Keystone (36 page)

It was ten years since George had
visited Amarna, yet it was as if the whole place was frozen in time. Nothing
had changed since 2036, except that the small town on the other side of the
Nile seemed slightly more deserted than before, and the ferry had acquired a
new pilot.

Even the warm
breeze felt the same as he emerged from the air-conditioned confines of Ben’s
car, which had struggled along the dirt track leading to the bottom of the
cliff, on top of which sat the engraved stone marking the entrance to the
famous Library his wife had discovered. That is, if sitting on something to
catch your breath could really be called ‘discovery’.

Ben took the
lead as he clambered up the crumbling cliff towards the small plateau.

“Shame we
didn’t rent a Land Rover,” George shouted up to him as he neared the top.

Ben rested
against the cliff top and looked out over the sandy-plain below, towards the
Nile. “Not really,” he said shaking his head. “It’s much quicker this way, as
the other route takes you round the whole place to approach from the back.”

George reached
his level, and they both took the final steps up to the plateau. Less than ten
yards from where they stood was a small gatehouse made of breeze-blocks, no
larger than a typical garden shed. It had no windows, and the metal door was
locked with a large Yale padlock. A few yards away was the stone that had
sealed the Library.

“Welcome to
the finest archaeological find of the twenty-first century,” Ben mused as he
handled the padlock, turning it over as if looking for weaknesses. “The most
important site in Egypt is closed by a single lock, with no guard. And thanks
to Kamal, the closest police are over five kilometres away.” He took off his
rucksack and opened it, removing a foot-long crowbar. Inserting it into the
ring of the padlock, he wedged one end of the bar against the frame of the
door, and pulled back. The leverage applied to the padlock was insufficient to
break the hardened steel, but the bolt the lock was fastened to buckled almost
immediately. After re-adjusting the angle of the crowbar, he pulled back again
in a single, jerking motion, and the lock fell away from the door, leaving it to
swing freely on its hinges.

George looked
at his friend in surprise. “Have you done this before?” he asked.

Ben opened the
door and shrugged. “No. But when you’ve watched as much TV as I have, you pick
up a few useful tricks.”

They were
about to step inside when there was a shout from behind them.

“Stop!” a
female voice barked authoritatively.

Ben turned
round with a grin on his face, and George did his best to fight the urge to run
away; the natural response programmed into him was to get as far away from the
scene of the crime as possible, whether that crime was stealing cookies between
meals as a child or breaking into one of the most highly regarded historical
sites in Egypt. The dilemma facing him must have been obvious to his audience,
because Zahra laughed out loud, and Ben slapped him on the shoulder.

“Sorry,
George,” he said. “I lied to you, there are some police here.” He nodded
towards Zahra and her four friends, three men and a woman, who followed her out
from behind an outcrop of rocks twenty yards away. George thought he recognised
one of the men from the patrol outside the airport in Cairo the previous
afternoon. Though none of them were in uniform, they all carried weapons, which
George assumed to be AK-47s. They were certainly not the sleek, modern-looking
guns from the day before.

Zahra caught
him looking at her rifle, and she winked at him knowingly. “So they do not know
it is us,” she said.

“The police
weapons are all traceable to the individual,” Ben explained, “based on biometric
authentication built into the grips. Each bullet can be traced back to the gun
that fired it, which can in turn identify who fired the shot and when the gun
was fired.”

George looked
at him in wonder. “You really do watch a lot of TV, don’t you?” Turning back to
Zahra, he smiled and offered his hand. “Thank you for helping us, I hope you
aren’t taking too much of a risk?”

She laughed
freely, shaking his hand and then nudging Ben in the ribs. “No risk, don’t
worry. It’s like old times, eh Farid?”

Ben looked sheepish,
like a schoolboy being told off for getting his uniform muddy playing football,
but knowing that he’s not in too much trouble and that it was absolutely worth
it. Looking at George, he shrugged.

“I don’t know
what she’s talking about,” he said.

Zahra brushed
away his denial with a movement of her free hand. Choosing to move on to more
important things, she proceeded to introduce her friends by first names only.

Manu and Haji waved
as she gestured towards them and they heard their names; it was quickly
apparent that neither of them spoke a word of English. It still came as a
surprise to George to meet people who didn’t speak any English at all, which
said a lot for the frequency with which he left the beaten track and ventured
into the heart of any foreign country. Their lack of English also highlighted
his own deficiencies in Arabic; usually, he would be able to meet anyone half
way with a mix of English and Arabic, bastardised into some unofficial
‘Arabish,’ but when it relied solely on him, it was another story entirely.
While they had obviously not been chosen for their linguistic or interpersonal
skills, it was clear why Zahra had decided to bring them along: Manu was over six
feet tall, had arms as thick as George’s thighs, no neck and a nasty scar
running down the left cheek of his otherwise attractive, angular features.
Haji, despite being a good six inches shorter, had a stocky physique and
wouldn’t have looked out of place in a boxing ring.

Without
weapons, they would have been a fearsome sight. With them, they were truly
terrifying, and George was glad to have them on his side.

The third man,
Tariq, had indeed been at the airport the day before, and he shook George’s
hand enthusiastically. There was obvious excitement in his eyes, and while his
English was worse than Zahra’s, which itself was far from perfect, his
willingness to understand more than made up for it. Despite his less imposing
physique when stood alongside Haji and Manu, Tariq carried his AK-47 rifle with
an ease and comfort that demonstrated years of experience handling weapons.

The final
addition to their septet was Leena. Almost as striking as Zahra, she was
slightly taller, and had a crop of short bleach-blond hair covered with a
Yankees baseball cap she wore back to front. Her English, though heavily
accented, was close to perfect, which she explained as being down to her
university education in Ireland. As soon as she mentioned it, George couldn’t
help but pick up on a hint of Gaelic melody in her voice.

On top of the
Kalashnikov assault rifles, the small company each had a holstered pistol and
rucksacks, which George guessed held everything they would need for a small
war. Zahra explained that they each carried ammunition, food and water as well
as flashlights and encrypted walkie-talkies. They were all dressed casually
except for their jackets, which were the type of flack-jacket the press would
wear while reporting from a war-zone.

Tariq had a
large spear-point knife in a sheath buckled to his lower right leg. It was a foot
long, and had a hanger attachment on its wood-covered handle, indicating it was
a bayonet. George couldn’t imagine how lethal the man would be holding an AK-47
with ten inches of carbon-steel sticking out of the end.

Again, Zahra
caught him staring at the weapons, and she broke into another perfect smile.
“The bayonet is a real history item,” she said. “Over eighty years old.”

He raised an
eyebrow, impressed, and Tariq gladly pulled the slender blade from its metal
sheath and passed it to him. It weighed as much as a bag of sugar, and he
marvelled at how the ancient weapon, which felt more like a sword, looked as
good as new.

“Amazing,” he
said, passing the bayonet back to Tariq. “I really hope you don’t have to use
it today!” He truly meant it.

“Don’t worry,
George,” Ben reassured him. “We’ll do our best to get Gail back without
bloodshed. But don’t forget, we’re not starting this; they took her away. And
because they left a body in her place, we know that they have no plans of ever
releasing her. They’re going to kill Gail if we don’t rescue her first,
George.”

He nodded
slowly, looking from face to face as he summed the situation up. He felt that
they were waiting for his approval before moving forwards with their plans;
my wife - my call
, he thought grimly.
There were seven of them in total; five well-armed and, he assumed,
well-trained people, alongside Ben, whom he was sure would be getting a gun
from somewhere before Patterson arrived. And then there was him, the odd one
out, with no previous experience, he’d never even been in a fight, save for
punching Captain Kamal and the odd bust-up at school, let alone fired a weapon.
When he had held the bayonet, the one thought that occurred to him was how much
heavier than his bread knife it was. This alone told him he was better off out
of the combat zone.

But his
emotional side was in conflict with this calm analysis. Gail was being held by
Patterson, who would be in Amarna in a matter of hours. Would he be happy to
simply stand by and watch as people he barely knew did all the work?
Like hell I will
, he thought. For the
past few days, she had been officially dead. Now the man responsible for that
was going to be handed to him on a plate.

He looked at
Zahra sternly. All trace of a smile vanished from her face as she waited to
hear his assessment of the situation.

Ben leaned
forwards. “George, this may be our only chance to get close to these people.
Once they leave Egypt, they’re untouchable,” he urged. “What do you say?”

“Do you have a
spare gun?”

Squatting in the shade of the gatehouse,
they went over the plan once more, with Ben and Leena translating into English,
to make sure George was comfortable with it.

“I will greet
Patterson at the foot of the cliff, with Zahra’s Toyota, on my own. I will be
unarmed, and carry with me the fake excavation permits that we made last night
back in Cairo,” Ben said.

“And if he
realises they are fake?” George asked.

Ben shook his
head. “He won’t. Zahra was completely taken in by them at first, so an American
will be fooled for sure. Besides, he has no reason not to trust me.” He looked
at his watch and realised they had little more than an hour until Patterson’s
scheduled arrival time. They had all agreed that they should be in position
with three quarters of an hour to spare, in case he was early. Otherwise they
would all be clearly visible from a distance, standing on the small plateau. “I
will then lead him round the road to approach the plateau from the rear. Zahra,
you will observe from the ridge. This then gives you five minutes to prepare
before we arrive at the Library entrance, and to make sure we are not followed
by anyone. We then have one of three options.” He gestured to Leena to explain.

“Option one,
this Patterson man is alone: we meet him at the top with guns. Option two, he
is not alone, but there are more of us: we meet him at the top with guns.
Option three, he is not alone, but there are more of them.” She pointed to a
narrow gulley, at the bottom of which a rough trail led up towards the Library
entrance. “There, if there is more than one car, we attack the rear one when it
passes through. This makes a trap.”

“So if there
are two cars, the front one has nowhere to go,” George agreed.

“We attack
first,” Ben added. “If they outnumber us, then we have one chance only to take
advantage. Once we lose the element of surprise, it’ll be impossible to win. If
he brings people with him, I have no doubt that they will be well trained.”

George nodded
in understanding. “What do we do to the trapped car?”

“Hopefully,
the trapped one will be the Toyota with me in it.” Ben replied.

“And Gail?”

Ben looked at
Zahra. “You have the photo of her, so you know what she looks like. If she is
here, I will make sure that she gets in the Toyota with me and Patterson. Just
in case she doesn’t though, you will need to make sure everyone knows which car
she is in.”

George mused
this for a few moments, scratching his chin. “What if she’s in the last car?”

“Then I let
them go ahead of me on the way up. They go through, and I block the exit,” Ben
replied simply.

The three of
them thought this through in silence for over a minute, before Zahra stood up,
stretched her legs and picked up her AK-47. “Good plan,” she said with a yawn.
They’d all been there for over three hours now, and had been over the plan
several times in Arabic already.

Ben started to
stand up as well, but George put his hand on his shoulder. “Ben, what is the
worst case scenario? What don’t we want?”

“That they get
inside the Library, especially if they have Gail. If they get her down there,
they have her as a hostage, and it gets complicated.” He looked back at him and
put his hand on George’s comfortingly. “But don’t worry, we won’t let that
happen.

George looked
at the door hanging loose on its hinges, the padlock and bolt mechanism, now
useless, sat in a heap in the sand. “If you hadn’t broken the lock, it would be
a lot harder for them to do that, you know?” he said sarcastically.

Ben shrugged
and picked the padlock up as he made it to his feet. “True, but if they have
guns, and they live that long, then they’ll have bullets to open the door
anyway.”

George brushed
out the attack plan diagrams they had made in the sand with his foot, and
picked up his own AK-47 that had been leaning against the breeze-block wall.
The first time he had held a weapon had been an hour ago, when they had passed
him the rifle from the back of the Toyota. It was heavier than he had imagined
it would be, more so than a six-pint container of milk. He shook his head as he
thought of the comparison; it was odd to find that the only things he could
compare weapons to had so far been things found in the kitchen.

Tariq had
walked him through the basics of holding, arming and firing the rifle, which
seemed simple enough that even a child could do it. He thought of news stories
from the Middle East and central Africa, and realised that children
did
do it.

The AK-47 had
two firing modes. The first of these was semi-automatic, where one bullet, or
round
as Ben kept reminding him, was fired
every time the trigger was fully depressed. To fire another round, the trigger
needed to be fully released and then pressed again. The second mode was
full-automatic, which everyone seemed to refer to as
full
. This meant that when the trigger was depressed, rounds would
continue to fire until either the trigger was released, or the magazine was
empty. You chose which mode to fire by operating a selector on the right-hand
side of the rifle to the lowest position for semi-automatic and middle position
for full. In its topmost position, the selector acted as the safety catch, and
stopped the rifle from firing. “The most important thing,” Leena had reminded
him, “is to make sure you turn the safety off before firing, and when you hear
click
, let go of the trigger and
reload.”

While firing
seemed pretty straight forward, reloading was something he was less comfortable
with. Although it seemed simple in theory, he was sure that in the thick of
things, he would forget to do something crucial and the magazine would simply
fall out of the bottom in a slapstick fashion, leaving him with an empty weapon
and a stupid grin on his face. As he stood in the shade on his own, Zahra and
Ben having gone to meet up with the others to confirm their plans, George
decided to run through the reload a few more times.

He turned the
AK-47 on its side and found the magazine catch, which was underneath the
trigger assembly, behind the magazine itself.
I can just see myself pressing that by mistake
, he thought
nervously. Pressing it, he pulled the magazine out, and placed it at his feet.
He then put the selector on the right of the rifle from
safety
to
semi-automatic
.
Grasping the bolt catch, also on the right side of the AK-47, he pulled it back
firmly and the single round that had been in the chamber of the rifle popped
out of the side. It fell to the floor, and he picked it up cautiously, feeling
the weight of the bullet in the palm of his hand before sliding it into his
pocket.

Picking up the
magazine, he slotted it back into the bottom of the rifle, and pulled the bolt
catch back; this time it slid back and forwards again effortlessly. He then
very carefully moved the selector into its topmost position and onto safety.

To ensure he’d
done it properly, he gave a quick tug on the magazine. Satisfied that it was
firmly secured, he release it again, and repeated the whole process twice, on
the last attempt managing to catch the chambered bullet as it popped from the
side of the rifle.

Happy that he
had put in enough practice to remember how to do it in a rush, he ensured the
safety was on and shouldered the rifle.

“How are you
doing?” Ben said as he strode across the sand towards him, a grim smile on his
face.

“Not bad,” he
admitted. “I think I have the hang of reloading now, it’s easier than I first
thought!”

Ben patted him
on the back and went to lead him to the rest of the group, who were starting
their climbs towards their elevated positions on either side of the gulley,
above the track. Suddenly, he stopped and pointed towards George’s clenched
fist.

“What’s that?”

George opened
his hand, revealing the round he had caught moments earlier. His hand dived
into his pocket, and came back out with two more identical rounds. Looking up
at Ben, his face dropped.

Ben laughed
and took the rounds from him. “Easy, eh? If you’d practised reloading much
longer, you’d have run out of bullets!”

They both
laughed as Ben removed the magazine, un-chambered a fourth round, and then
proceeded to demonstrate how they could be reloaded into the magazine by
pressing them down against the other bullets. The spring loaded mechanism would
carry the rounds down into the magazine until the last round sat neatly between
the lips of the magazine at the top. He then reloaded the AK-47, reset the
safety and passed the rifle back to George. “You shouldn’t need to do that
again, because there are three of these fully loaded magazines in your backpack
anyway. You won’t need to fire any more than that.”

“And if I do?”

“You won’t.”

Just then,
Zahra shouted over at them.

He looked at
his watch and cursed in Arabic. “Time, George!”

They were late
to their positions, and Patterson was due to arrive in less than forty minutes.
Looking up at his friend, he put his hand on the Englishman’s arm and smiled.
“Do not worry, my friend. You will be fine. We will also be fine, and we will
rescue Gail. In less than an hour, we’ll all be standing here laughing about
it, wondering what all the fuss was about.”

George watched
as he walked towards the cliff and disappeared over the edge, on his way down
to where Zahra had parked the Toyota in preparation. Ben’s car was safely
hidden behind an outcrop of rocks further down the track.

He turned
towards Zahra, in time to see her taking up position, lying down just behind
the cliff’s edge, giving her a perfect view of Ben and the track that led back
to the Nile. Leena and Tariq were settling behind some rocks on the left hand
side of the gulley, while Manu and Haji had already disappeared on the right.

He stood on
the plateau, alone, surveying the scene for more than a minute before Zahra
barked an order at him to hide. Doing as he was told, he ran towards the left
side of the gulley, and as he climbed up the smooth stones, thought about Ben’s
parting comment:
In less than an hour,
we’ll all be standing here laughing about it, wondering what all the fuss was
about.

George had no
idea how wrong this would turn out to be.