Journey of the Pharaohs

by Clive Cussler

  It was a good effort, but Barlow’s pilot cut him off and they took another broadside from the rifles in Barlow’s and Robson’s hands.

  Joe ducked as the swarm of bullets hit them, drilling holes in the plexiglass and sheet metal.

  “Faster,” Morgan urged.

  “No,” Kurt said. “Slower. And higher. As high as we can get.”

  “We’ll stall at some point,” Joe said.

  “So will they. And then all of us will be standing still for a moment.”

  “The sitting-duck plan,” Joe said. “Why not? The exact opposite of anything tactically logical.”

  Joe dipped the nose of the helicopter, picked up as much speed as possible and then pulled back on the controls. The agile craft began to rise, its nose angled up into what would be called a maximum climb angle.

  “Keep going,” Kurt said. “They’re following us up.”

  Joe kept the throttle wide open and the helicopter climbing, despite the speed soon beginning to bleed off. As the needle on the airspeed indicator fell backward, the altimeter began to slow. Soon the rotors were clawing at the air.

  “Five thousand feet,” Joe said. “We’re not going to make six.”

  Barlow’s Black Hawk had raced up behind them, unwilling to let Joe gain the high ground or get away.

  “Drift right,” Kurt shouted.

  Joe stepped on the rudder pedal, afraid that any other change would stall them out and send them spiraling to the ground.

  The helicopter slid to the right, putting them directly over Barlow’s craft by no more than a hundred feet. The stall warning began to scream.

  “It’s now or never,” Joe called out.

  In the back of the helicopter, Kurt flipped the control knob on Barlow’s mechanized cart to the forward position. It surged out the cargo door, carrying every tool and loose piece of equipment Kurt and Morgan could find.

  The cart went over the edge with surprising grace, flipping upside down slowly and raining a storm of shovels, picks and other gear toward Barlow’s helicopter. The tools were batted aside by the rotor blades, but the hundred-pound metal cart was another story. It crashed through the rotors, shattering three of the four blades, before slamming into the curved plexiglass of the cockpit.

  Barlow’s Black Hawk twisted and rolled over. It fell from the sky, dropping like a stone, until it slammed into the rocky banks of the Colorado River and burst into flames.

  Chapter 64

  Joe’s expert piloting skills prevented their helicopter from suffering a similar fate. After stabilizing their craft and leveling off, he turned back toward the burning wreckage. One look told them all they needed to know.

  “No one survived that impact,” Kurt said. “Let’s get back to the cave.”

  Returning to Silver Box Ravine, they met up with Paul and Gamay, who had the prisoners sitting in the shade, quiet and obedient.

  “You two would make good jailers,” Kurt said.

  “Guard duty is boring,” Gamay said.

  With the situation stable, Kurt reached out to Rudi.

  “Various authorities are on their way,” Rudi told them over the satellite phone.

  “Late as usual,” Kurt said. “What happened to our backup?”

  “A terrorist attack on the Glen Canyon Dam took priority,” Rudi explained. “The Army Rangers who were supposed to help you ended up flying north and thwarting it. Three of the four perpetrators were killed, the other one is missing and presumed dead.”

  “Barlow mentioned having a trick up his sleeve,” Kurt said. “That must have been it.”

  “If so, it was an effective and costly diversion,” Rudi said. “Multiple explosions and a group who infiltrated the control room. They opened all the floodgates and tricked the authorities into thinking they’d laced the place with nerve gas. Turned out it was harmless colored vapor. Unfortunately, it took a while to confirm all that and shut off the flow of water.”

  “Should we start building an ark down here?”

  Rudi didn’t sound concerned. “Based on the rate of discharge, you should see a five- to ten-foot rise in the Colorado River about an hour from now. It’ll pass by nightfall.”

  “We’ll be high and dry up here,” Joe pointed out.

  As Kurt and Rudi finished their conversation, a helicopter carrying U.S. Marshals landed nearby. A second helicopter with members of the Arizona National Guard arrived shortly thereafter. A third helicopter with agents from the FBI was reported to be on the way.

  “This little strip of land is going to be busier than O’Hare Airport before too long,” he told the others. “I’d like to tie up one more loose end before we’re ordered to leave.”

  “What might that be?” Joe asked.

  “Professor Cross,” Kurt said. “He’s missing and unaccounted for.”

  Kurt, Joe and Morgan entered the cave and spread out. Searching in a grid pattern, it wasn’t long before they found the professor. He was in the deepest part of the treasure heap, sitting propped up against a wall. Blood from a wound had soaked his shirt. His eyes were wide open, staring forward. Of all things, a file cabinet stood open beside him and a stack of bound papers rested in his lap.

  Morgan crouched beside the professor, felt for a pulse and then gently closed his eyes. “He’s gone,” she said, telling them what they already knew. “I would have said he died happy to have found the treasure, but there’s more to this than you’ve let on. Why is there a filing cabinet in here? What are all these papers?”

  “The secret of the cave,” Kurt replied cryptically, “the secret the Granzinis killed their partners for.” Kurt waved his flashlight around, pointing out the treasures and idols. “All of this—all the artifacts, all the mummies, all the gold and jewels—all of it is fake.”

  To prove his point, Kurt reached over to a statue that appeared to be made of marble. With a quick snap he broke the arm off, it crumbling to dust in his hand. “They’re props,” he explained. “Most of them are made from papier-mâché and plaster, balsa wood or tin.”

  “Props?”

  He nodded. “Elaborate set decorations. Designed and created for a movie that never got made.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.

  Joe reached down and pulled the blood-soaked stack of paper from the professor’s hands. “Journey of the Pharaohs,” he said, reading the title. “A Cecil B. DeMille Production.”

  “That explains the Kissel,” Joe said. “When we were using it as a mobile shield and battering ram, I noticed a name tag riveted to the instrument panel. That’s Cecil B. DeMille’s car.”

  “It was,” Kurt said. “And it’s the only historical treasure in the whole cavern.”

  “This is a movie set?” Morgan asked, just to be sure. “You’re telling me we’re standing inside a movie set.”

  Kurt nodded again. “According to the FBI files, DeMille came out here to make an epic about the rise of a fictional Pharaoh. A location scout had found this place and determined that it was a perfect stand-in for Egypt. The ravine outside doubled for the Valley of the Kings. The Colorado River stood in for the Nile. They used this cave as the interior set for several different locations, including a tomb, a temple and the Pharaoh’s palace. That’s why the ground is so flat. Because they had it paved. That’s why there are ramps and platforms all over the place. So they could move cameras, lights and equipment around to set up different shots, make the same cave look like different places.”

  “I suppose that’s why half the cave is filled with worthless furniture and trinkets,” Morgan said.

  “Set decoration,” Kurt said.

  “What happened?” Joe asked. “I’ve seen every old movie ever made, but I’ve never even heard of this one.”

  “Halfway through the shoot, one of the producers got caught in a financial scandal,” Kurt said. �
�The picture lost its funding and production shut down. Instead of hauling all this stuff back to Hollywood, they stored it here, hoping DeMille could find new backers. Unfortunately for them, the canyon got a lot of snow that winter, causing landslides, including the one that buried the entrance to the cave. The studio ended up writing the whole thing off and DeMille moved on.”

  “What about the archeologists?” Joe asked. “You said this place was discovered back in the twenties.”

  “The archeologists were partners of the Granzini family,” Kurt explained, “smuggling artifacts from Africa to buyers in Europe. They came here to follow up on the old rumors of Egyptian relics in the canyon and were led to this cave by a local guide. They burrowed inside and explored a small fraction of it, using only dim oil lanterns. They saw what we saw, the mother lode of Egyptian artifacts, which they immediately informed the Granzinis about.”

  “That must have sparked a celebration,” Joe said.

  “A short-lived one,” Kurt pointed out. “The Granzinis believed the story—they had no reason not to—reached out to their old contacts, urging their favorite European collectors to get their checkbooks ready. It wasn’t until the patriarch of the Granzini family came here in person that the archeologists discovered the truth.”

  “By truth, you mean the Hollywood fabrication?” Joe suggested.

  “Exactly,” Kurt said. “And that caused a conflict. An argument blew up about what they should do. The Granzinis had already made a lot of promises. They figured they could keep the lie going and profit from it. The archeologists wanted to expose the truth, which they knew would come out eventually. The Granzinis ended up killing them to keep them from talking.”

  “How were they supposed to make money from this?” Morgan asked. “Photos are one thing. But anybody who received a balsa wood statue would know instantly that they’d been had.”

  “The plan was the same as it always had been,” Kurt said. “Find artifacts in backwater places, pretend they were discovered here. The Granzinis were masters of sourcing run-of-the-mill Egyptian artifacts from around the globe and then claiming they came from famous tombs. They advertised this as ‘The rarest and most exclusive of collections.’ It was a gold mine just waiting to be tapped. They just needed the rumor to remain alive until they’d milked it for all it was worth.”

  “But what about the boats that DeMars found off the coast of France?” Morgan asked.

  “He’s the only one that ever saw them,” Kurt said. “There was never any proof. Most likely because there were never any boats to begin with. Even his children and grandchildren seem to doubt they existed.”

  “And the Writings of Qsn?” Morgan asked. “And the kid who flew them to Spain?”

  Kurt paused for a moment. “That was the hardest part to figure,” he admitted. “By all accounts, the writings are legitimate. But when they were actually discovered and where they truly came from is impossible to know. What they were doing on that plane is easier to figure. The Granzinis were hoping to get them to a buyer in France who would verify their authenticity. But after the shoot-out in Arizona, they were being hunted by the FBI. They needed to move the broken tablets before they got caught red-handed with them since the tablets would tie them to the murder of the archeologists. They probably should have just dumped them in the lake, but that would have meant giving up on a large payday, something they would need if they were about to relocate to another country. Sadly, all the usual channels of shipping were closed to them. All but one.”

  “Jake Melbourne,” Morgan said. “They wanted him to fly it. The fact that he ended up dead suggests he said no.”

  “They shot him and convinced their nephew to do it,” Joe said.

  “Seems that way,” Kurt said. “According to the FBI file on Cordova, Jake Melbourne was a friend of his and was teaching him to fly in exchange for free maintenance work on the plane.”

  It looked as if they’d solved a couple of long-standing mysteries, but Morgan was hung up on the original quest. “If the Writings of Qsn are legitimate, that means Herihor’s treasure and everything he stole from the other Pharaohs is still out there.”

  “It’s a compelling story,” Kurt admitted, “but it requires some interpretation. In the end, all the Writings of Qsn really tells us is that a group of Egyptians, working under Herihor, embarked on a journey that took them far from Egypt. They went by sea and then across open land, finally ending up in a canyon. But that canyon could be anywhere. It could be West Africa or Central America or somewhere in Europe. It could even be here in the U.S., but there’s no real evidence to suggest that. Even the well-known article in the Phoenix Gazette lists sources in the Smithsonian that the institute has no record of ever being employed there.”

  “Another hoax,” Joe said.

  “Believe only half of what you read,” Morgan said.

  “And none of what you see.”

  Kurt watched Morgan Manning for some kind of reaction. A half-dozen emotions crossed her face in a matter of moments. First came disbelief, then anger. For an instant, she looked like she could chew through steel, then her face softened and she began to laugh. “The joke’s on Barlow, isn’t it? He should have stayed in the mercenary business. It would have been safer for him.”

  “It would have at that,” Kurt said.

  “Now what?” Joe asked.

  Kurt grinned. “Now we turn this over to the proper authorities, head back to D.C. and bring the curtain down on this entire production.”

  Joe shook his head. Morgan offered a salty grin. Kurt didn’t mind. He just shrugged and turned for the exit.

  Chapter 65

  Kurt, Joe and the Trouts returned to Washington, with Morgan coming along for the ride. At a debriefing in the NUMA conference room, Rudi confirmed the capture of Xandra and Fydor, who were easily linked to the assassination attempt in Washington and the attack on the Glen Canyon Dam.

  “Have they confessed?” Morgan asked.

  “Xandra, the sister, hasn’t said a word,” Rudi explained, “but Fydor spilled the whole story within thirty minutes of being apprehended.”

  “How’d they get caught?” Kurt asked.

  “They docked the powerboat without paying the manager of the marina,” Rudi said. “He followed them to the parking lot to get a credit card, but by the time he got there they were in the process of stealing a car—his car. The plate numbers were given to the state police, who caught up with them at a truck stop near Flagstaff. Electronic gear and other evidence will pin them to both crimes.”

  “That’s two dangerous characters off the street,” Kurt noted.

  “And when the survivors of Robson’s gang are extradited to the UK, they’ll be off the street as well,” Morgan said. “For a long, long time.”

  The debriefing wrapped up and the participants made plans to go their own ways.

  Joe was off to Spain to learn more about Stefano Cordova, the young man who’d flown across the Atlantic shortly before Lindbergh. Paul and Gamay were heading to Australia for a proper vacation, choosing the destination partly because it was as far as possible from anything Egyptian. Morgan was scheduled to fly back to London immediately, until Kurt convinced her to postpone her flight for at least one day.

  “What’s in it for me?” she asked, walking him back to his office.

  “A gourmet dinner at a spot overlooking the river,” Kurt said.

  “What’s the name of this restaurant?” she said. “I dine at only the best establishments.”

  “It doesn’t have a name,” Kurt said, opening the door to his office and noticing that the stack of paper in his in-box had grown even higher than when he last looked. He walked by the desk just to see what was on top.

  “If that’s true,” Morgan replied, “what kind of menu can I expect?”

  “Pizza or cheeseburgers.”

  She frowned. “Doesn’
t sound very gourmet to me.”

  “Either selection comes with a bottle of Opus One,” he said. “A bottle I’ve been saving for just such an occasion.”

  That brought a smile to her face. “In that case, I accept. Since we’re talking about your place, I hope that means I won’t have to wear any shoes once I’m there.”

  Kurt grinned. “No shoes, no problem.” He was leafing through the paperwork, intending to leave it all for another day, when he spotted something interesting. He plucked a single-page report from the pile and began to scan the contents.

  “What’s that?” Morgan asked.

  “Paul’s chemical analysis of the sandstone fragment we found in Melbourne’s plane,” Kurt said. “The fragment that was part of the Writings of Qsn.”

  She leaned closer. “What does it say?”

  Kurt first read the findings to himself and then summarized for her. “It says the stone was quarried somewhere in the Colorado River Basin, most likely western New Mexico or northern Arizona.”

  “Well, that’s interesting,” she said.

  “It is,” Kurt replied, putting the report through the shredder. “Very interesting indeed.”

  EPILOGUE

  Navajo Nation, Arizona

  Four months later

  A parade of agents came through northern Arizona in the months after the attack on the Glen Canyon Dam. The FBI sent most of them, but representatives from the National Parks Service’s Bureau of Land Management, the State Department and the FAA all made appearances at one time or another.

  Reporters from the major networks came, followed by journalists from national magazines and local news outlets. Most of them asked the same questions. Few of them listened to the answers.

  By late December, the air had turned cold and the first snow of the season had dusted the vermillion ground with a coating of white. By then, the wrecked Black Hawk helicopter, the movie props and the vintage Kissel automobile had all been removed, the various agents had gone back to Washington and the journalists had moved on, chasing different stories in other parts of the country.