I heard a mumbling from her.
I lifted my feet up, instinctively. A black swarm, thick as a carpet, was flowing down the stairs. My heart tightened in my chest and my mouth went dry. They came straight towards us. Xena’s mumbling continued. It had an ancient feel to it, as if the same words might have been spoken down here millennia ago.
The black swarm kept coming down the stairs. It was thicker, more compacted now. Would they be able to climb on each other and reach us?
The swarm went around the steel wheels of the trolley. It stopped. I couldn’t breathe. Each wheel became covered in black. The swarm, like a wave, rose up the steel legs. Nearer and nearer. I could see individual ants, but thousands of them. They had red eyes, pincers at their mouths and long antenna, and some of them were looking up. They were definitely trying to reach us.
I couldn’t see the head of the horde any more, as they were mounting up right below us. I didn’t dare lean forward any more, in case I toppled the trolley. My back struck Xena’s and we stayed there, our backbones touching.
“You must pray hard,” she said. “The great mother will listen to you.”
So I prayed. It couldn’t do any harm. I used to recite the Hail Mary when I was a child, so wanting to believe it, that a higher power was watching over us with care.
I repeated it three times, fast. It calmed me a little. I looked down again. The swarm was circling the trolley, and then it pulsed inwards, as if it had one brain and was pushing its members up the trolley legs to get more food.
I held my breath. This was it. We could all be eaten by this carpet of ants in minutes. There was nowhere to run.
I could smell the ants now. It was a rank smell, like rotten food or dead flesh. The stink filled my nostrils. I looked upwards. My mouth opened and I recoiled. A line of ants was making its way along a crack in the roof, clinging to the rough edges, some of them falling off, but most of them making it.
And the lead ants were almost above us.
I looked back towards the passage and where we had laid the trail of blood. Why hadn’t they followed it?
Then I saw. There were some ants heading that way, but the majority had either smelt us, or seen us. Smelt us probably. They’d have a taste for human flesh now. Was this the way these ants had always been?
A groan sounded behind me. “Did you see the roof?” said Xena, softly.
I looked up again. The trickle of ants was getting bigger. And then some ants started falling on us. I began rubbing them away.
“Say hi to Sean,” said Xena. “You should know, I prayed for you both before. I think you’ve suffered enough.”
“Thanks, but have you any ideas about how to get out of this hell hole?”
“I do,” she said.
I felt the trolley move. I was still rubbing ants off my arms and legs and from Sean’s body, but I turned and saw Xena walking through the ants, heading for the passage. They were mounting up her legs already. As she walked the swarm followed her.
The last I saw of her was the swarm covering her entirely, but she was still walking down the passage into the hall beyond. My mouth was open. She had sacrificed herself for us. I looked down, humbled.
There were no more ants below me. I looked up. There were some ants on the roof, but not many. I turned to Sean, slipped down from the trolley, stood beside him. I slapped him across the face. I wouldn’t be able to carry him up the stairs. I needed him even partly awake.
But he wouldn’t wake. And now I was worried that the ants would return. I looked back at the passage. Even if I could close it, I might leave a way for the ants to stream through. I want over to the pile of bones. Perhaps there was a water bottle amid them.
But there wasn’t. I went up the steps to the bones spilling down, where another guard had been devoured. There was no water bottle, but I saw the glint of a lighter. I picked it up with just the tips of my fingers. It was resting against a thigh bone.
I took it back to Sean. I didn’t want to do this, but I had to. I picked up his hand, flicked the lighter on, placed the flame under his palm, started counting. Five seconds, please. It would be enough to wake an elephant.
I was right. I heard a groan. Sean’s eye’s flickered. It was enough. I took the brakes of the trolley legs, pushed it towards the steps.
“Come on, Sean. Wake up, wake up,” I was calling, over and over, anxiety still gripping at me. When I got to the steps I let the trolley tip over towards them. He slid forward. I stepped in, caught his head before it cracked against the stone.
But his eyes were open. An enormous wave of relief rose inside me. He was coming back. Warmth gushed through me. I hugged him tight.
“Thank God,” I said. “Thank god you are back.” Tears welled through my eyelids.
He made another groaning noise.
“We have to go, Sean. We have to get up these steps.” I took him under the arm, half pulled, half pushed him forward. His legs buckled, but he made it up a step, then another. Then he fell. I was lucky to stop his head hitting the steps. I shouted in his ear, “Come on, Sean. Come on. Let’s go.”
His legs straightened. I pushed forward again. We went up another step. After a few more stumbles we were at the top. I looked back down. There were ants again on the floor below. Not the same grotesque mass as had been there earlier, but there were more coming from the passage. We had to go faster.
We stumbled, fell a few times before we got to the elevator. It was the longest few minutes I ever remember. It seemed as if it would never end. But then we’d made it. When I pressed the button I turned around. Ants were all over the place. I hadn’t seen them. I looked down. They were all over me. They were all over Sean, too. I pressed the button to call the elevator again. I started swiping the ants away from Sean.
Finally the elevator binged. I cringed. Three men, soldiers, were lying, dead on the floor. They were half covered in blood. I recognized the insignia on their arms. They were British. So this was what had happened to the rescue party.
I pulled Sean in, leant him against the wall. Then I felt for pulses among the men. None of them had any. Anger spiked inside me. Some evil bastards had killed my countrymen. All these men had been trying to do was to help me and Sean and do their duty. Tears filled my eyes. I wiped them away. I had to be ready for whatever was up above.
I reached down, took a black pistol from the holster of one of the men. It was a Glock 17, standard issue. It was shiny, black. Someone had taken good care of their side arm. I bit my lip, aimed it at the crack in the doors. The elevator binged. The doors opened.
I was facing out into the foyer of the Yacoub Industries research facility. It was empty, but what was weirder was that outside the windows there was a whirlwind of sand, rushing up against the glass.
It was the sandstorm that had been threatening the city for days. I half dragged Sean towards a chair nearby, then went off searching for water. The sandstorm had, hopefully, sent whoever had killed our rescuers away.
I found bottles of water in a small kitchen behind the reception desk. I drank greedily, then brought a bottle back to Sean. I propped his head on my arm, put the bottle to his lips. His mouth was half open. He blinked. I poured some water in his mouth. He spluttered. “Stop.” His voice was stronger.
His eyelids flickered. I was staring into the most beautiful blue eyes in the world again. Another giant wave of relief ran through me. I beamed from ear to ear.
“Are you trying to kill me?” he said.
Epilogue
Henry Mowlam closed the taxi door. The early May sunshine in West London had warmed the inside of the cab all the way from Whitehall. He looked up at the terraced house off the King’s Road. There was a security camera pod on a stalk at the roof line, another around where the side passage led to the back garden.
He pressed the doorbell. It was only a few seconds before Isabel answered.
“You’re quick, Mrs. Ryan.” He held out his hand.
Isabel shook it, smiled
. “Come in, Henry. With the new camera we see everyone from the moment they enter our street.”
Henry walked down the passageway to the kitchen. Upstairs, a TV was blaring. Some Saturday morning children’s show.
When he entered the kitchen he paused. Sean was sitting at the kitchen table.
“Come in, Henry. Sorry I can’t get up.” Sean gestured at the wheelchair under him. “But it is good to see you.”
“How is the physio going?” Henry came forward, held out his hand. Sean shook it.
“Good, I think. There’s hope. That’s the main thing.”
“You do feel better, though?” Sean nodded. Henry had read the medical reports, they were part of the deep operation investigation his work with the Ryans was being subjected to. There was also the matter of a possible award to cover medical expenses, which the Ryan family were entitled to.
The medical report had said there was brain damage, following the lengthy period Sean Ryan had been sedated for, and the blood that had been extracted from him, leaving his red blood count dangerously low. But the damage was likely to be recoverable. The brain is an amazing mechanism, the report had said. New pathways can be generated with dedicated care.
Isabel was at the kitchen counter, a steel kettle in her hand.
“Coffee?” she said. “I got a new Italian yesterday. You can buy it by the brick.” She grinned.
“Sounds good.”
He sat opposite Sean at the kitchen table.
“Any news on when the Egyptian government will open that hall under the pyramid?” said Sean.
Henry shook his head. “Yacoub’s son is making a pitch to be elected to the Egyptian parliament. He wants the announcement to be timed to just before the parliamentary elections.”
“When are they?” said Isabel.
“Next year.”
“I thought Yacoub’s name would be mud after all the stuff he pulled,” said Sean. “Hiding that dig inside the pyramid, the people who died in his research facility. He’d have been arrested, if he’d lived.”
“But he didn’t. And a big find like the hall of records has a way of smoothing out a lot of things. Anyway, when they finally eradicated those ant colonies, everyone knew he’d met a grisly end.”
“Those ants were scary. Were they mutants?”
“Someone told us there were people in Egypt who wanted the colony maintained, so they could be studied,” said Henry.
“They didn’t do that?”
“No, but they got samples. A local entomologist thinks they’re a sub species which only exists under the Giza plateau. He says they would have been bred for their blood sucking abilities and ended up eating flesh too. Apparently, they’d wondered for a long time why there were so few rats under the pyramids. Now they know.”
Isabel placed a large white coffee cup, with a red band around its edge, on the table in front of Henry.
“Milk and sugar?”
Henry shook his head. “I’m trying to get healthy, now that my early retirement is approved.”
“I hope it wasn’t due to us,” said Sean.
“I was lucky,” said Henry. “A supporter from the Prime Minister’s office turned up on the day you were rescued. She helped sort a few things out. Otherwise, I don’t know what would have happened to me.” He was not going to tell her about the moment the Toyota Land Cruiser had disgorged its occupant, the Prime Minister’s private secretary, who had almost gone into shock when she’d seen all the guns drawn.
“I am sorry,” said Isabel. “I know you loved your work.” She sat down on the chair next to Sean, put her hand over his on the padded arm of the wheelchair.
“So that hall we found was somewhere people were rejuvenated?” said Sean. He leaned forward.
“That’s what it looks like. You saw the brief report, the translation of the hieroglyphs?”
“Yes, we threatened to go to the press last week, if the authorities in Egypt didn’t tell us what was going on. You do know the report they sent us was all of two pages?” He shook his head.
“But two very interesting pages.”
“And they want to call that pool the fountain of youth.” Henry nodded.
“It’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it?”
“We think, from the hieroglyphs, that they may have been drinking blood down there,” said Henry.
“Yeuuch,” said Sean. “Why?”
“Well, you do know,” said Isabel. “That if you transfuse the blood of teenagers to elderly people, they experience real physical rejuvenation, in many ways.” She smiled.
Sen shivered. “They whole idea is creepy. It’s vampirism.” He picked up his coffee cup.
“Drinking blood was probably just one way they got young blood into their systems,” said Henry. “They also found hollow needles in the hall. They might have been doing early transfusions.”
“The section of the report about the ankh, the cross they found overlooking the pool, was interesting,” said Isabel.
“That is a bit bizarre.” Henry took a sip of his coffee. Then he continued, “Any claim that the Catholic symbolism of eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ at Mass, was an idea they got from all this cannibal Egyptian stuff, is not going to go down well in Rome or many other places.”
“They also mentioned a square and arrow symbol was found down there.”
“That symbol is a lot older than anyone thought.”
“They say it is the hieroglyph symbol for the hall.”
Sean paused. The sound of a plane passing overhead, on the way to Heathrow, reached them. “So, what will you do in retirement?”
“I’ll be looking after Commander Smith’s roses.” Henry grinned.
“You two are getting together?”
Henry nodded. “You will be at the service tomorrow?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“I know the servicemen’s families will appreciate it.” Henry stood. “Better go.”
“I see Xena is also mentioned on the list of people being commemorated. Does that mean what I think it means?” Isabel stood to show him out.
Henry shook his head, sadly. “If she’d played just one side, she might have survived, but she was worse than Mati Hari for switching allegiances.”
“But she was working for us at the end? You wouldn’t commemorate her life like this, if she wasn’t.” Sean’s tone was matter of fact.
Henry stopped at the door. “I think her final act proves that, once and for all.”
He stopped in the corridor, turned to Isabel. “His mind is one hundred percent,” he said.
Isabel gripped his arm. “It could take years before he’s walking again, Henry. But I know one thing about Sean. He won’t give up. Ever. That’s just who he is.”
Henry kissed her cheek.
“Goodbye, Isabel. You are one amazing lady.”
The Cairo Puzzle Page 23
