Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Caroline Vermalle

  Only two people were not looking at the screen, but at Al-Shamy, as he unfolded Moswen’s message, read it without blinking and then stuffed it into the pocket of his beige blazer.

  One was Moswen.

  The other pair of eyes were set within the unique features of a black man well into middle age, with a short, white beard and a gold earring.

  Seconds later, a lesser bureaucrat was left to take questions from reporters, as Al-Shamy, followed closely by Moswen, marched toward the black SUV parked in front of the hotel lobby. Al-Shamy was walking faster than his assistant, with a certainty of purpose that made clear he would not be distracted. So much so that when the black man bumped into him and then began to apologize profusely, Al-Shamy quietly walked on without looking back.

  The other man, however, observed and followed with interest the race between Al-Shamy and his assistant towards their car. He waited for the vehicle to move off before opening his broad, muscular hand that was clenched around a simple, crumpled note, softened by sweat. The ink had run a little, but the words were still legible:

  BBC TV found 2 bodies in room A-55. Woman alive. Police requesting permission to drill. URGENT.

  A smile creased the man’s face as his gold earring reflected the dim light of the lobby’s black crystal chandeliers.

  14

  When the tour buses arrived in Giza the next morning, it was sheer mayhem.

  The plateau was swarming with journalists who had come to film the pyramid, but it was the tourists who posed the bigger problem. Many were crying, some shouted. How could Egypt expect to attract tourist dollars if they were treated so shabbily? The police did their best, forming a protective cordon while guards directed the groups towards Khafre and Mykerinos, but nothing helped to assuage the fury that mounted with each new coach of eager arrivals. As far as they were concerned, there was just no excuse for this, the most shameful of crimes against tourism: the Great Pyramid was closed.

  “Crime Scene”.

  The night had been long. Al-Shamy and Moswen had been slow to arrive; the streets were clogged by protesters and a police van had been set on fire. Al-Shamy had ordered Moswen to call Mohammed Hassan, one of the police chiefs he knew, and Moswen was forced to be the messenger of more bad news: Hassan had been suspended pending his trial following the death of three protesters. The police officer in charge was Kamal Aqmool, a recent arrival.

  “The one that stutters,” Moswen added sourly.

  Al-Shamy clenched his teeth but remained calm. As he reversed at speed down the broken sidewalks, trying to extricate himself out of a smoky cul-de-sac, his phone rang. He tossed the handset to Moswen, ordering him to answer. But as his assistant did so, his face was drained of its remaining color. It was the editor of News Night, the BBC’s primetime news program.

  She wanted confirmation that two bodies and a treasure had been found in a previously unknown chamber in Cheops.

  Al-Shamy cursed and slammed his fist against the steering wheel. Above them, the rotor blades of a helicopter forged a path through the dust and smoke towards the pyramids.

  It took all night to extract the bodies, under the cool supervision of police chief Kamal Aqmool.

  First, a robotic high-pressure water jet, borrowed from the army's bomb squad, cut through the limestone. The stone was porous and easily cut and all was progressing well. Al-Shamy was told that the damage to the building fabric would me minor. That did not stop him from pacing the length of the Queen's Chamber agitatedly. But soon, it was discovered that the block was too thick, diminishing the efficacy of the water jet. As the night marched on, precision work gave way to bludgeoning. The remaining stone was hacked and hammered away in desperation.

  Al-Shamy’s anger mounted, flinching with each blow as if it was an assault on his own body. He had not opposed it, though. The damage to the last remaining Wonder of the World of which he was the custodian may be horrific and irreversible. But the visceral, life-long urge to discover what lay on the other side was so much more powerful. A little before dawn, rubble from the four-ton stone block through which the tunnel was cut, lay strewn across the passage to the Queen's Chamber. The wall was finally breached, and what was behind was, at last, accessible.

  And neither Moswen, nor Al-Shamy, nor Kamal Aqmool, nor any witness there that night would ever forget the sight that the ruins revealed.

  Once the dust settled, it revealed a room about twenty-three feet long and seven feet wide. The walls were bare, unadorned, without inscription. The floor was entirely covered with a very fine powder of white limestone, a result of the breakthrough. Under this snow-like blanket, a man was lying on his back, along the long axis of the room.

  He was naked. The limestone dust covered his black hair, a tattoo on his stomach and a large wound on his chest. It was barely visible, but his body had begun to decompose. Around his body, flowers were already dried and rotted.

  Beside him, the body of a woman moved with slight and almost imperceptible jolts, unconscious, but as if in a fever, every so often emitting a soft but tortured moan. Her body was also naked, also tattooed with the same motif, and extremely thin. She was wrapped in a shroud of the same white powder that formed a fragile film over her long, gray hair. One of the paramedics pried open the woman’s eyelid; the iris was emerald green.

  As the stretcher-bearers tried to move her body, Al-Shamy entered the room. But he barely looked at the bodies. Instead, his eyes zeroed in on an object lying in a corner, near the opening. He walked towards it, but the police chief's hand gripped the archeologist's thin arm and held him fast.

  “Let me go,” Al-Shamy spat, glaring at Aqmool.

  “I cannot let you in before the f-f-forensic team has done their job,” the policeman said calmly.

  Silence settled between them. The police chief was tall and slight, and his manners betrayed a western education. His grip was firm, and his arms were discreetly toned and muscular. His good looks could have belonged to any of the famous TV actors, and only a slight stutter disturbed this perfect picture.

  “How dare you? Do you know who I am?” Al-Shamy erupted, quaking with anger.

  “With all due respect, doctor,” Aqmool began.

  But then he saw what was shining in the corner of the room. He motioned to one of his colleagues to collect it.

  “You'll have plenty of time for your inspections when we're done.”

  “And that? Where are you taking that?” Al-Shamy demanded, pointing at a pharaonic mask the policeman was carefully placing into a black plastic bag.

  “It is evidence,” Aqmool replied.

  Al-Shamy gritted his teeth and looked right at the police chief.

  “And how long will that… that circus take?”

  “One week. Or more.”

  “And the pyramid will have to remain closed?”

  “D-d-d-efinitely.”

  “One week? We'll see about that.” Al-Shamy turned to his assistant, “Moswen, you stay here and make sure that these idiots do not damage the rest.” He faced the police chief again.

  “You do realize, Aqmool, that it's your history that you've ransacked here? And do you know what's left of our country without its history?”

  “We saved the life of a–” the policeman began.

  “A woman?” Al-Shamy cut him off. “Hundreds have died since your gang turned this country upside down in the name of revolution, so spare me the heroics. Egypt is already in ruins.” He gestured towards the rubble. “These stones are all that we have left so that the world does not spit on us. That's all that's left of our pride.”

  Aqmool remained in the Queen's Chamber. The archeologist contorted his body to make his way out along the passage. The paramedics followed the same path with the stretcher.

  But then, Aqmool saw Al-Shamy stop, turn around and look behind him at the woman lying on the stretcher. Before anybody could intervene, Al-Shamy had pushed the medic aside and removing the blanket protecting her. He placed both hands on the victim's n
eck, and immediately her moans grew louder.

  Aqmool ran, but by the time he reached the stretcher, the archeologist had already removed his hands. He had not hurt her, but only wiped away the thick layer of dust from her neck and shoulders to reveal a strange, embossed pattern that glittered and shimmered as the woman’s chest shuddered.

  A necklace of the finest gold filigree and lapis lazuli cascaded over her neck and shoulders, setting alight the pupils of the two men that gazed down upon her.

  15

  The man with the gold earring walked along the corridors of the Egyptian Museum. He did not hurry, but did not stroll either. He climbed the steps with the calm air of someone who knew where he was going: Room 3, North Wing. The farthest room from the lobby one floor down.

  As he passed one of the guards dozing on a chair, he waved. The guard greeted him, watched him for a few seconds, then returned to his sleepy passivity. The museum did not often get visitors like the man with the gold earring. He wandered about like a regular, always alone. But he was not Egyptian. His complexion was caramel, like most Cairns, with light brown European eyes, and facial features that hinted at West African origins. Well into his fifties, but with a straight back, he was wearing a faded black suit that, once, had been expensive; now it was wrinkled and shapeless.

  Only the gold earring shimmered anew under the museum’s spotlights.

  Two life-size statues guarded the entrance to his destination. There were only about a dozen visitors in the large room. In the past, there was always a crowd of people so dense that one could barely get a glimpse of the display case. The most one could hope for was a fleeting glimpse stolen from over the heads of the tourists. But that was before the revolution. The man had not known that time. He had arrived when everyone was already running away.

  He lingered at the edge of the gallery and waited for the space in front of the display case to become free. He looked down at the grooves of the stone tiles. He knew them by heart, and where the natural pattern formed a V, he placed the end of his worn shoe, the one where the leather was slightly stained. He put his other foot next to it, perfectly parallel to the stone's joint. Then he raised his head and looked straight ahead, locking his eyes with those of one of the most famous kings in human history.

  Tutankhamen.

  The world’s love affair with ancient Egypt began here, with a treasure so vast it was the stuff of dreams, a gift from the gods beyond to the living to feed their hunger for gold and all things precious. The teenage pharaoh went into death with as much luxury as he had possessed in life, as witnessed by the one thousand seven hundred objects of his funerary adornment. The kings of Egypt of the Eighteenth Dynasty were no longer interred with their queens, concubines, foremen and servants as their ancestors before had been.

  But, in their place, Tutankhamen took with him four hundred and thirteen ushabtis, the figurines that represented them. Games, hunting weapons and furniture were also found in his tomb, along with his lion-legged throne and the nested caskets, one in gilded wood set with semi-precious stones and the other in solid gold. And the object that crowds flew from all around the word to see and that had become part of the pantheon of universally recognizable images ever since that suffocating summer of 1922:

  Tutankhamen’s golden funeral mask.

  With his nemes head-cloth of alternating bands of gold and blue glass to match the lapis lazuli, quartz and obsidian of his eyes, Tutankhamen was more than a treasure. He was a physical link to those remote and dazzling days when Egypt had been at the center of the world.

  The man looked at the mask in its fortified display case for a long time. He stood motionless, as if wanting to pay homage. Then he opened his shirt to reveal a small compact camera resting on his coffee-colored torso. The guard saw it, breathed deeply and turned away. Photos were strictly forbidden.

  Click.

  The guard did not move from his seat and continued to look to the other side of the gallery. The man with the gold earring shuffled around to the left side of the case, placing his feet on yet another imaginary mark.

  Click.

  He repeated the sequence on the remaining sides of the case.

  Click. Click.

  After covering the camera with his shirt once last time, he left as he had come, bowing to the guard who was too intent on biting a fingernail to notice.

  16

  “Show me this m-m-m-map,” Aqmool said in English.

  He was standing in his white police chief uniform, his beret on the desk in front of him between rumpled files and stained coffee cups.

  “It's not a map, it's a plan, and it's in the computer you confiscated,” Max replied defensively.

  He had answered in Arabic. Max spoke German, English, French, and Arabic fluently, and had used the local dialect hoping the cop would take him seriously. Aqmool shouted for one of his flunkies to retrieve Max's equipment from the evidence locker down the hall.

  Max sighed. It was eleven o'clock in the morning. He had not slept for twenty-eight hours, and he was already sweating in the heat. In his unkempt state and apparent disdain for authority, Max may have looked a rebel, but the truth was he had always lived by the rules. He didn’t do drugs or booze and his friends always teased him that girls were the last thing on his mind. Which was incorrect, but Max had never felt the need to set any record straight. All that mattered to him was his pyramid, and the fierce debates he frequently had with his tutors on the subtler points of architectural theory, revealed an extraordinary tenacity, and, when pushed, even temerity.

  But in front of this policeman, in the decrepit police station, Max was in alien territory.

  Water-green paint peeled off in chunks from the walls and fell to the floor where it collected in the corners of the rooms. Fetid aromas and stale, hot air flowed between the iron bars, leaving behind a grimy film on the once gleaming gold frames that showcased the smiles of the new men in power. Computers were slow, staff were frenzied and he could hear shouts in the street. Max tried to drive out the images of violence he had seen in the press, and replace them with what his own experience over the years: Egyptians were the most welcoming people on the planet. But try as he might, this morning he could not shake an inescapable fact:

  He was scared.

  The assistant arrived with Max's stuff. It had been confiscated when the police came to Giza, a few minutes after the guide had expelled them all. Together with Florence the pink-haired girl and the film crew, he had spent part of the night in the police hut at Giza and the rest on hard benches. All of their equipment had been taken, but Florence had got word to her boss at the BBC, and the cameraman had managed to conceal a USB thumb-drive with all the images from inside the pyramid, including those taken by the thermal camera. That concealed key made him nervous; he had something to hide. The policeman in front of him did not look like a torturer, though. Who ever heard of a stammering executioner who looked like a soap opera star?

  Aqmool slid the laptop towards Max. A few clicks later, Max made two drawings appear on the screen.

  One showed the corridor leading to the Queen's Chamber as everybody knew it: a simple pathway leading from the larger hall to the smaller Queen's Chamber. But the other, drawn in red to show the differences with the original, described a very different space: a corridor almost twice as wide, and serving a total of twelve chambers on each side. Each chamber was precisely the same size as the chamber they had discovered the previous night, now called Room X. The drawing suggested that the narrowness of the existing passage was due to the presence of the massive blocks that served to close off the chambers.

  Aqmool stared at the screen for a long time.

  Max wriggled in his chair, and before the policeman could speak, he blurted out, “That’s four years of work. If you want to know how I got there, then keep scrolling down, there are more than three hundred pages–”

  “Who has seen this d-d-drawing?” Aqmool interrupted.

  “My teachers at the university, m
y friends, and the SCA of course. I sent them the documents with my application for the permit.”

  “When?”

  “Six or seven months ago. It’s all in there.”

  Max reached for his laptop back, but Aqmool pulled it out of reach.

  “Mr. Hausmann, what were you d-d-doing at Giza?”

  “That's what I tried to tell your colleagues. Someone from the SCA – I didn’t get their name – called me on my cell phone to tell me that my permit application for the GPR reading had been approved.” Max could see the doubt in his interrogator’s face and clasped his hands together to steady his nerves. “You have my cell phone, you can check the calls, the call came in this morning at about ten.”

  “We d-d-did,” Aqmool replied slowly. “The call did not come from the SCA.”

  “Well, who then?”

  “Perhaps you can t-t-tell me?”

  Aqmool’s unfriendly smile made the hairs rise on the back of Max’s neck. “How could I? You guys are the ones who are supposed to trace the calls?”

  Max’s fear was giving way to frustration and anger.

  “I assure you, Mr. Hausmann, there is no need to get upset. If I have kept you here, it is simply because I need your help.” Aqmool took a deep and uneasy breath and looked right into Max's eyes. “I have two victims on my hands. I do not know who they are, what they were doing there, or if anyone else was involved in getting them into the pyramid. But that's for later. First of all, what I would like to know is how such a thing is even possible. It took an entire night, advanced equipment and six men to break through that wall. My men just called to tell me that they have tested the whole length of the walls of that passage and they are convinced they are all of the same material and thickness. Same for the floor and the ceiling. My forensic experts are telling me that the last time these blocks were moved was three thousand years ago.” He paused to scan Max's face. “Two victims are found in a completely closed room, with no exit except for a mouse hole. How is that possible, Mr. Hausmann? In your work, is there a solution?”