Death of a Pharaoh (28 page)

San Pablo International Airport, Seville, Spain,
morning of October 29, 2016

The last of the hundred strolled into the terminal at 9.37 am on
Saturday. Eduardo thought it was a major accomplishment considering they still
had more than two hours to go before departure. The group was giddy with
excitement. More than a third of them had never been out of Spain and for
several of them it was their first time on an airplane.

The boarding
process was quick and efficient since it was a charter and the news given by
the flight attendant shortly after takeoff that if was a complimentary bar went
a long way in calming any nerves. The pilot announced a flight time of five
hours to Cairo and most of the team were fast asleep after two hours of heavy
drinking. He didn’t mind, they all agreed to put their lives on hold for five
days and most of them signed on not only for the money but because they trusted
him.

There was an
element of confidence in the costalero world that few outside of its sweaty,
testosterone-laced universe could ever understand. Every year they risked the
long-term health of their backs to punish themselves in the pursuit of a
glorious Easter. Some of them did it because it was socially cool but they were
the young ones and they never lasted. Most did it as a promise for someone who
was ill or for a loved one who had passed away. A strange thing happened under
the
pasos
, grown men cried like children, overcome with emotion, but no
one ever mentioned it on the outside. It was similar to the mystical moments
experienced between soldiers in battle.

The combination of
close friendship, the passion of faith, the sacrifice for loved ones and the
endorphins coursing through their bodies combined to make it one of the most
potent drugs he had ever known. Researchers had even written that the
costaleros experienced a form of withdrawal like drug addicts. The sad thing is
that eventually every costalero realized that they can never get the same high
anywhere else. When time passes and they must someday give up their place
because of age, it represents a sad day. Eduardo tried to snap out of his
nostalgia and think instead of the money and what it would mean to his family.

Two buses, mercifully air-conditioned, waited at the arrivals terminal
after they cleared customs. They skirted the great metropolis that was Cairo
with almost 17 million inhabitants with everyone glued to the windows as they
made their way south toward Saqqara. Their destination was a new resort not yet
open to the public. A five star hotel that none of them could afford on their
own. When the bus pulled up, Eduardo spotted Pablo standing with an older man
at the main entrance. Hotel staff ushered them into the cool luxury of the
lobby. Pablo introduced Eduardo to Mustafa. A translator explained to the group
that they had two hours to rest then the owner of the hotel expected them at a
banquet in their honor.

Pablo took Eduardo
aside and introduced him to a young man named Hassan who lived near where they
were going to be doing the experiment.

“Tell him he looks
strong enough to be a costalero,” Eduardo commented.

The organizers
placed someone who spoke Spanish at every table and the food was amazing. After
so many centuries of Arab rule in Andalusia, they were almost cultural cousins
and many items seemed familiar to the men from Seville.

Eduardo and his
four assistants sat at the head table with Sr. Mustafa, Pablo, the General
Manager of the hotel and the Chief Archaeologist of the Foundation that funded
the trip. As his men keep asking for more wine, he felt sorry for whoever had
to sign the bill.

“Pablo, please ask
your friend Mr. Eduardo if his men are up to the task.”

Eduardo looked
surprised by the question and thought for a moment.

“Sr. Mustafa,
every Easter these men carry God on their shoulders, they are always ready.”

“Very comforting,
but the desert is not the paved streets of Seville.”

“I can assure you
that the desert could never be as demanding as the people of Seville at Easter
time.”

“Well said, do you
have any questions about what will happen?”

“When does my team
get to look at the
parihuela
?”

“It is in the
underground garage and you may take it for a test run tomorrow.”

“When do we need
to be ready?”

“The filming will
take place in two nights,” he informed them. “We do not expect your men to
carry such a heavy load in the merciless sun of the desert.”

“That is a
relief.” It is hot in Seville but rarely at Easter.

“Tomorrow after
you test the float, we will take our guests for some sightseeing. You will have
another opportunity to practice the next morning then we will transport you to
Hassan’s village for lunch and some cultural entertainment,” he explained. “We
will transport you to the staging area by jeep and camel as soon as the sun
goes down. A crew will have dismantled and reassembled the float before we
arrive.”

“What will you be
using for weight?”

Pablo glanced at
Mustafa for permission to speak.

“We needed to keep
this last part secret until you were all here,” he indicated. “This is not so
much an experiment as an operation to remove an ancient relic, the remains of a
great Pharaoh, and bring him back to Cairo.”

“We aren’t going
to carry him all the way to the capital are we?”

Mustafa laughed
and Eduardo realized that he understood Spanish.

“No my friend, you
will be carrying the remains of the Pharaoh a total of 22 kilometers to a point
on a paved road where a specially equipped trick will take over.”

“Why doesn’t the
truck pick him up at the site?”

“Some questions
are best answered the day after tomorrow,” Mustafa interjected. “For now,
please enjoy our hospitality.”

The
parihuela
was an exact replica. It looked like it had been
beamed down from Seville. The
caudrilla
was equally impressed. They
loaded it up with cement blocks until it weighed almost two tons. That would be
enough to start. It took them close to four hours before everyone on his team
was satisfied with the alignment of the
trabajaderas
and the feel of the
load. The costaleros were also happy and after a quick dip in the pool, they
all climbed on buses and headed to Luxor for sightseeing. Eduardo relaxed after
seeing that the float was adequate. He sat beside Pablo on the sightseeing trip
and they chatted about old times.

“How long have you
worked for these people?”

“Since university,
they are a good group.”

“Sr. Mustafa is
impressive.”

“He is one of the
richest men in Egypt. He owns a large engineering firm and he built half the
country, including the hotel. He wisely distanced himself from the corruption
of Mubarak and is on excellent terms with the new government.”

“Tell me about
this King we will carry tomorrow.”

“It is a secret.
We do not want to attract the press. He is an important figure historically and
any leak would be an international sensation. I am afraid that I cannot give
you any more details.”

“Twenty-two
kilometers is a long slog for costaleros carrying three tons.”

“Ten thousand
euros is a lot of money.”

“Good point!” Eduardo
agreed, “Will you be there?”

“Wouldn’t miss it
for the world.”

Staff Housing, Saqqara, Egypt, 19.12 EET,
October 30, 2016

The contract was a dream come true for Jake Turner. The recruitment
agency contacted him with only two months left on his second tour in
Afghanistan as a Medical Imaging Technician in the US Army. Prior to his first
deployment overseas, the military sent him to train at one of the world’s
largest suppliers of portable x-ray equipment. He specialized in setting up new
units when they arrived in the field. Because of the dangers of excessive
radiation from poorly calibrated machines, they performed most of the
fine-tuning on human cadavers until they were certain the unit operated safely.
The software was relatively complicated but Jake was a true computer geek and
he even suggested improvements that the manufacturer later adopted.

After his
discharge, Jake planned to use the benefits of the GI Bill to study to become a
forensic radiologist. When the agency offered him triple what he made in the
army every month to work on an archeological dig in Egypt, and tax-free, he
didn’t hesitate to sign on the dotted line. He’d still make it back in time for
classes to start in September and he had always wanted to see the pyramids.

Only four weeks
remained on his contract now. In the past two months, he trained a team of
technicians to use the two machines, both of them state of the art, which his
employer shipped to an excavation near Saqqara. Security was tight at the dig.
The Chief Archaeologist cited the fear of grave robbers to explain away the
extraordinary measures that made protocols at some of the bases in Afghanistan
look like training manuals for shopping mall guards.

After three
months, he still didn’t know the exact location of the site. Every morning,
they picked him up at the door of his very comfortable staff housing in an
air-conditioned van with tinted windows that didn’t allow him to see outside or
even into the cab. He knew that the driver took a different route each day so
he couldn’t memorize the itinerary. They used the same procedure every night at
the end of the day. All he ever saw were some barren hills with no visible
landmarks when he came out for a cigarette break every few hours. He didn’t
think they were far from Saqqara but there were hundreds of small valleys like
this in the region. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

To be honest, he
understood their paranoia. He wasn’t an expert but the scope of the discovery
undoubtedly rivaled the famous Valley of the Kings. If it ever became public,
it would be an international sensation. A National Geographic documentary in
the waiting! His employers made him sign an airtight confidentiality agreement
that basically meant he’d be in deep shit and he’d have to change his identity
and go live in Borneo if he ever mentioned where he had been working.

By his count, the
extensive underground chambers, richly decorated with hieroglyphics, contained
at least 150 mummies and all of them royal by the looks of the elaborate
sarcophagi. He was certain that vandals had never robbed the tomb and he could
only imagine the treasures hidden with each of the stiffs. He even had the
sense that someone had maintained the tomb over the centuries. The place was
jammed with security cameras as well as environmental sensors for temperature
and humidity like the ones in museums around the world; many looked as if that
had been there a while. Another strange thing was the reverence of the teams
whenever it came to scanning one of the mummies. It was as if they still
worshipped the dead king or whoever it was in that box. It was sort of creepy,
like some ancient cult or something like that but it didn’t matter to him since
they paid so well.

Jake was anxious
to finish the job. He was eager to get back to fast food, cheap beer and loose
women. He liked Egypt but the recent shift to Islamic fundamentalism made it
uncomfortable for foreigners living outside the normal tourist enclaves. He had
the weird sensation that people were watching him whenever he went to a café or
to the souk on his days off. The other night he walked home after dinner and
was certain a man in a brown djellaba followed him for several blocks. He
worried it might be the morality police. He decided to stop drinking alcohol in
public just in case he’d attracted the attention of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Five
days ago, he sat in his favorite kahwa drinking a
strong Turkish coffee with enough sugar to warrant a warning label from the
American Diabetes Society while he leafed through a day old copy of the Egypt
Daily News. Suddenly, a man in his forties walked over to his table.

“Sorry to
interrupt, you are an American?” he asked with a German accent.

Jake was
accustomed to tourists introducing themselves uninvited. In a café full of
locals, they would always drift toward the only other foreigner, like a magnet.
He tried to be patient with their attempts to start a conversation.

“Your name is
Jake?”

Jake studied him
before answering. He had blond hair cut short military style and a strong
build. He didn’t look gay. He lifted his right foot off the chair in front of
him and pushed it back. The sound of the legs scrapping across the tile floor
implied an invitation to join him.

The man turned the
chair with one hand and offered his right.

“My name is
Cedric, I am Swiss,” he informed him as they shook hands.

“How do you know
my name?”

“We know
everything about you,” he announced with shocking honesty. “We would like to
offer you a job.”

“Already have one
and when it finishes shortly, I am going back to the good old U S of A to study
at university.”

“You
misunderstand, my friend, we are interested in your current position.”

“Sorry, I signed a
confidentiality agreement.”

“Of course,” he
demurred, “but we thought you might consider breaking it for $50,000 in cash.”

Jake almost fell
off his chair; it was twice as much as he was making for his four-month contract.

“That amount of
cash smells illegal,” he opined.

“Semantics,”
Cedric dismissed with a wave of his hand. “All we require is some harmless
archeological espionage. No one will ever know,” he concluded with a reassuring
smile.

Jake was intrigued
and he tried not to show his interest.

“What do you want
exactly?”

“There is one very
special mummy among the many at the site where you are working.”

“They all look the
same to me,” Jake admitted.

“On the contrary,
one of them is of particular interest to my employers.”

“Who might they
be?” Jake inquired,

“The Vatican,” the
Swiss announced.

That was the last
thing Jake expected to hear. “What does the Vatican want with a dead Pharaoh?”

“Not everyone is
what they are wrapped up to be,” he commented in a mysterious tone. He moved
closer to the American and lowered his voice, “We have reason to believe that
the body of a very important saint from the earliest days of the Catholic
Church is among the many in the tomb.”

Jake wished he had
paid more attention in bible classes as a boy. “Can you be a little more
specific?” he demanded.

Cedric lowered his
voice even further and Jake had to lean forward on his elbows to hear him over
the din of the crowd.

“Saint Peter,” he
lied with breathtaking ease.

“You mean the
first pope?”

“Exactly!”

“I thought he was
buried in Rome?”

“So did we until
evidence surfaced recently that his body had been spirited away just after his
martyrdom by devoted Coptic Christians who brought it to Egypt for safe
keeping. His remains were mummified to preserve them as a relic.”

“How will I know
which one is him?”

“Very simple, he
will be the only one who was crucified.”

Jake knew it would
be relatively easy to determine if someone had died nailed to a cross. The
trauma would be obvious.

“You don’t propose
that I steal the body, do you?”

“Certainly not!”
he insisted. “It will be enough for you to identify the sarcophagus and provide
some physical proof that you have found the correct remains. An x-ray would
suffice.”

Jake weighed the
options in his mind. He didn’t have access to the copies of the x-rays taken of
the different mummies. He saw them briefly in the course of his work but a
technician later saved them to a hard drive located at the site. They never
allowed him to take his laptop past the lunchroom, precisely to ensure he
couldn’t make any copies. The internal network used by the archeological team
had Wi-Fi but the signal didn’t reach the common area where he often checked
his email on a separate signal provided for the contractors. One time he took
his laptop into the john and noticed a weak signal, not enough to connect. He
wondered if he could smuggle in an antenna to boost reception.

“So if I get you
an x-ray of someone who was crucified, you’ll pay me $50,000 in cash?”

“Happily!”

“Cedric, you have
yourself a deal,” Jake confirmed as he reached across the table to seal the
contract with a handshake.