Masks of the Lost Kings (Suzy da Silva Series)

by Tom Bane

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘Man fears Time, yet Time fears the pyramids’ –Arab proverb

  Squinting into the sun through the window of the Horus Corporation’s private jet, Suzy watched Cairo emerge from the empty desert below. From that distance it looked idyllic and neat. Only as the plane came lower could she begin to see the chaos of the city’s crowded roads. Soon she would be touching down in her motherland for the first time and she felt slightly breathless in anticipation of the new adventure that lay ahead.

  She threw her well-worn backpack over her shoulder, aware of how shabby it looked against the immaculate cream leather of the seats and the shiny mahogany of all the cabin’s fittings as she walked to the door. Getsu offered to carry it for her with a little bow but she declined with more irritation than she intended. His constant presence and unsmiling good manners were beginning to get on her nerves. She could never tell what he was thinking and it made her wonder if he was really on her side. He walked ahead of her once they were on the tarmac, leading her toward the airport doors, his head constantly moving as he scanned in every direction for danger.

  The moment they were inside the airport, she was hit by the heat and the noise of the crowds of passengers making their way through the system. There were officials everywhere, half of whom looked bored and sullen while the other half strutted and shouted orders and raised the levels of nervous tension even higher. After what seemed like ages, they were through passport control and had joined a mob of other new arrivals, bewildered and stumbling into the clamoring hands and come-with-me smiling faces of the local taxi drivers. All the calm and luxury of traveling in a private jet had melted away. She was going to have to struggle for survival just like everyone else. Hoisting her pack, she ran the other way. Finding a quiet corner inside the concrete arrivals lounge she shed her sweater—the heat begged a single layer and she was already sticky with perspiration. Being short, Getsu temporarily lost sight of her and Suzy felt slightly disappointed when he reemerged from the crowd just as she was cramming her sweater into her backpack. How come he looked so cool and unruffled, even though he was still wearing the pristine black suit which seemed to be his uniform? She wished she could lose him, if only for a couple of hours, and do some exploring on her own.

  But Getsu was not going to let her out of his sight again and quickly located the corporate Mercedes and its driver, steering her into the back seat behind tinted windows and stiffly pleated curtains, before climbing into the front beside the immaculately suited driver.

  The traffic clogged every road, making the whole city feel like it was at an angry standstill, but the driver appeared unconcerned. Continuously pressing a siren, he forced the gleaming limousine through the traffic jams, weaving between stationary lines of battered, dirty, steaming cars. Suzy pulled back the curtain on her window to watch the passing scene and saw a mixture of hatred and fear in the eyes of the people as they imagined what powerful figure might be hidden behind the darkened glass of the loud, bullying Mercedes. She hated the idea of receiving preferential treatment while everyone else had to wait in the dust and the heat, but at the same time she was grateful to be lifted out of the throng and whisked across the city in air conditioned comfort.

  Finally away from the dirt and fumes of the main roads they passed multicolored bazaars, where gold-leafed sheesha cafes and orange and yellow spice mounds competed with lapis lazuli dealers and shoe shops spilling their leathers out onto the sidewalk; old men were playing chess in the side street beside their hotel as they pulled up, while a boy cut nectarines on a wooden platter for them. As Suzy stepped out into the warmth of the city air, she saw women in brilliant blue robes shopping and gossiping, eating sunflower seeds from small paper cones. Her spirits were rising. It felt like the whole city was alive with the buzz of life.

  Cairo, Suzy discovered, wasn’t a gentle city. Packed full of people from every corner of Africa and the Middle East, with only a smattering of white faces, the “Mother of the World” was an all-out assault on the senses. Chaotic, noisy, polluted, enveloped in a whirlwind of uncertainty and seething with sweating bodies, the sheer intensity of the city could either seduce or appall. Attub-mud brick palaces leaned up against monolithic office blocks, trashy, stretch Mercedes jostled against donkey-drawn carts. Open-minded Cairenes, it appeared, saw nothing strange in all of this; more power to them, she thought, for the rich and varied tapestry of their city’s life. They didn’t seem driven by the Western obsession to update and upgrade constantly, perhaps because they live in such close proximity to eons of magnificent history—when the smog lifts, the pyramids appear.

  They were staying in the luxurious Continental-Savoy Hotel at 10 Opera Square, the place where Lord Carnarvon had passed away and where the seminal Lawrence of Arabia had plotted in vain against the British on behalf of the Arabs. Like so many people arriving in Cairo for the first time, Suzy was desperate to see the pyramids. She didn’t want to delay another moment, but she also wanted to go alone. She didn’t think that having the sinister Getsu hovering in the background was going to encourage anyone to talk to her openly.

  “I’m going to take a long bath,” she told him, once she had her room key, giving him no time to contradict her.

  Once safely in her room, she jettisoned her backpack onto the bed, deposited her mobile phone into the back pocket of her green slacks and placed her beloved beige fedora on her head as snugly as a queen’s crown—Indiana Jones was back in town and ready for action! She didn’t want to walk back out of the door in case she bumped into Getsu and he found out she had lied about taking a bath. She opened one of the windows and peered out. There was a metal fire escape but it was about six feet away—God alone knew how less athletic guests were supposed to get to it in an emergency. She was confident she could make the jump, even though a missed footing would mean a fall of five stories onto the dusty street below.

  Her heart thumping with the adrenaline of jet lag and adventure, she balanced herself on the windowsill and dropped over the side to face the wall, the soles of her desert boots braced against the bricks, her hands gripping the windowsill. With one mighty push she leaped backward onto the fire escape, twisting her body mid-air, hitting the metal platform with a perfect landing. She hitch-kicked her way over the rail onto the metal podium, turning ninety degrees and taking a deep breath before rattling down the grated steps to the street, half expecting to see Getsu around every corner. She looked up and down the narrow alleyway but there was no sign of him and she hurried out into the main street in search of a taxi.

  “Take me to Giza,” she instructed the driver. She didn’t make eye contact as he stared at her in the mirror, aware that a young foreign woman traveling alone would seem vulnerable, wanting to look like she knew what she was doing. Without saying a word the driver wove in and out of the traffic like a lost canoeist, doubling back and around, swapping directions and struggling against the currents of vehicles, chewing methodically all the time. Suzy’s Arabic was very rusty so she only had a vague idea what he was shouting as he hurled abuse out of his window at drivers and pedestrians alike. The last time she had spoken Arabic was when she was twelve years old with her father, on lazy days in the tropical heat of Amazonia. She felt a stab of regret as she thought of her father. If only he had lived to see her graduate to Oxford, to see her coming to Cairo as an adult, returning to his family roots. She felt the silver locket around her neck with her finger. The traffic was so slow she had plenty of time to make contact with the number Piper had given her.

  “Have arrived safely,” she texted. “I’m coming to the pyramids—where do I meet you?”

  The reply was almost immediate. He must have been waiting to hear from her.

  “Meet me at the Beer-El-Samman well at dusk. I will be bouncing a ball.”

  Bouncing a ball? It sounded like something out of a spy movie. She wondered what time ‘dusk’ was. One hour later, Suzy was at her destination. It would have been quicker to walk. Cairo’s
traffic was like metal molasses that did not want to budge. She remembered to ask for a receipt from the reluctant taxi driver for Horus Corporation. She checked over her shoulder again. Still no sign of Getsu. Great. She did not want Horus to know she was using unofficial methods and fixers to do her research; they might have corporate ethics or social responsibilities or some other grandiose reason for withdrawing her funding. She wanted to do things her way and she didn’t want to have to explain herself. She wasn’t even sure she would be able to. She was following her instincts.

  She looked around for a watering well of some kind that her contact had texted about. It seemed there was no such well anywhere to be seen. She kept her eyes peeled. Then she spotted it, a small well in the distance. As she walked toward it she could see a sinewy Arab man in a long brown Kalasirisa robe bouncing a rubber ball beneath a sycamore tree. As she drew closer, a group of children appeared from nowhere, forming a chattering circle around him, pulling at his sleeves, urging him to play ball with them. He shooed them away good-naturedly, as if he knew them already and Suzy felt she liked him before she had even spoken to him.

  As the children ran off, he looked back down at the floor as if hypnotized by the movement of the ball.

  “Hi …” Suzy said, tentatively, not wanting to break his concentration.

  He looked up and appeared startled by her appearance. “Oh,” he said, apparently trying to gather his thoughts. “Hello, I am Omid. You are Miss Sissy?”

  “It’s Suzy, not Sissy,” she smiled. She had a feeling he might be blushing, although it was already growing too dark to see.

  “My apologies, Miss Suzy.” He hesitated for a few seconds and then decided to put his hand out to her. She shook it and he appeared to relax a little. “The Professor did not tell me what you looked like. I didn’t expect …” His voice trailed away in embarrassment.

  “It’s kind of you to agree to do this for me,” she said.

  Omid was looking around nervously. She guessed he wasn’t used to being on his own with young women who were not family.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “I think perhaps the hat …” he coughed nervously. “People might be looking.”

  “Oh.” Suzy pulled the fedora off quickly. His shyness made her feel like she was posing a bit. “I thought I should cover my head.”

  “Perhaps a scarf,” he suggested, gesturing toward some stalls a short distance away.

  “OK,” she said, scrunching the fedora into a ball and attempting to push it into the side of her belt, but she could not manage it. Her long black wavy hair fell down past her shoulders and the hat refused to go into her bag. Giving up the struggle, she gave it to one of the kids, who were gathering to watch her with interest. The little boy ran away screaming joyfully, with the hat falling down over his eyes and the other kids following in a hot dust cloud.

  “You look much better, Miss Suzy,” said Omid, once she had bought a long scarf and draped it over her hair and shoulders. He seemed relieved in some way as he turned on his heel and led the way across to the pyramids, a long steady slope up a rock plateau, the Mokattam formation. It was not very steep but hard enough to make Suzy short of breath. A couple of tourists passed by them on camels.

  “I hear you’re an expert on the Great Pyramid,” Suzy said, trying to make conversation as they walked, to put him more at his ease.

  “Thank you. Most complimentary, but I earn my living as a guide, I have to be an expert.”

  “You like camel? He like you!” shouted a dusty, young, teenaged vagabond, gesturing with a long stick whip.

  “Yes, very nice, thanks,” Suzy replied, laughing at the expression on the animal’s placid face.

  “You like ride on camel, pretty lady?”

  “No, thanks.” she replied.

  “What is your name, pretty one?”

  “Suzy.”

  “Ah, I have a camel called Suzy, very beautiful.”

  Suzy was beginning to realize that she had made a mistake by allowing herself to be drawn into conversation.

  “—I can take the weight from your legs. You can dance on the camel to the pyramids, save your strength.”

  “Ma’a salama, Ma’a salama,” shouted Omid, shooing away the teenager and his camel.

  “They are all looking for Baksheesh,” he explained, “a bribe, some money, everyone for Baksheesh. Stay away from them, don’t talk or smile at them, just look straight ahead, be polite but firm, they are like bees around honey.”

  “It seems so rude,” she said.

  “Remember, they are trying to earn a living. By not talking to them, you are doing them a favor; you’re not wasting their time. They can move on quicker to the next victim. Let them earn Baksheesh.”

  As they proceeded along the limestone causeway, Omid stared angrily at any postcard peddlers, soft drink sellers or general mischief-makers who came too close.

  The Sphinx towered majestically above them, surveying the sands of time, carved out of living rock, half-lion, half-man. The mysterious portrait of a mysterious Pharaoh, it was still the world’s largest manmade sculpture in the 4500 years since it was first created.

  “The word sphinx means ‘strangler woman,’” Omid said, as they paused to look up. “It was first given the name by the Greeks. They gave it to any fabulous creature with the head of a woman.”

  “It certainly is fabulous,” Suzy murmured.

  “It is beautiful, like you,” Omid said, his courage gradually growing. Suzy merely raised an eyebrow at him and he returned to his guidebook voice.

  “The Sphinx lies to the side of the causeway to the mortuary temple of the Second Pyramid of Khafre. You can see the valley temple on the right and the paws of the Sphinx point to what is called the Temple of the Sphinx. See the central courtyard with twenty-four granite pillars in a colonnade? The temples are unique in Giza. Nowhere else has two temples; all the pyramids, the Pharaohs and everyone else had only one temple.”

  Suzy had never contemplated why there were two temples for the Sphinx and only one for the Pharaohs. The more you found out about the Sphinx, the more sublime the riddles became, she thought.

  “There may be some tunnels beneath the Sphinx. There are some that you can see at the side. Some people speculate that there is a Hall of Records beneath it, which is hiding the secrets of the origins of man, but there are no ancient texts that talk of a Hall of Records. No, in fact, that was invented by an American psychic with an overactive imagination. See how dreams can sometimes become reality?” Omid pointed upward. “Do you see the broken nose? The Sphinx was the unfortunate victim of some target practice by soldiers in the Turkish period. It fell off, along with the beard. It was believed that, by destroying the nose you could stop the spirit. You will see that later Pharaohs removed the noses on the statues of their predecessors—this destroyed the breath of life and meant they could no longer live on in the afterlife, a cruel fate.”

  The scale of the monument took Suzy’s breath away. These people were light years ahead of anyone else. Being there made her feel as if she was returning to a lost family, like she was meeting ancient relatives. Her mother had often talked about the wonder of it all, but she had never had the money to take her there.

  “An Indian friend on my course told me that the sphinx is known as narasimha, or man-lion, in Sri Lanka, home of the Buddha,” she said, eager to share any knowledge she had with the sweet-natured Omid. “In Buddhist tradition it functions as a guardian of the northern direction. Is that similar here?”

  “Curious that it looks east here in Egypt,” Omid said thoughtfully. “It faces the rising sun.”

  “The lion was a solar symbol in more than one ancient culture,” Suzy explained. “The royal human head on the lion’s body symbolized the power and might controlled by the intelligence of the Pharaoh, guaranteeing the cosmic order and balance of maat. So the Sphinx represents the Sun god.”

  “Ah,” Omid grinned, forgetting his shyness and looking her
straight in the eye for the first time. “I was wondering which theory you supported: solar god or statue of Khafre theory. I think most of your people believe it is the face of the great Pharoah Khafre, who built the second largest pyramid, the pyramid that it sits in front of. There was a scientific computer study of the face of the Sphinx, which showed it matches almost exactly that of statues of Khafre. So, what do you think?”

  “Actually I believe a pharaoh cut the Sphinx in his own likeness. In the afterlife, the Pharaoh became Horus the dweller in the Horizon—Horakhti—who was identified with a lion. The Sphinx guards Khafre’s tomb, the second great Pyramid, and the pharaoh in the afterlife joined not just with Ra, the Sun god, but also Horakhti in the east, so what I believe is that the Sphinx of Giza represents the Sun god, Ra, ‘coalesced’ with the divine image of Khafre, represented as Horakhti in his dynasty. The Sun god and Pharoah Khafre together, that is what I think, which would mean both theories are correct.”

  For a moment Omid seemed unable to speak as he stared at Suzy, carefully weighing her words. Never in his life had he met a woman who knew so much. “Hmm,” he said eventually, “you have thought about this before.” He paused. “Allow me to humbly point out the features they don’t show you in your libraries.” He pointed at the side of the Sphinx. “Here is the ear of the Sphinx; can you see the flecks of paint on it? Originally the Sphinx was painted, perhaps in garish colors.”