Map of the Dead: A mystery thriller that's a page turner

by Murray Bailey

  “Then we do need Marek, whether you trust him or not. If he can work out the first part—”

  “I’ll work out the rest.” Alex nodded. “OK, when we’ve got the right building, we somehow ditch him.”

  They stood at the front of the ferry to Amarna. Marek had asked about the symbols but Alex didn’t say any more. He simply repeated everything he’d already told the man. Now he stared ahead.

  Marek broke the silence. “My best guess is that the symbols refer to the Great Palace somehow.” The sun was over the ochre hills already shimmering in the heat. The Royal Wadi, the valley of his tomb, cut a V in the hill like the reverse pyramid—a supplication to the sun god.

  Alex turned away from the view and looked at Marek. “So, the hieroglyph of the boat refers to the solar barque?”

  “Exactly.” Marek grinned. “We are thinking the same thing.”

  Alex glanced at Vanessa, who had stayed in the Nissan, then back at Marek, and said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something.”

  “Oh?” Marek lit a cigarette and sucked long and hard before blowing a jet of smoke.

  “You first met Ellen on the EgyptConfidential forum and then exchanged emails.”

  Marek inclined his head.

  Alex continued: “But then you said to delete the emails and switch to a webmail account.”

  “Yes.”

  He couldn’t help it. Maybe he wanted Marek to be genuine or maybe he wanted Marek to admit he was a fraud. Alex asked, “Why was that?”

  Marek smiled. The ferry docked and he stepped ashore. “We must register with the transport police this time, Alex, do you not think?”

  “Marek!” Alex hurried after the wiry man, took hold of his arm and stopped him mid stride. “What was the reason?”

  “Is it not obvious? I was afraid someone would uncover our research. There is a great deal at stake here, both money and reputation. Since Ellen and I were partners then so are we. I do not mind sharing with you. Fifty-fifty.” He patted Alex on the shoulder and grinned. Then he looked more serious. “There have been suspicious people—men who I do not trust. They ask a lot of questions and I think my email was hacked into.”

  It made sense. Marek’s experiences sounded similar to his own, but Alex was still unclear about the answer. “So what is the webmail account?”

  Marek shook his head. “My friend, you must understand. After Ellen’s death and the burglary at Lord Carnarvon’s exhibition, I knew there was a problem. Was it not fair for me to be more worried? When you got in touch afterwards… to be honest, I was a little concerned you were perhaps not who you said you were, or perhaps were now working for someone else, so I deleted the webmail account.”

  Alex began to protest his innocence but Marek asked him to wait and disappeared inside a building. He emerged a few minutes later with an armed policeman in tow.

  For a second, Alex panicked: Marek with an armed man! But then Marek grinned and waved to Ahmed to pick them up.

  Marek said, “So, I was saying I was unsure about you, no?” He finished his cigarette and flicked it away. “Last night you told me everything about the Map-Stone and so now I am happy.” He patted Alex’s arm. “Come on. Let’s take a look at the palace.”

  They climbed into the Nissan. The policeman had them wind down the window so that he could stand on the step and hold onto the car through the door. They followed the route taken the day before, around the town and then south along the modern cemetery. Ahmed stopped beside the Great Aten Temple.

  They stood by the ruined wall and Marek faced south and swept his arms up and down. “This wide strip we now know as the Royal Road. At the end was a giant bridge spanning the road from the palace on the right to the King’s House on the left. Beyond the bridge was the Small Aten Temple.” He looked back at the Nissan and grinned. “The car would have been in the river because the Nile came close to the Great Temple and then around the Great Palace. Unfortunately the right-hand half of the palace is where the fields are now, and even geo-imaging has failed to provide any details.” Looking back towards the Great Temple, he said, “Most of the space inside the Great Aten Temple was open space. From the outside it is believed that it would have appeared like a traditional temple, with pylon towers and flagpoles, but rather than dark covered halls, even the two interior temples were open to the sky.”

  Vanessa asked, “There were a lot of altars?”

  “Offering tables,” Marek answered. “An amazing nine hundred tables in a grid, and from the wall reliefs we believe these would have been piled high with food offerings to the Aten.”

  “So not the forty pillars?”

  “I’ll come to that,” Marek said, and led them south to the wall on the right of the Royal Road. “So this was the Great Palace, the entrance wall forming a right angle with the side of the temple. The Great Temple was about half a mile long, the Great Palace over a thousand yards with pylons and colossal statues.” The group walked forward about a hundred paces to a section that included a wall crossing their path. “Up until now we have been in the outer courtyard. Now, we know from the stone foundations that there were unusually long ramps running along the wall. There is a theory that the structure here must have been monumental, probably a pylon that could be seen for many miles. It’s a tragedy we don’t know what it was, because it was intended to inspire and impress—maybe something as incredible as the great pyramids.” They walked on and Marek explained that the second section was an inner courtyard, probably with gardens and ponds. As they neared the final third, Marek’s phone rang. He answered excitedly.

  “I can’t hear you,” he said after a few moments. “The signal here is poor. Could you try a text?” He gave up and shrugged at the others. “That was my friend in Cairo. Maybe he has translated the hieroglyphs.” He laughed. “Looks like we beat him to it.”

  Alex asked, “But the only clues we have are the forty pillars and geese.”

  Marek nodded. “Perhaps…” he said mysteriously.

  The policeman intervened as they approached a network of stone walls and made them skirt around the side.

  Marek explained that the section was the main building of the palace. At the water’s edge would have been the Royal Quay. He raised his eyebrows knowingly. “Here, close to where we are standing, could be where the royal barge would have been moored. We have a typical double meaning of the boat hieroglyph, I think. The royal boat and referring to the palace of the sun. The bridge goes to the King’s House, as I said. Beyond that was the library. That is probably where the Amarna Letters were found.”

  Vanessa asked, “Oh, you don’t know where the clay tablets were actually found?”

  “No. They were found by a village woman in 1887. She sold them to a neighbour after destroying some. The neighbour sold the letters on the antiquities market and they were bought by an Egyptologist who thought they were fakes but had them checked. Luckily, the assistant curator of the British Museum realized their significance.”

  “But it was too late—” Alex started to add, but Marek was in full flow.

  “And so no one knows exactly where the woman found them. Now let me show you the Small Aten Temple, because I think I have worked something out.” He took them past the end walls of the palace and the King’s House to another east–west aligned temple. With a long thin courtyard described by Marek, it was approximately half as wide and half as long as the Great Temple. However it was divided in two with three sets of pylons still clear in the ruins.

  Vanessa whispered, “See, he knew about the letters.”

  “Maybe. It is supposed to be his expertise.”

  “Exactly, and he was suspicious of you. I think you are both paranoid.”

  Marek frowned at them. “Am I missing something?”

  “No, no!” Alex faked a laugh. “I was just saying about the three pylons. They probably relate to the three pharaohs: Akhenaten, Neferneferuaten and Tutankhamen.”

  “Yes. A pylon was a statement to the gods and a
ssociated with the investiture of the pharaoh,” Marek explained for Vanessa’s benefit. “Although Tutankhamen was called Tutankhaten at the time—after the god Aten, of course.”

  “So?” Alex said, looking around. “What are you showing us? What have you worked out?”

  Marek faced them west. “Through the courtyard ran a straight path to the river’s edge. You’ll see there are a few trees spotted around? Well, they’re more regularly spaced than appears now. There’s a clear pattern and the excavation team who have modelled this believe there were… forty.”

  Alex said nothing. The forty was part of the numerical code, not the location. He was sure of it.

  “Forty trees would be the forty pillars! The royal barge would be to the right beside the Great Palace of the Aten… or god’s sun boat.”

  Vanessa asked, “And the geese?”

  “To the south we have a stone quay where the main working city began. So the end of the courtyard would have been the start of a more natural setting. It is thought there would have been a garden and reed bed. As you know, geese played an important part in ancient Egyptian life and undoubtedly this is where the royal geese would have lived. Also, of course, close by we have the records office where Meryra the scribe would have worked. This section would have had great significance.” Marek turned back to the pylons. They were standing at the second. “And here is Nefertiti’s gateway. Alex, what do you think? Am I right?”

  Alex walked forward to a square area at the back of the temple. The policeman waved him away from the walls.

  Alex asked, “What’s this?”

  Marek wasn’t paying attention. He was studying his phone. “Sorry, Alex. What did you say?”

  “This area—what was it?”

  Marek seemed to shake some thoughts from his head but continued to look thoughtful. “Er… the sanctuary. In fact, it was a small version of the one in the Great Temple.” He looked back at his phone.

  Alex said, “What’s up?”

  “I am mistaken,” Marek said, but instead of being disappointed, his eyes flashed with excitement. “I get it! My expert friend has decoded the name we worked out last night. He’s convinced the order was wrong. It is not the name of a royal boat.” He held out his phone so that Alex could see what was written.

  “In transliteration,” Marek said, “the sounds are Hw-t-wr-t.”

  Alex frowned. “OK, what does it mean?”

  “The Palace of the Great Barque.”

  Vanessa said what Alex was thinking, “Isn’t that effectively the same thing?”

  Marek needed a cigarette and made them wait as he led them back to the Nissan. He was grinning at their faces when he finally removed the cigarette from his mouth. “Still not worked it out?”

  When they shook their heads, Marek said. “It is not so much what it means, because it is a name. A place known as Hut-waret—somewhere of amazing historical importance. The Greeks later called it Avaris, the city of the Hyksos, when they ruled Lower Egypt around the Thirteenth Dynasty.”

  “But that’s the wrong period,” Alex said, disappointed. “How does this help us?”

  Marek laughed. “Well, if it was a couple of years ago, then no it would not help, but recently an Austrian archaeological team thought they’d found Avaris. It is in the Delta, a place now called Tell el-Daba. And there is evidence of New Kingdom settlements. That, my friends, is where we need to go.”

  Joachim hadn’t followed the group back to Amarna. After the Englishman had spotted him in Akhenaten’s tomb, he knew he had to keep out of sight. He sat in a bar and sipped coffee awaiting instructions.

  His phone rang. It was the old man. Gershom.

  “Yes?”

  Gershom said, “It is not Amarna. They are looking in the wrong location.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Tell el-Daba.”

  Joachim didn’t know the place and the old man explained roughly where it was in the Delta.

  He said, “If we know where it is then we don’t need MacLure anymore. If you’re still saying we can’t get rid of him, then let’s just leave him. There’s more than one way to stop him being a nuisance.”

  The old man cleared his throat.

  Joachim prompted, “Is that a yes?”

  “It’s a no. Firstly because I promised and secondly because we can’t be sure we know everything. Last night, apparently, Mr MacLure said it was mathematical. We don’t know what he’s worked out.”

  “Tell el-Daba then. I should leave straight away.”

  “One other thing. We have a problem with the site,” Gershom said. “There’s a village and an excavation team working the area. We need a diversion.”

  “You have an idea?”

  Gershom explained his plan.

  Joachim was dubious. “It is a good idea, but can you arrange for that?”

  The old man may have been offended but he grunted, suggesting humour. “Leave that to me, Joachim. By the time you get there it should be in place.” There was a pause then he added, “And if it’s not, then you will need to improvise.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  Ahmed estimated the drive would take three and a half hours, and Alex dozed most of the way in the back with Vanessa, until a jolt of brakes woke him. They were outside Cairo and Marek explained an accident had blocked the first bridge over the Nile. In laborious single file, the traffic made its way beside the river and crossed at the next bridge then doubled back to pick up the ring road.

  Alex managed to piggyback off a variable Wi-Fi signal and killed some time by browsing the Internet for information on Hut-waret. Uncle Seth had mentioned two ancient Egyptian places referred to in the Bible: Pithom and Pi-Ramesses. Alex discovered that Pithom was believed to be the place the Greeks later called Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos invaders who ruled Lower Egypt for a hundred years. Then Ahmose, founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, defeated them.

  An archaeology team from Vienna University had been working the Tell el-Daba area for almost fifty years but had made their big breakthrough in 2009 when they discovered eight-metre-thick fortified walls under cultivated land that had once been almost surrounded by a Nile tributary. The structure matched expectations for Avaris, and the discovery of a warrior’s mud-brick tomb seemed to be confirmation of the Hyksos period.

  The connection became more intermittent, but Alex managed to read that a number of palaces and temples had been identified. The discovery of horse burials again appeared to point to pre-New Kingdom occupation. The team had also discovered Eighteenth Dynasty groundworks, although the Austrian team concluded this was restoration by Pharaoh Horemheb.

  An email arrived. He saw the name Mutnodjemet—the member of the EgyptConfidential forum—but the connection failed completely before he could open the email.

  Once off the ring road and on a motorway, they made good progress. When Ahmed pulled into a service area, Marek announced he desperately needed a cigarette, so they stopped and both he and Ahmed hungrily sucked in the nicotine.

  Alex and Vanessa stretched their legs. He located a shop selling mobile devices and purchased a dongle with prepaid Internet browsing.

  “How much further?” he asked Marek when he returned to the car.

  “We are already in the Delta, about forty miles north of Cairo. Not long now—about half an hour perhaps.”

  It took considerably longer. Ahmed clearly didn’t know the way, and the warren of roads that criss-crossed the green canals seemed to confuse him. Finally, after following a major canal and driving through a small town, Marek announced they were on the right track. And track it became, because they bumped along a dirt road through fields.

  Ahmed pointed ahead at a small hill. “Tell el-Daba.”

  Vanessa said, “Tell means hill, right?”

  Marek swivelled in his seat. “Yes, yes, a very important and strategic point here in the Delta.”

  “But,” Vanessa responded, “Amarna is called Tell el-Amarna—that town wasn’t on a hill.”


  “You are right!” Marek laughed. “It is one of the great mysteries… no, actually I asked Ahmed yesterday and he said it is a mistake that dates back to British rule. Some British bureaucrat mistakenly added the Tell part to the name.”

  Alex asked, “Do modern Egyptians despise the British for that period?”

  Marek spoke to Ahmed in Arabic and they both laughed. Looking to the rear seats, Marek relayed the conversation that Egyptians had thousands of years of foreign rulers, including the Hyksos, the Hittites, the Persians, the French, the Romans and the Greeks. In fact, the most prosperous times were under the foreigners, as opposed to King Farouk, who had had only his self-interest at heart.

  Alex asked, “What made you laugh?”

  “Ahmed used a phrase,” Marek explained. “It translates something like ‘It is better to trust the foreigner you know, than the brother you know you cannot trust.’”

  “Here,” Ahmed announced, and stopped the Nissan.

  They had passed through a cluster of houses and had pulled up outside a building that looked something like a low-lying block of flats.

  Alex noticed a large number of blue signs as they climbed out. They had the word Danger, with Arabic beneath. “What do they say?” he asked Marek.

  “There has been a gas leak.” Marek headed for the building’s entrance. “I will ask at the hotel.”

  Vanessa raised an eyebrow. “Hotel?”

  Minutes later, Marek returned, a wide grin splitting his face. “It is all right, the problem is over. It seems the village was cleared but the hotel owner refused to go and the leak was fixed last night. He is very angry with the local government—his main business is linked to the archaeological dig and he doesn’t know when the team will return. But in case we need to stay, I have negotiated a very good price.”

  A surly looking man came out of the entrance and headed for them.

  “One of the local excavation workers. He stayed behind when the others left,” Marek explained. “He is called Tariq and”—Marek rubbed his fingers together indicating baksheesh—“he’s kindly volunteered to show us the site.”