by Will Adams
They reached his kitchen, its broad fireplace open to the night sky. A huge old yellowing refrigerator clicked on as they entered, and began to rattle loudly. He kicked it, and the rattling became more subdued. “A drink?” he suggested. “You may not know, but Siwa is dry of alcohol. Our young men enjoy too much the labgi, the alcohol we make from dates, and labgi makes them enjoy too much each other, so no more alcohol! In this sense, however, my house is the oasis!” Gaille found his boisterous good humor disconcerting, as though he was laughing up his sleeve at them. He opened the refrigerator door to reveal a jungle of fresh fruit and vegetables inside, stacks of beer and white wine. He wagged a finger at Gaille. “Your father teach me wicked habits. A terrible thing, the love of alcohol. Each time I run low I must invent SCA business in Cairo, and I hate Cairo. It means I have to pay respects to my secretary general, and, believe me, that is a privilege made all the greater by its rarity.”
He poured them drinks, led them back to the hallway, where he unlocked a blue door, pushed it open, flipped on a light, and stood aside. A wave of delicious cool air wafted out. The room was large and lushly carpeted. A single heavy air-conditioning unit stood hissing beneath the closed, bolted, and shuttered windows. A computer, a flatbed scanner, and a color printer rested on two archival tables next to three gray steel filing cabinets and white-painted shelving stacked with books above locked glass-fronted cabinets. She noted the straight lines on the walls. There was no risk of this room, at least, turning back into mud. “I understand you’re here to research our old sites, yes?” He waved his hand. “My collection is at your service. If it is published about Siwa and the Western Desert, it is here. And if not published, also.”
“You’re extremely kind,” said Elena.
He waved her thanks away. “We’re all archaeologists here. Why would we keep secrets from one another?”
“Do you have photographs?”
“Of course.” He opened the top drawer of a filing cabinet, withdrew a large map, and spread it out. Grid lines ran north to south and east to west, giving each square a unique reference number that corresponded to an indexed folder in the cabinets, which contained grainy black-and-white aerial photographs as well as occasional color, ground-level site prints. While he explained his system to Elena, Gaille wandered along the shelves, fingering sheaves of press cuttings on the golden mummies of Baharriya; histories of Kharga, Dakhla, and Farafra and of the geology of desert. Two entire ranges had been given over to Siwa, the shelves packed so tight that she had to pull hard to pluck out a first edition copy of Qibell’s A Visit to Siwa. She turned the crumbling yellow pages with great tenderness. She loved the whimsy in the accounts of pioneer travelers like this.
“You know these?” murmured Aly, suddenly at her side.
“Not all of them,” she admitted. “In fact . . .”
He laughed warmly, then stooped to unlatch and open a low cabinet. Inside, wire racks bulged with gray and tan folders of loose papers. Notebooks and journals were stacked in separate piles. He found and removed a thick green folder and handed it to her. “You know the Siwan Manuscript? The history of our Oasis kept by the Mosalims since . . .” he waved his hand to indicate forever. “These notes in red pen are mine. You’ll find them valuable, I think.” He set the folder down and returned to his books. “Ah, yes! Ahmed Fakhry. A great man. My mentor and my very good friend. You have read his works?”
“Yes.” It was the only research she’d managed so far.
“Excellent. Ah! And this! W. G. Browne’s Travels in Africa, Egypt and Syria from the year 1792 to 1798. The first European for centuries to visit Siwa—or to write of it, at least. He thought us nasty, dirty people, while we hurled stones at him because he pretended to be a man of faith. How far the world has come! Here’s Belzoni, everyone’s favorite circus strongman. And Frederick Hornemann—German, of course, but he wrote in English. His journey was sponsored by the London African Society in, let me see, yes, 1798.”
“Is there nothing more up-to-date?”
“Of course, of course. Many books. Copies of every excavation log. But, believe me, when these old people visit, our monuments and tombs were in much better condition. Now many are nothing but dust and sand. ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.’ ” He sighed, shook his head sadly. “So much lost. You read German, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Good. One never knows these days. Even reputable universities seem to hand out doctorates to people who can barely speak their own language. Here is J. C. Ewald Falls’s Siwa: Die Oase des Sonnengottes in der Libyschen Wüste. Cailliaud’s Voyage à Meroe; you must read that. And that criminal Drovetti! I had to travel to Turin to see the Canon of Kings. Turin! Worse even than Cairo! They tried to kill me with their trams!”
“When can we start?” asked Elena.
“When you would like?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight!” laughed Aly. “Do you never relax?”
“We only have two weeks.”
“Not tonight, I’m afraid,” said Aly. “I have plans. But I’m an early riser. You’re welcome here at any time from seven.”
“Thank you.”
RICK AND KNOX CIRCLED DOWNWIND so that the German shepherd wouldn’t catch their scent. It was another ninety minutes before the guards set off on their rounds once more. The moment they were gone, Rick hurried into the clearing and over to the smaller building. He examined its two hefty padlocks, produced a hooked length of thick steel wire from his pocket, then proceeded swiftly to unlock them both.
“Where in hell did you learn that?” murmured Knox.
“Australian Special Forces, mate,” grinned Rick, pocketing the padlocks and ushering him inside. “They don’t teach knitting.” There was a deep hole in the floor, a wooden ladder tied to one wall. “It’s sixteen minutes to the other site,” said Rick. “I timed it. Sixteen more back makes thirty-two. We need to be out of here in twenty-five tops. Okay?”
“We’d better hurry,” agreed Knox, adrenaline pumping as he led the way down. The ladder creaked but held, and he was soon crunching on stone chips. Rick joined him a moment later. They walked side by side down the narrow corridor, Rick picking out a wall painting with his flashlight. “Jesus!” he muttered. “I thought Wolf-man was out of the Marvel comics.”
“Not Wolf-man,” corrected Knox. “Wolf god. Wepwawet.”
Rick was looking at him strangely. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You seen a ghost?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what? Have you worked out where we are or something?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“Come on, then, mate. Spill.”
Knox frowned. “What do you know about the Rosetta Stone?” he asked.
Chapter Twenty-six
BOSS! BOSS!”
Nessim glowered at Ratib. Since they offered their reward, their phones had been ringing constantly. Knox’s Jeep had been spotted everywhere from Marsa Matruh down to Aswan, as had Knox himself. Nessim was longing for a result, if only so they could call off this damned search and get some peace. But the more time that went by, the lower his hopes fell. “Yes?” he asked.
“It’s Abdullah, boss,” said Ratib. “You know, from Tanta. Says one of his crew has found the Jeep.”
“Where?”
Ratib shook his head. “Kid won’t say until he’s got his money. And he wants more. Kid’s demanding a thousand dollars just for himself. And Abdullah wants the same.”
Nessim scowled. The money itself didn’t bother him; it was Hassan’s, after all. But being held to ransom did. Yet, if this was for real… He checked his money belt to see how much he had on him. “Tell him we want proof,” he said. “Tell him to send photographs. If it is, they can each have seven fifty.”
Ratib shook his head. “The kid refuses to go back,” he said. “Reckons Abdullah will have him followed, and then he won’t get anything.”
Nessim barked out a laugh. He had met Abdullah twice him
self, and both times he instinctively checked his pockets afterward to make sure he still had his wallet. “Ask him to describe exactly what he saw.”
Ratib nodded and complied. “He says it was covered with a green tarpaulin,” he reported back. “He says he took a peek inside. He says he saw a box of CDs and books.”
Nessim grabbed the phone from Ratib. “What books?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” answered the kid. He sounded terrified, way out of his depth. “They were in foreigner writing.”
A flashback of Knox’s hotel room and the archaeology books he had taken away. “Did they have pictures?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“Ruins,” said the kid. “You know. And those people who dig in the desert.”
Nessim clenched his fist. “You stay exactly where you are,” he told him. “We’re on our way.”
“THE ROSETTA STONE?” frowned Rick, snapping a couple of shots of the painting with his digital camera before moving on. “I know what you’d expect me to know. Why?”
“And that is?”
Rick shrugged. “It’s a large chunk of a monumental stela. Black basalt, something like that.”
“Quartz-bearing rock,” corrected Knox. “It should actually be sparkling gray with a pink vein. The black comes from too much wax and London dirt.”
“It’s inscribed in three languages,” said Rick. “Hieroglyphics, Demotic, and Greek. And it was found in Rosetta by Napoleon’s men. Seventeen ninety nine, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
They reached a second painting, similar to the first. Rick took two shots; the flash was blinding in the darkness. “They realized it might hold the key to deciphering hieroglyphics, so they hunted for other fragments. Worth their weight in diamonds, as someone put it.” He squinted at Knox. “Is that what we’re after? The lost pieces of the Rosetta Stone?”
“No.”
“They didn’t find anything; but then the stone wasn’t from Rosetta originally; it was only transported there as building material.” As they walked, the walls turned black with char; great scars scored the baked clay. “One hell of a fire,” muttered Rick as he photographed.
“You were telling me about the Rosetta Stone.”
“Yes. Copies were made, and there was a race to decipher it. Jean-Francois Champollion made the final breakthrough. He announced his results sometime in the 1820s.”
“Eighteen twenty-two. Friday, September 27, to be exact. Considered by many to be the birth date of modern Egyptology.”
Rick shrugged. “That’s pretty much it.”
“Not bad,” said Knox. “But you know what you haven’t mentioned yet?”
“What?”
“The inscription itself. What it says.”
Rick laughed ruefully. “You’re right. How about that?”
“You’re not alone. This great monument, this iconic image, and hardly anyone knows what it says.”
“So what does it say?”
Knox shone his flashlight ahead. The white marble of a portal glowed pale, and on either side lay ghostly wolves. “It’s known as the Memphis Decree,” he said as they pressed forward. “Written to commemorate Ptolemy Five’s accession in one nine six BC. The Golden Age of the Ptolemies had been well and truly over by then, of course, thanks to Ptolemy Four.”
“The party animal,” nodded Rick, crouching to photograph the wolves.
“Exactly. The Seleucid king Antiochus Three thought he was soft and ripe for plucking. He seized Tyre, Ptolemais, and much of the Egyptian fleet.”
“Spare me the detail,” said Rick. “We’re on the clock, remember.”
“Okay,” said Knox as they moved on. “There was a great battle at Raphia. The Egyptians won, and peace was restored to the land. It should have been good news.”
“But?”
“Taxes were already punitive, but Ptolemy had to raise them even higher to finance his war and then the victory celebrations. People left their farms and homes because they couldn’t afford to pay. Discord spread. There were massive uprisings across Egypt. Ptolemy Four was assassinated, and his successor, Ptolemy Five Epiphanes, was still only a child. When a group of rebels attacked military posts and temples in the Nile Delta, Epiphanes’ men went after them. The rebels took refuge in a citadel.”
“That’s right,” said Rick, snapping his fingers. “They thought they’d be safe. They were wrong.”
“They were very wrong,” agreed Knox as they walked down two steps to a second doorway. “According to the Rosetta Stone, Epiphanes’ men stormed it and put them all to the sword.”
“Charming.”
“You know where it all happened? A place called Lycopolis, in the Busirite administrative district.”
“The Busirite administrative district? Wasn’t that pretty much where we are now?”
“Exactly,” nodded Knox as they reached the portal. “Welcome to the citadel of ancient Lycopolis.”
Rick went through first, his flashlight held out ahead. “Oh, Jesus!” he muttered when he saw what was inside. And he turned and looked away, as though about to be sick.
“COME,” SMILED ALY SAYED. “This is no evening to waste in a library.”
Gaille and Elena followed him to his outside table. A breeze had turned the evening cool. Birds twittered in the distance. Gaille listened as Elena and Aly chatted amiably, exploring connections, mutual friends, and obscure sites they both had visited. After a while, he turned to Gaille. “Your poor father,” he said. “I think about him often. My esteemed secretary general did not greatly respect him, as you may know. For myself, I work only with people I respect. No man loved this country more.”
“Thank you.”
He smiled and turned back to Elena. “Now, tell me what it is you do in Siwa. Yusuf hinted mysteriously that you’d found something interesting in Alexandria.”
“You could say that.”
“And it has implications for Siwa?”
“Yes.” Elena took a set of Gaille’s photographs from her bag. “Forgive me, but Yusuf insisted I make you promise not to say a word.”
“Of course,” nodded Aly. “My lips are sealed.”
“Thank you.” She passed them to him, explained how they had been found and what they meant, then read out a translation of the Alexander Cipher.
“A tomb fit for Alexander,” murmured Aly as he leafed through the pictures. “And you hope to find it in two weeks?”
“We hope to make progress in two weeks,” said Elena. “Enough to be granted another two.”
“How?”
“The text gives several clues.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “It states that the tomb was in sight of the oracle of Ammon, that it was within a hill, that its mouth was beneath the sand, that it was excavated in secret. Tomorrow morning, with your permission, we’ll compile a list of all hills in sight of the oracle. Then we’ll visit them.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Do you know how many sites that will be?”
“We can eliminate a few. This place was built in secret; that cuts out anything near ancient settlements or trading routes. And quarrying is thirsty work. They’d have needed fresh water.”
“This is the oasis of a thousand springs.”
“Yes. But many are salt, and most of the freshwater ones are settled.”
“They could have dug their own well.”
“And we’ll search for it,” agreed Elena. “We’ve a list of features to look for. For example, as you well know, you can tell quarried rock from the grooves left by the tools. Any significant quantities of such rock will be interesting. Digging in the desert is brutal. The sand’s so fine and dry, it runs like liquid. Macedonian soldiers were experienced engineers, so maybe they used a cofferdam. Your aerial photos might help us find its outlines. I’m also having some remote sensing equipment shipped in: a caesium magnetometer, a remote-controlled aircraft for more aerial photographs.”
Aly was still flipping through
the photographs. Gaille was watching him idly when his expression froze. He caught himself almost immediately, glanced around with attempted nonchalance, then hurried through the other photographs before passing them back. “Well,” he said. “I wish you luck.”
Bright lights flickered between the trunks of date palms. A canvas-covered truck roared up the drive and stopped in a squeal of brakes. Aly rose to his feet. “Yusuf suggested you would need guides,” he said. “I took the liberty of contacting Mustafa and Zayn for you. They are the best in all Siwa. They know everything.”
“Thank you,” said Elena. “That’s most helpful.”
“No trouble. We must work together, must we not?” The truck doors opened, and two men jumped down. Aly turned to Gaille and said, “I thought of them the moment Yusuf told me your name.”
Gaille frowned. “Why?”
“Because they were the guides with your father on that terrible day, of course.” And, just for a moment, all warmth left his expression. He squinted at her with an almost clinical detachment, curious of her reaction. But then he caught himself; his smile was back, and he was the perfect host again, crackling with benevolent energy, making everybody welcome.
KNOX SWUNG HIS FLASHLIGHT AROUND to see what had made Rick flinch. There were skeletons lying everywhere on the floor, some of them tiny, many still wearing ragged fragments of clothing, along with jewelry and amulets. “Oh, man,” grimaced Rick. “What the hell happened?”
“The siege, remember?” said Knox, more calmly than he felt. “The men would have fought. The women, children, and elderly would have taken refuge. An underground temple would have seemed perfect. Until they got shut in and someone lit a fire between them and their only escape.”
