“Is anything wrong?” Pierce asked.
“I wish to ask. The governments worry for you, because the pictures…” he shrugged “…are not so often. You understand?”
“Well,” Pierce said, “I’ll tell you. We’ve been out here three months now, and I think we all need a rest. Except for Dr. Barnaby and Mr. Conway, none of us are really experienced archaeologists, you know.”
“You know.”
“Yes.” Pierce was being cautious. He had arisen at ten. Lisa and Barnaby were not in the camp—presumably they were up at the Tombs of the Nobles, working. Had Iskander seen them? Had they already given him a story? It would not do to conflict with an earlier explanation.
“Where is the Dr. Barnaby?” he asked.
Pierce gave a sigh of relief.
“Up at the tombs, I imagine. He’s been rather sick. That’s one reason we need a vacation.”
“I do not hear. I am sorry for his healthy.”
“Much improved now. Just a touch of dysentery.”
“Ah yes. He is terrible.”
Whatever that means, Pierce thought.
“About the requests,” Iskander said. “Always, you say flashlight batteries. Why, yes?”
So this is it, Pierce thought. He had wondered if Hamid would notice their requisition of so many batteries and so much gas for the Land Rover.
“Well, it’s just the way things worked out. While Dr. Barnaby was sick, I went ahead, to examine other tombs we plan to study. Whenever I worked in the afternoon, I needed a flashlight, since the sun does not enter the tombs at that time of day.”
He could not be sure Iskander had understood that, but it seemed to satisfy him.
“And the others are how? Mrs. Barrett?”
“Fine, just fine.”
“I would see them.”
Pierce began to think fast, trying to figure out a way to tell the others his story before they cooked up one of their own. He could take Hamid up and say, “I’ve just been telling Mr. Iskander about your dysentery.” That would work.
“But,” Hamid continued, “I cannot be. I am back to Luxor. Please, my fond regards.”
“Certainly.”
“And to the Mrs. Barrett?”
“With pleasure.”
“Beautiful,” Hamid said.
“Very beautiful.”
“Very.”
“Thank you,” Pierce said.
“She is nice,” Hamid said.
“Yes.”
“Yes, I think so.” He sighed. “Well, I go now. If you will need, please.”
“Of course.”
Hamid Iskander left. Pierce frowned as he watched the Antiquities Service Land Rover bounce over the sand. He did not think Hamid was a fool, though he acted it. A wise man could play the fool, when it suited him. Why should it suit him?
That night, they did something they should have thought of earlier: they set up a rope ladder at the cleft so all three could go down together. Nikos sniffed as he entered the antechamber and kicked at one of the candles; he jumped back as it collapsed in a heap of dust.
“The door is over here,” Barnaby said, leading the way to the spot they had cleared. “Notice that no mortar was used—we have only to pry it up.”
“What do you think is down there?” Pierce asked.
Barnaby shrugged. “Another passage, another room, or perhaps even the tomb itself. I rather doubt that; we will have to go much deeper into the rock before we meet Meketenre himself.”
He wedged the crowbar into the crack and began to press against it.
“Let me,” Nikos said, and Barnaby stepped aside. The Greek struggled for a moment and then the heavy stone began to lift. When it was half raised, Pierce slipped a rope around it and pulled as Nikos pushed.
With a heavy thud, the stone crashed down, raising a cloud of dust. They coughed, their flashlights cutting narrow beams in the air. Then, they stepped to the hole and looked down.
It was a narrow room piled high with bodies. The figures were thrown into awkward attitudes of death, the eyes closed, the skin darkened and pinched. They were all men, skinny and naked except for rotted loincloths.
The smell was dry, stale, and dreadful.
“The slaves,” Barnaby said.
3. The Passage
PIERCE STEPPED BACK IN horror. Somehow, it all became real to him—the room, the tomb that lay beyond, the passage through the rock. All this had been done by men, the physical power of slaves, who had received death as their sole reward. He looked down again, noticing the emaciated bodies, the ribs visible through the leathery skin. They had been glad to die.
“What do we do now?” Nikos said. He was frowning in disgust.
Barnaby walked over to a wall and leaned against it. “We have to go down there. They may be guarding the entrance to the tomb itself. Or, they may have been buried with the plans. Don’t forget, the architect was murdered as well.”
There was a long silence in the room. Pierce lit a cigarette and paced up and down, feeling his legs move, testing his muscles. It was as if he wanted to reassure himself that he was alive.
“I’ll go down,” Nikos said.
“You don’t have to,” Barnaby said. Nikos spat. “You think a few bodies worry me? Give me a light.” Pierce handed Nikos the light, and the Greek jumped down through the opening into the room below.
He winced at the smell. It was stronger in the little chamber than it was above. He shone the light onto the bodies, looking at the faces, eyes closed, mouths open. The teeth were very white. He walked over to one. “How did they die?” Barnaby was leaning over the hole. “Probably strangled…You can see the marks at the throat.”
Nikos looked and saw the thin lines. A few bodies still had ropes knotted around their necks. He reached forward to touch one.
“Careful!”
It was too late. The body disintegrated before their eyes, the skin flaking off, the innards falling to the floor as dust, the bones crumbling.
“Don’t touch anything,” Barnaby said. “They haven’t been mummified and in this dry air are imperfectly preserved.”
“I’ve noticed.” Nikos coughed in the cloud of human dust.
Pierce was astonished. It really is true, he thought—you return to ashes and dust. He shuddered.
“Look for a man better dressed than the others,” Barnaby said. “He will be the architect.”
Nikos moved among the heaps of bodies, picking his way carefully. At length, he found an aristocratic-looking man stiffly propped against one wall, with dark hair, a long nose, and a narrow face. He was dressed elegantly in loose white robes coming to the knees, belted with a gold clasp. In death, the man wore a sad expression, as if disappointed.
“I think I found him.”
“Wait a minute,” Barnaby said, “I’m coming.” He climbed down and went over to Nikos. For a moment, he stood silently examining the man.
“That’s him, all right. Now let’s find the plans.” He flicked his beam around and saw a half-burned papyrus. Very little remained, just a corner of the roll. He looked at it closely.
“Don’t touch,” Barnaby warned. “This is it—the architect’s drawing. You can see there the passage leading in from the cleft and here the antechamber directly above us. From that room, another passage runs off—” He stopped. They had reached the point where fire had devoured the papyrus. Barnaby straightened.
“Well, at least we know that much: The main passage runs from the room upstairs, not here. Let’s go back.”
In the antechamber, Pierce was looking very pale and green.
“Not feeling good, Robbie?” Nikos said, smiling.
“Screw you,” Pierce said.
Barnaby walked to the far wall. Now that he knew what to look for, it took only a few minutes.
“Here it is,” he said.
They broke away the door and saw a long passage ending in blackness. Pierce shined his light down it and saw smooth stone at the far end. The passage was perhaps four feet h
igh and one hundred feet long.
“Shall we?” Barnaby said.
“I’ll lead,” Nikos said, “in case the door at the far end is difficult.”
“No,” Barnaby said, “I’ll lead.”
Nikos shrugged.
Barnaby led. Nikos followed, and Pierce came third. Bent over, they walked along, panting softly. The walls here were smooth, carefully finished. Pierce marveled at the competence of the stonemasons. It was very dark, the only light coming from the flashlights.
They reached the far door.
Barnaby pushed at it with his open hand, and it gave way easily.
“Well, what do you know?” he said.
He stepped forward and suddenly screamed, a high-pitched wail that trailed off into cold silence.
4. The Second Chamber
IN THE PASSAGE, PIERCE felt Nikos freeze at the sound. For a moment, they stood motionless, listening, trying to understand what had happened.
“Barnaby?” Nikos called. “Barnaby!”
No answer.
“Try your light,” Pierce said. “Careful.”
Nikos flashed his light forward and gave a low whistle.
“What is it?”
“Get me a rope,” he said.
Pierce backed out to the anteroom and found the rope they had brought with the other tools. He carried it back to Nikos.
“What’s going on?”
“Hold this end of the rope while I go down. It’s a sunken room.”
Pierce sat down and braced himself against the walls of the passage. Nikos threw the free end of the rope out, and soon Pierce felt the weight tugging as he held the rope in his hands. In a moment, Nikos called, “All right.”
Pierce crawled forward to look through the opening.
It was a second room, empty but larger than the first, and finished smoothly. The walls were adorned with colorful hieroglyphics in long rows that reached from floor to ceiling. The passage they had crawled through entered this room, but not at floor level—instead, it broke through the wall near the ceiling. Barnaby had stepped through and fallen twenty feet to the bottom.
He lay sprawled on the ground, his flashlight alongside him. Nikos was examining him.
“How is he?”
“All right, I think. He’s breathing. He may have broken some bones. I’m not sure. We must wait until he comes around. Did we bring anything to drink?”
“No.”
Nikos reached over and rubbed Barnaby’s hands, then shook him gently. He worked in silence for several minutes, and then, Barnaby stirred. He groaned, the sound amplified by the room.
“Barnaby,” Nikos said. “How are you?”
Barnaby rolled his head back and forth and groaned again. He opened his eyes.
“How do you feel?”
“Nikos,” he said, in an astonished voice. And then, abruptly, he vomited, retching violently all over his clothes. Nikos helped him up on one elbow.
“My God,” Pierce whispered.
“Doesn’t matter,” Nikos said, glancing up at Pierce. “It happens often when a man is unconscious.”
Barnaby vomited again, a dry, ugly sound. Nothing came.
“I wish we had something to give him,” Pierce said.
Barnaby looked up, glassy-eyed. “Hello, Robert,” he said. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, then groaned.
“What’s the matter?”
“I got it up my nose,” Barnaby said. “It’s awful.”
“Just sit there,” Nikos said, “while we figure out how to get you out. How do you feel? Anything broken?”
“I don’t think so. My ankle hurts, and I banged my knee when I fell. And my head feels like a watermelon. Otherwise, I’m okay.”
“Just sit,” Nikos repeated. He looked up at Pierce.
“Can you haul him up if I put the rope around him?”
“I think so.”
Barnaby started to get up, but Nikos pushed him back. “Relax. There is no hurry.”
Barnaby sat, and his eyes began to look around the walls. He was scanning the hieroglyphics rapidly, running down the columns. Color returned to his face, and Nikos offered him a cigarette.
Barnaby took it absently.
“What does it say?” Pierce asked. Barnaby shook his head slowly.
Nikos stood: “Where do we go from here?”
Barnaby said nothing. He merely sat, reading. He was mesmerized.
Up in the passage, Pierce leaned back and lit a cigarette. He was feeling strange—the three men in this brilliantly colored room were, to him, the entire world. Objectively, he knew that they were deep in the rock of the cliff, in a tomb hollowed out thousands of years ago. He knew that he had only to retrace his steps and he would find himself outside, in the air, looking at the stars and the Nile Valley. He knew that if he traveled a short distance, he would come to the Land Rover and the camp.
He knew all this, but somehow it was unimportant. “Incredible,” Barnaby said softly.
“What’s that?”
“This room. It relates the deeds of the Pharaoh Meketenre, including his war expedition against the Hyksos. He was apparently a brutal and vicious man.”
“He certainly screwed you,” Nikos said, and laughed. Barnaby seemed to return to the present, a slow process in which his eyes grew alive, focused.
“It’s going to be difficult from here on,” he said. “If this tomb is like some of the others with sunken chambers, the passage will continue up there.” He pointed up to the wall, near the ceiling.
“Nice,” Pierce said. “How do we find it?”
“It won’t be easy. The whole room has been plastered over. You can do it—but it takes time.”
“Speaking of time, we had better leave,” Nikos said. “Can you get up now?”
“I think so.” Nikos helped him up. He let out a squeal of pain as he stepped down on his bad foot; the ankle was swollen and discolored, but nothing else seemed seriously damaged.
Lisa wiped his brow with a damp cloth. “It’s all so unnecessary,” she said. Barnaby lay on his back, his face flushed, his clothes soaked with sweat. He shivered despite the heavy blankets covering him. His mouth, worked, but no words came out.
“We couldn’t avoid it,” Pierce said.
“You could have given up this wild scheme before you ever started.”
“Damnit, it was his own fault!” Pierce exploded. “He walked right out of that passage without checking first. There was nothing any of us could do to stop him.”
Lisa gripped Barnaby’s jaw tightly and slipped a thermometer under his tongue. She held it so he would not chomp down deliriously. “Well,” she said, “what now?”
“Do you think he needs a doctor?”
“Yes, I think he needs a doctor.”
“I was just asking, for Christ’s sake.”
She gave him a cold stare, and for a moment Pierce thought she was going to hit him. Then, she looked away and removed the thermometer. She held it up to the light. “One hundred and four.”
“I’ll get the Land Rover,” Pierce said.
A vacationing German doctor in Luxor pronounced the ankle broken—and insisted that Barnaby be flown to Cairo for X-rays and hospital treatment. Lisa and Pierce drove him to the airport and saw him safely onto the little plane. They watched as it climbed into the clear sky and was lost in the sun.
“I hope he’s all right,” she said softly.
“Oh, I think so.”
“I believe,” Lisa said, “that I could learn to loathe you.”
“It’s been done before.”
“You’re frustrating.”
“Sorry.”
They walked back from the runway to the taxi they had hired in town.
“Please give it up, Robert. Quit now.”
“No.”
“But I don’t understand—”
“It’s out of the question. I can’t stop now.”
She looked at him, shook her head, and sighed.
In the
evening, they received a telegram forwarded through the American embassy. It was reassuring: Barnaby’s fracture was minor and would require hospitalization for only a week. Pierce felt immense relief, but Lisa, who had been gloomy and irritable all day, did not improve.
“I just think something awful is going to happen,” she said. “This is only the beginning.”
After a week, they had managed to fix a rope ladder from the passageway leading into the sunken chamber and to sling a hammock on the far wall, permitting them to search for the continuation into the depths of the tomb.
In Barnaby’s absence, Conway took over; he worked cheerfully in the hot, chalky air, whistling and talking. He told Pierce about his youth in Cincinnati, about the digs he had worked on, about his family, and about Parisian girls. They seemed to be his favorite topic. He kept returning to them.
“The greatest chick I ever knew,” he said, “was four and a half feet tall. And tough. So tough, you wouldn’t believe it. She never wore shoes, even in the middle of the winter. And she used to grind out cigarettes in her bare feet.”
Another time: “You ever had a scratcher? I mean a real claw-you-to-death scratcher? I used to know one. Named Michelle. A nice name; you’d never have guessed it. Michelle ate all sorts of things to make her fingernails strong, and when she got through with you, you had to whip over to the hospital for a transfusion, honest to God.”
And still another time: “Did I ever tell you about the lady weight lifter? She was a mean one. I picked her up on the rebound—she had accidentally broken her boyfriend’s wrist, and he left her. Well, uh, this girl used to sit around all the time, you know, in parties and places like that, and flex. She squeezed rubber balls. She lifted dumbbells. All the time…”
His supply of anecdotes seemed endless.
One night, as he chipped away at the plaster, looking for the next door, he said, “What’s going on with you and the girl?”
“What girl?” Pierce was sitting on the floor, smoking. The hammock could support only one person at a time.
“What girl?” Conway imitated him. “What girl do you think?”
“Lisa?”
“The man has a lightning-fast mind. He strikes to the very heart of the problem with the swift speed of a cougar. Yes, my man. Lisa.”
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