The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET

by Scott Mariani

  Paxton’s associates were only small fry in the great scheme of the illegal arms trade, but the display was impressive. There was everything from small handguns to submachine guns to full-size assault weapons to RPG launchers. Everything was new, oiled and shiny under the lights. On the far side of the bench, a row of crates were filled with ammunition of various types. The last in the row was stacked with 40mm grenades. On the concrete floor, a large canvas holdall was unzipped and waiting.

  ‘You like what you see?’ the German said.

  Ben didn’t reply. Conscious of the men’s eyes on him, he ran his hand along a cluster of military handguns and picked up an Israeli-made Jericho. 15-round magazine, 9mm calibre. Simple, rugged and practical. He nodded to the men and the gun was placed in the open holdall.

  But Ben knew he was going to need more than a pistol this time. His brush with Kamal had already shown him the kind of people competing to find the treasure. He walked slowly along the length of the bench, assessing each weapon in turn. He needed firepower, but he couldn’t walk about Cairo with a full-size military rifle.

  Then he saw exactly what he wanted, and picked it up.

  ‘The FN F2000 assault rifle,’ the German said. ‘Good weapon. 5.56 NATO, high-capacity magazine. Ultra-compact bullpup design, inbuilt scope and on-board fire control system computer with laser rangefinder. Underbarrel 40mm grenade launcher.’

  ‘I don’t need a guided tour,’ Ben said, and the German shut up. Ben turned the short, stubby weapon over in his hands. It was a wild, space-age design, plasticky, brutal and ugly. But it was perfect for what he needed. He nodded. One of the Egyptians took it from him and placed it in the holdall with the pistol.

  ‘OK, that’ll do. Can we go now?’ Kirby said.

  ‘Not yet,’ Ben answered. He picked up a small, snubby .38-calibre revolver from the end of the table and handed it to Kirby. ‘This is called a Ladysmith. It’s yours.’

  ‘I don’t want a gun,’ Kirby said, wide-eyed. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘You’re getting one. We’re partners, remember. And with that, you won’t blow your own foot off or put a bullet in me. Even a child could work it.’

  Some of the arms dealers were sniggering quietly. Ben snatched the little pistol back out of Kirby’s hands, tossed it to the guy with the holdall and it was added to the collection.

  ‘Fifty rounds for each pistol,’ Ben said to the German. ‘Two hundred for the rifle. And ten of the 40mm grenades.’

  ‘You are expecting a small war, it seems?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Will there be anything else?’ the German asked mock-politely

  ‘That should do it,’ Ben said. ‘You know who to send the bill to. Our friend the colonel.’

  Five minutes later, Ben and Kirby were hooded and riding back towards the city in the SUV with the holdall between them on the seat. The drive back didn’t seem to take as long, and then their hoods were removed again and they were dropped at the pickup point on Sharia Talaat Harb. The men didn’t even glance at them as they got out. The car took off and disappeared into the traffic.

  ‘Well, thank you for that experience,’ Kirby muttered. ‘It was perfectly charming. Hoods over our heads. Men with guns. And now we’re going around Cairo with a veritable arsenal. Is all this really necessary?’

  Ben hefted the heavy holdall over his shoulder and started heading towards the car. ‘Welcome to my world,’ he muttered, to nobody in particular.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  By midday they were blasting back out of the city, heading south down the west bank of the Nile. The Shogun was fast and powerful, and Ben nailed it for seventeen kilometres through the lush but narrow green belt that edged the great river and had sustained Egypt for thousands of years. Then, with Kirby navigating, he swung right, and, a little way further on, the tarmac ended abruptly at the edge of the desert. They rolled across the sand for a few hundred yards, and the ancient ruins came into view.

  ‘This is it,’ Kirby said. ‘The pyramid complex and mortuary temple of Sahure, and where we find our second clue.’

  Dust rose and drifted around the Shogun as they stepped down from the air-conditioned atmosphere of the car and into the vicious midday sun. Ben shielded his eyes from the white glare of the sand and surveyed the landscape around him.

  The place was a field of rubble. The four clustered pyramids looked more like towering slag-heaps than the geometric perfection of those at Giza. It was hard to imagine that at one time, thousands of years ago, this must have been a magnificent and proud temple. Now it was nothing more than a sad, lonely ruin. Beyond it, heading west, there was nothing but arid wilderness all the way to Libya, then Algeria and the Western Sahara.

  ‘No tourists, do you notice?’ Kirby said. ‘This place isn’t popular with them. They’re all too busy off gawking at the Sphinx. Which means we’re free to poke around undisturbed for as long as we need to.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Fortune and glory,’ Kirby answered. ‘Your fortune, my glory.’

  Ben opened up the back of the Shogun, unzipped the holdall and took out the Jericho and a box of 9mm rounds. He quickly loaded, cocked and locked it and slipped it into his jeans.

  ‘Can’t you keep that thing in the bag?’ Kirby asked. ‘It’s making me nervous.’

  ‘Lead the way,’ Ben said.

  They walked among the rubble. With their backs to the greenery of the Nile banks, and apart from the intense blue sky and the burning sun above them, it could almost have been a lunar landscape. Rocks and stones lay scattered for hundreds of yards all around them. Here and there, a solitary pillar stood forlornly, covered in heavily eroded carvings.

  Kirby pointed at the pyramids. ‘Each one houses a different tomb. That one is the pyramid of Nyuserre. That one was for Neferirkare, who died while it was still being built. And that one is Neferefre’s. But the one we’re interested in is that one there. The northernmost of the four and the first to be built on this site, housing the tomb of Sahure-”He who is close to Re”. That, I’m pretty sure, is where we’re going to find what we’re looking for today.’

  Ben followed as Kirby led the way through the sea of sand and rubble towards the pyramid of Sahure. They passed through a ruined causeway and between a pair of desolate-looking stone columns that looked as if they had once formed part of some grand arch. The original layout of the buildings was barely discernible amid the wreckage.

  The pyramid loomed up overhead as they approached. Up close, the stonework looked dangerously loose, as if it could just dissolve in a giant landslide that would bury them in thousands of tons of rock. Kirby trudged in the deep sand around the edge, looking thoughtful.

  ‘There would have been a whole complex of rooms and chambers here,’ he said, motioning with his hand. ‘This area would have been a huge courtyard, decorated with reliefs showing scenes of Sahure hunting and fishing. And over here would have been a chapel.’ He bent down and picked up a fragment of rock. ‘Limestone. Probably from the ceiling.’ He stepped a few yards to his left, gazing around his feet at smashed red granite floor stones. ‘And that would have been an Offering Hall.’ He pointed.

  Ben followed the line of his finger, but all he saw was empty space.

  ‘Over there would have been a huge false doorway,’ Kirby went on unabated. ‘Through which the ancient Egyptians believed the spirit of the dead king would come to eat the meals left for him. Everything would have been lined with gold. All stolen by looters a long, long time ago.’

  Ben could feel every second ticking by. ‘But there’s nothing here,’ he said impatiently. ‘It looks like a bomb hit it. It looks like Kuwait City after Saddam Hussein.’

  Kirby didn’t seem to hear. He was deep in thought, gazing around him. ‘It has to be here,’ he muttered. ‘If Morgan found it, it has to be here.’ He stopped and put a finger to his mouth. ‘Maybe we need to go inside the pyramid. Sahure’s is the only one it’s still poss
ible to enter.’

  Ben followed at a distance as Kirby scooted along the pyramid wall and came to the crumbled entrance. The historian started down the steps, dropped to his knees and began scrambling in through the narrow space.

  ‘Watch out for snakes,’ Ben said.

  ‘Give me a break,’ Kirby snapped back.

  ‘Scorpions too.’

  ‘Don’t be such a Cassandra.’

  ‘Cassandra happened to be right about the Trojan horse.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I happen to know there are no snakes here.’

  Ben shrugged and said no more. Kirby wriggled away out of sight into the passage. Ben settled on a boulder and lit a cigarette. He filled his lungs with the smoke, let it trickle out of his lips and watched it tail away on the air.

  Twenty minutes later, he heard wheezing and gasping as the historian re-emerged, his face red and shiny, his clothes covered in dust and his hair full of cobwebs. Kirby stood up stiffly and leaned against the side of the pyramid, recovering his breath.

  ‘Well?’ Ben said.

  ‘Zilch. There’s nothing in there.’

  Ben turned away and scanned the desolate landscape. His guts were churning. Somewhere out there, Zara was being held hostage. This couldn’t go on. The days were going to tick by until the sands had run out of the hour-glass. And the rest was unimaginable.

  He turned and walked away.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Kirby called after him.

  ‘This isn’t leading us anywhere,’ Ben replied. ‘I’m going back to the car.’

  Kirby followed him along the causeway, protesting. ‘You can’t just walk away. It’s here. I know it’s here. Morgan found something and, if he could find it, I’m going to find it too.’

  They’d reached the two pillars at the end of the causeway when Ben turned back to face him. ‘You don’t even know what you’re looking for. Maybe Morgan thought he found something. How do you know he even did?’

  Kirby leaned against one of the pillars, wiping sweat from his brow. ‘Christ, it’s hot out here.’

  ‘Don’t move,’ Ben said.

  Kirby looked up sharply. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t move a muscle.’

  ‘Is this some kind of soldier-boy joke?’ Kirby demanded, turning red.

  Coiling around the base of one of the pillars, camouflaged against the sand as it slithered towards Kirby’s foot, was a large snake. Ben instantly knew what it was. The eyes in the broad, triangular head were black and beady. Above each eye was a horn. Horned viper. One of the deadliest snakes in Africa. Its six-foot length wound slowly around the base of the column. The black forked tongue flickered in and out. It glided over Kirby’s foot.

  Kirby felt the sensation, looked down and saw it. His eyes opened wide in horror, and his face turned from red to deathly white.

  ‘Stay put,’ Ben said quietly. ‘It’ll pass. It’ll only attack if you provoke it.’

  But Kirby was already stamping and dancing around in panic. The snake reared up aggressively. Rasped its coils with the threatening ffffffff sound that said it was about to attack. The triangular head drew back and the long fangs folded out as it prepared to lunge at Kirby’s leg.

  The strike never happened. Ben drew the Jericho from behind his hip and fired, all in one fluid movement. The snake’s head exploded and its body flopped in the sand. Kirby was yelling and screaming as the gunshot echoed across the ruins.

  ‘No snakes around here,’ Ben said. ‘Isn’t that what you told me, Kirby?’ He felt bad about having killed the creature. He stepped over to the limp body and bent down to pick it up and fling it away.

  That was when he noticed that his bullet had chipped a piece out of the stone column behind Kirby, and removed some of the carved markings on it. Ben sighed. A few history books were out of date now.

  He stood up, holding the dead snake in his hands.

  Then he stopped. Let the snake drop, and crouched back down in the warm sand next to the pillar.

  ‘My heart, my heart. Jesus.’ Then Kirby looked down at Ben. ‘What are you doing now?’

  Ben didn’t reply. He ran his fingers over the weathered stone, down from the bullet-chip to the strange carving he’d noticed near the column’s base. It was a little distinct from the other markings on the column, and seemed to be done in a different style.

  There was no doubt about it. ‘I think you need to look at this, Kirby.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look.’ Ben pointed at the markings on the stone.

  ‘I see,’ Kirby said, puzzled. ‘But that’s—’

  ‘Not those, this one. The one lower down, away from the rest.’

  Kirby stared.

  ‘It’s the seal you showed me,’ Ben said. ‘The temple, with the palm trees and the crowned bird.’

  Kirby dropped to his knees next to him. ‘Shit, yes, I see it.’ He carefully brushed sand out of the markings with his finger. Studied them for a few seconds, and turned excitedly to Ben. The snake was forgotten now. ‘You’re right. It’s the seal of Wenkaura. He was here. This is what Morgan must have found.’

  ‘What’s that marking underneath the seal?’ Ben asked.

  Kirby moved closer. ‘It’s pretty worn with age. Looks like a hieroglyph, though.’ He flattened his portly shape out on the sand to inspect it, tracing his finger along the symbols. ‘I’m pretty sure that’s the glyph for a chair, or a seat.’ He looked up. ‘But what does it mean?’

  ‘You tell me. You’re the expert, apparently.’

  ‘There has to be more,’ Kirby said. ‘We should scour the whole place.’

  ‘I thought you’d already done that,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s go. We’ve wasted enough time here.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Move it, expert. You can figure it out.’

  They climbed back in the Shogun. The seat was burning hot against Ben’s back as he fired up the engine and spun the wheels in the sand, bumping away from the pyramid site. They hit the road, windows open, cool air blasting in, and soon the Shogun was speeding northwards between green fields.

  ‘It’s a metaphor,’ Kirby said.

  ‘A metaphor.’

  ‘Got to be. Wenkaura is trying to communicate an idea through that symbol. Something that’s going to lead us to a specific place. Chair. Seat.’ He frowned, pressing his fingers to his temples. ‘Got it. It’s a symbol of authority. Position. You know, like our use of the expression “country seat”. Obvious, really.’

  ‘You’re just grasping at straws, Kirby,’ Ben said as he overtook a slow-moving truck and gunned the big car up the road.

  ‘You have any better ideas?’

  ‘Not yet. But you’re not doing so great yourself. You’re talking bullshit. And I don’t think the ancient Egyptians went in for metaphors.’

  ‘No, listen,’ Kirby insisted. ‘It makes complete sense. We know that Wenkaura, like all High Priests, was a man of very high position and privilege until Akhenaten started demolishing the religious order. He had an estate near Thebes, which is now the city of Luxor. Maybe that’s what Morgan had sussed out. Perhaps he was heading for Luxor.’

  ‘So what do you propose we do, professor?’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that,’ Kirby said testily. ‘I think we need to go to check out Wenkaura’s estate, or what’s left of it. Maybe we’ll find something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know until we get there, do I?’ Kirby snapped.

  Ben was clutching the wheel so tightly that he felt he could almost rip it off the steering column. ‘Seat,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Chair.’ He thought about it.

  And stamped hard on the brake. The Shogun pitched on its suspension and Kirby flopped forwards against his safety belt. The car ground to a halt in the middle of the dusty, empty road.

  ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ Kirby yelled.

  ‘It’s not land or estate,’ Ben said. ‘It’s not a place. It’s not a metaphor.’

  ‘
What?’

  ‘You’re making this more complicated than it is. The answer is simple.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘A seat. An actual seat. As in a chair. As in a throne.’

  Kirby stared for a moment, and burst out laughing. ‘A throne? You mean the king’s throne? You think Wenkaura left a clue on the throne of Akhenaten-his enemy, the heretic? Why would he do such a thing? It would be insane.’

  ‘His own, you idiot. He was a High Priest. He was an important guy, and all through history it’s been traditional that important guys have big chairs to sit in. Plus he would have had all the time in the world to have whatever inscriptions he wanted engraved on it. We need to look for the throne that sat in the temple where Wenkaura presided.’

  Kirby scratched his chin and thought about it. ‘Shit, you know what? You might even be right.’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘So where to now?’

  ‘Somewhere they have a lot of old chairs,’ Ben said.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The Egyptian Museum, central Cairo

  2.45 p.m.

  A short throw from the east bank of the Nile, right in the heart of the city, the grand museum housed Egypt’s largest single collection of priceless artefacts. The sun was beating down on the lawns and palm trees and clipped hedges of Tahrir Square as Ben and Kirby approached the building’s neo-classical façade and walked up the steps to the tall entrance. It was cool and quiet inside, with the hushed solemnity of a cathedral.

  Their footsteps echoed as they walked across the atrium. Giant statues towered up to the high ceiling. All around them were stunning displays of Egypt’s ancient heritage.

  ‘I haven’t been here for years,’ Kirby whispered, gazing in awe around him. ‘You forget just how mind-blowing it is.’

  Under different circumstances, Ben might have agreed with him. But time was pressing. Leaving the historian to wander around, he walked up to the main desk. The attendant sitting behind it was a somber-looking man in his late forties, balding and gaunt. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked softly in English as Ben approached.

  ‘I hope so,’ Ben said. ‘I’m interested in ancient ceremonial chairs, thrones, things like that. Do you have a special exhibit for those?’