The Pharaoh Key, page 24
“They’ve divided,” said Imogen as she strained to listen. “They’re outrunning us—on either side—to cut us off in a pincer movement.”
“Then we’ve got to do something unexpected,” said Garza. “Like turn around.”
“We’re not going back,” Gideon said.
“No, we’re not. We turn around, go back up the ridge a ways, then drop down into a side canyon. Then we climb up one of these adjacent ridges and head westward again.”
“It’s a smart plan,” said Imogen.
“Hell,” said Gideon. “Fine.”
They turned their camels and headed back up the ridge, Imogen riding ahead. This time they proceeded more slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible. After about a quarter of a mile they came to a slope leading into the right-hand canyon that, again, was too steep to ride down. The animals were exhausted anyway, their sides heaving, but they negotiated the rocky slope without further protests. The three soon reached the sandy bottom of the wadi, remounted, and went forward at a trot. Another quarter mile down the canyon, a slope on the right appeared to offer a way up the adjacent ridge. They turned out of the wash and climbed yet again, the camels struggling to find their footing. Halfway up, with their mounts blowing and grumbling, Gideon heard the telltale thud of camel pads somewhere below, echoing up the canyons.
He held up his hand. “Listen!”
The sound, surprisingly, was coming from ahead of them. Somehow, Mugdol had managed to cut off their escape route and was now coming back. Even as they listened, a silvery cloud of dust, illuminated in the bright moonlight, swept up from a nearby ridgeline, carried by the breeze. They were about to be cut off.
“Back!” Gideon cried. “Back into the canyon!”
Once again, they wheeled their camels around and sent them plunging back down the slope they had just climbed, the animals bucking in protest. Gideon grasped the front loop of his saddle with both hands, trying to stay mounted. At the steepest part of the ridge, Gideon heard a scream: Imogen’s camel had lost its footing and was plunging forward, the animal skidding on loose rock. Twisting sideways, it came down on one shoulder. Imogen leapt off at the last moment, barely escaping having the animal fall on her. The camel cartwheeled, screaming in fear, gangly legs churning the air before at last finding the ground.
Gideon reined in his own camel and, holding its halter rope, jumped off the uphill side of the slope and raced over to Imogen, pulling his camel behind him. She lay on a sandy slope, dazed and filthy. Above, Blackbeard had appeared on the top of the ridge not three hundred yards away. With a roar of triumph, he urged his own camel toward them at a breakneck pace, a dozen warriors still mounted behind.
Garza had reined in his own camel just above Gideon’s. He now pulled the crossbow off his shoulder and cocked it, fitting a bolt in the slot and aiming uphill. He fired. The shot was followed by a scream, and a camel went crashing to the earth.
“Are you all right?” Gideon asked, kneeling over Imogen.
“Shaken.” She tried to rise, winced. “Help me up.”
He grasped her around the shoulders, helping her to her feet. She had cut her forehead, and a thin stream of blood was running toward her temple. He dabbed it away with his robe.
She pushed it aside. “Get me back on the camel,” she said, staggering a little.
Pulling his own beast behind him, trying to shut out the sound of the screaming horde, Gideon helped her over to where her camel was struggling to rise. Miraculously, the animal was a little skinned up but otherwise still sound. Garza unleashed another shot, and then another, briefly curbing the downward charge.
“Grab his lead rope,” Imogen gasped. “Give it an upward pull.”
Gideon did so and the camel, with a furious roar, regained its feet. Gideon heaved her into the saddle.
“Let’s go!” she cried.
Gideon turned in time to see Garza’s final shot flash through the air and bury itself in the neck of Mugdol’s camel. The animal reared up with a furious squeal, then fell sideways, sending its rider somersaulting through the air. Without waiting to see more, Gideon grabbed his own saddle and hauled himself up, dangling and swinging even as his camel bolted after the others. They reached the bottom of the canyon and headed westward. But their pursuers had been only temporarily checked and Mugdol, apparently unhurt, was now riding another camel in hot pursuit. He was less than a hundred yards behind and catching up fast. Ahead, Gideon could see no escape—just a long, narrowing canyon with sheer sides. Over his shoulder, the yelling reached a triumphant crescendo as the band realized they were about to catch their quarry.
As they raced along the sandy wash, the ravine grew ever narrower, the sides pressing in, sheer black cliffs of stone. There was no escape either up or out—they could only continue forward. It was a race they would soon lose. The war cries of their pursuers echoed chillingly between the canyon walls. Blackbeard and his men were now virtually upon them.
Gideon heard a camel scream and glanced over to see Garza’s mount going down, a spear sticking from its side. Gideon reined in his own camel and turned it around, unshouldering his crossbow, and Imogen did the same.
Garza scrambled up from the fall, grabbed the pack-camel’s lead rope, swung up—then pulled the staggering animal around to face their attackers.
“Keep going!” he yelled at Gideon as he pulled out his crossbow, cocked it, and let fly a bolt at the approaching horde. He was almost out of ammunition.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m saving your ass!” Garza unleashed another bolt into the wall of riders piling down upon him, jostling into each other as they were forced together by the tightening cliff walls.
“You can’t fight them all!” Gideon protested in disbelief.
“The hell I can’t! Now go!” Garza, somehow managing to let fly the last of his bolts, was suddenly in the thick of the fight as the lead warriors reached him, some colliding with his mount amid a clash of spears, the savage roaring of camels, and the shrill ululating of the men. Abruptly, as Gideon stared in horror, he saw his friend surrounded by a strange coruscating light, flashing and winking in brilliant yellows, reds, blues, and greens: it was the gold and gems they had dreamed of and worked for so long, had labored so hard to take from the treasure chamber—erupting upward and outward into the air from burst saddlebags, obscuring Garza in a curtain of incalculable value as the camel thrashed and bucked, the ruptured bags spraying arcs of glittering stones.
“Garza!”
But the man and his glittering halo were obscured as a vast cloud of dust rolled down and covered the scene of battle. The last glimpse Gideon had was of Garza being thrown from his camel, crossbow in hand, his body blocking the constricted pass, like King Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae, amid a boiling turmoil of warriors.
“Garzaaa!” he cried.
“Gideon!” Imogen yelled. “If we don’t go now we’re all finished. Can’t you see he’s doing this to save us?”
Gideon wheeled his camel around and followed Imogen as she lashed her camel to a furious pace, feeling the stinging wetness of tears on his cheeks. They had lost Garza, lost the treasure, lost everything but their lives. As they barreled down the narrow canyon, the clash of battle receded. Gradually the ravine began to open up. Still they loped on, the camels falling into a rhythm of mechanical exhaustion. It seemed like they rode at that pace for hours—and then, quite suddenly, it was as if they passed through a magic portal into a vast desert sweeping to an infinite horizon, the stars and moon far above, a cool breeze playing about. On their own, the camels slowed into a walk and then continued to plod on.
They had left the tribal territory behind. When Gideon at last forced himself to look back, all he could see was a seemingly impenetrable confusion of ravines, peaks, precipices, and massifs mounting up, layer upon layer, to the distant summit of Gebel Umm, silver in the moonlight. They continued eastward in silence, across the vast desert, toward the Nile River.
42
THE CRIMSON SUN declined behind a limp row of palm trees lining the western shore of the Nile as the old boat chugged northward, belching a stream of diesel smoke. Imogen and Gideon stood leaning on the rail, watching in silence as the scenery slipped by in the evening light. After escaping both the mountain and their pursuers, the trip became for them a nightmarish four-day journey across a scorching desert. They were so plagued by mirages of distant water that when they at last reached the shores of Lake Nasser, Gideon could scarcely believe it was real. A dirt road had led them to a dusty village on the shore opposite the tourist attraction of Abu Simbel. Their robes were so filthy, and their faces so sunburnt, more than one person had mistaken them for local beggars and tried to drive them away. In Abu Simbel, an eternally smiling man with a single gold tooth had good-naturedly swindled them out of their camels and saddles. They had been too tired to argue. He had then kindly helped them buy tickets for the boat journey to Cairo, arguing furiously with the ticket seller to bargain the man down to a price they could afford, given how little he’d paid them for the camels. Despite carrying the grand and ironic name of the Queen Nefertiti, the boat was a shabby tourist cruiser that had seen better times. They were booked for the three-day trip into two windowless cabins deep in the belly of the ship, close to the throbbing engines.
They had nothing—no passports, no money, and no Western clothes. Gideon figured that when they reached Cairo, he could get a new passport from the American embassy. Imogen had promised to wire for money and loan Gideon airfare back home to New Mexico.
Leaning against the rail, watching the swirling muddy waters of the Nile pass by, Gideon felt almost paralyzed with grief for his lost partner. Once again, he reflected that he’d never met a man with such rare courage. And not just in holding off their attackers at the end, but throughout the entire journey: saving children on the sinking ferry even though he couldn’t swim; rescuing the chief’s daughter from the leopard. It had been a horrible way to die, slashed to pieces by Blackbeard and his men. He hoped to God it had been quick: the idea that Garza might have been captured alive by Mugdol made him feel sick.
Imogen had remained almost silent the entire trip. They stood pensively watching as the sun disappeared below the horizon and the air turned from yellow to green to an unnatural desert mauve. He noticed that Imogen had her soiled notebook in hand, at the rail, turning its crude pages pensively.
“You know,” Gideon said, thinking out loud, “if we hadn’t stopped to rob the treasure chamber, if we’d only kept going, Manuel would still be alive. I can’t escape the feeling it’s my fault he’s dead.”
“You can’t think that way. You’ll just cheapen his sacrifice. Besides, you decided together to rob the treasure.”
She hesitated for a moment, then turned toward him. “Listen to me, Gideon.” She spoke quickly, the words tumbling out as if they’d been bottled up for days. “We’ve got to figure out what we’re going to say about all this. I mean, what our story’s going to be.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“I…I think we should keep our mouths shut.”
“About the treasure?”
“About everything.”
“Why?”
Imogen was silent for a long time. “Remember what I first thought I’d discovered back in that chamber? An early formulation—a first draft, if you will—of the Ten Commandments. Inscribed by the Pharaoh Akhenaten.”
“I remember.”
“To me, it’s more evidence that Akhenaten was the father of monotheism—and in being so he changed the world.”
“But I thought it was Moses who received the Ten Commandments, on a mountaintop in the Sinai—directly from God.”
“Makes a brilliant story, doesn’t it? And a great way to legitimize a new religion. But what I found in the golden cabinet seems proof that the Ten Commandments were first formulated in Egypt by Akhenaten. When the Egyptians rejected monotheism after his death, a follower—most likely a follower named Moses—left Egypt with other adherents to this new religion.”
“To found Israel.”
“Yes.”
“That’s crazy.”
“No, it’s not. It’s not even a new idea. Sigmund Freud, of all people, claimed in his book Moses and Monotheism that Moses was Egyptian. Some biblical researchers go so far as to say Akhenaten was Moses, chased out of Egypt with his followers.”
“So what does this have to do with our not telling of the discovery?”
“I’m getting there. Those inscriptions I deciphered indicate there was a split among the monotheists. Afterward, Moses led one group—the main group—east to Israel. But another, much smaller group split away from them and went south to Gebel Umm. They were no doubt the ancestors of our little tribe. They carved the commandments into that tablet and placed it in that golden cabinet, their very own Ark…the location of which was recorded on the Phaistos Disk. They haven’t exactly thrived over the centuries, as you know, but it’s probable they started out as a far larger group—and as we’ve speculated, it’s also possible several of those disks were carried by proselytizing adherents to other areas of the world.”
“Why did the two groups split?”
“Well…” Her voice, which had been so urgent, trailed off. “Doctrinal differences.”
“What do you mean?”
“The group that fled south had an Eleventh Commandment.”
“Eleven commandments?” It sounded like a joke.
“Eleven is the most sacred number in Egyptian numerology. Having only ten would feel incomplete to an ancient Egyptian.”
“What did this Eleventh Commandment say?”
Imogen shook her head.
“It’s that bad?”
“It wasn’t a commandment in the form we’ve come to know,” she said. “It—well, it was more of a disturbing prophecy. Proclamation might be a better word. On the nature of the One God.”
“So? Spill it. Stop being coy.”
“It was so strange I’m not sure my translation is accurate. Besides, I…would hate to burden you.”
“You’re kidding, right? Burden me?”
She shook her head. “Trust me, you’re better off not knowing. You and everyone else.”
“Are you burdened by it?”
“Let me put it this way: I’d give almost anything not to have read it.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t tell me you believe it, whatever it is? You just said you’re unsure of the translation. And it’s not like we’re talking about the literal word of God here: it’s just some disaffected, heretical group of ancient Egyptians or something. False prophets weren’t exactly a rare thing in that era.”
She said nothing, turning over the notebook in her hands as if it were a sort of worry stone. “The main point is, we can’t tell anyone about what we found. The tribe would be overrun and destroyed. All the secrets they’ve been guarding—and I believe they have been actively guarding them these many centuries—will end up in museums. The tribe itself will be relocated to government housing and eventually cease to exist. And the world will become a poorer place.”
“What about Manuel’s death? What do we tell his siblings?”
“That he was brave and saved our lives and died during an expedition in the desert.” She glanced at him. “You didn’t tell anyone else about your discovery, right? The secret of the Phaistos Disk?”
Gideon shook his head. “No. Not that anyone would believe us. All we have for evidence are those scribbled notes of yours.”
“Oh, someone would believe us,” Imogen said.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because…” She hesitated, a faint tremor in her voice. “I know Eli Glinn will believe us.”
Thunderstruck, Gideon stared at her. “You know Glinn?”
“I’m his niece.”
Gideon went mute as he tried to process this.
She ran one hand along the rail. “Eli helped raise me when I was orphaned by a plane crash. He put me through Westminster School and Balliol. I stayed on at Oxford for graduate work. I’ve been freelancing as an archaeologist and Egyptologist in Cairo, and he called me up with an unexpected favor to ask—an assignment. He explained how he’d discovered that you and Manuel had stolen the Phaistos Disk translation and were apparently headed to the location it revealed. He’d managed to track you as far as Safaga. He asked me to talk my way onto your expedition and then report back to him what you found.”
“And you said yes? Just like that?”
“I couldn’t exactly refuse him. Besides…” She paused. “The Egyptian Middle Kingdom really is my area of expertise. And it wouldn’t have been the first time I’d done work for EES.”
Gideon felt like he’d been sucker-punched. He stared at her. “You dirty little liar!”
She shrugged. “We’ve been lying to each other all along.”
“Maybe, but I finally told you the truth.”
“And so have I.”
Gideon gathered himself to retort, but to his surprise nothing came to mind. She was right. “So you’re going to report back to Eli?”
“Of course.”
“What are you going to say?”
“That we found nothing.”
“Really? And why is that? Why agree to this mission, risk your life, if you weren’t going to see it through to the end?”
“I’d always planned to see it through to the end. But after all that’s happened…well, I just can’t rat you out like that.” She looked out toward the far bank. “Don’t think it’s easy for me. I know Eli and his ways even better than you do, but he was still a kind of surrogate father. At least, he tried to be.”
“I can imagine.”
She flared up. “He was very kind to me, and he did his best.”
“So what will you tell him about Manuel? About the treasure chamber—and the tablet?”
“Oh, I’ll make sure Eli has enough closure to content himself with. I’ll inform him, through our private back channel, that Manuel died and was buried in the desert; that the expedition was a total bust; and that you went off, disappointed, to your cabin to…” Her voice trailed off as she seemed to catch herself.
