The Alexandria Connection (22 page)

‘That’s good news, Truman, and you will have noted that Professor Ahlstrom has agreed to join our team at EVRAN.’

‘That
was
a surprise, Mr Crowley,’ said Stockton.

Crowley let the nuclear physicist squirm. It hadn’t been a deliberate ‘divide and conquer’ manoeuvre, but it was obvious Stockton saw Ahlstrom as a threat to his own standing, which pleased Crowley immensely.

‘Given Professor Ahlstrom’s standing in the academic world, he will be reporting directly to me,’ Crowley said, increasing the nuclear physicist’s discomfort. ‘In the meantime, I’ve approved a new research project that will require three kilograms of Cobalt 60 to be released from storage in California and transported to our laboratories in Idaho. Mr Ruger has also joined our team, and he’ll be in charge of the transfer, and the approvals from the Department of Energy will be handled here.’

‘I’d like to visit those laboratories at some stage, Mr Crowley.’

‘There are some areas of EVRAN which, for security reasons, are compartmentalised, and they’re off-limits, even to nuclear physicists like you, Truman.’

Stockton nodded.

‘Hasn’t got a fucking clue,’ Crowley muttered to Rachel after the scientist had left. ‘But he’s a useful idiot. Have you got the report on Costa?’

‘There’s an executive summary on the inside cover,’ said Rachel, handing over the confidential file. ‘I’ve also included the Area 15 report on Costa’s internet activity, emails and phone contacts.’ The CEO of EVRAN Timber had long been under surveillance. Crowley trusted none of his executives, and least of all the wily Brazilian.

‘Anything of interest?’ he asked, scanning the executive summary.

‘The usual stuff. He’s still taking time out with prostitutes and strippers in Manaus.’ The capital of Amazonas, Brazil’s largest state, had all the usual attractions of a major river port.

Crowley shrugged. ‘I don’t care what he does with his dick, as long as he keeps the government and the greenies under control.’

‘That’s more problematic,’ said Rachel. ‘You can see from the summary that the environmentalists are becoming more active, particularly over logging the Amazon, to the point where the government has to be seen to be taking action.’

‘I’ve seen the photos of the protestors,’ Crowley grunted. ‘And I’ve got screaming headlines for our man, Costa. That’s going to stop. Let’s see what his plan is. Show him in.

‘Good to see you again, Marcelo,’ Crowley intoned urbanely. ‘Have a seat,’ he said, guiding Costa toward a suite of blue suede lounges on the far side of the office. Crowley had modelled the area on the Oval Office, and in place of the presidential seal, the carpet between the lounges bore EVRAN’s erupting-volcano logo.

‘So, you heard the boardroom discussion on the greenies this morning; what’s the score in Brazil?’ Crowley asked, cutting straight to the chase.

Stocky, with a deep tan and a scar across his cheek from his earlier days as a drug runner, Marcelo Costa sported a neatly trimmed black goatee beard and moustache. Costa flashed his ivory teeth, but his smile was humourless. ‘We have them under control, Sheldon.’

‘And how is that being done, Marcelo?’ Crowley’s demeanour was suddenly icy. ‘How is it that these clowns are able to issue a fucking press release on EVRAN’s front doorstep?’ Crowley extracted a photograph of protestors taken next to the ‘EVRAN Timbers’ sign at EVRAN’s Manaus mill on the banks of the Amazon. Their banner read ‘Logging in the Amazon has destroyed an area twice the size of Spain! EVRAN Criminals!’

‘That won’t happen again,’ Costa replied evenly. ‘I’ve doubled the number of guards, and I now have two of my own men in IBAMA.’ The Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis was the Brazilian environment agency charged with overseeing the vast expanses of the Amazon jungle. The Amazon was not only the world’s largest rainforest in both size and diversity, it also absorbed and stored massive amounts of the world’s carbon. IBAMA’s resources were stretched and despite the government’s best efforts, IBAMA was not immune from corruption.

‘We not only have warning of any inspections, but we’re able to steer them away from our operations in the north-west down to the Mato Grosso on the border with Bolivia. You will have read the news reports of arrests?’

Crowley nodded. A Greenpeace survey had showed 72 per cent of logging in the Amazon was illegal, and that deforestation was occurring at a staggering 26 000 square kilometres a year, or the equivalent of six football fields a minute. Brazilian federal police had launched a crackdown on illegal logging and arrested the members of the gangs responsible for removing more than 80 million cubic feet of timber, which would fill over a thousand Olympic swimming pools.

‘I’ve put the word out. Any protestors who think they can approach our mills should be very careful. If they tangle with my guards, they’re likely to come off badly. There’s a huge demand for decking hardwood. Ipé will continue to flow to our markets, and the greenies better get used to it.’

‘Speaking of which, these are the latest private orders for cedar and mahogany,’ Crowley said, passing over a list of clients to whom he’d promised favours. ‘Once the orders are filled, make sure the list is destroyed.’

Costa smiled. In 2001, the Brazilian government had banned the export of mahogany but he and Crowley were well aware that over a quarter of the world’s timber trade was illegal and EVRAN’s export of Brazilian big-leaf mahogany, disguised as other tropical species, hadn’t missed a beat.

‘The mahogany’s not a problem, but the big cedar trees are getting harder to find. It may take a while.’

‘As long as it gets here. More importantly, is the next shipment for Karachi secure?’ Thirty-two of the gleaming missiles had arrived the week before and Costa had ensured that the appropriate palms had been greased to avoid any scrutiny.

‘The cargo is in one of our warehouses at the timber mill, and it’s heavily guarded. It will be loaded on to the
EVRAN I
, disguised in batches of ipé, as soon as she docks in Manaus.’

‘To assist you with your PR problems,’ Crowley said, getting to his feet, ‘Rachel is arranging for Ahlstrom to address the top business leaders and government ministers in Brasília.’

As soon as I’ve organised some media training, Rachel thought.

‘Always a pleasure to visit,’ Costa said, taking his cue and heading for the door.

Crowley watched Costa leave, and then turned to Rachel. ‘Make sure Area 15 has twenty-four-hour tabs on that little turd. He’s slicker than a rat with a gold tooth.’

‘And twice as dangerous,’ Rachel agreed.

A
fter Aleta had picked O’Connor up, she took the desert road from the Burg al-Arab airport back to Alexandria and the Hotel Cecil.

‘So . . . who did you have to sleep with to get a leave pass back here?’ Aleta’s feathers were still more than a little ruffled over O’Connor’s abrupt departure for Washington.

‘Still angry?’ O’Connor had long ago concluded it would not be good for his health to be on the wrong side of this lady. Perhaps that was part of the attraction.

‘A little,’ she said, ‘but provided you take me out to dinner, buy me flowers and jewellery, and tell me how nice I look, in six months time I
may
forgive you.’

‘That soon?’ he said, placing his hand on Aleta’s taut, brown thigh.

‘And that’s not going to do it,’ she said, making no attempt to remove his hand.

‘You’re very attractive, particularly when you’re mad,’ said O’Connor, ‘and don’t get any madder than you are already, but Washington has sent me here for a reason, although Tom McNamara sends his best.’

‘Screw Tom McNamara.’

They drove on in silence before Aleta finally spoke.

‘And that reason is?’

‘Let’s talk about that when we get back to Alexandria.’

O’Connor chose an outside table at the Athineos Café in Saad Zaghlol Square, a short distance from the hotel.

‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to what you do. Encrypted emails, iPhones, laptops. I assume there’s a reason we couldn’t talk in the car or the hotel room?’ said Aleta.

‘There are quite a few things not adding up around here . . . or back in the States,’ replied O’Connor. ‘I haven’t had time to check the hire car or the room in the hotel; for now, I’m assuming both are bugged, but it’s much harder to pick up conversations out here in the open air.’

‘So what’s not adding up?’

‘The less you know the better, just in case anyone is ever, God forbid, trying to get information from you.’

Aleta shook her head. ‘Uh-uh. After all we’ve been through together, Curtis Seamus O’Connor, that’s not going to wash, so out with it.’

O’Connor smiled. Aleta wasn’t cleared into any of the CIA compartments, and he was breaking longstanding rules, but she was right. Having been illegally placed on the CIA’s assassination list, and then pursued halfway around the world, she had a right to know.

‘We’re not sure why, but a couple of weeks ago, there was a meeting here at the Kashta Palace, involving a sacked Pakistani general, and several others, the identities of whom we’re not sure. Missiles manufactured in the United States by EVRAN, owned by Sheldon Crowley, the richest industrialist in the world, have been turning up in Afghanistan. These missiles are so advanced, they’re not even provided to our closest allies. Coupled with that, the owner of Galleria d’Arte Rubinstein in Venice, Zachary Rubinstein, seems to be operating as a highly paid fence for Egyptian artifacts, and depending on his clients, that might put you in danger. It might be a good idea to put the search for this papyrus on ice for a while.’

Aleta shook her head. ‘You’re telling an archaeologist to shelve a search for an ancient document that might turn Egyptology on its head? This is right up there with the search for the tomb of Tutankhamun.’

O’Connor raised his eyebrows in resignation. ‘Well, it was worth a try . . . but don’t underestimate these assholes, they’re playing for keeps.’

Aleta frowned. ‘This Sheldon Crowley . . . I’ve never met him, but his name crops up from time to time. He’s an amateur Egyptologist, quite a good one, apparently, and an avid collector.’

‘Would he be interested in something like the Euclid Papyrus?’

‘Possibly. Collectors can go to extraordinary lengths to obtain something in which the rest of the world could have an interest.’

‘Granted, but we’re dealing with the world’s wealthiest man. He has the means to buy some of the world’s most sought after icons. Why would he have an interest in a papyrus written by an ancient mathematician – one that’s rumoured to reveal the purpose of the pyramids?’

‘Scientists and archaeologists have puzzled over the pyramids for centuries, and we still haven’t worked out how they were built, let alone what they were used for . . .’

‘Tombs for the pharaohs works for me,’ said O’Connor with a grin.

‘Was that the sound of your mind closing, Curtis O’Connor? For a man with an intellect and scientific background like yours, you’re very quick to judge. I won’t get back onto the crop circles,’ said Aleta, her brown eyes dancing, ‘but we’re very quick to dismiss things we don’t understand.’

‘So you have a favourite theory?’ O’Connor asked.

‘On how the pyramids were built, or their purpose?’

‘Both, but let’s deal with how they were built first.’

‘The short answer is, we don’t know. For decades, the theory with the most credibility has been the notion that around 2360 BC, a hundred thousand slaves laboured for more than twenty years, using wooden levers and rollers, stone tools and plaited rope made out of flax, to haul over two and a half million limestone blocks. A lot of those blocks came from Aswan, which is 500 miles down the Nile, and some of them weighed more than 50 tonnes. Somehow they were hauled up ramps to construct a building that is half the height of the Empire State Building and sits on over 13 acres – but that theory no longer stacks up. Someone did the math on how many wooden rollers would be required, and allowing for the destruction of ten rollers for every ten-tonne block, they would have needed over twenty-five million rollers and levers.’

O’Connor nodded. ‘A lot of trees, and Egypt and the Levant are not renowned for forests. But I read somewhere that the blocks might have been secured between wooden discs and rolled to the site.’

‘I’ve read that theory too, and it’s a method described by a Roman engineer, Vitruvius, in his book
De Architectura.
But he wrote in the first century BC. The ancient Egyptians around the time of Pharoah Khufu, whose tomb the Great Pyramid is purported to be, had no knowledge of the wheel. That came much later in the sixteenth century BC when Egypt was invaded by the Hyksos from west Asia. They brought with them the horse and the chariot that Hollywood is so keen to associate with Egyptians.’

‘So when compared to the Great Pyramid, the Pharos lighthouse pales by comparison?’

‘The lighthouse is still worthy of being one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, but the Pharos lighthouse, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Artemis’s temple at Ephesus, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Colossus of Rhodes . . . they’ve all either disappeared or fallen into ruin. The Great Pyramid is the oldest and the only wonder to be still standing. Regardless of what theory we come up with to get the blocks to the site, and somehow allow for the miles of massive ramps that were needed, we still haven’t found an answer for the extraordinary precision of construction.’

‘Our old friend Fibonacci . . . we don’t seem to be able to shake him,’ O’Connor said with a grin, signalling the waiter for another two coffees. In 1202 AD, Fibonacci, arguably one of the most talented mathematicians the world had ever seen, wrote his
Liber Abaci,
in which he introduced an extraordinary sequence of numbers, one well known to the Maya, the Inca and the Egyptians. Each term in the sequence was obtained by adding the previous two terms:

1
,
1
,
2
,
3
,
5
, 8,
13
,
21
,
34
,
55
,
89
,
144
,
233
 . . .

But even more importantly, the extraordinary ratio of 1.618 or phi, designated by the Greek letter Φ, was obtained by dividing any number by its predecessor. The early divisions produced approximations, but as the numbers got larger, the divisions stabilised to become 1.6180339 . . . a ratio that had captured the attention of Einstein, Schrödinger, and other great Nobel Laureates. It was postulated that Φ could be the connecting thread of the cosmos and perhaps the basis of the elusive theory of unity. The golden ratio had been shown to be part of life itself.

Aleta nodded. ‘As you and I discovered with the Maya and the Inca, the golden ratio determines everything from the spirals on a nautilus shell, through to the distances between leaves on the plants, right up to the spirals in the galaxies of the universe. It’s unseen but everywhere, and the ancients knew this,’ she said. ‘It’s embedded in the pyramids of the Maya and the Inca, and there is compelling evidence the Egyptians knew about it as well, because the Great Pyramid’s ratio of the length of its side to its height is 1.618. Yet it’s so perfectly built, it would push the limits of even today’s technology. There’s even evidence,’ Aleta said, her enthusiasm growing, ‘that the original limestone casing was polished to today’s optical standards and the surfaces were precisely flat planed to within 2/10000ths of an inch. The pyramid is aligned with the earth’s cardinal compass points, and it’s sited at the
exact
apex of the angle drawn to the east and west sides of the Nile delta. And if that’s not enough, Khufu’s engineers used basic units of measurement that are exactly one ten-millionth of the mean radius between the centre of the earth and the poles.’

‘We both agree it was built by superb mathematicians and engineers, and not some primitive culture using hardened stone tools, but the purpose?’ O’Connor asked. ‘Leaving aside Hollywood’s slaves under the whip, it would have taken just about every resource the Egyptians had.’

‘Precisely, and even the most demented of pharaohs wouldn’t have got away with that, especially not for decades. The tomb theory is in just as much trouble as the primitive construction theory. The first people to break into the Great Pyramid were the Arabs under Caliph al-Mamun, in 820 AD. They miscalculated the location of the original entrance, which the builders disguised, and had to bore their way in. After months of work, they eventually reached the internal descending passage. They then tunnelled their way into the inner chambers, in search of gold and mummies. They found neither,’ Aleta said. ‘Nor did they find any soot on the ceilings of the chambers, which would have been left from torches used in any earlier break-in . . . they were the first to get inside since the pyramid was built.’

‘So you don’t think it was Khufu’s tomb?’

‘In a word, no. Or any other tomb. And the most telling evidence for that is the construction of air shafts, which run from the King’s Chamber to the surface of the pyramid. That’s something that this papyrus may shed some light on. Dead pharaohs don’t need air, especially if they want their bodies preserved for the afterlife. There has been no civilisation more expert than the Egyptians in the art of embalming, and they knew well that air would lead to deterioration and decomposition. Furthermore, there was none of the splendour that Howard Carter found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. The King’s Chamber is plain rock, yet its roof has an unbelievably complex design, something that I’m hoping that this Euclid Papyrus might also shine a light on . . . if we can find it.’

‘So not only was it never used as a tomb, but it wasn’t designed as one. I’ll bet that prompts some interesting arguments in your world,’ said O’Connor.

Aleta smiled. ‘That’s an understatement. The world of archaeology is a bitch, and you can multiply that by ten for Egyptology. There’s a herd mentality and woe betide anyone who challenges the accepted wisdom. Some have put forward a theory that the Great Pyramid was built, at least partly, as an observatory, utilising the angle of the air shafts to the heavens. Some argue that not only is the geometry of the pyramids very precisely aligned with the earth’s geography, but the Great Pyramid is aligned with the heavens as well.’

‘I read up on that on the plane flight. There seems to be some disagreement between these scientists . . . Orion versus Cygnus?’

Aleta nodded. ‘
Some
disagreement? A lot. The Orion theory was put forward in 1994, postulating the Egyptians laid the pyramids out to mirror the belt stars in the Orion constellation. The Orion constellation is located on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from anywhere in the world, and it was known to many of the ancient civilisations. In Arabic, the main stars are named Mintaka, which means ‘the belt’, Alnitak, ‘the girdle’, and Alnilam, ‘the string of pearls’. All three of those Orion stars are immensely hot. Mintaka is what we call a giant star, and Alnilam and Alnitak are supergiants, hundreds of times larger than our sun, so there’s no doubt they were very visible to the ancient Egyptians.’

‘But the belt doesn’t quite fit?’

‘You have been reading! Not quite: Alnitak and Alnilam fit precisely over the tops of Khufu’s Great Pyramid and Khafre’s middle pyramid, but Mintaka falls to the south-west edge of Menkaure’s pyramid, the third and smallest of the three.’

‘And Cygnus?’

‘There’s still a lot of argument as to whether the complex is aligned with Orion or Cygnus. Cygnus is one of the Milky Way’s northern constellations, and it takes its name from the Greek for swan. It would have been visible to the ancient Egyptians in the northern hemisphere’s summer and autumn and the papyrus we discovered with Euclid’s notations supports the theory that Cygnus’ Delta, Gamma and Epsilon stars fit precisely on to the apex of each pyramid. But it’s the star that Euclid appears to have superimposed over the rock formation near the Sphinx that’s had me intrigued, and there’s an even fainter dot to the north of it.’

‘Which might also support the idea the pyramids were built as observatories?’

‘I think that theory’s pretty far-fetched. There are much simpler ways to build observatories.’

‘None of which answers why Crowley seems so keen to get his hands on the Euclid Papyrus,’ said O’Connor.

‘I think I might know why. There’s one theory that hasn’t had a lot of attention to date, and that theory links the pyramid to an ancient energy grid. If that theory turns out to be correct, Crowley will want to make sure this papyrus never sees the light of day. I want to discuss this further with Professor Badawi, but the poor man’s been inundated ever since the theft of Tutankhamun’s funerary mask and I may not get to see him for weeks, perhaps months. With that in mind, and not knowing what you’re going to be up to . . . ’ Aleta paused to look at Curtis over the top of her sunglasses. ‘I’ve arranged to spend some time at Abydos, not far from Luxor. An American team from the University of Pennsylvania have made a very exciting discovery – the tomb of a previously unknown king. You’re very welcome to come but that depends on your schedule, which you’ve said absolutely nothing about?’