by Alex Archer
The corridor forked under a pale globe of light, and to the right it became a ramp that led down into blackest black. She wanted very badly to follow it. Something tingled at the back of her mind and urged her to discover what lay beneath this place.
But she opted, instead, for the other direction. She heard voices coming from there, and she smelled incense. There could well be guards, but there could also be answers. She summoned her sword, took a deep breath and started down the hall.
29
Annja stopped outside the doorway and listened. She was pleased the two men just beyond spoke in English so she could take in every word.
“Master Gahiji, Randall discovered a motorcycle beyond the first security post. We have traced its rental to Cairo, paid for two days’ use by Annja Creed. She is that woman you told me about. The one who nearly ended everything.”
“The devil woman.”
Annja knew that had to be Hamam speaking. His voice was rough and sounded forced, as if he suffered a sickness of the throat or lungs.
“I have alerted the security posts, Master Gahiji. The men are fanning out. We will find her. And we will kill her for you.”
“No!”
Annja almost jumped at the strained shout.
“I will kill her,” Hamam returned. “And in so doing I will discover why she is so difficult to put down, what is so special about one American woman. Sayed and his men could not do it in Australia. She nearly unraveled all of my plans there, as I told you. We almost did not get away with the great finds held captive in the university museum and that I discovered in the temple to my mother goddess.”
Annja shuddered. My mother goddess. She sensed madness in Hamam. Brilliant, the librarian and his students had called him. Insane, Annja decided to add. They were a dangerous combination of traits and could help explain why he’d chosen to poison the people of Sydney. He was simply nuts.
“Annja Creed,” Hamam continued, his voice cracking, “prevented the poison dump into Sydney’s water. She ruined the test. But she will not ruin this.”
Test? Annja’s eyes widened and she tightened the grip on her sword. She breathed shallowly, not wanting to make a sound and straining to absorb every bit of the madman’s explanation.
“No, she cannot stop the poison dump in Cairo, my friend.”
“Everything is in place, Master Gahiji. I have my men in the city, assembling the tankers and the botulism agent. They will release it tomorrow night at all the stations you indicated. It will be glorious, all the death.”
“She will not interfere this time,” Hamam stated. “The guards must find her, and they must bring her to me. Look to the temple. She’s an archaeologist—she might be there.”
Annja skittered back a few steps and pressed herself into a darkened doorway. The man Hamam had been speaking with emerged into the hall. His footsteps were heavy, and she held her breath as he passed. She could make out a few details—he was tall, broad shouldered and barrel-chested, a mix of fat and muscle, and he had a pistol on his hip.
Don’t see me, she prayed. Keep going. I do not need every guard in this modern-day Kom Ombo alerted. My life expectancy will pretty much vanish.
He stopped for a moment, as if listening for something, then continued on. When she couldn’t hear his footsteps any longer, she edged out into the hall and back to Hamam’s door frame.
And if I catch him? Annja thought. What then? I really haven’t thought this out. Curse me for taking the knee-jerk approach, for coming out here on my own and for coming in here without any backup. What was I thinking?
She was thinking about Oliver, she admitted, as she sucked in a breath and darted inside, registering everything in a single glance.
Hamam sat behind a massive mahogany desk, the front of it carved to resemble the pillars of the temple outside. Books were stacked on each corner, and in the shadow of the tallest stack were an assortment of pill bottles and a water decanter.
The walls were covered with a mix of bookshelves, all filled, and tapestries of Egyptian life. The rug she stood on was thick and woven with images of stiff-looking birds, cow-headed women and half suns.
He stood, leaning on the edge of his desk and reaching for a telephone festooned with all manner of buttons. An intercom, most likely, Annja registered, and one that she couldn’t allow him to touch.
Three long, amazingly fast steps and she was at the side of the desk, sword arcing down and severing the phone cord. A second swift slash cleaved the contraption in two. A third knocked his cell phone out of reach.
Hamam’s eyes were wide with fury and spittle flew from his lips. He tried to speak, but she darted at him, sword held in one hand over her head, her other arm straight out and going for his throat. She had no intention of killing him, despite all the deaths he’d planned and had contracted, but she couldn’t let him call for his guards.
He was off balance, shuffling back to get away from her, but not managing that. Her hand closed on his throat even as he tripped and went down. She landed on top of him, straddled him and used her weight to pin him. She sucked in a deep breath, smelling the incense that was burning somewhere nearby and the medicinal smell that hung heavy around his face.
She leaned in close. “You are a madman, Gahiji Hamam. Foul and calculating and worse than the most hideous monsters I’ve chased through these recent years.” She squeezed just enough to keep him from talking, and she kneed him when he tried to get up.
“These are just things, Hamam. All of these relics you’ve got in your cases. They’re just things, and they’re not worth the lives of people you intend to poison, and no doubt countless people you’ve already killed.”
His eyes bulged as he fought for breath, and she released her hold only a little. She brought the pommel of her sword down next to his head.
“You’ve got more relics here than what I saw in your display room, I’ll wager.” She watched his expression and decided she was right. “In the basement of this place, yes?” His eyes flickered and she figured she was on the right track. “But it’s not enough, and you want more.”
He started to wheeze, and in his breath Annja detected a hint of decay.
“But why does an old man need more, when there are far fewer years in front of him than behind? What can you possibly do with all this stuff?” She hadn’t asked that question to him, just posed it, and still she kept her grip tight enough that he couldn’t answer. “Madness and greed are monstrous qualities.”
“Pig,” he managed to say, the word no more than a whisper.
“What? No kelbeh?”
Annja glanced around the room again. Some of the books on a shelf directly in front of her looked old. On the top shelf were rolled pieces of papyrus—originals certainly, not forgeries.
“Why the poison?” Again she relaxed her grip. At the same time she drew the sword back and placed the blade at his throat. “I have to know, Gahiji Hamam.”
He smiled at her, a vile expression that set her teeth to hurting. “Blackmail,” he croaked. “Don’t you see?”
She raised her eyebrows. “No, I don’t.”
“With Sayed…now with another terrorist, though not one with his qualities…we will poison Cairo.”
One of the most heavily populated cities in the world, Annja thought.
“And while the authorities deal with the catastrophe, you cart away the best of the relics from the museum?” The muscles in his jaw worked, and Annja took that for a yes. “But not just Cairo, eh?” She suddenly saw the scope of what he wanted.
“No,” he said. “Sydney, Cairo, they are the beginning.” He stared at her for a moment before continuing. “Other cities, they will release their Egyptian artifacts to me to avoid suffering the poison.”
“Blackmail.”
“And sacrifice,” he added. “All the deaths I planned…they would be tribute to the mother goddess.”
Annja shook her head, her hair fluttering around her shoulders. “It makes no sense. Someone would c
atch you, just like I’ve caught you. All these things you’ve been accumulating and all the things you want to add to your trove. You can’t do—”
She took in a gulp of air and held it, then released it in a hissing breath. “The world would not let you get away with this.”
“Just for a time,” he answered. “I only need the wealth for a time. It will buy me passage to the highest place.”
Annja still didn’t understand. Even with all of Hamam’s resources, he couldn’t possibly pull it all off. Some, yes, he’d get some cities to turn over the relics. But the major powers would not cave in. And he wouldn’t live free. She found this stronghold, and others knew of it and would eventually tell the authorities. He would be undone.
“Downstairs,” she said. “That’s where my answers are.” Annja dragged him to his feet, holding tight to the waistband of his pants in the back and pressing the blade to his throat. “We’re going downstairs, Hamam, because I cannot leave this unsolved.”
She shoved him, keeping him off balance. Despite his small stature and age, there was a strength about him, and she didn’t want him even trying to escape.
“And if you call out, I’ll kill you,” she said, though she did not truly mean the threat. “And if what’s niggling at the back of my mind is even half-true, I’m betting you can’t let yourself be killed here by me.”
She waited at the doorway to make certain no one was nearby, and then she herded him down the hall, and then down the ramp that descended into utter darkness. Halfway down, a light came on, a motion sensor she was grateful for. Two turns and another sloping ramp, and she came to a study that dwarfed the one she’d discovered Hamam in upstairs.
Annja wanted to explore every inch of it—to ogle the glass cases and look through the very old books, study the sculptures and carvings under glass domes on pedestals. But she stopped herself. Instead, she forced Hamam to a desk, a duplicate of the one upstairs. It took her a moment to figure out how to use the phone, and in that moment, she was nearly undone.
Hamam reached for a bronze khopesh lying on the desk between stacks of books. It was an ancient Egyptian weapon, with a sicklelike blade, the most effective weapon of its time period. He swung it at her, cutting through her shirt and drawing a line of blood across her stomach. He pulled it back and meant to gut her with it, but she moved with lightning speed and brought her sword up and at an angle, and drove it down, pommel first, against the side of his head. He slumped to the floor and she bent over him to make sure he was truly out.
She locked the door to the room and shoved a heavy chair against it and quickly placed several calls, not staying on the line long with each one out of fear that the calls might be monitored and bring Hamam’s forces in droves. Through the operator she called the closest police, from Fayhoum, then the Cairo police, U.S. Embassy, and a fire department. She shoved a second chair against the door for good measure, then took a better look around.
From a glance at papers in a top drawer of the desk, Annja learned he’d been accumulating treasures through legal and illegal means for decades, and had kept track of all his acquisitions in paper ledgers.
In the room beyond she saw crates that she guessed had come from Sydney, and more shelves that stretched so far she termed the place an underground warehouse that reminded her of the one shown in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Another room sent shivers through her. It looked like an autopsy room, but with an ancient Egyptian twist. There were tools for mummification, and there were large glass jars labeled Natron and other clay jars that would contain the organs that would be removed from Hamam’s body.
“Hamam is dying,” Annja said. “And he plans to have himself embalmed.”
Beyond the embalming room was a treasure chamber, the likes of which rivaled anything she’d heard of archaeologists discovering in the tombs of the pharaohs and kings.
“And he was going to use his wealth…and his lineage from Khufu…to gain entrance to the place of the gods.”
She occupied herself waiting for the authorities by taking a close look at the relics displayed in Hamam’s tomb. Among them were stone carvings of pyramid builders and of animals that closely represented kangaroos. She knew these latter pieces had not come from Australia, though she couldn’t say how she knew that.
When Hamam came to, he admitted their authenticity. “The kangaroo carvings were uncovered nearly five decades ago from a site east of Cairo. None of the archaeologists at the time paid the animals any notice. They didn’t realize the significance, so I liberated those particular pieces from the Cairo museum.”
Annja stared at them. “So the Egyptians sailed to Australia…and came back.”
“Some of them,” Hamam said. “The first expedition. And I trace my ancestry to those first travelers.”
“And that line ends with you, Gahiji Hamam.” She ushered him upstairs at sword point and waited until she heard the sirens.
EPILOGUE
Henenu watched as one dozen of his men placed a slab above the doorway to Hathor’s temple. It was more ornate than his previous carving, and it was decorated with inlaid gold; his brother had discovered veins of gold in a nearby ridge. The prayer that he’d painstakingly carved on the stone’s polished surface honored the mistress to the entrance of the valley. A personal prayer that he’d carved on the reverse side, which would not be seen by those entering the temple, begged the mother goddess for a way to take them back home.
He’d ordered the temple to Hathor enlarged, too, something more befitting the goddess. Perhaps she would smile upon them at their effort, allow them to rebuild and sail their ships and return to the blessed land cut through by the blessed Nile.
His brother stood with him, admiring the temple and the crowning stone, the gold inlay glowing in the setting sun.
“It is beautiful, Henenu.”
He nodded. With all its angles and planes with squat, wide steps that led up to an entranceway yawning black like the maw of a hungry beast, the temple was indeed beautiful. But to Henenu, it stood as a symbol of the abyss.
“The men have done well, Khentemsemet. This is the finest structure in this accursed land.”
“Your words are kind, brother,” Khentemsemet replied. “But your heart is not in them. Your voice is sadness itself.”
Henenu ground the ball of his foot against the earth and turned away from the temple, looking out over a land filled with riches and wondrous creatures. Other peoples would be glad to call this home. But there was no natron in the soil, and so Henenu, who felt himself failing, would not be properly preserved. He would not be joining the gods at his passing.
His brother touched his shoulder. “The mother goddess, Henenu, will look with joy upon her finished temple.”
Henenu continued to scan the horizon, not wanting to meet his brother’s gaze.
“The others who came before us, Henenu, they found their way home. They brought with them treasures from this land, and the most unusual of the animals. Like them, we will return to Egypt.”
Shimmering waves of heat rose from the ground. It was the height of Australia’s summer. The presence of Horus, the god of the sky and of the noon sun, loomed large here.
“I will not be returning, Khentemsemet. Nor will some of the other men who came with us. Some are old, and some have toiled too hard on the buildings. Their bodies are broken and withering. Time is claiming us.”
Henenu continued to stare to the west, where a family of kangaroos milled.
“This amazing, wonderful, escapeless hole,” Henenu pronounced. “It has caught me in its embrace, and it will keep me from ascending.”
First edition March 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3016-7
ETERNAL JOURNEY
Copyright © 2009 by Worldwide Library.
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