Pharaoh (Jack Howard 7)

by Gibbins, David

  He took off his crown and dropped it with his staff on the floor, then cast off his robe; beneath it he was wearing only a loincloth, like the slaves. He opened his arms, face to the sun, feeling it bathe him in warmth, no longer self-conscious about his body. Under the Aten, all were created equal, and all were made beautiful. He passed through the entrance and along the edge of the rock-cut channel that led from the Nile to the temple. The channel was dry now, but was caked with desiccated mud from the river that gave off a putrid smell, reptilian. He walked towards a woman, sensuous in her white robe, her jet-black hair curly and long and her eyes surrounded by kohl; the shape of her breasts and thighs pleased him, aroused him, as he thought of the days and nights ahead when they would at last be man and woman, not pharaoh and high priestess. He took her hand and held it high. ‘Nefertiti-na-Aten,’ he said, smiling at her, using her new name for the first time. ‘May the Aten shine on us, and our children.’

  ‘It already shines on you, Akhen-Aten. Our son Tutankhamun will be Tutank-Aten, and will for ever be known as that, for he shall embrace the light too and his reign shall be long.’

  He breathed in deeply, savouring it. Akhenaten; no longer Amenhotep, high priest of Amun, but Akhenaten, he on whom the light of the Aten shines, he who would soon return north to lift the veil of ignorance from his people and reveal the presence of the one God. He smiled again, and began to walk with her, looking up and seeing his soldiers lining the surrounding clifftops, the attendants and guards of the priests along the banks of the river below. They came to a cluster of shackled slaves and stopped in front of their leader, a young man with fire in his eyes wearing the beard of the Canaanites. He had been held between a pair of priestly guards, but two soldiers came and released him, and he walked forward to greet them.

  ‘Hail, Akhenaten,’ he said, embracing him. ‘Hail, Nefertiti-na-Aten, my sister,’ he said, kissing her hand.

  She held him by the shoulders, kissing him on both cheeks. ‘Hail, Moses, my brother,’ she said.

  Akhenaten embraced him again. ‘It is as we planned, my brother, when you came as a slave to my palace and we first sat watching the sun set over the pyramids, and then came here with me. Now I am pharaoh, and our vision has become my quest. I will go into the desert to the land of my forefathers to seek the place where the Aten rises, and then I will bring back the light and it will shine over all Egypt. Where will you go?’

  Moses gestured at the slaves. ‘I will take my people north and return to the land of our fathers, where we will live under the light of the one God. I will await word from your new city that the Aten shines on all Egypt, and then we shall go forth together and spread the word to the world.’

  ‘May the Aten reach out and embrace you with his arms like the rays of the sun,’ Nefertiti said. ‘May you and your people find your way north in peace.’

  Akhenaten shut his eyes. He would do something else, too. Soon he would release all the knowledge from the temples, knowledge from past ages that the priests had locked away and kept for themselves. The priests who had mocked his appearance as a boy had said that they had the knowledge to cure the illness that caused it, but that Amun and his consorts had instructed them not to, had told them to keep it concealed. For that he would bring down his own judgement on the priests, and on the gods; he would extinguish them all. He would take the knowledge from the temple libraries and bring it together in one place, in the one temple to the one God, and he would preside within, the light of the Aten shining through him on those who came for divine dispensation, which he would give freely: the knowledge of the ancients would be laid open for all. He had already begun to depict his vision of this temple of light, this city of knowledge; he had instructed his masons to show it within the image of himself on the temple wall, and soon, when he reached the birthplace of the Aten, he would inscribe it all on stone, when the light gave him the vision to plan his temple and send word for the masons and carvers and quarrymen to begin their work.

  He opened his eyes, and Moses gestured towards the slaves, and then at the temple. ‘But they cannot go. The priests will demand the sacrifice.’

  Akhenaten smiled again, feeling serene. He looked at the shadow rising up the face of the temple, seeing that the sun would only be shining through the aperture at the top for another few minutes; it was the sign for the ceremony of propitiation to end and the priests to leave, and for the final act of appeasement to take place. He raised one arm, and two teams of soldiers swung shut the stone doors, placing transverse wooden beams across to seal them. He looked towards the juncture of the channel with the river, and raised his hand again. The priestly guards had been pushed aside by his own soldiers, who now began to pull on the ropes on either side of a wooden frame above the channel, slowly raising the sluice gate. The first trickles of water became a torrent, driving down the channel towards the place where it disappeared under the rock face into the temple. The water would only fill the chamber with the priests to the height of a man, but that would be enough.

  Suddenly there was a commotion at the sluice gate. The men jumped back, turning away and hiding their faces in their hands, terrified of laying eyes on the one who shall not be seen. A wave ran down the channel, pushed forward by something in the water: the leviathan, five times the length of a man, its great hoary tail slapping the sides of the channel as it surged forward, invisible below the muddy surface of the water. And then it was gone, as if it had clawed its way under the rock into the temple, a great wave sucking and spraying behind it, drenching the soldiers who cowered on either side of the entrance, making sure the doors remained shut.

  It had been starving, ravenous. For days now the priests had kept it without food in the pool, and when the procession of shackled slaves had arrived, it had begun crashing its head against the sluice gate, knowing what lay in store. Only this time the feast would be far greater than before: not slaves who had been wasted down to skin and bone, but instead those who had overindulged their own appetites for excess, and whose flesh would now provide one last gluttonous feast for the god.

  For a few moments the rushing sound as the water entered the temple drowned out the cries of the men inside. Then a terrible shriek rose above it, and another, the noise magnified by the hollow space within. The sun dropped below the level of the cliff, and the aperture became a slit of darkness, the noise like a death rattle.

  The god had supped its last sacrifice. The beast now ruled the temple, unshackled from the will of the priests, free to return to its pool in the river and prey on any men foolish enough to come this way and linger here again. But the beast would rule to its own measure, no longer as a god.

  Akhenaten raised his arm one final time, signalling to the foreman of the team on the slope beside the temple. They began to heave on a rope attached to a rectangular slab on one side of the aperture that had let in the light high up on the temple wall, drawing it across to close the opening. The final scraping sounds of the rock ended, and the noise inside was gone. All that could be heard was the faint rustling of wind in their clothes, and the distant sound of the river over the rapids to the south. Everyone remained still: his own retinue, his soldiers on the clifftops, the slaves and their priestly guards. Then one of the guards dropped his whip and ran, and the others followed. The soldiers swooped down on them, spears raised. The guards would not be food for the temple, but carrion for the vultures.

  The water that had flowed into the temple had found its level and was now surging back, a wave that lapped the edges of the channel as it rebounded into the river. Akhenaten looked down at the water that had splashed up around his feet, and saw that the muddy brown was sluiced through with blood.

  It was done.

  He turned towards the setting sun. The soldiers on the clifftop above the temple raised their elephant-tusk horns and blew one blast, the noise booming and echoing down the Nile and then fading away, like the last bellowing of som
e great beast. He opened his arms, staring into the orange orb, feeling the rays burn into him, letting his soul flow out through his eyes and become as one with the Aten.

  The old religion was dead.

  Let the new one begin.

  PART 1

  1

  Off southern Spain, present day

  Jack Howard eased forward in the confined space of the submersible, raising himself on his elbows so that he could see through the forward porthole into the azure shimmer of the Mediterranean. The thick cone of Perspex was designed to withstand the enormous pressures of abyssal depth, and distorted the view around the edge so that the research vessel Seaquest II some twenty metres above appeared as a strange play of white superstructure and dark hull. But the view in the centre was undistorted, a tunnel of clarity that seemed to match the single-minded determination that had brought Jack this far. As he made out the slope of rock and sand on the seabed below, his heart began to pound with excitement. Somewhere out there lay one of the greatest lost treasures of antiquity. For a moment Jack saw the image he had seen in his dreams for days now: a black basalt sarcophagus rising stark from the seabed like the toppled statue of a pharaoh half buried in the desert sand. Only this was not a dream. This was real.

  ‘Jack. Shift over. I need space.’ There was a grunt and a muttered curse in Greek and a figure pushed himself forward on his back alongside him, staring at the tangle of wires that hung from the open control panel above them. Costas Kazantzakis moved with a deftness that seemed to belie his barrel chest and thick forearms, and his shorter frame was more suited than Jack’s to fit inside the submersible. Jack knew better than to break his concentration, and watched as Costas moved his hands swiftly over the panel, pulling out and plugging in cables. In the distorted reflection of the Perspex Jack saw his face superimposed on Costas’, his thick dark hair appearing above the other man’s grizzled chin, and for a moment it seemed as if they were conjoined, two bodies become one. They had been doing this together for almost twenty years now, and it sometimes seemed like that. He pushed himself forwards to give Costas more space, watching his eyes dart over the panel. Seeing Costas at work quickened Jack’s sense of excitement over the discovery that might lie ahead. Costas had been his main dive buddy from before he had founded the International Maritime University, and together they had logged thousands of dives on IMU projects around the world. This one promised to be up there with the best, providing Costas could work out a way of releasing the tethering line that held the submersible suspended below Seaquest II like a lure on a fishing line.

  Costas turned to him. ‘You okay in here?’

  Jack shifted again. ‘I’d be happier diving free outside. Six foot five is about a foot too long for this space.’

  ‘Once I get this thing running, it’ll seem like an extension of your body. You’ll forget the cramped space, I promise.’

  ‘How much longer?’

  Costas gazed back up at the wiring. ‘I once stared at a control panel for eighteen hours. Then bingo, I got it.’

  ‘I thought a PhD from MIT in submersibles engineering would have eased you through a glitch like this.’

  Costas narrowed his eyes. ‘And I thought a PhD from Cambridge in archaeology would make you an instant expert in everything. I’m trying to remember the number of times I’ve watched my air gauge drop to zero while waiting for you to fathom out some ancient inscription.’

  Jack grinned. ‘Okay. Touché.’

  ‘Have patience,’ Costas muttered, staring up. ‘It’ll come to me.’

  There was movement from the hatch to the rear compartment beyond Jack’s feet, and the third person in the submersible appeared, a short woman with dark curly hair and glasses wearing an IMU jumpsuit. Sofia Fernandez, a former Spanish navy medic who was now an archaeologist with the local Cartagena museum, had come on board as the official representative of the Spanish antiquities authority. She had only arrived on Seaquest II an hour before and Jack had never met her previously, but both men had immediately liked her. At the moment, all that concerned Jack was that she was small enough not to reduce his comfort level in the sphere below a tolerable level.

  She pulled herself in, and sat in the driver’s seat. ‘What gives?’ she said.

  ‘Apologies for the glitch,’ Costas replied, looking at her ruefully. ‘This is a new submersible fresh out of the engineering department at IMU, and today is its first open-water test. I haven’t even given her a name yet. Seaquest II can only be here for a day or two, as she’s due back for a winter refit in England, and this was the only window I had to get this thing in the water to see how she behaves on a real operation.’ He paused. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask. Where did you get that accent? The sassy attitude. And don’t get me wrong. I like it.’

  Sofia smiled. ‘From dealing with men like you. I was brought up in Puerto Rico by my American mother.’

  ‘But you ended up in the Spanish navy.’

  ‘I was a Spanish citizen because of my father, and the navy offered to pay my way through medical school in Seville.’

  ‘And now you’re an archaeologist.’

  ‘After my pre-med year the call came for medical personnel to join the Spanish contingent in Afghanistan, and I volunteered to go as a combat medic. After that, I decided I’d done my bit for medicine and it was time to move on. At med school I’d developed an interest in operation theatre tools for remote surgery, so I did a masters in robotics engineering.’

  ‘No way,’ Costas exclaimed. ‘Right up my alley. We use the same basic technology for remote excavation from submersibles. We have got something to talk about during the long hours while I stare at this panel.’

  ‘Not long hours,’ Jack said firmly. ‘Short minutes.’

  ‘Well, my other fascination was archaeology, so I started over again and did a degree in anthropology and got the job at the Cartagena museum. My mother was a dive instructor in Puerto Rico and I’d dived almost before I could walk, so when I heard that you were planning to come to search for the wreck of the Beatrice off Cartagena, I couldn’t believe my luck.’

  ‘Combat medic, robotics engineer, archaeologist, diver,’ Costas said. ‘Sounds like a pretty good skill-set to me.’

  ‘Anyway, speaking of accents, what’s a Greek from the Kazantzakis shipping family doing with a New York accent? And best friends with a Brit?’

  ‘I went to school in Manhattan,’ Costas said. ‘And Jack’s only really a Brit in his ancestry. He was brought up in New Zealand and Canada before going to boarding school in England. So we’re international really. The International Maritime University. An international team of oddballs.’

  ‘That reminds me: a strange guy with long lank hair and a lab coat collared me topside before I got into the submersible. I forgot to tell you.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Costas murmured, staring back at the panel. ‘Lanowski. What does he want?’

  ‘He said that although Kazantzakis thinks he knows everything about submersibles, he’s really a concepts man and is pretty useless on computer systems and circuitry. He said that because you agreed to be his best man, it showed that you were his friend now and would have no problem acknowledging his superior mental agility. I think those were his exact words.’

  Costas grimaced. ‘He’s got it in for me because when he and his glamour-model wife got married in our top-end submersible, the trim was wrong.’

  ‘Correction,’ Jack said. ‘You sabotaged the trim so that they would get married at the bottom of the Marianas Trench instead of just below the surface.’

  ‘It was a great opportunity to test the new pressure hull,’ Costas said defensively. ‘It was the only reason I agreed to be his best man.’

  ‘This gets better,’ Sofia said. ‘Lanowski has a glamour-model wife and they got married underwater. Let me guess, they met online and it was love at first sight?’ />
  ‘You bet. Love of submersibles at first sight. She loves really big submarines.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And don’t tell me, she has a PhD too?’

  ‘Submersibles nanotechnology. Flying tiny drone submersibles into the abyss. Lanowski loves her for it.’

  ‘I’m sure he does.’

  Costas put out his hand resignedly. ‘Okay, what did he give you?’

  Sofia passed over a crumpled piece of paper. ‘He said it’s a circuit diagram. He scribbled it down while I kitted up.’

  Costas flattened the paper and stared at it. ‘Why oh why didn’t he show me this earlier?’ he groaned.

  ‘He said he was giving you the time to work it through yourself and realise you were never going to get there.’

  Costas reached up, pulled out one cable and plugged in another. A red light began to flash on the panel. ‘Okay. We’ve got maybe half an hour while the system reboots.’ He leaned back against the Perspex dome and looked at Jack. ‘Which gives you just enough time to fill me in on exactly what we’re doing here. I missed your briefing topside because I was down here apparently failing to spot what Lanowski knew all along. So what do we know about our target?’

  Jack did not relish the idea of a further half-hour swaying in the submersible under Seaquest II, and he welcomed Costas’ request. He reached over and clicked on his laptop, lifting it and turning the screen towards the other two. ‘It’s a fantastic story,’ he said. ‘Of all the artefacts looted by European travellers to ancient lands, this one is probably the most extraordinary. In 1837, a British army officer named Richard Vyse and an engineer named John Perring used gunpowder to blow their way into the main burial chamber of the pyramid of Menkaure at Giza. Inside it they found a great basalt sarcophagus and a wooden coffin. After an incredible effort inching the sarcophagus along the entrance shaft, Vyse and his Egyptian workers managed to get it out of the pyramid and down to Alexandria, where it was loaded on to the Beatrice. She set sail, and was recorded leaving Malta on the thirteenth of October 1838. That was the last anyone ever heard of her.’