Pharaoh (8 page)

‘It looked like a natural cavity which had been adapted to contain those incredible treasures. The shape of the sarcophagus, which we could partially see, the statues of the divinities and the style of the decorations left us in no doubt. We had found the tomb of some very high-ranking Egyptian dignitary. We’re no specialists, but as far as we could guess, it looked like the tomb of a Pharaoh!’

‘A Pharaoh? My God, it would be the first inviolate royal tomb since Carnarvon and Carter opened the tomb of Tutan-khamun.’

‘That’s just what we thought. But then—’

‘Although it could be a Hellenistic age tomb. The Ptolemies had begun to imitate the Pharaonic order completely. But without examining the finds directly, there’s no way to tell. You didn’t actually drop down into the room, then?’

‘No, the opening wasn’t big enough. And that’s the reason we’re here,’ said Sullivan. ‘We’d like you to take charge of the discovery. Up until now we’ve kept it a complete secret. The site is under the surveillance of armed guards with orders to shoot on sight.’

Blake ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. He was exhausted and this interminable day, instead of allowing him to rest, kept dragging on in a sequence of increasingly emotional experiences. ‘I’d like to thank you for thinking of me,’ he said. ‘It’s the last thing I could have expected on a day like today. But I’m afraid I can’t accept. Two reasons. First of all, you have to notify the authorities. They will then nominate an inspector who will direct the preliminary inspection and catalogue the materials. Second, due to a series of misfortunes which I have no intention of boring you with, I’m
persona non grata
in Egypt. And I honestly don’t understand the reason for all this urgency at one o’clock in the morning.’

‘In reply to your first objection, Professor Blake,’ said Gordon, ‘our activity is being carried out in territory which is absolutely off-limits. The military have ruled out informing the Minister of Antiquities. Too many people would come into the area and the stir caused by the discovery would attract too much attention. For this reason, in mutual agreement with our hosts, we’ve decided, for the moment, to rely on the collaboration of a trustworthy specialist whose absolute discretion we can count on. As far as your second objection is concerned, we’re well aware of your misfortunes. The fact that you’re not allowed to enter Egyptian territory has no bearing on the matter.

‘You’ll have to leave with us, now. That’s why we were waiting for you to come home.’

Blake turned to them with a strange expression, having suddenly understood what they wanted from him. ‘Now?’ he asked.

Gordon nodded. ‘The company’s private plane will be taking off from Meigs Field in less than an hour. If you need to get some things together, we can give you about fifteen minutes.’

Blake fell silent.

‘It’s understood,’ said Sullivan, ‘that you will be paid for your work. And given the circumstances and the inconvenience that we’ve caused you, your remuneration will be quite generous.’

Blake didn’t answer. He wasn’t interested in the money at that point. He would have worked for free, given the chance.

He thought of Judy, whom he probably would never see again, and was a little shocked to realize that losing her probably wouldn’t drive him to desperation, and he thought of Husseini, the servant of Allah who had offered him hospitality on Christmas Eve. It all seemed incredibly distant, as though it had happened a long time ago.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just let me get my toothbrush and throw some things in a suitcase.’

The two men exchanged a satisfied look.

‘You’ve made the best decision, Professor Blake,’ said Gordon. ‘I can assure you that what you’ll find waiting for you is beyond your wildest expectations.’

‘There’s just one thing I want to make clear. I’m not in this for the money. I see that you’re well informed about my status in Egypt and you may know I’ve had problems in my personal life, but that doesn’t mean anything. I’m not on sale for any price. The only thing I’m interested in is publishing the find.’

‘Your views are certainly understandable,’ said Sullivan. ‘But that’s something you’ll have to take up with our superiors. We’re sure that you’ll be able to come to a satisfactory agreement with Warren Mining.’

Blake knew all too well that he was getting himself into a potentially difficult situation, but his only alternative was looking for work in some remote city college or private high school.

‘
Alea jacta est
,’ he said as he got up and walked into the bedroom to pack a suitcase. The embarrassed smiles of his guests revealed their ignorance of Latin, even the most common of quotes.

He put his working clothes into the suitcase, along with his trowel and scalpel for the dig, Gardiner’s
Egyptian Grammar
, the disk with his hieroglyphic translation program, his underwear, shaving kit, suncream, a bottle of aspirin and one of antacids. He picked up the Prozac, but then threw it in the rubbish bin, knowing that he wouldn’t need it any more now that he would soon be treading the sands of the desert. He found his camera bag and, in less than five minutes, rejoined his travelling companions.

‘Let me lock up and I’ll be right out,’ he said. ‘Go ahead and start the car.’

The black Mercury drove through the deserted metropolis and Blake, sitting on the back seat, seemed hypnotized by the yellow flashing light on the snowplough which preceded them, raising a white cloud which fell in soft waves on the right-hand side of the street. The long day was nearly behind him and he thought with amusement that Gordon was like a benevolent Santa Claus who had brought him his Christmas present nice and early in the morning: an entire unspoiled Egyptian tomb and Lord knew what else.

He was excited by the idea that he would soon be flying over the Nile and plunging into the dry, clear atmosphere of the desert, his natural element. He would soon be breathing in the dust of the millennia and nudging an important someone out of thirty centuries of slumber.

At Meigs Field, Sullivan showed some credentials to a security guard, who let them pass. They drove out on a service runway to the ramp where a Falcon 900EX was waiting with its engines running. When they got out of the car, they were hit by a blast of snow and Gordon held his hat down until they’d got into the plane. Before entering, Blake turned around for a last glance at the snow-covered city, glittering with coloured lights. He remembered how, when he was a kid, he would anxiously scan the sky on Christmas Eve, hoping to see Santa with his sleigh and reindeer flying over the skyscrapers in a cloud of silver dust like in the cartoons, and he wondered whether he would ever set foot in the city again.

Sullivan got in behind him and they settled into the comfortable seats. The Falcon accelerated down the runway and took off into the grey night sky like a dart. It was soon soaring towards the cold northern constellations.

T
HE OLD
M
ERCEDES
advanced in a cloud of dust that the moonlight bleached white against the black rocks and steppe-like plain, towards the colossal ruins of Baalbek. When it reached the entrance to the Valley of the Temples it stopped and switched off its headlights. The six columns of the Great Temple rose towards the starry sky, like the pillars of infinity, and the man in the back seat marvelled at the spectacle in silence, listening to the voice of his soul. He thought of all those he had seen die in the countless clashes that had punctuated his life: dying in bombings or in battle, mowed down by machine guns, ripped apart by mines and grenades. He thought of those he had seen die of starvation and desperation, of disease and injuries, and he thought of all their restless souls wandering through the desert night.

Despite everything, this was one of the rare moments when he could rest his body and his mind, this moment of waiting. He rolled down the window and lit up the last of the three cigarettes a day his doctor allowed him and looked up at the starry black sky. It was times like this that reminded him of his childhood and his youth, the parents he had known for such a short time, the women he hadn’t been able to love, the studies he hadn’t been able to finish, the friends he hadn’t been able to see. Because there had never been time enough.

He thought of the people he had had dealings with: petroleum princes and emirs, tyrants out only for power and money, religious leaders who were sometimes cynical and sometimes visionary, young men devoured by hate and fanaticism, consumed by their frustration at not being able to possess the fetishes of Western wealth, secret service agents playing on both sides, bankers who’d got rich on the poor through the most filthy speculation.

He had used them all, as much as he had despised them, and not a single one of them had learned his real identity. He was waiting for the day of reckoning, when the most ambitious plan ever conceived by an Arab since the time of the Battle of Tours would give him victory over his enemies, the leadership of a nation extending from the Himalayas to the Atlantic Ocean. And the control of a third of the energy resources of the entire planet.

He started when a man dressed in black emerged from the darkness and began to walk towards the car, drawing closer and nodding at him. He nodded in response, got out of the car and followed to a low mud-plastered house. The man let him in.

He was an old man with curved shoulders and eyes dimmed by cataracts. ‘Welcome, effendi,’ he greeted him.

‘What news do you have?’

‘Good news. I was told to tell you: “Three donkeys have been

bought at the market of Samarkand as you ordered, paying a proper price. Now the donkey keeper is bringing each one to its stable, as you ordered.”’

The guest nodded his approval. ‘Praise Allah,’ he said. ‘Everything is proceeding for the best. Now, my good friend, you will tell the young men who are coming on the pilgrimage with me that I need to see them. Three of them will meet me in Bethlehem, three in Nablus and three in Gaza.’

‘Shall I arrange lodging for you at Mecca, effendi?’

‘No, my friend. This is a pilgrimage that we’ll be doing the old way, on camelback. You needn’t do anything else.’

They embraced and the guest walked back to his car, which was waiting at the foot of the columns of Baalbek. The old man watched him go, disappearing like a shadow from his uncertain sight, then he turned to the Temple. The columns seemed like giants on sentry duty in the middle of the night, ensuring that no curious eyes would see the small man hurrying off.

The old man had never seen him before, and would not have been able to describe him later, except for his black-and-white-checked keffiyeh and his grey jacket worn over a white jellaba. But he knew that he had spoken with the man most wanted on the face of this earth, he who above all others his enemies dreamed of having within their grasp.

Abu Ahmid.

T
HE AIR
of Bethlehem was still fragrant with incense and the city still bustled with activity so soon after Christmas. Thousands of pilgrims swarmed through the city streets and past the shops and stands at the bazaar.

It was a crowd that spoke many languages. An Orthodox priest dressed in black with a long-veiled
polos
on his head and silver icons around his neck, a humble Franciscan friar with his dusty sandals and a rope belt, a mullah with his head swathed in a white turban: the crowds milling around saw them all; they were living proof of how many different ways there were to reach a single God.

No one noticed the man with a black-and-white-checked keffiyeh, wearing a grey jacket over a white jellaba and carrying a woollen shoulder bag, as he entered the city and went to a little two-storey crumbling plaster house at the crossroads of Suk el Berk and Ain Aziza.

An elderly widow was waiting for him in the deserted house and she led him from the entrance to the main room: a modest place, the floor covered with old kilim carpets and a few cushions. The woman lifted one of the kilims, uncovering a wooden trapdoor that led into a cellar illuminated by a dim electric bulb. The man went down a ladder as she closed the trapdoor behind him and put the kilim back in place.

The man walked along a narrow passageway and entered another room about two metres by three, with a mat on the floor and a single light bulb hanging from the low ceiling. Three men were waiting for him, sitting on their heels, their faces completely covered by their keffiyehs.

The man’s face was concealed as well and his voice sounded dull through the strip of cloth covering his mouth. ‘Brothers,’ he said, ‘your mission is about to begin and it is of such importance that the success of Operation Nebuchadnezzar and the victory of our cause depend on it. We have spent years pondering the reasons for our past defeats, and these errors will not be repeated. This time we won’t move until we’ve received the signal that the packages have been delivered. As you know, these packages are quite large and would attract attention, and so they have been divided into three parts, one for each of you.’

He reached into the bag and extracted three envelopes, handing them out. ‘Here you’ll find cash, International City Bank credit cards and the instructions for collecting and delivering your package. You will learn them by heart now, here in front of me, and then I will destroy them. The instructions will also tell you how to contact the coordinator of the operation on American

soil. His code name is Nebuzaradan. You will communicate with him only in code. Unless it is an absolute emergency or I instruct you to do so, you will not meet with him in person.