The Lost Army of Cambyses (37 page)

cut back to create a doorway. You can see the

ancient chisel marks.'

Half of the entrance was blocked with shale and

rubble, leaving a metre-wide opening at the top.

Daniel put his head through and flashed the torch

around in the pitch blackness. There was a sudden

flurry and something shot out into the night.

'What the fuck?' gasped Tara.

'Bats.' He smiled. 'They love tombs. Nothing to

worry about.'

He took another look around with the torch

and then clambered through the opening. Tara

came to her feet, ready to follow. As she did so she

trod on a slab of loose shale which slid from

beneath her foot, causing her to lose her balance.

She swayed for a moment, clawing desperately at

the sides of the gully, and then the entire shale bed

gave way and she was on her back and sliding

downwards towards the edge of the cliff, scree

rushing beneath her like water down a chute.

'Tara!' cried Daniel.

Her arms flailed wildly as she grappled for a

handhold. In the narrow funnel of the cleft the hiss

of slipping stone was magnified tenfold so that it

seemed as if she was caught up in a raging torrent.

Dislodged scree vomited out of the mouth of the

gully beneath her and disappeared into nothing-

ness. Daniel stood helplessly in the tomb doorway,

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watching as she slid further and further down.

Only when she was almost at the cliff edge, and it

seemed certain that she would be dragged over it

by the force of sliding rubble, did she finally

manage to jam her foot against an outcrop of rock

and stop her descent. There was a long silence and

then the distant clatter of stones as they hit the

ground far below.

'Shit,' she gasped.

She lay still for a moment, breathing heavily,

and then, very carefully, stood up, keeping both

feet planted firmly against the walls of the gully,

where the rock was solid.

'Are you OK?' he called.

'Just about.'

'Stay there. Don't move.'

He clambered out of the tomb, shone the torch

beam across the shale, then edged his way care-

fully down towards her, grasping her outstretched

hand and half leading, half pulling her back up to

the top of the slope again. Her clothes and face

were grey with dust, her shirt torn at the elbow

and stained with blood.

'You're hurt,' he said.

'It's fine,' she replied, shaking the dust out of

her hair. 'Come on, let's see what's in the tomb.'

He smiled, despite himself. 'And I thought I was

obsessed. You should have been an archaeologist,

Tara.'

She grinned at him. 'Not enough excitement,'

she said.

Inside the entrance they found themselves in a

narrow sloping corridor. From this side, by the

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light of the torch, they could see that the bottom

half of the doorway was blocked with a wall of

mud bricks, against which the scree had become

piled. For a long while Daniel stood in silence

gazing around him.

'Originally the whole doorway would have been

bricked up,' he said eventually. 'Over the years

more and more rubble would have got piled up

against it, until only the top part was left clear.

Whoever found the tomb knocked that in and left

the bottom half of the blocking intact.'

He flicked the torch to the side.

'See, there are the bricks.'

Swept up against the wall of the corridor was a

pile of whole and broken mud bricks. He poked

among them and lifted one up. On its face was

imprinted a design of nine kneeling men, their

hands tied behind their backs, with a seated jackal

above them.

'What's that?' she asked.

'The seal of the royal necropolis,' he said, smil-

ing to himself. 'Nine bound captives surmounted

by Anubis the jackal. If the door blocking was still

in place, with the necropolis seal on it, that means

the tomb was intact when it was found.

Untouched since antiquity. About as rare as they

get.'

He stared down at the brick for a moment

longer, then laid it gently back on the floor and

shone the torch down the corridor, its beam

punching a narrow hole through the enveloping

blackness. By its light they could see that the shaft

sloped gently downwards for thirty metres before

opening out into what looked like a chamber of

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some sort. Beyond the margins of the torchlight

the darkness was thicker and more tangible than

any darkness Tara had ever known. They began to

move forwards, Daniel flashing the torch over the

neatly chiselled walls, ceiling and floor. After a few

paces, however, he stopped.

'What?' asked Tara.

'There's something moving down there.'

'Bats?'

'No, on the floor. There.'

He dropped the beam. Something was coming

towards them, fast.

'Daniel,' she said, trying to sound calm, 'stand

very still and don't make any sudden movements.'

BETWEEN CAIRO AND LUXOR

The night train to Luxor was less crowded than it

had been coming in the opposite direction and

Khalifa had almost an entire carriage to himself.

He removed his shoes, lit a cigarette and began

going through the files on Dravic, which Tauba

had had photocopied for him. Behind him, at the

far end of the carriage, two backpackers, a boy

and a girl, were playing cards. The files didn't

make pleasant reading. Born in 1951, in the

former East Germany, Dravic was the son of an SS

officer who had subsequently joined the

Communist Party and risen through the ranks to a

position of some prominence.

As a boy he had excelled at school, especially in

languages, and, aged only seventeen, had won a

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place at the University of Rostock, where he had

gained a doctorate in Near Eastern Archaeology.

He had published his first book at the age of

twenty – an analysis of Minoan Linear A script –

and had thereafter produced a stream of other

works, one of which, on Late Period Greek settle-

ments in the Nile Delta, was still regarded as a

standard text on the subject.

Khalifa finished his cigarette and lit another

one, remembering how he'd read the Greek settle-

ments book for an essay he'd written at university.

He stared out of the window for a moment,

the landscape flat, dark and empty apart from the

occasional lights of a far-off house or village, then

returned his attention to the papers in front of

him.

From the outset Dravic's academic achieve-

ments had been overshadowed by a tendency to

violence. At the age of twelve he had put out a

fellow pupil's eye during a playground fight, only

narrowly escaping criminal proceedings after the

intervention of the local Party supremo, a friend of

his father's. Three years later he had been im-

plicated in the murder of a vagrant who had been

found burnt to death in a local park, and the

year after in the gang rape of a young Jewish

girl, on each occasion escaping punishment

because of his father's connections. Khalifa shook

his head, appalled.

The German had begun excavating in his early

twenties, first in Syria, then Sudan and then Egypt,

where he had worked for five consecutive seasons

at Naukratis in the Delta. Despite persistent

rumours of antiquities smuggling and worse, no

317

charge against him had ever been sustained, and

his career had flourished. There was a photograph

of him shaking hands with President Sadat and

another of him being presented with an award by

Erich Honecker.

He had seemed destined for great things. Then,

however, had come the incident with the dig

volunteer. Although it had occurred in Egypt, the

girl had been German, and that's where he'd been

tried. He'd got away with it, but this time the mud

had stuck. His research fellowship had been

revoked, his dig concessions cancelled, he had

stopped publishing.

That was two decades ago. Since then he had

earned his living on the antiquities market, putting

his expertise to use procuring and authenticating

items for various wealthy patrons. In 1994 he had

been arrested in Alexandria for possession of

stolen antiquities and had served three months in

Cairo's Tura prison, where the last known photo

of him had been taken. Khalifa held it up – a

black-and-white prison mug shot, the German

standing against a wall holding a card with a num-

ber on it to his chest, scowling at the camera, huge

and malevolent. Khalifa shivered.

After his release from Tura, Dravic had gone

underground, entering and leaving the country

illegally, organizing the smuggling of artefacts and

their sale on the black markets of Europe and the

Far East. Despite warrants for his arrest in seven

countries, and numerous sightings, he'd always

managed to keep one step ahead of the law.

Details of his recent movements were sketchy.

All that was known was that he'd started working

318

for Sayf al-Tha'r in the mid-1990s, and had been

with him ever since. There were rumours of secret

Swiss bank accounts, links with neo-Nazi organiz-

ations, even covert involvement with Western

intelligence agencies, but most of it was hearsay.

After 1994 the German had kept a low profile.

One thing was certain, however – he was about as

bad as they got.

Khalifa worked his way through to the end of

the file, then stood to stretch his legs, wandering

up to the far end of the carriage, where the two

backpackers had put away their cards and were

now listening to a cassette player. He nodded a

greeting and asked them where they were going.

They ignored him – probably worried I'm trying to

sell them something, he thought, smiling to himself

– and with a shrug he wandered back to his seat, lit

another Cleopatra and got started on the patholo-

gist's report on old man Iqbar. The backpackers'

music seemed to blend with the rhythm of the

train's wheels, as though both were part of the same

tune. He could feel his eyes drooping.

Just south of Beni Suef the train juddered to a

halt. It remained stationary for five minutes, emit-

ting a soft hissing sound as though catching its

breath, and then started moving again. Another

minute passed and then he heard the door of the

carriage open behind him. There was a pause, then

a shout and a crash. The music from the cassette

player stopped abruptly. He turned.

Three men in black djellabas were standing over

the backpackers, whose cassette player lay

smashed on the floor. One of the men grabbed the

boy by the hair, yanked his head back and, in a

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movement so swift Khalifa barely saw it, slashed a

knife across his throat. Blood jetted out over the

carriage floor.

The detective leaped to his feet, reaching for his

gun. Then he realized he'd left it in Luxor and so

looked around wildly for something else to use as

a weapon. Someone had left a pile of books on the

seat opposite him. He began throwing them at

the men.

'Police!' he yelled. 'Drop your weapons.'

They laughed and began moving towards him.

He held his ground for a moment, then turned and

ran, crashing through the door at the end of the

carriage and into the next one along. There were

more people here, including a group of children

clutching brass lamps.

He ran forward between the seats, but snagged

his foot on a can of edible oil and fell. A hand

clasped his forehead and yanked his head

backwards.

'God help me!' he coughed. 'Allah protect me!'

A face loomed right up against his, huge, big as

a beach ball, half white, half purple.

'Poor little Ali,' chuckled the man. 'Ali, Ali, Ali!'

He was holding a trowel, diamond-shaped, its

edges sharpened. With a bellow of laughter he