Journey of the Pharaohs - NUMA Files Series 17 (2020)

by Cussler, Clive

“Avion,” Morgan replied. “L’avion.”

  Both Kurt and Joe took journals and got to work. Had the library been digitized, Hiram’s computers could have searched through every word in a matter of seconds. By Kurt’s estimation, the four of them couldn’t do it in less than a full weekend. With nothing to do but get started, Kurt sat down and opened his book.

  Darkness fell rapidly in the hill country of western France. As the sun disappeared behind the mountains bordering Spain, the air turned cool and the sky faded to a dusky gray.

  With the slightest hint of orange light still glowing on the horizon, the security guard at the front gate settled in for what he expected would be a quiet evening. He said good-bye to the staff as they left and lowered the heavy gate.

  Unlike earlier centuries, none of the staff lived at the château, they had homes and families of their own to go to. Aside from the security team and a butler, only the DeMars family remained overnight. And with most of the family away for the summer, the mansion was almost empty.

  The guard laughed at the idea. The residence had fifteen bedrooms, almost as many bathrooms, two kitchens, three dining rooms and plenty of other spaces. Most of the time, it was all but vacant. Better for him, he thought. Many of the châteaux around France had been turned into tourist destinations and hotels. That meant endless foot traffic, screaming children and issues with theft. The DeMars château hosted only occasional weddings and corporate parties. If it ever became a tourist trap, the guard intended to put in for early retirement.

  Sitting back and dividing his attention between the road outside, the ever-changing security feed from the cameras around the property and the music playing softly on his radio, the guard felt the peace of the evening settle on him. That feeling didn’t change much even as a pair of headlights came down the road, slowing as they neared the driveway. He saw a turn signal light up, flashing amber in the dark, and found himself mildly annoyed as a delivery van pulled into the drive and stopped at the gate.

  Grabbing his clipboard, the guard walked out to the van. “Catering and deliveries are not supposed to arrive after six. I hope you have a good reason for coming so late.”

  The window went down and the man in the vehicle looked over at him. There was something undeniably cruel about his face. “No delivery,” he said in badly accented French. “Pickup.”

  Looking into the van, the guard noticed that the steering wheel was on the far side. That made it an English vehicle. The accent was English too. He wondered if this had something to do with the group that had arrived earlier. The woman had been English.

  “Pickup?” he said, glancing at the clipboard and looking for anything that might be scheduled to go out. “What vendor?”

  “Glock,” the man said.

  The guard froze at the sight of the Austrian-made pistol. He noticed that a silencer had been screwed into the barrel. That could mean only one thing.

  He threw the clipboard and dodged to the side, but he was not nearly fast enough. Three muted shots were fired. Two hit him in the chest, the other in his right bicep.

  He landed on the ground, stunned, bleeding and gasping for breath. He looked back to see a passenger climbing out of the van, but instead of finishing him off the man rushed into the shack and pressed the button to open the gate.

  As the poles swung upward, a second van sped up to it, this one a larger, twelve-passenger model. It slowed, waiting for the gate to reach its zenith and the spikes in the pavement to retract. When the gate locked into position and the spikes disappeared, the van raced in.

  Mortally wounded and bleeding out, the guard still processed what he was seeing. This was an assault. A planned attack. He had to call in a warning. He reached for the microphone attached to his collar and squeezed the TALK switch. “Code—”

  A fourth bullet finished him off before he could say any more.

  Robson stood over the fallen guard, waiting for an alarm to sound or a return call to come through on the guard’s radio.

  “If anyone heard that call, we’ll be walking into trouble,” Snipe insisted.

  “Kappa and his men will find it first,” Robson said. “But I wouldn’t worry. It doesn’t sound like anyone was listening. Get him out of sight and get back in the van. We don’t want Kappa to have all the fun.”

  Gus and Fingers worked together, picking the guard up by his arms and feet and hauling him back into the shack. They laid him on the ground out of sight and closed the door. Meanwhile, Snipe had picked up the fallen clipboard. “Look at this.”

  Robson took it. It listed visitors and deliveries. He saw the names Manning, Austin and Zavala. Affiliations, UK and USG.

  “The MI5 agent and the two Americans are here,” he told the others. “Looks like we’ll get to kill three birds with one stone.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Château DeMars, fourth-floor study

  An hour of reading had gone by in the blink of an eye. To his surprise, Kurt found scanning for terms amid words in a foreign language surprisingly hard. It was easy for his mind to wander as his eyes glossed over and stopped really seeing what they were looking for.

  “This is like scanning the sea from a helicopter, looking for an orange life raft amid the endless blue,” he said.

  “That would be easier,” Joe said.

  Either way, it had the same effect—strain behind the eyeballs and the need for frequent breaks.

  “Yes,” DeMars said, standing up as he spoke. “Yes.”

  “Tell me you’re not just agreeing with us enthusiastically,” Kurt said.

  “I’ve found something,” DeMars said. “I think this is what you’re hoping for. Come look.”

  Kurt gladly put down the journal he was reading and moved over to the table DeMars had occupied.

  The journals covering May, June and July of 1927 sat beside him, stacked up neatly, effectively ruled out. Open in front of DeMars was the journal for August 1927.

  With the others gathered around him, DeMars adjusted his glasses and began to read aloud.

  Two days’ mule’s ride from Navia we finally arrived in San Sebastián. Here we are shown the items that the trader spoke of. Small golden castings, one in the shape of a crocodile, the other in the shape of an Anubis. They must be Egyptian. Proof that members of the dynasty were on the Continent.

  He looked up with a grin and read on.

  In addition to the golden items, these men have shown me flat sections of a reddish stone. The surface is covered with hieroglyphics. They have also a small, pyramid-shaped stone that appears as if it has been broken off the top of a marker or perhaps a small obelisk.

  Turning the page, he found a rough drawing with some dimensions listed beside it.

  “That’s a good match for what we saw in the case,” Joe said.

  Kurt and Morgan nodded. DeMars continued.

  I asked repeatedly where they dug the items up, but the old men shrug and do not answer. Perhaps they do not understand. I rephrase the words and ask how they came into possession of the items. They indicate they were among the belongings of a dead man who was found by the river a full day’s walk to the north.

  I asked who this man was and where he hailed from, but I receive only the same indistinct shrugs. He was not one of us, I am told. It is difficult to know what this means. I am in Basque Country and they do not acknowledge the government in Madrid. There is also the new divide among those who count Spain as their home. Communists and Nationalists are forcing people to choose sides. All of this is making my task of finding the truth more difficult.

  Kurt cross-referenced the dates with his knowledge of history. “Shadows of the Spanish Civil War.”

  “Indeed,” DeMars said, then went back to reading.

  Avoiding talk of the government, I ask how the man died and what happened to his body. They say he died from infection and loss of blood. Some of the men buried him and they brought his rucksack here. No one has come for him …

  The next page described the items
in more detail and the prices paid for them, but that was the last entry for Spain. When the journal resumed, it was five weeks later and the elder DeMars was visiting a friend in Paris.

  “He doesn’t mention a plane,” Joe said. “But the dead man’s injuries match what was written in the logbook. I’d say it’s a lock.”

  DeMars was smiling.

  “You look happier than us,” Kurt noted.

  “Proud,” DeMars said. “Many have considered my grandfather’s work trivial or even fraudulent, me among them. This proves that the items didn’t originate in Spain. But it also proves his discovery was serendipity, not deception.”

  Kurt put a hand on DeMars’s shoulder. “And when we find what the Writings of Qsn are pointing us toward, he will be the biggest reason for a discovery of epic proportions. Now we just have to figure out where he was. Where, exactly, is San Sebastián?”

  Kurt pulled out his phone, used to using the power of the internet for searches such as this. At the same time, DeMars put the journal aside and went to retrieve a large atlas from the shelf.

  He carried it to the desk and placed it down with a soft thud. Leafing through the pages, he came to a section depicting northern Spain, just across the border from France.

  “This is Basque Country,” he said.

  Taking out a magnifying glass, he scanned the page, searching the names of the towns and rivers. “Here,” he said. “This is Navia. This is where they began. From there, two days by mule upriver would take them somewhere between twenty and perhaps forty miles at the most. That would bring them to …”

  He checked the scale of the map and then placed a ruler alongside the river. At the twenty-mile mark, there was nothing, but nearer the top of the page, close to the forty-mile limit, was a small dot with two inked notes next to it.

  DeMars got the chills. They were his grandfather’s shorthand notes. They included dates in August of 1927. “This is it,” he said, circling the town for the others to see.

  Morgan and Joe came over to look. Kurt continued to wait on his phone to cooperate.

  “It says Villa Ducal de Lerma,” Joe pointed out.

  “But the church is there,” DeMars said. “San Sebastián de las Montañas—Saint Sebastian of the Mountains. That was my grandfather’s way of saying where he was, by telling us which church he visited.”

  While Joe and Morgan looked over DeMars’s shoulder, Kurt was about to give up on his phone. The mapping application had started and then frozen. It now indicated LOST DATA CONNECTION. The reception icon at the top of the phone, which had listed the name of a French Telecom company and had held steady at four bars during their conversation with Hiram, now indicated NO SERVICE.

  “I’m not getting a signal,” he said. “But earlier I had four bars.”

  “That’s odd,” DeMars said, pulling out his own phone. “We usually have excellent service. Though mine appears to be down too.”

  Seconds later the lights went out. First in the house, then outside along the grounds, one section after another, until the hillside was dark.

  “Blackout?” DeMars asked.

  Kurt’s frame tensed. “Blackouts happen all at once,” he said, “not a section at a time. Someone’s tripped the breakers. Do you have a landline?”

  DeMars pointed to a shelf on the far wall. On it sat an avocado green desktop phone, circa 1980. “Joe,” Kurt said.

  Joe grabbed the phone and held it to his ear. “Dial tone,” he said, nodding. “It’s working.”

  “Dial 55 for the security,” DeMars said.

  Joe pressed the 5 button twice, but the line went dead before the call could go through. Joe tapped the cradle a couple of times, but he got nothing. He looked across the room at Kurt and shook his head.

  “What’s happening?” DeMars asked.

  “My money is on a home invasion,” Kurt said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a compact .45 pistol, confirming a shell was in the chamber, clicking off the safety with his thumb and moving toward the door.

  “What about my security force?” DeMars asked.

  “Something tells me they’re already sitting this one out.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Château DeMars, ground floor

  Robson had caught up with Kappa and his mercenaries in the foyer on the bottom floor. Unlike Robson’s men, who were from the street, Kappa’s were straight-up mercenaries. They’d done plenty of dirty work in war-torn countries as part of Bloodstone Group’s full-service menu. Never war-fighting on the front lines—they were too valuable to be cannon fodder in some Third World civil war—they abducted dignitaries, staged political assassinations, set off bombs and conducted what passed for crowd control in countries where peaceful protest was often met with bloody assault.

  Including himself, Kappa had eight men at his disposal. He’d also brought a plethora of equipment—stun grenades, smoke grenades, body armor, night vision goggles, police scanners and even a high-powered transmitter that acted as a SERVICE DENIED jammer by overloading cell phone towers with a massive signal.

  “Think you brought enough junk with you?” Robson asked, watching the crew set up.

  “You don’t understand the modern battlefield,” Kappa said. “It’s all about overwhelming your enemy. Makes them give up and run much sooner than in a fair fight.”

  The transmitter sat on the floor in the foyer. It looked like a garbage can with four antennas sticking out of it.

  “Don’t get too close,” Kappa warned. “Not if you want to have kids someday.”

  Robson laughed but stepped back nonetheless. At that same moment, two of Kappa’s men brought out the butler. They forced him to his knees in front of Kappa, who pulled out a knife.

  “We’re looking for the man of the house,” Kappa said. “Have you seen him?”

  “Upstairs,” the butler said nervously. “In the study.”

  “Which floor?”

  The man didn’t answer.

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear me,” Kappa said. “Let me clean out your ears for you.” As one of the men cupped a hand over the butler’s mouth, Kappa brought the knife down, slicing into the top of the man’s ear. He began pressing downward and the blood flowed.

  The butler squirmed and grunted, but Kappa’s men held him in place.

  “I’ll ask again. If you don’t answer politely, I’ll turn you into the spitting image of Van Gogh. Which floor are they on? And in which room?”

  “Quatrième,” he said. “Fourth floor. In the old study.”

  Kappa pulled the knife away. “Bind him up.”

  As the butler was pulled away and tied up, blood flowed profusely down the side of his face. “If you’re wrong,” Kappa said, “I’ll come back and help you with your vision.”

  He turned to his men. “Cut the power and split up. There are two stairwells. Let’s move like we have purpose.”

  Kappa’s men divided up into two groups without delay. Kappa led one group down the hall toward Joan of Arc while the other group went in the opposite direction to the eastern tower and the second flight of stairs.

  Robson and his men were left behind as the breakers were tripped and the château went dark.

  With power off, the fans and air-conditioning unit shut down and the fourth floor turned stagnant and quiet. Kurt crept out of the study and over to the edge of the stairs. Windows and a skylight at the top of the rotunda were letting in just enough outside light for him to see.

  Down below, he saw Joan of Arc on her horse, along with several men who were wearing night vision goggles and carrying short-barreled machine guns.

  While one of the men remained on the ground floor to secure the stairs, the other three moved onto the steps quickly and quietly, traveling up them with military precision.

  Kurt ducked back into the study. “Trouble coming up the stairs.”

  A second after he arrived, Joe returned from down the hall. “We have armed goons in the other stairwell as well.”

  DeMars was brea
thing rapidly. “Can’t you shoot them?”

  “They’ve got body armor and machine guns,” Kurt said. “A shoot-out won’t go in our favor. Is there another way down?”

  “No.”

  “What about up?”

  “Yes,” DeMars said. “The roof is open.”

  “It’s a start,” Kurt said. “Grab the journal.”

  As DeMars picked up his grandfather’s journal, Kurt holstered his pistol and grabbed an armful of books.

  “Go,” Kurt whispered to the others. “Stick to the wall.”

  “What are you going to do?” Morgan asked.

  “Make a nuisance of myself while trying not to get shot. Now, move.”

  He didn’t have to say it twice. Morgan, Joe and DeMars climbed the steps. They raced upward, hugging the wall and keeping low so as not to be seen by the invaders, who were now making their way past the second floor and climbing.

  As Joe led the group, Kurt opened the books and bent the spines back to keep them that way. Upon hearing the click of the door up above, he heaved the books over the railing, tossing them up and over.

  They dropped toward the ground, separating as they fell, pages fluttering.

  The men on the stairs had been climbing in silence with their eyes on the landings and the railing, looking for signs of movement. They caught sight of the books a heartbeat too late and were taken by surprise. One man hit the deck, unsure if they were being attacked. A second jerked his weapon in the direction of the flying books and opened fire, spraying a dozen shells across the rotunda.

  The gunfire punched holes in the wall across from him as the books slammed against the marble floor. The echoes from both actions covered the sound of the door to the roof opening and shutting.

  Silence returned as the men regrouped. Kurt noticed red dots from laser pointers dancing along the walls. He lay flat on the ground until all the targeting beams had moved to the far side of the room and then leaned out just far enough to look down. This time the silence was shattered by the report from Kurt’s .45. His first shot went straight down, hitting the man at the bottom of the rotunda in the shoulder.