The Pyramid Prophecy

by Caroline Vermalle

  “Okay,” Max said, losing interest, but still playing along. “And did he help you to solve the murder in the pyramid?”

  “I don’t know yet, but he was flirting with some gray-haired model–”

  “A woman with gray hair?” Max asked, suddenly stiffening.

  “Definitely a woman with an edge to her, you know? Seemed to take herself very seriously. Anyway, the evening was pretty much a waste, but that’s not why I'm calling you. I wanted to tell you that I'm coming to Cairo. The day after tomorrow.”

  Max was still trying to process the ramifications of what Florence had seen.

  “Max, sweetie?” she asked impatiently.

  “Yes, I’m still here.”

  “Well, don’t jump for joy or roll out the red carpet on my account, please. I fly to Cairo all the time, so it’s no big deal, really.”

  “Sorry, yeah, that’s great. Fantastic. Look, I have to run. I’ve almost arrived. So I’ll see you in a couple days then, text me when you’re here. Ciao!”

  Max hung up quickly. He quickened his pace, trying to leave behind the pangs he had felt at hearing Florence’s words. Thaddeus di Blumagia and Sixtine? Together?

  He limped uncomfortably down the trash-strewn Giza streets. Broken cars were parked haphazardly on sidewalks as bicycles, camels, donkeys, and people all swarmed together in an explosion of colors in the shadow of the pyramids.

  Here, Cheops, Chephren and Mykerinos were no longer the wonders on postcards or the elegantly framed backdrops to the views from the windows of chic hotels. Here, they were each a stone colossus that hid the sun and loomed over the city with their dark stones steps. They dwarfed the dilapidated buildings that sat at their feet, a constant reminder to their inhabitants of their insignificance. In these hopeless streets, history was largely forgotten and replaced instead by the reverence of western consumer brands. Handbags, shirts and shoes had been elevated to the importance of ancient artifacts – their counterfeit versions sold alongside the cheap reproductions of the fake Egyptian amulets.

  Despite this, Max loved to walk in Giza – allowing himself to get lost in a place that was so different from the towns and cities of his native Germany. He would ask the merchants for directions and then let himself get lost again, repeating the process over and over. Finally, he arrived on a small patch of wasteland, an open square where children and men were playing football in the gloom of the setting sun.

  In the space that lay between the football players and the pyramid of Cheops, the husks of buildings still under construction and now abandoned, watched events unfold from the windowless openings of their already crumbling facades. At the far end of the square, behind a rusted truck that had once been blue, a small alley lined with yellow and orange houses wound its way toward the rows of palm trees that bordered the Giza plateau. The air was thick with the colliding smells of dinners being prepared and the smoke of garbage burning in smashed sewers. Max plunged into the alley, the men paused their game to watch him, their eyes hidden in shadow.

  As Max carried on, he heard the shouts and screams of the match. The smells of everyday life grew more pungent in the enclosed confines of the narrow street and the plague of flies that had followed him suddenly dissipated for no apparent reason. He stopped in front of a house. Old, dilapidated, instantly forgettable. Apart from the new model car that was parked in front, it was entirely anonymous.

  But here, a few months earlier, someone had delivered fifty blue lotus flowers.

  Max skirted the edges of the property; he saw nothing that suggested anything out of the ordinary. He walked across to the next street to try to get a glimpse of the back garden, but there was only an old shed, guarded by a forlorn looking mongrel. Max’s first impulse was to leave – perhaps they had got it wrong. But as he was there, and the house was their only lead, he decided that he had nothing to lose.

  He walked up to the front door and knocked upon the wooden boards crusted in flaking red paint.

  A curtain twitched in one of the windows, and the door creaked open. The smell of baking bread escaped. Standing at the threshold, hidden by the half-opened door, was a small, unshaven man wearing a stained apron and whose bloodshot eyes were filled with suspicion.

  “Excuse me,” Max said, checking first to make sure that no one else was watching. “I come from Germany, and someone told me that maybe you were selling antiques.”

  The man was motionless for a moment, then ushered him inside. As he entered, Max sensed that the space was larger than the outside suggested. Patches of concrete slab showed through ragged holes in the carpet as he followed the man into a living room that was furnished with a pair of patterned sofas, their garish colors faded and worn. His host left him for a moment, and Max could hear the babble of female voices from elsewhere in the house.

  A few minutes later, the man returned with some cloth bundles, which he spread out on the carpet. Once they were both seated on the floor, he opened the cloth wrappings to reveal many ushabtis, small funerary statues still coated in dust. Max recognized the color and texture of the dirt from his ordeal in the tunnel and knew immediately that the pieces were genuine. The man gave him his price, which was not as high as it could have been.

  “Where did you find them?”

  “Near the pyramids. The Great Pyramid,” the man replied.

  Max had heard this phrase many times in the souks – everything came from the pyramids.

  “Where exactly?”

  But the man would say nothing more. Max haggled for the sake of politeness, and they agreed on a very low price. A woman veiled in black brought in some tea on a battered tin tray which she placed on the ground in front of them so that they could serve themselves. Max took a few sips and tried to get the Egyptian to say more, but without much success. He handed over the money and asked if he could wash his hands. The man showed him to the kitchen, a shed that also served as a shower room. As Max ran the water over his hands, he looked around for some clue.

  He found nothing.

  There was no trace of the flowers either, except in the carved pattern of the cheap wooden door. The only thing that struck him as odd was the haste with which the man seemed to want him to leave.

  When Max left the house with his ushabti, he was again taken aback by the threatening presence of Cheops, which cast its silhouette over the ruined streets. Even once he had crossed the square, and returned to the main roads of Giza, he was compelled to look back several times, and on each occasion his eyes were drawn to Cheops, standing sentinel at his back.

  But it was not the stone behemoth that tweaked his senses. It took him several hundred yards, a few detours and the abrupt stop outside the reflective window of a cafe to finally catch sight of the figure that had been following him.

  It was a young woman, whose face was the only part of her body not concealed behind in limestone colored folds of fabric. At the next corner, he crossed dangerously close to an oncoming truck, whose driver honked and swore.

  Max turned around and saw the young woman standing on the other side of the road, unable to cross through the traffic.

  He crossed back to the other side of the road and asked her in Arabic why she was following him. Her answer took him aback.

  “You are Max, the architect, are you not?”

  “How do you know? Were you in the house?”

  She nodded. Her eyes sparkled with a determined intelligence that contradicted her youthful features. Her unaffected beauty had a haughty grace, despite the misery of her surroundings. He did not ask any more questions. He knew, even before she had spoken her name, that he already knew her.

  “I am Naya.”

  52

  Al-Shamy stood in front of Sixtine at the entrance to Sotheby's auction house, a heaving mass of clamoring journalists trailing in his wake.

  As the camera flashes reflected her emerald eyes, he moved towards her and for a moment their eyes locked. But she saw no hint of recognition in his face – she may as well have
been invisible.

  But she saw him. The rage that she had managed to keep subdued bubbled up inside her at the thought of Franklin’s final message.

  Al-Shamy is guilty.

  At that moment, there was nothing except the hated enemy before her, the source of the evil, the emptiness, and the green river.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats as we will now begin the auction,” the woman auctioneer announced. The collectors who populated the plush carpeted room with its contemporary decor cast wary eyes in Al-Shamy’s direction as they moved to take their seats. Amongst the elegance and ostentation, the archaeologist looked like a disheveled traveler that had washed upon a foreign shore. Solidly built men in well-trimmed suits, Sotheby's own security agents, had woven their way through the crowd and positioned themselves between Al-Shamy and the rows of gilded seats. Their message was clear, they would tolerate his presence, as long as he remained at the fringes.

  Sixtine took one of the seats reserved for bidders. On the screen near the auctioneer's desk, the items were listed in ascending order of the prices achieved for each item. Her hands were slick with sweat as she gripped the little plastic paddle with her buyer’s number. Her gaze kept returning to Al-Shamy who stood, stormy faced but saying nothing, and wincing with every blow of the auctioneer’s gavel.

  “Lot thirty-five,” the auctioneer announced, “a Tit knot or knot of Isis, an amulet representing the protection of Isis as prescribed in the Book of the Dead, chapter one-five-six. At a height of six and a half centimeters, it is made of red jasper, of which the color represents the blood of the goddess. It bears an inscription spelling out the name of Nefertiti. We start the auction at fifteen-thousand dollars.”

  Sixtine glanced down at her catalog. Two more lots and then she would raise her hand. She saw Al-Shamy watching the bidders lift up their paddles in turn, the agents on their phones with their hands half raised, ready to act on their client’s distant instructions. The auctioneer's staccato was ringing in the hall, and then the hammer was falling. The Tit knot, bought by an anonymous buyer, had reached $42,000, almost three times its estimate.

  “Lot thirty-six, a nine-point-seven centimeter high earthenware breastplate in the shape of a shrine. It includes a large blue scarab-beetle and bears the inscription of Chapter thirty B of the Book of the Dead. The scarab is depicted in the solar boat receiving the worship of goddesses Isis and Nephthys. We start the auction at thirty-thousand dollars. Thirty-five here with me. Forty. Forty-five with me. Fifty thousand. Fifty-five with me. Sixty thousand on the phone. Sixty-five? Sir, is that your bid?”

  All eyes turned to one corner of the room. Standing behind the seats and leaning against the wall amongst the spectators, was Thaddeus. He nodded.

  “Very good, sixty-five to the gentleman in the back of the room. Seventy on the phone. Seventy-five in the back. Eighty thousand. Ninety thousand.”

  Sixtine watched Thaddeus out of the corner of her eye as he continued to raise his hand to bid.

  “Ninety thousand. Ninety thousand, ladies and gentlemen, this magnificent blue beetle, symbol of the weighing of the heart of the dead by Maat, the goddess of Justice and Truth. Ninety thousand, the bid is against you, ladies and gentlemen, I will award Ninety thousand for the gentleman in the back of the room. Ninety thousand is the final bid, and sold. Sold for ninety thousand dollars.”

  Sixtine saw Thaddeus smile and, at the same moment, felt the violence of the hammer all through her body. Her mouth felt suddenly dry and her hands flushed cold, when she thought back to what the auctioneer had just said: the weighing of the heart of the dead.

  A whisper rippled through the room, and then turned into a roar. On the screen, the mummy had just appeared. The auctioneer called for silence, taking on the air of a stern judge.

  “Lot thirty-seven, ladies and gentlemen, I offer the mummy of Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt–”

  “The history of Egypt is not for sale!” a hoarse voice cried out, followed by the ticking and whirring of dozens of cameras.

  It was Al-Shamy.

  “Show some respect,” he bellowed.

  “Mummy with bandages and funerary mask,” the auctioneer continued, as the security men leaped into action, their silent maneuvering of the gesticulating archaeologist as well rehearsed as it was effective.

  “The people of Egypt demand the return of the remains of Nefertiti–” The murmurs of the crowd swallowed up Al-Shamy’s last protest.

  The auctioneer cleared her throat and continued. “We start the bidding at nine million dollars.”

  Perhaps still distracted by the Egyptian who was trying to free himself from the throng of security guards, nobody else in the room moved. Sixtine's hand shook as she raised her paddle to bid. She caught Al-Shamy's hateful gaze as he was pushed out of the room, the massive mahogany doors closing silently behind him.

  “Nine million bid, thank you.”

  Several paddles rose and fell in a mechanical flurry as the bidding shot from nine million to thirteen million. At least six buyers were battling and raising the stakes at a staggering pace.

  “Fourteen million. Fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty, twenty-two, twenty-five, twenty-eight million.”

  Without having time to see which bidders were the most stubborn, Sixtine counter-bid every time. When the figure arrived at more than thirty million, her confidence began to falter. The price had reached twice its highest estimate, and there were still several interested bidders, even if the initial frenzy of bidding had slowed. Finally, Sixtine realized that there was only one other remaining bidder.

  It was the stocky man with the tortoiseshell glasses. She overheard the bidder beside her whisper to his wife, “It's Helmut von Wär.”

  Sixtine raised her paddle again.

  “Thirty-eight million for Mademoiselle here. Forty million for the gentleman to my right. Forty-five million for Mademoiselle. Sir? Yes? For Monsieur, at fifty million. Fifty-five million for Mademoiselle. Come on, Sir, another bid?”

  Sixtine's heart beat against her chest. Von Wär hesitated. In a few seconds, Nefertiti would be hers. Fifty-five million. She had never thought that the mummy would cost her so much. But she needed it.

  “Sir, the final bid for Nefertiti is fifty-five million. Fifty-five million, the bid is here with Mademoiselle, ladies and gentlemen. Is this our final price?”

  Sixtine, holding her breath, saw von Wär shake his head to signify that he was giving up.

  Nefertiti would be hers, her treasure, her bait, the tool of her vengeance. She was staring at the hammer that was about to fall when she heard:

  “Monsieur, you're discreet today. Is that a bid?” the auctioneer asked, addressing a man far behind Sixtine. She turned around.

  Thaddeus had raised his hand.

  “Yes? So we have a bid. Very good. Sixty million for Monsieur in black, in the back of the room. Mademoiselle?”

  The few hundred people present stared at Sixtine, who glared angrily at Thaddeus. What was he doing? Why did he bid? But Thaddeus was looking elsewhere in the room, towards Helmut von Wär, who was furious.

  “Mademoiselle?” the auctioneer replied. The bid is now against you, at sixty million. Oh, wait. It looks like Sir on the right has decided to join us again.”

  Helmut von Wär had raised his sign.

  “Sixty-five million. Seventy million to the gentleman in the back of the room. Seventy million. Seventy million?”

  Sixtine raised her paddle again, her stomach tight, her throat dry.

  “Seventy-five million for Mademoiselle. Eighty million to my right. Eighty-five at the back of the room. Eighty-five million. It's eighty-five million here for Monsieur at the back of the room, I repeat, we're at eighty-five million dollars. Mademoiselle?”

  A murmur passed through the audience as it held its collective breath. Sixtine swallowed. She was bidding almost all the fortune that Seth had left her, for a dead queen. She stared at Nefertiti's golden eyes on the screen. Her dry mouth ta
sted the air of the pyramid; the sand, the lotus flowers. Seth’s decomposing flesh. She raised her paddle. It was her last chance; all-in. Eyes on Nefertiti’s faceless head, she prayed that nobody would outbid her.

  She heard the auctioneer say, “Ninety million!” with undisguised triumph. She did not dare to look to the right.

  “Ninety million for Mademoiselle. Gentlemen? Ninety million for Mademoiselle, I'm going to award ninety million–”

  Sixtine saw the auctioneer raise her gavel above the desk. But it hovered there, and the auctioneered smiled.

  “Ninety-five million to Monsieur, in the back of the room. The bidding continues, we are at ninety-five million.” The auctioneer spoke directly to Helmut von Wär: “Come on, Monsieur on the right, or Mademoiselle, one hundred million to make history today?”

  Helmut von Wär, with a resigned smile, raised his paddle.

  The auctioneer made a play at trying to restore calm to the room, “Ladies and gentlemen, please, the bidding is not over. One hundred million! One hundred million dollars for Nefertiti’s mummy. Mademoiselle, the bid is against you, one hundred million.”

  Sixtine felt all eyes in the room on her. But the bidding paddle, so light and insubstantial a few minutes before, had become an immovable anchor. Her childhood had been spent in poverty. She could taste that too. She looked at her hand curled uselessly around the wooden sign on her lap. Time seemed to stretch to infinity until the gavel crashed onto the auctioneer’s podium.

  Nefertiti was lost.

  While Florence, the film crew and a few dozen other cameras followed Helmut von Wär to the exit and filled the screens all over the world with sensational scenes, Andrew looked around him, trying to find those who stayed out of sight, for a possible interview. It was more out of laziness than real cunning, yet there were several details he found worth noting.

  The man in the back of the room who had narrowly lost Nefertiti looked strangely casual, an ironic smile on his lips, his hands in his pockets, waiting for the throng to move out of the auction room.