The Pharaoh's Secret (8 page)

White Desert of Egypt, seven miles west of the Pyramids

1130 hours

The quiet of the White Desert was broken by the staccato beat of helicopter blades as a French-made SA-342 Gazelle raced above the scalloped sand dunes at five hundred feet.

The copter, clad in a desert-camouflage pattern, was an older model. It had once belonged to the Egyptian military before its transfer, at a marginal price, to the current owner. As it crossed the largest of the towering dunes, it turned sideways and slowed.

The odd style of flight allowed Tariq Shakir to watch a group of vehicles racing across the blistering sands down below. There were seven in all, but only five were moving. Two of the vehicles had collided badly and were now stopped dead in a trough between the last two dunes.

Shakir raised his expensive mirrored sunglasses and held up a
pair of binoculars. “Two of them are out,” he said to another passenger. “Have the men go pick them up. The rest are still going strong.”

The remaining vehicles climbed the last immense dune, carving lines in the smooth surface, tires spitting sand, four-wheel-drive systems straining to the limit. One of them seemed to have left the pack behind, perhaps having found firmer sand and a better path to the summit.

“Number four,” a voice informed Shakir via his headphones. “I told you he would not be outdone.”

Shakir glanced into the aft section of the helicopter’s cabin. A short man in black fatigues sat there, grinning from ear to ear.

“Don’t be so sure, Hassan,” Shakir admonished. “The race is not always to the swift.”

With that, Shakir pressed the radio’s talk switch. “It’s time,” he said. “Allow the others to catch him and then shut them all down. We shall see who has spirit and who is prone to giving in.”

This call was received by a chase car trailing the group of racers. A technician listening in did as ordered, quickly tapping several keys on his laptop before hitting
ENTER
.

Out on the dunes, the leading SUV began to smoke. It slowed rapidly and then stalled completely. The others gained on it, spreading out and preparing to speed past the unlucky driver en route to the far side of the dune and the finish line of this strange race, which was itself the culmination of a grueling month of tests to see whom Shakir would choose to join the upper echelon of his growing organization.

“Quite unfair of you,” Hassan shouted from the aft section of the cabin.

“Life is unfair,” Shakir replied. “If anything, I have just leveled
the playing field. Now we shall see who is a real man and who is unworthy.”

Out on the sand, the other vehicles stalled in rapid succession and soon the noise of roaring engines and grinding transmissions was replaced with cursing and slamming doors. The drivers, drenched in sweat, clad in grimy clothes and looking as if they’d been through war or hell or both, clambered out of their machines in stunned disbelief.

One opened the hood of his vehicle to see if he could fix the problem. Another kicked the quarter panel, leaving a nasty dent in the sheet metal of the expensive Mercedes SUV. Others committed similar acts of frustration. Fatigue and exhaustion seemed to have sapped their strength of mind.

“They’re giving up,” Shakir said.

“Not all of them,” Hassan replied.

Down on the sand, one of the men had made the choice Shakir was hoping for. He’d looked at the others, gauged the distance to the top of the dune and then taken off, running.

Several seconds passed before the others realized what he intended: to finish the race on foot and win the prize. The finish line was no more than five hundred yards away and, once he crested the dune, it would be mostly downhill.

The others chased after him and soon five men were charging up the dune, over the crest and down the other side.

In some ways, descending the soft sand was harder than climbing up it. The wind had shaped this dune into a steep wave and two men stumbled forward, fell and began to roll uncontrollably. One of them realized that it might be faster to simply slide, and when he reached the steeper section, he launched himself into the air and slid on his stomach for sixty yards.

“We shall have a winner after all,” Shakir said to Hassan. He then turned to the pilot. “Take us to the finish line.”

The helicopter turned and descended, following a long diagonal scar that cut across the desert in a straight line. That scar was known as the Zandrian pipeline. A pumping station at its base served as the finish line to the race.

The Gazelle touched down beside it, kicking up grit and dust in a swirling little sandstorm. Shakir pulled off his headset and opened the door. He climbed from the cockpit and kept his head low as he made his way toward several men in black fatigues similar to Hassan’s.

In another time and another place, Shakir might’ve been a movie star. Tall and lean, with a tanned face, coarse brown hair and a solid square jaw that seemed capable of withstanding a camel’s kick, he was handsome in the sun-burnished way of an outdoorsman. He exuded confidence. And though he wore the same uniform as the men who stood beside him, his bearing was as different from theirs as a king’s would be from a commoner.

In years past, Shakir had been a member of the Egyptian secret police. Under the Mubarak regime, which had ruled Egypt for thirty years, he’d been second in command of the service, hunting down enemies of the government and holding back the tide of insurgents until the so-called Arab Spring had come and turned Egypt upside-down, ushering in what seemed to Shakir and others like him an age of chaos. Years later, that chaos was only just beginning to subside, with no small amount of help from Shakir and others, who were rebuilding the power structure of the country from their new perch in the shadows of private industry.

Using the skills he’d honed in the service of his country, Shakir had built an organization named Osiris. With it, he’d become wealthy. And while it was not a criminal organization in the
strictest sense, it conducted business with a certain flair and reputation. If Shakir was correct in his timetable, Osiris would soon control not only Egypt but most of North Africa as well.

For now, he focused on the race, the end of a grueling competition pitting twenty men against one another for the chance to become part of his special operative section. He had dozens of men, and women, already spread throughout North Africa and Europe, but to succeed he needed more, he needed new blood, recruits who understood what it meant to work for him.

Out on the dune, drivers one and four had separated themselves from the rest. As they reached the flat expanse at the bottom of the dune, they sprinted toward the pumping station. Number one was in the lead, but number four, Hassan’s handpicked favorite, was catching up to him. Just when it seemed Hassan would be proven right, number four made a fatal mistake. He miscalculated the nature of the competition, which had no rules and allowed for victory at all costs. Like life itself.

He took the lead, but as he did, the other driver lunged forward and shoved him in the back, sending him falling to the ground. His face hit the sand, and the other driver added insult to injury by stomping on his back as he continued on.

By the time number four looked up, it was all over. Driver number one had beaten him. The others came stumbling in, passing him by, as he remained on the ground, dejected and bitter.

When they too had reached the finish line, Shakir made an announcement.

“Each of you has finished,” he said. “Each of you has learned the only rules of life that matter: you must never quit, you must show no mercy, you must win at any cost!”

“What about the others?” Hassan asked.

Shakir pondered this. A pair of drivers had remained on the
dune, unwilling to engage in the footrace after all they’d been through. And then there were the two others whose vehicles had collided. “Have them walk back to the prior checkpoint.”

“Walk?” Hassan replied in shock. “But it’s thirty miles from here.”

“Then they’d better get started,” Shakir said.

“There’s nothing between here and the checkpoint but sand. They’ll die in the desert,” Hassan replied.

“Probably,” Shakir admitted. “But if they survive, they’ll have learned a valuable lesson and I may reconsider and deem them worthy of enlistment.”

Hassan was Shakir’s closest adviser, an old ally from his Secret Service days. On rare occasions, Shakir allowed his old friend to influence his decisions, but not today. “Do as I’ve instructed.”

Hassan picked up a radio and made the call. A host of Shakir’s black-clad warriors swooped in to direct the laggards on a journey that would most likely kill them. In the meantime, driver number four got up and staggered across the finish line.

Hassan offered him water.

“No,” Shakir snapped. “He is to walk also.”

“But he almost won,” Hassan said.

“And yet he quit so close to the finish line,” Shakir said. “A trait I cannot stomach in any of my people. He walks with the others. And if I learn that anyone has helped him, it would be better for that person to kill himself rather than suffer what I will inflict on him.”

Driver number four looked at Shakir in disbelief, but instead of fear, a defiant glare appeared in his eyes.

Shakir actually appreciated the anger in that stare and for an instant considered revoking his order before deciding that it must stand. “The hike begins now,” Shakir said.

Number four shook loose from Hassan’s grip, turned without a word and began the arduous hike without looking back.

As he walked off, Shakir read a communiqué handed to him by an aide. “This is bad news.”

“What’s happened?” Hassan asked eagerly.

“Ammon Ta is confirmed dead,” Shakir said. “He was killed by two Americans before he could get to the Italian doctor.”

“Americans?”

Shakir nodded. “Members of the organization called NUMA, it seems.”

“NUMA,” Hassan repeated.

Each of them spoke the acronym with disdain. They’d been in the intelligence business long enough to have heard rumors of the exploits this American agency had undertaken. They were supposed to be oceanographers and such.

“This can’t be a good thing,” Hassan added. “You and I both know they’ve caused more problems than the CIA.”

Shakir nodded. “As I recall, it was a member of NUMA who saved Egypt from the destruction of the Aswan Dam a few years ago.”

“When we were all on the same side,” Hassan noted. “Do we have any exposure?”

Shakir shook his head confidently. “Neither the freighter nor Ammon Ta nor the cargo can be traced back to us.”

“What about Hagen, our operative on Lampedusa? Ammon Ta was supposed to deliver the Black Mist to him so he could use it to
influence
the governments of Europe.”

Shakir read on. “Hagen escaped and made it back to Malta. He will try one more time to purchase the artifacts before they’re revealed to the public. If he’s unsuccessful, he’ll try to steal them. He promises to report back in two days.”

“Hagen is the only link to us now,” Hassan said. “We should eliminate him. Immediately.”

“Not until he has those artifacts. I want those tablets in our possession or destroyed beyond anyone’s ability to reconstruct them.”

“Is it really worth this much effort?” Hassan asked. “We’re not even sure what’s on them.”

Shakir was tired of Hassan’s endless questioning. “Listen to me,” he barked. “We’re about to put the leaders of Europe in a sleeper hold that will give us carte blanche to annex the most valuable part of this continent without any kind of repercussions. If someone finds a clue to the antidote on those tablets—if someone figures out how to counteract the Black Mist
—
then our entire plan, completely dependent on leverage, will fail. How can you not understand this?”

Hassan shrank back. “Of course, but what makes you think that information will be found on these artifacts?”

“Because that’s what Napoleon was looking for,” Shakir said. “He’d heard rumors of the Mist, sent his men to the City of the Dead and removed everything he could find. It’s only by luck that
we
were able to piece together the formula from what remained undisturbed and what we recovered from the bay. That means the vast majority of the information was taken. Taken by Europeans from our forefathers. I will not allow them to use it against us. If any of the details happen to exist on these particular relics, they must be retrieved or destroyed. And when it’s done, only then shall we eliminate Hagen.”

“He’s too weak to do it himself,” Hassan suggested.

Shakir considered that. “I agree. Send a group of the new agents to back him up. With orders to make him disappear when it’s over or if he becomes a liability.”

Hassan nodded. “Of course. I’ll choose them personally,” he said. “In the meantime, the
others
have arrived, they’re waiting to speak with you down in the bunker.”

Shakir sighed. As distasteful as it was, even he had to answer to someone. Osiris was a private military force, the beginnings of an empire that would control governments instead of answer to them. But in many ways, at least until this plan came to fruition, it was also a corporation, with Shakir as its president and CEO.

The others, as Hassan had called them, were the equivalent of stockholders and members of the board, though all of them had bigger goals than mere success in business. Even unfathomable wealth was not enough for such men. They lusted for power and control, they wanted empires of their own, and Shakir was just the man to give it to them.

Shakir marched toward the shimmering pipeline and the long cinder-block structure that contained one of his many pumping stations. Two of his men stood guard there. They opened the doors and held them wide, keeping their eyes straight ahead. They knew better than to look Shakir in the face.

Once inside, Shakir walked to the rear of the building. A caged door separated him from a mining elevator. He opened it, stepped inside the car, which was designed to carry large groups of men and heavy equipment, and pressed the down button.

Two full minutes and four hundred feet later, the doors opened and Shakir stepped out into a cavernous subterranean compound illuminated by lights hidden in the floor and the walls. Part of the cave was natural, the rest carved out by Shakir’s mining team and
the engineers. It ran two hundred yards in length. Most of it was filled with monstrous pumps the size of small houses and dozens of large pipes that twisted and snaked across the huge cavern before meeting at a central point, plunging into the ground and vanishing.

Shakir removed his sunglasses, impressed, as always, by the work. He moved past the oversize machinery to a control center, where large screens displayed the outline of Egypt and much of North Africa. A series of lines crisscrossed the map, ignoring all borders. Numbers beside each line indicated pressures, flow rates and volumes. Tiny flags blinking green pleased him.

Finally, he arrived at the plush conference room. Aside from the view—there was none—the room was the equivalent of any corporate meeting space in a high-rise office tower. The mahogany table in the center was surrounded by plush chairs filled with corpulent men. Screens on the wall displayed the Osiris logo.

Shakir took a seat at the head of the table and studied the group, who waited for him. Five Egyptians, three from Libya, two Algerians and one representative each from the Sudan and Tunisia. Shakir had taken Osiris from nothing and turned it into a major international corporation in a few short years. The formula for success required four primary ingredients: hard work, ruthless cunning, connection and, of course, money. Other people’s money.

Shakir and his cronies from the Secret Service had provided the first three parts, the men around the table had provided the last. All of them were wealthy, most had once been powerful—
had once been
because the Arab Spring that had tossed Shakir out had affected them even more acutely.

It all started in Tunisia, where an impoverished street vendor who had been abused by the police for years set himself on fire in protest.

It seemed so impossible at the time that this act would have any lasting effect, that it would be anything more than another life burned up and discarded. But as it turned out the man not only lit himself on fire, he became the match that set the Arab world alight and burned half of it to the ground.

Tunisia fell first and those who’d run the country for decades escaped to Saudi Arabia. Algeria suffered next. And then the fire spread, engulfing Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi had ruled longer and more harshly than anyone: forty-two years with an iron grip. Those close to him had grown rich and powerful on oil wealth. When the civil war came, many did not escape with even their lives, but those who’d been smart enough to send money and family overseas were luckier—though, like their Tunisian compatriots, they soon became refugees, men without a country or a purpose.

Egypt came apart after that and the reverberations took down Yemen, Syria and Bahrain to varying degrees. All from such a tiny spark.

Now that the flames had burned out, the men who’d survived the blaze wanted to reassert their control.

“I trust you all had a pleasant journey,” Shakir said.

“We don’t wish to make small talk,” one of the Egyptians said, a man with white hair, a sharp Western suit and a large Breitling watch on his wrist. He had made his money being paid vast sums by the Egyptian Air Force to use planes they’d sold to him for pennies. “When will the operation begin? All of us are anxious.”

Shakir turned to another subordinate. “Are the pumping stations ready?”

The man nodded affirmatively, tapped the keyboard in front of him and brought up the same schematic of Africa that had been on display in the control room.

“As you can see,” Shakir said, “the network is complete.”

“Any indication that our drilling has been noticed?” one of the former generals from Libya asked.

“No,” Shakir insisted. “By using the construction of the oil pipe to conceal our underground work, we’ve been able to keep anyone from being suspicious while we tap into every important section of the deep sub-Saharan aquifer. Which, as you men know, feeds every spring and desert oasis from here to the western edge of Algeria.”

“What about the shallow aquifers?” one of the other Libyans asked. “Our people have been drawing on them for years.”

“Our studies show that all freshwater sources are dependent on this deeper body of liquid,” Shakir said. “Once we begin drawing water from it in large amounts, their supplies will become unreliable.”

“I want them to be cut off,” the Tunisian insisted.

“Impossible to completely cut them off,” Shakir replied. “But this is a desert. When Tunisia, Algeria and Libya see an overnight reduction in their water supply, of perhaps eighty to ninety percent, they will be at our mercy. Even rebels need to drink. Water will be restored when you men are back in power. Working together, Osiris will then control all of North Africa.”

“And what happens to the water?” the man from Algiers asked. “You can’t just pump billions of gallons of water out into the desert every day without someone noticing.”

“It runs through the pipelines,” Shakir explained, pointing to the network that crisscrossed the map, “and then into underground channels—here, here and here. From there, it goes into the Nile. Where it flows anonymously to the sea.”

The power brokers looked around at one another approvingly. “Ingenious,” one of them said.

“What about the Europeans and Americans who might protest our sudden return?” the Libyan asked.

Shakir grinned. “Our man in Italy is taking care of that,” he explained. “I have a strange feeling they won’t be a problem.”

“Very well,” the Libyan said. “When does it begin? And is there anything more you need?”

Shakir treasured their enthusiasm. Deposed from their seats of power, these men were so eager to get back they would give him anything to make it happen. But he’d extorted enough in terms of cash and concessions from them. It was time to act.

“Most of the pumps have been running for months,” he told them. “The siphoning effect has begun to take place. The rest can be started immediately.” He motioned to a technician. “Signal the other stations: bring all pumps online.”

As the technician executed Shakir’s order, the sound of the gigantic turbines and pumps whirring to life came through the wall. In moments, it would be too loud for verbal conversation. Shakir decided he would have the last word.

“In the desert we call the hot wind Sirocco. Today we send it forth. It will sweep across Africa, putting an end to this Arab Spring and replacing it with a most parched and blistering summer.”