Seven Ancient Wonders (15 page)

True to his word, Wizard had built West an arm that was better than the one he’d been born with.

Other things about West intrigued Lily.

For one thing, of all the team at the farm, he hung out with her the least.

He didn’t play with her.

He didn’t teach her any special subject.

He would spend most days in his study, poring over old books—
really
old books with titles like
Ancient Egyptian Building Methods
,
Imhotep and the Architects of Amun-Ra
and one
really
old scroll titled in Greek:
A Collection of Wonders from around the World
.

Lily loved his study.

It had lots of cool stuff arrayed around its walls: sandstone tablets, a crocodile skull, the skeleton of some ape-like creature Lily couldn’t recognise, and hidden in one corner, a glass jar filled with a very strange kind of rusty-red sand. On a secret mission of her own late one night, she discovered that the jar’s lid was sealed tight, too tightly for her to open. It remained a mystery.

There was also a medium-sized whiteboard attached to the far wall, on which West had scribbled all sorts of notes and pictures. Things like:

HOWARD CARTER (1874-1939):
Found
Tutankhamen’s
tomb; also discovered
Queen Hatshepsut’s
unused tomb (KV20) in
Valley of the Kings
in 1903. Empty tomb, never used. Unfinished carving on tomb’s east wall is only known picture of Capstone atop Great Pyramid
receiving vertical shaft of sunlight:

After this West had noted: ‘
Queen Hatshepsut
: only female pharaoh, prolific obelisk builder’.

One note on the board, however, caught Lily’s eye.

It was at the very bottom corner of the whiteboard, under all the others, almost
deliberately
out of the way. It read simply:
‘4 MISSING DAYS OF MY LIFE—CORONADO?’

Once, late at night, she had seen West staring at those words, tapping his pencil against his teeth, lost in thought.

Whenever West worked in his study, his falcon always sat loyally on his shoulder—alerting him with a squawk when anyone approached.

Lily was intrigued by Horus.

She was an absolutely stunning bird, proud in her bearing and laserlike in her intensity. She didn’t play with Lily—despite Lily’s continued efforts to coax her.

Bouncing balls, fake mice, nothing Lily used could draw the falcon out into play. No, whatever silly thing Lily did to get her attention, Horus would just stare back at her with total disdain.

Horus, it seemed, cared for only one person.

Jack West.

This was a fact Lily would confirm through experimentation. One day, when once again Horus would not be drawn from West’s shoulder, Lily threw her rubber mouse
at West
.

The falcon moved with striking speed.

She intercepted the tossed mouse easily—in mid-air halfway between Lily and West—her talons clutching the toy rodent in twin vice-like grips.

Dead mouse.

Lesson learned.

But research was not the only thing West did.

It didn’t escape Lily’s notice that while she was busy studying in her classroom, Huntsman would often disappear into the old abandoned mine in the hills beyond the western paddock, not far from the aeroplane hangar. Strangely, he would wear an odd uniform: a fireman’s helmet and his canvas jacket. And Horus always went with him.

Lily was strictly forbidden from going into those caves.

Apparently, Wizard had built a series of traps in the mine
tunnels—traps based on those in the ancient books that he and West studied—and Huntsman would go in there to test himself against the traps.

Lily found Jack West Jr to be a bit of a mystery.

And she wondered at times, as children do, if he even liked her at all.

But one thing Lily
didn’t
know was just how closely she herself was being observed.

Her progress with languages was being carefully monitored.

‘She continues to excel,’ Wizard reported, just after she turned nine. ‘Her transliteration skills are like nothing I have ever seen. And she doesn’t even know how good she is. She plays with languages the way Serena Williams plays with spin on a tennis ball—she can do things with it, twist it this way and that, in ways you or I can’t even begin to imagine.’

Big Ears reported, ‘She’s physically fit, good endurance. If it ever becomes necessary, she can run six miles without breaking a sweat.’

‘And she knows every inch of my study,’ West said. ‘She sneaks in there once a week.’

Zoe said, ‘I know it isn’t mission-related, but she’s actually becoming quite good at something else: ballet. Watches it on cable. Now I know lots of little girls
dream
of becoming prima ballerinas, but Lily is actually very good at it, especially considering she’s self-taught. She can hold a toe-pose unaided for close to twenty seconds—which is exceptional. The kid just loves ballet, can’t get enough of it. It’s a girl thing. Think you can get some ballet DVDs the next time you go to Nairobi, Wizard?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Ballet, you say . . .’ West said.

It came as a surprise to Lily when she arrived at breakfast one day—again ignoring the sheet on the fridge—and found West
waiting for her in the kitchen, alone, dressed and ready to go somewhere.

‘Hey, kiddo. Want to go out for a surprise?’

‘Sure.’

The surprise was a private plane trip to Cape Town and a visit to a performance of
The Nutcracker Suite
by the South African Royal Ballet.

Lily sat through the entire performance with her mouth agape, her eyes wide with wonder, entranced.

West just looked at her the whole time—and maybe once, just once, he even smiled.

In 2001, she saw the first
Lord of the Rings
movie. That Christmas, Sky Monster, proud of the New Zealand–born team behind the film, gave her the three books by Tolkien and read them with her.

By the time the third film had come and gone in 2003, Lily and Sky Monster had re-read the books to within an inch of their lives.

And from those readings of
The Lord of the Rings
, Lily got her own callsign.

Sky Monster bestowed it on her, naming her after her favourite character in the epic.

Eowyn
.

The feisty shieldmaiden from Rohan who kills the Witch-King of Angmar, the Ringwraith whom no
man
can kill.

Lily loved her callsign.

And still, every day, she would enter the kitchen and get her juice— and see the sheet of paper with the strange writing on it stuck to the fridge door.

Then one morning, a few days before her tenth birthday, she looked at the uppermost box on it and said, ‘Huh. I get it now. I know what that says.’

Everyone in the kitchen at the time—Doris, Wizard, Zoe and Pooh Bear—whirled around instantly.

‘What does it say, Lily?’ Wizard said, gulping, trying not to show his excitement.

‘It’s a funny language, uses letters and pictures to create sounds. It says,

Colossus.
Two entrances, one plain, one not,
Carved by the fifth Great Architect,
Out of Great Soter’s tenth mine.
The easier route lies below the old mouth. Yet
In the Nubian swamp to the south of Soter’s mine,
Among Sobek’s minions,
Find the four symbols of the Lower Kingdom.
Therein lies the portal to the harder route.’

The next day, the entire team left Victoria Station on board the
Halicarnassus
, bound for the Sudan.

That same day the Sun rotated on its axis and the small sunspot that the Egyptians called Ra’s Prophet appeared on its surface.

In seven days, on March 20, the Tartarus Rotation would occur.

TUNISIA
15 MARCH, 2006
5 DAYS BEFORE TARTARUS

THE PHAROS

As a Wonder of the World, the Lighthouse at Alexandria has always been, terribly unfairly, the perennial runner-up.

It is second in height to the Great Pyramid at Giza—by a mere 29 metres.

It stood, intact and functioning, for 1,600 years, until it was hit by a pair of devastating earthquakes in 1300 AD. Only the Great Pyramid survived for longer.

But ultimately it would defeat the Pyramid on one important count: it was useful.

And because it survived for so long, we have many descriptions of it: Greek, Roman, Islamic.

By today’s standards, it was a skyscraper.

Built on three colossal levels, it stood 117 metres high, the equivalent of a 40-storey building.

The first level was square—broad, solid and powerful. The foundation level.

The second level was octagonal and hollow.

The third and uppermost level was cylindrical and also hollow— to allow for the raising of fuel to the peak.

At the summit of the tower stood its crowning glory, Sostratus’s masterpiece: the mirror.

Ten feet high and shaped like a modern satellite dish, the mirror was mounted on a sturdy base and could rotate 360 degrees. Its
concave bronze shape reflected the rays of the Sun to warn approaching ships of the dangerous shoals and submerged rocks just off Alexandria.

By night, a huge bonfire was lit in front of the mirror, allowing the great lighthouse to send its beam twenty kilometres out into the darkened sea.

Interestingly, like the Colossus of Rhodes a few years later, it was built at the request of Ptolemy I of Egypt—Alexander the Great’s close friend and general.

AIRSPACE OVER AFRICA 15 MARCH, 2006, 0200 HOURS 5 DAYS BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS

The
Halicarnassus
roared toward Kenya.

The huge black 747, with its bristling array of missiles and gun turrets, cut a mean figure in the sky. It looked like a gigantic bird of prey—death on wings.