The Lost Army Of Cambyses

by Paul Sussman

  His hands were clasped behind his back, the thumbs slowly rotating. Every now and then his tongue slipped out and ran along his lower lip.

  'What about the West Valley?' asked Khalifa, referring to a smaller, less-frequented gorge that branched off the main valley about halfway along its course.

  'Sure, it's less busy, but we'd still know if anything had been found there. It's not that much of a backwater.'

  'A mummy cache?'

  'But there aren't any mummies left to cache. Or no great ones at least, aside from a couple of the later Ramessids, and I can't see anyone considering those worth killing for.'

  'A minor royal burial, then. A prince. A princess. A secondary queen.'

  'Again, they would have been buried in the Valley of the Kings or the Valley of the Queens. Somewhere close to the centre of the necropolis. These people liked to stick together.'

  Khalifa leaned forward and lit a cigarette. 'An important official? A noble?'

  'More likely,' admitted the old man, 'although I'd still be surprised. Almost every significant official's tomb we've ever discovered has been either in the valley or close to it. Too close to make clandestine excavation possible. And these burials rarely contain anything valuable. Historically valuable certainly, but no gold or anything like that. Or at least not enough to make it worth killing someone for. The obvious exception being Yuya and Tjuju, but that was a one-off.'

  He stopped in front of the window, his rotating thumbs slowing until they were almost still.

  'You've got me puzzled, Khalifa. For someone to turn up a new tomb isn't surprising in itself. As I said, the hills are full of the damned things. But for someone to turn up a tomb whose contents are worth killing for and for that same tomb to be sufficiently off the beaten track for them to be able to keep it so completely under wraps, now that is unusual.'

  'You've no idea, then?'

  'None at all. Of course there are tales of fabulous hoards of buried treasure up in the hills. The priests of Karnak are supposed to have hidden all the temple gold in a cave underneath the Qurn somewhere, to stop it falling into the hands of the invading Persians. Ten tons of the stuff by all accounts. But they're just old wives' tales. No, Inspector, I'm afraid I'm just as much in the dark as you are.'

  The doctor returned to his desk and sat down heavily. Khalifa finished his tea and got to his feet. He hadn't slept since the night before last and felt, suddenly, exhausted.

  'OK, OK,' he said, 'but if you hear anything be sure to let me know. And no amateur sleuthing. This is a police matter.'

  Al-Masri waved his hand dismissively. 'Do you seriously imagine I'm going to go traipsing round these hills on my own trying to find your damned tomb?'

  'That's exactly what I imagine,' said Khalifa, smiling fondly at the old man.

  Al-Masri scowled at him for a moment, annoyed, and then broke into a wry chuckle. 'OK, Inspector. Have it your own way. If I hear anything you will be the first to know.'

  Khalifa moved to the door. 'Ma'a salama, ya Doktora. Peace be with you.'

  'And with you, Inspector. Although if what you've told me of this case is true, peace is the last thing you're going to be getting.'

  Khalifa nodded and went out.

  'Oh, Inspector,' al-Masri called after him.

  Khalifa put his head back round the door.

  'If you ever did come and ask me for a job, I'd be more than happy to give you one. Good day.'

  17

  SAQQARA

  They took a taxi out to Saqqara, following much the same route that Tara had taken two days before. Hassan, the man with whom she had found her father's body, wasn't in the office. One of his colleagues recognized her, however, and handed over the dig-house keys. They drove on along the escarpment and pulled up in front of the building, telling the driver to wait while they went inside.

  The interior was dark and cool. Daniel opened a couple of windows and pushed back the shutters. She gazed around sadly, taking in the whitewashed walls, the threadbare sofas, the rickety bookshelves, thinking how happy her father had been here, how the building had, in a sense, become a part of her own life as well as his. She wiped her sleeve across her eyes and turned to Daniel, who was gazing at a framed print on the wall.

  'So what exactly are we looking for?' she asked.

  'No idea.' He shrugged. 'Something that looks ancient, I guess. With hieroglyphs on it.'

  He moved away from the print and began perusing one of the bookshelves. Tara threw her bag onto a chair and drifted into one of the rooms off the main lounge. There was a narrow bed in one corner, a wardrobe against the wall and, hanging from the door, a tattered old safari jacket. She delved into one of the pockets and pulled out a wallet. She bit her lip. It was her father's.

  'This is Dad's room,' she called.

  He came in and together they went through her father's possessions. There wasn't much, just a few clothes, some camera equipment, a couple of notebooks and, on a chair beside the bed, a leather-bound diary. Its entries were brief and un-revealing, concerned almost exclusively with the progress of that season's work. There were several mentions of Tara – whom he styled 'T' – the last on the day before her arrival in Egypt, the penultimate day of his life:

  Into Cairo morning. Meeting at American Uni. re. next year's curriculum. Lunch Antiquities Service. Afternoon shopping Khan al-Khalili for T.'s arrival. Back S. late afternoon.

  And that was it. Nothing that shed any light on recent events. They laid the diary aside.

  'Perhaps they've already found whatever it is,' she said.

  'I doubt it. Otherwise why would they have been chasing you?'

  'Then how do we know it's here, not in Cairo?'

  'We don't. I'm just guessing that, whatever this thing is, your father only had it for a few days. And since this is where he's been living for the past three months it makes sense to start looking here. Try the other rooms.'

  They spent an hour going through the house, looking in every drawer and cupboard, even getting on their knees to peer under the beds. Without success. Aside from her father's camera equipment there was nothing there to interest even a normal thief.

  'I guess I must have been wrong,' said Daniel eventually, deflated.

  Tara was in one of the bedrooms. The adrenalin had been pumping through her as they searched. Now she was overcome by a sudden weariness. The pain of her father's death, momentarily forgotten, came flooding back more intensely than ever, an overwhelming sense of loss and helplessness. She ran her hands through her hair and sat down heavily on the bed, leaning backwards against the pillow. Something crunched beneath her. She sat forward again and lifted the pillow. A piece of folded papyrus was lying on the sheet, with her name, Tara, written on it in black ink. She opened it and read.

  'Daniel,' she called, 'come and look at this.'

  He came into the room and she handed him the sheet. He read aloud:

  One of eight, first link in a chain,

  Clue to clue, like stepping stones,

  At the end a prize, something hidden,

  But is it treasure, or just old bones?

  The Gods might help you if you ask politely,

  Imhotep, perhaps, or Isis or Seth,

  Although personally I'd look a little closer to home,

  For none knows more than old Mariette.

  'Aren't you a bit old for treasure hunts?' he asked.

  'When I was fifteen Dad laid a treasure trail for my birthday,' she said, smiling sadly at the memory. 'It was one of the few times I ever felt he really cared for me. I think this is his way of trying to heal old wounds. A sort of peace offering.'

  Daniel squeezed her shoulder and looked down at the papyrus again.

  'I wonder . . .' he said to himself.

  'You think maybe . . .'

  'That your dad's prize is the thing we're looking for? No idea. But it's certainly worth finding out.'

  He strode back into the main room.

  'Mariette is Auguste Marie
tte,' he said over his shoulder. 'One of the founding fathers of Egyptology. Did a lot of work here at Saqqara. Discovered the Serapeum.'

  Tara followed to find him standing in front of the print he'd been looking at before.

  'Auguste Mariette,' he said. The picture showed a bearded man in a suit and traditional Egyptian headdress. He lifted the frame from the wall and turned it over. Sellotaped to the back was another folded papyrus.

  'Bingo.' His eyes were shining.

  'Go on then,' she said, adrenalin starting to pump again. 'Open it.'

  He pulled the clue from the frame and unfolded it.

  A queen to a pharaoh, but a pharaoh herself,

  Ruled between husband and husband's son,

  Nefertiti her name, a beautiful name,

  And with her the beautiful one has come.

  Heretic husband, damned Akhenaten,

  Forsaken by the Gods because the Gods he forsook,

  Together they lived, but where did she live?

  The answer, perhaps, you will find in a book.

  'What the hell does that mean?' Tara asked.

  'Nefertiti was the principal wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten,' he explained. 'Her name meant the Beautiful One Has Come. After Akhenaten died she changed her name to Smenkhkare and ruled as a pharaoh in her own right. She was succeeded by Tutankhamun, Akhenaten's son by another wife.'

  'Of course,' grunted Tara.

  'Later generations reviled Akhenaten because he abandoned Egypt's traditional gods in favour of the worship of just one god: the Aten. He and Nefertiti built a new capital city two hundred kilometres south of here. It was called Akhetaten, the Horizon of the Aten, although today it's known by its Arab name: Tel el-Amarna. I dug there once.'

  He crossed to the bookcase.

  'Looks like we need to find a book on Amarna.'

  She joined him and together they ran their eyes swiftly along the rows of books. There were several with titles incorporating the name 'Amarna', but no clue inside any of them. There was another bookcase in one of the bedrooms and they went through that as well, but with no greater success. Tara shook her head in frustration.

  'This is so bloody typical of Dad. I mean, if I can't even get these clues with an Egyptologist to help me, what chance would I have had on my own! He never could understand that I just wasn't bloody interested in any of it!'

  Daniel wasn't listening. He was squatting on the floor, eyes narrowed. 'Where did she live?' he muttered. 'Where did Nefertiti live?'

  Suddenly he sprang to his feet. 'Merde!' he cried. 'I'm an idiot.'

  He hurried back into the main room, where he knelt in front of the bookcase and ran his finger along the rows of books. He pulled one out, a slim volume.

  'I was trying to be too clever. The clue was more literal than it sounded.' He held the book up, pointing to its title: Nefertiti Lived Here. He was smiling, pleased with himself. 'Probably the best book about excavating ever written. By Mary Chubb. I met her once. Fascinating woman. Let's see what the clue says.'

  This next rhyme – about the dynasties of ancient Egypt – proved easier than the last, leading them to a poster of Tutankhamun's death mask in the kitchen. Clue five was inside an amphora in one of the bedrooms, six pinned inside the flue of the chimney and seven hidden behind the lavatory cistern. Eight, the final clue, was rolled up inside a tube of tracing paper in a cupboard in the main room. By now they were both tense with anticipation. They read the last rhyme together, tripping over the words in their hurry to discover what it said.

  The last at last, eight of eight,

  Hardest of all, so use your head,

  Near where you are, but not inside,

  A five-thousand-year-old bench for the dead

  Fifteen paces south (or fifteen north),

  Bang in the centre, now use your eyes,

  Search for the sign of Anubis the Jackal,

  For Anubis it is that guards the prize.

  'Bench for the dead?' she asked.

  'Mastaba,' replied Daniel. 'A type of rectangular tomb made of mud bricks. Mastaba is the Arabic for bench. Come on.'

  She snatched up her knapsack and followed him outside, wincing at the heat after the cool interior of the house. The taxi driver had pulled his car into a pool of shade in front of the building and gone to sleep, seat reclined, bare feet sticking out of the window. Daniel stood for a moment looking around, shielding his eyes, then pointed to an oblong hummock rising from the sands fifty metres ahead of them and to their left.

  'That must be it,' he said. 'I can't see any other mastabas.'

  They crossed the track and hurried over to the hummock which, when she came closer, Tara could see was made of badly weathered brown mud bricks. Daniel went to one corner and counted out fifteen paces along its side, the top of the mastaba coming up almost to the level of his neck.

  'Somewhere around here,' he said, indicating the middle of the wall. 'We're looking for an image of a jackal.'

  They squatted and ran their eyes back and forth over the uneven surface. Tara found it almost immediately.

  'Got it!' she cried.

  Incised into the face of one of the bricks, very faint, was the figure of a reclining jackal, paws outstretched, ears erect. The brick seemed to be loose and, getting her fingers around it, Tara began working it out of the wall. It had clearly been removed before because it came out easily, revealing a deep cavity. Daniel rolled up his sleeve, checked quickly for scorpions, then drove his hand into the hole, withdrawing it holding a flat cardboard box. He laid it on his knee and began undoing the string with which it was tied.

  'What is it?' she asked.

  'I'm not sure,' he said. 'It's quite heavy. I think it might be . . .'

  A shadow fell across them from above and there was a metallic click. Startled, they looked up. Standing on top of the mastaba, gun in hand, was a bearded man in black robes, a turban wrapped low around his head. He motioned them to their feet, gabbling something in Arabic.

  'What did he say?' Tara's voice was tight with terror.

  'The box,' said Daniel. 'He wants the box.'

  He began to reach out, handing the box up to the man. Tara grabbed his arm.

  'No,' she said.

  'What?'

  'Not till we know what's in it.'

  The man spoke again, waving the gun. Again Daniel tried to extend his arm, again Tara pulled it back.

  'I said no,' she hissed. 'Not till we know why these people are doing this.'

  'For fuck's sake, Tara, this isn't a game! He'll kill us. I know these people!'

  The man was getting agitated. He pointed his gun at Tara's head, then Daniel's, then down at the top of the mastaba, firing a brief burst of bullets into the mud bricks, explosions of dust spitting up around his feet and into their faces. Daniel wrenched his arm free and threw the box onto the tomb.

  'Just leave it, Tara. I want to know what's in it as much as you, but it's not worth it. Trust me, it's better to let it go.'

  Keeping the gun trained on them, the man dropped to his haunches, releasing one hand and feeling for the box. It was slightly to his left and his fingers kept missing it, and, for the briefest of moments, he flicked his eyes downwards. At the same instant, hardly aware of what she was doing, Tara whipped out her arm, seized his robe and yanked. The man cried out and toppled forward over the edge of the mastaba, crashing head first onto the sand between them, his neck twisted at a curious angle.

  For a moment neither of them moved. Then, glancing across at Tara, Daniel knelt and lifted the man's hand, feeling for a pulse.