The Deceit (17 page)

Ryan put down the notebook and gestured at the roof of the mud tunnel above him.

‘So here we are in the necropolis of cats, the city of the dead cats, underneath the ruins of great Bubastis. From the first days of the Early Kingdom to the Persian invasions of the fifth century
BC
, this famous capital – at one time the capital of all Egypt – was the centre of cat-worship. As a result, Egyptians and others brought cats here, by the cartload, to be mummified; some cats were specially bred
just
to be killed, ritually drowned, so they could then be mummified.

‘And it wasn’t just cats. Many species of animals were mummified throughout Egyptian history: dogs, rats, rams, fish, ibises, baboons and sacred crocodiles. And beetles. Scarab beetles.

‘The Egyptians were so obsessed with the afterlife they went so far as to mummify
insects.
The dust of Egypt is therefore littered with millions of these animal mummies: so many, in fact, they have since been used as fuel, or fertiliser, dug up by bulldozers and shipped abroad by the ton.’ Ryan now gestured at a little niche close to his shoulder. ‘But here in the Bubastic necropolis it is very definitely cats that predominate, as we can see. Here. If I just reach in …’

He slid his hands into the dark, dry, narrowing slot. He could feel the three-thousand-year-old cat, preserved within its gangrenous swaddling. The papery corpse was repellent to the touch. Desiccated yet still faintly organic, dry yet moist, paradoxical and revolting. He swallowed his disgust and pulled it out.

‘In my hands I have a classic example, probably a cat mummy dedicated by a poorer family or individual. The richer votaries would commission a coffin for the cat mummy, and Canopic jars for the organs. The poor would simply have their cat basically eviscerated and embalmed, like this one, as you can see.’

Ryan lifted the sad little corpse to the camera; the head was barely connected by the flaking spinal cord to the body, the fur was like dead ashes, the eyes were all rotted out, the greasy dark sockets gazing at him regretfully. Or accusingly. Disturbed from the sleep of death.

He was relieved when he was able to slide the tiny corpse back in its immemorial hole. And clap the noxious dust from his hands.

‘So why did Macarius come here? The text breaks off at this point, tantalizingly. The following passage is illegible. But as he was researching religion, he was surely researching the religiosity of Bubastis, which was intense and famous. At one point Bubastis was home to the greatest religious festival in Egypt, described by Herodotus. Apparently
seven hundred thousand
people would gather for the annual festival of Bast, travelling along the Nile to the Bubastis temples and oracles in great barges. And they came to party. Herodotus describes the excited women in the barges hurling off their clothes and mocking the peasants on the riverbank with their exposed genitals. And then the drinking and fornication would begin, a Dionysiac ritual, a vast bacchanal, days of dancing and coupling above the necropolis. It was the greatest orgy of the ancient world, perhaps the greatest orgy in human history.’

Ryan paused. He didn’t know why. Something was wrong, he was sure of it. The shadows of the cats danced around him. The dust was so thick. He cleared his throat and continued.

‘We can only imagine what Macarius thought about this vivid history. He may, like a good Christian, have been scandalized. On the other hand, some strains of Coptic Gnosticism already had a very unusual attitude to sexuality. A Greek scholar called Epiphanius journeyed to Egypt in 335
AD
, and met a group of Gnostics whom he thought were ordinary Christians but he later called them Stratiotics, or Phibionites. He describes a group engaged in orgies, a cult that consumed semen and menstrual blood at the peak of their rites. Epiphanius even claims some Gnostics cooked human babies for Passover dinner.’

No. Something
was
wrong. There was a shadow – there – it was there, looming behind Helen: she couldn’t see it. He could hear it.

‘Helen!’

The black shape emerged into the cone of camera-light: it was an Arab man in a black cloak and a black beard. His face was wrought with anxiety.

‘
Run!
’
he said.

Ryan lifted a hand. And yelled in Arabic, ‘Why? What is happening? Who are you?’

The man pushed Helen in the back.
‘
Run. There are men coming after us.’

Ryan snapped back, ‘Who? Who are they?’

But the man gabbled on,
‘We couldn’t stop them. I work in the gate. I ran for it. I was coming down here to warn you.’

His explanation was cut short by a blaze of noise and light at the far end of the tunnel. Their pursuers.

‘They have guns. They are going to kill us.’

Ryan grabbed Helen by the hand and they ran, and crawled, desperately, urgently, down the musty mud tunnel, knocking cat mummies to the ground, crunching them underfoot, backbones cracking at last, skulls kicked out of the way, black rotted eyesockets staring unseeingly into the momentary glare of the flashlight.

‘They’re still coming, I can hear them—’

Helen was panting, dragging her bags with the camera. Ryan twisted in the horrible, narrow tunnel and took her bag, hoisted it, and scrambled on. But even as he fled, the Arab man squeezed past so that he could show them a new route: a tiny, half-concealed, even narrower tunnel.

‘This way.’

They had to duck under a low overhang of mud, rotten with age. The roof was unstable, Ryan realized. It could give way at any moment: they were taking a terrible risk. They would be smothered with dirt and ancient mummies: mummified beetles and mummified crocodiles and mummified ibises, and tons of Bubastic mud bricks. Filling their mouths, stifling them, drying them out, until they too would become just another trio of human mummies – raising the total to half a billion
and three
, as if anyone would notice.

‘Here, along here!’

The tunnel forked. Ryan could hear voices in the muffled distance, still coming after them. Who was this? The police? How could they have followed them? Was it the army? Come to arrest them? Had Albert betrayed them?

They took the left fork. The tunnel widened: the niches here were much bigger. Ryan glimpsed the shouting faces of dried-out baboons in large holes, grimacing, rigid and stricken.

The Arab man seemed suddenly confused. ‘Here. No. No. Here? No?’

The tunnel divided into three: it was a labyrinth. The man was paralysed by indecision, his flashlight switching this way and that, picking out a dried ibis, squawking for eternity, a piece of rock, scribed with faint hieroglyphs, and the endless passages of poisonous old mud bricks, dark and stained, soaked through with natron, wood-resins, animal fats. The salts of mummification had permeated the fabric of the tombs at this ancient end of the maze. This whole place was drenched and tainted with the liquors of preservation, the rancid juices of immortality; and now the voices behind them were audible.

‘Stop! Or we’ll shoot!’

English voices? British accents?

Helen pushed her way down the first tunnel, past the confused Arab man. But even as she did, a gun was fired. The bullet missed them, thudding into one of the niches down the way, shattering some ancient baboon skull.

Ryan put a hand on Helen’s trembling shoulder and pulled her back. They were caught, they could not escape – running was pointless.

The lights got brighter as their pursuers – or killers – approached. Ryan lifted an arm to shade his eyes from the dazzle as he tried to make out their faces.

‘We’re trying to save your stupid lives, motherfuckers.’

This time a Canadian accent? The men were young, aggressive, wearing jeans and tight T-shirts, canvas jackets; their manner was soldierly.

The Brit barked in Ryan’s direction, ‘You, Harper? Tell the towel-head to get us out of here. Now.’

Ryan asked the terrified Arab man to show the way out. Once he had been calmed, the man obeyed. For several minutes they squeezed between narrow walls of mud, lined with mummies and coffins and broken and rotten bandaging; everywhere, little skulls peered from little niches, their eyesockets seeming to move with the flashlights passing. The silent journey was horribly tense, as well as grisly. Where were they going? Who were these guys?

At last the Arab stood and lifted some planking, throwing it aside, and they emerged, blinking, into the overcast light. A dampness tanged the air: a faint drizzle had evidently fallen. This was the autumnal Nile Delta winter, so different to the endless seasonless sunshine a hundred miles south.

The men with the guns shunted them around a heaped old ruin of mud bricks, and there was Albert Hanna, squatting morosely in the dust; beside the gateman of the ruin-complex. Two more white men with guns were standing over them. The man with the British accent, apparently the leader, snapped an order: ‘Sit. We need to talk. Sit the fuck down!’

They sat in the dust like prisoners of war. Ryan gazed at his captors. The other man was looking to his left and right, like a trained soldier, like secret service. Ryan realized that
these
men were anxious, even scared. But scared of whom?

‘You can call me Callum,’ said the Brit, his gun casually levelled in their direction. A soldier perhaps? He had blond hair, shaved close to the skull, but wore a seriously expensive watch.

So not a regular soldier then. Ryan tried to work it out. The other men were similarly confusing: a mixture of military bearing and surf-dude demeanour.

‘These are my friends,’ Callum continued. ‘We’re here to save your bloody arses.’

Albert Hanna spoke up. ‘Then why are you pointing guns at us? Are you going to burn a village to save a village?’

Callum chuckled mirthlessly, and slid his weapon into a holster. Then he crouched so that he was eye-level with Albert. ‘Mate, listen. You
do not know
the trouble you are in – a whole lot of trouble.’

‘But who are you?’ Helen asked.

Callum waved away the question. ‘It doesn’t concern you. We are, for the moment, your only fucking hope.’ He turned to Ryan. ‘You have the Sokar documents – or part of them, right? And you are trying to decipher them?’

Ryan answered, his voice tinged with anger and suspicion. ‘Yes. But who are
they
? How are they following us, how did they trace us?’

‘The cops in Nazlet coughed. Gave your names to journos, names of mysterious Westerners sniffing around Nazlet when Sassoon was discovered. Bloggers picked up the story, spread it. Everyone knows who needs to know: there are plenty of rumours on the net. The people hunting you down have spies everywhere, lots of spies and money. How many checkpoints have you been through? How many Egyptian soldiers on two bucks a day have they paid off? This is how
we
traced you, so this is how they are tracing you. Except they probably have satellites too. Satellites and drones, the full McFlurry. They could be here in a minute, so we need to get out. And when we go, Ryan Harper, you will decode that document for us. In return we will stop you getting killed.’

‘But who is this terrible secret enemy?’ Albert Hanna insisted, his immaculate dark suit powdered with mud. ‘Who, precisely, is chasing us?’

Callum turned. ‘You’re the brilliant Coptic guy, Hanna, right? Famously smart? You not worked it out?’

‘It is the Israelis. Is it not?’ Helen said. ‘The soldiers in the desert. They are coming after us.’

‘Ten out of ten.’ Callum stared at Helen. ‘The Isrealis are coming after you. They have all the money they need, they have Mossad men with guns, and if they catch you with that papyrus they aren’t going to be cuddly like us. They will take the documents, and shoot you dead, and feed your corpses to the pigs of Moqqatam.’

Helen stirred, and Albert too.

But Ryan stood his ground, arms crossed. All his life Ryan had detested being pushed around and,
mano a mano
, pound for pound, he reckoned he could take this Brit – if he could get hold of his gun. But the gun was holstered and well out of reach, for the moment.

Callum smiled. In the most unamused way possible. ‘Fighter not a lover?’

Ryan shook his head. ‘Need more information. Why should we trust you? More than the Israelis, more than anyone?’

‘’Cause we haven’t killed you yet?’ Callum sighed, aggressively. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled photo. ‘You’ve obviously not seen this.’

He showed it to Helen and she flinched at the sight. Ryan grabbed the photo.

It showed the bruised face of an Arab man with a clean bullet hole in the dead centre of his forehead.

‘I don’t get it.’ Ryan frowned.

Helen interrupted, and answered. ‘That is the man, the Bedouin man, who first found the cave, with Sassoon’s body. The man who guided me back there.’ She turned to Callum. ‘The Israelis did this?’

‘Yes. They realized they didn’t have all the documents. They came back for the rest. They located this poor bastard and when they realized he couldn’t
assist
they shot him dead to make sure he couldn’t talk. And they will do the same to
you.
When
they find you.
Which
they will.’

Callum moved so close to Ryan that they were nose to nose. ‘Now, we can either get the fuck out of here, before they catch us. Or you can linger and enjoy the historic sights, for the last few minutes of your life.’

The owner of the witchcraft museum was frowning nervously as Karen reached in her bag for the recorder. Setting the machine on the desk, she sought to calm him. ‘Many thanks for coming in, Mr Ryman, we know you are busy.’

‘Oh, not at all, not at all.’ He smiled in an unconvincing way. ‘I was in Truro anyway, to see my mother. She’s up at Treliske, the hospital.’

‘Nothing terrible, I hope?’

‘Her pacemaker needs changing. Marvellous what they can do these days. She is practically bionic: two false knees, replacement hip. I sometimes wonder if she will rust rather than age.’