The Seventh Scroll (69 page)

There was no sense of time in the long gallery, and they could not tell night from day. It was always a surprise to leave the precincts of the tomb and find that the stars were shining in the narrow strip of sky that showed above Taita's pool, or to find the bright African sun burning hotly down out of the cloudless blue. They ate and slept only when their bodies demanded it, not according to the passage of the hours.

Re'entering the tomb after a few hours' sleep in their shelters beside the pool, they were crossing the causeway over the sink-hole when a wild cry reverberated down the shaft ahead of them. Immediately there was a hullabaloo of query and answer, and excited shouts from the men working in the upper levels of the tunnel.

"Hansith has found something," Royan cried. "Dammit, Nicky, I knew we should have stayed-' She began to run, and he hurried after her. They came out on the landing in front of the gallery to find it crowded with chattering, gesticulating, half-naked workmen. Nicholas forced his way through them with Royan on his heels. They realized that Hansith had cleared the gallery as far as where the shrine of Osiris had once stood. The roof above them was jagged and broken, and lying amongst the rubbish on the ruined agate tiles of the floor Nicholas made out the remains of the mechanism which Taita had placed in the roof, and which they had brought crashing down when they had activated the device. The main part of this was an enormous stone wheel, resembling a mill wheel and weighing many tons. Nicholas stopped to give it a cursory examination.

"When you read River God, you realize that Taita had an obsession with the wheel," he told Royan. "Chariot wheels, water wheels, and now this must have been the balance wheel of his booby-trap. VA-ten we moved the levers, we toppled the wedges that held this monstrosity in place. Once it started rolling, it tumbled all the drop-stones that he had stacked above the ceiling of the gallery." He glanced up at the shattered roof.

"Not now, Nicky!" Royan was hopping with impatience. "Time for your lectures later. Taita's deathtrap is not what has excited Hansith. He has found something else. Come on!'

They pushed their way through the pack of workmen until they reached Hansith's tall figure.

"What is it?" Nicholas shouted over the heads of the others. "What have you found, Hansith?"

"Here, effendi," Hansith shouted back. "Come quickly." They pushed their way to the face, and stopped beside the monk at the end of the blocked gallery.

"There!" Hansith pointed proudly.

Nicholas went down on one knee in the shattered remains of the shrine. Small pieces of the painted plaster still adhered to the fractured rock wall. Hansith pulled a slab out of the collapsed face, and pointed into the space it had left. Nicholas peered into it and felt his pulse begin to race. There was an opening in the side of the gallery, Even at first glance he realized that it was the mouth of another tunnel leading off at right-angles from the long gallery. It had been concealed behind the plaster-covered image of the great god.

As he stared into it with awe, he felt Royan's hand on his arrn and her warrii breath on his cheek. "This is it, Nicky. The entrance to the true tomb of Mamose. This gallery was a bluff. Taita's red herring. This is the veritable tomb."

"Hansith!" Nicholas called to him in a voice that was hoarse with emotion.

"Get your men to clear this doorway."

As the workmen moved the rocks Nicholas and Royan hovered close behind them, so that they were able to watch the shape of the doorway as it was fully revealed. It proved to be a dark rectangle, of the same dimensions as the tunnel leading up from the sink-hole, three metres wide by two high. The lintel and the door jambs were of beautifully cut and dressed stone, and when Nicholas shone his lamp into the opening he saw a flight of stone steps rising before him.

They moved the cables and the lights into the gallery and arranged them at the entrance to this new doorway, but when Nicholas set foot on the first step he found Royan at his side.

"I am coming with you, she told him firmly.

"It's probably booby-trapped," he warned her. "Taita is lying in wait for you around the first bend."

"Don't try that. It just won't work, mister! I am coming." They went slowly up the steep steps, pausing on each one to survey the walls and the way ahead. Twenty steps from the bottom they reached another landing. A pair of doorways led off it, one on either side. However, the staircase continued climbing directly ahead of them.

Which way?"Nicholas asked.

"Keep going up," Royan urged him. "We can explore these side passages later."

Cautiously, they continued climbing. After twenty more steps they came out on an identical landing, with a doorway on each side and the stairway in front of them.

"Keep going up," Royan ordered, without waiting for him to answer, Twenty more steps and there was another landing with the familiar openings on either side and the stairway straight ahead.

"This isn't making sense," Nicholas protested, but she prodded him in we should keep going on upwards," she told him, and he did not protest further. They passed another landing and then yet another, each of them the exact image of those that they had passed lower down.

"At last!" Nicholas exclaimed when they came out at ay on each the top of the staircase,,with the expected door.

"This is as far side but now a blank wall in front of them. as it goes." she asked. "How man

"How many landings are there? altogetherr

"Eight he answered.

"Eight," she agreed. "Isn't that a familiar number nowr lamplight. "You He turned to stare down at her in the mean-'

"I mean the eight shrines in the long gallery, these the bao board." eight landings, and the eight cups of They stood silent and undecided on the top landing looked about them.

an Okay," he said at last, "if you are so damned clever, tell me which way to go now."

she recited. "Let's try the

"Eeny'meeny-miny-moe,'

t'hand doorway." righ and passage only a short They followed ri t distance before they were confronted by a Tjunction - a blank wall with identical twin passageways on each side.

"Take the right one again," she counselled, and they followed-it. But when they came to the next T junction Nicholas stopped and faced her.

"You know what is happening here, don't your he demanded. "This is another one of Taita's tricks. He has led us into a maze. If it were not for the cable, we would be lost already."

With a bemused expression she looked back the way they had come, and then down the unexplored passages to their right and left.

"When he built this, Taita could not have anticipated the age of electricity. He expected any grave robber to be -quipped the same way he was. Imagine being caught in here without the electric cable to follow back the way we have come," Nicholas said softly. "Imagine having only an oil lamp for light. Imagine what would happen to you when the oil burnt out and you were lost in here in the utter darkness."

Royan shivered and gripped his arm.

whispered. "It's scaring!" she "Taita is beginning to play rough,' Nicholas said softly.

"I was developing rather a soft spot for the old boy. But now I am beginning to change my mind."

She shuddered again. "Let's go back," she whispered, "We should never have rushed in here like this. We must go back and work it out carefully. We are unprepared. I have the feeling that we are in danger - I mean real danger, the same as we were in the long gallery."

As they started back through the twists and turns, picking up the electric cable as they retreated down the stone passageways, the temptation to break into a run became stronger with each step. Royan hung tightly to Nicholas's arm. It seemed to both of them that some intelligent and malignant presence lurked behind them in the darkness, following them, watching them. and biding its time.

The army truck carrying Tessay drove back through the village of Debra Maryam, and then turned off on to the track that followed the Dandera river downstream towards the escarpment of the Abbay gorge.

"This is not the way to army headquarters, Tessay told Lieutenant Hammed, and he shifted awkwardly on the seat beside her.

"Colonel Nogo is not at his headquarters. I have orders to take you to another location."

"There is only one other place in this direction," she said. "The base camp of the foreign prospecting company, Pegasus."

"Colonel Nogo is using that as a forward base in his campaign against the shufta in the valley," he explained. "I have orders to take you to him there."

Neither of them spoke again during the long, bumpy ride over the rough track. It was almost noon when at last they reached the edge of the escarpment and turned off on to the fork that brought them at last to the Pegasus campThe camouflage'clad guards at the gate saluted when they arrived. The truck drove through the gates, recognized and parked in front of one of the long Quonset huts within the compound.

"Please wait here." Hammed got down and went into the hut, but was gone for only a few minutes.

"Please come with me, Lady Sun." He looked "awkward and embarrassed, and could not meet her eyes as he helped her down from the cab. He led her to the door of the hut, and stood aside to let her enter first. She looked around the sparsely furnished room, and realized that it must be the company's administration centre. A conference table ran almost the full length of the room, and there were filing cabinets and two desks set against the side walls. A map of the area and a few technical charts were the only decorations on the bare walls. Two men sat at the table, and she recognized both of them immediately.

Colonel Nogo looked up at her, and his eyes were cold behind his metalframed spectacles. As always, his long, thin body was immaculately uniformed; but his head was bare. His maroon beret lay on the table in front of him.

Jake Helm leaned back in his chair with his arms folded.

At first glance his short-cropped hair made him look like a boy. Only when she looked closer did she see how his skin was weathered, and notice the crows' feet at the corners of his eyes. He wore an open-necked shirt and blue jeans that were bleached almost white. His belt buckle was of ornate Indian silver, the shape of a wild mustang's head.

The sleeves of his cotton shirt were rolled high around his lumpy biceps. He chewed upon the dead butt of a cheap Dutch cheroot, and the smell of the strong tobacco was rank and offensive.

"Very well, lieutenant," Nogo dismissed Hammed in Amharic. "Wait outside. I will call you when I need you." Once Hammed had left the room, Tessay demanded, "Why have I been arrested, Colonel Nogo?" Neither man acknowledged the question. They both regarded her expressionlessly "I demand to know the reason for this high'handed treatment," she persisted.

"You have been consorting with a band of notorious terrorists," said Nogo softly. "Your actions have made you one of them, a shufta."

"That is not true."

"You have trespassed in a mineral concession in the Abbay valley," said Helm. "And you and your accomplices have begun mining operations in the area which belongs to this company."

"There are no mining operations," she protested.

"We have other information. We have evidence that you have built a dam across the Dandera river-'

"That is nothing to do with me."

"So you do not deny that there is a dam?"

"It is nothing to do with me," she repeated. "I am not a member of any terrorist group, and I have not taken part in any mining operations." They were both silent again. Nogo made an entry in the notebook in front of him. Helm stood up and sauntered across to the window behind her right shoulder. The silence drew out until she could bear it no longer. Even though she knew it was part of the campaign of nerves they were waging against her, she had to break it.

"I have travelled most of the night in an army truck," she said. "I am tired, and I need to go to a lavatory."

"If what you need to do is urgent you can do it where you are standing. Neither Mr Helm nor I will be offended." Nogo ditered in a surprisingly girlish manner, but did not look up from his book.

She looked over her shoulder at the door, but Helm crossed to it and turned the key in the lock, slipping the key into his pocket. She knew she must show no weakness in front of these two, and, though she was tired and afraid and her bladder ached, she feigned an air of confidence and assurance and crossed to the nearest chair. She pulled it from the table and sat down in it easily.

Nogo looked up at her and frowned. He had not expected her to react this way.

"You know the shufta bandit Mck Nimmur the accused abruptly.

"No," she said coldly. "I know the patriot and democratic leader Mek Nimmur. He is no shufta."

"You are his concubine, his whore. Of course, you will say this." She looked away from him with disdain, and his voice rose shrilly. "Where is Mek Nimmur? How many men does he have with him?" Her composure was beginning to rattle him."

She ignored the question, and Nogo scowled at her furiously. "If you do not cooperate with us, I will have to use stronger methods to make you answer my questions," he warned.

She turned in her chair and stared out of the window.

In the long silence that followed, Jake Helm crossed the room and went to the door behind Nogo that led through to the rooms at the rebir of the hut. He disappeared through it, and closed it behind him. The walls of the hut were thin, and Tessay made out the murmur of voices from the room beyond. The cadence and inflection were neither English nor Amharic. They were using a foreign language in there. She guessed that Helmw'as receiving instructions from a superior, who did not want her to be able to recognize him at some later date.

After a few minutes Helm re-emerged and closed the door behind him without locking it. He nodded to Nogo, who at once stood up. They both came across to stand in front of Tessay.

I think that it will be better for all of us if we finish this business as quickly as possible," said Helm softly. "Then you can go to the bathroom, and I can go to my breakfast." She raised her chin and stared at him defiantly, but did not answer him.