The Pyramid Prophecy

by Caroline Vermalle

  “I’m transferring you to Archives. Please hold.”

  Max sighed.

  It was a lost cause. Since the revolution, no one was responsible for antiquities, the country, or anything else. What saddened him above all was that, in his excitement at receiving the coveted permission from the Supreme Council of Antiquities, he had not asked for the name of the person who had given it to him, orally, over the phone. And of course, he did not have anything in writing. Beginner’s mistake.

  Yet Max was no novice. For thirteen years, he had been studying the internal architecture of the Great Pyramid. In his early teens, he had discovered the mysteries of Egypt in a comic book. Soon after, he was pasting archeologists’ drawings and copies of articles onto his bedroom walls, and, in time, his own photos taken on his first visit to the pyramids, at the age of fourteen. Then followed months of original research for his post-graduate studies.

  But apparently somewhere along the way to being highly educated, he had become unbelievably stupid. How could he not ask for the name of the person who gave him that precious permission?

  “Hello, SCA, how can I help?”

  This time, the voice was male. Max breathed deep and told his story yet again. But then something caught his eye.

  A camel galloped straight towards the entrance of the pyramid, and the armed policeman who was riding it yelled at two of his colleagues before rushing inside.

  “Do you have the name of the agent who gave you the permission, Mr. Hausmann?” the man at the SCA asked.

  “Err… wait,” Max said as he realized that two policemen were running towards him.

  “I’m sorry, we don’t have anyone by that name.”

  But before Max even had time to consider his options, one of the policeman grabbed his phone and ended the call while the other shouted excitedly and gestured at Max’s equipment.

  They spoke too quickly for Max to understand precisely what they wanted, but he began to think that rather than wanting him gone, they were instructing him to follow them.

  Inside the pyramid.

  Had his luck changed? With palpable tension and fear in the air, somehow this didn’t feel like a lucky break. He asked them to explain what they wanted him to do, but all they could say was “Go, go!”

  Max bundled up his equipment and followed the guards into the corridor leading to the Queen's Chamber. Almost at once the smell of sulfur burned his nose and throat. But it wasn’t just sulfur – there was something else in it. At the end of the narrow corridor stood the guide with whom he had argued earlier. He also recognized the sound recordist who had been waiting outside, and the pink-haired girl. She was very pale.

  Something felt very wrong.

  “Are those archeological instruments?” the guide asked nervously.

  “Yes,” Max answered.

  “We think there's someone in here.”

  “Where? Here?”

  With the toe of his boot, the guide gestured towards a hole, almost level with the ground. Max knelt and looked down the small tunnel.

  His heart felt like it was bursting in his chest.

  He made a sudden gesture, signaling the others to stand back. He looked around, gathering his bearings as he unpacked and assembled the Ground Penetrating Radar unit. He connected the monitor up to its battery pack and took out a small laptop. His focus sharpened as he made more mental calculations and began to envisage the geometry and structure of the whole pyramid. While he unraveled cables and adjusted levels, he pictured the stones, their mass and density, the pressure on the lintels, the mechanics of the whole assembly, the methods of construction and reasons behind the precise location of each of the slabs. There it was, the opportunity to examine what he had been studying for so long.

  Now he had a shot at proving what he had suspected: that there were secret chambers behind these very walls.

  The GPR screen showed the first results. Ghostly lines revealed what he already knew. There was a difference in density beyond the stone. A void.

  Without saying a word, Max connected a small device as big as a credit card, attached to a tiny LED lamp. He positioned it in front of the hole.

  The others saw the image appear on the monitor, but the colors were strange and irregular.

  “Infrared thermography?” John, the cameraman asked, his mouth dry.

  “Yes. Do you mind?” Max asked Robin, pointing to his boom pole.

  He nodded. Max grabbed the pole and attached the device to its end with tape that he tore from a large roll with his teeth. In a single movement, he placed the small camera in front of the opening.

  Then, for the first time since he had arrived, he hesitated.

  The anguish that had gripped the others was making its way inside Max too. The possibility of something, someone beyond those walls, even though preposterous, gave an icy edge to his movement. At the end of this tunnel, there could be a reality that his happy life had not prepared him to face. At that very moment, he met the eyes of the pink-haired journalist. He felt as though he knew her already – a bond had formed in an instant. Her steady gaze spurred him into action.

  Pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, he shifted his weight and gingerly inserted the small camera into the darkness. All eyes were on the monitor.

  At first, there was nothing but a featureless tunnel. The limestone block that made up the wall seemed interminable. Max pushed the pole further into the depth of the stone. The images reflected an infinite vortex and then finally, the void on the other side. Everybody held their breath.

  Then an object appeared on the monitor.

  One of the policemen pushed Max aside to get a closer look at the image on the screen. He stifled a disbelieving gasp. It revealed a treasure that could not be there, in a room that could not possibly exist.

  “Oh, my God!”

  John’s were the only words that escaped any of their lips. Robin's mouth hung open. Florence’s eyes glittered with excitement.

  “It looks like…” she began.

  “Tutankhamen?” Max breathed.

  The guide, as if gripped by madness, began to shout and scream. One of the guards seized Max while the other cocked his assault rifle and pointed it at the film crew.

  “Get out!” the guide yelled.

  Max tried to struggle but the space was too narrow and the policeman’s grip, strengthened by fear, too tight. In the melee, the guide fell against the pole.

  Then Florence screamed.

  They all turned towards her. Her hand was on her mouth and her eyes, bulging, stared at the monitor, which became the center of attention again.

  A body, a human body, moved slowly in the darkness on the other side of the wall.

  Long hair, a delicate neck. A woman.

  Max wrestled control of the pole and the monitor, and managed to adjust the colors. A thermal camera could not lie. The heat levels were there for all to see. The body was orange, red and yellow. But the shades were pale.

  “She’s alive,” he breathed in disbelief.

  “Get her out!” he started to scream, but the words were stifled in his throat by something else on the monitor.

  A man’s body. Rendered in the cold, dead hues of blue.

  13

  In the Champollion Room of the Four Seasons Hotel, journalists squirmed in their seats, waiting for Al-Shamy to resume his briefing. A tall, skinny, ginger-haired man with popping eyeballs and a BBC TV badge winced as Moswen elbowed him in the ribs to get closer to his boss.

  “According to our research,” Al-Shamy finally bellowed, “Nefertiti was likely discovered in 1932 on the Amarna site in a search led by a German archeologist, Dr. Friedrich Dortius, and financed by a rich merchant from Berlin, Adi Goldman.”

  Moswen edged his way close to the dais.He paused, looked up from his notes to make sure he had everyone’s attention.

  With a trembling hand, he scribbled a note on the only piece of paper he could find, one of the scattered press briefings that littered t
he room. His clammy fingers closed on the message. His boss glanced at him sideways for a fraction of a second, before continuing.

  “Even at that time, the rules regarding archaeological work were clear: everything had to be declared to the authorities and Egypt had the right to retain half of all artifacts discovered. However, we now know that the vast majority of Dr. Dortius' discoveries, including the mummy of Nefertiti, were dispatched to Mr. Goldman's Berlin address without first going through the proper channels set out by the Cairo Antiquities Bureau.”

  “Our records show that at least up to 1937, everything remained untouched. But, by the end of the war, Mr. Goldman was dead, and Nefertiti had vanished.”

  Moswen saw the ginger-haired man chuckle silently to himself. No one else was laughing.

  “Seventy years later,” continued Al-Shamy, “Mr. Goldman's great-grand-daughter, Sophia Neumann, stumbled upon his correspondence and began searching for Nefertiti. Her investigation led her to an abandoned warehouse in Berlin, where she found a cache containing two hundred and three Ancient Egyptian pieces, all of outstanding beauty. Among them, the sarcophagus of Nefertiti, with its mummy, intact.”

  He paused.

  “Sophia Neumann called three internationally renowned Egyptologists to assess her treasure. One by one, they delivered the same verdict: everything was fake.”

  Gasps rippled through the room.

  “The forgeries were not even competent; even the most casual of enthusiasts could see the scale of the deception. As the sale of forgeries is illegal, they advised Miss Neumann to destroy everything.”

  “But a few days before she was due to incinerate her fake Egyptian treasure, she met Yohannes DeBok, an antique dealer and renowned ‘fake-buster’, as is called in the profession – an expert in forgeries. When so many fakes are found together, there can sometimes be clues to the methods, identity or ‘signature’ of a known forger. DeBok spent three days and three nights in the warehouse. When he left, he announced to Miss Neumann that her collection of “junk” was worth between thirty and fifty million dollars.”

  Al-Shamy allowed the crowd to voice its excitement, letting the tension in the room escalate for a few seconds before continuing.

  “To protect his seventy-three real Egyptian antiquities,” he said, clearly relishing the moment, “Goldman had disguised them as worthless copies, and then placed them amongst more than one hundred and thirty fakes of equally mediocre quality. Did Goldman’s ruse confound the Nazis treasure hunters when they discovered the shed and then simply abandoned it, thinking that the pieces were not genuine? Or was the hiding place never discovered at all? We will never know. What we do know, however, is that without the intervention of Yohannes DeBok, Nefertiti and her treasures would all have been burned to ashes.”

  With his climax delivered, Al-Shamy stopped to drink from a glass of water and soaked in the exhilarated hubbub that enveloped the room. The journalists were beside themselves: was it not everyone's fantasy to find a priceless treasure in a forgotten attic? But the archeologist didn’t bask long in the glory of his revelations: the sight of a sweaty, mustachioed man holding a crumpled note and bearing down on him from the floor of the hall, caused his smile to falter.

  “A very urgent message, Sir,” Moswen whispered in his ear as he passed Al-Shamy the note.

  Moswen could feel Al-Shamy’s gaze boring into the back of his skull as he turned and walked away from the stage. When he thought he was a safe distance away, he turned to find that the chief archeologist was already speaking. Had he read the note? Moswen doubted it. His exhausted body relaxed so suddenly that he thought he was falling apart. He had delivered the message. There was nothing else to be done, except wait for the inevitable.

  Al-Shamy’s voice once again boomed around the room.

  “Today, it would be unthinkable for someone such as Dr. Dortius to tear artifacts from Egyptian soil and then make off with them with such impunity. Forty years ago, UNESCO enshrined in law the principle that antiquities belong by right to the country in which they were found, whether during looting or archaeological excavations. This law facilitated the repatriation of countless illegally acquired treasures which, in turn, supported the creation of museums and a vital tourism industry, but above all, it enabled Egyptians to take back what was always rightfully theirs: their own history.”

  A note of evangelical fervor began to resonate in Al-Shamy’s voice.

  “But the powerful lobby of antique collectors has succeeded in severely curtailing this law so that it applies only to antiques that were taken out of the country of origin after 1970. Sophia Neumann holds documents that trace the provenance of Nefertiti’s presence in Europe since 1937. And so, this lady, who has never visited our country, can therefore dispose of the remains of one of the greatest queens of Egypt as she wishes, at whatever price she sees fit.”

  He marked a pause, as if the grief was too much to bear.

  “At best, the buyer will be one of the great museums of the world. But nothing prevents her from selling to some anonymous collector who could, if so inspired by the apothecaries of old, and absolutely within the bounds of the law, reduce the remains of Nefertiti to powder and ingest it, in the false hope that it will enhance sexual prowess.”

  The room shuddered with shocked murmurs. Moswen saw the BBC man whisper what seemed like a joke to his cameraman. His colleague reluctantly managed a polite half-smile.

  “Egypt,” bellowed Al-Shamy, “does not have to be a slave to such an immoral auction. Ladies and gentlemen, as Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and Minister of the Egyptian Government, I hereby officially request the repatriation of Queen Nefertiti, not in her capacity as an archaeological treasure, but in the name of the return of the remains of one of Egypt's greatest heads of state.”

  Applause thundered around the room as camera flashes strobed chaotically. Al-Shamy kept the uncompromising expression of a schoolmaster, staring down at the projector's remote control. The next moment, all eyes were fixed on the screen as glimpses of the fabulous treasures were revealed: coffins, canopic vases, amulets, furniture, jewels, as well as a wide array of other objects, all of singular beauty and quality. The common consensus in the room was that these treasures easily rivaled those of Tutankhamen.

  Only two people were not looking at the screen, but at Al-Shamy, as he unfolded Moswen’s message, read it without blinking and then stuffed it into the pocket of his beige blazer.

  One was Moswen.

  The other pair of eyes were set within the unique features of a black man well into middle age, with a short, white beard and a gold earring.

  Seconds later, a lesser bureaucrat was left to take questions from reporters, as Al-Shamy, followed closely by Moswen, marched toward the black SUV parked in front of the hotel lobby. Al-Shamy was walking faster than his assistant, with a certainty of purpose that made clear he would not be distracted. So much so that when the black man bumped into him and then began to apologize profusely, Al-Shamy quietly walked on without looking back.

  The other man, however, observed and followed with interest the race between Al-Shamy and his assistant towards their car. He waited for the vehicle to move off before opening his broad, muscular hand that was clenched around a simple, crumpled note, softened by sweat. The ink had run a little, but the words were still legible:

  BBC TV found 2 bodies in room A-55. Woman alive. Police requesting permission to drill. URGENT.

  A smile creased the man’s face as his gold earring reflected the dim light of the lobby’s black crystal chandeliers.

  14

  When the tour buses arrived in Giza the next morning, it was sheer mayhem.

  The plateau was swarming with journalists who had come to film the pyramid, but it was the tourists who posed the bigger problem. Many were crying, some shouted. How could Egypt expect to attract tourist dollars if they were treated so shabbily? The police did their best, forming a protective cordon while guards directed th
e groups towards Khafre and Mykerinos, but nothing helped to assuage the fury that mounted with each new coach of eager arrivals. As far as they were concerned, there was just no excuse for this, the most shameful of crimes against tourism: the Great Pyramid was closed.

  “Crime Scene”.

  The night had been long. Al-Shamy and Moswen had been slow to arrive; the streets were clogged by protesters and a police van had been set on fire. Al-Shamy had ordered Moswen to call Mohammed Hassan, one of the police chiefs he knew, and Moswen was forced to be the messenger of more bad news: Hassan had been suspended pending his trial following the death of three protesters. The police officer in charge was Kamal Aqmool, a recent arrival.

  “The one that stutters,” Moswen added sourly.

  Al-Shamy clenched his teeth but remained calm. As he reversed at speed down the broken sidewalks, trying to extricate himself out of a smoky cul-de-sac, his phone rang. He tossed the handset to Moswen, ordering him to answer. But as his assistant did so, his face was drained of its remaining color. It was the editor of News Night, the BBC’s primetime news program.

  She wanted confirmation that two bodies and a treasure had been found in a previously unknown chamber in Cheops.

  Al-Shamy cursed and slammed his fist against the steering wheel. Above them, the rotor blades of a helicopter forged a path through the dust and smoke towards the pyramids.

  It took all night to extract the bodies, under the cool supervision of police chief Kamal Aqmool.

  First, a robotic high-pressure water jet, borrowed from the army's bomb squad, cut through the limestone. The stone was porous and easily cut and all was progressing well. Al-Shamy was told that the damage to the building fabric would me minor. That did not stop him from pacing the length of the Queen's Chamber agitatedly. But soon, it was discovered that the block was too thick, diminishing the efficacy of the water jet. As the night marched on, precision work gave way to bludgeoning. The remaining stone was hacked and hammered away in desperation.