Silver Tomb (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 2) (2 page)

Chapter Two

In which some excellent tobacco and coffee is had despite the less than savory surroundings

Lazarus left the hotel and tilted his bowler hat to shield his eyes from the sun reflecting off the pale sandstone walls of the buildings. It would soon be dark and the great god in the sky was giving a last, heroic fight before he would be swallowed by the night, as if the same battle had not been fought and lost every day since the dawn of time.

The remains of the iron horse still smoldered in the street as the fellahs doused it with cold water. The steam rose up in billows from its split boiler, and two of them were receiving medical attention from a passerby. Lazarus ignored them and followed the railings of Azbekya Gardens. Through the tamarisks and carob trees he could see the opera house. He headed towards the Grand Continental Hotel.

When he arrived in Cairo he had only one lead, and that lead was a man. Flinders Petrie. Lazarus had run into England’s preeminent Egyptologist in eighteen-eighty when he had been working for the Royal Archeological Society. Petrie had been the first man to make an accurate survey of the pyramids at Gizah. The two of them had taken to each other instantly.

He found Petrie in the foyer of the Grand Continental Hotel, dressed for dinner. He was about the same age as Lazarus; thin with a long, bearded face and thick black hair.

“Good lord, Longman!” Petrie said, extending his hand. “To think we should meet in Cairo once again! How on earth are you?”

“As well as can be expected, Flinders!” said Lazarus, shaking Petrie’s hand vigorously. “Still yearning for the days when the biggest worry was running out of funds or being robbed by our Berber guides!”

“Yes, I understand you work for the government now. And you’ve been in America! You must tell me about it.”

“Over dinner, perhaps. Where shall we go? The food at Shepheard’s is awful. How is it here?”

“Worse. But you must remember that little restaurant on the other side of the gardens? The one with the waiter with the glass eye?”

“Good lord, I’d forgotten!”

They ignored the shoe shine boys who chased after them with blackened brushes as they made their way towards the restaurant. Aside from the hanging plants and slowly rotating fans, the interior of the restaurant could have been seen anywhere in London or Paris. Rows of dark wood seating booths lined the oblong dining room, and the tables were spread with white linen embroidered in arabesque designs. They sat down and ordered. Petrie had ham in champagne sauce and Lazarus ordered a plate of breaded calf’s tongues with a bottle of Chateau Rautzan.

“What new things have you been digging up then, Flinders?” Lazarus asked his companion. “Last I heard you were at Tell Nebesheh.”

“Oh yes. We found some fantastic tombs filled with statuettes and a wonderful royal sphinx from the twelfth dynasty.”

Lazarus smiled at his use of the term ‘we’. Petrie was known for rolling his shirt sleeves up and pitching in with the laborers in his pursuit of artifacts, dispensing with foremen entirely, something which set him apart from his peers in that field. He also insisted on paying out rewards for items found, ensuring that they were handled with care and not stolen. It also ensured that Petrie was ever desperately short of funds.

“More recently I have been at a dig at Tell el-Amarna. There’s some fascinating building work from the eighteenth dynasty beneath all the Roman and Christian layers. We found a beautiful painted pavement showing all kinds of daily life, worth its weight in gold, although Maspero and all the others don’t see it. I seem to be the only Egyptologist in Egypt who believes that we can learn more about the past from bits of broken pottery than we can from all the sensational finds.”

“How is the new director of the Department of Antiquities working out?” Lazarus asked. In the six years since he had left Egypt, the esteemed Auguste Mariette had died and been replaced by Gaston Maspero.

“Oh, he’s not so bad,” Petrie replied. “A little chaotic. But his heart is in the right place. He’s dedicated to preserving the antiquities and sites of Egypt and brought big improvements on the treasure hunting practices of the old days. He’s a shrewd businessman too, letting certain artifacts slip out of the country for favors. Not that he’s corrupt, mind you. He comes down hard on the antiquities black market whenever he has a chance, which shows that he’s not only interested in the monetary value of things. Do you know he’s proposing admission charges for tourists wishing to visit ancient sites? It’s part of his plan to pay for their upkeep. Not a bad idea at all. And he’s currently engaged in uncovering the rest of the Sphinx at Gizah. He’s convinced there are tombs down there, as am I. The next few months will be terribly exciting if he can shift all that sand.”

“Indeed. But Tell el-Amarna, that’s the city Akhenaten built, isn’t it?”

“Yes, the Heretic Pharaoh. A fascinating place. I have a number of interesting artifacts I found there if you’d like to take a look. Except two of them have been stolen, curse it.”

“Stolen?”

“Yes. There was a theft at the Bulaq Museum the other week. A relief fragment was pinched right under Maspero’s nose. I was the one who found it, and it was a priceless example of the distinctive artistic style of Akhenaten’s reign. Now it’s gone. Also, I lost a cosmetic box I dug up at Tell el-Amarna. But that crime is overshadowed of course by the grisly murder of the man in whose custody the item was when it was stolen.”

“Really? I read about that in the paper. Did you know the fellow?”

“Yes, he was a friend of mine.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I lent him the artifact the day before. I can’t help but accept some of the blame for his death. Had I not lent him the item, perhaps he would never have attracted the attention of a murdering thug.”

“And they’ve had no luck in finding the killer? The papers are hopelessly in the dark.”

“As are the police. He was found with his neck broken and his hands and forearms terribly scorched, as if he had placed them upon a hotplate.”

“Most strange.”

They finished eating, and Petrie sat swirling his claret around in his glass expectantly. He had been very patient, Lazarus gave him that. But now he could wait no more. “I’ve told you enough about my activities since we last saw each other, Longman. Now I think it’s time you told me yours. Why have you returned to Egypt? What business has Her Majesty’s government got you on?”

“You’ve caught me out, Petrie,” said Lazarus with a smile. “It’s been wonderful seeing you again but you’re absolutely right in thinking that my meeting you is more than a wish to catch up with an old friend. I need to ask you a question. Have you ever met Mademoiselle Eleanor Rousseau?”

“No,” Petrie replied. “But I sorely wish I had. She’s very highly respected in my field. For a woman that is. She’s the one who discovered Akhenaten’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings last year. A wonderful find.”

“Odd that your paths have never crossed, with both of you being here in Egypt.”

“Not really. I spend so much time out at digs that I rarely come into Cairo. In fact it was lucky that I was at the hotel when you called. As for Rousseau, she’s even harder to find. She’s rarely in Cairo at all, by all accounts. Virtually lives out on some dig somewhere with an American fellow.”

“Ah, so you’ve heard of him too.”

“Lindholm or something. Haven’t heard much about his reputation as an Egyptologist at all. Probably just another treasure hunter, as if Egypt needed any more. But I would be very disappointed if Mademoiselle Rousseau was helping him in any way to rob this land of its cultural riches.”

“Are they courting?”

“How should I know, Longman? I’ve met neither and care little for the sordid affairs of others. Is this really why the government sent you out here?”

“Rousseau is the fiancé of Henry Thackeray.”

“Good lord, really? The fellow you had that very public spat with a few years ago?”

“That’s the one.”

“Well I’m surprised you are doing him a favor after the things he said about you in the
London
Illustrated
.”

“Lord, no. My orders are to find Rousseau and get her back to England. Whitehall thinks she’s some sort of spy and is worried about what she knows. Any sordidness is not really my problem. Now, Flinders, tell me what you know.”

Flinders looked around at the other patrons in the restaurant. “Very well, but here might not be the wisest place to discuss certain things.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that there are aspects of Mademoiselle Rousseau’s activities here in Egypt that have aroused the attention of organizations, like the police.”

Lazarus was intrigued. Finally his mission seemed to be turning out to be something a little more exciting than a missing persons case. “All right. How about I take you to a little place I know for coffee? It’s a local establishment and frequented more by natives than the British. Just the place people go to discuss things without being overheard.”

“Sounds capital, Longman.”

They paid their bill and left the restaurant, heading north of Azbekya Gardens. The northern part of the city was the decidedly more native part, filled with dim alleys and shuttered windows, the darkness behind their lattices concealing things the British authorities were all too happy to believe did not exist. Not all the windows were shuttered. Some opened onto balconies where the city’s courtesans leaned, peering down onto the uneven streets, the oil lamps illuminating their curves, barely concealed behind white silk gowns.

The coffee shop was nestled within a row of arches, entirely shaded. The haze of smoke that passed out between the arches came from the hookahs or ‘hubble-bubbles’; the water pipes favored by the Egyptians. They took their shoes off and entered, letting their eyes grow accustomed to the light. The ceiling was low, supported by arabesque arches. Groups of men in native dress sat about in small groups on cushions, drinking coffee and smoking.

“By Jove, you know some rum dives!” exclaimed Petrie.

They found an isolated spot and sat down. The proprietor came hurrying over with his coffee jug, from which he poured a steaming black stream into two cups. Lazarus ordered a hookah for them to share.

“They use Turkish tobacco here,” Lazarus explained. “Far superior to the local stuff which tastes like burning mummy rags.”

“I’ll remember that,” said Petrie, eyeing the contraption the proprietor had brought over with suspicion.

They drank their coffee and took drags on the hookah, relaxing into the cushions as if they were both born and bred Cairenes.

“You know, this stuff’s not half bad,” said Petrie, letting the smoke blast out through his nostrils. “And the coffee is excellent too. You certainly can show me a thing or two about local establishments, Longman.”

“I’m glad you like it. And we’re the only foreigners in the place.”

Petrie looked around. It was true. The locals didn’t seem to mind their presence, either.

“Now, if you feel quite safe enough,” said Lazarus, “please continue with what you were telling me in the restaurant.”

“Right. Last I heard, Rousseau was expanding on my dig at Tell el Amarna. I don’t believe there’s anything left there to find and I suspect that she found this out, for she has since moved on. Where to, I don’t know, but acquaintances of mine who have met her say she’s obsessed with Akhenaten and the Amarna period.”

Lazarus nodded slowly. Petrie didn’t have to fill him in about Akhenaten. Any student of Egyptology knew that particular pharaoh well. Known as the Heretic Pharaoh, Akhenaten had been born Amenhotep IV before he changed his name along with the entire religion of Egypt. His reign marked a sudden shift in the official faith of the land, from its many gods to the worship of a single solar deity represented by the sun, known as the ‘Aten’. Akhenaten (meaning ‘effective for Aten’) moved the royal court from Thebes to a new city he had constructed on the eastern bank of the Nile at Tell el-Amarna, in accordance with the rising sun. This was named Akhetaten, which meant ‘horizon of the Aten’.

This early attempt at monotheism did not outlast the life of its greatest proponent, however, and with Akhenaten’s death, his queen Nefertiti and the rest of the court moved back to Thebes. Subsequent pharaohs restored Egypt’s polytheism and declared Akhenaten a heretic, defacing his statues and razing Akhetaten to the ground. It wasn’t until Rousseau discovered his tomb that many of the blanks of his life could be filled in.

“It was around the time of Rousseau’s disappearance that certain items began appearing on the black market,” Petrie went on. “Items the like of which I have never seen before.”

“How so?”

“For instance, Longman, as a fellow Egyptologist, have you ever seen or heard of an ushabti made of solid silver?”

Lazarus shook his head. Ushabtis were the little funerary statuettes found in tombs, made to represent the deceased should they be called upon to do any kind of manual labor in the afterlife. Naturally many ushabtis represented servants to fill in for those wealthy enough to have owned servants in life.

“And how about scarabs?” continued Petrie, “or any other funerary goods for that matter?”