Grantville Gazette-Volume XI

by Eric Flint

  Johannes sat and sipped his beer. His thoughts were racing frantically but he knew he didn't dare let anyone see how upset he was. Several of his marks were seated close by. Johannes hoped none of them had heard the up-timers. He considered what to do. These up-timers didn't appear to be suspicious of his intentions nor did they appear interested. Still, it wouldn't do to trust appearances too far. Now might be a good time to move on. In truth, there weren't too many marks left in Grantville. This had been a good swindle, a very good swindle. His purse was heavy and his "partners" were expecting him to depart for Italy. He needed a story for his sister and her family—no, best just leave a vague note.

  Glancing around the room he'd shared with his nephew, Johannes contemplated some of the other rewards he'd gained in exchange for the longest stretch of honest work he had ever done. His sister refused to charge him rent and only accepted a pittance to cover his food so he had honestly earned money in his pocket. Even Hermann had stopped glowering and warmed up enough to grant that Johannes might just have had a long and terrible run of luck. It would be weeks before either of them realized how he had gulled them. Another package, as thick if not as carefully wrapped, contained a wealth of up-time materials he could peddle across Europe. The photo he'd used around Grantville rested in his purse, waiting to be brought out again with the plea "if I only had a few florins we could recover it." The world was full of gullible people who were dazzled by pretty pictures and stories of easy riches. He'd sold fake treasure maps and saints' relics all across the land for years. This time he had a real treasure map.

  He gave a last look around and knelt down to feel under the bed. There had been a couple of other notebooks under there from time to time. Wilhelm had shown a surprising lack of trust in his uncle after he'd caught Johannes going through the one about a Spanish galleon. Cursing under his breath, Johannes got up and straightened his clothes. There were many things he would miss - indoor plumbing, efficient heating, soft beds, and so on. He wouldn't miss his nephew's sharp eyes. Johannes found himself debating about making one last call on Hilda. Oh-so-willing Hilda who thought they were engaged to be married. Her charms included an extremely gullible father who had borrowed money on his business to fund the treasure hunt. Of course, he and all the other "investors" thought the treasure was a solid gold Roman statue buried in Italy . . . Johannes chuckled. That had been his best idea.

  He might go to Italy, after all. Italy was also full of gullible people, not a few of them quite rich. Italy had many charms—its weather for one, and the fact that it was far from the armies blundering about Germany.

  After a check of the closet he shrugged into his coat, hoisted the rucksack and stole out the door.

  April, 1634, Naples

  "Johannes!" the voice cut through the noises of the crowded market. "Johannes! It is you! How long has it been?"

  Johannes found himself facing a familiar man, one Jakob Witterwald.

  "Ah, Jakob. So you have managed to stay out of jail?"

  "Yes, yes. So have you, I see. Come, old friend. There is an inn down here with the best beer." In a lower voice Jakob added, "They have a room where two old friends can talk alone."

  Smiling, Johannes motioned for Jakob to lead the way. They walked to the inn, Jakob chattering on about his relatives, the weather, the price of tobacco, and other meaningless things. Once they were settled in the inn's back room Jakob became serious.

  "The last that I heard, you were headed to that place—Grantville. The town full of demons, wizards, witches, and all manner of magic."

  "Old news, Jakob. Old news. I did go to Grantville. There wasn't a single wizard or demon in sight. In fact, I spent all of last year there."

  "Ah! No demons or wizards. No magic, either?" Jakob sounded wistful. "I've been working a neat little scam based on 'Grantville Magic.' Tell me about the place and I'll have some nice hooks for my scam."

  "You would do well to drop it. Too many people know the truth about Grantville's 'wizards.' Unless you stick to backward villages that will trip you up." Johannes shook his head. "There is no money to be made in such places."

  "No . . . true." Jakob shrugged. "Tell me about Grantville anyway. You are looking prosperous. Whatever scam you've been running is profitable."

  Johannes grinned. "Would you believe that I spent my time in Grantville doing honest work?" He lit his pipe and began to talk.

  Well into the evening Johannes pulled out the photo of the mask of King Tutankhamun. Jakob's eyes glittered. Once the up-time notebook was unwrapped and the rest of the pictures displayed Jakob was hooked. He leafed carefully through, asking Johannes to translate, asking questions.

  Johannes considered his luck. Jakob had contacts in places Johannes didn't. The two of them had run several successful swindles together. Given the right clothes Witterwald made a convincing professor. There was a certain noble Italian with more wealth than brains . . .

  "Why are you just conning for pocket change?" Jakob suddenly asked. "There is a king's ransom in gold sitting in this tomb. Sitting there, waiting for someone to come along and take it."

  The thought stunned Johannes for a moment. He shook his head, answering cautiously. "Do you have any idea how heavy a solid gold coffin is? Or how difficult it would be to move it?"

  "Certainly. But it could be melted down. Gold bars are heavy but easier to manage." Witterwald thumped his finger on a picture of several small gold items. "These pieces alone would pay for the trip."

  "But Egypt is closed to outsiders." The pictures appeared to dance in the candlelight, beckoning to Johannes.

  "When has such a prohibition stopped either of us? I know a man, a Muslim, a wealthy merchant."

  There was little doubt Jakob did know such a man. There wasn't a port in the Mediterranean that Jakob hadn't sailed into.

  "Will he help us? Say for ten percent?"

  "We split the rest evenly?"

  "I get fifty percent. You get forty and your Muslim friend gets ten. I discovered this. I researched it and I spent the time learning enough English to understand what is in the notebook. Without my work, you would have nothing."

  Witterwald looked mulish for a moment. He sighed, shook his head and replied. "Granted. You get fifty percent. I agree. You have the knowledge to find this tomb and that is worth half. I'll take forty percent. Ali gets ten percent. Done?"

  "Done."

  * * *

  The inn by the docks was dim, dingy, and smelled of rotten fish mixed with tobacco smoke. A lack of windows and the few lamps did little to relieve the dimness. The smells exuded from the clothes and bodies of the men siting around smoking, drinking, and gossiping. Johannes thought it wasn't the worst inn he had seen, but it came close. This place didn't seem to fit with Jakob's description of the man they were to meet here, either. Ali El-Rahman was supposedly a wealthy merchant and a Muslim. Both made him a most unlikely client of this inn.

  The man Jakob finally greeted didn't look like a wealthy merchant. He did look like an Arab with his dusky skin, dark hair, and close-cropped beard tracing his jaw line. The dirty, tattered clothing didn't fit a wealthy Arab merchant's dress. The man was as thin as a starving dog. Most merchants, especially the wealthy ones, looked far from starving. Johannes grinned. Ali El-Rahman probably was an Arab but Johannes would bet his last florin the man was no more a respectable merchant than Jakob or himself. All the better! Johannes understood rogues.

  A little silver got the three "merchants" the use of a back room. With a flourish Johannes produced the up-time notebook and the picture of King Tut's coffin. In the flurry of speech that followed El-Rahman proved to speak acceptable Spanish. That was good. Johannes didn't want to be forced to depend upon anyone, not even an old acquaintance like Jakob, for translations.

  In minutes a deal was struck. Ali would arrange passage on a Greek ship bound for Alexandria. "The Greeks hate Turks," Ali explained. "The Greeks won't care if we're all good Muslims or infidels. In Alexandria, the bey uses Turkish tr
oops for customs and to stop infidels from landing. Even if the Greek sailors suspect you two aren't Arabs, they won't tell the Turks."

  Summer, 1634, Alexandria

  The air was breathlessly hot but Johannes and Jakob sat shut up in the small ship's cabin, not daring to go out on deck. Turkish patrols regularly swept the docks, collecting taxes and tributes and looking for illegal activities and unauthorized infidels. If caught the best they could expect was to be fined and shipped out. At worst they might be sold as slaves. On their last stop they'd learned that anyone claiming to be an up-timer would automatically be put to death if found anywhere within the Ottoman Empire. The idea that the local powers might considered possession of up-time materials the same as claiming to be an up-timer worried Johannes.

  Johannes and Jakob had let their beards grow on the voyage and both were sunburned enough to pass for Arabs at a distance. Unfortunately, the only words either knew in Arabic were "Insallah"—hardly enough to stand up to an interrogation. Ali had been unexpectedly reluctant to teach them anything more.

  Ali had explained that while Egypt was divided into twenty-four districts, each overseen by a Mameluke bey, the Sheikh al Balad was the most powerful of the beys and should be able to ease their way. The Arab was off the ship seeking out the Sheikh's men to present the requisite bribes. Johannes wondered about Ali and the bribes. The more Jakob swore Ali was trustworthy, the more Johannes wondered.

  Johannes had been forced to reconsider the group's financial resources in light of all the bribes that would have to be paid out. He hoped what they had would be enough to pay for a boat to take them up the Nile and leave enough for the bribes they would need when they found the tomb.

  Fall, 1634

  They had come so far—and now this! The very rocks seemed to mock them. Dry brown stones rested on more dry brown stones along the narrow and twisting little valleys. The lifeless valleys all twisted away from the river. Each had little side branches, equally lifeless, twisting off endlessly. Everywhere the cliffs were riven in wild patterns of cracks. The sun made the shadows darker by contrast. Here, away from the river, even a trace of green was missing.

  Johannes wiped sweat from his face on the sleeve of his filthy galabeeyah. In Alexandria, there had been many men in European dress. Ali had explained that some infidel merchants and such were allowed within the city. He had warned them that they needed to visit a market and find local clothing before leaving the city. Johannes demurred, concerned about the lightness of his purse.

  Ali's advice had proved correct immediately outside the city. Their European clothes stood out and attracted unwanted attention from every quarter. Coming across three Egyptian peasants, Ali had offered a pair of copper coins and the natives cheerfully stripped off their dirty robes. The Egyptians offered their loin cloths for another copper coin, but even Ali couldn't bring himself to take up that offer. He had given them a copper for their tattered and filthy turbans.

  Johannes sat on a large rock and stared at the barren hillsides. Jakob was wandering in circles, staring up at the lifeless cliffs and cursing. Ali simply sat silently in a sliver of shade from a boulder. Johannes wondered if this valley, the fourth they had looked at, was the right one. It had all been there, buried in the up-timer notebook. Several clippings commented on the barrenness and that many of the tombs had been nearly invisible, hidden among cracks and fissures. It was the pictures, the photographs, that had fooled him. All those neat and tidy up-time roads and cleared tomb entrances with staircases and large signs. He'd known not to expect the signs or paved roads. Yet those pictures had beguiled him into ignoring the words.

  All of it was in the notebook he had stolen and so carefully carried all this way. The maps in the notebook made it look simple. But now, here in the actual place, Johannes realized the difference between the photographs, maps made in the twentieth century and the reality of seventeen-century Egypt. On the maps it was so easy—"This is the tomb of Ramesses II and here is the tomb of King Tutankhamun." But the neat little dot on the map didn't help him much. Was the Ramesses tomb on the slope just in front of him, or under that pile of rocks to his left? Or was it down the way where Jakob was pacing? Or was it in a completely different valley? The maps didn't show enough details. The photographs were no better. Nothing in them matched what was here.

  They might not even be in the right place along the Nile. The ruins across the river should be the temples of Luxor, but he wasn't certain. Giza had been the last place he had been able to match the notebook's information with seventeenth century Egypt. Except—the pyramids looked different. With the help of one article he finally figured out that the difference was the lack of large holes in one pyramid. Somebody had blown huge holes in the side of it before the photographs were taken.

  Despite the year he had spent in Grantville learning English, Johannes found it difficult to understand many things in the notebook. He realized that, except for the small section on the pyramids, the notebook held little information about the rest of Egypt. Most of the clippings and articles focused on the Valley of the Kings and King Tutankhamun's tomb.

  Nothing in the notebook warned him that Egypt was full of ruins. All the way up the river, they had seen ruins. None matched the photographs in the notebook. Nor did the notebook have anything to say about all the town's names being different. One page did show a map with the village and town names as they had been in Roman times and what they were called in the twentieth century. Once past Giza, the names didn't match either set.

  Discouraged, they pressed on, grimly searching each major ruin for clues. A week ago, wondering amongst the ruins on the east side of the river, Johannes had found a section of wall that seemed to match one of the pictures labeled "Temple of Luxor." But they could not be certain it really was. Here, unlike at the pyramids, the ruins were in worse shape than the pictures showed.

  Frustrated, Johannes had gone over the entire notebook again. He had even re-read the handwritten list stuffed in the back pocket. It was a list of things needed for an expedition to the Valley of the Kings. Carefully written in pencil it listed shovels, tents, canteens, a compass, and such. Three different hands had written it; the only one he could read easily was his nephew Wilhelm's. Boys they might be. but one of them was pretty sharp for at the bottom was the entry "Money for bribes." Of more use to him were several pages stuck between the photographs and clippings. These pages were Wilhelm's notes in a mixture of German and English. A note stuck behind the section on Luxor had the telltale line "the temples were rebuilt . . ."

  So here they were, highly detailed maps in hand, but not knowing where they were. If the ruins across the river were the Luxor temples then the Valley of the Kings should be found here, directly across the river. If they could figure out which of the featureless wadis was the Valley of the Kings and if they could find the right tomb in the valley, then the maps should make sense . . .

  "There are a couple of openings, Johannes. There's one just over there and another there," Jakob shouted, hope tingeing his voice.

  The three men scrambled up the loose scree and into a low, dark entrance. Johannes grinned, his heart racing. It was a tomb entrance! The rock around them had been carved out. If they could identify which one it was the map should at least tell them if the Ramesses tomb was to the east or west of it. The three men lit candles and crawled into the darkness. Half an hour later, filthy and exhausted, they crawled out. It was a tomb, a tomb filled almost to the roof with sand and rocks and having not a single painting to match with the pictures. After a rest the trio tackled the other tomb. This one, higher on the slope, wasn't so full of debris and there were some paintings visible. Carefully Johannes compared the photographs with what he could see by candlelight. Again nothing matched.

  * * *

  Johannes brushed the dust gently with his fingertips. "Here, Jakob, hold the candle closer. Careful you don't drip wax on the photograph again!"

  "Hey! Look there!" Jakob yelped in Johannes's ear. "The
se figures match!"

  "And," Johannes sighed, "the rest don't."

  "So it isn't the right tomb?" Jakob didn't bother to hide his disappointment.

  "Maybe not . . . I think it might be the name of a relative." Brushing past the other man, Johannes crawled toward the tomb's entrance. In a little patch of sunlight, he flipped through the notebook, searching for a half-remembered picture. He found it and peered at it and then read the paragraph below it. Hope soared in him and he re-read the relevant passage. A noise from outside in the wadi barely registered. He crawled back to the painted wall.

  "Look, Jakob. These people match this photograph. That one is the pharaoh and this is his queen." His voice rose with his hopes. "This is the queen's tomb, not the king's. That's why the cartouche doesn't match. We're in the Valley of the Queens!"

  "So now we can find this King Tut's tomb and all that gold?" Jakob was grinning widely