Costas grinned at him. ‘You’re a hands-on kind of guy, aren’t you?’ The baby coughed, spraying milk over Hiebermeyer’s face and neck, and Costas stiffened, looking past Hiebermeyer’s shoulder. ‘Can you handle a camel as well?’
Hiebermeyer tried to wipe his face on his sleeve, while shoving the bottle back in the baby’s mouth. ‘What do you mean, a camel?’
‘I mean, a camel.’ While they had been talking, the camel that they had first seen from the Toyota had loped over and was now craning its neck down so that its face was directly behind Hiebermeyer, its jaws chewing from side to side and its hooded eyes looking out indifferently, apparently disconnected entirely from the scene. Suddenly its tongue came out and wrapped itself around Hiebermeyer’s face, drooping down over his chest to lick up the milk and then withdrawing again. The animal licked its lips contentedly and backed off with a sigh. Costas guffawed, and Hiebermeyer spluttered, trying to wipe his face again while still holding the baby. Aysha quickly took Ahren from him, and Hiebermeyer got up and stumbled towards an open water barrel behind them, dunking his head inside and shaking it vigorously before returning, sitting this time a good few metres away from the camel. He blinked and wiped away the water, then eyed Costas. ‘Watch it, Kazantzakis. Next time it’ll be you.’
‘That camel’s become the expedition mascot,’ Aysha said. ‘The locals say it’s descended from a camel that was left here by a British officer during the Nile expedition, and that it’s still waiting for him to return. So we feel kind of sorry for it. And it’s taken a particular liking to Maurice.’
‘So I can see,’ Costas said, grinning at Jack.
‘I think it’s time you earned your keep as godfather,’ Hiebermeyer said. He went over to Aysha, carefully took the baby from her and gave him to Costas, whose expression had changed to one of frozen horror. Aysha passed him the bottle, and they all watched for a moment as the baby fed contentedly, his eyes closed.
‘You look as if you were made for it,’ Aysha said, then turned to Hiebermeyer. ‘Have you remembered our visitors?’
Hiebermeyer snorted with annoyance and looked at his watch. ‘I could do without them. When Jack and Costas have gone to kit up, I have to get to the excavation on the other side of the river and make sure everything’s shipshape there too.’
Costas looked dubiously at the river. ‘How do you get there? Swim? Watch out for crocodiles.’
Hiebermeyer shook his head. ‘We took a page out of the 1884 expedition. We rigged a cable across the river just like the ship’s hawsers used by the Royal Naval contingent to haul whaleboats up the Nile. One of those pictures from the Illustrated London News shows a cable laid across those two jutting rocks that formed the narrowest point of the cataract, now completely submerged. I use the one we set up to pull a boat over the pool below us to the other side.’
‘Who’s coming exactly?’ Jack asked.
‘We’re expecting a visit from the Sudanese Ministry of Culture. It’s a scheduled inspection, and I welcome that. Our team here is almost entirely Sudanese and I’d love to see this develop into a permanent programme. Ever since the Aswan dam construction this area has been written off by archaeologists assuming that the interesting sites have all been inundated, but as you can see, there’s a lot still to be found on higher ground above the river. Perhaps the programme could have IMU backing.’
‘I can certainly propose it to the board of directors,’ Jack said. ‘Especially if our dive produces good results.’
‘What I’m apprehensive about is the new guy they’re bringing with them. He’s been specially appointed to increase awareness of recent Sudanese history, especially the Mahdist period. As a historian, I have a lot of sympathy with the idea. The Mahdi was an extraordinary character, and the way in which the Sudanese people rose up in support of him, mainly fighting for their own independence from foreign interference rather than out of religious fanaticism, should be looked on positively as a basis for nation-building today. God knows, this place needs it.’
‘Has there been any progress yet?’ Jack said.
‘Things got off to a bad start when Kitchener desecrated the Mahdi’s tomb after the Battle of Omdurman in 1898; from then until the end of the Anglo-Egyptian regime in 1956, the Mahdist era was not exactly a focus for celebration. Even the period of Gordon’s rule quickly passed out of visible history, because there was so little left to look at and a great desire to sweep away the horror of that time and look ahead. The only significant building to survive the Mahdist destruction of Khartoum, the palace where Gordon was holed up, was demolished after the British returned in 1898. The only substantial other survivals are two of the river steamers that he used to make contact with the advance force of the British on the Nile. The Bordein was restored in 1935, the fiftieth anniversary of Gordon’s death, and was something of a tourist attraction until it fell into disrepair after the British left. One of the new appointee’s first jobs has been to oversee its restoration. He wants it to appear as it did when the Mahdi ruled Khartoum and took over the steamers for his own use.’
‘I’d go along with that,’ Jack said. ‘Virtually all we know of the place during those years of Mahdist rule after 1885 comes from the account of Rudolf von Slatin, the Austrian officer who had been one of Gordon’s staff and later returned under British rule as a special inspector for the Sudan. It is extraordinary that a former boatbuilder from the Nile should have ended up ruling a country three times the size of France, and anything that can be done to put that period into visible history is very worthwhile, in my book.’
Costas knitted his brows. ‘Wasn’t there another steamer, one that was wrecked? I flipped through Jack’s books on the plane on the way here and that caught my interest. Gordon sent one of his officers downstream with a lot of his personal papers and artefacts, but the steamer foundered and the officer was murdered.’
‘Colonel Stewart,’ Jack said. ‘The steamer was the Abbas, wrecked in the fifth cataract, about five hundred kilometres upstream of here, in September 1884. It was the event that really seems to have sent Gordon into a downward spiral.’
Costas turned to Aysha. ‘Has anyone ever dived on it?’
She shook her head. ‘Not to my knowledge. The Mahdi’s men ransacked her and salvaged what they could after Stewart was murdered. They’d been persuaded that there was gold on board, and that’s what the locals still believe. They’re pretty hostile to anyone going near the site. There’s a local warlord who runs the place like a private fiefdom.’
‘Any truth in it?’ Costas asked. ‘The gold?’
‘Gordon wasn’t that kind of treasure-hunter. But he does seem to have sent a good part of his archaeological collection away in the Abbas, and that must still be lying on the riverbed. We thought it might make a good IMU project.’
Costas turned to Jack. ‘What do you think? Sounds like another case of the Beatrice, digging up a nineteenth-century wreck to find ancient antiquities.’
Jack pursed his lips. ‘It’d have to be a pretty big prize for me to go diving at a site guarded by a Sudanese warlord and his private army who might be hankering after reliving the murder of a British officer on the site a hundred and thirty years ago.’
Aysha nodded. ‘I think you’d have to get them on your side.’
Costas turned to Hiebermeyer. ‘Would that project come under the aegis of this new guy? Excavation of the steamer would put that period of history into the limelight, with the added attraction of ancient artefacts. Who knows what kind of things Gordon might have collected.’
Hiebermeyer looked uncertain. ‘I’m keeping my distance. I haven’t told you about this man’s background. He’s not a career politician, but he’s from an immensely wealthy Sudanese family based in Egypt. His father’s side are originally from this part of the Nile in upper Sudan. They claim descent from the prophet Muhammad through his grandson Hassad.’
‘The same as the Mahdi?’ Jack said.
‘The man’s name is Hassid al�
�Ahmed. His family were boatbuilders, just like the Mahdi’s. He’s never openly claimed a connection, but my contact in the ministry says it’s an unspoken assumption.’
Costas whistled. ‘Now that is living history. Maybe he’s not just intent on celebrating the history of the Mahdi, but is also a jihadist himself.’
Hiebermeyer pursed his lips. ‘You have to ask that question of everyone you meet out here. But I don’t think it’s as straightforward as that. When Aysha and I gave our briefing on the Semna project for the ministry people in Khartoum, I noticed that he seemed completely uninterested and was texting most of the time until I mentioned my particular interest in Akhenaten, when he suddenly pocketed his iPhone and began furiously taking notes. I mentioned this to my ministry friend, and he said that both this man and his father had plagued the ministry with requests to excavate a number of sites up and down the Nile with evidence for ancient Egyptian occupation. They’d been rebuffed because the family had an ugly reputation for treating any project they’d been allowed to develop in the Sudan as their own private enterprise, using bribery to corrupt officials sent to police them. The ministry had been obliged to accept Hassid’s appointment with great reluctance after he’d made a cash donation of thirty million dollars to the Khartoum museum in return for the role. Officially he has nothing to do with ancient sites, but it’s no surprise that he’s managed to shoehorn himself into the inspection today. Ostensibly he’s here to look at the evidence we’ve found from 1884, but I’m sure what he’s really interested in is the pharaonic remains and anything else he might wheedle out of us about ancient Egyptian discoveries. Why he should have that special interest, I don’t yet know.’
He looked at his watch and stood up. Aysha went over to Costas and took the baby, now fast asleep, and sat down again. Hiebermeyer turned to Jack and Costas. ‘I promised to show you how I know that two soldiers died up here that day in 1884. And how that’s led to a fabulous ancient discovery. It’s the reason why you’re here. Aysha, we’ll be back in half an hour. Let’s go.’
11
Hiebermeyer led Jack and Costas from the shrine over about two hundred metres of bare rock towards the beginning of a large gully that opened out into the desert to the east. They dropped a few metres below the level of the surrounding rock and walked towards an off-white tent some fifty metres into the gully, at the end of a dirt track from the main road where several of the expedition vehicles were parked. The tent was the size of a small marquee, with a pitched roof and guy ropes pegged out and anchored against the wind. Hiebermeyer opened the door flap and ushered them inside, where the air was noticeably warmer. ‘It’s something of a greenhouse in here during the day, but it’s the price we pay for keeping the dust out of the excavation,’ he said. They followed him over to a square trench about three metres across and two metres deep, with measuring rods along the sides and a plastic sheet laid over the bottom.
Costas squatted close to the edge of the trench, being careful not to let the loose dust and stone crumble inside. ‘This looks like a crime scene investigation,’ he said. ‘An ancient burial?’
Hiebermeyer nodded. ‘During our preliminary recce Aysha spotted two low piles of rocks about two metres long, evidently man-made. As you’ve seen, the plateau is largely exposed rock – gneiss and granite with some sandstone – and this gully is one of the few collecting places near the river for wind-borne dust and sand, the only place with stable sediment deep enough for a burial. But the two burials we found under the stones weren’t ancient. Beneath that tarpaulin are the semi-mummified remains of two British soldiers.’
Jack stared, his mind reeling. ‘Are they from the Gordon relief expedition?’
‘The khaki uniforms are correct. They have the shoulder badges of the South Staffordshire Regiment, one of the units with the river column. And one of them has a letter from a woman in Dublin in his front tunic pocket, dated early October 1884.’
‘So this is why you think a second soldier was killed in the sangar.’
‘We’ve left the bodies in situ, but did a full forensic analysis. They were clearly both buried at the same time and with some care, undoubtedly by their comrades. One was killed by a single gunshot wound to the upper chest, and probably died immediately. The other, the one with the letter, was hit twice, once in the lower leg and once through both thighs, severing the artery in his right thigh. He probably bled to death in agony.’
Costas stood up and backed away. ‘I don’t want to see.’
Hiebermeyer put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. We’ve reburied them exactly as they were, and we’re about to infill the trench. We’ve arranged that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, who administer the Khartoum War Cemetery, will take charge of the site. They mainly deal with Second World War casualties from the desert campaign against the Italians and the Germans, but they also have charge of First World War casualties from the war against the Turks as well as any bodies discovered from the 1880s and 1890s. We know the names of these two soldiers from their personal effects, and the Sudanese authorities have allowed the Commission to build a monument at this spot.’
‘So that closes the chapter on that fateful day in December 1884,’ Jack murmured, looking pensively at the tarpaulin.
‘It closes that chapter, but it opens another one,’ replied Hiebermeyer, his eyes gleaming. ‘Just like in the sangar, when they dug down here the soldiers cut through something else, something ancient. They probably thought it was the remains of earlier human burials, but when Aysha and her team removed the surrounding sediment, they found something unexpected. Prepare to be amazed.’ He lifted a flap of canvas dividing off part of the tent beyond the trench, and they stared in astonishment. On a hospital gurney at one end was an intact mummy, the criss-crossed strips of linen clearly visible beneath the hardened resin on the surface. The head was in the form of a stylised mask, with eyes and other features picked out in paint, the colours faded to pastel shades of green and blue and grey. Only it was not the mask of a human being. The mummy was lying on its front, and the head tapered to a snout, jutting out and ringed with painted teeth. Jack whistled. ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he said. A crocodile.
He gently put a hand on the resin, feeling the warmth where it had absorbed heat from the sun, a disconcerting sensation, as if the mummy were still alive. ‘Is it real? Inside, I mean?’
Hiebermeyer nodded. ‘We took it to the Khartoum School of Medicine for a CT scan. It’s a fully mature adult male Crocodylus niloticus. There was a scarab in part of the wrapping that we unravelled dating to the reign of our friend Senusret III, about 1850 BC.’ Hiebermeyer moved to another hanging curtain. ‘Now, get a hold of this one.’ He pulled the canvas away, and they stared in even greater astonishment. A second gurney held another crocodile mummy, this one in fragments, with only the snout and head and the lower part of the tail intact. But the head was huge, at least twice the size of the first mummy. And instead of painted features, the mask was picked out with gold leaf and encrusted jewels, black stones like jet for the eyes and a beautiful translucent green stone for each of the nostrils. Jack leaned forward and gently touched one of the stones, seeing the reflected light turn his finger a watery green, a shade he had never seen before.
‘The nostril stones are peridot, from St John’s Island in the Red Sea,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘The Egyptians sailed there specially to mine it. In the sunlight they reflect an amazing beam of light, almost too dazzling to look at.’
‘It’s huge,’ Costas said in a hushed tone. ‘I mean the crocodile. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘Despite the richness of the embellishments, it was pretty crudely mummified, and hasn’t survived so well, even taking into account the damage to the torso caused by the British soldiers digging through it,’ Hiebermeyer continued. ‘Our analysis of the wrappings shows that the smaller mummy was encased in linen and papyrus characteristic of the reeds grown along the banks of the Nile in upper Egypt, whereas this one is local
desert grass mixed with Nile clay probably from the pool below, as well as scraps of papyrus documents that seem to have been discarded from the fort.’
‘This is where you found the Semna dispatch you read to us earlier?’ Jack said.
Hiebermeyer nodded. ‘The smaller mummy was undoubtedly brought here from Egypt, whereas we’re sure this one is a crocodile that lived here and was mummified on the spot. And yes, it’s big. Huge. The largest known Nile crocs are those recorded in the nineteenth century by European hunters. Maybe there were leviathans among them, but this one now stands as the largest Nile crocodile ever recorded. I sent Lanowski the CT scan and his computerised reconstruction of the bones gives its length. Most fully grown male Nile crocs average about four to five metres. This one is almost nine metres, the size of a bus.’
‘Ibrahim was telling us about local stories of a leviathan in the river here,’ Jack said. ‘This seems to bear them out.’
‘Lanowski calculates the crush strength of the jaw at twenty-five kilonewtons, enough to split a cow in half,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘But like all crocs, the muscles that open the jaws are weak, and you’d be able to hold them shut if you wrestled it down. Lanowski says the IMU medicos will be particularly interested in the integumentary sense organs on a crocodile of this size, as they may reveal ways of sensing pressure that have applications to diving technology. But you’d have to catch one live.’
Costas stared at him. ‘Don’t even think about it. I’m not acting as fishing bait for one of Lanowski’s experiments. He wants a live crocodile, he can catch it himself.’
Jack gazed back at the trench. ‘What are they doing buried up here, so high above the river?’
‘That was my first question too,’ Hiebermeyer replied. ‘Nile crocs lay eggs in November and December, the time of year when the level of the river was already well down, and yet they instinctively nested above the summer high-water mark in order to prevent their nests being inundated as the river rose again when the eggs were due to hatch. It was the reason why the ancient Egyptians thought crocodiles could foretell the future. They’d choose a sandy spot where they could bury their eggs and stand guard. Where we are now is one of the few locations with any depth of sand close to the cataract, even though it would have meant a lumbering climb for them up the slope. It’s an exposed location, but open on all sides so difficult for anyone intent on stealing the eggs to sneak up unobserved. Given the size of the crocs that lived here, anyone chancing on them would have kept their distance. On open ground like this a croc can move faster than most people can run. In the water, one this big would be even faster, up to forty kilometres per hour in bursts.’
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