Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Caroline Vermalle

  “Not in this document, no,” Max hesitated. His sentence was still in suspense, and Aqmool had felt it.

  “In another maybe?”

  What was the point of being secretive? Max thought. At that moment, all he wanted was to go back home to London. He cleared his throat and said, “We’re not the only ones being bothered by tomb raiders and looters. The ancient Egyptians faced the same problem. So they used simple mechanisms that enabled them to seal the passages, using large blocks of stone. Imagine a huge block placed on a slanted surface, and held back by beams and wedges; this is what we found in the large gallery. Removing the beam can be done quite easily without equipment, then the block slips and seals the passage. Once it’s sealed, though, it is virtually impossible to remove it. But the problem with this idea…” Max stopped, as if lost in thought.

  “Yes?” the policeman asked impatiently.

  “Well, the problem is that this limestone block does not fit in the passage. It's impossible.”

  “So there is another passage elsewhere.”

  “Or it's magic,” Max joked, but Aqmool did not laugh. “I did do some more recent work, which I did not communicate to the SCA,” Max conceded, becoming serious again. “That's why I was there yesterday. Not to prove the presence of the void behind the wall that you destroyed but to prove the existence of another void. Below the Queen's Chamber. The layout of the paving stones is inconsistent; some stones intersect others, joints that only the original builders of the pyramid could have made. In 1986, the electricity company made a microgravimetry analysis–”

  Aqmool made a rolling motion with his hand, indicating that Max should move on from the detail of this thesis.

  “In short,” Max continued, “I have enough evidence to think that the slabs hide a descent to a passage under the Queen's Chamber.”

  “These slabs on the floor, in the Queen's Chamber, it's easy to move them?”

  “Not at all. They must weigh several hundred pounds.”

  “So let's say that the victims took the underpass and were interred in the way you describe. To raise the slabs from the floor of the Queen's Chamber, we would need just as many men and as much equipment as we did to break through to Room X?”

  “Yes,” Max said, wringing his hands. “Yes, absolutely, and their displacement would have left traces. If I could go back–”

  The look the policeman gave him stopped him. Max realized at that moment that Aqmool had not stammered during their last exchange. Or had he only just not noticed? Without this anomaly that made him more human, the policeman suddenly became much more menacing. Max swallowed, and another wave of anguish washed over him.

  Aqmool flicked open a file, from which he pulled Max's passport. He put it on the desk, but before Max could grab it, he covered it with his hand.

  “Last question,” he said, looking straight into Max’s eyes. “The greatest experts have been working on the hypothesis of secret chambers for at least two hundred years. They have found nothing. And you, a student, not even an Egyptologist, you succeed where they failed. Why?”

  With enormous effort, Max held his gaze. If ever he had to be convincing, it was now.

  “Maybe because I'm not interested in history, Sir. I do not see in the pyramid the work of exalted super-humans, inspired by life after death, the gods, astrology, telluric energy or whatever. I do not see treasure, nor eternity, nor hidden symbols. I see artisans trying to build an ambitious structure so that it stands up. I see the skill of masons, builders, architects. I also see their mistakes, the consequences of these mistakes and how they rectified them. I see men. It's much more interesting than seeing gods. And apparently, much more productive.”

  Aqmool smiled and remained silent for a few seconds. He seemed to hesitate.

  “I am going to ask you to stay in Egypt for a while. Is that clear?”

  “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Max said, his voice shaking slightly.

  “Officially, yes. But you are also one of the few people who can help me, and that's between you and me. I will do my best to get your p-p-passport back to you as soon as possible.”

  At that moment, a veiled young woman put her head through the doorway. She made a short apology at the interruption and placed an opaque plastic folder on Aqmool’s desk before disappearing the way she had come. Only a single Post-it note, protruding from the side of the folder, was visible.

  But before Max had a chance to take in any more, the policeman was already getting up. The interview was over. As he was about to leave, Max asked the question he had been dying to ask since the beginning of the interview.

  “How is the girl?”

  “Her condition is s-s-stable,” Aqmool replied, his even tone gave nothing away. “Goodbye.”

  He showed Max to the door and out into the corridor before returning to his office and closing the door again.

  When Max left the building, his retrieved gear under his arm, the midday light made him wince. He was dirty and hungry and exhausted. Where to now? Just then, a black-and-white taxi of dubious roadworthiness appeared in front of him.

  It was Florence. “Can I give you a lift back to your hotel?”

  Max accepted gladly and swung his gear into the smashed trunk of the car. When he sat down next to her on the faux leather seat, she stared at him. They had spent most of the night before talking, mostly because there was nothing else to do as they waited to be interviewed by the police. They had only known each other less than twenty-four hours, and yet they seemed like old friends.

  “So? Did they return your passport?”

  “Nope.”

  “Perfect,” Florence said smiling.

  “Perfect? Are you kidding?”

  “Well, I was worried that you would make a run for it and leave me here, all alone,” she retorted, melodramatically raising her wrist to her forehead as if about to faint.

  “Not funny,” Max said, although he was smiling, despite himself.

  “Anyway, passport or no passport, it’s been decided: you'll stay here, all expenses paid.”

  Max stared at her.

  “The BBC has come to the rescue,” said Florence, laughing. “You and I are to team up. What do you say?”

  But before he could answer, she continued, any trace of humor in her voice vanished.

  “I just received a tip,” she whispered in his ear so that the driver would not overhear. “Information that the cops don’t have. If it's true, this thing is just explosive.”

  “Where did you get this tip?”

  “A guy we are on our way to meet. You don’t mind a little detour, do you?”

  Max was too tired to press for more information. He had used all his reserves to deal with Aqmool and was too worn out to care about anything that did not threaten his very existence. As he looked at Florence, a smile once more upon her face, he thought that this did not fall into that category and so offered no further resistance as the taxi plunged into the chaotic streets of Cairo.

  Aqmool opened the plastic folder that the secretary had slipped onto his desk. Inside was an old-fashioned issue of the American edition of People, the celebrity magazine. He frowned and opened the page marked with a Post-It note. He scanned the pictures of a celebrity wedding, before bringing his eyes to rest on the official photograph of the bride and groom. He immediately recognized the face of the man as belonging to the corpse they had retrieved from the pyramid.

  The woman, however, he could not be sure.

  But then he saw the necklace of gold and lapis lazuli draped over her neck and shoulders.

  The victims were Seth and Jessica Pryce.

  17

  At the nurses’ station of the American Hospital of Cairo, excitement was at fever pitch.

  Everyone was talking, at the same time, about the arrival of the new patient in room 12. The motherly figure of the chief nurse, Joanne McClellan, surveyed the gaggle of junior nurses from behind her half-moon glasses. At fifty-two years old, she had see
n enough to at least give the impression of being above the gossip. But even Joanne could not suppress the faintest of thrills as she penned down in neat letters the name of her latest charge on the admission form. The police had confirmed her identity a quarter of an hour earlier.

  Jessica Pryce.

  Her staff respected Joanne and feared her in equal measure, and she wouldn’t let anything change that, but she still couldn’t resist the smallest of satisfied smiles. News had already got around: she was responsible for a celebrity. She could almost recite, verbatim, the well-thumbed tabloid articles from a few weeks earlier, that had been retrieved for the occasion:

  JESSICA AND SETH PRYCE GO MISSING ON HONEYMOON

  A helicopter carrying Jessica Pryce, 22, and mining magnate Seth Pryce, 35, was declared missing on May 26 near Mexico City. The newlywed couple (see previous article), was reported to be on honeymoon.

  The helicopter, a Hughes MD500 from TourMexVIP, took off from the exclusive O Hotel's private heliport in Mexico City. All contact with the aircraft was lost at 08:53 am, ten nautical miles after take-off. Mexico’s Minister of the Interior and Justice confirmed that it did not arrive at the planned destination.

  The only people on board were the couple and their pilot.

  “The Mexican Consulate has informed the Pryce family and the Chairman of the Board that Seth Pryce, CEO and President of Pryce Ore Inc., and his wife are currently missing. We have no additional information,” a spokesman said Friday according to a press release quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

  Seth Pryce, a self-made man whose personal fortune was estimated by Forbes magazine at $ 1.2 billion, is responsible for the turning around of Pryce Ore Inc., from a small platinum mine in South Africa into one of the most powerful multinational mining conglomerates in the world. A keen art and antiques collector, Pryce is also a well-known philanthropist: he recently announced that, upon his death, he would be bequeathing most of his fortune to charitable causes in the fields of art and conservation. He also made a substantial donation of land in Vietnam to the HUMANITAS Foundation to enable the establishment of a Museum of Asian Art.

  As rescue teams continued to search for the remains of the helicopter over the weekend, Gigi Desroches, Jessica Pryce's aunt, was quoted in the Guardian: “I still have hope that Jessica is alive.”

  The accompanying photos showed the happy couple and their whirlwind romance, on a yacht in Monaco or the streets of New York. With her blue eyes hidden behind designer sunglasses, her long, wavy blonde hair and oval face beaming with the light of her twenty-two years, Jessica Pryce née Desroches always managed a generous smile with just the right amount of shyness.

  Her body, with its generous curves and long legs, had a carefree vitality. Everything about her was vibrant, yet refreshingly natural, almost ordinary. She was perfectly cast in the role of the regular girl who came out of nowhere to marry the billionaire – and readers couldn’t get enough of her story. The public seemed genuinely delighted for the lovebirds.

  Joanne sighed and made her way to Room 12. In the corridor, she thought she had never seen a billionaire before. She wondered what it was like, to never have to worry about bills, or things breaking down. To have everything you wanted and enough left over to be able to give it to people who needed it, too. But then if this girl had not had so much, would she still have ended up the ghost that now lay before her?

  The white sheets could not hide the outline of Jessica Pryce’s emaciated body. Her hair had turned gray and cluttered the pillow in dirty locks. Her chest was no longer buxom but hollow, her long and slender neck stained by many small bruises, her lips cracked. Her whole body was covered in cuts and abrasions. Her fingers, especially, were severely grazed; it was said that she had tried to scrape away at the stone with her bare hands. As if she ever had a chance to escape. It was said that the room had no exit. For all intents and purposes, Jessica Pryce had been buried alive.

  Joanne steadied herself and inhaled deeply, as if gasping for air. She placed the girl’s file at the foot of the metal bed. She checked the machines and tubes that connected Jessica to life support. She went through her routine, in precise gestures, practiced and perfected over thirty years. Coma patients were part of her job. A job that she did well, as everyone here knew.

  But what they knew less well was that over time, Joanne had acquired a certain sort of gift.

  When those patients arrived, Joanne only had to spend a few minutes alone with them to know if they would ever make it. Over the years she had applied herself and sharpened her senses, so that educated guesses were transformed into faithful certainties.

  Now all she had to do was be with them, forgot her own mortality, and in the serenity of that moment, she knew.

  She could not remember the last time she had been wrong.

  But with Jessica Pryce, for the first time in years, she could not say.

  And that puzzled her.

  If the file at the end of the bed was anything to go by, there was little hope. Doctors, including the neurosurgeon, had found that the neocortex, seat of consciousness, thoughts and emotions, was as good as dead. The encephalogram too was almost flat. Moreover, no-one could explain the sheer speed of her physical decline. Even prolonged stays in airless depths, such as the accidents experienced by miners, did not usually have these physiological consequences. The doctors theorized about the possibility of a rare bacterial infection due to the proximity of a decomposing corpse that could, perhaps, have caused an aggressive form of meningitis.

  But nobody was sure, and Joanne was confused.

  There was something about Jessica Pryce that complicated her intuition.

  Like a whisper on the edge of her thoughts. Like something tugging at her soul.

  Tiredness, Joanne thought. She had done night duty a lot lately, as well as her normal daily hours. She berated herself for spending so much time with coma patients, especially now that the hospital was so busy. Especially lately, with all these young people falling like flies. There were so many other people who needed her help today. The matron signed, looked at her watch and walked towards the door.

  Then she heard a noise, coming from the bed.

  She turned around.

  Jessica Pryce’s green eyes were wide open, watching Joanne.

  The nurse hurried to take a pulse and check the monitor of the electrocardiogram. The heart was still beating, and she was still unconscious. A spasm, probably. Her soft, plump hand closed Jessica’s eyelids. She inhaled again and made for the door.

  When she left the room, the lifeless green gaze still in her mind’s eye, she wondered: weren’t her eyes blue in the magazine?

  But she didn’t have the time to think about it further: she came face to face with a thick-set man with heavy, pink jowls, a chestnut beard, and black, thick-rimmed glasses. He was dressed too warmly in a dark coat, and the effects were evident in the sweat that tumbled in rivulets down the sides of his blue-veined nose and cheeks.

  “Room twelve,” he said looking at the number on the door before turning to Joanne and asking with a strange accent. “Are visits allowed?”

  Joanne flattened her matron’s skirt, pulled herself up to her full, imposing height, and replied with absolute authority, “Certainly not, and you should have been told as much at the reception. Are you family?”

  “Thank you,” the man said before turning on his heels.

  Joanne watched him walk away. His bald head glistened in the overhead lights, a soft hat clutched in his hands behind his back. Small, pale hands, like those of a girl. She felt an immediate repulsion as she caught the scent that he left in his wake, more mineral than human. She considered asking the police for a security guard, but the way things were now, that would be more dangerous than doing nothing. She would tell her staff to pay special attention, and they knew better than to let her down.

  Why was it that it was at that precise moment that Joanne felt the hard shell that she had constructed around her over thirty ye
ars of working with the dead and dying, begin to crack? And through that crack, an unexpected emotion snuck in and grabbed hold of her heart. Now a single, clear feeling was spreading through her entire being.

  She did not want the girl to die.

  18

  Florence glanced at her watch, gritting her teeth. Cairo's traffic was hellish. They were late, and she wasn't even sure how long her contact would wait. They drove through the labyrinth of crowded streets, past ancient mosques, trying to find their way through crowds that flocked to the Khan el-Khalili, the oldest bazaar in the world. For Florence, closeted away in a luxury hotel in the Garden City, this was the real Cairo, with its scents, its colors, its life ebullient despite the tremors of a revolution that rumbled beneath the surface.

  Max dozed beside her; the heat, the traffic jams and the haunting voice of Umm Kulthum coming from the cracked speakers of the car stereo, had gotten the better of him. Florence allowed her gaze to linger over him; he was handsome, for sure. She had not seen it straight away, but now, after a night spent talking, getting to know each other and sharing these rushes of adrenaline, something had flourished. At first, she felt nothing more than idle curiosity, but that had morphed into an unexpected complicity, like a couple of kids up to no good, trying not to get caught. But this, in turn, had given way to something else beneath her skin. Desire.

  Not now, she thought, shifting her focus to those other things bubbling up inside her head.

  First, the great pyramid of Cheops contained a secret chamber, and she alone possessed the images of it. All you could see was a hole in a limestone wall, but the footage had already been sold by the BBC to media outlets everywhere. It had even become a viral sensation on YouTube.