The Amarnan Kings, Book 6: Scarab - Descendant

by Overton, Max

  "Good. Everything is ready?"

  "Yes, Colonel. There is also a message for you from an Ali Hafiz in Luxor. He says..." Massri consulted a piece of paper, "...the woman has been found. He awaits instructions."

  Sarraj nodded. "You will place a telephone and a secure line at my disposal immediately."

  "As soon as we get back to headquarters, Colonel."

  Bashir and Nazim had been standing within earshot. Nazim fussed with the small amount of luggage they had brought but stopped at the mention of the woman. He sidled alongside the Minister and whispered.

  "Woman? Does he mean Dr Hanser?"

  "How should I know? Or even care. We don't need her any longer."

  At the army headquarters, they were greeted by Major Arafa--the commanding officer--who found it hard to restrain his curiosity. He saluted and showed Sarraj into his office while detailing Captain Massri to see to the accommodation of the other personnel.

  "What's this about, Colonel?" Arafa asked.

  "Nothing to be concerned about, Major. I just need a squad of your men for a week or two. There is no problem, I trust?"

  "None sir. Everything is in readiness. Er, may I enquire...?"

  "Absolute secrecy, Major." Sarraj made a show of looking around, and lowered his voice. "I don't want it even breathed outside this room as to my destination."

  "Of course not, sir. Er, where are you heading?"

  "Good man. If asked, even you don't know. Now, you have a secure telephone line?"

  The major excused himself and the army receptionist put Sarraj through to Luxor on a secure line.

  "You have news for me, Ali Hafiz?"

  "Yes sir. Yesterday, while assisting the police in the search for the escapees, I saw the woman, disguised, walk into the Luxor museum, followed by a European man who was not her usual companion."

  "Do you know this man?"

  "No. He was dressed in a tropical suit and seemed at ease. Knowing that the woman might recognise me, I waited a few minutes before entering the museum. They were not in sight, but I made enquiries, and found that they had an appointment with one Dr Karim Zewali, the Director. They were with him for about an hour before leaving. I followed again and they led me to a small hotel near the bazaar. I watched, and they emerged with her original companion and had a meal at a nearby caf�, after which they returned to the hotel."

  "You have done very well, Ali Hafiz."

  "Thank you, sir. What are your instructions?"

  Sarraj considered the woman and her companion--companions--and debated whether they were a danger to his expedition, or whether they were of any use. He told Hafiz to hold and bellowed for Major Arafa, telling him to fetch Nazim Manouk to him immediately. While he waited, he had Hafiz recount whatever information he had on police activities, especially whether they were likely to find the fugitives themselves.

  "I would have to say it is unlikely," Hafiz said. "Unless they happen upon them by accident while in a caf�. The police are of the opinion the fugitives have left the city already."

  Nazim arrived and Sarraj covered the mouthpiece with one hand. He left the secretary standing. "This description you have of the track to the tomb--how certain are you of its accuracy?"

  Nazim hesitated. He knew he had enough information to guide them to the tomb--perhaps--once they found the pylon, but he did not want to reveal that just yet. There was still a chance he might be able to cut both Sarraj and Bashir out, so he temporised.

  "I cannot be certain, but I believe the pylon is the start of the track. Once we find that, we might be able to work out the rest."

  "How is it that you identified the pylon when this Hanser woman, a supposed expert, could not?"

  "There is a strong possibility Dr Hanser misled us in an attempt to safeguard the tomb."

  "Why would she...? Never mind. How did you find out she lied?"

  "By chance, Colonel. I saw a symbol in the Luxor temple that translated as pylon and I remembered it was the same as one in the Scarab inscription. I consulted a man at the museum who confirmed it and..."

  "What was his name?" Sarraj demanded.

  "Zewali," Nazim said. "Dr Karim Zewali..." His voice trailed off as he saw a tide of anger sweep across Sarraj's face. "What is wrong, Colonel?"

  Sarraj shook his head, mastering his anger. "Dr Hanser escaped into the city, as you know, and I have been looking for her, so far without success. What is your opinion? Do we need Dr Hanser any longer? Can you find the tomb without her? Without this golden scarab she spoke of?"

  "The ancients believed in the power of the scarab as a magical object, but we are modern men and know the truth of Allah. I don't think Dr Hanser knows any more about how to find this tomb than do I. You may as well call off the search, Colonel."

  "You are confident you can find the tomb?"

  "Yes, providing we can find the starting point--the pylon."

  "And Dr Hanser doesn't know where it is?"

  Nazim hesitated only an instant. "How could she? By her own admission she has never been to Egypt before."

  Sarraj considered Nazim's words for a few minutes, weighing his options. He was surprised to find the telephone mouthpiece still in his hand and spoke into it.

  "You are still there?"

  "Yes, sir."

  He covered the mouthpiece again and dismissed Nazim, before collecting his thoughts. "Ali Hafiz, it seems the woman is surplus to requirements. I want you to silence her and her companions--the Welshman, this new companion she has found, and Dr Zewali, as quickly as possible."

  Hafiz was silent for a few moments. "I presume you mean, 'permanently silence', so I must ask whether you desire their demise to be public or hidden. The British are no problem, accidents happen to tourists, but for a prominent person like the museum director, questions could be asked. Will I have the protection of the police?"

  "No, you won't, so make sure it looks like an accident."

  "May I use other men to help me?"

  "I will leave that up to you, Ali Hafiz, but you must ensure their silence afterward. No hint of this can be traced to me."

  Sarraj hung up and sat in silence for a while, wondering if he had done the right thing. It hinged on whether Nazim had told the truth about his ability to find the tomb from the description. If he was in any doubt, he would have asked that the search for the woman continue. She was the only other person--except possibly this Zewali person from the museum--who might know more. If that was the case, it was imperative that they be removed from the equation if they could not be bent to his will. He had formed the opinion that the woman would rather die than help him reach the tomb. Sarraj could not take the risk that, with the woman at large, she might beat him to the prize. I will let no one best me. My destiny is within my grasp at last .

  * * *

  The expedition left Edfu an hour later, rolling north in two vehicles--a jeep with Sarraj and Bashir as passengers, and a half-track with Nazim and Captain Massri, and ten soldiers in the back. Both vehicles were driven by men experienced in desert conditions. Although Sarraj did not envisage any deep desert travel, it was best to be prepared.

  Their route lay along paved roads at first, then onto dirt roads that climbed the escarpment and eventually onto untracked stony desert that swept inland from the crumbling edge of the cliffs. Sarraj consulted the map marked with the approximate positions of the ruins of the known pylons and spoke to the driver of the jeep, pointing out the general direction. Every hour, he would call a halt and they would take compass bearings on known landmarks, plotting their changing position on the map. By mid-afternoon, they were at the first site--or at least where the map indicated it should be.

  "I don't see anything," Bashir said. "Are you sure this is the spot?"

  "That's what the map says," Sarraj grunted. He got down from the jeep and stretched his legs.

  Nazim joined them and scrutinised the map. "On this scale, we could be right on top of it or as much as a quarter of a mile off."


  "That's no use to us," Bashir complained. "How do we find it?"

  "We know it's a ruined pylon from a small temple to one of the old pagan goddesses, but even if it's a total ruin we should still be able to recognise its traces. Worked stone or mud brick--maybe no more than foundations or a pile of rubble."

  "I can't see anything like that."

  "Perhaps, Minister, if you were to join us out here, we might be able to find it," Sarraj said.

  "I thought that was why we brought the soldiers." Bashir fanned himself with a clipboard. "It's very hot."

  "Then the sooner we find it, the sooner we can get out of here."

  Sarraj ordered the men down from the half-track and organised them in a line in front of the vehicles. Strung out a few paces apart, they shuffled toward the cliff edge with heads bent, searching the ground for any sign that men had worked the rocks there. When they reached the cliff edge, or as close as was reasonably safe, they moved north a little and wandered inland again, making sure that every square foot of ground was covered. Back and forth they shuffled, slowly working their way north.

  Bashir dropped out early, complaining of sore feet and thirst, followed by Sarraj. The rest kept working, stopping every hour for a drink and to reform the line. Colonel Sarraj now sauntered behind the line, snapping out reprimands if he thought a man strayed from a straight line or was paying insufficient attention. Dusk started to fall, and Sarraj saw that they had advanced close to half a mile north of their starting point. It was already getting hard to see, so he ordered the men back to the vehicles.

  Nazim marked the spot they had reached in the search and followed the men back to where they were setting up camp. Major Arafa had provided the expedition with tents and cooking stoves, fuel and food, and even a cook, who now prepared a palatable meal from the army rations. They ate and then sat with cups of coffee, cigars and cigarettes, the men apart, talking and joking, while the captain sat with his colonel and his guests, in almost total silence. A stiff breeze blew up, feathering the flames of the fire that heated another pot of coffee and the men brought up rocks to form a low protective wall around the fire.

  "I had no idea it would be this difficult," Bashir said, shifting uncomfortably on the rock-strewn sand. "The map says it's here, so why can't we find it?"

  Sarraj said nothing, just drew on his cigar and blew a cloud of smoke up into the cold night air. Captain Massri kept silent too, not wanting to enter into any discussion with the Minister, so it was left to Nazim to provide an explanation.

  "The map was made some thirty years ago, Minister, and the positions of landmarks depended on the skill of the surveyors with theodolites. Small discrepancies multiply, and when something is a ruin to start with, it is easy to be imprecise. Indeed, if the pylon is no more than a foundation, its position on the map may rely more on guesswork than accurate surveying."

  Bashir muttered something that nobody was interested enough to ask about, and silence fell over the little group. They listened to the murmur of voices from where the men sat. A stone fell from the rough wall surrounding the fire and one of the men got up, wrestling the straight-sided stone that had fallen back into the gap. Nazim stared for a moment, then got up and wandered over. He squatted and ran his hands over the block.

  "Where did you find this?" he asked. Captain Massri joined Nazim at the other fire, watching him curiously.

  The men fell silent and one of them cleared his throat. "Over there." He indicated the direction with a jerk of his thumb.

  "Show me."

  The soldier looked at Captain Massri and the officer nodded. "Show him, Private Hassani."

  Hassani rose to his feet and scooped up a torch, striding out into the darkness with Nazim on his heels. Massri followed, as did a couple of the other soldiers; several torch beams soon wavered in the desert darkness, probing the litter of rocks.

  "It was somewhere here," Hassani said, sweeping his torch beam around. "I weren't noticing exactly where; just looking for decent rocks."

  Nazim started searching the area, and directed the others to do likewise. They cast back and forth and were soon rewarded with a cry of triumph from Captain Massri.

  "I've found something. Is this what we're after?"

  Nazim knelt beside a block of sandstone half-buried in the sand and brushed it clean, sweeping the grains away from its sides. Another block lay below it, a third beside the second, with crumbling mortar loosely joining them. Nazim sat back and regarded the blocks with a grin.

  "That's just what we're after," he said. "Private Hassani, Captain Massri--I think you've discovered the pylon."

  The discovery spurred Bashir into action and, when faced with Sarraj's reluctance to do anything further until morning, cajoled and pleaded until the Colonel agreed to let the men work, provided they volunteered. Surprisingly, nearly half of them did, jokingly talking about digging for buried treasure. They worked with torches and shovels, clearing the sand away from what were slowly revealed as the foundation stones of a small pylon. Nazim carefully sketched the outline, and with the help of a compass, oriented it to the cardinal points. The gap between the two 'towers' was the gate, he explained to Captain Massri, and it pierced the brick wall with an east-west orientation.

  "Imagine two truncated pillars with a horizontal crosspiece--rather like the capital 'H' of the western alphabet. The sun would rise within that notch, and if we stand looking west, the rays should illuminate the object of our search," he said. "Providing this is the one we seek," he added.

  "It is," Bashir declared. "I feel it in my bones."

  "It could just be the entrance pylon to a small temple or shrine," Nazim said. "In which case, the only thing that would be illuminated would be the sanctuary of the god."

  The men slept, while Bashir and Nazim kept watch, too excited to sleep. As dawn approached, they woke the others and silently stood in the place where the gate had been, backs to the east and stared impatiently at the dark desert stretching away before them. The sun rose, staining the clouds along the horizon gold and pink. Shadows fled as the light of the sun blazed out along an uneven horizon, flinging the shadows of the waiting men westward through the pylon gate.

  "Where is it?" Bashir asked.

  "Where's what?" Sarraj said. "What are we looking for?"

  "Anything," Nazim murmured. "Everything."

  They watched until their shadows shortened, and Bashir uttered a derisive snort, returning to the campsite stamping his feet and beating his arms about his body to ward off the chill of the night air. Sarraj joined him, pouring coffee from the pot sitting in the freshly ignited fire.

  "So it's not this one," Sarraj said. "We move on to the next."

  "We're not even sure what we're looking for," Bashir grumbled.

  Nazim went over to the jeep and pulled out the map, tracing his finger westward from the pylon position, following the contours of the land. Bashir and Sarraj brought their mugs of coffee over and watched him as he worked.

  "There was one other thing I noticed in the inscription," Nazim said. "Where Dr Hanser said a 'green streak' which made us all think of vegetation, the account could easily read 'green mountain'. That's what I'm looking for--Jebel Akhdar--but I can't find one."

  "I've never heard of one," Sarraj agreed, "But maybe we should ask a local." He called Captain Massri over. "Are any of your men locals? Do they know of a Jebel Akhdar? A green mountain?"

  Massri went off to ask and came back a few minutes later. "Sorry, sir. Nobody's heard anything about that. One man says there's a Jebel Shabah in the desert somewhere that has a reputation for being haunted."

  "Ghost Mountain?" Sarraj asked. "That's got nothing to do with our quest. Have the men eat, and then pack up. We leave within the hour."

  "Leave for where?" Bashir asked.

  "North to the next site of course. There's nothing here."

  "Shouldn't we investigate this one further? We might be missing something."

  Sarraj turned to Nazim. "Well, you
seem to be the knowledgeable one--are we missing anything?"

  Nazim ignored the venomous look Bashir sent him. "I don't think we are, sir. My understanding of the translation indicates the sun rising through the pylon illuminates the green mountain. Yes, I know..." he hurried on, "...there is no green mountain, but the ancients must have meant something by it. I feel confident that when we look through the right pylon we'll see something unmistakable."

  "How did you become so knowledgeable all of a sudden?" Bashir asked, glaring at his secretary. "You were just the note-taker, and now you're translating hieroglyphs and identifying pylons and green mountains. What else are you hiding?"

  "Nothing, Minister. I just did a little research, asked a man at the museum about the identity of one or two pictograms, and kept my ears and eyes open."

  "You showed strangers the inscription? What were you thinking of?"

  "One person, and only a fragment. Where is the harm? We now know about two features we would never have known otherwise."

  "I suppose that is so," Bashir grumbled. "But you should consult me about such things."

  "You were busy, Minister."

  "The man he talked to at the museum was a Dr Zewali," Sarraj said.

  "That is correct, Colonel. He seemed to know what he was talking about."

  "I'm sure," Serraj said dryly. "This same Zewali has been talking to the woman."

  "Dr Hanser? How do you know?"

  "I have my own sources of information."

  "This is serious," Bashir said.

  "Zewali is also connected with the Department of Antiquities and they take a dim view of anyone else getting involved with tombs."

  "Will he be a problem? Or Dr Hanser?"

  Sarraj smiled. "No. Now, we are wasting time, and it is many miles to the next site."

  The two vehicles resumed their slow journey northward along the lip of the western cliffs. As long as the desert remained stony, they had little trouble, though the suspension of the jeep suffered from the bouncing and lurching over and around boulders and steep-sided gullies. The half-track had fewer problems, grinding its way over and through obstacles, though its pace was slow. Then they came to a stretch of soft sand blown by the westerly winds right to the edge of the cliffs. The jeep became bogged down, sinking to its axles. They dug it free and had the half-track haul it out before resuming their slow passage.