Area 51 (6 page)

Schliemann might have been convinced that Troy actually existed and thus spent his life searching for it, but Nabinger had no such convictions. Nabinger's work on the pyramids was one of detailing what was there and searching for its explanation, an area that was perhaps one of the most heavily studied in the field of archaeology. He had hopes that perhaps he might find something with the MRI, something that others had missed, but he didn't have a clue as to what.

Hopefully, it might be a new chamber with not only whatever was in it, but also new, unseen writings.

Welcher was looking at the readouts. "If I didn't know better, I'd say we're getting interference from some sort of residual radiation."

Nabinger had been afraid of this. "Radiation?" He glanced across the chamber at the group of Egyptian laborers who had helped haul the MRI down here. The head man, Kaji, was watching them carefully, his wrinkled face not betraying a thought. The last thing Nabinger needed was the laborers walking out on them because of the threat of radiation.

"Yeah," Welcher said. "To prepare for this I worked with the MRI in the hospital and we saw readings like this once in a while. They came up when the reading was affected by X-rays. In fact, the technician told me they finally had to write up a schedule for the machines so they wouldn't be on at the same time, even though they were on different floors of the hospital and both heavily shielded."

It was information not widely known, but Nabinger had read reports from earlier expeditions that had used cosmic ray bombardment to search for hidden chambers and passages in the Great Pyramid and their reports had been similar: there was some sort of residual radiation inside the pyramid that blocked such attempts.

The information had not been widely disseminated because there was no explanation for it, and scientists didn't write journal articles about things they couldn't explain. Nabinger often wondered how many unexplained phenomena went unreported because those who discovered them didn't want to risk ridicule since there was no rational explanation for their findings.

Nabinger had hoped to have better luck with the MRI because it worked on a different band-width from the cosmic-ray emitters. The exact nature of the radiation had never been detailed, so he had not been able to determine if the MRI would be blocked also.

"Have you tried the entire spectrum on the machine?"

he asked. They'd been down here for four hours already, Nabinger allowing Welcher to handle the machine, which was his specialty. Nabinger had spent the time painstakingly photographing the walls of the chamber, the bottom of the three in the Great Pyramid. Although extensively documented, some of the hieroglyphics on the wall had never been deciphered.

The notebook in his lap was covered with his scribblings, and he had been centered totally on his work, excited by the possibility that there might be some linguistic connection between some of the panels of hieroglyphics here and newly found panels in Mexico. Nabinger did not concern himself with how such a connection could be, he just wanted to decipher what he had. And so far, a very strange message was being revealed to him, word by laborious word. The importance of the MRI was diminishing with every minute he studied the writings.

A year ago Nabinger had made some startling discoveries that he had kept to himself. It had always been accepted that there were certain panels or tablets of markings at Egyptian sites that were not classical hieroglyphics but appeared to be some earlier picture language called "high runes." While such sites were few--too few to provide a database sufficient to allow a scientific attempt at translation--enough had been found to cause some interest.

What Nabinger had stumbled across were pictures of similar high runes from a site in South America. After a year of very hard work over the few samples available—combining them with those from Egypt--he believed he had manage to decode a couple of dozen words and symbols. He needed more samples, though, in order to feel comfortable that the little he had achieved was valid. For all he knew, his translation could be totally false and he had been working with gibberish.

Kaji snapped some commands in Arabic and the laborers rose to their feet and disappeared back up the corridor.

Nabinger cursed and put his notebook down. "Listen here, Kaji, I've paid--"

"It is all right, Professor," Kaji said, holding up a hand roughened by a lifetime of manual labor. He spoke almost perfect English with a slight British accent--a surprise to Nabinger, who was often exasperated by the Egyptian tactic of retreating behind a pretended ignorance of English to avoid work. "I have given them a break outside. They will be back in an hour." He looked at the MRI machine and smiled, a gold tooth gleaming in the front of his mouth. "We are not having much luck, yes?"

"No, we're not," Nabinger said, used to the strange syntax.

"Professor Hammond did not have much luck with his machines, either, in 1976,"

Kaji noted.

"You were with Hammond?" Nabinger asked. He had read Hammond's report in the archives of the Royal Museum in London. It had not been published due to the failure to discover anything. Of course, Nabinger had noted at the time, Hammond had discovered something.

He had discovered that there was residual radiation inside the pyramids that shouldn't be there.

"I have been here many times," Kaji said. "In all the pyramids. Also many times in the Valley of the Kings. I spent years in the desert to the south before the waters from the dam covered it. I have led many parties of laborers and watched many strange things at sites."

"Did Hammond have any guesses why his machine didn't work?" Nabinger asked.

"Alas, no." Kaji sighed dramatically and ran his hand lightly over the control panel of the MRI, getting Welcher's attention. "Such a machine is expensive, is it not?"

"Yes, it--" Welcher halted as Nabinger shook his head, now partially seeing where this was leading.

Kaji smiled. "Ah, Hammond, he had no readings. His man on the machine, he, too, said radiation. Hammond did not believe it. But the machine, it would not lie, would it?"

He looked at Welcher. "Your machine, it would not lie, would it?"

Welcher remained quiet.

"If the machine does not lie," Nabinger said, "then something must be causing the readings."

"Or something was once here that still causes the readings," Kaji said. He turned and headed back toward the other side of the chamber, where a large stone sarcophagus rested.

"The sarcophagus was intact but empty when they broke the seals," Nabinger said sharply, referring to the first expedition into this chamber in 1951. There had been great excitement over the discovery of the chamber and particularly of the sarcophagus found inside with its lid still intact and sealed. The mystery of the pyramids was about to be solved, it was thought at the time. One could imagine the dismay when the seals were broken and the lid was opened, and there was nothing in the stone box.

The interior of the Great Pyramid contained three chambers. One entered the pyramid either through the designed polar entrance on the north side, or one blasted just below that by a caliph in later centuries. Both linked up with a tunnel that descended through the masonry and into the rock beneath the pyramid.

That tunnel ended in an intersection hewn out of the rock where two tunnels branched off. One headed up to the middle chamber and the Grand Gallery, which led to the upper chamber. The other, more recently discovered tunnel headed down into the bedrock to the lower chamber. It was the lower chamber that Nabinger and his crew were presently working in.

"I was here in 1951," Kaji said. "Yes, the sarcophagus was empty then."

"Then?" Nabinger repeated. He'd worked with Kaji before at other sites and the man had always been honest.

When he'd first hired the old man years ago, Nabinger had checked with several others in the field and Kaji had come highly recommended.

"Hammond, he thought me an old fool, and I was young then," Kaji said. "I am older now. I tried to talk to him, but he did not wish to talk." Kaji rubbed the fingers of one hand lightly in the palm of the other.

Nabinger knew what that meant. Kaji wanted to be paid for his information, as Nabinger had suspected, but that was only natural. The professor thought furiously. He had rented the portable MRI. The contract was billed by day of use, and he had enough funds from the museum for eight days of use. If he air-

shipped it back tomorrow, he would save five days of billing. That was a substantial amount of money, at least from an Egyptian standpoint. The only problem was explaining his receipts and billing forms to the accountant back at the university. But there was no sense in continuing to use a machine in a place where it yielded no information. He also considered the runes he was deciphering in this chamber. Those alone would make the expedition worthwhile. The MRI had been a long shotanyway.

Nabinger looked at Welcher. "Take a break."

Welcher left the chamber, leaving the two men alone.

"Ten thousand pounds," Nabinger said.

Kaji's face was expressionless.

"Twelve thousand and that is all I have." Nabinger knew that was over a year's salary to the average Egyptian.

Kaji held out his hand. Nabinger reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills, the week's wages for the laborers. He would have to go to the bank and draw on the expedition account to pay them now.

Kaji sat down cross-legged on the floor, the money disappearing into his long robe. "I was here in 1951 with Martin's expedition when they opened this chamber, but it was not the first time I was in this chamber."

"Impossible!" Nabinger said sharply. "Professor Martin broke through three walls to get into here in 1951. Walls that were intact and dated. The seals on the sarcophagus were the originals with four dynasties marked--"

"You can speak impossible all you like," Kaji continued in the same quiet voice, "but I tell you I was in here before 1951. You have paid for my story.

You may listen or you may argue, it matters not to me."

"I'll listen," Nabinger said, beginning to think he had just wasted quite a bit of the museum's money and wondering if he could make it up by skimping elsewhere on the expedition fund. His mind automatically began figuring the exchange rate on the pound to dollar.

Kaji seemed satisfied. "It was nine years before Martin's expedition, during the Second World War. In 1942 the British ruled here in Cairo, but many were not happy with that.

The Egyptian nationalists were willing to trade one set of rulers for another, hoping that somehow the Germans would be better than the British and grant us our freedom.

In reality we did not have much say in the process. Rommel and the Afrika Korps were out to the west in the desert and many expected him to be here in the city before the end of the year.

"It all began in January of 1942 when Rommel began his offensive. By June, Tobruk had fallen and the British were in retreat. They were burning papers in the Eighth Army headquarters here in Cairo in preparation to run. They were all afraid. And Rommel kept coming. The British army fell back on El Alamein.

"I was working in Cairo," Kaji said, waving his hand above his head. "Even in the middle of war there were those who wished to view the ancient sights. The pyramids have seen many wars. There were many people for whom the war was a fine opportunity to travel and make money. I gave tours above. And sometimes, if the person paid enough so I could bribe the Egyptian guards, I took them inside.

Many wanted to see the Grand Gallery," he said, referring to the massive passageway hundreds of feet above their heads that had twenty-eight-foot ceilings and led up to the center of the pyramid and the uppermost chamber.

Kaji spread his hands. "I cared not who ruled Cairo. The pyramids have seen many rulers and they will see many in the future. And the pyramids and the other sites, they are my life.

"The Germans were only a hundred and fifty miles away and it looked as if they could not be stopped. In early July, General Auchinleck was relieved and Churchill sent a general named Montgomery to relieve him. No one thought much of it here. It was assumed the British would fall back to Palestine, where they would block the canal with sunken ships, and the Germans would get Cairo.

"That was when I was approached by a party wanting to go inside this pyramid.

They spoke strangely, but they paid well, which was all that counted. I bribed the guards and we entered, using the caliph's entranceway late at night, which was also strange.

"We moved through the descending corridor until we linked up with the original ascending tunnel leading to the Grand Gallery. But they did not want to go up, nor did they want to go to what we now call the middle chamber, but was then called the lower chamber. They had paper with them with drawings on it." Kaji pointed at the walls.

"I did not get to look at it for very long, but the writing was very much like that on these walls. The symbols that cannot be read." His eyes turned to the notepad in Nabinger's lap.