadn’t broken the lock, it would be a lot harder for them to do that, you know?” he said sarcastically.

  Ben shrugged and picked the padlock up as he made it to his feet. “True, but if they have guns, and they live that long, then they’ll have bullets to open the door anyway.”

  George brushed out the attack plan diagrams they had made in the sand with his foot, and picked up his own AK-47 that had been leaning against the breezeblock wall. The first time he had held a weapon had been an hour ago, when they had passed him the rifle from the back of the Toyota. It was heavier than he had imagined it would be, more so than a six-pint container of milk. He shook his head as he thought of the comparison; it was odd to find that the only things he could compare weapons to had so far been things found in the kitchen.

  Tariq had walked him through the basics of holding, arming and firing the rifle, which seemed simple enough that even a child could do it. He thought of news stories from the Middle East and central Africa, and realised that children did do it.

  The AK-47 had two firing modes. The first of these was semi-automatic, where one bullet, or round as Ben kept reminding him, was fired every time the trigger was fully depressed. To fire another round, the trigger needed to be fully released and then pressed again. The second mode was full-automatic, which everyone seemed to refer to as full. This meant that when the trigger was depressed, rounds would continue to fire until either the trigger was released, or the magazine was empty. You chose which mode to fire by operating a selector on the right-hand side of the rifle to the lowest position for semi-automatic and middle position for full. In its topmost position, the selector acted as the safety catch, and stopped the rifle from firing. “The most important thing,” Leena had reminded him, “is to make sure you turn the safety off before firing, and when you hear click, let go of the trigger and reload.”

  While firing seemed pretty straight forward, reloading was something he was less comfortable with. Although it seemed simple in theory, he was sure that in the thick of things, he would forget to do something crucial and the magazine would simply fall out of the bottom in a slapstick fashion, leaving him with an empty weapon and a stupid grin on his face. As he stood in the shade on his own, Zahra and Ben having gone to meet up with the others to confirm their plans, George decided to run through the reload a few more times.

  He turned the AK-47 on its side and found the magazine catch, which was underneath the trigger assembly, behind the magazine itself. I can just see myself pressing that by mistake, he thought nervo
usly. Pressing it, he pulled the magazine out, and placed it at his feet. He then put the selector on the right of the rifle from safety to semi-automatic. Grasping the bolt catch, also on the right side of the AK-47, he pulled it back firmly and the single round that had been in the chamber of the rifle popped out of the side. It fell to the floor, and he picked it up cautiously, feeling the weight of the bullet in the palm of his hand before sliding it into his pocket.

  Picking up the magazine, he slotted it back into the bottom of the rifle, and pulled the bolt catch back; this time it slid back and forwards again effortlessly. He then very carefully moved the selector into its topmost position and onto safety.

  To ensure he’d done it properly, he gave a quick tug on the magazine. Satisfied that it was firmly secured, he release it again, and repeated the whole process twice, on the last attempt managing to catch the chambered bullet as it popped from the side of the rifle.

  Happy that he had put in enough practice to remember how to do it in a rush, he ensured the safety was on and shouldered the rifle.

  “How are you doing?” Ben said as he strode across the sand towards him, a grim smile on his face.

  “Not bad,” he admitted. “I think I have the hang of reloading now, it’s easier than I first thought!”

  Ben patted him on the back and went to lead him to the rest of the group, who were starting their climbs towards their elevated positions on either side of the gulley, above the track. Suddenly, he stopped and pointed towards George’s clenched fist.

  “What’s that?”

  George opened his hand, revealing the round he had caught moments earlier. His hand dived into his pocket, and came back out with two more identical rounds. Looking up at Ben, his face dropped.

  Ben laughed and took the rounds from him. “Easy, eh? If you’d practised reloading much longer, you’d have run out of bullets!”

  They both laughed as Ben removed the magazine, un-chambered a fourth round, and then proceeded to demonstrate how they could be reloaded into the magazine by pressing them down against the other bullets. The spring loaded mechanism would carry the rounds down into the magazine until the last round sat neatly between the lips of the magazine at the top. He then reloaded the AK-47, reset the safety and passed the rifle back to George. “You shouldn’t need to do that again, because there are three of these fully loaded magazines in your backpack anyway. You won’t need to fire any more than that.”