The Egyptian (28 page)

“You’re free to ask.”

“I know I am. What do these clowns want? You said they got their test tube back, so why do they still care?”

“I assume they’re trying to protect their corporate secrets. As for you, you stole from them. I guess they took it personally.”

“I effectuated a transaction. There’s a difference. What was in the test tube?”

“Why’d you approach me and not Stefan?”

“I wanted a second opinion from your group. Let’s say I have an issue with trust.”

Grey gave him a brief outline of what had happened in Bulgaria, and of the potential import of the test tube. Jax’s eyes grew wider and wider, and he whistled. “I should’ve opened up bidding. You don’t have any more samples?”

“No.”

“And you just have the scientist’s word on what it was?”

“That, and the fact they’re still trying to kill us.”

“Who’s the ice cold can of Coca-Cola with legs?”

“Veronica. She’s a reporter.”

“I’ll have to have a talk with her. I don’t like the spotlight. I’m guessing you’re the muscle, although you don’t look the part, which makes me think you’re the smart and quick type, the spook no one sees coming. Am I warm?”

“I was Recon, Second Battalion.”

“Recon? No shit? What’s your gig now?”

“Private detective.”

Jax’s lips creased with amusement. “Tell me whatever you want. The less we know about each other the better.”

“That I’ll drink to. Have you made contact yet?”

“I’ll work it out when I get there.”

“Where do we find you?”

“The Grand Hyatt, under James McAdams. You?”

Grey handed him a brochure, and a name tag that read Mark Krebs. “Five days in Cairo at the Imperial Sands hotel. You’re free to join us there.”

Jax glanced at the brochure and grinned. “The itinerary’s quite good. Nile cruise, Red Sea dives, Bedouin tent camps, sunsets in the Sinai, the whole works. Where’d you get the false names?”

“I didn’t have time for fake passports. It takes states a while to sync up birth and death records, so everyone’s now a recently deceased citizen of Arizona. No one’s going to notice for at least a few weeks. It’s just for the hotel, in case anyone’s making inquiries.”

“We underground types call that piggybacking. What if the hotel matches the passports with the names on the tour?”

“We Special Forces types call that a preemptive bribe.”

“And if you don’t show up for the tour?”

“It’s a flex tour. We all checked the “explore Cairo on my own” box. We have four days.”

Jax pursed his lips and cocked his head in approval. “Ever considered a little something on the side, some easy cash abroad?”

Grey resumed stretching. “Nope.”

“That’s too bad. You’d be helpful at the negotiating table. Being an asshole is a great business skill. We’re not going to be friends, are we? Pity. I like making friends.”

“I assume you can reach Dorian in time?”

“Don’t worry about my part. Besides, you ever been to Cairo? You could hide the Chinese army there.”

“That’s the problem,” Grey muttered. “We’re looking for a test tube.”

BOOK FOUR

D
r. Shelley Hilton, a mousy Englishwoman with straight brown hair, sat across from Viktor behind a desk filled with the clutter of an Egyptologist: reproduced scrolls, loose Xeroxed pages covered in hieroglyphs, books on everything from dietary restrictions of the Old Kingdom to the history of pre-pharaonic magic. Viktor guessed her age somewhere close to forty, and she had the nervous habit of folding her hands in front of her and running her right thumb against the back of her left hand.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” Viktor said.

“Oh, yes. The pleasure’s mine. To be honest, you’re only the second lay person I’ve seen privately during my tenure. Being an Egyptologist is a lovely profession for cocktail parties, until you disclose that you specialize in the Ogdoad, at which time everyone looks for the loo and wonders who invited the wallybag. But enough of the sad lonely tale of the ex-pat scholar. What is it you wish to discuss?”

Viktor told her what he’d discussed with Professor Krantz at the Naturkunde. She made little humming sounds as she listened.

“What I’m looking for,” he said, “is evidence of a specific priesthood dedicated to Nu.”

“What you’ve been told is correct. Nu didn’t have a designated priesthood, or an official temple. The priests of other gods and goddesses tended the waters of Nu, which were represented by sacred basins inside the temples.”

“No heresies related to Nu, no short-lived ancillary cults?”

“Not that I know of. And I would know.”

“I see.” Viktor frowned and drummed his fingers. “Where did the myth of Nu originate? Is it possible there was a precursor deity?”

“No one is certain where and when the concept of Nu first appeared. The Pyramid texts, the earliest of which date to the twenty-fourth century B.C.E., contain the earliest references to Nu. But the Pyramid texts are almost certainly the first transcribed versions of well-developed religious traditions. It’s impossible to say how old the concept of Nu is. Old. Very old.”

Viktor thought her explanation sounded forced. “You have a theory.”

She smiled. “How shall I put this? You see Professor, there is Egyptology, which is a major branch of archaeology concerning the study of Egyptian history, art, religion and other aspects of ancient Egyptian life. Then there is, as with any other field, those areas that are not so well-documented, or accepted. Those that do not carry the weight of history.”

“Lore. Myths and legends.”

“Just as Christianity has its uncanonized literature, just as any other culture has its folk traditions, so Egyptology has its stories that have been discounted, lost, or forgotten. Or, of course, as the conspiracy theorists will claim, hidden.”

“And there are such stories concerning Nu?”

“If you’re asking my official position on a Nu priesthood, then I would tell you there’s no such thing, and we can have tea and discuss the politics of oil. If you’re asking me as a curious scholar if there’re perhaps other stories to be heard, then I’d tell you yes. So let me ask, what is it exactly you’re looking for information on?”

“Let me be candid,” Viktor said. “I specialize in the study of cult behavior. At times I consult with law enforcement, and I’m currently engaged on a matter that appears to involve a cult connected to Nu.”

Her body language retreated, her voice became guarded. “My… how odd. I—are you here on behalf of the Egyptian police?”

“This is a private matter.”

“I can see you’re here on a serious inquiry. What I alluded to earlier is merely an old hypothesis that’s been bandied about, one which I’ve further developed in my spare time.”

Viktor folded his arms and sat back in his chair. “If you don’t mind, at this point I think I need to know everything I can about Nu. I assure you what we discuss won’t leave this room.”

Her thumb rubbing grew more insistent as she mulled the decision in her mind. Finally she said, “You mentioned discussing the Cavern of Nu with Professor Krantz?”

“He said Nu had been mentioned in certain texts as a specific place. He mentioned a Cavern of Nu, in the Pyramid texts. Also a Gate of Nu.”

“Those are the two reputable references, along with a few random hieroglyph finds that refer to Nu as a lake.”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s the myth of Ra washing in the waters of Nu before he’s reborn at the start of each dawn. That’s as far as most Egyptologists venture concerning the origin of Nu.”

Her thumb rubbing became more insistent as Viktor waited for her to continue. “Please go on,” he said. “I’m not in the business of venturing where most people go.”

As her reticence melted away, an intense light brightened her eyes. “Among tribesmen in a certain area of the Western Desert, there was once the belief, up until at least the sixteenth century, that a remnant of the primordial waters, the waters of Nu, still remained.”

“Sixteenth century B.C.E.?”

“
C
.E.”

Viktor pursed his lips.

“These tribesmen spoke of a small lake at the bottom of an underground cavern hidden in the middle of the desert, and of a line of pre-pharaonic tribal chiefs who controlled those same areas of the Western desert. The chiefs were reputed to have had extraordinarily long life spans.”

Viktor let out a small chuckle, and she wagged a finger at him.

“Every belief we have, Professor Radek, has a beginning, a fact we too often forget. As an expert in cults I’m sure you’re well aware of this.”

“Yes,” he murmured. “Beliefs and practices often evolve quite differently from their original manifestations.”

She excused herself and reappeared with a pot of tea. Viktor accepted gratefully. “I thought you might’ve taken the chance to sneak away,” she said.

His lips creased. “You were discussing the origins of Nu.”

“As you know, Nu is the earliest known conceptualization of the primordial waters. Where do you speculate the idea for the primordial waters, the waters of eternal life, originated?”

“Clearly from the inundation of the Nile.”

“The obvious choice, and the standard belief. But don’t you find it odd that the sacred waters of Nu present in the ancient temples all took the same form, and that form was not in the shape of a river, but of a circular pool or basin?”

“Not especially,” Viktor said. “A representative form was chosen, perhaps to suit the aesthetics of the temple.”

“Mm. Let me switch gears. Are you familiar with the figure of Hermes Trismegistus?”

“The first alchemist reputed to have achieved eternal life. A figure of legend that eventually evolved into a syncretism of Thoth and Hermes.”

“Perhaps legendary. There is a school of thought which posits that he was in fact a historical figure. Did you know that two European alchemists visited Egypt looking for the elixir of life, Nicholas Flamel and the Comte St. Germain? And that they journeyed to the same area of the Western desert where the tribesmen believed the remnant of the waters of Nu still remained?”

“This is all quite fascinating,” Viktor said, “especially as I’ve heard these names mentioned twice in the same week. And of course I see where you’re headed. If all of the above is true, then I must ask, why has no one made these connections?”

“Perhaps because no one cares about long-dead legends, or forgotten tribal lore which lies outside the realm of a proper Egyptologist.”

Viktor was silent, and she relaxed her intense stare and gave a musical laugh. Her laugh brightened her otherwise dull features. “Or perhaps because the alchemists publicly claimed they wished to soak in the restorative waters of the oases of the Western Desert. Or perhaps because a series of earthquakes and sandstorms over the last five hundred years buried all potential evidence of such a place in the sands of time.”

Viktor folded his hands and again said nothing, sensing she had more to say.

“Let’s tie some of this together,” she said. “For my thesis, I took on the immense task of tracing the origin of the concept of Nu. Sometime around the fourth millennium B.C.E., as the desert dried up, most of the Neolithic peoples inhabiting the Western Desert moved to the Nile region. To my surprise, I found that the earliest known references to the worship of water came from remnants of the tribal peoples in the Western Desert, rather than the settled agrarians of the Nile valley. As far as I can tell, the Egyptian concept of a primordial body of water was present in the desert earlier than it was in the Nile Valley.”

“I didn’t think the Bedouins kept records dating to those time periods.”

“Not just that: these references predate the Pyramid texts. They predate the
Nile civilization
.”

“Then what’s the evidence?”

“Neolithic rock paintings, Professor. Paintings that depict the worship of a body of water. Do you remember the archaeological find in the Gilf Kebir, the Cave of Swimmers? I believe a recent movie popularized the discovery.”

“Rock paintings in the middle of the desert depicting people swimming in a large body of water. Quite a sensational find.”

“There was a similar find two decades ago, far smaller and less publicized, in the area of the Western Desert we’ve been discussing, near Siwa Oasis. Only the figures in these rock paintings aren’t swimming: they’re
kneeling
before a pool of water.”

“Was the find publicized?”

“It was a tiny, disputed find that didn’t have the sensational impact of the Cave of Swimmers. Moreover, the Neolithic peoples were animists. Veneration of nature is not a remarkable discovery. The Egyptology powers-that-be decided the evidence in the rock paintings wasn’t clear-cut enough to form a link to Nu.”

Viktor cleared his throat. “You’re extrapolating from these rock paintings that the concept of Nu, and the eternal waters of Egyptian cosmology, derived from prehistoric desert dwellers?”

“My research led me to a tribe of Bedouins in this area of the desert that have roamed there, according to them, for thousands of years. You’re correct that the Bedouins aren’t keen on written records, but they have an incredible oral tradition. They told me a story from their distant past. A short tale, but quite sensational. Would you like to hear it?”

He folded his arms. “I would.”

“I call it the Legend of the Lost Oasis.”

F
rom the back of the taxi, Grey noticed Veronica doing the same thing he was doing: watching with wide eyes as they rushed through the pandemonium of Cairo, the monolithic grace of the Pyramids hovering in the backdrop, a crush of people and cars and vendors and spires and epoch-spanning monuments in the foreground.

Veronica had barely spoken to him since their exchange at the beginning of the flight, and he didn’t blame her. But it wasn’t as if they didn’t have far more important things to worry about. When this was all over maybe he could get his head straight.

He glanced at the brochure in his hand. Cairo, mother of the world, city of a thousand minarets. Rarely had Grey felt such an immediate sense of identity from a city. Cairo simply felt like Cairo from the moment he stepped off the tarmac: the faint parched taste of sand in the air, the sun hovering overhead as if Cairo were her firstborn, the nonchalant juxtaposition of ancient and new.