The Cult of Osiris nwaec-5

by Andy McDermott

  ‘Great. So, Rad, what can you do to help us?’

  Rad reached into his messenger bag, taking out a travel-scuffed Apple laptop. He opened it, revealing a keyboard covered with sticky labels in different colours: shortcuts for professional video-editing software. He grinned. ‘The question is: what can’t I do?’

  Rad set up shop in a quiet corner of the hotel bar, the others peering over his shoulders as he worked. ‘I know my cologne is irresistible,’ he said, ‘but could I have a little more space?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Nina said, retreating slightly, but still anxious to discover what hidden secrets the recording might hold. So far, Rad’s efforts to enhance the image had met with limited success; the video mode on Macy’s camera had been designed with small Internet-friendly clips in mind, not high definition footage. Shaban and Hamdi were visible only from behind or with glare obscuring their features - and, as Eddie remarked, real life wasn’t like an episode of CSI: Miami. No matter how powerful the software and how clever its user, digital information couldn’t be extracted if it was never there in the first place.

  Rad was having more luck with the audio, though. Wearing earphones, he looped the recording, adjusting filters with each pass. ‘The saw’s making a fairly constant sound,’ he explained, pointing at a jittering waveform display in one window. ‘I won’t be able to get rid of it completely, but I can tone it down enough to hear the dialogue.’

  Karima leaned closer. ‘Let me listen.’

  Rad removed one of the earphones and passed it to her. She ran her thumb round its edge before putting it in her own ear. ‘I saw that,’ Rad said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You just wiped my earbud.’

  ‘I don’t want your wax in my ear.’

  ‘I do not have waxy ears!’

  ‘You sound married already,’ Eddie said, sharing a grin with Nina. ‘So what are they saying?’

  Karima translated what was being said by the two men as Rad replayed the filtered recording. ‘The one on the right, Hamdi, is worried about how long it will take to clean up the Hall of Records. If there’s any suspicion, it might fall on him . . . He’s just complaining.’ The playback continued for several more seconds without further commentary.

  ‘What’s he saying now?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘Still complaining!’ Another pause, then: ‘Oh, now they’re talking about the Pyramid of Osiris. The other man, Shaban - he says it will definitely lead them to it. They . . . I can’t hear properly,’ she said, the waveform display jumping as the noise of the machinery spiked. ‘Rad, wind it back. It’s . . . something about planets and constellations, but it’s very hard to make out. He wants to compare them to something.’

  Rad rewound the recording again. Karima frowned, frustrated. ‘There’s too much noise, but I think he wants to compare the zodiac to the constellation of . . . Dendera?’

  ‘There’s no constellation called Dendera,’ said Eddie. ‘Least not that I’ve heard of.’

  ‘Dendera’s not a constellation,’ Macy said. ‘It’s a place - it used to be a provincial capital of Upper Egypt. The Temple of Hathor’s there . . .’

  She tailed off, realisation dawning, but Nina was a step ahead. ‘He’s not talking about Dendera the place - he means the Dendera zodiac!’

  ‘What’s the Dendera zodiac?’ Eddie asked.

  Macy darted in before Nina could answer. ‘It’s a star map on the ceiling of the Temple of Hathor.’

  ‘At least, it was on the temple ceiling,’ Nina added. ‘There’s a replica there now; the original was taken - well, stolen - by Napoleon in the 1790s.’

  Rad paused the recording. ‘So they’re going to Dendera? You might still be able to catch them.’

  Nina shook her head. ‘No. The replica’s a close copy, but it’s not exact. They’ll want to compare the Sphinx zodiac to the original.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ said Eddie.

  She smiled. ‘You want to see some art?’

  10

  Paris

  ‘Been a while since we were here last,’ said Eddie as he, Nina and Macy crossed the Cour Napoléon, the central courtyard of the Louvre. ‘Must be, what? Three and a half years?’

  ‘God, where did the time go?’ Nina sighed.

  They passed the 72-foot-high glass and aluminium pyramid at the courtyard’s heart and continued to the ornate Sully Wing beyond. There were more security guards than on her previous visit; a spate of high-profile art thefts around the world in recent months had prompted the Louvre to pre-emptively deter the robbers from trying anything in Paris. ‘Okay, so we want room 12a in the Egyptian bit,’ Eddie said, unfolding a tourist guide. ‘Typical. It’s right round the far bloody side. So let’s see, right there, then left there, then straight on through . . .’

  ‘Eddie, we are not just going to charge through the Louvre, look at one thing and then walk out again,’ Nina insisted.

  ‘Yeah, but you’ve already seen the Mona Lisa, so it’s not like you’ll be missing anything.’ He winked at Macy to show he was just winding up his wife - and succeeding. ‘Anyway, Shaban and his mates are probably halfway to the Pyramid of Osiris. We don’t have time to play art critics.’

  ‘Philistine,’ Nina sniffed, but saw his point. The great museum’s treasures would still be here the next time she visited Paris, but those inside the Pyramid of Osiris would be gone for ever if the Osirian Temple reached it first.

  But she was still able to take in some of the exhibits along the way, the halls lined with splendid displays of Egyptian antiquities ranging from simple papyrus scrolls to full-sized statues and carved temple columns. She took small revenge on Eddie by stopping to examine various items, forcing him to come back for her with increasing impatience each time.

  Eventually, though, her curiosity about the importance of the Dendera zodiac drew her to it like a magnet. Room 12a was a small antechamber off one of the main halls. At one end of the room was a sandstone relief from the Temple of Amun at Karnak, but it was what waited at the other end - or rather, above it - that caught their attention.

  ‘That’s a fancier decoration than anything at Home Depot,’ said Eddie.

  Nina tipped her head back to take in the sight. The Dendera zodiac was a slab of pale brown stone behind glass some nine feet above them, lit to pick out the detail carved into it. It was larger than the zodiac in the Hall of Records, but the stylised figures of the constellations were arranged in the same way around the central pole of the sky.

  ‘Well, I can see Leo and Scorpio,’ Eddie said, indicating the forms of a lion and a scorpion, ‘but I don’t recognise a lot of ’em. I can’t even see the Plough.’

  ‘It’s there,’ said Macy, pointing at a shape slightly off the centre.

  ‘What, the leg of lamb?’

  ‘That’s what the ancient Egyptians thought it looked like,’ Nina said. ‘But pretty much all the major constellations - Libra, Taurus, Aries - are there, just in slightly different forms. The modern western zodiac was taken more or less directly from the Egyptian one, with a few name changes.’ She pointed up at a particular figure. ‘Orion, for one. The Egyptians knew him as someone else, a major figure from their mythology. See if you can guess who.’

  Eddie took a stab. ‘Osiris?’

  ‘Ding! Ten points.’

  Macy took out a colour printout of the section of the zodiac Nina had captured on video. Rad had enhanced it as best he could, providing two versions - a straight blow-up of the video frame, and a copy in which he had adjusted the perspective in Photoshop to make it look as it would viewed from directly below. The low quality of the original image meant that both pictures lacked detail, but the Sphinx zodiac’s painted figures made picking them out an easier task.

  She compared the printout to the zodiac overhead. ‘They’re pretty close, but there are some differences. This red circle here, it’s not on the one from Dendera.’

  ‘If it’s red, it’s probably meant to represent Mars,’ Nina realised. ‘I don’t k
now how much the positions of the constellations would change over a few thousand years, but the planets would be in different places after just a few weeks. It’s how you can work out the date when a particular zodiac was made - if Mars is in Aquarius, Venus is in Capricorn and so on, you can use a computer to list all the times when the planets were in that exact configuration.’

  Eddie looked at the printout, then back up at the ceiling, a thoughtful expression forming. Nina was about to ask what he’d noticed when Macy snapped her fingers. ‘Oh, oh! This is different.’

  She tapped a figure on the printout, offset from the lighter sweep of the Milky Way against the dark background. ‘This guy - I think it’s Osiris again. Same colour as his other constellation - green.’

  ‘Osiris was green?’ said Eddie. ‘Was he a Vulcan or something?’

  ‘Green was the colour the Egyptians associated with new life,’ said Macy. ‘But this guy,’ she pointed at the figure again, ‘he’s not on the big zodiac.’

  Nina looked more closely. ‘Is that something next to him?’ Beside the second, smaller Osiris was a little yellow-orange shape.

  ‘Another planet?’

  ‘I dunno . . .’ Even in low resolution the symbol of Mars was clearly circular, whereas this was distinctly angular.

  Three angles. A triangle.

  A pyramid.

  ‘No way,’ gasped Macy, coming to the same conclusion as Nina. ‘No. Fu—’ She gave Nina an embarrassed look.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Eddie said, grinning. ‘You can swear.’

  ‘King. Way! Macy finished. ‘That’s the Pyramid of Osiris!’

  ‘It must be,’ said Nina, looking to the ceiling for confirmation. Though the paint on the Dendera zodiac had long since flaked away, the carvings remained in perfect clarity . . . and there was no trace of either the additional figure of Osiris or the small triangle on the relief above. ‘When the position of the stars overhead exactly matches what’s shown on the Sphinx zodiac, you’re at the location of the Pyramid of Osiris!’ She noticed Eddie shaking his head. ‘What?’

  ‘Doesn’t work like that,’ he said. ‘Yeah, you can use the stars to navigate. But you can’t just look up, compare what you’re looking at to a star map, and know if you’re in the right spot or not - not without a sextant and an almanac with all the star positions on that day of the year.’

  Nina’s excitement evaporated. ‘Oh.’

  ‘But that’s not the only thing. The zodiac they nicked from the Sphinx, they think it’s a map, right?’

  ‘Right . . .’ Nina said, unsure where he was heading.

  ‘But like I said, it can’t be just a star map, so it’s got to be some other kind of map.’ He looked up at the ceiling. ‘Problem is, this ain’t exactly portable, is it? So when you go out to find the pyramid, you’ll need to make a copy. Only when you do . . .’ He grinned lopsidedly. ‘This’ll freak you out. Got a pen and paper?’

  Macy produced a ballpoint and notepad and held them out to him, but he shook his head again. ‘No, Nina, you try this. I want to see your face when you work it out.’

  More puzzled than ever, Nina took the proffered items. ‘Okay,’ said Eddie, ‘now hold it upside down, right above your head, and draw the shape of the room.’

  Tilting back, Nina drew a rectangle on the page above her. ‘All right, now what?’

  He went to the room’s empty end. ‘Say this is the north wall. Write north on your map - but keep it held upside down.’

  She did so, on her drawing marking the wall he was facing with an N. ‘If that’s north, then obviously the opposite end’s south,’ he said. ‘So write that too. Now,’ he raised his right arm and pointed at the wall to that side, ‘that means this wall’s east, and the last one’s west. Okay?’

  ‘Yeah, got that,’ said Nina, adding the appropriate letters.

  Eddie turned back to her with an expectant smile. He turned clockwise, pointing at each wall in turn. ‘North, east, south, west - “Never Eat Shredded Wheat”. Matches what you’ve just drawn, right?’

  ‘Yes, and can I look down now? My neck’s starting to crick.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ With relief, she brought down the notebook. ‘Okay, this is the freaky part. Turn your map so that your north’s pointing at the north wall.’ She did. ‘Now, what’s wrong with your picture?’

  Nina stared at her drawing, just a rectangle with a letter against each side, not sure what she was meant to be seeing . . . until it struck her like a slap to the forehead. ‘Hey!’ North was north, and south was south - but on her crude map, east and west had reversed positions from reality, east on the left of the page and west on the right. ‘That’s . . . that’s just weird.’

  ‘Told you it was freaky,’ said Eddie. ‘Mac showed me that when I was doing navigation training. It’s one of those things that’s so obvious, you never even think about it until somebody points it out.’

  Macy looked at Nina’s drawing. ‘I don’t get it.’

  He passed the notebook and pen to her. ‘Go on, try it for yourself.’

  ‘So how does that help us find the Pyramid of Osiris?’ Nina asked as Macy bent backwards and started drawing.

  ‘To be honest, love? Not a fucking clue.’ They both smiled. ‘It just means that the zodiac they nicked isn’t a straightforward map. Shaban and his lot might have a job figuring it out even with the whole thing to look at.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  Macy lowered the notebook, looking between it and the walls with dawning comprehension. ‘So east and west swap round when you look up or down . . . That is so wild.’

  ‘Yeah, see?’ Eddie said. ‘Not such a boring old fart now, am I?’

  ‘I never said you were boring!’ she objected.

  He grunted, but any further comment was cut off as an officious man in a tweedy suit came to the doorway, speaking in rapid-fire, supercilious French.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ said Eddie, even though he and Nina were fluent enough to get the gist of what he was saying. ‘English. Well, I am. They’re American.’

  ‘English and American. I see. I hope you are enjoying your visit to the Louvre,’ the man said, manifestly not caring whether they were or not. ‘But I am afraid I must ask you to leave this room. A VIP has requested to view the Dendera zodiac in private.’

  ‘Oh, a VIP!’ said Eddie with exaggerated brightness. ‘Well, of course we’ll shift out! Don’t want a VIP to have to share the room with any common people, do we?’

  ‘Good God, no,’ Nina added, adopting a haughty tone. ‘We shall most certainly take our leave before we sully the nasal passages of our betters with our noxious emanations!’ She linked arms with Eddie, and as one they pivoted to face the exit.

  The museum official was unamused, even less so by Macy’s fit of the giggles. ‘I apologise for the inconvenience,’ he said, mouth a narrow line, before addressing someone outside.

  Still arm in arm, unable to contain their smiles, Nina and Eddie went into the main hall.

  The smiles vanished instantly as they found themselves facing Sebak Shaban and Bobby Diamondback.

  11

  ‘Ay up,’ said Eddie, first to recover from the foursome’s mutual shock. ‘Fancy meeting you ’ere.’

  Diamondback’s hand whipped into his snakeskin jacket, but a sharp look from Shaban froze it.

  ‘Right, smart move,’ Nina said, trying to mask her nervousness. ‘This isn’t The Da Vinci Code. You can’t just do, y’know, stuff in the middle of the Louvre - in broad daylight in front of witnesses, no less.’

  The official looked dubiously back and forth between the two groups. ‘Do you know each other?’

  ‘We haven’t been formally introduced,’ Nina said with cold sarcasm. ‘But yeah, we know each other. Mr Shaban, I believe. And your charming friend.’

  ‘Bobby Diamondback,’ drawled Shaban’s companion. ‘Sorry I missed y’all earlier. If you catch my drift.’

  ‘Diamondback?’ said Eddie mockingly. ‘Bollocks! There’s n
o way that’s your real name.’

  Diamondback’s eyes creased into slits. ‘I’m Cherokee Indian, asshole.’

  ‘What, one sixty-fourth? You’re whiter than I am! And Puff Adder’d suit you better.’

  ‘Y’know,’ said Diamondback, shaking his head, ‘you oughta watch your mouth when you’re talkin’ to a Marine. It might get shut. Permanent, like.’

  ‘No proper Marine’d let their hair get into that state,’ Eddie replied, unimpressed by either the American’s threat or his greasy mullet. ‘Dishonourable discharge, was it?’

  ‘Eddie, honey,’ said Nina through a strained grin, ‘can you please stop provoking the man?’

  ‘I know you, of course, Dr Wilde,’ said Shaban. ‘In fact, after your little stunt at the Sphinx, I think a good part of the world knows you.’ The official blinked, recognising her. ‘And Miss Sharif too,’ the Egyptian added as Macy peered out of the antechamber. ‘All of you here together. How convenient.’

  ‘Why are we still here?’ Macy asked Nina in a fearful whisper.

  Shaban’s eyes narrowed intently. ‘Why are you here, Dr Wilde?’

  ‘The same reason as you, I’m guessing.’ Her gaze flicked down; under one arm, he carried a leather-bound folder that she imagined contained photos of the reassembled zodiac. ‘A keen interest in ancient astrology.’

  His eyes tightened still further. ‘Very keen.’

  ‘I’m sure. But we really should be going. See you - well, not soon at all, I hope.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Diamondback, his hand once again edging into his jacket, ‘how ’bout I show you the way out?’

  ‘Tell you what,’ Eddie replied, doing the same and hoping Diamondback couldn’t tell that he wasn’t armed, ‘how about you don’t?’

  ‘It’s all right, Bobby,’ said Shaban, touching his arm. ‘Stay with me. I’m sure we’ll meet them again. Hopefully,’ a small smile, genuine but nasty, ‘in less formal surroundings.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ said Eddie, still holding his hand near his non-existent gun. He and Nina backed away, Macy scurrying into cover behind them. Shaban and Diamondback stood like statues, watching as they reached a short flight of stairs leading down to the next room. ‘Okay, leg it!’