Silver Tomb (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 2)

by P J Thorndyke

  “Not at all,” said Lazarus. “Put me down for three tickets.”

  “Very well, I will just go and write them out then I will take down your details. A moment’s patience if you please.”

  When the clerk disappeared into the back room, Lazarus leaned over and pulled the ledger towards him. It was open on the page of the Nefertiti’s passenger list. He ran his index finger down the page, scanning the names until he arrived at ‘Murad Yasin’ and knew that he had at least found the right company and the right vessel.

  He whiled away the afternoon taking tea in Azbekya Gardens and packing his portmanteau. Evening had set in by the time he arrived at the Grand Continental Hotel. He left a message at reception for Katarina to meet him first thing in the morning at Port Bulaq. He considered trying to obtain her room number and asking her down for drinks or perhaps dinner, but knew he would feel like a cad if he did. She was exactly right about him, he realized. They had slept under the Arizona stars together and traversed a continent in a balloon, eating their meals at a small table and bunking in the same tiny cabin by the light of a single gas lamp, but here, in a passable example of civilization, he dared not ask her to dinner without a chaperone for fear of violating propriety.

  He instead went to Petrie’s room and the two of them sipped at cognacs while Lazarus explained the events of the day to him.

  “Up to another adventure?” he asked the Egyptologist when he was finished.

  Petrie’s eyes twinkled but his brow was furrowed at the same time, as if he was fighting with himself. “Will it be dangerous?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “And that Russian woman will be coming?”

  Lazarus’s eyes briefly rolled. “Yes. She’s a damned fine shot if that will make you feel any safer.”

  “Oh, undoubtedly, undoubtedly,” Petrie said, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “But perhaps it would be safer for her if two men were to accompany her. I have a mind to purchase a revolver after yesterday’s encounter with those villains. I shall make enquiries first thing tomorrow.”

  “Then you will come? Your knowledge of Akhenaten’s reign and religious movement may be invaluable to us if we do indeed find Rousseau’s site.”

  This comment seemed to galvanize the young scholar. “Absolutely! I could not pass up an opportunity such as this! Imagine what secrets of the eighteenth dynasty a new site might unlock! The Silver Aten… The mind positively boggles!” He knocked down the rest of his cognac and spilled some as if he had suddenly remembered something. “That reminds me! I’ve been looking at my sketches—I always do them, you know, of my finds—including the ones that were stolen. And something has occurred to me.”

  “Show me,” Lazarus said.

  Petrie went over to his writing desk which was littered with bits of paper, books and sketchpads, and drew out a couple of sheaves with some drawings on them. They were very good ones, done with the painstaking attention to detail that Petrie was known for. Lazarus studied them.

  “That’s a kohl container I found at Tell el-Amarna,” said Petrie, indicating the first sketch. “The one stolen from my poor man at the docks. Imagine that it was dropped nearly three thousand years ago by a lady at Akhenaten’s court, to lie in the sand after the city’s destruction, unseen by generations upon generations until I picked it up! Only to be stolen by an unknown murderer!”

  Lazarus examined the drawing of the tube-shaped artifact once used to contain the black substance the Ancient Egyptians painted their eyelids with. Some hieroglyphics were engraved vertically along the length of the tube, but before Lazarus could decipher them Petrie slid another sketch in front of him.

  “This is the sketch I did of the fragment I found and gave to Maspero’s museum. Also now stolen, of course.”

  It was a relief fragment showing part of a woman’s head wearing a Nubian wig surrounded by hieroglyphics. Lazarus tried to read them and found that one of the hieroglyphics had been entirely obliterated, as if deliberately.

  “It was not uncommon for the names of the deceased to be scratched off monuments by people who were angry with them,” said Lazarus. “Akhenaten for instance, had the majority of his monuments defaced by his descendants. In fact, it’s a wonder we know his name at all. Without a name the deceased cannot find peace in the afterlife and is doomed to wander in limbo for all eternity, or so they once believed.”

  “Quite so,” agreed Petrie, producing yet another sketch for him. “Fortunately the hieroglyph on this relief fragment was not wholly destroyed. One cannot make it out in the sketch, so I did a separate reproduction of just the damaged hieroglyph. Look here.”

  Lazarus looked. “Seems to be part of a feather and the tip of a bird’s head. There doesn’t look to have been a cartouche surrounding them, so the person probably wasn’t royalty.”

  “No. But compare the damaged hieroglyph to the one on the kohl container.”

  Lazarus took his time, not jumping to the conclusion that Petrie had so obviously drawn. But he had to admit, the symbols could have been the same. The kohl container had two feathers, a bowl, a bird and a couple of slanted strokes. He mouthed the phonetic values of the symbols; “Kiya.”

  “Kiya.” Petrie confirmed.

  “The name doesn’t ring any bells, I’m afraid. You?”

  “Not a jingle, but she must have made somebody very angry to have had her name scratched off this relief like that. It’s quite possible that the lady in the Nubian wig on the relief is this Kiya—the very Kiya who once owned the kohl container.”

  “I’m not sure where all this is leading us,” Lazarus confessed.

  Petrie sighed. “Nor I. But Kiya—whoever she was—must have been somebody of great importance at Akhetaten to appear on a relief like this, so beautifully painted… but then to have her name stolen from her, so to speak.”

  “Who do you think she was?”

  “Who knows? Perhaps one of Akhenaten’s wives or daughters. He had several you know. Of each, that is. We only know a handful of their names. Meriaten and Meketaten were two of his daughters, reflecting his habit for including the sun god’s name in the names of all members of his family. Apart from his great royal wife Queen Nefertiti, we don’t know of any other wives or consorts, but he probably had several. They often did, you know.”

  “Yes, as well as that repugnant habit of marrying their siblings,” said Lazarus.

  “Indeed. Whoever this Kiya was, she may have been tied up in the family of the Heretic Pharaoh in more ways than one. And perhaps our journey on the morrow will reveal her true identity as well as shed more light on Akhenaten’s reign. I only showed you these sketches because I find it so odd that both items stolen seemed to bear the name of Kiya. Coincidence, perhaps, but still…”

  “Yes,” agreed Lazarus. “Still…”

  Katarina had got Lazarus’s message, and was waiting for him with her usual punctuality on the dock of the appropriately named Nefertiti. Her beauty was a stark contrast to the state of the steamer that was to take them up the Nile, and Lazarus’s jaw dropped when he saw it. It was a wreck.

  He was put in mind of the Mary Sue—that floating nest of villains he had penetrated on the Colorado River. This one was smaller but just as filthy, with rust streaking its once-white sides and its blackened, cancerous funnels caked with soot.

  “It was on such a vessel that we first met, Katarina,” said Lazarus, trying to be jovial. “Do you remember?”

  “I remember trying to kill you,” the Russian replied.

  “Yes, well, we know each other a bit better now, eh?”

  “That doesn’t mean that I will let you take Dr. Lindholm from me without a fight. Pray it doesn’t come to that.”

  Flinders Petrie was hailing them as he made his way down the dock, a servant lugging his case a few paces behind.

  “Good morning, Lazarus!” he cried with all the excitement of a schoolboy on holiday. “And Miss Mikolavna! Lazarus has told me all about you!”

  “Has he?”
Katarina said, eyeing Lazarus coolly.

  Lazarus gave her a look to reassure her that he had most certainly not told Petrie everything about her.

  “You have my eternal thanks, madam,” said Petrie, doffing his straw hat and bowing low, “for getting Lazarus and I out of that loathsome prison. I cannot thank you enough.”

  “Don’t mention it,” replied Katarina, allowing with much reluctance, the Egyptologist to kiss her hand.

  “And may I say that it is the highest of pleasures to be travelling with such a jewel of a woman. Queen Cleopatra herself would pale in comparison to your exotic complexion!”

  “I think we had best be getting on board and finding our cabins,” said Katarina. “Egyptians are not punctual by anyone’s standards, but the vessel will no doubt be leaving sometime soon, and the sooner the better as far as I am concerned.”

  Petrie insisted on carrying Katarina’s small carpetbag up the gangplank and tottered after her, trying to carry on his flattery. “I may not have military experience like Lazarus here, Miss Mikolavna,” he said, but I know how to shoot a gun and have one close to my person at all times! There is no need to fear anything while I am near you!” He made to draw an antique-looking pistol out of his breeches to show her, but Lazarus darted forward to stay his hand.

  “Don’t go waving artillery about, for God’s sake, man! We are not here to attract attention.”

  “Quite right, Lazarus, quite right. Apologies. I was merely carried away by the scent of adventure in my nostrils, and the thought of any harm stepping into the vicinity of our dear Miss Mikolavna brings out the primal beast in me.”

  Lazarus inspected the revolver. It was a Colt Army Model 1860. “Where did you get that relic, anyway? It’s at least twenty years old!”

  “A fellow at the hotel put me in the direction of a salesman. Nothing wrong with a tried and tested weapon.”

  Lazarus himself had purchased an Enfield Mark II; the favored revolver of the British army and his previous weapon of choice before he had acquired the Colt Starblazer. The loss of that magnificent weapon still stung him. He would have to place an order with Morton for a new one as soon as he got back to London, if not before. He briefly wondered if Katarina still kept that long-barreled Smith and Wesson Model Russian strapped to her thigh, and smiled at the thought of that magnificent limb.

  They went to find their cabins, which contained a couple of grubby mattresses on bunks connected by a wooden ladder that looked to give anybody climbing it in bare feet a nasty splinter. On the wall, a cockroach made a quick scurry for cover as Lazarus dumped his portmanteau on the bare floor.

  “You’re down the hall, Flinders,” he said. “You can leave Katarina’s case here.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Katarina asked. Her eyes were dangerously wide and Lazarus knew that expression never bode well for him. “Am I to assume that you’ve taken it upon yourself to bunk with me?”

  “Well, I thought it would seem more proper if we were to travel as man and wife…” began Lazarus feebly.

  “Man and wife. Let me guess. Proprieties? Convention? I am beginning to wonder if all Englishmen simply use these things to their own advantage. You can take your case out of here, Longman, and bloody well find somewhere else to sleep!”

  “But I only booked three bunks!” Lazarus protested, suddenly finding himself standing in the corridor holding his portmanteau. “Everywhere else is taken, I’m sure!”

  “Improvise!” came the Russian’s retort as the door slammed in his face.

  “Katarina, this is ridiculous!” he shouted through the woodwork. “God knows we’ve roughed it together over more nights than I can count, now is no time to be prudish!”

  He was aware of a couple of men in tourist attire sniggering as they walked past. Petrie was watching him sorrowfully from down the hall. “You would be more than welcome to bunk with me, Lazarus, only I seem to be sharing with somebody already,” he called, indicating the large Egyptian man who had elbowed his way past into the cabin and was currently heaving himself up onto the top bunk.

  “Never mind,” Lazarus said. “I’ll find a spot on deck. If it’s good enough for the crew it’s good enough for me. It’ll be a fine night, I’m sure.”

  Chapter Six

  In which our heroes find themselves up the Nile without a paddle steamer

  It was not a fine night, much to Lazarus’s dismay. His ideas of watching the stars pass overhead as the warm wind drifted from the palms on the bank were dashed by a thick cloud cover that masked even the moon, and a chill wind that kept him shivering as he lay on the hard deck with nothing but his overcoat as a blanket.

  The day had been a long and frustrating one. The steamer was no Thomas Cook cruise, and the compromise in price was showed in its itinerary, which eliminated all but the most crucially important sites along the Nile. Their first stop was the pyramids of Gizah, merely hours after their departure. Posing as tourists, Lazarus and his companions could hardly refuse the donkey ride to the pyramids, Mariette’s house and the Serapeum, even though both Lazarus and Petrie could have told the barely comprehensible guides more than a thing or two about the sites. Katarina was the only one of the trio who had never seen them before, and she seemed genuinely interested in the histories of the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the mysterious Sphinx which was, at present, surrounded by the dig site of Maspero.

  Petrie enjoyed himself too, and had to be stifled on more than one occasion when he began to relate his methods of measuring the pyramids, nearly giving them away in the process. Even Lazarus had to admit that it was a refreshing rush to be back at the site that had fascinated him as a child, ever since he had seen an etching of the pyramids in a book in his guardian’s library. Here, in the sands of the desert, surrounded by the crumbling ruins of a civilization nearly forgotten, the world seemed simpler. They were a million miles from the scheming of governments and clandestine missions handed out by shadowy authorities in European capitals.

  Disaster had nearly struck when they returned to the steamer. Several of the travelers had remained aboard, not wishing to join the excursion. One of these was Murad, who emerged from his cabin just as Lazarus, Katarina and Petrie rounded the corner. Lazarus immediately steered them away as Murad sauntered past, not even blinking. Bumping into their quarry had always been a danger, and Lazarus swore that he would make sure all three of them were more careful in future.

  The cold wind of the night, coupled with the chugging of the steamer’s paddles, meant that sleep felt like a hopelessly ambitious goal. Lazarus eventually gave up and went in search of warmth and something to drink.

  He found both beneath the overhang of the cabins where several Americans, British and one Frenchman were sitting out playing cards and drinking whiskey. Being no greenhorn when it came to the game of Faro, Lazarus struck up conversation and soon earned himself a seat at the table and a hand in the next round. Cheerful small talk was not really his forte, but the sight of the whiskey bottle on the table urged him to great exertions in the art of polite conversation. Soon he was rewarded with a glass of the amber nectar that warmed his aching bones and made the thought of sleeping on deck not quite so dreadful.

  The following day proved more eventful, despite most of it being used up by chugging upriver with nothing to see until they were due at Minieh later that evening. The banks slid past; palm trees, swathes of Halfeh grass and tamarisks, punctuated by the occasional small village from which the inhabitants would usually swarm into the water up to their waists, some even swimming out to the passing ships to ask for baksheesh. But the sight of the clapped out Nefertiti and its assorted passengers hailing from the lower orders of various nations evidently persuaded most villagers that it was not worth getting their feet wet.

  Lazarus and Petrie leaned on the rail, smoking and watching the land drift past, sharing stories and laughing at their old days of poking around in temples and tombs. Katarina was in her cabin reading. It was Petrie who first spotted the danger and di
screetly brought Lazarus’s attention to it.

  “Psst! Did you see him?”

  Lazarus knew enough to keep his head firmly pointed forwards and not to swivel around to gape at whatever his companion was getting at. “No. What is it?”

  “Look carefully, to the left, at who just walked past us.”

  Lazarus slowly tuned his head as if interested in a heron that had just caught a fish on the bank. Further down the deck, dressed in a tarboosh and simple business clothes, was a man instantly recognizable to both Lazarus and Petrie, for barely a few days had passed since they had been detained at his leisure in the Cairo police station.

  “Christ! What’s he doing here?” Lazarus hissed. But it was a foolish question and he knew it. There was only one reason for Captain Hassanein to be aboard the same steamer as them other than an outrageously wild coincidence, and that was that he was after their quarry.

  “Who’s he talking to?” Petrie said.

  The unidentified man stood with his back to them, but his dress and the pale skin of his bald head suggested that he was not an Egyptian. When he turned, they saw the large waxed moustache that dominated his face, and Petrie let out a gasp of recognition.

  “Émile Brugsch!”

  “Isn’t he the brother of Heinrich Brugsch?” asked Lazarus, “who used to be the head of the School of Egyptology in Cairo?”

  “Yes, until that institution closed down and Heinrich moved back to Prussia,” said Petrie. “Émile is his brother’s junior by fifteen years and was Mariette’s keenest protégé. He was rumbled selling artifacts from the museum’s basement and should have been sent packing there and then, if you ask me. But Mariette gave him another chance and gave him the position of museum conservator, and he has been working with the police in cracking the black market in antiquities.”