“Funny place,” said Rafi, a slightly wistful tone in his voice. “There was a beautiful girl in one of my classes at university named Joy Schlesinger. She had the greatest . . . Anyway, she came from some place called Medicine Hat. What
is
a medicine hat?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea,” said Holliday, distracted. He turned around and looked out across the open stretch of sand between them and the ragged promontory of rock that separated the camp from the main desert beyond. The camp had been situated about two miles from the foot of the dark, stony crags. Far enough away so that the steep cliffs offered no strategic high ground. An enemy could be seen coming from miles away. He turned again and looked at the Tuareg guard. As well as the rifle he had a pair of Leupold 10×50 binoculars. Holliday turned toward the distant hills. He squinted and shaded his eyes.
“What are you looking at?” Rafi asked.
“Look out here,” Holliday instructed. “What do you see about five hundred yards out?”
“Sand,” Rafi answered. “Blindingly white sand.”
“Look closer.”
Rafi thought he could make out a slightly darker strip in the bright hot sunlight.
“A road?”
“Except it doesn’t go anywhere,” murmured Holliday. “Look.”
Rafi stared. The “road” looked like a line of hard-packed sand about half a mile long, parallel to the camp.
“What kind of road doesn’t go anywhere?” The archaeologist frowned.
In the distance, overhead, there was a faint mosquito whine that grew louder with every passing second.
“A runway,” said Holliday, glancing up. “These guys have got a plane.”
A minute or so later, coming from the west and dropping down from the high plateau to the south, the aircraft appeared, an old design with two booms creating twin tailplane assemblies. As it began its approach to the runway the guard on the parapet grew very agitated, unlimbering the rifle from his back and rushing toward them, brandishing the weapon.
“Edh’hab! Edh’hab!”
the man screamed.
“I think we’re supposed to get off the rampart,” said Rafi.
The plane’s wheels touched down and the propeller sounds deepened as the pilot backed the engines. The guard stopped, lowering the weapon and aiming it at them.
“I think you’re right,” agreed Holliday. They scrambled down the sandy hill. Above them the guard seemed to relax. Holliday and Rafi made their way between two rows of igloo-shaped tents and walked toward the big camel enclosure close to the center of the camp.
“What was that all about?” Rafi asked. He turned his head and looked up at the guard. The Tuareg had gone back to patrolling the rampart.
“I don’t think we were supposed to see the plane,” said Holliday.
“Why not?” Rafi said. “It’s not like either one of us can fly.”
“I flew in planes like that all the time in Vietnam,” said Holliday. “It was a Cessna Skymaster. They called them O2s in-country. They bird-dogged downed pilots and worked as forward artillery spotters. They used to take me and my men into Cambodia and Laos. They even made a movie with one in it.
Bat 21
, I think it was called. Danny Glover and Gene Hackman, our French cop’s favorite actor.
“
Popeye-goddamn-bloody-Doyle
,” said Holliday, doing a fair imitation of Louis Japrisot, the police captain in Marseille.
“Gene ’ackman this, Gene ’ackman that!”
“Could it get us out of here?” Rafi said.
“I think it had a range of about twelve hundred miles. It would get us across the border back into Egypt, probably Tunisia. If either one of us could fly, that is.”
“We can’t,” said Rafi thoughtfully. “But Peggy could; she’s got her pilot’s license, doesn’t she?”
“I don’t know if she’s rated for twins though; the Skymaster’s a push-pull.”
“Better a single-engine pilot than none at all.”
“We’d have to find her first,” said Holliday.
“Isn’t that why we’re here?” Rafi said, the words a challenge.
By four thirty in the afternoon they were no farther along in their search for the elusive Peggy. The only thing they’d accomplished was a slightly more accurate count of the number of people in the camp—220—and the fact that a mixed herd of goats and sheep smelled even worse than an equal number of camels. It amazed Holliday that goats and camels both gave sweet milk but smelled so nauseatingly foul, like a combination of raw sewage and a kid’s wet wool mittens roasting on an old-fashioned radiator.
Rafik Alhazred caught up with them just as they were heading back to their assigned tent. Wearing an outfit much like the one he’d had on the day before, he was at the wheel of a brand- new dusty white 200 Series Toyota Land Cruiser without a nick or a ding on it. The big truck looked as though it belonged in a suburban driveway. The sign on the door read:
Fezzan Project—Libyan Dep’t of Antiquities
British Academy
King’s College, London
Society for Libyan Studies
There was Arabic text below that was presumably a translation of the English above.
“The truck is mine but the sign’s authentic enough,” said Alhazred. “Change into the robes you arrived in, a little protective coloration. Hurry, please,” he added. “I’ll wait here.”
Holliday and Rafi did as they were told and piled into the truck, robed from head to toe, including the muslin veil across the bottom part of their faces. A real Tuareg crouched in the rear cargo compartment. He wasn’t visibly armed but Holliday was sure there was some kind of weapon hidden in the indigo folds of his native costume.
“If we get stopped you say nothing. Speak, and my friend Elhadji back there will slit your throats, quick as a wink. Don’t worry—my site identification is perfect. The dig has been in operation for more than a decade; field-workers come and go all the time; no one knows anyone anymore, which is to our benefit.”
Alhazred drove out of an opening in the north rampart that boxed the camp, then immediately turned east, heading toward the neck of the fifteen-mile-long valley, the dark, ominous basalt crags quickly closing in.
“So, Colonel, what do you think of my little pied-à-terre back there?”
“It bears a strong resemblance to a Roman military camp,” said Holliday. “I’m sure it was no accident.”
“Quite right, quite right,” said Alhazred, clearly pleased. “I spent a great deal of time at Baalbeck, in the Bekaa Valley, as a student. Very impressive to a young man.”
“Very impressive to the Emperor Vespasian as well,” commented Holliday. Rafi threw him a sudden perplexed glance then looked away. Holliday kept talking. “Although I doubt his son Trajan appreciated the oracle’s prophecy of his death in the Parthian Wars.”
“No, indeed not,” said Alhazred. They drove on. At the head of the valley Alhazred turned the Land Cruiser north and suddenly they thumped onto a paved road. Abruptly and jarringly they were confronted with reality in the form of an old faded billboard offering
Koka Kola
in Russian.
“The good old days,” Alhazred said and laughed.
Gee, we’re just the best of pals, aren’t we?
Holliday thought.
First you threaten to slit our throats. Then you crack jokes
. Alhazred was definitely a few nuts short of his bolts.
They continued eastward along the modern highway for ten or twelve miles, passing huge transport trucks, rattletrap old Lada vans and a few donkey carts heading to market, loaded down with produce. The buildings on either side of the road were mostly mud brick, but there were a couple of quite modern Tamoil gas stations with big blue and white plastic signs over the pumps. The few people they saw were dressed in the ubiquitous indigo robes. No one paid the slightest bit of attention as they passed; the sign on the side of the truck was obviously an open sesame for them.
Without warning Alhazred engaged the four-wheel drive and swung the big Toyota due north again, off the road and onto the crusted desert sand. They headed across the plains, the gigantic dunes of the Erg Murzuq rearing up like wind-scooped mountains on the far side of the wide valley, the sun lowering toward them, casting long shadows trailing behind the truck.
“We’re coming in the back door,” commented Alhazred. “Discretion being the better part of valor and all that.”
Holliday and Rafi were mute, staring out the windows. They saw a few isolated stands of palms and a narrow lake that wouldn’t have rated much beyond a pond back in the United States.
In the distance, ruins began to appear, the roofless mud-brick walls of what must have once been a good-sized town. The ruins were so densely packed together they looked like a rat’s maze.
“This is the town from the Roman era, first and second century A.D.”
“This isn’t where we’re going?” Rafi asked.
“No. The beehive tombs are much older than that.” They drove past the old ruins, veering steadily to the right. They hadn’t seen a soul since leaving the highway. Suddenly a Russian Gaz Tiger appeared from behind a flat outcropping of rock. It was the Eastern Bloc version of an armored Hummer. There was a soldier in brown Libyan army fatigues who stood poking his upper body through the angular vehicle’s top hatch, his hands gripping the firing handles of a big .50-caliber machine gun.
“Trouble?” Holliday asked, tensing as the big truck rumbled toward them.
“Doubtful,” said Alhazred without turning his head. “They’re lazy. Stop us and they’ll have to fill out an incident report; they’re like soldiers everywhere, they hate paperwork.”
“Is there a military base around here?” Holliday asked, surprised that they’d never stumbled on Alhazred’s band of terrorist Tuaregs.
“Just a small squad for constabulary duties,” said Alhazred. “They must have come out here to drink wine or smoke, or just for something to do. They won’t be a bother, I assure you.”
He was right. The armored vehicle roared to within a dozen yards of the Toyota and then the driver saw the sign on the door and waved at Alhazred. He waved back, smiling, and the Tiger sheered away. Within a few seconds it had disappeared behind them. Holliday exhaled.
“You see?” Alhazred said pleasantly. “Not a problem.”
Good thing, too, thought Holliday. After two weeks in the desert he was burned as much as he was tanned. He looked a bit like an overcooked lobster. Perhaps Rafi could pass as a Tuareg, but even in his indigo robes Holliday knew perfectly well he stood out like a stop sign.
Ten minutes later they reached the field of tombs and Alhazred slowed, weaving his way through the maze of salt-brick structures. Each one was made of rough brick a shade or two darker than the desert around it. They looked like sawed-off pyramids about twelve or fourteen feet high, some pierced with square windows on one or two sides, some solid.
Each of the squared pyramids was separated from its neighbor by what appeared to be a measured fifty feet on every side. The older tombs, the ones farthest to the north, were worn by the wind, blurred and almost shapeless mounds like the beehives that gave the tombs their name.
“One mummy per tomb, usually buried upright,” said Alhazred, pulling to a stop in front of one of the older structures. They’d put the mummy and his or her possessions in the tomb then fill it up with sand.
“Mummy, as in ‘curse of’ and all that?” Holliday asked.
“Yes,” replied Alhazred. “There are natron lakes all around here, so the process was quite simple. The general consensus among experts is that Fezzan was the place where mummification was invented.”
“Natron?”
“It’s a naturally occurring form of soda ash,” put in Rafi. “Sodium carbonate decahydrate to be precise,” he added. “It cured human flesh like beef jerky and it was a natural insecticide so it kept the bugs away. The dry heat of the desert did the rest.”
“Forty days in a natron bath and you lasted forever,” said Alhazred, grabbing a big Husky spotlight on the seat beside him and cracking his door open. He turned in his seat, smiling at Holliday and Rafi. “Come along, gentlemen, we have arrived; the tomb of Imhotep awaits.”
16
“So how exactly do we get inside?” Holliday asked, looking at the smooth mound of ancient mud brick. There was no obvious door or entrance of any kind. As he stood there he was amazed that anything made of mud could last for that long. If Alhazred was right the tomb was at least four thousand years old.
“Follow me,” said Alhazred. He headed around to the far side of the tomb, Holliday and Rafi behind him and the Tuareg guard, Elhadji, bringing up the rear. At the back of the structure Elhadji handed Alhazred a corkscrew-shaped device from beneath his robes. Alhazred squatted down and squinted, eventually locating an almost invisible hole in the sloping mud-brick wall. He pushed the “worm” of the corkscrew device into the little hole, twisted and then pulled.
“Hey presto!” Alhazred said theatrically. A crack appeared in the mud brick that became a square two feet on a side. He dragged on the corkscrew and the entire square came loose. With Elhadji helping him they lifted the trapdoor aside and set it down.
On closer examination Holliday saw just how ingenious the trapdoor was. The mud brick on the exterior was a cleverly made veneer no more than an inch thick, the phony brick epoxied to a thick slab of Styrofoam underneath. The whole thing probably didn’t weigh more than five pounds. From the outside the illusion had been perfect.
Alhazred spoke in a brief incomprehensible torrent to Elhadji and the Tuareg nodded in silent reply.
“You’ll have to duck down,” instructed Alhazred. He got onto his hands and knees, then scuttled through the small opening and disappeared inside the tomb.
“Age before beauty,” offered Holliday. Rafi gave him a nasty look, then followed on the heels of Alhazred. Then Holliday ducked through the secret doorway. Elhadji stayed outside.
The inside of the tomb was stifling hot and dark, lit only by the wash of sun coming through the hole in the tomb wall. Rafi and Alhazred were only vague blobs of gray in the center of the tiny chamber. The trapdoor was reinserted and Alhazred switched on the powerful spotlight. Holliday looked around; for the tomb of one of the most important figures in not just Egypt’s history but in the rise of Western civilization, the chamber was almost depressingly austere.