Sixtine

by Caroline Vermalle

  It was Andrew who had connived and weaselled his way into the first unit to film the press conference on Nefertiti, interview El-Shamy and get the scoop. Florence had been outmanoeuvred, and here she was with the second unit, the B-team, lumbered with the task of shooting the pyramid at night. Using archive pictures would have been much less costly. After all, it was not as though the pyramid of Cheops had changed a lot since the last time it had been filmed. And to top it all, she was claustrophobic.

  She looked at her watch again: 6.20pm. The site of Giza was practically deserted. Since the revolution, it seemed that guides now outnumbered tourists. To get a filming permit had been complicated by the fact that the Supreme Council of Antiquities was in complete disarray. Staff were being changed every other day and at the senior levels, only El-Shamy, the general secretary, had managed to retain his position. But just when she had given up, Florence had received the filming permit she had been waiting for with only days to spare. As luck would have it, the slot they had been given had fallen at exactly the same time as the press conference. She drew straws with Andrew and she lost.

  The sound recordist cursed. The guide who had to accompany them into the pyramid was a few yards away from them, just out of earshot. He had been speaking for over a quarter of an hour with a young male tourist who looked like some kind of Ghostbuster. Probably an amateur Egyptologist - Cairo had always been full of them. They were both gesticulating wildly, and the ghostbuster looked to be getting increasingly irate. The guide tried repeatedly to make calls with his mobile phone, but to no avail. Finally, the young man gave up, sat down on a stone and took out a cigarette. Only then did the guide signal to Florence for her and her team to follow him.

  They entered Cheops, the largest of the three pyramids in the Giza site. Florence took a deep breath. She had barely taken her first step into the monument and she could already feel the panic mounting within her. Millions of tons of stone were suspended above her. There was only one way out. She was going into what was truly the largest tomb in the world and the pungent odour that emanated from the corridors did not help at all. She had no memory of having been assaulted by the smell on her previous visit and yet now it was so strong that Florence was on the verge of losing her early dinner.

  “Does it always stink like that?” she asked the guide.

  “It is sulphur - in the Queen’s Chamber,” he replied in broken English, “But in recent days - very strong.”

  Unfortunately, it was into this foul-smelling room that they had to go into first. The Queen’s Chamber, so named by the early archaeologists to differentiate it from the King’s Chamber located higher up inside the pyramid, was at the crossroads of the axis of the pyramid. Except for its unequal paving and a gate set into a corbelled niche on one side, the room comprised only of bare sandstone walls about 15 feet long by 15 feet wide. Not exactly photogenic. Florence asked the cameraman to use a handheld camera and to film as if the viewer was walking into the room. But to achieve that, he would have to go back into the corridor, an oppressive space that was 3 feet wide and only four feet high.

  Florence sat against one of the walls of the corridor, in front of the camera, using her briefcase as a seat. She then placed her monitor onto the floor and connected it to the camera. She instructed the cameraman to shoot, even as the smell threatened to overwhelm her.

  “Silence! Camera. Action!”

  The monitor showed the view as the camera entered the room of the Queen. John, the cameraman, tried to film from every angle, but ultimately there was nothing to see other than the bare stone.

  “Cut! That’s fine,” said Florence, struggling to stand up.

  “Well it’s not fine for me,” interrupted the soundman grumpily, as he removed his earphones. “There was someone talking in the hallway. Can you tell them to shut it?”

  Florence looked behind her. The passage was almost forty metres long and was completely straight. Apart from the guide and them, there was nobody. The sound recordist, Robin, also looked. Seeing nothing, he adjusted his headphones again and then listened, shifting the boom mic from one side of the passage to the other.

  “Yeah, OK, that’s better,” he said sulkily, “Can we do it again?”

  “Fine, but make it quick,” snapped ​​Florence.

  She then realized that she had not swallowed in quite some time. The sides of the passage closed in on her and she could sense the coming crisis of claustrophobia. John repeated his movements, but before Florence could say, “Cut!” Robin interrupted again.

  “I swear there was an echo so someone is talking. If they don’t zip it, we’ll be here all night, for Christ’s sake!”

  The guide picked up his walkie-talkie and rattled off a few short sentences in Arabic. After listening to the response, he said, “We are the only ones inside. No-one else.”

  Robin fiddled with a few knobs and buttons and moved the microphone from side to side.

  “There is a voice, I tell you. I’m not dreaming it. It sounds – it sounds like someone … groaning?”

  A shiver passed down Florence’s spine.

  The cameraman sneered, “Cut the crap, Robin, I’m in no mood for this. I’m practically sleep walking here - let’s just get this wrapped, ok? Do you really need sound for this, Florence?”

  Before she could reply, Robin looked John straight in the eyes and without a word, tore off his headphones and thrust them into John’s chest. The cameraman let out a long suffering sigh and donned the headset. All eyes were fixed on him. After a few seconds, he took off the headset and said rather jovially:

  “I don’t hear anything. Robin, you should stay off the shisha…”

  Suddenly the echo of an acute growl travelled through the passage.

  “What the hell?” Florence almost jumped out of her skin.

  “Sounds like it’s coming from down below,” said Robin, more nervous than smug.

  “There is no down,” said the guide. The darkness managed to hide the panic in his eyes but not in his voice, “This passage, the chamber - that’s all.”

  Robin sought out the origin of the sound with his pole as if he were handling a metal detector and searching for buried treasure. Florence clenched her teeth, her whole body focused on the noise: there it was again, definitely moaning. It sounded like it came from a child, or was it even an animal? There had to be a rational explanation for all this, but at that moment she was incapable of finding it.

  She saw the guide wringing his hands, never taking his eyes off Robin. She caught John’s gaze and found herself making the familiar sign with her finger which he understood immediately. He pushed a few buttons on the camera and the red light on the front of the camera went off as the camera went into secret filming mode.

  Robin was kneeling in the hallway when he suddenly exclaimed, “Shit!”

  “You must all leave now, please,” said the guide, no longer trying to hide his panic.

  But Robin ignored him. He cupped his hands around his mouth and nose and then pressed them to the bottom of the wall, “Is someone there?” he asked, his voice muffled by the seal between his hands and the wall, “Can you hear me?”

  Florence saw with horror that Robin was peering into a small hole in the wall. The cameraman pushed the guide to one side and put the lens with a small lamp against the opening. On the monitor, Florence could see a narrow shaft with a diameter about the size of an orange. The light travelled about 3 feet into its depth before it was lost in darkness. There was no telling how long it was.

  “No filming, No filming!” screamed the guide.

  “I’m not filming,” John lied, “it’s just for the light!”

  The guide bit his cheek as his walkie-talkie went into over-drive.

  Florence stared at the monitor and then her heart stopped. As a groan louder than all the others reached their ears, Florence saw an imperceptible change in light at the end of the small tunnel.

  She was certain: something had moved on the other side.

>   4

  Chapter 4

  I am the witness. The witness to the timid light that does not belong to me. I am the spectator of a ballet performed on the wings of fireflies. Red stones bring forth voices in pain. To reach me, words are broken into a thousand pieces. I recognize the Triangle Man, and yet I do not know him. But you are too late, Triangle Man. I have already been brought to the Green River.

  The Green River from which nobody has ever returned.

  5

  Chapter 5

  Cairo, Giza Plateau, June 18

  “Yes, mom, do not worry, I’m perfectly safe here,” Max sighed, snuffing out his cigarette before throwing the butt into the small pile he had created as he sat down heavily onto one of the blocks of the Cheops pyramid, his mobile phone to his ear.

  With his shoulder length chestnut hair, six foot tall toned frame, fashionable T-shirt, vintage army shoes, ironically geeky glasses, and not to mention twenty-six years of life, it would have been natural to assume that by now, he would have earned the right not to ignore the impossible recommendations of his mother. But the truth was that he loved his parents and that not a week went by without talking to his mother. And today, she had watched the news too much.

  “Yes, all right … Yes … No, but where I am, it’s not dangerous. But if, but if … There are not riots everywhere, mom. And the terrorists are not hiding in the pyramids, I promise… Nobody is more peaceful than the Egyptians, you know that. Yes, I’ll be careful … Mom, I promise you, nothing will happen to me. I have to go…yes, I love you too… and give Dad a hug too…bye Mom.”

  Max hung up, pressed “Redial”, and waited. He saw on the horizon the clouds of orange dust that suddenly rose from the ground, squirmed and disappeared. It was the khamsin, the wind of the Sahara, with its air of bad omens and its warm, dry breath that made men crazy. But as he had said to his mother, nothing would happen to him. Finally, a woman picked up.

  “Hello, SCA.” An unfriendly female voice seemed to dared him to respond.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” said Max, in passable Arabic, trying to keep the desperation from his voice. “My name is Max Hausmann, I am a PhD student in conservation architecture at the Architectural Association in London. This morning one of your colleagues called and gave me permission, to come and do an RPS reading in Khufu today at 6 pm. I showed up with all my equipment, but no one here seems to know anything about it and I was not allowed in. This is the third time that I’ve tried to get through to your department, but each time I seem to get cut off. Would you, please, ma’am, kindly check in your files? My name is Hausmann, H-A-U-S-M-A-N-N.”

  “I’m transferring you to archives, please hold.”

  Max sighed. It was a lost cause. Since the revolution, no one was responsible for antiquities, the country, or anything else. What saddened him above all was that, in his excitement at receiving the coveted permission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, he had not asked for the name of the person who had given it to him, orally, over the phone. And of course, he did not have anything in writing. A beginner’s mistake.

  And yet Max was no novice. For thirteen years he had been studying the internal architecture of the Great Pyramid. In his early teens he had discovered the mysteries of Egypt in the comics Blake and Mortimer which were soon followed by archeologists’ drawings taped onto the walls of his room, piles of reference books in every corner, and then finally the photos taken on his first visit to the real thing with his parents at the age of fourteen. And then the years and countless hours of original research for his post graduate studies. But obviously somewhere along the way to being incredibly educated, he became unbelievably stupid - how could he have not asked for the name of the person that gave him permission that was almost impossible to get?

  “Hello, SCA.”.

  This time, the voice was male. Max sighed and as he began to tell his story yet again, something caught his eye. A camel galloped straight towards the entrance of the pyramid, and the armed policeman who rode it descended hastily and addressed two of his comrades before rushing inside.

  “But, of course, you have the name of the agent that gave you the permission Mr Haussmann?”

  “Not good,” Max said as he saw the two policemen running towards him.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think we have anyone by that name…..” but before Max even had time to consider his options, one of the policeman grabbed his phone and ended the call while the other shouted excitedly and gestured at the Max’s equipement.

  They spoke too quickly for Max to understand clearly what they wanted, but he began to think that rather than wanting him gone, they seemed to be instructing him to follow them … inside the pyramid. Maybe his luck had changed.

  He bundled up his equipment, and excitedly followed them into the corridor leading to the Queen’s room. Almost at once the smell of sulphur burned his nose and throat. And the police seemed to be scared. Maybe not so lucky after all. He asked them to explain what they wanted him to do, but all they could say was, “Go, go. ”

  At the end of the narrow corridor, he could just make out the guide with whom he had argued earlier. Something was very wrong.

  “Are those archeology instruments?” asked the guide, nervous.

  “Uh … yes?” Max answered.

  “We think there’s someone in here,” Max recognized the soundman who had been waiting outside. Max also noticed the pink-haired girl. She was very pale.

  “But where, here?” Max said.

  With the toe of his boot, the guide gestured towards a hole, almost level with the ground. Max knelt down and looked down the small tunnel and suddenly his heart seemed to explode in his chest. He made a sudden gesture, signalling the others to stand back. The only thing that mattered now was at the end of the tunnel.

  He looked around, getting his bearings as he unpacked and assembled the Ground Penetrating Radar unit. He turned connected the monitor up to its battery pack and then took out a tiny laptop. His focus sharpened as he made more mental calculations and began to envisage the geometry and structure of the whole pyramid in his mind’s eye. At the same time as he unraveled cables and adjusted levels, he was thinking of the stones, their mass and density, the pressure on the lintels, the mechanics of the whole assembly, the methods of construction and reasons behind the precise location of each of the slabs.

  Against all the odds, he finally had the opportunity to examine what he had been studying for so long. Even better, he was within minutes of proving what he had long suspected: that there were secret chambers behind these very walls.

  The GPR screen showed the first results. Ghostly lines that no one but Max could decipher revealed what he already knew: there was a difference in density beyond the stone. A void. Without saying a word, Max had already taken the cameraman’s monitor and connected a small device as big as a credit card, attached to a tiny LED lamp. He positioned it in front of the hole. The others saw the image appear on the monitor, but the colours were strange and irregular.

  “Infrared thermography?” John, the cameraman asked, his mouth dry.

  “Yes. Do you mind?” Max asked Robin, pointing to his boom pole.

  Robin, like the others, was hypnotized by the confidence of the younger man, who seemed to emanate calm, even in this dire situation. He nodded. Immediately, Max grabbed the pole and attached the device to its end with tape that he tore from a large role with his teeth. In a single movement, he placed the small camera in front of the opening.

  Then, for the first time since he arrived, he hesitated. The anguish that had gripped the others was at last making its way inside Max too. Because beyond these walls, he was no longer in the simple world of Blake and Mortimer.

  He could sense that beyond the stones there was a reality that his happy life had not prepared him to face. For what reason, he could not have said, but at that moment he met the gaze of the pink-haired journalist and her steady gaze spurred him into action. Pushing his glasses on back up the bridge of hi
s nose he shifted his weight and gingerly inserted the small camera into the darkness.

  All eyes were on the monitor. At first, there was nothing but a featureless tunnel. The limestone block that made up the wall seemed interminable. Max pushed the pole further into the depth of the stone. The images reflected an infinite vortex and then finally, the void on the other side. No one was breathing. One of the policemen pushed Max aside to get a closer look when an object appeared on the monitor and then stifled a disbelieving gasp.

  The images that then illuminated the screen before them went against everything that the experts had sworn was fact. They revealed a treasure that could not possibly exist.

  “Oh, my God!” John’s were the only words that escaped any of their lips, his eyes bright with excitement as Robin’s mouth hung open.

  “But that looks like…” Florence began to speak but seemed unable to finish the thought.

  Max looked more closely, the object was indeed familiar, too familiar even, it seemed … “Tutankhamun?”

  But then the guide, as if taken by madness, began to shout and scream at the police, one of whom immediately seized Max whilst the other cocked his assault rifle and pointed it at the film crew.

  “Get out!” yelled the guide.

  Max tried to struggle but the space was too narrow and the policeman’s grip strengthened by fear. In the melee, the guide fell against the pole and then Florence screamed.