Her makeshift torch winked out, the crunchy burnt end falling to the floor, dangerously close to her foot. “One down, one to go. I don’t want to think about what we’ll do when yours goes out, too.”
“We’ve got a bit of time. What do you think about my conjecture?”
Isis could now see only what was directly in front of Thorne’s booted feet. The walls were once again dark, hiding their secrets. Their story. “God, it
does
make some
convoluted sense.” Darkness didn’t usually bother her, but this darkness was oppressive and stuffy. She was so thirsty she’d drink…
Pepsi
. Her skin itself felt tight and parched, and even her hair crackled dryly around her face.
Water!
she screamed in her head.
There was absolutely no point sharing her desperate thirst with Thorne, who must be even worse off than she was. “But don’t you think the coincidence of your bad guy knowing my father is way the hell out of the realm of possibility? Of
credibility
?”
“Granted, I don’t believe in coincidences, but they
do
happen. The world of Egyptology isn’t that large. It’s feasible that the two knew each other, or at least knew
of
each other. It wouldn’t have been hard for good old Boris to buy your father a round or two. Here, or in London, or even in Seattle.
“Your father could’ve bragged about the find of a lifetime. Yermalof could retire and not work another day in fifty lifetimes if he fenced Cleopatra’s wealth.”
“Wouldn’t you, in your capacity as an MI5 operative in charge of rooting him out, have heard if the market was flooded with Queen Cleopatra’s antiquities?” She was sure Thorne’s torch was getting dimmer and dimmer, and she slipped her hand from his belt to lace her fingers with his. The prospect of getting lost in the tomb, and being alone, scared the crap out of her.
Her stomach growled loudly. “Sorry. How long have we been walking, do you think?”
Two, three hours? A month?
“Half an hour to forty minutes. Are you tired? Want to stop and take a breather?”
“I’d rather take a breather of fresh air while I drink a gallon of iced Coke while sitting in a deep bathtub, thank you.”
“The air here smells fresher. I think we’re heading in the right direction.” He squeezed her hand. “We’ll be out of here before you know it.”
“From your lips—” The air smelled no different here than it had smelled five hundred miles back. Dust, must, and the sex they’d had earlier. She smelled it on herself, and on Thorne, and just thinking about sex with Thorne made her girl parts throb and she didn’t have even a drop of moisture to spare to lubricate something she wasn’t going to use for a while.
So no thinking about light, water, fresh air,
or
sex. She was running out of topics.
“Something like what you’re talking about would be almost impossible to keep a secret. And Dylan claims he’s discovered the tomb as well,
and
he swears to have solid, undeniable proof, and the blessings of the powers that be to dig there.”
She thought of the painting of Osiris and Isis in the corridor behind them. Her father had always maintained that Cleopatra and Mark Antony and been buried together.
Two suicides. Antony first, and then his lover…
“When we get out of here, let’s go find your ex-lover and see what he has to say.”
The walls and ceiling were covered with images, too many to even try to guess who or what they represented, And even in the low light, Isis could see the gleam of
gold and precious stones. “I told you, I never slept with him.” Moving the button around in her mouth didn’t produce much moisture, and she licked her parched lips, which just made her thirstier.
“I bet it wasn’t for lack of him trying,” Thorne’s voice echoed. He didn’t appear that interested by the seated ten- or twelve-foot-high statues lined up on either side of the corridor now. Isis recognized the ovals depicting names.
Whose,
she had no idea. But they wore the high crown with a snake curved on the front. The crowns might mean royalty, but Isis thought perhaps they also represented Osiris, who was the god of the afterlife.
Or Mark Antony.
“He lied about being in the hospital when your father went out on the dig.” Thorne lifted her fingers to kiss her knuckles in a strangely romantic gesture. “Let’s see what else he’s bullshitting about.”
“I know you don’t like him.” Isis narrowed her eyes to see if that would help her figure out who the people were—royalty? Gods? Several had their arms crossed, holding the traditional crook in one hand and flail in the other. “Frankly I don’t like him that much, either,” she told Thorne. Squinting didn’t allow her to see any better, nor did it help her identify who or what she was looking at.
“But I can’t see him masterminding an elaborate kidnapping plot replete with camping equipment, and a helicopter to seal us in here. It just doesn’t seem like his style.” The doorway up ahead had two giant statues, painted black, with gold headdresses and staffs, standing
guard on either side. For such enormous statues the doorway itself was small, the size of a normal door in a house. Not the grand entrance to an important tomb. There was also, oddly, a faint smell of ammonia.
“Maybe not his style, but certainly Yermalof’s. And styles change when there are millions if not billions of dollars up for gra—
Bloody hell!
” Thorne stopped dead and Isis bumped into his back.
They passed from the corridor, between the feet of one of the statues, and into a chamber. Thousands of intricate and exquisitely painted images and glyphs decorated the walls. Strange animals, statues standing guard, and gold—everywhere.
In the middle of the chamber, side by side, were two gold shrines.
“Oh. My. God.”
“Holy bloody hell!”
The torch went out, plunging them into darkness.
ISIS LET OUT A
little shriek the instant it went dark. Her hand in his was clammy and cold. In the few moments he’d had to see where they were, Thorne already knew there were no other openings leading from this chamber; if there had been, none of this wealth would have survived the centuries. This was the end of the line. “Don’t panic.” He kept his voice low and calm.
“I won’t as soon as you tell me why not!”
“This is within yards of where your amulet came from.”
“Are you saying my father was right
here
?”
“Close enough.” His sixth sense gave him pinpoint accuracy. Professor Magee, or whoever had given Isis her amulet, had found it within a hundred feet of where they were standing.
“Take out your camera. We can use the flash to see if there’s another corridor leading away from here.”
“God, yes!” Her voice shook slightly as she shifted. “Excellent idea!” Not letting go of his hand, she snapped open the camera bag. “Hold this.” She started handing him contents of the case, which he gathered in the crook of his arm since he was still holding the now-dead torch.
He heard her remove the lens cap.
“Point it ahead. Let’s see what we have.”
A brilliant wash of light illuminated the tomb, and it looked even bigger than it had appeared by the meager, dull light of the sputtering torch. Gold bounced back the light from the flash, reflecting off surfaces so that the whole placed gleamed like a sunbeam breaking through dark clouds.
“I thought I imagined it, I wanted to see it so badly. Mark Antony and Cleo! Oh, my God, Thorne! We found their burial place.” She dragged him forward in the darkness. A couple of things fell from his arms, and he paused to dump everything on the floor near his feet in a pile to gather later. If there
was
a later. He didn’t want to point out the obvious, that while the find was spectacular—monumental, in fact—it meant they were still at a dead end, literally.
“It doesn’t look as though anything in here has been touched in over three thousand years.” The flash went off
again, giving Thorne a quick impression of the two giant shrines, each measuring at least sixteen or seventeen feet by about twelve feet, and at least nine feet high. They were positioned side by side with just a few feet between them.
“Again,” he ordered, reaching out to touch the wall of the one closest to them. Some kind of wood, cedar probably, covered with plaster, gilded and inlaid with precious and semiprecious stones. It looked as though it had just been erected that day. It was mind-boggling to realize it had been placed there three thousand years ago.
The flash went off, showing them the double sloping roofs and some of the hieroglyphics. Another flash. He got an impression of the brilliant blue background, hieroglyphs, and a shitload of gold.
Impressive as hell, undoubtedly the discovery of the twenty-first century.
They’d stumbled across what everyone else was willing to kill for.
“Did you see the double
tyet
-knot amulets? Those are Isis and Osiris.” Flash. “And on the end there, the protective
wedjat
-eyes… Oh, Connor, I
wish
my father could see this. Look at the details in these.” She ran her fingers reverently over a sunken relief of a headless lion.
“Maybe he will one day.” Thorne tried to keep each flash image in his head so he could reexamine it in his mind’s eye. “Take lots of pictures.”
With each burst of light he was more interested in seeing if there was a way out. He wasn’t willing to spend a whole hell of a lot more time here. If there was no exit,
then they had to negotiate the tunnel back to the original chamber. Isis might’ve gotten a second burst of energy, but he’d noticed her slowing footsteps and lack of energy fifteen minutes ago. She needed water—hell, they both needed water, to replenish what they were sweating out in the too-warm confines of the tomb.
“Let’s walk around to the other side.” The stink of ammonia was stronger behind the two shrines. Ammonia usually indicated bats. Tombs were a favorite hangout for them. He didn’t hear any squeaking.
“Okay.” There was a little bounce in her step as he felt his way along the wall of one of the shrines. “These are like Russian nesting dolls.” Flash. “There are usually at least five or six shrines one inside the other before reaching the sarcophagus inside. I would love, love, love to go through each one… I’d love getting out of here more, however.”
“Working on it.” All around the perimeter of the chamber were piles of Coptic jars, statues of all sizes, and piles upon piles of jewelry and ornamentation. What there
wasn’t
was a fucking
door
.
“To be the first person to lay eyes on Cleopatra in thousands of years…” She laughed as she took another series of shots. “I see now how easy it was for my father to get the bug, and why he never wanted to leave Egypt.”
“Flash the ceiling.”
She did so. “What are we looking for?”
“Bats.”
“Ew. Is that the smell?”
He nodded, which she couldn’t see. “I didn’t see any,
did you?” Didn’t see them, but knew they were somewhere close by. “If there are bats around, there’s a way in and out of the tomb close by.”
“Bats can squeeze into teeny-tiny holes, right? There might be an opening that’s only bat—”She stopped his forward motion with a sharp tug of his hand. “Hang on, stand here.” She positioned him. “Look straight ahead.” Flash.
“Do you see that?” Her voice rose in excitement.
“What am I looking at?” A narrow recessed panel, carved out of limestone, was set in the wall. A couple of statues in rich garb, holding hands, sat in a two-foot-high niche. Like everything else here, it was beautifully executed and covered with gold and stones.
“It’s a soul door—a false door.” She stepped closer and got off another flash. “The statues are to offer the souls refuge if the body’s stolen.”
“Lovely,” he said with a bit of a bite. “But we’re looking for a
real
door, reme—” The words cut off abruptly when he heard a faint murmur of voices beyond the wall. He squeezed Isis’s fingers, but there was no need. She too had heard the voices, and went dead still.
Suddenly a pinpoint of light shone through the solid stone soul “door” from the other side. “Don’t move,” Thorne breathed, squeezing her hand.
Moving stealthily, he went to the small hole and peered through it.
At eye level were the bats they smelled. Thousands of them, clinging in a black mass to the ceiling. Clearly not bothered by either the light or activity below them, they
clung to the ceiling. About a hundred feet below them was another chamber, brightly lit by massive floodlights. Thorne made out piles of artifacts, carriages, giant statues, shiny trinkets piled in boxes, lids nearby. Furniture, beds, chests, chairs, and tables were piled one on top of the next, and baskets and boxes were everywhere. Some neatly stacked, the rest in untidy piles.
A storeroom of some kind.
A way out.
A robed man circled the room, turning off each light and leaving that area shadowed as he moved to the next. A small group of men, dressed in Western wear, clustered nearby, conversed without fear of being overheard.
Their voices carried fairly well through the soul door. But the susurrus of wings, squeaks of the bats, and distance made it hard to get more than a word here and there. Still, he was pretty sure he could identify the man in charge by his size, and the sound of his voice. Surprising, but not completely unexpected.
Behind him, he heard Isis’s slightly unsteady breathing. But she didn’t insist on taking a look herself, and she didn’t say a word.
The men stayed another ten minutes, walking the area, pointing out objects, which one guy noted on an electronic tablet. A few moments later, the lights and the voices faded away, leaving the stink of ammonia and the rustle of the bats.
“WHAT DID YOU SEE?”
Isis asked softly when she heard him move away from the wall. He found her hand unerringly
in the dark, and wound his fingers tightly with hers. His touch immediately centered her.
“Looks like they’re packing up the artifacts for transportation.”