A bas-relief of Seth loomed next through the dust, a monster with erect, square tipped ears and a hooked nose like an anteater. “The backbone of Seth.” He pressed the spine of the god. A vertical block slid back under his eager hand.
“Hurry, Anson!” Daniel said. He gasped in the dust filled air.
“The buttocks of Horus!” He pressed the rear of the god and made another stone grate back into the wall. The figure of Nut arched across the wall. “The thighs of Nut,” he said, like words of a chant. He waded through powder to press a smooth curve of a thigh.
The area sank under his hand to reveal an empty square.
The powder continued to rise
Who was next? Ptah. There he was. Anson went to Ptah, the creator god, a standing figure wearing a tight blue skullcap, his stiff body tightly wrapped in white winding cloth. “The feet of Ptah.” But the red powder blood had already covered the god’s legs. He dug with cupped hands, adding more cloud to the choking air. The legs of the god appeared, a pattern like fish net on the winding cloth.
The white, pointed feet of Ptah inched into view.
He pressed the foot.
Their ears were filled with the shriek of grating stone. Two doors had reopened. One behind them and one ahead. The heart had released them. They rushed forward, making a dive for freedom.
They lay gasping on the stone floor like a fresh catch of fish.
How had his father known which path to take? Anson wondered in admiration.
Emory Hunter had been a man of formidable skills.
Chapter 85
THEY STEPPED into a chamber. A vaulted ceiling filled with a sprawling constellation of stars and supported by twin rows of swollen papyrus-bud columns opened up around them.
He felt a tingle on his skin in this place as if he had just stepped through a magnetic field. The sensation ran over his skin like the little hands of the sun god Aton. The air tightened in his lungs. His heart fluttered like a bird against the rib cage of his chest.
A sweet odour hung in the hall, like the burning flesh of an offering.
At the end of the hall bulked a brilliant golden shrine on a dais, like a throne of god, with sealed double doors and protected by golden images of Isis linking hands. Inside would lie nests of sarcophagi, tons of solid metal inlaid with lapis lazuli and turquoise and at its core the body of the god-man Osiris, gold covering his veryb skin in a mask and gold sheathing his fingers and toes.
But this hall was not just a tomb, nor was it a storehouse of knowledge, of science, mysteries or texts of the forbidden magic that the Egyptians called heka.
"Look at the walls,” Anson whispered.
Set into the stone walls, like shelves, were niches with platforms, each one holding what looked like a sleeping figure in gold.
“The forty-two gods of the judgment hall of Osiris,” Kalila whispered.
They went closer and they shone their lights into the niches. Stretched-out figures burning in gold filled the spaces, staring up with inlaid eyes of obsidian and rock crystal under eyebrows of lapis lazuli.
There were scenes throughout the Bible that described the seraphim, the ‘burning ones’ who burnt with their holiness, surrounding God’s throne. Were these the burning ones, burning with pure, solid gold?
Daniel was moved to speak.
“We have found them!” he said in an ecstatic whisper. “The Neteru - Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Horus, Nephthys, Seth, Osiris, Hathor and the rest.” It was a roll-call of the Egyptian heaven. “Can you feel it? The power in this place? It’s like the hum of an electricity transformer.”
They were more than glittering idols.
These reclining forms radiated energy like uranium rods in a nuclear plant, the sarcophagi of the gods, storehouses of power produced by thousands of years of prayers, magic, execration and sacrifice in darkened sanctuaries.
The air crackled and Anson thought that he heard rushing, whispering sounds like many voices or the sound of wind fluttering in his ears.
There was no Hall of Records, at least not one stocked with a cache of arcane knowledge and wisdom. It too had been misconstrued, a distortion of the truth. It probably came from an erroneous belief that this hall of gods stored the records of judgments of the souls of mankind.
But the gods did not care about men, their petty sins or good deeds. They cared about their own survival.
The head of SACER, Ibrahim Saad, had never been in search of a Hall of Records, but rather forbidden power, the combined force of the gods whose discovery prophecy said would precipitate a dangerous new age. Amenemhat had massed together the primeval forces of the gods of Egypt in a frightening concentration of power.
Chapter 86
THE INTRUDERS shone their torch beams around
A flash of light fell on a golden, falcon-headed statue. The raptor-eye was angry, martial. The beak gouged the air. The light revealed a name incised into the stone in hieroglyphs under the figure.
“The falcon-headed one,” Anson said in a reverential whisper. “Horus, the far-off, Lord of the Sky, the child of Isis and the very symbol of pharaonic kingship.” He gave a sigh, soft as a leaf falling, and it was followed by a sound like the moan of wind outside the hall. He pointed to another. “There lies Shu, Lord of the air and atmosphere, in legend sneezed out of the nose of the High God. Shu’s bones, like the clouds, held up the naked body of Nut, Mistress of the Stars and the vault of the heavens. And there, beside Shu, lies his sister-wife Tefnut, goddess of life-sustaining moisture, spat out by the High God. And there Hathor, the beautiful one, wearing her crown of a solar disc and horns, Mistress of Turquoise and also the great Destroyer of Humankind.”
A beam steadied on a hulk in dark gold. “The body of Geb, the earth-god whose laughter split the ground as an earthquake. See, his desire still reaches in vain for the over-arching Nut, but Shu, the god of atmosphere separates him from her...
Anson remembered Kalila’s words in the darkness of the tomb:
“Isn’t this what your heart truly wants? You were born with a craving to be bound up in this thing, to surrender your freedom to serve it, to ‘die’ for this greater other. Have you guessed what it is? Do you know? The hunger for this one thing is the strongest drive of the human spirit. Only one thing can satisfy it.”
What was that thing?
“The secret craving of your heart is this... to be bound up in ecstatic union! Is that not your hunger? Is that not the only thing that can fill your aching void, that can bind the pieces of your life together?”
To be bound up in ecstatic union.
A guard’s torchlight moved on to bathe the next shape, a coffin of a golden woman who wore a house-shaped crown.
“Here lies Nephthys,” Anson said with reverence. “Sister of Isis, who shared her grief, who stood at the bier with Isis and wept and who was companion to her in her wanderings. Her tresses symbolize the mummy wrappings and she was the protectress of the viscera of the dead.” Now he focused on a golden coffin with square-tipped pricked ears and a snout hooked in a snarl. The figure lay with arms by its sides, its fingers splayed like lusty roots. It seemed to sleep in frozen malignity. A bleak mood emanated from it. “Seth,” he said, “the so-called evil one, but as necessary as Osiris for cosmic balance. You are looking at the Egyptian devil, lord of chaos, storms and destruction, the murderer who attacked, killed and dismembered his brother Osiris. The shadow side of Osiris, without whom the good cannot exist.”
“And beyond, Sobek with his golden crocodile jaws, Anubis the jackal,” Daniel said. “An entire necropolis. Was this the necropolis of the gods that was said to exist in the Eighteenth Nome of Bubastis? Did Amenemhat move them all here, along with the remains of Osiris?”
Nobody could answer. All about them lay golden, animal-headed coffins like a warehouse of Egypt’s divinities: jackal-headed and vulture-headed, snake- and lion-headed, even ape-headed.
Were these the demigods?
Kalila rubbed her arms as if a chill had
struck her.
“No wonder people wanted to keep this secret buried,” she said.
“Yes,” said a voice behind them. “And we certainly tried to.”
A clatter of gunfire ripped up the silence. The chador woman’s guards staggered and dropped to the stone floor, leaving her standing alone.
Anson, Daniel and Kalila swung around. Men, rifles still smoking, stood in front of them, along with the Deputy Head of the SCA, Gamel Fawzi.
“Congratulations on your discovery. Archaeology has lost a father, but gained a son,” he said to Anson.
His voice betrayed no trace of impact at the sight of the dead bodies lying on the floor.
Chapter 87
“WAS THAT necessary?” Daniel said shocked, looking at the fallen men sprawled on the floor. Only the chador-wrapped woman remained alive. “I lament such needless bloodshed, but I suppose you are not a moment too soon.”
“No, I am hours too late to stop you seeing what you should not have seen. You think we act coldbloodedly? What about that woman over there?” Gamel Fawzi advanced on the woman in black, and the armed men stepped forward with him. “Here is a true killer. Here is the culprit who killed Professor Emory Hunter and a good few others.”
“And who sent me?” the figure threw back.
“You should not have turned freelance, young lady. A whiff of treasure and pearls was enough to turn your head, I see.”
“You were dishonest with me. I saw that your motives were not pure, so why should mine have been? When I asked you what treasures the professor had found, you laughed at me. Treasures of gold and pearls, so dear to Arabic legend? I fear not. Think of it more as a cache of weapons that infidels would use to destroy the faith of believers,’ you said. But it was treasure, the mother of all treasures.”
In the blink of an eye the situation had changed and their guards lay dead. A wave of relief at the newcomers’ arrival now receded in Anson’s mind with the realization that this was not a rescue at all. They had fallen captive once again, but this time to different captors. A brutal changing of the guard had taken place.
Our situation is even worse than before, he told himself.
“Why don’t you show your face to them all?” the SCA official told the woman in black. “Unveil yourself! Now.”
Chapter 88
THE WOMAN obeyed, reaching up to the cloth that hid her face.
Anson held his breath.
He both wanted and dreaded the revelation, like a family member watching as a sheet is drawn from the face of a corpse. Who was the lady of the chador, the veiled assassin who had provided her deadly services for this corrupt official and his co-conspirators?
Someone who mixed powerful religious beliefs with avid greed. Somebody who had been close to them in Egypt - at every step. Someone who had been at their side, yet remained hidden, or obscured all along, knowing that blood was on her hands.
Who was she?
For a time he had wondered about Kalila, but the Coptic girl stood beside him. Who else had been close enough to follow their movements?
The ruthless actions of this veiled woman had called for ideology, strength and an iron will.
Who would it be?
The black-gloved fingers grasped the material. She tugged and the veil fell away.
Saneya’s eyes flashed at them. The SCA girl stood revealed, erect and defiant.
But her identity was not the biggest surprise.
“You killed my father?” Anson said.
“No,” she said. “I killed our father. You are my half-brother, Anson, from a world I might have had, but never knew. And it was our father, Emory Hunter, whose indiscretions killed my mother. I watched her die for his crime against my family. Yes, I came to know Emory Hunter well. He had an attraction for young female students that began with my mother. And never ended,” she said, throwing a glance at Kalila.
His half-sister?
This woman of shadows? She had been with them all along, posing as an SCA watchdog. She had probably recorded their calls, all of their conversations.
“So this was never about protecting Islam from the demolition of heaven?” Daniel said to Gamel Fawzi.
“Do not judge me, Abuna. This is a war chest to end all war chests. Do you not grasp how much influence in the world this wealth will buy for those with the judgment to use it wisely, and yes, for the struggle of our faith? You would rather this treasure lay useless and untouchable in a museum for thousands of years, like a pile of deadly nuclear waste, protected by the so-called guardians of culture and antiquity?”
Heaven and greed.
They were two opposite points on either end of the continuum in a conspiracy that had begun with his father’s search. Now everything had come down to this point.
The mother of revenge was this war chest. What horror would it buy? What death and destruction?
Anson looked at the unmasked killer. Saneya. Their glances locked. What might have been between us? Instead, this. Fervour, strength, yes all of these qualities were there in her face. He also saw the same murderous ability to make decisions that his father evidently had, a person who could cut off the life of another and move on.
I have excavated another part of my father’s past. This young woman had found it easy to engage the visiting professor at Zagazig University, just as Kalila had. Emory Hunter had a weakness for fervent, argumentative young women.
Here then was the child of the Egyptian student who had fled with her unborn baby. A half-sister whose heart had turned not to wondering and longing about a missing father, but instead had turned, or been turned by others, into steely hatred.
Did my father ever stop robbing?
And now his obsession was going to rob them all of their lives.
Anson shifted his glance to Kalila. Her eyes were shadows of awe. A light from a torch struck the gold Coptic cross that hung around her neck. The cross gave a flash, then a comforting glow and it seemed to Anson at that moment that it lit a fulminating radiance in his mind that eclipsed the golden treasures of Egypt’s ancient past.
He still did not know if he believed in a life after death, but he did believe in a life after this moment and that this life was worth fighting to keep. For Kalila. For Daniel. For himself.
He swung his elbow at the nearest man, hitting him hard in the midriff. When the man doubled up, he brought his knee up into the man’s chin, sending him sprawling. The gun and his torch clattered to the stone floor.
Now the floor convulsed under their feet and cracks ran like rivers through the stone.
Chapter 89
AMENEMHAT’S FINAL trap -the place was set to collapse!
Anson swept up the torch. Daniel gave another man a shove sending him reeling into the other two.
“Run!”
He hooked Kalila by the wrist and hauled her with him, breaking into a sprint.
“Stop them!” the SCA man shouted.
Daniel clambered over a fallen man to join them in their flight.
They must go back the way they had come. Daniel pounded after them. Rifle fire clattered. Chips of stone flew around.
Anson led the way as they dodged the dark hollows of the pits where the wooden spikes waited below.
Stone shivered around them. The rest of the Labyrinth lay ahead. There would be no cautious progress this time. They had to take their chances on the run, relying only on their memory of the convoluted stone route.
They vanished into the maze.
They felt it under their feet as they ran down the twisting tube of stone. He thought at first that it was caused by their running footsteps, but now he saw the movement of the walls as they hit a new passage of the maze.
Was it an earthquake?
Chapter 90
THE WALLS of the maze were moving, the planes of the passage twisting and shrieking. The sounds of tortured stone made the air tremble.
They raced along the first sweep of the tunnel. Anson heard a roar, like a wave coming, chasi
ng them.
They would never make it through the miles of maze in time. A wave-force was crushing the walls together behind them.
They were caught in a dilemma like the jaws of Sobek. If they stayed on this path, they would be crushed. If they left it, they’d be lost.
“We won't make it this way!” he called out over the din. “We must find a quicker way.”
“If we leave the path we're lost!” Kalila shouted.
He took off into a passage.
A burst of gunfire struck chips of stone off a wall above their heads.
“This isn’t an earthquake,” he yelled. “It’s peristalsis, or something very like it. Stay with me closely!”
Some ingenious contrivance echoed the muscular waves of motion that in the bowels forced matter through the system. These walls were built to excrete unwanted matter - rejecting invaders who desecrated the labyrinth.
What had set it off, the invasion of so many people, a warning that the treasure was at risk, with a trigger set to shut the place down and seal its contents forever?
Anson flashed the torch along the walls as he ran. It was a peristaltic action - and the waves had a direction - out of the system.
The movement was not confined to the pathway, but ran throughout the maze.
All they had to do was to follow the direction of the waves and it would lead them out, provided the passages didn’t run into dead ends. The spray of the torch beam hit stone ahead. Anson’s hopes ran into a wall. Dead end. They doubled back.
His torchlight flared off a swaying wall. “That way!” He ran.
The whole system threatened to collapse on top of them. Anson kept following the direction of the waves of motion.
Another branch. He veered, pounded along it, stopped. A dead end compressed his torch beam. He went another way. The passage corkscrewed.
Another passage. He pressed along it and the others swept after him, the waves of stone grinding at their rear. Now a long, swaying passage stretched in front of them. They were going in the right direction. More turns, more twists.
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