Keystone (4 page)

The corridors of the Peabody
Museum were eerily quiet as Seth Mallus worked his way to the research labs on
the first floor. A small group of Mayan figurines watched him go up the ornate
late-nineteenth century staircase, past a large pop-up stand advertising an
exposition of indigenous identities in the twenty-first century.

He had been to
Harvard University’s Anthropology Department many times over the past few
years, though this was his first visit to the Peabody Museum after normal
opening hours.

Dr Patterson
was waiting for him.

“Great to see
you, Dr Patterson,” Mallus said going in hand first.

Patterson
shook his hand and smiled nervously; he had his agenda and he was going to
stick to it. He didn’t want this calculating businessman catching him
off-guard.

“Mr Mallus,
good to see you too. I expect you will want to see the fruits of our labour
first?”

Mallus looked
at him and raised an eyebrow. “First?”

Patterson bit
his lip. He was better at his day job and barely a heartbeat after shaking
hands was already at risk of slipping up. He chose not to say anything else and
led Mallus into a small room off the main corridor. Its walls were
sterile-white with a long work bench along one side. On it was a strange
machine that looked like a cross between an old-fashioned mangle and a
newspaper press, enclosed in an acrylic glass box

“Here it is,”
he said unceremoniously.

Mallus walked
up to the machine and looked inside; the beautifully intricate red and black
symbols can’t have been any more vivid the day they were inked. Patterson had
done a superb job. “It’s beautiful,” he whispered. “Is it safe to touch?”

“No, it will
never be safe to touch. The oils of your skin would cause lasting damage. It
will also need to be kept inside a pressurised, acclimatised container to
ensure that it doesn’t deteriorate. It will need to be kept out of direct
sunlight.”

Mallus turned
towards him and smiled. “I know what you are about to say, Dr Patterson.
Henry,” he emphasised the more personal touch. “We’ve been working together now
for almost five years and I’ve been waiting for this exact conversation, so
trust me when I say you do not need to skirt around the subject.”

“It should
remain here,” Patterson said frankly. “At your request, and thanks to your
generous donations thus far, I have been able to keep this project relatively
quiet. But I’m already coming under some pressure from my peers, those that I
have had to involve, to secure this artefact for the Museum.”

Mallus shook
his head. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question. I will be taking the document
with me this evening, and a final donation to the Anthropology Department will
be made in the morning. I’m quite prepared to make a personal donation to you,
too.”

It was
Patterson’s chance to shake his head.

“I won’t be
bribed, Mallus.” It had taken considerable effort to setup the laboratory
environment required to open the ancient papyrus, and he wasn’t about to give
it up without a fight. Even more so considering the level of secrecy he had
been forced to keep during the long years it had taken for the document to
finally be laid bare. “This papyrus is perhaps one of the most finely preserved
outside of Egypt, and it does not belong in your private collection.”

Mallus walked
up and down the room before standing to face the nervous-looking scientist.
“I’m going to be completely honest with you, Henry. You know this isn’t about
the papyrus; it’s about where it leads. I want to start planning excavations in
Egypt; dozens of people digging up the desert to find it. That’s the prize, and
that’s what I’m interested in. Now, I’ve got a feeling that when they do find
it, there’ll be a lot more work, and what we’ll be looking at then will be far
more interesting than some ancient treasure map.”

“So this is
all about money?”

Mallus looked
down at the floor, for the first time in Patterson’s eyes looking lost for
words. “No,” he said quietly. “No, I have a feeling there’s something more
important here. Something that could change everything.”

Patterson
looked at him with interest. “Like?”

He looked up,
the confident businessman Mallus gone, replaced with an anxious Seth. “I just
have a feeling,” he said. “We can work on this together, Henry. I’m not bribing
you. Just let me take my papyrus back and I promise I’ll bring you something so
big you’ll forget the damn thing ever existed in the first place.”

Gail woke with a start.
 

What a strange dream
, she thought. She
had been standing on the top of a cliff overlooking a vast plain. Running
through the middle of it was the river Nile. Suddenly, the ground had shaken
beneath her and a huge glass tower erupted into the sunlight. Up, up it had
risen until it must have touched the very edge of the atmosphere. Its base
filled the plain, bridging the gap between the Nile and the cliff on which she
had been standing.

The smooth walls
of the tower had reflected the surrounding cliff-top and the rising sun behind
her in perfect detail. It had however been unsettling that the only thing they
didn’t reflect was her.

Awake now, she
fancied she could still feel the humid air of the desert on her skin, and
touching the sheets realised they were damp with sweat. She rubbed her eyes and
checked her tablet sitting on the bedside table: three minutes to six. Barely
dawn.

George lay
sleeping beside her, his pyjama top was twisted round so that half the buttons
were on his back.
 
In her still-sleepy
state she couldn’t quite work out how that was possible, so she decided to think
it through while she went downstairs to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
 

On her way
back she stopped in front of the video wall.
 
It was certainly good fun to play with, and the novelty had not yet worn
off.
 
She picked up the remote from the coffee
table and shook it.
 
The wall came to
life and she quickly pressed the mute button; the system came with an
incredibly powerful speaker setup that Gail could not see a use for in her
normal-size home. Unlike George whose exact words were “It’s like being at
Wembley!” to which Gail had shouted “What did you say?”

She tilted the
remote on its side, and an Internet browser appeared next to the news
presenter. Her thumbprint on the remote automatically logged her in to her
social feed, which came to life with pictures and videos from her friends and
family. She focussed her attention on direct messages and emails.

The first was
from Ellie.
 
She had sent it barely half
an hour earlier, and from the way it was written she must have been drunk.
 
Gail almost laughed out loud as she realised
about halfway down that Ellie obviously thought she was writing to her mother. Closing
the message she scrolled down, ignoring several general emails from the
University until she reached the previous day’s auto-reply message from
Professor Mamdouh al-Misri of the Egyptian Museum of Cairo, regarding her
application form.
 
She sighed and
scrolled back up to the top.
 

Rotating the
remote lazily she refreshed the feed. It was only six in the morning, but you
never knew who might be up sending funny things. Her heart missed a beat as she
saw the new email appear: ‘RE: Tell el-Amarna dig.’ She quickly opened the
message and read it, her eyes resting on the last line: ‘Look forward to seeing
you soon!
 
Mamdouh.’

Within seconds
she was shaking George.
 
“Honey! I got
the place!” she screamed, her voice so high-pitched it was almost unintelligible.
“We’re going to Amarna!”

George broke
into a huge sleepy grin and tried to reach out to hug her. His twisted pyjama
top stopped him from lifting his arms, and he spent several frantic seconds
freeing himself from it. “Well done,” he said eventually. “I knew you
would.
 
Now all you have to do is write
your research proposal.”

But she had
already left the bedroom, and was taking the steps back down to the living room
two by two. “I know,” she shouted back up the stairs. “I know!”

The hot tarmac of the road
gleamed in the late-afternoon sun as their car moved slowly south.
 
The encroaching desert threw tentative
fingers of light yellow sand across both carriageways from their right.
 
In the distance, mostly hidden behind the low
mounds of sand, the tops of a group of palm trees could just be seen, swaying gently
in the light breeze.
 

Gail looked
above the desert at the deep blue sky.
 
It seemed almost alien to her, having arrived the previous evening from
the cold and wet winter climate of England.
 
On top of that, she could not remember the last sunny day in
Southampton.
 
One, perhaps two weeks of
sunshine over the summer months, but the relentless clouds mostly won the
battle for the skies of northern Europe.
 
Here, it seemed the other way round; a small, cotton-like cloud, devoid
of rain, glided slowly across the horizon to their left, but it was totally
alone against the azure background.
 

For thousands
of years, the Sahara desert had fought an ongoing battle with the fertile banks
of the river Nile. In the time of the most ancient pharaohs, the Great Pyramid
on the Giza plateau had overlooked a landscape of fields and palm groves, which
had helped to feed a young and expanding kingdom.
 
Every year, the Nile would spill over into
the surrounding fields, bringing with it the necessary nutrients that made the
area so welcoming to farmers and their animals.
 
And every year, the sands of the desert would fight back.
 
The incessant tug of war between the desert
and the river meant that for a great deal of its length, only a narrow band of
cultivated land separated the Nile from the sands.
 

Better
irrigation and modern technology during the twentieth century had meant that
the land could be used all year round with less reliance on seasonal flooding.
 
However, the beginning of the twenty-first
century had already seen a rapid change in climate, and for the past twenty
years the desert had been steadily gaining ground.
 

On their left,
the sand quickly turned to grass, which within ten yards had developed to a
rich variety of trees and other plants, their green leaves a welcome break from
the yellows and blues of the desert and sky to their right. George slowed down
to give way to an oncoming van.
 
The road
was barely wide enough for both of them to fit, but the driver seemed
unconcerned as he smiled at them and nodded his thanks.
 
Since they had left the motorway fifteen
minutes earlier, this was the first human they had seen.
 
Gail was increasingly excited as she looked
between the car’s satnav screen and the road, scanning the horizon for
something familiar that she would recognise from the hours spent online looking
at satellite images.
 
They were less than
three kilometres away from their destination, and she knew it wouldn’t be long
before something familiar cropped up.

 
“There!” she exclaimed, moments later. “Over
there, those houses!”

George had
just taken the car around a blind corner, revealing a group of flat-roofed
houses a hundred yards in front of them.
 
It was almost dreamlike, the scene so typical of a postcard of Egypt
that Gail laughed; a couple of children ran across the street chasing a
football, a lone chicken stood proudly on a low stone wall.
 
George let a large black sedan pass them, its
rear windows obscured, the stone-faced driver barely nodding at them in return.

“Are you sure?”
 
George said glancing at the satnav,
which still claimed another two kilometres to go.

“Absolutely!
Just past here on our left is a turning, which you take to cross the canal.
Ignore the satnav, it’s wrong.” Gail bounced in her seat as they drove past the
two children, who now appeared to be arguing about whether or not the street
lamp was the goalpost or not.
 
“Just
after that house,” she was almost shouting now, and George couldn’t stop
himself from grinning. “Now! Turn here!”

George
indicated left and turned onto a small side street, sandwiched between two rows
of houses; telephone and electricity wires criss-crossed the street, like the
intertwined branches of trees meeting above an English country lane. “Are you
sure? This looks like a bit of an alley-way.”

“Yes, I’m
certain. Just keep going along this street, it widens out!”
 
As the road did indeed widen she slapped
George’s leg and held it firmly with her right hand. “See?”

The rows of
houses on both sides ended abruptly, and the street gave onto the concrete
banks of a canal. A few hundred yards to their right, a flat bridge crossed the
calm black water ten feet below.
 
Along
its edge ran a series of short concrete blocks designed to stop cars falling
whilst also letting water and debris pass unhindered over the bridge in times
of flood. The precaution seemed very optimistic, as currently the water couldn’t
be more than a few feet deep at most.
 
There were a few cars and people on the roads, but Gail had expected to
see many more.
 
Indeed, this was far from
the bustling small town full of activity that the satellite images had shown
her.

“It’s not very
busy,” she said with a disappointed tone.

George changed
gear and brought the car to a halt at a traffic light. The left indicator
flashed patiently as the engine ticked over, the fan from the air conditioning
whining in the heat. “They’re probably all watching Indemnity,” he said. They
had watched the dubbed American sitcom in amusement for half an hour in their
hotel room the previous night.
 
From the
frequent commercial breaks, they guessed it must have been a very popular show
in Egypt, too.

The light
changed to green, missing amber completely.
 
George had grown used to this by now, it seemed that the middle light
was there purely as a spacer.
 
He moved
the car forward and turned onto the bridge across the canal.
 

“Where to
now?” he asked.

“Carry on
straight, we should be entering Beni Amran soon,” she looked up and pointed at
a small sign in Arabic with an English translation written below. “There! Well,
it says ‘Ben Imran’, but that’s close enough.”

Passing
through the small, mostly deserted village, they could see memories of a more
prosperous time; the sand was piled high in the doorways of houses and most
shops lay empty, the paint from the signs peeling and faint.
 
There were some cars and people, clearly the
area was still inhabited, but dying. Gail’s ‘Idiot’s Guide to Egypt’, a
tongue-in-cheek present from Ellie before they had left, did not cover the
modern area of Amarna or its surrounding towns and villages, choosing instead
to focus on the ancient Egyptians, but Professor al-Misri had already warned
Gail that the location was not known for its amenities.
 

They would be
spending their first night in the only hotel in Beni Amran, which had fifteen empty
rooms and was run by an old man and his wife. They also provided all of the
meals, as it was the only restaurant in the village.
 
The tourist industry at Amarna had dissipated
over the past thirty years, as visitors tended to go to the more famous and
immediately impressive sites of Thebes and Memphis. The frequent cruises
running along the Nile no longer came as far north as Tell el-Amarna, stopping
instead over a hundred and eighty miles away at Dendera.
 
In a world of package holidays to the north and
south, Tell el-Amarna was in the no-man’s-land between.

“Amarna!” Gail
exclaimed. Their car passed under a modern gateway in the form of an ancient
Egyptian pylon. On it, barely visible in the cracked and faded paintwork, were
the words ‘Welcome to Tell el-Amarna’. George grinned.

Beyond this
gate, they were barely twenty yards from the Nile. But the road did not end on
its bank, instead vanishing beneath the water down a gentle slope.
 
A barrier had been lowered to stop people
from driving any further, whilst a small sign advertising ferry times in both
Arabic and English politely advised them to buy tickets in the hotel before
boarding.
 

The hotel
wasn’t hard to find, as it was right next to the slipway, its three stories
rising high above the small flat-roofed homes, the elaborate writing on its
fading sign hinting at a more successful past. George parked their car on the
side of the road while Gail searched through the papers in her backpack for
their reservations; she didn’t think that there would be much of a problem if
she didn’t have the printout, but felt better for bringing it anyway.

The dusty heat
of the early evening was in stark contrast to the cool controlled climate of
the car, but nonetheless Gail was happy to be on her feet as she faced the
river. She filled her lungs, throwing her chest out to catch as much of the
atmosphere as possible.

Instead of the
humid heat she had been expecting, she found herself breathing in fresh clean
air, and for the first time since their arrival in Egypt she felt a cool breeze
against her cheeks and bare arms. In front of her the width of the Nile
stretched out over a hundred yards until it reached the opposite bank, beyond
which she could see the cliffs that had once enclosed the city of
Akhetaten.
 

“Come on
George,” she turned and opened the boot of the car. “Let’s get our things
inside and get ready.
 
There’s a ferry
across in half an hour, we can go and see the site before it gets dark, can’t
we?”

“Is there
anywhere we can eat on the other side?” George asked cautiously. “It’s been
hours since our last stop, and I’m famished!”

In a service
area earlier that afternoon they had enjoyed their first Egyptian fast food, couscous
with spicy sausages, but they had not stopped since, and the smell of cooking emanating
from the hotel beside them was obviously giving him ideas.

She already
had her bags in her hands and was heading towards the main door of the hotel as
she shouted over her shoulder. “We’ll be quick, I promise!”

Once Gail had
presented her letter of acceptance to the excavations at Amarna, sent to her by
the Professor from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo the previous week, the owner of
the hotel had happily sold Gail and George tickets for the ferry. Normally, he
had explained, the local tourism police would have had to escort them both on
the other side of the Nile, but the letter was proof enough not to warrant
alerting them. If they intercepted them boarding the ferry, they may insist on
accompanying them anyway, but it was worth avoiding such a thing if possible,
if only to save the cost of the baksheesh. A baksheesh was a tip, but was often
synonymous with bribe.

He advised
them that the evening meal was normally served just before eight o’clock,
giving them enough time to drive to the archaeological dig on the other side of
the river and introduce themselves quickly, before catching the seven o’clock
ferry back.
 

The police
nowhere to be seen, they shared the ferry with an old man at the wheel of an
ageing Land Rover Defender. The 4x4 and its driver both came from the previous
century, but nevertheless towered over the small, modern rental car and its
occupants. It was far better suited to the rugged terrain ahead, and while
George had enjoyed the luxury of the air conditioning that afternoon, he
couldn’t help feeling that they would be better off in the Land Rover from this
point forwards.

Leaving the
ferry, they drove onto the eastern bank of the Nile for the first time. They
passed a small, seemingly deserted village on their way and George laughed
nervously.
 
“I’m not surprised they
abandoned this place, it’s desolate!”

“The photos I
saw on the Internet showed that until recent years this whole area was green
and fertile, maybe not on this side of the river, but certainly where we’ve
just been.”

George
gestured to the remains of an even older village, mostly buried in the sand and
stone.
 
“It looks like this place has
been like this for quite some time.”

“I think this
side of the river was probably always less cultivated.
 
It’s very rocky,” she pointed at the cliffs
ahead of them to illustrate her point.
 
Their car moved slowly along the road; by now, the tarmac was mostly
hidden beneath the shifting sand.
 
They
had followed the directions given to them by the Professor, who must clearly
have owned a more appropriate vehicle like the old man on the ferry. “We’re not
that far, only a few hundred yards or so.” She could sense that George was
nervous about the car getting stuck. It was already starting to drift
unpredictably at each turn.

There were a
couple of ongoing archaeological excavations at Amarna, but only the Professor’s
was uninterrupted over the holiday period. He had been very happy to enlist
Gail’s help for the four weeks, which made her think that he had been having
difficulty getting people to sign up.

She couldn’t
have been more wrong. Up ahead they could see half a dozen white square tents,
neatly lined up next to a row of six cars, mostly 4x4s.
 
To the left of the tents, a group of a dozen
or so people were sitting or standing around the edge of a trench, covered by a
gazebo that during the day would keep out the harsh sunlight.
 
They were talking animatedly while pointing
inside the excavation.
 
A tall, thin man
with a neatly trimmed grey beard stood over them smiling, his wide-brimmed
straw hat casting a shadow over his face.