“Well, everybody is different, but I know how you meant it.”
“David has so many more issues than just those caused by seeing the death of his friends, feeling responsible for their deaths, and being the only survivor. The longer we have been together the harder it is to think of him as my dad, let alone call him dad.”
“I think if David had just those issues, they alone would be hard enough for anybody to live with.”
“Of course they would, I know that, but he has so many issues. He didn’t run away into the desert to get away from just those feelings, or from mum, or from the warlock. He ran away so that he did not have to face people and deal with all the confused feelings they evoked. His ‘inner demons’ he called them.” She brushed away what could have been the start of a tear. “I have found myself, Alex. I do not think that my father ever did. Am I confused; sure! I’m not even sure if I am making sense to you, but I am sure that I have found myself. I can’t live a lie like my father has. Can you understand that?”
“Yes, yes I can, and I now understand you so much better.” He shot off the bed and went immediately to the front pocket of his backpack. It had been the first thing he had noticed upon entering the bedroom. Its bright colour against an all-white room had made it impossible to miss. Ramses must have sent it up with the tent, because Alex had left it at the Winter Palace. “I understand this now,” he said as he unfolded a piece of paper. “When you wrote this–”
“Alex, how could you, you tore that page out of the book I gave you!”
“Technically, it was the book that I gave you, which you gave back to me!”
“Whatever! For you of all people to tear a page out of a book, what were you thinking?”
“Actually, it’s a scan. I have several of them, or, I had several of them. I wanted to have it with me when we met up … if we met up. The last one I had in my pocket did not survive the water!”
“No, it wouldn’t!” Kate took hold of the scan from the large book Alex had bought her from the Aboudi Bookshop in Luxor. It was of the penned message she had written on the inside flyleaf. She read her own words:
I love this book
just as much as I love the person who gave it to me.
Please bring it back to me one day,
when I am able to appreciate both the book and the person.
I have found the life I have always been looking for,
even though I did not know I was looking for it.
I hope you find what you are looking for.
Kate xx
Alex did not have to read it, he knew it by heart, though he now realised he had misunderstood its message. He had assumed that the life she had found was the life with her father. It was not. How could he have realised back then, because she had always looked for her father. Even when she had been told time and time again that he was dead, she had never accepted it. Never, not for one moment, would she have accepted that he was dead.
Now Alex realised that Kate’s message had referred to a much more important find; she had found herself, though at that time she had failed to find either the words or the confidence needed in order to confide in him. He really wished that she had been able to, though he understood that these feelings must have proved so difficult for her. That was why she had written, ‘Please bring it back to me one day, when I am able to appreciate both the book and the person’. This now made so many events understandable to Alex, and why certain actions made her so angry. It certainly explained her running away and not wishing to be contacted. Not everything fell into place, but today had explained so much.
Alex told Kate of his life since they had last seen each other. Of his feelings for Emmy and how they had strengthened. Rather than being annoyed, Kate appeared to be relieved. He finished by telling Kate that what he wanted more than anything from her was … friendship!
She said nothing as she took hold of Alex’s hand and squeezed it gently. She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, still holding his hand.
Alex was beyond happy that they could now get back to being the friends they had always been. At last he felt free to really tell Emmy just how much he loved her. He only had to find the moment, the courage, the words; and then there was the small matter of finding her and then freeing her and Cairo from their captors. Easy, he thought with a wry smile, as he drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 29
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Under the Sea
“This sea is so much rougher than I ever expected it could be.” Kate had to shout over the wind. “This is typical English seaside weather, not Egyptian weather.” She was looking out across the Mediterranean from the battlements of Qait Fort, as the locals called it. Its official title was the Citadel of Qaitbay.
Upon their arrival in the northern Egyptian city of Alexandria, Alex had decided that Qait Fort was not only the perfect location from which to work out where they had to go, but it would also be the safest place. Having been built in the fifteenth century AD, not BC, it would be somewhere they could feel safe from Cleopatra, her army, and her kind.
According to a papyrus delivered by Gadeem’s messenger – a massive bird of prey which had woken them with a start, as it slit the tent above their bed with a talon in the early hours of the morning, before dropping through the papyrus – this was as close as they could get to where Cairo and Emmy were.
“So, they are out there somewhere,” Alex said as he pointed straight out to sea.”
“Yes, but how far out there?”
With the wind hitting him face on Alex struggled to open the rolled papyrus. He turned his back to the sea, in order to shelter the papyrus from the worst of the wind, and wished that he had not. “Kate, we have a problem” he said, though his words were lost in the wind.
The white stone fort was not dissimilar to a European castle, with a round tower at each of the four corners, crenelated battlements – where Kate and Alex now stood – arrow slits for windows, and a single fortified entrance on the city side. The fort had the added protection of an outer curtain wall, on all but the seaward side, in which was a single gatehouse. The side of the fort against the sea benefited from the natural protection of powerful waves. The force they exerted through the jagged rocks beneath the fort’s sheer walls would smash any boat instantly, should any captain be foolish enough to venture too close.
Whilst waiting for Alex to read Gadeem’s papyrus, in order for him to be able to work out exactly where Cairo and Emmy were, Kate had moved, only slightly, to read a tourist sign which was written in several languages.
“KATE?”
The raised voice of Alex reached her just as she was reading, ‘at the entrance of the eastern harbour on the eastern most point of Pharos Island’. Her own alarm bells were going off as she spun around, took in all that Alex had been looking at for the last half a minute or so, and involuntary uttered an expletive followed by, “We are dead!”
“Any ideas?”
“Beyond killing you before they do … NO!”
“But this fort isn’t in my ancient memories.”
“What about one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?”
“The ancient lighthouse of Alexandria. Yes … of course that is.” The penny dropped. “NO?”
“YES.”
“We can’t be!”
“We are. This flipping fort is built on Pharos Island, directly over the site of that Lighthouse!”
There, beneath them, in the open area within the fort, were fifty plus soldiers, ancient soldiers. They were interacting with tourists, pretending to have mock fights and posing for photographs … especially with attractive, young, female tourists. A contingent was stationed at the only exit, where a tour guide was gesticulating at his watch. He obviously needed to be somewhere else with his tour group and did not appreciate the delay caused by the soldiers, which he, and the tourists, took to be modern day Egyptians dressed as ancient soldiers. Only Kate and Alex knew differently.
Tourists posing for photo
graphs with the soldiers by the exit allowed them to check every face. It was obvious to Kate and Alex that the soldiers were searching for them, so there was no way they could get out by mixing with a group: as they had done previously, to great effect, at the Valley of the Kings.
Could they have been suffering from nothing more than an overactive imagination? Could these be from an historical group whose members liked to dress up? The tourists were firmly of that opinion or they would have been running, screaming from the fort. No … these were ancients. Kate and Alex had seen enough ancients to know the difference.
Even looking down from this distance their full ancient Egyptian battledress was anything except amateur. There was actually not much of it, but what there was, was perfectly fitted. Each soldier wore a white wrap around mini-skirt with a single pleat on each side; their white flip-flops laced up to the knee with strips of leather; a wide golden belt held a scabbard which was cut away to reveal a robust sword. On the opposite side of the belt was a much smaller scabbard which curved slightly. It obviously held a decent sized dagger, though this was totally enclosed. There was no way that this could be taken from a soldier unless he was already dead.
Small flashes of light as the soldiers moved confirmed a liberal use of golden thread in their uniforms and gold inlay on their swords. The amount of gold used increased with the size and rank of each soldier. The one in charge, a massive though well-formed man, had virtually no white on him, whilst young soldiers were almost devoid of gold.
The size of the solid gold bands, which cut their way into massive biceps, were an even clearer sign of rank.
Kate and Alex, from the knowledge of previous adventures, knew that the soldiers of the family wore uniforms of predominately dark green and gold, whilst Merenptah’s soldiers wore red, with turquoise and gold worked into their leather belts and also the straps which crossed their chests. Their uniforms both took the form of an overly long T-shirt – they were true Egyptian soldiers. The soldiers below wore almost nothing and by the stances taken with tourists for photographs, were all too willing to show off their muscled, bronzed, and oiled bodies. These were ancient Greek soldiers. They had to be Cleopatra’s soldiers.
However, there was a subtler sign that these were ancients. They were not freely moving around all areas of the ground below. They had no option except to keep to areas which were extremely close to the level of the land as it was in their time. Even the most unobservant tourist would instantly notice a soldier failing to make contact with the ground, even if they failed to notice him sinking slightly beneath it.
Looking down from their vantage point it was clear to see that there were definite patterns of movement. These ancient soldiers knew exactly where they could and could not walk.
“Elite soldiers,” Alex said to himself, “Why does it always have to be elite soldiers?” He felt as though he was likely to collapse as his legs turned to jelly. Putting his hands behind him he steadied himself against the low wall of the battlement. He hoped Kate did not notice.
He had yet again rushed to a conclusion. Of course the fort had been built in the fifteenth century AD. That was not the question he should have been asking. He knew that now, though now was too late. He should have researched what was in Alexandria at the time of Cleopatra. He should have visited the library, the wonderful new library in Alexandria, which was home to so many ancient documents and maps, as well as reproductions of the same. He would then have realised that they were on Pharos Island. Home to the world famous Lighthouse, which after a chequered history was finally destroyed in the fourteenth century by a massive earthquake, only to be replaced by the fort.
He had done what he had so often thought of as ‘Doing a Kate’. He had rushed in ill prepared. Inwardly he cursed Dr Margretti and his boring lessons back at the British Museum. Cursed all his silly super gadgets. Hacker One, that all singing all dancing car of Margretti’s, and that ridiculous vegetable truck. What use was all that to him, to them, now? He had become sloppy in his thinking. Right now he needed to really think and he needed to think quickly.
“What now?” Kate asked loudly above the wind, though with far less attitude than Alex could have expected. She could obviously see the seriousness of their situation.
“Give me a second to think it through.” Alex realised that he had never wanted or needed gadgets … he had his brain … he had his ancient memories.
“You had better think quickly, moron!” The missing attitude had returned with a vengeance!
Cairo surfaced, blinked the salt water from his eyes, managed a fleeting glimpse of the shoreline, and submerged again. This was the eighth or ninth time he had surfaced. Coughing, spluttering, and gasping for breath each time, he knew all too well that he must get hold of something very quickly if he was going to be able to keep his head above water in such a rough sea: a mooring rope, a buoy, a boat. Seeing them and reaching them were two completely different matters; he was surrounded by small fishing boats that were being thrown around as if they were toys in a washing machine. Cairo feared one hitting him, knocking him unconscious, even killing him, yet unless he made it into one of the fishing boats he would not be able to survive in the sea for much longer. He fought with his arms and legs to keep his head above water, yet time and again he failed.
The last thing he had been told by Quentin before he had left the cell, was that the salt water of the Mediterranean would offer him far more buoyancy than the fresh water of the River Nile. As far as Cairo was concerned Quentin was wrong, quite, quite wrong.
Back in Luxor he would throw himself in the Nile, float on his back, barely moving, and get out at his grandma’s home, a kilometre or so to the north of his village. At times, in summer when the Nile was running at its fastest, he would be there before his parents, who used the local microbus service.
He had escaped his cell thanks to Rose. He had taken one last gasp of air before making the calm journey towards the surface. The surface, however, came as a shock. It was as if he had arrived into a war zone. He had resurfaced several times, before he had been able to make out anything except white peaks on violent waves which slapped him in the face as hard as a fist. Having only once seen the shoreline, he had since been battered and spun around so much that he no longer had any sense of direction.
He had an idea, sudden inspiration. Gasping for as much air as he could take in, he relaxed and let the sea push him down. Suddenly everything was calm. The sun streamed down through the clear blue water, giving no warning of what was going on just a couple of metres above him. He saw what he wanted, a mooring rope. It was too far away. In panic he looked around. He could make out one close enough to be able to reach with the air he had left in his lungs.
The rope was going slack and then very tight, overly tight. Its tautness confirmed to Cairo that here had to be a boat tied to the end of it. It had to be something heavier than an unused mooring buoy. He knew that he would have to time when he took hold of the rope. It had not appeared to be far away, but in his struggle to reach it he had used up all of his air. His lungs burned. He forgot about timing his grab at the rope; he grabbed in order to save his life.
Cairo was able to get a firm hold with both hands on a very slack rope. Should he have gotten hold of it when it was slack or when it was tight? Slack, tight … he failed to remember what he had worked out before he had dived down. His oxygen was depleted; his body had forced him to let some stale air out, causing him to fight hard not to breathe in.
Then as the rope tightened violently he realised his error. He should not have taken hold when it was slack. The sudden tautness of the rope propelled him as if he were an arrow from a bow. He was out of the water, breathing wonderful air. The problem now was that he was not just out of the water, he was well above the water and screaming, as he was much too far above the water to be safe, because what goes up must come down … eventually!
“Is that …?” Kate started to ask as she looked out to sea from Qait Fort, before sile
nce overtook her as her brain tried to rationalise what she was seeing. Even with all she had experienced, she still believed that man could not fly by flapping his arms. The reality of what she was watching caused her to doubt this certainty.
“I think … I don’t know what to think.” Alex was blinking his eyes furiously in disbelief.
“It is Cairo flying, isn’t it?”
“Either that or he is paragliding without a parachute,” Alex said as he stopped blinking and tried to rationalise what he was seeing. The person was a fair way from them, but it was definitely Cairo. Had there been any doubt, the constant scream carried in on the wind confirmed that it was Cairo. He was flapping his arms, his white galabeya flapping around him, and he was gaining height. He was indeed flying!
Both Kate and Alex had spun around upon hearing Cairo’s screams carried in on the wind. Though his screams continued, they spun back at the unmistakeable sound of ancient soldiers approaching fast.
Kate thumped Alex hard. “Ancient soldiers can’t come up here, this is wrong!”
Alex thought fast as he rubbed his arm. “They could if the ancient lighthouse and this fort had their outer walls in exactly the same place.”
“Oh, come on, we couldn’t be that unlucky?”
They were! Kate and Alex stepped away from the low wall and stood back to back. Kate watched as one soldier approached quickly, whilst Alex watched the other. Each soldier’s over exuberance was obvious: swords raised, running far too fast and making far too much noise.
“Not more three thousand year old rookies,” Alex thought as he spun quickly, stuck a leg out, and brought Kate to the floor, just as the soldiers swung their swords with an overly aggressive and overly powerful sweeping side movement. Neither soldier, not for a moment, considered moderating their run or their swing. Almost cut in half by each other’s sword, their torsos now hung by a thread. Being ancients there was no blood, though there was a fixed look of extreme shock and pain on their faces. Kate and Alex had already scurried out of their way. Getting up, Kate, with a wicked smile, gave each of the mortally wounded soldiers nothing more than a little guidance, but it was all that was needed to send them careering over a merlon – the low section between two crenels in the crenelated battlement which ran around the fort – and down to the sea below.
Gold of the Ancients Page 24