Keystone (23 page)

Five hours later, the wheels hit
the runway with a screech at Cairo International Airport.
 
She glanced out of the small window and
smiled. Arriving in Egypt always brought back memories of her first flight all
those years ago, when George had done so well in taking her mind off her
irrational fear of landing. By now, after dozens of trips, travelling by plane
was as mundane to her as travelling by train or car.

As usual, no
one was waiting for her inside the terminal. Instead, she went straight to a
line of yellow taxis and quickly negotiated a price with the driver in the
first one.

Travelling in
Egypt was also something that Gail had grown accustomed to quite fast following
that first trip. Their decision to rent a car on that occasion had come from
inexperience; certainly the distances looked great enough to warrant renting
one. But now, Gail wouldn’t have dreamed of driving herself. Taxis were far
more convenient, arguably safer and definitely cheaper.

More convenient
because parking spaces were virtually non-existent in the city, particularly
near the Museum where Gail normally went.

Safer, because
the law of the roads in Cairo was survival of the fastest, where even the
traffic police had difficulty controlling drivers.

And cheaper
because once you knew how to and had built up the guts to do it, bartering with
a taxi driver was as natural in Egypt as asking for the time. Within minutes,
Gail was sitting in the first taxi, having agreed to half of the first suggested
price.

It was already
eight o’clock, six in the UK. She tapped the phone link on her earpiece and
called her home number. George picked up after one ring.

“Hello?” he
said. “Gail, why can’t I see you?”

“I’m in a
taxi, my phone is in my pocket and it’s dark,” she replied, holding onto the
door handle as the driver negotiating his way past an oncoming lorry.

“Cairo Taxi,
eh? Better than Alton Towers. How was the flight?”

“Good, gave me
time to think about everything. Thought about you on landing, as always. And
thanks for the sheepish rabbit.”

He laughed.
“Glad I could help, and glad you liked the bunny, Bunny. How about your work?
You sound much better.”

She felt much
better, she thought to herself. “Well, I know Mamdouh pretty well. I trust he
would only have done what he thought was best for everyone concerned. I still
feel betrayed, like he could have confided in me, but I don’t know the
ins-and-outs of all this.”

“I’m sure
everything will be fine. Oh, before I forget. Some guy called Martín
Atony
, or
Antonass
, or something like that, rang for you about half an hour
ago. He sounded quite insistent and said he needed to meet up with you. He
sounded Spanish or South American or something. He was from the European Space
Agency.”

“What did he
want?” she asked. She had already deflected a dozen reporters wanting her to
comment on the Mars finds, but had made a firm decision to say nothing until
she knew something. She imagined that this
Martín
was no different.

“He didn’t say
exactly. I gave him Mamdouh’s details so if he hasn’t already he’ll probably be
calling you at the museum.”

“Bloody hell,
George! You know I don’t want to talk to the press or anything like that, and
I’m guessing Mamdouh doesn’t either.”

There was a
short silence.

“I’m sorry,
Gail, but he didn’t sound like he was after a story. I have his number here;
I’ll give him a call and tell him you’re not interested.”

“Hang on a
second.”

Her taxi was
apparently racing with another through a junction and despite her experience
she couldn’t help wincing as her driver swerved in front of the other to cut
him up. He was rewarded with three short beeps, and he waved cheerily out of
his window in reply.

 
“No,” she said bluntly, her mind back on their
conversation. “I’ll deal with him when I get there. We’re only a few minutes
away at this speed, anyway.”

“I’m sorry,
honey. I love you,” he added the last three words almost as an afterthought.

“Me too,
George. I’ll call you later.”

“Oh, and
Gail?”

“Yes?” She
heard the sound of cutlery on a plate and grinned.

“I’ve eaten
your portion, OK?” He spoke with his mouth full of what she assumed was
her
Fish and Chips.

“Whatever,
George.” She pressed a button on the earpiece and ended the call.

Five minutes
later, the car came to a stop in a street round the back of the museum. The
driver turned round to face her with a wide grin.

She wondered
briefly if the fact that she always haggled down to half the original price
meant the driver always drove at twice the required speed, but then dismissed
the thought. The look on this man’s face told her he probably drove like that
all the time. She paid the agreed fare, added fifty Egyptian pounds of
baksheesh
, and stepped out into the
relatively cool Egyptian-winter evening.

Professor
Mamdouh al-Misri had always been proud of his office at the Egyptian Museum. It
had a decidedly ‘Old World’ feel about it: dark oak shelves covered every wall
from floor to ceiling, while an imposing solid mahogany desk filled the centre
of the room. The shelves were mostly stocked with academic publications. The
entire bottom shelf, running along three walls of the office, was filled with
over a century of National Geographic magazines. A small shelf at head height
nearest the Professor’s chair contained a selection of old archaeological books
from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. All three volumes of
Carter’s
The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen
were present in the irreplaceable collection, and were themselves alone insured
for over a hundred thousand British pounds.

Of course, in
his few years as the General Director of the museum, the Professor had not yet
had the time to furnish such a lavish office all by himself. Such a collection
of books belonged not to him, but to the museum itself, and had been
accumulated over the last century by dozens of General Directors, each one
leaving their mark.

Professor al-Misri
was more concerned with the safety of the collection, in particular the earlier
works, than of adding anything specific to it himself. For that reason, he had
been working with the museum planners to modify certain shelves in the office.
Soon, for instance, Carter’s works would be protected by a thick layer of
Plexiglas and steel that could only be opened by entering a six-digit code.

He sat in his
chair and looked up at the books. They seemed so old and fragile, their spines
mostly bent and frayed at the edges. The dust jackets of some were torn and
partially missing. These were books that had been used countless times;
thumbed-through by his predecessors, left on bedside tables at night, or lying
on a desk under a pile of paperwork for weeks and months on end, and they
showed their age with pride.

He thought
about the Amarna Library, sealed tight against the elements, its contents
immaculately preserved for millennia. Thousands of books and scrolls, more than
a man could read in a lifetime, in better condition than the small collection
he saw in front of him now.

He shook his
head. Books were meant to be
read
,
not hidden.

Gail knocked and
entered without waiting. She found him sitting at his desk, which had been
cleared of all paperwork, revealing in full its leather surface to her for the
first time. The Professor looked at her blankly.

“Hello?” she
ventured.

His face
suddenly lit up. “Gail! Sorry, I was miles away. How was the flight?” He stood
up and rounded the desk to welcome her, holding her right hand firmly and
kissing her lightly on each cheek – a vestige of his Western education.

“Not bad,
thanks,” she replied.

They exchanged
pleasantries for several minutes after sitting down, before falling silent. The
Professor looked down at his desk.

“Why have you
cleared up, Mamdouh?” Gail asked.

He gave a deep
sigh and looked her in the eyes. “Because I cannot lie to myself any longer.
Being in this office reminds me every day of what I have let happen. I will
resign in the morning.”

She was taken
aback by his statement. “No! You –”

“Gail, I have
to tell you the truth,” he interrupted her. “At least what little I know of
it.” He fished a piece of paper out of the top drawer and passed it across the
desk. “Before I forget, you may want to contact this man later; he called for
you earlier.”

She read the note.
Martín Antunez
,
again!
It was followed by a phone number.
Like I don’t have more important things to do than talk to him!
She shook her head and put it in her pocket.

“Please let me
tell you everything, without interruption, and then we can discuss things,” he
said.

Gail
reluctantly agreed.

“You will
certainly remember when you first set foot in the Amarna Library, Gail. That
day, you walked into a veritable treasure trove, the single most impressive
archaeological find I have ever witnessed. Certainly on a par with Howard
Carter more than a hundred years ago. But I was not entirely honest with you
that day.” He paused to moisten his lips. “Months before our excavations at
Amarna began, I was contacted by an American man; an old friend who studied
Anthropology with me at Harvard. His name is Dr Henry Patterson. I hadn’t heard
from him in years, and we spent a good hour on the phone reminiscing about old
times. It turned out he was calling because he had heard of my excavation.

“I was amazed;
the excavation wasn’t exactly high profile, barely a blip on the Supreme
Council of Antiquities’ radar. Why would he know of it? He explained to me that
he worked for an agency in the States, based near Tampa in Florida. They had
reason to believe that certain finds from Amarna could be extremely damaging to
the political stability of the region. How they knew of these finds, he could
not fully reveal, but he suggested that his agency’s investigations pointed to
an as-yet undiscovered text, somehow related to Nefertiti. If we were to find
the text and reveal it publicly, his agency felt the repercussions would be
disastrous.

“Of course, as
I listened to him explain all of this I could not stop myself from laughing out
loud. It sounded completely preposterous, like a prank call. I accused him of
playing such a joke, but he flatly denied it. Instead, he offered me help. On
top of providing materials and equipment to aid in our work, his agency would
take responsibility for removing the offending finds in the event that we
uncovered them, and help ‘oil the wheels of bureaucracy’ if required. That
basically meant
baksheesh
. They would
also ensure that no loose ends were left lying around to give anything away.
You saw the men from the agency when you were on the dig, Gail.”

“The
engineers,” she whispered.

“Yes, the
engineers. They were attached to me from day one. I reported all of the finds
to them. From the moment they arrived, I regretted agreeing to work with this
agency. I always felt like they were spying on me, on the dig, and on all of my
students. There was something dark, something oppressive about their presence
that made me want to call him up and tell him they could leave right away. But
I never did, and when I found out what they wanted to hide, I was glad I
hadn’t.

“The engineers
pretended to make the Library ‘safe’ for us to investigate, Gail. In truth,
they went in to find what they were looking for and remove it.”

“The second
book on the plinth.”

“Yes. We were
left with one volume of a two-book set, Gail. What they took away was removed
from the Library as cleanly as possible, they even scattered dust around the
plinth so that nobody could guess anything was amiss. I spoke to Patterson by
phone shortly before you entered the Library, and demanded that he tell me what
they were hiding. What had been so important that the biggest discovery in
living memory was to be spoilt by an agency I knew nothing about? I had trusted
him because we had been friends, but on seeing the engineers on site with their
damned suitcase, I wanted to know everything.

“Patterson
calmed me down as best he could over the phone and told me that I could not see
the find whilst still on site. However, before it was shipped to its final
destination, God knows where, he promised that I would be able to look at it.
He was as good as his word, and on his request I journeyed to Cairo the day
after you first entered the Library.

“Patterson met
me in this very building, in my old office down the hall. One of the engineers
was with him, and they had made space for their case on my desk. I had already
signed a document stating I would not divulge anything to third parties about
our arrangement, but they made me sign another form before they would open the
case. They were quite forceful, but to be honest I probably would have signed
anything at that point: my curiosity was more powerful than anything. Then the
engineer opened the case and Patterson ushered me forwards.

“I will never
forget my first sight of the book, Gail, my first glimpse of the cover. It was
exactly the same dimensions as the
Stickman
volume, except that it was thicker: it probably contained half as many pages
again as your volume. Its cover was also wooden, with a bound spine. On it had
been engraved a picture, in the same fashion as the
Stickman
. My God! They would have looked impressive together!”

“Wait,” Gail
said. “You said that this so-called
agency
wanted to stop information from being spread from Amarna to the outside world,
and so went to all this trouble to hide one book. But there were hundreds and
hundreds of different books in that room, how did they know for sure that they
had removed the only one that mattered? What if
my
book had also contained something important, or what if one of
the hundreds of scrolls that we haven’t even looked at did?”