The Arab Fall (A James Acton Thriller, Book #6) (James Acton Thrillers) (15 page)

Acton
turned back toward the opening, holding up his lantern and sighed again. It was
breathtaking. The amount of gold, silver and precious gems was spectacular, but
the two sarcophagi, side by side, touching as if the arms of two lovers were
forever together. He stepped inside, Laura at his side, several students
following with their own lights.

“Bloody
hell, it’s incredible.”

Acton
smiled at Chaney’s outburst, then remembered where he was and the importance of
it.

“I’m
sure I don’t need to remind anybody not to touch anything.” He glanced over at
Chaney whose hand hovered in midair, about to touch a sculpture of a scarab.
His hand darted back to his side, then his chest, then his stomach, Chaney
apparently desperate to find a place where it would be under control.

He
stuffed it in his pocket.

Acton
chuckled as Laura turned to the students.

“Two at
a time. Five minutes, then switch off. Don’t worry, when we start to catalog
everything, you’ll get plenty of chances to enjoy this.” She turned back to the
sarcophagi, then looked at Acton.

“What do
you think?”

Acton
nodded to the one closest him.

“This is
obviously Cleopatra.”

Laura
sighed, placing her hand on the other sarcophagus.

“And
this must be Antony.” She looked up at Acton. “Isn’t it romantic, buried side
by side for eternity, together forever.”

Acton
smiled. “Don’t you think you’d get tired of me after two thousand years?”

Laura’s
hand continued to travel along Antony’s sarcophagus, reaching his head.

“I
suppose so.”

“What?”

She
looked up at him and winked.

“Har
har.”

Suddenly
gunfire from above echoed through the chamber.

“What
the hell—”

“Professors,
you better get up here!” yelled a voice from the surface. Laura and Acton exchanged
concerned glances, then hurried everyone from the room. Laura pointed at Terrence
Mitchel and another student.

“You two
guard this entrance, make sure no one goes inside.” She turned to the remaining
students. “Everyone else out. We’ll organize shifts tomorrow.”

Chaney
held the rope ladder steady as Laura climbed it, followed by Acton. As he
pushed through the hole at the top, he gasped at the heat of the late afternoon
sun, it so cool below. As soon as he recovered from the shock, he heard
shouting and another burst of gunfire from the camp.

He and
Laura ran toward the commotion, the camp coming into view below as they began
their descent. The workers were all clamoring to board a truck, two of the
security team holding them at bay with weapons, Reading with them trying to
calm them down, despite the fact few spoke little if any English.

“What’s
going on here?” Laura asked in Arabic.

The
foreman, who spoke English, spun toward them and rapid fired the situation.

“We must
leave! We cannot disturb the tomb of Cleopatra, otherwise we and our families
will be cursed for eternity!”

“Nonsense.
It’s just words on a wall. You know there is no such thing as curses.”

Acton’s
words seemed to have no effect.

“You
must let us leave. Now! We will work here no longer.”

Acton
sighed, looking at Laura.

“What
about just here, at the camp. Forget the tomb.”

The man
shook his head emphatically.

“No! We
must go!”

Acton
looked at Laura, who shrugged her shoulders.

“They
refuse to work; they’re scared of the curse. I don’t think there’s any
reasoning with them.”

“Agreed,”
sighed Acton. “Might as well let them go.”

Laura
nodded, motioning the guards and Reading out of the way, and the truck was
stormed, rolling away within seconds as bodies continued to be hauled into the
back of those not fortunate enough to get aboard in the first wave.

“Now we
have a problem.”

“What’s
that?” asked Reading.

Acton
motioned at the departing truck with his chin.

“Now the
world’s about to find out what we discovered.”

Cairo, Egypt

Night Before the Liberty Island Attack

“They found it.”

Colonel Soliman
frowned, scratching his thick but trimmed beard. They had known it was a
possibility, ever since that damned professor from London had received a permit
to dig. How she had done it, he didn’t know. His people had tried to block it
at every turn, but she seemed to have connections even better than his.

“You’re
certain?”

His
friend of over thirty years, Mansoor, nodded. “There’s no doubt.”

“And of
course the curse didn’t work?”

“It
worked on the hired help, but not the professor and her students.”

Soliman
sighed. He hadn’t expected it to work. After all, no educated person believed
in curses any more. About all they had accomplished with the curse was to slow
them down. Without their manual labor, they’d have to do everything themselves.
But it didn’t matter. In the end the result was the same.

Desecration.

The ruse
had lasted for two millennia. Archeologists for years had theorized the tomb
was underwater, a victim of Alexandria’s partial collapse into the sea, but the
truth was the remains of Cleopatra and her husband, Antony, had been moved to a
secret site almost a thousand miles away, along with several other Pharaohs’
remains over the years.

But now
the site had been compromised and something had to be done.

Mansoor looked
at him. “What do we do? We can’t scare them away.”

Soliman
shook his head. “No, we can’t scare them away.”

Mansoor looked
out the window at the rooftops spread across Cairo, a clash of ancient
buildings and construction techniques, stabbed with antennae and satellite
dishes, electrical and telephone wires dangling in an unorganized tangle in a
desperate attempt to modernize a city never meant to be modernized.

“There’s
only one thing these Westerners believe in,” he said.

Soliman’s
eyebrows rose slightly. “What’s that?”

“Violence.”

“Is that
what you believe?”

Mansoor nodded.

“So what
do you propose? We kill them all?”

Mansoor frowned.

“I don’t
like it any more than you do, but they have desecrated the tomb of a Pharaoh.
Isn’t that punishable by death?”

Soliman
bit his lip as he closed his eyes, leaning his head against the back of his
chair.

“Yes,
normally it would be. But consider their intent. Do they intend to steal what’s
inside?”

Mansoor shrugged.
“I guess not. They’re legitimate archeologists.”

“And
with the current laws, anything they find has to be turned over to the
authorities. Nothing can leave Egypt.”

“True.” Mansoor’s
eyes narrowed. “You’re not defending this, are you?”

Soliman
smiled. “Not at all. But before we go and kill them all, I think we need to
examine the situation.”

Suddenly
the door burst open and young Ahmed rushed in, his face flushed, his brow
covered in sweat, his chest heaving as his lungs sucked in precious oxygen.

Both Soliman
and Mansoor jumped from their chairs, rushing over to him.

“What is
it, Ahmed?” asked Soliman, placing a hand on his shoulder.

But Ahmed
couldn’t answer, his lungs still desperate for oxygen. Instead he shoved a
tablet computer he had been gripping toward Soliman. Soliman took it, holding
it up for them all to see. Mansoor gasped at the headline.

British
Archeologist Team Locates Cleopatra’s Tomb.

“We’re
too late!” cried Mansoor, spinning around and booting his chair across the
room.

Soliman
quickly scanned the article, noting the sources quoted were workers from the
dig site. Mansoor was right. They were too late if killing them were the only
option.

But
there’s one other thing Westerners believe in, perhaps even more than violence.

Nubian Desert, Egypt, University College London Dig Site

Acton poked a stick at the fire, mesmerized by the dancing flames.
They were all there, it a nightly ritual missed by none. Gathered by the open
fire, the wood collected from the surrounding area, and never taken from a live
plant, was used sparingly—artificial logs flown in at Laura’s personal expense
added to the flame, along with a healthy helping of camel dung supplied by
their laborers who in their rush had left their beasts behind. It wasn’t a
roaring fire as they might have at his dig site in Peru, but it was beautiful
nonetheless.

“So what
exactly have we stumbled upon,” asked Reading. “Is it really Cleopatra’s tomb?”

Acton
nodded, his eyes still on the flames.

“It
would appear so.”

“What
the devil is it doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

Laura
chuckled and waved her arm toward the dig site sitting nearby.

“Two
thousand years ago this wasn’t the middle of nowhere. There was a thriving
community here.”

“But no
city.”

She
dropped her head slightly in acknowledgement.

“But no
city. Why the tomb is here, I have no idea, I’m just pointing out that what is
now barren and abandoned wasn’t always so. There is obviously a reason her
remains are here.”

“What
can you tell us about Cleopatra that the movie didn’t tell us?” asked Chaney.

Reading’s
eyebrows shot up. “You’ve seen the movie?”

Chaney
shrugged. “I like the classics.”

Reading
looked at Acton. “I worked with him for years and never knew that.”

Acton
winked and then looked at Chaney. “Let’s ignore the movie. First, her name
wasn’t officially Cleopatra, it was actually Cleopatra the Seventh Philopator,
as she was the seventh to use that name. As well, she wasn’t Egyptian. She was
actually Greek, her family lineage descendant from when Alexander the Great
conquered Egypt.”

“She
wasn’t Egyptian?” exclaimed Reading. “I’ve always wondered about that. I would
have expected a Roman at the time to not publicly be involved with an African,
even North African, but if she was Macedonian, she was probably as white as he
was.”

“True.
They were more similar than many realize from a cultural standpoint.”

“That
coin that showed her certainly had her looking pretty beastly,” piped in one of
the students, which resulted in a round of laughter.

“Hard to
tell from the coin what she really looked like, and our definition of beauty
was probably quite different from theirs back then. The stories speak of her
beauty and her power over men. It could simply be the way she dressed which may
have been more provocative than what European men were used to at the time, or
her confidence in her sexuality that made her so alluring. We don’t really
know, but whatever it was, Mark Antony fell for her head over heels, much to
the objections of the Roman aristocracy.”

“Wasn’t
he responsible for the destruction of the Library of Alexandria?” asked Chaney.

“No,
that’s the movie confusing things,” replied Laura. “In fact when the Romans set
fire to the ships in the harbor, it ignited fires in nearby buildings, but the
Library was nowhere near the docks. History records the destruction of
thousands of scrolls, but these were most likely just paperwork.”

“Then
how was it destroyed?”

“There
are several theories, one of which Laura just debunked,” began Acton. “The
attack of Aurelian, the decree of a Coptic Pope, or after the conquest by the
Muslims.”

“Which
do you think it is, Professor?” asked Terrence.

“I think
they’re all true in their own way.”

Reading’s
eyebrows shot up. “Huh?”

“During
the attack of Emperor Aurelian, it is recorded that the main library was
destroyed, but a smaller part of the library, in a separate building, survived.
This was nearly three hundred years after the death of Cleopatra. Then, over a
hundred years later, the Coptic Pope Theophilus declared paganism illegal, and
ordered the destruction of all pagan artifacts, including documents. This
resulted in the destruction of much if not all of what remained of the library
in my opinion.”

Chaney
raised a hand, then dropped it quickly as if realizing he weren’t in school.
“What about the Muslims?”

“Several
Muslim texts refer to the destruction of the Library at their hands after their
conquest due to it containing information that contradicted the Koran. But
these accounts were written over five hundred years later. Modern scholars
think that these were stories spread by Saladin to justify his own destruction
of a collection of heretical texts.”

“It
would make sense though, if you think about it,” said Terrence. “What with what
they did to the Buddhas in Afghanistan, and what they’re doing in Timbuktu
right now.”

Laura
nodded. “There’s definitely a pattern, but in this case, I think history has
judged them unfairly.”

“So what
happened to Cleopatra?” asked Chaney. “How did she die?”

Acton
poked the fire, eliciting a shower of sparks that drifted over their heads.
“There was a civil war in Rome, between Octavian and Antony. Antony and
Cleopatra’s armies suffered a series of defeats, and they ultimately fled to
Egypt, but Octavian’s armies pursued them. Nearing defeat, Antony received word
that Cleopatra had committed suicide, and rather than go on without her, he ran
himself through with his sword. As he lay dying, he received word that she was
alive, and he was taken to her, to die in her arms.”

“That’s
so romantic,” cooed one of the girls, sniffles given anonymity by the darkness
indicating she wasn’t alone in her sentiment.