Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 03 - Cairo Caper

by Barbara Silkstone

I hopped on behind Petri. “Let’s get this show on the road.” Roger wasn’t the only one with repressed phrases.

  Our camel stood. Roger galumphed up to us. He pointed at me. “What are you doing? We need to get to Taporisis. If Darcy can keep up, you should be able to.”

  Evidently daggers couldn’t penetrate my sunglasses or he would have looked like a circus act gone tragically awry. “I had to stop because of a fire ant problem.”

  “Fire ants?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  We humped it toward the rest of the group. Fiona piped up, “What is Taporisis and why are we going there?” She huffed and crossed her arms, banging her pith helmet into Petri’s chin. “Nobody ever tells me anything.”

  Roger went into his professor mode, which I usually find kind of cute but I was fuming over his Darcy crack. “Taporisis is one of many temples of Osiris. Inside is evidence of a smaller temple dedicated to the goddess Isis. Antony and Cleopatra were worshipped as the earthly manifestations of Osiris and Isis. Because she committed suicide in a ritual act with deep religious significance, I believe this is where she would have taken her life. So we’re here to search for her tomb.”

  Fiona peered around Petri’s shoulder at me. “I’m so excited, Wendy. We’re going to find Cleopatra’s original Kama Sutra. The final piece in my quest. My book will be even bigger than I thought. I can name it The History of Sex for Dummies – What Goes Where in Cleopatra’s Own Words.”

  I desperately needed to rub my temples but I was afraid to let go of Petri.

  A clomp-clomp caught my attention. Darcy squeezed her camel in between Roger’s and our triplex camel. Where was the Super Soaker? But Roger was wrong. I was not jealous. I merely couldn’t stand the bitch.

  “I always knew someday we’d make this journey,” she said in a raspy rendition of her Marilyn Monroe voice. “Together.” She ran her hand through her mane. Her hair still looked salon-fresh.

  Roger responded with a hut-hut and ran his camel to the front of our pack with Darcy in hot pursuit. He led us up a rocky slope to the walls of the temple. We parked our camels between two fragmented walls and a knoll of tumbled stones.

  He bailed off his camel, skidded through some rubble, and then started down a scratch of a path, amazingly fast for a guy in two left shoes, toward the bottom of an excavation.

  Darcy hesitated on the loose rocks, which was a good thing. If she slipped she’d start an avalanche.

  The Ishtars dropped from their mounts.

  “Stay!” Darcy said.

  They obeyed. I wondered if they’d roll over, fetch, and bring in the newspaper for her.

  Fiona frowned, “I just know the Kama Sutra is here somewhere. But this is soooo steep.”

  Petri helped Fiona as if she were a fragile Victorian lady, her boots slip-sliding on the loose rocks.

  No time for second thoughts. I raced past all of them and hurtled down the treacherous drop.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I blew through the scree by using my high-heel as a spike to stabilize me, and my tennis-shoed foot to launch. Scary but it worked. The same technique worked on the path. I caught Roger as he got to the dig. I glanced over my shoulder. Darcy was bulling our way but her bulk wasn’t an asset on this playing field.

  Two crumbling exterior walls bookended a football field of boulders, littered with smaller stones and chunks of rock. I carefully placed my feet. A twisted ankle would be a disaster at this point. And my ankles were vulnerable. They’d already been through hell. Rough stone footings outlined some of what must have been the interior walls.

  The huffing and puffing behind me spoke volumes but I looked anyway. Yes Darcy had caught up. And still spa fresh, though winded.

  Roger frowned. “Our deal was, you got to be here in exchange for the camels, but you are not part of the search.”

  She patted his cheek. “But I knew you didn’t mean it, Roger dear.”

  His jaw muscles bunched and he spoke through clenched teeth. “I meant every word, but you’re here now. Don’t screw things up. This could be one of the world’s most important archeological finds.”

  She lowered her eyes, appearing contrite. “Yes, dear.”

  I wouldn’t have trusted her with last week’s losing Powerball ticket.

  Fiona’s distinctive voice reached my ears. “Wendy. Wait for us.”

  Darcy’s bulk blocked my vision. I sidestepped and saw Petri and Fiona picking their way through the rocky field. Fiona waved. “Please wait. I don’t want to miss out on the Kama Sutra.”

  “Kama Sutra?” Darcy said.

  I shrugged. “Long story.”

  Fiona was a ditz, but Petri being with us was a plus. He was armed and a lot stronger than anyone would suspect.

  Roger buried his face in his hands for a few seconds then rallied. Wordlessly he waved us on. We followed him around the perimeter of what looked like a burial ground.

  “This cemetery is the most recent discovery at Taporisis,” Roger said. He pointed to collapsed walls. “That’s the remains of the mortuary where the embalming of important people, but not royalty, was performed.”

  Between the cemetery and the mortuary I spotted an open crate of human skulls. The skeletons and mummies of small animals lay in separate containers on a large blue tarp. Digging tools were scattered around the edges of the canvas. Twine was strung between short posts to form an archaeological grid with numbered sections.

  “The expedition found twenty-seven tombs, twenty of them shaped like vaulted sarcophagi, partly underground and partly above ground. The remaining seven consisted of staircases leading to burial chambers,” Roger said.

  Roger continued his taking-the-class-on-a-fieldtrip lecture, swinging his hand toward the dig. “Inside the tombs were a total of ten mummies, two of them gilded. This cemetery indicates a person of royal status might be buried inside. It was common for high status individuals to construct their tombs close to those of their rulers.”

  Something totally out of place caught my eye. “What the heck is that?” I pointed to a high-tech double-decker bus parked near the split between the crumbled walls that marked the entrance. The bus was the Harrods shade of green with a swirling gold S logo on the side. Had London’s premier store begun to offer tours of hidden tombs?

  The veins in Roger’s forehead popped out. “Bloody hell! Are they selling tickets to this like it’s Old Faithful instead of a sensitive dig?”

  He nearly frothed at the mouth as he stormed to the bus. I was right behind him, in steps and in anger. The others strung out behind us. How could the site be protected if somebody’s running tour buses to it? Not to mention if we could have gotten on a bus like every-day tourists instead of what we went through… all my aches and pains magnified.

  We banged on the bus door until the door whooshed open with a pneumatic sound. A giant loomed over us. Okay he seemed a little larger because he was standing a couple steps above us, but he was close enough to a giant for me. He could have been a super heavy weight boxer. His eyes were puffy slits, skin the color of polished mahogany, muscle-bound arms bulging out of a short-sleeved Under Armour T-shirt. There wasn’t an ashtray large enough to bring this guy down.

  His voice was a rumble. “What’s all the racket? I’m trying to sleep.”

  Roger looked official even if he wasn’t. “Who gave you permission to park this thing here?”

  “Check with the boss. He’s down there.” He pointed to the temple entrance. The bus door hissed to a close.

  “Bloody ox!” Roger turned and started striding back the way we came.

  I fell in beside him. We approached Darcy first. Evidently Roger’s expression kept her quiet. She fell in on Roger’s other side without making a sound.

  Fiona and Petri remained together, picking their way through the rocks. They turned and walked behind us. Fiona said, “Are we going for the Kama Sutra now?”

  Roger gave me a you-owe-me-big-time-for-this-one glare over the top of his su
nglasses and didn’t answer her. He led us through the rocks and boulders to a staked-off pit. He stopped at the edge of the ominous cavity. We bunched up behind him.

  He pointed into the hole. “That’s where we’re going. To see the boss, whoever the hell he is.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “It’s about twelve feet to the bottom,” Roger said. “One at a time on the ladder. It’s attached to the rock wall. I’ll go first and hold it after I get to the bottom in case one of its underpinnings comes loose. You’ll find the ground is uneven and there are loose stones so mind where you place your feet.”

  He handled the descent with ease and called up, “I’m in place. Come on down.”

  As I moved toward the ladder, Darcy elbowed me aside and started down. If I kicked her, she’d fall on my love and turn him into a grease spot. She thundered to the bottom safely.

  I stuck my head over the edge and said, “Is the ladder still safe?” before I turned and stepped on the top rung.

  When I got to the fourth rung, my downward climb turned into an adventure. My high-heel banged off it and shot my leg into space, which torqued my tennis-shoed foot off its rung. I flapped in the air with a one-handed grip. I heard Darcy laugh. I swung my feet onto the ladder and panted for a few seconds before continuing. It gave me time to seethe and think of revenge.

  Petri came down with Fiona riding his back like a monkey, which was against Roger’s instruction, but the two of them surely didn’t weigh as much as Darcy.

  Roger didn’t say a word but his expression spoke volumes. His patience with our group of amateurs was growing short. I resolved to lay off the blonde no matter how much she deserved it.

  We stood in a dimly-lit circular chamber with coffin-size niches in the walls. Roger finally spoke. “As you can see, the sarcophaguses on this level have been removed. We’ll cross this chamber to a passageway that leads to the main transversal passage then work our way to the burial shaft that might contain Cleopatra’s tomb. There were three possibilities. The first two burial shafts have been bombarded with radar and hand-sifted. The Society eliminated them but sealed them because they contain many artifacts that need to be properly recovered and inventoried. Since the boss and his tour group aren’t here, they must be in the third shaft unless they broke one of the seals.”

  The natural light faded as soon as we moved away from the entrance shaft, but the lights in the chamber, though dim, were sufficient for us to get across without tripping and breaking our necks. But the passageway was another matter. Dark voids between sparsely strung lights made for slow progress. Roger took us down wobbly stone steps. I pressed my hands against the rough walls of the three-foot-wide tunnel.

  The fire ants were on my chest again. I would have killed for an ice pack. The no-see-um cat rubbed against my legs and the chest pain eased to the pizza-burn level.

  We slid down a slope of scree. At the bottom Roger said, “We’re into the first level of the main transversal passage.”

  The transversal passage was wide enough for three people to walk abreast and the lights were close enough together that there were no dark patches in between them. Voices echoed off the stone walls. I couldn’t tell from which direction but Roger could.

  “What the bloody hell? Sounds like people are in the first shaft. If the boss is in there, he broke the seal. The members of the Egyptian Antiquity Society will be pissed, as will I.”

  He sped up as much as he could over the treacherous surface. Brighter light streamed from a gap in the wall ahead. A huge wad of yellow tape resembling crime scene tape lay next to the gap. We went through and entered a well-lit, remarkably intact chamber, a time tunnel to cross the ages. Six people were gathered around an outline of a sarcophagus etched into the far wall.

  A stunning bas-relief the size of a canoe graced the adjacent wall. The figures were all identical females. I turned to Roger. “What is that –”

  He pointed and cut me off. “See the tall guy in the middle growling orders. That must be the boss, but those don’t look like tourists to me. This is not a sightseeing outing.”

  The man saw Roger pointing and strode across the chamber, stopping a few feet short of our ragtag group. He had cold grey eyes, silver-blonde hair, and a ramrod posture that suggested military discipline. With an affected upper-crust British accent he said, “And so, what have we here?”

  Roger stepped closer to him. “Exactly what I was going to ask you.”

  “I am Sloane Ranger, Commander of the Special World Archaeology Group.”

  He wore creased cargo pants and a tailored safari jacket with epaulets and a dozen flapped pockets. His cargo pants were bloused into calf-high ostrich-skin boots, which probably cost as much as my Jag, and completed the picture of a wannabe archaeologist.

  Roger blinked as though Sloane Ranger’s name registered with him. “I’m more interested in what you are doing here than your name. You broke a seal to get in here. I suggest you take your people and get out or I’ll see to it your permit is revoked.”

  Sloane Ranger barked a non-laugh laugh. “Do I look like I have a permit? I am now funding this excavation. The government doesn’t have the money to spend on it. Nor does your precious Egyptian Antiquities Society. So my organization is paying for it and providing supplemental manpower to the EAS.” He swept his arm toward his crew. “These are qualified technicians, not day labor off the streets.”

  I tugged on Roger’s sleeve and whispered, “Did Sir Sidney tell you about this?”

  Evidently I didn’t whisper quietly enough because Sloane Ranger said, “Sir Sidney is too embarrassed about the finances to discuss the situation, but I assure you, he is aware of what I’m doing as is the Egyptian Government. And it has no bearing on your mission, Doctor Jolley.”

  Roger’s head jerked. “You know who I am?”

  “The Doctor Roger Jolley, poster boy for lost treasures, and…” he glanced at the rest of us, “… his Egyptological cognoscenti.”

  The guy was a natural piss-head regardless of his money and accent.

  “I’m not here to hinder your efforts. In fact I want to help. I see you are not very well equipped.”

  Roger shrugged. “We had to leave Cairo in a hurry and this is more of a reconnaissance today than anything else.”

  A face-saving comment by Roger that fell flat in my ears. I hoped it sounded better to this annoying bastard.

  “There is a situation that will inhibit your reconnaissance. The third burial shaft has not had full lighting installed and the minimal lighting there has failed. However I can provide you with flashlights.”

  I heard the gears grinding in Roger’s head. He didn’t like Sloane Ranger or believe his story but we needed the flashlights. Finally he said, “Thanks, we’ll return them on the way out.”

  “You needn’t worry yourself with that. I have plenty.” He pulled a flashlight from a loop on his cargo pants, flashed it at his minions, and made hand signals to indicate one of them should bring some.

  Darcy wandered into my field of view with an entranced look on her face, her eyes focused on Sloane Ranger. She shifted her bulk as close as possible to him while she swiped a tube of gloss over her collagen lips. “Love your beetle pin.”

  He turned to her and smiled. “It’s a scarab. One of kind. Made in the eighteen-hundreds as a tribute to Poe’s Gold-Bug. But I thought it appropriate to wear to this dig, given the importance of the scarab as an icon in ancient Egypt.”

  I’d been so focused on his face and his words that I hadn’t noticed the diamond encrusted gold pin on his jacket.

  He eyed Darcy up and down. “Beauty and a lovely Rubenesque figure are a rare combination these days. Would you consider sitting for a portrait? Nude, of course.”

  She tittered. I mean, really, she tittered like a teenager. “Oh, I don’t know, Commander Ranger. I’ve never done anything like that.”

  “Please, call me Sloane. I have one of England’s greatest portrait artists on retainer. You woul
d be well compensated, and you might become famous. Also it would give us a chance to become better acquainted.”

  She tittered again.

  This juvenile exchange made me want to throw up. But on the plus side, if she was involved with this jerk, it would get her mind off Roger.

  The minion with the box of flashlights showed up. We all took one and turned them on. Mine didn’t work. Neither did Petri’s. We took replacements and the second time was the charm.

  Sloane Ranger waved his minion away then jumped two feet straight up. I looked down and saw a rat skitter away. Sloane was deathly white and shaking like a malaria victim. In a squeaky voice he said, “Oh, mother-of-god, it ran over my foot. Excuse me, a little phobia of mine. I was attacked by rats as a child.” He glanced over his shoulder as he walked away, probably regretting sharing something so personal.

  I might have felt sorry for him if he wasn’t such a piss-head.

  Roger said, “It’s time to find Cleopatra’s tomb.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Roger led us out of the burial shaft back to the transversal passage. We came to an opening with yellow tape blocking it. He said, “This is the second burial shaft,” and kept on trucking.

  I walked beside him. “You reacted like you knew Sloane Ranger’s name.”

  He nodded. “I’ve heard it before. He’s new to the archeology game, filthy rich and more dilettante than dedicated. His bus and clothes tell his story. I don’t trust him and I don’t know how competent his people are.”

  “Maybe because he’s the money man he wants to see firsthand that the job’s being done right. He’s willing to brave the rats to do it.”

  “Money man or not, it doesn’t give him the right to poke around and screw up the dig. He should just provide the funding and let the EAS do the work. Maybe I’m being influenced by my personal feelings about him. It was dislike at first sight. He’s a… a…”

  “Piss-head?”

  “Exactly. You have such a way with words.”

  Darcy was right behind us, trying to draw level, but the passage couldn’t accommodate three abreast if one of the three was Darcy. Petri and Fiona brought up the rear.