He vigorously tousled his head as he walked out of the bathroom, “We should discuss the latest news from London before my meeting,” he commented through the thick cotton.
“My Lord Pharaoh!”
The voice wasn’t Ethan’s. Ryan quickly pulled the towel off his head. In front of him stood a wide-eyed but beautiful young woman wearing a traditional floor length tie-dyed bubu with a matching headpiece. She looked two years older than him, maybe twenty at the most.
Mariam quickly lowered her eyes but not before getting a glimpse of the well-developed physic of the Pharaoh.
“Mariam, I presume!”
“My Lord, my apologies but you did say to come in. I will wait for your outside.”
She bowed and quickly left.
She wasn’t anything like he had imagined her. He’d anticipated a more bookish, academic type with thick reading glasses; not the vision he just saw. How could a woman that stunning be an expert in ancient funeral rites?
Five minutes later and fully clothed, he stepped out the door and located Mariam sitting at a small table in the garden framed by a cascade of brilliant purple bougainvillea. She was gorgeous.
“I hope that I didn’t frighten you!”
She quickly rose to her feet and bowed.
“It was not such an unpleasant experience, my Lord,” she assured him with a shy smile.
Her English was excellent. Chief Mbaye told him that she had studied in the United States.
“Your uncle indicated to me that you are preparing my grandmother’s Book of the Dead,” he commented.
“It is a great honor that she entrusted me with such an important task.”
Ryan picked up a chair from beside the door and carried it over to the table. He noticed Ethan arriving late. His Head of Security surveyed the scene and discreetly turned around. He was smiling. Ryan spoke to Mariam.
“Please, sit and tell me all about the Book of the Dead,” he requested.
Her lips started to move but Ryan barely heard the words. Her eyes captivated him along with the color of her lips and the way she wrinkled her nose when she laughed. He didn’t come back down to earth until she had to repeat a question.
“My Lord Pharaoh, will you be reading the prayers in English or in Ancient Egyptian?” she reiterated.
“Uh, I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Not to the Gods,” she responded with a laugh.
“Should I be taking notes?”
“Don’t worry about remembering everything,” she reassured him. “I will prepare a complete briefing book and I will also be there in the temple to prompt you if necessary.”
“You will be coming with me to Egypt?”
“If that is my Lord’s wish?”
“Absolutely, I mean… of course you have to be there due to your extensive mummy expertise and all that…” Ryan felt like he was back in the fifth grade.
“Mariam, please tell me what the Opening of the Mouth ceremony will do for my grandmother.”
“The purpose of mummification has always been to preserve the body for the Pharaoh’s use in the next life. Your grandmother’s will be the first not to be mummified. Instead, it has been placed into a state of biostatis using cryogenics. The result is even better. The ceremony is the symbolic animation of her corpse so that she may breathe, eat and speak again. Since they took her body to Switzerland, you have probably not heard her in your dreams. After the ceremony, you will feel her presence and she will be able to offer you her wisdom again.”
Her heartfelt explanation moved him, “I would like that very much.”
Mariam observed him closely; she had not imagined her young Pharaoh to be so sensitive. It only made him more attractive.
Ryan blushed and wondered if she realized he could read her thoughts.
She was about to continue when Ethan returned with Zach and signaled that they needed to speak with the Pharaoh.
“Mariam, why don’t we pick up over lunch?”
She bowed her head and turned to leave.
The three men watched with interest as she strolled across the garden, her hips swaying seductively.
Ryan smacked Ethan on the shoulder. “You could have told me that she was a babe. I thought she was you earlier and I walked out in a towel.”
“Did she scream?”
“I think she likes me, actually.”
“She has to; you’re a living God for her.”
“Seriously Ethan; does she have a boyfriend or anything?”
“Ryan, put it back in your pants for a second.” Zach blurted, “Here we are facing Armageddon and all you can think about is getting laid,” he scolded in mock horror.
“Alright you two, but do your Pharaoh a favor and invite the Chief to lunch so that I can spend some time alone with her.”
“I’ll think about it,” Ethan offered, “but only if you take your mind off of her long enough to concentrate on the latest news from London.”
“Shoot!” Ryan responded, “Oops, wrong choice of word.”
They all chuckled and it felt great.
“My Lord Horniness…” Ethan joked struggling to keep a straight face. “Herbert called to say that he will arrive tomorrow at noon with a full report. I did not mention your decision to name him Vizier.”
“Zach and I would like to brief you on an upgrade to the security here at Chief Mbaye’s residence,”
“Go ahead,” Ryan prompted as he recovered a more regal demeanor.
They led him on a one-hour tour of the compound explaining their concerns as they went along. Their earnest professionalism impressed Ryan and he was pleased they were working so well together.
“Tony is liaising with David in New York to coordinate the safety of Manuel and Ricky. Zach’s mother has accepted that Ricky is safer with us but she has refused additional security. She wants to stay with her husband.”
Ryan felt they couldn’t force her. “Can we maintain discreet surveillance without her knowing?”
“Absolutely, I’ll take care of it.”
“Anything else?” he asked them.
“That’s all for now, my Lord”
“Good. I’m starved,” he commented with an impish grin. “Unless the Horsemen of the Apocalypse show up asking for me, no interruptions,” he ordered. “Understood?”
Chapter Twenty-three
Offices of Abdelaziz Construction, Cairo, Egypt: 18:02 EET September 28, 2016
Mustafa Abdelaziz owned one of Egypt’s largest construction firms. He was also a dedicated Servant of Ma’at. An illustrious ancestor had even served as a Vizier to a True Pharaoh. As a young civil engineer right out of school, he worked on the completion of the Aswan Dam in the early seventies. Later, he was responsible for much of the civil infrastructure that helped change the face of his beloved country over the past four decades. After completing numerous airport expansions to meet the growing tourism industry, hundreds of kilometers of highways and countless bridges, he had done very well for himself.
He made certain that all of his six children, including both girls, received excellent educations abroad. They were all married now with honorable careers and each had contributed to his treasure trove of wonderful grandchildren, some of them already teenagers. Yet all of these fine accomplishments, paled beside the enormous responsibility that the True Pharaoh gave him before she died; the building of a new tomb for the mummies of her more than 170 predecessors and a state of the art cryopreservation facility for her body and those of future Pharaohs who, like her, would no longer be mummified. She had also commanded him to include a magnificent temple dedicated to the Goddess of Ma’at and a throne room for coronations.
The current Royal Tomb was under threat. Although it had served for more than two and a half millennia, zealously watched over by a loyal Bedouin tribe known as the Guardians, population growth as well as the pace of archeological excavations in the region made the location less tenable with every passing year. It became increasingly risky to hope
that so many mummies could remain hidden to the world with such technological advances as satellites equipped with powerful microwaves and other rays that could detect structures well below the sands of time and even beneath the urban sprawl of Cairo and Tanis. At some points, the existing royal tomb was less than two meters under the surface. The architects who built it thousands of years ago could never have imagined that small metal objects in space would someday be able to see through stone.
He initiated the project for the new royal complex six years after the tragic death of Princess Eshe. The hotel would bear her name. With a grant from the Falcon foundation, his private holding company purchased a large tract of land in a barren hilly area just to the southwest of Saqqara. He soon announced plans to develop a luxury hotel with a golf course, an artificial oasis and decent housing for the workers. It was an ambitious as well as a risky project and more than a few of his colleagues wondered if the old man had finally lost his touch.
Mustafa knew that he could not build in a heavily populated area. During the initial construction phase, he would be obliged to excavate massive chambers in the bedrock deep enough to hide the contents from probing eyes in orbit. He camouflaged the extensive program of blasting and tunneling as an audacious plan to bring water directly from the Nile valley to the resort, as well as the construction of underground parking and storage facilities. His engineers solved the disposal of the large amount of stone removed from the excavations by the construction of a pyramid patterned after the world-famous Step pyramid of Djoser; which would serve as the architectural centerpiece of the hotel. Dozens of stonemasons quarried the beautiful stone from deep within the ridge adjacent to the hotel.
It was a monumental undertaking that had consumed his every waking moment for the last decade and now it was nearing completion. The cost of the project made it unfeasible as a commercial endeavor, unless you had a foundation that didn’t care about the return on its investment. Government support had also never been a problem, the construction provided thousands of good paying jobs in a time of massive unemployment and in addition, the company contributed decent housing and facilities for the future employees of the hotel that would get many of them out of the squalid slums surrounding Cairo. It was a social undertaking of enormous scope and in its short lifetime had already received numerous prizes for architecture and social awareness from prestigious international organizations.
The resulting hotel had over 400 rooms and a convention center for gatherings of up to 2,000. It offered the perfect cover for publically recognized members of the Royal Council to be able to attend meetings and secret ceremonies without raising suspicions. With all of the major construction finished, designers were now decorating the lobby and rooms, in three weeks all would be ready. Just in time for the young Pharaoh’s coronation and Fannie’s Opening of the Mouth ceremony.
The suspicious activities of a Swiss NGO in the proximity of the old tomb had set off multiple alarms and necessitated a change in the calendar concerning the preparation of the more than one hundred and seventy mummies and their sarcophagi for removal and their undetected transfer from the current location to the new resting place. It was far more complicated than it might seem.
The number of mummified remains in the hands of the Servants of Ma’at represented a significant increase in the total known to modern archeology. All of them had been True Pharaohs but many had also been historically significant figures holding high positions in the Courts of temporal Pharaohs through the ages, including several Viziers. Others were important figures in Europe in later centuries and even as far away as China and the Mongol empire before the True Pharaohs become a hereditary dynasty. At least three that he knew of had been reigning monarchs as well as True Pharaoh. The curator of any museum in the world would be delighted to possess even one of these mummies, untouched by the depredations of unscrupulous grave robbers.
Today, it was the body of Jesus of Nazareth that demanded much of his attention. The remains of every True Pharaoh were equally important to the Servants of Ma’at, even if Jesus had inspired one of the great religions in world history. The fanatical obsession of Sanctus Verum to find the body of their Savior was a threat to all the mummies and to the security of the operation. With Nkosana’s coronation, only weeks away and the arrival of Fannie’s preserved body from Switzerland imminent, Mustafa was about to convene a special committee of his most trusted advisors to devise a strategy to frustrate the plans of the infamous Father Marco and his Swiss acolytes.
Chapter Twenty-four
Chief Mbaye’s compound, Dakar, Senegal: 11:40 GMT September, 29, 2016
Ryan spent most of the morning with Mariam learning prayers from the Book of the Dead. He was mesmerized. Not so much with the words, she was trying to teach him with such patience rather with everything about her. She had this way of furrowing her brow when she concentrated and she was always attentive as if he was the most important person in the world for her at that moment. He was certain everyone she dealt with felt the same way. Some people have that gift. She liked him too and he didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know it. He was marveling at her long sensual eyelashes when Chief Mbaye walked up and begged to interrupt.
“My Lord, Herbert Lewis will be arriving shortly and I knew you would want to greet him yourself.”
“Thank you Chief, we were just finishing,” he said. “Mariam, we will continue tomorrow.”
“Of course, my Lord,” she answered lowering her eyes as she took her leave.
“Things seem to be going well with your lessons, my Lord,” the Chief observed.
“Yes, she is wonderful… I mean a wonderful teacher and smart, very smart also.” He coughed to hide his embarrassment.
Chief Mbaye smiled to himself. It was unexpected but it was obvious that the feelings between the two were mutual. He had seen it in his niece’s eyes. Half the household had noticed it as well. Even Lord Thoth was purported to be delighted with the prospect.
Ryan read his thoughts.
“Don’t tell me the Gods are sitting up there eavesdropping on my feelings about Mariam?” he asked already knowing the answer.
“I am afraid so.”
“What about some privacy here,” he looked up in exasperation at the heavens, “I’m only seventeen, I don’t have filters for this kind of thing. They’re going to think I’m a sex maniac.”
“It would not be the first time.”
“Great, now they’ll get to compare. That helps a lot.”
“I meant that there have been other True Pharaohs your age and the Gods weren’t scandalized then and I doubt they will be now.”
“What happens when I get married, are they going to be like watching and giving each other high fives every night?”
“What is a high five?” Chief Mbaye asked in total innocence.
The question brought Ryan down off his high horse and he had to laugh.
Chief Mbaye step was lighter as he escorted the Pharaoh to the front entrance just in time for Herbert Lewis’ car to pull up.
“Hello Herbert, how was the flight?” Ryan asked as they shook hands.
“Good, my Lord. It is always easier traveling north to south; no time difference.”
“Wonderful to see you again Herbert,” Chief Mbaye added. “I believe lunch is in order.”
They followed the Chief to a table on the veranda. Unlike previous occasions, this time they got right down to business.
“Any news regarding the Consortium?” Ryan inquired.
“Yes, we’ve developed a better picture of their ambitions and it is not good. They are much closer to the fulfillment of their nefarious plan to dominate the global economy than we ever imagined. Our experts fear that they may be only months, perhaps as little as six, from achieving a veritable stranglehold on vital commodities such as petroleum, strategic minerals, steel and even major food supplies,” he confirmed. “Regrettably, due to our unforgiveable delay in discovering their plans, we inadvertently assisted them
in achieving many of their goals.”
“Are they well financed?” Chief Mbaye asked.
“The amount of money at stake is beyond all imagination,” Herbert assured them, “it makes the assets of the Foundation look like mere pocket change.”
“I never did understand all of this high finance,” the Chief apologized, “your grandmother was a genius in such matters,” he informed Ryan in an aside.
“Lord Vizier, I think the situation is grave enough that I recommend you call a meeting of the full Royal Council as soon as possible,” Herbert urged.
“I am afraid I cannot do that,” Chief Mbaye replied.
Herbert looked shocked.
“It is no longer my decision to make,” he explained as he glanced at Ryan.
“Herbert, I have told the Chief that I want to name you as my Lord Vizier.”
“My Lord, it is too…”
“Herbert, my decision is made. Will you accept?”
“Of course, it will be an honor.”
“Then it is settled. With so many youngsters around here, a little gray will serve me well.”
Mbaye beamed, “Congratulations my old friend, it is an inspired choice.”
“I can only hope to live up to your example.”
“So what do we have to do to make it official?” Ryan asked.
“I brought the Great Seal with me. We’ll draft a document after lunch and once you sign and seal it then the appointment takes effect.”
“Good, I have asked Ethan to replace you as Head of Security. Are you in agreement?”
“He would have been my first choice.”
“So now that my team is in place. What is this about a meeting of the Royal Council?”
“They are the most senior members of the Servants of Ma’at who form what the British would refer to as a Privy Council. They serve to offer you guidance and advice.”
“How many are there?”
“Almost one hundred right now,” Chief Mbaye answered, “As Lord Vizier, Herbert will chair the proceedings.”
“My Lord, we have the advantage that your presence here is still a secret. If we act quickly, we can gather the Council before anyone begins to suspect. Your grandmother was a frequent guest here and it won’t take our enemies long to send spies.”
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