Keystone (24 page)

Mamdouh shook
his head. “I have no idea, Gail. Somehow, they knew that there was only one
book to take care of. They certainly didn’t have time to read anything whilst
in the Library. They couldn’t have checked the entire
Stickman
book in that time, and believe me after having read it
myself I can assure you that it makes no reference to the content of the book
they took away. Their information must have been well sourced, but I’m at a
loss from thereon in. And I have not heard from the agency since that day in my
office.”

“What made
this book so special then?” she asked.

“In itself,
the cover was interesting enough. The engraving showed a human figure holding a
long staff aloft, as if in defiance. But it was upon opening the book that the
true surprise came.
 
It was mostly
illustrations, accompanied by small segments of text, a mixture of hieroglyphs
and hieratic. Full page drawings of people living in vast cities that we would
classify, even today, as futuristic; filled with flying machines, vehicles of
all descriptions, towering skyscrapers, sprawling forest-parks with fountains
and paths. It was like looking at a science-fiction landscape. Then there were
pictures of farms rolling over hills to the horizon, seascapes showing fleets
of strange vessels. The text below, in the little time I had to read and
quickly translate it, simply described the illustrations, like an
encyclopaedia, with comments like
Ancient
City with administrative centre
or
Agricultural
Environment
. And then suddenly, the mood of the illustrations changed. I
turned the page, and it was like a vast hand had been swept across the city
from the previous pages. Everything was razed to the ground, people were
running in all directions in obvious panic. I barely had time to take the
scenes in, however, because as soon as I had turned the page the engineer
stepped forward and closed the book, quite forcefully moving me aside. I have
not seen or heard from it since.”

“My God,
Mamdouh. Professor Hunt would love to hear about this! But even he would never
believe such advanced human civilisations from the past,” she said.

The Professor
looked her straight in the eyes. “And you think I would? Gail, over the decades
I have seen thousands of ancient texts, not just from Egypt but from all over
the world. This wasn’t some dream-fuelled flight of fantasy, it was a vision of
a future world. It was so real, so tangible, so believable that it can only
have come from someone who had witnessed it.

“All of the
people in the streets of the mysterious city, the pilots in flying machines,
the farmers in the fields and sailors on the strange ships
existed
. And from the little I saw, it is clear to me that they
were wiped out, erased from history.”

Gail could not
find the words, her mouth opened and closed slowly like a goldfish.

“When I saw
that book I realised what it represented; I
knew
it couldn’t be shown to the outside world. I don’t pretend to know what wider
implications it may have and why the agency would want to cover it up. Whatever
religious or political motivations they might have, I simply understood that to
reveal it would have been professional suicide. I would have been no better
than those who claim that the Great Pyramid of Khufu was built as a landing
platform for interstellar spaceships. Here was I, looking at a veritable link
between the ancient Egypt I love and something that would destroy everything we
think we know about our origins.

“I couldn’t
let that happen. As a philosopher, I was frustrated that I would never again be
able to see the book, to study and translate its text. But as a man who wanted
to earn a living and develop my career, I was relieved that it was being taken
off my hands. The responsibility was no longer mine.

“Because of
this, I never once felt inclined to reveal this to you, or to anyone for that
matter. Over time, I made myself believe that the book did in fact represent
little more than a fantasy world. I mean, what will people think thousands of
years hence when they discover our libraries full of science fiction? Would
they
believe that we had really waged
war with Mars, that we genuinely conquered the stars or that we could easily
travel through time at will?” He paused and let out a long sigh. “That idea
helped reconcile my guilt. The belief that it was a work of fantasy got me
through the past ten years in one piece.

“Until this
morning. When I saw the photos from Mars, it all came back as real as if I had
the book in my hands. The smell of the wood, the texture of the pages, the
intricate detail of the alien world; none of it was fantasy, it was authentic.
That is why I do not think the
Stickman
on
Mars is faked, Gail. I do not believe it is a coincidence. I believe instead
that it
belongs
on Mars, as do the
people from the book.”

He stopped
talking and they sat in silence for several minutes. He wanted to urge her to
respond, but understood that she was overwhelmed by his story and needed time
to digest. Eventually, she looked at him.

“Firstly
Mamdouh, let me say I do not judge you for what you did. I would probably have
done the same as you, otherwise my career as a result would have been entirely
different, and I would probably have had to get my doctorate from the Internet
rather than from a good university.”

He nodded in
reply, as much in gratitude for her understanding as in agreement of her
statement.

“Secondly, the
photos from Mars prove something else,” she continued.

“What?” he
asked. He had not expected her to dwell on the photos from Mars.

 
“The fact that the pictures from Mars reached
the media at all can mean only one thing: that whatever the agency you dealt
with is doing to cover all this up, they’ve made a mistake. Somehow, they
weren’t as thorough as they should have been, and if they were trying to stop
‘disastrous repercussions,’ then they’ve failed.”

The Professor
was about to speak when a noise from outside his office caught his attention.
He quickly placed his index finger against his lips. Gail turned round silently
to follow his stare.

Two loud
knocks on the solid oak door reverberated round the room.

After a
moment’s hesitation, Mamdouh stood up behind his desk.

“Come in,” he
said, a slight crackle in his voice.

George woke up to the phone
ringing incessantly in the living room. He looked at his watch: six-thirty in
the morning.

Bloody hell, Gail
, he thought to himself
as he stumbled down the stairs. He searched among the empty cans, bottles and
food wrappers on the coffee table before finding the remote. One of his friends
emerged from the toilet scratching his head.

“What time is
it?” he said.

“Six-bloody-thirty,
and where did you come from?” he asked as he answered the call.

“Slept in the
bath, mate,” came the reply as he looked enviously at the couch, where another
body lay comfortably, still unconscious.

George wasn’t
listening. The video wall asked him if he wanted to accept a video-call from a
private number in Egypt. He cursed under his breath; the one time that he was
home-alone and had friends over for a drink, and Gail had to call him first
thing. There was no way he could make the room look even half decent for the
camera, so he didn’t even bother trying. Instead, he checked his reflection in
the preview screen in the corner of the video wall and accepted the call,
before focusing his attention on the caller. It wasn’t Gail.

“Mr Turner?” a
man in uniform asked. He was standing against a plain white background, his
navy blue uniform immaculate. He didn’t wait for George to confirm his
identity, and he didn’t look surprised by his attire. To him, all Englishmen
looked as scruffy as the half-naked apparition he was talking to. “I am Captain
Ahmed Kamal of the Cairo police department. We are looking for your wife, Mrs
Gail Turner?” He used a raised inflection at the end of his statement,
prompting an answer.

“Well, I
assume you’re closer to her than I am, Captain; she’s in Cairo. I spoke to her
yesterday evening, but haven’t heard anything since then.”

“At what time
did you speak to her, Mr Turner?” the Captain demanded.

George crossed
his arms defensively. Two of his friends were now sitting on the sofa behind
him, looking at the video wall in bemusement. “Am I being interrogated here?” he
said. “Why are you asking me about Gail? Is she OK?”

The policeman
looked beyond the camera, as if checking something going on in the background
where he was calling from. “We just need to speak to her, Mr Turner. Telephone
recordings reveal that your wife was meeting a Professor Mamdouh al-Misri
yesterday evening at his office in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo. We would very
much like to find her so that she can answer some questions relating to our
enquiries.”

George scratched
his head. It was too early for this. “I last spoke to her at about six, that’s
eight in the evening your time. She was on her way to meet Mamdouh.”

“Mamdouh?” the
Captain raised an eyebrow. “You knew him well?”

“Absolutely,
we spend a lot of time there, we stay with him whenever we go to Egypt.”

“That’s very
interesting.” He looked behind the camera again and made a slight nodding of
the head. “Do you know of any reason for dispute between him and your wife, Mr
Turner?”

George was
taken aback;
what a question.
“Not
really, no. They were both pretty shocked by the photos from Mars yesterday;
Mamdouh called her and arranged her flight to Cairo, he wanted to see her as
soon as possible.” The policeman was annoying him now, what he really wanted
was to call Gail on her mobile to check she was OK. “Anyway, she will be at his
house now, they were meeting at the museum but she was going to stay with him
as usual. He lives nearby. You’ll find her there, Captain” George had a quick
rummage on the coffee table before finding his mobile phone.
 
He tried to call her, out of view of the
Captain, but the network immediately informed him that her phone was switched
off. “Otherwise, I suggest that you ask the Professor where she is.”

The Captain
looked carefully at George for a few moments. “I’m afraid that won’t be
possible, Mr Turner. You see, Professor Mamdouh al-Misri was murdered, late
last night in his office at the museum. Your wife is missing, and until she is
found she is our closest link to the killer.”

George’s two
friends slid out of the room into the kitchen, leaving him alone.

He sank to the
sofa and shook his head. The camera embedded into the video wall followed him.

“Mamdouh’s
dead?” he said in disbelief. “And there’s no sign of Gail at all?” he asked more
in the direction of the officer.

“I’m afraid
not, Mr Turner,” came the dispassionate reply. “I understand that this has come
as quite a shock to you. To help in our investigation, I would appreciate it if
you could try to remember any details about your conversation with your wife
yesterday evening.”

He shook his
head. Now he was extremely concerned about Gail; she usually sent him numerous
messages when she was away, to say goodnight, good morning, and to update him
on anything interesting in between. His phone and video wall both told him she
had done nothing of the sort since twelve hours earlier when she had landed in
Cairo. The only other call he had received was from the man from the space
agency.

“I had one
other call last night,” he started slowly. “A man called from the European
Space Agency wanting to speak to her. I gave him the Professor’s phone number
and told him to call there.”

The Egyptian
didn’t look surprised, but instead nodded his head approvingly. “A Mr Martín
Antunez, I believe? Yes, he called the museum yesterday evening as you suggest.
We found his details written on a note in the Professor’s office.” He was
getting fidgety, as if he felt he would get no further and did not wish to
divulge more about his case. “We have already spoken to him, Mr Turner. Anyway,
I have sent you my business card, if anything else comes to you, or if you hear
from your wife, then please let me know immediately.”

He was about
to reply when the screen went blank, replaced momentarily by the telephone company
logo, which in turn was replaced by the placeholder reel of the video wall, a
mountain slope overlooking a wide rain-swept valley through which a river wound
its tumultuous path. He stared at the scene for several minutes before standing
up and moving towards the kitchen.

Opening the
door he interrupted his friends, their sudden silence betraying the subject of
their conversation.

“Well?” the
one who had slept in the bath said. The look on his face and rasping voice both
suggested he had not slept very well. “Is she alright?”

He glanced at
them both and reached for the percolator. Sensing its lack of heat, he poured a
cup of the thin black liquid and placed it in the microwave. Removing it
seconds later, he sipped the piping-hot coffee and looked at them both again.

“I don’t
know,” he said. “But I’m going to Egypt to find out,” he added resolutely.

He left the
kitchen and his friends in silence as he returned to the video wall to book his
flight.

You did not need to come to
Egypt, Mr Turner,” Captain Kamal repeated in an unfriendly tone. “Our
investigations have been progressing well during the day; your presence is
simply not required.”

He seemed much
smaller in person than on the video wall, which had the annoying tendency of
making callers much larger than life. It could be quite intimidating at times,
which was why George usually only made voice calls except when speaking to
Gail. The added dimension of seeing any other caller was not something he saw
much point in, though many people insisted on using the function – in
particular for business or official calls.

Standing next
to the diminutive officer, he couldn’t help thinking that he looked like a much
reduced version of Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther films. The fact that his accent
was not dissimilar didn’t help. Had the whole situation not been so serious and
the man so unpleasant, George would have found him more than a bit comical.

“My wife has
disappeared in your country, how could I not come here to help you find her?” he
asked. “Speaking of which, are
you
any closer to finding her?”

“We will let
you know as soon as we find her, Mr Turner. In the meantime, I suggest that you
return to your hotel where we can easily find you, should that be necessary.”

The Englishman
left, albeit reluctantly, and Captain Kamal shook his head in disapproval.
Police matters were not to be meddled with by members of the public, he firmly
believed. Particularly not
this
police matter.

Why this
Englishwoman was so important, he had no idea, but now he had a murder scene
and an irate husband to deal with, it seemed that this was all going to be more
trouble that it was worth.

A routine
murder such as this would be over quickly enough. It was a high profile case,
thanks to the murder-victim himself being such a high-profile member of the
academic community, but that did not detract from his ultimate goal. Kamal was
a focussed and experienced policeman, and he already had three of the four
pieces of his murder puzzle handed to him on a plate.

The first
piece was the victim: Professor Mamdouh al-Misri, of the Egyptian Museum of
Cairo. An Egyptologist with a keen interest in Amarna texts, he had been the
General Director of the Museum for nearly four years.

The second
piece of the puzzle was the weapon: the sharp corner of the General Director’s
solid mahogany desk had broken the man’s skull at his left temporal bone as he
had fallen. This caused an internal haemorrhage that had placed pressure on his
brain and killed him within minutes, the autopsy report told him.

The third
piece was the motive: a collection of extremely rare texts, dating from the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were conspicuous by their absence
from the General Director’s office. On the black market, they would in total fetch
upwards of three million dollars, and he had been reliably informed by other
employees at the museum that there would be no lack of willing bidders.

Which left him
with one final piece to find: the murderer.

There were
three ways this could end. She
could
turn herself in, or be found by the police on the streets. He knew that wasn’t
going to happen, of course. Or she may never be found, instead disappearing
into the ether, never to be seen again. In a city of thirty million people, who
would question such an outcome?

But no, now
Kamal had met the husband he knew that it wouldn’t end that way. He knew
people, and he had seen the look in the Englishman’s eyes: he wouldn’t let this
go. If she wasn’t found, he would be a thorn in his side.

Which only
left one possible outcome: Cairo was a heaving great overweight animal of a
city; and overweight animals can have very dirty underbellies. A pretty woman,
alone on the streets late at night, on the run after committing a crime, would
be simply asking for trouble.

All he needed
was a body.

This is all more trouble than it’s worth
,
he thought again as he put his phone to his ear and made all the necessary
plans.

George almost ripped
the pocket of his shirt as he dug frantically for his ringing phone. His heart
sank as he saw the number wasn’t Gail’s; it was identified generically as
French mobile
.

“Yes?” he said
impatiently. He’d been running this way and that for hours, desperately trying
to get any scrap of information possible that would lead him to Gail.

“Is that Mr
Turner?”

A foreign
accent, but it didn’t sound French, although George’s knowledge of accents was
limited to the same old films from which he had characterised the Egyptian
policeman.

“Speaking,” he
said.

“My name is
Martín Antunez, from the European Space Agency. I need to meet with you
urgently,” he continued.

George wasn’t
surprised at the name. He had expected another call from him sooner or later.
“Hello Mr Antunez,” he said, still struggling with the name, “I’m afraid I
don’t know where my wife is. Did you not speak to her last night?”

“No, I’m
afraid not, I left a message with a man at the museum.”

“Professor al-Misri?
He’s dead.” George added. In his search for Gail he hadn’t spent much time
thinking about the Professor, and the fact stumbled out, emotionless.

“I heard that;
the police told me this morning,” he replied, slightly taken aback by the
Englishman’s bluntness. “Mr Turner, I know that your wife has disappeared, and
I believe these circumstances are too coincidental not to be linked.”

“What?” George
was exasperated, tired of people trying to get hold of Gail, when all he wanted
was to get hold of her himself. The last thing he needed was a riddle.

There was a
pause, short enough for George not to have to check his phone’s signal, but too
long to be caused simply by the long distance call bouncing into space and back
on its way from France.

“Mr Turner, a
massive cover-up is underway at the moment, and what is happening on Mars is
somehow linked to your wife, and the finds that she made in Egypt. The reason I
needed to speak to her was to talk about this and see where it would lead. I am
not the only one who believed that your wife has the answers, Mr Turner, and I
am sure that she has been taken.”

George bit his
bottom lip. “Kidnapped?” The police had said nothing of kidnapping, in fact his
impression had been that she was being treated as a suspect rather than as a
victim. “Why do you think that? Who would do such a thing?”

“I don’t want
to say more over the phone, we have to meet.”