The Case of the Purloined Pyramid

by Sean McLachlan

  Moustafa sent up a quick prayer. “Please God let there be no bloodshed.”

  Once they got past the gathering crowd, they made much better time. They crossed the bridge over the Nile and sped down the long, dusty road to Giza. The three main pyramids loomed on the horizon.

  Faisal gasped and pointed. “What are those?”

  “Those are the pyramids,” Mr. Wall said.

  “I thought people were supposed to have built them.”

  “People did build them.”

  “No, those are too big. The jinn must have built them.”

  Moustafa clucked his tongue and turned around in his seat. “Stop talking about jinn! People built them, your ancestors and mine.”

  “They must have been the greatest magicians in the world,” Faisal said, still staring at the pyramids as they grew larger and clearer through the haze.

  “What do you mean?” Moustafa asked, frowning.

  “Because they’d have to have been great magicians to get the jinn to do all that work for them.”

  Moustafa grunted, shook his head, and looked back toward their destination. He had better things to do than try to educate some little snot-nosed child who couldn’t appreciate his heritage. He had to figure out how to get that sketch from Monsieur Dupris. The man was sure to go mad when he laid eyes on Moustafa again.

  Mr. Wall must have been thinking the same thing, because as the car trundled up the road onto the Giza Plateau, passing through a little village of mud huts shaded by palm trees, he said, “Best leave Monsieur Dupris to me, Moustafa. Once we have the sketch, I’ll let you read the inscription. You’re far better at reading hieroglyphs than me.”

  “Oh, you’re quite good, sir.”

  “Nonsense. You’re better than I am, and we both know it. I hired you to help me, not give me false praise.”

  Moustafa looked at his boss out of the corner of his eye. Since when did a European not enjoy false praise? It was one of the cornerstones of European-African relations, although the false praise always went only one way.

  They parked the motorcar near the Great Sphinx, where a flurry of men idling under its shade rushed to them offering their services.

  “Hello, guide?”

  “Camel ride to see pyramids? For you special price!”

  “Hello, postcard?”

  Moustafa recognized a man he trusted in the crowd.

  “Hey, Naguib! Guard the motorcar until we come back, and my boss will give you a piastre.”

  “Thank you, Moustafa, but make it five piastres. He looks richer than even most Europeans.”

  “You’ll get one and be happy with it. We’re on serious business,” Moustafa growled.

  He glanced at his boss and saw he had a blank expression on his face, the very same Moustafa put on when he listened to conversations he pretended he couldn’t understand.

  “Two piastres,” Naguib said.

  “One and a half and not a millieme more.”

  “Oh, all right. Why is that urchin sitting in the back?”

  “Because my boss is more generous than is good for him,” Moustafa said pointedly.

  As they walked away, Moustafa shooing away a flock of men waving souvenirs in their faces and offering camel rides, Mr. Wall said, “Too generous? I think a car ride and lunch are a small price to pay for this notebook. What do you make of the symbol on the front?”

  The little leather-bound volume had a strange symbol embossed on the cover. It looked like a capital T, but the top curved downward and each terminal came to a point. The letter was surrounded by a floral design. Next to it was a stylized swastika, the sun symbol of the early Indo-Europeans, with curving arms that almost touched one another to make it look like a circle with crosshairs. The swastika served as the pommel for a sword.

  “The swastika is famous, but I’ve never seen it as part of a weapon, and I have never seen a T like this before,” Moustafa admitted.

  “Nor have I,” his boss said.

  “Wow!” Faisal gasped from some distance behind them.

  They had climbed to the top of the plateau, and the three main pyramids, surrounded by several smaller queen’s pyramids, had come into full view. The boy had stopped in his tracks and stood with his mouth hanging open and eyes bugging, amazed by the scene.

  A sunburned woman snapping photos nearby noticed him.

  “Oh, look at this darling little urchin. So picturesque!”

  This was said in a nasal American tone to her bored-looking husband, equally sunburned, who studied the pyramids with a noticeable lack of interest.

  The woman walked over to Faisal.

  “Now you stand right here while I take your picture, and I’ll give you a shiny new coin,” she said, and put her hands on his shoulders in order to keep him from walking away.

  “Don’t touch him, Edna,” her husband warned. “You might get parasites.”

  Faisal didn’t know what she was saying but understood what was expected of him well enough. He struck a pose, leaning on one leg with his head cocked and an innocent look in his eyes.

  “Oh, aren’t you a little doll? Now hold still.”

  Edna pulled a Kodak portable from her bag while her husband rolled his eyes and turned his back.

  The woman fussed over the camera for a minute as Faisal looked increasingly impatient. Finally she took a couple of snaps, put away her camera, and opened up a coin purse. Faisal grinned and extended a grubby hand. The woman pulled out a half piastre coin and gave it to him.

  “Now you go and buy some nice candy with that!” she said, obviously proud of herself.

  Faisal looked at the coin in disbelief, gazed up at the woman, and burst into tears.

  “Oh dear! I seem to have upset him!”

  Faisal whined incoherently, pointing to his patched jellaba and his bare feet.

  “Oh, the poor thing must be starving. Here you go. Um, Winston, how many piastres to a dollar? I can’t remember. Oh well, take this.”

  Moustafa’s eyebrows shot up as the woman handed over a ten piastre coin. Faisal grinned and skipped off. Mr. Wall looked equally astonished. Shaking their heads, they continued on their way.

  Faisal caught up with them a minute later.

  “You’re too big to burst into tears just because someone didn’t give you what you thought you deserved,” Mr. Wall told him.

  The boy looked insulted. “Me, cry? I never cry. I can fake it. Look.”

  Faisal fixed him with a woeful look. His lower lip trembled. His eyes filled. His face turned red, and the tears started to pour down his cheeks.

  The boy grinned. “Or I can do it suddenly, like I did with her. Whichever works best.”

  Mr. Wall shook his head. “I’ll never pity a wailing child ever again.”

  “If they don’t feel sorry for you, they won’t give you money. Then you look happy and make them feel good. But I’ve never received so much! Usually I get just a bit of bread or one or two milliemes. Are Europeans always this generous?”

  “They aren’t European. They’re American.”

  “I don’t care. I need to get in more pictures!”

  He spotted another group of tourists with a camera and ran toward them.

  “Hey, Faisal!” Mr. Wall called after him.

  Faisal turned and smiled. “You remembered my name!”

  “I might not remember to take you back to Cairo if you’re not around when I leave. See those diggings over there? That’s where we’re going to be.”

  “After you’re done, we will get lunch, right?”

  “Yes, Faisal.”

  “As much as I want?”

  “Whatever. Now leave us alone.”

  Faisal leaped in the air, spun around, and charged at the tourists.

  “That should keep him from bothering us for a while,” Mr. Wall said. “Ah! There’s Dupris.”

  The French archaeologist was approaching them as his crew worked in the background. Dupris glared at Moustafa.

  “Good m
orning, Monsieur Dupris,” Mr. Wall said before the man could object to Moustafa’s presence. “I’m afraid I have some very bad news.”

  “Cavell? I just heard,” Dupris said, giving Mr. Wall a stiff handshake and turning his back on Moustafa.

  “I’m terribly sorry. He didn’t deserve that. You probably also heard that he was shot in my house by a German man nobody at the party knew. There appears to be a group of Germans looking for inscriptions to match the one stolen from you. I’ve already caught another fellow sneaking around my house. Might I take a look at the sketch you made of the missing fragment? It could help me piece this whole thing together.”

  Dupris paused for a moment, then nodded.

  “Very well. I suppose the police have their hands full. My workers have been surly all morning.”

  Moustafa couldn’t help himself. “Perhaps treating them as human beings would improve their attitude.”

  Dupris treated him to a sneer and turned back to Mr. Wall.

  “You’re more than welcome to borrow it if you think it will help. Leave your ape here, and we’ll fetch it.”

  Moustafa resisted the urge to pop Dupris’s head off his shoulders and kick it like a football over the nearest pyramid. A man had been murdered in Moustafa’s workplace, and the murderer had taken two shots at him. He had more important things to do.

  After a short time, Mr. Wall returned with the sketch. When Moustafa studied the inscription, he nearly fell over with shock.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “It’s from the Great Pyramid of Cheops. It must be,” Moustafa said, his voice almost stilled with wonder. “Look here. It’s very fragmentary, but it says ‘is one belonging.’ Cheops’s title in his mortuary temple here at Giza was ‘Cheops is one belonging to the horizon.’”

  They sat in the shade of the Sphinx, that great enigmatic face looming above them.

  Augustus felt a thrill go through him. Could this be true? He pointed to the fragment of a curved line at the far left of the slab where it was broken off. “You’re thinking that’s the end of Cheops’s cartouche?”

  Moustafa nodded. “It would make sense. And remember that it was of polished white limestone. The few remaining fragments of casing from his pyramid are of the same material.”

  Augustus grew excited. “And look at the size of the inscription! It would be visible from the ground even if it was halfway up. Wait. So this means the original casing had an inscription. This is fantastic!”

  “Pity we didn’t find more of it,” Moustafa said.

  The antiquities dealer looked at him with renewed appreciation. His employee’s eyes gleamed with interest to match what he himself felt. This was a magnificent discovery. It didn’t explain their present predicament, though.

  “Why do the Germans want this so much they’re willing to kill for it? Why steal the inscription at all? Dupris would have published it along with the rest of his findings for all to read.”

  Moustafa shrugged. “That’s still a mystery. I suggest we go back to Cairo and check with every antiquities dealer, and with the museum too, for any other fragments of this inscription. If we could piece the message together . . .”

  A shiver went up Augustus’s spine. They had stumbled upon the greatest Egyptological discovery in decades.

  “We need to have another look at my house as well. Neumann seemed convinced that my house included some of the reused material that he was looking for. I find it hard to believe that the casing from the Great Pyramid would have ended up in a house in Cairo though.”

  A dim memory flickered at the back of his mind, something he had read long ago. He paused and chased it, but it eluded him. Never mind. It would come to him. He hoped.

  “Let’s go,” Moustafa said, standing and brushing the sand off his jellaba. “Now where did the Little Infidel get off to?”

  They looked around and saw no sign of Faisal. They did hear some shouting in the distance, however, coming from the direction of the pyramids. The two men glanced at each other. It sounded like an angry crowd, and it was drawing closer.

  “Could the workmen have rioted?” Augustus wondered.

  Moustafa grinned. “Perhaps they beat Monsieur Dupris with their sandals and stuffed camel dung down his pants.”

  “An amusing thought, but let’s get to the motorcar just in case they decide to do the same to us.”

  Just as they made it, Faisal appeared over the brow of the hill, running as fast as he could in their direction. He was even dirtier than usual, and his jellaba had several new tears.

  As he descended the slope, a crowd of children appeared behind him, all shouting in rage and brandishing sticks and whips. The bigger boys and girls made up the vanguard of the horde, with a trailing tail of smaller children, some as young as five, taking up the rear. A hail of stones flew after Faisal, who ducked and wove and managed to dodge most of them. Several tourists pointed their cameras at the scene.

  “Start the motorcar!” he shouted.

  “What did you do?” Augustus demanded, running for him. Moustafa followed.

  “Nothing!”

  Faisal shot past them. Augustus flourished his cane at the oncoming crowd, which stopped, unsure of what to do.

  “Get out of here!” Augustus told them in Arabic. “Leave him alone.”

  A cocky boy of about fourteen shouldered his way to the front of the seething mass of angry youngsters.

  “He robbed us!”

  “I knew it!” Moustafa roared, shaking his fist at Faisal, who had stopped about twenty yards behind them by the car. “You’re nothing but trouble.”

  “I didn’t do anything except pose for pictures,” Faisal whined.

  “Only the children of the village of Nazlat al Shamman are allowed to pose for pictures,” the leader shouted at Faisal. “Go back to your stinking city!”

  Faisal threw a rock at him, which flew between Augustus and Moustafa and caught the boy on the temple. The boy groaned and fell to the ground.

  Within a moment, he was up. Although blood trickled down his forehead, he looked undefeated.

  “Get the little city bastard and his foreigner friends too!”

  The crowd charged.

  Moustafa turned to Augustus. “What do we do?”

  “Run!” Augustus decided.

  Faisal had a head start and hopped into the motorcar well ahead of them. Augustus and Moustafa fled the oncoming tide of angry village children, several rocks thumping off their backs. Their longer legs allowed them to pull ahead of the mob, and they scrambled into the motorcar. Frantically Augustus started the engine and roared away from the Sphinx. The man Moustafa had hired to guard the vehicle squawked and leaped on the hood.

  “You haven’t paid me yet!”

  “Here,” Augustus said, tossing some coins at him.

  “Thank you, sir,” he replied, and leaped off into the sand.

  As they pulled away, Faisal stood on the back seat tossing stones at the pursuing crowd.

  “Get down, Little Infidel!” Moustafa ordered. “I should get Mr. Wall to drive at top speed and then throw you out on your head!”

  Faisal threw the last of his stones and bounced up and down in the back seat, laughing hysterically.

  “We should come to Giza again!”

  “Why? So you can get beaten up by village children a second time?” Augustus asked, swerving to avoid a line of camels.

  “I made twenty-one piastres!”

  “Not bad for a morning’s work and what looks like is going to be a beautiful black eye,” Augustus said.

  “Bah, they are weaklings! I could beat them all up blindfolded.”

  “Yes, they were all running from you, weren’t they?”

  “Are we going to eat now?” Faisal asked hopefully.

  “I know a place on the road to Cairo. We’ll stop there if they’ll take you.”

  “As much as I can eat?”

  Moustafa turned around in his seat and shook his fist at him. “Stop being impertinent!�
�

  “But I’m hungry!” Faisal whined. “I haven’t eaten since the day before yesterday.”

  “You’ll be lucky if Mr. Wall gives you a crust of bread. And if he gives you that much, you’ll be grateful!”

  ***

  Faisal shoveled rice and chunks of chicken into his mouth as fast as his hand could move. A stack of flat, circular aish baladi bread had already been consumed, a bowl of soup gulped down, a heap of vegetables demolished, and Faisal had started looking speculatively at Augustus’s and Moustafa’s meals.

  Augustus tried not to get distracted by the street boy’s atrocious manners and the horrified looks their table got from the Egyptian waiters and European diners. Instead he examined the notebook.

  It was in German, a language he knew tolerably well, but much of the writing was contractions or single letters, as if the writer was familiar with the subject and didn’t need to spell everything out. The few lines that were fully written out were esoteric. There was a lot of nonsense about pyramid power and the wisdom of the ancients, plus something about how the Aryan race had founded ancient Egypt at the same time as they had built a lost civilization in Germany.

  “What does it say?” Moustafa asked.

  “Apparently the pyramid builders were German.”

  “They were?” Faisal asked around a mouthful of lentils. One flew out and landed on Augustus’s cuff.

  “No, they weren’t!” Moustafa snapped.

  Faisal looked to Augustus for confirmation.

  “The pyramid builders were Egyptian,” Augustus said, cleaning his suit with a napkin. “The ones to the south were built by the Soudanese.”

  The boy shrugged. “That makes sense. Europeans don’t understand anything about jinn.”

  The two men went back to ignoring him.

  “Anyway, it appears Neumann and our pistol-wielding friend think there’s some great old German magic involved in the pyramids, and they want to find its secret. They think they can do so if they get the whole inscription. There are some drawings of hieroglyphs here too. Take a look at these. This is the cartouche of Cheops, isn’t it?”