The Deceit (25 page)

‘Sorry. Er, yes. I’m ready too.’

‘So we film,’ she said, gesturing to the place where she wanted him to stand. ‘There,
ja
. Just in front of those wall paintings. They are beautiful.’

Hanna watched them, rather slyly, like a half-sleeping pet. His eyes glittered in the twilight of the tomb. Ryan wondered, aloud, ‘You have enough light? To film?’

‘I have all the light I need.’ Helen smiled at him. Her smile had new meaning. Ryan smiled back.

‘How touching,’ said Hanna.

Helen and Ryan swapped a glance, then she pressed the button and began recording. ‘So tell us, tell the camera, about this tomb.’

Ryan coughed, summoned his thoughts, and spoke to the lens. ‘Immediately after his visit, and his revelation, at the Luxor temple, Macarius came here, to the Tomb of Ramose.’ Ryan gestured at the row of portly, lotus-capped pillars beside him, and the windowless walls beyond, covered with fine reliefs and hieroglyphs. ‘Ramose is a significant figure in Egyptian history, because he straddled two eras. First, he was vizier, the Master of the Secrets of the Palace – a sort of prime minister – to the great Pharaoh Amenhotep III, of the Eighteenth Dynasty. But he was also vizier to Amenhotep’s son, the controversial heretic Pharaoh …’ Ryan stroked two quote marks, with his fingers, around the word ‘heretic’.

‘This Pharaoh was first known as Amenhotep IV, but he changed his name to Akhenaten.’ Ryan paused, for effect, then went on. ‘Pharaoh Akhenaten is a deeply controversial figure in Egyptian history. Some say he was a tyrant, some a man of great enlightenment; many assert that he was the first monotheist in history. What we know for sure is that Akhenaten revolutionized Egyptian society, and that wrenching change is visible and tangible in this tomb.’

Ryan pointed at one wall to his left. ‘See the differing styles in these reliefs? This wall at the eastern side is adorned with exquisite and detailed depictions of Ramose’s funeral procession, but they are traditional: serenely stiff and formal, with weeping women in profile making offerings of fish and wine, and sledges carrying Ramose’s placenta, and an image of Amenhotep IV rigidly posed, next to the goddess Ma’at. Yet over here –’ Ryan walked a few paces across the tomb – ‘on
this
side of the door, the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV has become the Pharaoh Akhenaten, and the artistic style is quite, quite different: the Pharaoh is rendered much more naturalistically, alongside his wife Nefertiti, acknowledging the adoring crowds at the so-called Window of Appearances, in his new capital of Amarna, in Middle Egypt.’

Ryan turned back to the camera. ‘Akhenaten’s strange and turbulent reign has provoked many theories. He seems to have suppressed worship of the old gods, and demanded worship of the one god: the great god, Aten, the sun – that’s why he changed his own name to Akhenaten, which means “spirit of the sun”, or “glory of God”. In this painting –’ Ryan knelt low down, next to the wall, and Helen tilted her camera accordingly – ‘we can see the sun’s rays, depicted with little hands on the end, blessing Akhenaten, his wife and family: confirming that the one new God approved of the Pharaoh, and saw him as his vicar on earth, a kind of pope, the infallible mouthpiece of the Lord. But look at Akhenaten’s head and body, his pear-shaped torso, thin limbs and elongated skull, the way his costume sags below a protruding and rather feminine belly. Wherever it is found, in Heliopolis or Luxor or Amarna itself, Amarna art shows Akhenaten like this, with his strange head and feminine body. The peculiarities of his portraits have led scholars to wonder if Akhenaten was some kind of physical and mental freak.’

Ryan stood up and the camera followed him. ‘One idea is that he was diseased, or afflicted in some way. Others have claimed he was actually an alien; one serious theory says he might have been a kind of hermaphrodite, born without genitals; but if this was the case he fathered an awful lot of babies for a man with no penis. One of his six children, Tutankhaten, succeeded the throne when Akhenaten died. But young Tutankhaten renounced his father’s revolutionary faith, levelled the city of Amarna, returned to the old gods, and even tried to expunge his father’s reviled name from history.’ Ryan pointed upwards. ‘There, you can see the so-called cartouche, or seal, of Akhenaten has been erased: someone has climbed a ladder and taken a chisel and chipped away the name of the heretic Pharaoh. The son, Tutankhaten, also changed his own name: he became known as the boy king, Tutankhamun.’

He paused. Helen waved a hand,
go on, go on …

Ryan was thinking about the scene at Luxor, the birth of Amenhotep. Was there a way it fitted with the Amarna story? He could hear noises outside, distracting him. Yet the mosaic was slowly being restored, its ancient beauty would soon be revealed; he was ravished by the possibilities.

‘Ryan, please, finish up.’

He stared at the camera.

‘So why did Macarius come here? As ever, he does not specify, but it is now clear his great puzzle was focussed on monotheism. We know he was obsessed with Moses, the Egyptian priest who gave monotheism to the Jews, and we know he was obsessed with Akhenaten, the world’s first monotheist: because he came here to the Tomb of Ramose, Akhenaten’s vizier, and also he went to Amarna, Akhenaten’s capital, and—’

WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP

Ryan stopped. The noise was now unmistakeable, and deafening.

WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP

A helicopter was landing right outside. Helen was already running to the rectangle of sunlight, the exit, but the wind from the copter rotor was billowing sand and dust into the hypostyle hallways of the tomb: it must have landed very close, dangerously close.

Hanna called out, ‘Helen, get back!’

The dust was followed by a cracking sound, instantly familiar and immediately strange. An Egyptian wedding? No, of course not:
gunshots. And not in celebration.

Someone yelled outside in the light. Was it Callum? Or Simon? It was the scream of someone in pain, someone shot? Maybe someone dying. They were being attacked.

‘Helen!’ Ryan now yelled at her and she edged back.

The gunshots outside were crackling now; a ricochet rang from the rocks. Another scream shredded the air in the tomb, this time a scream of command: and the words were in Hebrew. It didn’t need translation.

‘They will kill us!’ Helen cried.

Ryan grabbed her hand and pulled her back into the deepest shadows. They were trapped, inside the tomb. They were going to die in the Tomb of Ramose: slain by Israeli agents, and robbed of the Macarius papyrus. The secret would be taken, the mystery would go unsolved. Ryan was scorched by his own anger and sadness.

Hanna had disappeared down the corridor, to the end of the tomb, the claustrophobic final chamber where the coffin would have been kept. What was he doing? What was the point?

Callum stood at the door, silhouetted by the light. He was firing wildly into the setting sun. Simon was nowhere to be seen: Ryan reckoned he must be dead already.

The gunfire was fierce: the Israelis must have come in numbers. Callum was forced back inside the tomb. He stood with his back against the wall by the door, occasionally twisting to duck and dive and shoot out at the oncoming killers, but Ryan could see from Callum’s face that he
knew
they were out of luck, out of options, trapped in here, trapped and doomed.

‘Come.’ It was Hanna, at the dark corridor entrance, beckoning. ‘Come here – come now!’

Ryan grabbed Helen’s hand and they followed, ducking low, because the stone corridor was so small, almost too small to squeeze through.

Hanna was in the final chamber, standing by a wooden trapdoor; darkness yawned beneath.

‘What the heck?’

‘It’s a tunnel, it leads everywhere, a network – we can escape!’

As Ryan helped Helen onto the top of the indented mud steps beneath the trapdoor, he heard the stomach-turning crack of gunfire
ricocheting down the corridor.
He gazed down in wonder.

Blood was spattered right across his chest.

It was Helen’s blood: she had been shot in the shoulder by a rebounding bullet. She fell down the steps, crying with pain. The trapdoor flapped shut above them and the bitter crackle of gunshots was muffled. Callum was buying them time, up there, in the Tomb of Ramose.

Ryan stared urgently at Helen. Her injury was energetically pulsing blood; she had to lean on him like a wounded soldier, good arm slung around his neck as they turned and made a grab at their lives: lurching along the crude stone tunnel and away from the tomb.

‘This way!’ said Hanna, using his cellphone flashlight to illuminate the unpainted, unplastered, utilitarian tunnel with its ancient chisel marks showing on the walls. ‘And here, hurry, yes, along here.’

‘But they will follow us,’ Ryan panted.

‘No,’ Hanna said. He flashed the light left, then right, in an explanatory fashion: the light exposed more tunnels, branching off into silent darkness. He was right, it was an enormous labyrinth, and now Hanna was taking them on a mazy, zigzagging route – making them unfollowable, as long as Callum bought them just a few minutes. Probably with his life.

There was no time for guilt.

‘Ryannn …’ Helen was moaning, her head lolling; she was semi-conscious with pain. Her blood dripped down Ryan’s shirt.

He hoisted her close, feeling her heartbeat through her damp shirt.

‘These tunnels were built by the workmen who constructed the tombs,’ Hanna explained as they struggled on. ‘They were also used by thieves. Only the local guides really know them well. When I worked here we’d take a hundred dollars from the very bravest tourists—’

Noises echoed, bouncing down the dark and indifferent corridors. Distant, yet menacing.

‘They’re in the tunnels,’ said Ryan. ‘They’re coming – Callum must be dead. They’re coming.’

‘They
will not
find us.’ Hanna calmed him with a gesture. ‘Trust me, please. I know this maze better than most. The most obvious routes go to Hatshepsut’s temple, and to Medinet Habu … we would have to be so very unlucky.’ He turned, his eyes dark in the darkness. ‘How is Helen?’

Helen was a sagging weight around Ryan’s shoulders; almost a dead weight. He could sense her strength ebbing – she was being dragged under, by death. Ryan despaired. It was as if the Tomb of Ramose had
infected
her with death: all these mummies, all these coffins, all this Egyptian obsession with death, it was contagious.

The Egyptians were right: life was just a factory for making souls. They were all like the cats of rancid Bubastis, bred specifically to die, so what was the point?

The point was to live just one more hour. The point was to save Helen.

Ryan Harper did this.

He fought to focus so that he could help her. Once more he hoisted Helen, her limp arm over his shoulder, following the diminishing and barely illuminated figure of Albert Hanna. The noises echoed down the tunnels again. Faraway yet ominous. If death was caged in these rocks, so were they.

‘Here, my friend,
mon brave
, not far now.’

The tunnel made another bewildering series of U-turns, junctions and dead ends, and then it switchbacked left and right and Helen groaned, and that was good, because it meant she was alive. But Ryan could feel the sweat from her body through his moist and bloodied shirt. A fever was rising inside her: they needed a hospital. If they escaped this labyrinth of cold stone, and bitter darkness, they’d need to get her proper medical care to have the bullet extracted. But how could they do that without alerting everyone – the authorities, the Israelis?

‘This is it.’ Hanna pointed to a wooden ladder, grey and ghostly in the dark. He climbed first, and pushed a trapdoor.

Ryan gazed up earnestly, hoping to see sky above … but there was just more musty darkness. Where were they? He glimpsed dim hieroglyphs.

Albert reached down as Ryan lifted Helen upwards; somehow they got her up and out, and Ryan quickly followed. He breathed the dank, clammy, unmistakeable air of what was surely another tomb; his life, it seemed, was now a series of tombs.

‘Where are we?’

‘The Tomb of Ay, successor to Tutankhamun,’ Hanna said. ‘Most remote of the tombs in the Western Valley. Quickly now, I know a place we can take Helen. St Tawdros. No one ever goes there.’

Ryan stared around at the stone chamber. The walls were decorated with scenes of hunting, and feasting, and the twelve baboons from the Book of Amduat. The centre of the chamber was dominated by a small, papery mummy, perfectly preserved in a glass box on a quartzite dais.

He looked again at the mummy. ‘That’s not Ay.’

Albert was already on the ramp that led out of the tomb.

‘No, it is Tiye. She was moved here some months ago because of the Akhmim connection. They are restoring her tomb in KV. Come, quick—’

But Ryan didn’t respond. Momentarily, he was transfixed. The Akhmim connection? Ay was from Akhmim. Queen Tiye was from Akhmim. And Tiye was the mother of Akhenaten, maybe the mother of Tutankhamun. All from Akhmim? This heretic family of monotheists.

He gazed at the mummy.

Even in the darkness, her vile and preserved little corpse showed the same curious, extraterrestrial head shape of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. The elongated cranium. Yet the corpse was tiny. Like the unexpected shortness of a movie star, encountered in the flesh. What
were
these people?

‘
Aiii.
’
Helen was moaning in pain.

Ryan swore aloud at his selfishness: even as Helen was
bleeding
, he was trying to work out the puzzle. Hauling her dead weight, once again, he followed Albert as the Copt led them up the dark stone ramp. At last they pushed open a broken wooden door and he was breathing the fresh, dulcet air of the desert night.

The landscape was nothing but rocks and sand, lit by stars; and a beaten-up road leading down an incline. Very distant city lights must surely be Luxor.

Albert came close and lifted Helen’s face by her chin. Her eyes were shut and she was trembling with pain and fever. ‘It is very bad. But there are nuns there, they can help—’