Sahara (11 page)

Eight more ancient ships were discovered beneath the silt and duly recorded before the sensors struck the big casino.

Pitt straightened, his eyes set in concentration as an image, far larger than the previous contacts, sailed across his monitor. “We have a royal barge!” he called out.

“Marking position,” Giordino acknowledged. “You sure it has
pharaoh
written on it?”

“As pretty a picture as we’ll ever see. Take a look.”

Giordino studied the growing image. “Looking good. No sign of a mast. She’s too large for anyone but royalty to own.”

The hull was long, with a delicate taper toward the ends. The stern stem was sculpted in the shape of a falcon’s head, representing the Egyptian god Horus, but the forward section of the bow was missing. The high-resolution enhancement of the computer revealed the sides of the hull to be decorated with over a thousand carved hieroglyphics. There was a royal cabin that was also ornately carved. Banks of what remained of the oars still protruded from the hull. The rudder was a massive affair that looked like a huge canoe paddle and was braced to the side of the stern. The main attraction, though, was the great rectangular shape that sat on a deck platform amidships. It too bore carved sculptures.

Both men collectively held their breath as the computer hummed away. Then the profile swept across the screen.

“A stone sarcophagus,” blurted Giordino with uncharacteristic excitement. “We’ve got a sarcophagus.” He rushed over to his console and checked the readings. “The nonferrous scan shows large amounts of metal inside the cabin area and the sarcophagus.”

“Pharaoh Menkura’s gold,” Pitt murmured softly.

“What do we have for a date?”

“Twenty-six hundred
B.C.
The time frame and configuration are right on the money,” Pitt said, smiling broadly. “And the computer analysis shows charred wood forward, indicating the bow as burned away.”

“Then we have Menkura’s missing funeral barge.”

“I wouldn’t bet against it,” said Pitt, his expression set in absolute euphoria.

Marx anchored the research boat directly over the wreck site. Then for the next six hours, Pitt and Giordino subjected the funeral barge to a battery of electronic scans and probes, accumulating an extensive record of its condition and disposition for Egyptian authorities.

“God, how I wish we could get a camera inside the cabin and sarcophagus.” Giordino opened another beer but promptly forgot to drink it in the excitement.

“The inner coffins of the sarcophagus might be intact,” said Pitt. “But the dampness has probably rotted away most of the mummy. As to the artifacts . . . who’s to say? They might possibly equal the treasures of Tutankhaten.”

“Menkura was a far bigger nabob than King Tut. He must have carried a larger hoard with him for the afterlife.”

“Well we won’t see any of it,” Pitt said, stretching his arms to the cabin ceiling. “We’ll be dead and buried ourselves before the Egyptians find the funding to raise and preserve the wreck for the Cairo museum.”

“Visitors,” Marx alerted them. “An Egyptian river patrol boat approaching downriver.”

“Word travels fast around here,” said Giordino incredulously. “Who could have tipped them off?”

“A routine patrol,” said Pitt. “They’ll pass by in midchannel.”

“They’re coming straight toward us,” warned Marx.

“So much for a routine patrol,” grunted Giordino.

Pitt stood and removed a file folder from a cabinet. “They’re just being nosy and want to check us out. I’ll meet them on deck with our permits from the antiquities office.”

He walked through the cabin door into the roasting air outside and stood on the open stern deck. The froth of the bow-wave died away to a series of ripples, the metallic hum of the twin diesels loping on idle as the dark gray patrol boat slipped alongside less than a meter away.

Pitt gripped a railing as the wash rocked the research vessel. He watched casually as two seamen, dressed in the uniform of the Egyptian navy, leaned over the sides and held the patrol boat at bay with padded boat hooks. He could see the captain inside the wheelhouse and was mildly surprised when a hand was raised in a friendly salute but no attempt was made to board. His surprise turned to astonishment when a wiry little man leaped over the gunwales and landed lightly on the deck almost on Pitt’s feet.

Pitt gaped at him incredulously. “Rudi! Where in hell did you drop from?”

Rudi Gunn, the Deputy Director of NUMA, smiled broadly and pumped Pitt’s hand. “Washington. Landed at the Cairo airport less than an hour ago.”

“What brings you to the Nile?”

“Admiral Sandecker sent me to pull you and Al off your project. I have a NUMA plane waiting to fly us to Port Harcourt. The Admiral will meet us there.”

“Where’s Port’ Harcourt?” Pitt asked blankly.

“A seaport on the delta of the Niger River in Nigeria.”

“What’s the big hurry? You could have instructed us by satellite communications. Why make the time and effort to tell us in person?”

Gunn made a negative gesture with his hands. “I can’t say. The Admiral didn’t make me privy to the reason for secrecy or the mad rush.”

If Rudi Gunn didn’t know what Sandecker had up his sleeve, no one did. He was slim, with narrow shoulders and matching hips. Extremely competent, a master of logistics, Gunn was a graduate of Annapolis and a former Commander in the Navy. He had come on board NUMA at the same time as Pitt and Giordino. Gunn stared at the world through thick horn-rimmed glasses and spoke past lips that were most always curled in a mischievous grin. Giordino likened him to an IRS agent about to make a kill.

“Your timing is ideal,” said Pitt. “Come on inside. Let’s get out of the heat. I’ve something I want to show you.”

Giordino had his back to the cabin door as Pitt and Gunn entered. “What did the goochers want?” he asked irritably.

“For you to drop dead,” Gunn answered, laughing.

Giordino spun around, recognizing the little man, and affecting great surprise. “Oh for God’s sake!” He came to his feet and shook Gunn’s outstretched hand. “What are you doing here?”

“To transfer you to another project.”

“Great timing.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Pitt grinned.

“Hi, Mr. Gunn,” greeted Gary Marx, ducking into the electronics cabin. “Good to have you on board.”

“Hello, Gary.”

“Am I being transferred too?”

Gunn shook his head. “No, you have to stay here on the project. Dick White and Stan Shaw will be arriving tomorrow to replace Dirk and Al.”

“A waste of time,” said Marx. “We’re ready to wrap up.”

Gunn stared at Pitt questioningly for a moment, then understanding grew in concert with his widening eyes. “The pharaoh’s funeral barge,” he muttered. “You found it?”

“A lucky hit,” Pitt revealed. “And only the second day on the job.”

“Where?” Gunn blurted.

“You’re standing on it, in a manner of speaking. She’s resting 9 meters under our keel.”

Pitt displayed the digital isometric model of the wreck on the computer monitor. The hours spent in enhancing the colored imagery paid off with a vivid, extremely detailed view of every square meter of the centuries-old ship.

“Indescribable,” muttered Gunn in awe.

“We’ve also recorded and positioned over a hundred other wrecks dating from 2800
B.C.
to 1000
A.D.,”
said Giordino.

“Congratulations to the three of you,” Gunn beamed warmly. “You’ve pulled off an incredible accomplishment. One for the history books. The Egyptian government will pin medals on you.”

“And the Admiral?” Giordino asked succinctly. “What will he pin on us?”

Gunn turned from the monitor and looked at them, his face suddenly turned dead serious. “A dirty, rotten job, I suspect.”

“Didn’t he drop a hint?” Pitt pressed.

“Nothing that made any sense.” Gunn stared at the ceiling, recalling. “When I asked him why the urgency, he quoted a verse. I don’t remember the exact words. Something about a ship’s shadow and charmed water being red.”

Pitt quoted:

Her beams bemocked the sultry main,

Like April hoarfrost spread;

But where the ship’s huge shadow lay,

The charmed water burned away,

a still and awful red.

“A verse from ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.”

Gunn looked at Pitt with new respect. “I didn’t know you could quote poetry.”

Pitt laughed. “I memorized a few verses, that’s all.”

“I wonder what Sandecker has on his evil mind?” said Giordino. “Not like the old buzzard to get cryptic.”

“No,” Pitt said with uneasy trepidation, “not like him at all.”

8

The pilot of the Massarde Enterprises helicopter flew north and eastward from the capital city of Bamako. For two and a half hours the vast desolation unrolled below like miniature scenery pasted on a scroll. After two hours, he spotted the sun’s glint off steel rails in the distance. He banked and began following the tracks that seemingly traveled to nowhere.

The railroad, only completed the month before, ended at the immense solar waste detoxification project in the heart of the Malian desert. The facility was called Fort Foureau after a long-abandoned French Foreign Legion fort several miles away. From the project site the tracks ran 1600 kilometers in a nearly straight line across the border into Mauritania before finally terminating at the man-made port of Cape Tafarit on the Atlantic Ocean.

General Kazim peered from the lush comfort of the executive helicopter as the pilot caught and passed a long train of sealed, hazardous waste container cars pulled by two diesel locomotives. The train was outbound to Mauritania, having emptied its deadly cargo and turned around.

He smiled craftily as he turned his stare from the waste cars and nodded to the steward, who refreshed his glass of champagne and offered a tray of hors d’oeuvres.

The French, Kazim mused, they never seemed out of reach of champagne, truffles, and pate. He considered them an insular race who only halfheartedly tried to build and maintain an empire. How the general citizenry must have sighed with collective relief, he thought, when they were forced to give up their outposts in Africa and the Far East. Deep down it angered him that the French had not disappeared entirely from Mali. Though they severed their colonial leash in 1960, the French had maintained their influence and a taut grip on the economy, exercising strong control over most all of the nation’s mining, transportation, industrial and energy development. Many French businessmen saw investment opportunity and bought heavily into Malian ventures. But none had dug their money shovel deeper into the Sahara sands than Yves Massarde.

Once the wizard of France’s overseas economic agency, Massarde had carved a profitable niche on the side, using his contacts and influence to take over and turn around ailing West African corporations. A tough and shrewd negotiator, his methods were cutthroat and it was rumored that he was not above using strong-arm tactics to consummate a deal. His wealth was estimated to be between two and three billion dollars, and the hazardous waste disposal project in the Sahara at Fort Foureau was the centerpiece of his empire.

The helicopter arrived over the sprawling complex, and the pilot swung around the perimeter to give Kazim a good view of the sprawling solar detoxification complex and its vast field of parabolic mirrors that collected solar energy and sent it to concentrating receivers, creating an incredible 60,000 suns with temperatures as high as 5000 degrees C. This superheated photon energy was then directed to photochemical reactors that destroyed the molecules of hazardous chemicals.

The General had seen it all several times, and he was more interested in selecting another bite of truffled goose pate. He was just finishing his sixth glass of Veuve Clicquot Gold Label champagne when the helicopter slowly settled onto the flight pad in front of the project’s engineering offices.

Kazim stepped to the ground and saluted Felix Verenne, the personal aide of Massarde, who stood waiting in the sun. Kazim gloated at seeing the Frenchman suffering from the heat. “Felix, how good of you to greet me,” he spoke in French, his teeth flashing beneath his moustache.

“Did you enjoy your journey?” Verenne asked patronizingly.

“The pate was not up to your chef’s usual standards.”

A slender, bald-headed man in his forties, Verenne forced a smile over his inner disgust for Kazim. “I’ll see that it meets with your approval on the return flight.”

“And how is Monsieur Massarde?”

“He’s waiting for you in his executive suite.”

Verenne led the way under an awning-covered walkway into a three-story black solar glass building with rounded corners. Inside, they crossed a marble lobby that was totally deserted, except for one security guard, and entered an elevator. The doors opened onto a teak-paneled entry hall that led to the main salon that doubled as Massarde’s living quarters and office. Verenne showed Kazim into a small but luxuriously decorated study and pointed to a Roche Bobois leather sofa.

“Please have a seat. Monsieur Massarde will be with you—”

“But Felix, I am here,” came a voice from the opposite doorway. Massarde stepped forward and embraced Kazim. “Zateb, my friend, how good of you to come.”

Yves Massarde had blue eyes, black brows, and reddish hair. His nose was slender and his jaws square. The body was thin and the hips trim, but the stomach protruded. Nothing about him seemed to match. But it was not his physical impression that lingered in the memories of those he met. They only remembered the intensity that burst from within his being in a manner like that of static electricity.

He gave a knowing look to Verenne, who nodded and quietly left the room, closing the door behind.

“Now then, Zateb, my agents in Cairo inform me that your people made a fiasco of frightening the World Health Organization from coming to Mali.”