Death of a Pharaoh (31 page)

He broke all the
rules and took an unauthorized bathroom break leafing through his favorite
gaming magazine while he took a crap, called his girlfriend for a hot episode
of phone sex, headed down to security to pick up the pizza he ordered earlier
and stopped in the cafeteria to get a can of coke.

When he finally
returned to his duties, he glanced at the monitor, dropped the open soda on the
floor and never got to eat the pizza. Neural activity was off the charts and
had been going crazy the whole time he was gone. At least he had enough
responsibility to call the head of the medical team, even if he knew his
chances of becoming a doctor were probably now less than Sarah Palin’s of ever
holding elected office again.

The activity recorded in Philadelphia felt very different to Ryan. On a
deep sub-conscious level, he had been fighting against the power of the
blinding white light since the attack on the compound knocked him out. He never
thought of giving up. Finally, the white started to turn a shade of grey as if
the signal began to weaken. Over the course of what seemed an eternity, his
mind suddenly plunged into utter darkness. He was back in his familiar
nightmare but after the nothingness of the light, it was almost a relief. He was
in the cold water again and could see his mother calling to him in the depths.
He started to swim toward her and for the first time ever she drew closer.  He
stroked with all his strength and in one last mighty effort he found himself
peering through the window of the car. She smiled at him as if she had long
waited for this moment.

“Nkosana, my
darling, I miss you so much but this was never your destiny,” she assured him,
“Humanity needs you. You must wake up.”

She reached
forward and their fingers touched for an instant.

“Wake up,” she
repeated as her image began to drift away.

“Mother,” he
called out.

Beach house, Atlantic coast, northern
Dakar, 08.02 GMT, November 2, 2016

Ryan awoke to find himself in a bed with an intravenous tube in his
left arm. Wires led from pads on his chest to a screen that showed his
heartbeat in green blips and he felt an annoying headset on his forehead that
he suspected monitored brain waves. Mariam was asleep at the bottom of the bed.
He knew she had been there for however long he was gone. Zach sat at a desk
with his back turned and he could hear movement in the next room.

“What does a
Pharaoh have to do to get some food around here?” he asked.

Zach fell off his
chair and Mariam bolted upright with a cry. Ethan raced into the room followed
by Tony. They all looked like they had been to a casting call for a zombie
movie. Everyone stared waiting for him to speak again.

“Heeeee’sssss
back,” was all he could think to say.

Tears of relief
stained every face and a torrent of questions threatened to overwhelm his
senses again.

“Whoa, one at a
time,” he ordered.

Ethan spoke, “You
had us all worried.”

“I thought you
guys were in the compound.”

Mariam suddenly 
remembered to breath. Ryan motioned for her to approach and gave her as much of
a hug as the medical paraphernalia allowed.

“Sorry about your
uncle,” he told her, “I will miss him.”

“He died for the
cause he most loved,” she assured him.

“How long was I
away?”

“You’ve been in a
coma for nine days.”

“Seemed much
longer from the inside.”

“What brought you
back?” Zach inquired.

“Apart from all of
you?” Ryan cracked. “You know my nightmare, well I finally reached my Mom and
she told me to wake up.”

No one had a
response.

“She’s more
beautiful than her pictures and she told me how much she missed me.”

Zach turned away,
overcome with emotion.

“Hey buddy, get
your ass over here,” Ryan ordered Zach.

They hugged and
Ryan whispered in his ear, “After Mariam, I missed you the most. Don’t ever
leave me. That’s an order from your Pharaoh.”

“Your wish is my
command, my Lord.’

“OK, I know this
is a feeding tube,” he stated as he pointed to the catheter in is arm, “but
I’ve never been so hungry in my life,” he complained. “What have we got to
eat?”

They all laughed.

“What time is it
anyway?” Ryan inquired.

“Eight-thirty five
in the morning,” Tony answered.

“Then breakfast it
is,” he proclaimed. “Ethan, wake up Herbert, I don’t think he’ll be pissed.”

“Right away, my
Lord.”

“After some food
and a shower, you can brief me on all the developments,” Ryan suggested, “then
if you don’t mind I’d be delighted to exchange this contraption,” he pointed to
the neurosensory on his head then continued, “for a crown.”

This time, Ahmed shed tears of joy as he wrote the good news on the
Pharaoh’s papyrus far below the desert in Timbuktu.

Terrace of the Lotus Café, Downtown Cairo,
morning of November 3, 2016

Hassan learned the news an hour later from Mustafa. His tribe, the Guardians,
had not stopped discharging their guns in the air ever since in celebration of
the Pharaoh’s amazing recovery. He would have gladly joined them but he was in
Cairo leading the operation to keep the Swiss from discovering the trail of the
mummy. He was on his third coffee of the morning and needed to pace himself or
he would become a bundle of nerves with so much caffeine. Last night, he rented
this table for a week. It was in the front row on the veranda of the Lotus Café
right across from the hotel where the Swiss were staying. The manager was
delighted with the arrangement and had no intention to share the generous tip
with the owner. He promised to keep it available twenty-four hours a day.

As if by miracle,
the swarm of tourist guides who normally hovered near the entrance of the hotel
like vultures disappeared only to have their positions taken by his men
pretending to be guides and ready to offer their services to any male who
looked Swiss. The same with the half dozen taxi drivers leaning on their
battered vehicles trying their best to cultivate an air of resigned boredom.
Two hapless American tourists couldn’t understand why none of them was
interested in a trip to the Egyptian Museum.

Everything was
quiet right now. The Swiss gathered in a second floor meeting room making
plans. They were careful to interrupt their briefing whenever a member of the
hotel staff entered the area but his spies among the waiters still managed to
snatch glimpses of the overhead projections and reported that they appeared to
be organizing surveillance of several buildings in Cairo as well as the docks
in Alexandria and Port Said.

Such an effort
would stretch their resources thin; something Hassan was counting on. He knew
they had little chance of finding the clandestine laboratory where the team of
scientists now worked on the Pharaoh Jesus’ mummy; his men controlled every
approach to the street. He hoped, indeed it was imperative, that Sanctus Verum
would discover the name of the vessel at anchor in the port of Alexandria
awaiting their precious cargo. The scheduled departure of the Maltese flagged
ship destined for Valencia, Spain was in four days and Hassan would do
everything in his power to make certain the Swiss received his invitation to
the sailing.

A table with a
gaggle of young attractive French girls tried every trick in their repertoire
to get his attention. They had been making suggestive comments and giggling to
each other for more than an hour. He tried to look scandalized as any devout
Muslim might but they weren’t buying it. It only stoked their ardor and he was
grateful when his brother arrived with an update. They seemed to like his
younger sibling even more and maybe they would lose interest when he left.

In reality, Hassan
could only think of Franz. He missed him. They had seen each other in passing
since his capture and never alone. Everyone applauded his decision to trust the
foreigner. The information he freely gave about Father Marcos contributed much
to the success of the previous operation. The plan was to send him to the
Foundation’s headquarters in Philadelphia to join a task force recently formed
to manage the threat posed by Sanctus Verum. All that remained was the approval
of the Pharaoh. He would meet with Franz immediately after his coronation and
use his powers to ensure he was sincere and posed no threat to the
organization. Hassan was certain that would be the case. He was happy for his
friend. He knew it was the will of the Gods.

Operating Theater, Secret Location, Cairo,
14.43 EET November 3, 2016

Pablo Fernandez sat in the observer’s lounge hunched so close to the
window overlooking the large aseptic chamber below him that his breath caused
the glass to fog up on occasion. He too rejoiced at the news of the young
Pharaoh’s return to consciousness and by all accounts unaffected by the ordeal.
He had prayed for hours to his beloved Christ of the Souls and was delighted he
had listened.

They were at a
delicate stage in the restoration and the bottle of cava he brought from Spain
would have to wait a few more days. Below him, a team of forensic pathologists
examined the body of the Pharaoh Jesus after its careful removal from the
massive stone sarcophagus. He had not left the secret laboratory since the
mummy arrived two days ago. In three weeks, they would donate the elegant
building to the Ministry of Antiquities as a state of the art facility for the
study of mummified remains. For now, it was more secure than the Presidential
Palace.

Actually, nobody
left. The entire team bunked in cots arranged on the top floor to avoid human
traffic that might have attracted attention. Many of the attending specialists
were internationally renowned scientists and their presence in Egypt would be
noticed. The conversation at meals was light and casual, an unspoken agreement
to rest gravity from the extraordinary situation. Everyone was a Servant of
Ma’at; many were Christian and a few, like him, were even Catholics. The
organization didn’t care about a person’s religion. It only insisted that a
member must be a person of faith and accept the True Pharaoh as the lawful
representative on earth of their God. Atheists, agnostics and followers of
satanic cults could not be Servants of Ma’at. Still it was impossible for
anyone on the team, regardless of their religion, to ignore the fact that the
remains on the table were the only tangible proof in the history of mankind
that a God actually existed. It wasn’t only a question of faith anymore.

At that exact
moment, a microbiologist, Dr. Saatvik Mukherjee from Mumbai, removed layers of
ancient linen in order to take a swab of the lower right arm where sensitive
scans had detected a patch of mold. Pablo leaned even closer to the angled
window. He was only six feet above the operating table and enjoyed a perfect view.
The arms were crossed over the chest, as had been the tradition for royal
mummies for thousands of years. Saatvik worked with skill and patience. He
cleared an area about six inches square, placing the discarded linen in a tray
for later study.

Eight people were
present in the operating theatre and another two joined Pablo in the lounge.
There was an audible gasp when he pulled the last layer away to reveal the
forearm. The skin was dark and leathery. They could all see the puncture wound
between the ulna and radius bones just above the wrist. Dr. Riccardo Anasetti
from Perugia University in Umbria made the sign of the cross and Pablo found
himself following suit. The silence was sepulchral. They were all witnesses to
the greatest moment in archeological history, yet the world would never know.

Dr. Mukherjee took
a swab of the affected area then covered the exposed zone with sterile gauze.
Experts were on standby to analyze the sample and recommend a treatment.
Members of the team had developed a synthetic linen pulp that would bind to the
old wrappings. It had an almost identical composition except for the addition
of a chemical that allowed it to harden on exposure to ultraviolet light. The
result would appear very much like the ancient linen.

Pablo expected the
team to complete the restoration in two days. Spotters for the Guardians had
identified Swiss surveillance teams in Alexandria near the offices of the
custom broker listed on the export permit granted in his name. Sanctus Verum
had swallowed the bait. A heavy security operation would escort the original
stone sarcophagus containing an unidentified non-royal mummy from the 2
^nd
Century BC to the port and load it on the ship. Meanwhile the new coffin with
the mummy of the Pharaoh Jesus would travel in a modest lorry to the Port of
Said to be boarded on a vessel bound for Barcelona; listed as the personal
effects of a Spanish diplomat returning home after a three-year posting in
Egypt. The goods would travel by diplomatic pouch. So far, everything was transpiring
according to plan.

The final element
was a small article scheduled for publication the next day in La Voz de
Galicia, a regional newspaper in the northwestern autonomous region of the same
name. It described the project sponsored by an American University to excavate
primitive Visigoth era tombs underneath the Cathedral of Santiago de
Compostela. The church was world renowned as a place of Christian pilgrimage to
venerate the purported remains of Saint James the Apostle.

Although the
reporter did not name the Falcon Foundation, she mentioned Pablo Fernandez as
the lead archeologist. He was certain Sanctus Verum would put the pieces
together and presume they were taking Jesus there. Popular legends such as one
that suggested the body of the Apostle had miraculously arrived on the shores
of Galicia in a stone boat would only help lead them to that conclusion. They
would have the right country but the wrong location.