Masks of the Lost Kings (Suzy da Silva Series)

by Tom Bane

  Piper clearly knew more about how the system in Egypt worked so Suzy felt she should trust his judgment. An alarming thought then hit her.

  “Hey, it couldn’t be anything to do with the Horus Corporation, could it?” she suggested.

  “Suzy,” the Professor’s tone suggested he was losing patience. “I don’t think the Horus Corporation would want to threaten anyone, do you? Let alone assassinate them.”

  Suzy persisted, “But if it was an assassin, why would someone want to kill me or Omid?”

  “Exactly. That’s my whole point! I think it’s much more likely to have been an accident, but I still think it would be wise for you to avoid making yourself conspicuous right now. Keep your eyes peeled, but carry on with your research. You’ve got Horus’s cash—use it to keep a low profile. You don’t have to contact them if they worry you at all. And if they catch up with you, just play dumb and say you lost track of things. If they contact me then I’ll explain that you sometimes become so immersed in your research that you forget everything else. They expect that sort of thing from academics.”

  “OK, but how do you suggest I give my bodyguard the slip?”

  “They’ve given you a bodyguard?”

  “Yes, a Japanese guy called Getsu. And he’s really strange. He gives me the creeps.” Another worrying thought suddenly came to her. “God, do you think he might be the assassin? He looks very fit. I know he does martial arts because I asked him. He said he was a white belt, which seemed weird as that is a beginner’s belt; most people wouldn’t brag about that, but—”

  “You said you gave him the slip at the hotel. Do you now think he was following you around at the pyramids?”

  “I don’t know. Oh, God, I’m not sure. If he was, then I think I lost him. Although I felt I was being followed around later.”

  “Then move to another hotel tomorrow.” Piper paused and then added just a bit too heartily, “I doubt he’ll go to too much trouble to find you.”

  “So you do think he might be dangerous?” Suzy knew he couldn’t possibly know one way or the other but she wanted reassurances anyway.

  “Listen, tell you what—I happen to know that Dr. Tom Brooking is staying in Cairo. Why don’t you contact him? He would be ideal to accompany you.”

  “No way,” she almost laughed. “I mean, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not? He’s a perfectly commendable chap,” Piper said. “In fact, I believe he’s somewhat of a martial arts expert as well, so he can protect you.”

  “Well, I have actually bumped into him already,” Suzy said, tactfully omitting how she had already bested Tom at judo. “He’s staying in this hotel.”

  “There you are then. You would feel a lot safer with a familiar face around.”

  “I don’t like him,” Suzy insisted, remembering how hard it had been to shake him off in the hotel foyer.

  The professor laughed. “I didn’t say you had to date him, Suzy, just keep him around. He’s doing research into the pyramids as well. I think you might have a meeting of minds!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I know you got off to a bit of a bad start but don’t judge him.”

  “Hah! What if he was the assassin?”

  “Come, come, Suzy! Don’t you think you are being a little paranoid now? Get a good night’s sleep and things will look better in the morning. They always do.” Suzy realized she couldn’t push the subject any more at the moment.

  “OK, but how come you know so much about Tom Brooking?”

  “I’ve known his father for many years. Tom’s a nice boy. His father and I have had our disagreements, but Tom is definitely a good scientist.”

  “OK, Professor, I’m sorry for getting so hysterical. And for waking you up. Just, before you go, can I ask one more question?”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “I received a mysterious email before I came to Egypt,” Suzy lied. “It said something like, ‘To find the Tutankhamun cycle, look for the hidden doorway, in the mask, in the tomb before Xul, a human number, the alpha and the omega.’”

  “And you received this message from whom?”

  “Er, I don’t know, it just arrived anonymously.”

  “Hmm, it’s interesting. I have never heard of the Tutankhamun cycle, but perhaps it’s a reference to the Bible’s Book of Revelations. ‘A human number’ you said, and ‘the alpha and the omega?’”

  “Yes, but what do you think it means?”

  “I have no idea, although the reference to Xul is interesting: it’s the Mayan name for the summer solstice, the 21st of June. Xul might be an anagram for lux, the Latin word for light, but it sounds like mumbo-jumbo to me. Still, intriguing. Leave it with me and I will think about it.”

  “OK, but how would the alpha and omega link to Revelations?”

  “The conventional explanation is that alpha and omega, being the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, symbolize Christ as the beginning and the end, the first and the last. So, you could say it means that Christ is eternal, but that doesn’t seem to me to be what the message is about. If anything, it sounds more like a code to me.”

  “A code? So what does it mean?”

  “I’m not sure. I think the most interesting reference is to the mask, perhaps Tutankhamun’s death mask. You can look into that when you visit the Cairo Museum. On the other hand, the death mask seems a bit too obvious so it might be a decoy; it might mean something else, so look very carefully in the museum; see if you notice anything we might have missed before.” Piper was beginning to speak like a principal researcher instructing his junior. “Of course,” he chuckled, “the email could just be from some crackpot. Try not to let it distract you from your thesis research. And now, young lady, try to get a good night’s sleep.”

  Once she had put down the phone, Suzy felt the silence of the room wrapping itself around her. She felt very alone and far from home and for a moment regretted turning down Tom’s offer of a drink in the bar. It would have been nice to have someone to talk to, to share at least some of her worries with. Once she had climbed into bed, however, sheer exhaustion overcame all her fears and she slid quickly into a tangled web of dreams.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  One year earlier, Getsu was kneeling, blindfolded, on the green outer lawn of the monastery garden on Japan’s Mount Koya. The elderly Grandmaster, Hanaka, raised the steel katana sword high behind Getsu’s back and paused. The only sound came from the rushing waters of the stream beside them. The sword flashed down to decapitate Getsu. Time slowed and his body rolled to the side, away from the blade tip. The fabric of his linen collar was cut open, but his neck was unharmed. He was alive; in fact he had never felt so alive. He had passed the deadly sakki test, a test that had killed many lesser men.

  Getsu’s heart and lungs were pumping but he remained calm. In that moment a spirit had taken over his body and he passed from the control of his master into a twilight state of death and life. As his master’s blade came down to kill him, his unconscious mind flowed through his body to take him to safety. He had practiced for this moment but there was nothing that could rehearse him for the precise path of the blade. He removed the blindfold.

  They knelt together on the grass, taking the tea ceremony. The Zen temple’s rock garden and its groomed layers of raked sand encircled their grassy island. Hanaka was pleased for him. He did not want to kill him, but Getsu had to prove he was worthy. Getsu sipped green tea from a wooden cup. It was so good to be free and back in the world.

  “Here is your belt,” Hanaka said. “One day you will be the next grandmaster of the ten schools. You have reached the Twelfth Dan, and, in time you will inherit the system from me, but there are further trials before you take over from me, and gain the Thirteenth Dan.”

  He passed Getsu a large white belt from inside his black cloak.

  A white belt! Getsu was taken aback. The white belt was the sign of a complete beginner in every martial art. He, having
worked through the arduous black belt grades, had reached the highest level. So much arduous training to be given the belt of a mere beginner? Why? He had learnt how to use an exotic arsenal of weapons, from the katana sword to the fukiya blowpipe, ten different styles of unarmed combat, the secrets of concealment and infiltration, disguise and assassination, breathing techniques and herbal practices to prolong life. Why work so hard just for a white belt?

  “This belt indicates that the disciple has turned full circle,” Hanaka explained, “that he is at one again with nothingness, the return to purity.”

  Getsu bowed, embarrassed by his error but Hanaka did not seem disappointed in him. “I am honored.” He tied the belt round his waist.

  “Now I must reveal to you the densho.” Hanaka reached inside his cloak again and pulled out some ancient paper scrolls, unrolling them from around a wooden stem.

  Getsu knew that only the past masters of ancient times had seen these secret scrolls. He would be the first person in sixty years to witness them anew. They rolled the dusty, yellowing papers out on the grass, placing pebbles on the edges to stop them coiling back up.

  “What do you see?” asked Hanaka.

  “I see the hexagrams of the I Ching.”

  “Correct. The I Ching- the book of changes an ancient system of divination devised by an ancient sage, Lian Shan, in 3113 BC. To cast the oracle, you purify three coins in water, and then toss them to reveal the hexagrams, a straight block or one with a gap, heads or tails, if you prefer. Then you consult the I Ching, the book of changes, and it will read you your future. But there is a terrifying secret hidden in the scrolls and the I Ching.”

  “Surely, if it lies hidden,” Getsu said, “then, I cannot see it?”

  “It lies hidden in plain sight. It has lain there for over thirty centuries waiting for someone to find it. Try to see it!”

  Hanaka turned over the scroll and on the reverse was a strange pattern, a series of random spikes and troughs, with a scale of what were presumably years across the bottom.

  “You have studied Chinese, have you not, Getsu?”

  “For seven years, Master.”

  “What does the name of the founder of the I Ching mean, Lian Shan?”

  “It means ‘continuous mountains.’”

  “And the Chinese name, I Ching, means book of changes. Close your eyes and meditate on that. Stop thinking and feel!”

  Getsu sat serenely in meditation, kneeling on the grass with his eyes closed, like a traditional priest. The Grandmaster patrolled around him using a keisaku, a long slat of pine, to align Getsu’s back and ensure a proper meditative pose. Then he walked away. Getsu was left alone for forty minutes to meditate on the grass. His thoughts drifted with the sound of the mountain stream and in his mind’s eye the hexagrams transmuted, shifted and merged into one another.

  Hanaka returned silently, took the pine keisaku slat and smashed it hard over Getsu’s head, breaking it in half. Getsu reeled in shock and pain.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Hanaka demanded. Getsu looked at the wood broken in two and thought of the hexagrams of the I Ching alternating between the solid blocks and then broken in two. “Abandon your thoughts, let your mind go,” commanded Hanaka.

  “The secret—is it something to do with moving between the hexagrams? They break between gaps and solid blocks to form a pattern. Lian Shan invented the I Ching in the year 3113 BC”

  “Well done, Getsu, you have been enlightened. You see, it is all linked: the ratio of the blocks to gaps in each hexagram can be plotted as a continuous line, like a mountain range. You can see this on the reverse of the scroll. Lian Shan’s name of continuous mountains is an allusion, a subtle clue to the hidden secret.” Hanaka pointed at the mysterious lines on the rear of the scroll. “If you see the hidden pattern in the sixty-four hexagrams in the I Ching, and plot the ratios of change between the gaps and sold blocks against time, that is how many hexagrams change from one to the next. Starting with the birth of the I Ching in the year 3113 BC, you get a timewave. The peaks and valleys can be shown every year up until today. Some of them have intriguing correlations that match the fall of the Roman Empire, the discovery of the New World and the World Wars of the twentieth century, but as you will see, the strangest thing of all is that the scroll’s timewave hits zero in the year 2012. It ends. That is the hidden secret of the scroll and the I Ching—2012!”

  “That is profoundly interesting” Getsu said, “but why? Why does it end there?”

  “That is what you must find out.”

  “You do not know why it ends in 2012?”

  “None of the grandmasters have ever known. Their sole purpose was to survive long enough so they could pass on the secrets to a worthy disciple, to transmit the secret along the lineage, ultimately to you.”

  Hanaka pulled a tanto dagger from his robe and passed it to Getsu. On the blade was engraved the pattern of the continuous mountain, identical to the one on the reverse of the scroll, but disguised as a wavy line, the hamon, a feature of all Japanese samurai blades.

  “This dagger is sacred and thought to have come into our possession in the year 688 and the very first grandmaster of Togakure Ryu was the first to possess it,” he explained. Getsu was surprised to see that, on the top hilt of the dagger, his name was engraved in kanji, Japanese calligraphy.

  “Do not fret, Getsu. Your name simply means ‘moon’ in ancient Japanese. The ancient masters worshipped the moon and stars, remember.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “You must find out.”

  “I do not want to the system to end in 2012. I have worked so hard to preserve it.”

  “The scrolls do not actually state it will end,” Hanaka chided gently, “they merely stay silent on the matter. Perhaps 2012 marks the start of something the ancients could not foretell. They could not see beyond it.”

  “Where should I go next, Master?”

  “Let’s consult the oracle.”

  Hanaka pulled three coins from his pocket and they walked toward the running waters of the mountain stream. Hanaka washed the coins in the cool water with his fingers and then spun them high into the air. When they landed, they would divine Getsu’s path.

  That night, Getsu headed for England.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Suzy awoke early. The first thing she did was inch the door of her room open to scan the hallway for any sign of Getsu or Tom Brooking. The hallway was empty. Pulling on her clothes, she grabbed her backpack and squeezed shut the door behind her, tiptoeing to the elevator and gliding down to the reception area. Freshly delivered newspapers stood piled at the foot of the reception desk. She glanced at the headlines but saw nothing about deaths having occurred inside the pyramids. Maybe the bodies had not been found yet.

  Outside in the street the wagons, cars and mopeds zoomed at breakneck pace depositing a fresh film of pollution on the local clothes bazaar. A smiling bearded man was hanging out his wares for the start of a new day’s trading. A vast array of turquoises, red ochre and burnt sienna silks stimulated her senses, velvety smooth and luxurious to touch, she picked a sample to try as a head wrap, the smell of car fumes in the fabric made her hesitate. She turned left into the covered bazaar, a huge assortment of cashmeres, satins and calicos welcomed her, the fabrics hung from wooden trestles and poles like multicolored wisteria trees. Spying some handmade organic silks, she lifted a black one to her face; it smelled as fresh as a daisy. She bought it. This would make her near invisible among all the other Muslim women. To test her new disguise, she cautiously walked a couple of streets to be sure she wasn’t being followed, and then hailed a taxi.

  “Take me to the Cairo Museum,” she ordered.

  The driver hardly gave her a second look, nodding for her to get in and spitting out of his open window before roaring away from the curb. She long ago had to accept that her looks drew attention. Now, more than ever, she was relieved not to be ogled. She could understand why so many millions of women
became accustomed to this garment-derived privacy.

  The taxi hurtled into Tahrir Square, screeching to a halt, Suzy’s desert boots landed on the raised concrete sidewalk.

  “Forty dollars, lovely lady!” grinned the greasy-haired driver, tapping his nipple with his finger.

  She stuffed a wad of dollars into his nylon shirt pocket, he winked at her like she had slipped him a dodgy bribe, cleared his throat and spat out a celebratory lump onto the pavement and zoomed off into the distance. Leaving Suzy to contemplate the finer qualities of bus and train travel.

  Moving across the square, she wove her way through the crowds beneath the trickling fountains, palm trees and water-lilied pools outside the brick red painted façade of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, she mingled with a gathering of students and tourists enjoying the morning sun, who were negotiating with a bunch of locals who were hoping to find employment as guides or sell some cheap souvenirs. Her scarf failing to deter them, she ignored all their offers and pushed her way inside the museum, away from the chaos. She had heard so many stories about this place. Now, as she looked about, she could believe they were all true. She remembered the one about the hundred crates full of mummies, carvings and jeweled treasures that were “forgotten” for eighty years, simply because someone neglected to do an annual inventory. Which other country could hemorrhage enough national treasures to fill the coffers of museums across the world, and still have over one hundred twenty thousand pieces without enough space to display?

  Seeing a visitor’s map on the wall, Suzy traced her finger round it in a flash, knowing precisely what she was looking for. She knew there were a thousand fascinating things intent on distracting her along the way but she walked directly toward the Tutankhamun exhibits on the top floor. Although she had an idea of what she hoped to find, she wasn’t sure where to start looking. As she passed two life-sized statues that stood guard at the gallery entrance, the decision was no longer hers, as the dazzling, lion-shaped golden throne of Tut stopped her in her tracks.