The Curse of the Pharaoh #1 (6 page)

Finally, late in the afternoon, they reached their destination.

The
Duat
had already chugged past great temples and riverside villages, heading for the barren hills to the north. The clusters of palm trees and farmland gave way to rougher terrain. Finally they docked at a rotting wooden pier, covered with wild vegetation.

Clearly no one had used it for years. The three adventurers (plus camels and cat) quickly disembarked and found themselves on a scrub-covered plain, crisscrossed by muddy streams.

“I thought Egypt was all sand dunes and desert,” said Dash, a little confused.

“The desert begins after you pass the mountains,” Agatha told him. “Here, on the banks of the Nile, the land is fertile, especially during the summer flood season.”

“How do you know that?” Dash demanded. “Wait, don’t tell me. Because you’re the rebooted queen of the underworld.”

“Cut it out,” she laughed. “All I did was memorize a few maps of this region.”

“You and your famous memory drawers!” Dash said with a snort. “All right, open one up. Where’s the trail? I can’t get a GPS read on my EyeNet; no signal.”

Agatha craned her neck, scanning the marshland. “It all looks like mud to me,” she had to admit.

Chandler, who was twice her height and had better eyesight, pointed at a sloping hill in the distance.

“Dirt path up that hillside, Miss,” he said quietly.

“Excellent, Chandler.” Agatha smiled. “That must be where we need to go.”

“Are you sure, cousin?” Dash asked.

She didn’t respond: she was already clambering onto her camel with the skill of a born rider. Dash moaned, eyeing his camel. “No spitting this time, okay, dude?” Somehow he and Chandler got onto their camels in one piece. Agatha was already riding ahead, urging her camel forward as fast as it would go. Dash and Chandler struggled to catch up.

They rode through the back country for a good half hour and then took a dirt path that wound upward between the jagged peaks fringing the Valley of the Kings.

Agatha had to stop every few minutes to wait for her saddle-sore friends, and each time she took the chance to survey the landscape with a small pair of high-powered binoculars.

The path was rocky and steep, full of dangerous turns and unmarked intersections.

“The bad news is we could get lost,” said Agatha, tapping her nose.

“And the good news?” Dash panted behind her.

Agatha put the binoculars back in the pocket of her khaki shirt. “No guards to get in our way,” she said, getting back on the path.

But she was wrong.

Big-time.

Just before sunset, they stopped in a narrow gulch to recheck their coordinates. Suddenly they heard echoing noises. Raising their heads from the map, they saw gun barrels poking out from between the rocks.

“Don’t move!” a man shouted in English.

At the sound of his bass voice, Dash started to shake. “This is serious business,” he mumbled in terror. “This time we’re really in trouble!”

A
dozen men swarmed into the gulch. They were armed, but no one was wearing a police or military uniform.

Who were they? Smugglers? Or tomb robbers?

“I have a very bad feeling about this,” Agatha whispered. “Let’s just stay calm and find out what they want.”

Dash and Chandler nodded in silence.

In the dim glow of dusk, a flashlight beam cut through the air like a blade. When the light hit Dash, he jerked on his camel’s reins and raised both arms high in the air. “We’re innocent!” he cried. “We surrender!”

His sudden movement spooked his camel, which kicked and bucked, trying to shake off its saddle and rider.

The attackers watched as Dash twisted around, frantically trying to free his legs from the saddlebags, and they burst out laughing.

“Oh, this is just perfect!” groaned Dash. “I get to be mocked while I die!”

The rippling laughter was interrupted by a French-accented voice: “You there! Give the boy some assistance!”

The sentence was uttered by a wiry, bald man with a white beard. It was Professor Maigret, the Egyptologist from the film clip.

Agatha dismounted and stepped forward to join him. “We’re here about the stolen tablet, Professor,” she informed him.

He looked momentarily startled. “What did you say?” he asked anxiously. “Is agent DM14 here?”

Agatha pointed at Chandler.

“At your service,” the butler said, giving Agatha a knowing nod and clambering down from his camel.

Still flailing around in the saddlebag straps, Dash protested, “What? Um, no, there must be a mistake! This is my mission.” But Professor Maigret was already shaking Chandler’s huge hand.

“I’m happy you’re here, Agent DM14,” the scholar said, relieved. “Please pardon my crew for the unfriendly reception. There have been many strange things going on in these parts.”

“You don’t say,” Chandler said stiffly.

“By the way, this is my hieroglyphs specialist, Doc—”

“A pleasure to meet you, Dr. Paretsky,” Chandler said, recognizing the young scholar from the photograph. In real life, he appeared even paler, his thin shoulders hunched, his eyes watery.

“The pleasure is mine,” the scholar replied in a low voice, intimidated by the butler’s bulk.

Then he looked at Agatha and Dash. “But who are these children?” he asked, perplexed.

“Even master detectives need clever assistants,” Chandler said gravely.

“
C’est vrai
, this is true,” interjected Maigret, happily rubbing his hands together. Then he
turned to a handful of aides. “You will please escort our guests to base camp,” he ordered.

As the group began to move, Dash sidled up behind Agatha, protesting. “I don’t get it.
I’m
the master detective!”

“Lower your voice, please,” Agatha said in a hushed tone.

“Tell me why you lied to them,” Dash insisted.

“Simple,” she said. “If they’re focused on Chandler, we can move around more freely.”

Dash thought about this for a moment, turning his gaze upward to the first stars of the night. “That makes sense,” he admitted grudgingly. “Keep their eyes off us…”

“Let’s run a quick check,” Agatha suggested.

“A quick check of what?”

“Can your EyeNet detect heat sources?”

“Yes, of course. Why?”

“Activate the scanner when we get to base camp,” she said. “According to our information,
there should be three scholars and twenty-one laborers, plus the fourth man from the photo, for a total of twenty-five people…”

Dash pulled out the EyeNet and punched in a sequence of keys. “Got it. You want to find out whether anyone’s missing,” he whispered.

“If the tablet was taken somewhere outside the main camp, the thieves will be with it as well. Am I right?” Agatha smiled and Dash nodded, impressed.

It was practically dark by the time they reached their destination, descending a long, sandy hill into base camp. Now that the sun had gone down, the desert air quickly grew cooler, and Agatha shivered.

They found themselves in a funnel-shaped valley surrounded by cliffs. In the silvery moonlight, the laborers’ tents looked like floating ghosts.

Professor Maigret led his guests into the pavilion reserved for the heads of the expedition.

Just outside the kitchen, they came across the third Egyptologist, a rotund young German with his mouth smeared with chocolate ice cream.

“Nice to meet you, Dr. Dortmunder.” Chandler spoke without hesitation, easing into the role of a master detective.

The geologist appeared stunned to be recognized. He quickly swallowed the last of his chocolate-cherry ice-cream pop. “Is anyone hungry?” he mumbled with his mouth full. “I was just having a predinner snack…”

While the two assistants cleared the table of papers and tools, Maigret took the butler’s arm, planning to show the lab tent to the master detective.

Agatha drew close to her cousin’s ear. “What’s the head count?” she whispered.

“Some of the heat spots are blurry,” he murmured. “I count twenty-three. Looks like there are two people missing!”

“Interesting. Extremely interesting.” Agatha nodded.

Soon after, the pavilion filled with the smell of sizzling sausage and crispy potatoes, served on tin plates. It was a far cry from Aunt Patricia’s exotic feast, but it was hearty and filling.

Everyone wolfed down their food in silence, even Maigret and Chandler. The bony Paretsky pushed his potatoes aside, but Dr. Dortmunder ate seconds and thirds. Watson sat in Agatha’s lap and, with a swipe of his paw, stole a whole sausage right off Dash’s plate.

He didn’t even notice.

Agatha decided to break the ice. “When you found us, were you searching for the two laborers who disappeared?” she asked casually.

The scholars looked at each other, astonished.

“How do you know about that?” asked Maigret, nervously wiping his mouth. “We haven’t told anyone outside the camp!”

“It’s our job,” Chandler said drily. “We’re here to investigate.”

The oldest Egyptologist was delighted. “What did I tell you?” he told his assistants. “The Eye International detectives are the best in the world! See, they’re already on top of this mystery!” Then he turned to Chandler. “Where would you like to begin,
monsieur
?”

“At the beginning, of course.”

By the light of the halogen lamps, Professor Maigret began to recount the sequence of events from the time they first left for the Valley of the Kings, about a month earlier.

Maigret and his assistants had followed the lead on an ancient piece of papyrus, preserved in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo,
which spoke of a cursed pharaoh. His tomb, numbered sixty-six by the Egyptian experts, appeared to be somewhere deep in the funnel-shaped valley. They had begun excavating immediately: days and days under the burning sun without even finding a coconut shell. Until finally Jafar, the director of operations, let out an exultant shout.

They all rushed to see what he’d unearthed and found themselves staring openmouthed at a large, clay tablet.

“Jafar,” Agatha murmured to herself. “That’s the name of the fourth man!”

She wanted to tell Dash right away, but just at that moment Dr. Dortmunder started to speak, describing the techniques they’d used to recover the relic. Because the ancient clay was so fragile, extracting the tablet had required surgical precision. It had been brought
to the lab for analysis less than a week ago.

“We knew at once what a sensational find it was,” Dr. Paretsky broke in. “I swear, in my whole career, I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“Doctor, are you referring to the backward hieroglyphs?” Agatha asked.

Once again, the three scholars’ dumbstruck expressions proved her right.

“Yes, the hieroglyphs,” he said gloomily. “When we finished cleaning the tablet that night, I deciphered the first few sentences…”

“What did it say?” Chandler asked.

“They described a magnificent tomb that priests had secretly moved to this valley after an uprising,” he said. “Unfortunately I didn’t have time to find out its location before…”

“You see, we were in desperate need of sleep,” Professor Maigret went on. “So we decided to continue our study the following morning.”