The Iron Tomb

by Peter Vegas

  Sam had nothing to say to this, but Jenny continued her cheerful banter as they climbed the stairs. “So here I sit, on my lonesome in the desert, till I can pay my way out. Right . . . take a seat.”

  They had arrived at an old desk. The second floor of the museum was even dingier than downstairs. It reminded Sam of a mad professor’s library. A solitary lightbulb struggled to light the room because the windows were blocked by shelves, which were packed with books and documents.

  “The town records of Al Minya,” said Jenny. “Bit of a nightmare, I’m afraid, but luckily I know exactly what you’re after.”

  The smiling museum curator disappeared down one of the rows and returned carrying a battered leather book. “This is what the professor spent his time going through. The port records of all vessels that passed through Al Minya in ’42.” She dropped the book on the desk. “I hope you know which parts he was interested in, deary, because I have no idea.” Jenny looked up with a glint in her eye. “I don’t suppose the professor is back in town?”

  Sam had to think quickly. “No . . . no, he isn’t. He asked me to follow up on some of his research.”

  “Pity. He’s quite a looker, isn’t he?” Jenny smiled slyly. “Happily married, I suppose?”

  The conversation had taken an awkward twist. Sam got it back on track. “I’m actually interested in one ship in particular. The Panehesy.”

  “Right, then. Let’s have a look, shall we,” said Jenny. “The Panehesy . . . the Panehesy,” she muttered to herself as she flicked through the pages. “Ah yes, here it is.”

  Port of Al Minya Shipping Records 1942

  June 17

  PANEHESY—25-ton merchant ship Reg 566892, Sinclair Shipping

  Docked 11.45 Wharf 2 En route from Amarna delivering medical supplies.

  DAMAGE REPORT—The Panehesy is leaking oil. Captain reports explosion in boiler room that has put a hole in the hull.

  I have ordered the ship upstream to a mooring barge to effect temporary repairs. Due to depart tomorrow morning (June 18) for Alexandria.

  “It’s a good thing the Panehesy only stayed one night,” said Jenny as Sam read the entry.

  “Why is that?”

  “Well . . .” Jenny had the look of someone about to share a good piece of gossip. “The night of June 18, 1942, a big storm hit Al Minya. Storm of the century. It lasted five days and buried half the town in sand. It actually altered the course of the Nile in some places.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Sam. “Why was it good luck for the Panehesy?”

  “The mooring barge was lost in the storm. The Panehesy was the last ship to use it.”

  “Lost—what does that mean?”

  “The barge was anchored in a channel between a small island and the bank of the Nile. Apparently, the storm filled in the channel and turned the island into just another bend in the river.”

  “So if the Panehesy had still been moored at the barge . . .”

  “It would have been buried by the desert. See what I mean? A lucky escape.”

  Sam knew he was onto something crucial. “Where was the barge located?”

  Jenny frowned at the logbook. “The next page has been ripped out. I can’t think why someone would do that.”

  Sam did. It was his uncle covering his tracks. “Could this be the location?” he asked, pulling Jasper’s hand-drawn map from his pocket.

  “Deary, that’s not much of a map. I mean, it could be anywhere on the Nile.”

  “I know, but these upside-down triangles . . . they’re the alchemy sign for water, aren’t they? That could show where the river used to run before the storm.”

  “Interesting theory,” said Jenny. “Do you know a bit about alchemy?”

  “Only that it’s about turning lead into gold,” admitted Sam.

  “Well, that’s the simple version, deary, but there’s a lot more to alchemy than that. It was named after Egypt, you know.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Oh yes. Chem is the ancient name of Egypt, hence the name Al-Chem-y. The Secret Fire is another name for it. Now, what does that other symbol stand for . . . ? I know the symbol for gold is the sun, but what is the circle with an arrow?” She paused for a moment. “Oh, I know! Iron! It stands for iron.” Jenny seemed very pleased with herself. “So, maybe this map does show the old channel and the location of the barge.”

  Or the Panehesy, Sam thought. He didn’t think his uncle had come all the way to Al Minya to search for an old barge. His rough map now had far more meaning, but not quite enough. He pointed to the iron symbol. “Is there any way of knowing where this is?”

  Jenny flicked through a few more pages. “I’m afraid not, dear. The only other entry refers to the decision not to recover the barge. But all it says here is it was a few miles upstream. I guess they had other things to worry about at the time.”

  “A few miles,” said Sam despondently. “You could search for weeks, months even, and never get close to finding it.”

  “Unless . . . ,” said Jenny.

  “Unless what?”

  “If your drawing is a good copy, you could match it up with an actual map of the Nile. And I know the perfect book. It has aerial shots of the river up and downstream of Al Minya.”

  “That’s great,” said Sam. “Can I see it?”

  Jenny laughed at Sam’s excitement. “Well, that’s the funny thing. It was your professor who asked if I happened to have a book like that. I wasn’t sure, to be honest,” she said, motioning to the crowded bookshelves behind her. “As you can imagine, it took me a while to find it, but when I did, I sent it over to the professor’s motel. That was last Friday. It’s a big old thing, quite expensive, but he assured me he would take good care of it.”

  A big book. That was the kind of thing you would have to clear a whole table to make room for. Sam knew he needed to get back to the motel, but before he could come up with a polite way to make his exit, a buzzer went off.

  “Well, would you look at that,” said Jenny, pointing at a small black-and-white monitor on the floor beside her. “It appears I have another male visitor. When it rains, it pours, eh, deary?”

  Sam hadn’t noticed the security camera above the front door of the museum when he’d arrived, but the new visitor had. The black-and-white picture made him look bald, but Sam knew in real life he had very short blond hair. Sam also knew he had just seconds to come up with an escape plan.

  “Jenny, I don’t suppose there’s a back door out of the museum?”

  “No, dear, afraid not. But I’m popping down to greet my new arrival, so it’s no problem to let you out the front.” Jenny noticed Sam still staring at the monitor. “Do you know that gentleman?”

  “Kind of.”

  “You don’t look very pleased to see him.”

  Sam shrugged, unsure about how much he should let on. He needn’t have worried. Jenny didn’t need an explanation.

  “Well, that’s that, then,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ll tell him you’re not here.”

  Sam watched the man fidgeting impatiently on the monitor. “I’ve got a better idea. Can you tell him I’m in the bathroom?”

  “Are you sure? I’m quite happy to send him on his way.”

  “No, that’s fine,” Sam assured her.

  “Suit yourself,” Jenny called out, heading for the stairs. “The bathrooms are just down the corridor.”

  Sam was already running to them.

  * * *

  “WHERE IS HE?” THE MAN demanded as he reached the second floor.

  “I told you,” Jenny called out from halfway up the stairs. “The bathroom.”

  “Which way?”

  The sound of thumping boots told Sam the man had spotted the sign.

  One hard kick sent the bathroom door slamming back against the tiled wall. It was a small bathroom, with an old, cracked urinal and three narrow cubicles. The doors of two were open. The middle one was shut, and just visible, in the gap between the bo
ttom of the door and the floor, were the tips of Sam’s sneakers.

  “Hello again, Sam. You are busy, yes? No problem. I will wait.”

  The man leaned back against the wall, breathing heavily after his stair-running and door-kicking heroics.

  From his hiding place under Jenny’s desk, Sam knew it was time to make his move. It wouldn’t be long before the Short-Haired Man discovered he was waiting on an empty pair of shoes. Sam took off down the stairs, mouthing a hurried thank you to the stunned museum manager as he passed her. As Sam bolted out the front door, an angry scream from the second-floor bathroom told him the ruse was up. He’d known Jenny wouldn’t be able to get rid of the man, but the bathroom deception was all he could come up with. It had meant losing his shoes, but at least he’d gotten away.

  A few minutes later the decision to sacrifice his shoes didn’t feel like such a smart move. The midday sun had baked the footpath crazily hot. Sam felt blisters forming on his feet with every step. Ignoring the pain, he kept up his pace. He had to get back to the motel. There was no way of knowing if the Short-Haired Man knew about the Nefertiti, but he had no choice. The book was there, so now it was a race against time to get back to the motel and get his hands on it.

  And he would. Just not the way he expected.

  15

  WHERE THERE’S SMOKE

  NOW IT WAS SAM’S TURN to kick down a door. At least he would have tried if he hadn’t been so exhausted. By the time he got to the motel, weeping blisters had formed on both feet. What hit him as he entered the reception area was how good it felt standing on the cool stone tiles.

  The second thing that entered his mind was the feeling there was someone behind him.

  Sitting in a chair behind the door was a man in his thirties who looked like a younger, healthier version of Ahmed. That turned out to be pretty accurate.

  “Father, come!” the man yelled, which was what Sam had been about to do.

  The plan was to find the book and one of the pairs of shoes he’d spied in his uncle’s room and get out, but the look on Ahmed’s face when he shuffled out of the back room told Sam things weren’t going to work out that way.

  Ahmed’s eyes lit up as soon as he saw Sam, and he darted back through the doorway with a speed Sam hadn’t seen from him before. He returned clutching a fax and muttering a stream of angry-sounding Egyptian. Sam had no idea what he was going on about till he caught a glimpse of his passport photo on the piece of paper.

  The Cairo police had finally caught up with him.

  The reason for Ahmed’s son’s presence became clear as two strong hands grabbed Sam from behind and pushed him toward the back room. Ahmed was still jabbering away, but the odd bit of English slipped into his tirade. Sam made out the words “police,” “uncle,” and “bad man.”

  He was guided firmly through the small back office and into a small storeroom. Rows of wooden shelves lined each wall, crammed with old computers, crockery, and other assorted pieces of junk. But what caught Sam’s attention was sitting near the door at eye level—an oversized book. The title, embossed in gold, proudly proclaimed Nile Aerial Survey.

  Ahmed’s son let go of Sam. He looked relieved with how smoothly things had gone and offered a translation by way of thanks. “My father is very upset with you and your uncle,” he said, though not unkindly. “He received fax from police saying you are both in trouble. He is calling them now. . . . I don’t think you will be here long.”

  Sam smiled and nodded as Ahmed’s son locked the door. He was probably thinking it was strange that the young criminal didn’t appear more upset, but at that moment Sam just wanted to be left alone with the book.

  When Jenny had told him the book was big, the empty table in Jasper’s room suddenly made sense. That’s where the book had been. But Jasper hadn’t taken it into the desert, so he’d made a copy of the map and left one under the bed for backup. And now Sam knew that the table had been empty because Ahmed and his wife had been worried about Jasper doing a runner, and they’d swiped the book as an insurance policy.

  Sam didn’t have to search through the book for long. His uncle had marked the page with a business card for a local company. When Sam laid the hand-drawn map over the image in the book, it matched perfectly.

  Sam quickly copied the coordinates for the location of the Panehesy from the original map. He decided he would try to get the book back to Jenny if he managed to get himself out of this mess, which brought him back to this most recent dilemma: locked in a room, with the police on the way.

  There were only two ways out. The door, which a quick investigation showed wouldn’t have been out of place in a jail, and a window, which was too high and too small, on the back wall. If Ahmed’s son had been in the storeroom at that moment, he would have seen the look he’d been expecting, because Sam had worked out he’d have to be a magician to get out of there.

  * * *

  AFTER THUMPING THE DOOR TO get Ahmed’s attention, he’d tried to talk his way out. The motel owner turned jailer made it clear that the magic words he wanted to hear were I have money, and Sam had none. But in the middle of trying to come up with a second plan of possible escape, another problem proved to be a last-second solution to a dilemma he hadn’t anticipated.

  The Short-Haired Man’s arrival at the museum had prevented Sam from making a proper trip to the bathroom, and stuck there in the Nefertiti Motel’s holding cell, things had started to get desperate. Until Sam had found two empty glass jars on one of the wooden shelves.

  They were now full glass jars, and Sam had thoughtfully placed them near the door, for easy disposal.

  Then they started to give off smoke.

  Sam wondered if he’d damaged himself by holding on for so long, but as his view of the jars of golden liquid became hazy, he realized that the situation was far more serious than that. The smoke wasn’t coming from his pee. It was coming from behind the jars, through the gap under the door.

  A high-pitched scream punctuated Sam’s revelation, and it spurred him into action. As he banged on the door, he could hear Ahmed’s wife talking frantically in the other room.

  “Hey! What’s going on?” Sam yelled. It was bad timing, because at that moment the fire alarm went off and clanging bells drowned out his cries. More banging failed to bring anyone, and Sam began to suspect that Ahmed and his wife had done a runner of their own.

  The door didn’t feel hot or even warm, and as Sam continued banging on the door, he searched his mind for remnants of the talk the local fireman had given at his school. Stop, drop, and roll? No need for that. Not yet. But more and more smoke was coming in under the door. Sam began to feel dizzy as the smoke wafted up around his head, and the fireman’s grim proclamation came back to him: “Smoke is the number one killer.”

  A stack of nasty-looking Mighty Nefertiti tea towels sat on one of the shelves. Soaked in water they would do a decent job of holding back the deadly white mist seeping in under the door. There was no water, but there was liquid. Two jars’ full.

  Sam moved to the back wall of the storeroom. The pee-soaked tea towels performed just like the fireman had said they would, but maybe it was already too late. He slumped to the floor, fighting to stay conscious in the smoke-filled room. The sound of splintering wood echoed through the small space. Sam looked up, but his vision was obscured by the clouds of thick white smoke bellowing in through the hole where the door had been. A beam of light sliced through the haze. The last thing Sam saw before he passed out was a bright yellow giant appearing out of the smoke.

  16

  WAKEY-WAKEY

  “I’M SORRY ABOUT ALL THIS, Sam. Really.”

  The words reached Sam before he was completely awake. As he came to, he had no idea where he was, but visions of the last few moments in the storeroom flooded back into his mind and he bolted upright.

  Mary, hovering over the bed, had no time to get out of the way. Their heads met with a meaty thud. Sam didn’t feel a thing, but the impact sent Mary ree
ling back across the room.

  The door burst open, and Bassem filled the frame, his eyes darting from Sam to Mary.

  “It’s okay, Bassem,” Mary reassured him. “Everything’s okay.” He didn’t seem convinced and left the door ajar after backing out. Through the gap Sam caught a glimpse of the bright yellow rubber boots he was wearing. He glared at Mary.

  “Everything is far from okay,” he hissed. “What just happened? Who are you?”

  Mary, still groggy from the knock on the head, wasn’t feeling quite as apologetic now. “What happened? Well, let’s see. . . . We saved you from the police. How about that?”

  “By nearly killing me?”

  “We didn’t nearly kill you . . . but we might have overdone it a bit on the sleeping gas,” she confessed.

  “Sleeping gas?”

  “That was Bassem’s idea. Knock out the motel owners and break you out of the storeroom.”

  “How did you even know I was there?”

  “Bassem has a contact with the local police,” said Mary. “As soon as the motel owner reported you, we knew about it.”

  Sam took his first proper look around the small room. “Where are we exactly?

  “A safe house that Bassem organized.”

  “Okay. So, next question, and most important . . . who are you?”

  “My name is Mary Verulam.”

  “Verulam?” Sam remembered the letter he’d found at his uncle’s apartment. “The Verulam Corporation pays my school fees.”

  “I know. Look, Sam, your uncle was working for my father. He’s worried about him.”

  “You’ve been watching me to see if I lead you to my uncle. I heard you on the phone at the helicopter.”

  “Yes . . . and no,” Mary stammered. “I didn’t lie to you. I want to help you. You heard me talking to my father. I wanted permission to tell you the whole story.”

  “So? What is the whole story, then?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  Sam rolled his eyes.

  “I’m being straight with you, Sam. Your uncle was following a lead my father gave him. That Panehesy clue you found in Jasper’s apartment came from him.”