Chapter 35
Construction began on the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 1897, with it later being inaugurated in the year 1902. It houses the largest collection of objects from the Pharaonic Era of Ancient Egypt, with over 120,000 artifacts in total already classified. The building has two stories and is neoclassical in style; it is situated in the city center and surrounded by a small garden decorated with ancient epigraphs and sculptures.
The lower floor is entirely dedicated to sculpture, relief paintings and sarcophaguses. It features the colossal statues of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, located at the back and presiding over the whole room. On the upper floor is the funeral paraphernalia of Tutankhamen, the museum’s crown jewel, together with other objects found in the tomb.
In 1835, the Egyptian Antiquities Service was founded to protect the country’s monuments and treasures from the greed of both locals and foreigners. The archaeological remains found were stored at various sites throughout the years, until they were eventually brought to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Mary was the first to enter the museum. On her left, James followed and didn’t let her out of his sight, his expression uneasy and his pace quick. The entrance was protected by high-level security; several metal detectors obliged tourists to pass through them if they wanted to get in or out of the museum. Just opposite, two security guards were checking two monitors which, despite being rather antiquated, were equipped with X-rays to detect dangerous objects.
It was clear that if anybody knew anything about the Trifariam, it would be the General Secretary of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities who, according to Mary, had a small office in the museum. It was he who, after the investigations carried out in one of the shafts, ordered that the Great Pyramid be closed to refurbishment. They had to get to his office however they could. To do so, they would adopt the same method they had deployed in the Great Pyramid to cut off the internal communication system. Anthony had left them the virus transmitter, after making them promise that he would get it back in one piece. Richard had remained outside the museum, inside the car. From there, following the instructions Anthony had given to them, he would try to disable the security system with the help of his laptop.
After she got in the queue, Mary hid the transmitter inside the digital camera case. “With a bit of luck, they’ll think it’s a camera and they won’t notice,” she grinned.
Nerves were starting to bubble up once more, gradually worsening as they got nearer to the guards. It was essential that they gained entry with the transmitter, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to do anything.
One of the guards addressed Mary with a scowl. “Good afternoon. Please remove all your belongings and place them in this tray, then walk through the metal detector.”
Mary put as many things in the tray as she could, timidly trying to hide the camera case. The tray passed through the scanner without the guards noticing anything untoward. Once it was on the other side however, the guard spotted something unusual and muttered something to his colleague, who quickly rifled through her belongings until he found what he was looking for: the digital camera case. The woman’s heart stopped for a couple of seconds. They’ve caught us! she thought.
“Does this digital camera have a flash?” asked the guard in a husky voice, leaving the case untouched and waiting for her response.
“Yes,” replied Mary, almost stammering.
“You will have to pay a fee if you want to use it inside. If not, leave it here and you can pick it up when you leave.”
The woman breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s fine. I’ll pay whatever I need to.”
James went through the same procedure and within a few minutes, they found themselves on the other side of the security barrier, inside the museum.
The sight of hundreds of archaeological remains left James bewildered as to where to begin.
“Over here!” said Mary in a hushed voice so as not to disturb the tourists. “The pieces in the museum are arranged in chronological order, going clockwise. We’ll attract a lot of attention if we go in the opposite direction.”
The museum was full of people, the majority kitted out in light tops with sleeves and shorts. The temperature inside was similar to that outside, and it was by no means as pleasant and cool as James had imagined. They even witnessed a middle-aged American woman being given medical attention after she had fainted.
The tourists were taking countless photographs beside the many glass cabinets which protected the most valuable objects in the exhibition, as well as the smallest ones which were susceptible to being stolen.
Upon closer inspection, it became apparent that the crowd was made up of several groups of tourists being led by guides, who were explaining to them the finer points of Egyptian civilization as well as showing the around the exhibits. A range of different languages could be overheard, including Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and, of course, the most common of all, English.
James was hugely shocked when he saw how a small group of about ten people, all of them senior citizens, were shining their flashlights inside a sarcophagus, perhaps in search of some inscription which would otherwise be hidden to the naked eye. He later realized that this was commonplace when he saw other tourists shining lights on sculptures and painted reliefs in the exhibition.
They walked along the corridor, crossing the first section which was devoted to the Predynastic period. Most of the remains were vessels, sculptures and objects which dated back to before the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. However hard they looked in every direction, they couldn’t find any surveillance camera which was low enough to infect with the virus. Without hesitating, they continued on to the next section.
James swept his finger along one of the glass cabinets in front of him and showed it to his friend. “Mary, considering that this is the museum with the largest Egyptian collection in the world, don’t you think it’s a little dirty and untidy?”
“That’s true. You should see the state of the basement - it’s a disgrace. A few years ago, they found three statues from the ancient kingdom down there, when the center had previously reported them as stolen. When the investigations were being carried out, they arrested two members of the museum cleaning staff. It eventually transpired that the statues were in the basement. Not to mention that, until recently, the mummy of Hatshepsut - one of the greatest queens of Egypt - was sleeping peacefully in the bowels of the museum. She was identified thanks to a fragment of tooth.”
They moved onto the next section without delay. It was dedicated to the Ancient Period, the era in which the great pyramids such as those of Cheops, Khafra and Mykerinos were built. James’ attention was powerfully drawn to a figure which stood before him, and was a mere three inches in height.
“It’s a statue of Cheops,” said the young archaeologist behind him. “It’s the only thing left of the Pharaoh of the Great Pyramid.”
Just then, James remembered how, a few hours before, he had desecrated his pyramid and possibly his tomb, which had remained hidden for thousands of years. A vibrating in his pocket shook him out of his thoughts. It was Richard - he was starting to get impatient. They had to hurry up and position the transmitter.
The next section corresponded to the Middle Kingdom and Intermediate Periods. The pieces were mostly sarcophaguses and reliefs taken from temples and tombs, and it was the prelude to the most important part of the museum; that of the New Kingdom. They didn’t have much luck in this section either, given that there wasn’t a sole security camera within arm’s reach.
The New Kingdom was the most brilliant period of Pharaonic Egypt, being the most prolific in terms of conquests, architecture and art.
The first room they entered was devoted to the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who was married to the beautiful Nefertiti. He was undoubtedly the most extravagant and eccentric pharaoh that ever existed. He is noted for being the first to introduce monotheistic religion, eradicating cults which worshipped any god other than Aten, the Disk
of the Sun.
They climbed the stairs leading to the upper floor, which was split into several rooms which featured items such as royal chairs, funeral objects, jewels, figurines, everyday objects and surely the most important part of the museum: the treasure of Tutankhamen.
James walked over to one of the galleries on the upper floor, from where he could look down onto the main rooms of the lower floor, all of them guarded by the enormous statue of Amenhotep III and his wife Tiye. As he leaned over, he saw a security camera fixed to the wall, just eight inches from where he was standing. It was focused directly on the statue of Amenhotep III, but it occasionally seemed to move to monitor the whole lower floor.
“What do you think?” asked the professor when Mary was alongside him.
“It’s the only chance we have - the other cameras are too high. The museum entrance is just down there, so you’ll need to be really careful or they’ll catch us.”
James was already kneeling on the floor and had stretched his right arm through the stone pillars which made up the handrail. It was a good moment because there were hardly any people around. Mary surreptitiously tried to guide him, telling him the direction in which he had to move to get hold of the camera cables, all the while pretending that they had dropped something as she leant over.
“A little more to the left…, a bit more…, more…, you’ve got it. Press it now!”
The sound of the metal pincers tearing the cable was music to James’ ears. Even though the transmitter was still hanging there at quite a height, it would be days before they found out it was there.
Outside, Richard’s computer beeped. The virus was starting to be transmitted and the museum’s security system would be in his hands in a couple of minutes.
They quickly went down the steps which led to the lower floor, despite being slowed down a few seconds by the great number of people who were suddenly going up to the second floor. While they were looking for the camera, Mary had noticed a door marked “Private” in one of the areas furthest away from the entrance. When they got there, they saw that the door was armed with a magnetic lock which was opened via a magnetic card. On the right, there was a small control panel with a numerical keypad, similar to that found on a telephone. It seemed to mean that an employee identity card wouldn’t be enough to open the door, and that they would also need to know the access code.
James took out his cellphone and pressed the redial button.
Outside the museum, Richard picked up the phone. “It’s about time!” he exclaimed. “I thought they’d caught you.”
“It wasn’t easy… the security cameras were located in the most inaccessible places you could imagine. I had to risk my neck to connect it, but I don’t think anybody saw us.”
Just then, the computer beeped again and a small message appeared in a Windows-like pop-up in the middle of the screen.
SUCCESSFUL. VIRUS TRANSMITTED CORRECTLY.
The software installed on the laptop began to download private museum files at top speed. All the information regarding the center - floors, security, access codes, personal details, inventories…. everything, absolutely everything - was being emptied on to the hard drive of Richard’s laptop.
When the process had finished, an image flashed up on the main screen of the program, showing what was currently being recorded by camera “Number 1” in the museum. The program was simple to use, just as Anthony had told him. A drop-down menu on the left allowed you to select the camera you wanted to watch, while on the right appeared all the doors with electronic access. Each of them had two buttons: “Open” and “Close”. In the lower section, an editing program allowed users to create a video of a given duration from what the camera was capturing at that very moment. This could then be copied as many times as desired before later assigning the new film to a particular camera. This meant that the surveillance room would see this video over and over again.
“Richard, are you there?”
“Yeah, sorry. The virus has been configured correctly and I have access to the whole building,” he said as he burst into laughter. “This program is the shit! We should get it installed in the university!”
James also laughed, but Mary had no idea why. After more than ten minutes, during which time Richard created a series of homemade videos which he assigned to the different security cameras, the armed door let out a beep and opened, much to the astonishment of the two people who were calmly standing before it.
There was a long, narrow corridor on the other side of the door, decorated with small Egyptian statues and a gray-colored carpet on the floor. The first two doors led to laboratories with large glass windows which allowed those in the corridor to look in. The museum apparently had high-tech laboratories where they carried out their own research on the objects they had discovered. There was nobody at work at the time, although there were a lot of computers and electronic devices which had been left switched on, revealing that somebody had been working there until recently.
The following door bore a sign which read:
MUSEUM DIRECTOR
They stopped in front of it and saw that it had the same two opening mechanisms as before. Richard managed to open it with no problems.
The office was huge, about one hundred and thirty square feet, and divided into two completely different areas. The first was some kind of living room with two sofas, a couple of armchairs and a library with more than five hundred tomes about Egyptian civilization. The second area was an office with an enormous, dark brown walnut desk covered in papers, documents and letters from tourists addressed to the Museum Director. They were all piled under a paperweight in the shape of a large sphinx. Various painted reliefs adorned the walls along with an impressive imitation of Tutankhamen’s funeral mask, even though it was small-scale version and only measured around eight inches.
The real mask was made out of a thick layer of 22-karat gold which was encrusted with different semi-precious stones such as turquoise, lapis lazuli, quartz, cornelian and amazonite, to name but a few. This object covered the head and shoulders of the mummy. It is definitely one of the most important treasures in the museum, and has come to symbolize ancient Pharaonic Egypt.
The sound of fingernails scraping along the wall made them both look at each other with trepidation. It sounded like somebody making their way along the corridor. A few seconds later, they heard the click of a magnetic card being swiped through the reader. James quickly scanned the office and grabbed an old letter opener whose handle was in the shape of a pyramid, while he heard the person on the other side of the door punching in the eight-digit access code. Richard blocked the system, making them think that they had typed the wrong code. In doing this, he had given his friends valuable time to hide right behind the door. After a second attempt, the door swung open and two people entered the office.
Chapter 36
“Go inside darling. Just wait until you see what I’ve bought you.”
A dark-skinned man, rather short and thin, entered the office holding hands with a little girl of about twelve years of age. She was wearing a beautiful pink strappy dress with a turquoise bow around the waist. Although they were father and daughter, they didn’t look it; his dark skin and strong facial features were very different from the girl’s chubby face and her milky-white skin.
“Sit on the chair and I’ll show you now,” said the man as he walked over to one of the shelves. On it was a small parcel covered in wrapping paper, with a bright gold-colored label which read: “Happy Birthday”.
The girl heard a slight rustling behind her, turned around and stifled a small scream which her father didn’t hear. It was already too late.
James had attached the professor before he even reached the shelves. His left arm grabbed his head and pulled it back, while his right hand brandished a letter opener like a dagger against his neck. “One shout, one mumble and I’ll kill you!” hissed James, almost more frightened than his victim. “Are you the Director of the Museum?”
/> “You won’t get out of here alive, I can tell you that!” he shouted. In the struggle, his designer glasses had slipped down his face and onto the floor, with one of the thick lenses breaking in the process.
“Are you the Director?” repeated James, this time in a more intimidating voice.
“What are you looking for in my office? Haven’t you realized yet that there’s nothing valuable here?”
“Where is the triangular object you found in the Secret Chamber of the Great Pyramid?”
The Director didn’t know how to react, nobody knew that such a thing existed… How can they have known? He swallowed hard in an attempt to avoid stammering and appear more convincing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
James’ arm squeezed his neck even tighter. He was much stronger than the Museum Director, who seemed like a doll in his hands. “After inserting a robot into one of the shafts leading from the Queen’s Chamber and showing it to the whole world, you closed access to the Great Pyramid, supposedly while it underwent refurbishment. We know that you kept investigating in the tunnel.” James watched the reflection of the professor’s face in one of the office windows, he looked shocked and in disbelief. “You found three stone blocks obstructing the passage and you raised them to gain access to the Secret Chamber. There you found funeral paraphernalia, papyrus scrolls and a triangle stored inside a small sarcophagus which was carved into the wall itself.”
The Museum Director had begun to tremble. They knew about everything in absolute detail. It was impossible; the only people in the whole world to know about the existence of that chamber were two men and a couple of scientists. Of course, one of those was the General Secretary of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and obviously he wouldn’t have said anything. The same applied to the other two scientists who were controlling the robot and swore they would keep it a secret, or be faced with a life sentence in prison.
Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) Page 23
