by Alex Archer
It certainly was colorful. Even on this sunny day, neon lights glowed bright and hung from practically every building. Convenience Store, one read, 24 Hours. Annja noted there were a lot of 24 Hours signs. Many of the businesses on both sides of the tree-lined street—and along the street behind her, she noted with a glance over her shoulder—were a mix of adult bookshops, dingy-looking nightclubs, seedy bars, burlesque shows and strip clubs. There were some trendy cafés and respectable-looking shops here and there, but the neon of their bawdy neighbors clashed with their sedate exteriors.
Adult Gifts, one neon sign advertised. Live Nude Dancers, another read.
“Like anyone would want to see dead nude dancers,” Annja muttered.
The ground floor of the buildings mostly looked the same—dark, shadowed by awnings and overhangs, lit at the edges by the neon. The second and third levels were glossy black stone sitting next to bricks painted white and pink that stood out across from fronts festooned in pale yellow, beige, orchid and a surprisingly subdued orange. Apartments, Annja guessed, or maybe offices for the places below. Window boxes were filled with flowers that were holding on in the still reasonable weather. Iron grates covered up some of the widows, looking artful while being protective.
She spied a sign that read Backpackers Welcome, hanging lopsidedly over a weathered wooden door. On a storefront window next to it flyers were taped announcing AIDS testing, health clinics and a place where intravenous drug users could inject themselves under supervision.
The sidewalks were filled with people. Many were tourists; she could tell by their attire and the way they gaped openmouthed at some of the establishments. Some were regulars to the businesses, she noted, because of their obvious familiarity with the neighborhood. A drunk leaned against a sex-toy shop window a few businesses down; he stared at Annja and smiled, showing a smattering of yellowed teeth. At the next shop two heavily made-up girls in skimpy skirts and high boots chatted with a pair of well-dressed businessmen.
She spied a heavily tattooed man. A purple-and-green serpent twisting down his arm and wrapping around his wrist was the mildest of the images. A gaunt-looking fellow in black leather, skin pulled so tight across his face his head looked skeletal, stopped to talk to the tattooed man and passed him a small white envelope.
“Satan made Sydney,” Annja whispered. Mark Twain was sometimes credited with saying that after he took a world tour in 1895 and passed through Australia. Annja had read plenty of Twain and knew the quote was wrongly attributed. “But Satan might have had a hand in crafting Kings Cross,” she said to herself.
Annja shivered. Her feet were sore. She looked down to see that the sidewalk was made of a patchwork of maroon bricks, grime and discarded cigarette butts looking to be the mortar. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked for a pay phone. One more attempt to call Oliver and Doug. Then she’d make a call to the police and come up with a reason why she’d run from the hotel. The police had to know who she was, from the tag on her luggage or from checking with the hotel.
The convenience store first, and then she’d make some calls, she decided, starting across the walk when the signal changed. In the block running east she saw that no cars were allowed on the street, that it was limited to pedestrian and bicycle traffic. A frumpy-looking woman on a ten-speed stopped and stared. Annja would not have been out of place, given the wild assortment of people and their dress in this neighborhood, but the blood spatters and bare feet were raising eyebrows.
No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service, the sign on the convenience store said. Annja ignored it and went inside, tugging down her jeans so they hid the tops of her feet. A banner at the back said Chemist, so she headed for it. She knew it meant the equivalent of a pharmacist, and the things she needed would be there. She spied an aisle with ribbons and hair ties, and went down it, finding a bin with fuzzy socks at the end. She rooted through it and selected a purple pair that looked the least fuzzy, then bought gauze, alcohol, first-aid tape and a pair of scissors.
She ignored the clerk’s concerned expression, took her purchases outside and darted through the doorway of a tiny Japanese restaurant.
The restroom was the dirtiest she’d seen in some time, and Annja couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose at the myriad disagreeable smells. The air was at the same time thick and close, and she sat on the back of the toilet and put her feet on the seat as she cleaned them with the alcohol.
“Wow, that hurts,” she whispered. “What a horrible day this has been.”
Day? She suspected not much more than an hour had passed since she’d found Oliver’s room empty.
She worked quickly, wanting to get out of there and get to the task of solving this wretched mystery. Her feet bandaged, she slipped the socks over them, then went to the sink. The mirror was chipped and filmy, and Annja was thankful for that, as it helped to mask her appearance. She thoroughly cleaned her shoulder where the bullet had grazed it.
“Thank God he wasn’t a better shot.” The wound was superficial, but it had bled enough to make a good bit of her bikini top pink.
After scrubbing the dirt off the little piece of soap she found, she washed the blood off her arm and tried to get some of it out of her top, and then she dried off with some paper towels and smoothed her hair behind her ears. She splashed her face and gingerly touched her scraped cheek. It would be bruising soon.
Annja stared at her hazy reflection. Her eyes, amber-green, showed neither anger nor sadness. But when she blinked and moistened them they showed that she was suddenly deep in thought. A few moments more and she tossed the paper towels onto the top of the overflowing trashcan and left the restroom, pausing at the take-out counter to order a small coffee and swallow it down.
She was so very tired and hoped the caffeine would at least give her a psychological boost.
Out on the street again, she stopped in a boutique that accepted American credit cards and bought the only pair of shoes that fit—baby-blue leather sneakers with silver laces—and a long-sleeved silky beige shirt with an aboriginal design of a kangaroo splayed across the front.
Feeling better than she had since breakfast, she headed toward a pay phone on the far corner of the block. It was near the famous El Alamein Fountain, a huge globelike water display that she would have considered pretty were her circumstances different.
Annja hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when a man with a hand like a ham grabbed her arm and pulled her into a shadowed doorway.
6
Jon looked as if he wasn’t quite old enough to drive, but he was a second-year graduate student in anthropology with an emphasis in archaeology. His round baby face and mass of curly red hair hid some of his years, as did the fact he’d made no attempt to move out of his parents’ house and didn’t care that all his friends knew it. He sat cross-legged on a small rug he’d brought with him—a futile effort to keep the dirt off his pants—and he stared at a slab of stone he’d just brushed off.
The first image in the upper left corner was of a cane crooked to the right, with a tilted square sitting halfway up from its base. Next to it were four circles stacked on top of each other, like a snowman without features, and a legless creature that looked like a cross between a walrus and a dog. There was also a setting sun, a cow-headed man holding an ankh, a three-legged owl, parallel wavy lines, stiff-looking birds, a narrow pyramid and a heavily lashed eye. The symbols were at the same time crude and elegant, and he tentatively touched the walrus-dog.
“Amazing,” he breathed. “Thousands of years old. This is just glorious.”
The images had been weathered by the salty sea air and the dirt that had shifted above them for centuries. Still, there wasn’t a single figure that couldn’t be made out. Translating them was another matter.
“Hey, Jon-Jon. No one at the uni could make much of that last piece you dug up.” This came from Cindy, a classmate whose sun-leathered face made her look quite a bit older than her twenty-four years. She leaned over Jon’s back to get
a better look at the slab, hands on his shoulders and breasts grazing the top of his head. Unlike Jon, she’d made no attempt to keep the dirt off her clothes, which had been eggshell-white when she started the day’s work.
“None of the profs at the uni could figure out any story from it,” she continued. “But they were using newer translation texts.” She pushed off Jon and came around to squat in front of him, the slab between them.
Despite the cooling weather, she’d worn shorts. Jon stared at her knees.
“Doc figured it out, though,” Cindy said. “The only prof who could. He showed me his notes this morning. They’re on the clipboard over by the cooler if you want to take a look.”
Jon dropped his gaze to the slab. “I want to finish here first.”
The wind gusted and Cindy made a brrring sound. Jon looked at her knees again and noted the goose bumps.
“I’ll tell you what his notes say, then.” She let a pause settle between them, to let Jon know that what she was about to say was important. “Doc used the old translation guides on the slabs, says they talk about an expedition looking for yellow metal. That would be gold. Says they were also looking for a new world to explore. Says an oracle of Hathor directed them to come this way. Who cares about an oracle’s vision. Think about it…gold!”
Jon looked her in the face now. Cindy was pretty, definitely, and with plenty of curves. But there were creases around her eyes and at the corners of her lips…too much time spent suntanning, and the pale blond color she chose to dye her hair was unflattering and brittle looking.
“Yeah, gold,” he said. “I know. The Egyptians used gold on some of their sarcophaguses.”
She licked her lips. “So anyway, Doc says your slab goes on to say that while the Egyptians were exploring around here, their leader was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. Prof thinks maybe there’s a tomb around here somewhere, and that maybe it’s on this side of the ridge. Maybe somewhere down through the crevice.”
“So it’d be our find,” Jon said, suddenly very interested. “The uni’s, I mean. Not Dr. Michaels and his team over yonder.” He scratched at his skin. “It’d be a kick if the uni found a tomb, while Dr. Michaels and his so-called professional team picked the wrong spot to dig.”
She smiled, the invisible braces on her teeth showing. “Doc wants us to keep quiet about it. Not to traipse over the hill and breathe a word to Dr. Michaels. Not to—”
“I could write my thesis on—”
Cindy made a growling sound. “I don’t care who gets credit for what, Jon, or if the uni makes headlines. I don’t give a rat’s ass about your thesis.”
Jon cocked his head.
“Don’t you get it?” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Gold. If the Egyptians were looking for gold…and found it…well, it’s probably buried in the tomb.”
Jon groaned. Just when it looked as if Cindy was taking archaeology seriously her magpie complex kicked in.
“Gold, treasure. Maybe some pretty little pieces don’t have to be cataloged. Know what I mean? Maybe I might just get compensated, and then some, for all the clothes and shoes I’ve ruined on this blasted project. ’Sides, we both know I’m not going to get an A out of this. I’ll be lucky if I pass. I figure I might as well get something.” Like gold, she mouthed.
Jon watched her sashay away, hips swinging more than they needed to. He groaned again. How did she ever make it this far at the university? There were twelve graduate students assigned to this dig. Next semester it would be a different twelve. A part of him hoped it would be next semester’s batch that uncovered the tomb; he didn’t want to deal with Cindy’s sticky fingers.
“I should report you,” Jon muttered. “I should tell.” But that would be juvenile, he decided. He returned his attention to the slab, then pulled a notebook out of his pocket and fluttered the pages to knock the dirt out. He thumbed through his scrawl about this particular site.
Originally it had been heavily overgrown with vegetation and rock. The soil line had been higher. It was considered a tertiary site, compared to the larger site Dr. Michaels’s professional crew was digging just over the rise. There’d been previous excavation attempts at the very spot where Jon sat, but nothing much had come of it—not even when a philanthropist had brought in expensive laser scanning equipment. That was why the university in Sydney had been given the go-ahead to send their graduate students to this place. There were some interesting pieces, but nothing spectacular was expected to be found. It was just a place to train would-be archaeologists.
To Jon’s knowledge, this was the first time the university had been involved in something considered a fringe project. Even some of the professors scoffed at the notion of Egyptians on Australian soil. But Jon knew it was more than likely Egyptians actually had come here—beyond the evidence that was directly in front of him.
Australia appeared on a Greek map dated earlier than 200 years B.C., and Sumerian and Mayan writings referenced a lost land in the Pacific. Then, more than twenty years ago archaeologists in Fayum, Egypt, discovered fossils of kangaroos. And eighty years ago things looking suspiciously like boomerangs were found in Tutankhamen’s tomb.
So ancient peoples from far away, worlds away, knew about Australia, and in Jon’s view certainly had been here…even before the aborigines.
Especially the Egyptians.
“Fringe nothing,” Jon grumbled. “This is all fair dinkum. And screw the gold. Hello award-winning thesis and a free ride in some doctorate program.” Maybe Dr. Michaels across the ridge would beg him to join that team. “Indiana Jones, eat your ever loving heart out.”
A “harrumph” startled Jon and made him bolt upright to his feet.
“Doc, sorry. Didn’t hear you.”
Jon knew their project head detested the Indiana Jones films.
“Cindy said she told you about my translations.”
“Um, yeah.” Jon was always nervous around instructors.
“Walk with me,” the professor said.
“Sure.”
Doc was a small man, at little more than five feet and slender. Most of the students dwarfed him. He was a tidy man, somehow staying clean despite sifting and digging alongside his charges. Jon admired him because Doc didn’t ask the students to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.
He was always in a broad-brimmed hat to shield his face from the sun. He had several in his jeep, and was wearing an olive-green one today with a tie that disappeared into his thick black beard. Jon guessed that Doc dyed the beard since the short and always neatly combed hair on his head was a mix of gray and black.
Doc rubbed his hands together as they walked and pursed his lips in a pensive expression. He mumbled about seeking more funding from the university, perhaps in the form of grants; the words were meant for himself, and Jon politely pretended not to listen.
Their course took them past the students around the sifting table and beyond the tents where they passed the nights. They came to a rock cleft, where a piece of split sandstone had formed a crevice. Spikes held a rope ladder that led down into it. The crevice couldn’t be seen from a distance. Because of the sandstone and the shadows that extended from the ridge, you almost had to be on top of it to notice.
Jon hoped he was being given permission to climb down. Doc was careful about the university’s liability, and only allowed students down there under careful supervision. There were more hieroglyphics down there. A lot more.
“Tomorrow,” Doc told him. “You and I and Cindy…”
Jon made a face.
“You and I and Matthew will go down and take many more photographs, bring some things up. There’s important work to do.”
“We could go down now.” Jon couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice.
“Tomorrow, when we’ve a full day of it.” Doc’s voice was kind but stern. “I’ve got some lights coming in the morning that will make it much easier to see. I need the light to better translate.”
; Jon anxiously shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I just knew you’d be able to translate that first tablet. And the one I’m still cleaning. You’ll read that one, too.”
Doc nodded. “These hieroglyphics,” he began. He tipped his head up and inhaled the cool fall air, and his gaze followed a noisy flock of birds heading west, farther into the forest preserve. “They are very ancient, archaic, from the early dynasties. Most Egyptologists would not be able to translate them, Jon. They’re all schooled to read what’s called Middle Egyptian. Very few—myself one of them—can read the formative styles.”
“Because these hieroglyphics look a little like Phoenician and Sumerian,” Jon supplied, puffing out his chest a little.
Doc nodded. “And that’s one of the reasons not everyone thinks these hieroglyphics are Egyptian.”
“So much the fools, them,” Jon said.
“Fools indeed,” Doc agreed.
“Think I’m gonna dux this class, Doc?” Jon cringed, realizing he shouldn’t be asking something like this so soon in the session.
Doc crossed his arms and placed his hands on his elbows. He didn’t answer.
“Presumptuous of me, huh?” Jon rocked back on his heels and shook his head. “Sorry.”
“You’ll dux this class,” Doc said after a moment. “We both know you’re my best student.”
Jon’s eyes gleamed and he opened his mouth to say something else, but stopped when he heard a muffled chirping sound. Doc disentangled his arms and reached into the deep pocket of his jacket. He retrieved a satellite phone and thumbed a button.
“If you’ll excuse me, Jon.” Doc continued walking.
I’m gonna ace this, Jon thought. He happily headed back to clean his slab.
DOC WAITED until he was well out of earshot of any of the students, then he held the phone to his ear.
“This must be important.” He paused and swallowed hard. “Had better be important to bother me here while I am with the students.” He cocked his head and listened intently. Then he dropped his voice. “Annja Creed? The American? You have her, yes?”