Jack had recognized the indents not from ancient parallels but from the Black Country in England, where he had once explored an underground canal from the time of the Industrial Revolution and seen where the bargemen had lain down and walked their vessels along the walls of the canal. The same had happened here, three thousand years earlier, only the Egyptians with their engineering exactitude had provided their bargemen with secure footing along the entire length of the canal. For Jack it was confirmation that this was indeed a passageway for boats to make their way between the Nile and the Giza plateau, with the Nile at low water lapping just below the level of the footings.
The tunnel could have accommodated vessels up to three meters in beam and one and a half meters in draft, large enough for the type of river barges that plied the surface canals to the pyramids during their construction. They had been hauled by teams of oxen and slaves plodding along the towpath just like those English canal boats of the nineteenth century that Jack had examined.
Costas reduced the speed by a further setting and Jack felt the wake wash forward, his legs dropping with the reduced momentum. He could see nothing but the receding darkness of the tunnel ahead, and he felt a niggle of unease again. “Do we have a problem?”
“I’m trying to reduce the drain on the battery. We’re not at critical yet, but it’s showing the orange warning light.”
“What do you make of our position?”
“In the absence of GPS reception down here, we can only go by dead reckoning. The tunnel has maintained a straight course almost exactly due west, bearing toward the southern end of the Giza complex in front of the Pyramid of Menkaure, just as Lanowski mapped it. And the aquajet’s computer calculates a lapsed distance of four point three kilometers. That puts us a kilometer or so from the point where Lanowski thought the tunnel could break above the water level.”
“If the tunnel links to the complex we saw from beneath the pyramid, then it has to rise above the water level,” Jack replied. “The intensity of light we saw reflected through that shaft in the pyramid could only have come from mirrors set up in dry spaces, as refraction through water couldn’t have produced anything so bright.”
“We have to hope that the other radiating arms on that map represent tunnels that are above water too. Otherwise we’re dependent on finding an exit from the main complex, and if that means the shaft we saw from beneath the pyramid, then we’re going nowhere. The shaft had been filled with masonry so that the aperture for the light was a slit less than half a meter high. There’s no way we’re getting through that.”
“While you were in never-never land today on the felucca, Lanowski and I worked up a best-fit CGI for what might lie ahead of us. The plaque from the shipwreck, the one that shows the Aten symbol superimposed on the Giza plateau and the desert, had a total of eight arms radiating southeast to northeast toward the Nile, all of them extending out from the sun symbol that we imagine represents the central complex below the plateau. Our tunnel is the second arm from the bottom, the one running nearest to due east. We guessed that two of the other arms might also represent actual tunnels or canals and not just be symbolic depictions. One of them must be the aboveground canal used during the months of the year when the Nile was in full spate, when the tunnel we’re in would have been completely submerged and unusable. We think the above-water channel may well have been the canal already in existence from the time of the pyramid construction, adapted and perhaps strengthened by Akhenaten’s engineers.”
“You mean the canal from the Nile to the artificial harbor that was dug in front of the pyramid, beside the mortuary temple?”
“Right,” Jack replied. “Each of the pyramids originally had one. All trace of the above-water canal from the Pyramid of Menkaure has been lost beneath the southern suburbs of Cairo, but we think it’s likely to be the next radiating line of the Aten symbol to the north of us, at an arc of thirty degrees from our tunnel and reaching the Nile about two kilometers north of our entry point. But it’s the line above that one that interests us most. When Lanowski superimposed the depiction from the plaque on the modern map, keeping to the exact alignment of the pyramids, not only did our line end up exactly at the Napoleonic fort, but the line two up from that, the one I’m talking about, abutted the river directly opposite Fustat, Old Cairo.”
“Which didn’t exist in antiquity,” Costas said.
“Not as we see it now. But knowing about the masonry block with the Akhenaten cartouche found in 1892 by those Royal Engineers officers beside the synagogue confirms what Maurice has long suspected, that the other blocks of that date found in the medieval walls of Fustat were not all reused from Akhenaten’s great temple at Heliopolis, to the northeast of Fustat, but included material from a structure whose remains lie beneath the boundaries of medieval Fustat itself. If you extend the Aten line across the river, it points almost exactly to the site of the synagogue.”
“So you think all these features from Akhenaten’s building program were interconnected—the Heliopolis temple, the structure under the synagogue, and this complex in front of the pyramids.”
“The Egyptians were really into alignments, right? It’s the kind of thing you can do in the desert over long distances, by line of sight. Maurice thinks that this was intimately tied up with worship of the sun, and that the Aten symbol with its very precise radiating lines suggests a particular fascination for Akhenaten himself. Maybe the passion for geometry that shows in the planning of his capital at Amarna should lead us to look for the same kind of grandiose conception here. With polished stone surfaces you can make the rays of the sun link together distant places, something that we might see in microcosm in the mirrors that we know must direct the light beneath the plateau. But Lanowski and I concluded that the line leading to Fustat may well represent another real tunnel, one likely to be above the flood level of the Nile so that it could be used all year round. The tunnel we’re in now and the above-water canal were used mainly for barging in building materials and other goods, at low water and high water, respectively. The tunnel from Fustat might have been some kind of processional way for priests and even the pharaoh himself.”
“Whoa.” Costas put the aquajet in neutral and pointed to the wall on his side. A flight of narrow rock-cut steps led upward to an aperture in the ceiling. “That’s exactly what I’ve been expecting,” he said. “While you had your head down earlier as we were going at full throttle, I saw several small dark openings in the ceiling that must once have been ventilation shafts, long ago blocked by sand and rockfall. This one looks more like a service entrance, something you’d expect partway along a tunnel of this length.” He released the handle of the aquajet, rose to the ceiling, and poked his head into the hole. “No good for us. It’s completely filled with a jumble of rock.”
“You sure?”
“I wouldn’t even want to try. Pulling out one of those rocks might create an instant rockfall and bury us.”
Jack stared at the steps, his mind racing. “I’m thinking of our eleventh-century caliph Al-Hakim. He disappears somewhere around this part of the desert, and then eight hundred years later Corporal Jones reappears after his own little adventure in this place wearing the ring that Howard Carter recognized as the signet of the caliph. Maybe Al-Hakim stumbled across this entrance and literally fell through it. I’m imagining him coming back here again and again, night after night, exploring ever farther into the tunnel, able to do so because the Nile was at low water when he was out here. And then one night he finds something inside, something so revelational that it makes him determined that his next visit will be his last one, that leads him to walk away from his day job once and for all. So he leaves his bloody clothes elsewhere in the desert to suggest that he’s been robbed and murdered, exactly the fate that those around him would have expected for a not very popular caliph wandering alone in the desert at night, and then he comes down here and finds a way of sealing himself inside by triggering a rockfall.”
“If h
e did that, he might have caused us another problem I’ve just spotted.”
“What do you mean?”
“Take a look ahead.”
Jack turned away from the steps and stared down the tunnel. He finned forward, and out of the darkness his beam began to reflect off irregular rock, quickly revealed as a fallen jumble that blocked the tunnel. It had been their unspoken fear from the outset. Costas powered ahead, leaving Jack with the aquajet, and came to a halt at the top of the pile, where there was a visible crack between the rocks. Costas reached in his arms and pulled, dislodging a block and sliding it out under him. “Watch out,” he exclaimed. The block slid down the pile to the floor, and was followed by several more as he dug his way deeper in. After a few minutes he pulled himself in entirely and disappeared, and then his headlamp beam reversed and shone back at Jack, momentarily dazzling him. “Okay,” Costas said. “If I can get through, then you should have no problem. But I can’t take out anything more. Everything in the jumble below those blocks that I shifted is way too big even to budge.”
Jack swam up to the crack, leaving the aquajet to be pulled through afterward, and eased his way into the hole. Costas was considerably bulkier than Jack was but surprisingly agile, and with his greater length Jack found it difficult to angle himself through the final part of the gap that Costas had created. Finally he was through, and he immediately turned around to retrieve the aquajet, reinserting himself in the crack and reaching for it. He caught hold of one of the handles and pulled it as far as he could, but it quickly became jammed. He pushed himself out and turned to Costas, who was hovering alongside. “I can’t get the aquajet through. There’s absolutely no way. It’s the shield around the propeller.”
Costas pulled himself in the hole to have a look, and he grunted and cursed as he tried every angle. He pushed himself out, breathing noisily. “It was nearly out of juice anyway. It was probably going to give us only another five hundred meters or so.”
“We have another problem. I noticed it only when we slowed down.”
“You mean my leak?”
“It must have been caused by that rockfall that sealed us in at the entrance. There’s a dent in your pack and a stream of bubbles from the manifold. I’d have to remove the cover to take a look.”
“Don’t even try. It might just make it worse. My helmet display told me about it when it happened, but there was nothing I could do about it, and I didn’t see any point in mentioning it. With the aquajet online, I calculated that I should still be able to make the likely length of the tunnel with oxygen to spare.”
“And now?”
“Twenty-five minutes of oxygen left. Almost a kilometer of tunnel. We’re going to be buddy-breathing.”
Jack focused on their training. One of the safety features of the IMU rebreather was an inlet on the manifold that allowed a hose to be attached from another rebreather so that the oxygen supply could be shared. He stared at the manifold, looking for the outlet. He suddenly felt cold in the pit of his stomach. It was gone. He looked quickly around, but he knew he was not going to find it here. There was no way he could attach his hose into Costas’ rebreather now, no way they could share gas. He dropped down alongside Costas and looked at him. “We’re not buddy-breathing. The inlet for the hose is gone. It must have been struck during the rockfall and popped off.”
Costas looked back at him, his face drawn. “I’ve got my portable emergency bottle, and I can use yours. That’s a further ten minutes each.”
“That means having to take off your helmet. Tell me when your carbon dioxide level reaches critical. I won’t be able to help you if you’ve blacked out.”
“Roger that. Let’s go.”
Costas powered ahead again, trailing bubbles behind him. Jack followed, watching his own oxygen consumption rise as he began to exert himself for the first time since entering the tunnel. He was finning hard to keep up. Suddenly everything they had talked about, the prospect of what might lie ahead, was blanked out of his mind, and all he could think about was the next few minutes. It felt horribly like the final countdown of a condemned man. He remembered four days earlier seeing Costas semiconscious in the submersible as he reached it on his free dive, and the huge relief when he had opened up the jammed air valve and seen his revived face at the door of the double-lock chamber. This time there could be no quick solution, no instant reprieve. Once the emergency air had run out, there would be nothing Jack could do except watch Costas drown. If that happened, life as he knew it would be over. Every second now counted.
After fifteen minutes Costas slowed down, his breathing hard and fast. “Okay, Jack. Ten minutes of oxygen left on my readout.”
“Roger that. Less than five hundred meters to go now.” As they swam forward, the tunnel ahead seemed to be surrounded by a golden glow, a ring of shining yellow that separated itself in the center of the tunnel as they came closer. It was a huge torque of gold shimmering in their headlamps, each arm ending at the top in a finial in the shape of a serpent’s head. On either side of it, the tunnel opened out and split into two parallel channels separated by a row of rock-cut columns that extended from the golden ring as far as they could see. “This is what we want,” Jack said, desperately hoping he was right. “This is the beginning of a dock complex that would have allowed barges to arrive on one side while others waited on the opposite side for departure, ready to head back toward the Nile. The wharf can’t be far ahead.”
“Snakes, Jack. I just can’t get away from them. You remember the Red Sea?”
“I remember the image of those sea snakes you sent Maurice’s boy. That made his day.”
“The sonar can see farther ahead than our eyes, and I don’t see anything yet.” Costas swam through the ring and Jack followed him, brushing against the gold. If it was solid, it was far larger than any golden object ever recovered in Egypt, an extraordinary testament to the wealth and vision of the pharaoh who had built this place.
He followed Costas into the left-hand passage, still seeing nothing ahead to suggest a surface to the water. A few minutes farther on, Costas stopped finning and sank slowly to the floor of the tunnel. “I’ve reached critical, Jack. I’m beginning to feel like I did in the submersible. A little dizzy and out of breath. I need you to get my helmet off now.”
Jack sank down beside him and saw Costas’ bluetinged lips through the visor, his eyes dulled. He unclipped the emergency air unit from the thigh pocket on Costas’ right leg. It was a miniature cylinder about fifteen centimeters long with a mouthpiece in the middle. He twisted it to crack open the valve, pressed the purge button to test it, and saw a blast of bubbles. He put it in Costas’ hand and then placed his own hands on the locking levers on either side of his helmet. “The water’s twelve degrees. You ready?”
Costas’ voice sounded distant. “You know, Jack, I could really do with one of those sandwiches now. Promise me you’ll have them if I go. I can’t bear to think of them wasted.”
“We’ll have them together. A picnic on the beach. You ready?”
“I meant to say, Jack. About everything. You know.”
“I know. Me too. Keep focused.”
“Camera. Keep my camera. And my headlamp.”
Jack unlocked and snapped the unit off the top of Costas’ helmet and wrapped the straps around his wrist. “Done.”
“Now, Jack. Now.”
Jack quickly snapped open the locking clamps, twisted the helmet and lifted it off, and pushed it out of the way behind the backpack. Costas had shut his eyes tight against the shock of the water, but he immediately put in the mouthpiece and took a breath. He reached down and took his spare mask out of his other thigh pocket, pressed it to his face, pulled the strap over the back of his head, and cleared the mask, giving Jack the diver’s okay signal as he did so. Jack remembered that they could no longer talk, that all he could do if the terrain mapper showed signs of the surface ahead would be to gesture. He unclipped the straps of Costas’ backpack and pushed it off, freei
ng him of the helmet and all encumbrances, and then took out his own emergency air and cracked it open. He held it ready to hand to Costas when the first one ran out. He had no idea what he would do then, when there was nothing more, when Costas began to breathe in water and convulse. He had seen it enough times to know that drowning was not the easy death that people imagined, but tormenting, horrible, like a slow hanging, the victim conscious for a few moments of terrible pain and sometimes taking minutes to die. He forced himself ahead, powering after Costas. All he could do now was hope.
A little over five minutes later, Costas put up his right hand, still finning hard, and Jack put his emergency air into it. Costas sucked the last of his own, spat it out, and put Jack’s in. He took a deep breath and powered on ahead. At this rate of breathing, he had only six, maybe seven minutes left. Still there was nothing on the terrain mapper. Jack hardly dared glance at the timer on the readout inside his helmet. Five more minutes had gone. There could be less than two minutes left. His heart began to pound, his mouth was dry. This was not happening.
And then he saw it. Fifty, maybe sixty meters ahead, the tunnel seemed to slope up. A few moments later he was absolutely sure of it. He finned as hard as he could, drawing parallel with Costas and turning to him, gesturing forward with a sloping motion with one hand and opening all five fingers of the other to show the distance. Then he realized that he was no longer seeing exhaust bubbles. Costas had taken his last breath. He spat out the mouthpiece, put his head down, and swam as fast as he could. They were so close now that Jack readied himself to pull Costas along if he became unconscious, knowing that there might be a glimmer of hope that he could be saved if he could pull him to the surface in time.
Then, miraculously, he saw the unmistakeable glimmer of surface water in his beam, and seconds later they exploded through, Costas gasping and coughing, floating on his back and breathing heavily. Jack panned his beam around, seeing a slope leading up to some kind of entranceway, and beside them a wharf that surrounded the end of the channel, evidently the ancient dock. He glanced at the external sensor array to check the air quality, and then unlocked and wrenched off his helmet, relishing the cool air on his face and taking a few deep breaths. He turned to Costas. “You okay?”
Pyramid: A Novel Page 28
