The Lost Army of Cambyses (47 page)

some pretty good maps and aerial surveys. I'll go

and see what I can find.'

He disappeared into a side room, leaving

Khalifa beside a stack full of volumes from the

very earliest days of Egyptology – Belzoni's

Researches in Egypt and Nubia,
Rosellini's

Monumenti dell'Egitto e della Nubia,
all twelve

volumes of Lepsius'
Denkmäler aus Aegypten und

Aethiopien.
Khalifa ran his fingers along them,

pulling out a copy of Davies's
Ancient Egyptian

Paintings,
laying it on top of the stack and gently

opening it. He was still looking at it twenty min-

utes later when the librarian returned and gently

tapped him on the shoulder.

'I've put some books in the reading room for

you. On the table by the window. It's not every-

thing on the subject, but it's enough to make a

start. Give me a shout if you need anything else.

394

Or perhaps a whisper would be better, given that

we're in a library.'

He sniggered at his joke and returned to his

desk. Khalifa replaced the Davies and went

through into the second room, which had shelves

to either side and a row of tables down the middle.

On the one furthest from him, beside a window

overlooking the gardens, were two teetering piles

of books. He sat down and, taking the top volume

from the nearest pile, started reading.

It took him three hours to find what he wanted.

He eventually tracked it down in a slim volume

entitled
A Journey across the Great Sea of Dunes,

written in 1902 by an English explorer, Captain

John de Villiers.

De Villiers had set out to retrace, in reverse,

Rohlfs' landmark expedition of 1874, starting

from Siwa with local guides and a train of fifteen

camels, and heading out across the desert towards

the oasis of Dakhla 600 kilometres to the south-

east. Twenty days later sickness and insufficient

supplies had forced them to divert to al-Farafra,

where the journey had been abandoned. What

interested Khalifa, however, was not how the

expedition had ended, but something that had

happened eight days after it had first set out:

It was on the morning of this eighth day that Abu,

the boy of whom I have already spoken, pointed out

a most extraordinary sight far off across the dunes,

somewhat to the east of our line of march.

My first impression was that the pyramid, for

such it was, must be a mirage, or optical illusion . . .'

395

Khalifa paused, pondering the unfamiliar words,

then stood and went over to the librarian, asking

for an English-Arabic dictionary. The man

pointed one out, and, taking it from the shelf,

Khalifa returned to his desk and flicked through it.

'Ah!' he said, finding the words.
'Sirab.

Tawahhum basari.
I see.'

He returned to the text, keeping the dictionary

open beside him, referring to it frequently.

It certainly did not seem possible that it could be

of natural provenance, both because of the

extreme precision of its form, and, more telling,

the absence of any other such formations any-

where within the vicinity.

As we drew closer, however, I was forced to

reconsider this initial appraisal. The pyramid was,

it transpired, both real and of natural creation.

How it had arisen, and when, I cannot say, for my

expertise does not, sadly, extend to matters geo-

logical. All I can report is that it was a most

exceptional addition to the landscape, huge

beyond reckoning, erupting from the dunes like

the head of a javelin, or, a perhaps more appro-

priate simile, the prong of a trident, such as that

wielded by Poseidon (we were, after all, in the

midst of a Sea of Sand!).

Some sort of joke, Khalifa presumed.

It took us much of the day to reach this fantastic

object, and necessitated a not inconsiderable

diversion from our set course. Several of the men

were against going towards it at all, believing it to

396

be a thing of ill omen and harbinger of evil, the

sort of charming superstitious bunkum to which

the mind of the Egyptian Arab appears par-

ticularly susceptible (they are, in many ways, as

Lord Cromer has so rightly indicated, little better

than a nation of children).

Khalifa shook his head, half amused by the com-

ment, half annoyed. Bloody arrogant English!

I gave ear to the men's concerns and did my best

to quell them, conceding that large rocks could

indeed be frightening, although generally in my

experience only to those of a feminine or childlike

disposition, and certainly not to such hardened

men as they. That seemed to have the desired effect

and, despite some churlish mutterings, we con-

tinued onwards, attaining our goal late in the

afternoon and setting up camp at its base.

There is, I am sure you will concede, only so

much that can be said about an outcrop of rock,

even one as curious as this, and I believe I have

exhausted most of it in the previous few para-

graphs. I would, however, draw attention to one

particular aspect of the feature, namely certain

markings discovered close to its base, on the

southward side, which, on closer examination,

proved to be rudimentary hieroglyphs.

My command of the ancient Egyptian language

is as limited as that of geology. I knew enough,

however, to hazard a guess that the signs spelt out

a name: 'Net-nebu'. An early traveller, no doubt,

who had passed by this very spot several millennia

before we ourselves came to stand upon it.

397

Later that same night, as Azab the cook served

up dinner, I raised a toast – in tea, sadly, not wine

– to the intrepid Net-nebu, wishing him retrospec-

tive good health, and hoping most sincerely that

he had reached his destination safely. The men too

raised their cups, solemnly repeating my words

without, I suspect, having the least idea what they

were talking about. It appeared to lift their spirits,

however, and a sound night's sleep was had by all.

Khalifa read through the description twice to

make sure he'd understood it properly, scribbling

the odd note to himself, then turned to an

appendix at the end of the book. Here there were

extracts from de Villiers's expedition diary, with

details of the distances covered each day, and on

what compass bearing. By measuring these against

a basic map of western Egypt he was able to get an

idea of the general area in which the pyramid-

shaped outcrop was located. He asked the

librarian for more detailed maps, and set about

pinpointing it precisely.

This took longer than he thought. He went right

down to a 1:150,000 scale map, but couldn't find

the outcrop anywhere. There was something that

might have been it on an enhanced satellite map of

the Dune Sea, but it was by no means clear, while

a 1:50,000 Egyptian military survey, on which it

would almost certainly have showed up, stopped

just to the west of the area he was concerned with.

He began to think he wouldn't find it.

In the end he did. On a Second World War RAF

pilot's chart, of all things, kept in the library more

as a historical memento than for any geographical

398

information it might contain. Nonetheless it pro-

vided a detailed topographical picture of the area

between 26 and 30 degrees of both longitude and

latitude, and there, roughly halfway between Siwa

and al-Farafra, sticking out from an otherwise

empty landscape, was a small triangle with the

legend 'Pyramidal Rock Formation'. Khalifa

slammed his hand on the desk in delight, the

sound echoing through the room like a gunshot.

'Sorry,' he whispered to the librarian, who had

put his head round the door to see what was going

on.

He noted down the rock's co-ordinates, check-

ing and rechecking to make sure he had them

exactly and then, wondering if his friend Fat

Abdul still organized desert tours, stood up and

stretched. Only then did he notice it had gone dark

outside. He looked at his watch. Past eight

o'clock. And he'd promised to be home by four for

the children's parade.

'Dammit!' he hissed, snatching up his notebook

and rushing out. Zenab would not be happy.

399

33

T H E WESTERN DESERT

By nightfall there was still no trace of the army

and Dravic was growing impatient.

All day long he had stood staring at the work

below, waiting for the cry to go up that something

had been found. Hour after hour had gone by, the

sun burning down on him, the flies swarming

around his face, the huge rock towering overhead,

its outline trembling in the outrageous heat, and

still the cry hadn't come. The vacuums had

worked nonstop, lowering the ground around the

base of the rock by almost ten metres, but there

was nothing. Just sand. Thousands upon

thousands of tons of it, as if the desert was mock-

ing him.

A couple of times he had descended into the

excavation trench himself, poking around with his

trowel, cursing anyone who happened to be

nearby. For the most part, however, he had

remained beneath the shade of his umbrella,

chomping on his cigars, wiping the sweat from his

400

eyes, growing increasingly anxious and frustrated.

As the sun went down and the sky darkened, the

air growing mercifully cooler, they set up giant arc

lamps all around the excavation, flooding the

valley with light. The chances of the illumination

being spotted out there in the vastness of

the desert were negligible and, anyway, it was a

risk they had to take if they wanted to push on

with the work. Every available man was issued

with a shovel and sent down into the trench to dig.

There was now a whole army down there, labour-

ing furiously beneath the blazing white light. An

army searching for an army. Yet still there was no

sign of it.

He was beginning to worry that Lacage might

be right. Perhaps the army was further down than

he'd thought. His estimation was that it ought to

be between four and seven metres below the desert

surface. That was what he'd told Sayf al-Tha'r.

Between four and seven metres. Ten at the outside.

But they were down to ten now and there was

nothing. Absolutely nothing.

They'd find it eventually, of course, but time

was pressing. They couldn't stay out here for ever.

As each day went by there was more chance of

their activities attracting attention. The desert was

remote, but not so remote that they could hide in

it indefinitely. They had a week at most. And if the

army was fifty metres down they wouldn't be able

to get much of it out in that time.

'Where is it?' he muttered, sucking angrily on

his cigar. 'We should have found it by now. Where

the fuck is it?'

He clenched his fists and worked the knuckles

401

into his temples. He had a furious headache –

hardly surprising, given that he'd been standing up

there for over twelve hours. He needed to calm

down. Take his mind off things. He shouted to one

of the men below, telling them he was going to his

tent and that if anything happened they should

call him immediately, and then turned and walked

back down towards the camp. He had a bottle of

vodka in his bag. A few shots of that and he'd feel

a lot better. And perhaps he'd get a couple of

hours' sleep as well. He could do with it.

As he walked, however, another idea gradually

came into his head, causing a smile to spread

slowly across his huge face. Yes, he thought, that

would really take his mind off things. He'd get a

wash, have a few drinks, eat, and then . . .

He reached the camp and, weaving his way

through the stacks of equipment, stopped in front

of a tent and put his head through the flap. Inside

Tara and Daniel were lying curled on the floor.