Macy frowned, thinking. ‘The second eye? I dunno. Unless . . .’ Her dark eyes opened wide. ‘Unless it’s something in the Osireion!’
‘The what?’ Eddie asked.
‘The Osireion - it’s a building, it’s meant to be a copy of Osiris’s tomb.’
‘A second tomb,’ Nina realised. ‘A second eye. And if it looks in the direction of the silver canyon . . .’
‘. . . we’ve found the pyramid,’ Eddie finished. ‘So, back across the Med, then!’
‘Rest assured, I will be co-operating with the authorities to find out who was responsible for this catastrophe,’ Osir told the news crew. ‘It’s been a terrible day for the sport, for Team Osiris, for Mikko Virtanen - and for myself personally, as you can imagine.’
‘What about the reports of a shootout on your yacht?’ asked the newsman, thrilled to have a story more juicy than sports reporting.
Osir needed all his acting skills to keep a neutral face. ‘I don’t know anything about that, only what the Monaco police have told me. Thank you, and excuse me.’ He retreated into the VIP box, the newsman still firing questions as he closed the door.
Shaban and Diamondback were waiting. ‘Well?’ Osir demanded.
‘Wilde and Chase must have got away,’ Shaban said grimly. ‘The Monaco police haven’t caught them, and since it would only take them ten minutes to reach the border I doubt they will.’
‘What about the yacht? Did the zodiac survive?’
‘Yes, so we still have that, at least. I’ve arranged for it to be shipped to Switzerland once the police clear the scene.’
‘My God,’ said Osir, shaking his head as he sat. ‘How did they escape?’
‘Because you were soft,’ Shaban snapped. Osir was startled by the fury in his brother’s voice. ‘I warned you! You fell for that woman, and she betrayed you. I told you to kill her, but you refused - and now look what has happened!’
Osir jumped up again, stabbing a finger at Shaban. ‘You do not speak to me like—’
‘This is your fault!’ Shaban roared, making Osir flinch. ‘Everything I do, I do to protect the Temple - but this has gone too far for you to tie my hands! If you want to find the Pyramid of Osiris - and keep it for yourself - then it will take blood. It has taken blood. And because you didn’t let me do what needed to be done, the blood is of our own followers instead of our enemies!’ His voice softened, slightly, as he put a hand on Osir’s shoulder. ‘Don’t you see, Khalid? If we don’t get everything, we will be left with nothing . . . and I will not let that happen. Let me do what needs to be done. We have to find Dr Wilde before she finds the pyramid - and kill her. You know I’m right.’
‘Yes,’ Osir said reluctantly. ‘Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. I should have listened to you, my brother.’
Shaban nodded, satisfaction on his scarred face. ‘Then we’re agreed. We find them, and kill them, and take the pyramid for ourselves.’
‘Agreed,’ said Osir.
‘Just one minor problem,’ Diamondback said, voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘We don’t know where they’re goin’, and we don’t know where the pyramid is either.’
‘We need an expert,’ said Shaban. ‘Someone who knows the entire history of Egypt.’
‘Hamdi?’ asked Osir.
Shaban shook his head. ‘Hamdi is a glorified librarian. We want someone world-class . . .’ He smiled malevolently as an idea came to him. ‘And someone with a grudge against Nina Wilde.’ Raising his phone, he selected a number: the Osirian Temple’s Swiss headquarters. ‘This is Sebak Shaban. I need you to contact the International Heritage Agency in New York, and tell them . . . tell them I want to speak to Dr Logan Berkeley.’
21 Egypt
What initially seemed like a simple trip back to Egypt quickly turned into a far more stressful experience. An attempt to book a flight from Nice was stymied when Macy discovered - to her mortification - that her credit card had been cancelled. Her parents had pulled the plug.
An angry phone call home made it clear that her line of credit would be only restored if she agreed to go straight back to Miami. Nina’s suggestion that, now they knew Abydos was the key to finding the Pyramid of Osiris, her work was done and she could return to the US did not go down well.
Eddie managed to defuse the tension between the two women by cobbling together an itinerary that was - just - manageable on his and Nina’s strained finances, flying from Nice to Athens on a no-frills budget carrier, then on to Cyprus, and from there a plodding ferry to Egypt’s Port Said. Following that was a slow and draining overland journey south by rail to the town of Sohag. Tempers frayed, they traversed the last miles in a rented 4×4, finally reaching their destination three days after leaving Monaco.
If Cairo had been uncomfortably hot, then Abydos, three hundred miles further south on the edge of the Sahara, was almost agonising. The temperature was well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and what breeze there was provided little relief, being laden with gritty, astringent sand. Nina was already on her second bottle of water, and it was still only morning.
As usual, Eddie barely seemed to notice the conditions, still wearing his leather jacket; his only concession to the burning sun was a floppy cloth hat to protect his balding scalp. ‘Could be worse, love,’ he offered. ‘At least it’s a dry heat.’
‘Hilarious,’ Nina snapped. Her pale skin had forced her to cover up, and unlike her husband she was sweltering. ‘God, I hate deserts. Why are the best ruins always in such God-awful places?’
But despite her foul mood, she was still impressed by what awaited them. The remains of the ancient city of Abydos sprawled over a wide area, the majesty of the temples in stark contrast to the ugly little village nearby. But when they stood before the structure they had come to see the modern world was figuratively and literally behind them, nothing in sight beyond the partially buried remains of the Osireion except the bleak wastes and distant cliffs of the Western Desert.
They had the place almost to themselves, a coach party there when they arrived having left for the next destination on its whistle-stop tour of Upper Egypt. A couple of policemen had been lurking nearby - unescorted visits to the ruins were discouraged - but a bribe persuaded them to wander back into the village for a few hours.
‘So, what are we looking for?’ Nina asked Macy. ‘You’re the expert.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly call myself that,’ she said, falsely modest.
‘You’re the nearest we’ve got,’ said Nina dismissively. ‘So, what’s the deal?’
Macy turned to the much larger, more intact structure behind them. ‘That’s the Temple of Seti, or Sethos, there,’ she said, ‘which was built by his son Ramesses the Second sometime round 1300 BC. The cool thing about it is that it’s totally unique architecturally. All the other Egyptian temples run in a straight line, yeah? You go in through the entrance, and each hall comes one after the other. But this one,’ she pointed out a section to their right, ‘is kinked.’
‘I like a bit of kinkiness,’ said Eddie.
Nina shushed him. ‘Why’s it that shape?’
Macy looked back at the Osireion. ‘Supposedly, the Temple of Seti and the Osireion were built at the same time. That’s what most of the books say, anyway. So did my professor. But it didn’t really make sense to me, and it turns out some archaeologists think so too. I mean, why would you bend your temple in half to avoid another building if they were being built at the same time? It’s not like they were short of space to put the second one farther away.’ She indicated the empty desert past the ruins.
‘So there’s another theory?’ asked Nina.
She nodded. ‘Some people think the Osireion was already here way before 1300 BC. It’d been buried by sand, but Ramesses discovered it when the Temple of Seti was being built. Things were too far along for him to stop work on the temple, but he didn’t want to knock down the Osireion either . . . so he changed the plans to make the new temple go round a corner.’
‘Why’d he want to keep it so much?’ said Eddie.
Nina knew. ‘Because it was a copy of the tomb of Osiris himself. They’d lost the location of the original tomb centuries earlier, but they realised they had the next best thing.’
‘And if we’re right,’ said Macy, ‘somewhere inside it is the Eye of Osiris.’
‘Which points the way to his pyramid. So all we have to do . . . is find it.’
They crossed the stony sands to the Osireion. The site was practically a pit, a series of stepped walls leading down to the excavated structure. Compared to the ornate elegance of the Temple of Seti, the exposed ruins were almost brutalist, made of unornamented blocks of pale granite. The hall’s floor, some ninety feet long, was hidden beneath a stagnant green pool.
Eddie screwed up his face in distaste. ‘I didn’t expect to come into the bloody Sahara to go wading. I would’ve brought my wellies.’
‘It’s not that deep,’ said Nina, descending the steps into the building proper. ‘I hope.’ She cautiously dipped a boot into the turgid, algae-coated water, finding it was about an inch in depth. ‘Ugh. At least we didn’t come in the rainy season.’ She turned as Macy and Eddie joined her, noticing a dark passage beyond an opening at the northwestern end. ‘Where does that go?’
‘It’s a tunnel that went to the northern entrance,’ Macy told her, examining a diagram in her guidebook.
Eddie squinted inside. ‘Doesn’t go anywhere now - the other end’s buried. Hope this eye thing’s not in there.’ He splashed to the other end of the hall. ‘I just thought of something. If this eye’s supposed to be looking towards the pyramid, and the pyramid’s out to the west somewhere, then it’ll be on one of the east walls, right?’
‘The man in the funky hat makes a good point,’ said Macy, exchanging smiles with him.
Nina unslung her backpack, taking out a flashlight, then waded to an opening in the wall. A ramp rose from the water; the small chamber inside was dry. She entered, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Like the hall outside, the walls were plain, unadorned.
Eddie and Macy followed. ‘See anything?’ Eddie asked.
‘Not yet.’ Nina carefully scanned the walls for any indications of carvings or markings. Macy, meanwhile, took out a flashlight of her own and conducted a much less methodical examination of the chamber, sweeping the beam around at random. ‘Will you cut that out?’ Nina demanded. ‘You won’t find anything just by waving the light about. We need to do a section-by-section search—’
‘Ah-ha! Found it!’ Macy interrupted. She fixed her torch beam on one particular spot, high on the back wall. ‘See? One Eye of Osiris. I rock!’
‘That’s more like it,’ said Eddie, seeing a symbol carved into the stone. ‘Archaeology without all the boring farting around.’
Nina’s patience finally snapped. ‘Will you both goddamn take this seriously!’ she shouted, voice echoing round the chamber. ‘It wouldn’t be boring if you had even the slightest interest in what I do,’ she said to Eddie, before rounding on Macy. ‘And you, if you really want to be an archaeologist, then start acting like one. Or acting like an adult, even!’
Eddie made a sarcastic face. ‘Oh, the schoolmistress voice. I love hearing that.’
Macy, on the other hand, was shocked by the attack. ‘But - but I still found it,’ she said, pointing up at the symbol.
‘By sheer fluke!’ snapped Nina. ‘And because you weren’t being methodical, you did exactly what Logan did at the Sphinx, which was rush straight for the obvious prize and completely overlook anything else that might be important.’
Eddie indicated the plain walls surrounding them. ‘There isn’t anything else.’
‘That’s not the point!’ she protested, before turning back to Macy. ‘You’re treating this like a high school field trip - and you’re acting like one of the cheerleaders giggling on the back seat of the bus with the jocks!’
Macy’s dark eyes narrowed angrily. ‘I suppose you always sat up front with the teachers.’
‘Well - yes,’ said Nina, taken aback by the challenge, ‘but this isn’t about me, it’s about the work. If we want to find the pyramid, we’ve got to be professional about it.’
‘And you think I’m not, is that it? Excuse me, Dr Wilde, but you wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me. I was the one who found out about the other entrance to the Hall of Records, I was the one who got us into the Sphinx compound—’
‘By flashing your boobs!’
Macy looked offended. ‘You think I’m just some bimbo, don’t you? Because I’m hot and I don’t get straight As in everything, you don’t take me seriously!’
‘You’re not taking this seriously!’
Eddie stepped forward, moving between them. ‘ “This”?’
‘All of this!’ Nina cried, waving her hands at the ancient structure around them. ‘Everything! It’s all important, but sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the world who actually cares about it!’
Macy’s tone became withering. ‘Oh, I see - the entire world of archaeology revolves around you! Dr Berkeley was right, you really do have to be the centre of attention all the time.’ She pulled out the folded magazine pages and flapped them at Nina. ‘You know, when I read this I thought you were so cool and so smart - that you were somebody really special. But you’re just like everyone else.’ She stalked to the entrance and threw the pages outside. Disappointment overcame her anger. ‘Everything’s about you.’
‘That’s not true,’ insisted Nina, now on the defensive. ‘I don’t care about taking the credit.’
‘You enjoyed it, though.’
‘Of course I did,’ she admitted after a moment. ‘But that’s not why I do what I do. I do it because . . . because I have to!’
There was an almost confessional tone to her voice. Eddie raised an eyebrow. ‘You have to?’
‘Yeah. It’s . . . it’s who I am. My parents spent their lives trying to reveal the truth about the past to the world - not so a few people could profit from it, but for everyone. That’s what I do, too.’ She paused, almost afraid to confess her feelings. ‘And if I can’t do it, then what else can I do? What else have I got?’
‘You’ve got me,’ said Eddie.
‘I know. But . . .’ For a moment she couldn’t face him, before giving him a sad, shameful look. ‘But what if that’s not enough?’
An awkward silence filled the chamber. Macy stared uncomfortably down at her feet, while Nina again found herself unable to meet Eddie’s gaze.
‘Well, you know,’ he finally said, managing a faint smile, ‘I never really did see you as the stay-at-home housewife type.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Nina said quietly.
He put his arms round her. ‘No need.’
‘You’re not mad at me?’
‘Only that you didn’t get this out into the open ages ago!’ He smiled again, more broadly. ‘That’s what was wrong all this time? You thought there was nothing else you could do except archaeology?’
Nina nodded. ‘Pretty much.’
‘Well, that’s just fucking daft!’ he said, laughing. ‘You’re the smartest person I know, you could do anything you want. Even dance.’ He gave her a pointed look. ‘You’ve just got to want to want.’
‘I guess . . .’
‘So what do you want, right now?’
She didn’t answer at first, then one corner of her mouth creased upwards, very slightly. ‘I can think of something,’ she said, ‘but we can’t do it in front of Macy.’
He grinned. ‘She can join in if she wants - I could handle a threesome!’
‘Eddie!’ Nina cried, batting his arm. Macy’s eyes widened.
He cackled. ‘For fuck’s sake, you’re so easy to wind up. We’re married, and you still can’t tell when I’m taking the piss.’
Nina harrumphed. ‘Just for that, we’re going to do the other thing I really want to do right now. Which is find the Pyramid of Osiris.’ She looked first at the symbo
l carved on the wall, then to Macy at the entrance. ‘But if we’re going to do that, we need to be a team again. I’m sorry I blew up at you like that, Macy. I shouldn’t have done - that was unprofessional. Besides, you were right, we couldn’t have done this without you. Any of it.’
Macy still looked sulky, but accepted the apology. ‘And maybe I got a bit pissy. So . . . sorry, Dr Wilde.’
‘Thanks. And it’s Nina,’ she added, after a moment. ‘Call me Nina.’
The young woman’s expression brightened a little. ‘Okay. Nina.’ She walked back into the chamber.
‘So,’ said Eddie, ‘what’ve we got?’
At first glance, what Macy had discovered seemed nothing special, a symbol less than two inches high carved into the stone just below the ceiling. It was a stylised eye - the same one featured in the logo of the Osirian Temple.
Eddie checked a compass. ‘Okay, so it’s looking . . . towards two hundred and ten degrees.’ He took out a map and spread it on the stone floor. ‘So we’re after a canyon on that heading, right?’
‘The silver canyon, yeah,’ Nina confirmed.
He used the compass to align the map with the real world. ‘There’s a fair few canyons out in the desert that way,’ he said. ‘What did the zodiac say, exactly?’
‘Just that the second Eye of Osiris sees the way to the silver canyon. To its start, presumably, because the rest of the hieroglyphs said where to go once you reached its end.’
‘Okay, so we want a canyon mouth.’ He looked more closely at the contour lines, bunched tightly where streams had cut their way down from the desert’s relative highlands. ‘Here,’ Eddie continued, tapping a spot on the map. ‘This canyon leads up to a big open plain, and it starts right in line with where the eye’s looking. It opens out here,’ another tap, ‘so going seven miles west takes you to . . . here.’
Nina leaned closer. The point Eddie indicated on the map contained nothing. Literally nothing; the contours were so widely spaced as to make the region practically flat. ‘If that’s the right canyon.’
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