Masks of the Lost Kings (Suzy da Silva Series)

by Tom Bane

  “But does the number twenty-six symbolize anything more tangible, rather than the mystical? I mean something real, not religious?”

  “No, not that I know of, but maybe it is connected to the sun like you said, but it is exciting—”

  The phone line suddenly went dead. Suzy tried to redial but there was no connection. Damn, she cursed inwardly. She hadn’t had an opportunity to ask about the alabaster vase. Her mind began turning over the Professor’s number theory. She remembered the ecclesiastical chair in Cairo museum that had two rows of thirteen sun disks on the backrest. Maybe the professor was right. Maybe it was twenty-six. She looked up at Tom who was looking back at her expectantly.

  “Tom, what does the number twenty-six mean to you in astronomical terms? Could it be linked to the sun?” Tom pursed his lips.

  “Well, there’s always the number of days it takes the sun to spin around at its equator.”

  “We need to go back to Palenque now,” Suzy said, jumping off the bed. Tom hesitated. “Listen,” she insisted, as she pulled on her boots, “what if the number twenty-six is encoded into the Pyramid of Pacal? Professor Gurion’s just convinced me that twenty-six is embedded in Tutankhamun’s mask, and, if we can find similar evidence in the Temple of Inscriptions, then we’ll have a link between Tutankhamun and The Mayans!”

  “Maybe we can find what we are looking for inside the death mask of Pacal as well,” Tom said, infected by her enthusiasm. “Perhaps it has an akhet, a hidden doorway inside it as well.” Suzy had already grabbed her bag and was halfway out of the door.

  Tom picked up the vase and extinguished the light, then scooped up the five round mirrors and some transparencies of King Pacal’s death mask that he had taken from his father’s house. They set off for the ruins by the light of the full moon.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  It was close to midnight when they approached the steps of the pyramid. The full moon was large and prominent in the clear night sky but the jungle was as quiet as a church mouse, with none of the usual nocturnal chatter and screeches. Suzy and Tom, however, were both far too absorbed to notice. Navigating the ruins to climb to the top by moonlight was treacherous and required complete concentration.

  In silence and without other visitors to delay them, they reached the top in no time, and headed for the stairwell.

  “We didn’t reckon on this happening. It’s locked,” said Suzy, pointing at the metal grill and huge padlock designed to deter nighttime visits.

  “No problem. Stand back.” Tom knelt down and rammed the end of his flashlight barrel into the D-loop of the lock and elevated his hand into the air, striking the palm of his heel like a karate master, forcing the lock open.

  “Impressive Tom, but it’s easier to use your foot.”

  They began descending down the triangular inner stairway. After a few steps, Tom paused and appeared to be looking for something.

  “What is it?” Suzy whispered.

  “From what I could see on the Internet, there should be a secret tunnel that runs all the way through the pyramid, called a psychoduct, ascending from the crypt of Pacal through to the top of the pyramid. It’s supposed to go all the way alongside the stairway, ending at the stairway’s entrance at the top of the pyramid under the perforated tombstone. Rather than being straight, it twists like a snake.”

  “The duct was probably for the departure of the soul after death,” Suzy suggested. “In Mayan death initiation rites, the ochb’ihaj sak ik’il, or ‘white breath road’, was the route for the soul to depart to the stars, just like the air shafts in the Great Pyramid. So where’s the tunnel for the psychoduct then? Is it hidden?”

  “I don’t know—somewhere here,” Tom said, feeling along the surface with his fingers. “It’s supposed to start at a stone at the top of the pyramid, but they would have concealed it. See if you can feel any holes in the wall.” They began combing the wall’s surface with their fingers, with Tom occasionally referring to his handwritten notes using his flashlight.

  “Got it!” Tom exclaimed, and shone the flashlight onto a small opening in the wall. It was difficult to angle the beam of light down behind the hole. Tom thought for a moment and then felt around in his pocket and pulled out one of the five mirrors. He put it to the small hole and pushed it through, letting it fall into the duct.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Suzy asked.

  “I’ve got this theory. I want to test it out.”

  Suzy tried to take a closer look at the hole and down the psychoduct, but Tom had already started descending further and he had the only flashlight. They continued down the corbelled stairway, counting the steps as they went until they reached twenty-six, where the first flight of stairs halted.

  “Interesting,” Suzy commented. “I counted exactly twenty-six steps.”

  “Indeed,” Tom agreed, searching for another tiny hole in the wall marking a bend in the psychoduct and dropping another mirror in. This time he seemed to know exactly where to look, so his theory seemed to be bearing up. He chuckled and looked toward her. “This is rather romantic, don’t you think?”

  “Romantic?” she looked up with a half-smile. “Do you often take your dates to subterranean crypts?”

  “Only the ones I think will appreciate it. Most prefer flowers and dinner at a French restaurant.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, then,” she laughed.

  As they continued on down, he located three more holes in the psychoduct and dropped a small mirror inside each. They were now deep into the pyramid. Any fear Tom may have felt earlier had now all but evaporated in the camaraderie of joint discovery.

  When they reached the crypt, they examined the engraved coffin lid, running the flashlight over every inch. “Look,” Suzy said. “Quetzlcoatl, the feathered snake!”

  “Exactly. Pacal is just like Tutankhamun; the vulture and the cobra on his death mask signify the feathered snake.”

  “The Quetzl, or spirit jungle bird of Mexico,” Suzy recited, racking her memory, “was prized for its luminescent feathers. Those feathers, when used to decorate the snake, Coatl, indicated the spirit soaring into the sky. The snake epitomized the physical body on earth, rebirth or resurrection every time it shed its skin. Just like the Egyptian ka and the ba. That psychoduct was the hidden doorway for the spirit.” She remembered the mysterious email with its cryptic riddle: To find the Tutankhamun cycle, look for the hidden doorway, in the mask, in the tomb before Xul, a human number, the alpha and the omega.

  “There’s something else.” Tom delved inside his pants pocket and pulled out a piece of paper with twin transparencies of the jade Death Mask of Pacal that he had found in his father’s study. He laid them on the sarcophagus lid.

  Death Mask of Lord Pacal

  “Hold the flashlight over it,” he said. “Let’s see if I’m right.”

  He laid the transparencies of the death mask on the coffin lid just as the flashlight flickered and then faded.

  “Switch it on, Suzy.”

  “The battery’s gone,” Suzy said, sinking in dread. She immediately thought of what had happened in the Great Pyramid in Cairo. “We have to get out!” she said, trying to feel her way to the exit. “Follow me.”

  An ethereal white glow began to fill the tomb. Suzy gasped.

  “My God,” Tom cried, “it’s the moonlight, shining down the psychoduct. The mirrors are working. It’s amazing!”

  “Of course, of course,” Suzy said. “It’s the summer solstice. It’s the route through the pyramid for the moonlight.”

  “Now, for my next trick,” Tom grinned, “my father discovered a technique he called the Mayan Transformer. He didn’t discuss it much with other archaeologists, afraid it would lead to him being ostracized again. But it’s an amazing technique created to unlock a hidden doorway into the Mask. And,” he added, as he smoothed out the twin transparent picture sheets of the Death Mask, “if I select a special point on an object, I can reveal an unseen secret. I just
lay one transparency on top of the other and rotate them.” Suzy watched, intrigued.

  “Now, remember you said Tutankhamun and Lord Carnarvon both had scars on their left cheek? Take a look at the death mask of Pacal.” Suzy moved closer and, in the dim light, made out a small black dot on the left cheek of the jade mask in exactly the same place as Lord Carnarvon’s mosquito bite. “It’s an orientation marker on the mask,” Tom explained. “There are also three black markers below the right eye. If I rotate one transparency about this point on the death mask markers, turning it 180 degrees, take a look.”

  Suzy looked but saw nothing. She looked back up at Tom who now wore a confused expression.

  “OK,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Perhaps if I rotate each transparency twenty-six degrees.” He repositioned the transparencies in a rough estimation of the new angle.

  Suzy looked again and still saw nothing. Then she had an idea.

  “Try 66.6 degrees,”

  Frowning, Tom began gently shifting the transparencies. Suddenly a new image emerged, a clear picture of a green jade snake. It had friendly eyes and two feathers sprouted from its head.

  “Oh my God,” Suzy said. “It’s a feathered snake.”

  “Yes. My father discovered it first in other Mayan sculptures. And the jade death mask is another of these Mayan transformers, as you can see, it’s like a doorway to a hidden image. I’m not sure my father worked out that the angle must be exactly 66.6 degrees though.”

  “So, we have a hidden image in the mask of Pacal as well, the feathered snake that was in my message,” Suzy said, hardly able to believe her eyes, “and a secret number twenty-six link between Tutankhamun and Pacal, and maybe even a six-six-six link, connecting Jesus to Pacal.”

  “Yes, but six-six-six is a famous number to Christians around the world, whereas the twenty-six has been hidden for centuries and it’s the number of the sun, the rotation period of the sun’s equator in days. And there’s another hidden solar number, thirty-seven.” Tom was rummaging around his other pockets for another piece of paper. On it was a photograph of a jade necklace. “Look, Pacal’s funerary necklace.” At Suzy’s shrug, his tone became more insistent.

  “Look Suzy, count the jade stones in the second row. Remember, thirty-seven is the rotation period of the sun at its polar region.” Suzy started counting and then looked up and grinned.

  “My God, you’re right!” She stepped away a few paces, thinking hard. Whirling back around to face Tom, she shouted in glee.

  “That’s it! Tom, that’s it! We’ve done it!” she shrieked. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him hard.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “FREEZE!” a black silhouette shouted. Tom and Suzy sprang apart. “Turn around. Turn around now.” A second figure pressed a machine gun muzzle to the back of Suzy’s head.

  “Up the steps!”

  They made their way out of the crypt, a third figure following behind. Suzy stumbled, sick with fear at the thought that Ben Sanders might have also met his end this way.

  CRACK

  A sudden jolt shuddered through them. The soldiers ducked down, while Tom and Suzy froze, their feet glued to the stairway, bewildered.

  CRACK

  Another tremor crashed through the pyramid, sending chips of stone and pebbles down the stone steps like a waterfall of rocks, followed by an anxious gap of ominous silence. The soldiers’ heads darted up and down, searching for the source of the attack. Tom grabbed Suzy and covered her body with his, wrapping her within his arms, and pressing them into a niche in the wall. The soldiers swung around, aiming their guns, and prepared to fire. Tom’s back was exposed. As one soldier braced himself and took aim, the silence was shattered by a mighty roar. The walls shook like a tornado, throwing the soldiers off their feet before they could shoot.

  The surface of the pyramid began shifting and cracking beneath them, filling the air with a brown dust. Another huge cracking noise rang out, and. above them, massive chunks of stone started to separate from the ceiling. A chunk of stone thundered down on one soldier’s head, cleaving his skull like an axe. Dark blood gushed down onto the steps. The other two soldiers were dispatched with equal brutal efficiency, crushed flat by falling stone before they could react. Tom and Suzy clung even more tightly to the wall, feeling helpless with the knowledge that there was easily a thousand tons of rock overhead that could come crashing down at any moment.

  The tremors faded like a shadow into the night, as quickly as they had started.

  “Quick,” Tom shouted, pulling Suzy away from the wall. “It must be an earthquake. We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Suzy was quivering with shock, unable to move. Tom didn’t hesitate. He hoisted her into his arms and began walking through the choking clouds of dust, following the faint moonlight that illuminated the top of the stairway, like a lighthouse beacon in the mist. At last they emerged into the clean air outside the pyramid and sank down, exhausted, coughing the stone dust from their lungs, struggling to regain their breath.

  “You OK?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m OK. Tom, what happened? Oh, my God, we nearly died!” She clung to him, half-laughing, half-crying, still feeling the memory of the cold, metallic feel of the machine gun’s muzzle against the back of her neck.

  “Don’t thank me,” he replied. “Thank the moon! There’s a theory that the full moon tugs on the earth’s crust with such force, it can initiate an earthquake, it’s even more powerful when the sun is involved. The Asian tsunami of 2004 and the Japanese one in 2011—they both occurred when the earth, sun and moon were perfectly aligned. I never believed the theory before, but, my God, I think I’m a believer now!”

  Suzy reached for his hand. He smiled down at her for a moment, and then bent his head and pressed his lips to hers.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The jade funerary necklace of Lord Pasal

  Safely back at the hotel, Suzy was desperate to find someone else to confirm her theory. Piper was the only person she knew with the ability and experience to separate the wheat from the chaff and the truths from the many deliberate falsehoods. If he could be trusted, that is.

  What if he was involved in the sequence of events in ways she knew nothing about? The more she puzzled over the assassination attempt in Israel, the more confused she became. Had the Horus Corporation been behind it, or had they actually foiled it? Was the Horus Corporation protecting her from Piper, or had they attacked her in Luxor? Perhaps the company was waiting for her and Tom to reveal the full theory before killing them both, in which case, maybe Piper was just another of their stooges, along with all the other experts she had met, all part of an elaborate façade designed to use Suzy and Tom to unlock the puzzle for them. Could that have been how Ben Sanders had become involved, Suzy wondered. Despite all these possibilities, there was no one else to turn to. She dialed Piper’s number. She had to trust someone. Tom watched her, eager to find out, but sharing her concerns.

  “Professor, I’m sorry to wake you,” she said when he answered, “but I truly believe someone is trying to kill me and I need to talk to you while I still can.”

  “Where are you, Suzy?” the professor asked.

  “I’m in Palenque, but I need I need to know … could it be Horus trying to kill me?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the so-called robberies of Tut’s tomb and at Palenque. In both cases certain objects were left in juxtaposition to others, deposited in key places, so that anyone coming later would notice them, like Tut’s sun ray collar that was supposedly ‘dropped’ in the antechamber. But it seems almost too obvious now.”

  “Nothing more elusive than an obvious fact,” Piper said, encouragingly. “Go on. I’m following you.”

  “Well, the tombs of King Pacal and Tutankhamun hide the numbers twenty-six and thirty-seven. The number thirty-seven is contained in the second row of the necklace of Pacal, and also in the sun ray collar necklace of Tutan
khamun. There are two times thirteen beads in the third row of Pacal’s necklace; the same is carved onto the ecclesiastical chair of Tut. There are twenty-six wooden coffers in Tut’s burial chamber and the pectoral scarab brooch has thirty-seven encoded into it. The same with the mummy-shaped caskets of meat, and ultimately the death mask of Tutankhamun—it has twenty-six golden rays hidden above the symbol of the akhet. There are so many references to enumerate, it’s like someone made it deliberately difficult yet easy to find the sacred numbers.”

  “Sacred numbers?” Piper asked. “Why do you think they’re sacred?”

  “I’ll put Tom on,” she said, passing the phone over.

  “Hi, Professor Piper.”

  “Tom, I’m so sorry to hear about your father.”

  “Thank you. I just hope we can continue his good work. Professor, we really need some help.”

  “Sure. Tell me about these sacred numbers.”

  “Well, I believe both the Ancient Egyptians and the Mayans understood that the sun rotates every twenty-six days at its equator but only thirty-seven days at the polar region and this causes a strange but subtle effect. The sun generates huge magnetic fields from large conveyor belts of electrical charge that circulate in cycles deep beneath its surface, but, because it spins at different rates between the poles and the equator, the magnetic field lines get tangled up. They get so tangled that they eventually break free and eject a mass of particles toward the earth. You’ve heard of the solar wind? It was discovered by two American astronomers, a father and son team, Horace and Harold Babcock, and in theory it could cause the whole of the earth’s electrical supply to shut down in a few seconds. But luckily we’ve got our own magnetic field on Planet Earth, which keeps us safe. Instead, the worst we get typically are the Aurora Borealis and Australis at the poles—the northern lights, with the charged particles shimmering in great curtains in the sky. Occasionally the earth’s magnetic field is not strong enough to resist the solar wind at a solar maximum or a big solar storm and that’s when we experience blackouts and satellite damage.”