Indiana Jones and the Secretof the Sphinx (17 page)

Abdul put Indy down.

"Take off your clothes," Ahkmed said. "All of you. Do it!"

Indy slowly began to unbutton his shirt, beginning at the top. Faye and Mystery started to loosen their clothes as well, also slowly.

"Where's the Staff when you need it?" Indy asked Faye.

"Shut up," Faye said.

"What?" Ahkmed asked.

"Nothing," Indy said.

"You mentioned a staff."

"Maybe I did," Indy said.

"Is this staff valuable?"

"Priceless," Indy said. "But it's not important now, is it?"

He finished unbuttoning his shirt. Faye knelt down to undo the laces of her boots, while Mystery slipped the new dress from her shoulders.

"Tell me about it," Ahkmed said.

"It would take too long," Indy said as he pulled out his shirttails. "And you're obviously in a hurry to get us in that brine solution."

The barrel of the gun wavered.

Both Ahkmed and Abdul were staring at Mystery in her underwear, their eyes bright with anticipation.

Reaching behind his back and pretending to free his shirttail, Indy grabbed the whip instead and came forward with it. The whip cracked as it bit into Ahkmed's wrist, and the gun went off just before Ahkmed dropped it and staggered backward into the wooden bench. The bullet struck the masonry wall behind him. The wooden bench toppled over, spilling the corpse and the baskets of snakes onto the floor.

Cobras darted in every direction.

"Snakes!" Indy yelled. "Lots and lots of snakes!"

Abdul seized Indy by the back of the neck with a hamlike fist and began to drag him toward the vat. A nine-foot cobra slithered up his leg and Abdul tried to shake it off.

The cobra hissed and opened its hood, then sank its fangs into Abdul's thigh. The giant yelped and grasped the snake with both hands, but could not pull it free. When he turned to plead for Indy to remove it, Indy drew back and hit him on the chin with his best punch.

Abdul staggered backward and fell face-forward into the vat. The liquid sizzled and hissed.

Ahkmed was already dead. Several snakes hung from his face, and there were many red and puckered bite marks across his cheeks.

"Let's get out of here," Indy said.

He jumped onto the stairs.

"Don't you want your gun?" Mystery asked as she slipped the straps of the dress back on.

"Forget it," Indy said, coiling the whip and hanging it at his belt.

Mystery shook her head, then walked calmly across the floor.

"Don't!" Indy said.

"Shhh," Faye said. "Don't interrupt her concentration."

Mystery continued forward, stepping over the writhing snakes, and picked up the Webley.

"They're just trying to find a way out," Mystery said. "Ahkmed was a goner, but Abdul probably would have survived if he hadn't panicked. A cobra bite is not normally lethal."

"I'll take your word for it," Indy said as he slipped the Webley into its holster.

"What do they do with the
—things
they make?" Mystery asked.

"There's quite a black market for powdered mummy," Indy said. "Some people use it as a medicine, while others believe it's a powerful aphrodisiac."

"How revolting," Mystery said. "Shouldn't we burn this place or something?"

"We would, if it wasn't attached to honest shops and homes on either side," Indy said. "We'll just have to leave it for the snakes to take care of."

9
Jackals

They drove to the Giza plateau shortly before sunset in a rickety old Ford owned by Sallah's brother-in-law, parked the car near the Nile beneath a sandbank so as not to attract attention, and waited for the moon to rise. When it did, rising like some ghostly messenger over Cairo two hours later, a jackal howled in the distance. The howl drove the last of the tourists back across the bridge to the safety of Cairo, leaving the monuments to the desert and the things that lived there.

Sallah picked up the canvas bag of torches soaked in pine tar and the heavy iron pry bar, and Indy got the shovels and axes. Faye carried the Staff and a pair of lanterns, while Mystery carried the ropes and tackle.

They climbed up the rocky bank of the Nile and made their way across the tortured landscape toward the Sphinx. As they grew closer, the Sphinx's head emerged from the horizon, along with the peaks of two of the three pyramids beyond. Finally, they threaded their way around the toppled columns and stones of the temple to arrive at the mouth of the enclosure itself.

Before them was the enigmatic face of the Sphinx, staring perpetually to the east. The ragged paws jutted toward them, while the head, with its protruding ears and ribbed hood, seemed ready to topple forward onto them at any moment, so badly damaged was it. Because the Sphinx was carved from a single limestone outcropping, the head was the only thing that appeared above the horizon; the rest of the body was set into a trenchlike enclosure.

Between the paws was an upright granite monument, about the height of a person, that was covered with hieroglyphics. Like the Sphinx itself, the monument was damaged and incomplete.

"There's something about this place," Faye said. "You can feel the ages pressing down upon you. No, not just the ages, but all of eternity."

"You're not the first person to note that," Indy said. "I felt it too, the first time I came here as a boy. Much more of the Sphinx is exposed now than it was. Its history has been one of alternately being buried by the desert and being dug out by later generations."

"Won't anybody notice that we're snooping around here?"

"It's not likely," Indy said. "We're so well-hidden by the enclosure that they would have to be right on top of us before they discovered us."

"What does this say?" Mystery asked, standing in front of the granite stelae. The moon was so bright that Indy could read it without the aid of a lantern.

"It's like most government monuments," he said. "It commemorates a public works project and the leader who instituted it. About twenty-five centuries ago, Thutmose IV cleared out the sand around the Sphinx and made repairs to it. Because we have part of a name down here on the damaged portion of the tablet, the single syllable 'Khaf,' most Egyptologists believe the Sphinx was built a thousand years earlier, by Khafre."

"What do you think?" Mystery asked.

"I think we don't have all the answers yet," he said.

"I've read that Napoleon used the Sphinx for target practice," Mystery said, "and shot off the nose."

"No, it was disfigured by an Islamic zealot in the fourteenth century," Indy said.

"All right, Indy," Sallah said as he set down his bundle and picked up a shovel. "I am ready. Where do we start?"

"Good question," Indy said. "Faye, it's time."

Faye nodded.

She walked to the Sphinx, then turned and sat between the paws, with the Staff across her lap. She lowered her head and concentrated, remaining this way for a quarter of an hour while the others waited in silence.

Finally her head came up.

Faye opened her eyes, but she looked as if she were listening to distant music. She placed one foot beneath her and then the other, and finally she held the Staff out in front of her at arm's length.

She walked forward seven paces, hesitated, and took a step to the left. She held the Staff over her head with one hand, then twirled it as she brought it down. The end of the Staff sank into the shallow sand and struck something hard beneath.

"Dig here," she said.

"Are you sure?" Indy asked. "There wasn't any lightning or anything. I expected more."

"When the Israelites looked for water in the desert," Faye said, "they simply struck a rock with the Staff, and a spring flowed. Why should this be any different?"

"Well, thousands—no, probably millions—of people have crossed that particular spot over the last five thousand years, and nobody's found anything there. It sounded like the Staff struck the natural limestone beneath the sand."

"Quit complaining and dig," Faye said.

Sallah marked the spot with his foot, then started to clear away the sand with a shovel. Indy and Mystery moved to help while Faye watched, the Staff held upright in her hand. In a few minutes they had enough sand removed to see a smooth, flat surface.

"It's man-made," Indy said. "But it could just be one of the flagstones of the old courtyard here."

"Keep digging," Faye said.

Sallah tapped the stone with the blunt end of the pry bar. There was a hollow ring.

"I'll be damned," Indy said.

Sallah looked up disapprovingly.

"I found an edge," Mystery said.

Within half an hour they had removed all of the dirt from the stone, which was flat and about a yard square. Then Sallah drove the pry bar beneath one edge of it.

"Not yet," Indy said. "Mystery, make sure the coast is clear."

Mystery nodded.

"Be careful," Indy added.

She scrambled up the right paw, climbed onto the shoulder of the Sphinx, and leaned against the head. The moon was high in the sky now.

Mystery looked behind her. The body of the Sphinx, nearly the length of a football field, looked out of proportion; the head seemed too small for such a huge body. Jutting into the sky in the northeast, and well-illuminated by the moon, was the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the last remaining wonder of the Ancient World. Nearly directly behind the Sphinx was the somewhat lesser Pyramid of Khafre, while to the southwest was the smallest of the three great pyramids on the Giza plateau, that of Menkure.

She thought she saw something move to the south, parallel to the Nile. She closed her eyes, then looked again, but there was nothing.

"All clear," Mystery shouted.

As she came back down, a piece of the Sphinx from a thousand-year-old patch sloughed away beneath her feet. She caught herself before she fell more than a few feet.

"I told you to be careful," Indy said.

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry next time," Indy said. "Be safe."

Sallah took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and leaned on the end of the bar.

Nothing happened.

He took a better grip on the bar and put his back into it. The muscles in his arms and shoulders bulged like snakes, but again nothing moved.

"It can't be that heavy," Indy said.

"Would you like to try?" Sallah asked. His face was red and his nose dripped sweat.

"You must not have good leverage," Indy said.

"How long do you think I've been doing this?"

"Let me try," Indy said. "That stone can't weigh more than a couple of hundred pounds."

He spit on his hands, repositioned the bar, and tugged.

"You're right," Indy said.

"Let's try it together," Sallah said.

Sallah took the top of the bar while Indy took the middle and Mystery pushed from the other side. After thirty long seconds of concerted effort, there was the sound of rock scraping against rock.

"It's moving," Indy said through clenched teeth.

"Keep going," Sallah urged.

Reluctantly, the stone yielded.

Mystery relinquished her grip on the bar and stepped back. She wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, and then looked up at the stars.

"It's funny," she said, her chest heaving. "I thought I would be excited at this moment, but I'm not. I feel strange—like I'm one of the jackals we hear out there on the desert."

"We are jackals," Sallah said, his eyes shining. "It is not a bad thing, it is the order of nature. My family has been scavenging these tombs for generations. We are simply human jackals.
Raiders."

10
Father of Terror

Sallah wrestled the large stone to one side while a gust of hot air issued from the passage, causing the Sphinx and the stars above to shimmer like a mirage.

"Take a deep breath, Indy," Sallah said. "We breathe the air of pharaohs!"

"And slaves," Indy said as he took a torch from the canvas sack slung over his shoulder. He struck a wooden match on the limestone block that Sallah eased onto the sand, then touched it to the tightly wrapped bundle of pitch-laden reeds. The torch sputtered before bursting into a steady orange flame.