The Case of the Purloined Pyramid

by Sean McLachlan

  They came to a side room of the mosque, a good hundred feet long and thirty wide, with a vaulted ceiling that reached for the sky. A few lamps made of glass with verses from the Koran painted in colorful calligraphy illuminated the interior. The thick carpet muffled their footsteps. From an arched doorway on the opposite wall they could hear voices.

  They crept to the doorway. Augustus dared to look, his hand gripping the automatic in his pocket. Faisal squeezed between him and the wall and peeked too.

  Baumer and the Egyptian stood by the minbar, the pulpit from which the preacher spoke during the Friday noon prayer. It was a high wooden platform reached by a narrow and steep flight of stairs, the sides and the railing intricately carved in a complex interweaving pattern.

  The Egyptian handed Baumer the papers and the heavyset German handed over a wad of banknotes.

  “Take care with the entrance,” the Egyptian said. “As far as we know, the temple was never looted in antiquity and any traps might still be there.”

  “Excellent,” Baumer said, leafing through the papers. “According to this, it’s just north of the Great Pyramid and—”

  Just then Faisal’s stomach growled. Baumer spun around, pulling out a Luger from inside his jacket.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Moustafa would have liked to have slapped Faisal silly for giving them away, but he was too busy dodging bullets. For a corpulent man in his late middle years, Klaus Baumer certainly had quick reflexes and a frighteningly good aim. His first shot cracked the stone doorway inches from Mr. Wall’s head. His second shot buzzed by Moustafa’s ear. Everyone ducked behind the doorway for protection, but Baumer ran across the room to get a better angle, and they had to beat a hasty retreat to get out of sight. Two more bullets followed them.

  Mr. Wall reached around the doorway and fired three shots in rapid succession in different directions. He was shooting blind, but Moustafa guessed it was just to make Baumer and the Egyptian put their heads down. He then looked around the corner, ducked back as another bullet winged past him, and returned fire.

  Moustafa hesitated. He did not want to defile this holy place by shedding blood, but it appeared he held the minority opinion.

  Mr. Wall ducked around the corner, his cane in one hand and his pistol in the other, firing away. Moustafa followed, rounding the corner just in time to see Baumer disappear into a side room. The Egyptian was running off in the other direction, heading for a darkened doorway.

  Moustafa snarled and chased after him. The Egyptian was older and not fit, and before he could reach the doorway, Moustafa tackled him.

  The two men ended up on the carpet together, Moustafa’s considerable weight pressing down on him. Moustafa punched him in the stomach to stop him from struggling and rifled through his pockets, finding no weapons.

  “You call yourself a Muslim and you defile the sultan’s mosque with gunfire? You walk with your shoes on carpets where men prostrate themselves before God?”

  Moustafa tore off the Egyptian’s European-style shoes and smacked him with them.

  A couple of shots rang out from the far end of the mosque. Moustafa hauled the Egyptian to his feet and ran in the direction of the sound, practically having to drag his unwilling companion behind him.

  Mr. Wall came back into the main room.

  “I lost him. He opened the front door and ran out to the main street. There was a motorcar waiting there. I took a couple of shots at him but he got away. We have to report to headquarters. I mean . . .” He rubbed the eye on the unmasked half of his face with the heel of his palm. “I mean . . .”

  Moustafa grabbed him by the lapel with his free hand and gave him a little shake. Mr. Wall shuddered.

  “Who am I?” Moustafa demanded.

  “You’re a colonial . . . I mean you’re Moustafa.”

  Faisal poked his head around the corner. “Have you stopped shooting now?”

  “And who is he?” Moustafa asked, inclining his head in the direction of the street urchin.

  Mr. Wall smiled. “Faisal. You call him the Little Infidel, and I think I might just start doing the same.”

  Moustafa smiled back. “Good to have you with us, Mr. Wall.”

  “And who is this?” Mr. Wall gestured toward the captive.

  Moustafa gave the Egyptian another smack with the man’s own shoe. “I was about to ask that myself.”

  Mr. Wall looked at the frightened man more closely. “Wait a moment. I think I recognize you. Don’t you work at the German Egyptological Institute?”

  The man trembled and shook his head. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Moustafa rummaged through the man’s pockets. “Where are your identity papers?”

  “Here they are,” Faisal said, handing them to him.

  Moustafa glared at the boy. “Give him back his wallet.”

  Faisal tried to look innocent. “What wallet?”

  “I know you took it because his pockets are completely empty. You’d steal in a mosque? Give it back!”

  “He shot at me,” Faisal whined.

  A look from Moustafa made him surrender the wallet.

  As Faisal sulked, Moustafa gave the man back his wallet and inspected the identity papers.

  “Talat Salih,” he read. “And yes, it says here he does work for the German Egyptological Institute.”

  “What were those papers you handed Baumer?” Mr. Wall asked.

  Salih paused a moment and then slumped, defeated. “An unpublished excavation report. He offered me money to steal it from the archives. Please, sir, I have a family to support. During the war, the institute stopped receiving funding. I haven’t been paid in years. I couldn’t find other work and kept my post in the hope that things would get better once the fighting stopped, but they still don’t have any funding. If it wasn’t for the support of my brothers, my family would be out on the street! Please don’t report me to the police!”

  Mr. Wall gripped him by the collar, gave him a little shake, and peered into his face. “Listen to me. You are going to tell me everything you know about the report and what Baumer and his friends are planning. And from now on, you will be my tool. Anything goes on in the German Egyptological Institute, I want to know about it. If I want anything from the archive, you’re going to fetch it for me. If the director decides to have bacon instead of bratwurst for breakfast, I want you to tell me. Are we quite clear?”

  Salih nodded eagerly. “Anything!”

  Moustafa dragged him toward the door while the others followed. It was time to get out of here before the soldiers in the Citadel came down to investigate the gunfight.

  “Start talking,” he told Salih.

  “Baumer has been frequenting the institute for some time, talking about all sorts of outlandish theories to anyone who would listen. He thinks the pharaohs were German. No one takes him seriously, but he donates money to the institute to keep the lights on. He’s spent much time in the archive looking at reports. I run the archive and so I had to listen to his nonsense. He would sometimes give me tips so I endured them. A few days ago, he asked for access to any unpublished reports on Giza. I’m not allowed to hand those over because they are the property of the archaeologists. He had somehow learned that a dig at Giza in 1913 had uncovered an inscription mentioning the Temple of the Eternal Dawn. This is the report I gave him. He offered me enough money to support my family for six months.”

  They exited into the garden. Moustafa looked nervously around, but except for a few beggars staring at them, there was no sign of any response to the gunfire. He suspected it would come soon enough.

  “So get to the point,” Moustafa said. “What are they planning?”

  Salih shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t even know Baumer was working with others until you told me.”

  “Did he mention the Thule Society?”

  “He did, but he didn’t say much. Only that it would make Germany great again and would purify the race. He said the new Germa
ny would be free of Jews and socialists. He said the old Aryan magic was the key to Germany’s renewal. He seems like such an ordinary man, and then he says such bizarre things.”

  Mr. Wall leaned in close to him. “Tell us more about this report. Have you read it?”

  Salih nodded. “It was an excavation by Herbert Steinert during the 1912–1913 winter field season. He surveyed the area a hundred meters to the north of the Great Pyramid, digging test trenches hoping to find some of the outlying mortuary complex. It turned out he found very little, just stray finds and the remains of an obelisk that mentioned Temple of the Eternal Dawn. He also found some steps, but he didn’t have time that season to dig down farther. In his report, he theorized that they were stairs into the burial chamber of a mastaba and that all the masonry had been stolen in antiquity, which is why nothing remained above ground. Herr Steinert returned to Germany with the inscriptions and wasn’t able to return to resume digging because the war started. He died in 1916 of a heart attack.”

  “Does anyone else know of his finds?” Moustafa asked.

  “I suppose the director and perhaps a few other archaeologists. I don’t understand why it is so important.”

  Moustafa and Mr. Wall looked at each other. To all appearances, Herr Steinert had found very little. He had obviously not seen fit to publish a preliminary report until he had pursued those steps down to where they led.

  But the two of them knew that those stairs didn’t lead to an old tomb of some ancient nobleman. They led to something far more important.

  “What did the inscription say?” Mr. Wall asked.

  “I can’t remember exactly. Something about Cheops being able to raise up the purest of men to the level of gods.”

  Moustafa nodded. That was something the fools in the Thule Society would lap right up.

  “We need to go,” Mr. Wall told Moustafa. “The Germans know we’re onto them and they’ll want to excavate that site as quickly as possible, probably tonight.” He turned to Salih and jabbed a finger close to his face. “Keep your mouth shut about this. If you see Baumer, tell him you got away. If you say so much as a word about us, I’ll have you up on charges, and I’m friends with the police commandant.”

  Salih nodded vigorously. “Not a word!”

  Moustafa gave the wretch a final slap and let him go. He ran off into the darkness, forgetting to ask for his shoes. Moustafa tossed them to a nearby beggar.

  “Thank you, sir!” the man cried, prostrating himself before him.

  “Go away,” Moustafa snapped at him. “So, Mr. Wall, what do we do now?”

  “We’re going to Giza, of course.”

  They hurried back to the motorcar. Faisal leaped into the back seat.

  “Can we stop for dinner?”

  “No time,” Mr. Wall said, starting the engine.

  “But you promised!” Faisal whined.

  He continued to whine for several blocks until they passed a molokheya stand that was still open. The rich scent of the soup wafted over to them as they stopped nearby, making the boy’s stomach grumble. Mr. Wall handed him a couple of piastres.

  “Get yourself something to eat.”

  Grinning, Faisal bounced up and down on the back seat and leaped out of the motorcar. As soon as his feet touched the ground, Mr. Wall drove off.

  “Hey! Where are you going?” Faisal shouted, running after them.

  “Into danger, and you can’t come,” Augustus called back.

  Moustafa burst out laughing. “Well done, boss!”

  A rock pinked off the back of the car. They could see Faisal giving them a crude gesture as they drove off.

  “That little louse!” Moustafa said, infuriated. “Turn back around and I’ll wring his neck so badly he’ll have to walk backward to see where he is going!”

  But Mr. Wall kept on driving, a smile spreading across his face.

  ***

  The Giza Plateau stood quiet and abandoned under a moonlit sky. The tourists always left at sundown, and those who lived off them left immediately thereafter. Few watchmen stood vigil to take care of the antiquities, and he had no doubt that Otto and his fellow veterans would take care of them easily enough. Augustus knew that they would be alone with the Germans.

  Alone, but not isolated. The Mena House Hotel, a travesty of modernism, stood only a few hundred yards north of the Great Pyramid. Built in the 1880s, it offered peace and quiet away from Cairo and matchless views of the pyramids from its covered porch. The porch was decorated in a faux Islamic style, with stalactite fretwork on the canopies in imitation of medieval Cairene architecture and pillars that looked like a cross between something designed by a mosque architect later beheaded for public drunkenness and the imaginations of a Boy’s Own hack illustrator who had never been anywhere more tropical than Brighton Beach on a bank holiday weekend. Would the horror never cease?

  At this hour, that porch was filled with tourists lounging in white wicker chairs, drinking champagne and martinis and babbling about anything but Egyptology. Augustus would have been willing to bet his entire collection of antiquities that not a single one of them could accurately point out which pyramids were those of Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus, or indeed that those names were the Greek forms of the original names Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure. He felt his stomach turn when he lifted his gaze from the porch up to the first floor, where the balconies of the most expensive rooms allowed guests to have a private view of the pyramids “far from the madding crowd” as the advertisement plagiarized. Some young woman was gazing dreamily out into the desert as if communing with the spirits of the ancients.

  Bah! To let a swarm of silly socialites infect such a place of ancient wonder with their superficialities boiled his blood, but at least he could console himself with the knowledge that the proximity of the hotel might make the Germans think twice about starting another gunfight.

  The hotel also gave him a convenient place to park. He noticed a pair of soldiers standing vigil at the foot of the stairs leading up to the porch. Good. He hoped Baumer and his crew had noticed them too.

  Then Augustus realized that these men could not be relied upon to serve as reinforcements. Their duty was to guard the hotel. If things got ugly near the Great Pyramid, they would not leave their post. Instead they would get the guests inside and lock the place up. And on second thought, he didn’t want to involve the authorities at all. There was a German diplomat lurking out there in the night, and he had no doubt Neumann would use all his power to make life difficult.

  As he and Moustafa unloaded the large burlap bag of weapons from the back seat, taking care that the muzzles didn’t stick out the end and give the game away, one of the young soldiers looked meaningfully at Augustus, made eye contact, and nodded.

  Augustus ground his teeth.

  Just because you’re in uniform doesn’t mean you get to have a heart-to-heart with me about my injury! Augustus railed silently at him.

  Augustus thought for a moment. How would the soldiers react if they saw him and a Soudanese carrying a heavy bundle into the darkness in the direction of the pyramids? They’d probably think they were off to some grave robbing and question them before they got out of sight.

  Handing the bundle to Moustafa, he walked up to the two soldiers.

  “Hello, chaps. I saw a group of sullen-looking natives having a palaver on the other side of the hotel,” he said, pointing away from the pyramids with his cane.

  “We’ll go have a look, sir,” said the man who had made eye contact with him before. The two soldiers readied their rifles and went out of sight around the corner.

  “Let’s go,” he told Moustafa, hurrying in the other direction. Within moments, they made it out of sight into the shadows. The guests hadn’t so much as glanced in their direction, being too occupied with drinking and gossiping. Once he and Moustafa were in the safety of the darkness and invisible to those in the well-lit hotel grounds, they headed in a wide half circle to come at the Great Pyramid of Cheops from
the west, well away from the location of the hidden temple.

  “We’ll have to sneak up on them unawares,” Augustus said, keeping his voice low. He felt calm. The sand was staying sand and not changing into mud. The crescent moon gave the dunes a dull shine that helped keep his mind clear. The clean sand, a faint white in the moonlight, looked so different than the stinking dark mud of Flanders. And the sky was clear and filled with stars instead of pouring rain or shrouded in mist. He gripped his cane, something he would have never carried at the front, to give himself reassurance.

  But he could still hear the distant artillery. Any time he held a gun in his hand, especially a lovely weapon such as his captured submachine gun, he got pulled back to 1917.

  Augustus discovered he was smiling.

  Try not to crack up while on the job, old chap.

  They crouched low, moving to the foot of the pyramid before turning north, back toward the road and the Mena House Hotel, now just a bright rectangle in the distance. The wind carried a slight buzz of conversation from the patio, then shifted and all fell silent. Augustus peered through the night, but it was too dim to spot the Germans.

  “Are you sure they are here?” Moustafa asked.

  “I doubt they would have wasted time now that they have the exact location of the temple. Keep low.”

  Augustus got on his belly and Moustafa followed suit. They crawled forward, alert for any sign of life in the desert. Moustafa’s movements were awkward and he made far too much noise. To crawl properly with a rifle in your hand took a bit of training. Augustus reminded himself to show Moustafa how, assuming they lived through the night.

  A slight glow came from up ahead, the barest extra brightness against the pale glow of the moonlit sand.

  Augustus turned to Moustafa and whispered in his ear, “Give me your gun. You can’t crawl silently with it. This is going to take some stealth.”

  Moustafa didn’t look too happy about giving up his weapon but saw the sense in the request and handed it over. Augustus nodded in approval. These colonial troops were reliable.