Kingdom of Darkness (8 page)

They reached the end of the passage, which dropped down a flight of age-worn steps. Deyab called out in Arabic. A reply soon came. ‘Dr Assad and Dr Banna are in here,’ he told his charges.

Nina, however, was less interested in who they were about to meet than where they were meeting them. ‘God!’ she exclaimed as she reached the foot of the steps. ‘This is amazing!’

The space they entered was a rectangular room around fifty feet long and thirty wide, its arched ceiling supported by two rows of ornate columns. The walls were decorated with more reliefs depicting the life and conquests of the Macedonian leader. At the far end was a marble tableau, statues kneeling before a larger-than-life figure poised in an eternally heroic stance.

Alexander the Great.

The sculpture was similar to other representations of the king that Nina had seen: waves of thick hair flowing down around a handsome yet hard face with a broad, almost leonine nose. A noticeable change from other statues of Alexander was a greater sense of age – not of the stone, but the subject it had captured. This leader was near the end of his short but eventful life, weariness showing through his commanding presence in contrast to the almost boyish features usually portrayed.

‘So that’s him?’ said Eddie as they passed two armed ASPS stationed on each side of the entrance.

‘That’s him,’ Nina replied. ‘Alexander of Macedon.’

‘Nice hair, I’ll give him that much.’

A young Egyptian man with a thin and patchy beard emerged from behind a pillar. ‘Dr Wilde?’

‘Yes, hi,’ said Nina, peering past him for the senior archaeologists they were there to meet. ‘I’m here to see Dr Assad and Dr Banna. Can you take us to them?’

The man’s eyes widened, and he rose to his full height, affronted. ‘
I
am Dr Banna!’

‘Really?’ she said, surprised. He only appeared to be in his mid twenties, just a few years older than the recently graduated Macy, and nowhere near old enough to have earned a PhD. ‘I mean, of course you are,’ she quickly corrected as his expression of offence deepened.

It did not mollify him. ‘I should have expected nothing else from the
great
Nina Wilde,’ he said, the emphasis positively dripping with derision. ‘Why would you bother to find out who you are meeting? Everyone else is beneath the world’s most famous archaeologist! And here you are, swooping in to take credit for someone else’s discoveries, as you have done so many times before.’

Eddie nudged Nina. ‘I
said
you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.’

She held up her hands to the scowling Banna. ‘Okay, don’t know what I’ve done to make you so mad, but we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. Is there a problem?’

‘Oh no, there is no problem at all!’ he said, shrugging as his sarcasm threatened to break the top of the scale. ‘You think I am some intern, some
child
, because I am young, but there is nothing wrong with that. Nor is there anything wrong with the IHA taking control of an Egyptian dig, and there is
especially
nothing wrong with you coming here to feast on the publicity of opening the tomb like some desert vulture!’

‘All right, mate, that’s enough,’ said Eddie, stepping forward.

Banna gave him a dismissive glare. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m her husband. And I’m also the bloke who’s going to pop you in the face if you’re rude to my wife again.’

‘I do hope that won’t be necessary, Mr Chase,’ came a booming voice from behind Banna. Dr Ismail Assad, wearing dust-caked overalls, stepped into view. ‘Ubayy is simply full of the fires of youth.’

Banna fumed, but under the level gaze of the country’s chief archaeologist decided to say nothing more . . . for the moment. ‘Dr Assad,’ Nina said, stepping around Banna to greet him. ‘It’s great to see you again.’

‘And you too, Dr Wilde. Mr Chase as well – I last saw you in Switzerland, I believe? That was an exciting night.’ His smile widened, a twinkle appearing in his eye as he saw Macy. ‘And Miss Sharif, welcome back. The discoverer of the Pyramid of Osiris returns to the land of her ancestors!’

‘
Co
-discoverer,’ Nina pointed out. Macy jokingly made a face at her.

Banna spoke sharply in Arabic to Assad, then said to Nina: ‘This is exactly what I mean! When you are around, no one else is allowed credit. You are like a black hole, except all the light you pull in comes from camera flashes.’

By now, Nina had recovered from her initial startlement. ‘Hey, you listen, Doogie Howser,’ she said, jabbing a finger at him. ‘I don’t know where you’ve got this idea that I’m some sort of insane publicity hog, but point one: the Egyptian government
asked
the IHA to assist on the dig; it didn’t barge in and take over. And point two: I don’t even
work
for the IHA any more! I’m here entirely as a favour, again by request of the Egyptian government. And frankly, right now I’m not in a frame of mind to take crap from anybody. Okay?’

Banna bristled, but Assad intervened smoothly before he could reply. ‘Perhaps we should go and meet Dr Schofield, hmm? You can see the final preparations for the opening of the tomb tomorrow.’

‘Yeah, I think that’d be a good idea,’ said Eddie.

Macy sidled up to him. ‘Whoa. She gets scary when she’s pissed at someone,’ she whispered.

‘Don’t I bloody know it,’ he replied.

‘What was that?’ Nina demanded, eyeing the pair.

‘Nothing,’ Eddie said with an innocent face.

Deyab stayed behind as Assad gestured for the others to come with him, heading for an opening in one corner. ‘This room is the antechamber,’ he began, his voice becoming oratorical. ‘Visitors would enter here to pay homage to Alexander. The most important visitors, or those who brought sufficient tribute, would be permitted to go through to the treasury and the burial chamber beyond, to see the body of the king in person.’ He gestured at the floor as they descended another set of stone steps. ‘Emperors and pharaohs have trodden these very stairs.’

‘Not for a long time, though,’ said Nina.

‘No indeed. We believe the tomb has been sealed since around 400
CE
. There is evidence that a structure was built to mark its original entrance – which we have not yet located, as the tunnel to it is blocked. That would explain how Al-Masudi and other scholars of the Middle Ages could claim to have seen it, but until now, nobody has entered the tomb itself for at least sixteen centuries.’

‘No wonder the place needs a bit of dusting,’ said Eddie.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and continued along a passage, rounding several corners before seeing bright spotlights illuminating a large metal door. A small group of people stood at the obstruction. ‘You know Bill, of course,’ the Egyptian said to Nina as they reached them.

‘Yeah, I might have met him somewhere before,’ she replied with a wry smile as she shook the hand of Dr William Schofield. Her former colleague was now on the shortlist of candidates to take her place as the permanent director of the IHA.

‘Can’t think where,’ Schofield said with a grin of his own. ‘Nina, hi. Good to see you again – although having heard what happened to you in LA, I’m sorry about the circumstances.’

Assad completed the introductions. ‘And this is Dr Youssef Habib, my associate from the Ministry, and Dr Dina Rashad.’ He gestured to a pair of Egyptians, the former a doleful middle-aged man, the latter a plump woman in her thirties with a brightly patterned headscarf over her long black hair.

Nina recognised her name. ‘Did you write a paper on the tomb of Queen Hetepheres a year or two ago?’ she asked.

Dina smiled, blushing slightly. ‘Yes, I did. Thank you! I am honoured that you would remember it, Dr Wilde.’

‘It was a very thought-provoking paper. I always remember things that interest me.’

Eddie smirked. ‘You written anything Nina’d remember?’ he asked Banna.

‘Eddie,’ Nina chided.

Banna scowled. ‘I have written three very highly regarded papers, as a matter of fact. My monograph on the founding of Alexandria is the reason I was put in charge of this dig.’

‘He is very good,’ said Assad, adding with a tiny smile, ‘for a man so young. Now,’ he went on, before Banna could complain, ‘will this door be opened tomorrow?’

‘I think so,’ said Schofield. ‘We’ve finished checking the lock with the fibre optics.’ He nodded towards a laptop and endoscopic camera on a bench.

‘The lock is a simple latch,’ Dina added. ‘Once we release it, we should be able to pull the door open.’

Assad nodded. ‘Good, good. So what do you think, Dr Wilde?’

‘Very impressive – and very exciting,’ she said, examining the door more closely. As in the outer passage, reliefs had been worked into its surface. The figure of Alexander was at the centre, standing tall above the supplicants around him. ‘It’ll be an incredible find.’

‘As long as nobody tries to take it from us,’ the Egyptian said with dark humour.

‘Anyone trying to break in here’d have a job,’ said Eddie. ‘The only way in or out’s down that long corridor, and you’ve got, what, a couple of dozen blokes with guns at the top?’

‘That many – that you can see,’ said Assad. ‘The whole street was being watched, even before this new threat. The ASPS guard the tomb, inside and out, twenty-four hours a day.’

Habib spoke up. ‘This threat, I cannot believe it is serious. You would need an army to break in here! We are worrying about nothing.’

‘It was serious enough for a man to kill someone to stop them from telling me about it,’ said Nina. ‘And serious enough for them to try to kill
me
, even though I’m not even with the IHA any more.’

‘Perhaps they did not know that,’ suggested Dina. ‘I did not know you had left until Dr Assad told me.’

Banna faced Nina, radiating both disdain and scepticism. ‘Dr Assad also told me what these raiders are supposedly trying to steal. A statue of Bucephalus?’

‘That’s right,’ she told him. ‘We managed to save some of the plans, which say it’s their primary objective.’

‘But we have found no such statue in the outer tomb.’ He thumped his fist against the imposing bronze barrier. ‘This door has been closed for centuries. Nobody could know what is inside. And there are no mentions of a statue of Bucephalus in the texts describing the tomb. I know this for a fact; I have read every one of them.’

‘Then maybe they’ve got a text you haven’t,’ said Eddie.

He folded his arms. ‘I doubt that. And why would they want to steal this one statue alone, and ignore the other treasures?’

Nina hesitated before answering, unsure how much she should reveal to the Egyptian archaeologists – and to Macy, for that matter. But she decided that since they could be at risk if the raiders carried out their plan, they had a right to know. ‘From what we’ve learned, they think the statue will lead them to the Spring of Immortality.’

The revelation produced different reactions from her audience: puzzlement from Macy, surprise from Dina, a look of uncertainty from Habib. But it was Banna’s response that was the most clear and forceful. ‘
Hra’!
’ he scoffed in Arabic, drawing a disapproving glare from Assad, before continuing: ‘You believe the
Alexander Romance
?’

‘I don’t believe or disbelieve it at this stage,’ Nina insisted. ‘The point is, whoever these people are,
they
believe it. And since they’re willing to kill for what they believe, I’m taking the possibility seriously. And so should you.’

‘The
Romance
is fiction, a fairy tale!’ said Banna. ‘It is not even correct on simple historical facts.’ He searched his memory for an example. ‘Like the role of Ariobarzanes.’

‘Who’s he?’ Eddie asked.

Nina knew the name. ‘In the
Romance
, he was one of the men who killed Darius, the last ruler of the Persian Empire. Alexander wanted to capture Darius alive, but his own people murdered him first.’

‘So says the
Romance
,’ Banna continued. ‘But according to the actual chroniclers of history, Ariobarzanes was killed by Alexander and his men at the Battle of the Persian Gates, half a year before Darius died!’

‘Well, that depends which chronicler you’re reading,’ Nina countered. ‘He was killed in battle,
or
he and his officers surrendered to Alexander,
or
he survived the Persian Gates and was killed while trying to return to Persepolis. Those are all from accepted historical records – but they’re also all mutually exclusive.’

‘But what you are talking about is fantasy, not history. Giant crabs! Invisible men with whips! Six-eyed horses! It is all nonsense – amusing nonsense, yes, it is very entertaining. But it is not true.’

‘The people who tried to kill Nina obviously think it is,’ said Macy, defending her friend.

Assad intervened once again. ‘There is a simple way to find out. When we open the tomb tomorrow, if there is indeed a statue of Bucephalus inside, then perhaps we should give the possibility more thought.’

‘It would prove nothing,’ insisted Banna. ‘I will be surprised if there is
not
a statue of Bucephalus in the burial chamber. Alexander and his horse were almost inseparable.’ He shook his head. ‘The world’s most famous archaeologist,’ the words oozed with disdain, ‘believes that the Spring of Immortality is real. What is next? Noah’s Ark? Pandora’s Box?’

‘I dunno, maybe Atlantis?’ Eddie said sarcastically. ‘Oh, wait, Nina’s found that already. Or Hercules – no, hang on, she found his tomb an’ all.’

‘And the Pyramid of Osiris,’ Macy added. ‘And the city of El Dorado, and King Arthur’s tomb . . .’

Assad chuckled at the younger Egyptian’s growing annoyance. ‘I think Dr Wilde has proven her credentials, don’t you, Ubayy?’

Scowling, Banna spoke in tight-lipped Arabic to the government official. Assad grudgingly conceded some point, then faced Nina. ‘You know that I will always listen to you, Dr Wilde. But Ubayy reminded me that this is his dig; I put him in charge myself! So when the burial chamber is opened—’

‘I never wanted to step on anybody’s toes,’ said Nina, raising her hands in conciliation. ‘My number one concern is to protect a major archaeological site – and my own life, of course! But it looks like you’ve got everything covered.’