‘Behdet? Ethan echoed. ‘Where is that?’
‘It’s the ancient Egyptian name for Edfu, a small ancient settlement five hundred kilometers south of Cairo. If the scribe Tjaneni left clues to his tomb’s location, then that would be the best place to look but there’s nothing but desert out there for thousands of miles. I don’t understand why so many people suddenly want to head out there?’
‘What do you mean, so many people?’ Lopez asked.
‘There were some tourists here earlier, asking questions about the same location. Russians, I think.’
‘They’re ahead of us,’ Ethan said.
‘Anything else?’ Lopez asked Radford.
‘The mastaba or tomb was made in a wadi that “held the heavens in its palm”,’ Radford went on as he read the script, ‘and was three ituru east of Edfu.’
‘How far is that in miles?’ Ethan asked, sensing that they were closing in on their target.
‘About twenty–five miles,’ Radford replied.
Ethan turned to Lopez. ‘With satellite technology we could find that canyon in minutes.’
Lopez snatched the images from Radford and kissed him on the cheek.
‘You’re a star.’
Radford stared at her in bemusement. ‘You’re welcome.’
Lopez followed Ethan as they hurried away, Ethan dialing a number on a fresh and untraceable cell phone Jarvis had given him.
‘We’re ready,’ he said as soon as Jarvis picked up the line. ‘It’s west of Edfu. We’ll need Lucy and Hellerman, and Mitchell too.’
‘Will do,’ Jarvis agreed. ‘We won’t have time to muster a large force or desert vehicles but I’ll have Mitchell leave now and meet you near Karnak. If you can get a ride out as far as you can into the desert, you could make it to the tomb before the Russians.’
‘They’ll need to assemble their men and equipment and get it all into the desert, and that takes time,’ Ethan said. ‘We need to leave now to beat them to it. Send Lucy and Hellerman too, and make sure Mitchell brings weapons and at least one GPS distress beacon in case we’re compromised.’
Ethan shut the phone off and looked thoughtfully out to the south.
‘The Russians will be on the same course if they’ve got information out of Elena,’ Lopez said. ‘They could have crossed the Sinai by now, might even be within a few miles of us.’
Ethan nodded.
‘No time to waste. Let’s go.’
***
XL
Thebes, Egypt,
1407 BCE
Tjaneni walked toward the great temple of Karnak, leaning upon his cane as he moved. The scent of the great deserts and the Nile filled the field of his awareness, the heat of the great sun high above and the sound of people toiling nearby as they heaved great blocks of stone in teams.
Tjaneni sensed but saw none of this, for his sight had long ago abandoned him. He could hear the small entourage of priests who followed him reverentially through the city of Waset toward the immense pillars of the Hypostyle Hall.
Tjaneni wore none of the traditional robes of the high priesthood, for his calling came from a far higher place and warranted absolute secrecy. A phalanx of the Pharaoh’s most feared guards protected the small group as they moved between the pillars, citizens of the kingdom silently moving out of their way and whispering softly to each other. Tjaneni could not quite hear everything, but he could gain some sense of what was being said.
‘Who are they?’
‘What are they doing?’
‘Why are they allowed to enter the dwelling of Amun–Ra and the God–King?’
Tjaneni felt the heat of the sun fade away slightly as the entourage moved into the shade offered by the vast pillars, a hundred and thirty–four of them arranged in sixteen rows. Some were over twenty rods tall with a diameter of three rods, and each weighed hundreds of tons: such was the power and knowledge of the kingdom, wrought and forged in the massive temples and fortresses they had learned to build.
Tjaneni led his priests through the pillars toward the Great Festival Hall, wherein resided the God–King himself, the Pharaoh Amenhotep. The late, great Thutmose III had been succeeded by his son after an incredible fifty–four–year reign. Amenhotep had grown into a wise and just ruler who, after so many seasons of war under his father’s name, had brought peace to the Kingdoms. And that, it had turned out, was why Tjaneni had arrived at Karnak.
Tjaneni led his priests to the Festival Hall and inside. He could sense the air of expectation within, could hear the flaming torches lining the walls, could sense the presence of the King’s guards and the scent of palm oil, fruits and woodsmoke.
Tjaneni paced his approach to the God–King perfectly despite his blindness, and he prostrated himself slowly before the Pharaoh. His priests helped him to his knees as they too got down before Amehotep.
‘Tjaneni,’ the pharaoh said in a soft, deep voice that sounded so much like his father’s, ‘rise and speak with me.’
Tjaneni rose weakly to his feet with the help of his aides, and then he motioned for them to leave. He heard them back away as the Pharaoh motioned for his own entourage to do the same. They retreated as a group until Tjaneni was alone with Amenhotep.
The younger man stood from his throne and moved to Tjaneni’s side, and with one hand the God–King guided him to the throne.
‘Sit, Tjaneni, for you need it more than I.’
There was no mockery in the tone, only the respect that a great King held for the scribe who had accompanied his father on so many wars and campaigns throughout his long reign.
Tjaneni sat gratefully, feeling almost blasphemous as he took the seat of the God–King. Amenhotep rested one hand on Tjaneni’s shoulder as he spoke.
‘It is done?’
Tjaneni nodded, and managed a tired smile. ‘It is done.’
‘The tomb is constructed?’
‘The work is complete, and the builders even now are preparing the tomb for its final occupant,’ Tjaneni assured the Pharaoh.
He heard Amenhotep release a brief sigh of relief. ‘As ever, you have exceeded all that I and my father could have asked of you, wise old Tjaneni. Can your priesthood be trusted with what we know?’
‘They shall take their knowledge with them into the underworld, my King,’ Tjaneni promised, ‘and return it whence it came, to the gods themselves.’
The Pharaoh nodded.
‘Good,’ he said, ‘for it has become too dangerous to the Kingdom for men to know of its location or its power.’
Tjaneni nodded in agreement, not for the first time in awe of Amenhotep’s wisdom and maturity in this, the most difficult decision in the history of the Kingdom and, perhaps, mankind itself.
Thutmose III, Amenhotep’s father, had presided over the greatest series of military victories of any Pharaoh in the history of the Kingdom. He had created the largest empire Egypt had ever seen in no less than seventeen campaigns, and he had conquered from Niya in North Syria to the Fourth Cataract of the Nile in Nubia.
Much of the reason for that success now lay in a tightly sealed wooden crate born aloft by four chosen men of inscrutable courage, and the scribe Tjaneni who had led them across much of the world on Thutmose III’s campaigns with a single object at their head.
The Ark.
When Tjaneni had first encountered the Ark it had taken the lives of two friends most dear to him, all those years ago in the caves near Megiddo. Tjaneni had not then understood the incredible power contained within the Ark, but word of it having incinerated two men who had simply dared to look upon it and almost killed Tjaneni spread quickly through the kindgom.
Under Tjaneni’s guidance, Thutmose III’s army had mounted the fearsome object onto rods and carried it away from the caves. That night, alone inside Thutmose III’s royal tent but with an entire army watching in silence outside, Tjaneni had opened the Ark at the Pharaoh’s bidding.
Despite the crushing fear he felt, Tjaneni had been surprised to find insid
e the Ark not the terrible fire of the gods he had expected, but instead stacks of tablets. Some were made from clay, but others were hewn from raw metal. Fearfully, Tjaneni had reached inside and again been surprised to find them inscribed with hieroglyphics that were familiar enough that he could read them.
Tjaneni had read one, then another, and with a shock of supernatural proportions he had realized what the Ark was: information. Incredible information, almost frightening in its depth and breadth. In one stroke Tjaneni knew how to win the war against the King of Kadesh, how to quell the land of Canaan, how to build things that could never have been built before.
How to crush any civilization with an unstoppable force.
Days later, the army had marched upon King Kadesh’s forces. During the immense Battle of Megiddo, the Ark was born aloft amid the Pharaoh’s banners as the army routed the Canaanites in battle and laid siege to the city. Utterly defeated, the enemy had surrendered shortly after when the Pharaoh’s army had smashed their way into the city and taken the spoils of Canaan.
Magnanimous in victory, Thutmose III had spared the city itself and its citizens, thus winning their gratitude and respect. From that day onward, the army had marched into battle with the Ark aloft before it and had never known defeat throughout the King’s long reign. The legend of the Ark had spread across regions, to the extent that Asiatic armies had been known to flee upon sight of the golden Ark as it was unveiled from beneath a billowing purple veil and held aloft as the Pharaoh’s forces charged into battle. Hushed, fearful whispers in many dialects of the Ark burning entire legions to a crisp, levelling mountains and laying waste to entire regions preceded the Pharaoh’s army wherever it travelled until no King dared stand against Thutmose III.
Those days were long gone now, the Kingdom prosperous and unified, now led by a King with no fear of battle but no stomach for more war after a lifetime of conflict. Amenhotep released Tjaneni’s shoulder and spoke softly.
‘And nobody but the builders know the location of the shrine?’
‘None,’ Tjaneni confirmed, and from his robes he revealed two small clay tablets that he handed to the Pharaoh. ‘This, oh king, is the location of the tomb and the only place it has been written.’
The Pharaoh took the tablets and concealed them beneath his own robes.
‘And they know the consequences of this great trust I place in them?’
‘They welcome it oh King and consider it an honor, as do I. Only one of our number, the elder Taiteh, shall walk away and into the deserts. He shall not return.’
Amenhotep took Tjaneni’s hand and grasped it firmly.
‘This power, it is too much for mortal men and even I fear it, fear what it means for our future for it is only a matter of time before the greed of men brings war to our doorstep. You know this, of how other Kings will covet it, fight wars to behold the ark of the Eye of Horus: it must disappear to prevent more bloodshed. Only the gods themselves were able to bring it here, and only the gods themselves can take it away again. It must remain unfound, buried for all of eternity if necessary. I will ensure that false words are spread of its location across the known world, rumors and whispers that will confound even the bravest and most determined hunter. Let no mortal man ever lay eyes upon it again, for it is not of this earth.’
Amenhotep stepped away from Tjaneni and together they walked around behind the throne. Although he could see almost nothing, his eyes long since blinded by cataracts due to his exposure to the Ark’s fearsome power all those years before, Tjaneni knew when he was in the presence of the supernatural. He could sense the Ark before him, silently radiating its fearsome power.
The high priesthood had taken to engraving hieroglyphics into the Ark’s golden walls, and the form of Anubis, God of the underworld, now crouched atop the lid, but otherwise the Ark was unchanged from when Tjaneni had first found it.
‘Men will search the four corners of the globe for it,’ he whispered as though he too could make the same prophecies that the great oracles could, ‘will fight wars for it, spill blood just as we have spilt blood in their search for power. And all of it, to one day again reach this same decision.’ He turned to Amenhotep. ‘I only hope that a King of your stature makes that decision for them.’
‘Go, Tjaneni,’ Amenhotep said to the scribe, brushing off the compliment. ‘Take your priests and wander into the deserts. Lead them to a safe place where they can never be found, and return the Ark to Horus. I will join you when the time comes, in the afterlife.’
Tjaneni turned and waved for the priests to join him once again.
‘We shall depart after nightfall,’ he promised, ‘and leave no trace of our passing.’
The priests nodded, and Tjaneni addressed them as the Pharaoh and his guard left the Hall.
‘You all know what is expected of us, the fate that awaits us,’ he said. ‘Our time has come, and our entire Kingdom depends on what we do next. We shall travel tonight with the Ark at our head and no army shall ever dare cross us, for our destination is a place where no mortal man can tread, and we shall ever after be lost to history.’
The priests murmured a soft response.
‘Amun,’ they whispered their traditional chant of acquiescence, the word meaning “hidden” or “invisible”, for their work was that of the unknown.
Tjaneni stood by as he listened to the workers veil the Ark and prepare for the journey into the deserts to the west, and he wondered if some day, perhaps thousands of years in the future, men would somehow follow in his footsteps in search of people who had vanished into time itself.
***
XLI
Hierakonpolis,
Kon al–Ahmar
The desert air was cold as the first hint of sunrise appeared across upon the eastern horizon amid thin streamers cloud, the distant mountains glowing pink and orange and a chill wind whispering across the empty wastes.
Ethan crouched on a low hill and scanned the glowing horizon with his binoculars, searching for any sign of the Russians making their way toward the encampment using the blazing sunset as cover. Despite his best efforts he could see no sign of them, and with the dawn less than half an hour away he knew it would become equally difficult for the Russians to locate their camp in the immense darkness. With their Mil–Mi 24 Hind helicopter gunship out of action that left only ground–based detection methods, and in a desert this large the chances of their being located were reasonably low.
‘See anything?’
Lopez crouched alongside him and he shook his head.
‘I haven’t seen any vehicle tracks yet so they’re behind us somewhere. We need to stay dark for now.’
Lopez nodded and shivered, more than aware of the need to avoid giving their position away using any source of heat or light. They had used no open camp fires, Ethan and Mitchell instead digging and lighting a concealed fire–pit and filling it with rocks which, once heated, were used inside sleeping bags to keep them warm through the night. Mitchell had then put out the fire and covered it with sand, the heat from the trapped coals warming the sand beneath them during the long night.
‘You always said you’d like to work in the field,’ Ethan observed as he saw Hellerman working on a laptop.
Hellerman, shivering under a blanket now that the coals beneath them had cooled, winced.
‘This wasn’t what I had in mind,’ he replied, his voice quivering. ‘I’m hungry, cold and my laptop’s almost out of juice. If I wasn’t so damned excited about what we’ve got here I’d probably be in a bad mood. Are you sure we can’t use the vehicles?’
Ethan shook his head as he kicked the dust at their feet.
‘Two family saloons were never going to get far through this sand,’ he replied, the cars hidden the previous afternoon in a wadi ten miles behind them, one of the engines already on the verge of overheating.
‘Come on, let’s get moving.’
Doctor Lucy Morgan’s voice sounded unnaturally loud in the otherwise silent desert as
they broke camp and began walking again. Ethan joined her with Lopez, Mitchell and the others following behind as they trudged through the pre–dawn darkness. To their left Ethan could see the dawn revealing distant hills that shielded them from the modern city of Nekhen, nestled alongside the Nile.
‘This area would have been one of the oldest burial grounds ever constructed in Egypt,’ Hellerman said as he glanced at the map Ethan held, ‘but it’s going to be tough to figure out exactly where the tomb is on foot even with the data we have.’
Ethan nodded as he looked around. The desert was barren, endless dunes and rock mesas, wadis and long–extinct rivers cutting through the terrain. It had taken modern archeologists hundreds of years to locate the tombs of even famous pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings – now they had perhaps an hour or two to achieve the same.
‘Are you sure we’ve got enough terrain here to work with?’ Lopez asked as they walked.
‘We’ll have to skyline ourselves to get enough elevation to see the surrounding area,’ Ethan replied, ‘but yes, I can put us right on Tjaneni’s doorstep using the GPS locator Jarvis gave us.’
‘Then all we have to do is figure out how to knock,’ Lucy Morgan said from beside them. ‘Most tombs were protected with doors of solid rock that weighed several tons, and we don’t have the time to dig our way under or around them.’
Ethan rested his hand on the explosive charges in his backpack. ‘You let us take care of the door.’
Lucy frowned. ‘You’ll be destroying the entrance to a priceless tomb that may contain artefacts of immense historical and archeological importance to…’
‘Thanks for the lecture Doctor Jones,’ Lopez interrupted, ‘but if we don’t get in there before our Russian friends arrive, there won’t be anything left for you to pore over.’
Ethan said nothing more as the little group trudged through the endless deserts, the sky to the east growing swiftly brighter as they travelled. Here on the equator the sun rose with startling speed and set just as quickly. Ethan watched the terrain around him and waited until there was enough light for him to see the tips of the hills to their west bathed in golden sunlight before he made his move.
The Genesis Cypher (Warner & Lopez Book 6) Page 27
