Sphinx (57 page)

‘I don’t understand . . .’

‘I was born over seventy years ago in a small village in the Sudan. We did not have the technology or the medical staff to correct such “abnormality”. My parents were horrified. They gave me to the darwish, who brought me up as his apprentice.’ He looked at me carefully. ‘You might know him - Ahmos Khafre? He’s the mystic I sent Isabella to visit in Goa all those years ago.’

I stared at Hermes, a sense of vertigo hitting me as I wondered exactly how much of both Isabella’s life and my own had been manipulated from a distance, as though we were marionette puppets jerking at the end of strings. As if he’d heard my thoughts, Hermes said softly, ‘So you see, the circle is even tighter than you might have imagined, Oliver.’

‘How did you survive?’ I asked instead.

‘I started to research the history of people like me, whom the Ancient Egyptians had once considered sacred. The perfect blend of the masculine and feminine, we were often chosen to be the high priests. I participate in the most sacred ceremonies.’

Hermes’s eyes shone madly and as he spoke his voice seemed to be getting higher, as if he was finally relaxing into his natural ambiguity. My memory jolted me straight back to the catacombs, to the painted features of the goddess Isis shimmering unnaturally, the voice behind the wooden mask. I leaned against the wall, sickened by the realisation. I’d been on the wrong trail the whole time - it had not been Amelia Lynhurst leading the worshippers. I looked at him, but before I could say anything he reached out and grabbed my wrist. ‘Oliver, we need each other. No one else can save you. No one else knows how to stop the astrarium.’

‘What do you want with it, Hermes? It’s not to save me, I know that much . . .’

Hermes smiled cynically and for the second time since meeting him I saw a maniacal side behind those guarded eyes.

‘Immortality, Oliver, what anyone would want.’

Horrified, I pushed his hand off. ‘You lied to me! You took her heart, you violated her!’

I banged against the bars to get the attention of the guard.

‘Wait, I’ll tell you everything!’ Hermes shouted, pulling me back.

I stopped rattling the bars. Hermes settled himself on the bench and patted the space next to him. I ignored him, preferring to stand.

‘Giovanni Brambilla ran a small salon that attracted individuals who were interested in mysticism and the occult. I’m talking over forty years ago, in 1936, when the world we knew was beginning to fragment. None of us wanted to lose power. We were a disparate group - academics, businessmen, archaeologists - but we all had a passion for Egyptology. And those were desperate times in a desperate city.’

So the police had been correct, I thought to myself - a secret sect of sorts under Giovanni’s tutelage. No wonder they’d been suspicious of Isabella.

‘At first the re-enactments were innocent, naive attempts to experience some kind of authenticity. But as the years passed I wanted to go further. I was convinced that if the rituals were carried out correctly, we could do something more powerful. It could be real.’ He paused, then whispered: ‘Sorcery. One day, unknown to the others, I replaced the sheep’s heart we’d been using in the weighing-of-the-heart ritual with a human heart.’

‘Whose heart?’ I asked incredulously, but I thought I already knew the answer. Ashraf had heard screaming.

‘A criminal’s - I stole it from the mortuary.’ He looked at me coolly.

‘You’re lying again! You had a man murdered, didn’t you? Ah, and that young Egyptologist who was missing her organs, like Isabella,’ I said, suddenly remembering Demetriou’s description.

‘They were noble sacrifices! What is important is how that little detail changed everything. That night we conjured Seth, his very being. It was phenomenal - suddenly, we had the power of gods.’ Hermes sounded hysterical now, his voice tinged with mania. I took a step back, pressing against the bars.

‘That’s not possible.’

‘Isn’t it? Oliver, you’ve seen it for yourself.’

I shivered, remembering the long shadow falling across the walls of the catacombs. Hermes watched my face with a kind of objective curiosity; a whole other personality seemed to be materialising under his veneer of obsequiousness.

‘After that, dissent broke out in the group,’ he went on. ‘But this was not the debate of a bunch of academic archaeologists. This argument had much broader implications.’

‘Giovanni wanted to use the rituals to destroy his political enemies?’

Hermes nodded. ‘For a while it worked. I couldn’t tell you whether it was the power of all those people believing together or whether it was real sorcery. Then Amelia broke the circle and ruined it all. She took some of the others with her, to pursue their own interests.’

‘And Isabella?’

‘She did whatever her grandfather wanted, anything. It had been Giovanni who first came across the astrarium in his research; research that he had been foolish enough to share with Amelia Lynhurst.’

‘And the excavation at Behbeit el-Hagar?’

‘Giovanni organised it. We were all convinced we would find the astrarium there. Giovanni had ideas about using it politically then, as a way of defending the old Egypt and, to protect his assets, warding off the inevitable takeover by Nasser. I thought he was crazy at the time. Now I know otherwise. We found nothing. Instead, Amelia found the Was and fled with it, betraying us. Giovanni persuaded Isabella to dedicate her studies to the mechanism. When she sought out Ahmos Khafre on my advice, he unwittingly pushed her further by giving her her death date. Her urgency fuelled her research and she came so close.’

‘What about Isabella’s death date?’ I asked through gritted teeth.

‘Ahmos Khafre was the greatest astrologer the world has ever known. The death date was real.’

‘She was just a child, Hermes.’ I felt myself getting furious at the callousness of his attitude, at the culpability of involving children, at Isabella’s stolen childhood.

‘Childhood is such a modern concept.’

At that, I couldn’t contain myself any longer. I lifted my fist; only Hermes’s terrified expression and my need to know more stopped me from striking the blow. Relieved, he wiped his sweaty face with a filthy sleeve.

‘I was deceived by Mosry. He infiltrated our group and I assumed that he and I wanted the same thing. It was I who arranged for his man to be on that boat when Isabella drowned. I didn’t know he was working for Prince Majeed until he murdered your Australian friend - an interrogation gone wrong.’

‘I could kill you now,’ I said thickly.

‘I am ready to die anyway.’

Hermes bared his scrawny neck, as if waiting for me to strangle him. I kept my arms stiffly by my sides. He pulled his collar back up.

‘The astrarium has a reputation amongst the military elite, both in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They believe in its powers. After all, it is known that Alexander of Macedonia wanted it, and Napoleon sent troops to look for it. If Prince Majeed gets hold of the device it will be bedlam for this region - tribal anarchy. He will use it to help create the kind of political chaos he thrives on. Then he swoops in to take over. My needs are far simpler. All I wanted was immortality.’ He smiled cynically. ‘No use to me now. They will kill me in here. Unless you could be persuaded to part with the astrarium? ’ He smiled at me hopefully, but I ignored him.

‘What about Hugh Wollington? Why does he want the astrarium?’

Hermes’s face turned ashen; I’d never seen him look more frightened.

‘How do you know about Hugh Wollington?’ he asked.

‘He was the voice of Horus, wasn’t he?’ I couldn’t hold back - I grabbed a handful of his filthy caftan and shook him, hard. ‘He was behind all this from the beginning!’

‘He is the high priest. He rules us all.’ Petrified, Hermes could barely speak.

‘Nonsense. He’s just a man like the rest of us. Just give me the facts!’ I towered over Hermes, who suddenly looked even more pathetic, almost whimpering with fear.

‘If he gets hold of the astrarium he will release Seth, the god of confusion,’ Hermes whispered. ‘Then may the gods help us all.’

There was a pause and despite myself I felt a frisson of terror.

I turned to call for the guard again. Hermes clutched at my arm.

‘Please, you have to understand. You were lured to the ritual deliberately to play Osiris. You are of the Underworld, Oliver, whether you like it or not. You are the deliverer. You must be allowed to complete your task.’

‘The deliverer - what are you talking about?’

‘At Behbeit el-Hagar we discovered a prophecy written by Banafrit which said that if the astrarium was ever lost the only person able to fulfil the true destiny of the skybox and restore it to the mummy of Nectanebo would be a priest of the Underworld, a follower of Osiris, someone who brought forth the subterranean treasures of the Earth. It was no accident that Isabella chose to marry you,’ Hermes concluded, almost with relish, looking at me sideways.

I had to restrain myself from lashing out at Hermes. How dare he suggest that Isabella had married me because she’d been instructed to! Yet, despite my fury, I couldn’t contain the tsunami of doubt now roaring up inside me, undermining all I’d ever believed in. Had the astrarium passed judgement on my life?

‘You wanted me to take responsibility for the astrarium because of some archaic prophecy?’ I said, incredulous.

‘You have no choice. But we can’t do anything about it if I’m not there. You need me, Oliver. And I need you. Please, please help me.’ He reached out. ‘I tried to get you to surrender the astrarium in the ritual. If I had succeeded, the power to control it would have transferred to me.’

‘You mean that I alone can control it?’

‘Until you put your birthdate in it - then you surrendered your destiny to its judgement.’

I felt the blood roaring in my ears and saw a kaleidoscope of images, each one more terrible than the last, dance in front of my eyes - Isabella’s heart floating in the water, her lifeless eyes beseeching me, a small pointed hand ticking away inevitably, condemning me to die in two days; the long shadow dancing across the catacombs, coming for me. I knew I should stay, should strike some kind of Faustian bargain with Hermes, but at that moment I suddenly found myself unable to speak. Gulping frantically, I tried to block a rising tide of panic. I pushed Hermes away. I just needed to escape.

I shouted for the guard, my voice hoarse. My calls ignited a chorus of wailing from the other prisoners until the whole corridor was transformed into a cacophony of misery. When finally I stumbled out into the courtyard, Hermes’s entreaties still rang in my ears.

The iron gates of the prison shut behind me with a clang. I walked towards the main street, calmer now but still reeling from the scenarios swirling around my brain. It was just before noon and the pavements were thronged with people: women on the way back from the market, men sauntering to the midday meal, schoolgirls linked arm in arm. Isabella had loved me, I told myself. But the prism of our marriage was now collapsing into a complexity of shards that I didn’t understand. Had my profession been the single factor in her decision to marry me? Had it held some kind of mythical symbolism for her? Everything I had known to be solid, to be real, was evaporating around me. Isabella had been my anchor, the continuity that had given my life foundation for the last five years. To imagine that our shared years of intimacy - of lovemaking, of believing in the life we had, that she loved me for who I was and not what I did - were nothing but mere simulacra was devastating.

And if my marriage hadn’t been real, what else was false in my life? I’d assumed myself in control of where I worked and for whom, but now I had to ask just how many of those decisions had been made of my free will? Had I been unwittingly following a path dictated by an unseen master? The idea that parts of my life might have been preordained was suffocating. It was an affront to all my personal philosophies: my atheism, my belief in free will, the notion that a person had control over their destiny. And then there was Hermes’s tale of sorcery and sacrifice. In my mind, I heard the quiet ticking of my life ebbing away.

Foreboding travelled over me in waves. I was painfully aware of time passing. Light seemed to bounce off everything - car mirrors, glass shopfronts, even the metal stirrups of the horses. I needed to get back to the monastery. But then what?

Behind me there was the roar of a car engine. I turned; a black Mercedes was trailing me. I could see Mosry at the wheel, Omar beside him and, disturbingly, Hugh Wollington in the back seat. Looking around me wild-eyed, I darted into a side street. The car followed, swerving onto the pavement towards me. People scattered, women screamed, fruit spilled over the street as the car headed straight for me - I closed my eyes, almost glad that it would all be over now, but just before the vehicle hit me a hand yanked me into a doorway, inches clear of the front bumper.