Eternal Journey

by Alex Archer

  “And…” Annja prompted.

  “He was exceedingly cordial and shared some cool, sweetened tea with me that he had in a thermos. He talked to me of the glorious Egypt of ancient times.”

  Annja threaded the material in the machine, and began to read. “Oh, my, in all my poking around on the archaeology sites, I’d never seen this.”

  “I doubt you’d ever find that on the Internet.” The librarian adjusted her glasses. “After those first few articles, it was all hush-hush. There were rumors Gahiji paid high-up newspapermen to look the other way. Oh, there are certainly people who know of it, as he must have quite the staff working there—and perhaps living there. But they know to keep their mouths shut.”

  “It’s a palace,” Annja said.

  “It is that,” the librarian agreed. “And those are just pictures taken partway into its construction. I imagine it’s quite a bit more beautiful than what you see there. My father was one of the architects, and that is why he took me to the site. He was proud of his participation in it, and he wanted me to see.”

  “And did you go back again? After meeting Dr. Hamam that first time?”

  She shook her head. “My father was fired the very next day. I heard him talking to my mother, saying that Gahiji was angry that he’d brought me to the site. My father called him Gahiji, not Dr. Hamam. I think they were friends, but all the architects called him Gahiji then. He said Gahiji did not want any more eyes than necessary on his home.” She paused. “My father, of course, did not tell me my presence was to blame for his dismissal.”

  Annja stared at the woman, not knowing what to say.

  “But it is good my father lost that job. The three other architects died shortly after the project was finished. Some of the contractors, too, from what I’d heard. I did not pay much attention to death when I was young. My father thought it something like the curse on the archaeologists who first discovered Tut’s tomb. Silly superstition.”

  “You don’t like him, do you, Gahiji Hamam?” Annja asked.

  “He is a very powerful, very wealthy man. And, no, I do not like him.” The librarian drew her finger to her lips, gave Annja a nod and left her to her reading.

  “I will find him here, in his secret palace,” Annja said, eyes buried in the hood of the machine. “And, no, I do not like him, either.”

  28

  Annja told the woman at the hotel desk that she would be staying at least one more night, maybe two. She ate a big lunch, wanting to make sure her energy was up, and then purchased several bottles of water, rented a motorcycle and headed out of the city.

  Worse than New York, Annja declared of the traffic. Driving in Cairo was a dangerous proposition, so many of the locals aggressively weaving from one lane to the next on swarming streets and rarely signaling. Oddly, she noticed that they were more polite around intersections. She thought about Dari as she drove; his bike was far superior to this rental. She hoped he’d been stitched up and was none the worse for wear. She hadn’t checked in with him or with West and his wife before she left for the Sydney airport. She’d been too focused on catching up to Hamam.

  Besides, she told herself again, she intended to return to Sydney for a proper vacation. She would plan a reunion with all of them.

  She pulled over when she was well outside the city and forced herself to relax, her nerves on edge from what she’d considered a perilous drive and from her upcoming confrontation. She drank one of the bottles of water, saving just enough in the bottom of it so she could splash her face. She didn’t care if the makeup covering the bruises smeared. She didn’t care what she looked like when she found Hamam.

  Annja had two maps with her—one purchased in the city and showing details of the area around Cairo. The other was drawn on a sheet of legal-size paper, the best recollection the librarian had of just where Hamam’s palace sat. Between the two maps, she hoped she could find it by nightfall.

  The day was beautiful for traveling. It was in the mid-seventies, quite a difference from Australia, and before the afternoon was out she suspected it would reach eighty. The sky was bright blue and looked shiny. The only clouds were high and thin, and the air had a crisp cleanness to it that was a welcome relief from the oppressive scents of the city. The people in the cars that passed her only gave her a glance; there was none of the speed and rudeness and aggressive driving that she’d witnessed in Cairo and its environs.

  Her finger traced her route on the map, and she guessed that it would take her perhaps two hours at most to get in the area of Hamam’s property, and then she’d have to find the place. Big, the librarian said, though it was nonetheless concealed.

  ANNJA CONSIDERED herself good at finding things, but the sun was nearly down before she was able to find anything.

  “Kom Ombo,” she whispered. Annja had hidden her motorcycle behind a rise of earth and had been exploring on foot, paralleling a twisting dirt trail that had a security fence well back from the main road it branched off. She spotted cameras, too, on the gate and on thin poles that would be difficult to see from a distance.

  “This is like Kom Ombo. But more magnificent.”

  She’d climbed a rise that looked like a sand dune, finding a bowl-shaped depression on the other side. The twisting trail leading down into it was bisected by two security checkpoints and undoubtedly more cameras.

  Annja recalled that during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, stretching from roughly 300 to 80 B.C., a double temple had stood at Kom Ombo. Cleopatra was known to have favored the place, which was dedicated to Sobek, the crocodile-headed god of fertility said to have created the world. It also honored Haroeris—Horus—who at the time was called the sun or war god.

  The last rays of the setting sun struck the main structure, making it look golden. Annja was transfixed by its beauty. The complex was nearly as long as two football fields, and would have been visible for miles were it not built in the depression with raised earth ringing it. It would be seen from overhead, Annja thought, though not easily. Its colors purposefully blended in with the grounds. A wide staircase—one hundred or more feet wide—led up to a columned building made of red-brown stone. Various Egyptian gods made up each column, suggesting it was a temple. There was Hathor with her arms raised straight above her head, her hands helping to support the roof. Horus was next to her, and Anubis next to him. Even at this distance, Annja could tell the detail was amazing. About fifty yards to the east of the temple, a thick, stunted tower rose, the top of it almost even with the rise that circled the place. Beyond it was a wall that encompassed a courtyard, and a pool that had been constructed to look natural.

  The main building in the courtyard—made of a little darker stone—had a modern touch, windows. Annja saw the failing light glinting off them. She thought she spied a generator beneath the roof of a squat-columned porch, but she couldn’t be certain. But a place like this would need at least one, as whoever lived inside would want air-conditioning in the height of Egypt’s summer.

  “Binoculars,” she whispered. “Why didn’t I think to buy a pair?”

  There was also a large, plain-looking building, and through an open door she saw the front of a truck. It was Hamam’s version of a garage with an ancient Egyptian motif.

  She had called the whole thing Kom Ombo because that is what the place resembled. She’d been to the ruins at the real Kom Ombo, where, though the structures were larger, they were in decay. This looked pristine.

  The real ruins had once been home to hundreds of crocodiles, which the Egyptians there considered sacred animals meant to be protected. Annja had seen mummified crocodiles in what was left of the ruins of the Hathor chapel, tucked away in the temple.

  The entire ruins had been excavated in the 1900s, Annja recalled, though parts of it crumbled into the Nile River when an earthquake struck in the early 1990s. She’d not been able to visit it before the disaster. She also remembered that the massive temple had twin images and offerings everywhere to honor both Sobek and Horus—
each god apparently requiring his own tribute. The carvings on the walls there were of Sobek in his crocodile-headed form, and sun disks to represent Horus. There were also carvings of medical instruments and rearing cobras, and hints of murals showing the story of how the laborers cut their building blocks with water and inserts of wood.

  She calculated that at least fifteen men patrolled the grounds at this re-creation of Kom Ombo, in what first appeared to be no discernible pattern. But after watching for a while, Annja picked up a thorough routine. They either carried M-16s or AK-47s strapped to their backs, and another rifle in their hands. There were pistols holstered at their waists, and two of them wore flak jackets. They looked military, but some had long hair that hung loose, and others had beards. She crept closer, crawling on her belly, and discovered they were a mix of nationalities—Arab, Korean and perhaps European. So not likely military—more likely mercenary, she guessed.

  The odds were horrible, and Annja’s fingers trembled with the thought of invading the stronghold. She had options, of course, such as returning to Cairo and contacting the authorities, telling them all of her suspicions and coming back with their version of the cavalry. But Hamam was powerful and rich and perhaps above the law—or far enough above it that she would have to give the police substantial proof of his wrong doings. She could contact the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and plead her case, get the statesmen involved. But that would take time, and she was already several days behind Hamam because of her time sequestered with the Sydney police.

  She could study this place some more, and Hamam some more, finding the evidence she needed to get the police to take over. But that would also take time, and Annja didn’t have a great measure of patience. She couldn’t do nothing, couldn’t just walk away and fly back to New York, rest a few days and then delve into the skeletons of giant penguins. It wasn’t in her to let something drop.

  Besides, something had pointed her in this direction when she met the librarian. Who was she to deny that?

  Annja waited until nightfall, drinking the rest of her bottled water and making certain she had the routine of the guards locked into her memory. Then she skittered forward like a scorpion, working to leave no trace over the hard-packed earth and being as silent as possible. Alone, she just might be able to avoid detection.

  It took work to make it past the cameras she spotted, and she prayed there weren’t any that she hadn’t seen. More work to get past the guards and to hide at the temple steps. She hurried up to them when the guards passed, and she hugged the wall where the shadows were thick.

  And she listened.

  All the sounds were faint but discernible—the soft footfalls of the men patrolling, the shush of their pantlegs rubbing together and the chink of their weapons against their backs and in their hands. She heard a dog barking, or perhaps a fox, from somewhere beyond the wall, and then another. Then there was a soft rattle and hum of a large generator. Pale light spilled out from between columns, and she had to move to remain in the darkness. After a few minutes she moved to another part of the complex and scaled the courtyard wall, using the birds’ heads and sun disks molded into the clay and stone as hand-and footholds.

  Annja had worn a jacket, but she didn’t need it, the temperature was hovering around seventy, she guessed. She was sweating—from nerves mostly. This one-man commando operation she’d launched had set her on a fine, sharp edge. She shrugged out of the jacket when she landed on the ground on the other side of the wall, balled it up and put it behind a bush. Inside the courtyard were the only plants she’d noticed, and these might look like natural growth from the air. The emerging moon showed a few small indigenous trees, such as the date palm, tamarisk and carob, none of them large. Grapes grew along the eastern courtyard wall, and lotus, jasmine and roses grew near the pool, their mingled fragrances heady. To the west she saw a spread of alfalfa grass and a stand of papyrus.

  She held her breath when four gazelles crossed in front of her and slowly headed to the pond. A desert fox, one that was too small to threaten the gazelles, hurried to the west when it noticed Annja; that was likely what she’d heard making a barking noise.

  She was overwhelmed by the place—it truly was a palace, more than a palace, a piece of history re-created and made magnificent on this hollowed-out stretch of ground in the middle of nowhere. It felt as if she walked in the past, where Egyptians had toiled and worshiped and had left behind artifacts to amaze and puzzle the people of her own time. She wished Wes and Jennifer could see it, wished the world could see it. Annja leaned against the wall and looked up at the tower and the columns of the temple, looked to the north where what must be Hamam’s residence sat next to the pond. Lights had come on inside.

  “Someone’s home,” she whispered. “And they’re about to have company.” As much as she would have liked to continue reveling in the wonder of the place, she had a self-imposed mission to capture Hamam and bring him to justice.

  It was for more than the memories of Oliver and Josie and Matthew. It was for the people of Sydney who had nearly died, and for anyone else who might fall victim to the professor’s schemes.

  Minutes later she was scurrying from tree to tree, spooking the gazelles and getting closer to the pond. She nearly stepped on a lizard, so intent on the building she hadn’t been looking down.

  “What’s this?” She knelt and saw a square of metal the size of a grapefruit. “Uh-oh.” It looked to be a motion sensor, and she worried that she might have tripped it—or others—and sent up a proverbial red flag in some monitoring room. She hoped she was small enough, like one of the gazelles, to go unnoticed. Still, she was more careful, keeping lower to the ground and looking for more of the sensors, which were placed next to bushes and rocks to help camouflage them.

  Heartbeats later she stood in the shadows of the impressive building. Like the temple, though smaller, its roof was supported by columns, but these bore the likenesses of pharaohs. The center ones straddling thick double doors had Hamam’s visage. Annja considered that creepy, and she couldn’t suppress the shiver that raced down her spine.

  She crept around to the back, finding more lizards and seeing three crocodiles chained to a post like a cruel owner might chain dogs. They paid her no heed, and she kept her distance. Crouching behind a column, she studied the door. It looked old, the wood weathered, probably purposefully, but there was a camera that swiveled this way and that just above it. And it was no doubt locked.

  A window, maybe, she thought, though those were likely monitored, too. Apparently Hamam hadn’t been content just with being out in the middle of nowhere, in a compound with armed guards and motion sensors. He had to put extra security on his doors.

  While she mulled over different scenarios, many of which involved her getting caught, the back doors whispered open and two more guards stepped out. One looked Korean, the other Arab. They conversed briefly, and Annja slid closer. She touched the sword with her mind, but refrained from calling it immediately. She dismissed the notion of summoning it altogether when they stepped to the opposite corner of the building, the Korean pulling out a pack of cigarettes. The doors started to close, and Annja shot through them.

  I am so going to die here, she thought. Now her count of armed security guards was up to seventeen, and she was certain there must be more. All those rifles and pistols, and who knew what other defenses Hamam had.

  Everyone dies, she told herself. The only thing in this world that matters is what you do with the days you’ve been granted.

  She edged into the room, and her eyes widened in admiration and bewilderment. She’d expected this to be a residence, and perhaps it was, but where she thought she might be sneaking into a kitchen—people so often had them at the back of a house—she’d instead entered a museum.

  The lighting was low, like museums she’d been in after hours. But it was enough to give her a hint of the displays. Without realizing what she was doing, Annja started moving down the aisle to her left, looking into case after c
ase.

  The first exhibit was ghastly. A mummified head was placed on a pillow, and next to it was a mummified hand and a foot. The tag beneath them stated they were the mummified remains of an unknown wealthy woman, previously wrongly identified as one of the wives of New Kingdom Pharaoh Seti II.

  There were mummified birds, too, and Annja wondered where Hamam got his displayed artifacts.

  She shook her head, scolding herself. He’d stolen them, of course, from the museum in Sydney or from others, or perhaps appropriated them directly from digs he worked.

  He had an impressive wooden image of Horus-sodpu from the Late Period, probably between the Twenty-Third Dynasty and the Thirtieth Dynasty, an image of a Ptolemaic ba—or soul—that was only a few inches high, a plastered linen mask from the fourth century, the card in front of it indicating it was found at Den el Bahn. A wooden mask from the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty caught her eye, as it had retained some of its original paint, and there was a large funerary cone made of red clay, which probably had sat at the front of a tomb, the inscription on it illegible.

  There was more—a mud brick stamped with the seal of a pharaoh, a considerable collection of Ptolemaic coins that were slightly corroded but in overall good condition. The images of eagles and kings were clear enough for her to see in the soft light. Coptic coins, a cast of a winged bull and another of an eagle, canopic jars of the style from Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, a bronze head of a Ptolemaic queen, a half-dozen bronze images of Isis and Horus and a wooden statue the size of a doll that was one of the concubines of the dead, possibly from the Twenty-Eighth Dynasty.

  Annja was able to stop herself from looking further. Her amazement had turned to ire. Hamam should not have this remarkable collection; it should be on display for the world to see. She found an exit that led to a narrow corridor, so dark she had to feel her way down. There were several oiled-walnut doors off it, with carvings she couldn’t see. Incongruous to the outside, they nonetheless were the accoutrements of a wealthy man’s abode.